smacky and bucky

Here's the final paragraph in the Wikipedia article on Lynchburg, Virginia:

Lynchburg became known in the latter 20th century as the home of the televangelist Jerry Falwell, who formed the "Moral Majority" in the early 1980s. Soon after he established Liberty University. It was also where Dr. Charles Browne Fleet introduced the first mass marketed over-the-counter enema, where the company he founded still manufactures laxative and bowel cleansing products, as noted in the company's website.

Enjoy the links!

And dude... Mary Worth has a stalker, and his name is Aldo Kelrast, and yes, his last name is an anagram for STALKER!

Behold:









She is soooooo screwed...

Overall, a very nice weekend. Friday morning I relaxed with a cup of coffee and watched TV for a while (and morning television sucks, OK? Yuck!). Around 10:30 I drove over to the park for our company picnic. Checked in, got seen by the right people, and wandered over to the batting cages. Sixteen tokens later (at sixteen balls per token), I was getting a blister on my thumb and decided to give it a rest. That's right, quick math person, I took a swing at 256 balls. I'm not claiming I hit them all, but I did swing the bat 256 times.

Laura and I hit the rode around noon and I was in the pool by 4. Finished another book. Friday night we had dinner out, watched the sun set, and relaxed in the hot tub (Our neighbors [Laura's parents] have one now).

Saturday was more of the same. A long relaxing day.

Sunday my father-in-law and I had to cut some branches off two trees. The top half of one tree broke off and was resting horizontally on a branch of the nearby tree. A 20-foot long, 500+ lbs. piece of wood hanging 20 feet in the air is a health hazard you don't need over you (literally). So we got the extension ladder, some rope, and a chainsaw, and went to work. We tied to the ladder to the tree in two places so when the top half of the tree came down, it wouldn't take the ladder with it. I volunteered to cut the other limb, so up I climbed 20 feet with a running chainsaw in my right hand.

The maneuver was flawless: Made a slow cut on the branch holding the tree, Crack, crack, crack, and down it came: 500+ pounds dropping straight down 20 feet. BOOM! I turned off the chainsaw and came down the ladder. The tree trunk was still caught on a branch on the other tree, so it was now leaning at about a 45 degree angle. No problem, I figured. I'd scamper up the log and the top part would give way and fall, right?

Except I was wearing old soccer shoes with soles that were so worn that they had no tread. I made it about half way and slipped, my left foot shooting out. My right leg scraped against the trunk from my thigh to my ankle, and I fell five feet onto my back. Onto a tree branch, actually. Luckily the branch was at an angle, so I only scraped and bruised the left side of my lower back. If the branch had been perpendicular, and I had come down with my spine crisscrossing it... [shudder].

But it all worked out, and I didn't paralyze myself, so that's good.

Sunday night soak in a tub of hot water back home worked the soreness out, and I'm mostly bruises and scrapes, with not many actual cuts. Looks bad, but didn't bleed much.

So, yay, I guess.

I mowed two lawns yesterday, because, face it, it wouldn't be a normal week if smacky didn't mention mowing two lawns. Some days I can put this blog on autopilot. This could be a paste of a post from 13 months ago! Has anyone seen Revenge of the Sith yet? Kidding, I'm writing this in 2006.

I must have been very good recently, because my wife is making amazing dinners. Not that she doesn't always, but I'm not the pickiest person on the planet, and in a pinch I'll eat a portion of almost any kind of food. Last night we had steak, new potatoes, and asparagus. (I really like asparagus, especially if it's the very thin tender spears, and while I'll choke down most vegetables, asparagus is something I actually like.)

Tomorrow is our company picnic, so I won't be in the office (thus this post's title). It's a pretty sweet deal. If you come to the picnic (which doesn't start until 10:30), you can stay a few hours, then leave and have the afternoon free. And you get paid for the entire day as if you had been behind your desk! It's taking place at a park with batting cages, miniature golf, and two swimming pools. I figure an hour in the batting cage, an hour socializing with fellow employees (i.e., making myself seen to prove my attendance), then checking out after a hot dog and a soda.

I want one of these (OK, I want two, actually and it also comes in gold, so I want two of those as well. I just didn't want to sound greedy):


First appearance Iron Man. How incredibly retro and cool is that? I love this buckethead. Even if the guy inside is sometimes a tortured alcoholic. See the really nerdy, detailed history of Iron Man on Wikipedia.





From the meaning of life to toys in three posts. Not bad, huh?

