The Incomparable Miss Boyle

I don't get this whole Susan Boyle thing. If you've been hiding in an oil barrel this week, the latest internet sensation is a 47-year-old Scotswoman who appeared on "Britain's Got Talent" over the weekend. Go watch the video; I'll wait.

Okay, welcome back. Are you as confused as I am? I mean, she certainly has a nice voice. Is it opera- or Broadway-ready? Of course not. She needs a lot of training, if only to try and put a governor on that vibrato, which is wide enough that a fellow could drive a double-wide through it. It's certainly not better than several local sopranos I've sung with, and that's just in the Delaware Valley.

Obviously, there's notability in the fact that the woman is hideously ugly and has led a pretty sad, boring life (never had a boyfriend, never been kissed, never waxed her eyebrows), and yet has this semi-remarkable voice. I put a "What's the big deal?" post on Twitter, and one reply said, "Everyone with a negative spin on Susan Boyle is missing the point. She's a phenomenon because talent doesn't discriminate." Which is a bit like saying "water is interesting because it can be both hot and cold."

Of course talent doesn't discriminate; most everybody has a talent in one thing or another. The feeling I'm getting from the masses is, "Look everyone! Even ugly people can be musicians!" Um...duh. The point is, I suppose, that we shouldn't pre-judge someone's abilities based on how they look, but on what they actually do. Can't judge a book by its cover, and all that.

What's odd is that the reason that she is popular disproves the reason that people say she's popular. Yes, talent should trump physical appearance. But in this case, it's not the talent: her skill is reasonable, but it's the juxtaposition of that skill and her disturbing looks that interest people. It's notoriety, not musical ability. Ask Kevin Federline how well notoriety sells albums.

I hate being a "hater." It's not a role I do well. I wish Miss Boyle all the best, but I have a feeling that once the news cycle is done with her, all she'll have left is her voice, which isn't really any better than an especially good church soloist (trust me, I've heard dozens). That's going to lead to heartbreak for her, but by then no one will care a whit.

Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling

I'm writing a post mostly so that people stop complaining about the most recent one; a new post will cause that one to scroll down the page.

Last weekend we wrapped up the Brandywine High School show, which was "My Fair Lady;" I would have posted about it but was far too busy working on it. I had to rearrange a lot of music, plus transpose an entire bassoon part into bass-clarinet, along with actual rehearsals and performances. I'm still catching up on sleep. It went off extremely well, and was super-fun as usual, but I'm so excited to be done that I can barely stop whistling.

Now we're just preparing the house for "Rosie," as Charles calls the creature lodged inside my wife's abdomen. Her appearance is scheduled for early May, but Sarah, stressed over the state of our domicile, thinks that she'll come early just to spite us. She's a pretty violent little thing; Charles certainly wiggled and shimmied when he was in there, but "Rosie" is fond of jabbing feet and elbows into Sarah's internal organs.

Less important news, although probably more germane to your interests: I'm planning another site revamp. I've had this weird dark wintery theme up for about 7 seasons too long, and I want some spring colors. Pastels, people! That's where it's at. Also, instead of the periodic longer updates, I'm going to turn this thing into a true "blog." There have been a lot of thoughts jump into my head lately that I'd want to explore a bit, but didn't have time to put together a complete "column"-style post, but it was too involved for a 140-character tweet. So expect to see shorter little notes, filled with the usual "humor" and "insight," throughout the day, mostly sent through email from my iPhone, because That Is How I Roll. I might even post the new template tonight and start the new blogging paradigm, but a lot depends on whether or not Charles, who is not feeling very well, allows me to do anything.

Peace and bacon!

Facebook foolishness

There's a thing that's been floating around Facebook like some kind of social disease wherein everyone goes down a list of movies and checks off the ones they've seen. I tend to ignore most Facebook crap (I'm currently 0 for 4,374 on "signing up for stupid applications that people have invited me to"), but this one was so wildly popular that I felt I needed to get in the top floor!

(Note: I am aware that the idiom is "ground floor." The humor relies on the fact that I'm getting in on this just as it becomes spectacularly unpopular; my participation therein is probably causal. Just wanted you, the reader, to understand my "humor.")

Supposedly, if you have seen more than 85 of these movies, you are some kind of "movie dork." Let's see where I place. My comments are hellatalicized.

(X) Rocky Horror Picture Show - Unfortunately. The best thing about this movie was Susan Sarandon, and I'm going on record to say I'd rather hump a sap hole in a maple tree.
(X) Grease - I hate this movie so much that my testes just completely retracted into my torso.
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean
( ) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
( ) Boondock Saints
(X) Fight Club
(X) Starsky and Hutch
(X) Neverending Story - Why isn't this ever on TBS? This movie was so awesome back in the 80s. I'm sure it holds up fine! Right? Right? (Note: I may be the only person in my generation to own and have read the original book, which is SPECTACULAR.)
(X) Blazing Saddles
(X) Airplane

Total: 8

(X) The Princess Bride - Just watched this a few weeks ago. Fantastic. Still holds up.
(X) Anchorman - Also rad.
(X) Napoleon Dynamite - Man, this is like a turkey! (When you bowl three strikes in a row. Because the last three movies are so awesome. Get it? No? You know what? You suck.)
(X) Labyrinth - Hambone!
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
( ) Anger Management
( ) 50 First Dates
( ) The Princess Diaries
( ) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement - They lost me on the last eight in a row. I wouldn't watch "White Oleander" if you tied my dingaling to a doorknob.

