Boviosity!

Surf at your own risk

Tim Blair links to a gallery of "Peace" activists (You know, the kind with Hezbollah t-shirts featuring upraised rifles) and cruelly includes an image guaranteed to cause you to rethink lunch.

Never fear, though, I've rendered the image safe for civilian viewing.

You be the judge!

Select one (1) riposte to complete the following exchange:

The scene: a church courtyard. A man and woman are standing and talking along with other parishioners: touching base, looking for volunteers, telling sob stories - all the sorts of things that take place in a church courtyard on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

He: "Would you mind helping the R--- committee with the mailing?"
She: "Sure!!!!!!!!!!"
He: "OK, I'll call you on Tuesday with details after I get them from the contractor."
She: "I'm not going to be home Tuesday! I have lunch with my daughter's class and that really blows a hole in my day so I just turn off the phone and sleep the rest of the day! You could e-mail me, though!"
He: "OK, I'll e-mail you. Thanks."

Next Sunday. The woman is talking with a large group of women. The man walks up and waits for her to finish. He catches her eye and nods significantly, in the way that indicates "I'd like to talk with you when you're finished if you don't mind." She continues talking for another 40 fucking minutes until the women drift away. The man approaches her.

He: "I never heard back from you about the mailing for the R--- committee."
She: "What mailing????????????????...!!!!!!!!!...?!?!?!?!?!?!"
He: "The one we talked about last week. I e-mailed you on Tuesday about it."
She: "Oh...I don't check my e-mail. Would you e-mail it to me again tomorrow?"

Comments again

Unfortunately, none of my efforts stopped the flood of comment spammers. So I'm going back to the typepad thing. I'll post some information about how that works later. I just did it now because I just had to delete 7 spam comments.

I hate these people. And Zach Braff.

Weigh-in, Week 16

Week 1: 281
Week 2: 281
Week 3: 275
Week 4: 271
Week 5: 270
Week 6: 273.6
Week 7: 271
Week 8: 269
Week 9: 267
Week 10: 267
Week 11: 266
Week 12: 267
Week 13: 264
Week 14: 266
Week 15: 266

Week 16: 269

I weighed myself several times during the week, and saw values ranging from 264 to 274. So I'm still not panicking, still working out regularly. I need to get a better handle on my eating, though. It's such an ingrained thing with me.

Comment change

Just another little tweak - I'm still getting some comment spam (but thankfully not as much) so on the off-chance that the spamming scum is looking behind a link that says "Comments", I'm going to let the link to comments say "Oh Yeah???" So if you want to comment, click on "Oh Yeah???"

Death of an Enemy

Back in February, I had a run-in with a neighbor of mine. Here is how I described it to a pastor friend in an E-mail:

We had a wild night last night, which wound up with us calling the police on a neighbor kid and me wandering the house with a baseball bat. The doorbell rang about 10PM, driving the dogs insane as usual. I really didn’t think too much about whether I should answer. Tasha told me later she wouldn’t have. That really didn’t occur to me. Hmm.

I opened the door a crack, and there was a young man standing there, either a very developed 14-year-old or a normal kid between 15-20 years of age. He said hello, and I said hello, and that he had rung our doorbell too late – he should come back the next day at a decent hour. I shut the door and turned off the porch light. He called through the door that he needed to speak with me about my son.

Slightly intrigued (in that yukky feeling at the pit of the stomach way that parents of an ill-behaved 12-year-old boy might recognize), I opened the door again. He gave a sort of animatronic canned rendition of introducing himself, complete with robotic sticking-out of the hand for a handshake. Obviously rehearsed and designed to put me at my ease. It had the exact opposite effect. Ignoring the hand, I asked him what he wanted. He said he needed to talk with me about my son, and that my son had trespassed on his property, started a fire, and stolen $100 from him.

