America’s Team Makes the playoffs

I’m pretty sure that the Redskins are America’s team.

 It is the capitol of America.

Way to go, America! Redskins!

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FunFranFacts!

• What do you want to know about Fran?
• She’s a dead shot. Or at least can kill you dead with a shot (even if you’re a harmless mommy bird protecting her young). She shows no mercy.
• She can really light up a party. Literally. Set other people’s houses ablaze. She will show no remorse, just giggle and toss her head.
• She once decided to up and run a 5k race, just to see if she would break a sweat. She didn’t. (Oddly enough, she floated through half of it – and we have the photographic proof).
• She can talk you into anything. And make you think it was your idea all along. (It brings to mind a story of how four room-less tourists took up with a man on an oxygen tank in his private home in Jackson Hole. Or, how some lovely children got to tour an American Embassy abroad, even though it was closed to the public.).

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What does your world look like?

‘Cause mine needs a thorough scrubbin’!

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Daily Show and Colbert Report to return.

I’m sure Comedy Central is forcing their hands and I’m not sure how good these shows will be without their writers but, selfishly, I’m glad they’re coming back.

They summed it up in a joint statement, Stewart and Colbert said: “We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.”

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I’m not one for the gossip rags, but…

Sheesh!

Reading the entirety of the National Enquirer article does make it seem a little suspect. John Edwards’ staffer is claiming to have fathered this baby. Okay. But if that married man with a family had fathered the child, would his wife let him move that adulter-ator into the neighborhood and have dinner with him? Uh-Uh. No, No way. Forget it.

It makes NO sense. Right?

Am I the only one who can’t wait to see how this plays out?

Kind of a pity since I had just stopped hating the ambulance chaser mere months ago.

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We just called ‘em keggers.

I cannot believe that someone so close to me worked for a Japanese company and failed to mention this holiday tradition. It’s Brillz, people!

Bonenkai is a “forget the year” gathering. The aim is quite simple and straightforward - to help you forget the unpleasantness of the the year.

What does this entail? Do you write your troubles down on strips of paper, place them on tine sailboats and set them sail? Do you go to a temple and kneel in prayer in some sort of syncretized Buddhist/Shinto ceremony? Do you burn notes of the wrongs you have done and have been done to you? Write your apologizes in the soot?

No, no, no, no, no, no, No! You foolish simpletons. You get drunk on the company dime.

Here’s to you, boozers!

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Ahhh. Good Old Fashioned Sibling Rivalry.

In the “I want to be famous too!” category: Britney Spear’s 16 year old sister is pregnant.

The competition is heating up, y’all. I seem to remember a gum-smacking Britney telling Matt Lauer she was poor white trash. Don’t worry, honey, we believe you. You can stop trying so hard now. You can put the gunrack back in the trailor. Every last one of us is convinced.

I do wonder whether Nickolodeon will still think Jamie-Lynn Spears, now an unwed teen mommy, is still a good role model for kids. Maybe they should rethink her contract on Zooey 101. No?

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Texas-sized Garbage Island- Your Subtelty Isn’t Lost On Me.

We’ve all heard the rumors of the Texas sized (or twice the size of Texas, depending on who’s reportage you’re listening to) pile of trash floating in the Pacific. The scuttlebutt is that it is hanging out somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii; How come there are no pictures of it? I would think it would be visible from some satellite. Or that Google Earth would be able to come up with something to slake the public’s thirst for knowledge.

(EDIT: See link below).

It is rumored to be between three feet and three or four hundred feet thick in different areas. Is all this submerged underwater? Is there no bit of it popping it’s little head though the surface of the,  sea?

And don’t think I don’t appreciate the fact that no matter how big it is, the pile of crap is always comparable to Texas. Your constant subliminal linking of the two is not lost on me.

Check it out!

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Advertising is absurd. Part 1.

Take a look at this image (taglines, below).  This is all of the taglines we came up with for the Audi pitch when I worked at McKinney.  Well, we didn’t win.  Maybe we needed a few more tagline ideas?

Taglines

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Good Lord! That is a lot of guitars. UPDATED 9/8/10

Welcome to the pinnacle of guitar nerd-dom.  The following is a list of every guitar I have ever owned (off the top of my head, I may be missing a few).  Trust me, I could go in to a lot more detail, but I’m afraid I’d be creating a black hole in the web with my super-concentrated geekness.  Enjoy.

1. 1964 Fender Jazzmaster– Bought this from a classified ad on AOL (pre-eBay days) for about $450.  The finish was stripped and it had a brushed-on clear finish.  Everything else was original including the tortoise pickguard, pickups and slab rosewood fretboard.  I had the body refin’d to Burgundy Mist, a Fender Custom Color, and added a repro greenish-white pickguard.  I think I sold this for about a grand after a year.

