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.