July 14 is "Cannibal Cow Day!"

Are you:

-Hungry?
-Desperate for attention?
-Utterly lacking in dignity or self-respect?
-Willing to do humiliate yourself for a handful of fast food?
-In possession of a full-body cow suit?

If you answered "yes" to the above questions, you're in luck! Because the Chick Fil-A fast food restaurant chain has come up with the most brilliant promotion known to man. Observe the ad below:Wait, wait--I know what you're thinking. It sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? When you hear of something so wonderful, so unusual, and totally free, it's only natural to be suspicious. And yet! I assure you I did not Photoshop this ad or alter it in any way--it really is a true and valid promotion. Yes! You can schlep your retarded ass into a public restaurant wearing a full cow costume on July 14 and receive a free combo! That's...hell's bells...nearly four dollars worth of processed chicken!

Careful though, cowboy. Read the fine print. It has to be a full cow costume. Don't try to sneak by just wearing a cow's head mask, or half-ass it in only a set of hooves and a tail. If you want to reap the bounty of a whole combo meal--that's a sandwich or nuggets, fries and a drink--you have to be tricked out from head to tail in a full-body cow suit. Hopefully you've already got a couple of those hanging in your closet, but if not, you can probably buy a decent one for $80 or so.

At this point, the laziest among you may be thinking, "Um...shouldn't I just keep my $80 and use it to buy myself twenty combo meals over a period of weeks or months?" Harrumph. Frankly, you embarrass me and shame yourself with such uninspired thinking. Sure, it would be way simpler, cheaper and easier to skip the whole costume idea and just pay for your deep-fried fast food like anyone else, but in doing so, you'd miss out on the opportunity to make a total jackass out of yourself and look like a moron as you sit on a plastic chair in the local Chick Fil-A restaurant trying to ram a chicken nugget through the mouth hole of your filthy cow suit.

So hurry; time's a-wasting. July 14 is the big day, and since it's nowhere near Halloween, it's not going to be easy to find the required attire in the local stores. Your best bet is to order it on the internet and pay for expedited shipping, just to be safe.

Oh, and email me a photo of yourself with your yummy prize clutched triumphantly between your hooves. I want to savor the moment with you.

Happy Birthday Kristina!

My friend Kristina (pictured on the left) is a great catch. If you're a single guy (or hell, maybe even a girl), you would definitely try to hit on her. If you're not single, you would probably try to hook her up with one of your best friends. She's adorable, she's tiny (size 3, for Christ's sake, something which I previously thought existed only in movies and fictional novels), she's fun, and she's incredibly loyal. Why do I tell you this? Because I need your help.
There are many guys who are interested in this totally hot friend of mine, but Kristina has apparently been drugged or hypnotized by her ex-boyfriend, because she cannot seem to let go of him in spite of his noticeable lack of appealing character traits. Although they're broken up, he manages to show up on the scene only every once in a great while, and only when he gets a whiff of the fact that she may be showing some interest in a new guy. He sticks around just long enough to get her to forget about the new guy, and then poof, he's gone again like Houdini.

Clearly, she needs an intervention, but this is a tricky business because she doesn't see anything particularly distressing about this ongoing scenario. So it's up to me to get him out of the picture, but how? Below are some possible solutions I've come up with so far, for your review.

1. The most obvious answer is to kill him. I watch enough true-crime TV to know that it can be done; all I'd need is a crawlspace in my house. This would be the surest way to free Kristina up for the opportunity to find happiness with a decent guy. A great plan! One small downside: A lengthy jail sentence. I am too prissy to flourish in the far-from-plush accommodations I've heard can be found in most prisons. These places probably don't even offer TiVo, much less a decent pedicure. I love Kristina, but maybe not quite enough to sleep on a bacteria-laden cot and miss the entire season of 24 for the next several decades.

2. What if I could cause Kristina to develop amnesia? On the surface this sounds like a total win. She would forget all about what's-his-name, and her life could go on as if he never existed. Apparently it's not hard to get amnesia--I've seen cartoons in which a person merely falls down and gets a bump his head, and bam! He forgets his own name. I could just give her a good shove, and that would probably solve everything. On the other hand, though, she might also forget me, and upon meeting me again, might not like me very much. I don't want to take that chance. For reasons that mystify me, and probably you as well, she loves me now, and I don't want to risk losing that. It's probably not all that easy to make new friends when you have an incredibly disagreeable personality.

3. I could cause him to develop amnesia. He'd forget about Kristina! He'd stop showing up in town; no more late-night drunken phone calls! A big upside is that I'd thoroughly enjoy giving him an excessively hard shove. Then, just to be safe, I'd put the confused chap on a bus to Wisconsin, where hopefully he'd stay, since he wouldn't be able to remember where his hometown was. True, people in Wisconsin would be very angry with me, but screw them. I have no pity for people who go to football games--or anywhere--wearing hats shaped like wedges of cheese.

4. I could introduce Kristina to such a fabulous, irresistible guy that she would totally lose interest in her ex. This is where you come in. I think I made it pretty clear in the past that I don't have the kind of male friends I'd trust my girlfriends with. But you! You're not like me! You've probably led a sane life, filled with normal, mentally healthy friends and acquaintances who have good jobs, no criminal records, and no periodic, state-mandated drug tests. So I'm calling on you for help. Gather up those fine, upstanding young men for my review and approval, and once I deem them suitable for my dear friend Kristina, I will set them upon her like a pack of dogs, and may the best man win her love and affection. I'm sure her ex has his good points, but we're talking about one of my very best friends here--Kristina is someone I love very much, and she deserves someone who loves her at least as much as I do, someone who would treat her with the care and respect she deserves.

In the event that you don't know any single, lovable, disease-free young men, I will also be accepting better suggestions than the ones I came up with above. Know how to eliminate an undesirable guy without landing on death row or being doomed to a life on the run? That's the kind of information I can use. See, Kristina's birthday was Thursday, and although we went out and celebrated with food, booze and gifts, it would be a really great birthday gift if I could solve this little problem for her. So please help. You've spent enough time merely reading my pearls of wisdom and words of poetic beauty on this site; now it's your turn to give something back.

Come on, get busy.

This just in: People are bad.

I've spent a lifetime being foolish.

I naively believed in the good of man; I truly believed that we are all born good, and while circumstances can cause some of us turn a little bad, for the most part we remain basically decent. It pains me to admit that I was wrong. People are born evil.

But what a flower-sniffing sap I was. Once, in a college writing course, my professor asked us to pick one of two viewpoints--that people are basically good or basically evil--and write a paper defending that viewpoint. Naturally, being the wide-eyed young idiot that I now realize I was, I ranted on about how of course people are basically good, and only through extreme influence do we sometimes, tragically, take a misguided turn for the bad. What an idealistic little Mary Poppins asshole I was.

Today, cold, hard truth smacked me in the face. I was sitting around minding my own business (probably musing about how the world is one big happy Brady Bunch episode) when I overheard a cherub-faced little boy of about 8 chattering away to his father about a cartoon he had seen on TV recently, featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. The distracted father was trying to do some work on his laptop while the kid yammered on, excitedly describing one of the coyote's elaborate anvil-as-weapon attempts on the road runner's life. The father muttered the occasional, "Mmm-hmmm," or "wow," in a flat, monotone voice. The kid was too young to understand that his father wasn't listening to a word he was saying, so he took his time meandering to the end of the story, wherein, as you might imagine, the road runner escapes once again, leaving the frustrated coyote steaming. The kid was the picture of childlike innocence, so excited about this silly cartoon...until! He wrapped the whole thing up by wistfully commenting, "I hope someday the coyote catches the road runner." To which Father Clueless mumbled, "Yeah, that'd be great."

What? This adorable little serial killer in training wants the coyote to catch the road runner?! What kind of parents raise a little monster like this? That'd make for a fun cartoon, wouldn't it?

Scene One: Coyote chases road runner; road runner narrowly escapes, a sweet, innocent smile on his beak.Scene Two: Coyote devises new plan to catch bird; road runner narrowly escapes once again, emitting an exceedingly cheerful, "Meep, meep!" and continuing to look angelic and huggable.

Scene Three: With grim resolve, coyote chases road runner again, this time with a fresh look of wild-eyed determination. At the end of a long, feverish chase, Coyote catches road runner, ripping into the bird's delicate throat with his teeth, amid the bird's tortured screams of agony. Blood-spattered coyote gleefully feasts on road runner's tattered carcass by the side of the highway, while cars whiz by, the occupants indifferent to the carnage.

Scene Four: Crazed from the taste of blood, the coyote goes on a maniacal killing spree, butchering and devouring every animal and man that crosses his path. Eventually, when he has decimated the entire population of the dessert, he begins to infiltrate other cartoons, slaughtering Mickey Mouse, Spongebob Squarepants, the Powerpuff Girls, the Afflac duck, the Geico gecko and the Energizer Bunny, as well as scores of others. The 8-year-old boy mentioned above sits in front of his TV cackling with demonic glee, rubbing his chubby hands together as he begins to map out his own plan to kills his parents, neighbors and classmates and boil them all together in one massive stew pot.

So there you have it; my rosy view of the world has been shattered. I now admit that yes, the world is a steaming cesspool filled with villains and cads, and when empty-headed hayseeds like myself stubbornly insist that people are innocent and kind, our foolish naivete only makes it easier for the scoundrels to pillage and plunder.

