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Four Tips On Picking Up Somebody Else’s Baby Daddy

It’s not that I really mind getting hit on by women when I take Chick Pea out by myself. I mean, it’s flattering and all, and I don’t want to discourage it. But please, all you baby’s mamas and disaffected housewives, you need to bring your A-game. I’ve seen way too many mistakes lately. Here are a few things you may want to keep in mind the next time you’re scoping out the father of someone else’s child in the park, mall, or payday advance center:

Don’t have your mom (the granny) do your dirty work.

The Ultimate Bait
The Ultimate Bait

Remember when your friend did this for you in that bar 18 months ago? That may have been a factor that contributed to your current situation. It says desperate and weak if you need your mom to come up and talk to me first, then introduce me to you. The best you can hope for out of this situation is that we’ll have one play date, you’ll supply the juice and crackers, and I’ll never call you again.

Don’t strategically place your child near mine to get your foot in the door.
I know you’re thinking that they’ll become instant playground friends. In your head they’ll be giving each other toddler hugs and kisses within a few minutes and I’ll sit down beside you on the bench and ask all about your little darling, and eventually you. Sorry, but it probably won’t go down like that. More than likely that encounter is going to end in your kid crying and possibly bleeding. Don’t blame me. I didn’t teach her to behave this way–it’s genetic.

Some married guys may be a little resistant to your advances
Let me clarify here. It’s a fantasy of most guys to meet a single mom who’s depending on her parents to support her and her kids(s) and may or may not have been to rehab a couple of times. Bonus if you yell at your kids over every little thing they do and fill the toddler’s sippy cup with soft drinks. Unfortunately for you, after they’ve made a commitment to someone else, some guys have a problem giving in to this fantasy. So if your target is a married guy, it would help for you to be really hot. Did I say hot? I meant really rich. Oh yeah, and it wouldn’t hurt if you’re really hot.

Bring better snacks than The Missus packed for us
If you need help reading between the lines, that means B-E-E-R. I’m spelling it out because mine repeats everything now, and I don’t want her talking to her mom about me drinking the beer you brought to the park. I mean, everything she says sounds like “Padasht”, but it will be pretty obvious she’s talking about my drinking when she starts stumbling around and falls on her ass, then just laughs about it. Mom will know something is up because she never packs beer for us when we go out. If you don’t have beer, I could possibly be lured into striking distance with a Fudge Round or a bag of Tom’s salt and vinegar potato chips.

These aren’t hard and fast rules, just general guidelines. For instance, some dads may prefer hard liquor to beer, and others may actually be happy to talk to your mom, what with the Cougar Craze sweeping the nation right now. As is the case any time you are on the prowl for someone to play dad to your kids temporarily, you’ll have to feel each situation out and adjust your strategy.

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Email, Blogging, and Twitter Explained

SVD is documenting his forays into these mediums (where else) on his blog. All of these things mean so many different things to different people. Here’s how I like to describe them…

When I send you an email, it’s the equivalent of me inviting you over to the house for a cup of coffee. We’re sitting at the kitchen table having a conversation. This has a few implications. For instance, “thanks” is not acceptable for an email in its entirety. I wouldn’t invite you over to my house to say “Thanks” and then slam the door in your face would I? Don’t be surprised, however, if I come banging on your door to borrow an egg or some milk though. These are the emails where I ask stupid questions.

When I write something on my blog and people comment, it’s the equivalent of me standing out in my yard and talking to whatever neighbors happen to drop by to talk. I’m lazy, so I’m probably sitting in a chair instead of standing, but you get the idea. Anyone is free to drop by and discuss, even if they don’t live in my ‘hood. This has implications too. For instance, driving by and yelling “F You!” or walking up and trying to sell me Viagra means you’re going to be ignored. Also, my “yard” isn’t as nice or visited by as many passers by as some. See, my yard isn’t near an interstate–it’s more like a gravel road–so there usually aren’t as many people stopping by. On some days, I just sit out there whittling and taking naps all by myself. Other days I just stay inside and nap.  If you stop by, it helps to bring beer.

