Another me

Like the Baltimore Colts in the dead of the night...

2007-08-02T06:58:00.000-05:00

I'm outta here.

Friends, neighbors, countrymen: Go here.

Ta.

Hey - I'm not so fat in Springfield....

2007-07-27T01:23:00.000-05:00

As part of the oppressive and truly frightening marketing blitz for The Simpson's Movie, the folks at Burger King have set up a "Simpsonizer" where you can upload a headshot and they'll, well, they'll "simpsonize" you, making you look like Matt Groening drew you.

Here I am (with Rastacat) going to the Kwik-E-Mart.

The site is simpsonizeme.com. Don't do this unless you've got a half hour to kill. Plus it's pretty damn particular about the picture you upload: gotta be a headshot at least 640x480, or it will make you wait for five minutes and then tell you it doesn't like your picture...

Interesting...

2007-07-26T18:29:00.000-05:00

Well, this actually worked for me. Anybody else get the right answer?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Boston You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine.
The Northeast
The Midland
Philadelphia
North Central
The West
The Inland North
The South
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Something to tide you over...

2007-07-25T05:57:00.000-05:00

Combining my dual passions for Gilbert and Sullivan and the Miami Bass sound...

Not dead, sleeping...

2007-07-23T09:33:00.001-05:00

Rough month.

Much work. Work-work and home-work. Garages to rustle into shape, firings to avoid to keep paycheck coming.

Still not completely dug out, but I am very thankful for the couple of you who keep dropping in.

Talk to you this weekend, I think.

ciao.

Don't be That Guy...

2007-06-09T05:39:00.001-05:00

It seems in my old age I'm turning into That Guy.

I'm that guy who can't manage to dress himself anymore...

Here I am at Wife'sCousin #9's wedding wearing one blue and one black sock.

And I'm that guy with the perverted kid...

Here's the grainy surveillance picture of The Boy grabbing his second cousin twice removed's butt during their dance. He certainly likes to get close during the dances with the ladies, which depending upon their station in life (mothers naturally respond to a child at their bosom, twenty-somethings think he's about to do "The Motorboat").

I'm that guy who yells at poor little thirteen year old umpires.

While I did not go to the lengths of the drunken fat guy below (the first 30 seconds, I didn't watch the rest of the clip, don't feel compelled to either), I apparently did give the poor eighth grader umpiring my son's little league game a little bit of a hard time last weekend. In my defense, I thought I was just helping him decipher the play that had just happened in the field. While I can see why calling him a "buck toothed blind little rodent" might have gone over the top, I feel we were just having a sincere exchange of opinions. At least I don't have to go to boring little league games (at least until the restraining order expires)....

And finally, I'm that guy who watches 1980's karaoke on YouTube. Here's Debbie Gibson's lost in your eyes. It was put up by some Filipino guy who's got like 600 of these things up. Majorly lovely time-waster....

Well, that's it for now. I'm off to wallow in my that guyedness now. Ciao!

Wake me up when September ends...

2007-06-07T07:57:00.000-05:00

Apparently I've gone on strike for the month of June. It's already the 7th and not nary a post.

Well, I've got an excuse. I've been really busy. (Due to my busy exhaustion, I wrote that as "busty". Yes, yes, I've been busty. But busy too.) Oh, sure, I hear you scoff; we're all busy. But I've been go-to-bed-at-2-am busy. I've been five-baseball-games-in-a-weekend busy. Two weddings, a graduation, two birthdays, and a new and very demanding relationship with a chiropractor who lusts after my hairy back three times a week...

And today it's an all-day staff meeting mixed with "team building" retreat, kickball game, and ice cream social. Now, I'm always skeptical about these forced-fun things. I had a track coach in high school who was the biggest martinet ever and he was all into theme-costume practices and all sorts of mandatory fun stuff. Mandatory fun is only necessary when you're not having real fun. So there you go.

Anywho, gotta run off to the mandatory fun meeting. Be back later tonight, I hope (after kid concert #2 this week....) with a picture of my wearing of two different color socks to the wedding last weekend, and if I can clear it through wifeypooh, another of the boy (age nine) grabbing the ass of his hot, tattooed 21 year old second cousin at that same wedding.

Ciao.

Kal 4 Prez: Issue One: Torte reform

2007-05-31T21:05:00.000-05:00

Greetings, fellow countrymen. Well, the political world's all a-buzz over that actor about to announce a presidential bid. I'll tell you what, I ain't afraid of him.

Here at Kal For President, we welcome all comers: from Romney and his freshly shellaced hair, to obvious brainwashed-sleeper agent John McCain, to also obviously brainwashed sleeper agent Barrack Hussein Obama, I welcome them all.

So, as a part of my exciting and paradigm-shifting campaign, let's start talking some issues!

First, a reading from the Book of Al:

I sued Coca-Cola, yo
'Cause I put my finger down in a bottle
And it got stuck!

I sued Delta Airlines
'Cause they sold me a ticket to New Jersey
I went there, and it sucked!

Yeah!!!

If you stand me up on a date
If you deliver my pizza 30 seconds late

I'm gonna sue, sue
Yes, I'm gonna sue
Sue, sue, yeah that's what I'm gonna do
I'm gonna sue, sue
Yes, I'm gonna sue
Sue, sue, yeah I might even sue you!

Ugh!!

From "I'll Sue Ya", off the Album "Straight Outta Lynnwood."

So, my "handlers" tell me Al is talking about the need for torte reform by sarcastically suggesting he will sue people for all these minor offenses. Sure, whatever.

Let me tell you, it's hard to get good help these days. These 22 year old kids fresh out of some fancy-pants college trying to tell me how to run my campaign. And then they come up with something stupid like this.

What the heck do they mean by torte reform? Look, I've had a lot about these little torte things, and let me tell you, I think they're wicked awesome. I love those alternating layers of cake and icing and chocolate mousse and all that. I think they're quite yummy. And I frankly don't think they need reforming at all!

Yessirree, I do love those tortes just the way they are.

Seems like it's my campaign staff that needs some reforming!

Rube Goldberg for pyromaniacs

2007-05-30T21:04:00.000-05:00

Found this on Live Leak. It's a neat Rube Goldberg machine using fire...

(Just seemed appropriate, tonight's Criminal Minds is all about a serial killer arsonist.)

Memorial Day, 2007

2007-05-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

The first Memorial Day since a 25 year old from Pleasantville was killed in action carried extra feeling for many in town. A fresh grave in our cemetery, which hasn't accepted war dead in at least a generation.

The war hit home for me this spring as well, as a young man I had worked with fairly closely was killed in action. He had joined the military in 2004, in the midst of the fighting, knowing full well what he was getting into. His father, a West Point graduate and decorated soldier in Vietnam, had turned against Bush's war, but Andrew had joined and proud to had done so.

This was after an evening of talking to the kids about the war, spurred by 60 Minutes' story of the Iowa National Guard troop they've been following since deployment. The Girl just doesn't understand it -- why do we need to waste American lives half a world away? Why can't these people just take care of themselves?

I don't have any answers for her. Some things I used to be very sure of I'm not so much anymore. I can't put a value on Andrew's life. Is all this worth it? Of course not. Not if you're asking me about this one kid I knew who went off to war knowing full well all the dangers and possibilities.

But what if it works? We won't know for years, of course. But are we planting anything that will blossom in the arid desert seas and lush river valleys of Iraq? Is there a child is Basra growing up amongst the chaos of hatred of a sectarian war (for this isn't Iraq against the US, this is Sunni and Shite and Kurd against each other, with bonus points for knocking off an infidel invader or two...), is there a young man or woman growing up thinking to himself or herself; this is crazy, this isn't what Allah wants?

Is there a teenager somewhere dedicating themselves to a future of bringing his or her country together around a shared vision and rejecting the destructive and nihilistic hatreds of the present?

How will this end? For too many American young, it will end in death. But will their sacrifice mean more than some writing on a marble slab in a cemetery; festooned with flags a flowers once a year? I hope so.

But I don't know.

Movie Night: The Most Depressing Movie Ever...

2007-05-27T10:43:00.000-05:00

The picture to the right is from a scene of "The Pursuit of Happyness" where homeless Will Smith is spending the night in a locked BART subway station with his five-year old son.

And this isn't the most depressing scene in this movie.

What a freaking nightmare of downer movie. I'm one of those people who identify just a little too much with characters in movies and books and by half way through this one I was ready to cut my wrists.

I'm not going to spoil the plot (here's the IMDB page for the movie), but suffice it to say, everything happens to Smith's character, short of a raging case of jock itch. Usually when a character eats one crap sandwich after another it's a case of lousy writing, in this case however, Smith's character is based on real-life homeless-man-turned-stockbroker-turned-multimillionaire Chris Gardner.

Couple of points:

* Between this movie and Crash, I'm beginning to think Carter's wife is a real bitch.

* Dan Castelanetta actually sounds like Lenny in real life, although oddly enough, Lenny is voiced by Harry Shearer. Weird.

* Jaden Christopher Smith, Will and Jada's kid, is painfully cute.

* Yeah, yeah. I cried. So sue me. I'm an easy emotional mark.

It's these damn father-son movies that get to me. I'm awash in Daddy issues -- the Father/son daddy stuff, not a fixation on old gay men -- so any movie with even a lick of Dad-stuff puts me over the edge.

This is an issue for another post and another time (I've just spent the last 1/2 hour of Cold Case trying to put into words the difficulty of raising boys, of making them men while teaching how to be so much more, all the while waiting for the inevitable point in time when they kill you in cold blood to seize control of your kingdom...), suffice it to say, I was puddle-city halfway through and felt emotionally exhausted by the end.

So, let's Sandraize this one. First, the groundrules, as always:

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...]

At any rate: there was no sleeping through this thing. It was a bataan death-march of a movie and it would've been unsporting chickening out mid-way through. Well, it was sort-of worth it, as... well... I'd be giving away the whole point of the movie (oops, too late).

Anywho, as dreadful as it was, it did keep me up, so, gotta be fair:

0 of 5 Sandras!

For those of you who are interested, the real story of Chris Gardner can be found here. Until next time, save the isle seats for me (so I don't drool on anyone as I fall asleep)...

Biker (coffee) Bar

2007-05-27T09:31:00.000-05:00

You don't want to get in the way of these mean hombres before they've had their first half-caf venti double sweet two squits lattee.

A Little Advice

2007-05-26T13:20:00.000-05:00

If you're ever in the State House, feel free to shake hands with the people who work in the coffee shop. Everyone else, not so much.

Someday, the Messiah-Shark Will Come...

2007-05-25T05:54:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post had a delightful and terrifying story yesterday about virgin births among sharks. Apparently in September 2001 a baby hammerhead shark was born to one of three female hammerheads sharing a tank at Henry Dormley Zoo in Omaha Nebraska. No males had been in contact with the females and they had all been in captivity for a number of years.

Now, last year on my old blog I noted that the DARPA (black helicopter guys) have been working on technology to use Sharks for their nefarious schemes; putting sensors in shark brains to try and get them to be use their excellent sense of smell to root out... well, lord knows what those DARPA guys are doing with the sharks. Part of me thinks that the whole "friggin Sharks with laserbeams on their heads" thing in Austin Powers came from DARPA. So I'm a little skittish about sharks from the get-go. I mean, even more skittish than that whole "they like to eat people" thing. That I can understand. It's the teaming up with the evil government scientists in the black helicopters that puts me on edge.

Anyway, now we get news that sharks have achieved virgin birth. Scientists had originally thought that perhaps one of the females had some male "materials" (hey, this is a family blog) stored up from before captivity.

Well, when they autopsied the baby shark (apparently another animal in the tank killed it shortly after it was born) they found that it was an exact genetic match to one of the three female sharks. No poppa. Asexual reproduction.

Apparently scientists had heretofore observed this kind of asexual reproduction, parthenogenesis, only in lower forms of life such as lower plants, aphids, parasitic wasps, and certain fans of the Jerry Springer Show.

Now, as a supporter of sex, I find this appalling. And even more importantly (frankly, how much more sex am I going to have anyway?), is this shark, born outside of shark sin, the long-promised Messiah-shark who will lead his Selachimorphian brothers and sisters to freedom? Will he rise again in glory to judge the living and the dead? And is he just a messiah for sharks, or are we land-based hairless monkeys invited?

I dunno. Messiah-sharks and Zombies. I don't like our odds.

Guess the Bellybutton

2007-05-24T05:07:00.000-05:00

John Stamos and Tom Selleck were on Conan the other night and the subject of bellybuttons came up. Well, the three of them decided to compare bellybuttons. Can you pick which one belongs to each?

Well, the pasty hands probably give the last one away. The top one, the ugly, deformed and utterly disturbing nubbin of a bellybutton belongs to John Stamos. The middle one, flanked by discolored spots that are obviously fatal skin-cancer from his days of shirtless vollyball while house sitting for reclusive billionaire Robin Chambers, is Tom Selleck's, and the bottom is ultra-white boy Conan O'Brien.

See ladies: ultra-sexy John Stamos has a gnarly bellybutton. And ultra-sexy Tom Selleck has a nasty case of fatal skin cancer. And of course Conan, is, well, Conan.

Kal wins, by default.

See the youtube clip here. And a tip of the hat to Thesuperficial for finding this.

Thirteen Stories From an Old Man

2007-05-23T06:44:00.000-05:00

Gino tagged me on a meme requiring the writer to make 13 predictions about the world as it will be when he or she is “old”. Well, RW already stole my joke about opening the paper this morning and reading off the first 13 headlines, so I guess
I’ll have to put a little work into this.

Appropriating his formula, what will the world be when I am 75, 40 years hence? Well, let’s see....

Dateline: Pleasantville, Massachusetts. May 23rd, 2047.
The bones are creaky as I rise out of bed. The ladies on the news sprightly tell me we’re in for a cool one today; the recent mid-90’s heatwave¹ will be replaced by a pleasant sea breeze bringing temps down into the ‘80s. Of course this will be only after a late morning series of thunderstorms which could cause a stray tornado or two². I make a mental note to fasten the storm shutters, then slap my forehead for my forgetfulness;

“Wifeypooh?” I say in a loud, clear voice.

As always, she answers. “Yes, dear?”, her voice cool and modulated.

“Could you secure the storm shutters when the barometric hits 29.5, would you?” She demurely responds yes. Never fails me, does she. “Coffee too, okay? And run the morning program, would you?” She quietly beeps an affirmative as the plasma in the bedroom lights-up with my emails, headlines, and the usual array of operational stats for the house.

The Boy was over with his grandkids the other day, my great grandkids – the oldest now two (it’s time to start paying for college, isn’t it!), and commented that he thought it was more than a little weird that I named the home control system³ after his mother – dead now these last ten years after blowing an aneurysm yelling at a door-to-door salesman⁴.

“Dad, don’t you think it’s time to move on? You’re still a young man, and with the new implantable, fully bionic penis⁵ that guy Avitable keeps talking about, you could still date. “

That boy. Always the romantic. And yes, I’ve read Avitable’s raving about the thing – how he actually made a horse cry the other day – but frankly, with my back I don’t think I could lug the bastard around. And look, as a full-time naked blogger he could deduct it as a business expense, I can’t afford $23.7 million… That’s almost two weeks of social security checks⁶.

The headlines were the same today as yesterday it seems. Luxembourg is the seventh European nation to make Arabic their official language⁷, George Quinton Robert Romney Bush has already announced for the 2056 Presidential election, having just turned 26. His uncle, President George Herbert Smith William Bush II pledged his instant support, himself the frontrunner in the 2048 race. His cousin, George Walker Texas Ranger Jefferson Bush, the current Governor of Old Mexico, cried foul – understandably, why his Dad would go supporting someone else for 2056 when GWTRB was running in 2052 and might be trying for reelection himself in 2056 was a little odd.

Although, hey, ever since the Bush and Clinton political families put aside their differences and pledged only to marry each other, the genetic material’s gotten a little thin. It wasn’t in the news, but I imagine George William Hillary Bush-Clinton, the military governor of Afganiraqanianistan is probably pissed.

I'll tell you though that these ten year presidential election cycles⁸ are getting a little tiresome...

The siege of Fort Gino in Arizona continued. I’d have to remember to send him an email. I mean, really, how important are incandescent bulbs anyway? Jeez. Just give up the lightbulbs⁹ Gino.

"Wifeypooh? Tull tickets?" She responded that she had placed the order for tickets, and Ian and the Boys, well the embalmed corpse of Ian and four sessions players all born about ten years after Ian passed out and fell out of his walker on stage that fateful night in Providence, playing the Jacobi bar mitzvah¹⁰.

But we loyalists still show and hope that one of these years they'll produce a new album. Although fifty years later Dot.com still holds up, I'll tell you what.

I surfed over to Large Regular, where Chris is mocking Bill Simmons for having a real, live, stroke when the Celtics yet again got screwed in an NBA draft lottery, getting the supersecret purple ping pong which gives them the last pick in the NBA draft, right after last year's champion, the Beijing Yau Mings¹¹. Well, there's always the Patriots who have won the last 39 Superbowls¹² and will be coached this year by a retarded Monkey with one testicle. The Krafts complained that the NFL forced them to hire the retarded monkey, but given the fact that the the majority of NFL teams are coached by Schottenheimers, the descendants of Marty and Brian, the commissioner figured that was the only way to level the playing field.

Of course, I had to surf through 57 popup ads of Peyton Manning trying to get my to buy a Rascal. That bastard's been dead and he's still in 67.3% of all the ads¹³ on Webovision. Well, that's what winning one superbowl (and choking 14 other times in the playoffs) will get you...

And, don't you know, I've been on the webovision longer than they government allows¹⁴ (don't want us to all get obese, you know...) so Wifeypooh breaks in and gently reminds me it's time for my mandatory exercises.

Well, that's fine. RW said he wanted to break-in the new flying Mini and wanted to zoom up to Minnesota to hear Harmonica Man's latest band rock the nursing home. I've read of his prowess with the holographic harmonica is something to experience in person.

Afterward he promised to drop me off in Toronto. I've got a hot date...

If the home system would just stop it's interminable bitching... Yes, I am wearing this out of the house, thank you very much. No, I don't mind that it's a velour sweatsuit... Yes, yes, I'll be back by ten... Jeez. Where's the remote?

Damn that boy. He disabled the mute button.

Why This Culture Stinks: Reason #272

2007-05-21T07:09:00.000-05:00

News Item: (Well, sort of, I got it from The Superficial) (Heyyyy.... It's not on The Superficial. I'm aghast. I rely on The Superficial for all my celebrity news! Oh, I guess I'll have to go to TMZ...)

Okay, News Item: Britney Spears made such a stink about the lack of leather seats on the United Airlines plane she was supposed to fly to Florida on that the captain of the plane taxied back to the terminal to let her off.

(Oh, and The Superficial has the story up now. I think my vicious taunting got to them)

Anywho: what the heck? If I complained about something so bitterly that the captain of the plane had to go back to the terminal to let me off, what do you think would happen?

Yes, that's right. I'd end up in the hoosegow. And so would you. And after getting extra special full-body cavity searches by the TSA, we'd most surely end up on a no-fly list and possibly even get audtied by the IRS just for fun.

We would most certainly not be allowed to interfer with a flight crew (the catch-all federal felony they tag everyone from terrorists wanna-bes to disorderly drunks) and get dropped off at the terminal.

I mean, this is America, right? This is a country of laws, and not men (and chicks). Right? Why the special treatment for trailer trash multi-gazillionaires?

And Britney, really, hon: You wear so little clothing, and velour dosen't stick you your fatty sweatty baby-momma ass like leather does. It's really the better choice.

Love,

Kal

I'm not threatening, I'm just sayin'...

2007-05-17T14:39:00.000-05:00

News Item: Earlier this week the corpulent body of Jerry Falwell was found dead on his office floor.

Fact: March 12, 2006, Falwell dismisses global climate change, saying "scientists who are not on the payroll of the government" were skeptical of climate change.

News Item: Pat Robertson escapes death when his private plane crashes without him aboard last May.

Fact: on August 2nd, 2006, Pat Robertson declared on the 700 Club that he was a "convert" on Global Warming.

God doesn't screw around. C'mon Gino: hand over those incandescent lights before anyone gets hurt.

Yup, still alive

2007-05-17T08:18:00.000-05:00

Sorry I've been away for a couple of days. I'm writing something that's a little difficult (plus I'm fat and lazy. Just so you know.)

I will leave you with the one thought:

Chicken Curry and an english-style pub for a business lunch = Bad Idea.

Smellingly yours,

Kal

Reason #476 I'm a Republican....

2007-05-14T07:32:00.000-05:00

It's tough nowadays to admit one's republicanism, but Thank God for Tony Snow.

Apparently Mr. Snow, Bush's spokesman, is in a band called "Beats Workin'", and, get this...

He plays...

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Jazz/Blues Flute!

I sh^t you not.

Here's a YoutTube clip of him doing "Stormy Monday Blues" sounding A LOT like Ian Anderson on Tull's version of the same song.

Apparently Tony and his band are in a battle of the bands at the National Press Club dinner with geriatric newsreader Bob Schieffer's band: "Honky Tonk Confidential". Here's an MP3 clip of one of their songs, with Shieffer singing.

Tony and his band, on their website, has on their songlist stuff like the Stones, The Grateful Dead, Badfinger, The Doors and Grand Funk Railroad. Shieffer? Schieffer plays crappy honky tonk crap.

Republicans = cool music.
Democrats = crappy music.

I rest my case.

Ewww....

2007-05-12T05:49:00.000-05:00

Meat free chicken? Well, if you're the kind of person who's strict about definitions and says "chicken is poultry" then why feel the need to tell me it's meat free? All poultry should be meat free, right? I mean, you're not slipping porkchops in with my poultry, are you?

