I can be a horrible creature of habit. For example, if I don’t hit the comic book store on Wednesday I get panicky as all hell. Granted, I’m usually weeks behind on my reading, so I won’t even get to the books that I’m purchasing for several weeks, but I have to hit the shop on Wednesday. Irrational? Yes, but who doesn’t have an irrational behavior or twelve?

Similarly, I have a list of books (comic and conventional) that I tend to read over and over and over. I’m not sure if this is a unique behavior (I would think not) — but who knows?

The first of these books is Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. This book opened so many doors into my budding love of secret societies and cults back when I was in high school. It’s a fantastic story of “what if we make up a conspiracy to sell some books” that gets way way out of hand.

This is a book I read about once every two years just to keep the material (and paranoia) fresh. After I read the Da Vinci Code, I immediately read Foucault’s Pendulum to cleanse my palette. This is a book that was shelved with its own concordance when I first picked it up. Shit like that makes me do a happy dance.

The most important book that I read over and over and over is The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. Anyone who knows me well should read this book just to see how my brain works. I’m not saying this book will change your life or anything, but THIS BOOK WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!!!!!

I read this book every year without fail. Sometimes I read it twice just for good measure. I’ve already finished my first reading of 2010 and I’ll probably pick it up again after I finish reading the odd young adult fantasy series I’m reading now (Fablehaven for those who are interested).

The third multi-read book I keep close at hand is of the comic variety. Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan.

Spider Jerusalem is almost as bad ass as Warren Ellis himself and Transmet (as those in the know are oft to call it) is the ultimate in dystopian futures. It’s got drugs, politics, social commentary and oodles and oodles of bad attitude. The fact that it makes me giggle like a little girl is just the gravy on the cake.

While it is always nice to read Transmet all the way through, if I need a quick fix, I read what amounts to the first collected volumes.

Warren Ellis’ Crooked Little Vein is also quickly crawling up as being one of those books I’ll read over and over, but I need to give it a third read just to make sure.

So, gentle blog reader, any books you revisit on a regular basis?

Many of you might be aware that I quit my job a little over two months ago to persue a life of leisure.

There are many reasons why I finally walked away from my job of five years, but they really aren’t important to anyone other than myself. The big thing that a lot of you who come in contact with me on a regular basis is that I feel like a new human being.

No more stress over factors that irked me to no end that I had no control over; no more false senses of urgency; no more working insane hours. It’s like heaven!

I gotta tell you, for the first month all I really did was sit around and watch the games of the World Cup. Sure, I cleaned the house like a madman just because I didn’t know what else to do with my idle time, but I got to see almost every game live. That’s a big first for me.

Then, when The Cup ended, I had to start thinking a little more long term. I took a little bit of time to finalize some projects that I had been freelancing on prior to quitting, but, with all this extra time, that happened really quickly.

I finally caught up on my five week backlog of comic books. Believe me, for my insane habit, five weeks is a crap load of books.

I got to play a video game for two days straight. I know that’s horribly hedonistic, but it was pretty damn awesome for me.

I bleached my hair and finally got my right lobe pierced to match the left one that had been pierced for the past twenty years (it’s the little things that working for “The Man” make you really appreciate).

I slowed way down on my smoking (I’m not going to say I’ve quit until I haven’t had a single smoke for three months and I’m not doing that hot towards that goal these days), and I started to aggressively attack a “Couch-to-5K” program. If all goes as planned, I start week four day one tomorrow morning.

This lack of day-to-day responsibility has got me feeling more centered than I have felt in a very long time. I’m less grumpy, anxious, sleepy (and other dwarfs as well) and I actually feel more healthy (except for the blasted summer cold I’m nursing right now).

And, because I can’t stay idle for too long, a friend and I have started a company to book Dallas-area bands (visit ManhandlerBooking.comfor more details). This will help me turn my habit/fascination with live music into a productive endeavor without having to expose anyone to my horrible horrible musical skills. I mean it. There’s a reason I do the vocal parts of Rock Band while squeezle is out of the house. There are just a few people who have been exposed to my dabbling in karaoke who are still alive to tell the tale. It’s just badness.

Unfortunately, the one thing I really intended to do over the past two months, but really haven’t gotten around to is write. I’ve been so lax with this blog that I probably need to get in here and scrub off a goodly layer of dust and mold before proceeding.

So, here’s the deal. I’ve got more to say and I’m hoping you folks are still willing to read it. I can’t promise any of it will be heady or substantive, but it will, at the very least, give you a little brain break for part of your day.

