Cast your chairs into the abyss, never to return

Gather round laddies and harken to my tale.

A tale of wonder, majesty and upholstery.

A story that happened to me, and if you're not careful, could happen to you.

If ever in your journeys, you should happen upon a young man answering to the name of Drew Smith, do not shrug him off. And if this Mr. Smith sounds a warning about a certain item, be sure to give him heed young one, especially if the item is a sleeper sofa.

For this man, despite his common name, is sage of great wisdom in the field of living room furniture that transforms via various dark rights, into uncomfortable places for sleeping. When Drew Smith tells you that a sleeper sofa is best left where it is, believe him, for the very forces of Hell shall conspire against you and all who would move it.

I once received such a warning. I told him that I be joining a common acquiescence of ours in the glorious battle that is moving. “Fear the couch,” he said. These three words, and nothing more.

And yet in this trio of syllables lurked untold truths and a warning that, had I followed, would have saved me untold aches in my heart and my back. But I paid them no mind.

I my hubris, I felt no need to “Fear the couch.” I am Steve Shinney and by the stars I fear no man nor beast nor piece of furniture. If I could survive the Great Nemean Dresser and the time I dropped a washing machine on my roommate, surely this mere couch with a bed folded inside was no match for my wits and brawn.

Once I tried to lift my side though, I knew that since the Dawn of Man no greater folly has ever occurred.

I tell you as sure as I live a breathe this sofa was not the sitting place of any mortal being.

It was the devil's loveseat.

No material known to man weighs as much as that contraption did. Surely it was forged in the very fires of the under world from the bones of some grotesque demon-spawned whale.

Beneath its behemoth girth, my muscles quivered and my hernia strained. I was able to keep it together (literally), but only be summoning all the grit and determination I could lay claim to.

Sometime, in the ages past, it was foreseen by a nameless oracle that everyone that I should ever help move would live on the the top floor. And so it was this night. Three floors of tight double staircases and tighter corners stood between us and the couch's final resting place.

And yet, it was proven yet again that no height is to great and no furniture is too heavy to crush the indomitable human spirit. We lost many good men in that final assault, but in the end, the day was ours and the move was complete.

Geek on. In glory and honor, geek on.

Steve Shinney is good at two things,moving heavy objects and using dramatic words. He takes both very seriously. Go ahead and leave a comment below.

Cryptic Facebook Status Explained

So I was trying to light the barbeque the other day, but without a lighter or matches. No problem, I thought to myself. I'm an Eagle Scout I should have no problem summoning fire using the skills I learned from the scouting program.

20 minutes later I realized that cooking chili in the can and getting into a fight playing basketball wouldn't help me here.

Thinking further back in my childhood, I remembered a time that I did an “experiment” in my parents kitchen by sticky construction paper into the toaster.
I don't know what seven-year-old me was trying to learn, but I remember what I got. Yelled at. And fire.

So I knew that my toaster made, besides delicious toast, fire. But I needed a way to get the fire to the grill.

I did manage to find some birthday candles. I don't know why we had birthday candle, I don't think I've ever gotten a birthday cake since I've been married. But this was not the time for bitterness, now was the time for clever solutions.

I figured a birthday candle would be the perfect way to transfer fire from something hot, like the toaster, to the grill. So I

About half way into this, a thought entered my head. Maybe this isn't such a great idea, I mean this is totally how an episode of Rescue 911 would start.

But then I remembered they don't make that show anymore, so I kept going.

In the end I failed to start a fire of any kind. I don't know if modern technology is made to made the potential everyday occurrence of jamming a birthday candle in the toaster less dangerous, or if I'm just really bad at everything I do but the end result was the same, my wife won't let me cook when I'm home alone anymore.

I'm not racist, I'm a sports fan.

Being sports fan means that you can honestly and truly hate someone that you have never met before just because of what they believe and how they look.

It's as close to being a racist as you can get these days and still be considered a good person.

