I now have the honor of being part of an elite group  of Americans who have come down with the shingles. [LOOKS OVER AT THE INTERNET]  Oh, wait, apparently one in three people get it sometime in their lifetime. If you are thinking quietly to yourself, “hey, isn’t that the band who sang that catchy song in the movie The Garden State?” you are probably getting the band The Shins. I’m not sure if anyone in the Shins have ever had the shingles, but the odds are there.

If you are thinking it has something to do with having experienced the chicken pox as a child, you are on the right track. Apparently the virus that causes the chicken pox hangs around inside your body just waiting to cause problems at some random point in the future.

So about a week ago I started getting daily headaches and my neck and right shoulder started to feel sore. Being a UPS employee for almost a decade now, none of these symptoms seemed particularly alarming. A few days later I got a rash on my neck and right ear. Just looking at it in no way relates to the pain I was feeling. Laying my head down on my pillow caused tremendous pain. I eventually started plans to build a bacta water tank that helped heal Luke Skywalker from a severe wampa attack at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. Katherine was not receptive to this idea.

The pain in my ear can be described exactly as the scene in Star Trek when a younger, more fit, and, well, I suppose less passed away Ricardo Montelbon places mind-controlling bugs in crew members of the Enterprise.

So, in conclusion, the shingles really suck. Really. And I know that I’m the type who, on occasion, may tend to exaggerate my pain situation to gain sympathy. And the fact that they just randomly pop up for no real reason makes it that much better. So if you know of anyone who get the shingles, the best thing to do is to sneak up behind them and inject them with large dose of horse tranquiler. Just let them sleep the whole experience away. Do not, and I don’t think I can stress this enough, sneak up behind them and give them an Indian burn on the effected area. This will most likely cause them to die. Literally.

Being a UPS driver, people often ask me how I keep my hands so clean given the grungy nature of my job. Actually, nobody has ever asked me that, but I have to start somewhere.

Every night when I come home from work I start the shower running and prepare what some would call my “Ancient Chinese Secret” for cleaning the deep seeded grime from my hands. This procedure uses two solid pumps from my 1.25 gallon Gojo dispenser and a light sprinkle of Ajax worked into all the nooks and crannies of my hand with a small oval shaped pumice stone. I scrub vigorously until the shower warms up, at which point I enter the stall and continue to shower in more or less the traditional manner. When I’m done in the shower, I dry off and rub a healthy amount of lotion into my hands.

Interesting points:

I’m pretty sure this is NOT an approved official use for Ajax.
For anyone considering robbing their neighbors in the near future, I believe this procedure is also effective at temporarily removing my fingerprints.
You may be asking yourself how this is Ancient, Chinese, or a secret. The old Chinese man I have locked in my basement taught me how to do it. Now that the secret is out, however, I’ll have to kill him. He will understand.

Have you ever had one of those days when you come home from the movies on a Sunday evening only to have your longtime friend/roommate/landlord tell you that he is moving in with his girlfriend to a brand new place ten miles away? Welcome to my world.

As if I didn’t have enough to keep me busy between not getting fired at work and arranging my Netflix movie queue on the Internet (OK, maybe that last one doesn’t sound that difficult, but if I don’t keep a constant eye on it, Kristin will fill up the list with her silly choices like the complete cartoon collection of “Jem and the Holograms” while showing absolutely no respect for my culturally enlightening selections such as “Shakes the Clown.” I mean, come on, how can Bob Goldthwait playing (“playing”) a depressed alcoholic clown not be an important social commentary?

Back to the “me getting kicked out of the house” thread, Scott assured me that I could live in the house until it was sold to someone else. This meant that I had somewhere between two weeks and six months to find a new place to call home. Before I started looking for a place I needed to answer several important questions: Do I want to rent or own? What part of town do I want to live in? Could I just sleep at the UPS center and avoid the extensive cost of shelter altogether?

After considering all my options, I decided to buy a place of my own. That way, I reasoned, if I got kicked out it would most likely be due to: A: a freak meteorite hitting my place or B: a complete and long-term finical irresponsibility on my part. In either case, I would only tangentially blame Scott for having to move again.

My search for personal residential real estate began, like any good search, on the Internet. I entered what I wanted in a house and how much I could afford to spend. In roughly 1/10th of a second I got a response back from Google. It offered me, in this exact order, books on houses from Amazon.com, doll houses for sale on Ebay.com, and finally every single piece of real estate, commercial and residential, for sale and not for sale, on the entire planet. Since this didn’t provide me with much useful information, I decided to take a more realistic approach to my dilemma– I drove around parts of town where I wanted to live and looked for “For Sale” signs on houses.

After a surprisingly short search, I found a place I liked and made an offer. For everyone who hasn’t purchased real estate, the negotiation process goes something like this:

Buyer: I will pay you X dollars for this house.

Seller: Well, I don’t know, I think it is worth 2X to the right buyer.

Buyer: How about 1.5X?

Seller: I might be able to swing that. Of course I would have to keep the washer, dryer, and all the windows and doors.

Buyer: If I have to buy all that stuff I would need to take my dying mother off dialysis. Would that make you happy?

And so on.

Once the terms of the sale are agreed upon, the next stage in the process is to arrange financing. Most people don’t have enough money to write a check for the total cost of the house. This is why mortgage companies were invented. In exchange for giving people lots of money to buy a house, the mortgage company has the right to put people through a complex and deeply humiliating loan approval process. This includes, but is not limited to, financial information from the past three generations of relatives, a complete pantry inventory, and, at the sole discretion of the mortgage company managerial staff, a complete urine analysis. “I’m sorry, but the sample you provided us was a bit too dark for our taste. You will never own a house. Have a nice day.”

Once financing has been arranged, the final step in the process is the closing. In addition to having to sign 8000 pieces of confusing yet legally binding documents, the soon-to-be homeowner needs to check for any forms clerical and typographical errors in the loan documents. This included making sure names are spelled correctly, dates more or less correspond to when events actually happened, and that the title company isn’t under the impression that you are buying a used muffler bracket assembly from a 1978 Pinto.

