You know, messageboards are a funny thing. The original purpose for messageboards (especially themed ones) was that they were a place where folks with some similar interest could discuss ideas, current events, news and even personal stuff.

Then, a funny thing started to happen. People who originally joined for the same reason or reasons as everyone else suddenly began stirring up trouble, flaming other posters and generally being pains in the ass.

Every board has them. Whether you are a member of a board about flowers or football, racing or racism, someone or several someones will be those people.

Now, I understand that not everyone agrees about everything, and if a board allows talk of, say politics, they are opening themselves up for some headaches. But if everyone can agree that "respect is the key" and that while we may disagree, we're all still people, then everything would still probably be okay.

Except it isn't. Because in the end, the assholes that make people start their own messageboards come along, promising to be good, and then they aren't. It's astounding how you can find that the same shitty people do the same shitty things regardless of where they are posting.

See, here's the thing. The internets is a wierd, entertaining, scary, and sometimes dangerous place. Yet, some folks have actually found friends thru various boards. My wife participates in a messageboard with other women who share the same due week as her, and they are, for the most part, a very friendly and supportive bunch. My sis-in-law has friends she met on a baord several years ago that make a point to getting together once or twice a year in cool places to spend time together. And I've met a couple of folks thru a board and one of these folks, it turns out, I enjoy very much and my family does too.

Except we talk less and less now because this person has grown tired of the same old bullshit that goes on with a few posters ruining it for everyone else. So much hate and venom and lack of respect for others is inevitably what ruins a board, regardless of that board's initial purpose.

So now, I sit and wonder what I am going to do. I like many of the folks that are posters like myself. I enjoy some of the funny things I see, read, hear, and have even learned some things about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the process.

But in the wake of some events recently, I just don't know if the roses are worth all of the pricks I get from the thorns. (I think that was a metaphor, but I'll wait until someone tells me for sure).

So now I'm left to decide whether the good fun and entertainment I get from the board is worth the aggravation I also get. It sort of feels like what I have heard a bad marriage is like, and I'm not sure I want to tough it out anymore.

p.s. I just re-read this and decided that it may be the lamest blog I've ever written. But fear not, people. Things are about to get better. Next week, starting Monday October 3rd, I will be serving jury duty for my local community. While they don't have wireless hotspots (lest some dumbass start browsing beastiality porn in the waiting room), they do have analog access so my plan is to basically blog my jury duty experience: good, bad and indifferent, so stay tuned...

I posted a little bit on this at a messageboard I frequent and I got flamed for it, so I decided to expound on it a bit here.

Ashley Smith (the woman that talked escaped murderer Brian Nichols into surrendering in March 2005) is now on a full blown media tour. She's written an apparently very forthright book about herself and that day and the rest of her life as well.

See, back in March, everyone was so impressed by this God fearing single mom who just tried to do the right thing that we ran around slapping hero tags on her, and I was one of them.

Hell, I'm still one of them. If Brian Nichols had walked into my house, I'd have shat myself and not been real sure what to do after that.

However, the point of this post is that now, months later, she's admitted that she used Meth to help calm him down and get him to listen.

"Hmmm" you're probably saying. "Where does a God fearing single mom get Meth on such short notice?"

Good question. It was hers.

Oh, and there's more. The 27 year old single mom whose husband died in a knife fight a few years ago and who didn't have custody of her then six year old daughter was (and still is) an unemployed, teeth falling out of her head (her words, not mine) Methamphetamine user.

Don't be confused here, folks. Methamphetamine is not a gateway drug. It's not booze and it's not pot. It's closer to crack and heroin. I don't think alot of folks wander out of their Promisekeeper's meetings and say "I need to wind down, so I'm gonna pick up some meth." It just doesn't happen that way.

Also, she says she wasn't going to do meth with Nichols, because she didn't want to face her maker like that.

I'm letting that one go for now (and maybe for good).

Now, she's a "God this, Jesus that, the Lord this" blah blah blah girl who is nothing more than what I loathe above all others: the reformed anything.

I used to smoke and don't know, but I hate ex-smokers. Almost all of them.

Self righteous recovering alcoholics I hate too.

Folks that find religion after a lifetime full of treating everyone in their lives like shit suck.

The same goes for folks that used to cheat on their spouses, used to steal, cheat, lie, commit fraud, do drugs, etc.

The only thing worse than someone telling me NOT to do something is someone that used to do that something a LOT and then telling me how wrong it is to do it.

Let's get this story straight. Here's a woman who married a bad guy who together had a kid, made some terrible choices, and eventually her baby daddy got killed in a bar parking lot in a knife fight.

The widow Smith moved to metro Atlanta without the daughter she couldn't have custody of, and proceeded to shovel herself full of methamphetamine and who knows what else.

Then, an escaped murderer walks into her house, she gives him some meth and talks him into surrendering, and that's supposed to give her permission six months later to go on the talk show circuit (it's the Onah Wintrey show today) and lecture me in the name of the Lord?

Please.

But State Farm, the like a good neighbor people, just did the insurance equivalent of shitting on my yard. They denied my claim against their insured. You know, the girl that left her lane at 75mph and hit my fucking car? Yeah, well they've decided that my claim should be against the mystery motorist from two lanes over that flinched.

I tried to explain to the very helpful woman that called to record my statement that what SHOULD happen is that State Farm should fix my car and THEY should go after the other person. After all, only one person involved in this deal maintained their lane and didn't strike another car, and that person was me.

Oh, and after Helen Nofuckinghelp denied my claim, I went home, explained it all to the wife, and then got a phone call. It was Timmy Notintheloop from State Farm calling to schedule a time to come by and get an estimate of the damage.

I told him that it seemed a little odd, since his shitty company had denied my claim about five hours earlier, but that he was more than welcome to come out and write some arbitrary figure on a piece of paper that represented what his shitty company was NOT going to pay to fix the damage caused to my vehicle by one of their insured parties.

I know it might not be totally Olga's fault, but I can tell you one thing, it's not my fault for sure. I am hiring an attorney to appeal this and I am going to stick this right up the Good Neighbor's ass.

Why? Because there is no way I'm paying one red fucking cent towards the repair of my car. Not one penny. I refuse to be victimized by a big company and a couple other knucklehead drivers.

I know State Farm's got some problems right now paying out for all the hurricane stuff, but that's not my problem. I didn't tell them to get into the insurance business.

The bottom line here is that they need to pay my claim. I will fight this. And I think there's a chance I'm beginning to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Wonder if they'd have to pay me if I was too traumatized to leave my home to go to work for a year or five?

Stay tuned. This is going to get better, or at least more fun.

These are from my camera phone and they're not great, but you'll get an idea about how the cars hit and where we hit and how we stayed together, given the rubber tire mark on the side of her car.

Notice also that her car is pushed in all the way to the bracings in the door. It's a 2005 Hyundai and I'm betting the damage is three or four times what mine is money-wise.




These are from my camera phone and they're not great, but you'll get an idea about how the cars hit and where we hit and how we stayed together, given the rubber tire mark on the side of her car.

Notice also that her car is pushed in all the way to the bracings in the door. It's a 2005 Hyundai and I'm betting the damage is three or four times what mine is money-wise.

In recounting this adventure for you, I left out one important detail. See, Olga has a....ummmm....mole. It's half an inch left of the center of her nose and and inch below the inside corner of her right eye.

I don't mean a mole like this: .

And I don't mean a mole like this: @

I mean a mole like this:



Except it's roughly twice that big.

Now, I'm not perfect. Close, but not perfect. And I am sensitive to the flaws of others.

But the first time I saw her and laid eyes on "it," the first thing that came to mind was Fred Savage from "Austin Powers in Goldmember."

I know. I'm going to hell. I sorry.

I have spoken to the girl that I had the incident with this morning several times. For convenience sake, let's call her Olga.

Well, after making an appointment to meet her at 1:30pm at the Gwinnett County Police Department precinct over by La Mall, she called me back, having apparently had a change of heart.

It seems she looked at the back of her fear-inducing insurance card and noticed that it said "moving violations and accidents stay on your record for 3 YEARS."

She obviously talked with her husband and they agreed that putting the cost on the credit card might end up FAR better in the long run than going thru your friendly neighborhood "pay me a thousand bucks a year but don't ever think of fucking calling me" insurance company.

