Best IM conversation of the year…

…if not the last several years…

Between me and a friend of mine, whom I shall call “Numbnuts” to protect his identity.

——————

Numbnuts (10:17:37 PM): Dude I had the gnarliest dream ever

Me (10:17:51 PM): (corpulent middle aged mutual male friend) vacuuming naked?

Numbnuts (10:17:53 PM): last night I dreamt that someone bet me $10k that I wouldn’t cut off my nipple

Numbnuts (10:17:58 PM): and for some reason, in the dream

Numbnuts (10:18:05 PM): I thought that it wouldn’t hurt or anything

Numbnuts (10:18:13 PM): so I had one of those little pruning shears

Numbnuts (10:18:25 PM): and I reached down and cut off my left nipple

Numbnuts (10:18:41 PM): and this gigantic lightning bolt shot out of it

Numbnuts (10:18:46 PM): and blew a hole in the wall

Numbnuts (10:18:57 PM): It freaked me out so much that I woke up and called my brother

Numbnuts (10:19:08 PM): and then went back to sleep and forgot about it

Me (10:19:16 PM): WOW

Numbnuts (10:19:22 PM): I just remembered it again just now because he called me telling me how fucked up I was

Numbnuts (10:19:33 PM): and I had to spend an hour talking to him convincing him I wasn’t using again

Me (10:19:39 PM): HAHA

Numbnuts (10:19:42 PM): Blue lightning bolt!

 

Nerd hilarity. -or- Why I love volunteering at the planetarium

Today I had my biweekly volunteer shift at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland. My days there are always an endless parade of people running the gamut from really annoying to really interesting.

I’m fairly knowledgeable about astronomical things, but I don’t even remotely pretend to be an expert… it’s humbling to be around some of the amazingly smart people there who put in far more hours than I do, and for no pay. Still, I’m pretty knowledgeable about the subject matter… but that seems to only guarantee that the proverbial socially-maladjusted geek will come along and try to one-up me (or one of the other volunteers).

Today, there was one who came and skulked around for a while, spouting off about various scientific topics to some of us volunteers and two even more geeky guys who appeared to be, essentially, his sidekicks. He talked and talked. He was easy to tune out, but I caught the tail end of what he was talking about because he delivered his final words with such conviction. Or more correctly, arrogance.

The end of (whatever point he was trying to make) was:  “I’m 45 years old. I plan to retire at 47. And in my career I’ve amassed enough personal wealth that I can.”

And as he said this, there was but one thought in my head, which I regret now that I did not verbally state, despite the beauty in its direct simplicity. And that one, single, bemused thought in my head was this:

“Dude, you are wearing a wizard costume.”

“Hello dude, your sausage is really small” …and other verbal emasculations

Part of my job is to answer customer emails… and we, of course, get tons of spam. Much of it gets filtered out, but not all of it does.

Because “viagra”, “cialis”, and other variants of those (like “c1 AL1s”) are commonly caught by spam filters, I guess spammers have had to employ a bit of cleverness to get around email defenses.

That, plus a blatant appeal to the combination of male pride/insecurity always helps.

With that, I present to you some of my favorite email spam subject lines that my company has received lately.  Yo comrade with small prick!
=====================================

–Girls prefer real things, not toothpicks
–Fucking a man with a small dick is like fucking a rabbit.
–lol man, why your one-eyed monster is so small? ;))
–Small meat not big problem anymore!
–Take your Award – Mr. Smallest ramrod 2006 😉
–We can double your one-eyed monster size
–Where did you get so small sausage?
–Size of John Holmes in a few days
–+5 inches or money back
–Adding few more inches to your weenie
–Are you still with short member?  😉
–Yo comrade with small prick! 🙂
–Why your prick is so small?  🙂
–small ramrod not big problem anymore!
–Why so small weenie man?
–Don’t want no short sausage man
–Could you reply why your Johnson so short?
–I salute your smallest meat of the year
–Hello dude, your sausage is really small
–is your Dick not stand up? your girl doesn’t like it?
–With Penis Enlarge Patch all your underwear will be too tight for you.
–The ability to look at smaller meats

I was having a triumphant morning commute– sun out, moonroof thingy open, stereo turned up loud (Rick Fuckin’ Springfield, thank you)– and my mind wandered to a random thought:  of any and all compliments I’ve ever received over the course of my life, two stand out in particular. (I’ve lost count of the insults.)

So please allow me a little ego love fest here. (It IS my page, after all.)

The first one:  “He is the most unpretentious person I’ve ever met.”  –Steve Domingo (roommate), to my mom– circa 1994

The second:  “It must be fun to be you!”  –Froggy, 2002.

