Ace is back (almost)

Yeah, I know -- I ramble on about Ace Frehley around here far too much.

However, I just had to post the above commercial for Ace’s new album, Anomaly. The album is due out on Sept. 15, and Ace was absolutely brilliant for tapping into his 1970s roots and putting out a wonderfully cheesy commercial that is reminiscent of the time.

And, by God, why shouldn’t I be excited about a new Ace album? He wrote some of KISS’ finest songs (“Parasite,” “Shock Me,” “Cold Gin” and “Rocket Ride,” to name but a few) and hasn’t released anything in a couple of decades.

So, enjoy the commercial. Appreciate Ace’s snide reference to that Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park movie and get ready to pick up an album from a true legend.

Oh, yeah. KISS is recording something new, too. Oddly, I just don’t care.

Remember, kids -- “It’s OK, Uncle Lumpy. Ace won’t let us down.”

A great, Arkansas-based moving company

Moving stinks.

When we moved back home to God’s country (Benton, Ark.) back in 2004, we rented a couple of moving vans, loaded them up and drove them down here. It was awful, but it was a cheap way to go.

When we moved to our new home across town a couple of years ago, we hired a full-fledged moving company to pack up everything and move it. That was a good way to go, but it was expensive. I also noticed that I still did a heck of a lot of packing.

I wish I would have known about something that takes the pressure of driving an unwieldy moving truck off of me but didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Sort of a middle ground, as it were.

That’s where ABF U-Pack Moving comes into play. Instead of going through the whole truck rental process, you get a cube from ABF that you load at your leisure. The trucking company then shows up, picks up the cube and hauls it to your knew home.

The cost is very nice, too, and you're dealing with a trucking company with a great reputation. ABF is based in Fort Smith, Ark., and is one of the premier less-than-truckload carriers in the nation.

The U-Pack service is a great one for people who want to economize a little bit but aren’t opposed to doing a little packing and loading. Click here and see for yourself how favorably U-Pack’s prices stack up against traditional truck rental. It’s a great program, folks.

The best of The Hawg…

Just the other day, I posted a little something acknowledging the one year anniversary of the Natural State Hawg.

I was content to leave well enough alone with that post, but that wacky Steve from The Axis of Stevil suggested I post some highlights from my one whole year of blogging.

I have decided to go ahead and do just that for at least three reasons – I’m a bit vain; I’ve got a devastating head cold right now and am medicated enough to make questionable decisions; and I’m lazy.

Yes, remember how all those sitcoms would air a “best of” episode every year? Whenever I saw those I believed them to be the result of writers who are very lazy and not afraid to admit it.

“Well, we’re under contract to do another episode, but we’re just not feeling it,” I imagined the writers saying. “Let’s go ahead and repackage some old clips and present them as something new!”

So that’s exactly what I’m doing here. You can blame that Steve fellow. Here are the very few highlights I can find, presented in no particular order:

1. That whole thing with Jeff Foxworthy. I sent Foxworthy a redneck joke last year and got mad when I heard no reply from him after pestering him through email. I got mad and posted a tantrum. Not too long after that, I received a letter and autographed photo from him.

The photo is hanging up in my living room in a cheap frame I got from Wal-Mart (and, yes, I do realize how funny that sounds). I also learned a valuable lesson about blogging – if you do something idiotic and then write passionately about it, people will visit your site.

2. Proving to the world how great rat terriers are. After this post,  who could argue against the notion that the rat terrier is the finest breed of dog on the planet? That post was – and still is – dedicated to my dog, Cobb.

3. International The Hawgmania! I learned another lesson about blogging from this post – bragging about how great you are is very funny, particularly if people think you’re serious.

4. Presidential Candidates. This post gets better with age because I was totally right. McCain and Obama both sucked as candidates – you had an old wishy-washy fellow and a man who stole his “yes we can” slogan from Bob the Builder. We’d be better off with the likes of Alton Brown, Patricia Heaton, John Elway, Mr. T or George Lopez in the White House right now.

Political posts are always great fun because I – by and large – hate the people who are running (ruining?) the country. We haven’t had a great president in this nation since Ronald Reagan and I get a kick out of mentioning that as often as possible. For extra double good fun, check out my “Hillary Clinton is a filthy, stinking liar” post. Beating up on Clintons is always fun as we Arkansans aren’t as sleazy as those rascals. Seriously.

5. Colonel The Hawg? ‘Nuff said.

6. The Benton Panthers won and I met two great bloggers. While at a Benton Panthers game, I met two Conway, Ark., residents and fellow bloggers – Paul and Laura Eilers. Nice folks, those Eilers.

7. My own holiday. Since the UN recognizes a holiday for about every damned day of the year, what’s wrong with establishing Universal Send Cash to The Hawg Day? It would give everyone the chance to dig deep and send some money and that would bring me closer to my dream of quitting my job and watching television all day.

