Miasmatic Review

Serenity

WOW!

We just got back from seeing Serenity. I’m glad Ktreva and I were able to see it. This was a great movie. I absolutely loved it. If you like Sci-Fi, Westerns and especially if you like both, you will love this movie. We both left the theater absolutely loving this movie. If you get a chance to go see it, I’d recommend it, especially if you are a Firefly fan. If you never saw an episode of Firefly you’ll still be able to understand what is going on. Ktreva didn’t watch as much of the series as I did and she still was able to follow what was going on and enjoy the movie.

It was a mix between action and comedy that just worked. A lot of one-liners that had the entire audience laughing and action scenes that kept your attention. The story line was great, the special effects where damn good and the acting was some of the best by the entire cast that I’ve seen in a movie. There were some scenes I wish they had elaborated on. Sure some of the plot was a little predictable, but I haven’t seen a movie in the last 10 years that isn’t.

We liked this movie so much we could have gone and seen it for a second time tonight if we had the time to do so.

For those of you that haven’t seen the movie I’m putting the spoilers in the extended entry. SO DON’T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW ANYMORE UNTIL YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE!!!

I’m a little disappointed in the fact that one of my favorite main characters was killed off. However the way they killed him was interesting. Two of the mains from the original show get killed, I can understand killing off Shepard. I just wish they had explained more about his strange past before they did. There were so many unanswered questions I still have about him. Wash dying just kind of sucked. I loved this character, he always had some great one-liners and Alan Tudyk is just a great actor. Why they decided to kill off his character is lost on me.

The air battle between the Reevers and the Alliance was too short for me; I would have loved to have seen more of that. Especially since it was the first time you saw any emotion out of the Operative. It was over with too quickly for me. Then again I am a sucker for a good space battle.

I think a little more explanation into the situation on Miranda would be helpful. They do give some, but a little more would have been nice. I understand that most of the population just lost the will to live while the remainder became Reevers due to the drug(?) they put in the air. Maybe I missed it, but they could have gone into a little more detail as to exactly how.

I would have loved to seen more of the melee between River and the Reevers. Not that it would have helped the story any, but I just loved the way the choreographed it her fighting.

I could go into so much more, but my descriptions just won’t do the movie justice. It’s just something you will have to go see for yourself.

In search of...

Wanted, drinking buddies.

Must be available on Sundays and likes football, shooting and camping.

The ability to cook hot wings, bratwurst and steaks is a bonus.
Owning a 47-inch TV with surround sound and NFL Sunday Ticket will warrant free beer.

Does not necessarily have to be a Packer fan.

Of course it doesn't run on Jello!

Tommy of Striving For Average has this funny spoof on how CNN spin's everything into Bush's fault. I'm generally not a political poster, but it made me almost squirt pop (not coke, not soda... POP) out of my nose.

If you want a quick chuckle, it's worth a view.

A pox I tell you!

I don’t have a lot to say today. Well I do, but I’m not burdening everyone with it. My little idiosyncratic bullshit is not something that anyone would find interesting. Let’s just say I’m having the type of day that most people are wont to avoid.

Have you ever had a day so bad that you swear that every mentally myopic megalomaniac in your life is intentionally trying to piss you off? Well I have many individuals that meet that criterion at work. Throw in friends and family that seem to intentionally trying to piss you off and there you go… my day.

It doesn’t help that Murphy’s Law is using me as a whipping boy either. Every time I am hit with, “good” news there is a tremendous he-bitch man-slap of “bad” that goes with it. Let me give you an example; I’ve been having problems with the data on one of the reports that is provided to me, it’s incorrect. I understand that, the team that releases it understands that, my peers/manager know it, but don’t understand it. Today, after 4 months of incessantly telling my peers/manager that it is wrong and trying to get them to assist me in getting it corrected; it is being fixed. HOWEVER! (AHA! I knew it was coming!) I have to go back and manually correct all the data for the last 4 months. Apparently, it has to be I that does it because I’m the only one that understands the damn report. The sad part is that this report only has an inappreciable relationship to my position.

Tonight I think I’m going to go home and have a long talk with John Daniels. No, I don’t mean Jack, when you’ve known him as long as I have you call him John.

Because everyone else is doing it.

You are a Social Liberal (61% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (71% permissive) You are best described as a: Libertarian Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

That's about where I figured I would end up. That's probably not a surprise to any one that stops by here regularly or who has met me.

Stolen from too many places to list.

Now if only he would shut up.

Clone has taken to talking really well in the last month. If he hears someone say something, he will file it away and say it again at a later time, or immediately after. This can be good because he can communicate with us better. Instead of getting mad or frustrated at being unable to convey a want or need to us, he tends only to get mad when we say no now… This is most of the time because he wants to do things like play with daddy’s firearms, swords, knives and axes.

His new verbal agility can be bad, especially if Daddy is watching his Packers make a stupid play and rattles off a stream of obscenities that would make Graumagus run off covering his ears. Only then to turn around and hear Clone repeat verbatim, “Son of a B(TCH! Those G*d d@mn M*ther f&ckers better learn to catch a g*d d@mn ball or they won’t win a f&ckin’ game all season, B@STARDS!” He said it perfectly; only instead of anger behind his voice, it was pride. Pride at knowing that he did something that made Daddy laugh and Mommy yell at Daddy. Now he knows which words are “bad” words and tattles on Dad if he says one. Then Mommy comes and yells at daddy to “watch his language”… the little bast…. brat.

Then there is the even more humorous situation where he uses slang correctly. Especially if we didn’t know that he knew the term. For example, Saturday night, before him and my wife became sick, we were sitting around the campfire listening to my friend Jim play the guitar and sing. Earlier in the night Jim was teaching him how to do the two-handed “monster metal horns”. Try as he would, Clone could not get it right. Flash forward 2 hours we are still sitting around the fire and Jim just finished playing a song. Ktreva was clapping when clone, trying to do the two-handed “monster metal horns” says, “Rock on mom!” clear as a bell. Fortunately, I hadn’t been taking a drink at the time or I would have spit Jack Daniels out of my nose into the campfire. That could have been bad on so many different levels.

Everyday he does or says something new, I just hope it doesn’t repeat something I’ve said and get me in trouble… again.

Picking the wrong event.

When deciding what re-enactments I do each year, I consider many things. There are three factors: A) My own past experiences at this event. Did I enjoy it or was it bad? If it was bad, was it because of something outside the events control (weather, bad experience with the public, natural disaster, etc) or was it their fault (lack of planning, no water/wood/restrooms, poorly organized, overly demanding). 2) Recommendations from other re-enactors. If another re-enactor recommends I try an event, this weighs heavily in my decision. Especially if it is a re-enactor, I know really well. If there are multiple re-enactors recommending that I try the same event. D) Do I have anything else going on that weekend? Am I free that weekend or do I already have plans? Sometimes I will change my plans to do an event, depending on what is going on. 4) How far away from my house is it? I no longer do re-enactments that are more then a 3-hour drive from my house. It’s too much of a hassle to drive that long and set up only to have to tear down, load, drive back and put away all my equipment at the end of the day. This is a hobby I do to relax, not to run myself ragged. As it is, I usually take the Monday after each event off work.

