When a blogger has nothing else to blog about, it's nice to have the Cheddar X to fall back on.
1. What was the last person, thing or event that made you cry?
9/11 anniversary stuff aside, I'd have to say it was my grandfather's funeral. I spoke at the funeral, and there was something about standing in front of the church, the same church where I had sat at so many Christmas masses with a feeling of total contentment, that just about made me drop to the floor in tears. On an unrelated note, my grandfather's casket was the heaviest thing constructed by man. There were six pallbearers, and we were on the verge of dropping the thing by the time we got it positioned over the grave. I swear it was made of lead.
2. What was your most recent vivid dream about?
Just last night I had a fucking hair dream. If you've never had a hair dream, let me explain. I've been shaving my head now since I was 21, primarily because I was destined to lose my hair anyway, and also because I look smoking hot with a shaved head. But. . . I occasionally have hair dreams in which I inexplicably find myself with a HUGE head of hair. We're talking gorgeous locks flowing down to my ass crack. I don't know where the hair came from, but I don't care. It's just super-cool to have hair again, if only in a dream.
3. What is the best bumper sticker you've seen or thought up?
The best bumper stickers in the world were placed on my old '89 Cavalier by me. They were: "Kinky Is Using A Feather. Perverted Is Using The Whole Chicken." "I'm Hung Like Einstein, And Smart As A Horse."
4. Who was your worst room mate? Why?
Spoon. Oh, God, SPOON! My fourth year of college, I shared a dilapidated party shack with four other guys. Spoon, so named because it reflected his intellect, was among them. He was a short scrawny dork with an impossibly deep voice for his size. He fancied himself a ladies man, even though he got laid a total of zero times during the year. It was widely believed he just hadn't come to terms with his homosexuality yet. Spoon loved himself with a ferocity that would apall even the most narcissistic people on the planet and he had a collection of colognes that could gas most third world countries. Spoon had a passion for loud music, and not necessarily GOOD music. He would blare his stereo at the most ridiculous hours of the day and night, and since I was in the room closest to his, I'd march into his room regularly and threaten his pathetic existence. And his room was HUGE, and compared to my fucking mouse hole of a room, it was palacial, which only made me hate him even more. But, it was his stupidity that irritated me the most. When he brought his TV upstairs to his room, I brought my TV downstairs so the rest of the roommates could continue watching TV. Spoon came downstairs, looked at the TV, and asked "Who's TV is that?" "It's mine." "So, you brought your TV downstairs, then?" Yes, you fucking MORON!
5. What do you order most often when you go out to eat?
If I'm at a new place, I always like to try their fettucine alfredo. Otherwise, I have a weakness for ribs.
6. What's your cocktail of choice? Or beverage for the non-drinkers?
Crown Royal and Coke.
Bonus Question:
Can anyone explain how Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor of California? And how we can get rid of him?
He was elected through a recall of an ineffectual and monumentally corrupt governor who had all the personality of an angry cobra. Arnold won the recall due primarily to his celebrity status. As a sidenote to this, I find it amazing how the true enemies of Arnold tried to paint him as (and still believe him to be) a goose-stepping Nazi. WTF? He said he admired Hitler's abilities as an ORATOR, and anyone who has ever seen a clip of Hitler pounding away at a podium has to admit the guy had an uncanny ability to inspire crowds through his speeches. Granted, he was a hateful and evil runt of a man who should rightly go down in history as one of the most despicable creatures ever to walk the earth, but the guy had a knack for public speaking. Having said that, I think I'm now qualified to be governor of California. How do you get rid of Arnold? Through an election.
Some of the greatest breakthroughs to benefit mankind have come about as a result of important studies conducted by important people with important titles making important amounts of money.
Where would we be today, for example, if it weren't for the studies conducted by Masters and Johnson about the intracacies of human procreation? Well, my dreams would be far less interesting, for one thing. Where would we be if it weren't for the studies that led to automobile engine heat balance, car safety, car noise and riding comfort? Well, my dreams would be far less interesting, for one thing.
And, truly, where would we be if it weren't for the diligent folks working around the clock to understand why cookies crumble? Wait a minute, a study was conducted to find that out? Why, yes, there was.