I replied that I was fine with that, as long as we weren't talking about fifteen $100 monthly payments, and she said "of course not," so we had a deal.

I explained to her that in my recent experience with the local gendarme as well as your friendly auto repair shops, that the damage looked to be around $1,500 and she thought that sounded okay.

I have since been to my autobody place (Sterling Auto Body in Duluth, GA) and gotten an estimate that, including my rental car, is around $1,350.

Then, I got a call from Olga stating that this was out of her price range, and maybe we should fill out a police report, which required me to leave work AGAIN and go to the police station to do that.

I said fine and we headed to meet with a law enforcement body that totally fucked me over the last time I was involved in an accident that wasn't my fault.

So we got there and a policeman met us at the door about 10 seconds after I arrived, and his punctuality was much appreciated. He asked for our pertinent information and then for each of us to describe what happened. I was buoyed by the fact that Olga right away said "and I drove out of my lane and into him." HOORAY!! Admission of guilt, or at least absolution for me.

To Olga's credit, she was able to get the tag number of the car that pushed her into me, and that came back valid to a driver with valid insurance, and the cop said "was it a blue Chevy cavalier?"

Ummm...Yes officer, it was.

He then explained that for a hit and run to occur, the offending vehicle doesn't have to strike another vehicle or vehicles. That vehicle need merely act in such a way as to cause an accident and then flee the scene.

So, Olga and I have been advised to contact our respective insurance companies, and we were also assured that a detective would be paying a visit to Ms. Shit for fucking brains regarding the near cataclysmic accident she would have caused were it not for the superior driving skills and cool under pressure actions of myself. Further, it appears that my corroboration of Olga's story strengthens our respective cases against Ms. Shit for fucking brains, which is also good.

Actually, I sort of embellished that part. But let's be fair. Had I done what the driver to my right did, I'd have been upside down under a box truck like a scene from The Blues Brothers, and you'd all be seeing it on the evening news.

I am with and have been with my insurance carrier for about 15 years. This is the 3rd time I have been involved in an accident that was no fault of my own in the last year. In one, the other lady paid straight away, but in the other, I was forced to file a claim and my insurance rates were affected despite me being absolutely not at fault.

I won't tell you which company it is, but they better get their good hands together and applaud my driving skills while they are handing me a check from the other person's insurance to pay for my damage and my rental car, or I'm going to talk to the good neighbor folks. I need support and help from my insurance company, not the "Meh? Whaddya gonna do?" treatment.

I'll keep you posted as the situation develops.

I'm not sure if I said this or not in either of my previous posts, but this is the third time this has happened to me in a calendar year.

That's right. The guy you know that spent the last 21 years bragging about how he hadn't had so much as a conversation with a cop has had THREE accidents in one calendar year.

Of course, the first one was a woman making a U-turn from the right lane into my right side door, and the second was when a woman in my building dragged the entire side of my wife's car the day I drove it to work, and this one was a girl leaving her lane to avoid getting hit, which resulted in her hitting me, but still...

I have had about an ass full of my cars being damaged by other motorists.

I have a message for the rest of you Gwinnetians:

Either kill it so I can get a new one or leave me the fuck alone.

That is all for now. Don't forget to take your vitamins and check your mirrors and blind spots.

I'm not sure how many of you have experienced this, so I'm gonna ask.

Do any of you know how frightening it is to be playing pinball with your car amidst and among a thousand other cars at 75 mph or better knowing full well that, if you unexpectedly change lanes or hit someone else, there's gonna be a shitstorm a mile long and 500 feet wide?

I am just sitting here now and thinking about how close that was to really catastrophic.

I must commend the young lady that hit me. Although she hit me instead of choosing to leave me out of it altogether, she did more or less maintain control of her car without exacerbating the situation by freaking all the way out, jerking the wheel one way or the tother as many young drivers would do.

I guess in the end of the day, if all I got out of a highspeed collision during rush hour on an intersate was some right front damage, then I should consider myslef retty lucky. That could have been much MUCH worse.

Before I start, I'd like to ask that all children under the age of, say, 17 please cover their eyes and ears.

Are they covered? Good.

GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCKING COCKSUCKING SON OF A BITCH SHIT ON A STICK FUCK!!!!!!

There. I feel moderately better.

Why all the swearing, you might ask. Well let me tell you a story.

This morning, I was making my usual commute from outer suburbia to inner suburbia by heading south on one of Georgia's fine interstates: I-85. I have made this same commute at roughly the same time of day for about 10 years.

Anyway, as I am passing the merging traffic from 316 on my left, I notice that there is also some merging traffic from the right, I presume from Boggs Road or something like it.

I also notice a little silver something car to my right that's about half past me as we're both doing a comfortable 75 mph, except that she's drifting into my lane. I look to my left and it's box truck city, so no dice as far as me being able to give much quarter.

I then look to HER right, and the car over there is coming over...period. So instead of holding her lane, she comes into mine and WHAMMO!!!! I get hit in the same fucking right front quarter panel where I got hit in my office park just about a year ago right now.

We pull over and I am beyond fuming. I mean, exactly how many times am I going to be the guy whose car gets hit while doing absolutely nothing wrong? This is the third in under a year, by the way.

Anyway, I hit the flashers, I'm pulled over in front of her by about 30 yards, and I sit for a minute to compose myself because I am H-O-fucking-T HOT!!! I know it wasn't her fault per se, but I am damned sure it wasn't mine either.

I get to her car and she's writing furiously, including the tag number of the car that ran her into my lane and (she thinks) hit her car on the right as well. I can imagine that things get a little dicey when you're getting pinballed in a hyundai at over 70mph, so I commend her for being so together.

We exchanged insurance information, she was very calm (as was I surprisingly enough) and I asked if she knew what to do now. She did not.

I explained that we both would contact our insurance agents and file a claim, and then it'd go from there. Actually, since it was her fault, I will contact her insurance agent and we'll go from there.

I simply cannot believe that once again I was driving and minding my own business and getting hit. Is my trailblazer cursed? Are all Trailblazers cursed? I have had about enough of this shit though, that's for sure.

Please think good insurance thoughts, as I don't want to have to come off with another deductible. 500 extra bucks I ain't got, and my insurance doesn't need another one of these. We're getting into the "habitual accidenter" realm and that is most certainly NOT somewhere that I want to be.

So, I'm sitting here on the bed playing poker and watching "Breaking Bonaduce" and thinking to myself "Self, you are SO not fucked up by comparison to THIS guy," and waiting for Rock Star: INXS to come on at 10pm.

(sidenote 1: My wife just walked back in, sat down, sighed and said "I'm big." I looked at her laptop and noticed she was shopping for overalls, so I said "Do you think you might want to upsize those?" Pregnancy is fun. Now back to the blog.)

(sidenote 2: the commercial for the Citi credit card rewards plan that has the two guys dressed like wizards and guys sitting on the sofa are shouting out attack moves and spells, and the doofuses are acting them out until the sofa boys finally shout RESET!!! RESET!!! is HILARIOUS!!)

I know. And before you start, I don't give a shit what you think. We've watched the show since the beginning. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

After watching for something near 287 weeks, it's tim for the finale. You know...the one where the guys from INXS pick their new lead singer.

Their choices are:

JD: Box full of crazy former Elvis impersonator and former homeless guy who could easily slip back into shithouse rat crazy mode in no time. He's talented

Mig: The guy that should be on a cruise ship or off-off broadway but is mysteriously still on the show based (I believe) solely on his Australianism. He's talented, but in a Jazz Hands kind of way and is absolutely 100% wrong for INXS.

Marty: Easily the most talented of the three, but he is an opaque skinny blonde dude that I don't think fits the image of INXS. Well, the image of INXS from 1989. I don't think they have any image anymore, but that's neither here nor there for the purposes of this blog.

(sidenote 3: On the show The Office, during the awards ceremony at Chili's, the boss guy calls up Phyllis to get her "Busiest Beaver" award. Phyllis arrives at the microphone, is handed her trophy, and notices that it says "Bushiest Beaver." My wife immediately started crying she was laughing so hard. Man, sometimes television is funny as hell).

