is this what they mean by "sympathy pain"?

today i ingested a pickle, coffee, a gourmet dark chocolate square, a clementine and a mini-tub of raspberry yogurt. IN ONE SITTING.

UPDATE: at the gym today, my nipples hurt.

a post script

incidentally ... how fucking good was dinner on thursday? i mean for serious. damn. i don't know where you had it or who you had it with, but mr nice guy can only feel sorry for you: his repast was better than yours.

indeed, his annual pilgrimage to vermont is the stuff of songs. it shall be celebrated, passed down in the oral tradition, year after year, generation to generation, in the spirit of homer, of virgil, of tupac, of chaucer!

this way to turkey ... and heaven

Vermonterbury Tales

Whan that Novembre with her dark meat thinly cut
The droghte of Octobre hath perced to the gut
And bathed every plate with fluffy stuffing
Of which 'tis not easy to keep from huffing
Whan mother-in-law eek with the sweet meate
Inspired hath in every mouth to eate
The tender yams, and the yonge cranberry
Hath in the Turkey the main course, do not tarry
And the nauseous Wyfe with scant ap'tite
Ensures the Man eats her share this nite
(Mr nice guy rejoices to recall the wedding vow),
Who dons a bib and bellies to the trough
And the pilgrim sets sail on a gravy boat
Grunting through courses like a rutting goat
And specially at the meal's very ende
To the Vermonte table he commands they send
The holy, blissful course of many pies
Which he devoured afore closing his eyes

a wife a day keeps death at bay

clearly mr nice guy would be dead by now if he weren't married.

mrs nice guy is still in vermont with her mother. i flew back bright and early friday morning, not in the least hung over or exhausted or reluctantly, to head straight to the office. long day at work. home to feed the cats, change their oil, etc. exhausted. so, of course, after making dinner i went to bed for a nice long night's sleep. ha. if only.

nothing goes better with feeding your cats than a nice ice cold stella. with the beer finished, mr nice guy decided to have some cheese (which called for a little vino, natch). wine and cheese sloshing in mr nice guy's contented belly, it was time to download porn check email. as usual, the email worked up a powerful thirst, so it was time for some more wine, maybe a little chocolate to boot. then it was off to the local coffee shop to read a little julian barnes and do a litttle people-watching. and since the cafe happens to have a full bar, a little wine was in order. (dear park slope parents: it may be a groovy little place for your teens to chill, but Tea Lounge on a friday night is frequented by an INCREDIBLY CREEPY middle aged man apparently named Joe who seems to know all your 15-year-old daughters by name, likes to give them cigarettes and talks with them about their boyfriends. christ i am NOT ready to have a daughter.) and since the joe-show was simultaneously deeply compelling and thoroughly HORRIFYING, another glass of therapeutic wine was in order.

and then to home. but first, a stop at al di la's wine bar for a tasty mindnight pile of pasta. and wine. (sadly, al di la is not related to al di meola) then home. and ice cream. and a little netflix. by about 2:30 mr nice guy, who had to be at work by 9:30, decided it might be a good idea to think about bed. actually, it was his legs that decided this for him because they seemed not to be functioning. but first, a moment or two for downloading more porn music.

and so on. look. mr nice guy didn't do anything bad. he didn't even talk to anyone of either sex, much less bat eyes at the tasty neighborhood niblets who doubtlessly would have relished the thrill of enticing him to transgress the seventh commandment, sultry jezebels of discerning taste everywhere knowing full well how life-changing a ride on the nice guy love shuttle can be. no. i was a good boy. (my liver might wish to interject at this point, and it probably would if i hadn't poisoned it. and, you know, it could talk.)

here's the thing ... this is mr nice guy's modus operandi every time mrs nice guy is out of town or consorting with her foxy ladyfriends for an evening. when she's not around i am apparently compelled to punish my innocent innards. if mr nice guy were still single at this point of his life, he wouldn't be single. he'd be dead.

