A Christmas of Firsts

Hello again to all. I guess I am going to spend a large portion of my Christmas break updating Jonny's blog :) With only three days til Christmas, I began thinking about how this Christmas season has differed from previous ones, and I realized that so far, this Christmas has been a Christmas of firsts.

First First: A Christmas of Engagement

As all of you are well aware, this is my first Christmas as one-half of a to-be-wedded-whole. While this is mostly a joyous occasion, it has raised some questions that, until now I did not have to worry about. Like, where do we go for the traditional candle-light Christmas Eve service? Do we eat pizza or gumbo? Is it made of wood or aluminum? (who can tell me where that line is from :) While Jonny and I have mostly decided how we will split time between our two wonderful families, this is the last time we will get to split up on Christmas Eve, thus making this holiday a first true glance at how we may celebrate Christmases to come.

Second First: Eggnog

I am all about Christmas-time-only foods. For me, this usually includes making sausage balls, red and green M&M cookies and Chex Mix for Jonny. This Christmas I made the aforementioned standards, but this year I wanted more. I decided this would be the year of Eggnog. Every year I see it in the grocery store and I wonder to myself, "What's all the fuss about?" So this year I decided, I'm jumping in the eggnog pool head first and tried some. Verdict: I LOVE THIS STUFF. I must have drank like 12 glasses already. So far I have only tried the right-out-of-the-carton stuff, with a little Blue Bell mixed in, but I have a homemade recipe that is FAB! and will be making it as another standard for next year.

Third First: Christmas Bread

Some what keeping in line with "Second First", and succumbing to the surrounding influence in other places al la internet land, I decided I would try my hand at making my first batch of Christmas bread. That is a labor of love kids. I started at 7pm and just finished at like midnight-thirty. I made three loafs: One for Jonny, one for work, and one for the Monette's. You can see how it turned out. I think for my first attempt it is pretty darn pretty... I'll let you know how it taste when I meet Jonny in the morning for work and sample it for breakfast.



All in all, I'll deem these Christmas firsts a success!

(Notice Tucker staring intently at that platter ever-ready should disaster happen. - Jonny)

The Dents are Alive With the Sound of Music

Hello to all our blogging friends out there. This post is being brought to you by the other half of Jonny on the Spot. I thought I would update Jonny's blog and share about our weekend... although most of you who read this were there and know about it .

Wow. What a weekend. It was great to have our friends and family gather together to celebrate our coming union. Everything was wonderful. If yesterday and today serve as any clues about whats to come, I think I will be humming "Five dogs, no fleas" and "Communication is the key" til AT LEAST the end of the week. That toast was truly a Dent-doing. As I have thought about it, I am reminded of one of the first trips I made to the farm. It was for a Thanksgiving dinner. After our food had settled, we all gathered in the living room, hymnals were passed around, Karl played the keyboard and everyone took turns calling out their request, singing solos while the rest joined in, in four part harmony. I remember taking it all in and thinking "I better get ready for all the musical moments that are about to unfold in my life." As I think back to that Thanksgiving, I am always reminded of how much the Dent family loves one another. It was such a sweet moment and I realized that, for the Dent clan, singing and music, is one of their many love languages. I can think of other countless moments where this has been the case. I am always in awe of those moments when the kiddos are all together and somehow Jonny finds a gituar and Anna Grace and Cavett end up dancing to the singing and playing of "Grandma's Feather Bed" or some other Dent standard. There is such joy and love in those moments and they are so precious to me. As the sisters toasted to us and our lives together, I will always remember it, not only as a clever way to wish us well, but also as a very appropriate expression of Dent love. I look forward to many more moments in song, and who knows... if Jonny and I strick it rich, maybe we can give those "Two loving grandmas" and "Four super aunts" those "Tweleve happy children".

Christmas Music

So, as soon as thanksgiving is over, it's all Christmas music all the time with Amber. In the car, at the house, and everywhere else. That's fine and all. Music is one of things people most enjoy about Christmas. But some artists think any piece of audible garbage put down on a Christmas album gets a free pass. They could not be more wrong. They could try, but they would fail.

So here are my top ten most HATED Christmas songs.

#10- "Feed the World" by Band-Aid, The song is awful, the artists are too full of themsleves, and the group name is a pun so lame its worry of a country song

#9- "Happy Christmas/War is Over" by Celine Dion, Lennon's original was passable but having this French Canadian wail it out as if it were "All By Myself" is misplaced at best and sonic assault at worst.

