Relax We Are on Vacation

By Mink

We have been flooded with emails, some expressing discontent with our infrequency of posting, while others seem to believe that we should be using Viagra (must be the plethora of old man pun jokes made on this site). Anyway, I am just writing to let you know that we are on a garbage dump vacation and we will be back to entertain ourselves and infuriate the anoynmous readers when we feel like it. I will, however, give you a quick run down of some stuff going on with us. Some of this may appear in more detail later on, but for now just sit back drink some egg nog and watch a Scrubs or Arrested re-run. We miss you too.


---The Mink's travel plans to LA take an expected (not a typo) turn for the worst as his connecting flight goes through Denver International Airport, which is closed for a blizzard. Oh good Karma where art thou?

---SingerZ tries to enjoy his law school winter break but his stomach hurts, and he can't fall asleep so he just sits in bed eating fried cheese.

---Benito (see The Odd Couple post) gets an offer to play professional baseball overseas. The Mink is furious, as he now needs to find a replacement at shortstop for his overly-competitive summer softball league.

---Mink's friend finds out that her boyfriend was 1. Married 2. Has two young children 3. Does not really have cancer. You may have to read number 3 again, because it is the most insane thing I have ever heard. Even George Constanza isn't that twisted.

---The Dumpers will be tearing up the Big Apple on New Year's Eve. We encourage all female blog readers to find us under the mistletoe when the clock strikes 12. Extreme and outrageous behavior are strongly encouraged. The Garbage Dumpers are always looking for some good action......or any action at all for that matter.

---And finally, Cal Ripken is about to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I am writing this mainly because SingerZ hates when I write anything sports related but also because I have a shrine to him in my parents' house, including a life size growth chart of the man as well as his jock strap. I had the pleasure of meeting him at a wedding, a year and a half ago, and my mother made sure to repeatedly embarrass me by telling Cal about the chart and other symbols of my man crush. Well at least she snapped this shot of us.





For any sports fans here, this is a great article about Calvin and his Hall of Fame worthiness. I plan on attending the Cooperstown induction in July, and you should too.

The Odd Couple

By Mink

Well, I have been sharing my thoughts and mental illnesses on this blog for over a year now but for some reason I have yet to really write about my current living partner. Benito and I are going on 18 months now (which I believe is generally accepted as the absolute cut-off for any prohibition for flatulence-in-public between couples). Like a true married couple we eat dinner to Scrubs re-runs, wear matching green "going out t-shirts," and ask each other if we look obese in certain articles of clothing. He even makes me waffles on Sunday mornings! (a real keeper, I know).

More importantly we are about as opposite as Michael Richards and Martin Luther King. (Editor's Tangent: I was watching a Seinfeld re-run the other day and was very worried that Kramer's real life tirade would taint my enjoyment. But to my surprise, the experience went better than expected. I kind of likened it to a hypothetical scenario where I would walk in on a female guest sitting on the toilet at a dinner party hosted by my parents. Upon her return to the table, it would certainly be awkward but then at a certain point I would probably realize that this person is friends with my parents and that I would thus be required to block out the unfortunate imagery and act as if nothing happened. I would then resume socializing with this lady and maybe even laugh at her jokes. Similarly, about 5 minutes into Seinfeld, the characters and I were cool and I was enjoying all the jokes to the fullest. In sitcom world, Kramer is pals with Jerry, George and Elaine and for that I must pretend like nothing happened in the real world.)

Ok that was a long digression. The point is Benito and I are the Odd Couple. He folds his clothes neatly; I use my bathroom floor as a hamper. He has a daily workout regimen; I have a daily Entenmanns eating regimen. He is handy and is known in the D.C. area for his satisfying wall-jobs (he builds dry-walls for people's apartments); I am not handy and make immature sexual jokes about wall-jobs.

The point is that while we generally get along great, my roommate is shall we say Type A and I am shall we say somewhere around Type T (on the lesser known A-Z scale). I will illustrate this with the recent incident of the missing apples:

I rarely purchase apples but for some reason one Sunday night I decided to act healthy and purchase a few for the upcoming work week. Unbeknownst to me, Benito made a similar decision the day before, although there was a glaring difference in the grade and quality of our respective apple selections. Whereas I picked out some standard yellow/green-bruised-dirt covered granny apples from Shoppers, the Type-A roommate spent his Saturday night at Wegman's where he carefully hand-selected some shinny-red-Grade-A candies of nature.

On Monday morning, I went to grab some food for my lunch and decided to take the whole batch of my apples to leave in my office fridge. Being my absent-minded self, I obviously had no recollection of the color of the apples, whichI had purchased less than 8 hours before. I grabbed a bag of 5 red apples, thought nothing of it, and headed to work. At lunch, I excitedly washed an apple off and ate it after finishing my standard cheese sandwich. I then offered some of the remaining ones to several co-workers. Fortunately, only one person took me up on the offer. So I was down to 3 shiny-red-roommate-apples.

