Monetary Consideration

Things are rolling

Hey everybody.  I am sitting here enjoying the warmth of a rum and diet coke.  The girl’s in the tub and the boy is wrestling with his mother.  Everybody’s laughing.  Over 400 people read something that I wrote today and the first draft of the stupid book should be done in less than four weeks.  I hate my day job and I’m fat again - but all things considered, I’m pretty happy.  Anybody know a good literary agent?

Something I wrote

Angeline bolted upright in the old kitchen chair as the sensation shot through her like lightning.  She wouldn’t notice until the current
crisis had past that she had smacked the back of her skull on the old chair pretty hard.  The peak of the ancient slab of wood had
lodged for a split second into the soft tissue between the bottom of her head and the top of her neck and would no doubt be blue
tomorrow.  Of course no one would see this discoloration as the area in question is covered by strawberry blond, terribly stringy
hair.  A little further north from the soon-to-bruise area lay the current crisis. It was a small, hard entity, moving frantically within the
part of Angeline’s hair.

Angeline is terrified of spiders.  She experiences an uncomfortable tinge with the mere mention of anything that has more than four
legs.  The manner in which this particular crawley beast was thrashing about made Angeline feel as though the creature had two
thousand legs.  After escaping the chair, the teenage girl made every effort to remove the small creature from the top of her head.  
Unfortunately, the fact that her hooded sweatshirt and brassiere had recently been pulled up to the top of her chest effectively
prevented her from raising her arms above her shoulders.

And there she stood.  Trapped.  A demon-possessed arachnid was now surely drilling into her skull.  Her entire torso was exposed.  
This was an emergency situation that called for drastic measures.  There would be no calm pulling down of the shirt and then
reaching up for the bug.  This situation called for flailing…and lots of it.

What happened next could only be described as something similar to a “crack seizure”.  Angeline threw her head back and forth in
an effort to catapult the insect from her hair.  She tried to scare it away by screaming.  Somewhere deep in her subconscious,
Angeline wondered if the animal could hear her as tarantulas did not, according to her recollection, have ears.  Finally, she attempted
to help the catapult process along further by bending back and forth at the waist in a violent motion.  Throughout this entire process,
three things remained constant: first, Angeline’s arms appeared to be frozen in the helpless position of elevated to shoulder height
and bent slightly at the elbow; second, whatever was in her hair was not leaving; and finally, the poor unfortunate girl’s exposed
breasts attempted to defy gravity by rolling and shaking in tandem with her insect-removal efforts.

Somewhere near the point where one couldn’t feel any worse for poor Angeline, large footsteps rushing to her aid become audible.  
A large figure appears in the background and heads toward Angeline at about the same time that her efforts to remove the potential
parasite are immediately and violently halted by her mother’s portable microwave stand that had been recently purchased at Home
Depot for $129.00.  With impressive speed, Angeline’s body becomes lifeless and collapses to the ground.

Angeline’s father arrived on the scene in response to his little girl’s screams thinking she had been bitten by the neighbor’s rabid
dog. When he looked down and saw his unconscious daughter on the linoleum floor - a small amount of blood running from her nose,
her sweatshirt up around her head and about a quarter of a saltine cracker stuck in the part of her hair, he could do nothing but
shake his head and shut off the webcam.  

After a few minutes of head shaking he gingerly pulled Angeline’s sweatshirt down, picked her up and threw her over his shoulder
and began the trip upstairs to her room,  cursing his mother and the goddamned nosy librarian that taught her how to use a
computer, and wondering what was going to come of all this…

The Screaming Mermaid

My daughter was wearing her outfit from last Halloween today…I have no idea why.  She was the little mermaid.  I was sitting on the couch.  She came running toward me, screaming at the top of her lungs.  She dove headfirst into the couch and did a somersault, putting her bottom in the air.  She continued screaming as she farted.  Then she unsomersaulted and farted again.  She successfully created the grossest fartfield around me that I have ever encountered.  Then she ran away laughing as I tried not to vomit into my sleeve.  From now on every boat and/or drinking establishment I name will have something to do with the screaming mermaid.  The end.

