A drunk underage Irish teen in Boston? Come on!
This sounds like a hoax!
July 4th, 2011The Minnesota State Bird
September 13th, 2010Wow! I just saw a Minnesota loon! Riding a bike at 9PM on a dark night, no lights, no reflectors, dark clothes, going down our unlit hill in the center of the road at high speed with his left hand on the handlebars and his right holding a cell phone to his ear and carrying on a conversation.
My Diet Tools
December 29th, 2009UPDATED August 2011: I fixed the links for the blender to go to the revised model.
These are the things which have helped me to lose 30-35 lbs. in 2009.
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Walking our Labradoodle, Layla, is what got me started losing weight and getting fit back in June. After a few months, I was down 10 pounds and in much better shape. Dog-walking has turned out to be excellent for weight loss because you HAVE to do it every day. No escaping the fact that even in the lousiest weather, the dog would like to go around at least one block, if not more. It helps that with Layla and Chewie, the standard poodle we bought as Layla’s companion in October, the dogs are so strong that they pull me along! (I now understand how just a few huskies can haul a sled, a person and hundreds of pounds of gear.)
I bought an Escali scale because it was guaranteed to be accurate even for large people. Most bathroom scales get wildly inaccurate if you go much higher than the upper 200s. This one was guaranteed even above 400 lbs (way beyond what I weighed), and it measures your body fat and your fluids. I love it and highly recommend it.
I then joined Weight Watchers for the first time in my life. I wish I had done that a decade ago. The digital scale, books with point values for food, pocket points calculator and daily food journals have helped me gain control of my over-eating. (The pedometer, not shown, gives me the value of points I’ve earned in fitness each day.) A membership to Weight Watchers pays for itself, since you save the $10/week just in groceries that you’re not eating! Most of the W.W. merchandise is a lot cheaper if you’re a W.W. member and purchase it through the organization.
Finally, my early Christmas present: The Oster Counterforms 2-in-1 blender
This blender had stellar reviews, and when I got mine I found out that they had improved it beyond how it was described on Amazon. It’s a 1000 WATT BLENDER! 1000 WATTS, not 600! All I do is add my smoothie ingredients and hit “frozen drink”; the blender then takes over, alternating the speed and direction until it’s well-mixed.
Here’s a trick I learned: Take the Weight Watchers chocolate smoothie mix, which costs less than a dollar. Add a cup of water (or milk) and then throw in 6-10 ice cubes (depending on their size). With the addition of the ice cubes, the end result is a smoothie that is indistinguishable from a Wendy’s Frosty…and it’s only 1 Weight Watchers point (or 3, with milk)! Let me tell you: A Frosty from Wendy’s is NOT a single point! You can throw in other flavors in small doses. Frozen slices of banana disappear into the chocolate smoothie; you can’t really taste them, they thicken the smoothie and you get a bit of fruit for the day.
Click my link and get that blender!
Gutless SNL passes up comedy gold for pandering
October 7th, 2009SNL finally does a skit that’s in even the mildest way critical of Barack Obama, and CNN thinks it needs to be fact-checked for maligning the President. And it’s not as if Saturday Night Live was especially devastating; it attacks Obama for not being successful at implementing left-wing strategies.
Here’s what really bugs me about SNL: They’re missing comedy gold. I believe that SNL should judiciously mock every politician, and in the past they’ve managed to do so even when given a whole herd of Democratic and Republican candidates to lampoon. 1988 and 1991-2 were great seasons for that, with Ackroyd doing Dole (“George, how would you like this pen stuck right in your neck?”), Franken playing Pat Robertson, and an entire array of Democrats giving reasons they did not want to go up against Bush (riding high on the Gulf War at the time).
Kiefer Sutherland’s “I’m old…and I’m only going to get older” and Phil Hartman as Mario Cuomo saying “I. Have. Mob. Ties!” still make me chuckle.
