Original humor & comedy articles daily weblog

I’m Tapin’ Matlock, and Murder, She Wrote, and.. and… What Was I Saying?

A blog a day keeps the dickheads away

So, have I mentioned how freakin’ cool my wife is? After months of rebuffing and pooh-poohing my TiVo fantasy, she actually went and offered to buy me a TiVo receiver. Yay, honey! Yay, me! Yay, TiVo! My wonderful, darling wife also surprised me with a cool book all about Fenway Park and the history of our belov’d Red Sox.

In related news, my parents bought me a dozen assorted exotic half-litre beers, some tasty salsa, and a gift pack of hot sauces. Which is nearly as cool as the TiVo. Not quite, but nearly, and certainly much appreciated.

So, if you haven’t figured out by now what black arts voodoo I had to perform to receive such lavish goodies, it was thirty-three years ago today that I finally ended many hours of labor and sploop!-ed into the world, with a wry grin and one raised eyebrow.

(Which was surgically lowered a few days later, but keeps creeping back up nonetheless. I can’t help it — people are just so damned consternating!)

So far, it’s been quite the cool birthday. The soon-to-actually-be-purchased TiVo is the highlight as far as gifts go, if only because I’ve been bitching about wanting one for so long. (Well, okay, not just that. It’s also going to rock serious ass, which is a Good Thing™. A Very Good Thing™, indeed. My wife’s still not so convinced, but she’s a sweetie, and willing to go along for the ride on this one. And once she sees that we can watch the Simpsons or South Park anytime we want — well, okay, I don’t know what she’ll think of that, actually. I’ll keep you posted.

But anyway — good times, good times. I don’t know how you are with birthdays, but it’s been a while since I stressed over one. Actually, I really ony wigged out over one birthday. That was my twenty-eighth, and it’s the only one I had even the itty-bittiest smidgen of trouble with. I thought that twenty-eight made me ‘old’, because I was no longer in my ‘mid-twenties’. And I was right, of course — five years later, and I’m ancient. I’m surprised I’m not losing teeth yet, or having hair come out in clumps.

(Especially seeing as how I’m also the proud mortgage-owner of a house older than my grandparents. If anything — short of little grimy munchkins running around the house yelling at each other — will cause clumpy hair-falling-outy-ness, it’s a gargantuan mortgage on a house built when the US was just forty-five states and a bunch of cowboy yahoos. You know, as opposed to the fifty states and drunken yahoos we have now. Oh, how times have changed!)

But as it happens, I didn’t actually become old on my twenty-eighth birthday, as I’d always thought. The way I always looked at it, I was ‘too young’ until I was twenty-one, and then ‘still young’ until I hit twenty-five. From there through twenty-seven, I was still in my ‘mid-twenties’, so I was ‘young enough’, and then ‘old and washed up’ as soon as twenty-eight rolled around. This is how it is for most people, of course, and how I thought it would work for me, as well. But I was mistaken, sadly. I was cheated out of some of the best times of my life. For you see, I actually got ‘old’ almost seven full months before my twenty-eighth birthday, due to a coincidence of my birthdate, American legal conventions, and the policies of certain popular periodical publications. I didn’t discover it until a couple of months later, but I officially outlived my usefulness on January 1, 1998. And now I’ll tell you why.

(Hey, it’s my birthday. I can talk about whatever the hell I want.)

I was born on this date in 1970.

(Of course, since I was born less than nine months into the year, I like to tell people that ‘I was born in ’70, but I was conceived in ’69!’ Yes, my parents are soooooo proud.)

Anyway, I slid into the world as we all do — naked and slimy and royally pissed off — and proceeded to rack up birthdays. I looked forward to sixteen, then eighteen, and then twenty-one. The next few years were good ones, with fun and frolicky birthdays, and all was well, until twenty-eight loomed next on my radar. I wasn’t ready to abandon my mid-twenties — who is? — and was just starting to work up a good lather in fretting about the upcoming loss when it happened. As I pined about the impending loss of my youth, I found that it had already hit the road. I was already an old man — a dirty old man, mind you, but an old man, nonetheless.

