I am the King of all Dorks!

I was perusing my statcounter today, noting that Gino, the troglodyte, had stopped by a couple of times and not lavished praise on my wonderful bride's fake McNugget making ability, when I noticed something...

You know how statcounter tells you various things about your visitors, like the resolution they're working with, or what browser they're using? Nifty little tool, and useful for professional developers so they know if they're getting all folks with 1200 pixel wide resolution, it's not good to use pictures that only cover 800 as their background... (cough... right, Stone?... cough cough).

Anywho, I noticed that most of my visitors are using XP as an operating system. A couple of Windows 2000, a 98, a few Macs, and a windows 3.0 (that's Gino... he says "winnows 3.0 was good enough for me granpappy, issn' shore 'nuff good fer me").

And then there's someone with shiny new Windows Vista. Who might that ahead of the curve person be? Oh, yes, that's right. ME!

Me! on the spiffy new laptop I purchased yesterday. Vista, baby!

I mean, I know fvck all about how to use it, but it shore does look pretty.

And gives me an excuse to not do any work for the next couple of weeks ("Uh, I can't finish those TPS reports, Vista's acting weird again. Have Milton do it...")

Thank you, now I'm off to go figure out how the hell to get a new document in Word 2007....

Faux Food

As the boy was born around April Fool's, Wifeypooh usually brings in a treat for his class which looks like something else. A couple of years ago it was poundcake and frosting that looked like grilled cheese, sushi made from rice crispies and fruit roll-ups, and this year's entry, the cookie chicken nugget, with jelly dip:



Bon appetite!

What the #$!@#%$! time is it anyway?!?

I interrupt my ongoing education of Gino to the dangers of Global Climate Change to bitch about one of the "solutions" to climate change.

Meet Ed Markey. Ed's the congressman from the 7th Massachusetts congressional district, and proud father of the provision of the 2005 Energy Bill which has screwed up to a far-thee-well every computer clock in this once proud nation. (Apparently, this picture shows Ed discarding the Parliamentarian of the House's advice not to run, and debate, with scissors.)

Anyway, where once America was an industrial giant and leader of the free world, the last two weeks have seen our great nation humbled and humiliated, as people across the continent have missed meetings, missed trains, and been generally lost, time-wise. Our Outlook calendars are a mess; meeting requests from non-updated computers are off by an hour, and we can never figure out which way their off, so we end up making them two hours off by trying to fix them. And commuting in the dark to work? That's sooo February. We were supposed to have commuting in the light by this time!

Now our good congressman thinks that he was doing something positive for energy efficiency by moving the time change. He points to the $4.4 billion in energy usage which will be saved by 2020. He points to the safety aspects, that late afternoon drivers will have more daylight, so perhaps fewer kids will get run over by dim-sighted old farts.

But I fear poor Ed was a dupe in all this. Ed was clearly a tool of the charco-golf industrial complex. As Deep Throat said, uggblaug-gaaaggg... Oops, not that Deep Throat... As the Watergate Deep throat said, follow the money...

Who stands to make out in all this? Why, the Golf industry. And the recreational grilling industry, that's who!

Read this, from Scott Deveau, in the Canadian Financial Post:

According to the congressional testimony in 1985, the golf industry estimated an extra month of daylight saving would amount to US$200-million in extra equipment sales and green fees. Even barbecue manufacturers came forward saying it could amount to an additional US$100-million in grill and charcoal briquette sales.

When it stays lighter for longer in the day, these folks figure they make more money. We'll all be golfing at 7pm in March, apparently.

Well that's it! I'm not going to be some tool of the dread leisure industry. That's right: Kal's World is now a DST-free zone. Please remember to adjust your watches when you leave.

And then somthing Gino and I can agree on...

Happy St. Patrick's Day from the Dropkick Murphys! (yeah, a day late, I know...)

Here's The Rocky Road to Dublin,



And, of course, their signature ending...



Enjoy.

Sure to piss off Gino...

Welcome to my little propaganda zone.

God has quite a sense of humor, dumping a foot or so of snow on the beginning of the first Interfaith Climate Walk in Massachusetts. This is nothing new, and it seems like every time the guys in Washington have a Climate Change hearing it gets canceled by a blizzard.

