Mercenary Words

A Reading from the Book of Manion

2006-06-23T17:53:00.000-04:00

nd so it came to pass in the land of Penetrode, that a tester of QA created a program. The program compiled and it was good in the eyes of the tester. The program would forbid the tribe of QA from using the Microsoft Notepad. And the tester did send the program forth that she might confirm that Penetrode Enterprise was working in accordance with the strictures set forth by the tribe of Development.

The tester's faith was sorely tested when the program went forth, for the Notepad paid it no heed, and ran freely upon the land, taking notes and such. Much was the wailing of the tribe of developers when the tester cried "Bug!" and "Showstopper!"

Sorely vexed were the developers, for the program was small, and appeared correct. Many were the options they considered, yet denied were they all, for the Notepad ran unhindered.

After three hours and minutes thirty, the tester made a suggestion. "Shall we not seek the help of the most high Lance Manion? For did he not write the book from which we create our programs?"

And the developers waxed most wroth. "No," said they. "For this problem is beyond his ken. It is not given to the writer of words to know these secrets. The problem must be one of dlls. Or possibly kernel interaction. Service Packs maybe? Did you write this on a Japanese machine?"

But the tester had faith, and approached the Manion. "Manion most Lance-tastic, willst thou gaze upon the program and make known to us the flaw?"

And the Manion gazed upon the tester and was pleased by her faith. "Bring unto me the program that I may better understand it."

The tester did bring the program and an offering of Diet Coke. Manion was mightily pleased by the offering, and looked closely upon the program. Thirty seconds later he sent forth the tester to assemble all of the tribes of engineering, including development, QA, and professional services. When the tribes were assembled, Manion did lift the program on high. And Manion did point out that there is an 'a' in the second half of the word Notepad.

And the tester did correct her spelling, and the plague of Notepad was lifted from Penetrode. Cancelled was the bug, and much was the feasting that followed.

This is the word of the Manion.

LM

Live Fire Manion

2006-06-19T17:15:00.000-04:00

So for Father's Day I went trap shooting with my father. It's kind of like skeet shooting. You get a shotgun and machines in two little huts fling 3-inch wide orange clay frisbees out into space. You get two shots, one at each frisbee. It sounds hard. In reality, it's even harder. However, the experience taught me the following life lessons:

Loading your shotgun with five shells and emptying the magazine at a fleeing frisbee (and still missing) will get you chastised by the operators of the range.

Missing repeatedly, followed by charging out onto the range and smashing the still intact frisbee with the butt of your shotgun will get you threated with ejection.

Running up to the clay throwing hut, sticking the barrel of your shotgun in the little window and shooting the clay thrower repeatedly at point blank range while screaming "Dodge this you bastard!" will actually get you thrown out.

My shoulder is still bruised technicolor from the recoil, but it was fun.

LM

A Journey of Personal Discovery

2006-06-14T14:04:00.000-04:00

So I went to the Mens room today. This in itself is not an unusual event. I go on a healthy and regular basis. But today as I was standing in front of the urinal, I noticed something. I was unable to locate the fly hole of my boxers. Without the fly hole, the magical pants weasel remains caged in the prison of my shorts. And I can't pee without causing what the commercials refer to as "personal wetness" At least I think that's what they're referring to.

Anyway, there was no cause for immediate alarm. Sometimes the flyhole shifts a little to the left or right. So I started searching. Nada. What about up? Okay, maybe down? Absolutely nothing.

Well, not nothing if you know what I mean, but this isn't a story about the size of my junk. Which is huge. Seriously. Porn-star like. A behemoth of schlong-osity. Just saying.

Anyway, while this is going one, a lawyer from the firm next door took up position at the urninal next to me. He stared fixedly ahead as I continued my search, as I brought both hands to bear, muttering things like "What the hell? It has to be here somewhere!" If you ever want to make a fellow rest room user uncomfortable, start talking to your crotch region when he's standing next to you. His gaze on the wall was so intense I expected the tile to crack. He left in a real hurry without washing his hands.

Still, my search came up empty. And things were beginning to reach critical mass. Finally I grabbed the waist band and pulled it down. And saw the label of my boxers. Yes, I had put my shorts on backwards this morning.

I'm not saying that I should get more sleep, but it's not what I'd call a good sign.

I thought about going into a stall, uh, reversing polarity, but decided against it. I kind of like the extra snugness up front.

Just thought I'd share.

LM

Quelle Surprise!

2006-06-12T17:21:00.000-04:00

So one of the many visitors to Mercenary Words, one Tor Kristensen, has shared with me that there is in fact a thriving French gangsta rap scene. So I went out and downloaded "Eclater un type des assedics" by Akhenaton. It's interesting. I'd have expected French gangsta rap to make frequent reference to the Bordeaux market. Sort of a "Latour be frontin, stone cold oakin,' the grapes be chillin' but he be chokin'" something to that effect.

In fact, the example that I found was primarily about putting a beatdown on the welfare office.

Here's a sample lyric -

You do not have a blue left leg
You are not entitled to welfare
And your right testicle is heavier than the left

Nary a brie reference out there! That testicle thing is kind of disturbing, though. Not sure what that's about.

Unfortunately, now I have a mental image of a public service announcement in France - I see images of guys falling over because the "boys" have gotten out of whack. "Don't let testical imbalance happen to you. Get checked today!"

All I know is the first thing I do when I get home is teabagging the scale. I don't want to fall victim to "Testicle imbalance - the silent killer"

Nuh Uh!

2006-05-31T16:34:00.000-04:00

And so you're all like, "What happened to Lance?" and I'm all like "Hey, I'm right here," and then you're like "But you haven't written anything in like a month, and I'm all, "Well you haven't written anything either," so you start with the "Why should I be writing something for your blog? So I'm like "Yeah, well, you're not the boss of me" and then you go all "Hey, don't go all gettin in my grill," and then I'm "Why don't you make me" and you're "I don't make garbage, I burn it", and then I'm all "Oooh, snap, bitch"

And it goes down hill from there. What I'm saying is, I'll try to resume posting on a regular schedule. Anyone know where I can buy amphetamines?

LM

Lance Manion Shares His Personal Space

2006-05-05T14:51:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned yesterday, Penetrode has a very international employee base. It's normally not much of an issue except for weird smells in the microwave. But last week it hit close to home.

We periodically have company-wide meetings in our largest conference room. We've passed the point where there are enough chairs, so we latecomers end up standing in the back of the room.

This is what happened to me. I found a good space in a corner for optimal leaning, and got ready to wait out the meeting. And more people came in after me. Most of these newcomers were Penetrode's Chinese contingent. I've worked with all of them. On a personal level I like them.

Unfortunately, their idea of personal space is anything that isn't actively occupying my body cavities. It was difficult. I like my space. And they were touching me. Touching me! The worst part was that there was lots of space elsewhere else.

I started to sweat. It would be rude (and a little immature) to start shouting "Stop touching me! Get away! " But at the same time, I needed to do something. I tried moving further into my corner, but they kept close. It was like were huddling for warmth or something.

So I faked a seizure. Sure, it was a little embarrasing to tell the EMT's to "never mind", but still it was worth it. They were touching me!

LM

Snack Pack, Bitches!

2006-04-24T17:41:00.000-04:00

I was just in the kitchen here at Penetrode. Someone had purchased a box of "Snack Pack Big Cups". But because it was on its side, I briefly thought it read, "Snack Pack, Bitches!"

And when I double checked, I was deeply disappointed. I think it would be great if there were a product called Snack Pack, Bitches! It would be just a small part of the whole "...,Bitches" line. It could be like Newman's Own, but more ghetto. Instead of Newman's Own Popcorn, we'd have Popcorn, Bitches! But it is not to be. The world isn't ready for Food, Bitches! I am disappointed again.

This incident reminded me of another great disappointment. Pull up a chair and prepare to hear about Jim's tremendous Aliens disappointment.

I was walking through the touristy district between Leicester Square and Picadilly Circus with my roomies, Amandarama and Fightguy. And standing in front of a building were two men dressed as Colonial Marines. Being big fans of the movie Aliens, we walked over to see what was up.

"What's this?" we asked.

"It's a new attraction called Alien War," one of the marines explained. "It uses some of the sets from Aliens and Alien 3. You get to go through and experience the movie first hand."

"Do we get pulse rifles?" I asked, half joking.

"We don't have the permits yet for rifles, but we do have handguns," he replied.

Suddenly, I had an erection like never before. Finally, I would have my dream of locking, loading, and handing out xenomorph ass on a personal basis. In my mind I was already warming up my favorite lines, "Let's rock!" "Yeah you want some of this? Yeah? You too?" and "They mostly come out at night. Mostly."

And yet, before I whipped anything out (wallet or otherwise) I knew I had to make sure. Somehow it seemed too good to be true. And also likely to result in the deaths of hundreds of customers.

"So," I asked, hoping against hope, "If we buy tickets, you'll give each of us a handgun with live ammunition and let us blast away at Aliens?"

"Oh, no!" Said the marine, "We use blanks..."

Blanks, I thought. Well, that's probably a lot safer. It might still be worth doing...

And then the other marine chimed in, "...and only the actors get to handle the guns. Participants play the role of colonists."

I was crushed. Colonists? Colonist makes the role of red shirt look like a good career decision. I didn't want to be a colonist! I wanted scream epithets while blindly firing a machine gun and practicing appalling gun safety.

So we left. Sadder but wiser. What kind of world is this where tourist attractions don't involve live ammunition and handguns? Answer - a pretty damn depressing place. And I can't even drown my sorrows in Beer, Bitches!

LM

Spawn of Manion

2006-04-16T18:05:00.000-04:00

4/14/06, Quinn Mackenna Manion was born. She's 7 lbs 4 oz, 20 inches long, and as deadly as she is beautiful.

LM

Altitude Sickness, or "I'm pretty sure that squid's not real"

2006-04-12T11:25:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time I went out to visit Mrs. Manion's family in Colorado. They live near Castle Rock, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. I'm more of a sea level kind of guy myself.
The trip started poorly. My flight left at 6 AM. Being an idiot, I decided, "You know, if I'm going to have to get up at 3 AM to get to the airport, I'm just going to push through and have an all nighter."

So I was already pretty zonked when the plane touched down in Denver. I compensated by chugging lots of Diet Coke. Unfortunately, the caffeine in Diet Coke, while a stimulant (all hail caffeine), is also a diuretic, so it dries you out.

So what do we have so far?

dehydration
fatigue
reduced O2

So I'm in Colorado, and Mrs. Manion and I decide to visit Seven Falls, pushing us up around 8,000 feet. I'm not feeling real well, but I hate to disappoint, so I press on.

At this point, I'm feeling a woozy, but I'm okay. I think. I start having a conversation with Mrs. Manion, who then says, "Who are you talking to?"

"You," I answer.

"But I didn't say anything," she says.

Then I know that not all is well at Lance Manion HQ. But I don't want to alarm her. So we keep driving around. And out the passenger side window I see a squid with a taco stand. And I think, "I've never been to Colorado. It's entirely possible that they have giant squids that own and operate taco stands." And then I think, "It's also possible that I'm severely fucked up."

So we get to Seven Falls. It's very nice. A network of waterfalls in among the mountains. There are some pictures of us there. I look like like my name should be Smokey McPot. We hang there for a while and get ready to drive home.

Did I mention that I'm the one driving? Well, yeah. It's my rental car. I'm not letting some hallucinations get in my way.

So we drive home. The challenge is figuring what's real and what's not. So I evaluate everything I hear against whether or not it sounds like something that might really happen. I did pretty well. Sure there were some non sequitors, and I ran a few red lights that turned out to be real after all, but that tends to happen with me.

We made it home okay, and I passed out for a while. I still regret not trying the squid tacos though.

LM

Excellent!

2006-04-11T15:44:00.000-04:00

I'm kind of stoked today. Mercenary Words got a hit from someone in San Dimas, California. That's right! San Dimas, home of Ted "Theodore" Logan and Bill S. Preston, Esquire.

These two fine gentlemen were founding members of one of the all time great rock bands (Wyld Stallyns) and heroes of one of the best 80's comedies, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Why was it excellent? Not only because it rocked, but because it also featured my favorite Go-Go, Jane Wiedlin. Plus I once scored while playing the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure soundtrack on my CD player.

So why does a hard-rockin' ass-kickin' guy like Lance Manion (the kind of guy who has what it takes to refer to himself in the third person) enjoy the Go-Go's? Because they partied harder and did more coke by 9 AM than I will by... um... well... anyway, the Go-Go's partied hard and rocked out. And Jane (the one with the green hair on the right) was the cutest of the lot. I was crushed when I saw her on Rock and Roll Jeopardy and it turned out that she was not the sharpest tool in the shed. But still pretty damn perky.

Anyway, the most exotic hit I got before this was some guy from Luxembourg. Luxembourg is the country with the motto "Mir wëlle bleiwe wat mir sinn" - translation - "We ripped our flag off from France." On the plus side, friends of mine tell me that Luxembourg makes some kick-ass beer, so I suppose it balances out.

I'd have given a shout out to my Luxembourgian visitor, but then residents of all the other independent grand duchies in the world would want shout outs, and frankly I don't have that kind of time.

So in conclusion, "San Dimas high school football rules!"

LM

Mental Note

2006-04-10T17:22:00.000-04:00

Yes, today it's a Mercenary Words twofer!

Anyway, I listen to music on my headphones a lot at work. The headphones plug directly into my laptop. When I go to a meeting, I put the laptop in sleep mode, unplug the 'phones, and bring it to the meeting.

Anyway, note to self - Remember to shut down the mp3 player before unplugging the 'phones and waking up the computer. Forgetting to do this results in the executive committee hearing the tail end of Travis Tritt's "Here's a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)" at maximum volume.

FYI, the executive committee is more of an adult contemporary crowd. If only I had some Sarah Maclachlan. Sad.

LM

Lance in Translation

2006-04-10T17:13:00.000-04:00

So today I've been working the translation of my books. It sounds all glamorous. "Hey, Lance, we'd like to translate your books in Japanese!"

If anyone ever gives you the choice between translation and being repeatedly punched in the nut sack (female readers will have to use their imaginations here), take the nut punching.

Seriously. There are few things more painful that going through over 1000 pages of documentation sorting out the little changes (ooh! I added a / on page 26) from the stuff that doesn't matter (like page numbers changing). There are some tools that can automate things, but it's painful no matter how you cut it.

All I know is now I've at least got justification for drinking heavily.

LM

The Stench

2006-03-29T17:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I was at a meeting today. I attend a lot of meetings. It's a good way to look busy without actually doing anything.

Anyway, this was a pretty crowded meeting, so we were packed pretty closely. So far so good. And halfway through the meeting, something starts to tickle my nostrils. Then something starts assaulting them.

Yes, someone in the meeting was passing gas. Ripping off a few silent but deadlies. And it was horrible. I'm not sure what goes on in this person's colon, but I doubt it can be explained by normal biochemical processes. It was nasty beyond all possible description. And it didn't stop.

At first I hoped that the air would just clear on its own. But it didn't. My eyes were beginning to tear. I looked around, trying to figure out who had inflicted this stench upon me. No one looked guilty. And the smell just kept getting worse.

I expected some undead creature to emerge from beneath the table or something. It would have explained the green tint in the air. And hideous evisceration was starting to look pretty good.

Eventually the meeting drew to a close. The host asked if there were any questions.

I stood and asked, "Which of you bastards has been blasting farts from the deepest pits of Hell?"

Well, I didn't really. But I wanted to. I really did. I mean come on, how low is that? Farting repeatedly in a crowded room? That's pretty evil even by my standards.

LM

Traduzca el Manion

2006-03-27T16:43:00.000-05:00

My musical tastes, as I'm sure you know, are pretty broad. For example, today I'm listening to Mexican gangsta rap. Specifically, Si Senor, by Control Machete, off their album Solo Para Fanaticos.

Unfortunately, I took French in high school and college. (Who here wants to discuss proto-feminism in the works of Marguerite Duras? You know you do!) On the plus side, I can inquire as to the location of your aunt's pen in flawless French (It's on your uncle's bureau). On the down side, there's almost no French gangsta rap. Interessant, n'est-ce pas?

So when I'm filled with the overwhelming urge to know what I'm rapping along to, I have to track down the lyrics and feed them into Babelfish. And this is what I get.

"It tells me that one feels,
Tell me that one feels
Tell me that the sweat in the forehead feels
Tell me that it feels,
Tell me if you have a feeling
Tell me that the sweat in the forehead feels"

It's interesting, because I understand all of the individual words, and yet the final product might as well still be in Spanish. Sometimes that's the way it shakes down here at Mercenary Words.

LM

The Return of the American Jerk

2006-03-24T13:31:00.000-05:00

So it's with great excitement that we announce the return of the American Jerk. The American Jerk, or Mr. Scoop as he was sometimes known around these parts, has restarted his own blog.

Turns out that he hates being called Mr. Scoop. Had I known, I would have referred to him as Mrs. Amandarama, or something like that. But if he thinks I'm going back through all 152 entries here and checking for his name to update it, he's got another thing coming.

In the early day of the intraweb, the American Jerk was well known as THE site to go to for dark humor, bestialy pics, and homemade explosive mixtures. I still use his recipe for Palmolive and unleaded in my disputes with local law enforcement.

Unfortunely, the American Jerk was eventually shut down after a nine day standoff with a Dominoes delivery guy. Details are vague, but the local paper later described the incident as "Topping dispute ends with 9 dead, dozens left homeless".

But I digress. From the staff of Mercenary Words, let us just say "Welcome back, and it's about damn time."

LM

Gangsta Manion

2006-03-23T12:42:00.000-05:00

One of the many little known bits of Manion trivia is my brief foray into gangsta rap. It's true. For a brief period of time, (last Tuesday from 2:15 to 2:47) I was known as Chromosome M.

Why Chromosome M, you ask? It's pretty simple.

In fish genetics circles, Chromosome M identifies separate metaphase chromosomes by distinguishing these virtual colors. However, when Chromosome M determines gene expression in the embryo, the overlap of two patterns is represented by the third virtual color, making it unavailable to visualize the expression of a third gene. But because the nascent transcripts of genes occupy discrete volumes in the nucleus, the virtual coloring schemes established for chromosomal M-FISH can also be applied to the detection of gene expression on a per nucleus basis.

Get it? Per nucleus basis? It just slays my geneticist buddies.

Unfortunately, no one else gets it.

Plus, being a Volvo driving honky pretty much shot my credibility to hell. Vibe magazine described me as a "...whack-ass hoopty driving wannabe, with a fish fetish"

One of these days I'm going to make another run at it, but with another name. Possibly a play on Hegel's Phenomenology of Reason.

LM

Danger Manion

2006-03-20T17:18:00.000-05:00

So this past Saturday morning, I was driving along a windy country road behind a beat up old Camry. Nothing was out of place was we drove along. And then we went through a broad curve. And the Camry decided that it didn't want to be constrained by existing social mores regarding things like roads and lanes. Instead of following left through the curve, it continued straight, at about 45-50 miles an hour.