You see, I was born a Yankees fan. My father was a Yankees fan. My siblings are all Yankees fans. My mother observes Yankees fan holidays. I had more choice in my hair color than I did my preference in baseball teams.

Being a Yankees fan is not as easy as some people make it out to be. People generally assume that you're just a band wagoner. You have to root for a team on the other side of the country that you have no real connection to. And there are Red Sox fans.

For those of you who don't follow sports, I may need to explain a few things here. You'll have to understand that the Yankees and Red Sox rivalry is about more than a mere game. It is the physical manifestation of literally centuries of competition between two of America's first cities. It has been around since baseball started being played on a field without cows. It's part of the game that is part of the soul of this great nation.

And seriously, they started it.

It all began when the devil himself went to Boston to start a baseball team.

I know my average reader doesn't care too much about sports, so I won't go into details of the long and sordid history between these two titans of the diamond. I'll just say that the Yankees have never used babies as bases, and leave it at that.

I mention this because I recently had what will probably be a once in a life time opportunity to travel deep into the heart of enemy territory, the very belly of the beast, and attend a Yankees/Red Sox game in Fenway Park in Boston.

Not wanted to draw attention to the fact that all 30,000 plus people there wanted to spit on me and dump nachos down my pants, I decided not to wear or do anything that would give any hints as to my true allegiance. With this in mind, I dressed like a jedi, because we all know that jedis are at one with the force as well as the entire American League Eastern Division.

I got to the game early to just soak in the ambiance that is Fenway Park on game day, which was a good decision and very enjoyable except for the fact that the were constantly pumping baseball stadium pipe organ music over the load speakers. The pipe organ is an excellent instrument uniquely qualified to play songs like “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” “Tequilla” or the timeless battle hymn about the dancing baby elephants.

It's not nearly so good at playing “Where the Streets Have No Names.”

I tried to blend in the best I could without feeling dirty. I would clap when the Red Sox made big plays, but I when it can time to yell and scream I stick to non-discriminatory remarks like “Yay baseball,” or “hooray for sports” or most often “I didn't go to work today!”

I don't think anyone noticed.

I was planning on doing something equally sneak whenever the Yankees did good, but that turned out to be a non-issue. The good guys don't always win, even when you travel the breadth of the nation to watch them play.

Still, the atmosphere in the stadium was electric. The entire place rocked with each long ball hit. Even though my team was losing that everyone around me was a Red Sox fan and a jerk, I still had a great time and would recommend going to anyone who likes baseball in any degree or fashion.

Unless of course you're a Braves fan.

Then screw you.

Steve Shinney actually played a lot of baseball when he was a kid. He was really good at “taking one for the team” which may be why he still can't pronounce extracurricular. Comments go below.

What is a father to be to do?

So life as a father of a fetus is a lot more stressful and time consuming than I expected it to be. Just like marriage and black people, I've gotten all of my information about pregnancy and the associated male experience from sit-coms. I've always assume all I'd have to do is get up in the middle of the night to run to the store for the ingredients for a barbeque flavored potato chips milkshake and to totally freak out in hilarious fashion when the big moment finally comes.

And so I practiced. I got pretty good I think. I had forgetting my wife in the car at the hospital down to a science.

But then I realized I didn't have to do any of that.

Actually so far, I haven't really had to do much. And I think that's the hardest part of the whole thing.

The one thing I've had to do is serve as a back rest for my wife while she lays on her side because her stomach crushes her intestines and makes her fart if she lays on her back. So she's taken to sleeping on her side. But our mattress sucks and kind of folds in on itself, which causes my wife to flop back on to her back during the night like a over-turned turtle on the side of the road: tragically helpless, in a slightly comical way.

This is where I come in. If I sleep crammed right up against my wife, I can keep her propped up in the correct position. This is awesome for me because I get to contribute to making a better gestation environment for my child and sleep at the same time.

Beyond that and trying really hard to learn the Chinese words for contraction and placenta so I can translate for her parents when the big day comes.

