I like to think that I'm pretty clever. I've been walking through forests my whole life and I've never been upside-down hanging from a tree or in a pit with a tiger. It's because I'm pretty good at spotting traps.
And yet, despite all skills as an Eagle Scout, this last weekend I still found myself at a baby shower.
In my defense, it was a baby shower cleverly disguised as a barbecue.
My first hint that this might not be a regular barbecue was when I realized the host couple were registered at Target. Generally people don't register for a barbecue. Although I'm totally for getting this tradition started. I think it would really catch on.
You have been cordially invited to a BBQ at the Shinney residence on Tuesday, the 12 of Febtober. Please RSVP so we will have plenty of potato salad. The couple is registered at Albertson's and Chuck's Butcher Shop.
I've never been a big fan of showers of any kind. They're just way to feminine for me. I know I'm suppose to be a modern man and all that jazz, but if that means I have to go to a bridal shower and listen to women squeal after each present they open, screw that.
Besides, baby showers always seem to be for one of two purposes. Either for the parents to get a bunch of free stuff in order to recover some of the massive costs involved in procreation or for them to say one last goodbye to all their couple friends who don't have kids yet.
Have your first kid is a lot like getting married. It is a huge commitment, it is a major milestone in your life and once you do it, it's pretty much impossible to hang out with anyone who hasn't yet.
I went anyway, assuming that so long as somebody stood outside and turned large chunks of meat into food using fire, I could just focus on that and be able to shut out all the talk about onesies and spit up.
No such luck. I was thwarted by one of my oldest (and most delicious) nemesis of all time: sloppy joes.
And by the time we started playing games, all pretense of being anything but a baby shower was thrown out quicker than old coleslaw.
I'm not saying you can't play games at a barbecue. Far from it. There are a ton of really fun games that can be played in the context of a barbecue: baseball, horseshoes and “see who can fit the most jello in their mouth” for example.
However, one game you never play at a BBQ is “Guess how fat the hostess is.”
Playing this game will get you kicked out of most BBQs with grill marks on your face.
And yet, some how, this is perfectly acceptable at a baby shower.
Well we couldn't just guess like normal people would. That wouldn't be fun. We had to take string and make a loop the size we thought our ever expanding host would be. When we laid them all down next to each other, it became as obvious as the fat guy at the gym that none of the guys had any idea how big a pregnant woman should be (not even her husband which is discouraging).
Then we had to guess the weight and length of the baby when he is finally born.
This is another spawning tradition that I've never understood. Why do we have to measure our babies like fish? It just gives me the impression that if one isn't big enough we can just throw him back, or sneak him under our waders and hope the game warden (or doctor) doesn't catch us.
I also hate it because I have no real frame of reference to go off of. I have not real idea how big a baby should be at birth. You could tell me that the average infant is three inches long like a new-born kangaroo, and I would not feel comfortable calling you a liar.
Since I had no idea how many inches or pounds go into an average baby, I just said he'd be 6 1/3 crayons long and hoped for the best.
Hundreds of people have told me how heavy and how long their babies are, and I have paid more attention to infomercials about home meat dryers than I have to any of these announcements. I think it's because I don't have a kid yet. Once I do it'll be competition, at which point I'll start lying about the size of my posterity, just like I lie about the length and width of everything else I care about.
And seriously, why can't we just say tall? Babies are people too you know.
Still even despite the lack of an actual barbecue, I had a good time. I'm proud to say that I've survived a baby shower.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go take a man shower. I still feel icky.
Geek on.
Steve Shinney is a veteran of many crappy barbecues who thinks that showers should be held for anyone for any major life event. He is currently planning a “just got an X-box” shower for himself.
100th post, in 3rd person rather than 3-D
The ever handsome Steve Shinney was walking to the bus stop this morning, when he noticed the sign at the Hooters across the street was proclaiming proudly, “We have Wi-Fi!”
'What a strange thing for Hooters to brag about,' he thought to himself. 'If I were them, I'd make a sign that said something like “We have buxom women in tiny clothes!” or they could just shorten it to “Hey, we're Hooters!”'
