Kal's World

2011-02-03T06:35:00.001-05:00

Gino - you'll like this one...

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

2011-01-19T07:36:00.002-05:00

Got a chuckle out of this one.

Farmer Bales Himself In Hay - Watch more Funny Videos

Oi

2011-01-16T20:39:00.002-05:00

The Real Reason I Started Blogging Again

2011-01-05T00:35:00.002-05:00

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...

2011-01-04T16:30:00.005-05:00

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

2011-01-03T17:30:00.002-05:00

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...

2008-07-13T19:45:00.004-04:00

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....

2008-07-07T20:46:00.001-04:00

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

2008-07-03T19:59:00.001-04:00

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....

2008-02-14T11:03:00.001-05:00

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

Simple things amuse simple minds...

2008-02-09T16:08:00.000-05:00

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

2008-02-08T23:18:00.000-05:00

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...

2008-02-03T22:21:00.000-05:00

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"...

2007-09-14T22:28:00.000-04:00

Reruns...

2007-09-11T07:11:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-11T06:27:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-09-08T20:40:00.000-04:00

Fred fred fred fred fred fred

2007-09-06T20:55:00.001-04:00

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...

2007-09-06T18:23:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-09-06T10:49:00.000-04:00

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

(I want a hybrid pimp mobile.)

Things you learn on daytime TV

2007-09-05T01:53:00.000-04:00

Needed to stay home today, extending my Labor Day weekend as the wife's school had started but the kid's school hadn't yet.

So, in between painting the 1/8th of the house I had... forgotten... to paint two summers ago, and watching EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of season two of The Tick, I managed to catch some daytime TV.

Some observations:

1) If I ever get a structured settlement there are many, many people who are willing to give me cash up-front for it.

This is why the poor stay poor. If you get a settlement that pays out over time, it may be that way to pay ongoing medical bills or something similar. If you sell your settlement, first off, you're going to get nickles on the dollar. Second, you're just going to blow through it on Ripple and Mad Dog 20-20. And then you'll be poor again. Idiot.

2) I can get phone service from "Local Phone Company" if I get my service shut off.

Again, idiot. You couldn't pay your phone bill with Verizon. And with Verizon you can get all the bells and whistles for $45 bucks a month. And you call call anywhere in Eastern Massachusetts. But you didn't pay that on time, or like for four months, so they disconnected you. Bravo. You get to sign up with these guys, get charged $50 bucks a month and not be able to call any number that you need to dial "1" for.

Oh, and if you're the kind of person who doesn't pay their phone bill, you probably also don't look up numbers in the phone book, so enjoy their 411 service at $1.25 a pop...

3) If I happen to slip and fall, or if I have breast cancer, or get fired from my job, or have inhaled asbestos, or ever been anywhere near a doctor's office... there are any number of ~~cheesy~~ ~~scummy~~ highly credible attorneys willing to take my case. Bonus points for those attorneys with William Shatner doing their ads.

4) Finally, courtesy of the Fox morning show (really, I can't be bothered to look up the name of it. Why bother, it'll be off the air in a month or two...), I learned this morning that sex is good. This was very helpful, as I hadn't realized that before. Actually, the good nugget of information was that for most of the hormonal benefits of sex, it doesn't matter if you're a party of four or running solo, so to speak.

In that vein, it's time to hit google and turn the Safe search off... I need some exercise.

Can't Talk: Tick's on...

2007-09-04T09:38:00.000-04:00

Well, a trip to Target to get a backpack turned into a $90 odyssey, replete with backpacks, books, and a couple of videos.

Wifeypooh really wanted Independence Day, but they were out, so I grabbed "Night at the Museum" instead (not really an even trade), but The Girl, earning her keep for another year found:

The Tick Vs. Season Two! So, alas, I sit here in the living room watching Die Fledermaus fall for a supervillian (fortunately his fear of commitment allows him to choose the right path).

I will be able to function sometime later this afternoon, after Episode 13...

Not-so-minor gripe: This season is missing an episode, as was Season One. In Season One "The Tick vs. The Molemen" was left off the DVD, apparently because of the similarity between supervillian "Mindy Moleford" and Cindy Crawford. In Season Two they left out the season's second episode, "Alone Apart", probably because of the similarity between Marvel Comics' Galacticus and The Tick's villain Omnipotus, who agrees not to eat the Earth but takes a little bite out of the moon.

Overall, fun to relive adolescence, but this time with scotch...

Five Days in the Land of Reptiles

2007-09-01T06:57:00.000-04:00

Well, it took long enough, but I finally got around to downloading some of the pics from the annual Jones Pilgrimage and Money Deplete-a-thon.

Every year, finding we have for some inexplicable reason saved up a few bucks, Wifeypooh commands we go on vacation and blow our cash in the tackiest ways possible.

Yes, we're theme park aficionados.

This year, having accumulated more cash than usual (I cleaned under the bed and couch cushions), we decided to go, once again, to Disney World in sunny, reptile-filled, Florida.

Kal, being the ~~cheap bastard~~ frugal manager of resources that he is, secured a four night stay in the lovely Marriott Grand Vista, home of the Nick Faldo Golf Institute!, for only $200.

But we don't play golf. And we had to sit through a "one hour" timeshare sales pitch. And the place was crawling with reptiles. But other than that, great deal, no?

And something they don't tell you in the brochure, replete with pictures of "One- two- and three-bedroom villas feature spacious living and dining areas, full kitchen, and a master suite with oversized soaking tub"...

That's for the folks who actually own timeshares there. The folks who are just staying there get the "lock out" units, the one-bedroom parts of the suites that timeshare owners can "lock out" and basically trade for longer stays (or something like that, it was all quite confusing...).

Anyway, here's the picture of the room from the brochure:

And here's the actual two-bed room:

Oh, I kid, I'm a kidder. That's really the "kids bedroom" from the Swiss Family Robinson Tree house. That link gets you to a website with some interesting facts about the Treehouse attraction. For instance, did you know the "root structure" for the "attraction" goes 42 feet into the ground? Or that the 300,000 leaves are all plastic? Well, I could have guessed that. There's nothing actually real at Disney. Why have anything real?

It gets a little unsettling actually. You fly down to Orlando International and the first thing that strikes you is the... orderliness... of it all.

Houses and houses and houses in grids. Right angles and gently sweeping curves. A whole civilization built after 1959, untroubled by things like rocks and streams. Blow it up, bridge it, plow it under: it's in the way of progress!

100,000 people living cheek-by-jowl, in single family homes (all the highrises seem to be hotels). Driving everywhere. And then you go to Epcot and ride "The Land" ride where they lecture you about the Native Americans living in harmony with nature and modern man having lost his way. Well, Walt, people in Central Florida seemed to be doing okay before you bought half the place and bulldozed it under the make fake trees...

Oh my, we're getting bitter. Okay, on with the pics with snarky comments.

While slavery was banished in the South during the Civil War, there is still a thriving trade in Cuban brides will to do light housework in exchange for Visas..

(oh, that's just wrong...)

All I could think of during the "Country Bear Jamboree" was: Jeez, people had a low threshold for entertainment in the 1960s. Well, that and: "hey, that middle moose, that's Tony the Tiger. (And it is, Thurl Ravenscroft did the voice of "Buff", as well as a bunch of other voices at Disney. He made up for these sins by voicing the vacuum cleaner in "The Brave Little Toaster", his last role.)

If you are lucky enough to get stuck on the "Finding Nemo" ride while they stop the ride for ten minutes to let some morbidly obese person on, this is what you will see.

For ten minutes.

That and the same three lines of dialogue on a loop. Delightful.

Every time we got to Florida (honeymoon, about five years ago, and again now) Wifeypooh pouts and sulks until I agree, yet again, to go to Seaworld. Not even getting her to go on the Atlantis ride last time (she's not a thrill ride person: she nearly killed me afterward) could get me out of it.

This time though I think we may have put a nail in the coffin. In the past the shows have all been at least somewhat educational; they talk about how they train the animals and the care the animals require, that sort of thing. This time though it was like Cirque Freakin' Soleil, with 800 pound aquatic mammals. I can see that sort of thing at home. (Well, if I put on a wetsuit and join Cirque d' Soliel, that is.)

She was decidedly unimpressed. Here's hoping next time I'll actually get to go to the Ripley's museum...

Seafarers in olden days used to mistake Manatees for mermaids.

Apparently a couple of months in the open sea makes you a) blind, b) really, really horny.

Ah yes, the cultural sensitivity for which Walt was famous. The "Small World" ride has recently been refurbished, so you can see it in all it's swingin' sixties glory.

Oh, and on the Official WDW website they actually GLOAT that you'll have that frickin' song stuck in your head all day: "After it's over, just try to get that tune out of your head. "

Bastards.

Another "Small World" pic. A pink Rhino. Okay, and these guys didn't do drugs? Puh-leeze.

Oh, alright. Pink elephant. Maybe they were just heavy drinkers.

Seaworld again. Tried to feed the kid to the dolphins. Didn't work. They, the dolphins, not the kids, did like the $5 worth of smelly fish, though (X4, so everybody got a chance to get their hands smelly and risk losing a finger to a dolphin). I really, really miss that $20 bill. It was one of my favorites...

Everything was going fine at the Shamu show, until the Killer Whale ate the diver.

Look: they're named "killer whales". You want a less bloody show, swim with guppies or llamas or something like that.

Shamu failed his drug test. He's been taking Viagra to get a little more starch in the fin, if you know what I mean.

Reptiles and giant bugs. That's Florida to me.

Oh, yeah, hurricanes too. You think they'd fix the building. Too lazy, I guess.

Finally, after five days of fun in the sun (and stinky sneakers: take them off before the raft ride!), it's time to go home (thank god...)

Well, that's it. Suggestions for theme park mania '08? Somewhere with fewer lizards perhaps?

Kal For President: Walking the Walk...

2007-08-29T21:34:00.000-04:00

Good Evening, fellow Americans.

As my loyal constituents will know, I am a sworn enemy of wasteful, piggish, dangerous, and downright obnoxious land-barge type SUVs. Particularly when driven by tiny blond housewives carting around little Moxie and Jared and the family golden retriever and has never come within 100 feet of a dirt road.

Well, I thought I had found a potential running mate with Pretty Boy John Edwards when I heard his SUV rant the other day. So I jump in Air Kal, my campaign jet, and fly down to North Carolina to break (corn)bread with John and his ~~mother~~ wife Elizabeth.

Well, we pull up, and holy Christ.

You seen John's place?

Uh yeah. The thing on the left is the "house" and the thing on the right, the big red thing, is the "recreation building". Main house: 10,400 square feet. Recreation building: 15,600 square feet. The hallway connecting the main house and the rec. building? 2,200 square feet. Okay, so John Edwards' corridor is bigger than Chez Kal.

Hmm. And what do I see in the driveway? Oh yes. Those things. SUVs. A whole passel of them!

The good folks at The Hedgehog Report were kind enough annotate the above photo and found at least four SUV's parked at the Edwards Manse.

Well, needless to say Wifeypooh and I took off at the first opportunity. Well, after the tour. Okay, and after a couple of nights in the guest bedroom. And a couple of games of squash in the recreational building. And, well, yeah. We stole a few towels.

Yeah, they're nice. Love those towels...

(For a more detailed story on the Edwards compound, go here.)

Thank You for not smoking. Vomiting is ok, though.

2007-08-22T06:03:00.000-04:00

When I was growing up my grandfather was a pipe smoker. There was nothing sweeter than sitting in his study reading one of his World War II books while sucking in that sweet aroma. I think Yankee Candle could make a mint off a pipe tobacco-scented candle.

That being said, I'm not a smoker. I worked in restaurants and smoking is sort of second nature , so I tried my hand at it but could never get the inhalation right and would end up nearly choking myself to death every time I tried to smoke.

(Actually, I think a month-long experiment in certain herbal... remedies... screwed up my ability to smoke cigarettes, it's a different procedure totally...)

Anyway, so I don't smoke, and as society's become more smoke-free the stench of cigarettes has become so much more apparent. And I understand how hard it is to quit smoking, but what I don't understand is that people actually take it nowadays, just seems to me that the jury's in on this one folks, why would you sign up for a habit terribly hard to break and disastrous to your health?

That being said, we've getting a little crazy. I always thought it was funny when I worked in state government that we made smokers leave the building and go into the open air to get their nicotine fix, which in New England means at least four months of sleet, rain, snow and howling winds. Aren't these people the biggest candidates for respiratory distress? You want to give them pneumonia?

Starting next July in the Netherlands it will be illegal to smoke in their hash bars. Well, smoke tobacco. Pot is still okay.

Okay, let me get this straight: Marlboro: neen. Maui Wowie: ja. And dope smokers get like five times the tar that cigarette smokers get. Yeah. This makes sense.

Here in the enlightened People's Republic of Massachusetts we banned smoking in restaurants probably ten years ago, and bars (and almost every other workplace in the Commonwealth) went smoke-free back in 2004. Now let's think about this for a moment.

Bars are smoke free. You don't have to be pestered with somebodies second hand smoke when you're downing that sixth shot of Jagermeister before you go out and prove to that goddamn pussy at the end of the bar that you can get your Corolla to drive on two wheel, goddammitt....

Smokers don't drive cars into school buses, or plow through crowds. Well, they do, but usually only after a Bud or six. Smokers don't necessarily puke all over your shoes when you're taking the late train home after a Bruins game. And smokers never get arrested for smoking too much and getting in a bar fight, resulting in a mug shot posted on "The Smoking Gun".

I've never read of someone under the influence of Cools committing a date rape and I never got buzzed enough off Camels that I stole my Mom's car and abandoned it in the town pond.

But smoke on a T platform? Ye Gods, what manner of heathen are you?

Later that same evening....

2007-08-18T00:56:00.000-04:00

Mmmm... Scotch and Wifeypooh's delictible barbeque chicken pizza. And having a wife who will make me and Brothergoodson a pizza even while I leave her to deal with two unruly pre-teens, I am truly blessed.

(And, oh yeah, the Patriots lost, but only after the first team defense basically stomped on the first team Titans offense [the Titans first half TD came off an interception return], but, hey: it's preseason... No worries.)

It's that time again...

2007-08-17T06:42:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posting this week, I had a post about Tom Green but then couldn't get myself to care enough about it to actually finish it.

(I hate Tom Green. I think he's an ass and a bully. And I don't feel bad about him getting ball cancer, because he got to sleep with Drew Barrymore. These things have a way of evening out. Looks, it's not like it was lung cancer or anything. Although I think I'd risk the lung cancer to be with Drew...)

Still have to post something about Orlando too, slacker.

But nothing tonight, I can promise. Tonight it's over Brotherdear's house at 7:30 to partake in food, adult beverages, and the pre-season Patriots-Titans game. Yeah, it's a preseason game, nothing much on the line, merely a tease for what is probably the most anticipated season we've seen around here in a long time.

Here's a picture of Tedy Bruschi looking like he's enjoying the thought of one last roundup.

Au Revoir, Turd Blossom

2007-08-13T05:38:00.000-04:00

Karl Rove, or "Turd Blossom", as his boss, eternal fraternity brother George W. calls him, told The Wall Street Journal he was stepping down at the end of August for the perennial excuse of firees everywhere, he wants to spend some time with his family.