Unfortunately, I don't have much else I can do. I just sit there, muttering reassuring words while my wife does whatever it is women do that lets a baby grow inside of them.

Which apparently is a very complicated, time-consuming and painful process. It breaks my heart to see my wife as uncomfortable as she is. It hurts even more when I realize that we're not even to the “fun” part yet.

This does mean we're also too far away for me to be doing anything. No nursery to put together, stairs to baby proof or anything yet. So I just spend a lot of time wandering my house, looking for something broken to fix or something bug-like to kill. Anything productive but manly.

Mostly though, I just tell my wife that she's awesome and that I love her. It's not much, but it's all I have.

I suppose this is all part of the experience. I think having to sit back and watch my wife suffer through a hardship that I am completely powerless to help her with is a challenge that I'd suppose to face. Something to help me become a better father.

My kids will have problems that I will be unable to fix or endure for them. When my son breaks his a arm, all my understand of circuitry and electronics will be worthless. My daughter's broken heart can not be put back together with duct tape. If I'm to be a father – more than a father, a dad – I need to learn that some times all you can do for the person you love is listen and then say you're there for them.

That, and truly mean it.

I think this is why men can't get pregnant, we have more important lessons to learn before we can have kids.

This is why I can't imagine being one of those lesbian couples who want to have baby so one of the women carries the child while the other just offers support. I cannot imagine what my wife would do to me if she was in this state and I wasn't just because I'd called “heads.”

Geek on.

Steve Shinney is learning all kinds of neat things, like the fact that five-alarm chili is not good for babies. Comments and more info can be given below.

This is supposed to explain where I've been

This may end up being the most important thing that I'll ever write in my life.

It all started with pee.

Urine has been a very important liquid in my life. I don't think there are has been a day in the last 27 years of my life that hasn't been – at least in some small way – effected by number one.

I've had to think long and hard about if winning a game was worth getting whizzed on.

As a janitor, I've cleaned pee off floors, walls and one time a ceiling.

I've used human lemonade as a weapon.

I've seen more bottles of pee along the side of the road then I have McDonalds bags and animal corpses.

I've taken a bottle of wee-wee that was stored, without permission, in my fridge and a milk jug of Kool-Ade to commit possibly the world's greatest act of psychological revenge ever.

And that's not even counting all the amazing adventures in my life that I've had and random, magic toilets I've found simply because they happened while I was on my way too drain the lizard.

Despite my otherwise robust and in depth pee-related resume, there are two things I've never done with the stuff. Knowingly drink it, and use it to tell the future.

The former is a trick known only to Kevin Costner in Waterworld and “Slow Bobby” Templeton in my fourth grade class, but the later is one that my wife recently preformed.

It was amazing though. Through some sort of mystical alchemy that could serve as a metaphor for our marriage, ancient Chinese wisdom and modern American technology combined with a normal bodily function to allow us to peer into the otherwise unknowable and let us know exactly what we would be doing in one year's time.

I was so nervous, I had to go. But it wasn't my time. This once, I had to stand back and let the love of my life take the spot light, and the seat of honor.

And unlike me, my wife wasn't peeing for her own selfish pleasure or for distance. My wife was peeing for a nobler cause. She was peeing for truth.

I gave her space to work. I've used more than enough men's rooms at stadiums to know that the only thing that can make it harder to produce than having someone standing watch over you is having someone standing watch over you offering tips. So I paced the hall.

I figured I'd need practice at it. Hall pacing is a time honor tradition for men in my position. Fortunately our hall is pretty short. I think its good to train a bit before moving to the big leagues.

Once the deed had been done, it was all over but the waiting. I was called in for this part. We stood there together, holding hands as our future unfolded before our eyes.

I was the most romantic thing we'd ever done in that room.

And there on the counter, too quick for anyone to really savor the moment, the second blue line appeared, bringing with it the amazing news.

She was pregnant.

We're going to have a baby.

Geek on.