According to an Oct. 2, Reuters news report out of London, British scientists say they may have worked out why the cookie crumbles. Every year, biscuit-makers throw away thousands of biscuits because they emerge from the oven cracked or broken. Thousands more reach the supermarket shelves but then crumble in the hands of their would-be eaters.
Well, okay, I guess that warrants a study. Doesn't it? I mean, isn't the phenomenon of crumbling cookies something that can tear families apart and lead to widespread rioting and looting?
Researchers at Loughborough University in central England say the problem may be due to cooking techniques and humidity.
"When you take (a biscuit) out of the oven it likes to absorb moisture from the atmosphere," Loughborough University's Ricky Wildman told BBC Radio Thursday.
It "likes" to absorb moisture? I think the real story here isn't the act of cookies or biscuits crumbling so much as it is the fact that cookies are apparently thirsty. I find that fascinating.
He described the process as like "an earthquake running through the biscuit."
"It's very exciting," he added.
I think Mr. Wildman really needs to get out more, maybe meet a nice girl and buy her some flowers. Just get out of the lab, man!
In other "exciting" news, we learn that dog breath is often times better than human breath. According to an Oct. 16 news report, again from Reuters and again out of London, we learn that more than half of Britons could have breath that smells worse than their pet's, according to a survey released Thursday. And women are the worst offenders, with three out of five failing a sulfur emissions test, according to research by toothpaste manufacturer Aquafresh.
Leave it to Aquafresh to go down the forbidden path of unlocking the secrets of the sulfur emissions jetted forth by humans and their pets. Is nothing sacred, Aquafresh? Is nothing sacred?! Perhaps I'm being too harsh here because I suspect that my own sulfur emissions, both front door and back, are probably appallingly high.
"Some mouths may be dirtier than cat litter," dentist Brian Grieveson said in a statement that accompanied the research.
Well, okay, I hope I'm not THAT bad. But, what if I am? What if people are secretly joshing behind my back, talking about "Old Cat Litter Breath Rhodes?"
"Oh, sure," all the women say. "Ryan's a smoking hot specimen of male hunkiness, and I'd love to wrestle with him in a tub full of Jell-O, but he HAS to do something about his cat litter breath."
Thanks for the complex, Aquafresh. Like I needed another one.
Finally, we turn to yet another groundbreaking study that answers, once and for all, where the worst place is to pass gas. I, for one, find it hard to believe that there's a BAD place to pass gas, but that's just me.
According to results, um, "Yahoo.com/prnews/030826/nytu031_1.html">released" Aug. 26 by (who else?) Gas-X, the three worst places to pass gas are 1) at a business meeting 2) on a date and 3) in an elevator. Again, in my mind, those are the three BEST places to pass gas, but what do I know.
I think it's interesting that such a survey was even conducted, so I decided to learn more about it. Apparently, the online survey was made up of a national panel that included 1,534 men and women, 25 and over. Why am I never selected to sit on a cool panel like that?
Somebody should do a study to look into that.
This week, Stewartville's contribution to mental illness offers up his views on space, styrofoam, patriotism, and even a little poetry. Shall we begin?
FOAMOSTYR Macheye thermacore Styrofoam. Now for the full wrap up of space. The last uncontrollable force of space is called wind, but the controlling factor for the wind is called BLUE MOON. "The BLUE MOON OF NOON:" Cold or hot. There will be those that say, "No Way," but those who say "No Way" don't call yourself Americans.
Gary XXXXXXXX
555-XXXX
PS Firing sequence 123-132
The blue moon of noon? It has a good beat, and I can dance to it. I just don't understand how this guy can function enough in society to feed himself, let alone pay bills. But, whatever.
Well, China's joined the space race.
With ground control watching, Yang unfurled the flags of China and the United Nations to "highlight China's persistent stand for peaceful exploration and exploitation of space," the government said.
Yayyy! Yay for peaceful exploration and exploitation of space! Yayyyy!
In a statement issued by Xinhua, Chinese President Hu Jintao said the launch was "the glory of our great motherland and a mark for the initial victory of the country's first manned space flight and for the significant, historic step of the Chinese people in the advance of climbing over the peak of the world's science and technology."
