My kids are slowly creeping up on an age where they should probably engage in some extra curricular activities.  The only problem is is that I don’t want to watch them engage in said activities because from what I can tell these are mostly on Saturday mornings which I have reserved for sleeping in, watching my kids watch cartoons, and eating doughnuts.  The primary activity that seems to be the default go to is youth soccer.  One of my problems with soccer is that it sucks balls to watch even when professional athletes who are being paid millions of dollars play it, there’s no way it isn’t horrible to watch when five year olds are engaged in such a uneventful sport as soccer.  Not only does my high level of intelligence and insight tell me youth soccer is god awful, I also had a brief career as a referee for youth soccer when I was in college.  I knew very little about actual soccer rules,  but it didn’t really matter because youth soccer isn’t really about rules, it’s about trying to keep the kids from attracting to the soccer ball as if they were frat guys who stumbled on a hot chick mere drinks away from passing out.  That being said and despite my lack of knowledge of the so called “rules” of soccer, I did have one thing going for me, I was the one who kept time.  I had a stop watch and the halves were suppose to be 12 minutes, by the end of the day they were 7 or 8 minutes.  Some of the astute parents may have noticed, but they were probably greatful,  I’m sure they  wanted to watch college football just as much as I did.

I have had people tell me soccer isn’t that bad, it may not be that bad but is it as good as sleeping in? Watching your kids watch cartoons?  Or eating doughnuts?  Of course it isn’t and I’m not trading any of those things in right now so that I can be forced into attending a youth soccer game, plus I’m sure there is a practice or two during the week that I would have to drag my kids to as well. (This is not an endorsement of football, football is just as boring as soccer with three times more injuries, most of them being catastrophic in nature) I’m not caving into the peer pressure of forcing my kids into playing a sport that they could give two shits about and that in all honesty, I hope they never play.  The crazy thing is, and I don’t know how this happened, but my oldest, Tod, all of a sudden decided he wanted to take karate classes.  I had hoped he was like his mom in the fact that she gets an idea in her head, is diligent about pursuing it for maybe 48 to 72 hours and then completely forgets about it, I would like to attribute it to her ADHD but who really knows what the exact cause of it is, it may have something to do with the fact that she has a vagina, I have a sneaking suspicion a lot of women are like this.  On that note, I’m sure she has had the idea of replacing me pop into her head but at some point realized it would take too much work and follow through to pull off, instead she decided to up the value of my life insurance policy.

I am digressing somewhat from where this was going, so bare with me since it’s been a while since I have blogged.  Shirley has had a number of ideas that have struck me as compulsive and not very well thought out.  One in particular was her desire to buy a camper.  I hate camping even more than I hate soccer so I played along and went to see some campers at a few places that sold campers, I even pulled a few used ones up on Craig’s list and showed her them just to keep the ruse going that I was as interested in a camper as she was.  Sure enough, a week went by and the camper idea fell by the way side like many of her other ideas had.

Unfortunately, her trips to Costco don’t allow me to implement this type of strategy in limiting her purchases.  Her latest fiasco occurred when I was golfing on a Saturday morning.  I came back and we had a brand new blender.  Here’s what happens with brand new blenders similar to what happens with tread mills and Nintendo Wii, they get used for a week and then the next thing you know they are being sold at your garage sale.  Normally I don’t even bother to ask how much something costs, but this blender appeared to be the Cadillac Esacalade of blenders so I had to at least inquire.  (the most I have ever spent on a blender is $30). As I inquired, Shirley indicated that it was probably as much as my golf all summer had cost, immediately I thought to myself “holy shit!” and then realized that my wife had no idea how much I actually golf and what the total sum of those greens fees would be, but I was still a bit alarmed.  She ended up spilling the beans and told me the blender was $500, my reaction was as if I had missed a three foot putt that would have won me the Masters, I was quite livid.  Here is what I don’t understand, how can a watch be thousands of dollars and how can a blender be $500? They do one thing, tell time and blend.  Fortunately I was somewhat calm in my approach to explaining how absolutely ridiculous spending $500 on a blender was.  As Tod and Ted watched on drinking their freshly blended smoothies, Shirley agreed to return the blender.

As with Shirley’s typically unsound wants and desires, I thought I could put off Tod’s request to attend karate by prolonging my search for the perfect karate class.  However, he kept bugging me on a weekly basis about going to karate.  I finally caved and found a karate class that received rave reviews on Google.  We arrived about two minutes before the scheduled 5:30 class, which was a gold star for us, and I signed the paper work to get Tod started.  Unfortunately the class was geared more for older kids and Aiden appeared to be the youngest enrolled by at least a year.  The instructor lined them up and had them do some rudimentary stretching which Aiden was struggling to accomplish.  Bad sign?  Hell yes, but what was even worse was when they got to jumping jacks.  He resembled an epileptic gold fish who had been spilled on the bathroom floor on the way to being flushed down the toilet.  I’m pretty sure at that point the instructor thought to himself as did I “this kid is in way over his head”.  After the failed attempt at jumping jacks the instructor paired the kids off and they began to do some karate moves.  The problem here was that most of the moves required the participants to do two things at once, the only activities Tod is capable of doing in conjunction with one another is eating and watching television.  He was on the struggle bus from the get go but was a good sport about it and gave it his all never feeling as self conscious as he should have.

One thing I did fail to mention was that all the other kids had their black karate robes on and Aiden was wearing jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt.  This was my bad, I could have at least brought along a pair of weenie benders for him to wear so he didn’t look entirely out of the ordinary.  (a karate robe is part of the deal if you sign up for three months of classes, I’m tempted to just buy him a karate robe on line and forego the classes). Initially he was quite concerned about not having his robe which is truly remarkable that kids that age realize when they are different and are actually that self conscious about it.  Ultimately, the karate maneuvers were completed and the final exercise was a team race where the kids were split up in two different teams.  Each team had to race to the end of the room and around a karate punching dummy with a bean bag balanced on their head.  Aiden’s team got out to a spectacular start but were severely bogged down when he came up and trudged his way around the dummy.  Fortunately for him there were some other inept kids  on his team and the loss could not solely be attributed to him.  The second event in the race involved a similar goal but instead of running they had to do high leg kicks the entire way.  This was even more of a struggle for Aiden but his team somehow managed to barely come out on top so his ineptitude was overlooked by his teammates but not by his dad.

As I was shuffling out of the class the instructor caught my attention.  I was worried he was going to try to talk me into bringing Tod back for another round, but I hadn’t given him enough credit.  Instead he told me about a Monday or Wednesday class for Young Dragons that is geared towards 3 to 5 year olds where Tod can work on his motor skills and core muscle development, as well as probably get beat up by his three year old brother since he can also be enrolled in the class.  When I told Aiden the news of a different class his response was “do I get to wear a robe?”  I answered in the affirmative and he asked me at least a half dozen more times on the way home about the robe.  While watching 3 to 5 year olds engage in karate exercises isn’t my ideal way to spend a Monday after work I still have sleeping in, watching my kids watch cartoons, and doughnuts to look forward to.  I love my Saturday mornings.

Some time ago I was riding in my truck with Tod and Ted and Tod asked me this question “Dad, do you love golf more than you love us?”  It was quite evident Shirley had been not too happy with the amount of golf I had been playing at the time, and that’s just the golf she actually knew about.  Ultimately I questioned her about the propaganda she obviously was hurdling upon the kids in regards to their father, and she denied it completely.  My kids are smart, but there is no way at this age they should come to the realization that I love golf more than I love them.  Eventually they would have figured that out on their own, but for now let them live in complete ignorance Shirley,  ignorance is bliss.

I will admit this, the question caught me off guard, but the appropriate response would have been this.  “That’s an interesting question.  Tod, you and Ted really like ice cream don’t you?  You would eat it three times a day if you could, right?  Now there’s some ice cream that you like better than others and when that ice cream is available it makes you really happy, way happier than eating vanilla ice cream, right?”