Oh bullshit.

This is just another example of the President waiting until after the toddler has burned down the house before taking away his matches. (See Rumsfeld, Donald R.)

Jesus George, the damage is done, why not let the poor guy get a couple more years on his government pension?

On some level you've got to feel for the guy, Rove. I mean, how would you like it if your picture came up every time someone googles "Turd Blossom". That would suck, wouldn't it?

On the other hand, I am glad to see Mr. Rove go, if only because he an I share some degree of resemblance and it's more than a little annoying to have people point this out constantly. When he goes and crawls under the same rock and Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft maybe people will notice this a little less often.

For those public figures needing a way out of a jam, Cracked.com offers this handy guide to resignations. My personal favorite and the method I hope to be important enough to employ someday is the whole resigning for the good of the country. After all, anyone who knows me wouldn't be able to keep a straight face if I actually tried to play the "spend more time with my family" crap...

Because I'm not sleeping anyway (and am too lazy to get the cameras out of the bag and download the pics...)

2007-08-12T01:48:00.001-04:00

His holiness, Avitable, has created a meme and required we respond. His wish is my command...

1. If I showed up at your house randomly next week, what would we do together?

Had not Googlemaps been so cretinous wrong (more on that in the pics n' gripes post about vacation '07), I would have shown up at your house randomly last week Mr. Avitable, and we could have answered that question in real time...

2. Rather than saying "I have a blogger friend", or "I have a friend who's a blogger", there should be a word for this that makes it less awkward to say. Would you prefer "blend", "frogger", "bluddy", "blogquaintance", or "webbud"? Or do you have a better idea?

Wifeypooh calls all my blog-acquaintances "those other losers...". I think I prefer "subjects" or "minions". Either works for me.

3. If we were hanging out together and you noticed that my balls were hanging out of my shorts, would you tell me or try to maintain eye contact and talk to me?

I would tuck them back in for you. Err... Ah... No. Scratch that. I'd belch or something as manly.

4. If you had no neighbors, would you buy curtains for your windows? Why or why not?

I have neighbors and I don't have curtains. Why would I get curtains if I didn't have neighbors?

5. Who would you rather fuck: Dan Rather or Betty White?

I think Dan might be fun if only because you could take the requisite dirty talk from his late '80s, early '90s non-sequiters when he started cracking up: "What's the frequency now, Kevin! Oh yeah, Courage baby!!!"

6. If two girls walk into a bathroom and they both find a newly born baby in the toilet at the same time, should they have to wrestle in oil while nude to claim the baby as theirs, split it in half and share it, or sell it on the black market and divide the proceeds?

I would think it was something having to do with nude oil wrestling that got the little foundling conceived in the first place. I favor selling and dividing the proceeds. Much like old cars however, sometimes though you can make more by parting it out rather than selling it whole. Just so you know.

7. Do you believe in ghosts, aliens, heaven, or mothers-in-law? Why or why not?

I have a mother-in-law, and no amount of wishing it weren't so has been able to reverse that situation. Her existence makes me believe in heaven, if only because I have seen hell-on-earth, and figure there must be an opposite but equal kind of thing.

8. What was your most embarrassing moment of your life and do you have pictures or video that you will share with me?

Would probably have to be my perfect three-part harmony fart in Ms. Paul's class in the third grade. Sherry D. was not impressed, I can tell you that.

9. Do you know where I put my sunglasses?

Did you check on your private parts? Sometimes I like to dress mine up and sunglasses are a wonderful accessory.

10. What aspect of your own blogging do you wish you could improve and why? Would you pay money for lessons taught by me to improve that skill? How much? And what's your credit card number?

My blogging can't be improved. Make what you will of that statement...

I just flew in from Orlando, and boy are my arms tired...

2007-08-11T23:47:00.000-04:00

Never so happy to see that dumpy little "Welcome to Massachusetts" sign on I-95 North. Just got in after the flight from the unreality of Orlando to gritty old TF Green in Warwick, Rhode Island.

A quick jaunt on I-95 and it's home to wash the festering laundry and apologize to the cat for leaving him alone for five days.

(Oh, don't feel too bad for him, he got his revenge; leaving a pile of cat vomit right in front of the door...)

Sometime tomorrow I may have up a pictures and gripes post, but for now it's good to be back in the Northeast where people don't feel compelled to talk to you or smile at you, and where we know how to freakin' queue in a line... (What's the matter with some people!?!).

Nighty.

The Garage - 1986 edition

2007-08-04T07:01:00.001-04:00

Here at Kal's World we're focused fixedly on the mirror, looking backwards to an idealized childhood where Al Queda, adjustable rate mortgages, and adolescent daughters were unheard of.

That's not to say the present isn't very exciting. Bridge collapses, workplace performance reviews, and the prospect of either Hillary or Barack as President of the United States are all exciting things. Not particularly good things, but exciting nonetheless...

Makes the Cold War all that much more appealing, doesn't it?

But there is something calling me to the present time; something with a draw impossible to deny: the prospect of a sports trifecta unseen around these parts since 1986.

1986 was a high-water mark for the long-suffering fans of New England franchises. The year began with the hysteria of the lowly (just in 1981 they had gone 2-14) New England Patriots, lovingly called by some adherents "The Patsies", reach the Superbowl for the first time in their history. Sure, the Pats were blown out of the water, and the seeds of future destruction were sown that January (the drug story that hit right around the Superbowl, Irving Fryar's descent into full-fledged head case), but even a 46-10 drubbing at the hands of the Bears couldn't totally diminish the thrill of an improbable Superbowl run (they won three times on the road, at the Jets, Raiders, and especially in the Orange Bowl against Miami, where the Pats hadn't won since Christ was a corporal).

Then that June, the Celtics, in mid-dynasty (third of four straight NBA Finals appearances), won what turned out to be their last NBA title to date, beating the Houston Rockets in six games.

Celtic euphoria turned to a magic summer for Boston's Nine as the Sox , stocked with folks like HOFers Wade Boggs and Tom Seaver (a cameo appearance in the twilight of his career), and future Hall enshrinee Roger "The Traitorous Bastard" Clemens (and ought-to-be enshrinee Jim Rice), took the American League Pennant and returned to the World Series for the first time since 1975.

1986 crashed that fall though, as the ball took a bad bounce on Bill Buckner (I'm being charitable) and the Sox, Patriots, and Celtics, after varying periods, sunk into mediocrity for much of the late '80s and '90s...

Now, the present. The Sox are leading the American league East, not letting the Dread Yankees (with mercenary Roger "The Fat Bastard" Clemens) get closer than seven games. The Patriots have reloaded in a scary way, adding the cream of the free agent crop, Monster Adalius Thomas and five quality receivers, including what seems to be a rejuvenated Randy Moss, and now the Celtics do the equivalent of an All In, trading everybody but the ballboy and Paul Pierce for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, two top-twenty, but thirty-year old players who've never won an NBA championship and see their chances limited.

Suddenly the Celtics are odds-on favorites to win the East, the Patriots look restocked enough to take a team which was one 3rd and 8 away from the Superbowl back to the promised land, and the Red Sox are acting like a team of destiny.

Yes, heady times in Boston.

Remembering 1986, and the attendant horrors that followed, I'm just content to enjoy it one day at a time. Change happens swift and horrible, and you never know when.

So, living in the moment, while looking backward to remember happily that magic year, here's Falco's Rock Me Amadeus, part of my 1986 soundtrack.

As ~~Gino~~ RW reminded me of a much more apporpriate song, which is a 1986 song too (man, if I was smarter I would've picked this one from the start...), here's Timbuk 3 with "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades":

There is, of course, a downside to me blogging again...

2007-08-02T20:22:00.000-04:00

Yes, I cat blog. It has been known to happen. I'll try and keep it to a minimum but when you've got a subject as interesting as this, how can you resist?!?

Helpful Signage...

2007-08-02T20:02:00.000-04:00

This is where your average, normal hookers enter the State House. Specific Hookers, however, have their own entry around the corner.

(depending on your screen size and/or relative level of blindness you may have to click the picture to get the joke)

I'm Back, Baby!

2007-08-02T06:48:00.000-04:00

It's time to come home, back to the first blog, the original blog. First abandoned in a fit of craven lust for blogger Beta services, I have been wandering. First to kaljones.blogspot.com, then to kalaswell.blogspot.com, with a couple of ugly hidden and better-to-be-forgotten stops in between.

I should have known better that to leave this home, this crie de couer, this work of love. And look what happened: shortly after I jumped ship in October, my Republican masters lost their first Gubernatorial election in sixteen years, and I became a professional expatriate, fleeing my politically-appointed position like those folks trying to catch the last chopper out of Saigon in 1975.

(Not that that was the wrong decision; those who stuck around have been hunted down and rooted out, so it was best to get out of Dodge while the getting was good...)

Anywho, the last nine or so months I have felt like a fatter, blonder, and not so evil version of Voldermort; having rent my soul into pieces, so to speak, as if blogs could contain a bit of your soul, I wandered the blogosphere unwhole. Incomplete.

But it is time to repair that wound, to return to my first, best home. I'm back baby.

Movie Night: The Most Depressing Movie Ever

2007-05-27T06:00:00.000-04:00

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

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

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

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

Couple of points:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0 of 5 Sandras!

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

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

2007-05-06T06:00:00.000-04:00

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

First, the mandatory explanation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Night: Better Than Sominex + A Bottle of Scotch

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

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

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

Movie Night: Twofer Edition.

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing gets past that one.

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

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

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

3 out of 5 Sandras©

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

Ah, a near perfect-storm of Sandraness here:

A. Followed March of the Penguins.

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

C. I had already read the book.

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

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

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

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

Okay. Time for a Sandra© rating:

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

5 of 5 Sandras©! A perfect score!

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

Movie Night: Failure to Launch

2007-01-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, nice beard.

Well.

Anywho.

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

..

...

....

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

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

And I didn't even fall asleep...

So, we give Failure to Launch:

Two Sandras**!

Until next time, keep warm!

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

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

So, Who Plays You?

2007-01-26T01:38:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

So who do you look like?

Fatboy

2007-01-25T01:36:00.000-05:00

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

I'm going to have to lose some weight.

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

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

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

"what's that thing around his neck?"

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

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

New Beginings, and the State o' the Union

2007-01-23T01:35:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers.

There, I feel better

2007-01-22T07:52:00.000-05:00

After last night had to get some aggression out of my system.

Look, no whining here about the phantom roughing the passer call, or the non-pass interference call in the end zone which would've given the Patsies first and goal from the one yard line. None of that here. Anytime your team can't hold a 21-3 lead with three minutes left in the first half, well, you deserve to lose the game.

But... I'll be rooting for the Bears in two weeks. Not because I'm sore the Colts beat the Pats, heck, even the Red Sox eventually beat the Yankees, these things happen. But because I'm worried about that guy in the Enterprise car ads who rents a decent car for his high school reunion, you know, "Moose". What's going to happen if Manning actually wins a Superbowl? He's already on 37.8% of the advertising shown on television (ramped up to 87.6% during the playoffs). If he actually won, there'd be no work for anyone else in advertising. What would the Geico cavemen do?

And, to top it off, he's apparently an ingrate. According to SI.com's Peter King, Manning's been playing silent with the media:

The words cut and sting, and I'm sure one of the reasons Manning has cut out almost all of his one-on-one TV interviews this season is because during almost every one of them in the last couple of years, if the TV person is doing his/her job, the question about not winning a National Championship or Super Bowl is asked. And so why should Manning subject himself to weekly reminders of the pain? I totally understand his refusal to deal with the the amiable but persistent grilling."

But he's okay subjecting me to fourteen ads per hour of television? Well, screw him.

So, my fellow football fans, unite behind the underdog Chicago Bears and maybe, just maybe, we'll regain our airwaves from the dorky "6 foot five, two hundred fifty pound quarterback(s) with laser canon arms"...

Gack.

Oops, missed that...

2007-01-20T11:42:00.000-05:00

The lovely Duff retaliated for the Christmas present tag I threw her by tagging me on this one. As a slave to the rules of the internet, I submit my contribtion.

But, as Wifeypooh is sitting across the table and scowling that I'm playing on the internet (or, as she calls it, a colossal waste of time), let's involve her. Below, in red, are her answers.

if you had to choose one vice in exclusion of all others what would it be?
WP: Junk food (as she munches on a Dorito).
Kal:

if you could change one specific thing about the world what would it be?
WP: No weapons of mass destruction. You should have to look at the people you're killing.
Kal: Like when she strangles hobos.

name the cartoon character you identify with the most.
WP: Wonderwoman.
Kal: Admit it, you're all jealous of me right now. I love the truth-telling lasso...

if you could live one day in your life over again which one would it be?
WP: No. Not interested.
Kal: See, it's hard enough to live with me the first time around, why would she subject herself to a rerun?

if you could go back in history and spend a day with one person who would it be?
WP: Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (Early female supremacist)
Kal: Admit, you're all very happy you're not me right now...

what is the one thing you lost, sold or threw away that you wish you could have back?
WP: I wish I had the flecks of gold from a river in Alaska my cousin gave to me.

what is your one most important contribution to this world?
WP: Teaching.
Kal: I think it's ensuring that I don't go out in public without pants. Left to my own devices, that would not be unusual.

what is your one hidden talent that nearly no one knows about?
WP: Obviously if I had a hidden talent I wouldn't mention it on the internet, wouldn't remain hidden, would it?
Kal: (smiling knowingly...)

what is your most cherished possession?
WP: Oh, definitely that big stud I'm married to. He's the best. I thank God every day for him...
(OUCH)
WP (for real): My engagement ring.

what one person influenced your life the most when growing up?
WP: (gazing at me like I have two heads) My mother (this doesn't have to be in a postive way, does it?)

what one word describes you better than any other?
WP: Clever.
Kal: (I would've said annoyed...)

The Saints Are Coming

2007-01-20T01:33:00.001-05:00

Thoughts for this weekend of conference Championship football.

Bears Vs. Saints.

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

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

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

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

Thanks to Brian for turning me onto this vid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ugh.

Head=Colts. Heart=Patriots.

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

The Saints Are Coming

2007-01-20T01:33:00.000-05:00

Movie Night: Cats and Dogs

2006-11-12T05:50:00.000-05:00

Those of you who've been around Kal's World for a while are familiar with Movie Night. This is when we break out The Sandra Bullock Scale© to rate the Saturday night movie choices of the Jones Clan.

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

Cats And Dogs (2001)

This movie was the purrfect (bwa ha ha, I kill me!) Sandra Storm.

1) I've already seen it at least five times
2) It's a stupid movie
3) I'd been raking leaves all day so I was kind of tired anyway.

You see, we've finally broken down and gotten Netflix. Now, this is great because our local rental shop closed down over the summer (due to Netflix), and the closest rental place is the next town over that we generally go to twice a month for groceries, so we've been spending an average of $15 per rental, when figuring in all the fascist late fees.

Netflixhas been great. We've been getting two movies a week, and haven't had a problem watching them over the weekend and returning them in time for two new movies the following week.

Last week, however, I had to mail the movies back from Pleasantville instead of Boston, and the pony must have been sick, because I cut it a bit too close and with the federal holiday on Saturday we missed getting back one of the movies in time.

