Terms of Not-So-Much-Endearment

Recently I've realized that I have a standard set of epithets I use for my best friends when they provoke me* into insulting them; and while a few of the epithets might get spread around, I tend to group specific terms with specific people.  For example, Flunky is, of course, "jackass";  Cap'n Shack-Fu generally elicits a "punk," occasionally upgraded to "Punky Brewster"; The Lovable PigPen is usually "ginger bastage," although I'll sometimes throw a "soulless" in there if he's been particularly PigPen-ish; and TopGun is lucky enough to get three levels: "jerk", followed by "jerk-face", and, last but not least, the compound epithet reflected in the following text message exchange** from last week which is the actual impetus for this post:

Me:  Can now go home and goof off. . .or maybe work out. . .nah, definitely goof off.
Him:  Aren't your workouts generally the same as goofing off? BURN!
Me:  Dear jerk-faced doo-doo head:  Why are you such a jerk-faced doo-doo head?  Sincerely, a non-jerk-faced, non-doo-doo dead.
Him:  Dear non-jerk-faced doo-doo head . . . as I am a jerk-faced doo-doo head . . . it is difficult for me to examine the reasons why I am this way.  Can a tiger tell us why they have stripes . . .or the great white tell us why they like to eat surfers . . .no. they cannot . . . and so, neither can I. It is just my nature . . .sincerely, jerk-faced doo-doo head
Me:  . . .I'll say this . . . you sure are an eloquent jerk-faced doo-doo head.

As for Li'l Random, he doesn't get a special nickname for those provoking moments; instead, I just call him "Li'l Brother" like always, except I load my voice with gallons of disappointment -- surprisingly effective.



*Yes, it's all their fault, I'm totally innocent, I swear.
**For the record, all ellipses in the quoted text are actual ellipses from our messages, and not signs of me editing things out.

Totally Worth It

I spent this past Saturday hanging out at PigPen's house, watching whatever random stuff would catch our attention on TV:  old reruns (Star Trek: TNG, South Park, Two and Half Men), some UFC fights, lots of college football, and an assortment of movies ranging from the execrable Old Dogs to the mildly entertaining Planet 51 to the odd-ball Sci-Fi cult film Dune.

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Dune -- yes, it's a mess, but it's a gloriously entertaining mess.    One scene that's burned into my memory is this one:



Not just because Wrath teh Berzerker used to mimic it all the time in college -- although he would change "For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!" to "For he is the Knickknack Paddywhack!" -- but because little Alia there is one of the creepiest characters in cinematic history.  And as PigPen and I watched the last part of the movie, I struggled to hide an evil little smirk as I planned the opening salvo in the following exchange:

ME:  Man, that sure is one creepy little girl
PIGPEN: Yeah, pretty creepy.
ME:  Y'know, I used to wonder how in the world they could have ever found someone that creepy . . . but then I found out she was played by a young Alicia Witt.  Once I knew she was really a ginger, it all made sense.
PIGPEN: [nods his ginger head slowly then punches me in the leg]
ME:  It was worth it.
PIGPEN:  Figured you'd say that. [punches me again]  Still worth it? [and again] How about now? [and again]

If you think this lead directly to PigPen and I beating the crap out of each other like the good ol' days of Benjiman Street, well, you would be sadly mistaken.  No, the beating the crap out of each other didn't happen until several hours later as PigPen decided to demonstrate the advice he was yelling at the UFC fighters on me.

Catching Up With the Cast: PigPen and Cap'n Peanut

Continuing the catching up trend, we now move on to the inseparable duo, Cap'n Peanut and The Lovable PigPen.  You may remember that PigPen and Peanut had gotten an apartment together in Lewisville not too long before I started renting a room at Shack-Fu's place.  After their initial lease was up, however, Peanut moved back to Era, and PigPen stayed with some other friends near Plano for a few months while looking for a new place.  The downside of this for me was that this move both of them further away from Denton -- in opposite directions -- making it difficult to find times for us to hang out.

A few months back, PigPen's search bore fruit, and he moved back to Lewsiville, this time as a home-owner. It's a pretty nice place, although the preponderance of hardwood floors makes me less inclined to engage in roughhousing -- which is probably better for my general health, true, but since approximately 95% of my friendship with PigPen has been based on physical violence, it's a little disappointing.  At least we still have verbal abuse to fall back on.

As for Cap'n Peanut, well, here's where here's where the news starts to get a bit bigger:  in a little over a month, Peanut will be joining the Navy.  His desired area of specilization?  EOD -- which stands for Explosive Ordinance Disposal. Yup:  Peanut wants to be on the Navy version of the bomb squad. And here I had been thinking Peanut was one of my saner friends . . .

On the one hand, I'm really proud of Peanut for his decision to join the military and his acceptance into EOD school -- but on the other, I hate the thought of another of my closest friends moving off, especially when it involves such a dangerous career choice.   But the gripping hand is that Peanut is excited about the new direction and looking forward to the challenge and moving on to a new phase in his life, and as much as I'll miss having him around, I'm glad he's found something like that. 

Fragmented Fri. - Goodnight, Champ

Since I haven't blogged regularly for quite a while, I thought I'd use today to catch all you blog monkeys up on what's going on in my neurotic little world . . . but then I realized there really isn't all that much to report.

I suppose there is one thing; remember last year when I resolved to start eating better and lose some weight? Well, I'm resolving it again, only this time I'm hoping to stick it out a bit longer. My current goal: to fit back into size 34 jeans while I'm still 34, which gives me about 4 1/2 months to do so. Today marked my 5th day without a soft drink of any kind, as well as my 5th day without fast food. TopGun and I have been working out, and tomorrow I plan to join the gym so I can have access to an elliptical and work on my cardio again.

This past week on Facebook has somehow been declared "Retro Week" prompting people to replace their normal avatars with younger pictures of themselves. I decided to be a good little sheep and follow the trend.

Zinger asked me if this retro-picture would be accompanied by some retro blogging. "Is there something exciting from you past you haven't blogged about yet?" he asked. Sadly, I'm still drawing a blank.

Last night The Lovable PigPen came up to Denton to hang out for a bit. He was about ready to leave around 11 when he decided to challenge me to a quick game of tennis on the Wii; despite my better judgment I agreed, and so it was that "one quick game" turned into several hours worth of game play. I wound up not getting to sleep until almost 3*; it was a lot like when we were still rooming together and would stay up all night playing video games, with the exception that neither of us picked a fight with the other this time around. Oh, well, maybe next time.

A while back, TopGun and I were watching a movie where somebody sent their kid to bed saying "Goodnight, champ!" I turned to TopGun and told him that's what I was going to say from now on when he went to bed; surprisingly enough, I have done this pretty faithfully for several months now, and now "Champ" has become the real-world nickname I use when I text/email him**

I don't normally talk about my friends' relationships here, but I just had to mention that my best bud Li'l Random McEvil is now engaged to be married, so I'll be heading to Florida next year for his wedding. Congrats, Li'l Brother!

*This evening TopGun told me I needed to inform PigPen he's not allowed to come over on school nights anymore
**Much like how in real life Li'l Random is Li'l Brother, Cap'n Shack-Fu is Bubba, and The Lovable PigPen is Ginger Bastage

The Great Texlahoma Blizzard of Aught-Nine

As most of you blog monkeys are probably aware, this past Christmas Eve was marked by an enormous blizzard that shut down highways throughout Texas and Oklahoma. Luckily for me, I headed up to OK on Tuesday afternoon -- stopping off in Tulsa to hang out with Cap'n Shack-Fu before heading on up to Miami on Wednesday -- so I was able to avoid getting caught in the horrible weather. Many of my friends weren't quite so lucky: it took Coronela 16 hours to get from Ft. Worth to Oklahoma City; TopGun's normal 5 1/2 hour trip to his family in Midland took him 19 hours, with people skidding out of control all around him; and the winner of the "longest Christmas Eve ever" award goes to Shack-Fu's sister and brother-in-law, whose 9 hour trip from Houston to Pampa took them over 28 hours due to the highway becoming a virtual parking lot at times.

And then there was The Lovable PigPen, who called me while he was on the road to let me know that if we ever decide to go on another ski trip, we could probably take his car, which was handling fine in conditions very similar to what we encountered on our way home from Breckenridge a couple of years ago . . . of course, then he wound up getting stuck while turning into his mom's driveway about 50 yards from her house, so maybe we should rethink that suggestion . . .

When I got PigPen's call I was out doing last minute Christmas shopping with my parents in Joplin -- my mother was all giddy about shopping on Christmas Eve, and I was along for the ride. The bad weather didn't hit us until we were heading back to Miami, and it didn't really start coming down hard until after we made it home. We did venture out once more that evening, heading to the video store so we could rent some movies for Mom to watch while we were snowed in, but after that Mom and I didn't leave the house until Sunday afternoon when we went to visit my Grandma Ann.

