Fresh Literature, Daily!

I have decided that it’s time for a career change. I’m tired of a thankless job in education, where I spend countless hours “behind the scenes” “molding the minds of America’s youth”. I want fame. I want glory. I want a job that gets me on television while I do the least actual amount of real work.

I want to be a UFO hunter.

I’m highly qualified for the job. I spent the majority of my pre-teen and adolescent years reading books about UFOs and aliens. I really liked the books by Daniel Cohen, mostly because they included the best illustrations of extraterrestrials. He had your classic alien archetypes: the black-eyed, short grey aliens, the blonde, beautiful Nordic aliens, the reptilian aliens, there wasn’t an alien he didn’t have in this book.

The most important thing that I learned from Daniel Cohen’s books was that, no matter what these aliens looked like, they were all a sort of intergalactic game warden: they’d abduct you, collect some genetic material (the beautiful Nordic aliens were apparently the most accommodating when it came to this), implant some sort of tracking probe, and leave you back in your bed, having wiped your mind. It was only after hours of expensive hypnosis therapy that you recalled the entire incident, and then got angry that they didn’t call you back, or even leave a number.

Ufology, when I was studying it, wasn’t considered a “real” science. All of the important evidence was heavily refuted, and ufologists were relegated to spending their time at obscure conventions hosted at Days Inns across the United States. It was a discipline mocked almost as heavily as astrology, or possibly even legal practice.

Popular perception has swung in ufology’s favor, especially in the past few years. The History Channel (official motto: We’re All About Hitler!) created UFO Hunters, wherein three men travel the world, visiting UFO hotspots and try to collect physical evidence of alien spaceships. This often entails spending hours sitting outside with cameras pointed towards the sky, taking sips of cold beer off-camera. I would be incredibly qualified to do this: a Ph.D. in chemistry taught me nothing, if not how to sit for long periods of time, hoping and praying that I’d get a semi-decent piece of data. Also, I’ve got the beer thing covered.

Now, UFOs are spoken of with the same serious breath used for chemistry, quantum physics and American Idol. Tourism to Roswell has steadily increased, especially during the Roswell UFO Festival. It’s a new and exciting field, and it needs to be populated by new and exciting men who are prepared to bring serious credence and methodology to it. Readers, I am that man. I am ready to hold that camera for long hours. I am ready to talk to every citizen of every small town that has ever experienced a UFO sighting. I am ready to wave a Geiger counter across entire acres of flattened grass.

Mostly, I am ready to drink cold beer and get paid to do it. I am certainly qualified for that.

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The Weight Watchers thing is going really well: I’m down 15 pounds in one month. I would attribute it to some nebulous personality trait such as “determination” or “self-control,” but there’s no way neither you nor I would believe that. The truth is that I don’t buy junk food at the store anymore. I don’t even go down the snack aisle! It’s a preservation tactic: I would probably be killed by Oreos flying off the shelves, screaming “Eat me with milk, fat man!” as I strolled down that aisle. Do screaming, suicidal cookies freak you out, too? I just don’t want to deal with that kind of nonsense, so I steer clear of anything that could be considered decadent.

Angie’s pregnant, and therefore not saddled with the same nutritional limitations as I am. Actually, she gets to eat mostly anything she wants, provided it’s not seafood or soft cheese. Abby’s developed a fondness for frozen pizzas and barbecue, and Angie’s happy to oblige. Our recent visit to Outlaw’s Barbecue didn’t end in divorce or manslaughter, which means I’ve learned my place. I don’t mind that she eats the lion’s share of smoky, slow-cooked meats, as long as she doesn’t tempt me with anything sweet.

I really should have explained that to Angie, before Wednesday.

We met Donna, my mother-in-law, on Wednesday night to pick Ema up from a visit. Donna jumps out of the car, opens the back of her SUV and hands me a large cardboard box. “Here’s Angie’s cookies!”

“Angie’s what?”

“Oh, I’m sorry honey. I forgot I ordered a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies!”

