For anyone who'd like to follow along...

Here's our baby's website.

It's weird. I have an 18 year old daughter who I adore and have thoroughly enjoyed raising... and until a year or so ago, had decided I was finished with children. Honestly, it only took finding someone like Emily to change my mind. Not that she lobbied to change it, but the idea of being a parent with such an amazing person just blew my mind. Not to be sappy, but we connect on a level I've never reached with another person before.

So we decided it was time.

Now, I am in preparation mode. I'm getting my office remodeled and in order. We're getting the garage and baby's room cleaned out, things put into storage and our lives generally organized. It's really fun! I needed this renewed energy and direction right now. It has motivated me both personally and professionally.

Life is pretty sweet!

No words necessary... we're ecstatic!

Comment-airy

Barry Bombs is one HR away from tying Hank's home-run total. He will then set a new record, I'm sure.

So f-in' what?

Barry Bonds is a cheat. So was Mark McGwire and a litany of other players who "juiced." (or currently juice) This is a non-event, and the more press it gets, the more troubled I get.

I think he should be recognized with a standing ovation when it happens (in the event he really DID set the record honorably and honestly) and that's it. He deserves no more, no less.

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"Aquafina... from some of the finest bathtub spigots in Milwaukee!" (How do you like my new slogan idea?)

It was revealed this week that Pepsi has been selling customers bottled water from "public water sources."

Shocking!

Americans, being the gullible bunch we are, believe water from a plastic bottle is better, cleaner, healthier... than that which is consumed from the tap. Common sense (and countless and constant health department tests) would indicate we're really, really stupid for believing that.

We bitch about $2.67 per gallon gas (my neighborhood price today) but we'll fork over 20 bucks a gallon for Fiji water because it has a fancy-shmancy square bottle and a picture of a mountain on the front.

When I leave the coffee shop this morning, I will go to QT. I will purchase a large bottle of Fiji. I will pour it down the sink and replace it with tap water. I will drink that tap water from the Fiji bottle. I will repeat that process over and over until the bottle wears out. I will look cool, rich and smart.

Which is the real reason Americans buy bottled water.

Want a sip?

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We're selling $20 billion in advanced weaponry to the Saudis?

STFU. You gotta be kidding me.

We never, ever learn. Ever. Stupidest, most forgetful people on Earth. Instead of making major moves to curb dependence on oil, we continue to coddle these backward MFs and dragging our feet on nuclear energy and the research of alternatives.

Nero fiddles while Rome burns.

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It's studio remodel time, so I'm headed to Home Depot to buy a door, a lighting fixture, some paint and all that junk. I'll take photos.

MySpice

For people who can't or won't pay for dating or singles sites, MySpace has been a free alternative for finding some lovin'. You can search by age, sex, location, interests... and then contact that person via private message to see if they're interested. A friend of mine who has a site on MySpace received multiple inquiries, including one couple who wanted to meet her for a threesome. Nice.

Brad Paisley has a song out right now called "Online." It's some funny shit!

I work down at the Pizza Pit
And I drive an old Hyundai
I still live with my mom and dad
I'm 5 foot 3 and overweight
I'm a scifi fanatic
A mild asthmatic
And I've never been to second base

But there's whole 'nother me
That you need to see
Go checkout MySpace
'Cause online I'm out in Hollywood
I'm 6 foot 5 and I look damn good
I drive a Maserati
I'm a black-belt in karate
And I love a good glass of wine
It turns girls on that I'm mysterious
I tell them I don't want nothing serious
'Cause even on a slow day
I could have a three way
Chat with two women at one time
I'm so much cooler online

The average profile on MySpace tells me many of its inhabitants are young people who use the site to satisfy their alter-ego or position themselves in sexual or suggestive terms. Adults tend to gravitate toward places like Blogger and Typepad, although those services have their share of kids, which means deviants will follow.

The difference is, unless you publish your email address on your Blogger site (which I do) there is no vehicle to contact the author. It's not condusive to the meat-market scene or being a predator's playground. I've never received email from someone asking for a threesome... although maybe that's because they saw my profile picture. ;)

Now it's been divulged that MySpace had to delete 29,000 sites from its system because those people were known sexual predators. And those were just the ones who chose to use their real names.

It's too bad, really. MySpace was a great concept. It's just that too many people use it to get laid or prey on kids. Like restaurants or nightclubs, they are defined by their customer base. It is what it is.

Showering is for sissies

We just returned from the annual camp-out and float trip with about 30 friends, and you just don't realize how much of a panty waist you are until you live outside with only a 5x5 tent, jerky and a fishing pole to get you by.

Of course that wasn't our situation. Sure we had jerky, but also KFC chicken tenders, packs of delicious crab meat, wine and cheese, jello shots, a huge portable CD player with sub-woofer, pre-prepared foil packs of roasted chicken with veggies and a rechargeable tent ceiling fan. Shit, tents don't even have ceilings.

Yet despite all of those "not-a-real-camper" comforts, do you know the one thing that made me a real camper last weekend? I didn't shower. In FOUR DAYS. Not even once.