Um, yay? Woo hoo? Clap, clap?
Referring to China's earlier unmanned space launches, an announcer on the English-language government channel CCTV-9 invoked American astronaut Neil Armstrong's words upon first walking on the moon. "If these were small steps," the announcer said, "then now we are taking a giant leap into space."
Okayyyy, guys, we get it. Good job. Let's not overstate the matter here.
Seriously, I don't know where China intends to go from here, but I hope their addition to the space community gives NASA a much-needed shot in the butt to start seriously looking beyond near-earth orbit and expand their vision outward. I find myself strangely irritated every time I realize that I wasn't born yet when the last moon landing occured, and I'm kind of disappointed that we haven't been back, even to the moon, since.
I mean, shouldn't we have domed moon bases established by now? Shouldn't we be mining the moon for its rich helium -3 content and learning how to design other-worldly construction projects? I don't know. Maybe such things have been on the drawing boards for some time but are continually scrapped due to some failing here or there. I just think it's kind of disappointing that, in the four decades human beings have been exploring beyond the earth, we haven't been able to go farther. I understand that space does funny things to the human body, and we need time to address that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we've just gotten lazy and have lost our imaginative spark.
There's a lot of space to discover. Let's get out there.
Mmmmmm, X-rated Cheddar.
1. Do you think NJ just passing a law banning people from driving while drowsy will be effective in preventing accidents, or just another law that will fall by the wayside after a few years?
I really don't know how you'd enforce such a law. I mean, how does an officer tell if a motorist is drowsy? It's not like you can smell drowsiness on the breath or anything. I don't know enough about the particulars of the law, but from where I stand it's like trying to make a law against thinking sexual thoughts while driving. That law would SUCK!
2. What is the best book that you have ever read? What made it such an excellent book?
If you've never read Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, you're missing out on one of the best works of dark humor ever written. It starts out bizarre and ends bizarre, and is a laugh-out-loud scream everywhere in between. Whether it's Major Major Major Major only being available to be seen when he's out of the office, or Milo Minderbinder's ability to buy eggs for six cents and sell them for three cents, and still turn a profit, or the dead man in Yossarian's tent, or Nately's whore, you'll be treated to a cast of characters that expose war as the crazy and opportunistic machine that it is. I've only read it twice, but I should read it again, as well as its follow-up, Closing Time.
3. If you were a multi-billionaire and decided to donate to a charity or good cause, what would they be?
Cancer research would be a top priority, as would AIDS research. Although it's easy to say I'd donate to famine relief organizations, I'm not sure which ones. As a multi-billionaire, there's a lot that could be done, to put it mildly. The multi-billionaire I saw on TV who built a $430 million yacht he only sails occasionally makes me question the priorities of the super-rich, as if I needed any more reason to do so.
4. What was your best wedding present? If you've not been married before then best birthday present, same for the follow up below.
Best birthday present? Hard to say. Hard to remember. Probably the birthday party trips to a local hotel swimming pool with all my friends when I was really young.
5. What was the worst?
Socks.
UPDATE: I don't mention my magazine articles much, because, well, they're dull as gray paint. But, I'm particularly happy with this one.
Last night, I drove to the Cities to stay with Melissa for the night. We hadn't seen each other in over a week, and the phone can grow tiresome, and eventually the itch to just BE with her overcomes the realization that driving to and through the Cities is an absolute pain in the ass, particularly when you consider that I'll be back on the same road the next morning before the sun is even up.
Driving back to Rochester today, though, as the sun crept over the horizon and illuminated the rapidly changing foliage colors, my thoughts were transported back in time to a similar morning ten years ago.
I was about one month into college, and I spent that first month basically in a haze of trying to learn a new way of life. Dorm life. College life. Dorm life for me consisted of a huge brick building located about three miles away from campus. Lourdes Hall was an old nun's quarters, and boy did it look it: plaster walls, tile floors, soaring ceilings crisscrossed by pipes, and steel doors that reverberated down the halls when they slammed shut. The rooms were about as Spartan as you can get. There was also an old heater in the corner that once melted my shoes from two feet away during a particularly cold winter evening. I hated that dorm room.
