If I Ever Start Another Blog ...
I'll call it "Pressed Peanut Sweepings".
Why would I ever start another blog? I can think of 3 reasons.
1. Wife finds out about this one.
2. Family finds about about this one.
3. I become some sort of public figure who is not allowed to make sometimes belligerent, immature, sexist, and funny-to-me comments.
Anyway, now that you are all here, I'll sneak in an update about life at frogurt estates.
The search for a home is becoming an epic land battle. Really. The
Visigoths had an easier time getting land from the Romans! The main problems are thus:
1. We are at the top of a lengthy upward housing market. This has caused inflated prices.
2. Interest rates are going up. This has caused an ass-load of first time home buyers to flood the market, driving up prices even further as they compete for homes in the $115-150 range.
3. Wife likes ranches, I likes Colonials. Being from Japan, she doesn't see a ranch as a small, apartment-like house, ...she sees it as a palace.
The fidget midget (baby) has done an amazing turn-around. Long-time readers will remember that she was severely undersized in the womb, failing to grow after about 8 months. This caused the doctors to do induce labor immediately and pull her out. Since then (almost 2 months) she has expanded like puffed rice. At birth she was below the 10th percentile for babies at her age. This week the doctor told us she was just OVER the 50th percentile for size. This means she is at or just above average. She grew 3 pounds in one month and now weighs a hefty 10 pounds and .5 ounces.
This week she got to experience her first round of shots. She's such a great little baby. You can really see her examining her environment, thinking, learning. She curious and expressive, ...but not especially emotional. I had the duty of holding her tiny hand as they put two needles in her left thigh and one in her right.
She was so happy laying there on the table when the first one went in. Her expression changed immediately. I expected her to cry right away, but she didn't. She was shocked, surprised. Her expression said, "this can't be happening". It reminded me of movie actors who portray being tortured. There's that horrible moment before they begin screaming where their minds try to comprehend this unprecedented pain. Their eyes wander quickly, then focus inward, sadly realizing that it really is happening to them. She had that expression, and it broke my heart.
The screaming and crying came shortly, but it was almost a relief compared to her stomach churning silence. After the needle came out she stopped crying and settled down quickly. I know she was thinking, "ok, that was bad. But it's over. I survived. It's ok." I know she was thinking this because that's what I would think and that's what her expressions told me.
The second needle went in and out and she cried more quickly, settling down more slowly afterwards. The nurse said the last one is the worst, and it was. When the third needle went in she screamed hard and loud. It took her maybe 30 seconds to calm down afterwards. You could tell the pain lingered.
The nurse also said she would maybe eat a little less in the next 48 hours and sleep a little more, which is true. The upside is that she slept through the night and we all got a nice night's sleep for once.
The wife's father is flying into town next week Sunday with his wife. They are staying for a week. I like her dad. He's generous, nice, friendly, but very serious. I'll be taking him around town a bit as he likes to go out, drink, eat, and live it up.
Lastly, I'm going to get a chance to get out of the house next week.
Crime and Judy plays at the
Cactus next Saturday. Maybe I can convince to the Doc to go out earlier and see Spiderman 2. It'll be good to tip a Newcastle at the Cactus bar with the drunks again.
I truly need it.
Friday Quiz
I don't know how this happened.
trichotillomania
What disorder do you have? brought to you by Quizilla
Most People Agree
Looks like most people agree the speech was "duddish". Some say it was not a total dud, like I do. I part of the speech that I missed was when we saluted the crowd and said something like he's reporting for duty. LAME. Wow, that flat.
Sully gets it mostly right. People like him were really giving Kerry chance to shine. They were disappointed.
Roger
feels it too.
A larger roundup
here.
The Real Mystery - The Simpson's
Kerry's still blathering, ...did you know he was going to make sure kids are ok after school? I didn't know that was the job for the President. I kinda thought, you know, that it was a parent's job. Uh oh, Vietnam reference number 3. Also, ...he's speaking too fast. He really ran through that speech fast. It's over now. Amazingly underwhelming.
Anyway, one of the
Simpson's characters will be outed as gay in the coming season. Who will it be?
People have dismissed the notion that is could be Waylon Smithers because everyone already knows he is gay. However, he has never officially "come out". So, I wouldn't overlook the possibility that it's him.
Other well-noted possibles:
Selma - Real possibility. They've already hinted at her lesbian leanings.
Chief Wiggum - Yeah, he's said some gay stuff, but I can't see it happening.
Skinner - Nah. He's had a long term relationship and was upset when Crabapple broke it off.
