Stuff, Things

I had a dream last night that I was riding in the casual carpool (a really good system we have here in Gomorrah-by-the-Bay which allows the drivers to save on toll money and skip the ugly toll plaza traffic, and the riders to avoid riding on the grungy odor-trap known as BART), but my dad was driving. I was in the back, and Carlos Beltran was in the front passenger seat, in his full Mets uniform and batting helmet. We must've made a wrong turn somewhere, because I didn't recognize where we were. I kept offering suggestions to my dad to get us back on track, but they were apparently all wrong, because pretty soon I realized we were on a narrow dirt road in the mountains.

I was really embarrassed, so I started making conversation with Carlos, like, "So, congratulations on the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards--that must be exciting..." but he was giving short answers and was obviously annoyed that we were lost in the wilderness when all he was trying to do was get to work. Then I somehow said, "so I guess this means you're the best first baseman in the league..." and he snapped, "First base?!" (since of course he's a center fielder, which I knew, but I was nervous and misspoke, so get off my back, OK?). Anyway, we continued to get more and more lost, but eventually I woke up. For all I know we're still there, and have had to eat Carlos to survive.

Meanwhile, here are some bits I've written in the past weeks which you should check out if you are the sort of person who enjoys things which are funny:

• Jude Is Never Having to Say You're Sorry: According to Jude Law, the only thing we have to regret is regret itself.


• Cracked Science Corner!!!!11!!: Three morsels of sciencey goodness, each of vital importance to you and your increasingly bleak prospects for a future as a non-dead person.


• And He Saw That They Were Good: Salma Hayek sez "Thank God for My Breasts!"


• Beatleohead, R.I.P.: Thom Yorke tells Paul McCartney to go suck a walrus.

...oh, and a Happy Turkey Day to all!

Wait 'Til Next #$%@!

As my significant other said, "Well, now you can focus your attention on other things. Like what to buy me for Christmas."

Well put.

Down the Rabbit Hole

I had to doublecheck, but this isn't a fake story like the one about the lion-fighting midgets. (Thanks to C. Monks for the tip.) We really are kicking ass, though--kicking the ass of our worldwide reputation. Consider its ass kicked to the curb in a right royal fashion. It's laying there on the curb with a big ol' footprint on its ass, weepin' and blubberin' and beggin' for its mama.

But you don't come here to be lectured about things you already know. No, you come here to read entertaining stories of how I'm slowly losing my mind, such as the following exchange, wherein I described to C-Baby how I helped my injured father get ready for a dinner party:

ME: So since his arm was in a cast, I had to help him get dressed--there was a lot of struggling with the... zip... up... thing.

HER: You mean the zipper?

There were some other funny ones, but guess what? I've forgotten them.

FOR YOUR FURTHER ENJOYMENT AND WULADIFICATION: Here's a story I wrote about Paris Hilton's desire to populate the Earth in today's Cleaver.

Each Culture Celebrates My Birthday in its Own Way

[Pic via Yahoo.]

Junkin' and Cleavin' and Offspringin' (and Wuladdin')

Did you like how I announced the resurrection of WULAD and then proceeded to disappear for a month? I thought you would. It was my way of separating the true fans from those who only visit the site because of my star turn on 3-2-1 Contact. You know who you are.

What actually happened was that Junkiness began winding down, as we've been unable to find and keep our target audience--or more accurately, we found our target audience, but it just happened to be celebrity crotch-shot masturbators with no discernible sense of humor. So we were somewhat busy scraping together last-ditch efforts to go out with an offensive bang.

Nothing's finalized as of yet, and the site is still technically active (I wrote a moving tribute to the impending Spice Girls reunion just yesterday), but as that project was winding down, another has wound up--as of a few weeks ago, I've joined the staff of Offsprung, a blog "for parents who don't suck," which was founded by the talented writers Neal Pollack, a.k.a. "Alternadad" (who I've been "appreciating" for years) and Matt Tobey, who's been one of my cohorts at Junkiness and is an excellent lay.

"What's this?" you say, "a parenting blog? But you yourself are no paterfamilias, silly WULAD!" And you'd be right. But as I pointed out to readers there, I have had parents, and was once a child.

[Which reminds me of a story: C-Baby and I were talking about Bruce Springsteen for some reason, and she asked, "Don't you remember how he was such a big thing in the early 80s, and was on the cover of 'Newsweek' and stuff?" and I replied, "No, I didn't read 'Newsweek.' I was a child."]

Anyway, Matt and I and Katie Spence write for an Offsprung sub-blog called The Cleaver (named for Ward, I believe), which has a similar tone to Junkiness, but with a focus on parenting and family-related stories. It doesn't sound like it'd be funny, but believe me, it is. So whether you have some little buggers of your own, or just enjoy decent writing and extreme close-ups of Christina Aguilera's uterus, come on by.

Meanwhile, I have every intention of continuing the process of rebuilding the WULAD empire, one post at a time. (Did I mention I'm not really a writer? God bless crystal meth!)

