I have moved my blog.  Well, kinda.  I actually moved the old one and put the new one in its place.

Why?  Because the old one got sick and died.  None of the comments work.

I am writing this post for the sake of anyone who has subscribed to this blog.

If this means you, please go to www.jagular.us and once there, update your subscription.

Yes, i know that this is the same place as the old blog.  It’s a long story.

Back in January I wrote a post entitled Yes, I Hate India, Too. You might remember it as the one with the nipple song. Originally I just wrote it as a filler piece to take up some space until I could find something good to write about, but in the time since, I have grown to love this post. Well, not the post so much as the comments. It seems to have taken on a life of it’s own in the intervening months. If you take a few minutes to read through the comments you can see the evolution take place. The whole point of the piece was “I saw a video and it made me laugh. Here it is.” This, of course, is dull reading. So I did the classic build-up to the ironic let-down intro to make it obvious to anyone who has more than half a brain that it was simply a stereotyping-style intro to a funny video.

Somewhere along the line, that point was missed. Maybe American humor is difficult for those of the sundry cultures. Maybe certain people are overly defensive due to the repeated questioning of their manual reading skills. Or maybe some people just have less than half a brain.

Nevertheless, I invite you to revisit the nipple song post and maybe you’ll enjoy the comments as much as i have over the last few months.

I got tagged by LuLu over at HowISaveMoney.net

I am to write a six word Memoir.  It’s not really fair that I am back for one or two days and got tagged already, but I am a good sport.  So without further ado, here it is:

What the Hell is a Memoir?

It’s been a long time since I have updated my blog.  I have received emails.  I have received phone calls.  I have received death threats.  And I have received 13000 spam comments.  My inbox is overflowing with moderation notices.

Please Moderate This Comment:  Buy Viagra Cheap Online.  We sell cheap and it we ship you fast.  You buy money today.

I never really meant to leave.  I just never really did anything worth putting down in writing.  I worked a lot of hours throughout March.  We are just finishing up Spring cleaning.  We had like 30 trash bags out on the curb this morning.  Very boring.

My daughter did learn to ride her bicycle though.  But I was at work at the time. 

There were a couple of times that things happened, or someone said something cute, or I had an inspiration.  But the thought of going through 13000 spam comments was pretty daunting.

So finally today I just deleted all of them.

So if you left a comment and it went to moderation, well….it’s gone now.  Lost in the stack.  Kaput.

I’m working on my shopping list right now.  I have to go buy some food.

See?  Boring.

Anyhow, I’m going to try to get back into blogging on a semi-regular basis.  Not that I expect to have any readers still around.

But of course, if anyone is still checking my blog, I suppose they must be as boring as I am, so everything should be pretty good.

For what it’s worth, happy Valentine’s Day.

It’s one of my least favorite holidays. I think whoever invented it was probably not married. In fact, I’m in favor of doing away with the holiday forever.

Sound pretty harsh? Let me explain:

Valentine’s day is not a true holiday.

Everyone knows that for it to be a true holiday, it needs to be paid. On Christmas, I get paid even if I don’t work that day. And if I do work, the pay comes out to double-and-a-half. Now that’s a holiday. On Thanksgiving, I get paid on the holiday, and on the day after, to boot. Again, another true holiday. On Valentine’s Day, if I have to work, I get…nothing. Both at work, and again when I come home.

“Hi, baby. I know I had to work today, but I’m home now. You wanna sneak off somewhere together?” No. It’s not going to happen. You might as well go take a cold shower now and get it over with.

Nevermind her birthday, anniversary, mother’s day, or the little thoughtful things you did during the year for no reason whatsoever. You blow Valentine’s Day and you are in the doghouse.

You have to buy gifts for someone that you already have.

It’s a strange thing. When you are dating, you want to impress her with your thoughtfulness. You want to let her know that you care. You are young and stupid enough to think that expensive gifts or fancy dinners are important in life. And in the process, you win her over. But now you already have her. Why do you have to keep buying expensive crap every year? I mean, seriously. When we were dating, I never saw her without her makeup. I never had a date with her where she wasn’t wearing some amazing perfume. When I would come in the room, she would stop what she was doing and come over to me and tell me how much she missed me. That all stopped with “I do”. What gives? How come I am expected to continue the pre-marriage ritual every year, but she doesn’t have to. Load of crap if you ask me.

Valentine’s Day Sex Sucks

Let’s face it. We are married. We have sex all the time. But Valentine’s Day sex sucks. I mean, think about it. We are going to have to get a babysitter. It’s going to have to be someone who is single, and not dating. That means that they will already be in a bad mood. Then we are going to have to drop the kids off with them and try not to make eye contact, because we know and they know that it is Valentine’s Day and we are going somewhere as a couple. And they are not. Then we will have to go to a packed restaurant and wait for an hour and a half until we get seated. The waiter will be in a hurry to get us out of there. The food will be slapped together, because they are going to be packed. And then out to a movie or something. Again, packed full. Loud. All the young single guys wondering if they are going to get lucky tonight will have all of their peacock feathers out and trying to make a good impression on their date. We’ll get out late. We have to pick up the kids. We’ll finally get home, but the kids are packed full of sugar, due to the sheer evility of the babysitter who is sitting home today with the kids while we are out “having a good time”. They won’t go to bed until they have had a proper beating. We will finally get to bed somewhere after midnight. Exhausted. And we’ll end up having a “quickie” and go to sleep.

