You've probably gotten an email at least once in the past 8 years entitled "The Budweiser Story". As has become her habit in the past couple years, my grandmother forwarded it to me yesterday after having received it from another of her friends, pretty much without having read it beforehand. As I do with most of the things she forwards to me, I deleted it without reading it. However, my sister later replied to grandma, indicating that she didn't like the content of the story.

So I went ahead and read it, and afterward decided to send the following message to everyone I could see in the thread who had forwarded it down the line (only 9 people) -- none of whom I know personally. I considered sending it to everyone to whom it had been forwarded, but I'd like to think of them as innocent bystanders in the whole mess.

I'm interested to see what kind of responses I get.

( My letter to strangers ... )

I posted my review of Alan Moore's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier" a few weeks ago, over on Facebook. (For those of you unfamiliar with Moore, he's the extremely talented comic writer who is famous for hating or ignoring every film adaptation of his comics -- "Watchmen" & "From Hell" among them.) My comment was that he had gone completely off the rails; it appeared to me that before writing it he had simply randomly chosen locations from the "Dictionary of Imaginary Places" soon after attending a polyamory seminar.

So the Wife just finished reading it, and here's what she had to say: "I'm working on a theory that Alan Moore's fans have sucked all his common sense out through his dick."

This was my review on meetup.com of the "Easter Eggstravaganza!" event we attended on Saturday, which was advertised as having 1/4-million easter eggs.

"Wow. Overcrowded, poorly organized, with ridiculously unmarked and unsupervised parking. I suppose I should have expected it from a free event, but the lines for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING were amusement-park long with very little in the way of satisfactory payoff. The toddler egg hunts were fine, but the older kid ones were essentially rude, sanctioned stampedes where children and adults trampled each other mercilessly. Maybe my standards are too high, but I saw very little in the way of polite or charitable behavior from anyone of any age, including the organizers and volunteers."

Here's where I think they went wrong: brand-new bicycles as raffle prizes.  And the raffles were free!  Sorry, but if you need a mountain bike as a bribe in order to spread the Word, you're doing something wrong.

It blows.





That is all.

It blows.





That is all.

The Daughter is in town. This is a big deal because the last time she was here I essentially kicked her out of my house.  That's not the whole story obviously, and there were extenuating circumstances, but that's what I feel like I did, and that's what it felt like to her.

Anyway, she wouldn't be here right now if not for the sad circumstance of my grandmother's passing last Friday.  So in an odd way I have to thank grandma for kicking the bucket and giving us another chance to try and be father and daughter instead of long-distance ... whatever.

*sigh*

Sometimes I hate being The Man, because I'd really rather be Atticus Finch. Fictional characters have answers for everything.

BIRTHDAY CHECKLIST

Neglect to make certain son took ADHD meds before school
Eat bacon & cheddar potato wedges for breakfast
Nap
Forget to notify email host about credit card cancellation
Go swimming
Watch series finale of BSG
Watch grandma die

The Man:  Thanks, stupid livejournal!

The Wife:  Why?

The Man:  Because it just sent me an email telling me themanabides' birthday's coming up on Friday.

The Wife [to the Younger Son]:  What should we get themanabides for his birthday, son? Say "pussy".

The Younger Son:  No, I don't like those.

The Wife:  [spit take]

I really, really enjoyed this one.  Enough that I did it twice.

( There be meme here! )

Got this from a blog by my Renaissance Faire sister, Artemis Rich. Pay attention.

---

This is a fun survey, but also an activist survey. Please repost this to your email list, blog it or use it in a group setting. Have fun with it but also let the point be made.

( Read more... )

Wonderful. Not just my county, but specifically my city, was mentioned in this segment:

NPR: Home Prices Hit California County's Tax Base

The selfish Californians of 30 years ago have my continuing thanks for Proposition 13, which fucked my educational funding, fucked my children's education funding, and is now fucking my county's prospects of serving the underprivileged for the next several years.

While messaging with a Friend of mine tonight, I came to a realization -- yet another in the long list classified as "You're Not Immortal".  Let me take you back ...

( Wherein I wax reminiscent. )

About three or four years ago, we got a free couch from a co-worker's dad.  Our previous hand-me-down had become lopsided from a relentlessly bouncy child -- not to mention an overweight Man -- so the timing of the availability of said new[er] couch couldn't have been more serendipitous.  Actually getting the thing into our house was a journey of Odyssean proportions that involved borrowing a pickup truck, hundreds of miles of driving, threats of stormy weather and the complete removal of the front windows from our living room.

But, oh, such a couch!  Soft and cushiony, with a fold-down center console that contained not only cup holders, but a speaker phone as well.  Each end reclined AND had built-in massaging vibrations.  So what if the brownish-gray, faux leather upholstery was a bit worn?  This was the King of Couches!  As it turns out, we never did take advantage of the phone or massagers.  The couch was too far away from a phone jack, and the vibrations were more annoying than pleasurable or relaxing.  It sure was nice, though, to put our feet up on a lazy Friday night for a movie or the Sci-Fi Channel lineup, laying back comfortably as the Wife knitted and I drank a beer.

