Day 7...

"Fleshy-headed mutant! Are you friendly?"
- Space Cadet R.M. McKenzie
"Now way, eh! Radiation has made me an enemy of civilization!"
- The Fleshy-Headed Mutant

We have been out of power for a week now. We spend our time looking for beer... All the bowling alleys were destroyed and the fleshy headed mutants are running amok.

We Survived!

We survived the massive wind storm of aught-six! We had 4 large trees blown over, two of them ended up falling on the power lines and blocking our road in. The neighbors and I cut down one of the trees and cleared a couple more, but there is still a large tree stuck in the power lines but we can drive our small car under it. Once we have power back, (which could be in six or seven days,) I will post pictures. Seacrest out!

Welcome to the 21st Century!

Recently, St. Cloud MN, a city I lived in for 6 years in the mid 90's was declared as one of the 50 worst cities in America. The author of the story said that the population of St. Cloud's only form of entertainment consists of waiting in line at Arby's. Well it looks like the lives of St. Cloud's citizens just got a heck of a lot better. Now they can wait in line at Hooters!

This story recounts the grand opening of Hooters St. Cloud! Warning. If you don't want to see college girls in short shorts wearing nylons, don't follow that link.

Here are a few choice quotes from the story if you don't want your precious sensibilities harmed, "You can be yourself," Candace Blazinski said, telling why she left another themed chain restaurant after two years to work at Hooters. "You get to sing, you get to dance. It's having a ball. It goes by so fast." (Kind of like youth and beauty... shake it while you still can.) Candace also went on to explain that, "the tips are better, not going to lie." When questioned about the famous Hooter's waitressing uniforms, Candace said, "You're covered", but then went on to explain that she works out more and has cut down on drinking beer.

There seems to have been a wee bit of controversy on Wednesday during lunch when female lunch patron Pat Conners who the newspapers quotes as "Curious" criticized the waitresses uniforms by saying, "I feel it does exploit a woman's body, but the waitresses aren't objecting." (spoken like a jealous old ninny!)

It looks like the wife, kid, and I have one more reason to visit St. Cloud more frequently.

GG's Cake

GG eating her cake.

Hah!

I know many of you had your doubts. It's alright, you can admit it now. I've overheard snippets of conversations from time to time. But Naarah and I actually raised a honest to goodness human being for one whole year! I had my doubts after the first day when Naarah attempted to paint GG's fingernails. I can still hear the Asian nurse yelling at us: "Who paint baby nails!!!???", "Who paint baby nails!!!???" "No paint baby nails! ... ever!" Fair enough, you learn something new every day.

In the beginning, my plan was to defer to Naarah on most things baby. My reasoning was that she was the oldest of four girls and should have had plenty of experience with babies. I was the youngest child in my family and had never changed a diaper in my life. The fingernail painting incident slapped me with cold harsh reality. Anyway, I figure the hard part is over and it just gets progressively easier from here till she's eighteen. Naarah loves montages so here is GG's life in photo!

Moma Dresses me like I'm "Special".

The Cold War gets Hot!

I work in a large nondescript office complex which consists of approximately 12 three story buildings. My company occupies one full building and consists of approximate 500 employees, of which about 300 are men. We have 1 bathroom per floor each of which contains 2 stalls and 2 urinals. Breaking down the numbers, we have on average 100 men sharing each bathroom which makes for pretty crowed conditions during peak "business" times. Peak "business" times, I will define as between 10-11 AM and 2-3 PM Monday through Friday. A typical day for a typical male employee consists of arriving at 8 AM, drinking coffee, let's say 4 cups between 8 and 10, coffee being a diuretic, the stalls fill up pretty quick starting at 10 AM.

The afternoon rush falls between 2 and 3 PM due to the overreliance for sustenance on the unlicensed taco truck that visits our office complex parking lot. The first three months of my employment found me with no end to frustration with always finding the bathrooms in my building occupado. Spending 15 minutes every day searching for a free stall in my building is not my idea of a quality work experience, so I decided to use my God given intelligence that had earned me my job as an Optimization Manager to solve the problem.

It didn't take me long to find a solution, you could almost say the solution found me. I was having a particularly difficult time finding an empty stall one day when I gazed out my cubicle window and noticed the nearly empty office building next door. When ever my company wanted to have an all hands meeting, we would trot across the parking lot the building next door which had 2 unoccupied floors. In fact, there was talk that we may lease one of those floors due to the space constraints we were currently experiencing.

