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Forsooth, let us forthwith listen closely to the brass tintinnabulation from the large sled in our barn.
Let it be agreed that the current climate is greatly pleasant such that were we to embark on a trip together in our horse-drawn runner-equipped snow-conveyance it would probably end with great mirth.

Without, unthawed rain appears to be settling soundlessly on the ground, and some erstwhile companions are inexplicably standing upon same and uttering strange exclamations of what I perceive to be joy.
Prithee, as I have said, it is sufficiently temperate in the out of doors that a quick jaunt in our multi-person sled would be of great interest to all parties.

Accelerate, you vaunted steeds, else I shall lay waste to your hindquarters with the leather!
Let us look upon the white material that surrounds us! It is indeed an astonishing, stunning thing over which we pilgrimage.

Damnable worthless animals! Do not your exhilarating fleetness diminish!
Intertwining our appendages gives me great pleasure.
We continue to smoothly navigate to the tune of December’s pallid scenery.

The faces of our collective assemblage have reddened significantly, and yet the selection of blankets and footwarmers seems to have been particularly ingenious, as my core temperature remains unmodified.
We two are particularly well nestled in warmth and comfort, almost as if we were priests of the same cloth, and those priests were actually winged creatures, if you catch my somewhat incomprehensible drift.

I submit that the proper course of action would be for us to continue forward on this path, ideally while producing tuneful melodies from our throats such as would please what gods there may be.
I believe that I have previously commented on the suitability of our environs for a equine-pulled trip, and while I hesitate to repeat myself, I feel it necessary to point out yet again the fittingness of my earlier statements.

I can’t begin to describe how awesome this site is, so I’m just going to give it to you and let you go on your way:

www.pandora.com/

In case you’re still here (although why you would be, I can’t fathom), I have just a few comments:

• Fall Out Boy is a good band, despite the fact that English is clearly the lead singer’s third language. This guy sings the phrase “We’re always sleeping in and sleeping for the wrong team” so that it sounds like “We’re always seeping in and seeping for a long team,” which is a wholly different mental picture.
• Pandora’s played a few songs by Dispatch for me. I have a lot of friends who say that Dispatch is the absolute shiznit, so I say this with great sadness, but nevertheless need to report: I’ve heard better music coming from my wife’s ass while she’s asleep.

I hope everybody’s Thanksgiving was as thoroughly fattening as mine. I still can’t walk right, and I have enough tryptophan in my system that I’ve been sleeping 12 hours a day since Thursday. The leftovers merely add to the misery, and by misery I mean “extreme joy,” ’cause there ain’t nothin’ so good as Thanksgiving leftovers. Turkey lurkey jerky.

This year my parents went out to Lancaster to be with Mom’s family, and I didn’t particularly feel like doing early food at Sarah’s ‘rents and then driving 90 minutes for another dose of pie, so we just hung out at the in-laws all day and had a righteous time. The food was delicious, despite the apparent disaster that resulted from not having any remaining hard-boiled eggs to put in the gravy (I didn’t even notice, to be honest), and I got to spend an hour or so in the basement with my father-in-law shooting pellets at cans and paper.

After that we watched “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” which I think should become an annual tradition, and enjoyed pie. Then we went home and went to bed, at which time David and Stephen called us at about 11:30 to report that their car had broken down in New Jersey and could I come retrieve them? Luckily, I’m all about driving on empty roads in darkness (seriously!) so I went and snagged them and then returned home and slept until 10am. It was awesome.

Friday we had lunch with Lynn and Dave from Bawst’n, and then I helped Sarah with homework until rehearsal.

Saturday I got up, made pie, and then went to baptize my nephew Nathaniel, which was awesome with a capital Awe. I hadn’t seen him in roughly a month, so I was amused to see that he had porked up considerably. Then we went back to my parents’ house, where I drank too much wine but got to see all kinds of fun family.

Sunday I had church services all day.

I need some turkey and a nap, I think.

If you ever need me to drive you somewhere, 3am on a Tuesday is a great time for it. What I can’t stand are people that call me at like 3pm on Friday and say “Hey, can you drive me to the airport in an hour?” That makes me stabby.

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all! Check it, here’s my list of dope things for which I, and probably others, are thankful:

• Justin Timberlake.
• My family, particularly my new nephew Nathaniel, who is radder than fresh cinnamon buns and twice as tasty.
• Pre-massive-and-terrifying-weightloss Jennifer Connelly.
• My health, which, aside from horrific obesity and lingering acne, has been superb.
• My tongue, which allows me to taste delicious things like fresh cinnamon buns and babies.
• Fat cats that sleep on your head and yell loudly for no reason when you’re on a conference call from home.
• Beer.
• Matthew McConaughey.
• The first good pee of the day.
• Mashed potatoes with butter.
• Shoo-fly pie.
• The fact that HW is pregnant.

