You can come over to my place if you want to, you can do anything you want to do

It's time for another example of why you shouldn't open your mouth unless you want an honest response to what it is that you're saying.

The other day a girl came over and I ended up making some banana pancakes for us. I had music playing the whole time, and one of my favorite songs came on.

Me: Do you know who sings this song?
Her: I don't know. Wilco?
Me: It's They Might Be Giants.
Her: I figured it was one of your favorite bands.
Me: But you didn't know which one. I'm going to have to ask you to leave now.
Girl (looking at her plate): That's ok. I'm almost done anyway.

He never waves when he goes by. He's hiding something from the rest of us.

I've been going to physical therapy for my back for the last several weeks. Recovery is slow, but the therapy seems to be helping. If I go a week or two without seeing someone, they usually comment on how much better I'm moving, so that's definitely a plus.

My physical therapist has me doing several different types of exercises. Some are exercises to strenghten my core. Some are stretches, designed to loosen up my back and stretch it out, but also to stretch my nerve past the scar tissue that's built up around it. One of the stretches requires me to place a loop around my foot and pull my leg straight to stretch out my hamstring. When I'm at physical therapy, he has a few pillowcases taped together to form a loop. When I'm doing them at home, he told me to just use a belt to do the same thing.

I usually go through all my exercises one last time before going to bed at night. Some I do on my bedroom floor, and others I do while lying on the bed. The hamstring stretches happen to be in the latter category. My bed sits underneath my window, so this is what my neighbors would see if they happened to look in from the street:





They probably think there's some kinky shit going on in my room.

I wasn't really drunk I was just pretending

Saturday marked the second time I've participated in an annual horseshoe tournament put on by a friend of a friend. Like last year, I had a great time. Unlike last year, my team (Whore'z Shoooz) didn't make it as far. We finished somewhere in the middle of the pack (30 teams total), but outlasted the champs of the previous two years, so that was almost like winning the whole thing. Almost. Ok, not really.

A few highlights of the day:

- The host lit off fireworks during the singing of the National Anthem, surprising everybody, including my friend who was singing. The song ended with the sound of jets flying over being blared from the speakers as well. A little while later, police arrived on the scene to investigate reports of shots being fired.

- I met a girl from Chicago who knows, and hangs out with, a couple members of Wilco. She took down my contact information to give them in case they come to Vegas again. I'm sure nothing will come of it, but it would be pretty cool if it did.

- My partner was showing me a scar he got on his calf while he was mountain biking a few weeks ago:

Him: I should've gotten stitches on that, but that's ok. Chicks dig scars, right?
Me: That's what they say, but if you really want to know, ask some. There are a few right there.
Me (to a group of girls): Can you guys answer a question for my friend here? He wants to know if it's really true that chicks dig scars.
Girl: That depends. Not if it's some kind of horrible disfigurement across your face.

- Since I was the only one not drinking, a friend and his wife asked if I could drive a few of them to go get some food. We took his Jeep to the drive-through at Sonic:

Two 13 year old girls: We love your mohawk!
Friend: Thanks! I love you too!
Me (to his wife): Uh oh. Are you feeling threatened?
Friend's Wife: Not by two 13 year olds. That'd be illegal.
Friend: Not necessarily. If I do them both at the same time they'd be 26.

- One girl told me I look like Taylor Hicks.

Me: I don't know who Taylor Hicks is.
Her: He's from American Idol.
Me: That's why. I don't watch that show.
Her: Sing me a song.
Me: I can't. I don't know what he sings.
Her: Sing anything. It doesn't matter.
Me: My bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R . . .

- My friends, a married couple, were one of the last six teams standing. Despite being up on their opponent 15 to 5, they ended up losing the match. The husband was quite upset after that.

Someone: Cheer up. It's not that bad.
Him: In order to do that, I'll need to squeeze the head off a small child. Well, any small mammal will do.
Me: I don't think they have any pets, so you're out of luck.
Him: Not even a goldfish? I could cut the face off a goldfish with some scissors.
Me: I don't think so, but I'll tell you what, if that's what you need, I'll drive you down to Wal-Mart and we can buy you a few goldfish.
Him: I'm going to need at least a dozen.

- After the games were over, a few of the people who came in from New York wanted to go out and gamble.

Guy 1: I want to go play cards. Who wants to go play cards?
Goldfish Hater: I don't. That's for homosexual tourists.
Me (to Guy 1): So by all means, go ahead.



