I Love How All of This is Vaguely Justified by Scientific Interest

Not the high-minded funny stuff I normally like to include, but still...

Still One of My Favorite Videos Even Though They Made It Silly and Even Though it Rips Off the Final Scene from Altered States

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

My Personal Motivator

This keeps me going.

And This is Why They Call It Work

"What's wrong? You look upset."

"You don't KNOW why I'm upset?"

"No."

"Well, THAT'S why I'm upset!"

"Sooo... now that I know why your upset, there's no need to be upset."

"NO! That makes it so much worse!"

***

Repeat this conversation about twenty times an hour and you might have a general idea of how time at the office has gone this week. Things are looking better in the future, but I might not be posting for awhile.

I Agree with about 90 Percent of This, but There are Some Good Ideas in It, Nontheless

A psychologist gives a lecture on the differences between liberals and conservatives and why they are both necessary for society to function. Anytime he uses the word "tribe" or "tribalism" I agree 100%. There are other nitpicks with other areas, but I want to share the information instead of picking through it, pointing out the stuff I don't like.

It is about 20 minutes long, so feel free to skip it if you are busy.

A Really Good Sequel

The Post Where I Re-Post from Another Blog's Post

I waste a lot of time on the internet.

Every once in awhile, I find something that I think is awesome/funny/worth my time. I then show it to the Mrs. who reminds me that I have a lot on my "To Do" list and maybe I should get off the internet for awhile.

So here is the latest blog I found - KinderTrauma.

Specifically, what makes it awesome is this post.

And even more specifically this picture.



Was this a complete waste of my internet time? Discuss.

Making Money? Off of blogs?

One of the great things about having your email associated to your blog is that people you have never heard from send you emails.



Here is one I received recently:

I'm the webmaster of [website removed]
I wanted to know if by any chance you would be interested in doing an unbiased review of our site [website removed] on your blog http://tmtomh.blogspot.com/

If you agree you can choose between receiving a product sample or receiving a payment.

If you choose the product sample instead of the payment the sample is yours to keep and you don’t need to send it back.

The product sample that you can get is %product and you can see it there: %product_url

Please let me know if you are interested.

Thank you
Z. R

If you want to receive more paid review proposals, just click the following link:

[link removed]

***

Ok, seriously, have you read my blog? My last two posts were about commercializing suicidal tendencies and doing everything I can to make dogs misbehave. And the one before that featured a drunk, pill-popping baby.

Do you think the intelligent, wealthy, and smokin' hott (with no 'g' and two 't's) people who read such high-brow material are just clamoring on my unbiased thoughts and feelings about your website? Probably not.

And while I'm at it, after reviewing my blog, what made you think I use it to do reviews of other websites? And how exactly does one review a website, let alone do an unbiased review? (I found it very clickable, so I give it four stars.)

And what the heck is a %product?

He Died with Dignity

We were at a party this weekend when a friend told me his dog, Brutus, had died.

Brutus was a great dog for telling stories about, and I often find myself telling Brutus stories at parties. So, in his memory, I will share a few with you.


He was an English Bulldog. In other words, he was huge, stupid, and happy all the time. He loved to play and to play rough. One of his best pals was a Doberman down the street. They would "play" by biting each others faces. The Doberman would knock Brutus to the ground, bite into Brutus' jowls and then drag him around the yard. After this, Brutus would stand up, his face covered in bloody teethmarks, and kind of jump up and down, as if to say, "Again! Again! Do it again!"

It was a little horrifying to watch, but after a few moments, Brutus' sheer glee at being ripped apart from another dog was contagious. If we tried to break up the "play fight," Brutus would sulk and look disappointed. "Don't you know you're being hurt?" we would ask Brutus while scratching behind his ears. "Don't you know you are in pain?"


He did not know this. He was big and stupid and happy all the time.

My favorite game to play with Brutus was a little thing I called, "Where is your dignity?" I would talk real excited and go, "Where's your dignity, Brutus? Where? Where is it?" And I would look around the room in an overly animated way. Because Brutus was not very bright, he would not look where I was looking, he would just stare directly at me and wag his tail.

