You're Gonna Cry Like a Little Girl

When I got married last year, I went from having 3 guy room-mates to having 3 girl room-mates, 2 of whom were under the age of 6. Most guys would think that is a pretty sweet trade-off, and I must admit, I love all 3 of my new roomies.

On a somewhat related topic, when I was a young boy I heard and used the phrase "cry like a little girl" quite frequently. As in, "don't make me come over there or I'll make you cry like a little girl" or "we made fun of Matty until he started to cry like a little girl" or "I punched Brian in the stomach and he started to cry like a little girl" and so on and so forth.

I never thought much about "crying like a little girl"... I just grew up knowing that if a boy cries, then he may as well be a little girl. I must admit, on my first day of kindergarten I was walking to school with JD (who shall remain partially anonymous) when he started to run while I was still walking... about 15 seconds later the bell rang and I just started crying - mostly out of fear from stories I had heard about teachers beating kids who were late to class - and JD turned around and yelled (within earshot of a bunch of kids who were then running to class), "Look at Pete! He's crying like a little girl!" and then he ran on to class.

Well I ain't no dummy... and I learned my lesson that day and never cried again. And I intend on never crying again, for I have a deeply imbedded fear of once again being compared to a crying little girl.

Let me now connect the dots. Since trading my 3 guy room-mates for 3 girl room-mates, I have a whole new perspective on what it means to cry like a little girl. Over the last year, I've had MANY experiences that ended/started/contained crying little girls - and let me add that I love all of these experiences and all the female participants :)

I've come up with a Top 10 list of reasons underlying the "crying like a little girl" experiences we've had in our house recently. In each of these situations, I was surprised to hear a little girl crying (more like weeping in most cases), for what appeared to me to be no good reason at all... so in each scenario, I asked, "Why are you crying?" and these were the Top 10 responses:

10. "Because nobody counted for me while I was rinsing with mouthwash."
9. "Because I can't get my little shirt off over my head." (Yes, the child's head is disproportionately large compared to her body, like all other children's monstrous heads)
8. "Because I can't see any sparkles in my eyes when I'm sick."
7. "Because my tummy growled at me."
6. (Hiding behind her mom who was unplugging their toilet...) "Because the toilet started to overflow and I got really scared."
5. (The day after #6) "Because I can't flush the toilet, I'm too scared."
4. "Because my cookie had too many chocolate chips." (WHAT!?!?!?! This girl is a choco-holic!!!)
3. "Because too many tickets came out of the machine while I was playing and it scared me really really really really bad." (The machine was a Skee-ball machine...)
2. "Because I have too much poop and I can't get it out and ... can you help me?"
1. "Because, because, because ... I don't know why."

Yep, just crying like a little girl.

Get Your Nosehairs Here!

Ok, so in celebration (?) of my pending 30th birthday, I have been thinking about life. In the deepest sense you can imagine. My life really hasn't changed much since youth, except that I get excited about different things now. (And now that I'm mostly grown-up, I think He-Man is actually, really, very gay [seriously, go back and watch an episode now and you'll be convinced]).



So that's about all that has changed since my youth. And I have a few hairs now that grow where they didn't used to, but that's another story. Maybe. Now that I think about it, these two ideas come together in one beautiful celebration of my rapidly approaching 30th. Follow me on this one, if you dare...

The one thing from my childhood that made me the happiest:
Hearing people say, "Just wait til you grow up and can't play all the time" and thinking to myself that when I grow up, I'll just choose to keep playing, no matter what age. And thinking to myself that these old people were really dumb for not playing anymore. I like to think I was pretty easily satisfied as a kid.

The one thing now that makes me happiest:
Successfully pulling out nosehairs in my cubicle at work.



A successful nosehair pull is one that doesn't cause me to sneeze; doesn't cause my eyes to water uncontrollably; doesn't cause me to blow my nose at least twice; doesn't cause my face to distort for at least 10 seconds; doesn't take 12 tries to get it out, each try more eye-/nose-watering than the last; doesn't happen when someone walks by behind me; doesn't result in my elbow hitting the corner of my desk really hard and then having to explain to the guy in the cubicle next to me what the big bang noise was. That's about it for my qualification of a successful nosehair pull.