#8- "Christmas Shoes" by Newsong, when I was first told about this song I thought it was a joke. I see it as a slap in the face to all evangelicals. Just because I like Jesus doesn't mean I have no artistic standards.

#7- "Santa Baby" by Madonna, this song is only like three lines long then repeated over and over in the same whiny voice. Is that tone supposed to seductive? Cause its not. Why would I enjoy that anyway? Oooooh yeah, get the jolly fat old guy all hot and bothered! That's the stuff! Or am I supposed to find her blatant gold-digging humorous?

#6 "All I Want for Christmas is You" by Mariah Carey, take the title of the song, paraphrase it a couple of different ways, and you've probably got all the lyrics already. I hear this one the most on the satelite too. I think she thinks if you add jingle bells to the track a pop song its magically transformed into a Holiday standard. It must be a Christmas miracle!!

#5 "Ave Maria" by Harry Conick Jr., this one is a shame cause Harry otherwise makes a great X-mas CD. He's a complete miscast for a song like this. A crooner sings Ave Maria? Really? It reminds me of the Robert Goule skits on SNL. If I wanna hear it butchered I can go to any Catholic wedding. Guarunteed the bride's got at least 3 cousins all fighting over who gets the dubious honor.

#4 "Favorite Things" by Rogers & Hammerstein, this one's a nod to Amber. It's a good song don't get us wrong. But it is not a Christmas song at all. You'll notice its the middle of the summer in the musical when they sing it.

#3 "Sing Noel" by Some Children's composer, doesn't popular airplay but its still horrendous. And the fact that the CCC does it every year on regional TV is ten miles past embarrassing.

#2 "My Grown Up Christmas Wish" by anyone, I know what you're thinking. "Oh, but its on that Amy Grant CD!" Big whoop. A chick wishes for world-peace at X-mas. And folks in hell want ice cream. Asking for it like a gift under the tree completely misses the mark if you want to bark up that tree anyway. You want the world to be better? Well you can't change human nature, but you can change your own actions. If you want a REALLY bad version though, check out Kelly Clarkson's errrr.....attempt at it.

#1 "Where are You Christmas" by Faith Hill, no explanation neccessary. Its so bad I can't even attempt to mock it.

1 month update

So, its been about a month since I proposed to Amber. You can read about all the wedding planning progress on the wedding website Amber does. But for me, this mostly means we've been exercising and eating better (I hesitate to use the word "diet" as it connotes something transient) for a month now. All the health-nut crowd will tell you, "Oh, you'll feel so much better!" and, "You'll have so much more energy!"

Well I call shenanigans on this propaganda. Having done this for a month, I feel awful. Stuff aches all the time. Its harder to get out of bed in the morning. I'm always hungry and always tired. I felt a lot better when I was willingly and blissfully unhealthy. Good news is Amber and I are both down 12 pounds, which while it sounds good is still a depressingly low percentage for me.

Taking Your Lumps

As a ravid college football fan, I'm often confronted with skeptical types who believe enthusiasm of that level to be an obvious misplacement of priorities. After reflection, I think such emotional investment in something is neither inherently good or bad. Rather, its one's reactions that determine the dividends of the investment.

For another year, I'll be deep in enemy territory trying to take the talk of LSU fans in stride, especially of the next two days: tomorrow at church, and Monday at work. In addition, I have to eat an LSU-branded piece of meat at Jared's at some point soon. And even though I've wore all my stuff and flown my flags high, I still have to wear orange and blue the next two days and congratualte every football fan who brings the topic up on a great game.

I think I disagree with the dismissive response to such a devastating loss. "Oh, it's just a game." Well, it surely is a game, but it would be obvious self-deception to pretend my emotional investment didn't make it something larger. One can't just sweep that emotion under the rug. And taking my lumps sucks.... big time. I don't like doing it. But life is a great long run of stuff you don't want to do.

In judging whether my investment is misplaced, we have to ask whether the ultimate effect on me is beneficial or or determintal. And I am fairly convinced that we as humans can ALWAYS benefit from a humbling experience. I don't know how 8-year-old Jonny would have taken it. The Braves' annual choking in the postseason reeked enough havock on me back then even without a sea of rival fans around me. But now I know exactly how this will play out for me. And perhaps I have this practice in misplaced priorities to thank for that certainty.