By the way, I think I am one of the few folks that intentionally skips the shows that lead up to ones I watch. I mean, who in God's name is watching Big Brother 6? I flatly refuse.

Now, without further adieux, let's bring on Rock Star: INXS.

10:01pm - As the show starts, Brooke Burke is at her sluttily-dressed madonna-whore best, or worst, depending upon how you look at it. I love how I hear women talking about her saying "she dresses like such a whore."

Ummm...yeah. That's kind of the job of the spokesmodel / announcerette. Let it go.

All three finalists are dressed in their fancy black outfits, as is the band and co-host Dave Navarro. Brooke is also attempting to pull off the Farrah Fawcett hair, and it's not right.

10:02 - Here's that indtroducing of everyone you don't remember at all that didn't last. It's uncomfortable for them and hilarious for me. Especially Deanna's boobs and Ty's hair. Oh, and Dave Navarro is still "guy giving candy to kids he doesn't know" uncomfortable to me. I like him, respect his work, but man, he's odd.

10:03 - Mig is showing his chest. What a surprise. They should make them all perform in burkhas so as not to affect the gay vote.

Oh, and showing INXS walking by a huge jet that says INXS on it is hilarious. They couldn't afford to paint that plane, let alone own it.

10:03 1/2 - Now it's the past performance montage. Meh.

10:05 - It's Mig showing his abs again. What a douchebag.

10:07 - JD Fortune makes his first homeless joke.

10:08 - My friend Ethel says "I *heart* Marty and his tree song." She's right. That song "Trees" and JD's song "Pretty Vegas" were awesome. Mig's song was about his friend dying, which went over like a turd in a punchbowl with the band looking for a singer to replace the singer that died of a heroine overdose while masturbating and choking himself to death. Good choice, Mig.

10:10 - Ethel points out that it would be soooo awesome if after all of this "Sorry mate, but you're just not right for our band" shit that when they got up to play, they all sucked ass. This is why it's important to bring tv viewing professionals in when doing important blogging.

10:12 - Here's the montage of why they should hurry up and vote Mig's ass out...immediately. Fingers crossed. He's singing a song that he sang off broadway in Queen: Off Broadway.

10:14 - The wife is now on the "Mig annoys me" train. Hooray. Ethel points out "You know, it just occurred to me how ironic it would be if JD won. Since he's been impersonating Elvis, he'd might as well impersonate another dead singer he can't do justice to." Good stuff, Ethel.

10:16 - Wife now pointing out that he's so ugly, no woman would ever swoon over him. Oh, and that sometimes she's ashamed of women. And she's sitting next to me. Now THAT is funny.

Hopefully that gong will be a sound that Mig hears a LOT more of in the very near future.

10:18 - Here's video of JD attempting to skull fuck random women in the crowd. The band asked him to tone it down. Duh.

10:20 - JD will now sing "You can't always get what you want," orinally sung by the Rolling Stones. He's gotta be careful of being "over the top" guy. Mig already did that, along with missing a trainload of notes. All he's gotta do is be solid, and he's in the final two.

Oh no, he's trying to get all improvy. STOP!!! STOP!!! Just bring it home you crazy, homeless, elvis impersonating goof.

10:23 - Marty relives his horrifically uncomfortable beginning and shows why he should win. And doing "wish you were here" by Pink Floyd was a good choice for him.

His hairstyle for this week, however, was NOT a good choice. He looks like a see-thru penis.

10:26 - Still haven't seen the uncomfortable Dave Navarro. You know, the one that reads wierd stalkery things from monitors and cue cards.

10:28 - Well, we left with a shot of the band huddled up like they were either pitching pennies, smelling Kirk's fart or I guess they could been discussing who's going.

If Mig goes, I believe in the integrity of the show. If it's Marty, it's better for him in the long run since he's the one that's got a solo future. If JD goes, then they don't want a front man. They want an Australian, and they can head down the road to being Kaja Goo Goo with Mig. Only time will tell...

Hopefully they will do this quickly and not like the other eliminations that Brooke does where she says someone's name and then says "you are...NOT it." Bitch.

10:33 - High fives around the bedroom. The band has some taste and a vested interest in them not sucking immediately. Now I hope Mig cries, wets himself and then vomits on the band during his "proper goodbye." Ah, now it's him hugging the other losers. HOORAY!!!

10:34 - Ethel hits a new high by saying "It would be funny if whats his nuts (Ty) was all "INXS hates black people" a la Kanye West. LOL" I love my internet friends.

10:35 - Verizon commercial starring Shakira. Can someone tell me why she's not stripping or doing porn? She's vocally as talented as me. Can anyone even tell me the name of one of her songs?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

(Sidebar 4 - I think my man-room wall of fame will also contain a print of Mike Myers making the "HOLY SHIT" face while standing next to Kanye Jackson Farakhan. Oh, reverend farakhan has now alleged that whitey blew the levies up to rid New Orleans of black folks. Just thought I should insert a little absurdity to break up all of the tension). 10:37 - Jesus. Marty's flat as hell. Not like a pancake, but musically. They're doing "Don't Change" and it's not particularly good.

I think INXS are playing right now thinking "Shit...we've gotta take JD, and we don't want him. We didn't really want any of these folks. This was kind of a goof. "

10:40 - Oh, and they're using lasers. Like Billy Idol did during the Rebel Yell tour. Nice.

Ethel says, “JD is going to have to autoerotically asphyxiate Dave Navarro to blow it.”

Jesus, now JD’s acting like he’s having a seizure. I think he and Marty both decided to blow it to save their careers and to collectively run from INXS like the plague.

Trouble is, I think one of them HAS to win. It's down to it. The band, after a lifeless mailed in performance, is now picking the guy that will "lead" them. I'm on the edge of my seat.

Here's where we are. Ethel and I have decided that because of his song "Trees," Marty wil get all of the quiet chicks that are all freaky in bed. Conversely JD, thanks to his "Pretty Vegas" tune, will get the crazy star-fucking ho's. I think the band of geriatrics would prefer crazy star-fucking ho's over quiet animal in bed chicks, so JD's your winner.

10:50 - The boys share a Starsky and Hutch handshake and Dave Navarro tells us that we just saw the new INXS. Yikes.

10:52 - Here's the cliffhanger.

It's JD. He's now laying on the stage, and may very well be Tony Stewarting his pants right now. It's a big moment for a formerly homeless Canadian.

So that's it folks. JD is now the lead singer of INXS. You may now return to the life that knows in its heart that INXS died with Michael Hutchence.

Here comes the uncomfortable, made for TV hug. I predict this ends up like David Lee Roth and Van Halen at the VMA's a few years back.

One more thing from Ethel. What's the over/under on how long it takes JD to end up in rehab? I'm guessing that it'll be before the second "leg" of their "world" tour.

That's all for me. It's bedtime.

Good night everybody.

I meant to include this in the last post, but I'll give it its own glory instead. Lauren drew a picture today:




I case it's not completely obvious, this photo (from left to right) is me, the wife, Lauren, a football, and the baby.

And she put the football in because that's what we were doing before she went to bed last night: throwing the football around the yard.

Sure, we're all head and legs, but I think it's pretty astounding, especially now that things are drawn in relative sizes.

My child is the smartest and most brilliant child to ever grace this planet with his or her presence.

Where to start, where to start, where to start? Let's see...

Friday night was pretty quiet after the rogors of the week. The neighbors / in-laws took in the North Gwinnett homecoming game (which North won 24-19 over Northview HS), we laid around the house, ate literally anything we could find that would take less than 60 seconds to prepare (corndog and chips for the urchin, the sammiches I didn't take for lunch on Friday and a salad or some such nonsense for the wife).

Saturday was a go early and often day that started with taking both vehicles to Bill Heard Chevy for recall repairs to the blinker assembly and tailights. I also started the process of replacing the gasket on my large BGE again, with the idea that I would remove the dome and re-seat it so that it would hold temps correctly AND stop burning up gaskets. We went to the BGE store for their moving sale (since everything in the store EXCEPT Big Green Eggs was 25% off) and bought some seasonings, a cover for my new BGE, some tools, and a couple other things no one but eggers will care about. (Shut up...it's my blog).