The first thing it hit was a telephone pole, blasting it to pieces and ripping down the power lines. I would have thought the pole would stop the car, but I was wrong. It continued through a front yard, and into a couple of parked cars. It was pretty spectacular.

I pulled over to see if the driver was okay.

The family that lived in the house came to the window and immediately called 911.
The driver seemed okay. A little disoriented, perhaps. I'm not sure if the disorientation was from the crash, or perhaps a little St. Paddy's day fun that ran late. After all, with no brake lights, no skid, no effort to avoid anything, we're clearly not talking the most alert driver in the world.

He seemed a little bothered by the damage, and after telling me that he was okay, started walking away. I wasn't sure what to do, but I didn't want to physically restrain the guy, so I stayed at the scene of the accident and waited for the police.

The cops arrived about five minutes later, having picked up the driver on their way up. The first officers ran the plates of the car. After that, it got exciting. The conversation went something like this:

Cop - Is this your car?

Driver - Um, yeah.

Cop - Surprise! No it's not.

Turns out the car was stolen! And forty-three more cruisers suddenly appear.

So I had been the only witness to a real Grand Theft Auto style fiasco. The family whose yard and cars were trashed were more than a little irate. I had to hang out for a while and give a statement to the cops. They really doubt that I'll be asked to be a witness or anything. Still, I like that I've done my bit for the justice system.

LM

Lance Manion Needs Caulk

2006-03-16T13:11:00.000-05:00

So there's a small gap between the siding of my house and the foundation. Being fairly handy, I went to the Home Depot to buy some silicone caulk to seal the gap. What follows is a mostly true story of my adventures there:

I got to Home Depot and went looking for caulk. I tried Fasteners and plumbing, but came up empty. I approached a nearby employee and said "Hi, I'm looking for caulk."

He looked at me for a moment. Then looked quickly to his right and left, and motioned for me to follow him. We entered the mens room. I was a little surprised. It would, however, explain why I couldn't find the caulk to begin with.

Then he motioned for me to join him in one of the stalls. One thing led to another, and I didn't want to be rude. I'd rather not talk about it, to be honest.

I left feeling somewhat cheapened. On my way out, I passed the caulk. It was in the Paint section. Next time I'm going to be more careful with my word choice.

LM

Shout Out

2006-03-09T16:46:00.000-05:00

And I'd just like to give a big Mercenary Words shout out to our visitor from London, England who came to Mercenary Words while searching Yahoo for the string "wanging your penis"

Whoever you are and whatever you're up to, I hope that you find the penis wanging that you seek.

LM

Lance Manion Sings Понимающее and Other Uzbek Classics!

2006-03-09T16:30:00.000-05:00

First, some exposition. Penetrode, like most software companies, has a pretty international group of employees. In addition to your basic Americans (of all sorts) we've got Russian nationals, Chinese nationals, Indian nationals, Japanese nationals, a scattering of EU countries, and a few others I can't recall.

"So what, Lance?" you're probably saying. Well, having a lot of different cultures working in close contact has had some interesting results. And I'm going to share a few of these with you. Today it's music. So put your hands together.

Anyway, For the official Penetrode Holiday Party this past year we all got video iPods. Not a bad gift, all told. And it's had an interesting side effect. People have been bringing in their MP3 collections and putting them on the network.

The results are surprising and educating. I've been listening to the contents of one developer's iPod. Unbeknownst to him - that's the great thing about being a security company. We have lots of ice and ice cutters - mad props to mah boy William Gibson. But I digress.

Alekseyev's iPod is loaded with Russian rock and pop. This isn't surprising given that the developer hails from the town of Chelyabinsk, in beautiful downtown Siberia.

The Russian rock scene is pretty eye opening. One tune, Понимающее by сердце sounds like some guy is taking a dump sideways while being given the heimlich maneuver. I have no idea what the lyrics are, though it seems to be an uptempo number. Maybe he's focussing on the song being over. I dunno. And Russian pop has a startlingly high accordion content. Who knew? Also, the word guitar is the same in English and Russian. No kidding.

One tune (Понимающее for those of you who care) has a reeeeaally weird spoken word bit with a guy who sounds like he smokes twelve packs a day.

I can also tell you that Alekseyev really likes Пикник. They (or possibly he) sounds like an Uzbek Marilyn Manson. He's got four albums by these guys.

To be fair, all of this beats the hell out of Tomoko's Japan-pop. That stuff sounds like kittens being pulled through a strainer.

So consider yourselves culturally broadened.

LM

PS. I don't want to get into how many language packs I had to install to get the cyrillic to render properly.

"Lance needs...."

2006-03-03T17:46:00.000-05:00

Because I'm not feeling real inspired today, I'm reusing something I saw on fightguy's blog. It's pretty simple, and I was vaguely amused by the results.

Instructions - Go to Google, put your name followed by needs together in quotes. (Ex: "Sarah needs"). Now post five of them.

Lance needs to note that the Ogam wheel is not by itself a calendar, but gives rise to a family of calendars, one of which is used by Charles. - Not sure what this means, but it sure sounds impressive.

Lance needs to decide if he is or isn't going to grow a goatee - I've thought about the goatee thing, but I'm going to wait until it's definitively uncool before going ahead with it.

Lance needs to vanquish an evil being. - Fortunately I did this twice before lunch. Man, I hate the Marketing department.

Lance needs to check the box declaring himself gay to push himself ahead of Asian-Americans with straight A grade averages. - Hey, whatever it takes, you know?

Lance needs a day or two more of drying. - Actually I haven't had anything to drink since last weekend, so I'm already pretty dried out. But today's Friday, and the Scoops are visiting tomorrow...

LM

Net Effect of Promotion

2006-03-02T13:46:00.000-05:00

So several of you have written to me asking what the actual results of my recent promotion are. I list them here:

I can now communicate telepathically with tapeworms. This has led to an interesting personal discovery about the contents of my intestines.
I can now officially declare a party to be either bangin' or whack
Although my job title remains "Drone/Bottomfeeder" my direct reports will now be referred to as "sub-minions"
I can authorize company expenditures of up to $10 at Circle-K.
I am now permitted to take Centrum Silver vitamins, despite being under the recommended age. Truly, it's a great time to be silver.
On business casual days, I can now get away with wearing a tuxedo t-shirts.
In the event of Enron-scale malfeasance, I may be called upon to act as a scapegoat.
My business cards now come with my name pre-printed, instead of a fill-in-the-blank.
I am now permitted one fake doctor's appointment per month.
When I finally am fired, I will not be charged for the cardboard box containing my stuff.

Yes, it's a pretty proud time in the Manion household. Screw the expense, tonight we're eating the good cat food!

LM

An Office Ninja Gets Promoted

2006-03-01T11:14:00.000-05:00

So you may remember that I was recently fired from Penetrode for my bold new ideas involving diseased ticks. Well, being fired may sit fine with some people, but not with me. And certainly not with an Office Ninja.

The challenge as I saw I was getting the termination paperwork from the VP of HR before it could be processed. But the VP was on vacation, and his office was locked. Lance Manion simply isn't equipped for this kind of skullduggery. But an Office Ninja is. Oh yes.

There's a small air vent that runs above all of the executive offices. I could get in, and slither over the heads of the execs, dropping down in the VP's office. I knew it would be a tight fit, so I went down to the cafeteria salad bar and took off my clothes. I surveyed my choice of lubricants. I thought about the thousand island dressing, but eventually went with a basic viniagrette. I thought the orange dressing might look silly.

So once I lubed up, I snuck over to the air vent. It's a narrow opening only about 2 inches by 8 inches. Even with the lubricant, the Office Ninja was having serious space issues. After ten minutes of serious effort, I had managed to get half an arm into the vent.

To make things more awkward, I was in office's main hallway, and Bob, the QA manager stopped by. "So, uh, Manion," he asked, "You uh, seem to be, um, naked and oiled on the floor of the hallway."

"Yeah, Bob. Seems to be the case." I replied.

"Any particular reason?" Bob asked.

"Lost my keys." I answered.

"Oh." he said. "After a lengthy pause, Bob started up again. "My wife, and I, we sometimes get together with other like-minded couples for, um, some sort of experimental lifestyle choices...."

"Really, Bob. How's that working out for you?"

"Pretty well, pretty well. Um, do you think that you and Mrs. Manion might be interested in joining us at some point?"

"Not really, Bob, but thanks for asking. I'm just going to keep looking for my keys now."

"Sounds good, Manion. Good luck with that." And Bob left. Still, I knew that my vent plan just wasn't working out, so I extricated myself, and retreated to the cafeteria to get some lunch and think about a plan B. Also, my clothes were still in a pile by the salad bar.

So I got my clothes and just used a wrecking bar to force the door open. A quick search turned up the notice of termination. I post it here for you to see the kind of place Penetrode is.

Employee Name - Lance Manion
Reason for Termination - We at Penetrode have made a significant effort to integrate Mr. Manion into our organization. Unfortunately, his obsession with "rage" and his tendency to run naked through the office has had a detrimental effect on our organization. Despite repeated warnings, we find it necessary to terminate Mr. Manion's employment at Penetrode.

I immediately ate the notice. I did this for two reasons. One - it quickly and permanently destroyed the evidence. And two - I've been trying to get more fiber. And then I had a moment of inspiration. The rest of HR would still be expecting some sort of notice or direction. So why not replace the termination with something a little better? So I got a blank sheet of paper and wrote of the following notice of promotion and put it in his outgoing mail box.

By using what is possibly the girliest font in existance, I guarantee that the VP will simply deep six the note rather than carry it around.

And the plan appears to have worked, as I've been promoted to Documentation Manager. I can just imagine the look on the VP's face when he gets back from vacation!

LM

Mind of a Manion, das dritte Teil

2006-02-27T14:56:00.000-05:00

Kind of tired today, so I'm just going to share some things that I've got on my mind.

Mister Wrong

One of the all-time great songs that no-one has ever heard is "Mr. Wrong," by Cracker. It reminds me a lot of myself as a young man. Three passages are really frighteningly accurate -
"I drive a one-eyed Malibu without a muffler, and a tape deck that works if you kick it hard enough. Baby, if you like to read, I got some great pornography..."
"Well, no I'd rather not go and meet your family. They'd prob'ly send me back where I belong. Don't want to hear about your Mr. Right, 'cause he's out of town tonight. Baby, come and spend some time with Mr. Wrong."
"And now do you have a girlfriend? And does she look as good as you? Hey would she like to meet my brother? He'll be out of jail in a month or two..."

Roomba Deathmatch

As a gift this Christmas, I got an iRobot Roomba, one of those cute little robotic vacuums that drive around your house, cleaning and plotting to kill all humans. It's kind of fun to play with. Although I've discovered another use for it. Namely, getting the cat out from under the bed. Just turn it on and point it under the bed. The cat will emerge moving just slightly under 40 miles per hour.

It beats the hell out of slithering around on the floor, and it helps reduce the dust bunnies.

Experiments

I like to do little scientific experiments. For example, I bought these gel crystals (At Luminations. They were on clearance). They look like aquarium sand, but when you get them wet, they grow into big squishy gel crystals. I've been attempting to grow them bigger and bigger. So far I've managed to hit golf ball size. I'm trying to come up with a way to condense, combine, and restart the crystallization process. But I digress. Mrs. Manion, however, would like me to remove my lab and test subjects from the guest bathroom. I bet Watson and Crick didn't have their wives demand that they remove all the squishy pulsating blue things from their bathrooms. At this rate it will be weeks before I have an army of sentient, blue (and somewhat squishy) crystal warriors doing my evil bidding.

LM

The Best Revenge

2006-02-22T17:46:00.000-05:00

I was at a meeting this morning. In it, one of the Penetrode bigwigs was waxing nostalgic about getting fired from one of his early jobs. He later went on to great success and wealth, while the company that fired him went under.

He closed by saying "Indeed, living well is the best revenge."

Despite an earlier warning from HR, I decided to raise my hand. "You have a question?" he asked me.

"Yes. I've given a great deal of thought to the topic of revenge, and I was wondering. What about suspending your enemy upside down in a pit full of diseased ticks? Isn't that really the best revenge?"

For what it's worth, I've been thinking about ticks as a method of revenge ever since the Manion family Christmas miracle of 2005.

Then there was one of those lengthy silences that indicates that I've shared a little too much.

"Manion, isn't it?" he asked.

I nodded.

There was another lengthy pause.

Finally, the bigwig answered my question. "Ticks are certainly a novel choice as far as revenge goes. The idea, however, is that by forcing your target - your revengee, if you will - to watch you "live the good life," you're providing a more enduring, and also more legal, form of revenge."

"You raise a valid point," I conceded. "Why don't we compromise? How about we change the saying to 'Living well while forcing your enemy to watch you while suspended upside down in a pit filled with diseased ticks is the best revenge.'"

"Well, the purpose of this meeting wasn't really to debate modalities of revenge, Mr. Manion."

"Well, if that's not the purpose of this meeting, then why did you bring it up?"

"I was merely trying to underscore the idea that sometimes a new idea can prevail against the conventional wisdom."

"And isn't that exactly what I'm trying to do?" I asked. "The conventional wisdom talks about living well, but I think Penetrode is ready for something new. Something that pushes the envelope. And the pit full o'ticks, both diseased and regular, is where we need to be. Penetrode could be leading the world in revenge methodology, but instead we're stuck in the past, with this whole "living well" garbage. Talk about behind the times! I say we invest immediately in ticks, and put our R&D department to work on the latest pit digging advances."

At that point, the bigwig's eyes took on that terrified expression that often appears on the faces of those who talk to me for more than thirty seconds. "Yes. Yes, why don't we do that," he said, edging towards the door. "Security will be by shortly to help you flesh out the details."

Strangely, security wanted to discuss the details outside, while handing me the contents of my cube in a plastic bag....

LM

Manion Trip Report - Day 3 - Tea!

2006-02-21T14:36:00.000-05:00

Thanks to alcohol and codeine, I got off to a slow start. We decided to have high tea. This was, I think, the highlight of the trip. We got all dressed up and headed to the Savoy. If you want to see the Savoy in all its glory, it's the setting for the final scenes of the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts movie, "Notting Hill"

The Savoy was awesome. You enter this huge, beautiful room, with lavish decor and trompe l'oeil paintings, big plush chairs, and a pianist. From there you're seated and pick a tea. Then they bring you these multitiered serving plates. The system is pretty simple. One tier has little sandwiches, one has little pastries, and one has scones. If you manage to clear a plate, they bring you more. Or, if you happen to really like the blue cheese and walnut on a sliced baguette little sandwich, they'll bring you lots of those.

We simply sat there, drinking tea and soaking up the ambience. The pianist played mostly classical, until I pleaded with him to play "Goldfinger" because I was feeling very Bond. Lance Bond.

And he did.

He actually played Goldfinger.

Truly, my life is complete.

We stayed at the Savoy, drinking tea (Earl Grey) and champagne (Laurent Perrier) for most of the afternoon. Inevitably, two pots of tea sent me to the mens room. The Savoy mens room is nicer than any room in my house. It has big leather chairs, an assortment of personal grooming products, and newspapers from all over the world. I had a hard time leaving.

Eventually, we left and wandered back up to Leicester Square. There we bought half-price tickets to "A Comedy of Errors" performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The performance was excellent. My only issue is with the script itself. I can forgive the two-sets-of-identical-twins thing that Shakespeare liked to use. I just think that giving both twins in each set the same name was a little unimaginative. If I ever have twins, I'm not name them both Antipholus, despite savings in name tags. Plus the other set of twins was named Dromeo. Not Romeo. Dromeo. I mean come on, at least invent a new name.

After the play let out we headed up to Covent Garden and my second favorite wine bar in the world, the Crusting Pipe. It's a cool place with lots of little underground cubbies in which you can hang out. There we had a late dinner and I had some more champagne.

They pretty much had to chase us out. So we wandered back to the hotel to plan for Day 4 - Shopping!

LM

Manion Trip Report Day 2 - Art!

2006-02-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

So we woke up and decided to hit the Tate Modern. Unfortunately, my A to Z (prounouced Zed, 'cause it's cooler that way) was out of date and didn't include the Tate Modern.

Our "best guess" approach ended up putting us a few miles away, at the abandoned Battersea Park power plant. This is awesome if you're a fan of Pink Floyd album covers. Less good if you're aiming for a modern art museum.

So we walked up the Embankment along the Thames, passing the London Eye and an interesting Dali exhibit.

Finally we got to the Tate Modern (also a converted power plant, thus the error. It was pretty sweet. Lots of art. I like modern art. I don't always get it (a time lapse movie of a decaying rabbit may be art, but I'm not hanging it on my living room wall) but it's much more interesting than a thousand paintings of fruit and fat merchants' wives. The Tate had an exhibit of thousands of stacked white boxes. I'm not sure what it meant, but it was fun to walk around thousands of piled and stacked boxes. We weren't supposed to touch them but I did. Inappropriately. Until Mrs. Manion made me stop.

On the way to dinner, we stopped at a Boots (local equivalent of a CVS), because I had a headache. I just grabbed what I thought was the strongest drug you could buy over the counter. The label was forty-three syllables long. Paracetamol dihydro-something-or-other. I gave up after the first six or seven.

Note - not correctly identifying the drug you are taking can have interesting results later in the evening. Anyway...

From there we ended up having dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. When I lived in the UK it was the only place you could get a decent burger. One of my fondest memories is of skipping class, sitting in the Hard Rock, drinking an MGD. Good times, people. Good times....

So I popped back a couple of pills and washed them down with a couple of MGDs. From there I got crazy bad loopy. Turns out the syllables I didn't bother to read spelled out C-O-D-E-I-N-E. Yeah. Mix and little codeine and beer and get ready to enter a serious coma. Which brings us to tomorrow...

LM

Coming Monday, Day 3 - Tea!

Justified Rage - Update!

2006-02-15T23:08:00.000-05:00

So, you may recall the small amount of plagiarism that took place involving my wife's pet, "Small Amount of Cat". Lex Armenia, the gentleman involved, has posted an explanation of his actions.

You can read it here - Small amount of cat? Nope, large amount of crap.

Although his explanation seems unlikely, particularly the part about Elvis and the probing, I'm going to take his word for it. (For what it's worth, he should have involved ninjas. I always believe stories with ninjas.)

Thank you for handling the matter with honor and BeefTasty!

LM

Manion Trip Report Day 1 - Rage!

2006-02-15T13:37:00.000-05:00

So, we staggered off the plane. That's always the toughest part of going to Europe. Your body thinks it's about 5 AM. The clock says 10 AM. All you want to do is sleep, but you can't. If you do, you never adjust to the time change. So instead, we pressed on, from Heathrow into London. Finally we arrived at our hotel, the Melia White House.

