Music Monday – the Pursuit of Happiness

I must officially be a curmudgeon because this is a whole lot funnier than it was 20 years ago.

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.

So, how was your 4th of July?

I think the above video pretty well sums up our holiday.

We shot off fireworks. A lot of them, in fact. Then we came in the house and the kids went nuts.

Who’s in the video? There’s my son, Michael (white shirt), my daughter Brenda (the girl in the black shirt who came in looking confused), my nephew William (green shirt), my niece Meghan (red shirt) and her friend Rachel (brown shirt – the girl who kept eating in spite of the chaos around her).

Of course the constant commentary is from my wife, Marci.

Enjoy!

Lucky kids!

The other day, I went and posted the picture over to the left as my Wordless Wednesday submission.

That’s my daughter (on the left) and one of her friends at the famed Arkansas Skatium in Little Rock. Because of economic necessity, my daughter stays at a Methodist church here in Benton during the summer as my wife and I are both stuck at work all day and no one is home to watch the little nipper.

At any rate, the church hauled the kids up to the Skatium a couple of weeks ago. I was envious as hell, of course because it’s too damned hot around here this year. It’s been pushing 100 degrees regularly over the past couple of weeks and it seemed to me that going out ice skating would be a very good thing to do in all this miserable heat.

My kid had a good time and I got to leave the office for a few minutes and get a picture of her. That’s a pretty good day.

The following week, the church was supposed to take the kids out horseback riding. Because of the heat, however, they chose to stay inside and have snow cones instead. Good choice.

My traffic joke

Folks, commuting from Benton to Little Rock to work every day is rotten. The traffic is miserable, indeed. How bad is it? Let me tell you…

So I was driving to work down I-430 and I saw this fellow walking down the side of the road. Since the traffic was just crawling along, I was able to simply roll down my window and holler at him.

“Hey, man! You need a ride?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m in a hurry.”

Heh, heh.

Wordless Wednesday – Escaping the Heat

Check out the other Wordless Wednesday participants or submit something of your own!

Yeah, this is Arkansas

One of the stories that's swept our beloved Natural State this week is one of an escaped pig that wound up in a swimming pool.

Curious? Of course you are! None other than the mighty Arkansas Democrat-Gazette covered the story and took a ton of pictures. Frankly, I’m grateful for the pig as his exploits gave us a break from the usual news of shootings and mayhem in Little Rock.

Last week, a truck full of pigs was heading to a sausage factory. The truck overturned and a bunch of pigs escaped. One 800-pound hog eluded the authorities for awhile and finally turned up in a swimming pool owned by one LeAnn Baldy.

Baldy lives in a neighborhood near the I-40/I-430 intersection close to Little Rock. The authorities apprehended the pig, but the rascal gave them a good chase for a few days at least. Good for him.

Here in Arkansas, it seems that critters are routinely ending up in swimming pool. I well remember an incident at a country club in Marianna, Ark., when I was five-years-old.

My parents had just taken jobs with the school district over there. Mom was a district psychologist and dad was the superintendent of curriculum. They got paid very well to go to work in that town and one of the perks of the job was that they were members of the country club there.

We were in the pool at the country club one day when someone pulled up in his pickup truck, opened the tailgate and tossed his Labrador retriever in the pool.

Now, the strange thing about that was that this was the mid-1970s and Marianna is in the Delta. In other words, those folks didn’t fully grasp the fact that the War Between the States had ended and the South lost. They didn’t allow blacks in that country club, but they laughed it up when someone threw a dog in the pool?

Thank God that struck me as odd way on back in 1974.

Years later, I still feel cheated

A few years ago, my wife and I took one of our cats to the vet.

The veterinarian gave us this card which was proof of our membership in Cats of the Revolution. I was excited, thinking that card would guarantee me an army of angry cats I could deploy against my hated enemies.

With such an army I could – dare I say it – rule the world. Yes, supporting the Revolution clearly meant I was on my way to violently grabbing some real power.

Sadly, I was wrong. I flipped over the card and read the Solemn Pledge that supporters of the Revolution are to take:

“I hereby swear that I shall uphold the tenets of the Revolution. I shall always keep my cat protected from the indignities of parasitic invasion. I shall bring said cat to the veterinarian regularly and will continue to do so all the days of our lives together.”