I took the short 30 yard walk that day and that experience changed my life forever. The bathrooms in the building next door were like a small slice of heaven. These bathrooms were always unoccupied, had top tier toilet paper, were complete with fully functioning air fresheners, and had a delightful hand soap that actually seem to not only clean but condition my hands. I had found my Valhalla!

I'm no dummy and I've been schooled in the tragedy of the commons. I knew I had to keep the secret of the great bathrooms to myself. If the word got out, I knew that my bathroom Taj Mahal would be destroyed. It would only take a few of the animals in my building a couple of days to turn the good bathrooms into something resembling a woman's bathroom at a gay club.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. The signs were all there and I had good run of almost a full year. Some of my coworkers must have noticed me on my daily jaunts next door. There is only a few reasons why a coworker would be walking next door with his copy of National Review tucked under his arm. The experience began to deteriorate over the past few months as word leaked out. I began to notice that used newspapers had begun to accumulate on the floor the bathroom. I should have confronted the cretins responsible when I first noticed people had begun to defile my temple, but hindsight is 20 - 20. I should have told them that if they didn't clean up their act, they would ruin it for all of us. To this day, I almost feel that what happened was fated. The cretins never listen and all good things come to an end.

The beginning of the end began a couple of weeks ago as I went next door during the afternoon bathroom rush. I entered the stall to attend to my business when a couple of minutes later, the bathroom door opened and someone spoke. Now I was raised with a certain level of decorum and as a result of this, I follow a number of hard and fast rules. One of these rules is that you do not speak to a man in a stall. I can imagine certain situations such as natural disasters, or terrorist attacks where this rule can be bent, but on balance I live by this rule. Because of my rule, I did not at first realize that this stranger was speaking to me. But as he repeated the question, "Why do you guys always use this bathroom?" I recovered enough to answer, "Full house next door." This bathroom Nazi apparently was not satisfied by my answer because he began a 5 minute diatribe about how I was illegally trespassing in "his" bathroom. The man had me at a bit of a disadvantage due to my current "position", so he may have won the first battle in the bathroom war.

After this incident, I went back to my building and told of my experience to my fellow male coworkers. It got hot fast, and most of my coworkers vowed not to give in to the bathroom Nazi next door. By early next week, multiple male coworkers had been confronted by the bathroom Nazi and each had similar experiences to mine. The last confrontation involved the bathroom Nazi vowing to put a keypad lock on "his" bathroom door, which I believe led the bathroom Nazi to think that he had won the war. Sure enough, one of my coworker reported the next day that a key pad was being installed.

Anything good is worth fighting for and my coworkers decided that they didn't want to give up the bathroom next door. Six months ago, my company leased the 3rd floor of the building next door. We quickly obtained the bathroom lock combination when the property management company sent it out to tenants in the building. One of my coworkers, Bobby, is a bit of a young punk and he immediately went next door to try out the combination. As Bobby was completing his business, the bathroom Nazi in a fit of rage entered the bathroom and began to pound on the stall door and gesticulate violently. Bobby popped off as he is proned to due, and felt everything was fine as the bathroom Nazi left the room. As Bobby left the bathroom, the bathroom Nazi was waiting for him in the lobby and began to physically confront him.

Bobby was pretty shook up by the incident and described the bathroom Nazi as "crazy, with strange dark eyes that were too close together." We are currently planning our next attack.

More Cowbell

Cat and Kid love baby food.

These pictures ought to give Grandpa Dennis a heart attack. GG and Lundy both enjoying meat sticks.

11 months old.

GG turns 11 months old today, so here are some recent pictures.



Naarah's friend Jenny got this car for GG a couple of weeks ago. She loves it. When you put her in it, she goes vrooooooom, vrooooom. As you wheel her around, she loves to wave to everyone. Just like the Pope!



GG taking a bath.



GG getting caught trying to call Elmo.



GG sipping some juice.



Daddy Out!

Don't F with Hornets

Bruce Lee was one tough son of a gun and he got his start in ShowBiz as the 60's TV super hero sidekick The Green Hornet. One of the most unbelievable episodes of the campy Batman television show pitted Robin the "Boy Wonder" against The Green Hornet. The casting director expected us to "suspend belief" as Robin played by shrimpy Burt Ward beats the heck out of The Green Hornet played by Bruce Lee. Come on... Bruce Lee's Pee is tougher than Burt Ward. In real life, Bruce Lee would have touched Burt Ward with his pinky and Burt would have crapped himself and broken into a thousand pieces.

This past summer I learned to respect the power of the Hornet. The summer of 2006 will always be know to me as the Summer of Hornets. It started innocently enough last June, with my attempt to rebuild a retaining wall that had partially collapsed due to last winter's rains. I was moving cement blocks when all of a sudden, I felt a hot searing pain near my right elbow. When I looked down, I noticed a rather large hornet attached to my arm. I smashed him between my fingers and started to panic.

