Dr Simple Man or: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Debt Bomb

If the government insists on dragging out cracking the debt conundrum, we're gonna need to expedite the legalization of pot, because that's the only way I'm gonna be able to focus long enough to learn one of the 14 Chinese languages.

Whenever all of the news about this impending debt bomb that we're on the brink of becomes too much for me, I go to a place in my mind where there's a monkey humping a coconut for a few minutes to clear my thoughts, and then I smile and go on to read about a different subject -- like the mating turtles who shut down the runway at JFK airport.

Warrior Dash, Tough Mudder and Why I May Not Live Through the Year

My wife, myself and some of our friends ran the Warrior Dash this past Saturday, and Wednesday was the first day I didn’t limp up the stairwell at work while fighting back tears. I spent the first half of this week walking in such an awkward manner that I was waiting for someone in my department to throw a frozen bag of peas on my desk and ask how my vasectomy went.

If you don't know what Warrior Dash is, good for you. Stop reading this blog post now and send me an e-mail thanking me for saving you about $200, your pride and full use of your legs for one additional week this year. For those of you with a mild disregard for your life, Warrior Dash is a 3.4 mile run through a hilly, muddy cow pasture littered with about 12 obstacles: climbing walls, cargo nets, guys wearing Speedo shorts two sizes too small, fire pits, mud pits and Marky Mark lookalikes walking the course because they forgot that getting oxygen to all those muscles is an obstacle in and of itself. When we finished, we limped over to the beer tent and then went down to watch everyone else who wished they were dead wade through the mud pit and cross the finish line, including a guy dressed like the Dirt Cheap Chicken. In spite of the pain, it was a pretty fun weekend. But being manly men, we have to keep going one step further until we’re up to our eyeballs in quicksand before we think about tapping the brakes.

Baby Safety Weekend

Last weekend we babyproofed our house, and now I feel like I have to crack the DaVinci Code just to use my toilet.

About one month after our daughter was born, my wife started banging the babyproofing drum, acting like our daughter, whose resume highlights at the time included filling diapers, keeping us awake all night and refusing to eat, was going to wake up one morning and say, "Man, I can't wait to drink out of the toilet, run up and down the stairs and throw a cat in the dryer today." Eventually my wife realized that Tootie wasn't going to wake up one morning and suddenly start acting like me, and that we didn't need to babyproof right away. (I've been told by my mother that at a young age I put our family cat in the freezer because the cat "looked hot." Yes, by the grace of God, the cat survived.)

World's Worst First Vehicle

I get a little teary eyed thinking about my first vehicle. Not because it was a classic car or a hot rod or anything like that, but because I start thinking about the smoke seeping into the cab caused by the oil burning off the transmission after the transmission blew up while I was driving down the road.

The vehicle was a 1977 Chevy Scottsdale truck, and I eventually pulled over to the side of the road, eyes burning and lungs filling with filth; both myself, and sadly the truck, survived. The truck had one gas tank on each side, ensuring that no matter which side someone hit me on, I would be reduced to a pork rind while the truck rolled on. The Scottsdale was like a touchy grenade with a clip at each end. It didn't help that the beast got what felt like 5 miles per gallon and almost went through one tank on the way to school and the other one on the way back, ensuring that I never had any money, even with gas costing about $1.30 in 1997. The gaping hole in the floorboard where I could see straight through to the road wasn't really a feature I appreciated, and there was really no good way to cover it up. If it was snowing outside the truck it would seem like it was snowing inside the truck, and turning on the heater or air conditioner often did nothing more than fog up the windows, giving me just one more obstacle to get past.