Then it was off to Best Buy to find an Ipod mini for the brother in law. The one we went to had pink and green only, so we opted to wait until Sunday since this trip was starting to interfere with beer drinking and football watching. Then it was home for said beer drinking, football watching and dinosaur steak cooking last night. I proceeded to attain my goal for the evening, which was to get drunk, and while I'm not proud of it (in case any kids are reading this), it was what I set out to do yesterday.

And don't look at me that way. I didn't drive anywhere. Shut up.

Oh, I forgot to tell you how I burned my leg on my Big Green Egg while changing the gasket.

After heating the Egg to about 500 degrees to soften the old gasket, I set the lid off to my right upside down and started some more cleaning on the bottom piece. Seconds later, I turned to my right and you can imagine what happened.



I bumped into the dome (which was about 450 or so degrees), and since I was already leaning too far to the right, I started to fall over, and in trying to recover I managed to touch the dome lip AGAIN with my leg and burned it again.

Anyway, today started early with Stinky waking up WELL before the usual time. We've had breakfast, assembled the pack n' play / changing table for the baby's room, I've thrown out (I mean recycled) the newspaper basket, I've watered the lawn and the islands, and soon it'll be time to head for Sam's for some more tubs for basement storage, hopefully some meat and a giant jar of pickles.

But the highlight of the day is to be our trip to the Gwinnett County Fair. Here's the thing about fairs:

Fairs kick ass.

I love the rickety, shitty-assed rides, I love the Simpsons-style sideshow Carnie types that run the ring toss and the pony rides. I love foot long corn dogs, deep fried twinkies, funnel cakes, and all the other shit they sell there.

I love playing on all of the cool farm equipment like tractors, combines, skid loaders, bobcats and the like.

I enjoy seeing all of the animals and the hillbilly children that raised them, from the cute baby sheep to the 3,000 pound Texas Longhorns with a ball big the size Connecticut. And don't act like you don't look. EVERYBODY looks at the bull's balls. Everybody.

I will be back later to tell you about our day and hopefully post some pictures of said adventure...

But I stumbled across these song lyrics at Fark.com

No, you don't need to know what i was reading about or where. What matters is that the band Bloodhound Gang has a song with the following lyrics. By the way, the song's title is:

Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo

Vulcanize the whoopee stick
In the ham wallet

Cattle prod the oyster ditch
With the lap rocket

Batter dip the cranny ax
In the gut locker

Retrofit the pudding hatch
Ooh la la
With the boink swatter

If i get you in the loop when I make a point to be straight with you then
In lieu of the innuendo in the end know my intent though
I brazillian wax poetic so pathetically
I don't wanna beat around the bush

Foxtrot Unifrom Charlie Kilo
Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo

Marinate the nether rod
In the squish mitten

Power drill the yippee bog
With the dude piston

Pressure wash the quiver bone
In the bitch wrinkle

Cannonball the fiddle cove
Ooh la la
With the pork steeple

If i get you in the loop when I make a point to be straight with you then
In lieu of the innuendo in the end know my intent though
I brazillian wax poetic so pathetically
I don't wanna beat around the bush

Foxtrot Unifrom Charlie Kilo
Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo

Put the you know what in the you know where
Put the you know what in the you know where
Put the you know what in the you know where
Put the you know what in the you know where pronto

Today’s blog is one of those stream of consciousness efforts, so bear with me.

I stopped on the way to work today to get gas. From my house and the way I go to work, there are about, I don’t know, eight or ten gas stations. I know the ones by the highway off-ramps and on-ramps charge more for gas, but I’m a right turn in and out kind of a guy. I won’t drive a mile out of my way to save three cents a gallon, and I can’t stand making left turns into gas stations that will require me to make left turns out of them.

I know it’s not rational, but who needs the headache of a gas stop AND two left turns? I know I don’t.

Anyway, I decide to accept the ten cents per gallon extra to go one tenth of a mile closer to the highway and get gas. I’m okay with that…sort of.

I get out, run my debit card, and start pumping. At $2.699 a gallon, the numbers oughta be flying by. Except they’re not. It’s literally dribbling out of the pump. And the guy next to me had the same look on his face as I did, and it said “What the fuck is this?” I mean, he spent over four minutes (I timed him) filling up a fucking motorcycle. And not a twin tank beast either. It was a Honda.

After about five minutes, I said “screw this,” stopped at five bucks, which was just about 2 gallons, and left. Can you imagine that it was going to take me 24 fucking minutes to fill up my car? What year is this? 1922? I will stop there again to let the proprietor know that I will not be buying his shitty, watered down, overpriced gas ever again.

There. I feel better. Now on to really important news.

The first story today that will get WAY too much publicity today is that Britney “letting myself go completely in the name of maternity” Spears has given birth to Cletus’ fetus.

See, I have to credit Fark.com for that. They started referring to Mr. Spears (Kevin Federline) as Cletus and Federcletus a LONG time ago…around the time that Whoretney first brought him out in public as “her man.”

Then, when I heard the story yesterday, Cletus Fetus hit me, and that was that.

Anyway, here’s a girl who married a guy that was married with two kids when they met / boinked. He’s 27 years old and already had two kids with Shar Jackson, who is famous for I have no idea what. Shar’s got four kids total, including the two she popped out 1993 and 1995 when she was 17 and 19 respectively. No mention of those baby’s daddies at http://www.eonline.com/, but I have to assume that he / they weren’t NEARLY as famous as the shit-ass white trash Federcletus is, but I digress.

An interesting quote attributed to Shar at the abovementioned website regarding the happy couple:

“You both smoke, you both drink, and you both cheated on your significant others after three years. You’re made for each other.”

Just made me laugh. She’s passing judgement on folks. Nice. Now, back to my rant.

Anyway, the world is now complete since the has-been no-talent hack and her never-been no-talent husband have a spawn. She’s 23, married for a second or third time, and this time, she’s procreated with the skee-zoid. Anyone care to wager if the marriage can last thru football season?

I mean really. There’s no way on God’s ball of dirt that we’re sitting here 10 years from now saying “man, I was really wrong about those two. They really ARE the perfect couple.”

Anyway, baby FederSpears already has a deal with that weirdo Donatella Versacci (I refuse to look that up to see if it’s spelled right) for exclusive one-of-a-kind clothes for the baby.

Again, does anybody see this turning out anything but bad? I picture ass-less chaps and pirate shirts and once he’s a teenager, he’s going to make the Coreys (Feldman and Haimm) look like the Von Trapp kids. I bet little London will be chewing ecstasy like tic tacs, smoking opium and probably will have his own line of bongs or something.

My question is, when is this nonsense going to stop? Not star-fucking or reporting it, but Britney? She hasn’t done anything that anyone would consider meaningful in about five years. The last thing I remember her doing was tearing off NBA warmup-like black slacks to show her skin colored suit as she humped the stage at the MTV VMA’s a few years ago. She’s cancelled tours due to knee injuries (which is PR speak for low ticket sales and lack of interest). Her family’s bleeding her dry waiting for the next Spears child to become America’s masturbatory fantasy, and they’re spending money like it’s Armageddon.

Combine that with the fact that her husband’s only earning potential is as a backup dancer…for her…and she can’t tour, and the fact that he’s spending money in Vegas on drugs and hookers like he’s Hunter S. Thompson and Ben Afleck combined, and you’ve got a recipe for a Barbara Walters special where Britney cries as she gets introspective and tries to figure out where it all went wrong.

Yawn. Wake me up when Kevin gets picked up for soliciting a prostitute, only it’s actually a dude trying to look like his wife, only he’s better looking than his now pig of a wife.

The question is, will Kevin go on Leno a’la Hugh Grant? I seriously doubt it. I expect that we’re more likely to see the Britney and Kevin “E! True Hollywood Story,” which will chronicle the their downfall, financial ruin and finally their demise.

At least that’s what I’m hoping for…

On a happier note, the Megamillions Lottery game is up to a whopping one quarter of a billion dollars. That’s the kind of money that turned the asshole in West Virginia from a two bit country bully into a two-bit stripper loving, cash losing, drugged out grand-daughter financing bully. I think I could do better than that.

After taxes, a mook like me would take home about 80 million, and that would be great.

If it’s not me that wins it, I would just like it if someone young like me could win it, or at least someone relatively young, given that I’m now 37 years old. I’m tired of seeing folks over 60 win it. It doesn’t matter whether they take the 25-year annuity or the lump sum payment. They won’t live long enough to spend it.

