Pet Cobra

Movember, Day 30: And So We Came To The End

Last day, last chance for you guys to go here and donate. What - surely you didn't think I was doing this for fun? I rarely do things just for fun any more. And yes, I will call you Shirley.

So What Does It All Mean? I rejoined the ranks of that oft-maligned and persecuted subculture, The Mustachioed. Unlike The Mustachioed, I can shave this thing off tomorrow and return to the good graces of Society, and perhaps that made it easier for me to step out of my privileged upper-middle-class clean-lipped shoes and walk in those of a downtrodden people. In doing so, I learned some valuable lessons about discrimination, bigotry, fear, hatred, and dramatic, delusional hyperbole. Team DadCentric has, as of this posting, raised a smidge over $1200. If that means one less man will avoid the indignity of having a doctor's finger shoved up his ass, why, I think we've done some good. So, until next year:

Movember, Day 24: Gray

What.

The.

HELL:

 

Movember, Day 23: ...and Tired

This morning: I wake to a rhythmic double beep.

BEEP BEEP.

BEEP BEEP.

BEEP BEEP.

2:00 AM. The sound is coming from downstairs. The alarm. Shit. Downstairs I shamble. Undead. The house is a cold dark cavern. The control panel warning light is on, indicating that the phone is not working. I shut the whole thing off. I think. I pressed a bunch of buttons and the beeping stopped, anyway. Back upstairs I shamble, to dream of brains. What I don't hear: the alarm company has received an alert that our phone is down. They've called our cellphones, because that's what they do when the phone goes down, to make sure that we're ok and that burglars or al-Qaeda operatives or North Korean Special Forces have not cut the lines. My phone is on mute. Beth's is somewhere in the house, buried in her purse, muffled. I drift back off to sleep and a few hours or minutes pass and I'm dreaming of doorbells. Which...no. I sit up. The dog is barking hysterically. 2:15 AM. I stagger back downstairs. The dog barks at the door. I open it. There is a package. It's addressed to me. There are a pair of boots. They are encasing a pair of feet. The feet belong to a Carlsbad firefighter. "Is anyone injured?," he asks. "Huh?,"I answer. "We got a call, medical alert. Your alarm go off?" I look past him and there are three more firefighters. "Oh. The phone. Our phone. It went out. I guess the alarm company called you. I'm sorry. Man. Sorry." The rest of his team is already walking back to their truck. "No problem," the firefighter says. "It happens. Might've been a power surge." I feel stupid. "Sorry," I say again. We call the alarm company and they tell us that when the phones go down they call our cells to make sure that we're ok and that burglars or al-Qaeda operatives or North Korean Special Forces have not cut the lines. Which is funny because the first time I wrote that I was being sarcastic. Then I went back to bed, but not to sleep, because my mind was ablaze with 3:00 AM Thoughts. The alarm is down! We're wide open! A Second Korean War! The holidays! The holidays! I may or may not have gone back to sleep. I'm leaning towards "not", and I have this morning's photographic evidence to support my claim:

Movember, Day 22: Cold

The rains came through this weekend and soaked everything, leaving a chill in their wake, like the whole neighborhood was built atop an Indian Burial Mound, the dead letting us know in their way that hey, your houses are blocking our view. We're all in the grips of varying stages of Sick, which also could explain the cold. Spectral or psychosomatic?

Or maybe it's the fall, frosty breezes the last defiant gasps of a dying year. We were out driving yesterday and happened to swing by the beach, deserted but for a few fleeced people out for a stroll, and of course the gulls, floating like barrage balloons on the incoming winds. When was the last time I put my feet in the water? Weeks? I like the beach in winter.  It's like standing at the end of the world, cold sand an impossibility, a symptom of a moribund earth.

It's cold. Could be ghosts, could be shifting ocean currents and prevailing winds, could be the sun winking out at last, could all just be in my head. Whatever. I'm wearing a beanie today.

 

Movember, Day Fourteen: My Favorite Bear Joke

Shave and a haircut? Needed.

