A Moment of Silence for Ensign Ricky

Star Trek motivational posters.

Now *these* I would buy.

Go here to see more. They're pretty funny.

Happy Feet, Happy Family

My wife and I took the three little kids to "Happy Feet" last night.



The first concern of the night, which turned out to the about the only one, was that it wasn't in 3D in the Imax theatre. We saw it in IMAX, and figured it was in 3D, since there had been 3D advertisements for the movie, which we saw at "Ant Bully" and "Open Season". It turns out, and I guess I missed this, that Warner Brothers announced back in September that the intended 3D release would only be in 2D after all. Though it may still come out later.

And let me say up front, that I had pretty much ZERO interest in seeing this movie. However, my wife was just the opposite... she *really* wanted to see it and take the kids. So off we went...

... and it was really good.

The kids totally got off on it. My five year old was dancing in the parking lot penguin style on the way from the theatre. My wife, who to my recollection over the last twenty-two years has given a movie no better a review than "that wasn't too bad", actually said that she loved it.

Visually it was wonderful to look at, the characters were funny and engaging, the singing and dancing was great... and there were several really significant themes that taught the kids some good lessons without hitting them over the head with them.

So who would have guessed it?

(Well, my wife I suppose... but not me!)

If you're looking for a few enjoyable hours at the movies... go get happy.

Weirdest Archie Comic Ever

Though I never thought to mention it, back when I was reading all those Batmans and Spider-mans and Justice Leagues as a kid, I was, of course, also reading...

Archie comics.

I mean, really, who didn't? Even kids who didn't read comics would read Archies. If that makes sense.

Here's the strangest one I ever owned though:



"Chilling Adventures in SORCERY"... narrated by Sabrina the teenage witch.

Now, see, I had read horror comics... but I *expected* those to be scary! *This* one was a horror comic too, but it was drawn in the style of Archie comics.... which somehow, through the bizaare juxtaposition, made it way scarier!

I still remember it.

In fact, I think it's still upstairs in one of my comic boxes.

Brrr. Scary Archie comic.

Oooh, My Spidey Sense is Tingling...

Look. Two new posters for Spider-man 3.



Look at both of these and pick your favourite. That decision can help you discern what kind of person you are. Are you someone who has given in to your dark side, yet your noble self is struggling to get out? Or are you a nice, friendly person who's suppressing a hidden mean streak?

Or... are you just a total geek?

It's SHOCKING! It's OFFENSIVE! It's DISGUSTING! It's a.... BREAST!!

Take a look at this magazine cover that caused an uproar in the U.S. a few months ago:



Isn't that HIDEOUS?? I mean REALLY. What were they THINKING putting that ATROCITY on a magazine for PARENTS?

...

Um.

People really need to get a grip. No, really.

There are tons of articles about this cover out there. Here's one from MSNBC. Some of the quotes did make me laugh though:

"Men are very visual. When they see a woman's breast, they see a breast — regardless of what it's being used for."

Whew. That's a relief. I was afraid that, like, if I saw a breast being used as a, I don't know, weed whacker, I might see a John Deere tractor or something instead.

And... "I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see."

I might be slightly hurting my own point here, but I think there's something she doesn't understand about men. Or boys.

Speaking as a hybrid of both.


******************************************
So thanks for coming by. And a special thanks to all the extra visitors who have padded my blog hits by searching for the word "breast" in Google. Though I'm sure you didn't make it to the bottom of this article to see your welcome, once you realize that it's a boring old breastfeeding breast. Oh, wait, I mean a shocking offensive disgusting sexual object that should be hidden at all costs.

Tell Me Why... I Don't Like Mondays

So I arrive at work early this morning. Have some mild obligatory 'good morning, how was your weekend' stuff with a cow orker. I mention, "Man, I'm tired this morning."

To which I hear:

"Not me! I'm ready to go, ready to work EVERY morning!!"

....

Well, hoo-f*cking-ray for you. Which also made me ponder, 'I wonder how much my laptop weighs? It's pretty hefty. I'd probably only have to whack him over the head with it eleven or twelve times to render him totally unconscious.'

Luckily, I'm not a truly violent person. Plus, I hadn't had my coffee yet, so my heart wasn't racing fast enough.

Stupid Mondays.

Must keep thinking... only eight more weeks until "24" (actually seven weeks, six days... since it premieres on a Sunday... even better!).

Enter the Maze.... If You Dare

Looking to kill a couple of minutes? Go here and try to lead the little red dot through the maze.

Looks really easy. You'll see.

http://www.mazefrenzy.com

Even more challenging version: Try to do it without saying any bad words. I fail at this version in particularly spectacular fashion.