Besides, I could do a lot of good with that money for both myself and other people.

Really.

The new season of Survivor starts tonight, complete with the first person who is, with the full permission and help of the producers, starting with a big fat HUGE lie right out of the gate.

It seems that former Dallas Cowboy quarterback Gary Hogeboom is on the show this season, but he colluded with the producers to say that he was Gary the Landscaping guy so folks wouldn’t resent his relative fame and perceived wealth and vote him off before he gets a chance to shoot himself in the foot.

Wouldn’t it be funny if the teams decided to kill a little time playing a little 3 on 3 football, or better yet, someone was sitting around talking about hot lesbian action, and they were about to be bitten by a ten foot uber-poisonous dragon-snake, and Gary picked up a coconut and threw a 40 yard strike to behead the monster, save the hot chick’s life, but in doing so opened the Pandora’s box that is his true identity?

Is there any doubt why this is the best reality show on the air today?

One last thing before I go today. Last night was effectively the semi-finals of CBS’ show Rock Star: INXS.

In case you’ve been under a rock (or simply don’t care and, like me, just assumed that INXS died ten years ago when Michael Hutchence did), this show is one week away from naming the new lead singer for INXS. The final four was last night, and unfortunately, the last girl was sacrificed last night in favor of the least talented of the final 8 or 16, Mig Ayesa.

I believe he is still in it for one or two reasons:

a) he’s Australian (like the band)
b) they KNOW he’s not the one, so they kept him to make next week a two-man contest.

I am petrified that it’s A, and that he’s gonna win no matter what. And that’s despite the fact that he’s nothing more than a cruise ship singer with abs. And you couldn’t miss his abs, because while he’s singing thru every musical break in every song he sings, he either takes off his shirt or tries to tear it off like Hulk Hogan, only he’s so wee and weak that he can’t tear off his own t-shirts. It’s sad really.

The two that it should come down to are Marty and J.D.

Despite nearly getting bounced in the first two weeks for being a raving lunatic, J.D. Fortune (nice fake name) has become the odds on favorite that doesn’t have an accent. His original material’s been good, he’s obviously talented, and his voice is about perfect for INXS’ older material which, despite their claims of moving forward, is essential if this band’s going to tour the world and play their old hits.

J.D.’s downside is that the crazy is probably just under the surface, and if you add some fame and a pile of money, he could got nuts again and leave them where they’ve spent the last ten years: without a singer.

The other contender is Marty. He’s from Chicago (a plus), his original stuff is great, he plays guitar as well (which always helps with the ballads) and he’s got great range.

Marty’s downside is probably his look. That sounds dumb but I think they (the band) are considering that in their final decision.

In the end, I hope Mig flames out by dropping his mic or pissing himself or something like that. Then I hope J.D. wins, leaving us with Marty as a solo act. Then (like my friend Amy) I could feel good buying Marty’s solo album and ignoring INXS much like I have for the last decade.

Well, maybe I wouldn’t ignore them outright (as I have several of their albums on my Ipod), but I wouldn’t spend a Canadian dime to see them in concert. INXS was Michael Hutchence. Period. Touring like this is akin to the John Kaye’s Steppenwolf or Axl Rose’s version of Guns N’ Roses. They just aren’t anything but a cover band hoping to make some nest egg money off of their past successes.

That said, I’ve enjoyed the show for what it was. A glorified talent show that allowed me weekly chances to crack on folks that are deluded enough to think that 15 minutes on a reality television show will result in real and long lasting fame.

Mig, when you get to the reality TV old folks home, tell Trischelle, Jerrie Manthey, Richard Hatch and the turd on a stick Puck, we all said “Hey.”

The Wedding Story that won’t go away

Last night I was watching the Monday Night Football game featuring the Atlanta Falcons beating the 2004 NFC Champion Philadelphia Eagles. They didn’t beat them with trickery or luck. The Falcons scored enough points and their defense beat the ever-loving shit out of Donovan McNabb while a second year 5’10” cornerback covered Terrell Owens like a blanket, allowing him some catches for over 100 yards, but the only time TO smelled the end zone is after he was pushed down in it without the ball.

Anyway, late in the first half, former Atlanta Hawks coach Hubie Brown was brought into the booth with Madden and Michaels, and my phone rang. It was our Catholic-American friends the Z’s, and they were watching the same thing and it made them laugh, so they called to tell me that they were laughing and thinking of us.

What could possibly prompt a Catho-American couple to laugh at 10:16pm to the point that they had to call someone and tell them about it?

Let me tell you a story:

It was 1986. I was 17, had just graduated high school and was dating this great girl. She was two years younger than me, but she was great. We went to the prom together, I gave her my class ring, blah blah blah. (I guess I shouldn’t blah blah too much since she became my wife, but you know what I mean).

So, we had been dating for a little while when she asked me if I wanted to go to her older sister’s wedding. I figured “sure…why not? Free food and an open bar to sneak drinks from? Count me in!!”

Well, I said yes before I knew the whole deal. It was a big wedding to be held at a very big local Catholic church, and the reception was to be held at a prestigious local country club (for fun, let’s call it Bushwood).

I had a fabulous $100 suit, which was on its last legs since I had grown since Christmas, but I figured it’d get me thru the day. Come to think of it, I think that’s about how much I paid for the one suit that I own now.

I didn’t really have any responsibilities for the wedding proper other than just getting dressed, showing up on time to pick up my date to get her to the church for photos, and then to pretty much sit around and not look bored out of my mind, which of course I was.

One sidenote here. My date’s mom asked me if I could pick up her family from Pittsburgh at the airport. And I said sure. The flight got in a little before 4pm and it was June 20th, and was approximately a billion degrees Kelvin outside.

At the time, I was driving my kickass 1976 custom Chevy van. It was figuratively cool, but it was literally it was a fucking oven. The air conditioning compressor had been destroyed in an accident, and since replacing it would cost more than the van was worth, I didn’t worry about it. Of course, I hadn’t planned on fetching aunt Cathy, Uncle Eddie, Mike, Dave, Mark and Scott, in addition to Molly’s grandfather, who was 84 at the time.

We loaded all nine of us (plus seven people’s luggage) into the van and headed into Atlanta’s Friday rush hour traffic. It was then I realized that there might be trouble. If I were to guess, I’d say it was about 90ish outside, which means it was 2,400 degrees inside.

No one complained (except me) and we finally got the family delivered to my date’s house. To this day, the boys talk about that awesome airport trip.

Fast forward to the big day. I had only been to Catholic church once in my life, and it was with my friend Timmy Shields who said I should take communion with him, but he didn’t teach me the codeword or the secret handshake, so when I got up there, I might as well have been holding my dick in my hand to deserve the look I got from the priest. He reluctantly gave me communion, but I’m pretty sure he put a curse on me that day.

I got my date to the church in plenty of time. Then, it was a whole lot of sitting around and realizing that, outside of my date, , the bride, the groom, the groom’s brother, the bride’s mom and the family I picked up at the airport, I didn’t know a soul at this wedding.

Looking from the altar, the Church is setup in a fan shape, so I piled way WAY into the back right about five or so rows from the lobby and plopped right in the middle of a row, figuring no one would sit near me and that, as long as I didn’t snore, I would be left alone.

I then noticed that folks not only entered from the main door but also an auxiliary door over my left shoulder. After a while, I got tired of turning to look at who was coming in since I didn’t know anyone anyway, so I just stopped and resumed writing cuss words on the little cards in the back of the pew in front of me and slipping them into the hymnals as the church continued to fill…

While distracted by my imagination and the teeny pencil they give you, I heard the door behind me open and shut, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a woman around my mom’s age or so and she was falling.

Without thinking, I let my superhero senses and catlike reflexes take over. I stood up, took two big steps to my left and dove, just catching the falling damsel by her right arm. As I did so, I looked to her left. Astoundingly, there was a man, apparently with her, and he was doing nothing to help her. In fact, he was falling too.

Only he wasn’t falling. He was genuflecting. And it wasn’t just some guy. It was former Atlanta Hawks head coach and then New York Knicks head coach and now NBA Hall Of Fame coach Hubie Brown!!