Crazy Khrushchev

At the height of the cold war, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev had a famous incident wherein he took off his shoe and banging on the table shouted, "Your children will grow up in communism!" Surely, this must have felt like a moment of triumph for the powers-that-were in the U.S. at the time. If this was their opponent's most eloquent argument, the West would certainly prevail. Well, it's been about a generation since, why don't we check in on old Niki's prognostications.

So what separated us greedy capitalists from the dirty commies? If this were Family Feud, I'd try to convince you all take make our final guess "free markets." But how free are they? Two government-chartered lending institutions who hold a vast majority of the U.S.'s mortgages have found themselves in deed poo. Bailouts are always tricky things. How does anyone learn from bad decisions if the government now provides a safety net? Where's the incentive for wise decision making then? But these two jokers didn't just get a bailout. Oh no. Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum here got straight-up taken over by the Feds. That sounds like a fact you here on NPR and barely give it a second thought, but let that soak in for a second. Uncle Sam (or Big Brother Samuel as Tom and I call him) now owns something like 70% of the homes in America technically. (And Bill Clinton said the era of big government was over.) But the fun hasn't stopped there. Now congress is talking about establishing some department to take on even more of these private companies' bad mortgages.

I propose Niki was not a raving fool. I think he understood something most American are blind to, being this: government's primary behavior is always to sustain and expand itself. And whatever new role or power it undertakes, it never relinquishes. Even a country founded as purly on the principle of self-governance as America needs but a few hundred years of crises before the masses clamor for the federal government to assume greater and greater roles. This is how liberty dies, not with a dramatic, punctuated, and obvious conflict, but through the unintended consequences of well-meaning knee-jerk reactions.

I fear we may be only years away from a law stating mortgages may only be handed out by the federal government. (For our protection of course.) And then, I feel a certain Mr. Khrushchev's sour countenance will change to victorious grin in his grave.

Jonny's Thoughts on the Campaigns

Holy Schnikees! Did y'all see McCain's VP pick?

But before I discuss his pick, let's see where Jonny's coming from. I saw some footage on the Daily Show of McCain at the motorcycle rally a while back and listening to him stumble through his speech I turned to Tom and said, "Sweet Christmas! John McCain is GOING to lose this election." And I still think that was a reasonable conclusion. McCain really can't sell himself. Why?

McCain Cons:
- He's Ooooooooooooold, like, don't touch him without gloves on cause your body oil could cause him to spontaneously decompose, old. Old doesn't sell. Our culture unfortunately worships at the altar of youth. Were it not for other circumstances, he really would be Bob Dole #2.

- He's running for the same party as the incredibly unpopular Bush

- "100 more years in Iraq"

- Most important, he can't energize the conservative base because of his unorthodox positions for a Rebuplican on some issues like immigration and campaign finance. But at the same time, his war stance prevents him from gaining the moderate vote which he might otherwise attract.

So, what's an old geezer to do? Well, whoever is running McCain's campaign is a freaking genius. He or she has realized the only way for McCain to win is to run the most negative campaign in history (no value judgments intended with that statement.) Playing up the Right's fear of Obama is the only and most effective way for McCain to energize them.

Now enter Gov. Palin (a name I kinda like cause it sounds like paladin and makes me think of Warcraft. That thought is gonna stick in your head too, you're welcome.) This pick does a couple of things.

1. Conventional wisdom says your VP pick shows where you think you're weak. So, Obama picking Biden is a defacto admission of a lack of experience they would say. So how does that work on McCain? He picked a young chick. Whats he gonna do? Deny he's old? Or a dude?

2. McCain's been trying to woo the bitter Hillary crowd. A chick VP may feel like a shallow attempt by some of them to lure them, but it will work on some others. Its like asking some one if they want a hot dog. "I don't know, I don't know if I want a hot dog." "Well, what if I put some chili on it?"

3. While a black Pres. is still better than a chick VP for progress-for-progress'-sakers, the addition of a disenfranchised candidate on the ticket does usurp some of Obama's mantra and sexiness.

4. Palin being an ATV saleslady and otherwise an outdoors-woman and a pro-lifer helps excites a few more far right votes, but not many.

