I'm not lazy.

I mean, I am, but it's lazy in your favor. For example, if given a choice between updating Funundrum and writing a 20 page LASIK and ophthalmology website, there'd be new crap up on here all the time.

I am sorry to say that the reason for lack of recent updates is that, simply put, nothing is happening to me. This weekend we might drive up into the mountains to see the aspens changing color, but until then... not a whole lot going on. I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's for the first time last night. That was pretty entertaining. I was looking on Google's image search for a good picture to throw in here, and decided on this one because how could you not enjoy saying "Frühstück" repeatedly?

Actually, this poster brings up a special linguistic theory of mine. In the northern midwest, specifically Illinois, Michigan, and probably Wisconsin, people tend to use the word "by" when talking about going to a place. For example, "Youse kids want to go by the hardware store? Go get a jacket with big pockets, I'll tell you what we do. We'll go in there and you can fill up them pockets with peanuts." That's a typical straight quote from my grandpa, and dead-on Chicago.

Anyway, going "by" someplace is the way they do it out there. One can go by the store or be by the store, so the word tends to mean both "to" and "at." I always wondered if that was due to the influence of German immigrants figuring that the German "bei" was identical in pronunciation and similar enough in meaning to the English "by," "to," and "at" that it just kind of stuck around. Discuss.

Fall is here!

I know I posted that a couple weeks ago, but the trees are really starting to turn color now and we FINALLY have snow again on our beautiful Backyard Rockies. Without snow on them, they were really bringing down property values. I was about to call the homeowners' association to have them look into it.

I got some photos -- the first one is from about a week ago, the second from this morning. We'll be out and about today -- I'll try to take some more pictures to remind all you Coasties what the seasons look like.

As promised -- Batman's For Sale sign

I told you it was ghetto.

You'd think the Dark Knight would be able to pull together something a little more classy, or at least have the good sense to choose something 1) not handwritten (poorly), 2) without balloons on, and 3) waterproof. Here's what I'm envisioning:

All bow before my mad MS Paint skills. You know, I've got Photoshop, but I can't be bothered to learn how to use it. I mean, I'd like to, but who's got the time? Plus, Paint-generated pictures are so much funnier.

Hubert's in, too!

Hubert's got a blog too, apparently. It's like the snarky writers have all risen up, en masse, to add fun, forest, and fantasy to my list of links. Check out Bonbon Confetti Artillery, I'm sure it will be good times.

Why I am the way I am

I just saw a news story out of Jackson, Mississippi, in which parents are angered at a PTA letter that went out at the beginning of the school year. Seems it was a plea for parents to get involved with the good ol' PT of A, and there were several options to choose from. I'm guessing they ranged from "Irritatingly chirpy in-your-face cupcake provider" to "Overzealous curriculum questioner hiding in the shadows," but the news story was about the last option on the list:

"No, I do not want to get involved. I want my children to be thieves, drug addicts, and prostitutes."

This got the more whiny parents upset, so they complained to the principal and started a whole hoohah. Clearly these people have no sense of humor. I told you that story so I could tell you this story:

When I was in first grade, back in the mid-80s, there was a big push at the time to increase children's self esteem -- I'm not sure what brought on the need for such a program, but the teachers and PTA went all-out. We spent a lot of time learning how to give each other compliments, which is fairly fruitless for kids who still believe in cooties. To illustrate the goodwill that gets passed along with a compliment, we were each given a small puffball of yarn called a "warm fuzzy," which we would hand to the person being complimented.

Sounds like a great idea on paper, but now you've got 35 six-year-olds who are hyper because there's something different than the normal lesson happening, and you've given each of them a projectile.

Anyway, I thought the whole thing was rather lame and a waste of time, which it was. Well, Open House night rolled around, and my parents were there because it's the right thing to do and because they are my biggest fans. Dad got stuck talking to some Irritatingly Chirpy Self Esteem Providing PTA Mom about the whole self esteem program, and I guess my dad had enough. He delivered what became one of the all time great Rhein family lines:

"My daughter doesn't need any of that. She's too ugly and stupid to have any self esteem."

And as the ICSEPPTA Mom gawped noislessly like an affronted fish, he excused himself and walked away. And now you know where I get my sense of humor.

Highlands Ranch Fashion Week

No, it's not as glamorous as the one in New York, Milan, or Paris, and ours consists of only a single dog, but we have one similarity to all the big players in the fashion world -- can you guess what it is?

