First Review

Someone finally sent me a review of the blog. I feel so honored to have received this review that I am going to post it right on the site. Here we go:

"You can do better with the website. I think part of the problem is your worse half is not as witty as you may think. And you aren't as edgy as your emails to me. Do you check who is hitting your blog? My friend has a way of tracking who looks by their servers. Can you do a better job commenting on current events? Try to be offensive, polarizing? At least that will get comments going."

Sweeeet!!! I do realize that it's not exactly a ringing thumbs up endorsement but I'm just pumped that someone finally read our site. I sent the link to another one of my friends and her comment to me was, "Ugggh, I opened the link and just saw too many words and didn't read anything." Yes, a bad review is better than no one reading your words. If you don't have anyone reading, this entire exercise is just mental masturbation. To be fair, I haven't been edgy. I'm working towards it. And to be fair to Stretch, she hasn't written much of anything to really be judged. Anyway, thanks for your patronage and honesty. I'm working on my next blog, it's loosely titled, "The Nazis were just Misunderstood and Prison Rape is Hilarious."

Word of the day

If James Lipton was asking me what my favorite word is, none of these are it; however, I think we should show the following words a little love.

Callipygian. Adjective, having shapely buttocks. There’s a word to describe a badonkadonk? Really? Why hasn’t Lil Jon incorporated this into a rap song? Couldn’t they incorporate the word play between callipygian (pronounced like pigeon) and chicken head? I demand some sort of investigation into this.

Underwhelming. Do you even realize that this is a word in the English lexicon? Someone in my office said, “That’s completely underwhelming.” I actually giggled....errr, laughed a hearty manly chuckle. For some reason, it sounded hilarious. As if they coined a new word. It’s a real word, people. Who knew? Can you honestly say that you’ve used underwhelming? Compare that to the number of times you’ve used or heard someone say “I’m overwhelmed.” The disparity is, well, overwhelming. Underwhelming is the Ashlee Simpson of the English vocabulary....compared to Jessica’s overwhelming…talents?

Today I got an e-mail from Don Cheadle

In addition to being a Debbie Downer (waaaa waaa), I'm also someone who likes to be involved in a bazillion extracurricular activities. Think Max Fischer from that movie Rushmore. Except no beret. And I'm not a dude.

One of my many extracurricular activities is to save Darfur. At first I attempted to do this single-handedly, and I'd like to say that I made some headway, but frankly it wasn't pretty. Luckily I stumbled upon the official Save Darfur Website, and this has made things much easier.

On this website, you can sign up for the Weekly Action Network, which basically means that every week they send you an e-mail asking you to do something small to help the effort. For example, today Don Cheadle sent an e-mail asking me to petition the Whitehouse. Usually it's just filling out a form e-mail that gets sent to the Whitehouse. It's very simple to do, so why not?

Sometimes they actually ask you to call your Congressperson. And one time I actually called the Whitehouse comment line. Apparently they have a phone line that is manned by operators whose purpose is to collect comments from concerned citizens. This totally blew my mind. I wonder if any of those comments ever get listened to? And I wonder how many people call each day? I'd guess hundred of thousands, but I'd also be surprised if maybe they only get like 50.

Anyhow... the moral of this story is: It's important to have extracurricular activities and it's important to remember those who are much less fortunate than us, even if they are on the other side of the world and their problems seem irrelevant to our lives. We are citizens of the world, people! Global community! Save Darfur!

Allow myself to introduce...myself. My name is Richie Cunningham.

3 Corndogma points for whoever names the movie quote first.

Wow, so the web mistress has decided to grace us with her presence. For the record, I don't have stage fright but when someone talks you into doing a JOINT blog and then goes AWOL from the get go, you begin to wonder if there's something wrong.

I'm going to have to agree with Stretch's personal assessment of herself except she's been a Debbie Downer ever since I met her and slept with her on that first night. Actually in her defense, she's not really a DD, I'm guessing a full C. (We aren't planning on sharing this with family are we?) I once asked Stretch the questions from the Inside the Actor's Studio questionnaire by Bernard Pivot. To the question, "if you could choose any profession other than your own, which would you choose?" she answered "an heiress like Paris Hilton." I suppose if that's your dream job, anything you do is going to be a bit of a let down. That's like me comparing my life to Hugh Hefner...or Derek Jeter...or Vanilla Ice in the early 90s.

