It was down at the Atlanta Bread Company. I had stopped in for a loaf of soup and some coffee and I ran into him at the coffee bar. We really hit it off. He's quite a talker. A bit of a "let's talk about me" attitude but I guess that's what happens when you're God.

Anyway, we had a pleasant brunch and he even gave me his autograph. It was all swirly and illegible, just like a doctor's signature. I figured 'what the hell' and stopped off at my pharmacist on the way home. They filled a prescription ($10 copay, of course) for it! I took two before bed, just like the bottle said. It turns out that they were laxatives. Powerful laxatives.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

The picture is in the extended entry, to spare the innocence of Harvey my tender readers.

We had dinner at Trey's place last night. All of us. That is, Lovely Wife and I plus three (count them: 1 - 2 - 3) children ages five and under.

Trey has a very nice house. It's new. He is a very, very brave man.

Dinner was fantastic. Sangria and veggie dip started us out. Ever have sangria? I was a sangria virgin and I quite enjoyed it. Lemon juice, sugar and red wine (in the correct proportions) make a light and refreshing drink. This one might become part of our regular repertoire.

The meal was centered around chicken Creole and it was to die for. I had chicken Creole dreams last night. No joke. Damn, that was good.

So what's the problem then? After all it has recently been shown that swimming through syrup is just as easy as swimming through water.

Cussler and Gettelfinger took more than 300 kilograms of guar gum, an edible thickening agent found in salad dressings, ice cream and shampoo, and dumped it into a 25-metre swimming pool, creating a gloopy liquid twice as thick as water. "It looked like snot," says Cussler.

How's that for a pick-up line? "Hey Baby, want to swim through my pool of snot?"

The pair then asked 16 volunteers, a mix of both competitive and recreational swimmers, to swim in a regular pool and in the guar syrup. Whatever strokes they used, the swimmers' times differed by no more than 4%, with neither water nor syrup producing consistently faster times, the researchers report in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal.

I seems that although there is more drag on the body as it passes through a thicker liquid there is also more thrust from pushing against the liquid and the two cancel out for a human sized object.

Now we know. Isn't science grand?

(Hat tip to Dopple-G)

Dad Says School Duct-Taped Son's Pants

The dress code says no pants hanging off of your ass. Assistant Principal Patricia Walters takes that shit seriously. When Spencer Allison wore his baggies down low his teacher sent him to see her and she corrected the problem in impeccable fashion.

"She then proceeded to duct tape his waist, three times around the waist," said [the boy's father Scott] Allison. "Then she sent him back to class, in front of his peers."

He said he worried his son would be mocked by his classmates at the school in the town about 20 miles east of South Bend.

"This outrages me and shocks me," Allison said.

Of course he's going to be mocked. The Assistant Principal taped his pants! That's beautiful! Talk about fodder for mocking. And what are the chances that lil Spence violates that particular section of the dress code again?

Actually, Spencer is pretty lucky. Whenever I see an example of this particular fashion statement I always think of a staple gun, not duct tape.

(Hat tips to Jason Trommetter and Jack Mitcham.)

I haven't gone the way of the dodo, just very time challenged at the moment.

I've put up a new post at Protomonkey. Enjoy!

I don't want to be cremated after all. That was my original plan, you see. No muss or fuss, the family gets a nice ceremony, say goodbye with the ol' ash sprinkle picnic, everybody goes home happy. Side benefits include not becoming worm food or the victim in some Frankestinian madman's experiments. You know me - I'd end up as "Abby Normal" for sure. And if you think of it cremation is really the only sure way to limit the necrophiliacs to a few choice days of abuse.

Unfortunately I've uncovered a flaw in my plan. You can duplicate the error very easily. Take the bag out of your vacuum cleaner. Cut off one end. Empty it. Look inside. What do you see?

Dust! There's still dust in there! Dust is fine stuff. It sticks to things. When they dump your ashes there's going to be some of you left inside that urn or Ziploc baggie (the container depends of course on whether your relatives spent actual money on your Shake-N-Bake moment or if they sent you out on the cheap).

And what happens to the leftovers? If you were urn bound you get washed away down the sink and into the sewer system. Oh, yay. Either a one way trip to the sewage reclamation processing plant or you end up in the East River. Depending on where you live.

God forbid your family lives in the boonies. Eternity in the septic tank - how does that grab you?

It's even worse if you were slag in a bag. You're trashcan bound at that point. Oh, you don't think so? Just exactly what do you expect the grieving kin to do with a used plastic baggie with a thin layer of you-dust in it? You're going into the can and from there to the dumpster and then to the land fill. Or the East River.