WULAD's Konsumer Korner

Well, I had a busy holiday weekend, spent memorializing our nation's honored dead in most American way possible--shopping. The first stop was Circuit City, where I showed how last-century I am by attempting to purchase a stereo. (For those of you under the age of 100, a "stereo" is a primitive machine which only plays audio sounds, and probably entertained your grandparents after a hard day's dinosaur hunt.)

The first thing I discovered upon arriving at the store was that Circuit City makes all their money off ginormous $3000 televisions now. The "home audio" section was dark and deserted, and filled with dusty "open box" specials, none of which were connected to anything. After ten minutes or so, I managed to abduct an employee in between TV sales. He showed me a few cobweb-covered receivers before demonstrating his awesome knowledge with this tidbit:

Salesman: Now I know the Sony says "100 Watts" and the Onkyo says "100 Watts" too, but what you really gotta pay attention to is the RMS. That's what makes the difference.

Me: Okay, and what is RMS?

Salesman: [pauses] I don't know.

He also showed me a home theater system which he suggested might work well for audio only--and it was actually plugged in, and with speakers connected! Unfortunately it was tuned to a non-existent radio station, and when I asked how to change it, he said, "Yeah, you need the remote for that." And where was the remote? He didn't know. (The RMS really kicked ass on that dead air, though.)

Eventually I gave up, and C-Baby graciously agreed to go with me to another store branch. The second store actually was much better--the salesman tried to be helpful, and I settled on a receiver and some speakers. In fact, the experience was perfect, right up to the moment when I opened the box at home to find one single speaker inside.

When I called Circuit City, a helpful employee informed me that "those speakers are sold as singles." As you can imagine, I was so thrilled to receive this information that I nearly shat my pants with gratitude.

The second adventure involved the assembly of a giant behemoth of a bookshelf from a certain Nordic mass-produced discount furniture emporium which is better at making meatballs than furniture. Everything was going fine, until I reached the diagram at right--looks easy, doesn't it? What the picture fails to illustrate is that the shelf on the left doesn't exactly fit, and each time you attempt to guide the little pegs into the little holes, five or six pegs on the other shelves pop out, and your heart rate rises exponentially as you increase your effort, both in force and profanity, causing more pegs to pop out, until the entire structure collapses into a giant plywood pile of hubris, with yourself pinned underneath, a quivering, bloody, broken man. The instruction manual actually includes an accurate representation of this process:



Thankfully C-Baby stepped in at the last minute to prevent me from murdering the shelf, and with equal parts blood, sweat, tears, and chipped beech veneer, we were eventually able to complete the mission. The moral of the story is: don't buy things!

The WULAD Is Dead! Long Live the WULAD!

Hello there! Anyone still listening?

I didn't think so. That's OK, if there's one thing I've learned in my days away from this site, trying to hit the blog Big Time, it's that traffic isn't everything, and I'll take quality of at least semi-literate readers over quantity of mouth-breathers looking for nude photos of Gary Coleman any day. Although I suppose some of you could be both.

As you can see, WULAD lives again. (And with a spiffy new design, no less.)

"Wherefore do thou so?" you ask me, "and we mean 'wherefore' in its correct usage, meaning 'why,' not 'where' like idiotic high-schoolers always use it when they're reading Romeo & Juliet and checking out Olivia Hussey's teenaged rack." Well, I'll tell you. As I lay in bed last night, tossing and turning with the strains of Lionel Richie's "Sail On" looping continuously in my skull, a voice suddenly called to me from The Other Side. It was Jerry Falwell, and he drawled: "Bring back WULAD, you loser... people liked it, and most of them got the jokes... by the way, I was wrong about everything: it turns out God is a little old Vietnamese lady who smells like shoes... also, you have to pee really bad... really bad... really baaaaad..." And I awoke with a start.

Another reason to plug the old reanimation cables on to the mummified nipples of WULAD and give it some juice: although I still enjoy contributing to Junkiness on a daily basis--that's the site where I join a select group of craftspeople in looking for laughs both cheap and pricey at the expense of the rich, the powerful, and half-naked crackheads who are attacked by alligators--there are just some things I've been aching to write about that don't quite fit their format.

So I encourage you to swing by your newly-rejuvenated WULAD a few times a week (or better yet, subscribe to our RSS feed) for scathing satirical tidbits, terrifying floating heads, and slice-of-life vingettes such as the following conversation, in which I demonstrate what a maven of pop culture I truly am:

Me: We can eat wherever. I'm not trying to get up in your grill.
Her: Don't say that, please.
Me: What, "Up in your grill"? Yeah, I guess it's pretty uncool now that it's in the new Shaq movie.
Her: That's Shrek, not Shaq.

Coming up next: a new installment in the ever-expanding tome of The Bible II.

From Our House to Yours...

