A Few Ground Rules...

When I say "Ground rules" I mean it in the sense of "Basic procedures of conduct," not in the sense of "here are some rules, which I have ground up." Just so we're clear.

Wombat's 3 Rules of comedy:

1: Anything coming out of an ass is funny. This one should be no surprise to anyone who has read this blog before, but it's true. For some reason any object or substance or noise coming from an ass is instantly imbued with an extra dose of funny. The same does not hold true for things going in an ass. Some of those things are funny, but some are not. In the case of ass-entry, it really depends on the object. But ass-exit? Always funny.

2: If they're laughing at you, they're still laughing. I'm a big believer in the idea that the laugh is something you should willingly sacrifice yourself for. Who cares if they're laughing with you because you're so fucking hilarious, or at you because you're so fucking stupid. You're still making them laugh, and that is a service to humanity. Good news for all of you dumb motherfuckers out there.

3: Never insult someone directly unless you're pretty sure they can take it. This may come as a shock to insult comedians everywhere, but I just don't think attacking people is funny. Making fun of people who don't know you're making fun of them is one thing, but I'd never walk up to someone and shred them to their face because I just don't think it's funny to make someone feel bad. If you get off on that then you are a waste of skin. However, if the person in question is a bud, and you know that they get that you are just busting their balls, then have at it. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that people who can take getting shredded and dish it back out are my favorite people in the world.

Note: Some of you who've known me for a while may notice that the monkey rule is gone. Monkeys are cliche. I was wrong about the monkeys. Monkeys are no longer funny. Unless they're coming out of your ass. (see rule #1)

Wombat's Spoon Rule:

There is a strict heirarchy when it comes to the use of spoons. Spoons meant for eating and not for mixing generally come in three sizes: The large "soup" spoon, the small "tea" spoon, and the tiny spoon you sometimes see in fancy restaurants. Pay attention.

- Ice cream should always be eaten with the tea spoon. You do not want to eat ice cream in giant "soup spoon" bites. You want to take your time and enjoy the ice cream. Unless you take so much time that your ice cream melts. If this happens either your spoon is too small or you are retarded. Yogurt? Same rule applies.

- Soup should always be eaten with (no surprise here) the soup spoon. The same applies to cereal. When your job is basically to fish little tiny floating corn flakes out of a sea of milk, you need a wide net. Anyone eating cereal with a teaspoon should have their head examined. And by "examined," I mean "run over by a truck."

- If you find yourself eating with one of those tiny spoons, immediately stick it up your ass. That's the only thing I can think of that the tiny spoon is good for. This would also be one of the instances where something going in your ass is funny. When the spoon comes back out? priceless.

- There is only one food item you are allowed to eat with a mixing spoon: Mashed Potatoes.

Wombat's Straw Rule:

If you are drinking a milkshake, or even better, chocolate milk, (or even better, chocolate malted milk!) You must use a bendy straw. I keep a box of bendy straws around for exactly these occasions. If at all possible, the bendy straw in question should be the kind with the red and blue stripes running up its length. A solid-color bendy straw may be used only if no striped bendy straw is available. Non-bendy straws are out of the question. Why? If you are going to drink a kid's drink, then drink it like a kid, for fuck's sake. And don't give me that crap about your milkshake being too thick to drink through a straw. Quit being a huge pussy and put some effort into it.

Wombat's Movie Food Rule:

Just because the modern movie megaplex now sells nachos and hot dogs and seven-course French meals, it doesn't mean you have to order them. Eat dinner before the film, or eat dinner after the film. Do not subject the people around you to the horrifying stink of your batter-dipped hot dogs or your tub of melted cheese. The movie theater is like a giant elevator: We are all trapped in here together until the ride's over. Smelly food has no place in a theater. The one exception is popcorn, which, while admittedly smelly, has kind of become part of the theater experience. It's tradition. You expect to smell popcorn. You don't expect to smell rib dinner and falafel.

A good rule of thumb is, if your order requires one of those red plastic trays, eat it in the lobby.

Wombat's American Apostrophe Wake-up rule:

Listen up, America: You have exactly one year to learn how to use the apostrophe correctly. That should be enough time for everyone to get the hang of what's a contraction, what's possessive and what's plural. After one year, I am hereby allowed to beat you to death with an 18" green rubber dildo if you write that you are serving "pear's" on your menu.