A great deal of my entertainment/exasperation on Christmas Eve came courtesy of my parents' cat, Snitzelfritz. Not too long after we got home, Snitz decided that he wanted to go outside, and so positioned himself by the back door and meowed to be let out. I opened the door, and as the bitterly cold and damp blast of wind hit him he backed up, shivered, looked at me with a baleful stare, and emitted an accusatory meow that I couldn't help but translate as "What did you do?!!?!?!" That was the amusing part; the exasperation started to set in as his tiny cat brain seemed to think that if he waited three minutes the outside conditions would change completely, and so he would be at the door meowing again, only to turn tail and run as soon as the door was opened and the cold hit him. I have no clue how many times we went through this ritual before he had a burst of feline inspiration and demanded to be let out into the garage instead. Of course, my parents have it set up so he can exit the garage and go outside, so probably 10 minutes after letting him into the garage there was some frantic scratching and meowing at the back door as the dummy* desperately tried to regain entry into the house. This, too, was repeated several times, until finally the fact that being out-of-doors was not a viable prospect for him finally sunk in.

The biggest downside to the bad weather** was that it derailed my post-Christmas travel plans; even if the weather was supposed to be okay in our neck of the woods on one day, then it was supposed to be bad somewhere else along the route -- and then the conditions would be flip-flopped the next day. By the time it was all said and done, I didn't head back to Denton until New Years Day, which meant I missed out on the Singles New Years Eve party with its super-hero theme. Luckily, I had thought to drop the stuff I'd promised they could use for decorations beforehand, so all of my action figures were available to guard the DJ from evil-doers.


But unfortunately it meant I didn't get to see all of the super-costumes everyone had thrown together.


Although I'm even more upset that I didn't get to have fun playing with the visual sound effects.



On the plus side, by heading back on Friday, it meant I got to stop off in Tulsa and see my best bud Cap'n Shack-Fu again for a bit, and as he's the closest thing to a real Action Hero I know, it was practically like being at a super-hero party. Only, y'know, fewer girls in interesting outfits.

Yes, they're wearing super-hero boxers; Marvel on the left, DC on the right.

*When I visit my parents, I often amuse myself by coming up with "Weird Al" style songs about how stupid/crazy the cat is. The festive one I settled on this time around was "You're a Dumb Cat, Snitzlefritz" to the tune of "You're a Mean on, Mr. Grinch," which was probably on my mind mainly because Zinger had sent me this link while I was there.
**Besides the fact that there was tons of snow and none of my friends to play in it with

A New Plateau

No Movie Monday post today, although I will say that Fired Up was a heck of a lot funnier than I expected; instead, we have what will probably be the first in what I have a feeling will be a long, long series of posts in the new "TopGun and I giving each other crap" genre because, well, we both enjoy giving each other crap.

Earlier tonight while flipping through the channels, I happened upon an episode of COPS. I turned to TopGun and mentioned how it was one of Cap'n Shack-Fu's favorite shows. TopGun said he rarely watched it, and I replied that neither did I, except when Shack-Fu was around and forced it upon me. I related how when he would come over to the house to watch TV and I'd flip past an episode he would start pestering me to change the channel back; I also related that my quickness to respond to his request was proportional to how much I felt like picking a fight with him. I then did a nicely exaggerated imitation of Shack-Fu's threats, followed by the statement "and then he'd kick my butt and watch COPS after all."

"So, he's just a bully," deadpanned TopGun. "Beats you up, then forces you to watch a show that you didn't want to watch. He's just a user, man."

"You're right," I replied. "I'm going to call him up right now and tell him he's a user. And then, he'll raise my rent. And then I'll tell him that you said it first, and he'll raise yours too."

"That's ok," he said with no hesitation, "I'll just beat you up and make you pay my half too.

That caught me off guard and cracked me up; when I stopped laughing I said "You know, that's the first time you've actually threatened to beat me up; we just reached a new plateau in our friendship!"

I hope PigPen and Shack-Fu don't get jealous.

Fragmented Fri - Five Posts in One Week? That's Unpossible!

• When I was starting to get the blogging bug again last week, I made sure to ask TopGun if he minded me writing about him, what with him being a Grey Man and all; his response was that he would be honored to be included in my ramblings. Poor, naive fool had no idea what he was getting himself into, did he?
  
  
• One thing I neglected to mention in last Friday's Shack-Fu-centric post was the conversation I had with him when I got back to Texas following my Virginia trip. I called him up to see how he was doing, since he had left out super-early that morning to drive from Quantico to Denton. When I asked if he was on schedule, he replied that he had been for a while, but now was having to make up some time. Anyone want to guess what had delayed him? If you said "saw an accident and stopped to help," then you've obviously either met Shack-Fu or read this blog before.
  
  
• Sometime during TopGun's first week at the house, I was talking about my roughhousing around with PigPen and Shack-Fu and the subsequent injuries and made a crack about how for some reason my best friends always try to kill me. He responded that I didn't have to worry about that with him, going on to explain that he only uses violence on those who deserve it. My response at the time was that PigPen would probably say that I did deserve it, but if the conversation had taken place just a week later, when I was fully comfortable giving TopGun a hard time, I would have instead used the first response that popped into my head at the time, cutting him off after the first half of his statement with a wounded "You mean we're not going to be best friends, TopGun?" with maybe some puppy dog eyes and a quivering lip thrown in for good measure. Hate to have missed that opportunity.
  
  
• In my jiu-jitsu class on Monday I managed to submit somebody twice, with two different submission moves, even. The first was a North-South arm triangle choke which has become sort of my go-to move from side control, and one of the few moves I can catch people in on a semi-regular basis; the second was a kimura, administered while he had me in half-guard, which was quite an achievement for me because I always mess up my arm placement when I go for that. Anyway, a nice little ego boost for me; always nice to feel like I'm not perpetually the lowest man on the totem pole.
  
  
• Midway through last week I got a text from TopGun asking me if I would call up an exterminator, as my roomie had had some extra protein in his cereal that morning courtesy of the ants which had infiltrated the box. After asking around, I decided to first try the liquid ant bait traps that Zinger suggested; within a day of setting them out, the kitchen infestation vanished. However, last night TopGun was assaulted by a couple in his room; apparently they know he was the one who ratted them out and were taking their sweet revenge on him.
  
  
• Saturday morning I was being my usual lazy self, lying in bed and wondering if I should get up or not, when I heard the front door open, followed by the sound of TopGun talking to someone else in the living room. Curious, I got up and moved towards my bedroom door, whose handle started to turn. By that point I had recognized the other voice, and so I whipped open the door just as PigPen was starting to stick his ginger dome in. Turns out he had been driving back from crashing at a friend's house, and was passing through Denton when he was struck by hunger and decided to come see if TopGun and I wanted to go grab some breakfast. Thank heavens I was awake; I'd hate to think what evil things might have befallen me otherwise.
  
  
• Figured I should share an example of TopGun's smartassery towards me so you don't all feel sorry for him for all the pot-shots I've taken at him so far. As we were driving to breakfast on Saturday, PigPen and I were talking about our rappelling trips* and PigPen was trying to remember who all went on our first trip. I said it was just him, Shack-Fu, and myself; he said he could have sworn there was a girl with us; TopGun piped up from the backseat "No, that was Todd."
  
  
• Shack-Fu gave me a call on Sunday afternoon, and when I asked how he was doing he said he was doing all right, although he was horribly sore. When I asked why he was sore, he responded "Oh, had a bit of a crash the other day." My first thought: not the Challenger! He then went on to explain that he had crashed his bike and scraped himself up pretty bad; when I told him what my initial thought had been, he responded that if he had crashed the Challenger, I wouldn't have been hearing from him, as he would have had to have killed himself.
  
  
• As I mentioned in my last post, despite only having known TopGun for a little over a month, I have felt unusually comfortable just being myself around him -- this, of course, has lead to me feeling compelled to explain to him several of my neurotic tendencies and try to prepare him for what storms may come. Honestly, I think I might need to just type up a pamphlet: "So You're Going to Be Todd's Friend: 10 Neuroses, Quirks, and Idiosyncrasies to Watch Out For.**" I'm sure it would come in very handy.
  
  
• Last Sunday I got a call from my old pal Papa Lightbulb, who I rarely get to talk to these days since his family moved to Houston. They were in town, and I had seen them briefly after church but hadn't gotten a chance to visit, so wasn't totally surprised to get the call, but wasn't expecting the question he asked: "What can you tell me about Red Tornado?" Seems his son had just gotten a Red Tornado action figure at the store, and had asked Papa L. to call me up for the 411 on the character, since he knew I had been the source of primo Green Lanter intel a few months back. I weighed the pros and cons of illuminating the Lightbulb boys on Reddy's convoluted history, but finally settled for "He's a robot who controls the wind, can fly and blast people," thus maintaining my place as "useful comic geek" and not "horribly pedantic ubergeek." And yes, we did visit about other things besides comic book characters after that; man, I sure do miss Clan Lightbulb.
  
