tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49071665216933374932024-02-08T07:51:33.752-08:00Affordable Commentary BlogIf you like this blog, you can keep this blog. Period. If your doctor likes this blog, he can prescribe this blog. Period. The rare and absurdly long posts on this blog will save you $2,500 per year, if your spouse has a gambling problem and would be wagering on amateur dwarf jousting if he was not occupied reading this blog. As sayeth Cruella Pelosi: if you pass by this blog, you will not find out what's in it. Which will cause catastrophic global warming. Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-23905860039538883132013-05-14T20:06:00.001-07:002013-05-14T20:06:08.426-07:00"Unexpectedly," Jay the Carney Barker has a Very Bad Week Conservative commentators have oft-noted one amusing tic of the MSM water carriers, namely: when something bad, but utterly predictable, happens as a direct result of one of President Light Worker's executive spell castings -- "Begone, Basic Laws of Economics!" "I hereby Banish Fox News and All Impudent Contrary Facts from My Sunny Chicago Reality!" -- Barry's media Supplicants and Tingly-Legged Adulators are always, always taken by surprise.<br />
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<i>What the heck? Dr. Krugman said the kajillion dollar Obama coin would pay off the debt, fix the Euro and provide funding for much-needed Green research into mobile, solar powered partial birth abortion clinics. That all of this has not come to pass must be the nefarious work of the Koch Brothers!</i> <br />
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Thus, Obamacare's perplexingly spiraling costs -- for mandating free, expanded health coverage to millions of new insureds, none of whom can be rejected for pre-existing conditions -- Unexpected! That criminals and crazy people don't seem to abide by gun control laws -- even bilingually-correct laws written IN STERN ALL CAPS (PISTOLO FREE CASA!) -- infuriatingly Unexpected. That Islamist fanatics are still trying to kill us, even after The One's masterful, America-flagellating Cairo speech and all that ongoing Muslim outreach by NASA -- Unexpected! That the planet-saving, tax payer-subsidized Chevy Volt is not outselling the gas-sucking Camaro, or even the RonCo Salad Spinner -- Unexpected! That the economy is still growing more slowly than Joe Biden's hair plugs -- Unexpected! Why, that masses of ungrateful school children are throwing away Michelle's mandatory healthy bean sprout cake and organic tofurkey muffin lunches, and are instead trading Ring Dings and fully leaded Coke and Pepsi products on a thriving black market -- Unexpected!<br />
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But you know what has been the most unexpected thing that happened this week? -- and this was truly unexpected: some rogue members of the tranquilized media herd have actually started asking questions of this administration. Yes, I know: "Unexpected" doesn't quite capture it. Un-freaking Unfathomable is more like it. And these are not just "60 Minutes" quasi-hard ball questions like "Jay, how can the President be so dreamy and yet so commanding, all at once?" or "Jay, reports are that Michelle's dress for the Clooney gala is an unprecedented Vera Wang and Versace collaboration. Can you confirm that?"<br />
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No, these new, unexpected questions are actually focused on getting at ... the truth. <br />
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The truth about why the administration changed the Benghazi story from what everyone in the intelligence community knew immediately (terrorist attack by Al Qaeda) to a laughable fable about an offensive video. The truth about why the Administration -- Barack, Susan and the rest of the cast and crew -- then peddled that lie for weeks, until Hillary shrewishly thundered: "At this point, you slavering right wing mopes!, what difference does a stained dress and some cattle futures make?! ... um, I mean, four inconveniently dead people mucking up my 2016 Presidential aspirations!? No freaking difference! Now, I need to go see to it that my plane is retro-fitted with a custom gold leaf bidet for my successor, Viscount Kerry." <br />
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The truth about why the good, well-meaning folks at the IRS decided that if 1) you were a Tea Partier (or if Brian Ross reported that you had Tea Party mannerisms or Tea Party movie rental habits), or 2) had a jingoistic penchant for loudly singing all the lyrics of the national anthem at sporting events, or 3) listened to Rush (not Canadian drum savant Neil Peart's Rush -- fascist radio fat guy, Rush), or 4) thought the Constitution was Dead and should be taught in public school, or 5) attended a snake-handling Evangelical church, or 6) shopped way too often at Walmart -- you were properly subject to a variety of "Holder- Approved Harrassments." Including: enhanced scrutiny protocols, audits, vigorous, medically-approved (by Ms. Sebelius, who always wanted to be a nurse-assistant for Dr. Kevorkian, but she had no bedside manner) anal probes and, if you laughed at the "Birther" joke your Uncle Cletus once told at the family reunion, maybe a shared cell with Wesley Snipes (who made the mistake of admitting he favored water-boarding terrorists during his IRS polygraph session).<br />
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And poor, incoherent, blind-sided Jay Carney simply can't process what is happening. Frankly, it's not fair: the sycophants are not performing their agreed-upon role, even after Valerie Jarrett read them the riot act during a private conference call. Yet, they continue to challenge Mr. Carney's explanations -- even after he used the hypnotic control phrase: "Fox News." That imprecation always works, but seemingly even it -- at least momentarily -- has lost its talismanic power. Yes, a few members of the 4th Estate immediately calmed down, lowered their hands and went back to texting Ezra Klein, but far too many others kept pressing the issues.<br />
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Here's the scary reality: if someone can't figure out how to play the race card on all this, and right quick, this might turn out to be a very unexpected and unwelcome "transparent" next few months for The Lithe, Naked Emperor. (What would wise Bill Ayers do about this predicament? Probably have a stiff drink, put some nails and a timer in a crock pot, and mail it to John Boehner. But that solution does not poll-test very well at the moment.) <br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-39763707230963680702012-09-30T20:09:00.000-07:002012-10-01T05:37:59.769-07:00Cotton candy costs HOW MUCH?!Man, I really need to stop posting so frequently. People are going to start thinking this is a twitter feed, me just prolifically spewing stuff every 8 months or so, rat tat tat like a machine gun ... and quality will suffer.<br />
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Quality was already suffering? All the more reason for a break. After this post, I may need a sabbatical, to recharge my creative juices. <br />
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Anyway, we took the kids to Hershey Park this Saturday, which was the last weekend of 2012 that the park would be open. Daddy's infallible thought process was that by end of September, with a nip in the air, the boys and girls of summer back at school and busy with weekend algebra homework and science fair volcanos to construct, the water park area closed down, the place would be relatively free of the teeming masses, no long waits, just our family skipping gaily from one empty ride line to another (Your Non-Existent Wait from this Point: A Mere 23 seconds!), with us eventually growing jaded from being able to sit in the front coaster car over and over.<br />
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Well, it turned out that the park was not exactly a chocolatey Wally World ghost town. No, it was a bit more crowded. How crowded? Like sharing an elevator -- or maybe a linen closet -- with every person in Calcutta. I think that in addition to the several million guests who arrived the normal way, the mendacious park overlords actually teleported in gleaming rows of tour buses from the future, just to break last year's attendance record.<br />
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It was absurdly, hatefully, maddeningly crowded. I fumed: Why are all these people going to Hershey Park at the end of September?! Obviously, our family is here because of careful, strategic planning. But the rest of these lemmings seem to think that this is, like, a totally sensible day to go to the park. Was the herd augmented because of the evening Kelly Pickle concert? (Isn't she an American Idol cast off? She's now a country music star? That gives me a migraine.)<br />
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Now, fortunately, our kids are still too young -- ages 7, 5 and 3 1/2 -- to ride the big roller coasters. Because the lines for those rides stretched to the Tappan Zee bridge. I think it's entirely possible that, immediately upon arrival, hundreds of people ran and got in line for "The Great Bear" -- one of those suspended coasters that provide the thrill of brain-sloshing G-forces and a the very real risk of a bloody pigeon strike to the face -- and when the park closed, those same people, now dehydrated, and weeping bitter tears of impotent rage, had nearly reached the spot in line where they could -- if they stood on their tippy toes -- see the loading platform in the distance. So close, and yet so far. <br />
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Did I say that our children are not big enough to go on the wickedly fast, stomach churning "Jolly Rancher" rides? Hershey has a handy ride height system, where types of Hershey candy correspond to how tall one must be to partake of the thrill of standing in line until one's bladder gives way. Jolly Rancher rides are the apex -- the double black diamond rides -- and only for people over 7 feet tall who have also flown a space shuttle mission; Reese's Pieces attractions are for slightly shorter people who have a 70 percent greater propensity for vomiting when upside down, and so on; Hershey's Kisses designated rides are for little tykes like our daughter Anna. <br />
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But Anna does not want to be, does not for a moment accept the reality that she is a vertically challenged, albeit adorable and quite tall for her age, second class Hershey Kiss. No, no -- Anna's attitude upon learning that God had not seen fit to make her grow fast enough to ride any of the Coasters of Death or other "Big Kids" rides, was not one of wistful equanimity. No, it was Cruella Devil being told the Dalmations were not for sale. Her ride sign should have been a Hershey's Bitter Lemon Crab Apple Tart Dipped in Unsweetened Chocolate.<br />
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The idea that she was humiliatingly relegated to the "Lady Bugs" and the 2 mph Horsey Ride, while her brothers were allowed on much better, faster and trendier rides, was too much for Anna to bear. Not even cotton candy would pacify her.<br />
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(Oh, did I mention that the cotton candy cost ... wait for it ... Four Dollars. I ordered two -- what are they? sticks? -- thinking it'd be around three bucks. I was even prepared for five, max. Eight dollars?! That's a mark up percentage that cannot be expressed in rational numbers. It's like Pi to the Infinity power. I'm pretty sure that it costs the Hershey robber barons one half of one peso to have an Equadorian child laborer press the button on the Wonka machine that whirls a spool of bubble gum pink, or electric blue or cancerous black spun sugar, and yet they want four bills. Gordon Gekko would be mortified at the profiteering.)<br />
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Anyway, I'm going to start having Anna hang from the backyard swing set, to stretch her torso, because if we go to Disney World as planned in another year, and she can't go on Space Mountain or the Pirates of the Caribbean, she might burst into flames and start flinging Snow White, Goofy, and innocent patrons thru the air with her telekinetic powers, like that girl in the Stephen King novel. Not the pig blood girl, Carrie, the other one. <br />
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Ultimately, despite Daddy's grousing about the lines, and Riley's penchant for rubbing his hands over every garbage can, urinal and germ-encrusted surface in the park (I'm surprised he doesn't have Ebola), we had a fun day. No one fell off the Sky Ride, we saw Zoo animals (although Anna was sorely vexed that the elk would not move and that there were no giraffes), and my 37 dollar pit beef sandwich was delicious.<br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-9541570420766016312011-10-04T13:30:00.000-07:002011-10-04T13:31:16.766-07:00It's Never too Early for Christmas Tree Tips<em>Yes, it is October. Christmas rapidly approaches. Our boys have already informed us that they want, among other things, a trampoline (very bad idea) a Bugatti, a Langorbeenie and a machine that will take them to the 2nd Dimension like Phineas and Ferb. (Don't ask.)</em><br />
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<em>So, to help everyone make preparations for the Holiday, below I have set forth my professional tips on how to pick, and erect, the perfect Christmas tree. These guidelines come from personal experience, and all of them are based on true, emotionally scarring events. Yes, even the chain saw in the living room.</em><br />
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It has been a Lucido family tradition, possibly dating back to Jamestown, to pile in the family truckster with the kiddies (all hopped up on sugary treats, such as the delightful Hand Imprint Turkey Cookies with glopped-on hills and ridges of green, red and purple icing, all whooping, screeching and twitching like euphoric Meth addicts with uncontrollable pre-Christmas mania) the Saturday after Thanksgiving to go select a real, live Tannenbaum. Artificial, sapless trees are for infirm people in nursing homes. Or Grinchy wusses who over-value their sanity. (If you don't get an intense feeling of satisfaction when repeatedly clogging your 50 horsepower Shop Vac sucking up metric tons of dead pine needles off the carpet every two hours so your foraging, one and a half year old daughter won't eat them, you don't know the true meaning of Christmas, and I pity you.) <br />