Total so far: 12

(X) Scream
( ) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
(X) Scary Movie
(X) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
(X) American Pie
(X) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp

Total so far: 17 - The theme here seems to be: did you like the original? It was okay. Did you see the sequel? What am I, stupid? If you've seen "Scream" then you've seen Scream 2 and 3. Because the plot is identical. And since nobody gets naked, sadly, I'm out.

( ) Harry Potter 1
( ) Harry Potter 2
( ) Harry Potter 3
( ) Harry Potter 4
( ) Resident Evil 1
( ) Resident Evil 2
(X) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
( ) Lilo & Stitch

Total so far: 18 - With a certain amount of pride, I can report that I have seen no Harry Potter movies, and read no Harry Potter books. I have seen my share of Harry Potter slashfic, but that's not a topic for a Family Blog.

( ) Finding Nemo
( ) Finding Neverland
( ) Signs
( ) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
( ) White Chicks
(X) Butterfly Effect
( ) 13 Going on 30
( ) I, Robot
( ) Robots

Total so far: 19 - I saw part of Butterfly Effect; probably like 2/3. I'm saying that counts, since I saw the end and then googled the parts I missed.

(X) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
( ) Universal Soldier
( ) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
(X) Along Came Polly
(X) Deep Impact
(X) KingPin - Wildly underrated. Randy Quaid takes a dump in a urinal! Priceless.
( ) Never Been Kissed
(X) Meet The Parents
( ) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
( ) KING KONG

Total so far: 24 - So far I seem to be at about 50% of the average. This is because I don't really watch movies. Not least because I hate movie theaters, but also because the number of times in a given year that I have 2 hours to waste can be counted on one hand.

( ) A Cinderella Story
( ) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(X) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
( ) Halloween
(X) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
( ) Flubber

Total so far: 26 - Some of these I've not even HEARD of. And the only Flubber I saw was "Son of Flubber," the sequel to "The Absent-Minded Professor," both starring Fred MacMurray. I don't believe it counts.

(X) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle - BRILLIANT.
( ) Practical Magic
(X) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
(X) From Hell
( ) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
( ) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards

Total so far: 29 - I've seen the last 15 minutes of Hellboy roughly 7 times. I guess that doesn't count, because I spend the entire time asking HW, "What the hell is going on?" and she responds "Stop fricking poking me, I'm trying to sleep."

(X) The Day After Tomorrow
(X) Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
( ) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
( ) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
( ) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
(X) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask

Total so far: 32 - I may have seen Child's Play and Sixteen Candles and Nightmare on Elm Street all the way through; I just don't remember. I'm gonna mark Child's Play and give myself partial credit.

( ) Bad Boys
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Slevin
(X) Ocean's Eleven
(X) Ocean's Twelve
( ) Bourne Identity
( ) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
( ) Bedazzled
( ) Predator I
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
(X) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George

Total so far: 35 - The Ocean's Etc. films always slay me. I think I watched Ice Age all the way through; if not, I definitely saw at least 30 minutes of one of the Bourne movies. Plus I read all the books. It evens out, people, c'mon.

(X) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(X) ET - The first movie I ever saw in the theater! Do I get double credit? No? Screw you, then.
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Boss's Daughter
( ) Maid in Manhattan
( ) War of the Worlds
(X) Rush Hour
(X) Rush Hour 2

Total so far: 39 - It's worth noting that I have FAR less than half of the average Joe to this point.

( ) Best Bet
( ) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She's All That
( ) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
( ) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
( ) Ever After
(X) Wizard of Oz
(X) Forrest Gump
( ) Big Trouble in Little China
(X) The Terminator
(X) The Terminator 2
(X) The Terminator 3

Total so far: 44 - Let's just say I don't own any of these on DVD.

( ) X-Men
( ) X-2
( ) X-3
(X) Spider-Man
( ) Spider-Man 2
( ) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
( ) Catch Me If You Can
(X) The Little Mermaid
( ) Freaky Friday
( ) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
(X) Cruel Intentions - I watched this entire movie hoping either Sarah Michelle Gellar or Reese Witherspoon would get naked, and neither of them did. We did get treated to a boob shot of the hideous girl, though. Thanks. <SARCASM>Made it all worthwhile.</SARCASM>
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(X) Shrek
( ) Shrek 2

Total so far: 48

( ) Swimfan - I watched up until the hot chick gets busy with the guy in the pool, and then went to sleep. Does that count?
( ) Miracle on 34th street
(X) Old School
( ) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf's Tribe
( ) A Walk to Remember - I watched a little of this with my wife, but then I started menstruating.
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old Virgin

Total so far: 50

( ) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
( ) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
( ) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King - Watched the Battle of Helm's Deep. Couldn't care less about anything not involving immediate elven bloodshed.
(X) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(X) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(X) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Total so far: 53 - Nothing but love for Indy. Haven't seen the fourth, though. Worried that it's lame. Is it lame? Wait, don't tell me, I don't want to know.

(X) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
(X) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
( ) Elf
( ) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies
( ) American History X
( ) Three

Total so Far: 55 - It's well-documented that "Waiting For Guffman" may be the best movie in the 20th century to not earn a single Oscar nomination.

( ) The Jacket
( ) Kung Fu Hustle
( ) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
( ) Monsters Inc.
(X) Titanic
(X) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(X) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard

Total so far: 58 - Much love for Grail and Shaun. Much hate for Titanic, although at least Leo dies and you get to see Kate's hooters. I change my mind: a small, but measurable, amount of love for Titanic.