To quote something a very wise man said upon being woken on the couch: “My mind is a sewer, and I live in a cardboard box.”

P.S. For all of you worried about that mouse up there at the top of my post, don’t worry. He’s suspended in a PFC solution, so he’s just fine.

I did something today that I haven’t done at all in my adult life: I didn’t leave a tip at a restaurant.

As someone who has worked in a variety of restaurant jobs over the course of my teens and twenties, I cut a lot of slack for a lot of the standard crap that goes on in the course of someone serving you your meal. I understand, to some degree, that omissions and substitutions can sometimes wreck havoc on the kitchen and I also realize that a ten table station is downright ludicrous.

What happened to me today at lunch was just a snowball effect of horrible management and apathetic self-victimization.

I’ve been going to a Thai joint near my office every week or so for the past five years: my first time being about a week after they opened their doors. It’s a pretty simple place with a mere dozen menu items for lunch that comes standard with a little cup of soup and a tiny eggroll. On most days, about half of the fifteen or so tables are filled and the whole lunching experience takes about thirty minutes and it’s right back to the office again.

Not today.

Today I walked in and everything seemed moderately normal: about ten of the tables were seated and the normal Asian server/manager was hustling around from table to table. I sat in the corner and she immediately came over to get my usual order: Thai fried rice with beef, medium spicy and an iced tea. She shuffled off and sent the other girl who typically acts as food runner over with my iced tea.

From there, the circus began.

As is typical with most days I’m out at lunch, I had my Kindle with me and was reading the latest crap novel that I crave so much, so I don’t often pay attention to much of what is going on around me. After five minutes of reading with no sign of soup, I started to look around. I would guess that more than half of the ten tables had their food and were throwing down the nom while the rest of us waited. A table near me who, I’m guessing, had recently ordered, flagged down the server/manager type who was standing in the corner opposite me. From their gestures I gathered that they were curious as to where their soup was. At that point I was curious as to where mine was, so I made the “inquisitive” face towards the server/manager. Rather than wander over to see what I needed, she merely yelled across the room “No soup yet?”

She hadn’t brought me the soup, and her runner had made herself scarce in the kitchen, so yes, she knew damn well that I had no soup. She proceeded to take three more tables of orders and, as an afterthought five or so minutes later, brought me my damn soup.

When the soup was dropped off at my table I asked her if I could get a refill of my tea. She motioned to the other end of the dining room and told me it was over there. Not once in my five years of going to this place have I ever refilled my own drink. I looked her in the eye and said “Seriously?” and her reply was “Yes, it’s over there.”

At this point I was already starting to get a tad pissed off.

Another twenty minutes passed and Thai fried rice with beef, medium spicy, was still not in front of me. The remainder of people without food around me were also wondering where their dishes were and started signalling to the server/manager that they needed to get their food out now or packed up to-go. The server/manager would make these exasperating huffs and then go back into the kitchen only to return a few seconds later explaining that she told the cook(s) to make the order. She proceeded to do this five or six more times for five or six more customers.

Finally, someone who had been seated before I got there got up and said forget the order and he was going to have to leave to get back to work. The server/manager got really indignant and said that the customer couldn’t do that because the food was finished. The guy gave a little chuckle and then walked out the door.

I was still without my Thai fried rice with beef, medium spicy.

Two more tables say they either need to cancel or have the food packed to-go right now and stood up. The server/manager began scurrying around the restaurant like ants after someone upsets an anthill; and, like those ants, it seemed that nothing was being done.

Suddenly, a plate of pad Thai came out of the kitchen and was delivered to a table where three gentlemen were seated. I’m not sure where the other two dishes were, but the other two guys got up and left.  After another couple of minutes another plate came out and the food runner angled towards my table. “Fried rice?” she asked. “Yes,” I responded and she plopped the most lacklustre plate of greasy fried rice I’d ever seen in this joint down in front of me and scurried off. Sure, it was Thai fried rice, but it was chicken instead of beef and had a spicy factor of zero.

It had been about forty-five minutes since I had sat down, so, instead of sending the plate back and trying my luck with another hour of waiting, I began eating.

Another plate emerged from the kitchen and it was another plate of Thai fried rice; a plate that looked suspiciously like beef. “I ordered chicken,” said the gentleman server/manager tried to put the plate down in front of. “He took yours,” said the server/manager pointing in my direction.

That was it.

