Okay! So it's time to sort through the many qualified applicants and select a few people to become Tossed My Salad Dancers. When I threw out that dancer remark, I expected maybe three or four "applicants." Instead there were eleven, thirteen if you count Scarlet Tongue requesting she be named drunken equipment manager and Motherdear requesting she be named den mother/riding crop wielding overseer.

Since Scarlet and MD were the only ones who requested special posts, I say we just give them what they asked for. Any thoughts?

From the other twelve applicants, I think a team of five would be good. I'll let everyone else choose four of them, two female and two male, and I'll choose the fifth.

Please review my notes on each applicant's qualifications and then you can leave your choices in the comments. (Yes, you can vote for yourself.)
 

Ladies:

Lulu - Pros: has Indian name (Drinks With Lesbians), has pointy bronze nipples, slept with my softball team on her wedding day. Cons: Blames tequila for almost everything, titles posts with obscure song lyrics that always send me Googling, slept with my softball team on her wedding day.

She Hulk - Pros: has an impressive wardrobe of fishnet apparel, has excellent Indian headwear, will smash our enemies. Cons: green skin limits wardrobe choices, occasionally gets nailed by aliens, may smash us accidentally.

Duff - Pros: already has a legion of dedicated radio fans, leaves excellent dirty comments, will work for cheese sauce. Cons: creepy radio fans may follow her here, will constantly snap photos of a gnome, will probably ride a cow to work.

Jazz - Pros: can provide her own brulee torch, has world famous profile boobs, can keep pace with Marriedman. Cons: thinks brulee torches are viable weapons, occasionally homeless, can keep pace with Marriedman.

Frankie - Pros: has luxuriant tiger fur, knows how to work a pole, likes Golden Grahams. Cons: flailing tiger tail may confuse other dancers, has bed bugs, thinks 311 is better than The Cure.

Sarc - Pros: can turn nouns into verbs, creates excellent blog names for people in her daily life, has legs long enough to span three zip codes. Cons: secretly hates everyone, thinks lesbians can't use Excel, has freakishly long legs.

Keeks - Pros: started stripping at age 15, excellent bird dancing skills, young enough that we can still corrupt her. Cons: likes Cherry Monroe, may show up for work hung over, naked and covered in blood, young enough that we'll still have to buy for her.
 

Gents

Pops - Pros: no aversion to spandex, has a Thunderdick, even better at blogging about nothing than I am. Cons: has a treasure trail, has no intention of seeing any movie, might actually be a bucket.

P.Eli - Pros: can riverdance, has costume ideas, platypi are cool. Cons: luscious beer gut, costume ideas all suck, might actually be a platypus.

Marriedman - Pros: has a mullet, amazingly creative, got me laid on his blog. Cons: has a mullet, disgustingly creative, had me doing a man on his blog.

Labbie - Pros: endless supply of roofies, has his own burrrrrito, not a "Lab Boy" anymore. Cons: obsessed with cake, obsessed with Star Wars, wants all the white women to himself.

So! Your thoughts?

When we left our intrepid heroes (yeah, that would be me, Girlfriend, and Sister) we were haphazardly hurling darts and fondling some cheerleader moobs. The evening was mostly downhill after that, but there were still a few things worth mentioning.

Earlier in the evening, Girlfriend and I went to a department store. When working our way through the check-out line, we were astonished at the speed of our cashier. This young man was focused, driven. He became one with his price scanner.

And he was in the bar. So we bought him a drink. Girlfriend approached the nearest bartender and notified her that we were covering his next drink. "Yeah, that's him, the young guy with shaggy dark hair."

The bartender went to tell the guy and I decided it would be a great time to ham it up. When somebody buys you a drink, you've got to look to see who, right? When he looked over to our table, I had my chin in my hand, was giving him an effeminate little wave, and had a very inviting look on my face. It was basically my best impression of a flaming homosexual trying to say "come dance with me, sailor."

The expression on the kid's face was awesome. His eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped, he leaned back a bit. His look more or less said, "holy shit!" Then he composed himself and accepted the drink anyway. This means he's either a closeted homosexual or an alcoholic. Or both.

One thing that Sister already revealed in a comment that I have yet to mention is the music. For some freakish reason, the DJ (who is normally pretty hip) was playing old music. A few times it was kind of cool. After all, I haven't heard Mountain in years and I kind of enjoyed hearing it again. The rest of the time it was completely and totally not cool. I could have probably gone the rest of my life without again hearing Dexy's Midnight Runners. ("Too-rah, loo-rah, aaaayyyy!") Ugh.