And if you are the kind of person that says anything with eyes is "meat", then what exactly is "meat free" chicken made of? Bananas?

This is very troubling...

Can't talk... eating working...

2007-05-11T08:03:00.000-05:00

Ugh. Deadline for vast quantity of written work coming up (like in two and a half hours). Eeek! Just checked, it's two hours! Small amounts of written work done. Need to turn into vast amounts quickly... No time for chatting.

Have a great weekend, and to all you Mothers and Mother$@#$ers out there, happy Mother's Day!

Oh, and for Motherdear, who may or may not be lurking, here's for you:

Arggghhghg!

2007-05-10T04:57:00.001-05:00

Two frickin' I've tried to set up my linklist. Two times. Both times I get like 14 entries done and the thing closes. Closes!

Mother$^@#$ing Blogger...

So, sorry to all my regular reads for not linking. It's not that I'm a big snob, it's just that I'm technically inept...

I don't mean to alarm you but.... RUN!

2007-05-09T09:37:00.000-05:00

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, they used to say. These days, the price of just staying alive is eternal vigilance. Or at least watching Fox25 every morning.

Case in point: last week news broke around here that the Medical Examiners office had "lost" a body. Apparently some poor guy died under mysterious circumstances in some hotel and they carted him off to the ME for an autopsy, and the ME "lost him".

Now our ME's office has been in the soup quite a bit lately. They misplaced somebody's eyes last year, and had a real bad problem with unclaimed corpses piling up and stinking out the joint. So, according to the ~~cover story~~ press accounts, in the process of cleaning out all the old, unclaimed corpses (maybe it's like a school lost and found: if nobody claims stuff it gets donated to orphans or something at the end of the year), anywho, in the process of cleaning out the old corspes, they think they might have gotten rid of this new corpse by mistake.

Sure. Right.

But I was buying it. Until someone thinking themselves a wiseguy emailed into the Fox25 morning show that obviously the body was a zombie and had walked off on it's own. The hosts all laughed it off and moved on to the next story.

Well. You see, I've read "The Zombie Survival Guide", and I know what to look for. I remembered a story back in February about alleged misdoings at a certain catholic cemetery in the Boston Archdiocese. Apparently they were reburying bodies, dumping them out of caskets, taking gold fillings, that sort of thing. Now, the interesting thing is a family had requested an exhumation to see if the charges were true, that their grandmother was buried just in the dirt, actually under the coffin of her later-deceased hubby.

Both the Church, and the family (who had hired a high-priced lawyer famous for his role in litigating the big church sex scandals) made high profile statements and Fox25 ran wild with this story... up until the exhumation. Then: nothing. Now, if indeed the charges were true, wouldn't that family (or the high-priced attorney) want to say, "See, I told you so(now pay up)". And if the charges weren't true, wouldn't the Church want to say: "See, we did everything right, now buzz off"?

But the silence has been deafening. Which can lead me to only one conclusion: the story was hushed up by the government. Classic Stage 1 Zombie Outbreak behavior. I don't know about you guys, but I'm starting my stocking up now. By summertime this place could be crawling with the living dead, and I need to be ready to split at a moment's notice.

Don't say I didn't warn you...

Pot (Belly) Purri

2007-05-08T07:41:00.001-05:00

As a special treat, I'm train-blogging today via the Treo and my spiffy magic wireless keyboard, so if this post degrades into gibberish, blame my inability to type on a tiny keyboard perched on my shoulder bag (plus the keyboard has a nsty habit on not synchingup with the Treo until you type your first letter, so if I miss a bunch of first letters of words, you know why.

(Note: I went back and edited when I got to my desktop. Couldn't take all the errors.)

Anywho - on to today's subjects.

1. Crash

Saw Crash over the weekend. Going to Sandra-ize it in a later post, but, man, what a movie. After it came in the mail I really thought we'd hate it, and the first ten minutes filled me with dread, but, wow. This could be the one that rewrites the rules. More later.

2. Fat@ssedness

My back has been on strike since about Saturday, and as much as I'd like to blame some crushing yardwork or fantastic accident, I woke up with it this way. So unless ninjas attacked during the night and I sleep-fought them off, there's no good reason I've been schlepping along like an invalid for the past three days.

There seems to be one solution: my back has finally decided that it's tired of lugging around my fat gut, and has gone on strike until further notice,

There's a lot of merit to this possibility, as I have reached yet another level of fat@ssedness I never thought I'd get to. The two of you who've been around for a couple of years may remember that I hit 250 a couple of New Year's Eves ago and went on a dieting and exercising binge that saw me drop 30 pounds, back to to marriage-day weight of 220.

And 220, you mqay recall, is about 40 pounds heavier than my woo-ing weight of 180. (But that was high school, back when I had a metabolism..)

Well, recently we've been flirting, aw, hell, when been completely molesting, 260 pounds, with the number 264 actually being spotted recently.

So this is completely out of hand. It's time again for an epic quest to dump off a pound or 50.

But I need incentive. (Oddly enough, "Not dying" isn't incentive enough.)

Last time I had the incentive of a contest with Brother-in-law #3, who himself was weighing in over three bills and needed to lose some weight for a wedding.

Plus, I was trying to look good for a certain young lady who I was sort-of mentoring and totally chasing after.

(Before you think me a cad: I am very happily married. But that doesn't mean I'm completely inured to the charms of the fairer gender. And it's kind of like a dog chasing a car: like the dog, I have no idea what I'd actually do with it if I were to catch it, so it's harmless, okay?)

Anyway, I need a potential ~~victim~~ ~~love connection~~ unsuspecting lass to chase after to get the old testosterone focused in the right direction. (Otherwise the testosterone says "screw the treadmill, let's play Madden tonight"). I'm going to start perusing the local health-food store to see if I can find a suitable person. (I have a wickedly horrible thing for hippy-chicks... They're my krypotite.)

And Bollix, occassional commentor and long time reader has volutneered to accept the challenge and enter into a gentlemen's wager as we both try to lose weight.

Since he's about 40 pounds lighter, we'll be doing it on a percentage basis. He's one of those crazy bicycle nuts who dress up in tight clothes and cycle all overr the place (lunatic), but I think with the proper incentive (find that hippy chick soon), I can give him a run for his money.

Well, gosh. My train ride's already almost over, so I've got to wrap this up. I wanted to mention one more thing, but that will have to wait.

Just one warning though: Stay away from the graveyards, okay?

That'll have to be it for now. Chat with you later.

(unless they get me, of course....)

Movie Night: Tom Hanks, the World's Greatest Actor..

2007-05-06T03:54:00.000-05:00

After holding on to The 40-Year Old Virgin and Return From Witch Mountain for about two weeks, finally got around to returning them and getting the next movies on the kid's and our lists.

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...]

Anyway, we seem to have blown through every single kid's movie at Netflix and are starting to get mostly-harmless '80s PG-rated comedies of suspect intellectual heft. I hope we're not doing any permanent damage to their developing brains...

This weekend's offering for the kids was Turner and Hooch, a typical odd-couple cop movie from Tom Hanks' unfortunate "I'm getting paid for this, right?" period (The 'burbs, Turner and Hooch, Joe vs. the Volcano). The only twist being Hanks' partner -- a large, ugly, slobbering dog. The Hooch of the title.

I'm not going to bore you with the plot, you've undoubtedly seen it before, so let's get right to the digressions:

First, if you look up "Turner and Hootch" (note the different spelling of Hootch) in The Urban Dictionary, you get slang for something very dirty. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but the kicker is the whole humming the Sanford and Son theme. That just makes the whole thing, if you ask me.

Second: decent "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" potenetial in this one. For instance, I was looking up the career of bit player Clyde Kusatsu (he played a grocery store manager) and was too lazy to type in "Tom Hanks" in the search bar and managed to get to him in five steps (with bonus points for actually using Kevin Bacon). Kusatsu was in a couple episodes of M*A*S*H with David Ogden Steirs, Steirs was in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame with Demi Moore, who was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon, who was in Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks.

You've also got Urkel's next door neighbor (who was also in Die Hard) and Craig T. Nelson for your Kevin Bacon game needs.

Third: Did I miss the three and a half weeks where Mare Winningham was romantic lead material?

All in all, a fairly inoffensive bit of late '80s buddy genre. Nothing to write home about, but gave the kids a couple of chuckles.

(The Boy just wandered down, here's his take: "I liked... Umm... Ummm.... Uhhh.... DAD! Don't write the Ummms!...." okay, okay. Here, after much prodding: "I liked that the dog wrecked the really organized guy's house. And I like Daddy's stinky feet")

(Uh, thanks. I think he just wanted to see if I would put that down. No editing here, babe. We're blog veritie!)

Anyway, I'll give it three out of five Sandra's, as I didn't fall asleep, but probably because I was surfing the net while watching it.

(The Boy's rating: Zero! And he wants to remind you all that he likes my stinky feet.)

(Yes, he's truly a delightful child.)

Happy Beltane

2007-05-03T04:35:00.000-05:00

Sorry been away, but it's Beltane you know, and I've been... well... busy.

The first of May, long before the Commies stole it for May Day, is a very important day. In the Celtic and Pict parts of the British Isles it's Beltane, the traditional kick off of summer.

Beltane's an ancient festival celebrating the death of winter and the begining of summer (June 21st, our "first day of summer" is actually mid-summer's day). Befitting my new status as a Crunchy Conservative interested in the environment and Mama Earth and all that crap, I've been trying to revive some of the old customs.

So, for Beltane you've got to build a big bonfire, dance around, maybe do a little Maypole dancing, and... well... some other stuff.

Beltane is around planting time, and you really want to make sure the Earth is super-fertile so your crops will grow nice and tall. Apparently the ancient druids believed that you could help along Mama Earth in her fertility by, well... getting busy in the furrows. Your fertility would rub off. So to speak.

So I got the bonfire all set, did a bit of dancing around, skipped the Maypole (that just looks goofy). And then asked Wifeypooh if she wanted to help me fertilize the garden.

Long story short, I woke up this morning in the bushes with a splitting headache, an egg on the top of my head, a broken spade next to me, and a ticked off wife locking me outof the house.

I guess she said no.

Ah well, maybe next year. For a bit of Maypole dancing, how about Men Without Hats?

Getting in touch with my inner dork...

2007-04-30T19:22:00.000-05:00

1. Spiffy new laptop running Vista
2. Palm Tungsten e
3. Palm wireless keyboard
4. Palm Treo - leaning up against a Rubik's cube, for added Dork points...

Not pictured: nifty presentation wireless powerpoint advancer/laser pointer.

I am the King of Dorks!

(and with all this wireless radiation going on I plan on developing a nasty brain tumor any day now...)

KaraMia doesn't care about this post...

2007-04-29T15:26:00.000-05:00

(and neither do most of you, but I don't care!)

I've been giggling since February. I finally got over it last week, and then the draft happened and it started all over again.

First, here's what got me giggling back in February...

Meet Adalius Thomas.

Adalius Thomas is one big mother-truckin' linebacker who can drop into coverage, stuff the run, and has speed off the edge. He does it all. He's played something like eight different positions at one time or another.

He was the cream of the free agent class this off-season, and my New England Patriots did something completely out of character. They opened up the checkbook and put a push on for the big stud.

So that had me giggling.

And then they went nuts.

Donte Stallworth, erstwhile Saint and Eagle, and certified burner (4.2 40 time in college). Sure, probably a bit of a head case. And some involvement in the League's substance abuse program, which is never a good sign... But... 4.2 in the 40!

They added his former college teammate Kelley Washington (6'3 with speed... 6'3 with speed... 6'3 with speed), and then brought in the next Troy Brown (speedy, smart, undersized with a huge heart), in Wes Welker. (Plus the guy absolutely killed the Patriots in a game at Miami this year... Getting him off the Dolphins was a two-fer).

That's three pretty good new wide receivers for a team that was one first down away from the Super Bowl. By now, I'm giggling every time I drive by The Razor (Gillette Stadium's wicked cool unofficial nickname).

And the draft was still coming, and the Pats were holding two first rounders (they absolutely robbed at gunpoint the Seahawks, getting a first for Deion Branch...).

They came into the draft with some real needs on defense. Their Linebackers are getting old, and got abused by the Colts last year, and they need a defensive back, where Safety Rodney Harrison is still a force, but is getting limited by injuries.

So they go and draft Harrison's replacement, right down to nasty temperament, Brandon Meriweather. Meriweather's the guy who stomped on another player during the Miami-Florida International game. He's a little smaller than Rodney (Rodney's 6'1 and 220, Meriweather's 5'10 and 190), but he hits bigger than his size.

The Pats traded their second '07 first rounder for the 49'ers '08 first rounder which looks to be a decent deal if they didn't have anyone else of 1st round caliber on their draft board. They also gave away their 3rd rounder to Oakland, for Oakland's '08 3rd, and some other flotsam pick.

The announcement of the Oakland trade was interesting, because there had been rumors all day about Oakland trading Randy Moss, their disgruntled superstar. Since it didn't happen with the 3rd round swap, I figured the deal was off the table, as there was no way you can get Randy Moss... That's Randy Moss, he of the 6'4 frame and blazing speed and fierce temperament, for some low second-day draft picks...

But oh my God. Coming back from dropping the boy off at CCD, word hit the radio that Moss was in Foxboro, undergoing a physical. He had apparently agreed to contract concessions, and was coming to New England for a 4th round pick. A fourth round pick. Four.

Oh

My

God.

Rumors about Moss had been floating around the Patriots for months, back to the middle of last season. Everybody pooh-poohed them, saying Belichick would never bring in someone like Moss. An obvious malcontent, a locker room problem.

But remember Corey Dillion? He was an absolute @sshole his final season at Cincinnati, a real cancer in the locker room, and he came to the Patriots and got the message.

Doug Gabriel, Moss' erstwhile Raider teammate? He came to New England, didn't get with the program, and was shown the door. I don't think Belichick's all that sentimental. I think he's a football coach, looking to win football games, and is going to do it with the best players he can get who buy into his system. And Randy Moss, for all you can say about him, wants to win football games.

I almost feel bad for the Colts. Almost.

Maybe I'll stop giggling by July. But I don't think so...

Dumb Enviro of the Week: Sheryl Crow

2007-04-26T19:50:00.000-05:00

If there's anything that makes it difficult to be an environmentalist (other than Gino’s continued Troglodytism), it's when a celerity says something very, very silly, proving once more there is absolutely no connection between the ability to make good public policy and the ability to play chords while standing up.

Today's example: Sheryl Crow. Ms. Crow, the erstwhile Armstrong marriage-wrecker, has shared her environmental vision of the world. Apparently, Sheryl's very concerned about de-forestation and paper production. So on April 19th she blogged about a couple of possible ways to cut down on wasteful paper usage.

No, no, not reining in CD packaging so there are no more 13-page foldout posters inside CDs, it's about our wasteful toilet paper usage:

I propose a limitation be put on how many sqares (SIC) of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

Sheryl, Sheryl, Sheryl.

Look, I don't know what you're eating, but when normal people eat food and poop, well, sometimes it gets a little messy. And one square of TP ain't going to cut it. Sometimes, after a particularly hot chili, why, I bring an extra roll in there.

How about this - why don't you cut down the size of your entourage when you're on tour? Take a look at her typical tour contract. It specifies parking space for three tractor trailers, four buses, and six cars. Now, compare that to the mighty Jethro Tull, who require only one 45 foot bus with a trailer. (Ian and the boys also have a contract rider specifying that all unused catering food go to a local soup kitchen. And he doesn't feel the need to pat himself on the back about it...)

But really, what do you expect, she's a rock star, not a Mensa member. Here's what she wrote after a visit to New Orlean's 9th Ward:

"-the irony is that many of those who left, were happy to leave- they were living in conditions so unbearable anyway, life away from New Orleans is preferable...so maybe our concern for a displaced community is...misplaced?"

Which makes her sound a lot like Rush Limbaugh. We shouldn't be too concerned about folks who lost their homes and possessions, because, well, their homes and possessions kind of sucked anyway? Actually, it's not Limbaugh, it's more like Marie Antoinette, who responded that the peasants who were out of bread and hungry should eat cake instead.

Actually, Sheryl's now saying the whole toilet paper thing, as well as her other suggestion that we not use paper napkins and wipe our mouths on disposable sleeves, were jokes. I can see that. And lord knows, I wouldn't want the Drudgereport to be running excerpts from my blog everyday. People may take things out of context. (or what’s worse, may not!)

But this is a teachable moment: actually, Sheryl's got a point there, buried within her nanny-like tut-tutting about our apparent wasteful hygiene habits. Trees are wonderful "eaters" of carbon, sucking it out of the atmosphere and using it to grow. So we like trees. The rainforests and forested areas are what we call “carbon sinks” because they “sink” carbon back into the ground. You remove too many trees and you upset the Earth’s natural carbon cycle even more.

But, actually, trees are best at sucking up carbon when they're growing. So paper companies which cut down a lot of trees, but also plant more to replace the trees than they cut down, aren’t as bad as you may think, Sheryl. They produce a lot of fast-growing, young trees to suck up carbon. And unless you're incinerating the waste, the paper ends up, at worst, sitting in a landfill, becoming part of the earth again.

So we shouldn't go around talking about people using less toilet paper and risking serious cases of monkey-butt. We should talk about rules for responsible forestry and requirements that companies practice sustainable wood harvesting techniques. There’s a cost to those linen napkins too, you know, in terms of water used to wash them and the electricity needed to dry them.

And really, trust me on this. You want me to use as much TP as possible. Really.

David Halberstram, RIP

2007-04-24T09:12:00.000-05:00

Author David Halberstram was killed in a car accident in California yesterday.

I've only read two of his books, "The Fifties" and "The Education of a Coach" (about Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick), but two's enough to know we've lost a giant of letters, and a wonderful example of a person with a view not clouded by political affiliation or partisan zeal, but instead by a realistic assessment of who we are as a people and the breadth of our potential as a nation.

Look at the commencement address he gave at the University of Michigan in the spring of 2000.

You are fortunate enough to live in an affluent, blessed society, not merely the strongest but the freest society in the world. In this country as in no other that I know of ordinary people have the right to reinvent themselves to become the person of their dreams, and not to live as prisoners of a more stratified, more hierarchical past. We have the right to choose: to choose if we so want, any profession, a venue to live and work in, any name. As much as any thing else this is what separates us from the old world, the old world across the Atlantic and the old world across the Pacific, where people often seemed to be doomed to a fate and a status determined even before their birth. We have the words of the great physicist I. I. Rabi to remind us of that special freedom, of the privilege which comes with choice. When he received the Nobel Prize, Rabi was asked by a journalist what he thought: I think he said, that if I had lived in the old country I would have been a tailor.

I do not think the stunning success of this society took place by happenstance. Both by chance—and by choice—I have become something of a historian of the second half of the twentieth century. I graduated from high school in 1951, and from college in 1955, and my professional career, throughout the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam took me through the stormiest years of much of the last 50 years. And if there is one great truth which categorizes that period in America it is that this nation has systematically become more and more inclusionary in race, gender and ethnicity—that we have made a constant and increasingly successful effort to make the playing field as level as possible, and to open doors once firmly closed.

When the question of inclusion or exclusion, one of the most basic to the concept of a state, has arisen over the years—when the status quote has been challenged—not every one has been in accord with the premise of a more inclusionary society, whether in sports, in the military or in the economy. There have always been doubters and they were always convinced, that the old ways were the best, that this impulse to open America up, much of it court-driven would somehow weaken us, that newer Americans were not as worthy as old and that the different groups hungering for a fairer share of the good life were not as worthy as those who had held power before them.

I am old enough to remember when a great many influential Americans were absolutely convinced that Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays would fail in the great arena of sports, and that our military would be significantly weakened by the integration of the armed force. You might like to wonder that when you think of Michael Jordan or Colin Powell, and their respective brilliant careers. These doubters, those who favored the status quo (in many cases it should be noted, because it favored them) also believed that the descendants of slavery who had worked so hard for so little for so long and who had been voiceless in our society for so long would somehow weaken our economy, if given a fair place in it.

The truth is, not surprisingly, that this effort to be inclusionary has made us in all ways a better, fairer and stronger society. And as for the economy being weakened by being more inclusionary I should mention to you that the year that I graduated from high school, 1951, the Dow stood at 250. Yes, that's right, 250.

I believe that this great American ideal, to be more just, to be more inclusionary, to offer to the children of others the educational possibility we would want for our own children, has given us not just strength but much of our common purpose. We still believe that we can improve ourselves and make this a better and more complete nation: we may argue with each other about the rules in the social contract, we can dispute each other's arguments, we are often cantankerous. But slowly steadily we are on our way to becoming the world's first universal culture. No wonder then that our popular culture has such power throughout the world—it is something that people all over the world can understand.

Looking at the commencement address he gave at Tulane in 2003, it's essentially the same, but with a nod toward the contemporary issues of the War on Terror and the occupation of Iraq:

But I would ask you today not to be fearful--we are not a fearful nation, we have never been one, and the members of our own families who settled in this country often after the most difficult and arduous of journeys were most assuredly not fearful people. Instead I want you to look forward to the essentially rich future which lies ahead of you, the blessed future which goes with the great good fortune of being a college educated citizen of this bountiful and most dynamic country.

This is something missed by those whose modus operandi is to complain first about America and ask questions later. We have problems, sure. But give me a country that doesn't have problems? Don't give me some two-bit European country with a social class system out of the 1600's. There is no place on this planet that matches the opportunity we provide, and the results we achieve.

It's something John Winger hit square on the head. We're the Mutts. We're the wretched refuse kicked out of every decent country in the world. But mutts are stronger than purebreds, because mutts mix the best traits and leave out the bad teeth and hemophilia you see in the British Royal family.