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In years past, I have demonstrated a Clark Griswold-like inability to accurately gauge the size of our tree: standing in the great outdoors, picking out our "just right" Douglas Fir, I've underestimated the tree's actual living room "presence," despite diplomatic hints from tree farm employees who eyed our chosen tree and said things like: "Uh, you folks gonna put this up in a barn?" or "Mister, d'ya have a trailer? I think this might crush your roof." Inevitably, this poor understanding of spatial relationships produces generous amounts of Holiday Tree Rage, when Daddy is forced to use a hack saw, branch loppers, high-tensile, wall mounted bridge support cables and risk a simultaneous double hernia and brain embolism shoving Gigantor Pine thru the front door and winching it upright. <br />
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Of course, Daddy Never Learns, and, indeed, Grows Ever Dumber. Thus, you guessed it: this year's King Kong Tree caused so much stroke-inducing wrath and multiple, tool-flinging tantrums before the accursed thing was semi-vertical and decorated, that I had to share some helpful tips on how Christmas tree professionals -- like me -- Just Do It, and in the process make it look so easy. Note: Not all of these steps are mandatory, although most are recommended. Pick those that work best for you and your family. <br />
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1. Drive to tree farm that used to be close to your old house, but is now a good 45 minutes away -- because it's tradition and emitting CO2 annoys people who drive Priuses -- and pick out a tree. Note: if tree is higher than the tippy top line on the 10' board used for pricing, consider downsizing. (Important Bonus Tip: if your bone weary 5 year old son falls asleep en route to the tree farm, dare not wake him from his Nap of the Dead upon arrival and make him get into his hated winter coat and scratchy hat, for yea verily, you will unleash such a torrent of misery and unspeakable crabbiness that the foundations of the earth shall tremble and the heavens will cry out: Fools! Why didst thou wake the slumbering child and not bring pacifying candy or powerful sedatives?)<br />
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2. Arrive safely home with tree. If tree has not flown off on the interstate and impaled a trailing State Police trooper in the head a la "Final Destination 2," it was tied down properly. If the tree does achieve launch status during return trip (holding it firmly to the roof with your left arm like the gene pool depleters who transport unsecured mattresses on top of their mini-vans is not advisable), race to the next exit, turn off your lights, park in a neighbor's drive way for at least a half an hour until the police cruisers stop circling the development, and buy a less dangerous and more easily transported potted Kwanzaa shrub.<br />
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3. Remove tree from roof of SUV. Do this when it's already dark outside to lessen visibility, and without gloves, because chicks dig men with pine needle scars (okay, scratches) on their hands. Although the tree is the approximate size and weight of a canoe filled with bricks, do not ask for wife's assistance, as this betrays weakness. If you drop the tree because your foot slips off the running board, and the trunk leaves an ugly scratch on the side of your vehicle on the way down, muffle curses by screaming into your wife's squishy travel pillow.<br />
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4. Check to see if trunk of tree will fit into plastic sleeve for tree stand. Ha! Of course it doesn't fit, you idiot! It's the circumference of a smallish Red Wood. Get hammer and chisel -- seriously -- and begin methodically chipping off layers of bark while seated on butt numbingly cold garage floor. This should take only an hour. If your legs lose all feeling, smash the chisel into your knee cap. This will take your mind off the pain in your pulped thumb, which you mangled during an ill- advised, "I'll-make-this-$%&*@-wood-knot-that-is-sticking-out-wish-it-was-never-born!" Babe Ruth hammer swing. <br />
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5. With bottom of tree trunk shaved to half its original circumference, screw on plastic sleeve that will now insert neatly and securely into the "socket" portion of the very expensive tree stand you bought from Hammacher Schlemmer, which is guaranteed to hold the mightiest, steroidally enhanced Christmas tree in all of the North Pole.<br />
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6. Grunting with exertion, haul tree, battering ram style, thru front door and into living room. Blindly -- and unsuccessfully -- try to insert it into tree stand. When wife, watching your titanic struggle with nature, asks bemusedly if she can help, yell "No! I can do it myself!" just before tripping over toy truck, losing balance and staggering like a drunken lumberjack into T.V. armoire. Scream cathartically: "I hate this stupid tree! I wish Christmas never came!" as your children, seated in their pj's on the living room ottoman watching "Elmo Goes to Grouchland for the Seven Thousandth Time and If Daddy Hears Elmo's Blankie Song Again He'll Eat a Bullet," stare goggle eyed at Daddy the sweaty berserker and ask Mommy: "Why is Daddy mad and saying that bad word 'stupid?'" <br />
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7. With tree precariously inserted into the base, spend the next half hour trying to make it stand up straight. Do this by stepping on the pedal that allows the tree stand to swivel, while threatening to throw the tree out the window if it won't stop tilting to the left or right in blatant defiance of your wishes. When it becomes obvious that the tree is too tall and too heavy for even a sturdy, German-engineered "Best in Test" tree stand (this might have been obvious even before now to a keen observer), and that the heavy plastic base also used in the manufacture of Panzer tanks is making foreboding creaking noises, as if the entire contraption is about to grenade, give up and stomp off to bed. Comfort yourself that you have accomplished most of your impossible mission. So what if the tree is not perfectly straight. You can tell guests it's a leaning, post-modern tree, that does not bow to patriarchal conventions of straightness. At least there's no risk it will fall down. <br />
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8. Awaken at 3 am to the sound of the tree falling down and crashing like a sack of dead elephants into the living room couch. Walk out to living room and stare in silent, stupefied fury at fallen tree for a full five minutes, maybe ten, gazing at the blast radius of branches, pine needles and no doubt thousands of tiny sap projectiles now flecking the living room walls. Fantasize about feeding the evil tree into an industrial wood chipper, until the wife breaks your demented reverie and demands that you come back to bed. <br />
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9. Get up at seven a.m. Note bitterly that Santa has not magically fixed the tree while you slept. Its fallen carcass still lies dead on the living room floor, mocking you. <br />
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10. Time for drastic, anger-fueled measures. Still wearing boxers and undershirt, get wife's loppers from the garage. Gleefully hack off branches, until the bottom three feet of trunk is denuded. <br />
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11. Bust out the chain saw. After spending twenty minutes fixing the chain -- Gollum hates the dratted, always-coming-off chainsaw chain! We hates it! -- savagely pull start the Poulan tree amputator. Revel in the window rattling cacophony. Don't bother dragging the tree back out to the garage; too much work. No, have the wife take the kids into the master bed room, and go Christmas Chain Saw Massacre on that overgrown pine. The tree has now been shortened by three feet, and the living room reeks of gas. Breathe deeply of the manly, oil/fuel mixture, a festive smell which will linger in your home, despite the use of numerous Glade air freshener bombs, until late January. Even the Who's down in Whoville loved the smell of gas in the living room on a Holiday morning.<br />
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12. Patiently explain to your crying children, who are hacking and coughing from the acrid chain saw smoke and the scary noise, that Daddy is not mad, but that there was a Christmas Emergency so Daddy had to use the loud machine. Also, instruct the children that might makes right, and then give them as many cookies for breakfast as they can double fist into their pie holes. <br />
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13. Spend 50 minutes on hands and knees vacuuming up wood chips from every nook and cranny in the living room while your wife stands over you like a drill sergeant, slapping a wooden spoon into her palm. Note this as a possible down side to using a chain saw in the living room. <br />
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14. Re-insert humbled, smaller tree (now a dwarfish 9 feet) into tree stand while doing a victory dance and yelling "How ya like me now? Mr. Tree Amputee?! Yeah -- Sucka! Um, Isaac and Riley, Daddy is saying grown up things. Ask Mommy later what 'sucka' means. No, the boy in Sunday school who took your truck is not a Sucka. We can only use that word at Christmas, when the bad tree won't stand up straight and falls over. Just do your dinosaur puzzle." <br />
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15. Search for various tools that you threw across the living room last evening in justifiable anger -- where's the hack saw? -- and put them away. Explain to your children that throwing sharp tools is only ok when you're really, really upset and need to vent your frustration. <br />
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16. Put on the soothing Nat King Cole Christmas album, and munch contentedly on a man-sized mixing bowl of Honeycomb cereal, knowing that in this year's contest of Man vs. Christmas Tree, Tree won. But Man got his petty revenge, and it was sweet.<br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-30146658844500950172011-10-04T13:06:00.000-07:002011-10-04T13:06:45.491-07:00The Day Our Son Changed his Middle NameRecently, wacky LA Laker Ron Artest has made the news for changing his name to "Metta World Peace." (His second choice was "Metta Involuntary Commitment Proceeding Is Needed By Ron Ron.") Anyway, that got me reflecting on the day -- about a year ago -- that our 3 year old, Riley, announced that he was dissatisfied with his middle name, and was legally changing it.<br />
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Here's a brief recap, as I recorded it for the family archives:<br />
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Riley is our free spirit. He kind of wanders happily thru life, occasionally stopping to head-butt something, or ask, quite loudly, in the middle of the grocery store why Daddy's poops are so big. He likes to relax on the living room couch wearing his Elmo tighty whitey underpants and snow boots. He's a funny boy. <br />
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Last weekend, we were at my sister's home. She also has a three year old boy, Laird. At some point during the day, Laird was not behaving (I don't remember the precise infraction; it may have involved the exposing of the firm, Lairdly buttocks at an unwelcome time during his sister's birthday party). My sister, as all parents do when expressing extreme displeasure, invoked Laird's middle name: "Laird John!" Riley, not familiar with the whole middle name concept, was confused by this. The following conversation ensued:<br />
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(Riley, wearing his quizzical face) "Daddy, what is Laird John?"<br />
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"Well, John is Laird's middle name."<br />
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"Mibblename? What is mibblename?"<br />
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"No, Riley, miDDle name. Laird is his first name, and his middle name is John."<br />
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"Why?"<br />
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"Because that's what Uncle Peter and Aunt Nicole named him."<br />
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(Riley, stonefaced, ponders this for a while.)<br />
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"What is named my middle name?"<br />
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"Your middle name is Edward. Riley Edward Lucido."<br />
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(Riley, expressionless, considers this information with the seriousness of a patient who has just been informed he has an inoperable brain tumor. After about a minute passes, he narrows his eyes and furrows his brow with extreme displeasure.)<br />
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"No."<br />
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"No, what?"<br />
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"My middle name is not named Edward."<br />
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"Riley, yes it is. That's what Mommy and Daddy named you, after your Grandpa."<br />
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"No. My middle name is ... Budward. Riley Budward."<br />
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He nodded his head in satisfaction, as if this proclamation had set the universe right again. And then he turned and walked away. Conversation over. <br />
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So now we have a son named Budward. Lame-O Edward is out, chick magnet, Budward is in. Lord knows where he came up with it -- it sounds like the nickname for the guy at the frat house who did the most keg stands -- but as far as Riley is concerned, he is Riley Budward Lucido, of Pennsylvania Harrisburg, and anyone who says different will be swiftly informed of their error.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-81587729152120920912011-10-04T12:43:00.000-07:002011-10-04T12:43:00.670-07:00Political Correctness Is Fun<em>I spent several years working at a huge company that was so saturated with cult-like, PC idiocy, people (read: me) got into major trouble for heinous transgressions like, for example, not proudly displaying one's "Diversity Cube" (literally, a Rubix-cube with photos of smiling black, Hispanic, Asian, transgendered, Native American, non-WASP imperialist people on each cube) on our desks at all times.* </em><br />