The title company’s main responsibility is to say everything is going smoothly, and then, two days before the closing, inform the buyer that six crucial documents have been mysteriously removed from the closing file. This is exactly what happened during my closing. Imagine this: I’m driving on the east side of Fort Collins delivering packages trying not to fall behind schedule when my cell phone rings. “Hello, this is so-and-so from your friendly neighborhood title company. Look, we just now realized that your place is a ‘pud’. Now that doesn’t mean anything to you, but since it is a pud, we need additional information from your employer regarding your pay from two years ago. If you could just fax that to me in the next half an hour or so, that would be great.” First of all, I’m in a big brown UPS truck, which does not have any type of onboard fax machine. Second, I’m 20 miles away from my computer and still have 4 hours of work to get done before I can get home. And finally, getting any kind of useful information from a company as large as UPS cannot be completed in less than four to six weeks.

Despite all these difficulties, I did manage to complete the process of buying a townhouse (or ‘pud,’ if you will). With that accomplished, I now get to move on to a whole new set of challenges such as moving all my stuff, landscaping the front yard, and putting up window coverings. I was planning on getting some of that done this afternoon, but I just noticed that my “Shakes the Clown” DVD just came in the mail from Netflix.

Since Kristin and I have been dating for a few months now, I figure it’s only fair to feature her in the “How I Annoy People” section of my web site. In all honesty I don’t remember any significant “moments” that defined our relationship. There was that one time I stood in the driveway holding up a stereo playing romantic Peter Gabriel music in the middle of the night. Had I actually been at the correct address at the time I think Kristin would have been impressed with the gesture. And I’m not just saying that– it’s part of the official police report. I guess things got serious somewhere in between meeting Kristin and her friend for a movie and getting put on the “A list” for her recent moving party.

One of the constant sources of conflict in our relationship revolves around the television series, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” To say Kristin is obsessed with this show would be quite an understatement. She likes Buffy in much the same way I enjoy, say, breathing.

I wasn’t at all surprised when I realized Kristin created a “Sim” on her computer that revolved around some of the main Buffy characters. For anyone not familiar with the computer game “The Sims,” it allows the user to create character simulations who interact with each other based on various user input. The entire experience is quite similar to playing God, but with a convenient graphical interface.

In addition to Buffy, Kristin created characters for two male vampires named Spike and Angel. While Kristin was otherwise occupied, I decided to see what would happen when Spike and Angel met face to face. I expected some surreal bloody vampire battle, but it turned out the software did not understand the television-based nature of the simulation. Spike and Angel just stood around talking to each other. To make things more interesting, I had Spike flirt with and tickle Angel. Next I had Angel return the favor. Both characters seemed to enjoy the experience. When Kristin came back into the room I saved the game and closed the program on her computer.

Thanks to my intervention, Spike and Angel became, well, quite close. Kristin was very upset when her plans to build a relationship between Buffy and Spike were thwarted by my meddling. Spike and Angel spend the weekends antiquing while Buffy sits at home wondering why (quite literally) all the men in her world are gay. Even though I think of Kristin as a tolerant and understanding individual, it turns out she categorically draws the line at computer-generated vampire homo-eroticism.

In addition to Buffy, I firmly believe that as long as Kristin and I are both alive (and possibly longer) we are never going to agree on the topic of Rush Limbaugh. Now don’t get me wrong here– I quite admire the accomplishments of this man. Kristin, for some reason, sees him as a future political leader, where I think of Rush as a heavier-set republican version of Dennis Miller.

So while I would like to see Rush Limbaugh use his abilities to provide commentary for high-profile sporting events, Kristin is waiting for the day when she can vote him into political office. Kristin firmly believes we would all be better off if this man was running the country. These “spirited conversations” we have usually end up with Kristin giving me a cold stare when I concede the point that Rush has been married more than enough times to understand the Republican Party’s family values stance.

Kristin’s anal-retentive nature is always a source of entertainment for me. The easiest way I’ve found to annoy Kristin is to take one of her CDs and rotate it in the jewel case so the disc isn’t aligned correctly. I have determined that a clockwise rotation of eighty-seven degrees provides the maximum effectiveness to drive Kristin crazy. Of course after I rotate the disc, I hold it up to make sure Kristin can see what I’ve done. This is followed by about twenty seconds of Kristin pretending not to care. Finally she lunges for the CD and will not rest until the situation is resolved.

While I try to be considerate of Kristin’s needs, I find it almost impossible to resist sneaking into her kitchen and shuffling the packets of Kool-Aid. I started this little hobby after watching Kristin alphabetize them while unpacking the groceries. I’m not sure what difference it makes to have the Lemonade packet sitting in front of the Black Cherry packet, but Kristin doesn’t want to take the chance on the matter. I have no doubt in my mind that this severely annoys Kristin and I suspect it explains her fantasies involving the eight foot tall pitcher-shaped Kool-Aid man breaking through her kitchen wall and beating the crap out of me.

Despite all my deficiencies, Kristin still seems to enjoy my company. Even though I tend to annoy Kristin on a surprisingly regular basis, she still wants to spend time with me. All of this leads up to the $64,000 question: Who repairs all the structural damage when the Kool-Aid man comes over for a visit?

After witnessing the popularity of recent book titles such as “You Might Be a Redneck If…”, “You Might Be Rush Limbaugh If…” and “You Are Most Likely Stuck In Someone Else’s Trunk If…” I decided the time has come to write my own words of wisdom about some of my quirky personality traits. My first thought was to write about being a computer geek. While I saw a lot of potential in this aspect of my life, the real inspiration came to me at 5:30 in the morning when I was watching “Invisible Mom 2.”

Now I don’t want to go ruining the surprise for those readers out there who have “Invisible Mom, the prequel to Invisible Mom 2” on video tape and plan to watch it later on in the week. The basic plot is that the mother in the family can for some reason turn completely invisible. The only way the other characters know she is around is through seeing the movement of otherwise inanimate objects, hearing her voice, and looking at any recently consumed food in her digestive tract. And sometimes she became visible at just the wrong moment for reasons I don’t understand. I fully expect that aspect of the movie to be completely explained in the next film in the series which is tentatively being called “Invisible Step Mom.”

So what is so important about this movie? In all honesty, the movie itself is only half of the equation. This movie, and countless others come on in what I refer to as the “golden hours” of the night. It’s too early for HBO to start showing their children’s programming, but it’s too late to spool up another soft porn movie. This seems to be the time when I get the most productive work done. And please keep in mind that the phrase “most productive” is relative to the rest of my day. Sometimes just doing less damage to the world in general can be productive.