And I hated the dorm bus to campus even more. Lourdes Hall offered a free bus service to the main campus each morning, a loud, smokey, gigantic bus (with a hinge in the middle for better cornering) that arrived at campus about 45 minutes before I even had to be in class. I hated dragging myself out of bed so unnecessarily early to catch that bus every morning. But, I was told that Winona State University encouraged students to take the bus, so who was I to bitch? I was just doing as I was told.
I remember, though, as autumn progressed, watching the turn of the season each morning as the bus rumbled along and the sun poked through the surrounding bluffs. I remember the leaves: orange and red and yellow. They were being choked off from the tree, but during those brief moments when the sun flashed over their surface, they looked radiantly alive. But, more than anything else, I remember the bus ride drowsiness. It was a drowsiness that can only be achieved by valium. It was a drowsiness that made it painfully clear that my fencing class that morning was going to be an exercise in sluggish reflexes. I would sit in front of the gymnasium each morning, my head nodding as I tried to catch a precious half hour of sleept before class started. I hated those early mornings. I hated being so sleepy.
Then, one morning, about 10 years ago to this day, actually, as the bus pulled away from Lourdes Hall and made its way to campus, I noticed a student getting into his car and driving to campus.
"Hey," I thought to myself. "I have a car. In fact, we're passing by it right now. Why in the hell am I not driving to campus rather than catching this bus almost an hour before I have to? Why?"
Why, indeed. I never rode the bus again after that day, and I grew to savor the extra time soaking in the warmth of my bed. I felt monumentally stupid that it didn't dawn on my earlier that I had a fucking car, but that stupidity only lasted for a short while, because I'd fall back asleep again, and dream of naked women.
The way I figure it, the cultural differences between the Islamic world and the West can be summed up by the way the two cultures observe weddings.
In the West, it used to be customary to throw rice at the newlyweds as a symbolic way of ensuring fertility. However, that practice has been curtailed as of late following the discovery that birds, after eating the rice, swelled up and died as the rice expanded in their stomachs. Oops. Sorry Tweety.
Instead, Western weddings nowadays usually acknowledge the bride and groom through the blowing of bubbles or, in an attempt to apologize to the birds of the world, the throwing of birdseed.
In many Islamic nations, on the other hand, it's customary to celebrate weddings by shooting guns into the air. They do this because. . . well, I have no idea why they do this. I imagine the tradition started something like this:
GUEST #1: I'm so extremely happy for the bride and groom right now, I can't resist hoisting my AK-47 and firing random rounds into the air!
GUEST #2: What are you doing bringing an AK-47 to a wedding?
GUEST #1: *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!*
GUEST #3: What is he doing? What's the matter with him? Somebody make him stop!
GUEST #2: Do you think I'm crazy? The guy's armed, and apparently stocked enough with ammo to be able to waste it shooting it into the air!
GUEST #3: Good point. Come to think of it, I'd rather join him than try to stop him. I'm going to run home quick and get my gun.
GUEST #2: Yeah, me too.
GUESTS #1, #2, #3: *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!*
And so the custom began. However, every time I see footage of celebrations being perplexingly augmented by gunfire, I'm forced to wonder where all those bullets go. What goes up must come down and all that. They have to go SOMEWHERE. Where?
Now we know.
Thanks to an Oct. 13, Reuters news report out of Belgrade, we learn that a two-seater sports plane on an unauthorized joyride was apparently shot down by mistake when it flew over a Serbian wedding party where guests were firing guns into the air, local media reported Sunday.
This type of thing would never happen with bubbles, or birdseed, or even rice. During Western weddings, you can be relatively certain the festivities won't bring down an aircraft cruising overhead.
"I heard shots from a wedding party which was very close to the crash site. Then I saw the plane in flames. It was shot in the left wing," witness Zoran Vukadinovic told reporters.
Yep, the pieces seem to fit, don't they? Let's see, you have gunfire, you have a plane in flames, apparently shot in the left wing. Hmmmmm. Elementary, my dear Watson, as Sherlock Holmes might say. Just for the record, I think that "Zoran" is a super-cool name.
"A few moments later, while attempting a crash landing, it was caught in overhead power cables," he said.
Man, that plane just couldn't catch a break.