Am I alone? Does anyone else out there pull nosehairs in the privacy of their cube?

That's all I really want now that I'm old. er. Older. I just want to fade away gracefully, riding a horse into the sunset, having had another successful day at the office. Ridding the world of one nosehair at a time.

Factory Recall: All Calvin Stickers

We are issuing a formal factory recall on all "Calvin" stickers. They are not working as intended, and are causing inadvertent anger toward any and all proponents of these stickers.

It does not matter which type of Calvin sticker you have on your vehicle. Whether he is peeing on a Ford symbol, Chevy symbol, Dodge symbol, or your school's nemesis.

It does not matter how long you have had it on your vehicle. Even if you bought it used five minutes ago and the prior owner put it on.

It does not matter where you were born or raised. Hey, I say "squoze" and I know better than to have a Calvin sticker on my car. Heck, I know better than to have a truck in the first place.

It does not matter whether you knew your mother as a child or whether she beat you with a bamboo stick.

It does not matter when you were born. Even if you were born while your mother was watching an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard or The Fall Guy.

It does not matter how tall your girlfriend's hair is. That's not an excuse for anything anymore. Sorry. That used to be good for anything.

It does not matter if your father was Bill Watterson or if your imaginary pet tiger's name is Hobbes. In fact, if either of those things is true, then either your father or your imaginary pet tiger is exceedingly ashamed of you and they want nothing to do with you ever again so you should probably drive your truck off a cliff asap.

Whatever reason or excuse you have for that Calvin sticker, IT DOES NOT MATTER. If you have a Calvin sticker on your vehicle, TAKE IT OFF. No one wants to know how stupid you are. If you need it explained to you any more than this, you won't understand.

Stop being an idiot. If not for your own sake, then for everyone else's.

"Are you a redneck?" "Nope. I'm a Zen Monk."

I'm going to say something that will shock you. I've read a couple of books in my life. There, done. I know, you're amazed. But let me keep going... I've read a couple of books in my life about Zen Buddhism. Shocked even more? I read the books to help me find my "inner peace" and improve my golf game. This blog is not going to question my motives for learning about Buddhism... but yes, it was purely to improve my golf game.

Zen Buddhists believe in an "awakening". An awakening is when you remove the scales from your eyes and begin to see yourself as your real self. No contrived ideas about who you think you are, or who you think someone else thinks you are, or who you think Phil Jackson thinks you are... just the real you.




I had an awakening about a month ago.

It starts with sourdough bread. And actually, it ends with sourdough bread. My wife had told me of a type of sourdough bread she wanted to make one night. It involved the squeezing of grapes into the dough and letting the dough ferment for a few days before baking. Sounds great, right?

So she made the bread a few days later. This is where the story gets interesting. The next day, I was sitting in my cubicle at work eating a sandwich on this sourdough bread, and I was just saying, "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..." as I savored this delicious bread. My boss asked what was so good. So I began to tell him about this bread. This is where it gets more interesting.

I recall my retelling of the bread-making process going something like this:
"To start, she squoze the grapes..."

My boss stopped me there. "Squoze?"

"Yeah. She squoze the grapes..."

My boss stopped me again. "Squoze?"

"Yeah. She squoze the grapes..."

By this point, my boss was laughing. "Squoze? Squoze ain't no real word, y'all."

"Oh yes it is, I've said it since I was a kid. There's no other way to say the past-tense of 'squeeze'. What do you want me to say, 'squeezed'?"

After consulting three dictionary-type websites, the so-called word "squoze" was smitten, or 'smote', to the ground. In a big, bloody heap. And I was left feeling like a... (what is a nice way to say 'redneck'?)

This was my Awakening experience. It was just as amazing and peaceful an experience as I had read about. It was an out-of-body experience. I truly felt as if I was floating in the air, seeing myself from the outside in. As the redneck I really am.