If you are anything like me, you wisely spent this “golden hour” wondering why telephones and calculators have their numbers in a different order. I’m not a brain surgeon, but I suspect these types of random thoughts running about freely in my head while I’m sleeping may contribute to my somewhat abnormal sleeping habits. Well, maybe not having a steady job for the past year might be a contributing factor.

Just to set the record straight, calculators have the 1,2,3 row on the bottom row while telephones put it on the top row. I’m not really upset about this arrangement, but the fact that it took me 27 years to figure it out bothered me. The 4,5,6 row always seems to be middle and zero is always at the bottom. Why couldn’t everyone agree on a common format?

After quickly dismissing the idea of getting “everyone” to agree on this, I started thinking which system is better. If you start typing numbers in a word processing document from lowest to highest, the lower numbers would appear to be higher on the screen. However, if you gathered up a bunch of people at a party and arranged them by height you would have the shorter people closer to the ground and the taller ones closer to the ceiling. While it proves a point, this does not make for a very amusing social get together. You know you are at a bad party if someone does this and it becomes a highlight of the evening.

Of course I haven’t even gotten into zero yet. No matter what, zero appears at the bottom in a row without any other numbers. That doesn’t seem to be very fair to the other numbers who are forced to share. It seems that since zero and one are neighbors on the number line that they should be close together everywhere else. Now every where I go I look to see which order numbers appear. Calculators and full sized computer keyboards put the lower numbers at the bottom. Telephones and remote controls all seem to put the low numbers on tops. Automated Teller Machines go both ways. But I digress. From what, I’m not sure.

While I couldn’t possibly write down every single thought that I’ve had tonight, here are a few of the other questions that I have been pondering. How much do my lava lamps add to the electricity bill? Should I go out and say hi the person delivering my newspaper? What is Kathleen going to dress up as for Halloween? How long until the mustard in my refrigerator goes bad? Why is the ceiling in my apartment more bumpy than the walls? If you are asking these questions as you stay awake all night, you just might be an insomniac.

I put off talking about this topic because there seemed to be so much wedding stuff to blog about, but here is the official news:  Katherine is pregnant and due to deliver in mid December.  Here is our first ultrasound, taken May 6, 2009.   I was going to scan this into my computer, but it was already quite blurry so I just used my cell phone camera.

I have no idea what is in the picture, but Katherine explained to me that the big dark blob is her womanly parts, the small gray blob inside that is the baby, and the pink object on the right is my thumb.  At the time the ultrasound was taken it was roughly the size of a gummy bear, which is what led us to the nickname “Walter.”

No word yet on the gender.  Everyone seems to have an opinion this topic, but I’ll just be happy if it comes out one or the other and not both.  We should have more information on the boy/girl issue after our August appointment.  We may even get a three dimensional ultrasound even though it is more expensive than the regular two dimensional version.  Most of the extra cost involves hiring an artist to be present in the exam room during the procedure to create a clay model based on a compilation of various two dimensional views.  Once the model is air dried it gets fired in a kiln after which time we can apply color glazes as we see fit.  It will look great on the mantle above the fireplace.

So until next time– happy gestating Katherine!

I truly believe that any sleep deprivation study needs to use 10 month old children who wake up a random intervals in the middle of the night.  My second daughter, Samantha, is quite skilled at screaming at random intervals in the night for reasons completely unknown to me.

So I took her downstairs the other night to try and calm her down, but none of the usual tricks were doing me any good.  Eventually I just sat down with her on the recliner and turned on the television.  After randomly moving through channels we both dozed off in the chair.  When I woke up I had a bunch of strange thoughts in my head such as:

Drug cartels from south of the boarder are funding conservative super PACs to keep funding for the war on drugs
The Rosetta Stone company is actively suppressing Esperanto for their own finical gain.
Jimmy Carter, at night when he isn’t working on being an international peace ambassador, is a super hero whose only goal is to get the United States to convert to the metric system.

So I’m not really sure what channel I was watching when I fell asleep, but I highly suspect it was one of those crazy 24 news channels. That, or I was watching the Colbert report commenting on these topics.  The last alternative is that I’m just strange enough to think of these things on my own.

I’ve been writing weekly stories for a year now on my website, so I thought now would be a good time to stop and examine what I’ve accomplished over the past year. To achieve this goal, I’ve chosen the standard “situation comedy flashback” idiom. Let the dog out, grab a soda, and get comfortable before the show starts.

The scene: Omar is sitting on the couch of the living room wrapped up in a warm blanket drinking hot chocolate. Behind the couch is a fake window with large quantities of fake snow falling. The television set it tuned to the weather channel.

Television Set: A cold front has moved in and stalled over the state of Colorado. They have already received 6 inches of snow, and the satellite images indicate the situation is only going to get worse. Schools, businesses, and taco stands across the state have all shut down until further notice. The best advise is to stay home and wait for the snow to stop falling. Preferably with a warm beverage.

Omar: Wow, that really sucks. I guess I can’t look for a job today.

Kathleen enters through the front door to mild applause.

Omar: I thought you were going skiing. How come you are back so soon?

Kathleen: They closed the highway because of the blizzard. We had to turn back and… hey, what’s going on here? First of all, we don’t live together. And this doesn’t look anything like your apartment. In fact, it reminds me of a bad UPN sit-com. And where is that clapping sound coming from?

Omar: Yeah, that darned snow. I guess we are stuck here for the night. Sit down on the couch—I’ll go make some more hot chocolate before I start rambling on endlessly about my web site.

Kathleen: What? I don’t want to hear about your stupid web site. I don’t know how I got here, but I want to leave.

Kathleen gets up and tries to open the front door. It won’t budge. She pulls frantically to get it open. Omar looks over from the couch and smiles.

Omar: Of course I’ll put extra marshmallows in your hot chocolate.

Omar walks into the kitchen and Kathleen reluctantly sits on the couch. Omar comes back out with another cup of hot chocolate.

Omar: This should warm you up. You know, this reminds me of the time I wrote about you entering the Kinetics race in the spring. Ah, those were the days.

Kathleen: Umm.. I suppose so. Look Omar, the only time we ever talk to each other is in the parking lot. You make it seem like we are best friends. I think its pretty creepy that you write about me so much on your stupid little web site.

Omar: Actually, its just the powder mix. I’m glad you like it though.

Kathleen: Are you even listening to what I’m saying?

Omar: Hopefully by tomorrow morning, according to the weather channel.