Instead of being whiney person number 13,543,456,667,654,323,123,111 wondering about the nature of the universe and my role in it, I've decided to put that on hold for a while and just make a short list of things that make me happy. Because in a zen sort of way, that answers that question, doesn't it?

So here's a quick list off the top of my head (in no particular order):

1) Sunny Saturday mornings filled with the promise of relaxation and/or adventure. Even if they don't lead anywhere.

2) The music of the Go-Betweens.

3) Music in general.

4) Getting about 25% through a book and realizing I love it and never want it to end.

5) Laura's smile.

6) Sitting in a chair in the backyard 10 minutes after finishing mowing the lawn and looking at it (the yard, not the chair).

7) The first sip of a cold beer after mowing a big yard in 95 degree heat.

8) Our pets: The way Buzz follows me around in the morning meowing for attention, the way Maddie grabs my wrist so I'll scratch behind her ears, the way Lexi is so excited when I get home you'd think I was a celebrity.

9) Slipping in to fresh clean sheets on a bed.

10) Seeing my name on the copyright page when a new book I worked on comes out.

and bonus # 11:

11) The feel of warm dry sand under my feet.

OK, so it's just me. I'm the only crazy one. Fine.

I did take a look at my diet and found it nearly devoid of nutritional value two out of three meals, so we went to the grocery store last night and I picked out some fruits and vegetables to eat, in lieu of garbage. Let's see how I feel at the end of the week.

I'm interested in watching the new BBC America show Life on Mars. It's about a British cop that gets hit by a car and wakes up in the 1970s, working on the same police force. Part of him thinks it's time travel, part of him is sure he's in a coma and dreaming. The first episode was on last night, but I couldn't face the idea of watching television, so I tivo-ed it to watch later.

I love this movie so much I nearly cry watching the trailer:

I watched Cube this weekend, starring a bunch of Canadians. One of them is the mom on the TV version of Dead Zone. The rest I've never seen before. The premise of the movie was very interesting, and most of it played out well. One major shift in character seemed to come out of nowhere and sort of screwed up the plot, but I'll forgive it. Worth a rental, and I didn't give anything away this time. In fact I didn't tell you much of anything about the movie, so I'm sure you're not tempted to see it at all. Let me get in Hollywood ad agency mode here for a second:

Cube is like Saw 2 meets The Matrix and Resident Evil and has a three-way. Now do you want to see it?

I finished the last half of Cell by Stephen King on Saturday. The showers ended in the early afternoon and the clouds actually parted, so I spent three hours in the pool reading. Not a bad book. Definite zombie overtones and moments in the book.

One woman continues to express interest in our house. She's been to see the place five times. The only problem is that she has to sell her condo to have to money to buy the house. She's probably praying we don't sell the house before she sells the condo, and we're praying her condo will sell so she can buy the house. Hopefully those two things don't somehow cancel each other out.

I picked up a used copy of championship poker for PS2 and played it some this weekend. Is it totally immature that I created a female character and named her E. Z. Lay? She's been having a great run so far, winning 6 out of 7 games.

Finally, since I already took the trouble to make the links on Kate's blog, I'll share them here too:


The real Telly Savalas for Player's Club

and

Jim Carrey as Telly Savalas for Player's Club

Both are funny but for different reasons.

----------

Sometimes I have mini panic attacks about my life. I ask myself questions like: What in the hell am I doing with my life? I rant about how fucked up everything is, but what am I doing about it? How am I attempting to make the world a slightly better place? I feel like I should be doing something beyond the everyday chores and stupid hobbies I have to distract myself. Cheesy horror movies and random pop culture shit that rots the brain like mental candy, completely devoid of intellectual nutrition. I find myself repulsed by pseudo-intellectuals that use big words to sound smart, but I go so far in the other direction in response, reveling in childish activities that don't challenge me at all. Sometimes I feel frozen in place, rationalizing that doing nothing at all is better than doing something and making things worse. People who fuck up, who really fuck up on a grand scale, are doing something.

When I was in middle school, I wasn't particularly motivated in classes, but I clearly recall being depressed knowing that there was no way I would ever have all the answers, or read all the books, that my brain couldn't contain all the knowledge we as living beings had created and thrown out there. At best I'd have a few items of trivia, a good basis for Jeopardy, but no real deep understanding of much of anything. I feel I should be at least alternating one piece of crap Stephen King book with something with more weight. Something that someone poured their soul into to create, with the hopes that someone would read it and their lives would be changed in some small way.

