My Retail Super Hero...

I'm guessing most of you were able to identify the "sore thumbs" from the picture. However, just in case you are stumped, here are the answers. The Matzah ball toy and Matzah holder have no business hanging around the Hanukkah items. Matzah is for Passover, a completely different holiday. Passover is to Hanukkah as Easter is to Christmas, except even less related. Adam's comment also made a good point about the items being over $10, especially the day after Hanukkah ended. That's just BS.



So just a little bit of housekeeping. We are off to DC tomorrow to celebrate the new year with none other than Mr. FindingTheFat himself. It's sure to be a great, artery clogging time. Since I'll be out of town, there are no guarantees that I will be able to keep up my "one post a day" pace that I've been doing until now. I'll try, but again, no guarantees. The same goes for after the new year. I'll post regularly, but not necessarily every day. I want to make sure that the quality of posts is not compromised just to maintain the quantity.

Speaking of quality, I'm going to use tonight's post as a way to salute someone who still believes in quality. The other week was the annual JoS. A. Banks 50% off sale. Everything in the store was 50% off, PLUS an additonal $25 off any $100 purchase. It's by far their best sale they have ever had and the only time where my favorite, the tailored fit, traveler's shirts are on sale. It would be a slap in the face of my people if I didn't take advantage of such an event. Unfortunately, they did not have one of the shirts I wanted. At any normal store, that would be the end of it. I would have left empty handed and more disappointed than my date to my sophomore year Valentine's dance. But I digress. Enter the retail super hero. The 60+ year old big bellied salesman. He took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and proceeded to take down all of my information. He vowed that come hell or high water, he would find me that 16-34 spread collar, ecru shirt. I doubted his genuineness, as I too am in the sales profession and know that it is saturated with empty promises, but I complied none the less. Several days later, I received a call, he found a shirt. But, it was the pin point collar. He knew it wasn't the right one, but wanted to see if I wanted that one instead, very nice of him. To be honest, I was suprised he took the time to call at all. After all, this is for one shirt that ends up being about 70% off. I got another follow up call this weekend that he is still on the search to find the shirt. He's sticking to his word, he's not gonna give up, I'm gonna get that shirt. Then today was the kicker, I received a hand written thank you note for my other purchases.

I couldn't believe it. I can't remember the last time I was at a store where the salesperson even pretended to care. This guy has spent more time time on my shirt search than most people spend planning a Bar-Mitzvah. Incredible. How could this be? Nobody cares anymore, I learned that all to well when I was teaching high school. Then I saw his business card and it all became clear.

There it is. He has no choice, he's Ken Awsumb Jr., Son of Ken Awsumb Sr. Clearly from a long line of Awsumb men. When Mr. Awsumb says he's gonna do something, well dammit, he does it. He's the kind of guy that doesn't go fishing, he goes catching. "Fishing" implies the chance of failure and that's not an option for Mr. Awsumb. So here's to you Mr. Awsumb and my 16-34 Ecru spread collar shirt. I know you won't let me down, you can't, it's not in your blood.

Jew don't know me.....I'm not just one of your many goys...

Let's start today's blog with the answer to yesterday's semi-obscure picture. Depending on when and where you grew up, you may or may not know the following song. Apparently my sister got it immediately so if you're in your late 20's or so (you're welcome sis) you probably know it.

The song goes like this:

There's a place in France
Where the naked ladies dance
And/With/There's a hole in the wall
Where the men can see it all.

That third line has a little variety.

No matter what the lyrics, it is always sung to the tune played in the video from yesterday's post. So, a big congratulations to anyone who got it from seeing the picture. An even bigger congratulations to anyone who got the even more obscure reference to the Leslie Gore song in the title of today's post. Bravo!

On to today's topic, "Jew don't know me". I'm sure my fellow members of the tribe have all been in this situation. Someone non-Jewish just found out you are Jewish. Their first response is to call you out for not being what in their mind is "Jewish". For example: "You're Jewish? Where's your little hat thingy". Or, "You're Jewish, but you just ate bacon" and my personal favorite, "You're Jewish? Wow, I can't even see the scars from where your horns used to be". I think it goes without saying that there are a lot of people out there with various misconceptions about Jews. I'm gonna lay a few things out for them.

First: Very few Jews wear "that little hat thingy", properly known as a Yarmulke. (pronounced Yahm-a-kah) It's typically the orthodox, or as I prefer to call them, "Super-Jews" that wear it all the time.

Second: Most Jews don't keep kosher. However, there are plenty that have created their own laws of Kashrut. They'll eat pork, but only if it's on the Cobb salad at the country club. They don't eat shellfish, except for the shrimp cocktail on the cruise ship. You get the idea.

Third: Horns? Really? People believe that crap? I blame Borat for this one. Enough said.

Finally: The one thing that all Jews (and really, people from any other religion have in common) feel is that no matter where you lie in the "I just dabble" to "Super-Jew" spectrum, anyone who is more religious than you is "Yeccchhhh, too Jewish" and anyone less religious "has the nerve to call themselves a Jew".

This brings us to today's picture. I was in Walgreen's earlier today checking out the Hanukkah sale items while waiting for my Chinese food from the restaurant next door. I saw this display which was really the inspiration for this post. Although they sort of had the right idea, there is a clear "sore thumb" in this display. It's kind of like a Sesame Street "One of these things is not like the other" Can you find it? (Click on the image for a larger view, there is a hint below if you need it)

Hint: Imagine this were a Christmas item display, would you expect to see Peeps?

Bonus: Upon further inspection, there could really be two items. Extra credit if you can find them both. Answers tomorrow.

Somewhere in France...