“Of course dad, ice cream is the greatest thing ever.  I can’t imagine there being anything I like more than ice cream.”

“Tod, I would love it if ice cream was always your favorite thing in the world, but I have a feeling when you get into your teenage years, if memory serves me correct, there is something out there that is going to blast by ice cream as if it were standing still, there will be an appropriate time and place for me to apprise you of what that is, and right now is not that time and place.  So back to my point, your happiness when it comes to ice cream is probably correlated to how long it has been since you have had ice cream, the type of ice cream you are eating, and the amount, right”

“I’ve always been happy when I have had ice cream, are there different levels of happiness?”

“Of course there are, when we let you watch a half hour of tv your happy right?  But how happy are you when we let you watch an entire two hour movie?”

“Really happy?”

“Exactly, and that’s what I am trying to get at here, wether or not I like something better than something else is contingent on a whole lot of things.  If I’m playing a real nice golf course, it’s a beautiful day, and I’m playing well, golf is my favorite thing to do, even above spending time with you guys.  This is especially true if its the day after I have had to  take care of you guys for three nights in a row because your mom has had to work late and you guys were being dicks the entire time.  I still love you guys, but I don’t like hanging out with you and  I like playing golf way  more than spending time with you guys.  But on the other hand, if it’s a crappy day, I’m slicing the ball and have absolutely no idea where it is going to go, and I haven’t seen you guys in a couple weeks, I would probably, and I’m not saying that I’m 100% sure, but at least 80 percent sure, I would want to be with you guys instead of on the golf course.”

“Besides where did you get the idea that I love golf more than you guys?  Which I don’t by the way, I would just rather golf than hang out with you guys, I’m sure the tables will be turned in 10 years when you figure out how to masturbate and suddenly gain interest in the opposite sex, you’ll begrudgingly talk to me once in a while but that will be about it and it will likely only be for the sole purpose of hitting me up for some money or to use my car”

“Well mom said you spend way too much time golfing and that she never gets to have a Thursday to herself because of your dumb golf league.”

“Well, you guys should probably hear this now, what you have to understand about married women, which includes your mom, is that their entire fulfillment hinges on their husbands.  Married women will pretend to have friends, but they are really just people who  they choose to hang out with who also have kids so that they can sit around and talk about you guys, I know, right, totally boring.  Guys on the other hand engage in activities that allow them to get away from their families and avoid talking about their kids.  We have hobbies such as golf, bowling, and watching sports that allow us to retain some degree of sanity.  Don’t get me wrong, there are women who have hobbies, but they are called lesbians and you probably want to steer clear of them because they will probably be better at most of the so called hobbies than you are, and that can be quite emasculating.  So, the harsh truth is that as much as your mom wants to bad mouth my hobbies and interests, I have encouraged her to do the same as me and find some hobbies and interests. In all reality, I’ve actually encouraged her to engage in hobbies with attractive women, i’ve suggested she start with pillow fights and see where it takes her as well as to make sure to document it via video, unfortunately she hasn’t taken me up on it yet.  Here’s the deal, the problem is she doesn’t want to hang out with other women on a regular basis because women are boring.  Does that all make sense to you?  You guys probably already know this, but there are maybe three women in the entire world who are actually funny, and then there’s a large group of women who have been artificially labeled funny because their women, kind of an affirmative action form of humor labeling for women.  That’s probably the primary reason women don’t’ hang out with other women all that often.  I don’t know about you guys but I like to laugh, and I’m not laughing when I’m with a room full of women I can tell you that much.  Does that make sense?”

“Not really, can we go get some ice cream?”

“Sure.”

 

 

Recently I took my kids to the MVP pool because it was the last week of summer for them.  School starts on Monday and I gave them three options of a fun activity to do to close out the summer and they opted for the pool.  I was hoping they would choose the splash pad down in St. Joseph so we could stop in South Haven on the way home at Sherman’s for ice cream.  No such luck, and instead of Ice Cream they ended up getting smoothies at the pool.  The trip to the pool was relatively uneventful but for two things, the first thing was that within five minutes of arriving at the pool the lifeguards blew the whistles, I immediately thought one of my kids may be drowning even thought they have had two years of Goldfish swimming lessons and last I checked were in 18 inches of water.  Unfortunately it was worse, much worse, someone had dropped a log in the pool and everyone was ordered out while the turd clean up crew went to work ridding the pool of it’s contaminants.  In my mind they should have tracked down the parent, I am assuming it was a child who crapped the pool but I guess it could have been an adult, of the culprit and immediately revoke their membership and force them to swim in the Grand Rapids city pools next summer.

We were stuck out of the pool for about a half hour while the decontamination took place.  What I didn’t understand is how do they completely decontaminate the pool without putting fresh water in it?  There’s no way they can eradicate every single turd molecule from the free floating turd they discovered.  Oh well, in light of the fact that there are probably hundreds of gallons of urine in the pool already, a few pieces of turd can’t be that harmful.  The second incident hit closer to home.  There’s a playground adjacent to the pool and Ted had decided to drop his swimsuit and take a leak in the middle of said playground.  This was just the latest in behavior that could eventually land him on the sex offender registry. A couple weeks ago he pulled out his junk in the middle of Target.  The peeing thing is understandable because I routinely catch him out on the front steps of our house watering the bushes with his own hose.  I’m partially to blame because I encourage this behavior, I have always been an advocate of peeing outside and prefer it over trying to get all my urine into a toilet bowl.  When your outside there’s no spraying the rim of the toilet, or in extreme occasions having it shoot off to the side and onto the floor or the wall.  This typically doesn’t happen to me, but my two kids have no aim and for the most part could care less if any or all of their pee makes it into the toilet. However, pulling his dick out in the middle of Target is disconcerting but hopefully just an isolated incident.  The only way all of their urine would end up in the toilet is if the bowl was the size of the opening on an industrialized trash can.

Taking my kids to the MVP pool made me think back to my childhood and realize that my kids will never be able to, or have to, do what I did as a kid if I wanted to go swimming in a pool. Looking back on my childhood this is one of the most ridiculous things we ever did as kids, and the crazy thing is it actually worked.  My group of child hood friends and I would go to three specific houses if we wanted to go swimming.  These three houses were the three residences in Byron Center that had in ground pools, there were plenty of above ground pools, but who the hell wants to swim in a welfare pool?   One of us would go to the door and ask if we could swim in their pool.  Can you imagine a group of kids doing this today? I want to say that our parents actually knew we did this but I am not certain they did, but if they did what in the world was wrong with them?  Letting your kids go to random people’s homes and ask if they can swim in their pool,  that’s some pretty bad parenting even for the 80’s when children’s car seats just came into play, every kid’s lunch was stocked full of items that equalled at least ten times the USDA recommended in take of sugar (fruit roll ups?  What a misnomer, there was no fruit in those things) and we were allowed to be away from home during the summer and on weekends from sun up to sundown without ever having to check in.

My memory of how we actually figured out who had to go up and ask to use the pool is a bit blurry, I want to say we took turns, but regardless of the mechanism, it’s truly amazing none of us eventually became door to door salesman.  As an adult looking back on unsolicited use of a random strangers pool, I think the appropriate response would have been “get the fuck out of here” not “yes of course you can.”  On top of that, and thankfully this never happened, but what if one of us would have been injured or drown, that would have been a tough one to explain to the company carrying the home owner’s insurance.  “You did what?  You let a bunch of random kids you didn’t know swim in your pool unsupervised?”

“Yes, of course they were unsupervised you think I am going to sit out there and watch a bunch of kids I don’t know play grab ass in my pool?”