That's right! You can see our model's ribs, too! Awesome! Anyway, one of the greyhound people was nice enough to make Maggie a coat for the cooler days ahead. We'll still need something sturdier for the really deep days of winter, but I figured I'd have her model them as they came in.

The lady who made the coat picked out this fabric -- it's got little sequined butterflies on it. Maggie is such a princess.


It even comes with a little snood thingy to keep her neck warm -- if the wind's blowing, I can pull it up over her ears.


Chris and I have decided she could be Gitmo Dog for Halloween. Tim points out that her outfit would need to be orange, and he's right, but whatever. For those of you who are saying "How sad to put things over your dog's head like that!" right now, obviously you have never owned a dog. Exhibit B:

Who would do this?

I know different people find happiness in different ways, but I've never heard of this one before. Often, between Friday and Saturday, we'll get two or three different newspapers thrown in our driveway -- a local paper, the Denver Post, and who knows what else. Now, we don't subscribe to any of these, but they come anyway.

I can't speak for anyone else, but our Fridays and Saturdays are spent in one of two ways -- we're out doing stuff, or we're home doing nothing. Either way, we're not out in our driveway picking up papers. As a result, these two or three newspapers sit on our driveway for up to 36 hours or so.

They don't make it much longer than that, because for some reason, they move themselves to our front stoop. Clearly someone is picking them up, week after week, and putting them in front of our front door. I'm guessing they're irritated that we don't pick them up within instants of their arrival, and they're trying to give us a hint via the ol' clue-by-four.

I wonder how long they'll keep doing it? I like to pretend it's little elves, a la the ones who helped out the Shoemaker.

Jesse and the Fat Man

For the year I lived in San Diego, I managed to make some pretty awesome friends at the company I worked for. This is mostly because we were all creative writer types who always had something interesting to say, and an interesting way to say it. It's a good life, being a creative writer type, as long as you don't look in your wallet too hard.

At any rate, two of these fine folks were Jesse, a writer at my company, and Lee, a friend of his who worked as a chef aboard the USS Midway museum/ship thingy. Now, you may have deducted from the title of this post that Lee is called the Fat Man. He's not fat. It's just what he's called, and it's hilarious, so go with it.

These two fine folks are currently on a mad trip from Scotland to Jordan, and Jesse's doing up a blog for it, Pomo Boho Hobo. I know that I've now set it up quite a lot, and if it's crap, you'll all blame me for wasting your time. But it probably won't be. For example, they've already seen David Hasselhoff.

Ahoy, ye scurvy lubbers!

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! It be September 19, International Talk Like A Pirate Day, a day for all land lubbers who gaze wistfully out to the sea to embrace their inner saucy wench or sea dog. If ye've no heard of TLAP Day before, I'm givin' ye fair warning. Ye best be talking to me like a pirate today, lest I be throwing you off the poop deck with the other bilge rats what refuse to have a good time. No fear have ye of evil curses, says you? Ah. Properly warned ye be, says I.

If ye be meaning to participate with your own particular brand of salty pirattitude, I be doffing my elegantly feather-trimmed cap to ye. If, however, ye no be sure of your pirate lingo, here's a few tasty tidbits to help you find your inner AAARRRR, as supplied by me mates at the TLAP website:

Ahoy! - "Hello!"
Avast! - Stop and give attention. It can be used in a sense of surprise, "Whoa! Get a load of that!" which today makes it more of a "Check it out" or "No way!" or "Get off!"
Aye! - "Why yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did."
Aye aye! - "I'll get right on that sir, as soon as my break is over."
Arrr! - This one is often confused with arrrgh, which is of course the sound you make when you sit on a belaying pin. "Arrr!" can mean, variously, "yes," "I agree," "I'm happy," "I'm enjoying this beer," "My team is going to win it all," "I saw that television show, it sucked!" and "That was a clever remark you or I just made." And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of Arrr!

When in doubt, use your best gravelly voice, address everyone as a scurvy sea dog, saucy wench, or jim lad, and draw out all yer vowels, which in the case o' pirating, be A, E, I, O, U, and always, always R.

I am alive.

But just barely. Okay, the really bad days were Thursday and Friday, and I've been mostly convalesced since then. Over the weekend, we played host to an old greyhound named Frank. Now, Frank is a little shy, and the sweetest thing in the whole world besides maybe Maggie, but he is stinky. Until they come out with, like, Web 10.0 I will be unable to accurately convey exactly how stinky this dog is. His coat, while oily and a little dandruffy (he's an old man, I will cut him some slack here), isn't really even the source of the problem.

