I hate you, Snow.

I hate snow. There, I've said it. Yes, it's pretty. And if I have nowhere to go and nothing to do (which describes my life on 0% of days) then fine. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. But since I have a life and a job and children and responsibilities then the arrival of snow means going out in the snow, which means cold and mess and slippery and slow and annoying. I drive a Prius, because I'm a Socialist Liberal Commie (and cheap) and it handles about as well in the snow as if someone gave me a sailboat and stuck it on I-15 for me to drive to work. So I feel like I am literally taking my life into my own hands every time I head to work. 

And I don't like that as soon as it snows I'm supposed to drop everything and run and go shovel my walk. And them shovel it again 4 hours later because it is STILL SNOWING!! Yesterday I refused to shovel, because I'm lazy, and so now I'm the trashy neighbor with the unshoveled driveway. And worse still my lovely neighbor actually shoveled my sidewalk for me and so now I'm the trashy and guilty-feeling neighbor. 

"Why don't you move to somewhere where there isn't snow," you say. Believe me, I've tried. I lived in Pasadena and Portland but Utah kept sucking me back in. In Portland when it snows, which it did one winter when we were there EVERYTHING in the city shuts down and all the news channels go to 24 hour coverage of the snow. No school, no grocery stores, no shopping. Nothing but sitting at home eating organic hemp seed bars, knitting beanies from local yak wool and praying for death. 

If you live in a snowy place, my prayers are with you. May you be blessed with no obligations and no reason to leave the house. And if you do have to leave the house, would you mind running a snow shovel over my driveway? I still haven't touched it. 

I hate Running...and 'ers.

Oh, you all know the type: once you were good friends, and you hung out a lot together at places with the words 'Hut' or 'O'Ramma' in the title and then something changed and they became distant and aloof. And then, after a time, they started looking at you with sort of a mix of pity and superior understanding....well, you guessed it, your friend is now a runner.

Yes, yes, it happens all the time, "Something just had to change," they say, "We're not 21 any more and I can't eat the way I used to." Well who cares, I say?! I'M still 21 and as long as I can have my Tums/Alka Seltzer cocktail I can eat whatever the beans I want...only not beans. And who asked you!?

Anyway, I'm sick of it.  Too many good friends have gone to the dark side...some of whom post on this blog. It's true, some of these guys, whose posts you skim every other day of the week, are runners. I won't name names, I am a professional, but you may have noticed that Josh gave away 'Earbuds' and not 'Milk Duds' on his giveaway.

So what to do about it?!  That is the question. I hate to complain with out a solution. Well, I have a scheme. I have to say I'm pretty excited about it.  It's cunning and devious in all the best ways. How can I possibly take those runners down from where I sit? I can't. They are much to quick. And so, in an effort to slap those smug self satisfied smiles straight off their faces, I'm getting off the couch.  I will run.  I will prove that the body's natural state is plump, stationary, and in flip flops.  I will dispel the myth that runners love the most, "Yeah, it was hard at first, but now my body craves it and I just can't get anything done until I've got my run in." HOGWASH!  Your body craves chunky peanut butter on a spoon, shoved into a half pound bag of milk chocolate chocolate chips! It does not crave running! Je deteste! And there is no other way to prove it than for me to run till blood spews from my eye sockets and I collapse, mangled and dead, from their lies.

Here is the plan.  I will run every day.  I have too, I can't leave room for their running lawyers to say I didn't do it right.  I will run every day.  I've already had push back from the few runners I've enlightened,  though I would expect nothing less, OF COURSE they would tell me not to do it, OF COURSE they would tell me that going from a primarily sedimentary life style to a wildly rigorous one would be a bad idea, and I say, "THAT'S MY POINT!" if you body needs that much coaxing to do something, then don't make it do it!

So, I will run every day.  But for how long...?Okay, so today is the first of April, so I'll run everyday for a year...no, wait, seven years....no, then I will just be a runner and I MUST NOT let that happen...oh yes, my stupid sister-in-law (she's not that stupid, she just graduated from some east coast university, but I'm enjoying the venom of my righteousness) my STUPID sister in law said it takes one month for the body to really enjoy running...again, I'm sure I could get my body to enjoy being eaten by a crocodile if I gave it a month!

