Posted Friday, April 28, 2006 by Gene   (6) comments

Hey, you know who has too much free time? Every single person in England, that's who.
Judge's Da Vinci code solved

Oh sure, we can tax them. Or, how about this? Let's just look at them sternly and go tsk tsk a few times. They'll get the message.
Bush rejects tax on oil companies' windfall profits

Seriously, does he actually think this is the way the world works? That major corporations that are supposed to maximize their own profits would willingly do something other than that, all by themselves? Because he told them it's probably a good idea?

Sigh...

In other news: a wedding
Wife Deb and I are attending a wedding this weekend, which you might not think of as a big deal except A: we never seem to find time to go out nowadays and B: we're almost entirely out of single friends, so this may be the last one we get to go to for a long time. Should be fun. The bride-- our connection to the ceremony-- is an Irish import. You think maybe there'll be some alcohol at the reception?

I said "almost entirely out"
Don't throw things at me, T. We haven't given up on you yet.

Posted Thursday, April 27, 2006 by Gene   (3) comments

Song fragment Freud
I'd like to propose a new psychiatric tool, in the same vein as word association and Rorschach inkblot tests. What you, as the therapist, would do, is give the patient a familiar song lyric or tune and ask them to give you the rest of it. And then figure out where in their twisted psyche THAT answer came from.

I bring this up because for most of my life I have smashed together, in my head, a portion of Handel's Messiah and the jingle from the old Reese's peanut butter cups commercial with the opera singer. Here is the transition point:

Unto us the Son is born!
Unto us the Child is given!
(Beat)
...It's delicious! Deliiiiicious!!!

See, I need some help explaining this.

Alas, I am snubbed yet again
People picks its Most Beautiful People'

Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2006 by Gene   (1) comments

The Onion does me one better
Scholars discover 23 blank pages that may as well be lost Samuel Beckett play

Sure, I can write a twenty page parody of Waiting For Godot, but I can't nail the Beckett admirers as well as The Onion just did.

For those of you wondering
I'm still not smoking. And I still want to.

A return to the gym
What should be interesting is seeing how much smoking retarded my weight loss/muscle gain program at the gym. It's possible I'm about to completely hulk out here, without changing the basic workout at all. I started going back regularly last week and found it easier to go up in reps on just about everything. Crunches, for instance. (That's "sit-ups" to most of you.) I'd been struggling at between three reps of 50 and three of 55 for the past month or so, but went up to three of 60 two nights ago. This was after the last time I did the 55 and, on the final set, just kept going past 55 and up to 75, where I stopped on the grounds that while I felt I could have done more, I also wanted to be able to stand upright the following day.

Meanwhile: fantasy baseball! Catch the fever!
Or something. I'm still mildly addicted to the day-to-day thrills of the ESPN Baseball Challenge. I'm sure you think less of me for it. If it's any consolation, I'm still working hard on that new novel (current title: "Sorrow Falls") so I haven't completely gone round the bend.

I'm in the 91st percentile in the challenge, it's only April, and I have plenty of time left to work my way up the leaderboard. Sure, there are 7034 people in front of me, but I don't think of it like that. I think of it like: there are ONLY 7034 people in front of me.

Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006 by Gene   (1) comments

Wait, doesn't he already work for the White House? Or do I have that backwards?
Fox anchor may replace McClellan as press secretary

Bush approval ratings at a new low
Just because I never ever get tired of saying "I told you so" to people who thoroughly deserve to hear it, here's my blog post from Wednesday, November 3, 2004:

Dear Bush supporters:

We, the defeated Kerry supporters, would like to congratulate you on your impressive display of ignorance and fear in the face of all available evidence. Truly, it took magnificent courage to look at your own monkey hand-puppet of a candidate and say with a straight face: "yes. This twisted, lying fraud is the man I want to represent me in the world stage for the next four years. This xenophobic barely literate incompetent bald-faced liar who thinks that facts are unimportant because God is speaking directly through him, this is my guy."

