My grandpa is recovering.

We know this because he is causing more and more trouble at the hospital every day. And, just to show you how absolutely insane my whole family is, let me relate to you the exchange that took place between my grandpa and his night nurse, a pretty woman with spiky hair, the first time he met her.

Grandpa: “Wow! You must have been really hungry.”
Nurse: “What do you mean?”
Grandpa: “Well, I’ve been hungry before but I’ve never been tempted to try to eat a firecracker.”
Nurse: “Are you making fun of my hair?”
Grandpa: “Smart girl. So, when can I get something good to eat?”
Nurse: “With that attitude, maybe never.”
Grandpa: “I don’t like you anymore. Can I leave?”
Nurse: “No. You have to stay a few more days.”
Grandpa: “But I want to go home.”
Nurse: “I’m sorry.”
Grandpa: “You’re a liar.”
Nurse: “Yes, I am.”
Grandpa: “Go suck another lightswitch.”

We couldn’t stop laughing for hours.

I thought he was brilliant.

For those of you who don’t know yet, Steve Irwin – The Crocodile Hunter, died over the weekend when a stingray stabbed him through the heart with its poisonous, barbed tail. According to the investigators Steve wasn’t doing anything to antagonize the stingray, which is weird because I’ve swam with stingrays myself and even though there was a large group of humans taking their picture and touching them as they swam by they never seemed to be upset enough to stab someone through the heart. But then again, the investigators have the actual footage that was being shot that day which shows the whole gruesome thing, so I guess they would know.

I wonder if Steve said “Danger, danger!” before he got stabbed.

I remember the first time I ever saw him on TV. He was slogging through the mud somewhere in the middle of Australia looking for a monster croc that he needed to capture and relocate further away from a small town. His over-the-top Australianishness made me burst out laughing almost immediately and when he did finally find the croc I began screaming at the TV for him to run the heck away!

The thing was fricking HUGE!

But to my utter amazement, armed with nothing more than a sturdy rope and a bath towel, Steve not only captured the croc, he did it without getting hurt in the slightest. From that moment on I was a fan and since then I’ve watched almost everything he’s done. And yes, that even includes his stupendously bad movie, Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course.

Ew. Just thinking about that movie makes me want to puke.

I’ve watched in amazement as Steve would pick up some of the most poisonous snakes in the world with no protection but a pair of cheap sunglasses. I saw the time a giant croc attacked and destroyed Steve’s lawnmower while Steve was trying to mow the grass in its pen at Steve’s Australian zoo. I’ve watched Steve save some crocs and other animals from mistreatment, and ultimately death, at a horrible, horrible Philippine zoo. I’ve seen him swim with sharks, hold a scorpion in his hands and even wave his tiny newborn baby over a crocs head and every time I held my breath thinking that this time he would go too far. That this was the moment he would get hurt or maimed or even die.

But he always proved me wrong.

Steve never really pushed too far; he tried not to ever antagonized or deliberately upset an animal. And, after watching his shows for a little while, I began to understand that his overacting was what made everything he was doing seem so dangerous, and not the animals. It was him and his crew that were in control of the situation and any time they felt it was getting out of control, or that the animals were becoming annoyed, they simply backed off and left the animals alone. Which makes it even more amazingly sad to me that it wasn’t a giant croc, or a poisonous snake, or even a shark that finally did Steve in, it was just a pissed off stingray with really good aim.

I really thought Steve would wind up croc food one day. Go figure.

Anywaste, Steve was a good man who made learning about animals really fun and exciting for me and for that I salute him. Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie! Oi, oi, oi!

Crikey, I’m going to miss him.

I know I’m going to regret this in the morning.

Click here to see my first ever attempt at doing stand up comedy in front of strangers. Now, just so that you’re properly warned, the material I used for my stand up routine was racier than most of what I write here on the site. That’s not to say it’s full of curse words or anything, but it might not be safe for some office environments. Also, I apologize in advance for the crappy clip. The quality of the video I recieved was slightly below “amazingly blown out” and the audio was so bad that I could barely make out some of what was said, but I did my best to clean it up before posting it. And at least you can get the general idea of what I’m doing and saying.

Which is just enough to let you know how much I suck.

Yesterday evening this site died.

I had nothing to do with the demise of TMG and to say I was surprised by my website’s death just doesn’t quite capture what I felt when I visited here and saw over 9 months of my online life was missing. Even worse was that only a few hours later, the entire site disappeared and there was nothing here but a 404 Error page.

Boy, was I ever surprised by that!

After 24 hours of frantic emails to my web host provider the problem seems to have been fixed which is good, but what isn’t good is that it even happened in the first place. And the real kicker? All of this happened two days after my stupid post about quitting!

Now don’t I feel stupid?

Anywaste, everything seems to be alright now, but because of this whole mess I think I’ll try a different host for a new site I’m thinking of creating. You know, just in case. And I also think I’ll post the little note I was going to leave here when all this drama began yesterday, just so I’ll remember exactly how I felt when I believed 9 months of my online life were erased by mistake.

I’m very angry.

Right now my website has reverted back to a version of itself from over 9 months ago and I don’t know why. Somehow, without my permission or knowledge, my web hosting provider decided to do something to my site and now I may have permanently lost almost a year’s worth of posts, pictures and updates. All that work and now it’s just gone. Poof. Just like that. Even worse, they haven’t answered my emailed inquiries in over 6 hours and, like most web-based services, they don’t have a contact phone number.

Which leaves me with nothing to do but wait.

There’s no real point to this post except to let all of you know that I haven’t voluntarily disappeared and if I don’t post for a while it won’t be because I don’t want to, but more likely it’ll be because I can’t. If these guys, who I have to say have been great to me for the last 5 years, have actually screwed me by erasing over 9 months of my internet life then I am going to be looking for, and moving to, a new provider which may take me a while. If they can somehow retrieve the lost files and get me back to where I was yesterday before this glitch then I’ll be back much sooner, although I might still want a new host when my current contract runs out. For now though, I’m so pissed off I could scream.

Screw that. I think I will scream. AAAAARRRGGHHH!!!

So, anyone know of a good web host provider they’d like to recommend?