My suggestion - Milhouse. We all know he's gay. They've basically said as much. But would they really have a kid come out as gay? I doubt it.
Longshot - Barney Gumble. Never had a girlfriend, you know.
My guesses:
1. Smithers.
2. Selma
3. Milhouse
4. Skinner
Kerry's Speech
One word: despicable.
More words: Mostly hollow. Non-specific. Promising so much that you can tell he's not serious, he's trying to over promise to cut against his weakness.
Speech is half over and he's already brought up his military service twice.
He's gone on for a long time now sanctimoniously defending himself against criticisms he has not received. I love hearing Dems moan and whine about being called unpatriotic, ...despite the fact that they have not been called unpatriotic in the first place.
"That flag belongs to all of us." Who said it didn't?
He just said that the election is about which party cares for children. Apparantly republicans don't care about kids, ...we must all live in gingerbread houses and lure kids into our cooking pot.
Here's a great quote from him: "I will not privatize social security."
Also, he just said that families were forced to wait for their tax cut so that Enron could have a tax cut instead. A lie. All of our taxes were cut.
Now here comes the laundry list of sorrow, ...bringing up sob story after sob story ...wow what a terrible country we live in. You'd think he was describing Carter's america.
Lots of Gephart style protectionism here.
Things seem rather subdued in the hall. Kerry is dull.
I'm getting a sandwhich and getting ready to watch the Simpsons, I've seen enough. Oh boy, ...here comes the social spending promises, head start, smart start, ...all that crap that doesn't work.
Kerry presidency ...Nightmare. Trainwreck.
I wonder how this will play in Peoria.
Have You All Met Lilly?
This is Fucking Hilarious
I'm an idiot, so I take lots of quizes. They amuse me. Most are poorly designed and dumb, but this quiz, "Which Big Bunny Character are you?" cracked me the hell up!
Please take the quiz yourself. My results:
You are Sam. Stupid people like you just make my
day! You are so retarded that you will jump off
a cliff in your near future.
Which Big Bunny character are you? brought to you by Quizilla
Syrian Band Mystery Solved
Looks like it was all a
misunderstanding.
*@!#$%!(!
Due to my video card woes, I haven't been able to play Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow even though I bought it the first day it was available.
Now I hear (old news that I missed) that
Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory is well into development!
Is it time to treat myself to
this? I have a one month window before my classes start again, ...but I'm cash and asset poor right now, a condition that will remain for at least the next 20 years.
Bite the bullet now? Lowest price I can find is $193.
Well, I gotta do it sooner or later.
Pacific Assault comes out in September, the
Call of Duty expansion comes out this fall, not to mention
Brothers in Arms due later in the winter.
I don't know if GTA: San Andreas will be released for the PC or not, but if it is, I would expect it to come out in Spring of '05.
I might as well take the plunge now, ...even though I can't afford it.
Social Security
The best congressman in the country, Wisconsin's Paul Ryan has
introduced a new bill (or will introduce it soon) to change social security by allowing us to control some of our own money.
This gives people the OPTION to invest a small percentage of your social security payments in a highly controlled environment (like a 401k). Again, this is an OPTION. If you are scared of investing, you can choose not to invest and just the current bad system provide you with poor or zero results.
Ryan is in his 30's, so like me he's concerned about this issue.
Read up.
Employment in Wisconsin at it's Highest Level Ever
Yep.
More people are employed right now than ever before in Wisconsin's history.
Remember all those Democrat ads about how terrible the economy is?
Oh, they have a boilerplate answer for this, ...they're "all" low-paying, burger flipping jobs.
That's total nonsense and there is no (zero, zip, nada) data to support it. In fact, all data has shown historic increases in manufactoring jobs in Wisconsin in the last few months.
BTW, is it any suprise this story was buried in the business section on the very week that Bush came through the state talking about jobs?
Prepare to be Scared
This
horrifying account of a potential "terrorist dry run" aboard a NorthWest flight has made it's way through the blogosphere, but I urge everyone to read it (if they haven't already).
I'm not sure what I expected to read, but I did not think that the story would
literally scare me, but it did. I'm still shaken by this. It's that bad.
I won't sleep well tonight.
The hottest conservative pundit (the hottest pundit
period) Michelle Malkin,
digs into the story and is able to confirm that the major facts of the story are
accurate.
Aroused and fightened, I carry on ...
What State Are You, Red or Blue?
Find out
here.
If you don't know what that means, you ain't been paying attention!