So I signed the pledge and stuck the card in my wallet. It’s stayed there over the past couple of years and I found it again today when I was fishing for something else.

I paid a visit to the Cats of the Revolution Internet site, played a game in which I helped a cat avoid parasites and couldn’t help but wonder about a couple of things. We have purchased flea collars for our cats and take them to the vet at least once a year.

But is that enough? Are we still active supporters of the Revolution? What do those cats hope to achieve through their Revolution? If I am a more effective proponent of that Revolution, will I still get the coveted army of cats to use against my enemies?

A more important question is this – why do I keep junk like that in my wallet, anyway? I really don’t have a good answer to that one.

Baby proof that house

Back when I was just a little The Hawg, I burned the heck out of myself on a furnace.

How? I was learning to walk and I pulled up on it. My mom tells me that was a scary event – almost as bad as the time I shut myself in a refrigerator when mom was cleaning it out.

Here’s the thing – infants and toddlers can get hurt easily. So, baby proofing a home is important, right? To protect the little critters, then, items such as baby gates and cabinet locks are important.

You can find out about such safety items and even take a look at a blog about child safety over at KidSafe. Pay that site a visit, huh?

Music Monday – Wall of Voodoo

Just the thing for a Monday morning. Enjoy!

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.

More proof that The Hawg is great

I had this great idea for Father’s Day this year.

My son is out of town visiting my wife’s family, but I figured I could still have a good time with my daughter and my wife on the holiday, right? I told them that it would be dandy fun if they took 30 minutes or so to simply tell me how great I am.

Strangely, they refused to do that. Oh well.

At least Windy over at Windmill on the Hill thinks I’m great and has presented me with the “Over the Top” award (great content over there and the layout absolutely puts my little blog to shame – click that link up there and go visit).

I appreciate the award, certainly. I’m terrible at passing these on, however. So, I’ll leave it at this – if you also think The Hawg is great and you own a blog, grab a copy of this award for your very own. Anyone who will acknowledge my greatness is obviously someone of taste and sophistication and deserves an award.

A cold day in hell?

I have absolutely hated Microsoft for years.

Specifically, I’ve hated that company ever since I got a copy of DOS 4.0 and thought it broke my computer. Yes, that operating system made my computer lock up regularly and that was unusual back then.

I hate Microsoft for Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows 98. I avoided Windows ME and was stunned when Windows XP turned out to be a solid OS.

I hate the fact that everything in the world is compatible with Microsoft so you feel like an oddball if you’re using something else. I hate the fact my wife blocked my attempts to buy a Mac. I’ve wished that company nothing but ill for about two decades now.

So, when Microsoft does something right – well, that’s worth mentioning. Folks, Windows Live Writer is a heck of a program. It’s free, fast, small and makes blogging a whole lot easier.

I’m using it to deal with this post, in fact, and I love it. What is it? Simply put, it’s a word processor that is dedicated to blogging and it’s far easier to use than the text editors that are built into blogs.

To set up my Windows Live Writer, I simply gave it my blog address and password. The program is now tailored to work with Blogger and I was up and running within seconds after installing Live Writer. And I don’t have to deal with weird things like junk code and such popping up here and there (a problem with more than a few Internet-based text editors). Furthermore, I can simply save a post and get back to it later through Live Writer, pull posts directly from my blog and fool with them through the program and do all sorts of neat things.

One of my favorite features is the photo editing one which allows the user to throw all kinds of effects on a photo (“color pop” and “tilt” are my favorites, and I’ll get around to using that sepia filter one of these days).

While there are some great features that come standard with Live Writer, there’s also a “plug-in” option that allows for some heavy customization of the program. Microsoft maintains a site full of plug-ins and there’s an active community coming up with all kinds of handy stuff.

Every now and again it seems Microsoft can get something right. That’s good to know.

Not surprisingly, that’s my kid…

For my Wordless Wednesday entry yesterday, I posted the dandy photo just off to the left.

That’s a photo of the Benton Maniacs – a softball team to which my daughter, Brenda, proudly belonged.

