Hello, been a while!

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!

Faux Food

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



Bon appetite!

Happy Valentine's day to me!

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

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...)

There but for the grace of God....

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.

Wifeypoohish

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.