Ertok the Evil Alien Overlord comes walking in through the kitchen door covered in snow and quite irritated.

Omar: What’s the matter Ertok? Did you get snow in your ship’s plasma couplings?

Ertok: Be quiet little Earth mammal. Unless you know anything about cleaning plasma couplings I would suggest you… Wait a minute—how did you know what is wrong with my ship?

Omar: It’s been so long since we have sat down and just talked about things…. Like my web site. By the way, Ertok, this is Kathleen. Kathleen, meet Ertok.

Kathleen: So Ertok, does Omar follow you around writing strange stories about you too? Aren’t there laws against doing stuff like that?

Ertok: If that is all he did I would be damned lucky. Omar made me travel half way across the galaxy for some poorly thought out scheme where I take over the world. As if there is any logical reason for me to take over such a pitiful little planet in the first place. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he hasn’t written about me for the better part of a planetary rotation cycle. So instead of going home to my family back on Barrius 5, I am forced to endlessly orbit the planet waiting for Omar to make up his mind.

Omar: You are right Kathleen—Ertok is one wacky alien overlord. I just never know when he is going to next. It reminds me of the time he tried to take over the world. Ha ha ha.

Ertok: You idiot! You never got around to writing that episode!

Kathleen: Well, Ertok, I’m sorry to hear that Omar dragged you here from so far away. But it is good to know I’m not the only one who is suffering here. Can we do anything to stop all this?

Ertok: For reasons I don’t quite understand, I can only access objects he has written about on his web site. Omar stopped writing about me before he got to anything useful.

Omar: That’s a good question, Ertok. Investigating obscure but unsolved mathematical problems has always been a hobby of mine. I guess I figure one day I’ll wake up and magically come up with a polynomial time solution to the NP-complete set of algorithms. When I go to bed each night I try and convince myself to dream about them.

Ertok: Wait a minute, that gives me an idea.

Kathleen: What, about the “Traveling Salesman” problem?

Ertok: You amuse me, Earth female. That math problem is a trivial homework assignment for young offspring on my home planet. I was actually thinking about the XR-2300 neural interface.

Kathleen: Isn’t that muffler bracket for a 79 pinto?

Ertok: Silence! This is no time to steal jokes from “Airplane 2.” Besides, it wasn’t even very funny the first time around. If I remember correctly, I might be able to make Omar’s head explode.

Omar: I have to agree with you there Kathleen—a lot of people think I am just too funny. But the “toofunny.com” domain name was already registered. How can I make so many jokes when millions of children in the world don’t even know how to make a simple “Three’s Company” joke about Chrissy being pregnant, much less understand the political and sociological ramifications? Which reminds me of episode 49 of “The A Team” where Murdoch and Face go on about….

Kathleen: The sooner Omar’s head explodes, the better.

Ertok: I found the remote detonation device. Lets see if it works.

Ertok presses the button. Omar’s head blows up leaving blood and brain matter all over the room. The lights slowly fade out and polite clapping can be heard along with the theme music.

As I was randomly looking through some of my previous stories on this web site the other day, I noticed a disturbing trend about how my life gets represented. To someone who doesn’t know me any better I might come across as a lazy bum who stays up all night long laying on my couch flipping television channels between mindless infomercials and fifteenth century battle recreations on the History Channel. Which is absolutely true, but besides the point. In addition to my odd nocturnal habits, I also engage in a vast array of interesting—if somewhat more mainstream—activities. Just the other day, for example, I ran my dishwasher.

I find that many otherwise ordinary activities, such as operating kitchen appliances, become less monotonous when made into some sort of a game. To spice up the extensive amount of time I spend cleaning my kitchen, I have created a game called “dishwasher safe or not dishwasher safe?” The rules are quite simple: one person picks an ordinary household object, and the other person has to predict how well it will survive in the dishwasher. (Side note: For readers over the age of twenty-one, this can also be played as a drinking game.) My experience playing the game has taught me quite a bit about high temperature hydrodynamics. Things that fall into the general “dishwasher safe” category include music CDs, dirty socks, and lava lamps. “Not dishwasher safe” items include wax candles, the Sunday newspaper, and unopened boxes of “Hamburger Helper.”

While I’m no Richard Simmons, I do make an attempt to get to the health club a few times a week. For reasons I don’t completely understand, sitting in front of a computer for long periods of time does not seem to burn very many calories. Despite the feverish pace of my brain during these episodes, I need to supplement this time with activities that require more physical demands on my body.

One thing I have noticed is that people generally don’t look very approachable when working out on fitness equipment. I’m not sure what everyone else is thinking when working out, but I know that while exercising on the stair master every one of my brain cells is preoccupied with keeping my body from falling off. If I did attempt to communicate with the person next to me I believe the conversation would start of with me saying something to the effect of “hi there—so, do you like living in Boulder? I hope the fact that I’ve somehow managed to tip over the stair master doesn’t make you think less of me.”

One day, while riding on the stationary bicycle something hit me. And, no, it wasn’t someone else falling off the stair master. I realized that I spend a fair amount of time surfing the Internet and talking to friends on Instant Messenger. The only thing that gets any exercise are the muscles in my fingers. This led me to realize something totally different than my original realization (which I haven’t gotten to yet—please bear with me). Fingers don’t actually have any muscles in them. The muscles that move fingers are located in the forearm area. Or at least that’s where I think they are.

So, getting back to my great idea—I think someone should build exercise equipment that is connected to the Internet. Since most of the equipment requires the person sit or stand in a stationary position, adding a touch screen would not be too difficult. Everyone seems to stare blankly ahead anyway. I’ve extensively researched many, many web sites on the Internet about people who are addicted to the Internet. Not that this plan would help them out at all with their addiction, but it wouldn’t hurt the situation if they had to pedal a bicycle while they jumped from web site to web site. Sure, they would still be pasty white computer geeks, but at least they would have well defined leg muscles.

Well, I hope this helps shed some light on the subject of “What does Omar do all day long?” I’m sure that if I really put my mind to it I could have come up with a dozen more productive activities in my life. Unfortunately (for you, the reader), I was glancing through the TV Guide and just realized that a three hour special about starting land wars in Asia is about to begin. So until next week, try to think of me as a productive member of society.