Last year’s SNL was pathetic. All they can find to do with Obama is jokes about how he is so awesome that they can’t understand why we’re even having an election? Obama seems an excellent source of material, so long as you’re 1) not pulling your punches against the black candidate and 2) not in the bag for the left-winger because you love his policies. Any fair impression of him would have “uh… uh… uh…” interjected constantly when speaking off the cuff, and beautiful speeches when looking at a teleprompter. This isn’t even touching on his policies, total lack of experience, constant campaigning, etc. etc. etc.
This spring, when he was flying around the world kissing the butts of dictators and apologizing for everything America has ever done while spurning our allies and handing out crummy gifts, I kept waiting for the awesome SNL skit that would result. Something like this:
AIDE: Mr. President, may I present the President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev.
DMITRY: Hello, Mr. President. I would like to give you one of Russia’s greatest treasures: one of the original Faberge eggs.
OBAMA: Oh, wow. That is amazing craftsmanship. Thank you very much. I don’t know if you heard…I got in trouble recently for some of the gifts I gave out.
DMITRY: Yes, the iPod for the Queen of England…
OBAMA: Right, right.
DMITRY: And it’s filled with all of your speeches…
OBAMA: Right, yes. And so…
DMITRY: And then you gave England back that bust of Winston Churchill because you didn’t want it cluttering up your Oval Office.
OBAMA: Well, that was a mista–
DMITRY: Or that collection of DVDs? DVDS? You think the Prime Minister of Great Britain hasn’t seen The Wizard of Oz?
OBAMA: I know, I know.
DMITRY: They don’t even play in European DVD players!
OBAMA: Dmitry, all I can say is that I learned my lesson. You know, I tried, I made a mistake. This time, I’m doing it right. Here’s a $40 gift card to Hollywood Video so you can pick out the movies you’ll like. Plus, to start you off, here are a few of my personal favorites.
DMITRY: Uh…Mr. President…even if I wanted to watch, uh, “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”…or uh, “Problem Child 3″… these aren’t going to play in my DVD player. (He is escorted out.) Wait, this one’s all scratched. What does “Previously Viewed” mean?
AIDE: Mr. President, the ambassador from Great Britain.
BRITISH AMBASSADOR: On behalf of Her Majesty and our Prime Minister, we would like you to have this.
OBAMA: (Opening the package.) It’s a… pen?
BRITISH AMBASSADOR: That is the pen with which the treaty of Ghent was signed ending hostilities between our countries after the War of 1812, and thus beginning the new phase of friendship that has endured ever since. It has been preserved in the London Museum of History for almost 200 years, and now we hand it over to you.
OBAMA: Uh… No, that’s fine. Okay. Well, for you we have an American delicacy. Rice-a-Roni. Ever been to San Francisco? They invented it there, so there you go. That’s something for you to take home and share with the other, uh, Brits. British people. English people.
BRITISH AMBASSADOR: I… thank you, Mr. President. Sure, I’ll try some Rice-a-Roni.
OBAMA: Oh, it’s not made up. You have to supply the butter. It’s in this box. See, it’s rice…and (reads the box) uh, uh, vermicelli, uh, and it’s mixed up in this box with like some seasonings…
BRITISH AMBASSADOR: I KNOW WHAT RICE-A-RONI IS! We see it on your American game shows all the time! Honestly, we give you an historic item of international significance and, and, like Don Pardo, you just give us a year’s supply of Rice-A-Roni?
OBAMA: I didn’t say anything about a year’s supply. A box, you get one box. It’s a year’s supply if you take very small bites and have some good Tupperware.
BRITISH AMBASSADOR: This is an outrage. Give me back the pen!
OBAMA: Where’s… does… hey, does someone have the… we don’t have the pen.
BRITISH AMBASSADOR: What do you mean, you don’t have the pen?
OBAMA: I think I gave it back to you already.
BRITISH AMBASSADOR: Of course you didn’t!
