Dead Baby Jokes

On a whim, we met Celeste & Nicki and Rhonda & Mike for dinner at Gino’s last night. It was a damn fine meal with damn fine friends. Gino’s can be hit-or-miss, and last night was definitely “hit”. The food was hot, the portions were enormous, and the conversation was hilarious.

The highlight of the evening wasn’t actually the clams, as one might expect, but a brief departure into Dead Baby Jokes. Kris loves Dead Baby Jokes, and I can’t say I disagree. She told our two favorite, and they had me gasping for air.

Q: What’s the difference between a truckload of bowling balls and a truckload of dead babies?

A: You can’t unload the bowling balls with a pitchfork.

Q: What’s sadder than a dead baby nailed to a tree.

A: A dead baby nailed to a puppy.

That last joke brought the house down. Or at least our little corner of it. “It’s hilarious on so many levels,” Kris said on our drive home. Just thinking about it made me laugh again.

I’ve been trying to decide what makes Dead Baby Jokes so funny. I think it’s because they’re just so wrong on so many levels. They violate taboo. They shock. They provide unexpected juxtapositions.

The real problem with Dead Baby Jokes is that they’re difficult to craft. There are thousands of these on the internet, and maybe one-percent of them are funny. Most are just dumb. Some go for intentional gross-out, which is not the same as humor. I can’t believe that of all the Dead Baby Jokes I’ve read, these are the only two that I really like, but it’s true.

The best way to generate new Dead Baby Jokes? Set the dingoes loose!

Bonus joke:

Q: What do vegetarian dingoes eat?

A: Cabbage patch kids.

Yeah, I know — it’s more of a groaner than a laugher, but still…

It Must Have Been Something I Ate

Busy busy busy. We are busy.

Yesterday morning, book group met to discuss The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert. This is not a good book. Gilbert has a strong, confident style, but she’s just a little too glib. Some might consider her twee. Worse, her subject is not worthy of a book-length exploration.

In The Last American Man, Gilbert writes about Eustace Conway, a real-life mountain man of the Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett mold. Eustace lives in a teepee (or used to, anyhow), eats roadkill (or used to, anyhow), and runs a sort of wilderness camp in North Carolina.

The problem is that we, the readers, are supposed to sympathize with Eustace. We’re supposed to admire him. Gilbert clearly does. She provides a chapter on his downsides, but they’re always filtered through her rose-colored glasses. But it’s hard to admire a man who comes across as a complete jerk. His attitude is always “my way or the highway”. He doesn’t trust anyone. He believes his is the only right way to do things, and is unwilling to let others learn from their own mistakes. He’s authoritarian. He’s callous. He’s not a sympathetic figure.

Despite the lousy man and the lousy book, we had a fantastic book group discussion — probably our best in months. Our discussion ranged from parenting to life skills to American history to our possible futures. Through it all, we touched on a number of books we’ve read in the past. It was great.

In the evening, we attended Kris’ office party. This, too, was fun. I used to be uncomfortable at these sorts of gatherings, but I know enough of Kris’ little friends (and their spouses) that I can have a good time. Plus, the highlight every year is the two-hour-long White Elephant gift exchange.

When Rhonda and Mike dropped us off from the Christmas party, they came in for some late-night Dance Dance Revolution. We spent an hour stomping and flailing. DDR is a great game, though it proved just how out of shape I was. Plus, as we were dancing, I became nauseated. I’d been feeling sick ever since dinner, and the exercise just made it worse.

It took me over an hour to fall asleep — I was trying not to be sick.

Today we drove to Jeff and Steph’s for our family Christmas. This, too, was fun, are would have been except that I was miserable most of the time. Kris and I left early.

I’ve spent the afternoon doing nothing. (Well, that’s not true. I’ve been writing. Always writing.) I just tried to have a bite to eat, but my stomach has rebelled. I’m not sure what’s wrong. Near as I can figure, I must have had something “off” at the Christmas party.