It's his mouth.

Now, greyhounds tend to have bad teeth as a rule. They're the Brits of the dog world. Frank's teeth are a total mess -- he's had to have some of them pulled, and the resulting dental lineup causes his tongue to loll amusingly to the side when he's excited. But his breath... dear god. Were it not for his panting and jingly tags, I would still be able to tell when he came up behind me. His breath is like a spectre of stank, both heralding his arrival and marking his passage through a room long after he's passed through.

Frank and his breath are not unlike one of the more disgusting recurring characters in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, Foul Ol' Ron, whose stench is so strong that it has become an entity unto itself and sometimes behaves as such.*

I will see if I can update this shortly with a picture of Frank -- my camera is currently broken and Chris has his in the car. I may draw cartoon smelly lines coming up from his mouth to indicate the stink. So overall, we had a good weekend, but it's been impossible to get Maggie to understand that Frank doesn't want to play all the time, and that just because he gets tastier food, that doesn't mean she can have it.

Anyway, I'm all better and even starting to *gasp* get a handle on work. Frank goes home tomorrow morning. Funundrum shall continue anon.

Gaze into the very maw of horror itself!

*Craig -- a thousand times, thank you for Discworld. It's so good.

Mmmm. Ribs.

I just got done doing my morning browse of my favorite celebrity gossip sites. Now, for those of you not familiar with this bizarre habit of mine, I don't do it because I think famous people are awesome. I do it because these particular gossip sites go out of their way to point out how ridiculous, shallow, and retarded most celebrities are. It's good fun.

Anyway, I just caught this picture of Kate Bosworth, and had to share it. I guess she was in the most recent Superman movie (which really could have used a giant spider or some polar bears) and some other stuff. The reason I'm posting this picture is that I feel it's a public service to let my readers know that Kate Bosworth is, in fact, an alien who's been sent along as a scout by the mothership. You should stay away from her lest she ram her ovipositor down your throat.

I suppose it's possible that she's not an alien so much as a young and talented actress who's bought into the sad anorexic standard of today's Hollywood. But I vote alien.

I have helpfully enlarged the important part of the picture so you can get a better look at her exoskeleton.

Urg.

Blogging may be light for the next few days, even more light than it already has been for the last few. It's 2am and within the span of six hours I've gone from "Huh, my throat's a little sore" to full on "I can't hear, swallow, or speak." So I've just taken the NyQuil Green Death Flavor in hopes that it will bring sleep.

Actually, continued NyQuil usage may ensure some excellent blog posts, so keep a weather eye out.

PS -- Batman moved. He's selling the house himself, so maybe tomorrow I'll see if I can nip across the street to get a picture of the horrifically tacky "For Sale" sign.

Why don't insecure women try this?

Something just occurred to me. You know how it's common practice for women to either prevaricate or flat out lie about their age? Yes, I know it's rather stupid, as age is simply a number that indicates how long one has been standing around stinking up the environment. But anyway, they do it.

I got to thinking about it, and women have been doing it all wrong. Take your average insecure 40 year old woman. She probably tries to get away with telling people she's 30. Chances are, people will either 1) not believe her, or 2) think she's a pretty tore-up looking 30-year-old.

Here's my solution. If you really can't bear to have people know what your actual age is, start adding 10 years. That same 40-year-old now looks pretty good, right? Damn, she's 50? Nice legs! Or whatever.

Anyway, that's my little contribution today to help other people feel better about themselves. The other option, I guess, would to just tell people exactly how old you are, content in the knowledge that you've jam-packed each one of those years with awesome stuff. Your choice.

Funundrum recommends

Today, Funundrum would like to recommend the Breakfast King restaurant, located on Santa Fe Blvd. in Denver. It's been there for ages, and has a brilliant menu for both breakfast and lunch (and, technically, dinner). We've driven past this place a number of times, but our hankering for a good breakfast burrito sent us over there with a purpose this morning.

For those of you not from Southern California, here's what goes into a proper breakfast burrito:

• scrambled eggs
• potato chunks (or hash browns, but this can go wrong fast)
• bacon, sausage, or chorizo
• cheese (preferably the Mexican white variety, but a jack and cheddar mix will do)
• hot sauce

All of this is wrapped up in a flour tortilla that was cooked in lard and made en mass in East LA and distributed to all the mom and pop breakfast/burger joints across the land.