( ) High Tension
( ) Club Dread
( ) Hulk
( ) Dawn Of the Dead
(X) Hook
( ) Chronicles Of Narnia The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
( ) 28 days later
( ) Orgazmo - Ain't seen it, but am profoundly curious about it!
( ) Phantasm
( ) Waterworld

Total so far: 59

( ) Kill Bill vol 1 - Would love to see this; saw the first 20 minutes or so the other night on TBS or something, but fell asleep. It was late. Anyway, can't watch it during any hours Charles is awake because I don't need him learning how to throw knives at people.
( ) Kill Bill vol 2
(X) Mortal Kombat - I just like that the guy that played Johnny Whatever went on to play a guy on Days of Our Lives for a while. Mighta been killed off, though.
( ) Wolf Creek
( ) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) the Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman - This sounds like a quality film in every way.
( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
( ) Army of Darkness

Total so far: 60

(X) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(X) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(X) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(X) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(X) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(X) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 66 - Wow, I've seen most of the Star Wars movies. Scary thought.

(X) The Matrix
(X) The Matrix Reloaded
(X) The Matrix Revolutions
( ) Animatrix
(X) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
(X) Team America: World Police - I'm not proud of having seen this.
( ) Red Dragon
(X) Silence of the Lambs
( ) Hannibal

Total: 72

The average is north of a hundo. Wow, I haven't seen very many movies. I do not consider this much of a failing. Tomorrow: I don't like Jonas Brothers. Also: get the hell off my lawn!

Gay marriage is heck of rad

Most of my readers (meaning both of them) are probably thoroughly aware of Newsweek's article, by Lisa Miller, on the religious arguments for and against gay marriage, but on the off chance you missed it, click here. It does a particularly good job of summing up and discarding the conservative religious arguments against same-sex matrimony, so it's useful information if you find yourself in an argument with a homophobic religious nut. A few salient quotes:

Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?

and

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument).

As Insty would say, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: More here.

Thought for the Day

"[Man] had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth -- but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it." - Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Headlines and Titles

Is it just me, or is the presidential campaign, and the coverage thereof, somewhat weakened by the fact that nobody knows how to properly refer to the candidates and affiliated politicians?

Every time I read a headline saying "BUSH BLAH BLAH BLAH" or "PALIN BLAH BLAH BLAH," I think to myself, you know, these people hold important offices. They may be douchebags, but the office itself merits our respect. Why are they not referred to as President Bush and Governor Palin whenever they're mentioned? It may just be me, but I have a really hard time taking any pundit seriously when he refers to a United States Senator as simply "Biden."

I'm guessing it's just me.

Despite my success in the bike ride a few weeks ago, I'm still having difficulty with my staggering bulk; I hit 250 pounds again, and decided it was time to Rectify That Problem. So I've been eating nothing but meat and cheese (and the occasional glass of vodka while we were at the beach), and as a result have lost 6 pounds in about 4 weeks. I'm hoping to shed a good bit more by Thanksgiving, at which time I intend to gain it all back over a period of 8 days.

To that end, I've been making beer like Sam Adams's fat drunk brother-in-law. I have a Guinness-like "Irish Stout" already in the keg and bottles, and am fermenting a batch of English Pale Ale. I have two more kits ready for b'ilin', including a "Robust Porter" and an English Brown Ale. All in all, I'll be appearing at our Thanksgiving vacation house with 4 cases + 4 kegs of homemade beer totalling approximately 18 gallons. My uncles are excited.

You may have noticed I put a twitter feed in the top left. Don't be sadden'd; instead, embrace the technology. I actually plan to make some small effort to keep it updated. At least as well as I do this blog, since my updates this year have averaged a wavelength of what, three weeks? Holy crap, I'm lazy.

Generic

So HW came home from the grocery store this afternoon, with food, dry goods, and feminine items galore. The latter, oddly enough, appeared to have been purchased third-hand from an offshore supply of East German products.

"Dude, where did you buy those tampons," I asked. "Communism?"

"Whaddaya mean?" she replied.

"I'm willing to cheap out dollar-store-style on certain things; gift-wrap, Christmas decorations, et cetera. But things that get inserted into my orifices? You know, I shell out the cash for the premium-grade."

"I used to be that way, but..." she trailed off, and it was clear she had sacrificed her hoohah on the altar of cheapiedom.

Here is a short list of items that I will only buy namebrand. I'm sure you have a list of your own; compare and contrast.

• Razors
• Birth control products
• Beer
• Aluminum foil
• Toothpaste
• Adoption agencies
• Financial services
• Hookers
• Politicians (the last two can probably be combined)
• Brazilian wax technicians

What's on your list of products or services you won't cheap out on?

In my never-ending quest to be exactly 4 years behind my peers, technologically, I finally got an iPod. For a long time I maintained that any music player was as good as another, and in fact convinced my wife a few years ago to buy me a little 256MB player that held 70 or 80 songs and was very small and compact and handy. It had some downsides, though: it used a single AAA battery, which it would burn through in about 45 minutes; it was nearly impossible to control the volume easily, which probably took a few hertz off of my audible range; and also it required a proprietary USB cable which I immediately lost, so the songs that were on it were gonna stay on it, which is unacceptable as long as Justin Timberlake keeps releasing albums.

