Category Archives: News

Things, Goings On, and Stuff I write

Election Result Maps

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As Jess didn’t say
 there are plenty of maps out there. Are we done with them yet?The Election result maps here are kinda funky, it’s like they crossed a map with Stretch Armstrong. In the end I’d like to see the country move on and get back to one of the following things:

  • Get back to the basics. Can we please all turn Amish so that the reality TV shows can stop?
  • Pull our money out of the stock market and buy more cars and homes. It is clear that the government is going to do it all wrong anyway, so if they can be irresponsible and just ‘spend, spend, spend’ without saving, why can’t we?
  • All buy camcorders and walk around recording ourselves and create our own public access reality TV shows. What could be more real than recordings of our lives condensed into 30 minute segments. Just think about the conversations you could get out of when you get home.
    Person1: “What did you do today?”
    Person2: “Let me edit it for you… Geez, getting a little impatient aren’t we, Person1?!”
  • Take up a musical instrument. If everyone in America played the nose flute the world would be a safer place. Imagine a terrorist landing on US soil and being greeted by Hare Krishna skinhead types with nose flutes. They’d never be able to blow things up or email ricin because they’d be laughing so hard.
  • Everyone get a blog. Wait. Everyone has a blog. Well not everyone, but a lot of people have them. What’s worse is that they don’t put content on them. Or if they do put content on them it’s stuff like:
    <teen blog>
    Today I brushed my teeth before breakfast just to irritate my mom. She is so lame. U have 2 C her to Blieve it. Talk 2 U l8r.
    </teen blog>
    <My blog>
    <– Some story about Abby having a potty accident. A sarcastic blog entry. Or something else I’ve managed to write about, including ‘Women of Walmart’ and Women of Home Depot’, oh, and don’t forget ‘Banana Phone.’ –>
    </My blog>

    On second thought, lets all stop blogging and we’ll go back to old-fashioned email lists, that’s way easier.

So, as you can see, Election Result Maps politics are over for America for at least two or three minutes. Let’s stop, enjoy it, and then get back to coloring in the lines, particularly if there are lines outlining 48 contiguous states. Can we please just pick some other colors besides Red, Whine and Blue?

Arafat Dead at 75

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Arafat has died. I would say that this is an end of an era, but in truth this is probably just a gnarly transition from one extremist to another. It is like switching from an all bean diet to a beer, cabbage and egg diet. Basically, this stinks. Fortunately I’m sure we’ve got a crack intelligence team that has figured out most everything thing there is to know about the next leader (who should probably figure out where Osama Bin Laden is).

Jerry Springer Strikes Again

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This evening our neighbors upstairs were at it again. And when I say ‘At it again’ I mean one male was screaming at absolutely the top of his lungs, “You stupid, [expletive deleted] piece of,” I interupt to point out that we were watching Master & Commander and the next word out of the neighbor’s mouth sounded similar to a synonym for ‘boat.’ It is at this point that I’d also like to clarify that stomping on the floor not more than 5 minutes earlier would have been appreciated because we were at the climactic battle scene towards the end of the movie. The part where the ship turns itself into a bug and surprises the snot out of a bunch of French folk. Cannon firing with surround sound turned on would have only been enhanced by the deep thunderous stomping of my neighbors upstairs. However, as is so common with them, their timing was off and the loud screaming of expletives was an inconvenience to us.

I’m hoping that they’ll either stop completely or do it again one third (and due to apartment policy, last) time so that we can move on with our lives. They’ve been a real hoot to have above us and I’ve learned a lot of things about being an upstairs neighbor from them. I’ve heard musical scales, river-dance like stomping in the bathroom and seen my daughter run out of my living room afraid. Oh, well. Next year we may try to buy a house anyway, which would mean that our neighbors would have to be really loud to get us this disturbed.

Super Sicko

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I was sick all of yesterday, almost a literal 24 hours. Monday night at 12:08 (I remember looking at the clock) I woke up and went into the bathroom and discovered that my body was in ’empty me at both ends’ mode. That is a relatively nice way to say that I took the fastest route possible to losing weight be getting my body to eliminate anything and everything in my digestive track. This continued to where I finally fell asleep somewhere near 3:30 (as far as my delusional mind could remember) that morning and then happened again when I woke up after 6.

I don’t watch a lot of television, but when I’m sick, the boob tube comes on. I think that Katie Couric is half the female host that Diane Sawyer is. With that in mind neither of them strikes me as brilliant news casters, but since when was the ‘mass media’ the best place to get really useful news?

Anyway, I’m back and in action now so I’ll be posting again as usual.

Special Times

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When I was a young child and on into my teens (though we stopped calling them such) I had ‘special times’ with my parents. Or dates if you will. This allowed my parents to have one-on-one time with us kids as well as give us an oportunity to have some fun without the distractions or potential arguments with other siblings. I remember we would go to get frozen yogurt or maybe go miniature golfing. Fun was had and I think that it kept me from selling drugs in high school. Oh, shoot, I did sell drugs in high school [I worked at a pharmacy].