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<em>*It should go without saying -- no, it never does -- that although I detest identity politics, I'm super-fine with Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, Romulans, etc. However, I reflexively resisted being forced to keep a ridiculous cube -- attesting to my diversity bona fides -- on my desk. "Look, visitor to my office. See that odd cube, next to my in-box? What does it do, you ask? Why, it proves I'm a good and enlightened person, who supports Right thinking. Underneath where it says: "At Giganticor, Diversity is Our Strength!", there is a photo of a smiling Chinese man, who appears to be writing equations on a blackboard. He is obviously very smart, and he enjoys toiling for Giganticor. Next to him is a picture of a woman of Latin American heritage, dressed in a power pant suit, far nicer than the kind that Hillary wears; she is laughing unselfconsciously, while seated in a glass-walled board room. She is powerful. At Giganticor, Hispanic women wield great power, behind the scenes. Yes, true -- in my experience, this kind of spontaneous hilarity is not the norm in board rooms, but at Giganticor, Diversity makes everyone happy! And by displaying this cube, I prove that I am not a racist or a "Phobe" of any type, even though I voted against Barack Obama." </em><br />
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<em>So, after I accidentally threw my Diversity Cube in the trash -- and was dutifully reported by a whistle-blowing co-worker (I am not making this up) -- I had to have a meeting with the company's Diversity Czar, HR and a sinister representative from the internal Ministry of Approved Thoughts and Behaviors, where I was told that my micro-chip implantation had failed and that I needed to go back to Sensitivity U for re-training. Suffice it to say, I fought Authority and Authority won, although not before I unleashed a memorable tirade during mandatory "Six Sigma" training (this is where we spent two weeks in a meeting room not doing any actual work, with a grinning, animatronic "moderator" who helped us make paper airplanes cooperatively, learn about "plus/deltas" and how to improve all of our customer CTQ's with our handy statistical tool box), which earned me the moniker "Angry Man." I wasn't really Angry -- I reserve that for people who block the left lane -- merely vexed. Like Emperor Commodus, when he found out that Maximus was still alive. </em><br />
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<em>Anyway, I now have a good friend who toils for a different mega-company that has adopted eerily similar, feel-good, self-esteem raising, Orwellian best practices. I think there is a federal regulation, rammed through by the Chi-Com PAC, that requires all U.S. companies with more than 250 employees to foist this morale and productivity killing multi-culti claptrap on it workers. Dilbert knows whereof he speaks. In particular, such companies are very big on "Awareness." Because being Aware makes us Care. And when we Care, we don't Stare at people with braided back Hair. Thus, each month brings with it a new culture (never American culture), or obscure religion (never something from the icky, Western Judeo-Christian tradition) or little known Holiday (it's Aztec Child Sacrifice Thursday! Feel Free to Bring in Your ceremonial Jade Daggers to Work, but Please do not carry them into the employee lunchroom), to be Celebrated! and Tolerated! in the most tacky, stereotypical way possible. These announcements, churned out by some very well meaning people in the company's Progressive Propaganda section, are comedic gold. "Gold, Jerry, Gold!" I mean, I'm not Asian, but if I were, I think that if all my non-Asian friends and co-workers showed up one day wearing Kimonos and eating with chop sticks, I would not feel "culturally affirmed." No, I'd likely find the whole thing to be incredibly stupid and insulting. (Of course, this is why my nomination to be the Director of the NEA was blocked in committee.) So, whenever my friend receives one of these company-wide missives, she forwards it to me, for additional comment. </em><br />
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<em>Below was my supplement to Asian Awareness Month. </em><br />
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***PLEASE SHARE THESE ADDITIONAL GLAD DIVERSITY TIDINGS!*** <br />
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Valued Associates -- Asian Immersion Month is just the glorious Beginning of MegaCorp's Diversity Delirium! In June, we will follow up on May's Awesome Asian Adventure with a celebration of the GATHERER PEOPLE OF VARIOUS THIRD WORLD DESERTS! All of us should learn more about these aborigines who, for thousands of years, have lived in roofless mud huts, surviving on a diet of sand fleas and pebbles, with only Al Gore audio tapes provided by GreenPeace for comfort and inspiration! Despite their lack of modern conveniences, they are a peaceful, joyous people who, unlike us, DO NOT DRIVE SUV's! They desire nothing more than to sing, dance and clap their hands while wearing no clothes. If the World was more like them, there would be No Wars, No Cancer, No Famine, No Sarah Palin, No Insurance Fraud and No Downs Syndrome Babies. Amazingly, despite their seemingly "primitive" culture, the GATHERER PEOPLE OF VARIOUS THIRD WORLD DESERTS invented micro-processors, the diesel engine and soap on a rope. And then Thomas Edison and Wall Street Bankers stole their inventions! They have much to teach us, if we will only open our minds. Remember: An open hand cannot punch, only slap; an open eye cannot be blind except from a sharp stick and that is rare; an open mind cannot hate, except those who deserve to be hated, like Rush Limbaugh and baby seal clubbing racist Tea Partiers.<br />
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CLICKING DAY<br />
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According to Wikipedia, Gatherer People communicate using Clicking Language. This language has no words; the people communicate using a complex series of clicks, grunts and guttural throat clearing noises. In honor of this pure, organic method of speech, June 15 will be Clicking Day at MegaCorp. On this special day, all MegaCorp Associates, Managers, Supervisors, Overseers and Enlightened Corporate Elites must communicate by clicking. NO SPEAKING WILL BE PERMITTED. Employees caught speaking will be sent home and a notation will appear in their permanent file stating that they are "Opposed to Diversity" and "Display Xenophobic Tendencies and Should Be Agressively Medicated." <br />
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Perhaps you are reading this and thinking: I'm so excited about Clicking Day, but I have a minor concern about how people will understand each other. Well, we have anticipated and solved that problem: Handy "Clicking Vocabulary Cards" will be passed out two weeks before Clicking Day. These cards will list 100 of the most commonly used Nouns and Verbs in English and provide you with their Clicking translation. <br />
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Example: "I have a sucking chest wound from mishandling my Asian Awareness Samurai sword, please ... gurgle ... call an ambulance!" is a simple, clicking phrase, rendered phonetically as: Click, clickclickclick, CLEEEEEEK, cuh, CUH! <br />
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A few hours of practice with your cards and you will be speaking like an aborigine in no time! And it will be FUN!<br />
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Remember: Our culture is not better than any other culture. Those who learn to appreciate and emulate other cultures are Wise and Good. Those who celebrate their own culture are Jingoists and Nativists, just like Hitler. And he was Bad. Here at MegaCorp, we are constantly striving to create an environment where everyone can feel <strong>A</strong>ssimilated <strong>S</strong>ensitive <strong>I</strong>nclusive <strong>N</strong>on-judgmental <strong>I</strong>mportant <strong>N</strong>oble <strong>E</strong>qual.<br />
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Please be sure your TPS reports are turned in before 4 pm.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-76609355093512620562011-10-04T10:33:00.000-07:002011-10-04T10:35:18.373-07:00Daddy's Baptism by Pee (a nostalgic remembrance)<em>I write a lot of nonsense emails while at work (memo to bosses: during lunch hour, of course; during productive, money-making time, I surf ESPN). I've been told by my London-based agent -- he also reps J.K. Rowling, so he doesn't take my calls -- that I should post them on my pathetic excuse for a blog, just to prove that I do occassionally have a fleeting spark of creativity which leads to something, anything, tangible. Below is one such example, written many eons ago when our first boy, Isaac, was an adorable wee tyke with a bladder larger than Secretariat's. I think I will treat this as the first entry in my "Unconventional Child-Rearing Tips for the Misguided and/or Grossly Negligent Parent" series. Our next urine-centric entry -- it's a popular theme -- might be "What to do when your mischievous boys, unwisely left alone in the bathroom, hilariously drink (well, at the very least sip) each other's pee out of Dixie cups instead of brushing their teeth and rinsing like they were supposed to." Btw, I think Tara made me sign a Confidentiality Agreement never again to discuss the horrific, emotionally traumatizing "Pee Incident" and its aftermath. So that disclosure may land me in solitary. </em><br />
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I got the chance -- that is, Tara, despite harboring grave doubts about my abilities -- allowed me to watch Isaac all by my Mr.. Mom self last Saturday, for a whole 8 hours. I had to feed him ("Honey, he's two months old and has no teeth. You can't give him Kix cereal."), change him ("Honey, make sure you don't put his diaper on backwards again. And try to keep the Desitin out of his hair.") and keep the dogs from licking his face after drinking out of the toilet. Simple. <br />
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When my Mom found out about my first "solo" mission, she actually offered to drive 4 hours from Virginia to "help" me. Hello?! How pathetic do these people think I am? My son and I were going to have a swell time all by ourselves, thank you very much.<br />
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I'm pleased to report -- as an unbiased observer -- that I did a great job, meaning that as far as I know, Isaac did not swallow any sharp, foreign objects or play with matches while in my care. Prior to leaving us, Tara had pumped about 3 bottles of breast milk for our hungry man to chug-a-lug. I've learned that breast milk is a more valuable and precious commodity than diamonds. (Oh, and I've been told that the "breast pump experience" is not unlike strapping the sucking end of a commercial grade Honda leaf blower to one's bosom. Fortunately, I'll never be able to verify this.) Tara warned me that if I spilled Mommy's Milk, or wasted it (what was I going to do? -- squirt it at the dogs just for kicks?) or forgot to put it back in the fridge and let it spoil, she'd have me murdered. <br />
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Isaac guzzled that milk like an alcoholic at Oktoberfest slugging pints of Guinness. However, I was surprised to discover that the amount of time it takes a baby to turn milk into urine is approximately 34 seconds. In the span of one hour, I think I changed 5 wet diapers. This kid needs to learn how to use the toilet, pronto. Anyway, it was on the fifth diaper change when Isaac did his best impression of a Super Soaker.<br />
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He was wiggling around on the changing table, waving his arms and generally enjoying having no pants on. Just as I was about to put on the new diaper, a faint but unmistakable smile crept across his face, and the pee started flowing. This was not a "tinkle." It was more like a garden hose turned on "jet." Stunned, my primal fight or flight instinct kicked in and I leaped back about 5 feet, which saved me from a direct hit. I think I might have yelled "No, Isaac, outside! Outside!" before collecting myself. With mounting panic, I saw that Isaac's mighty bladder was still pumping. I knew I had to stop the flow, but how? I thought about smothering the stream at its source with the diaper -- still clutched in my left hand -- but worried that would merely deflect the spray in other directions. Instead, I decided to "catch" the pee with the diaper, sort of a Star Wars missile shield defense for airborne pee. This technique was not as effective as I had hoped. I did manage to sop up most of the pee drizzle that got on the carpet with one of Tara's thick, wool socks (surprisingly absorbant), which I then stuffed in the hamper to dry.<br />
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All in all though, I'd say Dad's Day with Isaac was a rousing success. And I learned one important parenting lesson that I'm happy to pass on to all the other new fathers: <br />
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In child rearing, as in auto repair, the right tools make all the difference. Never use a diaper to catch pee. Instead, use one of your wife's large mixing bowls, preferably not the one she uses to make pie dough.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-11032100950432990752011-06-10T19:27:00.000-07:002011-06-15T10:11:39.086-07:00The Curious Case of Lebron JamesLeBron James might be the most physically gifted athlete to ever play professional basketball. He is a sculpted 6' 8", 250 pounds, an impossibly large, agile, powerful and explosive amalgam of fast twitch muscle fiber, cat-quick reflexes and a MENSA-level basketball IQ. If you took, say, vintage Scottie Pippen* (who, by the way, has been seated semi-courtside for every Finals game and has scored almost as many points as LeBron in the 4th quarter), exposed him to gamma radiation, and then harpooned him with a designer cocktail of HGH and Barry Bonds' vitamins, the resulting predatory mutation would approximate Lebron.<br />