He tried to distract himself by listening to music, but he still couldn't get his head around this concept. It didn't make sense for Hooters to brag about having Wi-Fi, something he himself possessed in his own apartment and didn't feel the need to make a sign to tell people.
He considered perhaps they were trying to compete with the coffee shop next door, whose sign also proclaimed that “We have Wi-Fi.”
'But who's business are they competing for?' He wondered 'Granted coffee shops have a monopoly on people who like to slowly drink a single overpriced coffee while they work on their Great American Novels.'
'But I'm pretty sure no novels – great, American or otherwise – have ever been read in Hooters, let alone been written.'
He considered for a moment taking advantage of this highly-toted Wi-Fi and writing his latest idea for a book ( a touching love story about a jazz musician who falls for sexy young werewolf set in the 13th century) just to be the first person to raise to literary greatness from such a location, but then he realized not only would his wife not approve (with punching) but with that many distractions bouncing around nobody could write anything.
'I can't even write if I see a dog outside my window,' he thought and pushed that fantasy out of his mind forever.
He looked down the street to the next bus stop and contemplated walking a bit further every morning so that he didn't have to wait where he had to read such perplexing signs. There were still nights when he would lay awake remembering last Christmas when the same sign wished him a 'Hooterific Holiday', a phrase that haunted him still.
Finally the bus came to carry him away. As climbed aboard he realized what it all meant.
'This sign, is a sign. It's the sign I've been watching for. It's time to bring back The Geek Beat.'
And so it was.
'What a strange thing for Hooters to brag about,' he thought to himself. 'If I were them, I'd make a sign that said something like “We have buxom women in tiny clothes!” or they could just shorten it to “Hey, we're Hooters!”'
He tried to distract himself by listening to music, but he still couldn't get his head around this concept. It didn't make sense for Hooters to brag about having Wi-Fi, something he himself possessed in his own apartment and didn't feel the need to make a sign to tell people.
He considered perhaps they were trying to compete with the coffee shop next door, whose sign also proclaimed that “We have Wi-Fi.”
'But who's business are they competing for?' He wondered 'Granted coffee shops have a monopoly on people who like to slowly drink a single overpriced coffee while they work on their Great American Novels.'
'But I'm pretty sure no novels – great, American or otherwise – have ever been read in Hooters, let alone been written.'
He considered for a moment taking advantage of this highly-toted Wi-Fi and writing his latest idea for a book ( a touching love story about a jazz musician who falls for sexy young werewolf set in the 13th century) just to be the first person to raise to literary greatness from such a location, but then he realized not only would his wife not approve (with punching) but with that many distractions bouncing around nobody could write anything.
'I can't even write if I see a dog outside my window,' he thought and pushed that fantasy out of his mind forever.
He looked down the street to the next bus stop and contemplated walking a bit further every morning so that he didn't have to wait where he had to read such perplexing signs. There were still nights when he would lay awake remembering last Christmas when the same sign wished him a 'Hooterific Holiday', a phrase that haunted him still.
Finally the bus came to carry him away. As climbed aboard he realized what it all meant.
'This sign, is a sign. It's the sign I've been watching for. It's time to bring back The Geek Beat.'
And so it was.
Somethings they just don't teach you in the MTC
Languages are a lot like fighting ninja werewolves, just when you think you're getting good at one you find that your skills are severely lacking when you need them the most.
I've been studying Chinese for over seven years. For the most part I do OK and on the occasions when I need to say a word or phrase that I don't know like “archaeologist” or “Decepticon” I have my lovely wife there by my side to bail me out (just like with the ninj-wolves).
This week however, I ran into a situation where both my leet sino-skills and lovely sino-wife both failed me.
I was still in China, doing some last minute shopping, which for me means shopping for Chinese DVDs. Chinese DVD salesmen are unintentionally hilarious. When every they see whitey they a circle with their fingers (commonly recognized as the universal sign of a DVD) and say one of the few English words they know “DVD” (which actually doesn't count because that's also how you say DVD in Chinese).
