Happy Drunken Indian Day!

I was having a hard time explaining to my Darling Wife just how offensive Valentines Day is to me as a loving husband and a man.  Finally I came up with this analogy, which only works because there is a certain flavor of American Indian and a certain amount of alcoholism in her family.

There is a holiday called Drunk Indian Day.  Most Indians are sober but they celebrate it anyway, because they feel social pressure to do so.  Celebration consists of (at least) buying a stupid little stereotypical-Indian doll with a bottle in its hand and its eyes crossed.  This is the Drunk Indian doll.  Purchasing one of these dolls and presenting it to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is the way you show that you are not, in fact, a Drunkard. 

Nevermind that you are the co-ordinator of the local Alcoholics Anonymous chapter and a teetotaler and everyone knows it.  IF you don't buy that little Drunk Indian dolly, well that just means you're a drunk and probably spent last night in the gutter in your own vomit, instead of at the store buying the doll!  It is, after all, exptected that you buy the doll to celebrate your sobriety.

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This works equally well for Crackhead Niggers Day, where you have to go find a small bag of quartz pebbles and present them in a little tiny plastic baggie, to PROVE to society that you are not, in fact, a crackhead nigger.

This also works for Wifebeatin' Redneck Honky day, where you have to go buy a white muscle shirt and a pack of band-aids to prove you don't beat your wife.

The point is, to make the analogy work for the woman to whom you are trying to explain it, you have to have a really strong, very negative stereotype of some group to which they are proud to belong.  Then have some useless commercial activity and a meaningless presentation to "prove" that you do not live up to the stereotype and then have it be "Oh . . . WELL. . . " if you fail to participate in the activity.

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Finally I think I broke through her childhood conditioning regarding Valentines Day.  The thing is, I don't *mind* getting her flowers or whatever on one specified day!  The *expectation* and the *demand* that I produce them, THAT's the problem.

Magic Under The Lights

Imagine walking at night in near-total darkness on an abandoned city side-street
Straight into a forest
Where trees are a hundred feet tall
The grass is trimmed neatly
And each tree is covered in points of light right up to the top of the canopy 

That was the perspective from the eyes of #4 last week-end.  If this does not qualify as a magical experience for a child, I don't know what would.

Click the image to see it supersized, hit escape to close the image window.  Better yet, right-click the image and "view image" then click it again to see it full-size (I left it at 1600 pixels wide so it should cover your entire screen)

Independence Day 2012

My ass.

Celebrate, or else we'll tax you for not celebrating. Justice Roberts said we could.

The ratchet tightens faster under The Obama than under all the previous holders of his office, but it is a ratchet. SOME people started revolutionary wars against the sort of government your boy is trying to set up in the country they fought to establish. I'm just saying.

The sophisticated consumer of news will perhaps be disturbed by the comparisons which may be drawn between the government of America in this day and this day.

Happy Juneteenth From Your Local Racist

First thing this morning at work, I put "HAPPY JUNETEENTH" on the bulletin board by the time clock at work. Later I went and fancied it up with a couple of different colors.

Later yet, the most worry-wart-ish of the guys who works with me said it was a good thing I didn't put that on the board at a bigger company. Somebody might get offended. I asked him if he had a problem with Juneteenth and the reasoning was more along the lines of no, I am too light-skinded to be celebrating the day.

You know what? This is NOT a holiday for "those people," unless you mean "those people who also have a human genotype encoded in their DNA." Juneteenth should appeal to all men everywhere who love liberty and justice. Brown or not . . .

Happy Juneteenth!

Mothers Day Fail 2012

So this morning, my Darling Wife got up and found a new fuzzy blanket on the couch. Then her wonderful husband made pancakes. Then #1 came out slightly green around the gills and said she didn't feel good. And during breakfast, the phone rang.

So we celebrated Mothers Day by . . . going to my brother's house and fixing it up. He had a tenant move out of a rent house and there was a to-do-list a mile long. And he's up against a mortgage payment if he can't get it rented this week. I fixed his toilet which failed at least four different ways, fixed his oven that was not lighting at all, mounted some curtain brackets, helped reverse the doors on the fridge, and that was the day.

Now she's off to visit a friend who just delivered a baby.

Museum trip and Nice Meal for mothers day: not so much. Oh well. Better luck next year.

Earth Day 2012

For earth day, I laid down a strip of rubber pulling away from a stop light and left some lights on with nobody in the room. You're welcome.

On This Day In History...

50 years ago today: A black man showed up all the white boys. There were 36 professional black basketball players. Wilt Chamberlain scored against all those honkies, then he did it again, and again, and again, and again, and again . . . 100 points in a single game. Against a team of professional players. They quintuple teamed on him even, and it didn't work.

Wow. It must have been amazing to see him run the court, shoot, dunk, etc. But you don't get to see it.

The other day, NP, who had never thought about it before was shocked to realize that there is no audio recording of the voice of President Lincoln. Well, they didn't film everything in the 1960s either, and the only recording of this basketball game is a low-fi audio recording of the fourth quarter.

The guy who was keeping the statistics for the game wrote on a sheet of paper and gave it to Chamberlain. This is as close as you get to video:

Nothing To See Here

. . . just a routine law enforcement activity. Please disregard the nine dead people and don't look forward to the next few days when over a hundred will die. Thank you for not inquiring too sharply into this matter.

