Watch your gas gouge...er...gauge

I was working it...man was I doing great! The bell was dinging and I was playing the hell out of the machine. I watched the score climbing...and climbing...and climbing... I leaned left, then right, riding the wave of excitement. People were lining up behind me. They wanted some of what I was getting.

That's right bitches...people pay big money for this shit...

Could this be it? Was it a new high score?

Holy crap! Yes!!! Yes!!!

That was before I remembered it was a gas pump, not a video game. Damn.

*****

It's truly amazing to watch the price of a gallon of gas jump 30 cents one day and another 35 cents the next. Must be Clinton's fault...

*****

In an amazing show of leadership, the Prez is thinking about maybe, possibly, could be releasing some oil from the country's strategic reserves. Not to help ease the sharply rising gas costs mind you, but to help the refineries hit by the huricane. Huh?

Yeah, that's right...you, me, and the guy down the street can take our lumps, but those poor, poor, multi-billion dollar oil companies are hurting and they could use a little lovin'.

Battle lines drawn...

It's official...I've given up my pacifist beliefs. War is necessary and I've just declared it. That's right, the Battle of the Waistline had broken out here.

A long time ago, I decided that I would never buy a pair of pants that have a waist bigger than 34 inches. I've stuck to it too. Once that's been filled, that's it. No new pants till they fit into the 34s...32s are better.

Let's get on the ball guys...

Okay, what kind of friends do I have? Did anybody let me know that Emily Procter was on CSI: Miami? No, I had to find that out for myself. Mind you, I still think the show is lame, but this at least gives me a small reason to watch. Also, it's not the awesome Ainsley from The West Wing...I loved Ainsley...I would marry Ainsley if she was a real person and I had a real job and I lived in Washington, D.C. And when I did, I wouldn't invite any of my friends. They don't deserve to come if they can't keep me posted on important doings. Jeez guys...she's even my age...I would think you would be more helpful.

This isn't as bad as finding out that Winnie was on The West Wing. That's right, they failed me on that one too. What kind of crap is that? Poor Winnie (aka. Danica McKellar)...she's been wandering around in a funk since she and Kevin went their separate ways and when she finally emerges as Elsie Snuffin, do my 'friends' let me know? Hell no - not a peep! Clearly, I must do everything myself.

Well, since this is a Googletastic world...if either of you want to go out sometime, just let me know.

P.S. - Note that both are posing with their cats...that's so my cat-lovin' friends can see just how badly they've failed me.

German Fest in West Bend, Wisconsin

I'm pretty sure this says it all...

Beer garden...and yes this woman always had this expression. Once she almost smiled, but caught herself before her 50-year record was nearly ended.

Is this crazy old guy putting down sawdust? Why yes, he is... Will the madness never end?

I wonder if they have any cute raffle girls? Indeed... And note the godlike figure of one of our fine citizens on the right. That's right ladies, there are many just like him wandering around here waiting to date you.

But they surely wouldn't dare to bring the music inside the beer tent... Ah, but they would! These are crazy-ass oompahers, they'll try anything. They had already Rolled out the Barrel and Edelweissed like madmen. Of course they were gonna storm the tent. There's no stopping men in Lederhosen.

No...no...it couldn't possibly be...a gyro!

Our idyllic little slice o' heaven...Main Street.

Pick your own version...

Life is all about how you perceive it. I'm sure some philosopher said something like that. If they didn't...well, let's face it, they must just suck at philosophizing. I'm not even a philosopher and I came up with that.

In the spirit of perspective, I bring you two versions of my day. You may choose whichever path you like. (Bold type is for the optimist, italic is for the pessimist and regular is just sort of neutral stuff.)

Got up kind of late and wasted most of the morning doing nothing.

Got up kind of late and wasted most of the morning doing nothing.

Blew off a BBQ with some old family friends because it would have been crawling with kids and I wasn't much in the mood for a bunch of kids. Also wasn't in the mood to be surrounded by a bunch of churchy husband/wife combos.

Decided I wanted to have some to myself to just relax and not do much of anything. So, I sent my regards and blew off the 'cue.

Hopped in my car and saw that German Fest was in full swing.

It was hard to find a parking spot and had to walk down to the goings on.

Found a parking spot and walked down to the goings on, enjoying the sun warming my face.

Live oompah music was going and people were having a good time.

Got a Gyro (yes, a Gyro at a German Fest...don't ask...it's been a question of mine for three years) and had to search for somewhere to sit down and eat it.