proof that mr nice guy is ineluctably evolving into a dad

i just asked my mother-in-law if i could borrow her lena horne cd.

the horror.

they say objectivity is the first thing to go

dammit!

an old friend of mrs nice guy's came over the other day, seven-month-old daughter in tow. and fuck it if that weensy angel princess isn't the cutest fucking little rugrat that ever lived. seriously, this baby could be a wee catalogue model, the poster-child for perfection, secretary general of the UN. and mr nice guy is fucking furious.

why the ire? isn't it obvious? there is officially now NO WAY that the nice guys can compete. there is NO WAY the nice guys will have a baby even remotely in the same neighborhood of cuteness as this little fairy sprite. and you know what, it is a competition, motherfucker! it is a zero sum game.

so here's how mr nice guy figures it: his only hope is to have the world's fugliest baby. look. i know parents are crazy. i know newly-minted moms and dads just love their perfect little woogums to pieces and no one on earth can convince them that the fruit of their loins is anything but beautiful. well. i swear to you, dear reader, that if the nice guys give birth to a hideous bugeyed gila monster, they will FULLY ADMIT to having an ugly baby.


portrait of the baby as a young monster

so, i promise, in the event of a gilababy, this exchange will never take place:

nice guys: here's our daughter, isn't she lovely?
friend: hey, WOW! uh. gosh, there she is all right! isn't she, uh, special? and very right there, too!
nice guys: say it! SAY SHE'S BEAUTIFUL!

no. we will frankly and fully admit it if our newly-minted screaming shit-factory looks like it belongs in the spider monkey colony or lizard habitat.

nice guys: here is our little tree sloth. now, shield your eyes as i remove her bonnet.
friend: aw, hewwo, wittle fwiend ... OH MY GOD SHE'S HIDEOUS!
nice guys: we warned you.
friend: MY EYES! THEY'RE BURNING!

mr nice guy is starting to look forward to this bit of parenting.

self-loathing is a force that gives us meaning

mr nice guy might as well just give up now.

i have always been a fan of "to kill a mockingbird" -- a perfect book, a damn good movie -- you gotta hand it to harper lee: she drops one big literary bomb on the world, BOOM!, and then quietly goes about her business. no sophomore slump, no public meltdown. she said what she had to say. i am told she still rides the subway. and probably thinks back fondly of her childhood memories of her neighbor, truman capote, sighs wistfully and counts her money in her head.

so the nice guys watched "to kill a mockingbird" again and you know what? i will never be as good a father as atticus finch. fuck it. i haven't even started, but christ, i give up. let's look at the differences, shall we?

• atticus finch is a steely-jawed public defender, righteously crusading for justice in the face of violent threats and humiliating slurs.
• mr nice guy is a slack-jawed coward whose wife does all the odd plumbing and carpentry jobs while he strums guitar (if mrs nice guy hears one more carter family ditty, she is going to fix my plumbing)
• atticus finch earns the respect of his children by doing the right--which is too often the hard--thing.
• mr nice guy panders to people's basest instincts for cheap laughs, like a monkey
• atticus finch is a humble, pure, saintly man with only humble, pure, saintly thoughts.
• mr nice guy is addicted to goat porn.
• atticus finch was played by gregory peck.
• mr nice guy would be played by, let's face it, carrot top

i could go on. but i won't.

here's further proof that i am not fit to reproduce: yesterday i locked myself out of the apartment. it was 2 pm. what would the wise and brave atticus finch do? mr nice guy figured his options included: waiting around 5 hours for mrs nice guy to come home (which could have justifiably allowed for his going to a movie AND a local watering hole to get watered), or calling our building's management and weeping like a 12-year-old girl at the end of "titanic." i called the management; they recommended a locksmith. brilliant! a locksmith will magically open my door for free!