(A digression, if I may. The Pleasantville Post Office is a small branch personed [can't say "manned" anymore] by two people with the urgency of... well... two not very urgent people. They really belong off in Vermont or something, but we're stuck with them. Fine. That's okay, I'm generally not interacting with them too much, since I work normal human hours I leave town and get back to town long before they've opened at 9am and boarded up at 3pm. [Or something like that, I really can't be bothered with the details right now.] But on a couple of occassions recently I've had need of them during a normal business day.

So I trundle up to the Post Office, only to find that they're closed for lunch. They take a lunch hour! From 12:30 to 1:30 they're closed. WTF? There's two people in the office. How hard would it be for one person to cover the desk while the other one scarfs up their Campbell's Soup in their lovely Mr. Zip thermos? [I've got one of those from 1974, it's a prized possession].

And wouldn't lunch hour be the exact time when a service industry person be most needed by those of us who have real jobs? We're going to slip out during lunch and buy our stamps or pick up our certified letters from lawyers threatening us that unless we don't stop sending those love letters to Kate Hudson there's going to be real trouble, but, jeez, it seems that she and Owen are taking some time off from each other, and little Ryder really needs a father figure and...

Oh... Sorry about that.

BTW: Kate: call me...

Any way... Okay, better get back to the main point of this post...

Digression: Off)

Yes, hmm... where were we? Oh, yes. So no kid movie from Netflix this week, and we had to plumb the vast catalog of Family Jones-owned movies for the evening juvenile movie. The Boy, whose turn it was to pick the movie, came up with this stinker. I think I lasted ten minutes. But since I've seen it like eleventy-hundred times before, a couple of notes:

1) How depressing would it have been if this had been Charlton Heston's last movie? As it is, he only did four movies after this (assuming he's done with acting, which I would say is the case four years after a diagnosis of suspected Alzheimer's disease).

2) We have to put a stop to stars having children. This is what happens when stars have children, they make these crappy kid movies. I've got to believe that was the case with Heston, he was doing this for his grandkids -unless his Alzheimers is more advanced than otherwise thought, and he thought he was signing on to some sequel to Planet of the Apes or something... Ye Gods.

3) There is no three. Really. This movie stunk. All over.

Look, I like kids movies. I like not having to think too much about the plot and I feel smart when I get the jokes obviously targeted at at the parents in the crowd.

But this movie didn't have any of that. And, on top of that, it went out of its way to annoy you. It also miscast just about every voice part, with the exception of the puppy voiced by Tobey Maguire, who pulled off the naive newbie routine. But people like Jon Lovitz, Sean Hayes (Jack! of Will and Grace), and Alec Baldwin use so much physicality in their acting they're wasted in a voice only role. Beyond the "oh, yeah, that's so-and-so" they didn't bring anything to the roles.

So, the rating. I was toying with the idea of a "6 out of 5" Sandras award for a movie so awful that you actually try to go to sleep during it to save yourself from having to watch, but that would require work;

Cats and Dogs earns...

5 out of 5 Sandras

Next up: the adult movie of the evening, Thank You for Smoking.

And Kate: really, Wifeypooh would be okay with an open relationship kind of thing. I'll treat you better than Owen, and I won't look like a homeless person like Chris...

On the Move!

2006-10-09T09:19:00.000-04:00

Alright, the utter destruction of my beloved template has given my the courage to just up and move.

Sick of waiting for Blogger to offer me a migration over to Beta, I've just opened a new account, Kal's World (v2.0) can now be found at:

www.kaljones.blogspot.com

Go check 'er out.

Hey, hey - Stop Right There!

2006-10-07T12:53:00.000-04:00

Template got all farked up when I was changing something, and my girlie-man coding skilz are insufficient to figure out just what the heck I did, so I've had to hose the whole thing.

Fortunately, this is an extra-long weekend for me, as Monday is Columbus Day (a holiday in MA), and Tuesday is a forced day off because my kids' retarded elementary school decided to make that a "curriculum day" for the teachers (e.g., they go to some hotel, chat about crap, do two minutes of 'team building' and have lunch on the taxpayers), so us working parents have to take a day off of work, after a three-day weekend no less, to take care of our kids.

Bastards...

So, anyway, I'll try to get a decent template up over the weekend, but I didn't want to deprive you all of my wisdom in the interim, so here's a crappy template.

Enjoy!

Gotta go make lunch.

For Sale: Cheap, One Really Fat Cat Blogger

2006-10-05T05:22:00.000-04:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for the meme-ories....

2006-10-02T19:42:00.000-04:00

Alrighty, getting back into the swing of this blog thing, I think I'll steal a meme from Avitable...

But since I'm supposed to be paying attention to wifeypooh (she's talking incessantly about her job... Man that woman's jaws are hinged in the middle and flap both ways...), let's have her guest blog the thing (with some notations).

1. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?

(She quivers at the thought) Only one person? Purely selfish gain, revenge, or the betterment of mankind? Pottery teacher from college... Art therapy person in college. (Gave her the dreaded B - minuses.. Thus ensued a twenty-minute conversation about trying to get the grade overturned and having to haul her pottery upstairs and blah blah blah....) (the things I do for you folks)

(Then her altruistic side gets the best of her and, afterall, she'll probably never run into this pottery teacher again...) Maybe Osama?

And why are you writing this down? You know how I hate the innernets...

2. You can flip a switch that will wipe any band or musical artist out of existence. Which one will it be?

(uh oh... I'm getting that look... Shouldn't have said blah blah blah...)

Led Zepplin. Even the dead one members. I really, really hate Stairway to Heaven. (Probably has something to do with creepy hippy boyfriend she had before perfect me...)

(Ohh.... the story comes out. It involves a 9th grade boyfriend and the relative length of said song, and apparently he was a bit handsy...)

3. Who would you really like to just punch in the face?

Kal.

4. What is your favorite cheese?

Smoked Gouda. (Note: she has never bought smoked Gouda. I believe she has never eaten smoked Gouda, I think this is some sort of Gouda envy). Oh, okay you idiot: Pepper jack cheese. (Me: Swiss!)

5. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your immediate disposal. What kind will you make?

Roast beef. And with everything, including hot peppers. (But no mayonnaise. What the hell kind of person doesn't put mayo on a roast beef sandwich?)

6. You have the opportunity to sleep with the movie celebrity of your choice. We are talking no-strings-attached sex and it can only happen once. Who is the lucky celebrity of your choice?

Goran Visnjic!!! WHAP! (Oops, sorry, that's mine) Michael J. Fox. (Well, you know, with the parkinson's thing, could be kind of fun....)

(ooh, that was offsides)

7. You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who do you pick?

(Dumbfounded look... Okay, I'll answer: Avril Lavignine.. "I like Avril Lavigne" she says... Moment of reverie as I imagine the possibilities... WHAP... back to the punching of the face...)

8. Now that you've slept with two different people in a row, you seem to be having an excellent day because you just came across a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk. Holy crap, a hundred bucks! How are you gonna spend it?

Go out to dinner. Maybe twice! (McD's is a good deal...)

9. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?

I can't depart right now, I have school... (yes, my life is one adventure after another...) Oh, all right, Disney. This is stupid....

10. Upon arrival to the aforementioned location, you get off the plane and discover another hundred-dollar bill. Now that you are in the new location, what are you gonna do?

Go out to dinner. But because it's in Disney, will only be half a dinner.

11. A demon rises out of Hell and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. It is...?

(Completely wasted on her, let me tell you... total teetotaler...) Do Shirley Temples count?

12. Rufus appears out of nowhere with a time-traveling phone booth. You can go anytime in the PAST. What time are you traveling to and what are you going to do when you get there?

Why would I want to time travel....( Y-a-w-n... Yes folks, exciting times here at Chez Kal... Okay, got an answer:). Fine, I'd go back and talk to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (You know, the first femi-nazi... My wife's hero... Kill me now)

13. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place?

You shall honor no other omnipotent dictator but me... (Sort of the rules of our house anyway)

14. You have been given the opportunity to create the half-hour TV show of your own design. What is it called and what's the premise?

The naked Goran Visnjic hour.... (oops, that was me again)

15. What is your favorite curse word?

!#@? - (this is a family blog after all)

16. One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren't really doing anything, they're just standing around your bed. What do you do?

We are now joined by The Boy:
WP: Close my eyes and hope they go away... No, wake Kal up to go kill them.
Boy: Pee on them.

17. Your house is on fire! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don't worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what's the item?

WP: "You shouldn't be running back in.. Photoalbums."
Boy: My pee and mummy-stained pillow. (One track mind...)

18. The Angel of Death has descended upon you. Fortunately, the Angel of Death is pretty cool and in a good mood, and it offers you a half-hour to do whatever you want before you bite it. Whatcha gonna do in that half-hour?

Boy: Play video games
WP: eat buffalo wings and nachos, and points be damned!

19. You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what's even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What's it gonna be?

Boy: To have every superpower!
WP: (ten minutes of hemming and hawing... Ach, getting that look again. Okay, here's my superpower: the ability to instantly brew the perfect of coffee! I'd be caffeine man, and I out last my groggy, decaffeinated, enemies.)

20. You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?

Well, she's taken off to go do some teacherly stuff, so you're stuck with my answers... And since this is a family blog, we'll have to leave this one to the imagination...

21. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

Third grade. The entire, mother-truckin' year. And maybe sixth grade too. And while we're at it, let's knock out fourth, sixth, first, seventh, eleventh... etc etc...

22. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool stuff... you can move to anywhere else in the world! Bitchin'! What country are you going to live in now?

Scotland. Reason one: my excessive body hair will come in handy during the cold winter nights. Reason two: with global warming, Scotland will become the new Riviera... (yes, yes, I know all about the slowing of the Gulf Stream and the impact on the English Isles, go pester someone else, Mr. Smarty-pants...)

23. This question still counts, even for those of you who are under age. Check it out. You have been eternally banned from every single bar in the world except for ONE. Which one is it gonna be?

I could NOT care less (take that, Grammar nazi!). Haven't been in a bar since I worked in one...

24. Hopefully you didn't mention this in the super-powers question.... If you did, then we'll just expand on that. Check it out... Suddenly, you have gained the ability to FLOAT!!! Whose house are you going to float to first, and be like "Dude, check it out... I can FLOAT!"?

I'm quite certain that if someone saw me floating they'd be tempted to tie ropes to me and enter me in the Macy's parade. I think I'll stay down here on the nice, solid ground, thank you very much.

25. The constant absorption of magical moonbeams mixed with the radioactive vegetables you consumed earlier has given you the ability to resurrect the dead famous-person of your choice. So which celebrity will you bring back to life?

Steve Irwin, because everybody got so pissed at me that I wasn't worked up about him dying. Then they'd all think I was cool, except for Terri, who'd have to sleep with his zombie-corpse self...

26. The Gates of Hell have opened, and Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person, etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?

I'll pass on the whole resurrected person thing. Those never work out well. Haven't any of you read Pet Semetary?

27. What's your theme song?

Well, there's that Beck song... But seeing as how after all these questions I'm a floating, super-caffeinated Sctosman, how about the "Greatest American Hero" theme?

There. A post. You happy?

An Important Public Service Announcement...

2006-10-01T19:03:00.000-04:00

I felt this tutorial was important enough to interrupt my blogattical...

Arrrrrgh! Governor King to Davy Jone's Locker!

2006-09-19T07:24:00.000-04:00

Former Governor Edward J. King passed on yesterday, and, as it is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, a proper send-off is required:

Avast Ye, me hearties, and settle in for a tale o' Edward J. King, the most pirating buccaneer ever to walk the poop deck of Massachusetts state government!

As a young lad just outta his learning, Eddie King went off to sea, well, the the All-American Football Conference, and played professional football for the Buffalo Bills (not the AFL Bills) and the Baltimore Colts.

In th' course o' time, he became the executive director of MassPort (the folks who run and own Logan Airport). It was in 1978 that King turned full-time to freebooting and made a run at the coveted corner office, entering a primary to try and unseat fellow Democrat, Michael Dukakis.

Well, Ed King keelhauled little Mike Dukakis in 1978 and was our state's top scoundrel for four years, charting a more conservative and business-friendly course than Dukakis. He was so conservative he endorsed Ronald Reagan and was called "Reagan's favorite Democratic Governor".

Dukakis and his liberal crew gave King the black spot in a primary rematch in 1982, and King sailed off into the sunset (well, Florida). He died yesterday after a series of falls and surgeries. He was 81.

Fair Winds, Guv'ner King! We'll sing a shanty and lift a toast of grog to yer memory!

Must... not... post.... Can't... control... fingers.....

2006-09-15T06:34:00.000-04:00

A London School of Economics trained researcher has released a study claiming that men are smarter than women...

Really.

Honestly.

Heh.

Well, never one to shirk away from controversy, here's my take: well, Duh!

Here's all the evidence I need:

Christie Brinkly and Billy Joel

Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman

And just about every sitcom couple on television today...

As a matter of fact, just about every man in the world vs. every woman. (With the exception of Goran Visjnic....). Men are infinitely more gross than women, and it's clearly a sign of women's lower intelligence that they continue to allow yucky smelly men to touch them.

There. Try and argue with that logic!

Tonight on Fox: COPS in Tehran...

2006-09-15T05:50:00.000-04:00

From Strategypage's neat collection of military photos comes this picture:

Apparently this collection of photos is from the graduation ceremonies of the Iranian Police Academy. They took my punchline, which was that it reminded me of some Monty Python skit (cross "The Spanish Inquisition" skit with them in Pepperpot outfits). I'm impressed they can run in those things, never mind rappel down the side of a building.

No one expects the Tehran meter maids!

(my favorite line from that skit: "Biggles! Fetch... The Cushions!" Gets me every time...)

Senior Citizens That Could Beat Me Up, Edition 427

2006-09-12T20:57:00.000-04:00

G. Gordon Liddy is 75 years old. My grandmother is 75, actually she turns 76 this month. I love my No-No, but frankly, I could kick her butt. I think I can take Pa-Pa too. He's got a heart condition and, frankly, one quick karate chop to the pacemaker and it'd be over.

Not that I would ever beat them up, it's just important to know that I could if I had to, like if they became double agents for Al Queda or something. G. Gordon Liddy, on the other hand, would give me a lot of trouble.

So I'm sitting there, watching Fear Factor (hey, cut me some slack, it was a rough day and I needed some brain anesthesia) and G. Gordon's on it. He's teamed up with Tempest Bledsoe (you know, Vanessa from the Cosby Show) and they're dunking him again and again in the water while hanging him from his ankles.

And now they're shoving him in an isolation chamber, dumping bugs on him and filling the chamber with a sulfer smell. C'mon. This guy spent 120 days in solitary. You think a few crickets are going to break him?

He won that challenge (and a $60,000 custom chopper), but the car crash course did him in. Apparently his eyesight isn't what it once was. Bummer.

But he could still be the crap out of me.

One of 2,996: Thomas F. Theurkauf

2006-09-11T00:43:00.000-04:00

(NOTE: I'll be keeping this post at the top for the next week. Look below this post for our regularly scheduled nonesense...)

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

A message from an old friend...