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Embrace Your Inner Geek – Or the One Closest to You

My sister and my dad have an opportunity to use words like kludge (pronounced: ‘klooge’) in thier workaday world. They say things like, “I don’t have enough disc space for that,” when referring to their personal free time. Ahem. Geek-y!

I find occasion to use the words ‘tontine’ and ‘antepentultimate’ – because I sit around talking about television (an episode of MASH (or The Simpsons) and reality tv, respectively).

So, the question arises, Who’s the bigger loser?

A: I guess that would default to me. At least theirs is an employable nerdiness!

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Uh, Dad? This One’s for You.

A pint of beer is better for you after a workout than water, say scientists

Yes. If you wait long enough scientists will support any cockamamie theory you want them to.

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Ch..Ch..Check Check ‘Em Out!

We’re not really breaking new ground here but in case you haven’t seen the internet sensation that is LolCats, there are pleny of sites devoted to it. Hey, deep down people dothink cats are cute. And, we do have a base need to anthropomorphize the animals around us. So these sites do satisfy a deep craving.

Seriously, this kind of thing would normally be the exact kind of thing I hate. But I have laughed. You should laugh too.

Edit:

Apparently these memes are so popular, you can still register to attend the first ever ROFLCon in April at Harvard. The LOLCats, LOLCode, LOLSecretz, Chuck Norris Facts and Paperclip to House Guy will all be in attendance. Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of history.

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Worst Band Names of 2007

Throughout the year, the AV Club keeps track of some of the dumbest band names they come across and at the end of the year they let us in on what made the rather puerile list.

Some of my favorites include:

Garrison Killer. - It’s a play on a name that mostly your grandparents will recognize. Not the way to go.

Malice in Wonderland. - I’m pretty sure I came up with that one. In first grade.

Penguins with Shotguns. – Well, last year was the year of the penguin, I guess they thought they would capitalize on that.

I Sank Molly Brown. -  The girl is unsinkable, but this name is not.

ButtStomach. – I’m sure it refers to a trick they perform on stage. Otherwise, their combined age best not be over 45.

The House that Gloria Vanderbilt. - We all get it. You’re cute. But no one in your target market knows who Gloria Vanderbilt is, not even that she is Anderson Cooper’s mom. No one. (Hint: The house is made of snugly fitting denim).

Wookie Hangover. – Alright, I see your thinking…you love Star wars and you just discovered drinking. Okay.  Keep trying.

The Cornish Gay Men- You’re really punny. But, I bet you’re not really gay.  (Note: This may have an entirely different meaning in Cockney).

BiFurious - I wish it ended with, “:The Reckoning.” Regardless, they’re probably twice as furious.

General Patton and his Privates. – Too quickly rejected was the original: “Old Blood and Guts and His Nuts”

The Pussy Pirates. - (First line of their bio: “First off, we’re an ideas band. I think we proved that with Fuck Mountain.”)  Wow.  Only an ideas band would “concept” such a lame name.  It’s got a little Pirates of the Carribean, plus a bit of “down-there” humor from the playground set.  I hope the first song is called Fart Police.  Nope.

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Tin Man

A few thoughts on SciFi’s mini series Tin Man that I just got around to watching last night (4 hours of tv takes less than 3 hours thanks to DVR! Thanks, DVR); it bears mentioning that the dialogue was really clunky at times and you may have to have an understanding of Zooey Deschanel’s acting “style,” (it took me a few episodes of Bones to accept her sister Emily’s too) and understand that it’s on SciFi and it’s a miniseries. These things are not all adding up to make a winner. But I did think the actors showed restraint, it’s quite tempting to go big with a line like, “Save the poetry for someone who cares.”

Thoughts:

• You started losing me with “fang pox.”
• If the answer to disease in the future is exchanging my lower torso for a floating mechanical robot body, I’m okay with that.
• I would like a costume that affords me a bongo drum on each hip. I will wear that everyday.
• I’m in the market for a dog, is it too much to ask for one that would get me out of jail and then later turn into a magical black man? I want that kind of dog. C’mon.
• The songs weren’t as catchy as the original. No, wait, the absence of songs here is a plus.
• Also, fashion wise, if someone could make me a pair of black ostrich feather epaulets, I’d be really grateful. Better make it two, I have a mother who’d rock those too.
• Truth be told, wouldn’t all of us like to trap our mothers in some separate realm where we could pop in if we needed to ask how to remove a mustard stain or iron a pleated skirt (or in the case of my mother, how to set up a third party administration for an insurance company)?

Did you catch the show? Have any thoughts?

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Really, Clive? Really? Again?

