I waited on a woman today that was in search of a cigar lighter for her husband.
After showing her several lighters she picked a Prometheus Torch for $100.

“My husband is unbelievable! Look at this,” She says.

She proceeded to pull out a long yellow piece of paper from her purse that had scribbles all over it.
She begins reading;

“He wants Titelist 3 golf balls and he wants a new Calloway FT-iQ driver and some golf shirts and a pair of New Balance sneakers, some white sox and on and on . . .  {ad nauseum}. The cigar lighter isn’t even on the list! {snort} But I wanted to get him one because he always uses mine which I use for my crème brulee.”

Well, la-dee-friggin’-da.
That is one French-ass dessert, isn’t it?

I smile and say, “So how old IS your husband? Nine?”

She actually laughed and said, “Oh, the cigar lighter is just a silly stocking stuffer.”

I wanted to tell her that I’m stuffing my wife’s stocking with anthracite coal this year not because she’s been a naughty girl but because we need the black, sooty rocks to heat our house.

Somehow I just don’t think she’d get it.

Only 14 days left.
Wake me up on January 2nd please.

I’m a bad Santa, a Grinch and yuletide curmudgeon of the highest order and I admit it.
Just the thought of this most blatantly commercial and candy-cane-twisted holiday sends me running for my dimly lit cave high on Mount Crumpit.
I’ll level with you and say that in my icy-cold heart I will always harbour a love
for the Christmas holiday with its ‘peace on earth, goodwill toward men’ mentality
but jeepers creepers how many lameass Mercedes Benz commercials can these ding-a-lings make?
Even if I had the dough I would never put a giant red bow on an SL550 and give it as a present.
You gotta be one hell of a pretentious douchebag to pull that one off.
I hardly ever watch TV and at this time of the year, even more so.
Television is where your radar picks up on all the subliminal horseshit this holiday has sadly come to represent.
Every year I try and trick myself into believing that I still hold close the personal ties of holidays past.
I’d be better off sticking my head into a steaming pile of reindeer shit.
Working retail does little but mar and mutilate a spirit that’s sadly on the ropes anyway.
I don’t hear the silver bells and I can’t see the blinking colored lights (unless they’re from a cruiser pulling me over for a busted taillight, Merry Christmas, ossifer)
Maybe it’s a psychological omission on my part, a defense mechanism to keep me from losing my plate of milk and cookies.
I should have dumped this post to Crumpit when I had the chance but I also felt it was only fair to explain my ‘month of December’ frosty sense of discontent.
If you visit here around the holidays you’ll notice that Mick gets very quiet.
I choose to leave my thoughts in a quiet place where silent snow falls, stars twinkle and the moon is always full.
It’s only in this blue crystal space that I build my sky-high snow forts of thought, ideas dripping like icicles in my frozen castle of winter words.
Maybe this will be the year that I somehow find a way to melt the walls of snow I’ve piled high, my vast emotional fortress of sorts.
Maybe this will be the time I find the absolute truth that lives peacefully inside a holiday I can honestly say I miss.
Then reality taps me on the shoulder and says, “Read This, Grinch.”
Yeah, we’re off to a brilliant start.
And people wonder why I despise this holiday and what it currently represents.
God help us, everyone.
I’m going back to my dimly lit cave, thank you very much . . .

I’m no computer geek but I have to say you should seriously think about downloading
Firefox3.
If you’re still using Internet Explorer, wake up, it’s a nastyass browser.
It sucks up more temp files than any browser currently known to man.
Temp files only insert dirty juice to slow down your machine.
Several months ago I downloaded FF3 and hated it.
I uninstalled it and re-loaded V2.
The bugs just weren’t worked out.
After watching this video, I changed my mind and decided to give it a go.
As of this moment, I’m pretty happy with it.
It’s faster and has some very creative features.
I will tell you that the machine it’s currently on is running Vista and I think that makes a difference.
Also, to keep your PC up and running, consider CCleaner, a little program with
incredible cleaning power in terms of temp files and internet clutter.
It also has a registry cleaner that works quite well.
Stop using Internet Explorer!

Firefox is free and totally amazing.
That was my little technological rant.
Hope it helps.
For Firefox3 look to my left sidebar and click it.
Again, watch out if you’re running XP.
As of several days ago there were still some minor glitch issues.
Regarding FF, as Nike says, “Just do it.”

I am: always waiting, endlessly hoping
I think: the world is going to hell in a hand basket . . .
I know: I’m not the only one that thinks so
I want: just enough
I have: a sad heart . . .
I wish: it weren’t so
I hate: Winter . . . (it’s coming)
I miss: Summer
I fear: things I have no control over
I feel: tired, like always
I hear: conversation, the rustle of a newspaper, a train on the tracks
I smell: like a fine cigar . . . (that nobody likes)
I crave: anything but
I search: for ‘the’ words . . .
I wonder: exactly what they mean
I regret: so very many things, so many mistakes, wrong turns and unfulfilled dreams
I ache: daily
I care: deeply
I always: keep ‘hope’ somewhere very close
I am not: a brain surgeon, but I’m pretty freekin’ smart
I believe: in my three wonderful daughters (my 3 hopes)
I dance: like an epileptic underneath a manic strobe light
I sing: rarely these days, which is sad
I cry: behind locked doors (not often enough)
I don’t always: shave my head
I fight: for what I truly believe in
I write: to simply stay sane
I never: feel that life is fair
I stole: a nice four-wheel dolly from a ritzy Hotel in Boston many years ago
(actually, I just ‘forgot’ to return it)
I listen: to those that truly need to be heard
I need: something
I am happy about: the fact that the dung-slinging elections are almost over.
And I could give two sweet shits about them.
Politics suck. Period. Amen.

