i'm building an ark

If you use Facebook, please please PLEASE read this link. I'm tired of receiving your spam after your account gets hacked.

Usually I jot my thoughts down during the week, so by Friday you have a full week's worth of brain dump to entertain yourselves with. This week, I've really had nothing specific going on to bitch write about, so I'm stuck kinna rambling here during lunch today.

Kid1 is still working extremely part-time down at the Hole. With every week that he's not working full-time+, he's digging himself deeper and deeper. He's still got all the past-due bills from last year at school to pay before he can registration for next semester. His intention is to move into a campus apartment in July... that plan is on really shaky ground now.

I did offer to reimburse him for all of his school expenses on a pro-rated basis. Better grades = better reimbursement. I'll pick up the tab 100% if he lays down all A's & B's.

The other kids are all winding up for the end of the school year. They all had solid grades at the last report card, and we haven't heard anything recently to lower our expectations. They've got just about 3 weeks left before they're free for the summer. I miss those days a lot. I've got 3 weeks til the end of my current semester, and 4 weeks til the new semester begins.

Kid2 is taking her SATs on Saturday morning. She's playing it off like she's really not worried, but I can see the twinges of anxiousness in her eyes whenever the topic comes up. I think she's got pretty high hopes for getting in to any college she wants to, and knows that a good bit of weight rides on this test. We all know that you can take it more than once, but she's pretty aggressive and totally wants to nail it in a single shot.

The rest of the weekend is full of other famstuff. We're getting together Sunday to do family pics. We do pics with the kids annually, but it's been a while since we've had pics of the 'rents & sibs & kids & errybody. A good family friend happens to have a fantastic eye for making us goofballs appear to be a halfway normal family unit.

(If you think you're kinna funny looking too, but want really good pics, get in touch with Kerry at K & R Photography.)

After the pics, we're heading to my little bro's for a BBQ and house-warming party. He's all growed-up now, with a mortgage and a lady to keep him in line. So we're cooking burgers on his new grill on his new back deck, and probably moving furniture around for him, too.

My buddy Eddi is coming into the states for a couple weeks. If he's got the desire, he'll be an honorary goofball at the BBQ. We're not putting him in the pics though. That would lead to too many questions....

Besides that, nothing much going on around here. Except rain. Lots n lots n lots of rain. Please quit raining before the weekend. Please?


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Puppy Curling would be a heckuva lot more entertaining if you could use the broom on the pups. (Credit to Manda for sending this game forever ago.)

Blow stuff up, including your opponent, and get hidden power ups. The title says it all: Playing with Fire.

If the invisible man starred in movies, Name This Movie.

You suck at online games. Bullet Time proves it. Game over, before you even start.



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20 years later, this guy still has the biggest nads:


CrouchTards

Not all old people suck, these two can still light the fire:


Eric told me he trips old ladies at the mall, too. Just for fun.


The ladies' answer to the Jizz in My Pants guys...



(giggle)


This is not a happy ending.


Yes, it was staged. Quitcherbitchin; you know better. Think it was just coincidence that the camera zooomed in on him before the 'accident'?


I need basketball, hockey, and baseball to hurry up and be done so it can be football season again.




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things i learned while camping

Over Memorial Day weekend, we headed up to the Granite Hill Camping Reeeesort with a rack of family and friends. All told, our group numbered well over 30 people, half of which were kids, and more than a dozen tents. It was an awesome trip, with plenty of good times and adventures for every one of us.

I learned a bit on this trip; about myself, about the people with us, and about camping in general. Some of the lessons were harder than others. I figure sharing my experience might save some of you from going thru the same pain...