Got a Gyro (yes, a Gyro at a German Fest...don't ask...it's been a question of mine for three years) and got helped by one of the cutest girls ever. Okay, maybe that's an stretch, but anyone who knows me will tell you that I can fall in love 100 times a day and often do. It's called living in the moment dude. Found a cool spot out of the main fray and sat down to one of the best fuckin' Gyros ever. (This is actually not an exageration. The same stand is alway there and it's run by real Greeks who make awesome Gyros. These are even better than the Gyros I ate in the Latin Quarter in Paris and those were pretty damn good. I get at least one every year - usually they're all I eat on German Fest weekend.) Also, the girls are always really cute too. I don't know how they do it but it's truly amazing.

The Gyro was so big I could hardly finish it.

The Gyro was so big I could hardly finish it. (It was way bigger than every other Gyro I saw. Obviously the Hot Greek Girl (HHG) who took my order and made it really wanted me and expressed it through her food. That is so awesome!

Went on my way to finish errands.

Stopped at computer store to get a video capture card and maybe a case.

They didn't have a video capture card that was supported in Linux. Bastards! Guess I won't be building a Linux powereed PVR this weekend. Thanks for nothing Milwaukee PC.

They didn't have a video capture card that was supported in Linux, so I just bought some memory. Now I've got lots of RAM. Go ahead and be jealous if you want.

Went to the book store.

They didn't have what I was looking for. Bastards!

They didn't have what I was looking for. Bought a different cool book. Hah!

I could go on more, but now it's getting to be evening and I think I'm going to go back and get my Fest on.

I'll probably get another Gyro too. No I'm not hungry yet - but what does that have to do with anything? Not a thing if HGG is still working that's for sure.

I will likely also drink beer. They at least have good beer down there. It's not beer I really like much (which I guess makes it bad good beer) but it's still better than Bud. Hmmm, maybe HGG would like to join me for a bad good beer...

Prost!

The Waiter and Former Intern Andy (who may have superhuman powers)

Man, I love The Waiter... In his latest post, he was tipped in porn. Sometimes his kind of humour is just what the doctor ordered.

And Josh, you should check this one out. In his latest post, Former Intern Andy makes a pretty good argument for why The Flash kicks ass... I'm not even a fan of the fast guy, but I was pretty convinced.

A cry for logic

We all have beliefs. Unforunately, most of us couldn't state logically why we have them. Maybe it's a shortcoming of our education, maybe it's because we're too lazy to question ourselves, I don't know.

I've noticed it quite a bit lately when trying to follow some lively debates that I've either heard, been part of, or witnessed in the blogosphere and day to day life. There seems to be a lot of invalid arguments and not a lot of sound arguments or even valid arguments.

So, what is a sound argument? Well, a sound argument is a set of premises that lead by way of inferences to a conclusion that is true. The only way for a sound argument to exist is for the premises to be true, the inferences to be valid and the conclusion true.

Slightly less appealing, but at least understandable is a valid argument.

A valid argument is one where the inferences are considered to be valid. The starting premises can be wrong, or the conclusion can be wrong, but everything in the middle makes logical sense.

Here's an example taken from The Philosophy Pages:

If I believe that whales are mammals and that all mammals are fish, then it would also make sense for me to believe that whales are fish. Even someone who (rightly!) disagreed with my understanding of biological taxonomy could appreciate the consistent, reasonable way in which I used my mistaken beliefs as the foundation upon which to establish a new one.

On the other hand, if I decide to believe that Hamlet was Danish because I believe that Hamlet was a character in a play by Shaw and that some Danes are Shavian characters, then even someone who shares my belief in the result could point out that I haven't actually provided good reasons for accepting its truth.

It seems that we've become so proud of the strength of our convictions that we seldom stop to examine the validity of our convictions. Instead of stating a logical case that supports our convictions, we tend to slip into a 'well...well...you're just a poopoo head' mentality when our convictions are questioned. And while the 'my Dad is bigger than your Dad and he'll beat you up' argument might be the trump hand on the playground, it's not a very impressive one in adult debate.

Politics and religion tend to be the two big battlegrounds of debate. That's been the case for centuries. But in America today it seems that our political debate generally runs something like this:

D: People need access to health care.
R: We're not going to let you raise taxes.
D: You don't care about regular people like we do, you just want to help the rich.
R: Fuckin' Liberals are trying to ruin this country.

Or:

R: People should have adequate health care.
D: Oh sure, you want to make the rich richer.
R: People need a hand up, not a hand out.
D: Fuckin' Conservatives are trying to ruin this country.

