You Know You're Getting Old When...

I woke up with an aching pain and stiffness between my shoulder blades three days ago and it still has not gone away.  I didn't hurt it at the gym or by lifting something heavy.  I guess I just slept on it wrong. 

You read right:  I sustained prolonged bodily injury while sleeping.

Getting old f'ing blows.

How Did I Get Here?

The internet is a wild and unpredictable place.  This morning I found myself reading an article that included the following paragraph:

Dampness caused by rainwaters began to consume the body very quickly. It was, therefore, quite easy to disattach the head from the rest of the body without violence. There was no need to actually "decapitate" Catherine as some have mistakenly believed and written. By means of tests carried out at the base of the skull the lack of the first few cerebral vertebrae has been discovered: this discovery confirmed the above-mentioned dissolution of the softer nerves and tendons which had already begun to take place, thus facilitating the separation of the head from the trunk. (Original Page)

So, because it's killing you to not know how I ended up there, here's a quick recap of how I went from "Houston Rockets" to "Severed Head" in less than 10 steps:

1. Houston Rockets - I received an email about an offer for discounted Houston Rocket tickets.  While reading, I thought to myself, "Where do the Rockets play?"

2. Toyota Center - Where the Rockets currently play.  However, they used to play at a different arena.

3. Compaq Center - Where the Rockets used to play, and where mega-church dude Joel Osteen currently holds...whatever he calls the massive gatherings of people who are throwing handfuls of money at him while listening to Jesus Rock music.  But Joel's congregation isn't the only mega-church in Texas.  There was one near my parent's house in Plano.

4. Prestonwood Baptist - It turns out the overall membership is 30,000 at Prestonwood, but the arena only seats 7,500 (compared to Joel's 20,000).  That's a tad bigger than the little Catholic church I attended when I lived there.

5. St. Catherine of Siena: Carrollton- Small Catholic church in Carrollton, Texas where I completed the majority of my sacraments.  It turns out that there are many other churches with the same name all around the country

6. St. Catherine of Siena: Austin - It turns out there is a church by the same name here in Austin, Texas where I am currently living.  What a coincidence, right? With so many churches named after Catherine, I thought maybe I should learn more about the actual person. 

7. St. Catherine of Siena: Siena - St. Catherine was born in Siena, however she died in Rome in 1380.  She was buried there, but the good folks of Siena wanted the body of their beloved fellow citizen interred in her home town.  But they couldn't get all of her (for reasons discussed above) so they settled on the "head-only" option.  Upon hearing hearing of this cerebral solution, I had to know more.  Where is the head kept?  Can you see it?  Is it totally gross?

8. Basilica Cateriniana San Domenico - Final resting place of St. Catherine's cranium.  See below.  And, for the record, it is totally gross.

What Have I Become?

I watched the Super Bowl this year.  From beginning to end.  I haven't been interested in a few years and I quickly remembered why. 

The NFL is devoid of likable players, for starters.  When they're not shooting up night clubs or running people over with their cars, they're standing around with their mouth hanging open looking like they have yet to produce even one human thought (I'm looking you Eli) on national television or marrying super models (what a cliche, Tom).  The Patriots got caught cheating.  Eli Manning is a sniveling brat.  It's hard to watch that kind of behavior being celebrated.  Plus the game was boring.  They'll have you believe that these guys are out there playing to win it all because they care about the game and the thrill of victory or whatever, but the truth is they get a huge pile of cash just for being in the game.  And that huge pile of cash is on top of the huge pile of cash they get even if they don't win a game all season.  For those of you whose memories don't go back far enough to remember the summer of 2011 (I know, that was a long time ago), this is the same humongous pile of cash that the owners and players were fighting over last year and that fight almost resulted in a strike that would have cancelled the whole season.  Whew!  Good thing they got that sorted out.  The last thing we need is for these moronic malcontents (to be clear, I'm referring to players and owners) to be less outrageously wealthy. 

And not only did I have to watch these jokers tediously sling the ball down the field for three hours, but then there were the lackluster commercials sprinkled throughout.  They weren't good this year.  But then, were they ever?  Who the hell is getting excited about commercials?  Maybe this year was worse because you could watch them all online before the actual game.  Kind of defeats the purpose of paying a trillion dollars or whatever the cost has gone up to for that thirty seconds of airtime, doesn't it? 

Then there was half time.  It was sponsored by a tire company.  Flashy.  Nothing says once-a-year, largest-audience-ever-in-the-history-of-television event like being sponsored by all weather radials.  Then an animated wax figure that sort of resembled Madonna slowly cartwheeled around the stage.  It was unbearable.  There was a middle finger hidden in there somewhere, or so I heard.  I didn't see it as I had already passed out from boredom by that time. 

