Two kid ninjas in the office

TM: one time i fed my dog doritos in milk
she puked
and i had to clean it up

me: HAHAHAHAHAAHA

TM: yeah
that was a brilliant idea
stupid 6 year-old brains

me: no kidding.
drawing on walls.

TM: yeah

me: one time I gave my carpet a haircut.
wtf...
I honestly thought it was a good idea.

TM: obviously
or else you wouldn't have done it

me: when you get in trouble for stuff like that, you're so confused.
you're like "no, just hear me out...the carpet—it’s fluffy like hair…"

TM: i made myself some numbchucks

me: ME TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TM: NO WAY!?!!??!
how did you do it?

me: my mom had really hard cardboard tubes for fax paper, or something like that.
so I took a small chain, took a screw and put it through to tube to secure the chain, and ta da - nunchucks.

TM: i climbed a tree with some hedge clippers and cut some branches for the numbchucks

me: you're going all natural

TM: and then took a nail and nailed a hole through each
and then threaded it with twine
it was pretty badass

me: that's awesome.

TM: b/c those things could actually hurt someone i got in trouble

me: I kept mine secret in the toy room.

TM: i tried
but i took them everywhere
so they eventually found out

TM: i never would have thought in a million years that someone else made numbchucks

me: Well, I haircut a carpet and you fed a dog Doritos in milk. We were bound to match up on something. Thank god it was something as awesome as nunchucks.

Coke noses and pop can gestation

In our office kitchen there just appeared a bountiful stash of Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite. It's a soda drinker's paradise. I imagine coworkers sitting at their desks with a piles of full and empty cans, product dripping from their noses and mouths, a la Pacino in Scarface.

Well Tony Montana, say hello to my little friends. They're free, unlike your product--all 90-some of them bound together with bird-killing plastic can six-pack thingies on cardboard half box palates like those things at Sam's Club. (Hmmm, that soliloquy really lost steam at the end.)

I know there's no health vaule in this stuff. It's a can of soda water, chemicals, and citric acid, among other undesirables. But reason has no influence on this instinct. If you think I can pass on free pop, you are wrong. I've been conditioned to desperately desire this crap (damn "My Coke Rewards"), so naturally I thought this was a late Christmas bonus, a special gift from someone who cares, or just a damn lucky. I wanted to know who to thank, which hands to shake, who to send a well-crafted thank you card. It's not often I get my afternoon caffeine fix without dropping $1.50. (Speaking of which, here's a tip: the 20-oz bottles cost $1.50. Two 12-oz cans cost the same. 4 free ounces. Ya gotta do the math!)

So I grab a can off the stack of goodness. "Gotta grab one of these," I say under my breath, directed half at the wall, half at the other guy in the kitchen, like we do in the office.

"Yeah, take as many as you want," he says. "They're all expired!"

You gotta be kidding me. He's messing with me. Bottom of the can? "MAR0209CBP." I'm no expiration date writer, but that looks like we're more than ten months past the expiration date. Ten months! 83.3% of a year! That's longer than it takes a human baby to gestate. You could have opened one of these cans on its last day of....non expiredness, drank it, assembled a test tube baby in the can, and had a one-month-old live human by now.

I crack it open and take a whiff. You think 10 months are going to stop me? Wrong again.

Follow me at Twitter here.

New Years Devolutions

Seeing that most New Years resolutions are abandoned quite quickly, I find it appropriate to include "buy a bunch of things I want" in mine.

So here's what I'm salivating over.

A new camera. I have ideas at the bursting point for which I need a decent camera. I bought a point and shoot about two or three years ago for $300. In the eighties, wouldn't that get you something that would last? This thing sucks now. Sometimes you just want a photo to remember things. Artistic superiority would be nice, but recolection is the minimum requirement. I either have early onset alzheimers, or my camera sucks. I'm going with the later.

Canon Digital Rebel xTi: ~$700 or something like that.

Guitar Pedals. More, bigger, better and weirder than I already own. My effects pedal hunger is an unsatiable one. It would be great if I could break this one, but I promise you I will not. I got an early start and ordered the EHX Cathedral pedal for 20% off or something the day after Christmas. How can you not agree to that deal? I kick myself for not also ordering the EHX Memory Man with Hazarai. But wait, that money could go to a new camera.

EHX Cathedral reverb: ~$190 (with discount)
EHX Memory Man w/Hazarai: $214
Countless other blow-your-mind effects: $lots

New hand soap for the bathroom. I'm running out of my Method minty foam soap. That one smells like the time I moved to Atlanta. Because that's when I bought it. 2010 calls for a new scent. Let's get creative.

New hand soap: $7?

Sticky pans. Nonstick pans are bad for deglazing. They don't make any glaze with which to deglaze. Major cooking fail.

Calphalon 8-piece cooking set: $399

Albert's BBQ sliders. These things are delicious. And on one night a week, they are cheap. Can't remember what night. So here's the first prerequisite resolution of the year: figure that out.

BBQ sliders at The Albert: $1 a piece

I should put "do more exercise" on this list, but I don't want to abandon that one.

Unmanned. Unnamed. Coincidence?

This could just be the conspiracy theorist in me (inspired by The Mind's new show on TruTV--seriously, it's about conspiracy theories. And it's called Conspiracy Theory. Clever.), but a December Newsweek article about unmanned drones in Afghanistan ignited my critical thinking skills. And conjured images of Valerie Plame and Karl Rove (well, the name of Valerie Plame--a quick mental search brought 0 results for images).

