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July 31, 2006

Swimming pool

I played a joke on Christy today which she did not think was very funny. I told her I did not have the heart to do to her what the joke entailed, but she insisted I do it. She did not know what she was getting herself into.

It goes like this: you have the victim put her hand out palm up, and then you draw on the palm with your finger a "map" of her dream house. You point out the driveway, the garage, the lawn, the house, etc. If you can manage to be sneaky about it, you then spit on the person's hand and say, "and there's the swimming pool!"

I googled this particular joke, and wasn't able to find any reference to it. That was a pretty mean joke that people used to play on each other in like the first grade, and I am surprised nobody had ever heard of it.

Now, this is completely unrelated, but it reminds me of an odd occurence from a few months back: a linguist or some sort was researching the use of the term "ditch in line," which means to cut in line. So when I say, "give me a ditch," what I mean is "let me cut in line." I write that every now and then on this here commentary, but apparently nobody else in the world uses ditch to mean a cut in line. I didn't know nobody else said it until this fellow told me that the term is only used in Central Ohio, and then former Ohio congressman (and one-time Presidential hopeful) John Kasich said it on Fox News and nobody knew what he was talking about.

In short, people from Ohio say "ditch" to mean cut in line, and spit on hands as a joke. Maybe you can see why I moved away now.

Posted by oz115 at 01:19 AM | Comments (3)

God bless the internet

Tonight I went on a music downloading binge and my travels took me to a band called Les Dale Hawerchuk. I had to look because this band MUST be named for the great Dale Hawerchuk, who toiled for the Buffalo Sabres in the 1990's. The 1992/93 edition of the Sabres was so offensively stacked that Hawerchuk, who was recently elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, picked up a boggling 80 assists and 96 points and was still THIRD on the team in scoring. He would have been fourth had the Sabres not traded the similarly named Dave Andreychuk for defensive help - he ended up with 99 points. Now, that was a much higher scoring era in the NHL, but to compare, 96 points would have been tenth for the entire NHL this year.

So, the point is, Dale Hawerchuk was a hell of a hockey player, and he was one of my favorite players back in those days. I am totally amused that he has a band named after him. This band, as you would know if you had clicked the link, also apparently speaks only French. What a wacky world we live in!

My favorite thing about Dale Hawerchuk: his nickname, "Ducky." For some reason I think Duck or Ducky is the coolest nickname ever, whether in English (Duck) or Spanish (Pato), as in former Columbus Crew defender Sergio "Pato" Miguez. I wish I was joking about this, but I'm not. I think it would be really cool if people started calling me Pato. So from now on (that is, until I forget about this tomorrow morning), please call me Pato.

I hope you really enjoyed this post.

Cheers,
Pato

Posted by oz115 at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2006

The life

My parents have this dog, Simon. He's quite a character. When he first came to the house, he had a bit of a discipline problem, which is to say he growled at a little girl who tried to pet him. My dad has quite an affection for the dog, and he was so afraid that he'd bite somebody and be sent up the river, that he hired a dog trainer. The trainer, a silver-haired fellow called Terry, did all sorts of things, and he may have scared Simon straight. It was like when they send the juvenile delinquints to boot camp on the Montel Williams show.

Then they started taking him out to lunch almost every day in order to "socialize" him. Instead, I think they managed to turn him into a creampuff. It's about a year later now, and Simon is starting to fit in nicely, which is to say he's figured out how to get whatever he wants. He still goes out to lunch with my parents. He's gone twice in the week I've been here, and his favorite food is Chicken McNuggets.

My mom dotes on him, possibly because he is usually her only company during the day. My dad treats him like a 50's dad would treat his son, imparting nuggets of wisdom such as, "You have to learn to play with other dogs, for I will not always be here to rescue you from other dogs."

Apparently, he also never eats dog food. Before I came home, I was talking to my mom on the phone when she told me how she made scrambled eggs for the dog, and they made him throw up. My first thought was: you made scrambled eggs for the dog? You don't make scrambled eggs for me! Our previous dog, the dearly departed Indiana, also had a favorite breakfast food: waffles. But only if they had syrup on them.

Then, tonight I cooked some steaks and hamburgers on the grill. My mom made two hamburger patties: one for her, and one for the dog. She told me, save this one for the dog. And he ate that burger up like it was his job.

