Pink Mold

We had pink mold on our shower curtain.

We still have pink mold along the caulking that seals the corner between the tub and the plastic wall thingy. Actually, I use the term 'seals' loosely, because the caulking is cracked all to hell, perhaps due to the pink mold. It's neon pink. There's stigmata on our walls from the 'hard' city water we have here in the 'burgh, but the stigmata is a rusty color. The mold is pink. I have a degree in engineering, and biology was always one of my weakest subjects, so although I find pink mold fascinating, I have no idea WHY it is pink mold, or more importantly, why it is growing in our bathroom.

Fortunately, it hasn't started growing on our new shower curtain yet.

It's actually so bright pink it looks like it belongs there, like it's a design cue for our bathroom.

NEXT ON PROJECT RUNWAY: make an outfit using only the pink-moldy caulking in Ben, Erin, and Ross's bathroom! GET ER DUNN!!!! (or whatever that dude says)

Shut up, my fiance watches it. So I do too.



We have a mouse in the apartment. I think I'm going to name him 'Hugh.' We tried to catch him with all these clap-trap 'humane' mousetraps I found on the internet but none worked.

1.) I rigged up a bunch of cardboard to make a ramp leading up to a garbage can. At the top of the ramp, I precariously balanced an empty toilet paper roll with a piece of cheese, some peanut butter, and a piece of popcorn at the very end. Ross wrote 'Cheese this way!!!' and drew an arrow pointing up the ramp in black magic marker.
The idea: mouse smells cheese, sees sign. Runs up ramp to eat cheese. Right when gets past the center of the toilet paper roll, he (or maybe she) goes tumbling into the bottom of the garbage can.
It didn't work. We tried different types of cheese, and everything, to no avail.

2.) A tray placed on the floor with an overturned cake pan supported by a bent shish-ka-bob stick above it. A piece of cheese is stuck on the end of the shish-ka-bob stick. Whenever the mouse runs and takes a bite of delicious cheese, the shish-ka-bob stick will fall, thus trapping the mouse.
It didn't work! We tried this for 3-4 days and nothing.

3.) A package of 6 mouse traps guaranteed by the Yinzer at Home Depot to 'Break those fuckers necks.'
In progress.

I feel really bad, because I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with my fiance a couple nights ago, and it was the episode where they caught a wayward Borg and nursed him back to life and all became attached to him so rather than using him to destroy the Borg they named him Hugh then let him rejoin the Collective, by his choice, which he had a hard time grasping the concept of, but then when he understood he had a choice, he said he'd rejoin the collective because it was too dangerous to stay on the ship and endanger everyone, especially Jordi. I think he liked Jordi a whole lot because everyone wants to be friends with a black dude. Seriously, even the Borg Hugh was like, man, it would be cool to be friends with a black dude, even if his other gig is Reading Rainbow.

So to make a long story short, I'm watching this show, and I felt really bad for Hugh, and I started thinking about our little mouse friend, who I decided to name Hugh, and how he's just trying to do his thing, like be a mouse, and hang out, and he's not evil, you know, individually, but, like the Borg, you know, collectively, we kinda assume he's an evil or some shit.

But the mouse traps are still out there with the peanut butter loaded in them, but a part of me is hoping that Hugh won't fall for it, will make a choice, and maybe run out in the parking lot and rejoin the collectively, or maybe just wind up getting eaten by one of those mean fucking alley cats out back.

Kids we picked on in high school

Its funny when you grow up and get out in the Real World and start to realize what a complete and total dick you were in high school. Well, at least I was. I think there were a few people who made it four ish years without tormenting some other poor soul but these were few and far between – there's always the random 'nice' popular kid, who doesn't fuck with anyone but is good looking/rich/tough enough where he/she doesn't get fucked with. Otherwise, the shit pretty much flows downhill and I spent four years at the bottom of the trash heap of the High School popularity hierarchy searching desperately for a milk crate to stand on, thus allowing the shit to trickle downward to some unlucky sap.