So dumping the dust proves problematic. The alternative is being cosseted on the mantelpiece of one of your whacked-out aunts or being stuffed in the back of your widow's (or widower's, as appropriate) closet. Oh, come on - do you really think they're going to get laid with a bottle full of your ashes around? Back of the closet (with last year's shoes) is about the best you can realistically hope for.

If they do keep you on display it's just a matter of time before somebody accidentally knocks you down and spreads you all over the floor and cleans you up with the Dustbuster, thereby fulfilling the awful prophesy of doom that says you are going to end up in a landfill. Or the East River.

Nope, none of that for me, thank you very much. I'll go traditional and let my rotting corpse take up some pristine park land for a few decades until they pave me over for the next strip mall. But I'm leaving specific orders for the coroner to implant a razor in my asshole. That'll show the necrophiliacs who's boss.

Pixy Misa, beloved founder of Munuviana, has grown a year older today. Okay, so technically he just grew a day older today, he grew a year older over the course of the past year. And if you think about it, so did all of the rest of us. It's just that Pixy has completed the task on the calendar anniversary of his birth so that makes it a special day for him and for all of the rest of us who have done the exact same thing but not on the calendar anniversary of our births - tough beans for us.

Happy Birthday, Pixy!

(In addition to it being his birthday it's also a big day in his computer life as he's about to break the world's record for most Windows re-installs in a single week.)

The storm was pretty impressive and the aftermath was unexpected. In our neighborhood alone there are eight or so trees down. That's in a neighborhood of around 30 houses. On our side of the street there is a string of houses that lost trees in a domino effect, one tree falling and hitting another and then again and again.

Two houses to the right had their house hit by a tree, damaging the roof. Fortunately it was a branch hit and not a trunk hit so the damage isn't too severe and nobody got hurt.

Three houses down the other way they were saved from a direct hit by the slightest of margins. A very large oak fell into a pine and the pine held it. It's bent over at a fifteen degree angle holding the oak up. When it lets loose, both will be hitting their house. They are looking into options now.

We got through with no house damage. There are lots of branches down all over the lawn but all of our trees held up this time.

We did lose a freezer full of food though and that bites. We even went out and bought more coolers so we would be able to put all of our chilled goods on ice. Unfortunately it just took too long for Georgia Power to get us back online and it had all defrosted.

Being without power was frustrating but also enjoyable. Flashlights doubled as strobe lights for an impromptu kids' dance party, neighbors congregated and shared storm stories, there was far more consumption of alcohol than normal and we all figured out how to wipe our asses by candlelight.

Good times.

We got pounded pretty well by Ivan's bastard offspring. Trees are down all over the neighborhood. We lost some sizeable branches but all of ours stayed up. Yay!

We have no power until tomorrow at the earliest. UPS power is failing and I need to save some for Lovely Wife so I'm outtie. Talk to y'all tomorrow.

Jaws in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies.

(Hat tip to Dopple-G)

Zlad is why VH-1 is wrong about the 80's.

(Hat tip to Dopple-G)

We started teaching Bear to read last Monday. Today he read the sentence above.

He should be blogging by next Wednesday.

They're everywhere! Jen turned 30, Elizabeth's CD got a year older, Harvey is 38. Where will it end? Hopefully nowhere and not for a long time. Happy Birthday, y'all.

Harvey is the only one who asked for presents so here goes. Harvey, you are invited to take The Silicon Challenge. I only got 16 out of 20. I would have done better but I kept getting distracted by something in my eye.

Kelley of Suburban Blight was in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, along with a bunch of other bloggers who are less important simply because I don't know them. The article is here and you can avoid the annoying registration here.

Congrats Kelley!

She's wondering if she's sick enough. My Papa used to say "If you're sick enough to notice, you're sick enough to stay home". Or was it "If you're sick enough to notice, you're sick enough to drink a half gallon of my home-pressed vegetable juice cocktail".

I have a disturbing feeling it was that second one.

She speaks from the heart.

Then you're probably either leading too much or you are jerking the trigger. Squeeze it slowly.

Yes, I do realize just how naughty "jerking the trigger" and "squeeze it slowly" sound. I'm like that.

Anyway, we went to the Yellow Daisy Festival at Stone Mountain yesterday. Biggest arts & crafts show in Georgia. 450+ vendors, yadda, yadda, yadda. Me and 5 cops may have been the only males there out of the 10,000 people in attendance. I swear it was worse than a Sarah McLachlan concert. I was on my best behavior but occasionally I would tremble and collapse into a fetal position, just to be on the safe side.

Good times. Good times.

Nicky is very inexperienced and somewhat at a loss about how to go about things, especially without the generally required equipment. He ends up 'mounting' whatever end of Kota that he happens to be located nearest.