But there are others vying for human food. We also have four cats who prowl around the house: Rick, Gordie, Artie and Tony. Everytime the grill gets lit, they suddenly appear on the patio, taking a look to see what is cooking. In fact, it's the only time you can get all four of them to sit still. If you are not careful, they'll jump on the grill and try to steal the meat. Seeing as I like to encourage their behavior, I gave each of them a chunk of hamburger. So today, all four cats and the dog got people food.

I will say this: if you are an animal, and you find yourself in the good graces of my family, you will eat as the kings did.

Posted by oz115 at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2006

Praise the Lord

The Blue and Gold is back, in all its retro glory, for 15 home games a year! Death to the red and black. A historical wrong has been righted - finally! Eh... Well, sort of.

Posted by oz115 at 07:56 AM | Comments (0)

July 27, 2006

I'm getting too old for this

August is quickly approaching, and you know what that means: it's back to school time for me. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I, when I was 26 years old, would be going back to school shopping for myself. But here I am.

Being back in Lancaster for a few days, as I am, I first went to the local Target. Sadly, they had nothing I needed. I thus headed down whatever street it is to the OfficeMax (Google Maps tells me it's River Valley Boulevard, natch), where I stocked up on my preferred Pilot G2's, Mead Composition books, and pink highlighters. I don't like yellow highlighters, okay?

I like Mead Composition books because I like writing in an actual book. Remember the Grail diary Henry Jones, Sr. had in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? I thought the idea of filling up a blank book with notes and junk was too fascinating. Sadly, I never had anything of substance to fill a book, except school notes. In fact, I think I have filled a Composition book exactly twice in all my years of using them: Physics my senior year of high school, and Torts in my first semester at JMLS. But Composition books are also annoying, in that sometimes they are hard to lay flat on a desk and you can't rip a page out of them. However, they look cool.

Speaking of JMLS, I am sad to say that I will be bidding adieu to that fine institution, and will now be a Loyola Rambler. What's a Rambler? No clue. But I do know that Loyola is the only university in Illinois to win something called the NCAA Tournament. Get stuffed, Illini! Also, I know a certain girl will be particularly pleased because now she can say hi to me at school and stroll to Water Tower Place.

But back to my back to school shopping. As I perused Target, I was consciously aware of the fact of other people roughly my age doing back to school shopping. But they weren't shopping for themselves. Oh no, they were shopping for their kids. That, friends, blew my mind. I will simply rationalize this by saying that if I had a kid at this particular juncture in my life, I would sure feel sorry for that kid. I probably would have left him at Dunkin' Donuts or something. So, for that, I must consider myself lucky that the only person I need to buy school stuff for is myself.

Posted by oz115 at 09:24 PM | Comments (4)

July 26, 2006

Happy trails

In a deliberately evasive press release, ESPN has announced that it has canned baseball analyst Harold Reynolds.

What could Mr. Reynolds have done? Whatever it was, I'm sure it was pretty naughty. My guess? Kenny Mayne had enough of losing to him in the celebrity softball games.

Posted by oz115 at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2006

I have you all beat

A post on Chicagoist suggests that being the guy in the big foam ear costume must be the worst summer job ever. That does look pretty terrible, but I can assure you there is a job that is much, much worse.

My dad, bless his sole, must have one day fancied that I would follow in his footsteps and go into the medical field. Instead, there is a reason I am now in law school. After my freshman year of college, he fixed me up with a job at the local hospital, with the very fancy title of "Patient Attendant."

What this meant was, I went up to the patients' room, and wheeled them down to the operating room. Then we'd flip them onto the operating table, and I'd sometimes stand around while the surgeons carved 'em up, and then I would sit there while they came out of anaesthesia, then I'd wheel them back up. When this was going on, they were usually babbling incoherently and groaning.

If I wasn't doing that, I did a number of other things: I made sure there was enough saline solution in the OR, and when the surgeons were done, I had to clean the OR. The worst part about that was mopping up blood, as well as having to pick up little bits of flesh and blood clots from the floor.