Normally I then blow them away by chatting with them about Chinese movies and movie stars, prove my linguistics manhood and move on. I'm fairly comfortable in these situations so I went to pick up a couple Chinese Television series to last us until our next trip while my wife took care of her parents' computer needs.
This is when I discovered a major chink in my Chinese armor (that phrase has never sounded more racist, I should have thought of a better way to say that). Since the last time I was in China many of the bootleg DVD vendors have moved much of the stock into the back rooms that used to be reserved for adult programming. Also the vendors seemed a lot more convinced that a white guy wondering around could only be interesting in dirty DVD was were making different commonly recognized universal signs with their fingers
I just wish I knew how to say “I don't want to go to your porn room” in Chinese.
I've been studying Chinese for over seven years. For the most part I do OK and on the occasions when I need to say a word or phrase that I don't know like “archaeologist” or “Decepticon” I have my lovely wife there by my side to bail me out (just like with the ninj-wolves).
This week however, I ran into a situation where both my leet sino-skills and lovely sino-wife both failed me.
I was still in China, doing some last minute shopping, which for me means shopping for Chinese DVDs. Chinese DVD salesmen are unintentionally hilarious. When every they see whitey they a circle with their fingers (commonly recognized as the universal sign of a DVD) and say one of the few English words they know “DVD” (which actually doesn't count because that's also how you say DVD in Chinese).
Normally I then blow them away by chatting with them about Chinese movies and movie stars, prove my linguistics manhood and move on. I'm fairly comfortable in these situations so I went to pick up a couple Chinese Television series to last us until our next trip while my wife took care of her parents' computer needs.
This is when I discovered a major chink in my Chinese armor (that phrase has never sounded more racist, I should have thought of a better way to say that). Since the last time I was in China many of the bootleg DVD vendors have moved much of the stock into the back rooms that used to be reserved for adult programming. Also the vendors seemed a lot more convinced that a white guy wondering around could only be interesting in dirty DVD was were making different commonly recognized universal signs with their fingers
I just wish I knew how to say “I don't want to go to your porn room” in Chinese.
I'm hoping for the second kind
I saw a sea monster yesterday.
I'm not really sure if it was one of the cool kinds with the lots of arms, the horns and the teeth and the ship wrecking powers like the Kraken or if it was the really cool kind with the tits and the boobs and the seashell bikini like a mermaid, but it was definitely a sea monster.
It was on my flight home from LA.
Even though the flight from LA to SLC requires passing over absolutely zero water, the plane made a small detour over the ocean. I think they were kinda hoping we would crash there. They seemed really proud of the fact that their seats could be used a a flotation device (all thought I would have felt a lot safer if the seats could be used as a parachute).
I saw something big in the water. I don't know what it was, but my world needs more magic. There fore, I'm decided in was a sea monster.
You can't change my mind.
I'm not really sure if it was one of the cool kinds with the lots of arms, the horns and the teeth and the ship wrecking powers like the Kraken or if it was the really cool kind with the tits and the boobs and the seashell bikini like a mermaid, but it was definitely a sea monster.
It was on my flight home from LA.
Even though the flight from LA to SLC requires passing over absolutely zero water, the plane made a small detour over the ocean. I think they were kinda hoping we would crash there. They seemed really proud of the fact that their seats could be used a a flotation device (all thought I would have felt a lot safer if the seats could be used as a parachute).
I saw something big in the water. I don't know what it was, but my world needs more magic. There fore, I'm decided in was a sea monster.
You can't change my mind.
I'll Eat Something With a Face, So Long as it's Not Smiling at the Time
Because I have a mental problem that prevents me from not buying something that's really cheap and I never pass up the opportunity to eat like a five year old, I recent purchased a whole bunch of goldfish crackers.
It's been a while since I've eaten goldfish crackers. I don't know why, I love pretty much all food that comes in the shape of a fish: goldfish crackers, Swedish fish, actual fish.
Well whatever the reason for the long separation, it over and me and one of my favorite childhood treats are back together again.