I happened to be walking through the wonderfully preserved open space on the Boulder path earlier this week. I’m not sure exactly why, but I realized that I was traveling at a slightly slower than usual pace. Perhaps I was preoccupied with the nature of the universe, the purpose of my existence, and the ultimate fate of humanity. In retrospect, the fact that I was hauling around a backpack containing a broken car battery might have contributed to my decreased velocity.

The whole situation started out quite innocently when a friend of mine bet me twenty dollars that I couldn’t juggle 3 batteries at the same time. I found it kind of odd he didn’t explain that he was talking about car batteries until after I accepted the challenge. Being a man of my word, we walked out to my car so I could drive to the bank to pay him the money.

This is where the trouble began. I tried to start my car and nothing happened. That’s not completely true—when I turned the key I could hear a slight clicking noise. I honestly can’t say if the clicking noise was supposed to be there or not. What I did know was that the engine wasn’t running, and you don’t have to be an auto mechanic to recognize this as a problem. Which is a good thing, because there are forms of algae that know more than I do about automobile design and repair.

At this point I wasn’t sure what to do, I didn’t have a lithium jump starter back then. The more I turned the key the more it was clear the car wasn’t going to start. I gave it more gas and nothing changed. I turned off the radio. Still nothing. Adjusting the rear view mirror, opening and closing the trunk, and topping off the windshield wiper fluid also didn’t have any positive effect on the situation. Having completely exhausted my knowledge on the subject of starting my car, I decided to let the car rest for the evening and check back on it later. Maybe it was possessed by some evil spirit and would return to a more normal state sometime in the future.

I went back into my apartment to research ways I could remedy the situation. In retrospect, watching a documentary on the Discovery channel about people digging tunnels under the English channel wasn’t very relevant to my automobile crisis. But I now I am quite well versed in state of the art tunneling techniques (which I hope to use sometime in the future). Being no closer to getting my car running, I decided to go to bed in the hopes the answer would come to me in my sleep. Unfortunately, the only dream I can remember involved a bunch of ten foot tall tangerines running around trying to explain basic concepts of algebra to anyone who would listen. I asked one of them how to fix my car, but it could only suggest that I employ the distributive property of multiplication.

Having found no solution from the Discovery channel or the subconscious part of my brain, I walked out to my car the next morning to see if it was in the mood to start. Nothing seemed to have changed from the previous night. Having decided that the situation wasn’t likely to spontaneously get better, I got a pair of jumper cables and called a friend of mine to try and jump start my car.

When I connected the clamp to my battery, the (prepare for highly specialized automotive terminology) “wire thingy” fell off of the battery. I’ve never designed or conducted failure analysis on automobile batteries, but I could hear this voice telling me that something might be wrong with this piece of equipment. The voice turned out to be coming from Scott, the guy who was helping me get my car started.

After agreeing that the battery was causing the car not to start, Scott went back to work. About two minutes after he left, I starting thinking that having someone to drive me somewhere to get a new battery would probably be a good thing. I went inside and did some research into getting a replacement battery. The Saturn dealership told me the battery was still under warranty, and if I could bring it in they would give me a brand new one.

This is the point in the story where, in retrospect, I didn’t really make the best decision. I have this habit of approaching situations with either total apathy or complete involvement. Moderation is not my strong point. Being completely obsessed with getting my car running, I took the battery out of my car, put it in my backpack, and got ready to walk the one and a half miles to the Saturn dealership. The fact that some form of liquid was leaking out of the side may have stopped a less determined individual, but I just wrapped it up in multiple plastic bags and started walking.

In case you are wondering, car batteries are heavy. I would not suggest carrying one in a backpack for any significant distance. But I did make it to the dealership, and I even managed to get back to my car with the new battery (which had the positive property of not leaking out acid into my backpack). When I installed the new battery in my car the engine started just fine. And the doctor said the large acid burn on my lower back will only take two or three skin grafts to fix. But that’s just the price of fixing my car.

Goodbye Boulder, hello Loveland. Well, that sums up what I have been up to over the past week or so. For various reasons, I decided to move out of my apartment in Boulder and into a house in Loveland. The most important reason revolves around a drunken late night conversation with Miss Cleo where she said, and I quote, “You have drawn the happy squirrel card. You need to make some big changes in your life, my friend.” The part about change really convinced me to move out of town. That, and I have completely exhausted my supply of wildly inappropriate JonBenet Ramsey jokes.

The first step in the moving process is to decide where to move. I have known my friend Scott since I was three and I have even gone so far as to travel to Germany with him to visit his parents. Scott lives in Loveland and he mentioned how he needed a new roommate. I thought about it for a few days, and eventually I called Scott back and asked if there was any way I could move in with his parents in Germany. Don’t get me wrong– I think Scott is a great guy, but his mom is a way better cook and most experts agree that Germany has a much better ultra-high speed train network than, say, Loveland, Colorado.

One of the keys to a successful move is to be disciplined and organized. Unfortunately for me, both of these attributes were permanently damaged in a prepubescent winter sledding accident. Despite this handicap, I tried my best to prioritize my belongings to make packing as efficient as possible. Here is a list of actual items I found during the inventory process:

One half eaten box of Total cereal with an expiration date of May 1997.
One empty bottle of shampoo with instructions in some foreign language.
A set of used check carbons from SIX addresses ago.
A zip-lock bag full of obsolete Dutch coins with an estimated value of seven dollars (minus the cost of transporting them back to Holland)

These items were carefully packed first using liberal quantities of crumpled up newspaper and bubble wrap. Once that was complete and double checked, I addressed the rest of my stuff.

One of the problems with packing is that I started with the things I cared about the most. All my clothes and electronic equipment were carefully packed and labeled in boxes to make sure nothing was thrown away or misplaced. On moving day all of this was ready to go. First we picked up the couch and placed it in the truck. The next two trips took care of my bedroom furniture. After twenty minutes all of my furniture, clothes, and electronic equipment was loaded up and ready to go. The problem, of course, was the rest of the crap that had accumulated in my apartment over the past three years– stuff that I didn’t want to throw away, but I didn’t care enough to actually pack. The good intentions I had at the beginning of the process gave way to me running around my apartment haphazardly throwing random objects into garbage bags so I could deal with it all later. The last bag I packed contained– and I am being totally honest here– a Harley Davidson calendar, a handful of razor blades, and my Fred and Barney Fruity Pebbles cardboard cutout.

