The Evil Grin

Random November Saturday Morning Musings

2010-11-13T07:00:00.001-08:00

1. Has anyone else ever noticed that the Beatles' song "Birthday" sounds awfully sarcastic? Listen to it again. The tone of Paul and John's voices definitely have a certain harshness. It's almost as if they are mocking the subject of the song with each lyric.
"You say it's your birthday - well it's my birthday too, yeah!" --- this is like someone sneeringly claiming it's their birthday when it obviously is not just to spite the person whose birthday it truly is.
"We're gonna have a good time" --- No, we're not. Because I'm a jerk and I'm belittling you by making fun of your birthday party.
"I'm glad it's your birthday" -- No, not really. I'm just sarcastically saying that to make you feel bad. Ha Ha Ha.

2. This has been one of the nicest Autumns I can remember. Too bad I've spent most of it indoors doing engineering stuff. It never rained in September, and maybe rained twice in October. We had one week recently of 50 degree weather, but other than that it's been in the 70s and sunny.

3. I keep having dreams where I'm talking to Brett Favre as if we are friends or I at least have an opinion that he cares about. I've always respected Favre as a football player, but I'm a Bears fan - so it's not like he's been one of my sports heroes. I kind of feel for the guy right now. He's having a rough season...getting physically beat up, the media has swarmed over his "racy texts" scandal (even though it's really no one's business and shouldn't be news - the only purpose it serves is to keep Jenn Sterger's name floating in the ether and providing fodder for the aforementioned media), his coach stinks, his team is a mess...he's almost assuredly wishing he'd just stayed in Mississippi instead of coming back this time around. That being said, though, you have to be impressed by his ability to keep playing with men half his age. He's still very capable and one of the better players at his position.

4. Is it just me or does Thanksgiving seem to come more quickly these days and without any build up? From childhood through my college years there was always a month-long anticipation and excitement that brewed. But lately the big day just sort of rushes upon us with only a bit of fanfare on the day before. Could it just be that I'm older now and my mind is occupied by more important matters? Looking back at my 20 year old self, I had so little responsibility or truly important things to tend to that I could afford to think about Thanksgiving every day for a month leading up to it. Come to think of it...my 20 year old self was a head-shakingly shadow-like version of my current self. But then that's always been the goal: to constantly be improving and as a result looking back on old versions of myself with disregard and a roll of the eyes. It would be a shame to always consider your former self to be the better you.

Well, it's time to eat a late breakfast and go watch my Hurricanes stink it up against Georgia Tech. If we lose today I will then be in full hoping-that-we-tank-the-season mode and looking forward to hiring a new coaching staff (Jon Gruden please!). If we win...meh...I'll be happy for the players and will try to be optimistic about the future, but I won't be daydreaming of championships.

3 Months of Busy-ness

2010-10-04T04:02:00.000-07:00

I have a spare 15 minutes, so let's see how far I can get....

Another year, another fantasy football season that sees my team having unbelievably bad luck and all my opponents' players just happening to have career weeks against me. Also, just like last year, a lot of my opponents' players who have amazing performances against me end up getting hurt the following week (exhibit A: Michael Vick). This week my opponent had both Jay Cutler and the Giants defense, so something had to give. Unfortunately it was poor Jay's head. As a Bears fan, last night was a miserable game to watch....

Engineering school has reached new levels of ruthlessness. I'm constantly working and having to shun family, friends, free time, creative pursuits, and sanity.

My technological annoyances continue. Oh the woes of being a broke college student...it now appears that my creaky old laptop is too old for further software updates (this includes Itunes...apparently I'm stuck with version 9.2 from now on)...which also means I cannot update the software on my Iphone. (I'm on version 3.1.3 of that...) I could potentially upgrade the software from another computer, but apparently that would mean losing everything on my phone - including pictures (all 1000 of them). As my creaky old laptop is incredibly slow and short on memory, an attempt at transferring my pictures to my computer is no simple task. What I really need is a fairy-god-mother to show up at my porch door with a brand new Mac laptop (and Iphone G4 while she's at it) and a case of Newcastle. And since we're asking for really cool things to be delivered to me - how about my lovely girlfriend, too?

Alright, my allotted free time is up. The Engineering Monster is coming....

July 4th Musings

2010-07-04T07:23:00.001-07:00

Good morning, America! Yes, we're still the greatest country on the face of the earth - despite the demolition that we are currently undergoing. This great holiday may be built upon ideals that many have forgotten or outright hate, but freedom is not something easily won or maintained. That liberty which so many Americans before us died for has often been threatened by outside and internal forces. Though these times may be troubling and dangerous, we must be confident that freedom and the American spirit shall endure.

So my fellow Patriots, enjoy this day. Spend it with the ones you love, bask in the sunshine, hold your special someone close, eat, drink, watch your goofy cousin blow his fingers off with firecrackers, wave to the ambulance as it drives him away, and go to bed remembering how lucky we are to live in this great nation.

Other random musings....

1. Did you know that in dry climates it is possible to cool your house with minimal electricity requirements? Evaporative cooling. It's a subject I've been researching lately for a project and for no apparent reason I feel like sharing. In deserts and other arid climates people can replace their standard air conditioning units with low-energy evaporative coolers (also known as "swamp coolers"). Basically the dry outside air enters the cooler and meets these saturated pads causing the water in the pads to evaporate. When the water evaporates this requires energy (in the form of heat) which comes from the air. As the air takes on water vapor and loses its own heat energy, it cools. A fan then blows the cooled air into your home. This air is actually rather humid - which many folks prefer because of comfort and its benefit to furniture, paint, etc. Also, evaporative coolers work just fine with the windows open. The result is a nice moist breeze flowing through the house. Additionally, solar panels may be used to power the cooler. While some companies have stated these coolers only require about 1/8 of the power of a standard AC unit, the use of solar power can lead to virtually free home cooling!

2. We have bald eagles still hanging around our house out here. Last week we saw two massive ones literally walking around on the ground. Until you've seen one in person, you really have no idea how HUGE these creatures are! When I saw them my first thought was - flying dinosaurs. I can completely understand how some people devote their lives to studying the many wild beasts of this world. Fascinating.

3. Last month I had the misfortune of seeing a tv performance by this abysmal band called Passion Pit. My last shreds of hope for society and our youth were dashed when I saw mindless "fans" cheering on these buffoons. For starters, the music is terrible. It's derivative of cheesy, bland 80s pop, but without any creativity or heart. The singer prances around singing in a falsetto. The whole time! He should be mocked and ridiculed for attempting to pass that off as singing! What have we come to?!?!?! These guys shouldn't be cheered, they should've been booed off the first stage they ever whined their way onto! What is wrong with our society?!?!? Bands are supposed to be cool looking, rebellious, tough, intimidating. They're supposed to write with heart and passion and creativity and experimentation! Singers should sing like men! With soul and anger and pain! They shouldn't look and act like spineless 15 year olds who do not have the capacity to ever be real men! Unless you're Robert Plant you shouldn't be singing in any range above tenor! Anyone who likes this band has been completely lulled to sleep by this society. Wake up! This is not cool - this is not real music - those are not real men - that's not singing! The thought of them having a record contract is so mind-melting that my brain has to trick itself into thinking the whole thing is some stupid joke. They can't actually be considered a real band and have real fans. No way.

alright folks...have a great July 4th! Don't let the socialists bring you down...

Home Again

2010-06-23T18:21:00.001-07:00

The following is an excerpt from an email to a friend earlier this evening:

"I might feel differently at another time, but right now...yes, I would say being 30 does feel different. You start looking back and seeing that you've been around 30 years - all of that went by in a blink...and if you're lucky, you've got about another 30 left before you're into what soccer buffs might think of as "injury time." It's sobering....and terrifying and seems impossible...but the only way to deal with it is to accept it and move forward. Charge ahead into the teeth of the enemy, letting your war-cry erupt from the depths of your soul, never looking back with a timid eye, but only to recognize where you have been...may the battle be long and glorious and end with a brilliance that blinds the sun itself."

Why do I share that here? Who knows...maybe it just felt like a complete musing and one that needed to be shared. Like a tune that cannot be held inside and must be allowed to pollenate new ears. (oooh, another complete musing...)

My journey to Chicago was fantastic. I cannot wait to return. Being back in a big city for an extended time reminded me of how despite the big bad world's dangers, it holds a lot of exciting, interesting, and necessary experiences for the human soul. When you've been in one place for a long time - a place that is comfortable and safe and familiar - you can forget how pleasing and fulfilling the outside world can be.

While I was away my tomato plants (which were but mere little protrusions from the dirt when I left) underwent a significant transformation into green, stretching, vibrant bio-high-rises. They even have little corner bars that friends gather at and a Treasure Island grocery store on every other block. Naturally, parking is a gigantic nuisance. I saw two bees and a catepillar get towed within 5 minutes this morning.

There are a large number of green tomatoes on the vines, however none have yet ripened. I'm already growing wary of the blight that destroyed last year's crop by the middle of July. And today i encountered the first dreaded hornworm of the season. I tried pulling him off of the leaf he was munching on (while laughing at me), but he refused to let go. So, I employed a new method of eviction -- the classic finger-flick. With one swift flick of my middle finger the green, leaf-gobbler set sail through the air, off the porch and landed somewhere on the rocks below. Unfortunately, I'm sure his friends will not be deterred.

While in Chicago, my dearest sweetheart successfully made me a full-fledged fan of two shows that I previously did not watch (or watched very rarely): How I Met Your Mother and South Park. I've seen my fair share of South Park over the years, but never really watched it regularly. Now I can't get enough. Butters is a hilarious little character! And the episode where the kids rescue the killer whale literally made me cry with laughter. How I Met Your Mother has sort of made me feel better about turning 30. All those characters are in their 30s and still seem to have long lives ahead of them. Maybe 30 really is the new 20/25. I'm serious. People are living longer and, at least in our culture, people are maturing (mentally - not physically) more slowly. You disagree? Look back at generations from the World Wars and compare how mature and responsible they were compared to our current generations of increasing self-absorption, blaming everyone else, unnecessary litigation, MTV, etc, etc, etc....do I really have to have this argument with you kids right now? Anyway...they're both great shows and just like Family Guy two years ago and The Office this past year, they will likely be my flagship shows in the coming year. Expect me to quote them and reference them at annoying levels.

Anybody have winning lottery numbers for me? How about someone who wants to be my rich benefactor? Seriously. Maybe a transport plane with a malfunctioning back door will fly overhead and accidentally drop a load of gold coins onto the front yard....

Okay, that's all for now, folks. May you all have pleasant lives until you hear from me again...and may you next hear from me when I'm in Chicago...

Live in Chicago!

2010-05-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the not-so-windy city! I'm in Chicago and am having an even better time than I expected. No roving packs of street thugs, gang-wars, serial killers, Terminators, or even an attack from the Cloverfield monster! I'm surprised by how (for the most part) I've felt safe and comfortable in this MASSIVE city. Seriously -- this place is like 10 other cities all glued together. At times I've been struck by the realization that human beings built all this! Imagine landing on a new planet with no cities of any kind and someone hands you the blueprints to the city of Chicago and says "Okay, this is what we're going to build." Of course, if you haven't seen Chicago that idea won't have the same impact...but for those of you who live here...yeah...imagine that.

I'm currently gazing out the window as the sun settles in the west (just over the 3rd base upperdeck of Wrigley Field) and enjoying a couple of tasty Newcastle Summer Ales (I had no idea they even made those!!!! For those of you who know me personally, you know that Newcastle has always been one of my favorite beers. And now they make a summer ale!!!!).

Some random thoughts:

1. We went to Giordano's for pizza in Greektown last night. Out of this world! We are not big fans of deep dish (I'll probably get a knock on the door shortly from the local authorities just for typing that), and went with the "thin" crust which was absolutely phenomenal! It was so good I had leftovers for breakfast. It's the kind of pizza that even when you're stuffed (and I mean STUFFED) you still want to keep eating it because it tastes/smells SO good! As we left I kept smelling my hands and salivating. The box of leftovers was several times heavier than most full pizzas.

2. Lower Wacker Drive will now forever be associated with the movie The Dark Knight in my mind. Too bad I left my Joker t-shirt (and voice) at home....

3. The condos on the Lake Shore (Lake Shore East) are really really sweet! But being 33 stories up and looking down from a little glass section of a living room that juts out from the building with floor to ceiling glass makes me break out in instantaneous cold sweat.

4. The food. Everything is awesome. I know - that's a lame description, but imagine yourself having just eaten something fantastic...now add in some sleepiness and maybe a few drinks...now try to form a complete sentence...yeah...not so easy, is it?

5. Wrigley Field. The atmosphere and neighborhood surrounding Wrigley is certainly something to be experienced. We picked up tickets for tomorrow night's game against the Dodgers (consequently, the last time I went to a major league game was several years ago in St. Louis when the Cardinals also played the Dodgers...and that year the Cardinals won the World Series. Wait it gets better. The time before that that I attended a major league game was in Miami for the Marlins vs Cubs....and that year the Marlins won the World Series....see the pattern Cubs' fans? Ya gotta believe...). We also conducted a search of every apparel shop and stand for a certain red-billed blue Cubs hat that I became enamored with. However, there were only mediums and smalls to be found except for at one shop. Unfortunately the "large" there was too tight and the XL was too loose. If anyone reading this happens to know their Cubs' apparel - it's a weathered looking blue cap with a red "C" with a bear inside and a red bill. I must have one. Or several hats of equal or greater cool-ness.

6. DePaul...I've been to a lot of college campuses...and attended quite a few of them...while hanging out at DePaul last evening I was struck by how, though the times, fashions, and faces change - the college kids stay the same. So young and lacking in experience...ah, how they think they know everything about the world....makes me appreciate who I am now...

7. Parking/driving in this city is nuts. I don't know how you Chicagoans do it. Nuts. That's the best word. Nuts.

Alrighty, dear readers, I hope you have enjoyed this little posting and if I find the time, I'll tell you more about my adventures up here. mmm...pizza...

Movies and Things That Dangle Under Trucks

2010-05-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

File this under things you don't see you every day:

So the other day I was driving home on the interstate. I was in the left lane and just in front and to my right was a white pickup truck. Traffic was pretty heavy (for around here). I happened to notice something dangling from underneath the truck's front axle. It looked rather like a snake to me and my imagination began to picture it as such a creature clinging to the underside of the truck, having just awoken, and wondering "This is going to be a bad day." But I soon reasoned that it was springing up and down too stiffly to be a snake and had to be a wire or cable of some sort. However, as the truck and I moved along down the road I noticed the cable started to dangle further and further - and bounce more and more with the turbulence of the road. I thought to myself that the cable was likely important and it would be bad if it fell off completely. A few seconds later, it did fall off. As it came out from under the truck I was stunned to see that it had indeed been a snake all along! It appeared that the semi immediately behind us took care of the snake, but the lasting impression of a snake hanging out on the underside of one's vehicle has stuck with me ever since. As I passed the truck I looked over at the guy and thought "Dude, you have no idea..."

I saw the Russell Crowe movie Robin Hood last week. It was pretty good...not on the level of Gladiator by any means, but worth seeing. It was definitely better than Iron Man 2, which halfway through I realized that nothing interesting had really occurred yet. And then nothing interesting really occurred in the second half. I can't even think of any other big movies coming out this summer. Or at least "big" in terms of movies that I would actually go see. So, whatever Twilight and Harry Potter sequels they're on now do not fall into that category. I've found that it really takes a lot these days for a movie to impress me. Either I'm getting older and it takes more to amuse me, or the quality of movies in general continues to decline. I'm thinking it's likely a combination of the two factors.

Of course, Hollywood ran out of ideas long ago. Now we unfortunately live in an age dominated by phony computer-generated special effects and formulaic corporate-Hollywood plots. Give me scale models and guys in latex masks any day over effects that obviously look computer generated. I don't care how "real" the CGI looks -- it still is obviously CGI and thus fake.

I've heard that there is a movie version of Stephen King's the Dark Tower in the works. Somehow I'm sure it will be a total Hollywood disaster. Now if they were to give the project to Christopher Nolan (one of the very few people in Hollywood I'd trust with any project), then we could have something special...

Apparently You Can Return Beer

2010-05-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

It seems apparent to me that they have 13 year olds creating all the commercials these days. Who else would think a Staples ad featuring a moron screaming "WOW! That's a LOW price!" over and over would be a good idea? And must I rehash my disgust and loathing of Flo from the Progressive commercials?

Did you know that you can return beer if you are unsatisfied with it? Well, perhaps it depends on the location and how well customers are treated there. Earlier in the week I purchased some Schlafly beer from my favorite local liquor store. I bought two different styles - Kolsch and the Summer Lager. I have had both previously and knew what they should and should not taste like. Unfortunately when I got home and tried each kind, I found that both tasted like cider and were rather flat. A cidery taste is often the result of adding too much sugar in the final conditioning stage. This often happens to home-brewers (yes, it happened to me). Because it happened with two different styles, the only thing I can figure is that Schlafly operates their process with a universal conditioning/bottling unit. In non-engineer-speak -- the different styles are brewed separately, then the liquid beer flows out of each tank and fills bottles. These bottles then travel along a conveyor belt along parallel or even the same path. Then they pass under some device which deposits a little extra sugar or other fermentable into each bottle which reacts with the leftover yeast to give beer that wonderful bubbly carbonation we all love. (And for the CO2-obsessed out there, this is naturally created CO2 from the chemical reaction. Large breweries like Budweiser actually pump CO2 straight into the bottle. Now, which one is more carbon-neutral and "green?" Can we consider beer bottles to be sinks for CO2? But aren't all large corporations like Budweiser evil? So pumping CO2 into beer from the surroundings must be evil...right?)

Speaking of CO2 - I haven't shared my simple idea for fixing the whole CO2 emissions thing. First, I'd like to once again point out that there are more than sufficient reasons for finding new energy sources and cleaning up pollution without even touching the CO2/climate change thing. The CO2/climate change thing has become nothing more than a politicized bulldozer for pushing through some factions' agendas. It's all about power and control. Create fear, push through the agenda that you want, and gain control. But I digress....

If we really want to get rid of CO2...why not create plants that have accelerated photosynthetic cycles to consume the excess CO2? We can genetically manipulate plants to grow faster, taller, resist disease, produce hybrid fruits, sing songs, and scare away burglars. Why not just make super-ravenous plants? Then we wouldn't have to have Cap and Trade, or bring America's economy down to the level of the rest of the world, or punish people for being successful, or have one world government, or have a massive federal government involved in every aspect of each individual's life. Just make the damn plants and let them do what God meant for them to do: Consume CO2 and produce oxygen. Oh...and let's also stop clear-cutting the Amazon while we're at it. Thanks.

Oh, just a reminder from our fearless leader -- information is a distraction. Yes, we wouldn't want people having too much information...they might get confused...better to just let the government decide for us which sources of information are true and accurate. (Psst....in case no one else is noticing, the feds are moving to make internet providers public utilities. This means they can regulate the internet without having to institute Net Neutrality. Ah, but I digress again...)

Has Orwell's 1984 been banned yet? I figure it's a little like a football team having it's playbook left on an airport bench.

Wait a minute...wasn't I talking about cidery beer? So, my beer was nasty. I didn't think there was anything that could be done other than complain to the brewery (like they were really going to throw out an entire production line of beer because someone got their flowrates wrong) and let the liquor store know of the problem. Yesterday I went in and explained to them what happened. They said they hadn't gotten any other complaints and seemed a little skeptical. They even asked if maybe the beer is supposed to taste that way. Kolsch and Summer lagers are NOT supposed to taste like flat cider. You know what IS supposed to taste like flat cider? Screwed up batches of beer that need to be thrown away. I was pleasantly surprised when the manager said I could bring the rest in for credit. Hopefully he doesn't forget that between now and the next time I can get in there with my cidery beer. The lesson: While Schlafly is one of my favorite micro-breweries -- steer clear of their products for the time being.

On Turning 30

2010-05-05T04:48:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I joined the 30 club. I went kicking and screaming. And clawing at the floor and doorframes. And blubbering and trying to make irrational deals with no one in particular. It was quite a sight. Luckily YouTube wasn't there to film it.

I still do not feel anywhere near 30. At times I still feel like a kid or teenager. Most times something more in the 22-24 range. You're only as old as you feel. And that's quite true. Human beings physically age at different paces. And we most certainly mentally mature differently as well. After the next 10 years go by in a flash (because they will) I hope I will have "let go" enough to just roll with joining the next "club."

Perhaps it all comes back to living in the present. Like Master Yoda once told Luke (paraphrasing here): "Too old...yes, too old to begin the training." No, wait. That's not the one. Here we go: "This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away...to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph."

However you feel about Star Wars, there are really a lot of great truths and inspirations to be taken from a lot of the Jedi philosophy. One of my favorites is the idea of "letting go." We must be able to let go of all the things that we hold onto so tightly. Only then can we be free.

So I'm 30 now. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing. One moment I'm alive and the next I'm dead. So time is really irrelevant. I must continue training myself to let go of trying to hold onto life itself. I should just light my tail on fire and enjoy the ride across the sky, like a meteor searing its way through the atmosphere.

Stormy Night

2010-05-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

It's always a little concerning when the weatherman says that their radar indicates a tornado is headed for your relatively exact location and even waves his hand over the spot on the map where your house is situated. In the wee hours of this morning, the weatherman did just not....and then the weatherlady who took over 20 minutes later did the same thing. Just when you think you've dodged the first tornado bullet (feeling the house shudder under the winds as in all likelihood a funnel cloud passes right over your head), the next Doplar-indicated-tornado makes an abrupt right-hand turn and heads directly for you. Twice I found myself wondering if the house was about to be ripped apart around me. Should I have gone down into the basement? Should I have put my contacts back in? I mean, who wants to get tossed around by a tornado wearing glasses? Shoes too? And maybe change shirts...don't wanna be found the next morning lodged in the base of a tree wearing an old baggy shirt that's a little too big to be wearing in public. Maybe shave too....

But thankfully we escaped the danger. Consequently i didn't get nearly enough sleep last night and shall be taking it out on the world around me. You've all been warned.

So do my dear readers know that a car bomb was found in Times Square last night? Shouldn't this be breaking news on all the news outlets? Even the state-run and state-puppeted media should be all over this.

Do my dear readers know about the Senate's latest socialist plans to institute National ID cards? At this point I shouldn't even have to be pleading with you all to wake up and face this evil head on...it should be apparent. But then, maybe the spell is still too strong...

Do my dear readers know that Soundgarden got back together and is touring??? Yes, Soundgarden!

Do my dear readers know that if I ruled the world one of the first things to go would be all Progressive insurance commercials with that wretched Flo? I HATE that company purely because of their idiotic, mindless, hopeless, insultingly annoying commercials. Not to mention their name....

While we're at it - no more "male enhancement" or Viagra/Cialis commercials. (I think i've said that before) My dad watches a lot of golf....I swear every single commercial break during golf tournaments has at least one Viagra/Cialis commercial -- "because any time could turn into the right time."

Our society has become so soft over the last few generations. That's our problem. Think back to our grandparents and the generations before them. Those were tough, responsible, rugged individuals. Now we're all a bunch of whiny, selfish, weaklings. That's why we have the culture war that we have now. Those who still hold onto values of strength, personal accountability, doing it yourself, doing the right thing, pursuing one's own success and reaping the rewards - vs - Those who want someone else to do it, who only care about their own instant gratification, who avoid hard work at all costs, who want the government to take care of them, tv to raise their kids, for successful people to be punished and forced to share the fruits of their labor out of a twisted sense of "fairness."

Maybe it all starts with the kids. Generations ago kids were brought up to be obedient and work hard. Today they're pandered to and giving everything they could want and far more than they deserve. Entitlement. A nasty thing whether given directly by the government or through behavior from parent to child.

Well, until next time, dear readers...stay out of trouble, stay out of the path of tornadoes, and don't allow the government to control you.

Ah, Spring...

2010-04-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

The season of new hope, new life, new love, new possibilities. And pollen and scratchy throats and eyes and the heart of the football off-season when September seems so far away and the wretched NBA season drags on mercilessly with its insipid Sportscenter highlights. Good thing there's spring football, the NFL draft, and lots of amazing spring-time beers to get us through!

The following beers are current must-trys: (in no particular order)
1. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (a classic standby that I just happen to be really enjoying lately)
2. Sierra Nevada Glissade (a golden bock that goes down smooth but has some substance to it)
3. Sam Adam's Noble Pils (delightfully refreshing and dangerously easy to drink)
4. Harpoon Irish Red (one of the better seasonal Irish Red's I've had in a while)
5. Schlafly's Pale Ale (fast becoming one of my favorite breweries - everything they produce is pure gold!)

Meanwhile, the dismantling of the Republic continues....the despicable health care bill...next on the target list - the banking system and the value added tax. Yeah, more taxes on businesses will surely help the economy. Oh, but I keep forgetting - profits are WRONG and business people are by nature evil and should be ashamed of their wealth (I'm being sarcastic...others are not).

I haven't seen any movies since the holidays, so don't even ask for my thoughts on any recent releases. But just like in years past, the January-March period brings about this bizarre and insanity-inducing massive advertising blitz on every channel, every commercial break for weeks leading up to each release. You may recall last year certain movies' ads became stuck in my head because I would be pummeled with them nonstop. And they're always terrible movies. 12 Rounds with John Cena. Remember that gem? "I'm gonna hunt you down and I'm gonna kill you!" See! The stupid lines are STILL stuck in my head from seeing the commercial literally every 15 minutes each night for 2-3 weeks!

Okay, so a short blog every month is better than no blogs for multiple months, right? Take care until next time, dear readers. And don't let life lull you to sleep...you might miss it.