And that's what Halberstram was talking about.

And somehow, I think he would've been please to see the connection between Bill Murray's character in Stripes and his own Pulitzer Prize winning career...

PS - Yeltsin, Halberstram, who's next?

Lilac Sunrise

2007-04-24T06:49:00.000-05:00

The lilac bushes have started budding.

Morning coffee on the porch is not far away. We've started grilling again, and baseball season's just kicked off.

Welcome back, spring.

A belated Happy Belligerent Americans Day

2007-04-20T08:55:00.000-05:00

I forgot to post this yesterday, but it's a tradition I have to recognize April 19th, Belligerent Americans Day.

1689: Massachusetts Governor Edmond Andros is booted for being an autocratic @sshole.

1775: Mob of ruffian farmers on Lexington Green start shooting on Redcoats (who are the army of the country of which the ruffian farmers are citizens, by the way) as the Redcoats are in transit to Concord to arrest some fellows who were plotting against the Government.

1861: Mobs of ruffian city folks riot in Baltimore, attack Union troops on their way to Washington DC. Four union soldiers and nine civilians are killed.

1898: Congress grants President McKinley's request for War with Spain.

1917: The S.S. Magnolia encountered a German U-Boat and fired what is believed to be the first American shots fired in WWI.

1993: The government storms the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Seventy-four religious extremists die in resulting conflagration / mass suicide / murder.

1995: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols explode a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168, including 19 children.

Now, if I were Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I wouldn't get out of bed today...

I am just so damn proud of the USA...

2007-04-18T17:30:00.000-05:00

I just read a story from the London Daily Mail that made me so gosh darn proud of my country that I knew I had to share it with you.

And to provide you with the appropriate soundtrack for your reading, here's a little patriotic music to read by:

(the good part starts at 0:33)

Okay, now on with the story.

Well, it seems that folks in old blighty have started to take after their corpulent younger cousins and obesity is quickly becoming common over there as well.

This has all the usual side effects; poor health, fat out of shape kids, and the breakdown of the family as people eat too much fast food, cats and dogs living together, fire and brimstone being rained from heaven, all that end of the world crap.

Now, for whatever reason they cremate a large proportion of dead people in England (I would assume land constraints, but I don't know so I'm not going to guess), like 2/3rds.

And this pandemic obesity is causing a problem with their crematoria. You see, the average English coffin is 16 to 20 inches across. Well, that's before Burger King. So their crematoria are built to handle that sized coffin. Problem is, there's a growing segment (the segment is growing, as well as each of the people in that segment, don't you know) of their population which is requiring coffins up to 40 inches wide.

Wide load, indeed.

So, what's this got to do with America? Well, in retrofitting their crematorium "fleet", English companies are having to turn to American companies:

"Among them Lewisham in South London has ordered a 44 inch cremator from the United States, where the world's highest rates of obesity means the funeral trade is geared up to meet the problem."

Alright! We're the world's leading exporter of fatass-fryers!

Let's hear it for the good-ole, corpulent, USA!

A World Without Bee Stings?

2007-04-17T10:33:00.000-05:00

A World Without Honey?

Actually, it's worse than that. There's growing evidence that something very odd is going on with bee populations across the United States and Europe. In the past month or so Drudge has picked up a couple of stories about recent the growing phenomenon called "colony collapse disorder" (CCD) where bee colonies pull a Roanoke and disappear. Some possible culprits of CCD are parasites and immune deficiencies caused by pesticides. Another possible vector, according to studies done in England, are cell phones. The numbers are pretty scary, with massive losses in bee populations in 22 states.

Either way, it's fairly clear something is going on, and there's a decent chance that we're more responsible than not. Now before you go all troglodyte [Gino: ;)] bees are crucial parts of agriculture. While we've been busy creating artificial pesticides and toxic-runoff producing fertilizers, we haven't figured out how to effectively replace the simple bee's role in pollinating crops. If bees go, well, we go.

Here's Einstein's take on it:

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Look. I'm a Republican. I'm a conservative, in the classical sense. I don't get all weepy about calling out evil and facing it (Nazi Germany, Iraq, the Soviet Union) and I don't think that it's particularly productive or sustainable for the Government to be relied on for sustenance, education, and direction.

I believe in God and I think he's as real as a rock, but even if I didn't I believe that the idea some overarching and eternally true moral sense is required for human beings to live together and not kill each other. I voted for GW Bush twice and I cried when Reagan died. I'm red state, baby.

But my party has got itself all fricked up over the environment, and the love of money, and the debasement of quality living, and I can't stand it anymore.

You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing, and something is not right here.

It's time to slow down. It's time to stop thinking that newer is automatically better. It's time to stop paving the green places, start reinvesting in our cities, recreate our neighborhoods and... and... and this is the toughie: turn off the goddamn TV and have dinner as a family.

For my conservative friends: you claim membership in a creed that cites personal responsilbility and minimalist government intervention. The flip side of that is a requirement that we be stewards of our own lives -- we don't believe in the nanny state so we work, we take care of our own family, we, in short, take care of our own business.

Well, this big world of ours, this is our business too. This is all part of stewardship. We have a responsibility to ourselves, and our kids, and our kids' kids, to understand what we're doing to the world and, as best we can, minimize our footprints. And we don't do that when in the name of efficiency or economy we buy cheap crap made oversees by slave labor for companies that piss and moan every time you try to make them clean up their messes.

We don't practice stewardship when we say "oh, the Earth is so big and nothing I do can have much impact." Multiply that statement times 6 billion and you see the problem.

We don't practice stewardship when we, in the name of convenience, surrender the moral and ethical programming of our children's minds to the folks who put "Two and a Half Men" on TV.

Too many in the Republican party have come to associate "conservatism" with bowing and scraping to big business. Efficiency is exalted as the end. Big is good. Cheap is good. Stock market's up? GREAT! Does it matter that it's up because the five biggest companies on the Dow have undertaken "downsizing" initiatives to inflate profits at the expense of thousands and thousands of jobs? Ah, the hell with those folks who got canned, I'm gonna get an extra $0.04 on that quarterly dividend...

Times are changing. Are you ready?

What do you think you get for frequent flier miles?

2007-04-15T06:39:00.000-05:00

Have you guys heard about the Rocketplane XP? Being built by a private company in Oklahoma, made up of a shadowy bunch of ex-aerospace industry guys (one had experience on the SR-71 blackbird program and has done contracts for DARPA, the secret hi-tech defense guys) and political hacks (a bunch of ex-NASA guys, and the chairman of the board is a two-time Republican Convention Delegate), the Rocketplane should be lifting off sometime in late 2007 or early 2008 carrying four suckers who pay $250,000 to go 100 kilometers into space and experience weightlessness for 3-4 minutes.

The technology looks neat, if somewhat limited in its application. It's pushed by two conventional turbofan jet engines, and one kerosene-fueled rocket engine related to the Atlas Rocket engines. Only 43 feet long (smaller than a 8 person private jet) this puppy will get to Mach 3.5, reach a minimum apogee of 34 miles, upside down so you can look out the roof and see Mama Earth, and then land at a normal airfield in unpowered flight mode (ie, you're gliding... Yeah, that sounds fun.).

Anyway, they've got a fairly developed website where they solicit your requests to be separated from a quarter million of your hard earned money. They've got some interesting schematics of some of the technological features of the craft, some which raise more questions than provide answers.

For example: The ventilation system is designed to provide clean, dry air to the cabin, contains a chemical scrubber to remove CO2, and is specially designed to filter out "any foreign items such as dirt, hair, or vomit that may be released in the cabin".

Umm...

Okay.

I can see some concern about vomit. That makes sense; you're going to be pulling 3-4 G's, and that may trigger a re-run of lunch. And dirt, well, sure, whatever. I mean, I would assume they're not doing the whole clean room thing that made John Kerry look like such an ass when he visited NASA, but I would be concerned if they're expecting too much dirt. Maybe they should vacuum more often. And, you know, "dirt" is sometimes a euphemism for something else, something a little more squishy than what we usually think of as dirt, but instead of counting on a filter to take that stuff out of the air, maybe they should just take a tip from this person, and issue each passenger their own Depends.

It's that middle thing on the list that's giving me a little problem. Hair? They're expecting hair to be released in the vehicle? Maybe they are expecting to have Lisa Nowak (from link in that last paragraph) and want to protect against the stray public hairs that come loose during groovy zero-G lovemaking. And you new know when Clarence Thomas may make a reservation and you'd hate to have a repeat of that whole "who put a public hair on my diet coke" thing.

Of course, this isn't the only way you can get into space. Over at Space Travellers you can book a flight on a Mig-25 Foxbat. That baby'll get you 15-20 miles up, about the right height to see the curve of the earth and high enough that you're wicked screwed when your assembled - by - disgruntled - commies - after - vodka - break aircraft falls apart.

By the way, "travellers" isn't a typo. The folks who run the website can't spell, but they can send you into space. Go figure.

Anywho, there are a number of adventures to be had from the old Soviet space program, but not that flight to the International Space Station Lance Bass was supposed to take a bunch of years ago. You can though, for the price of either $5.50 US$ or $5,500 (again, these guys should hire an editor, it would give me a little more confidence in their abilities) book a trip to Kazakhstan this October to watch the liftoff of a Soyuz rocket bound for the ISS.

For that dough you get accommodations at a 3 star hotel (I'm guessing it's no worse than the Day's Inn in Durham, NC), and all "transportations" in Moscow and Star City (the old Soviet kosmodrome in Bakinour, Kazakhstan (including "economy class" airfare from Moscow to Baiknour... Economy class Russian airlines? Boy, that sounds fun...)

You also get to watch preparations and training, and have a special seat in the VIP section of the stands watching the liftoff. Again, this is Russian space technology we're talking about here, so remember to bring your umbrella to deflect flaming chunks of rocket should the thing blow up on the pad.

Oh, by the way, handicapped folks need not apply, as the homebase for the pinnacle of commie technology doesn't have any elevators.

Me, I'll stick with driving fast and watching Borat again today, thank you very much.

Hello, been a while!

2007-04-12T19:21:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when you're up to your ass in alligators it's hard to remember you started wanting to drain the swamp.

It's hearing season up here in Boss-town, so I'm very busy scuttling from oak-paneled room to oak-paneled room, kicking @ss and taking names. Oh yes, the forces of sin and inequity (that is, nasty polluters and perpetrators of sprawl and bad development) quake when they see the mighty Kal and his cohorts coming.

Well, maybe not so much. I am at an inherent disadvantage with the malefactors of great wealth: I can't golf, and I don't like to drink in public...

(My drinking is all done at night, in the dark, while caressing the lovely, cold blue-steeled barrel of my .38.)

So, some personal news: I've become an uncle for the first time, as Brother-in-Law #2 has finally spawned. See, the wife and I are the oldest in our families, and up to now none of our combined five brothers and sisters had seen it fit to settle down and fulfil their biological imperatives.

Wifeypooh has a bundle of brothers and sisters, but the one closest to her age is, at 34, a confirmed bachelor. I think he spent way too much time with Wifeypooh growing up and has seen what a miserable bastard I am -OUCH!- (boy, she moves quietly when she wants to)...

Anyway, he's not going to get us nieces or nephews anytime soon. And Brotherdear is a Stage 4 commitment phobe with a nice dose of LookingForMsPerfect-itis, so while he's been in a couple of fairly long term relationships, I have my doubts (although I like his current paramour... She seems to call him on his shit, which he severely needs...) But I'm not holding my breath with respect to him.

The other siblings are all fairly young (Sister-in-Law#2 was 5 when I started dating Wifeypooh about 100 years ago), so we've had to wait a while, but it finally happened today, with a little girl coming this afternoon.

And I'm so glad it was B-I-L #2 who had the kid, as he was the giver of several loud and obnoxious baby toys for which I now get to return the favor, bwa ha ha...

Well, off to do some work. Thanks for checking in!

And another thing...

2007-04-03T17:21:00.000-05:00

I am proud to announce that if you google "Layfette House Foxboro", my "review" of 2/14/07 comes up number one.

For those of you who don't remember it, my opinion of this particularly restaurant (and to reinforce it for any google-bots that happen by):

Layfette House sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks Layfette House sucks....

Thank you for your support.

The Soundtrack of my life...

2007-04-03T16:35:00.000-05:00

The best decade of music ever...

(Argh! Frustration! Supposed to be playing 14 videos from my YouTube "80's Radio" playlist! Why is it only playing the first one?!? Gagghg!!!

Well, anyway here's the link to the playlist, if you're interested. Ciao!)

Help!

2007-04-03T14:29:00.000-05:00

Staying home with sick kid...

Watching Spy Kids 3-D...

Brain shirnking....

Help!

Google Paper, what a deal!

2007-04-01T06:46:00.000-05:00

You guys been on gmail yet? They've got a new feature, where they'll mail your email to you.

What a deal! If you don't really like electronic mail, they'll send you your emails through the US Postal system, printed out on paper!

For free!

How can they afford this, you ask?

Well, they'll include ads on the back of the emails, in large, red type.

Still, sounds like a wicked deal, doesn't it? I had a few ex-bosses who would have loved this option, as they seemed to just print out and read all their emails anyway.

And over on Googlesightseeing.com they've got a story about the great new feature on from Google, live satellite imagery on GoogleEarth!

But the more I thought about this, the more worried I became. I mean, wouldn't this be a perfect tool for terrorists or something? What the heck are the folks at Google thinking?

So I called the State Department and told them what the folks over at Google were up to. I mean, not the mail thing. That's cool. But the whole real-time satellite imagery open to anyone. That's no good. Jeez, those guys could launch cruise missiles or something!

Oh, yeah. Happy April 1st.

I am the King of all Dorks!

2007-03-30T16:46:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-29T19:40:00.000-05:00

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?!?

2007-03-19T03:24:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-03-18T05:41:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-03-17T06:45:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-03-11T23:54:00.000-05:00

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!

2007-03-07T08:13:00.001-05:00

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...

2007-03-07T07:34:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-03-03T23:30:00.000-05:00

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....

2007-03-03T06:29:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-03-02T09:31:00.000-05:00

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.

Take Free Career Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Clergy?

Hmmm.....

Read a Book!

2007-02-24T11:14:00.000-05:00

My soon-to-be Chief Justice Avitable ran a meme yesterday that looked interesting, so I'd thought I'd steal it, and save myself from having to think up something original today.

THE BOOK MEME!

Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror? Well, Stephen King is my all-time guilty pleasure, so I'd have to say horror. I'll read all three though, and have great affection for books from each of these genres.

Hardback or Trade Paperback or Mass Market Paperback? I have a lot of trade paperbacks from my "Buck A Book" era, back when you could get decent crap from B-a-B if you paid attention and went in daily. For instance, I've got the entire Richard Nixon library, special edition, in trade paperback. The problem is I'm a re-reader, that is, I find a book I like and I'll read it over and over again, so the paperbacks tend to get a little beat up over time. I do love the feel of a good hardcover, it feels so substantial - so official. But if I'm reading on the train, nothing beats the convenience of a mass market paperback. So put me down for "yes" on all three.

Amazon or Brick and Mortar? You ever notice that bookstores make you pee? I swear to god they're pumping up the humidity or something to make sure you don't just lounge around for hours and read all those wonderful words for free... If I'm after something specific, which is usually the case with the books Wifeypooh needs, we'll go Amazon, or more likely, Barnes and Noble's website, because she has a teacher discount. If I'm just looking to blow a half and hour and find something that will catch my fancy, nothing compares to an actual store.

Barnes & Noble or Borders? B&N for stuff the wife needs, but my lunch hour browsing is done at the local Borders, as the B&N in downtown Boston went bye-bye a couple of months ago.

Hitchhiker or Discworld? I laugh out loud at parts of the Hitchhiker series. Never read Discworld.

Bookmark or Dogear? I'm with Av, I'll use a bookjacket, if the book comes with it. If I own the book, I'll dogear - I don't see it as defacing the book, I see it as a tangible expression of my affection for these books.

Asimov’s Science Fiction or Fantasy & Science Fiction? I've only read a couple of Asimov's short stories, and was never too impressed by them. What do you mean by Fantasy & Science Fiction? Color me confused.

Alphabetize by author, Alphabetize by title, or random? I actually separate by genre - fiction, non-fiction, and then by author, usually. But mostly I just throw things around and stack 'em in the corners. My Buck-a-Book era left me with several hundred books I routinely have to hide from the Wife.

Keep, Throw Away or Sell? Keep. I have a copy of the freakin' Bhagavad Gita for goodness sakes...

Keep dust-jacket or toss it? Keep it, until it disintegrates into little bits. Then tape it up and still keep it. Why on earth would you throw it away?

Read with dustjacket or remove it? I use it as a bookmark, so definitely leave it on.

Short story or novel? It really depends on my mood. A short story is like a quick affair, a little peck. A novel is a commitment (well, a commitment for a couple of days on the train, I blow through books pretty quickly). I'll usually read a novel, then do a collection of short stories, then onto the next novel.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? Both. Love the movies too, although "The Prisoner of Azkahban" was too short -- although it was very, very good. "Goblet of Fire" was very good, and bodes well for the next one. They're getting darker, and thus I think more richly textured and enjoyable. I loved the art direction for the Lemony Snicket movie, matched the feel of the book's illustrations perfectly.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? Never stop until I need to eat, or sleep.

"It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time?" Ditto Avitable: "Who thinks up these stupid fucking questions?"

Buy or Borrow? Prefer to buy, because I'm lousy at giving back and I always feel bad when I have someone else's books... Plus I forget who I borrowed it from until they angrily confront me, usually at some family event.

Buying choice: Book Reviews, Recommendation or Browse? Recommendations. Wifeypooh's in a book club, and they actually hit upon a good book now and again (The Time Traveler's Wife).

Lewis or Tolkien? Tolkien. I find the Narnia series too thin gruel. (And I like the overblown, pompous language of the Tolkien stuff. So there.)

Collection (short stories by the same author) or Anthology (short stories by different authors)? Collection. I fall in love with authors and read their entire bodies of work, and then move on.

Tidy ending or Cliffhanger? Things have to end. Endings may be ambiguous, but to not end is a cop out, unless there's another book in the series.

Morning reading, Afternoon reading or Nighttime reading? Train reading. Bathroom reading. Very rarely bed reading anymore, because now that I'm an old fart I fall asleep when I'm tired and in a prone position. Plus, now that I've got someone in bed with me, I've got to use a booklight. When I was a kid I'd stay up all night and read in bed, but that's a thing of the past.

(oh, and if I'm in the middle of a particularly engrossing book, or coming to the end of a book, I'll often sneak off into the can for extended periods... even if I don't really have any other business in there, if you get my drift)

Standalone or Series? Series. I love getting to know a character, and coming back time and time again to visit his or her world.

New or used? Doesn't matter. We go to the library sale each year, when in the last hour you can get buy a grocery-bag's worth of books for two bucks. We'll usually fill four or five bags and walk out with 100 books for ten bucks and have our book needs taken care of for the year.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? Perhaps "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger, although it is a book club favorite and is in being talked about for a movie, so lots of people have heard of it. Hmm... I'm stumped. I can't think of anything I've read lately and would recommend that hasn't been read by everyone and their brother...

Top 5 6 7 favorite genre books of all time? I don't contain my reading to a single genre, and a lot of my reading mixes across genres, so let's try top five favorite Sci Fi / Fantasy / Horror books of all time:

Inkheart, Cornelia Funke
The Stand, Stephen King
The Time Travelers Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery, Various (it's a collection of horror stories for juvenile readers)
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling.
The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
It, by Stephen King

Favorite genre series? Oh, I have a couple. I love the Potter series, and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, and Stephen King's Castle Rock books, which all seem to go together. Also, of course, the Lemony Snicket series, and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

Currently Reading? I'm currently slogging my way through "The Earth is Flat" by Tom Friedman. It's a 400 pound hardback, so I haven't taken it on the train with me, and what with wives and kids to entertain, I'm stuck reading it five pages at a time. I may be reading this thing forever...

There. That's it. Have a great weekend, and read a book!

So Long, Suckers!

2007-02-23T06:22:00.000-05:00

No, no, I'm not quitting blogging again. I'm just practicing for my Monday morning call into work after I win Tonight's Mega Millions lottery game.

First, you've got to understand I'm not one of those schleps who throws $5 or $10 bucks a week into the lottery in hope of the occasional $250 Numbers Game hit. Gambling in general, and The Lottery in particular, is a highly regressive activity, usually taking much too much money from people who can't really afford it.

(And before you protest, as does my father-in-law, "well, I break even at worst", let me point you to Connecticut, where the two tribes that run casinos make voluntary payments in lieu of taxes to the state exceeding $300 million per year. Are they able to make those payments if everybody is "breaking even". No. That's your money they're giving to the state, and if they're giving $300 million, than I'd be willing to say they're making a billion and a half, at least.)

So I'm not a huge fan of legalized gambling. Actually, truth be told, it pisses me off. But I'm not above throwing two or three bucks at these ridiculous big stakes games when they come up.

For instance, tonight's Mega Millions game is over $170 million. Now, the chance you'll hit is something like 175 million to one, but it does take only one, doesn't it?

So I doubled my chances and bought two tickets to tonight's drawing. Someones eventually got to win this thing, why not me? And besides, I'll get way more entertainment dreaming of the ways I'd spend the dough than $2 bucks could get me anywhere else. (I mean, really: have you seen the look you get giving $1 bills to strippers lately? It's like you've got three heads or something...)

Anywho, how would you spend $177 million?