What is going on here?

Coach Brown and his wife stood up, had a little chuckle amongst themselves and continued on to their seats, acting more or less as if nothing had happened.

I thought to myself “Okay, that was a little awkward, but I think the damage is minimal. Let’s just chill out, ride this wedding out and get to the reception for some crab pastries, chicken fingers and free beer.”

Only that last part never happened. Why? I’ll tell you why. Everywhere I turned was Hubie Brown (local celebrity and longtime close personal friend of the bride’s family) reaching out and putting an arm around me with a beer in his free hand and a circle of people around him, and then saying “come on young man…tell these folks how you saved my wife’s life today while she was genuflecting!”

Hardy freaking har.

I later married my date from that wedding and we’ve been married for over 13 years now and together nearly 20. And almost every year since, I’ve been at my mother in law’s house on Christmas day and answered the phone and found Claire Brown on the other end, and quickly and invariably the conversation would turn to that special day when I saved her life.

I’m glad I provided the parties involved with a story that would sustain them thru tough times, and I’m glad that I’ve been able to share it with you.

Let me give you some advice. If you ever see a woman out of the corner of your eye and she’s falling in church, let her hit the ground. That way YOU’LL have the funny story about her and not the other way around.

(Just kidding, Claire. I wouldn’t trade that moment for anything).

Yesterday afternoon was the same as pretty much any afternoon when I got home from work. Lauren was excited to see me, although yesterday she was VERY excited since the new Diego was on TV.

For those without kids, Diego is Dora’s male cousin. I think he was created because the parents of all of the boys in the world were concerned that it wasn’t healthy for their sons to be playing with girl dolls and wanting to be a girl for Halloween. So, corporate America responds with Diego, bi-lingual adventure boy and increases their sales by 100%. Yay.

We then had a lovely flank steak with Béarnaise sauce dinner, complete with rice and squash, the latter of which of course I, a devout carnivour, did not eat. While I cleaned the kitchen, the wife and the urchin went outside to play.

It is here that I must introduce several characters. If you have read my blog for a while, you’ll know the person I’ll refer to as FBS girl or just FBS. Because I don’t want to be accused of being coarse or unrefined, that’s what I’ll call the 5 year old girl that screamed “THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!!” last Sunday after being told she’d be going inside the house as a disciplinary measure. This child is a rude, boorish, disobedient little shit with tendencies towards violence.

The other child involved is a 4 year old who is also a neighbor, and he is a rude, disobedient little shit. He just doesn’t cuss. He makes up for it, however, by throwing fantastic hissy fits that can last as long as 45 minutes, and have been thrown in the past on my garage floor. My favorite part about his folks’ parenting style is his dad’s desperate need to be liked, so he coddles him and tolerates all kinds of stuff.

Except when Dad’s “had enough,” which I think I’ve only seen once. He sternly walked over to the boy, picked him up and said “you don’t want me to have to get out Mr. Tickles, now do you?”

Not only is that something I don’t want to see, but I should have called DFACS as soon as he said it.

Anyway, these two children’s parents are very nice, and I know that parenting skills differ and it takes different things for different kids, but these four folks are failing miserably and their kids reflect that.

Now, know this. I leave in the morning well before my urchin awakens from her slumber, and if I get home at 5pm, I have exactly two and a half hours to spend where it’s just the three of us. We try to get outside for a while every night so Lauren can play and we can talk.

Anyway, these are the children and here’s the story.

Yesterday evening after cleaning up from dinner, we headed out front for some yard time. Uncle Todd and Heather and the boys also came over a little later, but not for the first 30 minutes or so.

FBS girl and her mom popped outside and asked if Lauren could come over and play. We replied that no, she could not, as we wanted her to play outside for a little while. FBS girl and her mom headed back inside and we figured that was it.

But no. Out come the mom, FBS girl and young Mr. Tickles, whose dad was apparently helping put in some light fixtures at FBS’ house. So here we all come to our front yard for some play time.

And here’s where I start to have a problem. You can raise your kid any way you want in your house. Really. That’s fine. But when you bring your kid(s) outside and their rearing starts affecting my kid, that’s when I get involved.

See, FBS girl is a brutish bully of a girl who, when she thinks no one is looking, likes to hit other kids, break things, and generally cause mayhem. I’ve seen it first hand. I do not turn my back on her for a second.

Mr. Tickles goes wherever he wants regardless of what any adults say (including inside my house more than once), cries horrifically when he doesn’t get his way, and also likes to break things. I also don’t turn my back on him for a second.

So wee tell the 3 kids to stay in my front yard. Period. Play tag, roll around, play soccer, whatever, but stay here. First thing out of the gate while playing tag, FBS girl throws Lauren to the ground. It’s not an accident. It never is. Then Mr. Tickles tags my daughter in the face with a fist. So much for this game. Lauren doesn’t cry, but she doesn’t understand kids like this. This behavior is not tolerated in our home.

We then go to soccer. Lauren gets a soccer ball, and FBS girl runs up and takes it. I tell her we have other balls to play with, and ask her to return Lauren’s and please go get another one for herself. She storms and stomps as does Mr. Tickles, who likes to hit himself in the head and growl when he doesn’t get his way.

Then the two children not of my loins begin leaving the yard. This brings out the new disciplinary tactic of FBS’s mom: “This is your final behavior warning, FBS. Do not take another step.” Repeat this 50 times with no ramifications and you’ve about got it down. Surprisingly, the child ignores her and continues inching towards where she’s going to see how far she can go. Lauren won’t dare.

I spend the next 45 minutes doing nothing other than watching these kids because they are constantly heading just out of eyesight and immediately doing things they’ve been told not to do. Lauren starts getting confused, as she wants to play with them, but doesn’t understand how they can continually disobey and not get in trouble.

So, we’ve had several multiple warning events, shoving incidents, hitting, sharing issues, and general bad sandbox skills. I am growing weary. Molly and I have discussed in recent days how we are going to address our concerns, especially with FSB’s parents, since they’re new and nice, but I’m fairly certain their kid’s the anti-Christ.

About that time, FBS grabs Lauren by the hand and runs in the opposite direction. This spins Lauren around, flings her feet out from under her and all I see is her feet up and her head falling. Lauren lands with a sickening thud, which is produced when the back of her head lands on the concrete driveway.

I went to her, picked her up, leaned over to about an inch from FBS’s face and screamed “YOU GO HOME!!!” and promptly took my child inside.

I have since been told that the several minutes that my in-laws and the neighbor stayed outside in my driveway were uncomfortable for all of them. I’d say I was sorry about that, but I’m not.

Lauren’s fine, aside from a nice knot on the back of her head, two scraped elbows and the confusion that comes from a 3 year old wondering why another kid is constantly doing these things to her.

See, I refuse to waste the little time I get each day with my child disciplining other people’s shit-ass kids. I love my daughter and I enjoy this time, and I enjoy that she is a well-disciplined, compassionate and polite child that is considerate of others, kids and adults alike. I think it’s likely that, as adults, FBS will be a serial killer and that Mr. Tickles will be an accomplice.

I feel bad that this morning, my wife will most assuredly field a call from FBS’s mom apologizing but at the same time taking issue with how I handled the situation. I have advised the wife that, if she doesn’t want to talk about it with FBS’ mom, she can direct that call to me.

I would simply say that while we enjoy your company, it is impossible for our child to play with your child if your child is going to act this way. We expect our children and all children to treat each other with respect and to obey adults and have basic manners. We work very hard to teach our daughter this and find that time with your child undoes this hard work at an alarming rate. Hopefully your child will begin behaving better and obeying adults and being respectful (which includes not talking like a penitentiary inmate), and when she does she is welcome to play with our child. But not until then.

So, look for more blogs in the future as this story unfolds, which it clearly will…

I know these are stupid and gay and retarded and all of that stuff, but in the end, I always read them when they're emailed to me and I always fill them out.

As a matter of fact, I think I may post a few blogs with different quizzes like this. That way, if you find one you like, you can fill it out and either post your response(s) in the comments or just cut and paste them into an email and send them to your family and friends. No need to thank me or credit me. After all, I didn't invent these astoundingly captivating wastes of time.

Anyway, this is the five's quiz. Enjoy everybody!!