Well, no more. From this moment on, I will no longer bumble through life with a fairy tale notion of the goodness of mankind. I will approach every stranger with the belief that he is not a friend, but a bloodthirsty killer on a rampage, more likely to gut me like a fish than say hello. I will sleep with one eye open. From here on out, it's kill or be killed.

And I'm starting with that little 8-year-old, cartoon-loving murderer-on-training wheels. Next time he looks up, he's going to see an anvil blacking out the sky.

Give from the heart. It'll make you feel better about yourself.

In the span of a week, both Brian and I received letters informing us that our financial/personal/medical records may have been compromised, and are possibly in the hands of an evil villain who will use them to first destroy us, and then topple our government and take over the White House.

Well, the letters didn't exactly go into those specifics, but I can only assume that will be the eventual outcome. I watch TV. I know how these things work.

First came my letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Yes, I'm a veteran. Please remember me on those holidays in which you revere all heroes of this country. During my few short years in the Army Reserve, I heroically performed such tasks as bravely typing memos, fearlessly moving things from one corner of a room to another, boldly stuffing a rucksack full of unnecessary items and schlepping it up a hill, valiantly staying awake during classroom instruction, and courageously consuming an incredibly diverse range of beige or grey food items. Now, as it happens, a VA employee has managed to lose track of a laptop computer which contained the records of many thousand current and former servicefolk such as myself. Jack Bauer has been contacted, so there's an excellent chance the country will be saved from total destruction, but who knows how many lives will be lost in the process?

And since Jack's attempt to save the world will be thwarted and stalled at every twist and turn by everyone he knows with the exception of maybe one or two brilliant, clever people who clearly idolize him and/or want to sleep with him, this could take a while. In the meantime, I have to plan for my future.

The missing data contains my medical and financial records, and I've been trying to think of ways to protect myself against the misuse of this sensitive information. First, there's the financial data. I have extremely good credit at this point. (Surprised, asshole? Actually, me too.) But I know that it would take less than a year for an evildoer to wad my lovely credit up in a ball and wipe his villainous backside with it, eventually leaving me bankrupt, starving and homeless, begging on the street for money to buy a nonfat, no-foam latte at Starbucks.

To insure against the possibility of abject poverty, I am hereby setting up a "Friends of Karla" donation program. I'll accept donations from you (yes, you) in any amount, but I think we both agree that it's pretty tacky to donate in anything other than multiples of $100. Because Bank of America, where my modest checking account is kept, is probably not logistically able to handle the thundering avalanche of cash that will surely come crashing in the moment I post this, I have had the foresight to set up several overseas bank accounts, so that I can keep the money spread out across several continents. I am also prepared to invest heavily in tech stocks and Purina dog food, to further distribute the cumbersome pile of money. Some of the cash I will simply bury beneath my house for quicker access. I realize there may very quickly come a time when I need to think of even more options for housing the ever-increasing influx of donations, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, I simply ask that you reach deep into your pocketbooks, your friends' pocketbooks, your mother's jewelry box, and your boss's cash register and donate whatever you can, as often as you can, until it hurts, to save this poor veteran from the clutches of impending disaster.

Next, there's the matter of the medical records. While I never wanted it to get out that I had such extensive and repeated STD testing in the 90s, I feel that a little bit of embarrassment is the least of my worries here. I have no idea what evil could be wrought by a criminal in possession of medical records, but I don't have time to sit around and speculate. All I can do now is prepare for the worst, so I'm setting up a "Friends of Karla" Organ Donation program. I ask you to donate whatever bodily organs you can spare, up to and including your heart, lungs, kidney, and skin. Got a friend with a nice, healthy liver? Appropriate it and send it in, ASAP. I'll also be accepting donations of blood, type B Negative. (Nice, huh? My blood type and my attitude toward life are the same! Ho, ho--I tell you, even in the face of disaster I still have a sense of humor. Don't you admire my strength, my courage?)

There's no time to waste, since we have no way of knowing what plans this medical records thief has, or how quickly he will be able to act on them. I have already bought several large, commercial-grade freezers to accommodate the organ and blood donations when they start rolling in, and I have alerted the US mail service, Federal Express and UPS that they will need to increase their staff for the next several months, lest they be buried in a mountain of packages and letters as a result of your unrelenting generosity and humanitarianism.

So please, I hate to seem rude, but there's no time for you to sit around reading this blog today. You've got to mobilize your friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances, even total strangers, to get started now collecting and sending donations.

Oh, and Brian got a letter too; this one from the company that handles his student loan. Apparently someone who worked for a records management company that handles the financial data for many thousands of current and former college students has taken a bunch of those records hostage and is willing to trade them for cash, guns, an unlimited supply of Gummy Bears, and safe passage to Brazil. Or hell, maybe they just lost the records, I can't recall, but I do remember the letter saying that the data had been compromised. I'd set up a donation program for Brian, too, but I worry that doing so might decrease donations to my own fund, with some people dividing up their meager life savings between the two funds. Let him figure out his own way out of this mess; I'm looking out for number one. If he starts to look hungry I might flip him a couple bucks, but beyond that, he's going to have to be responsible for himself, and dig his way out of financial ruin on his own. If there's one thing I hate, it's someone who's looking for a handout.

I'd better start saving for bail money.

When you're expecting a child, you sit around and daydream about what that child might one day become. Beautiful? Talented? Successful? Kind? Famous? Generous?

A writer? An architect? A scientist? A doctor? The president?

A lover of animals? A good friend? A sympathetic listener? A devoted spouse? A dedicated parent?

You know it's possible for your unborn child to become any of these things, but you gamely promise yourself that you'll love that child even if he or she becomes none of those things. You hope for the best, naturally, but secretly you also pray you have what it takes to love unconditionally even if your baby grows up to be a bit of a disappointment to you as an adult.

I have reached that crossroad in my life as a mother.

Jake had a lot of promise; he really did. He was cheerful and sweet, a quick learner, a big hugger. He rarely cried. He reached all the baby milestones at the appropriate times: Turning over, sitting up, crawling, walking, talking, etc. People told us on a regular basis how charming and adorable he was. And he was fun to be with. Looking back, it's impossible to pinpoint when things started to change, when Jake started to turn bad.

Maybe an outsider could have seen the signs, but I, as his mother, lived with him every day and must have simply missed the subtle changes. Isn't it funny how the closer you are to a situation, the harder it is for you to see it clearly? I wonder now if my friends and acquaintances were talking behind our backs, whispering that Jake was turning into a problem child, that it was a shame we weren't better able to guide him and keep him on track. Why didn't they speak up? What kind of friends are these, to sit back and watch us wander off into peril, rather than reaching out to help yank us back to safety?

But it's silly for me to sit here and place blame. I know that, after all, I'm his mother, and it was my job to guide Jake and help him become the best person he could be. If I'm going to point fingers, I should point at myself, because I'm the one who failed here.

And I know that I should love him unconditionally, but there are things I can't accept. I can't condone drinking and driving, for instance. It's irresponsible, it's dangerous, it's reckless. Yet Jake won't listen to me. In these photos you can clearly see he's behaving like a rabid frat boy, yet he's still in his jammies, barefoot, because it's barely 8 AM. What kind of person is this?

Half an hour later, he's so loaded he barely looks human anymore. And nothing I can say or do will slow him down when he's in this state. He's like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. Except that he's wearing jammies with cartoon dump trucks on them.

What would you do? Take his car away? Sounds like a good plan, since he's clearly not inclined to operate it in a responsible manner, and since he's demonstrated that he's not deserving of the privilege. Yet, when I tried that, I discovered it only encouraged him to commit even more heinous crimes, since he's more than willing to steal a car, even willing to hurt the owner of the car in the process.

I never expected motherhood to be easy, and I don't want to turn this blog into a "poor me" rant about how hard my life is. But I'm reaching out to you. What can I do to stop this little monster from ending up on the FBI's "Most Wanted Toddlers" list?

I know funny people.

Spoken by my attractive redneck friend Kenny in Missouri:

Don't leave me in this bar alone! You know I'll get drunk and end up going home with one o' them taterhogs that's been hitting on me all night!

Spoken by my friend Donna in high school algebra class, while discussing possible senior class trip destinations with our teacher:

KANSAS!? No! If we wanted flat, we'd stay here with Karla!

(And might I just say in my own defense that my very average C cups probably only looked flat next to Donna's very impressive D cups. I would have pointed that out at the time if I could have been heard over the shrieking laughter of my entire class and my teacher.)

Spoken by comedian Artie Lange:

Drinking non-alcoholic beer is like f*!#ing a mannequin.

Spoken by me while 3 months pregnant, upon being asked if I planned to find out the sex of the baby from my upcoming sonogram:

Hell, yes! I don't understand people who say they don't want to find out the sex of the baby until it's born. I want to know everything; I don't want any surprises coming out of my hoo-ha.

Spoken by the plumber who came to a rental house we had just moved into a few years ago, when we called him to fix the backed-up plumbing:

It's probably nothing major. Most times I get called out to a house where the sewage is backing up into the bathtub, and people are afraid it's going to require a major overhaul to fix it. But lots of times it's just sewer rats.