Steve Shinney is super excited to welcome a new gnome into the world. He is losing sleep of many perfectly normal fatherly concerns such as “what if I'm a bad dad?” or “what if I drop the kid?” or perhaps the most frightening of all “what if my daughter wants to be a cheerleader.” Congratulations along with unoriginal parenting tips can be left before.

According to my spell check Krypton is a word but Kryptonite isn't

I have some advice for everyone out there.

Don't wear your Superman shirt to help people move.

If it's your lucky shirt, take the risk.

If it's the only thing clean, wear something stinky.

If you're going to a Superman shirt convention afterwards, change in the car.

If you're a girl, go topless.

Do whatever you have to do to avoid putting yourself through the pain and headache of two hours of stupid comments from stupid people.

I guarantee that if you don't listen to me you'll pay for it. After ten minutes of trying to get the couch through the bend in the hallway some one will be like “hey shouldn't we be done with all this by now. I mean we have Superman with us.”
And then someone else will come back with “It must be all that kryptonite I have in my wallet.”

And then the two of them will look smugly at each other and laugh and laugh.

Then you'll have to punch them both in the nutsack.

So far we haven't met any gazebos

I would apologize profusely for my recent period of inactivity, but at this point I'm like a five year old with his finger in the cake batter. I'm not sorry for what I did, I'm just sorry I got caught.

There are reasons for me not writing much lately. Several of which I can't mention just yet and some of which are just too embarrassing.

Now any of you out there who where with me during the great Karaoke incident of '04 know when I say I'm embarrassed to tell you something, it's gotta be pretty bad.

One reason for my absence that I'm not embarrassed to admit (but probably should be) is that recently I've been spending a lot of time pretending to be a lot shorter than I really am.

Finally, after a life time of wondering how I could make myself more of a social outcast, I've finally found it. I've started playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeons and Dragons has always been the split entry landing that has prevented me from falling all the way down the social steps to the basement where everyone paints miniatures and writes slash fiction about Doctor Who and Darkwing Duck.

Secretly however, Dungeons and Dragons has always been my unicorn, the one thing that I really wanted to do, but unfortunately was just too cool for.

Darn my ability to play sports and make out with pretty girls.

I've spent plenty time in fictional dungeons and slain many a dragon in my day, but still this mythical combination of the two had always eluded me and this made me sad.

But no more, all it took was seven friends and coworkers to admit to each other that we all had this same desire, burrowed away, deep in the crawl spaces of our souls.

It was a defining moment in my life, one where I never felt so united in purpose with so many people.

That's kind of sad actually.

Regardless, this fearless party of adventurers has set forth into a world of darkness, hoping to connect the scattered points of light. We fight evil, by rolling dice at it.

Occasionally we speak in funny voices, but that doesn't seem to have any effect on the evil so it's kind of tailed off.

Still, we don't talk too much about our exploits with the outside world. We've already found the prejudices that kept us from playing as kids is still alive and well today.

It blows my mind that these days, a group of men and women, ages 23 to 35 can spent hours in a windowless basement waggling small plastic guitars and pretend to be rock star and no one will say boo, but have a group of the same demographic in the same place and have them do math and pretending to be guys with swords and gnomes and all of a sudden people start getting uncomfortable.

The one defense that I have against the attacks such uncomfort spawns is the fact that I play a dwarf.

I don't know what it is, but when I tell people I play a son of Earth, people seem to understand a little bit. I guess no one can deny that short, bearded men such as my self only have so many options in life and pretending to be a shorter, more bearded man seems to be one of them.

I think that may have been why so many people gave me hammers for Christmas.

With adult life as busy, complicated and down right scary as it is these days, I happy to have an escape, one made better still by the presence of friends and five pound bags of Swedish fish.

I highly recommend it to anyone who, like me, wants to roll maximum damage, but was too scared to before.

In conclusion, elves are gay.

Geek on.

Steve Shinney is a level two dwarf ranger and has waited his whole life to say that. Intense mockery can be left below.