Little know fact: I'm allergic to bee stings. Yep, just like Macaulay Culkin in "My Girl", one sting from a bee and I'm pushing up daisies.

After getting attacked by one hornet, his buddies began to swarm me and sting my precious calves. By the time I got inside, my wounds were beginning to swell, and I told the wife that she might have to take me to the hospital. I didn't die, so I learned that I'm not also allergic to hornets. My wounds continued to swell over the next few days and I itched like hell.

I took me a few weeks to psychologically recover from my first battle with the hornets but I vowed to exact my revenge.

The next incident in my Summer of Hornets started with me purchasing two cans of Hornet spray. I pinpointed the area of the retaining wall where the Hornets seemed to be hanging out and doused the entire area. I then returned to working on tearing my retaining wall down. After about 45 minutes of work, I got to the area that I sprayed down with the Hornet killer and with a shovel tipped over the top block in the retaining wall. As the block slowly cascaded off of the retaining wall, I saw the nest tucked under the cement block. The only thought that passed through my mind was "I'm F'ed". This thought was quickly replaced by second half of the fight or flight response as hundreds of hornets streamed out of their lair and started biting me.

I made it back into my house in under five seconds, caught my breath and began to survey the damage. As I looked into the mirror, I discovered about 50 hornets on my back. This triggered a second fight or flight response and flight won again. I began to tear off my clothes and ran for the bedroom. I could hear the little bastards buzzing around in the house. These things were super hornets, because later in the day when I gathered up my hornet infested clothes and threw them in the wash, they not only survived a full wash cycle, but they broke my washing machine.

A couple of weeks later, my father in law showed up, and I being the smart guy that I am, asked him to get rid of the little bastards. We suited Dennis up in my ski gear, snow pants, hat, big coat, scarf, etc. He was armed with two bottle of hornet/wasp killer, and went out to do battle. Dennis had so much clothing on, that he looked like the little brother from "A Christmas Story". Naarah, GG, and I watched him squirt the cinder block the nest was built into with the wasp killer. The little bastards were buzzing and dive bombing him pretty good.

When Dennis flipped the cinder block over to get a better shot at the hornet's lair, I thought he was a goner. Hornets stormed out and he made a hasty retreat to my garage. Dennis decided to change his tactics and brought out the big guns, lighter fluid and matches. Five minutes later, all that was left was hundreds of charred hornets. If life was fair, this would be the end of the post, but alas, life's not fair.

A few weeks later, I managed to find a couple of free hours on a Saturday, and decided to clean up the yard and mow the law. I mowed the front and started for the back. Everything was fine, until while I was walking backward, I stepped in a small depression in the ground. I looked down, and my left foot was smack dab in the middle of a hornet's nest. Hornets were buzzing and streaming out of the nest. Before I knew what the heck was going on, there was a searing pain in my ass. If you made it this far through this post, here is your sweet, sweet reward. The money shot:

99.873% Self Sufficient

My kid is advancing at geometric rates. She can damn near take care of herself. For instance, the following photos show that if the wife and I were to keel over suddenly, GG could feed herself. My dream of a beer delivery system is close to fruition.

Hippy = Jackass!

I have long understood the correlation between organic food eating, dirty smelly hippy, natural pathetic lovin' people and jackasses, but this article highlights the phenomenon. Some extremely stupid hippy parents have been feeding their children unpasteurized or "raw" milk, and now those children have come down with e. coli infections.

This follows closely on the heels of the "organic" spinach derived e. coli outbreak that sickened 180 people nationwide. If I have said it once, I've said it a thousand times, "All food is organic! If it was inorganic, you would die!"

The article says that in Washington state, it is legal to sell unpateurized milk, but it is illegal in many other states. Big surprise. My God, this is the 21st century. Do we really want to go back to the days before Louis Pasteur figured out you could heat food, kill many of the bacteria living in that food, and hence prolong the shelf life of that food? I know, Pasteur was a Frenchman. But come on, the hippy-dippy, natural food types love the French.

I often wonder if the people pushing the organic food, "raw"milk, let's not immunize our children and raise them as strict vegans, ever feel guilty when people follow their advice and bad things happen. I used to try to persuade these morons that their germ theory and nutritional theories were unsound, but to them, it is religious dogma. I don't much care when an adult chooses to be a moron and consumes unpasteurized milk. Play Russian Roulette with your dietary consumption, but don't pour this crap down some innocent kids gullet!

