At least, that’s the impression I get when I’m around other people who suck on jalapenos, eat the hottest of the hot sauces, snack on habanero-laced cinnamon toothpicks and point at me laughing when I’m fanning my mouth, unable to speak and knocking everything off the table in an effort to find a cold drink to douse the fire I’ve just inadvertently consumed.  And that’s just with the “mild” picante laced with ketchup.

Oh stop it. I know you’re laughing out there.

There are other people out there who can’t have it hot ENOUGH.   You know the type – they ask for whatever 12-alarm menu item they have, taunting anyone who wants to challenge their ability to violate their own tongues in devious and obvious ways.  They sit there chugging  hatch chilis while wondering if there’s anything but water inside some bean filling, and “hey, you done with that burned out cigarette butt? I need something to tide me over until dinner.  Light it back up, wouldja?”

Janna is one of those people.

In fact, she even wrote an entire blog post about how “Wayne is a Wuss” (I’m paraphrasing here.  She may not have been directing anything at me personally.  But she DOES have an entire blog category dedicated to painful eating.)

So I’m issuing the following challenge to her:

If Janna can come down to Texas and eat an entire Red Robin Burnin’ Love Burger in front of me, I’ll pay for it.

And by “it” I mean the burger, not the flight, hotel, taxes, rental car or art supplies.  I do promise to provide the camera and a lavish amount of DITL’ing.   Hopefully she won’t think this is a thinly veiled attempt at getting her to come down here and eat a meal with me, because we all know I don’t thinly veil anything.

Here’s a picture of said Red Robin burger:

In fact, for a limited time you can go to Red Robin’s main website and actually see a video of this abomination of a burger in exquisite detail.

I had to drink a pepsi just watching it.

Let’s make her “turning 39″ event as multimedia-enriched as possible. 

If you don’t want to create an utterli account, you could just reply here in the comments.  Oh, and you can also go to Janna-Mart and purchase something for yourself to celebrate her birthday.  I have, and I haven’t regretted it yet.  Then again, that might be because I’m just 38, and not senile yet, like Janna. 

Or you could do the kind-of lame thing and go to HER blog entry about her birthday and wish her well.  But I might not get credit if you did it that way, so if you want to be all selfish and stuff, go right ahead.  Who am I to get in the way of someone who doesn’t think of other people?

(DITL = Day In The Life)

Merry Christmas to all you awesome people!  I know it’s been 2 months since my last DITL, so I put in a little extra boredom and geek stuff at the end.  However, the DITL is still just 3 minutes.  It’s the bonus time that makes seem long and boring.

I thought about skipping #13 in the counting order like buildings and Presidents do, but what can I say? I’m a rebel that likes to live dangerously.

(Direct Youtube link)

Episode #13 contains these tidbits:

• Merry Christmas from Zina / Time to go jump on the Trampoline
• Bee Gees (no time to talk)
• Trampoline time w/Jaden! 
• Package from Janna, part 1 (driving with no hands! whaaaah!)
• Trampoline time w/Jaden!
• Meet Tigger, our new rescued Border Collie pup
• Package from Janna, part 2
• Snow in Austin is unbelievable
• Jaden is a 6yr old pool shark
• Package from Janna, part 3
• Christmas tunnel vortex (santasranch.net)
• Filled up for less than $20
• Preview of the MITL

This week’s bonus footage: MITL (Mac In The Life)!

All in 3 minutes or less! (excluding introductions, credits and bonus footage).

Note: background music supplied unknowingly by the fantastic duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, key stalwarts that make up Steely Dan, off their latest album Everything Must Go. The track I used portions of is Lunch With Gina. Pick this music up if you can – it is amazingly good.

Two readers have sprinkled a little blog love on me.   There’s a “I heart your blog” theme going on and Kapgar of kapgar.com and Marty (aka ChillyWilly from comments) from Banal Leakage are both secure enough in their hetersexuality to issue a hand-drawn pink puffy heart love note so delicately drawn on notebook paper to yours truly.  I’ll assume for the time being that they actually like my blog and aren’t after something else, like my DITL.