And there my first mistake came to bite us. I had booked a hotel for the same day as our flight, forgetting that the flight was overnight, and that our first day would actually be the next day. As a result, when we walked up to the hotel's desk, a smarmy spaniard explained to me that (when we hadn't shown up yesterday) they had assumed we weren't coming and sold the room to someone else. I pointed out that I had paid in advance for the room. The clerk pointed out that he didn't give a rats ass. After taking a moment to compose myself, I explained to the clerk that he had two options:

Provide me with a room in the next five minutes
Prepare for a size ten Nike enema

What can I say? Going without sleep makes me irritable. Anyway, we got a room.

So after ditching the luggage, we hauled into the city. Our first stop? Lunch at the Tokyo Diner. The Tokyo Diner is a great little restaurant in Soho. They serve really good Japanese food for cheap. The best part is that they absolutely refuse to accept tips. Is that great or what? I think the place is run by a cult or something, but I'm prepared to accept some amount of indoctrination for good and inexpensive food. I was bummed that they don't have gyu don on the menu anymore, but Mrs. Manion and I ordered katsu don instead, and enjoyed it tremendously.

From there we ordered walked around the city for a few hours and turned in early. It's always tough to do much on the first day.

LM

Tomorrow, Day 2 - Art!

Justified Rage

2006-02-09T14:34:00.000-05:00

Yes, finally, I have that sweetest of all things - justified rage. Normally, my rage is best described as random, or possibly senseless. That's because the targets of my vengeance haven't really done anything to deserve it. I mean, I usually invent a flimsy pretext, but the rage itself is pretty much just me running naked through the office wanging people with a sack full of pudding.

And I'm okay with that. Somebody has to be on the business end of the rage, and best it's not me, you know? But now, I've actually been wronged, and have the chance to exert rage with a purpose.

"What happened, Lance?" you ask. "Who was foolish enough to cross you, knowing the horrible, disgusting, and mostly-likely-flaming-bag-of-poo-based nature of your vengeance?"

And the answer is simple - Lex Armenia.

Lex and I knew each other in grad school. Lex and I played Quake together. That's a special bond, there. Lex came to my wedding to Mrs. Manion. That's not quite as important as the Quake thing, but still.

And Lex has stolen the name of my cat. And we're not talking about Sack of Garbage here. We're talking about our very own Small Amount of Cat. A kitten belonging to Mrs. Armenia (a charming woman I in no way hold responsible for Lex's clearly degenerate and criminal behavior) is appearing on DailyKitten.com and going by the name of Small Amount of Kat. And does the phrase "Small Amount of Cat is a registered trademark of Mercenary Words copyright 2005 all rights reserved" appear tattooed onto the kitty in no less than 16 point type?

No!

So I'm suing for a 20% cut of all of the cat's future income, one case of Fancy Feast BeefTasty cat food, and demanding that the cat be renamed to "Lance Manion Rocks You Like a Hurricane."

I'm expecting the BeefTasty to arrive in the mail shortly.

LM

A Very Manion Virus

2006-02-06T13:20:00.000-05:00

Sorry I've been delaying posting pictures from my recent trip. It's just that I've been really sick lately with some sort of Serbian Death Virus. I'm getting better, but it's a slow process.

I'm reminded of when I worked at Pfizer on their clinical trials database. For those of you who care, I'm 21-CFR-11 certified. Yeah. Makes the chicks go crazy when I tell them. You'd be amazed at the stuff you can find out in a clinical trials database. You see things like drugs that cure some disease 90% of the time, but that other 10% immediately croaks. Or drugs that have unfortunate side effects that are much, much, worse than the problem they purport to cure. I'll leave this one to your imagination. Suffice to say, if anyone offers you compound CY-40-IH, choose death instead.

Anyway, I'd be walking around a research building, near the pathogen labs, and suddenly someone would sneeze. And everyone edges away from that person. Or you'd feel like you had a mild cold. And then you'd remember that the early stages of ebola presents with cold-like symptoms.

But I've been away from Pfizer for a while, so I almost never worry when I start coughing up blood. With luck I'll be hitting on all 8 cylinders again shortly.

LM

For I Have Dined on the Finest of Little Sandwiches

2006-01-30T16:49:00.000-05:00

Yes my bunnies, I have returned from the UK. Despite some issues with Virgin Atlantic, (who thought I was a woman named Alexandra Blankenhoff, and wanted to charge me an extra $200 to allow my penis on board) I'm back safe and sound from the UK.

The trip was a blast. I went to the Haagen Dazs in Leicester Square, I saw Shakespeare performed by the RSC, I touched art inappropriately at the Tate Modern, I swilled Laurent Perrier at The Savoy, I annoyed a pianist, I smuggled contraband through customs, I drank cider at the Clachan, and I had high tea. I did all this and so much more.

Photos and a full trip report will follow.

LM

There are times in a man's life...

2006-01-24T13:15:00.000-05:00

There are times in a man's life when he must answer certain questions. These questions frequently begin with "Where were you on the night of" And if your lawyer is any good, he makes an offhand comment like "Boy it would sure be tough to prosecute you if you fled the country, wink, wink." (Good lawyers always add the "wink, wink")

So I'm fleeing the country to the UK for a couple of days. I always like to get back to the old country. If anyone needs me, I'll be swilling down Veuve Clicquot at the Cork and Bottle.

LM

Rage in a Jar

2006-01-20T13:31:00.000-05:00

So I've noticed that my fellow writer has an interesting assortment of makeups and moisturizers on her desk. They all have wonderful and cheerful names like "Hope in a Jar" and "Amazing Grace" and "The Supernatural."

As always, I'm alert to the potential presence of cash, and I immediately sensed a money-making opportunity. I mean, if people are willing to shell out significant dollar amounts for this stuff, there's probably also a market out there for the product I'm developing. So I created a cosmetics company. It's called simply Manion. But it's pronounced with a French accent, because then I can charge more. Seriously. Who charges more, Mary Kay or Clinique? Yeah. So always pronounce it "Man-yon".

Anyway, I just got back from the garage, where I've developed our first product. I'm calling it "Vat Full of Hate".

My target audience will be 40-something divorcees. I once lived in a building inhabited almost exclusively by divorced older women and their cats. The ad campaign will be something like this

Camera zooms on older woman. She on a sofa, looking worn and haggard. A 3/4 empty bottle of cheap white zinfandel and a cat are on the coffee table before her. The only light comes from a TV projecting onto her face. A muted laugh track plays in the background.
*Voiceover* "Did he leave you for some twentysomething chew toy? Did he ruin your life? Did he take your best years and leave you with nothing? Could you fill a vat with the hate that you feel? Well we already have!
New from from the laboratories of Manion, Vat Full of Hate. Simply apply every night, and watch the years fade away."
The scene shifts. Instead we see the divorcee (now played by a replacement actress 19 years old.) as the ex-husband begs her to come back. she rejects him and sets his car on fire. As she walks away, she is approached by a smiling young stud with washboard abs. "Hi," he says, "I love older women."
Fade out to Manion logo and slogan "Manion - Hate is Beautiful"

Vat Full of Hate will be cheaper than the "Hope in a Jar" I will manage the savings by testing on puppies and baby seals. I'm not sure if it's cheaper testing it that way, but what the hell, you know?

The ingredients will be whatever I happen to have a lot of in the garage. Right now it's lithium grease, but whatever. I see some serious coin coming out of this bad boy. So place your orders now.

The Manion Laboratories (me) are already hard at work on the followup product - Tube Full of Vengeance.

LM

The most disgusting spam. Ever.

2006-01-12T15:06:00.000-05:00

I just got the most disturbing spam ever. I'm not even sure how to deal with it. Those of you wanting to avoid the most disgusting mental images ever, should turn back. But you're not going to, are you? Of course not, you freaking perv.

Here you go, the actual text...

Always wanted to be like a superman: good-looking, courageous, fearless
with a huge and strong penis?
Are you ready for the new, extremely pleasant and irresistible adventures in bed?
Do you want to lose your head and wake up drowning in the ocean of your own sperm?
Do you want to innundate your neighbors with the amount of your sperm?
Then Spermamax! tabs are just for you.
Does your wife think that banana is harder than your penis?
Spermamax! tabs will make her change her mind.
You decided to put up with having no sex in your life.
Spermamax! tabs will change your decision.

So lets's put on some rubber gloves and start at the top, shall we?

Always wanted to be like a superman: good-looking, courageous, fearless with a huge and strong penis.

I'm not entirely sure how the fearless thing comes from a huge and strong penis. Unless it's bulletproof. And stylish. And prehensile. That would be pretty sweet. I mean, the comics never really tell you much about superman's wang. I could see him suprising the hell out of Lex Luthor with that thing.

Are you ready for the new, extremely pleasant and irresistible adventures in bed?

So far, not a problem. Sounds pretty good to me.

Do you want to lose your head and wake up drowning in the ocean of your own sperm?

And the answer here is "Dear lord no!" I mean, this is just beyond nasty. Seriously. If I ever wake up drowning in my own jizz, I'm going to eat a bullet.

Do you want to innundate your neighbors with the amount of your sperm?

And again, the answer is "Aw hell no!" Can you imagine the news reports? "Sperm freak destroys local neighborhood. Film at eleven. " And forever more you'd be the freaky spooge guy. I can't even begin to imagine explaining it to the neighbors. "Sorry man, me and the wife, you know, and one thing led to another, and you know how you wanted to redo your kitchen anyway..."

Then Spermamax! tabs are just for you.

I think I could do better with their slogans. How about these?

Spermamax! - For when you want to spooge a small lake!
Destroy nearby buildings with the awesome power of jizz!
Spermamax! Make FEMA come when you do!

Does your wife think that banana is harder than your penis?

I like the opportunity for comparison here. I can follow my wife around with a banana and constantly ask for comparisons. "Is it harder now? Really? Well whose fault is that then?"

Spermamax! Tabs will make her change her mind.

Note, all they're saying is that you'll change her mind. Yeah, you'll really feel like a man when your wife is forced to agree that you're harder than a banana. And she still won't sleep with you.

You decided to put up with having no sex in your life.

Um. I did? Was this when I got wasted last week? 'Cause I don't remember signing anything.

Spermamax! tabs will change your decision.

They've certainly changed the way I view bananas and bodies of water.

Unfamiliar Territory

2006-01-09T13:11:00.000-05:00

So I woke up this morning in an unfamiliar bed. Whenever this happens, I have a backup plan.

Feign sleep
Count number of people in bed
Determine gender of any people in bed
Mentally replay events of previous evening
Locate clothes and/or nearest exits
Flee screaming

So this morning found me in a Marriot in Irvine, California. I felt kind of stupid when I realized I had fled naked and screaming from own hotel room, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Penetrode, it turns out, had decided that sending me to Tokyo was a bad idea. My attempt to
prepare for the trip by learning useful phrases in Japanese had created tension. Our Japanese business partners were apparently unnerved when I opened our conference calls by shouting "None can defeat my rabid monkey style!"

So instead I got shipped to Irvine. I'll let you know how it goes.

LM

Penetrode: The Movie Continues

2006-01-06T14:53:00.000-05:00

So we've got a camera crew on site today. Marketing has decided to produce a brief film about the Penetrode experience. It's something to play on the plasma screens when they're at a trade show. I wouldn't know. They don't let me near the customers. I tell you, one incident of inappropriate humping, and they never let you forget it. I still want to know what that guy's cologne was.

In any event, ever since my feet starred in a movie with Bob Hoskins and Michael Caine (true story for another time), I've wanted to get back in front of the camera. But how? A breakdown in negotiations prevented me from having a major role. Clearly a more creative approach was called for.

I made it clear to the film crew that I was willing to do nude scenes if they were tasteful and artistic. Then I made it clear that I was even more willing to do nude work if it was sleazy and degrading.

The film crew indicated that there wouldn't be any nude work in this production, and that they'd really just like us to behave like it's a typical day at Penetrode. Apparently these shots were just to serve as background footage.

Now might be a good time to mention that I've been looking to increase my profile here at Penetrode. Sure, it's fun and games being a drone, but I'd much rather be a highly paid figurehead. So I've been reading a lot of those career advice books. I've been saving a few dollars by getting them at the local remaindered books store. My favorite is entitled "Jello Shots For Success". The premise is basically that you should get wasted before any major decision. That way you'll be loose and ready to deal with anything.

Fortunately, I was already wasted on a combination of coffee, tequila, and copy toner, so I was way ahead of the game.

Unfortunately, all of the backround footage was later deemed unusable. It seems that the film editors were unable to locate more than three seconds of film that did not include my naked and oiled form running into frame screaming "Penetrode rocks it Manion style! I got your data security right here!"

And apparently I owe them a lens. I don't want to go into why.

On the plus side, the production company has called me about a "special interest" film that they're working on.

LM

A Manion Christmas Miracle

2006-01-04T12:09:00.000-05:00

Every year the Manion family has a Christmas miracle. It's impossible to know the time or nature of the miracle. We just know that one will happen. Last year it was "The Miracle of Saint Frank of the Wedge." In '03 it was "The Miracle of the Choir-Jacking." These miracles serve as proof to us that God loves better than everyone else.

This year was "The Miracle of the Scrotal Tick" Apparently God particularly loves my brother, Sonny Crocket. This year, on Christmas Day, he woke up and went to the bathroom. While taking care of business, he noted that there was a large tick, burrowed deep into Mr. Scrotum.

We were all awoken by the resulting high pitched scream of fear and rage.

"What's the miracle here?" you ask. Well, it's winter, and my brother hasn't been running around pantsless (that we know of). Obviously God put a tick on my brother's scrotum as this year's miracle. Where did the tick come from? How did it get there? Clearly the only answer is divine intervention.

The entire family quickly assembled to form a plan of action. We talked, as my brother rocked back and forth, gently weeping. For some reason, he violently rejected the lit cigarette method of tick removal. Eventually, my brother decided that he had to face this challenge alone, as a man.

He took a pair of tweezers and went into the bathroom. For many minutes, we could hear the sound of struggle. Eventually, he emerged, victorious and bloody, and strangely subdued. But the tick was gone. Which was good. If the tweezers had failed, Sonny was going to reach for an Xacto knife.

So that's my Christmas. I hope that your respective scrotums had happy and tick free holidays.

LM

A Time of Reflection

2005-12-14T18:00:00.000-05:00

2005 is drawing to a close, and a time of reflection is upon us. Here at Mercenary Words, we're not real big on reflection. That's because it frequently involved cringe inducing memories that we're trying to eradicate with frequent and massive doses of tequila. Of course, a massive dose of tequila often creates its own cringe inducing memories. I guess that's why they call it the circle of life. Or something.

Anyway, in the spirit of the season, I'm going to post some of the most memorable things I've said in the past year. And no, I'm not going to give you context.

"Man, I feel like I'm growing a vagina just listening to this."
"My god. That shits in my face three times!"
"You could toss a small child into that thing and it still wouldn't stop. You'd probably need to clean out the auger after four or five of them, though."
"Sweet Jesus. Drive as if you had a pair."
"Why is all the good stuff is illegal in this state?"
"I think we've failed to consider violence as a solution here."
(singing) "Loooo-ving me is easy 'cause I'm beautiful."
"I'm sorry but the ethical ramifications are making me really uncomfortable. (silence, followed by extended laughter) But seriously, can I get that in the form of a bank check?"

Just imagine. If you hung out with me, you'd hear this kind of stuff all the time. At least until you joined the ever growing number of people who've taken out restraining orders.

LM

Penetrode: The Movie

2005-12-13T11:41:00.000-05:00

Marketing has decided to produce a brief film about the Penetrode experience. It's something
to play on the plasma screens when they're at trade shows. They want different people to speak briefly about their role in the company. Since they don't have any other writers, I've been nominated to represent the documentation process.

HR came around yesterday with releases for us to sign. The admin came to my cube and handed me the release. Our conversation went something like this:

Lance Manion - Archduke of Funky Town. With a smokin' ass.
HR Admin - A young woman we recently hired. For some reason we go through a lot of HR people. They tend to quit right after meeting with me for some reason.

(scene - Lance Manion's cube. Or, as I like to call it, "The Velvet Lounge")

HRA - Lance, we need you to sign this release so you can be in the company film.

LM - No problem. Just let me look that over.

LM reads the release

LM - Now, normally I let my people at William Morris handle this stuff, but I like this project. I think it's going to be big. Like Pulp Fiction big. It's got a real raw, indy feel. But I've got a few things I'd like to change.

HRA - Well, it's not really...

LM - (interrupting) Yeah, yeah, I hear you. First off, there's my trailer. I don't see a housing rider or anything here. This contract is really amateur hour. I mean there's not even a clause for ass work.

HRA - Uh... Ass work?

LM - Sweetheart. Baby. You're beautiful and I love you, but you know the Manion does his own ass work. I don't want to see any stunt ass in here.

HRA - The Manion?

LM - Damn straight, my little bubelah! Check out this ass! (drops trousers) America loves this ass! America can't get enough of this ass! Touch it! Feel it! This ass will make your movie. Did you see Shakespeare in Love?

HRA - Huh?

LM - This ass made that movie! This ass personally handed the Oscar to Gwyneth!

HRA - (looking away) It has hands? Wait. It was in Shakespeare in Love?

LM - Well, not in the movie. They hired it to just be around, inspiring the actors.

HRA - Ew.

LM - Listen. Hear me. Mr. and Mrs. Middle America love this ass. They fantasize about it. Put this ass in your movie and I guarantee you an Oscar.

HRA - Oh. Well, can your ass put its pants back on?

LM - Hey, this ass needs to breathe. It's star quality, baby. But let me just show you one more thing. Something to seal the deal.

HRA - Oh my god. Something's moving! I'm... I have to go. (runs away)

LM - Catch you later, babe! You bring that contract back with some edits and we'll do this. Caio!

And she left. And didn't come in this morning. Weird. I just hope this doesn't mean they're going try to cheap up on my trailer.

LM

Waste of Talent

2005-12-12T15:18:00.000-05:00

So tonight Mrs. Manion is going to be very late coming home. This is because her students in the electrical engineering program are doing presentations on their final projects. Some of their efforts include the following:

Lentil sorter - apparently it sorts live lentils from dead lentils. I have no idea how they can tell. Maybe lentils have a pulse. Maybe the live ones respond to the whole "How many fingers am I holding up?" thing. Maybe they're all dead. Who knows?B
Banana picker - it works by shaking the tree. Seems kind of low tech for an entire semester's work.
Tree planter - I mean, if the tree planter was a big ass cannon that fired an artillery shell across the city, and then fired a tree into the resulting hole, that would be pretty sweet. Instead, this thing looks kind of like a massive corkscrew on the back of a truck.

To say that I am disappointed is a profound understatement. There is not a single beer or laser related project in the mix. I would fail each and every one of these kids. If were in charge, A's would go only to students who have invented beer powered lasers. Or possibly laser powered beer.

