Taking Off

Tomorrow morning I hop on a plane for San Jose, where I’ll meet up with my super-mega-bff-to-the-max, Sunshine. After a little lounging, we’re hopping in the car and heading out on the road. We’re trekking off to the Pacific Northwest, and a little inland, for a few reasons. One, because it’s going to be fucking awesome. And two, because after we do some exploring in those few territories I’ll have driven through each of the forty eight continental United States of America.

I’ve left the country fewer than five times.

When I started having the means to move myself around I made a conscious decision; I decided that I would not travel in another country until I’d fully explored my own. People have so many pre-conceived notions about America. There is much to be pre-conceived about, to be sure.

There is also so much to see, experience. Europeans do not have a monopoly on culture, they don’t even have seniority. You can learn more about what it means to be a human being by sitting down in a luncheonette in a small town in Alabama than you can studying a winery in the south of France.

And the beauty.

I’ve seen some amazing things in these United States. A sunset across the desert mesas. Dew as thick as syrup collecting on Kudzu. Fields of corn so vast you forget that you’re supposed be bored by that type of thing. There is no other word for the Rockies other than majestic, Francis Scott Key got that one right.

I’m perplexed by people who travel for proclaimed reasons of seeking new and diverse things when there is so much here to see. There is wealth beyond your wildest dreams bordered by unimaginable poverty. There are cultures both new and old, those that have survived the test of time and those that have been created by our bored teenagers.

After this summer, I’ll have driven through and spent time in each state though I am sure I have not even begun to scratch the surface of what this country has to offer. In the future I’m planning on heading beyond our borders for more road trips… I have a tentative plan for Central America next summer.

Perhaps the things I’ve seen, the people I’ve met and the lessons I’ve learned will help me appreciate the rest of the world more. I can only hope, because I wasted a lot of money on gas.

O.F.F. Part 5

No post tonight. Misty May and Kerri Walsh are playing in a gold medal match in their white bikinis and it’s raining.

I have no blood in my finger tips, I had to type this with my nose.

O.F.F. Part 4

Finally got to catch a little table tennis on UHD last night. Fuck sprinting. You want speed? Watch two grown men play a child’s game at the Olympic level.

*ping*

*pong*

*ping*

*pong*

*ping*

*pong*

PONG!

It’s a sport so awesome the world’s first video game was made about it. If they’d figured out how to license John Madden’s voice back then he’d have been all over it, explaining how the guy who gets the pixelated cube past the pixelated rectangle more than the other guy will generally be the guy who wins, like Brett Favre.

I LOVE table tennis. It is the only event where I feel any sort of connection. I see running, swimming, volleyball, whatever and I’m here sitting on my couch, smoking and drinking a beer. I can’t do any of those things while smoking and drinking a beer. But table tennis? I can’t play table tennis unless I’m smoking and drinking a beer.

While we’re on the topic, how is table tennis an Olympic sport and foosball isn’t? What the shit? If you’re going to include one frat house basement sport, you’ve gotta have em all. Quarters, too.

PS: Whoever came up with that whole “soundtrack of the Olympics” bullshit needs to get poked in the eye with a dick. Sheryl Crow? Taylor Swift? That’s about as inspiring as a cold sore on your blind date.

Baby Birthday Bingo Blanket Bonanza

I was upstate this past weekend for a few reasons. Among them being the celebration of the birthday of this little girl:

My niece, Elizabeth. Look at that face! She turned one year old amid a frenzy of pink tablecloths, Hello Kitty everything and deviled eggs. She even let her battered and hungover uncle hold her and bounce her on his hip without grimacing once at the rancid odor of wedding reception booze seeping out of his pores.

I’m not really a baby birthday proponent. I’ll go to the first birthday, sure. Congratulations, you got the kid to year one, awesome, we are all thrilled.  But two, three or four? Forget it. That’s when you start having people with other kids come over. No need for creepy childless people hanging around when you can almost guarantee that the kid will have no memory of them being there. What, are you going to quiz them ten years later on who gave them the best gift? Who played the best round of pin the tail on the donkey? Who sat around looking bored until they deemed it socially acceptable to flee out the door to the nearest bar?

Give me a call when your kid turns 21, I’m way better at corrupting newly minted adults than I am at sitting through an afternoon of reaffirming your belief that your kid is the most special snowflake ever to fall out of the blizzard of your wife’s vagina.

Except my little Weezy up there, she’s definitely a special snowflake. Look at those cheeks! LOOK AT THEM.

You’re not allowed to pinch them, though. I have no idea what other sites you’ve been to before coming here.

O.F.F. Part 3

Someone I know sent me this link:

http://www.someecards.com/usercards/createcards

If you’ve never been to someecards.com, pull your head out of your ass and click on the link. It’s amazingly irreverent and can often be the tool that you need to say the things you’re afraid to say to someone you’re afraid to say them to. Like, “I want to stick my hee haw in your ping pong.”