Happy Ides of March

2010-03-15T08:23:00.000-07:00

Ah, the Ides of March! The day Caesar should have called in sick. The weather is that dismal in-between where it's too warm for snow but too cold for spring. There's no football on tv. And the trees still have that dreary lifeless quality about them. At least there are excellent spring beers to evoke daydreams of warm, long evenings grilling on the porch. I highly recommend the Sam Adams Noble Pils and Sierra Nevada's Glissade. Even Caesar would have chosen them over a goblet of pungent Roman-era wine.

So I've been on hiatus it seems. School has been sucking the life from my bones. I'm not even sure what to write anymore. My poor mind is so inundated by such horrors as convective heat transfer coefficients and quadratic multi-variable interpolation. I really despise X-Y graphs and this whole sick notion of trying to define the world in terms of those graphs. The world cannot be understood in sine curves and points on a graph! We are poisoning the minds of our youth with this nonsense! X-Y graphs are a terrible way of conveying information. Just give me a few sentences to clearly sum up what is happening on the wretched graph. And don't even get me started on computer programming....

Okay - let's shake off the demons and talk about random things:

1. How come whenever I see, hear about, or think of the Nissan Pathfinder I recall the very first commercial when it originally came out in the late 80's that made it seem like some mysterious and amazing new creation? -- I remember part of it shows this guy walking on a tarmac and looking back at the camera (think they were walking towards a big cargo plane) and managing to get the words "the Pathfinder" out before it cut away to other secretive footage. Oh the strange things television burns into the memories of little kids. Hmm...let that sink in and then start weeping for today's children.

2. Did everyone enjoy the Winter Olympics as much as I did? At first I really didn't care about them, but shortly after the opening ceremonies I became hooked. It was so cool coming home each night and having hours of footage. I discovered that I enjoy the Winter Games a lot more than the Summer Games. Skiing, speed skating, snowboarding, etc. I can't even think of a summer olympic sport that sounds interesting right now....

3. Who listens to regular FM radio anymore? Apparently someone does. It's a shame. If I turn on the radio I feel like I'm experiencing the aural equivalent of someone trying to feed me mind-control drugs. Society is decaying at an ever-increasing rate. In another generation we'll be a culture of complete self-absorbed buffoons, programmed to like, think, say, and do whatever gets pumped into our minds.

4. I'm officially a fan of the show Community. I feel a connection to the main character, Jeff, as we're both older, non-traditional students with law backgrounds. However, the folks I go to school with are the opposite of Jeff's classmates. Where he has a colorful group of goofy personalities to bounce off of, I'm surrounded by engineers.....not that there's anything wrong with that!

5. Them Crooked Vultures are unbelievable! Their album is a bulldozing, soul-charging, rhinoceros ride that will leave any rock fan happy. I've been listening to it non-stop for 2 months now. At this point I could handle never getting another Foo Fighters album as long as the Vultures kept producing.

6. Last night I watched one of ESPN's 30 for 30 films. It was about Reggie Miller and the Knicks back in the mid-90s. Back when I actually liked the NBA. Funny how time can change things. Now I abhor the wretched NBA and it's never-ending schedule. I wonder if in 10 years I'll hate the NFL? That's a terrible and depressing thought. If I hate the NFL - what sport will I love then?

7. Did you know that mustard gas is often used as an intermediary in chemical processes? It's apparently a good source of chlorine molecules when you need to replace other molecules with them. Of course, companies are not allowed (nor would they want to) store mustard gas - so it gets made within the process itself and then used immediately. Let's say there's a certain ingredient that goes into your favorite snack food or beverage or toothpaste -- in the course of processing that ingredient it has to be altered on a molecular level so as to result in the desired ingredient and not something completely different. Maybe you need some hydrogen molecules removed, but due to complicated rules of chemical reactions, you can't simply remove those hydrogens without first taking away other hydrogens. So in comes our friend mustard gas (aka Phosgene Gas) with his big, beautiful chlorine molecules. The chlorines replace the first set of hydrogens. But we still need to get rid of those original hydrogens - what do we do? Well, thanks to the big chlorines we can now get rid of the remaining hydrogens through a standard procedure without losing the chlorines. Then we can go through another step and get rid of the chlorines (think of them as a place-holder) and put back on the first set of hydrogens that we didn't really want to lose in the first place. THIS is the stuff I should be learning about all the time at school! Not graphs and analyzing graphical data and calculus and all that filth!

Alright...it feels good to have blogged again. Unfortunately I cannot promise when you'll next hear from me. Hopefully it won't be a month and a half again. Enjoy the Ides of March and if your best friend invites you to a meeting near a bunch of Roman columns.....maybe just fake having a cold and stay home.

The Bitter Snow Blog

2010-01-29T10:25:00.000-08:00

They got me. They got me good. Those damn Anti-Snow people. And the weather people. All day yesterday and last night they virtually guaranteed 7-10" for me. Then this morning I awoke and found the weatherman casually (and mockingly) saying we will only get 3-6" as if they never ever said anything about 7-10"! I know I didn't dream it! Oh, they got me good!

Is there anyway for me to sue the weather people for malicious and intentional infliction of emotional and psychological distress for all the years of manipulating, lying, taunting, teasing, and jerking me around regarding snow?

Oh, right, a magical pocket of dry air just happened to appear over our region during the night. How convenient. But this is what always happens. Every single time. They build it up -- first a chance a winter weather, then maybe a few inches, then definitely a few inches, then possible double-digits, then definitely double-digits, then promises of 3 feet of snow and polar bears roaming the interstate! And then at the last minute.....a dusting.....

Those of us in the know are fully aware that such magical pockets of air are the work of the vile Anti-Snow Machine! Someday I shall destroy that menace! And then the good people of our region shall be free to enjoy the fruits of winter's glory!

Right now as I type this there is not a flake falling outside. It's all conveniently evaporating before it hits the ground. (Yes, as a future chemical engineer I should probably know the science behind that part, but instead they'd rather teach me nonsense like derivatives and error calculations...but that's another rant) Meanwhile - Nashville, TN has snow on the ground (and probably some Pants on the ground too....)! It always gets me irate when locations to the south of me have snow and I don't! Texas has gotten so much snow this year it is absolutely ridiculous! All I've gotten is a lousy inch! One rotten inch!

What is gained by preventing snowfall in our area? Is it merely a personal vendetta against me? An arbitrarily chosen experiment to manipulate and confound me or the populace in general? A massive public manipulation designed to control our reactions? Whatever the goal...the Anti-Snow Machine must be stopped...

So all you Anti-Snow people out there....laugh it up...enjoy it...but my vengeance shall be had. In this life or the next. The Anti-Snow Machine will be destroyed and winter shall blanket this land in its white comforting hand. And I shall laugh as your tears freeze on your faces. You will stand at your windows, crying out at the savagery of winter's wrath. Watch as I dance around a bonfire upon 2 feet of packed snow under a snow-filled sky with all the wolves and bears and others who welcome the glory of Mother Nature's colder season. Fear shall embrace your icy hearts and the gleam in our eyes will haunt your midnight thoughts. Where will your broken Anti-Snow Machine - your man-made false god - be then? We shall fashion trinkets from its pieces and give them to the children as a reminder of the power of Mother Nature and the unflinching hunger for control and power of man. All evils - greed, socialism, etc - shall be buried under the eternal snow. Laziness and idiocy shall be shamed out of the culture. The space program will be fully funded and allowed to flourish (**cough** obama's flatlining NASAs budget - not surprising considering his ideological contempt for the space program - also a huge insult and embarrassment for our country). We shall all learn to welcome the onslaught of snow each winter. All will set aside the mad self-destructive obsession of only caring about their working lives. We shall once again remember what truly matters in life -- those whom we love and the things which bring joy to our hearts - not mission statements and reports and resumes and glad-handing and sales calls. Feuding pets shall make peace with each other. Weather people shall make amends for their role in the manipulation in service of the Anti-Snow Machine. I shall run with the wolves across snowy tree-lined fields and ice covered lakes. I shall have my vengeance. I shall have my peace.

"You tell'em I'm coming - and snow's coming with me!"

2010-01-28T17:28:00.001-08:00

Yes, folks! SNOW! Let the Anti-Snow Contingent moan and wail and gnash their teeth! Snow is imminent! By this time tomorrow night there could be between 7-10 inches on the ground right here in my backyard...and frontyard.... It shall be a glorious day of snowfall all day tomorrow!

Earlier as the local news went through the weather report I actually found myself walking around the house trash-talking no one in particular. Perhaps my barbs were aimed at all those who work tirelessly to keep snow away from our region with their prized asset - the Anti-Snow Machine. And perhaps someone finally succeeded in sabotaging that dreadful device....(cue evil laughter)

This afternoon I ventured forth to Wal-Mart to watch the traditional panicked pillaging of the milk and bread sections. Why do people feel the need to stock up on perishables? If the power goes out, do you really want a bunch of milk and bread laying around? Of course, that didn't stop me from getting milk (I was out) and eggs (i'll need breakfast as i enjoy watching the snow cascade onto the once dreary landscape and quietly chuckle with laughter at the Anti-Snow people who are undoubtedly cursing at their windows). Wal-Mart was surprisingly sane and relatively calm despite being fairly crowded. The gas stations were another matter. I steered clear of those. People were in lines filling not just their vehicles, but gas cans as well. The lessons learned from last year's ice storm have not faded. Wait a minute....I think our generator is still broken....well....that's awfully useful.

Okay...I'll check back in with you all tomorrow...and to rub it in the faces of all the Anti-Snow people....

"Like winning 10 cents in the lottery"

2010-01-08T09:56:00.000-08:00

That's what gettting an inch of snow is like - according to Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes - the greatest comic strip of all time) and I've often quoted that line over the years. It applies once again to the results of our "winter storm" from the other night. For those not familiar with the reaction of Kentuckians to the possibility of snow, it goes something like this:

A day or two before the "winter weather" is predicted to arrive, people flock to grocery stores and clean out the bread, milk, and egg shelves. Mind you - this is the case for ALL degrees of winter storms - from a major 8-12 inch snow storm, to an ice storm, and even (as in this case) a 1-3 inch mild snowfall. News reporters will be stationed along main roads, parking lots, and gas stations giving live updates of the treacherous conditions. Citizens will be warned to stock up on supplies and stay off the roads (unless of course, you go to my school, in which case you will be expected to arrive on time despite the 12 inches of snow, 6 inches of ice, roaming packs of zombies, and 300 foot tall alien robots wreaking havoc). As the threat of the inch or two of snow looms closer, the grocery and hardware stores will be flooded with wild-eyed folks desperately picking through what's left of the foodstuffs, ice scrapers, and shovels. All talk will be of the impending doom and catastrophic calamity that will surely keep everyone trapped in their homes for weeks to come. This occurs even when the "storm" will surely be nothing more than an inch or two of snow...just as it was the other night. And yet - all schools closed, businesses - even doctor's offices! Normally I'm a major proponent of shutting down society for the sake of snow and having a Utopia-like celebration...but yesterday even I would have felt no need to call of classes and shut down the region. (And if I'm the one saying that, then that's really significant!)

You know what I long for? I would really like to hear the weather-people talk positively about snow for once. Like -- not get so upbeat and happy when the snow misses us or less falls than is expected. I want to hear things like "well, darn, it doesn't look like we're going to get all that much snow after all. But hey - we tried our best! There's still plenty of winter left, so we have more opportunities to get that solid 10 inch storm!"

Switching gears...I finally got around to picking up the Them Crooked Vultures album. For those who don't know - this is a side project featuring Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. And yes, it sounds just like a blend of all three. Really really REALLY cool stuff! One can almost literally pinpoint certain strains of each members' style running through the songs. The song "Mind Eraser No Chaser" is one that gets lodged in your head for the entire day - be careful not to burn yourself out. I was a little cautious about what to expect at first, but was pleasantly blown away upon giving it a full listen.

That's all for today....2 blogs in 3 days...I'm spoiling you guys....

Hello, 2010...just yesterday you seemed infinitely far away

2010-01-06T07:31:00.000-08:00

Hey 2010...you see your buddy 2009 over there? Yeah....he doesn't look so hot, does it? Nope. That's uh...that's gonna be you in a year if you don't watch your step. I'm not one to be trifled with. Do you know what the motto for last year was? No? It was "2009 - The Year of Vengeance." Yeah. Let that sink in. Haven't come up with a motto for you yet, though...

Oh, hello readers...didn't see you there....if you don't put a new year in its place right away it can become headstrong and disrespectful.

So I know I took a few weeks off from this thing. Seems like I took a couple weeks off of everything. And that's probably a good thing. I'm supposed to be working on a project for a professor before the new semester begins (in about 5 days), but ever since Christmas I've plateaued and not much has been accomplished. I figured I would make a lot of headway this week...however, I keep getting caught up running errands and wallowing in the mire of unmotivation. And, of course, there is the condition many of us know all too well - Procrastination. Why do we do it? I suppose it has to do with what one infamous professor always asks us - "are you a carrot or a stick person?" And unless I'm truly interested in something, I need a giant stick swinging down to crush my bones.

What hasn't helped this week is that I went online and looked at the course webpages for some of this semester's classes. (Cue ominous 1950s horror movie music) Looks like there's going to be lots of horrific computer programming.....I absolutely HATE that stuff....why on earth do they insist on making things harder than they need to be -- more complicated and confusing? Why not try to simplify things? OH NO! Let's make computers so that you need to know a dozen asinine, complex, and unnecessarily obtuse computer languages so that you can physically type in outrageously long, complicated, and tedious commands for each tiny little thing you want the computer to do! Here's a shocking idea -- how about making it so that you just tell the computer in plain English what you want it to do? Or maybe have voice-recognition software so that you simply TELL the computer what you want? "Hey, stupid computer -- I want you to use the Bernoulli equation to solve for stupid velocity with the following stupid variables! Can you stupid handle that??!?!?!"

What makes it worse is that the other fellows at school LOVE this stuff. They eat it up like Oreo cookies first thing in the morning (I could eat a box of those things upon waking). "Oh boy, FORTRAN and Visual Basic! Integrating codes between Excel and POLYMATH! This is fun and easy and helpful! C'mon Rick, you know how to do this! What's that? Telling the computer what you want? HAHAHA - that's just silly! Typing in inhumanly long and ridiculous codes is way better!"

Soooo.....in other news....we might be getting our first touch of snow for the season tonight and tomorrow. Only a couple of inches at best....but better than the nothing we've gotten thus far along with watching such places as New Mexico and Dallas get hit with winter weather while we alternate between 45 and torrential downpours for days on end OR 20 degrees and windy with blue skies. Of course, there's always the local weather station's Anti-Snow Machine to contend with. The Anti-Snow Machine (as you all know) creates a magical bubble of clear air, above-freezing temps, or otherwise removes the presence of snow from an area as large as the viewing area or as small as my personal location. So while all the area outside the magical bubble ceases the misery of their daily grind and runs out to frolic in a harmonious Utopia of snow and Christmas songs and talking snowmen and animated rabbits and smiles and hot chocolate and sledding (and not to mention everyone suddenly lives in a forest preserve like in Calvin and Hobbes...in fact, most of my idyllic visions of life are somehow related to that comic strip...) and peace on Earth and blah blah blah blah blah --- meanwhile, I'm standing at the window watching rain come down as the tv turns itself on and the weatherman or weatherwoman or weathermonster or weatherbear or weathercoffeemaker or weatherwoodchuck appears on the screen taunting me by name and using foul language to demean me as he/she/it has the camera follow them outside to roll around in the snow and then write "Eat it, Rick" in the snow itself. Of course, later on follows the pretentious pandering to the audience during the regular broadcast,"oh, gee, it was just so strange, we got lucky and the snow just dissipated over our area! We never could have predicted that! Who knew?"

Hmm....perhaps I should go eat something....like many people, I have a medical tendency to have low blood sugar if I don't eat regularly...many other people completely dismiss this and do not take it seriously when I say "I can't skip a meal." They think it's just me being dramatic or something. But no - you don't understand...I....can't....skip...a meal. From a health standpoint, I HAVE to keep myself fed regularly. No food = no glucose getting to the brain = inability to function like a normal human being. So when my class schedule comes out and two days a week we have a 6 hour block of nonstop classes from 11-5 with no lunch break and people laugh when I say that this is a serious problem - I can get a little annoyed. "Oh, just go eat some computer programming - that'll make you feel better - who needs food when you can stare at idiotic computer languages?"

Alright, well....looks like I started off the new year of blogging with a low-blood-sugar induced diatribe about various annoyances. I'm sure you all totally enjoyed that and don't want your money back. Oh...I mean...no....your credit cards are so NOT being charged automatically each time you view my page....that's just a ridiculous idea...like low blood sugar...or computer programming...or an Anti-Snow Machine...

Pre-Christmas Thoughts

2009-12-17T07:57:00.001-08:00

Why do "they" make it sound like getting alternate student loans for college is easy and simple? It's not. In fact, it seems much more likely that the whole thing is a scheme to get people to spend time and money going to school for 3 years and then make it impossible for them to get the necessary funds to complete their degree. Then they sit back and laugh. "They" should be rounded up and fed to pteradactyls. (I think I just misspelled pteradactyls...but I'm too lazy to go look up the correct spelling)

Is anyone else disturbed by these Gap commercials with the little girls dancing around doing a cheer about how their clothes are "officially retired?" There's just something...wrong about it. And the cheer gets stuck in my head. "I love my comfy sweater - I love my comfy sweater - how cute are these boots? how cute are these boots?" Consequently the ad has taught me the "talk to the moose" thing where you stick your hands against your head like moose-antlers (this is as opposed to simply saying "talk to the hand" and extending one's hand palm outwards.). Hey, student loan people - talk to the moose! ....and my fist....

Did anyone else hear about the octopus that carries coconut shells across the seafloor and uses them as shelter? It's the first documented instance of an invertebrate, such as an octopus, using tools. Pretty cool stuff....wish I had an octopus....I bet he could get a student loan....(grumble grumble grumble)....

Did they really come out with more stupid reality singing shows recently? I see society's IQ continues to drop at an alarming rate. Maybe an evil one-world government is just what some of this world needs. Let the rest of us go colonize Mars first, though. And we're taking the octopi with us! (That's plural for octopus)

I heard we have a chance for a tiny amount of snow on Saturday. Less than an inch. You know what this means? All the grocery stores will be cleaned out of milk and bread in the next 48 hours. All generators in the tri-state area will be sold out. Salt trucks will be running non-stop beginning at noon today. Gas lines. Gas line brawls. Shoving matches in church parking lots. 3 weeks without power. College football mascots flying F-14s and doing barrel-rolls while Van Halen blasts from gigantic hidden speakers which can somehow be heard but not seen by everyone within a 100 mile radius. ........I know I can't wait!

I just realized this morning that we don't have a Christmas tree up in the house. Wow. Just...wow. I'd also like to take this moment to metaphorically get in everyone's face and say that they are CHRISTMAS TREES not "Holiday trees." Political correctness is a disease. It's way worse than swine flu. But not as profitable as global warming....(wink)

How come it's so much easier for me to write blogs on days when I really need to be studying, writing papers, or working on important Christmas break projects for professors?

Abe Lincoln or Layne Staley?

2009-12-08T06:57:00.001-08:00

If you had the power to not only go back in time, but to ensure that certain people would not be able to die untimely (early) deaths - and you had to choose between someone like an Abe Lincoln or JFK and a Layne Staley/Kurt Cobain/John Lennon type -- who would you choose?

Between Lincoln and Staley - I'm going with Staley. Lincoln had pretty much peaked. What more was he going to do with his life? Staley, on the other hand, if he were unable to die an untimely deaht - no overdosing, no suicide, no fatal grizzly bear attacks - he would have several more decades of creating music. That's infinitely more beneficial to the world than an ex-president going around the speaking circuit and campaigning for other politicians.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just the miserably dreary 40 degrees, rain, and wind (perfect Alice In Chains weather) while the rest of the country experiences winter wonderlands with peace and harmony and no work or school and hot chocolate for everyone and cats and dogs riding sleds together as Christmas songs rain down from the heavens and everyone is happy and smiling and life is one big Christmas commercial as families lob snowballs at each other and laugh amongst the pine trees with more precious snow fluttering down around them in a very picturesque and timeless scene and all is good....all is good......

Spartans! Prepare for Glory!.....and Final Exams!

2009-12-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

I'm writing to you from the threshold of Finals Week. All the tidal-wave-esque papers, projects, presentations, and assignments have been completed, vanquished, suffered through, and annihilated. Just a few more exams and then a few weeks of decompressing....

So the Bears managed to win today. And Cutler didn't throw any interceptions! I'm not on the Cutler-Hating bandwagon - in fact, I've started my own bandwagon as a Bears fan -- the Our-Offensive-Line-and-Coaching-Staff-Are-Pretty-Darn-Crappy bandwagon. Feel free to jump aboard - we have honey roasted peanuts (from Publix - not Planters brand...is there anything Publix can't produce that doesn't turn out amazing? Oh, that's right...most of you have never heard of Publix...well, it's the greatest grocery store chain that I know of...) 5-7....that's just the kind of record that leaves a team out of the playoffs but also out of the higher picks in the draft. Oh, but wait...we traded away our draft picks for Cutler...soooooo....

Tonight is the college football BCS Bowl selection. Where will my Canes end up? There's a chance they could be in the Music City Bowl playing against UK. More likely they'll be playing somewhere in central Florida. Speaking of Florida....it was so utterly satisfying to see the Gators lose last night. But I discovered that I do not hate Tim Tebow....just the hype he gets. In fact, I felt a little bad for Tebow...he seemed genuinely upset at the end. As for Urban Meyer...he can go play in traffic.

Have I vented about how this season of The Office has been very disappointing? What's that? "Every single day" you say? Really? I didn't think I brought it up THAT much. Well, not to ram a point into the rock-hard and wind-swept ground, but it HAS been quite disappointing. I want more hilarity and random goofiness! I want Dwight setting the office on fire! I want Michael kidnapping pizza delivery guys! I want grizzly bears with anti-aircraft guns! I want furniture being kicked around! I want Cheez-its!

hmmm...I just remembered a time when I was going to try to make this blog more serious and thoughtful. Or at least in between the random nonsense and musings, make some deep comments on life that my readers could perhaps find inspiring, poignant, or otherwise appreciate. But no...instead, I just go on about football and complain about The Office. (which, by the way, is the funniest show on tv...and Dwight Schrute is now my favorite tv character of all-time)

Thanksgiving went by in a blur. Quite literally. I was working on my kidney project the whole time. On Thanksgiving day I greeted family as they arrived by asking them if they happened to know the flow rate of solutes out of the proximal tubule. I took a 4 hour break to socialize and eat dinner...and then was back at it. I miss the years when we had tons of extended family in for the holiday. Extra tables had to be brought in and pushed together. 2 or 3 turkeys had to be cooked. I had to be picked up from the airport, as in most of my memories of such times - I was in college (the first time). Board games were played. Movies were watched. Guitars appeared and songs were played and sung. Life seemed like an endless ocean spread out before me, filled with countless opportunities and chances to make memories - to live out all the dreams I had. That sense of urgency had not yet taken hold...that full, soul-shaking realization that an end not only existed - but was just within sight on the horizon. It was much easier to be tripped up by, as well as take for granted, the little things. Now all hands are on deck....life spins past ever faster and faster (an engineer might say it moves exponentially). Soon Christmas will be upon us...and then a new year....I still remember a friend and I always saying that whenever 2010 rolled around it would mean that we were officially old. That and whenever Sean Connery passes away. (May the one true Bond live a thousand more years!)

So folks, as we progress through this holiday season - if you catch yourself in a lull or moment of doubt...remember that life moves too fast to try and catch or keep restrained, you just have to appreciate the little moments that you have the opportunity to savor. Put a little evil grin on that face and create a memory - something you CAN hold onto. Take it all in - let it roll around your soul - and then do whatever you can to make that moment stand out and be special for those around you. Smiles. It's always better to have a memory full of smiles and laughter than one of boredom, tragedy, and regret. If we're all going to end up going over the waterfall no matter what - then we might as well enjoy the ride while we can.

Just Nodding My Head to Prove I'm Alive

2009-11-21T08:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, I've been neglecting this blog for a while now. The reasons? First -- school. There just hasn't been time for much else outside of engineering related stuff. Second -- I think I fell into that natural tendency of mine to over-think what I was writing about and got to a point where I was hearing the criticisms of others before even writing anything. So, here's a nice, easy step back into entertaining all 3 of you who read these things....

Thanksgiving is fast approaching...my favorite holiday. Some folks prefer ham over turkey, which to me is simply outrageous. Even outside of a holiday meal - a full-sized turkey vs a full baked ham -- the turkey always wins in my book. And there's no such thing as too much turkey. It's meant to be consumed for a week after the actual holiday in sandwiches, reheated plates of leftovers, and even turkey-a-la-king. In fact, in this spirit of complete government control of all aspects of our lives and mandating every minute detail -- why don't they just make it a rule that sufficient turkey must be prepared such that all immediate family members and hangers-on can indulge in turkey eating until at least the end of the weekend? Turkey Czars? Why not! We have czars for everything else....

College football is nearing the end of its regular season and the NFL only has a couple more months. Meanwhile the dreadful NBA is already back in action. Just like John Mayer (though, admittedly not as awful and detrimental to society) the NBA should be abolished....or at least forced to only last for the few paltry months that the football season is limited to. This 9 months out of the year stuff is a crime against humanity!

Swine flue, swine flu, swine flu....did you get your shot? Not me. I got a regular flu shot as I've had them in recent years with no side effects. But I do not trust the hysteria or the rushed production of the swine flu vaccination. Rule of thumb -- never trust anything that has been politicized or overly hyped by the media. It's also a rule of thumb in chemical engineering to have the velocity of water through a pipe somewhere between 4 and 10 feet/second. (or is it 4 and 7......crap....)

I haven't been to the movies since August, so I have no reviews. in fact, other than a trip to Garden of the Gods with the family a few weeks ago and the school-trip to Nashville for our national conference, I haven't left the house at all on the weekends!

