Poppies, poppies, poppies!!!

For the last week or so, I’ve been reading Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz” to the kids before they get off to bed. Although I read a couple of the Oz books when I was a kid I don’t think I ever read the one the movie was based on. It’s actually a little less gushy (not so many lovely princesses and darling waifs) than I remember the others being. Also, there are many differences between it and the movie.

First off, the famous Ruby Slippers don’t exist. They are Silver Shoes. The Tin Man is the slightly more awkward-sounding “Tin Woodman”. Even the Tin Woodsman would’ve been a little better. And the witch is not the harassing threat she is throughout the movie but only goes after Dorothy and crew after they enter her land basically intent on destroying her.

Speaking of destruction, it’s not the typical fairy tale. The Tin “Woodman” brandishes his axe in every other chapter, mostly cutting wood to make rafts, bridges, and ladders but also severing limbs (well, from mobile trees) and chopping the heads from 40 wolves. The jolly Scarecrow breaks the necks of 40 crows and the Lion snaps the neck of a giant spider.

But the part my kids seem to dig the most we haven’t even got to. It’s the picture to the right of three stoogish guys with no arms (likely victims of the Woodman). They’ve got a little chant complete with strange barking laughs : “We’re the Quadlings! Ha-ha-ha! We’re the Quadlings! Ha-ha-ha!”

Or something like that. The way I wrote it above makes it seem like there's some kind of structure to it.

No structure for the Quadlings!!!

Zippy

I love banana peppers. Not the obnoxiousness of jalapenos but with a good zing.

RIP POW

I just saw in the paper today heard today that the Prince of Wales, a pretty cool British pub in Midtown, has been closed. Per the ad, it was closed due to a lack of “adequate parking and foot traffic”.

Lack of foot traffic? I guess any dreams I had of the cities of the US becoming more European have died when a British pub directly across from the soccer fields in the biggest park in Atlanta cites lack of foot traffic as a reason for shutting down. The place is surrounded by apartments and condos.

I suspect the real reason is the lack of parking. Yes, compared to a strip mall with it’s acres of slab, the parking is horrible. I used to live there and I know.

I guess people are scared to walk half a block to their homes or cars.

Damn…maybe we should adopt the Wild West/Kennesaw idea of everyone carrying a six-shooter at their hip.

Sure, the numbers of accidental and emotional killings would skyrocket but at least we’d have a place to go and have a beer.

Humorology 101 - Lesson 17

Ok. We all agree that a joke is not funny if you have to explain it. Even if someone doesn’t even know it is a joke, it still makes it less funny to explain it. But I guess that's because when he eventually realizes it’s a joke, there is a moment, however minor and brief, where he feels a little stupid.

So that’s funny.

But what if he never realizes that it was a joke and goes on with his life forgetting it entirely? Is it then funnier to explain it?

No.. it still isn’t.

Hey, I know… what if you give away the fact that it was a joke indirectly, not even relating it to the original joke?

Is that funny?

No.

Super Duper Dog Dare Tuesday

I show up at the voting spot with about 20 minutes to spare before it closes. No crowds and not any major traffic problems getting there so things are looking good.

But what's this? I need 6 forms of ID?!

6?!!

Who the hell has 6 forms of ID? I have my driver's license, of course, and I think my work badge might be in the car somewhere. Somewhere at home is my passport and, probably in the attic there might be a Malibu Grand Prix Club card from when I lived in Orlando but I don't have time to get either of those!

Damn... doesn't matter any way.

The Mongoose Flies

Sunday, we went to the SuperBowl Party of some friends of ours. Did what I always do... ate a bunch of food, drank beer and only watched about 20 minutes total of the game which is the most NFL I've watched this season. Not that it wasn't a good game... down to the wire, stunning upset, 19-0 hopes... doesn't get much better than that where a game is concerned. The little'uns rampaged upstairs with about 8-10 more of their ilk then watched one of the thousands of CGI animated affairs.... this one a Shrek rip-off.

Highlights: garlic potato skins, chile con queso dip (nothing really exceptional about it, I just love the stuff), a Negro Modelo with said dip, and a lot of comic talk about our upcoming redive into poopy diaper world. And, to top it off, just as we were making our farewlls during the 4th, A Toyota Sequoia commercial comes on with you-know-who doing the music.