I told him that it was too late at night to be starting a discussion such as this, and he could come back the next day. He became insistent and said I had to talk with him now. Occasionally he would reset back to his animatronic non-threatening hand-shaker display. I repeated that I wasn’t going to talk with him and asked him to leave. He said my son had trespassed on his property. I pointed out that I had asked him to leave three times – which meant that he was trespassing right now.

About that time, a second person who I had not seen, a pretty young woman, stepped into the doorway. I think she might have been out of sight since I didn’t have the door open all the way. She repeated the assertion that I needed to talk with them now. I said no, and asked them to leave. This was repeated several times, with them repeating various accusations. I might have yelled at them to leave at some point during this process. At one point I smelled alcohol and asked the young man if he had been drinking. This seemed to really upset him.

However, since they weren’t leaving, and since they hadn’t become abusive at this point, I decided to try to ameliorate them by giving them my phone number. They jumped at this opportunity and the young man whipped out a cellphone with a triumphant flourish. I gave the first three digits and then said, “Now, this doesn’t mean I want you calling me tonight.” He responded, “Just give me the number. You don’t have to be an asshole about it.”

Snap. I made a dramatic pointing gesture and said, loudly, “You are OUT of here NOW.” He jumped me and pushed me. The young woman pulled him away from me. He started shouting obscenities and inviting me to fight, calling me names and threatening my son, who had appeared in the doorway with me. I told him we were calling the police, and I probably called him a few names, too – “loser” comes to mind.

Then they were gone. About 5 minutes later the police arrived. I gave the officer the above information. We talked with Will, who said that he had been playing with matches in the woods near their house, but did not know it was their private property. The officer pointed out that setting fires anywhere without the property owners’ permission is arson and punishable by law. Will also said that he and his friends had cut across the kid’s property on the way to other friends’ houses, and the officer said that if he knows the person doesn’t want them doing that, he would have to stop. I asked what would happen regarding the $100. The officer said that if the young man had made a police report, then an investigation would be proceeding and his accusation would be given the scrutiny it deserved – and that he could face a penalty if it was determined he was making a false accusation.

The officer was very professional and left after a few minutes discussion to talk with the neighbor. About 30 minutes later the officer left the neighborhood.

This young man has now died in an accident. Drunk, according to a neighbor who knows the family. He was 19. I knew at the time that he was headed for trouble bigger than anything I could make for him. My heart goes out to his family, and to him.

Weigh-in, Week 15

Week 1: 281
Week 2: 281
Week 3: 275
Week 4: 271
Week 5: 270
Week 6: 273.6
Week 7: 271
Week 8: 269
Week 9: 267
Week 10: 267
Week 11: 266
Week 12: 267
Week 13: 264
Week 14: 266

Week 15: 266

I'm starting something new this week. Not out of desperation - I've been meaning to do it for awhile. Nope, nooooo desperation. Seriously, I'm still exercising nearly every day, and thanks to an astonishing act of generosity I now have even more options on that score.

It doesn't help that my play rehearsals take place at the director's house, and he always lays out food for us. I must remember to think, WWJBD? (What Would Jim Broadbent Do?) And then do the opposite.

Batting Average Pathetic

Dissed! If you're not reading the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Vent daily, most of these won't make much sense to you. Hell, they don't make much sense to me. These are items I submitted to the Vent over the last couple years. Only a few of them got in.

Many NFL scouts are calling the home office and saying, "Dude, we're getting Odell!"

James Lileks: "If Patton were alive today he'd be slapping civilians."

It's official. Trolls are no more humorous or intelligent on the Vent than they are anywhere else on the web.

It's really quite simple: I don't care if you're a Vietnam Vet, a WWII Vet, a Nobel Laureate, or a former CEO - don't use my stairwell as a lavatory.

I think the solution is obvious: don't let people who can't do math take out title loans. Of course, if you need a title loan, you've probably already pretty much blown the math requirement anyway.

I've got to hand it to you liberals. You pack enough stupidity into one sentence that it takes us 3 paragraphs to correct you. Then you accuse us of ranting at you! Bravo!

