a game for you to play while bored...

okay, all you nonexistant readers out in bloggerville. i will give you the title and a few lyrics of a song by a band i love, but consider to be relatively obscure(no, they are NOT in my favorites anywhere, so don't even try). (they are on sub-pop, but not famous, and not from seattle)

if you get it right, you win...drumroll, please...bragging rights! yes, that's right, bragging rights. (what'd you expect, i'm a stay-home dad and poor, and i'm married and my wife won't allow sexual favors!)

but we'll have some fun in the meantime.

cigarette machine:

she stands next to the cigarette machine.
this device has got it made,
she thinks.
it has a cast-iron stomach,
but a can for a heart.

that's it. and remember kids, "not even star-crossed, just unlucky" (same song)

so let's all be "not even star-crossed, just unlucky" together.

post your answers in the comments. if somebody gets it right, i will write a blog about how totally cool they are, and how much i wish i was them.

darth sardonic

all quiet on the western front...

a surprisingly short one today (yes, i know, you nonexistant readers pass out from surprise!), but there's really not much to tell yet. i have to say that this has become a fun way to meet some fun people and i'm glad my sis-in-law talked me into doing this.

speaking of my sister-in-law, i found her, and she has found me. check her stuff out, it's funny in a "hate-my-life" kind of way: http://isea.blogspot.com

wellp, that's really it. i know, i know, a boring one today, but i can't be coming up with shit all the time!

darth sardonic

i shed my skin and become centered...

saturday was our five year anniversary. this means my wife and i have been together for six years, which is almost double my first attempt at domestic servitude.

five years, in this day and age, is like a diamond anniversary, so my wife and i decided to do it up right. we begged and pleaded my sister- and mother-in-law to watch nos. 1 and 2 for the night so that we might go to avalon hotel and spa in portland, or (my wife and her family are from portland). check out how cool this place is at www.avalonhotelandspa.com to see for yourself.

so i received a mud wrap and a full body massage. now, it behooves me to explain at this point that this place is ritzy, and i'm a little used to feeling horribly out of place in ritzy places, but that was not the case with avalon. it didn't seem to matter that i was walking around in a bettie page t-shirt and a pair of very worn 501's, they treated me like i was the only guy in the place.

so daniel removed my skin via brushes, mineral oils, and mud. he tells me, "this is really good for removing the toxins from your body" which caused me to assume that one of two things would happen after i was done with the mud treatment: 1) i would immediately lose about 50 or 60 pounds, because i figure there's at least that much toxins in my body, or 2) by now i would look like one giant whitehead as these toxins fight their happy little way out of my body. neither of these things have happened, but i did go potty alot.

then stuart completely obliterated every tight spot, knot, and achey muscle in my body. my skin and body felt wonderful.

now, i used to be the most centered hepcat that ever walked the planet. very little got me upset. i used to get massages and the therapist would comment on how loose i was. i used to laugh at people who have to wear bite guards at night so they don't grind their teeth down to nubs(my wife falls into this category). my body used to be my pal.

then i had kids. now my teeth ache all the time from grinding. it's either that, or i injure my kids. i figure when they get jobs as lawyers, or ceo's, or rock stars, they can pay to replace my ground-down pearlies. my body is fighting a battle with me about what size it oughtta be, and i'm losing. and my muscles. oh my god, my poor muscles! they are like one giant knot.

so daniel and stuart made me right again, and my wife got all centered as well(in her own part of the spa, into which i was not allowed access), and then we wandered our smiling happy little way over to rivers, a stunningly cool restaurant a mere ten feet away from the hotel, where i drank gin and tonics and ate some absolutely wonderful food.

then back to our room for the kinds of things married couples do when they're drunk, without kids, and completely centered and feeling decadent, followed by a completely uninterrupted night of sleep.

wonderful. beautiful. aaahhh. of course, now we're back in the real world, and my wife and i are rapidly tensing back up, and i have begun replacing the toxins in my body as fast as i can swallow and inhale them, but my skin still feels smooth.

now i have to go, oh my beloved nonexistent readers, as i need to go buy a million lottery tickets so that i may win so that i may make a trip to avalon for this kind of pampering a regular deal.

bring on the funk!

yes, it has happened. last night, no. 2 woke up at two am, and didn't want to go back to sleep. i did what i always do, which is stick him in his swing in the living room, tell him to shut up, and go to sleep (during the day i may consider myself a fairly good dad, but at night, well, that bastard that takes care of them at night is only barely keeping it together). he continued to cry, and i went back to bed.

my wife chose this very moment to decide that we shouldn't pick him up at night when he cries, that he shouldn't go to sleep in his swing, that she should yell and holler, louder even than no. 2. the result; no. 2 stood in his crib screaming his fucking head off for two motherfucking hours!!! (predictably) every half-hour was punctuated by my wife on a stomping trip into the kids' room to further yell at no. 2. (also, predictably)

and of course, no. 1 got up at his usual time of sevenish, so needless to say, i am wiped.

now, i have noticed that the english language does not provide for the kind of bone-weary, please-god-kill-me tired that is discovered by stay-home parents. all of you working parents (who aren't probably reading this anyway, who is really?) like to think you understand, but there is nothing like the singularly exhausting task of being up half the night and not being able to wake up and drop them off at daycare, but instead wake up to their continued whining and crying and looking at your sagging, battered face in the mirror and thinking, "oh my god, these children are sucking out my very life!"