It was spring of ’98, early April or so, and I was chilling in my friend’s apartment. My bachelor friend’s apartment. Not that he was making me feel older, mind you, just because I’d been married for a couple of years already, and he was living the ‘high life’. Apparently the ‘high life’ consisted of doing a lot of your own laundry, eating macaroni and cheese or Taco Bell for every meal, and walking around the apartment in funky underwear. So, okay, I suppose I did miss it, just a little. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that my bachelor friend also had a subscription to Playboy, and I was thumbing through the latest issue. Um, looking for a nice chicken cacciatore recipe, or something. I’m certain it was something like that.

So, anyway, I must have sneezed or convulsed or something, because somehow — some-how — the centerfold ended up unfolding. Accidents will happen, you know. So, I took a quick glance at the young lady now lounging in front of me — I didn’t want to be rude, of course — and then checked out her personal stats, turnons, turnoffs, etc. Suddenly, I flung the mag to the floor and recoiled in horror. I couldn’t speak; all I could do was point a shaking, incredulous finger at the hot naked chick now crumpled on the floor.

Friend: Hey, what the fuck? What’s the matter with you?

Me: She… she’s…

Friend: Oh, yeah. I noticed that, too.

Me: You saw? Aren’t you horrified?

Friend: What? So her tits are lopsided? She can have that fixed.

(Ten minutes pass as I check this out, and we argue whether it’s a trick of the lighting or actual lopsidery. We eventually decide that she truly is a freak of nature, and must list badly to the left when she walks. I almost forget that this is not the object of my original horror.)

Me: Okay, you win. She’s the Elephant Man, only with a nicer ass. But that’s not the point. Did you check out her stats?

Friend: Hmm? Oh, yeah — she’s turned on by the Village People. That is freaky.

(Five more minutes pass as I verify this in the mag, get re-mesmerized by her unbalanced breasts, and wonder aloud whether she pads just one side of her bra, so she can sit upright. Again I remember that this was not the point.)

Me: Dude, that’s not the point. Check out her birthdate.

Friend: Birthdate? Why the hell would that matter? She’s at least eighteen.

Me: Right. She’s exactly eighteen. Born in January, 1980. Dude, she was born in a whole frickin’ different decade than us, and she’s showin’ off her sugar in a nudie mag. Don’t you get it?

Friend (horrified himself): Dude. We’re old. So fuckin’ old.

Me: Yeah. That’s the point, man. It’s over.

We didn’t say much for a while, as our ancient-ness soaked in fully. It was worse for him, I’m guessing. He had two sisters, one a year younger, and the other about seven years his junior. I’ve known this guy for most of my life — since second grade or so — and I couldn’t even begin to contemplate his little sister as an actual woman, with real body parts and turnons and needs. And she was still born in the seventies, same as us. And yet here was some hot-until-that-moment young thing staring back at us that was even younger, and a child of the eighties, to boot. That’s the day I knew I was old, folks, and I realized that I’d been old since the beginning of the year, ever since the very first flirty, bouncy young teenie became eligible to grace the pages of one of the smut rags wrapped in paper on the top shelf of the magazine rack. I haven’t been the same since, and frankly, I don’t think I’ve perused a Playboy since, either.

My buddy stayed in his room for a week, staring at the ceiling and trying to get his little sister’s face off of the naked chick’s head in his dreams. He finally recovered, but he let his subscription lapse, and started reading Lacy Granny instead. He still had nightmares, of course, but they didn’t involve anyone from his family, so he was happier, by all accounts. Creepy, and a little repulsive, but happier.

Anyway, on the bright side, birthdays haven’t really bothered me since. Thirty came and went, and was just a big party. No muss, no fuss, no nail-biting worry over ‘getting old’. I was already old, and will be forever. I guess it’s different for different people. Maybe if I hadn’t been born at the very beginning of one decade, then the transition to the next wouldn’t have seemed like a big deal. Who knows? I think we all have a day when we suddenly turn old — some people know it at the time, and others never realize. I only saw my aged-ness in the rearview mirror, but I’m glad I got it out of the way when I did. Now I can live the rest of my life, and not worry about when I’m going to lose it, or slow down, or start to go to pot. It’s alredy lost, I’m like a frickin’ turtle, and I’ve been potted, planted, and already wilted by now. So there’s nothing left to fear.

