An-dy Pet-titte! Clap Clap, Clap Clap Clap!

I was thinking today about how lame this blog has become. Posting once a week about how I ate Doritos the other day or whatever is no way to build a web empire. It got me wondering: did verbungle always suck so hard or is it just recently? I went back and looked at some old posts, and I came to the conclusion that while lameness often crept into the picture, some posts were actually pretty good and entertaining. They showed that my mind was functioning, by which I mean it had sufficient time each day to daydream about goofy stuff that might develop intro a full-fledged blog post. A blog post that would hopefully be good enough to entertain you as you sipped your morning hot beverage and put off work for a few minutes.

Like this. That was pretty good. And this one. Not bad. And this one, too -- all within a few days of each other. Sure, some of the posts sucked giant moosecock, but there were enough decent ones to warrant the continuing existence of the site. But these days...well, these days I can't remember my last decent post. Maybe this one.

So what has changed?

Well, like Columbo used to say, usually the most obvious answer is the right answer. In this case, that answer is that my job has taken over my life. Between working 70 hours a week (now down to about 55) and trying to keep my young baby alive and out of trouble with the law, I have barely had time to think cool thoughts, let alone type them up on the magic typewriter and get them to the people. When I am buying an egg sandwich, instead of observing some hilarious shit in the deli or thinking about something funny that happened to me back in '92 or trying to solve an ongoing international problem, I am instead worrying about work. Or baby. Or pops.

Who suffers? You do.

What do I aim to do about it? Not much.

But I think the next few weeks will be full of change for me, and hopefully it's good change, and hopefully it leads to some good posts. In the meantime, I will make one small adjustment. I will change the background color of this blog to suit my mood. I like to keep it white for the most part; I think that maybe it makes it less conspicuous for those of you who are reading it at work. But we need to shake things up so it's gonna get all rainbowy for a li'l while.

Since my head is empty right now, I have also decided to start utilizing your suggested post topics to get me going. 22 points for PBdotC's suggestion of talking about Billy Joel songs that don't suck. You all know my history with Billy Joel. When I was 13 years old, I would sit in my air-conditioned room with my friends (I won't name you) and play ColecoVision while soaking in the immense brilliance of every BJ lyric. Then, about three years later, I realized Billy Joel sucked. Since then, my hatred of Billy Joel has been fueled mostly by four things:

1) His massive suckitude
2) His arrogance and apparent complete lack of awareness of this suckitude
3) The sense of betrayal I felt for wasting appproximately 80 of my teenage dollars and 500 of my teenage hours on this joke of a man
4) My own self-hatred for those same reasons


So it is somewhat difficult for me to fairly evaluate his canon in the search for songs that don't suck. I think maybe they all suck.

Instead, I offer you the Billy Joel songs that I feel suck the least, or at least have something interesting or good about them. No order. Don't ask me to pick an order.

1) Worse Comes to Worst -- contains the slightly off but oddly satisfying lyric "And if I don't have a car I'll hitch/I got a thumb and she's a son of a bitch"
2) She's Got a Way -- nice, pretty love song a la James Taylor
3) Until the Night -- corny, bombastic, Billy Joelish as all hell -- but somehow it works for me. At least I think it does -- I haven't heard it in about 16 years.
4) New York State of Mind -- really not that bad, especially if you are a 13 year-old New Yorker flying home from Paris alone and listening to it on your cheap Crown Walkman-knockoff that your dad bought you for your birthday.


5) Don't Ask Me Why - not even close to a rock song, even by Billy Joel's standards, and it has a bunch of strikes against it (ugh, that wimpadelic organ solo) but it is damn catchy, in a McCartneyesque kind of way.

There are a few more but let's stop there. 22 points for PBdotC's suggestion.

By the way, major dingleberries to all of you for not giving me kwachas for the awesome photo on the previous post. That is a moment to be proud of, caught right there by the ol' camera. It's one of those rare instances where 12 year-old me woulda looked into the future and gone, "Damn right that's what I'll be doing at 37! Carrying bald dudes around the hallway at high speeds and grinning like a madman." And 12 year-old you would all have been jealous. And rightly so.

Also, I am happy about the Yankees getting Pettitte back. I have forgiven him -- we talked, it got emotional, and now it's over. Come on back, Andy. They're paying him way too much money but I guess who really cares, there's no cap. Baseball needs a fucking cap.

Going to California in like 2 weeks and I will play ball in the sunshine with the bro-in-law as often as I can. That is all I need. I wonder how bad I now suck; this is the longest non-injury layoff from basketball since I started playing in 1984. I can always set a pick on you if nothing else works.

Also, I got a new digital camera (free!) and it has a much-improved video mode. I will take some videos of some cool stuff soon. Maybe a video blogpost from the road.

20 points to whoever can tell me what my team's final time was in the carry the bald guy race. It was me and another dude up front and two girls in the back. We had to carry him down one hallway about 40 feet, around a corner and down another 40 feet. Hint, our time would have won if we hadn't been disqualified. Also, why were we disqualified (15 points)?