Being the astute (and incredibly waynal) reader that I am, I noticed that both of these gentlemen put my name and blog link LAST in their list.  I can take this in one of a few ways:

1. I was put last due to a random fluke (what is this, a 1 in 49 chance? more? less)
2. They decided to put people alphabetically.  It would seem the facts help this particular option, but this is Election Year – why would I start caring about facts all of a sudden?
3. I’m their least favorite blog on the list (hey, it could happen)
4. I’m their favoritest blog on the list, saving me for last.

Maybe its because Janna “does Band” for a living and I completely and totally miss band.  I miss high school band, I miss Army band, I miss dreaming about being in a band.   I’m currently living vicariously through my awesome daughter, who is in the best middle school band around, is about to be in the best high school band around and is pretty darn good herself (she was 1st chair flute, 1st band last year at UT’s Middle School Band Camp as a 7th grader).

One of the more recent Janna posts I connected with was her “janku” post, where she invented her own style of poetry, namely, a “janku” which she defined as a 3-line poem following a 4-6-8 rule of vowel usage instead of a 5-7-5 rule of syllables.  It was a great follow-up to her Haiku of Melancholy.  I’m especially proud of my work on her Thirteen Things the Letters TCB Could Stand For (check the comments for a story made entirely of 3 word TCB lines).

I submitted my own collection of janku’s in her post’s comments.  I find it only fitting that I completely copy her idea and make up my own form of poetry, and I need to name it “whallku”. 

There are several reasons I want to name it this:

1. It’s a fantastic greeting response.  When someone tells you “hi, whall!” you can say “whall, ku” and it won’t sound so awkward, like if you hadn’t said it at all.
2. You can use it after someone sneezes, because “whallku” is actually swahili for “gesundheit,” which is actually German for “hi, did you read the blog of whall today? haha of course you did, I only ask because it is custom!”
3. If there were a martial art made entirely of the expert use of a guitar hero controller and a euphonium, delivered with an unfaltering stream of perfect LOLcat references, it would be called “whallku“.  What am I saying, “if”?  Pshaw.
4. whallku.com isn’t taken.  Yet.

So, now for the rules of what a whallku is.

1. It shall have 3 lines, like a haiku and janku
2. The numeric phrase to remember is “3-5-7″.
3. First line has three (3) words
4. Second line has five (5) syllables
5. Third line has seven (7) vowels
   (“y” does not count as a vowel)

Here are my submissions.  Give me some whallku lovin’, won’t you?  Submit yours in the comments!

What The Hell?
Does he really think
this a good idea?

Obama, Obama, Obama…
All we ever hear.
Well, better him than Hillary!

Guitar Hero IV
A.K.A. “World Tour”.
Guaranteed addict.

blog of whall:
Insommnia cure
if ever I saw one.

Cabbage Patch Dolls.
Innocent toy trend,
or evil spawn of Satan?

CPS wrong re: 
Polygamist sect.
Yoda: “Much power they have.”

For double extra credit, see if you can create a haiwhallku, which means you satisfy BOTH requirements: 5-7-5 for syllables and 3-5-7 for words/syllables/vowels.  You might be asking yourself, “how in the world can a line have both 5 syllables AND 7 syllables for line 2? Have you gone crazy, Wayne?”

Yes, I’ve gone crazy.  But that’s beside the point.  There is an answer, and the answer is – use words that can be pronounced in multi-syllabic ways.  Like Hyundai can be pronounced “Hi-un-die” or “Hun-Day”.  The word “actually” can actually be pronounced “act-you-al-lee” or “actch-yule-lee”.  Some leniency is granted, but it’s mob rule.

I don’ recommen’
Hyundai, actually.
dey be too darn cheap.

US building first
Nuclear athlete man.
Noose at eleven.