I like to read crap.  Books that are the equivalent of watching a spectacular summer-time action/adventure blockbuster, but hopefully done really well.  And Clive Cussler fits the bill.  Although he has a few different series, I’ve basically stuck to the Dirk Pitt stories for a few reasons:

1.       I like Dirk as a character.  Besides his goofy name which brings up images of the lead character in Boogie Nights, he is the perfect action hero.  He has the physical and mental ability to save the world over and over again, while at the same time he is very human.  He has bad days, he’s aging, he needs sleep, and he drinks (and in the earlier books, smokes) too much.  They never mentioned that he goes to the bathroom though?

2.       I like his sidekick Al.  He sarcastic and sneaky.  Sometimes the banter between the two is a bit too much, but just shut that filter off in your brain and it’s a lot of fun.

3.       There is always a bit of history to be told.  The books typically start with an event that occurred way, way in the past.  Usually something is hidden, stolen, discovered, etc. and that is the basis for the storyline that we will be following once the books fast-forwards to the present.

4.       There are lots of details regarding gear of different types.  This is where the turbo-nerd in me comes out.  I like to know what kind of watch Dirk is wearing.  Or what vintage car he is driving.  I never mind Clive taking the time to tell me the details around the plane, boat, scuba gear, gun, computer, snowmobile, submarine, etc. 

So now you know that I like Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt books.  But what I find odd is that Clive feels the need to put himself in to the books.  I don’t mean his heart and soul, which is fine.  I mean himself as in Clive Cussler.  Cussler shows up in the stories.  He writes himself in.  Usually as a kind, wise old man who helps Dirk out or provides some bit of wisdom right when Dirk needs it.  And there is always a “he looks so familiar like I’ve known him all my life” kind of thing going on.  It’s kind of gross.  Once would have been no big deal, but over and over again is really horrible.  At first, I thought it was a fun little cameo ala Hitchcock.  But I’m starting to think Clive’s ego simply won’t let himself type that many words without reminding the reader that this brilliance is all Cussler.

I won’t even mention that Clive is now co-authoring his latest books with his son… Dirk Cussler!

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My Sister, the Genius

My ingenious sister had her Christmas party last week. “Having a Christmas party, that is smart but, I wouldn’t call it ingenious,” you say. Well, having the party wasn’t the genius part of it. The genius lies within the fact that she set up little craft stations throughout her house for people to make their own Christmas decorations.

You see, my lovely sister likes to bring people together. It’s a rare gift. I don’t have it. I like to keep people apart. “You wouldn’t like them anyway” is my motto. Sometimes bringing people together is more than dumping them in the same room. People are cagey, like tigers. They want to sniff others out, stalk them, see if they like their odors. A great way to let them do that is with seperate craft stations (My guess, tigers would love seperate craft stations in their “natural habitats” at the zoo.

It’s also a better conversation starter. Walking up to someone and saying. “Watcha working on?” is a lot less creepy than something like, “What is that, like your 8th glass of wine?”

So, store that good idea away for next year. My genius addition: Make it an ugly sweater party!

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You People Don’t listen!

I told you people to watch Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace when it was airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim but you didn’t and sadly, now it has run its course.

The show is about horror writer Garth Marenghi who (along with his publisher) stars in the tv series  based on his own works. They also produce and direct. They are good at not-quite one of these.

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I have a PatrolKitty, and yoooouuu Don’t!

Here in Austin we have a friendly little kitten that patrols our yard. It is true that she is quite skittish and does not protect us from intruders through our back gate at 4am (a story for another day), but she probably would let us know if there were a wayward chipmink nearby. 

I have since found out that kitten is a little bit of a harlot (n. female prostitute – from Anglo-French herlot beggar, vagabond; take it whichever way you want). She solicits food and company from at least four other neighbors. And still manages to look so pitiful and needy whenever you see her. Don’t fall for it! It’s all a ruse! She’s like the fabled panhandler who makes a six figure income; she looks rough but she could buy and sell everyone of us. MastermindKitty is her new name. She will chew you up and spit you out. 

Or just look cute like this:           

 

Other names that she responds equally poorly to are:

Herr Kitty, DerrKittyMeisterGeneral, HelloKitty, MissKittenBottoms, Cat Got your Tongue, ScardeyCat, Blackie, and Edgar.

Oh, and we have no idea if PatrolKitty is male or female. In case you’re wondering.

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Don’t like the Name?

Here are some other blog names we would have considered:

Talk turkey to me

NutCrackers

V for Eat It!

Flabberghosted

Friends with words

There is no I in blog

 CheesySaltines

Tomatoes are rad!

Hoard of the Manor or Hoard Games (or some other hoarding type pun).

 StopBossin’

Don’t Yell at the Help. (my personal favorite, might promote it to tagline, thoughts?)

Smorgasblog (taken)

OurQuagmire

Feel free to use any of our losers for your own blogging needs. Just make sure to give props where props are due (Here, at The Life Tussle).

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