I'm currently at my childhood home. Also my teenage home and up until about a year and a half ago, my "Holy shit, I can't believe I'm still living at home" home. One thing I've always done in this home is read all the ladies' magazines that were in the bathroom belonging to my mom and sisters. I've spent a lot of time in there. Plenty of good memories on that toilet.

Today I was flipping through Redbook, which is kind of like Cosmo for women about to hit menopause. On the cover is John Travolta with his three year old daughter and it says, "John Travolta with daughter Ella Bleu - EXCLUSIVE! - His secret struggle to give his beloved kids a normal life in a world where fame can be dangerous."

Apparently, Step 1 in John's secret struggle for that normal life is, "Plaster young daughter's face on the cover of a nationally published magazine." I think Step 2 is "Let that drifter maintenance man babysit her when I leave the house." Step 3 is, "Remove any semblance of normalcy from Ella's life, guaranteeing she'll write a tell-all book about me when I'm old and incompetent."

My favorite magazine is Cosmopolitan. There was once an issue where a girl wrote a letter that said, "Dear Cosmo. My boyfriend wants me to give him oral sex, but I hate doing it. He says that means I don't love him. What should I do?" The response was logical and what you'd expect. Something like, "No man can tell you what to do, so if you don't want to, don't do it. You are your own woman."

Then later in the magazine there was an article to the effect of "Ten ways to suck the cock off your man so he'll never leave you."

I'm watching an episode of Conan from back in December and Robin Williams is on. He is not funny. Robin Williams is not funny. I am not open to arguments to the contrary. I will not listen to anyone defend him. He's awful. That is all.

I probably burn my mouth twice a week. I'm a fucking idiot. Last night I did it twice. First on buffalo wings, then on pizza (I'm healthy). I think my mouth is sensitive, which just adds to my dad's theory that I'm gay. Other people will be eating this piping hot shit, and I know it's going to burn me, but I don't want to sit there and wait for food so I'll just eat it to prove that I'm a man, and then my mouth is scorched. I honestly do that on a regular basis. I've been to the dentist and he'll be like, "Whoa! Burned the mouth, huh?" And while I have a mouthful of drills and picks and dentist toothpaste, I say, "Yeah." Then he's like, "You fucking dick. Stop eating such hot food. You are obviously gay and can't handle your food temperature." My dentist is an asshole.

If you work with me and I happen to have a mouthful of poppy seeds, or perhaps a booger (hanging from my nose, not a mouthful of them), please let me know. Yesterday I got home and looked in the mirror and saw about three poppy seeds in my teeth. Or possibly eggplant seeds. Whatever they were, they were there for a while. And you didn't have the guts to tell me, you co-worker. And you have the nerve to call yourself a casual acquaintance. Granted, I should have checked my mouth after eating these things, but I'm a busy man! I've got things to blog about! Like this:

The only time that Times Square ever smells good is between 5 and 6 in the morning, because it smells like bacon. It smells so fucking good. It's like a city whose main industry is bacon. Every district would be the Bacon District. That would be the best city ever. Better than the Doritos city I once wrote about. I'd be like that dog in that commercial who is all, "Bacon! Bacon bacon bacon! I smell bacon!" The smell is even more potent and awesome if you've been drinking the night before. So here is my suggestion to you. Get your ass to NYC (make sure it's a weekday), get nice and drunk, sleep for three to four hours and then get into Times Square and let your sense of smell take over. If you don't drink, just drink this one time and then go back to your straight edge ways. God will forgive you Drinky McSober.

I should be on the New York Tourism Board. I'd sell the shit out of this city, all based on my "You should be in Times Square when the city smells like bacon" campaign. I would sell t-shirts that say "I (heart) NY When It Smells Like Bacon". There would be signs that say "Welcome to the Big Apple" and the apple in the picture would be wrapped in bacon. Every terror security alert would be Code Bacon. Kevin Bacon would be our mayor. "Bringing Home the Bacon" would be our motto. Calling a cop a "pig" would be not only tolerated but mandated.

I'm very excited about my new city.

