Another Fine Idea Down the Drain

I’m a little annoyed with Japan right now.

Many years ago I came up with the novel idea of creating musical rumble strips. I figured this would revolutionize the way we drive, turning a drab, boring trip into a new, more festive experience.

The concept is actually pretty simple. You know how you currently drive over rumble strips as you approach a construction zone or a tollbooth? If you’re not paying attention, it can startle the crap out of you as your car goes over them. They sound like this:

“BBBBRRRRRRMMMP! BBBBRRRRRRMMMP! BBBBRRRRRRMMMP! BRRMP! BRRMP! BRRMP!”

With just a little work, this annoying noise could be turned into a musical interlude. To make notes, they’d simply have to space the individual bumps of the rumble strips differently. Rumble strips spaced close together would result in higher pitches; ones spaced further apart would make lower pitches.

I told coworkers of mine that I was going to become quite wealthy with the invention of musical rumble strips, but they all mocked the notion. Ask anyone who knew me in 1995; I was semi-serious about this amazing innovation. Frankly, a few people in the office threatened me with bodily harm unless I’d shut up about it.

So, 13 years later, I got an e-mail from one of those former coworkers – a person I hadn’t heard from for a good decade -- who said, “Japan stole your musical roads idea.” Sure enough, he sent a link along that outlined EXACTLY what I was proposing.

From now on, I’m keeping my invention ideas to myself, lest they once again fall into the hands of the Japanese.

The Snoring Elevator

We took a wonderful family vacation out West this summer, and during the trip we spent a couple days in Las Vegas. This brought back memories of the most embarrassing thing I have ever said in my life, which occurred the last time I was in Sin City 20 years ago.

For me, coming up with my most embarrassing moment is like trying to identify a single grain of sand on a very large beach. There are just so many to choose from. But this one really seems to be the Mother of All Embarrassing Things to Say.

We were on a family vacation, and we stayed at one of the top floors of a Vegas hotel. I believe we had just packed everything up as we prepared to check out, and we headed for the elevator.

As we waited for the elevator’s arrival, we could hear a weird noise, as though wind was whipping through the elevator shaft. The noise was much more amplified when the elevator arrived and the doors opened.

We got in, joining a few other people for the ride to the ground floor. The weird, windy noise was really quite piercing, and I decided to violate Rule #1 of the Elevator Code of Conduct: I decided to say something out loud. So I looked over at my brother and said, “Geez, it sounds like the elevator is snoring!”

Well, before I had even finished that sentence – before the “-ing” part of the word “snoring” had even finished escaping my mouth – I realized what was going on. Turns out the severely elderly man on the other side of the elevator had a tracheotomy, and was breathing out of an air hole in his neck. And the sound of his breath moving in and out of the air hole was, well, much like the sound of an elevator snoring.

It’s moments like this where it would be ideal to simply burst into flames and die, but unfortunately I wasn’t that lucky. Instead, the man’s presumably soon-to-be widow glared at me while the rest of my family instantly edged away from me, as though they had no idea who I was.

On top of everything else, this elevator was apparently being operated by a team of really lazy hamsters, as it very s-l-o-w-l-y descended to the ground floor. I began to wonder if there may have actually been a problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull that day, prolonging the ride for what seemed like an eternity.

From that point on, I have avoided talking in an elevator. Granted, I’ll still fart in them from time to time and pretend someone else did it, but that’s about it.

I've Been Itching to Write This

It has taken longer than usual this year, but I have finally gotten my annual case of poison ivy. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to be a large batch of it this time, but even a little dot of a rash gets itchy enough to make me think about lopping off my arm.

Usually I get poison ivy sometime in the Spring, because after a long winter I get really excited about the idea of being outside, so the first time it gets warm I’ll just run off and start rolling around in whatever foliage happens to be handy.

This year I’ve done a better job of avoiding these plants, but I am just terrible at recognizing them. Sooner or later I always end up coming in contact with it, and then I’ll start getting these nasty puss-infested, oozing, itchy, red, blotchy, scabby, festering rashes. Sorry if you were eating.

These things itch the worst when I get up in the morning and take a shower. The hot water seems to really make it itchy, and I just want to scream. Actually, what I’d really like to do is to hire three or four very tiny people – in the neighborhood of two or three inches tall – and I’d give them each a little teensy, metal rake that they can use to scratch me for a few days. I’d give them occasional five-minute breaks, but I’d definitely keep them working around the clock.

If you know any people in those dimensions, please send them along to me with a cover letter and references. No calls, please.