Two Benefits of Freakishly Warm November Weather:

1) You can send the kids out to play in the back yard in their t-shirts.

2) With all the leaves having already fallen from the trees, you can have a nice unobstructed view of your 9-year-old son way up in a tree, far FAR higher than human child should ever be found.

Eek.




(Particularly when you are taking a picture from your deck, where you normally have to look *down* to see your kids in the yard, and yet, in this case, you need to look WAY UP instead)

My Phone's Acting Phunny

Oh, and happy third anniversary kidney day to me. We're going out to have supper with my left kidney tonight. Oh, and my friend who's around it. You missed that epic story? Read it here, here, here, and here.

Now back to the actual topic of this post.

Yesterday was a pretty weird day with my cell phone.

At 8am, shortly after I arrive at work, my phone rings and I answer it. I hear this:

"Do you have any ladies working now?"

If I was a little quicker, I might have had a snappy answer, but I chose to stick with, "Huh?"

He hangs up. I guess 8am is a normal time to call for some female company. I would have figured that the nighttime would be better. But hey, when you really think about it, who cares *what* time it is? And if you're *paying* for it, you can get it whatever time you want!!

Shortly afterward, the phone rings again: "I'm calling about the car you have for sale."

This time, I actually manage to tell the person that they might have dialed the wrong number. Which is what I *hoped* was the case. Sadly it wasn't.

Through the day, three or four more calls convinced me that somebody printed an ad in the classifieds selling a car, but it was printed with *my* cell phone number.

As well, I get several more calls where people hang up as soon as I answer, or immediately say "Sorry, I must have the wrong number." Bizarro.

I come up with a clever solution. I stop answering the phone. Well, unless it's a number I know.

I don't know if the call for the ladies was just a fluke on a fluky day, or if there's another classified out there that has my cell listed as well. But I'm ready. I've already come up with a marketing slogan for an escort service. Perhaps I have a future in advertising:

"Willie's Escort Service! You give *our* Willie a ring, and we'll give *your* willie a wring!"

Ring-a-ding-ding.

Christmas is Coming... Time to Start Smashing Expectations!!

As I drove my nine-year-old son and another boy to Cubs tonight, they were discussing what they wanted for Christmas.

My son comes out with, "I want an iPod, an iDog, and an iFish!"

To which I replied:

"How about an iDon'tThinkSo? Bwa-ha-ha-haaaa!!!"

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

The Blue Screen of Death Deception

Yeah, whoops.

Was leaving a note on my cow orker's pc today. Then I say, "Holy Crap, his PC just blue screened!" I watch his machine restart, Windows XP logo comes up, and... holy crap, it blue screens again! It restarts one more time, and BING! Blue screen of death once more!!



Feeling unwilling to let this evil cycle continue, I power off his pc cold, hoping that it will start up properly afterwards.

It does.

His machine starts back up fine.

All is well with the world.

Um... until he comes back to his desk. I tell him his machine was blue screening repeatedly, and I powered it off and it came back fine.

"You powered off my machine?"

"You *really* powered off my machine?"

I'm a tad confused by the line of questioning for about two seconds. And then the question comes to my brain...

"That wasn't a screen saver, was it?"

Um, yup. It was.

A *very* realistic screen saver, I might add.

Yeah, sorry. Hope you weren't running anything too important.

Some days it just doesn't pay to be a good samaritan.

Beware the Grim Reaper... and DELETE YOUR PORN!!

OK, last night I was off helping a friend with a computer problem. She had a pc which belonged to a family member who had passed away suddenly. She needed to see if there happened to be a will on it. But the computer got messed up in shipping and it wasn't working.

Now, I didn't get the computer fixed, it was pretty FUBAR'ed. However, I did take the hard drive from the computer and slave it into her own computer, so we could get access to the files.

I didn't find a will.

But I DID find... lots and lots of sweet sweet porn.

Whoops.

Now, to his credit, the guy who passed away was in his early thirties. Probably didn't leave the house thinking, "Hey... I might die today. Maybe I should delete all that porn from my computer!" And really, I'm pretty sure that anybody who keeps porn on their computer, no matter how well they hide it, figures that they will eventually have time to delete it so that it won't fall into the wrong hands. Clearly it doesn't always work out that way. (What *do* you call that anyway? Posthumous embarrassment?)

In any case, there you have it. Words to the wise:

Beware the Grim Reaper.

AND the Porn Finder.