Friday Existentialism at Casa WULAD

So as I woke up this morning, I could hear the morning newspeople gabbing about the recently deceased James Kim, and how he was only a few miles from a lodge that could've saved his life but he took a wrong turn, and it's possible he only died a few hours before they found him, and so on, listing all the little ways that bad luck conspired to have this story end in tragedy: "And if he'd only turned here instead of here..." Duh, James Kim! seemed to be the gist, whether they were intending it or not.

(There was even the required misuse of the word "ironic," which reporters are so fond of—"It's ironic that Kim was probably no further than a mile away when his family was rescued" or something—no, you idiots, it would be ironic if the rescue helicopter had landed on him and killed him. Anyway...)

Like everybody else in the Bay Area, I had been sucked into the family's story, probably because their pictures were so damn cute, and because I had gone from thinking "Boy, it's sad that they're probably not going to make it," to "Boy, that's amazing they made it," to "Boy, that's sad he's probably not going to make it." I remember having an especially unpleasant feeling when I saw friends of the family toasting the Mom and kids' rescue with champagne, since the odds were already pretty bad for Mr. Kim at that point.

Anyway the newscasters went on to something else, and as C-baby got ready to leave and I got ready to get out of bed, I said, "This is just another example of how God is an asshole," and she replied, "God isn't an asshole. You know why?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Because He doesn't exist," she said.

I love that chick.

Tom and Katie and Me

This exciting news reminded me of an experience I had last week in the casual carpool. For those of you who are non-Bay-Area-ers, it's a series of carpool pick-up and drop-off points--one of which is a couple of blocks from my house and therefore saves me some time vs. the expensive stinkiness of BART--and saves the driver the $3 bridge toll.

The downside is that riders are at the mercy of the driver's choice in listening material, driving ability and/or judgment, and bodily odors. The worst I've had to deal with so far have been centered on lousy talk radio or "lite rock"--For example, I realized this week that the Bette Midler song "From a Distance" could be used effectively during "coercive interrogations" in Guantanamo Bay, although it would most likely violate the Geneva Conventions (and common human decency).

However, last week I met my carpool match in a guy--let's call him "Jim"--who was easily the most unfocused spaz to whom I've ever had the misfortune to entrust my life. This... fellow... was on the phone the entire half hour of the commute--and not one long phone call, mind you, but many short calls, each dialed painstakingly with one hand on his cellphone (no hands-free set for this daredevil) while furiously changing lanes, swerving, and cutting people off, to no noticeable advantage in traffic speed, as women's folk music blared on the stereo. Here are a few of the snippets we passengers were treated to:

"Hi, it's Jim. Can you doublecheck the reservations for Pebble Beach? I wanted to make it to the spa but I'm not sure I'll be able to make it back from the studio in time, maybe we have an in-house waiting list? Also, confirm the guest list for..."

"Hi, it's Jim again. Can you be sure we have a screening room reserved for Tuesday, and also make sure to book us a lunch reservation, and can you..."

"Hi, it's Jim. I'm going to see the doctor later today--those acupuncturists were awful. No, I'm taking him the MRI myself--I don't trust those people..."

"Hi, it's Jim... Oh, that's Mary Chapin-Carpenter. Is it too loud? No? Good. Well, anyway..."

... And so on. Then, as we're nearing the exit from the bridge (and my merciful separation from this nutjob), he picks up the phone for one last call:

"Hi Tom, it's Katie. I'm so sorry you completely misunderstood my intentions last night. I was standing there in my bathrobe, I mean, what was I supposed to do?"

Anyway, based on all the clues this guy shamelessly dropped ("Have him email me at JimXxxx@xxxx.com"), I was able to find him on the internet when I got to work. He's some kind of lawyer, he likes spas and hates acupuncturists and he and his boyfriend call each other "Tom and Katie." At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, I wish I could have other people's privacy back.

I Went to a Portuguese Bullfight and All I Got Was This Lousy Picture of Jerry Springer*

*Also I got a T-shirt.

First of all, congratulations to everyone who ventured a guess as to the identity of the mysterious styrofoam whatzit (MSW) pictured in the previous entry. They were all very well-constructed responses, and I would have said any one of them could be correct, if I didn't already know that the object in question was Stephen Hawking's superintelligent function-graphing toilet seat cover.

On to new business. This past Saturday, C-Baby and I headed into the Central Valley for the finale of the thankfully little-known Portuguese "bloodless" bullfighting season. (I place "bloodless" in quotes because there is often bleeding, but not by the bull. In fact, unlike Spanish bullfighting, which seems sadistic to me, Portuguese bullfighting is in practice a mainly masochistic event. For a slideshow of one of last year's fights with explanatory commentary, click here.)

We were able to see a pretty decent variety of thrills and spills--including a particularly pesky bull which tossed two matadors within a minute, one of whom came back to finish strong after crashing to the dirt in a position the human body should never be in--along with the pickled beans, dolled-up ranchers' wives in heels, plethora of glow-in-the-dark virgin statues and other touches which contribute to the dusty appeal of the event.