I would think, and don’t quote me on this, but any type of insurance coverage is immediately void and null once you let a bunch of random mongrel kids into your pool.  On top of the three in ground pools that were available were we willing to sum up the courage to merely ask to use them, there was also a former residence that was converted into an office building that had an underground pool.  As a kid I wondered why anyone in their right mind would move out of a house that had an in ground pool and I was even more perplexed by the thought of a house with a pool becoming a business with a pool.  Now I realize that owning a pool is a complete pain in the ass and the upkeep and expense of having a pool is rarely worth it (the only time the labor and cost can pay off  is if you are into swinging, orgies in pools have got to be terrific).  So, when we were really desperate we would go swimming after business hours in that pool.  What added insult to injury was the fact that the business pool was way better than any of the other pools we swam in, it was at least 12 feet deep, had an incredibly springy diving board as well as a slide.  However, there were a few awkward moments when someone from the business would show up with their family to swim after hours.  Some times they didn’t care we were there, sometimes they did.

I do believe there is a business opportunity here loosely based upon the allowing of random strangers to use your pool.  There’s air B and B for people who have residences they don’t utilize or for some reason are vacant (or in the case of my brother occupied but with a spare bedroom) why not do the same thing with pools.  Most people I know with pools rarely use them and wish they could get rid of them, why not rent them out for parties or for groups of kids like me and my friends when we were kids?  It could be a gold mine.  Probably not as lucrative as my UBER KIDS idea where you have an uber driver drive your kids to their activities.  (seriously, who wouldn’t utilize this service, what a gigantic pain in the ass carting your kids around to their various activities)  I’m sure kids now a days can put enough scratch together to pay for the utilization of a random strangers pool as well as for an Uber driver to give them a ride to the pool.  This pool idea coupled with uber for kids may very well bring us back to the parenting of the 80’s when you didn’t have to pay any attention to your kids and you had absolutely no idea what they were doing unless they were asleep.

 

“So, what brings you in here today?”

“Well, Doc, can I call you Doc?  I haven’t seen a medical professional in about four years and I figured it’s time to get things checked out just to make sure everything is as it should be.”

“I guess you can call me Doc, if that is how you would prefer to address me.  Did you have any questions or concerns before we get started with the exam?”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s a concern more of a problem if you will, my back hair keeps growing with no end in sight.  I just happened to get a good look at what is going on back there when I was getting out of the shower the other day and it’s a mess.  In all honesty you could put my back hair in a braid, the good news is it’s blonde so it’s a little less noticeable than the average guy, but why do I need back hair or ear hair for that matter?   I try to keep on top of my ear hair but every once in a while I’ll neglect for a week or so and all of a sudden I have long hairs protruding out of my ear hole.  You can’t tell me that I need ear hair to stay warm or back hair.  I guess prior to the days of clothing back and chest hair may have been of some benefit, but I don’t see ear hair as a substitute for a good set of ear muffs or a winter hat.  On top of that I have a minimal amount of hair on my arms and legs, I actually have had women mention how jealous they are of me because if they had my legs they would only have to shave them once a month, however I am a chia pet from shoulders to my waste, makes no sense to me.”

“I don’t know what to tell you about the hair thing, I must have missed that day of med school.  However, they have made amazing advancements in hair removal these days, maybe you should give that a shot.”

“Whoa, not sure I’m up for doing something that extreme, and then once I get started on a hair removal regimen I’m probably going to have to continue on a semi regular basis getting it done.  Look, I am surprised my wife is willing to sleep in the same bed with me let along have sex with me, but that’s on her, the hair warning signs we were dating, fortunately I have an amazing sense of humor and a terrific personality to make up for my over abundance of hair.  Thank goodness she only met my grandpa once and he wasn’t shirtless at the time, the guy looked like a throw rug he had so much back and chest hair, had she known what my future held it may have been a deal breaker.  Now, you expect me to go into some stranger and have them git rid of all of this hair, what if the person doing the hair removal is a hot female?  Pretty sure I can’t handle that type of embarrassment, it’s why I wear a t-shirt at the community pool and at the beech, I know people are wondering why I am swimming with a t-shirt on because I’m in such great shape, obviously you know fat people are typically the ones relegated to keeping their shirt on in water.”

“Did you want to put your shirt on under your gown to hide all your hair?  It seems to be a sensitive issue for you and I want you to be as comfortable as possible.”

“No big deal Doc, you’re not that attractive so it really doesn’t bother me if you see all my faults, or should I say my only fault.”

“Ok, glad that you are comfortable allowing me to see your blemishes.  Are you ready for the exam?”

“Sure thing, let’s get this party started.  Oh, also I would really like another shot at the weigh in, you can’t get an accurate reading with all my clothes on, if you could have the nurse bring a scale in here after you are done I’ll jump on there in my birthday suit so we can get my actual weight.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, we don’t need to be that exact with your weight, unless that is another one of your insecurities.”

“I’ll just go home and get an accurate reading and call it in if that will be easier, you want me to hop up on that exam table so we can get the ball rolling?”

“Sure thing, I am going to need you to take a deep breath, ok breath out, take another deep breath, you can breath out again…..

“Well you seem to be in really good shape.  We are going to need to get some blood work done and that will take care of everything and last but not least,  did you want me to do the testicular cancer exam?  Also, if you do want that done did you want a chaperone?”

“Chaperone?  Is that code for a threesome?  As long as the chaperone is a female I’m game, while your not my type it would be pretty tough to turn down a potential threesome if the gender odds are in my favor.”

“No, that isn’t what I meant by a chaperone, I meant someone to watch me do the exam to ensure that I am not doing anything inappropriate.”

“Inappropriate?  Is that even possible? It’s been so long since I have had a foreign set of hands handling  my junk that I’m not going to object to anything, as far as I’m concerned give me the 100 point check down there if you know what I mean.  Also, I do have to warn you, I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen down there when you start rolling my nuts around in your fingers.”

“This is an exam that is solely for the purpose of detecting testicular cancer, no more, no less.”

“Ok doc, but I’ll just close my eyes while you are down there doing your thing and let my imagination do the rest.”

“Did you realize that your penis lists to the right?”

“Of course I did, I thought it was as sign of superior intelligence and extreme prowess in the bedroom.  I spend a lot of time in locker rooms and I can’t help but notice some of the other guys in the locker room, it’s like a horror movie you have to look.  Which is another issue I have, I read somewhere that a person’s nose and earlobes continue to grow throughout life, well you know what else continues to grow, at least based upon my observations in the locker room, a guys nut sack, I saw a guy yesterday who was bending over and his balls went half way down his thigh.  This phenomena seems even more pointless than back and ear hair.  You would really be surprised about the lack of modesty in the men’s locker room, especially the old dudes, they are shameless.  I actually saw one guy taking a hair dryer with his leg perched up on a bench and blow drying his pubes.  My wife tells me the women’s locker room is the antithesis of the men’s room, I’m not going to lie, that killed a lot of the fantasies I had imagined about what goes on in there.  Anyway, I haven’t seen anyone else who has the right leaning penis that I do, figured I was special.”

“Well, I don’t think it is a cause for concern or a sign of greatness, but it may have been caused by some scar tissue.”

“Scar tissue, not sure I have had anything that would have caused any scar tissue, I bet it’s just because I’m right handed.  Also, I was talking to my wife Shirley the other day about the whole colonoscopy thing and told her it’s no longer necessary.  She works at a hospital and thinks she knows everything about medicine even though she’s employed in the legal department.  She said I was wrong and that there is no blood test available to test for colon or prostate cancer.”

“Actually, there are a number of alternatives that can be utilized and most of them are blood tests.  There is one where we actually test a person’s fecal matter.  A person would put saran wrap over the toilet and collect a sample to be tested.  There are also different things that can be done depending on if you have a family history of colon rectal cancer.”

“Pooping on saran wrap, that sounds like it could be a recipe for disaster, why not just drop a log into a five gallon bucket?  Seems like that would be a lot less riskier.”

