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I’m starting to think that the country would run a lot smoother if my parents were in charge of Congress.   And I don’t mean house speakers or committee chairs or anything, I mean, everything that congress did would have to be run by them.  Want to put a bill to a floor vote?  As long as the floor is clean.  Sleep-over party with a lobbyist?  Make sure it’s okay with your father.  I don’t care if you’re under oath or not; I can tell when you’re lying!

Case in point: When I was 17 a guy at work was trying to sell me his old 1980 Mercury Cougar, and it was a pretty easy sell cause I wanted this thing bad. Real. Real. Bad.  Granted, it smelled weird, was already 17 years old when I was looking at it (born the same year I was), ate gas, couldn’t stop in the rain, couldn’t stop on a hill, couldn’t stop pretty much anywhere, but none of that really mattered.  The car was freedom, and I wanted to be free.  Free to pick up and go in a vehicle that was mine and mine alone.  Free to have no-one tell me what to do or where to be.  I wanted the special kind of unrealistic freedom that a 17 year old kid assumes is just around the corner at nearly all times, provided he makes a couple of “good” decisions.

Anyway, I approached my parents with the idea, and they sat me down and without telling me no, told me that if I indeed wanted to buy my own car, that meant that I’d also be buying my own insurance and paying for my own repairs.  Sure, the initial $800 price tag on the car was low, but after that, and after insurance payments, and after new brakes, and after everything else, I’d basically be working my entire job each week, all the hours, just to break even.  I was welcome to buy the Cougar, but I was also welcome to share the use of my mom’s car at no additional cost to me.  Freedom averted!

So you can imagine my chagrin when I read the following graph in a New York Times article titled: Call for Change Ignored, Levees Remain Patchy.

Come on guys.  Really?  Really?!  Seems just one conversation with my parents would have completely avoided this whole thing from getting as bad as it has.

Now, how to approach the Highway Appropriations Bill.  Might want to wait until after dinner…

Hipster Chain Letter Game Claims Roguishly Good Looking Victim

Okay, maybe not so snarky, but still, I don’t think I know eight other
people to send this thing to. I’m a popular guy, don’t make that
mistake, but most people I know don’t have websites… This will be
interesting.

Anyway, many thanks to kenspeckle for sticking the proverbial crowbar into the boarded up window that is my life.

Here are “the rules” of the meme:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their
  eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you
  need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1.

I Love Star Trek: I don’t just mean that I love Star Trek, I love Star Trek. Love it, love it, love it. And I’m not talking about just a love for the characters and the series. I’ve got several technical manuals on my bookshelf, a Tribble at work, and three books on speaking Klingon. I can tell you the top speed of the Enterprise-D (Warp 9.9986), and the two different classes of Klingon Birds of Prey (K’vort and Brell), and how the transporters compensate for Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (with Heisenberg Compensators, what else?), and a bunch of other stuff that might actually scare the hell out of you. Luckily, I’m able to contain my feelings around others, even around fellow Star Trek fans (Have you seen Trekkies? Those people are wack-jobs!)

2.

My Survival Tub: I keep a tub of supplies in my room, along with waterproof everything, because I firmly believe that I need to be prepared in case the apocalypse decides to ride in one night while I’m asleep. The tub contains the following:

• Two lengths of 200 feet of rope
• Collapsible shovel
• Canteen
• H-straps
• Waterproof container of matches
• Mosquito netting
• Bungees
• Flashlight
• Batteries, batteries, batteries
  
• Various knives and tools
• Hiking backpack
• Sleeping bag good below freezing
• Head-to-toe rain gear
  

Items on my wish list, but conspicuously absent:

• 5 days worth of k-rations
• Water purifier
• Car battery electrical adapter
• Compass
  

3.

My Rat-Tail: Remember that awful hairstyle in the 80s, when young boys would grow a tail of hair down the back of their head? Yeah, I had one of those, for quite a while. I also carved words into the side of my head in 4th grade. What can I say? Even at that age I had no shame.

4.

I Don’t Wear Underwear: This may be a shocker for most of you, but if you met me in the last ten years, I’ve never, ever worn undies in your presence. Work, play, bike, wedding, slumber party, meeting girlfriend’s parents, doesn’t matter. You may go throw up now.

5.

My Lego Collection: Growing up, I had an entire Lego town in my bedroom, complete with airport, parking garage, high rise, and Blue Oyster (I was in a Police Academy phase back then). It took up most of the floor space and was a big pain in the ass to clean. I still have all of them stashed away in my parents’ basement and once I have a basement of my own, I fully intend on restoring the township of Patland to its former glory.

6.

Moby Dick: I don’t want to sound like a snob or anything, but probably one of my favorite books of all time is Moby Dick. I loved all of it, the characters, the long passages on whales and sea life, the descriptions of whalers and whaling custom, the experimentation with form, everything. It was just one big adventure, but more well written than a typical adventure, and with none of the stumbling over PC issues (lets face it, whaling is about as un-PC a topic as you can get). It’s one of the few books I’ll probably read twice within a three year span.

This is, of course, not to be confused with the book I understood most clearly, which was Horton Hears a Who!

7.

AC/DC: I don’t want to sound like white trash or anything, but probably one of my favorite bands of all time is AC/DC. I was explaining my love of the band to a guy at a party last night and I compared them to The Smiths, stating that both bands were appreciated for the same reason. Of course, after making a comment like that, I was required to explain myself, which I will do again: The Smiths really only have one song: that droning, strangely ironic, melancholy, tragically hip track that they just keep repackaging in different forms throughout each album. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, in fact, I happen to really like that one song, therefore, I like The Smiths. AC/DC is the same way, they only play one song too: a rock anthem that is best described as the soundtrack for a beat down. If you like that song, you can put in any AC/DC album (trust me, it won’t matter) and you’ll find something you enjoy.

