I tried to have fun this past weekend because I knew I’d have to work on my 35th birthday, which was yesterday.  Still, my department took me out to Chevys for lunch.  I had a mojito wholesome, work-approved glass of lemonade and some shrimp tacos and eventually found myself with a free sombrero and a dessert.  I wasn’t upset about turning 35. Everything was going just fine.

Until I looked at the waiter.

He had a pin that read: “WE ASK TO SEE I.D. UNDER 35”

And I thought, how nice.  Here I thought the last significant age milestone was 25, when it becomes cheaper to rent a car.  I had no idea I had yet another fun-filled benchmark in front of me: the amazing ability to walk into any Chevys and order a drink without the inconvenience of having to take out my wallet and show my driver’s license.  Because, God knows, I’m sick of doing that.  If I had to show my license and prove that I’m of drinking age any more than I do already, I’d probably pull a muscle or get a repetitive stress injury. My birthday was already going great: Chevy’s thoughtful, considerate policy with its thoughtful, considerate slogan, with all it implied about the age I had just reached, made it perfect. Thank you, Chevys!  I am in your debt!

So you won’t mind if I just cram your free sombrero up your guacamole spout and burn down every one of your seedy, cockroach-infested franchises from here to San Diego.

Thought not.

The other Greg made me laugh yesterday because he didn’t hear two things I told him which I thought were important, and I asked him why he didn’t hear them, and he said “Because they didn’t make it past my organic spam filter.”

I definitely have an organic spam filter--certain words and phrases that won’t make it into my conscious brain no matter how hard people try to communicate them to me. I’ve listed some of them below (including the ones which have rules attached to them that allow them to bypass the filter under certain conditions).

Last night on [Insert Reality Show Here]
My baby did the cutest thing [RULE: Bypass spam filter if baby involves my niece]
My pet did the cutest thing
Need to redo this
Need to work harder
Need to work overtime
Greatest game
Greatest player [RULE: Bypass spam filter if sport involves beach volleyball or mud wrestling]
Got boils
Got scabs
Taking meds
My therapist said
Get up early
5 a.m.
6 a.m.
7 a.m.
8 a.m. meeting
John Tesh in concert
No Guiness on draft
You should change
You should rethink
You’re wrong
What you said wasn’t funny
What you said wasn’t interesting
You’re too short
You’re too goofy
Let’s just be friends [RULE: Bypass spam filter if phrase includes the words “With benefits"]

I scheduled the whole party a month ago, and didn’t realize that I was scheduling it a day before Easter.  Who thinks about chocolate rabbits and resurrections in February?  Whatever.

Earlier in the week I let my friend convince me to go shopping at Costco after I had a few beers.  It’s not good to shop at Costco without absolute mental clarity.  Because I saw a huge jar of pickles and thought “I bet fourteen people eating burgers can burn through that” and now I have a HUGE JAR OF PICKLES.*

I used white zinfandel for sangria.  Okay, so, maybe that didn’t work.

I dealt from the bottom of the deck when I wasn’t paying attention.

I write too much on this dumb site; some of the guests, in honor of the post below, brought me a stick of pepperoni and I didn’t get it at first.**

*But I’ll eat them.  I love pickles.

** But I’ll eat it.  I love pepperoni.

It’s the little things that get to me.  The tiny details that remind me that the world isn’t the way I would have it, were it in my power to shape the cosmos to conform to the most subtle nuance of my will.

For example, I had pepperoni pizza today.  I love pepperoni pizza.  Why can I only have pepperoni on pizza?

It’s possible to order chicken in a restaurant, and it’s possible to have a chicken topping on pizza.  But it’s not possible to order pepperoni in a restaurant.

I’d like to go to a fancy restaurant, order a nice bottle of red wine, and have a humongous slab of medium-rare pepperoni.  It would come in a large plate and sit in a crimson pool of its own grease.  You’d eat the pepperoni and then slurp down the grease like it was a soup of the day.

The world is full of self-proclaimed “sophisticates” and “arbiters of good taste” and gourmands, and I’ve never even heard anyone discuss this idea.  I’m embarrassed for them all.

The economy is picking up steam again.  Corporate profit outlooks look better. More people are getting jobs. 