No mystery here, I lean Red.
How Long Will You Live?
This
applet claims to be able to tell you how long you will live based on your answers to a series of lifestyle questions.
My result:
81 It's bullshit, man!
Wednesday Fun
Go
here to take a short quiz on which famous philosopher you most agree with. My results:
1. Aristotle (100%)
2. John Stuart Mill (96%)
3. Aquinas (94%)
4. David Hume (92%)
5. Kant (92%)
6. Ayn Rand (92%)
7. Jean-Paul Sartre (83%)
8. Nietzsche (79%)
9. Epicureans (76%)
10. Stoics (76%)
11. Thomas Hobbes (71%)
12. Plato (69%)
13. Prescriptivism (63%)
14. Ockham (53%)
15. Spinoza (53%)
16. Jeremy Bentham (51%)
17. Nel Noddings (43%)
18. St. Augustine (34%)
19. Cynics (31%)
For me at least, this was
not accurate.
via
the Gweilo
First Daughter
I've always thought that Barbara was the hottest first daughter we've had in recent memory. Kerry's dog-faced daughters are no match.
(
ED. they keep changing the cock-sucking link, so I've removed it. Check out the Bush twins in this month's vogue.)
In Towels
We're all in towels here, as Milwaukee has returned to it's normal "sauna" status. So, I'll just give you a brief roundup of life at the Frogurt estates.
I'm slightly pissed at Yost for pulling a Ray Rhodes on Sunday and costing the Brewers an important (for statistical and psychological reasons) game. Next time one of you readers dials up the old Ouigi board, tell Yost to "LEARN HOW TO FUCKING HANDLE A PITCHING STAFF ASSHOLE!" Thanks.
I'm slightly less pissed that it looks like I will miss out on the entire summer. The Fidgit Midgit (baby) can't really go anywhere and prefers to eat on an almost hourly basis, so it's not like we have time to go anywhere anyway. Plus, I'm taking that VB class on web which is sucking up about 6-9 hours a week. Also ...
we're looking for a home. Yes. Relocation time. We've outgrown our fashionable locale, and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the "one". The "one" being me. The many being wife, Squeak Box (baby), World's Naughtiest Dog (WND). Climbing three staircases to get into my flat was no biggie when it was just me, my beer, and my video games, ...try it with a kid and a stroller. Same deal with parking 1-2 blocks from my house because the Waukesha-transplant-asshole-firestarting neighbors don't know how to park their truck-piece of shit sedan-crotch rockets. Fuckshitters.
So, yes, a home. A big one, with spare rooms, high taxes, gun turrets, and all the latest mish-mosh. The market is tough for castles at the moment, but we're soldiering on. So eager sufficate in debt, we are.
The Midgit Monkey (baby) is squeaking and cooing her way into a personality. She's possibly left handed (if only she were a boy, I'd start teaching her to throw curves balls now), she's impatient (get's that from her mother's side), actively fights the sandman (from me), and cannot be woken from slumber unless dipped in cold water (from Mom).
The best (or worst) part is that she has my mannerisms. As a baby, child, and adult, my most common expression is the patented Frogurt synical wrinkled brow. She's got it. One of my favorite childhood pictures is of me in a BATMAN tank top, staring at the camera with a studious, slightly irritated expression, as if to say "Bite Me". She looks at everyone with that exact expression. Welcome to the family, sweetheart.
WND just ignores the Fuss Budget (baby), occasionally sniffing her in a search for food. WND is getting a little too curious about the formula bottles. Some day soon she will get a hold of one. She's a thinker, that one. If she wants a bottle of formula, I'm sure she already knows how to get it. She's just biding her time. She did the same with the diapers, sniffing the Diaper Geenie each time she entered or left the room. She can't get inside the Diaper Geenie. She knows this. So she observed and waited until one day while I was gone, the wife placed a wet diaper in the Diaper Geenie (but did not completely close the lid) and ran to the bedroom to open a new pack of diapers. Upon returning, WND already had the diaper down, open, and ripped apart. She had one opportunity to get a hold of one of those, it's no accident that she happened to be right there waiting for it.
That's all. Time to hit AC and the my half of the sack.
As always, there's a long week ahead.
...But Idiot Can be Relative
Last night the wife and I needed to go out and buy some provisions. Leaving the house around 8:45pm, we noticed some flames coming from the upper balcony on the house next door.
Our side door faces our neighbor's house. There is a nice sized yard between our house and theirs, so the flames were in clear view from my doorway.
