Apparently, I'm not grown-up enough to discuss girl parts with the boy. Here's how it went the first time around:

Boy: Baby sister doesn't have a penis, because she's a girl.

Me: That's right!

Boy: She only has a scrotum.

Me: ... Yes.

---

I was up in Canada this past weekend, just outside of Toronto. It's not a long trip, easily comfortable enough to go and come back in the same day. Anyway, I was at a reception at a big room in this community center building in a municipal park. As I was leaving, I saw this sign:

And then I laughed. Because the first thing they have to tell people not to do is play hockey.

Posted by omar at 9:48 PM | Read entire post | Comments (23)

First, the answer to the latest Four Truths and a Lie post is 3. Sarah, not only were you the first commenter, but your answer hit the nail right on the head. Well done! I meant to write that out with more pomp and circumstance, but time is short.

Second, let's say I had some good news and some bad news for you, the wonderful readers of omarphillips.net. Which would you want to hear first? Majority rules. Go!

Posted by omar at 7:07 AM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

First, on the photo assignment. There's still a couple of hours before the deadline, but thanks to the 10 who have gotten their assignment in so far! In order, thanks to Syar, Lisa, NCS, me, Yvonne, Mrs. Monkey Butt, Tori, Daniel, Jonathan, and Aubrey. Now, the old Omar might have gone and called out some of those who said they would participate, but have not (yet). But this Omar? I'm a better man. So don't worry, Nobody, Lauren, Cadiz, Jon, Nancy Face, JustRandi, Rhonda, and others, you can all rest easy. The new Omar wouldn't dream of calling any of you out!

But for the record, I probably won't get to putting together a photo gallery until sometime on Tuesday. So if you still wanted to participate but didn't yet get a chance, or if you officially gave up because you didn't see a face anywhere, or if you took the picture but don't have a way to get it off your camera yet, you have an extra day or so to regroup, un-give up, or get a hold of the necessary cables/adapters.

Second, one day this week, I was home with the boy. I'll spare you details, but for the first time in my life, I said, "Hang on, let me wipe my own bottom first." Sorry if that was TMI, but I had to jot it down somewhere so I wouldn't forget it next time I'm scrapbooking. That day is getting its own page.

Third, given the scare of lead paint in toys these days, I thought it surprisingly refreshing when I saw this price label at Target for the Fisher Price Geotrax Grand Central Station train set:

Fourth, I'm not really a scrapbooker.

UPDATE:
Fifth, Jon did get his assignment in on time. Next time, I'm making the deadline a time that is before my bedtime, so I can only (not) call people out who are deserving prior to going to bed. My apologies, Onj.

Posted by omar at 8:00 AM | Read entire post | Comments (21)

I'm a man of slightly above average intelligence. And I'm not afraid of the kitchen. Heck, I've documented enough pie making adventures on this site, so you already knew that. But there is something have kept from you, until now. I suffer from KCSAD (typically pronounced as if it were the two words "kick" and "sad" together), or Kitchen Container Spatial Awareness Disorder.

For those who may not be familiar, let me explain what KCSAD is. KCSAD essentially makes a person unable to accurately correlate the spacial capacity of available food storage containers with the amount of leftover food. It's a disorder that, in terms of its medical acceptance, is in its relative infancy. The disorder affects men at a much higher rate than it does women, but women are by no means immune.

Growing up, I never even knew such a thing existed. If my mom said, "Put away the rest of the dinner," I would simply slap the lid on the pot and put it in the refrigerator. Two pots? I'd stack 'em. This strategy got me right through my adolescent years. Everything changed when I got married. It wasn't a direct result of marriage, but as a wedding gift, we received several Rubbermaid food storage containers, varying in size from "curiously small" to "unnecessarily big."

I distinctly remember the day when I first suspected something was wrong. We had a nice spaghetti dinner, and we had some leftover sauce. When asked to put it away, I grabbed what I thought would be an appropriate container. About halfway through pouring, I wondered aloud, "I wonder if this is all going to fit?" Needless to say, it wasn't going to fit. But because I thought it would be close, I kept pouring...

I'm always conscious of that moment when I'm putting food away, to this day. And yet still, I'm unable to select a correctly-sized container. I don't always underestimate storage needs, in fact, I'd say the opposite is true. I usually choose a container that is too large, then overcompensate with subsequent containers. For example, for dinner last night, we had a wonderful veggie and chicken stir fry with rice. First, I put away the rice. I know it didn't all settle properly in the container, but I can still see the bottom in some spots:

So then I put away the stir fry.

Note that I was only able to close the lid because I kept eating items from off the top until it would seal. Even still, as you can see in the picture below, the vegetables on top were fighting for their lives under that enormous pressure.

I'm not looking for sympathy, my goal here is just to make people aware of the disorder. If you ask your significant other to put away the leftovers, here are some of the typical responses of those with KCSAD so you can look out for them:

• He/she pretends like he/she didn't hear you
• He/she eats the remaining leftovers as to avoid putting them away, even if he/she just said "wow, I'm stuffed" prior to you asking
• He/she leaves the food in the pot/pan/dish in which it was cooked, and attempts to put it in the fridge as-is, regardless of whether there is room for such a container

At this time, KCSAD has no cure, though its effects can be mitigated using some simple techniques. For example, you can buy storage containers that are all the same size, or provide a storage container to the person you are asking to put the leftovers away. Like I said, simple things like that will allow people with KCSAD to avoid what is often one of the most difficult parts of their day.

Thank you for your attention to this matter that is near and dear to my heart.

Posted by omar at 6:12 AM | Read entire post | Comments (25)

3 - Number of significantly-sized holes in my current pair of work shoes.

25 - Approximate number of dollars spent on my current work shoes.

2.5 - Approximate number of years since I bought those $25 shoes. In terms of dollars spent per day worn, I think it's fair to say that I have won.

4 - Number of stores I have gone to so far in order to find a new pair of work shoes.

2 - Number of pairs I've narrowed it down to so far. Both are extremely comfortable, but one is too reddish-brown for me to commit, the other a little too much on the tan side. The few pairs I found that are the color I want didn't fit me very well.

75 - Approximate number of dollars required to buy the cheaper of the two pairs of shoes I like. This is just a few dollars less than how much I've spent on my last 4 pairs of work shoes combined (though one of those pairs was free).

20 - Number of minutes I spent in the store wearing the too reddish-brown pair, trying to convince myself that I should buy them in spite of their slightly-off color, the price, and the slightly weird shoelaces (see below).

10 - Number of minutes I spent looking for a different pair of shoelaces for those too reddish shoes, because I'm not wild about the ones that come with it. It shouldn't normally take this long to look through the available shoelace options, but I spent about 8 of those minutes trying to figure out what the difference was between 36" men's shoelaces and 36" women's shoelaces. They only had the color I wanted in the women's shoelace section, but I was not OK with buying women's shoelaces without knowing what the difference is. I still don't know.

0 - Number of pairs of new work shoes I ended up buying.

Posted by omar at 6:38 AM | Read entire post | Comments (25)

So I guess I've left you in suspense long enough. The answer to the latest Four Truths and a Lie post is:

NOT #2 - Sadly, I do have a light "salt and pepper" thing going. Yes, even in the beard.

NOT #3 - The boy did get mad when The Man wouldn't let him vote for Rudy. And I am a registered Democrat.

NOT #4 - I really am both busy and stalling, though I may have given up on having a 500th post event all together, just so I can get back in the swing of blogging.

Which means the answer is #1! Lia wins, as she's the only one to guess correctly! Bonus points for Carol, Scroob, and Nobo. Sure they were all wrong, but I liked their reasons. Double bonus points for Jon for pitching a movie idea in his comment. I may not use it often, but my education in the field of Finance would prevent me from ever being surprised at what my fate is around tax time. Plus, I like to get a refund. ("But Omar, if you're so financially smart, why are you giving the government interest on your money?" Because I get greater joy from getting ONE tax refund than I'd get from earning small amounts of interests on small amounts of money throughout the year.)

To distract you from my stalling, here are a couple of internet goodies to keep you busy:

How well do you know your world? - On the USA quiz, I've gotten to level 7 a few times, but I can't get past it. I did OK on the World quiz, slightly less than OK on the Canada and North America quizzes, and very badly on everything else.

A Beatboxing Dog (via Wynne) - It's a dog, and you make him beatbox. This, in my opinion, is why Al Gore invented the Internet.

Posted by omar at 6:48 AM | Read entire post | Comments (25)

A few weeks ago, I purchased this bundle of software that included a little stop-motion animation program. That had nothing to do with why I got the bundle, but since I had the program, I figured I'd break it out and give it a try.

Since then, the only thing breaking me away from making bad stop-motion movies is the occasional moment where I consider whether or not baking soda is in fact more versatile than duct tape. Oh, and parenting. But for the most part, it's been movie making. Here's a sample:

Thirty-something seconds long, it took me a good hour and a half to make it. And the wife and boy were already in bed, so it's not like I was neglecting anyone. I may have neglected to shower, but whatever. It's in the name of art.

And baking soda totally is more versatile than duct tape.

Posted by omar at 10:40 PM | Read entire post | Comments (45)

I'm mad that the Giants won the Super Bowl. When I'm watching Super Bowl LV with my kid, I'm not going to get to brag about getting to see the best all around team I've ever seen finish a season with no losses. The Giants took that moment from me. They ruined a good father-son moment. Moment ruiners.

Speaking of the boy and the Super Bowl, he was asleep before Tom Brady stepped on the field. He did, however, watch the singing of the national anthem. For whatever reason, he loves the national anthem. He can sing the whole thing (though sometimes he will repeat verses). Today, he asked me if he could watch the national anthem on TV again. It made me very proud, but also a little sad. He didn't want to watch football, he wanted to watch the national anthem. Looks like I still have some work to do.

I went to The Cheesecake Factory for the first time last week. Never in the history of my life have I struggled so hard with a decision as much as I did when I had to choose one of their 30 flavors of cheesecake (they have more, but at least one is seasonal and a few are subtle variations). I settled on Dulce de Leche Caramel Cheesecake. My initial reaction was that I wanted to marry it. Subsequent phone calls and internet research have shown that this plan was not feasible. Instead, I have made it my goal to try each flavor at least once. Originally I was hoping to do it within a calendar month, but I figured that it would not be fiscally or waistally prudent for me to do that. So now my goal is to try them all by the end of '08. Even that is ambitious, as it will require getting one every week and a half. I fully expect to have an intricate website up within the week, detailing the status of my quest.

I very infrequently discuss politics, but for the first time ever, I'm actually excited about voting on Super Tuesday.

I went to a non-mall optometrist today. It went well, I'll actually have contact lenses that permit me to see, which is a step up from my last set. Additionally, I'll be updating my glasses, which are 8-ish years old. I learned something about myself while I was there, courtesy of a consultant they have working there to help people pick out frames - I have bad taste. The lady vetoed my first three choices, and ultimately suggested that I bring my wife with me next time. Ouch.

Posted by omar at 8:59 PM | Read entire post | Comments (31)

I received some items for Christmas, purchased at Sears, that didn't fit me well. So I returned them and got some store credit.

After being dangerously close to purchasing a waffle iron, then a battery-powered adjustable wrench, I decided to head to the men's section to look for some shirts. You really don't need a lot of detail here, as this part is not the point of the story. Suffice it to say that I found a couple of shirts in which I look hot.

I went to the checkout counter to pay for the shirts. The total, after store credit, was $7 and change. I swiped my card, punched in my pin, and waited. It went through, and my receipt started printing from the register. Here's where the fun starts.

"Here's your receipt, Mr. Phillips." She handed me my receipt. More was printing out. "The long part at the bottom is a feedback survey, if you complete it online you will have a chance to win a $4000 gift card," she told me over the sound of the printer. "And here's your customer debit record." As she handed it to me, I looked at it because I wasn't sure what a customer debit record was. It said "CUSTOMER DEBIT RECORD" and "THIS IS NOT A RECEIPT" on it. On this record, it showed the date of my purchase, the amount of my purchase, and how I paid for my purchase. Very similar to a receipt, but clearly NOT A RECEIPT. I didn't have too much time to ponder it though, because the register's printer was still going.

"Here's a coupon for 15% off any tool purchase of $50 or more," she continued. It was still printing. "Here's some information on home improvement financing specials." That was wasn't too long. But she wasn't done. "Here's a coupon for $30 off treadmills. (pause) And coming out now is a voucher for $15 off tax preparation at H&R Block."

I chuckled, audibly. "What, no gift receipt?"

"Do you need one? I can print one out for you," she said with a totally straight face.

I was caught off guard, because I think she thought I was serious. "No, no I was just... no, I don't. Thanks."

"And coming out now is your complimentary copy of Tolstoy's War and Peace."

I left the store feeling guilty for buying the two shirts, because in doing so, I watched two trees die right before my eyes.

Posted by omar at 7:41 PM | Read entire post | Comments (23)

I sat looking at this "Hazardous Materials" tape, and I wondered: was it put backwards intentionally because there aren't really hazardous materials in the area, but it's the only "caution" tape they had? Or are there actually hazardous materials back there, and someone just wasn't paying attention when they put it on? As I was wondering, it occurred to me that there is a large room with a glass wall on the other side of that tape. As in, the tape could be seen from the other side of the glass. Maybe it was meant for them to read, and I was the one in the midst of hazard?

So I took a few pictures, just in case any lawsuits stem from this. Luckily, I made it out OK.

Posted by omar at 10:21 PM | Read entire post | Comments (17)

Remember how a while ago, when I went to watch the boy's swim class, I kept getting hit on by all the moms of other kids? Well, we're doing swim class again. The only difference this time is that I'm the one going in the water with him. And I can't help but wonder if I'm getting hit on less now because I'm not wearing a shirt while I'm there.

Nah, it's probably because the wife is up there threatening anyone who looks my way.

OK, maybe it's 60% wife, 40% no shirt.

40% wife, 60% no shirt?

Posted by omar at 9:58 PM | Read entire post | Comments (8)

Last weekend, I photographed a local hockey game. It was pretty fun, I got a handful of good shots, and the good guys won the game. But that's not much of a blog post, is it? No.

I thought one of the linesmen in the game kind of looked like a girl, partially because while he passed at high speeds, it looked like he was wearing mascara. Or do I mean eyeliner? Whatever, I thought he was wearing make-up. Anyway, it wasn't until a face-off near the area where I was sitting that I got to zoom close enough to notice that it wasn't make-up, it was a black eye.

When I was going back through the pictures at the end of the night, I scrolled quickly past that image, and the face looked very familiar:

I know they don't look exactly alike or anything. But I had Britney's "Toxic" in my head that whole night, and now I think I know why.

Posted by omar at 8:22 PM | Read entire post | Comments (10)

For Christmas last year, the wife got me a Fisher Space Pen. Since then, it's been in my pocket all but two days (I thought I had lost it, but it was in my golf bag). In the past 10+ months, I've been trying to use some of its advertised features. For example, one of the easy ones was to make sure it can write at any angle, "even upside down." It passed that with flying colors, I was able to complete a sudoku puzzle while laying on my back. I tried the same test with one of my old Dr. Grip pens, it stopped writing within a minute or two. Fisher also claims that the pen can write "through grease." I tested this the first time I ordered a pizza, and again, it passed.

