Scribble and Wits

Back From the Dead

2009-05-27T20:29:00.004-07:00

I have serious doubts that anyone still reads this blog. Then again, it’s not like I had that many readers in the first place. Either way, I figured it was about time for another post…you know…since it’s been a while.

But first, let me just say that I do have at least three good reasons for not posting in such a long time. They are as follows:

1. Immediately after my last post I came down with a very severe case of writer’s block, which has been the cause of significant grief and sadness to both my mother-in-law and my inner child. Each encouraged me to resume blogging on multiple occasions, and each was disappointed by my hollow promises to do so. For those of you who have never experienced writer’s block, the important thing to remember is that experts say the best way to cure it is to do various productive activities, generally unrelated to writing, and generally requiring some sort of physical labor, like sweeping the floor or mowing the lawn (expert suggestions), or walking to the refrigerator (something I came up with). Naturally, I went ahead and focused on the latter option, which apparently requires a bit more time to take effect than the first two. Thus, the beginning stages of my prolonged silence.
2. Right about the time my writer’s block started wearing off, my obligations to fantasy football really started picking up steam, which understandably left little time for anything besides eating, sleeping, watching Netflix, eating, checking scores and stats, sleeping, watching football, eating, talking about football, eating, and eating. Naturally, blogging was kind of shoved to the backburner.
3. A couple weeks after the fantasy football season ended, Stefany left me alone with our baby, who proceeded to go No. 2 in his pants without asking permission. And since no one else was around to change the diaper I was forced to do it, which caused me to black out and briefly die before coming back to life and slipping into a coma for about 90 days.

So obviously, considering what I’ve been through the past 48 weeks, you can’t really blame me for not writing. On the other hand, quite a few other events have taken place in my life, and I figure anyone with the stick-to-itiveness to keep checking back here deserves an update (and that includes you, Colby JACK…don’t even try to pretend you don’t have this blog bookmarked and set as your home page). Here are a few of the highlights:

• July, 2008: Stefany actually starts gaining pregnancy weight. And even though I’m still gaining myself, for some reason, watching her belly grow makes me feel less fat.
• August, 2008: I create what will most likely go down as the single-most entertaining fantasy football league in the history of fantasy football leagues and enter the season with high hopes of winning my first sports-related championship since edging out Bryan Gillies for first-place honors in the 4th grade shot clock competition. (Please try not to cry if you read this, Bryan.)
• August, 2008: I stop gaining weight…for the most part…well, on most days…or some, at least…okay, fine, that’s a total lie…
• September, 2008: I start the fantasy season 0-3 (hurting, but trying to stay positive).
• September, 2008: Finally stop contemplating when to drop out of school and decide to just hurry up and finish (I feel like you need to know these things).
• October, 2008: 0-3 becomes 0-4 (getting flustered, slightly angry), then 0-5 (beyond frustrated), 0-6 (severe pain in both temples), 0-7 (feel like throwing up), and 0-8 (hate football, never watching again, never blogging again, never laughing again, removing myself from all unnecessary social contact, contemplating running away from home).
• End of October, 2008: I manage to pull myself together and start going to the gym with Jord. (And yes, if you really need to know, we were generally the fattest ones there. However, I feel somewhat less depressed about this than you might expect since I am still somewhere between 48-92 times better looking than Jord, and since neither of us was the smelliest in the gym. A professor Jord knows garnered that honor. We honestly had to leave the room when we saw her coming. (Yep, I said “her.”) No joke. We literally just turned and walked out of the room when she started moving our direction. Even then, I usually started tearing up before I reached the door. In retrospect, it really was an incredible experience. I’ve never smelled anything like it before in my life. I don’t think I’m a talented enough writer to offer a description here that would do it justice, but I feel like I should at least try to convey the magnitude of the stench. Okay, let’s see… I honestly believe she must have taken regular baths in a mixture of rotten eggs, curdled milk, methane and broccoli juice, while smoking cigarettes that she rolled herself with recycled toilet paper and cow crap, all the while spraying down her workout clothes with sulfur. (Jord, let me know if you don’t think that quite reaches it.) Oddly enough, I believe I remember Jord telling me she was single.)
• November, 2008: I stop going to the gym.
• December, 2008: I finish school (2nd best feeling of my life).
• December, 2008: I skip graduation to watch a Netflix. (And no, I don’t regret that for one second.)
• December, 2008: We have a baby, and he is much better looking than me (best feeling of my life).
• December, 2008: We bring the baby home and realize we have no idea how to be parents (scariest feeling of my life).
• December, 2008: Start working, decide I like my job.
• January, 2009: Decide to go back for more school (most cognitively dissonant feeling of my life).
• January, 2009: Decide I don’t like my job.
• February, 2009: Turn 25, have key lime pie (tied for 2nd-best feeling of my life).
• February, 2009: Get paychecks from December and January work, decide maybe I don’t hate my job so much.
• March, 2009: Change my mind, hate my job.
• April, 2009: Move to Lyman…to my mom’s basement (don’t feel 25 anymore).
• April, 2009: Mom buys us groceries (3rd-best feeling of my life, decide I don’t care about feeling 25).
• April, 2009: Try mango licorice for the first time, eat the whole bag.
• May, 2009: Realize April was a really great month!

