I encountered the woman in the elevator again this morning.

We both pulled in to the parking garage at about the same time.  She reached the elevator first, and stepped inside while I was still approaching.  I knew she was already pressing the "close doors" button before I got there, but considering it never works, and the doors stay open for like 5 minutes before closing, I took my sweet ass time taking those last few steps.  And of course, when I finally stepped inside she was mashing away on that broken "close doors" button.  Surprisingly, the doors didn't budge until they were good and ready.

The elevator stopped at my floor, and no sooner do I step one foot off the elevator car and she's pounding the button again.  The broken button that never works.  Hey, did I mention that the "close doors" button is disabled?  Well, it is.  But she's the only person in the building who hasn't noticed.  I guess she figures the button will work for her because she's in more of a hurry than everyone else.

I've devised a plan.

Next time I encounter her in the elevator, I'm going to stand outside the doors and smile at her.  If she finds time between button presses to ask me if I'm getting on, I plan to respond, "No, you go ahead, I'm in no hurry."  And then I'll wave to her as the doors close.  But in that last instant right before the doors fully close, I'm going to throw her a mean look.  Let her stick that in her pipe and smoke it for a while.

I'm concerned for crocoWife.  In the last year or so she has broken a toe, broken a finger, got some crazy skin-eating fungus on another finger, been diagnosed with tendonitis in her shoulder, endured a heinous ocular migraine that made her think she might have a brain cloud, and last weekend felt the pangs of a possible muscle spasm in her back.  Most disturbing of all, however, are her reports of feeling "tired."  That's the clinical term.

Lucky for her I'm like Columbo when it comes to research, and webMD informs me that her fatigue could be a symptom of a dire problem.  For example, she might have Hypothyroidism, Fibromyalgia, or a Congenital Heart Defect.  Tuberculosis, perhaps?  No, those are just wishful thinking, crocoWife's level of exhaustion is clearly more serious than those wimpy diagnoses.  My money's on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).

Other symptoms of CFS include: muscle and joint pain, check.  Unrefreshing sleep, check.  Sore throat, check.  decreased ability to think clearly, check.  As you can see, my concern is more than warranted.

Treatment includes regular visits to an acupuncturist, daily intake of dogbane and knob grass, and nightly voodoo ceremonies capped with the capture of a wild mongoose whose fur is rubbed against a balloon, creating enough static electricity to power a George Foreman grill, upon which a hamburger is cooked and eaten by the CFS afflicted individual.

Or maybe she has a cold.  And a child that never gives her parents a single fucking moment of god damn peace!  In fact, I believe there is a correlation between the onset of CFS and the birth of our child.  But I digress.

crocoWife's lucky she makes kick-ass chocolate-chip banana muffins, her magical culinary skills prevent me from trading her in for a new model.  And when I say "magic" I'm not kidding around.  Poof!  There's dinner!  Poof!  There's waffles!  It's amazing!  I lay around on the couch and poof!  Banana muffins!

Speaking of new models, I took my car to the dealer for service last week and requested a loaner car for the day.  I expected a 1976 Datsun or some other old jalopy, instead they gave me a shiny red Mazda RX-8.  Because they recognize the pimpness.

(P.S. If you didn't catch the "brain cloud" reference, go rent Joe vs. the Volcano.)

Celine Dion calls her Las Vegas audiences sleepy drunks.  "People come here for four days, they eat too much, drink too many free drinks, they get sick from all that, they are jet-lagged sometimes so they just sit in the seat and sleep," she said.

Well yeah, that ... or your boring show sends people into a deep fucking slumber.

A co-worker needed a ride home last night, I was happy to oblige because he's provided hours of entertainment lately by way of jokes at his expense.  You see, he can't drive right now because he hurt his neck.  From a sneeze.  Yes, Mr. Tie-quan-doe-black-belt injured his neck while sneezing.  Pussy.

When informed of this serious neck injury (which kept him out of work for a week) crocoWife suggested he might have been trying to give himself a blowjob.  And I was thinking, "Yeah!  I bet he was!  Pervert.  Sneeze, my ass!"

Anyway, while waiting for the elevator to the parking garage, the doors opened and a woman came charging out of the box.  Until she realized, hey, this ain't the garage, at which point she threw us a look as if it was our fault she tried to get off on the wrong floor.  Man, the look on her face was hilarious, her embarrassment complete, then she ran back into the elevator and repeatedly pressed the "close doors" button (which everyone knows is broken).

