Monday, December 29, 2008

Quick Christmas Story

This is how my Christmas morning started:

4:30am Son comes into our bedroom and asks to go downstairs to see if Santa came. Wife agrees he can.

4:31am Son comes back up to say the cookies left out for Santa are just crumbs. Wife asks if he left any gifts downstairs. Son runs off to check.

4:32am Son returns to say the stockings by the fireplace are full. Wife asks if there were any gifts under the tree. Son runs off to check.

4:33am Son heard to gasp, followed by the sound of paper being rustled and gifts being opened. Wife jumps out of bed and is met by daughter in the hallway. They head downstairs to stop son opening everything. Sister-in-law, who is visiting for the holiday, heads downstairs too. The thumping sound on the stairs means Christmas 2008 is a "go."

4:34am My eyes open.

4:35am More thumping on the stairs, this time the unmistakable sound of two adults and two children running back up them.

4:36am I am informed that, along with the gifts Santa delivered for us, our cat Luigi had left a gift of a dead mouse in the living room. A dead mouse I am now being called upon to clean up.

4:37am Christmas morning is less than six minutes old, and I am cleaning up a corpse.

It doesn't stop there. Naturally, not being dressed, I took Squeaky RIP to the backdoor and tossed him out into the yard as far as I could without going out into the snow with no shoes or pants on. Two days later, Squeaky was still laying on top of the snow, perfectly preserved as if placed in the fridge. Which he was, of a fashion. This unfortunately meant I had to clean up more, although that really just meant tossing his tiny body a little further down the yard on to a patch where the snow had melted.

Let's hope it's a good one, without any more dead rodents to deal with.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Blog Entry From The Future

Holiday Greetings, and best wishes for a Happy 2029!

I hope this Christmas Holographic Message finds you in good spirits. I realize there probably isn't too much in here you don't already know - I mean, our reality show is broadcast 24 hours a day, as are most of yours! - but here's a series re-cap of sorts just to keep you all informed.

Patrick has excelled in the NFL since graduating from Rutgers and setting all those rushing records. He turned down offers from the Cyborg Football League and the Steroid Football League to stay "au naturale" and signed with the New York Giants. It wasn't that the CFL's New Jersey Microprocessors Sponsored By AOL didn't offer more money. In fact, their $38 gazillion offer was one of the lowest we got (including the SFL's Receding Scrotal Sacs Sponsored By Viagra's offer which included a plot of land of Mars for a vacation home) but we decided to go with tradition over cash in the end.

Penny has found work harder to come by since curing cancer last year. There just that many diseases around any more since Dr. Keeble-Broderick came along. Even Matthew and Sarah Jessica are frustrated when they are forever fielding calls for Penny from their Hollywood friends - even after Penny won that Oscar in the 2019 remake of Pretty In Pink.

And as for Jason... he graduates Archer next year and remains a glowing endorsement for modern day parenting science and a bitter reminder that even vasectomies performed by the very best robot surgeons aren't 100% perfect. Now pre-school has been condensed to just one year and a series of Intelligence Injections, we don't mind paying the matter transporter fees to take him back and forth from the city twice a week.

Gwen's Nobel Prize for her work transforming NYC into a city powered entirely by potatoes was certainly a highlight. The constant smell of french fries wafting over the river doesn't bother us - but we're told it drifts as far as the old hood in Allendale some days. We often wonder about the old house, but someone told us it was knocked down 10 years ago when the projects expanded. Who would have thought Allendale would replace Newark as the car theft capital of the world?

As for me, the book business has remained strong and has really boomed since my last novel "Love In The Time of Avian Bird Flu" broke all records. Who would have thought every man, woman and child alive would have bought three copies each? And those rumors about people traveling through time just to buy a copy from the past? All true!

Anyway, seasons greeting, I hope RoboSanta Sponsored By Coca-Cola brings you all you can legally request under President Clinton's tough new laws. Ah, sweet Chelsea! You used to be so cool! ... wait, no, I was just kidding around. Yes, I know it's against thought laws and I could be... yes... 10 years? For just saying... well... let me sign off at least... take your hands off me! Don't you know who I am??

AK

Monday, December 01, 2008

Shirt outta luck

The latest drama at the New York Giants is my fault. Sorry.

Here's the thing. Every time I buy a new Giants shirt with a name on the back, something terrible happens. So terrible I can't really wear the shirt again. In fact, now I think of it, it's not just Giants jerseys either.

A few years ago, a friend of mine was having a birthday just ahead of his Eagles playing in the Superbowl. We decided ("we" being a group of guys that would get together and play video games once a month) to get him a Terrell Owens jersey as a birthday gift. You know, because we're good friends. As you might remember, Owens got hurt and played in the big game pretty much on one leg, the Eagles lost, Owens got mad and started pissing everyone off wanting more money and he was eventually traded to the Cowboys, making him an instant hate figure among the Eagles faithful.

Anyway, back to my shopping habits/career-ending Giants incidents. Back in 2000 I bought a Jason Sehorn jersey - my first Giants jersey. A few weeks later he was involved in an infamous play where he stopped chasing a certain opposition player because his pants started falling down. He was traded not long after that.

Tiki Barber - surely a lock, and a Giants favorite forever? Not after I bought my special edition Barber jersey. I got it just ahead of the Giants Superbowl against the Ravens. Not only did the Giants lose, but Tiki suddenly forgot how to hang on to the ball and he fumbled his way through the next few months. He soon got a reputation as a bad influence in the locker room, badmouthing new QB Eli Manning, and decided to retire young (which I don't blame him for - he got beat up for years and wanted to enjoy his immense wealth while he wasn't in a wheelchair.) That said, he managed to undo all the good will he had earned from Giants fans with his acrimonious exit and my shirt is worth half what it used to be (at its peak, people would stop me in the parking lot and offer me cash for it.)

Again, I managed to end the career of another fan favorite when I bought a Jeremy Shockey jersey. Again, everyone loved Shockey. Oppostion fans hated him, and yes, he was an ass, but he was OUR ass. Unfortunately, on the 2008 Superbowl run he got injured and the Giants kept winning without him. He didn't like that, and soon he was traded to New Orleans and became a Giants pariah.

Plaxico Burress caught the winning pass in the Superbowl. How could I fail with a Burress jersey? He played the whole of last season's SB run injured and kept scoring touchdowns. And yet, after I bought his shirt, his lax habits got worse, and following a suspension this season there now follows all this unpleasantness with a gun.

I pledge my next jersey will be a throwback. History can't come back and bite me on the Jeremy Shockey. Meanwhile, what to wear to the game this Sunday?