Most fine wines improve with age. The same is not true for U-Haul trucks. I’m guessing the monster I rented reached its peak somewhere around 1977 based on the painting on the side of the truck of an old fashioned American flag and the phrase “U-Haul: Helping American celebrate her bicentennial.” Now I see why it was the only truck in Boulder available to rent. Everything squeaked and rattled in exactly the way I thought it shouldn’t. On the way to Loveland I looked on the dash and noticed the vehicle had been driven 116,000 miles. Of course there were only six digits on the odometer. I strongly suspect it had been flipped three, if not four, times. And by “it” I mean the entire truck.

Despite the truck’s best efforts to spontaneously disassemble into its 40,000 original parts in the middle of Highway 287, we made it to Loveland without any problems. I even got the hang of the odd standard transmission which had reverse where first gear should be, overdrive where reverse usually is, and third gear crammed into the glove compartment with a hastily written note saying, “Don’t use this until we get it back into the transmission box. Have a nice day.”

Unpacking everything in Loveland went pretty smoothly. The biggest problem was by the time we unpacked all the crap I didn’t really care about, we were all pretty much exhausted. No matter how much I think about it, I couldn’t find a way to unload the front and bottom most section of the truck first. Having survived the move, I would recommend the following simple two step process to anyone else who plans on changing their residency in the near future. 1. Spend half an hour moving the most important things into the moving truck. 2. Unfortunately, the state of Colorado still considers things like “lighting your apartment on fire” and “insurance fraud” to be “illegal”, but I’m sure you can connect the dots.

While various barrier methods of birth control have been around since the ancient Egyptians were putting up those lovely pyramids, I’ve come to realize the most effective barrier method to date.

Step one:  The woman lays down on the bed on the left side.  She can position herself on her stomach, back, or side– whichever position is most comfortable.

Step two:  The man lays down on the other side of the bed.  He too can position himself as to maximize comfort.

Step three:  When the initial contact between the man and woman is made a signal is sent (the exact transmission method is unknown) to the one year old child sleeping in the adjoining bedroom.  This signal causes the child’s “I don’t want you to have sex” alarm to be activated.  The alarm system can only be deactivated by placing the child in between the man and the woman.  At this point the infant will promptly go back to sleep.  This guarantees the prevention of any type of sexual penetration for the rest of the night.

To really understand the process of raising children you need to start out with the birds and the bees.  First off, it isn’t totally necessary to dress up as wild animals to conceive a child– that is more of an issue of personal preferences.  In fact, a recent study concluded that a majority of Americans prefer to emulate their favorite masked Mexican wrestling superstars during sex.  Some people have even been known to enjoy it without any identity-altering clothing whatsoever.

A good first step is to find a partner.  Having them be more or less the opposite sex is a good start, but not a strict requirement.  Anyone who has seen “Junior” starring Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarzenegger knows the difficulties of same sex pregnancies.

The next step, ideally, is to build a relationship with your partner.  If time permits, spend some time with this person.  Get to know their likes and dislikes.  Communication is a key aspect to any healthy relationship.  (Keys to an unhealthy relationship:  beheading partners for producing incorrect gender offspring, initiating land wars in Asia, and, of course, an irrational desire to use the metric system.)

Cultural differences also need to be taken into consideration.  For example, most people understand the concept of monogamy, but in several South American countries a common variation is “I won’t sleep with anyone else, unless they have the same first name or hair style as my partner.”  And in Sweden it is perfectly acceptable to be intimate with anyone you meet when entering the incorrect gender’s bathroom of an Ikea store.  If your partner’s culture is significantly different than your own, make sure to take time to learn as much as possible just in case you need to mock them for several hours at local drinking establishment after a heated fight about her religious beliefs barring certain types of ice cream from being consumed in the house on days of the month divisible by seven.

My career path to becoming a lounge singer has been somewhat uneventful this week, so I’ve decided to field some of the questions I’ve gotten from inquisitive readers who want to know more about Ertok. For those of you new to the site, Ertok is an Evil Alien Overlord who, among other things, oversees the operations here at newfunny.com.

O: Do you like working with the Omar?
E: His performance so far has been acceptable. However, on the recently modified “Staff” page, Omar has associated me with one of the animated space aliens from the animated television show “The Simpsons”. On a superficial level, I comprehend the analogy, but on a deeper level it becomes clear that my personality more closely matches that of Kodos rather than that of Kang. I am currently considering punishment for this grievous error.

O: How many aliens are in the vicinity of planet Earth at this moment?
E: I am currently the only one. My responsibility is to scout out the planet and analyze your defensive capabilities before the main invasion force arrives. My involvement in this web site has minimal strategic value to the overall invasion plan, and is analogous to a small boy playing with and enjoying his pet ants with the aid of a primitive transparent optical refracting device.

O: You have implied that you don’t look like Kodos or Kang from The Simpsons. Do you resemble other aliens from popular movies or television shows?
E: In reality, I can emulate the look of any of the carbon based life forms that scurry about on your planet’s surface through a special device located on my space vessel. For example, I could exit my ship looking like any of your world leaders. Or Pauly Shore.

O: Is this entire interview a setup for a series of wacky adventures involving you and other members of the newfunny staff while you wait for the invasion force to arrive?
E: Did I mention that the XR-2300 neural interface I implanted in your head gives me the option of making your head explode?

O: I suppose we can skip that question and edit it out later.
E: I suspect that would be in your head’s best interest.

O: Speaking of the XR-2300, isn’t that a muffler bracket for the ’79 Pinto?
E: No, that’s the XR-2200. The 2300 is the lunar shuttle.

O: So, have you finished your assessment of our planets defenses? What did you conclude?
E: My research has concluded that your species is no match for us. The best chance you have to defend yourself is to annoy us to death with your gender homogenous adolescent music organizations. HA HA HA… [SNORT] [SNORT] [COUGH] [COUGH]. Edit out the snorting part too.

O: So how much time do we have until the invasion force arrives?
E: According to my calculations, they should have arrived several of your Earth days ago. I suspect the problem has to do with your archaic time system. Basing a calendar on small furry animals is not very efficient.

O: That sounds like yet another piece of information that might be relevant for future story lines involving evil alien overlords. Do you agree?
E: [pulls out a remote control device with a button on it labeled “blow up Omar’s head” and slowly runs his finger around it]

Well, look at the time! I would like to thank Ertok for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer all of these questions. If anyone has questions for Ertok, please feel free to sent them to newfunny.com. If we use your question on the web site, you get a free T-shirt from the back of my closet that I never got around to giving to charity.

