Major League Baseball

I'm no MLB fan, but this Oakland pitcher, Dallas Braden, who pitched a perfect game the other day is my kind of guy. He is a blue-collar journeyman player who throws in the low 80's and calls it a fast ball. I love it when a regular guy does something huge. You can have your Tiger & Michael Jordan and all the other superstars who deliver awesome performances. Give me Dallas Braden, who gets it done with limited tools in his toolbox...with no warning it was coming. To top it all off and seal the deal with me, Dallas yelled at A-Rod the other day to get off his blankety-blank mound when A made the mistake of jogging over it. You gotta love it.

Octopi

Saw the coolest thing on TV. This guy put a freshly captured octopus (A) in a tank with a crab in a clear plastic box. The octopus didn't even try to get at the tasty morsel. Then, the guy put the crab-in-a-box in an adjacent water tank with an octopus who had figured out how to open the plastic box, which he did immediately, and happily crunched on the little crab. Octopus A jumped to the side of his tank with a WTH look in his bulbous eyes. When the guy gave him another chance at the crab-in-a-box, Octopus A was on it like he had seen Octopus B do...and was able to pop a cover and get at the crab. Amazing.
I can't look at octopi on a Chinese buffet without thinking that maybe we shouldn't be eating something that teachable.

Willie Nelson...

...is an icon in the business and we all love him. I mean no disrespect... is it just me...or is he almost always ahead of the music by a half-beat when he's on-stage ? You ever notice that? His recordings are dead-on perfect and will be playing 50 years from now, but his producers and arrangers can't control him on-stage. We watched a live performance last night and I have to say...the American Idol judges would have found him "pitchy" (which he isn't) and most likely would not have voted him on to Hollywood.

Rescue dogs

We've been looking at dogs that are available for adoption. It is hard on me to look into a dogs eyes that are full of hope that I would be the one to take him out of that cage. Some of them have figured out that good eye contact increases their odds of being picked. But what about the ones who won't look up, even when talked to ? They won't waste the energy on what they believe is a useless effort at attracting an owner. They've lost hope. That ain't right.

Pop tarts...

...come with cooking directions which is one minute in a vertical toaster. As an alternative, it says on the box you can stick one in a microwave for 3 seconds. If a person cannot spare ONE minute in his morning to brown a poptart, he might want to think about loosening up his schedule. Just sayin'.

Sunglasses indoors

I don't understand sunglasses indoors. Professional entertainers love 'em. Cool athletes love 'em. I've heard Bill Cosby has a sensitivity to light and I totally get that. Absent an eye problem, sunglasses indoors seem pretentious to me. If that is the ultimate goal, we need to aim higher.

I saw something in my peripheral vision.

I didn't know what it was for sure, but I knew it couldn't live here rent-free. A quick trip to Walmart and my little surprise party was set. The score....

Building Management 1
Team Mouse 0

New music....wow.

Our I.T. Dept has hit us another home run. The words are scrolling at the bottom of the page. Michael Buble' and David Foster are putting out some really good music these days. If Michael ever comes to Memphis, we're there. Anybody who doesn't caravan over there with us isn't cool.

Fess Parker just passed away.

At 6'6", Fess Parker was awesome as Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone in movies and TV. He was exactly what all of us little boys wanted to be when we grew up. No one loved him more than my best friend, who passed away on a Mothers Day...years ago. Call me crazy, but I see my friend making a fuss over actually meeting Fess Parker this week. He was like that.

Our new philosophy...

...which is " Give No Unsolicited Advice" is working so well that I'm thinking of upgrading to " Don't Tell Nobody Nothing". It's bad grammer but a good rule. Our kids even seem to like us better.

Sen. Harry Reid (D) Nev

Sen. Reid says high unemployment makes domestic abuse worse, due to added stress in the household. Is he saying that giving a man money and/or a job will make him be a better person ? Let's hold that up to the light and turn it around. It seems to me the reverse may be true... that men prone to violence, domestic or not, experience unemployment in their lifetime many times the rate of men not prone to violence.

Politically Incorrect

If the devastated country of Haiti receives only food, water and tents...there will be MORE helpless, hurting people needing rescue a year from now...than there is now. Lots more. Somebody smarter than me needs to teach somebody down there how to fish...and how to make the ground productive for animals and humans. You know...grasslands, fruit trees, olive trees, grape vines, potato plants. If the land and sea in that area won't support life, that life needs to move on. It's not safe relying on the fickle kindness of others. Just sayin.

One key to a successful life...

...is not necessarily knowing all the right answers, but it's asking the right questions. Here's a good one (and this isn't original with me ).

***Was the juice worth the squeeze ?***

Number-crunching

You might be a geek if your tax paperwork was ready to file on Jan 1 before lunch. (guilty)

Our efforts at being productive in 2009 look more like a hobby than an actual job. We're hoping for a stimulus check...absent that, "there's gonna be some changes 'round here".

Gene Lyons in ArDemGaz

I cannot stop reading this guy any more than I can stay away from my oreo cookie stash...but he's making me crazy. Regarding the attempted terrorist bombing over Detroit, he writes. 1. Fox News went into warp overdrive reporting it, 2. America is slipping into "sky-is-falling" hysteria over the attempt, and 3. Americans have little to fear from al-Qa'ida. KNOW THIS. The ONLY reason we didn't have 279 deaths on that Christmas day is...the incompetence of the bomber and/or his handlers. This is not comforting to think about, because people who hate America have a way of climbing the learning curve and correcting their procedures. We better correct ours.

ArDemGaz editorial.

TSA agent Barney Fife says don't worry about how they didn't notice a Muslim pay cash for a ticket and actually board an international flight for Detroit with no coat and no luggage...even after receiving a call detailing his jihadist beliefs. With his best Mayberry swagger, he loads his only bullet and announces they will do even better with health care.

Side note : These Keystone Kops can't even work a guest-list at a dinner party without screwing something up.