Victory!

Talking about surprising news! My old high school football team actually won a game last night. Prior to last night’s game against A-C Valley, the Punxsutawney Chucks had little losing streak of 14 games in a row, dating back to November 3, 2006. That’s right… they didn’t win a single game in 2007.

Last night’s win was such an accomplishment that the team literally dumped the water jug over the coach, as though they had won the Super Bowl.

It’s always fun to read the newspaper’s account of the games each week as they try to put some sort of positive spin on each loss. I laughed out loud when I read the story from last week’s game because they were actually celebrating their closest loss in recent memory. Of course they still lost, but it wasn’t by the usual double, triple or even quadruple-digit margin.

So they actually won last night’s game 32-8, which can only mean one thing: A-C Valley must stink in a remarkable fashion.

Baaaaaarrrack!

Like most people, when I’m out driving around by myself, I like to practice burping, followed by burping louder. Of course this can lead to embarrassing situations, like when I have the window open and I’m at a stoplight, and the person beside me also has their window open, and they look at me funny.

But that’s not my point. My point is that I made a very interesting discovery the other day. It turns out that it’s really fun to burp the name “Barack.” Try it! The name just really lends itself well to the art of burping.

You kinda have to strain yourself to make the “M” sound to properly enunciate “McCain,” and if you burp the name “John” it just comes out too quickly to really enjoy it. “Biden” works pretty well, especially if you stretch out the “I” sound so it sounds like “Biiiiiiiiiden.”

I’ve had some limited success with “Palin,” too, but it’s certainly nowhere near as impressive as “Barack.”

I’m not sure yet if this discovery will affect my vote in November, although it certainly may. It would be pretty silly to continue to perfect burping the name “Barack” if he fades back into relative obscurity.

The Tribe Has Spoken

Hooray! A new season of Survivor starts tonight, and in HD no less!

I wanna be a contestant on Survivor. Ever since the first episode of the very first season, I’ve wanted to put my multitudes of manly skills to the test in an effort to win a million bucks.

Granted, I don’t really have any particular manly skills that would be helpful in winning Survivor, but it would sure be fun to try. I don’t know a thing about building a shelter out of palm tree leaves, and I’d imagine that if I were alone on an island I’d starve to death within a matter of just a few hours.

But every season there’s always some cranky middle-aged person who can’t quite relate to the younger contestants, who generally spends all their time whining, and who always ends up getting voted out first. That’s the person I’d like to be on an upcoming season. Except for the getting-voted-out-first part.

I’d spend the first day being overly critical of how my tribe was building its shelter. I’d stomp around, lambaste them and tell them they’re doing it all wrong (even though I have no idea how to do it properly), and then I’d go sulk on the beach, pretending to be mad. But in reality I’d just use this opportunity to relax on the sand and get a nice tan. Same deal with the fishing and whatnot.

When it comes time for the first challenge, I’d fake a knee injury. Or maybe I’d fake an orgasm; that would stir things up. (At this point I’m obviously typing under the assumption that nobody actually ever reads blogs, right?) Anyway, the key is to be flexible, and know what to fake and when. At night, I’d sneak out of the camp and hang out with Jeff Probst at the bar.

Why would my tribe keep me along? Entertainment value, for one. I’d always keep them guessing as to what I’d be doing next. And if they started getting bored with me, I’d dazzle them with my luxury item: the Rubik’s Cube.

Rock On!

I’m thinking about starting my own rock band. Not a real rock band – just a pretend one. I have virtually no musical abilities, so a real band is out of the question. This would be sort of like Fantasy Football, except instead of having a pretend football team it would be a make believe rock band, starring me.

I had a friend in college who had his own fake rock band, and he seemed to have a great time with it. Actually, he was obsessed with it, and he got really offended if we made fun of the whole thing. Which we often did.

Glenn had a pretend band called “Sneeze.” I can’t remember if the band consisted solely of Glenn, or if he had a few imaginary bandmates involved, too. Whatever the case, there were definitely no guitars, drums or any other sort of musical instruments involved. No, Glenn just enjoyed the concept of having a band, and he had even created marketing materials for it. Namely, he had a tie-dyed Sneeze handkerchief he had made, and he had serious aspirations of getting it mass produced.

After a while, Glenn’s obsession with his band got to be pretty annoying. He had written a couple lyrics to a song – I think it had something to do with a cheese steak sandwich since he was from Philadelphia – and it’s all he talked about. And again, if any of us suggested that his band wasn’t real, he’d get extremely upset.