A few lowlights of the day:

- Whore'z Shoooz got knocked out after four games. Both losses were close, we just couldn't pull it out at the end. Our elimination game was 10 to 9 and the opposing team hit a ringer to end it. I liked that girl before too, but hate her now. Her husband too.

- Since I was the only one sober enough to drive, I ended up driving people to the liquor store a couple of times. I think in all there were three kegs consumed, along with two gallons of Jagermeister. That's not a typo. My partner started referring to me as 'beer bitch'.

- Some of the ladies (including the hottest girl there) set up a Slip 'n Slide, and said they were going to go on it nude at 9:05, then never did.

- I got stuck talking to a drunk girl in the kitchen without a way to escape. She went on and on about her ex-husband and how he cheated on her, about how her daughter didn't respect her step-mom, and blah, blah, blah, for about 30 minutes. Apparently someone thought I was hitting on her and her boyfriend eventually came in and pulled her away (I never got a chance to thank him for that). After that, I told my friend that if she saw me talking to her again, to come and save me.

- I drove a group of people back to their hotel, and a guy stuck his head out the window and puked. Luckily, none of it got in the car, but I still had to stand in the street at my friend's house and hose it off at three o'clock in the morning.

- Finally crawling into bed at 3:46 a.m.

You can go ahead and get married, and this'll be our secret thing

Girl: I'm getting married in three weeks. Since you've been there, do you have any advice to give me?

Me: I have two pieces of advice for you. 1) Don't get married, and 2) Seriously, don't get married.

Although we often wondered, it was no thing of wonder

Nothing offsets the feeling of getting old quite like walking into a room first thing in the morning and having a young twenty-something year old girl say, "Wow, you have really nice calves!"

I'm just sayin'.

You say I like what you say, I like what you say

Now it's time for some sage words of wisdom from Native Minnow.

I always say. . .

. . . never miss a good opportunity to shut your mouth. Especially if you're someone who annoys me.

. . . that sometimes it's just easier to go out and buy new socks than it is to do laundry.

. . . it is better to have loved and lost than to live with a lunatic for the rest of your life.

. . . there's no such thing as "too sweet."

. . . nobody likes to be called crazy, especially crazy people.

. . . a cloaca's a cloaca.

. . . of all the places not to be seen, a small penis convention ranks pretty highly.

. . . it's better to go on vacation than on a shooting spree.

. . . a monarchy is always the best form of government, when you're the monarch.

We don't need no water let the mother fucker burn

Me: What else is new?

Togers: Not very much.

Me: Well that's not very exciting. Why don't you go burn down a shed or something? Then you'll have some excitement to talk about.

Togers: Aren't you supposed to be a good example?

Me: I'm supposed to be, but you and I both know that's not the case.

I don't want to be the bad guy, I don't want to do your sleepwalk dance anymore

Everclear played a show last night at the Mandalay Bay Beach. They're not my favorite band in the world by any means, but tickets were only $9, so I went with a friend of mine and a girl he recently met.

Earlier in the day when he told me she was coming, he told me to be on my best behavior.

Him: [Girl] is coming too, so don't be an asshole.

Me: Can I be a dickwad?

Him: I don't know that you know how not to be one.

My flying saucer, where can you be?

I'm not sure what reminded me of this, but when I was six years old my family moved from Montana to rural Utah. At first, my parents couldn't find a place for us to live, so we ended up staying in a hotel for the first month or so in our new town, dining in restaurants when we weren't at school.

One day we were eating, and there was a man who'd had a tracheotomy sitting at a table near us. I kept hearing his robotic voice, and was fascinated by it. I had to leave our table to go to the bathroom, and on the way back I stopped by his table, looked up at him and asked, "Hey Mister, are you from outer space?"

He wasn't. Who knew?

What went wrong walking tightrope high over moral ground

Friend 1: I was watching Bush's War on Sunday and fell asleep. When I woke up, my cat was sitting on my computer because it was warm.

Me: I just finished watching that on Sunday. Why are you looking so surprised?

Friend 1: Well, you're usually not the one I talk about politics with, he is. You're usually the one who talks about boobs with me.

Me: No, that's me and him.

Friend 2: Actually, that's pretty much you and everybody you talk to.


It's funny because it's true.