Then I would scratch him behind the ears, "Where's your dignity? Where is it? Where is it?" Then he would strategically shift his body so I would no longer be scratching behind his ears, but rather be scratching his butt. He loved having his butt scratched. There was one part of his body, at the base of his tail, that acted like a little dog button. If you scratched this one spot, Brutus' legs would collapse and he would flop on the ground. Then he would clumsily roll over and expose his stomach for more scratching.

When I would scratch his butt and hit the magic dog button, Brutus would flop. I would then begin rubbing his belly with an overly-dramatic, "That's right! You have no dignity! No dignity at all!"

There was one time when I attended a Christmas party at these friends house. There were holiday sausages and sugar cookies galore. Brutus came up to me and nudged me with his butt, practically begging me to ask him about his dignity. Instead I offered him a little bit of Christmas sausage in exchange for some amusing dog tricks.

"Sit," I said. Brutus just looked at me and wagged his tail so hard that it looked like he was just wagging his entire back half. "No, sit," I said and pressed gently on his back side.

My fingers must have brushed the magic dog button because he collapsed and stuck his legs up in the air, begging for is tummy to be rubbed. Figuring that this was as close as I would ever get to having him sit, I went ahead and gave him a nice piece of Christmas sausage. And another. And another.


I guess Brutus' delicate digestion wasn't prepared for the rich goodness that is Christmas sausage that probably came from a marching band fundraiser, because shortly after downing a half pound of the stuff, he began to eek out really smelly dog farts.

"Brutus, what have you gotten into?" asked his owners. Brutus looked to me, hoping I would intervene for him, but, sadly, I betrayed the poor dog's trust and pretended to be very interested in the decorative tinsel. They decided to move Brutus out of the house and into the yard. Of course, they didn't realize that I had not only fed Brutus the Christmas sausage, but more than a few sugar cookies.

Let's just say that when the sugar hit his system, he decided to run in circles. Without stopping. For three hours straight. For the rest of the evening, if I ever needed a little holiday cheer, I would look out the window, see this white blur going in circles, and I knew Brutus was happy.

And I hope, where ever he is, he is happy now.

Yet Another Reason I am not in Advertising

So this weekend, my wife bought a Prius.


I will have to admit, it is a pretty neat car. When you turn it on, the engine doesn't start - you just run on electricity until you reach a certain speed. Which means it is a very difficult car to lock yourself in a garage with, hoping to die of asphyxiation.

Morbid thoughts like this happen to me all the time. But usually the follow-up thought is pretty interesting. For example, my follow-up thought to this was, "Hey! That would make a great commercial!"

Just imagine...

A sad sack of a guy shuffles through his house, his limp hand drops a note. The camera zooms in on the note, revealing, in beautiful cursive penmanship, that his One True Love has found someone else.

The guy shuffles into his garage, closes his eyes, and starts his car.

Time passes.

Nothing happens.

Time passes some more.

Nothing happens.

Out of frustration, the man rests his head on the steering wheel. Immediately, the car radio springs to life, belting out, "It's a Sunshine Day" by the Brady Bunch.

The garage door rises, filling the air with light.

An announces coos, "Things are looking up. The new Prius."

Aaaand now you see why I didn't pursue a career in advertising.

How to Tell I Have Been to Your Party

I recently attended at family reunion for my in-laws.

I think I made an impression.

More of My Rich Cultural Heritage

Got this from Boing Boing.

I love these people. I am probably related to them.

Pure Nightmare Fuel

These dancing monstrosities haunted my dreams when I was a child. Thank you television from the 70s, but thank you even more to YouTube for allowing me to confront my childhood fears.

The Cost of Friendship

Alex is my #1 friend.

I say this because Alex is listed first in my Blackberry address book. I do not know any Aarons or Abbeys, so Alex appears first in the list.

This is important to know because my Blackberry accidentally calls Alex all the time.

Here is how it happens - I wear my Blackberry on my belt thanks to this handy dandy belt clip. And every once in awhile, my belly decides to seep over my belt and rest oh so gently on some of the Blackberry buttons, which in turn tell the Blackberry to start calling people.