The Office....in the last few months it has become my official favorite show on tv. The wedding episode was fantastic, but all of the new episodes since (with the exception of this past week's) have been quite disappointing. And other Office fans that i know seem to feel the same way. Hopefully this most recent episode is a sign that they are getting their groove back. Dwight being Dwight, Jim playing pranks, Michael doing awkward and ridiculously stupid things...that's the magical formula that made the show so great. Michael at the shareholder's meeting was superb! "45 day plan....45 points....45 points in 45 days..."

Okay, I'm hitting the wall and there's much engineering stuff to be done today. If I don't write again before Thanksgiving - have a good one and send me your leftovers.

Awards, Hype, Corporations, and Interstellar Zoos

2009-10-09T08:57:00.001-07:00

Because it was suggested, I'm going to try to squeeze out a short blog this morning.

So our supreme leader has been given the Nobel Peace Prize? This is another farce in this train-wreck of a presidency -- but considering some of the past winners (and the state of society in general), I probably shouldn't be surprised at all. From my understanding the nominations were due by February 1st....show he managed to perform such wondrous works of peace-making prior to that date.

I really don't think there are many people in this world today deserving of a Peace award. Certainly not any political leaders. In fact, I think politicians should be excluded from the award completely. Maybe if there are still some Mother Theresas out there -- give it to them.

I'm ready for the aliens to come and "wipe this place clean" (to quote Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails song "The Warning"), just as long as they accept my volunteering to be in the human exhibit of the Interstellar Zoo. And I humbly request either Kate Beckinsale or Adriana Lima to share my cage with.

Hey - did anybody else catch that stuff about school-kids being made to sing pro-obama songs recently? Obviously, you wouldn't have heard about it on in the mainstream media. It was pretty sickening stuff.

Lots of new music came out last month: Muse's "The Resistance" (amazing album -- and lyrically works as a soundtrack for those of us opposed to socialism and the movement to a one-world government), Pearl Jam's "Backspacer" (in case you missed it I was quite upset that they made an exclusive deal with Target and thus it was not available in a physical form here in our area where there are no Targets....in fact, let's get off track a little...Pearl Jam, being the liberals that they are, have always been very anti-corporation and about wanting the fans to hear their music without having to pay a lot of money. They always have done a good job of keeping concert ticket prices reasonable. But in this case, they completely and epically failed. Apparently all corporations are evil....except Target. But in so limiting the distribution of their album, people like me did not have access to it. True, it was available on ITunes, but some of us prefer having a tangible CD in our hands -- plus the CD has a higher sound quality. So, the band ended up limiting access to the music. Plus we all had to pay MORE than normal to get it. Best Buy is typically the cheapest place to get new CDs. Target is always more expensive. And if you do not have a Target within driving distance, you would have to either order from one online (thus incurring shipping costs) or from Pearl Jam's own website (at a higher price and again with shipping costs...it would cost about $20 actually). I would hope that after all this they would realize that not all corporations are evil and that most actually provide a service to people. By being gigantic distributors of products, these corporations make goods available to the masses at affordable prices. Does the corporate world itself suck? Yes, of course. Do I long to see mission statements, stuffy boardroom meetings, policies, procedures, HR departments, resumes, phoney handshakes, and the other rigid formalities of that world fall not just by the wayside but completely off the map and into the abyss? DEFINITELY YES PLEASE LORD MAKE IT SO!!!! But despite the detestability of the corporate world, I'm glad to have Wal-Marts and Best Buys around so I can buy the things I want/need and not have to spend more than I think I should have to.

Well, that was fun. Back to engineering stuff for me....

Musing Upon 19

2009-09-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

Stephen King was right. It's all about 19. A decade ago I was 19 and while life was still a vast, seemingly limitless expanse before my third eye, I could already sense its precipitous and fleeting nature. An early hint of that feeling which sunk in somewhere in the mid-twenties - when life suddenly felt very short and swooping past at an alarming rate. As if one had just been shoved off a cliff and realized the surroundings were moving faster and faster and the ground loomed larger and closer.

19 is like noon. It becomes the reference point of our lives. In the morning we always look towards noon. In the afternoon we look back at it. It's the turning point. And 19 (or somewhere thereabouts) is when things start to shift. Those deviously intangible things that only make clear sense in our minds. Where if we attempted to describe it to another human being we would stumble awkwardly over the words and then give up and go watch football. At 19 you can look up at those lovely eastern clouds at sunset (the ones that soar like mountains, but are painted in glorious blues and purples with white peaks illuminated by the sun as it fondly waves goodbye for the night) and imagine seeing whatever dream those clouds inspire actually come true. But in later years, that confidence fades, the swirling pull of time floods those dreams with doubts and all we can do is imagine another reality where such dreams are possible.

19 is a time when everything is incredibly slow, though we do not realize at the time. The 19 reality is vivid and sharp, as if Life itself wants to impress upon you the importance of that era. Like how a ball thrown into the air pauses for a moment at its highest point. Timelessness.

On a September evening in my 29th year I went running beneath a magnificent sky which held a modest assortment of those soaring, mountainous clouds I so love. On my Iphone (a device my 19 year old self would have marveled at) I listened to a song I first heard almost exactly a decade before. It had the same feeling as back then, though perhaps with some added layers from the years. As often happens I felt as if I could literally still be 19 - as if I could run right through a hole in reality and find myself 10 years in the past and it would seem perfectly fitting. And it hit me that a decade from now I'll likely still feel the same way. As if I've only been on this planet a matter of hours and that there is no possible way I have experienced all those years. And that nauseous falling feeling will begin to claw at me. That this cannot be reality, life cannot be this short, I'm only 19! There's still an ocean of time and possibilities and opportunities and experiences and lives to live spread out before me!

But only the 19 year old sees that ocean. The later versions instead see the edge of the abyss, like those old paintings when people believed the earth was flat and that ships would just sail off into nothingness. Or instead maybe there's a massive wall of water that with each passing day or year looms closer and closer. The inevitable in all its glory.

And so the 29 year old renews his vows that he must fill his remaining years with meaning, with accomplishments, with moments that he wishes would drag out a little slower - like a ball at its highest point.

September Pause

2009-09-18T16:46:00.001-07:00

Has it really been nearly 3 weeks since I last wrote something on here? Things have been busy. Free time - such as time to spend typing random gibberish on a blog that resides on a dusty, seldom-traveled side road of the internet - has become a scarce commodity.

But it's Friday evening....I just got over being sick for the last two weeks...I've been going nonstop with schoolwork and I'm just a little rundown and out of gas. I took a break last night for the Canes victory over Georgia Tech...but I still feel the need for more idle time. How about those Canes? Are we finally back? Man, I hope so....it's been a long, miserable few years of watching my beloved Canes' dynasty crumble and then be rebuilt. We Canes fans have suffered greatly - had our hearts broken (by other teams, our own team, and a certain coach who shall not be named) - had to endure the freakin' Florida Gators rise to dominance. And now...maybe...just maybe...we're back.

How about those Bears??? meh....not so much. Urlacher breaks his wrist and is done for the year. Cutler and the offense have a meltdown against the Packers. Ugh.......

I passed up drafting Adrian Peterson in my fantasy league's draft. (So did a couple of other people) I went with the Bears' Matt Forte instead - because he gets lot of receptions and receiving yards. Peterson typically does not. In fantasy football -- that matters! But after week 1 I am filled with regret. Especially when I see those cool Nike commercials where Adrian Peterson is running all over a dark, snowy field, tossing opponents out of the way as ominous music plays and finally at the end he sits down at his locker and appears to be some sort of alien or creature or secret army project. Awesome commercial....but nevertheless it shrouds my soul in the mists of Fantasy Draft Regret. It is a common and unfortunate affliction.

The latest Muse album (The Resistance) came out this week. It is quite frankly, unreal. Lyrically it's like protest music for those who see the insidious socialistic workings going on in our world today. A pre-emptive call to rise against the movements to a one-world-government, a fascist/socialist America, etc. If you're angry at the socialists - or just don't like any of the people in power (worldwide) and if you don't like the way our modern society tries to program us -- then you will find solace and a kindred spirit in this album. Musically they continue to evolve. One can hear a connection to their last album (Blackholes and Revelations), as well as David Bowie and Queen influences. A wide swathe of genres are represented -- from synthesizer-heavy foot-stompers to rhythmic hip-hop/pop vibes and the considerable orchestral arrangements. It feels like a concept album...like something from a by-gone era when bands made music because it was art and it came from inside them -- not just to put out hit singles and cash-in. I can't stop listening to it and I fear i will burn myself out on it soon.....like a moth to a flame....or a man to a beautiful girl....or Chaz to a beer.

A Little Something With Your Coffee

2009-08-31T05:17:00.001-07:00

It's a Monday morning. And the final day of another month of all our lives that is slipping away into oblivion and the beyond. Time and life (not the magazines) - always in their relentless march, leaving us grasping at the air and begging for yesteryear.

I recently had some advice for a college freshman who had just moved into his dorm: Leave your door open at all hours and say hi to every single person who walks by. Not creepy hi. Not lame hi. Not sarcastic, I'm-a-skateboard-punk-who-says-hi-as-a-way-of-being-funny-to-my-skateboard-punk-friends hi. Just a nice, friendly smile and a "hey, what's up?" Don't be like me - wasting your freshman year living in a cave, seeing only unfriendly faces whenever you cross path with others when in all likelihood, they're just putting up a tough front like you. And this got me to wondering what I'm doing wrong now. What advice would my future self be screaming at me if he could go back in time (but naturally be unable to be heard by me or even seen...like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol)? Is he standing here right now, pleading with me, warning me, frantically trying to prevent the sands from slipping through the hourglass?

I find that the Foo Fighters (or maybe simply Dave Grohl's voice) always makes me feel 19 or 20. Whereas Thom Yorke's voice (Radiohead) feels more mid-20s. And Daniel Johns (Silverchair) seems to fit my current age, place, time, spot in the sun. (What any of that means to you, dear readers, I have no idea...I'm simply musing openly this morning...)

This weekend I was lucky enough to catch "Inglorious Basterds." Superb film. Much better than the current elitist flavor-of-the-year "District 9." IB didn't follow any predictable plot-line and at no point could I discern where the moving was going - meaning, no tired sigh and me thinking to myself "O-kay...I see what's going to happen now....get on with it..." (a very refreshing and pleasing aspect). The style was inescapably Tarantino-esque, but it also did not feel like a rehashing of his older works.

The poor souls who encounter me on a daily basis will now be burdened by an onslaught of Inglorious Basterds lines, repeated ad nauseum, for at least the coming weeks.

That's all I have this morning, folks. Keep fighting the good fight - trying to keep those hourglass sands at bay.

Random Saturday Thoughts

2009-08-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

Random Saturday Morning Thoughts:

1. As I mentioned in today's FB status - I have no problem with the CIA using mock executions to gain information from terrorists. In fact, it's something I would expect and be upset if they DIDN'T use. Have we seriously gotten to the point where we won't let the people who are trying to stop the monsters (i.e. terrorists who spend every waking moment plotting to annihilate men, women, and children) to PRETEND to execute someone so as to intimidate or frighten these soulless gents into giving up information? What's next? Will the ACLU demand that Emeril cook all their meals personally? Front row seats to the Jonas Brothers? How about we're only allowed to ask them about potential plots against Americans in writing - once a month - and it has to be written on construction paper, in crayons, and must be phrased in a friendly and casual manner so as not to upset the poor dears? Meanwhile it's totally cool for the terrorists to bomb, shoot, disembowel, and re-enact every torture scene from the Saw movies on their victims. Madness!

2. The weather these past two months has been just amazing. (Yes, I just used the word "amazing" which happens to be the catchphrase of 18-20 year old girls when describing just about anything. Oddly enough, it was also used in the same manner, with the same inflection, and same pause between the "a" and "mazing" back when I was just a lad. Some things DO never change....) It's August and it is 80 degrees outside. We haven't had our usual droughts and I don't think we've had a single day in the triple digits all summer long. Wonderful weather! Phenomenal! A-mazing!

3. Why do I seem to have more dreams (or at least remember them far better) when I sleep on two pillows instead of just one?

4. I definitely should've seen "The Goods" last weekend instead of "District 9." My brother went and saw the former without me this week, so now I probably won't get to see it until it comes out on DVD. Actually, no. More like I won't get to see it until a few years from now when I'm at a friend's house and they say "you've never seen The Goods?!?!?! How did you not see it?!?! It's hilarious!" And then they'll put the DVD on, but 20 minutes in a pipe will burst in the kitchen or a wife will start having an allergic reaction, or a child will be throwing a temper tantrum, or a dog will lap up a few beers and get behind the wheel of the family SUV - and the movie will be stopped and I'll go home and it'll be another year or two before I catch the rest of it on TBS. What would I do without TBS?

5. Please. Please. PLEASE die reality tv! DIE! Reality tv is destroying what's left of our society's cognitive skills. The youth are already toast. It just needs to be abolished. Along with MTV. In fact, anyone associated with MTV or its programming should be rounded up and exiled to Siberia.

6. When one is making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, it is imperative that one use the "old fashioned" (full size) oats rather than the processed (and de-tastified) "quick 1-minute" oats.

7. Why do old men in gym locker-rooms insist on sitting completely naked and chatting with each other in front of other people's lockers? How is this a fun or enjoyable activity? Why not get dressed, leave the gym, and go chat over coffee or a sandwich somewhere? Aren't coffee and sandwiches and fully-clothed-conversations better than nude ones in food-less, moderately smelly locations where other men of varying ages and body tones are changing clothes?

8. I think cats see things that humans cannot.

9. Why do human beings spend 90% of their lives performing tasks they a) don't like, b) hate, c) find miserable, d) don't care about, or e) all of the above rather than spending the majority of their short time on earth doing things they actually enjoy and being around those they care about? It's insane! We get jobs and careers because we HAVE to, and then we're forced to spend most of our time toiling at them. I don't want to meet the man who would rather sit in a cubicle writing reports and giving presentations and checking regulations and protocols rather than be at home with his family or climbing a mountain or throwing a football with friends while grilling bratwursts. There's a small percentage of people out there who do not have to fall into this trap -- they truly love what they do or what they do is their dream. I do not want to fall into the trap, I want to be one of the lucky few. But the trap is like a gaping maw, a blackhole with a cackling laugh and giant neon signs around it like mouth tentacles on some nightmarish alien face that read "MISERY AHEAD," "THEY OWN YOU," "HAPPINESS IS NOT ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT," "IT'S UNFULFILLMENT FOR YOU, PAL." NO, no no! I do not want my life to be wasted like that! I only get one life - one shot! This isn't a game or a dream or a movie - this is real! REAL! ONE shot! No do-overs, no trying-it-again-next-time-around. THIS IS NOT A DREAM! THIS IS YOUR LIFE! THIS IS NOT A MOVIE! YOU ARE REAL! YES YOU! THE ONE READING THIS AND SUBCONSCIOUSLY GOING THROUGH LIFE LIKE IT'S ONE BIG MOVIE THAT YOU'RE WATCHING! IT'S NOT A MOVIE! IT'S REAL! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! LOOK AT YOUR HANDS RIGHT NOW! TELL YOURSELF -- "THOSE ARE MY HANDS! I AM REAL! THIS IS REALLY REAL RIGHT F'N NOW! THIS IS ALL HAPPENING!" Come off of the autopilot that we all leave on as we race through our daily lives. It gets harder to do the older you get. When I was a child I would frequently pause, look at my hands, tell myself something like I just told you to say, and it would literally (totally serious) hit me that I was real and alive and it would fill me with this mixture of dawning and panic and understanding. It was scary but also life-affirming. It was always literally like waking up from a sleep. But it would only last a few moments and I could feel my body and mind slipping back under.....now that I'm older it's harder to achieve these moments....but when they come they are still rather shocking to the system. I'm sure right now your autopilot is dismissing all this that I'm saying - maybe you're laughing to yourself - "oh, that Rick...he's so goofy, where does he come up with this stuff?" But I'm honestly telling you that if you can turn that autopilot off and "awake" for just a few moments, it will leave you feeling like the sky was just removed from the earth and you heard God clearing his throat up there.

Let the constant studying begin

2009-08-16T05:38:00.000-07:00

The Fall semester begins tomorrow (for some of us, at least). Some of my big, menacing engineering textbooks arrived this weekend. I've been reading through them a bit and have to say that they are at least more interesting than anything we covered last year. But that's not saying much. That train of thought has led me to the notion of rating my interest in different potential course subjects. On a scale of 1-5, with 1 being complete disinterest, misery, and ranting about the subject's pointlessness and 5 being a subject that does not require effort to pay attention nor feel like "school" or "work." Everybody got that? Okay, here goes:

Last year's subjects:
Differential Equations (a.k.a. Calculus IV): 0 (I would give it a negative rating, but I'm afraid someone would misinterpret the minus sign and think I was just giving it a good grade. The asinine textbook attempted to teach a "math" subject with lots and lots of words! As much as I love the written word, I do NOT learn math through vague paragraphs explaining equally vague concepts about mathematical nonsense.)

Physics II: 1 (Circuits, charges, resistors? Ugh, I don't care. But at least there were fewer lousy X-Y graphs and Calculus equations mixed in than there were in Physics I)

Thermodynamics: 1.5 (Horrifically vague and conceptual -- not just to me, but to all engineering students. Page after page of outlandish equations. And to make matters worse our textbook was written for Hell's Engineering College, where students are tortured for eternity with books that are mostly incoherent and indecipherable.)

Materials Science: 0.5 (The only edge is had over DE was that it was not entirely about insipid Calculus functions and actually covered real-life concepts. Unfortunately, the class came after 3 other back-to-back-to-back classes, leaped around from concept to concept, covered a thousand different annoying and similar equations, and was taught in such a manner as to make it seem like a good way to get information out of captured terrorists. Even though I was utterly disinterested in DE, by the end I didn't mind going to that class -- but Materials was misery. Pure misery.)

Potential Classes, Future Classes, Other Past Classes, Etc:
College Football 101: 5
Advanced Beer Brewing: 5
Victoria's Secret Supermodels Field Study: 5
Animal Behavior: 5
The Works of Joseph Heller, Douglas Adams, and Mark Twain: 5
Straight Forward How-To Make, Fix, Heal, and Perform Everything From Penicillin to Minor Surgery: 5
Comedic Improv: 5
Fantasy Sports Science: 5
Independent Study - Novel Writing: 5
World War II History (without perspective of the "blame America" crowd, i.e. American not presented as a negative entity): 5
Film-making: 4.5
Wine-tasting and Cheese-eating: 4.5
Tomato Farming: 4.5
Straight Forward Specific Explanation of how Medications React With the Human Body (no x-y graphs or equations allowed): 4
Astronomy: 4
Wildlife Biology: 4 (potential for 5)
Firearm Instruction and Safety: 4
Script-writing: 4
Pyschology: 4
Theories of Stephen Hawking: 3.5
Space Exploration: 3.5 (potential for 4 or 4.5 depending on professor and presentation of material)
UFOs and Other Unexplained Phenomenon: 3.5 (loses points because it has the potential to get really wacky and baseless)
Study of Military Aircraft and Seagoing Vessels Throughout History: 3.5
Military Tactics: 3
Rollercoaster Design: 3
Coffee - From the Field to Your Cup: 3
Surviving in the Wild/Surviving Collapse of Civilization: 3
Meteorology: 3
Botany: 2.5
Infectious Diseases: 2.5
Anatomy: 2.5
History of the Olympic Games: 2
Skyscraper Engineering: 2
Aeronautical Engineering: 2
Biology: 2
Property Law: 2
Criminal Law: 2
Economics: 1
Cell Biology: 1
Statistics: 1
Physics: 1
How-To Use Your Graphing TI Calculator: 1
Computer Programming: 0
Calculus: 0
Study of X-Y Graphs: 0
Talking on the Phone With Credit Card Companies: 0
Dealing with Academic and Federal Bureaucracy: 0
Self-Dentistry: 0

Saturday Night Special

2009-08-08T16:20:00.001-07:00

Tonight I bring you:
Random Made Up Lines From Novels That Do Not Exist

1. Life is a funny thing. Not so much funny in an amusing or even ironic way, but more like a sadistic and master-pulling-the-rug-out-from-under-the-pupil manner. One minute you're a vibrant, invincible lad sailing heedlessly through your youthful years. A vast and endless sea of decades and opportunities spread out before you. And then a few teetering moments later, you drag yourself out of a garbage bin and begin the teeth-clenching process of removing used razor blades, defunct syringes, and diverse species of broken glass from your suddenly not-so-Teen-Beat skin.

2. Carpel Tunnel Syndrome Man was back to his old tricks. He had fumbled his way into the entryway, past the morose plant of unknown origin and type which just insisted on lurking there by the door in its depressing little way, and now he had staggered near the pretty young coeds' apartment. The fruitful sounds that pretty young coeds make (when they're not being accosted by lecherous middle-aged men with apparently terminal carpel tunnel) drifted through the cheaply constructed walls and down both directions of the hall.

3. Dandelions. Dandelions upon dandelions. Dandelions begetting entire oceans of dandelion offspring. "Have you ever seen so many dandelions?" asked Shaw. "No. No I have not." Duncan replied. Other than the sun and the timid blue horizon, there were only dandelions to behold. A million dandelion factories operating at 110% capacity over countless day shifts and second shifts and midnight shifts and even super secret double atomic shifts could not produce this many dandelions in a reasonable or even barely sane timespan. Sure, one might point out that dandelion factories would likely have unions, and thus with the presence of such a progress and profit destroying mechanism, the inability to produce the envisioned number of dandelions is not all that surprising. But these theoretical dandelion factories would be union free -- and even then, would not be able to feasibly fill Shaw and Duncan's field of view with the appropriate number of dandelions.

4. "I remember that at some point I had the capacity to give a crap...but that time has passed."

5. The kindly old man seemed harmless enough. He had that grandfatherly air of warmth and gentleness. His attempt at a friendly smile appeared genuine. His thin gold collared shirt with the accidentally stylish short sleeves said that he was still vital enough to not be cold even in mid-summer. His cane said his hips and knees were on the fritz. And his wisps of unkempt gray hair said "at this point, do you think I really give a shit?"

6. "Get outta the car!" The gaping up-close view of a gun barrel filled Dave's vision such that he could no longer really see the car. If he could not see the car, then how could he obey the violently barked command being uttered repeatedly in his direction? "Get outta the car right now or you're dead!" Dave fumbled in the general area of the door handle. The inside rim of the barrel actually had a small silver ring. As Dave's addled brain mused over the craftsmanship of the gun barrel, his ears pulled themselves away from the tvs at their stations and resumed hearing things other than the continued threat of annihilation from the still un-comprehended figure behind the gun. Colleen. Ah yes, her. Her and her shrieking. So overpowering that his ears had simply opted to place those calls on ignore due to the threat of bodily harm coming from the opposite direction.

7. Brisbane stood at the podium, preparing to address the assembled students. Professor Thorndike and Vice-Dean of Student Concerns Westwood sat behind and to his left at a folding table pilfered from the Irish Students Association meeting that happened to be convening at the same time. Next door in the Cutler Building, the officers of the Irish Students Association sat on the floor, gazing up at their gathered brethren in various states of annoyance and confusion. The faculty goons who had taken their table had not even bothered to remove the ISA banner that had been hanging across its front. Nor had they even considered leaving behind the freshly printed information packets and sign-up information sheets that had come at significant out-of-pocket cost to the ISA. And not surprisingly, the faculty goons had also walked off with the ISA's priceless antique 12th century goat-skin map of Ireland which had been placed lovingly in the center of the table for all the members, both old and new, to enjoy. Professor O'Neil had been powerless to stop the faculty goons. As he had watched from the back of the room a thought occurred to him. Over an extended period of time, it was not inconceivable that an accumulation of slights such as this could very well lead to intense feelings of outrage and cultural angst in a specific group of people. He could almost see his beloved students field-stripping fully automatic assault rifles and speaking in the harsh clipped tones of the violently oppressed.

8. Andy's English voice strained and inched into a higher octave over the roar of the engines. "Are you sure you should be driving, Willy?" Willy turned away from the rapidly approaching and passing landscape ahead of the jet and gave Andy a disdainful look of supreme magnitude. "You don't drive a jet, you dumbass! You fly'em!" Andy wilted under Willy's continued Arkansas-ian aggression, as well as his intense whiskey-tinged breath.

America is starting to awake

2009-08-06T05:41:00.001-07:00

Good morning, America. While you were asleep all these months, socialists made a power-grab. Get that coffee down and continue voicing your disgust with this health care nightmare plan they have. You don't want a government agency deciding which medical treatments you can have? Me neither. You don't like the idea of such a government body letting the sick and elderly die because it costs too much to treat them? You think that sounds a bit too much like legalized genocide? Yeah, me too. You think it's good that you can decide if and when you go to the doctor and generally get an appointment fairly soon? Yes, that is pretty nice. You mean you don't want to have to wait months or years and have the doctor you visit determined by the government? And you think it's wrong for the government to be able to access your bank account? What does that even have to do with health care? Why would that even be in the health care bill? And how come they feel this need to rush an extremely drastic and apparently UNREAD piece of legislation that affects every single aspect of our lives down our throats? Perhaps because America is not as stupid as they thought. (Or as we thought.) As outraged Americans tell members of Congress how they feel about their "plans," these "public servants" look down at us, say that we're all fakes, plants, "manufactured." The sad thing is, these career politicians with their superior attitudes will likely continue to ignore us, dismiss us, and see us as nothing more than gnats. Finally - FINALLY - other Americans other than myself seem to be awakening to the fake way that most politicians speak! That lawyer-esque, salesman, wishy-washy, dance-around-the-truth-by-saying-nothing-at-all disgusting soulless politician-speak! Keep the coffee coming, America. Keep fighting.