“We don’t typically keep poop buckets around our medical facility.  I also forgot to ask you one of the questions I typically ask in our initial intake.  Do you consume alcohol and if so how often and did you consume some prior to this appointment?”

“Before I answer that, what do most people say is their weekly, or daily consumption?  I don’t want you to think I am a lush or anything.”

“2 to 3 drinks per week is an acceptable amount?”

“You have any tests you can run that determine the over all health of a person’s liver?”

 

Last night the Jansma family went to the Whitecaps game.  The game was fairly uneventful but for the fact that the Pitcher from the Hotrods ended up intentionally throwing at a Whitecaps player, was tossed, and then his manager went absolutely bonkers.  My question is why? it’s minor league baseball, absolutely no one gives a shit, we are all here for the dippin dots (they claim it’s the ice cream of the future, if that’s the case I don’t want any part of the future).  Regardless, I paid a minimal amount of attention to the game and what was truly surprising was the number of players in their mid 20’s putting up pedestrian numbers.  Most of the players had 3 to 6 home runs, a mediocre batting average, and were indistinguishable from the next guy.  I explained to Shirley on the way to the game, because she had no idea and thought that the Whitecap players either went directly to Detroit or to the Toledo Mudhens, that there isa  Connecticut rookie ball affiliate for the Tigers, Single A whitecaps, high A lakeland, AA Eerie, and then triple A Toledo.  If you are in your mid twenties and doing a little better than what Softball Guy would be doing if he were in your shoes, it’s time to hang up the cleats and get a job selling insurance or working at Craig’s Cruisers.

The other thing that I noticed as I was barely paying attention was that the stadium had a bouncy house and that would allow me to take my kids away from the purgatory I was in for a brief period of time.  You see, it is an annual rite of summer passage for the Jansma’s to attend a Whitecaps game thanks to the generosity of the Law Firm of Warner, Nocross, & Judd.  They have a suite, which is kind of cool because there is free food and beer, but you can get trapped talking to some pretty uninteresting people when you are stuck in a suite.  Fortunately, this year it was mostly people that new better than to try and spark up a conversation with me, or were actually ok to converse with. Despite the fairly innocuous composition of the suite I still thought the bouncy house was a good idea.

We made our way over to the bouncy house only to be stuck behind a raptor, not the pick up truck, but a latex version of a raptor dinosaur with a person in it.  It was one of the lamest things I had ever seen and even my kids thought it was ridiculous.  You could see the guys legs in the feet of the raptor making it pretty obvious to anyone above the age of 0 that the thing wasn’t real.  On top of that, the thing had a really long and uncontrollable tail that kept hitting unsuspecting fans in the head (the dinosaur actually had handlers dressed in kaki outfits that seemed to think it was hilarious when people were hit in the head by the tail).  In my mind it was an unintentional infliction of emotional distress, but I didn’t hand out any business cards because what would be your damages?  I can’t go to any more Whitecaps games out of fear of being whacked by a dinosaur tail, thats not damages, that’s a win in my book.

After passing the dinosaur in the fast lane of traffic we managed to make it to the bouncy house.  Conveniently located next to the bouncy house was a pitching station with a radar gun.  This comes into play later, but first the bouncy house.  There was an elderly women who was the bouncy house attendant/security.  She seemed incapable of staying alive watching the six o’clock news let alone tending to a bouncy house full of screaming kids.  And when I say full of screaming kids, I actually mean six, that’s right only six kids at a time.  This was a rule strictly enforced by Gertrude and when someone suggested a few extra kids wouldn’t hurt she said “no way, I’ll lose my job.”   First off I assumed this was merely a volunteer position so she could get out of the house and force people to speak to her in her roll as the bouncy house bouncer (I didn’t even try to do that).  It’s actually her job, if I have to engage in this type of work when I’m that old someone just pump me so full of cocaine that the top of my head comes off.  Second off, you can throw at least 15 kids in one of those things, and what fun is a bouncy house if there isn’t the risk of an injury significant enough to require a trip to the ER lurking around every corner.

While Tod, Ted, and I stood in line I grew inpatient.  There seemed to be no real line protocol being followed and as Gertrude shuttled kids in and out on a five minute rotation I began to worry that we were going to get fucked over.  Sure enough some women, who was fat by the way, grabbed one of her kids who wasn’t in line and put him in front of my two kids.  He had a forehead the size of a drive in movie screen and a vacant look in his eyes.  My kids would have been up if it hand’t been for this interloper, but no, we had to wait another five minutes.

I felt entirely powerless because I couldn’t be the asshole I typically am in these circumstances.  My kids were around as well as whole bunch of other kids.  How this should have been resolved was the way everything should be resolved, arm wrestling.  Yes, if we used the ancient art of arm wrestling to decide arguments and defuse conflict the world would be a much better place.  It worked for Sylvester Stalone in Over the Top, in fact through arm wrestling he was able to garner custody of his son, it’s way better than I have ever been able to do for my clients and I have a law degree.  I can just see it now, your honor we actually  have a settlement, ok we have two different settlements.  Hold on counselor that’s confusing but I guess you can put them both on the record.  No, no your honor we are going to arm wrestle to see which settlement we go with.  Imagine picking your attorney solely based on their arm wrestling ability, it would give a lot of Cooley grads hope.  GO COOLEY!  (For those who don’t know, they are the Phoenix University of law schools)

I’m not sure why I am a proponent of using arm wrestling to settle arguments, I have short alligator like arms and the strength of Kenyan distance runner, actually it’s quite possible Shirley could beat me in arm wrestling, she’s lanky and has surprising arm strength from having to carry our two kids who were quite plump as infants.  However, it just seems like a much more efficient way of doing things.  Imagine you get pulled over on a traffic stop for running a red light.  You can take it to court by hiring an attorney or you can arm wrestle the cop who gave you the ticket.  (I’d probably just pay the ticket because I don’t know any good attorneys and I suck at arm wrestling, but I’m sure there’s plenty of people who would opt for arm wrestling)

Now to the pitching machine.  I feel like I should buy one of these set ups and take it wherever there is going to be a large contingent of hilrods.  Country music concerts, tractor pulls, the zoo.  You should have seem them lining up to take a crack at this thing.  First off  I would never submit myself to this type of public humiliation because I know my fast ball wouldn’t break 50mph, but also trying to throw as hard as you can without warming up is a recipe  for either a torn rotator cuff or a blown out elbow.  There is a bullpen for a reason, so pitchers can warm up their arms prior to trying to throw as hard as they can.  The guy manning the pitching booth merely handed the contestants three balls and told them to have at it.  Hill rod after Hill rod went up and threw the balls so hard I’m confident some of them sharted upon releasing the ball.  That being said, the hardest thrown so called “fast” ball clocked in at 62mph.  I really wished it had been GLAD/GLBTQ night at the ballpark so that some super butch lesbo could have gone up there and thrown an 85 mph fastball and completely emasculated all the guys who thought they were the second coming of Justin Verlander.

As I was walking away from the bouncy house I saw two bros arguing about who was better at pitching since they both through their top pitch at 59 MPH.  I quickly approached them and said “Hey, I know how you can settle this once and for all….”

 

 

 

 

“Hello, could I please speak with Mr. Jizzma?”

“I’m not sure I should admit this, because you are either a solicitor or a telemarketer because you just butchered my name, but it’s the first time I’ve heard it pronounced that way, at lest that way not jokingly, so I’ll bite.”

“So, this is Mr. Jizzma?”

“Sure, I can be Mr. Jizzma today?  Who do I have the privilege of speaking with?”

“This is Bokur, I’m with MBNA credit cards, and I was calling about a debt that you owe my employer.”