The single exception to this rule is when using the word "it." I know proper time to apostrophize "it," and you should too, but I'll admit that shit can confuse you. Because it runs (not run's) counter to the usual way of doing a possessive. If you use "it's" incorrectly, you get a pass. No dildo-beating.

Wombat's Washing Your Hands After Peeing Rule:

Here comes the one where I alienate all the women and half of the men. Guys, you do not have to wash your hands after you pee, provided you have not peed on your hands.

I tried to explain to Sal that there is no need for washing if your hands are not actually urine-soaked, and her response was "yeah, but you touched your penis." Ladies, some of you seem to be laboring under the false premise that our penises are these horrid, feces-caked garbage sticks. I'd like to go on record as stating that I wash myself regularly, and that when I wash myself, I wash my penis right along with the rest of me. I then place my penis safely inside some nice clean underwear. The underwear then goes inside of some pants. There my penis spends the large majority of the day, riding around inside layers of cotton and denim, fully separated from the horrors of the outside world. My penis is probably the cleanest part of my body. If anything, when I pee, my penis should be upset that my filthy hands have touched it.

So gentlemen, as long as you don't have terrible aim, or don't understand how to properly use your equipment, you do not need to wash your hands. If you take a dump, then by all means, please wash them, but not when you pee.

Ladies, I have no rule for when you pee, because whatever it is that goes on inside of the ladies bathroom is a divine and unknowable mystery to me. There may be flocks of angels. Maybe they wash your hands. I'm in the dark on this one.

Don't get all excited... This post goes nowhere and takes quite a while doing it.

"Where," you may be asking yourself if you are a really really lonely person with nothing to do but sit in the dark staring at this blog on your monitor and pressing the "refresh" button over and over again in the hopes that I may have posted while you were picking your nose, "Where could Wombat possibly be all this time?"

Truth is, I was writing that opening sentence. I mean, look at that thing. To call that a "run-on" sentence just doesn't do it justice. That sentence ran on and is still running. It was last Tuesday when I first sat down here at Wombat World HQ and typed the word "Where." By Friday I had gotten to the part about the refresh button. I hit a snag at the "picking your nose" bit, and that laid me up for a couple of days, trying out various other body parts you could have been picking. I had settled on "that gap between your first and second toe" for two whole days before scrapping the idea.

Anyway, here we are nearly two weeks later, and you can see for yourself the fruits of my extraordinarily laborious... um.. labor. That one, big-ass sentence.

Okay, that's a lie. I didn't spend the last two weeks working on that one sentence. And no, I wasn't curing cancer or completing the complex ritual required to bring Julia Child back from the dead. I just didn't have anything to say.

The more astute readers of this blog may now be thinking "But, you never have anything to say... We don't come here for your biting insight, we come here for poop jokes."

Well, blog-buddies, I have no poop jokes for you tonight. In fact, I have no idea what I sprung blog-ward this evening to say. I just know that Miss Kendra demanded a post, and what Kendra wants, my friends, Kendra gets. This girl took on a car crash to save some kittens. No way am I getting her mad at me.

So, back to the two-week absence, All I can say is that I hit a dry patch. It happens to the best of us. Well, not Karla, who apparently posted 17 entries while I was away. Remember the cop in Terminator 2? The one who was a robot from the future made of liquid metal who could not be stopped? No matter what you did, or how fast you ran, he was always 10 feet behind you, running full-tilt and never slowing, never once looking away from his desire to rip the intestines from your still-warm body? Well, Karla is just like that. Only instead of ripping out your intestines, she flings some funny at you.

Then she rips out your intestines.

Anyway, I'm not Karla, and I just ran out of funny for a little while there. Not in my personal life. I was still plenty funny to the people I dealt with on a day-to-day basis. Believe you me, had you been here, in Wombat World HQ, instead of there, in the pile of empty Fritos bags you call your life, you would have been well entertained. The mouth part of me remained as funny, if not funnier, than it was two weeks ago. It's just the fingers part of me that sort of ran out of juice. It's not like I didn't try. I flung them at the keyboard a couple of times, but to no avail. There was not a drop of funny in them. Well, one time they produced a funny diphthong, but that was it. Otherwise, speaking in terms of keyboard-related shenanigans, it's been a quiet few weeks here on my end, at least until Kendra started with the threats.

And now, at last, I have been shaken awake from my long period of unfunny silence. And as you can see, the result is... um... unfunny wordiness.

Oh well. Be careful what you wish for, Kendra.

