I have a list of “things.” Knowing useless pop culture trivia is one of my things. Being insanely bad with directions is one of my things. Being awesome is one of my things. The list goes on and on, and I think it’s about time I began documenting them.

One of the “things” I do that my family members just love involves my cat, Smokey. Basically, I like to give Smokey credit for inventing things and for being proficient in anything and everything. I call them Smokey-isms. You may call them gold nuggets of comedic magic.

What’s a Smokey-ism? Allow me to give you a few examples:

When my family gathered at my parents’ place one Saturday and watched the movie Happy Feet, the following was uttered by yours truly during various points in the film:

“Did you know that Smokey invented tap dancing?”

“Interesting side note, guys: Smokey invented animation.”

“If Smokey was in this movie, the penguins would worship him.”

While watching baseball games over the years, I have said the following:

“Smokey once hit a ball 600 feet.”

“Pitchers would be afraid to pitch Smokey inside because they know he would charge the mound and kill them.”

“Smokey can run from home to first base in 2/10 of a second.”

“Did you know that Smokey invented baseball?”

While watching The Food Channel over the years, I’ve said the following:

“If Smokey was on this show, they’d call it 29 Minute Meals.”

“Emeril (Lagasse) learned everything he knows from Smokey. Except how to be lame – he got that on his own.”

“If Smokey was an Iron Chef, no chef would ever challenge him. They’d be too scared.”

It should be noted that these Smokey-isms are usually uttered completely out of the blue. A family member might be relaying how he or she has sore feet, and after having a serious discussion on the topic for a few minutes I will throw in a: “Did you know that the ‘air’ in Nike Air was Smokey’s idea? True story.”

You might think (or wish) I am making this up, but I assure you it’s all true. Why do I do it? Am I crazy? Or is Smokey just that awesome?

I’ll let you be the judge. I’ll leave you with some more Smokey quotes over the years. As I make new ones, or as I remember old ones, I’ll add to the list:

“Smokey invented meowing.”

“Did you know Smokey was an original member of The Beatles?”

“Did you know that Smokey coined the phrase Black Friday?”

“Smokey invented anti-lock brakes.”

“Smokey invented the stock market.”

“Did you know that Smokey invented the printing press?”

“Did you know that Smokey invented umbrellas?”

“Do you want to know Smokey’s all-time greatest invention? The spork.”

“Did you know that ‘The Boston Tea Party’ was Smokey’s idea?”

(after someone talked about hunting) “Smokey doesn’t need a gun when he hunts. He either round-house kicks them in the head or stares at the deer until they fall dead from fear.”

I have written about Smokey in the past (see Prisoner of War, 50% Fur, 50% Awesome and Angel Cat). Go check ‘em out if you have a fever and the only prescription is more Smokey. By the way, for the record, I make Smokey-isms for comedic purposes only – I’m perfectly sane and I only say them because I know my family just loves them.

And yes, for those worrying about my safety, I only say these things around my family. I never say them in public and never over a microphone at the mall (at least not anymore).

CC from The Life and Times of a Confused Twenty-Something tagged me over Thanksgiving for what could potentially be a very risque meme named Six Guilty Pleasures. Dedicated readers of SKOS (which should be all of you since my blog’s very addictive) will recognize CC as the inspiration behind my Dear Reader: A Three Hour Tour? post from September.

So do I have any guilty pleasures? No, of course not. But read on anyway.

Name six guilty pleasures no one would suspect you of having:

1. I like Mandy Moore. No, not as an actress (although she’s not bad). And no, not for her looks (although she is very pretty). I like her music. Okay, that is a slight exaggeration – I like one song of hers.

2. I like to watch the Food channel. Specifically, I like Alton Brown of the show Good Eats and Giada De Laurentiss of the show Everyday Italian. I like one for being funny and witty, the other for being easy on the eyes. I’ll let you figure out who is who.

3. I tell people I have them because “ladies like them,” but the truth of the matter is my home is filled with vanilla candles because I like them. Don’t judge me, people. They smell good.

4. I liked the group Blessid Union of Souls and wish that they’d make a comeback.

5. I like blondes. And brunettes. And red heads. Basically, I like any cute female with hair on her head. And to be perfectly honest, the hair probably isn’t necessary.