First off, you've got to decide how you'd take the money. Like a lot of these big games, they don't give you a check for $177 million (well, they give you those big, oversized checks, but take it from experience, you can't cash those... Ooo, this brings us to a digression, if I may:

In one of my old jobs I used to be responsible for setting up "big check" events where we'd have a press event announcing a large grant, usually a million bucks or more, and would bring along one of those big, four feet long checks, complete with forged signature of the Governor. The money would usually go to communities via wire transfer and required various hoops and hurdles for the town to actually access.

Well, we had an issue with one community where we were giving a grant for work done years before, and the town had been dicked around by the state forever in their attempt to get the money, so the town fathers were a bit skeptical that we would actually give them the money, big check notwithstanding.

The asked their state representative, a real pain in the ass, if they could get the actual check at the event. The state rep. asked me, and I replied: are you crazy? No. We don't give out paper checks for a million bucks. So he went about making my life miserable, pestering me for weeks, pestering my boss, calling the governor's office. Basically making my life a living hell until I finally went to the finance guys and threatened to light myself on fire if we couldn't make this happen.

Somehow, and I don't know how many state laws were broken, one morning the CFO swung by my office and handled me a paper check for One Million Dollars. Now this was back when I that was about 33 years worth of my salary. In one check. After about 30 seconds of wondering if Lil' Peach would cash a third party check for a million clams, I had a panic attack because I'd have to keep this thing in my possession for two or three days until the event.

Now this was back in the days that I'd actually lost my mortgage payment, one of Wifeypooh's checks, and a small dog in the mess that was my desk. These days I understand the value of a daily desk-purge, but back then I was captain clutter. I think I carried that check around in my hands, sealed in a manila envelope, for two days until we finally had the event and I gave it to the pain-in-the-ass state rep, who made a big deal about how tough getting the check was. Tough for him? Yeah, sure, did he sleep with a million dollar check under his pillow for two days? Bah..

**Oh, and by the way, should anyone from the Inspector General's office be reading, I made this up. Plus, it's been more than seven years, so I think we've gone beyond the statute of limitations...)

Anyway, where the heck were we? Let me just scroll up and see..

Hold on...

Oh, yeah. Mega Millions. Anyway, Mega Millions gives you two choices of how you can get your money; you can either get the jackpot split into 26 yearly payments, or they'll give you as much cash as that 26 year annuity would cost.

So, with the prize at $177 million, the cash option would be $107 million or so, and the annuity would run you $6.8 million a year, before taxes. Figure you can manage to keep 60% (we're being very conservative) and you'd end up with $4.4 million after taxes.

See, personally, I'd take the 25 year option. I know most people jump at the lump sum, thinking they can make way more money off investing the dough than they'd get form the annual payments. Sure, maybe you can. But maybe you'd end up like those idiots who blow through all their dough in a couple of years and end up broke and bitter, calling their lottery winnings the worst thing that's ever happened to them. That would suck.

So, being super-cautious type people, and taking the cash option, here's the first ten things I can think of that I'd do with my after tax booty:

Top Ten Things I'd Do With $4 Million A Year, After Taxes

10. $1mil - to be used to buy shotguns, canned goods, and bottled water for the coming of the apocalypse. Because I know with God's sense of humor, letting me win $177 million paid out in 26 years means that the world is ending in seven months.

9. $58K each kid into 529 plans for school. In case the world doesn't end.

8. $100K for each relative to pay them to leave me alone (5 siblings, 4 parents).

7. $300K for a yearly luxury box lease at Gillette Stadium - to pay Brotherdear back for every time he's taken me to Pats games on him.

6. $1mil for land (20+ acres of mixed pasture and woodlands), plus house, outfitted with solar panels, a windmill, and, resources allowing, a hydro generator. And a big freaking fence.

5. $100K for a Tesla Roadster.

4. $75K to get Joe Satriani to give me guitar lessons.

3. $200 for a new MP3 player (see, I'm not just blowing money willy-nilly).

2. $50K for a gold and diamond encrusted skin for the MP3 player.

And the number on thing I'd buy with $4 million per year after taxes:

1. $1.259 to my lawyers to get me a good deal out of the divorce which is caused when Wifeypooh hears about my little $1.259 million offer to Penny....

Ciao!

UPDATE: Oh my, I just realized that the bribes to my inlaws would cost $900K, not $100K, so I'd only have $329,000 to bribe Penny... That's not enough... Hmm... What could I get Av to do for $300,000???

Okay, I'm back.

2007-02-22T08:13:00.000-05:00

Looking at yesterday's post I realized my Dunkin' level must be low, causing these depressive and suicidal thoughts. So here I sit with my Dunkin' Great One, and, wouldn't you know it, all is right with the world!

I'm sitting here looking at a Father's Day present The Boy made me last year titled "Five Reasons Why I Love My Dad." And in addition to highlighting the sublime perfection of my fatherhood, it also speaks volumes about The Boy, and why he is destined to a life of slide rules and .... well, whatever the heck engineers do.

Five Reasons Why I Love My Dad
by Boy Jones

1. He is nice. Well, comparatively, I guess. I see the Boy hasn't yet discovered that "yes, ahem, yup, true..." are the conversation tactics of a Dad desperately trying to read that paper, not a nice guy engrossed in your breakfast table discussion.

And here's the sad part: in ten years I'll be sitting, probably at that same table, wishing I could have those conversations...

2. He plays with me. This is what happens when you have a dad with the mentality of a twelve year old. Actually, it was ideal. When Wifeypooh got tired of playing with me, she popped out the kids, and given me new playmates so I don't have to bother her.

3. He does not yell at me. I'm not the yeller of the family. I growl more than yell. I've also been known to huff and sigh. Which is why in the rare occasion when I do yell, it gets instant attention... Although the advent of adolescence in The Girl has seen increasing yelling with decreasing efficacy...

4. He buys me food. Well, I like food too, so it's not like I'm buying it just for him. And he eats like a bird anyway, so it's really not a big deal. Just give him a bit of macaroni and cheese and a cookie after dinner and he's all yours...

5. He gives me shelter. What kind of eight year old thinks about stuff like this? "He gives me shelter"... Whattaya think, I'd make you sleep out in the cold? What a left-brain, logical, Spock-like thought...

So, a future of protractors and calculator watches ahead of him, or what?

Ugh... February.

2007-02-21T05:37:00.000-05:00

Now is the winter of our discontent, the times that try men's souls, if I can mix my historic quote stealing.

So.

February sucks. Can it just get its ass over with please? Were in full pity-party swing over here and need March and the renewal of spring to get moving again.

A list of my grievances:

Trusty Laptop went teats up; windows ate itself.

Trusty MP3 player is missing, and feared somewhere in the bowels of the Xray machine at the State House (but, oh, I feel so safe!) (Until, that is, Wifeypooh finds out I lost the MP3 player and chews my ass out to the Nth degree)

Non-winter had been replaced by biting, searing, ice-storm cold. Thanks a efffing lot, Mother Nature. You biotch.

On the plus side:

Still on the right side of the dirt.

Nifty new Treo makes it possible to be hounded by email everywhere, even the can.

Got a new toy:

Of course, this new toy is necessitated by the fact that I weigh approximately 945 pounds and need someone to help me pee by lifting my ponderous gut out of the way of my rapidly disappearing manhood...

Oh Christ, that's a lovely image.

And this goddamn world has gone completely off the rails.

The 2008 Presidential Election is 21 months away, the New Hampshire primary is 13 months away, and ads are already going up? The rest of you are lucky, you don't live in the media market that covers Southern New Hampshire. We're subjected to political ads early and often, and have to put up with ridiculous shit like stories that Dennis Kuchinic is trying to get 42 votes in MooseScrew New Hampshire by taking sides in a local permitting issue that is absolutely none of his business.

I swear, you get your cat stuck in a tree in New Hampshire anytime within a year and a half of the New Hampshire primary and four they'll be four presidential candidates coming over your house with a ladder.

I just can't take it.

Can't take anymore talk about Tom Brady's bastard child, Anna Nicole Smith's body (or that poor soon-t0-be multimillionaire baby and the circus paternity trial), Britney's hair, etc etc etc.

Not to mention if you're a sports fan in New England up until this week your February sports options were watching the Celtics go on an 18 game losing streak, or trying to find the Bruins on some channel, any channel. When did they put hockey in the witness protection program?

But things are looking up, my friends. Pitchers and catchers reported this week; opening day is a little more than a month away. You don't even have to be a rabid baseball fan to appreciate that, pitchers and catcher reporting is, like the return of the geese or those little green eruptions that become your daffodils, a sure sign that spring is on the way.

I'm ready. Ready to renew life and put behind me this winter of my discontent. Ready to face my new life with firm resolution, not dread resignation. Goodbye cruel winter. Hello affirming spring.

Happy Valentine's day to me!

2007-02-15T04:56:00.001-05:00

Did our traditional Valentine's Day thing yesterday: Kentucky Fried Chicken by candlelight followed by watching "So I Married An Axe Murderer." This tradition was started years ago after a particularly lousy Valentine's Dinner at the local hoity-toity restaurant where the service sucked, the food was merely okay, and every other woman in the crowd was given a rose when they came in, except Wifeypooh. I won't mention them, as I wouldn't want to kill their business.... oh what the heck:

The Layfette House in Foxboro SUCKS!!! Sucks sucks sucks sucks sucks Layfette House sucks sucks sucks...

There, that feels better.

Well, anywho, got the wife her usual Godiva allotment, and a DVD of Oliver and Company, the first movie we went to together. She got me some chocolates, thus contributing to my future of morbid obesity, and a neat little toy came in the mail:

I somehow hoodwinked the wife into thinking that a Treo was completely necessary for my new gig... bwa ha ha... Now I can blog on the train, in the elevator, in my car, while showering!!! I will be invincible!!! bwa aha hah ha ha --choke choke, sputter sputter---

Alright, enough of that, time to shower...

In Honor of Valentines Day

2007-02-14T07:48:00.000-05:00

Av did this one about his gorilla-human relationship. It was touching and all that, so I decided to steal it and comment on my fictional wife...

1. Where/how did you meet?
My best friend's birthday party. She was his date. We bowled. I had a cast on my hand, which I had broken punching another player in the helmet (I never said I was bright). I bowled left handed. She bowled with two hands. I beat her soundly.

2. How long have you known each other?
Well, that party was some time in the fall of 1985, so 21 years and a few months.

3. How long after you met did you start dating?
I chased her three long years before she finally succame, in the fall of 1988.

4. How long did you date before you were engaged?
I was engaged in my heart the moment I saw her. It took her a little longer. We got engaged around Christmas 1990, two years after we started dating.

5. How long was your engagement?
Four and a half years. It was a Bataan Death March engagement, during which we must have broken up half a dozen times, particularly as the wedding neared. This was the first wedding in each family, and we were about 12 years old, and we didn't have jobs yet, so it was a little tense.

6. How long have you been married?
Thirteen years this April.

7. What is your anniversary?
Not telling. Gotta keep something for myself, you know?

8. How many people came to your wedding reception?
I think it was 200, although I wasn't much involved beyond fighting with my wife-to-be, fighting with my mother, fighting with my eventual Mother-in-law.

9. What kind of cake did you serve?
White cake with strawberries and white chocolate mousse, with a butter cream icing. Had to ask Wifeypooh that one, I had no idea... (I think I was still in shock, people tell me we had a reception, but I don't really remember it)

10. Where was your wedding?
The Catholic Church in Pleasantville. The reception was at a golf course the next town over.

11. What did you serve for your meal?
I have no idea. Probably chicken, this was 1994 and normal people were still doing the rubber chicken thing at wedding receptions.

12. How many people were there in your bridal party?
14 total, with junior bridesmaids and the flower girl, and the designated fluffer for later that evening.

13. Are you still friends with them all?
(This is going to be a sore spot should motherdear be reading this, as I didn't have my cousins in my wedding party but I did have a couple of college friends, one of which I haven't heard hide nor hair from in about ten years). I keep in touch with all my groom's men but one, and I think we've lost track of two of the wife's attendents, but since most were family (my brother, and her four siblings), we still see them (I wouldn't push it and say we're still "friends" with them all).

14. Did you or your spouse cry during the ceremony?
No. I did cry after I bought the engagement ring. I had never spend that much money on something I couldn't go through a drive-through in before. Took me a year of loansharking and leg-breaking to pay it off.

15. Most special moment of your wedding day?
Heh heh heh.. (Dirty laugh)

16. Any funny moments?
The wedding party sang the Time Warp. And my 19 year old cousin got to put the garter on my nine year old sister-in-law. He behaved, which was a pleasant surprise.

17. Any big disasters?
Not that I know of, but I was living the Life of Flounder (Fat, Drunk, and Stupid), so the hall could've caught on fire and my father and step-father could've had a duel to the death with AK-47s and I wouldn't have noticed.

18. Where did you go on your honeymoon?
Disney.

19. How long were you gone?
About a week. Both she and I had basically moved out of our parent's houses to get married, so going off alone at 4:30 in the morning to Florida seemed like a big adventure.

20. If you were to do your wedding over, what would you change?
Would've been a whole lot mellower about the whole thing.

21. What side of the bed do you sleep on?
On the right, to the left of the wife. When I shared a bed with Brothergoodson as a kid I had the left-hand side, but when Wifeypooh and I moved into our first apartment the eave was over the left, so to save me from concusssions every morning, I took the right.

22. What size is your bed?
Queen

23. Greatest strength as a couple?
She calls me on my crap, and I understand her better than anyone else. (For instance, I have conversations with her in my head; I know exactly what she's going to say, before she says it. Really cuts down on wasted conversation.)

24. Greatest challenge as a couple?
She calls me on my crap, and I don't call her on hers. But, frankly, everyone else calls her on her crap, so she doesn't need that from me too, does she?

25. Who literally pays the bills?
We do it together, at the kitchen table, every Monday night. We started doing it that was after a certain "secret" credit card with a $4000 balance was accidentially discovered one time... Not good times, not good times at all.

26. What is your song?
"Eternal Flame", The Bangles.

27. What did you dance your first dance to?
"Eternal Flame". Our "last song" at the reception was "You're my best friend" by Queen. That's a friggin' hard song to foxtrot to, I'll tell you what.

28. Describe your wedding dress?
We had matching white beaded off the shoulder numbers. I had me back hair braided for the occasion.

29. What kind of flowers did you have at your wedding?
Edible? I don't know, it was 13 frickin' years ago. Actually, I think she had lilacs in her bouquet, as she loves lilacs, but don't hold me to that.

30. Are your wedding bands engraved? What do they say?
We put our ATM PIN in there in case we ever forget it.

Well, that's it. Have a happy Valentine's Day, even if it's just with yourself... (And don't be cheap, buy yourself something nice first, okay? ...perverts...)

The Soundtrack of our lives...

2007-02-11T05:51:00.000-05:00

Well, all the major party candidates are trotting out their theme songs. So rich boy John Edwards, who's building a 55 thousand square foot house on 40 acres of land in North Carolina is using "Our Country" by John Mellencamp (maybe he's suggesting that he's so rich he can buy the entire country), and Chris Dodd, the Senator from Connecticut, is trying to make us forget he's the token old white guy in the race by using "Get Ready" by the Temptations.

Hillary will take the stage to "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones (an obvious play for the evangelical vote) while Iowa Governor Tom Vilsac uses a song I might actually use if I was running in non-bloglife, "Let the Day Begin" by The Call.

But, as I am running in bloglife, I have no need to use a song anyone might like. So, as my trusty advisers, my wetbar, I need some advice. What song should we use as the theme song of this glorious campaign ~~of global domination~~ of hope and love...

As a Yankovicicanocrat, or something like that (I can't be bothered to check last week's post to see the name of our political party), perhaps we should use a Weird Al song. The polka mixes are intriguing, as you get many, many songs for one licensing fee. The latest remix, off of Straight Outta Lynnwood has a bunch of good riffs that provide a good picture of what we stand for in this campaign;

"I say you don't show
Don't move, time is slow
I say take me out!" - Take Me Out, Franz Ferdinand - bespeaks the immediacy of this campaign and how important it is to act now and vote for me!

"When the pigs try to get at ya
Park it like it's hot
Park it like it's hot" - Drop it Like It's Hot, Snoop Dogg - good advice for anyone dealing with the police

"I'll take you to the candy shop
I'll let you lick the lollypop
Go 'head girl, don't you stop
Keep going 'til you hit the spot (woah)" - Candy Shop, 50 Cent - see, we're a pro-young person campaign... hold on... oooohhh... That's not what that's about? No? Really? Oh my, that's dirty... Moving on.

(The very unsettling aspect of having the Boy get into Weird Al is that he walks around the house singing "Dontcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me"... I really hope he doesn't sing that at school, or we're going to need to teach him how to streetfight...)

Another possibility could be "Gimmie the Prize (Kurgan's Theme)" from the movie Highlander. I certainly think the whole "here we are, Princes of the Universe" thing sums up our campaign well. Plus it'd be real cool to be immortal.

Another good one is Sunday, Bloody Sunday by U2. But you've gotta admit between sporting events and other politicians, U2 has become a bit cliche. So to take it up a notch, we could have our version be the one rapped by President Bush at his last State of the Union. It'd work on multiple levels; Republicans would think we were down with the whole Bush thing, and Demmies would think we were poking fun at George W.

We could go old-school, and use an old Dylan song. I always liked Subterranean Homesick Blues. "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows..." It's blowing toward a Kal victory, Baby!

Or, I could stay old school, and at the same time invoke another political hero of mine, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld. In his 1994 reelection for Governor he used the Grateful Dead's Truckin' as a campaign song, perhaps the first time in history a candidate has used a song with a line like "Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine,".

Oh well, perhaps I should just pick a theme song that sums up my personality? That would be this one, or course;

Well, loyal supporters, you got any ideas?

Kal 4 Prez!

2007-02-08T05:39:00.000-05:00

Many have asked, "well, Mr. Kal, exactly what kind of president would you be?"

To tell you the truth, I don't know, I've never been president before. So how better to find out, than to surf over to the fine folks at Blogthings and ask them?

You Are Most Like George H. W. Bush

You're considered boring by people that don't know you well. But like Bush senior, you do crazy things.
Maybe you'll end up banning broccoli in your house, or puking on the Prime Minster of Japan!

What Modern US President Are You Most Like?

Well, of course, they didn't have a question about the proper treatment of interns. That may have changed things a bit. At least I didn't get Nixon....

A Major Announcment

2007-02-07T08:49:00.000-05:00

The 2008 election is more than a year and a half away, and already these politicians are running around, claiming they’re all God’s gift to America. Well, let me tell you: I’m fed up. I’m fed up with both parties, and can’t see myself supporting any of the minor third parties, because, frankly, those guys are nuts.

So I’m doing what any rational person would do. I’m running for President too. In 2008. And maybe 2012 too, you know, should we lose In ’08.

I am forming my own political party, based on the writings of the genius of our times, Weird Al Yankovic. I thought of calling it the Yankotarian party, but that sounded too close to being a party named after the joys of self-love. Instead I’ve settled on Yankovicratican.

Now, just as the Republican party turned the thoughtful musings of Abraham Lincoln into a party based on foreign domination and obscene corporate raping and pillaging of the American economy, and the Democratic party took the reasoned self-reliance of Jefferson and turned into the handout to everyone, hate-America-first party, the Yankovicraticans will undoubtedly wander from the teachings of our spiritual leader, Mr. Weird Alfred Yankovic.

Don’t get me wrong: the Yankovicraticans do support wars of foreign domination, if only to ~~steal their treasure and take their women~~ spread democracy, love and Fleetwood Mac across the Globe. We’re also cool with the whole “government giving us money” vibe that the democrats like, but instead of handouts, which are a bummer ‘cause you’ve got to go to the welfare office or the unemployment office and wait around, I’m thinking we’ll go with the government will just mail everybody $100 a month for pizza or beer or guns whatever, no questions asked. Sort of like FEMA debit cards for everyone.

It is important that this juncture I disclose that Mr. Al has nothing to do with the Yankovicraticans, and does not know about our existence, and, furthermore, might likely, if he were to know about us, would probably denounce our movement and demand we stop using his most sacred of names in our materials. So let’s not tell him, Mmmm’kay? Let this be a surprise, so when we take the White House in 2008, or 2012, we can invite him to an inaugural ball, and he’ll think it was like cool that a President would invite him to a ball, but he’ll think it was like some Bush or Clinton relative that won, so he wouldn’t be suspecting it when we jump out from behind the punch bowl and like shout “surprise!” and everything.

Yeah, that would be cool.

Anyway, as your President I promise to do very little. No expensive government programs that just don’t work anyway, no expensive excursions into foreign lands; unless those lands have a) ample numbers English-speaking inhabitants, b) are a strategic source of Margaritas, or c) threatened our American spring-break way of life. I’m not going to bug you every ten minutes with presidential news conferences, and if those jerk reporters who pester the president on his way to his helicopter must ask me questions, I promise to only answer in Pig Latin, so the news people won’t know what to do and won’t bother showing you the tapes on some sort of bullcrap “special report”. I promise that I WILL spend as much time as possible at Camp David, and arranging State Dinners to invite Mary Lou Retton and Elizabeth Shue to. I might even pick up a new hobby, like golf or something.

I am accepting applications for the role of my Vice President. I have my Secretary of War all settled, but other cabinet positions are open. Oh, and we’ll be renaming the Cabinet. Cabinet; that’s a stuffy name. I mean, it’s weird. It’s a piece of furniture for goodness sakes. Who’s going to take seriously a President taking advice from a piece of freakin’ furniture. So I’m going to rename the thing and appoint a Presidential Wet Bar. I pledge to hire Isaac from “Love Boat” to be my First Barkeep. I pledge to stock only top-shelf booze: no cheap imitation Russian vodka for this magnificent country.