One day, in hopes of illustrating how ridiculous Glenn was becoming with all of this, some of my friends and I formed our own pretend band. We called it “Cough,” purely for the sake of mocking Sneeze, and we went so far as to make our own publicity photos. We posed with umbrellas and various hygiene products (pictured above) for our big time portrait. Glenn wasn’t impressed.

I’m thinking it would be fun to resurrect Cough, despite the fact that our members are spread throughout the country now. But with modern technology, I would think that we could still pretend to be a band just as well as if we were together. I’m betting that Sneeze probably has a web site somewhere.

Hip to be Cubed

I can still consistently solve the Rubik’s Cube in less than two minutes. Impressed? Didn’t think so.

It all started back in Junior High School. The cube was all the rage in the early 80s, and it seemed like it was an obligatory part of every backpack at school. I actually had two friends who managed to solve the cube without any outside help, but I admittedly read a book on the subject and devoted endless hours to learning how to solve it. And then I spent much more time learning how to do it faster and faster.

I look back now and realize that while I was spending my time on this remarkable endeavor, my friends were out doing more practical things, like figuring out how to deal with girls and so forth. But no, I felt some sort of bizarre compulsion to make all of the colors line up appropriately on this puzzle, over and over again.

Fast forward 25 years or so, and here I am, a 40-year-old guy who can still solve the cube in an average of a minute, 40 seconds. Woo! I’ll sheepishly admit that I still keep a cube on the nightstand and every so often I’ll whip it out (the cube, that is) and practice with it.

You’d be surprised to learn how remarkably little this ability has been able to improve my life over the years. I mean, not once have I ever gone into a job interview and the person conducting the interview says, “Whoa! Stop everything! A minute forty? You’re hired!”

For fun, I took the cube to a party earlier this year, thinking it would make for a bit of an ice breaker. I did have a group of people who watched me perform this feat (granted, they had little choice since I basically leapt in front of them in such a way that they couldn’t escape), and their combined reaction was basically: “Huh.” Oh well.

Anyway, if you or your company has the need for someone who can solve the cube with great speed and accuracy, please let me know – we’ll talk. In the meantime, Mrs. Smoot will be glad to let you know that I still haven’t figured out how to deal with girls yet.

The Urinal of Doom

So I took Little Smoot and her friend to a Chinese buffet yesterday. I was thinking my usual Chinese thoughts (“Does duck sauce really come from an actual duck?” “What makes sticky rice sticky?” “Which part of the duck?”) when nature called.

I answered the call and took care of business. I flushed the urinal, turned around and began putting everything back where it belongs, when I couldn’t help but notice that my feet were getting wet.

Turns out, the urinal was spewing out water to the point where it looked like Niagara Urinal. I half expected to see the Tidy Bowl Man exiting it via a little barrel. I wasn’t quite sure what to do about the situation, so I used the only bit of plumbing knowledge I’ve ever found to be helpful: I waded through the stream and jiggled the handle. It did no good.

I am quite disappointed in myself for not having the presence of mind to take a picture of it with my cell phone camera.

So anyway, I squished my way out of the restroom and sought to alert one of the workers about the problem. The first person I saw was the Mongolian chef. Turns out he barely spoke any English, and I definitely don’t speak Mongolian, so that conversation went nowhere. I told him “The urinal is overflowing!” And he just gave me that vacant look. I really didn’t want to resort to imitating sign language to explain the problem.

I eventually notified another of the workers, but he didn’t really seem to grasp the urgency of the situation. I stuffed a few more crab rangoon things into my mouth, paid, and got the heck out of there before the restaurant turned into a giant Chinese aquarium.

I’ve been nervously watching the news to see if the situation got worse. I can’t help but picture the restaurant being under several feet of water, with a bunch of ducks floating around on top.

How Not to do the Laundry

Here's a helpful tip for those of you who conduct your very own weekly laundry rituals like I do. After adding detergent to the washing machine, it would be in your best interest to place the detergent somewhere other than on the top of the washer.

It turns out that washing machines feature a fascinating event called the "Spin Cycle." And during the spin cycle, the washer can vibrate rather dramatically, and there's an excellent chance that the detergent could come tumbling off the top of the machine.

Our laundry area has a particularly hard floor, made of particularly hard cement. And I have learned that the fine people who manufacture liquid laundry detergent apparently did not spend a lot of time putting their products through crash test simulators.