“MBNA credit cards?  I haven’t had a credit card since I signed up for that Spirit card to get $50 off a flight to Vegas, turns out they had a $50 annual fee, really got screwed on that deal, suppose you need to read the fine print.  In all honesty, and I have taken out  a few credit cards, especially when I was just getting out of law school and living under the poverty line.  I honestly had to deliberate over purchasing a slurpee one time because I wasn’t quite sure it was financially feasible, then I just ended up buying two bags of doritos and the slurpee and putting it on my credit card.  Also, on top of the $50 annual fee on their credit card, which is complete and utter bullshit, their airline sucks, possibly the worst airline ever, and I have flown some shitty airlines, I have flown on Allegiant and I also flew on Air South from Grand Rapids to Ft. Lauderdale.  We made four stops on the way down there, fortunately none of them were emergency stops, they were all scheduled, but four stops on a flight that typically is 2 and  a half hours, that’s a sign of a mediocre airline right there, but Spirit is the absolute worst.”

“Sorry to hear that, no this MBNA credit card was actually taken out by you in 1994 in Panama City Beach Florida.  It had a $300 credit limit, but you now owe us $9,380.  with late fees and interest.”

“Holy shit, I do vaguely remember taking that credit card out to get a free t-shirt and to use in case of emergency if I ran out of money and needed to buy more beer and cold cut combos from Subway.  I think I set the world record for number of cold cut combos consumed in one week, by the end of the week my bowel movements were exactly a foot long.”

“The t-shirts suck everyone in, drunk college kids, educated professionals, and every one in between can’t resist the lure of a “free” t-shirt, they will run races through mud that require them to be electrocuted, sign up for credit cards they don’t want or need, or even hurdle over other spectators at sporting events risking death, just to try and get a free t-shirt.”

“Being Dutch it’s quite difficult to pass up free, while the car wash is a truly terrifying experience, they get me every time with their free vacuums, granted I have my own at home and it’s a much better set up, but I always feel like I’m getting one over on them when I use their vacuum, especially when I don’t actually get a car wash.  Unfortunately, it looks like this supposed free t-shirt is going to cost me around $9,000.  I can’t believe I could have been this delinquent in my payments, I have a credit score north of 800 and in all honesty would have thought I would have found out about this decades ago.”

“Do you still live at 601 College Park Drive Heights Illinois?”

“Hold on here, that was my address when I applied for the card, that’s where I went to College, you were sending my statements to that address?  Damn you Bernice!  Bernice was the person who worked in our mail room, she was bordering on corpse when I went there and I often times wondered if she was alive when I went to purchase stamps, but she somehow always managed to get me the right change and the proper number of stamps.  There’s little chance she’s still alive, even though she may have only been 37 at the time since everyone looked really old when I was in college.  Regardless, I need someone to blame and I’m blaming her.  Hopefully she’s dead so I can go after her estate for the $9,380 since she didn’t properly forward my mail to me.”

“Sorry sir, I don’t know what to tell you, what most kids your age did was immediately cancel the credit card, by the time their t-shirt had shrunk to the point it was no longer wearable their card was canceled?”

“Seriously, you want to blame this on me, I was in college, I’m a procrastinator, always have been and always will be.  This is what I do, I think to myself about things I should do, like say cancel a credit card, then I tell myself “I’m too busy watching tv to do that, I’ll take care of it tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes and I say the same thing until a tomorrow comes where I completely forget I even have a credit card and then decades later I’m $9k in the hole.  You want to know how long it took me to put my Y family membership on hold?  We stopped going there in April and I just put it on hold today, fortunately for the Y they just ran my automatic payment for July so now I can’t put it on hold for another month.  Who goes to the Y in the summer?  I didn’t even go there much in the winter when my kids were driving me crazy and there was absolutely nothing else to do, do you really think I am going to go there when it is sunny and 80 every day.  My oldest keeps saying he wants to go to the Y, I immediately want to ask him what the fuck is wrong with you?  People don’t actually go to the gym they merely acquire memberships to the gym so they can feel like they belong to something and tell other people they belong to something.  I’m seriously thinking about starting an internet gym, I’m quite confident it will be a huge hit.”

“It’s hard for me to relate to what you refer to as a gym, in India there are so many people that live here we don’t have room for frivolous things like gyms and we don’t have time for exercising.  Now, I am just calling as a polite reminder that you payment is now 7,678 days past due.  The minimum payment due is $20.”

“So, all you need me to pay is $20?  Wow, I spent more than $20 renting two movies from Red Box last week.  That’s right it’s under $2 a day but I kept telling myself I would watch the movies tomorrow and then a week later I hadn’t watched either one of the movies.  I think I actually watch maybe one out of every three movies I rent at RedBox, that would be a solid average if I was a major league baseball player, but I’m not, and even though a movie I have never heard of starring people I have never heard of with a Rotten Tomato score of 42% seems like a great idea at the time, it never really works out for me.  Also, I need to tell you I have a Netflix membership as well, I have been paying $8 a month for a movie that I have had at my house since November, my mom lost the return envelope when she was cleaning our house and I haven’t gotten around to requesting a new return envelope from Netflix, part of it is I have been quite busy and part of it is that I have no idea how to get a new envelope.”

“Once again it is hard for me to relate, we don’t have enough room in our tiny houses for television or dvd players so I really can’t sympathize with you.”

“Well then India must really suck if you have no need for gym and movie memberships that you never really use.  On top of that I took an uber home a while back, left my phone in the car, and ended up signing up for a find my phone app that takes out a monthly fee every month.  Turns out you  need your phone initially to be able to get it to actually find your phone when it comes up missing.  Granted, some people may have the foresight to do this, but not me, what good is a find your phone app that needs you to have your phone if you eventually want to be able to find your lost phone?  On top of that, now I don’t even know how to get the contact information to cancel the app I actually installed so there is absolutely no way I will ever be able to cancel the service, meaning they will be taking $7.95 from me every month until my debit card expires in August of 2017.  Part of me feels like I should lose my phone just so I can get my money’s worth.  Oh and my apologies ahead of time if you don’t have find my phone apps or uber over there, which I am sure you don’t because India sucks.”

“Well sir, can you make your minimum payment today?”

“Can I get back to you?  I really need to think about this.”

Towards the end of Tod’s third, and what will hopefully be his final year of pre-school, I accompanied him on a field trip.  The filed trip was sold as a visit to the “pond” behind the middle school.  I wasn’t too terribly excited about going on field trip with a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds and was a bit skeptical about an activity centered around visiting a body of water behind a school.  Ultimately I didn’t back out and the morning of the field trip Tod and I set off to meet up with his class mates.  Tod is in the Caledonia school system and I thought I knew exactly where the pond was that the event was taking place at, but when we got to where I thought we would be meeting there was only a group of three teachers who appeared to be gossiping and seemed annoyed by my presence.  So, I became more and more angry as I drove around between the high school and middle school trying to figure out where the pond was.  Damn you Shirley, you should have told me exactly where I needed to meet up with Tod’s class, this is all her fault.  Whenever something goes wrong I need a target for my anger, obviously nothing can be my fault, and it is completely healthy to direct my misplaced feelings of contempt upon some unknowing recipient.

I was really torn as to what to do in this situation.  Not being able to locate the class and the requisite pond gave me an opening to get entirely out of the field trip.  I suggested to Tod that we go get doughnuts instead, but he seemed to have his heart set on the trip to the pond.  I decided to do the right thing and park my vehicle so the two of us could go search for his classmates.  Unfortunately we found them, they were just getting started and had a bunch of nets to attempt and scoop creatures out of what was not any thing close to being a pond but was merely a swamp.  However, in the interest of drumming up participants in the field trip they made the right move by claiming we were visiting a pond.  Seriously, even the most faithful field trip attender would have reservations about blowing their morning going to the swamp behind the middle school.  I can be home watching the Kelly and Michael show (couldn’t ABC come up with a better name for that show?) or I can go look for disgusting creatures in a mirky body of water with a bunch of kids who eat their boogers and frequently make weird noises for no apparent reason?