6. I have a pair of snake-skin cowboy boots in my closet that I bought my freshman year of college. I’m not a cowboy. I do not like country music. But I do believe the definition of coolness is yours truly, wearing snake-skin cowboy boots, walking down the aisle of a grocery store.

Name six pleasures you once considered guilty but have now either abandoned or made peace with:

1. In the 90s, I liked the song The Sign by Ace of Base. As a rock guy, I tried to remain immune to its poppiness. But alas, I failed. It was too catchy, too disposable, too Swedish. The lyrics were just too deep:

I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes
I saw the sign
Life is demanding without understanding

Makes you think. Life is demanding without understanding.

2. Coffee. I don’t care if it stunts my growth – I’m going to drink it anyway!

3. Some time ago, I made peace with being a “cat” person. Most guys like dogs, but not me. Dogs are loud – they bark any time they hear a noise, which is every ten seconds. Dogs are also dumb – they bark any time they hear a noise, which is every ten seconds. Dogs are also annoying – they bark any time they hear…

Cats, on the other hand, are laid back. They’re easy going. And, in certain cases, they are the very definition of awesome.

4. I like all Kevin Costner movies. All of them. Yes, all of them.

5. When I sit down on a couch, I have to have a pillow. Sometimes I keep it in my lap, sometimes I put it to my side, and sometimes I just hold it. But I have to have it. It’s been argued I use the pillow to strategically hide holes in my bluejeans, but that’s not true. I just need a pillow. Why? Beats me.

6. Sleeping in on Saturday mornings is one of life’s great pleasures. Many a time have I considered throat punching someone after being awakened before nine o’clock in the morning on a Saturday. To quote Bruce Banner, “you’re making me angry… you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

Thanks for the tag, CC. Okay, I will go the lazy route and tag everyone who reads this. What’s that? You don’t wanna? You’re not chicken, are ya? Are you sure, because you’re exhibiting major chicken-like tendencies right now. Just so you know…

Banks are sneaky.

It’s become obvious to me that the management at my local bank reads my blog. Am I surprised? Well, no. My blog is awesome and incredibly funny – who wouldn’t want to read it? Still, I am a bit taken aback by the fact my bank is using information disclosed on my blog to lure me into giving them more of my money.

It started off very subtle.

1. The bank is on my way to work. This makes my getting lost on the way to the bank almost impossible. Is it a coincidence they chose to build the bank at such a convenient location? I highly doubt it.

2. The parking places are very wide. This makes the likelihood of my having to park next to someone incapable of parking their vehicle between the two lines much, much lower.

3. Once inside the bank, I never have to wait in line for more than a minute. This significantly decreases the chances of my becoming trapped in line with unsupervised, quasi-evil children.

I discovered their latest and most blatant trick while dropping off a deposit during my lunch break today.

I walked through the outside door of the bank and just as I was about to reach for the interior door a bank employee just happened to walk by, saw me coming and held the door open for me. This employee was a twenty-something, cute-as-a-button female who managed to give me three different greetings – one before I told her “thank you” and two after – in a span of five seconds.

I walked up to the waiting area to discover there was no one else in line. I was able to go right up to the front.

In front of me were six work stations with five bank employees. Each employee was twenty-something, cute as a button and female. Just then a sixth employee walked up to the sixth station and asked, “may I help you?”

This was the same employee who had opened the door for me. She greets me with a, “hi… again!”

I do believe I was smitten. How do I know? Because her name tag said “Brandi” and yet I refrained from making a sarcastic comment about the “i” at the end. Instead I smiled, said “hello” and handed her my deposit slip.

Very clever, Mr. Bank.

You know I like cute females, so you hire a staff of cute females. You know I despise people who cannot park, so you make it nearly impossible to park badly. You know unsupervised, misbehaving children tend to get to me, so you make the wait in line as short as possible. And you know that I am incredibly, incredibly directionally challenged, so you make your bank easy for me to find.

Bravo.

You obviously have no idea who you’re dealing with.

You see, I am also frugal. I am not going to just give you my money. I’m not going to take out a loan I don’t need. Not a chance, no way, no how.

I will, however, drop by the bank every day during lunch to pass the time…

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Travel safely, break a leg and all that good stuff.