One of the things I hadn't tried, however, was writing underwater. Let me give you some Omar trivia: I hate water. If it's raining, I'm trying to get out of the rain. When there's a pool party, I'm on the deck sipping a cold beverage. And when I'm in the shower, I don't have a pocket in which I can put my pen. There are no normal circumstances under which I'd have opportunity to write on a surface that is in water.

But because I'm so thorough, and because I signed up for this NaBloPoMo thing and needed something to write about, I decided to test it. So I grabbed the first thing I could find that would withstand being written on while underwater (a Linens-N-Things coupon), some water, my pen, and I went to work:

Next time, I'll be testing the "writes in 250˚F" claim.

Posted by omar at 8:49 PM | Read entire post | Comments (16)

The boy and I went out in search of a new winter coat for him. Not surprisingly, he wasn't really all that into trying on a bunch of coats. Consequently, I wasn't that thrilled about being there either. So for the sake of time, once I found the rack with coats his size, I started flipping through price tags to look for potentials. Not far along, I came across this Sean John price tag:

For that price, I could buy him four of the coats that are actually in my price range, fifteen crunchy tacos, a pumpkin muffin from Dunkin Donuts, a few songs from the iTunes music store, and two more coats that are so cheap that I'd question the quality of their assembly, yet I'd still get them just for the sake of increasing the quantity of items (particularly coats) that I can get for the cost of a toddler-sized coat that is obscenely expensive just because it has P. Diddy's name on it.

(Once I made my point though, I'd probably take five of those coats back to the store.)

Posted by omar at 8:59 PM | Read entire post | Comments (15)

For my first job after college, I had to wear a tie every day. I worked there for 14 months.

I've worn a tie to dozens of Easter Sunday church services, baptisms, weddings, and funerals in my life.

I have been on more job interviews than I care to think about, and have worn a tie to each and every one. You could throw a couple of job fairs in there also.

I can think of two or three formal family portraits I've been in where I had to wear a tie.

I have lived on this planet for 30 years, six months, and some change. I've worn lots of ties. All along, I was under the impression I was tying a half-Windsor knot. I just found out that I'm wrong. I've been using a crooked variation of the four-in-hand knot all along.

I feel embarrassed. Lied to. Mad. My pedestrian fashion awareness is not news, but this is tying a tie. Tying a tie is like a rite of passage, a skill necessary to go from boy to man. And I've been doing it wrong.

Sometimes, I can't believe I'm someone's dad. Thank goodness I haven't had the "how to tie a tie" talk with my boy yet.

Posted by omar at 6:00 AM | Read entire post | Comments (17)

And I signed up to write 30 posts in how many days?

Thanks to those who have sent in submissions for the latest photo assignment. (Let it be known that Bruno will not be visiting Aubrey, Sarah, Tori, Silandara, Jon, Cadiz, and Jonathan, who all had their assignments in on time.) I meant to make a gallery of images today, but I never got a chance. Then I was going to do it after Chuck tonight, but then tears and flattery persuaded me to extend the deadline. But because Tuesday night TV is horrible, I will very likely post the assignment results Tuesday night.

I carved one of our pumpkins tonight. In case you're not familiar with my pumpkin carving, look at my 2005 effort and how I stepped it up in "oh sicks". (I read somewhere that the kids were all writing it like that last year. It's so appropriate that I didn't read that until 2006 was already over.) So here's how we do in the double-oh-seven:

I wouldn't say it screams "fear," but at least it's better than the vampire in '05. I'm still deciding what to do with our other pumpkin, I'll post pictures later in the week. The boy insists that I give it a face, and he also requested that I give the face a mustache and beard. I'm admittedly not sure how to carve that yet, but I'll see what I can do.

Posted by omar at 9:19 PM | Read entire post | Comments (13)

Dear Candy Selling Guy:

I'm the guy who buys the Heath bars. Let's be honest, nobody else buys those things, so I think you know exactly who I am. Yesterday, when I came to get my Heath bar, you put a Skor bar on the counter instead. In response to my questioning look, you said that you were out of Heath bars, and that "it's basically the same."

Both bars may be made by Hershey's, and both feature milk chocolate and toffee. But let's be clear on something - Skor is to Heath like Monopoly money is to real money. Like Courtney Love is to Halle Berry. Like C.C. DeVille is to Eddie Van Halen. Like Ryan Leaf is to Peyton Manning. Like my key lime pie is to my pumpkin pie. Like Wal-Mart is to Target. Like Jimmy Kimmel is to Dave Letterman. Like Kia is to Lamborghini. Like "Hole Hearted" is to "More than Words." Like Ivan Drago is to Clubber Lang. Like Liston is to Ali.

I could go on, but I think you get what I'm saying.

Next time, I hope you will have the decency to not insult my sense of taste.

Sincerely,
Omar

Posted by omar at 9:12 PM | Read entire post | Comments (25)

- Our next door neighbors moved out on Sunday. We weren't BFsF or anything, but they were good neighbors (other than the occasional cigarette smoke odor that drafted to my yard). I'm not sure when the new people are moving in, so we're all nervously anticipating their arrival. I'm hoping for either Tiger and Elin, or a group of (female) Brazilian swimsuit models. If not either of them, I'll settle for normal folk with no loud dogs or broken down cars.

- The boy and I finally got to go to the Apple Store. As we were playing with one of the iPhones on display, I marveled at how this two-year-old kid was flicking through pictures, zooming in and out, changing photo albums, and "checking the weather" like he's had one of those for his entire life. At the same time, a woman nearby was speaking to an employee. She had an iPhone in her hand, and said, "I bought this thing a week ago, but all I know how to do is receive calls... My daughter said I can check my email on it?" It took everything in me to keep from tackling her and rescuing her iPhone from her.

- Related note, I didn't want to like the iPhone. I'm a sucker for all things Apple, but if you recall, I hate cell phones. Plus, Apple delayed the release of their next operating system because of the iPhone. I resented it. And then it came out, and I was all, "bah, too much hype, and it's too expensive." And then I used one. And then they lowered the price. Now I want to bathe in iPhones.

- Work is getting less busy, and my part in the work project I was working on is wrapping up. This means I can once again look at PHP code without wanting to remove my eyeballs, which is good. I've even been able to put some of the new stuff I've learned to use on this site over the past few weeks, which many of you have already noticed. In fact, one of those new additions got me inducted into the Shuck N Jive Hall of Fame, which is now prominently noted on my resumé.

- I played in a golf tournament with some higher-ups last week. I was about 4 inches away from scoring my first eagle, as I was that close to holing out with a wedge from the left rough, about 120 yards out. I am Tiger Woods.

- Me and the wife celebrated our 6th anniversary way back on the 15th. And when I say "celebrated," I mean that we dodged vomit. Still, I wanted to note publicly how lucky I know I am to have found such a wonderful lady to put up with me. Unmarried men out there, be jealous of me. Women, you be jealous of the wife, regardless of your marital status. Because I'm that awesome. (See what she has to put up with?)

Posted by omar at 8:54 PM | Read entire post | Comments (21)

I came home yesterday to find this new magnet on my refrigerator:

The wife got it in the mail from one of her friends (see post title). I'd like to do more blogging, but I feel like I better go do some dishes...

Posted by omar at 7:53 PM | Read entire post | Comments (31)

- Apparently, I'm a bit of an alarmist. I made the switch over to the new version of Movable Type this weekend. The interface on my end is drastically different, but as best I can tell, everything from your perspective is the same. And no, none of you were inadvertently given more cool points when I made the change. Nice try.

- Work is kicking my butt over the past week. As a help desk guy, it's not often that I have work come home with me. This week, I've been working on a couple of projects that have been consuming my work days AND evenings. It's actually fun stuff for me to work on, but it's still work. I'll be catching up on all of your blogs shortly.

- We didn't let the boy watch TV until he was 2, so maybe I'm the last one to notice this, but when did characters on kid's TV shows start asking so many questions?! Every two seconds, the character on the screen stops to ask a question, pauses for an often awkwardly long amount of time, then responds as though you answered his/her question favorably. Would you like to see an example of what I mean? (Pretend the image below is a TV screen. Stare at it until your internal sensors say, "wow, this is awkward." Keep staring for a few moments beyond that, then continue reading.)

...Great!

I watched a fair amount of cartoons as a kid. He-Man never asked me my opinion on what he should do next. Fred never stopped the Mystery Machine to ask me which way to go. Not once did Gargamel ask me for help with finding a Smurf. The worst is Little Einsteins, because they're always asking me questions in some time-sensitive situation. "Will you help us win the race?" Dammit man, I wouldn't need to help you if you'd quit yapping and get in your rocket! Stop talking and go! Go!

- I might be suffering from a little seasonal insanity.

- Happy birthday to my brother!

Posted by omar at 8:47 PM | Read entire post | Comments (22)

Here is the answer to the "Four truths and a lie" question from my previous post:

1) I pointed my fingers and did the twist.

This is in reference to the Wiggles' song, "Can you point your fingers and do the twist," which I found out at the concert that I can totally do. I pointed my fingers and did the HELL out of the twist. Yeah!

2) I got goose bumps when I heard the first few bars of "Big Red Car."

It's not even my favorite song. And I wish Rhonda was right, and that it was just cold in there, and the goose bumps were purely coincidental. But when Sam drove that red car out on stage...

It makes you get goose bumps just looking at it, doesn't it? ...No? ...Shut up.

3) I was pleased with the performance of the new yellow Wiggle, Sam Moran.

I was indeed. Sam did a great job. However, that's not to say I still don't have concerns about him. Like, for example, the fact that he's a little soft around the midsection. Don't get me wrong, I won't be winning the Mr. Universe competition anytime soon. I carry a little extra fat cold weather insulation on my frame also. But knowing that keeps me from going on stage with three other really skinny guys while wearing unflattering clothes:

5) Murray, the red Wiggle, waved at me when he walked around the crowd.

Very true. For a second, I also thought he was trying to muster up the courage to ask for my phone number. That's how sure I am he was waving at me.

Which leaves us with #4. Apparently, I'm not as good of a liar as I thought, as most of you got it right. Sarah and Becky even had the reasoning correct. The Captain's entrance was pretty exciting, but exciting enough to touch hands with a stranger? I think not. That sort of reckless behavior is reserved for major sporting events.

---------

On a completely unrelated note, if you're linked on the sidebar, that number next to your name is your score on the "omarphillips.net scale of cool" (higher is better). You might notice this number increase in direct proportion to the number of comments you leave here. That's not a coincidence. (*UPDATE* - Numbers only appear on the main omarphillips.net page, not on individual post pages. Sorry for the confusion!)

Posted by omar at 6:31 AM | Read entire post | Comments (52)

When someone says that something is a "pain in the butt," (or some other gluteal slang term), my response is often, "Then you must be doing it wrong."

Most of my close friends know what I mean. But if anyone else is around, I'd say that this gets interpreted correctly only about 10% of the time. Let's say, for example, that someone is filling out an application for something. It's long and asks a lot of questions you don't have answers for offhand. He/she says, "Wow, filling out this form is a big pain in the butt!" When I give my response, most people interpret that to mean that I really think they're actually doing something wrong when filling out the application, or that I'm questioning their application-completion skills in an insulting way. In fact, the joke is that I'm pretending to take their statement literally. Completing the application may cause some hand or wrist pain, or a headache from having to think too much. But it should cause no butt discomfort whatsoever. And that if it does, they must be filling out the form wrong.

Yes, I know. It's like I'm one of those, "that's what she said" people. I promise, I'm not. Given that I often come across as being a serious person at first, my jokes (however bad they may be) often seem funnier than if they came from someone who people expect to joke around.

Sometimes, I'll extend my response to say "Then you must be doing it wrong, because I just did (whatever it was), and my butt still feels fine." That dramatically increases the comprehension of the joke, but it's only applicable when it's something I have done. I guess I could say, "Interesting, because if I was doing that, I wouldn't involve my butt at all," but for some reason, I don't feel it delivers the same message with the same strength. Besides, I don't talk, so I like to say things in as few words as possible.

Anyway, this weekend, someone was complaining about having to walk a long way to get to the nearest bathroom. Someone else in the group said, "I know, it's such a pain in the butt."

I started my response almost unconsciously, but only got a word or two in before I realized that I was about to make a statement that could potentially be very wrong (and a bit insensitive).

Posted by omar at 6:39 AM | Read entire post | Comments (8)

My brother is a vegetarian who is very conscious of what animal products are used to make everything. Once a week or so, he surprises me with a new thing he refuses to eat or use because it's made (or potentially made) with meat products that I didn't know had meat in it. Things like many brands of lip balm, some lotions, soaps, chewing gum, cereals, etc. My response is usually something like, "enjoy your chapped lips then, crazy guy," or "the tree out front still has some leaves you can eat, crazy guy." The common theme is that I often think he's crazy, because he thinks my cherry Blistex is made from cows. Also, he won't let his kids eat Jello, which is not only crazy, but it's un-American.

So yesterday, I go out and buy some of this stuff for my contacts:

I had previously used a different brand, so I pulled out the absurdly long instruction sheet to make sure there wasn't anything I needed to know before putting it on my contacts. Before the directions, I noticed this:

Say what? The protein remover for my contact lenses contains pork? Intrigued, I checked the list of ingredients to find out what other surprises might be in store:

My contact lens cleaner contains enzymes from a pig's pancreas? My first thought was, maybe that old brother of mine isn't all the way crazy. My second thought was, how fantastically versatile are pigs?

Posted by omar at 7:45 PM | Read entire post | Comments (12)

1. Sometime within the next week, this site will reach the 100,000 hit milestone. I've been known to celebrate a milestone or two in my day, but they're usually comment milestones, not hits. Leaving a comment requires intent. Hits? You don't even have to actually visit my site in order to register a hit (see Google's page on results prefetching). And with my luck, hit #100,000 will be from some dude searching for "Exposed Wiggles." So instead of celebrating with the usual offer of prizes and having to come up with rules which assure that you're ineligible to receive any of them, the 100,000th hit party will be relatively low-key. Though I am planning a "top 100,000 moments at omarphillips.net" post, which should be quite the read.
2. I saw one of the most amazing things I think I've ever seen this past weekend. We went to visit some friends who live a couple of hours away. They have an 18 month old boy. He has these three placemats, one with all of the US Presidents, one is a map of the United States, the third is a map of the world. The presidents placemat, if you name any president, he'll point to the right person. James Polk? Got it. John Quincy Adams? Done. James Buchanan? No prob. Not even any hesitation. It was insane. He'll also say the names if you point to one and ask him who it is, but because he's so young, it's not always clear what he's saying. You can tell that he's saying the right thing though, in most cases. On the 50 states map, he does the same thing. Name a state, he'll point to it. Even the tiny New England states! He's still working on the world map, but he can still identify more than 10 nations. It was amazing. I know several adults (myself included, with the presidents) who couldn't do what he was doing.