  
• A few weeks back, TopGun let slip the date of his birthday to Slick (formerly MeiMei), and has regretted it ever since, as Slick has been pestering our resident Gray Man about how he wants to celebrate, and won't take "I'd rather just be totally ignored and not have anyone acknowledge my existence" for an answer.
  
  
• At the beginning of the month I travelled to Asheville, NC for the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) Annual Conference. Sounds thrilling, doesn't it? It was actually pretty cool in a way, since most of the other conferences I've gone to for work have not had a whole lot of relevance to my job, whereas this conference was directed precisely at people who do what I do. Kinda nice. Plus, while exploring the streets of Asheville one night, we happened upon a drum circle and a huge mosh pit of college kids dancing wildly to primitive beats; don't get to see much of that around here.
  
  
• The one down side to attending conferences is that they force me to try to get outside myself and meet new people, not exactly my forte. After my first night, I instigate the following texting conversation with fellow wallflower TopGun.
  

  Me: Now I remember why I hate going to conference: MINGLING.
  Him: I'm about to start a workout then just hang out. No mingling for me!
  Me: Just for that, I'm throwing you the biggest birthday party in the history of the Singles department. Mingle *that* bucko!
  Him: Hahaha! You clever bastard!

  Yes, this is definitely the beginning of a beautifully smartassed friendship***

*Okay, actually we were talking about Taco Casa, but that required talking about rappelling.
**Oh, who am I kidding? I could come up with at least 25.****
***Last weekend when TopGun and I were synching up our smartass natures to pester Slick, she looked at us and said "You guys just feed off of each other, don't you?" We both instantly went into wounded innocence "I don't know what you're talking about!" mode . . . I don't think she was fooled.
***Crap; I am now seriously thinking about what my list of 25 things would be. Thanks a lot, creativity-driven borderline-OCD, thanks a lot!

Fragmented Friday - Easing Back Into Blogging

It has now been over two weeks since I last posted, and even the posts I had done before that were quite anemic -- sad state of affairs, I know. I have no really valid excuse other than a hectic schedule and a lack of blogging motivation.

A few of the things that have been going on in the past couple of months

• A few weeks ago, Parkerite GMC got married, which led to a mini-Parkerite reunion. The bulk of the Poker Football League crew made it, as did Coronela and Little Man Stud, although Clan Flunky was unfortunately unable to attend, to the disappointment of all.
  
  
• I started taking Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes the last week in Februay at TXElite MMA here in town. Once again I tried to keep it a secret from PigPen so I could try to catch him off-guard with improved grappling skills, and once again I let the cat out of the bag sooner than I had planned. I'm enjoying the class a lot; it has a more informal structure than my karate and judo classes -- no bowing as you enter and leave, the instructor isn't "Sensei" but "Coach," etc. -- which actually makes it a much more inviting learning environment for me, and most of the guys there have been really cool, helpful, and encouraging. I've gone to MMA class a couple of times as well, and while I'm not as big a fan of the striking as I am the grappling -- the whole "have trouble seeing this far in front of my face without my glasses" affects punches and kicks much more than it does chokes and submissions -- it is a great workout, and I plan to attend it at least once a week. I've taken this week off because I hurt my shoulder a couple of weeks ago and wanted to give it a chance to heal up, but I plan on jumping back in next week.
  
  
• Two weeks from today I will be in Quantico, VA for Shack-Fu's FBI graduation ceremony; can't wait. There will be a few other Denton folk heading up for it as well, which is cool, so I won't feel quite so odd-man-out as I probably would have if it had just been me and his family.
  
  
• Tonight the Singles are hosting another Murder Mystery; the theme this time is "Murder Me, I'm Irish." Like last year, we had more people wanting to participate than we had roles, so I created 9 additional characters with clues, plus my own character who will serve as M.C./host. I will be playing Rick O'Shea, well known spiritual medium and host of the cable TV show "Bouncing Back from Beyond with Rick O'Shea." And yes, I plan to speak in an accent all night long, and no, I do not guarantee that it will be stable.
  
  
• I recently informed Li'l Brother that I was instigating a new policy; for every day that goes by without him returning my phone call/email/text/carrier pigeon/etc., he shall incur a penalty: 30 minutes worth of being practice dummy for my jiu-jitsu and MMA. After first being informed of the policy, he responded very quickly, but it's now been over a week since I left him a message which he has not yet returned, so it looks like I'm going to have to prove to him I'm serious . . .

Fragmented Friday - Who Watches the Watchmen's Man-things?

Latest diet update: as of yesterday morning, I was down 25 lbs since the beginning of the year.

Last night I went to a birthday dinner at Chili's in honor of Sunshine and Trouble, even though Trouble had declared multiple times that she was not having a birthday this year. Because of the timing of the dinner, I didn't get to watch OSU and OU play in the Big 12 quarterfinals, and had to settle for checking the score regularly on my cellphone. It was probably a good thing I didn't get to watch it, as the close score probably would have given me a heart attack. By the end, I had set the ESPN site to refresh automatically every 15 seconds, and so it was that it popped up the following info: "OSU 69 OU 70 FINAL." I sighed and announced it to the table, saying I was sad but was at least glad that the Cowboys had played them close. About 5 or 10 minutes later, one of the other guys said "Hey, Todd -- OSU won." Turns out he had just gotten a text from our former Singles pastor Freezeout who was actually at the game, and who is a big OU fan. I went back on my phone, and sure enough, the score now read OSU 71 OU 70. I later learned that OSU had gotten fouled with only a couple of seconds left and made two free throws to win the game; ESPN.com had just jumped the gun.

It amuses me greatly that most of the complaints I have heard from people about Watchmen have all centered around Dr. Manhattan's penchant for total nudity and the blue CGI private parts that accompany said penchant; who cares about plot, or acting, or direction or any of that jazz, just don't make us look at Dr. Manhattan's special purpose!*

My first time playing racquetball after the night of multiple buttkckings, I had made my first hit of my first game when Trouble said "What's wrong with your racket?" A quick glance showed that the top strings had broken. I went ahead and finished the game as is, since Trouble herself was playing with a cracked racket and had been for a few weeks, only waiting for payday to go buy herself a new one. Later, I emailed Cap'n Peanut to let him now that I had decided that the only possible explanation was that when he had borrowed my racket to play PigPen he had warped my racket with his crazy gorilla strength, and that a bill for a replacement would be forthcoming; he replied that it was nice to know that it was my shoddy racket that had been responsible for his less-than-stellar play that night.

Have you ever found out a piece of information that you were kinda glad to know, because you would hate to have been kept in the dark about it, but at the same time you kinda wish you didn't know, because that little piece of secret information fills you with concern and worry? Welcome to my world.

Last weekend the Singles had a game/movie night at Mei-Mei's parents' house; as always, the movie was shown out-doors, projected onto her parents' garage door. When the email invite went out, Cap'n Cluck urged everyone to remember lawn chairs and blankets. When I saw that, I decided to do one better than bringing a regular blanket, and instead brought one of my Christmas presents from my mom. So it was that about 20 minutes into the movie, as I started to get a little chilly, I wrapped myself up in a nice warm Snuggie**. The rest of the movie was spent with me looking for excuses to move my Snuggie-wrapped arms around for some reason, as every movement would sent Trouble and Lizard into paroxysms of laughter. One of those "you had to be there" times, to be sure, and I know most everyone else was lost as to what the three of us were dying laughing over.

I know I need to start up with the TV Tuesday posts again, but until I actually get around to it, I'd like to take this chance to say that this season of Lost is shaping up to be my favorite season, and I can't wait to see where it all leads. I also want to make sure everyone who is without the joys of TiVo/DVRs knows that Scrubs is moving to Wednesdays at 7:00. I'm also looking forward to the new sitcom which will be on between Scrubs and Lost, Better Off Ted.



Just looks like my kind of weird, doesn't it?

*Yesterday Zinger asked me if I had heard anyone make a "Dongtor Manhattan" joke yet; I assured him he was the first I had encountered.
**For the record: not only did I not request a Snuggie for Christmas, until I opened my present I had no idea that such a thing existed. It was a week or so later before I finally saw an actual Snuggie commercial.

Hanging Out

A couple of weeks ago, Cap'n Peanut mentioned that he and PigPen were planning on going somewhere to watch UFC 96 and invited me to tag along and I, of course, said sure. However, a few days later Peanut let me know that the plans were off because his parents were having a birthday dinner for his older brother that evening. In the end it worked out, since I would have had to have left early from the Singles Game and Movie Night to meet up with them, and thus would have missed out on tormenting Trouble and Lizard with one of my Christmas presents while watching Back to the Future on Mei-mei's parents' garage door*, but I was still a little bummed not to get to hang out with PigPen and Peanut. Since I'm trying to be more proactive in maintaining my friendships and not not sitting around waiting for people to come to me, I emailed Peanut earlier today to ask if he and PigPen had any plans in place for this weekend, or if they might be free to hang out with me. Peanut replied that they were both free, and wanted to know what sort of plans I had in mind.