(a side note:)
For my liberal friends who may be thinking of answering the White House's call and reporting me to them for "spreading disinformation" regarding health care.....I ask how you would have felt had the Bush administration asked Americans to report on other Americans who were "spreading disinformation" about the Iraq War? I have heard that this could actually be illegal, as in the government cannot gather information on private citizens who are practicing their right to free speech. But if the White House wants to know who is spreading disinformation -- shouldn't they be reporting themselves and the DNC?

This is not a game. This isn't like going out to eat and trying something new and just seeing how it tastes. This isn't just a fun debate where one side wins and gets to go have a pizza party and be patted on the head by their professor.

Wake up, everybody!

If you don't think the mainstream media is completely in the tank for one side - consider this: recently there was a Tea Party rally in Columbus, Ohio. The MSM largely failed to even mention it - and when it was, it was passed off as "a few hundred people." According to video evidence and the Columbus police, there were between 8,000-10,000.

Yeah, we're all fake. Our anger is "manufactured." How could I forget that we're all just extremists who need to be watched by Homeland Security. How dare we call people who lie liars. How dare we express our opinions. How dare we not hand over our own minds and just let the almighty and omniscient government tells us how to live our lives.

(end rant)

Okay, I'm really going to try to write something more trivial and goofy for my next blog. But it's kind of like being on the front-lines of a battle and taking time out from shooting back to chat baseball. I know - I can expand on my theory about how talking about potty training is the female equivalent of fantasy football for men. That should be stress-free and enjoyable for all.

I Got Yer Teaching Moment Right Here

2009-07-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

There's just so much flotsam floating around on the surface of my brain this morning....so here's a bit of it in random form....

1. The president spoke without knowing the facts on the Cambridge police incident and today is going to have a beer with the officer and the hatemongering, radical leftist professor who was arrested for disorderly conduct in what is being condescendingly spun as a "teaching" moment. So basically the officer, who by all accounts other than the president and other radical police-hating types (and the I'm-a-victim crowd) acted correctly, is going to be lectured to about why he was wrong. If I were Officer Crowley I would have politely declined this offer. Well...actually I probably would have taken the opportunity to make a public statement like "Sorry, I don't drink beer with sniveling Marxists who seek to gain unlimited control over the lives of Americans by lowering the nation to the level of all other nations because he believes it's not "fair" for us to succeed, not to mention rushing to shove Orwellian health care legislation down the throats of Americans who do not want the government making their health care decisions or limiting their treatment options or deciding who dies and who can live or who gets born or who gets aborted or selling out the futures of every young person in this country with more spending than any president in US history."

2. If you haven't taken a close look at this health care legislation - you really need to. And if you support it, then please wake up and realize this is not going to be good for anyone. Rationing of treatment. Having to wait months just to see a doctor. Having a bureaucrat decide whether or not you are worthy of a particular treatment. It is essentially legalized genocide of the elderly, disabled, and terminally ill. Unless, of course, you happen to be in Congress or the President -- because the new health care laws won't apply to them. Sure -- "you can keep your plan" -- that is until your policy changes or your premium changes or you change jobs -- then (unless they have since removed this sneaky, underhanded, control-freak provision) there's a little section of the bill that requires you to be put on a government approved plan. It's a little like telling the public they can still eat beef - no one's going to make a law saying they can't -- but then requiring all the cattle farmers to only use their animals for milk. It's designed so that the government can "say" that they're not going to eliminate private insurance, while at the same time all but assuring that private insurance will be eliminated. Then EVERYONE (except Congress and the president) will be on the government health care plan and the government will have incredible control and power over every single person's life.

3. Moving on....I'd recommend avoiding skin cancer if you can. Even the non-surgical methods of treatment are not that fun.

4. I'd also just like to say that John Mayer is a menace to humanity and must be destroyed.

Liking John Mayer = liking reality tv = liking MTV = liking government run health care = liking socialism = liking eating the contents of dirty diapers = DMB fans = thinking guys who sing with nasal-high-pitched-whiny voices and/or fake pronounced breaths during singing (a la Mayer, Jonas Bros, and the Family Guy example of a douchebag with guitar singing the song about Water under a tree to a group of girls) are amazing = being an idiot = needing to be ____.

Also, the band Phish and anyone associated with Rolling Stone magazine get _____ as well.

Bill Hicks quote and blank sections have been edited by the political correctness police.

5. I aced my summer class. Hurray for me. And I did it with cancer. See -- having cancer does make you better at things.

6. Apparently there is a nation-wide severe tomato blight going around this year. So perhaps my tomato growing struggles are not just my own. The birds still refuse to eat the hornworms that I offer them.

7. Football is almost here! The long miserable off-season is nearly over. Consider this: 4 months from now the football seasons will be winding down. But 4 months AGO - it had already been several months since we last had football in our lives! Meanwhile the NBA and NHL are allowed to drag on 9 months out of the year with their wretched sports. It's a crime against humanity! Almost as bad as Marxists running our country and trying to turn it into a socialist utopia - where there is no middle class, those who work hard, succeed, and earn money are punished and have their wealth redistributed, and small businesses are starved into extinction. But football is almost here...there is hope for both my Canes and Bears...

8. The weather this past month has been absolutely wonderful! I cannot remember a July this temperate (77-85 mostly). Plus we haven't had our usual drought. It's been quite lovely, I say, quite lovely...

Alright, that's all for now. Tune in next week when I insult the lawnmower and then invite it into the garage to lecture it on why it should feel bad and apologize to me.

Always Look on the Bright Side of....Skin Cancer?

2009-07-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

I just learned from my dermatologist's office that the little spot above my eye is/was indeed a small cancer. I should be fine - if there's a good kind of cancer to get, this sounds about like it. I have to put some special cancer-fighting ointment on it and go back to the doctor in a few months.

I can't help but wonder if I would be allowed to get that special ointment under the nationalized health care. Did you know that in Great Britain they have a board (the acronym is NICE) which essentially serves as a rationing board. They determine which medicines, treatments, etc can or can't be used and the best course of treatment in individual cases. Remember, the biggest insanity of the nationalized/universal/obama-care health plan is that it will no longer be up to you and your doctor to make decisions regarding your health and your treatment -- it will be bureaucrats.

Something else I feel I have to beat into everyone's heads: Just because a politician (or Supreme Court nominee) says something does NOT mean it is a) true, b) how they really feel, or c) what they really plan to do. In fact, it's usually the opposite. Look at their actions, their initiatives, their stances -- and use your brain to piece together for yourself what this person is all about. Right now there is a power grab underway - and one of the key factors is the general public's lack of attention span and incredible tendency to be distracted.

The obama-care plan has a rationing board, too. Their acronym is ICE.

Oh, and uh, the president and Congress? The universal health care plan does not apply to them. Just us. The little people. After all, we're not smart enough or enlightened enough to decide things for ourselves. And a bunch of us "cling" to our "guns and religion." We need a big government there to take care of us and watch us and think for us and decide when we die and if we can even be born.

Ah, but where was I? Oh yes....cancer. I have cancer. And I'm looking on the bright side of it. Here's a few of the good things that now come with my diagnosis:

1. Cancer jokes! It's like when Jerry Seinfeld's dentist converted to Judaism and began making Jewish jokes.
2. Attention and sympathy from friends, professors, and pretty nurses. (I don't care how small or non-life-threatening the cancer is -- if I have to deal with a cancer in my body, by golly, I have the right to make the most of it!)
3. Nike endorsement deals and commercials of me riding a bike while chugging Gatorade and pitching no-hitters in my Under-Armour in between hardcore workouts and winning all those Relay-For-Life races.
4. From now on, I have a new rock-solid comeback to anything: "Yeah well, I had cancer!"
5. No more getting teased for putting on sunblock before and during every round of golf.
6. Instantly a large portion of my favorite movie lines now can be slightly altered to include cancer as the subject and thus gain new significance: "They may take tiny portions of our skin - but they'll never take - our - FREEDOM!"

I'm sure there's more, but I get the feeling I'm bordering on In-Bad-Taste-Land here....Wait a minute, I'm the one with cancer! You can't criticize me! I can do whatever I want!

(it's really annoying having such a powerful and immensely large internal critic that you automatically "hear" friends' criticizing you before you do something...it's probably why writing is such a struggle at times....)

Irritant Interview

2009-07-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

We're coming to you live from the sidelines where a veritable rogues gallery of Irritants have assembled themselves here on this field of battle to pester, frustrate, annoy, enrage, and otherwise upset our regular intrepid writer. (Before anyone begins with the snide remarks about how none of the following is all that important or significant in the grand scheme of things and that our dear friend should control himself like a walking robot devoid of emotions - please note that we here at The Evil Grin recognize the insignificance of life's little annoyances and that this entire blog is meant to entertain and amuse, so please...just relax.)

It's nearly halftime now and here come the mosquitoes - bathed in Rick's blood as they leave the field. We go to our sideline reporter, the lovely Kate Beckinsale in her leather catsuit. And for our Human Resources department, notice that I in no way implied, insinuated, or stated that the catsuit made her appear sexy, "hot," or attractive in any manner. I simply made a factual observation that she is wearing a leather catsuit. My statement was no more harassing than if I were to point out that someone's pet chimpanzee were wearing a diaper.

Kate: The mosquitoes have just finished ravaging Rick's ankles while he was outside lamenting the condition of his tomato plants. All summer long these mosquitoes have been on the attack, morning, noon, and night with no apparent need for rest or other interests besides following Rick around and slowly draining him of bodily fluids.

Sounds like he'd prefer to have you following him around....

Kate: Yes, I think that would be fairly obvious. The mosquitoes are now going to lurk here on the sidelines until Rick ventures outside again. Mosquitoes, tell us, how effective were you at irritating Rick?

Mosquitoes: Oh man, it was great! We knew he was going to come out and check on those tomato plants, right? So we made a plan with the plants to team up on him. While he was busy getting frustrated with them we hit him from below. We focused on his ankles on purpose, you see? That way there would be the added irritation of wondering WHY we only chewed on his ankles! In his mind, it was almost as if we did it on purpose - which takes the frustration value to a whole 'nother level!

Kate: I see. He did seem quite aggravated as he tried to combat you fellows while also dealing with the plants. I hear the tomato plants really have been giving Rick trouble lately. For more on that, let's go back to our soon-to-be-blacklisted-for-sexual-harassment-analyst in the booth.

Thanks, Kate. We'll always have that time you passed out at the Christmas party. What? You don't remember that? Awww, that's a shame.... Anyway, yes, the tomato plants have been a great irritant lately as nothing Rick does seems to be keeping them healthy. First there were soil problems, then a case of black spot blight, then drainage issues, then more blight, and recently the dreaded Hornworm invasion began. Now some of the plants are just about beyond saving and others appear headed towards imminent doom. Just as the mosquitoes were settling in at the Rick buffet, he noticed that one of the healthier (and more productive) plants had, for no apparent reason, split down the middle under the weight of all the fruit it was bearing. It seems there's just no winning this season with the tomato plants. Rick thought he'd learned a lot from last season and that this year would see marked improvement. But that has not been the case. Truly frustrating.

Let's recap the first half of today's matchup: The onslaught began when Rick awoke at 5AM unable to sleep due to fighting cats and indigestion. The cats have been going at it all week and both appear to be staking claim to Rick's person. The indigestion has not gone away today, like a little old lady holding onto a marble rye - it just won't give up. Then chemistry joined the fray with it's seemingly pointless and confusing-just-for-the-sake-of-being-confusing subject matter. Do they ever explain how to make penicillin or plastic or clean water? No, just more calculus and irritating X-Y graphs that only seem useful to people who see the world in X-Y graph form. But Rick does not see the world in X-Y graph form -- when he sees a tree, he sees a tree! Not a series of points on a graph with a mindless curve and an insipid slope and a made-up-mumbo-jumbo natural log! These things do not matter! They have no place in reality! A sine curve means nothing! But a fist through a computer screen means everything!

Oh...he's fully enraged now. They've blown the whistle for halftime and they are trying to placate him and get him off of the field before he starts breaking things. He's hungry and the day is slipping away from him and I can see that desperate gleam in his eyes! He's pummeling the referees now. It appears he's filling one's mouth with polysporin, the same substance that has caused the allergic outbreak on his forehead. Please remove small children from the room! He has his chemistry textbook now....he's screaming at the crowd....he's pointing....I keep hearing something about how most of the people in this world are idiots....now he's punted the textbook and is running towards one end of the stadium. He appears to be headed towards some sort of large, tarp-covered object. He's removing the tarp...it's a van or truck of some kind. There's writing on the side.....it says, "Roving Gas Chambers: The Cure For Idiocy and Human Cancers - Because SLaughter is the Best Medicine." Oh, he stole that bit about slaughter from The Dark Knight! What a cheap bastard! He's doing donuts in the middle of the stadium now. Now he's headed for the sidelines! He just mowed over the mosquitoes! They're splattered all over the windshield! How he can still see to run over the tomato plants and chemistry books I can't fathom, but he's doing it! Now his bills are on the run! He's a madman, ladies and gentlemen! He's exiting the stadium! He's loose! My God, he's loose!

(We here at The Evil Grin would like to thank you for indulging us in another good idea gone wrong. As always, we're working to not over-think these things and instead allow them to develop naturally...but not in a "Green" cult kind of way. The Green cult can die in a fire. Perhaps we here at The Evil Grin need to go eat something before we go off the deep end of the Hitler pool.)

Indigestive Blogging

2009-07-11T21:00:00.001-07:00

Too much pizza tonight. I have no reason to really feel guilty about indulging tonight, yet guilty is what I feel. Last night it was oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Around 10pm I decided to make them...and ate about a dozen....and then had more for breakfast this morning. But I don't have any reason to feel guilty. I've been working out hard lately - if anything, I could stand to put on a few pounds. Yet guilty I feel.

What else...what else....sometimes I wish I had one interest (like other bloggers) that I could focus on solely and write daily blogs about just that one topic. I guess I could start a different blog for each subject that interests me. No, the problem with that would not be coming up with things to say or keeping track of each blog. No, the problem would be: a) deciding WHICH subjects are interesting enough to me to be worth writing about regularly, b) not getting bored by these subjects, and c) not obsessively fretting over whether or not those subjects are truly my primary interests and if people will define me by those interests.

I signed up for Twitter last night. I'm not sure why....I suppose I was mostly curious. It's pretty interesting to follow famous people/musicians/etc that one is interested in. Someday people will hang on my every "tweet," just you wait....

September is shaping up to be a spectacular month. First - we have both the college and pro football seasons kicking off. As I say on an almost daily basis, the wretched NBA and NHL seasons seem to last year round - they taunt me as they drag on while the too-short football seasons barely get 4-5 months. I'm excited about both my Canes and Bears this year.

Second, we have Oktoberfest -- my favorite season for beer drinking....although, I do LOVE a nice cold summer lager at the end of a hot day....oh man....it's 11:30 and I'm about to go to sleep, but one of those sounds GREAT right now!

Third, music: Pearl Jam, Muse, and Alice In Chains are all scheduled to release new albums in the month of September.

Still no news on the mystery spot the doctor removed from my temple. But apparently I've had an allergic reaction to either the bandage or the polysporin I was using on the wound. I now have a vibrantly nasty colony of bumps surrounding the little craterous area where the potential cancer once lived. This has happened before...but I thought polysporin was okay and Neosporin was the suspect....hmmm.....apparently the list of odd things I'm allergic to is still growing...

Can We Split the Country In Two Yet?

2009-07-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

(The following is from 6/30/09...it fell into a dark and murky corner of the blog until now)

I was planning on ranting and raving a little about the new Transformers movie, but other people have already covered it pretty well. Yes, I enjoyed it, but it was still one of the worst directed/produced movies I've ever seen. There's currently a headline article on Yahoo news about the atrocious plot holes. I also came across a chuckle-inducing (but not family friendly) satirical question and answer session about the movie. It was basically supposed to be one friend asking another friend about the movie. Very well done. Bravo to whoever wrote it.

Even now, 2 days after seeing the film, I still have these random realizations of moments in the movie that made no sense. Such as....

Since when is there a giant field behind the Smithsonian filled with retired aircraft?
How are the presence of Transformers on Earth a secret despite an epic battle in the middle of Los Angeles in the first movie?
How is that humans can go to Robot Heaven?
Robot Heaven????
Why does a movie about giant alien robots have to focus so much on a teenage love story and have annoying side characters while perfectly good giant alien robots spend most of the movie either in the background, off screen, or not saying anything?
How come the movies weren't preempted with more Michael Jackson coverage?

I could go on and on....but like I said, others have already taken the movie (and its abysmal director) to task. Despite my many, MANY complaints - it was still an entertaining movie...but it could have been SO much better. Just let me direct it next time. Please. There won't be any Shia LaBeouf, no Meagan Fox, no annoying side characters (like pointless roommates who do nothing but scream and be non-funny), no love story, no slow-motion cut-scenes in the middle of a big battle, no massive plot holes at every turn, no pushing the awesome giant alien robots to the background of the movie while lame-o humans occupy most of the screentime, and no killing off giant alien robots before they've had a chance to establish themselves.

(The following is from today....fresher and unlike it's older friend, not scarred-for-life from spending a week alone in the dark)

So I went to the dermatologist yesterday to have a suspect spot on my temple examined. The doctor took a quick look, could not determine what exactly it was, and then decided it needed to be cut off. A couple of minutes later a small chunk of my skin was being prepared for its journey to a lab and I was left pondering the fate of my modeling career (I'm joking....geez....). Hopefully it will turn out to be nothing, but then again, it could be the big C word. And this got me to thinking....have you ever noticed that we as a culture seem to hold cancer survivors in some higher regard? Like veterans or firefighters. If two people are applying for a job with the exact same qualifications - but one happens to be a cancer survivor - you know who's getting hired. Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this....it's just an interesting component of our human nature.

Anyway, it's SO comforting when the doctor says "I don't know what that is....let's remove it," and then asks if there's a history of skin cancer in your family.

Seems like our government is still working diligently at driving our country into the ground. Cap and Trade, nationalized health care, ANOTHER stimulus plan....it's getting to the point where someone who openly wanted to ruin the US and had unlimited power to do so couldn't do much better of a job than those who are currently running the show. Ultimately the problem is too many of us are apathetic, too many of us are idiots, too many of us are too easily confused/misled, and too many of us have been raised (whether consciously or subconsciously) to view America as the bad guy in all situations. We all get lazy at times, we all can act stupidly, we all can get lost in rhetoric and politics. Unfortunately a growing chunk of the population seems to be all those things (and more) all the time. (I have a term for it...but I can't share it because I haven't copyrighted it yet...)

And this week Al freakin' Franken became a US Senator. So now you no longer have to have any credentials to hold any office in this country. None. We can start randomly selecting people to fill every position from President to Secretary of Education. How about the local Prom Queen? She doesn't need more experience - people like her, they look up to her, they voted for her, so she can bring people together. Plus she's really pretty and speaks so well!

Al Franken as a senator is the liberal equivalent of Ted Nugent or Jerry Falwell or some other extremist with no real experience or credentials getting elected to the same position. Actually Rush Limbaugh might be a better comparison, but at least he didn't become famous for being a comedian. Perhaps you're saying to your computer (or at least I know I can hear my own friends' snide voices in my head right now saying it), "oh, you're just saying that because he's a Democrat! If Rush Limbaugh or Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis got elected as Republican Senators you'd love it and find nothing wrong with it! You're just a vicious stupid right-winger anyway! Nothing you say matters because you think unborn babies count for something! BOOOOOO!!!!!" (Okay, maybe I got carried away there....) The point is, I don't think Limbaugh as a senator would be a good thing, even though I think he would be a slightly less ridiculous choice than Franken if only because Franken spent most of his career being a comedian. Had Franken never been in the entertainment industry and instead spent all these years as a serious political commentator - then I would put him on equal standing with Limbaugh...and would still say it's ridiculous for either of them to be a senator. Clint on the other hand....I'm sorry, I'd have to vote for him. It's Clint Eastwood! He shoots no-good scoundrels and teaches personal accountability and self-reliance. He IS rugged individualism! Plus at least he's held public office before!

Meagan Fox and My Inner Critic

2009-06-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

Recently my dear mother kept an article from the Wall Street Journal (one of the few newspapers left that hasn't devolved into "rag" status or merely a propaganda forum) for me to read. It was about how many or most of us have an inner critic, who often can be more harsh than any outside voice. I've been telling people for a decade that I'm a perfectionist with an over-active and extremely Hitler-esque inner critic. Often this Inner Hitler had been an obstacle in nearly everything I attempt. Particularly (since about middle school) in my writing.

So, although the article was nothing new to me, it was nice to see the positives and negatives of self-criticism being acknowledged. The article also contained a brief quiz meant to assess one's level of self-criticism and perfectionism. 15 statements with a certain number of points allotted for the level of agreement with each statement.

Okay, fine. Since I can almost read your thoughts right now, I'll go ahead and give you what you want and type out the whole stupid quiz so you can take it yourself. (but if I get sued for copyright infringement, I blame you all)

For each statement, indicate the number that best describes how you feel most of the time.
1 - Totally disagree; 2 - Disagree very much; 3 - Disagree slightly; 4 - neutral; 5 - Agree slightly; 6 - Agree very much; 7 - Totally agree

1. It is difficult to be happy unless one is good-looking, intelligent, rich and creative.
2. People will probably think less of me if I make a mistake.
3. If I do not do well all the time, people will not respect me.
4. If a person asks for help, it is a sign of weakness.
5. If I do not do as well as other people, it means I am a weak person.
6. If I fail at my work, then I am a failure as a person.
7. If you cannot do something well, there is little point in doing it at all.
8. If someone disagrees with me, it probably indicates he does not like me.
9. If I fail partly, it is as bad as being a complete failure.
10. If other people know what you are really like, they will think less of you.
11. If I don't set the highest standards for myself, I am likely to end up a second-rate person.
12. If I am to be a worthwhile person, I must be the best in at least one way.
13. People who have good ideas are better than those who do not.
14. I should be upset if I make a mistake.
15. If I ask a question, it makes me look stupid.

I went through the quiz and came to a score of 59. (and that was being conservative) 54 or higher indicates a high level of self-criticism and perfectionism. 39 is average and 24 or less indicates a low level of self-criticism and perfectionism.

So how did everyone do? I'd love to hear some of your scores. C'mon...I shared mine...

Okay...onto my other topic of the day: Meagan Fox. She does nothing for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah - technically she's gorgeous, but her portrayed image just comes across as so vapid, shallow, and lacking personality that her physical beauty is completely negated. When I hear a fellow man gasping through barely restrained wanton desire the many perceived wonders of Ms. Fox, I know that man does not place much value on intelligence, personality, charm, poise, and other non-mammalian traits of attraction. Give me Kate Beckinsale any day over Fox. Beckinsale's (or at least her portrayed image) the kind of woman who can kill the undead in skintight black leather, go frolicking on the beach with you, laugh at your stupid jokes, move you to write songs and lay waste to countless villages, and still tuck the kids in at night while saving energy for quality time with her man. Hmm....wouldn't it be ironic if in reality both Fox and Beckinsale were nothing like their images -- or even reversed? (and when I talk about portrayed images, I don't exactly mean the roles they play in movies, but rather how they come across as real people) Regardless, I'm sticking with Becks.

Oh, and let's not forget Fox's little comments about how she wishes Megatron (the villain from the Transformers movies) would blow up middle America with all it's Bible-thumping rednecks. I don't have her exact quote handy, but if you replace all the descriptors she used pertaining to many average Christians in this country with words that describe terrorists or a random minority group, her statement would have been heralded as racist, immoral, unconscionable, and stupid. But thanks to our cultures wacky double-standards, it's still totally cool to say bad things about Christians and "middle America." After all, they just "cling to their guns and religion".....wait a minute, Fox didn't say that part....who was that again? Oh yeah...

A few more random comments before I go:
1. I've found recently that it is actually EASIER for me to run the hotter and muggier it is outside. I've always been unable to run in cold weather - harder to breath, the throat burns, nose runs, muscles ache and feel lifeless. Perhaps the warmer, more humid air helps keep my body loose. This could help particularly with my chronic sciatica problems. Whatever it is, this recent heat wave of 90 degree temperatures has me bursting with energy each time I go for a run.

2. Salmon could be the perfect food. There's nothing bad in it and each fillet (at least the one's in the freezer) has about 40 grams of protein! For someone as health conscious and mildly-addicted to working out as me, that's a gold mine! Last night I made an amazing salmon salad -- and normally I don't care for meat mixed with vegetables in salad-form. It was so good I ate the leftovers for breakfast this morning -- and I just might make it again tonight!

Housecleaning and Best Fight Scenes

2009-06-17T07:16:00.000-07:00

First - the housecleaning:
1. If you want some good insight on the evils of socialized health care (which is essentially what government run health care is), I suggest reading anything Stuart Varney has to say on the subject. He's an excellent journalist who lived in Great Britain and experienced socialized/nationalized/whatever term you prefer health care firsthand. Now he sees it coming our way.

On a personal note, while I have complained about my health insurance rates going up in recent years, I still do not want to see my provider run out of business by an undercutting government program. If there's a new massive government program out there at a cheaper rate, corporations are going to look at the numbers and start dumping Blue Cross Blue Shield and other private providers. Just like in The Office when they made Michael Scott pick the cheapest plan for his branch (but then he gave the duty to Dwight, who picked the worst plan imaginable). Also, it would be expected for the government (especially this government) to offer incentives to corporations and other groups to join the new government plan. Sure, you can keep your private plan....as long as that private company still exists. (as I often say, you can hardly ever take a politician at their word -- just because they say they're doing one thing, doesn't mean it's true. When some scam artist is bilking a kindly grandmother out of her life savings, he doesn't say "hey, I'm going to steal from you now." Instead he says "Oh, no, I'm not stealing from you - I'm here to help. That's just silly talk. I'm here to help you!"