Posted by omar at 5:50 AM | Read entire post | Comments (13)

Some of you may remember a post I wrote last year, about a sign at a zoo that taught me which primates are easiest to shoot and kill. A couple of weeks ago, we went back to that same zoo. And though I didn't get any good hunting tips this time, I did run into this cute little fella (click the image to view the full sign):

I had never heard of the Rock Hyrax prior to this trip, yet I am now convinced that the Rock Hyrax hates me and wants me dead. This animal is a small, furry, distant relative of the lovable elephant, you'd think they'd be able to find a picture that didn't give the kids another reason to soil their pants.

Posted by omar at 6:30 AM | Read entire post | Comments (10)

A couple of nights ago, the wife and I were enjoying a quiet night at home in our living room. I was on my laptop (probably doing some nerdy stuff like trying to learn Javascript and DOM scripting, but for the sake of making a better story I'll say I was) surfing for porn. The wife was catching up on some scrapbooking.

In our living room, we have what I call a fireplace. I made the mistake of calling it a fireplace in front of the home inspector when we were looking to buy the house, and based on his expression, you'd think I said "your mom is a streetwalker." He then went on about why it's a [something else with a name that escapes me], which is essentially a wood burning stove that is set in the wall, and not a fireplace. For the purposes of this post, I'm going to call it a fireplace. In reality, it's better described as a "hole in the wall," because there hasn't been a hint of a fire in it since we moved in.

Anyway, our fireplace is metal, so it makes a metallic echo-ish sound when anything happens inside of it. Consequently, it caught our attention quickly when we heard sounds coming from it. Seconds later, we saw a june bug (or june beetle or phyllophaga or whatever you want to call it) fly into the room. These bugs are all over the place outside this time of year, but it's been a while since we've seen one inside. Before I got a chance to roll up an old magazine and get into attack mode, he flew right into our lamp, got stuck, and died.

Not a minute later, another beetle dropped into the fireplace, clanked around, and got out into the room. Then another. And another. Before it was done, we saw 9 make it into the house in no more than a 3 minute stretch.

For those who don't already know this about me, I turn into Sergeant Sissy when it comes to bugs. One or two bugs is fine, but this qualified as an infestation. I did manage to smack down all of the intruders, but of course, I was terrified of the thousand more waiting in line to come in. So I did what any rational human would do - I found every piece of plastic I could find, and I taped it in place over every opening from the fireplace into the house. The bugs could still get into the fireplace, but they could no longer get from the fireplace into the house.

Then yesterday morning, I tore that all down and replaced it with a couple of those clear plastic sheets you can use to insulate your windows in the winter (warm-weather folks might not be familiar), as to make it look as classy as a fireplace covered up with plastic can look.

Don't you know that since then, not a single beetle has gone into the fireplace (and trust me, I have been watching for them). I even put a light close by in hopes of attracting them, just so I could see how they were getting in. Nothing. I got all freaked out, wasted a lot of tape and plastic, all for nothing.

So a quick note to any june beetles out there: screw you.

Posted by omar at 9:21 PM | Read entire post | Comments (13)

Yeah, so I guess I've been a little lazy with the blogging lately. Sorry about that. I'd offer up my reasons, but they're really not all that exciting. But in good news, I did get souvenirs for all of you while I was in San Fran. It was admittedly hard to find a souvenir that would work for everyone. If you don't have a desk or papers, what would you do with a paperweight? So I settled on this:

You should be receiving yours in the mail soon.

On an unrelated note, I sold my soul for the second time this year (the first time I sold out was when I bought a cell phone). I went to Starbucks. It was the only place that sold any food before 8 a.m. in my hotel. Because of the time difference, I was up at 4:30 a.m. every morning. Starbucks opened at 5, so I went down almost every morning. In my five visits, I only had three menu items: Caramel Frappuccino® Blended Coffee, Vanilla Bean Frappuccino® Blended Crème, and a Chocolate Croissant. Chocolate croissants are kind of hard to mess up. The caramel thing might as well have been called the "Coffee Caramel Coffee Frappuccino-Coffee Blended Coffee Coffee." I was excited by the word "caramel" in the name, but it was misleading. All I tasted when I drank it was coffee. Which is yuck.

The Vanilla Bean thing was quite good, but I think I might save that for a revival of "Food Review Tuesday." I can do a head-to-head comparison of that vs. the vanilla bean Coolatta from Dunkin Donuts. That's how much I care about about being thorough for my readers - I'm willing to drink 1000 tasty calories in one sitting just for you.

Posted by omar at 6:31 AM | Read entire post | Comments (15)

I saw this sign posted on the wall while I was waiting for an elevator on the 19th floor of a building:

Is it saying that the chemicals in the area contain tobacco smoke, and that tobacco smoke is known to cause cancer? Because I'd bet that people outside of California knew that.

Or is it saying that there are many carcinogenic and birth defect-causing chemicals in "this area," and tobacco smoke is just one of them? If that's the case, I'm thinking they should put more effort into keeping the chemicals out of their elevator waiting areas, and less effort into making signs.

In any case, the stairs got much more attractive after I read this. But then I figured that I had already been standing there for a couple minutes while reading, taking a picture of, and thinking about the sign, so I had already been exposed.

Posted by omar at 6:18 PM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

I like home improvement stores, like Lowes or Home Depot
Whenever I need lawn supplies, to one of those places I'll go
But as much as I love the stores, I simply can't see me
Going to the Lowes parking lot to "do the nasty"

Maybe it started innocent, just a simple trip to the store
And a romantic song on the radio turned it into more
Or, for all I know, Lowes was just the first stop after
And he couldn't find a garbage can in which to put the wrapper

Regardless, it caught me off guard to see this by my dubs
When I went to Lowes for weed & feed and something to kill grubs
But it's not at all my place to judge another woman or man
For choosing to copulate at Lowes inside their car or van

Posted by omar at 6:07 AM | Read entire post | Comments (9)

- Last week, the guy I go to the gym with during my lunch breaks suggested that we play tennis. Before last week, I hadn't hit a tennis ball since 1997. And I sucked then. It doesn't take a statistician to know that if I sucked then (in my athletic prime), didn't play for 10 years, gained 25 pounds and got slower, the odds of me being successful now are pretty low. As expected, I still do suck. But what I didn't expect is that I'd love it! I've played a bunch of times since then, and am now in the market to buy my own racket (or racquet, if you're cool) and sign up for lessons. Suggestions are welcome.

- Mother duck has been spending more and more time on the eggs each day. Still no sign of any male ducks, which has made the whole situation much more tolerable. We've started checking in on her more regularly, as she laid the eggs almost 3 weeks ago, and the baby ducks are supposed to hatch in 20-25 days. I think we have a slight case of Stockholm Syndrome going on in my house. I was initially on the phone with animal control, ready to have someone come and remove the ducks for fear of aggression or gang rape. Three weeks later, I'm avoiding my front door as not to disturb her, and I'm eagerly anticipating the arrival of her babies. It's like she owns half of my front yard. Next thing I know, she's going to have me robbing banks in the name of equal rights for ducks.

- This dude's head got run over by a truck. He was wearing a bike helmet and suffered "only" a concussion, but is otherwise fine. His quote to the local paper: "It feels really strange to have a truck run over your head." No, friend, it feels strange to put your hand in a bowl of peeled grapes. It feels really strange to touch your tongue to the leads on a 9-volt battery. You got your head run over by a truck.

- The 400th episode of The Simpsons is airing on FOX this weekend. My next post here will be omarphillips.net's 400th. They're such copycats over at FOX.

Posted by omar at 6:00 AM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

You poor bottle of Gatorade
Someone's day, you could have made
You replenish electrolytes and so much more
Now you sit on a urine-soaked floor

I feel so bad for the dude that bought you
He though he'd just stop to go #1 (not 2)
After which, he would quench his thirst
And then you fell from his man-purse

His body was hoping for carbohydrates
So he got you from the vending machine, despite its high rates
I'd bet he's filled with enough anger to move a mountain
He'll now have to "Be Like Mike" at the drinking fountain

Posted by omar at 9:45 PM | Read entire post | Comments (12)

Pardon my laziness on the blogs this week, but I'm on "bacation," and I needed a quick break from computers. But now I've had a few days to re-energize, and I'm ready to go. And though the calendar says it's spring, It's no kind of spring-like outside, so I should have plenty of time to sit at the computer and catch up.

And not that I'm into spreading hearsay, but rumor sites are saying that something about the final volume of The Chase is expected to be released Friday. Some are cautioning that it could just be a publicity stunt, though.

Posted by omar at 10:54 AM | Read entire post | Comments (10)

Those who are familiar with Tim Hortons restaurants are probably aware of their somewhat regular "RRRoll up the Rim to Win" contests. For those who are not familiar, they have contests where you can win stuff by buying Tim Hortons drinks. I'm not a coffee guy, but they have these butter toffee hot smoothies that rock my socks, so I stop and get one every once in a while. To find out if you're a big winner, when you're done with the drink, you have to - appropriately - roll up the rim of the cup. That's the only way to win.

Before I get to the crux of the matter, let me go off on a small tangent about how silly I find it to have to rrroll up the rim of a cup. It's really not very easy to do. And if you don't think to rinse out the cup first, then you get your hands all sticky while trying to rrroll up the rim. On top of that, if you win, you have to carry this dirty cup with the rrrolled up rim back to Tim Hortons to collect your prize. What's the matter with doing that thing like McDonald's, with the Monopoly pieces on the side of the cup? Take notes, Tim. That's how you run a cup-based contest.

So I finished my tasty beverage while walking from the parking lot to my office. Then I proceeded with the arduous task of rrrolling up the rim. To win. Lo and behold, I won.

For about a week and a half, I completely forgot that I had this gold mine sitting on my desk. Then yesterday, the wife called me while at work. She had won a couple of Tim Hortons gift certificates (aka "TimBucks") in some completely unrelated contest. Of course, this reminded me of my free donut! But when I looked around my desk, I didn't see my cup. After a brief, but frantic search, I found my cup -- in a nearby garbage can. And though I'm a very proud man, I'm not too proud to rescue my free donut from a garbage can. I took it out and put it in a safer spot on my desk.

Today, I finally remembered to bring my cup home. I was walking with a co-worker out to the parking lot. At the corner of the lot was a garbage can. And this isn't like an office garbage can, this is an outdoor garbage can with just a tiny little opening on the top. As I walked past the can, I instinctively dropped the cup in the hole. A millisecond after it left my grasp, I realized what I had done. I pretended like I forgot something, said goodbye, and turned around. When my co-worker left, I went back to the garbage can. Luckily, it was pretty full, so my free donut was sitting pretty close to the top, and no digging around was required. And though I'm a very proud man, I'm not too proud to go just shy of elbow deep in a public trash can to rescue my free donut from the garbage for the second time in as many days. That is, as long as I'm fairly certain that nobody is watching.

I plan on cashing in my prize tomorrow morning. And though most free donuts are good donuts, I feel like this one owes it to me to be a little extra good.

Posted by omar at 7:53 PM | Read entire post | Comments (20)

Pardon me, but I did NOT order one of those. I think you may have mixed up my order with that of the woman ahead of me in line.

Posted by omar at 5:26 PM | Read entire post | Comments (18)

On the night before Valentine's
The snow started to fall
The night sky turned light
And it was cold, y'all

By morning, lots had fallen
Local schools had been closed
I was up at 5:30
To go clear some snows

Was greeted by six inches
but then I'm afraid
Just a bit further out
The depth was 1.5 cans of Raid

How could this be?
Driveway was clear the night before
Mother Nature must hate us
she can be such a (edited)

I snowblowed the driveway
But that wasn't the end
When I got home from work
I had to do it again

Twenty-four inches they say
Though if you ask me
It felt so much more
Like seventy-three

Though the snow has since stopped
The cold weather remains
Sub-zero windchills
Cause a whole lot of pains

Some had it worse
And I shouldn't complain
At least it wasn't an earthquake,
tornado, or hurricane.

Posted by omar at 9:03 PM | Read entire post | Comments (16)

I've gotten a few questions over the past couple of days regarding the current poll. Or more accurately, the questions are about the relationship of the current poll, that poll a few weeks ago about the "Chicken Noodle Soup" dance, and my level of sanity. So I wanted to take a minute to explain.

Around the holidays, I was having dinner at my grandparents' house. I was sitting at a table with the young folk (most in their late teens or early twenties), and they were talking about this "Chicken Noodle Soup" dance. For a short while, I played along, pretending I had any idea what they were talking about. Then my niece, who is six years old, started making some crazy hand gestures while saying, "Let it rain... clear it out. Let it rain... and clear it out."

At this point, I nudged my brother (mid 30's) to quietly ask him what the crap his daughter was doing. He filled me in on what he knew, that it was some nonsensical song with an accompanying silly dance. Of course, I assumed it was a kids' song and dance, which are generally all silly.

Me: Aren't all kids' songs and dances silly and/or nonsensical?

The brother: Think less Wiggles, and more You Got Served.*

By now, my cousins had joined in. They were all surprised I hadn't heard it yet, considering it made it to suburbs "at least five months ago." After spending some time looking at me like I'm some relic in a museum, they told me to search for it on You Tube. So I did, and as expected, I saw a bunch of kids who made me worry about the future of this country.

The poll, which asked if you knew how to do the dance, was me just checking to see exactly how out of touch I am (at least, in relation to readers of this blog). Thankfully, over 97% of you either had no idea what I was talking about, or you know about it, but can't do the dance. Had more people said yes, I would have promptly enrolled in a hip-hop dance class.

As for the "Chicken Fat" song in the current poll, it's another one where I was worried that I was out of touch. It's a song from the 1960's that came from a government initiative to promote youth fitness. It's not only a good idea, but it makes for great entertainment watching my kid try to do push-ups.

The part that is confusing to me, is that I don't understand the name of the song, or many of the lyrics. For example:

Give that chicken fat Back to the chicken, And don't be chicken again. No, don't be chicken again.

or

Once more on the rise. Nuts to the flabby guys! Go, you chicken fat, go away! Go, you chicken fat, go!

You can hear the song on this website (note that it auto-plays when you visit the site). The song has been stuck in my head for days. I've been walking around singing, "go you chicken fat, go away! Go you chicken fat, go!" It wouldn't normally bother me so much that I don't know what it means, but this song was created for the government in the 60's. For all I know, I've been walking around singing government code words that mean, "the guy to my left is a commie, kill him now."

If you have any insight, please fill me in.

--
* - Neither of us have seen You Got Served, for the record.

Posted by omar at 6:05 AM | Read entire post | Comments (19)

Dear Fashion:

You and I have always had an understanding. We very rarely are ever on the same page, but it's always been kind of a "you stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours" relationship.