So anyway, I put an iPod nano on my Amazon.com wishlist a while back, and managed to update it to the new video version long enough before Xmas that HW bought me one. It's simply fantastic. It's like a monolith, and it has changed me from a raving caveman into a hip Seattle-style intellectual. (Sorry, I just read 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time.)

Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into some kind of indie band blog, 'cause let's face it: 99.9% of indie bands are independent of the major labels because they suck Donkey Kong.

Anyway, a few thoughts on the iPod nano:

• It is ridiculously small. Seriously, I look at it and marvel at what science can do. It's about the size of 3 credit cards stuck together, and holds 8 freaking gigabytes of data, be it mp3s, videos, photos, or even games. Note: playing games on an iPod is kinda sucky.
• I had never really gotten into the whole "podcast" thing, because without an actual iPod I could only listen to them on my computer, and if I'm sitting in front of my computer I'm undoubtedly reading something or playing a game, and can't concentrate on the voices in my ear. Having an iPod changes everything; I download podcasts and listen to them in my car, which is fantastic because the average podcast is roughly 25-30 minutes, and it takes me 25-30 minutes to get from where I work to Sarah's parents' house to pick up Charles. So awesome.
• Perhaps it's just the shape of my lobes, but the earbuds just won't stay in my ear very well. It's not a problem if I'm just sitting at my desk listening to tunes, but I can't imagine jogging with them. I think my ears are just too big. They make decent headphones that wrap around the ear (I have a pair I bought for my other mp3 player, although they're kinda beat up now), but the iPod earbuds sound particularly good, and I don't think a cheapy set would fit the bill. Some of my readers are enormous individuals who probably have iPods; how do you guys listen to your jams?

Also, since I'm always about 2 years behind on pop culture, HW and I are getting caught up on "Heroes," which I think is the best network drama on TV. More about that later in the week.

I try to avoid commenting on current events, because I really don't know what I'm talking about most of the time, and because you find better commentary other places. Really, you could find better commentary on MySpace, I think. So the bad news is, I can't let the I-35W Bridge Collapse pass without some sort of comment. The good news is that the comment is coming from someone else!

From James Lileks, probably the best conservative pundit/humor writer/all around amusing individual on the web today:

I’m listening to a story on the news about a man who survived the fall – then ran to help the kids on the bus. I’d guess the fellow never considered what he might do in such a situation. Never thought about it much. Who would? But then you find yourself on a bridge that’s crashed down into the Mississippi, and you’re struggling with the seat belt buckle. It works , but your hands feel thick. You’re alive – which doesn’t seem that odd, really, you’ve always been alive, so this is just different, but you have strange thoughts about insurance and a mad swirl of panic and there’s blood in your hair but you can stand – and then you see a school bus. So you go to the bus. Of course you go the bus.

Most of us would. It’s a remarkable instinct that wells up and kicks in, and it’s something you never expected to experience. As someone said about humans: We’re at our best when things are worst.

Would you have run to the bus? I'll answer for you: yes.

Me? I dunno. There have been FAR too many times in my life when I've wussed out instead of confronting something that I can't say for sure what I'd do in that situation.

What would you do?

Update: A later Lileks post on the subject:

I heard a KSTP reporter speak on the Bob Davis show this morning - he told a story about a first responder finding someone trapped in the wreckage, dying. The rescuer handed the victim a cellphone to say goodbye to loved ones.

Jesus Q. McChristus.

Having kids definitely makes one consider one's mortality in a more concrete way. (Don't worry, this is leading somewhere.) When you're, say, 20 years old, no wife, no kids, the concept of death usually occurs to you, probably as you're about to do a drunken swan dive off of a 5th floor hotel balcony into a swimming pool, but it's very abstract, and is treated as such. The most attention you can really give it is thoughts like "When I die, I want my ashes poured over Niagara Falls" or "Dude my funeral is TOTALLY going to have a Zydeco band!"

Once kids enter the picture, the thought of one's own death conjures up thoughts like "Do I have enough life insurance?" and "Shoot, I'd better find myself an attorney and get a will drawn up!" An unforeseen side effect, is that you find yourself occasionally wondering what it would be like if members of your immediate family, particularly (heaven forfend) your kid(s), were to die. So there have definitely been times that I've sat awake at 2am in one of my fairly frequent moments of insomnia and considered what it would be like to have the state troopers show up at my door one evening to tell me that HW was in an accident and ... well ... we're so sorry ...

::full body shiver::

It's probably the least healthy thing I could be thinking at any time, assuming my "many worlds" and "steering" theories have a grain of truth to them. Still, I have no more control over my train of thought than I do over a collapsing bridge, if you'll forgive the blunt reference to the topic at hand.

Anyway, the point, and you'll have to forgive me if I turn off my FCC filter for just one graf:

<PROFANE>

At no point, up until this very afternoon, had I ever considered the thought of hearing my wife's dying words over a FUCKING CELLPHONE. And trust me, this is different than, say, if my wife called me from a plane that terrorists were about to crash into a building. This a phone call from someone who is already fatally injured, whose eyes are already dimming, who's finding it harder and harder to breathe, who is seeing their own blood pouring out of them like water from a leaky fucking dyke.

</PROFANE>

So here's a REAL question: if you were fatally injured, and almost certainly dying within the next few minutes, would you CALL anyone? If so, who?