Does anyone else feel this way? That you're running in place and avoiding the "big questions"? The universal truth appears to be we don't really understand much of anything, but that's always been the case. Shining a light on how things are, and how they could be, has always challenged those that enjoy the status quo, who are usually in positions of power or wealth, who have reasons to fear change.

Wow, The Hand of Death is sort of a boring movie, but it makes nice background noise when you're reading a book, and the scene where the good guy grabs the bad guy's upper arm and twists, and it flashes back to when the good guy was training and finally mastered the skill of shattering a piece of bamboo with his hand by twisting it... was awesome. Bad guy lost his arm, then he got kicked to death, finally having his neck broken between the good guy's knees.

Sorry I spoiled the ending for you. You just saved $6.

I'm debating whether or not to take a half day today. Thoughts?

After work I went to the local hardware store and purchased a new spark plug for the lawn mower, and was pleasantly surprised that I had correctly guessed the problem and fixed it the first time. From 3:30 to 6:30 I mowed two lawns, and drank three bottles of water.

Dinner was a caesar salad with grilled shrimp, and a baked sweet potato. Damn fine meal.

I've started reading Cell by Stephen King. I didn't have any interest in it until I read last week that the book was his homage to the zombie genre, and he had dedicated the book to George Romero (king of the zombie film) and Richard Matheson (author of I am Legend, the literary roots of the zombie genre). That got my attention. And I picked up a new copy from a seller on Amazon for $2.00 (must be stolen to be that cheap).

Addition to yesterday's post: Is it merely a coincidence that all 18 of the families that "adopted" frozen embryos are white, upper middle class, and Christian? (I'm guessing on the last, but they're clearly white, artificial insemination ain't for the poor, and I'll bet a dollar there's not a Jewish family in that group!) How many endless debates, costing taxpayers endless amounts of wasted money, have been started because a relatively small but vocal and organized group of white, upper middle class Christians wanted to impose their own morality on the entire country? Need a few examples?

• PMRC and warning labels on music.
• Congressional hearings on violence in video games.
• Attempting to use the law to "define" marriage as between a man and a woman.
• Opposition to stem cell research.
• Pushing for higher FCC fines for "indecency" in the wake of Janet Jackson's boob.

If I really feel like making broad generalizations, I'd add:

• Illegal aliens debate.
• Flag burning amendment.
• Trying to make schools include "creationism" in the science classroom.

Meanwhile, as we spend money to debate these things, we close successful afterschool programs due to lack of funds and put kids back on the street with nothing to do and no role models. Is it a wonder the D.C. chief of police declared a crime state of emergency, allocating $16 million to cover overtime for police officers working six days a week and installing video surveillance cameras across the town?

AP: President Bush cast the first veto of his 5 1/2-year presidency Wednesday, rejecting legislation to ease limits on federal funding for research on stem cells obtained from embryos.

Well, no surprise there. He's steadfast in his beliefs. The problem is that his belief is unshakable based on old science. To him, the definition of faith is standing true to your unwavering beliefs, despite any evidence to the contrary. He must think that Bill Frist, the man so Republican that he made a medical evaluation of Terri Shaivo based on an hour of edited videotape, must have lost his mind to come over in favor of stem cell research.

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life of the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our society needs to respect, so I vetoed it," Bush said at a White House event where he was surrounded by 18 families who "adopted" frozen embryos that were not used by other couples, and then used those leftover embryos to have children.

Clever use of propaganda there. I guess Angelina Jolie is going to have to try a little harder to get the word out about all the foreign orphans begging to be adopted. How can they compete with stockpiles of frozen embryos... embryos that will never become persons, when there are 18 families out there willing to "save" an embryo from death by "adopting" it and putting it in a mommy, or a surrogate mommy. These families are more than willing to use cutting-edge medical science when it follows their moral code. I wonder what would happen if one of them needed a liver and got one from a monkey, or an atheist?

So one embryo is more valuable than 100,000 people with Parkinson's disease, but 2,500 dead U.S. soldiers aren't worth more than America's freedom from terrorism? Okay. Just so we're clear on that.

Yesterday I slept 30 minutes later than usual, but still got to work on time. (Of course, having flex time, it means I couldn't actually be "late." I could work 10-6 if I wanted.) This morning, I awoke 30 minutes earlier than usual, and decided to get up and have a slow cup of coffee and watch the local news. The big news is the weather: 100 degrees yesterday, 98 degrees today, with code red air quality, meaning don't go outside, don't mow the lawn, don't check the mail, don't do anything!

