What the...? If We Can't Laugh at Stupid People, then Who Can We Laugh At?

This is freaking awesome! I just have some questions. Is being a closeted homosexual worth all this trouble? Isn't it easier to just let your freak flag fly? While open homosexuality will most certainly make it more difficult to get elected to the United States Senate in Idaho, isn't getting busted by a cop whose job it is to stake out public men's bathrooms for rampant, random, booty calls a much bigger humiliation? I can only imagine the touchdown dance the arresting officer did when he found out he'd bagged a US senator. This is even better than getting to tell a busted John that the hooker he was with is really a dude. What makes this even better is that Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) is acting like this is all some huge misunderstanding, even though he's already pleaded guilty. Sure you're not a homosexual, Senator. Why is he trying to pick up men in a public bathroom in Minnesota; why not New York or L.A.? I'm sure he's more likely to find Jai or Perci in a big coastal city, while he's more likely to find Sven or Olaf in the Midwest -- and it's not cold enough yet for them to swing that way.



Equally as freaking awesome is Travis Henry, Denver Broncos running back. He has fathered NINE children with NINE women in four states. He's 28 years old. Wow! Feel free to mix in a prophylactic at any point, or better yet a vasectomy. What's even funnier is that he's a pot smoker(I thought pot was supposed to lower sperm count) and not that good so he doesn't even make the crazy bank one might expect for an NFL player. Idiot

Settle Down Beavis

I just finished rereading Monday's post. What the hell was that? I get kind of worked up. I blame my father. While he is the greatest man I have ever known, he has a tendency to overreact. It looks like it's genetic. 29 days a month Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and hippies don't occupy a bunch of space in my brain. Monday must have been day 30, which is strange because we are in the middle of August and football is starting. I'm addicted to football, and even if there was a 12 stepper I wouldn't be interested. Last weekend I was watching a replay of the Seminoles and the Gators from 1993, and I was getting upset at the play calling. The game ended almost 14 years ago. I know how it ended. It wasn't close. I know that my team not only won the game, but went on to win the national championship that year. Charlie Ward won the Heisman. Warrick Dunn was a freshman sensation. Bobby Bowden was lucid, that's how long ago it was. Yet I was standing in the middle of my living room holding my baby girl and screaming at the television. I couldn't help it. What made me happy is that LMJ didn't get upset. Normally, if I get loud she gets scared. She cries when I cough. She cries when I shout her mother's name across the house. But watching a football game, my yelling didn't bother her. She was empathizing, and she was grateful because I could verbalize what she couldn't. At three months she understands a basic truth: you don't ask a quarterback with an average arm to make plays requiring a big time arm. Charlie Ward's strengths were his cool demeanor and his mobility, not his rocket arm. LMJ is going to be all right. When she's playing touch football in kindergarten she'll know how to find and point out the mike backer. She'll know she can go deep against cover 3 and to get rid of the ball against cover zero. I'm not sure but I think I started this post about my overreactions.

WARNING: Extreme Politcal Views

I’m once again bored to the brink of suicide on a conference call listening to some idiot tell me how his variable annuity is so much better than anything in the history of the universe. I figure this is a good time to write something, at least that’s what the Bible tells me to do – And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them. When thou art beseeched by the inanities of wicked men, and their ridiculously overpriced variable wares, despair not. Ye shall instead update thine blog, even of the internet, and of the World Wide Web (Leviticus 4:20-21). I don’t have any type of bovine let alone a fatted calf, so I’m going to burn some Styrofoam coolers full of Aquanet cans in a plastic bag.

I’m sick of the anthropocentric tree huggers. If we burn all the fossil fuels, and cut down all of the trees the Earth will still spin on its axis as it continues to hurtle through space; we just won’t be here to see it. So? Even if our self-destruction takes every other form of life on the planet with us – and I seriously doubt we can finish off cockroaches – Gaea still has the option to start all over. I tend to believe that Agent Smith had it right in The Matrix; we’re not really primates, we’re a virus. I don’t have anything against conservation or self-preservation, but Al Gore makes me want to vomit, so does patchouli, and I’m more than willing to destroy the planet out of spite. Every time I see Al Gore I get closer and closer to writing in Dick Cheney for President in ’08. I don’t know much about his politics but he’s from Nebraska, so how bad can he be? Warren Buffett, Bob Gibson, and Johnny Carson are all from Nebraska. I’m pro-conservation, but for my own cheap and lazy bastard reasons. I use a tank of gasoline once every 40 to 50 days. I drink water out of two plastic cups, one I got in 1994, the other I got in 1995. I use one coffee mug that I may or may not wash. I’m not opposed to left leaning politics; I grew up in a house full of them. But if we’re going to go left then let’s go left. Let’s go Lenin left, let’s go Mao left, let’s go Guevara left, let’s go Sandy Freakin’ Koufax left (the greatest lefty in the history of baseball, and I do not want to hear anything about Warren Spahn). Otherwise, shut your mouth and get back to me when you grow a set. I have a huge problem with political groups/zealots that try to tell me that they invariably have a better understanding of what’s going on than I do: both sides of the abortion issue, both sides of the gun issue, evangelical Christians, Islamists, environmentalists, newspaper columnists without a sense of humor, and sports talk radio hosts. Maybe I should stop reading the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and just get my news from John Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Diane Rehm for President

Wise Words Being Written

3 month old babies aren't too concerned about what other people might be interested in. They're a little bit self centered. If they don't get what they want immediately they are not shy about voicing their displeasure. I've heard this rumor for years from parents, but I never thought much about it until LMJ showed up bulk mail -- it took almost 9 months. An infant's glaring lack of patience, however, appears to be more than a rumor. I'd call it a hard and fast rule -- a constant if you will -- like gravity and the speed of light. MJ went back to school this week, and I began sharing daycare duties with CJ. She has LMJ Monday, Tuesday, and half of Wednesday, and I have her Wednesday afternoon, Thursday and Friday. I made the mistake of imagining that I could get some work done while LMJ slept. Fortunately, she was nice enough to show me the error of my ways by forcing me to carry her around like a wet lump while she slept. She wouldn't sleep in her crib, her basinet, her bouncy chair, her swing, on her favorite blanket in our bed, on her favorite blanket on the floor; she would only sleep in my arms. Still, a grumpy day with LMJ is better than a great day at work.