Three guys live in that upper flat. They're all typical guys, ...baseball caps, baggy shorts, a motorcycle, a stream of identical guys coming over each evening with 6-packs, a few trucks, and no girls. I don't think a girl has ever visited their flat.
They mostly use the upper balcony for smoking (one of the bigger guys smokes every 20 minutes or so), but sometimes they cook-out up there.
I assumed the flames were from a recently started grill. If you use too much lighter fluid, the flames can jump pretty high for a few minutes before settling down. However it did seem odd to me that the fire was coming from the base of the balcony and not from a grill that would be at least 12 inches higher.
The balcony is all wood, except for the side of the house which is aluminum siding. The fire obviously had ample fuel as the flames were fat, tall, and active. They pushed through the wooden supports of the railing, spilled over the balcony base, and blasted into the aluminum siding. The center of the fire seemd to be in the corner where the side of the house, the balcony railing, and balcony base met.
As I stepped down from the porch, my wife asked if the fire was supposed to "be like that." It's one of those moments where you have a choice to make. Everything is up in the air, ...should you wait and see if the fire gets worse (signaling that is was unintentional), or should you spring into action?
Well, I could tell the fire was going to get worse, so I ran next door. My downstairs neighbors were outside looking at the fire. I guess they adopted the "wait and see" approach.
I ran over to the neighbors house and started ringing the doorbell, aware that I was standing directly below the fire. A passerby (a cogerly old man) yelled to us, "You should call the fire department." The downstairs neighbor went into her house and I yelled to her to indeed call the fire department.
I kept ringing and pounding on the door. Meanwhile, the flames started to curl under the balcony and were about to spread to the roof of the porch.
The fire was getting worse and I started to think about my flat. Would the fire consume this old house and mine along with it? Eventually one of the guys came down the stairs. I pointed up and yelled, "Your balcony is on fire!!!"
He ran back up the stairs, yelling for one of his room mates. I left the porch and joined my wife near the front porch of our house. The flames now had consumed the railing and were slowly crawling up the side of the house.
The guy came out, saw the fire, ran back inside and retrieved a small fire extinguisher. A few shots of which doused the fire. Those things really work!
The railing was still glowing like embers, so I asked my downstairs neighbor if she called the fire department. "No."
Great. So, I called 911.
"Hello. Yes, we've got a fire here, but I think they've got it under control. Maybe you should send someone over to check it out."
"You want what? You want the fire department?"
"Yes, well someone should come and make sure it out. It's looks like it's under control, but ..."
"You need to call the fire department."
"Uh, ...ok. Can't you ..."
"I'll transfer you to the police."
"Uh ..."
"Hello, Milwaukee PD."
"Hi. We've got a fire here. It's under control now but we need someone to come and take a look at it to make sure it's ok."
"A fire?"
"Yes. My neighbor's balcony was on fire."
"You need the fire department."
"Yes, I ca..."
"I'll transfer you."
"Hello, Milwaukee Fire Department."
Sigh.
I told them about it. The guys were now assembling on the porch. The railing and wall and floor were all hissing and popping and glowing. They thanked us, and were visibly shaken by the events.
I asked if it was the grill that caused it, and he told me it looked like a cigarette fell into their garbage can.
With that, the wife and I left as the fire truck blared onto our street. Men in full gear hopped out and rushed to the scene.
I took a picture of the damage this morning. I'll post it later. The landlady is gonna be pissed.
I can be such an idiot
My eyes and brain assume a lot. They are often too busy to concern themselves with details, they're big fans of just getting the "jist of it". When they should be examining something, they usually just take a glimpse of it, make a set of assumptions, and move on.
A formerly recurring example of this was my frustration at repeatedly buying the wrong shampoo.
I used to use Sauve conditioning shampoo. All the Sauve bottles look the same, except some are for dry hair, some are for normal hair, some for oily hair, and some are merely conditioner. On at least four occasions I bought the conditioner instead of buying the shampoo.
My eyes registered the general location of the shampoo bottles, but my brain never kept it's focus long enough to make sure I pulled the correct bottle from the shelf.
This just happened to me again. I wanted a Coke from the deli in my office building. I saw a can that was red and said "Coke". I took it, paid for it, walked back to my desk, opened it, poured it into a cup, and THEN noticed it was Cherry Coke.
Furthermore ...Cherry Coke sucks. It has a buttery, sweat-filled sneaker, flavor that makes you suspicious that the folks at Coke designed the Cherry Coke can to deliberately fool people like me into buying it. Once it is tasted, no one would buy it again.