$200 and one hour later i was inside the apartment. i have seldom been this amazed at my sheer stupidity and lack of common sense; you can only imagine how mrs nice guy felt when her key didn't fit the new lock when she got home. i was inclined to tell her that i had changed the locks and was withholding sexual favors until she agreed to name the kid after my greek uncle Testocles (if it's a girl: Chlamydia). but i don't have a greek uncle and her sense of humor would probably have been tempered by her daily after-work need to regurgitate.

so you see, dear readers, that i am no atticus finch. i shall be scheduling my vasectomy for some time next week. snip, snip!

what are YOU thankful for?

it seems that mr nice guy has lost a little momentum here with the old interweb diaryblog cybernet. he apologizes, you see, he has a life. (HA! that was quite possibly the funniest thing i have written yet.)

so. actually. mr nice guy was contemplating all the things for which he has to be thankful this year. you see there comes a time in every man's life when he is an expectant father and he has read enough updike to know that it is futile to rage against his lot in life so he might as well pour himself a heaping glass of shiraz and appreciate the finer things. here, then, is mr nice guy's list of things he is thankful for:

1. he is thankful you didn't point out that he just dangled his participle
2. heaping glasses of shiraz
3. the fact that his employer actually forced him to take a day off from work. sure, i have to be in on wednesday AND friday AND saturday. but it is with great reluctance that i take even thursday off
4. that i have a beautiful wife who has so far survived nearly 4 months of agonizing pregnancy
5. that i have survived nearly 4 months my beautiful wife's agonizing pregnancy
6. cabernet
7. my one-eyed cat who has no depth perception and makes me laugh every time she tries to jump on the bed but misses because she has no depth perception
8. all 3 of mr nice guy's readers (not including mater nice guy, who is a given but shouldn't be)
9. malbec
10. netflix (specifically: the entire CANNONBALL RUN oeuvre, especially the distinguished work of jack elam)
11. grenache
12. the greatest invention of all time--trumping even penicillin, the wheel and breakdancing--by which, of course, i mean the ipod. sweet merciful moses is ipod the greatest thing ever or what?
13. cockfights
14. the fact that an old friend of mine just used the AOL instachat protocol to tell me that "at this moment, everybody has somebody that doesn't live at their house passed out at their house." mr nice guy is at once thankful that this does not describe his life BUT that at least it is still prone to happen somewhere in this world
15. old-timey murder ballads in 3/4 time
16. that he has all his fingers and toes and they all work and he can only hope for the same to be true of the wee little monster growing in his wife at this precise horrifying moment
17. i am going to go out on a limb here and say zinfandel

that's it, i am chronically out of juice (and for that matter, chronically out of chronic). good night.

a rose by any other name ...

note to self: if we have a boy, it might not have a great sense of humor about being named dick blow.

if it's a girl, though, since aquanetta is already too common, we've already decided that we're definitely naming her prell.


now don't you go gittin' above yer raisin', missy prell!


UPDATE: oh shit! prell is more common than aquanetta. back to the drawing board.

what mr nice guy is mocking reading

should we be worried, people?

mrs nice guy has been receving gifts from her (VERY GENEROUS) friends now that everyone knows that three months ago 300 some-odd-million of my fantasically buoyant swimmer-sperm navigated her uterine straits, selecting the strongest gonad-ambassador to seduce her unsuspecting egg (man, those were the days). now that they know we're she's preggo, mostly people seem to think we should be reading. and here's what we should be reading:

• the unofficial guide to having a baby ("more than the official line")

this is a good book. but here's my concern: it is a book that professes to tell you what doctors aren't telling you, and it is co-written BY A DOCTOR. what the fuck? ladies, if you ever find yourself in the waiting room of one dr. john sussman, flee like the french! apparently he's not going to tell you everything you need to know. why should he? he's saving it all for his next best-selling help book. the dude probably forces his patients to read "the unofficial guide" like that college professor mr nice guy once had who assigned his own treatise on the key battles of the peloponnesian war. why aren't doctors telling us everything? what's with the scare tactics? help!