On the eighth night of Hanukkah, my Schnoozle gave to me...
Eight salad croutons,
Seven flavors of popcorn,
Six chocolate fondue dipped biscottis,
FIVE SLICES OF HAM,
Four Meatballs,
Three Chicken Wings,
Two Egg Rolls,
and a pizza with Pepperooooooooooni.


Well, tonight concludes what has truly been a lovely and as you can imagine, tasty 8 nights of Hanukkah. However, with every ending comes a new beginning. Tonight is no different. Tonight marks the debut of the first work of art from my illustrator. From time to time I have ideas that require some custom artwork. Often, the clip art I find on the web and my super skills with MS Paint just won't cut it. Therefore, I have found someone that has the ability to bring my ridiculous ideas to life. Tonight will be the first of such ideas.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Seems possible...but, with this one, I'm only looking for 23. (up to 25 if you want to be picky about the contractions) I thought this could be a funny idea for a T-shirt but want to see if people get it or not. It might be a little too much. Can you figure it out? Let me know what you think, but don't post the answer in the comments and spoil it for anyone. Click on the picture for a larger view.









Play the video if you need a hint.

Still don't get it? It's ok, I'll post the answer tomorrow.

More Einsteins...

On the seventh night of Hanukkah, my Schnoozle gave to me...
Seven flavors of popcorn,
Six chocolate fondue dipped biscottis,
FIVE SLICES OF HAM,
Four Meatballs,
Three Chicken Wings,
Two Egg Rolls,
and a pizza with Pepperooooooooooni.


So I have had the benefit of meeting many people in my life that I can pretty much guarantee I'd beat out if we were ever going head to head for a technical job. Granted, I'm a pretty technical person. I can hook up a home theater, I can program the clock on just about anything, I can setup a bluetooth earpiece to work with a mobile phone. (Two phones actually, you're welcome Schnoozle.) However, it's my personal opinion that just about anyone with a high school education should be able to do those things too. I have lots of these stories, but here's two about people I've encountered that were a few potatoes short of a Latke .


It was this past Tuesday, at the grocery store. I wanted to get some movies from the redbox to watch over the holidays. As I'm browsing the choices, the Einstein standing near me, watching me intently says "That's a pretty good deal, $1 a night" Of course I agreed, it is a good deal. Then he ruined what could have been a perfectly painless encounter. He said "So what do they do, just beam the movie to your television?" No joke, those were his actual words. Being a pretty technical person, I was absolutely frozen with awe at the thought of that. So as I stood under the Gigantic sign that said Redbox DVD rental machine, I decided to be polite and said, "no, the machine just spits out the dvd you choose." "Oh, ok." he answered. That seemed to sufficiently satisfy his curiosity and he walked away. Maybe he had to get back to his job of designing exercise room signs, I don't know. Unfortunately for me, I started thinking about it and it made my brain hurt...Beam it to your TV? What? Let's just imagine that was even possible. (Without the use of an addressable set top box...just to clarify for the other techies out there that want to argue.) Let's say that by using advanced GPS, there was some super high tech way for the machine to take your address and the location of the tv you want to watch the movie on and "beam it there"...why on earth would you drive all the way to a store to use a giant vending machine to do it. Ugh.

Here's a classic- About 10 years ago, in my days working at Wegmans (Greatest grocery store ever) I was the guy that was called over when the cashier or customer had an issue. One day I got to observe this priceless moment. The store had just installed new credit card reader machines and a lady asked for help using it. My co-worker said, "No problem" and pointed to the payment choice buttons on the screen and said, "Just tell it how you are gonna pay." The woman held her credit card up, put her face right up to the card reader and said very clearly, "I'll be using my Mastercard". She then stepped back and watched the card reader, waiting for something to happen. We both looked with disbelief and tried to hold back the laughter. My co-worker was able to keep it together long enough to say, "What I meant was, press the button that corresponds to your method of payment, then swipe your card."

There's two more signs you can make Mr. Engvall.

Live and Learn...the hard way.

On the sixth night of Hanukkah, my Schnoozle gave to me...
Six chocolate fondue dipped biscottis,
FIVE SLICES OF HAM,
Four Meatballs,
Three Chicken Wings,
Two Egg Rolls,
and a pizza with Pepperooooooooooni.



Tonight's post is another installment of "Word of the Day" Here goes:

Word of the day:

Wisdumb: Knowledge that is acquired by doing something stupid.

Here's a partial (very, very partial actually) list of things I've learned, the hard way, that I think are worth passing on.

-Close your eyes when you snap the lid of the shampoo shut. There seems to be some kind of magnetic force in the eyeball that always attracts the one little drop of shampoo that shoots out when the lid snaps shut. This same force seems to also exist for fresh squeezed lemons, limes, and other citrus fruits.

-If you're at someone's house and have to use the bathroom, first check that there is toilet paper, then do a test "pre-flush" so that you get a good idea of what their toilet is capable of handling.

-Increasing the temperature on the oven is not an effective way to reduce the time needed to cook something.

-Smell the milk before you pour it in the glass. This prevents unnecessarily dirtying a glass if it's bad. Also, do this before you pour the Cereal in the bowl. Nothing worse than having your Cap'n Crunch in the bowl ready to go only to find out that there's no milk, or that the milk is bad. I've had many a morning ruined from this.

-The best way to wash your hands in a public restroom is in the following order. Roll out the paper towels from the dispenser. Yes, you heard me right, do this first. Then, turn on the water, soap your hands, rinse your hands, dry your hands with the towel that is already out....see, no need to touch the nasty towel machine handle thing. Then use the towel to shut off the water and open the door. Perfect.

-Adjust the volume on that thing that is on exercise equipment at the gym (or the one on the airplane) before connecting your headphones. There's always that one 80 year old lady with severe hearing loss at the gym that was on the machine before you watching Murder She Wrote at full blast.