my brain has shriveled to a dried date, and all the newly emptied space has been filled with throbbing pain. i awoke covered, and i mean COVERED in bedsheet scars, like i had not been sleeping so much as fucking wrestling with the mattress (and losing, apparently). i stood in front of the open refrigerator for ten minutes trying to remember what i opened it for in the first place (oh, yeah, creamer).

and lurking just around the corner, just behind my drooping eyelids, i can feel it, the funk. that's right, any moment now i will be reduced to a self-loathing, self-deprecating chunk of pathetic, pitiful humanoid glop, who alternately hates his life, and hates himself for hating what is most definitely a beautiful and wonderful life. if i can have a big huge bawl (yes, i am a man, yes, i cry. i cry at some sad songs, i cry at sad movies, i cry at happy movies, i am not afraid to admit it.) i will get most of it out of my system, but it's trying to convince the kids to let me watch "the green mile" uninterrupted that's the trick. i have trouble even listening to five for fighting's "superman" without them hanging off of me like growths.

but i've got to try, it's the only way to stave off the impending dark cloud of doom...

the kind of random weird things that bombard me all day...

i should mention here that i really have no life. having chosen to be a stay-home dad has freed up quite a bit of time for the crazy shit going on in my head to run amok.

so here are a few things that have popped into my head in the last 24 hours:

why is it called "post-nasal drip" (meaning "behind the nose" or, in essence, down the throat) when it is coming out my nostrils? wouldn't that be "pre-nasal drip"?

there is a show on pbs (i watch a bit of children's programming, yes, mostly searching for hot chicks who are cleverly disguised as clowns or teachers or whatever while my kids learn their abc's. am i the only person who does this? i'm a sick bastard.) called "dragon tales". the premise is that a brother and a sister have this dragon scale that they use to go to dragonland and play with their dragon friends. where the fuck did they find the scale?! is this the kind of thing that can be found just laying around? how the hell would they know how to use it, and even more intriguing, why would they want to? we're talking fucking dragons here! fire-breathing, hungry mothers who prey on human flesh.

"star wars: attack of the clones" was on hbo yesterday. so i left it on as i cleaned house and did laundry. yes, i am a housebitch (insert whip-cracking sound here). i thought there should have been a scene right after the one where anakin slaughters all the sand people in which padme would be in a dim room, talking on a cell phone, while anakin slept in the background:

padme: "yeah, girl. he fuckin' freaked me out. mmmm-hmmm. he was goin' on and on. how he killed all them sand people. shit yeah, i was scared! no, it's okay, i slipped a rufy in his drink, he'll be out all night. of course i'm still gonna fuck him! he gets me all hot with that moody, dark jedi shit. i just wanna make him wait a little longer. okay, see you at the club then?"

and am i the only one who thinks that the nameless dork who plays ani (skywalker, not difranco) in this episode seems like he took acting lessons from william shatner in this scene? here's one of his lines: "they...are like animals. and i...slaughtered them...like animals." if he would've followed this up with "KAAAAHNN!!" his fate would've been sealed.

there is a commercial for a mattress in which one of the actors portraying someone who really gives a rat's ass about said mattress says, "it was like sleeping on a cloud." and i always think this should be followed up with the line, "oh, well, i mean without the horrible plummet to earth afterwords, of course."

thanks for playing along, if any of you are actually reading this, which i doubt.

a day in the life...

it is 7:30, am, my kids (2, boys, one three and one two, who shall be referred to nos. 1 and 2, respectively,) have stolen the wooden spoons out of the utensil drawer and are auditioning for skinny puppy or einsturzende neubauten. it feels more like they are practicing on my temporal lobes.

we've now been up for roughly an hour, and i still haven't finished my first cup of coffee. they have both been fed, changed, picked out some mind-numbing "baby einstein" dvd to watch, thrown fits when mommy left for work, proceeded to run around the house screaming and throwing themselves on the ground, no. 1 has had his claritin, and has just asked me to wrap him up in saran wrap so that he can houdini out of it, which won't take nearly as long as i would like.

i, on the other hand, aside from performing all the functions necessary for my children (see paragraph above), have mostly stood around scratching my ass and rubbing my eyes. sleep deprivation is my constant friend and companion. i've found that sleep deprivation brings his friend, depression. at least once a week i feel pathetic and old and worn out. it wasn't so bad when i was allowed to look at online porn, but since some fucking waste-of-space hacker used one of my favorite sites to drop 79 viruses into my hardrive, i've been dusting off my video collection, and have more time (though, i should point out, less energy) for cleaning the house. i am a stay-home dad in my early 30's who has only just quit wearing the "punk-teenager" clothes from hot topic and bleaching my hair to hide the gray that has begun popping up all over.

i could go on and on about how rough my life is, but the fact is, it's not too bad really, other people have it much worse, and i actually like it (most days when i'm not in the aforementioned funk), and i desperately need a second cup of coffee and some pants. so we'll call that "it" for now, and i will hopefully have something funnier to write about soon.

oh, and c, sis-in-law, if you're reading this, then you found me!