you wouldn’t want it to get too cluttered

Ugh man, I’ve got that ten-hour plane-flight funk going on. You know, that thin sheen of been-up-too-long sweat and grease all over my body. Coupled with the stretched, frazzled feeling you get from bring travel-worn – I’m ready to sleep in my own bed. I got bumped from business class on the long leg of the flight, so I’m in the next best place – the exit aisle with no seats in front of me, on the aisle seat. I actually think this would be fine were the arm rests just a tad freakin’ wider so as to accompany my ate-too-much Taiwanese food hips. I mean, my wallet is pressed so tight against the armrest that it’s holding the seat-recline button in perma-depress – which is really pissing me off. The only problem with sleeping in this seat is that I tend to naturally lean out into the aisle to keep from laying my head on the shoulder of the attractive young Japanese woman sitting painfully close to my hip pocket in the seat next to me. I think they are stewardesses, I hope they don’t mind the snoring.

Got home to find the lawn in a shambles. See, we had some decorative concrete curbing (mow-strip) installed one Friday while I was gone, and apparently the install crew got the sprinkler treatment during their job (at least this is what I imagined happened). To fix this problem, they decided to simply turn off the main water (they had no choice really, not being able to access the controls in the garage or anything). Anyway, Sharaun didn’t notice the sprinklers weren’t coming on until the lawn told her by turning a nice I’m-dead brown. Not her fault, how’s she supposed to know. She ended up calling me at a customer in Taiwan, where I proceeded to work through an extremely frustrating 20min debug process in which we attempted to figure out why the sprinklers weren’t working. Eventually, and without even getting divorced, we figured it out and got them up and running again.

But you know me, I take a lot of pride in the yard. I mean, I’ve worked dang hard to keep it looking OK. And now with the appearance of the dreaded crabgrass the week before I left, the large spotty-brown thing I once took so much pride in is just a neighborhood eyesore. I know it sounds trivial, but you don’t know how much it frustrated me to be greeted by that sad sight upon pulling up to my beloved house after a two-week stint overseas. Anyway, I hit it double-hard today with a nice dose of crabgrass killer and some kinda turf-builder, and it’s been getting enough water – so perhaps the majority will grow back. I mean, I guess when it comes down to it, who cares right? But man, that seriously bummed me out.

This weekend was sufficiently laid-back: hung with friends, cleaned the house, worked a tad in the yard. The thing is, I’m really gonna be slammed this week at work. I have several commitments which I placed “on hold” when I was traveling, and they will be coming back to judge me this week. I’ve got to make good on some promises, and one involves getting a big project done by tomorrow evening. It’ll be tough, but I think I can swing it – even if I have to work late. What’s worse is, I have to take Friday and Monday off because we’re climbing Mt. Whitney this weekend. Don’t even get me started on how woefully unprepared I am for that. I should’ve been running every day for months, instead I’ve been stuffing myself with Chinese food and Bloody Marys – just hoping my weary legs can carry my clinically obese ass up that mountain. We’ll find out I suppose.

I promised you guys the scans of the Taipei Hooters menu that I boosted one night whilst at dinner. It’s funny for a couple reasons, both of which I think are obvious. Firstly, these girls have no hooters. I mean, c’mon y’alls, we all know the “hooters” in Hooters isn’t really talking about owls like the logo may lead you to believe. They mean boobs! No, I’m for real, that restaurant Hooters is all about boobs. Anyway, we took to calling the place “Hoot” because the “ers” was actually pulled around the back of the shirt being that there was nothing in front for it to stretch across. Secondly, at Hooters in Taiwan you can order all sorts of seafood. Shock! Seafood at an eatery in Taiwan?! These people live and breath fish man. Pat even complained one morning because his bacon at breakfast tasted of fish – and that’s what I mean, everything there is seafood. Oh, it may not be seafood overtly – like fish or prawns or whatever. But you can almost bet that it was made or cooked with seafood or some seafood “essence.” I’m being unrealistic for the sake of comedy of course, but really? they love some seafood. And yes, I know it’s an island. Anyway, without further ado – the Taipei Hoot menu:

Janet was our waitress, and mighty attractive if I may say. You could land a plane on her chest, but she was cute nonetheless. Note that you can order “Chips and Salsar” or the “Fried Fishman Platter.” You can keep the fishman thanks, I’m not feeling terribly cannibalistic today – but salsar, now that sounds new and exciting.

Here’s the flipside, where you can feast on such delicacies as “Curly Squid” and “Pork Knuckle.” Man, when did Hoot go all gourmet? To be fair though, the “Fried Mushroom” only costs lantern-house-menorah-sailboat, pretty good if you ask me.

I think it would be cool to sell a shirt that had nothing on the front but the words “Where I stand.” Then on the back there would be a short list of items and two columns, “Yes” and “No,” with a box for each column after each line-item in the list. Before I get to the list, lemme say that the purpose of this shirt is controversy. You take the few most-debated political and social issues today and list them out – then sell all the yes/no permutations. I imagine a list something like the following:

	Yes	No
There is a God.
Capital punishment is just.
Keep abortion legal.
Affirmative Action is rad.
Gay people will burn.
Three AK47s? No problem.
Welfare works!

Anyway, you wouldn’t want it to get too cluttered, so I think that list would be enough to enrage enough people. Then you wear it around see, and people know right away where you’re at. Maybe I should make these shirts. I mean, there’d need to be 128 of them to get every possible combo – then you could keep stats like which permutation (combination?, I forget my statistics) was most popular and stuff. It could be a whole website, people could even vote on the next issue to be added to the short-list. Hmm? Oh yeah, and for any of you entrepreneurial bastards out there – I’m pretty sure that’s my intellectual property now that I wrote it down, so don’t even think about it.

And I’m out, g’night.

Also written on this day...

• warm onion flesh - 2021
• stars so bright and real - 2018
• duck and cover - 2011
• poof! i'm in texas - 2007
• livin' off the land - 2006
• dreams - 2005