Gino - you'll like this one...

Now there's a guy who loves his work...

Got a chuckle out of this one.


Farmer Bales Himself In Hay - Watch more Funny Videos

Oi

The Real Reason I Started Blogging Again

I really stopped blogging during the Patriot's 16-0 year in 2007. Sure, I threw up occassional blogs after the -gulp- Superbowl loss to the Giants, but it was the cessation of blogging early in the season that killed this for me. I'm such a creature of habit, and when I got out of habit of blogging I couldn't pick it back up.

I stopped because the Patriots were winning when I wasn't blogging, and then they lost the Superbowl, and then I went and ran for local office and Lord knows I didn't need folks looking at my innermost thoughts...

Well, anyway, couple of years later and I've got that hankering again, so here we are.

And plus the Patriots are going back to the Superbowl and I want to be able to record the feeling in media res, as it were. (Oh, what an insufferable jackass...)

Anywho, here's a little YouTube clip of a couple of idiots (Deion Sanders, Michael Irvin) declaring the Patriots over and done with after losing to the Ravens in the playoffs last year.

While I was away...

So a lot happened in the past couple of years as I took my little bloggicatical.

Today's mail brought back to mind one -- the Michigan Bulb catalog arrived, and The Girl promptly hid it from Wifeypooh, for everyone's protection.

You see. Wifeypooh decided to try gardening this year. Now, for those of you without first-hand experience to the fearsome botanical powers of Wifeypooh, that last sentence was meant to sow fear and dismay into the readers of this post. WP, for all her ability to nurture children, husbands, and fat cats, is no friend of the plant kingdom. Actually, she’s more like some sort of herbaceous Dr. Mengele, her plants becoming innocent pawns in some obscene experiment on how best to torture and destroy all things green. I mean, this woman his killed cacti, for goodness’ sakes. The little plant we got after going through pre-Cana before we were married? Dead in a month. Plants given to her annually by her (brainwashed) adoring students? All deceased before July ends. We have had but one plant live more than a couple of months in their entirety of marriage, and that’s some sort of indestructible thing that from time to time reverts to consisting of five leaves on a wilted vine until I take pity on it and water it. The woman is just not a gardener…

But, like they say about second marriages, hope triumphed over experience, and Wifeypooh fell sucker to those lovely flower gardens in the Michigan Bulb Catalog. As The Girl wisely noted, “Mom, you’re having delusions of grandeur, you know you can’t grow anything.” Shady-Perennial plant mix in hand, visions of shade-tolerant flowers bloomed in her dreams.

Step One: clear the garden area. So one morning she just started ripping plants out of an old, overgrown flowerbed the previous owners of the house had cultivated. After watching her carefully pulling out the many, many poison ivy plants, making sure to wear gloves, etc etc for a couple of hours, well, that was taking too long, so I came over with the very large and dangerous pickaxe and started chopping away. Carnage ensued.

Well, it turns out when you chop up poison ivy roots you release the extra-special and potent supertoxin, which is apparently able to go through clothing, latex, time and space. And it turns out Wifeypooh is extra-specially allergic to poison ivy supertoxin. So, fast forward a week and I am slightly infected with a nice set of rashes, while WP has oozing pustules seeping poison ivy juice on several parts of her body. The infected areas looked like those blisters you get from second-degree burns, and were maddeningly itchy. Also, the local Board of Health required her to wear her hair loose, tear her clothing, cover her upper lip and shout “unclean, unclean!” whenever she went out in public.

Actually, she was given some sort of steroid, which unfortunately neither made her all pumped up like Arnold Schwarzenegger, nor actually cured the infection. The infection got in the blood stream and somehow started popping up in places that she had never gotten poison ivy juice on her – unless she was out cavorting in the ivy sometime at night wearing nothing but a smile. So on this went for four weeks. We bought out the inventory of every quack poison ivy cure the new Walgreen’s in town had, and had to burn all of the gardening equipment.

And needless to say, nothing ever grew in the shade garden… And where she did get stuff to grow in the front yard, it will most likely be torn up when the leaking water service pipe gets replaced in a couple of weeks. Next summer when the urge to garden hits her we’re going to save some time and money and just go out and roll in the poison ivy without buying any plants.

Working from Home Lesson #268

So.