In any event, I have a busy week ahead of me. But once this is over, I think I can have some time to relax! I’m looking forward to it…

Subscriber Counts for All My Sites (Dec 2007)

In February, I posted subscriber counts for all the sites I run. At that time, my most-read site had 6784 regular readers. Today that numbers is over 40,000. While I’m pleased with this, it also gives me a severe case of stage-fright. It’s one thing to be writing for a few hundred people, but to be writing for a small city? It makes me nervous.

This list is based on the FeedBurner survey of my RSS feeds. This isn’t a count of actual direct traffic to the sites, but of the number of people who have subscribed. In parentheses, I’ll list the number of subscribers in February and the number of subscribers now. I’ll also write a little about my plans for each site.

I’ve ordered the list based on how important the sites are to me. I consider the first four to be “active”, and it’s my goal to maintain each of them as best I can.

Get Rich Slowly (6784 readers in Feb, 40808 today) — Yes, GRS really is read by over 40,000 daily subscribers right now. (And 4,000 people subscribe via e-mail.) I try not to think about it. I love writing this site and I love interacting with the GRS community. I’m earning enough from writing about personal finance to transition to a full-time writer.

foldedspace.org (330 readers in Feb, 302 today) — Foldedspace has suffered over the past two years. My attentions have turned elsewhere. We used to have a small but vibrant community here, but I fear I’ve lost many of the old readers. Still, I’ve been working to post here more often lately, and I’ve managed to move my old MT template to WordPress. All that’s left is to move over the archives.

Get Fit Slowly (new blog — 373 readers today) — Get Rich Slowly helped me turn my finances around. I’m hoping Get Fit Slowly can do the same with my health. Mac and I are writing this blog together, and so far I’ve been quite pleased with the experience. We’re both relaxed but serious about this. We’re not letting it become a chore, yet we’re dedicated to make this site a success. Our posts here are sporadic, but should become more regular (and higher quality) with time.

Animal Intelligence (23 readers in Feb, 98 readers now) — This number actually rises to about 120 or so on the days I post an entry. Unfortunately, I don’t post entries as often as I’d like. This is one blog that will benefit from my move to full-time. I’ll be able to spend a couple hours writing posts each week. This blog will never go away. I love the subject.

Money Hacks (93 readers in Feb, 847 today) — This GRS companion site was basically stillborn. I kept at it for a few weeks, and in that time grew the subscriber base to 1,000 people, but I couldn’t maintain the site. I didn’t have time. I still hope to revive it someday, but for now it’s dormant. (And, in reality, the Money Hacks feed is an abridged GRS feed at the moment.)

Vintage Pop (3 readers in Feb, 1 reader now, and that’s me) — Ah, Vintage Pop. How I love the idea. I’m not going to say this site is dead forever, but I have no plans to work on it in the next year or so. I do think it could be huge if I were to devote time and effort to it, and I think it could be a lot of fun. We’ll see…

Four Color Comics (31 readers in Feb, 39 readers today) — Ah, my comic book site. This site is dead, dead, dead. Though I’d love to have time to write about this aspect of my life, I don’t. I’ll maintain the domain, but I have no plans to return to this blog in the foreseeable future.

Bibliophilic (11 readers in Feb, 19 readers now) — My book site, which is dead dead dead. Again, this is a nice idea, but I just don’t have the time. I once thought I’d repost all my book reviews here, but rumor has it Google frowns on “duplicate content”, so I’m not willing to jeopardize all my other sites just to keep this one alive.

