the absolute first thing you must do upon walking into your hotel room is to rip the top bedspread from the bed.

that thing never gets washed, and god only knows what has taken place on top of it. i have seen enough amateur porn on the internet to know porn amateurs never make it under the covers, every thing is done on top.

that thing is cootie infested.

i struggle to make it 7 minutes into espn sports center. 3 attempts to shut off the tv, i am outsmarted by the remote. my brain is wrecked.

i lie in the dark, trying to figure out when i must catch the shuttle to the airport. unable to make the calculation, i set the wake up call for 5am hoping that it all works out.

hotel pillows suck, i doubt the wake up call will be needed.

i had spent the week (or at least 90 hours of it) writing a sow (statement of work). absolute pure torture.

sometimes you live life other times you just exist.

we were about to begin our vacation. a couple miles outside dfw airport, i noticed she was straining to look out the car window high into the sky. i asked her what was going on.

"man, what is the deal with all the airplanes out there?" was her reply.

at some point in middle school science class we spent some time on personal hygiene. there is not a lot to cover at that age, brush your teeth and wash your hair. it's like taking your car in for service after only 3000 miles. not much needs to be done.

now at 35, i could probably use a refresher course. things are much more complicated. random mutant hairs occasionally sprout from my back. in fact i just seem to be hairier all over (except for my head of course). i have more nooks and crannies, my teeth are not as white as they used to be, and a few finger and toenails seem to be making it up as they grow. i have butt fur that dates back to the days of milli vanilli.

i'm pretty sure none of those issues were covered in 6th grade.

times have also changed. many men are having cosmetic surgery, shaving their bodies, and coloring their hair. all things that would be considered vain or feminine when i was growing up.

i don't even know where to start. what is the preferred method for removal of ass hair?

the line to board my flight moved slowly. slow enough to watch a man be "randomly" selected for a body and bag check. security escorted him to a table only a couple yards away. Security was interested in his carry-on. his carry-on was a steel lock box with a cream colored rubberized coating. he was instructed to open it.

never have i seen this type of box used as a carry-on, very curious was i to know the contents. i thought perhaps a transplant organ of some sort. perhaps some green glowing urainium rods. perhaps stainless steel tubular canisters containing even more curious content.

he took his time finding the keys to the box, almost begging to attract a larger audience. completely engrossed, i would have refused to board the plane till this drama had fully played out.

my view was temporarily blocked, but the voice of security was easily heard. "you sure do like to keep your candy safe, don't you?” i immediately assumed that "candy" must be slang for drugs, or munitions. The line took a step forward. i saw the open box and it's contents.

clark bars and paper clips.

clark bars are probably the least dangerous of all candy bars (now a snickers is something to fear). even from a goodness perspective, clark bars hardly warrant being stored in a lock box. the four boxes of paper clips seem to be standard issue. they were stored in those plastic boxes with the latch so hard to open it usually result in a game of pick-up.

clark bars and paper clips, that was it. not even mcgyver could do anything with clark bars and paper clips. this would be a safe flight.

today i am extra shiny clean.

my bar of soap had shrunk beyond usable, but still more soap than needed in a normal shower. so, i just kept scrubbing till it faded away. some of my parts were washed 3 or 4 times!

unfortunately the flip side is that i will be extra dirty tomorrow, because i have no soap.

7-11 guy "is that all?"
me "yep, that's it"
he begins calculating my change. two quarters, three pennies i think to myself.

7-11 guy "the storm must be coming?"
me "yep"
an assumption he reached because i'm not good looking enough to have come from a wet t-shirt contest. make the change!

7-11 guy "i hope my old ford can get me home."
fat guy in line behind me "ha! ford, good luck! Found On Road Dead!"
this kicked off the lightning round of dueling acronyms. a competion no one should be proud to win. it immediately annoyed me. a puddle is forming at my feet. c'mon dude, two quarters, three pennies.

7-11 guy "First On Race Day"
fat guy "Fucked On Race Day"
i am now just loitering, in the way of these two idiots. making change was of little priority. i am gnashing my teeth again, my jaw aches from an entire day of gnashing. i just want out.

7-11 guy "Fastest On Road, Dipshit!
fat guy "Fucker Only Runs Downhill!"

the debate is only 20 seconds old and i've had it. time is up mother fucker, two quarters, three pennies! i am about to unload the days frustration on the slurpee jockee.

whoa, ease up, just leave. i open my mouth, relax my jaw and split before my change can be calculated by the beautiful mind.