In that spirit, yesterday after work I measured a closet for shelves I want to make and install. Of course I'm also lazy, so if I can find shelving anywhere near the actual size I need, that would be ideal. Closet size: 14 inches deep by 26 inches wide. Who designed this thing? Went to Home Depot, but the deepest shelf they have is 12 inches, and that will not do. Returned home with no purchase. I might have to actually buy wood and cut and sand it myself. How annoying.

I'm not sure why this is, but lately I've felt the need to be productive. Like, all the time. Go to work, come home, then do something: mow a lawn, do some home improvement job, something. It's all well and good, sure... it's not like I feel the need to do a different type of drug each day. But I can't seem to just relax much recently. If I'm not doing something, I'm thinking about what to do next. Sunday I spent two and a half hours in the 95 degree heat weeding two flowerbeds and transferring compost from one compost bin to another (larger) compost bin.

When I finally finished, I washed the dirt off myself with a hose and jumped in the pool, so I didn't spend the day punishing myself. I've just been feeling like I need to earn rewards.

Crap, does this mean I'm becoming some sort of adult?

Have German mechanics been bred to have tiny ewok-like hands? That's the only way they could reach all the little screws and bolts in the engine compartment of the new Volkswagen Beetle. I thought I'd never loosen the bolt holding the battery in place! I was able to fit a wrench in there, but with the tubes and hoses running around it, I had a turning radius of about 3 degrees.

I think the real answer is this: German engineers are freaking geniuses, and design everything so you need to let the dealer fix even the smallest problem. Everything inside the interior of the car is simple, clever, and intuitive to the driver. But everything under the hood is crammed together and unreachable. Do you think it's a coincidence that over HALF of the items described in the manual suggest taking the car to the dealership rather than attempting to fix it yourself? Remember about a year ago when I talked about changing the headlight bulb? The manual doesn't even tell you how to do it! It only says take the car to the dealer. I called the dealer and they said it would take an hour and cost $100. One hundred dollars to change a $3 light bulb! I instead found the instructions in a forum online and did it myself in 15 minutes. The second time I had to change a bulb in the other headlight, it took less than 10 minutes.

I finally loosened the bolt and took the old battery to the store and got a replacement. The car now runs, but of course still needs transmission work. At least I can drive it to a garage now.

My wife's mother was driving through town after visiting my wife's sister, and she stopped by, taking wife and dog with her to the river. Leaving me alone with the cats. Nothing exciting about an evening alone with work the next day. I did see something I want to spread the word about (I did see something about which I want to spread the word. See? Good grammar sometimes makes you sound like a retard speaking English as his third language...):

I watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on FX. I caught the pilot when it premiered and didn't think it was funny at all. Last night though, they aired two fantastic episodes. In the first, the daughter gets mugged and decides to get in shape and learn boxing. But it's too much work, so when someone offers her steroids, she takes them like crazy. And goes crazy. Also in the episode, three friends decide to make money in an underground fight club, but none of them can fight. So they get drunk and train one of the friends to take physical abuse, figuring if the guy can take a punch, he'll last long enough in the fight to tire out the other guy. Oh, and the father of one of the guys and the girl is Danny Devito. And last night he was going to box the guy that played Carmine Ragusso (The Big Ragu) from Laverne and Shirley, who is now a big fat old guy. The ending is a brutal parody of Million Dollar Baby.

In the second episode, they decide to serve underage kids liquor in their bar (long story). They all end up living out their fantasies of being the cool kids in high school, even though they're now about 30. Three of them end up with dates to the prom, and the fourth guy is jealous as hell no high school girl asked him. I'll be adding this show to our Tivo list.

Here's a clip called Banging :

Leaving the Beetle in the garage for a few months without starting it now and then is a very good way to kill a car battery. Kill it dead! How dead? Hooking jumper cables to it and running those cables to a big fat SUV still didn't provide enough power to turn over the engine. What the hell? Is this what happens when German engineering is moved to Mexico for assembly? Something important gets lost in translation? It's bad enough the transmission is going bad, after only 42,000 miles. Hang your head in shame, German engineer. Shame! But a battery that can't be jump started? You should know better, Hans.