As BCBS and others lose corporations, they have to find a way to stay afloat. So, perhaps they make up their losses by raising individual plan rates (like mine) to the point that we individuals can no longer afford to keep our plans...and are forced to join the inferior government plan. Soon BCBS and its kin are dinosaurs - fossilizing in ancient river beds for future combustion, followed by demonization as the cause of future cyclical climate change which is then politicized and used as a means to gain power and control. Then we face two extremes: Massive over-crowding in our doctors' offices and hospitals as people seek medical attention for every little ache and pain ("I kinda have a headache, I need an MRI") OR rationing of procedures, tests, and exams as government bureaucrats (lovingly called "central planners" by some people not fond of the current administration) make the decisions on whether or not you are deserving of such care.

2. Hmm....I wrote the previous part of this several days ago...now I've entirely forgotten what the other "housecleaning" issues were....

Okay -- onto the Best Fight Scenes. Recently I took part in a random discussion about the best movie fight scenes. These could be considered for a variety of reasons - such as the action itself, the characters involved, length, comedic factor, etc. Here are some of the favorites (in no particular order):

1. (They Live) --- Roddy Piper versus Keith David -- a cult-classic 80s sci-fi/horror movie about alien invaders who look like humans and whose true hideous appearance can only be seen when one is wearing cool-for-the-80s black sunglasses. These two have a ridiculously long fight-scene that harkens to Piper's day job as a pro wrestler.

2. (Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith) -- Obi-Wan Kenobi vs Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader --- the epic duel that ultimately leaves Anakin's charred and limbless form lying beside a river of lava remains one of the few things George Lucas has gotten right in the last couple of decades.

3. (Fight Club) -- Edward Norton vs himself (literally) --- Norton's character beats himself up in order to keep his annoying boss off his back...and also bilks the company out of a nice settlement. I'm sure there are millions of us who have seriously considered pulling this stunt, but never had the guts to go through with it.

4. (Fight Club) -- Edward Norton vs Jared Leto --- Ah...there's something so satisfying about seeing pretty boy actors getting their fictional faces smashed.

5. (Snatch) -- Mickey (Brad Pitt) vs Gorgeous George --- George is a trained bare-knuckle boxer who gets knocked out cold by one punch from Mickey the unassuming gypsey. Good times. Excellent director's work, in my opinion.

6. (Happy Gilmore) -- Happy vs Bob Barker -- how can one not enjoy the octogenarian Price Is Right host trading punches (and crass one-liners) with Adam Sandler? It's just the kind of silly fantasy young men would dream up while goofing around in the backyard: "Hey! Wouldn't it be awesome if, like, Adam Sandler fought Bob Barker?" "Oh dude! That's awesome!"

7. (Snatch) -- Mickey vs whoever-he-was-fighting-at-the-end-of-the-movie -- I can't recall who the opponent was, but the brawl that Mickey was intentionally losing only to ulimately win at the last second and complete his revenge against Bricktop is another fantastic element to a truly great film.

8. (Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace) -- Obi Wan and Qui Gon vs Darth Maul --- while the rest of the movie was largely a disappointment (and dismal commentary on George Lucas' handling of one of the most beloved franchises of all time), the lightsaber duel at the end was worth watching. Unfortunately two of the only three cool characters in the entire movie are killed off.

9. (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) -- Indy vs a bunch of Nazis on a moving tank -- One of my all-time favorite movies has a really under-appreciated scene where Indy must rescue his father from inside "the belly of that steel beast" (a pre-WWII era tank). Indy hangs by his satchel from a cannon-barrel, he shoots through multiple Nazi soldiers at the same time with a Luger, he even leaps off the thing at the last second just as it goes over a cliff. What more could you ask for? (besides a 4th Indy movie that wasn't epically ruined by Lucas, Spielberg, and Shia LaBeouf)

10. (Lord of the Rings) -- Gandalf vs the Balrog --- Go ahead. Say the line. Surely you've had a few drinks and stood in front of the bathroom door and said to your buddy "You shall not pass!" Okay, even I haven't done that. Anyway, my inner dork really likes this confrontation. Also I immediately think of the Family Guy episode where Mr. Herbert (a.k.a. - the perverted old man) says the line to a giant, evil, living tree that is attacking Chris Griffin (or whom Herbert once called "the muscly-armed paperboy").

11. (Predator) -- Ah-nold vs the Predator -- "You are one ugly...." As if this classic didn't have enough memorable lines ("Get to the chopp-ah!") and scenes, who can forget the epic slugfest between a mud-encrusted Arnold (still in his prime) and one of the greatest movie aliens of all time? There is actually something in the male DNA that prevents us from ever growing bored with this movie. Seriously.

12. (Anchorman) -- the news-team gang battle royale -- without this scene the movie is significantly less funny. Steve Carrell's character kills a guy....with a trident....after that he lays low for a while.

13. (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) -- King Arthur vs the Black Knight -- "it's just a fleshwound!" And I don't think I need to say anything else.

14. (300) -- Spartans vs innumerable hordes of Persians -- Isn't the whole movie basically one big awesome fight scene? It's impossible to pick just one scene or particular fight. So, I'm lumping all the fight scenes together for the purposes of this list. Prepare for glory!

15. (Kill Bill Part 1) -- The Bride vs The Crazy 88 -- Though I haven't seen this movie in at least 5 years, I can still recall this brutal and very Tarantino-ish bloodbath as being an excellent fight scene. Extra points for the hot-girl-with-a-sword angle.

16. (The Bourne Ultimatum) -- Jason Bourne vs motorcycle guy -- This fight scene set a new bar for realistic and gritty action filmmaking. A hallmark of Bourne movie fights is that, as in real life, the winner of the fight rarely walks away unscathed. There were several other amazing Bourne fight scenes I could include on this list...but I'm confused as to which movie they were in and who he was fighting and why....one was in an apartment against another assassin....hmmm.....

17. (Troy) -- Achilles vs Hector -- two of the ancient world's greatest warriors do battle at the gates of Troy, regrettably one must die. I still can't stomach the end of the film, however, when worthless, conniving, no-good Paris/Orlando Bloom shoots his little arrows. If I'd be directing that movie we would have changed the story around a little more and none of that crap would have happened!

18. (Gladiator) -- Russell Crowe vs anyone put in his way -- I can't even begin to sort through all the great fight scenes in this one. So, I won't bother. You've seen the movie. You know what I mean.

Okay....I'm out of top-of-the-head and stolen-from-the-discussion fight scenes. Feel free to add your own and even rank them if you wish. I'm positive there are dozens of great ones I've neglected to add.

I'm back...and still scatterbrained

2009-06-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

Did anybody miss me? I haven't blogged in nearly 3 weeks. Why? No, I wasn't on vacation (can't afford those these days). I think mostly I felt like I had nothing to say and that nobody would care about anything I had to say even if I did have something to say. Perhaps my old enemy - self-criticism - played a role. And maybe some innocent comments by friends inadvertently led to my inability to write. But today I have forced myself back to the keyboard....still with nothing much to say....

I finally saw "The Hangover" yesterday. It was hilarious...funny all the way through...in fact, it seemed to get funnier as the movie went along. Unfortunately my brain has aged (or at least my priorities) to the point that I can no longer instantly retain all the good memorable lines from movies I've just seen. Also, most of those good lines were probably too vulgar to repeat in this (somewhat) family-friendly blog. To those who have also seen it: I'm still not clear on a couple of things -- 1) How did Phil end up in the hospital? and 2) How did they get the cop car in the first place?

Earlier in the weekend I also saw "The Taking of Pelham 123." It was rather mediocre, as I expected...but not bad. It was entertaining and I believe it sets a new bar for number of uses of the "f-bomb." Seriously. It was so blatant that I got the impression that the director was making a joke out of it - just tossing it into every line of the film. More f-bombs than The Big Lebowski. (That's a lot of f-bombs)

While trying not to pay attention to the news this morning (as these days all it does it agitate, depress, enrage, or otherwise make me feel ill) I couldn't help but notice some segment on exercise for the elderly. And it made me think that we really need to step up the science of creating artificial limbs/organs/entire bodies. I KNOW we can do it! "Oh, but it would cost too much - wahhhh!" Do you know how much it costs to take care of the elderly as it is???? When I get old I want my own replacement organs, robotic limbs that look perfectly real yet out-perform actual human limbs, or even a whole new android body for my brain to run around in. Let's make it happen people! Old age is out there, lurking, waiting, snickering sadisitically to itself in the shadows while fumbling with a package of Twinkies as it watches you go for that Saturday morning jog and come back aching just a tiny bit more each day! He may inevitably take me - but by golly, I'm going down like a Spartan!

Ah, but with socialized health care right around the corner - we're all in big trouble anyway. Just pray you don't get sick. Seriously. We currently have the best health care system in the world - even with all its quirks and problems. But we're about to go back to the Stone Age. But why waste my energy typing about it....those of you who get it - get it. Those who disagree will always disagree. Let's just split the country in two before things get really REALLY out of control. (Because we're already at just "really out of control.")

If any of you haven't seen the Mike Judge film "Idiocracy," do yourself a favor and check it out. Or at least watch the first 5 minutes where they compare the breeding rates of the stupid and non-stupid in our culture. It's funny, alarming, scary, and shockingly accurate.

Hmm...something light and humorous to wrap this blog up with....hmm...

Oh. Over the weekend Petsmart had pet adoption days on both Saturday and Sunday. I'm (jokingly) not allowed to go near that place on such days, yet this weekend I happened to be there both times. But I didn't adopt anything. So, that's good. I CAN fight temptation after all.

Pseudo-UFOs and Movie Dissatisfaction

2009-05-26T05:01:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a lovely Memorial Day weekend. Except for those jerks who woke me up Saturday night at 1AM in their airboat with all the searchlights and the stupid droning generator. It was the sort of thing a less intelligent individual might have taken for a UFO landing. It started with hearing the noise in my sleep. Then I began gradually waking up in stages - at first thinking it was just a helicopter going overhead. But once fully awake I realized what was going on. The sweeping lights through the trees that entered my bedroom window were not the spotlights of passing helicopters (military or search and rescue) nor were they the pre-abduction lights of an alien craft. Looking down through the trees to the lake I saw the small boat with its ring of powerful lights - each reflecting off of the water, creating the illusion of a second ring. The boat was nearly on shore and while the sleep-annihilating roar of the airboat motor had ceased, the annoying drone of a generator could still be heard. Over the noise of that, however, I could also hear the guys on the boat chattering to each other. These same characters had been here before - a couple of weeks ago - but with a less noisy motor, no generator, and at 9PM rather than 1AM. I actually considered firing a gun into the air to convince them to leave. But they soon left on their own.

I saw "Terminator Salvation" this weekend. I'm still not quite sure what to think about it. I can't say it was that good, but I'm also not quite ready to say it terrible either. But I have a bad feeling that once the movie-honeymoon wears off (the occasional tendency to give a film a slightly more favorable review due to having wanted the movie to be good in the first place) that I'm going to say it was truly awful.

One aspect I definitely did not like was the ending. I can't really go into detail, because that would mean including spoilers which would be a mean thing to do to my readers. Here is a brief rant about the ending that I wrote elsewhere (contains minor spoilers -- skip if you wish to remain completely spoiler free):

"I found myself actually wanting Connor to die - that's how bland the role of Connor was in the film. And that's not really Bale's fault. Most of the movie involves following Marcus around and he's the one doing most of the fighting. We see Connor get shot down in a helicopter, nearly get owned by a legless T-600, get shot down in ANOTHER helicopter by those hydro-terminators, only to later on get thrashed by the T-800.

The writing and directing basically made Connor out to be Optimus Prime but without all the sentimental feelings the 20-somethings might have about the character. (side note - I guarantee you they kill off Prime in this Transformers...they did it in the cartoon movie...and at the end it'll be "oh no, what do we do! The Decepticons are stronger than ever - Prime is dead! Oh nos!" and they'll fade to black with a scene of the surviving Autobots, Sam, and Megan Genetically-Engineered-By-Movie-Studios Fox looking off into the distance as Linkin Park begins to play. Then we'll find out they plan to "wrap it all up" in a 3rd part and that will be the end because Hollywood can only have frickin' trilogies! Leave it open for more? No, no, no! Let's have a trilogy. And then I die a little inside.....i need some breakfast...."

I had never seen or heard of Sam Worthington before - but he was excellent as Marcus Wright, the hybrid human/cyborg. Last week we were discussing male actors having to win over the male audience -- well, Worthington just did it. His character was FAR more compelling than that of John Connor, plus the script gave Worthington the chance to seemingly act circles around Bale (again, this was due to poor writing and directing).

I'm really tired of these terrible Hollywood directors getting to play amateur hour with all the big movie franchises. Are there even any good, reliable directors left out there? Even the once mighty Spielberg has lost his edge.

In other movie news, I think I actually want to see "The Hangover." The last time I saw a Vegas-bachelor-party-gone-wrong movie was about 10 years ago ("Very Bad Things"), which raised the bar for shocking gross-out comedies. Parts of that movie were quite disturbing - even to myself and my friends who were then crass, un-shockable 18-19 year olds. But by today's standards, most of those elements are found on network tv each night.

Okay, I've grown irritated sitting here trying to find an ending to this blog. But I'm convinced no such ending exists. Rock on, everybody.

Mighty Sampson Gets a Haircut...

2009-05-22T06:21:00.000-07:00

So I went for a haircut yesterday.....I intended to have a little more taken off than last time....but it's funny how that always seems to result in the complete and total deforestation of my hair. So, I'm no longer really a shaggy-haired lad, rebelling against society's ills. But the hair will be back....and it will have its revenge...in this, 2009, the Year of Vengeance!

Anyway...

Here's what's randomly on my mind this morning:

1. I have a tick bite on my leg that either has a red rash around it (indicating very bad things) or is irritated from all the constant scratching. Nothing seems to itch as intensely or for as long as tick bites!

2. When you're mowing so deep in a wooded area that the plant-life (I can't call it grass, because this was way beyond just grass) is as tall as the handle bars, it might be time to call in air support and just have the place napalmed. And to all the turtles I rescued from being eaten by the mower -- you're welcome! No, no - don't bother thanking me for saving your lives -- just hiss at me and slam shut the front door on your shells.

3. Has anyone seen the YouTube video on Shia Labeauf (sp?) where it's just 2 minutes of clips from his movies of him saying "No?" For those - like myself and the majority of male movie-goers out there - who can't stand him, it's an enjoyable experience and a demonstration of his oh-so-amazing acting range.

4. I've probably mentioned my little theory before, but I'll bring it up again: In order for a Hollywood actor to become one of the true "top dogs" he MUST win over the male audience. Crowe, Bale, Damon - they've all done this and are all at the top of the heap. The Shias and Orlando Blooms of the world will never be that successful unless or until they can make the average guy like them. Take Brad Pitt for example, he went from being a male-hated pretty boy to now being a guy's-guy actor noted for his talent and great role selection. It all started around the era of Se7en and Fight Club. He began showing the male audience a different side and we began to say, "alright, Pitt....maybe you're not so bad...maybe I could have a beer with you...fight a war with you...." How is this done? There is no set formula, but there are certain aspects to the roles an actor takes that can help accomplish this goal.
a) Be a viable "Badass." -- Just playing a role that features guns or swords isn't enough. In fact, doing so can expose an actor for being just another pretty boy male-model type that Hollywood is trying to force-feed to the general public. You have to be believeable. You have to be a man's-man - rugged, tough, the kind of guy you could depend on to lead you out of the wilderness after a plane crash - or help you fight off the street gang that is terrorizing your neighborhood. And you can't look pretty while doing it -- it's okay to look good - just not pretty. In fact, never look pretty if you want to win the male audience over. We hate that. It's why in the real world we say "I can't stand that pretty boy!" so derisively. An example of "Badass" -- pretty much any role Russell Crowe has played that involved swords, guns, or fighting of any kind. An example of Epic Fail Badass -- Orlando Bloom in "Kingdom of Heaven," Shia playing Indiana Jones' street-tough motorcycle-riding son in Indiana Jones 4, and George Clooney as Batman (but that was horrible for a lot of other reasons as well).

b) Be funny - but in a self-deprecating or off-the-wall kind of way. Don't be a punk! Nothing irritates the male audience quite like some young pretty boy who acts cocky and makes a bunch of smart-aleck remarks. Do this and you may have sealed your doom forever. (I'm looking at you, Shia...) An example of good humor: Vince Vaughn.

c) Be able to play a character as opposed to just another pretty romantic lead. Brad Pitt has played crazy serial killers, loons, devious figments of one's imagination railing against modern society, and even dim-witted personal trainers. He has taken on roles that require looking and acting like someone far less than a charming, handsome hero. And he's pulled them off successfully.

d) Take on roles that subsconciously will earn our respect. Jason Bourne? Maximus? The new gritty, more realistic Batman of Christian Bale? If these characters popped out of the screen and started walking around in our living rooms -- we would literally drop our popcorn bowl and follow them off on adventures. If Colin Farrell's Alexander came out of my tv screen I would hurl the popcorn bowl at him and demand my money back for seeing that WOAT movie in the first place.

4. I think I'm gonna start wearing half-shirts like Iceman and Slider in Top Gun. Or at least oil myself up each time before I play sand volleyball while Kenny Loggins' music plays in the background.

5. Okay - my attention span is gone. Everyone have a great weekend and be safe out there.

The Fun in Fundamentalism

2009-05-18T06:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, I neglected my blog for a week. It was finals week and it would have been quite irresponsible of me to be here writing goofball blogs instead of cramming in the last bits of a semester's worth of information. I don't have one specific topic of conversation this morning - which will surely annoy the stodgiest of you out there. Yeah...you know who you are...with your obsessive love for policies and procedures and mission statements and meetings and reports and action-plans and files and gladhanding....I shall break through the wall and reach you someday...and you shall be free....

Sooooo....I'll just continue with the numbered random thoughts, as that seemed to work well last time:

1. My new Beers of the Week: Shiner Blonde -- apparently you cannot get it in Western Kentucky, but if you travel into Southern Illinois, and get a little lucky, you can find it in gas stations and liquor stores alike. It is easily my favorite of the Shiner brews. It also has a special place in my heart as I discovered it during the Ice Storm this winter. My first memories of it are tied in with memories of grilling and laughing under the dull roar of a generator with my brothers and sister-in-law. Making fond memories out of frozen lemons.

My other recommendation is one I actually haven't yet tried (but it is on deck for this evening): Fat Tire by New Belgium. I've heard great things about it for a long time, but for some reason it seems like I could never find it around here.

2. I picked up the new Green Day album this weekend. Normally new albums/DVDs come out on Tuesdays. So last Tuesday I found myself fuming that I couldn't find it in Best Buy or at Wal-Mart. I even ranted to Aric that it was this town's fault...but I used much more colorful language. For some reason the album didn't get released until Friday. So...call of them orbital bombardment... As for the album...I haven't made it all the way through yet, but so far it has the feel of a sequel that falls flat. Like one of the Pirates of the Carribean sequels. Not bad - still entertaining - but lacking the originality and charm of the first.

3. Callie and I were accosted during the Downtown After Dinner "festivities" on Saturday night. I say that sarcastically as the only entertainment aside from a special performance of the Paducah Symphony, were two musical acts: 1 - a band playing 50s-60s era classics and 2 - some college guys doing barbershop quartet. No really. 10 years ago no frat boy would be caught dead singing in public. No high schoolers would willingly put on musicals and consider it cool. American Idol would have been booed off the air. Boy, do times change....

But I digress....so my niece and I were walking towards the river when this goofy looking chap in a big St. Louis Cardinals sweatshirt and Nikes hands her a fake million dollar bill with some sort of fundamentalist Christian stuff written on it. Then he proceeds to start asking us personal religious questions while his minions (a couple guys like him and some kids who looked like the type to hide in the bushes and shoot non-believers with blow-darts) essentially surrounded us and watched. He wanted to know if we had been rasied in a "good, Christian background" and what we thought happened to us when we die. Of course, our answers weren't good enough - especially the part about Purgatory, which he dismissed completely (and which should have been his first clue that he was dealing with those darn Cath'lics!). Instead he wore this vacant, fake smile - exposing teeth that featured food between nearly every one of them - a condescending nod followed by an equally condescending "yeah...yeah...well let me ask you this..." And his eyes....I've always felt you can tell a lot about a person by looking into their eyes...and this guy's eyes were empty and cold.... So, Callie quickly grew angry with this man's thinly veiled assault on our beliefs and accusatory nature and stopped responding completely, while I took up my own fake smile and condescending tone to match that of our new pal. Why yes, I HAVE told a lie before! Hmmm...well, I don't think I've stolen anything since I was a little kid. What's that you say? The Bible states that if you break the 10 Commandments you're doomed to Hell? Wow...how about that... Then he asks me if I've ever looked at a woman lustfully. Um...yeah...quite a bit, in fact. He replies that the Bible says if a man looks at a woman lustfully then he has committed adultery in his heart. (Doesn't at least one party have to be married for it to be adultery? And how exactly would any of us exist if at some point our fathers didn't look at our mothers lustfully?) He goes on that "knowing what the Bible says about that, what do you think is going to happen to you when you stand before God?" To which I laugh and reply "Well, it's not really up to me!" By this point, I'm losing patience. Callie looks like she's ready to slap someone. And now he's asking us why Jesus died and wanting to know how we participate in His sacrifice. We respond with Communion (his second clue that we're none other than those fiendish Cath'lics!) which earns us another fake nod and "right...right..." He started in on something else about sins that I was not paying attention to and Callie spunkily answered "that's why we go to Confession." And finally! Finally the light bulb goes off in Cardinals sweatshirt's head! He's got a couple of those Cath'lics on his hands! Immediately he stops his whole act, gives me a hand shake and says "I hope you make the right decision." And just like that he and his entourage moved on down the street. We kept seeing them the rest of the night going through the same routine with other groups of young people - mostly teenagers. Callie and I both look younger than we are, but unfortunately for him, we're not weak-minded or easily manipulated. If somebody wants to evangelize their religious beliefs, that's fine and dandy - but don't go around accusing young people, intimating that they're going to hell, picking apart their own beliefs, and basically acting like a holier-than-thou, conceited windbag. People like him give Christianity a bad name.

Afterwards I kept thinking of things Dr. House would have said to the guy. "Those Nikes you're wearing...were they made in the Mexican sweatshop or the one in Southeast Asia? And how is God going to feel about your promotion of the exploitation of children? Hmm...sounds like you could be in Hell with the rest of us."

During the whole thing, I kept thinking of the time on Family Guy when they wanted to potty train Stewie, so they went to the bookstore:
Storeclerk: "Hi, how can I help you?"
Peter: "Well, we're looking for a book to potty train our son."
Clerk: "Well, 'Everybody Poops' is still the standard."
Peter: "Ah, well...we're Catholic, so uh...."
Clerk: "Oh, then you need 'You're a Naughty Child and That's Concentrated Evil Coming Out of Your Backside.'"

Okay...now to respond to Jason's comments from last week (which I just read last night)...

4. No, I haven't seen the Deadliest Warrior....so yes, you were ranting about a show I've never seen and yes, indeed, my references to Spartans and Pirates were completely unrelated. Sorry.

5. I haven't had the Reissdorf, but I've loved ever Kolsch I've ever tried. But I still don't like really hoppy beers and cannot drink pale ales of any kind (literally taste like soap to me).

6. Just to clarify - when I say that it sounds like a horse galloping when Killian runs across the deck...Killian's a cat.

Alright. That's all I have the patience for this morning.

If you read this blog you can feed the self-esteem of an esteem-starved blogger

2009-05-10T19:33:00.001-07:00

Look. If you people aren't going to comment on anything I write (and not to mention, keep sending me bad checks), I'm just going to stop writing my own brand of gibberish.

Nah....I'm just kidding. I wouldn't do that to you. (I felt like Ike Turner just then...Ike loves you, baby! I only beat you 'cause I love you SO much!)

Today was Mother's Day. But for the few of you who I'm pretending will actually read this, it is now at least Monday - if not several months from now. (in that case, I'm writing to you from the past....I have no words of wisdom to impart....sorry) For my mother today, I drilled holes in walls and hung pictures for her. It was actually a lot more involved than I thought it would be.

Now here's the bizarre version of the previous sentence:
Today was Mother's Day (yadda yadda yadda - nobody reads this, I'm Eeyore, self-deprecating (bad) jokes, blah blah blah)......For my mother today, I drilled holes in the wall of a bank so she could rob the place at her convenience. Then I hung pictures of her enemies being hung. It actually took a lot more time and energy than I thought it would. But it wasn't good enough. No...no it wasn't. She threw a whiskey bottle at me and shouted in her British accent "You call this a Mother's Day?! More like Crappy Son Day!" (it's likely that only those who have heard Mom's "voice" will appreciate that)

Mother's day nonsense aside, the big event of the weekend was the release of the new Star Trek movie. And it was fantastic! I was very skeptical when I first heard about it, but it blew away all the hype. They really did an excellent job with it. I've come to expect nothing but ineptitude and formulaic garbage from Hollywood in recent years. But for once, I have renewed hope. Or at least hope for the sci-fi space adventure genre. They successfully kept the essence of the old series alive while also updating and retooling for a new generation of fans. I have yet to hear of anyone walking out of that theater with anything less than positive to say about the film. Ah, but there goes my attention span....I'm tired and it's time for my random comments, obvervations, and other assorted crap:

1. I didn't win Powerball this week. They must have screwed up and sent me the wrong numbers. Or picked the wrong ones. Whatever. It'll get sorted out.

2. I don't wanna be a pirate, but I can handle being a Spartan

3. The Benton Wal-Mart's aisles must be 40% narrower than all other Wal-Marts. Also the Benton Wal-Mart's indigenous population has 20% more meth addicts and 58% more slow-moving old folks (who need their shopping cart licences revoked) than the average Wal-Mart.

