For the last two years, I’ve been working in the illustrious bartending field. Slinging drinks to help drown the sorrows of the downtrodden, depressed, and occasionally the pathetic. During these past two years, I have accumulated a wealth of stories, some funny, some scary, most entertaining.

A few years ago, around the holidays, I had a “first” experience. It was a busy night, the bar was packed. It was that magical frenzy time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the time when retail pressures and family dysfunction are at their peak. A couple of military types saunter into the bar (I know they were military b/c of their short haircuts, drill sergeant walk, and Government Issue ID’s). They proceed to imbibe copious amounts of Bud Light and Jager Bombs.

For those of you blissfully unaware of what a Jager Bomb is, it is a shot built on a base of Jagermeister, a liquor that tastes like a blend of cough syrup and black liquorice, which is served chilled. Added to this vile liquid is Red Bull, that sickly sweet, bull testicle hormone “energy” drink. This concoction is then thrown down the gullet and chased with a beer, mainly to scrape the overwhelming sweetness remaining on the back of your tounge.

Now, these lovely, salt of the earth military boys drink several Bud Lights and Jager Bombs throughout the night. They are getting tipsy, but behaving, so I continue to pour. They order two more, I pour, serve and liberate them of their $12 (yeah, 6 bucks a pop!). I return with their change just as they set their shot cups on the bar. One of the guys looks at me funny. I see the pale green color creep into his cheeks and I jump back- 2 seconds too late. He returned that Jager Bomb, along with a few beers and some semblance of chicken or pasta. All over the bar, and yours truly.

In shock, thinking about all the nasty bugs you can catch from the body fluids of others, I hose myself off, then bleach down the bar. Meanwhile, lines are beginning to form as other bar patrons have guzzled down their own drinks and are impatiently waiting for refills.

I finish wiping the bar down and the vomit comet asks me, very politely, “Can I get two more bud lights?”

Bewildered I look at him. “No, I think you’re cut off now”.

Okay, it's been 6 years over two vehicles but I'm finally ready to stand up and admit it. I am a minivan driver. I'm not saying I'm a truck driver stuck in a minivan or an SUV aficionado forced into minivandom by circumstances. I am an actual, honest to God, confirmed and anointed minivan driver.

I sit high up and can actually see what's going on around me. I live in Atlanta - on these roads you need this height just to hit par. Whenever I rent a car I feel like I'm an ant lost in SUVland.

I can take 7 friends or family (or occasionally work folk) 300 miles in any direction without stopping. I can tow shit. I can strap stuff on the roof without running rope through my windows.

E.L.F. does not light minivans on fire.

While the advantages are obvious there are admittedly a couple of problems. First, it's a minivan. Although my engine is bigger than the recycled sedan engines in comparably sized neo-trucks I will never get street cred. It is next to impossible to look cool with one arm at 12 o'clock, the other out the window and Nickelback blaring on the speakers when all of that is happening in a minivan.

There's also this blind spot at the passenger's side rear. I'm used to a blind spot on the driver's side and have learned to compensate for that over 20 years of driving. I still have problems with the one on the passenger's side though. It's a monster on my particular type of minivan - big enough to hide a Labrador Retriever in.

So anyway, my question is ... How do you tell your kids that their favorite pet is dead?

So I walk into the bathroom at work and someone had just taken an unusually foul poo. Since I was little I always thought that if you smell someone else's shit, the noxious odor got into your body and would someday give you a disease. Call it fecal cancer or whatever. So whenever I walk into a bathroom, I hold my breath so I don't get this disease that I made up. I'm 42 now and I still do the same thing. I'm positive I'll get fecal cancer if I don't hold my breath. And it's really only strangers poo that causes it. That's my rule. Hey, it's my disease so I make the rules.

Speaking of crap, me and the wife have codes for different things. For instance, we were at a party once and there was only one very small half bath downstairs and that's where everyone was supposed to go and relieve themselves. This tiny bathroom is right off the dining room where the food was being served. So this guy named Fred decides he's going to take a big honking stinky in this tiny bathroom. I'm eating some chicken parm, I hear the toilet flush and out comes Fred with all his stink. I almost puked up the parm. So now, in our house, we have a tiny half bath downstairs. And we've made a rule: there is absolutely NO Fredding in the downstairs bath. This guy is now a verb.

Another code - Walt=booger. Me and the wife once temped at the same company. Our boss was named Walt and for the whole 6 months we worked there he had the same honkin' booger in his left nostril. Apparently, no one in his family saw it. Or at least they never told him about it. And neither did anyone at work. Day in and day out, he always had the same booger. So now, whenever either of us has a booger that we aren't aware of, we'll say, "Honey, uh, Walt". That means it's time to go somewhere private with a mirror and start picking your nose.