We almost envy you your naivete in believing that backwards about a hundred years is the direction the country should be going. And the way you accept whatever comes out of the mouth of this administration as the truth, without checking to see if it's the case? So cute. Really. You're adorable.

And when Bush promises to do things that he never ever does, and you get to pretend that he did do it just because he said he did? We would love to partake of a little of that cognitive dissonance sometime, just to see what it's like. We bet the world looks much happier from there.

We would like to be able to say you get what you asked for, and what you asked for is a higher tax burden, a longer Iraq occupation, a country in much greater danger from outside threats, an embarrassment to international diplomacy, a Medicare disaster, a federal deficit that may just bring the entire country to its knees, a richer upper class, poorer lower class and nonexistent middle class, and a collapsing public education system. But we can't say this because even when it happens, you won't know it. You are the shiny happy people, and it's obvious now that you only get your information from your President, and apparently there are no facts that will compel you to understand that he is lying to you. The country just drove off a cliff, and those of us with a grasp of reality know what's going to happen when we hit bottom, whereas you think you've just learned how to fly.

We hope you enjoy the view on the way down.

I find re-reading that cathartic, don't you?

When supermodels go wild
I'm not linking this article because it's an interesting story. I'm linking it so you can look at the before/after photos that come with the article. Oh my. Makeup really does make a big difference, doesn't it?

Wearing new glasses today
They rest higher on my nose, the prescription's slightly different, they have screws into the lenses (no frame) that are in my line of sight and may make me cross-eyed like all of the people who sued Steve Martin's character in The Jerk, and they're plastic lenses, which I've never had before. I'm going to walk into a wall before the day is out.

Posted Monday, April 24, 2006 by Gene   (0) comments

The lesson, as always: never build on top of a Hellmouth
Man dies when large hole opens in home

Schadenfreude of the week
Harvard author faces scrutiny

If you don't understand why one might derive pleasure from discovering that the Harvard freshman who signed a $500K book deal for her first book might be guilty of plagiarism, then you probably aren't a writer.

And the cat came back
One of our cats went missing on the 18th, when one of son Tim's friends left the door to our home open. At least, that's what we think happened, insofar as three of our five cats ended up outside, and while Tim claims the doors were all shut all the time we're not prepared to accept that three feline-related quantum miracles took place in the same afternoon. Two of the cats-- Pepper and Moki-- were quickly recovered, because they are young and stupid and had never been free outside before. (They were found in the garage and under the porch. I'm reminded of a hamster I had as a child who, upon escaping from his habitrail, climbed into the maze I'd made for him in wood shop and got stuck in there for the night.)

The third cat was our oldest and-- theoretically-- our wisest, Constantine. 'Tine had been out for a full week once, when we first moved, and used to jump off our second floor porch to the nearby garage in order to wander the neighborhood for a while. Then he'd wait for us at the back porch for when we let the dog out. But that was a while ago, and he's pushing thirteen years now so his jumping and wandering days are pretty much over; I guess nobody told him this when he wandered out.

For two days wife Deb was inconsolable, because not only is 'Tine her favorite cat, he went missing exactly one month after the death of my father, and you just can't buy that kind of parallel. And he wouldn't turn up. We called the shelters and the people whose job it is to clean up dead animals in the road and nobody had him. One of us walked the neighborhood every few hours calling his name at all times of day and night-- there is a class action restraining order pending from our neighbors for this-- but he wouldn't show.

Finally, on Friday night at around 11, I went out alone for a quick (it was cold) walk around the block, not expecting much. I learned two things: first, we have a skunk in the neighborhood. (Quick fact: Constantine is a black-and-white cat.) He and I said hello and then got away from one another very quickly, so that worked out more or less okay once my heart started beating again. Second, the apartment building two houses down from us, which has been gutted and is being rebuilt, is wide open. I mean, when I went by I saw that a window was open, and when I peeked through the window I saw that the door to the ground floor was also open. I stepped inside through the doorway and called for the cat a few times, but didn't go any further because I didn't have a flashlight with me. And this was exactly the situation where, in the movies, one either finds a body or becomes one.