So, with all that said, I still think I'd bet on Obama to win if I had to bet on somebody. But I just wanted to give some dap to the savy folks running Old Man River's campaign.

As for me, there's a chance Ron Paul will actually make it on the LA ballot, which would make me a happy happy Panda.

BTW

I'm getting married.

R.I.P.

On a sad note, DMB saxophonist LeRoi Moore has passed away from complications after an ATV accident. So, I encourage you to dust off your old "Under the Table and Dreaming" and "Crash" CDs and savor the dulcet tones of Mr. Moore. His solo on #41 was always one of my favorites. God Bless.

The Best Jokes Aren't Planned

So Amber had to pick a book to read from a short list for her weekend seminar class. The dialog between her and I went a little something like this:

Amber: "I'd kinda like to read 'Counseling Poor Families' but it's really expensive."

Me: "Wow........"

Amber: "What?"

Me: "Well......that's like......terribly ironic."

Amber: (laughs for like 3 minutes)

A Trip in Numbers

So, what the heck has little Jonny been up to these days?! I'll tell you numerically.

-3500, miles driven (Shreveport to Tampa to Nashville to Chicago to Shreveport)

-3, days on the beach

-6, Major Musical Awards for acts seen (3 Tonys for Wicked, 3 Grammys by the Bluegrass group at the Station Inn in Nashville)

-35,000, the rumored dollar amount of Neags' wedding budget

- 25, minutes on the subway from the hotel to downtown Chicago

-17, number of times the weird Chicago people dinged on their glasses at the recption (which evidently means the bride and groom have to kiss, not that someone has an anouncement)

-3, new brands of beer tried

-21 to 1, the score when Amber and Danny attempted to play native Chicagoans in a game of "Bags" (a bewilderingly popular game of throwing bean bags into wooden holes)

-217, the total pages of college football preview magazines read while on the beach

-350, the approximate dollar amount spent on gas round trip

-1, number of "War Eagle"s received at the Art Institute of Chicago when I wore an AU shirt

-94, the story of the observatory at the Hancock Tower

-1, number of ice chests accidentally left in the bed of Craigo's wife's truck in Nashville

-3, number of hours it took for us to realize there was a soccer game at soldier field next to the natural history museum and that's why we were getting run over by Latinos

-25, number of miles we took as a detour just to get some chicken biscuits Monday morning in Memphis

Rain

So, if you were in Shreveport this week, you might have noticed it rained. A lot. So, I had resolved to give Tucker a bath the night it started to flood and figured, "well, I'm gonna get nasty wet washing Tucker and he needs walking too........" So I put on a swimsuit and a T-shirt and Tucker and I took our walk as if it was a normal day. At the corner of Greenway and Stratford, it was deep enough for Tucker to dog-paddle. As I haven't played in the rain since I was a kid, it was quite enjoyable. I recommend it if you don't mind passing drivers looking at you funny.

Project Marvel

So, as you all know I had a lot of stages in childhood of different interests. Funny thing is, a lot of them kinda stuck and I still indulge in them every now and then albeit not with the same tenacity. (Paul may have put away childish things, I just renamed mine.)

Anywho, a good example of this is comics. As a kid, in the back of your mind was always the thought, "Man, It'd be super-sweet if I had a copy every every marvel comic." Well, that was of course an idle daydream as it's a almost certain impossibility. It'd take you a lifetime to hunt down all those back-issues in those weird shops populated by the strangest individuals known to man. But as in so many other cases, Mr. Internet has come to the rescue, and thus I've been working on what I've dubbed "Project Marvel" for the last 6 months or so. (I think if the internet had to assume a anthropomorphic form, it'd be the guy in the dark alley wearing a trench coat who whispers at you slyly, "Hey, wanna buy a watch?") So far, I've got everything from 1961-1980. God bless technology. Tom argues that they publish things faster than I can read them, so I can never read everything, and he's probably right. But it's nice to know I could.

Title

Its your time. Its my time. Its ten thoughts time.

#10 Train A leaves St. Louis headed east at 6:30PM traveling 70 mph. Train B leaves D.C. headed west at 4:00PM traveling 65 mph. When do the trains meet? Why was that always the example of a hard standardized test question? I'm not chomping at the bit to answer it, but it's not that hard. Not to mention has anyone ever actually seen this question on an actual test before?

#9 After winning the Presidential Nomination, Lincoln grew a beard because a little girl wrote him a letter saying he should. How cool is that?