And Twitter? Twitter is like all of us are piled into a bunch of eighteen wheelers and talking on CBs with antennas so big that the whole world can tune in. Anytime something important happens, it will hit Twitter as fast as news of a Smoky seen setting up a speed trap. Anyone with their ears on will definitely know about it.

Wait, I have a better description for Twitter…

Twitter is like ham radio for people who can get a date.

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Community Standards

First of all, a few housekeeping items…

Thanks to all of the new readers I’ve picked up in the past couple of days for subscribing. Nothing like a naked chick in a public park to boost readership, huh? And thanks to all of my readers who were with me long before this latest bit of urgent news hit Tennessee. Sorry if you guys were locked out yesterday–we had a little bandwidth issue while people were flooding the gate.

Something that came up in the discussion about the naked woman on the playground in Barlett was whether or not this woman had actually done anything wrong. Lots of folks were throwing up the fact that there are nude beaches in city A or this had been challenged in city B and that the Baptist minister should get a life. Others were saying that she’s unequivocally wrong and damn her to hell. So who’s right? I think it really comes down to community standards.

Yeah, this is the United States where we take everything to the Supreme Court that may involve free speech, but let’s just step back for a minute and look at this calmly. What’s wrong with a community setting its own standards of decency, and what’s wrong with respecting that standard? It’s not as if the fine folks in Bartlett want to outlaw bumper stickers or women showing their wrists. They just don’t want hot naked chicks playing in their parks.

I know you may be thinking, “why would you want to limit the presence of hot naked chicks anywhere?” Well, if you’ve ever been to a topless beach, you are well aware that for every hot topless French chick there are about 15 disgusting old German women who are topless as well. All of your hopes and dreams about a topless beach are quickly vanquished. All of a sudden, you are perfectly ok with everyone just putting their top back on. That becomes the standard you wish that community would set. But you don’t get to change the standard. You just have to stare directly at the sun until you have not only burned your eyeballs out, but hopefully the image of that herd of beasts you just saw thundering down the beach collecting shells as well.

Here’s another example–If you’re like me, there are certain words that you use around your friends that you don’t use around your parents. Actually, if you’re like me, there are lots of these words. I call it “parent vocabulary”. You may have a “kids are around” vocabulary that is similar. Do I think it’s a little silly that these words offend them? Sure. But it’s not big deal for me to refrain from using those words around them, even when we are on my turf…nothing lost.

In fact, that’s why I rarely curse when writing on this site. It’s not because cursing offends me at all. It’s because I’d rather set a standard here of saying what you want to say without cursing. There are times when that’s really the only way to get your point across, and in these times the use of naughty words makes the post more effective, at least in my opinion. I don’t have to explicitly state that–it’s implied, and most people with half a brain pick up on it.

And by the way, I really appreciate the fact that most of the people who comment here are respectful of that standard, even if the standards on their own sites are different.

I’m not personally offended by, well, anything. However, there was some stuff posted yesterday that I had to chop out of the comments. For my community standards, language isn’t the ultimate determining factor, it’s whether or not anything is being added to to the discussion. So yesterday I ended up deleting comments that were nothing more than links to the girl’s site and a couple that were just curse word laden without saying anything. Those would probably have been deleted even without the cursing. No one will miss them anyway.

But I’m perfectly ok letting a comment like, “all these prudes wouldn’t be here with out perverted thought from their horny dads muttered to their whore moms” from a commenter named “dickinyourdaughterdown” stand. Why? Because it is funny. My community standard (at least for that post) is that if I was amused, it’s a good comment. In this case, the post wouldn’t have been nearly as good if he hadn’t used the phrases “horny dads” and “whore moms”.

So summing all this up (I’m sure you couldn’t wait for that), I’d bet most people in sleepy ol’ Bartlett probably wouldn’t have cared if she’d shot this video in her house, or her backyard, or behind a WalMart at 3:30 am. Their problem with it was the fact that it was on a kids’ playground in broad daylight. A little prudish? Maybe by your standards, but you aren’t being loaded onto a truck and forced to live there either.