I was looking at a back for goldfish crackers for probably the first time since I learned how to read, and I noticed that they have a mascot now. A whole school of mascots actually.
Now on the side of every small bag of goldfish crackers are four goldfish crackers with eyes and a mouth.
I'm all for my snack foods having cute cartoon mascots. There's a part of me that gets a perverse thrill from the thought of a tree full of little, well-dressed elves who's sole purpose in life is to bake me delicious cookies. There's just something creepy about the lovable, happy character that's suppose to make me want to each a particular snack food being one of those particular snack foods.
It's kinda like how I've always had a problem with Mayor McCheese trying to sell me his head.
It's been a while since I've eaten goldfish crackers. I don't know why, I love pretty much all food that comes in the shape of a fish: goldfish crackers, Swedish fish, actual fish.
Well whatever the reason for the long separation, it over and me and one of my favorite childhood treats are back together again.
I was looking at a back for goldfish crackers for probably the first time since I learned how to read, and I noticed that they have a mascot now. A whole school of mascots actually.
Now on the side of every small bag of goldfish crackers are four goldfish crackers with eyes and a mouth.
I'm all for my snack foods having cute cartoon mascots. There's a part of me that gets a perverse thrill from the thought of a tree full of little, well-dressed elves who's sole purpose in life is to bake me delicious cookies. There's just something creepy about the lovable, happy character that's suppose to make me want to each a particular snack food being one of those particular snack foods.
It's kinda like how I've always had a problem with Mayor McCheese trying to sell me his head.
No tooth puns
My tooth hurts. It's not a constant demanding pain that demands attention like stubbing your toe or taking a mail box to the crotch. It's more of a slow annoying pain, the kind that never goes away, but never gets bad enough that you can complain about it without sounding like a total wienie.
It's kinda like working in an office.
I'm no stranger to mouth pain. I went through the torture of having braces in Jr High which was basically two years of constant mouth pain and soft food. Then in my freshman year at college, I had my wisdom teeth taken out by a man that I once watched cut a tick out of my friend's butt with a scalpel. So I can handle a little moral ache.
I'm pretty sure it's just simple cavity and a simple trip to the dentist would have the whole filled with metal and me filled with pain killer and happy gas and my problems would be solved.
However, just like my issues with body oder, knowing how to fix a problem doesn't mean I want to do it.
Now before you go accusing me of having such a common and down right boring neurosis like a fear dentists let me explain myself. Unlike the millions of Americans who fear dentists and all their needles, drills and long, pointy metal tooth pointers for absolutely no good reason, I have three firm, realistic and sane reasons to not want to got to fix this problem.
First: Dentists are doctors. Doctors are for wusses.
Despite 25 years of evidence to the contrary, I have still managed to convince myself that I am a strong and manly individual. I could have been a crusader, marching across the known world to face death at the hands of heathens, blistering sun and sand in uncomfortable places. I could have been a mountain man, living alone in the woods for years with nothing but my gun and my beard for companionship.
Instead, I am a software developer.
I think the most dangerous thing I did this week was tell a coworker the break room soda machine was out of diet Mountain Dew.
Since I was cursed to be born in the 20th century, I have to find other things in my life, bare them with patience and tell myself that makes me tough.
Right now, I'm wearing this toothache as a badge of pride.
Second: I cannot shame my family.
My grandfather was a dentist. He was more then a dentist though, he was like a dentist character in a cartoon. Everything at his house revolved around teeth. I grew up reading dental propaganda in the form of children's books. I played with a Play-doh set where you made teeth, stuck them into this creepy plastic head and then yanked them out. They had me so brain washed, I really though that an apple was as good as a candy bar.
We were a family who brushed. We were a family who used mouth wash. We were not a family that flossed, but we always told grandpa we did when we went for a visit. Seriously, nobody flosses.
I still remember when I got my first cavity. I was in high school so I had driven myself to and from the dentists office (this was in Idaho, where apparently you're allowed to drive under the influence of medical painkillers). I still remember the look of disappointment I saw in my mother's face when I explained why I was drooling out of the left side of my mouth.