So the end result is that when your brand new bottle of liquid detergent vibrates off the top of the washing machine, even though this may just be a height of four feet, it can create a very impressive splattering radius throughout the surrounding area. And it is a nasty bugger to clean this stuff up. And you will spend several days smelling extremely "fresh," like a winter breeze, and your hands can become extraordinarily and annoyingly dry to the point where you just want to lick them.

And, when you explain to your significant other that you have wasted a significant amount of detergent in this careless manner, you can fully expect to be the victim of The Look of Doom.

A Case of the Toots

Much to my surprise, we have a new trumpet player in the house. Little Smoot had her fifth grade band tryouts the other day, and we were more or less steering her toward the flute or clarinet. We were figuring that these would probably be among the least annoying instruments we’d have to listen to, especially during her formative days of lessons.

Strangely enough, she decided at somewhat the last minute that she’d like to try the trumpet, and follow in Dad Smoot’s footsteps. She said that she liked the idea that I could help her learn to play it since that’s what I played when I was in school, 350 years ago.

Granted, I probably spent more time passing notes back and forth and making fun of our director’s various quirks than I spent actually learning how to play the trumpet back then, but here I am, a role model now.

She hasn’t gotten her Official Rental Trumpet just yet, but she has been toying around with the old ones we have at the house. My brother’s old trumpet is here for some reason, and my old one is still in the basement somewhere. Up until now, I’ve only used them for the purpose of scaring the living crap out of the cat.

I’ve been trying to teach her the basics, and I must admit she has quite a range! She ranges from making the trumpet sound like a dying elephant, all the way to making it sound like a farting hippo. It’ll take some practice.

The Fruity Killer

I admit it: I'm a mass murderer. I've been on a killing spree for several days, and I'm not sure when I'll be satisfied. It's these stupid little fruit flies. They're driving me insane.

We've been contending with a nasty stink bug problem as I mentioned in an earlier post, but now we seem to have these stupid little flies whizzing around the house, particularly around the kitchen. I'm not sure what may have invited them in, although we're suspicious of the tomatoes we had on the counter earlier in the week.

What's worse, there are times that I am only imagining that there are fruit flies, in addition to the actual ones that we have in the house. You know those "floaters" that are in our eyes. Well, sometimes one of those things will float through my field of vision, and I'll think it's a fruit fly. Very annoying.

I think I've gotten the upper hand on these little monsters, and in a way that's a bummer because eradicating them is just getting to be fun. I read somewhere on the web that one way of killing these flies is to chase them down with the vacuum cleaner. Not only is it easier to catch the flies this way, but let's face it, it's kinda fun.

Our neighbors probably think that I'm on some sort of cleaning kick because every few minutes they hear me fire up the vacuum cleaner. If they were to peer in the window, though, they'd see that I was striking a pose with the vacuum cleaner's hose, and that I was spinning around with ferocity in an attempt to catch bugs in mid-air.

I think I look just like one of the Ghostbusters, except that they had actual proton packs that shoot out special effects rays; I have a Kirby, which "really sucks," pardon the language. It does really suck, though. I've sucked a lot of the bugs off the ceiling and walls, but I get the most satisfaction out of the ones I can suck right out of the air. Just before they get inhaled into the vacuum, I enjoy watching their futile attempt to escape.

Uh oh, someone's going to again suggest that I should get sensitivity training...

In the meantime, I'm hoping I won't get confused and accidentally vacuum one of my eyeballs out.

Dumb Pennsylvania Signs, Part II

In my last post, I suggested that Pennsylvania could solve its budget problems by selling off dumb signs. I'm guessing they could make a mint off of this brilliant combination!

I spotted these signs just a few miles from home. They're at an intersection in Coraopolis. I suppose that if you were to make an attempt at translating this sign into English, it would be something like:

"You can only go this way. But you can't."

Good luck with that!

They should have another sign beside it saying something to the effect that drivers should make an effort not to rear-end other drivers who are trying to figure out what to do here.

Dumb Pennsylvania Signs, Part I

I think I've come up with a way for our fine state to raise some much-needed funding. The government recently nixed a plan to turn I-80 into a toll road (thank goodness), so Governor Rendell is struggling to come up with money to fund public transit and whatnot.

With very minimal thinking, I have come up with a way of raising about 3 bazillion dollars. All the state needs to do is sell off its massive surplus of superfluous, stupid signs.

I've traveled extensively throughout the country, and I'm almost certain that Pennsylvania is the only state that has erected thousands and thousands of signs for the purpose of telling you what the speed limit isn't.