The worst, and I mean, worst part about this job was something called "shave prep." Before you had surgery, you had to have whatever part of the body that was getting cut up shaved. Who better to send to do that than the crappy old patient attendant? So, the nurses would give me a little shaving kit, send me into the prep room, and I'd have to shave the patient. Usually it was like an arm or a chest or something, but every so often they'd send me in with a guy who needed to have his groin shaved. You have no idea how hard it was to type that sentence. And no, whatever idea you may have about shaving a groin, it's not like that. I didn't enjoy it, he didn't enjoy it, and I didn't touch any balls. If my pride was destroyed because I had to shave someone's junk, I can only imagine what it must have felt like to be the guy having his junk shaved. Ugh... I shudder at the thought.

And that, friends, is why I had the worst summer job.

Posted by oz115 at 09:39 AM | Comments (2)

July 24, 2006

Allright

As a former Daytonian, everyone knows that Yellow Springs is the weirdo-hippy town with the great nature preserves and lots of strange stores, not to mention the home of Dave Chappelle. So why not put an art gallery in the bathroom?

Call it Chagall in the stall, Picasso in the powder room.

Anyone who uses the public restrooms inside a replica of the 1880 train station in this southwest Ohio village will be treated to a display of original paintings on the walls.

Dubbed the ChamberPot Gallery, the exhibition that opened in mid-June is the brainchild of two local artists hoping to draw attention to this artist-oriented community and to lure into the village out-of-town hikers, bikers and joggers who use a bike path next to the station.

"For the most part, everybody has been very excited about this. They just think it's a hoot," said Corrine Bayraktaroglu, co-organizer of the restroom gallery. "And we're getting puns left, right and center — take a peek while you leak."

Some of the 19 works, mostly by local artists, are bathroom-themed, including a dress made of pink, blue and yellow tissues, and a person's face screaming out: "Got Paper?" Some paintings are abstract, and other subjects featured include an outhouse and a person blowing soap bubbles.

Posted by oz115 at 01:33 PM | Comments (2)

July 21, 2006

Spot the error

My dad's a bit of an artiste, and his current hobby is to design and construct decorative eggs. He gives them away as presents, and has made about 20 of them over the past few years. Now he wants to spread the word to the masses, and to do that he got himself a booth at the Artwalk at this year's Lancaster Festival.

A certain fraternal organization hosted his booth. Inside the building, I found this sign:

Your? Come on! I said it before, and I'll say it again... It boggles my mind when people do stuff like that and don't bother to fix it. I can understand a mistake, but when the mistake is noticed, you gotta fix it!

Posted by oz115 at 09:56 PM | Comments (1)

You gotta do what you gotta do

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em:

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A woman police officer moonlighting as a prostitute has got off with a caution, New Zealand police said Thursday.

The unidentified officer, stationed in the country's biggest city Auckland, was discovered last year to have been a prostitute for a short time.

"The officer concerned has been counseled. Under police procedures this amounts to a censure," Deputy Police Commissioner Lyn Provost said in a statement.

The police officer, who was understood to be having financial difficulties, had not sought permission to have a second job. Such applications are considered on a case-by-case basis.

Posted by oz115 at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2006

Seen about town

I have to say, having a camera phone is too great, if only because it gives me a handy way to document what the heck I'm seeing around town. Plus, it makes the blog look all colorful and junk.

Today, I encountered this billboard:

This purports to be the work of a vengeful wife who caught her husband with another lady (or perhaps another man?) But I am going to guess that the somewhat not-amateurish production values (unlike yesterday's example) mark this as the work of an advertising agency attempting to guerilla market something. But what could it be? My guess is a car, movie or TV show.

Posted by oz115 at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2006

Lesser of two evils

I was walking home from the gym today when I came upon this sign taped to a mailbox:

Now, if you ask me, is this really that big of a deal? Now, I understand that some people take great offense to people who put their garbage in their dumpster. I would probably be upset if somebody routinely put bags of garbage into a dumpster, but I don't know if I would call the police about it. This would be especially so if I had to pay per garbage bag or something, but I do not think that is the case in Chicago.

(Side note: my previous home, which was condemned and turned into multimillion dollar houses, had a difficult dumpster to reach. Instead, I would throw my trash into the dumpster for the 40-unit apartment building next door. I heard nary a word!)