And I can't relax with my knees on the ground and a stick in my back, Sister Jack

I'm not Catholic, so I don't completely understand the idea of Patron Saints. I do, however, realize there are a lot of them, I just didn't realize that there was one for just about anything. I was shopping for Jesus pencil toppers* last week at a souvenir shop on the Strip and found a bunch in the section with all the religious paraphernalia. These two were my favorites:







*One of the reactions I perform on a regular basis in the laboratory involves making multiple copies of a segment of DNA. Anyone who performs these reactions on a regular basis will tell you it's pretty much voodoo. Hence, I have little statues that I put atop the machine when I'm running mine for use as good luck charms. Who better to have as a good luck charm than Jesus Christ? I mean, my friend has a golden statue of Buddha that seems to work quite well, but I needed something for my problematic DNA samples, and I can't use someone else's good luck charm. Doing so would be more likely to bring a curse upon my research than it would be to cause the reactions to work.

Red dragon tattoo, it's just about on me, I got it for you, so now do you want me?

I love this time of year. It's warm outside, meaning the girls are dressed in less, which makes a walk across campus that much more enjoyable. At least when the girls wearing less are those who ought to be, and not the other kind (i.e., fat and ugly). However, such is not always the case. The other day I was walking with two friends and saw a girl with a tattoo on her breast. Unfortunately, this girl was not attractive, but her tattoo was very noticeable.

Friend 1: Did you see that girl's tattoo?

Me: How could I miss it?

Friend 1: She must have just had that done.

Me: It did look pretty new.

Friend 1: She was trying to push everything up and out to make sure that everyone can see it.

Me: She needed a good push-up bra for that.

Friend 2: She needed a tattoo of a hot chick on her face.

I've got ten miles to go on a nine mile road

I met my wife at a party where I drank too much, my son is married and tells me we don't talk enough

I was talking to my ex-wife the other day, and she told me they'd been teasing Mr. M. all day about his new girlfriend. His pre-school teacher had the kids in the class pair up and hold hands while they did one of their activities. Upon hearing that, I told my ex to put him on the phone.


Me: [Mr. M.], do you have a girlfriend?

Mr. M.: Her not my girlfriend. Her my friend.

Me: Did you hold her hand?

Mr. M.: Yeah.

Me: Then you're married.

Mr. M.: No. We're not.

Me: Yes you are. It's a Utah state law that if you hold a girl's hand you're married to her.

Mr. M.: That's not true.

Me: Yes it is, and you're a real jerk for not inviting me to your wedding.

Hey piggy piggy

Several more instances where I probably wasn't as professional as I could have been while teaching my students. Today's lab was the fetal pig dissection.


Me (talking to the entire class): Now, when you cut down through the pelvic girdle on the male, you need to be careful because it's really easy to cut through this part and sever the penis. Every guy in here just cringed when I said that, and if you didn't, you should have.

---------------------------------------------

Female Student: Can you show me where this pig's uterus is?

Me: Sure, but you haven't cut deep enough. Here, let me see that scalpel. You have to cut through the pelvic girdle like this. Oops. I think I just cut into the vagina.

Female Student: You're never going to be able to keep a girlfriend if you're doing that all the time.

Me: Unless she's into that sort of thing.

---------------------------------------------

Female Student: So we're having trouble finding our pig's boy parts.

Me: That's because you've completely mangled them. Here, let me see if I can salvage any of that.

Me (Later): Well, here's the testicle, but it's no longer attached so I'm going to go ahead and put it over here. Same goes for the other one.

Female Student: Gross.

Me: Hey, at least now you got to say that you spent the day ripping some balls off.

Female Student: Yeah, I can just see it: "Hey Honey, guess what I did today . . ."

---------------------------------------------

My Assistant: Easy there. You're really going to town on that thing, but remember, you don't want to ruin any of the stuff you're going to be looking at next time.

Me: She's just so excited to finally be cutting into something substantial.

Female Student: This is cool, but I really want to cut open a human.

Me: Don't look at me. I think you'll find it works best to stick to the members of society that aren't easily missed.

My Assistant (to her): Usually prostitutes and homeless people work best for that.

My Assistant (to me): You know what I'm talking about.

Me: You weren't supposed to tell anybody about my Jack the Ripper side.

---------------------------------------------

Male Student: So where is the vagina on this thing?

Me: It's right here, although you're probably having a hard time seeing it because of all the juice down in there.

Male Student: Are you saying my pig has a juicy vagina?

Me: . . .

If you see her say hello

Me: Yeah, that girl was crazy. Actually, all women are crazy. All men know that. Yet, for whatever reason, we keep trying to make ourselves believe otherwise.