• the girlfriend's guide to pregnancy (gets extra bonus points for having been penned by jimmy iovine's trophy wife)

ok, maybe she's not a trophy wife, what with that whole law degree and everything, but vicki is a former playboy playmate. which means she would very likely get naked for mr nice guy because isn't that what former playmates are supposed to do? also she has four, to judge by the jacket photo, severely maladjusted hell-children. so, fine, she handles the pregnancy well, but maybe not what comes next, you know, that whole rasing-kids-thing. but did we mention she is a former playmate?

mr nice guy responds to popular reactions to his having knocked up mrs nice guy

mr nice guy is not naive. and yet (and yet!) he cannot help but stammer when friends, acquaintances and other flotsam that float through the eddies of his life come up to him and ask "were you guys trying?" i mean, COME ON PEOPLE, mr nice guy managed to exist 30 years on this earth without knocking anyone up (accidentally) so he'll answer in the form of a question: WHY'S HE GONNA START NOW? you think he hasn't been around the block? you think he doesn't know the ropes? you think he hasn't attended the weekend sleepover orientation? what? mr nice guy has a pretty reliable track record of keeping the ladies satisfied AND out of paternity court.

anyway. YES. this was planned.

also. here's another thing: at the ripe old age of 30 mr nice guy knows he's going to be a "young" parent. if by "young" you mean "not-a-78-year-old-first-time-parent-in-new-york-city-which-is-of-course-the-standard-by-which-all-things-must-be-judged-with-the-exception-that-in-the-grand-scheme-of-like-the-rest-of-human-history-IT'S-NOT-ACTUALLY-THAT-YOUNG-in fact-i believe-in-1482-at-30-years-old-i-would-have-already-been-a-great-grandfather-and-probably-holy-roman-emperor-grand-wizard-oldest-man-alive," then, yes, i might grant you that i am a young first-time father. (gold star goes to you if you manage to decipher that hyphenated sentence, because i can't.)

anyway, for every single hipster who tells me "whoa, yer havin' a kid, dude. there but for the grace of god -- and condoms -- go i," i have this to say: how come no one ever says "whoa, a kid! fun!"???

dude! granted i am operating without any deep empirical knowledge, but ...

• kids are fucking FUN. kids rock.
• having a kid is like having a pet THAT TALKS.
• having a kid is like having a free indentured servant to do your every bidding EXCEPT THAT IT'S SOCIETALLY KOSHER to compel them to wax the floors and fetch you beer and, like, change the channel.
• come on, franz ferdinand! having kids is endlessly hilarious (especially if someone else is, like, changing diapers and teaching them morals, which is why i chose the wife i did: she's totally into doing that alone!). they say the darndest things!
• having a kid is like having that crazy drunk aunt over for lunch ... for EIGHTEEN SOLID YEARS!

in conclusion, cool guy, having a kid is better than hanging out with you.

mr nice guy can be petty, too

mr nice guy is a lazy guy. he does things the old fashioned way. he is not so industrious. he, you know, goes with the, like, flow. correspondingly, he doesn't quite get this story of the 56-year-old woman who had twins the other day. some choice quotes:

"A lot of people may think I am selfish or crazy or whatever," said [Aleta] St. James, who entered the news conference in a wheelchair dressed in a pink bathrobe.

"Well, I'm a little bit crazy," said the motivational speaker. "I've never lived in the box. I just say if you have a dream, if you put your mind to it and don't listen to other people's negativity, you can really do incredible things."

first of all: AWESOME. who on earth has a mother who actually admits to being both crazy AND selfish? that's like a trifecta (except for the fact it's just two things and not, you know, three). it just doesn't happen. and you know what else? it's sexy. smokin'.

also. this:

She had endured three years' and $25,000 worth of in-vitro fertilization treatments before the dual miracle.