So I went home and told Deb. Not expecting much, we gathered what light-making products we had (keychain flashlights, mostly) and went back to the scary abandoned half-built building. Because everyone knows psychotic killers won't attack if you travel together.

We did not find a body, or a killer. We did find our cat. He was curled up on a blanket in a soon-to-be closet on the first floor, no more than twenty feet from the door where I'd stood earlier calling him. Why he didn't walk over then I don't know, except that I'm not sure any of our cats like me much, so maybe that's sort of normal.

Posted Friday, April 21, 2006 by Gene   (1) comments

Random inexplicable complaint of the day
I spend most of my work drive-- from home in the morning and to home in the evening-- listening to sports talk radio. This is now easier to do than it used to be because there are two stations in town (actually three, but I only listen to two) instead of just one, so commercial breaks can be easily avoided by flipping the channel. Option number two on my dial is ESPN radio, which in the afternoon is hosted by the often-annoying Michael Felger and Kevin Winter. Felger is annoying because he seems to live in a world where the only people who get their sports information from the internet are geeks who live in their parents' basement. Winter is an entirely different breed of annoying, and the most annoying part is I may be the only person who hears it.

Do this: say out loud the letter "N". Good. Now unless you are Kevin Winter, you said it the way everyone says it: "ennn". Winter, if he did the same thing, just said "ennaa". This comes up whenever a word ends with an "N" sound, which is frustratingly often. Worse, he does the sports flash, so every twenty minutes we get to hear the local sports news announced like this: "the Bostonna Red Sox wonna a close onea last night against the Orioles, Onea nothing, onna a home runna off the bat of Kevinna Youklis."

And I swear, I am the only one who hears this.

Posted Thursday, April 20, 2006 by Gene   (0) comments

Bon Jovi follow-up
I heard an announcement for his local tour appearance this morning. Opening for his band? Nickelback. Of course. Throw in Cheap Trick, Celine Dion and Eddie Money and get Jeff Lynne to produce, and you've got the Rock Concert You Hear Every Day In Hell.

Gack. Where's my Radiohead CDs? I must cleanse.

Oh, and Bobby Goldsboro
The worst song of all time

Meanwhile, in the sports world
Your Boston Red Sox boast the best record in baseball at 11-4. I'm surprised too.

Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2006 by Gene   (0) comments

The Bon Jovi Auto-Lyrics Generator
In the morning, my wife often leaves the television on one of the country music video stations so that, I will move faster, in order to flee the house more efficiently. The other day I was listening to the current video, being sung by the cute chick from Sugarland. Four lines in, I said "I guess she used her Bon Jovi lyric generator to write this"... and then Bon Jovi leaned into the camera shot and started singing the chorus with her. Which means I can now identify Bon Jovi lyrics blindfolded, even when he's not singing the song. This is not good.

The song is called "Who says you can't go home" and you've heard it by now, because it's one of those viral Top 40 songs that even cloistered monks start humming last week without knowing why. It's off of Bon Jovi's latest album Have A Nice Day.

Please note, even the album's title is a cliche.

I have this dream that someday Bon Jovi, just for the hell of it, writes an original lyric instead of using the auto-generator or refrigerator magnets or whatever he's got going on right now. Because currently whenever I hear a song of his I actually fly into a murderous rage, and that's just not healthy for me or the people around me. Please review the lyrics of this song if you don't understand what I mean.

Hint: "dog without a bone", "been there, done that", "born a rolling stone", "just a hometown boy", "spending too much time on the telephone", "every step I take", "the only life I've ever known", and, of course, "who says you can't go home" are all cliches or legitimate song lyrics from other songs. (And I missed a few, I'm sure.) What's left is a lot of pithy crap involving borrowed metaphors (rainbow & pot of gold, seeds sown) and pedantic junk that probably came from the "cliche-reversal" button on his auto-generator program (i.e. "you can take the home from the boy, but not the boy from his home", which not only makes almost no sense, the sense it does make is the opposite from the theme of this entire song.)