Over the weekend, Kathy from the very funny The Junk Drawer tagged me for a meme. What’s a meme? Beats me. I had to Google it. The trusted and always-accurate Wikipedia came through with a definition:

A meme comprises a theoretical unit of cultural information, the building block of cultural evolution or diffusion that propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution.

Needless to say, I was still confused.

After a little more research from a more reputable source (i.e. anyone but Wikpedia), I discovered that a “meme” is a set of questions answered by one blogger, who then tags another blogger to answer those same questions. And so on and so on.

Oh, so it’s like a homework assignment I can give to other people? Why didn’t Wikipedia just say so?

Below are my answers to the Five Things About Blogging meme. I will do my best to be serious and answer these questions honestly, but as my readers know that might not be doable.

1. How long have you been blogging? – I began in May of 2005. I had just finished graduate school, the baseball season (I was a coach) had ended, and I was in my final days as a high school teacher. In short, I suddenly found myself with way, way more time on my hands than I was accustomed.

I needed something to fill my time. My choices came down to starting a blog or becoming a male model. After the male model thing fell through because I refused to get a haircut (“Would you ask Mozart to get a haircut?,” I argued), I started a blog.

2. What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors? – As mentioned above, boredom (and my refusal to trim “the do”) inspired me to start a blog.

Okay, my love of writing also played a hand in it. I might not yet have a complete grasp of the intrincities of the English language, but I seem to have a knack for storytelling. I love sports, specifically baseball, and lately I have grown to enjoy the topic of personal finance. And my sense of humor, which has been described to me as, “drier than a dry desert,” apparently needed an outlet of some sort.

Blogging allowed me to have a creative outlet for the long-winded stories I like to tell on occasion. And by “on occasion” I mean all the time, 24/7, even when my audience has left the room.

3. Are you trying to make money from your blog, or just doing it for fun? – I enjoy blogging. I would do it for free, and I did it for free for two years. But then the frugal part of my brain spoke up and said, “domain names aren’t free, ya know… we’re losing money here, funny man.”

And so, a few months ago I decided to offset the cost of my domain by putting up a couple of Google Ads and submitting some of my posts to Associated Content.

Are the 43 cents I’ve earned from Google so far worth the blemish on my reputation? You better believe it.

4. Tell me 3 things you LOVE about being online. – By far, I would say the thing I enjoy best about being online is meeting new people. It’s a neat thing being able to sit down and write a silly post about nothing that can be enjoyed by people all over the world. They leave me comments. I visit their sites and leave them comments. Someone sees my comment at one of these other sites, visits my site and leaves me a comment. I visit their site and leave a comment. It’s an endless loop, but the good kind.

Another thing I enjoy about being online is my point of view is able to get “out there.” As you have noticed, I talk about things the media is afraid to talk about. Aliens stealing our socks, for example, is a topic that’s been too hot for anyone else to handle. While the rest of the world was praising Oscar the Cat, I correctly identified him as a serial killer. And if it weren’t for my weekly rants about my affection for coffee, would any of you know coffee even existed?

The third thing I love about being online is the retirement plan.

5. Tell me 3 things you STRUGGLE with online. – I guess the biggest struggle I have with being online is maintaining my low profile. Hypothetically, if I was in the witness protection program, blogging like I do would be a bad idea. I mean, what if, hypothetically, a member of the mob stumbled upon my blog one day? What should I do then? No, seriously. I’m asking, people. What should I do?!?

I guess “spam” would be another thing. I hate all varieties of Spam – be it comments, e-mails or the quasi-meat in a can. Finally, another struggle is blogging has led to insomnia. When you stay up until 3am reading your old blog posts over and over every night (like I do… I’m a big fan) you’re going to suffer from insomnia. There’s just no way around it.

That wasn’t so bad. Thank you, Kathy, for tagging me (and for the great compliment). Be ready, though: the next time I’m tagged for a meme and it’s one you have not previously done, I am going to return the favor. (insert evil laugh here)

Okay, whom to tag? I am going to tag Allison, Erin and Josh for this meme. Josh because he didn’t acknowledge my awesome bluejeans at church yesterday, Erin because she is way overdue for a blog update (and this will give her some handy material), and Allison because she has a blog that dates back to 2004 (thus making it very difficult for someone like me to read it in its entirety).