My husband (horrified): Sewer rats?! We have sewer rats?!

Plumber: Well, some people call them tampons. I call them sewer rats.

It's Not Easy Being The Sane One, Part I

For quite some time now, I've suspected that I'm the only sane person in existence on a planet teeming with the mentally ill. I've long been compiling evidence to support my theory, and I think you'll agree that my findings are pretty shocking. The list is long--too long to cram into one blog post, so I'll let you in on just a couple of the facts I've collected that prove that the whole world, (with the exception of yours truly) is batty:

--There are people out there who eat chili with Ritz crackers instead of saltines. Yeah, you read that right. Ritz goddamn crackers! Chili is perhaps the world's greatest food, something to be eaten in winter or summer, for breakfast or dinner. And it's an absolute requirement for anyone with a hangover. The idea that mindless peasants all over the world are fouling this manna from Heaven with the sweetened cardboard that is Ritz Crackers is horrifying and shameful. I can only pray these people will be punished in the afterlife.

--Even as we speak, in bars all across America, millions of people are blithely sipping margaritas made with sweet and sour--and pretending they taste good. Sweet and sour is vile, wretched stuff, and should never be consumed. It's probably perfectly good for rinsing out a kitty litter box or flushing out a radiator, but it's not suitable for the delicate human digestive tract. Its very existence began as a practical joke, I'm sure. Some lazy 20-something bartender got tired of mixing up real lime juice and sugar each time a customer ordered a margarita, so he devised a scheme to make things easier for himself, therefore freeing himself up to take more breaks to sit in his car and get stoned during his shift. At first, he probably just mixed up a huge vat of of lime juice and sugar and stored it in the refrigerator, where it could be swiftly accessed any time a customer ordered a drink. But after a couple of days he probably realized the lime juice was going bad when stored that way--and no way was this lazy prick willing to mix up a new jug daily. So the shiftless swine stopped using lime juice entirely, instead throwing in some limey sugary powdered Koolaid-type crap thereafter known as sweet and sour. His piss-drunk customers didn't notice or complain, so the a-hole bragged to all his bartender friends that he'd found a way to make drinks faster and smoke pot more on his shift than anyone else he knew. The sensation caught on, and voila--fast-forward to the present day, where I can be seen in restaurant after restaurant, bar after bar, year after year, asking waiters and bartenders if I can get a margarita made with lime and sugar instead of sweet and sour, only to be met with a blank stare as if I had just asked if I could please have the manager's panties blended up in my drink. Am I the only sane person left? Why does everyone cheerfully accept drinks made with sweet and sour, when sweet and sour tastes like sugared bile? My liver demands better. Nay, after the hell it's been through, my liver deserves better.

Oh, the list goes on and on. I'll let you in on the rest of it, but I'm sure you're reeling from these first two shockers. Yes, the world is a sick place. Thank God that there's still someone like me--perhaps the only sane one left--to speak the truth and stand up for what's right and decent. Now I call on you, my faithful readers, to join me in my fight. The next time a waiter tries to slip some sweet and sour past you, break the margarita glass over his head and disembowel him with one of the broken shards. Next time you see some halfwit desecrating a bowl of chili with Ritz crackers, ram the spoon up his nose. We can't just sit back and watch the world go to hell in a handbasket.

Thank you.

The Bad Mommy Chronicles, Part II

You've probably figured this out by now, but although I'm a mommy, this is not a mommy blog. That's not because I have anything against mommy blogs or mommy bloggers. It's mostly because I've figured out there's a better than 50% chance that at some point Jake will be taken away from me by the state, and I expect that when that happens, I'll be too busy wallowing in self pity and drowning my sorrow in pure grain alcohol to want to deal with having to start a new blog. I'll want to keep on being Karlababble--after all, I'll have already suffered enough loss at that point without having to also lose my beloved blog, and my beloved (albeit depraved and misguided) blog commenters. While the rest of the world will judge me harshly for being an unfit and dethroned mother, you will still be there for me, if only because you lack the moral compass to understand my crimes.

So no, this is not a mommy blog. However, from time to time I am compelled to inform you of some cute or interesting thing Diaper Butt has done recently. Or, as in this case, some close call in which he narrowly escaped with his life and all four tiny limbs.

All stories in our house these days seem to begin with, "I left Jake alone for a split second, and by the time I turned my back...," and end with a description of a David Blaine-type stunt performed by my toddler. A few days ago, I was cleaning the living room, and had my eye on Jake, who was playing in his room. He was sitting on the floor talking to his toys, which seemed safe enough to me. I went about my cleaning, and after a moment I noticed it was too quiet in the house. This is always a bad sign. When Jake is behaving himself and everything is normal and good, he chatters away ceaselessly--a trait he gets from his father. When I suddenly realize a silence has fallen over the house, it's time to panic. This kind of quiet invariably means Jake has discovered something dangerous and is stealthily trying to get himself killed before I have a chance to interrupt him. When I peered into his room to see what he was up to, I saw that he had climbed up onto the little table by his bed, and was sprawled across it on his belly, legs outstretched behind him as he gripped the edge of the table and peered over it as if he were peering cautiously over the edge of the world's tallest building.

"No!" I scolded him as I picked him up, envisioning him tipping the thing over with his Tony Soprano belly leading the way, subsequently bashing his big head on the floor.

A few mornings later I was getting some breakfast ready for him in the kitchen when I thought of something I wanted to tell Brian, who was in the bathroom getting ready for work. Jake was banging a wooden spoon against the kitchen floor when I left him. I chatted with Brian for a few minutes in the bathroom until I realized the banging had stopped. Taking note that the house was now filled with that "suicide quiet," I knew I'd better locate my chubby little masochist fast. Leaning around the corner to look for him, I saw he was no longer in the kitchen. I found him in the living room, on top of our behind-the-couch table crawling in a tight circle on the glass top as he looked over each edge. "No!" I admonished him as I picked him up, imagining him throwing the whole glassy, irony death trap off balance as he crashed to the floor in a screaming heap.

Today Brian was at home in the living room, having taken note of the fact that Jake was gnawing on toys in the dining room. When Brian heard the sound of one of our ceramic coasters clanking against wood, he sighed and headed for the dining room, thinking Jake had somehow managed to reach far enough onto the table to grab a coaster and had begun banging it against a chair leg. Instead he found Jake standing on the dining room table clutching his coaster, apparently squatting now and then to thunk it against the table top.

So you see my problem; the kid's an adrenalin junkie. Next, I expect to find doing cartwheels on the roof of our house, or possibly scaling the city water tower, or perhaps attempting to bungee jump off of an overpass. This won't look good to the busybodies at Child Protective Services, so I need to take some preventative measures, fast. I'm still fairly new to the whole mommy thing, so maybe some of you more experienced types can take a look at my list of ideas and see which one sounds best:

-Stapling his feet to the floor.
-Chaining a boat anchor to his leg.
-Magnetizing the floors in our house and making him wear magnetic booties.
-Putting a brick in his diaper.
-Greasing up all our furniture with Vaseline so he can't get enough traction to climb on it.
-Putting an inner tube around his middle so he bounces when he hits the floor after falling off a table or chair.
-Putting an Elizabethan collar on him, like the ones pets have to wear to prevent them from licking a wound too much. (This wouldn't solve the climbing problem, but it'd be fun to watch him walk around wearing the thing. Plus it'd make for some funny pictures to post on my blog.)
That's all I've thought of so far. I'd probably have been able to compile a more comprehensive list if I weren't so busy snatching Jake off the various furniture items in my house. What happened to the good old days when a mother could ignore a kid for hours on end and he'd still be in one piece at the end of the day?

I'm an excellent host.

And no, I don't mean "for parasites," although I'm probably good at that, too.

As those of you who insist on peeping in my windows already know, my sister and niece were recently here for a visit. I was a most hospitable and gracious host, the likes of which would put Martha Stewart to shame. (I mean, more shame than her recent prison stint, even.)

First, there was the welcome banner I made for their arrival. How many of you put out welcome banners for your guests? Not many, I'd guess. Which is a shame, because it's such a nice gesture, and really lets your guests know how you feel about having them over.

(Candypants is my nickname for my sister, and Brandypants is my niece, whose real name is Brandy. It's one of those things on the incredibly long list of things that's probably only funny to me.)

In my guest bathroom, I went to the trouble of displaying a framed photo of my dear sister, taken at bathtime. Well, technically, it's a picture of my son's body with my sister's head, but still, it's a very charming photo, and I get bonus points for the fact that it's a one-of-a-kind piece of art.

And for my final decorating touch, I put another photo of my sister in a place where I could be sure it would be seen and enjoyed every day. Candypants doesn't think this is such a great picture of herself, but I figured that wouldn't be a problem since most of the time it would be to her back, anyway.

And yes, this is the kind of movie star treatment you can expect to receive when you stay at Chez Karlababble. Plus, I'll allow you to get up with my son every morning and feed him while I sleep in, which is really a treat for my guests. All I ask is that you don't all email me at once with your requests to stay at my place; regrettably, I can't house all of you at the same time. One or two guests at a time, please, and be sure to send a photo of yourself ahead of time so I can decorate accordingly.

(By the way, I've missed you!)

Think of this as an opportunity.