For this last weekend, my formula went all to hell. I participated in an event I had never done before called Frenchman’s Frolic. For the last 4 years, I had done the Belvidere Pioneer Festival on this weekend instead. I should have stuck with my instincts this weekend and done Belvidere instead. Frenchman’s was a complete bust. Lets break it down using my formula A) I had never done Frenchman’s. Belvidere I had done for 4 years and always had fun and enjoyed the event, other then rain issues I don’t recall having a bad time there. 2) I have had many re-enactors I have known for years tell me how great Frenchman’s is. The only people that have told me they like Belvidere are the ones that still participate in it. D) Both are within 10 minutes of my house. 4) I had planned on doing Belvidere as a given event all the way up to Clan Chattan getting together to go over the schedule of the year. Then I changed to try to keep group harmony and from the way people where talking in the group I was trying to protect my reputation as well. (I think we all know how well that went! IE I left the group back in June).

Based on my formula I normally would have done Belvidere. My formula didn’t fail; I failed my formula. Let me tell you why:

The members of Clan Chattan that read this site will remember the heated discussion had about what event we did, Belvidere or Frenchman’s. I was told that it was a live fire camp with shooting competitions, many vendors, it’s a re-enactment just for re-enactors (very little public, so it’s really relaxed), a lot of people participate at it. I can honestly say I was serious misled. I was able to shoot for a total of 5 minutes at the post shoot. The rain was part of the factor in this. After the post shoot the range was closed for the bow competition. The way they talked it sounded like they where NOT going to reopen the range that day, rain or shine. I wanted to shoot, that was the main reason I wanted to go. They did open it up later in the day at 6:20 PM; the sunset on Saturday was around 6:50, with all the cloud cover it was too dark to shoot by 6:35. I wasn’t about to get my musket dirty again for 15 minutes of shooting. It never opened again.

As for the vendors, there wasn’t a single one there. No food vendors, no shooting supply vendors, nothing! There was also less then 20 camps there. I was told that one of the larger national events moved to this weekend and most of the vendors went to that. However, no one is sure where all the other re-enactors went. There was a lot of speculation, but no one knew for sure. It was a very quite camp, really sober somber.

It didn’t help that it rained most of the day on Saturday AND Sunday. It also didn’t help that both Ktreva and Clone got sick Saturday night and where up all night vomiting. I tried to warn her not to let Clone drink from THAT bottle, but she wouldn’t listen! That’s a joke people! They had some kind of food poisoning. Something that I didn’t eat, which left one culprit, bad apples.

Ktreva was bored out of her mind the entire weekend. There was nothing for her to do there except watch Clone. At least with vendors, you can go on a walk about and see what they have, even if you aren’t buying.

As for me, I joined in the post shoot... I was on the third place (second loser) team, which won me a beer. Hey, free beer is good. For those of you that don’t know, a post shoot is a competition to shoot a 2X4 in half in the shortest amount of time. My friend Jim, his father, his son and his friend that camped with them where the team that won, for the fourth straight year. On Sunday, I watched the second half of the bow shoot. (It was postponed on Saturday due to rain) and on Sunday I was in the Tomahawk throw.

The point of the ‘hawk competition is to cut a playing card in half with a single throw of a tomahawk AND have it stick in the block. I would have won, I cut the card in half, but my ‘hawk didn’t stick. The block was hard and everyone was having trouble with getting their ‘hawks to stick. I wasn’t able to duplicate that feat.

After the tomahawk throw, we packed up camp and went home. You know an event went bad when you where home, unpacked, had the wet canvas hung and were able to watch the fourth quarter of a noon game. Normally I’m lucky to get all of that done and be able to see kick off the Sunday night game.

If it weren’t for the fact that our friend Jim and his camp was there the entire weekend would have completely and utterly sucked. Most of the camps were spread far apart and separated from one another. There just wasn’t the camaraderie there that was at most of the other events. This again may be in part due to the rain, but I don’t think so. Saturday the rain was finished sometime around 5:00 PM.

I don’t know if I’ll do this event next year or not to be honest with you. I’m thinking about joining the club so any friend with me and I can go shooting there anytime we want. If I do that, then I think I’ll have to go back. If I don’t join, I’ll probably go back to Belvidere.

Faunacide in the city.

It’s been a while since I’ve regaled you all with a tale of my cruelness to my minions, so I thought I would share a little incident that happened today… strictly for your mirth.

This morning I heard two of my thralls talking about killing a deer in order to make sausage. Of course, my interest was peeked, killing deer and eating it, how any red blooded American re-enacting male could not want to get in on this. When I asked what brought this up, since neither “J-man” or “Big-T” seem to be the hunter type, they tell me that minion “Sherby” killed a deer with her truck on the way to work. Jumping out of my chair, I exclaim, “What? A dead deer ready for the taking? Where?” Visions of a new deer hide and fresh meat for the weekend filled my head.

Plans of field dressing the deer in the parking lot were dashed when they said, someplace on Spring Creek RD. They weren’t exactly sure, but it had been a couple of hours since the incident and Spring Creek is a pretty busy road. Walking over to Sherby’s desk, I start asking her questions.

Me: “I hear you killed a deer this morning.”

Sherby: “It was an accident, it jumped out in front of me. I hit it with my Dad’s truck.”

Me: “Did you grab the deer? Did you call the police?”

Sherby: “The deer was too big for me to pick up, so I left it on the side of the road. It wasn’t an adult deer, but it was still too big for me. Why would I call the police?”

Me: “Because in Illinois if you hit a deer with your vehicle, it is the law that you contact the police, plus you’ll need the report for the insurance company. Where did you hit the deer at?” (You do have to contact the police if you hit a deer; this is true)

Sherby: “I hit it on Spring Creek down by the river. My dad only has liability, so we won’t be filing a claim with the insurance.” (She hit the deer in downtown Rockford! All the luck! By this time, the crews would have cleaned it up, it would have been flattened in traffic or the homeless would be eating better then I am tonight!)

Me: “You still want to contact the police. If you don’t they can charge you with leaving the scene of motor vehicle accident with a fatality. You don’t want the police showing up at your dad’s door to drag him away do you? You left a dead deer in downtown Rockford, where there are cameras and witnesses that can identify the vehicle.” (The police will NOT charge you with leaving the scene of a MVA with a Fatality for reducing the surplus deer population.)

Sherby (looking worried): “Killing a deer is considered a fatality?”

