Establish A Perimeter

So I've gotten into a nasty habit lately - I've been saying "Fail" when something funny happens or when someone does something stupid or actually does fail at something, like telling a terrible joke...  

I have no idea where this came from, but there it is... really it's just another way to say something is retarded...

At any rate, as I started thinking about things to blog about today a conversation with someone - I don't remember who (Sidenote: what's the first thing you remember? I have a memory, admittedly, that the Spaniards would describe as El Terrible and I have a hard time remembering anything, which leads me to my question... I can't remember the first thing that I remember... is there such a thing as pre-30's onset Alzheimers?) "Establishing the Perimeter."

Now, you may think one thing has nothing to do with the other, but I beg to differ... Allow me to elaborate, first with a question:

Have you ever seen a movie or TV show where establishing a perimeter allowed the cast to achieve their primary goal? Or was it just a way for more people to die and the principals look more bad-ass??

When Luke and the rest of the Rebel Force are trying to destroy the Death Star in Episode IV,

 the Red Team Leader tells the others to establish a perimeter as Luke goes in for the money shot... need I say it... FAIL!

Sometimes it comes close, but it never works... And so, I propose to we start using the phrase "Establish a Perimeter" exclusively as slang for "FAIL!" For instance:

"Wow John, you really established a perimeter last night with the ladies..."

Or, "Hey, how's Jeff doing with the drug problem? Is he establishing a perimeter with the heroine again?"

I mean really - have you noticed that no episode of 24 has ended with Jack going, "Man, thank goodness we established that perimeter - now let's all go home and get some sleep!"

FAIL!

Three Random Third Day Of The Week Thoughts

So, I hurt myself - I think that's been made clear by my injury list to the right... It's not that I'm clumsy (ok, sometimes it is) it's just that I tend to do activities that lend themselves to my getting hurt... and that's not likely to change...

At any rate, have you ever been startled and distracted simultaneously, so that your brain gets jumbled up with the wrong exclamation?? The other day I was putting together some of my recent race numbers in frames to hang on the wall, and I was using glue to keep them down because at the end of a race they're completely wrinkled... Well, forgetting that I had already glued one side of the thing, I reached out for it and my fingers immediately stuck to it like it was flypaper... If you don't know what that feels like, ask Matt...

Anyway, I wasn't expecting this, but I also wasn't fully paying attention because I was still concentrating on smoothing the thing out and, let's face it, I have a little bit of adult-onset ADD... The result of all this confusion was that I inexplicably shouted, "OW!" for no apparent reason... Thankfully no one was around, so I didn't have to explain that I was too retarded to know the difference between sticky and hurty...

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You know what I hate?? Air blowers that they have in restrooms instead of paper towel dispensers... I don;t know anyone who DOESN'T hate them, (except for the tree-huggers and really: are they even people??) And the thing is, the manufacturer knows that people hate them... That's why they find the need to label them to justify their existence: "These damn things save natural resources and are more sanitary than paper towels, blah blah blah..." 

You know what also saves natural resources and is more sanitary than paper towels? A big sign that says "Please wipe your hands on your pants because we're too f---ing cheap to buy paper towels..." (And don't get me started on the thin-A&*, chicken-Sh#$ little toilet paper they have...) 

Also, do you think motion-activated paper towel dispensers (the hi-tech environmentalists dream...) work for vampires? I hope so, because otherwise there are probably a lot of vampires out there who aren't washing their hands after using the bathroom... On the other hand, maybe that's why they wear capes...

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I don't understand the system we use for deciding what foreigners are supposed to be called... Why do we have Australians, Italians and Brazilians, but not Japanians, Mexiconians or Portugalians?? 

And if Australians are from Australia, why aren't Canadians from Canadia? People from Canada should be called Canadanians... And why aren't people from Germany called Germaniums?? I mean, I know it doesn't make any sense, but it would be funny... and really, don't the Germaniums owe us that much? 

