The Pilot Announced…

the plane was going to crash.  They were headed for sure doom.  A lady stood up and said, “Before we crash, is there any man on this plane that can make me feel like a real woman one last time?”

A man promptly removed his shirt and said, “Here, iron this.”

I just thought I’d throw that out there.

No Place Like Home

We had a great time on our trip to Miami, but it is great to be home again and back into our regular schedule.  I couldn’t believe the story about the shooting at Hooter’s here in Knoxville–how tragic.  I actually found out about it while reading Total Diatribe…thanks Billy Mac!

With a week of almost nonstop non-posting, I have several things in the works.  I’ll be working the next few days to finish up my half written posts and complete my half thunk thoughts.  I’ll start by popping over to twitter and writing some notes.   All of this before I even get a chance to catch up on everything I haven’t read in the last few days.

It’s crazy how the world keeps turning, huh?

Headed for Fairer Weather

Round 1 of Christmas is over…at least the Knoxville portion.

Headed to Miami and 80 degree weather for the next week.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get some posts up between eating and…eating.  🙂

Why I Don’t Delete Anything (Anymore)

I wrote something on Twitter last night after spending an hour or so reading old emails between the missus and me from our dating days.  At the time we were living 750 miles apart, so email was one of our major means of communication.  Seemingly unrelated, I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about some messages I was reviewing from an old Yahoo! group that was really active 6 or 7 years ago. 

I’ve never been one to knowingly keep a journal, especially one of those “deepest inner secrets” type things.  I know that for some people it’s a theraputic exercise, and I get that, but it’s not something I’ve ever really felt the need to do.  I’m reasonably good at sorting things out in my head, and honestly, there isn’t that much to sort out anyway.  I’m lucky enough to lead a very stress free, unscarred life.  It helps that I have a wide streak of apathy to boot.

However, I really like reviewing the back and forths I had with other people during different times of my life.  The major things in your life don’t need documenting because they are things you’ll always remember.  But it’s hard to think back and remember what happened during an unremarkable day or week.  Reading even the shortest little email from someone else makes it much easier to recall everything else that was going on in my life during that time.

I guess that could be the argument for personal journaling, but it is so much more natural for me to write dialogue instead of a monologue.  I need those other people to make it pop.

So I’m making a proposal to Mrs. Missus (hey, you finally get a real proposal).  How about if we make an effort to send each other an email every now and then, even though we now have the luxury of being able to talk to each other every day?  Maybe you have to communicate with me more than you’d like already, but let’s give it a shot just for a little while, say 5 or 6 years, and see how it goes.

Feel free to email your answer to me…I think you still have the address.

And The Biggest Jerk Is…

Henry Rollins.  Obviously.  Although I only received half as many votes as Hank, I must say it was an honor just to be nominated.

I was surprised that Burt Reynolds didn’t get more votes, not because he’s that big of a jerk, but because I would have thought his noteriety alone would outpace Rollins.  I’m not sure how to take the fact that I received as many votes as Reynolds.  Am I that big of a jerk, or am I that popular?

It’s hard to say.

Miss Milwaukee 1959

Joanie Cunningham All Grown UpFirst of all, thanks to those of you who continue to vote in my idiotic polls. They usually start off as stupid ideas that pop into my head. They later graduate to stupid ideas that show up on my blog. I then spend a week or more trying to figure out if there are any real conclusions I can draw about my readers from the answers. For this past poll, I think I was pretty successful in doing just that.

When asked the question “which one?” of the women from Happy Days, 33% of respondents chose Jenny Piccolo, which was one of two correct answers. Why Jenny Piccolo? She was a minor character, right? She didn’t contribute much to the show until long after Fonzie jumped the shark and Marcy’s second husband (Married With Children reference) showed up, right?

Good point. But savvy male viewers, even in their early childhood, could infer quite a bit about Jenny Piccolo. One thing was certainly implied by every reference to her–she was bad. Not crackwhore bad. Naughty bad. Bad influence on Joanie bad. Break curfew bad. Willing to kiss on the first date bad. I guess in the 50s you’d take whatever you could get as far as naughty goes. Either way, guys knew that Jenny Piccolo was down. Not only that, but she was the hottest of the available choices. Jenny Piccolo is the only acceptable choice for the type of guy who’d be looking to hook up while on vacation for a week in Milwaukee.

The only other acceptable answer was Lori Beth, but only 17% of respondents chose her. How does she qualify as an acceptable answer? Well, Ritchie Cunningham picked her didn’t he? Lori Beth was a nice girl, at least on the surface. She was the anti-Jenny Piccolo. She had Ritchie p-whipped (the “p” stand for “prude” of course). Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham loved her, The Fonz respected her, and Potsy and Ralph were on a never ending quest to find a girl just like her. I have a theory that Lori Beth and Potsy actually hooked up in the bathroom at Arnold’s one night after getting all hopped up on root beer floats. I also suspect that Rick Ocasek wrote “My Best Friend’s Girl” about Lori Beth from Potsy’s perspective. But that’s here nor there.

