Consider this my virtual casserole dish welcoming Dave Matthews to the neighborhood. No, not the band, the real Dave Matthews.

Dave has long been a commenter on my site and a friend. I’ve made many suggestions that he get his own place to share his weird wit. (I don’t mean that in a, “Get your own blog and stay off of mine,” kind of way. Honest!) So, he finally took the plunge as created
Dave’s Strange and Unusual World over on WordPress.

Welcome, Dave!

Construction has picked up in the office space next door. Today the noise has reached a new high point.

After I tweeted about it, I didn’t feel I had achieved the catharsis I was looking for, so I got out my Treo cell phone and recorded the sound in my office. Remember that the microphone on my cell phone is designed to pick up a nice loud voice an inch away, so what you are about to hear is much quieter than the actual noise level. You can just barely hear the Spanish crooning in the first few seconds, while I can hear every lovely word of it.

Clicky clicky to get the MP3 sound file.

An important lesson learned from WeightWatchers has been that little things add up. You can shave a good amount of calories from your normal diet by making small changes. Croutons, for example. Croutons add a couple of points to your salad. Are they really that important to the enjoyment level of your meal? If you can forgo the croutons, you’ve got two more points you can spend on something more enjoyable, like fresh fruit or a hot fudge sundae. (What?!)

Speaking of croutons, here’s this week’s white board quip.

Why do croutons come in airtight packages? It’s just stale bread to begin with.
– George Carlin

Ok, so the post title is a little sensational, but let there be no mistake: the tree-hugger-centric world view sees humanity as a virus. And this AP article makes it as clear as glass.

The story covers last years rise in birth rate in the the US. We’re having more babies while Japan, Canada, and all of Europe are struggling with birth rates that are not keeping up with mortality rates. Long story short, those golden idols of Liberal socialism are having fewer and fewer babies, so why is the world’s only super-power having more babies? Here’s the AP‘s take on it.

“Experts believe there is a mix of reasons: a decline in contraceptive use, a drop in access to abortion, poor education and poverty.”

Are you kidding me?! The Liberal media is so completely out of touch with reality that they can only assume the higher birth rate is due to more poor, stupid people and the evil Conservative Conspiracy taking away the poor, stupid people’s access to abortion!?!

It couldn’t possibly be due to the fact that life in America is good. The economy is good. People are healthy and prosperous. Conservative capitalism works. NO!! It CAN’t be THAT!!!

What’s even more infuriating is that after the AP writer gives us the “expert” opinion, none of the actual experts quoted in the article say anything that comes close to that pile of putrescence.

GAH!!

Read the whole article… IF you’re not going to be operating a vehicle or heavy machinery or have access to a fire arm lest you go postal afterwards.

Apparently, the Cowboy’s fulfilling my playoff expectations was not the only big event that happened yesterday. It seems that in a mundane hotel conference room somewhere in L.A. Hollywood finally threw the kind of award show they deserve.

My contempt for the self-congratulatory circuses is well documented. I’m very glad to hear that the writer’s strike has hit Hollywood where it hurts the most, their pride!

I’ll bet you didn’t even know that the Golden Globes took place this weekend. I sure didn’t. I just happened to catch a link to the non-story on Drudge. It would seem that without the writer’s guild’s blessing, the show that is usually a red-carpet, super-extravagant, over-produced, back-patting showcase was instead on par with an Amway sales pitch at the local Holiday Inn.

The hotel ballroom, which should have been filled with famous nominees cheek-to-cheek at cozy tables, instead was given over to risers holding TV cameras and an audience of reporters and anonymous others.
…
Lacking Hollywood’s trademark famous faces and manufactured excitement, the awards … were missing any magic or meaning – an emperor stripped of his designer duds.
…
TV viewers – those who bothered tuning in – had to forgo any celebrity sightings and settle for the likes of Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” and Mary Hart of “Entertainment Tonight” fame. They read a laundry list of winners, supplemented by clips from nominated film and TV shows.

Now that’s what I call entertainment!</sarcasm> I only hope the guild’s snub of the Oscars has the same effect.

Some industry pundits are taking this to the extreme. One even forecasting, “Hollywood’s end is near.” Oh, if only ’twas true. I’m honestly excited to see Hollywood and her elitist twits served a large helping of humble pie when they find out that we cretins out in “flyover country” will live on as happy as ever without the bilge they call “entertainment”, but I’m not so naive as to think that their pedestal will actually be toppled. Then again hope springs eternal.

This week, Tammy finds herself in a foreign land: Wisconsin. It’s kind of a long story.

Her company is doing some rearranging. They’re shifting some business from a warehouse up there to the one where Tammy works here in Dallas. So they sent her to learn how to speak Wisconsinese (I think it’s a dialect related to Canadese). It will be her job to train the folks back here how to do business in this new tongue.

She was supposed to fly out yesterday. We got up a little earlier than usual, had our weekly fellowship at Waffle House, and I took her to the airport. Don’t fret. I was still able to get to church on time.

Then she sent me a text message during church. (See, I was a good boy and set my phone to vibrate so the sermon was not interrupted by an annoying ringer. Instead it was interrupted by me spasming in my pew while my phone vibrated in my pocket in a way that made me feel un-Christian.)

It seems that the Wisconsinese weather was bad (unlike the beautiful, sunny day we had here, high in the upper 70’s) and her flight was delayed, then delayed so more, and finally canceled. (Yes, I was “filled with the Spirit” in my pants several times during the sermon.) I had to stay after church and clean erasers due to my vibrating pants, so a friend of ours got Tammy back home.

Tammy’s flight was rescheduled for 7 AM this morning and because Tammy is a model citizen she wanted to get to the airport an hour or so early. (I’ve learned that when Tammy says, “an hour or so,” it translates to what I call, “about two hours.”) So if you do the math, that means I got up at that hour which I still refuse to believe exists (<whispers>five-ay-em</whispers>) and drove her to the airport again.

This time the flight went smoothly and, as I type this, she is learning all about the Wiscon people. Maybe she’ll be able to tell me why they wear cheese on their heads. I’ve always wondered. Maybe it’s good for your hair. *shrug*

Only five shopping days left until “Holiday”!!

I know this guy.

He went to Harvard, but only squeaked by with a D+ average. He dropped out of law school. He dropped out of divinity school. He has no formal education in any scientific field. He has made numerous grand and self-exalting claims, all of which have proven untrue.

So what could a guy like that amount to? Not much, right? Well, actually he’s Nobel Prize winner and former Vice President of the United States.

“I took the initiative in creating the internet.”
– Al Gore

Only in America.

P.S. I was looking for a good synonym to “braggart” to describe Mr. Gore but the best word thesaurus.com offered is a bit too PG-13 for this blog. I’ll give you a hint. It has to do with the male bovine digestive system.

If you’ve ever met me, you probably know that I’m a germaphobe. (The actual term is mysophobe, but nobody knows what that means.) Just today, I was laughed at repeatedly when I had to visit a busy, downtown hospital with some co-workers. My hands never left my pockets and I kept my mouth closed as much as possible.

But once in a while a story comes along that makes it all worth it. I love when I get the chance to say, “Look who’s laughing now!!”

A quick google of this story reveals that it’s been around the new for a while, but I just came across it today. Watch the video and bask in the horror.

Clicky clicky.

Just for grins, here’s a couple of pics I scraped of the inkernets.

The secret’s out! Your iPhone is really running XP!

And here’s a sneak peak at Mac’s new Sudanese version of the iPod due out next Spring.