Add to that the recent Al Gore stories (Mr. Inconvenient Truth uses more electricity in a month than most of us use in a year, Mr. Inconvenient Truth flies all over globe in CO2 spewing aircraft, etc etc...) and it can be a tough time to work on climate issues.

(Oh, and let's not even get into that recent documentary, The Great Climate Swindle, the producers of which have already admitted to using data that "looked better" than was scientifically accurate or properly labeled.)

But since you've deigned to come visit, allow me to subject you to my favorite piece of climate advocacy, this ad produced by the British government:



Now isn't that something? I saw it this week as part of a presentation by Solitaire Townsend, an English marketing specialist working on climate issues, training climate advocates how to get across to mass audiences a message usually reliant on boring and confusing scientific jargon. The video is part of that effort.

But this isn't new stuff. Found this while noodling around on YouTube (looking for all my videos those bastards from Viacom are getting pulled down. Screw you Viacom. I hope Viagra becomes illegal, Sumner Redstone, you prick...)

Anyway, check this out from an educational film made back in 1958:



Now, of course, the Warming Skeptics will point out that the environmental movement is just a bunch of loonies looking for something to bedevil progress with whatever crackpot theories they can come up with.

Remember, for instance, that in the 1970's the crazy Birkenstock-wearing loons were talking about a new ice age. Well, when we were pumping millions of tons of sulphates (SO4) into the atmosphere we were increasingly the reflectivity of the atmosphere, which would have eventually, in years and years, caused severe cooling.

But we got a handle on sulfates in the 1970's and reduced their impact on the atmosphere. Now, their effect moderated the warming impact of CO2, so having less SO4 in the atmosphere means not only less Acid Rain, but less offsetting action to Global Warming.

Which is why some in the Bush administration have publicly proposed "salting" clouds with sulfur (or maybe some sort of huge, orbiting mirror to deflect the killer sun's rays). All this so they don't have to put in a compact fluorescent light bulb.

Where am I going with all this? Damned if I know. I'm going to warn you though I'm going to be doing more on this stuff here, so be prepared for weekly harangues about your polluting ways, you troglodytes.

Thank you, that will be all.

Rumors of my demise were only slightly exaggerated...

Sorry I've been away. See, had a little medical emergency. Had discomfort in my lower abdomen. After much medical research (by which I mean looking up every available article on fatal diseases in Web M.D.), I diagnosed myself with stage 4 abdominal cancer and begin putting my affairs in order. Which means I had to come clean with my wife about that girl I kissed in college. (Really, she meant nothing to me... and she had a bit of a mustache. And her name was Fred. And it was really dark in that bar...)

Anywho, I basically moped around for a few days, sobbing uncontrollably every couple of hours until Wifeypooh got sick of the whole thing and made me go see the doctor.

Now, I like my doctor. First of all, he probably goes two and a half bills, and Wifeypooh used to babysit his kids and tells me their cupboards are filled with junk food, so he doesn't really get on your case about being a fat pig. I appreciate that.

But I think he may be losing a bit off his fastball. See, I was in desperate need of morphine, as that's what Web M.D. says you treat a fatal non-operative cancer like mine with, and Dr. StayPuft was having none of this. He actually wanted to examine me!

So after the traditional social finger or two... Or, I swear, the whole hand (Moon River!) (What the heck was he doing up there? Setting up a parlor?)... He sends me off for various tests. All of which come back negative.

Yup. No cancer. Web M.D. let me down. Then Dr. StayPuft tries to sell me this line about how the discomfort I was feeling was probably due to some type of physical activity I had recently done which was using muscles I didn't normally use. Now, as I try to use as few muscles as possible, I was able to pinpoint exactly the root cause of my horrific pain...

Derek Jeter.



Yes. The captain of the dread Yankees: the chief nemesis of our blessed Red Sox. Mr. November himself. He's the cause of all my sorrow.

You see, Jeter endoreses this torture device sold to unsuspecting parents of little leaugers: the Hit-a-Way. You attach it to a pole, throw the ball away for you, it coils around the pole and comes back upon whence you hit it.

The boy got one for his birthday last year and I set it up for him this week, so he could start practicing for baseball season. And I took a few cuts myself.

Well, let me tell you: the muscles one uses to ride the train, drink coffee, type blogs, and hit on pretty women are not the same ones used to swing a baseball bat. And getting exercise to certain here-to-fore unchallenged abdominal muscles... well... Let me just say for the record I would still like the morphine.