Well I'm glad my partner in crime joined me. Blogging is a lot like sex, it's much better when your doing it with someone else online.

Allow me to introduce myself...

So, my good friend, Skid, has been giving me hell about not posting anything on our blog yet. I think he feels like he's standing on stage all by his lonesome, and he's starting to get stage fright. I don't know why, because it's not like there is anyone sitting in the audience. Simma down, Skid!

I'm just kidding. He's absolutely right. I've been delinquent. And for that I am sorry.

Anyhow, since this is my first post, I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce myself. Because, really, what's the point in having a blog if you aren't going to talk about yourself? You all can call me Debbie... Debbie Downer. I'm a malcontent.

I blame it all on my job. I've been at this job for six months, and it's totally dragging me down. I sit in the back office (oversized-closet) all by myself. I don't really even have any work to do. I'll go days without actually talking to a single person. As a result, I have totally let myself go; I'm a shadow of my former self. I used to be the cute girl in the Citizens jeans, all made up, hair done, smile on my face. Now I shower like twice a week and I can't remember the last time I wore makeup. Today I am wearing the same shirt that I wore the past two days because no one saw me in it so I figured I would save myself some laundry. When I do interact with people, they are all about forty years older than myself. And I decided long ago that they have nothing to offer (which by the way, my former self would never, ever do... because that's just bitchy).

The good news is that this is a contract position. The bad news is that I don't know what the hell I want to do once this is over. I think I might give it a few more months, and if nothing surfaces I'll just move out to California. You'll take care of me, right, Skid?!

Although California has awful traffic and there'd probably be an earthquake as soon as I move there. Waaaaaaaa waaaaaa....

Dancing with Lost Idols

Let’s collectively stick a fork in Lost. Cmon, I’m getting tired of trying to convince people. At this point, I’m only watching the show so I can point out all the flaws with the story line and the fact that each week the promos say, “this week, the mystery of X is explained.” In reality they rarely explain anything and 10 more questions come up. At some point, the show will crumble under the weight of its own complexity. They’ve literally painted themselves into a corner…or do I mean figuratively. At some point, the show is just going to end with absolutely no resolution or explanation. If Lost is a girlfriend, she's the one you had back in high school that wouldn't let you get past second base and left you with blue balls and confusion.

Speaking of TV shows, I’ve recently got into a pissing match with Comcast over a 5 dollar remote control and cut my cable. I say this because I need an excuse for this next comment I’m about to make. You know you crossed over from watching Dancing with the Stars because there’s nothing better on, to enjoying it too much, when you watch and think to yourself, “he really needs to hold his frame better during the foxtrot.” In my defense, some of those dancers are ridiculously hot and their outfits…yikes. I wonder if the costume department is comprised of 100 illegal immigrants with the world’s biggest collection of Bedazzlers.

Also I don’t watch American Idol but I do flip channels and will occasionally get my remote stuck on Fox. I just have one thing to say, I’m not sure about this Jordin Sparks. Either she’s moonlighting as Dr. Torres on Grey’s Anatomy or she’s a man, baby. I haven’t figured it out. What? Don't act shocked. You can’t see her on an HBO special? And I don’t have proof, but I’m certain that Sanjaya is auditioning for a role on Fraggle Rocks on Ice.

What's in a name?

Corndogma.com. I wish I could take credit for the name of our blog but it was the work of Stretch’s creative genius. My first pick for the name was stretchmarks.vs.skidmarks.com but Stretch was so adamantly opposed that I didn’t push the matter. I thought it was a hilarious name for a blog between a guy and a girl but she said something about vomiting in her mouth. Stretchmarks are so uniquely feminine while skidmarks are so completely male….I thought it was perfect. She obviously doesn’t have stretchmarks and I don’t have skidmarks, currently, but nonetheless, Stretch went ahead and exercised a unilateral veto.

For those who never tried to come up with a name for a website….fugedaboutit. It’s impossible. Every good idea has been taken by some sort of cyber-squatter. Stretch and I are Seinfeld fans so I looked up: spongeworthy.com, mulva.com, serenitynow.com, nosoupforyou.com. Everything was taken. My other suggestions were macaroniandkimcheese.com (I’m Korean and Stretch is perhaps part Italian), ovophagy.com (intra-uterine cannibalism…the ultimate in sibling competition), and spermicidaltendencies.com (Obviously a play on the words, suicidal tendencies. Stretch is surely going to blog about how much guys suck and should die, and well, I kill enough sperm of my own).