Like the picture posted above, you'll find all sorts of instances where PennDOT has thoughtfully posted "End" speed limit signs. How helpful! So what are we supposed to do when we encounter a sign like this? Does it mean I can speed up... or should I slow down? Or maybe I should just crawl into the back seat and assume the fetal position.

Considering the numbers of these signs, I figure we should be able to fund any shortfall by selling these things off. I'm sure fraternity houses and the Museum of Stupid Signs would be happy to purchase the majority of them.

Tomorrow... part II.

I AM JUST LOOKING...!

I'm seriously thinking about getting a customized shirt that says, "I'M JUST LOOKING. LEAVE ME ALONE!"

I like to go into Best Buy and Circuit City just to look. But apparently this is discouraged at these stores. As soon as I walk in the door of these places, there's someone literally right there inside the door asking me if I need help. Do I look that helpless? These people look at me as if it's astounding that I even figured out how to get to the parking lot, let alone navigate through the door. Now that I somehow managed to enter the store, surely I could use some help now!

Once I get through the first "helpful" person, I'll start striding briskly past various departments, being very careful to avoid making eye contact with anyone, but these obnoxious people will just materialize out of thin air, right in front of me, to see if I need help. "NO. I AM JUST LOOKING" I tell them.

I'll find an area of the store where I have an interest, and I'll begin just looking at stuff. And sure enough, one of these dang Geek Squad people, or whatever, will sidle up to me and treat me like I'm a dazed Alzheimer's patient who had just wandered away from the home. "NO. I AM JUST LOOKING!"

You know how some people will squirt water at their dogs to discourage bad behavior? I thought it would be an interesting experiment to take a spray bottle into these stores to see if it would fend off the sales people:

GEEK: "Hi. Welcome to Best Buy! May I help..."
WATER BOTTLE: (PSSSHHT PSSSSHT!)
GEEK: "Ewww."

I doubt it would work, though, unless the water bottle was filled with some sort of nasty acid or something. But it's an idea worthy of further research.

Of course the irony is that once in a great, great while I will actually want the assistance of someone who can answer a question about an item. And naturally when I do have a question I can never find someone to answer it. Figures.

Going Amish

I'm glad I went ahead and went to the Steelers/Browns game last night; otherwise I would have spent the night pacing around because our power was off at home. I had thought about skipping the game due to the forecast for rain, but Mother Nature teased me into making the trip to Cleveland by providing sun and warm temperatures earlier in the day.

Meanwhile, back at home, the power went out as the remnants of Hurricane Ike swept through with a vengeance. So the rest of the Smoot clan spent the evening "being Amish." Little Smoot couldn't play video games; Mrs. Smoot couldn't get the work done on the computer as she had planned.

When I got home, I found several barrels of freshly-churned butter, and all of our cows had been freshly milked. And my swanky denim trousers and suspenders were nicely washed.

The electric came back on shortly after I got home at 2:30 this morning. But now we don't have water service! As a result, I'm sporting quite a funky, somewhat Amish hairstyle today.

I'm Wonky, Thank You

I decided today that my new word is going to be "Wonky." As in, "Geez, my computer has gone wonky on me." "Hmmm. I feel wonky."

It just has a nice ring to it, don't you think? I'm not sure whether the cool kids in school use this word, but I was never a cool kid in school to begin with, so I guess it doesn't matter. I'll just go with it for a while and see how it goes.

In the meantime, I'm about to head out the door for the Big Game in Cleveland. The Browns are definitely wonky.

Stink Bugs Galore

I want to personally thank whoever was responsible for introducing stink bugs to our area. Apparently these bugs -- technically known as Halyomorpha halys or "Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs" -- were first found in Allentown, PA, in 1998, and had apparently been inadvertently transported here along with cargo from China or Japan.

We first started noticing these things a few years ago, and now our home is like a little international airport for these stupid things. Their bodies are shaped like little stealth bombers, and when you squish them, they emit this nasty odor, hence their names.

The nice thing is that they're pretty stupid and easy to catch, just like the Cleveland Browns. But there are so many of the doggone things. They also seem to have some sort of unnatural fascination with our gas grill. When I take the cover off the grill, there are always a dozen or so of them flittering around, and a bunch of them will just sit there on the grill and look at me as if to say, "Now what?"

I must admit that it's fun to turn the grill on and see how high the temperature will get before they'll fly off. I should keep a chart and record my findings, and see which ones last through the highest temperatures. And people tell me I have no life...!

Orange... Cones... Everywhere

Our road has been in the midst of a revitalization project since 1932. Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration, but it certainly seems like it has been forever.