Yes, those seven and eight-year-old girls had a tough time of it this year. They won two games this season and one of those was by forfeit.

This photo was taken right before their final game of the season. Obviously, the win-loss record didn’t get their spirits down. That’s a good thing.

The photographer told them to “act silly,” perhaps as an attempt to relax the kids. The resulting photo is my favorite one of the lot.

My kid, by the way, is the oddball wearing the wrong jersey. That kind of thing happens when you give kids two different uniforms – invariably, there will be one child who will wear the wrong one. Of course, my girl turned out to be “that kid” on picture day.

Oh, yeah.

Anyway, the odds were stacked against the Maniacs this season. A softball team, see, has 10 players on it. The Maniacs’ roster had but 10 girls on it, meaning there were no substitutes available. The Maniacs wound up fielding eight or nine players more often than not, so their record should really come as no surprise.

At any rate, the children had a good time this year and that’s what counts, right?

This entry is part of the Tell Me Thursday event – a project that I think is a great idea.

Wordless Wednesday -- those wacky Maniacs!

Be sure to view the other Wordless Wednesday entries (or submit something of your own).

Music Monday -- the Beatles

Ah, "Strawberry Fields Forever." One of my favorites of all time. Enjoy!

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.

The Hawg makes a wise purchase...

My wife tells me I've got too many video game systems around here, so I bravely defied her and bought another one off of eBay tonight.

I couldn't help it.

Let me explain. I've got an Atari 2600, an Atari 7800, a Nintendo Enterainment System (NES), a Sega Genesis, a Sony Playstation, a Nintendo 64, a Sega Dreamcast, a Nintendo Game Cube and a Nintendo Wii around here. A few years ago, I sold my Magnavox Odyssey 2 (because it wasn't that great) and my ColecoVision blew up. I also got rid of an Atari Jaguar because it is the Chrysler Sebring of the gaming world. As for handhelds, I've got an Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear and Nintendo Game Boy SP.

With all that and the tons of games stored all over the place, why would I go out and buy another system? That's kind of complicated.

Not too long ago, our beloved 29" RCA television gave up the ghost. We've got to replace it and we're getting one of those huge, HDTV things in the next week or two. I thought the NES would look great on it, but there's a problem there.

As any NES fan knows, the original, front loading systems are problematic when they get older -- that 72-pin monstrosity that curves all over the place just plain goes bad after a time. A few years ago, I picked up a much more reliable top loader unit, but there is a problem with that system in that it has no RCA plugs. You've got to rely on that weird RF box to connect the thing to a television set and I'm afraid it would look absolutely horrible on a huge screen. If it doesn't look to great on an old 29" television, how bad will it be on a large high definition set?

So, I went out and bought the beautiful red and gold system pictured above -- the Retro Duo. Believe it or not, that thing has S-Video outputs and (I'm told) can play both NES and SNES games and use all those cool SNES controllers. So I plunked down $45 on eBay and got one tonight. I'll have flawless video and the reviews on it make me hopeful I can play SNES and Super Famicon games as well as my existing NES library. Not bad, huh?

Hey, there's not much I can do for the old Ataris and my trusty Sega Genesis has RCA plugs built it. And, of course, there are no connectivity issues with the newer systems I own. I figure replacing my old top loader NES with the Retro Duo was a good move.

It's too bad my wife doesn't agree. We'll see what she thinks when we're playing Super Mario Kart or she's zipping through a Zelda adventure, huh?

Of course, I'll post up a full review of the thing once it comes in. I can hardly wait.

Little Rock's best kept secret and turning 40-years-old

Since I live in scenic Benton, Ark., and commute about 20 miles a day to get to work in Little Rock, I wind up going out for lunch quite a bit.

My friend Dave and I head to a spot called the Chinese Kitchen at 11401 N. Rodney Parham Road quite a bit. We love the heck out of it as it's both inexpensive and tasty as can be.

Just today, I got pepper steak with an egg roll (a darn good one if you like that type of thing) and some of the best fried rice on the planet (just a little egg, soy sauce and pork -- nothing weird). Throw in a root beer and my bill came to $5.48. Outstanding.