Me: “Of course it died. It’s like a homicide, except it’s a faunacide. Instead of dealing with a human you have an animal” As far as I know there is no such thing as a faunacide, I believe I made that word up on the spot. UPDATE: Actually googling it, there appears that someone else came up with it before me.

Sherby: “Is that bad?”

Me: “Well yea, it falls under the animal cruelty laws. It’s a felony in this state. It’s equal to clubbing kittens with a golf club” (lie, lie, lie… BTW, I just liked that analogy so I used it, there is no special law for clubbing kittens with a golf club.)

Sherby (eyes wide and teary); “It was an accident! I didn’t mean to hit the deer!”

Me: “What if that had been a kid you had hit? Would you have meant to hit the kid, probably not? Because this is a deer that makes it okay? That’s just wrong. That poor deer was out, enjoying life and trying just to survive and you go and squash its head with the front of your truck. Now the poor little deer will never be able to grow up and enjoy life. At least when a hunter kills a deer they eat it and use the carcass. Not you, no you just leave its lifeless body on the side of the road where its death is meaningless!” (Did I mention she is an animal lover? No… ahhh, now it’s funnier!)

Sherby (eyes misting over, voice shaky): “That’s not what I meant; I never meant to hurt anything. I wouldn’t hurt an animal. I don’t know what to do.”

Me: “What I would do, if I were you, is call the police. Tell them that you hit the deer and that you just now where able to get to a phone. They will tell you exactly what you need to do. You should still be in an acceptable time frame, so I don’t foresee any problems.” (This was legit advice. She did need to call them and even though it was technically a lie, since she didn’t know she had to call the police until now, this was the first chance she had to call them).

Sherby (looking better) “Thanks Mr. Contagion. I’ll do that now.”

Twenty minutes pass, I walk back over to Sherby.

Me: “Sherby, what did the police say? Are they going to charge you with Faunacide?” (Because cops charge people with crimes over the phone?)

Sherby (looking releaved) “Luckily no… I just need to go file an accident report.”

Me: “You got lucky this time!”

Later when she left to go to lunch with minion Blond-T, I asked who was driving. Minion Blond-T responded she was. This set up this parting shot:

Me: “Good now maybe more innocent deer won’t be slaughtered at the hands of the Sherby.”

I couldn’t help but laugh while Sherby gave me the evil eye and Blond-T laughed.

Donation or Extortion?

It’s that time of year again. Not fall, even though today is the first official day. No, it’s that time when companies across the country try to extort money from their employees to donate to the United Way. Why do companies force this issue so much? It’s because then they can say they raised so many dollars for them and get a special mention in next years drive. It’s all marketing that they don’t have to pay as much for… they make their employees do it.

I don’t mind charity drives, but I hate feeling forced into donating my time and money. Is it a donation then? Not in my mind, if forced to pay then I’m not donating money I’m a victim of extortion. I’ve worked for companies that keep track of donations to the United Way and if you don’t donate so much you won’t get a promotion or good review. They went so far as to tell the employees that. My current company is not that bad, however they do put a frown on a lack of participation, especially if you are management level. They do however hand out a sheet telling you what the recommended donation is based on your salary level.

My company makes a huge deal out of this drive. They put on shows, hold raffles, have fundraisers, and do what they call “Supervisor Stunts”. The Supervisor Stunts starts with a drive for money. They have cups set up with various peoples names on them and employees in the company drop money in to the cup to vote for which supervisor has to do a stunt. The four with the most money are the “winners”. The stunts are usually unimaginative things stolen from pop culture. A couple years ago, they did a fear factor take off where the individuals had to eat something safe, yet disgusting. In all actuality there was nothing all that disgusting about what they ate. Last year they did a take off of the old Nickelodeon show Double Dare. Each supervisor had to go through an obstacle course that was only designed to get them covered in slime, condiments, ice cream, pudding, etc.

This year they decided to open it up to all management and some of the support staff. I was strongly encouraged to participate in it this year. Why? Because with my position I am easily one of the top two people in the office that the employees would like to get revenge on. Thus, I would bring in a lot of money. Unfortunately, for them I had a different idea. Mine was more along the lines of, “I’m not donating one damn cent to the United Way and I’m not doing anything that might help raise a dime for them.”

See the extended entry for my reasons.

Some of you may wonder why I won’t donate to the United Way. It’s because I hate them. Actually, hate isn’t the right word; I loathe and despise them. I have no problems donating to charity; in fact, I donate my time and money to various organizations all through out the year. It’s just these arseholes that I can’t stand. As many of you may know, I’m a huge supporter of the Boy Scouts of America. I am an Eagle Scout with a Bronze palm. I’ve spent time as a leader and volunteer. Right now, I fill in when I can, but I donate money directly to them. However, the United Way in various states has started pulling their funding from the Boy Scouts, because of their position on homosexuals as volunteers.

Fine, they don’t want to help fund the Boy Scouts because of that, it’s their right. I agree with the Boy Scouts and will just give my money directly to them. However, I don’t think they have any right to try to dictate policy in these organizations they are funding. The money that was given to them was given with the belief that it was going to be spread amongst the various organizations they list, which still includes the BSA. However if they pull or cut their funding then they are misrepresenting where that money is going. Many of the people I spoke with here didn’t even realize the United Way was doing that.

The other reason I don’t like the United Way is that I know too many people that needed their help, swallowed their pride and asked only to be turned away. The excuses being anything from they made too much money to they weren’t in a dire enough position. The problem being is that every one of the people that was turned away all needed it badly. These weren’t short hardships, but long ones, including the loss of homes and family. Then I hear the stories from people here who did receive their help, including some of my minions, these people where in better conditions then the others I know.

I don’t know what their criterion is to receive help, but I’m thinking they may be a little bias. IE if you had a good job and life was good, then you where laid off, haven’t been able to find a steady well paying job in 2 years. The Department of Child and Family Services comes knocking on your door to take your kids. Not because you abuse them, but because you can’t make ends meet. You’ve given up every luxury you used to enjoy just to bring home food and cloth your kids. That wasn’t enough to keep someone for reporting you for neglect because little Johnny isn’t the healthiest looking kid in school. So finally in the last bit of desperation after being turned down for all the other assistance programs you turn to the United Way only to once again be declined… because you once made too much money. Does this story sound like BS? I thought it was, except I know the person it happened to and it is true.

I’m not even going to go into the mishandling of donations and funds that have been associated with the United Way. The first two were enough for me never to want to give them a cent. I’m not telling others not to donate to the United Way, that is your choice. I’m just telling you why I don’t like them and why I won’t. I believe that is a choice each individual person has to make.

Loonie Loonie Loonie!

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
Third Emperor of Rome and ruler of one of the most powerful empires of all time, your common name means "little boots". Although you only reigned for four years, brief even by Roman standards, you still managed to garner a reputation as a cruel, extravagant and downright insane despot. Your father died in suspicious circumstances, you were not the intended heir, and one of your first acts as Emperor was to force the suicide of your father-in-law. Your sister Drusilla died that same year; faced with allegations that your relationship with her had been incestuous, you responded, bafflingly, by declaring her a god.