#8 Evidently, back in Lincoln's day, neck-beards were in style. More proof I was born in the wrong era. I could grow an excellent one. People would say, "hey man! awesome neck beard!"

#7 I often mention nostalgic things from childhood in these, so I'll do the opposite now. I hated Nickelodeon shows as a kid. Hey Dude, Salute your Shorts, Doug, Rocko's Modern Life, Pete & Pete, Wild & Crazy Kids, all grade-A pieces of television garbage. The only good thing to come out of Nickelodeon in the last 25 years: David the Gnome! His show was off the chain.

#6 Tom has been rooming it up with me for about four months now, but he still hasn't fully realized what Tucker is capable of. Tucker helped himself to Tom's Taco Bell the other night, and his container Strawberry milk mix yesterday morning. If he thinks its edible (and his standards are quite low I assure you) Tucker WILL eat whatever you leave out.

#5 A slight disclaimer. As wedding season is now upon us, I'll be attending blessed event after blessed event in the next few months. But just so you know, I judge you by the details of you wedding festivities. Was there recorded music at any point? Did someone in your family drink too much? Do you have a picture on display with both of you wearing jeans and a white shirt? Did you smush the cake in each other's face? These are all bad things fyi.

#4 Developmental psychologists have all sorts of methods of delineating the endpoints between their arbitrary stages in life. Allow me to propose my own. Childhood officially ends when you come to the realization that McDonald's is disgusting.

#3 The liberal arts education is a complete fraud. Liberal arts meant in Roman times the abilities belonging to a free person, code for well-to-do. So what's important as a wealthy Roman? Why, rhetoric and poetry and such since you never have to do any real work in your life. Therefore, the the liberal arts education was originally very utilitarian. Now its just esoteric. Don't get me wrong, I like rhetoric and poetry, but those aren't very utilitarian subjects to a middle-class American male.

#2 Mike Hampton is hurt. In related news, dogs bark and water is wet.

#1 One of the things I loved about staying at my Grandparent's as a child was the fact I could eat all the lucky charms I wanted for breakfast (honeynut cheerios was as sweet as it got at my house growing up.) But now that I am perfectly at liberty to gorge myself on lucky charms, I don't really care for them anymore. One of life's little gotcha's.

This Just In....

Hello to all of you out there in blogger-land. Today's post comes from a guest writer, the one and only Ber. I've been thinking about joining this little blogging family myself, but every time I get pumped about it, my professors decide they own my soul. So Jonny, in pure Jonny fashion, pointed out the obvious: I can just post on his blog! Now I get the best of both worlds, both school and internet.


So anywho... Today was one of those days when I was confirmed in one of my life choices. I went to a conference at the Collin County Community College about abuse awareness and prevention in children. Listening to the presentations I couldn't find anything boring which was a victory in and of itself since I had been up since 5:45 am (not the morning person this one!) I just felt like I knew I was one the right track with my career choice. I can't wait to the day that I get to work with families and children who need someone in their corner.


I have also noticed that being a budding psychologist apparently means I am uber aware of those odd research stories on sites like CNN and Yahoo- you know like the ones that make claims like: "This just in! Peanuts make your Hippocampus function better!" Well, tonight I was checking the weather (we are in a severe storm watch) and I saw the follow title: "Mother's Diet Can Help Determine Sex of Child." With my interest peaked, I clicked the link. In a nut shell, moms-to-be who consumed a wide range of nutrients, such as potassium, calcium and vitamins C,E, and B12, in addition to eating more calories had boys. Jonny and I have often discussed how male-heavy this generation of the Dent -clan is, so with this new info, I wanna know what the Sisters ate during their pregnancies. Lets have our own research project! If you wanna that is :)

Signing off for now!
-Ber

Conveyance Book Golf

So, I've created a new game at the Red River Parish Courthouse: Conveyance Book Golf. If you have two entries in the same book you need to look at, you decide on a par based on the number of pages between them. (Its arbitrary at this point, so I'll have to come up with a standard formula soon.) You then try to turn directly to the next desired page just by eyeballing it. Its easy enough for me to add an extra column out to the side of my runsheet to keep score. I was +9 today, not a bad showing. I've had one hole-in-one and a handful of double eagles. Maybe I'll introduce it to my fellow abstractors soon.