• A couple of my friends know a LOT more about camping than I ever will, and I'm forever grateful that they came to my rescue dozens of times over the weekend.
• There has to be some sort of mathematical formula to determine the cubic volume of how much to bring from home. I don't know the formula, but I'm pretty sure it grows exponentially every time you add another female or kid to the guest list.
• I'm really happy we brought all that stuff. For example: food and pillows.
• People live at campgrounds! Like, for permanent!
• Campground employees are not generally members of Mensa.
• Poison ivy likes me a lot more than I like poison ivy.
• Zanfel may work, but for $40 a tube, I'll just scratch.
• It's really funny to see people freaking out over little spiders, but then totally enthralled with the snake living in the tree roots next to base camp.
• Teenage girls, when separated from their daily routine, will dumb themselves down to "campgrond employee" level to get feed their addiction to flirting and attention.
• Do not play "The Washer Game" with a chick from Minnesota. If she suggests playing for money, just to make it interesting... RUN!!!!
• Cooking on charcoal tastes 100x better than cooking on gas.
• Cooking on charcoal takes 100x longer than cooking on gas.
• Surviving eighty kids singing Hannah Montana in the clubhouse at the karaoke party was one of the most challenging things I've ever attempted.
• The three hot Latinas sunbathing by the pool are not on a "girls-only camping trip".... they have husbands around somewhere.
• Kids are sticky, a fact which doesn't mix well with dirt, leaves, insects, grass, and other things that you see while camping.
• Kids generally have very weak marshmallow toasting skillz.
• Kids get a HUGE kick out of adults who will eat the burned-to-black marshmallow accidents. They also enjoy adults who will reach into the fire and eat the apple that the kid just threw into the pit.
• Ashes and splinters add texture and flavor to roasted apples after they've been pulled from the firepit.
• I can fit GlowStick bracelets through the holes in my earlobes.
• After sharing a full bottle of Jack and a half bottle of Jim, sharing a bottle of Venezuelan Rum is a very bad idea.
• Biking the hills of Pennsylvania is just a touch more difficult than biking the hills of VA. (btw - new personal max speed record on the bike: 45.1 mph!!!!)
• Campfire, beer, and a guitar combine to make everyone sing like professionals.
• When your camp-neighbors turn the lantern on inside their tent at 2am, that means they like your singing, too.
• We have the best friends. Ever.

Many thanks and much love to all of you who helped make this past weekend so much fun!

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Leslie found Waldo!

Drunken Master is neither my biography nor a Jackie Chan movie. In this instance, it's a halfway challenging bartending game.

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Good Girls - pay attention. iVillage has 10 tips you need to learn from Porn Stars. Trust me on this.

Jen (with Gordon Ramsay's help) made me cry. Gordon will swear at you, too.

A whole flock of flying dog pics! Oh, hell yes!

All "woman" should be owning this, especially woman of the etiquette! (credit withheld from submitter to avoid possible incrimination....)

10 awesome Sesame Street videos. I'm old, and I can still watch this show.

Sometimes soccer reminds me of professional wrestling:


More cartoonstuff; here are the biggest TNMT ripoffs.

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shallllllllunge!

Preamble 1 - Regarding last week's Waster, my message is not "don't be nice to bicyclists". Please, continue to be nice. Just be SMART and SAFE first, then be nice afterwards if possible.

Preamble 2 - Stop reading the Waster now. Click this link, read the letter, and share it with your friends & family.

Now on to the silliness...

(sandman simms vs bill cosby)

You get an abbreviated Waster this week... pretty much only getting what I've written over the past 7 days, and nothing more. I'm bailing out of the office in a minute to prep for the weekend.

We're heading up to Gettysburg PA for a weekend of camping with all the kids, and the dogs, and the neighbors, and the neighbors' kids & dogs. I think we've got a crew of over 30 people heading out for the weekend. I'm not sure that the Granite Hill Camping Reeeeee-Sort is ready for the circus to roll into town.

A quick update on the Kid1 drama ... He's back in town, home from school for the summer. He's living in his mom's basement. He has picked up server shifts down at the 'Hole, and he's actively searching for a day job, too. I think the realization finally set in that his money is tight.

He's got plans to go back to school in mid-July. He and his room mates from last year have a reservation for a school-owned off-campus apartment. Obviously, he's got a buttload of overdue payments that he needs to make before then. I'm hoping he can work 3-4-5 jobs for a couple months and get it done. I'm hoping he succeeds at it. We'll find out soon....

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Two quick games, which I haven't spent any time playing....

The first came recommended by Tony: Magnetic Defense.