So, the Bear Joke: this guy goes to the Anchorage Zoo, because he hears they've just captured Alaska's Most Ferocious Bear and he simply must see this bear for himself. When he gets to the bear display, he sees a huge crowd of people hanging around, looking down into the pit where the bear is kept. He looks in.

And sees the bear just sitting there, licking his balls.

The bear does this for about a half hour - no growling, no roaring, no gnashing of the teeth, just borderline auto-fellatio.

Finally the guy walks over to the zookeeper. "Hey", he says. "I heard that this was Alaska's Most Ferocious Bear! He doesn't look that ferocious to me." The zookeeper says, "Believe me, this bear is a stone cold killer." The bear keeps on licking his balls. "Really", says the guy. "Yep", says the zookeeper. "Why, about an hour before you got her, someone fell into the bear pit and that bear right there ate that person right up." "This bear? Then why's he just sitting there licking his nuts?" "Well", says the zookeeper. "The person that fell in? Was Sarah Palin. That poor sumbitch is STILL trying to get the taste out of his mouth."

Movember, Day Eleven: Black Hats

Usually when you get a hat like this, they give you a bowl of soup with it:

If you come here often, you've noticed that I spend a lot of time writing about nothing. I suppose I could come up with more Topical and Incendiary stuff to write about; after all, we swim in the Twitter fishbowl, and there's always somebody upset 'bout somethin'. Twitter's where the streetfights happen, then blogs prepare for the siege. Yesterday it was Amazon. Today it was something else. Somebody was outraged about something. Perhaps it was something important. How important, in the Great Grand Scheme of Things, is the question. When the Daily Dramas unfold, when people don their white hats, rally the troops, and call out the villains, I'm finding myself less inclined to unsnap the holster and remove the safety, and more inclined to simply shrug. 

Because no matter how many people read your blog, it's a big old world, and most people still don't. Perspective: that post I wrote that 75 people commented on? 6,697,254,220 people didn't.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I got that t-shirt for free. Perks of being a Featured Contributor. The hat I paid for.)

Movember, Day Ten: The Truth Is An Octopus

I skipped a day. Too much stuff going on, including an evening out with Andy (you know him as Beta Dad) and Seth (you know him as The Didactic Pirate. Or is just Didactic Pirate? It's the classic Batman v. The Batman conundrum.) Apparently my burgeoning 'stache did as well. Here is how we're faring today:

Last night the conversation turned to blogs; specifically, whose blogs we read. The three of us admitted to not reading a whole lot of blogs. Maybe a handful each. (We read YOURS, of course. And we all agree that you're a hell of a writer, and that you are destined for Great Things.) I don't feel bad about not reading a whole lot of blogs because not a whole of people read this one. Thus, symmetry is achieved. Many of the blogs I don't read are doing a meme called 30 Posts of Truth, or 30 Days of Truth. This is not to be confused with 30 Days of Night, featuring noted non-actor Josh Hartnett. Anyway, the idea is to do an entire post based on one of the items below. That seems like too much work, and a series of 30 posts revolving around my patchy facial hair is much more interesting. But I gave it a shot anyway, with answers distilled down to their essence.

1. Something you hate about yourself: My flippant attitude. Often times, I wonder if's merely a shield, there to protect me against the ever-encroaching despair that is a by-product of living in a tumultuous and disjointed world.

2. Something you love about yourself: My insensitive sarcasm. (See #1.)

And that was about as far as I got, because there's truth and there's confession. Truth is in the tales, and even the weirdest, most random shit I post up here will tell you infinitely more about Me than a bullet-pointed list of likes, dislikes, triumphs, and regrets. Now, please watch this video featuring the most awesome octopus ever. It's as weird, random, and true as me.

Movember, Day Eight: Stupid Picture

Tangible progress!

I am not sure what I'm looking at. Yes, it's kind of a stupid picture. Don't complain. I coulda posted this one:

(You'll have to go to the next page to see it. But I'm warning you - you may not want to.)