Love,

Uncle Sam

Free Vacation, Anytime, With 1 Catch

My Darling Wife went on a free vacation this weekend. She got to choose the time and it was even available on short notice. Spent approximately a whole day with NO children pounding on the door when she was trying to powder her nose, nobody pulling her arm as she tried to take a bite, no four screaming people in the same room with her ears.

The catch: it was at my parents' house. She went and took a break from the children (including me) and hung out with the adults for New Years. She said it was a great thing. I think I'll make coupons so she can just go if she needs to.

Bonus: we made arrangements for her to get a free cell phone, to replace the last free cell phone she's had for a year. That one recently died as she was holding it in her hand going down the plastic slide at the park (a.k.a. the Static Generator 2000). Score, thanks Jesus!

The Good/The Bad/The Ugly

Good: 12lbs chunk of Sirloin for Christmas dinner
Bad: Teeth that sometimes bleed
Good: The meat is so thick you have well-done and still-bleeding, all on one piece in the same oven, when it's done cooking.
Bad: The first bite of beef is bloody and it tastes like teeth that are bleeding
Good: The second bite is well-done and tastes and feels much better
Bad: The slice you grab for dinner looks well done but is just barely brown and not really cooked
Good: It tastes like cooked beef on the way down, and mixes well with the other stuff on the plate
Bad: Feeling like puking because it really wasn't cooked and it was a big ol' slice
Good: Darling Wife drives home and a nap is taken

Merry Christmas!

I'm Tired. And I Smell Nice

We got our christmas tree tonight. It takes a surprisingly long time to pick needles out of the carpet. The house smells like pine sap again and that includes those of us who were tree-hugging to get the thing upright in its stand.

Good times.

#2 decorated his bedroom with the tree lights, so we need to get more lights. Raise your hand if you decorated your room with christmas lights when you were a child!

"Absolute Victory"

It's okay Japan, you don't have to offer annual apologies for getting us into World War II. We kicked your face in, and we DID see Absolute Victory, just like Roosevelt said we would.

Quote of the Day: "China apparently is preparing for war. What are we preparing for?" -Laura Ingraham, 07 Dec 2011, the day they told their Navy to prepare for combat.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody

For a change, a made-up holiday I can get behind. I hope you spend it with people you love. Have a good 'un.

End of 2012, End of The World!

I finally realized why the Mayan calendar stops at 2012: the world is going to burn up! No, seriously, follow me here. You know how your calendar has 13 or 15 months on it, just so you can have plenty of time to get another one and still know what day it is next Tuesday? They didn't stop the calendar at 2012 because of that, although it is a pretty long overrun for any calendar*. No, they stopped the calendar at 2012 because the Kyoto Protocol is set to expire at the end of 2012. Currently, with the world cooling for the past decade, it is dubious that enough political will exists to renew or strengthen the protocol.

So that's it. Global warming will kill us all, started by the hot air that will be coming from the mouths of insider-traders and politicians (but I repeat myself) who will be protesting the end of the Kyoto Protocol. My take on the whole thing:

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

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*The little known fact is that the Mayan economy was largely built on calendar publication. They sold one to everybody which is how they got to be such a large and wealthy empire. The collapse of the Mayan civilization began when their customers figured out there would never (in their lifetimes) be a need to purchase a second calendar. Once everybody had one for every room in their house, plus one at the office and a small one for the car, plus a pocket version (laminated to protect it from sweatybalz) sales plummeted and the civilization just fell apart. True story.**

**or not

Daylight Savings: Still Lame

There is no compelling argument for it. Therefore, Congress should not make a law and force the changing of clocks at gunpoint. That is all.

Bah, HUMBUG!

A fine excuse for picking a man's pocket every first Monday in September!

My Darling Wife is happy this year that I don't believe in happy communist worker day Labor Day. She is holding classes and I'll be home to tend to the younger half of the Zoo while school is ongoing. Then maybe we'll go shout our support of the workers of the world in a parade . . . or something.

Labor Day is for COMMUNISTS.

Independence* Day, 2011

Happy 4th of July everybody. Let's all try to pretend for a day that we do not live in a socialist kleptocracy, okay?

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*...speaking of which, how independent are we of England when China is buying illegally-high amounts of our sovereign debt through English markets? Whatever would we DO if China didn't buy up all our debt?! Stop taking so much money from the People at gunpoint? The horror!

Oh well, hey where are the fireworks? Oh, banned. Where are the gun shooting galleries? Oh, banned. Well, at least the air conditioner with the federally-approved refrigerant works great, thanks God.

-1 Year Anniversary!

The first Formula One race at the new Circuit of the Americas track* will have been run by this time next year, if everything goes according to plan.

* said track built with 1/4 BILLION dollars of Texas taxpayers' money (taken at gunpoint) for the hosting of races put on by one of the richer people in the world who could probably have done it out of pocket. But hey, if you could get someone else to donate $25M/year for a decade "for the cause" - wouldn't you?

How Could I Forget?!

A resounding congratulations to the Allies and a hearty boot up the ass of all collectivists everywhere on the 67th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Memorial Day

Remember