However, unlike every other bullfight we've attended in the past, a gradual crescendo of murmurs in Portuguese and English hinted at something big taking place at the end of the event--and lo and behold, after the sixth and final bull headed out of the ring after his day in court, a chant which had been bubbling below the surface finally broke into a full roar: "Jer-ry!Jer-" and so on.



Anyway, the gist of the thing was that Springer--who you may have heard of from his stint as mayor of Cincinnati--was going to be performing the Paso Doble on that wonderful masses-opiate Dancing With the Stars, and needed to shoot some scenes to pump up his bullfighting cred.

According to the show's website, "the Paso Doble ... should create a Spanish Bull Fighting atmosphere. The Paso Doble is the dance for the Man, which allows him to fill the 'Space' with strong three-dimensional shapes and movements danced with 'Pride and Dignity.'" In this case, Springer demonstrated this "pride and dignity" by strolling triumphantly into the ring (where only minutes before teams of Portuguese-Americans had risked life and gonad jumping on giant enraged animals) while children were prodded to throw roses at his feet, twice. (In his defense, Jerry conceded that "they wanted me to shoot something here to make it look like I know something about bullfighting.")

The website continues: "The woman's role varies depending on the intepretation of the dance... [she] can take the role of the matador's cape, the bull or even the matador at different times within the dance." This was demonstrated by the painted blonde hussy who serves as Jerry's dance partner holding her index fingers to her head and tromping around like a bull. It wasn't nearly as charming as it sounds, which is not very charming. In fact, it was even less charming than that.

The high point [spoiler alert, for those losers who watch the show] was when the producers convinced Springer that they were about to release a bull, sending him cowering for the exit--only to send out a tiny calf (generating a chorus of "awwww"s), which seemed terrified of the blonde hussy, who kept prodding the poor creature in an attempt to get it to "charge." We took that mildly-entertaining moment as our cue to split, which was probably best because I'm sure they recreated the hilarious surprise multiple times to get the right shot.

Anyway, I hope they don't make a huge deal out of it on the show, because then everybody will find out about the bullfights and they'll become really popular and then be outlawed after Pam Anderson chains herself to the bullring and is accidentally gored by an escaped bull, popping her left implant.

Just remember: I was into watching bullfights before it was cool.

WULAD's Konsumer Korner

After a decade or so spent living in noisy metropolitan areas, often surrounded by discourteous neighbors, roommates, prostitutes, and roommates who are also prostitutes, I have become a connoisseur of ear plug technology. So I greet every new addition to the field with interest, and look forward to the happy moment when I can wedge their spongy goodness into my hungry ear canals.

However, last weekend I came across a perplexing new product from the already-well-respected-by-me Hearos® brand, which I just had to share with you:

My friends, I'm talking about ear plugs... for women.

Why, you might ask, do women need their own brand of ear plugs? I asked myself the same question, but luckily, the fine folks at Hearos® have addressed this query in the FAQ section of their exquisitely feminine website:

Why should I consider the Sleep Pretty in Pink products?

The Sleep Pretty in Pink products were introduced because there was a void in the marketplace for a high quality, branded line of ear products... for women. Whether you have a need for noise reduction (sleeping, snoring solution, traveling), hearing protection (concerts), or blocking light (sleeping) the Sleep Pretty in Pink line has a high quality product that can work for women AND children.

Psst... Hearos: they work for men, too, bitches!

That's right——the author of your very own WULAD is secure enough in his masculinity to test ear plugs which purport to be strong enough for a man, but... anyway, I've prepared my own take on the Frequently Asked Questions, which will give you the information you've been dying for ever since you read about this fifteen seconds ago. Let's begin!

How do Sleep Pretty in Pink brand women's ear filters differ from ear plugs for manly men?

They're pink.

That's it? Really?

Really. No little flowers or inspirational sayings or suggestions for spicing up your marital bed whatsoever.

Did Sleep Pretty in Pink brand women's ear filters block sound as effectively as those made for manly men?

Yes. Once I put those beautiful pink babies in, I could barely make out the screams coming from my basement.

Did this experience provide you with witty ideas for further women-only personal care products?

I'm already looking into patenting women's dental floss (it'll be pink), women's Drano (pink and lavender-scented), a woman's calculator (pink, and all operations result in "Don't worry your pretty little head about it"), and a women's dictionary (pink, and doesn't include the words "science" or "promotion"). Also tampons for men.

Are you serious with that chauvinist crap? I thought you were a bleeding-heart liberal and all that.

That was mock-chauvinism. Lighten up, and try some Sleep Pretty in Pink brand women's ear filters so you can get your beauty rest, Sugartits.

Did you really buy these because you were curious about how well they worked, or is this a prelude to "testing" women's shoes, support hose, underwear, and/or feminine hygiene products?

I'm busy. Go away.

Quiero Round Egg

This morning, to celebrate my significant other's final day at her job before moving on to greener pastures, we stopped at McDonald's for breakfast. (She is a big fan of the Egg McMuffin, so we occasionally stop there as a treat. Neither of us likes any of their non-breakfast food.) Usually I do the when-in-Rome thing and get an Egg McMuffin also—and I enjoy them, don't get me wrong, although I find them to be a pale imitation of the rockin' breakfast sandwiches I used to get in New York (like the many bacon, egg & cheese bagels I downed here). —But today I decided to buck the system, and try to recreate the glory of breakfast sandwiches past.

