My Masonic Apron's AWESOME GIVEAWAY!

Hahaha! You clicked to read this post thinking I had some cool promotional item to give away to a randomly-selected reader in order to drive up my readership statistics.

That's funny!

Yeah, I don't have shit for you.

What I do have, though, is a blog post-- because that's what a blog is supposed to contain, right?

Right.

Have you ever stopped for a moment to consider what is on your desk, and what those objects might say about you and your own personal little world? Personally, I'm a little afraid of revealing to you, gentle reader, all of the items that are sitting here in front of me, but I think I'm going to, because I think you deserve to know. Not only that but, I think, most of you know me well enough by now to know that I believe in an overabundance of disclosure.

I think it brings us closer together.

Ready? Here we go:

I'll start with the obvious-- the computer monitor. It's a 19-inch Westinghouse flatscreen that we purchased as an "Open Item" from Worst Buy a few months ago when my wife's butt-monitor of the Bush, Sr. era finally blitzed out. I had been advocating for a flatscreen monitor for months and months prior to that event, ironically, to conserve desk space. You'll see why that's ironic soon.

On our desk also sit two boxes of checks. I'm always petrified of running out of checks. We don't usually run out, we usually just lose them. Even though most of our bills are paid in cyber-space, we still use checks to pay the mortgage and the car payment. There are three hundred checks in the two boxes on the computer desk.

A huge Mag-Lite flashlight. I bought this flashlight many years ago, for one reason: because it's a cool cop-like toy. It's the kind the police used in the 1970s to beat the shit out of suspects when they couldn't reach for their nightsticks in time.

There's a pedometer, too. When my wife and I go out walking or hiking, she likes to know how far we've gone, for reasons of personal gratification. We always forget to attach it to her waistband whenever we go walking or hiking.

My "Pirates of Penzance" score and libretto. Hopefully I will remember to take this to work with me today so I can use 15 minutes of my 1/2-hour lunch break to practice my recitatives, and the Act II finale so I won't look like a complete asshole at rehearsal tonight.

Lots of Post-It-type notes. Some contain online ed. class log-in information, things we want to remember, some are discolored. It's obviously not a very efficient system for remembering things, because I look at some of them and don't even know what they refer to. And they're in my handwriting.

The Boob-Frog. The Boob-Frog is a very long, sock-monkey-looking creation that my wife made, though it definitely more resembles a frog. It has two extremely large, bulging eyes that easily conjure up images of two honkin' titties, thus rendering it "The Boob Frog." It lies inert and prone on our desk, looking rather like a worn-out, empurpled prostitute on her lunch break. I mean, come on-- it's not like she'd be practicing "Pirates" on her lunch break.

A stuffed gingham turtle. I don't remember the story behind this one, but he's cute. He has two purple beads for eyes and a brown patterend shell. I like him, but I don't really know what he's doing here. I hope he doesn't get corrupted by the Boob Frog while I'm at work.

The digital cameras. Yes, there are two, because we're card-carrying members of the Bourgeoisie, and we like it. My wife's is huge and contains pictures from the infamous barn dance and less infamous wedding we attended this past weekend. The smaller camera is mine and it contains dozens and dozens of pictures from our vacation to Maine, including but not limited to pictures of us taking a spin in a real Model-T, me drooling over a 1950 split-window VW Beetle at an antique car museum, some old guy in a blue Speedo doing stomach crunches on the beach, a guy in a kilt, and my wife clutching onto the side of a sailboat for dear life on the Atlantic Ocean. All pictures have yet to be uploaded.

My Norton Anthology of American Literature "Shorter Seventh Edition." It's 2,874 pages.

A 1/64th scale replica of a VW Beetle with a picture holder attached to it. The picture that used to be in it was of me and my wife after I had just proposed to her on the porch of Mark Twain's house in Hartford, CT. The Mexican painters moved it and the picture fell off-- but I just spotted it on the dresser across the room. There, I've put it back. CUTE!

A container holding approximately 8,436 pens, most of which are probably non-functional. There's also a pair of chopsticks in there, I guess for the as-yet unmaterialized instance where we consume Chinese food while watching a TV program on Hulu. Maybe the season premier of SouthLAnd? (October 23)

A couple of random, overflow pens managed to escape from the holder and are on the desk, scattered, including my personal favorite from the Pennsylvania Resource Organization for Lactation Consultants. A nutjob who used to work in my office was also a lactation consultant and she left sixty of those pens at work when she quit. Wanna prank 'em? 610-873-9828. Tell them you're uncontrollably geysering and it's coming out chocolate.

Two free tickets to the Antique Auto Museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania. My wife makes her monthly car payments to a credit union in Mechanicsburg, PA and they just sent her these tickets, out of the blue. Finally, something free that we can actually use, and that we will enjoy. If they don't get lost in the vastness of the desk clutter.

Two bottles of nail polish-- Black Peal and Bogota Blackberry.

There's a scrap of pink fabric with little back dresses on manequins sticking out of the top desk drawer. It's mostly on the desk top, so I guess it counts as something on our desk, even though it just looks like the desk drawer threw up.

And, finally, under a chenille lampshade made by my wife which sits on top of one of our auxillary speakers, all of our mortage and closing papers from our homebuying extravaganza. The folder's too big to fit into our filing cabinet, so, um it's on our speaker.

Once, in a graduate level education class, my professor said that you can tell a lot about a person by opening up the trunk of their car. I looked down, carefully averting my gaze as I had learned in years and years of math classes.

"What about you, son?" he said to me. I looked up at him.

"Um," I stammered, "I'll pass."

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P.S.-- Still want that giveaway? Come here and take all this fucking shit off my desk. Except the "Pirates" score. You can have that once I'm off-book.