So What has That Lazy Blogger Been Doing, Anyway?

I apologize for the almost complete abandonment of this blog. A funny thing happens every time I try to crank this baby back up: life starts throwing tons o’ crap at me.

A lot of it is self-inflicted. I’m happy and excited to announce that I’ve been spending a significant amount of time lately creating and developing material specifically for stand-up comedy. I’ve actually tried writing material like this before, but I soon learned that it is very different from writing humor pieces. I struggled, got discouraged and gave it up for a while. However, something clicked in the last few weeks, and I’ve been writing like a madman.

Will I be successful? Who the hell knows. I could still bomb. In fact, a comedian friend of mine assured me that I will bomb…but that everyone does. At least I am having fun with it. I’m very excited about some of the material I’ve written. I just have NO idea if I have the talent to actually perform it.

I’m also the commissioner of a fantasy football league, which if you are not familiar with this, it’s when 10 or 12 idiots draft pro football players in order to win fictional games. As the Commissioner, I’m the Head Idiot. At least I make the rules.

I’m also a mortgage broker in a horrific real estate market, which for all intents and purposes makes me unemployed. At least that is what the income has been lately. As you can imagine, this has me scrambling for solutions as well.

So, with the stand-up crap, the fantasy football crap, and the mortgage crap, I am a seriously busy person for someone making $0 a month. However, I will try to get back here more often, especially after the draft is over. Meanwhile I have snuck over to MySpace and written four blogs since I last posted here. Why? I don’t know. All the blogs I post over there are kind of off-the-cuff spontaneous crazy stuff. Yet for some reason they always seem to turn out funny and get boatloads of comments. Maybe I should stick to random nutty blogs.

Anyway, here are the links to my most recent blogs:

Available for Hire: Top-Notch Applicant Eagerly Seeking Position for Non-Work

Are You Tied to an Electronic Leash?

A Blog About a Crappy Mortgage Market, Stand-up Comedy, and Commercials

Attention MySpace Photoshop Gurus (a Sort-of Contest)

Open Tryouts For the New Hottest Band in the World! (Fixed the Stupid Link)

Now that I've shown you how to get rich by doing absolutely nothing, I've developed a foolproof way to become an incredibly famous rock star--with groupies and everything--without ever recording any music!

See how you improve your life just by reading my stuff?

("Rock Star" link goes to my MySpace blog.)

Why Microsoft Needs to Hire Me

There is something distracting about a blinking cursor when you are trying to write creatively. Whenever I'm in one of my many bouts versus writer's block, I'll sit there looking at the screen, and the cursor will blink back at me with impatience, as if it's thinking, "Well? Still thinking? Not so funny today are you, Loser?"

I think they* should change that. Instead of a blinking vertical line, they should have something more soothing and conducive to the creative process. As I'm sure you've probably already guessed, my proposal is a mini-Keira Knightley. That's right; I think in every computer program that uses a cursor, a small picture of the British beauty should be looking back at you. She should have voice capability and speak in that incredible English accent, too. This way I don’t feel so badly when my idiot brain goes blank:

Knightley: “You haven’t typed in a little while. Is everything okay, Joeykins?”

Me: “I’m just drawing a blank here.”

Knightley: “Poor lad. I’d give you a massage if I could. Would you settle for me disrobing?”

Me: “Well, if that’s the best you can do…”

Oh, I know what some of you are thinking: “What about us women? What kind of cursor would we get?” And I have the perfect answer: Keira Knightley. Come on! She’s beautiful! Even another woman can appreciate that. She’d look better than a cursor, right?

Besides, I don’t want to borrow one of your computers and have some dude looking back at me.

*Whoever. Or maybe “whomever”. I’m a blogger, not a writer, dammit.

Jesus Christ, Action Figure (Apostles Sold Separately)

I read recently that Wal-Mart will soon be selling Jesus and other religious “action figures” designed specifically for children. Of course, being Wal-Mart, this surprises me about as much as another Bush Administration indictment. But I have to wonder: Who will be buying these things? Can you imagine the “playing” that will be going on in a typical household with these toys?

Mom: “Timmy! Quit hitting your sister with the Virgin Mary this instant!”

Timmy: “But Mom! She cooked one of my Three Wise Men in her Easy-Bake Oven!”

Sister: “Did not!”

Timmy: “Did too!”

Mom: “Both of you, shut up and stop ar—OH MY GOD…who flushed the Son of God down the damn toilet?!?

Sister: “That was Timmy!”

Mom: “Timmy, do you know how much a plumber costs?!?!”

Timmy: “But mom, YOU said he could walk on water!”

Mom: (sighing) “Jesus Christ”.

I Got Served

Thirty-six.

That’s my age, but a part of me basically refuses to believe it. And that is the part of me that decided to go play indoor volleyball last night.

I should know better. If I had to describe in five words what my feeling was after playing volleyball for three hours, those words would be “Burning Thigh Muscles of Death”. Well, I suppose “Very Painful Lower Back Contusion” or “Wrist Possibly Broken in Half” would also work, but those ailments aren’t the ones causing me, every time I sit down, to wonder if I’ll ever be able to stand up again for the rest of my natural life. You don’t even want to picture what it is like for me get up from the toilet.

Ha ha. Too late. You have that image stuck in your mind, don’t you?

Well, no offense, but screw you. You aren’t in anywhere near the pain I am. I think I may have bruised every surface of my body. I’m currently on an all-Advil diet. I’ll even take some Vicodin if anyone has it.

And to literally add insult to injury, physical ailments weren’t my only issue last night. I haven’t played volleyball since about 1993, and apparently since then, they changed all the rules. In the early nineties, the rules basically were:

1. If the ball came anywhere near you, try and hit it up in the air.
2. But don’t use your beer hand, lest you might spill some.

Last night, however, I was playing with semiprofessionals that take their volleyball very seriously and have all these new rules about what each position is supposed to do. They were always yelling things at me like “Get in the V!” and “Cover short serve!” and “Beer is not allowed on the court!” and “Stop crying!”

Okay, I’m kidding about the last two, but I really was always getting yelled at, mainly because, no matter where I went on the court, I was always in the wrong place. My teammates tried to help in-between serves, but they were always giving me incomprehensible advice like, “Make sure to play short on serve and immediately fade back afterward but only when we are serving. When they are serving be sure to cover the middle short zone then fade back to let the setter set”.

I would always say “got it” but when play commenced I’d continue to run around randomly bouncing off of my teammates. I’m pretty sure they all thought I was, um, “differently abled”. I’m beginning to agree.

Anyway that was last night; tonight I am just dealing with incredible pain. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m signing off now to go curl into a fetal position and die.