Recently, I had noticed a bit of a disturbing trend, where you make men's clothes tight. This has always been an issue with pants, because you insist on making pants that don't have enough room in the thighs and butt, forcing me to buy pants with larger than necessary waists. It has made me mad, but I've been able to work around it. In the past couple years, this disturbing trend of making tight clothes has spread to shirts, forcing me to buy larger sizes than I have in the past in order to get the same "loose-but-not-overly-baggy" fit I like.

I know what you're thinking, Fashion. "In the past, Omar, you weren't as fat as you are now." First of all, shut your face. Second, you're right. I have gained weight over the past 5 years. However, I still have L and XL shirts from years ago that fit me now just like they did when I first bought them.

This weekend, I had to go buy a new winter jacket. My old Columbia jacket (size L, purchased in 2002) was in pretty bad shape. I like Columbia jackets, as they are warm and generally windproof. So I went to the store to look for a new one. I started with size L section, and I could barely fit in those. I went to XL, which sort of fit, as long as I didn't want to raise my arms more than 12 inches away from my sides. In order to get a jacket that fits just like my current size L jacket fits, I had to move to the XXL section. Two jackets, same brand, close to the same fit, two sizes different. I don't blame Columbia for this, I blame you for telling Columbia that tight is "in."

Fashion, you have tried to rattle my confidence in the past, when you told me my soccer-player thighs were too big or that my feet were too wide. But nothing you have ever done has made me feel quite so fat as I did this weekend, when you made me have to purchase an XXL jacket.

Our "understanding" is officially over. I hate you.

Sincerely,
Omar

Posted by omar at 6:54 AM | Read entire post | Comments (17)

Back in 1996, I had knee surgery to repair some torn cartilage. It was not a huge deal, though I did experience some complications during the surgery that delayed my recovery. Still, I was off crutches within only a week or so, and was back to some mild activity in a couple of months. I could have remained the chiseled stud that I was prior to the surgery, had I gotten right back into exercising like I did before.

But I didn't. Lethargy set in, and I let myself go. I did a little "Oprah Winfrey" thing, where I'd plump up, slim down, plump up, then slim down again. Except I didn't have a TV show or a billion dollars.

In 1998, I tried to right the ship. I borrowed my cousin's Tae Bo tape. It was all the rage, and I knew that the only way I'd stick with an exercise plan is if I could do it in the comfort of my own room. I'll do your exercise, but only if I can be lazy immediately before AND after! Besides, Tae Bo worked for Emmanuel Lewis.

This post isn't about me and my fatness, though. And it's not even really about Tae Bo. It's about Billy Blanks.

Before I continue, let me make sure that something is clear. In fact, without even knowing what I'm going to say, it's already clear to you. I just want to make sure that you know that I know it's clear. Should I ever find myself in a fight with Billy Blanks, he could end me. He could kill me, chop me up into small pieces with his bare hands, and donate my parts to various medical research centers -- all before you could say, "I heard Billy and Omar were going to fight!"

Besides, Billy helped me to lose something like 17 pounds. Billy's my homeboy. In fact, I'd like to put an open invite out there to you, Billy. If you're ever in my neck of the woods, I'll be offended if you don't stop by. Dinner's on me. In exchange, all I ask is that you don't punch or kick me.

It's because I like Billy so much that I am concerned about him wearing things like this on videos that he sells to millions of people:

Billy, you're awesomer than that. You don't need to wear low cut leotards that half expose your nipples, leg warmers, and unnecessary belts to be a man. Wear a tshirt - a sleeveless tshirt - that says, "I could end you." That's all you need to do.

Posted by omar at 8:26 PM | Read entire post | Comments (21)

The freezing rain started falling Sunday night. It's Tuesday, and I just now got back inside from scraping it off my car.

Posted by omar at 8:36 PM | Read entire post | Comments (13)

Over the past several weeks, Omar hasn't been blogging much because:

(a) he is an international spy, and this is a busy time of year in the spy business.
(b) he's been on the couch watching bowl games.
(c) he's been going around saying, "hit me on my celly" to everyone in earshot.
(d) he's been planning the most awesome-est prize and celebration in anticipation of the 5000th omarphillips.net comment.
(e) he's been learning the Chicken Noodle Soup dance.
(f) All of the above

Posted by omar at 5:40 AM | Read entire post | Comments (35)

1. Learning PHP and mySQL
2. Contemplating a 2008 presidential run
3. Getting a tattoo
4. Chasing a terrible two-year-old
5. Cleaning up after that same terrible two-year-old
6. Christmas shopping
7. Attempting to beat my own Elefun record
8. Completing a whirlwind tour of the US, following the news that I was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year
9. Trying to help care for a sick wife and sick terrible two-year-old
10. Exaggerating how terrible my two-year-old is (he's only half terrible)
11. Wetting my pants as a result of the Photoshop CS3 public beta
12. Thinking about this
13. Getting angry because Yul won Survivor instead of Ozzy
14. Developing some crazy plot twists for The Chase: Volume 3
15. Thinking about the next blog redesign
16. Suffering through intense guilt after cutting down my own Christmas tree (this is the first time I'd ever cut my own)

Posted by omar at 6:53 AM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

I got an A in my Java class! I got 100% on the final exam! I'm so happy, lots of heads are gonna roll!

That last sentence didn't even make sense, but I don't care! That's how happy I am! Name all the rolling heads and win a prize! I am the egg man! I am the walrus! Coo coo ca choo!

Now pardon me as I go write a Java program that steals money from each of your bank accounts!! Yeah!

Posted by omar at 6:15 AM | Read entire post | Comments (17)

Dear makers of Pepto Bismol:

I've felt nauseated quite a bit over the years. I've had heartburn. Occasionally, I experience indigestion. "Upset stomach" is my middle name. And diarrhea, well, we're entirely too familiar. I've got bad intestines, and I've experienced diarrhea way more times than I care to discuss, and probably 1 + way more times than you care to read about.

A universal sign for "I feel the need to vomit" is to put your hand to your mouth. I've rubbed my chest when I had heartburn, even though I know it will not help one bit. Likewise, for indigestion and upset stomach, I've put my hand to my belly. I guess it may have a little bit of a pacifying effect, and it also signals to others that I'm in some sort of distress. However, not one time in my 29 years have I put my hands to my butt when I've felt a bout of diarrhea coming on.

I've been holding that in (no pun intended) since I first saw this series of commercials, a couple of years ago. But as I continue to see more come out -- more of your commercials, that is -- I am reminded of how impractical that gesture is.

Sincerely,
Omar Phillips

Posted by omar at 9:53 PM | Read entire post | Comments (10)

On my lunch break yesterday, I made a couple of stops at local retailers in search of a new microwave oven. One of my visits was to my home away from home, Target. When I got out of my car, I noticed a HOT girl getting out of her car a row over. Then I realized that she looked familiar. Then I realized that she was my wife. She was going to her home away from home to pick up some stuff for the boy, neither of us knew that the other was going to Target. It was a fun chance meeting, but that's not what this story is about.

Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I was talking with the wife about random stuff. Then I was like, "Oh yeah! I went to Target this afternoon and -- "

I got that far before I realized that I was about to tell her that I ran into HER at Target earlier in the day. Clearly, my brain is being overworked and needs a vacation.

(Oh, and no word yet from the neighbors on their trick-or-treater count. I'm calling that a victory.)

Posted by omar at 6:07 AM | Read entire post | Comments (16)

Last year, my Halloween prep was lame. I thought it was good at the time, but in hindsight, it was lame. This year, I'm bringing it. I'm stepping up to the plate. Bringing my A-game.

As a reminder, here's my lame 2005 effort.

Here's how we roll in the oh-six:

Oh, I'm sorry, did I cause you to wet your pants in fear? Did your arachnophobia kick in, causing mild convulsions and cold sweats? Well GOOD, because I told you I'm not playing around this year. Sure, the pumpkin pirate skeleton guy might appear to be missing some teeth. I'll tell you what, you go find me a skeleton pirate - a REAL skeleton pirate - with a full set of teeth in his mouth, and I'll fix my pumpkin. I've also got my costume set to answer the door in, and the wife bought some orange lights to decorate the porch.

Write this down. Quote me on it. If we don't win the trick-or-treat contest with our neighbors this year, I will never compete with anyone in anything ever again.

Luckily, that outrageous statement doesn't matter, because I guarantee that we will win.

Posted by omar at 6:30 AM | Read entire post | Comments (20)

I was sitting at the table eating dinner with the wife and the boy. He sneezed. Whenever he sneezes, whether it's necessary or not, he asks for a tissue. Rather, he demands a tissue. It usually goes something like, "Tissue. I need it. I need tissue."

Though he could work on his manners, we're all for him wanting to keep his nose clean (literally and figuratively), so the wife got up and got him a tissue. He wiped his already dry nose. After doing so, he looked at the tissue. After a moment of staring at it, he said, "Where booger?"

First off, high-five to whoever taught my boy the word "booger." He not only used it correctly, but he used it enthusiastically.

Second, this led to considerable examination of this practice of looking at tissues after blowing noses. I'll admit, I have done this for as long as I can remember. And while I didn't assume it was just me who did it, I did think I was part of a select crowd. I thought it was something that one learns when young, does for a while, then grows out of, much like giggling at farts or doing the "crane" move from the Karate Kid when threatened.

Now, I'm not so sure. It seems as though everybody does it, including my 1-year old. Is it not a learned behavior, but an instinctual need to see what comes out of our bodies? Does it help us bring closure to our stuffy-nose state if we have the visual confirmation that something actually came out? Do we just like to look at gross stuff?

Posted by omar at 6:29 AM | Read entire post | Comments (17)

Longtime visitors know that I'm pretty enthusiastic about lawn care. Newbies, FYI: I'm pretty enthusiastic about lawn care. So the other night, I went out in my back yard on a weed control mission. I filled up my tank sprayer with a gallon of water and a couple of tablespoons of Weed-B-Gone, and I started patrolling.

Since the boy has been of age where he can run around the yard, I've been cautious about what chemicals I put on the grass. I don't worry so much about the herbicides, but I've been using pesticides very sparingly. As a result, I've had a bit of a lawn insect problem this year. So as I was walking around with the sprayer, I'd occasionally scare a lawn moth out of hiding. I've never explicitly stated my feelings on lawn moths, so let me be clear: I think they should all die. Now. No, yesterday. They should all have been dead yesterday. Needless to say, whenever I see one fluttering around near the surface, I go in for the kill. I give them a taste of my size 11s. A little stomp sandwich, if you will.

So let's recap: I walk around with my tank sprayer, spraying weeds. I see the occasional moth fluttering low to the ground, and I swiftly raise my leg and bring the thunder down upon it.

I fully understand that though what I'm doing makes perfect sense to me, someone who is more than a few feet away probably can't see the moths, and it probably looks like I'm pausing my spraying to break into some kind of dance. With this in mind, I tend to only do this in the back yard, where there is a lesser chance of someone seeing me and calling the authorities.

As always, I started behind the garage and worked my way out. I tend to keep my head down, as to better be able to spot the weeds and the moths. A few minutes in, I saw what I assumed to be the Moth King, as it was very large. I tried to do a couple of little quick stomps, but I kept missing. So I dropped the sprayer and follwed him. He paused, presumably because my grass looked too tasty for him to keep flying past. It was then that I delivered the fatal STOMP, followed by an audible, though not excessively loud, "HA!"

It was then that my subconscious was like, "don't look up!" Then my conscious responded, "huh?" and looked up to see what I wasn't supposed to look at. As it turns out, my chase for the Moth King had brought me far enough into the back yard where I had a nice view of my neighbors, along with two other lovely couples, who were having a nice get together on their back deck. Or rather, they had a nice view of me. And apparently it was a good show, as all of them were watching me do my stomp dance.

I waved and promptly went back inside.

Posted by omar at 6:44 AM | Read entire post | Comments (13)

Just as with everyone else this time of year, busy real-life stuff is taking away from my time to blog. So rather than trying to compile a coherent post, I'm just going to list a few things that I've wanted to post about recently.

• I want to do another photo assignment, but I fear the topic I want to do is going to be too "artsy" and that it will dissuade people from participating. So if you've got any suggestions for a photo assignment that you think might be fun, let a brother know.
• I hate it when TV shows say they are "uncensored" or "uncut," but then there ends up being no curse words, blood, or nudity. Not that I watch TV for curse words, blood, or nudity. In fact, I think they have no business being on regular (non-premium) channels. But when I hear "uncut," I immediately assume that it means something would have been cut because it is normally too explicit for TV. Instead, it usually just means that they gave one of the editors the night off, and there is an extra boring 5 minutes without nudity, violence, or curse words.
• A couple of people have asked me what happened to my picture that used to be in the sidebar. The short answer is, I got rid of it. The long answer is that I was working on a more detailed "about me" page, that will be complete with text, pictures, video, and go-go dancers.
• The boy has a little toy crocodile. He calls it "fah-fo-dido" (or sometimes, fah-fo-di-yal). The other day, we were reading a book we took out from the library. In the book, it referred to a particular crocodile as "Crock." When I said it, he repeated me perfectly. Inspired, I got his toy. I pointed at the book, he said "crock." I asked what his toy was, he said "fah-fo-dido." I ask you, do you think it's a coincidence that Whitney Houston, who once sang "I believe that children are our future..." turned into a crazy drug addict?

Posted by omar at 8:39 PM | Read entire post | Comments (17)

Back on August 10th, I wrote this post poking fun at my local zoo for sugar coating the struggles of Roscoe the rhino. I think the zoo could have done a better job of telling the public what is really going on, without making it seem like everything is A-OK.

This past weekend, we went to a different zoo. (Hey man, back off. I like zoos.) However, this place had the opposite problem, where they seemed to err on the side of giving too many of the gory details. Take this sign, for example, where they offer tips on which endangered primates are the best for killing by gunfire:

(an image of the full sign is here)

So it's either cartoons and boo boos, or death by gunfire. Perhaps I'm being too idealistic, but I think there's a middle ground between those two extremes that the people who make these signs should be shooting for. No pun intended.

And now that I think more about it, I'm starting to question that burger I ate at the zoo's restaurant.

Posted by omar at 9:54 PM | Read entire post | Comments (11)

When I was at school in Pennsylvania, I always heard the locals complaining about PennDOT. I knew it was always related to some sort of complaint about roadways and/or roadway construction, but it took a while before I realized they were talking about the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

It's not often that people think positive thoughts about their local department of transportation. It's one of those things that you either don't think about, or you complain about. If there are potholes, you curse them. And when the potholes get fixed, you say "it's about damn time." They can't win.

I'd like to go against the grain and take a moment to praise the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT). Sure, I do my share of complaining about all the summer road closures and anytime there's no snow, it's construction season. But on the flip side, there's this:

In the background is a sign saying "END ROAD WORK." You may not be able to accurately perceive distance from this photo, but this sign stands roughly 25-30 yards from the "ROAD WORK AHEAD" sign in the foreground. It's also not conclusive from the photo, but I can assure you that there is no visible road work going on between the signs. This has been the case ever since they were put up several weeks ago.