What would I think if this happened in the park where we take our kid? I doubt I’d think much of it if my kid wasn’t there to see it–no harm, no foul. And if we were there? I’ll give these folks the benefit of the doubt and say that they probably wouldn’t have shot the video in that situation anyway. Besides, I have enough to keep me occupied to bother getting upset over something that hasn’t even happened.

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Straight Outta Knoxville

Thanks to the guys at Knoxify and Rootclip, I’m wearing a shirt today…my new Rootclip T-shirt that I won via Knoxify’s giveaway.

Eastcoast? Westcoast? Nope. This is all about Ebenezer and Westland–aka The Westland Ghetto. Entry to Knoxify’s contest was open to anyone discussing their ‘hood in the comments, so I figured I’d represent my block here.

And here’s a better look at the high quality T-shirt. Thanks again for helping save on my clothing budget, and check out Knoxify and Rootclip if you get a chance…both are examples of high quality interneting.

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I’m a Big Winner

Just wanted to say thanks to the guys over at Knoxify for rigging their random number generator so that I could win their contest.  Look for me around town wearing a shiny new RootClip t-shirt.  Hopefully by the end of the summer it won’t look like it’s two sizes too small.

I’ll be repesentin’ the Westland Ghetto in style.

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Thinking Games Useful For Corporations

Most video games hold my attention for about 3 hours. That’s not 3 hours at a time, that’s 3 hours total. The one exception is strategy games, which I can play into the wee hours of the night. Civilization is my all-time favorite, mostly because it absolutely destroys me, but there are several other “thinking” games out there, and now they are being used to do good instead of evil–unless of course you find corporations evil, in which case they continue to do evil.  Then again, that probably makes you a communist, so evil in your eyes is probably good in mine.

Now video games are making their way into corporations. These “serious games”—the term that’s been kicking around the last few years to describe games that are learning tools—use the same technology as the latest PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 titles, but they’re not targeted at Doritos-munching 14-year-olds

The Rise of Corporate Games.

Oh yeah…Rock Band 2 Comes out in September.

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I Once Got Busy In A Burger King Bathroom

If these cost more than the girl, you should pass.
I always thought general idea was to take the condoms you bought in the gas station bathroom out of the bathroom before using them.  Apparently not so for a lot of people.  Ick.

But here’s this question.  Why do people have sex in public places?

Logistics can certainly play a part in the public-sex equation. But having sex in a car or on the slide at the local playground is a lot different from having sex in the women’s bathroom at Qwest Field during a Seahawks game, something a Thurston County deputy prosecutor was alleged to have done in 2006.

This article claims that the main reason is to stick it to the man (no pun intended), but I think people do it for reasons that don’t have anything to do with that at all.  For instance, I have a friend, let’s call him “Mike”, who had to have sex in a restroom at a bar.  He didn’t have any other choice.  If he’d tried to take the girl some place private his girlfriend would have definitely seen them leave together and caused a big scene.   Then there’s the case of another friend, let’s call him “Eric”,  who had to do it in the bathroom in the Atlanta airport.

“Had to” you ask?  Well, duh, yeah.  They met on the plane, and both had layovers in Atlanta en route to their separate destinations.  If you’ve checked in for a flight in Atlanta post-9/11 you know that security is a nightmare, so leaving the terminal just wasn’t an option.  And what about the people at my former job who would hook up in the broom closet or outside by the dumpster?  Do you really expect them to go anywhere else when they’re only given 30 minutes for lunch?  It just doesn’t make sense.

So I would contend that public sex happens out of necessity more often than not.  Life just moves too fast, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to line up schedules, much less make reservations at an hourly hotel.  Feel free to leave your own public sex experiences in the comments, just please don’t leave your real name if I know you.  Chances are it’s not an image I want stuck in my head.

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One of the Coolest Things I’ve Seen

Not bragging (well maybe a little bit) but I’ve been very lucky to get to do a lot of really cool stuff in my time.  One of the coolest was a couple of years ago when I got to go to a shuttle launch.  That alone would be pretty cool, but my sister-in-law happens to be an engineer at NASA (yeah, I know, right?), so we got to go to the launch as her guest.