It gives new meaning to the term "Fucked in the head".

Those are the little bumps on the otherwise glass-smooth upper torsos of certain overexercised Olympic athletes.

As you know, Kota (aka Scarface) is in her first heat. She's a bit 'off' in the head but seems to be handling things okay. Nicky on the other hand, is not. Nicky is nutless in a literal sense but he is still responding to the pheromones/hormones/whatever that Kota is putting out.

He keeps trying to hump her.

It's such a sad and pathetic scene. He has as much experience with female dogs in heat as Kota has being one. That is, none. He can't do anything productive since he has no balls. She's so much bigger than he is (labrador vs. terrier) that it's almost comical to watch. Perhaps the funniest thing is that Kota doesn't even pay attention to him. He'll try to grab on and go to town and she'll just lie there playing with a toy or whatever she was doing until she gets up and walks away leaving him with a sad and bewildered look on his face.

I was laughing (quietly, so as not to further humiliate the dog) at this yesterday when I had a disturbing thought. Nicky is incapable of doing what he wants to do. He is following deep rooted commands that are a part of his very being, he has no option not to keep trying to do what he can never do correctly. He is acting and reacting based solely on how he has been conditioned and bred to act and react. No matter how stupid he looks or how much people laugh at him or what an ass he makes of himself he will not stop until the conditions that are prompting him are removed.

Nicky is John Kerry, Kota is the USA and her heat is the election cycle. Is that spooky or what?

Bear: Daddy, can I punch you?

Me: No. That should be "May I punch you".

Bear: Daddy, may I punch you?

Me: Sure, buddy.

I'm all about the grammar.

The Scene: A cook-out at the Peacock house (slow cooked beef ribs, chicken breasts and bun length hot dogs). Sounds of bad karaoke float over the hills from a neighbor's house.

Dopple-G: What is that noise? Is somebody else having a party?

Lovely Wife: It's some karaoke or wedding singer or something. He was doing Dido last night.

Jim: There's nothing quite so sad as an off-key tenor singing Dido.

Dopple-G: The problem with wedding singers is they all sing the exact same songs. They need to expand their repertoire, put in some songs that rock. You know what they really need? They need to sing some...

Trey and Jim: (Interjecting simultaneously) Metallica.

Dopple-G: ...Metallica.

The spooky part here is that to the best of my recollection Trey and I hadn't ever gotten* into a discussion about music in general or Metallica in particular. Are we just both warped in the same fashion or did we both just read Dopple-G that well?

Either way I think we've successfully addressed two things here. First, we're obviously a natural team so the Flying Pig party isn't going to be subject to the divisive inter-party sniping that plagues the big parties. Second, Bread Fan will make an excellent replacement for Hail to the Chief.

* I really hate "gotten". Yes I know it's a real word and yes it is used correctly here but I really, really don't like that word. I use it now in self flaggelation just in case I've got some karmic debt that I don't know about.

Just very busy. Odd how life got busier when I lost my job. Feh.

Anyway, here are some things that are much better than waiting for a post here:

Still waiting on a Gmail account? Try Omnilect instead. 2 GB of storage there and you don't need somebody to invite you. (Hat tip to Lovely Wife)

Read the second parts of The Great Dismal short story at Quibbles & Bits. The first parts are here.

I've never been a huge baseball fan but I think I am now since I read this post from Corporate Mommy.

He's having a baby! Go say "Hi" to the newest member of Clancy's family.

Happy anniversary to Tiffany and Scott!

Besides getting the heave-ho from work there was a bit of other drama here yesterday. Nicki got out wandering (he's our older dog). Kota was out too (9-month old lab, in case you don't remember). Kota is always out when the kids are out because she sticks by them and protects them from evil neighbors, ice cream men and other suburban menaces. Nicki isn't supposed to be out because he is a dumbass and because Kota will follow him around.

Nicki ran across the street in front of a pick-up truck. Kota was following him. Nicki may or may not have been hit - no injuries in any case. Kota was lucky that the driver stopped the truck so fast but she still got tagged. She's got a 2 inch patch of fur and skin scraped off of her face on the orbit of her left eye and the same on her chin. I treated the wounds and Lovely Wife put a bandage on the big wound.

She's okay and none of the injuries are health threatening. She sure is timid now though - I hope she gets her spunky nature back soon. Also, she looks like a complete dumbass and that can't be good for her self esteem:

(Click for biggie size)

That's Don Juan de Burger relaxing on top of her. Notice the underwear too? That's one of Bacon's night time pants. She started her first heat just now too.

Lovely Wife went out and got her some very sexy dog lingerie to hold her maxies so she's not in pull-ups any more. No pictures of that due to threats from PETA.