I shovelled a few more forks full of rice into my gullet and gathered up my stuff. As I headed towards the counter where the cash register was the server/manager scurried over to find my check. We didn’t exchange a single word as I gave her my best head-shaking stink eye and paid for my failure of a lunch. I’m pretty sure she knows that I’ll never be back in there again.

If you are here because of this article then I’m glad you visited. This is the fifth “article” in this series and you could probably stand to read the other four. You are probably what I refer to as my “target market” when it comes to little thing like being in contact with the modified (especially in Dallas).

First, and foremost, kudos to Teresa Dennis for getting out there and kicking off a new shoppe in town. Now that I’ve said that, I’m really wondering why she went with her own concept instead of franchising a Hart & Huntington shop here in Dallas. What, Dallas is just too cool for H&H to put out a shingle? I really doubt that. I expect Ms. Dennis to make a metric craptonne of money from her endeavor with almost zero repeat business. Why, you ask? The answer is simple. Hers is the land of ankle tattoos and tramp stamps. More kanji will make it’s way out of Subkulture Klothing and Ink than is in the Japanese Constitution. Part of me wants to grab my camera and just wait to be a paid contributor to Hanzi Smatter after what I expect to come out of this Uptown “experiement.”

This leads me to the fifth, and horribly late, lesson in our series: trend kills art.

I used to be a huge fan of the works of Don Ed Hardy. Hardy took a degree in printmaking and a relationship with Sailor Jerry Collins and managed to pull together an iconic catalog of style and form that helped to define “old school” tatoo art.

Then 2004 rolled around and the douche that killed the Von Dutch name decided to destroy yet another American icon. Yes, that would be Christian Audigier. It’s not coincidence that squeezle and I dressed as douchebags for Halloween in 2009 by decking ourselves out head-to-toe in budget Ed Hardy/Christian Audigier clothing.

Even Andy Warhol couldn’t mass produce that much cultural pap to be slurped up the the “undesirable elite” to be worn at exclusive clubs and events that would probably rather not have me in attendance. Hell, Andy is probably touching himself lewdly in the grave at the mere thought of having his work reach the ontological and improbable (near impossible) pinnacle that Hardy, err, Audigier has done: killing an American artform.

Sure, I’m more than willing to recognize that I have a severe degree of bitterness in this regard. For years and years I’ve wanted nothing more than a gigantic “Aloha” monkey tattooed on my torso (if you don’t know what it is, look it up). Squeezle has pretty much forbidden me from getting this, but it has been our little back and forth for the last decade. Now, sadly, it’s a cliche. I still want the little guy, but getting it now would be akin to getting the McDonalds arches put on me and declared subversive art. For that I am pissed. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before Mark Ryden and Simone Legno (tokidoki for those not in the know) works become as prevalent, but I can, at the very least, still enjoy these gentlemen as pre-co-opted artists.

Above all, I want you, gentle reader, to know that this drivel is my personal opinion. Blogs are like assholes, everyone knows someone who has a stinky one. Sure, my bidet is on the fritz these days, but I still keep ordering the red curry and hoping for the best.

I honestly hope Ms. Dennis makes a good go at her “Subkulture” effort. I don’t imagine I’ll know any of the artists or clients of the joint, and I expect it to do as well as any of the trendy “boutiques” in Uptown, but I hope she learns a lot out of the exercise. Normally I’d throw in a nasty remark here about the potential for a Kat Von D guest spot at Subkulture, but I think that’s just a little too soon for Dallas’ fragile psyche.

Just a parting thought, though, what’s the over/under for the “buy the shirt, get the same tattoo for 75% off” sale at Subkulture?

There is a special place in my heart for the relationship between the microwave oven and the potato. Such an innocuous combination was responsible for the beginning of an amazing friendship and the formation of the Forkers.

With that in mind, I approached the melding of microwaves and starchy tuber after reading Savory Sweet Life’s article on “How To Make Potato Chips In The Microwave” for a new approach on things to make with potatoes in a magnetron environment.

Unlike most endeavors I undertake, I actually wanted to follow the instructions on this one. The last thing I needed to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon was to have to explain to squeezle why and how I’d managed to blow up the kitchen and set the microwave on fire. I realize most modern microwaves are smarter than I am, but I’ve been very wary of them since the incident I had with the microwave that was in our house when we first bought it that operated just fine with the door open. It took one good burn on my hand to figure out that I probably wasn’t smart enough to operate that particular machine.

We’ve since replaced that oven (a couple times, I think), and our current microwave presented me with a few “challenges” when approached from the chip-makers perspective.

