Ahhhhh… Money won is always sweeter than money earned, and this $20 bill I have in my pocket that used to be in El Steve‘s pocket is giving me diabetes.

God, I love diabetes.

Steve came over today to test the durability of a new lens by shooting some portraits of me, Beth and Zoe. (The lens held up fine with no obvious defects or breakage, so I think he’s going to keep it.) While he was here we enjoyed our usual far-ranging conversations, and one of the important topics we discussed was that old 80’s TV show That’s Incredible. And that’s where the controversy flared.

As everyone knows (everyone but Steve, that is), the three stellar hosts of That’s Incredible were smokin’ 80’s hottie Cathy Lee Crosby, football great Fran Tarkenton, and legendary crooner John Davidson.

Let’s look at that list one more time, shall we? Hosting That’s Incredible were:

1. Cathy Lee Crosby
2. Fran Tarkenton
3. John Davidson

Skip Stephenson does not appear in that list, does he? No, Steve, he does not. And now $20 does not appear in your wallet because you foolishly bet me that he did. You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” But, only slightly less well known is this: “Never go in against Chuck when 80’s TV trivia is on the line!”

Thanks, buddy!

Ow.

Also: Ow.

And lest we forget: Motherfucking OW!

When I returned from a day of scuba diving yesterday (yes, it was great, thanks for asking), I noticed that a long-time problem tooth was acting a little twitchy. I had a root canal done on it recently and it’s been a little sensitive every since. So having it hurt after chomping down on a regulator mouthpiece all day seemed sort of understandable … if you can get to a state of mind where you can accept that chronic tooth pain is acceptable. I took two Advil and went to bed.

Waking up this morning, it was still twitchy. Even more so, actually. But since I grind my teeth at night I figured having it hurt after chomping down on nothing all night long seemed sort of understandable … if you can get to a state of mind blah blah blah. So I took three Advil and carried on.

Tonight, Zoe wanted to go out for barbeque for dinner. I considered it and realized that all that chewing was gonna friggin’ hurt and that my tooth wasn’t up to it and I had to say no. We had Chinese instead. With soft, chewable noodles and rice.

At that point I was forced to admit to myself that maybe, just maybe, I have a dental problem that requires a dentist’s attention. So I calculated when I can most reasonably get in to see my dentist. The weekend is right out, obviously, and I have to be in the office Monday through Thursday, so I figured I’d do it next Friday. I asked myself: Will my tooth wait seven days for me? Sure it will. And I took four Advil and went to watch TV.

Now it’s about four hours later and I’m about to go take a handful of Advil. I can feel a little bump forming way up at the top of my gumline on the root of the tooth and I know from past experience that it’s an abscess. And it hurts. A lot. And it’s going to hurt more.

So now I’m asking myself: Will my tooth wait until Monday for me so I can try to get an appointment with my dentist after work? And I think it’s a stupid question. The better question is: Will my tooth wait until morning for me to try to get an emergency appointment tomorrow?

But the real question is: Where’s the damned Vicodin that was left over after I had the stupid root canal done that I’m going to have to have re-done?

A public private message to my favorite red headed stalker:

I read your email last night through webmail, but now with my internet access down I can’t get it through my work laptop’s dial-up. (And how stupid is that — that I can’t access work email through my work dial-up??? Welcome to ***. Morons.)

Anyway, email your info to me at my personal email (chuck at this domain), which I can get, and I’ll get back to you. Beth and I are all over getting together with you.

P.S. Tim, this ain’t for you. You’re my second favorite red headed stalker. But I still love you, man.

TANSTAAFL. It’s an old Heinlein-ism that means There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Except that there is; we’ve been dining for quite awhile. Internet-wise, that is.

Way back in the heady days when DSL was the Next Big Thing, I ran out and signed us up for service. And it was good. Sort of. But it was also free. Sort of.

Yeah, they kinda forgot to bill us for it. Ever. The service provider had financial problems and went Chapters 1-99 and was sold off in bits and pieces to other companies and somehow we fell through the cracks and never got billed. Eventually we got tired of the spotty service (hey, we have standards too: free crap is still crap, right?) so we signed up for cable internet service.

They came out and gave us a modem and drilled holes in the walls and ran wires to the house and voila!, we had cable. And it was good. And they too forgot to bill us. Ever. We set the account up for payment to automatically be deducted from our checking account every month, but they never deducted. Ever. And still we had service. And every once in awhile the service would hiccup and I’d think the jig is up and I’d have to come out of the shadows, but then it started up again and I STFU.

I’ve had my own little internal arguments about this, about the ethics of basically stealing their service. But you know what? You can rationalize and justify just about anything. I’ve factored that into my internal debates even as I continued to debate … and get free access.