McDonald's does in fact have a Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bagel——and although the bagel is puffy and doughy and the bacon is flat, it's not a bad sandwich altogether if, like me, you're 3000 miles from the nearest competent breakfast-sandwich-maker. However, for whatever reason, they took the best part of the Egg McMuffin—the over-hard fried egg——and replaced it with a lame folded sheet of pre-scrambled eggish product. I have no idea why they would do this, other than to "mix it up."



What if, I wondered, you combined the correct non-egg ingredients of the Bacon Egg & Cheese Bagel with the perfectly prepared egg of the Egg McMuffin? Could I create a little taste of New York, albeit a slightly rubbery and pre-fab one?

So while understanding that McDonald's is not the sort of place where you can expect to "have it your way," I thought it was worth at least asking whether this Frankenbreakfast was possible. I approached the subject delicately with our "team member."

"I want a Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bagel, but——"

"One Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bagel," she barked.

"But wait," I added carefully, "you know how the Egg McMuffin uses a different egg? Can I get that kind of egg? Not like the folded scrambled one that's on the bagel."

"You want a scrambled egg?' she asked.

"No, no," I quickly said, "like the Egg McMuffin."

She turned to the line, and said, "Bacon Egg & Cheese bagel... quiere round egg."

It was just that easy. And it was delicious.

Three Short Lists Which May or May Not Be Better Than Nothing

Reasons Art Garfunkel Should Have Been Selected as the New Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq

• Could’ve used expertise in breakdancing to add much-needed hip-hop appeal to cause
  
  
• He and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi went way back, although it’s true Art was a little miffed when Bin Laden got picked over him as best man at the wedding--I mean, it’s not like Art pulled Zarqawi’s lifeless body out of a frozen pond and carried him to safety when he was eight--oh yeah, come to think of it, he did, that ungrateful son of a bitch
  
  
• Implicated in schoolyard incident by co-conspirator Julio
  
  
• When Iran beat the U.S. in soccer, he celebrated by planting an improvised explosive device in Paul Simon’s guitar case
  
  
• Recently changed name to Artu al-Qarfunqel
  
  
• Advocated stoning of Mrs. Robinson for her whorish western dress
  
  
• Has successfully hidden from U.S. since 1970
  
  
• Like a bridge over troubled water, he will blow you up

(More career options for Mr. Garfunkel here.)


Actual Reactions from Residents of Kansas City when Told I Live in Oakland, California

• “Oh, you’re from Oakland? We hate Oakland! The traffic was horrible, and once when I took my nephews to San Francisco we were in Chinatown, and we ended up in one of those alleys where white people aren’t supposed to go, you know what I mean? And the kids disappeared, and I finally found them in one of those porn stores!”
  
  
• “Oakland?! That hellhole!”

Best Phrase Randomly Noticed while Flipping Through The New Yorker

• "Gestapo Santa Claus"

The Vast Right-Wing Cab-spriracy
I was listening to Rush Limbaugh yesterday morning—wait, you say, what's that about the runaway bride? No, I actually was, because my taxi driver was either a Republican or was Repub-curious or maybe spoke no English and just liked the sound of Limbaugh's mellifluous voice. Who knows.

In earlier days I might've been really annoyed by this and asked him to turn the radio off (in New York, for example, riders are entitled to silence—it's right there on the little taxi customer's bill of rights—but I wasn't sure if my lovely Gomorrah-by-the-Bay had a similar rule for me to invoke), but living in the relatively protected left-wing enclave of San Francisco has given me enough comfort that the mere sight of a right-wing bumper sticker no longer fills me with immediate nausea.

At my office, for example, a coworker recently confessed that she didn't actually know any Republicans, but just heard about them on TV. I suspect she's wrong, but the fact that she could even consider it must be difficult to imagine for anyone living in that thin sliver of America east of the Bay Bridge and west of the Lincoln Tunnel that I keep hearing about.

In any case, Mr. Formerly Fat But Now Thin but Not in a Way that Looks Healthy and Sometime Football Announcer but Later Disgraced Drug Addict but Now Rehabilitated and You’d Be an Addict Too if It Happened to You and So On—anyway, Rush was railing against Bill Clinton's new anti-obesity program, really skewering it. His gist was that the government doesn't trust you to raise your kids, so Bill Clinton and his jack-booted thugs are going to storm into your house and steal your Pringles at gunpoint, with Elián Gonzalez's aunt wailing in the background.

As I listened to Rush saying all this—especially the Monica jokes—my instant reaction was to feel sorry for him. I mean, his guys won, they've been running the country for five years, and pretty much doing whatever they want. But Rush is still partying like it's 1996, hounding Bill Clinton—when last I checked, a suburban retiree recovering from multiple heart surgeries—and I just felt pity that his vast '90s empire of vitriol had been reduced to picking away at the bleached bones of Clinton's political career (until he runs for mayor of New York, I suppose).