* I realize “meme” is pronounced like “dream,” but where’s the fun in that?

“I think I can get another six or seven months (use) out of these two (pairs of blue jeans).” – me on 11/11/07

It turns out I was slightly off in my estimation of how long my jeans would last me. And by “slightly” I mean six or seven months.

My “good” pair, the pair with a “slowly growing hole” in the crotch area, had to be put down. When I got home, the hole that was only an inch or so big when I left for work had grown to five inches. Also, it had a new friend. A second hole, two inches wide, had set up residence right beside it.

“At least they found one another,” the hopeless romantic in me thought as I went to look for my stapler. Common sense then knocked on my door and informed me that stapling the holes in my jeans – especially in that area – probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

Also, I couldn’t find my stapler.

Now I had a real dilemma on my hands. It was the middle of the week and I would not be able to go shopping (Lord help me) for new jeans until the weekend. What would I wear to work? My other pair of jeans has an 8-inch tear in the right calf – not exactly acceptable work attire. My good pair of jeans has two holes in the crotch – the only places such attire would be acceptable are places I never, ever want to go.

What was I going to do?

With hesitance, I chose Option C – I would wear my third pair of jeans, the ones hidden in the back of my closet that I never wore. They were in pristine, perfect condition. Why did I never wear them?

My ex, Lauren, despised these jeans. She hated them with a passion. Hated, hated, hated them. Why? Because they were tight in the calf and ankle area. You know how most jeans are loose around the ankles (“boot cut” is the term used ’round these parts)? Well, these weren’t. And just as I dislike people who can’t park, people who wear Bluetooth headsets on their ears in public and Pauly Shore, Lauren disliked tight-around-the-ankle jeans. It was one of her things.

As most of you have (hopefully) surmised, I am a guy. Guys do not care or pay attention to the looseness of their jeans around their ankles. We only notice such things if someone points them out to us. After the hideousness of my jeans was pointed out to me and after several days of noticing that no other guys wore jeans like these, I put them away in my closet.

They have not been worn since.

Until today.

Yes, I am sitting behind my desk at work on my lunch break wearing tight-around-the-ankle jeans. I am a rebel. A rebel in tight jeans.

And I’m loving it.

I am bringing the tight-jeans look back into the mainstream, people.

And since I bought these jeans at the height of my “gym workout warrior” days, they are even tighter than they used to be. And that’s good because “tight” is “in.” Since when? Since I started setting the fashion trends.

Get on board, people. This fashion train is on its way to Awesome City.

Over the weekend, the topic of “Christmas presents” came up in conversation amongst members of my family. Eventually, my sister asked me what I was going to get her this year.

My sister knows that I am frugal and that I put lots of thought into gifts. She also knows that I like to get gifts the person will get lots of use out of and/or will last the person a long, long time. That is why I did not understand her disappointment when I told her the following:

“I’m going to get you a cardboard box.”

(more…)

I have noticed something that highly concerns me. When I was younger, I would play tackle football in my bluejeans. I would climb trees in my bluejeans. I would ride my bike around the neighborhood, occasionally falling down in the process, in my bluejeans. I did all of this, and my bluejeans would rarely – if EVER – get holes in them.

Today, I wear my bluejeans as I drive to work, as I sit at my desk, and as I sit on my couch to watch TV. And somehow, my bluejeans become riddled with holes after only a couple of months.

So why the change?

Am I harder today on my jeans than I was as a kid? Or are jeans today just not made like they used to be?

A cynic would immediately assume it’s the latter: the makers of bluejeans have started cutting corners to reduce their costs and increase profits. I am usually a cynic, but I don’t want to be one any more. I want to be upbeat and positive.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to point all blame at yours truly. I must be doing something wrong.

Maybe I need to ease up a little when I sit down at my desk at work. And when I get up from my desk to go get one of my dozen cups of morning coffee, maybe I should move a tad slower.

When I put my hands in my pockets, I should be careful not to be too forceful. And when I put my bluejeans on in the morning, maybe I should do it one leg at a time just like the expression says I should.

And maybe, just maybe, I should stop doing yoga in my jeans during lunch at work.

I hope these changes work because I am currently down to only two pairs of jeans.