My job is great, I have a ton of flexability and work from home pretty much as much as I want, even though we have an office in the Big City. I took full advantage of this benny during the Christmas - New Year's week and, coupled with the fact that I park my car outside and my wife's is in the garage (my side of the garage looks like a divorced-dad storage-cube exploded), annnd, we had a fairly decent snow storm from which I didn't bother to dig the car out of for three days -- well (and, I dare you to diagram that sentence!) -- well, anywho, when I finally dug the car our sufficiently to go somewhere New Year's Eve (aided greatly by the four plus days of above-forty degree temps), the car wouldn't start.

Yup, I had killed the battery, leaving her sitting out in the cold for a week without moving it. Oh, by the way, I've got this funky problem with the ignition where I have to pull the key out midway between ACC and OFF or it gets stuck, which I'm sure provides some sort of drain on the battery.

Well, went out this afternoon to push the car into position for jumping. I needed The Boy (now a charming man-boy of 12) to steer as I pushed to get Earl (that's the car's name: Earl Grey. It's gray. Hey, I didn't pick the name).

So before I let the boy get in I gave the ignition a twist, just to make sure.

And don'tcha know: damn thing started. And I just started laughing. When I tried to start it up New Year's Eve, I was still digging it out so I just poked my body in the door and turned the key. The car didn't turn over because I have one of those idiot-proof standards that won't start unless you depress the clutch.

Duh.

In four days of not driving I had forgotten how to start my car... That's just sad.

So that's Working From Home Lesson #268: If you don't go out perodically you will forget how to drive.

-----

Oh, yes, and by the way: this post means I'm blogging again. It's just time, I've been off long enough, and we're going to have a hell of a playoff run to document!

See you soon. (all 2 of you...)

A Bit Under the Weather...

Sorry been quiet folks, I've been a bit under the weather.

Started a fever on Wednesday, went to Boston on Thursday anyway, taking part in a five hour meeting while hitting 102 degrees. Stayed home on Friday, hit 104, went to the Doctor. He had absolutely no idea what was going on, sent me home with scripts for drugs for a disease they weren't sure I had and didn't want me to fill until Monday anyway.

Then on Saturday I hit another 104, this time 104.8, and got myself sent off to the ER, where they stuck me full of things, took a chest x-ray, gave me some Motrin and sent me on my way. Oh, yes, they took about four vials of blood, the last one as big as a relish jar which they said was for a blood culture, but I swear that phlebotomist had rather long canines.

I missed my Godson's Christeining on Sunday and am currently sitting on the couch with a pounding noggin and an Advil-depressed temp of 99.7. Lovely. At least there hasn't been any barfing since Friday.

On the plus side, just got Season 4 of the Simpsons on DVD -- the Conan O'Brien year, a high water mark for the series. So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to medicate and meditate on the essential nature of D'oh...

You Know You're a Fat Load When....

You break a toilet seat.

(well, let's be truthful... that's like the fifth toilet seat I've broken. I'm not proud. And my butt hurts from being pinched by the broken seat...)

He's back... maybe

Okay, friends, (all two of you) a bit of an update.

So, yes, I passworded the blog. I did something really stupid and ran for selectman. And even worse, one of my friends and fellow bloggers was the campaign manager for my opponent. And the last thing I wanted was my lusting after Kate Hudson to get posted on the local gossip-board, so I shut 'er down.

And then I went and won the election! By less than 40 votes. So now I'm a "town father" and have to act all responsible and everything... But on the plus side, I get 1/2 of all the taxes paid in town. (Just kidding. It's only 1/5th...)

So, you lucky, lucky three, I think I'll start posting again. After my incredible electoral awesomeness, I'm definitely re-starting the whole Kal For President thing, and of course I'll continue to tip you off to movies you won't be able to stay awake for...

Welcome back, pull up a chair, let's chat.

Just to remind my wife on Valentine's Day....

Just so she remembers why she likes me so much...

Simple things amuse simple minds...

OK, something's been bothering me since the Superbowl. And no, not the fact that the normally clutch Patriots utterly failed to take over a very take-overable game about 14 times during the night...

Well, I am bothered by that.

But that's not the thing that was bothering me.

But now I'm thinking about it again.

Oh crap...

-- urp --

There, I just threw up in my mouth again, dammit...

Anyway, the thing that's been bothering me is Mike Campbell's doubleneck from the halftime show. Yes. I haven't been able to get out of my mind the argument I had with my brother- and mother-in-law about Campbell's guitar.