You revived a number of unpopular traditions, including auctions of properties left over from public shows. When a senator fell asleep at one such auction, you took each of his nods as bids, selling him 13 gladiators for a vast sum. You attempted to have your horse, Incitatus, made into a consul and hence one of the most powerful figures in Rome. It was granted a marble stable with jewels and a staff of servants. At one point you forced your comrade Macro to kill himself - in much the same vein as your father-in-law - accusing him of being his wife's pimp. You, of course, were having an affair with said wife at the time.

Things went from bad to worse. When supplies of condemned men ran short in the circus, you had innocent spectators dragged into the arena with the lions to fill their place. You claimed mastery of the sea by walking across a three-mile bridge of boats in the Bay of Naples; kissed the necks of your lovers, whispering sweet nothings like "This lovely neck will be chopped as soon as I say so,"; dallied with your sister's lover and made her pull her unborn child out of her womb prematurely. Towards the end of your reign, you had a golden statue of yourself made and dressed each day in the same clothes you yourself wore. When you eventually died, the terrified people of Rome refused to believe that such a cruel reign could ever end, and believed you to be alive for years afterwards.

Blog Momma-Sis Bou had this quiz. Since I am a historical Re-enactor and amature historian, I just had to take it. However, for the record I have never, EVER bedded my own sister... your sister, maybe when I was in college... but that was a long time ago! :)

Why you don't take sick kids to the fair.

T1G put up a story about his run in with Carnies. While reading it, it reminded me of something that happened to me when I was younger.

My grandparents on my mother’s side lived in small towns in northern Illinois when I was growing up. At first, it was on a farm they owned and ran just outside of Kirkland, IL. Then when my grandfather wasn’t able to run the farm anymore, they sold it and moved into a neighboring town where he got a job. Every summer on the Fourth of July there would be a family reunion and we would all get together at my Grandparents and drive to Kirkland for their festival. They would have a pork chop dinner, flea market and the usual rides, games and carnival food. During the day, the local sport leagues would get together and play baseball. There was a big parade. In one area, they had truck and tractor pulls and at night, there were fireworks. I remember this fair fondly. We stopped going when I was around 14 and would go camping instead.

It was during one of the last years we went that my incident happens. When I was 12 or 13, we decided to make an entire weekend of it. My parents drove the small RV they owned to my grandparents house so we could sleep in that instead of them having to drive home late at night with my 8 year old sister and myself just to get up and come back early the next day. This year the worst thing that could happen to a kid on the Fourth of July, happened to me. I got sick; I came down with the flu. No one believed me when I was telling them I wasn’t feeling good all day, they didn’t want to miss the fun. I don’t blame them either, I still wanted to go and I felt pretty bad.

Upon arriving, I took off with some money to join up with cousins of mine that lived there. We purchased tickets and got in line for this ride called The Salt and Pepper Shakers. It was basically two cars that spun in an opposite directions in a vertical circle. As we stood in line, this big nasty looking Carnie kept harassing the girls in line, especially the pretty ones, about them getting sick on the ride. Some of the girls got so nervous they actually stepped out of line. I’m not sure if it was what he was saying or if it was the way he smelled. It was one of the most horrid things I had smelt at that time in my life. I have since smelt much worse. It’s one of those smells that get stuck in your memory and you just can’t let it go. Back then I didn’t know what the smell was, today I can. He smelt like stale beer, cigarettes, sweat, urine, feces and sex.

Have you ever had a smell so bad that it is stuck in your nose for hours and no matter what you do, you can’t make it go away? Well, that was what happened to me. When it was my turn to get on the ride I was feeling worse then normal, but I didn’t want to ruin my fun. We were strapped in and the ride started. I was in the rear-facing car, luckily, when all hell broke loose. In the middle of the third loop, it hit me. I’m not sure if it was because of the flu, motion sickness, the smell of the guy stuck in my nose, the half pound of parade candy I had eaten, the guy talking about kids getting sick or all of the above.

From my mouth with enough force to spray through the protective cage came up everything I had eaten in the last 2 years of my life. Well it seemed like it was that much. Apparently, I had timed it just right too, when it flew out of the cage it showered the carnie in all of its foul gastric juice nastiness. Of course, there where other people hit, but the majority of it hit the carnie.

The ride was quickly stopped and we where taken off. The other people in line groaned, as they had to shut it down to clean it off. The carnie was swearing up and down at his much-needed shower. I swear it made him smell better! The most amusing part of it was that surprisingly little of my own vomit was on me. It spewed fourth so hard and with the motion of the car, only a little actually landed on my shoes.

My grandfather quickly took me home. I kept apologizing the whole way for my ruining the day. Grandpa was a great man and told me that it was okay, he was ready to go home for a nap anyways. I knew it wasn’t true, but it made me feel better. He would have spent the whole day watching the truck and tractor pulls.

The next day I didn’t go back to the carnival at all, I was bed ridden and didn’t feel up to it. When the next year came and we went back to the fair, my illogical kid mind was in fear that the same smelly carnie would be back and looking for me to get revenge. Even back then, I had heard stories of carnies. If he was there I never saw him, or I didn’t recognize him.

It was the worse Fourth of July I had ever had.

Am I Evil, Yes I am!

How evil are you?

I was over at Jenna Thomas-McKie's and she had this quiz. I haven't done a quiz in a while so I thought why not. I answered honestly thinking I would get "you are good with evil tendancies", not the above.

Funny or tactless... you decide.

A friend of mine’s roommate shared with me an idea he came up with a couple weeks ago. He wants to get a customized New Orleans Saints jersey. He doesn’t want to have his name put on it; in fact, he isn’t even a Saints fan. What he wants to do is have the name on the back be “Katrina” and the number to be “5”. The five is for category 5.

I’ll be honest and admit it does make me chuckle; there is something darkly amusing about that. Maybe it’s because one of my ways of dealing with things is to make jokes out of it, or maybe it’s just because I’m an asshole. Either way it did amuse me some.

So far I’ve shared this with about a dozen people getting a mixed reaction, I’m just curious what everyone else thinks. Is this funny or is it tactless? Or possibly tactlessly funny.

Real women love football...

…the rest can stay in the kitchen*.

This last weekend I took my wife, Ktreva, to see the Packer/Browns game. Yes, my team lost which sucks, but that is life. For all of the naysayers out there, remember the Packers started last season with a 1-4 record and ended up with a 10-6 and the division. There are 14 games left so don’t get too worked up yet.