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*<i>I'm stealing a Joe Posnanski trademark by using the asterisk here -- I promise not to do it again. Scottie the Basketball Analyst and Historian recently opined, perhaps after suffering a migraine that melted his cerebral cortex, that while Jordan was the greatest scorer ever, LeBron might be the greatest player ever. Scottie said this before the Finals commenced. Five games, eleven TOTAL LeBron fourth quarter points later, Scottie now looks more ridiculous than he did when he refused to re-enter a playoff game with 1.8 seconds left because Phil Jackson had picked Toni Kukoc to take the final shot (which, incidentally, he made). Jordan, the Greatest Holder of Grudges of All Time (GHOGOAT), will never forgive Scottie for this traitorous idiocy, and is undoubtedly planning to have Charles Oakley murder Scottie and pin it on Brad Sellers, who was always weak-minded and therefore deserves to be framed and lethally injected for his basketball inadequacies</i>.<br />
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LeBron has been -- for the past several years -- hailed in most quarters (with the exception of the Kobe-Is-The-Messiah fever swamps populated by 14 year old Mamba worshippers and Mark Jackson) as the best player in the NBA. Stat crunchers like ESPN's John Hollinger rave, justifiably, about LeBron's historically great PER (2nd only to Jordan), and suggest that he's had as many transcendent playoff performances as MJ. Which proves that John Hollinger, while perhaps brilliant, has descended into madness and should be involuntarily committed.<br />
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In the Eastern Conference championship series against the Bulls, LeBron not only scored at will, taking over several games in crunch time while D-Wade was in a shooting funk, but during key moments when he was asked to guard the Bulls' best player, he absolutely suffocated Derrick Rose, the recently crowned league MVP. <br />
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The point is, LeBron is already -- nine seasons into his straight-out-of-high-school NBA career -- an historically great player, the total package (well, except for the pesky fact that he remains an unreliable shooter with a post up game that rivals that of Steve Nash), with the potential to rank among the very best to ever play: Jordan, Russell, Jabbar, Bird, Magic. That's the company he's trying to keep.<br />
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But a strange thing has happened on the way to the King's coronation: verily, he began to play like a court jester. Again.<br />
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Yes, we all witnessed, with a mixture of fascination, glee and consternation, Incredibly Shrinking LeBron in last year's playoffs, when he submitted three consecutive stink bombs against the Celtics after his Cavs held a 2-1 series lead -- the most infamous being his Game 5 disappearance, when he played more like Henry James, notably one of the worst 'ballers among famous English writers.<br />
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We all know what happened next. LeBron decided he had grown tired of trying to win all by himself, kicked all Ohioans in the groin, and alienated the rest of the country with "The (very poor) Decision" (the one positive to emerge from that execrable display of tone deaf cheesiness was that it made a laughing stock out of intrepid Jim Gray, who is now a side line reporter for the Stihl Lumberjack Tour) -- and took his monumental narcissism to South Beach, to join forces with co-Superstar D-Wade and Above-Average Mini-Star Chris Bosh, formerly of the Toronto Pteradactyls, the NBA franchise best known for allowing Kobe to score 81 points during a meaningless regular season game. (Incidentally, Vince "the amazing half man" Carter once scored 82 points during a Toronto intra-squad scrimmage, but banged his shooting elbow in the process, causing him to place himself on the IR for two weeks against the advice of team doctors, who all told him he had a "minor boo boo" that could be treated with a Dora the Explorer band aid and a lollipop, to take his mind off it. Vince was once the Next Jordan, until people realized that his heart, much like the Grinch, was ten sizes too small. But I digress.) <br />
After Lebron and Company -- in a lavish, garish, obnoxious celebration for having accomplished absolutely nothing -- promised to win "not one, not two, not seven, not Infinity ..." NBA Championships in Miami, things got off to a rocky start. He and Wade didn't know how to co-exist; Bosh looked utterly lost; Rony Seikaly routinely dominated the Heat front line in alumni scrimmages; the team choked away numerous games in the fourth quarter because they executed like FEMA in close games; the media vultures began circling 17 year old, 2nd year head coach Eric Spoelstra (ok, he's 22), waiting for Darth Riley to take command of the malfunctioning Death Star. However, the team gradually found its stride in mid-season; LeBron and Wade figured out how to dominate without getting in each other's way, the Heat began to strangle teams with their aggressive, lock down defense and jaw-dropping, Cirque du Soleil transition game, and wound up with the best record in the league. Then they methodically dispatched proud Boston and upstart Chicago in two grinding, physical series -- the kind they weren't supposed to be able to win -- and were seemingly poised to shut up all their critics by rolling over the older, far less athletic, historically soft Mavs in the Finals.<br />
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But then LeBron apparently ate some bad carne asada, and the plot started to get a little screwy. <br />
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7, 0, 2, 0, 2. Those are the game by game 4th quarter scoring totals for LeBron in these Finals. (And the two he got in game 5 were a gift, an uncontested lay up with 30 seconds left after the game was over and the Mavs were letting the clock run out.) So, basically, Lebron has legitimately scored TWO POINTS during "winning time" in the last four games of the most important series of his career. That's one basket more than avid Heat fan Gloria Estefan. This is not only "un-excusable", as the King himself admitted, it is unfathomable and nearly un-possible. LeBron James is, by all accounts, the best player in the league. He can get his shot off any time he wants. He is being guarded in this series primarily by Shawn Marion and Jason Kidd, whose combined age is 113, or slightly less than Dick Clark, pre-cryogenic unfreezing. Heck, if he just curled up in the fetal position inside the paint, and waited for a Dallas player to trip over him, he might draw enough charging calls from Joey Crawford to get himself to the free throw line a half dozen or so times, which would be more than the THREE free throws he has attempted in a nearly 60 minutes of crunch time. This is not merely poor play -- it is non-existent play. (I do not want to hear any exculpatory mewling about Lebron's "defense, facilitating, rebounding, intangibles, motivational speeches during time outs or any other pathetic excuses intended to mitigate his abject awfulness at the end of these games. Every Miami player and coach knows there is something terribly wrong with LeBron, and at this stage must be desperately hoping for a miracle cure. Maybe he should watch "Shazaam!")<br />
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There is really no precedent for what we are seeing with LeBron. No truly great player has ever vanished -- become an absolute non-entity, an apparition, a rumor, royal excess baggage -- to this extent in a championship series. Lots of guys -- including the best ever, Jordan -- endured bad shooting games. It comes with the territory. But with all the greats, you knew they were there. They were fully present, competing, fighting, trying to impose their will, effecting the outcome. Not LeBron. He continues to Fade into Bolivian, the Greatest No-Show on Earth.<br />
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It has been clear for a long time that LeBron is not a ruthless, pathological competitor like Jordan. He lacks the velociraptor DNA that was injected into MJ at birth. Fine -- no one else had it, either. But there's something more going on here. I think part of it -- which is almost never discussed -- is that LeBron is a very limited offensive player. Yes, he's a great scorer, but that is due almost entirely to his freakish athleticism. He is so much more physically gifted than the puny mortals against whom he competes, that he has never had to refine his game. He does not have a well rounded, diversified offensive tool box. When he gets hot (although improved, he remains a mediocre, but streaky shooter) he makes 3's, and becomes unguardable. Or, he takes off like an ICBM and dunks on your head in transition. That's pretty much it. He has no post game -- nada, not even a fade away or jump hook -- which is inexcusable given his size, strength and leaping ability. Further, he really has no mid-range game; he has not developed a reliable, stop-and-pop, 12-18' jumper that Jordan and Kobe perfected. The rotation on his shot is still a bit goofy; it resembles a lazily tumbling asteroid. So, when his jump shot goes (and right now it's clearly gone, having fled and taken its talents to environs unknown), he is reluctant to shoot, and when forced to play a half court game where he can't get up a head of steam and rumble to the hoop, he has no viable third option.<br />
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This partially explains why Udonis Haslem has scored more points in the fourth quarter of this Finals than LeBron. I did not make that up. <br />
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LeBron also strikes me as a guy, despite all his accomplishments, accolades and bravado, who periodically -- and at the worst possible times -- suffers from a paralyzing loss of confidence. Again, Jordan, Bird, Reggie, Kobe, all the great end-of-game assassins -- never thought this way. If Jordan was cold, he shot <em>more, </em>offended by the idea that the ball was not obeying him.<em> </em>(In one of his most amazing games, MJ -- who had apparently played something like 6 rounds of golf before tip off and completely messed up the mechanics on his shot, actually started off shooting 1-20 against the Miami Heat, yet remained undeterred, and scored 20 points in the 4th quarter, almost dragging the Bulls back from a huge deficit to win the game; John Paxson has said it is his favorite Jordan performance). After any poor shooting performance, Jordan usually came out the next game in a barely containable fury, having convinced himself that someone on the other team, or in the media, had been talking trash about him, and laid apocalyptic waste to everything and everyone in his path. One of my favorite anecdotes about Jordan is that during one NBA Finals game, when he was struggling with his shot, players on the opposing team's bench were becoming more and more dismayed with each Jordan miss, knowing that retribution would be forthcoming in the next game. <br />
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LeBron is not capable of summoning that kind of maniacal, win-at-all-costs intensity, which probably makes him a far healthier and well adjusted person. But it ain't the stuff of greatness.<br />
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The hyper-scrutiny and criticism that LeBron has endured over the past week almost makes me feel bad for him. But he brought this on himself. When everyone is a witness, everyone gets to see the train wreck, in super slo-mo, hi-def. I honestly don't know whether LeBron has the fortitude to snap himself out of this walking coma. Maybe -- spurred by an adoring home crowd and erupting competitive pride -- he will unleash a legendary, vindicating performance in Game 6. He's fully capable of putting up a 42/13/8 masterpiece, silencing the haters, and leading his more talented team to a title it should win. On the other hand, the trend lines don't bode well; four consecutive games of "shrinkage" is a hard thing to reverse. (Plus, the basketball Gods owe Dirk and the Mavs after the Shining-esque officiating horrors inflicted on them in the 2006 Finals.)<br />
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I'll be rooting for the Mavs, but I'll also be rooting for LeBron to be great. Watching a talent like LeBron struggle this mightily is not pleasant viewing. Well, except in several million Cleveland households. I'll be expecting great (and by that I don't mean that I hope LeBron plays like Sue Bird.)<br />
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Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-60348352349851194422010-03-25T20:39:00.000-07:002010-03-26T06:50:20.718-07:00I have a few people in mind for the Death PanelsToday, rather than riff on something I find amusing, like how my three year old son Riley calls eyebrows "ow-breys," I am compelled to discuss -- if I can control my blood pressure with periodic ice baths -- the health care Debacle. Apocalypse. Abomination. Blood boiling, teeth-gnashing, garment rending, Big Effing (to plagiarize our classy VP) mega-Catastrophe. (Or, if you're a grinning Pelosi-ite, work for MSNBC/CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS or write editorials for Pravda aka the New York Times, the totally awesomest achievement in the history of Big Beneficent Government. They'll be celebrating this one for at least the next decade at Socialist Band Camp.)<br />
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Honestly, I cannot remember a time when I have been more seethingly furious than I was this past Sunday, when I sat and watched head Whipstress Nancy (wielding a ridiculous, super-sized wooden gavel used to commemorate Epic Achievements in Progressive Governance -- the most recent being Jimmy Carter's handling of the Iran hostage crisis) -- and her merry band of Reconciliators cheering their corrupt, fiscally insane, anti-democratic health care jam down.<br />
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Actually, no, I can remember a time I was angrier. It happened a mere ten minutes after I witnessed the intentional destruction of the best health care system in the world, when--<br />
