in a few short hours we will be in florida for the thanksgiving holiday. so, posts may be infrequent or graphically challenged for the next few days. rock on.

any bloggers in the fort meyers area?! i'll buy you a beer!

a few drawings from the sketchbook (color added in photoshop). lately, i have been interested in windows and the interaction of the foreground negative space with what exists beyond the window.

in honor or the re-appearance of SARS, here are 5 things that send my germ phobia into orbit.

- sticky elevator buttons
- wet bathroom door knobs
- a band-aid floating in a pool
- a used tissue found between the couch coushins
- public phone ear pieces

oddly, toilet seats have never bothered me.

conversation one 8:40 am
clueless project manager - will your tools integrate with html
me - tools?
cpm - yeah, the graphic ones?
me - photoshop, illustrator?
cpm - uh...yeah, i need to know if those will support our solution.
me - uh, yeah ... but can you?

conversation two 10:05
cpm - the sight map will have working navigation, right?
me - no, that's the wire frame.
cpm - oh, can i have that later today?
me - but the site map isn't finished.
cpm - oh, does that one have working navigation?

conversation three 1:25
cpm - can the mac read html files?
me - huh?
cpm - i want to make sure this mac thing doesn't slow us down.
me - oh, i see, yep the mac can read html. even a few gif files too.

conversation four 6:20pm
cpm - hey, this sitemap doesn't have working navigation!
me - see ya tomorrow.

upon returning home from my grandfathers funeral in michigan, my wife informed me of another family death. a cracked cylinder head in our saturn has rendered the car useless (at less than 60,000 miles).

i see three options.

option one. fork over $2,500 dollars to fix a $4,000 dollar 7 year old car.

option two. fork over $25,000 to replace it with a new minivan.

option three. leave a sack of flaming turds on the saturn dealership door step.

this event is only one of many that are shaping up the holiday season to be a memorable one.

ho, ho, fucking ho.

when i was small, i once heard my grandpa playfully say "co-inky-dink" instead of "coincidence". from that moment on, when ever the word is used, i read or hear it to be co-inky-dink. i can not say the word without thinking co-inky-dink.

i suppose it is a delitefull little legacy my grandpa has left me, but after 30 some odd years of it, i am nearly insane.

it is now my turn. a legacy i shall leave for you.

so, through the power of suggestion, the sentences below will forever change your thought patterns. welcome to hell.

reader beware, if you are easily influnced, stop reading now. why are you still reading? ok, you asked for it.

the suggestion:

for evermore, whenever you read or hear the word "public", you will replace it with the word "pubic". then you will curse my name under your breath.

sorry.

each time i fetched him a beer, he rewarded me with an indian head penny. he was a coin collector. each birthday he gave me a mint set (coins incased in plastic a display) of the coins produced that year. he told me that one day the coin sets would pay for my college education. as i got older and closer to college age my family and i joked that the $34.38 (the face value of 18 years worth of coins if broken out of the plastic cases) might buy one of my art history books.

now at 36, i realize the value of the coint sets far exceeds $34.38. his love for me that took the form of yearly coin sets is too great to measure.

last night my grandfather passed away.

alzheimer's disease stole away his hobby of coin collecting long ago. 12 years ago he had trouble remembering my name. later he failed to recognize his daughter. eventually he forgot who his wife was. last year he had hip surgery. only hours after the operation he forgot he had the operation and tried to get up and walk. he fell to the floor.

i don't know the man who's physical body finally gave out yesterday. the grandfather i knew had been gone for a long time. the disease stole him from my family and i.

so, in a very odd way, today i celebrate his death. although a battle has been lost, one can rejoice that the battle is over.

the tree in the front yard was very large. it's branches reached out to the house, some touched the wall of my bedroom.

the wall of my bedroom that my bed was pushed up against.

every night he stealthily climbed the tree, inched out on the limb and sat listening to me through the wall. often times he would bring his toolbox. when he thought i was asleep he would begin his work. i could hear the saw, pushed and pulled, back and forth, cutting through the wall.

i lay with my back to the wall, sheet over my head. i knew if i actually saw the blade peeking through the wall, i would instantly die of a heart attack. so, i lay, just listening, and waiting...

it was hard work cutting through the wall, sometimes he worked all night. at any moment i fully expected he would finish his work and a perfectly round circle of wall would fall backwards into the grass below. he would reach inside and snatch me from my bed.

my dad told me it was only the wind causing branches to scrape the aluminum siding. would he miss me when i was gone?

moments ago, i witnessed a major urinal etiquette infraction of titanic proportion.

