When Your Wife Stabs You With a Fork You Learn to Pay Attention.

May 29th, 2008 Humor, Photography, Rules of Good Photos atholkay 1 Comment »

In any other situation it’s called a partial seizure. During a showing it’s called The Thanksgiving Turkey Test. That’s the one where the buyers are pretty interested in the home and everything is going pretty well, then suddenly the female half of the buying couple makes a beeline back into the kitchen and just stands there. 

The “standing there” could take a little while. There may be odd movements and vocalizations. It’s really important not to disturb her. What she’s doing is trying to imagine if she’s comfortable pulling the Thanksgiving Turkey out of the oven in this particular kitchen. Open your mouth and you break the spell. Just let her come out of it on her own. 

Oh sure the kitchen is just fine… at least it is to you foul mouthed oafs that make a ham and potato chip sandwich and just spin the loaf of bread afterwards and tuck the end under. Yeah… me too, guilty as charged. True story - back in the in the early days of wedded bliss I once came home from Wal-Mart with a box of matching plates, cups and bowls. When asked how many were in the box, I did the math and said “four days worth”… 

… apparently that was the wrong answer. 

It turns out that when there are just two of you, and you have a four day supply of plates, you have eight settings. Then I had to wash brand new plates! I had to take them right from the box and wash them. She’s not due for PMS until Tuesday either, so she’s like Basic Instinct calm as she said we had to wash them too. I’m freaking out man. 

Sorry, wandered off for a bit there. Anyway, um… wife, kitchen, the standing there, imagining if it’s possible to pull off T-Day. I’m right back with you now. Focused. 

So, here’s the snap of the wet towel – you have to pass the Thanksgiving Turkey Test in the photo of the kitchen. Buyers will study the kitchen photo like no other. 

The good news is that the kitchen photo is the easy one to get right. The biggest key is simply making sure the kitchen is clean as possible, and decluttered as possible. I go really, really, and I mean really decluttered. Move the toaster, the spice rack, the candle, the cat’s food bowl, the dish towels out of the shot. If it’s an ornamental towel hanging on the handle of the oven that the First Lady gave your grandmother, they can either bring an offer, or you take it out of the shot. Take everything that isn’t nailed down out of the shot, with the exception of just two magical items that can sit on the counter. 

1. A coffee maker – because coffee symbolizes relaxation, enjoyment and can cap the end of a successful dinner event. 

2. A roll of paper towels – symbolizes ease of use and cleanliness. 

Now there are a bunch of other important things that do matter in kitchen shots, especially making sure the verticals are vertical, but I’ll hit that up another time. The lion’s share of the emotional impact in the kitchen is just going to be the open space and the cleanliness. 

P.S. Fridge magnets are of the devil. 

P.S.S. Yes I know that this entire post is completely sexist in assuming that the woman/wife will be in control of all the cooking etc for Thanksgiving. In my defense, all I can say is that I’ve seen multiple instances of very even tempered, domestically egalitarian, women turn into possessed maniacs attempting to channel “Betty Crocker on a good day” around Thanksgiving.  Suddenly the way cloth napkins are folded becomes as important as correctly following the checklist for the deployment of Space Shuttle. In situations like this the best advice is to repeat the phrase “everything was fabulous” until the situation has resolved. My point remains salient though – home buying is rarely rational. 

P.S.S.S   You’re probably wondering about about the “stabbing with the fork” bit in the title. Here’s the story… I got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water… the turkey was left in a chicken stock/brine thing in a cooler in the kitchen…anyway, long story short, we had to clean the kitchen floor, I sustained “superficial fork wounds”, and everything was fabulous.

Mentos Coke Bomb Prank

May 20th, 2008 Humor atholkay 4 Comments »

It’s so perfect it its simplicity. 1.5 minutes. I can’t stop laughing.

Wanna Pay For Advertising Like This?

May 19th, 2008 Geekage and Blogging, Humor atholkay No Comments »

Everyone loves a widget that makes a pretty graph…

…except when you’re asking $688,000 and there is no way to turn the damn thing off on the expensive web hosting platform you pay too much money for.

 Apparently you’re safest in you car. Ideally driving away from this listing.

Hat tip Malcolm Waring for the image.

WHY R RMRKS WRTTN W/O VWLS?

April 30th, 2008 Humor atholkay No Comments »

Here’s a little beauty sent to me from Robert and Sandy Cook in Burbank CA.

Description
Lov. Refurb. 3+2 18′x23′ gh w/ 3/4 ba. Beaut. Updated kit, h/w floors, new dual pane windows, copper plumb. Sep lndry room, patio, carport. Gh permited as rum pus rm w/lge dn owner may carry 2nd fa heat/air negotible. Lb fd + lb for gh side door of gar…

Okay… at this point I’m following it about 80% successfully but I’m starting to feel like I just accidently joined the Japanese class when I signed up for Spanish. However the final line just cracked me up.