But I digress.

I was at work yesterday, CorpComm we'll say, when I overheard the new guy in my department talking about how his Ebay account got hacked and someone from China (???) sold a bunch of stuff through his account, like Thomas the Steam Engine books and shit, but actually delivered all the goods and wound up HELPING his seller rating.

As he's saying this, I have a mental image of Perch drunk off whiskey, firing a gun in the corner, laughing hysterically while selling ridiculous stuff through dude's ebay account.

Back story: A few weeks ago, I noticed a flier in my co-workers cube for new kid's band (you know you're getting old when you refer to those in their early twenties as 'kid'), playing a gig in my sorta hometown. I asked the new kid where he went, and he said (my high school.) Pound it and I asked him when he graduated. Asked him about family and I realized his older brother had been mercilessly tortured by a few of my younger friends. Actually, I thought my friends may have ruined his life, and I definitely encouraged this kind of behavior, especially since we were the (High School) Skate Mafia and he was a poseur.

I called Perch a few nights later and asked him if he knew dude's younger brother, the one I work with, and he laughed and told me a few instances of torment, the best (worst) of which involved throwing a shovelful of gnarly dirty snow in this kid's face. Damn, man.

I guess it's nice to see that as hard as we tried to ruin people's lives back then it didn't always work out.

Astronaut Seats?

BY: Joey Shine
Astronaut

Whatsup baby girl. You mind if I sit here?


Cool. WAITRESS!!! WAITRESS!!! THREE FINGERS OF JIMMY WALKER BLACK!!! Thanks doll.

My name’s Joey Shine. What’s your name, sexy baby girl?

Misogynistic? What’s that mean girl?

Ah, nah baby.

Nah, sweety.

Wow, I mean, nah, baby.

Yeah, I talk this way around my mother.

Yeah, sexy, come on, it’s me baby. Joey Shine.

Yeah, I talk this way at work.

An astronaut. Yeah, you know, I fly into space? Work for NASA?

You can take that look of disbelief away baby girl. We’re real people.

Ohhhh… sorry girl I just farted. See? I told you astronauts are people too.

DAMN… that DOES stink…. sorry about that girl… this seat isn’t very fart absorbent..

Yeah, you know, fart absorbent like astronaut seats. I worked on that program.

Don’t laugh, girl, $34 billion of taxpayer money went to perfect fart absorbent seats….

You think John Glenn wanted to smell Buzz Aldrin’s beer and wild turkey farts on the entire ride to the moon? I was in a Dirty Teddy’s Tavern a few weeks ago with Buzz, and that motherfucker cleared the room with one fart.

Lemme light a smoke.

Yeah, girl, sure, astronauts smoke.

Nah, I’m in tip-top physical shape.

Smell better? Cool. Yeah, girl, they had me working on the fart absorbing seat a few months ago. Yeah, I was known as the dude with the worst farts on active astronaut duty, so they had me come in every day to, you know, gather empirical evidence or some shit. We actually had some cats in from the airline industry, you know, cuz they make those seats that are super fart absorbent and float…. we just had to come up with seats that are super fart absorbent, float, AND can withstand re-entry. Oh yeah, they gotta withstand all that chafing from space suits too.

Nah, lots of chafing.

LOTS.

WAITRESS!!!! THREE FINGERS OF JIMMIE WALKER!!!!

You know, when you get, um, excited, and there’s people around, like all packed around you like in the space shuttle, and you kinda slide your ass back and forth on a seat, cuz it feels real good?

Too much information? Sorry baby, Joey Shine’s just telling you ‘bout the birds and the bees.

Yeah, I’m saying, these seats are barely fart absorbent. Vinyl just kinda reflects it right back up to you, you know?

The worst though are in my truck, baby girl. Heated leather. You gotta turn them off before you bust. You ever smell a cooked fart, reflected right back up in your face? It’s horrible, baby girl. It’s worse than farting during re-entry on our old non-fart absorbent chairs.

So what do you do for a living baby girl?