Felt Family Remodel - Part Deux

So I just wanted to show off the latest round of pictures of the progress we've made at the Felt place -

It should be noted that this work was all done over the July 4th weekend... Yup... Dedication, homes...

This is Matt taking off the old door - you can't really get a good sense of the door, but if you look at it (the old door, that is) and start thinking "Man, this door really doesn't belong on a house, yet there's something fitting and familiar about it..." that's because we've all seen them before... on portable classrooms...

This is the new door... much much improved... and that's also Paul's big fat head in the way...

We also reframed most of the windows today... we took out the ones (yes, plural) that were leaking and replaced them, re-caulked them and then expanded caulked them... This is Ryan doing what his very vast technical expertise allows him to do... scrape caulk off the old windows...

This is the result of Joe and Ryan's caulkjob - see how it's all messy and spread around - apparently they don't aim right with their caulk, they just leave it to go all over the place, which we'll have to come and clean up later... although once that caulk gets on something, it's never really the same...

And this is the expanding foam that we used to seal the windows from the inside... it's like Slimer's special caulk...

We finished replacing both the bedroom floors...

And the kitchen floors, minus the part where the plumbing has to be moved to make the new and exciting kitchen from which Kellie will cook many delicious meals for vagrant, umarried friends...

And this was all Tim (Kellie's dad) - he framed in an entire bathroom  and closet in Taylor's room all by himself - and when I say all by himself, that's exactly what I mean - according to him he's going to make sure Taylor's room is the best in the house, and I believe him...

So next steps are basically kitchen, plumbing, bathroom, then its the easy stuff like floors and sheetrock - its coming along!!

Mr. 3000

So a while ago I got this handy counter for my blog, provided by BlogStats that basically records the traffic going to and from your web site - 

The blog is scheduled to hit 3000 unique visits today (that means it records when someone goes there, but only records once, even if that IP address goes multiple times during the day) and over the past two weeks or so I'm averaging about 42 visits per day...

That's a huge jump from when I first started so I have to ask myself - where the hell are all these people coming from?

I know a very limited number of people (and like even fewer) and there are only so many dedicated readers that I have (sidenote: I will admit that the internet is like ice cream on a hot day to someone with even a mild case of ADD - I am linked on several other blog sites and when someone sees that there are more pages to surf vs. filling in their TPS reports, well... thank goodness for ADD is all I have to say...) so I have to be getting traffic from other places...

Apparently the topics that I've chosen are popular, and my BlogStats widget tells me where they're coming from... here is a smattering of search terms from Google, Yahoo and MSN that (inexblicably in some cases) lead people to my site this week:

youtube help me snorkel

          ...and please watch over Grandma, Amen...

average human pig spider

          ...what are three stupid animals in order from largest to smallest?

can i run a marathonis it painful

          ...the answer is yesyes...

porn vagina bounce bounce

          ...easy there big fella - take a breath and try again...

andy fields car accident

          ...no, andy fields drive good...

michael jackson leg bruises

          ...not anymore it doesn't...

if believe before man on the moon

          ...then doubt after woman on the earth...

what does (snip) mean after a sentance

          ...it means your mohel didn't warn you and went about business while you were talking...

ashley waddell

          ...wtf?? ash, get OUT...

where we put s in sentance

          ...my copy editing TA says put it at the beginning...

and one more for the road:

i ran bay to breakers naked

          ...two things: first WEIRDO, second - yes, I thought I knew you...

Thanks to everyone for getting me to 3000 - next step? 4000! (Logical, right...?)

Actors vs. Characters

So last night we went to see Public Enemies at midnight - TOTALLY worth it - I won't do a whole movie review thing, suffice it to say that it was awesome, and, as Matt was saying last night and I can't agree with more, it was nice to take a break from the special effects-laden summer blockbusters... The thing was amazingly acted (Batman's weak southern accent aside) and I really can't even describe how phenominal Johnny Depp was... GO SEE IT...