Our local authority geniuses decided a couple years back that everyone in the township should have to be hooked up to the city sewage system. My guess is that the only reason for this decree was that they wanted everyone to have to pay the monthly fee for such services, and they couldn't charge people who weren't using it.

So, house by house they began this massive project, up and down the road. And pretty much everywhere they added the new sewage connections, they had to make a huge mess of the road. The end result was a road that looked as though it had been maintained by al-Qaeda. There was a really long stretch of time where we just had this... "road," which is basically a mile-long Pothole of Doom.

At the beginning of July we all got excited and optimistic when an actual road crew showed up and started doing some sort of work. We figured it would be, what, maybe a couple weeks and we'd have a nice new road that we had been promised.

Well, here it is... September, and the road still looks like crap with no end in sight. The road is basically an obstacle course where we have to weave around cones and holes and flags and oncoming traffic. It would make for a great sobriety test.

For the last few months the road has been in the hands of a 4-person crew -- Larry, Curly, Moe and the Obligatory Flag Babe. Once in a while the OFB also drives a steam roller thing, which makes me nervous.

Anyway, I really hope that someday we'll have an actual road to drive on. Mrs. Smoot suggested we simply rent a helicopter to get around.

Smell the Wonderful Smell!

Can you smell it? Inhale deeply....... ahhhhhhh! It's the wonderful smell of nothing!

September 11 has obviously become a day of remembrance, but there is something to celebrate on this particular anniversary of that terrible day. Pennsylvania has finally snuffed out smoking at most public places, and I'm a very happy camper.

I actually get annoyed when I'm following someone who is smoking in their car -- that's how sensitive my nose is to it. It doesn't help that many of our favorite restaurants have "alleged" non-smoking sections that are positioned right beside the smoking areas. We have literally been places where you can be at a non-smoking table, but the table right next to you is permitted to light up.

When seated next to a smoking table, I'm often very tempted to start farting to whatever degree I can safely manage without causing garment damage. I'd just love to have a smoker look over at me and express their annoyance with me, just so I could tell them, "Oh, I'm sorry, this is the Farting Area."

Cinna-licious

You know how if you're with a group of people, there's always one idiot who will accept any dare just to prove his manliness, or something? I'm proud to say that I am that idiot, and I feel compelled to share a story from this Labor Day, in case anyone else is ever dared to eat a tablespoon of cinnamon in the future.

We went to a party at my brother's house, and one of the guys got a nasty case of hiccups. Someone -- I think it was actually Mrs. Smoot -- suggested that if he would eat a spoonful of sugar, it would cure the hiccups. And oddly enough, it worked.

This led to a conversation about how it's allegedly impossible to eat a spoonful of cinnamon. This sounded pretty stupid to me; it's just cinnamon, right? Quick as a flash, my brother lovingly rushed into his house and emerged with a nice, heaping spoonful of cinnamon for me so that I could disprove this theory.

Well, let me share with you exactly what happens if you attempt to eat cinnamon by the spoonful. As you're putting the spoon into your mouth, before any cinnamon even hits your tongue, some of the cinnamon molecules get sucked up into the nose, causing a sudden, alarming burning sensation. By this time, it's already too late to abort the whole thing because you have already sucked the whole load of cinnamon off the spoon and into your mouth, all to the cheers of an enthusiastic crowd.

Then things get really terrible. Some of the cinnamon sticks to the roof of the mouth and onto the tongue, and the rest just sits there like a bunch of sand in the mouth. And you can't really inhale, because the cinnamon gets sucked into your lungs and burns like a mother. And if you laugh or breathe out, you wind up coughing a huge cloud of cinnamon into the air, looking like Puff the Magic Cinnamon Dragon or something.

Of course at this point everyone is laughing to the point of peeing themselves, while I'm trying to determine whether this is going to cause permanent respiratory damage, or perhaps merely be fatal. And all the while, I'm shooting these big puffs of cinnamon into the air to the delight of the crowd.

Then, long after everyone else has gone home and forgotten about the whole thing, I am learning that everything now smells like cinnamon, and this continues to be the case for several days.

On the plus side, I was reading that cinnamon has numerous health benefits, including enhancing memory skills. Hopefully my brain will use this ability to remember that eating cinnamon by the spoonful is just a pretty bad idea.

Hooray! The Earth is Still Here!

Phew! It was very nice to wake up this morning and find that the Earth was still here.