Fucking Obnoxious, Redneck, Dorks!

my sister is a horse fanatic. as a kid she would gallop around the the back yard pretending she was the champion horse in a riding show. this continued much longer than it should have for a normal kid. even into her teens, i remember occasionally looking out the window to see her trot by. it was kind of a family secret (till now).

recently i saw a story on hbo's real sex about people that enjoyed pretending they were horses. they galloped around on all fours wearing little more than a harness. some wore saddles and gave pony rides to their partners. very creepy.

now i find myself wondering about my sister's sex life. not really something i want to think about, but i can't stop since i saw that show. kind of like a song you can't get out our your head.

this sign hangs above an entrance to a parking garage.

i guess the americans with disabilities act does not apply to wheel a chair bound behemoth.

i expect a class action suit from andre the giant, shaquille o'neil, and paul bunyon soon.

a visual of gheorghe muresan rolling along in a tiny wheel chair and being knocked on his ass makes me giggle.

my neighborhood feels like a movie set. it is a facade made to look like a neighborhood. it has been designed to deter interaction among neighbors. i see no humans here. on saturday mornings crews jump out of the back of pickup trucks efficiently mowing and trimming a yard in 15 minutes. alley access to garages keep vehicles off the street. six foot privacy fences ensure i don't catch a glimpse into my neighbors back yard and see his blinds drawn shut.

my house is different.

the sidewalk leading to my door is illustrated with multi color chalk drawings, multiple modes of kid transportation liter the yard, a bike, a scooter, a wagon. the window shades are open giving view to the living room and kitchen from the street. a few mismatched lawn chairs near the door.

all these things are signs of life. signs of life rarely seen in the burbs of dallas.

but i know people are out there somewhere. i drive by brand new malls and starbucks. movie theatres are constantly sold out. i see people on tv in the stands for rangers, mavericks, cowboys and stars games. all those cars causing the tollway to crawl at 4mph. Where the fuck do all these people live?

not in my neighborhood.

i recently went to the printer to pick up a document. the printer is shared by more people than you can shake a stick at.

an email rests face up and pushed to the side. obviously unclaimed for some time. i recognized the recipients name and decided to hand deliver it.

then i was drawn into the content of the email. it was from a woman other than his wife. she had enjoyed the pictures he sent. small icons printed on the page represented attachments. she was returning the favor.

shit, what do i do now?

return it to the printer and leave it to shock and amaze others? try and save him further embarrassment by hand delivering the email, pretending i did not read it (lame)? hand it to him with the old wink, wink, nudge, nudge? email him pictures of myself?

dear reader, what is the etiquette for such a situation?

i put it back on the printer and waited. i kept the printer under surveilence for several hours. sooner or later he would print something new and return to find both old and new pages. the suspense was both sickening and delightful.

as the great willie wonka once said "the suspense is killing me, I hope it lasts."

much later he came to collect. he looked at it, looked at it harder, both confused and horrified. he quickly shuffled the page into the freshly printed stack. he then looked both ways as if crossing a street. his head slightly tilted downward. he was looking for witnesses. i was cleverly hidden.

next time i an xeroxing several copies to plant in printer trays around the office for fun.

i wouldn't mind this job so much if i didn't have to show up every day.

as a kid i heard about overpopulation. it became my greatest fear. it got to the point where i secretly cheered deadly natural disasters. anything that would clear some space for me.

my second greatest fear came from the first. realizing the amount of land on earth was finite and number of inhabitants (past and future) potentially infinite, i feared that the entire earth would soon be a consumed with graveyards leaving no place for me to live.

a silly kid i was. i now realize you can double and even triple stack bodies in caskets, thus slowing the time to turn the entire planet into a grave yard.

my sophomore year in college i had a kidney stone. far and away the most painful event in my life. my doctor diagnosed me quickly and referred me to dr. brown, a urologist.

later that day i sat in an exam room waiting for dr. brown. when he entered i recognized dr. brown immediately, even though we had never been formally introduced. i had just begun dating a girl that had been the object of infatuation for many years. dr brown was her father. he quickly realized who i was also.

"mike, drop your pants please, i will need to do an examination"

crap.

he proceeded to spend the next 5 minutes poking and prodding my wiggly bits. i feared many things in that 5 minutes. i feared the random ill timed teenage woody. i feared he could read my mind. i feared the topic of tonight's dinner conversation with his daughter would be the size and shape of my genitalia. i feared he might squeeze the jewels till i promised to never touch his daughter. i feared she may walk into the exam room any second asking to borrow dad's car. i feared he might be pranking me (why would you need to examine the unit externally for an internal kidney stone?).

for reasons unknown, we stopped dating soon after the kidney stone.

kind of weird to think i went farther with her dad in five minutes than in all the time i had spent with her.

i have seen the commercial a hundred times but i can't decide if the chick popping it old skool to dirty vegas in the passenger seat of the mitsubishi eclipse is a hottie or a retard.

another car commercial currently running has verified my fear that i am a failure. the new cadillac commercials are using the "been a long time since i rock and rolled" tune by zepplin. obviously their target market has changed. no longer the blue hairs, or cigar chomping salesmen. the cadillac target audience is now white males, 35 years old. the target audience is me. that is why i am a failure. there is no way i can afford this car, not even close.