The swingers didn't seem to let this bother them. I don't think it mattered what the DJ played, they were going to use that music for a little dancefloor foreplay. I suspect Sister will be describing those scenes to a therapist at some point in time.

"SSLLLUUUUTTTSSS!" Sister said. Repeatedly.

The bad music and unattractive scenery kind of put us all in a down sort of mood. I'm not sure there was any way to salvage the evening, but we soldiered on anyway. We passed some time playing with that evil, evil quarter machine.

I don't know how to describe this thing, but I know you've seen one like it. It's got a shelf filled with quarters and a steel pusher that moves back and forth. You drop your quarter in and try to land it in exactly the right spot to push quarters off the edge.

That damn thing is worse than a casino. It seems so easy. I looked at it and said, "Oooh, look… there's four dollars in quarters hanging on by a millimeter. One single quarter is all I need. I can do this."

That machine lies. It's evil… evil I tell you! One quarter turned into two which turned into twenty. I got a few quarters back, but naturally pumped them right back into the machine. So in the end I walked away with nothing. I swear, that damn machine started laughing at me.

When I was finally able to tear myself away with The Kid's college fund intact (current balance: $11), we settled on the much more pleasant Boobie Hunter. I was a little disappointed to learn that Girlfriend is also a much better boobie hunter than me. This seems to be a trend. With the possible exception of my mother, all the women in my life are better boobie hunters than me. And I've been practicing for decades.

We finished Boobie Hunter and naturally found that our table had been stolen the minute we left it. "To hell with it," we thought. "Let's just leave."

You may recall that Sister was carless that night, so we dropped her off. However, she requested not that we take her home, but rather that we take her to a nearby guy friend's apartment. (Nice setup, eh, sis? Run with that however you like.)

We then went through an all night drive-thru to satisfy Girlfriend's hamburger craving, and then went home to satisfy her… uh, other craving.

Seven hours later we finally went to sleep. Wait, that came out wrong. Seven hours later we woke up from sleep. Yeah, that's what I meant to say.

Sunday turned out to be perfectly ordinary, and just as boring as I prefer my Sundays to be. Breakfast was the only noteworthy event of the entire day. We picked up The Kid and went to local restaurant for some omelettes. We kind of ended up having breakfast with the swingers. Kind of. Sort of.

At the table next to us were the chubby cowgirl and her cowboy companion, Alice Cooper's dad, and his companion, whose costume intentions were never determined. (I'm a mouse! Duh!) I can only assume that their presence as a foursome the morning after means that the swingers did in fact swing. Nice.

For reference, none of them looked any better in the daylight. I still wouldn't nail them with Jenna's dick.

"I, uhh, bought you a book."

"You bought that for me?"

"Yeah. Can I buy you a coffee to go along with it?"

She smiled. "Yeah. I'd like that."

The big centerpiece of the weekend, as it usually is, was Saturday. Nearly the entire day was spent waiting for night. Girlfriend and I were taking Sister out drinking for her birthday. And that's really all that happened Saturday, so I'll just jump right into that.

I took The Kid to Girlfriend's sister's house to spend the night (wink, wink) and we went to pick up Sister at her place. The three of us arrived at our favorite watering hole around 10.

That early in the night, the place is pretty slow. We got our drinks and decided to play pool while the tables weren't crowded with people who actually have some skill at the game. See, we like to play pool, but we all really suck at it.

I was sticking a few quarters into the table when I noticed a pal of mine walking in. Lazy Roomie saw me and wandered over to join our game. He was looking his usual "needs a bath and a shave" self that night.

The four of us stayed in our corner for a bit, comically chasing billiard balls around and doing some heavy duty people watching. And Sweet Fancy Moses, there were some people to watch. Apparently the bar was hosting some kind of impromptu costume party. None of the employees knew what the deal was with that, so it was not something actually arranged by the bar.

Just a private gathering of people in costumes, I guess. Within earshot, someone asked the chubby cowgirl about the costumes. Chubby cowgirl responded that it was the Halloween party for a local swingers club.

A swingers club? Rock out with your cock out. That's the coolest thing I've heard in, uhh… well, since the last really cool thing I heard. The swingers looked nothing like I would have expected. I expected that for the most part they would be attractive enough that complete strangers might actually want to have sex with them.

This was not the case. Most of them were so ugly, I wouldn't nail them with a stolen dick.

But their costume selections were pretty entertaining. There was a woman wearing a black sack-style dress adorned with two very large felt electrical outlets, one over the groin and one over the chest. Her companion was wearing black jeans, a black t-shirt, and a homemade foam contraption that looked like a cross between a diaper and an electrical plug.

There was a woman wearing a very cool half angel/half devil costume. Sister and I both lusted after her excellent angel wings.