Campbell's Petty's longtime guitarist and he was the guy stationed on Petty's right hand (our left) who used a double-neck guitar for two of the three songs. When I saw the quick cut of Campbell and could've sworn that both of the heads were too small for twelve pegs. But they kept cutting back to under-bridge-dweller-looking Tom Petty (really, what's with the beard?).

Here's a screen cap from the show. Too blurry to tell:

Maybe that's six pegs on top, maybe not. But the head is really too small for a twelve string. Was it a bass? What the heck? I was told by my (guitar playing) mother-in-law, and (decidedly unmusical) brother-in-law that I was full of it and nobody would have a double six string, what would be the point?

So I googled various combinations of "doubleneck" and "superbowl" and "tom petty" etc etc until I found out that Mike indeed has a custom doubleneck that he's been using for years, but none of the posts I found about it mentioned it was a 2x6.

Learning that Campbell's been with Petty for a long time, I decided to look for a better live version of "Free Fallin'" and see if that came up with anything. Well, Jackpot!

Redemption! That's clearly six pegs on both those heads. It's a 2x6.

And the answer (which I suspected as I thought Campbell used two different keys in each of the songs he played with the doubleneck, although I wasn't thinking to see if he was strumming the lower neck during the other song) is that you'd use a 2x6 when you want to do songs that call for different tunings and you don't want to or can't just capo to get the effect you're looking for.

There. That was boring, no? Yup, Mr. Know-it-all is back. Sorry.

(could be wose, you could be married to someone who just spent 45 minutes on the internet in pursuit of this useless information...)

Argh! Time to get moving

On deadline. End of the week: that doesn't necessarily mean Friday by five, does it? Well, I hope not, because I'm still working on this report.

A little music to get the blood moving....

Well, that sucked...

Well, they've been playing with fire for years. Never a team to put people away until the early part of this season, they reverted to their old ways of letting teams stay in games and then mustering huge efforts at the end. This time the other guys had a little more at the end than the Pats did.

Some things bothered me;

* the offense looked absolutely lethargic all day, with the exception of the last half of the 4th quarter

* Brady didn't seem to have much left in the tank

* the defense played really well until that final drive when they had at least four opportunities to stop the Giants and didn't do it

* I really didn't like Belichick leaving the field early, I thought that was really classless

Ugh...

I guess this means I have to blog again...

My thoughts on the Patriots tape "scandal"...

Reruns...

Statcounter, the handy hitcounter, tells me that 10% of my last 100 hits were the results of people looking up info on Joe Chodat. As of this morning, if you google "Joe Chodat", my post about Joe (and others) from last year is number one!

So, who is Joe Chodat? Joe, as you can see from the right, is a deadbeat dad. Joe was number 3 on the list when I wrote about it last June. I think the recent activity has to do with the state releasing it's latest version of the Most Wanted deadbeat Dad poster. I'm sure his mother is so proud, as Joe has catapulted himself all the way to number one this year! Way to go, Joe!

As I said then, I'm usually fairly libertarian about stuff; except stuff you do that infringes on me. Leave your babymomma and go on the run, and those kids end up on welfare, that means I have to pay for them. I have to pay for them even though I didn't have any of the fun of making them. That's not right!

So Joe Chodat, wherever you are: you owe me, buddy. Get your two-earring wearing @ss back to Mass and pay up buddy, I haven't got the extra to clean up after your messes, got it?

On another programming note, the post directly below is a rerun of last year, part of the 2,996 Project where bloggers did a memorial to a person killed on 9/11. I didn't know Thomas F. Theurkauf at all, but I hope that his family could be brought some comfort in his being remembered, even if it is by some fat, pajamaed blogger.

One of 2,996: Thomas Theurkauf

Thomas F. Theurkauf
Stamford Connecticut

"any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." -- John Donne

I don't know anybody who died on September 11th. A family friend of my inlaws had an interview scheduled in one of the offices on a high floor in one of the towers; she slept in and missed her interview and lived.

Life's kind of odd like that. Had she been a tad more responsible about her obligations, she'd be dead. Ignoring the alarm kept her alive. I wonder if Thomas Theurkauf thought about blowing off work that morning.