Now I'm off to ice my elbow after playing catch with him for ten minutes. It's either that or I've got a wicked case of elbow cancer brewing...

This is a Test!

This is a test, this is only a test.  If this were a real post, there would be an actual story here.  Maybe funny, possibly profane, but certianly not just this filler text, that's for sure.

Actually, testing if the email posting works, so we can blog from the nifty Treo at meetings, from the train, in the bathroom!

Bwa ha ha ha...

Kickin' it into high gear...

Well, as our campaign gets underway, we're developing some of our marketing materials.

Here's the latest from the gurus at Kal Central:



If that doesn't convince people, nothing will.

Movie Night: Better Than Sominex + a Bottle of Scotch + Chloroform...

Well. This is what happens when you don't pay attention to your Netflix queue...

Holy crap. Slept all evening, and now I'm going to be up until 4am.

Movie Night: Twofer Edition.

Our first movie this evening was March of the Penguins, the Oscar winning (there's a warning for you) docu-freaking-mentary about the annual trek of the Emperor penguins from their ocean home to their breeding grounds. And back to the Ocean. And back to the breeding grounds... And back to the Ocean. And so on, and so forth.

Look. I've nothing against documentaries. And, as documentaries go, this one was fairly watchable. Well, moderately watchable. It was a tad light on facts: for instance, I was dying to know what that bird was that ate the penguin chick (a Skua, it turns out), and it would've been interesting to learn the overall penguin breeding success rate, figuring in adults who turn into sealbait, the kids who are birdfood, and the eggs that never hatch (turns out only about 60% of couples actually end up having a chick, and it just goes down hill from there).

And having Morgan Freeman as your narrator is a good thing for a documentary. Like James Earl Jones and a couple of other guys, I could listen to this guy read a grocery list and be enthralled. (It's worth noting the original French -of course- version had actors voicing Momma Penguin, Daddy Penguin, and Baby Penguin. But, as we know, the French think Jerry Lewis is a national treasure.)

Now, to be fair, I did give the kids a choice. They could either have watched this, or Return of the Jedi. We've been doing the Star Wars movies, from I to V, over the past couple of weeks with only Jedi left to go. But the kids picked this, and who am I to stand in the way of their learning something.

But the Boy did look at me halfway through the movie and say "Dad, you know, Return of the Jedi would have been more exciting..."

Nothing gets past that one.

As for Sandras©, well, first the mandatory explanation:

The Sandra Bullock Scale© was devised to rate a movie sleepability, due to my inability to stay awake through any Sandra Bullock film since Demolition Man. A perfect score of five out of five represents a movie's a) stupifying boredom combined with b) lack of even token nudity despite hot chickage [see Practical Magic... what a waste of time, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock and zero nudity... Rated PG-13 for sensuality my fanny...])

Now, Sandraing this one was tough. It was a fairly slow paced movie, but you stayed nearly enthralled... well, interested, in the fate of the scruffy little seabirds. And the kids watched the whole thing. And I think I only zonked out for a couple of minutes...

3 out of 5 Sandras©

Yes, March of the Penguins does not have the raw boredom power to put you out after a long day. For that, we've got Capote

Ah, a near perfect-storm of Sandraness here:

A. Followed March of the Penguins.

B. Stupid frickin' Netflix disc kept skipping, causing me to miss major portion of the middle of the film, severely affecting my ability to give a sh^t about the (alleged) plot.

C. I had already read the book.

Now, as I mentioned, I was not diligently monitoring our Netflix queue, or this would've gotten pushed to the back, as the Wife had laid down a new rule after a regrettable night spent saying "Wha tha fruck?" for 126 minutes during a "watching" of Syriana a couple of weeks ago. Yes, we've banned Oscar winners from the Jones household.

If it's good enough for those pretentious artiste wannabe fvcks in Hollywood, it's not coming here. Look, people. You work in the movie business. Cut the crap. I don't need artsy-fartsy direction with sparse dialog and a piano-clinking score when I want to be entertained. Not to be too much of a pretentious dick myself, I've got a fairly interesting job. I work on issues of importance and lasting consequence. I'm not going to apologize for wanting to watch movies with fart jokes and gratuitous nudity. I gave at the office, okay? I don't want to think, I want to be entertained.