I will run every day for a month.  Perfect. But what about soreness? No doubt my rereading this post will fire me up with vengeance enough to run a thousand millennia, but when my legs are sore then I'm just useless. For reals, once I made my wife carry me up a flight of five stairs three days after a most exhausting walk up a trail in the mountains, you can read all about that calamity here.  Alright, so I will run everyday for a month, but just enough not to get sore.  I'm not going for quality here, I am going for the bare minimum here, just so I can check their check list (notice they don't actually have such a check list) and prove they are crazy zelots who lure unwitting fatties into their sugar free Kool-Aid drinking cult!  (I've never been on this side of a 'Cult' conversation, it's nice) A CULT!! Supported by running shoe corporations and jock strap manufactures... woah, do you think I need a jock strap? I've never had one...NO! BARE MINIMUM! That's my motto and that's what you can put on my tomb stone, that and 'It was the lies of runners that put him here! I hope you're happy.'

Alright, what time is it...8:41?! Good Heavens! Well, I can't run tonight, it's getting dark...or is it?!  That's what those runners would have me think!  I bet they are responsible for this daylight savings crap! I WILL RUN EVERY DAY!  I will run so you don't have too. Stay put my comrades, I will be the Trojan Horse they never see coming!  My only fear is that Men's Health doesn't pull a Tonya Harding on my, now, late night run.  Well, hope they can catch me! Of course they can catch me...I'm gonna have to wear all dark clothing and keep to the shadows.

Stay strong for me gentle readers! I will maintain a journal and keep you abreast of all the horrors which will undoubtedly follow.

I'm gonna have to shave my head.

And if you don't support this in anyway, then keep quiet.  We know you are a runner and just trying to quell the truth. If you have any pro running comments you can shove them here on Josh's, 'Thoughts on Running' post...though I've never read it myself. Who knows what kind of propaganda he's pitching over there?

Good news!  I may not have a Jock Strap but I did dig out my old dance belt... hang on...it sorta FITS! OKAY!! I'M OFF! START THE COUNT DOWN! ONE DAY DOWN!

I HATE egg NOG!

This letter is in response to my colleague's disgusting post yesterday.   

KEN!

Pull yourself together, of all the delicious things you can stuff in your face at Christmas time, you are going to waste waist space with the glue secreted from overripe boiled eggs?!  I know we are all on the same team here at Part Time Authors, but this is where I draw the line. I mean, you can have your intensive Shark posts and your Vinyl Apostasy posts and I have to support you, but this mug of puss you dashed with cinnamon that you have me looking at first thing this morning has ruined my day...and my life. 

WHO EVEN INVENTED EGG NOG?!

Wikipedia: The origins, etymology, and the ingredients used to make the original eggnog drink are debated. Eggnog may have originated in East Anglia, England; or it may have simply developed from posset, a medieval European beverage made with hot milk.^[1] The "nog" part of its name may stem from the word noggin, a Middle English term for a small, carved wooden mug used to serve alcohol.^[1]

Don't mind the  numbers in the brackets; they mean nothing here.

Blah, well who cares?!  Every year I see people I know swilling this glop...Wait, no, I don't even have to make up gross words because the people who invented it only could come up with the word 'NOG' to describe it. Is there anything else in the whole wide world called a 'NOG'?!

Wikipedia:

• Nog (novel), a novel by Rudolph Wurlitzer
• NOG mouse, a variety of mice used in medical research
• Nogales International Airport (Mexico)
• N-Oxalylglycine, an organic compound
• Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira, a Brazilian mixed martial artist
• Noggin the Nog, a popular British children's television series
• Nog (Star Trek), fictional character, a young Ferengi in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Oh whatever!  SO there are lots of NOG's... big effing deal.  It still doesn't change the fact that every year I see grown people, with no forcible provocation, under their own decision and control, fill some dumb novelty mug with this flobbergoxing drag and dump it into their own gob with some glee fetched smile all the while knowing they just swallowed toxic funk, whose only reason for existing is to be so potent and putrid that it masks the soiled stinging taste of Rum.  And somehow the baby Jesus got saddled with it.

Well, enjoy your holiday.  While you're at it why not have a nice cup o' fecal juice to wash the taste out of your mouth! At least your father had the sense to verbally set you straight on the matter; however, he was far too soft on you. Were I your father, I would echo Shakespeare when he was talking about the Nog of an Egg:

'How tender 'tis to love the babe that Noggs me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.' *

Take that Wikipedia! What do you have to say for yourself now?!

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work,^[1][2] but the notion remains problematic with nebulous boundaries.^[3][4][5][6] The modern concept of plagiarism as immoral and originality as an ideal emerged in Europe only in the 18th century, particularly with the Romantic movement, while in the previous centuries authors and artists were encouraged to "copy the masters as closely as possible" and avoid "unnecessary invention."^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]}

*Don't ask me why your father breast fed you as a baby and why he had eggnog spilling from those breasts...it's Shakespeare, and therefore proves my point.