You work in an abortion clinic? So, are you, like, down to get down, baby girl?

Ouch. That hurt.

Alright, play hard to get then, baby girl!


Don’t forget to look in the sky tomorrow, and you'll see the sun shining - then look over a little bit, and you’ll see the brightest shine you ever seen. That’ll be me, baby - Joey Shine.

Strike Three, Mr. Eggers!

That's it Mr. Dave Eggers. My torrid imaginary hetero-dude-love affair with you has ended. I thought things were going so well this evening when I was driving over to the Hazlett Theater to see you speak and do a book signing - sure, we had our little tiffs in the past, but this one was going to go smoothly.

When I sent that clever short story I wrote from your perspective, FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE DAVE, about the woman with the curly blonde hair who talked to herself at Dee's, DAVE, I thought it was nice that you had one of your lackeys at McSweeneys read it and send me the rejection letter. A nice put down, maybe playing hard to get, I don't know.

And then, DAVE, I sent you my 222 page manuscript, a brilliant tale about love and loss and how the nothingness three friends found on America's interstate system brought them closer than they ever thought possible, and I waited, and I waited, and I stayed up nights staring at my gmail inbox waiting for that magical (1) to appear next to the word 'inbox', and I waited, and finally, DAVE, I was in China for work, and I got another email from another lackey, this one sounded like at least he read the manuscript, or maybe McSweeney's has a bunch of form rejection letters to sort of personalize the horror of rejection for all of us sad pathetic lonely fucks.

But I was angry for months, DAVE, then I got over it. I couldn't stop thinking about you, DAVE, in a completely hetero way. If I wanted to have any sort of sex with you it was sex with all the wonderful sexy words you had written. Smitten with you, again, I was, Dave, but in a totally straight sort of way; it was your written words I wanted to smear all over my naked body like hot, lavender massage oil, and prance around the room, reading, inhaling the words, and inhaling your fine musk.

I saw the ad for your appearance in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago, DAVE, and I marked my calender with a big red hetero heart on October 29th. October 29th came and I put one of my favorite shirts on, actually, it was the one I thought you would like the most. Alot of people, you know, they, like, tell me this shirt is real nerdy, kind of annoying, but I thought it was something you'd appreciate. It was clean and smelled nice but was full of wrinkles, and made me think about how wrinkled the sheets would be after we spent an evening laying in bed together in a completely hetero way.

I arrived at the commons to find the parking garage was closed! Shit! It was 7:15pm! I circled the commons twice looking for a spot and only found one in a shady dark alley (The North Side is notorious for the smash and grab!) so I circled again and finally found street parking.

I threw the front door to the theater open at exactly 7:34pm, 4 minutes late, only to learn the show had sold out! Curses! Instantly waves of regret and fear and furious anger passed through my body and the scene from Falling Down when Michael Douglas shoots the rocket launcher underground and blows all that shit up went threw my head and I really wished I had a rocket launcher at that moment because I would have blown that fucker up but instead I just stood there and shook a little bit and probably looked a little stupid as a single tear ran down my face then I turned and ran into the night cursing you. By the time I got to my car I had composed myself and realized that everything happens for a REASON, DAVE.

Have a good life, Dave.

To-Do List

Ross and I have been coming up with more and more random shit lately that we want to do. This blog is going to help us keep our thoughts in order.

1.) It's Always Sunny at Kowarski's:
This television show will star Ross and I and take place at Kowarski's, the dive yinzer bar down the street from our apartment. It will be similar to It's always Sunny in Philadelphia, but with Don Cannon playing himself and guest appearences by James Lipton playing himself as a pimp. We're going to try to make it a spinoff show, but if the dudes aren't down, we're totally going to bite their shit anyways.

2.) Working Class Zero
A tattoo/clothing store located somewhere in Pittsburgh.

3.) Corporate Zombie
A comic criticzing Corporate America. The protaginist names' Bill, a zombie who quickly ascend the corporate ladder.

4.) Print some fucking shirts.