I have zero original ideas. Pretty much if you've seen something on here that amused you, it's because I stole it from someone else and passed it off as my own. This is the professional writer's way, I'm told. Nobody's come up with anything interesting since Nabokov inspired three generations of child molesters. I mention this because I intend to steal from Bill Simmons an idea that he occasionally uses rather than come up with ideas of his own: the mailbag! I don't really get interesting mail that I'm comfortable sharing with any of you, so I'll just use the comments that people leave here on these here pages.

• Kyle A responds to my hairstyle post:
  Um, Kevin Mench...yes, it's in the "water". Right. I played baseball and soccer with him growing up and he was only slightly larger than me ('bout 6'0" 135 at the time). I'm sure he had a 3 inch, 85 lb., and 1 hat size growth spurt in college though. Didn't everyone? I'm not saying...I'm just saying.
  Well, OBVIOUSLY. The man has no neck. He went to parochial school, but apparently the nuns weren't beating him enough. I bet the man has balls the size of chiclets.
• An anonymous response to some links from a few weeks ago: i hereby revoke your use of wordpress.com's popular blogs.
  I'm not entirely clear on what this means; I don't have a wordpress blog. And Sweet Baby Jesus knows, my blog ain't popular. Am I not supposed to link to any wordpress blogs? Or can I not even read them? I need a ruling.

  Additionally, I hereby revoke your use of the English language until you learn to capitalize properly.

• Mike S weighs in on Robert Horry:
  Horry - the dude that... isn't. During the Houston Rockets amazing mid-90's run, Mr. Horry was a clutc.. gutless man that mad... missed all those 3 pointers. Thank God that one of the requirements for the Rockets is you HAVE to have a 7'2"+ center. Those guys rock (read: tower). The only bad thing about him going to SA was he screwed Robinson's chance for a ring (well, not really, but I can wish). The General friggin DESERVED a ring. If only honorary (not Horry-ary).
  Here's the thing: you don't win 7 titles, playing reasonable minutes in most of them, by merely being lucky. Sure, Horry's not going to be The Guy that wins the title, but he's never been on a team that was weaker for having him there. Any failures he had in the mid-90s are more than cancelled out by the huge shots he made with the Lakers and Spurs. Never forget, though, that I have no earthly idea what I'm talking about most of the time, particularly when it comes to the NBA.

  The Admiral (or General, or Field Marshal, whatever you want to call him) did win a title with the Spurs in '99, thanks to Big Timmy.

  Mike goes on:
  Dude, video games are the thing that keep us sane. Believe it.
  For REALS, though.

That's, um, about it. 'Cause I don't really get a lot of comments. 'Cause I have, at least count, 4 readers. To make up for the fact that this post is about as funny as a myocardial infarction, I give you: bacon placemats.

I love the farmer's market. Other than Walmart, there's simply no place you can go to get that warm, fuzzy feeling of smug superiority, and Walmart doesn't feature Amish folks exhibiting their own special brand of eccentricity. At least, the Walmart in New Castle, Delaware doesn't. (That particular Walmart is a true hotbed of intellectualism; did you graduate high school? 60% of the other shoppers didn't, and as far as I can tell none of the employees. Also, it's a good place to get shot, which every neighborhood SORELY needs.¹)

The farmer's market is great because it's always "THE farmer's market," not "A farmer's market," even if it's not entirely clear which one you mean. It's as if the place has such gravitas that it ALWAYS warrants the definite article (because you're DEFINITELY going to see some shiznit up ins). We have two major ones available to us: the one in New Castle, only a few miles from our house, and one in Boothwyn, PA, which is all the way up 495 and through some backroads. Getting to the one in New Castle requires you to go through the intersection of routes 273 and 13, which takes a minimum of 10 minutes, plus another 15 fighting your way through the parking lot because most of the folks who go to the farmer's market are no smarter than the average sea anemone and have no concept of "not getting in the way." (More on this in a bit.) As a result, it's actually faster to get to the one in Boothwyn, particularly if you know the sneaky back way in that avoids the bulk of the parking lot idiots. Also the one in Boothwyn (namely, the Booth's Corner Farmer's Market) has an "Amish BBQ" (whatever that is) featuring good rotisserie chicken and a potato soup that we're fond of that they haven't served the last 4 freaking times we've gone.

We went on Saturday, and oh man the fat emphysemics were out in force. I haven't seen that many oxygen tanks since I helped bury Natalee Holloway behind a scuba shop in Barcadera. (Too soon?) It's always fun to wade your way through the sea of inhumanity and see someone you know (we ran into a friend from church), or someone who clearly is as overwhelmed by morons as we are (anyone with a college sweatshirt usually fits the bill). We got food at the BBQ (Rotisserie chicken, enjoyed by all) and I found a place selling Phils paraphernalia so I coughed up $16.99 for a Mike Schmidt tshirt in the totally hideous 80s uniform color scheme.

I'm pretty sure most of the people who shop or work there have rusty above-ground pools and/or trampolines in their backyards.

---

Footnote 1: In the 3.5 years that we've lived in our current location, we've had the wife of a university professor get STABBED TO DEATH a few blocks away (by the professor's mistress and former student, who then went to a Jewish cemetery in north Wilmington and attempted to burn the knife and her clothes on the ground there), and another resident rape someone and then walk out onto the Delaware Memorial Bridge with the intent of ending his woes. We're, um, hoping to move soon.

