So da wife says, "let's go get some stuff from Safeway.." last night, and that's a command request, so I come along. On the way through the front door I pull my favorite trick and snake a GAMES magazine to read while I'm pushing the cart. the Lady Hotspur sets a brisk pace, and I follow her. I am one of the blessed few that can read and walk at the same time (it has something to do with my third eye), so I'm reading as I'm pushing the cart. Bad idea. I whip round the corner into soft drinks and bury the nose of the cart into the RAID display. It's about 8 feet tall, and I've just destroyed the foundation. Slowly, ponderously, it heels over and cans of Ant and Roach spray go flying down the aisle to T.L.H's mortification. "RUN!!" She hisses through clenched teeth. That's my girl, none of this staying around to take responsibility nonsense.

Later, I'm in the produce section, feeling light-hearted and jocular after my narrow escape. I start juggling oranges. Of course, I quickly hear: "Put those down, you moron! You need constant adult supervision, I swear!!" This throws off my split-second timing, and one orange goes flying. Smack into the head of the middle aged woman to my right. I apologize profusely and help her find her contact lens.

My mortified wife gets even with me by grabbing some Romaine lettuce still cold and wet from the mister and shaking the water off on me. Ho ho ho, very funny... I decide to get even with her, and ;whip some scallions at her, also wet with water. Unfortunately, I'm holding it by the wrong end, and a cloud of green scallions goes downrange from me.

After a quick check at the direction of the security cameras, drey drags me off to pay...

My son, being a natural anarchist with little regard to "the Rules", combined with an overwhelming, naive trust in humanity, is often set up by the little rat bastards in his first grade class. Getting Little G. to be the fall guy for mischief is starting to be an art form for a little clique of kids in his home room. I've complained to the school, and tried to get him moved, but they blocked that because they thought Garrett would have MORE trouble afterward.

So I'm a little pissed off at this gang of tiny, malicious shitheads. And being a dad, and being Irish, I look after my own blood..

So today, I'm dropping Little G. off to sit in line to go into home room, the little gang of four tried the same old "get Garrett in trouble game with his Dad.. yeah, great idea!" So the first thing they say to me is "Hey, Garrett's dad, Garrett is ALWAYS getting in trouble-- he has to go to the principal's office sometimes".

Uh oh, you done picked the WRONG guy to say that to, goat-boy.

I leaned casually down, big shit-eating grin on my face... I took off my sunglasses and made my eyes glow red. "you know what?? if you tell on Garrett ONE MORE TIME... I'll make sure you don't pass on to second grade, and stay in first grade again all next year, and EVERYONE WILL LAUGH AT YOU... YEAH!. I KNOW who you are..." (still grinning)

I put my shades back on and gave Little G. a hug and said goodbye, turned around to smirk at their slack jawed faces.. and stopped again, mime-ing "I SEE you... he he heeeee...."

Well, it felt good at the time, but it's really a tad mean in retrospect, even if they are a gang of bullying shitbags. So now I'm sitting here with the remains of a bucket of chicken and a bottle of Ortleibs, and I feel bad about it.

Thanks for sharing.

Natch, if I get a horrified phone call from G's teacher, I'll deny everything.

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One thing I am NOT is what you might call.. "Handy". I'd rather pay someone else to do my Harry Homeowner work than figure it out myself. This isn't laziness, it's self-preservation. Most of my handyman jobs end up with minor electrocution, pipes breaking, me running about through jets of water screaming "Oh my GOD!!!" sotto voce, and usually someone who really knows what he's doing (like my brother, father, brother-in-law, friend Joe or somebody) coming over to bail my dumb ass out of another bad project idea. My intentions are always topnotch it's the execution that's lacking. The thing that bugs me is the sexist nature of it all. When something breaks, needs replacing, or general maintenance, every eyestalk in the house swivels in my direction. "Who, ME? What the hell, I don't do plumbing...!" I squeak.. but I know it's a lost cause. Duh. I'm the Dad. I gotta know this stuff.

It's a guy thing.

So I'm probably more proud than I should be that I managed to replumb an entire shower over the weekend-- pipes, showerhead, tile replacement and everything. It's not the most impressive plumb job I've ever seen, but it has the beauty of functionality.

