Support Our Disabled Veterans

Sitting on the couch in the lobby of my San Diego hotel, the young men looked like any other group of friends. They were laughing, talking and swearing. Some had their wives or girlfriends. A couple of small children rested in strollers.


But as I walked closer, on my way to have coffee, I saw a wheelchair and a walker. I saw scarred faces. One young man stood up on his two prosthetic legs and stretched his two prosthetic arms. Yet, they were laughing, talking and swearing.

I was in San Diego for a meeting, and pissed that the weather was not cooperating. They were here to receive Segways as part of the SEGSFORVETS program to provide this nimble personal transportation vehicle to Veterans who were disabled as a result of their duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Outside the hotel, a hulking Army Vet walked up to me with a cane. He looked about twenty-five and fully capable of kicking someone’s ass.

“This weather doesn’t bother me,” he said as he lit a cigarette, “I’m from Milwaukee.”

“What are you in town for?” I asked, though I already knew.

“SEGSFORVETS.” He said.

I asked him what happened and he told me that in December of 2005 he was hit with an IED south of Kirkuk, Iraq. His femur was shattered and they had to remove his large intestine. He spent two YEARS in Walter Reed Medical Center recovering. Much of that, I would assume, was to put his legs back together which were puffy and scarred with hundreds of lacerations, surely from the blast.

“Hey,” he stated flatly, “You win some, you lose some.”

Actually, he won and lost. He lost a hell of a lot…more than can be stated. He will win because he has the courage, fortitude and balls to have taken the worst the world can throw at him and plow ahead with conviction and bravery.

I shook his hand, thanked him for his service and wished him good luck. The price these men and women pay is not just on TV.

(There are lots of charities out there, I suggest www.draft.org. They raise money, they buy Segways, they give them to Veterans who need them.)

Dave Has New Shoes - Reluctantly

As much as I willed the hole on the bottom (the sole?) of my shoe to self-seal through some sort of Vulcan mind trick, I knew a trip to the shoe store was inevitable. This filled me with dread in the same way, “Mr. President, Representative Boehner is on the phone,” probably fills Obama with dread.


There are few things I try to avoid as much as shopping. In fact, I don’t even view it as shopping. I view it as replacing - and replacing is usually a pain in the ass. To illustrate this, take the brakes on your car. You don’t “shop” for brakes, you “replace” brakes. And you only replace them when they go bad.

This view is diametrically opposed to that of my wife, who would have viewed this an a tremendous opportunity to not only “replace” the worn out shoes, but to add several additional pair of shoes to her Imelda Marco like collection.

Such it was that I found myself in the local shoe store. Since I “replace” and do not “shop” I walked briskly to the slip-on, black shoes that in my opinion go with everything I own. (This, so far, does not apply to shorts.) To further reduce my exposure to retail environs, I was at a self-service store. No waiting around with one shoe off while a clerk checks in back for your size. The down side to this is that you miss the opportunity to goof around with the foot measuring device while waiting for your shoes. And that foot measuring device is one complicated looking piece of equipment. It seems to have an inordinate amount of numbers and lines on it for such a simple task. It does look as if you could calculate the rate of fuel burn off for the space shuttle.

Just as I was getting frustrated looking over the vast number of choices (three), my neighbor strolled up with her two girls. She said they were “shopping” for “spring shoes.” At which point I said, “What the hell are spring shoes?” It was a women thing, I assume. My wife would have understood.

I made my decision based on one pair having something called “comfort gel for shock absorption.” This sounded really cool, like shoe Viagra. The little insert in the heel was even blue like Viagra. I really don’t see needing shock absorption, but who can say? Before I walked in there, I didn’t know there was such a thing as spring shoes.

Cosmos - I Don't Drink 'Em, But I Do Read 'Em.

In the April, 2011 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine (“Cosmopolitan” is French for, “articles about things that will never happen to a guy”) there is a feature on the cover that caught my attention; “50 Ways to Seduce a Man (In a Minute or Less).” That title gives men too much credit since “hello” suffices.