Even if its not popular

So, it's been a while. My apologies. I assure you this past absence is not indicative of future posting frequency.

Anywho, I read a lot these days and I thought it'd make for passable blog entries to share things I've found engaging, so here goes:

In 1846, a black man named William Freeman was released from prison after serving a sentence for a crime which it was later determined he did not commit. Shortly thereafter, Freeman entered the home of John VanNest, and armed with two knives, killed John, his pregnant wife, and his mother. Upon his capture he openly confessed to the crime and laughed hysterically. As it turns out, Freeman had a deep family history of mental illness. Unconcerned with Freeman's circumstances, the community demanded his death and threatened violence on any attorney who would represent him. When no willing man could be found, Henry Seward volunteered. In the following weeks Seward worked diligently preparing Freeman's defense and urged the jury to have Freeman committed rather than put to death as his actions were, "unexplainable on any principles of sanity." Ultimately, Seward's pleas fell on deaf ears as everyone knew they would. But Seward reflecting on the incident remarked, "In due time, gentlemen of the jury, when I shall have payed the debt of nature, my remains will rest here in your midst, with those of my kindred and my neighbors. It is very possible that they may be unhonored, neglected, and spurned. But perhaps, years hence, when the passion and excitement which now agitate this community shall have passed away, some wandering stranger, some lonely exile, some Indian, some Negro may erect over them a humble stone and thereupon this epitaph, 'He was Faithful.'"
Poetically enough, that phrase can be seen on his headstone today.


This would be a commendable account of any man, but what makes it more amazing to me is the fact that Seward was a very ambitious politician who was aiming for the presidential nomination. Today's candidates would never risk challenging public sentiment like that. It is therefore a great tragedy to me that we know Seward more singularly for his purchase of Alaska than his faithful pursuit of Right in spite of scorn and derision.

A Little Slice of the Good Life

Sometimes something small can make your day.

Not too long ago, I made a half-conscious comment to Amber. "If I was loaded, you know what I'd get? A billion wooden coat hangers, that's what. No more of this thin metal junk."

Well, as it turns out, one doesn't have to be loaded to have all wooden coat hangers thanks to everyone's favorite billionaire, Mr. Ikea. 10 hangers = $3. And since Amber lives only a stone's throw away from the Frisco Ikea, she hooked me up. My closet is awesome now. Thanks Wam!

In the words of KC and JoJo, "Crazy crazy crazy crazy crazy."

So, some of you might have heard about the two girls that were shot to death at UNC and Auburn this past week. You may have also heard that a group is planning on picketing the Auburn student's memorial service in a few days.

If you're scratching your heads allow me to explain. There's a group of crazy folks from Topeka Kansas called Winsboro Baptist Church (although every legit Baptist Convention and association in American agrees they're crazy.) Why are they protesting the mourning of this girl? Get ready for this: you shouldn't have a funeral for her because you should be glad she died, because its God's punishment on America for its growing acceptance of homosexuality. They protest funerals of American soldiers KIA for the same reasons. Their website at godhatesfags.com explains that soldiers are just lazy idiots who couldn't get a job anywhere else anyway.

Now, that's a whole new kinda crazy. These folks are nuttier than a squirrel turd. They make Sonny the Cuckoo Bird look like Dan Rather.

Thankfully, one father of a fallen G.I. successfully sued the crazies for 11 million dollars after they showed up at his son's funeral. The state of Kansas also passed a law banning demonstrations at funerals. Unfortunately, the lady running the "church" now is a lawyer and is challenging the law. Sadly, the case is making its way up to higher courts.

The moral of the story is just say no to crazy.

This One's for Stephen

Fun Fact of the Day

I can stick my whole fist in my mouth. Take that world!

Jonny's Ten Thoughts

So, I realized today that none of the fam has a facebook account, and as such, you've never been able to read Jonny's little column entitled "Ten Thoughts." They're kinda like an Andy Rooney rant, a Letterman top ten list, and Jack Handey quotes all rolled into one. So you lucky devils get to gorge on them all at once. I present the Best of Ten Thoughts:

May 3rd 2007
#2 - I was extremely peeved when I learned about negative numbers. I felt totally betrayed by my teachers. They had told me for years you just couldn't subtract a larger number from a smaller number and when I questioned their authority they offered me no explanation other than you just can't.