I do not know when this happens, but I do know that Alex gets called more than anyone else because he is the first person in my address book. If a certain button is pressed three times in a row, the Blackberry goes "{click} Open Address Book. {click} Make Call. {click} Call this person."

And since my belly does not often scroll down the list in the address book... BOOM! Alex gets a call.

Today I had the distinct pleasure of eating a very large Tex-Mex meal and then shortly afterwords calling Alex and apologizing for my phone repeatedly calling him and sharing with him the joy of the gurgling sound my stomach makes when it meets up with combo fajitas.

"I am sorry my phone does this, Alex," I said. "And I don't want to make you feel bad because I only call you when I am gaining weight. Try to think of this in a positive way. You are my belly buddy. And to celebrate our chubby-wubby friendship, I am going home and doing some sit ups for a few hours."

So this whole post is a long way of letting the world know what kind of torture I put my friends, especially long-suffering ones like Alex, through.

That and the fact that during our conversation today, Alex said, "You should blog about this."

Being a Member Has Its Rewards

I am about to leave for a trip to Atlanta and may not be near the internet for awhile.

But before I leave, I am happy to share some webisodes written and directed by my fellow Dallas Screenwriters Association Board member, Michael Shriro.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

How Can It Get Closer When It Doesn't Move?

Reason #426,223,789 why Tina Fey is awesome!

My Cultural Heritage

Not a day goes by when someone doesn't stop me and ask, "Excuse me, sir, but how did you get so funky?" And then I am asked to demonstrate how to bust a move.

This usually ends with a round of applause, some gratuitous "whoop whoop"ing and maybe a few choice words that end in -izzle. Fo' reals, ya'all.

The sad truth of the matter is this - I did not do anything to learn how to be funky, how to perfect the flow of my verse, or how to drop a beat. All of these are just a product of my rich cultural heritage.

Check it out, ya'alls:



It cannot get better than that. I am weeping from the pure funkatude and funkadelic funkyness of it. THIS is my cultural heritage. In fact, I am pretty sure I am related to all of these people. We get together, all of us homies in our hood, and we immediately fall into a nice little groove.

And this is a beautiful thing. Fo' reals, ya'all.

Shout out to my home slice Alex for sending me this video.

David Foster Wallace 1962 - 2008

Reading, and by this I mean serious reading, has become a luxury. If the book is really entertaining, you know there will be a movie or television show made out of it, so, seriously, why bother? Books take time to read and very often the time spent reading can be used entertaining yourself in some other way¹. With the emails and the text messages and the (dare I say it) blog entries², it has become increasingly difficult for someone who considers him or herself a reader³ to sit down with a nice fat juicy book with wild digressions and insightful rambles and thoroughly entertaining prose.

There is a strange connection between writers and readers, because you cannot lie on the page. Words leak out of writers in a way that they cannot fully control and the words are absorbed by the readers in a way that can be described as deeply intimate. This is why people obsess over books in a way they rarely do over other things. ⁴

I really love David Foster Wallace's books. He had something to say about who we are and where we are going as a culture. His books are fun and entertaining and baffling and frustrating and wonderful. He adamantly refused to ever produce anything at an eighth grade reading level.⁵

And reading his work helped you feel smarter. Whether it is the detailed analysis of brain chemistry in a footnote of "Infinite Jest," or his brilliant deconstruction of David Letterman's entire shtick in the short story "My Appearance,"⁶ his work inspired me to not only be a better writer, but to be a better reader.

And that is something I have to thank Mr. Wallace for. His work made me want to be better. In his short time in this world, he created works of art above and beyond anything I am sure I could create my entire life. I wanted to be a better reader for him and a better writer in the vain hopes that I could cobble together some words that might someday, maybe, make an impression on him.

Thoughts of loss inevitably become selfish, and my selfish thought is this - I am not going to get more books with the name David Foster Wallace printed on the covers anymore. I won't be able to read what he thinks of the 2024 election. And I will never get to meet him to tell him to his face how much I appreciate what he has done.

I appreciate you and your work, David Foster Wallace.⁷ May you find the peace that eluded you.


