ABC: Always Be Contestin'

I just applied to be a contestant on the ABC show Card Sharks. Here are some answers I submitted on the form:

Are you a risk taker? Why or why not? Tell us about it - we love stories

Danger is my middle name. Really. It's my legal middle name (on my driver's license and everything). Why am I a risk taker? Well, as my grandma always used to say (and Drake copied without so much as a shout out in his rap song), you only live once (YOLO!). Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. That's another quote from my grandma. She's very wise.

I almost blew my hand off with an M-80 as a teenager. I am not exaggerating when I say I was half a second away from sporting a pirate hook for the rest of my life.

I wear white after Labor Day.

How did you hear about casting?

My wife and I were watching the show and she was like "we gotta sign up to get on there!" And I was like "that's a great idea!" So now here we are.


I mean, with enthusiasm like that, how can they not pick me?

The results are in

I just took a DNA test and while it turns out that I am not, in fact, "100% that bitch," I did find that a good number of my distant relatives were seafaring, horned-helmet and/or flannel skirt wearing badasses, which is kinda cool.

By the looks of my results it looks like I'm about 1/3 English, 1/3 German and 1/3 Celtic/Viking.

After looking into my ancestry, I am left with two major takeaways:

1. Scotland's national animal is a unicorn (this is true, look it up).

2. My warrior ancestors would be extremely proud to know that all the toil and suffering they endured has resulted in at least one of their surviving progeny devoting his life to writing comedy.

Writer inspiration

The Infinite Monkey Theorem is a proposition that an unlimited number of monkeys, given typewriters and sufficient time, will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. This derisive concept is pretty depressing to think about if you are a writer. Fortunately it turns out that it's total bullshit.

In 2003, lecturers and students with the University of Plymouth’s Institute of Digital Arts and Technology (i-DAT) got a grant to place a single computer and keyboard in the macaques enclosure at the Paignton Zoo.

After a month with the computer, the macaques had produced five pages of nonsense text, but otherwise seemed to limit their screen time to urinating and/or defecating on the computer until such time as it stopped working.

In conclusion:

🐒 + ⌨️ = 💩

click for source

I made another friend on Skype!

I keep getting messages over Skype from people trying to scam me in some way or another. I like to flip the script on them and see what happens. Here's my latest interaction. It's long, but I promise it's worth a read.