I was in the river a lot, we swam, floated and waded. But I never bathed in the traditional sense, which makes me a f*ckin'-A camper. I didn't even need mosquito repellant.

Here's a photo of my Hummer, packed with the camping supplies of two couples. If you had tried to pull the wrong piece out at the wrong time, there would have been a deadly explosion of camping supplies, vodka and tent material. You may also find pieces of a pink flamingo as well... hey, even on the road your yard needs to look kitchy. If you look closely in the upper left corner, there's a black bag... thank goodness we had space enough for our deluxe queen-size air mattress with 600 thread count sheets.* Camping just isn't the same without the necessities.

A picture of Violet and me. We may or may not have been in a state of insobriety. Notice the messages on the shirts... yeah, we're just that good.

So let me ask you... if you bring pre-cooked food and have access to showers and buffet food, is it really camping? That was the subject of the great debate around the campfire. (which we lit with a bag of lighter-fluid-soaked charcoal briquets) We are most definitely NOT camping purists. Are you?

The quote of the week was courtesy of camper Bill. When told there was extra ice if he needed any for his cooler, his response was "is it still frozen?" Here's your sign.

Disclaimer: the mattress sucks and the sheet thread-count is only like 150... but that stuff doesn't sound funny at all.

You can take the kid out of the hood...

Michael Vick is a jagoff.

He's also the Atlanta Falcon's star quarterback. He's also up dog-shit creek.

Read the story - it'll make you feel like puking, especially if you're a dog lover.

Throw the book at him. Put him in prison, where he belongs... he's a scumbag.

A blog's worth

We're back from our weekend whirlwind trip, and I owe thanks to friends Dave, Trish and their kids... and Russ and Shelly for making it great.

We're back at it for now, but Thursday we leave for our annual camp and float trip on the Huzzah river! We'll be gone Thursday through Sunday. When we return Sunday, it'll take most of the afternoon to check for ticks.

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Lately I've been off and on with blogging, although I don't have an adequate excuse. But today, I was reminded that my blog is an important and worthy spot on the net.

Back in 2005, I lost a dear friend, and wrote about it on these pages. I used what words I could find at the time to fashion something of a tribute/obituary for her... and today as someone was searching the net to find their old friend Adrianne... they learned of her death here. They posted a comment honoring her, a full 2 1/2 years after her passing. (Thanks for visiting, Alex. I'm happy to read your words of remembrance)

I conducted my own search and found that mine is the only outpost on the net which honors her life, or marks her death. Even today, there are people just getting the news... and if my blog serves no larger a purpose, I will be content.

And now, dudes jumping on trampolines!

Ever see The Man Show? It ended every week with "girls jumping on trampolines." I don't need to explain the virtues to you.

I jumped on a trampoline for the first time in 20 years today. More like 30 years. I was a kid in Los Angeles at the time, and the arcade next door to my mom's job had trampolines, and it cost 25 cents to jump for 15 minutes. I probably spent a dollar a day jumping.

Now that I think about it, I was 10 years old, so it's only been 23 years. ;)

And you know what? I wouldn't have gotten on the goddamn thing if I had remembered how much work it was.

We're in Youngstown, Ohio today with my friend Dave Steele. He's feeding us beef. I know that sounds dirty, but it's true... we bought an entire tenderloin at Sam's today and it's sizzling away on the grill right now. Lucky you, I have my camera.

You know you want some.


That's Dave, The Grillmaster. He's a prick and sometimes kind of feminine but he's OK.

Tomorrow, it's on to Dayton, Ohio to spend time with our friends Russ and Shelly. They have a pool. Emily has her bikini. You'll check back tomorrow, won't you?

iPhone Confessions

Over at smays.com, my friend Steve is doing a series of interviews with people who have taken the early leap of faith with an iPhone.

Steve is one of the most web savvy people I know. He has a clear view of the future of the internet and how it will evolve in the next 10 to 20 years. He's a Mac guy... and the iPhone is my first foray into the world of the Mac.

We sat and chatted, on my iPhone, about my iPhone, over a cup of coffee yesterday morning. To hear the results, go here.

www.smays.com is one of my multi-stop daily fixes.

Techies will enjoy this

Sent by a friend, it sounds like some kinds of software I've used...

Desperately seeking technical support!

I'm currently running the latest version of Girlfriend 5.0 and having some problems. I've been running the same version of Drinking Buddies 1.0 for years as my primary application, and all the Girlfriend releases have always conflicted with it. I hear that Drinking Buddies won't crash if you minimize Girlfriend with the sound off, but since I can't find the switch to turn it off, I just run them separately and it works OK.

Girlfriend also seems to have a problem co-existing with Golfware, often trying to abort my Golf program with some sort of timing incompatibility. I probably should have stayed with Girlfriend 1.0, but I thought I might see better performance with Girlfriend 2.0.