As I am currently stricken with a severe case of Olympic Fucking Fever and have consigned myself to two weeks of couch rest and plenty of Gatorade, I figured I’d make some special cards in the spirit of both the Olympics and someecards.com.

Go ahead and make your own!

Olympic Fucking FEVER, Part 2

Teeny tiny girls’ gymnasties tonight. The epic battle that rages in male pants around the world is legendary. Is it okay to find these girls sexually attractive? How do you draw the line? What happens when you blur that line for the girls over 18 and then get smacked in the face with the Chinese pre-adolescent squad? Do uncross your legs, completely turned off? If not, I suggest making a bee line to a Dateline house and tell Chris Hansen exactly what you’re doing there.

There’s only one other group of women who wear that much glitter and that’s strippers. Just sayin’.

Phelps and crew just broke a world record by five seconds. Somewhere Mike Spitz is trimming his stache in preparation for obscurity. Jesus that’s got to suck, to realize you’re about to be the guy that was the best before the new guy who is now the best. Not to mention that without any world records, you’re kind of just no one. So if you’re reading, Spitz, sorry, bro.

Also, aren’t records being broken every year in swimming? Really, it’s almost like a mini-Moore’s law, where every ten years or so a Michael Phelps type swimmer comes along and makes a quantum frog leap through the pond, smashing world records.

In the 1908 Olympics, the winner swam the 100 Meter Freestyle about twenty seconds slower than they are today. How much faster can these guys go? If there’s another two Spitz/Phelps freaks come along in the next 100 years, will they just start teleporting from one end of the pool to the other while waving their arms around?

Olympic Fucking FEVER

I got it bad, dude.

I’m stuck to my couch like a week old sex stain watching the men’s team gymnastics final. Back flips, twists, a billion things I could not care less about for 99.9% of my life dominates my entire brain from the moment I wake up. Two Americans stuck their landings and I squealed like I’d been stuck, ifyaknowwhatimean.

I check up on how Michael Phelps is feeling, his emotional disposition has somehow become important to me.

I’ve actually spanked it to Kerri Walsh, I’m not ashamed to say it.

Gold Medals are sexy, baby. Very sexy.

Dorkus Maximus

A friend of mine posted this on a mutual messageboard a couple days ago under the title: How Dave and I Came to Be.

Wish I could say it’s entirely inaccurate, I was a huge D&D dork when I was a kid. Not that that’s particularly surprising, given my penchant for building scale models of fantasy battles out of candy.

I still don’t know who made this diagram, but shit do I want to shake his hand.

Yes I’m sure it was a guy.

It’s been so long since I’ve talked about it with anyone who’s unfamiliar with the game… when I was young it was something my brother, myself and some friends had a forbidden love with. We hid the books, character sheets and dice from schoolmates because it was considered such an uncool taboo. We stashed them while at home under our mattresses, because my mother, who was at the time going through a severe case of the religion, thought they were evil or something.

First of all, neither of those make sense. If you’ve never played the game I’ll describe it in a series of Tao-like fragments. D&D is whatever you want it to be. The only rules of D&D is that you can make whatever rules you want. You are yourself and someone else.

Not to make it sound mystical or anything, but those are the essential truths I took away from growing up, “on the dice” as I came to call it. The sky’s the limit. Be whatever you want. Your only boundaries are your own imagination.  It was the gaming equivalent of a big blank sheet of paper and a box of two hundred and fifty five crayons.

How is it either uncool or evil to flex the most important muscle you’ll ever have?

Since I’ve grown up, I’ve become brazen about my once hidden fascination. When I’m bored I’ll return to the world’s we created and let my mind wander on the backs of mythical creatures, sword in hand. What I’d once kept locked up like a little Anne Frank of embarrassment I now kick around like a badge of past geekdom.

But I still don’t mention it on first dates. I doubt any lady would be interested in the workings of the Deck of Many Things, or 2d10 rolls on the treasure table in the back of Dungeon Master’s Guide. Nor would I want to, the indoctrination of secrecy holds a little too strong perhaps.

Or maybe there needs to be another box on that diagram, a little dotted line from around the entire thing that leads to a big green rectangle entitled, “reconciliation of the equal importance of all things, imaginary and real.”

Which would then lead straight to that big red circle of girls.

And When I Woke Up My Pillow Had Footprints On It

My legs are crazy sore. Calf cramps, quad cramps, you name it, I got it. I have the leg equivalent of menstrual cramps right now. But I didn’t do anything this weekend except drink enough to poison the water supply of a small country. Barbecue, housewarming, night out, bachelor party.

Jeezus I may be hungover till Thursday.

So I’m wondering if there’s any relation between my leg soreness and the drinking. It would make sense right?

It’s either that or I was sleep jogging again.

Boobs

They’ve been on my mind all week. Big ones, too.

Maybe it’s something about the weather and readily available cleavage all about, but damnit if I’m not completely mammary crazy.

Sweater puppies. What a great term. Cuddly little floppy eared sweater puppies.

Big ole titties like Keeley’s right there.

That’s really all I wanted to say today.

Boobs.