First and foremost, the instructions say to turn off the rotation in your oven if it does that. Since mine rotates and doesn’t have the ability to disable the rotation, I pulled out the gigantic glass tray and elevated it using some prep bowls to inhibit the rotations. From there I was able to follow the instructions: putting down parchment paper, covering the paper in thinly sliced potatoes (thank you scary mandolin cutter), spraying the mess with cooking spray and applying a sprinkle of sea salt.

Now came the scary part. I was about 50/50 convinced that the microwave was going to implode when run for five minutes with not much other than a quarter of a potato and a sheet of paper in it. To my surprise, it did not. What it also did not do, however, was crisp up those chips. I had to add an additional two and a half minutes to the time in order to get crispy chips with the stationary setup. It was vitally important to monitor the chips after the first three minutes because they all pretty much cooked at different rates.

For the second run (you honestly don’t get that many chips down in a standard-sized microwave), squeezle suggested I yoink out the elevator bowls and let the stupid oven rotate. This worked infinitely better than the stationary chips. After about three minutes, chips were crisping up and my speed to delivery (aka, squeezle’s belly) was way faster.

One potato about the size of a pint glass generated four and a half runs through the microwave and a pretty normal serving size to go with sammiches that squeezle made for dinner. We were about to embark on a second potato, but figured the oven could use a bit of a rest since the glass tray was close to lava hot and the kitchen reeked of potato steam.

That being said, I found it a bit too easy to make these chips. They were a snap to make and remarkably tasty. Usually when I set out on a “project” such as this, I make a huge mess and usually end up hurting myself or causing some sort of trouble that I, then, have to resolve.

None of that was true with this. Even with my liberal applications of cooking spray (a potential for me seriously injuring myself in a plethora of ways), nothing bad happened. I didn’t start any fires, I didn’t cut myself on the razor-sharp mandolin, and I didn’t leave the kitchen looking like the Swedish Chef had done a guest spot.

I guess there is always next time.

I spend an inordinate amount of time sitting in front of a computer. I realized last night while going through my typical Facebook/blogs/forums routine that, even when I’m not at work, I spend a crapload of time sitting in front of my monitors.

Ultimately, I’m all about getting my daily dose of rads while I rot my brains chuckling at lolcats and maybe even popping out a line or hundred of code. What I’ve never thought about, or even had to think about is how much I’m moving around while I’m “moving about” onscreen.

That sounds weird doesn’t it? Well, let me set up why this concept suddenly became my biggest daily issue.

In my office at work my area used to be a gigantic open section of floor. At some point very flimsy walls were hung from the ceiling and doors were hung on some of the holes in these walls to form rudimentary offices. One of those caves is my office. What didn’t change, however, is the lighting. The lighting setup for the gigantic open area was left as-is for the current setup of five offices, one conference room and a whole crapload of cubicles. What this means for me is that the single switch that controls the lights for my office, and all the areas in-between, is about fifteen yards away from where I sit and around all of the cubicles.

That really never bothered me. I’m at work, the lights are on, it’s time to get crackin’ on what needs to be done. Sure there have been a couple days of severe hangover that made me wish I could turn out the lights and just curl up, but it really hasn’t been an issue.

Last Thursday night, however, everything changed. Apparently a crack team of commando electricians spent their Thursday night rewiring my little area with motion-detecting sensors for all of the lights. Now my office can be dark while the rest of the floor is lit up.

All in all that’s very responsible of them. Mythbusters has proven that it’s more economical to turn out those nasty fluorescent lights rather than leave them on all the time, so I’m a believer in the off switch. What I’m hating, however, is the fact that the damn motion detecting sensor is a low-bid piece of shit.

Three times, yes one, two, three freakin’ times the lights have gone out while I have been writing this piece.

If you’ve been around me for any given amount of time then you know that I’m not really one to stand still well. I’m a fidgeter and it’s genetic. I almost always have one or both of my legs bouncing like crazy whether I’m sitting or standing. When I’m working and my brain is pretty much just wired to my fingers, it gets even worse. Here I am, wriggling like a puppy and the damn lights are still going out.

The ultimate beauty of this change, however, is the fact that noone is stepping up and taking responsibility for it. I’ve talked to three different “people of authority” and each and every one of them has pointed me in a different direction: all wrong. Times like this remind me how laughable bureaucracy really is. Something major happened yet nobody knows who did it or even authorized it.