Oh, had I not mentioned that? Yeah, I’m hell of gonna be a father in late May. WOOHOO BABIES.

Real busy today, but not too busy to share the fun with you: Click this for fun movieage. Sound not required, as Sarah’s little digital camera recordeth it not. The whole thing made us pee a little.

Yes, that is our kitchen; yes, that is our cat The Cheat (notable for her love of Christmas trees), and yes, she has an empty box of Diet Sunkist stuck on her head. Don’t be angry with me: I didn’t put it there. This time.

Sorry this is late (like, 2 days late), but my eentarweb hosting guy was doing some kind of experiment in spam and security blocking things that resulted in blogger posting not working. Sorry about that. Not that you really missed anything.

I’m gonna hork (steal) a meme (internet idea thingy) from James Lileks (short funny writer who is currently very cold and bitter about it): it’s ThURLsday!!! Check out this stuff that made me happy this week:

I definitely think everybody needs a flying pig hat, with flapping wings. Let’s all get one, and I’ll figure out a HOW-TO to motorize the flapping. It couldn’t be more awesome than that.

Of all the bobbleheads I’ve seen, this one is the only one that I covet. (Not for $800+, but still. Awesome.)

Useful information for all your spastic friends. (Emily, bookmark this one.)

More useful information from wikihow.

Placeopedia.com. Two of my favorite things, Google Maps and Wikipedia, together at least. Brings a tear to the eye, it really does.

I stayed home sick yesterday, because for the second time in under a month, I woke up feeling like Satan had peed fiery urine down my throat. (Yeah, think about that image for a while. Demons and golden showers…it’s a winning combination!) So I napped for a while, watched a little TV, checked email, did a little work from home.

I started feeling a little guilty for being useless, so I called my mom to see how my uncle (just had heart surgery) was doing; much better, apparently, which is superb news. I did some kitchen cleaning, set out some chicken to thaw for dinner, and said, “Hey, I’m gonna be making pies next week, I should go ahead and make the dough now and save time!”

So I kneaded up some of my mom’s patented pie crust recipe, which involves egg and vinegar, making things extra yum. Sadly, I didn’t have any vinegar that I could find. I substituted balsamic, which turned things an ominous color, but when everything was together I tasted the dough and it appeared to be fine. I set that in a bowl and refrigerated.

Next, I decided some cookies would be in order, so I threw together a low-carb/low-calorie peanut butter cookie batch and baked it up. Then I put on the new Diana Krall Christmas CD and sat in an easy chair with a blanket and a cat and read a book for an hour or so. Then to temper all that feminine crap I tore out some annoying sliding trays out of kitchen cabinet and replaced it with a single shelf. That was my day.

Oh, except for baking the chicken with minced garlic and powdered cloves. That was good.

Aren’t you happy to know how I spent my sick day? Then you’ll be thrilled to hear me relate this tale:

The things we do to lose weight and look good. Every floor of our building has a coke machine dispensing bottles of carbonated goodness. Sadly, the bottom 4 floors all were sold out of diet soda. Instead of getting regular coke and just taking the calories, I ran to the top (5th) floor, and ran back down, manboobs jiggling all the way! Aren’t you proud?

My life is boring and repetitive. Welcome to it, you crazy kids.

I LOVE THE INTERNET. (But noooooot as much as you, you see.)

When I was in Acme yesterday, a song came on the PA that I was like, “Hey, I’d forgotten about that song, that’s a good jam. I’m gonna look that up when I get home and download it.”

But I forgot to, mainly because my mind was distracted by having to replace a garbage disposal (it had stopped grinding up food and seemed to be content to just buzz ominously when switched on, as if the motor had burned up). Then this morning got in the car and spontaneously remembered, but I couldn’t remember the melody or any of the words except something about “the hardest part.” And I figured there’s about a 75% chance that I’m not remembering that correctly either. Anyway, I google “hardest part love lyrics” and get a bunch of stuff, one of which is (drumroll please): “I’ve Been In Love Before” by Cutting Crew.

I love the internet.

As to the garbage disposal, there was much cursing and gnashing of teeth, but I finally got it in. This morning, however, I discovered a slight screwup: the previous disposal had a thick rubber tube attached to a port on the top. I assumed it was some kind of outlet to get rid of food chunks and send it off somewhere, but I wasn’t entirely sure where; it didn’t seem to go into the drain line to the sewer. The new disposal, which was just a more recent version of the exact same make and model, had the port, but it wasn’t actually open. It was completely plugged with molded plastic. I said screw it and stuck the hose onto it anyway just so it wouldn’t flop around under the sink.

This morning, I found out what that hose is for: the dishwasher drains into it. HW ran a load of dishes last night and opened the machine this morning to discover that none of the water had drained out of the bottom. Fearing the worst, I opened the cabinets under the sink, but discovered that the metal clamp had held, and no water had leaked out.

