Manfriend is loud. As a person, he has a loud voice that permeates even the quietest recesses of our home. I will occasionally have to tell him to use his fucking indoor voice because he is not seven, he is a man, and his outdoor voice is loud and inescapable.

When and if we have a child, we will need to acclimate our child to Manfriend’s bouts of loudness. Likewise, I am belligerent. The combination of these two traits means we will need to show our child that loud and belligerent behavior is not inherently negative or scary. It can be exciting!

To do this, I think we will need to become the super enthusiastic parents. Pretend our child is an athlete. Respond accordingly. For instance:

“Are you a baby? You’re a fucking baby! YEAH! Is that a kitty? That’s AN ADORABLE KITTY CAT! SAY KITTY CAT! SAY IT AGAIN! SAY KITTY CAT ONE MORE FUCKING TIME, MOTHERFUCKER! HA HAHAHAHAHA MURDER!”

“How old are you? SHOW ME HOW FUCKING OLD YOU ARE! HOW MANY FINGERS IS THAT? TWO? TWO IS THE BEST AGE OF ALL TIME!”

I anticipate Manfriend will punctuate these declarations of support and love with shouts, leaping up from his seat and screaming, “YEAH!” at the top of his fucking lungs.

We’ve been debating this whole pet thing for awhile. Recently, we had an interesting breakthrough. The thought process goes like this:

1. We love where we live. We have an amazing apartment in a great part of the city, and no matter how green the grass looks on the other side, we’re really comfortable here. I would even go so far as to say we’re spoiled. The only thing that is imperfect about our apartment? No dogs.

2. A dog is a pain in the ass. Realistically, if the dog can’t come to work with me most of the days of the week, we’re not getting a dog, even if it was allowed. I won’t keep a dog in a crate all day every day, especially in a building where neighbors could hear barking. Won’t. Of course, training would be done, but what a tough situation if it doesn’t work out the way we hope.

3. Not all cats are assholes. We have first hand experience with some great cats. Some first hand experience with some not-so-great cats. We want a cat that wants to be with us, and cuddle, who doesn’t attack us or ignore us.

4. Hmm, is there like, a lap-cat breed out there?

5. Hm. There is. The Ragdoll keep reading »

There’s this ongoing .. I don’t want to call it a debate, because there’s no fight surrounding the phone, but more of a saga. The ongoing phone saga. So a few months ago, Manfriend’s 2 year cellphone contract was up. Instead of upgrading to a new iphone (which is what he had), he decided to switch carriers and try out one of the droid phones.

I won’t get into the details of it, but apparently it had a few issues which were ultimately solved by removing its protective case and restarting it every few days. Cut to present day dinner time in our apartment. Manfriend is microwaving a burrito and we’re idly conversing.

“I solved another problem with my phone,” he announced happily. keep reading »

So, whilst we were out to eat, we concocted a new hit blog idea that involves me writing about the things that I hate. Manfriend did an exemplary job of coming up with suggestions of things for me to hate. His initial idea was Mike “The Situation” and his new t-shirt idea, a shirt with a window that displays abs.

My response was not hateful, so much as impressed. Only someone like The Situation could make a shirt like that successful. At the same time, a fly happened to be buzzing around us, and I grew irritated with it, claiming that a fly’s sole biological function is to be repugnant. Manfriend suggested that this too would make a great blog post in my hate blog. We decided we should record our conversations, and rehashed the ideas. So, without further ado, our lunchtime conversation about Mike “The Situation” and flies:

Do you think a blog devoted to rants and raves written by me would be a good use of our time, or should we pass on this one? More importantly, would you read it?

Also, how many times do I say “situation” in that recording?

Should we just make recordings of our stupid conversations? Manfriend is convinced that I am “very popular on the internet,” but I am not as convinced. I don’t think people find us as funny as we find ourselves.

UPDATE:
The verdict so far is that we should do a lunch podcast instead of a written blog. I like this idea, and suggested that the blog be a) a container for the podcast itself and b) provide supplementary information, such as bulleted lists, visuals, pie charts, cat pictures, animated gifs, and glitter unicorns. I call it “blogcast.”

“Michael. MICHAEL. MICHAEL! MICHAEL!MICHAEL!MICHAEL!MICHAEL!”
“What. WHAT?!”
“Kill it kill it kill it kill it! Agkgh!”
“Kill what? A bug? I’m doing something.”
“It’s going to RAPE US AND SUCK OUR BRAINS THROUGH OUR EARS!”
“HOLY SHIT THAT THING’S HUGE.”

I’m not ashamed to admit that I fled. A few minutes later after the sounds of fighting had died down, I cautiously peered out.

“Did you kill it?”
“Yes, it’s dead.”
“Where is it?”
“On the chair.”
“Holy crap, dude.”
“Yeah… I really killed it.”
“It … it exploded.”

He left it as a warning to other giant bugs who might accost us.

For those of you who’ve kept up on our war against bugs that find their way into our home, this was not a house centipede. Rather, it was a huge fucking horse fly. We get one in the house every few years, and every few years, we kill it dead and leave its corpse out for a while as a message. It seems to be fairly effective.