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<em>Hah! Best health care system my malignant nose wart! Tell that to little Marcellus whatsisname, that precious twelve year old boy who's mother lost her job, got sick and died! -- while Rumsfeld laughed at her funeral! -- you greedy, heartless, right wing beast! All because one of your pet evil insurance companies, as part of a top-secret military experiment to sterilize lower income and transgendered Americans OR impregnate them with Dick Cheney's genetically altered sperm to create a race of pasty, gravelly-voiced super-torturing war criminals, denied her claim for reparations. Or injected her with flesh eating bacteria. Or, whatever. Look, the cause and effect here doesn't matter. It's symbolic. It's about Bush -- because he Lied and people, like Marcellus's Mom, and Patrick Swayze -- Died! -- and it's why we need universal health care, including government subsidized body piercings and free medicinal marijuana, just like they have in enlightened Cuba. Did I mention Marcellus is BLACK? Yeah, you Nazis hate to see black folks getting medical treatment. Despite being sprayed with fire hoses by bed sheet wearing tea-baggers, that African American boy, carrying only his Al Sharpton lunch box (donated by the New Extra Strength Black Panthers), hitch-hiked cross county from LA, where sources say he had been living in a refrigerator box inside Arnold Schwarzenneger's gold plated dumpster. But I digress. Marcellus eventually hitched a ride with an MSNBC news crew -- who luckily were in Utah filming a documentary on the home grown Mormon Terrorist Menace. Eventually, he found his way to Harry Reid's office. And then this courageous little boy with a heavy heart looked Senator Reid squarely in the eye and said: "Sir, my new best friend Mr. Axelrod has given me candy and told me that my mother would have been very proud if her death could be exploited by using me as a prop in your ruthless campaign to destroy the private health care industry. And my other new friend Mr. Rambo -- he says the F-word a lot -- promised I could have my own Panda Bear from the San Diego zoo if I learned to say this speech he wrote for me and cried whenever that other man wearing the head set signaled me." Obama did this for Marcellus, and all the unemployed ACORN public servants, and the Berkley Gender Studies Department and every person on Main Street who has a right to an infusion of Obama Cash and Obama Love, for he said 'suffer the little children to come unto me and I will make them eternal wards of the state, yea, verily.' So, you and the rest of the black-hearted fascist veal eaters should just shut up and say 'may I have more patriotic tax increases, please.' </em><br />
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Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted by a dissenting opinion, I was saying that I became several orders of magnitude angrier when our Supreme Leader, accompanied by his faithful, lobotomized assistant, Joe Eyegor Biden, triumphantly strode to his teleprompter to proclaim the Good News to All 27% of the People who were actually in favor of this government takeover of 1/6 of the economy. With his iconic Rushmorian jaw jutting skyward at about a 60 degree angle (any more upward chin tilt and he's going to need a teleprompter on the ceiling to keep the text within his line of sight), the Emperor declared that he had "heard the American people", and chosen to ignore their outraged screams of protest, because he was erudite and smart, and they were stupid, ungrateful lemmings that can't grasp their own self-interests. Plus, they were powerless to stop the Hope and Change wrecking ball, and in time, after the progressive brain chip implantation, they would come to embrace the demolition of their racist, imperialist country.<br />
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Seriously, at this point, Obama is such a brazen liar -- understanding that his media lap dogs will never call him on even the most outrageous, mendacious, hallucinatory prevarications -- that he can say anything about the magical properties of the health care bill. The unending torrent of glib falsehoods that flow from his lips is breathtaking to watch, like listening to my five year old, with chocolate frosting smeared on his face, as he calmly assures me: "Daddy, let me be clear. I did not eat the cake. No, because I don't even like cake. I don't even like soogar. I eat soogar but I don't like it. I think I saw the cake fly around the room, and out the window. Then Riley ate it. Plus, when we eat the cake, we make the cake lots bigger, so there's more for you and mommy and everyone to share. Ok, silly Daddy?" <br />
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I have to paraphrase Obama's short victory speech, because my ears were filling with blood and I couldn't hear everything, but I think I caught the high points: <br />
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<em>My friends and fellow Americans. This is a great day. An historic day. I received a lovely card from my friend Hugo Chavez, which said: 'Way to go, hombre. You are a man of the peoples, a revolutionary like Che. Keep up the excellent work, my skinny comrade!' I'll cherish that. But this is not about me. It's about Government by the people, Government for the people, Government around the people, Government tightly embracing the people, Government transforming the people. This is what change looks like. Let me be clearer than clear: As I have said many times before, during my hundreds of speeches in opposite world, this health care bill will reduce premiums, lower the deficit, grow giant chocolate bean stalks, insure all Americans, cost nothing, largely end genocide in Africa, not only provide better medical care, but indeed, invent medical care that doesn't even exist yet, like five second brain-cloning and underwater rhinoplasty, make time travel a reality, turn ugly people beautiful, make fat people bulimic, end the conflict in the Middle East, make abortions a truly festive occasion to be enjoyed by unwanted babies of any trimester, and mandate that all fat cat Wall Street bankers contract Ebola. Now my affable cats paw, Mr. Gibbs, will take some questions. </em><br />
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"Yes, Mr. Gibbs, Fawning Supplicant from ABC News. The President said that the health care bill will cause greedy bankers to contract Ebola. How and when will that happen?"<br />
(Gibbs) "Well, Mr. Supplicant, you heard the speech. Once the Ministry of Purifying Infectious Disease is in place, greedy bankers, and hopefully filthy rich CEO's -- that's part of the reconciliation package -- will start hemorraging blood from every orifice."<br />
"That sounds great. But, isn't Ebola contagious? Won't it spread to Main Street?"<br />
(Gibbs, shuffling notes) "No. Uh, we've had the Ebola, um, Ebola Inspector General certify that no subjects living on Main Street will be infected. And, if they are, they should eat, um, lots of organic arugula and they'll feel all better. All right, no more questions. The President has to revise his March Madness picks, and then attend a meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel where he will explain that Israelis must stop patronizing Sbarro's pizzerias and riding on buses, because constantly getting blown up is fostering the cycle of violence in the region."<br />
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We laugh so as not to cry. <em> </em> <em> </em>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-79534764157346032792009-12-21T20:45:00.000-08:002009-12-22T14:06:55.409-08:00King of the Sloths Returns, Part DeuxI had to laugh when I saw that my previous post -- in (cough) April, heralded my triumphant return. And then I lost my muse. And my Procrastinitus really flared up. And my son dropped a metal Tonka truck on my head while I slept on the couch, mentally enfeebling me to the point that I preferred to watch a bizarre cartoon called "Wow Wow Wubbzy" at 10 p.m. rather than churn out award winning prose on this heavily trafficked site.<br />
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But, my wife has made me promise to write a 2009 "Year in Review" mega-post before 2010. That may be optimistic, although I do feel I owe my 3 Bangladeshian followers some content. (They can't read English, but were told that my Og -- remember, that's what we're calling it until productivity increases -- when de-crypted, predicted the exact date of the Great Global Warming Tidal wave that is prophesied in the Scrolls of Gore.)<br />
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Actually, I do plan to write a lengthy review of "Avatar", James Cameron's long-awaited and truly spectacular piece of gooey, pantheistic, lib-tard drivel. Here's a teaser synopsis: <i> </i><br />
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<i>It's the future. Humans -- that is, the greed-engorged spawn of Bushitler Satan Monkey -- have raped and despoiled and war-mongered their way across the galaxy, proving Agent Smith's axiom: "Humans are a diseeeeease." But, Trees are good. Plants are good. Noble, wide-eyed, blue Indigenous Alien Peoples who worship trees, plants and rocks are especially good. And pure. And almost as enlightened as a big-shot Hollywood film director. Just like the peaceful, fire-side dancing Native Americans, who only scalped enemies who had excessively large carbon footprints. And the angelic Aztecs -- well, except for the whole misunderstood human sacrifice thing -- but that was because of Abu Ghraib. But back to the movie. So, Good tree-huggers, Bad humans. The Bad humans -- surprise! -- blow up the aliens' sacred giant redwood tree, which is the size of the Sears Tower. Then the saintly warrior Blue People, led by Kevin Costner, I mean, Tom Cruise, I mean, some Australian actor, fight back against the Moloch-worshipping human oppressors and defeat their massive warships of death with a barrage of spears, angry, ululating war cries, dragons and the help of the Eewoks and Janeane Garafalo, who plays a terrifying carnivorous hippo/lion beast with T-Rex incisors and six legs. (Oh, I'm now informed that that menacing CGI creature has nothing to do with Janeane Garafalo, other than similar grooming habits. My mistake. ) And against all odds, Planet Utopia is saved, and everyone in the theater rises as one to communally weep and cheer and renew their vows to wipe with only one sheet of toilet paper.</i><br />
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That's the basic idea, although the movie was less nuanced than my recap. I must say, though, that the 3D effects are stunning, amazing, pick-your-adjective phenomenal. Cameron is a tendentious, aging hippie, but the man is a genius. I'd go back and see it again, just for the visuals. A more detailed review to come.<br />
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<i> </i> Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-50148258714158011082009-04-21T11:51:00.000-07:002009-04-21T13:18:13.600-07:00King of the Sloths ReturnsSo now that everyone of my friends has pelted me with rotten fruit and called me a disgrace to blogging for failing to post even a single word for over a month, I felt it was my obligation to at least acknowledge that I am still alive. (In fact, I haven't posted for so long, I forgot my password, and it just took me 45 minutes of hellish "chatting" with customer representatives to retrieve said password from my Google overlords so that I could provide you with this important proof of life.)<br /><br />My excuses for posting as frequently as a dead person are numerous and compelling: 1) I requested and received a TARP subsidy NOT to post so that more illegal aliens, I mean, undocumented workers could (which seems only fair); 2) the meds are no longer effectively controlling my bi-lateral procrastination syndrome and I'm searching for a holistic cure; 3) I've been burning the midnight oil working on my Children's Road Rage Alphabet Book (I'm up to the letter P: "<em>Peabrained Patti smokes Pot and drives a Prius; she cut us off and didn't even see us; People like Pinhead Patti are a Pestilential Plague on the Planet and should be Pummeled with Pipes while we laugh with glee-us</em>." Yeah, yeah, it needs work. Then again, Maya Angelou is a poet laureate -- so by that measuring stick, I'm Robert Frost and Tennyson combined; 4) oh yes, we moved; 5) we had a baby; 6) we moved and had a baby basically the same week; 7) we are now living under the same roof with three children under the age of four ("I LIKE the red cup RILEY!" "NOOOOO, I YIKE WED CUP, IDEE!" "MINE!" "NO, MIIIIIINE!" "UHHHHHHN!" "AAAAAAAAH" (in unison) "WAAAAAAAH!")-- AND two retarded, crap eating dogs; 8) I briefly considered changing jobs, starting on a strict, colon cleansing diet of emu and lentils at the same time we had the baby and moved so that we could set the record on that scale that assigns stress points to traumatic events; 9) every time I thought about blogging, at around 11 p.m., "Road House" would come on TNT and I would be compelled to watch; 10) I've been spending all my time Twittering (if that were actually the case, Tara would have followed the instructions in my Living Will and had me euthanized).<br /><br />Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.<br /><br />I have no more time right now to entertain and enlighten (isn't that Glenn Beck's phrase?), but I promise to return -- maybe this very evening -- to provide Nonsense Du Jour (or, Du Month).Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-28450779771890192992009-02-18T18:13:00.000-08:002009-02-18T21:01:54.780-08:00Let's Hear from One of My ReadersEnough politics for awhile.<br /><br />First, an unsolicited beverage recommendation: go get yourself several gallons of refreshing and delicious "Minute Maid Pomegranate Tea." (Is that spelled correctly? Pomegranate looks wrong. I don't have time to look it up.) As the two Aussie crabs in "Finding Nemo" would exclaim, "Sweet nectar of loif!" This has supplanted Snapple Grapeade as my favorite healthy drink. Yes, Tara, I concede that each 18 fl. oz. serving (that's my rough estimate of how much I usually guzzle straight from the container before taking a breath) is probably the equivalent of ingesting 8 tablespoons of granulated sugar. But who cares. It has massive drinkability! And antioxidants! As we all know, antioxidants stop, er, oxidation. Which is one of the main causes of prostate cancer -- and global warming. And the pomegranate is one of those exotic fruits that has special curative properties. In fact, I suspect that even though sucking down this tea every day for, say, a month will give you diabetes, the pomegranate -- with it's high concentration of naturally occurring omega folic acids and vitamin triple E -- will actually kill off the malignant diabetes cells before they metastasize. Well, at least that's what I tell Isaac and Riley when I fill their sippy cups with tea to kick start their day.