In the ensuing carnage, which saw the senseless slaughter of the galloping horse, the ghost-riding drum-roll, silenced metronome, and both the yellow AND blue marching dinosaurs, it was believed that all breeds of MS Hands were likewise wiped from the face of the puhblic Darpanet. The housewives rejoiced, and Microsoft finally made inroads into the home market where IBM’s WaRP had previously held the lion’s marketshare*.

    Some objected on cultural preservation grounds, believing that there was a place in this world for even the tackiest digital castoff. Dancing baby, tumbling football, rolling eyeball: each were snatched from the brink of extinction and given natural habitats in places like the Florida Panhandle’s “Hello World Farms” and “20 GOTO 10,” a Pheonix area refuge.

    I joined the roster of volunteers and, in 2009, I followed an anonymous tip to a crumbling crack-house in Pontiac, Michigan and there I located the last working copy of Windows XP Professional in Michigan. I inserted the cartridge into my Atari and, casting glances over my shoulder at the mean streets outside, began a frantic search through the archaic Windows folder.

    I shook, eyes a-wobble, as a full glove** of White Man Hand cursors were found huddling together, surviving on temp files and abandoned installer logs. They were sad, having either become separated from the rest of their kin having eaten them in desperation.

    Originally, there were Black Man Hand cursors, Black Girl Hand cursors and even White Girl Hand cursors. While I still search for these other lost glove-mates, I am still proud to announce that I made it out of Pontiac with this charming glove of White Man Hand cursors.

    My wife and I hosted a successful stud program avoiding the dangers of in-breeding, and when combined with a custom INF file and a ZIP file, we are adopting out gloves of these proud critters to anyone willing to give them a home.

Unpack it somewheres. Open the resulting “Hands Cursors” folder, right-click on the Install.inf file and select “Install”. Now you can find the hands in the pointer section of the Mouse settings on your computer. This wouldn’t be necessary if you were running Windows XP, but there are no more Windows XP computers anymore.

    I popped it back mostly in place myself while waiting for the x-ray to be interpreted at the ER, and the picture you see here was the appearance of my shoulder the day after the accident. The discoloration running down my arm eventually turned into a beautiful blotchy, purple mess. (not pictured)
    Keep in mind I didn’t actually hurt my arm; the apparent bruising is actually the blood from the injury migrating away from the damaged tissue…probably because there’s not enough room up there.

    I visited my orthopedic doctor the very next day.

     On the 4th of July in 1776 America declared independence from its oppressive colonial masters. The surviving humans of the North American slave colony of New Jersey discovered, with the help of Ben Franklin and the then time-traveling Theodore Roosevelt, the fatal weakness of our alien masters, the D’Aret Krang.

     Ben Franklin’s research had revealed that the D’Aret Krang, a race of beings so genetically pure that they shared a single set of chromosomes, collectively suffered from a genetic propensity for epileptic seizures when exposed to bright, flashing lights. His rudimentary experimentation with electricity had failed to yield reproducible results, so Theodore Roosevelt was summoned from his time crypt once again to assist in finding a weaponizable source for blinky-blinkies.

     Unfortunately, Theodore Roosevelt’s time-travel machine had only one seat and this, combined with Thomas Edison’s homophobic fear of sitting on the manly lap of the massive Roosevelt, led the rebels to conclude that Edison could not be a part of the solution this time. Without Edison there was scant technology available to the desperate slaves of the time to take advantage of the newly discovered weakness.

     Fortunately Dolly Madison had an extensive collection of aesthetically pleasing incendiary devices gathered during her youthful journeys in the orient as a silk-trading ninja. A deployment of this technology was quickly organized by Paul Revere and El Quakerudo*, one which culminated in the simultaneous detonation of approximately 50 metric tons of saltpeter, gunpowder, and ‘fireworks.’

     The D’Aret Krang fell as one to the ground in a jiggly, hooting mass of alien flesh. George Washington and Nathaniel Hawthorn led bands of men in dragging our quivering former-masters into the very space craft that brought us our hateful overlords. They then programmed the ships to dive into the sun and America celebrated as the fleet of invaders burnt itself to cinders in the heliosphere if our favorite star, Sol.

     So join us in celebrating our victory, planet Earth! Thanks to our American forefathers (and a time-traveling Teddy) humans have been free to oppress themselves in peace ever since.

FREEDOM IS OURS! -peace out.

* Quakerudo is a musical group made up of youthful Quakers. As they discover their degenerate suxuality** they are replaced with fresh-faced and prepubescent replacements. There are always more fresh-faced and prepubescent replacements…

** I know what I said.

For the most part, I was startled at how old everyone looks, and I can only assume I looked startlingly old to them as well; though I just think of myself as looking like ‘me’.

There were lots of lumpier faces, balding heads and beer guts on the men. Most women were wider in the hips and had some crows feet on their faces.

Several of the ladies (and I’ll not name names) looked more attractive now than in high school but, AFAIK, none of the men fared as well. I think that’s more a testament to the God-awful clothes and hairstyles women wore in the late eighties than anything else.
In any case, I tried mingling, with middling success. I’d strike up a conversation, which almost always started with, “I’m Joe Whited and you are…?”, moved through the “where do you live?” and “what do you do?” stages, on to the “any children?” side-shot and tapered off with the awkward denouement, “yeah.. well…”

The group was small, but that fits the size of our class, really. (~80 graduates) And when we adjourned to the “rock” room @ ~22:00, Derek Jenza queued up an earsplitting assortment of period tunes the likes of which I’d grown tired of when still a virgin. This would be more tolerable had it not been mind-numbingly loud. I tired of trying to read lips and Heather and I beat a hasty retreat shortly thereafter.

I left regretting not the reunion, as it was inevitable and missing it would have left a nagging doubt in my mind forevermore, but I’m certainly reassured that my dogged resistance to looking back has been the correct path all along.
I thank the organizers, the ringleaders of which seemed to be Jessica Fritz-Echols, Sula and Derek Jenza. The latter seemed far more gregarious than I remembered him being, but it may be that the gloom-tinted glasses I wore in high school prevented me from seeing it. Class acts, all of them.

    Soon after that was a bike ride with my girls (and a tag-along friend of Sam’s) followed by a lunch-time trip to an arcade where an audience of strangers who didn’t know any better applauded my ITG play. Sam then shared a game of DDR with me and played many ticket games. She ultimately chose to bank her tickets in the form of a hand-written IOU rather than cash them in for the junk under the counter. She says the tickets were more valuable than the prizes because she can remember the fun better that way. Huh! She’s growing up faster than the grass in my back yard.

    Lastly, we ate a dinner of steak with my step-dad and now I’m home for the evening
.
    It wasn’t perfect; a paper wasp stung Heather and I seem to have lightly sprained my thumb. But these annoyances merely prove that today wasn’t a dream, and I can honestly say this was the best Father’s day I’ve ever had… though I’ve only had nine of them.

    Hope it was a great one for everyone else out there, and g’night.

    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.