2006-09-08T08:17:00.000-04:00

An open ~~letter~~ bitchslap from Recondo

Hey you. Yes, you, Kal. You big pussy. What's with giving Steve Irwin grief about getting killed in a freak accident with a stingray? Save me this weepy "oh, but what about his children" bullshit. His children will a) live pretty damn well off his millions, b) have thousands upon thousands of hours of videotape to remember their father by, and c) have a mother (Terri) with more testosterone than you have. You big girl.

You know, this is a disturbing trend I've been noticing. You wrote that big wussy post about chickening out of all the good rides at Six Flags, and you wrote this piece o' crap getting all weepy about soldiers dying on Memorial Day. You've got soft, you pansy.

Life is meant to be lived. Not shuttered up in some office under fluorescent lights eating twinkies. Is the reason you're mad at Irwin because he represented something so fundamentally un-you? Would you ever chase a snake? No... you're a wimp. You're more concerned about protecting your pitiful life than living it! And why? what's so worthy about your existence that it should be extended?

Look here: the fundamental choice we make in our lives is always between safety and liberty. Seatbelt laws=safety. Not being pulled over every two minutes by the seat-belt nazi's=liberty. Pick sides. And it better be the right one, or I'm gonna have to open up a 3 3/4 plastic can of whoopass on you.

Twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-four (give or take a couple) hours to go...

2006-09-06T08:24:00.000-04:00

And I wanna be sedated...

Okay, can we just get this NFL season underway?

It's almost time. Time for struggle. Time for strife. Time for redemption. Another epic season beckons.

When last the hometown 22 took the field, it was to embarassingly choke away a playoff game in the rarified air of Denver. From dynsasty to also-ran.

This is a season of ifs;

If Bruschi can come back from a wrist problem and play to the level he reached at the end of last season (after coming back from a stroke and a hole in his heart)...

If Dillon and Maroney can combine to be a Thunder and Lightning backfield...

If they can field a recieving corps that can catch the ball and stretch a defense...

Ahh, September when all things are new, and anything is possible.

Bring on the season, already.

A better tribute to Steve Irwin....

2006-09-06T08:20:00.000-04:00

(perhaps he was jamming his thumb in the stingray's nether regions?)

Look, the guy harassed wildlife for a living. He'd pick up deadly snakes, jump around with crocodiles... And now his wife's a widow.

Braaavo.

Crikey!

2006-09-04T06:52:00.000-04:00

Animals 1 - Steve Irwin 0.

A stingray? A stingray takes out Steve Irwin?! This is guy who fed chickens to a 13 foot crocodile while burping his infant. This is a guy who wrestled snakes, wrangled spiders, and played with whales. And a stingray does him in? That's just wrong.

This is only the second time in recorded Australian history a stingray has killed somebody. As icky as they look, they tend to be pretty calm and non-aggressive animals, apparently. Unless, I guess, you go shoving a camera in their faces.

Kind of like Sean Penn.

My condolences to his kids, Bob (the potential croc chow) and his eight-year old daughter Bindi. And of course, Terri, his wife. He was 44. Total bummer. And, yes, Geraldo still lives. There is no freakin' justice in this world...

Nuts & Honey...

2006-09-02T09:01:00.000-04:00

Nuttin' honey, that's what I got. I would note I was correct with respect to John Mark Karr, he's a vile, repulsive, broken human being, just not the vile, repulsive, broken human being who killed Jon Benet Ramsey.

Now I was going to write something about how I thought people were unduly giving the Ramsey's a hard time about Jon Benet's beauty pageant thing, but, man, looking around at the million sites dealing with the murder -- there's something just too weird about this whole thing.

And I'm not providing links, you can google it all for yourself, but the similarities in handwriting between Patsy Ramsey and the ransom note, the weird language of the note, the 30 doctor's office visits in 3 years, a lot of which were for UTIs or other odd (and suspicion raising) reasons...

Look. I have no idea what happened. I have no idea what information the DA did or did not have... but this case just creeps me out.

Oh, and I'm a big ussy-pay.

(That's pig latin. I'm fluent in it, you know...)

You see, Brother Goodson took us on our annual pilgrimage to Six Flags New England yesterday. And again, my inner chicken took center stage.

And it's getting even more embarrassing. Now The Boy is acting braver than me.

This is "Scream". It's one of those rides that shoot you straight up into the air, then drop you 90% of the way down, then shoot you up again. Oh yeah, great times. It's 200 feet high, and you can see all the way to Connecticut from up there (well, since Connecticut is about 500 yards from Six Flags, that's not such an impressive feature).

See, I did go up on this thing two years ago. And the zooming isn't so bad, it's actually kind of neat in that you reach a zero G state at a couple of points, and sort of float. But in between the first zoom up and the big drop, they hang you up top for 5 or 10 seconds. Which seemed like an eternity. And all I could picture in my head was my hand unbuckling my safety belt and me being a Kal-cake on the pavement 200 feet below.

Or worse yet, that happening to The Girl, who was sitting right next to me.

The older I get, the worse I get with heights. It's getting so that I freak out on those stupid sky-lift type rides. The one at Six Flags has you in a steel ball cage 87 feet high. Oh, and it will swing from side to side if you get it off balance. And if you've got a 250 pound fat dude sitting next to his 100 pound daughter, it will swing. Back and forth. Back and forth. And Kal will imagine the pressure being put on that little pin holding the big, sure-to-crumple-on-impact steel ball

Blaugh.

It's not the side-to-side stuff that bothers me so much. Centrifugal force = no problem. Heights= big problem. And it's not so much the idea of heights, it's the falling (or, rather, throwing myself from off of) those heights. Swinging around in circles? No problem. White water raft rides? No problem. Excessive rates of speed? No problem. Get me five feet off the ground - I start getting dizzy and anxious.

And now my eight year old knows his Dad is a big wimp. Life sucks.

Quick Hits

2006-08-31T17:42:00.000-04:00

Alright guys, sorry I've been remiss. What do you think about the small changes to the blog? The header up top there, with the lightbulb, the camera, the quote balloon and the computer is supposed to represent something like ideas, pics, and rants - all in this website.

I dunno, something like that. Really, I can't be bothered to do any deep thinking today, don't ask me.

Yesterday not one, not two, but four co-workers stopped by to ask me what was up, I looked exhausted - beaten.

"Oh, just tired, that's it... the news went a little long. That's it." How could I possibly tell them what it's like, what that down is like after the heights to which I had flown?

Oh, they're good people, don't get me wrong... But they can't know the exhilaration of the big deal. The charge from making law - negotiating the finer points of statute. The adrenaline thrill of hunting down your adversary, rooting him out, and crushing his throat with your bare hands. Killing him quietly and slinking off without being seen by another soul -- well, another soul that lived to see the sunset.

If they've never felt these highs, (that feeling, putting three rounds in a two diameter circle, for instance), how can they understand my lows?

It's a lonely path we've chosen, but it's the only path we'd be able to walk, isn't it?

Oh, and Conan had a good guest on.

Separated at Birth?

2006-08-28T07:08:00.000-04:00

By now you've got to have seen about 100 of those annoying "Ask Dr. Z" ads Chrysler is running. It turns out that the guy featured in them is actually Dieter Zetsche, Daimler-Chyrsler's CEO, and not just some bad actor.

I had always thought that the "Ask Dr. Z." ad was cooked up by some yound ad man who had spent all his work-hours prepping his fantasy football draft when he was supposed to come up with a campaign for the "new" Chrysler. One day, while cruising Sports Illustrated.Com he realized he had a board presentation in 20 minutes. He had been perusing the one millionth of so fantasy-football mock draft, and he came upon the visage of SI's "Dr. Z", football guru and man seriously in need of a life, Paul Zimmerman:

The resemblence is uncanny.

Zimmerman is called Dr. Z. for his encyclopedic knowledge of football. Zetsche is called Dr. Z as he has a docterate in engineering. Dr. Z of SI.com idles millions of American workers each week with indepth articles about football, usually read when said workers are supposed to be doing some work. Dr. Z of Daimler-Benz idled 26,000 American workers when he merged Chrysler and Daimler and closed six Chrysler plants. Who is the bigger threat to American productivity and the American workforce?

Incidentially, when I was a teen seriously into restoring/fixing/abandoning one of my semi-monthly vehicle purchases, I was a religious reader of car mags. I desperately wanted to be an automobile journalist, if for no other reason than I could meet and woo Mean Jean Lindamood, the cofounder of Automobile Magazine and therefore like totally hot... (I saved like a note from a long-lost love the rejection letter I got from her regarding an unsolicited article I sent Automobile.)

Anyway, I remember reading then this saying that on the way up, a car company is usually run by engineers, as it's peaking and begining to slip, it's run by accountants, and when it's in full free-fall, it's being run by lawyers.

Bill Ford is a bean counter (MBA, but history undergrad, so maybe there's some hope), and Rick Wagoner of GM is a bean counter (MBA again, with an economics background). At least Zetsche knows cars better than money. Lee Iacocca, the last "savior" of the auto business was an engineer...

Compare and contrast:

Takeo Fukui, CEO of Honda: Engineer. Carlos Ghosn, the Brazillian-Lebanese, but French trained CEO of Nissan, is an Engineer.

And, of course, the exception that proves the rule: Hiroshi Okuda, President of Toyota got a business degree before joining Toyota in 1955. Of course, Mr. Okuda is the guy who put Toyota on the hybrid path back in the mid-1990's, when gas was cheap (relatively) and car companies were making a mint on guzzling SUVs, so he can't be all that dense.

(Oh, and he has a black belt in judo. So don't screw with Toyota, or he'll kick your ass...)

Strike!

2006-08-24T08:08:00.000-04:00

Well folks, it's come to this. I'm on strike.

To quoth a great American, "I've taken all I can takes and I can't takes no more!"

Yes, yes, I know. I've got more Salem stuff to post, and there's all manner of interesting and notable crap going on in the big wide world, not to mention at the homestead, where The Girl, my darling little 10-year-old, is trying to drive me absolutely insane...

But that's it! I don't care! I'm not in the mood to blog no more!!

What's bothering him, you ask? Why's he all unhinged?

Oh, my friends, it's a culmination of calamity, a plethora of pain, a miasma of mirthless ..... mirthless.... mirthless something-that-begins-with-M.

Exhibit One: Your Boston Red Sox. Look, I'm not a baseball fan. Baseball is best used like golf, as an excuse to take a nap on a Sunday afternoon. I'm a football fan. I could watch a football game between the Perkins School for the Blind and the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth. It just doesn't matter. Give me a patch of green, 360 feet by 160 feet, paint a couple of endzones and a few hashmarks, and I'm yours.

But the Red Sox are not a baseball team, and the games they play are not baseball games. The Red Sox are some sort of sick barometer of life in this benighted region. They are our connection to the eternal secrets of the universe, our window to the fates.

And the fates hate us.

For 86 years Red Sox Nation toiled like Sisyphus, pushing that boulder to the crest of the hill, only to have it roll back down on us year after year. But, hey, we're New Englanders - we're used to adversity. Most of us are Irish - that's double training for adversity and sorrow; it's genetic.

It seems now 2004 was just another trick of the heavenly bureaucracy that runs baseball. The Gods of Baseball, as I've mentioned, are capricious, nasty and brutish. I don't say arbitrary, which is usually tied to the word capricious, because they're anything but arbitrary. Everything is planned, everything has meaning.

So we see 2004 for what it was. The Gods of Baseball had seen that we had become inured (giving that Word-A-Day calendar a real workout today) to the continual almost-there finishes and dramatic collapses. 2003 had perhaps taken the cake, taking us to within six outs of the World Series before an epic collapse in Yankee Stadium.

(incidentally, the 2003 collapse was the cause of a nine month sabbatical from blogging as I went on a soul-searching tour of the Orient, cleansing my chakra and centering my tao.)

In order to properly torture us, the Gods need us to have hope. And that's what 2004 did, gave us hope. We Believed! It's like Pacino in Godfather III (oh yes, that never happened, sorry): "Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in".

Oh, poor piteous fools.

Which brings us to this weekend. The Sox were sliding and the Yanks were surging. A five game homestand against the Yankees, just the thing to right the ship and get this race off on the right foot. And what happens?

Five loses in a row. Five gigantic loses in a row. The Sox gave up approximately 436 runs in five games, started canvassing the bleachers for middle relief pitchers, and, to top it off, Manny Rameriz (an awesome hitter in his own right, but perhaps more critically, protection for David Ortiz in the order) develops some sort of hamstring/brain cramp and looks like he may be appearing only sporadically for a while.

In the midst of a West Coast trip....

And to top it off, it gives Chinless Dan Shaugnessey a reason to trot out more of his the-world-is-falling crap. Fellowship of the miserable, indeed.

Ye Gods.

Say it: September 10th, Buffalo at New England... September 10th, Buffalo at New England.... September 10th, Buffalo at New England...

Rants and Memes: My cup runneth over...

2006-08-21T02:05:00.000-04:00

What is blogging all about if not rants and memes? So here's some 1:29AM thoughts...

John Mark Karr (it's the curse of the three name thing; Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman, John Wilkes Booth -- uh oh, wait a minute, starting to sound like Mel Gibson, better dial it down a bit... Okay:)

Anyway, many people are getting all worked up about John Karr, the guy who confessed - maybe - to the Jon Benet Ramsey murder, getting fried shrimp and champagne while flying back from Thailand to the US. I happen to think that Karr isn't the guy, that he's either running from something in Thailand and needed to get out of the country poste haste and was broke, or he's getting an enormous high out of the notoriety, either way you could have counted me in the group of people who think that Karr should've been brought back in the US in different circumstances... Like muzzled and in a dog crate, rather than business class.

But there might be a method to this apparent madness. The AP has a story with quite a few criminal justice types praising the maneuver, believing it's meant to get Karr talking - while he's not technically in custody and without the challenges posed be Miranda.

Either way, soon enough we'll have DNA evidence either ruling him out or in. Even short of being the person who killed young Ms. Ramsey, Karr seems like a dangerous and broken person. And frankly, either way, I think Karr would look good in a nice little crate, packed up and put away somewhere dark and quiet for a long time.

Now, bring on the meme!

His Grace, Avitable, was kind enough to tag me. Think of this as a "holy day of obligation" kind of thing..

(That just cracks me up. The fact that he looks scaringly like Brother-In-Law#3 just puts it over the top...)

4 jobs I've had:
1. G-Man... Kinda sorta. Well, in that I work for the gum'mint. I very rarely get to shoot people though (which is okay, the paperwork's a real bitch)
2. Souless, godless, Public Relations Flack.
3. Junior Assistant Minister of Skulldrudgery and Dirty Tricks, US Senate campaign.
4. Bartender

4 movies I could watch over and over:
1. So I Married an Axe Murderer (and I do, every Valentines Day)
2. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
3. LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring
4. Highlander

4 places I have lived:
1. Boringtown, MA
2. Pleasantville, MA
3. That's it...
4. Nowhere else...

TV shows I love to watch:
1. ER
2. Boston Legal
3. NFL (Your Three-time World Champion New England Patriots)
4. Lost

4 places I have been on vacation (last four):
1. Washington, DC
2.Hersheyy, PA
3. Orlando, FL
4. Salem, MA

4 websites I visit daily:
1. Lileks
2. The Daily Canon, over there on the left
3. Slate
4. Boston.com

4 fave foods:
1. Lobster
2. The Bomb pizza: everything, including anchovies...
3. Chinese
4. Chicken Mole

4 places I'd like to be right now:
1. In bed (it's 1:54am, for goodness sakes...)
2. In Kate Hudson's bed (see, I told you that guy Chris was a bum Kate... And you really think Owen Wilson's any better? Give me a break...)
3. In the White House.
4. Nowhere else in the world.