A friend of mine is a sports editor at a paper in California. On the sidelines of a football game he was asked by a local booster why he wasn't cheering for the home team. His answer was that wasn't cheering for either team, he was cheering for the game.

Maybe if more people were willing to take that attitude, then more people would find themselves able to question their own convictions and allow others to question them as well.

That's really all logic is about. Exploring how we come up with our convictions and beliefs and determining whether or not they are really valid. But that takes work and the results don't generally fit onto a bumper sticker so most of us tend to just fall back on our 'you're a poopoo head' mentality never stopping to think that in so doing it's us that become the 'poopoo heads.'

Have you ever...

Have you ever bought a delicious grande mocha from Starbucks, sipped it while driving and then left it in the car, only to hop in the car a day or so later and grab said mocha and take a swig? Well, I have. It sucks.

Putting My Seven Point Mind Training To Work

I was listening to a recording of a talk by a Buddhist monk, Lama Thubten Yeshe, who has a pretty thick accent. He was talking about the Buddhist concept of renunciation. I could have sworn I heard him use the words "monkey nuts" repeatedly.

Of course I was confused, so I played it back. Sure enough, "monkey nuts."

Then after listening some more, I replayed it. Ah, maybe he's referring to Buddhist concept of "Monkey Mind." No, that didn't make sense either.

Finally, it became clear that he was saying, "monks and nuns." It all made sense.

So you see, studying Buddhism does lead to enlightenment.

True then, true now

Here's quick test for you. Who said the following:

"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."

A) Some nutcase Liberal against the Patriot Act.
B) One of them long-haired hippy freaks.
C) Ben Franklin, a major figure in the founding of this country.

Um yeah, it's neither A nor B...guess that just leaves C. But what did Ben Franklin know about patriotism?

WWJS? (Who Would Jesus Slap?

Here's a happy little ditty from Media Matters that's sure to warm the cockles of your heart (or something of that nature). Never mind that the guy has none of his facts right to start with, this is a 'Christian' leader calling for an assassination.

Pat Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

From the August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

If it pisses you off, then take action and leave a comment here at ABC Family. ABC Family airs Robertson's hatefest, The 700 Club.

Three-fer

In what can only be viewed as an epic confluence of events, I witnessed three annoying things simultaneously today. That doesn't happen very often - not even in Wisconsin.

I pulled into a spot at Goodwill, turned off the car and decided to finish off the McDonald's grub I had just bought at the nearby drive thru. (It was the Big-n-Tasty with cheese meal if you were wondering. And it was indeed tasty. And I had Coke to drink with that today.)

I'm sitting there enjoying the interplay of the mayo and ketchup with the fine American beef on a bun and in pulls a woman with a big "In Loving Memory Of..." sign on the back of her SUV. Normally, I wouldn't have noticed, except just the other day Slade had done a post on this very thing.

Then, just as I'm letting that slide off my back, a woman pulls into a not-spot in the middle of the lane in front of the store. Best of all there's an actual spot six feet away. Amazing.

She lets her fat buddy waddle out and into the store and then proceeds to stay right there with the engine running. Her windows are down and it's not hot enough to need the AC and she's not listening to the radio. Again...amazing. Listen lady, you're already driving a 12 MPG beast anyway, why not cut of the engine and let us all breath a bit while you're at it?

You might think I got mad about all this, but you would wrong on that one. No, I just enjoyed the hell out of my burger and thought to myself that maybe there really isn't any such thing as evolution...

Note to dumbasses the world over...

Finally got spammed... Wow, how fun is that? At least I don't have to deal with Chinese hackers trying to hijack my site mailserver like when I had a website up... With them I tracked them through a couple of IP addresses, three hotmail accounts, two yahoos and a couple of gmail accounts before dead ending in China.

Anyway, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who anonymous posters are on your Blogger site, especially when you have something like Blogpatrol. It just makes you wonder when you get a shitty anonymous post from someone who stops by your blog several times a day... Maybe it was supposed to be tongue in cheek.

So, I took off the spam completely and deleted the crap anonymous post. Maybe I should repost it with a return address so people can know who you are...there's a thought.

An hour ago, it was a beautiful sunny day. I was going to go sit outside with a coffee. It's dumping rain now. We're not talking metaphorically either. Maybe it will clear up later...

How's your day?

Back at ya...

In August of '04 - in his room in Queens - my friend Josh wrote pretty fucking cool story about a Kirsten Dunst daydream he had... If enough people beg him, he might repost it on his blog. It's totally worth reading.