These guys were hanging out at the entrance to our subdivision as I got home from work the other night.

I have to admit up front that I have never written a story while being held against my will at the Boulder County Police Headquarters. Usually I sit home at my desk and mold the random thoughts running around in my head into a somewhat coherent and for the most part correctly-spelled piece of literature. On this occasion I was not afforded the meager luxuries of my small one bedroom apartment, but rather I scribbled my thoughts on the back of some legal documents with a small pencil the guards overlooked during the customary pat-down process. I suppose the guards didn’t view me as a traditional “psycho killer” type during the check in process. Either that or their apathy won over. What ever the reason, it gives me a chance to explain how I got here in the first place.

It all started rather innocently enough. After a few hours of one of our favorite Saturday night activities, my friends and I were talking about how we could improve the already wildly entertaining game of Laser Tag. The place where we usually play sports an impressive 8500 square foot multistory arena where up to forty people run around shooting each other for thirty minutes at a time. The next logical step would be to play it outdoors. Being regular customers, the manager let us take a few of the guns out in the parking lot to see how well it would work.

Playing laser tag in the parking lot was a blast. We would run around the buildings and take refuge behind the few cars that remained in the parking lot at two in the morning. If you aimed the gun carefully, you could hit someone that was standing still from about 200 yards away. The biggest problem was that after about thirty minutes of running around the parking lot we were all too out of breath to play anymore.

I suppose at this point in the story we could have all gone home, and the story would have ended there-and more importantly, without the need for police intervention. But that’s not what happened. After catching our breath on the curb of the parking lot, we created a slight variation of the game. We reasoned because we all like to play Laser Tag and we all like to drive our cars that, “Laser Car Tag” would be more entertaining than either activity by itself. We decided on boundaries for the game, picked teams, and each got into our own car.

The general idea was to chase down one of the cars from the other team and shoot the blinking lights on their gun in order to get points. With four cars and a rather large field of play it wasn’t very easy to find the other team, much less shoot the lights on their gun. We all drove around for twenty minutes without anyone getting hit. At that moment I realized my teammate Brian and I both had cell phones in our cars. I called him up and we set up a trap for the other team.

In case you were wondering, it’s not all that easy to drive a car with a standard transmission, talk on a cell phone, and aim a laser gun out the window trying to hit the other team all at the same time. Despite these difficulties, Brian and I were able to set up a trap where I got one of the other cars to chase me and Brian sneaked up from behind and hit one of their sensors. Victory was ours.

Sometimes in life you can win and lose at the same time. This was such an occasion.

While Brian was sneaking up on our prey, it turns out that there was a police car that was sneaking up behind all of us and witnessed the entire maneuver. He pulled all three of the cars over. In all honesty, I don’t think he appreciated our creative vision that night. While he didn’t specifically arrest us for playing laser car tag, he did mention some “laws” against going thirty-five miles an hour over the speed limit through the main street in Boulder, not stopping at red lights, and erratically changing lanes every three seconds. We presented what I thought was a convincing verbal argument that it’s the difference in speed that kills and since we were both going seventy miles an hour down 28th street, there was really no chance that we would hit each other. The officer seemed largely unconvinced and decided to give us the pleasure of spending the night in jail.

My first (and so far only) night in jail was not as bad as I imagined. Neither the guards or other prisoners deemed it necessary for me to receive any kind of “anal probe”, which I greatly appreciated. I spent four years in college living on dorm food, so what they gave us in jail really brought back memories. If all goes as planned tomorrow morning we will all get out on bail pending our court hearings.

Post Trial Comments:

The trial received much more publicity due to the accounts of that night and the corresponding video tape from the officer’s patrol car being the feature story on the television show “COPS” last week. As part of my plea bargain, I have agreed to provide a public service message on what has now become known as Xtreme Laser Tag.

Youth of America– playing Laser Tag while operating a car, motorcycle, mountain bike, or gyrocopter may seem like a whole lot of fun, but it’s actually a very dangerous sport. While there have been no documented deaths attributed to this activity in the United States, it is believed every year between 100 and 200 children in Mexico and other parts of South America die in Laser Tag related incidents. Remember– friends don’t let friends get really drunk at Christmas parties and… OOPS, that was a previous story. Just remember kids, officers have been authorized to use stun guns and other forms of violent-yet-non-lethal force to stop these now illegal Laser Tag games.

Well, that part is over. Now I can get this whole ugly mess behind me once I finish my 200 hours of community service in accordance with the terms of my parole.

In my ongoing effort to explore the non-horrible aspect of AI, I created a fun calendar for two besties I deliver to every day as a UPS driver. I took a few pictures of them and then turned to ChatGPT and Google Gemini to create a month by month visual adventure for 2026. And, yes, I did get their permission to put this up on my web site.

A lot of newfunny readers are curious to learn more about Ertok. For those of you who are new to the site, Ertok is an Evil Alien Overlord that oversees my work on the newfunny web site. The Evil Alien Overlords are planning to enslave the human race and create a planetary network of mining slave camps. Here are some questions I asked Ertok during a recent interview:

O: So what part of the Galaxy are you from?
E: We come from a planet known in your scientific community as BETA-MX-1974. For those less technically inclined humanoids, our home world is on a planet that orbits a star which, from this point in the time/space continuum of the galaxy, looks like an ear of a little bunny rabbit. Or the front headlight of a 1984 Pontiac Fiero, depending on your sociological upbringing.

O: How are you able to speak English so well?
E: You might suspect we have a complex computer system that provides real time bi-directional language translation or that we insert some mythical cold blooded sea dwelling life form into our aurial chamber. One of our long range listening posts detected patterned electromagnetic waves radiating from your planet. We were quickly able to decipher them into their respective audio and video signals. Once the invasion force was dispatched from the home world we assimilated your culture through what you refer to as television and radio. While not perfect, our understanding of your language should be adequate for our needs. For example, we still haven’t decoded what your television signals refer to as the, “ancient Chinese Secret”. But from what we do know, we consider this to be of minimal strategic military importance.

O: So why have you chosen me to be the spokesman for your Invasion Force?
E: Well, we examined several factors when choosing a candidate. First of all, you posses the computer skills needed to convey our message to a large audience through your planetary digital packet distribution system. We also noted your wildly overactive imagination will most likely cause disbelief when conveying this message.