Anyway, that bring me to today's point - you may have noticed that I used "Batman" in place of Christian Bale and actually used Johnny Depp's name...

Every movie we go to we play a little game called "Dude, that's the guy from..." Sometimes we remember the actor's name, but more often than not (unless Steph is around, the freaking walking IMDB) we just remember where we've seen him/her or the roles she's played...

So, in that vane, there are now four types of movie actors:

1. The movie actors you call by their christian names

Now this category is going to be relatively small, and it has nothing to do with how big a star they are, but more to do with personality - have they been as big in things they've done OFF screen as ON screen? Were they famous before they started doing movies? Etc...

For example, George Clooney and Brad Pitt are who they are - they are bigger than the movies they're in, and have been in so many interviews, tabloids, tv appearances, etc that when you see Brad you don't say "Hey, there's Joe Black" - you say "Dude, that's Brad Pitt" or even "Dude, that's the dude that dated (and dumped) two of the hottest women on the planet..." (the whole calling actors by terms used to describe their personal life could be a whole other category, ie "Dude, that's the guy who's holding Katie Holmes hostage..." but we won't go into that one...

The second part of this category is people who were famous before movies, such as Will Smith.  Will will (nice...) be forever known as either, simply, Will Smith, or The Fresh Prince... granted, part of this is due to his being named "Will" on his TV show, but come on... Do you even remember any other character name that he's played besides Ali? You remember the roles, sure... but what about the names?? Didn't think so...

2. Actors Who's Names You Know, But Who Have Played In Such Iconic Movies As to Immediately Conjure Up the Name of Said Iconic Character

While it should be noted that most of these people can fit into the first category, this is a thing unto itself... Three actors immediately come to mind:

Tom Cruise - he has one role for which he is so immediately identifiable that it can easily trump even his own name (I say easily because I think the two can be interchanged and no one would bat an eye) - and that, of course... is Maverick...  Ole Tommy Boy is bigger than any movie he's ever been in, so much so in fact that I have a hard time looking at him in movies and going "Oh man, that Nazi is going to overthrow Hitler..." It's more like "Dude, Maverick is going to overthrow Hitler..."

I will say this, in preparing this blog I think I may be able to remember more iconic names from Maverick's characters than any other: Cole Trickle, Ethan Hunt, Rainman's Sleazy Brother, etc... But he'll always just be Maverick, who feels the need for speed... and desperately seeks the advice of his dead navigator (who fits so into our third category it's ridiculous...)

Sean Connery - This is more an interesting one though because of all the things he's done, there are actually three roles that you can immediately come to mind, with a possible fourth: Bond (he will always be the person someone is talking about when referring to Bond, unless they say "New Bond" which is Danielle Craig, another 

third category-er...), Indy's Dad, and the old dude who got jiggy with Catherine Zeta Jones in that one movie...

Harrison Ford - Like Bond (yup...), there are two here that you can use, and if they aren't obvious to you, then you're no friend of mine...

Others would possibly be Captain Jack, Braveheart, The Terminator, John McClain, Neo, etc...

3. Actors Who Will Only Be Referred To By Character Names

This is actually the crux of what I wanted to talk about, it just took me a little while to get here... This includes the dude we saw a preview for last night "Obi Wan," "Batman," "The Dad From Family Matters," "Morpheus," etc..

Almost every actor that we've ever seen can fit into this category - I mean really, these guys and gals get paid to pretend they're other people, so why shouldn't we treat them like it?  The guys who are genuine celebrities with genuine celeb personas will fit into one other the two top categories and everyone else we can forget their names and get immersed in their acting.

It's these people who actually make a great movie - it's the bit characters who lend strong support and make you believe the bullhooey that's happening on the screen.  Not to say the guys in the first two categories aren't great actors - they truly are, but more oftentimes than not if you get a movie with too many of those guys, it doesn't work - 

Take last night's Public Enemies - it had Captain Jack and Batman as the two lead guys, who wouldn't seem to mesh well but it didn't matter because they were only one screen together for two scenes, and their characters were in bitter contrast to each other so it worked - but it wouldn't have if it wasn't for third category actors "Blue Dong from Watchmen," "Phoebe's Brother," "Hurk from the Wire," "The Dad from 16 Candles," "The Main Dancer From Step Up," (who BTW is starring in a movie called "Parkour" based on free-running that I can't wait for...), etc...  