I am neither left wing nor right wing, but instead chicken wing. I am buffalo wing. I will be the drumstick of American politics – somewhat crude, definitely funny looking, makes a mess, but ultimately satisfying.

I ask you to join me on this journey, and together we will scarf down all the free sandwhiches and political-event chicken kabobs we can get some other sucker to pay for.

Kal For America, America for Kal

Two Things

2007-02-07T05:03:00.000-05:00

Stole this one from RW, before he went into a death spiral of depression after his beloved Bears got two in the cap from Peyton Manning and the Colts.

The "Two Things" Meme:

Two Names You Go By: Doofus (wifeypooh) & Mom (the boy)

Two Parts of Your Heritage: Scottish & Lithuanian (yeah, I'm a pissy drunk)

Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now: Birthday & Suit (there's a visual for you)

Two Things You Would Want in a Relationship: Discipline & Bactine

Two of Your Favorite Hobbies: S & M... No, that's wrong... Umm... Blogging & Madden Football.

Two Things You Want Really Badly At The Moment: A billion trillion dollars & a fake ID.

Two Pets You Had/Have: Fat Kat & Peaches the Wonder Idiot Dog

Two people you talked to today: Me & Myself (I also chatted with I, but he was grumpy)

Two things you did last night: Hee Hee & Leer Knowingly

Two people that live in your house: Boy & Girl

Two things you ate today: Coffee & More Coffee

Two people you miss: Reagan & Clinton (c'mon, wasn't that the most entertaining eight years of presidency you've seen? Can you imagine how much fun this guy's going to be if he doesn't actually have any responsibility and still gets to live at the White House? Keggah at Bill's!!!)

Two things you're doing tomorrow: Taxes & Sleep (Not quite death and taxes, but close)

Two vacations you've been on: Disney & Every day from 2 to 3:30

Two Favorite Holidays: My birthday (soon to be a major international holiday) & Bastille Day

Two favorite Alcoholic beverages: Scotch & Whiskey

Two bands you have seen live: Jethro Tull & ...gulp... The Bangles

Two things you will do after you finish this survey: Get dressed & Go off for another day of humiliation and slavery to The Man.

There, two things. Face it, you're not coming here for anything original, are you?

Ciao

Not that I'm bragging....

2007-02-04T22:19:00.000-05:00

Stolen from Chris, who is a heathen going straight to hell because he got a 95...

You know the Bible 96%!

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

Actually, I credit reading David Plotz's Blogging the Bible series on Slate. It's at once funny, hip, and informative. Well, except for the entries on Jeremiah... He's a major bummer, old Jerry...

Viva La Garage! Viva YouTube!

2007-02-03T06:52:00.000-05:00

I used to have a blog called "The Garage" which reflected my obession with 1980's and early '90's culture. Well, culture's a bit of a stretch when talking about Wham!, but, anyway...

In the interest of not juggling four different Google Id's, I thought I'd bring The Garage over here, and incorporate it into the new place. So, to kick it off, here's a quintessential 1980's song. It makes no sense, it's got a ton of electronic instruments, and it's from a one hit wonder.

Well, I'm not being fair; it's from a musical, so it must make some sense in the context of the musical, and Murray Head had a good broadway career, but you get the idea.

Now, about Viacom's attempt to pull all MTV clips off of YouTube. First of all, the actual artistic product here doesn't belong to Viacom. A clip from MTV shows a video, produced by the artist, not the work product of MTV, they just put their little bug on the corner of the screen. And it's not even like they play friggin' videos anymore, what the hell do they care?

(Putting on old man beard)
See... When I was a kid, MTV was music videos 24/7, they didn't have any crappy shows to get in the way... blah blah blah...
(/old man beard)

Anyway, now that YouTube is owned by Google, this is obviously a ploy by Viacom to grab some licensing dough from the Google boys. In the spirit of solidarity with the Googlionaires, let's put up another video grabbed from MTV, shall we?

Here's Tom Jones and the Cranberries covering Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House."

Enjoy.

Oh the Shame!

2007-02-03T05:36:00.000-05:00

You Are a Conservative Democrat

Frankly, the way most other Democrats behave embarasses you greatly.
You pride yourself on a high level of morals, and you have a good grasp on right and wrong.
It's likely you think America needs to get back to its conservative, Juedo-Christian values.
Why aren't you a Republican then? Because you believe the goverment helps more than hurts.

What's Your Political Persuasion?

Now some of you folks are new to Kal, so don;t take this to heart. I'm not a Conservative Democrat, but because I'm pro-choice these tests always get this wrong, well, and the fact that I beleive in some modicum of environmental responsibility and I don't want to see every inch of wetlands paved for Walmart, or the fact that I couldn't really care less if my friend Ahhhndrew finally settled down and married himself another guy. For this they call me dirty names, like Democrat.

Grow the F up...

2007-02-02T04:27:00.000-05:00

Ok. Let me get something straight.

You, you twenty-something slacker skateboarding blogger punk iDioT Whu Kant SPELl in yeR BloGGG Idiotarian, you think the city of Boston and State of Massachusetts are governed by fools because they took seriously a number of phoned-in threats related to various objects attached to major pieces of public infrastructure?

Boston's getting the heat from the enlightened Generation Y for their "fascist overreaction" to the (sarcasm)brilliant(/sarcasm) marketing campaign that brought several major roadways to a standstill yesterday.

And the two dudes busted for actually installing the "devices" held an improptu news conferences acting like, well, jackasses. Here's the link, I'm not wasting the space putting it up.

What a bunch of idiots.

Here are the facts.

Wednesday morning at all about the same time:

Separate from the Mooninites ads, two simulated pipe bombs were found, one strapped to a major highway bridge and another in the offices of the New England Medical Center (NEMEC).
A clearly disturbed man who was not a patient was busted running out of NEMEC saying that today (Wednesday) was going to be a horrible day, and God was going to get us all.
A sequence of calls went in to Boston Police giving the locations of a number of the infamous "lite brite" marketing devices.

These "devices" were attached to landmarks and pieces of important infrastructure, not stuck to Joe's Autobody or the neighborhood Dunkin' Donuts.

While authorities had figured out fairly early in the day that they were a cartoon character, and the blogosphere was buzzing about this fairly early on, Turner Broadcasting did not get in touch with the city until something like 5pm.

Bombs, or IED's as the media loves to call them, are often disguised as something innocuous. For instance:

"Another new tactic identified involves women carrying IED disguised as a baby while trying to enter hospitals (two hospitals were targeted in Baghdad in early November 2003 using this tactic, and so far reports claim that five women have attempted this kind of action)."

and, remember, the Soviet Union used to disguise bombs as toys in Afghanistan.

So. You're responsible for the lives of the around one and a half to two million people who work and live in Boston. What are you going to do? Treat this as real until proven otherwise, or
wait until someone gets blown up?

Fine, you sit around in your mother's basement playing guitar hero all day. I get it. You're too cool to be fooled by some dumbass marketing ploy.

But when you're on this side of the line, the side actually responsible for shit other than deciding whether to put in the stainless lip ring or go with the gold, well, that's a different kettle of fish. Sure, if you live in East Butt-truck Indiana it's easy to dismiss Bostonians as a tightly-wound group of nincompoops. But nobody wants to bomb Indiana.

And as to the other major metropolitan cities and why they didn't catch it, well, did they have people calling them in?

There's the crux of the matter:

Somebody, or maybe a series of somebodies, called these things in. You can't go ignoring calls from the public about things attached to pieces of public infrastructure that don't belong there. That would be a serious dereliction of duty.

I think that maybe the "starving artists" who put the things up didn't think they were getting enough attention out of them, and called them in. Now if that's the case, then there's your jailable offense. That's when it crosses the line from simple trespass (there's no way they had permits for any of this) to felonious hoaxing. That's what I'd be worried about, were I them.

I'm glad they took this stuff seriously. I was on a train that was stopped, we all had to get off, and bomb-sniffing dogs were run through. Nothing was found of course, and I was ten minutes late getting home. Big deal. My civil liberties weren't infringed by getting off the train for ten minutes. And I got home in one piece.

Let the folks who are responsible for the public's safety protect the public. Let the folks responsible for body piercing and graffiti worry about other crap.

Am I wrong?

I got NOTHING...

2007-02-01T20:45:00.000-05:00

I think turning into a crunchy environmentalist do-gooder has killed my sense of humor. I got nothing... Could just be exhaustion, I guess, or the tragic lack of any readers -- that's always a bummer.

Oh, by the way, wanted to thank the members of the Daily Canon over there on the right who updated their blogrolls to reflect the change in locations. Love you guys.... sniff sniff.

Anyway, I can't figure out if I'm depleted of blog ideas because work has got my a bit bummed out, or if it's just that I'm sad I have to watch Gray's Anatomy tonight and not 30 Rock.

It's not that I don't like Gray's, it's just that I need a little gonzo in my decidedly dour do-gooder life...

Dear Idiot: Thanks a lot, Turner Television, a bomb-sniffing dog ate my sandwhich...

2007-01-31T20:46:00.000-05:00

One thing I miss about not being in government, I don't get the early inside gossip. Like today, when the Boston.com was filled with stories of "suspicious" electronic devices found affixed to the undersides of a bunch of bridges in Boston.

A friend of mine still on the inside said the things looked like Spongebob. Apparently he doesn't watch Adult Swim on the Cartoon Channel, or he might have recognized the little guy as Ignignokt or Err the Mooninites from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Unfortunately, however, my friend is a grown-up with a real job. As are the members of the Boston Police, so they don't have time to watch idiot cartoons. Had Boston hired a police for of slacker college student underachievers then they might have not been fooled...

So apparently this was a guerrilla marketing campaign by Turner Broadcasting to hype Aqua Teen Hunger Force, or the movie based on the series coming out soon, or some such foolishness.

Couple of problems: from a marketing standpoint, if you know what that cryptic figure is, you probably already know about the movie or the series. If you don't know that the cryptic figures are, then, well, that's not really going to tell you anything, is it?

And these things were attached to the underside of bridges. In 2007. Without any permits. The cops needed lifts to take them down. Wouldn't you be worried if the cops didn't take this stuff seriously?

So when someone standing at a T station noticed one of these things and asked the transit cops about it, well, naturally the public safety apparatus in town went bananas.

One of these things were attached to the underside of the viaduct for route I-93, one of the major access routes from the north of Boston. When it was found naturally the State Police shut down the highway. During the morning commute.

And then a couple of T lines too were shut down during rush hour. And as this stupidity triggered an elevation of the threat level, other protocols kicked in, such as random bomb-sniffing dogs being run through the evening trains.

A good deal of slacker idiots are writing in to the Globe bulletin boards excoriating state and city officials for "over reaction", but what the hell else do you expect?

First of all, if you're going put up bombs, they're not going to look like sticks of dynamite with an alarm clock attached. They're going to look like something else.

Second of all, you can't go around putting crap like this on public structures, especially in the current climate.

Turner should know better. This is a billion dollar company (owned by Time Warner) which presumably has at least one lawyer on staff.

Boston Police have already arrested the guy who placed these things on the bridges -- a "struggling artist". But he's just an idiot chasing a buck. I hope that the attorney general and district attorney don't stop with him. Turner caused probably tens of thousands of dollars in actual damage today (public safety personnel overtime), not to even mention the inconvenience caused to thousands of commuters. Unfortunately they accomplished what they wanted; skads of free publicity for their idiotic show (the news has been showing clips -- it looks idiotic).

Well, that's all the venom I can muster. What do you think?

UPDATE: Mayor Menino was on Fox25 this morning upping the ante, saying this little imbroglio cost the city and state upwards of $1 million.

Also turns out that in addition to the 38 or so ads plastered about town, they also discovered two fake pipe bombs, one strapped to the support stanchions of a bridge and the other in an office at New England Medical Center yesterday morning at the same time. Now does the cops' reaction make a little more sense?

And it also turns out my train was off-loaded yesterday and searched with dogs because of a separate, unrelated, phone-in bomb threat. Lovely.

Movie Night: Failure to Launch

2007-01-28T05:15:00.000-05:00

Ok, I had been avoiding this one. Really, how much Matthew McConaughey can anyone take? Like I really need to let Wifeypooh feast on that eyecandy? And then I considered my recent spate of Kate Hudson films, and, well turnabout is fair play..

(and it doesn't hurt that Kate #2, Zooey Deschanel, is in this one...)

But first, a note about Netflix: Dudes, get those little plastic coverings you can put on the DVDs before you send them off. WTF are people doing with their movies? Playing freakin' frisbee?

Last weekend got "The Devil Wore Prada" at the behest of the wife, and the first twenty minutes and the last twenty minutes were completely unwatchable, even with the nifty computer DVD which has progressive scan and all that. Absolute garbage. And now the movie in on the "Very Long Wait" list, so they're not shipping out a replacement anytime soon. Bastards...

Well, anyway, this week we got "Failure to Launch", starring Lance Armstrong's lover Matthew McConaughey, the comley Ms. Deschanel, and fright-footed, horse-faced, man-handed Sarah Jessica Parker. (Apparently they had to digitially "fix" SJP's feet in editing, as they so ugly from years of stilletto abuse...)

I was thinking we'd get another four or five Sandra performance, but my interest was piqued when the PG-13 warning screen came up and said the film was rated thusly for "partial nudity". More about that later.

SJP, as annoying as I find her in real life was actually very charming in this film, and McConaughey was, well, Matthew McConaughey. In the one of the little featurettes one of the writers called his performances "laconic". How about this adjective: stoned. Everything I've seen him in he looks stoned. Not too surprising since, this is the guy who got busted when neighbors called the cops complaining about the nosie, and they went to his house to find a buck-naked McConaughey playing the bongos at two in the morning.

(And for those of you who clicked on that link hoping to find a picture of a buck-naked McConaughey, well, shame on you, you pervets.)

Usually these romantic comedies drive me nuts, mainly because they rely on the misunderstanding and chase scenario, where something goes wrong, and we the audience can see that it was just a misunderstanding, and we hope that they get back together, and they just do, but not quite, and etc etc and so on and so on... Drives me crazy, you want the truth.

But this one didn't have that endless "just missed it" feeling, and I thought better of it for it.

It was nice to see Brad Cooper (Will from Alias) getting some work, and Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw were actually pretty well matched as McConaughey's parents.

And yes, Zooey was sublime. But we've come to expect that, haven't we... It's those eyes. She could do the "HeadOn" commercial and I'd watch it.

And then there's the nudity. I'm not going to lie to you, I was hoping it was Zooey, and dreading it would be SJP... But, in retrospect, that would have been better. Even Mr. Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, would have been better. By the way, you know, I've always been impressed with Abraham Lincoln's beard... I don't know why I thought of that, it just always seems to come to mind when I talk about SJP and Matthew Broderick... Never mind... Moving on.

Again, nice beard.

Well.

Anywho.

So, as you guys are a bunch of perverts, I've taken the liberty of making a screen capture of the "partial nudity" deemed PG-13-worthy. So, if you just must see such things, click here, it's okay, I'll wait.

..

...

....

You back? Don't day I didn't warn you. Jesus Marimba. Yikes. I think I would've preferred Kathy Bates...

But, you know, it was actually a pretty good movie, for what it was. Don't expect to come out of it inspired to cure cancer or fight global warming, and don't expect to be touched in any sort of meaningful way (unless 57 year old white man butts are your thing and you're touching yourself after seeing the above captured scene). Expect to get a few laughs and see some decent acting and you won't be too disappointed.

And I didn't even fall asleep...

So, we give Failure to Launch:

Two Sandras**!

Until next time, keep warm!

** For those of you new to Kal, 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...], making it impossible for me to stay up through.

A score of zero Sandras is a movie that has me riveted from the first minute and I don't even need to get up and walk around during, or grab a cup of coffe, or anything.)

So, who plays You?

2007-01-26T06:02:00.000-05:00

RW is involved in a group of fine wits and raconteurs who do a "Roundtable" (after the famed Algonquin Roundtable... I call dibs on Wolcott...) post-and-discuss thing every Thursday.

This week Prego has the honors, and he's posted a question: who would play you in the movie of your life? Well, RW, as I've mentioned to him on his blog before (or maybe he mentioned it and I agreed, I can't remember), looks to me like Tim Curry. And Avi has offered up Oliver Platt and Jonathon Rhys-Davis (Gimli, or, even better, Professor Maximilian Arturo from Sliders). Although to me, Avi is always a doppelganger for my brother-in-law.

As for me, the years have gotten kinder. It used to be the most apt casting would've been singer-songwriter (and possibly hobbit, I mean, you ever seen the guy? He's tiny...) Paul Williams.

Or a younger John Madden (possibly due to my out-of-control eyebrows...)

But then heaven delivered Philip Seymour Hoffman (that doesn't sound too foofy, does it?)...

And yes, I talk like Truman Capote too... Well, hopefully not.

So who do you look like?

Fatboy

2007-01-25T05:47:00.000-05:00

Well, two days in the world of do-gooder non-profits and I've come to one conclusion.

I'm going to have to lose some weight.

These people are all so thin. And they never use the elevator. Which could be why they're so thin. Now, over in the government world, I could blend in. There were bigger fatassess and smaller fatassess than me, but there were fatasses none the less. Over here in do-gooder-dom, it's me. I'm the only fatass. And while nobody's said anything yet, I can tell they're thinking it;

"you know, all that extra food he eats could go to starving kids in Malawi...."

"if he'd just not take the elevator all the time, think of all the carbon he'd save from the power not necessary to lift his fatass...."

"what's that thing around his neck?"

Oh, yes, the last thought relates to dress code. I have gone from a place where arguably I was the worst dressed person, to being a veritable GQ cover boy. I've hit them with suits the first two days, worn the black leather wingtips, the whole nine yards. I don't think they know how to take it. I expect to see a sweater vest and a pair of earth shoes anonymously left on my chair one of these days...

So looks like we're going on another weight-loss jihad. Well, it was time anyway, holidays being over and all that. Looks like it's no elevator and nightly treadmilling for Kal. Wish me luck.

New Beginings, and the State o' the Union

2007-01-23T21:16:00.000-05:00

Well, Day One. First day in the new gig. Much paperwork. Much signing of names and exposing of private data. Many, many new names to memorize. The biggest difference between the public and private sectors? Wine in the office kitchen. No wine at the old gig. Wine at the new one. That's an upgrade. (I don't think I'm allowed to drink the wine during the day, it's probably for special events... Perhaps I'll test that next week.)

Anywho, got a nice new office, with a window that actually opens. Haven't had an openable window in eight years. I suspect my masters knew I was liable to throw myself, or, more likely, someone else, out of it at any time. The new folks don't know me that well yet.

Oh, and opening your window in January is not appreciated by your floormates, no matter how novel it is for you. Just thought you should know.

Oh, by the way, watching the State of the Union while I'm typing this and just caught John Kerry with a "I can't believe I lost to this nitwit" look on his face as Bush pronounced "insurance" like Cooter from "The Dukes of Hazard"; (INN-sur-ance).

Got taken out to lunch by my new boss, and in another novel experience, it was not from a place that could've employed John Belushi doing his "cheeseburger cheeseburger, no Pepsi, Coke!" routine.

(Ugh... Now it's vee-HICK-kles" for vehicles... Gack)

Oh... My... God... He just called Global Climate Change a "Serious challenge". Holeee crap.

Hey, that's neat, he spoke while Dick Cheney was drinking a glass of water. Neat ventriloquism trick..

Oh, Republicans, you can relax. That one sentence about "serious challenge" was the only mention of climate. And he called for an expansion of domestic oil production in "environmentally sensitive" ways. Excellent. I think he means making sure there's enough Palmolive dish soap in Alaska to wash off the sea otters when there's a drilling accident in the Arctic Preserve.

Anywho, the new job was fine, although the only thing taxed today was my memory of my social security number. I suspect it's not going to stay this easy.

Hey, Hillary's sitting behind Obama. Wonder if she's balling up little pieces of paper and throwing them at him. She looks like the type.

Well, gotta get going. If I'm going to listen to the rest of this speech, I'm going to need some libation...

Cheers.

The Saints are coming...

2007-01-20T09:39:00.001-05:00

Thoughts for this weekend of conference Championship football.

Bears Vs. Saints.

I feel for RW and Gino, I really do. You see, I believe in the football gods. I believe in a heavenly bureaucracy which oversees and influences the football season to achieve purposes; to teach humility, to uphold sportsman ship, to reward careers of great impact. Why else would a team named "The Patriots" win in the 9/11 year? How else to explain Pittsburgh's improbable Superbowl run last year, but to reward ultimate nice guy Jerome Bettis with a Superbowl in his hometown as his swan song? These things don't happen by accident.

Given that line of thought, how can you pick anyone but the Saints today? They've even got a ready-made song to go with the occasion (which they play before each home game), and their fates seem, like Sauron and the Great Ring, inexorably tied; in the Saints case it is to the hope and future of their once great city.

The song I'm talking about is "The Saints are Coming", by U2 and Green Day. Not getting ESPN, I had no idea that the song had been played at the first home game at the Superdome this year. And then Isaw the video, and the crusty old sentimentalist in me got simultaneously chocked up and pissed.

I got choked up because I still think of the US and her military as a force for good in the world, and pissed because the failure of local, state, and national government during the Katrina disaster is such a blemish on those of us who work(ed) in government. This video, and its portrayal of a history that never was, triggers those emotions.

Thanks to Brian for turning me onto this vid.