What added insult to injury was the fact that Tod’s teacher told me when I arrived that she didn’t wait for us because she didn’t think we were coming.  We definitely could have opted for the doughnut route with no real repercussions.  I immediately new that I was in for a painful experience when I discovered there was nothing interesting that could be pulled out of this swamp.  They had been at for at least ten minutes before we arrived and nothing remarkable had been pulled out of the swamp.  I decided to grab a net and managed to pull out three tadpoles within five minutes of being there.  Yep, I’m the pre-school field trip equivalent of the crocodile hunter the only difference is I wasn’t dressed in khaki from head to toe.

The supposed silver lining to this thing was that there was definitely going to be a nice ratio of women to men on this field trip due to the fact that we were in the Caledonia school system.  My guess was that the Caledonia school system is chalked full of families adhering to the traditional family model where the mom stays at home while dad goes out to bring home the bacon.   I was absolutely right about that and the ratio was probably about 8 to 1, the unfortunate thing is there wasn’t a looker in the bunch.  Granted, I’m happily married and Shirley is the apple of my eye, but it never hurts to have a few attractive women think to themselves “who is that guy? I mean he’s not that good looking, but he’s here on a field trip with his son and his half hearted attempt at parenting is kind of cute, I really appreciate the way he tries to interact with his kid in-between checking his phone, he must be a keeper regardless of the fact that he has no hair.”   Women can get past the superficial stuff if there are redeeming qualities that are more than skin deep, guys can’t.   However, dealing the lack of talent was actually the least of my problems as we continued to forage through the swamp.  First of all, I grew bored after pulling out three tadpoles and was wondering when this debacle of a field trip was going to conclude.  No one seemed to be in a hurry to get out of there so I immediately began to prepare an exit plan until Tod’s teacher informed us that there would be a snack time followed by a trip to the high school to meet up with the FAA (Future Farmer’s of America).

Now I was forced to stick it out, not only for the snack time, but there was no way I could justifiably leave the field trip early if there was the possibility of a worthwhile activity rearing its ugly head.  Had we continued in the swamp I would have had no problems leaving because it was a complete waste of time, but hanging out with future farmers of America, that has potential, very limited potential, but potential none the less.  Ultimately, after a very disappointing snack of goldfish crackers and water (I thought the swamp was bad, but the snack was the equivalent of having to go to Chernobyl on a field trip) we made our way to the high school to meet up with the Caledonia’s future farmer’s of America.  They had a classroom with a green house and also a mini trout pond (a large hot tub like container with water in it containing fish that was quite cloudy due to all the fish poop in it making it difficult to actually see the fish).

The class was run by an instructor who was wearing cowboy boots and had an Oklahoma State Cowboys vanity plate on his Dodge Ram pickup. He had brought a couple sheep from home to sheer for the pre-schoolers.  In addition, each kid was able to pair up with one of the students and pick out seeds to put in a plastic glass filled with dirt to try and grow at home.  This was definitely a step up from the swamp excursion and didn’t cause me near as much anxiety because I knew it would be over once we planted our seeds and the sheep were sheered.  We ended up picking bean seeds even though the likelihood of actually having the seeds germinate was lower than being able to grow potatoes on Mars, we have a fish that is somehow still alive only through pure  luck, but if we have to be responsible for making something come to life it doesn’t have a chance.

The kids in the class seemed real nice and I immediately envisioned Tod and Ted somehow becoming loosely affiliated with the Caledonia chapter of the FAA so they could intermingle with these types of kids.  I ended up approaching the instructor after all the kids were done petting the sheered sheep (the sheep were completely loosing their minds, it’s one thing to be sheered but to have a bunch of pre-schoolers pawing at you afterwards, that’s insufferable)  and asking him about FFA.

“So, my names Jason I was actually a CFA, current farmer of America, I worked on a celery farm for three years.  It was the worst three years of my life.  You ever actually work on a farm?”

“I have a garden where I grow cucumbers, tomatoes, and green beans.  That’s about all it takes to get this gig, that and a pair of cowboy boots and a Dodge Ram, the school actually pays for my gas.  Can you believe I make 80 grand to teach a bunch of kids how to grow green beans and barber sheep?”

“It’s a great gig, I was kind of hoping my kids could somehow get affiliated with it, I don’t want them actually having to be a part of FFA, their mom would never let them actually do manual labor, they are a bit too soft for that and she would probably think farming is way too dangerous, but if they could somehow just hang out with the actual members of the FFA that would be terrific.  I’d even let them wear cowboy boots if that was what it takes, they could be honorary members, kind of like when some celebrity who briefly attended a college gets an honorary degree for not doing shit.  I feel like getting them in with the FFA crowd will keep them from becoming hipsters, Emo’s, or even worse, theatre dorks.”

“I’m not sure how we would actually be able to get them involved with the FFA without actually making them participate in the proscribed activities, we don’t really have honorary members of our group, it’s all or nothing, cowboy boots, dodge trucks, and confederate flag belt buckles.  Your kids are going to have to get their hands dirty if you want to keep them clear of less desirable social groups that kids typically gravitate towards in high school.”

“My only other hope is that they would become jocks, but you actually have to have an innate skill set if you want to get in with that crowd, and I’m quite certain my kids don’t have that skill set, however their mom’s entire family is comprised of gun toting Ted Nugent wanna be’s, what does it take to get my own organization started in this school? It could be an off shoot of FFA, Future Hunters and Meat Eaters of America, FHMEA for short, all you would do all day is shoot shit, I realize the anti gun nuts may have a problem with kids shooting guns at school, but I think it could be a real success.”

“Interesting, I love guns, and I have been looking for an excuse to put a gun rack in my Dodge Ram on the school’s dime, let me talk to our administration about this and get back to you, this thing takes off and I may be able to double my salary.”

 

 

 

 

Last night I came home from water skiing to find that my kids were actually in bed and Shirley was watching the Bachelorette.  One of these things surprised me and one didn’t.  Shirley has an amazing tolerance for terrible reality TV, she loves Survivor, Bachelor, and Big Brother.   My kids have no tolerance for going to bed until the sun has completely set, they are the antithesis of a vampire.    Shirley claimed that the kids were waiting for me to get home and that I needed to go check on them.  I actually think she was hoping I would go upstairs, see my bed, and decide it was a much better option than being forced to watch the Bachelorette in an attempt to wait her out.  Fortunately for me I decided to see what this installment of the Bachelorette had to offer.

It’s pretty obvious that the Bachelorette and Bachelor are loosely casted and not a random draw and likely scripted. They have to have either a super crazy chick or a super douchey guy depending on if it’s the Bachelor or Bachelorette.  I joined the episode in progress and they were going to ESPN in LA for a group date.  Some of the potential suitors were doing their interviews as they led up to the  group date and were alluding to a specific guy who they all thought was going to ruin the group date.  I asked Shirley who the douche bag was and she said “you’ll see.”  It was fairly obvious as the group date progressed that this season’s go to DB was Chad.  Ultimately he ended up calling all the guys out for immediately telling the Bachelorette that she was amazing and that spending time with her made them the happiest people on the planet.  He went on to chastise them for falling all over themselves to impress her asking them if they had ever been around a beautiful women before?

I have to commend Chad for going after his fellow contestants.  Seriously, what if this year’s Bachelorette, JO JO, has nipple hair?  I’m sorry but these guys would not be treating her like the second coming of Scarlet Johansen if she had nipple hair, that’s a deal breaker my friends, I dated a girl in college who had this affliction and let me tell you it was quite difficult to get past.  Even my own nipple hair, and I’m a guy, grosses me out.  Despite the ridiculousness of their immediate undying affection for someone who could have the stinkiest farts in the world or own multiple cats, these guys are all in merely because you have to be, it’s how you win the game.