Footnotes

¹There is another blog entry idea for the world. "Why do you read?" I tend to read for two main reasons - entertainment and information. Sadly, the whole idea of being entertained is more or less monopolized (in my life at least) by film and television. There are strengths and limitations in each medium, of course. For example, you never have will the distinct pleasure of complaining about Kevin Costner's horrible accent when you merely read "The Adventures of Robin Hood." And why would anyone want to experience the "Adventures of Robin Hood" without complaining about the accents is quite beyond me.

²Yeah, I said it.

³Which I do.

⁴That is another blog entry idea. How people who are obsessive over novels are different from people obsessive over actors, comic books, or movies? Because it is a different kind of obsession - an obsession that quite literally gets under your skin. Words can affect the mind in a way few things can outside of recreational drugs and possibly sharp rocks. I endlessly quote books. A sizable portion of my conversation comes from other people's words.

⁵As someone who writes technical manuals for a living, this whole "eighth grade reading level" is a big bugaboo for me. The original idea came from newspaper marketing departments - newspapers should be readable by the general population and the general population reads at an eighth grade level. I had an editor who lived by this and scratched out every one of my words that broke the three-syllable barrier with the note "eighth grade" next to it. I kept responding with the phrase, "isn't this document supposed to help the person get smarter?" but to no avail. There is nothing quite like being continually asked to dumb it down for this mythical person who just won't get it unless it is dumbed-down.

⁶This is one of my favorite pieces of fiction from David Foster Wallace, and the short story I use to try to get people to read him. It is one thing to hand them a book over a thousand pages written in an eight-point font⁸, but it is something else to hand them a short story about an pill-popping, aging actress going on the Letterman show. When I try to get people to read any of his non-fiction⁹, I show them the book "A Supposedly Fun Thing That I Will Never Do Again" which is a real showcase of his essays.

⁷The whole footnote thing is my way of crudely imitating his writing style. A lot of David Foster Wallace's work is comprised of footnotes. I even want to say in some of his books, there are one or two footnotes that are longer than the chapters they footnote.

⁸This infamously-dense book would be "Infinite Jest."

⁹Which is just as good or better than his fiction.

Love Languages

There is this book out there that is about love languages. It is like those ubiquitous Mars Venus books. It is a book purchased primarily by newlywed wives who give it to newlywed husbands for the purpose of using the book to talk about the relationship.

Of course, what newlywed wives don't realize that their husbands got married so that they would never have to talk about the relationship ever again.

I say this because early in our marriage, I was presented with such a book. With a typical "I-do-not-realize-the-powers-I'm-tampering-with" attitude, I ignored it entirely, explaining that I had a stack of other books that really needed my attention first, especially considering the fact I had no idea if Spider-Man would win or not. I mean, the Green Goblin has a flying glider. How can Spider-Man possibly compete with that?

A few months after being presented with and subsequently ignoring the love languages book, an attractive single lady friend of ours told us how the love languages book totally changed her life. Because this woman was pretty, I feigned interest in the book. Which led to a "why-don't-you-ever-feign-interest-for-me-anymore" discussion with the Mrs.

Which eventually led to us discussing the relationship for a looooooooong time. Which is what the Mrs. wanted in the first place. I could have avoided this situation entirely by just reading the book and discussing it with her waaaay back when she wanted me to.

This, of course, reminds me of the Republican Vice Presidential candidate.

When I read about her, it is like there are two voices in my head and they are speaking two completely different love languages. And because there is not any common ground between these love languages, I cannot make up my mind what I think about her.

Here's an example:

One part of the brain goes, "I am very concerned about her lack of foreign policy experience."

The other part of the brain goes, "Dude. Vikings!"


One part of the brain goes, "In the brief time she has been in the national limelight, there seems to be a lot of inconsistencies between what she says she stands for and how she actually behaves in office."

To which the other part of the brain retorts, "Duuuuuude. Vikings!"


And finally the first part of the brain goes, "Neither political party truly represents your views on the issues, why even consider breaking with your tradition of voting for third party wackos in presidential elections? Especially when your reasons for subverting your principles are trivial bordering on nonsensical?"

The response?

"Duuuuuude. Vikings!"