I'm sure Schnoozle could put together an even longer list of Wisdumb I've gained, considering she's witnessed or cleaned up most of it. I bet if we ask her really really nicely, she'll write some of them here. :-)

Christmas Kisses

This was my Christmas card for Jewboy because it is exactly something he would do and an exact response from me. He'd also ask me to do this --


Therefore, mistletoe is forbidden in the house. So are matches in the bathroom - but that's another story....

Happy Birthday to Jew...

On the fifth night of Hanukkah, my Schnoozle gave to me...
FIVE SLICES OF HAM,
Four Meatballs,
Three Chicken Wings,
Two Egg Rolls,
and a pizza with Pepperooooooooooni.



So here it is, the birthday of one of the most famous Jewish Carpenters of all time. This year however, it falls on the 5th night of Hanukkah. Does that mean all of his friends would have to buy him two presents? One for his birthday, and one for Hanukkah? Gold, Frankincense, Myrr and perhaps something sensible, like a new robe, waterproof shoes, or some fresh water for his wine making hobby. In honor of this, I created a T-Shirt for such a special occasion.

So Happy Birthday to you J-Man! Have your Cake and eat it too. Then, take six of the candles from it and put them in the Menorah. Might as well get your money's worth out of them.

Amothr Onr oF Mydeas...

On the fourth night of Hanukkah, my Schnoozle gave to me...
Four Meatballs,
Three Chicken Wings,
Two Egg Rolls,
and a pizza with Pepperooooooooooni.

So tonight's post will be another one of "Mydeas"...a somewhat practical one. I'm still working on the prototype for "No Toz". If Schnoozle asks you what happened to all of her Dr. Scholls shoe inserts, I don't know anything about it.

As I've mentioned several times before, it gets really cold here. As you can imagine, hands can be very affected by this. Normally, people wear gloves, which is a perfectly logical solution. However, when you wear gloves, much of your dexterity is lost. This becomes particularly inconvenient when trying to use a mobile phone. Most things typed on a mobile phone while wearing gloves end up looking like the title of this post...pretty much incoherent. This brings us to Mydea.

So there are a couple things going on here. Ignore the ugly 1980's glove and focus on the functionality. Picture a plastic, slightly stretchy thimble inside that the thumb snugly slides into. That thimble is attached to a small plastic/rubbery "nub" that passes through to the outside of the glove. By having this as one piece, the user would get tactile feedback when a button is pushed. They'll also have the precision they are used to when typing with that small part of the side of their thumb that is between the nail and skin. It could even help all those people with fat sausage fingers that alwyz Typ mssge tath lkoo lkie tish. Wanna take it one step further? Make the piece out of a conductive material and you can use an iPod too, that's easy. Now you can type away and still keep your fingers nice and toasty. No more holding your glove under your arm while trying to type, which inevitably falls in the snow or on the ground. Hands stay warm, messages are readable. Everyone is a winner.

So let me know what you think....Thumbs up?

Ain't no thing....

On the third night of Hanukkah, my Schnoozle gave to me...
Three Chicken Wings,
Two Egg Rolls,
and a pizza with Pepperooooooooooni.


So one of my co-workers has passed on a couple wise quotes to me. The first is "only the paranoid survive" and the second is "you can't fix stupid". Although I agree with both, I'd like to focus on "you can't fix stupid".

I've had my own, similar saying for a number of years now... "Stupidity is contagious and everyone's dying to catch it" My experience teaching is really what started this thought. Not only were the kids stupid, see "One D Ten T 5" for more details, but more importantly they were proud of it. Nothing made them happier than to not know the answer to a question. "Psssshhhh, I don't know that shit, that's smart people stuff." The scary part is that it's not just kids, it's adults too. Ever ask a clerk at a store what your change is gonna be, or what the price will be after the 10% discount? Clueless, and happy about it. "I don't know, that's why they make calculators" is the typical answer. I see things all the time that clearly show that someone's been infected with Stupid.

Here's today's example- This is a picture I took at a Marriott Courtyard.

Really? The Exercise room is open from midnight to noon? How convenient. This wasn't some temporary thing either. This was a professionally made, solid plastic, permanently attached sign.

To the person who put in the request, the person who made it, the person who received it and the person who hung it, I think Bill Engvall says it best. "Here's Your Sign."

How I Roll...

On the second night of Hanukkah my Schnoozle gave to me....
Two Egg Rolls,
and a pizza with Pepperooooooooooni.


So Friday I met Junkass for lunch at KFC. Yes, another ManDate. I ate a ridiculous amount of delicious fried chicken, biscuits, mac and cheese and potato wedges. So much in fact, that I skipped dinner since I was still full. Saturday, we had Indian food for dinner. Sunday, as shown above, we had homemade pizza and wings. (Mmmmmm, Anchor Bar wing sauce, the true original Buffalo wing sauce) and tonight, Vietnamese eggrolls and soup, also known as Pho.

Hopefully you are thinking "So What? Not interesting, not funny, get on with it."

The point is this, if you were to have a room full of Southerners, Indians (dot Indians, not feathers Indians...Schnoozle sugar coated it by saying "India, not Native Americans, but as usual I have a more PC way to describe it), East Coasters and Vietnamese, the chances of them all getting along is probably pretty slim. Their food in my stomach is no different. There has been lots of churning, gurgling and so on these past few days.

This brings us to our word of the day. (Just one today, I've clearly been spoiling you all with lots of everything these past weeks)

Crap-Dusting- The act of slowly releasing (so as not to be noticed) intestinal gas while walking around a big, often public area. The method is similar to and inspired by crop dusting, where a farmer sprays pesticide from an aircraft to cover his whole field evenly.