The second is from the same site, and I just liked the name: Ball Racer. I bet mine are faster than yours.

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Even the idiots at "Cracked" think Jenny McCarthy is an idiot. (Surprisingly well written and logical, too!)

More idiots! Getting married! Little idiot spawn can't be far behind!
(no, this is not the link to tacky weddings that you've already seen 1000x. it's a collection of rather poorly-selected wedding first-dance and daddy-dance songs.)

What kind of beer tastes best? Free beer! Free is my favorite price. Friendly's Ice Cream is giving away single scoops for free on June 6 from noon-5pm! mmmmmm.....

Giggle...


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this blog is not spam

(Thanks MurderBurger!)

Today is Bike to Work Day. I don't know if it's officially NATIONAL BtW day, or if it's just something made up here in NoVA. Don't care, really. I bike to work on most other days, so I'll play along with their game today too (especially when they're giving away free breakfast and t-shirts).

Biking to work makes me feel good in a couple different ways. Between family, work, school, and socializing, I don't have a lot time left over to carve out any exercise. Biking utilizes the commuting time to squeeze in a bit of a workout without too much of an additional time investment.

I've also got about 100 chilluns, so I drive a big ol' gas sucking SUV. Biking is a way of lying to myself about how good I'm being to the environment, and making up for the truck a little bit. I'm saving the planet from all the damage that I do.

Ever since the weather has started warming up, I've been intending to write an open letter to all the nice and polite drivers in the area. Seriously. There are a few, more than you think, really. When you're biking on the street, you get exposed to a lot of 'em.

We have a major bike trail in the area, the W&OD trail. It's a well maintained, rather scenic, smooth, easily accessible, friendly sort of bike trail. It connects a number of towns around the area, so it's great for commuting, too. By necessity, it has to intersect with a lot of different roads.

These intersections are where the nice & friendly people are easy to spot. (don't stop reading now, you don't know where I'm going with this yet.)

It's the law in VA for cars to yield to pedestrians or bikes that are in a crosswalk. It's also a pretty smart thing to do, since running over somebody can ruin your day and leave scratches, hair, and blood all over your car.

It's NOT the law to stop for bikes that will be in the crosswalk sometime in the future.

DON'T EFFING STOP WHEN YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO EFFING STOP!!!!!!!

There are other cars on the road; some coming from the other direction, some driving behind you. You cannot control them. Unless you have some magic or telekinetic powers that let you stop everyone else on the road, you're just making it more dangerous. I understand, you're just trying to be nice. And I really do appreciate the thought. But you're not being safe.

Simple example, just from this morning. I'm on Crestview Rd, stopped in the turn lane, waiting to turn left onto the bike trail. The nice lady in the green minivan stops to let me go in front of her. The guy in the white pickup behind her has no idea why this minivan is stopping in the middle of the freakin' road. Car trouble? Lost? Stupid?

So he crosses the yellow line to go around this van that's blocking traffic, and winds up coming directly at me. I would have been so much safer if nice green minivan lady wasn't so nice and just drove as expected.

At most of the trail / road intersections, bicyclists have a stop sign. Van Buren even has a separate stoplight for the bike trail. Think for a minute about how 'tarded it is to stop at a green light, so the people with a red light can go ahead of you.

Next instance: Sterling Blvd. It's a 4 lane (two in each direction) highway, with traffic generally running close to 50mph. The bike trail has a stop sign; the highway does not.

At least a dozen times last summer, the nice driver stopped in the middle of the highway to let bicyclists cross. Again, I understand, and I really appreciate the gesture. You're forgetting about the OTHER lane of traffic, which is still flying past you. You're also forgetting about the people swerving to avoid your "stopped in the middle of the highway" car.

Remember, Ralphie's aunt was trying to be nice when she sent him the pink bunny pajamas, too. Don't be that nice to me, please.

(Yes, I do know that there are many many MANY bicyclists that are just as dangerous. They dno't play well with others. Most of them could do with getting clipped by a fender or two, and not too many tears would be shed over it.)

I don't believe in Peter Pan
Frankenstein or Superman
All I wanna do is....