What is it with the kids of today? Did they not watch "Real Genius" (Val Kilmer's finest hour)? Do they not understand that nothing is cooler than massive destructive capability and a 5% or greater alcohol content?

The wild man project in this group is a portable microfilm projector. Oooh. The whole thing makes me sick. When I was in college, I knew a girl who won a huge gift certificate to the greatest sandwich shop in the world (Big G's in Waterville, ME). Had I won that prize, my friends and I would have eaten like kings in a massive orgy of excess. Instead she donated it to a homeless shelter. And people wonder why I try so hard to be a bad person. I'm just trying to balance the cosmic scales, folks!

So I'm boycotting lentils as a result. I'm not entirely sure what that's going to accomplish, other than minimal self sacrifice. I've actually been boycotting lentils since an unfortunate experience in 1992. But now I've got justification.

Going Undercover

2005-12-07T18:00:00.000-05:00

I graduated from Colby College several years ago, and look back fondly on my time there. So I was shocked when an article came across the AP Wire telling me that Colby College is going to have undercover police officers sneaking into parties to cut down on "...the dramatic increase underage drinking." That didn't seem like Colby to me.

Colby is the kind of place where the alums get together, and tell long, haunting, pointless stories, and make people like Mr. Scoop and Mrs. Manion apoplectic with rage. In my memory, Colby is a magical place, where every Spring the snow melts and you can still see where "We fuck sheep" was painted onto the roof of the old DKE house.

My reaction to this information (the undercover cops, not the sheep fucking) was twofold - "Do they think the average student is completely brain dead? And, "Who do I have to kill to get that job?" Colby only has about 1700 students. By December you can recognize pretty much everybody by sight, if not name.

All I can imagine is some forty year old cop with a wearing an ill-fitting Maroon 5 T-shirt and a mustache standing in a corner and hoping nobody notices him. It's like some horrible parody of 21 Jump Street, but with Andy Sipowicz playing the Johnny Depp role.

I think the whole cop thing is a solution in search of a problem. As my old creative writing professor used to say (shortly before he went off to become a woman, but that's another story) you go to college to learn exactly how much it takes to make you throw up. And dammit, denying these kids a safe and nurturing environment in which to puke on each other is removing a vital piece of growing up.

And I really doubt that there's been a serious increase in underage drinking. The only way the underaged kids could drink more than we did would be with a beer IV. We didn't abuse alcohol. We buried it at a crossroads with a stake through its heart. We had a game called QB4. The rules were simple. Four players, one keg. No one leaves the room until the keg is empty. Now that's alcohol abuse.

Nonetheless, for the public good I am prepared to put on my Colby sweatshirt and play beer die with the kids. It's like the saying "Set a thief to catch a thief" except in this case it's "Set a Manion loose in a room full of drunk twenty year olds to catch something that will take a great deal of explaining to Mrs. Manion."

When even I recognize a plan as a truly bad idea, you know you're on to a serious loser, people.

LM

Add'l Note to Self

2005-12-02T11:40:00.000-05:00

Note to self -

Do not listen to "Sweet Transvestite" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show at volumes loud enough to be heard outside the cube, lest you end up answering questions from Ying-Li, the incredibly innocent and niave QA intern. Such questions may include:

What is this music?
What is transvestite?
Oh! Do you like transvestite?
Is play? What is play about?
Transvestite is gay and alien?
What is bi-sex-ual?
You like to play bisexual alien?

And for the 43rd time this year, you get to visit HR for a talking to.

LM

Mind of a Manion, Part Dos

2005-12-02T10:12:00.000-05:00

I've decided to take a break from my usual tasks to share with you a few things that have been on my mind of late:

Penetrode has finally settled on another writer. She starts in late December. I'm pleased, because now I have someone to blame things on. It was harder (but not impossible) when I had to blame everything on QA.
You're not really rocking your car stereo until the side mirrors start to vibrate with the bass line.
It's looking like I'll be sent to Japan for a week or two in January. Somebody got the bright idea that since I wrote the book on configuring Penetrode Enterprise that I should go actually perform one. I'm looking forward to it. For what would be a more natural environment for an office ninja than downtown Tokyo...
The Penetrode Holiday Party is coming up. It's going to be held on-site. That's kind of lame, unless they're passing the savings on to me in the form of a large check. In which case they're princes among men.
The receptionist and I (having graduated from the same college, though many years apart) plan on introducing beer die (the most complicated drinking game in the world) to the company during the holiday party. Look for me to be fired for a massively inappropriate display of pantslessness before they can ship me to Japan.

So that's most of what's on my mind these days. The rest is just porn and filler. Happy Ho-days!

LM

A Manion Thanksgiving, Plus Added Bonus Meme!

2005-12-01T11:29:00.000-05:00

So it's been a while (yet again). I don't really want to go into the details. Suffice to say the Manion family Thanksgiving was celebrated in warm and lovely San Diego this year, at my brother Sonny Crocket's house. One thing led to another, some Manions went to Tijuana, some drugs were smuggled, body cavities were searched, penis ensued, Manions were arrested, police were bribed, Manions escaped, and the whole thing ended up in this multi-state crime spree, high speed chase fiasco. But I suppose every family has its traditions.

I'd go into it more, but I've been invited by the always scrumtrellescent fightguy to participate in this whole "meme" thing that the kids are doing these days. I'm too lazy to think of an excuse to get out of it, so here goes. The unifying theme seems to be multiples of five. How 'bout that?

And so....

20 years ago I was: Stuffed into a locker somewhere. I'd rather not think about it.

15 years ago I was: Worshipping a half deflated basketball on a rock with a man named Backdoor Johnny Balls. It seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, it might have been kind of weird.

10 years ago I was: Thinking to myself, "Sure, selling stereo equipment at Circuit City is all glamorous, but maybe there's something else I could do."

5 years ago: Recently married, getting evicted. Man, you accidentally flood one apartment and the landlord just holds it against you forever, you know?

1 year ago: Recovering from 'roid surgery. Two weeks off, tons of pain meds, and all the Aqua Teen Hunger Force you can handle.

Yesterday: Documenting how to break unbreakable encryption algorhythms (Elliptic Curve Encryption, Cipher Streams, that sort of thing). Hint - Go after the implementation, not the crypto itself. Yeah.

5 snacks I enjoy: Pretzel goldfish, beer, sushi, Chex mix, methamphetamines.

5 songs I know all the words to: Miami 2017/Billy Joel, Our Lips are Sealed/Go Go's, Blinded By the Light/Manfred Mann, Ziggy Stardust/David Bowie, Volcano Girls/Veruca Salt

5 things I would do with a million dollars: Aston Martin DB12 Vanquish, fully stocked wine cellar, pay off my house, travel the world, hire a squad of bloodthirsty mercenary lemurs to be my 24 hour body guard.

5 places I would run away to: London, UK; Auckland, New Zealand; Champagne, France; Nantucket, US; Napa Valley, US.

5 things I would never wear: Skin tight bike shorts, sandals, clamps of any kind, loungewear, underoos.

5 favorite TV programs: Futurama, Battlestar Galactica, House, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Tres Mujeres

5 bad habits: Displaying mercy, not thinking things through, trying a bad plan again because "it might work this time", being lazy.

5 biggest joys: Mrs. Manion, the crushing of an enemy, doing something new, exploring, rage

5 favourite toys: Computer, car, home theater, pocket multi-tools, my magical pants weasel.

5 fictional characters I would like to have dinner with: Lucy Weston (Dracula), The Lady Door (Neverwhere), Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby), Havelock Vetinari (The Discworld Series), Crowley (Good Omens)

With any luck, these little bits of Manion-related trivia have given you a deep insight into my character (or lack thereof). Finally, I have memed. I feel so dirty. But that's kind of my ground state, so it probably has nothing to do with the memeage.

LM

SSNNNNOOORRRRTT Awesome!

2005-11-22T14:35:00.000-05:00

Today we've secretly replaced Lance Manion's regular coffee with pure Columbian cocaine.

Let's see if he notices!

Truth be told, it's actually a mix of espresso and NyQuil, but the results are much the same. I have a cold, and in order to be coherent during yet another interview, I took some NyQuil. Unfortunately, that zonked me out. To bring myself back to life, I drank fourteen espressos.

I feel pretty great. The only downside is that I've realized that the cafeteria workers downstairs are plotting to kill me. I'm kind of amazed that I didn't see it before. Nonetheless, it's not really a problem. I'll just blow up the building and get them first.

But I'll do it after lunch. No sense in trashing the cafeteria before I get something to eat. In the mean time, I'll just change my oil, paint the office, rewrite 430 pages of documentation, and kill all who oppose me.

LM

Evil Intelligence

2005-11-21T15:25:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I've busy lately. Mostly it's due to my attempts to create an evil artificial intelligence. I got the idea from watching SpiderMan 2 and Stealth back to back. They taught me that artificial intelligences really want to be evil, and that it's just a matter of time until they turn on you. Being a pretty much horrible person myself, I have no problem with this.

In the movies all it takes is a small electrical short to turn a normally good AI into a supremely evil AI. I figure that it should be a piece of cake if you're actually setting out to create an evil one. Unfortunately, despite what the movies would have you believe, it's not that easy.

Self identifying as a "l33t h4XX0r" does not make one a great programmer. For example, when I took intro Comp Sci in college, our final exam project was to create a mathematical model of life. My roommate produced a thriving little ecosystem. I produced a small mold colony. Unlike my many real world mold colonies, the computer simulated mold immediately died.

My evil AI has been doing similarly poorly. By now I was hoping that it would have hacked its way into the Pentagon and gotten me control of at least one or two nuclear weapons. Instead all it's done is printed out 1,000 sheets of paper saying "Lance Manion sucks it."

I suppose the whole "sucks it" thing is a little evil. But it's not the sort of evil that crushes the globe beneath an iron fist. Instead it's the kind of evil that puts flaming bags of poo on the neighbor's porch. I'm going to keep working on it. I'm not giving up until it's at least leaving flaming bags of radioactive poo.

Happy Corporate Birthday

2005-11-11T09:42:00.000-05:00

So our VP of HR had his birthday yesterday. As a token of appreciation, the powers that be circulated a card and asked the collected drones to sign it. Now most of my fellow drones went with typical "Happy Birthday" type sentiments. And that's fine for most people.

As a professional writer, however, I feel a certain obligation to stand out. If it's written down, it has to be cleverer(erer?) than everybody else. Cause I'm awesome like that. It should be something that the powers that be will read and say "Hey, I like the attitude on that Manion boy. Let's give him a $90,000 raise!"

So I hung on to the card for most of the afternoon waiting for the muse to sing. And eventually she did. And I wrote "Party like a rock star 'till the cops shut you down!" And then I included my initials and a little picture of a headbanging stick figure. This picture is actually much better than the one I drew, but it gets the message across. Mine had a little stick guitar.

Apparently some felt that the message was little "raw" for an elderly man whose biggest hobby is taking care of his prize lhaso apsos. I figure hey, if the guy doesn't have much time left, he might as well go out with a bang. I know I'd rather waste my estate on hookers and blow than give to my descendents.

In any event, it worked out okay. Me and the VP are going to Vegas next month to rage. Should be fun.

LM

Punishable by Death!

2005-11-09T14:09:00.000-05:00

Sorry I've been quiet lately. I've been kind of busy writing training for our customers. It's a little nervewracking when the training is going on as you're writing it. I try always to stay at least two slides ahead.

Interestingly, the biggest complaint the customers had about the training was the little quizzes that I wrote at the end of each day's workbook. Apparently the customers felt that the quizzes were unnecessary. Now that we're doing a post mortem on the training, we're trying to decide how to improve things (and sell more training).

Initially, Marketing wanted to just cut the quizzes. Instead, I suggested that we find a way to incent the customers to take the quiz. After all, processing and reusing the information is the best way to make sure that the customers retain that information.

Marketing suggested that we offer prizes, like pens or T-shirts for the high scorers. I thought that idea was good, but that something more grandiose might work better. They asked for ideas. I suggested that we make failing the quiz punishable by death. Marketing felt that death might cut down on repeat business. I suppose they had a point there. I then suggested that instead we make only the lowest score in the class punishable by death.

Marketing pointed out that the T-shirt thing was less likely to involve legal repercussions. I suggested that Marketing fellate a goat, because dammit, all the Fortune 500 companies punish quiz failure by death. I drew a chart, using my toes and many crayons, that demonstrated this claim. "Can we afford not to punish our customers with death?" I asked.

Marketing made it clear that they felt that death really wasn't at all a good incentive in any customer facing capacity, and that despite my chart, they did not believe that this was accepted practice among Fortune 500 companies. They were willing to believe however, that I was mentally ill.

Fortunately, it turns out that accusing me of being mentally ill is punishable - not by death though. Instead it's punishable by me doing something unspeakably disgusting in the VP of Marketing's credenza. Yeah. It should be punishable by death, though.

LM

Beware of Urinal

2005-11-04T10:58:00.000-05:00

Seeing as it's Friday, I'm too lazy to make anything up for y'all. Instead, I'm going to talk about my favorite topic - me. And I'm going to tell you about the worst date I ever went on. Be forewarned. It doesn't have a happy ending. There's no, "...we ended up laughing about it, and spent the rest of our lives together..." No. It ends with one man, walking home alone, freezing cold and soaked to the skin. Sing the blues, people. Sing the blues...

So I met this girl. We'll call her Christie. We went on a date or two, and things were going well. We were on that crucial third date, where the closing of escrow becomes a real possibility. I think my odds were looking good.

In an effort to sort of grease the rails, I decided to take her to a bar called Paddy Burke's in Boston. It's traditional Irish bar. You can get wasted and sing along to Danny Boy. Or if you're a belligerent drunk, you can have a good bar fight. It's that kind of place.

So we've got a good booth, the band is playing, she's having fun, and I'm glad that I planned ahead and bought the 36 condom "Manion Sampler". We've had a few beers and everything is going according to plan.

If this were a movie, right here is where they'd freeze the frame and cue the danger music. If this were a roller coaster, we'd be cresting the top of the hill, and you'd hear the brake release.

So need to take a leak and head off to the bathroom. The trip to the mens room is uneventful. I'm standing at the urinal, taking care of business. No problem. I've done this many times before and am fully checked out on the equipment. I finish up. I pull the lever at the top of the urinal.

And the urinal explodes. Really. All of the silver plumbing at the top of the urinal blows apart, and the feed pipe proceeds to hose down the entire mens room. Guys are freaking out and yelling, and I'm at ground zero trying to put away my magical pants weasel while getting abused by a high pressure hose.

So picture this from my date's perspective. She's sitting there, drinking a beer, trying to decide whether or not sleeping with me is a good idea. And then there's a hue and a cry (or possibly two hues) from the bathroom. Six guys come out in various stages of drenched. And last of all, her date comes out looking like he went for a swim in the mens room pool.

I sloshed back into the booth and tried to explain. I don't think she believed me. I pointed out that it was from the feed pipe, so the water was at least clean. I don't think she believed that either.

The bar was pretty apologetic about it, and gave us free beer for the rest of the night, but I was starting to get hypothermic. So after another beer, we left. I was still leaving a trail of wet footprints behind me.

I walked her home. We got to her door. I was hoping that maybe I could parlay the events into some sort of "Why don't you come in and get dried off and/or have sex?" Instead, I got "I hope you don't freeze before you get home." Yeah honey, it just got a lot colder, I thought.

No cabs would pick me up. I ended up having to walk several miles home, at night, soaking wet, in the Fall, without a jacket. I never heard from Christie again. Which was her loss.

Sometimes I still go back to Paddy Burke's. But I never use that urinal. I can't take that kind of chance. Now I just pee in a potted plant. It's safer that way.

LM

I got an Atomic Wedgie at Penetrode

2005-11-03T14:58:00.000-05:00

Sorry I've been quiet for a while. I had a lot of deliverables due in a very short time. But they're done now. My secret was drinking 19 gallons of Diet Coke. I probably took three years off my life, but at least.... um... You know, now that I think about it, that may have been a poor decision.

Anyway, I just got out from interviewing another writer candidate. This guy was named Steve. Steve seemed to think he was doing us a tremendous favor just by coming in for the interview. And he got all snotty when we asked for a writing test. Never a good decision. Steve's actually taking the test as I write this. Little does he know that we'll be tossing it out along with his resume.

Fortunately, we have a parting gift for Steve. It's a T-shirt that says "I got an Atomic Wedgie at Penetrode" And he'll read the shirt and say, "But I didn't get an atomic wedgie." By then, of course, we'll have moved the hydraulic winch into position, and then he'll have to drive home looking out the fly-hole of his briefs.

This job has its disadvantages, but it also has its benefits. I think I'm really getting the hang of this interview thing.

In the end it doesn't matter. I'm pretty sure they're going to go with Bob.

LM

Okay people, here's the sitch

2005-10-28T14:55:00.000-04:00

I've got 55 release notes to write by the end of the day. I've drunk six and half cans of Diet Coke (I think. It's hard to tell once they start getting blurry.) And I've got a brandy new copy of Civilization 4 sitting next to me. The challenge is documenting all of the notes, and getting the hell out of here in the absolute minimum amount of time.

I have two advantages:

Unlimited caffeine
Gun n Roses playing on my headphones.

I have one disadvantage:

Rule - No Alert is captured even if there is prompt if file is from D:\ for the rule curVersion - Yes, this is what I have to work with. The developer who writes this stuff is somewhere on the Pacific Rim. No one really knows where. And he ain't answering his email.

This is why Penetrode has trouble attracting writers. Nonetheless I remain confident that I'll be lobbing nukes at all who oppose me by nightfall.

LM

Roommates Past

2005-10-27T17:12:00.000-04:00

I've actually been pretty good about keeping touch with former roommates, such luminaries as Amandarama and Backdoor Johnny Balls. But over the years there have been a lot of them, and I've lost touch with many. So this entry goes out to the ones that I've managed to misplace.

Mad Dog - Junior Year, College - Mad Dog got the nickname when he dropped two tabs of acid and attempted to hold up the campus restaurant. With a spoon. A plastic spoon. Security maced his ass and sat on him until the spiders went away. Mad Dog was last seen smuggling himself into Cuba. Really.

Chimwemwe - Sophmore Year, College - After a series of housing screw ups involving the institutionalization of my planned roommate (hey, at least he had the decency to melt down at home, and not in my room) I ended up rooming with an exchange student from the University of Malawi. He was a nice enough guy, but very unclear on American culture. His expressed goal was to sleep with lots of American women. It was a lot like living with an African version of
SNL's Czech Brothers. ("We're two wild and crazy guys!") Chimwemwe was last seen heading back to Malawi, having been surprisingly successful at his goal.

Lynne - 1997, Brighton, MA - Lynne was (purportedly) a student at a Boston area college. And completely insane. When she applied to be our roommate (filling the hole left by a guy named Peaches), she told us that she enjoyed baking, cleaning, and walking around in her underwear. Okay, so we were stupid. It wasn't until later that we realized she was lying to us. Turns out that Lynne was actually an escort. I suppose she would have done the underwear thing had we paid her, but we didn't have that kind of money. The big challenge was keeping her and Backdoor Johnny Balls from killing each other. They had a hate that made the whole Isreal/Palestine thing seem kind of light duty. Lynne was last seen packing up and leaving. She didn't say where she was going. We didn't ask.

