Bye-Bye, Baby

So today I sent in my Nikon camera to the factory to be fixed. The speed flash stopped working so I had to send it in for repair. I took it down to my local FedEx-Kinko’s where they’re reportedly going to ship it. I paid extra big money to have it wrapped carefully, shipped in a box 6 times it’s size full of peanuts and carried by ballerinas on their tip-toes. I also paid to have the guy behind the counter breathe as well as talk to other customers. In fact, the whole experience felt like FedEx was billing me for my time in their store. There’s something magical about that extreme form of capitalism called ‘Shipping – Copying – Printing.’ It makes you feel like a useless slave bound to their rules. Therefore, I’m going to start RandyEx where I’ll ship copies of your printings for 3000X profit and become independently wealthy after only 7 weeks on my new diet plan.

I hope my camera comes back OK.

The Tree

Yesterday I went and collected the yearly tree due to the help of my brother (in Christ) Craig. He’s got a long car with the ability to throw things on the roof so he kindly hauled the branches and bough to our apartment. Unfortunately the diameter of the tree was greater than the (crappy) hoop that came with our tree stand. So I had to cut, whack and hack at the bottom of the tree to get it into the hoop. In the end: we’ve got a tree, but 90 degrees is not quite the angle it’s at. Maybe I can talk Craig into firing up his saw to make some wood bits for me to balance the stand out because the tree is not moving in that ring.

You see, Craig has got a miter saw. It’s slick and I watched him use it with (friendly) envy. It’s quite the saw and I think that when we get a house next year we’ll have to buy one shortly after so that I can cut random pieces of wood with great precision. Enough of Craig’s great saw.

Abby will be joining us in tree decoration shortly and I expect that to be quite, um, intersting 🙂 I’ll post pictures later.

Abbyisms

Several Abbyisms of late I needed to report:

We’re Going to Bring Jesus a Present
Since Christmas is Jesus’ birthday Abby assumes we’re going to His party and we’ll bring Him presents. This is going to be tough to break to her, much worse than Santa Clause (who is currently ‘A man’ whe we pass him). She cracks me up with her logical conclusions – there’s no escaping this one.

Bring It On
This morning Abby declared this one out of no where. No context demanding it, she just blurted it out. It makes things exciting around here not knowing what she’ll say next.

Potty Training Part VIIMILK

Well, today Abby decided to go to the bathroom without any adult assistance. This would be good if she succeeded. She didn’t. Instead she got #2 on the floor, the toilette seat and was sucking on her tube of toothpaste when we found her half naked in the bathroom. Good times. So I helped Jessica clean Abby and the mess up and we got onto the rest of the day which was full of Abby’s intensity and disobedience. However, this evening she went back into the bathroom herself and successfully unloaded with #1. What an amazing surprise 🙂

My Blister is a Mac Blessing

I’m sure the title of this post is odd. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the blister on the tip of my index finger from doing funky bass guitar stuff last night (I’m recording ‘Carol of the Bass’, my all bass guitar rendition of ‘Carol of the Bells’) is really handy on the touchpad for the iBook. Sure, it’s annnoying other times but it is the most precise touchpadding I’ve ever done 🙂

Complete Chicken Genome Sequenced

Due in large part to the help of the folks at www.subservientchicken.com scientists have sequenced the complete Chicken Genome.

What will we do with the chicken genome? We’ll learn about how to reduce chicken health problems, see how chickens and humans are related genomically and also learn how to make a better chicken salad sandwich. People for the Treatment of Edible Animals were extatic about advances in super-chickens and chickens in military uses.

One professor at Deep Southern Rural Alabama School of Holy Oaks Baptist Theological Traditions Seminary who requested annomininininiimimity was quoted as saying, “T’ain’t so. God didn’t make no super-chickens off the ark.” However, Princeton Seminary professor countered, “If Jesus were alive today he’d be all for making more chicken breasts cheaper to feed the hungry.”

Donation for the Horde

I got a nifty spam this morning with a person looking for a ‘donation for the lord.’ It’s basically the same schpiel that televangelists use on television. Check out the funky quotes below:

I am the above name
person from Sierra-Leone

Read: The above name must mean something like: my name will change as my spamming program alters it.

Since his death,
I decided not to re-marry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which
the Bible is really against.

Read: Where is that passage?

Exodus
14 VS 14 says that the lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace.

As a Christian sort of fellow: Yeah, that’s a verse for Jews from the Old Testament!

OK, I’ll stop there, but this cracked me up.

Elf Slams Dodgeball

OK, so this last week I’ve watched Elf and Dodgeball. As the title of this post suggests Elf was a much better movie to me. Now, here’s the thing: Elf was fresher and funnier. Dodgeball had funny moments, it had some good snippets edited out, though which would have really clinched the humor in the movie – if you don’t believe me rent the DVD (except you Mom, because I know it’s not your kind of movie… at all) and check out the edited and deleted scenes. Ben Stiller used the same movements, similar joke types and goofy gags that he did in Zoolander and several other movies. In other words, the main quality acting came from his opponent, Peter. However, I give Steve the Pirate (a character in the movie) two thumbs up!

Elf on the other hand was consistently funnier and maybe, because I didn’t watch a lot of Will Ferrell in Saturday Night Live, his humor was at least mostly fresh. Yeah, there was some slapstick stuff in Elf, but I loved the claymation mixed with the real characters in the North Pole. I loved Will Ferrell’s exuberance, whether it was sugar powered or not. And what’s with the love story in the movie that doesn’t lead to sex? I mean come on, do we really want to watch a movie without sex? Actually, yes. I loved that there was very limited language, no sex, very minor innuendo, and a huge amount of creativity in this movie.

So, Elf 0.8, Dodgelander 0.5.

Pardon me while I go pour some syrup on my spaghetti…