I really wanted to reply "I already said: to hang out. Duh!" but thought that such a tone might be counterproductive to actually getting them to hang out with me.

Peanut's reply asking what I wanted to do is a pretty good example of a difference in mindset I've noticed between several of my friends and myself, with my friends being much more action/event oriented while I often couldn't care less. It happens often with Peanut, who isn't much of a sit-around type of guy; it happens with Shack-Fu, who is very task-oriented at times; it happens with Li'l Random, who is difficult to pin down even with very specific plans, let alone nebulous ones; and it happens with Zinger and Pooh-Bear, who will often meet my requests to come visit with questions of if I had anything special I wanted to do. And almost every time my friends try to get some solid plan out of me, I respond with a "doesn't really matter to me" sort of attitude.

It's not that I don't want to go out and do stuff; it's just that, for me, going out and doing stuff isn't necessary for me to enjoy myself. When I call someone up and ask if they want to hang out, it's because I want to be around them, talk with them, joke with them, pick on them, etc. To me, it doesn't matter if this happens waiting in line at the movies, in the middle of an amusement park, or just sitting at one of our homes around the TV set. As long as I'm spending time with my friends, I'm content. And, yeah, some of my favorite memories stem from going out and doing stuff with my friends: the birth of Hyper Force 3000; Bumper Bowling; St. Valentine's Day Meal of Doom; any number of trips to Texas Road House with Cap'n Shack-Fu . . . the list goes on and on. But by the same token, I have incredibly fond memories of just sitting around the house with my friends, swapping stories and goofing around.

Once upon a time, such a focus on activities would get to me as, in my usual neurotic way, I would turn it around in my head as a sign that people really didn't want to hang out with me without something else going on to distract them from me. But as I've matured, I've come to accept that this is just another one of the personality quirks, much like the True Colors system or the Languages of Love/Appreciation; I may be content to sit at home and gab, but others need more stimulation, need to get out of the house and experience something. And as long as both sides understand that about the other, things can run much more smoothly, and with luck not devolved into "What do you want to do? I don't know, what do you want to do? I asked you first" territory.

So, which category do you fall into, my blog monkeys? Are you a "go-go-go-go-go!" person? Or a "Stay or go, it doesn't matter as long as I'm with my pals" person? Comment hungry bloggers want to know!

Back to my email conversation with Peanut: I did respond with a crack about how if I had to plan things the deal was off, which followed by some ideas about what we could do -- ideas that I had already come up with before my original email because I pretty much knew that a request for concrete plans would be forthcoming.

Who says I can't learn?

*A story for another time . . . perhaps

A Dynamic Shift

As I've mentioned before, I often spend great portions of my time dissecting the ins and outs of the interpersonal chemistry and group dynamics of those around me. While my previous posts focused on questions of what forms the basis of such dynamics, my blog post the other day brought to mind an example of a dynamic in which I have observed a sizable shift in a positive direction. Gradually over the last couple of years, I have reached the point that time spent with PigPen and Cap'n Peanut leaves me feeling like part of a trio of good friends, and not just a third wheel tagalong.

It's not that I always felt like a third wheel when hanging out with them, but more often than not, if I was around the two of them for an extended period of time, I would eventually slip into that self-defeating, Outsider state of mind. There were several things which contributed to this, on both ends. On my end of things, there was my natural, neurotic Outsider tendencies, which are really always just a moment away from kicking into full gear in any social situation. But there were a number of factors in the PigPen/Peanut dynamic that exacerbated my neurosis. To start off with, PigPen and Peanut had been best friends for years and years before either one of them met me, breeding a bevy of inside jokes, commonalities, and shared experiences that can be daunting to a newcomer at the best of times, but even more so when you factor in the specifics of the duo's behavior.

For you see, much as the combination of PigPen and Cap'n Shack-Fu results in HyperTwin activity that dwarfs their usual hyper behavior, and the combination of Li'l Random and myself leads to Odd Squodd weirdness which sometimes makes our individual randomness seem logical, so does the combo of PigPen and Peanut result in a ratcheting up of their normal behavior to a sometimes intimidating degree. In their case, the amplified behavior is of the trash talking, insult/put-down humor variety. Once the two of them get on a roll, it's a sight to behold, as they feed of each other's energy and go all out to one-up each other; woe to any outsider who tries to get a shot in on one of them, for they are then hit with both barrels from the united pair.

Adding to the joy was the fact that my status as PigPen's perpetual whipping boy was also usually amped up. So, for example , if Peanut made a crack at my expense, PigPen would jump in and join in the attack; if I were to take a crack at Peanut, PigPen would retaliate on his behalf, even if my crack at Peanut had me taking PigPen's side; can't imagine how that could spark my Outsider complex, can you?

A brief aside: Since people tend to read much more bitterness and vitriol into these sort of posts than what I intend, let me take a moment to state for the record that as far as I'm concerned none of this was malicious or purposeful. PigPen was just trying to zing me like he always did day in and day out, just like I tried to zing him; once again, our friendship is based on mutual antagonism, and I am as guilty of starting crap with him as he is of starting crap with me. That being said, when Peanut got added into the mix, I couldn't help feeling like I was constantly being ganged up on and marginalized. I know that wasn't his intent, but it's how I perceived it, and over time I began to feel more and more like PigPen didn't want me around in general, and resented me impinging on his time with his best friend in specific.

So, what changed? A couple of things.

I think the first and most significant change was that Peanut and I became good friends. You see, even though Peanut and I had known each other for a while before I even met PigPen, let alone moved in with him, we were more passing acquaintances than friends. For the longest time, I thought he didn't like me for some reason; after I moved in with PigPen and got to hang out with Peanut more, I soon learned that what I had read as disdain and dislike was actually a variation of the same misunderstanding that occurred when I first met iamam and Rebel Monkey -- turns out that Peanut wasn't always comfortable when in a new group, and kept to himself until he got more acclimated. Sound like anyone else you know?

Anyway, over time Peanut and I got more chances to hang out one on one, and I gradually began to dismiss the thought that he only put up with me because I was rooming with his best friend, and started to accept that he considered me a friend in my own right. Once I made that mental shift, and began to believe that Peanut actually wanted me around and I wasn't just getting invited along out of pity, that third wheel mentality started to fade. But it wasn't quite vanquished, because I had only dealt with one part of the equation.

The other part of the equation, of course, was my growing paranoia that PigPen really didn't want me around. How did I confront this problem? By employing a radical solution: I talked to him about it. Using my patented Paranoia Resolution Formula, we each figured out where the other one was coming from, and moved on from there. Sadly, by the time I'd finally burned away all of my self-consciousness regarding my place in the group, it was only another month or so before they both moved to Lewisville, and my chances to see them vastly decreased. But at least now that I do get to see them, I can just relax and have a good time, and not question my place in the group.

Although I'd been cognizant of the shift in our mini-group dynamic on some level, it was the day after the evening of multiple buttkickings that I really started to reflect on how large a change there had been. Yeah, PigPen and Peanut still egg each other on to a crazy degree, and yeah, there are times when they gang up on me; but there are also times when Peanut and I gang up on PigPen, and there are times when it's every man for himself, and there are times when we're all united against someone or something else. I no longer let their long standing friendship trigger my Outsider complex; instead I just sit back and enjoy the moments when their long history manifests itself, and spend the rest of my time forging the bonds of the newer friendship I'm building with both of them now.

Amazing what can happen when I get out of my own way, isn't it?

Of Bro Codes and Buttkickings; or "An Evening With PigPen and Peanut"

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from The Lovable PigPen asking if I could take off work a bit early on the following Friday afternoon to pick him up from the airport after his return from a business trip. To make it worth my while he offered to buy my lunch and pay for a day pass at his and Cap'n Peanut's gym so that I could work out with them and play some racquetball. Never one to pass up free food and an excuse to take off of work, I quickly agreed; of course, the fact that I don't get to hang out with PigPen too often anymore, and hadn't played racquetball with him since a couple of months before he broke my finger might have had a little bit to do with it.

I got to the airport about 10 minutes before his flight was scheduled to land, which turned out to be excellent timing, as his flight was about 10 minutes early. I was standing by the baggage claim that had been indicated online when I saw PigPen walking out, looking around; he looked right through me and turned to walk the opposite direction. I of course did the only logical thing; sped walk to catch up to him and invade his personal space so that he almost spun around and decked me. When he realized it was me and didn't give me crap for coming up on him like that, I knew something was distracting him. Turns out as soon as his plane landed and he turned on his work Blackberry, he had a ton of missed calls. You see, although he had been out of town on company business all week, he had also been primary on-call all week, and so didn't get a full night's sleep all night from dealing with calls. And, of course, while he was on the flight, some major technical issues sprang up, the end result of which was that his planned afternoon off went up in smoke; bummer for me, who had been looking forward to hanging out with him, and double-bummer for him who had been looking forward to being able to escape from work stuff for an afternoon.