Now, don't get me wrong: I know a lot of musicians put cliches in their songs. But in most cases there's at least a fragrance of inspiration in them somewhere, a line or two that is consciously clever. Bon Jovi's reliance is absolutely pathological. He must be stopped.

Posted Tuesday, April 18, 2006 by Gene   (0) comments

Just for the record
I had nothing to do with the Natalie Holloway disappearance. I just wanted to get that out of the way.

24 madness
I worked in a bank branch for many years. At night, when we had to close the main vault we had this timing mechanism inside that required us to figure out when we wanted the door opened again. Should anyone attempt to open the vault prior to that time the lock would not budge. I remember this because there were occasions in which the person doing the math for the vault did it incorrectly-- either they just miscounted or they neglected to take into account things like daylight saving time-- and we had to wait until later to get into the vault.

So on 24 last week, in order to get into a safe deposit box in a downtown bank branch at 11:30 at night, Jack Bauer, drives to the bank manager's home, kidnaps him, and makes him open up the branch. I would like all of you to know that this will not work. Number one, bank managers are like McDonald's counter help: they change every six months or so. Number two, it takes more than one person to open ANYthing in a bank. Number three, if someone turned off a motion alarm in a bank at 11:30 at night, do you think maybe the alarm company would notice this and go "hunh... that can't be right"? Well, they would. Number four, see my comment above. If Jack's lucky, the vault was set to open an hour before the branch. Keep in mind that I'm talking about technology that was old when I worked in the bank a decade ago. There's no way that fancy-ass electronic vault they showed on TV is somehow missing such a patently logical safety precaution.

Now, if I were writing this show it wouldn't be a run-of-the-mill bank. It'd be a pricey, private clients bank, where twenty-four hour access to the safe deposit boxes is a feature. How hard would that have been, I ask you?

Addendum
Kiefer Sutherland signed a large contract to keep him on board as Jack Bauer for the next few seasons, as well as for a movie. Question: you have a show whose calling card is it's real-time format, with 24 episodes each making up one hour of a single day. What do you call the movie version of this show? I'm voting for "2".

Posted Monday, April 17, 2006 by Gene   (2) comments

King Easter
I was given the onus of responsibility for constructing an easter basket this year. The reason for this is simple: I was not going to drive to Wrentham, which is where the only Harry and David's in the area is, now that the one in Natick has closed. Every year wife Deb and daughter Becky-- and possibly son Tim-- would go to the Harry and David's and overspend the hell out of this holiday on a single basket for the whole family. So I went to the Natick Mall alone and bought a crapload of Godiva chocolates, a few random jellybeans and milk duds, and a copy of King Kong on DVD.

Kong prompted the following exchange between my wife and myself on Easter Sunday:

Wife: what does King Kong have to do with Easter?
Me: um... Kong died for our sins?

Seeing clearly now
Guess who's covered by my eye care insurance? Fucking nobody, that's who. Not Pearl Vision or Lenscrafters or any other place where the word "convenient" and "fast" are a part of the conversation. I learned this when we tried to get Tim a new set of glasses after he busted his existing pair, and to look into getting me a pair with anti-glare coating so I can stop squinting at my computer monitor.

So after stopping by the Lenscrafters down the street from my office on Saturday morning, I went to work and looked up the insurance plan, and never has a larger list of independent eye doctors and voodoo practitioners been concocted. None of them had walk-in service and none could get glasses done in anything faster than a week. And, none had a selection worth a damn. I now understand how Pearl Vision and Lenscrafters et cetera remain in business despite not taking any insurance anybody's ever heard of.

The thought that occurred to me at Easter mass, for which I shall be going to hell
I think "Come to the Catholic Church: where the bread don't rise but Jesus does" would make a good slogan.