C and I used Super Bowl Sunday as an excuse to eat a lot of junk food, drink beer and sit on the couch all day, which was fun.  But I just assume watch anything else while doing it. 

A couple weeks later, I watched the Grammy's.  What a train wreck.  Thankfully, it was recorded on the DVR and I could fast-forward through the parts that were terrible.  I watched Adele.  And that was pretty much it.  Beach Boys - fast forward.   Chris "Assault and Battery" Brown - fast forward (TWICE).  Sir Paul McCartney who, incidently, appears to have recently celebrated his two hundred and eleventh birthday - fast forward.  Niki Minaj's satanic cult ritual - fast forward.  The guy from Rhinestone Cowboy - you get the picture. 

Next is the Oscars.  Am I going to subject myself to that steaming pile of hog shit as well?  Probably.  It might not be terrible.  But if it is, I'm going to have to really start wondering if these events that I've never found so disgustingly unenjoyable in the past are actually getting worse as the years go on, or is all of this distaste just part of my evolution into a grumpy, constantly complaining old man?


**Update**

I intended to watch the Oscars (all 14 hours of them), however through devine intervention my DVR malfunctioned and did not record the event.  Miracles really do happen.

A (very tardy) Holiday Update: 2011 Edition

Well, we did it.  We survived.  This year's incarnation of The Holiday Season was not the most horrific on record, however it was still a challenge.  But, we persevered.  We made it through and now we can relax knowing that it will be 10 months before we have to do it again.  Here are this year's highlights:

Thanksgiving:
We did Turkey Day (I can't stand it when people call it that) Over Eating/Football Day at Mom and Dad's in Dallas.  The food was good, although in a move that shocked no one who is familiar with my family, we hand selected a $75 organic, free-range, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, non-genetically altered turkey who lived in a three story condo on the beach and received a shiatsu massage everyday of his life (until his untimely demise) and ... then we deep fried it in peanut oil. Why?  Because it's delicious.  Oh, you mean, "Why did we buy such an extravagant and expensive piece of meat when it was destined to taste like nothing more than delicious, fried deliciousness?"  No reason, really.

On an unrelated note, I turned 32 the Saturday after that fateful turkey frying extravaganza.  32.  We had a good time celebrating 32, but nothing as messy as 30.  Never again (hopefully).

Christmas:
Late December was a doozy this year; C's dad turned 65 the weekend before Christmas, so we made two trips down to the family lake house in as many weeks.  They're a nice bunch, but for some reason they refuse to use the dishwasher.

C's dad:  "Why do we need a dishwasher if we have you?"
Me: "Seven adults living in one house, eating three meals a day at the kitchen table, that ends up being  a lot of dishes."
C's dad: "Better get to work, then!"

Thanks, father-in-law.

Not that it would matter anyway.  Christmas is a time for the "Special Plates" to be used at every meal.  There are two sets of "Special Plates".  I'll let you guess how many of those sets are dishwasher safe. One set is made of pewter and the other set is older than I am.  Give yourself a hand if you guessed zero.

Me: "Why don't we use the dishwasher safe plates for, like, one meal a day?"
Father-In-Law: "It's tradition to use these dishes."

It turns out traditions are very important to the people who don't have to clean them.

So there I am, up to my elbows in everyone's food scraps scrubbing each antique salad plate and pewter serving dish three times a day.  Alone.

There is another son-in-law who you would suspect would be sharing in my sudsy agony, but he has a propensity for staph infections and can't risk having is face swell up like a balloon because he got a paper cut and then dunked his hands in some grimy dishwater.  So, because I have a fully functioning immune system, I get to wash by myself.  Hooray for being a modestly healthy, normal human with the ability to fight off minor infections!

Also, get some gloves, bro.  Problem solved.  On second thought, I'll get them for you.  Merry Early Christmas, I'm going to play Nintendo.

New Year's Eve:
I know we're getting old.  The most recent example was a conversation C and I had in late December.

Me: "What are we doing for New Year's?"
C: "Dunno.  Go out?"
Me: "Ugh, all those people.  Impossible to get a cab..."
C: "Stay in?"
Me: "I mean, it IS a single-person's holiday, but we can't just NOT do ANYTHING...right?  Right...?  Riiiiight...?"

Luckily, we were saved from our own lameness from some good friends who invited us over to their house for an amazing dinner and tons of wine.  Our delightful hostess roasted a 10 pound, bone-in prime rib and it was pretty spectacular.  We drank bottle after bottle of my friend's prized wine collection, which I felt bad about, but they were so delicious and he just kept opening them, what was I supposed to do?  It would have been rude not to chug them straight from the bottle.