I know you think I'm neglecting you because I haven't posted in awhile. Now, don't jump to any hasty conclusions--I'm not in rehab. I'm not at the Mayo clinic for advanced STD testing. I have not violated my probation. I haven't hiding from the local bookie. Rather, my sister from Alaska is here for a visit.

This is the sister I refer to as Candypants. There is nothing in this world I love more than my sister. Well, except for my son. And maybe my husband. And nacho cheese Doritos. And a good long nap. And tiny little Bulldog puppies. And the letter Q. But aside from those few things, (and several dozen others), I love her more than anything. So my full attention must be devoted to her during her visit. This means I don't have much time for blogging. Depending on your outlook, this may be a blessing or a curse.

The thing I love second most in this world (I mean, after my son and my husband and nacho cheese Doritos and long naps and Bulldog puppies and the letter Q and the other unnamed things) is my niece, who is also here for a visit. So between the lovable sister and the lovable niece, I have plenty of activity in my household to prevent me from blogging.

Use this time wisely, won't you? People tend to spend too much time surfing the 'net, which erodes the brain and dulls the senses (particularly on this site). You need a break from this mind-numbing silliness, don't you? Take this opportunity to learn a new skill, experience a new adventure.

Can't think of any new adventures to expand your horizons? Choose from this handy list. You could:

-Take up knife throwing.

-Join NAMBLA.

-Sell your fresh, un-tainted urine specimens to junkies on probation. (This option is only possible for the handful of my readers who actually have untainted urine.)

-Sleep with a relative.

-Become a pole vaulter.

-Finally kick heroin once and for all.

The possibilities are endless. By the time I write my next post, you could be a whole new, more exciting, more interesting, more adventurous you! And I think we can all agree that the old you was pretty dull. So please, take this opportunity to enlarge your brain, expand your mind, without the interference of the brain-shrinking material this site is known for.

And don't worry, I'll be back very soon to destroy whatever progress you've made.

Dear Jackass, Volume 9

Dear customer who asks me for assistance and then answers his cell phone in front of me:

What is it that makes you think I'm actually going to stand here expectantly, smiling politely while you yammer away to your girlfriend or your buddy? Is it me? Do I convey such an air of patience and goodwill that you assume I thrive on serving the meaningless whims of even the most self-important pricks and thoughtless Barbie dolls like yourself? Or do I look so bored and lost and unfulfilled that surely eavesdropping on your one-sided conversation would be a big thrill for a loser like me? Don't bother answering that; go ahead, take a few more minutes and finish your conversation. I'll use this time to talk myself out of yanking your phone out of your hand and disemboweling you with it.

Dear parent who gives long-winded, unprompted speeches proclaiming, "If you mess with my kids, you'll have to deal with ME:"

Yes, fine, you win the parent of the year award, okay? Now pipe down, Supermom (or Superdad). If someone were here threatening your little sweeties right now, this monologue would be warranted, even lauded. But beating your chest and shouting your allegiance to your kids' safety and well-being while standing in line at Target or sitting in the bleachers at a soccer game wins you a classification a boring windbag. Please try limit the number of times per month you refer to yourself as a protective mama bear, or make reference to your "claws coming out" in response to a perceived threat to your babies. Save that energy for when your kids are actually in harm's way. I'd hate to hear that something bad happened to your kids while you were busy making the Mama Bear speech for the 1,365th time and weren't paying attention.

Dear people who constantly ask, "Are you working hard, or hardly working?"

I bet this little quip was novel and amusing back in 1924, the first few dozen times it was spoken. Now it's just annoying. More annoying than the tired joke itself is the dopey little chuckle you always emit immediately after saying it, in spite of the fact that you've surely used this line a thousand times in your life. Do you really still find it funny? If so, I'm stumped. I can't figure out how you got dressed this morning without getting tangled up in the leg of your pants and accidentally asphyxiating yourself.

What am I doing wrong?

Perhaps I've been misleading you.

It seems that some of you have gotten the impression that this site is the place to go to satisfy your many diverse and incredibly sick needs, to include, apparently, masturbating with a banana peel. Observe a recent screenshot of my Statcounter.com search statistics:


It must be me. There must be something about me that leads you to believe you can find info or images or stories here about masturbating with a banana peel. Which makes me think perhaps its time to reevaluate my life and make some changes.

Have I not made it abundantly clear that my site is designed to be a force to effect positive change in the world? A place where people of all races and religions and economic backgrounds can come together in harmony? Where love can bloom, trust is sacred, truth prevails? Have you not read my previous posts?

Does no one remember when I tried to illustrate how good music and camaraderie can blissfully blind a person to the ugliness in this sometimes-cruel world?

Have I not tried preach the benefits of proper manners and social etiquette?

Have I not sought to share with you the unmitigated joys of motherhood?

Have I not done my best to show you that cleanliness is next to Godliness?

Was it completely lost on you how hard I tried to illustrate the importance of getting the sleep that is so necessary for good mental health?

Have I not labored to teach you how laughter can brighten your day and enrich your life?

And yet, it appears it has all been for nothing. Despite my best attempts to make the world a better place, I am rewarded with the banana peel masturbator. What's next? Masturbating with a syringe? Breast self-exams with a catcher's mitt? Intercourse with self-rising bread dough?

Again, let me be clear about my mission here. Karlababble.com is meant to be a safe place, a comforting place, where you can go to get away from the hustle and bustle. Here, we can grow together as people, and form a sort of family where we support each other through the trying times. There are plenty of sites out there for the sick and depraved, the soulless and the shallow. In the last day or so I've made some technical changes, so from now on, when you reach my site via a search engine query for something twisted and immoral, you will be automatically redirected to a site where that kind of sickness runs rampant, and filth and vulgarity are revered.

Until then, let's all join hands (I'm speaking figuratively, for the slow among you) and try to cleanse our minds of the mental image we now probably all have of a fat, hairy man sitting naked in front of his computer in a dingy apartment, masturbating with a banana peel, while his 17 cats crap all over his tattered furniture and chase cockroaches across his urine-stained carpet. Wait, I'm thinking of an ex-boyfriend. Okay, forget the hand-holding mind-cleansing bit and just lay off the crack pipe for a day or two. That might clear your head sufficiently enough for you to recognize karlababble.com as the peaceful garden I intended it to be.

Not sure what to wear? Visit karlababble.com!

As you're no doubt aware, karlababble.com is an important tool for millions of people. It's your one-stop source for all kinds of information and advice, to include:

Gardening tips
Detailed stock analyses
Sizing chart for sport bras
Metric conversion table
Cooking tips
Flight arrival and departure times
Arabic fonts
Discounts on teeth whitening procedures
Apartment locator service
Custom-made orthopedic shoes
Tarot card readings
Lightning-fast tax returns
Plastic surgeon referrals
Expedited passports
Chinese-English translation
Filtered drinking water
Pre-marital counseling
Frozen embryo transfers
Autographed 8x10 glossies of Barry Manilow
Confidential STD testing
Rare/endangered fish
Flu vaccinations
Spiritual guidance
Sugar-free Jello
Black-market babies
...and so much more!

We here at Karlababble Industries pride ourselves on providing a wide range of goods/ services/ guidance/ information to our clients/ members/ inmates/ castaways/ offspring/ followers, and we're proud to announce our latest area of expertise: Fashion!

Recently I bought a shirt so attractive, so flattering, so stylish and so chic that I felt I had to share it with you.I know what you're thinking: "Never mind the shirt, check out that fabulous model!" Please; you're embarrassing me. I'm here to showcase the shirt, not myself. No wardrobe is complete without one of these gems.

Feel free to visit the design-your-own area of Jerkass Clothing, which is where this fine piece of couture came from. (Although it doesn't seem to work in Mozilla Firefox, which is so December 2005.) But don't get all hung up on that site--head back here afterward. After all, there's no information about black market babies or sugar-free Jello there.

No third-world countries, please.

Commenters sometimes complain that I don't post enough. Well, not all of them--there are a few who probably want me to post less often. But there does exist a contingent that seems to wish I'd post every day. And that can only mean one of two things:

1) I'm a genius, and my pearls of wisdom are highly anticipated and eagerly received.

2) The vast majority of my commenters are married or in long-term relationships. They've gotten tired of talking to their spouses and significant others, and would gladly engage in any activity that gets them out of having the same conversation for the 50th time with the old ball and chain.

Either way, I'd like to keep you happy. I'm here to serve. The problem is how to find the time. I do, after all, have a 1-year old child. Try as I may to ignore him, the little bugger refuses to be marginalized. He will even resort to--get this--defecating in his pants just to get some attention from me. As sad and misguided as that sounds, I have to admit I'd done that myself to get attention from Brian. It works, but I've come to learn that not all attention is good attention. Actually, I learned that from a short stint in prison in the '80s, but some lessons have to be learned more than once before they stick.

So time is one barrier to the non-stop blogging you demanding a-holes seem to want. But perhaps the bigger problem is there's not always something exciting to write about. If I were a pirate or a movie producer or Tom Jones, there'd be no shortage of exciting adventures to recount for your amusement, but the truth is that my life isn't all that exciting. I go to the gym, I play with Jake, I say terrible things about people under my breath, I work a little here and there, where I try to talk myself out of physically harming my coworkers (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). And that's about it. Nothing really newsworthy in there, as you can see. And I'm not willing to let this blog fall the direction of so many blogs, wherein the typical post is written, "Dear Diary" style, as in, "Today I stubbed my toe, then I read a book, then I took a nap. I wonder if Doritos are cheaper at Safeway or Walmart? Bye for now." Not that there's anything wrong with those blogs--I find them strangely compelling. It's just not what I had in mind when I started this thing. Consequently, some days I sit down to puke up a new blog post, and I find I have nothing to puke up.

