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To really understand the process of raising children you need to start out with the birds and the bees.  First off, it isn’t totally necessary to dress up as wild animals to conceive a child– that is more of an issue of personal preferences.  In fact, a recent study concluded that a majority of Americans prefer to emulate their favorite masked Mexican wrestling superstars during sex.  Some people have even been known to enjoy it without any identity-altering clothing whatsoever.

A good first step is to find a partner.  Having them be more or less the opposite sex is a good start, but not a strict requirement.  Anyone who has seen “Junior” starring Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarzenegger knows the difficulties of same sex pregnancies.

The next step, ideally, is to build a relationship with your partner.  If time permits, spend some time with this person.  Get to know their likes and dislikes.  Communication is a key aspect to any healthy relationship.  (Keys to an unhealthy relationship:  beheading partners for producing incorrect gender offspring, initiating land wars in Asia, and, of course, an irrational desire to use the metric system.)

Cultural differences also need to be taken into consideration.  For example, most people understand the concept of monogamy, but in several South American countries a common variation is “I won’t sleep with anyone else, unless they have the same first name or hair style as my partner.”  And in Sweden it is perfectly acceptable to be intimate with anyone you meet when entering the incorrect gender’s bathroom of an Ikea store.  If your partner’s culture is significantly different than your own, make sure to take time to learn as much as possible just in case you need to mock them for several hours at local drinking establishment after a heated fight about her religious beliefs barring certain types of ice cream from being consumed in the house on days of the month divisible by seven.

The Learning Channel began airing the second season of “Toddlers & Tiaras” which documents young girls in highly competitive beauty contests.  “Finally, a show that caters to our unique demographic!” proclaimed all the pedophiles.

Telecommunication giant AT&T recently announced plans to drop sponsorship of Tiger Woods due to his indefinite break from professional golf and infidelity issues.  AT&T has also recently stopped selling certain phones in New York City for unknown reasons.  This has led Tiger and NYC to become friends on facebook and send each other messages about how AT&T is little more than a no-talent ass clown and they could both do better.

Hello, and welcome to my 2009 Christmas Letter. For anyone reading this in the future (from when I wrote this), I’ll provide some historical context to help fully appreciate this letter. For anyone reading this while I’m writing this, please stop spying on me. I know how the industry works– radio transmitters in dental cavities, spy satellites tracking my movements from overhead in real time, and, of course, who can forget all the supposedly “free” rectal exams that are only a cover for placing global positioning devices. However, if you are still going to spy on me– even after I very kindly and clearly asked you not to– please feel free to correct any grammatical errors as I’m writing.

Now where was I? Oh, yeah, historical context. It being 2009, the hit movie of this Christmas season is the CGI filled mega-disaster “2012.” The reasoning behind this is obviously is that if the world does end in 2012 as the ancient Mayans predicted, the ticket sales for the film would really be in the crapper along with the rest of humanity if the film were to be released in 2012. The only way to prevent a grisley death would be to follow John Cusack around, since he seems to be the only one with the ability to escape the upcoming doom.

In television news, the most hyped show is the remake of the 1980’s sci-fi show “V.” The original show centered around alien “Visitors” who came to the planet with unclear motives. In a creative writing masterpiece, this time around the Visitors have acquired DNA from our 43rd President and created an army of clones to destroy our civilization. Stay tuned in early 2010 for the exciting first season finale of “W.”

OK, so back to my world. This year has been one of the most eventful times in my life. Katherine and I decided we were both ready to get married and start a family. It turns out that one of those two items requires a lot less effort than the other. (But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself for those who prefer the traditional “chronological” order of storytelling.)

After reviewing our wedding location options, we decided to get married on June 20, 2009. Most of the preparations were quite straight foward. Katherine ordered a dress and I found a nice three piece suit. I’m not sure if I ever documented this, but one of my informal “goals” in my life was to never own a suit. I made it 34 years, but I decided that I would rather buy a suit than rent another tuxedo. And who knows, maybe someday I’ll be a bigwig at UPS and need something other than company issued apperal to go to work each day. Stranger things have happened.