So, that’s my birthday story. Probably a little more rambly than usual, but it’s a big day, and I’m not getting any younger, you know. It’s a wonder this shit makes any sense to begin with. Plus, I’m all excited because I’m gonna finally get my TiVo. So cut me some slack, just this one day.

Ooh, plus I have a softball game to go play soon, which is always fun and always followed by much eating and drinking and general merrymaking with the team. Most of whom are also old, though few of them seem to be ready to admit it. Which is okay — they’re allowed to hang onto their delusions, I suppose. I could clue them in, but what good would that do? Better to sit and struggle to hear what they’re saying, and eat my applesauce and strained peas, and then hobble with my walker back home. No need to drag them down with me. They’ll learn soon enough, as we all do. Hey, at least I was lookin’ at a naked chick when I discovered I was old. Who could ask for more than that?

What Do You Mean, Toothpaste Wasn’t Invented Yet?!

I blog, therefore I am

Before we get to our blogging for the day, we have a Programming Note From the Shameless Self-Promotion Department:

I’m entered this week in the New Weblog Showcase at The Truth Laid Bear. The submission is an entry ‘ripped from the archives’ called A Wall to Save Us All. If you’re interested, have a look. If you’re impressed — or you wanna help a poor brutha out — you can link to it from your own blog to ‘vote’ for it in this week’s Showcase. (See the Showcase for full details.) I really appreciate the support, and if I win… well, that’s just one more day to put off contemplating suicide, now, isn’t it? Or something like that. Anyway, have a look. If you don’t like my entry, maybe you’ll like someone else’s! It’s all good, baby.

Also, it’s not official yet, but I’m trying to worm the same entry into the next Carnival of the Vanities. ‘Cause, you know, I’m shameless. The current Carnival is careening into gear at DaGoddess, and the next — hopefully featuring moi, among dozens of others, will be hosted at Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. Check it out, read the blogs, have some fun, burn your bras, whatever. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I can’t tell you people what to do.

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog, already in progress. Blog appetit!

Do you ever have one of those shows that you really like, or think is interesting, but not quite compelling enough to actually figure out when the thing is on so you can actually watch it?

(Those of you with TiVo need not apply, you smug, self-satisfied bastards. I will become one of you, dammit!)

Anyway, maybe it’s because I’m at home more lately, but I have one of those shows. Or more precisely, I have four. So under the guise of pointing out good shows for you to watch, I’ll give you just a taste of what piques my interest these days. It’ll be fun. I promise.

1.) The Family Guy

Five Second Synopsis: Cartoon about dysfunctional family; sort of like the Simpsons with cameo celebrity appearances and more fart jokes.

Okay, I mention this one first because it pisses me off the most that I can’t figure out when the hell it’s on. It’s always been like a frickin’ fly buzzing around my head. I never knew when the damned thing was on when it ran on FOX, and now that it’s syndicated, I still don’t know when to tune in. I’ve caught maybe half a dozen episodes ever, and I want more. More, do you hear me? More!

Plus, the damn show is a watch-tease. Or something. That didn’t sound right, but something, all right? Cut me some friggin’ slack; it’s nine o’clock in the morning, for the love of Twinkies. Anyway, what I meant by ‘watch-tease’ is this: it’s one thing when I can’t get my shit together to watch a show on a regular basis. I accept that. Most days, I can’t even get my pants on facing the right direction, so unless I’m very careful, I’m likely to miss out on anything that requires thinking ahead. Like catching a particular show, or eating. That sort of thing.

But it’s a Different Thing Entirely™ when I catch a show once a year or so, and then see the same damned episode that I’ve already watched. I’ve probably seen a half-dozen Family Guy‘s, and half of them were reruns. (And yes, I realize that they’re all reruns these days, ya dildo. I mean reruns in the ‘If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!‘ sense. I have seen it, it’s not new to me, and it frickin’ cheeses me off!)