Fortunately, I've come up with a solution.

You guys can pool your money together and send me off on madcap adventures that I can then dutifully blog about. Most of you will appreciate this because you'll have something to read, and Hoss will appreciate it because he'll have the occasional spelling error to correct. And while I'm gone, you can each take turns babysitting Jake. Problem solved!

To kickstart this thing, I've compiled a short list of places you might want to send me, where I can engage in various blogworthy, nutty exploits:

1) A Caribbean cruise
2) New Years Eve in Times Square, New York
3) A gondola ride in Venice, Italy
4) Napa Valley, CA

Of course, it is your money that will be sending me on my madcap adventures, so naturally you'll have the right to decide where to send me. And because I know you're a vindictive, merciless bunch, I suspect you're thinking more along the lines of places like:

The La Brea Tar Pits, CA
World's Largest Bug, Rhode Island
Dinosaur World, Beaver, Arkansas
Golgotha Biblical Mini Golf, Cave City, KY
World's Largest Collection of Mustards, Mt. Horeb, WI

So I'm essentially at your mercy, right where you've always wanted me. So go ahead, my cold, callous, so-called friends, tell me where you'd like to send me, that I may engage in wacky escapades to recount for you here on my blog.

You've got to admit, they DO look suspiciously alike.

The old guy in the Six Flags commercials looks like a feisty, fun-loving fellow, prone to busting out in a joyful jig at the drop of a hat, but watch out, pal. He could whack you just as easy as he could ask you to dance.
The guy is truly manic depressive. One minute he's doing cartwheels to a zippy tune in front of a roller coaster, the next minute he's shooting Tony Soprano in the belly. I can't explain why he's so moody one day and so ecstatic the next, but I know this: The guy really enjoys himself at amusement parks. That's where he should stay. If you ever run into this guy while you're enjoying a day at Six Flags, be respectful. Don't try to cut in line in front of him for the Superman Tower of Power ride. He's just there to blow off some steam, but he won't hesitate to blow your head off, just to prove a point.

Finally, a film for the whole family.

My buddy Psquared is a genius. Not only is he just an all-around genius (and, allegedly, a guy who looks smashing in Superman Underoos), but apparently a genius filmmaker as well. I was so inspired by his inspirational filmmaking that I decided to take up the craft myself.

I know what you're thinking: "Slow down there, cowgirl! You can't just decide one day to be a filmmaker, and then bam! You're a filmmaker. These things take time, which you're short on, and talent, which you lack completely."

Well, I've proven you wrong once again. About 10 minutes ago I decided to take up filmmaking, and about 1 minute ago I finished my first film. I'm a prodigy, you might say.

Because this is an independent film, and therefore very artsy and deep, I'll give you a little background so you can appreciate the more obscure references.

My friend Common Wombat has a rather unique and cool job. He spends the last part of each year merrily prancing all across the countryside turning dull, drab shopping malls into fun, fantastical Christmas wonderlands. He has a hand, or sometimes two or three hands, in designing, building, and setting up those mall Christmas displays that bring joy and wonder to the hearts of children everywhere. You could say he's a bit like Santa Claus, if Santa had a major gastrointestinal problem that caused sinus-killing flatulence. Why does he do it? Not for the money, friends. He does it for the satisfaction of knowing he's helping to bring the true meaning of Christmas to little Johnny and little Suzy. He's a role model for us all.

Every December, scores of busy, distracted parents charge into the mall dragging their flustered children behind them, intent on hastily charging up their Visas and Mastercards grudgingly and thoughtlessly, just to cross off a few names from their Christmas lists. There's no thought or feeling associated with this commercialized spending spree, just a calculated need to snatch up something, anything, to wrap and give to Grandma and Uncle Bob to fulfill the annual obligation of Christmastime. These parents are stopped dead in their tracks when they're surprised to find not just the sterile, uninviting storefronts they expected to see, but a wintertime fairy tale come true--Wombat's handiwork--Christmas trees, presents, snow, reindeer, beautiful decorations and candy canes and a hundred magical things that make parents and chilren alike remember and rejoice in the spirit of the holiday season. Suddenly, these shoppers are humbled, transformed. Faith and goodwill is restored, all thanks to Common Wombat. The world deserves to hear his inspirational story.

Which is why I chose him as the subject of my first feature film. Films have been made about all the great leaders and prophets and heroes of the world--Ghandi, JFK, Joan of Arc, E.T., you name it. Why not Wombat? I got tired of sitting around waiting for someone else to come along and tell this beautiful tale. At a certain point, I realized it was time for me to become part of the solution.

To that end, I proudly present you with my first film, A XXXmas Love Story. I hope you enjoy it.

Hit me with your best shot.

Have you ever met one of those people who has a tendency to speak too bluntly? You know what I'm talking about, one of those people who could use a polite word in a given situation, but instead choose to use an inflammatory and needlessly derogatory one. Someone who, for instance:

People always claim they want to be dealt with honestly, but that's actually the direct opposite of what they want. What they really want is to be lied to in the most flattering way possible. If a friend says, "I want you to promise to be totally, 100% honest with me: Do you think I'm (insert defamatory adjective here)?" The right answer is never, ever, EVER "Well, yes, maybe just a little." An answer like that will unleash a chain of events which will end with you laying bloody and disemboweled with a garden utensil protruding from one of your nostrils. The only acceptable answer in such a situation is, "Oh, for God's sake, where do you come up with this stuff? Don't be ridiculous! You're not the slightest bit (insert defamatory adjective here)...unless, of course, you want to be (insert defamatory adjective here). In which case, you totally are! And I find it incredibly refreshing!"

I have a tendency to be too blunt with people. When I'm yammering thoughtlessly away on a given topic, I just come right out with the strongest word possible, rather than taking a second to think of a more diplomatic word. People who love me must have grown to love me in spite of this trait. Other people probably find me to be a total jackass with a tiny, dried-up heart the size of a thumbtack. You know who you are.

But I'm no sissy--I can dish it out, and I can take it. I don't get many opportunities to prove this, because people tend to avoid taking shots at me, possibly out of fear. But I want to prove it to you now. So go ahead, say that awful thing you're thinking about me. I can take it. No matter how blunt you are, how undiplomatic, how rude and out-of-line, I will take it in stride. I will not look up your ISP address, track you down and set your house ablaze while you sleep inside. Seriously.

Do you think I'm as dumb as a bag of hammers? Ugly as a sumo wrestler in a Girl Scout uniform? Think I have a beak like a toucan and an ass like an old man in an adult diaper? Think I'm so fat that when I wear a red dress, people yell "Hey, Koolaid!"? Think I have the morals of a sorority girl and the personality of half a can of Spam? Well, this is your chance to get it off your chest.

So come on, hit me with your best shot.

Don't judge me. There's a reason I'm this way.

You guys are a vicious, catty bunch; I realize that. Passing judgement, criticizing at every opportunity. I know you think I'm evil, wrong, a bad parent and a bad person, maybe even a criminal and a lunatic. But I swear, it's not all my fault. If you could see the hell I deal with every day, the sheer insanity I put up with in this house, you'd have a lot more sympathy for my flaws.

Case in point:

This is a photograph of what my husband considers a properly cooked bowl of oatmeal.
No, your eyes aren't deceiving you--it does indeed have the consistency of puke soup. He puts a couple of scoops of perfectly good oatmeal into a bowl, drowns it in a pony keg of milk, and microwaves it for a split second and voila! A bowl of slop that looks like something you'd expect to eat in a POW camp.

This is the kind of absurdity I deal with every day. Was he raised by a roving band of gypsies who subsisted on gruel and bread crusts? Does he think this is normal, acceptable behavior? Or is he really trying to drive me mad? I suspect it's the latter. I think he has devised an elaborate scheme to repeatedly commit small acts of absurdity in the hopes that over time he will be able to drive me to complete hystseria.

The man can't be reasoned with. I've tried to explain to him that this is what properly cooked oatmeal should look like: It should be one solid mass that you have to break into chunks with a knife. It should be so thick and gummy that your jaw aches from chewing it. It should be cooked to a point of dryness normally seen only in attic insulation. You should be able to turn the bowl upside down without the slightest resulting movement from the oatmeal itself. Washing the bowl afterward should require the use of a jackhammer and a bottle of adhesive remover. But he just stands there as I explain this, blinking his eyes at me in silence, as if I'm the crazy one. Then he slinks off to slurp up his curds and whey, either unaware or unconcerned that all across America, nursing homes are packed to the rafters with the toothless elderly who are eating the exact same meal.

Why is he doing this to me? I have a theory that he plans to drive me to the point of dementia, then have me committed to a lockdown mental institution so he can have complete control of the TV at all times. But I am not to be underestimated. I will devise my own plan to drive him crazy first, whereupon I will have him committed, and I will have free reign to leave all the kitchen drawers and cabinets open, and leave the toilet paper roll off the holder.