Example: "Dude, I think it must have been all that chili I ate today, but I just non-stop crap-dusted the whole cereal aisle, from Apple Jacks to Wheaties."

So just remember the old song, "Beans, beans, a food you can trust, the more you eat them, the more you Crap-Dust."

Come on baby light my....candles.

On the first night of Hanukkah my Schnoozle made for me.....A pizza with pepperoni.

Yum. She made the dough from scratch, made the pizza sauce, covered it in cheese and pepperoni and baked it just for me. Delicious!

This brings us to the first night of Hanukkah, a most joyous occasion. The celebration of the oil lasting not only one night, but an incredible 8 whole nights. It's no knocked up virgin, but we do with what we have. Although in more modern times, it's really turned into a way for Jewish kids to not feel left out on Christmas, when all their non-Jewish friends are celebrating up the wazoo. Why would they feel left out you may ask? Let's do a side by comparison. We'll start with my house and examine traditional "in-house" decorations.

We have a nice tree decorated with gold and silver ornaments and ribbons and crystal icicles, (All meant to symbolize the wealth and riches of my people...it was no accident) and a lame ass crooked Menorah. You should be beginning to see my point. Christmas decorations: a gorgeous tree decorated with ornaments, ribbons, figurines and a star. Hanukkah decorations: a candle holder. Blah.

Christmas 1, Hanukkah 0.

Next, let's look at Outside decorations.

Here's the non-Jewish house on Christmas:

Snowmen, candy canes, lights, garland, trees. Gorgeous.


And the Jewish House on hanukkah:

Christmas 2, Hanukkah 0.


How about music? Let's compare. Here's a very, very condensed list of Christmas songs:

Jingle Bells
Frosty the Snowman
Winter Wonderland
O Holy Night
Holly Jolly Christmas
Silent Night
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer
Let it Snow
Little Drummer Boy
Let it Snow
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Feliz Navidad (for our amigos)
Silver Bells
And the list goes on and on...

Let's look at Hanukkah songs:

I have a little Dreidel
Adam Sandler's "The Hanukkah Song"

Christmas 3, Hanukkah 0.

How about presents?

A typical Christmas present:

Now, a typical Hanukkah present on nights 2-8:

Christmas 4, Hanukkah 0.

Finally, let's take a look at something especially near and dear to both Schnoozle's and my heart, Food.

A typical Christmas meal:

My mouth is already watering. Ham with gravy, carrots, crescent rolls...an all out feast fit for royalty.


Hanukkah dinner:

Don't let the picture fool you, that's not a hashbrown, it's a potato Latke. Even dressed up with sour cream or jarred applesauce it's mediocre at best. Yeah, we serve a breakfast side dish as the holiday meal honoring our miraculous history.

Christmas 5, Hanukkah 0.

Well, it appears that this contest between Christmas and Hanukkah was a complete shut out. Sorry Hanukkah. But then again, we always have Passover.

What's "wit" that shirt?

Tonight's post is a short one, just one of my many T-Shirt ideas. Technically, it is the day of rest for my people, so you're lucky that you're even getting this.

So as you've noticed, my humor is probably best described as "witty". I am known for being quite a cunning linguist. I try to take normal situations and twist them in a certain way to extract the humor. As you know, Schnoozle was born in Taiwan, where pretty much everything that most people own is made. Here's a T-Shirt that I designed for Schnoozle that I think illustrates the point well.

Minnesooooooda, A Primer...

So it's been about two and a half years since Schnoozle and I moved to Minneapolis. It's been a unique experience to say the least. I thought it'd be good to put together a primer for those of you that haven't had the pleasure of experiencing Minneapolis. Here's a few things that
anyone moving to, or visiting Minneapolis should know. There's lots to tell, but this post will focus mostly on language.

Life:

Unless it's July or August, dress warm. The winter is really cold and really long. The Picture above I can only assume is from late June. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is due to us frequently going into weather debt. These sub-zero temperatures can last for weeks at a time and the city pretty much goes into hibernation. However, if in those brief two months of nice weather, you venture out and about and meet some of the locals, here's what to expect...

Apparently, if you grow up here, around the age of 22, you're given a spouse. Then about a year or so later you have a kid or two, get an SUV and live in a house out in the suburbs, except on the weekends when you go to the cabin. It's similar to what happens in LA, except there you've been divorced twice by the age of 25, it's a Porsche, a house on the beach and the perceived ability have odorless bowel movements.

Language:

The primary language here is English, but with a few slight twists. There's two things here; first there are unique words and then there's the pronunciation of words. Here's the most popular ones that you'd need to learn to follow a typical conversation.

Pop- Refers to any carbonated beverage. I realize this varies throughout the country. It's soda in most places, soda-pop in upstate NY, Coke (regardless of the variety, sprite, orange, etc.) in the Southeast and Tonic in the Boston area. Here it's Pop, although I insist on calling it soda...cause I am such a bad-ass rebel.

Spendy- Expensive. Example: The food there is good, but it's a little spendy.

Stoli-Doli's- This describes the act of soaking Pineapples (Dole brand) in Vodka (Stolichnaya), hence the term, Stoli-Dolis, then squeezing the pineapple and using the juice and leftover vodka to make a martini like beverage. Very tasty and a great way to wake up on your kitchen floor.

Pull-Tabs- These are essentially a lottery ticket almost exclusively sold at dive bars. Instead of scratching them off, there are little paper tabs that you pull open to reveal what's under them. If you get three in a row or something similar, you win between $20-$500. It's not uncommon to see huge piles of these at the tables at the bars.

Now we get to pronunciation. These are common words that I've heard everywhere I've lived but pronounced completely different. Kind of like the way New Yorkers butcher the word Coffee.