I never want to see that look again.
Third: Popcorn is awesome right now.
The cavity is right in between my two back teeth, which is normally the kind of place that popcorn kernels like to hang out for weeks, making me consider suicide. Now, the whole is big enough that any remains of the delicious movie treat can be easily removed.
It seriously a dream come true for me.
Fortunately for me, I'm married and my wife is used to me. She's got me an appointment for next week to get this taken care of, so I guess that's that.
Geek on.
It's kinda like working in an office.
I'm no stranger to mouth pain. I went through the torture of having braces in Jr High which was basically two years of constant mouth pain and soft food. Then in my freshman year at college, I had my wisdom teeth taken out by a man that I once watched cut a tick out of my friend's butt with a scalpel. So I can handle a little moral ache.
I'm pretty sure it's just simple cavity and a simple trip to the dentist would have the whole filled with metal and me filled with pain killer and happy gas and my problems would be solved.
However, just like my issues with body oder, knowing how to fix a problem doesn't mean I want to do it.
Now before you go accusing me of having such a common and down right boring neurosis like a fear dentists let me explain myself. Unlike the millions of Americans who fear dentists and all their needles, drills and long, pointy metal tooth pointers for absolutely no good reason, I have three firm, realistic and sane reasons to not want to got to fix this problem.
First: Dentists are doctors. Doctors are for wusses.
Despite 25 years of evidence to the contrary, I have still managed to convince myself that I am a strong and manly individual. I could have been a crusader, marching across the known world to face death at the hands of heathens, blistering sun and sand in uncomfortable places. I could have been a mountain man, living alone in the woods for years with nothing but my gun and my beard for companionship.
Instead, I am a software developer.
I think the most dangerous thing I did this week was tell a coworker the break room soda machine was out of diet Mountain Dew.
Since I was cursed to be born in the 20th century, I have to find other things in my life, bare them with patience and tell myself that makes me tough.
Right now, I'm wearing this toothache as a badge of pride.
Second: I cannot shame my family.
My grandfather was a dentist. He was more then a dentist though, he was like a dentist character in a cartoon. Everything at his house revolved around teeth. I grew up reading dental propaganda in the form of children's books. I played with a Play-doh set where you made teeth, stuck them into this creepy plastic head and then yanked them out. They had me so brain washed, I really though that an apple was as good as a candy bar.
We were a family who brushed. We were a family who used mouth wash. We were not a family that flossed, but we always told grandpa we did when we went for a visit. Seriously, nobody flosses.
I still remember when I got my first cavity. I was in high school so I had driven myself to and from the dentists office (this was in Idaho, where apparently you're allowed to drive under the influence of medical painkillers). I still remember the look of disappointment I saw in my mother's face when I explained why I was drooling out of the left side of my mouth.
I never want to see that look again.
Third: Popcorn is awesome right now.
The cavity is right in between my two back teeth, which is normally the kind of place that popcorn kernels like to hang out for weeks, making me consider suicide. Now, the whole is big enough that any remains of the delicious movie treat can be easily removed.
It seriously a dream come true for me.
Fortunately for me, I'm married and my wife is used to me. She's got me an appointment for next week to get this taken care of, so I guess that's that.
Geek on.
They're like really flat vampires
I had a good night.
I slept tight.
I should have known I was forgetting something.
I was very disappointed to learn that bed bugs really exist. I was even more disappointed to learn that they really do bite.
What really got me upset though, was when I learned that they bite me.
My wife and I recently discovered that we have a colony of bed bugs living in our mattress. To my wife, this was a disgusting and extremely annoying inconvenience. To me it was just plain shocking.
I don't think I would have been anymore surprised to wake up and find a unicorn chewing on my foot.
I probably wouldn't have been anymore shocked if I had found a small family of tooth fairies living in our closet.
Before the moment of actually seeing the bed bug crawling around our bed and the 45 minutes on Wikipedia doing bug related research (did you know that there's an entry for wet T-shirt contests) I would be more likely to believe that the strange bite marks we had been finding all over our bodies were from the Utah Chupacabra (much rarer than the Mexican variety).