Movember, Day Seven: Lazy

First, an update. The post-weekend Movember (remember, kids - I ain't doin' this for shits and giggles. The 'stache is being grown for a Good Cause, and your donation is/would be/will be greatly appreciated) Action is looking like this:

Do Movember Rules allow for a mustache AND a soul patch? Eh, rules. 

Of greater concern: I'm looking pretty friggin' haggard. Look at the expression. The bags under the eyes. The crow's feet. The Thousand Yard Stare. 

That's a man who's been All Work, and No Exercise. And no Motivation.

For a while, I told myself that there were no new worlds to conquer. In my late 20's, there was Rock Climbing and Backpacking, culminating in a couple of crazy-ass solo trips. One was a solo trek around the upper rim of Yosemite Valley, me, a one-man tent, three days' worth of beef jerky, pita bread, bean dip, and Clif Bars. The other was a solo climbing trip to Joshua Tree National Park (during what would be the hottest weekend of the year - 115 degrees in the shade, dropping down to a chilly 95 degrees at night) - I scaled burning granite during the day, and I slept in the back of my truck at night, until a pack of coyotes went tear-assing through my campsite. (Then I slept sitting up in the passenger seat of my truck.) In my 30's, it was surfing - just about every day, dawn patrols and evening glass-offs, culminating in a hairy trip up the Lost Coast. I jumped back into karate several months back, but after a few not-so-minor injuries, my enthusiasm has waned. 

I was racking my brain trying to come up with Reasons: moving into a new house and a new neighborhood. Change hit us like a tsunami; what once was has been swept away, and we've just now cleared out the debris and gotten the lights to work. Now come the aftershocks: the pressures of working 3 different jobs from home while trying to entertain an increasingly feisty 3-year-old and help guide an increasingly rambunctious 6-year-old through the roiling waters of first grade. 

I tell myself it's what happens: you turn 40, and your responsibilities shift. But really, I look at that picture, that waxen sunken-eyed fuzzy-lipped me, and I know the truth. I've just gotten lazy. 

 

Movember, Day Five: I Finally Bathe, And Come To A Realization

Remember, remember, the Fifth of Movember. I didn't have a Guy Fawkes mask. But I did take a shower. See?

I'm often asked if that's my real hair (yes) and if it is, why do I always wear hats? I should flaunt that shit! The truth is that I wear hats because I take a shower maybe three times a week. I'm up and working at six every morning - and by work, I mean wrangling my 6-year-old, 3-year-old, and jobby-job stuff (I do have a Paying Non-Writing Job, which I do from home, as well as the stuff I do for Man Of The House, and my own sites). I ain't got time to bathe. Also, my bathroom is on the second floor, and what happens is, I turn on the water, crank it over to HOT, and wait. And wait. And wait. Meanwhile, the HOT water makes it's way down from the Rockies, into the Colorado River, through volcanic fissures that heat the water, through Arizona, underneath houseboats full of drunken teenagers, past the meth fields of Jamul, around Cape Horn (it's a water rights thing), and to my house, which has a hot water, a good thing since, you know, CAPE HORN, where the penguins and the narwhals frolic together in blissfully friggin' cold harmony, but the water heater has a timer, and the timer supposedly allows one to control the flow of hot water to the upstairs portion of the house, but the previous owners didn't leave the instructions, and so I had to look it up online, and it's a funny thing, but Googling "HOT WATER TIMER THINGY INSTRUCTIONS" doesn't yield up much expect for a few weird Japanese tentacle porn sites, and after about three hours of going through those I began to realize that maybe I was looking in the wrong spot, and thus I'm not really sure how to operate the timer, and for all I know I've enable Skynet to eventually become self-aware, so that's why I usually end up taking a shower that starts off cold and reaches a decent temperature only after I've washed my hair, and so today after I got out the shower I took that picture and after I uploaded it to this site I got on Twitter and found this article and said fuck it, being a Good Man is too goddamn difficult. But hey, narwhals.