Root (and also Route)- You may be thinking, "I know that word, it rhymes with flute, cute and toot" Ah Ha! Not here. Here, it rhymes with put, yes, put. That goes for Root beer, Route 100, and grass roots. There's a similar issue with "roof". Here, it does not rhyme with proof, it rhymes with woof, yes, like a dog would do. Weird.

This brings us to my favorite (Well, least favorite I guess):

Karaoke- This word gets totally butchered. Every where else I've lived, it's pronounced Carry-o-key, with the emphasis on the Carry. Here, it's Kro-key, occasionally Ka-Ro-Key. Yeah, almost two complete syllables get lost. Who knows.

So if you ever come out and visit and some 23 year old married couple invites you out cause they could finally get a sitter and suggests a bar on "Rut"55 to get some pull tabs, sing Kro-Key and maybe get a "rut" beer or a pop for her cause she's pregnant again, then mentions that you won't have to worry about it being too spendy, cause they live out in the suburbs, you'll know exactly what they're taking about.

Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm, you make me wanna Snoop...

That's right, the title's a play on the Salt N Pepa song and this post is about snooping. How creative of me. Every once in a while I come up with a great prank. Today's post is about one of my favorites. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll talk about some of my others in the future, but today is just one of the many. So I had the feeling that people, when given the opportunity with impunity, like to snoop. Then it dawned on me, the perfect prank. Everyone has guests over and most of the time, depending on the duration of the visit, the guests will use the bathroom. What is typically found in a bathroom? That's right, a medicine cabinet. What better way to find out the juicy tidbits about your friends then to sneak a peek in there. Any drugs? Do they really floss like they claim to? Are they cheap asses with all generic products? Go ahead, take a peek....

See, it's the perfect prank. They open the cabinet and are immediately caught in the act of snooping. It's funny, but they can't laugh for fear of being caught. Even better, they can't tell you, or anyone else that they think it's funny, that would be admiting to snooping. They have to bottle it up inside. I just get to look at them as they come out of the bathroom and give them my best "I know you know that I know" look.

One D Ten T 5...

After Graduating College, I moved to Southern California in search of the perfect electrical engineering job. Unfortunately, it was 2002 and the technical job market sucked. It wasn't as bad as now is I'm sure, but still pretty bad…dot com burst and all that. Long story short, I started substitute teaching which quickly turned into a full time teaching job. I taught High School Algebra I and Algebra II. Yes…me, a teacher, in charge of the welfare and education of a room full of impressionable teenagers…awesome. I learned many valuable lessons from my students while teaching. For example, wrapping your thumb and pointer finger in scotch tape prevents the dreaded red-orange fingers when eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos. I also learned that young girls aren't afraid to publicly offer their teacher a lap dance to improve their grade. (Relax…I turned her down.) But most of all, I learned that this country could be in really big trouble in the future. Some of, well actually, most of those kids were total idiots. Now I know people will think I'm sooooo mean by calling the kids idiots. Fair enough. I'll present you the facts and you can be the judge. (Just so you know, the facts will be incredibly biased in favor of my side of the argument. My blog, my rules, deal with it.)

Here goes:

Situation 1-

Mr. JewBoy, "Ok, see the problem on the board, solve for X" (see problem on board in the picture above)

Student "Huh?"

Mr. JewBoy "Figure out what number X has to be to make the equation true"

Student "Pssshhhh, I don't know that shit."

Mr. JewBoy "OK, let's work through it. Since X is being divided by 6, we have to multiply it by 6, that way they cancel. If we do it to one side, we have to do it to the other…just like we've been talking about for the past 5 weeks.

Student "Ummmmm, ok"

Mr. JewBoy "Good, so the sixes on the right side cancel, now we just have to multiply the 3 on the left side by 6.

Student "OK"

Mr. JewBoy "OK, so what's 3 times 6"

Student "Ummmmm, 16 something?"

Mr. JewBoy "No…and I can't even begin to explain how many different ways that's wrong"

I would have given him some credit if he had just said 16, at least that's close. However, the fact that he thought it was "16 something" showed that even at age 15, he had absolutely no clue how numbers work…at all.

Situation 2-

Mr. JewBoy "…it's something that is used in all 50 states"

Student 1 "You mean 52 states Mr. JewBoy, there's 52 states, haha, you're wrong."

Mr. JewBoy "No, there's 50 states."

Student 1 "Nope, there's 52"

Student 2 "Yeah, there's 52"

Mr. JewBoy "No, I'm absolutely 100% sure there are 50 states."

Student 1 "Nope, there's 52, Ha! You forgot about Alaska and Hawaii"

Mr. JewBoy "Alaska and Hawaii are part of the 50. There are 50 states, I promise. That's why there are 50 stars on the flag."

Student 3 "Oh, that's what those stars are for?"

That pretty much sums up the 5 classes of Einsteins-to-be that I dealt with every day. Still think I'm mean for calling them idiots?



(Just in case some of you went to a similar school and don't get the title, One D Ten T 5 = 1D10T5)

Our 2nd Date

One day, some time back, my girlfriend, AimDog, and I received an email from our friend Junkass, who is AimDog's fiance. In the subject line was "Our 2nd Date" and attached was the picture above.

As it turns out, JewBoy and Junkass had spent the entire afternoon together hitting golf balls, running errands and apparently sharing a milkshake. Thus was born our Word of the Day: ManDate.

ManDate - a date in which two males, at least one or both are seemingly heterosexual, spend quality time together in activities such as shopping, attending events, dining and movie watching.

Stay tuned, ManDates make for many blogworthy stories to come...

Oh yes, and they claim that they didn't actually share the milkshake but I think they're just hiding the truth.