These are not the only domains I own, but they’re the only ones where I’ve actually created active sites. (They’re not all active now, of course…) Other domains that may see future activity include:

Cougar Tracks — A site meant for alumni of Canby Union High School.
Oak Grove Crossing — For information about my local community. This is a slow-to-get-started project with John C. I’m also hoping Lane will chip in. (And maybe Amy Jo, since she’s in the area now.)
Spiral Bound — My notebook blog. Believe it or not, this site has some underground support. I’ve never posted a thing here, but I think it could have a cult following if I did. I’m dead serious.
Success Daily — This one is set up and ready to go. I just don’t have the time. David Hatch will be disappointed to hear that I’m now thinking a January 2009 start date at the earliest.
Taking the Scenic Route — Actually, though I own the domain, this is a placeholder for a future Amy Jo project.
Too Much Cat and Too Much Dog — Ah, yes. I actually have entrepreneurship plans for these sites. I may make them a case study for GRS at some point.

There are other ideas kicking around inside my head, but I have to stop somewhere. The truth is, nothing else really matters to me right now but Get Rich Slowly. That is my top priority. If anyone out there wants to help with any of these, let me know. I’m open to possible collaborations.

The Devil in the Dark

When I was a boy, I loved Star Trek. For nearly twenty years, Portland’s KPTV (channel 12) broadcast the series at 4pm every Sunday afternoon. We didn’t have a television for much of my childhood, but most of my friends did. Whenever possible, I would watch Star Trek.

When the series was released on DVD a few years ago, I bought the first season, but I never watched it. It’s been gathering dust.

A few weeks ago, I decided to make some clam chowder. This is a laborious process. Though I enjoy it, the work takes a couple hours, and much of it is mindless. “I should watch something on the computer,” I thought. “I should watch Star Trek.” And so I did. I’ve been watching one episode a night ever since.

Many of the early episodes are truly awful — there are good reasons the show struggled to stay on the air. But by the middle of the first season, things began to click. The writers and producers discovered their characters and figured out how to tell their stories.

I plan to do a full review of season in about a week, but I want to take the time to mention one of my favorite episodes: The Devil in the Dark. On an important mining colony, a mysterious creature is terrorizing the workers. This mysterious beast can move through solid rock, and it dissolves anyone it touches. Fifty men have died in just a few months. The Enterprise is summoned to eliminate the problem.

Initially, Kirk and company intend to destroy the creature. But, as he is wont to do, Spock begins to suspect that there’s something deeper to the problem. He’s right, of course. First of all, the life form is silicon-based, something that is seemingly impossible. Second, it is highly intelligent. And finally, it is merely defending its nest, which has been disrupted by the mining activities.

Watching the episode tonight, it was shockingly obvious that this is where my appreciation of inter-species friendship and communication originated. It was from watching this episode of Star Trek when I was a boy that I developed an appreciation for other animals, and began to suspect that other species might harbor intelligence that we, as humans, could barely comprehend. From there, it was only a small jump to similar philosophical positions.

Many of these Star Trek episodes don’t stand up well upon re-viewing. I haven’t seen them in twenty (or thirty!) years, and what I loved as a boy is sometimes almost unwatchable as an adult. (The Corbomite Maneuver is mind-numbingly bad.) But The Devil in the Dark is as good as I remembered. Amazing that much of the framework of the adult J.D.’s belief system can be traced to one hour of television made in 1965…

Too Cold

All the heat in my life is vanishing.

First, the heater in my car gave out on Tuesday morning. I’m sure this is a quick fix, but I don’t have time to take it in. I’m playing Santa for Custom Box, so I’ll need to wait a week or so before I can have the heater repaired.

Then this morning the space heater in my office seems to be operating at half power. It’s blowing air, but it’s tepid air. It doesn’t warm me. It’s bad enough that Nick has begun turning the heater off at night instead of letting it operate at a low level, but now the thing barely works at all. Brrrr cold.

I might be able to tolerate this lack of heat if my clothes kept me warm. But because of my current girth, few things fit. Normally I’d wear my long johns, but they don’t “go” with the sweater I wore today, for example. I need to see customers, so I can’t look like a total hick. (I do have my long underpants on, and that’s some consolation.) Also, for some reason my socks and shoes are providing no protection this morning — my toes are cold.