Yes, those are just a few of the many people to have basked in my glorious presence. Jealous? Yeah, you know you are!

LM

Interview with the Manion

2005-10-26T14:04:00.000-04:00

As many of you know, I strongly advocate the use of a monkey puppet when you're interviewing for a job. Yesterday, however, I had the chance to use my monkey puppet on the other side of the desk. Yes, Penetrode is hiring another writer.

For the most part, this is good news. The only downside is that they're hiring the guy that I beat out for my current gig. And they asked me to interview him. I knew going in that he was a little bitter, but I was determined to be as professional as possible. But as my ace in the hole, I brought the monkey puppet.

So here's how the interview went.

Lance Manion - Professional. Smooooth. Yes, it takes four o's to describe how smooooth I am.

Monkey Puppet - A typical monkey puppet, which is to say it is belligerent, abusive, and deeply, deeply evil.

Bob - My interviewee. A fellow technical writer, about 10 years older than me, and apparently a little bitter.

So Bob shows up and we take seats in the conference room. I have Bob's resume and am just about to start discussing tools and document architecture, when Bob decides to start something.

Bob - Hey, that's a, uh, nice monkey puppet you have there.

LM - Yeah, but my monkey puppet has one problem. You know what that is Bob?

Bob - Um. No?

LM - He's not holding a banana, is he Bob?

Bob - No... it doesn't look like it...

LM - Do you know why that is, Bob?

Bob - No...

LM - Because apparently you don't want the job badly enough to get him a banana. Bob.

Bob - So you'd like me to get a banana for your monkey puppet?

LM - (Sighing heavily) Yes, Bob. Yes, I would like you to get a banana for my monkey puppet.

Bob - Is this a test? Some sort of leadership or role playing thing?

LM - (composure slipping) No, Bob! It's a test of whether or not you're going to come through with a damn banana for my monkey!

Bob - Um. Lance, you know that the puppet's not a real monkey, right? It's a cloth thing with your hand up its ass. Seriously.

(lengthy, awkward silence)

LM - You're not a team player, are you Bob?

Bob - I'm a team player. I'm just kind of blown away that you're the guy that got my job.

LM - Bob, don't blame me. Blame the monkey.

Bob - Blame the monkey for what?

And then the monkey puppet attempted to pull Bob's scrotum up over his head. Sadly, the puppet never got Bob's scrotum higher than chin level, but he tried for quite a while. Then Bob brought the puppet a banana.

After that the interview went a lot better. And it looks like we'll be hiring Bob as soon as he gets back from the hospital.

LM

Back From the Dentist

2005-10-24T15:06:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I went to the dentist today. I hate going to the dentist. And the dentist hates me. Mostly because I can move myself out of the chair and down the hall just using the muscles in my butt cheeks. Seriously, I get Exorcist style butt cheeks whenever I see that dentist chair.

It's just the pointy tools, and poking, and what not. My worst nightmare would be a dentist who also happens to be a giant spider. Just FYI for people who still haven't picked out a halloween costume.

My dentist is one of those guys who specializes in people who hate going. He deals with these anxieties using calming techniques and nitrous oxide. After a couple of good huffs of nitrous, you could take one of my legs and I'd be cool with that.

So I hate the dentist, but I still go. I don't particularly want to have to gum my food. And I even passed on the nitrous, because I'm a grown up, and have to drive back to work.

Anyway, I went this morning, and got a clean bill of health. My teeth are good for another 6 months. Yay!

LM

Sheep!

2005-10-20T11:02:00.000-04:00

My parents live across the street from a sheep farm. Sheep are interesting creatures. They're dumber than a barrel of hair, and not all that clean. Still, they're relatively people friendly.

Unfortunately, that whole fluffy white Easter lamb thing becomes a little less of a story book thing when you realize that you're eating one of them. Oh well.

Now I'd like to share with you a sheep joke. (Yes, I'm one of the few people who actually remembers jokes. It's a disability and I'm seeking treatment.) The joke's a little old, so some of the references are slightly dated, but work with me here.

So an American, an Australian, and a Scotsman are walking down a country road. They come across a sheep. The sheep has tried (and failed) to jump a fence. It's suspended across the fence, with its butt hanging in the air.

The American looks at the sheep and says, "If only that were Cindy Crawford!"

The Australian looks at the sheep and says, "If only that were Elle McPherson!"

The Scotsman looks at the sheep and says, "If only it were dark out!"

The joke is funny because it implies that all Scots enjoy having sex with sheep! Is that great or what? Come back soon when we have Lance Manion's Ginormous Compendium of Blond Jokes, and Lance is bludgeoned to death by Mrs. Manion, a natural blonde.

Dance Off!

2005-10-17T12:59:00.000-04:00

So I decided on a new method of conflict resolution in my life. It turns out that jamming a rabid howler monkey down someone else's pants comes under Massachusetts General Law section 43 part 97, "Felony Assault with a Farm Implement" Plus it's hard to find a store that reliably carries rabid howler monkeys.

Once my attorney got the charges reduced to "Malicious Fondling of a Root Vegetable" I decided I needed a new coping skill. So after some meditation in front of VH1, I decided that from now on I'd resolve my conflicts using that ancient and time honored method, the Dance Off! If it's good enough for Justin and Britney, it's damn well good enough for me.

Oh, and for the record, the correct spelling of Dance Off! includes the exclamation point. Otherwise it's just stupid.

So this morning I had a chance to put my plan in motion. Development wanted to change one of my document headings from "Importing Templates" to "Downloading Templates" And I looked at that developer, put down my howler monkey, and said "Oh it's on baby, it's on!"

And then I threw back my head and screamed the magic words, "DANCE OFF!"

Out of nowhere, a driving techno beat began, quickening my pulse. I started in with some light vogueing. I wanted to lull the developer into false sense of security.

The developer stood silent for a moment, before snapping his finger in a Z shaped motion. "Oh! You did NOT just go there!" He immediately began busting moves so phresh that I began to doubt myself.

And battle was joined. The developer was quickly joined by the forces of the Marketing department and QA. I was backed by Release Engineering and Professional Services. The dancing was frantic. Styles appeared, clashed, fused and burned.

The soundtrack shifted and changed. We went through house, acid, trance, jungle, techno, acid house, and polka. It was during the polka that the tide of dance shifted in my favor.

As you can see, a security camera caught some of the action.

In this picture, you can see how one of the Marketing minions is brought down by some of my spicier Latin dance rhythyms. I call that particular move Salsa de los Pantalones.

Not every man can work Salsa de los Pantalones into the Beer Barrel Polka, but that's the kind of guy I am.

Her fall turned out to the turning point of the engagement. When she went down, Development's left flank was open, and the 11th hip hop brigade was able to move into position. After that, it was just clean up.

The dust settled, and the developer admitted defeat. And then, to show how magnanimous in victory I can be, I stuffed a rabid howler monkey down his pants.

LM

Vitor and the Children Part 2 - The Word of Vitor

2005-10-14T15:51:00.000-04:00

So we were cold, poor, and hungry, trapped in the Sneath Pit at the height of the holiday season. There's a lot to be said for a traditional Dickens Christmas in London. Such as, it sucks when an outrageous splurge is Pizza Hut with cubic spicy meat topping.

And as we explored our home sweet flophouse, we found a book. Contrary to your expectation, this book was not the Bible, Talmud, or Koran. The previous denizens were not exactly religious people. No, the book was "Fortune's Fool" by Angela Wells, and published by Harlequin.

I reached into a dusty cabinet and pulled out the book. The cover of the slim volume was obscured by dust. As I brushed the dust away, I saw the cover art. An attractive young woman on horseback, with her tall-dark-and-handsome beau.

The book spoke to me. It said, "You are lost. I am the way. Also, if you're desperate enough, I might have some racy passages."

The back of the book promised the following "Ria had been joyously en route to the grand villa of her elderly guardian, the man who had rescued her from the slums of Sao Paolo and paid for her convent upbringing. Moments later Ria was staring into the ruggedly handsome face of her abductor, bracing herself for his ransom demands, demands that would surely seal her fate.
His words were chilling. "You're not to be ransomed," he said."I mean to marry you -- by this evening..."

Her abductor turned out to be none other than Vitor, a socially conscious lawyer with a penchant for kidnapping and seduction, and the sexual stamina of a dozen priapic lumberjacks. I knew then that I must follow the way of Vitor. That I must model myself upon him. And more importantly, that I must share the way of Vitor with others. For Vitor did sayeth unto me, "The people of the slums, they live the in pits of poverty. Your fiance, Eduardo, keeps them there. I fight every day to set them free, Ria. And set them free, I shall!"

And I thought, I live in a pit! And poverty sucks! And I don't want to marry some guy named Eduardo! Vitor will free me! So I brought the book before my roommates and told them of the way of Vitor. And they asked, "But how do we know that the way is true?"

So I flipped to another page, and read at random - "Vitor’s gaze was on her back and she couldn’t help reacting, feeling her body tingle. Why did he have to be so charming…so handsome? She wanted to mop his face with that hideous salsa."

To be perfectly honest, none of us were really sure how relevant that message was. Fortunately, we'd been drinking and were prepared to follow just about anything at that point.

So we pulled out our pens and paper and assembled with Way of Vitor. As Ways go, it's pretty easy to follow, with only a few major commandments.

1. Thou shalt not tell people what to do -
Vitor, chapter 3, verse 14 "Inside, they sat at a table, Ria with her back to a wall. Her evening bag in her lap, her hand inside it gripping her gun, she leveled a look at Vitor. “First, don’t ever tell me what to do. I’m responsible for what I do, and what I do will always be my choice. Not yours.”

2. Thou shalt honor the dead by grunting -
Vitor, chapter 6, verse 1 "Fear flickered through his eyes. Surprise chased it. “I hope so,” he said, though his expression seemed out of sync with his tone. “My girls need to know what happened to their mother. I need to know what happened to my wife.” He grunted.

3. The horniest among you shall become Nuns of Vitor -
Vitor, chapter 4, verse 9 "He hadn’t expected to find a houseful of ladies staring at him Several gave him an appreciative appraisal as he entered, but he only focused on Ria. She stood in the kitchen, hands on her hips. They were soft and curvy hips, too."

4. Whenever possible, thou shalt be naked -
Vitor, chapter 12, verse 3 "Vitor put a hand on her shoulder, startling her before she could turn away. “Hey, you look great. Now take off those clothes.”

5. Blessed are the truck theives, for they shall receive unlimited airtime minutes -
Vitor, chapter 2, verse 2 "“I stole a truck,” Ria said. “I’m heading home. I — I’m groggy as hell from the drugs, but I think I’m okay. And I'm keeping that jerk's phone.”

And so now we follow the Way of Vitor. Spread the word. Services are held in the behind cement mixers, for such is the Way of Vitor - "Ria rounded the corner, and saw Vitor, prone beneath the chute, concrete splashing onto his chest."

Vitor and the Children, Part 1 - Vitor Comes to the Sneath Pit

2005-10-13T15:31:00.000-04:00

So, some of you have noticed a recurring theme in the comments section. That theme would be a series of references to someone known simply as Vitor. The tale of Vitor is a deeply moving one, of squalor, deprivation, and Sneath, ending in a triumph of the human spirit. But mostly it's a tale of Sneath. So grab yourself a Tennent's Extra and pull up a chair.

As I've mentioned before, after college a few of us went back to the UK to live and work. Here's the cast:

Lance Manion - Dangerously Sexy
Amandarama - Dispossesses Slyly
Rob the Fightguy - Dismembers Swiftly

We touched down in London one day in October, with no jobs, relatively little money, and no place to stay. We had decided not to burden ourselves by overplanning the trip.

After a quick search, we found jobs and housing. We ended up in a squalid little furnished flat on Sneath Ave, in Golders Green, London. Recognizing that image is everything, we christened our new home "The Sneath Pit."

As for jobs, we found the following:

Lance Manion - Professional balloon animal maker
Pro - I was the highest paid of the three of us.
Con - Constantly tormented by German tourists, occasionally blinded by balloons.

Amandarama - Jewelry salesperson for Christian Dior in Harrods
Pro - Got to wear home thousands of dollars worth of costume jewelry.
Con - Christian Dior eventually noted absence of jewelry.

Rob the Fightguy - Referee for Quasar, (Organized Laser Tag)
Pro - Generous coworkers with large supplies of weed.
Con - Weird hours, worked with children.

So anyway, we were in London, cold, poor, and hungry. But at least we had a crappy little 10" television. We were plucky and made the best of it. We would gather nightly and watch Red Dwarf, Absolutely Fabulous and Get Stuffed.

And then one day we were burglarized. Not that there was much to steal from our squalor. But the burglars were plucky as well and made off with the aforementioned crappy little television. They also trashed our flat. Well, all the parts except mine, which I had already trashed.

That was a dark time. There was a void in our hearts and in our souls. And we looked to fill that void. One night as we sat around listlessly, we explored the many dusty cupboards and boxes left by previous denizens of the Sneath Pit. And as if it had been waiting for us, we found a book. And this book not only filled the void in our lives, it changed us forever. And I must share this book with the world.

Coming soon, Vitor and the Children Part 2 - The Word of Vitor.

LM

Manion Poetry Slam: Haik-u Buddy!

2005-10-11T13:39:00.000-04:00

Yeah, it's that time again! Time for another Manion Poetry Slam! After all, when Haruki Murakami posts to your blog, it's time for some high-grade Manion poetry.

This outing I'm going with the time honored form of haiku. A haiku consists of three lines, with 5-7-5 syllables. They also usually use two lines to set a scene, with an event happening in the first or last line. Bet you were dying to know that.

Truth be told, I had originally wanted this iteration of Manion Poetry Slam to feature limericks, but Mrs. Manion still forbids me from publishing my long form limerick epic, "From Venus to Nantucket" So instead we're going to have haiku.

Here we go.

My anger is unchecked
QA worker in my grip,
Sweet caffeine lifts me.

Disk crash a bad thing?
Marketing doesn't think so.
A release note dies.

A Five AM cat
flies (briefly) from the window.
Darwin strikes again.

And for the big finale, a story in haiku.

The iron bars hold me-
Arrested for showing it
to the cheerleaders.

Mrs. Manion sighs
heavily and pays my bail.
Cops return my stuff.

There ya go. Manion Poetry Slam, in all its eloquent glory. Feel free to grip the mic and go for yours, baby!

LM

Status Report: Small Amount of Cat

2005-10-10T12:47:00.000-04:00

As long-term regular readers of Mercenary Words know, we have a cat. The cat is known colloquially as Small Amount of Cat. Professionally the cat goes by Lafite, as in Chateau Lafite Rothschild. It made as much sense to name the cat after a first growth Bordeau as anything else.

(We used to have two cats, but one day Sack of Garbage just never came home. Seriously, we have no idea what happened. The vet's assistant pretty clearly thinks we terminated Sack of Garbage. But we didn't. At least I didn't. And I'm pretty sure Mrs. Manion didn't. I mean, I'm sure there was a good reason she was out digging a hole in the back yard in the middle of the night...)

Anyway, Small Amount of Cat has decided that it's very important that we get up at about 5 in the morning. It's getting to the point where I'm ready to dig a mysterious hole in the back yard too.

Small Amount of Cat clearly has some amount of siamese heritage. And also clearly has some amount of air raid siren heritage. I'm thinking we may have to make her sleep in the basement for a few days until she gets the message. Or at least gets the message that waking me up at 5 in the morning six days in a row is not a plan guaranteed to ensure long term kitty health.

I've offered to start waking up the small cat with an air horn whenever she's asleep so she knows what it's like, but Mrs. Manion says that's not a good plan. She also nixed the spring loaded platform that would have fired Small Amount Cat of gently out the second floor bathroom window. So I'm working on it. I'll keep you posted.

LM

Lance Manion Meets SuperFrog

2005-10-07T14:48:00.000-04:00

So yesterday I was one of the select few to hear celebrated author Haruki Murakami at MIT. Mrs. Manion got there early and saved me a seat. This was a good thing because the fire marshalls ended up chasing out everyone who didn't have a seat. In the words of Professor Junot Diaz "That's some cold shit." I wish more professors were street like that guy.

Anyway, eventually things settled down enough for the reading to begin. Murakami spoke excellent English and seemed like a genuinely nice guy. He read from my favorite short story "SuperFrog Saves Tokyo" It's dark tale about a giant frog that battles a giant worm to save Tokyo from disaster.

The only disappointment was when Murakami let some other MIT faculty member take over reading the story. I mean, I didn't haul my butt into Cambridge to hear some random guy read the story. I came to hear Murakami read it. Ah well.

Then there was a Q&A session. The questions were good for the most part. I had a question, but didn't get to ask it. In the unlikely event that Haruki Murakami reads Mercenary Words, I'll post it here:

"Many of your novels open with the protagonist talking about how he's awkward with girls, and has very poor luck meeting women. And yet during the novel the protagonist needs to carry an umbrella because tail just rains down from the sky onto this guy. Seriously. This guy scores like a freakin rock star. This guy scores like he's LeBron James playing against a team of handicapped midgets. This guy scores like he's invented scoring. This guy scores like he's playing the lead role in the movie 'The Guy Who Scored All the Time.' This guy scores like..." My question goes on in this vein for a few minutes, but I'll cut that in the interest of space. "...So yeah. What's up with that?"

I like to close my questions with "What's up with that?" I feel it makes them more intellectual. I also wanted to suggest a sequel story where SuperFrog and Worm team up to battle Rodan. Maybe next time.

LM

My Father vs. Wisteria Drive

2005-10-06T13:46:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, I lived on a street called Wisteria Drive. (Long before the Housewives ever got Desperate) It was sort of curvy, emptying out into a long straightaway. The curve reached sharpest right around our mailbox. And a couple of times a year, some lousy driver would come along and wipe out the mailbox. The annoying thing is that they never came to the door and offered to make amends, they just kept going.

And this injustice became a point of pride for my father.

The first few mailboxes were generic things of wood and plastic. Virtually any car could knock them over with minimal damage. So we began putting the mailboxes on stronger posts. Much stronger posts...

One of the earliest "car resistant" designs involved putting the post in a concrete base. This was good. Instead of merely scratching someone's bumper, we were now collecting parking lights.

But it wasn't enough.

Dad wanted a car. He wanted the whole car. He wanted the driver to have to come to the door and beg for mercy. He wanted the bumper stuffed and mounted over the fireplace.

So we pulled out the cement. It wasn't providing enough resistance, and it was making replacing the post much more difficult.

Instead, we went from traditional 4x4 lumber to pressure treated 8x8 timbers. It's twice as thick, and weighs a ton. It's not unlike hitting a full grown tree. Now were were getting whole headlight assemblies. And this was good. But still not victory.

