That's a paddlin...

Boost Mobile - you took a seminal childhood memory - the glorious, groundbreaking, and influential Super Bowl Shuffle - and you turned it into a bleary-eyed zombie-eaten corpse of itself. It burns, IT BURNS! Between this, the GI Joe movie, and a recent glimpse of my 3rd grade school picture, my childhood has really taken a beating this year. It's a damn good thing I'm an adult and I don't have to deal with that sort of...

Home purchasing - oh, wait, that's right, I have to do THIS, instead. I'd take a thousand locker shoves from Geoff Terman before I'd go through this again.
Mortgage broker: So if you get me this statement, and a copy of the checks, we should be good to go.
Me: Great! Here you go.
MB: I'm sorry, I meant THIS statement, and a copy of the backs of the checks as well.
Me: OK! Here you go.
MB: Oh, did I forget to ask for a complete sexual history? I'll need that, as well. Oh, and a copy of the original statement, but notarized and handwritten.
Me: Here. Take this.
MB: Oooh, my mistake. It seems that now the underwriter needs the ORIGINAL statement that you faxed three weeks ago, but it needs to come from the fax machine of one Jerry Boseman, of Butte, Montana. Here's his number, if you'll just
Me: Who's the closer now, bitch?

Dan Brown - I wasted 5 hours to read your stupid book, Dan. And I want them back. If you're going to just write the same damn story over and over again, at least hide some of the redundancy. And your obsession with large, hulking evil men who are all devilishly handsome and inhumanly strong speaks volumes about your...interests. I'm not knocking it: all I'm saying is, you're super gay. Own it. And stop publishing.

Sarah Palin - you're a retarded hypocrite.

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Booyakasha.

Festus - you're the size of my thumb right now, but evidently that's enough to make Wife nauseous for six weeks. ENOUGH. If you're going to be this big a pain inside the womb-a, G-d help us when you claw your way out in August. And if you think it's unfair that I'm already complaining about you and you're not even born yet, well...good luck in the Fancy Pants Clan, my fine little whatever-you-are-that's-not-really-a-person-yet-but-has-a-heartbeat-and-toes.

The Olympics - you are not interesting unless someone is crashing. And while there have been some great spills, everything has to have a heartbreaking story. I've got my own crap to deal with, Canada and NBC. I don't need to hear about how the Nordic Combined team all bonded over their shared experience of being adopted and then sold to a cult but then rescued by loving grandparents from Sweden who only wanted their grandson to be great at something, since little Tommy, Roy and Deke can't even read. Wake me when Community's back on.

February - go away, now. This month I have:
- received a black eye from Child,
- broken my own glasses with a lamp,
- had sharp stabbing abdominal pain that mysteriously disappeared after a quick run to the ER,
- dealt with the mortgage nonsense you read about just 30 seconds ago,
- had to deal with 3 feet of snow, and the narrowed streets and the awful drivers and the new and varied potholes and the leaks and the worrying about the new house and whether it's flooded and will we know before we move? because the seller sure isn't going to be forthcoming with that information,
- and now the melting of the snow, which means watch out for enormous falling icicles that will impale you and your loved ones! Hooray! And,
- Black History Month. Not that I'm opposed to blacks getting their own month, but history is boring. We have a black president! Let's hear more about him! Although...

Barack Obama - you are being a real big pussy, Mr. President. Sack up, slap Harry Reid in his old white face, and have Glenn Beck waterboarded. You are the leader of the free world, one of the smartest men to ever sit in the Oval Office, and you let Congress handle health care? Maybe you ARE retarded. In the meantime, own your agenda, and tell the Republicans where to shove their teabags. I know there's room for them all on Sarah Palin's chin. And now that she's working at Fox, it's not like she's got anything better to do.

Wait, don't go! I'm not through demeaning you yet?

I had a really crappy assistant, who I fired in November. She couldn't schedule a meeting, she thought she was better than her position but did nothing to prove it, she couldn't spell, and she had some special power for pissing off volunteers. And finally, I said enough, and she was gone. I'm assuming she's working somewhere else, but HR is shifty. She could be buried in my yard. There was some fresh dirt there the other day. Anything's possible with HR.

In the meantime, we interviewed some new candidates, and hired one. Ridiculously overqualified, but she said in the interview that she wanted a place she could grow and stay for years and years. Hey, she said so in an interview, it must be the truth, right?

Wrong. The falseness of that optimism astounds me, a week later. I am shocked at my naivete. It's like the time I heard loud noises from my parents' room, and I assumed they were having sex. But then what was the dead moose for, Dad? And the bullet holes in the TV? Answer me that, Mother!

Anyhoo, it was going great. She really was amazing - she was serious, read up on information on her own time, didn't use her work phone for personal calls...she even called me sir. SHE CALLED ME SIR, dammit. I can't even get Child to call me sir. Now that he's 2, he only refers to me as "the bald one, with the glasses and the fear." Sass gets you nowhere but a paddlin', boy.