Happy Memorial Day!

So recently the company I work for signed a contract for a large purchase. We spent just under one year shopping vendors, whittling down our top choices, and then negotiating with each one. This afternoon I sat down with 2 other guys from my company and the sales rep for the company we decided to go with. The first thing I notice about the sales rep (and something that has always bugged me about him) was his goddamned dirty fucking fingernails.

Listen asshole, if we're going to make a six million dollar purchase with you, clean your god forsaken fingernails! What the hell is wrong with you? This dipshit is taking home comission on six mils and he doesn't even bother to take a goddamned shower before he shows up? What the ever loving hell is up with that? Fuckin' ell! I make a fraction of what this toady bastard hauls in every year and even I can manage to keep myself clean!

We buy capital fuckin' assets from Pigpen. I'm on the wrong side of the business.

My life is cluttered with useless people and mindless chores.

Yesterday someone was hovering in my office doorway while I was working on something complex. I couldn’t lose my place and I was trying to finish something before looking up.

“Am I bothering you?” they asked.

“Not yet,” I said.

It had the desired effect. I glanced up and saw that the person had no idea how to reply to that. Didn’t know whether to flee or not. And they cut right to the chase and it was fairly painless for me. People usually stand there and try to talk about some TV show or something before they get around to asking me the question they came in for. I guess it’s an attempt at bonding.

I don’t fraternize at work. I have a professional life and a private life and never shall they meet. I’m very polite, but I don’t share, bond, relate or participate in small talk. I smile a lot. I’m courteous. I’m professional most of the time unless someone invokes my anger with stupidity above and beyond the standard that I have come to expect.

I can’t personally take credit for the “Not yet” line. I saw it or read it somewhere, but I’ve been dying to put it to use.

In other news, Bill has already vanished, having exhausted his repertoire of items that have been inserted up his ass.

I’ve been watching The Tudors, a new series on Showtime about Henry the 8th and Ann Boleyn. Very entertaining. I had no idea how popular doggy style sex was amongst the royal court was back then.

I’m also taken with the show Cash in the Atticon BBC America. That’s where an antiques expert goes to someone’s house and rummages through all their shit to find stuff to sell at auction. Then just before the auction the idiots set reserves twice as high as the value of the item and nothing sells. It’s amazing though, the amount of Victorian and Edwardian furniture people have lying around in England. All made of walnut, mahogany and oak. And the stuff sells for less than I paid for a coffee table in a middle range furniture store. My wife now wants to visit England just for the auctions.

I’ve never been to an auction but I really need to go just for the material. People touching their noses and shit to bid versus the people holding up giant placards with their number on it. People hiding in the back and then jumping out at the end for a bid just before the hammer strikes. I’m fascinated by that stuff.

I've lived in both Oakland and San Diego; the proverbial arm pit and sun tanned breast of California respectively. I thoroughly enjoyed both. I've got family out in the O.C. I've got friends peppered up and down the coast. I've always kept California near the top of my list of places I'd be willing to move to. But after this morning? Not so much.

The Scene: I'm in the kitchen making coffee. Lovely Wife is outside in the car port.

Lovely Wife: Listen to the warning on this label: "Warning: This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects and other reproductive harm."

Me: What is it? Cleanser?

Lovely Wife: A fishing pole.

Me: A fishing pole?

Lovely Wife: Yeah. A fishing pole.

Me: A fishing pole that causes cancer and birth defects?

Lovely Wife: Yeah. But only in California.

So there it is. If I can't fish there I can't live there and I'm not going to take the chance of catching birth defects from my fishing pole. Sorry, California. You're off the list.

So yet another kid popped up in the neighborhood who is lactose intolerant. And it got me thinking. No, not about how every other kid born in the last 15 years is either allergic, asthmatic, AD, AH, AHD, AHAD, DAHA, HAHA or in some other way socially and genetically inferior to kids from my generation. I was thinking about tolerance itself. Somebody who is lactose intolerant can like dairy products just fine but they just can't stand them physically. Except that this isn't usually how it goes. The real skinny is that people use "whatever intolerance" as a way to avoid things they don't like while casting themselves as sufferers.