But success appears differently than it did a few years ago.  You don’t see the crazy breakneck dot com days anymore.  Instead, the slow boil of business activity is taking the form of a series of high-profile mergers and acquisitions.

IAC is buying Ask Jeeves.  SBC is buying AT&T.  Oracle bought PeopleSoft.

When I look at today’s landscape, I realize that there’s another spate of mergers and acquisitions in the offing--in the blogging world.  The fact is, there’s way too many blogs.  At last count, there are several hundred thousand active blogs--and those are just the ones with some form of Harry Potter icon or font style.

There will be a wave of blog M&As.  You can trust me on this.

And I’m going to start it.

Because I thought about it, and I realized that the Oracle/PeopleSoft deal got its start from a single press release. All Larry Ellison did was announce his intent to buy.  Then the lawyers and bigwigs got involved, and a bunch of stuff happened and eventually Oracle won.  But it all began with a press release.

To that end, I’d like to officially present the below press release to the business and analyst community.  I know that by doing this, I may shock some people.  That’s just the way things are.  Every journey begins with a single step.

So here we go.

Geese Aplenty Announces Intent to Acquire Wil Wheaton Dot Net.

OAKLAND, Calif. (March 23, 2005)—Geese Aplenty today announced its intent to acquire famed celebrity blogger Wil Wheaton’s personal website.  Terms of the opening bid were not disclosed, but included a combination of cash, stock, and vintage Star Trek trading cards.

“Geese Aplenty, Inc. believes that Geese Aplenty and Wil Wheaton Dot Net have excellent synergies that make a merger inevitable,” said Greg Howard, President & CEO of Geese Aplenty.  “Wil Wheaton used to be on Star Trek, and I used to watch Star Trek.  Also, he has a lot of readers and I want them.”

Mr. Howard was less forthcoming on the topic of whether Wil Wheaton Dot Net’s current staff would be retained if the merger was successful.  “I don’t think we’d make any sudden changes and alienate the customer base,” he said. “But in the long term?  I dunno.  If you think about it, do you really need Wil Wheaton to write Wil Wheaton Dot Net?  I’m not convinced.  Maybe we could get Adam Rich.”

Wil Wheaton did not return calls for comments.  This is mostly because no one has his phone number.  In fact, he hasn’t even returned Mr. Howard’s emails.

“I’m pretty sure he got my emails on the subject,” Mr. Howard said.  “I mean, I don’t know exactly what his email is.  But I sent them to wil at wilwheaton.net, and ensigncrusher at wilwheaton.net, and a few others.  I’m sure at least one of them got through.  I also sent a letter to his fan club.  It was on very official-looking stationery.”

Oddly enough, Corey Feldman--who co-starred with Wheaton in the hit 1986 movie Stand By Me--did return calls for comment.

“Sure, I’ll go on record about this if it’ll get me on television,” Mr. Feldman said. “Will this be picked up by Celebrity Justice?”

About Geese Aplenty
Geese Aplenty leverages corporate synergies that integrate top-line revenue efficiencies into enterprise solutions that power industry verticals.  Also, sometimes it talks about what Greg did on the weekend.

About Wil Wheaton Dot Net
Wil Wheaton is an actor and author.  He saved the Enterprise several times and kissed Ashley Judd.

I spent some time on Friday surfing my company’s Internet connection to learn about tipping.

I would point out, to my co-workers and higher-ups who read this site, that this is the very, very first time I have ever surfed the web on company time.  Furthermore, not only do I never, ever do this in the normal course of a work day, but our company has the absolute lowest number of employees, on a percentage basis, who surf the web on company time.  This is because I hold a sermon every alternate Tuesday in the break room entitled “Why You Should Not Surf the Web on Company Time.” Co-workers, and especially higher-ups, you are invited to attend this sermon the next time I give it.  I believe you will be impressed with my fire and passion.

So anyway, I was trying to learn about tipping because I was having some furniture delivered to my place this weekend and I wondered if I should tip the guys.  But the Internet wasn’t any help. The problem is, tipping sites are highly conservative. They always suggest tipping more than you actually should, apparently because the authors are worried about offending someone. They say things like:

“Always tip people who pass you on the street without punching you.”