The last little gem in this story concerns price. I guarantee that these Jackasses paid significantly more money to purchase this "raw" milk than they would have if they would have purchased run of the mill pasteurized Darigold.

Daddy Daughter Weekend:

Since GG’s mom was in Northern California getting her drink on last weekend, I had Genevieve all to myself. What did we do? My favorite weekend activity: going to the zoo. For Genevieve’s first zoo experience, we went to the Cougar Mountain Zoo in Issaquah. I had never been to this particular zoo, so I was looking forward to it. The zoo is small but fun. It costs pretty much a dollar and animal. Here are some pictures of GG’s first zoo experience:

A cougar, hense the name Cougar Mountain Zoo. This little guy had a hurt paw, so he was laying around licking it.



A parrot. This zoo has a ton of birds, parrots, macaws, etc.



GG was watching these guys fight. At one point, the red one bit his buddy, the the bitee let loose a cry that made GG and I almost crap ourselves.



An Alpaca. The zoo informed us that the Alpaca is one of the smallest in the Camel Family. They had brown ones and one white one. There were a bunch of snotty nosed kids feeding the white one -- racists!



Cranes: If you look closely, the sign says; "Cranes - Stab-Peck-Kick - Keep Away" I'm not going to let some stupid zoo tell me how to raise my kid... check this out:


That's right. I don't have a sign on her stroller, but GG bites, kicks, punches, pinches, and craps all over the place. Stupid zoo.

I'll leave you with this: Steve Irwin dangled his baby in front of crocidiles, I pose my baby in front of Grizzly Bears!

Attention All Muslims!

As it is August 22, 2006 let me reveal myself as the legendary 12th Imam. Allah hid me in Two Dot, Montana and while the first few centuries were pretty lame, the introduction of Taco John’s fifteen years ago really spiced up my life, if you know what I mean. Mmm Potatoes Olay. Anyway, now that I am unhidden, listen to me! Take off your dresses, shave your beards, stop dressing your women in sacks, don’t blow yourselves up anymore! Get a kitty and cuddle - - Imam Out.

PS. You can now wipe your butt with both your left and your right hand!
- - Imam Out Out.

Ava














This is what my kid looks like when I mention that name!

So Advanced!






Only eight months old and already a savy media critic. The nut didn't fall far from the tree with Genevieve. I was watching TV last night while the wife was out playing softball. Genevieve crawled over to the TV, pulled herself up, and began to slap the TV screen, proving that she likes my stories about as much as her mother.

Warning to Ava: Genevieve is now mobile and trained in the dark arts of the Ninja.

There can be only one!

My cat hates you!




My cat hates you. He hates everything about you. He hates the way you dress. He hates your crappy hair cut. He hates the way you speak. He thinks you waddle like a duck. He hates your profile. My cat doesn't like the cut of your jib. Your mere presence causes my cat to seethe with rage. The only thing that is keeping my cat from killing you is his lack of opposable thumbs. The only question that remains is; what are you going to do about it? Yeah, my cat thought so. My cat thinks you are a whuss. In fact, he hates you even more now.

What the hell.

Reuters is reporting that a chicken has laid an egg with the word Allah inscribed on it.

ALMATY (Reuters) - A chicken in a Kazakh village has laid an egg with the word "Allah" inscribed on its shell, state media reported Thursday.
"Our mosque confirmed that it says 'Allah' in Arabic," Bites Amantayeva, a farmer from the village of Stepnoi in eastern Kazakhstan, told state news agency Kazinform.
"We'll keep this egg and we don't think it'll go bad."
The news agency said the egg was laid just after a powerful hail storm hit the village.
Kazakhstan is a large, thinly populated Central Asian state where Sunni Islam is a dominant religion.

This incident follows closely on the heals of the fish that was caught that had the word Allah in Arabic inscribed on it side.

A few months ago, I took a crap that was shaped like Mohammed's scimitar. I didn't want to keep it because it had already gone bad. When I flushed it, I swear I heard the words, "Allahu Akbar". It was sort of creepy. I didn't say anything at the time because I didn't want the media exposure.

Tiger in a cage!






That's not a pretty face.

A Contrarian view of Ken Delay

A great post by one of my favorite bloggers on the benefits to the natural gas market brought on primarily by Ken Delay and Enron can be found here.

Quackery.

The latest adventures of Drunky McDrunkerstein falling down a few flights of stairs, injuring her neck, and going to the Chiropractor for relief; allows me to reflect on my feelings towards the so called science of Chiropractic Adjustment. I have always registered some skepticism toward Chiropractic Adjustment. Anyone who knows me, knows my feelings towards the forced extraction of wisdom teeth (know as the Gibraltar Conspiracy), and while my distain for Chiropractors does not exceed my distain for Oral Surgeons, it comes pretty damn close.