Which Type are You? (Get Your Stronger Arm Ready)

There are two types of computer users:

1) Those who change their desktop wallpaper, and

2) Those who don't. (There is actually a sub-category of those who don't: If, by chance, you have wallpaper on your desktop that says "Compaq" or "HP" or "Dell" or something like that, you fall into that subcategory. Using the base of your palm, preferably with your stronger arm, smack yourself hard in the center of your forehead three times fast. Then continue to read.)

No matter which group you fall into, you'll enjoy the images at www.caedes.net.

It's a website with a huge collection of diverse images, from photographic to computer-generated, all proportioned to fit your desktop. I discovered it a couple weeks back, and have returned there repeatedly. Here are a few backgrounds I've used recently:







Pretty nice, eh?

So check it out. And it you're a type 2, don't despair. There's hope for you yet.

The Triumphant Return of Alfred E. Neuman

Last week, during a snack food stop to a local convenience store, this magazine caught my eye:



And, I must say, I bought it immediately.

Because it instantly made me remember THIS magazine from 1979:



Holy Smoke, I forgot how much I loved MAD Magazine as a kid. The movie and tv parodies, the "Lighter Side of...", Spy vs. Spy, the fold-in back covers, the little tiny Sergio Aragones cartoons hiding on the edges of the pages, not to mention the brutal mocking of celebrities and politicians!

And for that matter, it's only in hindsight that I realize how much my sense of humour (or lack thereof) was informed by all the MAD Magazines I consumed over a period of a few years.

So, naturally... I wanted to expose that to my kids! (You see, my plan is to have little versions of ME going out into the world to spread the joy long after I'm gone)

In fact, it was *days* before I even managed to get my hands on the magazine and read it.

I know it was a big success by the way they all pored over it and talked about it. The line that pretty much sums it up was the one that came from my five-year-old:

"Hee hee! Look! I can see Spider-man's BUTT!"



What, me worry?

The Joy of Making Your Kid Say a Bad Word

Ah, parenthood. It's kind of like bowling.

Let me explain.

Last week, I was driving in the van with some of the kids. My 9-year-olds, I believe. The dvd player was on. "The Cat in the Hat". Actually a reasonably funny movie, as long as you consider it more like a parody of the original books rather than an adaptation. But I digress.

In any case, I hear the following sequence in the movie, which I always enjoyed. The Cat is showing his fancy car to the two kids. Here's how it goes:

The Cat: [showing his car] Here she is, the Super Luxurious Omnidirectional Whatchamajigger, or S-L-O-W for short.

Sally: S-L-O-W?

The Cat: Yeah, S.L.O.W. It's better than the last thing we had: Super Hydraulic Instantaneous Transporter.

Conrad: Oh, you mean...

The Cat: NO! Quick! To the S.L.O.W.!

That joke always got a chuckle from me. But not, I noticed, from the kids. I suspect they didn't really get it. So I spell it out for them.

"Do you guys understand this joke? Think about it. The first letters in the name of the cat's car spell S-L-O-W. Slow."

"But then he tells the kids that it's better than the first name: the super hydraulic instantaneous transporter. What do the first letters of those words make?"

My 9-year-old son processes. I can hear the wheels turning. Then, as soon as the letters form a word in his brain, although he doesn't yet realize what it is he's about to say, he blurts out:

"SH*T!!"

To which I immediately reply, doing my best not to smile:

"Oh my goodness! You *know* that word's not appropriate! You are *so* grounded!!!!!"

"Daaaaaa-aaad!"


...

Yup, parenthood. Kind of like bowling.

You set them up, just to knock them down.

Wink.

Can't.... Help..... Myself....

Once I heard there was a preview of 24 Season 6 posted online, I decided not to watch it. So as to not spoil myself for the upcoming season.

Which lasted... um, I don't know... about an hour.

For those of you who don't watch 24, start now.

Here it is:

Ooh, Check Out the Big Brain on Brett!

Pulp Fiction" really is, in my opinion, a modern movie classic.



Some people don't agree. They hate it. Maybe it's the incessantly foul language. Or the violence. Or the story that jumps around enough that you *really* need to pay attention. (Um, those are some of the reasons I love it)



It's like that though. It's kind of a "love it or hate it" movie. Not a lot of people who are lukewarm about it.



My teenage daughter loves it too. I introduced it to her a few years back.



Tonight we're sharing the joy with my teenage son.

Maybe he'll hate it.

But I don't think so.

I Have the Power!

Chalk it up to the power of suggestion.

Best line spoken to me on Tuesday while I was dressed up as Dr. Evil for my co-workers:

"Oh my God! YOU SHAVED YOUR HEAD!!!!"

I didn't have the heart to point out that I've been doing it for six years.