Of course, this was a small sample size, and it’s possible that today he started speaking truth to power about things like the Sudan genocide or North Korea's nuke party or the Abu Ghraib trials or the fact that a member of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently said that based on current climate models, he "wouldn't be shocked to find out that by 2100 most things were destroyed."

But I guess it warms my heart to think that in forty years he could still be dogging Clinton at his deathbed, and I'll put on my Hootie cassingles, swim out my front door, and sigh, "I love the '90s."

On an Unrelated Note
Today was a banner day for internet searches. Here’s a few:

• dispelling horniness
  
  
• snobby fables
  
  
• Michelle Kwan's great ass
  
  
• is Britney Spears bald
  
  
• pictures of Nomar Garciaparra scratching his balls

A Day in the Life of WULAD
Some of our loyal readers no doubt spend hours wondering, “What is the man behind WULAD really like? What makes him tick? What does he do all day? Can he loan me fifty bucks?”

Well, thanks to today’s post, you will learn the answers to all those questions, and some you wish you’d never given me reason to think you were asking. So, without further justification, we present this insiders-only, backstage look at the Man Behind the Douche, and if anybody reads the whole thing, I’ll eat my phonebook.

7:04 A.M. Clock radio goes off. Instead of hitting the snooze button, I inadvertently, or more likely advertently, hit the “off” button, probably because I was practicing until 2 A.M. last night. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to spend 40 hours a week doing what I love and have trained and studied for, rather than being forced to squeeze it into the paltry scraps of undigested time the “day job” spits on to the floor beneath the table of my weekly schedule? What’s that? Your hearts bleed for me? They should, jerks.

9:08 A.M. Rise and shine, take 2. This means a phone call to the boss and a ten-buck cab ride. In the interval, however, I did have a strange dream about some famous person. I can’t remember. This stuff makes for good reading, right? Right. Should I do this more often? I should? Aw, you’re too kind.

9:38 A.M. Since I’m late anyway, I decide to stop for a bagel at a neighborhood deli which prides itself as being the most authentic “East Coast”-style delicatessen in San Fran. While that’s true—they do have such disgusting-looking but Lower East Side-friendly fare as chubbs, gefilte fish, and shmaltz herring—they still haven’t figured out the New York breakfast sandwich (bacon or sausage, egg & cheese on a bagel, seen here in its natural habitat).

However, I notice that something sounding suspiciously similar has been added to the ‘specials’ menu this morning. After making sure that the egg is fried, and not microwaved into fluffy oblivion as is the usual method here, I order one. The verdict: pretty good. The sausage is weird, though, and really needs to be a patty rather than links.

9:49 A.M. I notice the cab driver is listening to Bill O’Reilly. I think for a second about asking him to turn the radio off, then decide it’s only a ten-minute ride. While I don’t like O’Reilly because he’s usually repugnant, dishonest, and generally obnoxious, this morning he happens to be castigating the people who are running the ads from veterans claiming Kerry lied, betrayed his country, etc., and for once I agree with him. Who knew?

10:36 A.M. Checking referrer stats for the website. More of the usual internet searches—“Joe Rogan shirtless,” “Hilton crotch,” “laura bush naked nude free laura bush naked” and so forth.

Interestingly, I discover that WULAD is currently #2 for “Darya Folsom” (the frothy yenta of a local morning news personality whose fate has, through strange and ineffable twists and turns, become inextricably intertwined with my own). Somewhat more surprisingly, we’re also #5 for “transsexual prostitutes 14” on Google Netherlands.

1:13 P.M. Turkey bologna is just not all it’s cracked up to be.

1:18 P.M. After perusing some of the more hipsterishly self-referential sites on somebody else’s sidebar, I think of a clever new site subheader, “Blog Will Eat Itself.” But since there is nothing new under the sun, I do a quick check to make sure I’m the first one with this brilliant idea. I’m not.

2:25 P.M. Since I feel it’s important to participate in the greater global community, I try to make time to participate in discussions on other sites. Here’s an example of a comment I left which, I feel, really elevated the level of discourse. (Scroll down.)

3:13 P.M. By the way, I’ve been working all this time—but you knew that, right? I’m always working. I never work on WULAD or read other people’s vanity sites at work. Because I’m just that dedicated to my job. You knew that, right? Right?

3:28 P.M. Some of the important things C-baby has sent my way to examine—not while I’m working, incidentally, which is all the time (see above):

• Note that this rabbit has “a darling inquisitive personality and loves to explore.”
  
• Nice pad, but why did Mr. Mojo here have to mention man-thongs? Man-thongs!
  
• British people love Dennis Leary, right? If he got this job, does it mean he might get beheaded? Please?

3:44 P.M. Have you ever listened closely to the synthesizer parts towards the end of Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now...”? They’re right strange. If I was real tech-savvy and/or didn’t have a job I’d put up an mp3 so you could hear it, but you’re just going to have to dig one up yourself. Leave me alone!

