Hey Kids

I Blame You Pikachu

Fridays Digressions

• While placing my empty printer cartridge in the recycling envelope I noticed instruction #1) Place 1 or 2 empty HP inkjet cartridge(s) in this envelope without additional packaging, materials or notes.




• It's annoying sometimes to live in a world that requires that kind of instruction.



• Nearly everytime I go to into my children's bath after my son showers for school there's an empty Dr Pepper can on the side of the tub. Part of me says I raised him right something else tells me I've failed him.



• He'll be ok.



• I swear, the spaces between these thoughts comes randomly sometimes and if I go back and try to edit, it won't take and goes right back like it was when I publish.



• The Christmas tree is up and for I guess the 35th time (or whenever I saw it last) seeing it reminded me of the silver tinsel tree we had as a child that had a multi colored wheel that faced it and spun around by an electric motor casting red, blue orange and green? colors over that tacky tree. I can still hear it humming if I close my eyes.



• It malfunctioned and caught on fire once, no one was home- it's a wonder it didn't burn that old house down.



• Mom loved Christmas, I'd give anything if she had one more with us.



• When we were little some Christmas' dad would take us out to see the Kings family lights on Christmas eve while mom would stay at home and pretend she was going to bed to be ready for the big day. She would put all our presents out- some of which were stored at neighbors. We'd come home and the bottom of the tree would be overflowing. We still have a picture of my sister running for her presents- she is just a blur.



• The best part of the Kings lights was Santa fishing from a boat in the lake.

A Crazy Picture

of someone I don't even know

Wednesdays Digressions

• Headline from my news browser: Panda in China Zoo bites student who wanted a hug. Some things just make you go $%^&*#@ ! I wonder what part of that person did not understand the word Bear? And why would it ever occur to anyone to want to hug a wild animal of any type?





• I don't know which is scarier- the fact that the movie Kung Fu Panda probably had something to do with another humans perception of a large, powerful, fanged animal or the fact we can be so predictably stupid I can can sit here rocking back and forth and give myself a 90 % of being correct with such a goofy, off the cuff prediction.




• Just saw a blurb about Americas Most Wanted is responsible for the capture of 1000+ fugitives.




• The first show they did profiled a guy who owned the pizza place near where I went to college (Johns Pizza?). Immediately after the show a girl I knew went into the place and saw the guy and said,"Wow, this is weird, what a coincidence - I just watched this show called Americas Most Wanted and they did a story about a guy who had tattoos just like yours." He got a scared look on his face and ducked out the back. His body was found the next day, he had killed himself in a state park nearby.




• He made a good pizza.




• My spellchecker hi lights Kung Fu.



• A low power TV station in Cincinnati has changed its call letters to WKRP to promote its change to digital format due to widespread recognition of the old show. I would have assumed someone would have picked that up a long time ago. Everyone in their market and anyone who visits will check it out- pretty smart. I'll assume they get the joke to acronym of the last 3 letters.


• Hulu.com has WKRP in Cincinnati episodes.

You Should Know A Little About

Jim Abbott

"In 1989, Abbott joined the California Angels' starting rotation as a rookie without playing a single minor league game. That season, he posted a 12-12 record with an ERA of 3.92. His 12 wins in his first professional season were the most since Mark Fidrych won 19 for the Detroit Tigers in 1976, and he finished fifth in the year's Rookie of the Year voting.

In 1991, Abbott won 18 games with the Angels while posting an ERA of 2.89, finishing third in the American League Cy Young Award voting. In 1992 season, he posted a 2.77 ERA, but his win-loss record fell to 7-15 for the sixth-place Angels. No player since 1917 started at least 20 games, had an ERA under 3.00, and had a worse winning percentage. Abbott was also won the Tony Conigliaro Award in 1992.



On September 4, 1993 while pitching for the New York Yankees, Abbott pitched a no-hitter against the Cleveland Indians.



In 1994, Abbott's Yankees led the American League East, but the 1994 Major League Baseball strike ended the season on August 12, 1994. The following year, after starting the season with the Chicago White Sox, he returned to the California Angels, who held a 11 game lead over the Seattle Mariners in August, but lost the American League West in a one-game playoff to the Mariners.


When preparing to pitch the ball, Abbott would rest a right-handed thrower's glove on the end of his right forearm. After releasing the ball, he would quickly slip his hand into the glove, usually in time to field any balls that a two-handed pitcher would be able to field. Then he would remove the glove by securing it between his right forearm and torso, slip his hand out of the glove, and remove the ball from the glove, usually in time to throw out the runner, and sometimes even starting double plays. During international play, Cuba once decided to repeatedly bunt against him, hoping that he wouldn't be able to manage, which proved to be an unsuccessful strategy."-Wikipedia





Strange habit you say? Oh, imagine my embarrassment, I forgot to mention he was born without a right hand!

Monday's Missives

• Few things in this world get on my nerves like anime` cartoons. This is so true that when I realised Speed Racer was anime` I considered hating it for a minute.




• I couldn't hate Speed Racer.




• It seems like the guys who like anime` tend to like it a lot and also have a thing for samurai swords and Japanese women. I knew a guy who was in to all of that and married a woman from Japan. She was way out of his league and I bet has wished for a do-over more than once.




• There is a type of autism that one of the components is an obsessive fascination with another culture. It also often involves a fascination with things like public transportation. I knew a guy once from a job I had who would travel to Europe to ride the trains of different countries. This wasn't to see the world by rail- it was to gather information about which system was the best to return to the US and try to kill coworkers by sheer boredom from stories about the superiority of Belgium's schedules over Luxembourg's.




• I've heard people finally resorted to just raising a hand up in front of his face anytime he got near and saying,"I don't care anything about the train service in Lichtenstein and I don't want to hear any retarded stories about it!"
• My thoughts regarding drilling here in the states got challenged a bit when a rig went up within 700 meters of my home. I was really tolerant of the noise, light pollution and the mud on the roads, what got me was the nearly new 700.00$ washing machine ruined by sediments kicked up in the well which my family now can't drink from. My neighbor had to replace a dishwasher and everyones water quality and pressure was affected around me. My ISP also had to replace my rooftop unit that picks up my internet signals because the oil company put a telemetry unit on that site that knocked my download speeds down to 1992 levels.
• It's official: I Hate Big Oil- whatever that is.
• I saw a video the other day done by a news crew in either NZ or Australia- I don't recall where they had a guy who had won the lottery scratch a ticket off to recreate the event. He did it, the color washed out of his face, he looked faint and began slumping over a bit an said, "I just won 250,000, oh my God..." He won another 250K. If it were me there'd be some way I'd owe the government money and the ticket would read, please send a cashiers check...
• Once when I was in college a group of us were lying around some studying, some half napping when the conversation got started, what would you do if you won the lottery? Everyone recounted strangely (I thought ) detailed plans for ginormous houses, boats and every kind of luxury car under the sun. I did not play the lottery and was one of those more or less napping so didn't think about it until I was asked directly to contribute. I said something like,"I don't know, well I guess I would help everyone in my family with their needs, pay for some struggling students college, put some up for my children, help homeless and hungry people and well, probably in general- ease a lot of peoples suffering every chance I got."
• They looked at me like I was crazy.