4. Suggested beers of the week: Harpoon's Summer Lager and Schlafly's Kolsh.

5. No matter what the context or how crappy of a day I've had -- it's absolutely hysterical when someone vomits on Family Guy. And yes I realize that it's very "low brow" of me to laugh at it, but I don't care what you think. Unless you have money to give me....or you're a pretty lady....

6. The Land of the Lost movie comes out next month. It actually looks pretty good. Unless, of course, they did that trick where all the funny parts are only in the previews. Then Transformers comes out in July and G.I. Joe in August. It's really weird that the tv shows and toys I loved as a kid are now major summer blockbusters.

7. When Killian runs across the deck past my bedroom it sounds like a little horse galloping. No, I'm not exaggerating.

Alright, time for sleep. Happy Day After Mother's Day (all you pretend readers).

Robot Adriana Limas and Visions of the Future

2009-05-08T05:23:00.000-07:00

Somewhere around the severe thunderstorm we had last night and getting up to let Killian in from the lightning, wind, and rain, I had some really bad nightmares. In one I nearly had a heart attack as my heart was beating at an incredibly unhealthy pace - I just hope it was only beating that fast in the dream and not in real life as well. Because if it was...I may have done some damage to it. What observations can one make that would indicate a damaged heart? These are things everyone should know and not just medical professionals. Oh sure - "just go to the doctor." Have you tried making doctor appointments before? If you have a serious medical problem and call the doctor's office, chances are they're going to say "hmm....well, we can fit you in 3 weeks from next Tuesday." "Gee thanks, but uh, I think the infection in my foot will have either killed me or just taken the rest of my body hostage like a Somali pirate by then. So, if you have something a little sooner...like in a couple of hours maybe...that would be great..." Robots. I want medical robots. Millions of them. One in every home! Think C3PO from Star Wars but with Dr. House-ish medical knowledge. And maybe Adriana Lima's voice....

Why not just completely model them after her? Robot Adriana Limas with massive medical knowledge following you around all the time, answering every little query you have about the human body, measuring and analyzing all the little obervations you make about your own body's functioning (what? that's just me?), telling you how great you look in a polo shirt and golf shorts, giving you a massage, laughing at your jokes, doing all the driving for you...truly a miracle of modern science! Then an upgraded model could have an indestructible metal skeleton - like the Terminator - and be programmed to defend you from street gangs, killers, thieves, and other such evils that lurk in big cities. Just imagine -- being able to walk through congested, crowded, dangerous urban metropolises with the carefree stride of all the millions of people who seem to naively walk carefree through such cities! And with an impervious robot Adriana Lima at your side who finds your goofy, off-the-wall banter hilariously charming and endearing. It's the sort of future-world dream that American dreamers used to dream about....before the cynicism and societal cannibalism of the last few decades.

There was a time when dreamers looked toward the future and saw flying cars, utopic cities with smiling families, moon bases, rocket sleds, friendly aliens who were actually both little and green and who spoke in silly voices and floated around in tiny spacesuits with ridiculously impractical clear, glass space helmets complete with antennae. But lately the only futures we seem to dream about involve nuclear holocaust, disease, poverty, human isolation, eternally overcast skies and every major city resembling Detroit in Robocop, creepy gray aliens who either want to perform experiments on us, wipe us out, or control us for their own nefarious intergalactic schemes, and cool loners like Mad Max and John Connor walking the ruined landscape trying to stand up for what's right in a world gone mad.

Sure, the world is a scary place - but there's still room to dream about happy futures. Let your imagination skip past thoughts of communism and nuclear warheads and instead frolic amongst the robot Adriana Limas and little green cartoonish aliens who offer sarcastic observations on your daily life. Did I mention that the robot Adriana Limas also love sports and come programmed with an infinite number of flirtatious smiles, winks, and wiggles? Oh and maybe the capacity for love.....

But if you can't quite get past those grim visions of the future - how about a compromise? A bleak future world where robot Adriana Limas rule us all! All hail the robot Adrianas! All who oppose the Adrianas shall be destroyed! We shall have peace and harmony under the smoldering pouty eyes of our Great Leaders!

(I'll take it...)

10 Moments of Chaos

2009-05-06T05:24:00.000-07:00

Seems I've been running into mental roadblocks with my blogs lately. Thinking too hard. My old nemesis.

Well, I'm another year older, according to the calendar. And as the years go by (and as my brain gets filled up with engineering knowledge) my verbal skills seem to be deteriorating. My mind was once a steel trap for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Now I'm constantly having to think about a word's spelling or usage and making typing errors. Could be the math and science skills invading the verbal territory. That or I'm developing a neurological disease. Maybe it's ALS (Lou Gerhig's disease). I've been getting these little painless muscle twitches for months. All on the left side of my body (except for the eye twitch, which will affect either eye). The twitches have been in my forearm/wrist, bicep, and (in the last couple of days) the bottom of my foot. According to WebMD (the internet's heroin dealer for hyperchondriacs), I could have Lou Gerhig's -- but I haven't had any numbness and my face hasn't been twitching and my coordination seems about normal. So maybe I can call off the press conference at Wrigley Field... WebMD also suggested various types of epileptic seizures - but I haven't been thrashing around on the floor or fitting the other symptoms. In all likelihood, the simplest and most benign diagnosis is probably the correct one: (insert medical term I found last night and mentally misplaced since then) -- basically just benign muscle twitching caused by certain meds (some of which I take), caffeine, stress, fatigue, and exercise. Yet my inner Dr. House still fears the Lou Gerhigs....

I suppose I could review the big movie of this past weekend: Wolverine. But I'm bored with that idea right now....

Instead here's an attempt at describing 10 seconds of having ADD/ADHD: (think of each second as a snap shot of what's going on at that instant) (on second thought -- thinking of them as seconds doesn't work because its taking me a lot longer than 1 second to collect those thoughts and type them out...so let's just call them "moments")
:01 -- looking out the window - lighting of sky reminds of (flash dozens of images of different random days from the past)...sound from kitchen - metal clinking - silverware...leaves on the trees are so intensely green, vibrant, alive....music from tv...classical....from a movie....hairball on the floor needs to be picked up...where is Killian?....better not be clawing furniture....

:02 -- this song reminds me of high school...driving down I-24....(random moment of driving in rain on I-24)...music from tv again...(instant mental check of how hungry I am, whether I need to go to the bathroom)...check the clock...what day is it?....can't believe it's been 11 years since this album came out...(instant recall/reliving of some sort of emotions or feelings from when Pearl Jam's "Yield" was released)...the bottom drawer of the dresser is slightly open...

:03 -- is that the music from The Dark Knight coming from the tv now? I almost typed cocoon instead of coming (millisecond of worry about neurological disorders). Remember the movie Cocoon? Wilford Brimley - he was always stern and mad at kids. And he was born 60 years old. (is that a hunger pain? - hunger/bathroom check...still good) head itches. the lighting outside has changed again....(instant flurry of past moments that the light reminds me of)...

:04 -- gunshot from outside - someone hunting or maybe people being murdered nearby? What if they were being murdered and the killer decided to kill off everyone else in every house in the area. We'd have no way of knowing what was going on because we dismiss the gunshots as hunters. My hip hurts. (scans room and assesses the articles of clothing that are visible) what day is it?

:05 -- (mental hunger/bathroom check) getting hungry, what to eat? there goes Killian into the bathroom. (stops music from playing - too distracting) Nike shoes. University of Oregon. The guy who owns Nike gives tons of money to U of Oregon's athletic program. Green jerseys. Rain. Pacific Northwest. Seattle. Visiting Seattle when I was 15. Seafood. Mount Rainier. My foot is falling asleep.

:06 -- thinking too hard...mind screeching to halt...all tied up in knots...remember that movie I saw as a kid - or rather, the scene from the movie -- some poor guy had been captured by the mob or other bad guys and was tied to a chair with his legs tied to the seat of another chair. A guy with a bat then broke his legs. It messed me up as a little kid - made me afraid of having my legs broken...which transferred over to fear of injury in ways other than having mobsters break one's legs between chairs with bats. Plus the horror that that man must have felt not just having his legs broken but the anguish of knowing he wouldn't be able to walk and would have severe impairments even after his bones healed. Foot is still asleep. (mental hunger/bathroom check) hairball is still on the floor. Where's Killian now? head itches. Need to finish this and get moving. But have to make it to 10 "seconds." This is a stupid idea. Losing steam already. Quit criticizing yourself. Shut up. You shut up. Shut up is one of the many crass terms contributing to the downfall of our society. Each time a kid or young person tells another to shut up - our future grows that much dumber.

:07 -- how many coins on the dresser? silence in the kitchen now. Where's Killian? What time is it? (random memory of eating at Pizza Inn with the guys a few weeks ago) I don't want to eat at Pizza Inn. Where will we eat lunch today? They'll want fast-food.... my old red sweatshirt sitting on a box near the tv - haven't worn that in a while. What am I doing at the gym today? (random glance out of the window brings instant reminder of the sky/trees looking that way on a few particular days 3 years ago) foot twitching. hope it's not serious.

:08 -- having mental conversation with Jonathan while typing this. (looks at top of dresser and assesses each item) Need to get moving. (checks the clock and calculates whether there's time to go to the gym this morning) Thud from somewhere in the house. I need to read more non-textbooks. I think it's supposed to rain today. Don't know what to have for breakfast, nothing ever sounds good. Houston Astros. Jeff Bagwell. Craig Biggio. I don't even like the Astros. Astro the dog from the Jetsons. "Rat's rall right, Reorge!" Family Guy spoofing Elroy Jetson as a burned out drunk in his grown up years being thrown out of a bar and into a cab driven by Bam Bam (from the Flintstones): "take me to Astro's grave!" This leads to the time Family Guy spoofed a Peanuts 10 year reunion where Charlie Brown was a burned out drug addict who had sold Snoopy and Woodstock bad drugs leading to their deaths. Breakfast cereal. Why the association between cereal and the Houston Astros? Maybe because the Asros' colors and logo bear some resemblence to cereal box logos and colors. Hungry. Don't want cereal. Jeans on the floor near my backpack. When did I last have a beer?

:09 -- What will people think when they read this? Will anyone actually read it? Ear itches. (random Family Guy quote) (random memory of watching the Bears play the Tennessee Titans on tv this past fall) Need to eat. My truck seat is a torture rack. Staring into space....

:10 -- What music do I feel like listening to in the truck this morning? Sudden random irritation and annoyance for no reason at all. Don't forget the hairball. Killian better be behaving wherever he is. Not good to end a setence with "is." Grammar goes out the window when documenting one's thoughts....or (insert snide comments about other real-world writing). What's today's date? Foot twitching again. Fast twitch muscle fibers. Fiber in cereal. Cereal boxes that resemble the Houston Astros logo/colors. Boo-Berry, Crunch-Berry, Count Chocula. None of those resemble the Astros. Are the Cubs going to be any good this year? Been sitting like this too long, sciatica hurts. The cheesiness and fakeness of those medic-alert bracelet commercials. (millisecond worry about growing old and hoping medical science cures the aging process) Phone call from Ryan. Train of thought destroyed. (was there a train to begin with?)

So yeah....hope you enjoyed that. I'm not sure how accurate of a description it is...in fact, I'm sure I'll think of better ways I could have described the world of ADD to you "normies" later on. But for now -- I'm off...

If someone else wrote this, you'd be laughing right now

2009-04-28T18:16:00.000-07:00

Hey, let's just call it a year already.

This has been the windiest 4 months in western KY I've ever experienced. I want to see WPSD mentioning this and acknowledging that it has been unusually windy. And I don't want to hear any reference made to global warming. This is far greater than any overly-politicized issues --- this is nature straight up laughing at me. Nature knows I don't care for windy days (a breeze is nice, but gusty winds - especially on a cold and/or rainy day are just misery-inducing). Nature is being extra-extra-windy around here, but in such a way so that nobody except myself seems to notice. THAT's how insidious nature is!

How about that swine flu? Having just read most of Stephen King's "The Stand" in the last year, the flu coverage keeps filling my head with thoughts of 99.9% of the earth's population dying out and the rest having one last good vs evil battle royale.

Then we have the back-up Air Force One making unannounced photo-op flyovers of Manhattan. So much idiocy and only so little attention span within which to point out said idiocy. Why do we need to have this photo-op in the first place? Are these pictures going to have real live aliens in the foreground? Then are we going to sell the pictures to magazines across the globe and use the profits to pay off 1/29874000182363927256481238dkwudsjk02387377y29dfjer7uj77829th of all the massive debt we've racked up in the last 3 months? Hey - you know what? My cash flow is pretty bad right now (in fact, - seriously folks - I need a job post-haste), I think I'm gonna take a page from our government's playbook and just start crippling myself with massive credit card debt and loans from shady guys in bad suits down at the docks. Eventually my debt will be so large that I'll have no choice but to indefinitely keep pouring more of my income into paying off that debt (rather than keeping my hard-earned future income and spending it as I see fit -- but what do I know, it's probably better if I just let someone else decide these matters for me. Maybe someone at a central planning office can tell me what to do with my money...and maybe make my healthcare decisions for me...and tell me what to wear and what to say and what to think...life would be so much better that way...we could all get along and be happy and all the mean people in the world would start being nice....). Yep. No better way to jump-start one's financial situation than to burden oneself with massive, crippling, worry-about-it-next-year debt.

Oh, I mentioned healthcare....here's a tip: if things keep going the way they're about to be going -- buy some medical textbooks and as many medical supplies as you can get your hands on and practice on your friends and relatives. Because soon you'll be treating yourself. Or just hope you don't get sick. OR....be like the Buddhists and the Jedi and learn to "let go" of all that you fear to lose - including your health and/or life. Wouldn't that be awesome? To just live without being so afraid of death... To calmly accept that at any given time you might be leaving this life... And to not be upset in the least...

Yes, nature is an insidious and devious entity - a tormentor and a charmer - a lover and a fighter. One day she's making you shake your fists in frustration as winds blow 40 degree rain into your face and your tax returns across a flooded parking lot. The next she sparkles you with one of those life-affirming spring evenings when the sky is majestic and the trees are proud and green and deer look up from their secret distillery in the woods as you walk by, oblivious with your smiling face lost in the grandeur of one of life's rare, but sweet moments.

What really matters in life? Spending 8-14 hours a day at a job? Or being at home and around the ones you love, doing the things that interest you, appreciating the little things in this world - like the way skunks pay very little attention to humans when they're rooting around in the grass for whatever it is that skunks eat? Ah geez...here I go again...I'm about to segue into my rant about the insanity of the modern working world (or as the guys at school know this rant as: "Mindless, hopeless, soulless, life-sucking.....") with all it's obsessing over image and protocols and procedures and policies and regulations and formatting and gladhanding and preening and talking in circles and talking and saying nothing at all (like politicians, the poor soulless wretches). But I should stop myself here because all of you either a) don't care, b) don't get what I'm saying and just think I'm raving about something silly and that I'm thus wrong for raving about it, c) have been so succumbed by society that you are unable to see my point, or d) don't get that while I'm trying to make a point and express my strange view of the world, I'm also trying to amuse and entertain in some fashion.

And yet there's something about my delivery that differs from others who make similar comments/observations. Something that makes people laugh hysterically at others and just shake their heads at and dismiss me. And that makes me angry. Angry and petulant. Love that word. Petulant. It just leaps off the lips.

You know what's fun? Being an English major in engineering school and throwing your massive verbal intellect around with all the guys who love calculus and see the world in x-y graphs. A bird flies by -- I see a bird and think of ways to describe it, wonder where it's heading, give it a personality, name it Phil.... They see points on an x-y plane with a curve depicting the flight-path of the "object" as it moves in the x-direction. And throw in some sine and cosine mumbo-jumbo and some coulombs and derivatives and exponential letter "e's" and hyperbolic functions and partial derivatives and other made up crap for good measure. It's a BIRD!!!!!

We're all running out of time. Our bodies are oxidizing every day that we live, asteroids are conspiring to wipe us out, terrorists (oh wait....we don't call them that anymore - I FORGOT - how insensitive of me!) are eager to cause their "man-made disasters," (idiocy...just idiocy) influenza mutates and contorts itself into new and improved versions each year, the world's climate is warming...no wait, now it's cooling....no, it's warming...no, cooling...now it's just "chill-axing," artificial sweeteners, swimming in the ocean, breathing air, red meat, being married, being alone, tacos, long walks in the park, semicolons, and Jack Black movies all cause cancer and will kill you; Yellowstone Park is actually a giant underground volcano and will explode and wipe us all off of our couches and back to Fred Flintstone's happy stone-age family; earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, the Cloverfield monster, mass hysteria and hero-worship; and let's not forget nuclear armed countries that could very well fall under the rule of radical muslim extremist terrorists (what was the PC term that the government insists on using now? I forgot...) literally any day now. Basically there are - always have been - and always will be things that are either killing us or are actively trying to kill us (especially those dastardly asteroids....out there in space, plotting...scheming). We're always running out of time to live...to make the most of what we're given. So - RUN! Run outside and frolic with your loved ones and your pets and your car and your favorite plant! Do the things that mattter! Don't save it up for the day that comes conveniently AFTER the asteroids hit and the term-the-government-no-longer-uses-to-describe-terrorists 's attack and the socialized health care physician tells you you have 5 different types of cancer - after you wait in line for 49 business days and bribe the right folks at central planning. Get out there and spend your life wisely. Don't be like Donovan at the end of The Last Crusade and choose "poorly." Because then your body will instantaneously (and horrifically - especially if you're 9 years old and watching it happen to someone else) rot and turn to dust as your lovely (albeit traitorous) Austrian cohort shrieks in terror.

It just occured to me that this blog is almost coming across like it's the last one I'll ever write. What with the urging people to live life thing. Hopefully by pointing this out I will reverse whatever trick fate had up its sleeve.

So, let's just call it a night then. I'm sure there's a House or Family Guy on somewhere I should be watching.

One person's rant is another's "freedom fighter"

2009-04-25T06:26:00.000-07:00

I've been noticing a lot of military vehicles flying over the house lately. More than usual. Am I being monitored already? (Edit: No seriously. We normally see Apaches, Sukorsky's, transport helicopters, and transport planes around here -- but not at this frequency flying directly overhead. Plus - the other day it was sunny and the sky was perfectly clear. I was outside and heard the sound of a fighter jet approaching swiftly. The sound went directly overhead, but I never saw it. No clouds, no sun in my eyes, just nothing there. Maybe we have a new technology that actually makes the jet invisible. I HOPE so. It would give me at least a little bit of hope for the future of our military and national security.)

So, apparently my health insurance premium is going up another $30 this year! In the past it's gone up around $10 at a time (i don't see why it should be going up this consistently in the first place). In 5 years it has very nearly doubled!!!! This is nuts! How can they justify this? I haven't even been sick in over a year. I'm so annoyed, I'm going to go outside, build a laboratory, and start making my own medicines and vaccines. Heck, maybe I'll start my own medical school...

The other night I saw a little interview with the infamous Billy Mays. The shocking part: He wasn't yelling! In fact, he acknowledged how everyone thinks he's "always yelling," and explained it away as "cutting through the clutter." It actually made sense. We're always being bombarded with noise and ads and stimulation -- if Billy came on the tv and spoke calmly and quietly, no one would listen to him and no one would buy his products. And you know what...during the interview while he was speaking in a normal tone of voice...I actually almost found him likeable.

There's a show on the History Channel called UFO Hunters. Mostly it's a tiresome charade as this group of professed UFO experts visit the sites of encounters and try to investigate whether or not something actually happened. Just like most series nowadays (like the one with the guy who goes looking for monsters/legends), they find some circumstantial and often conspicuous evidence, they hear questionable stories from pseudo-reliable witnesses, and in the end they come up with nothing more than they started with. But the other night they actually managed to hold my attention. They were investigating the stories of secret Nazi projects involving UFOs. Apparently a former Nazi scientist claimed that they had received help from aliens and were trying to make their own flying saucers (and other secret weapons). The Nazis had a vast number of secret projects going on throughout the war and were also considered to be well ahead of the rest of the world in areas of rocketry and propulsion. In the course of the investigation they even found that one Nazi scientist had been conducting human experiments on how the body would be affected by space travel. The most interesting part of the show came when they visited a former secret Nazi bunker in Poland. Supposedly the Nazis had been working on their ultimate weapon there, something called a Reeza (sp?) - or "bell." The artistic interpretation showed a bell-like hovering metal object that had to be chained in place. I think it was supposed to be the engine or power-source for a flying saucer. While people could walk around in the bunker, there was a large section of it that had been sealed off long ago. In this sealed area is where the bell was alleged to have been stored. Upon returning to the US, they found that this bell actually had been found by our military after the war (along with a host of other Nazi projects) and was brought back here. I'm sure it's being studied by "top men." What men? Top men.

Fresh Beer and Dismembering Nazis

2009-04-22T21:40:00.000-07:00

So Quentin Tarantino's new film, Inglorious Basterds, is coming out in a few months. I caught the trailer online the other day. Basically the movie is about a group of Jewish-American soldiers in World War II who are dropped into Nazi occupied France with the purpose of brutally slaying, mauling, scalping, and otherwise killing Nazi troops. So, uh.....why no outcry that it glorifies brutal torture from a certain segment of society? What if the movie were set during modern times, say a group of Navy SEALs sent out to hunt down and disembowel terrorists, creating fear and terror amongst those who make it their life-mission to bring fear and terror to others? Well, I can imagine it would be publically slammed (by a certain segment of society) as horrible and despicable and would be boycotted -- or at the very least there'd be some nut saying "See! This is what evil America does to people in real life!"

But what is the difference here? Why is it okay for Brad Pitt and his buddies to scalp Nazis, but if Pitt was killing Osama Bin Laden it would be politically incorrect and offensive? Doesn't anyone else see the disconnect here? Some of the same people who freak out over waterboarding at Gitmo and love to brand the US as capable of only actions that are evil or wrong or reprehensible will go and see Inglorious Basterds and laugh and say "man, that was awesome." And they'd probably have no issues (or mere minor grumblings) if the story were true and we actually did send troops over to brutalize Nazis and cut swastikas into the foreheads of the survivors. Perhaps that's because Nazis have no political clout today. There's no political power to be gained from defending them. Or from victimizing them. Yes - just imagine that. Nazis being painted as victims. But some people in this world do it all the time with other just-as-evil groups/individuals.

Ah, well...enough of that. The movie looks like it has potential to be good. I can't even recall the last Tarantino movie that I saw...much less one that was decent.

Since Lent is over and I can have beer again, my tastes have been renewed and my enjoyment of beer reinvigorated. Yesterday I stopped in to pick up some new beer (my stocks are virtually depleted) and resisted the temptation (and the risk) of buying imports that could possibly be 9 months past their Best Before date. I was looking at some Tennent's, but could not find a date anywhere on the bottle and so passed it by. Instead I bought more Sam Adams White Ale and decided to give Schlafly's Summer Lager a try. The Schlafly's is excellent. An exceptional summer/spring brew. And for me, what was almost as good as the taste was the writing on the bottom of the lable: "Bottled With Love On: 03/30/09." That means the very beer I was drinking was only a few weeks old. And fresh beer is infinitely better than old skunky beer.

Accumulated Thoughts

2009-04-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

The following are random bits that amassed themselves here during the week:

In regards to Deanna's comment about the Itunes last-played time-stamp feature: I listen to music on Itunes WAY more than on my Ipod, but I'm pretty sure it records the times a song is played on the Ipod, too.

Apparently the Department of Homeland Security is now more concerned with "right-wing extremists" than Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists. It seems right-wingers who disagree with expansion of the federal government, limiting or taking away gun ownership, the erosion of American sovereignty, and lackluster national defense are now considered radicals and potential threats. Nice to know fascism is alive and well in the 21st century.

Bruises shouldn't take 3 weeks to heal.

It's official -- yellow tail sushi rolls are my favorite type of sushi roll (and typically they're in my price range).

My inner Dr. House flourishes more and more each day. If only I had that vast medical knowledge and superior memory-recall ability to vanquish all who stand in my way.

April is slipping away.....soon it will be May and then December and then 2035 and we'll all be old and wondering "where did the years go? we can't possibly be this old already?" No...actually, that'll just be me. The rest of you will all feel like you've lived long, fruitful, full lives and won't have that I-just-arrived-at-the-party-and-you're-telling-me-it's-over feeling like I will. And oh, the panic that will ensue as I wrestle with the fact that there are only a few years left. How can this be?! It's not possible! I was just born, I still feel so young! There's nothing filling the years in my memories! This is madness! MADNESS!!!!

Ah.....I feel better now...don't you?

I'm watching the House episode where House and Cuddy are on the flight over the arctic and they think there's a meningitis outbreak. What would happen if there really were an outbreak like that - or of a new even more deadly disease - on a long-distance flight with no airports to land at during an emergency? Well...obviously bad things would happen. Can you imagine if every single person died and the plane just came barreling in for a crash landing? Geez....that's....that's kinda dark and disturbing....

I'm still bitter about the Zywiec beer I bought last weekend being 8 months past it's best before date.

Okay, these random thoughts have lingered here too much. Time to set them free - to release them out into the world, to fly like little baby eaglets, with their soon to be massive talons and beaks.

The Drunken Easter Blog

2009-04-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

2:00 PM
No, I'm not drunk. Sure, it would make for wonderful literary entertainment for me to document a day of beer - but I have school work to stress over, family to visit with, and a job search to conduct. Luckily for you, dear readers, my mood is already growing cloudy due to 2 of the 3 previously mentioned items and I'm nearing the point where I toss my books and computer aside in aggravation and march to the refrigerator where the beer resides. So, those of you campaigning for the Drunken Easter blog just might get your wish. Calculus exams, projects, and resumes and cover letters be damned!

(to clarify, I gave up beer for Lent and as it is now Easter I can enjoy beer once again)

So, if you're sitting at home or are sitting bored on a relative's couch with your Iphone or Blackberry today - perhaps you should check in here every once in a while to see what madness ensues....