Seems that a group of nerds in Switzerland have been erecting a $9 billion mechanism with the intent of garnering a better understanding about how our universe was formed. For most of us, all we really need is six or eight beers, and we can come up with all sorts of good theories on this subject, but these guys went an extra step and built the "Large Hadron Collider" in an effort to simulate the moments after the Big Bang.

The project took something like 25 years to complete, and apparently there was only one teensy potential problem with the whole experiment. Some more nerds worried that the LHC could spawn a black hole capable of sucking the entire world into oblivion -- all in the span of 1/20th of a second -- followed by even larger celestial bodies, like the solar system, the galaxy, Rush Limbaugh, etc.

I'll admit that there have been mornings where that scenario would probably be the best way to start a day, but that's not what happened this morning. In the wee hours of this morning, they fired the sucker up, and little particles of matter went whizzing around in a big circle or some such thing, and the nerds were wetting their polyester pants with joy. Hooray for them!

Hygiene Issues

We have a wonderful neighbor next door to us named Jean. She has lived there for a couple years now, and her mother owned the house before that, so we've known Jean for quite some time. It just occurred to me that this creates an unusually weird situation for me, though, when I see her outside.

I always yell, "Hi Jean!" when I see her. I realized today that this might seem odd to other people who live nearby who think that, for some bizarre reason, I'm standing outside yelling about "hygiene." I imagine that some people may worry that I'm directing this greeting at them, and perhaps they take a whiff under their arms just to check to be sure everything is on the up and up.

Yip Yip YAP!

Help me understand what possesses people to go out and get these little yappy dogs as pets. What purpose do they serve? The Smoot neighborhood features one family who has at least three of these little, nervous wiener dog things, and they are fully capable of spending entire days yapping and yipping at everything they see, real or imaginary.

Sometimes the owners will thoughtfully leave their yappy dogs outside while they head off to work for a day, safe in the knowledge that they'll be far enough away that they won't be the ones who have to listen to these little monsters while they're gone.

I just have a hard time understanding the appeal of these dogs. They spend all day barking up a storm, and if they're not barking, they're probably peeing somewhere inappropriate or pestering someone for food or something. It's not like they're big enough to be useful in any way, like Lassie was. When was the last time you read a newspaper headline like, "Family Saved from Tragic Blimp Accident Thanks to Alert Yappy Dog."

Every once in a while one or more of the neighbor dogs will escape through the gate and will end up wandering around through the yard and on the street. Sometimes other neighbors will try to corral them back behind the gate, but there is definitely a highly insensitive part of me that roots for the cars...

Happy Birthday, Twinkle Toes

I would have offered birthday wishes to my little girl a little earlier, but she got a cell phone for her birthday, which means I've been spending a lot more time text-ing than usual. My fingers are nearly worn down to little nubs.

Little Smoot turned 10 today, so at 5:26 p.m., she and I watched the clock tick past the exact moment of her birth in 1998. Yeesh, how the time has flown!

In any event, we're very proud of our birthday girl. Happy Birthday, kiddo -- and welcome to the double-digit club!

Na-Nu Na-Nu!

If you're like me (and God help you if you are), you may have noticed that over the past few years there have been a lot of houses with these weird stars attached to them. I'm deeply concerned.

I first started noticing them in rural areas of Pennsylvania, and now we even have them across the street from us. There is only one logical explanation. I and other experts on these sorts of things have concluded that these houses are inhabited by space aliens, and the star is their symbol to let other aliens know where they reside. Simple.

I have also noticed that these stars come in many different sizes. Clearly, the larger the star, the higher rank the alien holds. I stumbled upon the house in the picture last night. Clearly, this is the home of one of their supreme leaders.

No Fee, Unless We Get Money For YOU!

Since I work out of the house and I regularly have the TV on during the day, I consider myself to be an expert when it comes to evaluating the various commercials for personal injury attorneys. We have several of them in the Pittsburgh area, and their messages are all basically the same: If anything bad has ever happened to you in any shape or form, regardless of who was at fault, you have BIG MONEY coming your way! Somebody has to pay, regardless of whether it was your own fault, your own clumsiness, or your own stupidity that got you into this conundrum in the first place! Kah-ching!

One of the main ones in the region is Edgar Snyder and Associates. One would think if he was such a great lawyer he would have sued his parents for naming him "Edgar" in the first place. Edgar has so many commercials he may as well start his own TV station and just run them around the clock.