4. Actors Who Are Terrible And Should Never Be Remembered Even If They Are In Some Amazing Movies

Population: Nick Cage...

Animal Testing

So as most of you know, I've been working on one or another blog entry for a while, meaning basically I put an idea into a tentative post, to go back and develop later when I have nothing else to blog about...

So... in California, there are animal rights activists - so much so that even the homeless have pets, much to the chagrin of Roy...  At any rate, I started thinking about animals and all they do for us - as you know, I'm not a pet person, but I like animals... for food and circuses and whatnot...

The other day I was watching an infomercial that claimed the super shampoo they were selling (sidenote: quick RIP to Billy Mays... that dude was awesome, and the embodiment of the American dream... Seriously, check out wikipedia... I mean, he's gotta have the Pearly Gates looking sparkly clean by now, don't you think??) Anyway, the shampoo was "not tested on animals" - which prompted the following thought process:Who cares? And why is this important enough to mention in trying to sell our stuff?

Well it's important because it's controversial...

But why is it controversial??

Because it's the scientists and big pharm vs. the animals...

Who has the better gripe??

I think the animals do, but only for one reason: scientists are idiots, and Tiff is right not to trust them... (Follow me here...)

The problem with animal testing arises from a misunderstanding of the word 'testing...' To me, 'testing' something means using something in the manner it was intended to be used, to see if you get the desired result... So to test shampoo on a monkey, you would first shampoo the monkey's hair - then rinse the monkey - and finally smell the monkey to see if the monkey still smells like a monkey... If, 

rather than smelling like a combination of monkey sweat and poo, the monkey now smells like a combination of strawberries and wildflowers - success! Otherwise, it's back to the lab again...

The animal rights folks will lead you to believe horror stories about how scientists smear shampoo directly into the monkey's eyes to see how they'll react, but I think that such cases are probably rare, and result mainly from inadequate training of the scientists... 

Maybe the scientists just need to be told what shampoo is actually for, and that they can assume that having shampoo smeared into your eyes (or your monkey's eyes) is going to hurt like hell, so they don't really need to test for that... I suggest giving the shampoo testing scientists the following checklist:


The first box is already checked, so they'd be like, "Oh, that's right, I don't have to worry about that one..."
But alas, the scientists don't share all the blame... I also think that the animal rights activists haven't thought through the ramifications of NOT testing products on animals...

 If we can't use human shampoo on monkeys, then what are we supposed to use to clean our monkeys? Monkey shampoo, right? Well who do you think they test monkey shampoo on, genius?? It's a vicious cycle where we all end up dirty and smelling like stank instead of honeysuckle and vanilla.. and by "we" I mean all things possible...
The way it is, each species should be allowed to pick another species to stand in for it during testing. So humans could pick monkeys, monkeys could pick dogs, dogs could pick cats... all the way down to the animals that don't know any better, like the cockroach and people who watch The Bachelor.

The whole schlemoyle basically comes down to is this: every product is tested on somebody (read: something...) If your shampoo wasn't tested on animals, then guess what? It was tested on humans.... There isn't really any alternative, is there? 

If the first bottle of Generic Shampoo X rolls off the assembly line without Generic Shampoo X ever having touched the head of some animal, then you the consumer are the lucky animal who gets to test it... (sidenote: if the product is named Generic Shampoo X, then 

there's a good chance that there are some monkeys working in the marketing department - I mean come on, put some effort into it...)

Now I'm not necessarily opposed to testing shampoo on humans, but it doesn't seem like an improvement over animal testing unless I get to pick the humans...