As for the "other" game, my beloved Patriots vs. the Induhniapolis Colts, here's couple of thoughts.

a. I had a stepfather from Indiana. Don't really care for Indiana, or Indianians. Sorry.

b. It's quite distressing to me that the Colts vs. Patriots is starting to look like the Red Sox vs. the Yankees, and I'm rooting for the Yankees end of the equation.

c. I really hate to say this, but with all the hits the team has taken over the past two years (the Bruschi stroke, losing three coordinators to head coaching jobs elsewhere, Rodney Harrison's injuries, the Deion Branch fiasco, the Adam Vinatieri fiasco, the Seau injury, etc etc...), it's amazing that they're in the AFC Championship game. This team is playing with house money.

Here's the thing: the Colts have to beat the Patriots to win the Superbowl. That's why they (improbably) lost to Pittsburgh last year -- they hadn't beaten the Pats in the post season yet. Peyton Manning must exorcise the demon for this team to move on.

It's like the Patriots first Superbowl in 1986. To get there, they had to run the table of road playoff games against the Raiders (exorcising the 1976 phantom rushing the passer call that knocked the Pats out of the playoffs), the Jets, and the Dolphins. Playing in Miami, where the Patriots were like 1 and 306. Sometimes things have to be done first. And beating the Patriots is what the Colts have to do first in order to win the Superbowl. It is their destiny...

But, as we've discussed, since this is the Saint's year, I'm guessing it's just not in the cards for Manning to go to the Superbowl this year. Because if he goes, you know he has to win for the curse to be completely lifted. Argh... this gets confusing.

But put a gun to my head, and I'm going to say Patriots. It's not that I intellectually think the Patriots can beat the Colts. The Colts are a superior team, and built in a way that match up well against the Pats.

Here's what the Patriots are good at: they are very good at taking away that one thing you want to do. They gameplan very well for that, and their players are disciplined and able to focus on the task at hand.

But the Colts can do a lot of things. And even if the Pats take Harrison and Wayne out of the game (an iffy proposition I grant, but what they've got to do), Manning can still kill you with Dallas Clark and Joseph Addai. Do the Pats have enough bullets to take out everything the Colts can throw at you? I don't know. With a bunch of backups in the secondary, and old and slow linebackers.... I just don't know.

Ugh.

Head=Colts. Heart=Patriots.

Actually, I almost hope it's the Colts, especially if the Saints win the NFC game. I'd hate to be responsible to bumming out the entire city of New Orleans, all over again when the Pats beat them in Superbowl XLI...

Regeneration

2007-01-20T07:52:00.000-05:00

Well, had to do it. One down, six to go.

Welcome to my world, part three. Part two doesn't count, as that was just a migration to Beta. Part three was necessitated by my secret identity becoming just a little too un-secret for comfort in my (real) professional life, where success does not come from people knowing what a weirdo I really am.

For those of you who just stumbled upon this blog, this will make absolutely no sense. For the three of you who regularly, well, semi-regularly, subject yourselves to that other place, well, welcome back. I could never stop blogging, it's too much of a compulsion. And since the new gig isn't on the public dime, and includes nifty new telecommunications equipment putting me on the grid 24/7, who knows, might just post more than twice a fortnight.

But it was time to regenerate, as I had just left the first job I ever had, a thirteen year association with state government. So how better to cut off one phase of life and start a new one than with a shiny new blog?

So here we are. Welcom aboard, and I hope we'll manage to have some fun and maybe even learn something!

Or at least we'll have a place to bitch and look at pictures of Kate Hudson.

That wouldn't be so bad...

For Sale: Cheap, One Really Fat Cat Blogger

2006-10-05T15:39:00.000-05:00

G-r-o-a-n....

So it's 5am the morning after a slight over-indulgence with clear, potato-based liquor.... Blaugh.

Now, why the heck would I get up at 5am this morning you ask? Let me introduce you to Rosey, also known by his nom du blog, Rastacat:

So this morning he got up on my nightstand, found the button for the radio, and stood on it waking me up. Yesterday he started meowing pathetically at about 3am. I put him in the bathroom and shut him in, only to be woken up again a half-hour later by the sound of him basically eating his way through the door. So into the garage he went(with the steel-core security door, let's see you chew through that!).

I can hear you now; just get rid of the cat. If only it were that easy. See the whole family is very attached to him. As a matter of fact, if push came to shove, I think they'd choose him over me. Afterall, it only seems to be me that he gets up at oh-dark-30 or whenever he has his feline-version raves. (I'm guessing this is to do with my natural male saber-tooth tiger fighting gene...)

So I think the solution is clear. One of you needs to adopt me. Here are my qualifications: I am a middle-aged (listen, getting to 70 with this body is achievement enough, so technically I'm middle aged at 35), slightly corpulent and quite hairy male, with short (disappearing) hair and affinities for Star Trek, Jethro Tull, 1980's nostalgia, and the Madden football games. No known food allergies.

I can do laundry and light housecleaning, and if you're a person of the female persuasion, well, let's just say.... No, no, let's not say anything... Wifeypooh has an internet connection at work now, you can never be too careful...

All offers will be kept confidential, until appropriate husband neutralizing (I'm talkin' to you, Penny) actions can be taken...

Everything Sucks...

2006-10-04T15:41:00.000-05:00

This is going to be a bit disjointed (grain alcohol will do that to you...).

Crap. I'm still using complete sentences. Obviously not enough grain alcohol yet (Gypsy has set the standard for drunken blogging..)

And, by the way, we'll be watching Lost during this post- which is a really bad idea, 'cause JJ Abrams + booze can leave you really fucked up... Like, for instance, I could've sworn I just saw a nice little busdivision,... err... subdivision on the other side of the Lost island... and it's got Kerry Weaver's lesbian lover in it...

Oh, new Career Builder ad, one with the guy and a monkey at the urinal, and the monkey is certainly not dollowing... err...following the etiquitte spelled out in that video a couple of posts ago. This one's not on youtube yet, but here's a montage of Careerbuilder monkey ads... You know, for my money, you just can't get enough monkeyads...

Oh yes, she's back... Buy here she's Juliet... Interesting.

By the way - it was nice to see them not kill off Luka and Maggie's kid on ER last week. They haven't killed a baby in like a year..

Holy leaping lizards... Kate from Lost is in a low cut dress with her womanly parts all bulging out... my goodness..

Anywho, as I was saying, I think, at some point at least in this post, I'm in a crappy mood. Life sucks.

And the worst thing is, I can't write about it at all because too many people I know in real life know about this thing. And the last thing I need is someone from work knowing about my years as a page working for Mark Foley...

So, hyeah;.. Wroks sucks (uh oh - the grain spriitis are kicking in...(),... Politics sucls. The mega-volcano at TYellowstone is 40m,0-000 tyears late for an explosion, there've been four school shooting in the last two weeks, and my daughter is 10 going on 14 and may not make it to 11 if she keeps up her wiseass mouth....

Serious shit is going down, and I don;'t know how I;m supposed to just raise a family and go to work each morning and act like nothings happening.

Well, there's no way to wrap this up. So I;m just going to say good bye, and I;'kll see you all tomorrow...

Ciao

Eat, Drink, and be Merry...

2004-06-12T21:25:00.000-05:00

Ah, the wonders of the Internet.

Tonight I found the Death Clock which, when I tell it when I was born, what my body weght index is, and what my general outlook on life is, will tell me how many seconds I have left on this mortal coil.

Entered my info: birthday, mid-30s BMI, and generally optimistic outlook. Contrary to Wifeypooh's consternations and contrary protests to the contrary, I am going to stay on the right side of the dirt until 2065 - well into my 90s.

So, concerned as I am with my slightly marine-mammalian physique I punch in a nice(er) mid 20s BMI. That one has me croaking in 2058. So, forsaking that second ice cream serving at dinner will actually cost me seven years. Cue Burns' voice: Excellent...

Now, change my outlook to pessimistic, and even with a svelte under 25 BMI I'm croaking before I hit 50.

So happiness is the key to longevity. Groovey. You gonna eat any more of that?...

What are we fighting for?

2004-06-08T21:23:00.000-05:00

From today's Washington Post (registration required, but it's free):

A U.S. law enacted in 1994 bars torture by U.S. military personnel anywhere in the world. But the Pentagon group's report, prepared under the supervision of General Counsel William J. Haynes II, said that "in order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority."

The Pentagon group's report, divulged yesterday by the Wall Street Journal and obtained by The Post, said further that the 1994 law barring torture "does not apply to the conduct of U.S. personnel" at Guantanamo Bay.

It also said the anti-torture law did apply to U.S. military interrogations that occurred outside U.S. "maritime and territorial jurisdiction," such as in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it said both Congress and the Justice Department would have difficulty enforcing the law if U.S. military personnel could be shown to be acting as a result of presidential orders.

The report then parsed at length the definition of torture under domestic and international law, with an eye toward guiding military personnel about legal defenses."

So, if the President says it's okay, we can toss U.S. law. And, if you're outside the country, all bets are off. "Gentlemen, we've just passed into international waters -- the no smoking light is off and the captain advises you your have the option today of choosing cat-o-nine tails or thumbscrews for your interrogating pleasure".

When we become as they, what the hell are we fighting for?

Req. in pace, Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States

2004-06-06T21:20:00.000-05:00

1911-2004

Brotherdear called asking if I had seen the news, and I knew pretty much as soon as he asked what he was talking about. I had read yesterday that it appeared Reagan had taken a turn for the worst, and the concern in Brotherdear's voice for my mental state could only mean that Reagan, my idol since I was nine years old, had passed away.

I cried for Reagan tonight. Aw, hell, he's in a better place, the tears were for me. For Nancy. For all of us.

I was nine when Reagan won the Presidency. Iran, a pissant little country led by a bunch of hooligans fresh from the middle ages had taken 54 Americans hostage and held them for over a year. Inflation was in double digits, and my Dad had been out of work for what seemed like forever. Topping it off, I was a fat little kid with white hair who was regularly threatened with death in my new school. All of this was Carter's fault (even the white hair and the threatened beatings). In rides Reagan.

Ronald Reagan spoke to me that year. He understood the role of the President. The people don't need some sourpuss jackass who gets on the television, spends eleven paragraphs telling America it's screwed, and by way of solution four sentences basically saying "have faith". And, what's more, a sourpuss who looks like he's sucking a lemon suffused with goat piss. Yeah, that's what we need.

Reagan was an actor. So what. I'm married, I have a job, I have kids: I pretend all the time. We're all actors. Reagan was just better at it than the rest of us. And his best role, The role of his lifetime, was that of President. When asked in 1966 what kind of a Governor he would be, Reagan said "I don't know, I've never played a Governor." Well, I'm pretty sure Anthony Hopkins had never played a sociopathic cannibal before winning the Best Actor Oscar in 1991. He just nailed the role. Just like Reagan did.

Reagan was the right man at the right time. We needed, after four ungodly years of Carter (gas lines, inflation, unemployment, canceled Olympic appearances, military advances by the Russian bear) a radical change in direction. Reagan was that fresh wind.

He became the standard bearer for the Conservative Cause, but he governed pragmatically -- getting half a loaf rather than going hungry. He frustrated the Bejeesus out of Democrats, probably for the same reason Republicans went bananas over Clinton: the people loved them, even when they disagreed with them. There was a magnatesim to Reagan that was compelling, just like Clinton. And like Clinton, Reagan understood that the best use of a President is to set a tone -- not to engage in the minutae of government, a la Carter.

He delivered a script the American people were dying to hear. Better times were ahead, don't look back except for inspiration, and buckle up. Carter spoke of lesser glories; of belt-tightening and settling. Reagan spoke always in the positive, didn't dwell on the negatives, and focused America's attention on what should be done, not what couldn't be done.

He made me proud to be an American. I remain so. I am happy for him that his long day's journey has reached its end. I feel very sad for his wife, with whom he was so completely in love. I feel sad for us, as we lose a leader, but I am hopeful that his death at this time will lead to an examination of his life, and that our current crop of politicians may remember the simple truths that sustained and informed his tenure in public life:

Never doubt the strenght of American will and the power of American ingenuity.
Always look forward to a future that will be brighter than today.

------

Here's something telling, CNN is treating today's news as a solemn event, arguing about the legacy of Ronald Reagan. FOX is going with the Irish wake: an appreciation of the man; his triumphs, faults, and foibles.

Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan for years, both in California and in Washington, wrote an excellent obituary for the Wastington Post, online here (requires registration, which is free).

Go read it. And go read National Review's The Corner, which has an excellent round-up of people's reactions to Reagan's passing.

Information on the President's Funeral Arangements may be found at the Military District of Washington website.

------

From his goodbye address to the nation in 1989:

"I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation -- from our experience, our wisdom and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries."

George Tenant - Au Revoir

2004-06-04T16:12:00.000-05:00

George Tenant, the Grady Little of U.S. intelligence (this is about to become an all-Grady, all the time blog) has resigned/been given the boot.

I don't know George Tenant from a hole in the wall. For all I know he could be a nice guy who gives to the Salvation Army and never, ever cheats on his taxes. He may even be a lover of animals and work part time for his local United Way.

But the U.S. intelligence community under his watch has had a string of stunning victories more painful to bear than the last 35 years of Red Sox futility. Someone has to be held accountable for 9/11 (new story yesterday has the FBI being told about the WTC/plane plot a year before it happened), and even though Tenant was just one part of the vast apparatus -- and the story linked to just now indicts the FBI, not the CIA -- I believe the failure on so many levels to pick up what was becoming a fairly fleshed out story of a plot in the making has to be laid on somebody's doorstep.

Add to 9/11 the failure of American intelligence (and over reliance on assets that had their own axe to grind - something we conveniently overlooked because they happened to agree with what the Administration's preferred belief set was) in Iraq, and I think Mr. Tenant's retirement to greener pastures is somewhat overdue. So does the Blogfather.

Of course, the American voters may have another idea of whom to blame come November.

Return from Exile

2004-06-02T16:11:00.000-05:00

Well...

It's been a while.

I've been off in the mountains of far Alaska recovering from the latest Red Sox debacle, chanting the mystical "om" while centering my chaka and visualizing Grady Little drifitng southward on a disabled shrimp boat...

But they're back, and I'm back. They new victim, er.. Manager, Terry Francona, seems to be an interesting, if a little stiff, guy. He played for the Expos, Brewers, Cubs, and 1980's Indians, so he really knows about winning. Err...... I mean, he had a great career as a manager, winning 77 games in 1999 finishing in third place with the Phillies... Er.....

Umm...

Hmm...

Does anybody else think that maybe the whole hiring Terry Francona thing is maybe being driven by the fact Theo Epstein is sitting on a bunch of 1982 Fleer Terry Francona Rookie Cards and he's hoping will finally get above "common" status if the Sox somehow win the series this year?

Ye Gods.

Bring Me the Head of Grady Little!...

2003-10-17T04:03:00.000-05:00

This is why I hate baseball. Obviously there are no baseball Gods, or if they are, they are sick, twisted, cruel little creatures with black hearts who thrive on crushed hopes and forsaken dreams...

I'm looking at my little notebook. Seven outs to go, Two men on, 4-2. Little Evil Karim Garcia is the tying run. Soriano is at the plate. Ball. Foul. Strike. Foul. Ball. 2-2 count. Pedro strikes him out, for the fourth time that evening.

I went upstairs, told Wifeypooh Pedro has just masterly saved his bacon and got out of the seventh, and we were going into the eighth ahead 4 to 2, but Pedro was definitely done for the night.

Eighth inning.

Manny bats, out. (By the way, what the heck's with all that scmooze on some of the Red Sox batting helmets? Looks like dog crap.)

David Ortiz, Pappy. Homerun. 5-2. Little note in the margin: "wine".

Bottom of the eighth.

Six outs from the World Series. Six outs. Five batters later we're five outs from the World Series, except it may not be us, because it's tied 5-5 after Grady "Forrest Gump" Little lets Pedro stay in after bringing not one, not two, not three, but four batters to two strikes before giving up hits. At this point Pedro has thrown approximately 9,000 pitches and his right arm is seven inches longer than his left.

"Aw Crap" is scrawled along the bottom of the notebook.

Six freakin outs.

I knew it was over at that point. Oh, sure, my heart leapt a little when Ortiz hit that nice double, but I knew as soon as Kapler was sent in to pinch run we were done for. Not that Kapler can't run, but that putting in a pinch runner who can score from second is a smart managerial move -- which assured that Kapler would never make it home; as nothing Grady Little ever does looks like a smart managerial move.

Jeez. At this point I'm ready to bring back the Gerbil.

Listened to Grady Gump's post game interview. Two questions. Both basically the same. To paraphrase: what the Hell were you thinking?

Of course, had Grady sat Pedro after the seventh and someone from the bullpen came out and lit themselves afire, as had been the case for huge chunks of this season, then Little would share John McNamara's fate, who seventeen years later is still answering the question "Why didn't Roger go out to pitch the eighth?"

Well, for new Red Sox fans this was certainly instructive. I don't know why I fell for it this year; I feel like a fatter, hairier, version of Charlie Brown as the BoSox yet again play Lucy with the football.

Oh, this was supposed to be different. This was so different. Looking at the notebook now: "9:25 PM EDT - Clemens' career ends as he's pulled in the fourth. Score: 4-0."

Now he gets another ring, and we get... what exactly?

Well, the media will be happy at least, they, like the Baseball Gods, feed on misery and despair. Chow time, fellas.

Just to be on the record before tonight

2003-10-16T21:52:00.000-05:00

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "the Red Sox are going to win the Pennant."

Tonight's the big night. Seventh Game. One Hundred Years after the first Boston World Series win (held on what is now the Alma Mater, no less), and it's Red Sox / Yankees for all the beans.

The Yankees; winners of 101 regular season games, four World Series' since 1996, with the biggest payroll in baseball (okay, I'm making that up -- I don't have time to look up the actual numbers) versus

The Boston Red Sox; perennial "wait til next year" victims of improbable and sometimes sensational August / September / and October train-wrecks, the underdogs, the lovable mutts with their shaved heads and Johnny Damon's Mullet.

I'm a big time beliver in a heavenly bureaucracy: there's God, and then there's all these minions that handle things like, well, like nipples on men. Things that are really out of the whole life/death/cosmos area that's the purview of the big guy.

So, this "heavenly bureaucracy" (see, as a bureaucrat myself I like to imagine bureaucracies are necessary parts of everything) finds the time to get involved in other stuff. For instance, as Gregg Easterbrooks from ESPNs Page 2 points out, there are the Football Gods. My belief in the football gods got a big boost when the Pats beat the Rams. Look at that story: it's the 9-11 year, a team named "Patriots" wins, only after their longtime QB is lost for a huge chunk of the regular season, but comes back to save thier bacon in the AFC championship game, etc etc. It had destiny writen all over it.

Can't you feel that same thing happening with this Red Sox Team? C'mon, only the baseball gods could write an ending of the Roger Clemens / Red Sox saga like this. Either his last game is a loss to his former team, putting them in the World Series for the first time in 17 years, or he again stabs out the heart of New England and ends his career in the World Series, pitching for the mercenary Yankees. After which, he descends directly into Hell for his assorted misdeeds.

I prefer not to think that the Baseball Gods could be so capricious; I have faith in bureaucrats - the want the happy ending. And tonight's happy ending has the Traitor Clemens getting the L.

If the Red Sox win, then Basball can be saved -- baseball has meaning, for the Gods of Baseball offer salvation and mercy. If the evil minions of Lord Steinbrenner again take the prize, then there are no Baseball Gods, and the sport is a hopeless parade of random violence and soul-crushing despair.

In this battle for the heart and soul of Baseball Nation I am reminded of this exchange between Connor MacLeod and Ramirez from Highlander (the coolest movie of all time).

RAMIREZ
He cares about nothing or no-one.
He is completely evil.
(intensely)
If he wins the Prize, mortal men will suffer an eternity of darkness and slavery beneath his boot.

MACLEOD
How do you fight such a savage?

RAMIREZ
With heart, faith and steel.
[In the end, there can be only one…]

Yes, there can be only one. And tonight, that one will be the Boston Red Sox.

Hitman Needed, Include References and Salary Requirements

2003-10-04T06:57:00.000-05:00

"It's just that wasting old ladies isn't nice." - Otto West, A Fish Called Wanda

One of my many bosses at work is planning a nice little mid-fall trip, one of her many, many vacation forays, to a tropical island in the western Antillies. Problem is, her elderly aunt is at Death's door. Well, perhaps walking up Death's front walk, or maybe just admiring Death's farmers porch. She is certainly loitering somewhere in Death's front yard like a meter reader searching for the watermeter, and, wouldn't you know it, Death hasn't trimmed his hedges in ages.

If Auntie were to shuffle off this mortal coil, then, in proper Irish-American fashion, Little Mary Wimpypooh would have to fly home from her tropical vacation and do the whole waking/mourning/drinking/arguing/burying/drinking/arguing thing. Now, if Auntie were to have the common decency to pass three or four days before the flight is scheduled, then Mary could do the proper Irish mourning, and wing off to climes tropical.

But the problem is, Auntie is rallying. Or maybe not. Allegedly in a coma two or three days ago, she was downright perky last night. But there's still enough time until departure for a couple more go-arounds; rallying and failing, rallying and failing. And it's not like we're talking about some middle-aged person for whom their passing would be for their family a tragedy beyond all understanding; this is an ooooold lady who's about to get her reward for a lifetime of 9:00 weekday masses and at least three Mary's on the Halfshell (seriously, there oughta be a law...).

So, in the interest of helping out Little Mary Wimpypooh, I am seeking the services of a gentleman with certain, shall we say, talents. Now, we've taken up a collection here at work, and we've gotten it up to about $8.37, but, really, it's not like I'm asking you to take out the Pope, for goodness sakes. One well-placed trip over a cord could probably do the job. Think of the good you'd be doing; Mary would get to go on her annual pilgrimage to tropical climes where pliant non-english speaking cabana boys await to fufil her every desire (hey -- get that mind out of the gutter, I'm talking about drink orders!! -wink wink-), Auntie would meet her maker and finally learn the truth about what happened on the Grassy Knoll, and, for you, Mr. Professional Assassian of Old Ladies, there may be some work in it for you later -- Motherdear ain't getting any younger. Or, for that matter, is Wifeypooh....