<br /><br />Now, let's take some reader mail. Here's a letter from my very knowledgeable friend, Todd Fuller:<br /><br /><em>Dear Tony: Isn't the purpose of a blog (short for "weblog," a term first coined by Nostradamus in the 14th century, when he predicted the rise of "Hissler" and a futuristic communication system known as the "Indernut") to post short, pithy, entertaining thoughts multiple times each day? You post once every two weeks. That's fairly pathetic. I don't want to rain on your parade, but maybe you should just keep a journal -- for yourself -- and scribble in it twice a year. That way you won't continually disappoint and waste the valuable time of friends who expect some minimal level of effort and productivity from you. There's no shame in admitting this just isn't your thing. It took me years to realize that dressing up as an Arthurian Knight and jousting at Renaissance Fairs wasn't my calling -- and when I faced that hard truth, it freed me to play Dungeons and Dragons 24/7 and eventually become a 27th level Paladdin; essentially, a demi-God. I'm not saying you will achieve what I achieved, but your journey of self discovery needs to head in another direction. Glass blowing, perhaps? Scrimshaw? (That's a dying art, especially here in Pittsburgh.) Good luck, my friend. You will always have my brutally honest support.</em><br /><em></em><br />Todd, thanks for caring. I should mention that Todd -- seriously -- is an excellent and quite successful estate planning attorney. I think somewhere around 76 percent of his typically infirm and mentally diminished clients, have in their Last Will and Testament named Todd, and not their children or beloved pets, as sole beneficiary. That speaks to the deep bonds of trust that Todd forms with every person he represents.<br /><br />Todd and I got to know each other when we worked together at the same Harrisburg law firm. Perhaps my favorite Todd anecdote from our Glory Days is the time that he went to get a hair cut -- and returned to the office bald.<br /><br />See, Todd is famously frugal. (His wife Jen is yelling: "Cheap! The word is cheap! He made me live next to an ugly, sulfur-spewing steel mill in a house with tested radon levels of "Infinity and Beyond" -- Todd says radon is a 'government hoax started during the Carter administration' -- because he refused to have a mortgage that was higher than our grocery bill.") Anyway, because Todd is ... thrifty, instead of going to a reputable salon or barber to have his thick, lustrous hair shorn, he decided to go to "Cost Cutters." <br /><br />There is a legal concept known as "assumption of the risk." When you are foolhardy enough to go to a place called "Cost Cutters" for a trim, you assume the risk that the person cutting your hair will be so incompetent -- indeed, may have only sheared sheep prior to making the giant leap to coifing a human scalp -- that they may sever your jugular vein or cut off an ear lobe while trying to trim side burns. Your chances of receiving a hair cut that looks marginally better than simply placing a mixing bowl on your head and tracing its rim with dull sewing scissors are one in four. Yet, Braveheart Todd was undaunted -- and, more importanly, he had enough quarters for the $2.25 "Hans Christian Anderson Pageboy." <br /><em> </em><br />Well, we know how this story ends. In tears. Literally. As Todd tells it, he knew something had gone horribly wrong when, in the midst of his hair cut, the young gal wielding the clippers turned ashen, then began crying. Alarmed, Todd asked what was amiss. She stammered that the plastic shield had come off the clippers, causing her to "turf" his head, as they say in the lawn care biz. She had cut out a neat, 2" x 2" rectangle -- down to the bare, pasty scalp -- in the back of his head. The only way to rectify this, short of Todd wearing ski hats for a month, was to get the full Sinead O'Connor.<br /><br />When Yul Brenner returned to the office, he was mildly displeased. We tried to cheer him up by telling him that for a white boy with a large, asymetrical dome, he didn't look too hideous. But when his secretary -- who Todd hated already because she was lazy and couldn't type -- said he got what he deserved for going to "Cost Cutters," he bludgeoned her to death with his dictaphone. Which marked the beginning of the end of his tenure with the firm. <br /><br />Todd let his hair grow out after that traumatic incident, and he now sports a thick pony tail, which his nursing home clients and his wife really dig. <br /><br />Well, I hope you all enjoyed that extra special glimpse into Todd Fuller's life. I'm sure Todd will correct me if I've gotten any of the particulars wrong, although my team of fact checkers seldom miss anything.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-80622821272814497112009-02-17T07:26:00.000-08:002009-02-17T11:47:34.148-08:00Rant PotpouriMy apologies for the lack of recent posts -- I've been spending my nights fighting crime and reading the Stimulus Bill. I made it to page seven (of 1,300) and noted a few -- just a few -- questionable items. Such as:<br /><br />177 million for installation of environmentally friendly bidets in Walmart bathrooms (John Kerry insisted on this provision as he greatly enjoys the 17 bidets in his wife's mansion and was scandalized when he discovered that the unwashed masses do not have access to this French method of paper-less gentle cleansing when shopping for Spam, Slim Jims, confederate flags and automatic weapons);<br />200 million for "Gout Awareness";<br />62 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, with 32 million specifically targeted to subsidize "Performance Artists who incorporate natural, free range urine, excrement or other bodily secretions into their patriotic work protesting the United States' imperialistic wars against innocent brown peoples";<br />1.8 million to Noam Chomsky for "a life time of scholarship and public service";<br />$27,000 for improved Vice Presidential hair plugs;<br />400 million to the newly formed U.N. Council for Peace, Harmony and the Humane Obliteration of the Zionist Menace;<br />$500,000 each to accredited Tort Lawyers in good standing to spur "entrepreneurial, wealth-creating class action litigation";<br />500 Million for Alternative Energy Research, including Di-lithium Crystals and the Flux Capacitor;<br />$8,000 tax credit for first time Democratic voters;<br />$5,000 tax credit for anyone disenfranchised in the 2000 election;<br />$3,000 tax credit for Native Americans because they are a noble people;<br />$250 million to MSNBC to promote "Excellence in Journalism";<br />$100 million to Jesse Jackson and his "Rainbow: Extort" Foundation to promote the Hope of Black Victimization;<br />$12 billion for "1,000 foot global warming tidal wave prevention and evacuation planning, and the construction of a lunar Bio-Dome powered by vegetable oil and Michael Moore's flatulence." <br />You get the general idea. This is a trim, fiscally responsible, "nothing-but-the-essentials" bill that is focused like a laser on cauterizing our economic blood loss. In fact, I think it's the best piece of legislation to come out of D.C. since the Alien and Sedition Act. Although I suppose a raging partisan intent on nothing but obstructionism could find fault with some of these provisions, I personally was pleased to see that this entire process has been exactly as President Obama promised: "targeted, transparent, and treeemendous." Or something like that.<br /><br />Before we leave politics, allow me to mention one moment from the feature film length Obama press conference that made me fleck my television screen with rage spittle like Keith Olbermann.<br /><br />It was when some blow dried crap weasel from one of the major networks stood up and asked when the President was going to allow the media access to the flag draped coffins of our soldiers so that -- and I quote -- "Americans can know the true cost of war."<br /><br />Pardon me while my head explodes with Krakatoan-levels of anger.<br /><br />Yes, the stupid, NASCAR-worshippin', Bible-thumpin', gun-totin', confederate flag flyin', SUV drivin' red state lemmings don't understand that when their friends, neighbors and family members go off to war, they are risking their lives. Why, that Rasputin-like Cheney has convinced them that they're over in Iraq and Afghanistan eating ice cream cones and chasing butterflies in sun-dappled fields of posies. Oh, and the sheeple remain frightfully ignorant of the evils of war despite the fact that the NYT, Washington Post, LA Times, MSNBC, Time, Newsweek, etc. etc. etc. breathlessly report -- in front page, bold type, all caps headlines -- whenever one of our heroic troops is killed. (Query: Could the deafening media silence on the success of the Surge, the dramatic reduction of civilian and military deaths have anything to do with liberal media bias and an unwillingness to report events that no longer conform to the favored "Vietnam Quagmire" template? No, that's ridiculous.)<br /><br />The American people are quite familiar with the wages of war. War is Hell. It is also sometimes necessary to kill those who would kill us. The media elites -- who imagine all the peee-ople, living life in pee-eace -- will never get this. And the fact that they would eagerly sensationalize and cheapen those solemn and private moments so they can "teach" the mouth breathing, warmongering masses that war is "bad" makes me want to strap a Claymore to every one of their microphones. <br /><br />While I'm purging all of my negative energy, allow me a brief screed about one of the upcomoing “events” I most loathe and detest -- the Wieners. I mean, the Oscars. There is nothing more insufferable than watching a bunch of snobbish, narcissistic, pea-brained celebrities filled with delusions of their own self importance tearfully congratulate each other for their “brave” and “stunning” artistic achievements – you know, like making an anti-Iraq war movie. Or a movie about a transgendered male couple who faced discrimination by torch wielding Mormons when they tried to adopt a gay Labradoodle. You go, Oliver Stone! Bravo, Tim Robbins! I bow before your mad acting skilz and awesome intellect, Sean Penn! Speak truth to ‘da Man! Yes, it takes stones the size of Rosie O’Donnell’s giant bulbous pumpkin head to criticize the policies of the Bush Administration while in La La Land. (The moment when the Oscars became officially dead to me is when "Shakespeare in Love" won for Best Picture over "Saving Private Ryan." That was a travesty on par with, say, "Tyler Perry's House of Payne" beating "Seinfeld" for Best Sitcom, or anyone beating Gloria Allred in the "Witchiest, Publicity-Seeking Evil Shrew" competition. The mind boggles.)<br /><br /> <br />Have you taken a gander this year's list of “Best Picture” nominees? These films collectively took in about 18 dollars at the box office. See, Hollywood, er, the Academy , doesn’t nominate popular movies (see, e.g. Batman) for Oscars. That’s because unenlightened Philistines flock to those "blockbuster" movies. No, the Academy has far more sophisticated taste in films.<br /><br />So, we get the following:<br /><br />1.“The Curious Case of Benjamin’s Bottom” or whatever it’s called. It’s a touching, poignant story of a man who’s bottom gets firmer while everyone around him grows older, leading to Zzzzzzzzzzz …” <br />2.“Milk” – starring that brooding, deep thinker, Sean Penn. It’s about a famous gay guy who had lots of important gay related achievements. Cool. How about we all agree that being gay is the Best Thing Ever and just move on. I think the tag line for “Milk” should have been: “Being Gay! It does the body good!” – or just, “Got Gay?”<br />3. “Frost/Nixon”: A movie that shows the Richard Nixon was not a good person! I’m shocked! Why was I never told about this? That theme has never been explored before. And it’s very timely, given that Richard Nixon was President over thirty years ago. Seven people have seen this movie and they are all members of the Political Science department at Cal Berkley. (In all fairness, I like Ron Howard as a director -- "Cinderella Man" is one of my favorite movies -- and I've read that his portrayal of Nixon and the historical record is mostly accurate and even handed; nevertheless, to paraphrase Pauline Kael: "I don't know a single person who went to see this movie.")<br />4.”Slumdog Millionaire:” I know nothing about this film, nor do I care to. I’ll be sure to catch it when it comes to the Carlisle theatre as a double feature with “Mama Mia.”<br />5. “The Reader.” Wow. Sounds exciting! Should be the family hit of the Summer! Look for the sequels, “The Writer” and “The Arithmeticker.” I know it's supposed to be a poignant, emotionally wrenching, morally ambiguous tale about a young man who has a torrid affair with a woman whom he later discovers was a Nazi -- what pathos! -- but I'd rather watch "Kung Fu Panda" 30 times in a row (and I have).<br /><br />Let's finish with a health tip. Drink lots of water.<br /><br />That's what Tara always tells me. And I absolutely believe that keeping oneself nicely hydrated is generally beneficial. But I harbor some skepticism that water -- or the lack of it -- is the direct cause of so many common ailments. Here are some typical conversations I'll have with Tara:<br /><br />Me: "I have got a pounding headache."<br />Her: "Well, have you been drinking enough water?"<br />(I'm almost willing to buy this cause and effect relationship, although I doubt there's a peer reviewed study showing that test subjects who drank water experienced less headaches than the control group who guzzled Coke and Sunny D.)<br /><br />Me: "I'm really tired. I've got no energy today."<br />Her: "Yeah, and how much water have you had to drink? None, I'll bet."<br />(Lack of water = malaise. Perhaps fybromyalgia, chronic pain syndrome and a host of other imaginar, I mean, real diseases are all caused by a diet low in water.)