I would start with the crowd down at the bus station, and move onto skinny jeans guy and then go to guy who wears his baseball cap to the prom... and for the latter two groups, I'd require the eye-smearing test on principle.

I gotta be honest though - don't shampoo monkeys have a pretty great life compared to their caged brethren?? I imagine the conversation that would go on between an escaped test animal and his wilderness-dwelling cousin:

Wild Monkey: Hey man, where you been?

Test Monkey: Dude, I got tranq'd and carted off to a shampoo testing lab.

Wild Monkey: Fo' realsies? That sounds terrible...

Test Monkey: Yeah, I got shampoo'd like six times a day - I smelled like freaking strawberries and wildflowers...

Wild Monkey: Man that sucks...

Test Monkey: Yeah, and that was bad enough, but then some new guy smeared shampoo in my eyes. My EYES - can you believe it?.

Wild Monkey: Wow.

Test Monkey: I know - it's like... read the checklist bro!! Anyways, I had enough of that, so I escaped. So... what happened to your leg?

Wild Monkey: Cheetah ate it.

Test Monkey: Bummer.

Felt Family Remodel: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Deal with 107 Degree Heat

So as the majority of people who read my blog (all seven of you) know, we've been remodeling Matt and Kellie's place because of their upcoming munchkin - due sometime in the middle of August (though Kellie is WAY preggers, and it could be any day now...)

At any rate, we're totally redoing the place while they're staying at Matt's parents' place while they (Matt's parents) are in Hawaii for their annual "Let's Go to Hawaii and Lounge in Luxury in Lahaina" trip that generally lasts about a month... sometimes longer... So we have about three weeks to finish...

Kellie basically with Tiff's help packed up all their stuff and moved it all to one of four locations: Bragg Woods, Joe's garage, my shed and my kitchen... because neither of those places really gets used... except the kitchen... that's where I keep my Flav-R-Ices, bottled water and frozen peas (for icing down after my runs) but that's about it... Oh, and my collection of paper plates and Solo cups left over from the campaign...

After the packing we started last Saturday with massive demo and took out the following from the house:

1. The Rotted Floors

2. The 1970's-era Wood Paneling

3. The Entire Kitchen

4. The Entire Main Bathroom

5. The Entire Baby's Room (including knocking out the closet and bathroom)

6. The Interior Doors

7. Thirteen Gallons of Sweat (donated by all of us working...)

So this is after all the wall panelling was taken out... notice the floating light sconces that we simply hammered around...

This is where the kitchen used to be... this is right before we took up the floorboards... notice the sink plumbing and the rotted wall joists... those are fun to deal with... taking down wall panelling and taking up floors while you have old fiberglass insulation and mold to deal with = awesome!!

This is the master bedroom after the rotted floors got taken up - again, this is EXACTLY what you want your wood to look like underneath the floorboards and walls...

And now we come to the truly interesting part... if there is one... this is a generic picture of Matt and Paul working on the bathroom... notice that Paul is drawing something on the floor here in sharpie...

Perhaps you'd like a better look...

That's right, it's the schematic for what we (read, Paul) need to do to move the toilet a foot and a half to the left...

So we all head to Home Depot to get the parts, and the we all realize how much trouble we're in when Paul stares intently at every single pipe part... Paul, can I get you a snarfblat so you don't just stare the whole time?? Got very boring...

So in order to move the toilet a foot and a half, there had to be some surgery done on the piping... namely, we had to cut the sewer line (read: sh*tpipe) and extend it... easier said than done, or should I say, yes, it's as gross as it sounds... And yes, one of us took the opportunity to pee into the open sewage line... pixelated for your benefit... though as Paul says, I could have used only one pixel and it would have been fine...

At any rate, Ryan took the following amateur video to tell you just how noxious it was... warning... there is some language here...

That was our first day... I know all of you are OH SO interested in this, so I'll keep you updated...

Just pray for us, cause on Saturday is was 107... and that place gets HOT!