Eventually I settled on the belief that I’m not stealing because I’m not hiding. They know who I am and where I am and what they gave me and what I agreed to pay — or at least they should. It’s not like I’m using a black box I bought off the internet or hacking into my neighbor’s cable box. No, I signed up with them just like everyone else did with every intention of paying for the service. They just never asked for payment.

But… Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s all bullshit rationalization. I’ve always known deep down that it was wrong, always felt badly about it, always resolved to call them up and ‘fess up and get the billing started … someday. I just never got around to it. (Another rationalization, I know.)

Anyway, the free lunch is now officially over. My cable is hiccuped again and so I went ahead and called the cable company today and signed up for new service. Yes, “new” — what, am I stupid? My install date is Tuesday morning and it looks like the only ‘net access I’ll have ’til then is my work laptop with my company ISP’s dialup. Free, of course.

So I’m going back on the cable company’s radar. I wonder if they’ll bill me this time?

Well, the inevitable has happened. The duck, who so nonchalantly and bravely faced down oncoming traffic with casual disregard, has become roadkill. Sometime this evening it was apparently run down by one of those speeding cars it had such contempt for.

Seeing as how I’m nowhere near home I’ve had to rely Beth’s reportage of the carnage, but just knowing the duck got the noose makes me kind of sad. I liked having him/her/it quacking out in the middle of the road, it was kind of cool. I’ll miss the nightly ruckus it caused out front, with all the quacking and cars stopping to “help” it.

I take some solace in knowing that I tried to get it out of the road, but it persisted in coming back again and again. I don’t think there’s anything we could have done to keep that duck out of the street. Its end was inevitable.

And so, in remembrance of our dearly departed duck, I shall posthumously name it. Duck, you were Traction. Literally.

Quack.

Dear owner of the BMW 740i who parked thisclose to me in the mall parking lot today:

Gee, I’m awfully sorry about your passenger side door. I accidentally slammed it with my door — hard — several times — really hard — as I leaned out my driver window to put the note on your windshield. I normally would have stood next to your car to place the note but you were parked so close to the driver side of my truck that I couldn’t squeeze in between our cars, let alone open my door to get in if I’d been able to get to it. (I actually had to get in on my passenger side.) I’m also sorry for my poor penmanship in the note; I know it can be difficult to read my chicken scratches, so I’ll reproduce the note here for your convenience:

“You’re lucky I didn’t key your car, you prick. You shouldn’t park so close to beat-up cars — we just don’t care about dents. Obviously. Have a nice day…”

I hope there’s no hard feelings on your end. I know I feel better.

Ray Charles died today. He set the stage for much of what passes for Soul and R&B these days, and his passing is another sad marker of the end of an era of what was, to me, real music.

I saw him once a few years ago at the Hollywood Bowl. He seemed terribly weak and frail even then and his voice was a thin echo of what it used to be, but even with all that it was a great night of music. I’m glad I got the chance to see him perform.

Bye, Ray. We’ll miss you.

My friend and co-worker Kevin, recently married, just confided with me that he and his wife are having a baby. I congratulated him, of course, then asked:

“So, have you met the father?”

Ha. I kill me.

I love comedy grenades. A comedy grenade is a joke they “get” or a prank that goes off after you’re long gone. A grenade I left in Missoula last month just went off.

Todd, the network administrator out there, and I spent my two weeks there one-upping each other with stupid pranks: taking the wheels off chairs, unplugging keyboards, removing mouse balls; that sort of thing. I left two grenades for him on my way out the door. For the short-fuse one, I rubbed a Chapstick all over the lens of his sunglasses, which gave me much pleasure two days later when he emailed me “You owe me a new pair of Oakleys, you bastard.” The long-fuse one I forgot about … until now.

I also smeared Chapstick all over the earpiece of his telephone handset. He normally uses a headset, so I knew it would be awhile before that grenade went off. Well, I guess today was the day he picked up the phone, because I just received a flood of cursing from him through IM.

Aaaaahhhhh….. I love a good grenade.

After reading the sage advice from David, I realized that opening a can of whoop-ass on my cat burglar would also probably open up a can of worms as well. Confrontation would be deeply satisfying, but having events spin out of control in the process would not be. I’ve been on the “W” bench. I don’t need to sit there again. So I opted for the passive-aggressive approach instead.

I drove around the neighborhood until I found his car in an alley a few blocks away. I wrote a note and left it on his windshield:

If any of my cats go missing, I’m coming for you first. There are NO stray cats for you at my house.

Short and sweet and, I think, succinct. He knows I know where he is. He knows what I think he’s up to. He knows he’ll answer to me if he does it. He’s not anonymous now.

We’re still keeping the cats locked up again tonight, but I feel a little bit better now.