Request for Advice

Okay, so I’ve been trying to train myself to be a programmer and it’s really not working.  I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent individual.  I hold a masters degree and have a day job where some people might consider me “important”.  I am a Phd candidate at an accredited institution in the midwest.  I swear to God I am not a moron…somebody please believe me!!!

In the past I have learned and near mastered several concepts that some might consider “advanced”.  So why the hell can’t I get past the first few tutorials of Ruby, or Java, or Python, or even Liberty BASIC?  Everybody says the same thing, “Just stick with one book about one language at a time.  Eventually you’ll get it.” What I always do is work until I get stuck, then bang my head against a wall for a week or so and then move on to a different language and then repeat.  Is there some open source project that I should go join?  Can I sign up for a computer science mentor somewhere?  Anybody want to come over?  I need some advice to unmoronify myself.

Thanks.

Tumblrsgoodispose

Years of restlessness, that’s me. I know that you guys hate hearing about this shit and prefer the fart jokes, but I’ve had this feeling for years that something big is going to happen.  Unfortunately, it never does.

Sure, positive things happen.  Good general health, decent paying jobs, hot wives (okay, just the one) great kids, nice house, 37” tv, decent friends…but that’s not the point…I’m such a bitch.

Anyway, I spent the day trying to finish up Christmas shopping and decided to convert to Islam instead.  I think I chose one of those ultra-militant sects that gets to hate America because once the conversion was complete I just started backhanding complete strangers in Wal-Mart.  Most of them smelled Christian anyway.

After that I called headquarters and asked if I could trade my 70-some virgins for all eternity for two virgins, that one hostess at Applebees (no chance she’s a virgin) and an 8-ball tonight.  They said no, so I quit.  I think I might be Jewish now.  At least that might explain why some guy named Haggai Sherzabeck has been calling my house.

That’s another thing.  Like many people, I don’t have a home phone anymore.  Does anyone else feel weird when they get home from some day trip and there’s no messages to check?

Okay, last weird question - Has anyone else found that their ability to enjoy a 3-D movie has diminished as they got older?  One time when I was about 10 I went and saw a movie in an I-MAX theater in Seattle.  It was about molecules or some shit that I didn’t give a shit about, but the 3-D effects were the coolest thing that I’ve ever seen.  There were these little green molecules flying all over the theater.  They were just fucking, everywhere.  Several times I felt like I could just reach out and grab them.  It was completely awesome.  I saw Disney’s Bolt in 3-D last night and was completely unimpressed.  Of course the story was fine, but it was the same formulaic bullshit that all kids movies are.  The 3-D was was 3-D’ee enough, but it was totally lame compared to the molecule thing.  Help me out will ya?  Was I just an impressionable kid or is there something to this?  By the way, if you read me at the Surf Report, I’ve decided that I will update every week or fucking quit…so for the moment, you’ll get me on Mondays.  I can talk about why it’s so hard for columnists to write for the surf report if you want to know…but mostly I just wanted to warn you that you might see some of the best stuff that comes out here over there.  I’m not a plagiarist, I’m just not all that funny anymore.  See you later.

Quasipermanente

Sorry for the hiatus, I have been moving my family into a giant new house.  Actually it’s really old - 170+ years old as a matter of fact.  It used to be the girl’s college that the rich farmers sent their daughters to.  The house is pretty cool, you should come over and check it out.  Seriously, come on over.  We are renting it with an option to buy it after 6 months.  I have no idea what my wife is going to want to do.  I don’t think she likes the place as much as I do.  I’ll keep you posted…you know, i case you give a fuck. 

The extremely good thing about all this is that the family is all back together.  I thought I was going to get a ton of stuff done during our time apart.  The opposite was true.  I didn’t get shit done and I gained like 25 pounds.  So anyway, I think I am gonna take off and start trying to get my shit together.  Talk to you later.