3:30
There's nothing quite like the head-shaking disappointment of purchasing one of your favorite beers - like the outstanding Polish brew Zywiec - then coming home and discovering that the Best Before date was 9 months ago. So your first beer in almost 2 months, a beer that is one of your favorites, tastes just like any other old skunky beer. I REALLY hate that!

4:10
You know a beer is skunky and old when you go from a top-shelf Polish brew to Amber-Bock and think the Amber-Bock tastes like heaven.

The beer drinking has been interrupted by a leak in the basement of unknown origin. Then Killian got up into the drop-ceiling again and that problem had to be resolved.

The family is in the living room watching the Master's while Callie and Cole play guitars and I waste time writing to you people.

4:55
Callie and I are reduced to working a puzzle while I swill skunky beer. Every beer in the wet-bar-fridge is skunky and old! I guess that's why they're in there for public consumption and not in someone's personal stash. It makes it hard to drink beer for the sake of amusing friends via my blog when all the beer is rather unpleasant to the pallet. Nevertheless, my grammar is slowly eroding. I've gone from skunky Zywiec to skunky Amber Bock to less skunky Sam Adams Winter Lager.

And no one has commented on this. I hope at the very least you all enjoy this tomorrow. While I enjoy a day of studying and job apps and post-teenage angst and coffee. Back to the puzzle, I guess...i really thought there would be more hilarity today...so far I'm disappointed. And you, dear readers, have a right to be disappointed too.

6:45

How in the heck did it get to be almost 7Pm already? One minute I'm making a puzzle and the next it's raining and the Master's is over and all the guys that everyone was rooting for choked and lost.

Did anyone actually see the movie Dumbo Drop? cause I sure didn't. I don't know why I'm thinking about that. Probably someone said something that sounded like Dumbo....

Cole is moping because he hates everything on the menu. The ham is going into the oven and I hear commotion in the kitchen. The puzzle is almost finshed.

What are you looking at? Yeah? well, Happy Easter to you too! You wanna fight about it? I'm Irish so it's a protected part of my cultural heritage that I can get drunk and fight about pointless things and not get in trouble.

Hey -- hey....maybe right now is a good time for me to fill out some job applications...that would be fun...ahhahahaha.....

8:00
The Drunken Easter blog has come to a sputtering end. After gorging myself on ham, green beans, bread, and asparagus I harassed Callie by poking fun of the way college girls always describe everything as "amazing." Then everyone took turns teasing each other and now we're waiting on dessert. The beer has been diluted by all the good food and I'm sobering up to the nightmare that is the coming week.

On behalf of the Evil Grin staff, I apologize for the potential lameness of this blog. But it was a good idea and perhaps with a few tweaks it could be a success some other time.

A Dose of Sanity, Please

2009-04-10T05:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I had one of those dreams that single people (and those who may not be entirely satisfied in their current relationships) often have. The one where you meet someone and fall in love -- you know, that initial unstoppable excitement and euphoria that envelopes you during those first few days/weeks/(months?). It could be someone from real life, or just a made up lovely figment of your imagination, or some random person you passed in a hallway. But then you awake and reality is standing over the bed, laughing and dripping scalding hot coffee on your head.

Has anyone else noticed those ADS alarm system commercials where guys dressed in black kick down the front door while someone is home only to be "scared off" by the sound of the alarm? My problem with these ads is the false sense of logic they propose. For example, in one there is an attractive young woman walking on her treadmill while listening to her Ipod. The treadmill is set up in a well lit room in front of a bank of windows - which conveniently have a row of thick rose bushes on the outside. Next the camera reveals two sinister-looking fellows lurking in the bushes and gazing menacingly at the woman. They skulk their way through the landscaping and proceed to kick the front door down. Now I would think that if two guys who took the time to buy matching black outfits and toboggans knew that the house they were about to break into was not empty, then they must be a) highly motivated to break in, b) have alterior motives, c) are professional mob hitmen, or d) are on drugs or otherwise lacking in rational coherent thought. As such, in real life these men would likely not be scared off by a mere alarm. They would know that a certain response time exists before any help could possibly arrive. Neigbors or the potential presence of other people in the home is also of apparently no consequence. I'm sorry. But in reality, something bad is going to happen to this poor woman regardless of whether the alarm goes off or Scott from ADS is "there to help" on the other end of the line. If this woman really wants to be safe and protect herself while at home walking on her treadmill in skimpy outfits in front of huge bay windows, well then she should buy and learn how to properly use a firearm. Or adopt a couple of dogs and have them professionally trained to defend her and her home from invaders. Or marry a Navy SEAL.

Speaking of Navy SEALs and dogs......the other day I was listening to Glen Beck and he told the emotional story of former US Navy SEAL, Marcus Latrell (sp?). Marcus is a Medal of Honor recipient and has experienced things most of us could not survive physically, mentally, or emotionally. From what I could gather, he's a man in constant conflict and turmoil, struggling to find peace in his life. While recovering from wounds during a now-famous battle against the Taliban he was given a dog to help him through the process. As Beck described it, the dog has been more than a pet or friend to Marcus, the dog has been a lifeline and they have both taken care of each other. Then recently Marcus awoke one night to gunshots in his front yard. Outside he found a group of local thugs who had just shot his dog - for fun. Apparently these walking human cancers had been killing dogs in that county for months. Marcus somehow restrained himself and did not shoot them right there. They fled but he chased them down in his truck and held them at gunpoint until the authorities arrived. Still these soulless scumbags taunted Marcus and threatened his life. This story about sums up the world. These thugs will now be processed by an inept justice system - perhaps get off completely or maybe only do a few years and then be back out in the world actively serving as agents of evil, eating away at what good exists. In a rational world, individuals who serve no good - who only detract from the lives of others, would not be allowed to continue existing. You don't make a person healthy by leaving a cancer in their body. You cut it out. If you cannot see that some people in this world are soulless cancers then you are either blind, in denial, or asleep. WAKE UP!

Sigh....

Oh. How about this pirate business. Enough already! Send in a SEAL team and wipe them out! Apparently this morning the (American) captain had to resort to trying to escape by jumping overboard - only to be recaptured by the pirates. This is insane! America is not supposed to negotiate with terrorists (not much different from a pirate) or be overly concerned with making sure no harm comes to those who threaten our people. (I heard a report yesterday that our administration warned the American crew not to harm the pirates or they would be held accountable. If true - it's really mind-blowing. Just insane.) We have the technology, we have the skill, quit worry about policy and politics and the ways other countries might paint us as bad guys and do the right thing! Save the captain and then go find the pirate mothership and SINK it. Then send a squadron of F-18s to strafe their bases on land. This is why we get hung up in wars that take years to finish and crippling political debate --- we get wrapped up in worrying about politics instead of fighting bad guys.

Well, I've got a lot of work to do today, so I can't sit here pointing out the world's insanities any longer. I wish I could do something to help, but I'm no messiah.

I can almost see the lights of the Goodyear blimp

2009-04-07T04:25:00.000-07:00

"Just wakin' up in the morning, gotta thank God / I don't know but today seems kinda odd" -- Ice Cube

It's funny how some songs stick with you through the years. ITunes has a feature that lists the last date/time that each song was played. Sometimes it's amazing to see that I haven't played a certain song in years. The above-quoted Ice Cube song was last played on June 3, 2004 - but to my mind it seems like I hear it (and every other song on my computer) at least once a month.

Why is it that I buy these flavored CoffeeMate creamers and they taste great the first time I use them, but then after that....I feel like the son in "There Will Be Blood" being forced to drink a tall glass of whiskey and milk?

So who saw House last night? I was NOT expecting a suicide! I figured someone was going to be killed off....but not like that....(I probably shouldn't say anymore in case some of you haven't yet seen it)

No, I did not go to Tater Day yesterday. On Saturday, however, I had a dentist appointment in Benton and had to dodge several dual-Rebel-flag-bearing pick-ups as I made my way through town. You know....as much as some of us roll our eyes at it, I'm sure other communities have similar annual cringe-inducing events. The Polish carpenters told me about this small town in Georgia where every year for Oktoberfest the entire town makes beer and gets hammered. They're even allowed to stumble around drinking in the streets. (No, not New Orleans) They said there's a lot of German immigrants there who brew authentic old-world style beers. (I wonder if that should be "old" with an e on the end?)

Sorry Wenders, time to gripe about something: the seat in my truck. Driving my truck has become physical torture. Normally just driving around in my truck causes my sciatica to flare up (back and hip pain), but after someone else adjusts the seat it becomes even worse. Then the more I mess with it trying to fix things, it only gets worse until I'm literally squirming in my seat and driving faster just so I can get out of the vehicle sooner. Hey - we live in a society where blaming others is the norm - maybe I can sue Ford for my chronic sciatica problems?! What say you, my abnormal amount of lawyer friends?

Yeah...what's up with that? An unusually large number of my friends are either lawyers or hold engineering degrees. I wonder what professions I do NOT have friends in..... I don't know any chiropractors. I don't know any police officers (do I?....). I don't know any Hollywood actors or screenwriters. No plantation owners. No research scientists. No astronauts. No preachers/evangelists. No politicians. No pro or semi-pro athletes. No psychiatrists (but a few psychologists). No mechanics. No librarians. No oil-drillers. But it's possible I do know someone who has force-fed their kid a tall glass of whiskey and milk.

Well, enough rambling. Time to start my day. I hope I don't have to use my AK...

"We Can Work It Out"

2009-04-06T15:12:00.000-07:00

"life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend" - The Beatles

So, the F-22 Raptor program was cut today, effectively handing over future air superiority to the Russians and likely China. History has shown that those who win wars, successfully defeat invaders, and remain thriving nation-states are the ones who have the better technology. The cavemen from the river kept the cliff-dwelling cavemen from stealing their food, cave-drawing chalk, and mammoth-hide underwear thanks to their development of the hollowed-out-massive-turtle shield. Oh, but I'm sure it probably wasn't very "fair" of them to have all that food or chalk or underwear while the poor cliff-dwellers went without.

North Korea launched their little ballistic missile the other day. Fun times. Meanwhile, our nation's Missile Defense Shield has been axed. Yeah. We don't need defense from missiles. Especially not when such trustworthy and admirable nations as North Korea have them.

The European Union has mandated that all emails and websites visited on every single computer in its countries must be archived. (apparently they already do this for phone calls) In a bold strike for that classic (and under duress) American ideal of "rugged individualism" the Swedes have decided to completely ignore this edict. At least one European country hasn't totally bought-in to the one world government idea. I find it interesting that the folks who hated the idea of the US tapping phone-lines and internet communications of suspected terrorists a few years ago are typically big fans of the EU (and/or the ethos that Europeans know what's best for all of us) and yet here's the EU being a big, scary, personal-privacy-devouring monster.

Speaking of one world government.....the fire-sale continues on America's sovereignty. For those youthful voters out there, this is the concept that our nation decides its own laws and cannot be controlled, dictated to, or shackled by another nation or group of nations. Yet that appears to be just what we are allowing to happen. Slowly and surely and sickeningly. Now someone other than the US government will be dictating the financial rules our country uses in our banking industry. Agreeing to international legislation that allows an international body to govern all bankings firms - even those in the US - does not sound like protecting American sovereignty to me. Sounds like...gutting it.

Hmm...what other joyful things are happening in the world...

Here's a quality I feel all leaders must have. Whether that leader is the CEO of a corporation, manager of a sports team, a Cub Scout leader, or the head of a nation -- they should always portray their organization in a positive light. As the head of that organization it is their JOB to be the world's biggest supporter, cheerleader, advocate, and defender of that organization! A leader is not going to be successful and is certainly not helping his/her organization by pointing out all the negative aspects of that organization when they are out and about in the public eye. I certainly don't want my Cub Scout leaders or Caveman chiefs going to tribal councils and saying "you know what, we're not very good, you guys are better than us and should tell us what to do."

Oh. I suppose the term caveman is offensive. The PC police will be out to get me.

If humanity survives long enough into the coming centuries (and is not too hindered by global war and tyranny) I foresee an eventual migration of Pilgrim-like "rugged" individuals to Mars. A group of oppressed people united by their desire for freedom and equality and seeking to escape tyrannical and/or fascist rule. People seeking religious freedom, the right to keep the fruits of their labor, and holding to the idea that there ARE such things as right and wrong - not moral relativism and justification for any and all misdeeds. Colonies will be established and eventually break away from their distant and totalitarian would-be masters. A New World will rise and become the beacon of liberty and opportunity, like America long before. And other nations will be jealous and spiteful and envious of the great things that the Martian nation embodies. But after a time, history will repeat itself again, and the people of Mars will grow apathetic and disconnected. Minds who thirst for power and control will find a way to sow their seeds, translating their message into whatever disguise is required to bring the pendulum back in their direction. The Martians will give away their freedom, just as the generations before them through all time have done. And thunderous applause and greedy smiles will snuff out the beacon of lady liberty. But though the pendulum may linger a bit longer on one side for a time, it will always find a way back.

Da Bears Have a Quarterback!

2009-04-03T06:36:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday to all. We begin today's blog with more glowing blather about the Toyota Tundra: yesterday I drove home through a severe thunderstorm complete with a tornado warning, hail, and roads awash with the sudden torrential downpour. And the Tundra handled it all like a champ. I felt invincible, like a Spartan warrior in a hippy colony.

I also noticed that since I've been driving the Tundra, my sciatica problems have been quite a bit better than normal. I think it has to do with the differing comfort levels of sitting in my truck versus sitting in the Tundra.

Yesterday my Chicago Bears pulled off a dazzling trade for Pro Bowl QB Jay Cutler. I've been going back and forth all night over whether they gave up too much for him. They sent Kyle Orton and both this year's 1st round pick and next year's 1st rounder in the exchange. That does sound like a hefty price. However, let's think back on how well the Bears typically draft in the 1st round: such stunning selections as Rex Grossman, Cade McNown, David Terrell, Cedric Benson, etc. More often than not the Bears' 1st rounders wind up as busts. So, in effect, they likely traded a pair of future busts to Denver for a proven, young QB whose presence alone is something they haven't had in a very very very long time. I'm excited. Now let's just shore up that defense and find another wide receiver. And bring back Ditka.

(I've had an idea brewing lately to do an NFL draft blog. Even fewer than normal of you would probably find that interesting. But it could be fun. We'll see if I actually can keep that idea wrangled long enough to do it. And before the actual draft happens at the end of the month.)

Last night Wenders demanded that I come up with blogs that are funnier and feature less complaining. (not sure where I complained during the retelling-of-lunch blog or the Tundra-is-awesome blog, but whatever, Wenders) But - as expected - here I am now unable to write anything remotely funny. Thanks, Wenders. I'm now completely paralyzed (creatively speaking).

Yesterday I randomly began my day with a Doc Holliday quote from Tombstone as my status. This spontaneously led to others posting further Doc quotes throughout the day. What a great movie. It never gets old. It's like Top Gun with its high level of re-watchability and plethora of quotable quotes, but with more credibility as a piece of art. And no Tom Cruise.

Dang. Still paralyzed. I'll get you for this, Wenders!

I've found over the years that I can excel at things when I am NOT supposed to be doing them. For instance, if two of us are working on different projects - I might be dead in the water with mine, but I can look over at what you're doing and assist you with ease. Because I'm not TRYING to do it. The mind clears, the walls cease to exist, calmness floods all the residents of my mind.

Only a little more than a week to go and I can have beer again!

Okay, I'm completely snakebitten now. Time to just wrap this up for the day. Remember, this blog is all Wenders' fault.

Lunch With the Chem E's

2009-04-02T05:08:00.000-07:00

April is going to be a big month. By the end, my life could be heading in a very different direction. And if a month from now certain issues have not been resolved...well...then that would not be good.

On a lighter note, yesterday at lunch I was trying to explain a scene from Monty Python's Meaning of Life to my friends Ryan and Jacob (who don't read this blog and who have never seen Monty Python). It went something like this:

Me: ...how did that song go? 'Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at 10 million miles a day'
Ryan: (to Jacob) I wonder what that is in revolutions per minute?
Me: Oh - no - it actually started when the two guys showed up at the door and asked for another guy's liver.
Ryan: (laughs and shares brief glance with Jacob)
Me: They're like (adopts British Monty Python accent) 'Hello, can we have your liver?' And the guy is all 'No, you can't have my liver!' 'Why not?' 'Because I'm using it!' And then they point out that he's signed an organ donor card and that they need his liver so he has no choice but to give it to them. So, they take him into the next room and start hacking out his liver while he's screaming and blood is flying everywhere. Then his wife comes in and (in female Monty Python voice) asks 'Can I get you boys any tea?'
Ryan and Jacob: (laughter and shaking of heads)
Me: So while one of the guys is still ruthlessly hacking out the liver while the poor guy screams and carries on, the other takes the wife into the kitchen and starts hitting on her.
Ryan: (rolls his eyes a little, mocking Rick's long-winded story-telling)
Me: Hey! Don't give me that look - I'll cut your face!
Ryan: I love it when you tell me you're gonna cut my face. There's just something about your tone when you say it.
Me: Yeah, well every day in Physics you randomly look over at me and tell me you're going to kill me. At least all I'm doing is cutting your face.
Ryan: (laughs)
Jacob: And I'm just going to murder both of you when you least expect it.
Ryan: This is true.
Me: ANYWAY! The one guy has the wife in the kitchen and is hitting on her. He keeps trying to convince her to go out with him and she's non-committal, so he then asks 'well...can we have your liver?' She's unsure so he says 'well, maybe this will convince you,' and the refrigerator door opens up and a guy steps out and sings a song -- the one about the planet that's evolving and revolving at 10 million miles a day. After the song she's convinced and says they can have her liver.
Ryan: So what was the meaning of life? Wasn't it 42?
Me: No that was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. At the end of the the movie (Meaning of Life) there's a guy sitting there who says 'Oh, I suppose you want to know the meaning of life,' and he rattles off a short spiel about being nice to children, not eating too much fat, try to have fun, etc, etc.
Ryan: I need more breadsticks.

Ah...those are the moments that make engineering school (almost) bearable.

Birth of a Salesman

2009-03-31T17:26:00.000-07:00

I'm about to do something completely out of character and that is sure to have the opposite effect: I'm going to sell you something. (ooo, I feel slimy already) Maybe "sell" is a bit strong. Perhaps "blather glowingly about" fits better. Those of you who know me well, however, are likely familiar with my unique ability to create the opposite of interest when attempting to promote, sell, or speak highly of something. I often point to high school trips to Blockbuster where my suggestions for rentals (such as "hey, that's a good movie" or "how about that one, I've been wanting to see it") would instantly extinguish any and all interest the other members of the group may have had in said film. While re-reading Catch-22 for the umpteenth time, I came across a character who prior to his deployment in World War II had been recruited by large companies for the sole purpose of running them into the ground. It had something to do with the heads of the companies making a profit off of the companies failure. (hmm....why does that sound familiar...) Then I began to think -- "hey, maybe large companies could hire me - not to promote their products - but the products of their rivals!" Just imagine it, Apple hires me and puts me in national ads talking about how great PCs are --- weeks later Bill Gates is auctioning his house and popping Prozac like Dr. House eats Vicadin. Coke-funded ads feature me chugging Pepsis after a jog through wind-swept, sunshine-strewn fields --- kids universally declare Pepsi as "lame" and their sales plummet. Hanes hires me not to promote the comfortsoft boxer briefs I love so much, but to frolick with supermodels and puppies in Jockeys or Fruit-of-the-Looms. I could make millions! I could determine which companies rise and fall! [this line of thought led to a political comment which has been removed by Rick's Thought Police - not to be confused with THE Thought Police. Thank you for your compliance. Please move along and continue reading. Send Rick your money. Or at least lucrative book deals.]

Anyway...my point was that, in the past, when I have tried to influence others into trying a product, movie, food, vacation destination - typically they react as if I just told them the product was defective, the movie stunk worse than Alexander and The Happening combined, the food was primarily composed of industrial waste, and the vacation destination was actually a labor camp. Then I get frustrated and stop trying to make suggestions.

What was I selling again? Oh right, the Toyota Tundra. (Maybe this would work better if you could hear me doing the Mike Smith voice) I've been driving a Tundra for the past few days while my truck is in the body shop. I grew up strictly an "American vehicles only" kind of guy. But this past year I drove my dad's Prius and was impressed. Now that I've gotten a taste of V8 power and the Tundra's ultra-smooth ride, I'm finally ready to join the bandwagon (and just in time for Toyota to see their first financial woes in recent memory). So if I were Mike Smith, what would I say about the Tundra? "This is Mock Smiff. We're in the truck business! If you want a truck that can do it all -- and I mean do it all -- then the Tundra is the truck fer you! It's got V8 power and interior room to spare. It'll haul anything you need to haul. Come on down to Mock Smiff Toy-yota, Mit-suh-bish-a, Kia and let us put you behind the wheel of one of these beauties!" [Rick's Thought Police would just like to point out in the off-chance that someone reading this happens to know (or in fact, is) Mock...er...Mike Smith, that the previous parody was merely meant in jest and that Rick would jestfully parody his own mother in the same manner.]

So there. I just sold you on Toyota Tundras. The company is doomed. I have a lot of friends who not only drive Toyotas, but openly declare their love and affection for them. I'm afraid now things will change. You may not understand or even question why, but soon after reading this blog you will cease to feel the same way about your precious Corrollas, Land Cruisers, and 4Runners. Your minds will be clouded by images of me happily driving and talking about Toyotas...and your stomachs will turn and some bizarre and unexplainable subconscious force of nature will compel you to feel the opposite of how I feel. By next week you'll be pulling into Ford, Chrysler, and BMW car lots and practically handing them the keys. At that point, you'll take donuts in trade. (mmm...donuts) (is it donuts or doughnuts?)

And now - it's too late. Like a good super villain I can freely monologue at this point and reveal "my plan." As some of you may be realizing, I'm not actually "selling" anything for Toyota, but for their rivals. All I need now is some green hair dye and Joker warpaint.

But all joking aside, I really do love this Tundra. Normally when I drive in the rain it's a white-knuckle ride as the ruts in the road pull me back and forth. But in the Tundra today it might as well have been perfect conditions outside. If only parking that behemoth were a little easier...

My favorite pro-Tundra thought so far is from my most recent status: it's a tank - I could crash through Soviet roadblocks like they're made of cotton candy!

[Thought Police again -- clarifying that Rick does not work for Toyota or its rivals, but should either of them wish to hire him to counter-promote the other's products, he could sorely use the money and employment. Or if Toyota just wanted to give him a free Tundra for his glowingly positive blather, that would be swell, too.]

Oh, What a Wonderful World

2009-03-30T16:38:00.000-07:00

Recently I was once again musing/moping about how short the football season is and how painfully long the torturous NBA season drags on with its annoyingness. Baseball has a pretty long season, but it's not annoying to me. Here's where that line of thought led:

I think part of baseball's appeal is that it's this consistent presence for about 7 months. A comforting friend that's always there. If you miss a few games during the summer because you were out doing fun warm-weather outdoor things -- no problem. Its something to check in on after dinner when you're unwinding. It's not really something to get amped up about.

I understand football takes a toll on the human body. But surely they could fit in another month or two. Ah, hell, I'm probably just being selfish and dreaming.

I don't know why I'm going on about baseball, but my favorite time for baseball is right around July 4th. The summer is almost at the midway point, you're grilling a lot, you come inside while some brats or burgers are cooking and check in on the game, you're having a few good beers, maybe your girl or buddy is over. Maybe it's a gathering of your best friends. Maybe the news comes on and says cold fusion has in fact been perfected - free energy for everyone and that most of our elected officials have stepped down after admitting to their idiocy and greed and careers of dirty dealings. Then scientists announce they have cloned Adriana Lima and are distributing 1 free clone per heterosexual male across the globe. Instantly all wars and crimes come to an end as we all bask in Adriana's glory. Old age is cured and we all live long lives while retaining the appearance of our 25 year old selves. Heath Ledger returns from the grave and immediately begins work on Dark Knight sequels. All the worlds artists, musicians, and actors get off their high horses and get busy creating grand works for humanity's enjoyment. Cancer is cured. Idiots are launched into the sun. The Canes win the NC almost every single year in disgusting displays of dominance not seen since Biblical times. Maroon 5 are executed on live tv. Reality tv is banished. Those who long for it are dealt with swiftly and vengefully by one Mr. Ray Lewis. Everyone's lives begin to make sense and a feeling of purpose and contentment spreads across the land. Birds stop flying randomly into windows. Planes stop falling from the sky. Billy Mays is chased until exhaustion by angry mobs for the rest of his days. Golf ceases to be eternally frustrating. Men are no longer allowed or even physically able to sing in those annoying nasal, high-pitched voices that all the emo kids sing with. John Mayer's evil spell is broken and he is destroyed. Snow is available on demand. (Sunshine as well) Sleep no longer leaves one more tired and sore and achey than when they went to bed........(you mean that's still just me?). Everyone learns to get along and be tolerant....or they're shot into the sun. The Cubs win the World Series -- more than once! Beer no longer kills braincells, it nurtures them, praises them, reads them stories and educates them in the schools of its choice. Anxiety-inducing big city traffic is done away with as cars drive themselves in a neat and orderly fashion. Movie studios stop pumping the same movie trailer into whatever tv I'm watching every 10 minutes for two weeks until the crappy movie comes out in theaters and then I still don't go see it but I can't stop doing the stupid lines from it even after a month has gone by "you wanna hear what I did to your daughter? I wanna hear you beg for your life." Dr. House is pulled through a wormhole from an alternate reality and is summarily cloned and distributed to every hospital. Everyone enjoys that. 50 cent tacos return to Casa Mexicana for good. Cats and dogs live in harmony and pizza is no longer fattening. Oh what a wonderful world it could be!