Cynthia Mckinney gets things done? Spoken like someone who hasn't driven the Cynthia McKinney Parkway in the last few years. What a hotbed of civic and cultural achievement!

If Saturday was just a 7 on the Mellish Meter, then next time ol' Kirk calls for a 10 I'm gonna get ready for the Second Coming of our Lord.

I've observed recently that drawing actually is Mike Luckovich's strong suit, and I personally think that's the saddest commentary on his material that can be made.

I'm so glad to see Don O'Briant is writing a "letter to his adult children." Who do you think he'll send it to first - them or Scribners?

OK, OK, the KKK flag isn't about racism and "Dixie" isn't about slavery. And if you elect me governor in '08, I'll write that into Georgia law.

(No, I have no idea what I was trying to get at with that one.)

Every morning it's the same charade: we put our MARTA cards in the reader at Indian Creek, the cards are rejected, the nice gatekeeper lady smiles and puts hers through and we go on our way. I would complain, but she has a nice smile.

This gatekeeper was the same one from this post.

I just know that all you Bush-bashers are venting so angrily because you wasted all that time & money learning Arabic for when Kerry surrendered to the terrorists.

I truly hate to say this, but the Human Trumpet sounds more like a Human Human. I've got better trumpet noises coming through my underwear, if you know what I mean.

"Intelligent Design" is simply a way for fundamentalists to punish scientists who don't believe in God by refusing to believe in science.

Those blaming George W. Bush for Katrina and the levee breaks are exhibiting exactly the kind of magical thinking that makes me very, very grateful their chosen candidates almost always lose.

I needed a laugh - thanks for the story about the rich white guy driving his toy car in traffic and tooting his horn at people who pass him when he's doing 18mph. What a champ!

So, Ashley was "surprised" at the reaction to her meth story? Well, who couldn't predict that? Surprise is one of the most frequent emotions experienced by drug users, especially when they inadvertently catch a glimpse of reality.

Thanks for the article on how riders can cope with MARTA's frequent outages and failures. Now if the paper would only report MARTA's frequent outages and failures! The trains frequently strand people when there's no jumper on the tracks, you know.

Anybody who thinks Scooter Libby has been indicted of treason is not worth arguing with. Nice Vent, Sparky!

To all the homies on MARTA draped across an entire bench and glaring at me in case I want to sit next to you: you're not striking a blow for freedom like Rosa Parks did, you're just being a jerk.

Idea! Name Atlanta's transit system after Rosa Parks. Besides paying tribute, "PARKA" would have the added advantage of describing the trains 3 days of the week.

This seemed witty when I wrote it, believe it or not.

After checking out this year's movies, I was going to suggest a new category: "Best thumb in the eye to the settled values of the hated bourgeois." However, I see they already have that category, only it's called, "Best Picture."

Regarding grandparents raising their grandchildren: somehow, I'm not all that enthusiastic about the children of our local meth addicts being raised by the same people who raised the meth addicts.

Boy, if it takes Mary Worth as long to toast Wilbur's victory as it did for them to jawbone the case to death, they're gonna be fishing 'em out of the sewers.

Bush could have had his ports deal handed to him on a silver platter if he had only put out word that he was considering forbidding the UAE from consideration.

This one too

Isn't it about time for those daily post-hypnotic suggestion allergy clinic commercials, aka the "Pollen Counts" they sponsor, to begin?

Hey, Mayor Bill, I bet the prosecution wouldn't have introduced all that evidence about your mistresses if you had spent a little of that bribe money on your wife instead.

Man, either somebody smeared Vaseline on my computer screen, or somebody in the photo department at ajc.com REALLY loves Hanoi Jane Fonda.

(I'm not kidding. It was disgusting.)

Isn't it time for editors to declare a moratorium on declarative sentences starting with "think?" Think every other Eleanor Ringel review, to name one example among many at AJC and elsewhere.