The article probed the dilemma of a super top-secret "clandestine CIA search-and-destroy program" which shoots missiles from unmanned drones in the sky. The dilemma: shoot bad guys, and probably also some good guys. Important debate, but here's my problem: Since we're reading about it, IT'S NOT A FLIPPIN SECRET!!!

In Newsweek, reporter Mark Hosenball writes government officials won't confirm the program exists--at least not officially. He then cites a "U.S. national-security official--who...declined to be named..." and another who speaks on anonymity, and so on and so on. And the faceless voices tell one story: the success of the secret operations.

So you can see beginnings of my conspiracy theory start to take shape, right?

Hell, if I told you I wouldn't reveal what I ate for breakfast and then Tom in Accounting told you he knew what it was, you'd get curious, wouldn't you?

And on top of that, doesn't it seem convenient that there are these mysterious deep throats running amok and leaking all these positive stories about this controversial operation? There aren't any rogue advisors leaking the story of dead civilians all over the place.

Recipe for success
1) Make (name of clandestine death program here) secret.
2) Leak only the details you want to be known. (The best part is, they don't even have to be true! You're an unnamed source!)
3) Watch the media write up stories you want published

Conspiracy or not, leave Tom in Accounting alone. I dropped my fried egg sandwiches on the garage floor.

La Basurera

This post was written during a mission trip to Coban, Guatemala. It was composed as an entry on www.mattblumphotography.com, but has not been posted yet.

---

The other day, we stood on broken glass and crushed candy boxes, our eyes squinting through sunglasses from the bright sunlight. Our feet were of course protected by our tennis shoes, probably not our best, because of course we didn’t want to soil our nicer footwear. Some of the people who live there at Coban’s garbage dump weren’t so lucky to have anything to protect their feet. One little toddler boy wasn’t wearing pants.

There are several Guatemalans living there in shacks and they pick through mounds of trash that seem to stretch for miles (or weeks of searching) among mangy dogs and a sea of vultures fighting over pieces of raw meat.

We all were unsettled, if not haunted by our own selfish feelings; we worried about our belongings in the car, we applied our sunscreen and drank bottled water. Those who live here have to wait for weeks to have potable water delivered through a happenstance connection between a local priest and some firemen.

We talked to a government employee asking many questions about the dump and the inhabitants here. Matt Blum translated for the other nine of us, as has become his unofficial job on this trip. The employee in the official blue cap answered many of our questions. Earlier, Blum told us the dump has improved very much since the group from St. Pats visited last year, and the employee’s answers explained these improvements. The mayor of Coban has offered free school to the kids living in the dump given that they are not permitted to search through garbage. The government has also provided land for the people to live on and room to sort recycling to sell--all small but meaningful steps to improve a desperate lifestyle. Most adults living at the dump only speak the Mayan dialect of Q’ecqhi’, making it difficult to find any other job. But now their children will speak Spanish, hopefully improving their chance in the future to gain employment away from this place.

After handing out bread, juice and candy to the children, we jumped back into the back of a pickup truck to make our way back to the monastery. A day later, I continue to be haunted by those images and thoughts, hoping for a brighter tomorrow for those children.

Every night on this trip we have sang several songs, one of which is Open the Eyes of my Heart. Certainly that visit opened our eyes. At the dump, we assisted those children and some of the adults by providing some small sustenance. But I think as we stood there in our clean clothes and sunglassed faces juxtaposed against a landfill and a desperate group of people, the real benefit that came from today was our eyes have opened at least a tiny bit more.

Dream hurl

Dave Matthews Band recently posted a video of some DMB fans getting the ultimate 2 a.m. studio tour in Louisianna. They were invited in to listen to one of the new tracks from their upcoming studio album while Dave and Carter Beuford hung out with them. They listened politely, bobbing their heads, but when the groove kicked in they started hollering and dancing like face-mauling chimpanzees. Go figure. I think they were drunk Canadians. But whatevs. They're standing there with Dave. Who knows what you'd do? I'd probably throw up and then start stealing things. Later that month in jail I would come to with no memory of ever meeting Dave. However, I would have been sober the whole time. But that will never happen. Oh well, we can dream, right?

Stay away from any girl that is currently occupied, including your best friend's

Generally speaking, according to most man laws, bro codes, and all other pacts of manship, your friends' exes are off limits. Obviously from time to time there are exceptions, but this it's even more important to lay off if they are only sorta broken up or just broke up. Treat just-released-on-DVD My Best Friend's Girl like it is your best friends girl--off limits. The story is mediocre, the acting is what you'd expect, and the ending is outrageously unbelievable. Dane Cook's character is hired by his best friend (Jason Biggs's character)(they call themselves cousins--oh cute) to date his recent ex (already forgot who played this part - oh, Kate Hudson) and be a top-notch dick rag to her. He does a good job, turning on obscene music and bringing her to a strip club--ultimate dick rag moves for a first date. But Kate Hudson's character is cool with raunch and apparently loves boobs flying in her face. At the end of the date, she's looking for adventure after recently breaking up with the all-too-nice Jason Bigg's character. She invites Dane Cook up for a little first date sex. Although he refuses this time, they break all bro codes, man laws and other general niceties of friendship, as Jason Biggs continues to lament over losing Hudson. In the end, he forgives Dane Cook and Kate Hudson and Dane Cook live happily ever after. It's one of those movies that leave you thinking what the f*ck just happened? My Best Friend's Girl should be off limits.