So thank you, NYSDOT. Thank you for taking care of the roads in my neighborhood without so much as a hint of inconvenience. In fact, the only way you could inconvenience me LESS would be to have a cooler of ice cold Pepsi waiting by my car each morning. Or a conveyor belt that takes me directly to my office. With Pepsi.

Posted by omar at 8:53 PM | Read entire post | Comments (8)

I need your help, Internet. Help prove me right.

I tried to make a poll question out of this, but there are too many options. I need you to leave me a comment with the following information:

• Your gender
• How old are the articles of clothing you are wearing right now

To clarify, I'm talking about outerwear only. Don't tell me about the granny panties from 1979. If you're nude, and your a girl, I think you meant to go to that other black guy's website. If you're a nude guy, well, I... why are you reading my site without any clothes on? In fact, let me further clarify and say the last clothing you wore outside. Shirt, pants, skirt, etc. No accessories. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Don't let me down by making me out to be wrong.

I'll start.

Posted by omar at 8:20 PM | Read entire post | Comments (30)

A few days ago, I took the boy to the zoo. We're members there, and he really enjoys looking at the animals. That is, as long as the animals don't move, particularly not in his direction, as this will result in him shrieking in terror. Then parents passing by always give me that, "why are you torturing your child?" look. Then I return the "but he's been talking about the whino and elphant all day! he wanted to do this!" look. But I always feel like that sentiment is too complex to be conveyed by just a look, and that other parents continue to think I'm a bad parent.

Anyway, we were passing by the indoor portion of the rhino exhibit. Our zoo has two white rhinos on loan from somewhere else for the season. One of them is fine, he pees, he kicks around huge piles of his own poop, and generally does other normal rhino things. Quite charming. The other, however, never goes outside. In fact, he remains enclosed in a rather small indoor cage. A sign posted next to the cage says why (click on the image for a larger view to read the text):

Though I feel badly about the rhino and his cuts and scrapes, I did have to chuckle at how much the situation was sugar coated for the sake of the kids. What they really meant to say was:

"Roscoe is cut up like that girl in the original 'Nightmare on Elm Street.' He has been desperately trying to get the hell out of here and run in the wild, as his instincts tell him he's supposed to do.

Rhinos have very thick skin. These cuts are like a scraped knee, shoulder, back, face, stomach, and foot.

His keepers and veterinarians are watching him carefully. Our lawyers are checking our insurance policy and contract with the lending zoo to make sure we're not liable, so that we don't have to triple your admission price next year.

They will heal quickly as he adjusts to his new small cage that we will not let him out of until it's time for him to go back home."

Posted by omar at 5:56 AM | Read entire post | Comments (12)

"It's so hot outside. And it's so damn humid, it's horrible. Walking outside from an air conditioned building is like walking into a wet blanket."

"Yeah, it sucks."

"Like a wet electric blanket, turned up to 'high'."

"What?"

"Electric blanket? Because of the heat."

"...so you're saying that going outside is like being electrocuted?"

"No, I'm... you know what I... shut up."

Posted by omar at 7:17 AM | Read entire post | Comments (20)

Jimmy: ... you've got the whole Will Smith, squeaky clean, no-cursing image thing going, why on earth would you try to use one of my bits? After all, as you said, I'm the least funny guy on TV.

Omar: No no, I think I said something about you being the least funny "comedian" with a TV show, and that I'm mad about you being rich. There are guys on TV who are way less funny than you.

Jimmy: Thanks for that. I'll go cry myself to sleep in my million dollar bed. And you still haven't answered the 'what were you thinking' question.

Omar: I've already mentioned that I think it's the funniest thing to come out of this show. It's also one of the most appropriate bits you do, though I guess that's not saying much. (Looking out to audience) Am I right?! (Audience cheers.) I knew it may have not gone over well with a few, but I didn't expect the reaction I got, on and off blog. I've learned something from it.

Jimmy: Like don't use an unfunny guy's jokes?

Omar: Something like that, yes.

Jimmy: I feel a little bit like I'm Oprah and you're James Frey.

Omar: You're half the woman Oprah is, Jimmy.

Posted by omar at 6:16 AM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

I'm not a fan of Jimmy Kimmel. I think he's generally not funny, and it makes me very mad that he's got way more money than I've ever seen in my life. That said, one of the funniest things I've seen in a while is the "This week in unnecessary censorship" segment on his talk show (note that I've never seen the talk show, just clips of this segment online).

In related news, I have a long, rich history of taking other people's funny ideas, altering them slightly, then calling them my own tend to get "funny" inspiration from unexpected sources. With that, I'm pleased to bring you a great idea I had, the omarphillips.net edition of unnecessary censorship!

Images removed

(On second thought, I guess I'm not that pleased to bring it.)

Posted by omar at 6:34 PM | Read entire post | Comments (17)

For my purposes, I'm pretty good with Photoshop. One of the struggles I face as a result of that, is that whenever I show someone a funny image, they immediately assume it was something I "created" rather than "captured." To that end, I feel the need to preface this post by telling you that the following images are 100% authentic, and beyond cropping, no Photoshopping was involved.

I also have been accused, once or twice, of exaggerating some real events for the sake of entertainment. A common side effect of that is that people often don't believe me when I say something is 100% anything. I could tell a story, then say that it is 100% false, and someone out there would be like, "I don't know, it kind of sounds believable to me." It's the life that I lead, folks. It's hard being me. But in this case, when I tout 100% authenticity, you can bet your (valuable item here) that I mean it.

We got a puzzle for the boy from Target. It was in the $1 section, so why not? It's a puzzle of little cartoon barnyard animals. Underneath each puzzle piece is a drawing of the animal, as well as text identifying the animal. It looks like this:

So we're doing the puzzle with the boy one day, and we're naming the animals as we take off the puzzle pieces. We remove the cow, the horse, the pig. All is well. Then we get to the lamb. Or so we thought:

I'm all about crazy fonts, but I don't think that's a "B" at the end. That says "lamp" to me. But it's just unclear enough where someone could argue that it is actually correct. Unlike when we lifted the "chicken" as seen below:

There's no argument to be made in this case. That says "chiken." At least the puzzle wasn't made in the USA. And it only cost $1.

Posted by omar at 6:49 AM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

"I picked up a new Weber grill last month, it's fantastic. 44,000 BTU, and it's got like 700 square inches of cooking space."

"That's cool. The wife and I picked one up last year, it's pretty nice too. Side burner and all that."

"What kind?"

"Hm?"

"What kind of grill is it?"

"... I have no idea. Gas? It's black, and it cooks food."

"You don't know what brand it is?"

"No, but who cares?"

"I'm just saying, I don't know what kind of man doesn't know what kind of grill he has - nay, what kind of grill he just bought."

"Dude, did you just use the word 'nay' while trying to question my manhood?"

"At least I know what kind of grill I have."

I was not aware my manhood was being measured by my knowledge of grills. Here I was thinking it was all about lawn care and eating beef jerky.

Posted by omar at 10:04 PM | Read entire post | Comments (7)

Things I've been doing instead of blogging:

Watching Movies

I got a Netflix subscription for Father's Day. I've watched more movies in the past month than I have in the past 2 years. The list includes Batman Begins, The Aviator, Wedding Crashers, Anchorman, Madagascar, and some others. I've got Munich sitting around ready to be watched, also (suggestions welcome). I've never been much of a moviegoer. This is primarily because I don't like getting ripped off, but also because I don't remember movie quotes. You wouldn't think that's a big deal, but really, how many times do people quote movies? All the freakin' time. Then they wait for me to react or say the next line or something, and I just sit there. Then they're like, "Remember that? From (movie title)? I know you saw it, you were with me when I saw it!" It's way too much pressure. Instead, I just don't watch movies. It's my thing. It's only backfired on me once, when I almost got beaten up for not having seen Braveheart.

Thinking

You know what it's like when you can't seem to turn your mind off? That's been happening to me for the past several weeks. It's very abnormal for me, as I usually can mentally shut down on a moment's notice. Not recently, though. It's getting annoying. The more I try to take a break, the more my mind races. You'd think that with all this thinking, I'd have thought of a cure for IBS by now, but I haven't. I think I'm pretty close, though.

Parenting

When my kid was first born, it was exhausting, mainly because I didn't get many hours of consecutive sleep. Now, it's MORE exhausting, but in a different way. Some of you may already know this, but toddlers have lots of energy. They don't stop. They could stop, but they don't want to. They want to run and open and close and climb and (try to) jump and eat everything except the food you provide for them and go inside and go outside and get picked up and get put down and read and talk and laugh and yell and scream and swim and sing and poop and talk about their poop and occasionally, go down for a nap. I have to pay more attention to what I say, because he repeats everything now. Like when I said that Bruce Arena "sucks," he picked right up on that. Worse yet, I have to S-P-E-L-L even little everyday things now, because god forbid I take a S-H-O-W-E-R without letting him get in the T-U-B and stand under the W-A-T-E-R.

Posted by omar at 6:44 AM | Read entire post | Comments (18)

It's "use it or lose it" time at work with regard to vacation days, so I'm treating myself to a long weekend. Luckily, this vacation time coincided with the first week of the boy's swim class.

Quick tangent: I don't know if I've mentioned it here before or not, but I hate water. As far as I'm concerned, it's good for three things: bathing, drinking, and keeping my lawn that lovely shade of emerald. I don't like oceans, lakes, ponds, pools, or even puddles. Wait, make that four things. I forgot about transporting sewage. Catching a whiff of the boy's diaper pail gave me a glimpse into a world where poop has to be removed manually. (shudder) So should we ever cross paths in person, don't ask me if I want to go for a swim, run through the sprinkler, go on a cruise, or walk in the rain. Baths are off limits too, but for a different reason.

So back to the boy's swim class. It's a little two week thing, only for a half hour per day. Kids his age can't handle much more than that, so it works well. The wife has been taking him, and they've both been having a blast. I was thrilled to be able to go this morning. I gathered all my camera supplies and hopped in the car with them.

The class is held at the local high school pool. There's a balcony-like viewing area above the pool, and that's where all the non-swimming parents and spectators go. So I excitedly went up to get a good spot. They had the pool split up into three or four sections, and classes were going on for kids of all ages. The start times of the classes were all staggered, so people were coming and going the entire time.

I leaned up against the rail, waving down to the wife and boy. Nothing cracks me up like the boy slapping the water and yelling "STASH!" (his version of "splash"), which he was doing often and with much delight. Anyway, as I'm sitting there smiling, waving, and taking photos of my wife and child who are only a few feet away, I got hit on by at least three women (there was a fourth, but her intentions were questionable). That's a woman-to-minute ratio of 1:10, far surpassing my old single days, when I would have considered a 1:30 ratio night "scrapbook-worthy." (I'm not really a scrapbooker, it's just how I refer to noteworthy events. Seriously, I'm not.)

I'm letting all my single friends know about this. Skip the speed dating, take a kid to swim class.

Posted by omar at 9:26 PM | Read entire post | Comments (10)

During my "blog template change every week" phase, someone who knows real life Omar accused me of only having a blog so that I can have a place to mess around with CSS.

That's SO not true. How much of a nerd do you really think I am?! There are so many wonderful and rewarding things that come from blogging, like writing, trying to be creative, "meeting" people from all over the world, and... um, yeah. Ok. The truth is, I blog so that I can obsessively monitor website statistics.

My StatCounter obsession has been well documented. To that, you can now add a Google Analytics obsession. I got it set up last week, and it's fantastic. And while there are scads and scads of features I enjoy, my favorite by far is this:

It's graphical representation of the number of unique visitors per geographic location (it's a map of the entire world, but 85% of my traffic comes from the US, so I cropped it). A few things are very clear after looking at this image:

• I need to step up advertising out west.
• Cate needs to wear her AV-wear shirt out more in other parts of Utah. And Arizona and Nevada.
• I'm a smash hit in the original 13 colonies.
• Oregon is L-A-M-E. Honestly, I expect that out of New Mexico, but you, Oregon? I thought you were better than that.

Posted by omar at 10:20 PM | Read entire post | Comments (22)

Have you ever seen that commercial for Formula 409 cleaning spray, where the janitor picks up the bottle labeled "Formula 410," and he shoots a hole in the wall with it? Then the narrator says, "because the world is not ready for Formula 410..."

I can't help but laugh hysterically every time that commercial comes on. The wife thinks I may be going crazy. Apparently, so do 4 others, based on the current poll. Or maybe 3 others, if the wife was one of the voters.

Also, tomorrow promises to be a busy day, so I probably won't get to making the photo assignment gallery until Monday night. If you were one of those who was all like, "I'm in!" but has not yet submitted a photo, you've got an extra day. I don't want to name any names, but you know who you are. So far though, 7 people have submitted some pretty sweet photos. I'd say "the pressure is on," but this is not a contest. All you need to do to be a winner is participate.

Posted by omar at 6:25 PM | Read entire post | Comments (7)

For Mother's Day, the wife decided she wanted take-out from Olive Garden. Fettuccini alfredo for her, the Tour of Italy for me. The boy got nothing, because he was being bad all day. Now, I'm not dumb enough to publish on the internet that we chose not to feed our 1 year old child. Social services would be at my door in no time. Of course we gave him some food. He had half a breadstick and some water. It's all we could fit through the bars of the cage we keep him in when he's bad.

Anyway, while eating my tasty salad, I noticed this:

It's a tomato. In the shape of a peace sign. Click on that picture for a slightly bigger version. I'm not big on signs from above - or from Olive Garden, for that matter. But this, this spoke to me. As a result, I've decided to sell our house, sell most of our stuff, and move us downstate into a commune. Oh, before I do, I'll be changing my name. I'm not 100% sure what it will be, but right now, I'm liking "Ray O. Sunshine."

I'll keep you posted on whether or not the domain name for this site will change.

Posted by omar at 9:10 PM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

Listen closely. Hear that? It's the sound of my neighbors' confidence growing. Why? Because I... Omar Phillips...

I'm sorry, I'm having trouble even typing this out.

I... I practically destroyed my lawn.

Wait! Before I get crushed beneath the weight of your collective disappointment, let me explain. It was a silly mistake caused by me trying to take TOO good care of the lawn. Or rather, series of silly mistakes. Observe the following lawn rules:

1) Under no circumstances should you cut off more than 1/3 of the height of a blade of grass. A blade of grass can only withstand the loss of so much moisture at a time. Any more than that, and the stress tolerance of your lawn decreases significantly.

2) If possible, you should avoid mowing your lawn in the evening. The grass should have sufficient time to dry before nightfall, as moist grass at night promotes lawn fungus.

3) If you're DUMB DUMB DUMB enough to disregard those first two rules, then please, for the love of god, do not do either (or worse, BOTH) of those things on a night where frost is expected.

Tuesday of last week was the only day I had time to mow, so I tried to squeeze it in between the boy's bedtime and nightfall. I committed the lawn care sin of letting my schedule tell me when to mow, instead of letting the lawn tell me when it's time to mow. My lawn went from the greenest on the block to the third yellowest - ahead of only "Yellow Lawn Guy" on the corner and "Dan DeLion" up the street - almost literally overnight. (I should note that though my lawn got yellower than my neighbors', it's still weed-free - UNLIKE theirs.) The daytime temperatures were in the upper 60's, I didn't even think to look for any frost warnings. What kind of climate has frost in late April anyway? A stupid one, that's what kind.