Managing the Waste of Me

The other day I was just coming out of a Benadryl Low and was in this semi-drugged/ semi-hung-over state, when I began reminiscing about how great a person I am... (a favorite hobby of mine)

...and I realized that most of the people around me throughout my life had WASTED MY EXAMPLE. (Let that sink in for a minute - it's really deep, especially for me).

This saddened me. I felt almost as if I should cry. But rather than empathize with others (or sympathize? I always confuse the two. Maybe that's why I shy away from doing either..), I just decided that I need to do a better job at reminding those around me of how good an example they have.. in me.

So to all of you who read this, I would just like to say, "Please stop wasting my example. Use it for your own good. Use it for the good of others. Use your own discretion and conscience in determining how to use it. I trust you can and will use it for the betterment of everything in existence. Just PLEASE STOP WASTING MY EXAMPLE. Thank you."

The Day That Ex-Lax Saved My Life

Was last Friday.



I will never talk bad about Ex-lax again. It will forever be close to my heart. I don’t want to share too many details but let me summarize with a few bullet points:
• Monday morning had food poisoning.
• Went to hospital that day.
• All food removed from my innards.
• Began eating solid food couple days later.
• By Friday, I needed to get some of that solid food out really badly.
• Friday at noon = Volkswagen trying to squeeze through a straw.
• Straw didn’t want to explode.
• Ex-lax saved my life.


I learned a few things that day:
• Ex-lax is not just for brownies.
• It is a humbling thing to feel with a fairly high level of certainty that your survival today depends on either a little box of Ex-lax or a Cesarean section.
• It is a scary thing to realize that you just ate 3 little cubes of Ex-lax when the recommended dosage is only 2.

Wo- Men’s Lib

Do women really want equal rights? Do men really want equal rights?

I’m answering both questions with a resounding NO. Then what do we really want?

Men, well men just want to watch the game and be left alone. Men would just as well let the woman have all the rights. Just give a man a tv, espn, some old pizza, and he’ll be happy. Even if it’s in a jail cell. On a pee-stained mattress with no sheet.

They say women are difficult to figure out. Well, after 5 months of being married to one, I have them figured out.

Women, I’ll tell you what women want. Women want men to want what they, the women, want. Women want men to want to talk about things. Women want to feel, not only that you listen to them, but that you want to listen to them instead of reading your Sports Illustrated. Women want you to want to do the dishes instead of watch the football game. Women want you to want to stay home and babysit instead of golf with your friends while they go shopping. Once a man finally wants what the woman wants, there is peace and happiness. All women will deny that this is what is required for a peaceful relationship. But trust me, it is the truth (look at the title of this blog, I know the truth).

Ok, so now that we know all about men and women we can discuss this on a grand scale. Women have been fighting for “equal rights” for years. They feel (and I would agree) that they have not been treated as fairly in our society (and many others) for a long time. They are right. And our society has been responding, slowly, for a long time. Women can vote, buy alcohol, hold powerful jobs in Corporate America, and run for president.

They can even wear pant suits.

Women are basically doing a lot of things that were reserved for men just a few years ago… that has been the main thrust of the Women’s Lib movement… to empower women by giving them what only the men had. I think we need to start slowing things down though… I mean, if the women keep doing things previously reserved for men, they are going to end up sitting around in their underwear playing videogames all night. They will soon stop showering. They will swear off floss. They will increase the speed at which they drive (ok, maybe not such a bad thing…).