For heaven's sake, people, read a few limericks before you try writing them. Limericks aren't just five lines that rhyme, any more than a haiku is just three sentences with a certain syllabic footprint. Style, scansion, and most of all WIT are also required.

Those troops in Viet Nam died for nothing because people like you and Hanoi Jane couldn't see past their own noses and forced the nation to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. You got played, and the soldiers payed.

Idea! In response to last Friday's action, let's all eat Italian on Cinco de Mayo.

Sorry, kiddoes - I'm just not in the mood to turn waiting for my wife at Publix into a politically-charged "gotcha-"fest. Don't you have anything better to do? I know I do.

Jack Handey - Ashleigh Brilliant - Steven Wright - Handey again - Handey - Wright. What, honey? Oh, I'm just listing the originators of today's vents.

Man, I bet those few editorial cartoonists who held their seething, irrational hatred of George W. Bush in check so as not to look stupid are just smacking themselves now that the Pulitzers have been announced. Look for another two years of "Hitler the cowboy chimp" crayon scrawlings from Luckovich!

Did anybody see Luckovich speaking on the news? He speaks about as well as he draws. I can't stay mad at him...he's just kind of sad.

Man...all that drawing, and he still had to put a "Pat Robertson" name tag on that blob in the middle of the cartoon. Congrats, Mike Luckovich!

There's a difference: speeding doesn't automatically make you a jerk. Driving 55 in the fast lane does. I suspect this distinction will be lost on those who need to hear it most, however.

Hey, Adam Smith: Not every disparity in prices is a result of gouging. Gas is cheaper in Middle Georgia than in Atlanta because there is less demand there.

How do you say "Happy Fifth of May" in Chinese? I want to be able to greet my server on Friday.

As sure as the sun sets in the West, reality intrudes and makes Liberals look dumb...and Liberals continue to think it's a right-wing plot.

It's simple, but probably not simple enough for you to understand: Castro's refugees are attempting to escape a "successful" Communist regime. Fox's people are attempting to escape a failed Capitalist regime.

If Algebra really was a waste of two years of your life, and you really got nothing from it, then I hate to tell you, but the rest of your life has been wasted as well, and nobody's getting anything from you. Ignorance is nothing to brag about.

Even though my Mom was a dedicated Government worker who did indeed bring lots of work home, I'm still surprised when I hear of it in others. This is because besides work, Mom also brought home stories of the people she worked with. "Lazy" doesn't begin to describe it.

I was going to respond to the poll that asked "Should the MARTA shuttle be moved back to Five Points," but there was no option for, "Duh."

Looks like the Fat Lady ululated for Zarqawi

Who was crucified, died, and was buried, and arose on the third day to sit at the right hand of God? The Son did!

Shameless bandwagoneering - there was a whole series on "Sonny Did" Georgia Gubernatorial campaign commercials.

Bill Campbell "Sexy"? I didn't know they allowed you to vent from prison, Mr. Mayor.

I'm taking up a collection to arm the Capitol Police with Tasers. I've collected $3.22 billion so far!

(Regarding Cynthia McKinney, of course.)

I learn the most interesting things in the Vent. For instance, both Wal-Mart and the US Army have the power to force American citizens to work for them. Enlightening!

Sure, it's possible to make the hot dogs and the buns come out even. It's a lot more fun, though, to make the margarita mix and the tequila come out even.

I pushed the "quantity" button 3 times on my microwave, but when I opened it up there was still only 1 bag of popcorn in there.

(Published, but they added a "Dadgum!" in front of it, hence the next vent but one.)

Oh, boy, it's time for the annual White breast-beating and race-card-playing festival over the 60-year-old lynchings in Madison!

"Dadgum?" I didn't start my popcorn in the microwave vent with "Dadgum!" I'm more of a "Gadzooks" man.

Aaah, another school year on MARTA, another batch of young un- and never-to-be-married girls telling their new babies to "shut the h--- up." Looks like parenting class is gonna need to start in 8th grade this year!