The shirt off my back...

So I've had several ideas lately for funny T-shirts. Those of you who are loyal followers may be reminded of the Jewsian Fusion and Jewish Christmas shirts highlighted in previous posts. I've sent several of these ideas to a website that sells funny T-Shirts. I not going to name them since it's been a few weeks and I've heard nothing back. I figure if they're not gonna use my ideas, there's no way I'm giving them free advertising here, those bastards...But I digress. Let's get onto today's topic. Recently, even the temperature here in Minneapolis has started to feel the effects of the economic situation. We are officially in weather debt. It was -8 degrees today. That means that if the weather here were a bank account, it would officially owe Mother Nature 8 degrees, just to be broke. Lovely. With such bitter cold temperatures comes a particularly unpleasant side effect, dry skin, which of course includes chapped lips.

This brings us to the T-Shirt of the day:






So keep those lips coated, and "stick it" to the cold.

Mydeas...

This will be the first installment of the section called "Mydeas". I admit it's a not particularly clever word for My Ideas. A decent title, but not quite word of the day worthy.

So I've always had ideas, mostly for inventions. I guess I've just always had the wiring of an engineer...at least from the idea side, rarely have I followed through and actually created something. It all started when I was little, like single digits little. I had a bit of an obsession for vacuum cleaners. Don't ask me why, but I did. One day I got an idea for an invention. I don't know if it's because I saw someone on a riding lawn mower, or what, but it just came to me...a riding vacuum cleaner. Big hotels, large carpeted areas, long hallways, it'd be perfect. At least I thought so...and actually still kind of do. So I went into the basement and attempted to attach the upright vacuum to the front of my Volkswagen cabrio power wheels. Let's just say, at best, it didn't work out. So here I am, about 20 years later and I still have ideas. Wacky, inappropriate and occasionally good ideas. Here's a couple:

We'll start with the "good" ideal.

A toothbrush with a built in toothpaste reservoir. For those of you that have seen the infomercial for "The Paint Stick", it's a similar concept. The non-brush end of the toothbrush would have a connector for a toothpaste tube to thread in and fill up the handle of the brush. Then when you are ready to brush, you'd slide up a little switch on the base and the toothpaste would come out of a little valve hidden in the bristles. No need to bring toothpaste when you travel. Just think of all the space that would free up in the 1 little plastic bag you're allowed to carry on the plane. Genius.

And now for wacky.

My wacky ideas are usually not at all practical, but make me laugh. It seems that lately there has been a barrage of commercials for air fresheners. It's unreal. Have you ever been in the aisle of the grocery store with air fresheners? There's typically no less than a full half of an aisle from floor to ceiling. (trust me, I know, I have Wegmans experience...Don't worry if you don't know what Wegmans is, It will be a topic for a later post...if not many posts.) Do we really need that many choices? So anyway, back to the point. All the commercials show air fresheners with multiple scents, automatic sprayers, extra plug outlets and who knows what else. Ridiculous. They make it seem like the aroma therapy is going to solve everyone's problems. I doubt it. Smells don't help people, medicine does. And, we all know what the best medicine is, Laughter. I say let's make an air freshener that tells a joke every time it sprays. That's right folks... "Scents of Humor" The funniest, best smelling air fresheners in the world. Just remember that the best thing for that unpleasant odor...(perhaps from a diasaster) is a good "Scents of Humor" of course.

And finally, Inappropriate.

As a man, I would strongly oppose this, since us guys love it, but I think the women out there might appreciate it. Many women wearing tight clothes, especially work out gear, face a similar problem. Camel toe, or possibly even worse, Moose Knuckle. I'm not going to link to definitions. If you don't know what they are, you're gonna have to look them up on your own. The product, appropriately named "No-Toz" would be a small flexible insert for the underwear, shorts or pants to conceal the issue. Pretty much the only reason I thought of this is just so I could direct the commercial. It would be full of athletic women happily running and frolicking round...Camel Toe Free. The background music? There's only one obvious choice, the 1980's hit single by The Go-Go's...."Our Lips Are Sealed"

And there it is, a small peek through the window into my mind and Mydeas.

Too close for comfort...

Tonight's post will be a short one since it is the weekend and rather late. One note though, for those of you that may be new to this site, please start with the "How it all Began" post. You can get there by clicking on the link to the left.

Here's today's word of the day:

Diasaster: The unfortunate and very embarrassing occurrence of bodily waste exiting the body prior to successfully locating and entering a bathroom. A near-diasaster, very common to people cursed with sensitive stomachs, would accurately describe a situation where all hope is lost in finding a bathroom in time, but somehow, through sheer luck, the person reaches the safety of a bathroom in time.

Example- "Oh man, I had a near-diasaster yesterday. I was stuck in traffic when my morning coffee kicked in full force. I exited as soon as I could and stopped at the nearest store, but it wasn't open yet. Luckily, a custodian saw me squirming outside and unlocked the door to let me in. Phew!"

So, you may ask yourself, is there anything we can do to prevent such diasasters? The answer of course depends.

Java Developers

A friend of mine moved to Minneapolis and tonight was his first night in town. To celebrate, the three of us went to dinner and to a bar afterwards. As we are watching the festivities at the bar, several Indian (from India, not Native American) guys walked by. As I turn to tell my friend- "Oh yeah, there are quite a few Indians in Minneapolis...," JewBoy blurts out "And here come the Java developers!"

And that is the difference between us.

Food for thought...