Twenty Years ago, I was: 17 years old and a couple of weeks into my senior year in high school. I had already been suspended for smoking in the bathroom between classes (that happened the first day of school) and had been "advised" by one school administrator to forge my parents' signatures on one of the county smoking permits so I could smoke outside and not get into trouble.

I was driving a copper colored 1976 Chevy Van with a cream-colored "Starsky and Hutch" stripe up the side. This bad boy had wall to wall carpet, a 9 inch black and white TV, a "cool box" with the Pink Floyd "Dark Side of The Moon" album cover painted on it, a CB radio, moon roof and an 8-track. How fucking hot was I in 1985?

I was probably working at the Pizza Hut delivery center in metro Atlanta at the time, making decent high school money for taking orders, supervising a little and creating maps.

Fifteen years ago, I was: 22 years old, out of college having run out of money and interest in academia (but mostly having run out of money) and I had moved back to Atlanta. I was living in Norcross and working at TJ's Sports Bar and Grill, owned by former Toronto Maple Leaf and Atlanta Flame Tim Ecclestone.

My life at the bar revolved primarily around working doubles five days a week, eating courtesy of my employee discount and taking full advantage of the employee discount offered on draft beer.

A typical workweek saw me off Monday and Tuesday, mostly for social drinking and / or recovery. Then I’d work doubles from Wednesday thru Friday (which meant working 10am to either 11pm or close at 2am or 3am), then just the night shift Saturday, followed by a double on Sunday.

A regular day was about $40-$50, a decent day was about $60-$75, and a good day was anything over $100. I / we were really living hand to mouth, literally deciding if we could eat until I came home with tip money.

The bar ruled, I was the first guy Tim ever hired to wait tables, and we had a really good time there. I was reunited with my high school sweetheart before I left college and, I believe at that point, we were finalizing efforts to move in together.

Ten Years ago, I was: 27 years old, I had been married since May of 1992, and was living life to the fullest…kind of. We had not missed a home Atlanta Braves playoff game to that point and that year, we got to see the Braves beat the Cleveland Indians to win the World Series. That kicked complete ass!!

We did some traveling thanks to discounts available to us thru my wife’s work at the nation’s largest privately owned travel agency here in Atlanta. We went on several cool trips, including one to Boston for Labor Day weekend of 1997 (which you can read about here).

We were still DINK’s at the time (double income-no kids) so we had little to no responsibility. We had been in our house for five years, and had not yet begun to see the neighborhood falling into its current state of horrid disrepair.

I was working at LXE and had been working there for about four years. I met and made several great friends there that are still close to us to this day.

We played darts in the Buckhead Dart League on Wednesday nights, then Friday and Saturday nights were for home dart playing, video games, drinking and playing Yahtzee.
Five years ago, I was: 32 years old. I had moved to my current job working for the world’s largest condom manufacturer and had been here for two years at that point. Not much had changed in five years. We had been on a few all-inclusive vacations to some cool places, but everything had stayed remarkably the same in the five prior years.

One year ago, I was: We were now a family of three and had sold the ghetto house in favor of one in Suburban Atlanta that is across the street from my wife’s oldest sister and her family.

I was still working in the latex bidness, but we had just sold our medical division to a venture capital group, so we were forced to move across the lobby to the other half of the floor and start our work life anew. I had a new desk, a new boss, and had been in our new house for a year. Lauren was 2ish, and we had begun talks about a second child. Holy crap, things sure had changed in the last five years.

My Five Favorite Snacks: Cheddar Cheese combos, Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles, ABT’s (atomic buffalo turds) prepared on a Big Green Egg, Slim Jims and pretzel bites from the Mall.

Five songs I know all the words to: Man, that could say 50 and I’d still have too many. Let’s go with American Pie by Don McLean. (And for the record, it's not whiskey and rye, it's whiskey IN Rye, as in Rye, NY), U2's One Tree Hill, Bust a Move by Young MC, Paradise City by Guns N' Roses and Convoy by CW McCall.

Five things I would do with $100 million: First of all, I’d give my friend Susan a million, since that’s our lottery agreement. Then, I’d give Heather and Todd, Colleen and Jeff, Peggy, Mom and Dad, Mom and Bill and John and Judy a million each. I’d put a million in a VERY tight trust for my brother, and I’d set a mill each aside for the two kids. That’d leave about 90 million, and I’d go to town.

I’d obviously pay off our debts the first five minutes. I’d trick the house all the way out, but I’d also start looking for a newer / slightly bigger house in our community / school district with room for a little build out in the back yard for my uber-deck/patio and pool. I’d most assuredly buy about 110 foot houseboat at Lake Lanier, as well as a nice ski boat and possibly a house up there.

I’d quit my job faster than I could say, “screw this!” and I think the wife would too. We would start doing things we cared about and helping the neighborhood schools and charitable organizations.

I’d lease a Marathon Motorcoach (with an option to buy) and we’d go to the races we wanted to attend in the summer and on weekends during the school year, and just see the country.

I’d invest in some property between my house and the lake and look to develop it with the help of Thomas Management. I’d hire a personal trainer and then fire her shortly thereafter because, let’s be honest, I don’t want to be told what to do. I’d hire a hot nanny for the girls, but I’d tire of her and fire her too.

Then, I’d relax and live like Forest Gump, taking the girls to school and picking them up, making lunches, helping them with their homework and just enjoying my life with my wife and kids.

Five places to run away to: Lake Lanier, The Bahamas, Cancun, Minnesota and Boston. Oh, and I would visit the last two ONLY outside of the winter months and the tropical ones only outside of hurricane season.

Five things I would never wear: spandex bicycle shorts, a thong, a tank top, a visor or sandals that go between your toes.

Five favorite TV shows: This is tough. I’ll go for all-time rather than just right now. I think they’d be Seinfeld, Cheers, The Simpsons, Friends, and Lost.

Five biggest joys: My family, college football, NASCAR, cooking on my Big Green Egg and writing.

Five favorite toys: My X-box, my computers, my Big Green Egg, our digital camera and my 60GB photo Ipod.

Five people to pass this on to: I'm not passing this on to anyone directly. That was the point of this exercise, after all...

Oh, and if you read this far, here's a bonus for you. It's my sickness haiku.

Head all full of snot.
Why does this happen to me?
Could this be a curse?

Let me first say that despite what you would be led to believe, our country and the region will, in all likelihood, bounce back from this disaster. Before long, Americans will be side by side with the people of the Gulf Coast helping them rebuild or relocate to get back on their feet and on with their lives. It's what we as Americans do. It may not look like it now, but I think that things will return to a relatively normal state.

That doesn't mean that New Orleans proper will ever be the same. I have my doubts about that. But as long as there's oil just south of that city and a river running through it, folks will try.

Now, a lot of folks have a lot of different ideas about what happened, why it happened, and who should be blamed for the unmitigated disaster that is / was New Orleans, and I believe that there is more than enough blame to go around on this one.

Over the course of the next few weeks, months and even years, more will come out and we'll re-evaluate what we thought we knew.

But as it stands today, the first person / group of people I'm blaming is the city of New Orleans, followed closely by the state of Louisiana.

Here is another article from Merritt Island, Florida Reporter that, if even partially true, is going to be very bad for the Mayor and Governor down there:

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I think all of Mayor Nagin's pomp and posturing is going to bite him hard in the near future as the lies and distortions of his interviews are coming to light.

On Friday night before the storm hit Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center took the unprecedented action of calling Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco personally to plead with them to begin MANDATORY evacuation of NO and they said they'd take it under consideration. This was after the NOAA buoy 240 miles south had recorded 68' waves before it was destroyed.

President Bush spent Friday afternoon and evening in meetings with his advisors and administrators drafting all of the paperwork required for a state to request federal assistance (and not be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act or having to enact the Insurgency Act). Just before midnight Friday evening the President called Governor Blanco and pleaded with her to sign the request papers so the federal government and the military could legally begin mobilization and call up. He was told that they didn't think it necessary for the federal government to be involved yet. After the President's final call to the governor she held meetings with her staff to discuss the political ramifications of bringing federal forces. It was decided that if they allowed federal assistance it would make it look as if they had failed so it was agreed upon that the feds would not be invited in.