On the way up, we made excellent time. We were behind this Semi averaging 80 MPH; we drafted most of the way to Green Bay behind him. It was nice. However, we lost him around Fon Du Lac. When we got to Oshkosh, we were stuck in traffic. The city is on both sides of Lake Butte Des Morts; however, the only bridge that crosses it is the highway. We hit Oshkosh right around 5:15 when everyone that worked on the south side of the lake was trying to get to their homes on the north side. It was insane. We went 10 miles in 30 minutes.

We spent Saturday buying Packer items, including mud flaps for my truck, clothes and Packer Lingerie for the wife… Its football and sex… how can you go wrong? We also went through the Packer Hall of Fame and took a tour of Lambeau Field. The tour was great because we were able to go out the tunnel the Packers run out of every home game. We were able to walk along the edge of the field itself, however we were specifically told to stay off the grass. I was a bad man. After weighing the possible penalties, I decided I had to take the risk. The only people around me where my wife and the tour guide and he seemed to be pre-occupied with the other members of our group; so, I reached down and touched the grass. He caught me and I just gave him a guilty look and was ready to be thrown out of the stadium. He just laughed and shook his head. Apparently some fan does it every tour group. To me I wasn’t sure if I would ever have the chance to be down there again. Being a life long Packer fan I had to do it!

My wife was great; she understood my little idiosyncrasies and played along with them. She also was excited at the whole Packer Experience. Being able to revel in the history and legends of one of the founding teams of the NFL AND the only team that has its original name. All of the others have either changed names and/or cities.

There were Cleveland Brown’s fans there of course. Even they seemed to enjoy the city and the stadium. The only complaint I heard from the Brown’s fans was; “Packer fans are way too nice.” That just goes to show you that Packer fans are the greatest and classiest fans on the face of the earth.

I ended up wearing jeans and a Jersey to the game. Five minutes before kickoff I was regretting not wearing shorts, it was hot! Well it was hot to me, I’m used to winter games. It was nice that we weren’t all cramped together. When you go to winter games, the seating is very cramped due to all the cold weather gear everyone wears.

On Sunday, during half time, the Packer’s retired Reggie White’s number 92. It was a nice ceremony. I’ll admit I got a little misty-eyed, especially when they unveiled his name and number on the ring of Fame at Lambeau. His was only the fifth number to be retired in Packer history. The others are Don Hutson’s 14, Tony Canadeo’s 3, Bart Starr’s 15 and Ray Nitschke’s 66. You may not be a Packer fan, but you can’t deny that Reggie was a class act and one of the greatest defensive players ever to play the game. It’s a shame that he was taken at such a young age from this world.

I pressed my luck again with speeding, and succeeded, I didn’t get a ticket. We were able to get out of the Stadium at the end of the game and back home by 9:30. I made sure to note the times because I’ve had people tell me that it isn’t possible to go to a 3:15 game in Lambeau and make it back to Rockford before 10 PM. Of course I averaged 10 MPH over, but aren’t speed limits more of a suggestion anyway?

* as seen on a T-shirt in Green Bay, WI

Due'nae make me keel haul ya, laddie!

It's national Talk Like A Pirate Day. That means today you can go out and annoy the people you work with by talking really funny and using innacurate terminology and, in most cases, a bad Scottish accent since people seem to think Pirates = Scottish, at least in my office.

What to wear?!

Every year for the last 12 years, I have gone to at least one Green Bay Packer game a season. Mostly in Green Bay at Lambeau field, sometimes in other stadiums. This year is different then all of the other years. For the first time ever I’m seeing a game played in September. Prior to this game, the earliest I had ever been to a Packer game was the second weekend in October, and I had luxury box seats.

They are calling for the weather to be in the 70’s with minimal chance of rain. When packing I realized that I was short on the warm weather clothes for the stadium. Since 90% of the games I’ve been to were in December, I have tons of clothes for cold weather! The thought of wearing shorts into a stadium kind of scares me. I’ve never been able to do that before this weekend. Something is inherently wrong with wearing shorts to a football game.

Where was Ben Stiller?

Tuesday night I was sitting in the house bored off my arse. Ktreva had the computer to play these stupid cheesy games she likes thus I was relinquished to the TV. To be Cliché, it’s amazing how with digital cable you can surf through 150+ channels and find nothing on… Except Tuesday night.

Tuesday when I hit channel 405, the Game Show Network, I found the most interesting show. EXTREME DODGEBALL! I kid you not; I spent an hour Tuesday night on the edge of my seat watching two teams of seven adults, the New York Bling and Denver Hurlers, playing dodgeball. I thought this was only in the movies, aka Dodgeball. I didn’t realize adults ACTUALLY played this game… for MONEY!

In the first quarter the Denver Hurlers lead by 12 points and kept a lead on the New York Bling all the way up to the last two minutes of the Fourth quarter when New York took the lead and the game, after slowly whittling away Denver’s lead through the second, third and fourth quarters.

This has to be the newest greatest sport! Possibly, even better then Football….

Okay, I over stepped the line there and I can’t keep this up. This was one of the most stupid things I’ve wasted my time watching. They even had celebrity captains on the teams, some boxing chic and a snowboarder. There were goofy rules for scoring points depending on which quarter it was. The players had some goofy nicknames and a couple wore makeup or costume accessories to their uniforms. They had this female “reporter” down on the field that looked like a crack whore they picked up off the streets, showered, put in a decent pair of jeans and a shirt, handed a microphone to and said, go pretend actually to care about this sport. It was tragic.

I don’t know what was worse, realizing that players where around my age or that these people where actually winning money to play this. Burger King was a sponsor, they even had the Burger King “Hit of the Game” or something like that. Their affiliation with this “sport” (read game… it’s not a sport) makes my want to not only have nothing to do with them again, but to also disavow their existence. Well this and all those commercials they have of the Burger King playing football… okay any commercial involving him.

Needless to say, I doubt I will go out of my way to watch this again. I think I would rather spend a night watching maggots grow in a dirty diaper.

Waiting for the intervention.

Football addiction has taken a turn for the worse. Help needed… quickly. Wife is an enabler. Last night I decided I needed to “play” football, unfortunately I didn’t have any football games. Today on lunch, I went out and bought an Xbox and Madden ’06. Between that and my going to Greenbay this weekend for the game, you probably won’t see much of me for the next couple of weeks.

The worst part is that Boopie has been asking me to buy him an Xbox for two years now, and I keep telling him he doesn't need one. He's going to be so mad when he sees it. That and the fact I've already decided that since I'm plugging it into the main TV of the house the only time he will get to play it is when A) I am not playing it. 2) My wife doesn't want to watch the TV. D) I don't want to watch the TV. That pretty much leaves at night when he is sleeping.

Happy Birthday Harvey!

Harvey of Bad Example is turning 39 on the 14th. His only request for his birthday was pictures of partial to fully naked boobies, titties, juberlies, jugs, gazangas, ta-tas, fun bags, dirty pillows, golden bozos female breasts.