…Buyer to check permits.

LMAO. Perhaps even a slight moment of ROFLMAO.

“We have no permits. Buy this place and you’re so screwed.” 

Great Spirit of NORG-veey

April 28th, 2008 Good Vibes, Humor atholkay 1 Comment »

Okay really, seriously now, I hope to have returned. The blog appears 99% repaired by the Tomato crew and basically functional as before.

The other reason for my longer absence is that I’ve been off vacationing in Florida at the expensive mouse house for the last week. I would have said something earlier, but with the blog mostly down and the Department of Homeland Security still having us at Condition Peach, I felt uneasy about posting online that my house was going to be empty apart from a pair of attention starved cats.

Oh… Condition Peach… that’s actually Condition Orange, but the signs are starting to fade in the sun a bit. It still feels weird to listen to the endless blaring of the threat level in the airports and dumping all the carry on luggage through the scanners. That’s a lot of people working that security thing and they mostly look bored beyond belief. Jen got some special attention as security guy with a wand waved it over her her and had her down to bra and panties in a back room in under a minute. All I could think as it was happening is… damn I have to get one of those wands.

Oh relax, that didn’t happen, just working in a joke that I cribbed from the paper this morning.

Anyway… don’t worry the cats got fed and apparently serious love from our sweetie cat sitter. The mail was wedged into the mailbox like I was trying on one of the three pairs of fantasy jeans I have hanging in my closet, but alive cats and absence of pee smell generally nets you a front of the class seat for a repeat performance.

(edit: apparently Jen got the post office to hold the mail until the day we got back. I just carry the bags.)

In an completely unscientific study I can forcefully announce that the American dollar must be seriously tanking as Disney World seemed swamped with European tourists enjoying the exchange rate between the Euro and the Dollar. We’ll be tieing it 1:1 with the Rupee next week I heard. I kept thinking I was seeing the same guy everywhere for a while but nope… just dozens of Chelsea supporters on holiday apparently.

The World Showcase in EPCOT is like the best idea ever, but painfully short of where it could be. Seriously, if you can’t buy a David Beckham shirt in “England” and down a British Rail meat pie as penance for whatever sins you’ve committed, why even bother?

France would be better if Disney made working there part of its progressive discipline policy. I.e. Verbal Warning -> Written Warning -> Working Counter in France -> Termination. You get to see the Effiel Tower and get some haughty service. Just like being in France!

Also someone from the Norwegian government needs to step in and raise a royal stink about the Norway bit in EPCOT. Great spirit of NORG-veey that place makes Norway look like Germany minus the fun. If you’ve ever been trapped in the holding cell after the Maelstrom ride you’ll know what I mean by NORG-veey.

Seriously now, just deep six either Norway or Canada and get Australia in there. Everyone likes Australia despite 90% of the land mass being like the surface of Mars. Mexico is great though, being an excuse for having a maragrita stand for the win.

Yeah I said add Australia, not New Zealand. EPCOT needs that blindingly obvious landmark building and the Sydney Opera House would work great as a scaled down model. Also I have a hunch that there would be some inane sheep based ride that would make no sense at all. You’d be riding around in sheep cars looking at the history of sheep for two minutes and the ride would dump you into a shop filled with sheep shirts and mugs and stickers etc. So I defer to Australia just this once. Plus Paul Hogan could star in the Aussie attraction assuming he’s still alive.

Best Disney memory… listening to a teenage girl on a cell phone trying to find her friends with some in front of China and some in front of Japan in the World Showcase.

“but I’m right here!”

“I’m waving my arms… how can you not see me?!”

“I’m standing right in front of China and I can’t see you”

“Well I’m in China and I can’t see you either”

“…”

I had to help her out and explained this was in fact the Japanese pavilion.

“Some creepy guy just said I’m in Japan… I’m so lost”  (don’t ask me how you get lost on a path that is basically a big circle)

“Well I don’t know, it’s not like you can tell these countries apart”

So I pointed out that the scaled down Forbidden Place thingy in China had a golden roof visible from the entire lake.

…she looked at me like I was from NORG-veey.

Jen I Meant To Tell The Girls About This Cat Video

March 17th, 2008 Humor No Comments »

 Online Post-It-Note for the win. Sound is a little quiet.

I Absolve Comcast SportsNet For Its Insulting Slander

March 8th, 2008 Humor No Comments »

It’s not easy having a semi-unique name…

From the Associated Press news wire.