Look, it’s fine if they only made four lousy episodes of this show, and it’s just the luck of the draw that I’m catching repeats, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that is not the case. Somebody out there knows when I’m watching TV, and knows which episodes I’ve seen, and just frickin’ substitutes in a rerun anytime that I happen to cruise past the channel it’s on. That’s the only explanation. Can you say, ‘V chip’, people?

2.) Faking It

Five Second Synopsis: Regular people are trained in a foreign occupation for four weeks, then thrown to the wolves to be judged.

This one, I almost got a handle on, but I lost it, and now I don’t know when to watch. This is also one of the many ‘cross-over’ shows that started on the BBC, and has now been dusted off, bastardized, sprinked with glitter and hair spray, and Hollywood-ed into an American show. Now normally in these cases, I prefer the original. (Gee, could you tell?) And I suspect that will be the case here, but the jury’s still out, and here’s why:

Episodes seen from the original BBC show (my titles and descriptions; no spoilers about judging results):

The Aspiring Chef: A street-wise, foul-mouthed chap (hot dog vendor, maybe? I missed the beginning of this one) is recruited to become a head chef for a month. First episode I saw, and I was hooked.

Best Moment: They threw the guy in with a stereotypical (but apparently real) abusive, perfectionist prima donna chef-with-a-heart-of-gold for advanced training. The poor trainee left after an hour or so and recorded a profanity-laced, thick-accented tirade on his video diary — ‘This is just feckin’ shite. It’s shite. I dun’ knoo whet I’m doin’ here. It’s a feckin’ madhoose. I can’t teek much more of this… this shite!‘ Or words to that effect. You get the feckin’ idea, mate.

Vicar Sells a Car: A man of the cloth from some rural pasture-town is plopped into a downtown, big-city used car lot and told to sell, sell, sell! He’s too nice and genteel to make it on the lot, so the salesmen spend much of their time toughening his skin, and his accent.

Best Moment: During the show, the owner of the lot sends our man to buy a car, which he’s then going to sell. He ends up spending a tiny fraction of the money he’s given on a run-down, beat-up clunker of a lemon, and is soundly chastised by the owner about it. At the end of the show, the owner gives it to the vicar, because it’s impossible to sell such a flaming hunk of shit. Er, shite.

You Call That a Painting?: A grungy house painter is cleaned up, slicked back, and taught how to paint real art, starting (and pretty much ending) with ‘Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Crippled Boy’. He starts slowly, but picks technique up quickly and produces quite a lot of work for a four-month period. Well, to me, it looked like a lot, anyway. You could wallpaper a hallway with all the crap he painted.

Best Moment: I hate to pick an easy one right from the show’s trailer, but when the professional art critic that visits to check our hero’s progress says that one piece ‘looks like it was painted by a macaque monkey trying to do a pastiche of Matisse‘ (I may be paraphrasing slightly), the look on the budding artist’s face alone was worth the price of admission.

So, that’s quite a body of work on the Beeb side. Solid episodes, creative choices, interesting personalities. And I’ve only seen one American Faking It. So how could I still believe that our version might make it after all? Well, here’s what I watched:

Yay, Ivy League!: A mousy-feisty Hahvahd girl (New Englanders, you know the kind…) travels to Hotlanta to become a Falcons cheerleader for a month. She struggles with her ‘booby bimbo’ opinions about cheerleaders, but soldiers on and shakes her poms, anyway.

Best Moment: Um… it’s a show about cheerleaders. And a misfit, pent-up-bookworm-becomes-glamorous-hottie plot. Hell-oo-ooo. It’s porn without the goofy music. It’s all good.

So, that’s Faking It. Hey, just think, maybe they’ll call me, and teach me how to write blogs for a month. Wouldn’t that be cool?

3.) Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Five Second Synopsis: Gaggle of gay men whirl into a straight man’s life, clean him up, make over his digs, and watch him on hidden cameras.

Okay, this one’s actually hard to miss, the way they’re market-blitzing the bejeesus out of it. I think it’s airing on six or seven channels, and I’ve already caught parts of three shows without really meaning to. But it is fun, if a little scary. Well, not scary, really — it just makes me think about whet they’d say to me. (Especially right this minute. No, you don’t want to know. Trust me.)