Normally, I don't post pictures like that…. on this site. However, since Harvey was one of the three people to influence me to start a blog, I thought I would comply with his wishes. Plus I have met him in person and he is generally a good guy. Oh, and now that he is 39, TNT is going to trade him in for a younger model. That means he’s going to need something to keep him busy at night.

Here’s to you Harvey! Happy Birthday!

The picture is in the extended entry. To quote the birthday boy himself, “moderately safe for work, but difficult to explain."

UPDATE: Harvey has his official birthday post up.

My wife modeling the much talked about Cheese Bra!

GO PACK GO!

Dipping into Savings.

Shortly after I bought my truck gas prices really started taking a leap up. I didn't think anything about this as gas had been continually rising over the last couple of years. Right before Katrina hit I filled her up with gas one last time and haven't driven her as much as due to the high gas prices. Sure enough I stopped driving and the prices are now dropping. Maybe it's all my joy riding around in my truck that is causing the gas shortage and price hikes.

Well tomorrow I have to go fill her up. I've got about 1/8th of a tank left. Gas is down to $2.81 a gallon. This should only cost me around $100.00. I'm not complaining, I feel that it is my right to drive that truck around burning off fossil fuels just to make up for the annoyance of having to hear hippies whine about it.

Golden Rod...

...a color or title of a Pr0n movie?

Shorted rounds and Cleaning firearms.

It was a long weekend for me. I’m having issues at work, so last Friday I had the day off. A little “vacation” if you will. It was nice because I was able to stay out late Thursday night to catch the New England/Raiders game and not have to worry about getting up for work the next day. Ironically, I was up at the same time as if I was going to work due to my truck blocking my wife’s van in the driveway. Once I was up, I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

Friday was spent with me running around running some errands I’ve been putting off. I finally picked up my new modem as well as a package from a shooting supply house. On Sept 2nd I had ordered 100 .710 caliber and 100 .730 caliber round ball for my musket. I have a shoot on September 23, 24 and 25th here in Rockford. When I picked up the package, it only had the .710 round ball in it to my annoyance. When I got home I quickly fired off an e-mail to the supply house inquiring as to where the .730 round ball is and if it is on back order, why didn’t they bother to tell me that when I ordered it. I’m still waiting on their response. Unfortunately, I have limited places to order that caliber of round ball from or I would have ordered from somewhere else.

Friday night I finished making my bullet bag. I cheated a little and used one of nature’s natural creations as the base of the bag, a bull scrotum. That’s right my ball bag is a “ball bag”. I hand sewed a drawstring leather cap onto it and it was ready for use. Maybe later I’ll post a picture of it for you all to see. I thought I did a fine job on it.

Saturday it was time to dismantle my black powder firearms and give them a thorough cleaning. The locks on both my Blunderbuss and Brown Bess (musket) where rather rusty due to the high humidity. My Brown Bess needed a good cleaning since I do most of my black powder shooting with it and there was a lot of black powder residue stick in the hard to get to parts. The lock came apart with relative ease, however I ran into a snag putting it back together.

Last week Clone, being his curious self, got his hands on my Bess and knocked it over. Initially when I inspected it, I didn’t find anything wrong. While reattaching the frizzen spring it snapped. (For those of you that don't know, a Frizzen spring is what is used to hold the Frizzen closed on a flintlock. The Frizzen is the metal part that covers the pan that holds black powder in place. When the hammer comes forward, the flint strikes the frizzen causing a spark and flipping the frizzen open to ignite the powder.) Upon closer inspection, I could see this was not a stress fracture. When Clone knocked it over it must have landed just right and put a crack into it. It’s the only way to explain how it broke. Last October I had the main spring on my musket snap because of a weakness of the spring, the fractures look nothing alike. Stress fractures tend to be more smooth and straight where this one was jagged and crooked. That meant I had to order yet another part for my Bess. At least I know I will have the part by Friday at the latest.

Other then that incident everything went well. I was able to finish my cleaning with out a problem. Normally I do the cleaning the weekend or week before a re-enactment. Next weekend I’m heading to Green Bay for the Packer/Browns game, so I did it a weekend early. This saved me from having to discover the broken spring too late to be able to get a replacement part.

I hate Ahmad Carroll.

Just finished watching the most important game of this weekend…. And my team lost.

This sucks. The penalties killed us. Unless Ahmad Carroll starts to show improvement, he’s going to be the death of the Packers. He’s like Bawah Jue of the last couple of season. If he doesn't learn how to keep his hands out of recievers faces, he is going to bring enough penalties down on the Packers to cause even the Bears offense to look good.

At least it’s only the first week. There are 16 weeks left, 15 games to go. One loss does not eliminate a team this early on.

Damn our defense!

Unfortunately my Green Bay support person had surgery this week. (I hope he is doing well, no one has responded to my messages inquiring on his status) So I have no one to vent to. Then again, maybe I should contact a Bear fan; they can sympathize with me.

Pre-game check list.

Packer T-shirt…. Check
Packer hat…. Check
Whisky…. Check
Beer…. Check
Pop (aka Soda, aka Coke, but only if you are from the south because I’m not drinking coke)…. Check
Hot Wings…. Check
Snacks…. Check
Printouts of every pool/Fantasy team I’m in…. Check
Clip Board with pens and highlighters to make notes…. Check
Latest Packer Pro Shop and NFL Shop catalogs…. Check

This can only mean one thing: FOOTBALL TIME! OH YEAH!

Today is the first Sunday in football season. Thursday nights game between the Pats and the Raiders was very entertaining and helped cool my football fever, but it wasn’t enough to give me the fix that I needed. Mainly because neither team is in my division so the outcome of the game did not have a direct impact on my Packers.

Today is a different story; at noon CST my wife will become a football widow. This will last all the way until February. She doesn’t mind, as a football fan herself, she just doesn’t understand my deep love and infatuation of the game.

You will have to excuse me now while I go do my pre-game rituals.

The Season is Here!

Tonight at 8:00 PM CST NFL regular season starts. The reigning Super Bowl champs take on the troubled Oakland Raiders. Any team that has Randy Moss is going to be troubled.

I can barely contain my excitment. If it wasn't for the fact that I have a position that requires a certain level of dress, I'd be coming to work wearing my Jersey and all my football gear. As it is I am wearing Packer sox and underwear... not that any of you wanted to know that.

Birthday Wishes and Good luck!

Bou of Boudiccas Voice, my blog mama-sis, is celebrating her 20th birthday Version 21 today. Everyone should go over and wish her a happy birthday... and inquire what Jesus was like as a child. (hiding)

Also...

CalTechGirl of Not Exactly Rocket Science is requesting good luck wishes for an impending job interview today. As promised, I'm giving her both barrels of good luck... until kick off tonight, because I can't concentrate on anything except the game when football is on.

Football season extended?!

Some of you may not realize that a large chunk of my life revolves around football. From the first regular season game through the Pro-Bowl, I track my team and players. Whenever football is on TV, I generally want to watch it, unless it’s two teams I could care less about and the game has no impact on the Green Bay Packers.