I'm working one of those ridiculous jobs in which I'm up all night, sleeping all day, and drinking the blood of hookers I dump in the woods of South Jersey. I mean...well, dang. Anyway, the gist of this is that I have little time for such frivolities as "blog posts" or "pooping," but because I'm a nice guy, I'm throwing this up on here as a sign unto you that I am rad and care deeply about your personal feelings towards, I dunno, stuff.

Anyway, I thought I'd talk about Old vs. New. Some people are what I call "conservative fuddy duddies" and prefer only the old; some people are what I call "liberal hippie forward-thinking types" and have an endless drive for All That Is New And Rad. Like most people, I fall somewhere in the middle, as evidenced by the following, um, evidence:

• In sports, old is better, like WHOA. The Designated Hitter: bad. Juiced baseballs: hella bad. Umpires wearing some kind of green shirt that makes them look like park rangers: craptastic. NASCAR's "Car Of Tomorrow": the stupidest idea since I started cutting myself to stop the crying. Football teams passing on 65% of downs: BOORRRRRIIINNNNNGGGGG.
• Technology: Dell Latitude D410 (my new work lappy) > Packard Bell Pentium 133. XM Radio > cassette tapes. PS2 > Ms. Pacman. The internets > libraries. CDs > vinyl LPs, despite the audiofreaks who say things like "digital recordings are just missing something." They are, of course; they're missing tape hiss. This is a good thing. Dorks.
• Women: modern sorority skanks dressing like 7th Avenue streetwalkers are a pretty solid improvement over the grunge-y sweater-wearing style of the early to mid-90s. Unless you have a 14 year old daughter, in which case I suggest you chain her to a radiator. On the other hand, apparently the 70s was the decade for hot chicks getting busy with no repercussions, so who knows. (I was, sadly, like 2 then.)
• Modern hotel keys suck, because invariably they are encoded to deactivate while I'm at work, such that when I return, completely exhausted, they don't work and I have to take like 8 elevator rides back to the main desk to have them fix things. Argh. (It's happened twice to me this month.)

In short, I've been awake for something like 32 of the past 36 hours and probably need to stop drinking caffeinated sodas because I haven't blinked in a few minutes.

My office has geese. Not, like, indoors; that would probably interfere with our business processes, and Baby Jesus knows we have more than enough problems already. No, the geese are outside, but they are plentiful, and they have distinctive personalities.

I know what you're thinking; geese are geese, man! Even worse, they're Canadians! But I tell you truly, these geese all behave completely differently. For example, there's one that hangs out by the big pond out back, right next to the path I take to get into the building. It seems to have taken up permanent residence there, and has no apparent fear of humans. I walk within 2 feet of it at least twice a day and it barely even takes notice of me, preferring instead to eat pieces of grass and leave nasty green poop on the concrete sidewalk.

However, there are at least two more who see fit to avoid humans as much as they can, so they sit by themselves out by the running track, hissing at all passersby. (A hissing goose is HILARIOUS, if you haven't seen it happen. They are the least threatening creatures I've ever seen.) By the sixth lap on the track, I'm openly yelling at them "Stop hissing at me! I've run by here 5 times already and have yet to threaten you!" But they never learn.

Those are the three that seem to be permanently on hand, but sometimes we'll have entire flocks of them, splashing around in the pond, nearly getting run over in the parking lot, and hissing at the dreaded humans.

I guess I should be glad; my good buddy Kyle works in a place with a significant goose population, and one gander in particular actually started attacking folks because he thought they were fronting on his woman. Yelling "I have no interest in your woman, you feathered freak! Leave me alone!" had no effect. And in case you're wondering what a goose attack is like, basically they run directly at you with their big wings a-flapping and hoping to maybe nip a bite out of your arm.

Kyle weighed his options: he could kick the bird's ass, but he would feel guilty about it, and also probably be FOUND guilty of bird abuse by a court of law; he could call animal control, but figured there wasn't much they could do other than take the bird away and probably kill it; or he could exercise the third option, which was to buy an air horn.

So Kyle went out, wandered up to the gander, which, as was its wont, came at Kyle with murder in his eyes, and Kyle fired off a blast from the air horn as soon as the bird got close. The bird immediately stopped, honked the goose-speak for "My bad, dude, I didn't realize you were the head gander all up in this peace, I'll be going now," and shuffled back to his lady.

I'd give up to $100 to have video of this, btw.

(Speaking of Kyle, and of money, he and a lot of his close friends are Virginia Tech alumni, so this has been a tough week for all of them. I don't really have anything useful to say that hasn't been said elsewhere, so I'll just link to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund and prevail upon you to donate some small amount of whatever vast cash reserves you may have.)

In honor of Valentine's Day, which was like 26 days ago so this is TOTALLY CURRENT AND UP TO DATE AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME DIFFERENT, here are a short list of various reasons why I love my wife:

• When we took a road trip to the Outer Banks last fall, I made a mix CD of various recent tunes that I liked, which included some Alison Krauss, John Mayer, and that new Avril Lavigne song, "Keep Holding On," which is in 3/4 and therefore I like it. (I have a thing for that meter.) After listening to the first few tunes, HW turned to me and said,

  "Were you on your period when you made this?"

• Yesterday, we were in the kitchen feeding Charles and making lunch, and she walked by me and bumped her hip into mine. I said,

  "Did you just do what I think you did?"

  Sarah giggled. "Yep."

  "All trying to give me the hip bump?"

  "I farted."