We had a great time, watched the ball drop and when it was all said and done, we had stayed up later than the pregnant girl who was there, but not as late as my friend's 90 year old grandfather (who we had expected to go to bed early.)  He showed us.  And that goes to show you: you're only as old as you think you are.

Good bye, Freedom

C talked me into getting a dog. I'm not sure how she did it, exactly, but I suspect a combination of Black Magic and sugary treats that clouded my judgement just enough for me to accompany her to the animal shelter to "just look".

24 hours later, this thing was living in my house:



I guess I didn't fully appreciate how different my life would be post-dog. It turns out everything I do now is subject to the eating and crapping cycles of this little fuzzball.

She sure is cute, though.

Like Lambs to the Slaughter

Herman Cain's campaign is out with a new "Women for Cain" website described as "an online national fellowship of women dedicated to helping elect Herman Cain as the next president of the United States."

Or, as Herman Cain himself is calling it, a list of potential victims.

Go get'em Herm! Nothing says "Next President of the United States" like inappropiate touching and infidelity and now you have an online database of ladies lining up to get groped!

See ya in the White House in 2012!

Memories

I don't remember when I bought my first copy of Ill Communication by the Beastie Boys. It might have been a gift, but with the large quantity of swear words it contains, I doubt by parents would have bought it for me. I do know that by the fall of 1997 I had bought at least four copies because the first few had met their demise in ways directly related to the excessively high amount of play time they were subjected to: some broke, some got scratched, some were lost. I had other CD's, good ones, but there was only one in my car's CD player or in my Sony Discman (look it up, kids) at ALL times.

I have a couple of homemade, burned CD copies floating around somewhere; not that it matters though. I have a digital copy on both of my computers (desktop and laptop), my cellphone, on my Amazon Cloud Player, and Google Music, plus you can go to the official website and listen to the whole album plus bonus tracks there for free. CD's are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Just like records, eight tracks, and audio cassettes, a new technology is slowly taking over and will soon force the CD into the "retro" category and only hipsters with their tight pants, black rimmed glasses and iPhones will care about them. And that's fine (not the hipster part, NO ONE deserves a fate in which those brats are the only ones who will pay attention to them. But the advancement of technology part is fine). It's the way of the world.

But as I was sitting at work listening to what is (and after seventeen years, I think it's safe to say) always will be my favorite album, I started thinking about how I am a member of the last generation that will remember the CD.

And I don't mean literally remember; all current and future generations will have Google and Wikipedia and, therefore, the ability to look up "Compact Disc". What I mean is that the concept of a store that exists only for the sale of CD's is already a thing of the past. CD players that you carry around (or better yet clip to your belt) are long gone. It won't be long until it's considered old-fashioned to have a CD player in your car now that cars are coming with auxiliary inputs, hard drives, and USB ports. Hell, I saw a commercial for a car with Pandora installed in the on-board, touch screen computer in the middle of the dashboard. Internet radio, in the car. What I mean is that we (myself and people my age) are the tail end of the last cohort that will really remember the CD experience.

I remember buying a CD for $20 or more only to find out that the only song worth a crap on the whole album was the one I had heard on the radio. But with iTunes and the Amazon MP3 store, you only pay for the songs you want so you don't have that disappointment. Plus, you can preview the songs right there on the website before you buy.

I remember the sinking feeling I used to get when a CD would skip. I would flip it over to find a deep, irreparable scratch right through it. And you could try and fix it, but it never worked. They sold machines that claimed to do the job, someone told me to use mayonnaise once, but the end result was always the same: shelling out another $20 for a new one. MP3's don't scratch, or wear out.

I remember CD books littering the floorboards of every car of every person I knew. You could flip through a book of 50 albums and still only find a handful of songs worth listening to. Now we just shuffle the iPod.

I remember reading the lyrics on the liner notes to try and figure out what the hell they were saying. Now we just Google it.

So, as I'm sitting here, forcing you to reminisce with me and listing to what is, and will continue to be my favorite album in crystal clear digital MP3 streaming over the internet, I can't help but think about all the fun I had as a dumb, teenage kid driving around town worrying about stupid little things that seemed to be so huge at the time, how nothing was more important than spending time with my friends, wondering about what the future was going to be like, looking forward to the time when I was all grown up and how this CD was the soundtrack for it all.

Holy crap...