I drove down to DC this past weekend, and being that we are all Code Orange all the time, there are some friendly reminders on the highways that it's everyone's job to fight terrorism. On those electronic highway signs, which in a pre-9/11 world alerted us to traffic delays and construction, there is now this warning: "Heightened Security Alert - Report Any Suspicious Terrorist Activity".

Since I was supposed to report suspicious activity, I didn't report any of the normal every day run of the mill terrorist activity. I saw suicide bombers and hijackers and political figures being kidnapped, but as far as terrorists go, that's a pretty average day. Nothing suspicous about that. I did see some terrorists playing shuffleboard, which is awfully suspicious. I reported those fuckers post-haste.

I feel bad for any people of Middle-Eastern descent who go on vacation now. If you are a Muslim looking dude, you can't take your video camera out to film your family without Fearful Americans reporting you. And if they do any filming, it can't be in front of any sort of landmark, because people will think it's for some terrorist training video and you are going to try and blow up Cinderella's Castle. All photos or video now has to be in front of nothing significant. "And here we are with the kids in front of a, uh, tree there. You can't see it, but the Golden Gate Bridge is over to the right of us. I would have taken a photo of it, but, you know. Didn't feel like taking an extended vacation to Camp X-Ray."

CNN was showing some of their exclusive terrorist video recently. They have this footage from a training camp, and it looks pretty normal. There are guys doing the obstacle course monkey bar, crawling on their bellies kind of thing. The same thing you might see in a training video of any military. But then all of the sudden, they show these guys diving through a hoop of fire. Wha? I'm assuming someone in al-Qaeda got their hands on an American training video and used it has a model. But whoever they stole it from accidentally taped over part of it with the circus.

"Ok, I've stolen the tape from the Infidel's army. Now we need to set up a shooting range and a nice big obstacle course. And oh yes, we will need a hoop that we can set on fire."

"A hoop?"

"Yes. To jump through."

"They have to jump through a hoop?"

"Indeed. To build a strong army like the evil Americans, we need to do exactly as they do, and if they have their soldiers jumping through fire, we will do the same. And we are also going to need some elephants and a monkey on a tricycle."

Hi there. Had a bad day? Stub your toe? Your boss is a dick? You're pissed Clay didn't win American Idol? Your dad is annoying? You don't have enough money to go out drinking both nights this weekend? You have a headache? Got a cold?

Consider yourself lucky you whiny bitch.

The other day I was eating lunch in a big food court setting in the Jersey City office I no longer work in. Two maintenance men were sitting there eating lunch with nothing to say to each other. One was a small, weaselly looking fellow, and the other was an older, crotchety looking man. After saying nothing and just eating their food for a while, the smaller guy abruptly said, "You know who used to hump my girlfriend?"

I never found out who used to hump his girlfriend because my brain got stuck on the word "hump". Who actually uses that word when talking about sex? The only time it's ever used is when talking about bunny rabbits, or people who have lots of sex like bunny rabbits, or in the case of dogs having relations with a human leg. It's never used seriously.

"Dude, how was your date last night?"
"Pretty good."
"Oh yeah? Ya get humped?"

"Mary, how is your boyfriend?
"He's great. He humps me so good."

The weirdest part about it was this guy was talking about his own girlfriend.

Speaking of getting humped, I was recently at a gay bar for a friend's birthday party. He is gay, hence the gay bar. It wasn't some kind of unfortunate accident of a straight friend of mine. It wasn't like really gay gay bar, but more of a regular old bar, except most of the guys were checking each other out. I witnessed no openly gay relations.

The saddest part about the night for me was at one point I realized, that for the first time in my life, I was in a bar where I knew for a fact that I could have so easily gotten laid. Gay guys love the humping.

I was recently cleaning my room when I found a piece of paper with my handwriting that read, "Nothing pleases me. I am mildly retarded."

I have no recollection of writing that, and it had to be within the past year because I've only been living in my apartment since last June.

I am disturbed by this.

I also found mouse poop. This is less disturbing.