After months of conflicts, I consulted a friend who has experience with Girlfriend 2.0. He said I probably didn't have enough cache to run Girlfriend 2.0 and eventually it would require a Token Ring upgrade to run properly. He was right. As soon as I purged my cache, Girlfriend 2.0 uninstalled itself.

Shortly after that, I installed a Girlfriend 3.0 beta. All the bugs were supposed to be gone, but the first time I used it, it gave me a virus. After a hard drive clean up and thorough virus scan I very cautiously upgraded to Girlfriend 4.0, this time using a SCSI probe and virus protection. It worked OK for a while until I discovered Girlfriend 1.0 wasn't completely uninstalled!

I tried to run Girlfriend 1.0 again with Girlfriend 4.0 in the background, but Girlfriend 4.0 has an undocumented feature that automatically senses the presence of Girlfriend 1.0 and communicates with it in some way, resulting in the immediate removal of both versions!

The version I have now works pretty well, but, like all versions, there are still some problems. The Girlfriend package is written in some obscure language that I can't understand, much less reprogram. And I've never liked how Girlfriend is totally 'object-oriented.'

A year ago, a friend upgraded his version to GirlfriendPlus 1.0, which is a Terminate-and-Stay resident version. He discovered GirlfriendPlus 1.0 expires within a year if you don't upgrade to Fiancée 1.0. So he did. But soon after that, you have to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes as a 'huge resource hog.' It has taken up all his space, so he can't load anything else. One of the primary reasons that he upgraded to Wife is because it came bundled with FreeSex 1.0. Well, it turns out that the resource allocation module of Wife 1.0 sometimes prohibits access to FreeSex (particularly the new Plug and Play items he wanted to try). On top of that, Wife 1.0 must be running on a well warmed-up system before he can do anything. And, although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with MotherInLaw 1.0, which has an automatic pop-up feature he can't turn off.

I told him to install Mistress 1.0, but he said that he heard that if you try to run it without first uninstalling Wife, that Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before uninstalling itself. Then Mistress 1.0 won't install anyway, due to insufficient resources. If anybody out there is able to offer technical advice...

A 19 million dollar bowl

NASA must be high.

First, I remind you that the original budget for the international station was somewhere in the vicinity of 8 or 10 billion dollars. We are now at 100 BILLION. Eleven zeros. (more zeros than a St. Louis Cardinals scoreboard)

And NASA has just purchased a 19 million dollar toilet from the Russians.

Remember the story about how NASA spent millions researching a pen that could write in zero gravity, while the Russians just used a pencil? Apparently the Russians heard it too, and decided to grab part of the money NASA is throwing around like drunken ... sailors. I wish I could come up with a better metaphor, but I fear NASA will soon become the metaphor.

A 19 million dollar toilet. That certainly trumps the $700 pentagon toilet seat or the $1000 lag bolt. As I write my monthly check to the IRS, I find myself less and less tolerant of stories like these. Do you have any idea how much beer and pay-per-view I could be buying?

I've never seen a more disorganized, inefficient and corrupt organization than the US government. Maybe it's time to put the whole of Washington DC into their fancy new Russian toilet and give it a flush.

Naw. Then we'd have to pay a plumber 10 million to unclog it.

Brush with greatness (and by greatness, I mean child molester)

A few months ago, and in a state of insobriety, Emily and Paula purchased 4 season tickets to the Muny outdoor theater at Forest Park. (note to self: do not relinquish credit cards to intoxicated women)

Last night we attended the Muny's production of Grease. Eh. It was okay. The lead actress (the part of Sandra Dumbrowski) was vocally a little weak. Otherwise, it was pretty decent.

While dining at Jimmy's on the Park prior to the play, I snapped this picture* of Paula.

Not that she's not picturesque, but I was actually taking the photo so I could share this inset with you.


Dude is totally Woody Allen. Minus the perversion and filmmaking genius. Subtract 25 years and add a foot onto his height, and he's a dead ringer.

I got to wondering if people actually TRY to look like celebrities, or if it's just the fact that there are only so many face types.

I've been told I look exactly like Brad Pitt.**



*Pictures taken with my new iPhone - great quality for a PDA, right?

**Maybe they said I looked like a friend of Brad Pitt. Either way.

Scotch and bacon*

Sometimes a song just hits the spot. I had dinner with great friends tonight, then came home and poured a scotch and turned on iTunes.

This particular song has been recorded by everyone from Sinatra to Bryan Ferry. The version I'm listening to now is from Frankie Laine's "Torchin'" CD. As a still-fairly-young guy, I find myself wishing there were more songs being written today that hold as much meaning.

A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumblin' words that told you what my heart meant
A fairground's painted swings
These foolish things remind me of you

You came, you saw, you conquered me
When you did that to me
I knew somehow this had to be

The winds of March that make my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings but who's to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things remind me of you

How strange, how sweet, to find you still
These things are dear to me
They seem to bring you so near to me

The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations
Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations
Oh how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you.

*Emily can always tell if I've had a drink or two because I have a habit of microwaving two strips of bacon as a bedtime snack. Don't judge.