Ahhh... beer is good.

Doesn't Anyone F'ing Knock Anymore?

Today Kerry and I saw the halfway-there sonogram of the new memebr of Team K. It has all the right bones, kidneys too, and both halves of a brain plus all four chambers of a going-to-town heart.

And it's a boy!

We could tell when he clutched his goods just when we were looking for'em.

Sleeve-fisted find

As almost anyone who knows me is well aware of, I rarely watch TV. It’s a complete waste of time and I’m not interested. I also don’t play computer games… they are a waste of time as well but however I am very interested in them but have decided not to indulge because I’m pretty sure I’d become obsessed.

Anyway, the point of this particular post is that I think the brain is very eager to waste time on pointless activities and if given any leeway will do so readily. About once a week, I will find myself in front of the computer at 2 or 3 in the morning looking up inane stuff… no, not even porn. That would be understandable… just utterly useless crap like discussions of upcoming movies that I never see, Amazon reviews, band histories in Wikipedia, or the snarkapaloozic AV Club message boards.

I‘m not talking about late-night blogging (like I am doing now) or book reading (where I will often go through an entire sleeve of Saltines). Both of these are basically ok in my book. It’s sitting here, bleery-eyed, reading endless comments on comments about a review of a movie or book I’ve never seen nor have any interest in doing so that drives me nuts… after the fact, that is.

Springfield! Are you ready to rock?!!!

Ok, ok... my running companions, Fu Manchu, do have a bit of a schtick but somehow, at least for me, they manage to be serious even with songs with titles like "Boogie Van", "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Dice", and "Hot Doggin'"

However, my mind cannot seem to wrap itself around the possibility of these guys taking themselves anything close to seriously.

Get set...

Neither snow nor the looming threat of the dreaded “black ice” kept us from the race. Liam’s was one of several out of about fifty cars that a big deal was made out of (Go Optimus Prime!) which he got a thrill out of. And it wasn’t that slow either. It was last on the first of four but then came in 2nd on the next, and first on another. But the capper was Optimus Prime won #2 Best in Show and Liam got a trophy!

This shot shows the cars in action. The one in the lead belongs to a friend of Liam’s as does the Hummer that Optimus Prime is neck and neck with. Because his Dad was out of town, I made the Hummer as well Optimus. For how quick I worked on it, it actually turned out pretty cool.

On your mark...

Tomorrow is Liam’s pinewood derby race. For those of you unfamiliar with this, it’s one of the more famous Cub Scout events in which each scout builds a car with his Dad and it is rolled down a ramp in a race with the other cars. People go nuts with this and, as you can see, most of the cars are NOT made solely by the kids!

Liam wanted an Optimus Prime in truck form. Here is what you get with the kit that you have to build the car from. No problem, right?

I cut it which involved borrowing a band saw from a friend which ended up not working and I used one at my work which had a metal-cutting blade and burned the wood. I glued some extra wood on the top for the cab then Liam sanded it. I primed it with the stuff I’m going to use on the bathroom ceiling if I ever get back to that project then cut some stencils into tape so Liam could paint flames.

Unfortunately, I failed to realize that red paint over blue does not look like red… especially not the same bright red that the rest of the red parts are! Then the tape pulled off a bunch of the paint… sigh. I touched it up as best I could and glued on the accoutrements: pipes and a chrome bumper and grill. I put in the windshield with a Sharpie and screwed on weights I bought at Michael’s to get it up to the maximum allowed weight… more weight to overcome friction.

For the friction side of things, I did file down the casting burs on the nail axles and puffed in some graphite powder but that was I for the wheels. Oh wait, I also sanded off the plastic blister on the wheels formed during the molding process. I guess I did go a little nuts on this but a lot of folks get a lot worse. I did most of this by hand not with all sorts of custom Dremel tools.

In the last hours before registering the car where they check its weight and dimensions, I realized the pipes were a little high and the entire length JUST exceeded the max 7 inches. I sanded off the back which meant that there was a huge unpainted section then when I was grinding one of the pipes it broke from its Crazy Glue support! Not to mention that now the weight was off.