#1 - Deja vu's are freaky. But the older I get, I'm not just having deja vu's. Instead I think I'm having deja vu's of deja vu's and even deja vu's of deja vu's of deja vu's. Maybe I'm in a matrix inside a matrix inside a matrix.

May 8th 2007
#10: Capslock is without any hesitation the worst invention in history in my opinion. Who I ask ever has need for this worthless button? By the time I die the ratio of times I accidentally hit capslock to the times I used it on purpose will easily be a million to one. The worst is when you accidentally hit it online and it looks like you're shouting. What if that happened in real life? "Man, Charlie, I'm so sorry abOUT YOUR MOM!!!! HER UNTIMELY DEATH CAME AS A TOTAL SHOCK!!!!!!"

#6: You remember George Jetson's job? He just pushed one button all day. I would kill at that job, seriously. Ask anyone who's ever played a Mario-Party game with me. I could be done with work every day in half an hour. I'd put Cogsworth cogs out of business in one fiscal quarter.

May 22nd 2007
#10 - I hate shows that have an overarching goal to the entire series and then fail to ever achieve said goal. Example: Disney's Gummibears. The Gummibears of the show are but a remnant of a once vast Gummibear civilization which has since migrated to "Newgumberland." Thus, the protagonists are aliens in a now human land seeking to rejoin their kindred in this promised land of Newgumberland. In the course of the series there are a vast array of references to their displacement and longing to be with their own kind, but guess what, they never get to freaking Newgumberland. Oh, they drink juice and bounce around and stuff but they never get a step closer to their precious goal.

July 2nd 2007
10. If there are red ribbons for aids and yellow ribbons for the troops, does an orange ribbon mean you support troops with aids?

8. The "bong hits for Jesus" guy lost his case in the supreme court recently. That's too bad. He should switch to plan B now: contend he just left off an "o". It was supposed to be "bongo hits for Jesus." He was advocating drum circle style praise and worship.

5. So, the universe is constantly expanding. Lots of folks think thats a bummer as it'll make space travel and communication more difficult. I think its a little comforting though. The universe is getting fatter as it gets older just like me. "Its not my fault," I can say, "this is the way the universe works!" I wonder if, like us, the universe still keeps that old pair of quasars thinking, "oh, I can't throw these out, I'll be able to wear these again some day."

3. As the paragon of slothfulness, Garfield does nothing but sleep and eat lasagna. Don't you think he should've picked an easier food to make? Even a frozen Stouffer's lasagna takes like an hour and a half to bake. The real lazy folks in this world could tell him it's all about Mountain Dew and Red Baron pizzas.

Sept 24th 2007
#10 - One of my favorite Disney cartoons was Ducktales, but you know what even bugged me as a kid? Scrooge McDuck's favorite pastime was diving into his gigantic vault of coins. His huge moneybin is the major landmark of the metropolis of Duckberg. Its gotta be 20-30 stories tall, and he dives at least ten feet. Assuming those are metal coins, that's like diving off a two story house onto the pavement.

#8 - You know what reams of paper come packaged in? More paper. Why not just put a rubber band around it then instead. I'm glad that don't do that with other stuff. What if lunch meat came wrapped in more lunch meat?

#7 - I'm not done with Ducktales yet. I'm surprised the show didn't set off an international incident. Seriously, one of the largest corporations in the uber-greedy capitalist U.S. makes a show where the biggest miser of all time.........is a Scot! Did Disney have the gall to air this cartoon in the U.K.? It's like if the Irish made a cartoon about the biggest drunk of all time, Muhammed AbDuck.

#6 - I find myself incredibly prejudiced against the current piece of tape in the tape dispenser. Its been sitting out exposed to the harsh elements of this office for God knows how long. What assurance can I have of its continued adhesive ability? So, I tear it off, discard it and tear off a new one who I know will be sticky.

#5 - No one writes good jingles anymore. When are we gonna have the next "Diesel Driving Academy"-level jingle?

#2 - Is there any bigger fraud than the fine point sharpie? You can never get a sharpie fine enough to equal a pen. By its very nature the sharpie is a big clunky awkward beast. One should never use it for writing unless you're prepared to use a whole sheet of paper for one sentence.

March 4th 2008
#8 - Was there anything cooler in your childhood than the moment they started playing the Ghostbusters theme at the skating rink. Answer: No, there most certainly was not. (Who ya gonna call.......)