Saturday before the storm hit the President again called Blanco and Nagin requesting they please sign the papers requesting federal assistance, that they declare the state an emergency area, and begin mandatory evacuation. After a personal plea from the President Nagin agreed to order an evacuation, but it would not be a full mandatory evacuation, and the governor still refused to sign the papers requesting and authorizing federal action.

In frustration the President declared the area a national disaster area before the state of Louisiana did so he could legally begin some advanced preparations. Rumor has it that the President's legal advisers were looking into the ramifications of using the insurgency act to bypass the Constitutional requirement that a state request federal aid before the federal government can move into state with troops - but that had not been done since 1906 and the Constitutionality of it was called into question to use before the disaster.

Throw in that over half the federal aid of the past decade to NO for levee construction, maintenance, and repair was diverted to fund a marina and support the gambling ships. Toss in the investigation that will look into why the emergency preparedness plan submitted to the federal government for funding and published on the city's website was never implemented and in fact may have been bogus for the purpose of gaining additional federal funding as we now learn that the organizations identified in the plan were never contacted or coordinating into any planning - though the document implies that they were.

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It is the local government's responsibility to have a feasable evacuation plan in situations like this. It's not like anyone believed that there would never ever be a hurricane in the Gulf Coast area again.

So you've got a group of folks that constantly petition the feds for money for upgrades and what not, but then spend the money on casinos and other fluff. There's even talk now that a proposed plan was a scam to get more money, was never implimented and the planned contractors had never actually been contacted.

These are the same folks that screamed from day one for the Feds to do something.

Secondly, I blame the people that stayed.

I know that sounds shitty. I know there are folks that couldn't get out, but not nearly as many as the number that stayed. I read an interesting column today and here's an exerpt. Actually, here's the whole thing since I don't want anything taken out of context:

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An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
by Robert Tracinski Sep 02, 2005 by Robert Tracinski

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster.

It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

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See, I understand trying to protect your stuff. But in the end, common sense has to prevail. Your house and TV and dishwasher and car aren't worth shit if you're dead. Once it was clear this storm was enormous (which was 3 days prior to striking when a buouy recorded a 68 foot wave just off the coast), the time to leave is now. Pack up the family, put on your best shoes, fill whatever you can pull with water, some food of some sort from the pantry, pack a bag or two of essentials, and get walking.

No, the bridge out of town wasn't a great place to be either. It was hot and there was no food or water. But it was better than being neck deep in human waste, decomposing biohazard and chemical-filled water, waiting for no one to come.

The thing is, most of the folks that stayed just sat around assuming the government would take care of them like they always had. But the government can't do that. They haven't been able to for a long time. They can come in after the fact and write some checks, but that doesn't help anyone when the wave hits.

And the idiocy that came after is unforgivable. The fact that a group of people (no matter how many were at the Superdome) didn't have the sense to walk a distance away from where they were trying to sleep to urinate and defecate is beyond understanding. In the direst of dire situations, I would still keep my wits about me enough to know that you can't shit where you eat and sleep. It's that simple.

I also understand breaking into a grocery store for water, bread, diapers, formula and other life sustaining goods. But for every person stealing food, there were 50 shit-asses stealing box after box of Air Jordans, plasma televisions, luxury clothes and other worthless crap.

Worthless? Yes, worthless. Where the fuck are you going to plug in that plasma TV, dumbass? You're walking around neck deep in a full and dirty toilet surrounded by nice architecture, and you won't even put the TV down to keep the E-coli infested water out of your mouth.

Then there were stories of people shooting AT rescue helicopters and boats, and eventually of policemen being shot and killed. At that point, it was no longer a mission of mercy, but a police action.

I was in full support of the National Guard being under orders to shoot to kill, and I still am. Survival is one thing. That behavior is altogether another.

In the end, the whole thing makes me sad. Self-preservation is bred from a good upbringing, knowing the difference between right and wrong, being self-reliant, taking responsibility for yourself and your life, and doing the right thing, especially when no one is looking.

I only hope that these sights don't somehow make Americans lose their collective belief that we are all in this together. Because believe me, it's going to take every one of us to get through this disaster, and this won't be the last one. Hopefully the next one will be handled better by the people AND the powers that be.

And before I go, here's another footnote that should make folks sick. On Neal Boortz's site today, I read the following:

Yesterday on the show I predicted that by the end of the week someone was going to be calling for the victims of Hurricane Katrina to be paid massive amounts of money, just as were the families of the victims of 9/11. Well ... it didn't take long. And just who was it that stepped forward to demand the victims compensation fund? None other than the NAACP. Yup, NAACP president Bruce Gordon is saying that a compensation fund for the Katrina victims should be the first order of congress. By the way, the NAACP didn't call for a victim's compensation fund after any of the four hurricanes that devastated Florida year. Draw your own conclusions.

Don't believe it? Here's the link:

http://www.naacp.org/news/2005/2005-09-06.html


Sorry this was so long, but there was good stuff to read and important stuff to think about as we move into the next phase of this disaster: The "I want mines" part.

Have I told you about the 5 year old girl across the street? Well, something happened yesterday afternoon that topped anything I've seen so far.

It's late afternoon around 4ish, and the TML's and the across the street in-laws are out in the yard, enjoying the day, even flying kites if you can believe it. It was perfect.

Then, out of nowhere, THEY show up and join us.

the folks are nice (if not a little loud) but good people. But the 5 year old is the one that screamed "I'M NOT GOING TO FUCKING SCHOOL!!" in front of 20 moms and their kids at the bus stop the first week of school.

Anyway, we're playing and goofing around and, as is usually the case, child X is acting up a little and draws the ire of her father. The father (I'll call him LOUD TALKING GUY) says "CHILD X, YOU ARE NOT BEING A GOOD EXAMPLE. DO YOU WANT TO GO HOME OR BE GOOD? COME OVER HERE AND TELL ME YOUR DECISION!! ONE!!! TWO!!! THREE!! FOUR!! FIVE!! TELL ME YOUR DECISION!!! HAVE YOU MADE YOUR DECISION?!?!?!?"

All the while, child X is totally ignoring him, but for the nose thrust upwardly in the air and both hands brazenly planted on either hip.

By the way, I'd like to add something here. I don't believe in counting for your kids to get them to obey you. I count to see if Lauren will do things faster, like getting her shoes or cleaning up the playroom or getting to the tub at night, but not as far as a behavior consecquences game. Mostly because I've never seen it work for very long. The kids end up stalling and trying to push the parents, and eventually 3 becomes 4 and then 5, and then the parent just looks foolish.

So, LOUD TALKING GUY grabs her by the arm to walk her across the street to her house for a few minutes of discipline (cough cough...unlikely), when child X shouts the following very clearly and in the proper context:

THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!

Ummmmm....what? What the fuck did she just say? I looked over (carefully) at my brother in law who was sitting across from me in a camp chair and next to child x's mother, and I thought his eyebrows were gonna jump off his face they went up so fast. I had heard right then. This child had just said "THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!"

As the dad was walking her inside, the mom said "I bet she's gonna get a spanking and a mouthful of soap for that..."

Five minutes later, out come LOUD TALKING GUY and child X tear stained, but no worse for the wear considering.

Then, it was back to blatant disobeying and being a shitty influence on my kid. Child X dumped a bottle of bubbles in the fountain on my deck repeatedly, she dumped out the beer cooler despite repeated warnings against suck behavior, and she continued to play in the fountain after being asked by her parents and us to stop.

Then, when child X was told something and threw her nose up, eyes closed, with her hands defiantly on her hips and MY child did it immediately thereafter, things reached their zenith.

Lauren was then taken inside shortly thereafter and told that, regardless of how other children acted, she was to use her manners and good behavior at all times, ESPECIALLY when other children misbehave. She was also told that we were embarassed and extremely disappointed.

She cried.

She came back outside and apologized to every parent for not using her manners and proceeded to ingnore child X as though she had the plague. LOUD TALKING GUY and his wife didn't even seem to notice.

My question is, would any of you have even survived if you had said those magical words in earshot of your parents, let alone AT THEM???

We are now in serious discussions about no longer letting that child anywhere near mine.
The gravity of the situation is still only slightly overshadowed by my hysterical internal laughter at a 5 year old uttering that magical phrase and living to tell about it.