We stopped to get a quick bite to eat at KFC, and then swung by his place so he could grab his car. Luckily, Cap'n Peanut was home, so I hung out with him while waiting for PigPen to get back from work. Well, except for the hour where Peanut had an appointment, during which time I sat around reading their copy of The Bro Code by Barney Stinson*; not surprisingly, I discovered that I am a frequent code violator, but was more than pleased to note that Peanut had a couple of infractions under his belt as well. Anyway, PigPen was finally able to escape from work, and by the time all was said and done, we made it to the gym probably close to 7pm.

It was at this point that Peanut and PigPen tried to kill me.**

Okay, so maybe, that's a bit of an exaggeration; really, they just tried to make my arms and legs fall off with a work-out far beyond my meager capabilities. I would periodically inform workout mastermind Peanut of my intense loathing of him, and how I would do him great bodily harm if I were actually still capable of moving any of my limbs. After they finished breaking my spirit with the workout from hell, we headed to the racquetball courts.

I managed to beat Peanut in my first game***, but had a brief fear of being shut-out by PigPen when he broke out into an impressive lead early on in our first game; I told them afterwards that if he had managed to shut me out after not playing for over a year and a half when I had been playing with Trouble for the last month or two, I would have just walked back to their apartment and then driven off into the night, vanishing along with my dignity. Luckily, this was not necessary, as I finally got my head in the game enough to stage a minor comeback. Not enough to beat him, of course, but enough to keep me from feeling like a total screwup. We kept playing until the gym shut down at 10, at which point we finally picked up some dinner and headed back to their place.

Before we had gone to the gym, Peanut had been giving PigPen a hard time about the previous weekend, when they had stayed up late reliving their college days by playing Tekken 3, during which time Peanut had managed to rack up quite a few more wins than PigPen. After all the trash talking, PigPen of course had no choice but to instigate a rematch. And while it apparently wasn't as one-sided as their previous all-nighter had been, Peanut was still turning out to be a bit more on his game than PigPen, a fact that frustrated the always competitive PigPen to no end. At one point, Peanut handed me his controller while he went to get something to drink, and so after getting my butt kicked by the workout and again in racquetball, I received my third butt-kicking of the evening as PigPen mercilessly took out his aggressions on my poor electronic avatars -- poor because they were being guided by someone who had never played any version of Tekken before and being attacked by someone who had devoted countless hours to learning all the nuances of the game. After several games in which I was barely able to lay a virtual hand on PigPen, I passed the controller back to Peanut with great relief.

One of the features of the Versus mode of Tekken 3 is that it keeps a running tally of how many wins each player has, making it easy to keep track of just how far ahead Peanut was. This lead to the following exchange:

PigPen: "Man, I can't believe Peanut is up on me 13 games."
Me: "Actually, if you subtract the wins you had against me, it's more like 17 games."
PigPen: "Shut up, Todd!"

This exchange was repeated several times over the next hour, with each iteration leading to a more forceful tone of voice from PigPen, as well as threats of physical violence. And so it was that my smart mouth lead to my 4th and final butt-kicking of the evening, as PigPen followed up on his threats and engaged me in our first sparring match since the night he moved out 6 months previously. And while the part of me that had missed our semi-regular grappling matches was pleased, the part of me that was so worn out from the workouts and racquetball that it couldn't move its arms and legs was less so.

By the time my hosts had decided they were ready to call it quits, it was around 4AM. I crashed on their couch, and managed probably three or four hours of sleep before I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep, so I just laid there on the couch waiting for the others to get up. Eventually they both emerged from their respective rooms, and Peanut called out for pizza for lunch. After we ate, Peanut and PigPen headed to Era to pick up a table from Peanut's parents, and I headed back to my place. I was sore from the workout, but both of my tormentors, I mean, friends, assured me that it would be even worse the next day. However, after a brief chat with my mom when I got home, my sleep deprivation caught up with me, and I crashed for several hours, waking up 30 minutes before I was supposed to head to Cap'n Bubbles' birthday party with a massive headache and even more massive pain in my limbs; apparently, my body had taken my three hour nap as a signal to move into second-day-soreness mode. The upside, of course, was that although I wound up having to beg off the party, I got most all of the discomfort out of the way on Saturday, and felt pretty good on Sunday.

To recap: initial plans scrapped, received massive butt kickings at everything I attempted, and wound up feeling pretty miserable the following day. Factor in the fact that I got to experience all of the above while hanging out with two of my best buds who I don't get to see nearly often enough since they moved to Lewisville, and I'd have to say that on the whole it turned out to be one of the best weekends I've had in a while.

Even if the bastages did try to kill me.

*Pretty entertaining little book; I'm tempted to purchase the audiobook version which is read by NPH in character.
**While never explicitly spelled out, I can't help but feel like attempted homicide flies in the face of the Bro Code
***A fact that I would be much more willing to brag about if it weren't for the fact that that night was Peanut's first time to play racquetball ever, and my win was not by a very impressive margin. Cursed athletic, coordinated people, making me look bad!

Fragmented Friday - Ulterior Smile

Was getting ready to type up a Fragmented Friday post when I noticed that there was one saved in my drafts which I had started last November, before NaNoWriMo derailed my blogging but good. So, first, some old stories from before Cap'n Shack-Fu set off to Quantico.

• One weekend Shack-Fu, Li'l Random and I got together for dinner and a movie. At one point during our meal -- which was shockingly not at Texas Roadhouse -- Shack left himself wide open for a crack at his expense, and I took full advantage of it. As Shack gave me the menacing death glare, Li'l Random began to laugh; Shack quickly turned the glare in Li'l Brother's direction and asked "What are you laughing at?" Random replied "Oh, I just took a bite of my sandwich, and the lettuce tickled." He then quickly took another bite, let out a little tee-hee and said "Look, there it goes again."
  
  
• A little while later during the same meal, Li'l Brother got a funny little grin on his face as Shack-Fu and I were having some more back-and-forth, prompting Shack to ask what he was smiling about. Li'l Brother asked "What, I can't smile now?" My response was that it was obviously an ulterior smile.
  
  
• Another time a week or so later, the three of us were eating at Texas Roadhouse -- I know, how unlike us, right? We wound up with a waitress who had not had the pleasure of serving us before, nor had her co-workers warned her about the joys of dealing with a trio of HyperForce 3000ers. Li'l Random almost blew her brain with his randomness, but she got her revenge - albeit inadvertent - a bit later. First she asked Shack-Fu if he was a preacher -- "You just give off that kind of vibe," quoth she -- and when he told her that actually he and Li'l Brother worked together, she expressed disbelief, stating that she had been sure Li'l Babyface was only 16.
  

And now for a few more recent things

• Let's start with a more up-to-date Shack-Fu tidbit; my best bud has received his orders for his first assignment after the academy. For his first two years as an agent, Shack will be working out of Tulsa, OK. While he had been hoping for an OKC assignment, due to it being closer to friends and family, Tulsa really isn't that much farther away. Sure, the extra two hours distance will mean the day trips to visit aren't quite as feasible, but at least he'll be close enough that we won't need air fare to make a quick visit possible.
  
  
• For the first time in my life, I completed my tax return before April. Part of this whole "trying to be organized" thing I'm trying out. We'll see how long that lasts
  
  
• Hand in hand with my move towards organization is my New Years resolution to start eating better and exercising regularly in an effort to lose some weight. Okay, not just some weight; a lot of weight. So far, it's going well. I'm working out at least 5 times a week, even without Cap'n Shack-Fu around to drag me off my butt; I've been fixing my own meals at home rather than succumbing to my fast food cravings; and, most impressively to some, I have cut down my Coca-cola intake to one day a week. I'm finding it much easier to stick to the diet now that I'm living alone and don't have to worry about tempting food brought in by my roomies. I'm also being much more open about my attempt than I have in the past; I used to tell very few people, because I was afraid of failing, but now I figure that the more people who know, the more accountability there is. My initial goal is to lose 40 lbs; I'm already a little over 1/3 of the way there.
  
  
• A few days ago I posted a few pictures from high school on Facebook; being from the early 90s, there were many examples of female hairdos that defied the laws of physics. For some reason, some of these females weren't exactly happy to have their early stylistic choices put on view for all Facebook to see. And thus began a wave of photos being posted online in what I like to call The Nostalgia Wars; at this moment, Redneck Diva seems to be the clear winner, armed as she is with a range of Student Council, Band, and Competitive Speech photos, but it's early days yet in the war; early days*.
  
  
• Zinger posited the other day that the reason for the lack of blogging was because my life is so much more boring now that I'm living alone. I do think that's part of it; life without day-to-day interaction with The Lovable PigPen is definitely not as interesting, although it might be slightly healthier for my ego. And with Cap'n Shack-Fu at Quantico, and Li'l Brother travelling with work, most of the sources for good blog fodder just aren't as handy as they once were. But the recent Wyandottian explosion on Facebook is stirring up the high school memories like crazy, so there may be some more nostalgia-laden posts from that as well.
  