Our building only has three floors.  We were on the second floor, so for her to have been on the "down" elevator meant she was coming from the third floor.  That look she gave us, she clearly couldn't comprehend what happened to the parking level, as if we somehow moved the garage and replaced it with our floor so that we could purposely delay her descent.  The entire ride down I choked on my laughter to avoid snickering over her shoulder.

How can a person be so blissfully unaware of their surroundings that they can't tell the difference between a one floor elevator ride and a three floor ride?  The elevator "dings" at every floor, all you need is to be able to count to three.

Then I drove "sneezy" home.  Rain was falling in buckets so I dropped him off at the bottom of the hill, a few blocks away from his house.  I couldn't drive him directly to his doorstep, I wanted to get my car out of the rain storm and into its nice warm garage.

Continuing to decipher the corporate lexicon.

crocoPuffs Feature: Corporate buzzword dictionary, vol. 3

The Girl Scout cookies have arrived!  Between crocoWife and myself we have eight boxes.  She ordered 4 from the girl DOWN the street, I ordered 4 from the girl ACROSS the street. I received the delivery of my cookies last night (next time I'm ordering from the girl DOWN the street, because she delivered crocoWife's cookies a week and a half ago).  Two of my four boxes will be empty by tomorrow morning.

My sister sold Girl Scout cookies when we were kids, now she sells everything else under the sun: Mary Kay cosmetics, Pampered Chef, Tupperware, illegal firearms ... hell, I don't know what she's selling nowadays.  The point is, I think the whole Girl Scout cookie business is nothing more than an indoctrination to a lifetime of door-to-door salesmanship.  Fucking cult.

Dateline NBC aired an undercover hidden camera segment the other night on the topic of fast food restaurants.  (Who doesn't love this brand of investigative journalism, by the way?)  All the restaurant filth you could hope for, captured on film!  My favorites are when they send a rookie intern to actually work undercover for a week to capture all the damning evidence.

Anyway ... this latest segment featured a dude who apparently swallowed a hairpin while eating his "breakfast sandwich meal."  That is one gluttonous motherfucker.  Hairpins are like 2 inches long, how do you not notice when you gulp a 2 inch piece of metal?  Did he swallow his sandwich whole like a forest ogre?

He said he felt heartburn and pain about 20 minutes after eating it.  Well ... yeah.  Chew your fucking food, fat boy!

As a long time Sacramento Kings fan, I've seen it all.  The seasons during which we would pray for 30 wins; making the playoffs for the first time in 1996 after a too long drought; the deals that brought Vlade Divac, Chris Webber, Jason Williams, and Peja Stojakavic to the team all in the same season; the so-close-it-still-hurts-to-think-about loss to the L.A. Lakers in the 2002 Western Conference Finals; and this season, the purging of that championship-contending team with the ousting of Divac, Webber, and Doug Christie.  Most notably Webber's recent trade to Philadelphia.

Chris Webber's Sacramento story has been nothing if not compelling.  When the Kings traded Mitch Richmond to get him in 1998 he didn't want to report to the team, and by the time he was traded to Philadelphia he didn't want to leave.  He did show up eventually in 1998, of course, and at first his plan was to bide his time, then bolt when his contract was over.  And it showed, because his heart wasn't always in it.  I remember a playoff game against Phoenix where he practically disappeared, and seemed surprised that his teammates won the game despite his lack of effort.  When it came time for him to sign a new contract, he didn't leave after all, he stayed in Sacramento and decided to give it a serious run.  But his numerous injuries have kept him off the floor, and he's been slowly degrading to the point where at times this season he's looked like my step-father - who hobbles down the court on Saturday mornings with a bad back.

The thing is, Webber complained a lot while he was in Sacramento.  Reporters asked him about his relationship with Tyra Banks and he boycotted the local media in protest.  He'd have a bad night and hear a smattering of boos from the fans and he'd criticize the fans for not supporting him.  He'd criticize his teammates for being soft, criticize the team management for not keeping players he liked on the team.  Neglecting to point a finger at himself, he never seemed keen to look very closely in the mirror.  He tried to project a tough-guy image, but he's just not that tough.  Since he couldn't handle Sacramento's softball media, I always wondered how he would be able to handle the New York or Philadelphia media.  Now we know.  Not very well.

He's barely been in Philly two weeks and he's already upset about his playing time and the (perceived) under-utilization of his skills.  He's avoiding reporters by leaving the locker room after games before the media is allowed in.  The fans are booing him more strongly than any booing he ever endured in Sacramento.  Webber has since stated that the fans booing him didn't bother him, but if there's one thing to know about Chris Webber, it's that he takes things personally.  You can bet your bottom dollar the booing bugged the shit out of him.