All of this could be forgiven under normal circumstances. If I could come home in the afternoon to take a hot bath, it wouldn’t matter. A long soak in a hot tub would warm my inner core. It’s not happening. For some reason, we’ve got plenty of scalding water in the morning, but when I try to take a bath at 4pm, all I get is the lukewarm stuff. Ugh.

I draw a lukewarm tub anyhow, and I sit in it, shivering while I watch old Star Trek episodes. Every so often I’ll run the water for a couple minutes in the hope that somehow it will have heated. Occasionally I get lucky. Occasionally there is hot water. But a lot of its effect is negated by the fact that even when the water eventually is hot, it starts out cold. The first water from the faucet is ice cold, and it stays that way for ten or fifteen seconds. Or longer if there isn’t actually any hot water.

I’m cold.

Story Time at Rosings Park

Every day, it’s the same thing.

The alarm goes off at 5:30. Kris hits snooze.

The alarm goes off at 5:39. Kris pulls herself awake and heads downstairs for a shower. I pull of my C-PAP mask, roll over, grab my laptop, and then set it on my belly. While Kris is getting ready, I’m doing my morning stats.

Each day, I log the same numbers from Get Rich Slowly. I have a spreadsheet containing traffic, subscriber, link, and revenue information. It’s a little anal-retentive perhaps, but it’s probably no surprise to most of you. I also process e-mail and then check to be sure there are no fires to be put out. (Believe it or not, sometimes there are.)

At about 6:05, I put away the laptop, grab some clothes, and tromp downstairs. I brush my teeth, etc. as Kris gets out of the shower. At 6:10, I get into the tub and begin to soak. I don’t have as long as I’d like (and in the winter, I never get as warm as I want) — I need to be out of the house at 6:25, which means I need to be out of the tube at 6:20.

Some days — like today — Kris throws a monkey wrench into things. Some days — like today — she begins to talk to me about work. At 6:18.

Kris is a good storyteller, and I like to hear about all her little friends, but her stories are not short. In fact, they’re always quite long. I’d rather she told them to me in the evening, as we’re eating dinner. “I’m tired when I come home,” she said tonight when I mentioned this.

I understand. But when she starts telling me stories about work at 6:18 am, my heart sinks. I want to be a good husband and listen, but I also don’t want to be late for work. If I’m on time every day during a pay period, I get a $50 bonus. If I’m not, I don’t. And when Kris begins to tell a story at 6:18, I know it’s going to be a near thing.

Things get even worse when she slips into lethargy mode. She’ll go through periods where she hits the snooze button twice. Or when she won’t get into the shower until 6:04. When I come down to take my turn, she’ll have only just begun.

When this sort of thing begins to happen on a regular basis, I practice social engineering. Before she gets home from work, I go through the house and set back every clock by three minutes. (I can’t set them back any further or it’s too obvious. Though not as obvious as writing a blog entry about it.) This usually helps mitigate the problem, though it never quite solves it.

Ah, the strange dynamics of the husband-wife relationship.

Cats Like Birds

Cats? We have cats? For those of you who have been craving a cat update, here’s a video I took last month. It features are three boys and their insane desire to be OUTSIDE:

Have I mentioned that I love my digital camera? It’s small, it has wide-angle capability, and it takes video. I actually use it more for videos than for photos. It’s more fun that way…

Go, Speed Racer, Go!

When we were boys, which cartoon did we like better than any other? The one with race cars, of course. As lousy as I thought the last two Matrix movies were, the first one was brilliant. And based on that alone, I’ll go see this:

Coming in May!

Good Day, Bad Day

Wednesday got off to a lousy start. I rolled out of bed groggy and unrested. I was cold. My bath water was tepid.

When I got to work, things got worse. My eyes began to water and my nose began to run. I started sneezing uncontrollably. I was a mess. I wanted to go home sick, but Nick called to say he wouldn’t be in, and Jeff had a dentist appointment midday.