4:22 P.M. C-Baby alerts me to this spread of the Mayor of our lovely Sodom-by-the-Bay and his pool-hustler wife: “is it just me, or does this smack of Bennifer-ishness?”

4:38 P.M. I just had an idea that will save me and my coworkers scads—I tell you, scads—of time and inconvenience. How about an award? A raise, maybe? No? Nothing? Some donuts tomorrow? A polite nod? Hey, here’s a funny joke: someday I’m going to blow you motherf#ckers all to Hell! Ha, I crack myself up.*

*This really is a joke. Actually it’s a subtle joke masquerading as a crass joke. The bottom line is I did not, nor would I threaten the lives of anyone, except the president.**

**That was a joke, too.

5:18 P.M. You suckers wanna hear some serious lyric writing?

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what's right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that I've become

Papa Hemingway, is that you? Poetry, pure and simple.

6:15 P.M. C-Baby has discovered that the Japanese term for gang bang is “team harem.” She’s more of a cultural ambassador than she generally gets credit for.

6:25 P.M. I’m blowing this Fudgesicle® stand; we’re going to see Jonathan Richman tonight at the Makeout Room. Now, it should not be inferred from this that I’m one of those people who “go to cool clubs” to “see hip bands” or can “carry on a conversation.” This is a one-time thing.

Well, our chronicle ends here; what happens in Las WULAD stays in Las WULAD. But we hope you’ve enjoyed, or at least finished, this exclusive glance into the world of blah blah and no one’s reading anymore. Cheers!

Obama bama bobama, banama fama fofama, fee fi momama... Obama!
I had to confess, while talking to C-baby last night about the Democratic Party’s new rising star, that I was guilty of some prejudicial mental imagery about Barack Obama over the past months. Before seeing his speech—which was as refreshing and inspiring as everybody is saying—I had a lazy picture in my head of Mr. Obama as, well, somewhat... Afro-centric.

To clarify: I guess I assumed, without giving the matter much thought, that he had been born as Joe Smith or something—possibly because his name reminded me of good poet/lousy ambassador to the Jewish community Amiri Baraka, whose name used to be Leroi Jones (Get it? Barack/Baraka?)—and Obama had changed his name in college to get in touch with his African roots. (That’s small ‘r’ roots. Not the TV show.)

This is of course a dumb assumption, as was proven by listening to his speech, during which he discussed his recent Kenyan ancestry, and even poked fun at himself as the former “skinny kid with the funny name.”

“Wait,” asked C-baby, “did you think he was going to come out in a daishiki, with his fist in the air, saying ‘Black power!’?” I had to admit that sounded pretty ridiculous. “And then,” she continued, “he was going to take your luggage out to the car?”

This last statement was a reference to the most recent episode of being a dumb white dude I had reported to her (there are probably other episodes I keep to myself): We were staying at a hotel in midtown Manhattan, and were waiting to get our suitcases from the bellhop so we could head to the airport. We had been told to wait for him by the front desk. After a few minutes, the elevator doors opened in front of us, and I saw a black guy in a suit step out, and immediately thought, ‘here he is!’

Of course, he wasn’t the bellhop. He was just a guy in a suit who happened to be black, presumably a guest of the hotel and most likely in a position to buy or sell my stupid cracker ass.

So, in summation, even smartass urban-dwelling liberals like me are vulnerable to snap racist judgments and stupid assumptions. Well, duh, C-baby might say. Oh, and I like Barack Obama. A lot.

A Link for the Road
Via Patho/Poly, an article about Bush’s handlers’ repeated plagiarizing of student papers from the internet for his speeches—in this case using a student-fabricated quote. Well, if it’s good enough for the youth of America, it’s good enough for the leader of the free world. The article also contains my favorite quote of the day...

At least, like Cuba's prostitutes, Kerry likes to stay clean.

Do you suppose it's too late to get that into his speech tonight?

Democracy in Action
As part of a new series entitled “E-mails I’ve Received From Famous People, As If Anybody Cared,” I’d like to share with you, the reader, an intriguing correspondence I had with the Senior Senator from this sprawling state, one Dianne Feinstein.

This was back in the winter of 2002, and—concerned citizen that I am—I was peeved about some action or inaction on the part of President Action Figure and his Collectible Playset. So I dutifully fired off an e-mail to Her Royal Fein-ness requesting that she support the Clean Air Act or oppose the war in Whatever-istan or vote against a judicial nominee or give McCain a wedgie, or some other such idealistic crusade.

Lo and behold, not a day later my face lit up as I spied a fat, juicy reply message in my inbox—no doubt the Senator agreed with me completely, and wanted to hear more from me; perhaps she even wanted to hire me as a speechwriter or illegal housekeeper!

My pulse raced as I rushed to open and read the e-mail…



In the esteemed public servant’s defense, I got a more fleshed-out reply about a week later; but the simplicity of her message in the e-mail above, I believe, speaks to the issue more than any three-paragraph form letter filled with policy statements ever could.