Basketball Is for Young People

I didn't run today. The heat index was reported in Kelvin. I remember a Battlestar Galactica TOS episode where they were on a planet that was so cold its atmosphere liquefied at night. The fact that this can't happen doesn't matter. There was a Cylon super laser that needed to be destroyed. Anyway, today was the exact opposite of that. I blew out an air cushion in my Nike's so I played basketball instead of running. If I set an 8 minute mile pace, and I'm motivated, I can run all day. I used to be able to step onto the basketball court and bust people up from sunrise to sunset, not anymore. I'm in better cardiovascular shape than I've been since the early '90's, but the ridiculous histrionics my muscles and joints need to go thorough before they're ready to help me brutalize some fool on the hardwood/concrete make me want to cry. I feel like Al Bundy. I feel like Rico Dynamite. I'm living too much in '89, when trying to guard me would result in as close an approximation of prison love as one is likely to find outside a maximum security facility. '07 LJ has to warm up so he can stretch so he can warm up. It's an embarrassing display I used to watch with confusion and contempt for those wincing, groaning, and holding up the game. Now I am that guy. I shoot jump shots instead of taking it to the rim. I box out and use my body to rebound instead of skying over the weak. I don't push the ball up the court on the fast break. Hell, I can't remember the last time I played an actual full court game. I really do not like being the wily, crafty veteran. I much preferred being the rookie sensation. Maybe getting old is better than the alternative, but not by much on the basketball court.

Randomosity

I'm thinking about legal action against Mom101. She wrote a piece about the random censorship in a showing of Grease on TV, and negligently got the song "Summer Lovin" stuck in my head. I'm letting the sticking of "Greased Lightning" slide, but I can't overlook the ridiculous duet. It's difficult enough for me to maintain my image as a thug-ass-gangsta now that LMJ has turned me into an Alan Alda/James Taylor caricature. I'm basically Wayne Brady. But that doesn't excuse Mom101's wanton disregard for the nature of my thugitude and the adverse effect of showtunes on said. I have to sue. It's the American way.

It's frickin hot. The thermometer in the '97 Ford Explorer POS says it's 101 degrees. All this leads to is an increase in bad words falling out of my mouth. I have an appointment this afternoon, and I'm really wishing I had made them come to me. The AC in my office is world class.

I ran this morning, 6 miles. I'm determined to get in what I consider good shape. I still plan on finishing the River Run in under an hour. I ran the first three miles -- down to the Jacksonville Landing -- in 23 minutes and change. I ran(read: hobbled trying not to burst into tears) back in
49 minutes and change. My legs hurt. My knees hurt. Strangely, my feet don't hurt. I'm looking forward to doing it again tomorrow.

I Didn't Die. That's an Accomplishment, Isn't It?

I ran in something called the Tour de Pain over the weekend. It was a trilogy of races beginning with a 4-miler on the beach Friday night, followed by a 5k Saturday morning, and finishing with a 1 mile “sprint” Saturday afternoon. Running sucks. You know how you can tell? Your body tells you so constantly while you run. The run on the beach seems romantic until you realize a mile is a really long way. The beach race was two miles straight out and two miles back. The second mile marker is over the horizon from the starting line. During the third mile I thought they must have shut down the mile 3 marker because the one I was staring at had to be the finish line. I had been running for at least ten thousand years since I made the turn at the mile 2 marker, surely I had gone more than a mile. I guess not, because as I passed the marker – marked by Satan himself with a 3 – the mile 4 marker appeared as a tiny blip on the event horizon of the newly repaired Hubble telescope feed I was getting from JSG’s phone. I finished the race fourth from the bottom of my age group, which doesn’t bother me as much as not being able to catch the short fat chick fifty yards in front of me. I was weak; she was strong. If we were in Japan I would have had to kill myself. But if we were in Japan I wouldn’t be able to gorge myself on cheeseburgers. I’d have to live on rice and fish, so I would be in better shape. It’s the corporate farms’ fault. We got home around 10 o’clock and nine and a half hours later I started the 5k in Baymeadows. It was an uneventful race with the upside of me finishing fifth from the bottom in my age group, up from fourth. The 1-miler, run at 4:30 in the afternoon in Jacksonville, in August, on concrete, surrounded by more concrete, was the worst. I thought it would be the best. This was the first race I’ve run since I started racing last sping that actually felt like a race. No points would be given just for finishing. My time would actually be scrutinized. It was great. I hadn’t felt like this since competing in high school. Then the gun sounded and I took off. I’m faster than all of these jackasses – up to about a ¼ mile. I’m like a top fuel dragster. Unfortunately, I’m like a top fuel dragster that has to finish a mile. My lungs finished in about a minute and a half. I ran the last 2/3 of the race on spite, pride, and hatred. I finished the race in an almost respectable 7min15sec. I did rise in my group rankings far enough from the bottom that it was impractical to know how far from the bottom I was. I’m happy to have finished solidly in the middle of the pack, which is the dream of every fat, old, out-of-shape athlete trying not to die.

Finally, A Program I'm With

Where do I sign up?