I've since had to seek consultation from "Mike the Scott's Guy" online, and he suggested a supplemental feeding and some more timely mowing. A week later, it's doing better, but it's still not right.

The unfortunate part is, it has taken up way too much of my time. I've had to resort to putting pictures of me up around the house, along with recordings that intermittently say "I love you," "good job!" and "DON'T TOUCH THAT!" If I'm not mistaken, I think I saw my boy call a picture of Tiger Woods "daddy" during one of my brief stints indoors. (While this initially was a bit heartbreaking, upon further review, we might be able to run with that and make a little bit of money.)

As if all that wasn't enough, I discovered this while outside:

Next to this new hole was a brief note saying, "Making your lawn look like crap is not going to prevent me from wanting to mess it up further."

Is it any wonder why I've been having trouble sleeping lately?

Posted by omar at 8:22 PM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

Let's say I leave a comment on my own site. I get the email comment notification a minute later. When I get a comment notification email, as opposed to a regular email, I get a different on-screen notification (in the image below, the red indicator shows the number of unread regular emails, the blue is the number of unread blog comments).

I know it's a comment, so I excitedly open Mail and read the message. My elation lasts only as long as it takes for me to realize that I'm getting all excited over an email I sent myself (it's usually not long, but long enough to make myself feel like a bit of a loser).

This happens to me every single time I leave a comment here. Please tell me that this happens to you too.

----

In completely unrelated news, I just read this story on cnn.com:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/04/25/health.beans.reut/index.html

(In case CNN changes the link, I copied the page here.)

Thank god they've conquered bean-induced flatulence. Maybe next, they can work on cancer or AIDS or something.

Posted by omar at 4:24 PM | Read entire post | Comments (16)

Perhaps I should have warned you ahead of time, but on the weekend of the Masters, I don't like to do much of the interacting with other people. And if extended Sunday coverage wasn't enough, this year, I was able to watch the tournament in high definition. Crap, I think I just peed my pants a little bit. This has been happening every time I say something about "the Masters in high --" whoa, I almost did it again. It was like being at Augusta National, except I got to see more golf, do less standing, scream whenever I damn well felt like it, and change a diaper. It was fantastic.

In other news, in case you missed it in the comment thread of the last post, Dr. Seventeen Syllables won the 3000th comment contest. I immediately got my financial guys on the prize, and they were able to deliver pretty quickly.

However, my legal guys got wind of the fact that she was planning on using the card to buy stuff in Djibouti. Since then, they've been using all their little law-tricks to prevent the card from getting delivered. Rest assured, 17, the card will arrive as soon as possible. My word is like gold. Ask anyone (except Glo), I always follow through when I say I will.

Finally, I've been goofing around with CSS some more, which means a new blog template. I'm trying to make the average life of my templates be longer than 10 days, but it's hard. Anyway, if there's anything I've learned this time around, it's that Internet Explorer SUCKS. Hopefully it'll start sucking less when the final version of IE 7 gets out, but I'm not holding my breath.

Regularly scheduled witty blog posting to return tomorrow...

Posted by omar at 9:47 PM | Read entire post | Comments (8)

I'll be the first to admit, I'm no regular theater-goer. I may have seen, on average, one play/musical on stage per year over the past 10 years. It's not because I don't enjoy it, because I usually do. I just rarely find myself thinking that a particular play is a "must see."

This year, my parents are hosting an exchange student. She was in the local high school's big spring production of CATS. The high school typically puts together some good productions, and the kids are usually very talented. This year's kids were no exception, they could sing and dance like pros.

However, I was a bit surprised by the show itself. All I knew going in is that it had run on Broadway for 15+ years. I had never seen it, nobody had ever told me the storyline. After seeing it, I now know why nobody told me the storyline. There is no storyline. I'm no artist, but shouldn't plays/musicals have plots? Dialog? Character development? I did some additional reading on it, and learned that the play itself is an adaptation of a bunch of individual poems. Basically, the common theme is that the poems all have to do with cats. THAT is what ties it all together. That's it.

Needless to say, I left the theater feeling a bit dissatisfied. The worst part about it is that 5 days later, I still can't get it out of my head. I can't stop thinking about how this horrible horrible play lasted so long on Broadway and elsewhere. I can't stop trying to estimate the amount of dollars generated by it. I WANT to stop, but I can't. Oh, and there are three songs from it that are stuck in my head also. This is pretty common with show tunes, but usually, I don't hate the show that the songs are attached to, so it's worse this time. The wife feels the same way. In her words, "I feel like I've been scarred. I can never get my pre-CATS life back."

Maybe that's how it lasted so long. It's like an infection, a virus. (Not a good kind of virus, like The Indie Virus that I've recently contracted.) This is the bad kind. I'd put CATS somewhere between syphilis and herpes. There's no cure, so it's worse than syphilis. But you're always very aware that you're infected by it, so it's not as bad as the commercials say herpes is.

So if you like your plays to have plots, skip this one. If you're all artsy and like free-flowing incongruously written shows that have no storylines, lots of nonsense songs, and some made up words, stop hugging that tree and go see CATS.

Posted by omar at 12:34 PM | Read entire post | Comments (10)

• According to people in the Czech Republic, dogs say "huff." And what's more, cows say "boo." What? Since when do cows make "B" sounds? Since never, that's when. That came up when someone from the Czech Republic was talking to my kid about animal sounds. Let me issue a warning to you, internet: don't try to tell me or my kid that cows say "boo." I'm not threatening you or anything, I'm just saying.
• I spent the weekend upgrading some stuff in my home network. Some of you may understand the sheer joy this brought me, though I expect most of you have already (a) finished rolling your eyes once and are working on roll #2, (b) moved on to the next blog, or (c) noticed that you were getting free wireless internet access from my new router, and have been serving porn from my IP.
• High school girls these days, they don't wear enough clothes. If I haven't mentioned it before, I'm thrilled my kid is a boy.
• High school boys these days, they're a bunch of punks. But I'm still glad I have a boy.
• I think I'm starting to show my age.
• 90% of the blogs I read started around this time last year. That's weird. Though I did actually start blogging a year ago today, the anniversary of omarphillips.net is on April 1st. You WILL be reading more about that in the coming weeks. I'm nothing if not full of myself.
• I went out last night, I didn't get home until 11:15pm. I was in bed and asleep by 11:35. Did I mention that I think I'm starting to show my age?
• It's quite possible that the only movie I saw that got nominated for an Oscar in any category is March of the Penguins. In thinking about it, I've only been to the movie theater three times since the end of 2003. I saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (summer '04), then Star Wars Episode III, twice (May '05). Maybe I'll treat myself to a trip to the movies sometime later this year...

Posted by omar at 8:40 PM | Read entire post | Comments (13)

It seems like it was just two weeks ago that I was sitting in my living room, kneeling in front of the TV like it was my master, watching the opening ceremonies for the 2006 Winter Olympics. I'd like to take a moment to air some things that have been on my mind since the start of the games.

• Neither NBC nor the IOC can determine what name I call a city. It's Turin, not Torino. I don't call Rome "Roma," I don't call Milan "Milano," I won't call Turin "Torino."


• The US medal count was down to 25, from the all-time high of 34 in the 2002 Salt Lake City games. You know what this means, right? We need to make up some new sports, STAT. We got all our snowboarding and freestyle skiing events added in the past two Olympics, but the world is catching up quickly (in those cases where they have not already passed us). My vote: the quadathalon. Cross country skiing, shooting, half-pipe snowboarding, and kicking a series of 40 yard field goals (in the snow).


• I think I know why Dick Button is such a sourpuss. I have a few theories, actually, but the primary one is revolves around him being mad that his name is Dick Button. I don't love the 200 hours of figure skating, but I can't NOT watch Olympic coverage. That is, I thought I couldn't not watch it. Until I heard Dick Button as the color analyst. For those outside of the country who didn't have to endure it, just imagine that every time a figure skater did anything, and old man came on the air saying some old man variation of "that sucked."


• While we're talking about figure skating, NBC should offer some Olympic alternative to figure skating on one of their other channels. They never spend 2+ hours of prime time coverage on any other sport event.


• While we're still talking about figure skating, why is ice dancing an Olympic event? Ice dancing, as I understand it, takes the best parts of pairs and individual figure skating and removes them. No jumps, no throws. Just... dancing. On ice. Citius, altius, fortius. Groovius? There's nothing about dancing in the Olympic motto.


• I love Bob Costas. There's nothing else I have to say about that, really. Except that Jimmy Roberts is a close third behind Costas and Jeff Probst.


• I have no hard evidence to back this up, but I think Luciano Pavarotti is actually a mannequin. Did you see the close ups of him during the opening ceremonies? He's plastic. I much preferred Andrea Bocelli in the closing ceremonies. One of his songs (Con te Partiro) plays in Vegas during the water show at the Bellagio, so now every time I hear him sing, it reminds me of the trip to Vegas.

Posted by omar at 6:43 AM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

Doubles luge. Seriously? Why?

UPDATE:
In doing some more investigation, I found that there is no rule saying it has to be two men in doubles luge. It could be two women, or a woman and a man. So the whole thing with there always being two dudes is by choice, not by rule. That explains a lot.

Posted by omar at 8:06 PM | Read entire post | Comments (11)

When I left my desk yesterday, everything looked normal.

Joe Paterno and the San Fransico Giants guy were bobbling away happily, and Yoda was just hanging out being wise.

When I came in today, something was different. The first thing I noticed was the haze in the air. When I got close enough, through the haze, I could see this:

Those monkeys may not look familiar to all of you, but they certainly did to me.

Was winning a birthday contest worth the corruption of my favorite septuagenarian bobble head, the ageless Giants fan, or Master Yoda?

The answer, of course, is yes. Pass the smokes, monkey. Wait, those are cigarettes, right? Why are you guys so giggly?

Posted by omar at 7:15 AM | Read entire post | Comments (7)

The scene, Wheel of Fortune. The category, "before and after." The puzzle:

THE FUNK_ CH_CKEN SA_AD SANDW_CH

contestant - I'd like to solve the puzzle!
Pat - Go ahead!
contestant - THE FUNKY CHICKEN STAND SANDWICH!!!
crowd - AAAAWWWWWwwwwww
Pat - I'm... uh, I'm sorry, that's not it.

This contestant wasn't the show's big winner, but Mr. Chicken Stand Sandwich left the show with over $8000.

I must find a way to get on this show. I must.

Posted by omar at 7:37 PM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

20 hours before this photo was taken, it was 63 degrees and sunny.

If you live in a place where winters are warm, prepare a guest room. The Phillips family is going to be staying with you for a few months. If you don't mind, be a doll and pick up some Lactaid milk (1%) and a few boxes of cereal for me. You don't want me around in the mornings unless I have some cereal. See you soon!

Posted by omar at 10:56 PM | Read entire post | Comments (18)

(The parts in red were implied through facial expressions.)

"That'll be $6.49."

"What the...? This is the dollar store, and I have 8 items. How does it come to $6.49?"

"If you'd rather spend $1.50 more, I'll take your money. These 4 items are $1 each, these others are two for $1."

"Hm. Maybe that $1.50 could go towards the part of your outfit meant to keep your butt crack covered. How much do I have to spend in order to use my debit card?"

"Seven dollars, you cheap son of a --"

"Ok... (pointing to a multi-pack of gum). How much is that?"

"You mean, 'how much is that item at the counter inside of the DOLLAR STORE?' It's a dollar."

"If everything was a dollar like it's supposed to be at a DOLLAR STORE, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. Ok then, I'll take one of those, too."

"Whatever. $7.58. Cash or charge?"

"Remember 20 seconds ago when I asked about the debit card minimum purchase? Debit please, exact amount."

"There's your receipt, sir. Happy holidays. Wait, they do celebrate holidays in hell, right?"

"Thanks. You too."

Posted by omar at 3:06 PM | Read entire post | Comments (9)

I struggle with how to write about this without sounding creepy. But I'll try anyway.

I was walking down a hallway on my way to the restroom. At the end of the hallway, if you kept walking straight, you'd walk straight into the ladies' room. To get to the men's room, you need to turn left once you reach the end of the hallway. The layout is an important detail here, as to make me sound as un-creepy as possible.

As I was walking down the hall, a woman was entering the ladies' room as she was talking to a friend. Her conversation had not ended, so she continued talking as she stood in the doorway with the door open.

So let's recap. I'm walking innocently, she is holding the door open.

I couldn't see in the restroom enough to see people peeing or anything, but I incidentally saw inside enough to see that one wall of the room was decorated. It had shelves, with vases and plants and stuff. The other thing that was very obvious was how well lit the room was.

Then I walked into the men's room. In the dim light, I was able to identify that the walls were "decorated" with a handful of dried boogers and varying degrees of graffiti. The winner was the large text saying "YOU SUCK," written in what appeared to be fecal matter.

I'm not defending them, but perhaps the men who do this stuff wouldn't do it if their restrooms had plants.

Posted by omar at 12:58 PM | Read entire post | Comments (7)

Yesterday afternoon, I was getting ready to eat my lunch. At the same time, I was finishing up the boy's lunch, as well as getting him dressed to leave. My lunch required very little preparation, I only needed to reheat last night's dinner of sloppy joes. I got it out of the fridge, threw it in a bowl, and microwaved it for a minute or so. I got distracted, and by the time I remembered that it was in the microwave, it had already cooled back down.

I covered it back up with a paper towel, then set the microwave to cook it for another 30 seconds. Then I went off to chase the boy before he reached the doormat and started trying to put my shoes in his mouth. Again.

A couple of minutes later, some faint popping noises prompted me to go back in the kitchen. I was, needless to say, quite surprised to see that the microwave was not only still going, but that it still had 45 seconds to go.

Apparently, I set it to three minutes instead of 30 seconds. Rather than rushing to clean this mess up while it was still relatively fresh, I ran and got the camera. It kind of reminded me of the microwave in my college dorm room, so I wanted to capture the memory (I don't think this picture really does it justice, but it's all I've got).

Of course this happened less than 24 hours after the wife had cleaned the microwave. Good thing I had that paper towel covering the bowl.

Posted by omar at 6:54 AM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

That's a little screen shot from weather.com, showing the temperature right now. Now, before all of you who live in Antarctica prepare to tell me how warm that is, I am not posting it to complain about the weather. I made a conscious choice to live where I live, in spite of the crappy, crappy weather.

However, the one thing I feel well within my right to complain about, is the group of MORONS people who always insists on walking around outside in this weather wearing only a t-shirt and jeans (undoubtedly, they also have their hands in their pockets, to stay warm). I get colder just looking at you, and for that, I hate you.

That's all.