Last night I slept like a baby. I woke up crying twice and I crapped myself.

If you don't live in the NYC area, you are missing out on the greatest thing any local news station has to offer. That is the Fox 5 Problem Solvers. And when I say "greatest", I mean "worst". Every news station has something like this, where they usually try to fight for someone who has been wronged. Usually, it's Joe Average Consumer trying to get what's rightfully his. And most of the time, the "problem solvers" are the most irritating, badgering, relentless and annoying people. The Fox 5 Problem Solvers all wear black leather jackets and they talk really loud and walk really fast and are often carrying a tape or documents that will help in the solving of a problem.

Last week, during "24", they kept previewing what the Problem Solvers had in store for us tonight. Somthing "you've gotta see to believe." It was more video of the 9/11 hijackers who went to a strip club a couple of days before the attack. They showed ten minutes of security camera footage of the terrorists getting lap dances. They also sped it up to a ridiculous rate of speed, so it looked like these were the best strippers ever. Here was a conversation I did not have with a friend the following day.

Me: Did you see the Problem Solvers last night?
Friend: No. What problem did they solve?
Me: I'm not sure they solved any problems, but they showed the terrorists getting lap dances. From strippers!
Friend: Wait, the 9/11 terrorists?
Me: Yes, those terrorists.
Friend: Holy shit! They were in a strip club?
Me: Yes.
Friend: Wait wait wait. The guys who killed 3,000 people were in a strip club.
Me: Yes, can you believe that?
Friend: No.
Me: My view of them has totally changed.

I'm not sure what they were trying to accomplish in this report. It was ten minutes of these tapes, interviews with the owner of the strip club, and video of the Towers collapsing. It was honestly the most disgusting display of "journalism" I've ever seen on television. It was just an excuse to show strippers and take the 9/11 footage out of the archives. It was basically sex and violence, which is what most local news has become. There was no point to the story. They tried to play up the, "These guys say they are religious, but would religious men be doing this??"

No matter what else is discovered about the hijackers, I'm pretty sure nothing will top the time they hijacked planes and crashed them into buildings.

If you watched the President's speech last night on NBC, the announcer said that Friends would return after the "brief" statement by the President. If you were like me, after 15 minutes of him talking, you were thinking, "What the fuck, Bush? They said you'd be brief." Well it turns out that they changed the speech at the last minute. This was the original speech:

"My fellow Americans. We have won the war. We are awesome. Who wants to feel my muscles? Go ahead. Don't be shy. (President will then flex for about fifteen minutes, much like Hulk Hogan used to, after winning a wrestling match.) Thank you. And may God continue to bless America and ignore the rest of the world."

The other night I was out with my friend Anise, and there was this guy at the bar, who kept staring at us. He obviously wanted in on our conversation, because we are so fucking interesting. I am not opposed to talking to strangers, despite what my parents taught me as a boy, but this guy was just annoying. He was just staring, waiting for us to talk to him. Finally he started talking to us and gave Anise a lei. Apparently he was in Hawaii earlier in the night. He then said something like, "I've had such a terrible night." He wanted us to say, "Awww, what happened there, fella?" But neither of us were really interested. Here was our conversation.

Guy: Sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to give you this. (Places the lei around Anise's neck)
Anise: Thanks.
(AWKWARD SILENCE)
Guy: I've had a terrible night.
Me and Anise (both nodding): Oh. Huh.
Guy: Yeah, it's just been really bad.
Anise: What happened?
Guy: Just about everything.
Me: Before you go any further, no one you know died, right? I wouldn't know how to handle that.
(Guy just stares at me. Now I'm thinking, "Fuck, someone did die." Turns out no one died, though. He was King of Drama.)
Guy: No. But I've felt like killing myself tonight.
(More awkward silence)
Anise: Hey, the night is still young!
( I laughed hysterically and the guy turned back to his beer. He left after about twenty minutes and after he saw Anise take off the lei.)
Anise (as the guy was leaving): Damn. I'll feel bad if that guy kills himself.

Are we terrible people? I don't know, but that dude was annoying.