“Tip your food servers 30% after tax, and offer to give them a bite of your dessert.”

“Tip your bartenders one half the cost of your drink and clean the bar counter with your tongue.”

I had decided to tip the furniture guys regardless, but as the time drew near, I started getting all Steve Buscemi.  I realized that I had actually paid a delivery charge for the furniture, so what was up with splashing out more money?  Even though that was a contract between myself and a major corporation and didn’t extend to the proletariat, so what?  When you don’t tip pizza guys, the next time you order from that place your large pepperoni comes complete with a severed hand.  But you’re not likely to have to deal with the same furniture guys twice.

But then the guys came and I watched them and I realized something: they were carrying very large objects up two flights of stairs and doing it in record time.  Suddenly my building felt very insecure.  Two locked doors and an elevator code didn’t mean jack to guys who could juggle the contents of a living room without working up a sweat.

I tipped them with the warmth and gladness of a Julie Andrews song.

President Bush has selected Paul Wolfowitz to become president of the World Bank.

Wolfowitz replaces outgoing president James Wolfensohn.

Also considered for the post were

United States Representative Frank R. Wolf

CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer

Former J. Geils Band frontman Peter Wolf

Bush intends to stay in close contact with his new associate.  The White House is just down the street from the residence of the World Bank president, Castle Wolfenstein.

I understand the urge to be indecisive.  I’ve agonized about every major life decision I’ve ever made--where to go to school, what to do, what to stop doing, where to live, how to live it.  These things have never come easy.  I’m always staggered by the multitude of options, what it means to choose one path and have countless others forever vanish.  I’m sympathetic to those who similarly find themselves caught between two possibilities, and to not understand how to navigate between them in order to reach a firm, solid solution.

But the whole concept of boxer-briefs is just taking the whole thing to an extreme.

Women, if you hang out with someone who wears boxer-briefs, you will:

Always have to decide where you both go for dinner

Need to hang on to the remote if you ever want to watch anything

Wear the pants in the relationship...as well as several other garments.

Again, I understand indecisiveness.  I mean, I have a PC desktop and a Mac for my laptop.  But boxer-briefs takes the concept of dual platform to an extreme that I simply can’t support or condone.

I dreamed I won “Most Humorous” in the Bloggies!  And then the IRS gave me a refund for everything I’ve ever paid them!  And then my boss gave me a corner office equipped with a private gym and a gazebo!  And then I grew an extra arm and this third arm was a master of kung fu!  And then a monkey crawled out of my buttocks and invented cold fusion and fed the world’s children with ice cream!

Now that I’m awake, though, I’ll just congratulate the winner--what?s-her-name with the baby and the caps lock--and also fellow losers the Yeti, the ‘Zilla, and those Fug girls.

From now on I’ll only enter blog contests I can win. Like “Most Likely to Gratuitously Mention Alexis Bledel at the end of a Stupid Post Like This One.”

I already have plenty of signs that I’m getting old.  Laugh lines cut across my face like tiny ravines.  What’s up with that?  As it happens, I have laughed a lot in my life.  I find many things funny.  And my reward is to have my face become a kind of chronological roadmap?  Legend: “One saggy inch = five years.”

Then there’s the love handles.  Ever since I sailed past the big 3 plus 0, it’s like someone poured too flesh into my legs and it began spilling over my hips.  Again, though, is “love handles” the correct term?  A loved one is not likely to say: “You appear to be tired. Let me pick you up by your conveniently placed handles and carry you the rest of the way.” Nor is a loved one likely to grab on to them in some sort of throes-of-passion thing; no one dares to put their hands into those undulating pits of quickflesh.  That’s a good way to irrevocably lose valuable jewelry.

Then there’s this weekend.  During a friend’s birthday celebration that lasted from 11 a.m.-2 a.m., I found a video game that I’m actually good at: virtual boxing.  I ducked and swung and defeated my opponent.  Three times. Until I got tired.  Winded.  My shirt soaked with sweat, I suffered a fatal TKO. I was finally beaten.  ("You burned 400 calories,” the game told me helpfully, as if the kids who play this thing use it to set aerobic benchmarks for themselves.)