Posted by omar at 8:03 PM | Read entire post | Comments (9)

For no reason at all folks, here is one of my favorite photos. It's a Subway sandwich on the street corner. Dancing. At a glance, it looks like that sandwich is filled with a lot of lettuce, some tomatoes, and a college student desperately in need of beer money. Enjoy.

Posted by omar at 9:21 PM | Read entire post | Comments (6)

One day, back when I was a wee lad, I was looking for ways to take faster showers. There was one shower, there were four people, and speed was essential to maintaining a happy household. The plan I came up with was to mix the shampoo and the conditioner in my hands prior to rubbing it in my hair. Brilliant, I thought. After doing this for a week or so, I was so proud of myself, I had to brag to my mom.

"Mom, I've been mixing the conditioner and shampoo together so that I can shower faster!"

"You shouldn't do that, you're making both the shampoo and conditioner less effective." And that was the end of that.

A few years later, Procter & Gamble introduced Pert Plus. Essentially, they took my idea, bottled it, and made skillions of dollars. It could have -- no, should have been me. Some might think that this experience would make me more driven to follow through on my ideas. Those people are so clearly wrong. This experience just makes me want to sue.

My poor college roommate had to endure my ranting about this for two-plus years. I'm having trouble letting it go. I'm not even sure what got me thinking about it today, probably the $315 million I didn't win in the MegaMillions drawing last night. Damn California. Who let them in the union anyway?

Anyway, I'm still working on gathering documentation for my lawsuit against P&G. But until the courts say otherwise, if you've ever purchased 2-in-1 shampoo plus conditioner, of any brand, you owe me $1. That's a dollar per bottle, mind you.

Posted by omar at 8:13 PM | Read entire post | Comments (6)

Here's the part where I fill your hearts with fear:

I'll freely admit that this is among the lamest jack-o-lantern vampires in the history of jack-o-lantern vampires. He's like, "I want to suck your blood! Unless that's not OK with you. Is it OK? How 'bout we go shopping instead?" But it's the best I've got. I'll do better next year.

In other news, I got a voice mail message from Alyssa Milano last night. She was upset that she got left off my list of 7 celebrity crushes. I was too scared to call her back (she's got an awful temper), so I'll respond here. If you're not Alyssa Milano, skip the next paragraph.

Alyssa, I think you're great. You know that. But when you dated Fred Durst a few years ago, it hurt me. And so I lash out at you by not putting you on my list. Maybe it's not the best way for me to respond, but what was I supposed to do? And now you're out and about dating pro baseball players? You can't have it both ways, Alyssa. We're just friends, and that's all we can be. That's all we'll ever be. -Omar

To everyone else, Happy Halloween. Sorry for scaring you.

---

UPDATE
omarphillips.net is approaching 20,000 hits! Keep an eye on the hit counter. #20,000 gets to be featured in the upcoming worldwide omarphillips.net advertising campaign:

Posted by omar at 6:12 AM | Read entire post | Comments (23)

Prior to last week, I used to get maybe 10-15 Google/MSN search hits per week, according to StatCounter. Last week and this week, I've been getting 15-20 per day, and I don't know why. I keep getting excited to find out that I got a new reader from Portugal, Poland, Japan, etc. On further investigation, I find that it's just someone else searching for info on "Steve Harvey's hair" or "Jem and the Rockers." My latest favorite is "butt scratching." According to Google, there are only a couple of sites that are more relevant to butt scratching than omarphillips.net.

Thanks Google, for helping me find my niche.

------
To finish off the week, here's a recent real-life conversation with a reader:

Him: Omar, your blog is funny. You should do a podcast, I bet that would be funny too.
Me: You mean like a radio show type thing?
Him: Yeah.
Me: Have you ever heard me talk for more than a minute straight?
Him: ...I don't think so, no.
Me: (stares)
Him: Yeah, you're right. Stick to blogging.

Posted by omar at 1:01 PM | Read entire post | Comments (11)

All I needed to get me out of my blogging funk were a few encouraging comments from good people and an early morning trip to 7-Eleven, where I saw this sign:

It wasn't until I showed this photo to someone else and saw their indifference that I actually understood what the sign meant. They're saying that 20-packs of the Budweiser family of beers and the Michelob family of beers are all selling for $12.99.

Needless to say, this is NOT how I originally interpreted the sign.

I had some funny stories running through my mind about Bobby-Jim and his cousin/wife buying family packs of beer, because, you know, $12.99 is a great price for beer for the entire family. Then I cracked myself up even more because I realized there were 20 beers in the family pack, which would be quite a night for the average family of 4 or 5.

"Bobby-Jim Jr, I'll race you! Last one to finish their four beers has to go clean the stables!"

"YEEEE haw, you're on, cousin Dad! (glug, glug, glug...)"

Indeed, this was just what I needed to get the creativity flowing again.*

---
* The sign, not the 20 pack.

Posted by omar at 12:56 PM | Read entire post | Comments (10)

Last night, the wife and I decided to order some pizza for dinner. 35 hungry minutes later, he arrived. I visually estimated him to be in his early 20's. I was watching for him, and I opened the door just as he was reaching for the doorbell.

Pizza Guy - Whoa, I guess I don't need to press that!
Me - Yeah, I was watching for you.
PG - Here's the receipt, if you could sign right here. (hands me receipt) So, is this a pretty quiet neighborhood?
Me - (kind of joking) You would think so.
PG - You mean it's not? It seems like it would be.
Me - Yeah, I was only kidding, I'm just socially inept and always try to come up with some sort of clever response to everything as to appear witty and charming. Besides, I didn't really expect you to follow up on it. It is generally pretty quiet around here.*
PG - It seems really nice around here. I hope to be able to live in a neighborhood like this someday. I'm so tired of living in dumps, crappy apartments, you know?

I don't even remember exactly how I responded to that, but let's just say lots of embracing and crying ensued. Long story short, the Phillips family is always ready to take on a challenge for a good cause. So we adopted the Pizza Guy. Pizza Guy Phillips. I felt it was my duty to give him all he hopes for, given that he continues to deliver us tasty tasty pizzas at the family discount rate.

Important Note: Is that the second post in a row that I've broken out the double tasty? Damn.

PG - hi internet

Good boy. Now go make your bed.

----
* Some of this response was internal, but I can't keep it straight sometimes.

Posted by omar at 5:43 AM | Read entire post | Comments (16)

(This is a follow-up to the previous post.)

Remember how Baby Tad was doing something to my car? Well, I finally got up enough courage to take the car out last night, and I found out what he did. And it was way worse than I thought. It appears as though he installed a neon under car kit. I almost wanted to kick my own butt when I was driving it.

(Not actually my car)

This time, when I yelled at him, I recorded his response so that you guys could see that I wasn't joking about his tone or the inappropriateness of his responses to me.

Posted by omar at 12:18 PM | Read entire post | Comments (12)

A few months back, the wife and I were looking to buy some toys for the boy. We wanted something interactive and not too loud. I came across this:

LeapFrog Hug & Learn Baby Tad. Great! It's cute, he can be hugged, and he helps the boy to learn. I read some reviews on Amazon about it, and while they were generally positive, there were a few people who commented about how Baby Tad was "possessed." By this, they mean that he occasionally talked when he wasn't prompted to do so. After reading some more about this and a few other toys, we decided to pick up something else.

Coincidentally, a few weeks later, we had an out of town visitor who came by with a present for the boy. The present was none other than Baby Tad. For a month or so, I really thought Baby Tad was quite charming. I saw no evidence of the problems mentioned on Amazon.

Last weekend, I started to notice that something was different with Baby Tad. I can't think of the words to explain it, but he was just different. He was still talking and singing with the same pep, but he was acting a little... defiant? Bold? Yeah, bold is a good word for it.

For example, one day I walked into the kitchen for a snack. As I rounded the corner, I saw this:

Shocked, I was like, "Baby Tad, what are you doing in the cupboard?"

His response was a smug, "I'm Baby Tad. Let's sing! Baa baa black sheep have you any wool..."

Blinded by his charm, I sang along through the end of the song and went on about my business. By itself, I probably wouldn't think that much of this incident. Then a few days later, I came downstairs and found this:

"Baby Tad! Get away from my computer, that's not a toy!"

"I'm Baby Tad. (smooch) I love you." Again with the smug tone.

When I took the computer away, I was even more shocked to find what web page was up on the screen. "What the hell were you doing looking at my checking account online?"

His reply, "Peek-a-boo, I see you!"

The last straw, however, was this morning. I went out to take a jog. As I passed between our cars on the driveway, I saw this:

I can think of no legitimate reason why Baby Tad would be doing something underneath my car. I didn't even talk to him this time, I didn't want to hear anything he had to say. I picked him up and threw him inside.

"I'm Baby Tad. That's the purple triangle... Let's play!"

"You little... The only thing we're playing is 'lock you up in the cabinet until I can figure out what we're going to do with you'."

So if anyone needs a gift for a kid that's 6 months and up, let me know. (Also, if any of you know about cars, I'm looking for someone to check mine out to figure out what the hell he did.)

Posted by omar at 9:33 PM | Read entire post | Comments (24)

I don't usually do this, but please read this article on CNN.

While you're reading, I'll be furiously working in my underground laboratory discovering ways to use voles to fuel my car. Stay tuned.

Posted by omar at 7:15 AM | Read entire post | Comments (14)

To any other 4-pound tubs of Animal Crackers that think they can defeat me: look and learn.

Look and learn.

***cadiz12 inspired update***
Guess how long it took to consume all 4 pounds of crackers. Closest guess without going over wins a prize.

Posted by omar at 12:36 PM | Read entire post | Comments (30)

• I hope you all had a great weekend. And for those who had a 3-day weekend, I hope it was 50% more great. No, I'm just kidding. Truth is, if you didn't have to work on Labor Day, I hate you.
• Remember the Google Page Rank rap? Of course you do. In that post, I asked X to come up with a beat. I'd like to make it known that he delivered. The only hold up now is that I need to find a rapper to perform the song. As soon as I do, BELIEVE that I'll be posting the finished product for your bootlegging pleasure.
• Late last month through the beginning of October is (by far) the busiest time of year at work for me. So sorry if comments from me don't come as frequently during this time. Trust me though, by October, I'm going to comment so much you're going to start wondering if the spammers got a hold of my Blogger login.
• The boy has been saying "bob" a lot recently. Looks like Hobo Bob is hard at work.

Posted by omar at 5:52 AM | Read entire post | Comments (3)

• If you are asked to sing the national anthem, sing it the way it was written! One of my greatest pet peeves is when people allow their artistic impression to make it sound like a different song. Impress me with your voice, not with your ability to change the notes of your country's nation anthem.
• At a Hawaiian theme party, there are an endless number of jokes that one can make surrounding the "lei." Most are inappropriate.
• I reached 10,000 steps legitimately (without butt scratching) on Saturday. I did it by shopping. This means I should go shopping every day.
• Then I broke 13,000 steps on Sunday. Minimal butt scratching. I did this one by going to the zoo. This means I should alternate shopping and going to the zoo every day.
• I went to one of our local pro soccer team's games this weekend. I don't know if the men out there already knew this, but these days, most women don't wear clothes when they go out! Remember those days when you used to have to say, "I wonder what she'd look like naked?" Those days are gone! No wondering is required!
• Back when I was young, probably 7 or 8, my babysitter at the time always used to use a specific kind of Lysol air freshener to mask the smell when anyone pooped in the bathroom. 20 years later, I still associate the smell of that Lysol alone with poop, and it is disgusting to me. I now feel the same way about baby wipes. It's to the point where they smell like poop to me, even before they actually are used to clean it.

Posted by omar at 6:55 AM | Read entire post | Comments (18)

Please tell me you were watching ESPN tonight (Thursday). Please tell me you saw the replay of Nathan's Hot Dog Eating competition, followed immediately by the Alka-Seltzer US Open of Competitive Eating. Because this might be the best 90 minutes of TV I've ever watched.

I studied my way through high school and college, but can I eat 40 hot dogs in 12 minutes? How much did college cost? Apparently, I didn't really learn anything.

Takeru Kobayashi won over $500,000 last year. He's 26, I think? I bet he's going to have some sweet stories to tell at his 10 year reunion:

classmate - I got my MBA from Harvard, married a model, and I'm now working for a Fortune 500 company making $150,000.

Takeru - I set world records by eating 53.5 hot dogs in 12 minutes, 17.7 pounds of cow brains in 15 minutes, 59 Krystal square burgers in 8 minutes, and 20 pounds of rice balls in 15 minutes. Oh, and I made $500,000 last year. I'll now help myself to your wife.
(Turns to wife, nods head.) What's up, baby? (walks away with wife, heads towards dancing leprechauns)

But until there's a competitive cereal eating circuit, it's all just a dream for me.

Posted by omar at 8:26 PM | Read entire post | Comments (13)

I don't know if it's the entire state of NY or just my county, but where I live, it's legal for a woman to go topless anywhere a man can. Up until last night, I hadn't really seen anyone take advantage of this.*

I stopped at a gas station to fill up. It was dark outside, probably around 9:45 or so. As I'm standing there emptying my savings account into my gas tank, I see a woman walk into the parking lot light from the darkness of the sidewalk. She was probably in her mid to late 40's, and maybe a little grubby looking, but generally pretty normal. Most notably though, she was not wearing a shirt. Or a bra.

As she walked further into the light, she put on a t-shirt she was carrying in her hands. She proceeded to walk across the parking lot, right back into the shadows. I looked over at the guy at the adjacent pump, giving him a "was that just a topless woman walking through the gas station parking lot?" look. His expression in response confirmed it.

--
* I have seen one other person do this, but she was some college-aged hippie wannabe who was trying to make a statement. It wasn't a normal situation like last night.

Posted by omar at 9:41 PM | Read entire post | Comments (22)

(current comment count: 871)

You say kilometre, I say mile. You say litre, I say gallon. You say kilogram, I say pound. All of those things are OK with me.

What's not OK is when you say fluid ounce, I say fluid ounce, but we're talking about slightly different things:

UK fluid ounces on the left, US on the right. The conversion is 1 US fluid ounce to 1.0408424714400801 UK fluid ounces.

I don't know who initially created the fluid ounce, so I'm not sure who to be mad at, the US or the UK. All I know is that this sort of nonsense makes me wanna fight someone.

Posted by omar at 8:36 PM | Read entire post | Comments (16)

You recently came near my hometown as the headliners for the 2005 Air Show. Try as you might, you guys are not nearly as good as the Navy's Blue Angels, who have come each of the past several years.

I have included the following photos to illustrate my point (they were taken with the same camera and lens):

You guys:

The Blue Angels, last year:

See the difference? You guys did 90% of your act (roughly) 100,000 feet above the ground (not to mention that the tops of your planes are white, so if you are upside down, we can't see you). The Blue Angels were nipping treetops. Windows rattled. Car alarms went off. Bobbleheads bobbled. Glass trinkets broke. The elderly covered their ears. Fetuses rolled in the womb*. Pets soiled carpets**. Actually, and this is 100% true, one of one of them flew through my living room, just to say hi.