So Dad went in an entirely different direction, and took a page from the army. Yes, we became the owners of the world's first (and only) mailbox post/tank trap. (You can take Dad out of the military, but you can't take the military out of the Dad.)

The idea was that when a car hit the mailbox post, the impact would lever up an underground arm on either side of the mailbox. The arm would rise out of the ground like an undead claw and grab the car's transmission. It was the mailbox equivalent of punching the car in the groin. A car can keep going without headlights, even without a bumper, but not without a transmission.

Constructing it took a day. Installing it took another day. Testing it was impossible. A successful test would have cost us a car. We would just have to wait. And wait we did. And wait. And another car never hit the mailbox. It was like they knew about the trap.

Eventually my family moved. And years later I drove by the house again. And the tank trap post was gone. I'm curious if it ever bagged a car or not. But I'm not about to ask the current residents, "Hey, did your mailbox ever destroy a passing car?"

LM

PS. Believe it or not, had the tank trap post failed, the next one was going to be a steel I beam (think construction girder) in a wood sheath.

Lance Manion, a Catholic Girls School, and a Cup of Cottage Cheese

2005-10-05T15:42:00.000-04:00

I'm kind of tired today, so rather than exercise my creativity gland, or whatever body part is responsible for that sort of thing, I'm going to tell you yet another true story from the Manion Files. Hey, it beats writing software documentation.

Before we were married, Mrs. Manion used to teach at Emmanuel College in Boston. Emmanuel is a women only Catholic school specializing in women from developing nations who are the first in their families to attend college. Not that this is particularly relevant, I just like exposition.

So one day, I went to visit Mrs. Manion while she was tutoring. I hadn't had lunch that day, so I was very hungry. It turned out that Mrs. Manion had a left over individual cottage cheese unit that she hadn't eaten. She offered it to me. The cottage cheese in question appears below:

So I said, "Sure, I'll have the cottage cheese." Unfortunately, I was in a library. I thought to myself, "Lance, you can't eat the cottage cheese here. Not in public. Not in the middle of a library. It's icky."

I looked around for a moment. "You know Lance," I thought, "this is an all girl's school. You're the only guy you can see. It's not like there's anyone is in the mens room. And it's probably sparklingly clean from lack of use. Why not just go there, inhale the cottage cheese and get moving?"

Like most of my plans, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

So I headed into the mens room. And it was clean and quiet. Then I realized that I had no utensils. Ever the problem solver, I washed my hands and opened the container. I used my fingers to hork down the cottage cheese as quickly as possible.

It was then that a male professor walked in.

It was then that I stood in the middle of the mens room at a catholic girls school with cottage cheese on my hands and face.

Now you're probably asking, "Wow, Lance! You looked like a serious freak! Is there any possible way that you talked your way out of this?"

And the answer is no, there was no graceful way out. So instead, I screamed like a little girl, flung the cottage cheese at the professor, and threw myself out the window. If you're going to be freaky, you might as well go all the way.

Sadly, Mrs. Manion's contract was not renewed after that year. I'm almost positive that I had nothing to do with that.

LM

Is It True?

2005-10-03T16:32:00.000-04:00

I've noticed that this blog has had the unintended effect of starting a lot of rumors about me. So I've decided that rather than let these things get out of hand, I'm going to address them head on, here and now.

So Lance, is it true that your 'roid is dating Lindsay Lohan?

No. Although my 'roid has been seen out and about with many a starlet, my 'roid and Lindsay remain "just good friends."

Just how many times have you been arrested?

You'll have to clarify the question. In this country? What if I was just detained for questioning? By which law enforcement agency?

Are you high?

Huh? What? Right now? Why? What have you heard?

We've heard that in job interviews you refuse to answer the "If you could be an
animal, what animal would you be?" question.

This is true. I used to say "I'd like to be an intestinal parasite." But that creeped people out. Now I just don't answer.

Is it true that you attended a gay wedding this past weekend?

This is also true. The food was excellent and the cake was to die for. The music emphasized show tunes a bit more than I might have chosen personally, but the event was a blast. I think this alone is more than enough reason to legalize gay marriage. You can marry a soap dispenser for all I care, so long as you have an open bar.

LM

'Roid Rage

2005-09-30T12:30:00.000-04:00

So unlike most of the human race, I have no thyroid gland. This comes as no shock to me, as I was there for the series of operations in which it was removed. Apparently mah 'roid (as I like to refer to it) had a case of what the doctors like to call "thyroid cancer," or some other medical jargon. It's no big. It's one of those cancers that nobody dies from. Well, except Chief Justice Rhenquist, but he had a different flavor of it, and was 43,000 years old.

Once in a while I miss it. The gland, not Rhenquist. Apparently the gland is butterfly shaped. Or at least most are. Mine was more softball shaped (and sized) which rather necessitated the removal. So when I see butterflies or softballs, I think about it.

I've asked for a new one, but I guess they don't transplant those. It's kind of too bad, because I've already got the scar. They might as well swap a new one in. Or a bionic version! That would be totally bitchin'. I'm not sure what a bionic 'roid would get me, but I bet I could fight crime or something with it.

Anyway, it's been a year since mah 'roid shipped out. I amuse myself by envisioning the adventures that my 'roid goes on.

I like to imagine him skiing the slopes at Zermat. Or maybe partying on the beach in Rio. Or even better, seeking out my enemies and jumping out of air ducts, latching onto their faces and tormenting them. That last one is my favorite.

Maybe Disney could make a movie out of it, or something. Some kid finds my 'roid, thinks it's a dog (or whatever), and they become best friends while seeking vengeance against my enemies. Kind of like "Lilo and Stitch" meets "Chuckie".

So anyway, on the first anniversary of being officially 'roid-less, I hope that wherever you're at, my little butterfly shaped buddy, you're raging old school.

LM

Taking it Personally

2005-09-29T13:40:00.000-04:00

When I check my hotmail account, I frequently see ads for various personal matchmaking services. And the ads usually run something like this -

Kandi - 25 - Redondo Beach, FL - Kandi enjoys muscle cars, performing oral sex, and three-ways. She's fabulously wealthy, but not too bright, and has no idea what a prenup is.And there's a picture of some pouting blonde with parted lips looking like she's waiting for some porn film director to shout "Action!"

I think that the men that see these ads are supposed to think "Hey, I should subscribe to that service! Then I can meet women like that. I bet beer guts are a huge turn on for her!" When in reality, you couldn't get "Kandi's" attention with a flare gun and a suitcase full of hundreds.

But I bet some men join the dating service, figuring "It has to be kind of true, right?" Then they find out that the service actually has one female client, who's 40, incredibly bitter over her divorce, and devoted beyond all sanity to her chihuahua, El Fuego Nino.

Instead, I suggest that people do what I did. Hang out in a bar until you find a woman who's drunk enough to respond positively to the patented Lance Manion pickup line - "Hey baby, how 'bout it?"

Of course the current system isn't all bad. I do like being able to look at pouting blondes with parted lips and claiming that I'm researching a blog entry.

LM

My Secret Pants

2005-09-27T10:48:00.000-04:00

Today I am happy, for I am wearing my secret pants. My secret pants are jeans. The secret of my pants is that they are lined with flannel. My secret pants are both warm and comfortable, like pajamas.

My coworkers today have noticed my serene smile and asked my why I am so happy. I tell them it is because I am wearing my secret pants. I offer to show them the secret of my pants.
Then they say things like "Um... Yeah... I gotta go be someplace else right now."

This does not bother me. My pants are warm and happy.

I also have ultra-secret pants. They are lined with fleece. They are too warm to wear inside except on the coldest days, though.

Tomorrow I'm going to wear my assless chaps. Ain't nothing secret about them.

LM

PS. In response to inquiries, no you can't have my secret pants OR the assless chaps. But you can buy your own (Secret pants, that is. I had to have the chaps custom made.) from LL Bean. Look under jeans.

Return of the Office Ninja

2005-09-26T16:44:00.000-04:00

As I write this, I am home scrubbing myself clean. The office ninja has returned, another mission accomplished.

I have decided to take next week off. Rather than actually request the week and have it denied, I decided to simply sneak out and conceal my departure.

"But that's impossible, even for you, Lance!" you might say. And it's impossible for a lot of people. But not the Office Ninja.

My plan started in the conference room, during the weekly status meeting. I hummed a stale bagel across the room, into the head of the marketing VP. As an Office Ninja, I know the many pressure points of the human body. I know the ones that can render a man unconcious instantly. I also know the one that makes the receptionist slap me and call HR.

Anyway, as the marketing VP folded like a deck chair, I slipped under the conference table in the confusion. As the company drones wondered what had become of me, I drew out my White Out of invisibility. By removing my clothes and painting my body, I became perfectly camouflaged. In case you're curious, it takes 119 little jars of white out to assume perfect Office Ninja invisibility.

I then darted out from under the table and ran for it. How my coworkers will wonder at the source of the strange white footprints that appear magically in the hall.

In my cube I have left a humonculous that bears a striking resemblance to me. It's powered by a steam engine that runs off Diet Coke. Whenever somebody approaches, it screams out "C'mere, ya savage love monkey!" I figure that will keep people from approaching too often. And as the piece de resistance it periodically sends out emails to the entire company asking questions like "Bug 43288 - Should we release note this?"

Hell, it will probably be even more productive than me. None shall be the wiser.

LM

I'm a Bad Person, and That's OK

2005-09-23T09:48:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned before, I'm a bad person. I'm okay with this, and don't really feel a need to change. I like it because it gives me a certain degree of personal freedom and a complete immunity to feelings of guilt.

You know, in the movies, where the morally weak character sells out the hero to the bad guys, and then redeems himself by some act of self-sacrifice? I'm kind of like that, except for the part where he later redeems himself. In my movie, you'd see my character flying first class to Europe while the hero is chased down the street by every bad guy in town.

For example, yesterday I was one of many employees teleconferencing with some remote salepeople. I was looking remotely at this guy's computer screen. On his screen, he had a picture of his son, an unattractive boy of about 4.

Because I'm a bad person, I had no problem saying "Damn! That kid is ugly! We're talking scare-a-dog-off-a-meat-truck-ugly! Get that ugly off my screen!"

Because there were many people, and the connection was poor, I was able to remain safely anonymous in the conference call, while creating tension and strife.

So now there are many people arguing, blaming and finger pointing. Plus HR has asked me to write a policy about "proper inter-employee dialog" I plan on including an exception clause for "cases of severe ugly".

It was a good day.

LM

Dougie and the Mixed Nuts Part 2 - Dougie Style

2005-09-22T14:51:00.000-04:00

If you're arriving a little late, you should really reading at Dougie and the Mixed Nuts Part 1 - The Adventure Begins.

So where were we? Ah yes, Dougie was on all fours, on the top bunk of a bunk bed, poised to insert three inches of the wide end of a vaseline-lubed pool cue into his rectum.

The football players broke out cameras to commemorate the moment, shooting frame after frame of film. I can only imagine how proud Dougie's parents would have been of their boy at that moment. All we really needed to complete the moment was the theme from 2001 in the background.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that the whole enterprise hit a snag. Dougie couldn't get the leverage to insert the pool cue. Apparently a lubricated pool cue is difficult to manipulate from behind with one hand. I pray I never share this bit of knowledge and have to explain how I know.

As Dougie patiently explained, it was a matter of angle and leverage and weight. Somebody else would need to... um... drive.

This new development was met with a lengthy silence, followed by a lot of throat clearing and looking around. Rob and paused in our efforts to jimmy the window open. What would happen next?

It was at this point that the football players lost their nerve and backed out of the deal. Nobody was willing to be known as the guy who put Dougie behind the eight ball.

They took their money back and said that they wouldn't pay. Dougie then refused to jam a pool cue up his butt. And everyone was a little embarrassed.

Like many such tales of alcohol-fueled freakiness, the next morning was a touch awkward. Nobody really much wanted to talk about it. No one except, strangely enough, Dougie.

Dougie took great pains to point out that it wasn't his fault that the probing fell through. That he would have jammed that pool cue up is butt, no doubt about it. And that he remained prepared to do so for a price.

I think his logic was that he would make it clear that he didn't wuss out. That he was more of a man than the football players. Unfortunately, the result was that everyone made a mental note to never, ever, ever, be in the same room as Dougie, ever again.

Epilogue: Dougie now teaches elementary school. Really. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

You are cordially invited to the wedding of friend A and friend B. Hash brownies will be provided.

2005-09-21T10:55:00.000-04:00

Sorry I've been slow about posting lately. Mrs. Manion has had to be on campus for 9 AM each day this week, and it's killing me. Getting from Ashby to Cambridge means getting up at about 5:30 AM. I am so not a morning person.

But you know, come to think of it, I'm not sorry. Because I'm a bad person and I'm okay with that. And right now I'm a bad person on about 436,000 milligrams of caffeine. I'm not sure what that's going to get me (other than the foaming, twitching, and desire to rip my own head off). I'll keep you posted.

In the mean time, you're probably dying to know what we got up to this weekend. Well, we attended a wedding, along with 50,000 uninvited guests. A friend of Mrs. Manion's got married this weekend. She and her fiance rented a lovely old mansion right on Boston Common. They were fortunate to be able to rent the building on fairly short notice.

So Mrs Manion and I got all dressed up and came into the city. We parked far away and took the subway in. We got out at Boston Common. As we're walking along toward the mansion, we noticed that there seemed to be an unusually large police presence. And they weren't even there for me. Turns out I spent twenty minutes hiding in a dumpster for no reason at all.

There were thousands of people, two stages, bands, incense vendors, and an overwhelming scent of low grade marijuana.

Yes, it turns out that this weekend was indeed Boston HempFest '05. Yes, that was why the mansion was available. So as the vows were exchanged, you could occaisionally hear the lead singer of Saliva Zone scream out "WHO WANTS TO GET HIGH?" or "DON'T LET THE MAN HARSH YOUR BUZZ! LEGALIZE!"

For added entertainment, the reception now also featured hacky-sack circles, hair braiding, drumming, and henna tattoos. Pretty sweet if you asked me. And I think I got a contact high.

The bride, on the other hand, was less amused. But after a few hits, she was cool with it. The wedding favors were personalized bongs. Or at least I think that's how I ended up with a personalized bong. Not sure. It's a little hazy.

Good times, people. Good times...

LM

Texas Toad

2005-09-16T15:54:00.000-04:00

So my hit counter tells me that the Texas Attorney General's office has been to my site. They Googled the string "Brazilian Toad". The best part is that I'm not making this up!

I think this is just great. Seriously! Law enforcement is now visiting me. I couldn't be more proud.

Either that or they're investing me. Again.

Sigh. I guess it's time to go move the bodies...

LM

Yeah? Well, release this!

2005-09-15T18:04:00.000-04:00

Right now my project is to write a set of release notes. You'd think that was pretty easy. Just write down what's new and what doesn't quite work right. Unfortunately, the Marketing department believes that my document has the magical power to make things go away. So we have conversations like this.

Evil Marketing VP "I see that we can't display reports in Japanese"

LM "Nope."

EMVP "Can you take that note out?"

LM "Sure. But it's going to be a nasty surprise to the Japanese."

EMVP "I see. Yeah, let's take that note out."

LM "You do understand that taking the note out doesn't actually change anything. The reports still won't display in Japanese."

EMVP "I understand that. It's a matter of perception."

So apparently we'd like to give the Japanese the perception that we don't actually test the product. My whacky belief that this might be a bad thing is probably why I make the small bucks.

So for those of you who'd someday like to join the hallowed ranks of the professional technical writer, here's the Lance Manion guide to writing release notes:

There are three types of notes, Broke Things, Things that used to be Broke, and New things that will probably get Broke. In the notes we call them Known Issues, Resolved Issues, and Enhancements.

Let's start from the bottom, shall we?

Enhancements - You want this to be the longest section, so you grab everything you can think of. Is the background a different color? Great! Interface updated for increased readability. Or something. If all else fails, make features up. I'm personally responsible for a set of process control software out in the world that cures herpes. It's not like anybody reads this stuff.

Resolved Issues - These are easy. Generally you're writing something to the effect of "The application is now compatible with 7200 RPM hard drives." What this really means is "Your computer will no longer make a hideous screeching noise before setting your hard drive on fire and shooting it out the window."

Known Issues - These are the toughest to write (or, as hackers would say, These are t3h Suxx0R") What you have to do here is describe everything that doesn't work in the product. Now some people might ask "But Lance, if it doesn't work, why are we releasing the product at all?" Beats the hell out of me. I just bang the words together, you know? Here you write things like "In rare cases, the archiving stored procedure may corrupt the user ID tables. Be sure to backup your database nightly." What this means is this "If you so much as look at the server crosseyed, it's replacing all of your most valuable data with porn."

And in an enterprise level application, you'll have to document about 150 of these bad boys. In a day. And people wonder why I drink 43 liters of Diet Coke a day.

Coming tomorrow "Dougie and the Mixed Nuts part 2 - Provocative Photos!"

LM

"Kaboom!" Or "Rhode Island Teen Attempts to Detonate Handicapped Concert-Goers"

2005-09-14T11:35:00.000-04:00

So I'm here at Penetrode listening to "Little T&A" by the Rolling Stones. It's one of their better songs that never gets played on the radio. You can probably guess why.

I'm trying to decide what to tell y'all about today. It was going to be the fine art of writing release notes, but somehow I think I'm the only one interested in that sort of thing.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about the first rock concert I ever attended. The year was 1990. Billy Joel fever was sweeping the nation, along with his Storm Front tour. Yeah!

Unfortunately, at the time Sonny Crockett, my brother and comrade in arms, had just gotten out of the hospital. He was injured while saving a minivan full of Playboy Playmates from a gang of neo-nazi biker pit bulls. At least that's what he tells people. Although he could walk, his doctor advised that he sit in a wheelchair for the concert.

The Providence Civic Center was pretty good about relocating our tickets to the, um, handicapped section. I'll tell you, that was a scary place. I mean, my brother was sitting a little funny, but otherwise looked fine. Some of the other people in this section had entire life support systems strapped under their wheelchairs and looked like they wouldn't make it past "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant". I began to imagine the conversations that led to their concert attendance "Dammit, Doctor! My cancer may be terminal, but I need to see Billy before I go!"

Anyway, we were watching the concert and things were going well. At one point during "Only the Good Die Young" I started to stand, but then I realized that I was pretty much the only one in my section who could, so I sat back down. I would hate for people to be thinking "Oh, yeah, look at him. Thinks he's so cool, all standing and shit..."

The concert continued, and Billy launched into "Goodnight Saigon," his ode to the soldiers who fought in Vietnam. "Well," I thought, "Maybe I can't stand, but I can at least wave my lighter in the air." I don't smoke. Never have. (Except for a cigar or two a year) But I always bring a lighter to concerts. I just like the idea of waving an open flame around in public. I'd bring a propane torch if they'd let me.