And if there's two things to know about him, the second is that he always knows how to spin things afterwards to make them sound palatable.  He flashes a broad smile and tells you everything you want to hear.  I think he fancies himself a straight-shooter in the mold of Charles Barkeley or Shaq, but he's not really.  He never had the balls to stand behind his statements, he always seemed to be changing his story, or his comments were "misunderstood."  Just wait, Philly fans, you'll see what I mean.

In general, he just isn't fitting in with his new team yet.  Which is pretty much the same thing that happened last year in Sacramento.

Last season, Webber missed the first 50 games or so while recovering from surgery, and the Kings were the best team in the league in his absence.  The offense flowed and they racked up wins.  Then Webber came back and made no effort to fit in with what the team was doing.  He didn't want to work himself into the flow, he wanted to be The Man™.  In doing so, he disrupted the good thing the team had going.  Looks to me like he's doing the same type of thing in Philadelphia.

To put it into perspective, think about your own career.  When you change companies, do you march into your new boss's office and tell him how things are gonna be because you know better then him and the rest of the company combined?  Or do you lay low until you get the feel for what the company is trying to accomplish and how you fit in?

When it comes to his skills, there's no denying he is a very good player.  But he's not a great player.  It's rare that he puts his team on his back and wins games practically on his own.  Which is exactly what guys like Kevin Garnett, Shaq, Allen Iverson, and Tim Duncan do.  When in the clutch, Chris Webber is not your man, but he thinks he is.  Therein lies a problem.  Webber is first to point out his greatness and last to acknowledge his weaknesses.

And Webber's number one weakness lately is lack of hustle.  It's almost as if he feels chasing a loose ball is beneath him, grunt work for the lesser paid players.  He's got points to score and assists to dish out, no time for muscling under the defense to get that tough rebound and putback basket.  Already apparent with the new Kings, they have more hustle.  Brian Skinner, Kenny Thomas, and Corliss Williamson (acquired in the trade for Webber) will hustle.  They'll play hard and defend for every minute they are on the court.  The same cannot be said for Webber, which is one reason why he's having a hard time already in Philadelphia.

I'm no Chris Webber basher, I like the guy and liked his game up to a couple years ago.  I enjoyed watching him play for the Kings, and I think he's a decent person off the court.  But I can't deny the part of me that feels like now he's getting what's been coming to him.  Part of me is happy to see him miserable in Philadelphia right now.  Because he never acknowledged how good he had it in Sacramento.

Remember when the Superfriends reenacted the Budweiser "Wassup" commercial?  Well, now the talented acting troupe has taken on Office Space.  Check it out here.

Last month I read Augusten Burroughs's Running With Scissors on the recommendation of crocoWife who read it on the recommendation of a friend.  This book is insane.  For starters, his mother used to eat candle wax and bathe in broken glass.  It's his memoir spanning roughly from ages 9 to 17 and it's a fast read, sometimes hilarious and always entertaining in it's "I-can't-fucking-believe-this-is-real" prose.  You can buy the book here.

Turns out, a movie is being made based on this book.  If they do it right, it could be the shiznit.  And I like the cast they've put together: Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alec Baldwin.  You can check out the film's details here.

California has legislation in place which will deny H.S. diplomas to graduating students if they can't pass an exit exam, starting with the class of 2006.

I think it's a phenomenally fantastic policy!  That way we stop handing diplomas to people who can't read, which this state has been known to do from time to time.

As happens with any phenomenally fantastic idea, the motherfucking liberal democrats are trying to put a stop to it before it even begins.  They have submitted 2 bills to the state legislature trying to block/delay the tests from taking place.

To pass the test, students will need to display 7th grade math skills and 10th grade english skills.  Graduating 12th graders will be the ones taking the test, and if they can't pass it they don't deserve a fucking diploma.

Never mind that the exam would be painfully easy to pass for 90% of students, but the testing has already been delayed once!  It was originally supposed to start for the class of 2004.  Which means all schools, teachers, and students have been on notice for at least 2 years about what it will take to pass the test.

I really wish this country and state would stop giving free rides to people who don't do shit.  This is why H.S. diplomas are meaningless, pretty much anyone can get one.  Imagine if a high school diploma actually MEANT something again, forcing students to actually be able to read, write, add, and subtract.

You can read all about it here (reg. req.).