Now my football season may be extended, much to the chagrin of my understanding wife. It seems that Rockford has picked up an Indoor Football League team called the Raptors. Today, with my wife’s permission, I looked into purchasing season tickets.

I know it’s only Indoor or “Arena” football… but once February hits I tend to get depressed and that is a long time from February to September. This would fill part of that gap. Plus indoor football is better then no football!

Now if I could only get my season tickets to the Packers! I’m only 1051 away!

What about the farmers?

On my drive to work every day I drive past cornfields. Every day I notice how short and sickly it looks compared to years past. The ears that have managed to form are small and under developed. The drought we are in is really taking a toll on the local agricultural industry. Some of the local media has run stories and interviewed multiple farmers regarding the status of the crop.

One of the farmers stated that the quality of the corn isn’t even good for silage and that he wasn’t sure if it was worth harvesting it from the field, with the price of gas being as high as it is. I knew it was bad, but not that bad. I figured they could at least use the corn for feed. I tried to find a link to this story; unfortunately, I was not able to find one. For you folks out there that don’t know what silage is, it’s fodder from plants converted into feed for livestock through a fermentation process in a silo. The farmers use this to supplement their livestock feed, especially in the winter months.

When the local farmers feel that it might be better off for them to let the crop rot in the field because they would go further in to debt just to harvest it, you know it’s got to be bad. They usually get some kind of return on it, but in the interview that I saw the farmer said in not so many words that harvesting this corn would be as smart as throwing money into a furnace. Even if they used the entire crop just as feed, at least they received something for it. Instead, they may have to purchase extra feed just to keep their livestock fed over the winter. Farmers make a living off their crops and livestock. If it isn’t worth it for them to pull the crops out of the field, what will they do? How are they going to pay their bills or provide for their families?

If the drought broke today and we received a good steady rain for the rest of the year, it’s too late to save this year’s corn crop. Maybe it isn’t as bad as that one report made it out to be, but looking at the cornfields I can’t help but to think it is. Growing up in Illinois and spending times on farms, I know what good healthy corn looks like. The corn crop in Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin cannot be described as “good or healthy”. Even the sweet corn you get at roadside stands and in stores are some of the sorriest I’ve seen in years.

Since I haven’t seen a lot on this issue, maybe I’m in the minority that is concerned about it. With harvest coming just around the corner I suspect we all will start to hear more regarding this issue, then again maybe not. It seems that unless something happens to a large urban area, the national media doesn’t cover it. For now, I’m just going to hope that the farmers in this part of the country fair better then I think they will.

Sausage fest... ewww.

Oddybobo, of Bobo Blogger, is out of town and has left us a nice little comment party going on. There is only one problem, no women are participating yet. What is up with that ladies? I'm ready with artillary filled with chocolate pudding AND a super soaker filled with massage oil. Get over there and show us what you've got!

(... uh I mean comment ways, really I did... I wouldn't lie to you. Not you baby, I would never lie to you. *looking innocent*)

P.S. The firemen are already there ladies!

Ms. September is here!

Over at the Spoon and Blade we have our latest Mortar Maiden ready to be reviewed. Go check out the delightfully delicious Davina Baillie.

Remember, you can't go wrong with girls and artillary... even if it is primitive artillary.

Sleep deprivation.

Sorry I’ve been away, it was a long weekend. Clone has decided he does not like to sleep anymore. It started Friday night, we would put him to bed and he’d just stand there and scream. He wanted to stay awake. It was Saturday that it started becoming a real problem. After deciding, he had enough of standing in his crib and screaming; he climbed out and walked to the top of the stairs to scream down to us.

We put up a child gate at his door, but that didn’t help. He was like Spiderman climbing right over it. It may have slowed him down by a fraction of a second. Around midnight he finally laid down to go to sleep, only to get up at 5:30 in the morning! Neither my wife nor I was ready to wake up and deal with the day that early. Especially since, it was a holiday weekend. We did the only thing we could, and brought him to bed with us in hopes he would go back to sleep, which he did.

On Sunday, Ktreva replaced the crib with a toddler bed we have. At least that way he won’t break his neck trying to get out of it. She also picked up a new “Harder to climb” child gate. When naptime came, we learned a couple of things. At least with the crib he thought twice about climbing out. Now he just gets up anytime he wants. As for the new gate… “Harder to Climb”, Bullshite! He looked like a gymnast jumping over a pommel horse.

Sunday night was the same thing, even though he didn’t really nap, he wouldn’t go to bed. We knew he was tired, but he did not want to go to sleep. If we laid him down, he would get up and break out of his room. Nothing would make this tired little boy lie down and sleep. In fact, he would turn on the TV to watch it! Again, on Sunday night he went to bed around midnight and was up around 6:00 on Monday morning.

My wife and I were tired, we hadn’t slept much because we kept waking up to make sure he didn’t climb out of bed, over the gate and try to navigate his way downstairs to the living room to play with his toys. When he woke up, again he was brought into our bed to sleep. Clone may have the vast majority of his traits from me; however, he does have one that is uniquely from his mother. He tosses and turns in his sleep like a whirlwind of knees and elbows. After laying there for a couple of hours, I just couldn’t take it anymore. Yes, I was tired, but I just could not sleep with that little Tasmanian devil in the bed.

Naptime comes and again a fight and not sleeping. Monday night bed time and again he is not sleeping! I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, when I came out of our room I could see a flickering light coming from his room. That little snot weasel had gotten up and turned the TV on again. He had attempted to make another break for it around 3:00 AM. Fortunately, my wife thwarted his attempt. We have yet another night of not sleeping.

This morning when the alarm went of at 5:30 AM, I was ready to kill the boy. I’m exhausted, my body does not want to climb out of bed, and I can’t even pretend to be in a decent mood. Of course, Clone is still sleeping… Therefore, we woke him up. Apparently, he was tired and didn’t want to. Go figure, and no we didn’t care. Maybe tonight he’ll sleep.

I don’t know if I can take much more of this.

They made me chuckle.

Since it is Friday on a holiday weekend, I thought I would start the day off with some amusing items I found this week on the internet.

First, we have an item that proves that computer geeks lack in neither imagination nor free time to be creative. This guy came up with his own animated video, using different formats, for Wang Chung’s “Everybody have fun tonight”. Go check out On The Cutting Room Floor of Oblivion. (You will have to click one of the two top links, depending on speed of internet access, to view the clip)

Next is for all of you job hunters out there. Over at Impact Lab, someone received one too many rejection letters. He came up with his a form rejection letter rejection letter. I know that sounds redundant, but if you read it, you’ll understand.

Finally, for all of you potential evil super criminals out there, I found a treatise on How to Destroy the World. This is a lengthy read, but rather amusing.