Girl Scout cookies are proof-positive that the gender wars are horribly stacked against the male of the species. Little girls in pressed uniforms are trained to offer the most tempting of sales pitches. “Hey mister, would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies,” Little Molly asks, “so I can go to camp to learn how to care for my blindness-stricken mother and cat?” Little Molly’s idol is Donald Trump, and she has no problem closing the deal. You give her whatever money you have, write a check for the last of your savings and take out a second mortgage so Little Molly can teach kitty-Braille to her cat.

And hey, you get delicious cookies out of the deal.

And delicious these cookies are. My favorites are Samoas: caramel-coconut cookies striped with fudge. If any part of that sounded bad to you, you’re a heartless monster that hates Christmas. Oh, Thin Mints are good, too. And Peanut Butter Patties. And…oh, heck, anything but those lemon cookies. Lemon cookies are the “Honorable Mentions” of the Girl Scout cookie race.

So, we now understand that I love Girl Scout cookies.

And that Angie bought approximately 3.5 metric tons of them.

And that they’re worth approximately five million Weight Watchers Points apiece.

“But Angie, I can’t have any!”

“I know, I’m sorry, honey!”

“But Angie, cookies!”

“I know!”

“I love cookies!”

“Honey, I’ll take them to work.”

“But your coworkers don’t love cookies like I do!”

“But you can’t have them.”

“I know!”

In the end, I had to acquiesce to her decision. The cookies were not safe in our house, and Angie would rack up major brownie points with her coworkers. I would go cookie-less, but for a greater cause.

Just don’t ask me what that cause is right now. I’m too busy thinking about cookies.

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WARNING: My mom curses in this one. Okay, I’m writing about her cursing, but you know what I mean.

Today’s my Mom’s birthday. I didn’t get her a gift because, frankly, she’d yell at me for wasting my money. That’s how moms are, I suppose. I know I wouldn’t mind if Ema bought me a nice birthday gift, or at least a pretty card. Maybe moms are just less selfish.

Anyway, since I can’t buy her anything, I can at least tell you one of the funniest stories that involves my Mom, physical discomfort and steroids. Okay, it’s the only story that involves all three of those, but it’s a good one.

One summer during my later teenage years, Mom finally got tired of the weeds growing up around our back porch. I could only mow so far under the back porch, and the Weed-Eater wouldn’t reach, either. Mom was small enough to climb under the porch, so one day she grabbed a pair of scissors and decided to do just that.

An hour later, she came out with the first armful of weeds. Ten minutes later, the second armful. A half-our later, all of the weeds and leaves were in a nice neat pile, which she then drenched in gasoline and set on fire. Compost? No, we deal with excess foliage in the south through more incendiary means. We didn’t have any hot dogs, or we’d have gotten a meal along with the show.

Dad came home from work about an hour after that. He noticed that Mom’s forearms were pink, and that she was scratching them. “Lois, honey, what did you do?”

“I cut those damned weeds out from under the back porch and burned them.”

“Honey, did you do that bare-armed?”

“Why Joe, yes. It’s too hot to wear long sleeves.”

“Honey, that was poison ivy growing under the back porch.”

“Well, shit. I reckon that’s why I’m itching so bad.”

Mom tried to brave it through the night with Calamine lotion. The next morning, she was first in line to see the doctor. The doctor gave her a cream and some Prednisone tablets. Prednisone is an immunosuppressant, which basically means that it tells the body to stop freaking out over something minor like poison ivy. It causes the itching to stop while the poison ivy is still in the skin.

It also increases your appetite. In a big way.

That night, I brought some Chinese food home for me and Alice (my sister) to eat. Mom and Dad hated Chinese food. I suspect that they just had an adversity to tiny ears of corn. I open up my dish, a steaming plate of beef and broccoli, when Mom gets really close to the plate.

“Oooh, what’s that?”

“It…it’s beef and broccoli.”

“Pete, that smells GOOD. Can I have a bite?”

“Uh…sure.”

I cannot exactly describe what happened next, except to say that there was an empty aluminum foil plate at the end of it all. Mom was licking her lips. “Can you go get me another plate of that?” I bought three, just to make sure I’d get one. She ate two more plates and all of the fortune cookies.

She’s never eaten Chinese food again. She can’t stand the smell of it. But that one day, hopped up on prednisone, she thought it was the best-tasting thing ever. Happy Birthday, Mom! I hope you never have to eat it again.