OBAMA: Well, I don’t know. It’s a pen. You know how it is with pens. Now, if you wouldn’t mind?
(The ambassador leaves in a huff.)
AIDE: Mr. President, may I present Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
HAMID: Thank you, Mr. President. As a token of our esteem for the sacrifices which your troops have made for our freedom, the nation of Afghanistan would like to give to you this twenty foot statue which you can see from this window. Called “The Purple Fingers of Freedom”, it was crafted by our finest metalworkers from the remains of Taliban rocket launchers. Please accept it with our blessings and our endless, undying gratitude.
OBAMA: (sniffs) Thank you. I’m sure we can find a storage space for it somewhere. And for you we have this…
HAMID: A package of Twinkies?
OBAMA: Well, one Twinkie.
AIDE: Next. The Ambassador from Australia.
AUSTRALIAN AMBASSADOR: G’day Mr. President. We found this rifle owned by a private collector. This is the rifle that killed Crispus Attucks and sparked the war that led to your independence. We present it to you.
OBAMA: Thank you. (Aide whispers in his ear.) Before the Secret Service has a word with you about the wisdom of bringing a rifle used to kill a black man into the White House, I’d just like to give you this Shamwow.
AIDE: The new Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
NETANYAHU: Mr. Presid–
OBAMA: Let’s keep this quick.
NETANYAHU: Oh. Uh, well, here. This is a gift from one free, demo-
OBAMA: Hey, it’s a watch. (Slips it into his pocket.)
NETANYAHU: Actually, that watch belonge-
OBAMA: And here’s an iPod Shuffle with the audio versions of my two books. Bye. How we doing on time?
AIDE: We need to speed things up for your speech.
OBAMA: Just keep them coming, pop pop pop.
AIDE: The Prime Minister of Lithuania.
PM: A bottle of our finest wine that won the gold medal in 1938.
OBAMA: Here’s a bag of Oreos. Sorry it was opened.
AIDE: King of Spain.
KING OF SPAIN: Sword carried by Christopher Columbus.
OBAMA: Sweater I wore in college.
AIDE: The King of Canada, I think.
“KING”: A newly-discovered Edgar Allen Poe manuscript.
OBAMA: “Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders” for DOS on 3.5 floppy disks.
AIDE: Ambassador from Poland.
POLISH AMBASSADOR: Screen door from our first submarine. I’m kidding. It’s a Van Gogh painting we found in a Nazi mansion.
OBAMA: Here. Temporary tattoos of the Powerpuff Girls.
AIDE: French Ambassador.
FRENCH AMBASSADOR: A working time machine.
OBAMA: Complete works of Tracey Chapman. Got it off of Limewire. Just copy it off the jump drive and give it back.
BRITISH AMBASSADOR: Are you sure you…
OBAMA: We don’t have your pen!
AIDE: Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
OBAMA: Oh wow. This is a real honor and a pleasure to have you here. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you could make it. Just…wow.
AHMADINEJAD: I didn’t know I was supposed to bring anything. No one told me. I mean, no one ever invited me to anything before.
OBAMA: Please, forget about it. You’re our guest. For you, though, I have a real treat. It’s an advance copy of my new book, “101 Reasons That America Sucks.”
AHMADINEJAD: Didn’t Howard Zinn already write that? Hahahahahaha!
OBAMA: Hahahahahaha! Well, please, have a seat. You’ll be at my table. No preconditions! Hahaaa!
AHMADINEJAD: Oh, Mr. President! Ha!
AIDE: Ambassador from New Zealand.
NZ AMBASSADOR: The Lord of the Rings box set.
OBAMA: Whoa. That’s kind of a lame gift. What, did you just hit the gift shop at the airport? That’s so rude. I almost think you don’t deserve this snowglobe of the White House.