But it’s hard to watch without putting yourself in the victim’s subject’s place. These five guys prance in, and teach the guy how to dress, and shave, and clean, and paint, and cook. It’s what I imagine growing up Italian must be like, only with lighter loafers and a breezy sense of style. It looks like it might be fun, frankly — hell, if I could get five guys over here just to paint the damned house, it’d be worth it, even if I did have to start wearing ruffly shirts and waxing my eyebrows.

4.) The 1900 House

Five Second Synopsis: A British family moves into a turn-of-the-century Victorian outfitted with only 1900-era goodies. For three months.

Okay, I don’t know whether you’ve seen this show. It’s on PBS, so you probably haven’t, unless you’re trolling for Sesame Street reruns. I caught the first two episodes by chance, but now I want to see the rest (there are only four in all). Anyway, after seeing two episodes, I’m ready to make the following judgements:

• The historians and suppliers on the show are very good; the house really looks like something from a century — and a whole world — ago.
• From the ‘audition videos’ in show one: your average British family is not the most attractive group of humans on the planet.
• The family that signed up for this — parents and four kids — are completely, totally, undeniably out of their freakin’ minds.

Let’s take a look at the facts, shall we? One, there’s no electricity. None. They’ve got gas lighting, a coal stove doohickey for cooking and heating water, and the sun for just about anything else. Two, they’re stuck with only the medicines and cures available from the era, which consists primarily of cod liver oil and bleeding leeches. Oh, and morphine. Yikes! And three, they have an outhouse. There’s a tub in the bathroom, but when it’s ‘loo time‘, they’ve got to trudge outside to hit the john. Which means that for emergencies, they’ve got chamberpots.

So now, I want all of you to ask yourselves a question. Yes, that’s right, all three of you out there. Pay attention. Let’s say you wake up in the middle of the night with a bubbly, bursting bladder. You’ve got two options — either you trudge downstairs and outside in the dark and cold and wind to make a tinkle, or you squat over a bowl and let loose, and then sleep with your pee until morning. What do you do? What do you do?

I have to admit, I’m not sure myself. The chamberpot sounds gross, but remember, you’ve got to make it down a flight of stairs, through a door, a yard and another door, all in unfamiliar territory, and all without bumping into something along the way that’ll jostle the juice out of you prematurely. The options are not good. Plus, let’s say you take the lazy way out and piss in your pot. Fine. What kind of dreams are you going to have for the rest of the night, eh? Look, when you smell bacon cooking, you dream of breakfast. When you smell smoke, you dream of fire. What’s a ‘piss dream’ going to be like, as it wafts up to you from under the bed? Not good, I can tell you that. And hopefully not breakfast, unless you’re on some diet I don’t wanna know about. (What would Atkins say? How many carbs in a quart of pee, do you think?)

Anyway, the parents in the group were already sniping at each other by day three. The mother had a near-nervous breakdown on day four, which coincidentally — or maybe not — was her birthday. ‘Happy birthday, Mum. Hope you like your present — it’s a shred of dignity, to replace the one you lost when you tried squeezing back into your filthy corset after going without a bath for three days. Many happy returns!‘

I feel bad for the neighbors of this house. Between the outhouse, and the chickens that they’ve brought in, and all the yelling and screaming, it’s got to be a friggin’ nightmare. But the ones coming out of this thing the worst are the kids, of course. Oh, sure, the mother’s got it bad. She’s spending three hours to cook each meal over what amounts to a pissant campfire, and hand-washes all the family’s clothes (they’ve got three outfits apiece, whether they need ’em or not!), and has to stay in her Victorian-era bindings at all times, while the kids get to change for school. So she’s definitely going to bite someone’s head off at some point. No question.

But think of the kids — what sort of ruthless, merciless taunting are they enduring in class? They have to bring their turn-of-last-century-food lunches to school, interact with as little 20th — not to mention 21st — century technology as possible, and clamber back into their grimy clothes as soon as school’s over. So they’re barely-washed, un-deodoranted, smelly, haggard, gruel-eating, loner freaks. For three months. I can just see the schoolmaster instructing the bullies at their school:

No, William, you may not pull his underwear over his head. Elastic bands weren’t sewn into underwear until 1915. Yes, Jill, toilets existed in 1900; you may safely give the twins a swirly.