The challenge, of course, will be how to drive him batty. It won't be easy, because by nature I am an incredibly reasonable, agreeable person, loved and admired by all. A pillar of society. Therefore, it will be difficult for me to consciously attempt to behave in ways that a person might find objectionable or unreasonable. It comes so easy for Brian, but it will be a real challenge for me. But you'll see; I'll rise to the occasion.

There's a Perfectly Reasonable Explanation For This, Part 1

When you see a child so determined to get in the dryer, it makes you wonder. What could be going on here? I can guess some of your catty little answers now:

1) That photo I took when he was 4 months old wasn't a depiction of a one-time event. I put him in there on a regular basis, often to muffle the sound of his crying, or to suppress the smell of his dirty diaper.

2) He's trying to escape his mommy, who may or may not dangerously unstable. The dryer doesn't seem like an ideal place to hang out, but it does seem safer than being with Mommy Dearest.

3) He's looking for more (or perhaps cleaner?) panties.

4) Just to amuse myself, I wait til he's good and hungry, then put his food in the dryer, just to watch him struggle to retrieve it.

5) He's forced to do his own laundry, since his mother is passed out on the front lawn with an empty bottle of Jaegermeister in her hand.

Got any ideas, smartypants? Can you think of a better explanation for why my 1-year old was caught trying to launch himself into my clothes dryer? Go ahead, let's hear it. I'll submit your answers to Jake and ask him which one was the correct one. The winner gets a sneaky 1-year old child with a dryer fetish.

Here's Jake, wishing you good luck.

(Extra points to those of you who have noticed the recurring theme in which I invent "contests" which are really just thinly-veiled attempts to pawn my child off on someone.)

Are thong panties included in the food pyramid?

I have this weird and funky little dresser that I bought years ago from a catalogue. I wanted it because it had drawers which swung out to the side, rather than coming straight at you like most drawers, which I thought was cool and unusual. I might have been drunk at the time. I think the catalogue billed it as a lingerie dresser, but I imagine the only people who have enough lingerie to fill an entire dresser are hookers, strippers, Vegas showgirls and Mariah Carey (who seems to be a combination of the all three). Since I'm not any of those (anymore), I figured I'd use the dresser for socks and underwear. Actually, most people don't have enough socks and underwear to fill an entire dresser, either, so I wasn't sure exactly what I'd use it for, but I felt I had to have it. It cost a few hundred bucks, and I later discovered it was kind of a waste of money.

For one thing, the funky side-swinging square drawers are only hinged by one corner, which is part of the supposed coolness, but it also means there's really nothing to keep them in place when they're pushed in (in the "closed" position), so they're likely to swing back out at will if your floor isn't perfectly level...which mine isn't, since I live in a treehouse built by gnomes. Owing to my redneck roots, I attempted to solve the problem by attaching little velcro squares to the backs of the drawers so they'd stay closed. As you can imagine, this was a silly idea. You can see the black velcro when the drawers are open, which looks pretty ghetto. Not a huge deal since the drawers are mostly closed, not open, but there's also the problem that if you put anything silky in the drawers, it's likely to get snagged on the velcro, which sort of ruins it. And the truth is, really, it's way easier to toss all your undies into one big, normal dresser drawer instead of having to divide your collection among several smaller drawers. At any rate, I've kept this goofy little dresser for years out of sheer stubbornness. I figured I just had to have it, I ordered it, I paid for it, and damnit, I'm using it. Kinda like I'm punishing myself for my bad impulse purchase.

This stubbornness was all well and good before Jake came along. Now that I have a 1-year-old, I've discovered what millions of mommies before me have known for years: Toddlers derive unparalleled joy from emptying out drawers. Brian has put cabinet and drawer locks on the cabinets and drawers throughout our house which contain things that might potentially maim or impale Jake, but we've left open a few of the ones that contain harmless items, so he can get his jollies by tossing the contents out onto the floor for us to pick up several hundred times a day. He has three drawers in the kitchen he has access to (filled mostly with tupperware, measuring spoons, etc.), one in each bathroom (filled mostly with towels, brushes, etc.), and all of the ones in his bedroom (filled mostly with clothes and blankets). The ones in our bedroom that contain our clothes are a non-issue, since they are heavy dresser drawers which are impossible for him to open at this age. That is, except for my Cambodian sweatshop-produced lingerie dresser.

The contents of my so-called lingerie dresser have always been as such: The drawers on the left side contain socks and the drawers on the right contain panties. Colored socks are in the top few left-hand drawers, and white socks are in bottom few. Regular panties are in the top few right-hand drawers, and thong panties are in the bottom few. Jake can't reach the top drawers, but he's at the perfect height for the bottom ones.

There's no good explanation for why we have a random, ugly, kitchen-type chair sitting in our bedroom, but we do, and it so happens that it kind of blocks Jake from getting into my sock drawers on the left side of the dresser. But the thong panties in the bottom right side of the dresser are at his mercy. At any given moment, I am likely to stumble upon an array of scattered thong panties littering my bedroom floor, like breadcrumb-type trail left by a kidnapped stripper hoping to be rescued. But since everything that Jake tosses onto the floor is first shoved in his mouth, that means he snacks on my thongs for a bit before discarding them. He's the little perv in mid-panty raid:



Judging by the look of joy on his face, I have to assume these things are pretty tasty. Well, and judging by the rave reviews of truckers all over the U.S. as well. But how do they fit into Jake's diet?

His pediatrician spouted a lot of babble about how he's supposed to get so many servings of veggies, milk, candy, and processed spreadable cheese each day. I don't recall exactly what he said, but I think he said a "serving" should be about the size of his head, and he should get 19 servings a day of Hormel products, 4 servings a day of Hershey's products, and 8 servings a day of microwavable items. He didn't mention thongs. How do I factor this into his diet? Can I microwave them and put them into the last category? Someone please advise me; I know a child's diet is a very important thing, and I take my responsibilities seriously.

In the meantime, I have a free lingerie dresser for anyone who wants to come pick it up. I'll even throw in a few pairs of saliva-coated thong panties.

Dear Jackass, Volume 8

Dear caller who identifies yourself by saying, "Hi, it's me!"

You self-important prick. I only get a call from you once in a blue moon, and you have such a massive ego that you assume I'll immediately recognize your voice? Are you really so egotistical that you believe I have you in the forefront of my mind at all times, and that your voice is tattooed on my brain? Or do you simply think I'm such a loser that you're the only friend I have, and that any time the phone rings I assume (nay, I pray!) it must be you? I have two shocking revelations for you:

1) You are not on my mind all day every day. In fact, you're barely on my mind when I'm actually in the room with you. You can't see it, but when I'm talk to you on the phone, I have to periodically punch myself in the face to keep from nodding off in the middle of your boring stories. Sometimes I have to put the phone down while you're in mid-blather so I can run to the bathroom, put my head in the toilet and flush to revive myself. Disgusting, yes, but still better than listening to you drone on about how your coworkers are mean to you or your boyfriend doesn't like to cuddle.

2) I have a whole life that does not, in fact, revolve around you. I have other, better, friends, and many things to occupy my time and energy. When the phone rings, I do not assume it's you. In fact, every time you do that ridiculously pompous, "Hi, it's me!" thing, I spend a confusing several minutes trying to figure out who the fuck "me" is, and the eventual realization that it's you brings me no specific joy. What that basically means is that you're not even a fraction as unique or special as you think you are, and moreover, you're embarrassing yourself by assuming everyone you know spends their days staring at their telephones praying you'll call. Get over yourself, asswipe.

CAUGHT in the ACT!

You guys probably think I make up a lot of the stuff I write here. I'm not sure if you think that because you're just a suspicious lot, jaded and bitter from being ripped off by drug dealer after drug dealer through the years, or if it's because you have such a low opinion of me that you think I need to make up wild, fantastical tales just to get attention, but I can assure you, everything I write here (with the exception of about 98% of it) is totally true.

Case in point. Not long ago I wrote about how my devil child is fascinated by the drain in the bathtub, and refuses to believe that it's not a portal to another world filled with toys, kitties, TV remotes, bite-size chunks of cheese and other things he loves more than he loves his mommy, which is why he makes it his mission to attempt to slither out of his baby tub and inspect it at every opportunity. When I wrote that post, I included a photo of Jake in said baby tub, but did not have a photo of him actually in the act of slithering. Now I have it: Photographic proof that at least a portion of what I write here is not total B.S:

Notice the crafty look in his scheming eyes as he makes his move. The kid's a loose cannon. So now you see my dilemma. Allowing a soapy infant to scrabble out of his tub at will is a bad idea for several reasons:

1) He could bonk his noggin on the porcelain of the tub, resulting in a cranial fracture, or possibly a huge red bump like the ones I've seen in Bugs Bunny cartoons.

2) Not having fully mastered the art of slithering, he could slip and wind up face down in the water of his baby tub, causing him to drown, or worse, cutting his bath short before I get a chance to finish chipping the grime off of him.

3) He could discover that the drain really is a portal to another, better world filled with toys, kitties, TV remotes and bite-sized chunks of cheese, but that, unfortunately, he is too fat to fit through the portal. He'd get stuck halfway in the drain, with his soapy derriere sticking up and his chubby legs waving frantically. That would render my tub pretty much useless, since that would stop up the drain. At the very least, it'd cost me a house call from a plumber. And half an infant.