Earlier today, I was reflecting on why I hold such low estimations of Chiropractors and the only reason I could fathom is Elmer Baldridge. “Who the hell is Elmer Baldridge?” you say, I was just about to tell you!

Mr. Baldridge was my high school Chemistry and Physics teacher. Baldridge arrived at my Catholic High School before my Junior year under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Due to the miniscule salaries offered by Catholic schools, Catholic schools typically employ two types of teachers; young ideological teachers fresh from college who want to change the world, and older, more experience teachers who are married to Doctors, lawyers, etc. Their spouse’s income allowed these teachers to work at a school with more freedom, and generally a school population that took learning more seriously. Elmer Baldridge did not fit either of these categories.

Rumor had it that Baldridge had been fired from his previous teaching position at a public school for putting on a rubber glove during a chemistry lab and asking for a female volunteer. He was forty to fiftyish, short, balding, single, and pushing 300 lbs which may play into the reason why he will always be associated with Chiropractic Adjustments in my mind.

Baldridge’s firing and subsequent lawsuit for wrongful termination did not seem to temper his classroom behavior. He was constantly making controversially statements during class. For instance, as he was explaining the periodic table one day, a student answered a question by using the words, “Man – Made”. Baldridge said in response to this answer, “I don’t like the term Man-Made. Women helped too. The men needed someone to make their Coffee!”

On another occasion, Baldridge was lecturing on the concept of cell division or cleavage. He began his lecture by asking the question, “Does anyone have a good definition for cleavage?” Immediately after asking this question, he turned to a well endowed (my grandma would have referred to her as “blessed”) female student and said with a twinkle in his eye, “Ms. Malloy, please define cleavage!”

Getting back to the point of the story, Baldridge once told me about the Chiropractic Adjustments he had been getting every week for the past five years. According to him, his Chiropractor would usher him into his office, request that he lower his pants and under wear, and have him bend over the examination table. At this point, the “Dr” would leave the office only to return a few minutes later with a rather large snow shovel. The “Dr” would then tell Mr. Baldridge to brace himself and would smack him three times on the ass with the snow shovel. According to Baldridge, this weekly “adjustment” was the only thing that ever worked to relieve him of chronic neck and back pain.

I’m not one to judge, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $120 a week to have some quack smack me in the ass with a snow shovel.

What the hell is Elmo doing slumming with Oprah?


Hey Oprah, Hands off Elmo, NOW!

Palestinian Hot Potato

LGF has the story of two Palestinians killed and seven others wounded when a family was playing with a gernade.

Let me paint a picture for you.

Setting:
A Palestinian family sitting around their house railing against the evil Zionists:

Akmed: "Mohammed, I'm bored railing against the evil Zionist Entity." "Let's play a game!"

Mohammed: "OK Akmed, what type of game to you have in mind?"

Akmed: "Oh, I don't know." "How about this." "Let's get the whole family sitting around the table, I'll pull the pin on this here gernade, we pass it from person to person, and the person holding it when it goes off, Wins!"

Mohammed: "Genius, pure Genius." "Let me go get my 1 year old neice, she loves games!"

Deer

Animal Profile #1

As I’m sure all of you could tell from my teaser Latin nomenclature, the first profiled animal in my back yard is the deer. I was about to describe the deer as the sheep of the animal world, but then I realized that sheep are the sheep of the animal world.

Ah, what are deer good for? Shootin’ of course! In addition to shootin’ deer are good at spreading lyme disease. In my back yard they eat the blackberry bushes and occasionally get in the way of my vehicle. This little critter later surprised me as I came around the corner of my house. I’ve decided to name him …. Dewey.

Deer Quick Facts:

Deer are the state animal of the following states:
Arkansas
Illinois
New Hampshire
Ohio
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Wisconsin

Bucks range in weight from 130 – 350 lbs
Does range in weight from 90 – 130 lbs

Deer look cute but, if you have been reading my blog, you know that they occasionally attack humans walking out of basketball games. Be very wary of the clop, clop, clop of little hooves behind you!

New Posts coming soon...

I decided to start an on going series on the animals in my back yard. First up: Odocoileus hemionus

You can cut the anticipation with a knife!

The Sneeze

Testing to see if I can add video to my blog. If I can, I better than everyone!

Who's the dummy?

Learning to crawl...







Is difficult when you have a damn shitzu up in your grill!