I think the reason I would be more ready to accept on of these other supernatural possibilities over the prefect natural bed bugs is that until I smashed one with my own bare hands, I had no idea that bed bugs were perfectly natural.
Until the job people of the Internet gave me the low down, the only source I'd even heard of bed bugs from was my mom. Now my mother may make the best meatloaf on the planet. She, however, is no entomologist.
Ever since I've been legally able to ignore everything my mom told me, I've been operating under the assumption that everything my mother told me was wrong. I retroactively applied this theory to all the things she had told me in the past.
Since from the time I was in feety pajamas my mother warned me of two things, bed bugs and the witch that would come out of the kitchen closest after my bed time (my mother was an expert at child manipulation).
Now I have to accept that fact that my mom, the same women who told me that if ate all my vegetables I'd grow up big and strong like Superman (four hundred pounds of broccoli later I'm still only 5 foot 5 and get beat up by fifth graders on a regular basis), was actually right about something.
This changes everything, I literally have to rethink the way I view the whole world.
If there really are bed bugs, then maybe some of the other crap my mom told me was right too.
Maybe the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus really are watching me all the time, judging whether I got candy or underwear each year.
Maybe fat kids really do have feelings.
Wow, maybe some day I really will regret hitting my sister in the face with my yellow wiffle bat.
Nah, probably not that one.
That's it for me, I'm off to kill more bed bugs, that's what I do now.
Geek on.
Steve Shinney is an former super gullible six-year-old who, once he got used the idea of his mom's competence is really enjoying having a whole new species to squish.
I slept tight.
I should have known I was forgetting something.
I was very disappointed to learn that bed bugs really exist. I was even more disappointed to learn that they really do bite.
What really got me upset though, was when I learned that they bite me.
My wife and I recently discovered that we have a colony of bed bugs living in our mattress. To my wife, this was a disgusting and extremely annoying inconvenience. To me it was just plain shocking.
I don't think I would have been anymore surprised to wake up and find a unicorn chewing on my foot.
I probably wouldn't have been anymore shocked if I had found a small family of tooth fairies living in our closet.
Before the moment of actually seeing the bed bug crawling around our bed and the 45 minutes on Wikipedia doing bug related research (did you know that there's an entry for wet T-shirt contests) I would be more likely to believe that the strange bite marks we had been finding all over our bodies were from the Utah Chupacabra (much rarer than the Mexican variety).
I think the reason I would be more ready to accept on of these other supernatural possibilities over the prefect natural bed bugs is that until I smashed one with my own bare hands, I had no idea that bed bugs were perfectly natural.
Until the job people of the Internet gave me the low down, the only source I'd even heard of bed bugs from was my mom. Now my mother may make the best meatloaf on the planet. She, however, is no entomologist.
Ever since I've been legally able to ignore everything my mom told me, I've been operating under the assumption that everything my mother told me was wrong. I retroactively applied this theory to all the things she had told me in the past.
Since from the time I was in feety pajamas my mother warned me of two things, bed bugs and the witch that would come out of the kitchen closest after my bed time (my mother was an expert at child manipulation).
Now I have to accept that fact that my mom, the same women who told me that if ate all my vegetables I'd grow up big and strong like Superman (four hundred pounds of broccoli later I'm still only 5 foot 5 and get beat up by fifth graders on a regular basis), was actually right about something.
This changes everything, I literally have to rethink the way I view the whole world.
If there really are bed bugs, then maybe some of the other crap my mom told me was right too.
Maybe the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus really are watching me all the time, judging whether I got candy or underwear each year.
Maybe fat kids really do have feelings.
Wow, maybe some day I really will regret hitting my sister in the face with my yellow wiffle bat.
Nah, probably not that one.
That's it for me, I'm off to kill more bed bugs, that's what I do now.
Geek on.
Steve Shinney is an former super gullible six-year-old who, once he got used the idea of his mom's competence is really enjoying having a whole new species to squish.
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