NASA employees and contractors enter a lottery of sorts for each launch, and the winners get to take a single carload of people into a viewing area that is really close to the launch pad. “Close” here means a couple of miles, but to give you an idea, the media was positioned directly behind us. If you’re familiar with Cape Canaveral, we were in an area roped off right next to the Vehicle Assembly Building. As you can see from this video, there are no people in front of the area where we were seated. This is as close as any civilian can get, and the non-civilians who can get closer can’t get much closer.

Although this was shot with a simple hand held video camera, I think it at least captures how loud the space shuttle is, and as you can see by the vertical line that is basically burned into the frame, it is insanely bright, even on a sunny Florida day.

The first day we went to see the launch it was scrapped about 20 minutes before liftoff, but we came back a few days later to get the best fireworks show in the country on July 4, 2006. So there you go…beat that for cool things!

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Baseball in 2008–meh

I never thought there would come a time when I would care this little about baseball.  The All-Star game is tonight, and I don’t think it’s possible for me to care any less.  Baseball really has no soul left for the most part.  There are a couple of exceptions–a few weeks ago I was in Chicago for Friday’s game between the Cubs and the White Sox.  Cubs tickets are always a hot item, but tickets to this game were going for more than $250.  I had a chance to go, but the price wasn’t worth it, and I opted to go play poker instead.

I did take the train up to Wrigleyville for pregame festivities, and it was so fun being in a city where so many people care so much about baseball.  These were real baseball fans, and the trip up (we took the red line from Sox-35th to Addison) was really fun, just because of the fans and the trash talking.  In contrast, I was in Atlanta for three days before I went to Chi-town, and nobody…NOBODY cares about the Braves.

Apathy–that’s pretty much how I feel about baseball in general.  I just heard that Barry Bonds is irritated that no team wants him, even though he’s willing to play for the league minimum.  While I really don’t care at all, that at least gives me a little joy.  It’s not that I care so much about his juicing, I just don’t like the guy in general, mostly because of his inability to throw out Lonnie Smith–the only man who’s “ass to rest-of-body” ratio is greater than mine–in the 1991 NLCS, costing the Pirates the pennant.

You’ll recall that the Braves went on to perform the first of their many choke jobs that year in the World Series.

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On Hearing Loss

I just read Newscoma’s post about her strep throat related hearing loss.  Hers is temporary, but it’s still weird.  I lost my hearing temporarily once.  She can describe what the experience is like better than I can, but my story is still worth telling.

It’s odd not being able to hear. The telephone is impossible. The television is muffled and I’m probably freaking out the neighbors. My nieces, bless their hearts, sound like chipmunks who have had a couple of Harvey Wallbangers.

My temporary partial hearing loss happened about 10 years ago.  I let it go for a while, but after a couple of weeks I started getting a little worried.  It was occuring in both ears, but one was much worse than the other.  I finally went to see the doctor physicians assistant (I’ve never met my doctor), and she checked my ears and decided it was probably due to the wax buildup–nothing a good cleansing with the big super soaker Dr’s tool couldn’t fix.  Unfortunately, not much came out with the cleansing, and my hearing wasn’t any better.  She looked in my ear again and saw that the blockage was still there, so she grabbed a tool with a little hook on the end and started digging around in there.

rugby mud“OH MY GOD!!!!”

That was the first thing I’d heard clearly in a couple of weeks.  I couldn’t believe the size of the rock that was stuck to the end of the hook tool when she showed it to me.  I instantly realized what had happened.  A month or two before I’d played a rugby match in a downpour on a field of mud.  I’d given myself a good scrubbing the next day some time after the match and made sure to get inside my ears.  That with the occasional q-tip being shoved in there had packed the mud and blocked my ear canal.

The weird thing about not having your full hearing for a while and getting it back instantly is that all of the ambient noises your brain usually blocks out all of a sudden sound really loud.  It’s kind of tough to separate what you want to hear from all of the other noises going on around you.  Driving was dangerous for a couple of days.