That's right though. I did have enough power for the digital dash to come on, and I confirmed that the car only has 42,000 miles on it. According to Kelly Blue Book, the mileage on a Beetle that age averages 75,000! The car is 33,000 miles below that (for the math-impaired). It's another reason I'm considering getting a few transmission repair estimates from some other local, small-time garage guys. Guys who aren't pussies and won't just say, "Let's replace the entire thing for $4,000 without looking inside the transmission. Sure, it might need a $20 part replaced, but it's too much work to actually look inside." [paraphrase of what the VW dealership told me.]
--------------

Quick note to the person who stole one of my two pieces of pizza I brought for lunch yesterday:
Thanks for at least leaving me the larger of the two pieces. It was very clever of you to find it, seeing how the pizza was in an opaque tupperware dish, inside a blue plastic grocery bag (with the handles folded under the tupperware), on the bottom rack of the office refrigerator! I hope all the cracked red pepper I put on it didn't give you heartburn. I'll use less next time if you prefer. (This is one of those "shrug and get on with your life" moments, as I can't imagine who would actually take the initiative to open a bag and a tupperware container to see what is inside. It's not like I walked into the office singing the "I've got pizza" song. It's just weird. Someone really wanted a piece of pizza.)

My final, huge spring book just arrived from the printer! Shut up, it's not late! I don't care if it is July. I only picked up the project in mid-April after two outside editors fell through. And it's two books, since there is a student edition of the title as well. I created the student edition, painstakingly extracting all the teacher notes, background info, and (of course) the answers to all the questions. Each edition also has different illustrations I had to keep straight. With all that in mind, getting these books out in three months is incredibly speedy. Whee!

=================
Late-breaking News:

While I can't justify making this purchase for myself, if any of you win the lottery sometime, feel free to buy me this:


The Complete Homicide Gift Set: Every season of the show, the three crossover episodes they did with Law & Order, and the final Homicide movie on 35 discs for $299.95. All in a police file cabinet. At 35 DVDs, it makes my Planet of the Apes monkey head seem quaint and restrained!

Picture and news courtesy of TV Shows on DVD. I really like their site, and check it often for news just like this. Check them out, because I don't want to get in trouble for stealing their picture!

Still riding a post-vacation high, I stopped at Home Depot after work and picked up a few items for the, um, home...

I got a ceiling fan, ceiling fan remote, 9-volt batteries, a six-pack of 60-watt bulbs, and a roll of electrical tape. One and a half hours later, the formerly fanless bedroom now has a fan that can be controlled with a remote. The remote controls both fan speed and the light. I finished before dinner and didn't electrocute myself!

Since I was on a roll, I took the overhead light that had been in the bedroom and installed it on the sun porch, replacing an old ugly brass thing the former owners had chosen. That only took about 15 minutes, since it was just matching wire colors, tightening the wire caps, and putting the glass dome in place.

I watched two episodes of the World Series of Pop Culture last night on VH1, and I'm either proud or ashamed that over two episodes, I only missed three questions. I didn't recognize the lyrics to Full House (proud to miss that one), and I couldn't remember the nickname Rudy gave her friend on the Cosby Show. (The answer was "Bud." The woman even said it in the same voice Rudy did on the show. Awesome.) Two more episodes come on tonight at 10. Sixteen teams are competing, with the final winner getting $250,000.

I don't want to jinx anything by talking about it in too specific terms, but good things may be on their way. Fingers crossed, lads and lasses...

In other news, I'm back. We got home yesterday around 4 p.m., and I immediately changed clothes and mowed the lawn. After 12 days of neglect, the backyard was getting mighty high. Luckily it was a mostly dry 12 days, so no wet grass with which to contend. Finished up the lawn around 5:30 and the wife had ordered pizza and picked up some beer. Yay! Simpsons, Family Guy, and Dead Zone, then to sleep.

Nearly got mad this morning, as the coffee maker didn't want to make coffee. The machine turned on, then turned off when I pushed the "brew" button. But after 10 minutes of futzing with it (including turning it upside down and shaking it), whatever had been wrong corrected, and coffee flowed. Again, yay!

Got to work and zipped through a week of e-mails, finding no major emergencies I had missed. I did, however, have a new job assignment waiting for me. Just before vacation, I was talking to a fellow editor about her latest book project. It's an extremely interesting topic, but written in a very dry manner that sucks all the interest out of it. I told her I'd take a crack at spicing up just the first paragraph of the introduction, as an example she could show the author. About 30 minutes later I returned it to her. While I was gone, she showed it to our boss, and now our boss wants me to rewrite much of the book. Can you believe that? WOW!!!!

This is turning into the finest July ever.

Again, don’t want to jinx anything. I’ll just sit here and smile to myself for a while, sipping my coffee.

Wow, this has been an amazing vacation. Sooooooo relaxing. I've read four books, swam everyday, went kayaking, went boating, played poker, played scrabble, soaked in a hot tub, watched a few movies, napped in a hammock, ate seafood, watched the sun set a few times, and watched the sun rise once.