Feel free to tag yourself on this.
No tagging here.
I borrowed this from Moe.
Great Meme . . .
Maybe too much information?
Ah, well, it had to come out sooner or later . . .

Weekends seem to yearn for a video.
Not many people visit but those that do have a bit of time on their hands.
Found this ‘writing’ video and just had to share it.
Too damn funny.
Have a serene weekend everybody!

My father is stuck.
Although it’s unlike Winnie the Pooh in the Honey Tree
or even a tomcat that’s climbed too high into an archaic but majestic oak, those types of ‘stuck’ are manageable to a certain degree.
It’s like he’s an enigmatic and unsolvable crossword puzzle, a stalemate of stalemates, a real life version of Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day where every day is the same.
And though I repeatedly tell myself that it doesn’t bother me, deep inside it does.
Every visit it’s the same old thing.
I sit and stare.
I tell him stories.
I tell him about the weather and what I had for lunch.
I tell him what I’m making for supper.
Almost like it really matters.
It’s sad when I can’t even fool myself anymore.
I swipe madly at this insidious and maddening cobweb that has my father’s mind and memories
in its grip, deliberately refusing to let go of him.
I was sitting the other day watching him go in and out of sleep like a short-circuiting light bulb, his eyes methodically opening and closing; wax on, wax off.
I softly said, “Dad, what are you waiting for?”
He muttered something incomprehensible and shut his eyes, tired of trying to solve the puzzle, tired of my questions, tired of this confusing life.
And I can’t blame him.
He’s endlessly moored to this drab room in a city nursing home with no knife to cut the ropes.
I’m starting to feel lost as well.
Lost to him and so very lost for me.
I feel guilty after asking him the question and retreat to my dark corner of the quiet boxing ring knowing he shouldn’t have to answer a query such as that.
This is about him and not about a too selfish ‘Michael’ and his all too busy life.
But how does it finally end for this sad and fragile man?
Please, dear God tell me. Will you?
If I’m supposedly being taught some kind of lesson here, I’m really losing my patience and these days nothing seems to make sense. Nothing.
So maybe God listens.
Maybe.
Once again, I close my eyes on another day and I think, maybe tomorrow.
Yeah, right, maybe tomorrow . . .

Someone mentioned this video yesterday and I found it online tonight.
Got several things to say.

#1 - This guy (aka “rapping artist”) has his name right by definition but he spelled it wrong.
#2 – I’ve seen steaming piles of horseshit that have more poetic prowess than this gasbag.
#3 – “Relevant” just doesn’t quite rhyme with “President”, IMHO. Sorry, Luda
#4 - You even irritate Obama. (go figure)
#5 - “So you get off your ass black people, it’s time to get out and vote!” – Ludacris

You be the judge.

Got one thing to say to Ludicris;

End of story.
I rest my case.
The moral of the post?
Get Ray and Stevie to give you political musical props.
You’ll do much better in the long run.
This is pretty funny too . . .

And no, it’s not the Canadian Football League.
Watch the video for more info.
Though he’d never make it as a stand-up comedian, I’m liking this congressman from Texas.

Had enough yet?
NozzleRage.Com

I got on the train one morning several weeks ago and settled myself in for the train ride into Boston.
I was on a double decker train in a seat for one, perfect for writing or sleeping, the latter of which I do in the mornings I leave early.
A woman (I think she was a woman) with incredibly confusing blonde hair sat in front of me reeking to the high heavens of a cologne that almost made me gag.
Eau de Litter Box, perhaps?
All I could think of was the feeling I get when I walk in to Bath & Body Works at the mall; a total devastation of the olfactory senses to the point of nausea.
Anyway, this woman proceeds to flog the ever-loving shit out of her hair, cooties, dandruff and dead hair flying everywhere as I sat there taking it like a man, too tired to move to another seat.
That wasn’t quite enough though. She pulls out her compact and begins to violently swab her face to beat the band with the finesse one would use to scrub a dirty truck bumper.
I don’t scrub my ass that hard in the shower, for God’s sakes.
This went on for twenty or so minutes and it was disturbing, to say the very least.
The lips took at least half of the twenty minutes ending with that yucky “schmupp” sound.
I’m thinking Blondezilla must be an absolute vision when she’s finally done primping and packing her fat little face.
Sometime shortly after the “schmupp”, I fell fast asleep.
Thank God for small miracles.

Later that day, I thought about my wife, a minimalist when it comes down to makeup; less is more, period.
She’ll argue with me until JFK comes back from the dead but when she’s done up for an evening out (a rare event these days, sadly) she IS a vision.
Her face is just beautiful.
A few mornings ago I got out of the shower and dried off before opening the medicine cabinet for a Q-tip.
I saw a small innocuous looking package and I could swear it read “FaceSpackle”.
Now I looked up “spackling compound” on the web and found this: A white pre-mixed compound or powder to which water is added for use in mending cracks in plaster, holes in sheetrock walls, skimming old wallpaper seams, should be sanded smooth and flat after drying
Wow.
This was disturbing.
Dear God, please not my wife.
I put my glasses on and saw that the writing didn’t say anything close to what I thought it said.
It was some kind of newfangled facial exfoliant from Origins.
As a man, I have a difficult time understanding all these exotic things women use on their face.
But my wife has taught my daughters well though; easy on the rouge, light on the eyeliner, gently shadow the lips.
Whenever one of them wears makeup they look like women, very pretty women. What happened to my little girls, I’ll never know.
If they continue to take their mother’s advice, the future years will treat them kindly.

As the train pulled into Boston that morning, Blondzilla got up and made her way to the exit.
Lord have mercy, I think she used to do makeup for Bozo the Clown . . . Ringling Brothers at the very least.
And if she happens to read this?
I’m getting my ass kicked some unsuspecting morning.
I think I’m safe . . .