That might have been fine by itself, but then Lifehacker linked to my debt-free post at Get Rich Slowly, and things got even worse. Generally a link from Lifehacker is a good thing. In this case, however, my server came to a grinding halt. This isn’t the first issue I’ve had, which made things even more frustrating. It over three hours for things to get back to normal, and I was a nervous wreck the entire time.

Because I was too busy fretting, I couldn’t get anything written. It wouldn’t have mattered anyhow, because the phones kept ringing. Can you imagine? Actually having to deal with customers at a job?

By midday I realized that I had overbooked my evening. I had promised Mark and Tim that I would meet with them to discuss their new book, and to talk about publishing. But I had also told Paul and Amy Jo that I could help them move their appliances out of storage. Oops. I had to cancel my second engagement.

The day dragged on, and I seemed at my wits’ end.

In the evening, my luck changed.

Because I had to work late (to cover for the sick Nick), I skipped coming home and drove directly to dinner. As I travelled, I listened to Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, our book group choice for January. I love it. I haven’t read a book this good since Proust or Moby Dick. (“Oh great,” Kris muttered when I heaped this praise upon it.)

I ate at Cha Cha Cha, a cheap Mexican place that qualifies as “comfort food” for me. I ordered a lime Jarrito to go with my tacos, but just as my server was about to open it, I noticed they served a few mixed drinks. “I’ll take a mojito instead,” I said. A mojito sounded perfect.

The mojito wasn’t quite perfect, but it was strong! It seemed to be made of only rum and mint. When I stood up after finishing, I could tell I had a slight buzz. From one drink! I was plenty safe to drive, though, so I headed off to my meeting.

What a meeting! I don’t know what I had been expecting, but I came away inspired. I know Mark from the Writers Guild, but I had never met Tim before. He’s a confident, energetic entrepreneur. He came prepared with all sorts of notes, and he had articles and clippings to give to me. It was awesome. I left feeling excited about the directions Get Rich Slowly could take. (“Get Rich Slowly action figures!” Kris said when I told her about my evening.)

At home, I did a before-bedtime check of my site stats. It had been a good day. In fact, it had been a great day, especially from a financial perspective. My sites made $422.12 yesterday, surpassing an 8-month old mark. (On April 10th, my sites generated $384.88 in revenue. If only they would do this every day…)

Though I had started the day cranky, I went to bed happy.

The Wire: Prequels

Kris and I have been re-watching The Wire. I believe it’s the best television show ever produced. It’s epic. It’s powerful. It’s moving.

The Wire explores the world of crime and corruption in Baltimore, Maryland, looking at things not just from the cops’ eyes, but also from the eyes of the criminals. Creator David Simon does a fantastic job of drawing parallels, showing how honor and family are important in the criminal world, and how the “good guys” can be just as amoral and conniving as those that most people would condemn.

The fourth season was released on DVD yesterday. Though we’re not ready to watch it, we squatted on the first disc at Netflix. We’ll hold it until we’re ready to view. Mean? Perhaps, but I’d rather do that than have to wait. We’ll finish the second season this weekend, and then do the third over the following week. We’ll be watching the fourth season by Christmas.

Meanwhile, here are some bonus prequel episodes, which have been posted to YouTube. In the first one, we meet a young Proposition Joe (played by a woefully inept boy who must have been cast just for looks):

Warning: Plenty of foul language ahead.

Young Proposition Joe (1962)

Young Omar (1985)

When Bunk Met McNulty (2000)

Though these clips are fun for those who watch and love the show, they’re not really representative of the show itself. The show is simply amazing.

Not everyone agrees. Andrew and Courtney tried to give it a go based on our recommendations, but they found it unwatchable. There is a lot of swearing and violence — it’s a stark show that doesn’t flinch from reality — but I think it’s worth it. The first season takes four or five episodes to get rolling, but once it does, it’s amazing…

Finally, here’s a promo for season five, which begins next month on HBO.

Too bad Kris and I won’t be watching that for at least another year.