ZEN FOR THOSE WHO TAKE LIFE TOO SERIOUSLY

1. SAVE THE WHALES. COLLECT THE WHOLE SET.

2. A DAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE IS LIKE, NIGHT.

3. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU HAVE DIFFERENT FINGERS.

4. I JUST GOT LOST IN THOUGHT. IT WASN'T FAMILIAR TERRITORY.

5. 42.7 PERCENT OF ALL STATISTICS ARE MADE UP ON THE SPOT.

6. 99 PERCENT OF LAWYERS GIVE THE REST A BAD NAME.

7. I FEEL LIKE I'M DIAGONALLY PARKED IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE.

8. HONK IF YOU LOVE PEACE AND QUIET.

9 REMEMBER, HALF THE PEOPLE YOU KNOW ARE BELOW AVERAGE.

10. HE WHO LAUGHS LAST, THINKS SLOWEST.

11. DEPRESSION IS MERELY ANGER WITHOUT ENTHUSIASM.

12. THE EARLY BIRD MAY GET THE WORM, BUT THE SECOND MOUSE GETS THE CHEESE.

13. I DRIVE WAY TOO FAST TO WORRY ABOUT CHOLESTEROL.

14. SUPPORT BACTERIA. THEY'RE THE ONLY CULTURE SOME PEOPLE HAVE.

15. MONDAY IS AN AWFUL WAY TO SPEND 1/7 OF YOUR WEEK.

16. A CLEAR CONSCIENCE IS USUALLY THE SIGN OF A BAD MEMORY.

17. CHANGE IS INEVITABLE, EXCEPT FROM VENDING MACHINES

18. GET A NEW CAR FOR YOUR SPOUSE. IT'LL BE A GREAT TRADE!

19. PLAN TO BE SPONTANEOUS TOMORROW.

20. ALWAYS TRY TO BE MODEST, AND BE PROUD OF IT!

21. IF YOU THINK NOBODY CARES, TRY MISSING A COUPLE OF PAYMENTS.

22. HOW MANY OF YOU BELIEVE IN PSYCHO-KINESIS? RAISE MY HAND.

23. OK, SO WHAT'S THE SPEED OF DARK?

24. HOW DO YOU TELL WHEN YOU'RE OUT OF INVISIBLE INK?

25. IF EVERYTHING SEEMS TO BE GOING WELL, YOU HAVE OBVIOUSLY OVERLOOKED SOMETHING.

26. WHEN EVERYTHING IS COMING YOUR WAY, YOU'RE IN THE WRONG LANE.

27. HARD WORK PAYS OFF IN THE FUTURE. LAZINESS PAYS OFF NOW.

28. EVERYONE HAS A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. SOME JUST DO NOT HAVE FILM.

29. IF BARBIE IS SO POPULAR, WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BUY HER FRIENDS?

30. HOW MUCH DEEPER WOULD THE OCEAN BE WITHOUT SPONGES?

31. EAGLES MAY SOAR, BUT WEASELS DO NOT GET SUCKED INTO JET ENGINES.

32. WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU GET SCARED HALF TO DEATH TWICE?

33. I USED TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND BUT MY BRAINS KEPT FALLING OUT.

34. I COULDN'T REPAIR YOUR BRAKES, SO I MADE YOUR HORN LOUDER.

35. WHY DO PSYCHICS HAVE TO ASK YOU FOR YOUR NAME?

36. INSIDE EVERY OLDER PERSON IS A YOUNGER PERSON WONDERING WHAT HAPPENED

37. JUST REMEMBER - IF THE WORLD DID NOT SUCK, WE WOULD ALL FALL OFF.

38. LIGHT TRAVELS FASTER THAN SOUND, WHICH IS WHY SOME PEOPLE APPEAR BRIGHT UNTIL YOU HEAR THEM SPEAK.

Pilfered from an e-mail sent to me.

Confrontation in a parking lot.

A very strange incident happened to me on Tuesday. That was the day Clone was sick and I had to stay home to take care of him. We ended up going to the grocery store to pick up some items to help him… Tylenol, Gatorade (He hates Pedialyte), milk, etc. The whole trip to the store went just fine, it wasn’t until we left that I had an issue.

I was putting Clone into his car seat in the truck. My cartful of items that I just purchased was right next to me. Just as I started belting Clone in, this old guy walks up and starts to take my cart. I grabbed it and the following conversation occurred.

Me, “Excuse me, that’s my cart. I’m not finished with it yet.”

Old guy, “This is my cart, you took it!”

Me, “ No, that is my cart. I just bought those items in the store.”

Old guy, “You took my cart! This is my stuff.”

Me, “If you look in the cart you will see it is definitely not your stuff, I’m not thinking that at your age you will be needing Children’s Tylenol.”

Old Guy, (not even looking in the cart) “I didn’t buy any Children’s Tylenol!”

As I could feel my temper starting to get the best of me, I was getting ready to whip out my wallet and show him the receipt for the items. Just then a young guy comes walking up. When I say younger, I mean younger then the old guy. Then again, from the looks of the old guy, he probably played with Jesus as a child, so just about anyone was younger then him. The new guy the came over was about my age. At first, I thought this guy was going to start giving me crap for, “stealing from an old man”. Then he says to the old guy, “Grandpa, this is not your cart. This cart belongs to this gentleman.”

He then turns to me and says, “I’m so sorry. My grandfather has senior dementia and gets confused easily. I was just putting our groceries in the car when he wandered off. He’s didn’t mean any harm. He just thought this was his cart.” The old guy apologized and looked confused.

Everything made sense at that point. I told the younger guy it was no problems and told the old guy there were no hard feelings. To help ease his ego I added an, “Don’t worry about it; it’s an easy mistake to make. I’m sure it happens all the time to everyone.”

My grandmother on my father’s side had Alzheimer’s and Senior Dementia. It wasn’t difficult for me to understand the guy’s predicament. Whom I really feel bad for is the grandson. It’s only going to get worse. I saw my grandmother for the last time when I was about 14. She didn’t die until I was 22. She lived about 8 hours away where most of the rest of my Father’s family lived. We would go up there at least twice a year to visit my relatives, but I refused to go with to see grandma. It’s not that I didn’t love her, it was because of what happened the last time I saw her.

She was in the nursing home and we walked into her room. As soon as she saw me, she started yelling and screaming about how I had left her there and why would I do that to her. It didn’t take long for everyone in the room (My parents, two aunts and uncles and my younger sister) to realize she thought I was my father. She started calling me by his name, even though he was standing right next to me. She said something like, “If you really cared about me, you wouldn’t have let your brother put me in here.”

It was a horrible visage of a woman that I always remembered as being kind and caring. After we left, I made my parents promise never to make me go visit her again. That was not how I wanted to remember my grandmother. Unfortunately that is the last, but not strongest, memory that I have of her.

I just hope something like that doesn’t happen to this grandson.