The father, an unnamed ex-boyfriend of St. James', agreed to donate his sperm but will have no part in the twins' upbringing. She has seen only a brief profile of the woman who donated the eggs.

dearest aleta, hadn't you heard? the prolific mr nice guy offers his services for FREE! a quarter large? sweet honey bee, that's much too much! plus, i also promise to have no role in the upbringing! at most, mr nice guy would settle for a simple c-note when it comes time for litter numero dos. you want references? call mrs nice guy; she can be reached at 1-800-SATISFIED-CUSTOMER. and. sorry to break the news, but "in-vitro fertilization" sort of negates that whole "miracle" claim.

also. did you happen to do the FUCKING MATH? when (ok, if) your little twins graduate college at, say, the advanced age of 22, you will be 193 years old! i mean, do the math! does this not even warrant a pause (or, at least, a menopause)? mr nice guy is no puritan, but as someone bringing precious new life into this world, all he has to say is ... with a mom like you, i hope you realize those twins are going to be fun to party with. what rhymes with shot? HOT, that's what!

oh, and guess what else, aleta. the ante was just kicked up a fucking notch!

pregnancy, 16 frothy ounces at a time

ok, so you want to see the belly at 12 weeks? i'll show you the goddamn belly at 12 weeks. here:


at least i get a seat on the subway

i just don't need to hear about it. i ... i'm feeling a little sensitive about the weight we've put on, ok? mr nice guy is losing his girlish figure, true, but what do you expect from a fellow when he's drinking eating for three? damn sure mrs nice guy ain't keeping anything down. so it falls to me to pack on the pounds, dig? it's a struggle, but you know what? when little baby labatts is born it'll be all worthwhile.

what's that? oh. if it's a girl we're naming her stella. stella artois.

till the breaka dawn!

and so as part of the whole end-of-first-trimester ritual mrs nice guy and i returned to the OBGYN to have a little more love practiced upon us. herr doktor was, blissfully, actually a little alarmed that mrs nice guy has a touch of the hyperemesis gravidarum. but this being the end of the first trimester, her expert opinion was consigned to "you'll feel much better this week; i just know it." for this they give out medical degrees?

so we heard the tiny freak's heartbeat today. the doc greased up mrs nice guy's belly, stuck a little mic up to it and the baby's heart went whooshwhooshwhoosh. as mrs nice guy and i held hands, gazing into each other's eyes, we did not speak, so profoundly were we moved. still, i know we were both thinking exactly the same thing: "god DAMN that kid's laying down one sweaty-ass groove. UNH!" we're talking clyde stubblefield here, peoples. that fetus is so deep in the pocket, it needs a passport to make change. i swear, mrs nice guy even busted a little free-style lyrical smackdown on our whack OB. and ya don't stop!

actually, to tell the truth, if you really want to know what the beat sounded like, mr nice guy would describe it thusly: the heartbeat was not quite that typical lubdub techno beat sound. no. it sounded, actually, more like a--how shall i put this?--dishwasher. not just any dishwasher, mind you. we're talking an asko D3530 (with stainless steel interior and hidden controls) kickin' it live on the pots'n'pans cycle. BOOM! or i should say wickywhooshwhoosh! ... someone get me some fred wesley up in this muthafucka! damn!

a nice day for a white black tie wedding

oh man. we went to a black tie wedding last night. sweet mamapants -- mrs nice guy actually made it out of the house, the poor thing, and to boot put on a shmancy skirt and a tight tee and said "my grapefruterus is sticking out." bless.

anyway. this was a momentus occasion: mrs nice guy got to wear a maneater outfit that she has had, and barely worn, for nigh on four years. this being a very explicitly black tie affair, mr nice guy had to RENT A TUX -- that was two sizes too big ("um, i am pretty sure i wear a 42." "no, ju have beeg shoulders. ju vear 44." "fine."). mr nice guy was all emotions at once: he was livid to be paying $140 for a penguin suit ... only to later learn that the GROOM HIMSELF wore no tux; he was all teary-bleary eyed at going to a sweet november wedding; and he was dismayed to think about all the terrible, terrible things that had happened inside his by-the-hour tuxedo on prior occasions. (shudder.) just imagine some slightly-beefier-than-mr-nice-guy teen on his prom night excreting all kinds of horrifying bodily fluids into his rented polyester only to return it on the morrow and have l'il-old-moi wear it next. blueghagh. so, for preemptive good measure, mr nice guy added his own special sauce to the pantmix before he even put the thing on. [i am not entirely sure what that means, but it's funny so i am leaving it there -- ed.].