Well, I guess that pretty much sums it up. See you in 11 months.

Just joking…but seriously, it might be awhile before I write again…like maybe three years…no, not really, I’m just kidding…but maybe not.

1,000 and Counting

2008-06-22T17:51:00.003-07:00

Today is a big day for me. If you haven’t already heard, this blog just passed the 1,000-page-visits mark. I know. I was surprised too. With the exception of finding out my wife made cheesecake Friday night, it’s easily been the highlight of my week.

I know I couldn’t have done it without all my loyal readers, though. So thank you…really…I love all three of you.

Seriously, though, this really is a monumental day for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had 1,000 of anything in my life.

I’ve been sitting here for the past three and a half minutes trying to figure out where, or who, so many visits to this site could have come from. I’m sure I don’t have 1,000 friends, and that means some of you are not only visiting once; you’re actually returning a second or even third time. And I don’t even have any music.

So here’s how I decided these 1,000 visits undoubtedly break down, give or take a few clicks, of course:

• 184 from my mother because, well, she thinks I’m great,
• 105 from my wife checking to make sure she won’t have to divorce me because of something I posted here,
• 33 from my wife’s mother because she gets the internet at work and because, well, she thinks I’m great, too,
• 46 by me checking to make sure I didn’t post anything that will make my wife want a divorce,
• 3 completely by mistake, and
• 629 from old friends wondering if I’m really as fat as I look in the pictures on my last post.

Oh, and if you were wondering if all that really adds up to 1,000 visits, it does. I double-checked it with my computer’s calculator. Plus my dad was a high school math teacher, so I’m genetically good with numbers. That’s how I know that in the last two months alone, I’ve made more than two dollars and 75 cents in Adsense revenue.

And that doesn’t even count the increase I’m going to see in my earning potential by referencing this blog on future job applications.

You Don’t Know Jack Part II: The Making of Colby JACK

2008-05-03T20:42:00.002-07:00

Think what you want, but as I expected, I received my first piece of hard evidence that there’s a lot more to this whole “Jack” thing than most people realize.

Shortly after my last brilliant post, a friend of mine sent me the following e-mail:

Dearest Matt,

I would like to comment on your latest post. First off I want you to know that I have been inspired by your message and believe that it has changed my life for the better. You see, I just have not been getting the breaks in life that one would expect when one works as hard as I do. After reading your post, though, I realized that the reason I have been pushed aside during important job-related considerations is because I don't have a power name like JACK. With that said, I decided to change my name to Colby JACK. Let me tell you it has made all the difference. Some people say my name sounds a little cheesy, but I don't mind. You see, it is lonely at the top, but it is comforting to look down and see all the people below me. Thanks for changing my life.

Sincerely,

Colby JACK

A bold move? No doubt. In fact, I can honestly say that Colby is the first person I have ever met with enough courage to change his last name after reading just one of my blog posts. But I think we can all agree that while it may be lonely at the top, it’s a whole lot better than staring up at the butts of thousands of people with better names.

So Colby JACK, I commend you for your decisiveness and wish you the bust of luck on your journey through life as one of the happy few who have made the transition from not knowing jack to being named Jack.

You Don’t Know Jack

2008-04-15T15:02:00.002-07:00

I’ve been watching a ridiculous amount of Lost lately, and while it may not be the most productive thing I’ve ever done, I’ve learned at least one valuable lesson: People named Jack are more successful in life than people named something else.

