By being an absent-minded schmuck monkey, that’s how.

You know how you can opt for “cash back” when you use your debit card at the supermarket? I needed some cash so I could use the vending machines at work the other day, so I punched in for $10, took my receipt and groceries, then walked out. And completely forgot to take my $10.

And of course I don’t realize this until hours later too, so no chance of going back and retrieving it either.

This wouldn’t be so bad… except that today I did it AGAIN, opting for $10 cash back and then once again completely forgetting to take it.

I hope whoever ended up with my money got a good meal out of it at least.

I recently got an email from a reader who said I was the perfect match for her sister, so I sent her sister an email and we shared a few things about ourselves. Here’s what I learn about her:

She loves to fish in Alaska and went to college on a football scholarship. Even worse, she’s from Tennessee. No offense to the natives of the state of course, I just think you’re all a bunch of donkey hicks (though I’ll make an exception for this gal here, only because she knows me and if I didn’t she’d hunt me down like a dog and saw my legs off.)

Anyhoo, after inquiring a bit further about this football thingie in the vain hope that colleges also extend football scholarships to cheerleaders as well, evidently she got the scholarship as a result of being the equipment manager for her team, and has been entertaining a life long dream of being a contracts agent. She majored in sports admin and now works as a… paralegal.

My final “Oh My God Get The &^%$ Away From Me!” note to her went as follows:

Dear “Meg,”

You’re either a man or a very, very ugly looking woman. If you’re wondering why you might be having trouble finding guys to date, the spitting and scratching your privates (of which you have none) while you hang out with your football buddies might clue you in somewhat. Maybe it’s not your fault though, just the fact that you live in a state with an in-bred population that rivals only Utah in numbers, and as a result it’s often hard to tell the gender apart.

I’m not sure why your sister thought I’d be a good match for you though. Maybe she felt I’d be able to help you discover your feminine side by offering you the love that only a fine, studly man like me could give. Yet despite the fact that I have been known to work miracles every now and then, sad to say, I simply cannot bend the laws of physics to my will in order to transform you from a hairy, lumbering, mountain man-thing to a soft, doe-eyed work of womanly art that I would be proud to roll around in the hay with.

So, best of luck to ya, hope you do fulfill your dreams of being an agent, and who knows, maybe I’ll read about you someday in Sports Illustrated, though it quite obviously won’t be the swimsuit edition.

Much Love,
Lincoln

Ever since I’ve began to get some feeling back in my hands once I started tying up icepacks to them, a thought occurred to me.

Women are to blame for all of my health issues.

Wait, I’m going somewhere with this. See for guys, when it comes to taking care of ourselves and improving our general health, we’re pretty much… what’s the word, a bunch of schmucks.

We could wake up with the left side of our bodies completely paralyzed, but as long as it doesn’t stop us from getting our clothes on and driving to work, we won’t really think much of it, the same way we won’t concerned much if a car backblows 3 quarts of oil out its exhaust pipes, as long as its considered otherwise drivable. Minor things like half body paralysis (or a black cloud of smoke bellowing out of the engine of a car) don’t really bother us too much, so long as we can still get from Point A to Point B.

Women though, have this tendency where if they so much as suffer a mild discomfort, they’ll go into a complete system shutdown while they conduct extensive full body scans to determine what’s going on. But more importantly, they’ll do that for the people they love too. It’s what helps them make great mothers and doctors.

Unfortunately for me though, Mommy thinks I’m quite old enough to take care of myself now, yet I still have to reminded that there are things out there such as bandages and Tylenol, so no, I don’t have to go to bed with unbandaged scrapes oozing blood onto the spreadsheets, or wail over a pounding headache that a little Motrin IB could have fixed up right away.

Had life not have been so cruel, had I met a special girl early on, she could have kept me healthy, bandaged up my wounds, and kissed all the booboos, especially the one that was in my heart. So I blame women, (or rather the absence of one), for my current plight. You could have fixed me up and made me a better man, but instead, all that’s left of me now is a wounded rabid animal hellbent on ridding this planet of your vile kind. May the skies rain down hellfire and brimstone on all you filthy harlots of Babylon, all because one of you just couldn’t wubs me.