This is why I haven't written the great American novel...

2006-08-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

I spent two hours on the computer this morning playing Command and Conquer...

But man, a 100 to 1 kill ratio?!? Sheeeet... I am dangerous.

(Actually, the Girl had a friend sleep over and I am hiding from them, lest I be dragged into some sort of Extreme Makeover, Fat Dad Edition...)

Day One in Salem, Part 2: I do believe in Spooks, I do believe in Spooks...

2006-08-17T08:26:00.000-04:00

So. After filling up with culture, and a $22 per person dinner (and that includes one kid ordering a bowl of soup), we signed up for a nighttime ghost tour of Salem.

We were ensured some sort of paranormal activity - I mean beyond how $10 per adult and $7 per kid turned into $40 for 2 adults and 2 kids.

First stop on the tour was the Howard Street burial ground, apparently the eternal resting place of some restless folks, including Giles Corey, the only victim of the witchcraft hysteria who wasn't hung. Old Mister Corey refused to enter a plea at his trial, which ticked off the justice system at the time.

So, they pressed him. Laid his 80 year old body down, put a board over his chest, and started putting rocks on him. According to our guide, hearty old Mr. Corey lasted three days before expiring, but not before responding to the sheriff's query as to whether he had anything to say, with a simple: "More Weight".

Giles was a quarrelsome and disagreeable old man, and apparently called his wife a witch enough so that she was put to trial as well. She didn't have Giles' stubborn streak, pled not guilty, was found guilty, and hung up on Gallows Hill.

Well, the field where the pressing took place is apparently now the old Howard Street Burial ground. Giles is said to reappear from time to time at the graveyard, and it's usually bad for Salem when he does; he was allegedly seen quite frequently before the catastrophic fire of 1914 that burned a good deal of the city.

Now, is that flash reflecting on dust over in the upper right hand corner, or is that an honest-to-goodness orbs?

So, the next stop on our ghost hunt is the old abandoned Salem jail. The jail, built in 1811-1813 and serving as a functioning jail until it's shuttering in 1991, is pretty creepy in the daylight. Trundle there at night, and it's creep-o-rama.

Well, ye olde gaol is a veritable hotspot of ghosts. Or dust. You make the call.

These were taken in what was the old exercise yard, next to the "carriage house".

Now, on to the site of infamous Sheriff Corwin's house. The witch hysteria died down when the girls who were apparently the authorities on witches and witchcraft went a little too far and accused the Governor of the Colony's wife of witchcraft.

Well, the Governor stepped in and said enough is enough and put an end to the trials. Well, as you can imagine, Sheriff Corwin wasn't the most popular fellow in Salem. And adding to his troubles, Corwin had a nasty case of the curse. Well, at least according to our guide (and several ghost hunting sites on the 'net), Corey had cursed Corwin (and the subsequent sheriffs of Salem/Essex County) on his deathbed, dooming Corwin and all those future, innocent sheriffs, to early demises.

Corwin died young, in his 40s. And according to Bob Cahill, former Essex County Sheriff, every Sheriff of the county has retired due to ill health or had some serious heart or blood ailment. (Should I tell Frank Cousins, the current sheriff? He's a nice guy and held an awesome barbeque at the 2002 state Republican convention. I'd hate for something bad to happen to him.)

Well, Corwin's body was corpse-napped, or so the legend goes, by a merchant who had been accused of witchcraft but had fled, forfeiting his estate and wealth. Apparently Corwin's family paid a ransom, and the body was returned.

Mrs. Corwin had her husband buried in their basement to ensure he wouldn't get stolen again.

The Ward house now stands on the same lot, and was built, at least according to our guide, with some of the same foundation stones as the Corwin house. Here's a photo I snapped of the Ward house (the thing in the lit window is a bust of Washington, not a ghost, by the way).

And here's what came up on Wifeypooh's camera:

Ectoplasm, anyone?

And here's the next picture out of her camera.

Spooky, no?

Actually, the most terrifying thing I saw that night was this witch:

Yeah, that's Samantha. From Bewitched. The folks from TV Land put her up. God save us all.

Next: The revenge of grade school dioramas...

Day One In Salem, Part One: Kulture.

2006-08-17T08:21:00.000-04:00

The first day in Salem we decided to bore the kids to death with culture, before partaking of some of the cheesier aspects of the city.

One trip to the Peabody-Essex Museum is enough culture for anyone.

The PEM was founded in the 1790's, when, according to PEM's whitewash of history: "entrepreneurs from Salem came to understand that to thrive in a new global economy, they needed to understand and appreciate other peoples and cultures"...

Salem was a wealthy trade port in the 1700 and 1800's, and I have a feeling that the robber barons of the age wanted to show off all the things they could buy/steal from their ports of trade in the orient.

The museum has an impressive Asian art exhibit, including an entirely intact home from Southern China, the Yin Yu Tang house, which was used by a family in china for 200 years before being moved, piece by piece, to the PEM and reassembled.

They don't let you take photographs of it (an annoying practice in a few places in Salem, encouraging some lawlessness on day three, as you will see), but they've created an elaborate website detailing the house, its history, and the stuff within it.

They do let you take photos in the main exhibition halls, so here's a fearsome Polynesian god of something or other:

Now, I've cropped the photo for more sensitive viewers, but I was very disappointed by the, well, ahem... impressiveness of this figure. Brothergoodson and I got Polynesian tiki statues from Dad after he went on a trip to Hawaii, and I was always impressed by the Tiki's... manliness...

This guy's like nine feet tall, poor sucker was hung like an Irishman...

Anyway, they had a good deal of Native American art, including many modern pieces.

Unfortunately... many modern pieces.

From the press release announcing the exhibition: "The sculptures and paintings in All of My Life embrace the experiences and worldviews of nine contemporary Native American artists who call upon and reinterpret both Native American painting and sculpting traditions that are thousands of years old as well as those of modern art."

Anytime the worlds "worldview" and "reinterpret" are in the same sentence, you know you're in for a trip.

Take, for example, this... installation:

This is a big pile of dirt, modeled into the waffle-garden style of gardens favored by indigenous people in the water-starved American southwest, but with each square making some sort of point about the damage "the white man's diet" has done to native peoples. Excessive use of refined sugars, prepared foods, and various unwholesomeness of the American diet has wrought much havoc with these peoples.

The 47,000 is in reference to the 47,000 native Americans afflicted with diabetes. Apparently, according to the accompanying video (which I note used as a soundtrack a bunch of Enya songs: so, our food sucks but you'll take our quasi-new age music?), the white man's use of sugar did not react well to the metabolisms of native peoples.

Apparently, and if I said this I'd be labeled a racist and exiled off with Jimmy The Greek, the feast-and-famine lifestyle of pre-Colonial Americans created a genetic preference toward fat storage which was exacerbated when the white man showed up with his evil refined sugars.

So, in addition to outright killing the indians with guns and small-pox infected blankets, a charge I am entirely prepared to cop to on behalf of my European brethren (I blame the French, just so you know), we also insidiously forced Native North Americans to Twinkie themselves to death.

Oh, and yes, the pile of white things in the corner are marshmallows, those symbols of European Epicurian Imperialism...

Mmmm.... Marshmallows.... Delicious....

After all that Culture, a bit of lowbrow humor was required.

From the exhibit A Barbarian in Salem, (c) Kal Jones, 2006, I give you: the statue with the finger up his nose:

Artist: Kalezac Prometheus Jones. Photograph. After a piece by Adam Avitable

Next up: Spooks and Bullshit.

Argghhh!!!

2006-08-17T08:06:00.000-04:00

$@#%@#%! Blogger just ate a huge posts I wrote about coming back from vacation...

And I can't remember a single sentence of the quite witty and brilliant thing! Damnit.

Okay, well, here's a picture of a pirate with a finger up his nose.

Enjoy.

More about our trip to Salem, Mass., home of life-sized pirate statues and witches and, even, -gasp- real life spooks, later.

Good to be back.

Breakin' the Law! Breakin' the Law!

2006-08-14T08:14:00.000-04:00

Went over SIL#1's house yesterday for a cookout to celebrate BIL#3's birthday. Brother-in-Law#3 is addicted to the old lawn game Jarts. You remember those, right? They're those big lawn darts you toss at a round target, you get three points for a bulls-eye, and one point for being within one Jart length of the bulls-eye. Game to 21. There's all this complicated stuff about having to hit 21 exactly, and going back down if you go over 21, and you subtract from your total if you get a bulls-eye and your opponent comes within one Jart of the ring, and so on and so forth...

Frankly, it's all too much for someone holding a beer to understand, so I stopped trying.

The only problem is that Jarts was banned, outlawed!, by the Consumer Product Safety ~~nazis~~ Commission in 1988. It's illegal to sell or resell Jarts in the United States. So we're using heriloom Jarts passed down through the generations.

My only fear is that they pass those Jart registration laws they're talking about. That would be a problem.

Well, you know the old saying, when Jarts are outlawed, only outlaws will have Jarts...

Because I'm a big baby...

2006-08-11T14:42:00.000-04:00

I whined incredibly at Avitable because he didn't tag me on a meme, so now I should actually do it, shouldn't I...

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet and current street name)

Peaches Marshall

2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/grandmother on your mom's side, your favorite candy)

Bob Twizzler

3. YOUR "FLY GIRL/GUY" NAME: (first initial of first name, first two or three letters of your middle name)

K Prom

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)

Green Elephant

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)

Prometheus Attleboro

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name, first 2 letters of mom's maiden name and first 3 letters of the town you grew up in.)

JonKa HaPla

7. Terrorist Name: (middle name spelled backwards, your mom's maiden name spelled backwards) -

Avitable boycotted this one, as he felt it was offensive (the name will sound Arab, and not all arabs are terrorists, after all). But I'm Irish, and we've all been painted with the terrorist brush before, so I don't feel any qualms about doing this category:

Margaret Thatcher.

8. SUPERHERO NAME: (your favorite color, favorite drink)

The Green Coffee (ooo... that sounds particularly icky)

There, now, for the taggings:

Md, P-shag, Gypsy and Duff...

Heh...

2006-08-11T07:04:00.000-04:00

In my never-ending quest to get Duff to see the light, and to pick a much more worthy piece of guy candy to lust after (paging Dr. Kovac...), here's a recent picture of Val Kilmer from The Superficial.

Bwa ha ha.

(Not that I'm jealous of Val or anything, oh, noooo...)

May the Scwhartz be with you!

2006-08-11T06:55:00.000-04:00

In a frightening case of life imitating art, or of Mel Brooks morphing from comic genius to prognosticator of the future, 7-11's in Japan will soon offer bottled oxygen.

Remember Spaceballs? The plot of the movie revolved around Planet Spaceball's plot to kidnap Princess Vespa of Druidia in order to steal their abundant oxygen. Here we see President Skrob, Mel Brooks, gulping down some of Planet Druidia's sweet O2.

And here's what those trendsetters in Japan will be snorking later this year:

"So Lone Star, I see your Schartz is as big as mine........"

Carnival of the Vanities, 8/10/06 edition

2006-08-10T16:33:00.000-04:00

By the way, The Carnival of the Vanities is the longest running weekly "Blog Carnival", where folks can submit their best post of the week and get it seem by scores of other bloggers.

The Carnival is actually how I met Duff, who proceeded to drag me into the wonderful circle of folks I read and read me (most of those folks over there on the Daily Canon, as a matter of fact).

Anyway, this week's edition is up atHumantide. go check it out.

A Guest Editorial From Recondo

2006-08-10T06:58:00.000-04:00

The Errorists Have Won

No, no, that's not a typo. I'm talking about the pussified jackaninnies who pass for leadership in this pathetic country. I'm talking about the pitiful twits who think that making you take off your stinky, swampy shoes at the airport, in freakin' Florida, for gods sakes, during August, will make you safe from terrorism. For cripes sake. Thank goodness I don't have functioning nostrils.

Well, they're at it again. Apparently the observation deck of the Statue of Liberty is a perfect place for shoulder launched stinger missiles or some such nonsense.

According to this story from the Associated Press, the outgoing director of the National Park Service, (what's his personality got to do with it? Sure, so he's outgoing, I wouldn't expect a political appointee head of a major organization to be frickin' Emily Dickinson... Ohhh... That's not what they mean by outgoing... Never mind.)

Anyway, the soon-to-be-ex head of the National Park Service has sent a letter to Congress saying, essentially, terrorists with a fifth grade education are smarter than we are, and we can't do anything to make it safe for fat tourists from Idaho to climb to the top of the Statue and look out her crown.

They will continue to let people climb up to her toes.

Ah, so it's fine that Americans will be able to look up Ms. Liberty's dress and examine her gigantic copper legs (she's French, they all have nice gams...), but no more up to the crown.

(sarcastic voice)

ohh... No! There's a one in a million chance that something bad would happen. And then you'd get mad and fire me... boo hoo. And we couldn't possibly do something like put an armed guard up there to shoot anyone who looks suspicious... boo hoo...

(/sarcastic voice)

You people make me sick.

You think life is supposed to be 100% safe? Was it safe to hop on a wagon and ride across this big nation, shooting indians and buffalo?

No.

Was it safe designing all sorts of great advances of modern civilization like microwave ovens, nuclear bombs and The Morton Downey Jr. Show?

No.

Was it safe to go topple an annoying Arab nation with a homicidal, yet not quite as homicidal as everyone else over there, Dictator without a plan for what to do once he was gone?

Ah, No.

You are Americans, people! Life is not supposed to be 100% safe. When was the last time you were 100% safe? Probably when you were a little kid in buster browns and fudge-stained undies, and Mommie and Daddy told you what to eat, what to watch, and when to go to bed. Is that what you want from your government? A Mommy state wiping your chin and spit-tacking down your cowlick before she sends you off to school/work, your every step monitored by the 30 million surveillance cameras in use in the United States.

Here's what you've brought us to, jackasses: Charles Shumer, the vapid, idiotic, annoying communist Senator from New York, is starting to make sense:

"In this case, freedom has given way to fear. One of my favorite memories as a child was going up to the top of the Statue of Liberty and looking out of her crown to what I thought were the ends of the Earth. Now, generations of kids and adults will be denied that opportunity."

I ask you, which is more dangerous to American civilization? The very, very, miniscule chance that some idiotic smelly terrorist will go to the top of the statue of liberty and manage to pull off some act of terror, or the fact the Charles Shumer is started to sound as if the medication is finally working?

That's it. I'm moving to Canada.

That will be all.

This Day in Massachusetts History, August 9th

2006-08-09T12:25:00.000-04:00

August 9th, 1995: Jerry Garcia, the lead singer of the Grateful Dead, died of a heart attack while in a drug rehab program in California.

Our Governor, the always entertaining Bill Weld, ordered flags in the Commonwealth be flown at half-mast.

Weld actually had tickets for the upcoming Dead show that September, and had used some of the band's songs during his campaigns. (His convention song during his reelection bid in 1994 was "Truckin'" and his convention staff wore tye-dyed T shirts.)