So I fire up my lighter and start waving it around with tremendous gusto. And all hell breaks loose. Turns out that a lot of the people in this section have their own oxygen tanks. For those of you who slept through science class, exploding oxygen tanks are what blew up that Valuejet plane in Florida years ago.

So we've got a bunch of handicapped people fleeing the arena as fast as their batteries will carry them. We were the only ones left in our section.

I didn't really understand what had happened until security confiscated my lighter. At least we got to see the rest of concert.

Coming soon - Lance and Sonny go to a David Bowie concert and ask the crucial questions - "What is that stuff they're smoking? And why does it smell so weird?"

LM

Enemies List

2005-09-09T15:02:00.000-04:00

When I was in first grade, it was briefly cool to write down a list of your enemies. After a few days, the school forbade us from creating these lists. Then their popularity really took off.

So it's been a couple of decades, but I've decided to create a new enemies list. I publish it now for your reading pleasure.

Dharmender, the QA intern

Now, you're probably saying, "Lance, your fury burns with the white hot rage of a thousand suns. Why is only Dharmender singled out for your crushing vengeance?" And the answer is fairly simple. Although my job title is senior technical writer, this is only because the admin misspelled my actual title. In reality my title is somthing like "drone/bottomfeeder"

Thus the only person currently within my somewhat limited grasp is Dharmender. Now there's not much point in having an enemies list unless you can crush the person or persons on it. So I'm kind of sorry that it has to be Dharmender, but such is life.

Or in Dharmender's case such is the hideous random vengeance for no apparent reason, but you know what I mean.

LM

So, What Do You Look Like?

2005-09-08T13:53:00.000-04:00

Many of our faitful readers write in asking what I and Mrs. Manion look like. It's an obvious question. I mean, I'm often curious what other bloggers look like. So I went out and rooted around for a photo or two. Here you go.

And before you ask, no, this photo was not taken on the set of a porn film or a cigarette ad. I was just feeling very seventies that day. And yes, Mrs. Manion digs on the big freaky hats. She's strange like that.

What do you mean you don't think I look anything like that? Fine. Be that way. I just like that photo and will be using at the representation of me for the forseable future. It was either that or my mug shot. And due to the pepper spray I'm looking kind of rough in that one.

Dammit people, this is the internet, and it's my god given right as an American to blatantly mispresent myself to others. Just be thankful I'm limiting it to photos and not shilling for donations because of my incredibly rare (and almost certainly fatal in the event of insufficient donations) case of Yohimbe Syndrome. I'm just saying.

LM

You Asked For It!

2005-09-07T10:13:00.000-04:00

Nay, you demanded it! So here you go. Part 1 of the harrowing true story of Dougie and the Mixed Nuts. Be sure to stretch before reading.

LM

Dougie and the Mixed Nuts - The Adventure Begins

2005-09-07T10:05:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, when I college, I went abroad to study theater in London. One of my roommates at the time was the beautiful yet deadly Amandarama. She can vouch for the accuracy of the tale you are about to read.

In an effort to show us some of the British countryside, the college sent us all on an overnight trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon. We stayed in a hostel just outside town. All the guys were in one room, and all the girls in another. Now might be a good time to introduce the cast of characters.

Four football players, AKA The Football Quad - Names are kind of unimportant. They were basically four of the same guy, members of the underground Lambda Chi Alpha frat, and only on the theater program because all the other study abroad programs involved languages other than English.

Rob - One of my other roommates. Another theater major, who for reasons unknown, always traveled with a jar of vaseline.

Me - Your host, Lance Manion. Intelligent, sexy, debonair...

Dougie - Short, pudgy, bisexual, and so hairy that he would get stuck in pool filters.

Amandarama - Not really involved in the story, but would be hurt if I didn't include her in the cast of characters.

So we're collectively stranded in Stratford Upon Avon, UK. Stratford, home to William Shakespeare, is not a happening place after dark. So we split into our collective groups and got into some serious pubbing. My friends and I were pretty light duty about it. We'd had a hard couple of days before and took it easy. Dougie and the football quad took the other approach, and pounded hard. They were blasted out of their collective minds by the time they got back to the hostel.

So Rob and I are sitting in this room full of wasted guys. There's nothing left to do but go to sleep. Or is there?

One of them drops his boxers, grabs his scrotum and start screaming "Mixed nuts, Dougie! Mixed nuts! Put 'em in ya mouth!"

Apparently throughout the evening the football players have been asking Dougie what he would charge for various sex acts. In case you're curious, here are the prices:

Hand job - 40
Oral - 80
Playing "Stuff the Dougie" - 200

At first everything seems okay. A little weird, but okay. Rob and I are a little unnerved, but figure, "Hey, at least they're not looking at us."

Haggling ensues. Dougie refuses to budge on his price points. He drives a hard bargain, that Dougie.

Eventually, a football player notices a pool cue in the corner of the room. Not expecting a serious response he asks "How much?" At this point, me and Rob are becoming concerned. Suddenly it dawns on everyone in the room (except Dougie, who already knew) that Dougie is willing to sodomize himself with sporting goods in exchange for cash. As Shakespeare once said, "What brave new world is this that has such creatures in it?"

Dougie raises the following questions:

Wide end or skinny end?
Lubed or dry?

Fortunately, Rob brought a jar of vaseline, which he contributed to the effort. When asked later why he volunteered the vaseline, Rob had this to say:

"If it all went to hell and we ended up getting buttfucked by a bunch of football players, I wanted them to at least be lubed."

To this day, I appreciate that Rob took the long view there, and I try to live my life by these words.

After further haggling, Dougie agreed to either three inches of the wide end, or five inches of the skinny end for 60 pounds. Of course, this was the lubed price - dry was 20 pounds extra. The football players assembled the requisite sixty pounds and a jar of vaseline. A deal was struck.

It was about this point that Rob and I decided that it was time to start knotting the sheets together for out escape. My luggage be damned, I didn't want some football player deciding that Dougie wasn't enough.

Coming soon, Dougie Part 2, "Provocative Photos"

My Father vs. Crustaceo, The Giant Land Crab

2005-08-29T14:40:00.000-04:00

So you've probably been saying to yourselves, "What the hell happened to Lance? He's been quiet for over a week!" And I'd like to tell you that I've been held captive by an elite squad of lingerie model ninjas. I really would like to tell you that.

Unfortunately, it would be blatantly untrue. Instead we've been really swamped here at Penetrode, Inc. As the only writer, I've been paying the price for my "plays poorly with others" work ethic.

The Dougie thing is still in the works. Lord knows I'm not keen to get dick-slapped by Mr. Scoop again. In the mean time, here's an entertaining little story from my childhood. As the title indicates, it's the story of me, my father, and a gigantic landgoing crustacean.

There are such things as land crabs, you know. People always think I'm making them up, much like the lingerie ninjas. Here's a picture. They're big enough that a pinch would get your immediate and undivided attention.

Apparently they climb trees, and then jump on tourists and eat their heads. At least that's my theory.

Anyway, when I was about six or seven, we lived at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. I played with the other children on the base. One day, I pulled out my little riding fire engine to see a gigantic blue land crab. Now in my memory, this thing was about nine feet across. In reality they're about six to eight inches. But this thing was hissing and waving a gigantic claw at me. I took off screaming.

My mother came out and saw the crab. She immediately called my father, who came back from work. The crab was still hanging out in the yard, entertaining itself by eating pedestrians or something.

My parents decided that the only way to make me feel safe again, and to restore the equilibrium of my little world, was to watch the public, violent, and very, very, final, execution of the crab.

So my father got a hoe and a hatchet. I don't think these were his first choice for weapons, but I think the neighbors would have frowned on hosing the backyard with shotgun shells. As I tailed him very closely, we went looking for the crab. It was in the back yard,hiding beneath the hibiscus.

My father used the hoe to flip the crab onto its back, and pinned the big claw. Once he had the crab pinned, and demonstrated to me that the crab was no longer a threat, he picked up the hatchet. Within seconds, there were crab parts everywhere. Seriously.

This memory is very vivid for me. I have kind of mixed feelings about it. I mean, the crab wasn't a real threat, but if something were terrifying my kids (not that I have any) and I could do something about it, I probably would.

So we buried the crab, and forever more, I've enjoyed the great fresh taste of boiled Maryland crabs. I particularly like the kind where they bring you a bunch of crabs and you get to dismember them yourself. It makes me feel better knowing that I'm protecting the children of the world.

The Darkest Evil the World Has Ever Known

2005-08-18T13:33:00.000-04:00

Okay, the Dougie thing is taking a while. I'll get a few paragraphs in and have to stop until the screaming subsides. So in the mean time, I've decided to repost my thoughts on the other greatest evil ever to manifest in the UK. - LM

Last night Mrs. Manion and I had Indian food. We like a good curry now and again. I got into Indian when I lived in the UK some years ago. The UK was a cool place. I was born there, but left as a kid. (Air Force brat. Long story. They seized my accent and the extraneous U at the border, so now I can spell words like colour, honour, and favour, 18% faster than the average Briton.)

I also lived there during and after college for a couple of years. The UK has many wonderful things to recommend it. Two of my favorites were Hob Nobs and Merrydown Silver cider. Get me a tube and a bottle and I'm a happy camper. You can usually find the Hob Nobs in the US. Never tracked down the cider, though.

Unfortunately, the UK is also directly responsible for the greatest evil the world has ever known. Namely, Marmite.

Marmite: Lord of Darkness

"What's Marmite?" An innocent victim might ask. Well, according to the good people at Marmite, it's the following:

Yeast Extract
Salt
Vegetable Extract
Niacin
Thiamin
Spice Extracts
Riboflavin
Folic Acid
Vitamin B12

I have no idea how it's manufactured. Presumably there's a crack in the Earth's surface that extrudes this ick. Maybe they've got a Hellmouth. I dunno. And I'm not getting close enough to find out.

People will tell you that it's a lovely spread for use on toast and such. They'll also tell you that it's an integral ingredient in Twiglets (If Marmite is Satan, then Twiglets are like the Arch-Duke of hell or something. More on Twiglets later.)

Let me walk you through the typical Marmite experience.

1. Well intentioned Brit hand you a jar of Marmite and a piece of toast. "Try it," he says, "It's TRADITIONAL," he intones.

2. You look at the jar. It's cute. Small. Sort of like something a high end jam would come in.

3. You open the jar. Inside is something that looks like tar. But not as appealing.

4. You sniff delicately. It smells like something that decayed a good while ago.

5. You look questioningly at your host. "I think it might be past its prime," you say politely.

6. "What? No, it's fine, try it!" You host replies, putting the pressure on.

7. Well, I've eaten weirder stuff than yeast extract, you think, and spread some on your toast. The tar metaphor continues to apply as you lay the dark brown/black evil on your innocent slice of toast.

8. You taste. In order not to appear rude, you take a decent sized bite. You chew.

9. It hits you. It's like all the hounds of Hell have taken an Armageddon sized crap in your mouth. Repeatedly.

10. You struggle to control your gag reflex. In a supreme act of will, you swallow.

11. "Did you like it?" your host asks. "It's an acquired taste."

12. You stab your host repeatedly in vengeance for defiling your mouth forever.Yeah, it's that bad. Seriously. No one ever believes me, and then they learn the hard way.

And on to Twiglets. Sidekick to evil.

For some reason, the technology to manufacture pretzels never made it to the UK. I couldn't tell you why. The closest thing they've got are Twiglets. They're basically pretzel thins baked in, you guessed it, Marmite.

You've been out drinking, you've got the munchies, and you want pretzels. You look the bag. The picture looks right. The slogans are... peculiar.... "Satisfyingly 89% fat free!!" ... "Extremely crunchy!!" ... "Hazardously knobbly!!"

The knobbly thing should be a warning, but hey, you're drunk.You shell out your 1.49 and dig in. And you've just been orally ambushed by Satan's little buddy. Repeat steps 9 and 10.

It really is that bad.

So on your next trip, have fun, try the Red Fort on Dean St. in Soho, and kill anyone who tries to push Marmite on you. You'll thank me later.

The People Have Spoken... And They Demand Mixed Nuts!

2005-08-17T16:20:00.000-04:00

Wow. I never expected that so many of you would sign up so quickly and enthusiastically for such a twisted and depraved journey. Honestly, I thought I could just sell the story and not come through. But you've shown me that there's a market out there on the interweb for stories of questionable moral content.

Perhaps I could do something with photos of naked women that people would pay to see or something. Incredible that no one else has already thought of this...

Anyway, here's the deal. I'm going to go home, stretch, drink half a bottle of peach schnapps, and start writing. The story of Dougie and the Mixed Nuts is not a short one. And it's not for the faint of heart.

So take a page from Ithiel's book. Start working on your buzz now, find a comfortable chair, and have a therapist on standby.

We're going in...

LM

Dougie and the Mixed Nuts

2005-08-16T17:34:00.000-04:00

Mrs. Manion and I have been going back and forth about whether or not the world is ready for the story of Dougie and the mixed nuts. It's a true story that I myself lived through many years ago. It's a story of four football players, two theater majors, 60 pounds worth of sex acts, pool cues, Stratford-Upon-Avon, photographs, insane amounts of body hair, second story windows, rope ladders, and one small bisexual man named Dougie.

Mrs. Manion feels that the story of Dougie and the Mixed Nuts is a little too "spicy" for even you, the people who don't flinch at the sight of scabies or hot clown on clown action.

I think you guys might be able to handle it.

So what do you think? Are you ready? If you guys think you can handle it, I'll tell the story. If you can't, or if Mrs. Manion tells me that I'm looking at another FCC indecency fine, I'll restrain myself.

So let me know.

LM

For a taste of yer whiskey, I'll give you some advice...

2005-08-15T13:21:00.000-04:00

I don't karaoke very often. It's not really my thing. But some people, like Amandarama, or Mrs. Manion, like it. So here are my tips for having a fun and entertaining evening out at the local karaoke bar.

No matter how much you think that MeatLoaf is god's gift to music, not everyone shares your opinion. Your decision to perform the twelve and a half minute unedited version of "I'd do anything for love (But I won't do that)" will not be appreciated.
If you're forced to sing, choose "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers. Everybody else in the bar will sing along with you, removing the need for you to actually sing. Lip sync it like you were Britney and everybody will still love you.
As soon as Mrs. Manion starts doing the ass dance on top of a table, you have about thirty minutes to get her home before disaster strikes. If she starts telling you that you never let her have any fun, you're down to fifteen minutes.

There you go. Now get out there and belt out some Irene Cara tunes.
LM

Manion 2K

2005-08-12T12:27:00.000-04:00

Yes, here at Mercenary Words we've finally had over two thousand hits. And many of those hits were not generated by Mrs. Manion pounding the refresh button on her browser. And that's pretty cool. So I'm going to hoist a celebratory Diet Coke in recognition of that brave soul out there who said, "Dammit, I want to know more about scabies, but rather than go to a reputable medical info site, I'm going to get my information from some random guy with a blog." 'Cause that's exactly the sort of thing that I would do.

"Hey honey, it's okay to ignore that rash, because RickyBoi63 says on his blog that his cousin had one just like that an' his arm didn't fall off or nothin..."

And by way of thanking all y'all who visit Mercenary Words on a semi-regular (or semi-nude - We're cool with it either way, just keep posting those photos!) basis, here's a little card that I'd mail to you if I had any idea where any of you lived.

Thanks for making a fun little project a little more worth doing.

LM

The Unleashing of the Hamsters of Madness

2005-08-10T11:08:00.000-04:00

We still don't have Diet Coke. And now I don't have any madness hamsters. Talk about a rip off. They should have been called "Crawl into the Heating Ducts and Die Hamsters." I'm mad, sure, but I don't think that was an accurate representation of the hamsters.

So I've decided to up the ante. I've contracted the Penguin of Death to track down an eliminate the person who drank all the Diet Coke in the office. The Penguin of Death was trained by an elite school of ninja penguins. At least that's what it said in the brochure.

I will smuggle him into the building in a box. With air holes this time. And let him waddle off to wreak such carnage. Delicious, meaty carnage!

There will be such an ass-kicking. In 412 flavors. Get ready for it, people.

LM

Madness Hamsters!

2005-08-09T11:42:00.000-04:00

I'm getting a new pet - Madness hamsters.

They kick ass over dogs and cats. I will train them and unleash them on my enemies. It will be awesome. This is going to be so great.

And do you know who the first victim of my madness hamsters will be? Of course you do! It's going to be the person who drank all of the frickin' Diet Coke and didn't order any more! I don't know who this person is, but I'm going to learn. Oh yes. And my madness hamsters will quickly reduce this damned soul to a gibbering mass of a humanity!

BWAH, HA, HA!

LM

And a Manion Dreams...

2005-08-08T12:10:00.000-04:00

So, many of you have written to me saying:

Dear Lance,
What do you dream when you are asleep?

Signed

Lots of People

And that's a difficult question. Mostly because the world seems bound and determined to prevent me from getting a decent night's sleep these days.

But because you're probably looking for an insight for the various biographies of me that you're working on, I've written down a few of the most recent entries from my dream journal. Psych! I don't have a dream journal. I'm vastly too macho.

Anyway. Here they are - real(!) dreams that I've had in the past week. To make life easier on my future biographers, I've already researched the symoblism and meaning of the dream and provided an explanation.

Manion Galactica (Yeah, I watch Battlestar Galactica. You should too.)

So I was on the surface of Caprica with Starbuck and Helo. And Starbuck had forgotten to pack a lunch. So I shared my lunch with her. 'Cause I'm all gentleman-like.

Meaning - packed lunch = always prepared; Starbuck = hot chicks dig me;

High School Manion

So I was back in high school, but I had forgotten my pants. Somehow I had to get to class without anyone noticing my pantsless state. Hilarity ensues...

Meaning - School = past source of tension; pantsless = my continuing belief that more people would really like to see my magical pants weasel.

Aliens vs. Manion

So I was an officer on board a naval destroyer, and we had to dock with an aircraft carrier that we believed to be infested with aliens from the movie Aliens. I was ordered to lead the first team on board. I had invented some sort of ultraviolet flashlight that could kill the aliens, but didn't hurt people or equipment. Of course, right after we got on board, the batteries died...

Meaning - Aliens = Aliens; flashlight = inventiveness/creativity; batteries dying = Desire to show how badass I am by personally clubbing aliens to death with the magical pants weasel (Certainly does not mean that I fear letting myself down. Absolutely not. Definitely means the badass thing.);

There you go. Now can I get a nap or something?

LM

Guest @ Das Manion Haus

2005-08-07T17:37:00.000-04:00

So we just finished hosting several of Mrs. Manion's friends. Now we're recovering from the flat out exhaustion of spending two days cleaning. It's the price we pay for convincing random people that the house is always beautiful and elegant.

Little do they know that three hours ago the bathroom was a biohazard.

Argh.