It's that kind of excitement, closeness, and dedication to their fans that I felt I was missing during your show, and that has me yearning for their return.

* - At least that's what the boy told me he did during the show last year.
** - I have no proof that the part about the pets is true. But I bet it is.

Posted by omar at 6:49 AM | Read entire post | Comments (9)

A few posts ago, I mentioned how I purchased some songs from the Wiggles, and how they've been subsequently stuck in our heads. Particularly, we've been singing the song Fruit Salad constantly for a solid week and a half. I'm not ashamed to admit that I love it even more now than ever. The boy worships these guys too, he can't get enough. He keeps telling us how we need to buy all of the Wiggles' CDs.

Last night, I was listening to their record "Yummy Yummy" in my basement. Yes, I mean a record, not CD. Old school vinyl. At one point during Fruit Salad, I had a small sneezing fit. Trivial detail, but it made me miss my favorite part of the song. So using my DJ skillz, I spun the record back so that I could hear my homeboy Murray sing his part again.

Important Note: If a particular skill is likely to improve your street cred, the plural form of said skill is spelled with a "z" at the end instead of an "s."

Clip 1 - (Forwards, 0:08)
Clip 2 - (Backwards, voice track turned up, 0:08)

Keep in mind that this is just a clip. The whole album is riddled messages similar to this one. Frankly, I'm not sure how these guys live with themselves. As soon as I'm done listening to the rest of Yummy Yummy, I intend to take this story to the tabloids, then contact my lawyer to find out what steps I can take towards some sort of lawsuit.

Posted by omar at 12:40 PM | Read entire post | Comments (13)

Poll with a duration lasting until the number of results reaches 15-20

In spite of the record number of responses, it has come to my attention that some people feel the previous poll (regarding Catherine Zeta Jones) did not have sufficient answers. "What if I think she's a 9? It's not like a 9 is bad!" "Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I'm jealous of her." "Dude, I'm not homosexual just because I don't think she's a 10."

I'll acknowledge that I did leave out an option for the asexual people. To you folks, I am indeed sorry.

To everyone else, the only three rational answers were provided.

--

Obligatory (brief) Episode III discussion

I was largely disappointed by this movie. I saw it twice this weekend (I only saw it the second time because I had the opportunity to see it digitally projected, which is roughly the tech guy equivalent to asking a college student if he wants a five dollar bill that fell in the toilet - of course he does). I'm not going to really get into it, but there are two things I'd like to mention. (I'll be purposely vague, just in case you haven't seen it yet.)

Whoever decided that Wookiees should make the Tarzan sound when swinging should be fired. That was horrible, and it makes me want to hate George Lucas. (As a side note to that, whoever decided "Wookiee" needs two e's at the end should also be fired.)

When the guy's legs and arm got cut off near the end of the movie, did anyone else get flashbacks to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the scene with the Black Knight guarding the bridge, and Arthur cuts off his limbs? "What are you going to do, bleed on me?" It made me laugh out loud in the theater, at a time which happened to coincide with his body catching on fire. I think it made me seem insensitive to other moviegoers.

Posted by omar at 12:46 PM | Read entire post | Comments (6)

As many of you have noticed, I changed the image at the top of my site, as well as my profile image. When I first did it, I thought "oh, this is going to be cheeky and fun."

I certainly did not expect the overwhelmingly positive response I got to the anti-vole logo. All of the comments about it had me wondering how I could capitalize on the popularity of the logo. At that moment, I got a call from my homeboy Tommy Hilfiger. He was just looking to borrow some sugar, but he turned on a light bulb in my head.

The answer? An upscale urban clothing line called - AV-wear.

(I had to come up with some snazzy text to go along with the existing logo.)

It'll be all the rage with the urban and suburban kids (urban kids first, then suburban kids a month or two later). The day after I came up with the idea, guess who was ringing my cell phone looking for some of my designs?

That's right, the White Stripes! Didn't think they'd be the type to go for upscale urban clothing? Me neither!!! But they love it, and have already put in additional orders for gear (that's urban-speak for clothes and clothing accessories). Since then, I've had countless celebrity inquiries, notably from:

P. Diddy:

Peta Mathias:

and even Tiger Woods (just seeking sponsorship, he's still contractually obligated to wear Nike clothes for now. But he's all AV-wear in 2007!):

I'm also working on some jewelry for Jay-Z and Laura Bush. Oddly, they have similar tastes in iced-out rope chains ("iced-out" is urban-speak for loaded with diamonds):

I owe the overwhelming success of the new AV-wear line to you, my fellow bloggers. It is your positive comments that started all of this. As a result, everybody who has commented on my blog prior to May 17th gets an automatic 10% discount on any AV-wear gear!

Look for it soon at your local upscale urban clothier. Online ordering should be available by late summer 2005.

Posted by omar at 11:18 AM | Read entire post | Comments (10)

The sun is out, not a cloud to be found. 72 glorious degrees (22 for the non-Americans). People make scrapbook pages about days like today.

The birds are singing. The weeds in my lawn are wilting. The ladies are outside in bikinis working on their tans, the fellas are showing off their winter work in the gym while throwing their non-Frisbee brand flying discs around to each other. Everybody has a smile on their face. Not like creepy Joker smiles, more like "happy to be alive today" smiles. Everyone is outside frolicking, virtually naked and happy.

The neighborhood kiddies are running off the school bus to go play in the backyard (the kids are wearing clothes though. what kind of a blog do you think this is, sicko?). That happy old couple is walking around the block. In fact, on days like today, nobody walks. They all just seem to float. The happy old couple is floating around the block. Even the dog that always craps in my backyard floated right on by and crapped in the neighbor's lawn instead.

Wonderful sunshine, birds singing, people smiling, people naked, kids playing, old people and dogs floating, and a crap-free lawn. What a wonderful day outside.

Of course, this is all hearsay. My office doesn't have windows.

Posted by omar at 12:30 PM | Read entire post | Comments (6)

(If you've already been to this site before, then sorry. I just heard about it for the first time yesterday.)

1. Go to www.gizoogle.com


2. Enter a FULL web address in the text field (include the http:// before the address. blogs work great, use your own site if you have one)


3. Click "Gizoogle It"


4. Read the resulting translation


5. Laugh


6. Repeat with other sites


7. Blog about it

Important Note: Step 6 should happen automatically. If not, then this may not take an hour. Now that I think about it, it didn't actually take a full hour for me. More like 35-40 minutes. Pretend like the title said "How to kill 35-40 minutes." I could change it, but I think it kind of looks nicer as "How to kill an hour."

Also, it doesn't work great with every site (some not at all).

Posted by omar at 11:38 AM | Read entire post | Comments (10)

A band-aid may once again be required when reading this post. When you go to post a comment, you'll notice that I now have implemented "peek-a-boo" comments, so you can view or hide existing comments without having to go to a different page. As always, I amuse myself by making these horribly unnecessary changes to this site. Click on the comments link below to see.

Blog comments, just like the internet itself, were invented by Al Gore. This is a little known fact, but he started writing a blog back in the late 80's to brag to his unemployed college buddies about the new "internet" thing he created while working for the US Government.

Government cheese, common in poorer areas of the country, really does taste as bad as you think it would. Honestly, who in the government do you think would know how to make good cheese?

One time, at a Penn State football game vs. Wisconsin, a cheese-loving jerk of a Badgers fan gave me the finger. Some might think I had it coming though, since I was making jokes about his momma.

Big Momma's House, a horrible Martin Lawrence movie from 2000, somehow has a sequel in the works. That's right, Big Momma's House 2. This makes me think that there are a lot of people out there (movie making people) who don't know what to do with their money.

Damn, I wish I had some more money. I think I should start collecting a paycheck from Babies 'R' Us, since every time I go in there by myself to get something for the boy, 20 people ask me for assistance, thinking I work there. What really gets me about it is that their employees wear a uniform. I don't have one, and don't wear anything that looks remotely close. Is it that odd to see a guy shopping for his baby?

When I was a baby, I accidentally got hit in the head with a golf club. I have the scar to prove it. However, that's not my most interesting scar. When we were wee lads, big brother thought it would be funny to put a fork in the fire on the stove, then press it to my arm. I have a scar in the perfect shape of a 4-tined fork on my forearm. It hurt like a son of a bitch.

A German short-haired Pointer bitch named Carlee won "Best In Show" at the 2005 Westminster Kennel Club dog show. (Personally, I was rooting for "Coco," the Norfolk Terrier.) The first Westminster dog show was held back in 1907.

In 1907, it must have sucked when you got cut (luckily, I wasn't blogging back then). This is because it wasn't until 1921 that Earle Dickson invented the band-aid.

Posted by omar at 8:05 PM | Read entire post | Comments (9)

I'm tired, my neck is sore, my head hurts, and it's 43 degrees outside (that's about 6 degrees for you Celsius folks) and cloudy. On May 3rd. I am officially cranky.

That means no smiles. At all. Not just me, you too. If I'm cranky, everybody should be brought down to my level of miserableness. To help enforce that, I brought along a friend of mine. Meet HAL 11000 (WAY better than HAL 9000 from 2001).

Think it's a joke? Smile and click the same link again (or just refresh that page when it comes up). That's right, you blew up a different village. One more time.

You know, having you blow up villages is making me feel better. Today's lesson: misery does indeed love company. It makes sense, really. Once all the miserable people are together, everybody loves the company so much that nobody is miserable anymore.

Except for those people you you blew up. I hope you can live with yourself.

Posted by omar at 12:15 PM | Read entire post | Comments (8)

Where I work (in the job that I love), we have an abnormal mix of Windows and Macintosh computers. While something like 3% of computer users are Macintosh users overall, we are about 40% Mac. Particularly when new people come in, their realization of the unusually high percentage of Macs will typically spark a high-intensity Mac vs. Windows debate.

(For the record, I own one of each, though I do prefer Macs.)

Mac users, as they are typically outnumbered in this argument, are a defensive, scrappy, and fiesty breed. They will take every possible opportunity to let you know why Macs are better. Argue with them or put them down, their retaliation will be swift and harsh. Observe:

Windows User: (referring to the fact that the only available computer to use in the computer lab is a Macintosh) They should put more real computers in here.
Mac User: Oh yeah? [PFSSHHSSHSsssssssssssssssssssss...] (the sound of the Windows user's tires being slashed)

Occasionally though, rational discussions do take place. Like this morning, I was chatting with some of my coworkers about the look of Apple computers, particularly laptops, in comparison to their Windows-based counterparts. Similar to the iPod, Apple laptops have a nice, sleek, identifiable, and sexy look.

Important Note: There were women involved in this conversation. A group of guys calling inanimate objects "sexy" is not cool. Not cool at all.

Armwrestling didn't settle the dispute, so we decided to conduct a random survey of 10 passers by. Each was shown three pictures, and was asked to choose which they thought was the sexiest: one of me holding an Apple 12" iBook (photo A), one of me holding a Windows based IBM Thinkpad (photo B), and one of me with no computer at all (photo C). The results, shown in the pie chart below, were irrefutable.

Which photo is sexiest?

Other Important Note: Incidentally, this survey also revealed that 100% of people (10 of 10 respondents) think I am sexy.

(I am expecting that by this point, you are just skimming this anyway, and that the bold/italic text will be all that you read. You'll skip right over the text saying that this survey is statistically insignificant and that any conclusions are unfounded. Omar rules!)

If you use Windows, and I have offended you in any way, I'm sorry. Follow this link for some good old Windows-only fun.

Posted by omar at 6:54 PM | Read entire post | Comments (13)

Late last night, I was flipping through the channels when I came across "Pimp My Ride" on MTV. I just caught the end of the show, where the person was being reintroduced to their newly pimped out ride. I stuck around long enough to see that another episode was up next, so I stayed put.

Three hours and 6 pimped out cars later, I hadn't moved.

Important Note: You might think from reading this post that I'm a bad husband and father, spending 3+ straight hours watching MTV. That probably does disqualify me for husband/father of the year awards, but it's not as bad as it seems. There was family time before MTV time.

Other Important Note: Because I spent so much time watching pimped out rides and getting the boy to fall asleep, I really didn't get much sleep. That accounts for the general lameness of this post.

Anyway, back to pimping. Three hours of pimping rides had me thinking of all the inanimate objects out there that could be pimped (inanimate only because "Pimp My Sister" would be illegal in NY). I came up with entirely too many of these, but will spare you and only share one:

Meet the new, '05 style, pimped out Grillmaster1000:

Yes, that's a PS2 and a 20" flip-down LCD screen. Plus 17" Giovanni rims and Pirelli tires. I DARE your friends and coworkers to pass up your next barbeque.

You've officially been pimped.

Posted by omar at 7:42 PM | Read entire post | Comments (3)

From an article on ESPN's Soccernet (note the part in bold):

Inter were also banished from San Siro... for two games by Italian officials later in the same season after their supporters threw a motor scooter from the second tier during a league game against Atalanta.

Perhaps stadium security was busy? I assume the motor scooter from the balcony didn't start the riot, so they may have had their mind on the hecklers and battery throwers (aka "amateur hooligans") while the scooter was making it's way up to the second level. I think the security folks should shoulder some of the burden here. Do they think Inter Milan fans are the only ones capable of throwing motor scooters?

Posted by omar at 12:37 PM | Read entire post | Comments (0)

This just in:

There are people who live in the state of NY who don't live in New York City. 10,968,179 people, to be exact (according to 2000 census numbers).

Furthermore, there are areas of New York that are not part of New York City. New York is 54,475 square miles in size. New York City (the five boroughs), 319 sq mi. This leaves 54,156 square miles of land in the state of NY that are not claimed by NYC. To drive the point home, this land mass discrepancy is represented graphically here.

The city of Buffalo is in western NY. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, even Pittsburgh, all in different states, are closer to NYC than Buffalo.

So though I am from New York, I cannot see the Empire State Building from my house. The subway does not reach my neighborhood. I have been to the Statue of Liberty, but seeing as though she is 400 miles from my hometown, I don't visit often. This goes for 10,968,178 of my peers also.

To NYC residents: this means I live "upstate." No, further upstate. Past Yonkers. No... (sigh) nevermind.

Posted by omar at 9:41 PM | Read entire post | Comments (0)

One of the first changes I will make when I rule the world is to create some universal locker room rules (men's locker room rules, really. I don't care what goes on in the ladies locker room). Some might say I need to adjust my priorities, but I think this is important. The list of rules would include items such as:

1. There is no need to be walking around naked with a towel draped over your shoulder. If you have a towel, why not put it around your waist?


2. If you are naked, my area of personal space increases - threefold. Please make an effort to not invade my space, I will offer the same courtesy.


3. If, due to locker proximity, you have to be naked inside of my personal space, don't talk to me until after you put (at least) your underwear on.


4. Always put your underwear on before your socks. Please.


5. If you are concerned enough to wear sandals in the locker room shower so your feet don't get germs, don't sit your naked butt on an uncovered public bench. Get your germ infestation priorities straight.

Posted by omar at 7:50 PM | Read entire post | Comments (17)