the ceremony was lovely and i even convinced mrs nice guy to meander onto the dance floor for a ginger spin to the tender strains of the "lido shuffle." actually, my memory is a little hangover-hazy and is not convinced that was the exact song we shimmied to, BUT the wedding singer frontman did have a sweet yamaha keyboard/guitar thing swung over his shoulder and a madonna mic on his ear and he was strolling from table to table serenading everyone with the splashy strains of "give me the night," which was, in a word, AWESOME.

mr nice guy's beady little eyes welled up with pride and love to see his bride so publicly on display -- it was her first time in mixed company since everyone had officially learned of her "condition." and with the softest, sweetest part of his little heart mr nice guy took her home early. in the cab, while his bride took a mid-barf catnap, mr nice guy imagined to himself the bride and groom of this new wedding, huddled together in their newlywed home several months hence -- she still in her wedding gown, he still in his not-tux. she is on the bathroom floor puking the bitterest of her liver-bile. saltless tears dry in her very ducts. the tux-free groom is intermittently holding her hair back and wondering when the next flight to cabo leaves. the new wife pauses and wipes the corner of her mouth. she looks, sweetly, up at her husband and spits through her vomit-stained teeth: YOU DID THIS TO ME WITH YOUR TINY PRICK, YOU SON OF A BITCH!

and it almost makes the rental fee all worthwhile. almost.

mmm, grapefruterus

so here we are, rapidly approaching the end of the first trimester. round one clearly goes to our demon baby, but there are two more to go ... and we have steely resolve on our side, kid.

this is what the tiny guppy should look like, if all is going according to god's evil designs, right now:


you'll never have it better than this, kid

wouldja just look at that adorable thing. mr nice guy has only one thing to say about this precious sweetness: please don't piss off the vengeful alien freak monster baby living inside my wife, it might rise up and kill us all.

ok, the "facts": "this month your uterus is a little bigger than a grapefruit ... your baby is a fetus now ... it is about the size of an apple" (from: what to expect, p.155). i don't know about you, but mr nice guy is suddenly hungry. garcon! let's have a plate of aged sharp cheddar, a glass of chilled dry riesling and some sliced applebaby. basta! and don't for get to peel the grapefruterus.

also this: "baby is making urine now, and excreting it in the amniotic fluid." ok, so there goes the appetite. let's cancel that order of appplebaby and ... give it a stern talking-to. first of all: ew. no peepee in mama, ok? bad baby! second of all, when you are born i am afraid you're grounded. straight to your room and no tv for a week. i must admit, we're not mad at you. but we are a little disappointed.

finally this: "the head -- which sits on a neck now instead of flat on the shoulders [ew again -- ed.] -- is still disproportionately large, taking up half of baby's crown-to-rump length [crown-to-rump? is this a baby or a horse? --ed.] ... the fetus's eyes are moving closer together and its ears are positioning themselves on the sides of the head -- making it look more human."

ok, what the fuck? remember that sweet 80s show manimal? of course you do! remember when jonathan chase would turn into a hawk or a dingo or whatever and his face would contort in pain and his lips would stretch and his eyes go all beady and move closer together and then -- blammo -- he's a crime-fighting turkey? remember? well, that's what's happening inside my wife. i don't like it.

mr nice guy's conclusion about pregnancy as we near the end of the first trimester

it's actually really fucking boring. wake me up in six months when the fun begins.

the most important question of our time

mr. nice guy is a little heartbroken today, and probably not for whatever twisted reason you might have reached for. he has put the election behind him and will go on probing the important facts of life, just as he would have if gordon fucking shumway were elected president. (mrs nice guy, however, has disappeared. will she ever return?)