The best part is that neither of them knew it at the time, and neither of them probably remember it now.  But these two sentences have a permanent residence in my head. Which is something.

Mormon-ah-ma-nah. –or– the Missionary Position –or– here, let me show you to debasement

So as I’m settling into my new digs (way out there– 42nd x Lawton), I am increasingly eager to go explore the new turf. I thought I’d post a random Craigslist ad to see what sort of wacky responses I might get from this simple question:  what are good places for a new person to go to out there– anything and everything from restaurants and cafes to bars to hardware stores? What all IS out there?

To date, I have received only one response, which I copy here in its entirety:

Go to church at 22nd/Lawton. There’s a singles ward at 12:30 on Sundays.
Pull up mormon.org for answers to your questions.

Further evidence that you, my esteemed readership, can run but you can’t hide.

This could be amusing, though… why should I limit my query to physical locations that I can sully by showing up, when there are entire corruptible GROUPS of people to defile?!?

“Oh sorry, I thought you said SINGLE SWORD.”

Consider the following. –OR– I ♥ NY(e)!

A short anecdote in which Mig basks in the presence of a great personage. Please, dear readership, allow me to cluck about it for a moment.

A few Saturdays ago, I was doing my usual biweekly volunteer shift at Chabot planetarium in Oakland. Chabot was due to have a special guest that day:  Bill Nye, the Science Guy. I correctly anticipated that they might bring him out to the telescope deck, where I usually work, so I had the camera in my pocket just in case.

I had the solar telescope set up and there were sunspots and solar flares to show a neverending stream of people. My shift was actually busy enough that I’d temporarily forgotten about any impending sci-lebrity encounters… when suddenly I saw The Man himself.

Not only did I get to (excitedly and giddily) get to meet him, but I got to show him the solar scope and the goodies that were visible in it. He was dazzled and amazed and had never looked through something like that before.  (It’s quite a  feeling to impress Mr. Science with something… scientific.) And he happily posed for a picture with me– a treat that only one other person was afforded as the Chabot Secret Service hustled him around.

He later gave a very interesting talk that I got to attend… Sadly, they didn’t get to me in the subsequent question-and-answer session, because I had the best question ever teed up:

Where do you go tie shopping?

A nice start to the year. I think the rest will be accordingly awesome.

To me, you look more like number two, if you know what I mean.

I was relating this story earlier today, and I share it with you, gentle reader, so that you might derive some amusement from it as well.

There was a girl I knew in the dorms in college, named Katie.  (Note: this is not to be confused with kick-ass Katy whom I also knew in the dorms.  Different person.)  This story is about Katie with an “-ie”.  I don’t remember her last name.

I knew Katie my second year in college. 1991-1992. I lost track of her after that year but I remember her very well because she is in a few pictures I have of a dorm Xmas party where I am wearing– I will admit this to you because I like you– purple muscle pants.

Anyway, that year, my dad gave me a book at Xmas called “How to Shit in the Woods”.  He found that amusing.

Sometime a few months later, I was walking around the University Union and ran into Katie. She was sitting in one of the marginally comfy maroon couch/chair situations that are undoubtedly still there (and undoubtedly not since cleaned). She happened to be reading that exact book– “How to Shit in the Woods.” It turned out that she was actually reading it for a class of some sort.  Being that it was a rather obscure book, I was surprised and said “hey, I have that book too!”

The point here is this:

Sixteen years later, I still think of this girl every single time I take a crap.

And I wonder how she’d feel if she knew.

-mig.

Guard your children… for I am now officially “scary.”

I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly scary person.  And you, gentle reader, probably know me enough to know that I’m better described by a lot of other words.  Some such words are more complimentary than others, but still, “scary” probably isn’t one that would first come to your mind.

Yet that’s how I came across to someone this weekend. I was out riding my bicycle through the mean streets of San Mateo, just kind of exploring around, seeing where bike trails go, etc.  It was a beautiful and blissful day, and I decided to do a lap around a playground and community pool that I’d come across.

For a public park on a sunny Sunday, it was quite empty.  On the playground were two kids, their parents at a picnic table not too far away.  I was just kind of pedaling slowly, not even really looking at them, and of course doing nothing threatening.  But as I passed on the bike path about 15 feet from them, the girl stated to the boy:

“That guy is scary.”

I’m quite sure her fear didn’t stem from my bicycle-related attire.  Nope, I’m pretty sure that this pronouncement was thanks to the Copycat Luke Littell Biker Mustache that I’ve been cultivating.

Now if only I could scare the kid neighbors’ bratty-ass friends away in the same manner…