Posted Monday, April 17, 2006 by Gene   (1) comments

King Easter
I was given the onus of responsibility for constructing an easter basket this year. The reason for this is simple: I was not going to drive to Wrentham, which is where the only Harry and David's in the area is, now that the one in Natick has closed. Every year wife Deb and daughter Becky-- and possibly son Tim-- would go to the Harry and David's and overspend the hell out of this holiday on a single basket for the whole family. So I went to the Natick Mall alone and bought a crapload of Godiva chocolates, a few random jellybeans and milk duds, and a copy of King Kong on DVD.

Kong prompted the following exchange between my wife and myself on Easter Sunday:

Wife: what does King Kong have to do with Easter?
Me: um... Kong died for our sins?

Posted Friday, April 14, 2006 by Gene   (4) comments

Tamson starts remodeling
But I think maybe she shouldn't have hired the cheapest decorator available.

Yes, that is her house. Apparently her garage caused the whole thing by jumping in the way of a twelve year old neighbor who was inexplicably driving the family car.

Posted Thursday, April 13, 2006 by Gene   (1) comments

Longest. Week. Ever.
All right, maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, the week of March 18th was longer. And the week after that, when I had to go back to work again, was pretty long too. But, and this is important, I could still smoke in both of those weeks.

There's always someone you forget
Keep this in mind: there's always someone you forget or neglect to give bad news to. I didn't get a chance to tell Stratos about dad's sudden demise until two weeks after the event, and then I felt terrible for having not found a way to tell him sooner.

Who's Stratos? The pizza guy. Honest. He owns the pizza place we'd been frequenting since 1978. Apparently dad went in there two or three times a week. I knew they knew one another, but I didn't really realize how friendly they were. Stratos was, of course, utterly devastated. "You could have called me," he said. I probably could have, but I didn't think he'd know me if he wasn't looking at me, and we just never found time to stop by.

Anyway. That was fun.

Don't you hate those guys who blog constantly about their brackets and their fantasy teams?
Fucking Oakland.

Okay, okay, here's the thing: ESPN.com has a free fantasy baseball contest thingie, where the challenge is to fill your team with the best performers on any given day, while staying below the given salary range. You're rewarded for hanging onto good players (their value might go up but not their cost to you unless you drop them) and also for picking well from day to day. With David Wells pitching for the Sox last night I went for the safest pitching staff I could find, which was Oakland, which got shelled. I went from being in the 94th percentile in the game to somewhere in the high 80's in one night. Should've picked the Mets.

Posted Wednesday, April 12, 2006 by Gene   (1) comments

Worth a read
Chuck Closterman on Barry Bonds

If it's a girl they'll name her Maaaary, and a boy? Fraaaank.
Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard engaged, expecting

Posted Tuesday, April 11, 2006 by Gene   (0) comments

Two quick baseball thoughts
Number of home runs hit by David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez this season, as of this writing: 1

Number of home runs hit by Bronson Arroyo, a pitcher the Sox traded to the Reds this offseason: 2

And...

Coolest name in baseball: Chicago Cubs reserve Angel Pagan

Posted Tuesday, April 11, 2006 by Gene   (0) comments

I know what he meant, but I bet he wishes he'd found a better way to phrase it
Overheard in a news report about the Duke lacrosse team scandal, from a reporter whose name I did not get:

"Unfortunately, many rapists can wear condoms."

The context was the report that there was no DNA evidence that the victim had had intercourse, consentual or otherwise. That word "unfortunately" just hangs out there, doesn't it?

Let's see, nausea, insomnia, hot/cold flashes, no stamina at the gym, my last pack of smokes tasted like crap, can't seem to get enough to drink or to eat...
Duh. This isn't withdrawal; I have the flu.

Red Sox opening day is today
Yay.

That's it?
Well it'd be a bigger yay if I was going to the game, or if I could watch the game, or if the season hadn't already begun eight days ago.

Of note, the team started off the season 5-1, while the Yankees started off 2-4. I'm expecting much schadenfreude from the Yanks this year. I hope they don't disappoint.

Posted Monday, April 10, 2006 by Gene   (8) comments

Fuck fucking fuckedy fuck FUCK
I gave up smoking over the weekend. I hate it. How do you people live like this?