Honestly. It’s true.

Think about all the important people in this world who are/have been named Jack. There’s CTU agent Jack Bauer, spinal surgeon and island leader Jack Shephard and Black Pearl Captain Jack Sparrow from the world of fiction.

But there are even more successful Jacks in the real world, like: Jack Black, Jack Daniels, Jack the Ripper, Jack Be Nimble Jack Be Quick Jack Jump Over the Candlestick, Jack Ruby, Jack Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, Jack Johnson, Jack in the Box, Jack London, Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack La Lanne and Jack Frost.

Plus, Jack isn’t the kind of name that people can make fun of easily. Other than twisting it into Jackie, it can’t be turned into a girl’s name very well, and Jackie sounds like a tough chick anyway. Not like Matilda.

Jack doesn’t rhyme with anything stupid, either. You could say Jack Smack, but that just sounds like Jack will punch you right in the kisser if you try to make fun of him. Not like Fatty Matty.

So that’s why I’m naming my first kid Jack.

Stefany wants to name it Jaxon if it’s a boy, but if she does that I’ll still call him Jack. She says if it’s a girl, we’re naming it Samantha, but, again, if she does that I’ll still call her Jack.

And if she has a problem with that, then she doesn’t know jack.

Why? Because I want my kid to grow up to be somebody. How many F-16 fighter pilots named Fred or T.J. do you know? How many kids named Gerald or Anthony grow up to be billionaires? How many astronauts or chiefs of surgery go by Albert or J.P.?

Sure, there have been some, but they obviously had to beat the odds. And I’d rather have my family members not have to battle a stacked deck their whole lives.

They already have our last name to deal with, and that will be tough enough.

Can movies really make life easier? I say yes!

2008-03-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

I am not a morning person.

Sometimes I’m not even a daytime person.

But mornings are consistently tough. When I’m lucky, I don’t have anything going on til 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon and I can just sleep right through them. But since most of the rest of the world operates on a pretty standardized 9-to-5 circadian rhythm, I’m generally rolling out of bed about 3 hours before I’d like to be.

Which is why it’s weird if I wake up with a smile on my face, but that’s exactly what happened two days ago. My alarm clock went off, and like every other morning I stumbled toward the bathroom. Halfway there, though, I realized that I was in a good mood, so I started asking myself what the deal was. I racked my brain for about half a minute before remembering that the night before my wife and I signed up for Netflix.

With the cobwebs starting to clear, I realized my reasons for being happy about this were two-fold: The first, and most obvious, was that with Netflix I can rent as many DVDs as I want and watch movies instantly on my PC for one low price. There are no late fees and no due dates, and DVD shipping is free both ways. Plans start from only $4.99 per month plus applicable tax, and with the most popular plan—which gives me 3 DVDs at a time—I can rent as many movies as I want and watch unlimited hours of movies and television instantly on my PC for just $16.99 a month plus applicable tax. The best part: there are no additional charges. I get free shipping and postage, more than 90,000 movies to choose from, a free two-week trial, and I can cancel at any time.

But the second reason is that by getting Netflix, my wife and I felt confident that we could get rid of our satellite dish without being deprived of the pleasurable and desensitizing effects of having a constant stream of media flooding our daily lives. This saved us about 60 bucks a month—and made us feel great!

Since signing up, Stef and I have added more than 100 titles to our “Queue,” including: Evan Almighty; The Astronaut Farmer; Lost, Season 1; August Rush; We Are Marshall; The Office, Seasons 1 and 2; I Am Legend; Meet The Robinsons; The Day After Tomorrow; The Fox And The Hound; and, last but definitely not least, Sandwiches That You Will Like.

After just two days of this, I can honestly say I’ve never had a better reason to keep getting out of bed in the morning.

We’ve already watched one movie in its entirety (after which we proceeded to carefully place it in its prepaid return envelope and slip it in the mailbox) and we’ve got two more sitting on our counter waiting to be given the same treatment.

In fact, I originally intended for this blog post to run for about six more paragraphs, but I’ve got Ocean’s Thirteen staring me in the face here, and I’m starting to have a hard time concentrating….What’s that, Stef? The popcorn’s ready?....But I’m not done writ—ah, screw it…