There was a French maid, a cowboy, a witch, a guy wearing white robes and a mask that made him look like Alice Cooper's dad (when he took the mask off, he still looked like Alice Cooper's dad), a wizard, a younger man wearing women's SpongeBob pajamas, and an assortment of people whose costume intentions could not be discerned but whom Sister so eloquently described as "SSLLLUUUUTTTSSS!" (You've got to say it just like that, she says.)

Fairly early in the evening we abandoned the pool table and camped out next to the dart board near the bar. We can actually play darts. We still suck at it, but not as obviously. Besides, right by the dart board is a great spot to people watch.

And people watch we did. Unusually for us, we hardly sounded the Hootchie Alarm at all. Sister made up for this shortcoming by saying SSLLLUUUUTTTSSS! every few minutes.

Anyway, while we were playing darts is when I got my little bit of action. The cheerleader was standing near the bar right next to the scratch line taped on the floor. While making my way to the line, I was overwhelmed with a desire to get some of those boobies.

I was thinking to myself, "This cheerleader is tall, thin, leggy, reasonably attractive, long blonde hair, short skirt, pert boobies. So what if he's actually a man?"

So I just reached out and gave him a friendly little squeeze. For reference, Nerf boobies are not very satisfying. I violated a man in drag, and it wasn't even very much fun. And it turns out that he's surprisingly modest for a swinger. He looked shocked and genuinely offended. The cheerleader's companions, however, thought this was the most deliciously entertaining thing they'd ever seen, judging by their laughter.

I got to second base with a cheerleader.

Chew on that a little while I'm writing the rest of it.

Been a while since I prattled endlessly about an entire weekend, hasn't it? I think it's about time to do that again.

Last week Sister had some vehicular difficulty. Something about a blown transmission on the freeway. It kind of ruined her day. Several days, even. And she had on her work schedule a shift at another office fifty kilometers away. So Friday I stepped up to the plate and took her back and forth to work.

At the end of work on Friday, I stopped by my house to pick up Girlfriend and The Kid and we made our way north to the bustling urban metropolis of Chicken Creek. Considering it was Sister's birthday weekend, we took her out for pizza on the way home.

Every time I visit Chicken Creek (Sister picked this name, not me… I'm just sticking with the theme), I drive past a certain pizza restaurant. Until last Friday, I'd never stopped. Part of me wishes I still hadn't stopped.

The pizza was pretty good, but the service sucked, the prices were too high, and the atmosphere was… very Canadian. (To my few Canadian readers: not that that's a bad thing.)

This place, Armando's Pizza, is the most northern looking restaurant I've been in. Ever. Even restaurants in Ontario don't feel as northern as this one did. Everything in this place is some shade of brown. Everything that could possibly be made of wood, was. To be fair, it's highly polished and lovingly maintained, but still. I shudder to think of the number of trees who gave their lives to cover every surface in the joint with a layer of shellacked pine.

Those few things that weren't wood were either stone or covered in a reddish sort of carpet that just screamed "roller rink snackbar." In fact, large portions of the place spoke of roller rinks, in voices of varying volume. Sometimes retro can be pretty cool, though. I must confess that I spent a dollar on the old Tron arcade machine in the corner. And I had a damn good time with it, too.

After wasting a little time and a little money on the arcade machines we dropped Sister off at her place and scurried home so I could see our new additions: two new cats. Specifically, two adult female spayed and declawed cats. Girlfriend's pal Tinkerbell is moving away shortly and she won't be able to take her two cats with her.

So, gleefully, we inherited them. Tink stopped by while I was still at work, so the cats were busy getting settled in while we were out. As soon as we all got home, we sat down to play and pick out new names. Apparently Tink had named them Kit and Maude.

Wow, do those names suck. The new names we chose are Mittens and Bubbles. Together they will probably be referred to as The FishieKitties.

Which reminds me of something else I've been thinking about lately. Why don't I have a small team of Tossed My Salad Dancers? That would be cool.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it's the blog you hate to love and love to hate, it's Tossed My Salad! With our host, moderator, and village idiot The Fish! And introducing the Tossed My Salad Dancers!"

I need dancers. Need them. You can paste your resume into the comments.

Update: I can't believe I forgot this part. While we were eating our pizza, The Kid tried to show us something he learned in school. His kindergarten teacher has been teaching them some sign language and he tried to show me and Auntie Sister what he'd learned that day. He started by crossing his hands on his chest, then he moved his left hand to his hip. He finished off with a two-handed gesture that looked like he was pantomiming an airplane taking off.

I don't remember what this set of hand signals means. I was too busy laughing my ass off because he looked like he was trying to get me to steal second base.