If that doesn't have "PC gift from above to all politicians" written all over it then I don't know what does. Expect to see some of these in the soon to be inescapable campaign barrage:

* Senator Byrd's days in the KKK weren't really his fault. He had a bad case of blacktose intolerance.
* Hillary isn't frigid. She's just fuktose intolerant.
* Speaking of which...it's not Monica's fault that she didn't swallow. She is spunktose intolerant.
* Kennedy isn't a boozer. He's sobrose intolerant.
* Obama isn't myopic. He is cluetose intolerant.
* Jesse Jackson? As bad a case of truthtose intolerance as I've ever seen. Well...next to Bill Clinton anyway.

Yeah, I think I'm on to something here. Anybody else detect 'ose intolerance out there?

So I looked up an old buddy the other day, because I hadn't heard from him in forever, right? One of my old roomies from grad school. He was a pretty cool guy: funny, educated, well paid, liked to have fun. He was really good with technology, and had a lock on all the latest downloads: DVD's, XBoX games, software. You name it the kid had it, sometimes before they were released. I asked him at one point how he did it. I mean, can you imagine getting a peice of that action? But he would always dismiss my inquiry with some nonchalant smirky remark. The stingy bastard.

Anyways, about halfway through the second year of the program (at this point I was already living with She Who Would Become The Wife), he said his work schedule was changing and he'd be absent from class, but they'd still let him finish the degree. That was the last time I saw the kid.

I'd give him a phone call every now and then about going to get some drinks or play a par three or something; but I never got an answer. Eventually the phone number was disconnected. I mean, I never even saw the kid around town either.

So the other day I figured I'd see what I could dig up. Knowing he was affiliated with our graduate program and at least one other, as well as a multi-national employer and a highly regarded professional association; I assumed it's be easy enough to just google his full name. Wouldn't you know, that set of words yielded two full pages of hits - all about the same thing.

Something called Operation Site Down.

It seems my buddy's dowloading habits had gotten the attention of the United States Department of Justice, specifically an attorney out in Cali. He was indicted just before the spring semester started that year, and sentanced some weeks thereafter. To several months of house arrest and a fine that makes your average car loan look like a bar tab. His PC, laptop, cell phone, and all the copied product were confiscated.

I was surprised that it'd all turned out like that, but at the same time everything fit together: the timeline, the hundreds of bootlegs laying around the house. It's one of those things you hear about but never really see.

But I am really glad he never told me how to get in on it; because having a felony offense on your background check doesn't really put your resume on the top of the pile.

I eat a lot of frozen pizza. I’m a lazy man and if the wife’s not home I’m not about to dirty a dish or pots and pans that I’ll have to clean. I slap a piece of aluminum foil on a cookie sheet and bake. However. Sometimes, even if I put a lot of oil on the foil, the pizza sticks and I can’t get it off. Especially French bread pizza—which for some reason will not come off that foil without me struggling and eventually flipping it upside down.

So my wife bought some new foil: Reynolds Easy Release or Non- Stick or some shit. It has a non stick coating already on there. The results were impressive. I don’t care what you put on that foil, you could bake that shit at five hundred degrees until it’s charcoal and it comes right off.

That’s the problem. Last night I took my pizza out and when I turned around with the tray the pizza flew right fucking off and on to the floor. Upside down, because that’s the only way the damn things fall. And I was hungry. My rage lasted for several hours.

Hint: Wear closed-toe shoes

Rating: Five Stars

Comments: NOTHING will stick to this shit.

Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?

I bought this new tooth paste the other day. It's Crest Cinnamon something or other. It's supposed to whiten your teeth more than regular toothpaste and freshen your breath with cinnamony goodness. All well and good, except it's red. I know you associate cinnamon with the color red. So do I. However, after brushing, when you're in spit phase, it looks like you're hacking up blood. Now, every time I brush, I think my gums are bleeding. I have to remind myself that it's just the toothpaste. But then I think to myself, hey! What if my gums are bleeding? I'd never know it.

So, a word of advice to the folks at Crest: Either dump the red-colored toothpaste, or call it something like: "New Cinnamon Crest - now with gingivitis! If you've never experienced the joys of bleeding gums, Try new Crest with gingivitis! Whiter teeth, fresher breath, and bloodier gums!" I mean really - who thought red toothpaste was a good idea?

So that's my latest bathroom hygiene woes. Innocuous enough for you?

P.S. By a show of comments, how many of you think that I'm at least as talented and funny as James Lileks?

Okay, how many of you agree that I at least have more hair than he does?

Okay, it's time to tally the points from the 'Donate a Name For Our New Blogger' contest.

Susan - I liked this one at first, because it was so simple. Then I decided it paled in comparison to what would become the competition. -5 for tommy.

