Worst web log I personally know of.

I felt normal today, as evidenced by the fact that I was speeding in my inappropriately unreinforced low-to-the-ground non-momish enonomy kid car on the way to work while listening to "Fire it Up" by Modest Mouse which has approximately one more day before it becomes a sports anthem, a la Who Let the Dogs Out, so enjoy it while you can. Which means, enjoy it today. Incidentally this band hails from an unlikely suburb peopled by trophy wives with tight designer workout clothes and big SUVs that I could throw a rock from my current location and hit without really aiming.

The point of my post is this: if you ever have a kid, it might take about a year for you to feel normal again, so budget for that.

This blog is super boring

Hmmm... this blog is getting super boring. Actually so is the internet but that is not my responsibility, is it?

Zzzz what?? Did you say something? I nodded off for a second. It's a cliche to stop blogging but what do you do when your blog gets boring? Also incidentally I agree with Dwight Schrute... this is now a web log. What does it say that I knew how to spell Schrute without looking it up?

This post sucks. Hmmm. A real dilemma here people. Something has to be done about this. I don't know what.

Update The husband thinks I might want to consider adding a new character to boost ratings... a Poochie sort of a concept. One who could spew catchphrases and stand around drinking corporate beverages... and end up on bootlegged t-shirts... I could squeeze a few more gasping seasons out of tiny dog with a cute little Andrew Keaton type of rascal...

Fishwich

Right, so I have this fish. Still.

At times I entertain fantasies of setting him free in a certain local watering hole to liberate myself from rummaging in fish excrement every month while I attempt to clean the tank. And yet I know, those glossy corporate koi in there would eat him immediately. He is a feeder fish, after all.

Still, that tank.

Damn thing stopped working today, the tank filter I mean, and the fish drifted in eerily still waters, eyeing me through the slightly warped glass. I know, I know. Without the filter, things get scuzzy and airless in there. You end up with a gasping fish. I remember this from a dark time in the recent past.

"Oh, probably your impeller motility has been compromised," I am informed via phone by Starla, in aquatics. "Try to clean it out." Except that Starla? Our outdoor water spigots all have that foam boob on them, you know the thing that's supposed to keep your pipes from freezing? So I'm out there mucking gelatinous black slime out of the motor housing using a bucket of water carried outside from the kitchen in the failing late afternoon light, in a mist of cold rain, and cursing fish kind.

Within the hour I find myself at the pet store, with my filter in a bucket, surrounded by hundreds of glowing tanks in a big, dark room. This is where it all began; where the cursed three fish first came into my life two years ago. "Oh, the Eclipse 12 motor is indestructible," says an employee with hearty certainty, as he plunges my filter unit into a nearby tank. "You've probably got cat hairs wound around your impeller piston. Happens all the time." He nods with certainty, dashing off to get a new part. All around me, creepy shrimp-beasts and legless water snakes wiggle in their habitats.

I wander over to the goldfish section to look into the big feeder fish tank, and am surprised to see how tiny the pathetic little minnows are; a fraction of one inch, in many cases so small they are sucked into the filter unit at the back of their tank, so only their lifeless tails poke out. They are disposable, of course, these feeder fish. I think of my own fish back at home: impossibly fat and huge, living off the largesse of my guilt, waiting for his refurbished filter.

It's late, and I'm driving home with a slimy but functional tank filter in my trunk. I stop at Macdonald's, something I have literally done less than five times in my entire life. I couldn't tell you exactly what I was doing there tonight.

"Yyyyyellow!" Says the register kid. He's wearing a backwards baseball hat and a skinny 80's tie. A wise ass.

"You guys have an, uh, veggie burger or something?" I say, blinking at the menu. None of it makes sense; fast food I mean. It's all these numbered combo packages with tie in movie poster toy upgrades and booster cola packs. The kid stares.

"No ma'am, but we do have a Filet o Fish."

"Right," I say to the kid. "I'll take the fish."

Best overrated band ever

This sounds so great. Even though I can't hear and I am about to die.

Woody, are you kidding me?

OK, it's 3:30 a.m., an hour only fit for 18 year olds in love, ER nurses, and brand new mothers. Yet here I am, none of these, blogging about a wildly overrated movie from 2005. Why? Because I am watching cable, and I have the worst cold in the history of illness.

Let's just get right to my thesis here: how exactly did Woody Allen manage to turn a profit on making the same film twice? After much desperate searching for a movie free of a) creepy sex scenes or b) women being killed, I ironically settled on Match Point to keep me from angrily obsessing on my dry, hacking cough that will never, ever go away, ever. Hearing that Match Point was some sort of "Woody Allen comeback" and all, I thought I could just roll my eyes through the Woody Allen font in the title sequence, and the thought-provoking crackly victrola tunes and all to at least possibly see something not too irritating or violent as I sat stewing in the dark, surrounded by kleenex, blankets and my everpresent companion, the needling, incessant, raw-throated cough, as it stole hours upon hours of sleep from my life.

Well, OK. Creepy sex scenes and murder came along somewhere in the seemingly endless running time of 124 minutes despite my best intentions; Alice, this was not. But that wasn't even the worst part, no sir. If I am not mistaken, this peice of cinematic crap got some sort of Oscar nomination (for Best Film Lifted Wholesale From Other Film By Same Director, I can only assume). This clown even called it "Allen's finest movie since Manhattan." Now, I am not a Woody Allen fan. He is completely indulged by Hollywood and allowed to release torrents of films on the moviegoing public year after year that reflect some sort of musty, stylized hothouse flower New York candy land that no human has ever experienced, and we are expected to consider them great when they are about as relatable and relevant as your great grandpa's spats. OK, what was that about spats? It's 4:00 a.m. people, and I'm coughing, and I'm pissed.

But at least you could rightly expect each of his movies to be vaguely unique. Right? As in, not blatantly and totally lifted, character, moral, and plot point, from something he already did? Did he really think he could just wait a decade and then dust off Crimes and Misdemeanors, recast it with the latest tinseltown man bait, and then kick back while the greenbacks rolled in? Isn't that Joel Shumacher's job?

I'm starting to think Woody Allen actually may have killed a woman, and is trying to let us know via repeated cinematic confessions, complete with identical operatic soundtracks and oblivious, tittering rich people in linen pantsuits. It's OK, Woody. No one seems bothered by your other morally suspect activities, so consider yourself above the law. But for god's sake, I don't want to see this damned movie again in 2016.