Poor little buggers. I don’t know how the hell any of them are doing it. Shit, I wouldn’t make it for a week in The 1990 House, much less one from one hundred years ago. Think about all the things we didn’t have back in ’90 — the Web, the Sims, Lara Croft, The Drew Carey Show, Dream Team Olympic farces… well, okay, some things were better back then, I suppose. Still, it was a scary time. We barely had the Simpsons, or Seinfeld. And blogs? Fuggedaboutit! I feel faint just thinking about it. I’m gonna go have a lie-down and watch TV. I just hope I don’t stumble onto ESPN Classic or an old Dynasty rerun, or I may lose it completely.

The Quest for Endless Simpsons and Always-On South Park

Baby, once you’ve had blog, you never go back.

My life is incomplete. Hollow, wasted. There’s a gaping void in my world, and I can’t fill the hole. Behold my anguish.

I need TiVo.

Wantsss the preciousss TiVo. Wantsss it. Mussst have preciousss TiVo. Givesss it to me!

(Okay, enough of that. You get the picture. I feel all dirty when I talk like that. Like Ivana Trump or something.)

So, anyway, I’m angling for TiVo. Now, don’t get me wrong. With most things, if I want it, I just go out and buy it. I’m a big boy, after all. If I want a chicken sandwich, I go buy a chicken sandwich. (Mmmm… chicken. With lettuce and mayo and onions and jalapeno peppers… Nnggghhh…) Okay, remind me not to blog right before lunch in future, would ya, folks? Now I’ve gone and drooled all over my keyboard. Hmmm. And my leg, it seems. Eep.

But back to my story. If I want food, I buy food. If I want a video game, I buy a video game. If I want the new Jewel CD, well — okay, I probably kill myself at that point. But theoretically — this is very important — theoretically, I could go out and buy it. And then kill myself. But still, I could. But I won’t. But I could.

Such is not the way with TiVo, I’m afraid. For one thing, it’s a ‘big ticket’ item. I’m not likely to be able to slip it in without causing a blip on the budget radar screen.

(The ‘radar screen’ being my wife’s Mac’s monitor when she’s going over expenses for the month. And believe me, she catches everything. Which is good, because I generally catch nothing. So it’s a nice balance, and the repo man almost never comes around any more, since my wife’s taken over the operation. In the meantime, I make up for my fiscal deficiencies in other ways. We have exactly the opposite responsibilities when it comes to watching baseball, for instance. It’s my job to watch every single pitch and explain the minutiae of the game in as much detail as I possibly can, while she pretends to not listen and read a magazine. So I think it’s pretty even, if you look at it that way.)

Now, I could risk just taking money out of the bank and buying the thing, thereby keeping the charge off of our credit cards, but even that would arouse suspicion, I’m afraid. Why, you ask? Oh, I’d be delighted to tell you! Thanks so much for asking! First of all, the really nice Sony DirecTV TiVo console runs about four bills.

(Look, if I’m going to scheme and plan and wait around to get the damned thing, I’m aiming high, all right?)

Maybe a tad less on eBay, but still — more money than I could justify taking out for ‘play money’. I mean, that’s a frickin’ boatload of chicken sammiches, you know what I’m sayin’? So I’d need a good story, which I sadly don’t have.

And even if I did, there’s still the fact that I haven’t actually gotten money out of an ATM in roughly four years. So the mere withdrawal would set off alarm bells, whether I took out four dollars or four hundred.

(Okay, so maybe I should explain why I don’t take money out. It’s just because I don’t have to. And no, all you smart-asses out there, it’s not because my wife gives me an allowance, either! Don’t be a dickhead! No, the truth is far different, and I resent your implication. Good day, sir!