No, seriously
I have no motivation to do anything at all. We worked on cleaning our house over the weekend, and every time I finished a job I'd say "and now I can have a... FUCK!!!"

Y'all have to appreciate, I smoked for twenty years and never went above 15-18 a day. That's less than a pack. I know people who smoked for half that time and got up to two packs a day, and I don't even know where in the hell they found the TIME to smoke that much, but anyway, my point is this was always less of an addiction for me-- it took all of four hours to get over the physical withdrawal-- than it was a love of something. I loved to smoke. I loved the taste and feel of the smoke in my lungs and I even loved that I had to step away from whatever else I was doing at the time to light up and I even loved that it made me something of a pariah in most public circles.

So why give it up?
I don't think I'm unhealthy right now, I really don't. I also don't think the 15-18 cigarettes a day I was smoking were doing me substantial harm. Quote me whatever statistics you want: every body is different, and the fact remains I could do an hour of cardio and another hour of weights a night for six straight days while smoking three to four packs a week and not suffer for it.

So I'm quitting because my family has only been asking me to for fifteen years; because it turned out my son actually DID have pneumonia last week (he's better now); because my father died younger than he should have and, even though he quit smoking a long time ago, everyone else in my life is going "shit, dude, you better take better care of yourself"; because I'm tired of smelling like cigarette smoke; and because maybe it's just time.

Or maybe it's not. Because I just finished eating, and I really want a goddamn cigarette now.

Posted Friday, April 07, 2006 by Gene   (3) comments

"Pilot error" is my new favorite euphemism
Eva Longoria, big enough to see from space

Incredibly sad news
Maggie Dixon, 28 year old womens b-ball coach, dead of heart attack

I totally have to start taking better care of myself.

Man of the family
I've heard it said, by a number of people, that I'm now "the man of the family" as in, the oldest male now that my father's passed away. The consensus seems to be that this means a lot more responsibility, and while I agree that if we're attacked by a neighboring tribe or we're called to the palace to pay tributes to the emperor or to sign up to defend the land against the Mongol horde, this is a big deal. But other than that? I think this job is basically about putting up storm windows and cutting the turkey. The "women of the family" have everything else covered pretty well right now.

Posted Thursday, April 06, 2006 by Gene   (0) comments

Forget impeachment; let's just charge him with a crime
Court papers: Bush OK'ed leak

Posted Thursday, April 06, 2006 by Gene   (0) comments

These people obviously didn't watch that Wynonna concert
Study shows women's obesity rate levels

Yeah, this'll win you a lot of repeat customers
Kenya fake air crash sparks panic
"Kenyan air authorities briefly sparked panic by announcing a plane coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo had crashed with 80 people on board -- then saying it was a practice drill..."

Do they not have lawyers in Kenya? Because the number of lawsuits this would cause here-- and I'm not the litigious sort, but I'd sure consider it-- would be astronomical.

Dan Brown is on line two for you, sir
'Gospel of Judas' authenticated

24 thought
The Big Bad was revealed on Monday's show to be (spoiler alert) the President himself, who, we are to now presume, has only been pretending to be a big pussy this whole time. Both wife Deb and I, on witnessing this revelation, cried bullshit. I think they decided on this plot twist about two weeks ago, because it completely contradicts everything that happened before. Like, for example, when the President's chief of staff confessed to being behind the conspiracy in private TO the President a few hours earlier. Since there wasn't anyone else in the room at the time, there was no reason for this conversation to have taken place in the way that it did.

Soap opera. I'm just saying.

Posted Wednesday, April 05, 2006 by Gene   (0) comments

Um, oops
Homeland Security official arrested in child sex sting

I joke with daughter Becky about how half of her online friends are probably undercover FBI agents, seeing as how she's currently a genuine 14 year old girl, unlike the imaginary one this genius was trying to hook up with.

Lance Armstrong to drive Indy 500 pace car
You think at some point he'll go "WOW! This is a LOT easier!"