Unfortunately, a proper breakfast burrito is nearly impossible to find outside of Southern California, mostly due to an inadequate concentration of Mexicans. I've decided to find this lack of burritoness charming -- it means that my hometown has its own unique foodstuff, a la a Philly cheesesteak, a NYC street vendor hot dog, or a koala-and-croc-meat kebab consumed in front of the Sydney Opera House/Harbour Bridge Tourist Center and Photo Opportunity.

While not perfect by any means, the Breakfast King comes close enough. Denver's unique foodstuff happens to be green chili, which deserves its own post but let's just say it's tasty when it's good, not so tasty when it's bad, and comes as an option on top of just about any dish served here. The Breakfast King breakfast burrito is no exception. It's got eggs (check), potatoes (check), ham, bacon, and sausage (pork trifecta of goodness -- check), and it's all wrapped up in a flour tortilla that was made with lard somewhere in East Denver (I guess).

Then they cover it in cheese and green chili. [sound of a record scratching to a halt] WTF PEOPLE? Why can't you put the cheese on the inside, like normal burrito folks, and what is up with the green chili on every damn thing? Well, we got our waitress, Alice, to put the cheese inside and the chili on the side, and it turned out okay. The green chili was actually the best I've had, and the Breakfast King proudly serves no fewer than four (4) hot sauces: red Tabasco, green Tabasco, Cholula, and Tapatio.

When the Mexican man in the cowboy hat and his family walked through the door, it almost felt like home.

Slacker Jack

I don't know where this picture came from, else I'd credit it properly, but it's what Nathan sent me when he felt that I hadn't been productive enough on Funundrum. Super awesome.

Funundrum recommends

Today, Funundrum would like to recommend an excellently written, massively funny blog called Wide Lawns. It chronicles the comings and goings of the denizens of a big country club in Florida. It's written from the perspective of a lowly employee whose two chief responsibilities are keeping track of the bar codes on cars used to open the front gates and dealing with the ridiculously crazy crap that over-entitled rich people throw at her all day.

I started reading it yesterday from the beginning, and lost an hour and a half before I got my wits about me. Maybe it's especially funny for me, since I lived in Florida and I had to deal with the over-entitled rich people at CubanCo Cruises, but I think most folks will get a kick out of it. Especially those of you still working for CubanCo Cruises.

Bad Copy of the Day Award

"In the past, cosmetic surgeons used harsh chemical peels to remove the signs of aging and sum damage. Now we have the advanced CO2 and Erbium lasers in our armamentarium."

Armamentarium (n): [arm-uh-men-TER-ee-um]:
1. A weapons store containing ballistae and bolts, onagri and slingshot, caches of gladii and pilae and other items of weaponry.
2. The collection of equipment and methods used in the practice of medicine.
3. A word that immediately signifies to me that this copy was written by a doctor who hasn't pulled his head out of his ass since medical school and who probably uses ridiculous words like this with his bewildered patients on a daily basis.

PS -- "Have we mentioned that we have not one, but TWO kinds of lasers?"
Also -- No, "sum damage" is not a typo on my part.

I'd title this post "Crikey!" but it's been done.

As are all of us, I am shocked and saddened at the sudden passing of Steve Irwin. Well. Not shocked, per se, as the man made a living by irritating wild animals. And as for saddened, well, I don't know. He made a living by irritating wild animals. But I'm sure he had a good heart.

At any rate, I was driving home today from the trainer (Key emotion during this time: Ow.) and listening to the afternoon radio monkey. She began the "shocked and saddened" spiel, but had to restart several times due to her coworker repeatedly making noises on a harmonica. God, I hate radio monkeys.

Her heartfelt tribute went a little something like this:

"Isn't it amazing? Were you just, like amazed when you woke up and heard that Steve Irwin had died? Doesn't it seem, like, impossible that he would die from an animal attack? Because, I mean, here's this man, who spends his whole life so close to... he does all these amazing things with dangerous animals, he does all these dangerous and, like risque things...."

Risque. Really? I never saw that episode of Croc Hunter. Perhaps she's referring to the South Park spoof, wherein Steve spends the entire episode threatening to "jam [his] thumb up [the] butthole" of whatever animal he's currently conquering. I seem to remember that this included Cartman.

Risque. Please get the hell off the radio, you stupid radio monkey.

Helpful Hint from Funundrum: If you'd ever like to end an argument really quickly, put on your best over-the-top Aussie accent (check out Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins for a hint) and shout, "Ah'm gaunna jam me thumb up yehr butthole!" Works a charm.