I’m sorry the rest of you had to see that. Now, for those of you who are truly interested in how I get my spending cash, I’ll tell you. It’s quite simple, really. Every night, I leave my wallet, and my keys, and my trusty slingshot, on my dresser. Most mornings when I wake up, all my stuff is there, untouched. But every so often — once a week or so — something magical happens. On those mornings, when I get to the dresser, there are twenty-dollar bills scattered on top of my wallet. Not piles of them, mind you. A couple, or three. If I’ve been really good that week, maybe even four or five! But it’s not an allowance, of course, as those cretins tried to suggest earlier. It’s nothing so preposterous or demeaning as all of that. No, there’s only one plausible explanation for the phenomenon, and it’s this:

Sometime deep in the night, while all good folks are sleeping, the Andrew Jackson Fairy visits each house in turn, searching for good little boys and girls. When she finds a worthy soul — one full of light and love, but woefully low on dough — the good Fairy waves her wand and sprinkles her magic pixie bills over a wallet or pocketbook, and voila, the lucky person will wake up to a beautiful surprise of legal tender, lovingly submitted for their spending amusement. It’s like Christmas once a week, without all of the trees and wrapping paper and religious crap to get in the way of what’s really important — getting cold, hard cash whether you deserve it or not.

So that’s how I get my money, because I’m a good little boy, and I mow the yard occasionally and generally stay out of trouble. But how do you get your cash? ‘Cause if it’s not from a Fairy, then you’re missing the boat. Sounds like somebody needs to do a little rethinking about how they’re living their life, no?)

All right, what the hell was I saying, anyway? Oh, right, TiVo. Of course.

So, putting TiVo on a credit card is out, and withdrawing money from our account would get me busted, too. And to top it off, when I first brought up TiVo, my wife replied with:

‘We don’t need TiVo.’

Folks, I have to tell you — the first time she said that, I fell to my knees, breathless. Like I’d been shot, or gotten a really bad wedgie. An elastic-over-the-top-of-the-head wedgie, you know the kind. I didn’t know how to respond. I mean, first of all, she’s wrong. So wrong. Of course we need TiVo. We’ve always needed TiVo, even before it existed. How could anyone not need Tivo? What kind of statement is that, anyway? ‘We don’t NEED TiVo‘ Pish tosh. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.

But of course, I couldn’t say that to her. As soon as I try to convince her that we need TiVo, she’ll start cheating and using logic, and tell me how we need to buy food, and we need to pay the mortgage, and we need to make the car payments, and I need to paint the porch… hey, wait a minute. What was that last one? (She sometimes tries to slip one of those in on me.) Anyway, once she gets going, she’ll find some way to make TiVo seem less important than food, and water, and shelter, and not going into debt and hocking our wedding rings. I don’t know how the hell she does it, but somehow she makes it sound plausible. At the time, anyway.

So, I have to admit, I was stumped for quite a while. I couldn’t charge TiVo, I couldn’t buy TiVo, and my wife doesn’t want Tivo, so she’s not going to help, either.

(I even paraded my friends and coworkers who have TiVo around, to regale her with glowing testimonials and tales of the life-changing power that is TiVo. She scoffed. And harrumphed. And — more recently — pointed out that I have no job. Man, she’s good! I had to find another way…)

I ran through scenarios. I could earn extra cash by donating blood, or plasma, or sperm… hmmm, giving sperm, eh? Hell, most people do that for free! But I dismissed those ideas. I checked out the first two, and they both involved needles, which I wasn’t interested in. At that point, I could only assume that donating sperm also works the same way, so I didn’t even look into it. Or sleep well for a couple of nights, either, still thinking about it. *shudder*

I considered other alternatives. I could borrow money from my parents, or her parents, or that guy at work who I have incriminating pictures of. But I thought it through, and that wouldn’t fly, either. Even if I could come up with the money somehow, I still had to bring the thing into the house and hook it up. I mean, I couldn’t just hide it under the couch, and pull it out after she went to bed… or could I? No. She’d eventually find it, and then I’d have to tell her the whole story, and then I’d be sleeping in the dog house. I could show her those incriminating pictures of the guy at work, I suppose, and we’d have a good chuckle over that, but I’d still be in the dog house. Which we don’t have. So I’d have to build one, paint it, and then sleep in it. With the dog. And the dog farts, so I’m not doing that. There had to be another way.