My personal favorite commercials come from Berger and Green. Cyndi Berger appears in many of the commercials, sporting a deer-in-the-headlights look as she tries to sound stern and angry while reading from the teleprompter, desperately trying to convey the message that she's stern and angry, and just can't wait to get money for you (and a generous commission for her). Also, for whatever reason, her hair seems to take on a weird greenish tint on TV.

Larry Green appears in other commercials, which are just over the top, unintentionally hilarious. While he is acting angry and stern, there are often videos playing in the background of massive explosions, crash test dummies, motorcycle stunts gone bad, etc. If anyone managed to survive any of the things that are going on in the background, suing someone is probably the last thing on whatever may be left of their minds. Click here to see a typical commercial of theirs that someone posted on YouTube. Note the flaming car flying through the sky in the background at the beginning of the ad.

I literally laugh out loud when I see commercials for Shenderovich, Shenderovich and Fishman. The Shenderovich brothers are twins, and I don't know if they're actually dwarfs or just really short. For that reason I feel a little guilty about laughing out loud at the commericals, but I just can't help it. These guys have these little wussy voices, and they'll stand with their arms folded and their backs against one another in an attempt to look angry and stern. Priceless!

An Historic Moment: He's No Longer Presumptive!

Finally. The media can now stop calling John McCain the "presumptive" presidential nominee. He's now just "the nominee," and reporters all over the country can breathe a sigh of relief knowing they can safely make their deadlines since they don't have to waste precious moments by typing that extra word every time they mention his name in a story.

Why have they been adding that extra word for these last several months? Anal retentiveness, of course. He's not officially the nominee until they hold the roll count at the Republican National Convention. Up until that point we all have to act as though the RNC is going to surprise everyone by nominating the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, or someone else, instead of the guy who they have already obviously picked, and have been running commercials for out the wazoo.

While I'm complaining about other really stupid and trivial things, what is the deal with reporters who are now using the phrase "an historic?" This is "an historic election." "An historic storm" is on the way. Last I checked, the letter "h" is still a consonant, and I grew up learning that you use "a" before words that begin with a consonant.

I can't imagine anyone saying, "Look! An history book!" So why "an historic?" I don't get it.

Well, here it is... my first 24 hours of being a blogger, and I've mostly spent my blogging time whining about dumb things. I'm going to try really hard to come up with something more festive and positive tomorrow. It'll be Friday and everything!

I Hereby Frock Thee

I was listening to the news the other day, and heard about a pastor who was being defrocked by his denomination. This leads to some obvious questions, namely, at what point does a pastor become frocked in the first place?

I've known many pastors over the years, and I cannot remember any of them saying, "Sorry I can't meet you for lunch, I'm being frocked today." Nor have there been any elaborate frocking ceremonies that I can remember, intended for new pastors who have just finished seminary.

Clearly, if I had ever had the chance to witness an actual frocking, I would jump at the opportunity. I'm sure it would be a great frocking time for everyone.

Meet The Swearing Neighbors

Well, I started the day as I have started so many days in the past: by calling the police to attend to our idiot neighbors down the street. We have lovingly dubbed them "The Swearing Neighbors" because they have this wonderful and continual habit of turning all of their arguments into public performances.

Attached to the back end of their house (which is about 300 feet from the back of our house, down a side street) is what most people would consider to be a deck. However, the Swearing Neighbors don't believe it is a deck at all. No, to them, it is a stage. And unfortunately, the rest of the neighborhood is their unwilling audience.

I first called the police regarding one of their performances back around 2002. I later learned that the day I called was the day after they moved in. On that occasion, the woman was repeatedly calling the man a newly-coined swear word that would probably get me banned from the Blog-O-Sphere if I were to type it. Let's just say it started with an infamous "C-word" that offends every woman I've ever met... plus the word "hole"... plus the word that technically means "female dog" but is rarely used for that purpose.

Since that time I have notified the police about their performances more than a dozen times, and we even took them to court a couple years ago, successfully getting them charged with disorderly conduct. I'll save that story for another entry someday. I will tell you it was a hilarious encounter with the judicial system, and I relished the fact the Swearing Neighbors actually argued and swore at the judge.

I Have too Much Spare Time. Now I Have a Blog.

So the other day, Mrs. Smoot made a comment suggesting that most people who have blogs are people who have way too much time on their hands. Therefore, I decided it was time to start a blog.

So here I am, giving it a whirl. I've thought about the idea of putting my thoughts into blog format for some time, but just haven't acted on it. Every so often, I'll get cut off in traffic, or I'll be annoyed by a particular radio commercial, or something, and I'll think about what great blogging material it would make.

Well, now I have a blog.