2 men walk into the restroom together discussing a project. the first man stops at urinal 1. the second man skips urinal 2 and saddles up to urinal 3, properly creating a courtesy buffer. when the first man sees the second went directly to urinal 3, he packs up and moves to urinal two (in order to continue the conversation i assume).

it was at this point i threw the yellow infraction flag.

dude, i can hear you just fine a urinal away. there is no reason to get all up in there and shit.

I am the miss manors of urinal etiquette and i have documented previous infractions here and here.

wife has identified several things about me (no need for sleep, "creepy" drawings, love of mustard and spam sandwiches, etc.) that she will eventually use in divorce court to prove my mental instability. the latest was the desire to stand freezing, scanning the sky in the middle of a cornfield at 4:30 am.

me: "i'm getting up at four a.m. to watch the leonid meteor shower"
wife:"you better set your alarm."
me: "nah, i have a little clock in my head that tells me when to get up. don't you have a clock in your head?"
wife: "yeah, it says never get up."

it was tricky climbing the ladder to my roof. the protective pillows i had strapped to my arms and legs some what restricted my range of motion.

this time i was prepared for the leonid meteor shower.

i sat down in the lawn chair i had duct tapped to the shingles earlier in the day. i only put a dozen beers in the cooler so not to impair my meteor sighting abilities on the off chance the big mamba jamba came hurling towards the house.

i donned my old white crash helmet (not a.n.s.i. approved). it was cold, so i placed the space heater next to the lighter fluid and magnesium strips. i took stinkerbell (the cat) from my backpack and placed her on top of the chimney. cats can see in the dark, i thought she might be useful if one landed in the yard and i couldn't find it. i wore a catchers glove on my left hand and i had a fishing net ready to catch anything too big for the mitt. quick movement on the roof required foot wear that would compensate for the pitch of the roof, so i wore a pair of my wife's high heels backwards.

after hours of no sightings, i came back inside. that internet program thing said the leonid shower was last night. oh well, it just means a little extra time to properly prepare for the next shower in 2103.

moving faster than a walk but slower than a run. more importantly, consider the inertia of six feet three and 225 lbs. rounding a blind corner. i felt the soft impact on my shin, but a harder more firm impact just above my knee.

the midget was knocked on her ass. instantly mortified, i felt like Andre the Clumsy Giant. i instinctually reached down with both hands to pick her up by her armpits (my conditioning as the parent of a 3 year old).

luckily before i could embarrass myself further, she popped to her feet as if ejected from a toaster and continued on her was as if nothing ever happened.

no eye contact and no words exchanged (other than the horrific gasp the escaped me when she hit the floor).

an apology, my ignorance is grand. i know "midget" is not politically correct terminology, but i am certain it is better than "little shit".

son one and i recently joined the ymca indian guides (kind of like scouts but more politically incorrect). we had to make up indian names for ourselves. i choose the indain name of "wind maker" based upon my gastronomic abilities. a small inside joke (as well as a built in excuse for inopportune slippage) for my tribe mates. little did i know the name would be printed on the back of the tribe shirts which are worn monthly to events attended by many many other tribes.

oh, and with two sons, i will potentially be stuck with this name for 5 years.

my punishment for being a smart ass, i suppose.

could be worse, indian names i rejected included; little snake, beaver hunter, and dances with wood.

son one and i went camping with the tribe (ymca indian guides). we stayed in a quaint little cabin decorated with stenciled folk art forming a ceiling boarder around the interior of the cabin. upon closer inspection i fear the stenciled artwork depicts some sort of hermaphrodite mating ritual.

i found it hard to sleep with the million hermaphrodite pride march parading around me.

try and keep it under the skirt, honey.

the people in this meeting room believe i am creating some sort of staffing plan. but i am not, i am typing this. i would rather be urinating but i am a visitor here and have no security badge.

no badge, no reentry. badge = freedom. i am a prisoner.

so hear i sit, with the worlds smallest bladder about to split at the seams. i'd ask to borrow someones badge, but i have done that 4 times this morning, the last time only 15 minutes ago.

oh, and i have to poo too. the stress levels here are wreaking gastronomic havoc on my gutty works. audible havoc. i think someone is moving furniture in my belly.

i wonder if anyone has ever shit themselves in a meeting room surrounded by strangers.

i wonder if these people will one day say "remember that guy that came all the way up from texas just to shit in our meeting room?"

another will respond, "yeah, i remember, ...then he jumped out the window to his death."