Finally, it hit me! There was one loophole, just big enough to squeeze through. I could have my TiVo, and even tell my wife beforehand that I was getting it, to avoid any nasty discoveries down the road.

(Well, any more nasty discoveries, anyway. I think I could have avoided the last fiasco if we had a better mailman. Seriously, just because it’s called a ‘mail order bride‘ does not mean that you have to lodge her in the mail slot for my non-mail order wife to find. Dude, get a frickin’ clue, would ya? Next time, I’m usin’ FedEx.)

Anyway, here’s the plan. All I have to do is buy my TiVo without spending real money. No, no — I’m not talking about counterfeiting cash, people. I’m talking about using money that’s not real, not useful. Stuff that we’d never end up spending, but that can be converted into real, live money. Take dollar bills, for instance. What do you use singles for, apart from the occasional vending machine and the strip club outside of town? Nothing. They’re useless. Maybe you keep a couple to give to the homeless guy doing softshoe at the bus stop, or the Salvation Army Santa. But do you ever really use one dollar bills? No. They’re for charity, strippers, and for bribing little kids to go get you a beer. All good causes, certainly, though I maybe wouldn’t prioritize them in the order they’re listed. But there are alternatives to each, now, aren’t there? You can buy the homeless guy a sandwich instead, or pay your charities with checks. You can get your own damned beer, you lazy prick, and dude — if you can’t find naked horny chicks on the internet for free, well, then you’ve got no business looking in the first place.

So now I’m on a quest.

(For TiVo, dude, not naked horny chicks. Focus.)

Now when I get one of those useless one dollar bills, I don’t just drop it, or light it on fire, or crease it down the middle and stuff it into the first pair of low-rider jeans or halter top that bounces past. No. Now when I get a dollar bill, it goes straight into the Fund. The Gettin’ Me a Goddamn TiVo Fund. And I told my wife. I told her not to change how much money she gives me um, the Andrew Jackson Fairy is scheduled to leave me, or how much we sock away for retirement, or anything. I’m saving on the side, and if that means going without the occasional soda or bag of chips, or G-stringed bimbo, then that’s just the sacrifice I’ll have to make.

(To be honest, I really can’t remember the last time I went to a strip club. I’ve never been to one in Boston, and we’ve been here for four years, if that tells you anything. Of course, since I’ve started my Fund, all my friends tease me about the ‘booby bar’, and want to know where I go, and if they can come next time. It just doesn’t make any damned sense, though. Look, if I were going to strip clubs, you can be pretty damned sure that the last thing I’d have lying around is dozens and dozens of dollar bills. If I were going to bother to go, I’d at least put the things to good use, now, wouldn’t I? Sure, I idly crease a few of the ones in the fund — you know, just in case — but at the moment, I’m more interested in TiVo than titty. Have I mentioned just how old I am, by the way?!?)

Anyway, I think I’ve got all my bases covered. It’s slow going, but I’m making good progress. I’ve been saving for a while now, and I’m nearly half-way to my goal. (Sony, you frickin’ bastards, do not raise the price on your TiVo box before I hit four hundred. So help me God, I will take a cheese grater to all of your asses if you jack me up on this one. You got that?) And being out of work hasn’t really slowed things down too much. Oh, the Fairy’s been a little stingier, since I’m eating at home most days now, but then again, I don’t need a lot of cash, so it’s okay. I still order the occasional pizza, or need a tank of gas (no, not the kind you get from pizza, thank you very little), or go out for a weekend beer. So the singles are trickling in, slowly but surely. There are four more downstairs right now that I got as change for Chinese takeout last night. Cha-ching!

So wish me luck, folks. I have a dream. And I’m going to make it, sooner or later. By the time I reach my goal, TiVo will probably jack right into your brain stem and massage your feet while you watch. I’ll be a hundred and thirty years old, and won’t be able to figure out how to program the friggin’ thing, or even set the damned fool clock. By that point, there’ll be seven thousand channels, and not one that I want to watch anymore. I’ll be my grandfather, sleeping through movies and complaining about ‘all the crap they show on this confounded thing‘. But no matter. I’ll have my TiVo, whether I need it or not. And that’s what it’s all about.