I have always been a picky eater. I can remember when I was very young, my mom would pay me $.05 a green bean. Even at a young age, I followed the lesser known 11th commandment of my people, "Thou shalt never pay retail, or pass up a good deal". When I first met Schnoozle, my diet consisted of Chef Boyardee, Stouffers Mac & Cheese and Jerry's Pizza (Not because it was good pizza, but because a large was only $5 on Monday nights...see the 11th commandment above). Delicious. My, how that has changed. Inspired by our good friend over at findingthefat, Schnoozle and I have clearly become food snobs. Since we don't have any kids, like everyone else in this city seems to, we have lots of time to cook elaborate meals. It's become a pastime for us and the butt of many jokes from our friends about the level of ridiculousness that we go to. For example, when we make brunch, the hollandaise for the eggs Benedict was fresh made from scratch as were the English muffins, yes we made our own English muffins. Schnoozle baked a Challah at 11pm on a Saturday night, just to use for French (Freedom) Toast. You get the idea...we're ridicuous. Schnoozle enjoys the good food and I like to use all the fun kitchen tools. Immersion blenders, Mandolin slicers, salad spinners, you name it...I have a blast. Of course, I only like to do the fun stuff...briefly. Usually after I fold up the fifth wonton, the excitement as well as my attention span is gone and the thought of doing 45 more is too painful. That's when I usually stray from the kitchen, plop my ass on the couch in front of the TV and leave the rest of the work to Schnoozle. When it's time for something fun again, there I am back in the kitchen, chopping, shredding, or deep frying away. 

 This brings us to another installment of "Word of the Day"... Snactivities- Any activity that involves the amusing, excessive preparation, presentation, or consumption of food items. Think Lunchables, but with a much larger arsenal of ingredients and culinary poetic license. I mean really, why just have boring old breakfast when you can create a pancake faced scrambled egg man with sausage patty eyes, hash brown hair and bacon ears. Eating a whole cooked quail at a traditional Chinese banquet style dinner? Make sure to give the head a kiss on the beak as a sign of appreciation for the little guy's sacrifice. So in conclusion, I say ignore the words of all your mothers, Go ahead...Play with your food.

Schnoozle's Thought of the Day: Paparazzi

If I were famous and had paparazzi following me, I would carry a camera around and take pictures of them. Then I'd post it on my blog.

Let's Get Angry...

This will be the first installment of "Let's Get Angry", a regular occurrence on this site whenever something particularly bothersome happens and I feel the need to publicly rant about it. Celebrities are always an easy target and today's post will focus on just that. Enter Robert J. Ritchie. Who's that you may ask? Perhaps you know him by his more popular name, Kid Rock. I'll start off by saying this, I do commend Mr. Rock for his ability to somehow merge Rock and Roll, Country and Rap into his unique musical style. I think it's pretty safe to say that hard core Rap fans and hard core Country fans probably don't end up at the same dinner parties very often, so it's an impressive achievement. Unfortunately, it's pretty clear that this handsome fella is an asshole. Read this article to see what happened. In short, he's flipping out because Judge Wong didn't approve of him playing a concert as a punishment for his crime.

This is where I get angry. How is playing a concert a punishment for a crime? How could he even think that would be ok? That would be like if I vandalized a building and as punishment, was forced to give a presentation on the value of monitoring software. That's not a punishment, it's his job. The idea is that you have to do something you don't enjoy, or for that matter, get paid millions of dollars to do normally. On top of that, let's just say that punishment was approved. How do you explain to a group of soldiers serving in the Middle East that the only reason you are playing a concert for them is because you were sentenced to do so? I'm hoping that Judge Wong sentences him to something like asphalt paving in the summer in Georgia, porta-potty cleaning after the chili festival in DC, or even better, forcing him to listen to a Michael Bolton CD on repeat for the 80 hours. This is really the perfect opportunity to prove that "one Wong can make a right".

So this is Christmas...

Since the holidays are nearing, I think it's a good time to reflect on one particular Christmas that Schnoozle and I shared. It had been a couple of years and Schnoozle and I are officially "a couple". The holidays were approaching and it was decided that we would spend Christmas with her family. Schnoozle's family are fairly devoted Christians and pretty active with their church. Fine with me. We'll go to church and do all the traditional Christmas things. I figured it wouldn't exactly be eight crazy nights of potato pancakes, menorah lighting and dreidel spinning insanity, like us jews are accustomed to, but I was sure it'd be entertaining at the least. Just a quick side note on Schnoozle's church. It is an all Taiwanese presbyterian church. Now, to Jews, religion is divided into two distinct groups, Jews and Non-Jews. Seriously, that's all we care about. Presbyterian, Lutheran, Catholic, Christian, Baptist.....whatever, to us they are all Goyim.

So our Christmas begins. Schnoozle and I arrive at her church on the eve of Christmas. The first thing I notice is that the parking lot is a bit of a mess. Granted, it's loose gravel and there aren't any lines, but none the less, just about every car is parked crooked, several are still attempting to park. My confusion quickly cleared when I remembered that this is an all Asian church. We walk into the church and take a seat in one of the pews. I glance around and was instantly reminded of Sesame Street's famous "one of these things is not like the other". Yeah, I am the ONLY round eye in the place. No problem, I can handle it. We stand as the Pastor enters and I do my best to hide a proud smile. I am clearly the tallest person in the room. Nice. The pastor does his thing, we sit, we stand, talk about the greatness of the J-man and so on. Peace be with you and also with you...and it's time to sing. Enter the choir...the all asian choir. Believe it or not, Schnoozle has never seen the movie "A Christmas Story". But since I'm pretty confident anyone reading this blog has, you'll remember Fa Ra Ra Ra Ra. I had a live performance. The Choir started out with A Chird is Born in Bethraham, did a couple more songs and ended with a truly heart warming Sirent Night. Awesome.