Friend: I could go for some craziness right now.

Me: I could see about setting set you up with the crazy girl.

Friend: I don't mean that kind of crazy.

Me: Regardless, that's the kind you're gonna' get.

Island in the sun

I just recently got with the times and purchased a camera phone. I didn't realize how much I was missing out on before. Take this text I sent to my sisters for example:

From: Native Minnow
To: Epitome-of-Sweetness; **L**; Lightning-Strikes; TennisGirl



My view from the pool chair.

--------------------------------------------------
From: **L**
To: Native Minnow

You suck! lol

--------------------------------------------------

From: Lightning-Strikes
To: Native Minnow

I'm a little jealous, it's cold here.

--------------------------------------------------

From: Tennis Girl
To: Native Minnow

What's next? You're going to tell me it's 80 degrees there?

--------------------------------------------------

From: Native Minnow
To: Tennis Girl

Pretty close. It'll be 85 on Saturday.

--------------------------------------------------

From: Tennis Girl
To: Native Minnow

So when all the girls road trip down to your house you're not going to care, right?

--------------------------------------------------

From: Native Minnow
To: Tennis Girl

Come on down

--------------------------------------------------

From: Tennis Girl
To: Native Minnow

I really do want to. If only we weren't going to the Jazz game.

--------------------------------------------------

From: Native Minnow
To: Tennis Girl

Now it's my turn to be jealous.

--------------------------------------------------

From: Tennis Girl
To: Native Minnow

Tit for tat

You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals

Since my other t-shirt idea seems to already be taken, I figured I'd modify it a bit here:

What's the name of the song? Explosivo!

Overheard at the pool earlier today:

Guy #1: **farting loudly**
Guy #2: Dude, I think you just ripped your chair.
Guy #1: I think I ripped my colon.

My ribs that show through t-shirts and these jeans I got for free

Here's another t-shirt idea that would probably make me some money if I weren't too lazy to follow through with it.

Wash your hands of it forever

Girl 1: Can I have some gum?

Me: That was my last piece. But do you want this one that I'm chewing? You can have it.

Girl 1: Ok.

Girl 2: Gross.

Girl 1: Why is that gross? Because [Minnow] has diseases?

Girl 2: Yeah.

Me: You don't even know me. You can't say that.

Girl 2: I've heard enough.

Me: Don't believe everything you hear.

Girl 1: The only thing you need to know about [Minnow] is that he's from Utah, so he has 15 wives.

Girl 2: So he does have diseases then.

Me: No diseases. They were all virgins when I married them, because they were all like twelve years old. Isn't that the way polygamy works?

Girl 1: You should know. You're the polygamist.

Me: Besides, fifteen wives? That's way too many. Actually, do you know how many wives is too many?

Girl 1: How many?

Me: One.

You'd have a wonderful day if you could see how lucky you are

Yesterday I got my haircut. I arrived at the scheduled time, but my stylist was running behind schedule. He apologized and told me it was still going to be a half hour before he could get to me. I told him I was going to go sit in the car and listen to music, and to come get me when he was ready. As I sat there, I started reading through the material inside one of my CD cases and saw a list of things that made the band's fans consider themselves lucky.

So, I compiled a list of my own.

I am lucky . . .
. . . to have a family that loves me.
. . . to have three amazing children.
. . . to have received a good education.
. . . to have great friends.
. . . to have good health (for the most part).
. . . to have a roof over my head, running water, electricity, my own transportation, etc.
. . . to have a love of music.
. . . to have a full head of hair (even if it is rapidly turning gray).
. . . that my research has taken me to so many beautiful places, and will tell a good story when I'm ready to tell it.
. . . that I never voted for Bush (so his colossal fuck ups aren't my fault).
. . . to be alive.

But perhaps most of all, I'm lucky to have gotten lucky!

Telephone call for Mr. Horrible

Me: Did you hear about the shooting over the weekend?
Friend: No.
Me: Well, I guess there were a couple of them, but I'm talking about the one on Friday.
Friend: What happened?
Me: They said on the news that a mom was driving with her 11 and 15 year old kids, and somebody pulled alongside the car and shot her in the head.
Friend: With the kids in the car!?
Me: Yeah. Pretty nuts, huh?
Friend: That's cold.
Me: I know. At least wait until she's dropped the kids off.
Friend: . . .
Me: Or kill the kids too.
Friend: . . .