I will say two things, before I quit for the evening:

1) Thanks to everyone who pledged money to sponsor me in the upcoming Polar Plunge. I have just about hit my goal, all thanks to you excellent and awesome people. I thank you, the Special Olympics thanks you, and Stacy Keach thanks you. (That's a lie. I do not speak for Stacy Keach. Well... not anymore... But that's a story for another time...) It's one week to the plunge, and anyone that still wants to sponsor me can go here and enter my name, John Baker. There will be a big-old recap of the whole event next week, complete with embarrassing pictures of yours truly in a shameless and honestly unnecessary display of near-nudity. Be sure to tune in.

2) Apropos of nothing, I have to confess here in front of God, the blogging public, and okay not God because I believe he may not exist (or may... or may not... whatever...) That I, Wombat, have some form of Saran Wrap dyslexia.

Yes, you read that right. I have seen you people time and time again with your plastic wrap, pulling a long glossy sheet from out of the box. And I have seen you, with one swift movement, tear that sheet cleanly and neatly from the roll, with no ragged edges or clinging back upon itself. And all the while, you are smiling, as if you're having the time of your life, wrapping this, covering that... I have studied you as you have done this, and I have tried, oh how I've tried, to emulate you.

But no. I seem to be the only person in America, nay, the world, for whom Saran Wrap isn't the high-point in helpful domestic invention, but rather a long thin box of evil mocking laughter, spilling forth in the form of clump after clump of useless, balled up clingy plastic.

I just wanted to get that off my chest. Hey, remember when I wasn't posting? Come on, admit it, it was better that way.

I'm about to do something STUPID.

I did something incredibly stupid this time last year, and I enjoyed it so much that I'm about to do it again.

"What is this stupid thing you did," I can hear all of you (okay, two of you) asking. "Did you get an unfortunate tattoo in a hard to cover spot on your body?" No... "Did you sign a pact with the devil, promising him your first-born child in exchange for rock-hard abs?" Um... no... "Did you ride 500 miles on a bald pony over sharp rocks and broken glass to the disheveled hut of a mad old crone, in the hopes of finding therein a magic potion that could make you a god among men, only to be tricked by the evil witch and left a broken wart-covered shell of a human being?" Jesus, no... What's wrong with you people?

What I did in fact do, was run nearly-nude from the relative safety of a beach into the icy arms of the frozen bay. And I'm doing it again. And so, my friends, are you.

Well, in a manner of speaking.

What I'm talking about is the tenth annual Polar Bear Plunge. This is that thing you all hear about on the news where a few thousand people run into the freezing water to raise money for charity. The charity here in my home state is the Special Olympics Of Maryland. My buddy Chris (amazing nature photographer... check him out) talked me into doing it last year, and it was awesome. Except, replace "awesome" with "kind of horrible and freezing, but afterwards leaving a warm feeling in my heart."

Here, just so none of you think I'm full of shit, is my account of last year's plunge:

Everybody believe me now? Good. Now try to scrub the image of tubby Wombat in his swim trunks from your minds long enough for me to explain the part where you come in.

I don't just do this because I love freezing my balls off, people, I do this to raise some dough for a good cause. I need you fine internet citizens to sponsor me. I'm not asking for a lot of dough here. Just look deep into your heart and ask yourselves "how much would I be willing to pay for even more photographic evidence of Wombat making a complete ass of himself?" 10 dollars? 20 dollars? more? Let me up the ante a bit. This year I have convinced Sally to run into the glacier-water with me. That's twice the bang for your buck!

Um, no, we're not going to actually... um... bang. At least, not while the cameras are snapping away. That was a figure of speech.

Okay, here's the deal. The Plunge is in about three weeks, on Jan 28. If I have moved any of you to get involved, all you have to do is click this link right here. You'll go to the Polar Plunge's website. There, click on the "sponsor plunger" button, and enter my name, (my real name) John Baker. If there's more than one of me, I'm the one from Baltimore, MD. You can sponsor me from the warmth and comfort of your own office chair, using a credit card or paypal. For those of you who would rather support Sal, enter her name, Sally Kervin.

I'm going to thank any of you who decide to donate in advance. It's a really worthy cause. Any of you balti-bloggers should come out to watch the plunge. It's a lot of fun. I'll be posting pictures of the whole thing on here at the end of the month for everyone to enjoy, but suffice it to say that those who donate will be able to enjoy the pics a little more, not having all that crushing guilt to fight through.