no. the reason for my heartbreak is thus: i had grand plans for this particular post. it was to be mr nice guy's great reach-across-the-aisle gesture. he was going to unite this troubled land through music. he had planned to post two beautiful, quasi-rare songs (instead, you'll have to settle for 30-second clips): one for the republicans, one for the democrats, and through the INELUCTABLE HEALING CHURN OF THE FUNK, unite them all.

alas. i am a luddite and i cannot figure out how to post mp3s (or 4s or 32s) on this consarned site. but. in the end, that's your loss. not mine. the deepest grooves, as you may know, cut past the ears and straight to the bone, no matter who you think you are. it's just too bad that your ears, gentle monkeys, will not be made love to in the way only mr nice guy would have done it here today ...

instead. in the spirit of this week, i wish to ponder the most deeply divisive question of our times (after this one: it is my tiny humble opinion that "tastes great" is for the red staters, whereas "less filling" is more of a blue state meme). but. the question i wish to spend the rest of the evening answering, you cannot help me on. by going unanswered, it risks tearing the very stitches from the fabric of our civil life. in coming to a happy conclusion here, i believe we can all look to the future with hope and optimism. the question? it is thus, and only through hours of nice guy research will a workable detante be attained:

scotch? or irish whiskey?

on second thought (formerly: do not read this)

well, there you have it. the people have spoken.

mr nice guy is disinclined to get all political on your ass, but he will say this: the system works. it is a marvelous thing -- the people vote and the people choose a new president and no matter how divided the country is, the losing half accepts the results. there is no bloodshed. there are no riots. sure, democracy is not without its blemishes, but i challenge you to name a better system of government.

ahem.

oh. a post-script: mrs nice guy informs me that she is going to have an abortion while she still can. you know, for old time's sake. also. apparently we're moving to french canada. who am i to blow against the wind (marital, political or otherwise)?

why aren't you voting?

here are ten nice-guy reasons to vote. don't tell me who you are voting for -- i don't care! -- just fucking do it. christ!

< /preaching >

UPDATE: mr nice guy knows there are only eight fingers in that photo. it's a fucking metaphor, people! jesus!

UPDATE the second: no, that is not our actual guppy. the nice guys don't have that kind of (intrusive) technology at the estates.

ALSO: this is funny.

bag - cat = good times

and so the proverbial cat is out of its proverbial pillowcase (mr nice guy was growing weary of swinging the cat in said pillow case helicopter-style over his head. his arm is sore. it was time to let the feline free). the people have been told; mrs. nice guy is out of the closet.

a few reactions so far:

great-auntie-nice guy, 87, pater nice guy's late mother's much beloved spunky sister: "she throwing up? good! if she's sick, it'll stick." (quick find me some wood, i needs to knock. also, who knew we were related to johnny cochrane?)

mr. nice guy's raffish friend: "make sure, when she goes into labor, that you have a flask of booze ready to go. trust me, you'll need it. she doesn't need to know. get vodka, something that doesn't leave a trace on your breath when you drink it straight. you'll need it." (funny, i am drunk right now)

another caddish confederate: "make sure mrs. nice guy's bowels are good and empty before she goes to the hospital, because believe me, when she gets on that table, everything that's inside her is gonna come flying out. and no one needs that." [gah! -- ed.]

this from a rake: "nice to know you had it in you. or mrs. nice guy. whatever. great news."

along similar lines: "good to hear your boys work."

some schmuck: "did you use levitra?" [mr. nice guy has actaully always found the product name "levitra" highly amusing. like it makes your cock magically levitate or something. which i guess it does. so it's aptly named. never mind. --ed.]

and so on.

mr nice guy, shameless mama's boy that he is, also recently made the probably misguided move of telling his beloved mater about this little web endeavor. all part of the effort to boost mr nice guy readership above three people. her reaction: "i don't wear knickers. i wear a thong."

this goes some distance towards explaining why mr nice guy is the way he is.