We're gonna get a major story twist in 60 days? That would've been barely enough time for the old Mary Worth to wrap up a dinner party! No wonder she's losing weight.

As a longtime (ok, just a couple years) devotee of Mary Worth, I was kind of hurt that this one didn't get in, even though there were a flurry of Mary Worth vents around that time.

It is better to Vent and look like a fool than to use Q&A as a very slow Google and remove all doubt.

Spanish language lesson #322: driving through some of the neighborhoods off of Jimmy Carter, I learned that "Yard Sale" is apparently a term for "Warning: Garbage Strewn on Lawn."

Sod Off McSwampy

Hey, look, this site lets you create your own McDonald's sign.

They seem to have some kind of an axe to grind. Oh well, all the better to chop down lovely trees with!

Much remains to be done

Apparently

UPDATE: Improved search string!

Predictions Unfulfilled

Well, I made a few predictions about MARTA that turned out not to be true, so I'll go ahead and admit I was wrong.

Only the north bank of gates is accepting riders, meaning you can't walk straight in from the south part of Forsyth street entrance and card yourself in. You have to walk in and jostle over to the other bank. And you can't exit through the north gates. I have a sinking feeling that this is intentional.

This is fixed. All gates on all sides accept both in- and egressing passengers. Nevermind.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that MARTA will do away with the unlimited-use weekly or monthly card model. Every ride will delete value from the card.

Too cynical! I was wrong.

I've been enjoying my ride lately, although some have been apparently having a problem with MARTA management.

(The things you see when you open comments after years and years...blog-scoop!)

Comments wiiiiide open

I've decided to accept comments from non-registered users. So if you don't have TypeKey and have been wanting to comment, now's the time to try it. I guess the TypeKey hurdle is just too great. I'll have to approve your comments, though. I'm going to leave it on approval-only until I figure out whether I'm about to get buttloaded with spam.

Sleep Paralysis?

I experienced a pretty typical episode of night terrors last night. This happens to me roughly 2-3 times per year and I've learned to ride it out. Reading this site makes me think a more accurate term might be sleep paralysis. I don't have the thrashing or somniloquy that accompanies night terrors. Tasha was awake the whole time I was having my episode and didn't know anything was happening to me until I woke up fully and told her about it. However, during the incident, I was convinced that I was hooting and blowing air through my lips the whole time!

Maybe it was a mild night terror. They're probably getting milder as I become more aware of them and know that they're not real and they don't last. So as long as I can keep myself calm I'm fine. But the one night terror symptom that is strongly present and distinguishes it from sleep paralysis in my case, is that I'm initially convinced that there is an evil presence in the room. Before I knew about night terrors I really thought there were evil spirits in the room; last night I thought my son was roaming the house!

Weigh-in, Week 14

Week 1: 281
Week 2: 281
Week 3: 275
Week 4: 271
Week 5: 270
Week 6: 273.6
Week 7: 271
Week 8: 269
Week 9: 267
Week 10: 267
Week 11: 266
Week 12: 267
Week 13: 264

Week 14: 266

Gotta keep pushing. I think I took last week's loss as an invitation to the feast. Let's not overthink this...a 2lb fluctuation either way is probably nothing major. Let's keep an eye on the overall trend, and hope for another tick down next week.

Good thing is, I exercised nearly every day and it has definitely become a habit I want to keep.

And Tasha & I are changing our eating habits after listening to this podcast...could be that we managed to overdo it on the "Real Foods."

Next up: we're going to move our elliptical out of the living room and into a dedicated space in the garage. Even though we're using it every day so it's easy to justify taking up the living room space, we're hoping to make our living room more livable. To keep up the motivation, I'm going to use a little found money to get a TV for the garage and we'll watch DVD's out there while working out. I'll also be installing weights and a bench out there.

Comments fixed?

Hey, somebody with a Typekey account try and leave a comment!