Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 

The back of our apartment complex looks out to a parking lot and the back of another small 6-pack of apartments. There's also a small workshed belonging to that small 6-pack. This morning when I took Shady out for her morning walk, much to my surprise I discovered anywhere between five to six abandoned toilets, complete with bowl and tank.

Where did they come from so suddenly? Had I unwittingly stumbled across some secret toilet burial grounds, a sacred gravesite where all toilets seem to instinctively know where (pardon the phrasing) to go when they're about to die?

Or were these toilets migratory and had just returned from the south? For that matter, did National Geographic do a special on migrating toilets and I missed out? And if so, does anyone have a copy I could watch?

In other news, Mel discovered that her much loved game "Age of Empires II" can in fact be played on Windows ME. She subsequently stayed up to about 7am this morning playing the game. I only know this because I awoke to sunlight pouring through the living room window and the sound of a mouse being vigorously clicked. Afterwards I retired to the bedroom and went back to sleep. In any case, Mel is asleep now and will no doubt be rather groggy and/or grumpy when I have to rouse her in about a half hour.


Today's Lesson: nothing screams evil like an April Fool's prank involving your girlfriend or wife smiling and telling you she's pregnant.
posted by Phillip at 7:53 AM

 

Well, a little bit of food and a lot of extra sleep later has found me alive and happy and…ready to go to work…well, at least I’m still alive. That’s got to count for something, I suppose, since I wouldn’t be able to count if I wasn’t.

Anyhoo, today’s little bit of nowhere is something I’ve been meaning to write for quite some time, and for various reasons either something more interesting to write instead has come up, or I’ve been away from the computer. Or Blogger’s been flipping me the binary middle finger.

About 2 weeks ago, Mel & I were joking about the hair upon my chest. It’s not shaggy by any stretch of the imagination; I highly doubt that if I were to take my shirt off, a hunter would mistake me for a bear and try to skin me or remove my gall bladder. On the other hand, my genetic code has handed down to me a nice layer of padding over my pectorals, which tapers off the closer it gets to my bellybutton.

I’ll pause for a moment to let many of you cringe at the subsequent offending mental picture.

Okay, moving right along, our conversation got me thinking about the hype surrounding shaved or hairless chests. Personally, I don’t see the big deal. Then again, I might flinch if a guy took off his shirt and it looked like someone had glued a border collie to his chest. I’d probably flinch even more if a girl took off her shirt and looked like that. But I can’t exactly wrap my brain about how, when pressed, we only hear of people preferring a naked/hairless chest. (Who knows? Maybe the ones who say they prefer hairy chests are quelled because of their “liberal” views of chesthair.)

So I sat there thinking to myself, “What’s the big deal about a hairless chest? Why do so many guys cave under the pressure and shave?” Alas, possessing hair upon my noble and manly chest--

I’ll pause for a moment to let many of you snicker at my overblown egomania.

--meant that I could not properly understand the hairless state of mind. In order to understand, you must first experience. So I stood up in front of the bathroom mirror, lathered myself up and shaved my chest.

I’ll pause for a moment as the ramifications of what you’ve just read sink in, which will no doubt be followed by lots of hysterical laughter at my expense. *Shrug* Everyone has to have a hobby, I suppose. And to those of you who recall the leg-shaving fiasco from the Delmo Dress Incident, you will all be proud to know that not once did I nick or cut myself while saving!

Now I can truly say after experiencing life without chesthair that all the hype is overblown. Personally, I’ve spent the last two weeks feeling oddly naked and having to squint through the brightness of my ridiculously white chest now on prominent display. Muscle tone isn’t the problem; the gymnastics and weight training programs I took while I was growing up saw to that. Given my gangly stringbean condition, I can’t exactly bulk up without suddenly looking a character from Utena--all broad shoulders, all skinny legs. Perhaps if I were able to tan I might be able to improve upon a complexion that’s currently whiter than the paint on our kitchen cupboards.

But all of that is a moot point right now, since I’m letting my chesthair slowly grow back. I’m not about to regularly shave my chest; I don’t have the money to afford all the razors I’d go through. In the meantime, the itching has at long last begun. Which disturbs me, since Mel was giving warnings left and right about how much I’d be itching almost non-stop days after shaving my chest. It’s been roughly two weeks now, and the itching has barely registered. I get the occasional need to scratch at my chest, but I’m happy to report that when it comes deforesting your chesthair and then letting it all grow back, my forest is hassle-free!

I’ll pause for a moment to let you make a face over how horrible that particular analogy was. Thank you, and good night.


Today’s Lesson: you cannot burn a CD if you put the CD upside-down into the CD burner. It took me two failed attempts before I realised what the problem was. Yes, yes, all at once now, if you please: “BAKA.”

But look at it this way, at least I didn’t mistake the drive for a cupholder!
posted by Phillip at 5:32 AM

 

Just when things have finally calmed down after the Easter weekend, and I have a few minutes to sit down and pull another little bit of nowhere from out of my hat...in the morning, Blogger tells me it's gone and fubar'd itself, and then in the evening I'm knocked flat on my ass courtesy of some sort of vile little 24-hour bug. Figures. But a little patience and a lot of sweating the bug out, and I'll probably be discovering some new obstacle standing in the way between me and blogging.

I blame the Evidence Mice. They're cunning, those little buggers.

In other news, apparently Mel sounds like a kid whenever she answers the phone. When someone from the local newspaper called asking us to subscribe, and Mel answered the phone, he asked, "Are either of your parents home?" To say she was vexed would be stating the obvious. Then again, sometimes I lack that whole "knack for subtlety" thing.

Again, I blame the Evidence Mice.

Today's Lesson: in the gospel according to Mel, there is no such thing as too much Cardcaptor Sakura.
posted by Phillip at 5:29 PM