In honor of the dead Garcia, and the politically-dead Weld (Bill, we hardly knew ye), here's Touch of Grey.

And for political junkies, YouTube has Weld's campaign film from his doomed New York gubernatorial campaign (which has an inordinate amount of scenes from his Massachusetts political career). You can see the video here.

Pot Purri

2006-08-08T07:28:00.000-04:00

In the twenty years I've been going to Jethro Tull concerts the drug of choice has gone from marijuana and mushrooms to Prilosec OTC and Lipitor. The over/under on average age was 50. And have you ever seen a 50 year old woman throw her granny panties unto a stage? Not good times, that.

Taking a vacation next week, going to Salem for a couple of days, see the witch stuff, the Essex-Peabody, hang out at the ocean, that kind of thing. Expect many, many jokes about various inlaws at the various witch museums... I fully expect to come back completely bruised and battered from the annoyed elbows thrown by Wifeypooh, but I gotta be me!

I think I'm in love with Nina Persson. Those looks she gives in the Tom Jones / Cardigans video for Burning Down the House (down below) have this sort of bored superiority that drives me absolutely bananas. That smirk.... Grrrrowl...

So, Pat Robertson has finally come around on Climate Change. I see God taking his plane down a couple of months ago had the desired effect. Now, Mr. Robertson, endorse gay marriage, or the almighty is going to kill your Cocker Spaniel.

Spiffed up the Daily Canon over there on the side, so it notes when folks have updated their blogs. Now everyone cane see when you're slacking!!! Bwa ha ha. (oh, thanks Blogrolling).

Penny posted a "How Girly are you" quiz up on her blog. She got 12%. I got 8%. So, Penny with the bodacious ta-tas (pffhhhbbt: Mossy's away! I can say all sorts of salacious things!) is only 4% more girly than I. Well, given my current corpulent-ness, maybe that's right...

(Duhh.... Penny got 32%, one of the people in the comments got 12%. Okay, I'll buy that P is 24% more girly than I am. But, just letting you know, that 8% of me that's girly is the part in charge of doing the dishes and picking candle smells [I'm a wicked good candle-smell picker, dudes], and nothing else... got it! No poofters here! -- Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course!)

Oh well, time to go hose the scum off and trundle off to work for the day. Peace and love and all that good crap.

Who are we to be?

2006-08-07T08:11:00.000-04:00

** Warning: Not the usual idiotic Crap **

El Globo has two very thought provoking op-eds today (thought provoking beyond the thoughts Boston Globe op-eds usually provoke in me, which is: "What the Fruck are these commie hippie pinkos smoking now?").

James Carroll uses the 61st anniversary of the day after the bombing of Hiroshima to connect the unconscious American guilt over the bombings of that city and Nagasaki with the events of 9-11, et seq..

Carroll clings to the popular post-hoc school of thought that Japan was within inches of surrendering, and that the big boys had their toys and were going to use them until there wasn't a yellow devil left standing (I paraphrase).

He creates what he calls the "Nagasaki Principle",

...what began as destruction for a goal becomes destruction for its own sake. War generates its own force in which everyone loses. This might be called the Nagasaki principle.

...It can operate at the level of close combat, driving fighters to commit atrocities that, in normal conditions, they would abhor. It operates equally at the level of the commanders, leading them to order strikes out of desperation, frustration, or merely for the sake of 'doing something.'

He describes us as a people deeply ambivalent about our conduct of World War II, feelings of shame at our "overkill", which we finally were relieved of, or felt we should have been relieved of, by 9-11:

Unconsciously ashamed of our own action in using the bomb, we were waiting for pay-back, and on that beautiful morning it seemed to come. The smoke rising up from the twin towers hit us like a mushroom cloud, and we instantly dubbed the ruined site as Ground Zero, when, as historian John Dower observes, the only true Ground Zeros are the two in Japan.

Our unconscious shame was superseded by an overt sense of victimhood. We launched a war whose momentum has carried the world into the unwilled and unforeseen catastrophe that unfolds today. Our denial of nuclear responsibility, meanwhile, embodied in our permanent nuclear arsenal, licenses other nations that aim to match us -- notably Iran. Momentum and denial combined to destroy Nagasaki, which was, alas, not the end, but the beginning.

I'm always uncomfortable with armchair meta-analysis like this; it's a simplistic and absurdly facile form of public policy study to reduce the actions of nation states on a world stage to Freudian analysis more appropriate for discussions of why we think Daddy didn't love us.

As someone who very likely would not have been around had Truman not made the decision he did (1/4th of my chromosomes were over in the Pacific theater before August 1945, and would've been firmly in the tip of the spear had the US invaded Japan), I cannot fault the decision to drop the bombs and bring the war to an earlier end. Yes, quite selfish of me, but, hey, this is Kal’s World, remember?

Carroll’s point about our conduct of the current war, though, finds an interesting echo in Cathy Young’s column.

Young invokes Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the firebombing of Dresden while asking the question “Is The West Too Civil in War”. Consider at least 35,000 lives were taken in one night of bombing in Dresden, not to mention the quarter million plus who perished at Hiroshima.

Leaving aside a moment Carroll’s supposition that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not about winning a war but more about simply violence for violence’s sake (Carroll must have an extraordinarily dim view on the humanity of American leadership in 1945), Young raises an important point raising all sorts of specters (the V word anyone?).

One of the lessons of Vietnam was that the American public has a limited appetite for the realities of war. And that’s not a bad thing.

I wouldn’t want to live in a society so inured to violence, death and gore that the nightly newscasts became watched with eagerness, rather than dread. We are not a sick society, and we love and hold fast to life so that a single death in a state of 6 million people, for instance, is worthy of discussion on the nightly news.

Young notes that some have suggested that it’s our very humanity that has caused us to wage a war palatable to our modern sensibilities, but ultimately self-defeating, particularly against a foe unencumbered by such sensibilities.

Ultimately the Cold War was fought between two foes with similar outlooks. The Soviet Union, as backward and stunted as it was, was still a proto-European nation with leaders and a society that preferred life over death. As had the United States. Nuclear War is not an option between two such actors. Rational and calculated escalations and de-escalations is the rule for two such countries.

In our current “war”, there are no such safeties. We are truly operating without a net, and with one hand tied behind our back.

Put it this way: our goal in Iraq was not subjugation. Our goal was the removal of one leader, and the installation of a multi-party democracy. This isn’t necessarily peace, and specifically for Iraq, this doesn’t mean peace, not for some time.

The folks blowing themselves to pieces (or, more accurately, getting others to blow themselves to pieces) really have very little motivation for moderation. Their religion countenances (so far as they are concerned) such actions, and apparently there’s little enough in their lives to keep them from blowing themselves, and hopefully a dozen or more infidels, to bits (there’s a fascinating discussion to be had here about societies with excess numbers of unmarried young males, which I won’t burden you with at this time).

Can you fight a war acceptable to American television audiences against such an opponent? Can you win such a war?

But more importantly, would you want to win such a war?

I don’t know, I don’t think so. It would be one thing if Al-Zarqawi were sitting up there in Quebec lobbing missiles at us and killing American civilians, like Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s reaction, as abhorrent as it may seem to us, should be taken within the context of a nation surrounded by her enemies and whose very survival is question: most recently by some lunatic who could have a nuclear weapon before the decade is out.

Some have said (in Young’s piece) that Dresden/Hiroshima/Nagasaki should be viewed in a context of a civilization under a threat against her very existence. And that’s very true. Success for Germany and Japan meant an end to “western” civilization, there’s simply no two ways about it. Had England fallen, and a puppet regime installed, even if “peace” had been declared, it would have only been for a time while Hitler and Hirohito/Tojo consolidated their gains and strangled us off in our island.

No one can say that Al Qaeda can topple America. And we could, to use PJ O’Rourke’s prescription for peace in the Middle East, “raze buildings, burn crops, plow the earth with salt, and sell the population into bondage”. But that wouldn’t be who we are, or think we are.

And that’s why this war is so insidious. We’re at war against ourselves.

On the whole I'd rather be blogging...

2006-08-06T07:05:00.000-04:00

"Hey, the walkway needs mowing" she said. She has a way with words.

Between the crazy rainforest-like weather, and working a bazillion hours the past two weeks, certain yard upkeep tasks have fallen by the wayside.

Ergo, the front walk looked like this (I like the sepia, really adds to the whole abandoned property vibe we had going):

Several hours later, the Girl and I (ok, mostly I - she came out and futzed around with one two by two foot patch of bricks, and then amused herself my pushing the pushbroom up and down the walkway for 1/2 hour before I relented and took them out to the local restaurant/second-run movie theater)....

(Okay, okay. Yes. I Saw Garfield 2. Okay. How the hell did they get Bill Murray and Jennifer Love Hewitt and Billy Connolly for a Breckin Myer film? And the Garfield look-alike was voiced by Tim Curry, but I can understand that, he's a whore -- he'll do anything for money...)

(And Bob Hoskins? And Jane Leeves? And Sharon Osborne??? What de fruck? People, this is a Breckin Myer vehicle for goodness sakes??)

Anyway, here's the after picture (a little less trailer park?):

Now I've just got to get rid of the Dodge Charger on blocks and bury the three dogs that got stuck under the rear porch and died last spring...

Don't F*** With Mother Nature

2006-08-05T07:07:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the heat finally broke, leaving after being chased out like a thunderstorm that took Boston like the Germans ripping through Paris.

You could see it for miles, turning a clear, sunny day, into dusk in moments.

Bringing with it a line of rain that you could see marching inexorably forward, here it is hitting Cambridge and moving across the Longfellow Bridge:

This lasted for five or ten minutes, drenching the city and taking the heat with it.

Unfortunately, the humidity decided to hang around, making the evening badmitton game sauna-like (but without the towels - I don't think they'd stay on, and, really, would you want all your junk flailing around with the little rackets flying all over the place? No, I didn't think so).

(Oh, and when I first wrote that paragraph I spelled badmittion wrong, as bedmitton. Hmm... I think the sauna comparison has me all fixated...)

Anyway, sleeping was comfortable last night for the first time in a week. Which, of course, means the cat absolutely needed to be fed at 5:15am, and noisily went around the house telling everyone.

So, got him fed, and went back to bed. Then had the dream equivalent of left-over night. Your parents ever do this leftover night where the throw a little bit of everything you had that week on a plate and that was dinner?

Frankly, I can't remember if we did that in my house, my memory is shot (certain highschool activities have contributed to serious gaps in long-term memory... Uh... Umm... Well, Mom - I hit my head on the trampoline in gymnastics... Yeah, that's the ticket... That's why I can't remember anything... Riiiight...)...

Anyway, I don't think we ever had that sort of leftover nightmare (I can't even remember if we had leftovers. Leftovers? Really, Why wouldn't you eat it the first time?! If there's food there it's meant to be eaten!!!)... but in Wifeypooh's family, her mother would set up three pots on the stove, and everything chicken would go in the chicken pot, everything beef, etc etc. Didn't matter if they complemented each other (Food that does complement, for instance, the Kung Pao chicken to the BBQ Chicken: "My, what a nice sauce you have, I simply must try it some time!)....

Ugh. Digressions out of control. Must... control... storytelling....

-whack-

There, better.

Anywho... The point I was trying to make, somewhere, a long time ago in a blog far far away, was that after I went back to bed after cat duty, my subconcious went into leftover mode, and cumped everything that's happened in the last month into one dream, to wit: (that's lawyer-talk for "check this out")

So, I'm a new teacher but I'm late for class because I'm not dressed and I can't find any clothes that match and I've gotta write a legal brief for the judge, but I only have an old typewriter that puts the letters backwards and while I'm in the car driving to work/school there's a drive-by shooting, but it doesn't hit our car.

And I swear to God KaraMia was a passenger in the car with me. In one form or another (for instance, substitute "Legal Brief" with "Lunch Order") that all happened. Well, except for the KaraMia stuff. I would never have an attractive lady as a passenger in my car without Wifeypooh knowing about it...

She would be driving.

Six Degrees...

2006-08-03T06:06:00.000-04:00

Well... Session's over, Ian Anderson concert over, and I've got Nooooothing to say. Absolutely nothing. Bollocks, sometime commenter on the blog and often commuting buddy, called me out yesterday:

"Dude - " (he doesn't say dude. He is rather proper. He wears bow ties. But they look good on him, and he's a biker [the pedal-100-miles-across-the-state kind, not the ride-a-big-hog king] so he's all masculine and stuff, it's not a geek bowtie kind of thing. Anyway...)

"Dude. You've written f***-all (I don't think he says f***-all either. He's got a rather proper diction. Could be from being raised in Canada. I dunno... oops.. sorry for that digression) on the blog lately. Recycling old crap, and dropping a YouTube video of a concert? What the hell?"

So I'm killing myself to come up with something to say... I mean, I could bitch about the weather. It was 100 degrees yesterday. And humid. Certainly not big-fat-hairy-guy of Northern European extraction friendly, I'll tell you that... (and so will the people I was stuck in a rather small conference room with last night.... heh)

Anyway, everybody's talking about the weather, that's kind of boring. I would note though, that we are not a third world country. What's with people dying from the heat? Of course, I'm guessing a lot of these heat deaths are folks who were kind of old anyway and would've died from one thing or another, maybe it's just a culling the herd kind of thing... Ooo.. I think that's out of bounds.

I could talk about the story in the Daily Mail that says that cell phones are crawling with billions and billions of litte germs that will give us pimples, boils, and eventually kill us.

Apparently cellphones carry more germs that a toilet seat, according to the article. I mean, where the heck are people putting these phones? Can you hear me now, indeed!

So, I'm cruising YouTube to come up with something for the Garage and I find this video from a band called Ok Go:

Apparently these guys share management with They Might Be Giants, and have a kind of similar weird kineticness to them. (Is that a word? Hmm... probably not. How about "kinetic weirdness"? Sure. That works better...)

Well, they did their second album with Tore Johansson, the Swedish producer. Johansson, if you read his bio, was reponsible for The Cardigans, which you may remember from 1992's Lovefool:

Isn't Nina lovely? This song was in constant rotation in '96 when we were walking zombies from caring for the not-yet sleeping newly born Girl. So at two in the morning when I would get a swift kick in the @ss to go take care of the little bundle of joy, I'd sneak her into the living room and curl up with her on the couch, watching VH1. This song and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" are all I remember from the first year of my daughter's life.

Anyway, The Cardigans, you may recall (not really, I had never heard of this until I wikipedia'd them), did a song with Tom Jones - yes, Mr. Studly Tom Jones - covering the Talking Heads' Burning Down the House. (Now there's one studly Northern European who wouldn't let the heat get him down).

And, of course, Mr. Tom Jones did the seminal remake of Prince's Kiss, (which I think is actually better than the original...):

And how to get from Ok Go, rock hipsters of today, to Prince, in six steps. Well, it's sort of like four. But really, who cares?

A Little Something to Hold You Over

2006-07-31T07:59:00.000-04:00

Today's the last day of session, so I'll be working like a dog. However, in honor of last night's Ian Anderson concert, here's a cut of special guest Lucia Micarelli and Ian and the boys doing a cover of Led Zepplin's Kashmir.