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This year has certainly got off to a rocky start, what with two major earthquakes so far. I knew something had to be up: hurricane season came and went without so much as a destroyed city. We didn’t even lose power for a day, a rarity for the season. Mother Nature doesn’t seem to be keen on letting our buildings stand around for too long, so she decided the best thing to do was knock down a few countries and see us scamper like rats.

I’m not going to make light of the situation, at least as far as humanitarian effort is concerned. Yes, everybody and their dog started a fund-raising group, some of which were nothing more than cash grabs (dogs apparently need a lot of money, possibly for gold-plated water dishes or gourmet kibble). But a lot of real aid is being poured in, and I love to see people help their fellow man. Heck, even Tiger Woods sent an entire hospital down to Haiti, though it didn’t stop his sponsors from dropping him like a radioactive potato.

I just want to give you a public service announcement, brought to you by your friends at the National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA, current motto: “Doing as much as we can with five dollars and a roll of duct tape”). They determined that the most recent of the earthquakes, the Chile-quake^*, knocked the axis just a tiny bit off from its normal position.

Hollywood has taught me that this is one of the Seven Signs of the Apocalypse, or possible Another Mel Gibson Disaster Movie. I was led to believe that, if the Earth was indeed knocked even the tiniest bit off-axis, that our seasons would change, tidal waves would destroy every coast line, and we’d all have to live in futuristic bio-domes with Pauly Shore. That is, until we were thirty-five, at which point we’d be killed^**.

It turns out that none of that’s going to happen. Instead, the day just got 1.26 microseconds shorter.

I know that one-point-two-six millionths of a second doesn’t sound like much, but I know for sure that my boss will want it to come out of my personal time. I have little enough of that as is, and it’s mostly occupied with cleaning my daughter from various phases of mess. I’m not going to give up even one breath of my free time, even if that time would equate to one-millionth of a breath.

Friends, I’m proposing that we instead ask for the work day to be shortened by that time. Who here’s in favor of working a 7.99999999965-hour day, but still being paid for the entire 8? It’d be like getting a 0.00000000438% raise! We could all do with a little more money in our pockets, right?

I say it’s time that we take a stand! Petition, strike, do whatever you have to do! We want our 1.26 microseconds back, and we want them for ourselves! We are not going to be cogs in the machine any longer! WE ARE PEOPLE!

Failing that, we can at least get it as part of our lunch break.

^*Not to be confused with the Chili-Quake, which is delicious.
^**Which, if we’re living with Pauly Shore, wouldn’t be that bad a thing.

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The results of my sleep study recently came in, and I was able to buy a CPAP to prevent the “moderate sleep apnea” that caused me to sound like “a herd of cattle being driven in a thunderstorm” which in turned caused my wife to “secretly plot my death so she could get a decent night’s sleep”. The first month of using it was pleasant enough: I’d stopped snoring, so much so that Angie would now wake me up just to make sure I was still breathing. I was worried that the “Darth Vader” sounds coming from the CPAP would keep her up, but she was able to ignore them for the most part.

My CPAP mask started fitting a little less perfectly last week. It would start out snug, but halfway through the night the mask would start leaking cold air into my left eye. Have you ever had air shot into your eye, especially when you weren’t expecting it? The Geneva Convention probably outlaws it as a form of torture.
I had to go back to the medical supply store for a replacement. I explained the problem to the sales associate, who then pointed to my face and asked me:

“Wasn’t your goatee shorter, the last time you were in?”

“Well, I haven’t shaven since then so, yeah, it’d have to be.”

“That’s the problem. Your facial hair is keeping the mask from getting a good seal.”

Do you remember the story of Samson and Delilah? Samson was a Jewish strongman who was famous for smiting Philistines. He once beat a group of Philistines to death with the jawbone of a donkey. I’m not nearly as physically intimidating (or as cruel to donkeys), but most of my physical beauty stems from my goatee. With it, I’m Mount Vestudius, paragon of red-headed virility, able to impregnate women just by looking at them. Without it, I look like a twelve-year old kid who’s trying to buy beer. I was crestfallen.
I broke the news to Angie on Friday. She loves my goatee, probably because she’s not allowed to grow one. Society is a harsh master that way. She knew I would go from Sex Panther to Wet Kitten through this transformation.

