Until then, I’m going to continue to be that dick you know who finds the idea of watching sports to be unfathomable and tedious.

    I can understand the enjoyment of actually playing a sport, though I tend to get carried away and hurt myself or others when I try to participate. But seeing a gaggle of overpaid meat-heads run around on the same patch of dirt for an hour or three when the outcome will surely do me neither harm nor good is a waste of video-game time. Fact***.

    But, sadly, this is not a view shared by my lovely wife. Heather has always loved hockey, and I’ve gotten used to the months of hockey games taking up our evenings and influencing our schedules. I consoled myself with the fact that Hockey would end come spring-time and we would get our nights back.

    In recent years she’s added baseball to her body of interest, night games of which now extend the sports season in our house through the summer months. I’m ok with that, too.

    But now we have this world cup stuff going on and, while such occasions passed without note in years past, I now find myself watching still more wealthy men running around a patch of dirt for hours. Only now it is all while plastic trumpets blare their hornet calls through our screen door to passing bugs. The insects are incapable of playing soccer/football.

    Speaking of which, I found a fish fly on a front window. Reminds me of my early years in St Claire Shores, where the harmless nuisances would die their little deaths all over your car at a moments notice.

The Ize Have It:For 24 hours, every time you find yourself using a verb ending in “ate” or “y”, change the ending to “ize.
    Nullify = nullifize, gravitate = gravitize.
Also, randomly add “ize” to common nouns to turn them into verbs.
    Tator Tot = Tator Totize, Pencil = Pencilize
Conversely, you should replace the ending of any verb that naturally would end in “ize” with “ate”. (Do not use “y”, as it is too short and doesn’t sound quite so self-important and douchey.)
    “Democratize” should now be “Democratize” and “illiminate” becomes “illuminize.”

Soup Talker: For one week, eat lunch at Panera Bread. Halfway through eating, carry on a loud, obnoxious, business related conversation with your soup. Gesticulate** using your spoon when making self-important points so that hapless passersby will be sure to be impressed with your awesome intellect.

Omniscient Interruptor: For a period of time no less than eight hours, do not allow anyone you speak with to complete a declarative statement. Interrupt at around the half-way mark of any sentence you hear by stating “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was talking about..,” and then follow with an anecdote that can’t be easily applied to the discussion at hand.

Bob: “And we decided that Dad had to go into a home because Judy can’t possibly-”
You: “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was talking about with Chad yesterday when he told me he didn’t want to pay for the premium kennel to take care of Kratos when he went to Houston. It’s gotta be hard, man.

Opinion Contrarian For 48.5 hours, any time someone begins to tell you about something they like or love, take the earliest opportunity to tell them that you are not into it, and the reason you are not into it is because you tried it once, and concluded that only a tasteless philistine would be fool enough to get into it.

Bob: “I don’t think I’ve ever missed an episode of “Enigma 2000,” that show just really gets under my skin.”
You: “Yeah, I watched an episode. I thought it was way too derivative and, really, poorly written. I pretty much just drink spring water and read Cigar magazine during that timeslot.”

Bob:”I drive a Volkswagon Golf. Just picked it up, and it’s a load of fun to drive.”
You:”I test drove one of those during a sneak-peek at the Troy Motor Mall. It was OK, I guess, if you like rattles and don’t care about quality car audio. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure its fine for you, but it just isn’t my kind of car.”

Popped polo collar: Pop your polo collar.

While these may all seem pretty tough, they represent some of the few exercises* a lay-person can easily perform without having properly prepared his or herself for douche-baggery. Just imagine the mental gymnastics a real douche-bag must go through in order to maintain all the douche-mannarisms necessary to maintain their

    I wore the cheap canvas thing all day, making an exaggerated show of placing things in, and taking things out, of it wherever I went.

    I’ve not a legitimate need for it, so I resorted to low-level kleptomania; stealing coffee mugs, pads of sticky-notes, a yo-yo, a stress toy, and others. Like a confused robin hood, I then would redistribute the stolen objects onto the desks of others.

    At one point I placed a sheaf of paper to be recycled into it, walked across the office to the shredder, and then methodically pulled page after page from the bag and fed them through.

    When I was done I took the staple remover from the counter and placed it into the mesh pocket I dubbed the “lisp mitten” for the feminine look I inadvertently adopted whenever I stuck my fist in it.

    Later, I removed the staple remover* and replaced it with a diet pepsi that was gifted to me. This bottle is empty, but still occupies the Lisp Mitten.

    I am ready to go home now and my murse’s inventory is:

• An empty plastic spill-proof coffee mug.
• A blue, lego robot fist.
• A disembodied foam head that parrots annoying catch phrases when squeezed
• A CDRom copy of Microsoft Office 97
• aforementioned empty drink bottle
• my cell phone, which expired of exhaustion some time past

    I’ve decided to leave it here for the weekend. No, I’m taking it home. I guess.