So I can't just have the kid running amok in the tub. I need another, better method of de-stinkifying the little bugger. I've been brainstorming a few ideas, which I will share with you now:

1) I could put in him in the backyard and spray him with a garden hose. The upside: No mess to clean up afterward. The downside: His ear-splitting screams might arouse the suspicion of my neighbors, netting me yet another visit from Child Protective Services.

2) I could spray him down with Formula 409 and wipe him with a kitchen sponge. The upside: Formula 409 cleans even the toughest stains. The downside: Central nervous system damage, possibly resulting in hair loss and reduced motor skills.

3) I could put him in a little red wagon and send him through the drive-thru car wash at the corner Exxon station. The upside: Cleaned and dried in under 3 minutes. The downside: I'd probably be the one who has to pull the red wagon through, which would mean we'd both be getting a bath. And since I vowed never to wash my hoo-ha again after sleeping with Steven Tyler backstage at an Aerosmith concert in 1997, I can't allow that to happen.

So those are my options, and none of them are total winners. If you have any better ideas, please share them. In the meantime, I will just stop bathing him altogether. The upside: One less chore for me to do! The downside: He'll eventually smell like a dumpster full of severed gopher feet. So any advice you have will be appreciated.

I'm like Match.com for felons.

I have a dilemma. I don't expect any of you yahoos to have a solution for me, but I'll tell you anyway, because if you can't tell your problem to faceless strangers on the internet, who can you tell them to?

I met and became friendly with a very nice girl over the weekend. In the course of our conversations, she asked me to keep her in mind for any of my single male friends, since she's unattached and is looking for someone. Being the helpful sort, I quickly agreed, and set to work mentally sorting through my male friends to see who might be available and a good match for her. My enthusiastic, "Let's help this girl out!" attitude quickly deflated like a balloon when it became clear that in assessing my single male comrades for love candidates, I was doing something akin to rooting through dumpsters looking for something to wear to the prom.

Don't get me wrong, I love these guys--that's why I call them my friends. But most of them have, shall we say, issues. And let's face it, part of my love and affection for them is probably rooted in my relief over the fact that I'm only friends with them, and not trying to slog through a romantic relationship with them. While I would recommend them highly if someone were asking for referrals for good friends to hang out and have fun with, I don't think I can, in good conscience, foist any of them upon this sweet, respectable female acquaintance of mine. I'd suffer from seller's guilt, as if I were trying to scam her into buying a car that I knew was a lemon.

Let's run through the list of eligible bachelors in my friend pool:

-I have one friend who spent several years and several thousand dollars on a coke habit, then several more years and several more thousand on a meth habit, then settled into the more economical life of a major pothead.

- I have one friend who woke up in emergency room one night to discover his stomach was being pumped, and his blood alcohol was .37.

- I have one friend who drove from Missouri to Florida to visit his dad, bringing along a girl for company a girl he had recently met and was interested in. But it wasn't long before they started to get on each others' nerves, eventually getting into an argument of some kind...so at a bathroom break in Georgia, he drove off and left her at a gas station. And no, he didn't go back for her.

- I have one friend who I once saw buy a rose for his girlfriend. We were in a bar, and a lady was going from table to table with a basket of roses, trying to guilt-trip men into buying them for their dates. When Todd said "Sure, I'll buy one," his girlfriend Jennifer was shocked, as were the rest of us, since none of us would have dreamed he'd try to do anything romantic or sweet. Her face lit up as he paid for it, and we all said, "Wow, how nice!" as she blushed and smiled. When Todd finished paying for the rose, he turned to Jennifer and proceeded to whack her on the head with the rose over and over until every petal had fallen off. Then he handed her the thorny stem, which she accepted with a look of crushing disappointment and total resignation.

- I have one friend who has two kids by two different girls (neither of whom he married), and he still lives with his mom despite being in his mid-30s. He's probably been gainfully employed a total of 11 months in his entire adult life.

- I have one friend who drives a car that's painted only with primer. I've tried at length to explain to him that he will never, ever get laid until he paints his car, but he's either very stubborn or completely asexual, because he steadfastly refuses to paint it, preferring, for some inconceivable reason, to drive around town in his primermobile.

- I have one friend who has spent time in two different mental institutions.

- I have one friend with the most mind-bogglingly extensive porn collection, both in video and in print, that you can imagine. Go ahead, imagine. No, it's bigger than that.

- I have one friend who used to have masturbation contests with his roommate. They'd each lay on one of the two couches in his living room and watch porn, then race to see who could finish masturbating first. Whoever finished first would get up and go to the couch where the other one was still at it, and try to distract him so he couldn't finish.

- I have one friend who claims to have slept with over 200 girls, a figure which doesn't surprise me at all. I've known him to sleep with 2 or 3 in the same night, usually without remembering even their first names.

- I have one friend who, after a night of drunken debauchery, woke up stark naked in the living room of a strange house, with a naked female stranger passed out on one side of him, and an empty bottle of cooking oil on the other side of him.

- I have one friend who cheated on wife #1 with the girl who eventually became wife #2, who he eventually cheated on with one of my gay male friends.

-I have one friend who gave one of my female friends crabs. (And no, this isn't the one I already told you about. Or the other one I told you about.) STDs are so prevalent among my male friends that the Atlanta Center for Disease Control probably has most of them on their Most Wanted list.

- I have another friend who gave one of my female friends chlamydia, which is bad in two ways: It's depressing and demoralizing enough just having a diseased hoo-ha, but it's just downright cruel when the very name of the hoo-ha disease mocks you by starting with "clam."

So you can see my quandary. If my male friends were assembled in a mail-order husband catalogue, it would look more like a collection of mugshots at the local police station. If I do set this lovely girl up with one of my, um, colorful male friends, I'll have to sit up nights wondering if she's somehow gotten stuck bailing him out of jail, or cleaning up his puke, or notifying his mother of his unexpected demise, or becoming a drug mule for him. But I do want to help her out, and I would like to see her meet a nice guy, so tell me, do any of you have any nice, single male friends you can let me borrow?

Procreate your way to financial stability

People seem to think it costs money to have children. I hear people say things all the time like, "We're going to wait to have a baby until we're making a little more money and can afford it." I admit, I used to be under this misconception myself. I thought it was very, very important to wait til I was financially stable before going forth and multiplying. (I can hear you out there saying that perhaps I should have waited til I was mentally stable as well. Or is that the voice in my head again?)

Turns out I was wrong about the expense issue. Jake saves us money, big time.

For one thing, Brian and I used to go out every weekend with friends to bars and restaurants. Both Friday and Saturday night, sometimes even on Sunday. Now we very rarely go out. When we do, we drink like old grannies rather than like frat boys, like we used to, because it's no fun getting drunk when you know you'll be up at 7 am with a cheerful infant who seems innately driven to turn the TV on and off over and over by pressing the big power button on the front panel. So we daintily sip on a modest couple of drinks and then go home before midnight like the old folks we've become. On the drive home, we shake our fists at the cars that pass us, shouting "Slow down, you young whippersnappers, before you kill everyone on the road!"

In addition, I used to do a lot of drive-by shopping. I'd be driving by department store, and I'd think, "I'll pop in and see what 's on sale." Although I'm a big cheapskate when it comes to clothing and shoes, only buying things if I get them for a good price, it doesn't take long for the numbers to add up when you're constantly popping in at the drop of a hat. However, now that I have Jake, I'd rather go naked than take him to the ladies' department of any store to try on clothes. He sits in his stroller and twists and contorts himself like a bendy straw as he whines about being confined to his seat. I put toys on the little tray in front of him to keep him entertained, and he swiftly snatches them up and tosses them overboard, so that I have to get on my hands and knees and ferret them out from under the racks of clothes. As I push the stroller along, his arms are permanently outstretched, hands open to grab anything that comes within reach. Whatever Snatchy McGrabby is able to secure in his grubby mitts is then quickly deposited on the floor for his dutiful mommy to pick up. Eventually the tortured howling starts, and that's when the fun ends. I now understand why Julia says " I would willing pay $500 million thousand trillion (per annum) to avoid shopping with [my son] Patrick."