One has a slowly-growing hole approximately twice the size of my thumbnail in the middle of the right-thigh area. It also recently added a 8-inch tear in the right-calf area after getting hooked on a nail.

The other pair, my “good” pair, has a slowly growing hole in the – I guess there’s no other word for it – crotch area.

I think I can get another six or seven months out of these two, but after that I’m afraid that I’ll be forced to go shopping… at the mall.

Lord help me.

1. Writing about Daylight Savings Time…
….. comic gold.

2. Posts involving me hitting on Amish girls who may or may not be married…
….. big crowd pleaser.

3. Anything pertaining to coffee and my obsessing about coffee…
….. lots of blog comments.

4. Writing about baseball and spitting…
….. NO.

A funny blog I like to read recently wrote a post asking why baseball players and coaches are always spitting. It’s a fair question, but a difficult one to answer. It’s like asking why a rugby team stranded in the snowy Andes mountains after a plane crash would resort to cannabolism in order to survive.

It’s something you have to be a part of to totally understand.

For full disclosure, I played baseball from the age of six to my freshman year of college. In my early twenties, I coached baseball for three years. During my time as a player and coach, spitting wasn’t just something I did – it was something I tried to perfect.

Why?

What a bystander or fan doesn’t understand is that spitting and winning go hand in hand. In baseball, you cannot have one without the other. Show me a team with players and coaches who do not spit every five seconds and I will show you a team of losers. If a team wants to win, it has to spit. A lot.

The good players – the really good players – work on their spitting during the off-season. Right beside their home gym and in-door batting cage is a spittoon. With their spittoons, players work on accuracy and distance. Players know that in order to step up their game to the next level, they must be able to accurately spit on clumps of dirt fifteen yards away. If they can’t, they will eventually be replaced by players who can.

Coaches also understand the importance of spitting in baseball. Why else would they be doing it all the time? It doesn’t look attractive. No woman has watched a baseball game, seen someone spitting on high-def television and thought to herself, “I’m going to marry that man.” No, they do it because it’s fundamental to the game. Whenever a coach is fired, teams often cite “we needed to go in another direction” as a primary reason.

In baseball, “we needed to go in another direction” is code for “his spitting just wasn’t up to snuff.”

Because it is so vital to a player’s success, coaches begin teaching the art of spitting to players at a very young age. Go to any Little League game and you will see kids as young as six spitting on the ground. They don’t do it because they like to do it. They do it because it’s one of the three fundamentals of baseball:

• Keep your eye on the ball.
• Always wear a cup.
• Spit all the time.

Oh sure, it can be argued that spitting in baseball can be traced back to the early days of the game when players and coaches all chewed tobacco. Spitting was just something you had to do with chewing tobacco, so people didn’t think anything of it. And so it became a part of the game. Players who didn’t chew tobacco spit because everyone else did it. In time, tobacco was predominantly replaced by something healthier that also required spitting: sunflower seeds. And so the spitting continued. Today, kids spit while playing baseball because they see the players on television do it. The players on television do it because they grew up watching players do it, or because they eat sunflower seeds or chew tobacco. And so on. In short, players and coaches spit because everyone else does it or did it.

Believe that nonsense if you want. The truth is: spitting is paramount to success in baseball. If you want to win, you have to spit. If you don’t want to spit, go have a tea party.

All that said, anyone who spits outside the game of baseball should be tarred and feathered. It’s a disgusting habit.

“Spring forward, fall back.” This little phrase is used as a reminder for when to change our clocks for Daylight Savings. Time is cursed at in the spring (when we lose an hour of sleep) and praised in the fall (when we gain an hour).

This past Saturday was one of those joyous occasions where we were to turn our clocks back and gain an hour of wonderful sleep. Only I didn’t. Because I forgot. Again.

As I pulled into church Sunday morning to a near-empty parking lot, I picked up my cell phone and called my mom.

“Where are you,” I asked.

“What do you mean? It’s only ten o’clock,” she replied.

“You forgot to turn back your clock didn’t you?”

She knows me too well.

Daylight Savings Time is an enigma I have yet to completely solve during my twenty-something years on this planet. And even on the occasions where I do remember to set my clock there is usually a fallout.