Speaking of songs I enjoy, here’s my much requested formula for an AC/DC album. Like mad libs, if you fill in your own titles using my descriptions, then you too will have your very own bizarro AC/DC album: (Leave your own creations in the comments field.)

Album Title: Should be strangely phallic or amusingly violent.

Track 1: Title should reference either electricity or an act of god.

Track 2: You’re lonely and haven’t gotten laid in a while, and you play guitar.

Track 3: A song about the utter invincibility of Rock ‘N Roll.

Track 4: A song about a dirty woman you once knew.

Track 5: An homage to the female anatomy.

Track 6: Title track, also the radio song, also the catchiest song on the album

Track 7: Breaking things (rules, hearts, balls, anything you choose).

Track 8: A double entendre, usually alcohol, artillery, or female themed.

Track 9: Closest thing on the album to a love song. Take your cues from Track 5.

Track 10: An homage to the Rock ‘N Roll lifestyle.

Track 11: A song that under no circumstances would you play for your mother. Be creative.

Track 12: Closest thing to a blues song. Look to Track 2 for guidance.

Track 13: This song will make liberal use of cannon fire, title it appropriately.

8.

The Representative: Having a majored in both Creative Writing and Journalism in college, and finding myself with no creative outlet during the first year after moving to Brooklyn, I took it upon myself to write a newspaper for my apartment. Now, just to clarify, it wasn’t a newsletter for the building (community events, recycling guidelines, other crap like that), it was a newspaper for my own apartment (Population: 3). Most of the stories centered around the cats, but some involved close friends or neighbors.

I made two issues. Upon publication of the second one, I struck a rather deep chord with my roommates at the time and they forbade me from publishing any more. The first I patterned off my old college newspaper: benign stories, typos, bad headlines, blah pictures, stupid advertisements. The second I patterned off the New York Post, and that’s what got me in trouble.

I know, I know, you want to see it. Well, you asked for it:

representative-041023_page_1.jpg

representative-041023_page_2.jpg

Tagged: I went to a few of my friends blogs and most already have posts with this game (apparently it’s going around like a stomach bug in a 3rd grade classroom and I’m the last one go to down to the nurse) so I’m going with the random blogspot blog approach. My apologies to: andrewjenna, mnbicyclecommuter, beingnatashafialkov, karikariboberry, mommieivy, martinb84, billyfish, and walkerrider. Perhaps if all of you decided to post about Second Life, Goth, objectionably religious objectionably political objectionably religipolitical objectionable content, or obscure Anime then I would have left you out of this mess.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 marks the end of 22 years of van ownership in the Kennedy family. I know, I know, it feels strange simply looking at the words I just typed, but they are true. This Wednesday, my father, the man who guided me, who provided the moral blueprint for my entire life, the man who I look up to most in the world (Hulk Hogan is a very close second, and still has his Astrovan, hint hint), the man I admire most, has turned on the family, turned on himself, and sold the poor van up river for a couple of bucks off a new Toyota.

As I write this, I can only imagine the van, sitting peacefully in the driveway (not leaking, by the way), patiently awaiting a set of much needed new tires. My father will get in the van Wednesday morning and the van will be so pleased, because at its ripe old age, being driven is a rare honor, bestowed upon it at odd, but glorious intervals. And the van will pull into a strange parking lot full of strange new cars, all from a far off land, all speaking a strange un-American language. But the van will react as it always has, with poise and respect, and it will attempt to strike up a conversation with these strange vehicles using the universal language of engine ticks, but they will just twitter amongst themselves and point their highbeams and laugh. But the van will just shrug it off, thinking, “Maybe this is where I’ll get some new tires!” And why not so? The van has served for many years, through many trials. Who cares about the twittering cars? Not the van. Because its job is the proudest of all, its job is to protect and transport the Kennedy family, speaking of that, where is the man in the yellow Gore-tex? And that’s when the van will see my father, driving by in a brand new Sandpaper-pearl 4Runner, driving out of its life forever. Only then will the van know sadness…

The way I see it, there are two options, over the next few days I need to float the cash to buy the van outright. I think I can do it if I can leverage some of my eggnog futures and funnel them through a dummy corporation I cooked up the last time I was in Hong Kong.

Or, I can go Brady Bunch-style and convince the Toyota dealership that the van is haunted, thereby making it ineligible as a trade-in.

As we speak, I’m cutting eye holes in an old sheet and digging out the silly-string. I think you know which option I’m leaning toward.

Needing to be reminded why I will be moving to a new job within the next week, I spent most of Friday sequestered in a conference room perusing royalty statements.  And around hour number 6, close to the end of the day, I was nearing the end of my proverbial rope.

That’s when the Yip-Yips started up.  I don’t know if it was the constant affirmative answers I was giving as my coworker read the totals against my printed copies, or if it was something I ate for lunch, but before I knew it, I was responding to questions in the style of my two favorite characters from childhood, the Yip-Yips.  And thanks to the magic of youtube, I can now recycle my childhood and present it to you in all its compressed-digital, VHS-copied glory!!

This was the first one, a classic, featuring some of the best onomatopoeia I’ve seen come out of Sesame Street in quite some time.  As first contacts go, good effort!!

The Yip-Yips return, though they are still unable to find a sentient life form on this planet.  Not that that stops them…

For on their next visit they discover the computer. Thankfully they are interrupted before they are exposed to the terrible time-wasting properties of the internetz.

Of course, if anyone is going to make first contact with the Yip-Yips, it’s going to be Kermit…