5 - I think our modern scientific and technological advances have a lot of unintended negative consequences and I think it's rather fashionable to point those things out these days. But I think they can do a lot of good too. Think about the Phantom of the Opera. If that dude were alive today we could hook him up with some corrective plastic surgery, some group counseling and he'd be good to go. Maybe he had a tumor on his amygdala that made him want to rape young opera singers in his little lair. They could cut that puppy right out. Just saying.

#4 - Where'd they come up with the name Indiana Jones? And what executive thought it was a good title? Sure, we don't question it now cause the movies were good. But say it a couple of times and you'll realize how dumb it sounds. If you had never heard of Indiana Jones, would you be willing to go see a movie entitled "Oklahoma Smith and the Burning Venereal Disease?" (OK, I might go see that, it sounds like a spoof comedy, but you get my drift.)

#3 - You know why I'm sure God exists? Wood. Yeah that's right, wood. It just grows up out of the freaking ground and its really freaking useful. Just looking at my house, there's a billion things that all serve different purposes, and you know what they're made out of, wood. Granted, plastic may have more uses these days, but we had to figure that crap out of a couple thousand years. Did I mention the wood just grows up out of the freaking ground though?!

#1 - You recall that old paradigm of the world being on top of a giant turtle? Why a turtle? Is there any real reason? Why not a more lovable animal like a jack russell terrier or a spider monkey? Could you imagine if the world was on top of a monkey? Maybe there'd be more crazy hijinks in our daily lives if the world was on top of a monkey.

Retroacitve blogging

So, I realize other folks are not as into football as myself, so I promise this won't be the subject of many of my posts in the future. But I had to include this one because the video needed to be shared.

Amber and I usually try to go to one AU game a year. Usually not a very big game, something like Arkansas or Ole Miss. Well this past year it looked like we weren't going to any game, but Amber wanted to just look at tickets for the Iron Bowl. "Yeah right! Good luck with that!" I thought. But then she proceeded to find student tickets for around 200 on Craigslist. And as it turned out, we'd be in Gulf Shores already for Thanksgiving with Amber's family. So the stars aligned and we went to our first Iron Bowl.

We got into town early, got a good parking spot for only ten bucks, saw all the sights, did all our shopping, ate lunch, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Only thing that wasn't optimal was the fact we had to miss Tiger-Walk since we had to wait in line in front of the stadium with all the kids 3 and 1/2 hours before the game. One fella in front of us in line brought a case of beer and started dishing out free beers when they told us the line would start moving in the stadium in 20 minutes. "FREE BEER!" "Seriously?" "DEAD SERIOUS DUDE, WHO WANTS FREE BEER?" Ah, to have gone to a real college.

The game itself was great. The flyover was the lowest one I'd ever seen. We saw some Bama fans in the student section get kicked out. It was a closely contested defensive struggle the whole way through. At the end, for those of you not as into football, its customary for Auburn folks to taunt the Bama folks with their own cheer "Rammer Jammer" with slightly different words after we win. The video here is of Amber and I joining in. Keep in mind college football cheers can be a little colorful, so don't press play around the young and impressionable or the easily offended.

Blog........sounds like a Dr. Seuss word.

Well, in typical Dent family fashion, something has started with the older siblings and after a few years has now trickled down to yours truly. I don't have any hilarious childhood antics or cute pictures to share, just an old dog. So while my sisters bring you the beautiful, profound, and precious in life, I'll endeavor to give you the strange, the obscure, and the mildly amusing.

So I'll start with said dog. Tucker had a hematoma on his right ear. (You may recall he had one on the left ear about 4-5 years ago.) So I took him to another distant relative of Almer's (he seems to have a lot of those) one Dr. David Davis D.V.M. (I took all I had in me not to ask him why his mother named him David.) So, for the last two weeks Tucker's had a huge bandage on his ear that stuck out like a sore thumb. Amber and I started referring to him as our special-ed dog (no offense to your former profession Mom.) Well today we went and got the bandage taken off. Tucker didn't know how good he had it with the bandage on. It looks like a peice of meat until the hair grows back. He stills has the stitches in. I asked Dr. Davis if Tucker could conceivably scratch them out. Like a good doc, he didn't say it was impossible, just that he'd never seen it done before. I figure if any dog could do it though, old Took would be the one. But here's hoping for a speedy recovery.