Ok, now on to the men. Or as I call us, the Oppressed of the New Age. In my first job out of college, with an international accounting firm, my starting class was a group of about 400. Of those 400, over 300 were women. Is that because accounting is a woman’s job now? Possibly. But I don’t think so. The company I worked for is currently ranked in the top 20 on Forbes’ Best-Companies-to-Work-for-If-You’re-a-Woman list. Or as I call it, Forbes’ Best-Companies-to-Work-for-If-You-Want-to-Oppress-Men list. Basically, to be that high on the list means giving more jobs to women than to deserving men, promoting women faster than deserving men (most women averaged 2 years to first promotion while for men it was closer to 3 years), and allowing women to wear much more revealing clothing than men (women can get away with wearing any type of revealing clothing without it even being questioned… in fact, it’s almost encouraged by all the perv men in powerful positions; but if I wore a low-cut shirt that also revealed a little of my midriff when I either sat down or stood up I would be reprimanded by a powerful corporate woman right away. Not that I want to, I’m just making a point.) So, as a man I have a harder time getting a job, then getting promoted once I get that elusive job, and I can’t even wear the exciting clothing that just might help me to get the job and the promotion in the first place! I am beginning to feel oppressed as a man in this society.

(But then again, maybe the women want us to want that…..)

Side note: And what’s with this double standard of wanting to be equal but still playing from the women’s tees in golf? Equality ain’t fair, is it? Men are slowly beginning to realize this.

Men, we need to rise up and even things out. We’re fighting on a battlefield that has been tilted too far away from us. Sure, we (or our parents) kept the women down for years… but does that mean we have to suffer because of it today? Should I pay for my parents’ mistake? No! We must level the playing field, men! Opportunity for all, pant suits for NONE! And while we’re at it, let’s just make everyone play from the same set of tees.

Camo- Karma- Camo- Karma- Camo- Karma-elian

So ... remember a few months ago, I wrote a blog that BASHED camouflage clothing worn by non-military civilians TO BITS?

Well, as karma always gets its way, I feel like I need to update all readers of my current situation.

In the past few months, I've had some drastic changes in my life - got married, went to Cancun for a couple weeks, moved my wife & two new step-daughters two thousand miles across the country in the middle of the AZ summer, closed down the smoothie shop, worked at a CPA firm doing taxes for a couple of months, decided to get back to the corporate world and lengthy commute I had sworn off less than a year before, began crossing my legs in a more "european" way, and the biggest change of all ... had camo introduced into my life.

Let me explain - my 6-yr old step-daughter just began first grade a month ago. She has the most amazing sense of intuition I have EVER beheld. And she is curious to the Nth degree to add to that. Which makes for a potentially very dangerous situation at home. Anytime my wife and I might be up to something ... well, something that newly-weds are wont to be up to ... "WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING IN THERE?! HEY, WHY IS YOUR DOOR LOCKED?! OH WELL, I KNOW HOW TO UNLOCK IT..." Yeah, this kind of stuff happens all the time. I know what you're thinking, just wait til she goes to bed... well her spider sense is so profound that she will wake up if she feels there may be something going on. (And there's NO possible way she can hear us over the fan in her room...) Anyway.

So I had never said a word to her (the anonymous 6-yr old) about my feelings toward camo. But somehow she must have just sensed it. About a month ago, while the girls were out back-to-school shopping, I get a text from my wife who knows and shares my feelings toward camo, "[anonymous 6-yr old] just insisted that her new shoes are camo. She wouldn't choose anything else. I couldn't stop her. I tried everything I could. Sorry." Nothing I could text to my wife at that instant could express how deeply saddened I was.



And nothing I could text my wife at that instant would make the young camo-ist change her mind. In the week following the camo shoes coming into our home, three other pink camo articles of clothing made their way into our home, a mere 40 feet from where I sleep. And a mere 45 feet from where I eat my PB/Nutella slightly toasted sandwiches every morning (another blog for another day).

SHE SOMEHOW COULD SENSE MY ABSOLUTELY UTTER ABHORENCE TOWARD CAMO. And she just HAD to rebel against that distaste.

Apparently, camo is all the rage right now. But guess what? I COULDN'T CARE LESS.

AND NEITHER COULD KARMA.

But that's how karma works, right?

Kobe ain't got nothin' on "The Truth"

(...unless you count lying and cheating...)


Since when has a multi-million-dollar, I-can-get-away-with-anything-in-life-because-I'm-a-great-basketball-player JERK been trying to rip off MY idea?