His three sons, then 12, 11, and 9, were in school, probably just starting the week before. Too soon in the school year to play hooky with Dad and go fishing or catch a movie and lunch. Maybe he wasn't the type. I know he was extraordinarily dedicated to his work, and good at it. He was a Vice President at Keefe, Bruyette and Woods, were he analyzed financial markets. He was one of those guys you see on CNBC talking about what a certain bank merger means for the economy. And as I said, he was good at this work; in 2001 the Wall Street Journal named him the best bank analyst in the country.

But in reading about him, I get the sense that he was a man understood the important things in life, as well as economics. There are those, it's said, that understand the cost of everything, but the value of nothing. I don't think Tom Theurkauf was one of those people.

Again, I didn't know Mr. Theurkauf. But we judge lives by what's left behind. From the impressions we've left on people - impressions that last so much longer than our footprints. And it's in his widow Robin Theurkauf that we can see evidence of the good man who died on September 11th.

Robin Theurkauf went back to school after having those three kids, encouraged by her husband, and got a PhD in International Politics from Yale. She's involved in the small group of 9/11 survivors who have made it known that they don't need more killing to help them; that the death of innocents in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else can never make up for the loss of their loved ones and can only hope to serve the purposes of those who planned and executed 9/11.

She testified against the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui, and has written at length about the need for judicial and other non-military solutions for the perpetrators of terror. And while I disagree about her faith in judicial forums as a tool against terrorism, I admire her ability to put aside her own loss and seek solutions that affirm life, not take another dozen, score, or hundred for each person lost on 9/11.

To me, Robin Theurkauf's actions; her advocacy of peace and justice rather than the wounded lashing out of our great nation, is a more fitting and noble tribute to her husband than I could ever pen. From my limited understanding of Thomas Theurkauf, I believe he would be proud of his wife.

For a proper eulogy from someone who knew Mr. Theurkauf, go here. To learn about a scholarship fund set up to benefit underprivileged kids in Hartford, check out the Thomas F. Theurkauf fund at the charity The House of Bread.

This post is a part of the 9/11 victims tribute started by D.Challenger Roe commemorating the 2,996 victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks. For a list of participants and the victim they are honoring, go here.

Hey, there, here's your TRO...

Fred fred fred fred fred fred

Gino, who would rather support a candidate who is "right" than actually support someone with a chance to win the presidency, has thrown his weight behind Ron Paul, after his first favorite, Tom Tancredo, (totally expectedly) evaporated into nothingness.

Well, putting aside the obvious damange this does to our own Presidential run, we here at Chez Kal are very excited about Fred Thompson's much delayed announcement.

For a kid who came politically of age in the late seventies and early eighties, Thompson provides an irresistable analaouge to the Great One. From the folksy way of speaking, to the sense that he's "right" on the issues but isn't going to beat you over the head about it (for all his right-wing cred Reagan was a once-divorced guy whose first chief of staff as governor was a homosexual and who hung around and counted as friends folks people in his home of Dixon would think were typical Hollywood liberals...), Thompson's our Second Coming.

He's even a (sometime, alleged) Actor. Although his roles always seem to be of Fred Dalton Thompson.


One of Gino commentor's notes that some of his back catalog could come back to hurt him. My initial thought was that if playing second fiddle to a chimp couldn't totally bury Reagan, how bad could being an FBI agent in an appalling family comedy (Baby's Day Out) or voicing a horse (Racing Stripes) be for Thompson?

Ah, but Reagan was in the pre-YouTube days. TV stations couldn't play "Bedtime for Bonzo" ad infinitum to poke fun at Reagan, if for no other reason than the FCC would've probably made the stations dig up some footage of Carter to satisfy the equal time rule, and nobody wanted to see more of Carter in 1980...


But YouTube has no such restrictions, and it's only a matter of time before some enterprising liberal puts together a mash of the worst of Fred Thompson, film star.


Fortunately for Thompson, so many of his roles have been of Fred playing, well, President Fred Thompson, and it shouldn't be long before his "This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it" quote from the Hunt for Red October is layed to a techno beat and becomes the anthem of a new generation of college republicans...

T Minus One Hour and Counting...

One hour left until the NFL season kicks off. Makes me so happy, I thought I'd share this wonderful and cheery video with you:

Boy, love those kitties!

But seriously, football is here. Thank god.

Prediction for this evening: Saints +6.

UPDATE: I meant Saints, +60

It's not the heat, it's the rising seas and 100 year floods every year...

Al Gore would be much more effective if he just had a baseball bat....



(I want a hybrid pimp mobile.)