I've never had anything bad there, in fact. The portions are plentiful, the ingredients are fresh and you just can't beat the place if you're interested in some Chinese food for lunch (or whenever else).

There are only a few drawbacks to the place, really. The lunch menu could stand to be a little larger and they make a very good catfish fillet (seriously!) but don't provide lemon for it. Also, the restaurant is very small as it seems to be mostly geared for takeaway orders (we've never had a problem finding a table, though). Finally, the restaurant is closed on Monday and that's thrown us for a loop at least twice.

There are a few places off the beaten path in Little Rock that are well worth discovering. The Chinese Kitchen is one of them.

Turning 40-years-old sucks

As I whined about last week, my 40th birthday was on June 16. I'm not happy about it one bit.

Luckily, I made it home on the afternoon of my birthday from some out-of-town meetings. The kids are gone (my son is in northwest Arkansas visiting my wife's family and my daughter is at a Girl Scout camp) so we'll have the place to ourselves until Friday afternoon.

That's pretty nice, actually. We've not been able to do things like finish conversations with each other for years.

Hanging out with my wife without a child running past and making racket every few minutes has certainly taken the edge off of officially hitting middle age. Don't get me wrong -- having the kids back in the house will be great. Regardless, I'm enjoying the quiet.

And that's when...

Take a good look at the above photo as it's very important.

That was made by my friend Dave for two reasons. He obviously hates Halle Barry (I'm not sure why). But Dave put that photo together to illustrate a concept we came up with a couple of years ago.

Back then, there was this fellow who was found in a bush outside of a hotel. He got extremely drunk and was discovered crying and covered in his own vomit. He had also managed to pee his pants.

So we developed a phrase to describe the exact point where an individual experiences the most intense personal humiliation imaginable -- "That's when he pissed himself."

Yeah, it's great stuff. Think about this example. There was a prosecuting attorney a few years ago who liked to cavort with female prisoners. He was caught in the act with one.

What happened next? He lost his job, his wife left him and his career was over. So the exact moment when he was caught with the prisoner is the one that marked the beginning of the period where he lost everything.

That's when he pissed himself.

Remember Gary Hart? It looked like he might have a shot at the presidency in 1988 until he was caught with Donna Rice. Henceforth, he will be known as the guy who was caught with Rice and is politically dead as Geraldine Ferraro.

That's when he pissed himself.

You see? That's one powerful phrase there, isn't it? I hope it catches on and is trotted out whenever someone engages in activity that is so humiliating there's just no other good way to describe it.

Little Rock -- not even the ice cream man is safe

While murder and mayhem has become commonplace in Little Rock, a story from this weekend was shocking enough for even people used to the city's skyrocketing crime rate to take notice.

It seems a couple of teenage thugs decided to shoot an ice cream vendor on Saturday. It seems 23-year-old Holly Crain had the audacity to try to make a living by selling ice cream in southwest Little Rock when a couple of punks hot her inside her ice cream van.

Crain, fortunately, appears to be recovering just fine. She told the cops a couple of toughs demanded money from her while she was on the job. She handed it over and then was shot by one of the grateful kids. Two 16-year-olds connected to the shooting have been nabbed and charged with robbery, theft and attempted murder.

Folks, that whole story is just pitiful and stands as more proof at what a filthy cesspool our capitol city has become. Not even an ice cream vendor is safe in Little Rock these days? What the hell is going on in that city, anyway?

I've become used to hearing about shootings in Little Rock. The fact an ice cream vendor was shot strikes me as particularly pitiful, however. Perhaps the ice cream salesmen should consider purchasing some heavy armor and armed escorts.

Actually, this month has been fairly atypical for Little Rock so far. Sure, we're used to turning on the evening news here in central Arkansas and hearing about the latest shootings in Little Rock, but the ice cream incident was unusual. One that was downright detestable happened last week when two soldiers were shot outside an Army recruitment center in west Little Rock.

In that incident, one soldier -- Quinton Ezeagwula -- survived while the other one -- 23-year-old William Long of Conway, Ark. -- did not. The shooter, 23-year-old Carlos Bledsoe, has been caught and charged in connection with the shooting.