Little did I know that this episode was actually last weeks episode and not the most current installment of the show.  However, it was a great introduction to Chad and he doubled down as the episode progressed and thanks to the amazing invention called the DVR I can hopefully catch up before tonight’s episode.  (Shirley stayed up and watch the most recent episode but even my sex drive couldn’t keep me awake through another episode of the Bachelorette, the only problem is I’m not sure how I feel about watching an episode of the Bachelorette by myself)  A large contingent of the guys on the show hate Chad and are perplexed by the fact that the Jo Jo can’t decipher what a gigantic douche the guy actually is.  The conglomerate of Chad haters is spearheaded by some guy who looks to be about 5’2′, has a bunch of tats, and claims to be a former marine.

Wether he loves a person or hates a person he refers to them as bro which automatically makes him an even bigger douche than everyone who was a cast member on Jersey Shore.  The entire conglomerate were putty in Chad’s hand and he did what every nut job ever to appear on the show does, he butted in to everyone else’s one on one time with the Jo Jo and stole her away from them.  Classic move by Chad that infuriated all of the other contestants causing them to become completely unhinged.  Needless to say, our 5’2 bro had a confrontation with Chad that almost led to fisticuffs but clearly indicated that both these guys were going to be getting roses for the foreseeable future.  Seriously either one of them could give Jo Jo a Dutch Oven and they would get a rose because ABC is not going to let these guys leave.  This was further affirmed at the Rose ceremony where Chad received the final rose.

Heterosexual bachelor/bachelorette is a somewhat entertaining show that I have learned to live with because my willingness to watch it shows my complete and utter dedication to my wife and typically results in a pay off.  However, why does this show have to be limited to men pursing a women or a group of  women pursuing a man.  Can’t we have men after a man or women after a woman?  Of course we can’t, no one, regardless of how open minded they may seem or actually be wants to watch that unfold over a season of television.  It’s quite evident that the networks, as liberal as they may be,  realize this is ratings suicide and don’t want to have their only advertising options be the WNBA, Amazon, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.    I’m fairly open minded and I wouldn’t want to see a homosexual version of either show, unless it was comprised entirely of hot lesbians (which is probably an impossibility)  having pillow fights in their underwear, i’d watch that all day every day.

This idea of having a version of the bachelor for each sexual orientation leads to a somewhat related issue that was receiving quite a bit of attention a little over a month ago.  The idea that we need to create transgender restrooms.  Here’s the deal, when I was in high school the toilet stall in the 10th grade boy’s room didn’t have a door on it.  My entire sophomore year I never took a shit at school.   This may seem strange, but 10th grade was the youngest grade when I was in high school and there was no way I was venturing into another grade level’s restroom to try and take a crap, constipation as awful as it may seem, was a welcome alternative to going big ock in unchartered territory.   I learned to adapt and knew that if I wanted to take a shit during the day I would have to do so under extreme conditions.  The result, I didn’t take a shit at school.  My oldest doesn’t poop at daycare because they feel he’s capable of wiping his own butt and would make him do so (he’s not, at least not effectively) he’s a chip off the old block, at least when it comes to pooping at school, I’m fairly competent at wiping myself.

So if I was put through such extreme bathroom anxiety when I was in 10th grade, a particularly stressful time of life even if your high school has a door on the stall of the bathroom, why shouldn’t transgendered individuals be able to navigate bathroom distress?  Besides, haven’t these people proposing transgender restrooms heard of Speedway gas stations?   Speedway gas stations not only  have the most incredible fountain drink selection they also have individual bathrooms where you can lock the entrance so no one can join you.  Speedways are just about everywhere, however I would suggest avoiding the restrooms at the Speedway locations that have bullet proof glass protecting the cashiers, those tend to be a bit dicey,  only in the most dire of circumstances have I dropped a deuce at one of those locations.  That being said, unless you are miles and miles away from a gas station or a student at South Christian high school, there is no practical need for this country to spend millions of dollars to accommodate a small segment of society requesting facilities that typically are readily available to them.

For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am an attorney who derives a fair amount of my practice from drunk driving cases.  That being said, there has been a noticeable downturn in drunk driving work since the advent of Uber.  On a positive note, Uber has gotten me home safe and sound on a number of occasions when I was in no shape to drive and I applaud Uber and what it has done to decrease the prevalence of drunk  drivers on the roadways.  In addition, I “left” my wallet in my uber ride on the last night of bowling league and spent the entire next day without a phone.  Having no phone isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but my phone case is actually a glorified wallet that holds all of my access cards, debit card, and Id’s.  I actually enjoyed having no phone for a day and it was quite refreshing to know that I couldn’t get in touch with anyone and no one could get in touch with me.  It was like going back in a time capsule to the days where the only way to reach someone was through a landline or a pay phone.  I decided not to cancel my personal debit card or firm card because I had a good feeling uber was going to come through for me.

Sure enough, at about 6pm the following day my Uber driver, who I didn’t even recognize when he showed up to drop my wallet off, called Shirley to let her know he had my phone and indicated he could swing by to drop it off.  Upon his arrival I ran out and embraced him, picking him up in my arms, telling him he was the most amazing uber driver ever.  OK, I didn’t exactly do that, but I did give him $50 for his troubles and openly wept as I clutched my phone/wallet.  “I will never do that to you again phone/wallet, did he treat you ok?  I still love you just as much as I have always loved you, daddy just needs to let loose every once in a while, but next time he’s only going to have cash with him when he feels like letting loose.  Did you miss me?  I missed you!”

So, Uber is terrific right?  For now it is, truly an amazing concept that has changed the way people get from point A to point B intoxicated.   In addition, it allows for both parities in a relationship to go imbibe as much alcohol as they want since there is no need for one of them to be the designated driver.  But you know what would be even better than Uber?  Not needing a driver at all.  That’s right we are not far away from a time and place where cars are able to operate without drivers.  In the not too distant past this concept seemed like complete science fiction, but now it’s entirely possible my kids, age 3 and 5 will never need to learn how to drive.   I remember attending driver’s education at Byron Center High School and sitting through movie’s where they would try to scare the shit out of you so that you would have no choice but to be a safe driver out of pure fear. (and that was way before the dangers of texting and driving, I can’t even begin to imagine how horrifying current driver’s ed movies are)  On top of that there was hours of driving and it wasn’t just you and the instructor, they’d pack a couple other pimply faced dipshits in the car as well and you would have to ride in the back watching your life flash before your eyes and hoping the brake on the instructor’s side of the car was fully functional.  One time I actually tried a left turn into on coming traffic at a blinking red left turn light, the instructor practically stood on the brake.

Imagine getting your first car and it’s self driven?  Kind of seems like it would take the fun out of driving if you don’t actually get to drive the car.  I suppose they are going to have to make people get their rider’s license at some point.  Rider’s training where you just have to learn how to effectively ride in a self driven car.  Sign me up to run the rider’s training school, seems like one of the best gigs ever, and probably about as unnecessary as the greeters at Meijer stores.  I’m sorry but Meijer is such an amazing place you could have someone telling me at the door to get the fuck out of there and it wouldn’t deter me one bit, why do I need some old person creeping me out as they welcome me into the store?  This issue of a rider’s license does raise a question, at what age are kids able to ride by themselves?  When they no longer need a booster seat?  When they are able to order through a drive through?  I can just imagine if Tod and Ted are rocking their own self driving car after getting out of their booster seats. “Tod let’s go through the Culver’s drive thru again, I want to try their flavor of the week this time.”

“No, they already told us ten consecutive time’s through is the limit, if  we go for 11 we may end up having to eat Frosty’s for the rest of the week.  I say we head over to Toy’s R Us there is some new Ninja Turtle toys that are suppose to be coming out today in anticipation of their new movie, one of the new action figures look just like Megan Fox, and I heard it’s anatomically correct.”

