So what exactly is in toothpaste that the instant you drop even a molecule of it onto your shirt, it immediately stains and won’t wash off? Seriously, what the hell are they putting in here? Oil-based paint?

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It’s always a sad reminder of just how out of touch I am with popular culture when I hop into the iTunes Store and don’t recognize a single artist on the top sellers list. Actually, it’s getting to the point where I don’t even know how to pronounce them. Ke$ha. 3OH!3. Iyaz. Honestly, it looks like that time our cat jumped on my keyboard.

I know I’m lame and out of touch, Apple. Do you have to rub it in?

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I was walking down to the grocery store yesterday, which takes me past a pretty busy intersection. There’s a homeless shelter just down the street and the bums like to work those corners, begging motorists for change while they’re waiting for the light to change. There was a guy there that day, standard hand-lettered cardboard sign in hand, bumming for coins, and he saw me and shouted, “Hey, man! Happy new year!”

I fired off a “You, too” and kept on walking. About five steps along it hit me: What possible happy new year could this guy have? Short of winning the lottery, I’m not sure there’s much that’s going to improve his current life status. What new year wishes could I offer him that wouldn’t be simply bitterly ironic? Here’s hoping you don’t lose a foot to frostbite? May no yuppie teenagers soak you in gasoline and set you on fire? To a year where you don’t finally succumb to psoriasis?

I need to find another route to the grocery store.

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Welcomed in the new year with minimum fuss and fanfare. Although more than previous years when I looked up at the clock around 12:10 and muttered, “Oh, shoot… New Year’s. Right.” Still, going into the new year with a new wife, at a new job, in a new city. Frankly, that’s enough new stuff for a while. Fortunately, I’m still old, so I got that going for me.

And isn’t the year we’re supposed to make contact? Isn’t Roy Scheider supposed to living on Jupiter with a giant space domino or something? Well, it’s only January. We got time.

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As you may remember, NASA recently crashed a multi-million dollar spaceship, on purpose, into the surface of the moon, essentially to see how big of a mess they could make. (And how cool of a job is that? I once accidentally damaged a printer toner cartridge at work. Got in all sorts of trouble.) Well, they’ve now looked through the debris and have announced they discovered water on the moon. And not just little dribbles, either. They found “a significant amount,” which since we’re talking about the moon, I’d say anything over about a teaspoon would qualify.

Naturally, NASA is frothing at the panties over this discovery. “We have a significant amount of excitement,” were their exact words. They say this is the first step towards creating colonies on the moon. They found “a significant amount” of water and now we’re talking colonization? I really don’t want to rain on their parade (another water reference!), but I would just like to point out that, while they may have found “a significant amount” of water, they also found “a complete lack” of oxygen. I mean, it’s great that people won’t be thirsty while they asphyxiate, but I’m not too sure that little concession is going to be much of a comfort to them.

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I’ve decided to buy one of those dumb-ass over-the-ear Bluetooth headpieces that countless cell-phone douches use to hold ungodly loud conversations with invisible people in the supermarket so they can continue buying toilet paper without having to tie up their hands. Please understand, I’m not going to use it for that purpose. I’m only going to use it in the car, and I’m not even going to hook it up to my cell phone. Just this way I can sing along with the radio and passing motorists will simply think I’m having an animated phone conversation.

Better to be thought of as an ass than a nutcase.

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My left hand does, anyway. Feels too heavy, kinda off. Must be this wedding ring I’m wearing.

Yes, the Soon-to-be-Mrs. is now just the Mrs. and I’m trying to get used to having a heavy chunk of metal on my finger all day long. It kind of feels like if you wrap a Band-Aid around your knuckle too tightly and can’t bend your finger properly because of it. It’s a near-constant distraction that my mind is always peripherally aware of. I find myself messing with it all day long, taking it off, twirling it around. My brother, who apparently went through the same thing, likened it to putting a collar on a cat, which if you’ve never done, can be quite amusing as long as you stay out the kitty’s reach.

I’m sure I’ll get used to it in time and pretty soon it’ll be like I’m not wearing it at all. But until then, I guess I’ll just keep drifting left and bouncing off the wall.

What? I said it was heavy.

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Got a call the other day from a local charity. The woman on the phone, clearly reading from a script, asked in a inflectionless voice if I’d like to donate money to help prevent child abuse. I told her I wasn’t interested as I really considered myself more on the supply-side of child abuse.

I don’t think she had a section in her script for that.

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If you look up “picture” in the dictionary, there’s no picture. Ditto for “photograph,” “illustration,” “diagram,” “graph,” and “chart.” Seems like of all the words that were tailor-made to have sample images with them…

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Driving to work the other day and I pulled up behind a car plastered with patriotic bumper stickers. “Proud to be an American!” one proclaimed. “These colors don’t run!” asserted another. There was a standalone American flag, a 9/11 remembrance sticker, and several others, all announcing a love for and pride in anything American.

The car was a Nissan.

I always like a little hypocrisy in the morning; makes the day go faster.

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