The Adventure of The Dental Mouthpiece
August 6th, 2009Several years ago, my old dentist pointed out that I had ground my incisors flat. Where most people have nice protruding incisors, mine are even with the height of the rest of the teeth. I had never realized this. What’s worse, no dentist had ever pointed this out before. Years and years of check-ups, and every time the dentist would tell me that I had great teeth and I was taking care of them so well. Suddenly, my incisors are just dulled flat forever and no dentist ever saw this coming? I asked him how this happened.
The dentist said it was due to my grinding my teeth. In a bizarrely accusing manner, he asked, “Why are you grinding your teeth?” In his mind, I must have planned all this in order to annoy him. Yes, I admit it, every day I take a leisurely stroll down to Silver Lake Park where I take great delight as I merrily grind my teeth for hours on end. “This will teach that stupid dentist! I will do whatever I want with my teeth!” I say between protracted sessions of rolling my mollars together. What a yutz this guy is.
Obviously, I wasn’t aware I was doing it. It’s probably happening when I sleep. Ah well, it’s too late to save my teeth now. They’re ground flat.
Later, I switched to a dental office that wasn’t in a double-wide trailer. (Don’t ask. It was Melinda’s old dentist.) Zumbro View Dental is a wonderful dentist’s office, and my dentist Dr. Bhuttar pointed out that I was probably still grinding my teeth and the damage would continue unless I got a mouthpiece to guard against it. One fitting and $700 later, I have this plastic mold that is custom-fit to my teeth.
Every night, I take it out of my toothbrush drawer, stick it in my pocket, go back to the bedroom to change into pajamas, plop the mouthpiece on over my lower teeth and sleep knowing that my nighttime self is not screwing my mouth up for the rest of my life. In the morning, I take it off, brush it clean while brushing my teeth, and put it in the drawer.
And some mornings…I wake up to find I forgot to put it in and it’s still in the pocket of my pants. Sometimes I don’t even realize this until I don the pants again and find the mouthpiece in the pocket. (I change clothes after work and sometimes I’ve only worn the pants for a few hours, so they can be worn again the next day.)
This happened a few weeks ago. One day in mid-July, I found the mouth guard in my pocket as I was racing off to go shopping. Paranoid about hauling around this $700 item, I kept feeling for it to make sure it was in my pocket. I went shopping at Target, bought mulch at SuperAmerica and loaded it into the back of the Saturn Vue, gassed up at the Sinclair station, went home and unloaded the Vue, hauling mulch out to our landscaped back yard and dumping it, and then turned in for the night.
No mouth guard. Undoubtedly, it had caught in my keys or some other pocket item and fallen out. I retraced my steps. Called SuperAmerica and Sinclair. Searched the house, the back yard and the landscaped corner, digging through the mulch. No mouth guard.
The only bright spot is that I have ample money in my dental account to pay for another, but it irks me to do so because of my own stupidity.
Last week, Dr. Bhuttar made a cast of my mouth again. (You can’t use the old molds, as they deform over time.) I wrote out another $700 check. Today, Thursday, August 6th, I went in on my lunch hour to pick it up. It doesn’t fit as comfortably as the last one, but they’ll adjust it if they need to next week. I brought it home and set it on the counter.
Melinda and I are Christians, although I think our true faith is in Murphy’s Law. She pointed out that it is only now that I’ve paid for a new mouth guard and had it manufactured that the old one will turn up. We laughed.
However, I am sure that’s going to happen sometime. I’ll be out rotating the wood chips and there it will be on top of the landscaping fabric. Or it will be found in the lawn when I run over it with the mower.
I brought home my new mouth guard at 1PM. At 11PM, Melinda entered the office and said that she’d nearly had a heart attack.
She showed me my new case, which I’d left out on the counter. I smiled, knowing what happened. She had found it on the counter and thought she had found the old one sitting out in the open.
Then she extended her other hand. There on her palm, no carry case, a tiny piece of the corner broken off… is my old mouth guard. Not even half a day after I brought the new one home.