Imagine never having to bring your kid’s anywhere, your self driving car does all the work.  Obviously they would have to reach a certain age first, but hell you would never see your kids if they had their own car that drove itself.  The mall, the movies, swimming  lessons, soccer, being a parent suddenly doesn’t sound manageable if you aren’t carting their ungrateful asses all over the place while they turn your car into a pig sty.

Are these new cars going to have something akin to parental controls on them for wives to keep their husbands away from specific businesses and husbands to do the same with their wives?  Damn it!  Why won’t this thing let me go to Sensations, I love their buffet.  Imagine if women could program the car to stay at least five miles away from all golf courses on the weekends?  Likewise, men being able to keep their wive’s vehicles from going with in walking distance of a Target could be just what the doctor ordered for some couples.  Or, in the alternative, if your wife (or I guess husband, but women seem much less concerned about outward appearances) seems to be putting on a few too many lb’s you program her vehicle to take her to the gym instead of the evening dining out she had planned with her friends.

Here are just a few things self driving cars could eliminate, auto insurance and the douche bags who sell insurance as well as any commercial with Flo in them, drunk driving, road rage, The Bernstein advantage (They claim to be Michigan’s first family of law, which is complete bullshit, Shirley and I should be Michigan’s first family of law) due to the fact that the majority of their cases are auto injury cases, traffic cops, and gridlock.  However, I do wonder how construction zones would work.  How does the car know when to merge?  Wouldn’t it be maddening to be in a vehicle that merged two miles before it was absolutely necessary and there was nothing you could do about it?   Granted, the trade off would be that you wouldn’t have to watch the random car go about a mile further then they should only to have some softy let them merge into traffic.  “What are you doing!  Don’t let him in.”  Honestly, I fantasize about a scenario where someone who does that is never allowed in to merge and they are stuck on the outside looking in for hours.  People who merge at the last minute, regardless of their religious affiliation,  are going to hell right?

The reality is that the self driven car will bring a lot of good into the world and probably eradicate a lot of the bad, but it’s biggest achievement will probably have to do with race and gender relations.  With the self driving car in play white males in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s will no longer be the only good driver’s on the road, we will all be equal.  Oh well, I’m sure there is plenty more I could write about when it comes to the self driven car, but I have to get out of here so I can beat rush hour traffic.

In November of 2015 my life changed for the better.  I was turned onto Starbuck’s cold brew coffee and I haven’t looked back.  Prior to jumping on the Starbuck’s bandwagon I didn’t realize what all the fuss was about.  Now, I am fully aware of the amazingness that is Starbucks.  The rational behind my jump to cold brew coffee was to continue to pump caffeine into my system as I weaned myself off diet coke and energy drinks.  Being Dutch I realized it was not financially feasible to drink two vente cold brews a day.  To continue my cold brew obsession without having to sacrifice retirement savings I decided to home brew most of my cold brew coffee.  (I still hit Starbuck’s once in a while, there’s a barista who reminds me of Natalie Portman at my local Starbucks, and I ‘m quite confident she thinks I’m super creepy, however one of the other barista’s actually recognized me and new exactly what my order was going to be, I still got it)  I probably need to quickly explain the cold brew process to keep this thing going in the  proper direction.  The process requires ground beans to be placed in a jar and then mixed with water.  12 hours later you have your self a delicious caffeinated beverage.

The problem with the cold brew is that it creates a ton of coffee grounds and very little actual coffee.  What compounds the problem is that Shirley lives in constant fear that our septic system is going to completely collapse and in turn our drain field will become unusable, making our house worthless unless we are  willing to go to the bathroom in five gallon buckets and bathe at the car wash (that would be a truly petrifying experience).  However irrational her fear may be, and it is along with a lot of other fears she has, none of which are of midgets or clowns which, completely rational fears, it definitely exacerbates her displeasure when coffee grounds are found in the sink.  This morning as I crafted a cold brew I wondered to myself “are coffee grounds bad for your septic system?”  There was a statement by Iron Man (Tony Stark) in the latest Marvels movie when he found coffee grounds in the sink at Avengers tower that would lead one to think coffee grounds may bring about the degradation of a septic system.  However, his credibility is completely shot due to the fact that he fought Captain America for the entire second half of the movie.

So, how was I to find out if coffee grounds are actually a threat to my entire existence?  Am I one more batch of coffee grounds from having to take a poop in a five gallon bucket?  Oh wonderful internet, I’m sure you have the answer for me.  It was the internet that allowed me to figure out how to cold brew, the internet that allowed Shirley to order my cold brew equipment on Amazon Prime, and the internet can most certainly tell me if I need to dump my grounds out back in the rubbish pile or just put them down the disposal.  However, before I could get out my phone and google the answer to my question I asked myself “how the heck did people figure this kind of shit out before Al Gore invented the internet (he did, just ask him)?  How did anyone figure anything out back then?  I realize a big portion of my life was PI (pre-internet) but I have totally blocked that out of my memory and any memories I have of that time have had internet inserted in them, it just make the memory a whole lot better with the internet in the background even if it didn’t actually exist back then.

AI (after internet) is the only way to go and I just did a little research to find out when the internet was invented by using the internet (no way I could have done that if we didn’t have the internet) and it appears it was invented in 1983 but the world wide web didn’t come about until 1990.  So, we are living in the year 26 AI.  I realize we have that AD BC thing we currently use, but how do you really know exactly when Jesus Christ was born? I feel like whoever came up with that concept to track time was just guesstemating on that date and we need to move on to PI/AI to track the course of time.

Prior to getting to 0 AI how did people know stuff?  How did they find out new stuff?  How did they keep track of the comings and goings of housewives and their empty lives?  (There was no Facebook)  Can you imagine trying to order take out back in the PI days?  First of all how did you figure out the phone number to the take out place?  Yellow pages, fuck that, that sounds like way too much work having to pull out a book and then figure out what category in that book to look under for the take out place you want to eat at.  On top of that, how do you know if it is any good, they may have some complimentary things in their yellow pages add that claim they are the best, but they came up with the advertisement, so it’s like me telling someone I’m good at sex, they aren’t going to know if I’m right unless they give me a shot.  Google reviews, Yelp, and other resources on the internet allow you to get mostly unbiased reviews (I’m sure there are people who write their own positive reviews and competitors who write negative reviews) but for the most part the reviews, if there are enough of them, are not going to steer you in the wrong direction.

Renting movies back in the PI days was a complete mine field of disappointment as well.  I realize renting movies is somewhat of a PI concept in and of itself, but there was a time where the internet did exist in conjunction with Blockbuster Video.   Back then you had to rely on what was on the cover of the movie jacket and the reviews that may have been placed on the cover of the jacket.  Now unless the movie stars Adam Sandler (meaning it is a complete turd sandwich)  a person typically has to rely on the internet and IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes to figure out if a particular movie is worth investing a couple hours of time into.

How would you answer the coffee grounds question in the PI days?  Go to the stack of Encyclopedias gathering dust in your living room?  Good luck finding the answer there.  You would probably have to call a plumber if you wanted a legitimate answer to your question and that would require you to procure a phone number to a plumber which requires the Yellow Pages.  That’s a whole lot of work when the alternative is to live in complete ignorance and just pour the coffee grounds down the drain hoping for the best.  Imagine the call you would have to make:

“Bob’s plumbing how can I help you?”

“Hey there Bob, do you guys deal with coffee grounds?”

“Coffee grounds, excuse me?”

“Yeah, coffee grounds, what kind of effect do they have on your plumbing and septic system?”

“We never covered that in plumbing school, you might want to call Maxwell House.”

How would you be able to find out who won the bronze medal at the 1984 summer olympics for men’s 110 meter hurdles?  Or the women’s decathlon at the 1992 olympics?  Where would you go to determine which country won the most medals in the 1976 winter olympics.  Some of you may ask yourselves “who gives a shit?”  My response, exactly.