I glued the pipe back and headed home to grab a slice of leftover pizza for dinner and take Liam to registration. Liam could not stand the unpainted section so I let him touch it up. Just before heading out the door, I decided to glue a washer to the trailer section (the dolly?) to make up for the lost weight.

The registration was at this massive, maze-like fortress of a church. The length just made it and the weight was 5.0 ounces… right at the max. Yes!!!

Too bad

The other day I saw a pit bull and a husky running through the neighborhood. With kids, I’m not a big fan of dogs running loose but usually I let it go. For a f*ing pit bull, I’m calling Animal Control. Oh, I know… it’s bad owners that give the breed a bad rep. I’m sure most of them are wonderful, loving animals.

So how about this compromise? Let’s wipe every last one of them off the face of the earth. Own one? It’s killed, you go to jail. Sell one? It’s killed, you go to jail.

How about that?

A gorgeous, sunny afternoon

So that I don’t completely destroy my knees, I try to break up my running by riding my bike every once in a while. I ride pretty much the same route as my long runs… along a new road near my home that bisects a massive multi-development area. It’s got two lanes on each side so the cars… well, SUV’s for the most part… can give me some room and it’s hilly with expansive views and tough climbs.

Near a park along this road there’s a woodsy area that they are only now encroaching on on all sides with more development. Today, I noticed a dirt road going into this area so I figured I’d ride my bike in and check it out. It went down a steep hill, meandered around a pond, then slipped into a muddy area that I opted not to venture through. Another part of it ascended a tall hill overlooking the whole area… rife with 5-story look-alike uberhomes, manicured lawns, and tennis courts… some air-conditioned.

But do you know what I didn’t see? Not a single trace of a bike tire track on the entire length of the dirt road. Now granted, the route was no big deal but don’t you think in this entire area with hundreds upon hundreds of homes there’d be at least a few bored kids on bikes that would’ve rode up onto the hill I was on?

What kind of soulless, gutless, Halo-engorged generation are we creating here?

And whatever rhymes with “eloquent”.

For the last few weeks… well, more like months… I’ve been doing work on my bathroom ceiling. A long time back some brightboy put in a skylight and neglected to put any flashing around it. This was the 2nd hidden problem with the house that I found out about when I noticed water dripping in through a window. When I figured it could not be getting in from outside the window, I realized it was coming in through the skylight hole and dripping down just above the ceiling and making its way down the inside of the drywall. Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to fixing the flashing issue until a year or so had passed and the ceiling was water damaged. Now that we are considering moving it’s gotta get fixed.

But goddamn but it’s a pain in the ass. The ceiling is popcorn so you can’t really patch it. Which I learned after patching the hole in the garage that I fell through. It doesn’t look that bad… for a GARAGE but it wouldn’t work for a bathroom. So the popcorn had to go.

Although it’s written up everywhere on the Net as a nightmare, getting the popcorn off was relatively simple. Even on a ladder 18’ in the air, it was just a lot of scraping then a bunch of Shop-Vac action. But now I’m fixing all the warped areas with joint compound and there’s an art to this stuff.

I did the whole thing once and sanded it all and it looked like crap so now I’m doing it all again. Today I finally finished putting up the mud with the right drywall knife (more of a trowel, really…. I’m not cutting anything with it but “knife” is what they call it) this time. Tomorrow I’ll sit up on that ladder covered with white powder sanding until my arms are killing me… and I won’t be surprised if it still looks like crap. Then I have to paint… joy!

Anyway, today I had the boom box playing Primus’ Frizzle Fry and when I took the CD out of its case, I found a long-lost Red Hot Chili Peppers’ disk: Uplift Mofo Party Plan. Yes! Both these bands plus Janes and a few others were what I remember listening to a lot driving around Orlando just before Nirvana shook everything up.

But tomorrow no tunes since the dust gets into everything… boom boxes, lungs, eyes, etc. Just sanding, sanding, sanding… and coughing up white phlegm.

Quick bit

My guess is that this whole ad campaign is derived from the "does a bear sh**t in the woods" adage.

What's next... a guy in a pope hat?

Clearly, more Keoughs are needed.

Some of you may have already heard about this but Kerry and I are expecting lil’Keough #3 late June. We’ll get some info on whether it’s a boy or girl at the end of Jan. Right now, we’re looking at Finn for a boy and Colleen or possibly Riley for a girl but of course there is plenty of time for this to change!