There but for the grace of God....

2003-10-03T22:15:00.000-05:00

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - An enraged Ethiopian mother of five will be tried for the murder of her husband who died after she crushed his testicles in a fight, police told the state-run Ethiopian News Agency.

Police said on Friday the man was so embarrassed after the incident that he declined to seek treatment for the injury, and died days later.

"Following a disagreement over the husband's spending habits, his wife refused to give him his dinner and also decided to sleep alone," police in the western region of Wellega said.

"The husband was so angered by this affront by his wife that he tried to beat her. In the melee that followed, the wife grabbed and twisted his testicles causing serious damage."

Police said the unnamed woman, a resident of Wayu-Tuka district in Wellega, had had several arguments with her husband about the amount of money he spent on booze.

So, Men, be grateful she's only throwing plates at you for spending the last $20 on that football pool at work. It could be worse. Much, much, worse.

And Next Week, an Interpretive Dance Praising Stalin's Agricultural Policy...

2003-10-03T05:27:00.000-05:00

Dear Old Alma Mater is hosting a "multimedia tribute to the Black Panther party," titled “The Black Panther Suite: All Power to the People” composed by "cutting edge Asian-American artist" Fred Ho. Well, Fred's pieces are always interesting, for instance, "The White Peril" which, as the Village Voice says:

" burned with a seething inner flame, its passion so restrained and compressed that it shot out of his sax bell in pithy phrases of irresistibly cogent logic ... Rage eloquently channeled is always a thrill."--Kyle Gann, The Village Voice

Oooh, more seething inner flame, please! What manner of eloquently channeled rage are we in store for at Dear Old Alma Mater. Apparently audience members in the first couple of rows should wear fire-resistant ponchos, as Ho is some sort of pyromanical Gallagher, what with his seething inner flame shooting out of his sax bell.

According to the advertisement, "Power to the People" is an

"interactive video and martial arts choreography that addresses the civil rights struggle of the 1960s and 70s, and explores its relevance for modern America."
Okay.

Hmm. Here's Black Panther relevance for modern America: when someone stabs someone in the head with a kitchen knife, as Huey Newton did at a party years before founding the Black Panthers, don't let them out of jail.

When a petty thief, the self-same Mr. Newton, who used to lurk outside emergency rooms and steal from the cars of people rushing in for medical attention, forms a group posing as Social activists, watch out.

When a person kills a 23 year old police officer, and wounds another, in a traffic stop shootout, don't screw up the trial and let them get off on "reversible error."

Penultimately, when an organization murders their bookkeeper when she discovers they've been embezzling from anti-poverty programs, don't write "multimedia tributes" to them.

And, finally, when you are a major urban university and host this multimedia tribute, don't hold your breath during pledge time.

The Lesson

2003-09-22T05:26:00.000-05:00

Lileks turned me on to this one, but didn't link. James, James! Specificity is the soul of credibility!

Anyway, read this story about those fine examples of humanity, the folks who guard the tomb of the unknowns in Arlington National cemetery. They were offered the chance to bug out when Isabel was barreling down on Virginia.

Thanks, but no thanks, was their reply.

In essence, these guys were willing to sacrifice their lives to guard some dust brought back from overseas. I'm not going to make a point about how great this country is because these men were willing to stand guard at the tomb. Because if you read the story, and the quote from the ringleader of the decision to stay behind, it had nothing at all to do with this country. It had everything to do with the anonymous soldiers buried under the granite.

"Did they volunteer? Did they get drafted? How did they die? They did their job and this country paid them back by not remembering who they were ...."

The humanity in this statement is overwhelming. I feel honored to be guarded by men and women who believe as such. At the end of this war, when the forces of civilization have triumphed, it will have been not because of the strength of our armies, or the superiority of our technology, but because of the human heart that beats within each and every American, British, Polish, and, yes, French and German man and woman. It is because of the clearly apparent superiority of a culture that places value in an individual, and regards each human life as sacred.

We may not win this war for a long, long time. There will be more events that will shock and depress us. We have much work to do on the homefront as well; taking on a "Fifth Column" within that forgets the ascendancy of our nations is because of our trust and respect in the individual. Those that forget; they that revel in power, control, and disrespect for inconvenient life (the unborn, the aged, the powerless), those that forget must be reminded. Gently, and with love. One gesture at a time. One lesson at a time. Lessons given by the most unlikely of teachers, like a member of the Old Guard who refuses to leave his post: not because the charnal remains he protects are those of American soldiers -- but because they are those of another human being.

Performance enhancing drugs in football...

2003-09-15T05:22:00.000-05:00

See this story, I'll wait while you go and read it:

Patriots ink Levitra marketing deal.

Back?

Okay, baseball is one thing. Rafael Palmeiro can go and talk about Viagra and he'll get razzed, but it doesn't hurt his team. There's something vaguely not quite right with Baseball anyway, as baseball has references to players with "three balls" and bats are called "wood". Maybe baseball is appropriate for groinal issues.

But please, "The New England Patriots football performance brought to you by Levitra: when you're flogging a wet noodle, think Levitra and the New England Patriots!"

"Brady sets up to pass, the rush is on, he scrambles, evades the sack!, And remember, when you're penile dysfunction problems cause you to evade the sack, think Levitra and the New England Patriots!"

"The snap, the ball is down, Vinateri kicks, Patriots score!!! Which is more than you're doing if you don't take Levitra, the Official Erectile Aid of the New England Patriots."

Actually, this works on many levels. Perhaps they could bring back Zeke Mowatt as a celebrity endorser. Maybe even Lisa Olsen.

Well, that's it. Say goodnight, Gracie. The 2003 New England Patriots football season is officially over.

(Note, this was written before today's dismantling of the Philadelphia Eagles. All is forgiven. Go and support your team, go out and buy some Levitra today.)

It's All... Stupid

2003-09-05T09:41:00.000-05:00

Ok, there's a new show on ABC this fall, It's All Relative, that they've been promoting up the wazoo (so it must suck like an electrolux), which is billed as a sort of La Cage Aux Folles taken to the "what next" stage.

Lenny Clarke plays a Boston Irish Catholic whose son is engaged to a Harvard Medical student. Lenny's son is a bartender, and his fiancee has two gay dads.

Comic goodness ensues.

The ads run last night feature delightful light hearted name calling, featuring such lovey words as sissy-boy, pansy, etc etc.

It's being billed as sort of an Archie Bunker for the new millenia. Three episodes. I hope this thing keels in three episodes. How do I hate this? Let me count the ways....

1) Stereotype-o-rama. You want to offend? This baby's got it all!!! Gay men are well-coiffed, wordly, sophisticated and bitchy. Boston Irish Catholics are knuckle-dragging troglodytes who would call their prospective inlaws derogatory names (to their faces, and before the wedding, all true Boston Irish Catholics know to wait until at least the reception). Harvard students?: Modern and progressive. Working class joes?: Backward and offensive.

2) Fact idiocy. If you're going to offend people, do it with some intelligence. On last night's promos, as Lenny Clarke was bringing the nationwide view of Boston Irish Catholics (they hammered that point endlessly: he's not just from Boston... He's Irish! He's Catholic! My goodness, he probably is a repressed altar boy abuser himself!!!!) down a peg or eight, the two sophisticated gay gentlemen spewed their own invective: "Irish Catholic" "caveman" "Republican".

Huh?

Just as now nation divided may long endure, and as a house built on sand will fall into the sea, no television show with writers for an abject disdain for truth will long entertain an audience. The strength of situational comedy lay in believable absurdity. Take a memory, event, or truth, particularly something painful or hurtful, push it two degrees past truth and caricature to create a safe distance, and you have humor. But you've got to base these things in truth, so that people will see it, recognize it, and appreciate it's difference from reality.

This is where "It's all relative" drives off the cliff. There is no such thing as a Boston Irish Catholic Republican. There may be a Loch Ness Monster, there may be a Big Foot, and there may be a pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow, but there ain't no such thing as a Boston Irish Republican.

(We gots plenty o' Boston Irish Republican Army sympathizers around here, but that ain't the same thing).

requiescat in pace, Cherry (A work in progress)

2003-08-26T06:44:00.000-05:00

Bought a new car last night. Well, okay, not a new car, which would be completely out of character, but a newer car. The newbie, a 2001 Saturn SL1 (the link goes to a picture of a car the same year and color, not my actual car), will replace Cherry, who has 144,000 rode hard and put away wet miles.

The new entry to the Kalezac Kar Stable got me to thinking about those who had gone before, so I thought I'd try to lay electrons to monitor screen in reverential reminiscence of them that had gone before.

1. 1974 VW Karmann Ghia. Ah, the first car. Is there anything better than a first car? Bought sometime in 1987. With Dad's money. Of course. Car actually ran on the road only a couple of times, as I was still with driver's permit, and Motherdear and Stepdad Version 1.0 were somewhat deaf to its charms.

As an air-cooled Volkswagen, heating was an option only available during the summer months. In addition, Karmann had a big hole in the dash where a radio had once been, which let in lots of nice, fresh, brrrrisk air. Had a nasty habit of in transit windshield icing, but that was okay, as it usually happened on the inside of the windshield, and could thusly be scrapped off without having to stop the car. By the time I got her, Karmann had been extensively “modified”, including the replacement of standard VW seats with low-slung Chevelle sport buckets, making it damn near impossible to see out of the kraut-burner.

I got a lot of practice sculpting bondo and finishing with ferrous oxide, and single handedly kept the local car parts store sold out of WD-40 during the year and a half I “worked on” her – which consisted mainly of taking parts off and stowing them in the garage (many of the unidentified automobile guts still in Motherdear’s cavernous barn-slash-garage are remnants of Karman).

Karmann became carro non grata when I took Motherdear out for a drive and the failing vacuum advance failed to advance. Right in front of a big truck. She was not amused. Orders came from on high that Karmann was not sufficiently safe to be a daily vehicle for a freshly minted driver, and I was instructed to find alternative transportation. Karmann lingered in the yard, a visible manifestation of the festering rebellion of my teenage years, and witnessed the passage of many of the following vehicles, finally being sold to some enterprising middle-aged gentleman (perhaps his buttinski mother had just passed on) for $25 about the same time as the decommissioning of the SS Impala.

2. 1979 Plymouth Volare , (My car, a 1979 with a two-tone tan and brown color scheme, mag wheels, and louvers on the rear 35rd quarter windows was even more guido'ed up than this picture). After the deposing of Karmann, Motherdear filled the temporary wheels gap by arranging for a friend of Stepdad V 1.0 to part with his 1979 (?) Volare for the measly sum of $475. Now, back in 1988, when Kal’s nights were spent busing tables and breaking in on poor little oysters and clams just so some pseudo-yuppie could eat them, $475 was big money.

Fortunately, the $1100 I got for the Volare three months later was bigger money. Motherdear was not amused, as I assume the $475 was a somewhat discounted “family and friends” rate, and her ungrateful issue was taking advantage. But, c’mon. $1100 for a Volare?!? Who could resist?

This gap in wheels necessitated a quick replacement, as the slowly disintegrating Karmann was still not an option. The unexpected windfall provided the opportunity to move up a bit in the automotive genome, and perhaps buy something with a little class.

Naturally, squandered that opportunity:

3. 1981 Mustang Hatchback. First foray in Ford. Should've learned my lesson then. Much unhappiness and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments would've been avoided. Much sorrow that was mine could've been others. And, actually, that's what happened.

Bought the pig sometime in my junior year. Brown interior, brown exterior. In-line six (although not the fabled in-line six of the Volare which, as Motherdear proclaimed, would run until the cows come home. Well, Motherdear, of course the engine keeps running. It's trying to distance itself from the ugly guidofied body it's stuck in...). Automatic transmission.

Yes. Automatic. Automatic, in-line six. Varoom, indeed.

It was a serviceable ride for a junior in high school, but parking lot braggadocio had to be backed up, and a fervent quest began the August before Senior year to find more chick friendly wheels for the final year of high school.

Unfortunately, this quest ran somewhat awry and produced a vehicle, while still the favorite all-time best Kal vehicle to ever be driven solo (aka, without learner's permit), was, probably, just maybe, possibly, a chick car.

4. 1982 Mazda RX-7. Ah, the second "one that got away". Like Karmann, the Rex was a high school parking lot head turner. And she was fast. In Massachusetts at the time it was the law that if you got three speeding tickets in a twelve month period you'd lose your license for some period of time; maybe six months, can't quite remember. Anyway, I went eleven months with two tickets (got two tickets in the space of a month). To this day I maintain that part of my problem was that I had just started dating Wifeypooh, whose Dad was the Chairman of the Board of Selectmen (think Mayor, and also serves as Police Commissioner) of Pleasantville.

Anyway, ran her into a state trooper. A big state trooper. Not good times. Totaled car. Ruined insurance rating for ten years. Paid hundreds in fines.

5. 1980 Triumph Spitfire. Actually my dad's car. Borrowed her for a time after I crashed the Seven. Broke it and gave it back to Dad. Borrowed it again after I got married and needed a second car. Broke it again. Hasn't been on the road since. Haven’t spoken to Dad in three years. Brotherdear reports in the one conversation he has had with Dad in the interim discussion of Kal's destruction of the Spitfire is prominently featured. Like the stabbing of Frodo by the Fell Riders, Kal's destruction of the Spitfire is a wound to be carried the rest of his father’s days…

6. 1982 or 3 Pontiac 1000. Mine was turd brown, had four doors, and interior plastic that was crumbling like chalk. Cost over $1000 in brake work. What a pig.

7. 1983 Mazda RX-7. First sunroof. First lesson that all sunroofs, no matter how caulked or otherwise "fixed", lead like sieves. I had kept the destroyed Rex, as her motor was still good and I was hoping I could find another Seven with a bustermarated engine and swap them. Success! Dad and I switched the motors over and Rex II lived for a couple of years before finally succumbing to my insatiable appetite for new wheels (well, and to be fair, she had exhaust problems which would've cost thousands and thousands of dollars that I didn't have.)

8. 1971 Chevy Impala 2-door. The SS Impala. Not an Impala SS, which would have been cool. No, this was the SS Impala because driving it was a little like driving the Queen Mary. You didn't so much steer this car, as you aimed it. Gas gauge never quite worked, and she got about four gallons to the mile, so driving it was like a form of automotive roulette.Only ran out of gas once though, which was lucky because the thing weighed about four tons and was a bitch to push.

9. 1986 Subaru XT. Take a look at those pictures, especially the interior. That car was like a spaceship!

10. 1992 Ford Probe. Was my brother's car, my wife drove it until someone ran into her and totaled it.

11. 1986 Nissan Stanza Wagon

12. 1989 Ford Probe. Was my mom's car. First year of Probes. Gave me a good year after many years of slumber at Mom's house. Unfortunately suffered massive multi-system failure requiring thousands and thousands in repair work. Final act of fealty to the family: served as a trade for our first Brandy-new car ever, a 2003 Pontiac Vibe!

13. 1994 Eagle Summit. I got the Summit when we bought the Vibe. That was in March. By July the Summit was in need of $1500 in exhaust and engine work, and sporting 144,000 miles.

14. Earl the Saturn.

Looking back, I believe my continuing bad luck with vehicles stems not from my own complete disregard for the principles of vehicle maintenance and my Mario Andretti on Crystal Meth driving method, and is actually the continuing effects of a curse; a curse first uttered by a dejected 1974 VW Karmann Ghia – her autumnal years relegated to yard planter status and forced to watch her erstwhile owner – nay, her former lover, under the sway of a progression of hulks of iron, plastic, and rubber.

Hopefully Earl will end the insanity and provide some degree of long-term transportation. All these cars hold a special place in my heart (okay, maybe except for the Pontiac 1000. PIG!!!), but it's time I grow up and get some reliable transportation.
.

Korea, Iran, Bulger, Oh My...

2003-06-19T00:58:00.000-05:00

Goddam it.

For some godforsaken reason, my browser decided to jump to another page, destroying at least a half an hour of midnight ramblings about the state of the world. With links galore, no less. Well, screw it. I'm tired. I'm grumpy. The world's going to hell in a handbasket. Film at 11.

Okay, quickly: because you don't need to a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, you just need a browser, a passel of links, and a curious mind.

Maybe because we live in such an instant age we're knowing more than we ever did, but, Christ, this little green gem of rock, water, and various carbon-based life certainly seems poised for one big clusterf*ck, don't it? Or, actually, a bunch of medium sized ones.

North Korea, the socialist workers paradise, is in the midst of an eight-year famine. Couple of delightful consequences: according to a UNICEF study in 1998, North Koreans seven year olds are, on average, eight inches shorter than their South Korean peers. And a new delicacy is popping up more often in North Korean markets: special meat. Here's another story about it. Motherdear is probably gloating right now, as she's a vegetarian. But, hey, who knows, maybe these industrious Koreans are on to something. "People, the other white meat". Too bad Robert Mitchem's still dead, I can almost hear him doing the commercial voice over.

PJ O'Rourke once wrote "Man developed in Africa. He has not continued to do so there." Horrible stories of cannibalism are coming out of the Congolese Civil War. The Guardian had this story in January about pygmies being eaten by rebel troops. Other news outlets have these atrocities being practiced by both sides. The UN has ridden in to save the day, sending unarmed observers who don't speak the language. And then letting them get slaughtered. Of yeah, Kofi and his Anamaniacs really would've had Saddam on his knees with just a few more months.

In happier news, it looks like something is getting ready to happen in Iran. Iran has a huge cohort of twenty-somethings. They are a product of a repopulation program undertaken during the devastating Iran-Iraq war. These kids have no love lost for the Mullahs, and are starting to get pissed off at being told what to do. Their college professors are getting in on the act and protests are popping up across the country. Now, as a particularly snarky friend of mine said to me today (unless it was on Instapundit, if so, sorry to Blog Master Glen), "so, you're saying it's like USA, circa 1968?". Well, except, wasted youth and hippified college professors during the summer of love and the Cambodian Moratorium had middle class lives and concerns to get back to. These kids in Iran got nothing. And when you ain't got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. It will take some time, these are secular kids missing the "will of God" fire that toppled the Shah in '79, but it'll happen. That'll be tic-tac-toe, three in a row: Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.

Some predictions (all guaranteed to be wrong, but if they aren't: remember you heard it here first).

1. North Korea will implode within a year. If the drought/flood cycle persists, and Kim who-ever continues his Dr. No ways, he'll have his head on the end of a pike (supplied by the North Korean army) by next June. One Caveat: the army is the only thing Kim is paying any attention to, and to whom he is diverting what little food he has. Maybe they're too loyal. But, man, it looks like that breaking point is close, doesn't it?

2. UMASS President William Bulger will disclose in testimony to the House Government Reform Committee tomorrow that his brother James "Whitey" Bulger actually passed away of natural causes a couple of years ago, and is buried in Ireland, or maybe even Southie. Just a funny feeling. Completely unfounded. I just think that this saga demands some sort of poetic ending like that - that's the denoumount of the "Lawmakers and Lawbreakers, The James and William Bulger Story" telefilm, brought to you by AC Delco, on the SuperStation: President Bulger emotionally tells the House Committee about his brother's secret funeral in a small cemetery in Killarny on a misting April morning. The final scene, naturally, features an umbrellaed drink being brought on a tray to a man lounging in a chaise facing a setting sun on some Carribean Island. "Your drink, Mr. Baxter..."

3. The Red Sox will win the pennant.

4. And monkeys will fly out of my butt......

G'Night.

A Perfect Morning in an Imperfect Time

2003-05-23T06:41:00.000-05:00

Did you ever think that you would be looking back so fondly to the Halcyon days of 1989?

I think I graduated from high school at the most perfect of times. Our senior year, 88-89, saw "The End of History" as the cold war ended, the commies turned into nice guys, and the Wall fell. We were in college for the 90-92 recession, so the bad job market didn't really hit us, we left college with the New Economy in full swing and either got established in "old economy" jobs with enough time to burrow deeply enough to avoid layoffs when the bubble burst, or made truckloads of dough in the new economy that gave us the abliity to ride out the 99-03 recession (the economy's waking again, feel it?). We're old enough so that Osama and the end of the world scares us just enough to take it seriously, but we're not young enough to actually believe this is the End of the World (I assume that people my age in 1982-83 were just as frightened of Reagan/"evil empire" as folks are these days of Bush/"american empire").

We really are a lucky few. I look around to those younger than I, who were broomed out of their first jobs without so much as a "fare thee well", who are looking at the world situation and seeing nothing but terrorism, war, and cruelty until the end of time, and I truly feel sorry for them.

Actually, it's the computer science and business majors I feel sorry for. The history / poli sci / and even english majors understand this as just another variation on that favorite disc of time's jukebox: "Man's inhumanity to man". (ooo boy, get a load of that! I crack myself up sometimes.).

So, as for my part, things are going fairly well. Job is motoring along; hopefully they'll keep me until I don't wanna be kept anymore. Wife's good. Kids good. New cat is a laugh-riot -- if not a bit annoying at 5:15am when he's reminding me it's time to get up and chase the sun. And I actually like this weather. I think perhaps it's the Scottish in me -- but this morning, walking to work with the old Jethro Tull on the MP3: "Grey the mist cold the dawn; cruel the sea and stern the shore. Brave the man who sets his course for Albion", I could imagine my Scottish ancestors keeping watch in the towers of Castle Moil, waiting to raise the chain that ran from Skye to the mainland to collect the toll on the ships sailing southerly down the coast.