• She takes so much in stride:

  Me: I just pulled a chunk of wax out of my ear the size of a lady bug.
  Her: Eww dude
  Me: Jeepers, what the hell. I thought I cleaned this ear the other day. I'm getting even MORE wax out.
  Me: What the [very bad word]! I think a bee tried to build a hive in here.
  Her: EWW
  Me: I've scooped out 3 big chunks with my pencil, and I think there's more.
  Her: Oh, weird.The date on my watch is messed up.

So, in short: Sarah is rad.

On the news front, the show is chugging along; we open Thursday, with three rehearsals between now and then to get things right. Woo! I'm terrified, but I always am at this point.

Man, local civic associations are AWESOME!

Wait, did I say awesome? I meant POINTLESS, ANNOYING, AND LAME.

We have a nice neighborhood civic association to whom we give twenty bucks a year, in exchange for which they operate some kind of community watch and send out monthly letters begging deadbeats to send in their dues. (They've actually started publishing the addresses of folks who don't send in the cash, which I find greatly amusing; so far my block has been pretty good about paying up, because the monthly flyers seem to imply I'm expected to join a roving band of vigilantes to walk up to miscreant households and torch them to the ground.)

From these monies they also pay for mowing of the community park areas, and snow plowing in the winter. Which would be great if the plowing was done. It ain't gettin' done, son. You may have noticed on Wednesday that we had a pretty significant snow/sleet/freezing rain "event," resulting in 2-4 inches (depending on where you measure it) of rock-hard ice on our streets and lawns. My wife spent about an hour yesterday chipping it off of our cars. (I would have helped, but it was HECK of cold out there.)

Now it's been sitting for a day, and is thusly not going to melt until August, so we get the joy of driving over it for a few months. AWESOME! Er, LAME!

Okay, sure, the community watch does seem to deter crime; we haven't had a murder in our neighborhood in 2 or 3 years (true story). And I do approve of them getting the grass mowed rather than, you know, letting it overgrow the jungle gym. Now if they could just find a way to prevent my across-the-street neighbors from parking all their crappy cars in front of my house. (Sadly, it turns out it's illegal to slash their tires! Who knew?)

Okay, here's the thing. If you don't watch "House" you are missing out on The Awesomeness.

I myself came to the show late. I started watching last fall and was like "WHOA It's like a party in my brain! What have I been missing!" HW and I have been trying to catch up on the episodes we've missed, and as a result I feel like the hole in my soul that has been there ever since well FOREVER really is starting to fill up.

Yes, Charles did fill a hole in my soul, but that was A DIFFERENT HOLE. My soul is like swiss cheese, people; I need a little Charles, a little scotch, and a little Hugh Laurie and Jennifer Morrison.

Side note: the name Hugh is totally bad. When I say bad, I mean good. Like, bad-azz and shiz. Just throwing that out there.

The show has everything: supreme intellectual discussions of diseases and disorders; grizzled manly men (House, Foreman); emotionally-available prettyboys (Chase, Wilson); moderately psychotic hot chicks (Cuddy, Cameron); and the occasional exploding testicle.

What more could you possibly ask?

Okay, yes, perhaps some nudity, and maybe a little more of Doctor Cameron smoking a bunch of meth and getting it on with Doctor Chase, but even without that stuff the show is near perfection, even with the exploding testicle thing, which makes a brother queasy, fo' reazy.

Next week: I expound in my usual ridiculous style on the topic of 24 and why Jack Bauer is going to give me a big hug. (He needs it.)

Oh, I made a wiki, do with it what you will.

I've been thinking a lot about vegetarianism lately, prodded by my friend Rachel and various other famous folks, and I think it's time I joined the fray. Not that I have anything of value to say, really, but Lord knows if I can say something stupid and pointless about a subject that I know nothing about, I am going to do so, dang it.

It's the American Way.

Anyway. I'm willing to concede that a vegetarian diet is undoubtedly healthy, even healthier than a meat-laden diet, assuming you make sure to get various vitamins that are found in abundance in meats and rather scarcely in veggies. I'm a little hesitant to concede that eating meat is unethical, because I am a bit of a moral relativist and I don't like when people tell me where to draw lines. (What I mean by this is the following: my house has an ant problem. It hasn't been bad the last few months, but usually they reemerge every spring in swarms until I pay a thin man with a truck full of noxious chemicals to arrange for their collective demise. I consider this to be vital to the health of my family, and I'd like to think that any vegetarian with any sense would deal with a pest problem the same way. Ants have brains, though. Why does a chicken's brain have any greater claim to the continuation of life than an ant?) I'm completely supportive of the idea that animals should be treated humanely, and thus I do disapprove of large farms that stuff animals into small cages and inject them with horrific chemicals to counteract the effects of putting millions of barely-healthy critters into a small space. (Not gonna lie, though, KFC is hella good.)

I do get into arguments with veggie folks, though, over the idea that humans were or weren't designed to eat meat. Humans may or may not have subsisted primarly on seeds and pine nuts 50K years ago, I wasn't there taking notes. But they did eat meat when they could get it. And why? Because It Tastes Good.

My argument here is not that we should be permitted to eat on animals just because it tastes good. What I'm saying is that animals are designed/evolved/made by robots/whatever to eat certain diets, and to them those diets taste good. Carnivores eat meat not because they have made an objective decision that, ethics be damned, they believe it is their birthright to eat the flesh of their fallen animal brothers, but because IT TASTES REALLY DELICIOUS to them. Herbivores stick to grass and leaves and things not because they are tree huggers who drive hybrids with ACLU stickers all over them, but because to them that stuff is like prime filet, yo.