LM

Everyone in Hollywood Has a Script

2005-08-05T14:04:00.000-04:00

Or so they tell me. So I decided to come up with a script. I'm going to just give you the overview here, because otherwise you'd recognize the awesome genius of it and steal my idea.

For what it's worth, this idea was inspired, in a loose and non-copyrightable way, by Amandarama's latest post...

Here we go -

"Divided We Stand" - by Lance Manion

It's the year 2105. Brain transplant technology has just been invented. Police detective Turk Mannington has just been gunned down in the line of duty. Racing against time, surgeons manage to remove his brain from his body. Unfortunately, they don't have anywhere to put it. So they run to the animal testing lab to find a host body.

Unfortunately, the testing lab only has a bunch of lemurs. Even more unfortunately, the cranial capacity of a lemur is not nearly big enough to hold a human brain. So Mannington's brain
gets divided amoung a dozen lemurs.

He can only think clearly when all of the lemurs are within a 10 foot radius of Stinky, the lead lemur. When a lemur is outside the circle Mannington loses the brain function contained in that lemur. Like if the lemur for a given memory is outside the radius, he loses that memory. Hilarity ensues when his memory of ettiquette steps out and two of his lemur selves have sex with a bag of coffee grounds.

Manningon frantically tries to keep his lemur-selves out of trouble while investigating his own murder. It's like a buddy movie, where one buddy is the hard-bitten cop, who does things by the book, and the other cop is 12 lemurs that like to mark their territory with poo. Despite his initial rage at being trapped in a collection of small primitive mammals, Mannington eventually accepts his fate, and become the first lemur detectives on the force.

It will be filled with touching scenes like the one where Mannington tries to reconnect with his fiance, while 11 other lemur selves check the fiance for ticks and fleas.

The climax of the movie will come when 12 lemurs collectively fire a rocket launcher into the fleeing limousine of the bad guy. In a stunning twist, the bad guy is then transplanted into a dozen fossas (that weird looking thing below), natural enemy of the lemur.

That smell you're smelling? That's the great, fresh scent of Oscar. Check it out, people.

LM

Once Again, I Got Nothing...

2005-08-04T14:52:00.000-04:00

So I've been devoting way too much time this morning to coming up with something to write. And the muse isn't singing, no matter how much White Out I sniff. Stupid muse.

So I'm going to try something a little diff. Something a little free-form. Sort of a Spinal Tap style Jazz Odyssey (and we all know how well that turned out).

So lets ride that camera eye, as Dos Passos would call it, into that nutty world we call "The Mind of a Manion" (Just as aside, it helps if you say "Mind of a Manion" out loud with a kind of
reverb effect. Seriously. Try it!)

Cars
If one or more body panels on your car are made of Bondo, don't bother getting the wide bore exhaust. It's not like your car is one cannister of NOS away from being in "The Fast and the
Furious"

Movies
"Cruel Intentions" was a great, and underappreciated, movie. It had Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Phillipe all being delightfully tawdry. If you're looking for some quality sleaze on a Friday night, try this puppy out.

Costco
This place rocks. It's the american dream for people who want to build something out of beef jerky. And some day I will build something out of jerky. I'll start small. Perhaps a tool shed.

Now that I'm bringing this puppy in for a landing, I see that my Jazz Odyssey metaphor may not have been too far off. But anyway, I made a promise that I'd post something every day. So bleah.

LM

Good Mood

2005-08-03T11:02:00.000-04:00

I'm in an unusually good mood. I almost don't feel like crushing most of the galaxy beneath an iron glove in a velvet fist, or however that's supposed to go.

To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm feeling good. Perhaps it's because I slept well last night. I think it's called the "Sleep of the Just." Or in my case it might be better described as the "Sleep of Someone Who Knows the Statute of Limitations Has Passed." I've never been sure. In any event, I'm feeling well rested.

It also might be because I've switched from Gangsta Rap to Classical. The problem with gangsta rap is the headphones. When I'm in the writing zone, and grooving to "Rat-a-Tat-Tat" by Dr. Dre, and someone taps me on the shoulder, everything goes hazy for a minute, and the next thing I know, I'm hanging from the ceiling by my toes and holding some poor QA guy's spleen. It's always QA for some reason. You'd think it would be marketing spleens. Oh well.

With a little Strauss (specifically, the Blue Danube Waltz), I can turn and calmly ask how I can be of service. Although at this point they've outsourced the QA department anyway. They were running out of spleens fast.

It's not because I've switched to decaf. I would never switch to decaf. Decaf is for the weak. Decaf is heresy. Or possibly apostasy. I don't know.

Perhaps I'm a good mood because my current deliverable is finally coming together. I'm already 43 pages into a guide for Application Remediation.

I don't know. Either way, I'm feeling pretty good about life this morning. If I didn't feel good, I'd be concerned that my normal baseline of rage was being displaced. I can only hope that someone incurs my wrath tomorrow.

LM

Naked Night @ The Annex

2005-08-02T10:08:00.000-04:00

Way back in the olden days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and grunge rock was new and hip, I was in college. I lived in a section of a dorm, that, thanks to poor architectural design, and campus politics, had a semi-independent existence.

The dorm was called Mary Low, after Colby College's first female graduate (fyi, Colby was the first private liberal arts college in New England to admit women). Our apartment, for lack of a better word, was called the Mary Low Annex, or simply, The Annex. We referred to ourselves as Annexians. Our first, and only, political act was to secede from the main dorm. Not so much because we cared about anything political, but more because we didn't want to share our kegs.

As theater geeks, we had plenty of stage weapons and power tools, and Scoop could kill a man at thirty feet with a field hockey stick. The revolution was brief, and relatively bloodless. We weren't worth the trouble of subduing. Which was fine with us. Violence interfered with the partying.

Life was good, for many moons. But eventually our grades started to suffer. People came to us to rage, and experiment with their sexualities. Mostly, this was good, except for the time that Backdoor Johnny Balls crawled in through my window to eat my money, but that's a different story.

Eventually, the six original Annexians listed below:

Lance Manion (Me! Me! Me!)
Scoop
Twitch
Rob
Zaq G'Yce, the Xorphian Warlord
and last but not least,
Karyl

...came up with a plan. We would come up with something that would sound really cool, and really hip, but something that would also keep people away. We came up with Naked Night @ The Annex.

It was great. Every Tuesday we'd talk about how we were going to take all our clothes off, and be naked, and explore whatever. We invited everyone. Of course, mid-winter in mid-Maine ensures that anyone stupid (or desperate) enough to show, won't survive the trip.

As a result, we got to work on our lighting design plots, our theses, our student teaching plans, whatever, without interruption. It was, and remains, a thing of beauty.

Every Tuesday, we would really sell Naked Night, to everyone we knew. And every Tuesday we got an night of uninterrupted studying in. It was brill. I'm thinking of reintroducing it into my professional life.

Try it yourself. It works!

LM

Savage Love Monkeys

2005-08-01T12:34:00.000-04:00

This morning I decided that I'm not doing enough to help other people feel good about themselves. Now you're probably saying, "But Lance, you hate other people. Your dream is to crush them under your iron boot heel once you become supreme overlord of the galaxy."

And that's true. But it doesn't mean I am not occaisionally filled with the desire to be nice to people. True cruelty requires an element of capriciousness. So today I decided to refer to all of my coworkers as "Savage Love Monkeys" I know that I would be happy if someone called me a savage love monkey.

So I opened every conversation with "Hey (coworker name), you savage love monkey." And when that look that says, "Has Manion finally snapped?" crossed their faces, I knew that I'd made their day a little brighter.

Unfortunately, many of my coworkers are not native English speakers. For example, this morning I said, "Hey Dharmender, you savage love monkey...". Dharmender was confused, to say the least.

My first attempt at explaining things was to use Babelfish. Unfortunately, Babelfish produced things like "Ape of barbaric sex," which totally did not help my already tenuous relationship with HR. Further attempts produced "Monkey with abusive genitals" and lastly "Merciless wrench of desire."

And so the concept of savage love monkey took a great deal of additional explaining involving visual aids, spreadsheets, and shadow puppets. The shadow puppets weren't really necessary, but I like shadow puppets.

So now coworkers are coming over to my cube just to be called savage love monkeys, except for the non-native speakers, who have begun filing a class action suit. Such is often the case is my world.

LM

Soft Drinks and Rat Pee

2005-07-29T14:22:00.000-04:00

As I cracked open a Diet Coke this morning, a coworker chided me for not rinsing the top of the can.

"They all have rat pee on them, you know," she whispered.
"Rat pee?" I said, "Really? All of them?"
"Of course," she said, "They're in these filthy warehouses before they came here. Rats pee all over them."

I looked at the can more closely. I'll clean the top if it seems unusually filthy, but I'll usually give it the benefit of the doubt. Now my curiosity was piqued. I had to investigate further.

I've worked briefly in one of these beverage distribution warehouses as an industrial temp for a couple of days. I had to resort an entire semi full of black label beer. The driver took an off ramp too fast, and all the pallets came apart. It was about 100 degrees. Every so often I'd pick up a damaged can and it would explode, like a warm and nasty beer grenade.

In my limited experience, the beverage warehouse was no cleaner or dirtier than any other warehouse.

But now I have questions -

How do they ensure that each can gets peed on?

What about the cans stacked on top of each other? Do they spread them out to allow the rats access?

How many rats are there? Are they union?

Have some warehouses cut back and substituted cheaper mouse pee?

I have the following image of some guy whose job is to be "the rat guy". He'd be the guy who makes sure that they get a nice even coating of rat pee on all the cans. Maybe he has trained rats or something. Or maybe the they outsource the rats and he just uses a sprayer. I dunno.

I'm going to look into this and get back to you.

LM

The Creative Process

2005-07-28T10:41:00.000-04:00

Many of you write to me and say, "Lance, how is it that you manage to write something new and entertaining virtually every day? What's your secret?" And the answer is simple. I use the patented Mercenary Words creative process. Try it yourself, and watch the content flow, like a big flow-y thing.

Because I'm a sharing kind of guy, I've outlined the process below.

Go to work.
Write documentation for about 13 minutes.
Create elaborate revenge fantasy against enemies.
Decide to save fantasy in case I ever have a chance to put it into motion.
Listen to gangsta rap.
Have lunch with loser friends. Pray that they'll say something funny that I can use.
Cope with disappointment of loser friends yet again.
Consider getting new friends.
Decide instead to order rounds of tequila fanny bangers.
Friends still not funny, but personally am much funnier. Sexier, too!
Return to work
Write documentation for about 13 minutes
Listen to more gangsta rap.
Scare coworkers by singing out loud about "Brooklyn in the back, sippin' 'yac, whassup, y'all"
Panic that it's already 2:00 and still have nothing to write.
Pound forehead onto keyboard.
Sniff markers.
Remember creative writing teacher's advice - Write what you know.
Throw together some garbage about drinking, cars, and B&E.
Realize it sucks, but save it in case I get more desperate later.
Copy and paste the word "poopy" over and over, hoping that it might somehow become amusing, or possibly avante-garde.
Reread previous posts wondering if it's too early to try to recycle content.
Become sufficiently desperate that I decide to use garbage post about drinking, cars, and B&E.

It's a thing of beauty, people. Feel free to use it in your own blogging lives.

Real Time Fetus

2005-07-27T11:36:00.000-04:00

So it's time for another true story from the Manion Files. This one comes from when I was in grad school. I was in a technical writing masters program at Northeastern University. I wasn't there so much out of a love of academia, but more because to get a job in tech I needed to get some credibility. The masters seemed like the shortest path.

Anyway, there was a lot of friction between the tech writing masters students and the traditional English major students. They viewed us as mercenary hacks (pretty perceptive of them, really), selling out the beauty of language for a few dollars. We viewed them as pretentious snobs out of their minds with jealousy over the fact that we had actual job offers that didn't involve the phrase "Let me tell you about our specials today."

Because the tech writing masters was still nominally an English degree, we had to take a lot of critical theory courses. I hate critical theory. I hate critical theory like I hate spiders. "But Lance, what is critical theory?" you ask. It's the idea that books aren't really about what they say they're about.

I hate critical theory like I hate spiders.

For example, Feminist Critical Theory would tell you that "Pride and Prejudice" is not about a woman who meets a snobby guy, but eventually they fall in love. FCT would tell you that it's really about a woman trapped in a patriarchal hegemony, who attempts to subvert the existing paradigm, but is eventually subsumed by the dominant power structure. Or something. From there it gets kind of complicated. A lot of it is really just intellectual whacking off. But a lot of academics love it.

Whenever I suggested that maybe Jane Austen wrote "Pride and Prejudice" because she thought it was a good story, and might make her a couple of bucks, I was told that I "...just didn't get it."

Generally, the salient points of any critical theory book can be boiled down to a few pages. And yet they take up hundreds of pages, and are written in light bendingly dense prose. The whole thing strikes me as incredibly self serving. To give you an idea, our main text was "Modest-
Witness@Second-Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse" by Donna Harraway.

That's the real title. I didn't change a thing. Now I was an English major in college. I LOVE to read. And this book made me want to put my own eyes out.

So I did what I could to have fun with it. Eventually we were told we'd have to do presentations on selected essays. I chose "Real Time Fetus" by Raina Rapp. The professor went through the class and asked each of us why we chose the essay that we did. I responded that I chose the paper because "Real Time Fetus" because it sounded like an awesome name for a punk band.

Strangely, I was the only one who found this endlessly hilarious.

For those of you who care, the thesis of the essay was that sonogram imaging technology reduces women to a vessel that carries the fetus around so we can look at it. The sonogram makes the woman "transparent" and marginalizes her role in the pregnancy. See? Two sentences. Of course, it took the original author 40 pages to get there. That's why I'm a tech
writer, and she's not.

It really got ugly when I Photoshopped little fetal mohawks onto my visual aids. I think the professor passed me just so she'd never have to see me again.

LM

IBM Still Asks About Me

2005-07-25T09:54:00.000-04:00

I went on my first business trip in the mid ninties. I was sent to IBM's California office with a few coworkers to perform usability testing for a small software startup. I was very excited.

The trip lasted a few days and went well. I got to drive a rental car and expense my dinners out. A good time was had by all. Until the last day.

A few of us were having an informal conference in an office. I had my knee up on a chair. The conference was going well. I had convinced IBM that I knew what I was doing.

The conference dragged on, and I noticed that my leg had fallen asleep. I put it down to restore circulation, and maybe take a few steps.

The moment I tried to put weight on the leg, it failed completely. It was totally numb and useless. I collapsed like I'd been tasered. Given the thud that my knee made, the numb thing was probably a mercy.

I wasn't really alarmed. My leg was only asleep. I tried to get up, but my leg was useless. I was flopping around like a fish.

My coworkers were dying of laughter. IBM thought I was havin a seizure. As I protested that I was fine, I tried to pull myself up using the nearest chair, but the chair was on wheels, so I ended up just dragging it back and forth as my legs flailed.

After a few minutes, enough feeling returned that I was able to stagger up and out into the hall. My coworkers were on the verge of rupturing, they were laughing so hard. I think one guy wet himself.

I was never invited back by IBM. But my friends tell me that they still ask about that guy who fell over...

LM

Why Did You Visit Mercenary Words?

2005-07-22T14:22:00.000-04:00

The vast majority of you come here for my insouciant wit, and the vain hope that I'll start posting nude pictures of myself. But some people come here looking for a little something extra. I thought I would share with you some of the most exciting paths people have taken to visit this little corner of the web.

From France: Enter the terms "Monkey Fuck" into AOL France's search engine - we're on the first page.

From Russia: Enter "clow pie fetish" into Russian Google - Again, page numero uno. The thing that amazes me is that people actually click through to the site.

From the USA: Enter "Scabie" into Google. Apparently a lot of people think I've got something worth hearing on the subject of scabies - we're front page news.

From the USA: Enter Mercenary Lemurs into Google - not only are we on the first page, we're the number one result.

And that's pretty darn great.

But I've noticed an alarming rise in the number of people who visit the site because they queried Google for "clown pie fetish" I'm serious here. I've got hits from Russian Google, US Google and French Google.

Now I'm pretty much willing to do anything for traffic, but.... Damn....

Now I certainly hold some of the blame. I was the guy who wrote the original post on clown sex, lord help me. And yet, I'm more than a little freaked out by the number of people who are clearly looking for it. And my software only records the ones who click through. I mean, how many other people are out there desperately searching Google for photos of some guy with floppy shoes and a festively striped strap-on?

I had thought about doing a post about furries at some point, but after this, there's just no chance.

Jobs That Don't Appear on My Resume

2005-07-21T12:04:00.000-04:00

Okay people. I'm running on far too little sleep, and far too much caffeine. When I got in this morning, I pretty much dunked a straw in the coffee pot and washed it down with a handful of espresso beans.

Why do I tell you this? Mostly because I suspect it means that we'll be casting our usually low standards for coherence to the winds. And I'll be twitching more than usual. Though my record for twitching is still held by the night that I drank 15 shots of espresso. I really need to learn that if one of something is good, that doesn't automatically make drinking fifteen of them into a smart move. And that's a truth that applies to both espresso, Jaeger shots, and dried fruit.

In the mean time, I'm too tired to make something up, so I'll just write some stuff about myself and the various jobs that I've held that don't appear on my resume anymore - a topic of endless fascination for all of you, I'm sure.

1. Shopping Cart Retrieval Technician, "Jerry's King of Meats" Yes, that's really the name of the store. The worst part was when I had to dress up as the "Sausage Prince" and wave to passing cars. They went out of business shortly after I quit.

2. Cash Register Drone, "Caldors" I was your basic register monkey. Caldors went out of business shortly after I quit.

3. Beach Concessioneer "Scarborough Beach, Rhode Island" This was a good job. I sold suntan lotion on the biggest guido beach in Rhode Island. It was great. These guys would get a macho thing going over who could use the lowest SPF, until they were all out there basting themselves with baby oil. I ran the over/under on burn ward admissions. Unfortunately I was fired before I could drive them out of business.

4. Print Technician "Jay Printing" This job was pretty uneventful, but for two things. I was high on waste ink fumes most of the time, and I accidentally destroyed $30,000 worth of paper stock by spraying it with toxic waste. They have since gone out of business.

5. Shipping Technician "Kaman Industrial Technologies" This was a fun job. I put stuff in boxes and shipped them. I was buddies with the UPS guy. I listened to the radio. Any job that involves unlimited styrofoam noodles and bubble wrap is a good time. Incredibly, they are still in business.

6. Site Laborer "Dacon Construction" What does a degree in English prepare you for? Manual labor! I moved heavy things all day for next to no pay. Not my proudest moment. Dacon is still around. Clearly I'd lost my kiss of death at this point.

7. Associate "Circuit City" I sold stereo equipment. I lived the commissioned sales life. Not a good time. On the plus side, I can talk home theater with best. Eventually I quit to go to grad school. And Circuit City is now in dire financial straits. Another one bites the dust!

Bwah, ha, ha!

LM