So tonight I must disconnect the hose (undoubtedly spraying water everywhere) and drill out that plastic plug so that the dishwasher will work.

I hate appliances. (But love the internet.)

I’m sure many of you have been wondering: Hey! I know Matt must have done something highly amusing for Halloween. Where are the freakin’ pics of the hilarity? Well, bichon frisse, here you go. And worry not about the smallness of the imagery, as forsooth you can click on ’em and makes ’em real big-like. DO IT. DO IT.

Here we have the Fantastic Four: Tinkerbell (Karen), Carl (yours truly), Death (Craig), and Flava Flav (Kasiem). You’ll note that Karen is rocking the cleavage: more on this to come.
Nerd (Brian) and Tinkerbell flirt without shame. See how Brian gracefully bares his teeth to show his ability to bring down the wild boar (he’s a good provider!). Note Karen continuing to display her cleavage (she’s got a prodigious rack!). Young love; je t’adore.
Venus (Kris) and Gypsy (Mel) display our 2006 model, the Ovenaire 2006xt! It can handle your stroganoff as well as your rack of lamb! Uh…girls…get out of the way…we can’t see the oven…oh, screw it.
Yours truly rocks the Dance Dance Revolution. Note the form: take note, as I am a professional.
The onlookers marvel at my prodigious moves. (Seriously. I was unstoppable. I…am…a…DDR…god.)
Poor Kristy tries to match my flava. (I’m not lying about this. Both Kristy and Sarah are trained dancers, neither of whom could match my skeelz.)
Kristy goes for laughs. KICK IT, GIRL. KICK IT HARDER THAN IT HAD HERETOFORE BEEN KICK’D.
Brian, Barrett (Dr. Handlove or something) and Kyle (some kind of Greek god whose name escapes me) admire the view. The look on Kyle’s face is quite clear: “That’s it, hike up your dress, girl. DZAAAAMN look at dat booty!” It’s been a while for Kyle. (Welcome to marriage! HAHA! Who’s laughing now! Certainly not me.)
Sarah love you long time. (She so hawny.)
The next day, we went to watch Kyle play soccer. It was like watching me on DDR, I think; faster than the eye can follow. Kyle scored two goals.
Later, this young man was heard to say “No hay lugar como hogar” over and over and then disappeared, only to wake up with Auntie Inez and Uncle Pedro in Mexico City.
Kyle goes second knuckle.
Kyle takes a rest from the busy life of standing around waiting for somebody to kick the ball his way.
Sarah and Kristy admire the way Kyle picks his butt. (It’s true. Sarah in particularly is fond of a good butt-picking.)

I‘m not sure why I turned out to be so good at DDR, but I’m pretty the game has very little to do with dancing, and a crapload more to do with:

1. Rhythm. I got buttloads of it.
2. Hours and hours of video game playing instead of doing something constructive with my life.

Normally, I try to avoid political discussions on here, mainly because my beliefs are contradictory and weird, and also because I’m a wuss and I hate getting into arguments that always end up being very personal. Nevertheless, I wanted to get something out regarding the concept of torture.

Torture’s been in the news a lot lately, and I had a lengthy conversation about it with my boy Rick the other day, and I realized my opinion on the subject depends largely on one salient fact: Does torture work?

I had always been operating under the assumption that it does. After all, if you clamp my testicles into a vice, pour lighter fluid on them, and carefully hold a match about 4 feet above them, I’m going to talk. I’m going to tell you anything you want to know. But I’m not a highly motivated terrorist, willing to give up my life and my scrotum for my beliefs.

I don’t have any particular moral revulsion to torture, really. I don’t know if it makes me unfeeling or sociopathic, but I have a hard time conjuring up sympathy when a guy who fully supports flying jets into American buildings has to watch an American pee all over the Koran. Assuming, that is, that it’s being done with an eye towards getting information out of the prisoner, and not towards just being mean to him because he has dark skin and has a fondness for turbans. If torture works, then the only reason NOT to do it is that other countries might take to torturing Americans. But since Al Qaeda and others have shown no qualms about kidnapping civilians from any country and sawing off their heads on camera, I don’t think it’s a serious issue. I would prefer torture to be a method of last resort, but if a guy knows something we need to know, and he won’t give it up, I say, sure, put a cigarette or two out on his arm.

I was watching The Daily Show (now with More Jon Stewartness! and inexplicably less couch) the other day while Jon discussed torture with Sen. John McCain. Jon mentioned multiple times that torture doesn’t work, which is news to me. I haven’t seen any real documentary evidence either way, but I can tell you I’d been operating under the assumption that it was reasonably effective.

I guess this leads me to my question, which I pose to my readers and offer to have them respond in the comments: Does anyone know for certain, either way, what the true effectiveness of torture is?