Wednesday, August 22, 2007

World Wrestling Something or Other

Reha called me on my hateful non-iPhone cellular Blackberry +2 Device of Loathing.

“Hey, Jon!”

I move my head in circles, trying to get better reception, “Hey, Re, what’s up?”

“Where are you?”

More tipping and twirling of my head, “I’m right here, at my desk.”

“What are you doing?”

“Um, just working, I guess. Why?”

“Well, it sounds like you are over there in a wrestling match or something.”

“Well, yeah, Re, there is a bear here, and I’ve wrestled it to the ground. He had my phone.”

“Oh, is Richard there?”

And I fell over and died laughing.

See, because Richard? Gay. And he’s not just gay, he’s a “sub-species” of gay guy who classifies himself as a ”bear."

I explained all of this “bear” stuff to Reha a while ago as a way to prove to her that my beard was, in fact attractive to at least some people and not at all throughly goofy looking, since Richard said that my beard made me look “hot” and “adorable” and not at all like one of the guys from ZZ Top, which frankly, though I was flattered, I was a bit nonplussed, since I really am going for the ZZ Top look. It’s either the ZZ Top look or until Reha refuses to be seen in public with me or I have to rip my face off because it itches ALL THE TIME.

Anyway, that’s a whole lot of explanation for not a lot of joke, but I just had to share with you the fact that my wife made a completely out of character funny.

And to point out yet again, that I need an iPhone instead of the unholy monstrosity that is the Blackberry 7100 series from Sprint.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

On the Garage Floor

Buried underneath all the crap of our lives which previously lived in the garage and now lives in a POD I found that *something* spilled. At first I thought it was glue, because everything the brown ooze touched was impenetrably stuck to other things that also touched the brown glop. After digging a little deeper and getting everything else out of the picture, I figured out that it was paint. A paint can had tipped over and gluggled out onto the garage floor. Except the strange thing was that I *never* found the empty paint can. So this spill may as well have come out of nowhere. Weird. But the color and texture of the dried paint was pretty cool.

Those cassette tapes were stuck in the upright position. Had to break them into little pieces to pry them off the floor.

And then Ellis made me take a picture of her:

She was having trouble prying her shirt off her head. Typical. Brain the size of a planet, but she can’t get her shirt off without adult supervision.

Monday, August 20, 2007

The Dangers of Digging Through Old Boxes

I’ve been shuffling boxes and boxes of “stuff” from the garage to the POD. I haven’t really been looking through that many of them, because I inevitably stumble on someone’s baby book and end up standing in the garage, surrounded by boxes, flipping pages and breaking down in a small puddle of tears because my babies, they will never be babies like that anymore.

Anyway.

I did peek into one box of photos and just had to share a portion of its contents with you, because you of all people will be able to appreciate the degree to which these are truly memorable.

This is a shot from Christmas of 1980. That’s my paternal grandfather and though it may look like a 13 year old girl, it’s not. It’s me. And, is it just me, or do I not bear a striking resemblance to a blond version of a young Kristy McNichol?

Me and my Dad. You can’t read the tee-shirt very well, but it’s a “Snoopy” tee-shirt and it reads, “I’m allergic to mornings.” No wonder I got stuffed in lockers in junior high.

This is from my Junior year of High School, I think. I’m holding one of my much younger step sisters, Kate or Robin. Man, was that band hat awesome or what? (And yes, I was a “band fag,” though in my high school, the band was quite good and there wasn’t as much stigma about being in the band. Still, The Hat is truly stupendous.

Mad Skillz on the ten speed. Though it’s quite possible I fell over mere seconds after the pic was taken. I did that a lot, sadly. Oh, if only the scars from my numerous “face plants” could speak. You know what they’d say? “Ouch! Oh, man! Why didn’t someone ever take his bikes away? The boy was obviously not very coordinated. Jeez, how many near death experiences should it have taken to convince people the boy really had no business on a bike?”

And why didn’t someone tell me to get a frickin’ haircut? Though man, look at that. I used to have a metric ton of hair. *sigh*

Sunday, August 19, 2007

New Site Design

As is my wont every year around this time, I throw caution to the wind and re-design my site. This time I’ve gotten a little bit more tricky with things. I’m using a technique called sIFR to do some wizardry so I can have “nice” headline type. It’s all very complicated, frankly, and I just followed the directions to get it to work properly, but if you have javascript on and Flash installed, you should see some nice headline type. NeutrafceDisplay-Medium representin’ in da hizzhoouse! (Man, I just can’t pull off Snoop language, can I?) If you don’t have Flash or Javascript on, the site will still work as expected, you just don’t get to see the lovely headline type.

Anyway, if you read the site in a feed reader like Google Reader, NewsFire, or NetNewsWire, nothing will have changed dramatically for you at all. The feed addresses are the same. But pop in and take a look around. Let me know what you think. I’ve done my best to test in all major browsers and platforms and everything seems to be OK. Though it’d be great if someone could buy me an iPhone. I simply must test it out. It’s all about the research. :-] And if there any egregious bugs, please drop me a line.

Thanks! And YOU are my favorite reader! All those others mean NOTHING to me!

Friday, August 17, 2007

My Son, the Philosopher King

Somehow the dinner conversation turns to death. I was trying to film Ellis doing something cute (or obnoxious, it’s a fine distinction) and Reha became a part of the shot. Naturally death comes up.

She loathes to be on camera. So she says, “Jon, please stop that. You know I don’t like to be filmed.”

“But what about that one time when Ellis was super little and I took all that footage and then once you saw it a couple years later you said how grateful you were that I took it after all?”

“Well, fine maybe if I were dying and was going to leave some last messages to the kids, you could film me, but that’s not the case right now.”

“Actually, Reha, everyone has a terminal disease. Life is a terminal disease.”

Lucas pops in with his best stoner, slightly befuddled voice:

“That’s deep, man.”

 

Novus

Proximus

 

Favorite Entries

If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

• Help Wanted
• From the Office of Mis-directed Email
• A Word from the Small Person in the House
• RNT Product Review: Chocolate Mix Skittles Left Me Sterile!
• Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago
• Dear Gratuitously Naked Conversationalist at the Gym:
• A Peek Inside the Writer’s Guild and Producers’ Negotiations
• We Regret the Error
• Letters from a Homeowner to His General Contractor
• What I Did There
• Hermaphrodite Administrative Assistants and Receptionists Need Not Apply
• Giving Me an IM Account Was Obviously a Huge Mistake
• Official Ransom Note Typography Vista vs. Mac OS X Shootout
• I Need a Real Hobby
• Beat Down
• Big Fat Lies
• True Love
• Now MY Ovaries Hurt
• Don’t Get Her Started
• Disturbing Trend
• Had to do it
• Mooshy stuff
• Ransom Note Typography End User License Agreement “EULA”
• Diva-licious!
• Just so we’re clear
• PETA may have a point

Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

©2005-2008 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.