YOU GIRLISH MANIACS!!!! DAMN YOU!!! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!!

But, yep, I’m still staying alive.

Even though my online moneymaking efforts have been a colossal failure, even though I’ll never find the girl of my dreams, even though I’m now typing this very post with my nose because my hands are still as numb as the feelings of a guy whose wife left him for another woman, I’m staying alive.

There’s just something about strutting that seems to make everything better.

…life going nowhere, somebody help me… somebody help me, yeaaaaaaah…. staying aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiive…

Well that’s assuming these whacko symptoms I’ve been experiencing lately is the result of having brain tumors. It would however explain my insanity too.

But let’s recap: It started off with my arm hurting like a son-of-a-female-dog (which I blame women for, and still do). Then my hands started feeling like they’ve been slathered with Novocaine. Then I get a neck sprain where I can’t turn all the way left without screaming for Mommy (and it’s been like this for almost two weeks now). Then my tongue gets numb on me. Seriously. The same kind of numb feeling I’ve been experiencing in my hands too.

So other than the brain tumors, it could also be: hypothyroidism, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, or some kind of neuropathic disease that would eventually result in my extremely violent and painful death. Total awesomeness, dude!

As you can imagine, this hasn’t really put me in the mood to blog lately. I’d go to a doctor, except for the fact that I hate, hate, HATE doctors. They subject you to a hundred tests that makes them a ton of money, and then when they still can’t figure out what’s wrong with you, they’ll give you some B.S. diagnosis like “chronic fatigue” just to keep you from warming up to their dirty secret that in spite of all their training, they’re still a bunch of clueless morons who don’t know a damned thing about the human body. The only time it seems they get a diagnosis right is when it happens to be for a fatal disease.

So, no doctors for me right now, thank you very much. Just in case though, I’ve been searching for Last Will and Testament templates I could use to make sure my parents quickly inherit all my belongings without any problems (including my stuffed animal collection and my Homer Simpson doll.) My laptop though I’m taking with me to my grave.

I should maybe be more concerned about this, but I guess I’m at peace now with the fact that my life has always been utterly meaningless, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see nature correct its mistake by soon putting me out of my misery.

Oy, I need to stop reading those novels by H.P. Lovecraft. It’s really making me morbid these days.

The question for the ages.

Actually I’ve been working behind the scenes trying to boost my traffic levels (with less than stellar success I might add), and also working to get another ad network going to fill my ad spaces. I’m actually amazed by the income ratio I’m seeing so far. If it continues to hold, my eCPM would be around $10, meaning for every 1000 pageviews this blog gets I would earn $10. It’s not earth shattering by any means, but considering the typical eCPM for those who use Google Adsense is around $1 to $2, it’s not bad either. My goal is to eventually net around $40 a day (or $1250 a month), so I’ll have to continue my efforts to boost my eCPM and bring more traffic in.

Speaking of which, there is one more thing I can try, sort of like a last ditch effort to bring in the level of traffic I want, but it’s EXPENSIVE, and it still requires a lot of work. The good news is I can use my previous blog earnings to pay for the first month (it’s done on a subscription basis), and if the results are effective, the higher ad revenues that result should be enough to front the costs and still net me a profit.

Maybe. If it fails, I’ll pretty much will have lost all the money I’ve ever made via blogging up to this point. Ah well, I’ll just have to believe that fortune will continue to favor the brave.

And the reckless.

I went down to Best Buy the other day and grabbed the two latest Nancy Drew mystery games off the shelves (marked down too!), then made my way to the cashier.

The guy must have noticed how happy I was because he remarked dryly, “You must really like these games.”

“Um, they’re for my sister. It’s her birthday.”

“Sure.”

“She’s twelve,” I insisted.

“Sure.”

“Well, have a nice day,” I continued cheerily, then muttered under my breath, “…little snotnosed ball of pus.”

Ah well, two new games and I am happy as a clam… err, for my sister that is.