Slutbucket and Slaptasm - Slutbucket is something you hear drunk bitches screaming at eachother in a chick fight; -2. Slaptasm, although creative (+2), doesn't make any sense to me without further description. Total score, 0.

Fuckhead - Funny, but then I realized I was just playing favorites. As such, Paul will incur no penalty, but I'm now -7 for being a nepotist. Unfortunately for the rest of you, I'm also +142,398,756 for being a member of this oligarchy we run at SBD.

The Suck - Very creative. -8.

Susan Spermblogger - Firstly, - ∞ for not sharing links regarding said pornstar. However, I appreciated the compound name (one of few); so I grant thee +147,293 points. Which is a drop in the bucket on your way back to zero.

Fart Rooster - Personally, I loved this one. It made absolutely no sense at all, but my mind kept trying to put these two familiar words together to form a mental picture. I'm not sure it really suits Bill, but +9 for something that made me laugh.

Patsy - That's my sister's name; you ass. Go to Hell, and minus whatever Bill says you deserve.

THE Tinkey Winkey - Humorous, but I'd have a problem referring to some dude with a phallic psuedonym.

Ron Jeremy's Cock - See above, minus the 'Humorous' part. Besides, why would you want to be named after something that's been in and out of more whores than a herion needle?

Bumhole McFingerin' - I like that it alludes to said blogger's penchant for having his ass stuffed by strangers, but I don't want to think about fingering butt holes when I think about Bill. Even though it's pretty much already that way, thanks to him.

Sally Scrabby Raphael - Maybe if it were Sally Scabby Raphael. +1 for the full name.

Bill - Look, the whole point of this is to come up with a funny name. And goddamit, if I wasn't afraid that Bane would creep through my house while I slept and slice off my nutsack; I'd dock him points and maybe ban his IP. However, I am absofuckinlutely terrified that he will do exactly that; so he wins the contest hands down. Hey, what can I say. I love my balls right where they are.

Snibbley Fartwobbler - Another good, creative name. Except the Snibbley part. That sounds like something out of a Disney movie. +1/2 pt.

Cindy Brady - I thought this was hilarious. Firstly, Bill's a total whiner. It's what he does best. And secondly, those fucking pigtails he insists on wearing make me want to hit him with a spiked bat. +9 for Ted.

Lola - The name was good and all, so I give you +2 for it. I also give you +17 for the job hunt. I hate job hunting. However, you did win last year; which means you start this year at -37. Sorry, it was in the contract you signed. Yeah, down at the bottom...the fine print...see.

And lastly, if you don't think your submission was judged fairly and without prejudice against your person; there is an appeals process. You see, this is SBD - a website that believes in 'liberty and justice for all'; as you can see on the right sidebar there. So if you feel you've been slighted, please feel free to go fuck yourself. It's your celebrated, god-given and protected right.

Why I hate lawyers; reason number 56342.

From what I gather, a lawyer in DC was elected to the bench. On his first day he wanted to wear his special pants. I guess that’s like getting a new lunchbox for the first day of school. Unfortunately, the dry cleaners lost his special pants. So in the name of “"mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort" he’s suing the dry cleaners for $67 million dollars. That must be some pair of pants.

He’s also suing for ten years of weekend rental cars to take his dry cleaning to another location. I don’t know what that’s got to do with a lost pair of pants. Regardless, the guy is calling 63 witnesses in the case. They didn’t call 63 witnesses in the fucking Manson trial. If you’re not feeling somewhat nauseous by this point you must be in law school.

According to calculations in the article, $67 million could buy this guy almost 85 thousand pairs of pants at $800 a pop. Apparently, lot’s of people think this is hysterically funny. Except the dry cleaner who broke down in tears during the interview. These poor bastards have been paying legal fees for two years already because of a pair of the special pants.

Eventually the dry cleaners offered him $3,000 which he would not accept. Then he offered $4,000, which was also declined. They then offered this guy $12,000 for the goddamned pants and the guy turned it down.

Apparently, there is a consumer protection law on the books that’s $1,500 per violation, per day. He also wants $500,000 in emotional damages and $542, 500 in legal fees, even though he is representing himself in court. All because of his special pants.

A couple of weeks after they lost the pants, the dry cleaner found them…matching ticket and everything, but the lawyer/judge claims they’re not the right ones.

I just don’t see the humor in this. The fact that a judge or lawyer or whatever the hell he is ought to know better than to clog up the courts with this shit. And the worst part is the case hasn’t been thrown out. So, lives of dry cleaner—ruined. Taxpayer money—wasted. The fact that this guy is an officer of the court and has done all this makes me sick.