It turns out that shooter was born Carlos Bledsoe but changed his name to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. He's a Little Rock resident and a Muslim with a chip on his shoulder. Neither one of those facts is particularly surprising.

"I wouldn't live in Little Rock if you gave it to me," my grandfather once said.

I do believe he was right. My family is from Benton, which is located about 20 miles southwest of Little Rock. I live in Benton, too, but work in Little Rock like over half the workforce here in Saline County (seriously -- the Benton Chamber of Commerce has stats to back up that statement).

Back around 1981, Saline County lost its major employers when Alcoa and Reynolds packed up and left the area. Nothing has emerged to replace the jobs that were lost back then so a lot of us head to Little Rock to work.

Meanwhile, plenty of Little Rock residents who have gotten sick of the crime and nastiness of Little Rock have fled to Benton and Bryant in Saline County, Cabot in Lonoke County and Conway in Faulkner County. It is the hope of a lot of residents in Saline County and other areas that have grown due in part to the exodus from Little Rock that we'll attract some employers as populations grow.

That would suit me just fine. I'm sick of the commute and it would appear that you never know when someone in Little Rock will show up waving a gun around and shooting people. Just this month, we've had a couple of soldiers shot while standing outside of a recruitment center and an ice cream vendor shot for (apparently) the sheer hell of it.

Over the past 10 months, we've also had the chairman of the Arkansas Democrat Party shot dead in his office in Little Rock, a television reporter killed in her bed in the Heights (one of the better areas of town) and a bunch of diners at two Waffle Houses terrified as those stores were robbed at gunpoint within minutes of each other. Actually, that was kind of a funny story -- the crook stopped to demand a sandwich while he was robbing the Waffle House on West Markham and got shot in the butt by the cops when he ran out of the restaurant.

Of course, you've had a lot of people get shot and killed over the past 12 months in Little Rock. It's hard to keep up with them all because shooting happen about as frequently as the weather changes in that town.

At any rate, granddad was right. Little Rock isn't worth a damn.

You, too, can cuss like Ty Cobb!

A few months ago, I promised to either come up with a new interjection or revive an old one as my gift to the world on my 40th birthday.

At long last, I'm ready to reveal the results of months of intensive research and thought. I should first mention that I'm unleashing this interjection on the world a bit early -- my 40th birthday is June 16, but I'll be out of town on business that day so I doubt I'll be blogging much on my actual birthday.

So, what's my new interjection? I've borrowed from one of baseball's greatest players, Ty Cobb, that hasn't been used in some time -- fee simple.

Yeah! That's one that you can really get a hold of and spit at people. For example:

That Ty Cobb was one fee simple son of a bitch!

Out of town and working on my birthday? Those fee simple bastards!

Oh, yeah! That Ty Cobb was a complete mess, but he knew how to cuss and his "fee simple" modifier just makes any obscenity or interjection infinitely more vile. Of course, one question must be answered -- what does it mean?

I appreciate the modifier because of my legal background, see. Let's say I own a fee simple estate in a plot of land. That means I own it absolutely and my claim to it is superior to any other.

So, let's say I call someone a fee simple bastard. I am claiming, then, that individual owns the title of bastard and that all others who are called bastards are mere pikers compared to the "fee simple" one. That particular individual is a Bastard (note the capital B) in a world full of bastards.

Besides, phrases such as "fee simple bastard" and "fee simple son of a bitch" are just fun to spit at people through clenched teeth.

So, there it is. And, by the way, contemplating turning 40-years-old is a fee simple bitch. What a fee simple suck-ass age. Damn.

The filthy truth behind M&M's

There are some things in this world that just bug the hell out of me.

One of those things is how cheap, nasty milk chocolate simply dominates the desert and candy industries. That garbage has only grown in popularity since I was a kid and it appears that no end is in site. I well remember a few years ago when my wife made a beautiful cheesecake and then dumped filthy, disgusting chocolate all over it.

I could have cried. I might have cried, in fact.

At any rate, the most vile invention in the already evil chocolate world is M&M's. That slop is the Chicken McNuggets of the chocolate world -- candy made with the cheapest crap available but one that has thrived thanks to an insidious marketing campaign.