Model of Restraint

After the Texas Rangers' devastating loss last night, I decided that I can't get too wound up over tonight's 7th and final game of the series. I love baseball season from start to finish and tonight it will be finished. Until the excitement of Spring Training 2012, there will be no Major League Baseball. It's just a bonus that my home-town team is playing for the World Championship. So tonight, instead of forgetting to breathe between pitches and screaming obscenities at the television, I'm going to try and just watch the game and hope the Rangers win knowing full well there is nothing I can do to influence the outcome.

Well, almost nothing.

I have already changed my Facebook profile photo to the Rangers' logo (which is the FB equivalent to tattooing it on my face).

Here's my lucky shirt.

Here's my lucky hat.

Here's my lucky koozie.

Here's my lucky glass.

and my lucky keys.



I'm obsessed. Let's start the obscenities.

Did I Do Thaaaaaat?

I am currently obsessed with the length of my jeans. It's becoming a real problem. I know they're too short. I just know it, but I can't prove it. I currently can't concentrate on anything else and I have that pit of the stomach feeling you get when you realize after you've already left the house that your nipples are showing through the shirt you're wearing and now there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm pretty sure they weren't always this short; I recently washed them in cold water and ran them through the dryer on low heat and somehow they shrunk, like 3 inches. I know they did. They're new and this was the first time I washed them, so I expected a little bit of shrinking, but not an entire inseam size.

But I can't prove it and that's why I'm currently obsessed with my own ankles. I'm blinklessly studying my gait in every reflective surface I pass, I'm staring at my lower half of my reflection on the elevator door, and I'm contorting my head around as far as it will go in an attempt to see the back side of my pants while everyone in my office wonders what excatly is wrong with me.

Here's what's wrong with me: I'm convinced I look like this guy: but I have no way of knowing for sure.

Let's See What Else I Can Get Them to Do

As you may recall, I asked the CIA for a favor in my February, 2010 post. Click here for a referesher if you don't have all of my posts memorized. (Shame on you, Mom!)

Well, it seems as though The Agency picked up on my suggestion for making the United States a safer place. Click here for the full story

Congrats on a job well done and thanks for reading, you crazy spooks!

Hello?

Breaking news: The Ultra-Hip and Exclusive, Invite-Only Club of Google+ is now open to everyone! You may all begin celebrating now.

Being as cool and in-the-know as I am, I had no idea that Club Google+ had been opened to the masses. So, when I noticed I had been asked to join, I was a little excited but mostly just upset that it had taken so long for someone to invite me. I made some snide remarks on Facebook to that effect, then realized my error and tried to retract them. Not my finest performance.

Now that the dust has settled on my entrance, I'm looking around Google's cutting edge internet discotec and see...that there's no one here.

It's less like an exclusive nightclub and more like a stylish coffee bar: quiet, with sleek plastic furniture and a few people hanging around minding their own business.

I do like that it's quiet, though. I feel like Facebook has become a venue exclusively for things that I couldn't care less about all trying to get my attention at the same time.

"Come on down to FarmVille!" What? Why the hell would I want to pretend to live on a damn farm?

"Jimmy likes Bacardi!" Yeah he does.  A little too much, if we're being honest.  That's why he can't keep a job.

"Sally just got the highest score ever on Who Gives A Crap!" Good for her?

"My baby just took her first steps!" Finally.  She's 7.

So, we'll see how the Google+ thing progresses and hopefully it will be a viable alternative to Facebook someday.  But for right now, I'm casually sitting in the corner trying not to bother anyone and so is everyone else: I have a whopping 1 item on my stream in the last 3 days. Thrilling.

Dear Diary,

I can't stop looking at Scarlett Johansson's butt. It's becoming a real problem; at least for my wife.

Dear "Mad Men",

Are you doing that thing that "Lost" did where everyone loves you for some reason and I am the only one who can see you for the steaming pile of dookie that you are? Because I'm only three episodes in, but I'm really getting the feeling like you are definitely doing that thing.

Let me know.

Thanks,

PR

USA! USA! USA!

Holy crap, I love America.

We just spent a week in Belize. It was a lot of fun, we saw some really neat stuff around the coral reef down there and generally had a very relaxing time. The Belizeans we met were all very nice and friendly and the natural beauty of the place is amazing.

But it's dirty. And it's inconvenient to get to/find/buy anything. And no one is in any hurry to do anything, ever. Don't expect to "run to the store for some ______ real quick." Because no one gets anywhere quickly and the store won't have ______ when you get there.

So, if you're ever feeling exceptionally un-patriotic, go to a third world country for a week or so and see how they do things. You'll end up coming back through U.S. Customs painted red white and blue wearing nothing but an Uncle Sam wig and top hat with fireworks shooting up from your back and the National Anthem blaring out of your backside.