Walking the Tightrope

So many times my red-haired wife will come home and tell me about news stories she’s read or heard, and I’m always surprised. I don’t read news sites. I don’t watch TV, so I never see the news there. I don’t believe in newspapers. I mean, I’ve seen evidence of them before, but I just really don’t believe in them. Too much like bigfoot. A lot of hearsay and no real proof. And I really don’t listen to any news-bearing stations on the radio. So I guess you could suffice it to say that I don’t really keep up with current events.

I was sitting on the couch today, getting ready for my mid-afternoon nap when I suddenly had the urge to turn on the ole telly. I have one of those real old-school ones that’s not LED or 3D or 4K or any of that. It’s just a simple 1080p LCD. Remember back when those used to be cool? Anyway, I looked through the list of recorded shows – all the Doc McStuffins and Good Luck Charlie and various other Disney crap we record for my daughter – past my Ultimate Treehouses and Treehouse Masters, you know, the good stuff. And I found Nik Wallenda – Walking the Tight Rope.

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The Tree House Bar

I’ve been thinking a lot about tree houses lately. I’m not sure why this is. But Stavi and I have been sitting out on the driveway drinking beer and looking up at my massive trees in my front yard, and it has come to our attention that those are some damn fine tree house trees. I’ve been thinking, therefore, that maybe we should construct a tree house up in one of them there trees.

I’ve long been obsessed with awesome tree houses, and used to try to build them all the time when I was a kid. I was also always jealous of those friends of mine who had really nice ones. My Pop built me a helluvatuff fort when I was a kid. My sister and I had our own two-storey house in the backyard. But it wasn’t a tree house. There’s just a difference. Maybe a tree house can be hidden in the trees. Heck, I even wrote a poem about a tree house when I was younger. Don’t hate.

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Here be Space: Collector of Collections

I’ve been home since Saturday. But I’m still getting used to it. Like I said before, it feels like I’ve been in a different airport (and hotel) every week. And indeed, I pretty much have. It’s nice to get home and know you’ll be staying there for at least a little while. Our next trip isn’t scheduled until August, so I have at least a month here before I have to use a suitcase again. Gah, I’m so tired of putting stuff into suitcases.

But you know what I’ve found about being back in the house? Well, besides the fact that when you’ve been gone for a week you get to see what your house actually smells like. I’ve found that it’s too big. You know, 7500 square feet can just get overwhelming for a guy like me. No, seriously it’s only about 2500 square feet, but when you’re home alone, it feels like a whole helluva bunch of wasted space. Of course, when you’ve been living out of a suitcase in a hotel room every other week, you start realizing that you’re doing just fine without all your big luscious space. And furthermore, all your stuff.

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Brew Review: Ricky Gervais – Out of England

What? Another review? Yeah, well the only other things to talk about right now are getting kicked like dead horses, with boots covered in bacon. And the guy doing the kicking has a blister on his foot because there’s a hole in his sock. And his wife is a dental hygienist. So yeah, it’s kind of tiring. I’m already tired of the conspiracy theories about how dude isn’t really dead. Or how he’s been dead for a long time. Seriously? We need another conspiracy to latch onto? :rolleyes:

And plus, too, when I see something great, I like to share it with you guys so you can see something great too. So let’s get this starty parted.

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What is a reunion without first a union?

It’s that time of year again. You know, that time after Halloween when you begin taking down the sheety ghosts and throwing away the rotten, moldy, blackened, gnat-infested carcasses of the pumpkins on your porch and prepare to replace them with Christmas decorations. It’s that time when we begin winding down the year and getting ready to board up the tree houses for the winter, and start migrating inside where we can convene around fireplaces and football games. We also tend to have a lot more family reunions this time of year.

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Can you feel yourself getting dumber?

Why is reality television so popular? I guess I should put quotes around “reality”, because, as we all know, almost none of it is really real, realistically. But “reality television” has become the standard for all programming on broadcast television now. It’s become so popular that Fox, in the extra cable packages, even offers an ‘All Reality – All The Time’ channel. Is this seriously what people want over drama?

See, to me, television has always been about being entertained. And what scares me is that people really are being entertained by this low-brow programming. Women competing to see who gets to be some dude’s next wife. Men competing to be the next ex-husband of some woman who’s not really even all that pretty. Why did I say pretty, instead of mentioning her personality? Well, obviously, that’s all it’s about, because it’s television! Lowest common denominator. Have you seen Idiocracy? Yeah. Think just like that. And that’s not the worst of it.

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Character Flaws

Smug bastard.Ever notice how smug the Quaker Oats guy looks? It doesn’t really make me want to buy their product, it makes me want to kick that pilgrim’s ass. He in fact looks like he’s trying not to laugh at you. And speaking of kicking ass, I’ve now settled my old hypothetical: Mr Clean would definitely kick the shit out of Mattress Giant.

But seriously, brand-name characters are either just really bad ass, or really bad. Bad ass? The Most Interesting Man in the World, for Dos Equis beer. That guy is bad ass. I mean, hell, his blood smells like cologne. Bad? Jared from Subway. Is this guy’s fifteen minutes not up yet? Will someone please run over his stupid ass? Look, Subway Marketing Campaign Advisor Guy, we all know he didn’t lose all that weight only eating Subway sandwiches. Sandwiches have bread. Bread has carbs. Carbs make people fat. We don’t buy it. So please. Retire his stupid ass and let’s move on. We’re all sick and tired of his birth-control face by now.

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Newscasters: A Hive of Scum and Villainy

We watched House tonight on television – great show, by the way – and as I was getting up to turn off the TV, the ‘next on’ bit came on to tell me what was going to be on the news at nine tonight. Immediately I got so disgusted I wanted to hit someone. Real hard. And this isn’t one of those annoyances – this was an almost incoceivably inconsiderate and disrespectful piece they were advertising.

She said it with fervor, “… Plus, how this swimsuit supermodel barely survived the crashing winds of the tsunami!” played against some moving footage of the woman modeling in a bikini.

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This just in: People are morons.

Did anyone watch the “watch with the world premiere event” last night on Discovery Channel – Inside the Space Station? I did. It was pretty cool, but I kept getting severely irritated with the people. Not the people in the show, but the people watching it.

Example:

Every time it went to a commercial, it would show some dude from some small town asking a question to the cosmonauts. When the program came back on, the cosmonauts would answer it. What pissed me off was the subject of these moronic questions they asked! One woman asked, “What do you miss the most about being on Earth?” Give me a damn break! So of course, all three dudes answer the same exact way: “I miss my friends and family.”

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