8. How to make soccer popular in the U.S. My brother and I discussed soccer and we came up with the plan to make the sport catch on in the U.S. The key to the whole thing revolves around random and indiscriminate violence. Part 1 of our plan is here and Part 2 is here. Read them both and you, too, will be a believer.

9. Where is my boysenberry? IHOP doesn’t sell boysenberry syrup in central Arkansas. What? I’m understandably upset. So I sent the company an email and even got a response.

10. My cell phone was garbage. The thing broke because it was too flimsy to survive being thrown a few times, kicked and stomped. I hate cell phones. Absolutely hate them.

11. Avoid this shampoo. The Hawg gets a new shampoo. The Kitten goes nuts for it.

12. The Christmas Wrench. What would you do if you had to repair a sink on Christmas eve. Would you do the smart thing and borrow a wrench from a neighbor or sneak past a Wal-Mart employee trying to keep people from entering the store right before it closed? Sneaking around is fun, kids…

13. The end of Twitter? Like Twitter? Get ready for something even more obnoxious – Pretty Pink Pony! Why? Because sending tweets just isn’t sissified enough.

14. Why is Fox News hiding the truth? I love this post primarily because someone got very, very upset over it and made an idiot of himself in my comments section. Here’s the thing about politics – neither party gives a damn about folks like you and me, so going out of your way to defend any bastard politician is generally a waste of time.

15. What the hell is going on here? Sick of all those “LOL cats” photos? I am.

That’s about it. Thanks for a great year, folks. I’ll get the hang of this one of these days. I promise!

I was always rotten at algebra…

Back in school math was never my strongest subject (and that’s putting it mildly).

Over the years, I’ve learned to master the evil number through sheer focus. I lacked that focus in school, of course, and it seems to me it would have been a very good idea to have had a little help in that regard.

Some algebra 2 help would have – in retrospect – been particularly useful. Thanks to the wild, wonderful world of the Internet, finding some algebra help is much easier now that it was once upon a time.

For some free algebra help, TutorVista.com is a good place to start. The convenience of it all is sure to be much appreciated by struggling (or lazy) students and their parents. Pay the site a visit, folks.

Are you ready for Sept. 15?

So, what happens on Sept. 15? The famed Ace Frehley’s new album, Anomaly, will be released. Read this Rolling Stone interview with Ace Frehley and click the video below to see a vintage performance of “Rip it Out” (a song from the man’s first solo album). Get ready, folks!

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.

Oh, Lappy – I hardly knew ye…

Just this weekend, my work laptop – a Toshiba (hereinafter “Trashshiba”) Satellite A215 dropped dead.

Yes, the thing won’t boot at all. Our technology cat at work tells me that it’s probably a hard drive issue meaning that a lot of the data I had stored on that thing is gone. Yes, another cheap, piece of crap hard drive is all I need to get it up and running again.

Ah, that’s a shame but it’s no surprise. As I’ve ranted about before I’d prefer to have a Macintosh. However, my employers love Windows PCs and my wife has blocked my attempts to purchase one for the house (she claims they’re too expensive).

The thing I hate about Windows is this – there are an awful lot of cheap Windows PCs and notebooks out there. There are some expensive ones, too, but Microsoft has spent a lot of time and money convincing everyone that cheap hardware is just great.

That’s the entire premise of Microsoft’s latest advertising campaign, isn’t it. “Don’t get a Macintosh! This cheap piece of crap has everything you need and it runs Windows! Don’t be a sucker!”

So people get suckered into buying substandard hardware because they’re convinced it’s just dandy. Take that Trashiba of mine. I asked for a Macintosh a couple of years ago and got a cheap Windows notebook instead.

“Look at what you get for the money,” I was told. “A Macintosh is just unreasonably expensive.”

So, instead of a durable Mac I wound up with something that dropped dead after a couple of years because I had the audacity to use it regularly. Hell, I even carried the laptop around and used it as a portable computer – certainly it wasn’t designed to be mobile, was it? That's awful hard on a computer -- you know, carrying it around and all.

There’s a reason some Windows boxes are dirt cheap – they’re built with the shoddiest, crappiest components on the planet and fail in a hurry.

The truth of the matter is this – you can get certainly get a durable PC made with top notch components but it will cost about as much as a comparable Mac. Don’t think a $500 laptop can hold a candle to one that costs $2,000 one that’s running either Mac OS X or whatever flavor of Windows is popular this week.

Yes, Windows can be a good operating system – but you’ve got to be willing to buy some decent hardware and that costs money. You don’t hear Microsoft talking much about that, do you? If you take the “this computer is great because it’s cheap” argument from the company, what does Microsoft really have left?