Well, time has rolled on and I finally have my hip-hop response to it. (For those of you who unfamiliar with the rap world, it's a pretty common thing to respond to other artist's works by addressing them in your own...don't you feel cool knowing that?) Um yeah...so, here it is:

"Anyway, it's not like you should talk," she said over her fork, a strand of Spaghetti a la Puttanesca dangling from the prongs. I never imagined that a loose strand of pasta could increase a beautiful girl's attractiveness, but there it was. I tucked the memory away, knowing that this small moment would remain cherished forever. "How many hours a week do you work?"

I just grinned at her.

"And besides, you don't get mobbed going to buy tampons..." she said.

"Um...maybe 'cause I don't buy tampons."

"Well, if you loved me..."

God, if she only knew. How could I not fall for her. I was still amazed that I somehow made it past the initial "hi."

"I'll buy you tampons if you stop waving your food at me."

"Huh...oh..."

The loose noodle had slipped further from her fork. She put it in her mouth and slurped it up making a pucker-lipped face at me.

"Okay Dad..." she said in her mock grownup voice. I felt her foot on my leg under the table at the same time she stuck her tongue out at me.

"Nice," I said. "There's next week's cover shot for the Enquirer... And since you were mean, maybe I won't tell you about that spaghetti sauce on your face."

"What?," she said quickly pulling the napkin off her lap. "Where?"

"Hmm..."

She rubbed the napkin down both sides of her mouth, her light-blue eyes darting quickly to her left as if to be sure no one was watching from the front of the restaurant. Looking down, she saw her napkin was still white and frowned. She dabbed around her mouth, this time catching her chin in the process, and glanced at the clean napkin.

"Where..." A quick glimmer of a blush lit her cheeks as she realized she'd been had.

I was saved from a flying napkin by the arrival of our white-shirted waiter.

"Ah...the bell," I said.

"How is everything?" the waiter asked.

"Great, thanks," I said, still relishing my little victory.

"Would you like some more wine?"

I glanced across the table and saw her nodding, "yes."

"There you have it..." I said to the waiter. "Two more please."

"Great," he said. "I'll go grab those for you."

"I think he's scared of you," I said, nodding at the back of our retreating waiter. "Notice how he never talks to you?"

"It''s better than when they only talk to me..."

"I guess you're right about that."

I still wasn't used to the whispers and the weird reactions, but I did my best to pretend it didn't bother me. That kind of attention was easier for her since she was used to it, but I knew the constant spotlight got to her sometimes.

"So, have you heard anything yet?" she asked, breaking the short silence.

"Huh? About what?"

"About your friend's story."

"Oh that..." I said. "Not yet."

"I can't believe she hasn't called him."

"Well..."

"C'mon. It's a great story," she said. "I just about died when I read the poem part. That was pretty awesome."

"Yeah, that part cracked me up too. That's why I figured she might like it. I don't know, maybe she'd get a kick out of it."

"I think she'll call him."

"That would be pretty cool."

"How did you get it to her?"

"You remember the guy who sent your agent my script?"

"The guy from William Morris?" she asked.

"Yeah..."

"Mmmm, not really. But go ahead."

"Well, anyway, he's a friend of my friend Eric so I got his number and asked if he could hold of Kirsten Dunst. He said that wasn't really his thing. So I told him I would just send it to him, let him read it and if he thought it would be cool, he could try and get it to her. I guess he liked it 'cause he gave it to one of the guys he works with and he gave it to her agent. There you have it."

"I think she'll call," she said.

"What makes you so sure?"

"I called..."

"True. I'm still pretty amazed about that."

"I'm glad I did," she said as she reaching for my hand.

"Me too.."

I pushed the rush of memories back, happy though they were. The phone call, the lunch down by the beach, the drive back from Redondo, thanking God I actually cleaned the place and did the dishes that had been stacked in the sink, the talk into the night over the bottle of Dynamite Cabernet I'd been saving for a special occasion...

I just wanted this moment right now though. Her smile, the little freckle on her cheek, her hand in mine across the table... These moments are short when we're out in public.

This one was no exception.

"Excuse me..."

I looked up to see a guy in jeans and an In-and-Out Burger tee shirt standing at the side of our table.

"Aren't you Scarlett Johansson?"

She smiled politely at him. I felt her hand pull out of mine.

"You're her aren't you?"

"Yes I am."

"Wow...I'm a huge fan. Can I get your autograph?"

"Sure," she said. I pulled a pen out of the pocket of my jacket that was draped over the chair behind me and handed it to her.

"Hey, can you take our picture together?" the fan said, handing me a cheap digital camera.

"Sure," I said...