The Ellensburg Song (Rod Goosman Remix)

I’m all for looking forward. My motto is “keep it moving.” But there is always a time for looking back. Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of getting together with old friends and family. And rather than write a long-winded message talking about what that meant, Solo and I teamed up on an early Christmas present for all of you. Soup and Slayer reunited. Lyrics available upon request.

The Ellensburg Song (Rod Goosman Remix)

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I just have to personally say Solo kills this track. The beat is infectious. The production is on-point. It’s amazing to me how easy this all is with his talent and expertise. And thanks to him I realized I could never go on tour.

Having a Zillionairette

I can still remember it vividly… It was flat-out unwatchable, perhaps the most pitiful display of high school athletics I’d ever witnessed. At the time, I was a sophomore in college, attending my sister’s high school softball game as a gesture of support.

At the conclusion of the game, my sister ran over to where my family was sitting.

My sister: “Did you see my four home runs!?!”

Me: “Yes I did. Well, actually, you had four singles. Because there were multiple fielding and throwing errors committed by the defense, you were able to score on each hit. Just so you know, those aren’t considered “home runs”. Technically, you had four singles and the defense committed eleven errors while you ran the bases. That’s how it should be scored.”

My sister: “Whatever, you’re just jealous.”

Me: “I can assure you that I am not.”

My Dad (glaring at me): “No, those were some great hits Sweetheart. All of them were home runs.”

And so it goes. Mercifully, that was the last girls’ softball game I ever attended.

As we left the ballpark, I thought of my parents, willfully sitting in the stands watching every single game. My dad wasn’t reading a newspaper during the game. He wasn’t sipping from a flask either. Instead, he had a pencil and a little piece of paper and was keeping track of all my sister’s at-bats. He legitimately cared about what was going on in the field. I simply couldn’t wrap my head around that.

I have a feeling that is about to change. While this episode happened almost ten years ago, I found myself thinking about it again this week. You see, we found out on Tuesday that the bun currently roasting in my wife’s oven is a female bun. In other words, we’re having a little girl.

I started this post with the story about high school softball for a reason. I’m slowly finding out that the prospect of having a girl makes you think about things like this. It’s weird, to say the least. This is on top of the usual worries dads face, you know, about having to one day threaten a high school boy with physical violence, having to put off retirement for another year to pay for a wedding, and having to deal with a son-in-law that spends an inexorable amount of time playing video games and dressing up like Star Wars characters.

I’m not looking forward to any of these things, but they are in my immediate future. I’m starting to think that this is how my Dad was able to enjoy himself at softball games. Instead of putting asterisks next to the “home runs” being hit, he was simply happy to spend time with his daughter and put off worrying about things like the possibility of a future prom date pulling into his driveway with a windowless van. Ah, fatherhood…

With that said, here are a few answers to some FAQs:

A girl, huh?
Yes indeed.

How do you feel about that?
I’m warming up to the idea. On the one hand, it will be an entirely new experience from having a boy. I’m sure I will gain a lot of new perspective on life in general in this process. And, I think gray hair can be a dignified look on a man.

Any ideas for a name yet?
Actually, “Prudence” has a nice ring to it.

Truthfully, I haven’t given it much thought. Because we are having a girl, it likely means I won’t be able to revive the effort to name our child “Lando Calrissian Ring.”

How is your wife doing?
Excellent question. As soon as she’s done insulating the crawl space, I’ll ask her.

When is the due date?
March 17th. I’m banking that the hospital will be serving green beers in the cafeteria.

How is little Charlie taking the news?
As you would expect, Charlie is taking it like a man.

C’mon… Did you pull off a snipe?
I won’t lie, it actually took me two shots this time. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I didn’t properly account for wind direction or the humidity. Sometimes, in the murkiness of battle, miscalculations can occur. However, I made sure to track the flight path of the first round, and adjusted accordingly on my next shot. As you might expect, my second shot went dead-center through the ovum. Mission Accomplished, time for extraction.