Last week there was some bad weather, and my assistant is nowhere to be found. She doesn't answer the phone, she's not responding to e-mails, nothing. The woman sitting next to her is worried, even a little frantic - they've already bonded (see? Wonderful!).

Finally, around lunch, HR receives an e-mail: "After much thought and consideration I have decided not to continue working at ______. Thank you." NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I had plans! We were going to be a team! I had t-shirts, and hats! And now it's all ruined.

Was it the sexual harassment? Because I told Wife she's not allowed to call you anymore. Was it the pantsless work environment? Because I can wear a kilt. It's scratchy, but if you come back I'll deal. I won't scream at the wallpaper anymore, and if you want, I'll even throw out my dead bat collection, even though it was voted "Best Dead Bat Collection" at least year's holiday party.

At least tell me what I did wrong. I mean, it could literally be anything.

And now, I have to deal with a temp who rolls his eyes every time I ask him to stop using my desk for his earwax ball. I don't care if you work better with it over here, buddy. It's getting all confused with my earwax ball, and that will simply not do.

Your Joke is Funny, Because #1 - Wait, Where are You Going?

I like jokes. Like this one:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Interrupting cow.
Interru-
MOOOOOOOOOO.

A. Mazing.

But I also enjoy jokes of the more practical variety. You know, the "pranks," as the young folks say, on their Tweets and internets and whatnot. So I tried to bring this joy and whimsy to my office, which is not really known for its commitment to whimsy. Frolicking, absolutely - but not as much with the whimsy.

A coworker with a notoriously messy desk was out of the country for a month. She has been cajoled, harassed, poked and prodded to clean and organize her workspace for years, but there has been no change. So I said, "Hey, wouldn't it be a hoot if we took everything off her desk, and hid it? So when she comes back, it will look like her desk is clean! Whaddayasay, guys and gals?" And everyone in the clubhouse shouted "Hooray!" and carried me off for ice cream sundaes - in the sense that my boss and his boss both agreed this would be a fine idea.

The stage is set for a quality office prank, one that would not harm anyone, or result in the death of any minority or small fuzzy animals. And it would be funny, and we could laugh, and reminisce in our old age about how we put one over on old X.

And then my boss' boss, as is I suppose her duty, proceeded to suck the very life and humor out of the plan.

First, she ran it by HR. HR thought it was a terrible idea (surprise! God, I hate Toby).
Second, she called X. And told her what we were going to do. By then, however, it had changed into some sort of favor we were doing.
Third, she scheduled time on her calendar, as well as on mine and my boss'.
Why did she need to schedule time? Because Fourth, she decided that we were going to reorganize X's office for her, as a kindness.

I don't need to tell you what kindness does to funny. That's right, it beats it like a small child, then spits on it as it walks out the door. "Take that, funny. No one loves you." Kindness is SUCH a douche.

My joke on X became a joke on me, and my need to bring humor into inappropriate settings. Like, say, a meeting with my boss and his anal compulsive neat freak boss. I felt like an 8-year-old who's halfway done before he realizes that this is SO not worth the $1.50 his mother bet him that he couldn't clean his room in less than an hour. Only because I was in my office, I couldn't wet myself and light my bunk bed on fire.

Well, not at the office, at least.

Jewy Mannish

I don't know if you guys knew this, but I am a manly man. Burly. I have hair on my chin-y chin chin. I have so much hair I need to use Nads. Not, you know, on my nads, but still, if you had to remove unwanted hair, you'd have to use a product called Nads, wouldn't you?

Anyhoo, the Bears beating up on an old man on Monday night emboldened me and my manness. And my manness had taken a hit recently, due to staying home, mommy-style, with the Child all week, and not being able to fight in the War on Christmas this year because of some lingering laziness.

The Fancy Family was presented with a crisis this week - our gloriously large TV stopped working. And now we were supposed to "talk," and "be a family," and "not ignore each other's slowly intensifying rage." So quickly I responded, and determined what the problem was - the lamp needed to be replaced. And instead of succumbing to the whim and schedule of some electrician, I decided to fix it...myself.

I could build up more suspense, but I don't want to screw over my readers who are afflicted with heart conditions. It was super easy, and took about 5 minutes.

But my manness has returned! Yay!

But it still isn't working, which means that I need a new color wheel, which, from the internets, seems to be a much more complicated process. But with my manness, I shall overcome. Or cry trying.

In the meantime, it's back to "pretending to listen to Wife's crazy patient stories." Wait, that shouldn't be in quotes.

HOU

We're buying a house in Pittsburgh. I cannot decide if, long term, this makes me happy or excited or what.

I know it's the most adult thing I've ever done (other than that movie I was in that's now all over the internet. Just google "cable guy," and "karl hungus." You can't miss me.), and that includes fathering a child. This is all documents and numbers and investments and steel flashings and junction boxes and sconces. So if I wasn't bald already, I'd be losing my hair.