Poor Lady H., she couldn't understanding why I was brachiating like a chimp when I finally got everything to work. "Feel my chest hair, WOMAN!" Ah well, you're only so good as your last success.

I also tore down a mailbox and built a new one. Move over Harry Homeowner!

---

Unless you do something?

Just got this in the email from on of the VA Rennaissance Fair folks.

The "JeniMcD" in this is Jenn McDonald, who is very active in Greyhound adoption and makes it part of her Ren Fair schtick.

--- In VARFCAST@yahoogroups.com, JeniMcD wrote:
I am sure that by now everyone knows that my purpose at faire -
(besides having fun!) is to find potential forever homes for retired
racing greyhounds. Many of you have said that "One day"... Well, I
don't do this often, but now I must ask you to consider if today
could be that day.

I have just received word that the track in Plainfield CT is
closing. That means there are 500 greyhounds in need of homes - or
they will be, dare I say it, put to death. This is not the first
track closing, nor is will it be the last. However, this one is
important to me - Plainfield is where both our loving Izzy and our
crazy Killian come from.

Look into your heart and ask yourself if perhaps now is the time. I
rarely talk about the "what ifs" when a dog isn't placed. In fact,
I train my people not to discuss it. However, the closing of a
track is significant and devastating. (Imagine if lives were
attached to the closing of a ren faire...)

If you have any questions about the breed, please contact me, Scott,
Meredith, Audrey, Lisa, Patti & Kati, Kim B. or Angi. If you need
help finding an adoption group, contact myself, Scott, Meredith, or
Audrey. Time is critical. There are 500 loving greyhounds looking
for homes. Won't you please consider adopting a retired racing
greyhound.

PLAINFIELD'S ADOPTION PROGRAM DIRECT LINK

Other Greyhound Adoption Societies possibly near you.. cite Plainfield

nbsp;Adopt a
Greyhound

The Greyhound
Adoption Center

National Greyhound
Adoption Program Top Page

Greyhound Pets
of America national

Rocky Mountain
Greyhound Adoption

TLC
Greyhound Adoption

Colorado
Greyhound Adoption

Virginia
Greyhound Adoption

Greyhound Adoption
League of Texas, Inc.

:: Welcome to
Greyhound Adoption of Ohio (GAO, Inc.)! ::

Golden State California
Greyhound Adoption and Retired Greyhounds
...

Greyhound
Adoption Service Home Page

Midwest
Greyhound Adoption

-=[ Peoria
Greyhound Adoption ]=-

Welcome from Heart
of Texas Greyhound Adoption, Inc.

Niagara Greyhound
Adoption Inc.

Escarosa
Greyhound Adoption

QCGA

If you've read this blog at some point in the past you know the Lady Hotspur and I adopted a Greyhound, NIXON. He and I have had our ups and downs but overall he's a good guy.. if you can find it in your heart to adopt a greyhound I certainly recommend it!

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My PC downstairs is riddled with this spyware crap. The problem is that wherever you go on the Internet somebody is trying to sell you "fight spam/spyware" stuff and frankly I just don't trust someone providing a service to thwart a phenomenon I can't stand using the same marketing channel as that phenomenon!

Here's a few good things I've found:

PC HELL: Fairly authoritative, doesn't appear to be selling anything (other than the sponsor links paying for the page itself). Has step by step instructions on getting rid of the most prevalent scumware.

SPYWARE INFO: Home of Hijack This! A kickass utility that attacks the worst kind of scumware, browser hijacks.

OPT OUT: Another good standalone utility, not unlike Spyware S&D. Good links on this page; doesn't appear to have a commercial motive beyond the other products he makes.

SPYBOT S&D: Spyware Search and destroy is perhaps my favorite. A standalone app that does analysis and cleaning, it can be had for free, though it is donationware.

AD AWARE SE: Ad Aware is the grand-daddy of antispamware and is still being pdated and still is free (though the author sells an enhanced version). Doesn't work well out of the box if you have S&D installed, as they both conflict with each other. Or perhaps they have fixed this.

That's what I have for now. If you know of a good, informative page on methodologies for removing hijacks and SPYWARE, please suggest it in the comments box. I'm actively collecting this stuff.