Interestingly, while Jake pointedly dislikes cruising around his stroller for any length of time, he loves to sit in a shopping cart. I have one of these nifty things, which is comfy for him to sit in, has some toys attached to it, and keeps him from licking from the shopping cart handles the bacteria of the million syphilis-riddled crack-whore shoppers who have gone before us. We can shop for any length of time like this, with him happily chirping away and pointing at things we pass. Observe my cheerful shopping companion, riding like a prince in his grocery cart:

Of course, the problem lies in the fact that lots of stores don't have shopping carts, especially clothing stores. They have those big mesh bags for you to carry over your shoulder, which I'm guessing Jake would not be as happy to ride in as he is the shopping cart. Still other clothing stores do have a cart of sorts, but it's a strange contraption that really amounts to a huge mesh bag on wheels. Also probably not something Jake would like to be stuffed into. A real shopping cart, such as the one pictured above, is crucial to a successful shopping jaunt.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago, in anticipation of his first birthday party, I stopped at a card and party store to see what kind of nifty kid crap I might find to decorate my hovel. I thought I'd be safe doing this, despite the fact that they didn't have any shopping carts, because I knew we wouldn't be in there long, and I assumed Jake would take at least a few minutes to get bored and cranky. I was wrong. The twisting and fidgeting and grabbing and complaining began almost instantly, as well as the disdainful tossing overboard of everything I tried to put on his little tray to amuse him. At first I put some effort into trying to chat him up and keep him happy, but seeing it was in vain, eventually I decided to just grin and bear the crabbiness and try to just accomplish my mission as quickly as possible. So I stopped messing with him and just minded my own shopping business. He whined a little, moaned some, and then eventually emitted such a plaintive little mooing sound that I leaned forward to get a peek at him...and discovered a breakdown in the system. Not being seatbelted in (since I figured this would be such a quick and easy trip), he had twisted and writhed in his crabbiness to the point that he had completely slid off his seat, and would have plopped to the floor if not for the little tray that was keeping him barely hanging on. His little body had easily slid under the tray toward the floor, but his fat head would not quite fit. Below is a picture of a stroller, and although it's not the same stroller we have, it's close enough. Imagine Jake's fat head wedged halfway under the tray, with the rest of his body dangling off the front of the stroller as he meowed sadly for help. Even as I was hustling to rescue him, I was lamenting the fact that the laws of good motherhood prevented me from taking a moment to stop and snap his picture first. You would have enjoyed it. You would have called the cops immediately on me, but you would have had a private chuckle first.

Another way Jake saves us money is in preventing us from traveling. We used to take off work now and then for a weekend or a week of vacation, sometimes flying, sometimes driving. I know lots of people travel with their children, but there's nothing about spending a week in a hotel room repeatedly removing the un-babyproofed electrical cords from Jake's slobbery mouth that sounds fun or relaxing to me. Nor does the fact that he gets bored in a stroller in under 10 minutes bode well for the prospect of keeping him entertained on a plane for a 2 hour flight, or more horrifying to imagine, a car ride for 6 hours. While I haven't checked into it, I am willing to bet that it's illegal to give a child moose tranquilizer just to keep him quiet during travel, and since I can't think of any other solutions, travel is simply out of the question til he turns 12.

So by my calculations, Jake has saved us close to 4 billion dollars in the past year, money we would have foolishly squandered on booze, restaurant meals, hotels, flights, and clothes.

"Yes," you're probably thinking, "but what about the things you have to buy for Jake that you didn't have to buy before, like diapers and baby food?" Good question, but I assure you those are small expenses in comparison to the massive savings mentioned above. Take diapers, for instance. Diapers are about 23 cents each, which could add up if we changed his diaper 5 or 6 times a day. But being the thrifty, forward thinkers we are, we've figured out that it's cheaper and easier to put him in an adult diaper, which is so much larger than a baby diaper that we only have to change it once every few days, rather than once every few hours. Clever, no? Think about it: Do you empty your kitchen trash bag every time you toss a banana peel or a coffee filter into it? No, you wait til it's good and full and then change it. Furthermore, do you put a teeny tiny little trash bag in your kitchen? No, you put a good-sized trash bag in there, which takes longer to fill up. So it's only logical to use the same principle with babies and diapers.

As far as food goes, that's pretty cheap, too. We feed him birdseed, which is far more economical than pricey baby food. And since babies grow out of their clothes in a matter of minutes, we leave him naked the majority of the time, except for his Depend undergarment. That adds up to big savings on clothing. Think, people. Don't just keep handing Babies R Us your wallets simply because they say you need all that expensive stuff.

In conclusion, I'd just like to assure you that babies are nowhere near as costly as you think. You've just got to think outside the box, and keep one step ahead of Child Protective Services. Now go reproduce.

Lessons I've Learned, Part 10

Let your underwear be a camouflage for your ass.

I don't have time to recount here the many and various times I've made a fool of myself, nor do you have enough years left to read them all before you die. But I'll tell you about one of them, and I'll leave you to speculate how many hundreds more exist in the record books.

Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror about two hours after a meal and noticed you had some huge, incredibly eye-catching, uniquely disgusting bit of food stuck in your teeth? Or maybe a couple hours after your last lipstick application, you notice a big smear of lipstick across your chin, or maybe a couple hours after your last killing spree you notice an unsightly streak of blood across your forehead? Whatever the faux-pas, your reaction is always basically the same: Once you realize how goofy you look, your mind starts reeling back over the previous few hours as you wonder how many people saw you in this condition. Suddenly those just-slightly "off" looks people were giving you make sense. First, you're embarrassed for yourself, and then your embarrassment turns to anger at the parade of people who obviously took note of your appearance and didn't say a thing to alert you that something was amiss.

At my previous job we used a parking garage with valet parking. We had no choice--it was the only parking available downtown, so our company paid for us to valet park there. This might sound like a perk to you, but it sucked. I prefer to drive vehicles with a standard transmission, and at the time I drove an Isuzu Rodeo with a stick shift. As it happened, only one of the parking garage attendants knew how to drive a stick, so sometimes I had to wait 20 minutes for that one yahoo to become available to get my car. And their so-called safety rules prevented me from being able to get the thing myself, despite the fact that I was often able to see it from where I stood fuming. How can it be that a person who is hired to park cars only knows how to drive half the cars out there? Shouldn't that be a job requirement for a guy who valet parks? Eventually when it was time to trade my car in, I went against my preference and bought a vehicle with an automatic transmission just so I could get my car from the stupid parking garage without having to wait forever. That's neither here nor there, I just wanted to bitch about that. At any rate, I liked all the guys who worked at the parking garage and they liked me, and we often exchanged pleasantries while I waited for my car.

One day Mike, one of the attendants, was acting a little bit "off" while I was babbling to him about God-knows-what. He just kind of gazed at me with this glassy look in his eyes and didn't have much to say, which was unusual for him. Normally, he chatted away and flirted, but today there was clearly something wrong. I'm incredibly self-critical, so I assumed I had said something to offend him--which wouldn't be unusual for me, since I often yap before I think, and then am later aghast when it suddenly hits me how insensitive/retarded/high-on-PCP I must have sounded. So on my drive home, after taking note of Mike's strange gaze following me as I got into my car and drove away, I mulled over our past few conversations in my mind, picking them apart to find the offending barb. I couldn't pinpoint anything, but then again, the truly insensitive/retarded/high-on-PCP aren't always cognizant of their blunders, even when they try to be, so the fact that I couldn't think of what I'd done wrong certainly didn't mean I hadn't done anything wrong. I pondered it for awhile, eventually giving up and moving on to other thoughts. I went home home to relax for the evening.

At some point, I went to the bathroom at home--which is where everything suddenly snapped unhappily into focus. I was wearing a cute pair of black dress pants with an unusual design--they zipped up the back rather than the front or side, and were fastened above the zipper with a single button. I reached behind me and unbuttoned them, then went to unzip them--and realized they were already unzipped. They had been unzipped for hours. Stricken, I buttoned them back up again and left them unzipped, twisting in front of the mirror to see what I had looked like for the past few hours. This was not the kind of unzipped fly that you barely notice--I was wearing black slacks, a black, short-waisted sweater, and the whitest panties money could buy. With the button fastened and the zipper unzipped, my virginal white panties presented themselves in a huge, gaping 4-inch long oval that seemed to start at my waist and run halfway down my butt. To top it off, my panties weren't cotton, but kind of a sheer material, in spite of their glaring whiteness. I had truly made an ass out of myself. The only thing I was grateful for was that I hadn't been wearing a thong.

Naturally I did that thing I mentioned above--I stood there in my bathroom, mind racing back over the last few hours to determine who had seen my big white ass and cheerfully declined to alert me to the fact that I was strolling about half-nude. By my calculations, it had been probably about three hours since my last trip to the bathroom, which must have been where the problem originated, and in that span of time I had interacted with probably 15 people or more. All of them wretched, disease-riddled, soulless weasels without the slightest remorse for letting me sashay around town with my hiney on display. I wished them all a painful death by fire.

The next day I accosted each one of the gutless swine who had been with me in the midst of my previous day's streaking incident, and demanded to know why they hadn't said anything. My coworkers claimed not to have noticed, which was bad on two fronts: Either it meant they were all big fat liars, or, considering they were all men, it meant that apparently not one of them ever took an interest in looking at my ass. So either I was working with a pack of lying scumbags, or worse, I was an unattractive toad who my male coworkers did not readily identify as "female" in any way. When I interrogated Mike, the parking garage traitor, he paled at the mention of my panties and began to stammer and wet himself, offering me no explanation for why he had allowed me to humiliate myself.

So I learned a lesson that day. No, not "zip up your pants," goofball. I learned that one right about the time my mom potty trained me. This was an accident, and there's no way to guarantee I'll never again have another wardrobe malfunction after using the bathroom. No, the lesson is to wear panties similar in color to my clothes. Not matching--that's a little overboard. But if I'm wearing dark colored pants, I wear dark colored panties, just in case my ass ever makes another public appearance without my consent. I'll still look like a dumbshit, but hopefully only the very alert few will notice it this time. And the extra bonus is that if fewer people notice me making a fool of myself, I'll have fewer people to wish cancer upon later when I count up how many people could have bailed me out and chose not to.