“Can I kiss it one last time?”

Apparently, I’d already given her two children, she didn’t need me to be virile at this point.

I shaved that night. I did it in stages, first taking all but the moustache. I showed it to Angie.

“You look like a 70’s porn star.”

“So, leave it?”

“No. “

I then cut off all but a tiny strip under my nose. Every man who shaves his beard must end up leaving the “Hitler Special” above his lip. I didn’t bother showing Angie. When facial hair looks ridiculous to a man, it’s make-out repellant to a woman. I finally shaved that last swath, leaving my face bare.

It’s a good thing I’m doing well on Weight Watchers now, because this new double-chin that had taken residence under my goatee has to go. I showed my new face off to Angie.

“Well, you look fine.”

Fine. I had went from the sexiest thing on two legs (in her mind) to merely fine. I didn’t want to be fine; I wanted to be King Stud Dog Of Shumate Farms. I wanted to be the Denzel Washington of fat, white men. I wanted my power back.

I’ll have to live without it, though. The CPAP is working well, and we’re both getting good sleep. I had forgotten what it was like to go through the day being alert. I noticed things I hadn’t noticed in a while. For instance, I noticed that my chin jiggles like Jell-O when I shake my head.

And if that’s not enough of a reason to quit being negative about the whole experience, I don’t know what is.

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As you’ve probably heard, a killer whale recently killed its trainer at Sea World. Now, I’m not going to make light of the whole situation^*, but I have to wonder just how comfortable you can get around an animal with “killer” in its name, and if that’s ever comfortable enough for you to take even one eye off the murderous beast. That this killer whale had a rap sheet didn’t help its situation any.

Where do aggressive sea mammals go when they’ve proven they’d rather bite you as soon as look at you? I know that, at least for chimpanzees, feisty animals can be isolated from the general population and be gawked at across a hundred-foot-wide moat. I don’t think this solution would work particularly well for killer whales, because:

• They don’t tend to do so well on land; and
• That hundred-foot-wide moat isn’t a real deterrent, if it manages to find its way to water.

It could be that the killer whales are kept in some kind of secure aquarium, much like the one Scotty made in Star Trek IV. We’ve got transparent aluminum, right? We don’t? Well, never mind. You can’t just send them back out to sea, because we’ve touched them and now their mothers will never take them back. I suppose we have to do something.

And that’s where marketing comes in. You know how nobody really liked eating prunes? But people love plums. So we just renamed prunes to “dried plums,” and now we can’t keep them on the shelves. That’s also how we got away with creating the word “downsizing”: people are less likely to bring a sawed-off shotgun to work the next day if they’ve been downsized. Heck, it sounds slimming!

And that’s what we need to do here: rename the killer whale. Sure, we’ve already got “orca,” but even that sounds dangerous, and a little bit foreign. We don’t like foreign words unless they’re words of cute, non-lethal things. Sushi, for example^**. Pokémon, too. That’s what we have to do, then, is give the killer whale a new name that a)sounds kind of foreign and b)makes us want to cuddle with it.

I’ve got just such a name. Killer whales are black and white, right? You know what else is black and white? Pandas! They’re gentle, they eat bamboo, they have problems mating in captivity! What we do is, we rename killer whales into “panda whales”! Nobody would ever think of a “panda whale” being violent! Sea World solves its problems, and we get a new national treasure!

Except, of course, when the panda whales decided to eat another trainer. Then all the pandas will get a bad name.

^*Okay, I lied. I totally am going to make light of the whole situation.
^**Provided it’s not fugu.

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Angie and I are heading down to the in-laws this weekend. We plan on going to Outlaw’s Barbecue, a wonderful place that serves only the finest smoked pig.

It may be the end of our marriage.

You see, I joined Weight Watchers four weeks ago. I follow their “Points” plan, wherein you are allowed to consume a certain number of points’ worth of food per day. Foods are given Points values based on their calorie, fat and fiber content. For instance, five pounds of celery may be worth zero points, while merely looking at a chocolate cake is worth fifty.