The point is this. It’s damn hard to come up with an original untaken name, go to godaddy.com and give it a shot. As for corndogma, I love it. I’m corny and dogmatic….plus I love any type of carnival food that’s deep fried. Stretch likes all meats on a stick so it works well for her also. Good work Stretch.

My Inaugural Blog - A Dedication

My inaugural blog. I’ve never even read a blog so I’m not sure exactly what to write or how to write it, but I’ll try to use properly grammar and correct speling for your reading pleasure.

Who knows where this literary odyssey will take us, but if I only get one entry completed, I might as well as make it something substantive, a dedication. (I promise future submission will be much like myself: wry, non-sequitur, non-repetitive, polarizing, non-repetitive, and slightly smelling of cabbage.) The most important people in my life are my parents, but this dedication isn’t for them. (Who’s sorry for not buying me those Air Jordans, now?) No, this dedication is to a guy I haven’t seen in half a dozen years, Erich Kern.

For those of you who don’t know Erich, he’s a bastard…but in a good way. I met him while in the Army when we were both deployed to Macedonia/Kosovo. We were roommates, actually bunkmates to be precise. I still remember the first time we met. I just got into the theater of operations, dropped my bag off in my assigned room, and met my new roommates, except Erich. I had to go to work and by the time I got back to the room, everybody was asleep and the room was pitch-dark. Using my incredible spidey-sense, I felt my way to the foot of my bed. I leaned forward slightly and banged my face into a pair of giant, stinky feet. (Oh, I guess I should mention that the Erich is a hair over 6 foot 6 inches tall and his feet would hang outside the frame of his top bunk by about 7 inches.) After spitting the toe jam out of my mouth, I crawled into bed feeling dirty and abused.

Eventually, we met in a more traditional sense, shaking hands rather than rubbing my face on his swollen hogs. We spent 4 months together and developed an immediate dudeship. The bastard is one of those solid guys that everyone gravitates towards. I mean everyone. Yes, you. Built like a basketball power forward, but kind-hearted to where women wouldn’t feel threatened. Tall and good-looking, but self-deprecatingly hilarious that guys don’t want to kick him in the groin. For the female readers, think a young Clooney – suave, smart, charming, and a little playboyish. For the guys, think Vince Vaughn in Swingers – leader of every circle, ridiculously good at everything, hilarious, got the world on a string but doesn’t take anything too serious, talking trash while kicking your ass at Playstation. All the females on the camp knew Lieutenant Kern. If the Army ran a Bachelor reality show, this is the guy in the Jacuzzi with a handful of roses. He’s the Fonz before he jumped the shark. I think the women at the camp came up with fake maladies just so they could go to the medic’s station.

Throughout life, certain people leave an impact but eventually drift away. You want to keep in touch but it gets tough when you keep bouncing around every few years. Plus when that guy is as popular and the center of so many people’s lives, it gets even harder to get a lot of face-time. I’m sure that would have happened eventually, but we never got that chance. Erich and his fiance went on a ski trip to Kaprun, Austria shortly before Thanksgiving, 2000. I was supposed to join them but another guy backed out and I didn’t feel like being the third wheel. I woke up the following Monday morning and while taking a shower, I heard Erich’s name being mentioned on the radio. I assumed he was being awarded a medal for doing something amazing, but I quickly learned that he died while trapped inside a train that caught on fire inside the mountain of the ski resort. We had hung out for the past year and in an instant, the bastard was gone.

Every now and again something makes me think about him. It becomes less and less frequent nowadays, but when it happens, I immediately recall two things – first, the parties at his pad which were ridiculously stocked with booze and women, and second, the time he took a lazy jump shot in the lane and a short kid, a good foot shorter than him, rejected his shot with a forearm. We gave him hell for that and still would. As I begin this web log, it reminds me that he was one of the early pioneers of the internet who took the time to set up his own website back in the day when no one knew the potential of the internet for anything other than porn. So as I begin my first foray into this www thing, I’m dedicating this to Erich and his family that survived him. As someone said during his funeral, Erich is at Heaven’s bar drinking a Guinness, waiting to buy us a drink. Hopefully, Heaven has a Wifi connection.