“A cable sports network says it no longer will make Athol the butt of its jokes…

…The ad featured two side-by-side signs that together read: “We can pronounce Worcester … without sounding like an Athol.”

A network spokesman said it apologized Thursday to… Athol by linking his name to a similarly sounding vulgarity… the advertisement required mispronouncing Athol to make its point. The correct pronunciation is “ATH’-awl.”

Also caught up in the melee as innocent victim is the town of Athol in Massachusetts. A town of about 11,500 in north-central Massachusetts, is believed to have been named for the Scottish second Duke of Atholl, who died two years after the town was incorporated in 1762.

Though Selectman Susannah Whipps was on record as saying she was more concerned, she said, about vandals who add an “r” and an “e” to town signs to change the name to “rathole.”

I may have misquoted slightly  

LMAO “Rathole”.

McFail at Math?

February 26th, 2008 Deeper Thoughts, Humor No Comments »

Okay so I’m a big heap of lame.

Jen is working late tonight so I’m cooking… actually for goodness knows why I’m on a serious fish kick, and even though part of me wonders if a Filet of Fish from McDonalds actually contains any actual fish, I’m having an overwhelming compulsion to eat two Filet of Fish.

The hard part is convincing my two darling little freaking salad munchers that we should eat at McDonalds, without allowing them to talk me into driving for 20 minutes to the McDonalds with the really big play place off exit 25 on I-84. I’m not driving a long ass way for “fast food”.

Anyway… the joys of my life want Chicken McNuggets. One wants 10, the other 6, with Bar-Bee-Queue Sauce the little one explains firmly as if speaking to someone venturing into McDonalds for the very first time unsupervised.

Honey… trust me, I’ve been there. Heck… I’ve even worked there. Heck, I’ve even been fired from there. Though I maintain to this very day that wouldn’t have happened if they had bothered to train me where the pull switch was located for the over the grill fire extinguishers.

True story by the way. Shut down the whole store for a night.

Anyway…

I need 16 McNuggets.

I can get a 6 and a 10 pack, but that comes to fifteen cents more than the 20 pack which costs $8.09.

Hang on.

Dollar menu… 4 pack… $1

4 x 4 = 16 McNuggets = $4 = LMAO I WIN!!!

McDonalds you McFail at math.

Or do you?

Thankfully Football Is Over

February 4th, 2008 Family Life, Humor No Comments »

Dear Jeff Brown takes football more seriously than I do, which honestly isn’t hard as I generally prefer to have the TV blaring Hannah Montana re-runs pacifying the kids than football. The Patriots play somewhere in New England and I guess are my default team and have been romping along undefeated all year. Which after all those Brazilian national soccer teams that were a complete lock on winning the World Cup, and all those New Zealand All Black teams that were a complete lock on winning the Rugby World Cup, I instinctively know that New England essentially had no hope of winning the Superbowl.

I know that the Patriots have been undefeated all year, the same way I know that Britney Spears opts for “shaved and commando” rather than “trimmed and panties”. For some reason the media just has to make sure I know this by belching the information at me 24/7. Left to my own devices I’d be completely in the dark about both. Actually Britney seems a bit under the weather lately, and I’ve reluctantly had to remove her from the list. When you start feeling sorry for Kevin Federline… well that’s a really bad sign isn’t it.

Anyway – I’ve been standing in line in the comments on Jeffs blog with a bag of salt and looking for open wounds the last few weeks. Just generally malicious intent.   

I actually watched the game Jeff - much to the disgust of my daughters who wondered what the hell happened to Dad as they hunkered down to watch Hannah Montana re-runs all night. You’re going to watch the whole thing? Seriously? How much have you had to drink?

If nothing else it was a decent game to watch. Can’t complain about 3 lead changes in the 4th quarter for watchability. One sided blow outs are boring to watch for the most part no matter the sport.

But what was with like half a dozen old people getting interviewed and holding the trophy before Manning was after the game??!?? Bizarre. Like we care.

I do get bored with timeouts though. I think if someone ran for President on a platform of baning timeouts from all professional sports that would swing at least 20% of the vote right there. Try sitting on your butt holding the ball and making a “T” sign with your hands in rugby and you’ll wake up in hospital as God intended.

My wife used to play in her high school marching band and the general view of bands standing around in New England winter weather is that you always cheer for the clock.

…GO CLOCK! YOU CAN DO IT! GO CLOCK!!!!!

So you can imagine her distress when everyone rushed the field at the end of the game jumping and screaming and then the officials put a second back on the clock like some kind of football CPR was required.

And what the fluffy bunnies is with Hannah Montana movie tickets costing $15?

Lazy Sunday

January 27th, 2008 Humor No Comments »

Outstanding Beastie Boys parody from Saturday Night Live.