as a graphic designer i am fascinated by iconology. over the easter holiday it's hard to miss all the icongraphy associated with the catholic church. most obvious is the cross. it hangs on walls, tops steeples, appears in stained glass, decorates clothing, etc. it's is embedded in our culture so deeply, it is often taken for granted, even by people of other religions.

i started thinking about the literal representation of the cross. the cross was the instrument used to kill christ. an odd object to iconize. what would today's church look like if the instrument used to kill christ was a knife, or a guillotine or an electric chair? how creepy would that be?

sometimes i just want to build a giant pillow fort here and hide inside with a flashlight reading richie rich comic books.

this was peaking over my neighbor's house yesterday morning. it looks like he has finally begun work on the genetically altered race of super huge killer clowns that he is always rambling on about. i'm glad he likes me.

or maybe it's just the bounce house for his kid's birthday party.

i am taller than most which has become an important evolutionary trait contributing to my survival and avoiding lay-offs here at the office. i am tall enough to see over the cube walls.

sometimes i frighten smaller workers when my extremely large cranium rises above the horizon of their cube wall eclipsing the light. they accuse me of "praire doggin".

sight above the cube walls allows me to spot executives before they see me. how can i tell between executive and bourgeoisie, you ask? the hair. executive hair.

i slip away before any of the executively haired ones see me. this is important because at any given time i am guilty of several firable offenses.

untucked shirt - my long crocodile like torso makes it hard for my shirts to stay tucked in, so i gave up on that.

short sleeves - i am proud the track marks are gone, and i want everyone to know.

excessively worn shoes - what do they expect, i walk on em all day long.

wrinkled pants - hard to spot because they are hidden under my untucked shirt.

i have survived another day.

afterthought: my hair is taking me no where in this world.

i boarded the elevator at the basement level. a small pudgy man wheeled a dolly into the elevator on the first floor. strapped to the dolly with bungi cords was standard issue black office telephone (why would you need a dolly to transport a phone?).

awkward silence as the doors close.

i look down at the phone and say "dang, i thought mobile phones were gettin' smaller".

ok, so the line wasn't that funny, but as inane elevator banter goes, it was genius.

pudgy glanced down at the phone, up at me, then to the lighted numbers above the door. for the rest of the journey he continued staring at the numbers, frowning. no response, not even a fake polite elevator laugh.

obviously, he didn't get the joke. he must have thought i believed it was an actual mobile phone. most likely he quickly decided any attempt to explain that it was a desk phone to the moron was futile.

72 more vertical feet of seemingly never ending awkward silence. just he and i.

every time i land at DFW airport and spend 45 minutes taxing to a gate, i wonder why we didn't just fly for another few minutes and land closer to the gate.

generally i enjoy being a human. i look at the animals and just giggle knowing that i can drive a car and they can't. heck most of em can't even reach the pedals.

oh and one more thing, my opposable thumb rocks! na-na-na-na-naaa!

a friend once told me it's healthy to hate someone. at the time i couldn't understand because i had no one to hate, but now i do. i have a nemesis. previously i wasted great amounts of energy carrying a subtle disdain for many. now i am much more efficient and focused by truly hating just one.

i sleep better at nights and wake in the morning with a true purpose.

there are other benefits to focusing your hatred. sometimes i have random thoughts about things like pancreatic cancer, dismemberment, or tsunamis. i now have a focus in which to direct those thoughts. that's good because you don't want those things cluttering up your mind, putting you at risk of actually suffering from such a malady. sort of like moving something directly from your inbox to your outbox.

some say time heals all wounds, i should have let the hatred fade by now but i can't it's too much fun.

oddly, i don't think my nemesis is even aware of my hatred.

i have been saving up for a new bladder. mine doesn't hold much any more and it's embarrassing running off every 10 minutes to go winky. donations to my new bladder fund can be made via my paypal account.

the flexibility of css has begun a somewhat disturbing trend. many sites now let the user mix and match design elements (background, color scheme, text formatting, etc.). an example would be redcricket.com (please finish reading before accusing me of redcricket bashing).

i wonder if it is a trend or a fad, time will tell. i see little value beyond the gizmo factor and eye candy.

it reminds me of when "interactive" became a buzzword and was applied to everything. people would say things like "you will be able to choose the ending to the movie you are watching". i don't want to choose the ending, i pay money to have a great story teller like stanely kubrick or the coen bothers choose the ending. that is what they are good at, i am not, my ending would suck.

it is the same with websites. as a designer, i take a stand. i design a site to look a certain way. the interface can be a statement supporting site content.

that being said, i applaud sites like redcricket (the best skinable site i have seen) who are pushing the medium further. those experiments may lead to a solution i do agree with, or identify situations where it increases the value to the user.