And when I say "Finn" I don't mean Finnegan, Finnian, nor even Finbar. Just Finn.

So drink up, lads. This round's on me.

Bring on 2008

Yup... a pretty typical New Year's Eve. Had some super-tasty homemade French Onion soup (a tradition from Kerry's family) and let the kids stay up. I knew Erin was going to fall asleep during the movie ("The Last Mimzy" - meh) just as I knew Liam would stay awake. He and I played the laser game up till the ball dropped. Then we forgot to make a toast with the sparkling apple juice. We did get the parrot to squawk "Happy New Year" though!

Not at all like NYE99 at Matt's with the entire front room jammed solid with jumping bodies and no one had queued up a song for the new millenium so it ended up being Madness' "Our House".

Too bad the Y2K mobs didn't show.

Now you're set to get into the groove!

Well, I said I wasn’t going to blog anymore about Christmas but I’ve got to give a rundown of the highlight gifts (ie., “coolest toys”).

Erin got a robotic parrot, a My Little Pony “robot” or whatever these types of pseudo-alive toys are supposed to be called, plus a few dolls. The parrot is pretty cool and it might be fun to program it to respond in different ways but I don’t see it’s long-term appeal lasting especially to Erin who asked for it repeatedly. It was at the top of her wishlist. Pinkie Pie has a LOT of songs stored in it and it focuses on dancing so I can see this being a good one. However, the solid (although not exciting) gift will be the playdesk. Erin’s main love is working on her drawings and crafts. And it’s gotta light!

Liam loved a chess-like game with lasers. He got some great Lego sets but he’s been holding off on working on these. In fact, he still hasn’t opened one he got for his birthday. Now he’s off and running on the big hit to the wallet: the Lego Mindstorms robot. I thought I’d be pouring over instruction manuals and fumbling with controls to get him started but when I got around to doing this he had already built a car that would hit a wall and go into reverse.

More Gravy than Grave

Ok... one more bit then no more Christmas crap for 12 months... well, 10 months unfortunately.

Two classic stories are "A Christmas Carol" and "It's a Wonderful Life". And by classic I'm referring to the basic tale. Yeah, I know they are both overdone and overplayed but still, I can't think of another example of a simple, effective story done as well as these. But that's because I saw one last night and the other is playing right now so my brain isn't working quite right.

Help me here.

Christmas Eve

Here we are, giving the kids some time to fall asleep, ready to spring into action with screwdrivers, tape, and scizzors. For the last 2-3 weeks both of them have been acting like timebombs… like buzzing hives of energy, getting more and more excited with each passing day… all leading up to tomorrow morning.

I was thinking that at any time Liam would start asking the hard questions about Santa. He’s asked how he does it so fast but we kind of have this theory worked up that Santa stops time. Also, I told him a long time ago that Santa imports toys from China so the blatant identicalness of Santa’s toys with the ones at Wal-Mart has never been an issue. Plus I claim ignorance of Santa’s methods as well.

But you know what? It doesn’t really matter. Liam doesn’t ask the hard questions because he doesn’t want to press too hard… he loves the whole fantasy. I’m not saying he’s purposely not asking but I am sure there‘s a subconscious denial of some sort at work.

And it’s a pretty flimsy charade, by the way. With a Santa at every other function, characters on TV wearing Santa suits, and basic logic screaming from every facet of Santa’s operation, how hard could it be to figure it out? Even the Christmas specials often make me cringe thinking that Liam’s going to start wondering. A lot of these incorporate the “Do you believe in Santa?” thing. Before this, I don’t think my kids were even aware that there was a controversy. “Wait a sec.. you mean there are people that DON’T believe in Santa? Why not? I wonder….”

When Liam was born, I kind of went back and forth on the whole Santa thing. I didn’t like the idea of lying to my son especially in such a huge way. Basically, I’m setting him up for a tragic, life-changing stab-in-the-back. But I gave in and went along with it. I’m glad I did as the kids love it and I’m sure they always will. Although I still hate how it completely flies in the face of the honesty ethic - something I value highly - as well as creating havoc with the parental trust thing, denying Santa from them would be stealing something from their childhood. Besides, if it was good enough for us… etc., etc.

HO HO HO!!