(If you are reading this and are a parent or a pet owner, by now you've already heard the other shoe drop.)

Unfortunately, within about a year the couch had begun to show significant signs of wear, such as screws occasionally, inexplicably falling out of the undersides of the foot rests.  By this evening, it was in an extremely sorry state.  Large areas of the upholstery were worn down to the underweave, many of the seams torn and resewn with my heavy-handed stitches.  Because of its construction, things that had fallen down under the seating required a Cirque du Soleil-level contortionist's skills to retrieve -- or just declaring them lost.  Stains from countless spills, colored markers and crayons made the original color impossible to recall.  And just this morning a 3-inch rip appeared out of nowhere near the center of the seating area.

The last straw to which this story's title alludes was at about 8:30 tonight, when the Younger Son spilled (or purposefully poured?) an entire bottle of Power Ade (never mind where he got it) onto -- and into -- one end of the couch.  We spent about 5 minutes fooling ourselves into thinking we could salvage this sinking ship, but finally resigned ourselves to a Craig's List search after I lifted it up and disgusting blue electrolytes poured down and out of the other end.  Considering (a) how difficult life has become recently and (b) the fact that the couch had always taken up a huge amount of floor space, I decided that tomorrow's big project while watching the inauguration will be to dismantle the monstrosity and get it the hell out of our lives.  I will likely take pictures.

Problem.  Solution.  That is all.

Watching CNN while at the gym earlier, I was amused by the crappy closed-captioning.  The story in question was about murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and the anchor had said at the beginning of the piece that it contained "language that may be offensive to some viewers."

As a woman quoted harrassing remarks that included the notorious N-word, here's what the captioning said:

"You knitters move on, now."

The old Banana Republic.  The real Banana Republic.  You know, the one that made travel and safari clothing you could count on to last forever?  You know, the one I got shoes from in 1986 that still fit and haven't fallen apart?

You know, the one that didn't suck?

I'm sure this is a long-dead meme from before the Big Bang, but as I've only recently converted from blogging Luddite, I'll pretend that I made it up.

My phrase in English: "I am the mayor of Cranky Town."
Translated into Spanish: "Soy el alcalde de la ciudad irritable."
Translated into French: "Je suis le maire de la ville irritable."
Translated into Greek: "Είμαι ο δήμαρχος της οξύθυμης πόλης."
Translated into English: "I am the mayor of [oxythymis] city."

Hooray for Telephone 2.0!

I was a truly crap student from 7th through 10th grade.  Bored out of my mind, probably with low-level, undiagnosed ADD, I was a clown, procrastinator and chronic masturbator (though not in class, thank goodness).  I cut 2 or 3 straight weeks of school during 7th grade and still managed to pass, but the crowning glory, my lowest of the low, came during my 8th grade social science class.

My final report was called "Life of the Apache", and it was the worst piece of teenage-produced academic trash I've ever seen (with the possible exception of the Koala Report -- the Sister can post a link).  We were required to include various key pieces of information about our chosen Native American tribe, such as Weapons, Food, Homes, etc.  Although the overall report is impressive for 15 pages thrown together the day before it was due, the Religion and Conclusion sections are really where I proved just how much of a wienie asshat I was.  I have left the spelling and grammar exactly as they were, but added italics for emphasis of true brilliance:

"There is no real name for the religion of the Apaches and, through research, I have come to the conclusion that it is to complex to include in my report. Though I will tell you that some Apaches took christianity as their religion."

When I read that passage out loud to the Wife tonight after having found the report in my garage scrapbox, she looked at me incredulously.  Here's the part that made her tell me she wanted to hit me:

"I think I have learned a lot about the Apaches but I am disappointed at myself. If I had started my research sooner, I could have done a much better report. But as it is, this is my report, and it's not the best. If you, the reader, ever has to read one of my reports again, I will try to make it better."

I should have been a fucking journalist, man.  That certainly could have passed muster at any of our local community weeklies.  Or USA Today.

Starting with the sad hilarity first, spied in my neighborhood.  Talk about turning the other cheek:



( More photos behind the cut. )

Given the current crisis between Israel and Gaza, I thought this might be a good time to post the story below.  I've been meaning to for some time, not only because it's an interesting tale, but also because it gives an insider's perspective on "neutral observers."  Although it has nothing to do with Gaza itself, it does reveal some historical context that may be welcome to those interested in international law and politics.

My grandfather (really my stepfather's dad) joined the UN on New Years Day 1948 (61 years ago today), and retired in 1978 from his final positions as Director of the General Legal Division and Deputy to the Legal Counsel (positions which, today, are on the Under Secretary level).  He saw many things during his tenure, and contributed greatly to the establishment of many treaties and resolutions.  In 2005, he published a limited run (essentially for family and friends) of a short book entitled "United Nations Memories," which included among other things a two page "name dropping" section of people he'd met and worked with (George H.W. Bush, Roy Cohn, Jimmy Carter, etc.).  It also included the following story.

(NOTE: Having spent several hours transcribing everything below from one of my copies of Grandpa's book, I now realize that I should simply have scanned the pages themselves, and saved myself the aching wrists.)

 

 

( The Barrel Story )