This afternoon, I am going to stop bitching about the lights that keep going out on me. The way I look at it, lights on means business and productivity and lights out mean nap time. When I crawl back into my hole after lunch and the lights go out on me, I will take that as a sign from the mysterious “Powers That Be” who authorized the installation of our wonderful new lights as a signal to take a nap. I guess they really do care about employee engagement around here.

I’m not sure if a recent head injury (reference my zombie hammer posting below) managed to rattle loose the plaque clogging up my artistic side, but I’ve been scribbling on just about everything for the past week or so.

I have one gigantic stumbling block when it comes to artistry, however: I can’t draw a straight line to save my life. Sure, everything looks just peachy in my head, but transition to paper is a Herculean effort of “over-the-mountains-and-through-the-woods” between my brain and hand. To make matters worse, the frustration of the effort makes my lines even shakier than they normally would be.

If, by some chance, I do indeed manage to get out a decent representation of what I was attempting (typically on the piles and piles of random scrap paper I keep in my office), I am often hard-pressed to duplicate whatever effort I just made look acceptable.

Even more scary is that the current things I’ve been doodling out look like stuff that Martin Ontiveros has done whilst having a seizure during an earthquake.

By no means do I let any of this distract me from putting ink and graphite on paper: it’s just adjusted my approach a little. I spend much more time experimenting with lines I normally draw straight and seeing if I can duplicate the opposite side of a curve. It’s frustrating as all hell since I’ve been spending the better part of the last decade popping out computer generated graphics like crazy. Photoshop and Illustrator are much more forgiving that good ol’ pen and paper.

I’ve got no problem with computer graphics, and still rely on using the computer for almost 90% of ideas I’d like to move forward into any semblance of a physical manifestation of my creativity, but there is just something fundamentally different between printed images from the screen and something that was plotted out and drawn on a given surface.

Recently I’ve begun playing around with customizing the paint schemes on designer toys (my beloved RealxHead mini fortune cats in particular). The challenges of working with a two and a half inch tall piece of vinyl really turn into a matter of scale. I’ve got grand plans that need to be executed very small, so I’ve turned to working with stencils and my newly acquired airbrush setup. On the screen everything seems just perfect, but trying to cut out wee tiny stencils after printing is just about one of the most annoying things I’ve ever done.

I realize that the more I practice, the easier this will all go and the better I’ll eventually get. It’s a painfully slow process, but I’m willing to stick it out (for now).

Something to consider each and every day is your level of preparedness when the zombie apocalypse comes.

This may sound farcical, but being ready to not be overcome by flesh-eating masses of the undead will pretty much make you ready for anything. To this end, I spend more than my fair share of time thinking about how best to defend myself if set upon by shamblers, runners or both.

Several weeks ago a friend and I came up with what could be one of the best zombie survial tools to date; a device we simply call the “zombie hammer”.

The construction of the zombie hammer is quite simple. Cast a pretty decent sized sledge hammer in titanium with a slightly over-sized head that is hollow. Fill the hollow head with mercury and you are all set to swing for the bleachers.

When considering a zombie weapon it is important to think about upkeep and portability. Guns will run out of ammo, and swords/knives will probably lose their edge (ever de-bone a chicken?), but hammers and/or maces seem pretty solid. Putting a spike on one end may provide for some more damage, but if you get stuck while a horde is on you, a spike could be a problem.

Let’s talk about the power behind the zombie hammer: a head half-full of mercury.

When I was a kid my brother and I had one of those over-sized plastic baseball bats that we used to smack all manner of objects around our backyard.  Quite by accident we discovered that filling the bat a bit with water allowed us to smack the crap we were swinging at a lot farther. The weight to power ratio was pretty damn amazing.

I was further able to test the power of the zombie hammer this past Friday when I managed to smack myself in the eye giving myself a slight concussion. The offending object? A half-filled Camelbak water bottle.

That’s right, I conked the crap out of my face and managed to give myself a black eye in the name of science! I can say, from firsthand experience, that the zombie hammer is quite effective against human flesh. Please don’t try this testing at home, I’m a pseudo-professional.

My embarrassment of concussing myself while standing in my bedroom were only compounded by the fact that America’s Funniest Videos was on the television. Oh the humanity.

As many of you know, April Fool’s Day also coincides with my birthday. I’m sure many of you who weren’t previously “in the know” are now smacking your heads and thinking “that explains so much.”

That’s right, every time Mr. T utters “I pity the fool” he’s talking about me.

The life of a fool is relatively simple. People don’t expect much out of us, so we traipse through this world unawares of the dangers that await us at every turn: a.k.a. life.