I can't speak for anybody but myself, but to me, red meat tastes like there is a party in my mouth and stomach and NOBODY ELSE IS INVITED ITS ALL JUST FOR ME YOU BASTARDS. Tofu tastes like an elephant crapped and somebody rendered it into cube form. My tongue was designed to deliver pleasurable sensations to my brain when I eat meat, and thusly I intend to continue eating animals AND vegetables in massive amounts, as is my nature, until enough people disagree with me to make a law saying it's illegal. I figure this'll happen around 2032 or so, so I'd better get my fill while I can.

Do you ever completely irrationally miss things? Not miss as in "I tried to shoot my cat but she ducked," but miss as in "I shot my cat and I wish I had not done so as I had not foreseen how much her peeing on me while I slept was part of my life." I was chit-chatting with some coworkers about Accenture, a company with whom we frequently do business, and how they took over the old Wanamaker Building on Augustine Cutoff (the only image I could find is this one, which was taken recently and seems to feature crap).

I miss Wanamaker's. They moved out of that building 1991 in favor of a massive new location in Christiana Mall, which subsequently sold out to the May's corporation which turned it into a Hecht's, which in turn became Lord & Taylor, which closed last year. I'm not sure why I miss it (this is the irrational part); it was no different than any other crappy clothing store, except by the time I knew it this particular store was stained. Literally and figuratively; the cheap panel carpeting looked like it had been lived on by an incontinent elephant, and the whole place had an aura, from as far back as I can remember, of "we're probably going to close in a few months. Don't put anything on layaway."

Externally, though, the building is MAGNIFICENT, even if the inside had lost all luster decades ago. It has different levels, and a huge glass curving window with pillars on the outside, and it's simply a mid-century architectural masterpiece. Not having a picture to show you is KILLING me. (I keep having to inject myself with small doses epinephrine to keep my heart going.)

I don't have a lot of memories of the place. Just a few of going with my mom and sister and playing hide-and-seek among the racks of clothes and getting into trouble, which happened a lot, and one vivid memory of me making My First Purchase Of Any Kind. (I'm pretty sure this happened there, although it also could have happened at the Sears in Governor Square, another sad loss to the Wilmington economy.) I had scrimped and saved, and I had my $2.50, and I wanted a set of the Hot Wheels cars that had little swivelling parts that would simulate crash damage when you banged them into one another. (Ah, the simple tastes of youth.)

I remember a major point of discussion with my mother at the time was whether I should tell the cashier to "keep the change," which would have been a penny. I apparently was quite the generous tipper at 8.

On Sunday, I was scheduled to sing a Messiah concert at my parents' church, splitting the bass solos with another nice fellow named Tom. And then Tom got sick. So I sang most of his stuff, with the entire men's sections singing "The Trumpet Shall Sound" because it's flat-out too high for me to get all the way through without one of my testicles exploding.

So there. Bet you didn't know that.

Now that that's done, I'm basically done with my various extra-curricular musical endeavours for the year. I still have church services to do, but no more concerts. My wife is pleased by this, although since her class is done her life is a lot less stressful, particularly when it comes to my absences.

Sarah's about 4 classes away from completing her master's degree, which is pretty amazing to me. Her GPA right now is a solid 4.0, which is flat-out ridiculous. My GPA in college was Very Bad, mostly because, for me, going to college at 18 was like giving an eleven-year-old the keys to a motorcycle. The first year was a waste of time, the second year was life-threateningly unhealthy on a dozen levels, and the remaining three years were just numb. I ended up with a degree in a subject I'm not terribly fond of but am good at and which pays well, and now I have 35-40 years of life-sucking grind to look forward to.

How thrilling.

On the other hand, since Sarah will soon be done her degree (and has no interest in immediately continuing on into a doctorate, although that would be kinda cool), the free education that comes with her job will be unused unless one of us goes back to school, so I've been considering the possibility of doing so. Now, if I'm smart, I'll go back and get a degree in computer engineering. This degree has a great deal of upside: I'd be more marketable, and probably be eligible for a payraise at work. The problems are that I have zero interest in actually studying computer engineering, and my GPA in college was so detestable that getting into the program would require convincing the-powers-that-be that I'm a worthy risk, despite my history. Begging professors to let me into a program that I'm uninterested in doesn't seem like a winner to me.

The other option is to go back and get a music degree, possibly one in conducting. This has almost no upside; it has no bearing on my 9-5 career, and basically makes me eligible to make a few extra grand a year as a church choir director (and not even one in the Episcopal church, where I'd be expected to be able to play the organ, which I cannot, at the moment, do). Also, I run into an even worse problem getting accepted into the degree because I don't actually have a music degree at all, let alone one with a nice tidy GPA.

On the other hand, if I were accepted (which isn't a long shot as the previous paragraph would make it seem, if I can basically do some sucking up and get every musician I know to intervene on my behalf), I could get a master's degree in music for free, and I'm rather interested in conducting as an avocation. Getting a music degree to help advance one's hobbies would be a poor idea if I had to pay for it, but free? Not taking advantage of it is like giving away money. Plus, theoretically if I got the degree and my GPA was pimp, I could then contact the computer engineering department and say, "Hey look, I learned how to study!" and get the master's in that later.

Just mulling this over. Your thoughts?