*Sadly, I don't have much more ammo in my arsenal, having lost a ton of pictures when our house burned down years ago

"Are You Messing With Me?" ; A Tale of Cinna-Man and the Cola Wars

Last week Cap'n Shack-Fu and I headed down to Lewisville one night to have dinner with PigPen and Cap'n Peanut at Logan's Roadhouse, which is Shack-Fu's favorite steak place. As soon as our waiter took our drink orders, Shack asked him if he would mix up some cinnamon and butter together so Shack could have some cinna-butter for his rolls*. The waiter gave him an odd look and then headed off to the kitchen. When he came back, he just had a little cup of cinnamon and asked Shack-Fu if Shack wanted to mix it himself, or if he really wanted the waiter to do it. A patient Shack explained to him that usually when he requested it the waitress would put the butter and cinnamon in a bigger bowl and mix it all up until it was a nice, thick, cinnamony paste. The waiter gave him a serious look and asked "Are you messing with me?"

Now, normally, this question might not have been too surprising considering that this was basically a HyperForce 3000 gathering -- I give you our evening at On the Border as Exhibit A -- but for one reason or another none of us were feeling particularly HyperForcey, so the accusation of tomfoolery took Shack-Fu off guard; he quickly said no, he wasn't messing with the waiter, and that the wait staff had always been happy to do it for him before. "

Are you sure you're not thinking of Texas Roadhouse?" the guy asked next. No, Shack-Fu assured him, he wasn't -- not feeling it necessary to inform the waiter that at Texas Roadhouse you don't have to request them to mix stuff up for you, since they have it already ready to go -- and he asserted that if the waiter asked his co-workers they would confirm that such a thing had been done many times before. "I can do it if you don't want to," the always courteous Shack-Fu continued, "but if you wouldn't mind getting a bigger bowl and doing it for me, that would be great!"

The waiter finally grudgingly agreed to go back and mix some up**, and when he returned he was obviously still half-expecting some sort of "Gotcha!" from us; apparently he had gone ahead and asked all of his co-workers, and none of them had ever heard of such a thing, and they all warned the guy that he was being messed with***. "Are you sure it was this Logan's where they did it?" he asked Shack, obviously not realizing that questioning your customer isn't exactly the best way to earn a good tip.

But in retrospect that's not too surprising, since very little he did that evening showed that he knew how to earn a good tip -- and I'm not just saying that because the only time he brought me a refill it was filled with hated Dr. Pepper. Suppose I can't blame him too much, as he was probably just a little confused thanks to PigPen and I going through the same routine we go through every time we're at a restaurant together:

Me: I'd like a Coke, please
PigPen: Give him a Dr. Pepper!
Me: No! Coke!
PigPen: Yes! Dr. Pepper!

As of this date we have not gone so far as to devolve into fisticuffs in public due to such an exchange, but I occasionally think it's only a matter of time****.

Anyway, most of the time our little back-and-forth will initially catch the wait-staff off-guard, but they will quickly clue in to the fact that it's just The Lovable PigPen tormenting me as usual*****; however, this poor creature waiting on us that particular evening pretty much froze in his tracks like a deer in headlights at our banter. When he accidentally brought me a Dr. Pepper, I was not entirely surprised. Disgusted and offended, sure, but surprised, no.

But even beyond the drink mix-up and questioning of the validity of the cinna-butter request, our waiter's performance was sub-par; not quite Valentine's Day Meal Massacre bad, mind you, but, pretty pitiful nonetheless.

*As you may recall, one of Shack's other nick names is Cinna-Man, due to his love of the cinna-butter
**I think it was around this time that PigPen opined that Shack's persistence was earning us meals seasoned with our waiter's spit
***This struck Shack-Fu as odd, as he couldn't believe that nobody working there had ever had a request for fresh made cinna-butter before; he and I eventually decided that more than likely the poor waiter was indeed being messed with, but by the rest of his co-workers and not the Shack-man.
****Just a few days earlier I had narrowly avoided a Dr. Pepper sneak attack at lunch when the waitress came by to ask for drink orders while I was in the rest-room; luckily Trouble stepped in and saved me from the horror, much to PigPen's consternation.
*****For the record******, PigPen isn't alone in the cola torment; he can usually count on Shack-Fu, Li'l Random, and Mei-Mei joining in his cause. Luckily, I have allies as well in the form of Cap'ns Cluck and Peanut.
******Also for the record, trust me, if I could find some way to torment PigPen as easily he as he torments me, I would do so in a heartbeat. No innocent victim, I, just an inept attacker

The Pros and Cons of Emotional Exhaustion

So, after two weeks of Monday through Friday blogging, I wind up with a week of Tuesday-only blogging. What's up with that, you might be asking, especially those who went rappelling last weekend and were eagerly awaiting my blog post; interestingly enough, therein lies part of the problem.

Last weekend Cap'n Shack-Fu was granted a brief reprieve from deployment thanks to jury duty and doctors' appointments; since there was no telling how long it might be before he gets sent out again, he and PigPen planned a quick rappelling trip on Sunday. Throughout the day, I lost count of how many times I was told "Ooo, that's got to go in the blog!" or "That needs to be the blog title!" or "Boy, you should start carrying a notebook around with you so you don't forget any of this, it's gold!" etc. Now, while on the one hand it's nice that the group was so interested in seeing my take on things, at the same time the constant reference to how much they were looking forward to reading said blog did what such a statement of high expectations always does to me: it made me freeze up in fear that nothing I wrote would measure up.

"But hold on," you might be saying, "that only explains why you didn't post about the rappelling trip; what about Movie Monday? Or Fragmented Friday? Or any other day?" Well, like I said, the rappelling trip was only part of the problem. The rest of the problem is, well, complicated.

You see, despite having a lot of fun at times this weekend, there was a lot of other, less happy-go-lucky stuff going on at the same time, stuff that was affecting people I care about, stuff that was activating my high Blue tendencies and making me switch into overly-empathetic mode and putting the weight of worrying about everyone else's problem on my shoulders . . . in other words, stuff that I can't really talk about in any detail. Yes, I know it stinks when I only talk in generalities, but honestly the situations that were going on around me had next to nothing to do with me, other than me being kind of caught up in it all as the guy that people feel comfortable talking to, so I can't in good conscience go into any detail whatsoever. Suffice it to say that by the time Monday rolled around I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, especially as some of the emotional fallout from the weekend drifted over into the next several days, and was unable to summon the willpower to write about much of anything.

Now, I went back and forth on whether to even mention the emotionally exhausting portion of the weekend, since in the past when I have remarked on this sort of thing people's reactions have been to say "Well, I won't burden you with my problems anymore because I don't want you to get so stress out." Which is not in any way shape or form what I want. I mean, I have to admit I like being the guy people trust enough to talk to about what's going on in their lives; I like the fact that people know that if they ask me to keep something to myself, I will; I like being able to be there for my friends and offer my empathy and sympathy and advice, even if no one ever, ever takes said advice, ever. Ever. There are times that I learn things that I really don't want to know, but even in those cases I often think it's better than the alternative for me. Honestly, it would probably do me more mental damage if people stopped confiding stuff in me, because I'd most likely slip into neurotic what-have-I-done-to-lose-their-trust mode. That's right, I'm going to find a way to be emotionally exhausted and a mental basketcase with or without y'all's help; at least if it's from being the confidant and secret-keeper, it will come from a place of feeling trusted, wanted and needed.

Yes, I am a horribly needy bastage, but we all knew that already, right?

In all seriousness, last weekend was a case where there were multiple things going on all weekend long, and I was busy trying to process one problem while another one sneaked up behind me and whacked me upside the head with a psychic two-by-four; individually I probably could have handled any one of the situations okay, but taken all at once . . . I will say that, while I was in the middle of it all, there was a large part of me asking "Why me?" But, once the dust has settled, I can look back and realize that the only thing I would really change would not be being in the middle of it all, but instead how I dealt with being in the middle; if I could have said this instead of that, done that instead of this, found a better way to help my friends in need -- that's what I would change. Everything else pales next to that.

Fragmented Friday - Five for Five

• Earlier today I got a message from Zinger: "This could be your first full week of posting in a long time" Well, despite being nearly overwhelmed by a desire not to post just to be contrary, I finally decided to buckle down and type something up, making this my first M-F posting schedule since last June.
  
  
• Despite the great benefits of the saline nasal rinse, I have been having a horrible time with my allergies these last couple of weeks. I've had to restock on Claritin-D and antihistamines to keep things under control; when I went to watch PigPen and Cap'n Bumper play softball on Wednesday I barely made it through the first game of their double header, and had to bow out of the second one. I'm afraid I might also have to cut short my time at the Single's campfire at Cap'n Cluck's parents' house tonight, which is a shame, since they're selling the house making this our last one there.
  