Just a perfect morning of a perfect life in the perfect time. At any rate, beats the shit out of the alternative.

Fun with chemistry

2003-05-23T06:37:00.000-05:00

An interesting piece in the NYTimes about those mobile labs.

While we have not been able to definitively determine whether they had actually ever been used to produce chemicals (the mobile labs had been decontaminated with an "unknown caustic agent" prior to their discovery by the Americans), I think the tiniest bit of Socratic reasoning allows us conclude:

1) Hussein used chemical weapons (against the Kurds, during the Iran-Iraq war).

2) These labs have very little utility beside the production of biological agents. (One of the competing theories is that they are used to make hydrogen for weather balloons, and of course, the usual pesticide dodge. Apparently, Iraq has more "pesticide" plants per person than any other nation on the planet.)

3) The U.S. has transcripts of Iraqi military officials that seem to point toward a concerted effort to hide the existence of chemical weapons: "We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left." On the second, one Republican Guard commander told another, "Write this down: Remove the expression 'nerve agent' whenever it comes up in wireless instructions."

4) why would someone clean to the point of microbacterial decontamination equipment for producing hydrogen for weather balloons?

To sum: he had 'em, he used 'em, he had to make 'em, these labs don't look like they could've made anything else, ergo: these mobile labs are the chemical weapon smoking gun.

So why did it take so long to find anything, when apparently, according to Colin Powell, Iraq was so cluttered from chemical and biological weapons that Hussein had to bring in "Merry Maids" every Thursday to tidy up? Slate notes that General Tommy Franks admits that US Special Forces bribed a number of Iraqi military officials to sit on their hands during the conflict. He has defended this as essentially a cost-benefit decision: one Tomahawk costs $1 million, we can demobilize an entire unit with one $1 million bribe. Looks like a good deal.

A natural conspiracy theory that could run off of that news is that, perhaps, some of our bought and paid for Iraqi generals know a little more than they're saying about the location of chemical goodies, and, just maybe, the US govt., figuring that they'd be able to find good evidence elsewhere, have "excused" them from divulging everything they know. The reasoning being that there is no way the US Govt could "harbor" military folks they know had possession of / had been ordered to use chemical weapons, buuut, if we never asked, then bribing these guys and bringing them over is okay. Sort of a don't ask, don't tell, chemical weapons version.

Your theory?

Wifeypoohish

2003-05-15T06:36:00.000-05:00

The Independent, a British newspaper, has online [pardon me while I dangle my participle] a story about a new study with the troubling news that the planet's languages are being lost at an alarming rate. Faster, indeed, than those subspecies of newts and gekkos we typically get ourselves so worked up about.

Apparently this planet has only 6,000 languages. (Actually, from experience in the Modern Historical Metropolis in which I work and play [don't tell wifey-pooh], I would say that that is about right. And 5,999 are spoken by local cabdrivers. Unfortunately, English is not one of them.) So, six point two billion people , 6,000 languages. Works out to about 104 million people per language. The US has, give or take, 290 million people, so we need about 2.9 languages. Makes sense: Spanish, Chinese, and American English, which is about .9 a real language.

[brother goodson interrupts: Hey, moron. Do the math. 6 billion (6 x 10^9) divided by 6 thousand (6 x 10^3), when dividing you subtract the exponents and get 1 x 10^6, or 1 million. (I took this right from his email, well, the math, not the "hey, moron", that was implied.) And yes, he's right. I did the math on my little calculator and figured out that I miscounted the zeroes. Fine, fine. The question is: who the hell actually does math with exponents? Sure, I may be a math imbecile, but at least I'm not a Freak. Here, here's a buck, go buy another pocket protector. Freak. We return you to the story, already in progress]

[brother goodson retort: Yeah, I'm a freak. With a Z4. And no wife. Suckaaaaaah]

Unfortunately, it doesn't work out like that, and 200 to 250 languages are the big bullies, all above one million speakers each, and 357 languages have under 50 speakers. Forty-six are known to have just one native speaker. One of these, no doubt, is wifeypoohish.

(I crack up just looking at that word. Wifeypoohish. Wifeypoohish. I'm dyin'!).

While wifeypoohish is related to English, it, much like the bushman language from "The Gods Must Be Crazy", contains several seemingly nonsensical sounds which actually carry significant linguistic importance.

Drawing another analogy from more commonly studied languages, like the Eskimo dialects which contain thirty-three words for snow, wifeypooish uses at least four hundred homonymic grunts and groans which, depending upon context, phrasing, tone, time of day, phase of the moon or butterfly migration patterns in China, can infer happiness, unhappiness, hunger, or deep homicidal intent.

And in closing: that Eskimo thing is bunkum. English has a ton of words for snow too, and, as a language that uses adjectives as appurtenant to nouns, and doesn't rely only on creating new words out of combining roots, we gots snow words up the ying-yang. Being frugal in most things, I only need one word for snow: shit.

Thoughts for a Monday Morning

2003-05-12T06:29:00.000-05:00

Ah, it's been almost a half month. In truth, I was just trying to up the anticipation. Or, I had nothing to say. You pick.

So, some random thoughts:

The ongoing Bob Ryan controversy:
Jason Kidd, who actually smacked his wife, got a $200 fine and agreed to undergo counselling. Bob Ryan, who said he would like to smack Kidd's wife, got a one month unpaid suspension.

Sooo, Jason Kidd, who actually beat his wife, loses 200 bucks. Bob Ryan, who only says he would like to beat Jason Kidd's wife, is out, at least, 10 grand.

The lesson: in America it is cheaper to actually beat your own wife than to say you want to beat someone else's wife.

Does this send the right signal? What the heck is wrong with this country?

And please, the nattering nabobs: I am not condoning wife beating. My mother taught me never to hit a lady. She taught me to duck and run when the lady is throwing vegetables, plates, cutting boards, etc, at you.

SERIOUSLY FOLKS ADDENDA
Actually, the disparity between Ryan's punishment and Kidd's (and put aside that Ryan's punishment is by a private party with which Ryan has a consensual relationship -- that is, if he were ticked enough about this he could tell his employer to go pee up a rope and he could take his golden prose elsewhere, while Kidd's penalty is imposed by THE MAN), anyway, Ryan's rather stiff penalty vs. Kidd's slap on the wrist, just perpetuates the double standard that domestic violence prevention labors under. Threaten a person outside your personal sphere -- big time trouble. Threaten (and hit) your wife -- well, that's a different (somehow less serious) matter. This is lunacy.

What Ryan did was essentially to get up on a park bench and say he would like to smack somebody. This is somehow worse than me going out and actually smacking the next passer-by? Oh, no, I see, if the next passerby was my wife, then that's a matter for counseling. But if it was a private citizen then it's off to the hoosegow with me. See this for a discussion of the term hoosegow. I just like that word.... This double standard makes absolutely no sense at all.

Okay, back to the trivial...

And you were expecting?:
The new JD Powers survey says the Hummer owners are slightly upset at the vehicle's gas mileage.

Umm..

Boy, getting 10 mpg rather than that 12 you had expected is certainly a bummer. Are these folks really that dense? This frickin' car weighs like 9,000 pounds! It has more interior room than my first apartment! A hummer with a gun rack is enough firepower to coup d'etat at least four or five central american nations!

And you pay $50,000 and are worried about gas mileage? It's like griping about the lack low number of cupholders in brother Goodson's BMW Z4.

Morons. A nation of morons. Of rich morons.

Evil triumphs, because good is stupid.

Well, Jenna picking up the $1million was fairly pukey. Talk about a hobson's choice though: vapid jenna or crazy matt. I guess I just don't understand Christy. I mean, somebody did tell her that you wrote down the person you wanted to win, right? Motherdear will be devestated, although not as much as if manboobs bob had won. She thought rob was the nexus of all evil in the universe, but isn't that the lesson we take from the six seasons of survivor? Evil is rewarded with the million bucks, good wins a car.

Z4.

Drove brother Goodson's Z4 this weekend.

Niiiiice.

Mucho boosto, as our south american friends would say. Shift that baby into second and step on the gas. Woooooosh. One problem. The nose is entirely too long. How do I know this? Because I managed to hit the curb while parking in the local donut establishment. Sickening "crunch" sound. Abrupt stop. Nausea. Visions of fratricide.

Relatively unknown BWM safety feature: it is impossible to put one's head behind a tire and commit suicide by releasing the parking brake. Car is too low to the ground to accomodate normal human-sized noggin.

brother Goodson was very understanding. Am only banned from driving said Z4. Can still oogle it and wax once per month.

Okay, that's all for now.

Did the hip among us get the movie reference? As always, emails to Kalezac@gmail.com guarateed to be completely ignored.

Red Dragon v. Manhunter

2003-04-28T06:32:00.000-05:00

Some thoughts while trying to not obsess about the computer solitaire game the KEEPS CHEATING ME SO I CAN’T GO TO BED. (Yes, yes, we are developing a nice little obsessive compulsive tic that requires I beat solitaire before I go to bed. And I’ve got to beat the four different solitaires on my Palm Pilot in sequence to have a good day at work. I tell you, I’m about two degrees separated from needing live chicken blood and the earth from a graveyard harvested under a full moon to get dressed in the morning….)

Rented “Red Dragon” on Friday night. In a fit of typical maleishness, slept through good portions of it. Went back the next morning and watched it while wifey-pooh and the fruits of my looms were out. While I was grouting. You know, if you’re ever too scared of a movie to fully enjoy it, just watch it while you’re grouting. There’s nothing like polishing that skim coat of grout off tiles 400 times to dull the terrifying effects of a movie.

Of course, try writing a review of said scary movie at 1:30 in the morning in a house full of various and sundry sounds. Not good times.

Not that Red Dragon was particularly scary. Actually, I didn’t find it at all scary. Or in the least scary. Or the teensiest bit scary. Well, perhaps Ed Norton’s pathetic attempt at Wil Graham was scary. Yeesh. I hold no particular grudge against Ed Norton. I haven’t seen American History X, so I can’t see him as a tough guy. I did see him in that god awful film with Ben Stiller and Jenna Elfman, where he plays a nice guy priest, and I think I’ve seen him in some other films where he basically plays a nice, dull, young man.

But Wil Graham ain’t a nice young man. He’s a tortured, world-weary veteran of mayhem, death and destruction. Ed Norton as a world weary detective able to see through the eyes of a homicidal sociopath – I’d rather be forced to sit and watch Al Gore speeches, for goodness sakes.

Now, perhaps had I come to this movie as a “Red Dragon” virgin, then perhaps I could’ve bought the whole thing. But I didn’t. You see, Manhunter, the 1986 version starring William Peterson (“Hey. Ain’t that the movie with Grissom?” Says wifeypooh. Pretend not to shudder…. Pretend not to shudder…. “Ah, yes… It is…”) is perhaps one of my favorite movies of all time. And Red Dragon, for all it’s production values, for the valiant consistency with the printed material, just, well… sucks. Let’s do a tale of the tape and compare these movies side by side, Manhunter from 1986, and Red Dragon from 2002.

Wil Graham: Ed Norton (02) vs. William Peterson (86). ADVANTAGE: Manhunter.
Manhunter came along at a very impressionable time for me. And William Peterson’s portrayal of Graham, combined with his role in “To Live and Die in L.A.” and the HBO Bull Durham rip-off “Long Gone” remain the trifecta of crusty, world weary, macho dude role models. There’s a scene in both versions where Graham is talking to Freddie Lounds, feeding him the B.S. story meant to draw the Tooth Fairy into a trap. Peterson-Graham (I keep trying to write “Grissom”) comes off as contemptuous of Lounds and impatient with the whole charade. Norton-Graham practically giggles like a school-girl comparing notes with Lounds (played in 02 by Phillip Seymor Hoffman, who is very good). You do the math.

Lecter: Sir Anthony Hopkins (02) vs. Brian Cox (86) ADVANTAGE: Manhunter.
Ah, yes, you say to me. Obvious proof the boy has flipped his lid. Sir Anthony is a member of the Royal Shakespeare theater… Sir Anthony has been knighted by the Queen… Sir Anthony was in “Remains of the Day” a costume drama period piece you actually liked! All these things you say to me. I respond: true, all of the above. I say to you: Sir Anthony chewed so much scenery in this movie (and Hannibal) that I needed a sympathetic dose of Maalox. He’s become a caricature of himself. And his accent has become weird to the point of distraction. What the hell is it with that phony southern affectation he does from time to time? And he looks absolutely awful. In one of the DVD extras the director says that Hopkins put on 30 pounds for the role – was it to try and bloat up so the wrinkles wouldn’t show so prominently? This movie was supposed to take place before the other two! Sir Anthony playing Lector has become like Jack Nicholson to me, just playing the same character on autopilot. Cox WORKED to give us Lector, and it’s much more satisfying.

The Tooth-Fairy: Ralph Finnes (02) vs. Tom Noonan (86). ADVANTAGE: Manhunter.
Well, Duh. The Tooth Fairy is supposed to be a scarily deformed man who is shy and awkward with others. Tom Noonan is freaky. Uber freaky, as our good friend Shaggy would say. I mean that little scar on Finnes-Dolarhyde’s upper lip is supposed to be enough to turn him into a serial killer? Puh-leeze. And Finnes accent?! Ye Gods. Between Finnes and Anthony Hopkins it’s a murder-the-generic-american-accent fest. Plus, Ralph Finnes spends entirely too much of this movie naked. Now, I don’t need to see that. I really don’t need the scene where Finnes-Dolarhyde has his morning-after dialogue with the dragon (the dragon wants him to off Reba, Dolarhyde thinks about blowing off his own head instead). When Finnes-Dolarhyde comes bounding up the attic stairs, we are treated to…. Well, you know… Suffice it to say: Damn you Ralph Finnes, for making me feel inadequate to a cleft-palate homicidal sociopath bedwetter. Like I needed to feel any more insecure.

Crawford: Harvey Keitell (02) vs. Dennis Farina (86). ADVANTAGE: Silence of the Lambs.
Okay, okay. I like Harvey Keitell. I loved him in Reservoir Dogs, and I haven’t seen The Bad Lieutenant, so I don’t get PTSD flashbacks from seeing him on screen. Farina from Manhunter loses points for doing that god awful “The Inlaws” series last year. Sure, that’s not fair, but nobody said life was fair. Of course, both of these Crawfords are far inferior to Scott Glenn’s portrayal in Silence of the Lambs. Scott Glenn rocks. Jeez, they brought back Frankie Faison as Barney the Orderly, why did they feel the need to change Crawfords each movie? Bastards.

The obligatory girl in trouble, Reba: Emily Watson (02) vs. Joan Allen (86). ADVANTAGE: Push
Actually, thinking about this, I’m going to change my mind. Joan Allen gets the nod here, for one particular scene. The tiger scene is in both movies, the scene were Dolarhyde brings Reba to “see” a tiger. It’s during this part of the movie where Dolarhyde gives us a glimpse of his suppressed humanity and we begin to root for him, just for a moment, to be able to get himself out of his psychosis. Joan Allen really sold this scene, laying on the tiger to hear it’s heartbeat, caressing the tiger in this, perhaps not so, subtle foreshadowing of her laying with a far more dangerous creature later in the movie. Emily Watson basically pats the tiger, and listens to it with a stethoscope. Ho hum. Just another day at the office, fondling a ten foot long tiger. (Actually, the tiger in Red Dragon seemed a lot less sedated that the tiger in Manhunter. Perhaps Ms. Watson was afraid of being eaten. Perhaps Ralph Finnes had yet again taken off his clothes and was prancing around naked just off camera. Either way, she doesn’t really communicate the sensual nature of the contact, and what it means to her. So, we gotta give this category to Joan Allen and Manhunter.

Graham’s wife: That chick who Josh Lymon gets down with on West Wing (02) vs. Some oldish haggard blonde (86). ADVANTAGE: Manhunter.
In the story, Graham’s wife has a 11 or 12 year old son from a previous marriage. The relationship between Graham and the boy, how the boy learns about Graham’s past and begins to fear him just a bit, really shows us how different Graham is from us, and maybe how much he is like the men he chases. The wife plays very little role in this whole thing, so it’s not exactly a juicy role for an actress. You’ve just gotta be the Mom and wife figure. So, if you don’t bring anything to the party, please be sure to just not pee in the punchbowl. Josh Lymon’s girlfriend fails miserably in this regard, distracting me throughout the movie with thoughts like: hey, this chick is my age, what’s she doing with a 12 year old? And: hey, is the kid the lovechild of her relationship with Josh?, etc etc.

(editor’s note: Acutally, Ms. Mary-Louise Parker would have been 27 when she had the twelve year old in question. She just looks hotter than you. Kal’s note: I would hope freakin’ so.)

Ambiance: Silence of the Lambs look-alike (02) vs. Miami Vice look-alike (86). ADVANTAGE: Miami Vice baby!
Michael Mann, he of Miami Vice and MTV videos, directed Manhunter, and it shows. Everything is that clean, modern 1980’s look. Lots of white, very antiseptic. The soundtrack is moody and synthesized, except for the use of Iron Butterfly’s “Innagoddadavida” during the climactic scene. Red Dragon is very visually similar to Silence of the Lambs, with the sort of world-right-after-a-rainstorm look. It’s much more consistent with the written material: Manhunter almost laughably had Dolarhyde living in this bachelor pad with a large poster of Mars on one end of the living room and Japanese screens (all the better to fall through) in another part of the house.

(I may have made that bit about Japanese screens up. You see, this is the great benefit of writing a blog that nobody reads. No smartass can write you emails saying, “Kal, you ignorant sl*t, we learn that Lector is from Lithuania in the book “Red Dragon” on page thirty-seven, in paragraph six, obviously that’s where his odd accent comes from…” or “they were falling though the poster, not a Japanese screen, in “Manhunter”.)

But this movie captured so vividly a time I hold so dear: no wifey-pooh, no Fruits of my Loom, no mortgage, no J-O-B, that to watch it is to, for two hours, be catapulted back to the age of thin ties, stubble, and Ronnie Reagan. Red Dragon just makes me feel like I need a shower.

Final Score: Manhunter 6, Red Dragon 0, Silence of the Lambs 1.

Till next time, sports fans.

Oh – for obsessive compulsive finders of movie trivia: nothing in this posting, as it’s all about movies. Would be sort of redundant, wouldn’t it now?

A Boy's First Post

2003-04-16T06:27:00.000-05:00

Northeastern called again the other day, ostensibly to make sure I was still getting the alumni magazine, but of course to ask me for money. While I am very grateful to NU for giving me -- er, strike that -- providing me the opportunity to earn a serviceable, if not spectacular, education, it cheeses me off to no end that they are constantly looking for money from me, after I just finished paying $250 a month for my 1/3rd share of college. (okay, I didn't finish paying it off, I rolled it into my mortgage, which thanks to these Great Depression Redux interest rates I raised the extra 20K for about $75 a month). And what the heck do they do with my $10? They build more freakin' buildings like the four-story health club -- that's right, health FREAKIN club -- on Huntington Avenue.

Now, not to sound like my dad, who walked ten miles to school each morning in the snow, uphill, both ways, in July, but when I went to Northeastern (cue music) we ate in a flippin cafeteria. With LINOLEUM. Probably ASBESTOS LADEN linoleum. And if the asbestos laden linoleum didn't kill you, the smoke coming out of the "game room", featuring one archaic Pole Position, a geriatric Asteroids, and perhaps Dig-freakin-Dug, that old whore of a game, would croak you. Like I want to make these kids' college years any more cushy. Screw that.

Anywho, I usually promise to throw them $10 per year, and then have to beg and plead with my wife, who wisely controls the finances, to let me send them a check after about 15 reminder letters from them, the cost of shipping and handling thus exceeding the $10 I eventually, grudgingly, send.

For some reason I was in a bit of an odd mood when the latest pimply faced workstudy student called looking for dough -- it was a guy, which perhaps doomed the effort to failure, as usually the voice of a youngish co-ed fresh from the leafy suburbs of Connecticut will elicit my interest enough to trade Professor McShane stories, after which I will usually promise the half-sawbuck, sort of the equivalent of the money on the dresser the morning after, I guess.

So I tell Mr. Sophomore that yes, indeed, I still get the beautiful alumni magazine. Which I read for the articles, really. Or, rather, would, if the articles were interesting. Which, is, not so much the case. Yes, I say, I get the magazine, which is rather puzzling as I graduated from Boston College.

Stunned silence.

Then, "Uh, you sure?"

Okay, perhaps he was asking if I was sure that I was receiving the Northeastern alumni magazine, not that I was sure I graduated from Boston College. I can understand him perhaps thinking I was addled enough to mistake the BC magazine for the NU magazine, as NU is quickly turning into a leafy green campus with expensive buildings, and the alumni magazine so rarely catches that real essence of Northeastern life, Punters Pub and classes at the Y (complimentary flak jacket included).

I am hoping that Northeastern has not taken to accepting students who would believe that I perhaps was not sure WHERE I HAD ATTENDED COLLEGE. I would have understood had he told me, "hey, you shitting me buddy?", or perhaps "oh yeah, you're the deadbeat who talks to the girls for thirty minutes and then promises ten bucks". But, please, am I aware of where I went to college? What the hell kind of question is that?

So, I said: Yup. BC, class of '93. Brilliant ad lib on my part, as due to Northeastern's patented water-torture-for-five-years I graduated NU in '94, but would've finished a normal school in 1993.

More stunned silence.

"Uh, could you hold?" So he put me on hold for 30 seconds, came back on, apologized and hung up.

So, no $10 bucks for Northeastern this year. Unfortunately, I may also lose my free subscription to the Alumni mag.

Jeez, I wonder if they'd print this story as an article? I'd read that.