Lucia, who Brothergoodson fell completely, irrepetently and irrevocably in love with, absolutely electrified the show.

Zzzzz... Later...

2006-07-31T07:57:00.000-04:00

Still recovering from last night's Ian Anderson concert...

Will post later... I promise.

Meme Week, Day 4: No meme, but a re-run

2006-07-27T06:34:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay, you ungrateful swine.

Never mind that I'm working past eight every night for the public good, never mind that I'm getting on the train after four hours of sleep, and falling asleep through my morning meetings... Oh, no, you don't like memes.... Wah Wah.... Boo frickin' Hoo...

Alright, here: have a rerun.

First posted back on October 29, 2005, my heretofore ally, Recondo the 3 and 3/4 inch action figure, threw a coup de blog and took over. Enjoy (you bastards).

An New Day for ~~Kal~~ Recondo's World

I couldn't take it anymore. The whining. The self-important "what kind of turnip are you" quizzes, the pompous attempts at social commentary. The guy was driving me up a frickin' wall!

I had to do it. You'd have done it too...

I knew I had to wrest control of the site from him, I knew that was the only way to make the place worthwhile. The problem was how to do it. Oh, I had his passwords, no problem there. Many the time he'd trundle off to work, forgot he spelled something wrong, and then called in, from the train, and ask me to fix it for him. But the sandals post was the last straw.

I broke in one day (I use his profile to leave flirtatious comments on Duff's site. Well, and Penny's site... and Gypsy... and Callie.... Oh, okay, just about everybody short of MD...) and noticed he was writing a post about his recent disgusting, and entirely embarrassing, recent habit of wearing socks and sandals around the house.

Now it's one thing to humiliate yourself within the confines of your home, but when it goes outside, well, you've got a responsibility to group! This couldn't stand.

So after a late night of planning with Ken (nice guy, a tad light in the loafers though, if you ask me. Not the kind of guy you'd share a fox-hole with, but good for strategic planning. And he makes a mean flan...), so, Ken and I planned all night. We knew we'd have to take the man down. Not kill him, that would raise too many questions. Something along the lines of knock him out, and tie him up in a room in the basement. Ken came up with that one. I got out of there before he started in on Desperate Housewives again. He loves that show.

Early in the morning I broke into the cabinet and found a small brown vial of the type you obviously keep very dangerous poisoin in. When he wasn't looking I dumped the whole vial into his morning coffee, and waited for nature, er.., terrible poision, to take's its course. Unfortunately, I didn't read the label first...

This was going to be harder than I thought.

Back to the drawing board. That evening the Kal watched Return of the Jedi (after the kids went to bed and Wifeypooh went out with friends: I mean seriously, where's the hookers?! This guy's a putz...). The ~~cute~~ err, incredibly annoying, Ewoks gave me an idea.

Allies were enlisted...

We set up.

Bam! He goes over like a redwood.

Then the crack FatCat squad swoops in and does the rest. After a minute of stuggle, his oxygen-deprieved shuts down and he passes out.

All that's left is to drag his unconcious body into the garage and pahr-tay!

So there we are. Kal will be going on an extended.. "vacation", and I'll be, err, taking care of his place while he's gone.

Enjoy.

I know I will.

Meme Week, Day 3

2006-07-26T06:46:00.000-04:00

Got home from work at 8:45 for the second night in a row, after going to work at 8:00... All Work and No Play makes Kal a Dull Boy, so Meme Week Continues!

Got this one from Scratching the Itch

Are you more...

Banjo for the fun, danceable sound or violin for the soulful, spirit-lifting sound? I'm a banjo that's out of tune, got a broken string, and is being played by a gap-toothed hillbilly...

Bus/subway for cheapness and ecological responsibility or cab for door to door convenience? I'd like to think bus/subway, but since I use the subway to avoid walking, I'd have to say cab...

Paper grocery bags for the capacity and biodegradableness or plastic grocery bags for the convenience and reusability? Well, since I'm a big fat guy who will eventually rot, I guess it's paper bag for me...

Liking fruit that you peel (bananas, oranges, etc.) or fruit that you don't peel (apples, pears, etc.)? Peeling fruit. Then the part that you eat hasn't been handled by innumerable people of questionable hygiene...

Expensive 3-ply kleenex or discount 2-ply kleenex? Three ply, baby.

Super soft toilet paper to be cushy on your widdle bum or rough, no-nonsense toilet paper to be sure to get your dirty asshole clean? I actually prefer the hard institutional type that your can really do a thorough scouring with. Makes me feel all oogly inside...

Watching fake wrestling (WWE, for example) for the kitchy drama or watching real fighting (boxing, UFC, etc.) for the realness? I used to looooove wrestling. White trash culture has always been a favorite hobby.

Coy about telling people what you want when asked ("Oh I don't need anything.") or upfront about telling people what you want when asked ("I would LOVE a new watch.")? Insufferably coy, so I never get want I want and become resentful and bitter about the whole thing...

Believing NASA is amazing for inventing the Space Pen (works in no gravity) or believing NASA is stupid for not doing like the Russians who just use pencils? You know how many people had jobs to invent things like the space pen? And the space pen and other high-tech NASA research routinely gives us neat-o things like Tang, so I'm all for over-engineering the simple problem. So long as I get Tang out of it...

A Spanky fan or an Alfalfa fan? Wha? I hate the Little Rascals. I'm a Buckwheat fan, but only the Eddie Murphy Buckwheat. I was traumatized when he was shot...

There. That's Day Three in the Meme Week. Live with it.

Day 2 of meme week.

2006-07-25T07:55:00.000-04:00

Busy busy busy!

Here's another meme. This one went around a while ago, I started it but never finished. Now done for your reading and/or doing pleasure:

GRUB-OLOGY

What is your salad dressing of choice? My stable of favorites all have creamy in common; there’s creamy Thousand Island, creamy French, creamy Blue Cheese. So, to cut to the lowest denominator: lard. Just give me lard dripped over my salad and I’m yours.

What is your favorite fast food restaurant? Hmmm... Burger King. Love Burger King fries. Anyone who think’s McDonald’s cheap=@ss thin crap excuse for fries is either clinically insane, or just downright ignorant.

What is your favorite sit down restaurant? Probably Acapulco’s, a mexican place next town over.

On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant? 20% or more. I waited tables and tended bar through high school and college, so I gotta repay the karma.

What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of? Yogurt with nuts. I could eat that three meals a day for a month and still be happy.

Name three foods you detest above all others. Detest food? What the hell kind of weirdo idea is that?

What is your favorite dish to order in a Chinese restaurant? Crab Rangoon.

What are your pizza toppings of choice? Ham and Pineapple, hamburg and onion, or, god help me: I loooove anchovy pizza.

What do you like to put on your toast? Butter. Peanut butter. Then jelly. All on the same toast. Yummmmm.

What is your favorite type of gum? Trident tropical twist.

TECH-OLOGY

Number of contacts in your cell phone? Thirty-one. In the old phone I still keep because its has all my old numbers: 112.

Number of contacts in your email address book? As of this moment, six hundred and twenty-five.

What is your wallpaper on your computer? This picture.

What is your screensaver on your computer? Google’s photo album.

Are there naked pictures saved on your computer? I refuse to answer on the grounds my wife may be reading.

How many land line phones do you have in your house? Four. Three cordless and a corded.

How many televisions are in your house? Two, plus a little 5-incher that runs on batteries.

What kitchen appliance do you use the least? I’ve gotta say we get pretty decent usage out of everything in the kitchen. My one-cup coffee maker (who the frig drinks one cup?) gets used in spurts, and can go a week or two without being used (and of course with grounds left in it, so I open it up, see the used grounds, and just say the heck with it and put the dirty grounds back) probably gets the least usage.

What is the format of the radio station you listen to the most? Sportstalk for the 5 minutes I’m in my car.

How many sex toys do you own that require batteries? All my equipment runs on natural gas.

BI-OLOGY

What do you consider to be your best physical attribute? My big, huge, brain.

Are you right handed or left handed? Lefty.

Do you like your smile? No, as it is on my face, which I loathe. I wish I was a vampire, so I would never have to see myself in the mirror.

Have you ever had anything removed from your body? Tonsils. A tattoo. A couple of teeth. Lots of hair (not voluntarily).

Would you like to? Hmmm... other than 80 pounds of ugly fat, no, I’m good.

Do you prefer to read when you go to the bathroom? Yes. It’s the only time I can read for pleasure and not feel like I’m shirking some chore or another I should be doing.

Which of your five senses do you think is keenest? Irony. I have a well defined sense of irony... (oh, I KILL me!)

When was the last time you had a cavity? Last year. I’ve had so many that I’ve turned into Bill Murray from “Little Shop of Horrors” ; “I think I need a root canal... A long, deep, root canal...”

What is the heaviest item you lift regularly? My fat @ss off the sofa.

Have you ever been knocked unconscious? No. Nearly did in the dentist chair once during a particularly hairy extraction, but never went fully out. Too bad, it was quite a rush.

MISC-OLOGY

If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? Yup. Boy would my credit card companies hate me...

If you could change your first name, what would you change it to? When I entered the witness protection program I was given this option. It’s harder than you think, trying to come up with a new name. The worst part is when they move you next to someone with your old name, and you keep taking their mail by accident. Not pleasant.

How do you express your artistic side? My life is a piece of performance art. Not necessarily given to rave reviews, admittedly.

What color do you think you look best in? I look equally awful in all colors. I just wish eggplant would make a comeback. I have at least three zoot suits that I could put in the rotation...

How long do you think you could last in a medium security prison? Well, I’d be sure to beat the hell out of the toughest guy there on the first day, and then I’d be fine. Well, no, I’d be in the hospital for the rest of my sentence, so I’d be okay...

Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake? Nothing I’d be willing to admit to.

If we weren’t bound by society’s conventions, do you have a relative you would make a pass at? Do sisters-in-law count?

How often do you go to church? Oh, I’m a weekly communicant. I’ve a lot of sins to work through. Currently on the j’s. (this, unfortunately, is a long letter)

Have you ever saved someone’s life? Puhleeze.

Has someone ever saved yours? I don’t think so, and if anyone tried, I’d kick their @ss.

DARE-OLOGY
For this last section, if you would do it for less or more money, indicate how much.

Would you walk naked for a half mile down a public street for $100,000? Listen, if I were to even threaten to walk down a public street in the all-together the inhabitants of Pleasantville would take up a collection to bribe me not to and I’d net waaayyy more than $100,000.

Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100? What exactly do you mean by “member”...?

Would you have sex with a member of the same sex for $10,000? No. The divorce would cost way more than $10,000...

Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000? $200G’s for a little finger? Hmm.... That’s an appealing offer... No, in the end I’d have to say the joy I get from showing that bling-bling on the pinkie is worth more than $200,000 to me.

Would you never blog again for $50,000? No. Currently blogging is my only communication with my mother. If I didn’t blog I’d have to call her or go see her once and a while, and that’s certainly NOT worth $50,000 to me.

Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000? Boy, that would be one sick, sick magazine that would pay me $250K to pose nude. I’ll have to take a pass on that one.

Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000? Oh heck, sure. I’d probably do that for free if I thought you’d think I was cool after.

Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000? Depends. Saddam Hussein? Sure. Random person on the street? Maybe not.

Would you shave your head and get your entire body waxed for $5,000? Oooo Slick. Sure, for $5 Gs I’ll go clean. I will miss my eyebrows though.

Would you give up watching television for a year for $25,000? In a heartbeat. So long as I still have internet.

There. Hey, you! You reading there! Yeah, you. You're tagged! Go do this on your blog and leave me a note in the comments telling me you did.

Thanks

Kal out.

A Meme, A Meme, My Kingdom for a Meme!

2006-07-24T00:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, work is about to get really busy next week (legislatures are like college kids, they put off everything until the last minute), so I think I'm not going to have much interesting to say, so expect a week of re-runs and memeology...

Kicking it off, here's something from Avitable.

In the comments section,

1. Recommend a book, movie, musical group, song or album for me to experience.

2. Ask me three questions.

and, 3. Post this on your blog.

Okay, and I noticed Penny quasi-tagged me on this other one, so here we go, done with Wifeypooh as an added treat, let's ask Wifeypooh to join us:

7 Things to do before I croak:

Wifeypooh:
1. Get a job.
(that's it, she has rather low expectations lately...)
2. ...oh, and go out for Buffalo Wings.
(and that's why I love her, she's easy to please.)

Me:
1. Go to Scotland
2. Win an election - any election
3. Learn to play an instrument
4. Have a piece published in a magazine
5. Have a grandkid
6. Clean my room
7. Live to see the kids move out of the house

7 Things I can't do:

Wifeypooh:
1. Get to sleep easily most of the time
2. Cook steak decently without the grill
3. Cartwheel
4. Handstand
5. Ride a horse
6. Get a tetanus shot (allergic)
7. Pretend to like dogs

Me:
1. Stay awake when Wifeypooh can't sleep and wants to talk endlessly
2. Eat Wifeypooh's rather dismal steak failures
3. Stop thinking about wifeypooh doing nekkid handstands and cartwheels
4. Get out the door for the early train I say I'm going to take every single day
5. Kill the cat. Even though I really.. really want to.
6. Follow directions

7 things that attract me to people:

Wifeypooh
1. They think I'm funny
2. I think they're funny
3. Outgoing
4. Friendly
5. Smart
6. Fun
7. Charming
8. Massively well-endowed, like Kal (Oh, okay, I wrote that...)

Kal
1. Are named Wifeypooh

7 Things I say most often:

Wifeypooh:
1. Girl, put your shoes on
2. Girl, clean your room
3. Girl, Did you clean your room?
4. Girl, Didn't I tell you to clean your room?
5. Kal, Where did you put ______?
6. "uh huh... really.... yup... sure..." (while half-listening to Boy talk about his latest video game)
7. No.

Kal:
1. Supersize that
2. Please stop talking about this video game
3. Please clean your room so your Mom doesn't hurt me
4. Please don't hurt me
5. Put down that pan
6. No, really, put it down
7. Ouch

7 Movies I could watch again and again:

Wifeypooh
1. Mrs. Doubtfire
2. Harry Potter (any)
3. Back to the Future (all three)
4. Schindler's List
5. Sound of Music
6. Evolution
7. The Santa Clause

Me
1. Highlander
2. Manhunter
3. So I Married an Axe Murderer
4. Star Trek (the even numbered ones are better, but I'll take any of them)
5. Braveheart
6. A Fish Called Wanda
7. Rochelle, Rochelle

7 books I love

Wifeypooh
1. The Dollmaker, Harriet Arnow
2. The Giver, Lois Lowry
3. The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
4. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Judith Viorst
5. Harry Potter (all six), J.K. Rowling
6. The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
7. Educating Esme, Esme Raji Codell

Kal
1. All The King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
2. The Stand, Stephen King
3. Holidays in Hell, P.J. O'Rourke
4. What I Saw the the Revolution, Peggy Noonan
5. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
6. All The Words, The Complete Monty Python Volumes 1&2
7. A Time for A Change (Can't remeber the author, even though I know him and can picture him and it's in my bookcase a work. It's a book about the Republican victories in Masaschusetts in 1990 - it's neat to read because I know pretty much everybody in it).

Actually, in the interest of complete disclosure, WP and I first did this mem back in January...