I’ve lost seven pounds in four weeks. It’s working pretty well, but only because I’ve been able to remove all forms of temptation from my diet. I buy all the groceries, so I leave all those delicious, decadent cookies and cakes on the shelves. I pack my own lunch, so I have no excuse to go to Wendy’s and wolf down a Triple Baconator and large fries.

But barbecue? I can’t resist that.

Angie wants barbecue because Abigail (our baby-to-be) is demanding that Angie keep her in constant supply of meat and sauce. For those of you who don’t know, barbecue is made by slow-cooking pork^* over a wood fire, allowing the smoke to impart its subtle, complex flavors to the meat over the course of a full day. The result is a tender, succulent piece of pig that’s then dipped in tangy barbecue sauce and eaten with your hands.

That’s why I love ribs. They come with their own handles.

You can go for side dishes, if you want: baked beans and coleslaw are traditional fare. Angie likes potato salad. Regardless, all of this is just ancillary to the ribs. I don’t know if I’ve quite stated my point of view, but ribs are clearly God’s favorite food^**, along with sweet tea and white bread. I can’t say no to something that our Creator Himself must love so dearly.

Herein lies the problem: ribs are sold and consumed in slabs. A slab will generally yield twelve really good ribs. According to my research, four ribs are worth eleven Weight Watcher Points.

A full slab of barbecue pork ribs, therefore, is worth 33 Weight Watchers Points, or 75% of my daily allotment of points.

Now, I realize that Angie must consume large quantities of meat, for Abby’s sake. And I have to go to Outlaws to support her during this time of need. But there’s no way I can eat just four ribs. That’s like eating one potato chip, it just can’t be done. Like I said, I have to do it. I just don’t think it’s fair.

If I make it through this weekend without devouring all of Angie’s ribs, or sulking too much that I have to settle for barbecued chicken, our marriage will withstand anything. Personally, I think worse of the situation: I fully expect Angie to stab me with a fork while I’m suffering from rib-covetousness.

That’s all right. Barbecue sauce is a great antiseptic agent, I’m sure.

^* I guess you could do this to beef or chicken, but it’s just not right.
^** I’m clearly leaning more towards the Christian, less towards the Judeo-, side of God, here.

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I used to try “speed-writing” exercises way back in the first month of this site. Actually, I think I only tried it once. But I have six minutes until my next meeting, so why not give it a try again? What’s the worst that can happen? It’ll be horrible? You should be used to that by now.

Oops, five minutes.

Four minutes. Thinking of something funny on short notice is hard.

Three minutes. Well, this is just going so well. My in-laws are going to think I’m an idiot.

Did I tell you that? Angie showed both this site and DaddyJourney to her mom. On the day I wrote about the in-laws coming to help us rearrange our furniture. Which was significantly after I’d written about my propensity for “Your Mom” jokes.

Her mom claims to love DaddyJourney. She’s not had a comment about this site yet. Huh, I wonder why.

It still feels weird to share my creative writing efforts with my family. It stems from when I used to draw comics: I’d make a funny strip involving workplace safety (or, more precisely, how easy it is to kill yourself with everything in the lab), show it to my parents, and my dad would say, “Well, it ain’t Garfield!” I considered taking that as a compliment, except a lot of people seem to dig lazy cats with lasagna fixations.

In short, I just didn’t have my family’s sense of humor. It’s not genetic, apparently. All my friends liked my comics, but I was still trying to please my family on some level. I went from a strip comic, to a one-panel gag comic. People love the Far Side, right?

Except nobody in my family even knew what I was talking about. I would come up with a real gem like this, and my sister would blankly stare at the page. “Is that supposed to be a goat? Why is his head on fire?” And then I’d be dejected.

It only got worse during the time in which I made girl/robot strips. If I haven’t mentioned it before, go here to be absolutely amazed at just how messed up I am. I seriously made over a hundred comics about a robot terrorizing the bejeezus out of a little girl. I loved each and every one.

“Well, I still love you, honey.” That’s what my Mom said.

So you can see, I’m not very good at sharing creative works with my family. I could take some high road and say, “Well, they just don’t understand.” And that would be stupid, because my family’s full of smart people. They get it, they just don’t like it.

But you guys do, right? You guys love me!

Right?

RIGHT?!?

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