And that's on top of the fact that we're taking a seriously permanent step. In Pittsburgh.

Now, I love being able to afford a house, and daycare, and student loan debt. And Child loves his grandparents, and all the kids he gets to beat up at school. And Wife loves her best friend.

But I just bought a house in a city in which I have no real friends, and has a subpar music scene, and the only book store within walking distance is closing in three weeks, and whose communal commitment to education is, shall we say, somewhat less than I'd prefer.

A house means we're here at least another 5 years. 5! Years! That's a long time to have to call someone about great Community lines instead of relating them in person, or having just one person who likes to drink beer and ogle college chicks like a dirty old man (and no, my father-in-law doesn't like to drink beer). So as much as being an adult is cool and all, and now I get to play music however loudly I want to, I'm still not sold on this whole Pittsburgh thing.

Also, whine whine whine, blah blah blah. I bet this was a hoot and a half to read. Well Merry Hanukah to you too.

Where have I been? Where have YOU been?

An entire month. Thanksgiving, the FancyPants signature holiday (gluttony, sloth, wrath, football, and stuffing), and not a single word. What kind of a dick blogger am I, anyway?

Anyhoo.

I'm a big fan of the Chinese custom of naming years. Year of the Monkey? Who didn't throw some feces, am I right? And how about that Year of the Grinning Dragon? If I had a nickel for every snotty British prep school kid I lit on fire that year...(why yes, that WAS a Harry Potter reference. Thanks for playing)

For the past few years I've been naming years in a typically FancyPants kinda way. 2008 - Year of the Baby. 2009 - Year of the Turducken.

Some classics, by the way:
2001 - Year of the Syphilitic Dodo (Bush gets sworn in, 9/11, war, C's in law school. What an awful, shitty year)
1993 - Year of the Colored Jeans
2004 - Year of the Unicorn-Copulating Griffin (in terms of improbable events, cf. Red Sox World Champions, and the FancyPants wedding)

So comes 2010. My Naming Committee sits, and ponders suggestions.

The Year We Make Contact: too Arthur Clarke-y.
Year of the Book: Given my ability to keep current on a measly blog, I doubt we're seeing this Year until sometime in the 2060's.
Year of the Baby II: too expensive. Do you know how much those things cost in upkeep? Screw that noise.

Finally, we've come to a decision:

2010: Year of the House.

More details to come.

Oh, and in case you hadn't heard, BRANDON JENNINGS.

The Bears? SO not jerkin

Rod Marinelli continues to live up to his porno name, and bend us all over some piece of furniture that people are bent over for sex in a very uncomfortable place. Like a Volkswagen. This time it was the Cardinals, scoring and scoring until I just couldn't take it anymore.

So, for the first time, I switched off a football game, and began watching a movie about grrrlpower and the super wonderfulness of best friends.


Josie and the Pussycats is a tremendously underrated movie. The cast alone - Rachel Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson, Parker Posey, Seth Green, Alan Cumming of all people - makes it worthwhile. Then there's the satirical product placement, and the catchy pop punk.

But most of all, there is Tara Reid, in all her empty-headed glory. Sure, now she's unattractive and boozy and weird looking. But back then, she was a ditzy goddess, a walking blond joke. A female, live action Ralph Wiggum:

"These walls are mushy!"
"The tough make lemonade!"

And so on.

So no, I'm not ashamed.

The real question, though, is whether I'm overreacting. After all, the Cardinals are a solid team. So, it turns out, are the Bengals. And Crybaby is playing pretty well.

But my real concern is that I don't recognize my own team. A pass-happy team with terrible defense? I didn't realize I was rooting for the Oakland Raiders. If we use our first round pick next year on a receiver, I'm going to start freaking out.

Oh, that's right - we don't have a first round pick. We sent it to Denver with the Neckbeard.

Which brings me to my other problem with this season. In Bizarro world, Bizarro Fancy Pants is deliriously happy. The Bears are undefeated, with a 2-headed rushing monster - Matt Forte and (I can't BELIEVE I'm writing this) Cedric Benson. Neckbeard is under center, throwing short, sensible passes to people on his own team. Which is fine, because we're running all over everyone, and the defense is lighting people up. Mike Singletary turned down some absurd head coaching offer out west to come back to Chicago and coach the defense, and ever since their first game when they separated Aaron Rogers' legs from the rest of his body, no one wants to play them. Tommie Harris is a model citizen, because the only thing he's more afraid of than Coach Singletary is making Brian Urlacher angry.

And Rod Marinelli is lying dead in a ditch, or doing 50 chicks in a movie, or something completely unrelated to football, per the restraining order.

See what's going on there? There are a bunch of Bears having solid seasons - they just seem to be playing for other teams. And the current Bears don't resemble any Bears team that has ever worn Bears jerseys. Thus, Josie and the Pussycats.

Honk if you love hugs!
Honk if you love rainbows!
Honk if you love Pussy...cats!

Also - read this.