It's now Christmas day. Schnoozle and I head over to her parent's house. We are going to be making a homemade meal. We start with some traditional Asian appetizers, soy tofu something, sliced pork and some kind of veggies. We then made homemade pork dumplings. For any of the members of my tribe that may be reading, think Kreplach but with a pork filling. We ate the delicious dumplings and then it was time for a movie. We put in "Little Miss Sunshine" and all watched it together. Presents were exchanged, hugs, and "Zai Jien's". (chinese for good bye...one of the 6 chinese words I have learned) On the ride home, I said to Schnoozle..."So let me get this straight, on Christmas day you have chinese food and watch a movie? I hate to break this to you, but that's Jewish Christmas."

Even though "one of these things may not be rike the other"....I guess we're not so different after all.

Blog-Worthy

Some of you may remember the episode of Seinfeld that introduced us to the term "Sponge Worthy". This brings us to today's topic, Blog-Worthy. What is Blog-Worthy? Having built up a pretty solid reputation as a funny guy, I constantly find myself feeling pressured to "be funny". Every time I am introduced to someone new, they always start off with "I've heard you're soooo funny". So there I am, forced to live up to their pre-conceived notion that I am always hilarious. It's pretty stressful. This Blog presents me with the same challenge. I feel that I have to choose each topic carefully, to ensure it is in fact, Blog-Worthy. In other words, it has to be creative, informative, or funny enough to be worth presenting to you, my loyal followers. Which brings me to another point. FEEDBACK! Let me know what you think. If I post a story, a T-Shirt idea, Invention or anything else that gets concocted in that vault of useless knowledge known as my brain, I want to hear your thoughts about it. So, long story short, please post comments and feedback on any of these posts. (It will also help my side of the argument everytime the Schnoozle says "you think you're so funny don't you" Now I can say, Yep and so does...)

So today's Post is going to be the first of the "Word of the day" themed entries. These are words that to the best of my interest don't exist in the english language, but in my opinion, should. (Some of you may remember Sniglets from Rich Hall, a performer on the 1980's HBO series, Not Necessarily The News...same idea)

Here goes:

Showvoting- The act of wearing your "I voted today" sticker all day and bragging about how great you are for voting, how important each single vote is (just ask Al Franken about that one), why anyone who doesn't vote isn't as good of a person as you are, blah blah blah. Similar to the celebratory dance after a player spikes the football when scoring a touchdown known formally as Showboating.

Inhebriation-The act of becoming drunk on any of the delicious flavors of Manischewitz wine.
Note: Although the initial word was created for Manischewitz wine, I would also allow the use of the word if the Inhebriation was caused by any Mogen David wine, or either of the two He'Brew beers, Messiah bold or Genesis Ale.


Well, that's it for today. I now have about 23.5 hours to come up with something equally entertaining. Now do you understand the pressure I'm under?

How it all began....

This post will be covering a lot of material, so before you start, grab a snack or a drink, "go" if you have to "go", then cozy up and enjoy. So let's see, where to start... I think a good place would be here, specifically the section called "How We Met". Consider that the prerequisite to this post. As JewBoy's father, The SussDaddy always says, "there's three sides to every story, his side, her side and the truth". I think for those of you that have met the "Jewsian Fusion" that is JewBoy and Schnoozle, it will be pretty clear which way the truth leans.

Anyway, let's get to it. First, I think the title needs to be explained. We'll start with the nicknames. JewBoy is pretty straightforward, as many of you may know, I am in fact a Jew. Not so much in the religious sense, (although he was born to a jewish mother, circumsized..that's right, the turtle neck is gone AND Bar-Mitzvah'd) but more in the big nosed, jew fro'd, coupon using sense. Schnoozle on the otherhand is really more the product of a creative progression. For quite some time, I insisted on calling Schnoozle by a variety of nicknames. Some examples are: Snoogans, Puffalump, SnuggyPants, MuffinCakes, Poochie, Poochiekins, Snuggykins...etc. Then one day it happened, JewBoy called her Schnoozle. That was it, I finally found the perfect name. It's like one of those movies where the customer doesn't choose the car, the car chooses the customer. It was perfect. Of course there are several variations of the Schnoozle nickname. Schnooz, the short version, The Schnoozle, a more formal version, Schnoozie(s), Schnoozarella, when she's dressed up, Bonita Schnoozalini, the beautiful Italian Dictator, NudieSchnooz, (which includes prior to, during and after a shower) The great Schnoozini, magician extraordinaire, Schnoozapalooza, the alternative band outdoor concert and of course SchnooziePants. I think it's worth noting that none of the aforementioned nicknames are approved, or quite frankly even liked by Schnoozle, but as you can imagine that's of no concern to JewBoy. That pretty much sums up how the names came to be.

Now, onto the blog title. Our good friend over at findingthefat.blogspot.com decided that "The Adventures of JewBoy and Schnoozle" would make for a fairly entertaining blog. He's pretty familiar with some of the stories and adventures that we have been through and on several occasions made less than subtle suggestions that we needed to start a blog. Well, here it is. Not only has he found the fat but he's also insipired me to share our thoughts and experiences with the world.

What to expect... So here's some of the things that you may see here. I plan on having a variety of sections. Obviously, I will document our adventures together. There will also be sections of Invention Ideas, Words that don't exist but should, T-Shirt Ideas, Things that make me angry, and a whole slew of other entertaining tid-bits. Schnoozle also plans on posting here as well. It is my understanding that her posts will mostly be descriptions of the ridiculous things I do that she has to put up with.

And there it is, the start of what I can only hope will be an e-masterpiece bringing laughter and joy to the hearts of all our loyal followers. Welcome to the Adventure, it should be a fun ride.

And so the adventure begins...

After much pestering, I have finally taken the initiative to document what are in fact, the adventures of JewBoy and Schnoozle. More to come soon...