Generally I avoid overt April Fool’s pranks since everyone expects them from me. It’s a lot funnier to have people wait in suspense for a punchline that never comes than to cave into expectations and actually do something stupid that people can say “I expected that from you” for.  Some of my best pranks come in the “off season,” well away from my accepted day of glory.

In fact, the last really good April Fool’s prank I pulled was way back when I was a kid and taped down the sprayer handle on the kitchen sink; soaking my mother when she came in to wash something off.

That is, until this year.

The most important thing to remember when pulling off an epic prank is that everyone expects it on April first. The key is to lay down the groundwork several days, if not a week, in advance. On top of that, an epic prank is subtle in its nature rather than right up in your face. If executed correctly, the epic prank could stay in place for weeks or even months before discovered.

The poster to the right is my prank of the decade. (click to see a bigger version).

Around my office we have a fair number of multi-function printing devices. They print, they scan, they even copy and collate all of your documents in a zippy-quick fashion. They are part of everyone’s mundanity yet just a little mysterious. That is what makes them ripe for the pranking.

I’d like to say that my prank was an original idea, but I stole the basis of it from a picture I saw on the internets of a similar sign put on an HP printer/copier. It’s always good to give credit where credit is due.

The pieces I needed to put my prank into action were simply a copy of photoshop, a list of model numbers for the MFP’s we use around here, a SHARP logo and a small illustration of the said device. The rest is creative genius.

The important thing to remember is that most people in an office are conditioned to respond to “official” looking documents. By putting a notice at the top of the poster demanding that the poster get posted and putting something mystical like a QRcode, a document number and, most importantly, a revision date on it, I effectively made this poster a missive from the copier gods. By using clever shapes and multiple colors, I lure the observer into thinking that important people took hours and hours to make sure this document was as clear and concise as possible so the observer would understand the cryptic instructions as easily as possible.

All that’s left to do is print up a couple of these and post them near the devices.

I typically get into work at least 30 minutes before most everyone, so wandering around to the various printer/copy stations with a pile of papers and a roll of tape was a breeze. Quite actually, having these signs show up when you aren’t around actually lends to the official-ness of it.

The ultimate kicker is that I actually signed this “document” in two places. See if you can find them.

This one is for Markoff Chaney.

This next week marks my achievement of making yet another complete rotation around the sun on this ferro-nickel rock ball we call home. Coinciding with my annual trek, I have recently become painfully aware of the limits of my quickly dilapidating frame.

Two factors contribute to my current tales of woe. First, in a matter of freak genetics, the males of my immediate family have unusually long torsos. This, sadly, gives us no advantages other than the ability to see over short people and the propensity for lower back issues. Second, I am horribly accident prone. Combine my bad back with my ability to injure myself in even the most safe environments and you have the perfect recipe for my current run with organized sports.

In an attempt to justify the amount of beer I drink each week, I started playing soccer (again) several years ago. When the league started up most of the teams were like-minded and saw the matches as a way to justify going to the bar afterwards. As the players started getting that false sense of pride and hope that comes with scoring goals and winning games, the league got a lot more competitive. By the time our team fell by the wayside (D-Burn/Brewsers R.I.P.!), we had managed to very successfully fill the coffers of many a medical specialist in the DFW area. I, myself, had managed to jack up both knees, tweak my back horribly, break an uncountable number of toes and even break my own rib in a fall worthy of a Warner Bros. cartoon. Did I mention I was accident prone?

In the aftermath of soccer (not dead, just on hiatus), I mistakenly thought it would be a good idea to partake in a 3-on-3 basketball season/tournament with some fellows at work. The season started roughly a month ago and I managed to get a good eight minutes in before I was crushed backwards (oddly enough by an HR specialist) and sent to the floor with my back spasming. Thus ends my current basketball career. That’s right LeBron, you’re off the hook. Three weeks later and I still have to be very wary of my horrible slouching posture lest I not be able to walk out of my office. Boy howdy that’s fun.

So that leaves me with more pedestrian methods of keeping my shattered corpse in good enough shape to keep upright for the time being. I’ll keep doing individual activities where the chance of me being folded, spindled or mutilated are slim (though I probably will find a way). My next hope at damaging myself falls this summer when work has been toying with a badminton tourney. Yes, I am, in the first time since college, going to find a way to injure myself playing a game made popular by British aristocracy whilst subjugating India. Kudos to me.

In the meantime, does anyone know of a good herbal muscle relaxer? My prescription of Flexeril is running out.