Ah, but there's a nasty little secret to M&M's -- that particularly anti-American and environmentally unsound candy was originally developed by the Nazis. Yes, the Mars Company folks (those filthy dogs!) like to claim that stuff was made available to U.S. soldiers in World War II.

That's partially true. M&M's were developed by Hitler's Germany for the express purpose of crushing the morale of American troops. Thanks to a handy tool over at the Mars (those filthy dogs!) Internet site, I was able to design some custom M&M's so that they appear exactly as they did when Hitler and his boys were flinging them at our troops.

Yeah, that's right. Those horrible things were tossed at hungry American troops and bore such messages as "Sieg Hiel!" and "Hitler is great." Go ahead and take a look at the authentic reproductions of the original M&M's at the top of this post. The folks at Mars (those filthy dogs!) should be ashamed of themselves for participating in such madness and actively attempting to undermine the Allies.

We all know that little Forrest Mars got in a spat with his daddy and sulked around Europe prior to World War II, right? The folks at Mars (those filthy dogs!) will tell you that Forrest came up with the Mars Bar and M&M's while he was throwing his hissy fit and he put those in production when he came back to the U.S.

That story is only half true. What was Forrest really doing in Europe? He was working on a candy bomb for the Nazis -- a treat that would explode when broken with a tooth and wipe out platoons of soldiers. We are somewhat fortunate that Forrest scrapped his candy bomb plans and fell back on simply making his evil, awful and nauseating M&M's.

He failed to make a candy bomb, so he went for the next best thing -- a piece of low-grade chocolate covered by the same candy shell that graces Drixoral tablets. The hard shell was essential, see, because it was durable enough so that the Nazis could stamp their propaganda directly on it.

Yeah, go ahead and call me crazy. However, just remember this -- whenever you eat an M&M, you're enjoying a treat that was developed by the Nazis. Don't fall for slick marketing campaigns featuring "cute" pieces of talking candy. Put down those M&M's and pick up a good, American treat instead.

Will Conan suffer the same fate as Leno?

Conan O'Brien, at long last, made his debut Monday as the new host of The Tonight Show.

I was glad to see Jay Leno go, but I can't help but wonder if O'Brien will suffer the former host's fate. Years ago, Leno was a rising young comedian who was an absolute hoot.

Ah, but he took over The Tonight Show from Johnny Carson and became, well, boring. His hyperactivity and unpredictability was toned down and the man became annoying conservative in his approach -- Leno went from a unique comedian to a man who seemed petrified of taking any chances. Leno, upon taking over from Carson, immediately became predictable, trite and more than a bit boring.

Well, Leno's gone and along comes O'Brien. An irreverent fellow who thrived on the absurd and making fun of himself at any given opportunity. Some of the old Conan was present during his Tonight Show debut, but there was something else there, too -- everything just felt, well, so scripted.

When O'Brien hosted Late Night, the whole thing was a mess. Yes, it was a lot of fun, but it was a sloppy mess, nonetheless. Things rarely felt so "scripted," you know? That same feel just wasn't present on Monday night. Yes, the show kicked off with O'Brien making a "to do" list of things to do prior to taking over for Leno. Ah, but wait! He forgot to move to Los Angeles, so we had that play out for a bit prior to Conan's arrival and blah, blah, blah. It seemed just too slick, too well rehearsed. So unlike an O'Brien skit, in fact.

You had to be watching to get the full impact, of course. Oh well.

What was disturbing and can be described is that drummer Max Weinburg -- the man who's banter with Conan was always a highlight of the old show -- was pushed to the background. Andy Richter was back in the fold (he was with O'Brien during the early days of Late Night,) but he was shoved in the background, too. That left us with just O'Brien -- a man who's funny as hell but does need some lackeys to bounce things off of from time to time. Those lackeys were pushed to the background, and that just made things less (seemingly, of course) spontaneous.

At least Pearl Jam showed up and kicked ass.

Hopefully, O'Brien will get more comfortable in his role as host of The Tonight Show and get back to his old shenanigans. I sure hope so. Otherwise, late night on NBC will be pretty much pointless. Jimmy Fallon is busily wrecking O'Brien's old show, so I at least hope Conan returns to form on The Tonight Show.

We'll just have to see, huh?