Local media said neither of the men held a pilot's license.
Oh, so it's THEIR fault they were shot down over a wedding?
Firing guns into the air at weddings and other celebrations is common in Serbia.
Just a thought, but maybe it's time it becomes LESS common. There's a lot of non-lethal birdseed and bubbles in the world today. Come on, Serbia. Join us.
UPDATE: And, when you're wrong, you'd best admit, such as I'm about to do here. Mitch Berg points out Not to intrude, but Serbia is predominantly Eastern Orthodox, not Moslem. Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo are Moslem - but that's not where this happened, is it?
Followed by Michael Snider: Good for Mitch.
He's right, of course. Serbs are predominantly orthodox (I've been in Belgrade during the New Year when pop-corn gun fire sounds all over the place at midnight, then a larger bang -- my buddy looks over at me and says, "grenade"). Croats are predominantly Catholic, Kosovo's people are predominantly Muslim but the territory still sits within Serbia's borders (hence Slobo's desire to get rid of them all back in 1998), Bosnians can be Bosnian-Serbs, Bosnia-Croats or Bosnian-Muslims -- the ethnic mix is, or was, about 1/3 each (oh, forgot, there are also Croatian-Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia, bulldozed in 1995, and Croatian Muslims from near the B/H border to the south.) Then there are the Slovenians, which are mostly Catholic but pretty homogeneous insofar as there are fewer Slovenian-Croats and Slovenian-Serbs, which is why when they seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991 (they were the first to declare independence) there were fewer cultural and territorial points of conflict.
This particular incident took place in central Serbia, far from any Muslim population (although the proximity of Muslims to Serbs with guns usually results in a great deal more gunfire, but that's for another time). Basically, Serbs rarely need a reason to shoot off a weapon.
What is it with me and eating crow this week? It's been a steady diet, let me tell you.
For those of you who don't already know, the Midwest is being invaded by Japanese beetles, otherwise known as ladybugs. This invasion, compliments of a USDA initiative undertaken in the late 1980s as a means to control soybean aphids, finally hit critical mass this years thanks to a drought-ridden summer followed by this October's Indian summer.
Make no mistake about it, the ladybugs are out in full stink-fucking fury. I blogged about them before, but the true extent of their invasion was laid bare this weekend when I went back to my hometown to check on my parents' house and do some end-of-the-year yardwork.
As I mowed the lawn Friday afternoon, it was a toss-up as to whether I was cutting more grass or more ladybugs. Some of the little buggers managed to take flight before the mower set upon them, but the vast majority became beetle mulch. The survivors, however, made their displeasure known by landing on me and excreting their stain-creating whatever the hell it is. Some stains were green, while other were brown, while still others were a combination of the two.
Oh, and they also bit me a lot. I'm sorry, I guess their bites are gingerly referred to as "pinches," as if the ladybugs are coyly flirting with me. Well, those "pinches" are painful little bastards. And, woe be it to you if you actually take revenge on the pinching little pukes, because the slightest squeeze makes them let loose with the most foul-smelling aerosol ever to be shot forth by a bug the size of a pea.
With the yardwork completed, I went inside to wash up, because I was covered in little specks of ladybug shit and ladybug stink. That's when I made the discovery that, upstairs, the ladybugs had staged a takeover of my parents' home. I mean, every corner of every room upstairs had a conglomeration of beetles hugging up against one another. Each corner, I think, housed a minimum of 10 to 15 ladybugs. They were EVERYWHERE.
So, out came the Raid. I sprayed Raid in every room, on every corner, on every surface. When I was done spraying, the entire upstairs was a fog of Raid that could have qualified as a weapon of mass destruction, at least according to the insects of the world. I retreated downstairs to wait for the Raid fumes to expire.
The aftermath was astounding. My parents' bedroom alone consisted of carpet that was 78 percent covered in ladybug carcasses. Hundreds upon hundreds of dead ladybugs littered the upstairs, including a large helping residing in the bathtub. And I STILL didn't kill them all. I saw several more resilient bugs clinging to life, and the drapes. So, out came the Raid again.
I never did get around to vacuuming up the little bastards. I'll get to that task the next time I'm home, provided the ladybugs haven't taken over the house completely.