Tonight Abby and I had a special time, we went to the library and picked out some books and videos and then afterwards (don’t tell Jessica) we went to Starbuck’s where she had some chocolate milk and I consumed a small portion of a tall latte. Abby flirted with several people in the store and I watched the reflection of a woman cry a lot to a man in the window. We didn’t have any deep conversation, but I hope that it tells this little two year old girl of mine that I love her very much and think she’s very special.

At the library she cracked me up by saying, “No, it’s my precious heart, Dad.” And what a precious heart it is.

A New Bike for Abby

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Today FedEx delivered Abby’s new bike that Grandpa and Grandma Forland ordered for her while we were in Washington. I’ll try to get pictures, but at 2 years old, she’s hard pressed to move those pedals around. Oh, well, it looks cute!

Interesting Op-Ed

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I have been amazed, amused and confused by various responses to Bush’s re-election this last week. My thoughts aside, which are pretty ho-hum, this Op-Ed article is quite fascinating.

I’m a generally conservative guy (but I’m not registered Republican, I’m ‘unaffiliated’ or some other non-sense term that means, “Please don’t pigeon hole me.”) and I’m not a closet Christian, but I’ve been flabbergasted that so many web sites and news blurbs cited ‘Evangelicals’ as the source of Bush’s win. For crying out loud, there are lots of states with a very small percentage of actual Christians (where Christian does not equal WASP) but where conservative values tend to be held. Heck, I left the Bible Belt to find a home church 🙂

What I’m most interested in is some reasons why I don’t think Kerry won:

  • Anything but Bush is hardly a reason to vote for Kerry, and it’s really not a reason to vote against Bush. It just says that someone disagrees with Bush.
  • Bush Lied. Yup. Most likely he spun, or lied, about a lot of stuff. This is typical for politicians, no matter what stereo-type they get labeled with (including Bush’s Christianity). People apparently aren’t expecting truth from politicians or televangelists.
  • Bush is against Stem Cell Research which could hold the cure to (insert many diseases here). I want to state right now that I am for stem cell research. With one condition: don’t get the stem cells from aborted babies. The reason this didn’t win people over to the Kerry camp is because not enough Americans recognize this as the issue it is. There is a lot of ignorance when it comes to medicine and the common United States citizen.
  • The War on Terror is never ending. You may know that. I know that. However, considering that most of the people voting attend religious ceremonies two or less times a year their recognition that terrorism in the middle-east is often based on religious motivation – they don’t think about it and they don’t get it.
  • Peoples children are dying in Iraq. Voters don’t want people to die. However, when you calculate that the number of US citizens that die every month from car accidents in the United States is higher than the number who have died in Iraq in all of that time, the fatality rate has been very low[1]. Granted zero deaths is better than even one death. I’m personally not for war, and don’t want us in Iraq (or any other country) either, but I think that voters didn’t buy this argument.
  • Gay (marriage, unions, governmentally recognized relationships). Many Americans may not be homophobes (or many may be, I don’t know enough Americans to tell you this) but I think that this issue really didn’t grab the attention of John and Jane Doe because Will and Grace is their one contact with homosexuality – except if you count their aunty’s hair dresser.

This is a very small list and I know many more arguments were leveled during the time of the presidential running (or, if you want to be humorous, the running of the bulls [as in bull pucky that came out in the mud slinging]). My recommendation for those against Bush’s presidency is to not marry a Canadian, move to Canada or protest all over the place. Instead, move to California, they’ve got plenty of room (not really), join a cult (to counter the Evangelicals) or marry a Canadian so they can move down here and populate the country with Candadian ideas and accents (Pretty good idea, eh?).

I’m interested in intelligent conversation on this and would like to hear other arguments I didn’t list and see what else we can come up with. Also, what candidates do you prognosticate for the next presidential election? Powell verses H. Clinton? That would be quite the race because you’d have a black male verses a woman. Of course Arnold Schwartzeneiger verses Obama would be even more intense! OK, I’m going to bed.

On the Road Again

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Much like Willie Nelson I have many hit songs, tax issues and a fanbase with no need for dental floss. Unlike Willie, I don’t like to be on the road a lot. We’re heading back to the great state of Colorado. We’ll sleep in our own beds tonight which will be good. However, I’m sad that I’m not going to get to work on the house today and until it’s finished.

Anyhow, blogging will resume its abnormal patterns as of now. I hope to get some of the pictures I’ve taken here up online.

Poop Nazi

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I have been called a poop nazi this morning. This is a name that I take seriously given that I’m German in descent and I married a rather German woman. Therefore Abby is still a mutt, but she’s got a lot of German blood. The reason I’m a poop Nazi? Because I ask Abigail if she needs to go poop when her face falls into what I would call a blank poop stare. A blank poop stare is one in which her focus can be seen shifting to her bowels and the inner workings of her body. It is like she’s doing a system check to make sure everything is as it should be.

However, I ask more often than Abby needs to go, and so Jessica has called me this crappy name. Therefore, I christen her, the Moderate Mommy.