So this was a re-run, and a meme! Lucky you!

Yo

2006-07-17T06:23:00.000-04:00

Hey. I got nothing.

Busy weekend, no rest for the wicked. I will say I was saddened to read this weekend about the marital problems of the president and Mrs. Bush. Oh yes. And Lindsy Lohan's a babe. Serious babe. Seriously freckled babe. (Insert pig comment about connecting the dots here).

Thank you Globe Magazine. The long-supermarket-line denizen's best friend.

Recycle me please...

2006-07-14T06:10:00.000-04:00

Playwrite Eugene O'Neill uttered one of the more classic last words as he lay dying of alcoholism in a New York Hotel.

"Born in a hotel, and, God damn it, died in a hotel." His life had come full circle, from the hotel-life his parents had lived as actors, to dying in a Boston hotel, unable to write and suffering from alcoholism and some Parkinson's-like ailment.

There's a great new product on the market that will allow me to achieve that kind of symmetry.

When Wifeypooh and I first got married a significant amount of our furniture was the put it together yourself type made out of sawdust-and-glue particle board.

Great stuff, and always a thrill to get that 4,000 pound box home, lug it inside, and spend three hours with those screws you have to turn to grasp the pointy bolt you screwed into the other piece. You know what I'm talking about, right?

Well, EveryBody Coffins produces the coffin equivalent of this stuff. Actually, it's more like those cardboard boxes you put together by putting Tab A through Slot B.

The ultimate coffin for the Ikea set. Think about it: why spend $4K on a coffin that will at most be used for a three hour wake and a one hour funeral. And, you know, when you put me in the ground, I don't need to stay in some preserved state forever and ever. Let me break down, be worm food.

Some folks say they want to be burned and have their ashes spread out, I say; that's unenvironmental! First off, there's the emissions from the cremation itself. I can't have myself contributing to global warming!

Secondly, in the burning process you've wasted parts of me that could be better used. Sure, you can donate your organs (although whoever gets my liver isn't getting that good a deal), and still be cremated, but why let all that carbon and other good crap just go up the flue?

Put me under a garden. Make me into Soylent Green. Heck, if you gotta burn me, at least do it in a combined heat and power plant so I'm generating something useful. And if I have enough notice that I'm going to die, I'll help you out by ensuring I am well infused with certain, er, accelerants (of the 12 and 25-year old, amber colored and bottled in Scotland and Ireland) varieties.

Think globally, die locally.

I told you so!

2006-07-13T07:33:00.000-04:00

El Globo has an AP story noting that the Cruise-Holmes ~~publicity stunt~~ baby has not yet been seen in public.

I have several theories.

1) There is no baby. There never was a baby. Katie's womenly parts defeated Tom's feeble attempts at spawning, and she just pretended to be preggers for nine months so she could eat Ice Cream and Whoppers without getting hassled by Tom The Health Nazi.

2) The notation regarding the sperm donor they used in the artificial insemination was incorrect, and it turns out the baby is half-chinese, so they're keeping her out of sight until she's old enough for plastic surgery.

3) I told you so. Human babies are yummy and tender. Couldn't just do the placenta, could you Tom? Problem is, babies are like Lays. You can't eat just one. Brad and Angelina: I wouldn't go inviting the Cruise-Holmes' over for dinner anytime soon...

Apropos of Nothing....

2006-07-13T05:47:00.000-04:00

Look, it's early, I've been up for four freakin' hours already, and I have nothing to say.

So screw it, here are some cows.

Enjoy.

The Moo-Flower, The State House Cow (Hancock's Cow Pasture), and the Trojan Cow. These are some of the 100-odd (and I do mean odd) cows littered across Boston until September. They're part of the "Cow Parade Boston", the Boston version of the "Cow Parade" charity events that have happened in Chicago, London, St. Louis and other places. The cows, each from the imagination of a local artist, are going to be auctioned off this fall with the proceeds to benefit the Jimmy Fund.

There. I wrote something. Now go let me sleep, okay?

A Note in the Public Interest.

2006-07-11T08:10:00.000-04:00

You may be interested to know that "because he keeps putting stuff on the printer/copier and walking away, leaving it to run out of paper and causing my print jobs to be queued up behind his 42 un-done copies when I really just need that ESPN.com story so I have something to read in the bathroom" is not and adequate legal defense for shooting a co-worker.

Just thought you should know.

Kal.

Must... Stop... Singing...

2006-07-09T10:20:00.000-04:00

Look, I love They Might be Giants as much as the next guy. I loved Lincoln; from Ana Ng to Purple Toupee, it's one of my favorite albums. I love Youth Culture Killed My Dog. I love their kid-orineted album, No, arriving as it did at a fortuitous moment in my life - threatening murder after being forced to listen to Raffi ONE TOO MANY TIMES.

And I loved the first of the Dunkin' Donuts ads. "Doing things is what we like to do" is a paean for the ages to the addicitve quality of The Dunk, and exemplifies why Dunkin' Donuts has become the moloko-plus of this hyperactive age.

And the first of the smoothie ads was lyrical; poetic even:

"And so lunch is over
and dinner is so far away
this distance is an ocean
and time has taken my boat away
but now, I won't be hungry anymore..."

And then came "One Million Degrees".

At first I was hooked with the guitar licks, and simple lyrics. And the Tony Lister-look-alike black guy (well, without the crossed eyes. But he's got the Tony Listeresque snarl down pat).

Here's the only version of it I could find on Youtube, some guy taped this off the TV with his camcorder... (man, where do these people come from?)

But having heard it for the 458th time... I beg of you: STOP. Please, Dunkin', STOP. You're killing me. I find myself singing "It's like one billion degrees..." over and over and over again...

Mea Culpa...

No Mas...

I confess, I killed Kennedy. Whatever it takes. Just make it stop!

A Grammar Lesson

2006-07-09T06:54:00.000-04:00

A friend and I were discussing the wonderful utility of a certain very nasty anglo-saxon word the over day, and he sent along this wonderful tutorial on the multiple forms and parts of speech of our favorite dirty word (click on the photo to go to the link).

(*Note: Doofuses: this is nasty language. It is the F-word. Don't play this at work, get overheard by your boss, and fired. If you do, it is because you are terminally stupid. This is not my fault. Got it? Thank you, you may proceed.)

To get a transcription of the piece, go here.

Both of the links identify the author of the piece as the Monty Python troupe, and other internet sites say it was written by George Carlin. Proving truth is always more absurd than fiction, it is commonly believed that both those suppositions are wrong, and the piece was actually voiced by Jack Wagner - the "voice of Disneyland."

Well, that makes sense...

Happy Birthday America

2006-07-04T21:52:00.000-04:00

230 years ago a bunch of traitorous englishmen sweated out a muggy summer in Philadelphia, finally deciding that there could be no rapproachement with the mother country and it was time to, to borrow a phrase, bring forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal.

Before honoring their commitment by sweating out a muggy day in my brother-in-law's pool, Wifeypooh, the kids and I honored their commitment by reading their words.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Then the list of really, really nasty crap that the King had done to those who were, after all, his subjects. The Boy got to read a bunch of these, including "He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.", which, for an eight year old, is a bit of a mouthfull.

And, hey, we weren't being ingrates. We asked our heretofore countrymen for help:

Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.

No help there. So, here's the kicker: so long, King...

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

That last part, the lives, fortunes and sacred honor bit, always gives me a lump in my throat for some reason.

Now it's off to watch the Pops and fireworks on TV (which the addition of the national CBS broadcast has totalled screwed up - thanks alot, the rest of you), as I ranted about last year.

So, happy 230th birthday, America. You don't look a year over 219.

Reason #426 I'm not a shuttle astronaut (the other 425 revolve around being a big, fat, pig...)

2006-07-03T07:33:00.000-04:00

Drudge links to a story this morning about the extents to which NASA is going to keep vultures... yup, vultures away from the Space Shuttle launch.

He even has a picture (which isn't in the story he links to):

Okay, here's why I could never, ever be an astronaut (okay, other than the fact that propelling my fat arse into space would take waaayy too much fuel); I'm a big ussy-pay.

That's right. I'm a chicken. Bwack bwack bwack. I can't do roller coasters. I hate driving with Brother Goodson when he tries to recreate The Fast and the Furious in his Z1. I'm just a big wimp.

And would a wimp ever consent to being shot into space, strapped to four million pounds of explosive stuff, with a freakin' vulture hanging around outside?

No. Your answer is no. I've seen way too many cartoons to know that vultures like to hang around where dead things will be, usually sitting on tree limbs and talking to their vulture buddies while poor dudes in ripped pants crawl through the desert. C'mon, you've seen that, haven't you?

No thanks. Not for me. Not the fate tempter, I.

Hey You!

2006-07-02T11:30:00.000-04:00

ATTENTION BATTLE OF THE BLOG VISITORS!

I'm sick of losing my hard-earned credits to blogs that are crap, but look nice. This is not high school people, looks don't count for everything! Read the blogs, man!

What other blog brings you piquant observations on the pressing issues of the day, a Malaysian-blog inspired post with pictures of rotted food, or the geo-political rantings of a 3 3/4 inch plastic action figure who is clearly unbalanced and quite possibly dangerous.

I mean it. I'm not losing to some 14 year old idiot who uses the word "'cuz" and "LOL" in their blogs. I just can't go through that again! If you don't vote for me and I lose AGAIN I'll hunt you all down and... well... do something quite nasty I would think (although, honestly, officer, very legal, I assure you..) (Is he gone? Okay, here it is: I'll hunt you all down and give you Atomic Wedgies. Don't say I didn't warn you...)

There. That's all I have to say.

Thank you, and good day.

Update: Oh yes, I lost. Surprise, surprise... Bastards.

2,996

2006-06-30T05:22:00.000-04:00

This September 11th will make the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that so changed the course of this nation.

I don't look forward to the debate that will naturally spring from this anniversary, with liberals and conservatives each using the passage of time to make history conform to their own exigent needs.

I expect Ann Coulter's loathsome remarks about the 9/11 widows will be used again and again, and politicians of every stripe will seize the opportunity to tell their voters, who will have an election to vote on in November, why they would do a better job against Al Quida and Terrorism than they guy they're running against.

I really couldn't care less. I'm tired of this. I'm weary of the politicization of this issue and frustrated both with folks who would have us unilaterally and on an artificial schedule leave Iraq to chaos and strife, and those who use the terrorist threat to mock and ignore the very constitutional protections that create the wonderful variegated society that so offended radical Islam.

I want to talk about people. Let's use this day a couple months from now to remember the individuals who died that day; who they were and who they left behind.

And I've found a way we can do that. I've been reading a very good blog from a dad in Minnesota, View from the Clouds, who turned me on to something called "2,996". It's an effort started by blogger D. Challenger Roe to assign one of the 2,996 victims to someone to remember them on 9/11/06.

Here's the drill. You go here and place a comment in any of the posts saying you'd like to take part. D.C. will get back to you with a name of a 9/11 victim. On September 11th you do a tribute to this person. Easy-peasy.

I visited yesterday and got my name, Thomas F. Theurkauf of Stamford Connecticut. Mr. Theurkauf was a bank analyst and left behind a wife and three children. He was 44.

I encourage you guys to grab someone, if you're so inclined. There are plenty of names left, and he needs some help getting this done so that everyone will be covered.

And everybody, have a happy and safe holiday weekend. I myself will most likely be pouring through a 300-400 page budget document, but this is the cost of working for the public good. (By which I mean the opportunity to steal paperclips and have a decent view.)

One Infuriating Thing About Living in a (Moronic) Police State

2006-06-29T08:07:00.000-04:00

Remember that guy who got busted for killing a seagull?

Remember how he was arrested, not by the normal police, but the MSPCA (Mass Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to ~~Dinner~~ Animals?) Police?

Remember how he lost his job and his wife had to pay $1,000 in bail to get him out of jail, and had to put it on HER CREDIT CARD!

(....SHAKING IN UNCONTROLLABLE ANGER.....)

Brett "The Human Douchebag" Myers, a Philadelphia Phillies pitcher in town for the Phillies series with the Sox last weekend, was busted after publicly, in public, with the public looking on, hitting his wife in the face with a closed fist and pulling her off the ground by her hair.

Apparently he wanted to go home and get some sleep, and she wanted to stay out drinking. So he got ticked and clobbered her. This isn't just a little slap, this was a closed fist hit - twice - that left her face swollen and, here's the punchline, or at least half of it, still bruised when she bailed him out the next morning.

Wanna hear his bail?

$200. Two Fricken' Hundred dollars. Two Bills. Two C notes. Myers, who has a $3.3 million contract for 2006. Who, if he starts 30 games this year will make $12K for each inning of each start, paid $200 in bail, after hitting his wife.

Mr. Window Washer kills a sky-rat and gets $1000 in bail?

What the Holy Heck?

Look, I could go on some dissertation about how bail is only really used as an incentive to make sure someone shows up for trial, blah blah blah, but I won't.

Because the D.A. of Suffolk Country, Dan Conley, already did. He went on sports radio and basically excused the low-ball bail request for this millionaire wife-beating-stupid-facial-hair-wearing scumbag.

Some poor shmuck goes into debt and loses his job for killing what is essentially the relative of the turkey you will chow down on this Thanksgiving, while sportstars get sweet deals.

Of course, this is nothing new. Remember the whole Jason Kidd-Bob Ryan thing? Essentially, Jason Kidd smacked his wife and got a $200 fine, and Bob Ryan, a sportswriter for the Boston Globe wrote in a column that he would like to smack Jason Kidd's wife (she was acting like an @ss at a Celtic-Nets game) and got himself suspends without pay from his job at the Globe. As I noted at the time, in America it's less expensive to beat your own wife than it is to write you wanted to beat someone else's wife.

So here's a collallary rule: when you're threatened by wildlife and fear for your safety, you're better off smacking your wife than defending yourself against the animal. Just wanted to make sure you're clear on this.

Thank you, and good day.

One Nice Thing About Living In a Police State...

2006-06-29T06:48:00.000-04:00

Someone I read is having trouble with a deadbeat dad, not having received child support in like ten years. Unfortunately, she doesn't live in the enlightened Republic of Massachusetts, where we hunt down dead beats like the scum they are and publicly humiliate them while shaking every dime we can out of them.

Including grabbing their unemployment checks, professional licenses, and driver's license.

Usually I'm a libertarian, but I have no patience for folks - whether they be male or female - who run away from their parental responsibilities. The push on child support enforcement in Massachusetts came in the mid-90's, during debates on Welfare Reform, as it was clearly apparent that many of the welfare cases we saw were because of scumbag dads that ran out on their babymommas.

My favorite aspect of our CSE system is the yearly public humiliation campaign we undertake, producing a ten-most wanted poster of the more odious suspects. The picture above should take you to the actual poster, should you click on it. The figures these folks owe are astounding. Of course, I have no idea how the hell I'd pay some of these orders - Joe Chodat and his $768 a week... Jeez, I hope the dot-com bomb didn't clean him out... Yikes.

But this all comes down to responsibility. Even us libertarians believe "you do the crime, you do the time", and, more importantly, why should the rest of us have to pay because you bailed out on your kids?

And, you know, there is the old joke: "Why does divorce cost so much? Because it's worth it.." Freedom comes with a price, man. Pay up.