But this wasn’t a real fight.  I wasn’t hitting anybody. I was beaten by my own physical exertion. I was beaten by air.

I knew I didn’t have any street cred. But it’s one thing to get beat up by the Bloods or Crips; it’s another to be the losing end of a throwdown by oxygen.

That could lead to the worst hip hop lyrics ever:  Don’t be surprisin’ if I start ionizin’/My molecules may be without color and taste/But I’m still all up in your face.

Getting old is just like that boxing video game.  No matter how many TKOs you deal out, you know that the game will eventually wear you down.  The blows will come fast and hard--taking out a clump of hair here, sticking in some flab there--and eventually your flesh begins to shake itself loose and sag from the unrelenting violence. You can try to reclaim the time that’s being snatched from you--make a party go from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., drink shots in the afternoon, seek refuge in music and sex.  Refuse to ever go to sleep as a way of spinning out the precious moments.  But there’s still a final sucker punch waiting with your name on it. There’s no way you can beat the game; the only thing you can do is stay in the ring as long as you can, and put up a decent fight.

Debbie Gibson is posing naked in this month’s Playboy.  I know this because an old college friend of mine is having his birthday, and he used to be a huge fan of hers.  We’re going to give him a copy of the issue as a gag gift.

Okay, I’m lying a little bit.  I’d probably know about the photos even if my friend wasn’t having a birthday.  After all, Deborah and I go back a long way.  I knew her when she was still just an electric youth.

Anyway, I recently read an interview with her.  She said that she agreed to do the shoot because “she’s grown more comfortable with her sexuality.” I’m pretty sure that Tiffany said the same thing when she posed for the magazine a while back.

So this makes me think that I’ve confused the meaning of “comfortable with one’s sexuality.” Because, to me, that means that you have no problem asking your partner to dress up like a pirate and make ostrich noises.  But no--apparently posing naked in Playboy is actually being comfortable with one’s sexuality, whereas the pirate/ostrich thing is what I previously misunderstood to be “Grasping for a few final fleeting moments of fame before even VH-1 forgets about you.”

1. This weekend my brother and his wife asked me to be the legal guardian of my niece in the event of a tragedy.  In all honesty, I was surprised; other people worry whether I have the emotional maturity to handle being loaned a copy of the Space Ghost: Coast to Coast Volume One DVD, much less given a child.  In any event, although one obviously hopes I never have to face such a situation, I’m going to make a point to water my plants more often.

2. A $500,000 home in the Bay Area is invariably described as a “starter home.” Exactly what are you supposed to start after making such a purchase?  Selling crack on the side so you can make the mortage payments?

3. I used to think that I could have chili for dinner every night for the rest of my life.  That’s before I made Firecracker Chili in my new crock pot and found that theory actually being put to the test.  I airlifted several thousand pounds of it to Eritrea, hoping to help feed their starving millions, and I got a note back from the government: “We loved it.  For the first few hundreds bowls or so.  I think we can handle it from here.  Thanks for the nice thought, but get a hobby.”

4. Idea for a sequel: A woman is declared dead after a near-fatal boxing match, but is brought back to life by a team of scientists who endow her with mechanical limbs and a fierce desire to fight evil.  Coming this summer: The Six Million Dollar Baby.

- Hey, [NAME OF I.T. GUY DELETED]! Thanks for the new computer.

- Yeah, we were finally able to get that to you.

- So listen, I notice that I don’t have any method for pumping out phat beats that make the homies go ‘Yo’ and the honeys go ‘Whoa’ speakers.

- Oh yeah. The newer computers don’t come with speakers.

- Well, listen, sometimes I need to wave my arms in the air like I just don’t care listen to webcasts and online seminars that pertain to my profession of choice.

- That’s true.  I guess you are in the marketing department and probably need speakers.

- Exactly.  For example, sometimes when I’m working late and no one’s around, I crank up the tunes and shake it like tapioca pudding on a broken escalator I listen in to analyst reports and quarterly earnings as broadcast by our competitors.

- You know, that’s cool.  I’m sure I can hook you up with some speakers.

- Thanks, man. I really appreciate the ability to winamp this joint until it’s bleeding funk and pumping junk and basically setting this disco on fire keep abreast of industry trends and help our company remain a market leader.