Lori Beth is the long term girl. She’s the type of girl you want to date for years. If you play your cards right, you can build up her hopes that you’ll one day marry her and have a couple of kids in your middle class house. She’ll stay home and bake cookies while you get up every morning and head off to your dad’s hardware store. Of course, you have no intention of ever following through, but still. Her hopes will finally be dashed one steamy night at Inspiration Point when you accidentally call her…

Leather Tuscadero? Someone actually chose Leather Tuscadero? Uh, not sure if you were aware, but Leather Tuscadero doesn’t even like dudes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I don’t like dudes either–at least not in that way. Is that the attraction to her? Some kind of psychological thing that makes you want what you can’t have? Are you that much of a masochist? Oh wait, maybe the “leather” part of the name ties in there somewhere. If that weren’t enough, she looks like Joan Jett on a 12 day meth binge. She was only included on the list as a trick answer, and you fell for it. I’d never even have considered her if I hadn’t been thinking about…

Pinky Tuscadero. Those of you who chose her, I get it. Sort of. I was just as worried as you were when the Malachi brothers gave her the Malachi crunch in the demolition derby. But please, let’s think this through. She’s a carny–a sideshow act. She’s just one step above the usual crowd of groupies that follow Fonzie around. She’s always leaving to go out on the road and jump her motorcycle through a hoop of fire or something. I half expected her to turn up on an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard playing a middle aged woman who comes back and reveals to Bo and Luke that they are actually her sons whom she left with her brother Jesse in order to keep them from finding out that Roscoe was their real father. That would explain where they got their daredevil genes wouldn’t it?

The obvious wrong choice out of this list, Joanie, was chosen by 25% of respondents. Who picked Joanie? Identify yourselves! How can you do that to your boy Chachi? And that’s nothing compared to the fact that she’s Ritchie’s sister! His little baby sister! Is nothing sacred anymore? I’m more disappointed in those of you who selected Joanie than I am in those who selected Leather.

I’ve learned a lot about my readers from this poll. Now how can I top it?

Write It Down You Selfish Jerk!

After I posted my grandfather’s Thanksgiving thoughts last night, I spent the next few hours re-reading some other things that he wrote. I will definitely be posting more of it in the future. He was a great storyteller, and there are plenty of good stories in his memoirs.

TCH brought up something in the comments of that post that I think was pretty significant. We’ve all but lost the art of good, personal writing–letter writing was what he called it. I’m making a call right now with my small little voice that we do what we can to remedy this. If your parents and/or grandparents are still living, encourage them to chronicle the big events in their lives at a minimum, or to write an entire life story. You’ll be surprised how much entertainment and wisdom you can gain from their experiences, and you’ll probably make their day by just showing interest in their lives.

In the same vein, it’s worthwhile for all us to do the same. Blog software makes that easier than ever before (you don’t have to make the blog publicly available) but a pen and pad work just as well. I actually have everything my grandfather wrote scanned and converted to .pdfs, and it is cool to see it in his handwriting.

Some of the best stuff my grandfather wrote was about what it was like growing up in the 1920s and 1930s. It is really interesting to me because he grew up about 10 miles from where I did; yet his experiences were so different from mine. It is strange to imagine, but the way we grew up would be very foreign to the way kids are growing up today. Your personal description of the Atari 2600 or riding a bike with no helmet may actually interest someone somewhere down the line.

When I think of all the funny stories I have accumulated over the years, it is sad to think that they will all die with me. Maybe I’ll record them all, at least cleaned up versions of them, and no one will care. But maybe someone will. I should at least give them the opportunity to decide if any of it is worth the bother.

Free Kittens (To a Good Home)

Okay, I already have feedback on my last post about the beggars outside of the supermarket. Some guys I work with read my blog (I write, they read, where’s the “work”?), and one of them brought up another case outside of grocery stores–free kittens.

The “free kittens” sign almost always includes the small print phrase “to a good home.”

What kind of home is good? Is it the kind where you don’t get your cat spayed, allow it to reproduce, then stand out in front of a store and give away the feline offspring to total strangers? Or, as my friend put it, “why do they care? By making the kittens free, they have determined that they have no value on the open market.”

Product Recommendation — Creative ZEN Plus

If you are looking for a small mp3 player as a gift, I’d check into the Creative ZEN Stone Plus. I bought one for the Missus a couple of weeks ago, and this thing is great, especially when compared to the iPod Nano. For one thing, you can easily move files to and FROM this player easily–something that has always annoyed me about my iPod. Secondly, you can’t beat the price, which is less than $65, making it affordable enough that you could make a case for just buying a few of them and giving everybody the same thing. No way you can get anything with an Apple stamped on it for close to that. The third thing about this player that stands out when compared to the iPod is that it comes with a built in FM transmitter, which is really handy when you are on the go. Hop into your car and tune in to the right frequency and you are listening to the same thing that was just coming through your headphones without plugging anything else in.

There are some really nice accessories as well, including a wristband–the player is the size of a large watch face, and a keyring. Not to mention all of the skins and protectors you can buy.

There are also 4Gb, 8GB, and 16Gb video versions of this player, which is also much cheaper than their iPod counterparts, but I’m not interested in watching video that small, so I haven’t looked at them very closely. Another consideration when choosing a player that is video enables is that, if you are like me, you’ll drop it 100 times the first day you have it and crack the screen anyway. Just something to think about.

In short, if you are past the hype of the iPod and want a good player for a good price instead of a good player for an outrageous price, I’d recommend this one. I’ve had really good history with Creative’s ZEN players–this is the fourth one I’ve bought, and they’ve all performed really well.

Your Lack of Apathy Shocked Me

In my last poll I asked if you really cared…a pretty open ended question. To my surprise, most people actually do care, at least about a few things. And half of those care about most things.

Only two people chose “nope,” indcating that they don’t care at all.

It doesn’t really matter to me though, I was just wondering how you all felt.