Image via WikipediaWe were talking about the Kane family egg roll, which I think is one of the most fun and most odd traditions I've ever been a part of. We all gather at the Kane household in P-berg and dye dozens of eggs. We write all manner of inappropriate things on them, including all the things that have been frustrations and problems for us throughout the year. Once we're all done, we each pick our favorite and play a game where we try to smash the ends of each others eggs. Ms. Kane unmercifully destroyed my Old English D egg last year with a swift downward motion and an evil chortle. I vow revenge this year. So after the game, we gather most of the eggs, gather on the back porch and roll the eggs off the end. Symbolically, we're washing ourselves of the previous year's worries by throwing away the eggs. In reality, we're feeding the family of raccoons who gather in the ravine below. It's a wonderful tradition, and after the upcoming set of holidays, thinking about it helps me slog through the frozen tundra of where ever I happen to be on that day. The reason this came up is ...

It's not like that, I swear. For crying out loud, I'm a married man! Nonetheless, this weekend gave me some of the best times with random girls I've had in a while. Here's how it all went down... Saturday night: I was on the Blue line heading downtown to hang out with Rick Mizfield. At the Harlem stop, a girl who looked to be about 21, got on the train. She was all kinds of skanked out, rocking the tube top under her parka. Black fishnet stockings stretched from the bottom of her tiny, black skirt to the top of her mid-calf, white, f-me boots. Despite her outfit, you could tell she was cold and uncomfortable. She sat next to the window, kind of curled up, her downcast eyes saying "Please don't look at me." Her outfit screamed look at me, but the look on her face said she'd only feel comfortable once she was chugging jaggermeister and pretending to fend off the awkward sexual advances of drunken, leering frat boys. Anyway, as she clomp, clomp, clomped onto the train and slinked into her seat, two middle-aged women in TSA jackets, obviously heading home from a shift at the airport, stopped their ...

Fucking Central Illinois. I'm sick, it's cold and all I want to do is watch my Thursday night programs. So I'm wrapped all snug in my hotel bed and what do I get? NBC 25 WEEK's Out to Eat in Central Illinois instead of My Name is Earl. What the fuck do I want to see campy reviews of local diners for? Of course a ticker is scrolling across the bottom of the screen telling me that My Name is Earl will air at 1:35 a.m. Friday. I guess a show about a redneck's quest for redemption is too racy for the heartland. So here I am, watching some yokel talk about the all-American cuisine at Grumpy's Steakhouse. Wonderful.

We had a particularly grueling day at work today, wrestling with a MySQL server on a PC (we primarily use Macs). So at about 3:45 we called it a day and our IC gave one of our co-workers an instruction on how to navigate the World of Warcraft. "Are you killing something finally?" "Yes, I'm whacking it with a stick!" --- "When it looks like you're on fire, it means you've leveled-up." "So you can play gay characters in this game?" "They're all gay characters." --- "She's a chick on World of Warcraft, she's going to meet all kinds of guys!" "No, she's going to meet one kind of guy." --- This is all happening with another one of my co-workers blasting the cheesiest 80s and 90s music he can find on his iTunes. I swear I just heard Wang Chung, so as you can see, I work at the best place ever. Oh oh! Tony! Toni! Tone'! Gotta go!

So we played a practical joke on my co-worker today and it's probably a lot funnier if you work here, but I'll share it anyway. We used to work with a large, socially-awkward, lumberjack looking fellow from the U.P. who we called Eggs. He had a crush on another of my co-workers, we'll call her Pocahontas because she's Indian (dots, not feathers). He expressed it in a junior high schoolboy, Pedobear kind of way. Anyway, as a joke on Pocahontas, we wrote a fake love letter, Photoshopped an engagement picture and sent it to her via a fake e-mail address. The letter is below: My dearest Pocahontas, Please forgive the impersonal nature of sending such an important message via e-mail, for it's quite urgent. I decided that the immediacy of the Internet mixed with my fear that if I hand wrote this, the extremely heartfelt sentiment and feelings would be lost in the illegible abyss of the chicken scratch that is my handwriting necessitated its delivery in this manner. It's so important that you understand and take to heart each word I write, because this truly comes from the depth of my soul. It's been quite some time since we've talked, and yet my heart ...

The best argument for gay marriage and against Prop 8 I've ever heard. No using the Bible to throw it back in Christians' faces, no arguments about legality, just pure, heartfelt emotion. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCBczUzEb1A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

As the clock ticks down to election day, if you're still on the fence even just a little bit, allow me to tell you why I'm voting for Barack Obama and I think why you should as well. Taxes While both candidates have proposed tax plans that would give cuts to large groups of Americans, according to the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, Barack Obama's tax plan would give a majority of those cuts to those who make the least, while John McCain's would give a larger percentage of the cuts to the wealthiest Americans. John McCain has gone around calling Barack Obama a "redistributionist," which is funny, because you know who else was a "redistributionist"? Mark 12: 38-44 — But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything— all she had to live on. If progressive taxes — which have been the foundation ...