Next on the wedding list was to get rings. I kept my father’s wedding ring in a safety deposit box for the past ten years, and I decided to have the diamond put into a new setting for Katherine. She really likes sparkely things. That, and she found it all romantic and shit. I had my dad’s gold band resized to fit my ring finger.

We had a bunch of flowers at the wedding, but I don’t have any recollection of consulting a flowerist. Either the experience was so incredibly horrible that I’ve completely repressed the memories in the deepest recesses of my brain or Katherine took care of it all without me.

The best pre-wedding planning expericne by far was choosing a wedding cake. In fact, I would recommend to anyone who likes cake to go to a bakery that specializes in wedding cakes and pretend you are getting married. They bring you samples of all their different cakes for you to try. Just eat all the samples and tell them you will be making your decision shortly. Just remember not to go back to the same bakery more than once every few months unless you are commited to creating elaborate disguises and fake personal histories.

Before I knew it, the big moment was upon us. And by that I mean Katherine handed me a home pregnancy test that came back positive. (See, I told you I would get back to this.) These devices have come a long way in recent years– instead of a simple plus or minus, a small computer inside the handle prclaimed, using the man’s voice from AOL mail, “You’ve got a baby-mama.”

The wedding itself went off without any major problems. One of my favorite parts of the evening was the unusual table number scheme we used. It caused a lot of confusion, which is exactly what we wanted. The other highlight was getting to use the microphone during the reception. My friend Brian wanted to hear a song, so I sung the first tune that came to my mind– the “free credit report” pirate song. It went over quite well with everyone that night– my only regret was not getting it on video.

We spent one weekend in November attending a birthing class. In retrospect, I think I didn’t go into the class with the best attitude. I told Katherine that my role in the birthing process was analogous to a father crawling inside the lower cabinets on his back to fix a leaking kitchen sink when the young son comes by and asks the father how he can help. The father looks around and hands the boy a wrench to hold while the dad finishes the job. When the baby gets here my job is to stay out of the way of all the hospital employees and hold any random object that are handed to me. That, and not pass out.

December rolled around and our baby preparations kicked into high gear. Originally Katherine was due December 5th, but after the second ultrasound that date was pushed back to December 15th. Isabel Lutfey finally arrived the night of December 23 after she was forced out of her mama-juccuzzi by the modern marvel known as a C-section. The delivery took place at the Medical Center of the Rockies, and the experice was made as plesant as possible considering what had to be done. The staff in the delivery wing catered to our every need, and they even play “Brahm’s Lulaby” over the public address system when a baby is born. When someone dies, they play an entire CD of William Shatner’s spoken poetry. That was, at least, until it caused an unfortunate casscade effect of wildly premature deaths throughout the building.

We spent Christmas in the hospital and finally came home on December 26. The dog went crazy when we first arrived with our latest addition to the family, but after a few minutes he calmed down after realizing that Isabel isn’t food or toys. I suspect he plans on hovering around her innocently until she is old enough to start dropping food on to the floor. So all in all it has been quite a busy year. I suspect that this latest addition will keep my quite busy, but I am excited to learn how to be a dad.

I thought I would end this year’s letter with a quote from the best 80’s B-movie I watched this year, “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.”

Jim (played by a young and, oddly enough, funny Bill Mahr): Bunny, don’t worry! You’ll save me!

Condemned killer Kenneth Biros could become the first person in the country put to death with a single dose of an intravenous anesthetic instead of the usual — and faster-acting — process if his execution proceeds Tuesday.  This new process is believed to be more humane than the previous method of strapping the individual into a chair and forcing them to watch old episodes of “The View” until they became bored to death.

We rented “Zach and Miri Make a Porno” from Netflix this weekend.  The premise is quite simple– long time friends and roommates Zach and Miri are broke, and decide to remedy the situation by filming a porno flick.  Of course nothing really goes as planned, and things get weird between the two friends when the idea of having sex with each other and a bunch of strangers comes into play.