<br /><br />Me: "Honey, I'm a little concerned. I've been bleeding profusely from my eye sockets and cerebral-spinal fluid is leaking from my nose."<br />Her: "I don't want to hear it. When's the last time you had a glass of water? Did you ever think that hemorrhaging would stop if you drank water instead of sugary iced tea?")<br /><br />I'm convinced that the Stimulus Bill would have been much less sucky if Obama, Pelosi et al had been drinking more water.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-66007105252695029282009-02-02T19:07:00.000-08:002009-02-02T21:45:43.539-08:00Fresh, Mediocre Drivel for the Teeming MassesMy friend and co-worker Andrea, who has been gravely disappointed by my lack of posting, should be pleased to see that I have upped my anti-slothfulness <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">meds</span>, and am providing new ramblings. Before we get to my latest "must read" blather, my wife Tara has demanded equal time to make some clarifications. Here she is:<br /><br /><em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Ok</span>, first of all, you are making our boys sound like raving beast-children. People are going to think they need to be harpooned with giant syringes full of Ritalin and that I'm a terrible mother. Isaac and Riley are actually quite well behaved -- most of the time -- and I think you should try to portray them in a more positive way. </em><br /><em></em><br /><em>Second, and more importantly, the only immature person in this house who sometimes spells out bad words when HE is angry is you. And our house does not have a gas leak, or a sink hole. And our dogs, while sometimes a challenge, are good boys. You need to stop being so mean to them and constantly talking about how they eat poop and track mud into the house and scratch the floors. They are part of our family, too. </em><br /><em></em><br />Thank you, honey. Allow me to very briefly respond to your excellent points. Our boys are adorable. And generally very <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">un</span>-brat-like. But Isaac does occasionally feed Riley dirt out of a plastic soup ladle he stole from the kitchen. And they do like to eat the '<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Ol</span> Roy dog food straight out of the giant rubber container in the laundry room. And their two favorite games are still "Daddy, Bonk your Head!" and "Daddy, Smell My Stinky Feet." (Tara is yelling up from the living room: '<em>Pray tell who was the genius inventor of these marvelous, child development games?' </em>I'm going to ignore that rude interruption.<em>) </em>And the boys still have these kinds of interactions: "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Riwee</span>, here, I will take your new ball -- WE DO NOT SCREAM, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">RIWEE</span>! -- yes, because it is a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">yittle</span> too bouncy for you and I am a big boy -- STOP <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">YICKING</span> ME, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">RIWEE</span>! -- <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Yissen</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Riwee</span>, I will get the ball and yet you taste some of this <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">yeyow</span> snow. Right there, see? I think it is gonna be <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">soooo</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">tasteee</span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Hee</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Hee</span>! Eat some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Riwee</span>! <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Yesssssss</span>. Do it! Quick quick before Mommy comes! Mommy, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Riwee</span> is eating the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">yeyow</span> snow and that is 'gusting!")<br /><br />I can't remember what Tara's other points were. Something about how we could sell the dogs on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Ebay</span>? Good idea.<br /><br />I have some gripes that I wish to share. I am going to do these rapid fire, in no particular order of importance. Some of you have heard these complaints before, but they bear repeating:<br /><br />McDonald's policy of serving lunch beginning at 10:30 am is utterly insane. Nobody wants burgers at that time of the day. But many paying customer are craving delicious and nutritious <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">McGriddles</span> or sausage and egg biscuits at O Ten Hundred Hours, and those customers will go home enraged (or slightly bitter; your reaction may be different than mine) that they could not have a Big Breakfast because of -- what? -- an internal memo that says:<br /><br />"<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Secret</span> Lab tests have confirmed that the highly addictive chemical in McDonald's burgers -- which compels people who would otherwise be ripped triathletes to eat three meals a day at our Golden Arches against their will -- is most effective when ingested in the early morning hours. Accordingly, breakfast service MUST end by 10:30 so that we can <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">obesify</span> the lemmings. Any franchisee found serving breakfast after 10:30 in violation of this policy -- even to quell rioting by breakfast-starved customers -- will be liquefied." <br /><br />I recently did a lengthy email rant about this and I will not recycle it here. Well, I guess I sort of just did. But I have another long held grievance against not only McDonald's, but all fast food restaurants. See if you can detect the, how shall I put this -- severe brain damage evident in the following exchange between me and the garbled voice of stupidity coming <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">thru</span> the drive <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">thru</span> display:<br /><br />Me: "Hi. I'd like a PLAIN cheeseburger. PLAIN. No condiments of any kind. No pickles, no mayo, no special sauce, nothing. Just a PLAIN cheeseburger."<br />(long pause while the attendant digests this stupefying, outlandish request)<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">McGenius</span>: "Uh, sir, do you want cheese on that?"<br /><br />Sigh. When I say I want a plain <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">CHEESEburger</span>, is it not implicit -- actually, explicit -- that said cheese is to remain one of the main components of my desired happy meal? Is this such a difficult concept to grasp? In fact, if one was legitimately confused by my request, wouldn't it make more sense to confirm if I wanted either "meat" or a "a bun" with my cheese?<br /><br />Enough of that. There are more important issues grating on me.<br /><br />Why was ESPN covering the Inauguration of Barack Obama? I love ESPN -- even now that it is an evil corporate <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">colossus</span> that basically rules the world. I will watch anything on the Global Leader: women's billiards (I can even tell you that Alison Fisher's nickname is the Duchess of Doom); the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Stihl</span> Lumberjack Tour (gotta love the "hot saw"); the World's Strongest Man Competition ("Oh, dear, it appears <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Magnus</span> has gotten a triple hernia and snapped his femur trying to lift the final Atlas Stone."). But can the ESPN <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Ombudsperson</span> please explain what the election of our new President -- as historically significant as it was -- had to do with sports? I resent politics intruding into my sports-watching. Thus, I don't want to read a feature article in Sports Illustrated about how Obama played basketball in high school and is a life long hoops junkie. (Gee, I must have forgotten a similar, fawning SI profile of George Bush and his life long passion for baseball, culminating in his ownership of the Texas Rangers. I think the working title was "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Chimpy</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">McHitler</span> Is Ruining America's Past Time and Is Even Making Baseball Unpopular in France.")<br /><br />I understand that all the left wing sports journalists -- like the rest of the media -- are writhing in paroxysms of ecstasy now that the Healer of Planets has arrived to save us. And they are free to write <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">haikus</span> or sonnets about the Dali-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">Bama</span> on their personal blog, or in their daily journal. But stop infecting sports columns and broadcasts with your tiresome agitprop, because it makes me angry. And you wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Because that's when I punch chairs and break my hand (the epic tale of Daddy's valorous fight against bed room furniture will be saved another day).<br /><br />It's grown too late for any further screeds. I think maybe tomorrow (tomorrow being defined as any time in the next week or so) we'll do a fictitious mail bag, with fan letters and hate mail from my readers. <br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <em> </em>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-4070247411789280762009-01-26T19:18:00.000-08:002009-01-26T21:09:38.574-08:00Gwossary of Isaac and Riley-ismsI have nothing funny to say at the moment. I was going to do some Food Commandments and include the Evil Sauces and Vile Creamy Dressings flow chart, but I'm not feelin' it. So, as a mediocre substitute, here's a list of words, phrases and technical terms commonly used by my sons in their everyday speech. I'm not sure why I thought that would be enjoyable to read about, but that's the thin gruel I'm serving up this evening.<br /><br /> <strong>"Tokyos":</strong> Isaac's completely random name for Skittles candy. We can usually figure out the derivations of the boys' words, but Tara and I have no idea where this one came from. I'm just glad Isaac isn't old enough to be in school. Had he blurted this out during kindergarten snack time ("I'm having some wed and yellow Tokyos"), I'm sure he would have been suspended for culturally insensitive hate speech.<br /><br /><strong>"Pork chop":</strong> Again, somewhat bizarrely, this is what Isaac called his chalk board. "Daddy, I want to draw you a spessal picture on my pork chop. I tried to draw a spessal picture on Riwee's face but he was mean and would not yet me and then Mommy gave me two spankings." <br /><br /><strong>"Baddy Boody!":</strong> Precise meaning unknown. We believe its etymology can be traced back to Riley, who used to call the movie "Toy Story" -- featuring Buzz Lightyear and cowboy Woody -- Budd en Oody. Isaac latched on to this, morphed it into Baddy Boody and has made it one of his signature "Isaac's brain is now fully controlled by No-Nap Delirium" nonsense phrases that he likes to yell over and over as he sprints around the house. He also likes to blurt it out at the dinner table, in combination with the forbidden word 'Toopid (stupid) to see if he can get Riley to say it with him. This usually occurs after Riley has dumped his dinner on the floor and is rubbing the greasy plate in his hair, while Isaac is dipping his fork in his milk and drizzling it on the table like Jackson Pollack. After Isaac has been warned that one more artistic milk dripping will result in his iniquitous buttocks being smiteth, yea verily, he busts out the BB: <br /><br />"Baddy Boody! Baddy Boody! 'Too-pid! Hahaha! Say it Wiwee! Baddyboodytoopid, Baddyboodytoopid, BADDYBOOOOOODYTOOPID! Noooo Daddy! No spankings. I ready to yissen ..."<br /><br /><strong>Ayigator</strong>: Riley's name for "Gatorade." "More Ayigator, Daddy? More? Me holding Ayigator?" (Daddy foolishly allows Riley to "holding" the Ayigator and drink out of the plastic container; Riley over-tilts the bottle causing an Ayigator tidal wave, and Ayigator spills all over the couch. Then Mommy calls Daddy other names, which she spells out so the children won't hear.)<br /><br /><strong>Guessing Room</strong>: What Isaac calls the Guest Room in our house. "Daddy, Daddy, can we go in the guessing room and pway games on the 'pooter? Riwee should not come with us in the guessing room because he will throw up yes actually he will Daddy because uh Daddy yissen Daddy Riwee threw up at breakfast and he cannot do dat in the nice guessing room."<br /><br />Maybe tomorrow I'll provide my readership with a long, venomous rant about Mrs. Helen Keller Magoo, the lady in front of me in the Sheetz parking lot who pulled her car to the very right hand side of the massively wide exit area and then tried to turn LEFT. After I and the 10, now 11, now 15 other irate drivers waiting to turn Right sat behind this awful woman through three light cycles, we dragged her from her car and stoned her to death with rock hard Shmagels and Shmuffins. As I later explained to Isaac, you should never stone people unless they are Reewy, Reewy 'Toopid and Bwocking the Exit Yane.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-33331993314784109292009-01-23T20:00:00.000-08:002009-01-23T23:01:17.664-08:00Big Pharma Needs A Super HeroThis post is basically for my sister Jessie's amusement. All four of my other readers will find it bizarre. Feel free to return later this weekend, when I will discuss something of more general interest, like how I was the best kick ball player in the history of Muhlenberg Elementary School. <br /><br />So, Jessie, one of my four beautiful and talented sisters, is a pharmaceutical rep. I've never quite understood -- or, rather, I've never been fully comfortable with the idea of trying to convince doctors to prescribe one medicine over another by bringing them trays of Panera cookies. <br /><br /><em>"Yes, Dr. Cocktoasten, while it's technically true that our competitor's breakthrough liquid rectal suppository cures both Leprosy and Diabetes while also fighting Gingivitis, and our FDA rejected drug, Anthraxostatin, does not seem to work at all in clinical human trials and caused 43 percent of test subjects over the age of 72 to develop fatal constipation, I've brought cheese filled croissants! And we'd like you to be the guest lecturer during our next product launch, in Monte Carlo, where you'll have daily access to the electric blue Pfizzer Pferarri and will receive unlimited full body massages from Monica Bellucci. You'll write 17,000 scrips next month? Super! Here's some extra pens for your staff and there's a miniature white Lippizaner stallion for your daughter tethered in the parking lot. Thanks so much doctor!"