Anyway, if the choice was between having somebody put a little plastic bag in my garbage, or leaving the poop on my lawn, I think I'd take the bag in the garbage. As for the author of the sign, all I can really say is, "take a chill pill!" It's not the most neighborly of signs, nor is it grammatically correct. In fact, I'm a little miffed that some of my neighbors are slightly antisocial. But I already knew that.

Posted by oz115 at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2006

Good old historians

Historians love to rank stuff. I mean, who doesn't? I recently came across this article, in which historians ranked the top ten Presidential blunders. Number one, interestingly, was President Buchanan's failure to prevent the Civil War - a mess he conveniently left for his successor, Abe Lincoln. Personally, I don't quite understand what could've been done to prevent it. Seems to me the Southern states were pretty much set on telling the rest of the country to take a hike!

Posted by oz115 at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2006

The new white whale

So lately I've spent an unfair amount of time playing online Family Feud. In fact, it's become an addiction, which would not be abated until I actually won a game.

It's extremely frustrating to play, because sometimes you will give a perfectly valid answer, but it will recognize it as something different and give you a big fat zero. For example, one of the questions was, "Name something a husband would hide from his wife." I said, quite succintly, "an affair." To my chagrin, I got a big, stinking ZERO. But then the number one answer was revealed, to be "affair". I was like, come on! So you see, when the computer doesn't always recognize your responses, it can be hard to win.

Additionally, it is also hard to win because "100 Americans" sometimes give really stupid answers. One question was, "name a complaint people have about the beach." The number one answer? Sand! Sand? What do you want, concrete? Or, "name a sport that lets you call time out." Two people said soccer, despite the fact, there are no timeouts whatsoever in soccer.

Anyway, I was playing recently and got on a total roll. In fact, so much so that I *won*. I was victorious! I tried to do a screen grab to record my feat, but, I didn't figure out how to do it before the thing telling me I had won disappeared. So here's a picture of somebody else's victory. You will just have to take my word for it.

Posted by oz115 at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2006

Yes!

I never get tired of this! (MP3 file, not safe for work!)

Posted by oz115 at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2006

Interesting

One of the more disturbing episodes in Sabres (and hockey) history occured on March 22, 1989 (contains not-so-pleasant picture), when Sabres goaltender Clint Malarchuk was involved in a collision with several players. His teammate Uwe Krupp flipped over, and the blade of his skate cut into Malarchuk's neck, severing his jugular vein. (Heck, here's a video of the incident.) It was awful for everyone involved, but Malarchuk managed to survive to tend goal another day. Then, he had to do battle with an even tougher foe: obsessive compulsive disorder.

So what better way to commemorate this horrific event in hockey history? An action figure, of course!

Now, I'm not usually a squeamish guy, but this sort of thing strikes me as, well... tasteless. I mean, there's a certain school of thought that since he survived, we can all laugh about it. But, I tend to disagree. There are certain events in my life that I simply wouldn't want to relive, or even think about again. I would submit that nearly dying on the ice during a hockey game is one such event.

It got me to thinking: I wonder if there are other action figures in the works for other horrific sports injuries, such as:

Joe Theismann breaks leg:

Pete Rose bowls over Ray Fosse in the All-Star game:

Or, please don't hate me: Go For Wand breaks leg, is euthanized on track:

Allright. I'll see all of you in hell!

Posted by oz115 at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)

July 11, 2006

Obsessive

So, Zorn today had a column detailing his friends' efforts to find every taxi in Chicago with a number between 1 and 100. I won't lie, I have often thought about keeping a list of every cab I see, and whether or not I've seen them more than once. Yes, it is stupid, but I see so many taxis I just have to wonder if I am seeing the same one more than once.

Now, my parents used to have us do something similar on long family road trips: see if we can find a license plate from all 50 states. Invariably, we would get around 45 to 48 on our longest trips, with Alaska and Hawaii usually the only holdouts. Bless their soul, my parents would rarely fly anywhere on vacation, and so we drove almost everywhere, including long-ass hikes to Orlando and Nova Scotia. (With a ferry thrown in.) I think the state game was just a way to get us to shut the hell up, because we didn't have any of those cool in-car entertainment dealies.

I've often debated the in-car DVD player for when I have kids. On the one hand, being in the car is one of the few times you aren't exposed to sensory overload and videos and TV, and I always enjoyed car rides because I could read a good book or look out the window at cool sights. But, if I was bored, lord was I annoying. So I'm sure a DVD player would keep me from being TOO bored or annoying, until we couldn't agree on what to watch, that is.