"yeah, now THAT was funny."

this company is so stupid big, they really have no clue as to what i do. so, they send me places. expensive places. places where they have other people who have no real clue as to what i do. we all sit around, look at each other and wonder what i do.

i wonder how we make money.

perhaps there is a printing press in the basement.

well, i don't know where you came from or who you are (must find and install refer code!), but according to recent log activity, you are probably looking for the switch spoofs.

you can find 'em here; mark, ellen, and the user switch.

having kids radically changes everything in your life. one of those things is friends. i have two types of friends, chosen and circumstantial. the circumstantial far out weigh the chosen.

circumstantial friends are people that share circumstances with you and your life. a common day care, a common kid's soccer team, a common playtime at the park. the commonality is the primary topic of conversation. once that topic is exhausted, conversation turns to weather, car mileage and cowboy football. circumstantial friends suck.

i no longer try to talk about art and design, beer, beat poetry, or my mexican wrestling mask collection to circumstantial friends. those topics result in blank stares followed by "hey, this is some kind of weather we're having, huh?

meetings with circumstantial friends are preceded and postceded by conversations with the wife about how they suck and i would never choose them to be my friends.

the disparity between the two types of friends is bumming me out. that is where you come in.

if you have been here a few times and are still reading this, then we must be of similar minds. i am moving all of you into the chosen friend category to reduce the disparity.

so let me pour you a beer (st. pauli girl dark), and lets not talk about the emmit smith's rushing record.

volume 3, page 134, paragraph 12 of the ultramicroscopic content guide strictly prohibits commentary of politicians or political events.

volume 5, page 23, paragraph 2 of the ultramicroscopic content guide encourages the use of doodles as content.

so, on this day (that just happens to follow election tuesday), i present a random, innocent little doodle from sketchbook b-2.

i have developed a simple criteria to help decide when it is time to quit my job.

at what lottery jackpot amount would you quit your job?

when things are going good my answer is usually around a million.

when things start to slip, i calculate what i would need to start my own business, $200,000.

when things start to suck, i calculate what i would need to support the family till another job can be safely found, $50,000.

when things suck, i calculate what it would cost to move back into my parents, $5,000.

eventually, you realize the winnings from a 1 dollar scratch off card is enough motivation to quit. that is when you quit.

i love my wife for her fierce individuality and refusal to be influenced by my political rants.

i must now make my ways to the polls to offset and nulify her kooky vote.

update above is the sticker i was given immediately after voting. how did they know?...oh yeah, this is texas.

i have a new hobby to pass the time. when pooping in public restrooms, i write notes for future poopers to find on the toilet paper roll. things like:

- where have you been, i miss you.
- 8:45 tomorrow morning at the coffee machine.
- i like your socks.
- i pee'd on the seat.
- please be my poo pal, leave me a note.
- please stop leaving butt crud on the seat, you fucking cave man.
- just think, we both pooped in the same potty, weird, huh?
- you'll pay for the evil things you have done.
- as you sit here, i am sneezing on your phone receiver.
- thanks for hogging the handicap stall, asshole. signed the cripple.
- we have traced the writings, they are coming from the stall next to you. get out now!

look for my literary genius on a roll near you soon.

it is 6:30 pm, i am 2.5 hours into a 1 hour conference call with sgt. rock and the team of misfit toys. there is no imediate foreseeable end to this call. in some sick and distorted path of thinking, we have decided it would be best for the client if we do the design phase before the discovery phase. perhaps we could squeeze usability testing in before the discovery phase.

this project is doomed to suck ass and i just want to get off the phone.

i took this photo of the vehicle in front of me yesterday.

these people drive me nuts. his message was real, i photoshoped the licence plate.