I say, hell with it. We can have sex any day of the year.

The platitudes don’t cut it

Let’s face it. Every year you hear someone talk about the over-commercialization of different holidays. “Make Christmas a craft,” they tell you. “Spend Thanksgiving telling people how thankful you are”.

Valentine’s Day is no different. “You don’t have to buy her expensive gifts,” they say, “Show her your love by doing the dishes. Vacuum the floor. Clean the bathroom.”

Yeah, right.

“What did you get me for Valentine’s day?” she will ask you.

“I cleaned the bathroom.”

“And you bought me a….?”

You’re toast, man. She’s going to be talking to her friends and they will say “I got a dozen roses.” “I got a diamond.” “I got a day at the health spa.” and she will be saying “He cleaned the toilet for me”.

You’re a dead man.

Now I had a plan back in my younger years. We were engaged to be married, and I said that I thought it would be very romantic to be married on Valentine’s Day. I mean, what better expression of love can you give someone than to marry them on the one day of the year that is set aside for lovers? No dice.

“You honestly expect me to get married on Valentine’s Day?” she said.

“Sure,” I told her. “It would be a beautiful thing.”

“You must think I’m stupid,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she said, “There are only a certain number of holidays during the year. Some of them involve gifts and some do not. Valentine’s Day involves gifts, and so does your anniversary. I’ll be damned if you will trick me into combining the two of them and gyp me out of a gift-giving-holiday every year.”

So it’s not like it’s just an accidental cultural phenomenon.  This whole Valentine’s Day thing is a well-planned female conspiracy.  I figured that out one year.

Well, I say that I figured it out, but really she let it slip.

She said, “Now you know that if you forget Valentine’s Day you have to hear about it until next Valentine’s Day.”

And I said, “Is that some sort of Women’s Code?”

And she said, “Yes.  You didn’t know?”

So anyway, Happy Valentine’s Day.  I hope you don’t screw it up too bad.

Little old lady:  The doctor explained my heart condition to me, but I don’t really understand what he said, since he used such big words.  Could you explain it to me in plain English?

Jag:  Absolutely.  Instead of giving a good, strong beat, sometimes your heart kind of “skips a beat” and quivers a little bit like Jello for ten or fifteen seconds.  During this time, it is not putting out any blood circulation at all.  It’s really dangerous when it does this, because if it doesn’t go back to normal after a few seconds, you wouldn’t have any circulation at all, and you could just fall over dead one day.  He wants to put in a special kind of pacemaker that will monitor your heart and shock it back to normal if this should happen.

Little old lady:  When my heart does this quiver, would it maybe feel like a little flutter on top of my stomach?

Jag:  Yes, it very well could.

Little old lady:  Well that explains THAT!  And all these years I thought it was gas.

It was the middle of the night and I heard laughing noises.  It’s the sound of non-sleeping kids who are trying not to sound like they are awake.  So I went in to let them know in no uncertain terms that they needed to go to sleep.

Jag:  One of you needs to go to sleep, and the other one needs to go to sleep, too.

Kids: (snicker)

Jag: So close your eyes up and start snoring.

Kids: (Make snoring noises)

Jag: (goes back to where he came from)

Kids: (start making laughing noises again.)

Ambre:  “Daddy, a fly keeps getting on me, but I already took a bath.”

Maria Shriver showed up at the Obama rally in California and gave her endorsement.  She said something along the lines of she was hanging out at the house and realized that she wanted to endorse him.  So she went straight down to the rally unannounced and gave her speech.

She didn’t take time out to do her hair or her makeup.  And she was wearing some sort of trench coat.

But I don’t typically judge people by their looks.  I listened to what she had to say.  And for a brief moment I found myself agreeing with her.

She said, “I thought, if Barack Obama was a state, he’d be California.”

And she paused ever so slightly.  And during that pause, I found myself identifying…and even agreeing with her.  Just for a moment, mind you.  And then she started talking…clarifying…and it fell apart after that.

“Diverse, open, smart, independent, bucks tradition. Innovative. Inspirational. Dreamer. Leader.”

And…well…it seems that our perceptions of what it means to be California differ somewhat.

I was thinking more along the lines of:  Self-important.  Vain.  Values symbolism more than action.  Thinks that their circle of friends is representative of the world as a whole.  Tries to legislate the hippie values onto the whole nation.  Has an education but not a brain cell.
You know.  California.

But for just that split second in between sentences, I found myself agreeing with a Kennedy.