Posted by oz115 at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2006

Why bother?

Despite my reputation as a lazy SOB, I don't get food delivered to my house that often. In fact, lately the only time I can recall getting delivery is when the weather was just too craptacular for me to walk to whereever it was that I was getting delivery.

So, today I walked down to get a gyros, and I noticed they had a take-out menu, which blared "we deliver!" I thought, cool, they deliver. But then, below that, is the stipulation: "within 3 blocks." So, they deliver, but only within three blocks. Three blocks is well within the even-I'm-not-that-lazy zone. If I want some food, and it's three blocks away, I can't envision a scenario where I would rather they deliver it.

Posted by oz115 at 03:23 PM | Comments (0)

Pow

I still don't believe this actually happened, in the World Cup Final! Here's to Italy, by the way. That 1/4 Sicilian bit of me is totally beaming with pride right now. Actually, it isn't, because I wanted France to win.

Also, for a much more hilarious version of this, click here.

Posted by oz115 at 12:51 PM | Comments (1)

July 06, 2006

What a world

Awhile back, I bought this doormat:

It's a silly doormat, but I figure anyone who came by would have a good chuckle over it. Somebody must have had too much of a chuckle, because I recenetly discovered that it has been STOLEN! I don't know when it was stolen, because I am so unobservant that I didn't notice it was gone until somebody inquired as to its whereabouts. So, if the thief who took my doormat would kindly like to fess up, I will consider not pressing charges. Jerk.

Posted by oz115 at 04:49 PM | Comments (1)

Striking it rich

I met Christy for lunch way out on the Northwest Side, as that is where her work took her today. After a tasty lunch of a monte cristo for me and chicken fingers for her, I about pooped my pants with excitement because I saw a Salvation Army thrift store.

As you no doubt know, I am obsessed with t-shirts, especially slightly goofy, old t-shirts. To me, the best t-shirt tells a story, tells the observer something about the shirt's wearer, or even commemorates something I've done. In my case, a lot of my shirts are just plain silly. The Salvation Army thrift store is a gold mine for finding t-shirts like this. There is a wide selection, and most shirts can be had for a dollar. It is key to intercept them at the Salvation Army, because there are crafty types who will buy a shirt from the Salvation Army then try to resell it for a goofy price.

I was not disappointed. I spent probably an hour in the store, which I can truthfully attest is the longest time I've ever spent in a single store shopping for clothes. And so it was, I ended up with 8 shirts and a pair of Vienna Beef trucker hats for a piddly $10.46. I don't entirely know when I will get to wear a Vienna Beef hat, but it was 90 cents, and I wasn't going to pass this up:

Anyway, here's two of the shirts I bought. I think this one needs no explanation:

On the other hand, I also bought this:

It's a pretty silly shirt, but the reason I got it is because of what's written on the back: "THE BEER THAT CHOSEN PEOPLE CHOOSE." I'm like, damn! There is an official beer of Judaism? I had no idea! So, despite the fact I'm not a chosen one, I chose that shirt. Tehe!

Posted by oz115 at 03:27 PM | Comments (1)

July 04, 2006

Happy birthday, America

I love the Fourth of July, because it is the birthday of this great country of ours. But one of the things I do *not* like about it is that it is a holiday, and holiday means lots of stuff is closed.

To wit, I was raving to Christy about how this new Mexican restaurant by my house had probably the best quesadilla I ever had, so I decided to take her there, as she also loves a good quesadilla. And guess what? It was closed, on account of the holiday! I then decided to take her to Boston Blackie's instead, and they were open. Boo yeah.

So later, I had a hankering for some brownies. No place around here has a real to-die-for brownie, but I have always admired the brownies from the bakery at Dominick's. I hopped on my bicycle and pedaled on over. Guess what? The 24 hour, always-open Dominick's was closed! I wasn't going to give up, so I re-hopped onto my bicycle and pedaled over to the Lincoln Park Supermarket, where I bought some ready-to-bake cookie dough and some toothpaste, on account of me being nearly out of toothpaste. Some cookies are currently baking away in my oven. Hell yeah.

Posted by oz115 at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)