She’d been out watering the lawn. Seeing the chip, I immediately knew what happened. “I ran over it with the lawn mower?”
Melinda shook her head.
“Layla was chewing on it!”
That dang dog has been chewing on it like a toy for weeks! Layla the labradoodle has only been in our home for less than two months, and I’m still too new a dog owner to even jump to that conclusion for a missing item.
FYI: Open air services for the First Church of Murphy’s Law are at 9 on Sundays when it is sunny out.
Down 10 pounds!
July 24th, 2009Rats, I can’t seem to get this embed to work. Oh well, follow the link to my page!
Piano we’re giving away
May 20th, 2009When we moved into our house in 2001, this piano was in the basement. We really need the storage space, so we’re giving it away to anyone who will move it themselves.
We’ll have to saw off the old rusty railing on our steps just to get it out the door, but we were replacing it anyway.
Maggie Simpson speaks… and says WHAT?
May 10th, 2009Tonight’s episode of “The Simpsons” was about four stories of women in literature. Usually, these “three stories” episodes are mediocre at best. I think they started doing these right around the time that I fell out of love with the show. I used to watch the show religiously. Now, I find it boring at best and offensive more often than not. Not coincidentally, the show got more pedantic around a year into the Bush administration. Not ravingly mean like “Family Guy”, but pedantic. I don’t even watch the show unless it’s because I’ve turned on Fox in advance of “King of the Hill” coming on.
(An aside: I consider the jump the shark moment to be the episode where Lisa converts to Buddhism. It’s unfunny and seems like little more than a commercial for Buddhism. Contrast it with the hilarious episode where Lisa becomes a vegetarian: the message doesn’t sacrifice humor, and even with vegetarian guest stars it holds out the possibility that Lisa is in error.)
In tonight’s episode, Lisa tells a story about Snow White with herself as Snow White, and she is cured from her poisoning by a female doctor because she should not have to rely on a man. (Like I said: pedantic.) Marge tells the story of Macbeth…or rather, of her trying to get Homer cast as Macbeth in a play. I missed the third story. Finally, as they are wrapping things up, Maggie tugs on Marge and holds up her story: Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. Lisa moans, “Aww, isn’t that the book read by right-wing losers?” I suppose that’s funny. We’re then treated to a fourth story where Maggie is using building blocks to fashion amazing buildings in a day care center that punishes her for not being mediocre like the rest of the children. The baby is finally put on trial, and delivers an Ayn Rand speech. That’s right, Maggie speaks in the imaginary story, with the help of Jodie Foster.
Granted, this is an imaginary story that is out of continuity, but it would be funny if Maggie was actually as right-wing as her older sister is left-wing. I’m sick of the only conservatives in Springfield being the villainous Mr. Burns, the insane Rich Texan, the murderous Sideshow Bob Terwilliger, Dracula and Dr. Julius Hibbert.
Why Barack Obama should not be antagonizing Israel
April 22nd, 2009The President apparently needs more Jewish friends if this is somehow news to him. Roger Simon:
…But wait. This is not the good part. The good part is what President Obama said next. The good part is one of the examples the president gave of the innovative, new-wave, cutting-edge, sharp-as-a-tack, out-of-the-box thinking that one member of his Cabinet has already come up with.
“Janet Napolitano at the Department of Homeland Security estimates that they can save up to $52 million over five years just by purchasing office supplies in bulk,” the president said proudly.
To which I say: You mean the U.S. government DOES NOT CURRENTLY BUY ITS OFFICE SUPPLIES IN BULK?
My co-worker Terry points out that there’s probably some stupid rule preventing the ordering of bulk supplies.
Live by the teleprompter; die by the teleprompter
March 18th, 2009The Irish PM reads Obama’s speech, and Obama thanks himself because that’s what it said on the teleprompter.
John Romano’s right: if this was George W. Bush, the video would be everywhere already.