Jingle Bells, Batman Smells, WULAD Laid an Egg
Meanwhile, elsewhere about the internet, M. Smartypants does some web-footed word-weaving today on the subject of platypuses (or -pi). WULAD Wregulars may be aware that Ornithorhynchus anatinus is my favorite animal not living in my apartment; however, there is more to the story.

What even fewer initiates know is that, when your proto-WULAD lad was a sprightly 11 years old, he was the president and founder of the Platypus Lovers’ Committee (PLC, no longer listed on NASDAQ), an organization which at one time had as many as ten members (all officials and sub-officials of the Committee, of course), but now has only one—my dad. I know this because his membership card still barely clings to life in the deep recesses of his wallet, and makes an appearance on special occasions.

Am I proud that I devoted so much of my pre-adolescence to the appreciation of egg-laying mammals, at the expense of activities like learning to catch or to interact effectively with my peers? Absolutely.

Was it worth the beatings? Ask my quote-tennis instructor-unquote.

An Army of Two
Well, it wasn’t easy—due to the overwhelming response—but WULAD’s esteemed panel of judges has selected the two winners for our prestigious Wrapped Up Like a German Cannibal Joke contest. In second (also last) place, we have a delicate yet powerful evocation in verse of the greater relevance that a solitary German cannibal can have to the brotherhood of man and the human condition. From Ryan:

Internet to the rescue
Lonely only child
He ain't lunch, he’s my brother

…with an auspicious start like this, we can no doubt expect great things in the future from the pen of this Bard of the Bay. Also he has an amazing collection of porn.

But now, it's the moment you’ve all, or at least both, been waiting for, when we reveal the champion of the first biennial WULAD Jerman Joke Jamboree: none other than Richard, who demonstrated his poetic prowess and mastery of the form with this mighty trilogy of epic limericks:

There once was a cannibal named Armin
whom news reports spoke of as charming
He sat down with Mr. B
and cut off his pee-pee
Would you say that his smile was dis-arm-ing?

Armin was on trial for killing
his actions were gruesome and chilling
but cannabalism aside
it couldn't be denied
in this case the victim seemed willing

So the Cannibal's on trial—whatever;
the thing that'll impress me forever
is two people meeting
for long-term or just eating
Ain't it great how the internet brings folks together?

Bravo, Herr Kontestmeister. For the rest of my handful of readers, who are content to sit on life’s sidelines and watch clashing titans like Ryan and Richard tackle the real challenges, I will make no effort to evoke remorse; I can only say that if you saw the dazzling prizes that are currently en route to the two wordsmiths above, you’d crap yourselves with jealousy. And speaking of amazing lists of two, it’s time for…

The Two Most Creative Lines That Strange Men Tried to Use on C-Baby This Weekend, vol. xmcvi
Not content to use old chestnuts such as "Hey, Little Mama," our two award-winners broke new ground by offering the following gems while C-Baby was en route to a show by her Secret Boyfriend:

Second Prize (a week in San Tropez with Leon Redbone and the cast of the hit TV show “A Very Busey Christmas”) goes to the guy who said: “I know this sounds crazy, but I lost my car. Do you want to help me find it?” Strangely, she declined, but that should be no reflection on the quality of the invitation.

And the coveted Grand Prize (a tuxedo made entirely out of scraps of “intimate” laundry that I stole from Paris Hilton’s room at the Four Seasons while she was handing out campaign leaflets for Matt Gonzalez) goes to the brilliant man who asked, “Excuse me, would you like a small woman’s coat?” (This contestant later fell back on the hackneyed "Are you a dancer?" but his opener is nonetheless staggering.)

That’s all the contests for today. Feeling left out because you didn’t win anything? You can fill that emptiness in your soul by pledging to the PHCSF—where everybody wins, and the holiday cheer and Valium egg nog is always flowing.

Lady on the 27 Bus, 9 a.m.

Yeah, I been tired
Everyday I gotta go all the way out there to get my dose,
or they throw you back in jail
Been tryin’ to get off the stuff
but they don’t want me to
you know, they want to keep getting that Medi-CAL money

You should come to my place, there’s an open bed
since my friend got sent up for two stabbings
There was some mofo comin’ after her
so we got a coupla big knives, like machetes
and went down to Market Street—she’s Mexican,
and you know how those Mexicans are with the knives—
I told her she shoulda got rid of that yellow knife

They got two whatyoucallem
witnesses for the defense, though
but she’s the sweetest, give you the shirt off her back,
she don’t weigh but 90 lbs.

She’s a whatyoucallem, not a transvestite
one of those other things
Anyway it was three times,
you’re, you know, career criminal,
so she got life in prison
but I think she’s where she wanted to be
if you know what I mean

I was going through her drawers
to see if there was anything worth keepin’,
and I found one a them big things,
you know, with the …
they says, Ain’t you afraid to sleep next to her?
I says I’m the last person
she’d ever use one a' those things on.