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Puzzle, thinking, driving, reaction game: I Love Traffic!

I never make an important decision without consulting Benson first. Or the Magic 8-Ball if he's not available.

Cheers! Just like bartending, except you don't make any money and you get to go home with dry socks at the end of the night.

Parking Perfection 4(?? I don't remember 1, 2, or 3??)

Eddi and Tina sent me a winner.... This game combines strategy, coordination, breakfast meat, cruelty to animals, and odd British humour. Whoooohooooo!

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What not to wear when picking the kids up from day-care. Thanks for the advice, Mikey!


Here is a whole great big write up / discussion / argument / TMI about the portable Breathalyzers that the cops use on the side in DUI stops. (Way too much geek info here about the software coding of the devices.)

Scamming the Scammers. Every few months, I see another story on this topic. 419 scammers, who use the web to rip off stupid people and little old ladies, are the target of reverse-scamming. Whenever I finally finish my schooling, I'm spending my new-found free time on 419Eater.com. The stupid people of the world should get ripped off, but don't mess with little old ladies.

Dominic planted a seed in my head. I'm just wondering how this will affect whippets hitting the door at 20mph.


Jon found a really good, straightforward review of Absinthe varieties available in the US.

YouuuuuuuTuuuuuuube, the tripppppy alternative to watching plain ol' boring youtube videos. Watch Alice in Wonderland or play with your own favorite videos.

CraigsList wusses out.

An article for all you broke-ass guys out there... you still need to be nice to your lady, and she won't think you're a bum.

ONE MILLION DOLLARS! All you have to do is prove that you're psychic.

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slap chop redux

Ohhhhhhhhhh, Jimmy you made my effing week! Hi, this is V-v-v-v-v-ince, with SlapChop...


A few days back, my office sent out a broadcast email to the entire staff.
"HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM SWINE FLU! ! ! ! !"
The email contained about 10 rules that we all learned in pre-school. Cover your mouth. Use a tissue. Wash your hands after using the restroom.

Seriously? There are grown people in the working world who need an email reminder to wash their fcking hands?????

Math lesson:
If you've been potty-trained for 25 years, and use the restroom 5x per day, you've had 45,625 chances to fcking establish the habit.

Maybe a picture from BadAstronomy is worth a 1000 words:


Math lesson 2:
There are 1639 confirmed cases of swine flu in the US. (CDC, May 7)
The population of the US is 307,212,123. (CIA World FactBook)
Odds of winning swine flu lottery: 1 in 187,439
Odds of getting struck by lightening: 1 in 79,746 (About.com)

So you should install a lightening rod on your short-bus helmet before you go out in public wearing a doctor mask.

Other queef-tards in the news: Oprah is giving national coverage to the anti-vaxxers. Between this crap and the KFC coupon, Oprah's aiming for a higher body count than Jenny McCarthy (currently 163).

Next week, I'll have a full recap of the Kid1 college drama. Today is the last day of exams, which he is taking, and the dorms close at noon tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll get a bit of info from him soon to figure out what he's trying to do.

Sunday is Mother's Day, so we'll be running around a bit. Don't forget your momma. Remember now if you'd already forgotten. Send a card, buy her flowers, give a call, make a video, do something dammit!


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It's the Jimmy Walker of webgames! Dyn-o-mite!

I actually couldn't get this game to load on my system, but I was told it was worth trying. It's pertinent, sounds funny, and looks like it's got potential, but so did Alannah Myles. Here's DebtSki.

Pizza City... cool little driving game. Reminds me of Taxi.

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Pocket Band is playing the State Theater in Arlington tonight! They're opening, so this time they have to be on time....

Benson's first job:


The VA government prescription drug database was compromised and is being held for ransom.

I've wondered about those wolf t-shirts for a while; never quite understood. Benson shares the secret of exactly how a Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt will change your life.

Out of the whole effing music and smartphone business, is it possible that only Trent Reznor gets it? His reaction to Apple rejecting the NIN iPhone app.

Chinese CopyCars.

Failblog always delivers a smile. Breathalyzer fail:


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