The things you only get to see when your wife likes country music
Wife Deb cannot go to sleep at night until she's had a chance to surf through one circuit of channels on our TV. This takes a while-- we get all the movie channels-- and actually has to be scheduled if it's going to be completed. Well, on this circuit are all of the music channels that actually still play music videos, including at least two country music stations... which Deb lingers on... because she likes country music. (I did not know she liked country music when I married her, and actually, she didn't know either. This was kind of like her discovering she's a lesbian after fifteen years, only not quite as devastating.)

The other night we came to a stop on a concert starring Wynonna Judd, who had guests, including Ann and Nancy Wilson (from Heart). I bring all this up because when Wynonna and Ann both stood on the edge of the stage together I was riveted, because I was sure the stage was going to collapse and send them tumbling into the audience. I'm thinking the reason Wynonna is solo now is that she ate her mom, and Ann must be eating so much Nancy doesn't get any, because Nancy still looks nice.

"They should make the microphones shaped like ham sandwiches," I said to my wife.

Posted Tuesday, April 04, 2006 by Gene   (1) comments

Jumbo sized dog
Talking to the wife last night, we both agreed it's time we started getting our dog some exercise. No, that's not a euphemism for something else, although we were discussing this while in bed. Our dog Penny, who is a mix between a beagle and some sort of larger dog like a spaniel or a doberman-- a mutt, in other words-- is so huge I've taken to calling her Jabba.

We have a reclining chair in our living room that can also rotate 360 degrees, and this is the chair she often ends up taking, but you should see the process involved. First, she has to prepare herself for the jump, which involves taking a dozen cautionary baby-steps to find the proper angle-- because when she jumps her clearance is about two inches, and when she misses she ends up with her hind legs dangling off the edge of the chair and all her weight on her ribcage. (The process she undergoes to get up the stairs at night takes five times as long.) Second, after she's worked out the physics necessary-- applied force, angle of ascent, gravity-- to get her fat ass into the chair, she jumps and impacts the chair sufficiently to rotate it 180 degrees. Now she's facing the wall and whining, so we have to get up and spin the chair back so she doesn't miss her stories.

I realized last night, after letting her in back to do her business, that very soon her weight will be a threat to me personally. Because someday those little legs of hers will no longer get her down the back staircase and outside, and I'll be forced to carry a sixty pound dog who doesn't like to be carried and is full of fecal matter down the stairs to keep her from crapping in the pantry, and about halfway down I'll throw my back out and drop the dog, who will immediately evacuate her bowels herself in fear. They'll find both of us hours later, lying on the steps, unable to move, and covered in dogshit. And being laughed at by the cats.

No comment
As I write this, it may be fixed, but as of an hour or so ago, the comments option in this blog was busted. Tamson was the last one to get a comment in, and when I replied my response vanished into the internet netherverse, which can be found at Brigadoon.com. When this has happened in the past, the vanishing posts appeared one or two days later when the commenting function returned to normal. I expect that will be what ends up happening again.

Posted Monday, April 03, 2006 by Gene   (2) comments

Added to the list of things you can only get away with in certain states
Last week daughter Becky had to find a short piece of literature to read to her class. It could be anything, but she was encouraged to find something that had little in the way of a rhyme scheme or a distinguishable rhythm. The task was to read something in a persuasive and compelling way. Her choice was a song I turned her on to more than a month ago: Dear God, by XTC. Take a moment to read the lyrics. Now imagine your fourteen year old reading them aloud in front of her class at your local public school.

Not surprisingly-- because I live in the People's Republic of Cambridge-- we received no concerned phone calls from the dean.

It could have been worse
I'm thinking of two other songs I've played for my children at some time in the past: Rape Me by Nirvana, I Touch Myself by the Divinyls. And that's just off the top of my head.

Stop looking at me like that; I'm trying to expand their musical experience.

Brackets
Yup; I'm done. Thanks bunches, George Mason. You too, Boston College. Don't expect me to pick you to go all the way again any time soon.