Explaining The Prefixes “Ass” and “Butt” To A Foreigner

As you know, helping others is a passion of mine.

The other day, a foreigner came up to me with a perplexed look. He was worried that he was about to lose his job over a simple breakdown in communication. The English language is complicated, and sometimes common expressions can become lost in translation for non-native speakers.

From what I gathered, his supervisor told him to deliver an “ass-load” of lumber to the construction site. It’s a simple enough request. The problem is, the foreigner showed up with a mere “butt-load.” You can imagine the frustration of the supervisor.

I chuckled as he relayed the story to me. True, confusing “ass-load” and “butt-load” is an easy misunderstanding when you think about it. As I explained to the foreigner, both terms reference tremendously large, burdensome quantities. For instance, you might say that you have an “ass-load of homework to do” or that you have a “butt-load of bills to pay.”

However, there is a distinction between the two words: an ass-load is much, much bigger than a butt-load. I elaborated further, that while it does imply a pretty massive quantity, a butt-load is still somewhat manageable. On the other hand, an ass-load is a quantity that is almost impossible to achieve.

“Think of it this way,” I told him, “if someone requests an ass-load of something, give them as much of it as is humanly possible, as there is no greater quantity of anything than an ass-load. On top of that, you can never exceed an ass-load. For instance, you’ll never hear someone say, ‘Whoa, whoa… this is way too much… I only wanted an ass-load of French fries.”

I continued on, “Now, think of a butt-load as generally one-fourth of an ass-load. Granted, it’s still a lot, but it’s somewhat doable.”

Despite this explanation, I could see the foreigner was still having a hard time understanding the concept. Then it dawned on me, in the foreigner’s native land, they used the metric system. Pulling out my TI-85, I used the conversion function to demonstrate that an ass-load was really 1.78 “arse-loads”, the corresponding unit of measure in the metric system. I could see it was starting to make sense.

I figured while I had the foreigner’s attention, it was incumbent upon me to share with him some of the other usages of the prefixes “ass” and “butt” to avoid future embarrassing mishaps. “In our culture,” I began, “the words “ass” and “butt” can be powerful modifiers of traditional words. In fact, in some circumstances, a prefix of “ass” or “butt” will make the word take on its most extreme form. Here are some examples…”

“For starters, let’s say you have to catch a flight in the wee hours of the morning. Obviously, you’d want to get up pretty early. You may even be forced to get up “ass-early”. This is the earliest possible time a person can be woken up from a full-on sleeping state. Technically speaking, the actual time of day you’d get out of bed would be the “butt-crack of dawn”. And naturally, the butt-crack of dawn is ridiculously earlier than the real crack of dawn.”

“Now when it comes to your job, if you hit traffic you might show up late for work. However, if it has been several hours, and there is considerable doubt you will show up for work at all, that is being “ass-late” for work. Generally, that means arriving at least two hours or so later from when you were supposed to be there. Similarly, if you have an important deadline, you might find yourself working ass-late at the office. Working ass-late means that when you finally do get home from work, all you do is go straight to bed so that you can get enough sleep to handle being at work at eight a.m. the next morning.”

“Also, if someone is really worthless at their job, they might be called “ass-lazy.” For the record, ass-lazy is as lazy as someone can possibly be. Even worse, if you have no professionalism whatsoever, you might get called an “ass-clown.” As you might expect, an “ass-clown” is even more of a buffoon than a regular clown.”

“And finally, when it comes to a blind date, worst-case scenario is that your date is “butt-ugly” with “ass-breath.” If you find yourself in that situation, just tell her you have to get up “ass-early” the next day and cut the date short.”

The foreigner thanked me for my help and we parted ways. I tried to make a joke about how this should help him “ass-similate” to our culture, but he didn’t get it. I thought it was clever though, and laughed to myself as I crossed the street.