---

Blue Angel photo shoot.. from San Francisco Bay area. Some excellent stuff here. I've put them up in the FLICKR account, and they can be seen HERE. These are fantastic pictures, albeit the flag waving gets a tad tiresome after a bit. I particularly like the giant lumbering C-130 (on which I have flown in the past) gaining altitude with Alcatraz there in the background. Check it out!

---

Spam is indeed the work of Satan; upon that most of us that aren't involved in direct marketing might agree. And Robo-Spam, the kind that spiders the internet to look for random text gobbets to "fool" spam filters.. well, that might be 9th level of the Inferno kind of evil.

However, once in a while the little spam robot comes up with an unintentionally hilarious combination, and such a piece hit my email inbox today.

Tourism is Egypt's biggest foreign currency earner, and the industry had made a strong recovery after the 1990s violence.

They said Saturday's violence was a result of the government crackdown on a small militant cell it says carried out the April 7 suicide bombing near a Cairo tourist bazaar that killed two French tourists and an American.Police officials said the women were waiting for any tourist bus to attack and did not know that Israeli tourists were on board.

The ad image (which I did not click on) was for Viagra, and the subject line was identical to the subject line of this post.. I can't help but snicker at the unintentional Freudian overtones of the whole thing. What are they selling here?

---

Deconstructing HITCHHIKER'S...

Garrett and I went to see this on Saturday, as a consolation for having our scout campout rained out.

First off, I liked it-- pretty much. It was amusing, very visual and generally moved along at a nice clip. The script was decent-- writing credit goes to Douglas Adams himself, who was intimately involved in the production of the movie until the day he died (and he shows up as "the countdown head" briefly at one point), However, the script did not capture my attention as much as the PBS BBC TV version I saw so many years ago.

The movie is to the book as, say, the Lord of the Rings movie was to the book-- MUCH of the book's soul was trimmed to make the plot move along at the speed that it did.

There are many good points. Stephen Fry's narration was perfectly droll and supercilious, just like you would expect the Hitchhiker's Guide voice to be. The credits are very kitschy and cool, opening over a dolphin dance number of "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish."

I like the actor they got to play Arthur Dent in this film far more than the Arthur in the TV series.. he's the Joe Everyman I always expected Arthur to be, whereas the TV version was kind of a whiner. Mose Def as Ford Prefect was inspired casting, I suppose, but he was only marginally convincing to me. Maybe he should have gone for 'more alien'.

Movie Arthur:


Movie Ford and Zaphod:


TV series Arthur (in bathrobe) and Ford:


Trillian is given a larger role in the movie than in the book, and Zoey Daschalle (who was so winsome in ELF) performs ably and is cute as a button, to boot. Alan Rickman's voice of Marvin is quite good... but he seems almost the obvious choice for the role. Alas, they made the robot itself almost too cutie-pie for words and that took away from the effect.



I like the BBC Marvin (which appears in the movie, btw!) much better. Sam Rockwell as Zaphod (simply put) sucked. The BBC Zaphod (stupid special effect head and all) was driven, meglomaniacal and arrogant. The movie Zaphod was just "a dick". And I didn't like the movie reinventing the second head the way they did, neither! I want to see a Ray Milland/Rose Grier style THING WITH TWO HEADs kind of two-headed man, dammit.

The special effects are not, surprisingly, that overwhelming. The Vogon fleet is vast and immense, but almost comicly so. The Heart of Gold (and especially the Improbability Drive) are very well realized-- the point where the drive engages is pretty funny. The scene with the whale is, simply put, pretty dang great.

The animation of the Guide itself is great - the entry for Vogon's is spot-on. Its simple animation, but in this case its wholly appropriate. The music that's played when the book is first discussed is lifted from the BBC series.

There are a couple of divergences from the book plot in the movie-- and they are most welcome if you've seen the BBC TV version more than once (as I have) and read the whole series at least once (which I have).

In sum, it was entertaining, if not memorable. Not quite the earth-shaking bit of cinema I had built up in my own head, but not hugely disappointing. I'd see it again to catch the parts I napped through.

Walt

PS: Here's some props from the movie on display at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood!

http://www.zacmicro.com/gaminggaragesale/Hitchhiker

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