And Capote was not entertaining. If you don't know how to read, by all means, rent this movie. You'll learn something about Truman Capote. What that something is, I have no idea, as I slept through gigantic chunks of this movie, waking only every five or six minutes to skip ahead a chapter because the !@&^*$ disk was so beat up it wouldn't play. If you want to actually learn about Capote and can read, go get the book.

And if you're one of those jerks who likes to sit around and say "hey, they didn't invent cans with pull-tab tops in 1962", then by all means, don't watch this movie. I suspect the continuity coordinator was sent back to making films for the Canadian Broadcasting Company after this abortion of missed detail...

Okay. Time for a Sandra© rating:

(oh, come on, you must see this coming...)

5 of 5 Sandras©! A perfect score!

Thank you. Next week: Caddyshack and Spaceballs... My cup runneth over...

That's Just Not the Way I Roll....

I think my cat wants to have a homosexual relationship with me.

I blame myself, partly. I saw the signs, but did nothing. I expected this would just go away, but it hasn't. It's gotten worse and I'm afraid he's just going to snap one day and kill us all in some weird bi-species love-triangle murder-suicide.

(**note: I have now used up my quota of hyphens. The remainder of this post will be hyphen-free).


I mean, look at that picture: does that pose say "Come on and see me sometime, sailor..." to you or what?

Now look, I'm not opposed to alternative lifestyles. Matter of fact, I'm very supportive of gay marriage -- after all, why should just heteros suffer the horrors of marriage? But it's just not for me. Well, unless I go to prison or get shipwrecked with an NFL football team or something. Or join the British navy. Then I'll reassess. But for now, no. Not my bag.

And I haven't had a cross species relationship, well, in ages. And really, I was a little drunk, and I really needed the money.

But I kid, I'm a kidder.

I didn't need the money...

Anyway.

Yes, where were we? Oh yes, the cat. Every morning he wakes me up at the crack of dawn. I used to think it was because some idiot around here (well, that's me) had forgotten to feed him the night before and he was hungry. But I've become very good about feeding him and he just comes in and wakes me up anyway.

So I'll go downstairs and try to use the extra hour or so productively, hopping on the computer and reading blogs doing extra things for work.

And he'll come over and pester me to pay attention to him. Okay, nothing too out of the ordinary yet. I mean, he's a little dog-like, but from what we understand, his breed (Maine Coon) are attention hogs.

He'll sit there and look at me and rub his head on my leg (well, actually it's a little more like a head-butt) (damn. There's another hyphen. That's going to cost me...)

He rubs his head on me, and I am well trained to go to the bathroom and turn on the water so he can have a drink.

Well, this morning I was feeling particularly chipper and thought I'd scratch his back a little. Now this is what this ginormous fat cat looks like drinking from the sink:


Note the tail is sticking up.

So, I'm scratching his back, looking out the bathroom window at the backyard (again Mother-frickin-nature dumps a foot of rain on us and freezes it overnight. That's going to be a party driving in, let me tell you..). After a minute or so of this I look down and note his tail is curled up around my arm, so I'm getting a full bore-view of cat ass. Delightful.

Then I notice the cat ass is... is.... oh my, this is too horrible to write, but I will for you, faithful reader: the cat ass is pulsating. It's rhythmically... pulsating... is the only word for it. And he's purring... the most gravelly, lustful, needful purring I've ever heard from him.

And then he stops drinking and turns his head to look at me.

And, I swear... He winked.

I just feel so dirty...

Ugh...

Major amounts of written material due... No time!

Well, Penny re-emerged from her recent hibernation (as did the Moss-ster) and disgorged like three or four posts the past couple of days, so I thought I'd steal one so that she doesn't whine too much that I'm not writing...

Career Inventory Test Results Extroversion |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 90% Emotional Stability ||||||||||||||| 50% Orderliness |||||| 13% Altruism ||||||||||||||||||||| 63% Inquisitiveness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 73% You are an Inspirer, possible professions include - conference planner, speech pathologist, HR development trainer, ombudsman, clergy, journalist, newscaster, career counselor, housing director, character actor, marketing consultant, musician/composer, artist, information-graphics designer, human resource manager, merchandise planner, advertising account manager, dietitian/nutritionist, speech pathologist, massage therapist, editor/art director.

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Clergy?

Hmmm.....