SINCE NOW! Kobe is trying to take over my "The Truth" thing with a blog of his own.

Kobe Bryant Attempts to Speak "The Truth"?

For a minute, I'm going to talk to Kobe. Feel free to ignore me until I'm done ranting at his smug Laker face-

Kobe, you don't know the truth. Your life has been one big lie after another. Ever since that little fiasco in Eagle County (remember, YOU CHEATED ON YOUR WIFE and made the mistake, if only that time, of getting caught), you've had about as much credibility as Sly Stallone doing Rocky XXIV purportedly without steroids. Good thing for you that at least you had enough money to buy your wife back with that $4 million dollar ring. But let's be honest... she's gonna take more of your money and run the next chance she gets, so you gotta keep your little fiascos out of the news. Man, even Moesha saw through your little web of lies and gave up on you (4th bullet up from the bottom), before it was too late for her. I dare say she was more qualified to write "The Truth" than you are. Yeah, that's a virtual e-slap in your face.

I want you to give up "The Truth" business and leave it to those of us with some integrity and an active moral conscience. I mean, I write about Poop and David Hasselhoff's music and Muffin Tops and Loofas and ... and ... Poop!

If you continue to taint "The Truth", then what are people going to be able to believe? You are the worst kind of bad guy - the one who pretends to be good and fools those of us who aren't intuitive enough to see through your little charade.

Please don't ruin "The Truth" for the real good guys. Like me.

Poop is funny

Why is the word "poop" so funny? I always thought it was just boys that loved that word, but apparently it's girls, too. Since becoming a step-father to two girls, ages 4 and 6, I've realized just how funny the p word is to little girls, too... any time they get into a funny or giggly mood, out comes poop. There's no way around it. Doesn't matter what they're laughing about, one will ALWAYS say poop, no matter how badly it clashes with the topic at hand. When everybody is laughing, hearing the word poop just makes us laugh more. It seems to be a tried and tested rule of comedy- if someone is laughing, throwing a little poop in makes it better. The old cliche is true... there truly is no stopping poop sometimes.

When I was young, I remember thinking to myself, "I know I'm gonna get in trouble saying poop... so... if I'm gonna bust it out, it had better be in a situation that is going to get maximum appreciation from the crowd." Honestly, I would strategize when to drop the proverbial poop bomb on the crowd. I found that if you pay attention, a perfect moment will arise when the word just begs to be said- in ANY and EVERY conversation. I challenge you to try paying attention to each conversation you have for the next three days to see when you could drop a poop in for maximum impact. Your poop sensing will become more accute and you will start to either develop or re-kindle the ability to know when and where to bring up poop in each conversation. Even if you don't actually drop the poop in, you will recognize these opportunities as they arise and then also as they subside.

We have definitely become de-sensitized to poop. Like I said before, I used to get in trouble for dropping poop when I was young. But the comedic effect was always worth going without dessert, if my parents heard me. I mean, a few well timed poops at school and I was labeled as a very funny child by my peers in elementary school. I just knew where to throw down a poop... it was never around my parents cause they just didn't appreciate a good poop. But kids my age were always impressed with a nice, strategic poop. Unless, of course, there was too much poop coming out... that usually caused the dreaded thought in others, "His only material is poop" and that was a comedy career killer. So I settled into a good frequency of pooping at a young age. It's amazing how much of my self-image I owe to poop.

I'm sad to say that my poops have been rather infrequent lately... I just never feel that pressing need much anymore. No uncontrolled poop outbursts; no planned, tactical, thought-out-in-advance poops; basically no poop at all anymore. I know, it's really sad. Maybe that's why I am delighted when I notice kids using poop to get laughs now. I admire a good pooper, almost like it's a long-lost art form...

Kids have it easy with poop these days, though... I usually laugh when the girls improvise a nice poop, or when they will work some poop into whatever they're doing. I'm sure my parents would be appalled at my acceptance of their poop... but poop is funny sometimes. There's no denying it. Poop is just funny sometimes.