Fast forward to Tuesday morning. I woke up about an hour after my roommate and headed to the bathroom for the morning pee. With my contacts not yet in my eyes, I glanced over at the mirror and noticed the following message on 2 post-it-notes:

Matter of Life and Death.......I think you took my apples. Please return, I don't want your yellow shitty apples. I want my red ones for tomorrow. They're from Wegman's. Thanks,

Hate,
Benji


My bad, my bad. Ben is now vacationing out of the country and I am home alone with only some deformed yellow "shitty" apples to keep me company.

The Dump's Anniversary Reading List

by singerz

Many of you said we wouldn’t make it. By many of you, I mean that guy I bumped into on the train a year ago. Well, you stinky little man with small hands, screw you. We lasted a year and are going strong. And no, I didn’t forget the Garbage Dump’s one year anniversary. I’m just mad that Mink never takes me out anymore. The first few months were great, but since then I feel like he takes me for granted.

Anyway, in honor of our anniversary, I have put together a reading list of books I either wish existed or I want to write myself. Feel free to add your own. I already know “Anonymous” is going to add “This Blog Sucks But I Still Check it 6 times a Week.” And now, the list:


101 Things That Make Me Vomit

Why We Should Wash Our Hands After We Pee

10 Better Ways to Spend a Saturday Morning Than in Synagogue

The secrets of AOL IM: How to be someone youre not when talking to girls

Sweatpants: A Novel

Facial Hair - part two

When You're Hungry, You Should Eat

Secrets of Law School: Don't Go

Snood: Gross hair covering or addictive video game?

Candy is Better than Vegetables, No matter What Mom Says

I Started this Blog to Get Girls and its Just Not Working

The Anniversary Edition

By Mink

Well it is official. SingerZ has forgotten our one-year anniversary. I came home the other night wearing a racy new outfit, had the scented candles out, fried up some of his favorite goat cheese and even cleaned out that gross brownish ring that lives right about the water of my John.* (I just want to add for the record that it hasn't always been easy having a name that also stands for a place where people go to move their bowels. Yet recently I have come to embrace it, and on occasion I will even sign a thank you note or an email with a: "Sitting on the, Jon.")

Anyway, getting back to the humiliation of the forgotten anniversary....On November 19th, we reached a major milestone in our blogging relationship. We have just completed one glorious year of sharing stories about escapades involving manicures, woman cramps, haircuts, and insulting dead guys. Yet for whatever reason, SingerZ seems to take this for granted and instead chooses to live the American dream in Manhattan, spending his wild nights eating bad pizza and loudly over-analyzing Grey's Anatomy with an all- male gathering.

So I sit here alone, eating a carton of Ben and Jerry's while watching When Harry Met Sally. And I am left with no choice but to share some of my mis-adventures with anyone who is really bored at work reading this (or just to my mother's 50-something- year-old pals who apparently comprise 90 percent of our readership).

Note: All of the events below are one hundred percent accurate. Only the timing of the occurrences has been altered to enhance my debacle- filled week:

Monday was supposed to be an exciting one as I was replacing my cancer- infested '96 Accord with a "new" '01 Camry. In the previous weeks I tried to play the "educated consumer card" and began talking out of my bunghole as I asked various car dealers about V-6 engines, gas mileage and rotary girders. In reality, I was just pleased to be driving something with brakes and a radio that actually works (My old radio would work on occassion but usually I would have to bash it in with my fist for this to occur. Such violence caused many a bloody hand as well as many an awkward conversation with passengers who were convinced I had a bad case of Tourette's).

But as expected, things refused to go smoothly, and within minutes of coming into possession of my burgundy bundle of joy, I found myself garbage- bagging shut the driver- side window when it refused to go up. I then was unsuccessful in filling the tank with gasoline because the gas hatch was broken and locked shut. Finally, to add insult to injury, the seatbelt decided not to lock into place. (I don't generally use the "insult to injury" phrase but here it is applicable because after finding each little blemish with the new car, a voice inside of me actually was loudly hurling insults my way. By the time I discovered the seatbelt problem it was actually screaming, "Jon you are an ASSHOLE")

Feeling as if I had just purchased a lemon, I decided to relax by laboring on a paper for work. I actually was semi-productive for a few hours, before somehow accidentally saving the document as a temp file and then over-writing it and in the process losing about 8 hours of work. After a couple hours on the phone with the tech people and learning more than I ever want to learn about temp files, I realized it was a lost cause.

Then to cap off the smooth day, I tried to chill out with some wine and Sportscenter before retiring to sleep for the night. But somehow my bedroom television had become unplugged and I had to fumble around in the dark to reconnect the damn thing. In the process, I knocked over my cup of spare coins, scattering them into the various clothing piles that reside on my floor. At that point I threw up my hands and cried myself to sleep. Ok maybe I was laughing, but certainly not with myself (My timing must have been way off because I was constantly a few giggles off my own pace**).

That was my manic Monday and a perfect way to usher in year 2 of the Garbage Dump. Here is to another year of insanity, L'hayim. Happy Anniversary!


*For those interested in learning of the origins of the name "John" as a bathroom name check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harington

**FYI this was meant to be a pun