Either way, I thought for sure the first one would be, “Honey, do you mind if I bring some of my girlfriends over so we can watch porn with you?” It was not. The ideas were, however, just as improbable. For instance, Patricia Taylor, (who has a PhD and contributes ten of the fifty suggestions) recommends “while you are out shopping together, graze your butt past his package indiscreetly but very purposefully.” The biggest problem with this isn’t the rubbing of a package, its assuming a universal truth about relationships doesn’t exist. That truth is that men and women abhor shopping together.

My wife and I don’t avoid shopping together because we don’t get along; we avoid shopping together because we know precisely HOW to get along. Shopping together usually (almost always) means that she shops while I stand around until she takes pity on me and we leave. If she is lucky, she can direct me to a bar and plop me on a barstool where I can remain contented for hours. There may not be a lot of rubbing packages, but there is a lot of me holding packages,

Even though great ideas abound in the article like “take an ice cube from his drink and slip it down your blouse, then ask him to find it,” make for good copy, they really don’t translate well into the real world. That usually translates into, “shit, I dropped that ice cube!”

So if, per chance, my wife rubbed against me while we were (or more likely weren’t) shopping, I would say, “whoops, let me get out of your way.” And let’s face it guys, “whoops, let me get out of your way” is the real key to happiness, which can lead to, “hello,” at which point, we are seduced.

Stupidity Through Frozen Pizza - A Comment On Society

“Do not eat frozen pizza.”


Right - good tip. Another good tip would be, “Drinking boiling water will burn.”

Also, you should “remove the wrapper before baking. “

Seems ridiculous, really. Or does it? In a time when P. Diddy is being sued for one TRILLION dollars for being responsible for 9/11 (Google it) one would think that the frozen pizza company who thoughtfully affixed these warnings was protecting is pepperoni covered ass.

I don’t think so. I think people can be really stupid. And far from being engaged enough to file a lawsuit, they might actually wonder why the pizza they plucked out of the frozen food aisle and bit into (with the wrapper on) was cold and hard (like Dick Cheney’s heart) and not warm and cheesy (like Bill Clinton’s) like they see on TV.

It’s reasonable to assume that if you are smart enough to buy a frozen pizza, you are able to identify the difference between foods that require cooking and those that don’t. But if this were the case, there would be no need to tell the consumer. No, I don’t think the pizza company was worried about lawsuits, I think they have a handle on the stupidity that can pervade our society.

“Do you think anyone would be foolish enough to eat this without cooking it?” asks pizza executive number one.

“I absolutely do,” says pizza exec number two.

“You don’t think they will realize that it’s frozen and that it should be hot?”

“You willing to bet your 401(k) on that?”

“You’re right,” says number one as he picks up his phone. “Larry? Hey there. We decided - get the warning on there. What? Yeah, put the one on about the wrapper too.”

Moldova Is Drunker Than Us - Break Out the Beer Bong

Do you know where Moldova is? Neither do I. What I do know is that somehow, this little known Republic has managed to drink itself to the top of the World Health Organization’s list of drunkest countries in the world. So what, you say, America has got to be in the top ten. After all, you religiously drink your glass of red wine with dinner. Nope, that is reserved for countries like Estonia (5) and Andorra (7) (do you know where THAT is?) But surely, we Jägerbomb drinkin’ patriots are in the top twenty. Nope. We are behind Korea (12) and Denmark (16).

Despite leading the world in intoxicated reality TV stars, we fall squarely into the fifty-seventh spot; after the U.S. Senate and Snoop’s house.

This is an unmitigated travesty. If the thought that Sarah Palin may run for President is not enough to have you knocking back a fifth of Jack Daniels every twenty-four hours, what is?

This is merely a question of motivation. It’s time to stop smelling wine and acting like you give a shit about acidity and tannins and just drink it. Stop worry about calories in your beer and whether it is a subtle hefe-ice-mango-low carb craft brew and shotgun the bastard (in fact, shotgun the entire case). Drink whiskey from the bottle and vodka over ice.