  
• Tomorrow I'm heading down to Lucas to visit Clan Stoneheart. All through the week Zinger's been asking me what I was wanting to do while I was down there, and my answer was pretty much a consistent "I dunno." Well, a little while ago he called me to tell me that he and Pooh-bear had come up with something for us to do that night and that I'd want to make sure I brought some slacks and a polo-type shirt with me. Haven't the foggiest idea what we'll be doing, but with luck it will help with blog fodder for next week.
  
  
• Speaking of blog fodder, when I was typing up yesterday's post about short films, it dawned on me that, although I've made passing comments about it and have pledged to go into greater detail several times, I still have not done a full-fledged post about my trip to the Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham, AL back in '02. Look for it next Thursday; if it's not here, then I will have failed in my duty as a faithful blogger. But, what else is new?
  
  
• I mentioned that I'd watched one of my tapes with PigPen and Cap'n Peanut on Saturday, but I didn't mention that although PigPen had originally said they would try to make it up here, I wound up watching it at their place. See, during the heaviest part of the rain dumped on us by Ike on Saturday, I texted PigPen to see if they were still coming up; he replied that it would depend on the weather, plus Peanut's parents were taking him out to dinner for his birthday, and there was no telling when they'd get done, but if I wanted, he could let me know when they were back and then I could come down there and watch it. My first thought was "doubt I'll go," since I hate driving in the rain and I hate driving at night, and I really hate driving in the rain at night. Almost immediately following this thought, however, was a practical question I quickly posited to him: "Did you guys get a VCR?" He quickly replied in the negative, saying I would have to provide that as well. Glad I asked, huh? By the time he texted to see if I was still wanting to come down, it was no longer rainign, and I was so restless after a day of botched plans* that I didn't even let the worry that it might start raining again keep me from hopping in the car with my VCR, which I had stuffed in my backpack to help keep it dry. No sooner had I started the car than I got another text from PigPen reminding me that I needed to bring the VCR. I shook my head at his lack of faith in me and backed out of the driveway, not realizing until I was half-way there that while I had remembere the VCR, I had forgotten its remote control.
  
  
• Only one more week until Miss ArkanSass comes to visit; hopefull Li'l Random will be back from deployment by then . . .
  
  
• There's been a small explosion of familiar faces popping up on Facebook recently, both from high school** and college. Two of the Wyandottians, neither of whom I've seen or talked to in ages, both mentioned that they've read my blog, which surprised me; I have this mental image that my blog only gets read by people I have regular contact with. Of course, one of them mentioned she found it through Redneck Diva, which explains it.
  
  
• One of the Facebook features is a "People You May Know" suggestion, which shows you the names of other Facebook members who have at least two friends in common with you. Most of the time I have no idea who the suggested people are, and so have to look at the common friends to find out why they've been suggested; generally, the common friends will make sense (Zinger and Pooh-bear; Cap'n Bubbles and her roomied Brown-Eyed Girl; etc.), but every once in a while there will be one that throws me, like when I saw that one of the suggested people was friends with my long-time Parkerite friend Coronela and also with my young cousin who's a senior in high school; turns out the suggested friend is classmates with my cousing, and one of Coronela's step-sisters. Last night I had four or five suggestions pop up who were all friends with a Wyandottian who was a Senior when I was in 8th grade and also with my college roomie Wrath teh Berzerkr's younger sibling; not sure where the connection there comes in.

*This was also the day that my movie watching and costume shopping with Li'l Random got scrapped due to his being deployed.
**So far, only two people from my graduating class have joined, one of whom pretty much joined, accepted my friend request, and hasn't been back one since. Was it something I said?

Fragmented Friday - PAC Man Fever

Got the following IM from Zinger yesterday afternoon: "You made a mistake with your blog. Unless you start posting more often, we're all going to have to see that pic of PigPen until you decide to blog again. Hopefully it will not be long." I assured him that I had a Fragmented Friday post in the works.

The other day I was checking my site statistics and saw that CoIM got a hit as a result of the following Google search: destroying shack fu. So, watch out, bubba, apparently someone in New York has it out for you.

I'm slowly adjusting to a PigPen-less household; you know, it's the little things that get ya. Like, how when the new season of Deadliest Catch comes on, who's going to sing along with the theme song with me? And when I watch Wipeout, who's going to laugh so hard at people face-planting that I have to rewind the tape so he can take a hit of his inhaler and get his breath back? And what the heck am I going to do with the vast array of rubber bands, paper wads, and other projectiles I unconsciously accumulate with an eye towards hurling them in PigPen's general direction?

After my Ham of Dogpatch, USA post I was eagerly awaiting some sort of response from PigPen, and was disappointed when none was forthcoming; after all, now that we no longer room together, I have to find other, long distance ways to pick fights with him. Turns out that he did try to post a comment on the MySpace version of the blog, but for some reason it didn't take. From what he said, the comment was pretty much what I expected it would be, first responding to my hairline crack with a "like you have room to talk" comeback, followed by an assurance that if I had hollered that out he would have come off the stage and into the audience to find me, just like I had told Li'l Random and Trouble he would. He also said that the girl trying to get him to take the picture wasn't embarrassed, since he was embarrassed enough for the both of them. Think that was about it.

Along with my lack of drive to write anything for the past month or two, I've also had a lack of drive to attend my judo classes. The first few I missed were because Shack-Fu had just gotten back into town after deployment and PigPen's work schedule changed so he was actually home from work before 9 or 10, and I chose trying to maximize my quality time with two of my Best Friends before they moved on over going to class, rationalizing that I could go back to judo at any time, but who knew how many more chances I'd have to work out with Shack or pick a fight with PigPen? Of course, the longer I went without going to judo, the harder it became to get motivated to return; ironically, the two people who were my initial reason for slacking off were the two voices raised loudest in disappointment over my lack of attendance. This all came to a bit of a head on Sunday when I was at lunch with the Singles and I saw one of the black belts from class coming in with his family. Shack-Fu noticed him too, and remarked that he was one of Shack-Fu's co-workers. I, silly little man that I am, mentioned that he was one of my senseis. Not too long after that, Shack-Fu got up to get a refill on his drink, but was gone for quite a while; the mystery of his extended absence was solved when I suddenly heard his voice uttering my name loudly from across the restaurant. I turned my head and saw him and my sensei both staring at me with manic grins on their faces. Yup, nothing like knowing that I've now been singled out for special humiliation and attention to get me back to class; Shack-Fu knows me so well!

For the record, while I razzed PigPen about hamming it up in Li'l Abner, the fact is that the whole cast was pretty hammy -- at one scene a character literally vocalized a "Yuk yuk yuk!" type of laugh as he skipped off stage -- so he was just going along with the tone of the production. Plus, he made us laugh (on purpose, even), which is what he was there for, so I'd say it was a successful role for him.

Oh, and Shack-Fu's machinations did work, and I did finally make it back to judo on Tuesday; so far out of shape that I thought at one point I was going to keel over and die. All that, and the FEMA sensei wasn't even there. *sigh*

It's the time of year at work where all the librarians have to turn in their Personnel Affairs Committee binders which are filled with documentation of all the work we've performed throughout the year, both in our primary assignments and in our professional development. Since the documentation in these PAC binders are what are used to determine raises, promotions, and extension of contracts, it's a pretty stressful time of year. My joy has been that this is my third PAC binder to prepare, and it's also my third job title, as every year since I've become a librarian my job description has changed drastically. I'm hoping that now that I've become Head of the Serials and Electronic Resources Unit these drastic changes will die down, and I can actually start focusing on that whole "professional development" thing I've heard about. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go write up my personal essay for the binder explaining why the heck I did what I did this year.

The Ham of Dogpatch, USA

You may recall that a while back I mentioned that Brown-Eyed Girl had been cast as one of the Dogpatch wives in the Denton Community Theater's productin of Li'l Abner. What I haven't mentioned is that a few weeks before the show opened she sent an email out asking for "muscular guys" to volunteer to help out as sort of background characters; three guesses which of my best buds answered the call.

Yup, that's right, The Lovable PigPen was kind enough to offer up his body for the good of the theater. When he came home the night of his first rehearsal he told me that he actually got a featured, if non-speaking, part. You see, part of the plot of the play is that there is this special tonic which will transform any guy drinking it into the picture of perfect masculinity. The big reveal of this is when a government agent drinks the potion,



stumbles off stage, and returns a changed man*.


In essence, PigPen's role consisted of him wearing a tattered shirt, ripping it off, flexing and calling attention to his physique while all the women oooed and ahhhed over him; in other words, the part of his dreams.

Unfortunately, he only got to appear in the one scene, although he did show back up at the end to do the curtain call. Of course, as a minor non-speaking role he got to stand up on the "hill" in the back with the other minor non-speaking role: a guy in a bear costume. Seeing PigPen standing on the hill waving at the crowd next to the bear gave Li'l Random the giggles because, and I quote "It's like something from an Adam Sandler movie." Personally, I was flashing more on Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law which would have the bear show up randomly for no reason at all, but the point was well taken.