See? You never know what station my train of thought is going to pull into.

Elvis Will Have His Revenge ("in this life or the next")

2009-03-27T18:05:00.000-07:00

It's been an intense week around here. I've been up since 4:30AM and my mind should be crashing at any time. But I feel the need to ramble a little, dear readers.

This week's entry in the Increasingly Annoying Commercial category is the entire Wendy's campaign where the cartoon "Wendy" remarks in that eye-gougingly perky voice at the end of every ad, "it's WAY better than fast-food, it's Wendy's!" It's only a matter of time before something horrible happens as a direct result of that voice. When some loon in Harrisburg, PA fills a Wendy's dining room with 8000 gallons of tartar sauce from a hijacked tartar sauce tractor trailer - you'll know what sparked the madness.

Remember a couple weeks ago when I couldn't stand seeing commercials for those movies that had been playing over and over on tv? The Last House on the Left --- "you wanna hear what I did to your daughter?" Yeah. Well, for the last two weeks they've been pounding "12 Rounds" into my brain every 10 minutes. The catch-phrase this time around is "I'm gonna hunt you down and I'm gonna kill you!" Because one year ago he took something from the bad guy "that can never be replaced!"

Do you hear that? That's the sound of Hollywood scratching around in the dumpster of creativity for ideas. Maybe they'll find a half-eaten bearclaw...maybe an old shoe....partially broken mechanical toothbrush....or maybe they'll just remake some more old movies. Yeah, sure, that works.

Tomorrow morning my beloved Miami Hurricanes will hold their annual Spring Game. But instead of getting to watch the game on tv up here, I'll be treated to a 2003 Tennessee high school softball game on CSS. Get the popcorn ready! Mom! MOM! MEATLOAF!!!

May I make some more suggestions for the Intolerably Increasingly Annoying (an ever-expanding description) Commercial category? How about any and all erectile dysfunction ads. When these first started airing I was young enough so that it was uncomfortable viewing them around the family. Now they're not so much uncomfortable as they are just annoying, repetitive, and leave me feeling like there's a giant corporation out there that doesn't think very highly of my intelligence (or most men's for that matter).

While we're at it, let's do away with that "Viva Viagra" song. Elvis Presley is going to rise from his velvet-encased grave (or karate kick his way down the ramp of his spaceship -- OR come out of seclusion from his quiet life as a groundskeeper in a tiny West Texas town) and single-handedly carve a path of destruction rivaling that of the Cloverfield monster and Jack Black on a bender combined as he wipes out every last individual involved with the desecration of his song. (That was quite a Faulkner-esque sentence. Oh wait - no - it didn't drone on pointlessly for pages about characters you could care less about and about eras of history that are best left for dead in the ditch of time. Faulker. I have a growing list of the most over-hyped and over-rated people and things. That might be two lists.... Anyway, he's on there. Along with a certain president and a Florida Gator football player (hint: a lot of people treat both of them like walking deities).) (This paragraph has so many parenthesis it's starting to look like my Excel projects from last spring's horrific computer programming class.)

Where was I? Ah yes, Elvis wreaking havoc as the nation takes a breather from all the bailouts and movie trailers. Peanut butter and banana sandwich crusts the size of Buick Skylarks littering the countryside in his wake. Sweat-soaked scarves tossed haphazardly into rivers causing untold ecological damage. And you know what Elvis will say just before he begins his vengeful mission? "I'm gonna hunt you down and I'm gonna kill you." Of course.

200 Evil Grin points (similar to Schrute Bucks) to whoever can tell what movie, actor, and line the title of this blog is a reference to.

Oh, one more thing. Yesterday just before our first exam of the day, Ryan and I were both "cracking up." For some reason he found it wildly amusing when I said I was cracking up "like a package of crakers being run over by a semi full of elephants and Nazi stormtroopers." (the elephants because they're heavy...and the Nazis because they're menacing...) So, I thought I'd share and see what the rest of you think about that.

Escaping the Room of Scorn

2009-03-24T04:27:00.000-07:00

As I was staggering about in the dark this morning, trying to make coffee and work out the tiredness and soreness from sleeping (what? everybody doesn't wake up more tired and sore than when they went to bed?), I was thinking about Liam Neesan and his wife's tragic passing. I recalled how it had taken a while for me to like Neesan. As an actor, he had to grow on me. But then I realized that that was the case with a majority of my favorite actors.

Matt Damon -- in "Good Will Hunting" he struck me as a pretty boy punk who'd always had it easy. Natural good looks and perhaps a pushy stage-mom can make up for talent or any other possible area where one might be lacking. I didn't hate the guy or anything, I just figured him for yet another of the pretty boy actors Hollywood churns out (which is also a prime reason why they have so few marketable leading male actors these days -- they went away from the Clint Eastwood and Harrison Fords who were appealing to both the male and female audience in favor of Ben Afflecks and skinny little male-models types who fail miserably when put in a role that requires being something other than pretty or having great hair.). But after a few years and a few good roles he had earned my respect and is now one of my favorites. Like Heath Ledger was in the process of doing, he had crossed the boundary from being loved by women and mostly scorned by men to universal acceptance. THAT is the key to being a leading male in Hollywood. I'm getting tired of having to scream it. Yet Hollywood keeps pumping out the same lame punks, year after year. That High School Musical kid, Ashton Kucher, Orlando Bloom, etc are all famous because they're appealing to girls. But men (by and large) can't stand these guys. Bloom has come very close to breaking out, but I think he would have to shave his head, adopt a sarcastic, I-don't-care attitude and then start taking quirky roles that highlight completely different aspects of his character than we have previously seen. Like Ledger taking on character-actor type roles - the opposite of a heroic leading man.

Brad Pitt is another who made his way out of my Room of Scorn and is now one of my favorite actors (Russell Crowe is probably my favorite who is still in his prime, Ford would have to get the all-time label due to his body of work). Pitt was insanely popular with the ladies when he first arrived on the scene. And this annoyed men greatly. But through wise choices in the roles he took and showing he could be a man's man he made a pioneering leap over the Fan Gender Gap. Once upon a time a guy wouldn't be caught dead claiming Pitt as one of their favorite actors. A blog such as this, printed out and rushed back through time via Trans-Temporal-FedEX (what? You've never used them? They're very handy and reliable. Especially when you absolutely, positively, HAVE to get a package back through time - on time!) a guy like me would be mocked and ridiculed for printing such praise of Pitt. I might even get ex-communicated from the Order of Manliness.

Back to my original thought, though: I never considered Neesan to be part of the pretty boy group. I just didn't care for him. Other actors who have overcome the Room of Scorn include:

Johnny Depp -- it's okay to like him now and even revere him as a guy's favorite actor. But there's still some of that pretty boy stink clinging to him. Somehow being Jack Sparrow solidified him both as a guy's-guy and as a sex symbol for the ladies. That's one remarkablely lucky role selection.

Christian Bale -- he's in a dead heat with Crowe for my favorite "current" actor crown and probably at the top of the heap in Hollywood right now. Any role he wants - he can have it. Superb actor and extremely versatile. However, there was a time when I didn't like him. It was only a brief period of time and my level of dislike was rather small. But I did dismiss him because of his pretty boy status. And he quickly won me over and the hearts, minds, and wallets of America.

Roberty Downey, Jr. -- not only was the guy a star from the 80s (that's one strike), but he was always relapsing into drug problems and being given 2nd, 3rd, 45th chances by Hollywood (another strike with the guys - guys who seem to be of the mindset that an actor who does drugs should be able to handle it and just shut up about it), and to top it off he had made his star by being a pretty boy and protraying a cocky, smart-aleck persona in most of his roles. Not winning over the guys that way. But then this past year he rose from the depths of Scorn-dom and in one summer won a tentative place in the esteem of the male audience. His roles in Iron Man and Tropic Thunder showed a completely different side of RDJ. Or at least a side the male audience had never seen before. We haven't fully bought-in to him yet, he's still on a probationary status, but with future roles in Iron Man sequels looming, he's probably a safe bet to be in our good graces down the road.

Well, that's enough of that. I don't know where these topics come from sometimes. I need more coffee...

Nights of High Tension

2009-03-21T07:23:00.000-07:00

Well, last night was another of my random sleepless, high-blood-pressure, paranoia-filled nights where I wonder what's wrong with me and if my heart is just going to randomly stop beating. It all started earlier in the evening while watching tv. If one's heartbeat were like a hand gently rapping at a steady pace on a door, all of a sudden it was like the hand gave 3 or 4 faster, pounding raps and then went back to normal. After that I kept checking my BP, which over the next few hours ranged minute to minute from normal (125/75) to 135/85 to 150/96, but typically hovering in the 140/90 range. I hadn't been stressed or nervous or even had caffeine. I had my (mostly) sleepless night and this morning took my BP again -- it was still around 140/90 -- then dropped to 135/85 after a couple of minutes.

It's times like these that I wonder if I will survive my 30s. If my BP is this crazy now -- what will happen when I have a stressful job and wife and kids and mortgage?

Anyway...last night was the Battlestar Galactica series finale. I know none of my friends watch the show, so there's not much point in commenting on it here. Nevertheless, it was a pretty solid ending. I've found that most often when my favorite shows come to an end, the final episodes feel forced and lifeless or are just completely unsatisfying. Seinfeld, anyone?

Well, maybe it's my high/erratic blood pressure this morning, but I can't seem to stay focused writing this. Can't seem to stay interested in typing things.... like if your favorite team were playing and the game was on tv, but you had the stomach flu...so you had a hard time caring as much as normal or even watching the game. And instead you just went into the bathroom and laid down on the tile floor and wished you felt normal so that you could care about the game like you knew you should.

Fashion Pet Peeves

2009-03-15T06:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday did not go very well. Here's to a brighter Sunday for everyone. And, randomly, a list of some of my Fashion Pet Peeves:

1. The whole 80s-fashion-is-cool thing that the high schoolers and college kids have going on these days. Makes me wanna puke.

2. Guys in their mid to late 20s who overdress for social occasions as a way of expressing how successful they think they are. i.e. A guy who makes 35K a year but who schmoozes with the local big shots so he shows up to the moderately upscale watering hole to hang out with friends his own age dressed like either Tom Brady in a GQ ad or a high profile defense lawyer walking into court.

3. Dudes who wear wife-beaters out in public on a regular basis.

4. Girls with the giant sunglasses. The sight of these cockpit-window-panes instantly knocks 50 points off a girl's IQ and their whiny, nasally, Paris Hilton voices can be heard complaining about the crowds at the mall with the same level of despair as refugees lamenting their devastated homelands.

5. Hippies and anything they wear.

6. Girls with the short 80s haircuts (ex: abruptly cut off at mid-ear with goofy upward arcing line around the back). Let's learn from the mistakes of the past, not repeat them.

7. Jorts and sandals. Especially when worn during promotional photo shoots by college football stars who receive obama-ish levels of extreme hype and hero-worship (but at least those stars have actually done something - oh snap!).

8. Tight clothes on overweight people.

9. Huge clothes on skinny people.

10. When guys wear shorts outside and it's below 40 degrees

11. When grown women dress like they are 9.

12. Pink polo shirts. Especially if you are in college, a fraternity, or spend a lot of time either at the gym or in the bathroom putting gel in your hair.

13. When women who are at least moderately attractive wear 1-piece bathing suits. Why are these things still around?

14. Crocs. They're neon-colored, plastic slippers!

15. Those hats that my father would call "Tammies" that the emo crowd like to wear. I always see the singer from Fall Out Boy wearing one. Are you a 70 year old man from Scotland? Is it the 1800s? No? Then take off the hat and lose those skinny jeans. Be a man!

16. Popped collars unless being popped ironically for comical Euro-trash model poses.

17. Those big, furry looking boots I see a lot of girls wearing lately.

That's all I have for now (that are appropriate for this forum...I had to edit a few out). Feel free to add your own in the comment section - or the comments on whatever social networking site this is linked to.

Another Spring Break Bites The Dust

2009-03-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't know how many of you watched Battlestar Galactica's second-to-last episode ever last night. In fact, I can't name a single friend that I know watches the show. In any event, last night's episode was a very good one - very intense and building up to next week's 2 hour finale.

I have a lot of work to do today, but I'm considering only spending a couple of hours on it and then running off to the movies. I woke up this morning thinking I had to stay at home today because there would be carpenters here. But due to the rain, they've decided to not work today and instead come tomorrow. So, now I have the day free (other than my work) and tomorrow I have to remain here. Hmm....what to do...

So my spring break is over and what did we learn? Well, we learned that the Weezer song "The Spider" is still too depressing to listen to all the way through. We learned that just because you say you're going to have a nice relaxing day to yourself doesn't mean you won't find yourself cleaning out basements, trailers, and unloading truck-bed's full of tools in torrential downpours. We learned that March is still a lousy excuse for a month. We learned that when you grow your hair out for 7 months and then go to get it trimmed (just a bit) you might not be happy with the results. We also learned that spring breaks spent at home go by just as quickly as those spent drinking and getting skin cancer in warmer locations.

The other day I finally turned on the Genius program on Itunes. I had been fearful of doing this as it scans your music library for information and then sends it to Apple. However, it claims that it does so anonymously. Well, I took the plunge and now Apple has all sorts of secret info on me. I had heard people rave about the supposedly "eerily perfect" playlists that Genius creates. Uh...I'm just not seeing it. I keep giving Genius shots at coming up with playlists and I'm not seeing at all how they are supposed to be so great. Basically it seems like it starts with a random song and then selects songs by similar artists to go with it. Maybe that's the point...and maybe that is a good idea...but I like a little more variety. I have almost 3,000 songs on my Itunes and a wide range of different artists. Yet when Genius fills a 25 song list I'll find maybe 12 different artists and often multiple songs from the same album. In a 25 song list I shouldn't find 2 songs from Thom Yorke's solo album - considering that there are about 10 songs on that album and those are the only 10 Thom Yorke songs out of the 3,000 on my computer.

But the real reason I wanted to try Genius was for the new music recommendations. It's supposed to offer up selections from the Itunes store that you would like based on your library. I've been a little more happy with this aspect of the program, but again feel like there should be more variety. In the Itunes store they'll offer a list of 15 recommended songs with a "more" tab that keeps generating more lists. There have been a lot of good ones on there that have caught my interest. However, I keep seeing the same bands and even same albums over and over again. I have an astounding number of Pearl Jam, Radiohead, and Muse songs on my computer - but I don't seem to be getting a lot of recommendations that are similar to them. Instead I get a lot of indie bands (which for the most part I'm not into) and seemingly random rock songs that I've never heard of. Also they're really pushing the Smashing Pumpkins Rarities album. Nearly every 15 song list has a track from that album on it.

So my jury is still out on Genius, but I'd like to hear what others have to say about it.

Another complaint about Itunes and its music catalogue: how come I can't find all the b-sides and rare tracks that I want? Why offer a seemingly random selection of such songs and not all of them? I guess this is on the artists/labels themselves. If you're going to sell your music on Itunes, why not make all of it available? Kudos to Radiohead for making a solid effort in this regard. But they still need to make those extra tracks from their last album available.

Okay, time to get some work done....and then maybe an attempt at fun today...

Movie Ads and Haircuts

2009-03-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I got a haircut today. I didn't intend for her to cut much off - really, I just wanted things cleaned up a bit. I hadn't had a haircut in 7 months, so I wanted my hair to look "on-purpose shaggy" as opposed to "haven't had a haircut in 7 months shaggy." But it seems more was lost than I initially thought. I'm sure it'll be okay, though. Give it some time and the Joker hair shall return. But maybe it's best to wait until the Fall for that...

I'm hearing mixed reviews on The Watchmen. Apparently there are some "awkward" scenes in it. Of course, I was never all that hyped up about the film to begin with. When the frequency of a movie's commercials begin to rival those of CashForGold.com and Billy freakin' Mays, chances are the studio knows the movie is not that great and needs to be hyped. For instance, I've seen the previews for "Last House on the Left" about once every 8 minutes for the last 2-3 weeks. But it feels like I've literally been seeing the ads for 8 months. "You wanna hear what I did to your daughter?" "I wanna hear you beg for your life." And I wanna hear Hollywood get some new ideas.

I'll never forget about 9-10 years ago when the movie "Double Jeopardy" with Ashley Judd came out. It was absolutely ridiculous how often its ads were on tv. I felt like I was losing my mind for about a month. I was hearing the announcer's voice in my sleep say the words "Double Jeopardy" over and over. And I still have never seen the actual movie.

But I do know that Ashley Judd - like me - got a haircut in that movie.
Some other folks who got haircuts:
Demi Moore shaved her head in G.I. Jane
Brad Pitt went from spiked to buzzed in Fight Club
Sean Connery had his "grunge" hair style cleaned up in The Rock
Keanu Reeves went from bald to slightly-more-than-buzzed to regular-late-90s dude in The Matrix

What do all those movies have in common? Well, let's see... they all involve fighting, guns, death, and with the exception of Double Jeopardy - groups of people united to fight for a common cause. But I guess you could say that Ashley Judd and her lawyer were united to fight for the cause of getting her set free from prison for not killing her husband. But what does all this have to do with my haircut? Well - I didn't shave my head, so I'm not a woman trying to make her way through Navy SEAL training. I didn't go from a trendy, spiked up style to a buzzcut - nor do I conduct bare-knuckle brawls in basements - although, it is possible I could be a figment of my own imagination -- nevertheless, I'm not Brad Pitt. Also, I do not want to hear what you did to my daughter and I DO want to hear you beg for your life. I suppose I did go from a grunge/Joker look to a slightly tamer more suitable-for-public-viewing style...so maybe that means I'm Sean Connery. And what would Sean Connery do to the people who hurt his daughter and left her for dead in a lake? Well, after he finished systematically attacking and killing each of them until only the ringleader was left, he would be injured and the ringleader would appear to have the upper hand. Perhaps Connery's wife would be threatened at this point by the shirtless and scruffy looking ringleader who would again ask if anyone - anyone at all - would like to hear what he did to his daughter. Eventually Connery himself or mabye his injured daughter would kill the ringleader. The battered, bloodied, and emotionally exhausted Connery family would hug each other and then dispose of the bodies together. Maybe the local police would sympathetically look the other way or even assist in covering up the incident as the thugs who attacked the daughter had already been causing problems in the town. Then Sean would decide to grow his hair back out because he was always happier having it long and grungey. But then one day he'd go in for just a trim - just to clean things up a bit - and suddenly find himself set back a couple of months in his growing season. And then Sean, depressed by the loss of his hair, would gather up a band of scruffy cronies (and Giovanni Ribisci), go to a sleepy lake-side town, and begin attacking pretty young women and randomly showing up at the family's houses afterwards.

And then they'd make a movie out of it and show the preview 89 times a night.

Conspiracies Abound

2009-03-09T07:03:00.000-07:00

Here's to the most boring spring break ever. I think I have managed to relax a little, though, which is a good thing...and "all part of the plan."

I have not seen "The Watchmen" yet, so I cannot comment on it. But I did buy the new U2 album. I was skeptical of the positive early reviews, especially a few accounts which proclaimed it some of their finest work ever. It only took the first track to impress me. On one hand the album reminds me of their Joshua Tree days - but with a modern style and production. On the other hand I feel like it is a very good summation of their body of work to this point. Like virtually all U2 albums, there are still arguably one or two "duds," but this time around each song reveals different layers upon further listening. I keep expecting the band to hit the wall as they age and become irrelevant. Thankfully they have managed to avoid that fate.

2009 has to be the windiest year I can recall! Seriously! Is this another one of those things where I'm the only person who sees it? For the last 2+ months we have had an inordinate amount of windy days. Probably enough to last an entire year. I want studies done on this. I want it politicized. I want vast amounts of tax-payer money spent on dubious and conflicting research projects. I want people guilted and frightened into taking action to stop the Wind Phenomenon. I want corporations punished for contributing to wind. I want ego-maniacs to run around grandstanding and giving speeches about it. I want nations to give up their sovereignty to pathetically inept (and corrupt) psuedo-world-governing-agencies. I want propaganda! I want book deals! I want supermodels to feed me grapes on tropical islands!...um...wait a minute....got my ideas crossed....

I stayed up very late last night. Normally I'm asleep by 11 or 11:30. But last night there was a two hour show on the History channel called Ancient Aliens. It was about "Alien Astronaut Theory." Basically it discussed the theory that aliens have been contacting and communicating with human civilizations throughout history. It pointed to written accounts as well as artifacts and more obvious structures such as pyramids and the massive lines drawn in the Nazca (spelling?) plateau. I don't really have any conclusions or arguments to make about that. Because...what's the point? I'd be just like the people on the show, or the people I used to sit in English Literature classes with -- repeating what has already been said, what is obvious, or otherwise can be easily discernerned all under the subconscious facade of making oneself look and sound intelligent. Anyway....it was an interesting little show. It seems that the discussion of UFOs and alien life has changed over the years. We used to wonder if they were invaders like in a 1960s sci-fi movie. Then we wondered if they were real or just secret government projects/hallucinations. Now we seem to be wondering when some global conspiracy will be revealed.

But enough about that....I need to get going and accomplish something today.

A New Dawn For Random Blogging

2009-03-05T18:15:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody. I have upgraded my blog. My old dear, sweet, gentle readers - fear not - you can still enjoy my random musings on my Myspace blog. This is intended to be more of a cleaned up and slightly less personal version of my normal blog. Because sometimes you just can't go ranting and raving about every little piece of daily minutia.

Hopefully we will have new readers joining us. And hopefully they'll give me money.

In order to facilitate the flow of ideas and musings (and occasional rantings), I will be holding to the old format. The old format being typing whatever pops into my head and seeing where things go. Like the Joker I must have "no rules." Batman couldn't stop the Joker because he (Batman) had rules. Thus, I cannot write if I am confined by rules. But since I am planning on linking this to my Facebook page I will be actually going over what I've written before hitting the post button this time.

So let's see....where do we begin tonight? Well, as of this afternoon my spring break has officially begun. (No, I am not going to go into reintroducing all you new readers to the world of my blog. Nor will I go through the tedium of explaining my life and why I feel the need to ponder out loud the things that I ponder out loud.) Seems I am getting too old for spring breaks. For a while there I didn't have them -- except for that un-official spring break I took from work 3 years ago. I made the solo trip to Florida for two weeks to reunite with the college crew. I awoke the morning of my intended departure with a severe head cold and cough. I waited for a Z pack to come in before ultimately setting off around 10AM. A miserable 13 hours later (and a nightmarish experience with Atlanta's rush hour traffic -- which I may never fully recover from) I completed the journey and vowed never to do it by myself again. Until two weeks later when I had to drive back.

Anyway...did I miss an episode of House this week?

Oh, perhaps you are wondering - "Why call it 'The Evil Grin?'" Well...I tend to get snagged when it comes to naming things, so when something just feels right and I like it - it's best just to go with it. An evil grin is only truly evil if you have evil in your heart. Otherwise, it can be playful, mischievous, even righteous. ..........Great. Now I'm doubting the name. Thanks a lot. I wonder if I can edit the very name of the blog....

The Arby's RoastBurger is still on my mind. This sandwich is almost a force of nature. I can't recall the last time I ate something that not only tasted better as I ate it, but that I began to crave more and more as time went by.

I had a very intense and vivid dream last night. Those who know me best understand (perhaps all too well) the level of strangeness and detail inherent of my dreams. Due to my efforts to make my blog more "suitable" for public consumption, I shall now mentally edit out all the personal aspects of the dream. However, I still want to share its essence. I was at the lake, checking on what was apparently my parents' house. The night had this stifling eeriness and isolation to it. Just like the night during the ice storm that my brother and I went out to the resort to check on things -- it was pitch black and completely silent. We only had one flashlight and it literally felt like being on another planet, lost in darkness. But in the dream there were at least still a couple of lights working. I could see a dense fog upon the lake. Someone who was with me oddly decided to take a canoe out into the blackness, searching for a cave. After they left I felt closed in by the dark, alone, agitated, like how I imagine a person stranded on an island might feel. Suddenly my dream took a sojourn. It was now daylight and I was still at the resort. I was walking through the trees and then found myself laying on a bed set up between a parenthesis of trees with power lines and branches dangling symmetrically overhead. Everything had this timeless, peaceful, contemplative feel. It was as if I were supposed to be pondering something...or deciding something... Then just as suddenly I was right back in the isolation of the dark. But my parents were there. And the person who had left in the canoe had returned safely. I had thought this person was gone for good (or at least gone from the dream). It was then that I had my moment of illumination. Normally when I dream, I seem to know that it is a dream, but I play along - 100% committed to the story/role. And in this moment I knew I was dreaming, but I stepped out of the role. I felt like I could finally see into my own subconscious mind (which I firmly believe to be significantly smarter than my cluttered, distractable conscious mind). And then right before my eyes I began to "see" untold amounts of knowledge and information that my subconscious contains. It was like for one moment being able to access at will every single piece of knowledge, every experience, every thought, every vision your eyes took in. I desperately wanted to hold onto this "bridge" between the two halves on my consciousness. Yet I knew that when I awoke it would be gone. So I think I also tried to just take in that feeling of wholeness. But there was more. I think due to having to return to my clouded conscious mind I cannot recall all the details. I had this sense that...everything was going to be okay. A clearing of all of life's worries. Like a peek at the answers in the back of life's book.

So, that was my dream. Or at least the watered down version. It seems that a common theme to the human experience is a search for answers. We wander through our days seeking answers to the problems we face, the meaning of our existence, the purpose of our lives. But sometimes there just are no answers...or the answers are not revealed for long periods of time. Sometimes things happen and we beg God, our friends, or the empty room around us to answer "why." But maybe we learn more and become better off figuring that out for ourselves rather than having it simply handed to us. We are also more likely to accept an answer that we discover on our own than one given by another. Maybe sometimes it's better not to know the answers and to just "be." If you're always waiting for the day that you have your answers before you can live again, you may just run out of days.