</em> <br /><br />But I digress. The reason I mentioned my sister's job is because she told me what occurred at her most recent sales meeting (or "Stretch Goal Quest" or whatever ridiculous internal name the company gives such pow wows) and I found it amusing. The point of this meeting -- as it is for all such meetings -- was for the genius level management personnel to tell all the agents that they sucketh greatly and that due to their slothfulness and lack of enthusiasm, market share is in the toilet. The solution to this crisis? Be the Plunger. No, no, my sister was advised by her wise and inspirational team leader that she must ... wait for it ... Think Outside The Box. Brilliant! (Someone in the corporate world should incorporate that novel concept -- maybe with a cute graphic of a brain with legs squatting next to cube -- into a PowerPoint presentation.) <br /><br />My sister asked the sales Oracle for a bit more specificity, to help her achieve this state of External Boxedness that would increase sales. His response was so deeply asinine that I have no doubt he will be company CEO in less than six months. He said, in his most scornful Gordon Gekko voice: "Do you watch movies? Do you? Well then, ask yourself -- what would Batman do?" <br /><br />(This exchange immediately brought back long-repressed, horrific memories of my stint as in-house counsel at a large company. My boss, an incomparably hateful woman who we (me) called Satan's Corpulent Handmaiden or the Shambling Mound of Toadyism, when confronted with a question she could not answer -- a frequent occurrence -- would say: "Interesting question. You should read the book 'Who Moved My Cheese?'" Apparently, this book was equivalent to the King James Bible in terms of the eternal, universal truths that it imparted. I never did read the Traveling Cheese book and I smashed my Diversity Cube with a ball peen hammer and I refused to donate to the United Way and was placed on a Watch List by HR. Surprisingly, I did not become a member of the Board of Directors.)<br /><br />But back to my sister's mentor, Socrates, and his profound inquiry: What would Bat Man do to make doctors write more prescriptions? I want my sister to answer this question correctly on her next "How to Sell Drugs" pop quiz. Well, upon reflection, the answer is obvious. Batman -- at least, Christian Bale's Batman, would employ the following Superhero Sales Stratagems. First, he would signal all the doctors in his territory with a giant spot light showing a Reuben sandwich shaped like a bat, so that they would know it was time for a catered lunch. Next, he would send Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer or Halle Berry, take your pick) to sit in the doctors' laps while doing "hypotheticals" and explaining the boring formulary. Finally, Batman would telepathically command the doctors he called on to inject the clueless, jargon spewing corporate drone-bot regional sales managers with a lethal dose of potassium chloride during one of their "ride alongs." This would dramatically boost sales and company morale. Oh, wait -- I think it was Aquaman that had telepathic powers. <br />Nevermind.<br /><br />Jessie, I hope this helps you impress the power brokers at your company. At your next sales meeting, when the VP of Rampant Success Visualization asks the group: "If you were a drug tree, what kind of drug tree would you be?" -- I'm afraid you're on your own.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-16232044636316298992009-01-18T19:47:00.000-08:002009-01-19T09:45:40.853-08:00Mommy, Why Daddy Is Yelling and Saying 'Son of Uh!'? What is Son of Uh? Dat Funny!Daddy was saying "Son of a ...!" because Daddy thought it best not to complete that thought. What prompted Daddy's outburst was, of course, a dreaded Home Improvement Project.<br /><br />Oh, before I continue I see that I have my very first Follower. Thanks Nicole, for boosting my flagging self-esteem. Go ye now and do my bidding; here is my first command to you: "It's time for Helter Skelter." (Charles Manson jokes -- always tastefully hilarious.)<br /><br />As I was saying, I am a poor man's Bob Vila. That is, if Bob Vila had no arms and legs (and became enraged every three seconds because he could not use his mouth to hold the nails and hammer them at the same time even with the special velcro mouthpiece attachment), and knew as much about carpentry as Rosie O'Donell knows about geopolitics -- I would be Bob Vila. My saving grace is that even though I am not particularly handy, I accept my limitations in this area with equanimity and good humor and only become insanely angry when major catastrophes occur -- like when stupid adhesive vinyl tiles will not fit together neatly.<br /><br />Laying vinyl tiles. That's what I was doing today. Let me see if I can rank that on the home improvement difficulty meter, with 10 being, say, a project that only a team of architects, engineers and that master wood worker guy that's on after "This Old House" should attempt, and 1 being a project that a special needs monkey could complete while simultaneously eating a banana. On that scale, vinyl tile installation rates a ZERO. Not tremendously challenging for sentient beings with opposable thumbs. But somehow, in the midst of this laughably simple project, on several occasions I wanted to gouge my eyes out with the utility knife. (But I did not kick anything, and I only spiked my metal T-square twice. And I threw my tantrums only when the boys were busy in the living room making it look like a Claymore mine filled with toy cars and trucks exploded, so good parenting award to me!)<br /><br />We were fixing up our "sun room." Sun room is a bit of a misnomer, since the room has no heat. This time of year it's more like an 18' x 10' walk-in freezer, with four large, crudded up picture windows. I believe the previous owners used this room to hang slabs of meat on large hooks and to store tractor parts. We keep our treadmill in this room, which was last treaded upon when poor Dubya was popular. When we bought the house, the owners had covered the original plywood floor with that green, indoor-outdoor carpet that looks and feels just like Astroturf. Classy! -- and in keeping with the authentic Colonial Williamsburg vibe. We covered that abomination over with a bunch of high end carpet remnants that were slightly too wide for the room; I decided that rather than spend a lot of time cutting and fitting (and screaming), I'd just let the carpet ride a few inches up the side of each wall, where it would blend in.<br /><br />(I have visions of Ty Pennington inspecting our sun room, moments before demolition, shaking his head with a mixture of pity and disgust.<br /><br />"<em>So, you used this room to work out? I mean, this is bad. Look at this carpet! It looks like a blind man with a spastic arm went a little nuts with the staple gun. You've got staples out the wazoo. I see there was water leaking from the ceiling. You put the Lego bucket under it. Nice. Did you keep livestock in here? Oh, your two Labs. Man, the whole room kind of smells like wet dog. And the doctors think that's how you contracted Lab Lung? They said it was the airborne microbes from their feces breath? Wow. That's ... that's just a bummer. Well, Lucido family, the good news is that we're going to demolish this unsafe, uninhabitable sun room and you're going to take a vacation -- to the Camden Aquarium!</em>")<br /><br />Actually, thanks to my wife's mad painting skillz -- and some very nice, post-tantrum lining up of the tiles by moi -- the room came out pretty good. Of course, tomorrow I have to cut the tiles to fit around the room edges. That project could be ... slightly perturbing. I'm going to try my best to avoid having a Jack Nicholson in the "Shining" moment. Did I mention that Tara loves it when I have home improvement rage? She says those are the moments when she's most attracted to me. Well, that and when I swerve around people moving too slowly in the left lane and then give them the much derserved "You're a human cankersore" stare. She really likes that.<br /><br />Enough lyrical prose for now. Maybe on Tuesday we'll discuss the myriad evils of creamy sauces.<br /><br />No, wait. Can't do it then. I'll be watching MSNBC all day while at work and weeping along with the Revrund Jackson, Oprah, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins et al. Just for a different reason.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-4607798456567613012009-01-13T19:19:00.000-08:002009-01-13T21:26:54.864-08:00Must we disclose that the prior owners died from radon poisoning?If all goes according to plan, we are hoping to list our house for sale in the next two or three months and then join the nearest Branch Davidian commune. <br /><br />This is the perfect time to sell, because: home sales are booming! Also, it's the middle of winter, everything looks drab and desolate, and the unscoopable, rock hard piles of frozen dog poop (courtesy of our two fecund Labs) that have melded with our back lawn will charm any prospective buyer. <br /><br />Did I mention that we have two boys, ages 3 (Isaac) and 2 (Riley) who like to sprint around our dining room table while wearing, respectively, dirty socks on his hands like mittens (Isaac) and a green plastic bucket on his head (Riley) -- while screaming "I Smash You!" "No, I Shmash Youuuuu!" at each other? They will be a huge help during the arduous boxing and packing phase.<br /><br />We're expecting a baby girl in March -- not making that up -- and nothing eases the crushing stresses of the moving process like a newborn with, say, reflux and hives from dog allergies. Ok, enough negativity. Even I must concede that it will be easy to keep our home looking neat and clean at all times, what with the Captains of Chaos roaming free, strategically placing mounds of trucks, blocks, discarded sippy cups and shards of half eaten pieces of toast in every room. <br /><br />Universal Selling Point in Our Favor: the thick clumps of black dog hair that roll like tumbleweeds across our hard wood floors and into our morning breakfast cereal. Realtors traditionally view this as a potential "turn off" -- but rampant dog hair that seems to magically regrow itself 15 minutes after vacuuming is now considered "chic and desirable" according to PETA.<br /><br />Fortunately, we live in a stately brick farm house, built in 1860, that requires very little up keep. Thus, the only items on our "before you sell" list are minor, cosmetic fixes, like:<br /><br />1) Locate source of pesky gas leak and duct tape it;<br />2) Throw area rug over basement sink hole;<br />3) Have boys color in with burgundy magic marker large areas on dining room wall where they ripped off pieces of ornate wall paper that is a discontinued pattern and cannot be replaced;<br />4) Place large chair in front of annoying electrical outlet in living room that constantly sparks and melts all the extension cords;<br />5) In-ground, 1,000 gallon oil tank may have slow leak. Tap water still looks and tastes fine. Ignore.<br />6) Fill in gaping craters idiot dogs dug in back yard with sand from Isaac's sand box. If Isaac sees this and cries, pacify him with bag of colored marshmallows. Or give him Skittles and let him play with Mommy's good jewelry. Make him promise not to drop it down "the hole" in the dining room floor.<br />7) Wood at base of garage doors is rotting. Looks bad. Try to conceal with Tara's decorative rocks from garden.<br />8) Refinished pine floors in dining room have deep, ugly scratches from spastic dogs' raptor claws. Get gallon of Polyurethane. Pour in dogs' water bowls. Kill dogs.<br />9) Water still pooling on roof of front porch. Plan all open houses on days when not raining.<br />10) Look into "cloud on title" issue.Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4907166521693337493.post-54424927108961765062009-01-12T19:05:00.000-08:002009-01-13T11:20:39.915-08:00Unfrozen Caveman Blogger Say: Now Me Pretty Big Deal"And thus began one of the great literary works of our time."<br /><br /><em>Tony's Mom, on the haunting first line -- 'Last night I dreamt of setting Manderley, my sister's stupid guinea pig, on fire again' -- of his award winning 5th grade Anti-Fire Prevention Essay. </em><br /><em></em><br />If my Mom could actually log onto her computer from the Pleistocene Era, she'd no doubt say the same about this, my inaugural blog post.<br /><br />Childhood fame changes people. After that essay, followed by my critically acclaimed series of hilarious family Christmas newsletters and my PUBLISHED Letter to the Editor of Sports Illustrated (in which I, channeling Mencken, called Rick Reilly a "bigger buffoon than Dennis Rodman." Classic stuff.) -- I was burnt out. Disillusioned with the industry. So, I stopped writing for money and lived off the residuals. Then I went insane and decided to go to law school.<br /><br />But my dedicated readers, who have so enjoyed my Pulitzer-worthy email rants about timely and important issues of the day -- Pinhead Drivers; The Heinous Evil that is Mayonnaise; My Attempts To Have My Feces Eating Dogs Euthanized Without My Wife's Knowledge; Why One Should Never Eat A Mystery Crumb Even if One is Nearly Certain it Fell Off a Delectable Entenmann's Danish -- have demanded that I keep churning out the drivel.<br /><br />So, this is for the American People. (Note: Because I have advanced, bi-lateral Procrastination Syndrome -- thank you for your letters -- with secondary Slothfulness, I may not be able to post as consistently as some other professional bloggers. I think if the nine people who ultimately read this check back every Memorial Day, they'll likely be rewarded with fresh content.)<br /><br />That's all for now. In a few years, I hope to have my bio up, and maybe some pictures. If my three year old son Isaac could read, he'd say: "Daddee, this bwog is not very good. The moon is up and you need to go to sweep."<br /><br />Indeed.<br /><br /><br /><br /><em></em>Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11600716100416458207noreply@blogger.com0