Finally, something I can use. [Link via Eccentric Flower.]

People who fart in stores should be fined. That's all I'm saying on the subject.

The weirdo weather pattern seems to be leaving. For about two hours it poured down snow. Big-ass flakes. It didn't really stick, but there was so much coming down it accumulated in certain areas. Eventually it stopped snowing and the temperature went up to about 40. Exciting, no?

Haloscan's down yet again. A pox on you, Haloscan!

Yesterday it was in the low 80's; this morning it's like 33 degrees and it's sleeting. A little while ago it was simultaneously sleeting, raining, and snowing. I blame Haloscan for this weather anomaly.

I've been ignoring blogs all day long, and it's been glorious. OK, so it wasn't glorious. Anyway, I've wasted precious hours (that should have been spent studying for my accounting test) looking at three Brian Wilson/Beach Boys web sites reading about the infamous, unfinished, and heavily bootlegged Smile album. This is the best of the three sites and has tons of stuff for me to poke through until I get sick of the whole subject. The next best is this, which also has tons to read. And while this one doesn't have as much material, it's still worth looking through--unless of course you're (1) not a fan, (2) have no interest in popular music history, or (3) you simply have no idea what I'm going on about.

I've noticed that the content-controlled text ads at the top of my blog are now about "Odor Control" since I went off on that rant about stinky trees.

Ever have a painful dental hygiene mishap? Tuesday night I was vigorously brushing the inside of my bottom front teeth, when I missed. I was doing a rapid in-out motion and the toothbrush slipped off the teeth and I jammed the plastic end right into my bottom gum. Hard. I ended up with my head in the sink making a sound not unlike that of a wildebeest that's just been shot with a high-powered rifle. Foaming toothpaste poured from my mouth and I expected that to be followed by a torrent of blood, but it wasn't. I quickly recovered and finished brushing. My bottom gum is still sore.

All the people on the streets are insane. Yes, I know I've said this several times before, but it's still true.

When I came home from school to eat lunch, I was blocked from entering my own driveway by a Charlie Daniels lookalike (cowboy hat, beard, sunglasses, the works.) who was having trouble either getting his car into or out of my driveway. His hatchback was partially open and several large tires hung out the back. Meanwhile I'm basically parked in the road. He eventually got the car out. When he pulled up beside of me he said, and I'm not making this up, "Sorry, I don't have reverse." Who drives without reverse? I just gave him the "That's OK" nod and wave. What I should have done was scream, "Get the fuck outta my driveway!"

Sedatives, I need sedatives. Hey, don't I have a bottle of Vicodin?

Then, on my way home from my second trip to school, a guy sees me coming and still pulls out in front of me at the last minute. And what made it worse was this mouth-breather was driving below the speed limit. It's times like these when I wish I had either rocket-launchers or machine-guns mounted on the front of my Buick.

Before I got home, my progress was halted by a suicidal German Shepard. It saw me and still ran out in front of my car. I slammed on breaks and the stupid dog just looked at me. I drove past and I saw it in the rear view mirror walk out into the middle of the road and stand there awaiting its next opportunity to shrug off this mortal coil.

Animals are as bad as people.

Don't any of you know the name of the stinky tree I've been ranting about? I thought for sure one of you would put something in my comments like, "Oh, you're talking about the Mungorumba tree. Yeah, they really stink," or something like that. I suppose I could just ask someone around here, but that's no fun. Or better yet, I could go on a rampage with a chainsaw and cut down every stinky tree in the area.

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of something to post today, but I couldn't really think of anything worthwhile. My day-to-day life is so mundane it wouldn't interest a goat. (That doesn't even make any sense.)

I got a book in the mail today that was written by Claudia Emerson, my writing teacher from ten years ago. (I'm so damn old.) I did a search at Google on her name and turned up this interview. (I've never read an interview with someone I know. Peculiar.)

The stinky trees I mentioned yesterday are in full bloom. I can't go anywhere without being around these vile things, they're a blight on civilization. They also remind me of two things:

The first thing is a story my sister told me about one of her friends who likes oddball plants and flowers. One day this woman saw a plant at a really cheap price in a catalog and the description said the plant had a "pungent aroma" or something similar. Anyway, she bought it and planted the damn thing right beside her front door. When it bloomed it smelled like rotten meat and it attracted flies.

OK, the other thing the stinky trees remind me of is a bizarre "marriage manual" from the mid-20's called Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique by Dutch madman Th. H. Van De Velde. (Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.) I found this book at a thrift store years ago, and I wish I possessed a large enough vocabulary to adequately convey the insanity of this text. But I digress. In a chapter that deals with, among other things, smells, I stumbled across the following: "[...]The semen of the healthy youths of Western European races has a fresh, exhilarating smell; in the mature man it is more penetrating. In type and degree this very characteristic seminal odor is remarkably like that of the flowers of the Spanish chestnut (Marrons), which also vary according to the condition of the trees and the atmosphere, and are sometimes quite freshly floral, and then again, extremely pungent and quite disagreeable.[...]" Of course, the stinky tree that now haunts my every waking moment isn't a Spanish chestnut, it bears no fruit that I know of, and if it did bear fruit I certainly wouldn't eat any of it.

The answer to this morning's tiresome question.

Does anyone have any idea what ever happened to 1960's mercenary leader Col. "Mad Mike" Hoare? I tried tracking down info on him yesterday, but after an hour of searching, the only contemporary news I found was that he'd been released from the prison in South Africa after the Seychelles farce.

Spring is usually one of my favorite seasons, but in recent years the popularity of a specific type of tree has made this season somewhat nauseous. I don't know what this particular tree is called, but in spring it's covered with little white flowers. A neatly-trimmed line of these things in your yard card can be quite dramatic, but standing downwind of them can be quite disgusting. The flowers smell like a combination of filthy washing-machine water and semen. Seriously. You can smell them even worse at night. The traditional night-time aroma of honey-suckle (and sometimes even the wind-shift blasts of eye-watering reek from the sewage treatment facility) are completely overwhelmed at times by this evil smelling plant.

Steve McQueen, Harry Houdini, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fatty Arbuckle, and me.

Question: What do the above people have in common (besides being carbon-based life forms)?

I'm not watching the Oscars. Nope. I used to watch it, but I went cold turkey several years ago. Last year I fell of the wagon and ended up suffering (yes, suffering) through the longest telecast in Oscar history. And I hadn't even seen any of the nominated movies. I hate big celebrity awards ceremonies, the only reasons to watch them is to see if anyone wears a transparent dress or have a tape in the VCR on the off chance someone's boobs pop out while they're accepting an award. And if anyone (i.e. Salma Hayek) has anything pop out, I can see the screen captures on Usenet.

Bob's back., woo-hoo!

Too much trouble coming up with a cool name for your latest military adventure? Try the American Military Operation Name Generating Device. [Link via Metafilter.]

My favorite was "Operation Delirious Marsupial".

What did I do in the days before I got satellite TV and internet access? [Scratches head and thinks for a long while.] Oh, yeah...I remember. I used to read books and write stuff on paper. I must've been out of my mind.

Are there any clothing-optional dentist offices?

Why have I been skipping showers on Friday nights? Just because I usually don't have to go anywhere on Saturdays doesn't automatically mean I should be grubby and smelly. In fact, I hate being grubby and smelly. And having a two days growth of beard sucks too. (I think I'm channeling another blogger; if I ever find out specifically who I'll let you know.)