O: I’m a little bit confused now. So you want me to tell the world about your plans, but you don’t want anyone to believe what I’m saying. What purpose does that serve?
E: One thing we learned about your culture is that humans seem to enjoy the idea of irony. This way, after all humanoids are toiling away in the mining camps, we can post a big sign saying “We told you our plans, but nobody took it seriously. Now you and countless generations of your offspring will pay for this insolence. Oh, and please wear eye protection when operating heavy machinery.”

O: Being your cooperative spokesman by devoting my time and energy to your cause, will I be allowed to have a cushy administrative position in your new world order?
E: No.

O: Do I get anything for my efforts?
E: Yes-we have noticed you are trying to solve a mathematical problem your race refers to as the Non Polynomial Complete Set Theory Conjecture. (Our species calls it the “Traveling Mining Camp Equipment Sales Humanoid” problem). We plan on giving you the mathematical proof, which is small enough to fit in the margin of a single piece of paper, right as we assign you to the most dangerous mining camp.

O: We are almost out of time, so would you like to say anything to all the faithful newfunny readers?
E: If any humanoids are curious, your future will be similar to the movie “Superman 2”. Except instead of three escaped convicts from planet Krypton, there will be several thousand of us, and there will be no Superman. To paraphrase your human expression: “May the more advanced life form bring cruelty and mining camps along with their victory”. Ertok out.

Well, hopefully this interview will help keep you informed about Ertok and the Evil Alien Overlords. If you have any more questions, please send them to the “Letters to the Editor” section of the newfunny web site.

A chain store called “Tuesday Morning” opened up a year or so ago in Loveland, Colorado.  I keep wondering how they came up with the name.  To the best of my knowledge, they sell a variety of overstocked gift type items at rather low prices.

Even though I know exectly what they sell, I keep imagining they specialize in selling the “Plan B” contraceptive/birth control device. (FYI:  “Plan B” is a pill women can take up to 72 hours after unprotected intercourse that prevents conception from occuring.)

I can just visualize the advertisement:  Ladies, were you out late on Saturday night having unprotected sex with anonymous male partners?   If so, remember you have until Tuesday morning to get to Tuesday Morning if you don’t want to start baking a bun in your oven!

With the exception of Dick Clark helping America ring in each new year, all good things must come to an end. The “Star Trek: Voyager” series is no exception to this rule. You may love it, you may hate it, but either way, the last episode will air in a few weeks. Will the crew make it back to Earth? Here at newfunny.com we have a been blessed with a very interesting piece of “inside information”. Unfortunately, it has absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek, so I will have to save that for another story.

Before I go any further, I have to stop and make a special dedication. I like to think of my sister as one of the biggest fans of Star Trek fans in the entire charted galaxy. Wait a minute, I’m thinking of me. My sister hates the whole concept of Star Trek so much that she once spit in the face of Patrick Stewart when he was passing by in the airport terminal. OK, I just made that part up (he only looked quite a bit like the guy who plays Jean Luc Picard), but I can say without any doubt that she has her own “prime directive” to cause bodily harm to any one who thinks its cool to wear a Klingon forehead apparatus in public. So, Karen, if you are reading this, I hope you get a tingle in your spine similar to when Data first activated his emotion chip.

In all honesty, I have to admit to aggravating the situation with my sister by forcing Star Trek information upon her every chance I get. When we were younger, I would often times run around with a banana clip over my eyes pretending to be Geordi La Forge from the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” series. My most shining moment in this aspect of my life was calling up my sister at two in the morning to tell her I just got home from the opening night of the latest Star Trek feature film. I can only imagine the look on her face as I woke her up out of a good night sleep by screaming “STAR TREK– INSURRECTION!!!” into the phone receiver.

I would now like to spend some time hypothesizing about how the Voyager series is going to end. I can assure you that I have no advance knowledge of the actual ending for the series. The whole point of the newfunny stories isn’t to report “facts”, but rather to make the results of my overactive imagination appear to be true. Having said that, here are some official newfunny.com alternate endings for the series:

California Style Ending:

After miscalculating the amount of dilithium needed to get the ship back to the Alpha quadrant, the captain initiates rolling blackouts for the duration of the journey. The shortage of power creates a series of unique predicaments the crew must address. One episode will involve the more elderly crew members on several decks suffering from heat exhaustion after their air conditioners stop running in the middle of a hot summer afternoon. The finale will focus on a no-holds-barred banana cream pie fight between Captain Janeway and First officer Chakotay over who was supposed to fill up on dilithium crystals on their last away mission.

Monty Python Ending:

After some ingenious manipulation of the space/time continuum, the crew manages to get out of the Delta quadrant and back to their own section of the galaxy. Sprits are high as earth becomes visible on the long range sensors. After three days at maximum warp the crew reaches Earth and makes their final landing preparations. A massive celebration is planned at Star Fleet Headquarters for Voyager. Just before the ship sets down a large cartoon foot comes out of nowhere and crushes the ship into a twisted pulp. Roll credits.

Scooby Doo Ending:

B`Elanna Torres and Tom Paris look into the cause of energy surges that consistently disrupt the daily operation of the ship with creepy sounds and unexplained visual phenomena. The young pair eventually gets to the bottom of the case after a series of subtle clues, trap doors, and Scooby Snacks lead them to the culprit. The cause of the “ghosts”, if you will, turned out to be nothing more than a series of computer commands programmed in by the unscrupulous ship’s captain who planned on getting a good deal on a high mileage haunted galaxy class cruiser upon their triumphant return to Earth.

There aren’t too many famous people I would want to meet in person, but I thought I would keep track of who I would like to meet for lunch.

Lisa Loeb: OK, she is rather pleasing to the eye (or at least both of mine), but what really won me over was her short lived TV show “Dweezil & Lisa”. I would call it a cooking show, but I don’t think many other people would be quite so generous. One episode revolved around them hosting a pancake party. While at a cooking store Dweezil wanted to buy an $80 batter dispenser. Lisa said it was too expensive and not worth the money. Now here is a woman who I’m guessing is pretty well off financially realizing that she doesn’t need another kitchen gadget. Also, she didn’t insist on having her name be first in the show’s title.

So, Lisa, if you are still reading this, and plan on being in northern Colorado in the future, give me a call and we can go out to Chipotle for some chips and burritos.