Overall I enjoyed the movie.  Seth Rogen who plays the main character Zach, does a great job being the slightly irresponsible but good intentioned roommate.  Elizabeth Banks play Miri, who kind of seems too sexy to have been living with Zach for the past decade.  These main characters get developed well through witty dialogue.  My biggest problem was that you could see where the plot was going every second of the film–  no major surprises.  Zach and Miri attend their high school reunion and meet a moderately successful gay porn star.  Brandon St. Randy mixes Keanu Reeves good looks, Clint Eastwood’s scratchy voice, and a dash of old fashioned compassion in perfect proportion to create his almost-but-not-quite over-the-top performance.  I kept waiting for him to appear later on in the movie, but was sorely disappointed.  Oh, I guess I should have put “spoiler alert” before that last sentence.

I don’t know exactly how this type of compensation works, but someone should be paying Jason Mewes because they really just stole the his character of Jay from several movies (Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks 2, and so on) with the Lester character.  He looked and sounded just like Jay, which really bothered me since all of the other characters seemed so original.

My favorite line of the movie was Zach telling Miri, “I don’t mean to alarm you… but I think I just jerked off Lester a little bit.”

See this movie if: you are a Seth Rogen fan and enjoy porn satire.

Don’t see this movie if: you are on a first date, want to watch a real porn movie, or want to be surprised by exciting plot twists.

And, while I’m thinking about comedy pornography, I think the best movie to see in this genre is “Orgazmo.”  Written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Orgazmo details the transformation of Joe Young from a Jahova’s witness on his first mission to taking down an organized crime ring.  A variety of jokes about Utah (Joe Young, “I’m not a superhero! I’m a Latter-Day Saint.”),  fake boobs (”My doctor says now I have enough silicone in my body to kill a small elephant! Isn’t that cool?”), and even a surprisingly insightful debate by the porn stars about who gets degraded by pornography.

The movie might have seen a wider audience if it hadn’t gotten an “NC-17″ rating.  I don’t think it is any more or less graphic as “Zach and Miri,” which received and “R” rating.  I suspect the people who rate movies just don’t like Matt Stone and Trey Parker.  I’ve read that “Team America” and “South Park: The Movie” both orginally received NC-17 ratings.  Which is interesting since one was made completely out of puppets and the other one was a cartoon.

So if you are only going to see one funny pornographic movie this summer, watch Orgazmo.  If you are going to see more than one, also check out “Zach and Miri Make a Porno.”

After finishing his State of the Union speech, the President took a moment to respond to concerns regarding the nation’s policy towards North Korea. “We can launch an attack the minute we finish building that battalion of hydrogen-powered armored vehicles.”

This is a sketch comedy group in New York. I was having a hard time picking out my favorite clip to post, but I finally decided on “The Parks Department”. The mix of music and stock footage feels a bit choppy, but it gives the video a certain charm. Also, this one showcases all of the actor’s talents. Their website at OldeEnglish.org has a complete library of their work. Other top skits to look for include “Photo Booth,” “The Door Store,” and “Pizza Delivery.”

OK– I’m going to confess something here.  I didn’t really write all these posts on April 4, 2009.  In my ongoing effort to get everything I’ve written on to my newfunny website, I imported the blog I started on my myspace page two years ago.  I apologize in advance for any problems this may cause to my loyal readers.

I’ve been a UPS driver for 3 years now– not quite long enough to get my own route.  Basically I cover other driver’s routes when they are sick or on vacation.  Some customers are rather attached to their drivers.

“You aren’t our regular/usual driver.”
“No, I’m the irregular/unusual one.”

One of the other swing drivers told me that one, and it seems to make people laugh.  And since I deliver to new people all the time, I get alot of practice. My other favorite line goes something like this:

“That’s a nice shirt/pair of shoes/lavishly decorated tierra”
“Thanks”
“They don’t let me wear anything pretty to work– its all brown, brown, brown!”

Another good aspect of my job is that I can practice the same joke on 50 different people in a day so I can get the timing and wording just right.