Together, in the words of our beer-summit president himself, we can “Win The Future.” If we all pitch in and get good and drunk a little more often, we can hop right over Bulgaria into that coveted 25th position. Only then will Luxembourg (21) will be directly in our sights.

(Authors note: Moldova is a tiny landlocked country in Eastern Europe, located between Romania and Ukraine (6). They clearly have no problem with motivation.)

The Case of the Vanishing (and Subsequent Return of the) Victoria's Secret Catalogue

I admit it; I am not above looking at my wife’s Victoria’s Secret catalogue. I enjoy flipping through its pages of lingerie that after fifteen years of marriage I am no longer permitted to buy. My wife contends that we really do not have the time for such things. Nonsense. For instance, we usually have a few minutes after dinner and before we do the dishes. Such suggestions are usually met with an incredulous sigh and, “is that all you think about?” Well, yes.


But yesterday, it wasn’t so much that I was looking at the VS catalogue, as much as we were looking FOR the VS catalogue. You see, our kids had some friends over (one of which just came in through the basement and up the stairs – and then into the pantry – all without knocking or otherwise acknowledging his entrance) for a sleepover. Now that they are older, this causes very little interruption in our day as long as we have sufficient cash on hand for pizza – and chicken, soda, chips and cookies – and a full box of waffles and several gallons of juice.

Anyway, I distinctly remember the VS catalogue residing on our kitchen table - where the boys were eating. For some reason, after they were finished and we had cleared the table with a front-end loader, it hit us that the catalogue was gone. This was not immediately troublesome since like most well organized homes, we have about thirty-two places in the kitchen alone that act as temporary holding places for mail, magazines, keys, cell phones, wallets and pens.

We were now missing five boys and one pseudo-soft-core porn magazine. Although I was chuckling inside, this is had to be dealt with. I’m savvy enough to know that the last thing I need is this turning up in someone’s bedroom and some mother seeing my wife’s name on it. Still, it required some tact, as twelve year old boys can be embarrassed when having to even acknowledge the very existence of parents, let alone one yelling into the game room, “Did you boys take the Victoria’s Secret catalogue?”

We quietly brought one of our boys upstairs where my wife simply asked him about the catalogue’s whereabouts. His immediate (and incriminating) response was, “I didn’t take it.” However, this didn’t stop him from disappearing and returning a few seconds later with it in his hand.

Plans foiled, he returned to the basement. As for me, I erased the browsing history from my iPad.

Tweetle Dee and Tweetle Dumb

I wouldn’t dislike Twitter so much if not for the word “tweet.” Not since “chipotle” worked its way into the American lexicon have I been so utterly disturbed by the overuse of a word. As I watched the violence unfold in Cairo this weekend, I heard one newscaster say, “This all coming to us via tweets and re-tweets.” So, desperados with smart phones have co-opted our news coverage? Anonymous revolutionaries are taking time out from throwing rocks and saying, “Brother, hold this rock for me a minute, coverage picked up and I have three bars, I need to tweet something real quick!”


But can you take any of this seriously when the word “tweet” is involved? Is it me or does this sound like baby talk? (Same newscaster as above: “This all coming to us via goochy-goos and re-goochy-goos.” See, same thing.)

But none of that matters, because I seem to be the only person around who still has no idea how the hell to “follow” someone! That means I have to hear the “tweets” fourth hand on ESPN, E!, CNN, QVC, Food Network and The Gameshow Channel, all of which report these tweets like they are the butter cream roses on some under-decorated news cake.

There is a logical progression with all technology. Twitter is leading us down the inevitable road whereby one day, one eye will be replaced with an LCD screen at birth and you will be synched (with the help of a three trillion GB CPU stapled to your head) to every living human being and you will be constantly updated whenever your new friend in Rotterdam is “enjoying a caramel macchiato.” You see, you won’t have to follow them - they will follow you.