Outside of enjoying getting to watch PigPen in his element -- you know, hamming it up** -- my other favorite parts of the production were the guy playing Evil-Eye Fleegle, who stole every scene he was in, and watching Brown-Eyed Girl really get into her part as a wife mourning her husband's loss of libido during the big Dogpatch Wives number "Put 'Em Back."

My favorite moment after the production, however, happened when we found PigPen and Brown-Eyed Girl after the show was over to congratulate them. We were standing there talking and some girl came up with a camera and asked PigPen if he could take a picture; PigPen, once again clad in the tattered and torn shirt of his costume, said "Sure, shirt on or shirt off?" The girl, looking mildly embarrassed for him, clarified that she wanted him to take a picture of her and someone else; put a big ol' smile on my face.


*There was a part of me that wanted to yell out "Sure, he's got muscles now, but what happened to his hairline?" when he came out, but I knew that such an act would have been my death warrant. But oh, what a glorious death it would have been . . .
**I would make a crack about how he was such a big ham he should have played Salomey, but I'm about the only one who would get the joke, so I won't.

Fragmented Friday - Back From the (Brain) Dead

Many apologies for the my unannounced hiatus from blogging. To be honest, over the last couple of months I've had trouble writing up much of anything, whether it be a blog post or email or Sunday school lesson or short story or what have you; I'd try, but could not find the focus. In fact, I had planned to write this particular blog post on Monday, but you can see how well that panned out. Still, I need to get my writing juices jump-started somehow, so here's a brief update on three pretty big things that have been going on.

1) Cap'n Shack-Fu has now officially passed his Phase II exam for entrance to the FBI, and has also passed his physical fitness test and polygraph; it's now on to the background check. However, while he did technically pass the physical fitness test in order to move on to the next step in the hiring process, he was one point away from being totally in the clear. Instead, he's now on physical fitness probation and must report back to the FBI each week with a progress report on how his workouts are going, and might even have to head down to the branch office periodically for observation. Now, since he was only one point behind due to not being able to work out while on deployments, it shouldn't be too hard for him to bring the score up . . . as long as he doesn't get deployed again, that is.

2) The Lovable PigPen has now officially moved from a status of "Roomie" to "Fomer Roomie." Li'l Random and I helped PigPen and Cap'n Peanut move into their new place in Lewisville last weekend, a task we were both more than happy to assist with up until Peanut mentioned that we were going to have to move his piano into their second floor apartment; think when it comes time for them to move out Li'l Brother and I are going to take up a collection so they can get movers to take the damnable thing back down the stairs. It's been odd walking by PigPen's empty room all week, and I've had a couple of "Can't wait to tell PigPen when he gets . . . oh, wait . . ." moments here and there. Right now Maverick and I are trying to find a new roomie to help out with the rent and bills since our lease is of the "we're responsible for rent until someone else takes over" variety, something that's becoming even more of a priority due to the next item.

3) Maverick is officially a car owner again. After over a year and a half without a reliably running vehicle, he picked up a used car this past weekend. The upside for me is that now I can go back to my old work schedule and not have to worry about coordinating rides. The downside is that throwing in car payments, insurance, and gas costs on top of increased rent and bills is going to stretch Maverick's budget to the brink. So, if you happen to know of a single, non-smoking male with a reliable source of income looking for a place to live in the Denton area, well, you know who to call.

The Scottish Fireplug

On PigPen's birthday a couple of weeks ago a group of us took him out to Pete's Dueling Piano Bar in Addison, which is an annual tradition for him. Now, as most people who've been to Pete's might be able to guess, it's not exactly my type of place. On the one hand, yes, there's lots of music and sing-along possibilities, which is nice, but on the other hand, it's also crowded with drunk folks who like to smoke. Last year we got a table near the stage, which was cool since, y'know, I could sit down and fight off the smoke-induced headache, plus I was less likely to be crowded and shoved by people fighting to get from Point A to Point B -- although I did get whacked in the head by a beer bottle brandished by a totally plastered and oblivious blond who eventually got escorted away by a bouncer. This year, however, there was to be no table sitting, as we were much later getting there than usual due to us heading there straight from picking PigPen up at the airport. So, it was while Cap'n Cluck and I were trying to cool down by virtue of moving away from the tightly packed crowd and hovering near the front entrance and its accompanying breeze that I first saw The Scottish Fireplug.

Of course, that's not how I first thought of him; no, my original nickname for S.F. would have been closer to "That short, white-haired, wrinkle-faced, incredibly creepy, totally drunk old guy in the bright red t-shirt." It was the red t-shirt combined with his short, stout physique that made me think of him as The Fireplug. Standing about 5 foot or so, he first drew my attention by stumbling back and forth in front of us several times, running into various people and then fixating them with a look that can only be described as the height of creepiness before making his way back to his lone companion, a guy in his late 20s/early 30s who was probably 6'2" or so. After awhile he wound up standing pretty close to us, and somehow either Cluck or I caught his attention and he started to move closer to us, gazing creepily the entire time. After standing there for a minute or two with him swaying on his feet, cigarette coming dangerously close to Cluckity a few times, she and I decided it was time for a change of location. Luckily he didn't decide to stalk us, and while Cluck was done dealing with him for the evening, I got to witness his excellent social skills a few more times before the evening was over.; two of these times took place in the rest room.

The first time he was leaving the rest room just as I was entering and some jovial drunk decided to strike up a conversation with him; Mr. Creepy jabbered something back at him that I wasn't really sure was English at first, but soon discovered was actually a thick Scottish brogue worsened by the heavy amounts of alcohol he had apparently consumed that evening. Ironically, when I was finally able to decipher his ramblings, I realized he was telling the other person that he couldn't understand what they were saying.

The next bathroom encounter was a bit less pleasant. There was a pretty long line to get into the rest room at that point, and I had just moved through the door into the crowded room when I heard a huge commotion coming from the sole bathroom stall, with a belligerent drunk hollering that he was about to kick somebody's ass; three guesses who the target of his ire was. I'm still not sure precisely how it all started, since the open rest room door blocked my view, and by the time I poked my head around to see what all the hubbub was about the Scottish Fireplug was stumbling from the stall, spouting off his gibberish while the other guy was ranting about how S.F. had gotten in his face, threatened to push him, you just don't do that, he needs to learn to watch his mouth, etc. etc. The guy right in front of me in line stepped in to break it up, and since he was a big dude who probably could have taken the angry guy out with one hand tied behind his back, things calmed down. The peacemaker was trying to get angry guy to back off, saying "he's just an old drunk dude, let him be." S.F. kept mumbling things that were incomprehensible to most folks, but the elderly bathroom attendant -- apparently schooled by many hours offering hand soap and paper towels to barely coherent drunks -- stepped in as interpreter and claimed that S.F. was apologizing, a claim I kind of doubt but who can say? Finally S.F. stumbled out of the room and as he went past all of the people who had been standing outside hearing the commotion without being able to see the action I heard several people making sounds the likes of "oh, it's him," signaling that I wasn't the only one who had marked S.F.'s creepy presence. The folks behind me in line started talking about things he had done that night, but the only one that really jumped out at me was the fact that supposedly earlier that evening he had gone up to some guy who was sitting down and licked him on the ear; this, of course, resulted in a drunken chorus of "Dude, that's so gay! Like, so, so gay!" The Peacemaker said "Oh, come on, he's just a squirrel looking for a nut." It was at this point that The Lovable PigPen happened to wander into the restroom and say "Well, he's looking in the wrong forest, that's for sure."

I didn't see much of The Scottish Fireplug until after closing time. Li'l Random and I were standing outside the main entrance to Pete's, which is located on the second floor, waiting on Cap'n Peanut and PigPen to come out, when S.F.'s companion came out and started talking to one of the bouncers in a thick, but understandable, Scottish accent of his own. After a minute or two of looking around for S.F. he finally saw him sitting on one of the benches right inside the entrance, slightly slumped forward but still conscious. The Young Scot went over to gather up his older and drunker pal, but apparently our Scottish Fireplug didn't want to leave and when the Young Scot was insistent, S.F. took a few half-hearted swings at him. The Young Scot immediately dragged S.F. to his feet and began to march him towards the stairs, S.F. struggling the whole time. Li'l Random looked over at me and said "I'm going to follow them out and watch." I tagged along, figuring I could get the valet to retrieve my car and get a show on the way. After fending off a few blow from S.F., The Young Scot had had enough and sought to neutralize S.F.'s striking ability, grabbing both of S.F.'s wrist and yanking them up over his head. And so they proceeded to and down the stairs, S.F. not even muttering or mumbling any more, just feebly struggling in The Young Scot's grip; halfway down the stairs they reached a landing and made room for someone else to pass by, a move that enabled S.F. to free one of his arms and throw a few more hammer fists at an increasingly less patient Young Scot who shook S.F. hard and began to threaten his general well-being if he didn't calm down. They made it down the stairs and out into the night with no more incidents, thus ending what both Li'l Random and I considered the most entertaining part of our evening.