I’m reminded of the time in college where my body had not yet adjusted to the time change. It was November, a week after Daylight Savings Time, and I stayed up until well after midnight watching television. I didn’t have classes the next day, a Thursday, so I wasn’t worried about being sleep deprived.

I awoke groggy and looked up at my clock. It was only 4:00 in the morning. No wonder I still felt so tired. I put my head down and went back to sleep. I awoke a few hours later and saw that it was only 9:20 in the morning. I still felt tired and groggy, and since I didn’t have to be anywhere I went back to sleep.

A couple hours later I woke up and saw it was now 11:00. “Time to get out of bed,” I thought to myself.

I went to the restroom, put in my contact lenses, and then went to the kitchen to make my lunch. As I sat down to a bowl of Ramen noodles, I signed into my America Online account to check my e-mail. As I looked down at the bottom corner of my computer screen, I saw that the time said 11:24 pm.

“That can’t be right,” I thought to myself.

Even though it would have been much easier to simply look out my window to see if it was day or night (or even to turn on the television and see if Letterman or Leno were on), I called my mom.

“Hello,” my mom says sounding as if she had just been awakened by a ringing telephone.

“What time is it,” I ask.

“Huh,” my mom replies.

I then explained to my mom the series of events. Groggy as she was, my mom was able to pinpoint precisely what had happened:

I slept the entire Thursday.

Each time I had awakened and looked at my clock, it was not in the morning as I had assumed. It was in the afternoon and evening. The first time I woke up, it was 4:00 pm.

I thanked my mom, said goodbye and let her get back to sleep.

It was now a little after 11:30 at night on Thursday. My Friday morning college class was still 10 hours away. I had a lot of time to eat my Ramen noodles, watch infomercials on television, and think about how Daylight Savings Time had bested me.

“Never again,” I vowed that day. “Never again will I let Daylight Savings Time get the best of me.”

Fast forward to Sunday morning as I sat in my near-empty church parking lot. That is when I made a new vow, a vow to find the ancestors of William Willett (the originator of Daylight Savings Time) and make them pay.

Cower in fear, descendants of William Willett.

It’s payback time.

After finally recuperating from the sugar fest known as Halloween, I have the energy to replay the events from that day in my head. This Halloween was just like any other until I bumped into a young couple wearing Amish costumes. Or at least I thought they were Amish costumes…

“What original costumes,” I thought to myself. The man was wearing dark trousers and suspenders. He was clean shaven, but had long sideburns. The girl was wearing a plain, blue dress with a white apron, black bonnet and white cape.

Now, since I am knowledgeable in all things Amish (i.e. I have seen the movie Witness and the epic music video Amish Paradise by Weird Al Yankovic), I knew right away that they weren’t a married couple.

Assuming their costumes were historically accurate (and if you’re going to dress up like the Amish why wouldn’t you want to be historically accurate), both were single. Single Amish men are clean shaven. Single Amish women wear black bonnets and white capes. Also, they weren’t arguing with each other, which was a dead giveaway.

Could they be dating or “courting”? It’s possible. But if so, the guy needs to stop leaving his girlfriend behind to watch their horse and buggy while he goes inside to use the restroom.

“Hello,” I say.

“That is a great costume.”

A nervous smile greets me. I needed to put her at ease with some of my comedic magic.

“I once thought about becoming Amish, but when I found out they wouldn’t let me bring my Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs I nixed the idea.”

Her nervous smile was replaced by a look of nervous confusion. She must not be a fan. Or maybe she had never heard of the show before? No, that couldn’t be it.

“So what kind of gas mileage does this thing get?,” I ask.

The nervous smile returned, but she didn’t say anything. Boy, this girl is pretty shy.

Knowing her brother/male friend/boyfriend was due to return any moment, I ask for her phone number.

“We do not use phones,” she quietly responds.

“Right, of course you don’t,” I say, thinking I’m playing along.

“How about your e-mail address?”

The look of nervous confusion returned. Oh dear. She really is Amish.

I then made a graceful exit. And by “graceful exit” I mean I pointed into the distance and asked, “is that Jacob Amman?” as I ran away.

That’s right. I just added Jacob Amman to my list of diversionary tactics. Of course, this one only works on the Amish. I need to remember that…

Testing