That's Hot!

I found an interesting article on the Telegraph's website today. I thought I'd share a snippet of it.

Even for the hardened adventurer, surfing in boiling waters just 20 feet from the flowing lava of an active volcano is pushing the boundaries of extreme sport. But for professional surfer CJ Kanuha the thrill of a challenge was too good to pass up.

He said "I was tentative to get too close at first, and for good reason, the boiling water there is well over 200 hundred degrees in some spots, super hot, and it quickly melted the wax on the surfboard."
The surfer, who suffered peeling skin on his legs from the boiling water, added: "It was an amazing feeling to get so close to the power of the lava from the volcano."

I submit that this is just further proof that our current views on the ancient volcano sacrifices are wrong. People were not forced to jump but went willingly and usually said something along the lines of, “Dude check this out!” before disappearing over the edge.

false advertising

Alright, I don't get it. Can someone explain to me what Abercrombie & Fitch sells? On my way home from work I was stared down by a 2 story tall photograph of a young shirtless guy with his hand in his hair. Fantastic... What the crap does this have to do with clothes?! They sell clothing don't they or did they switch gears entirely and just started selling young men. If they have I apologize whole heartily and commend their advertising department, bravo, well done and all that.



Now I can understand as a clothing manufacturer you'd want to have an attractive model wearing your companies latest fashion. This makes sense to me. You're showing your product on the best possible figure much like how toothpaste companies show people with perfect bright white smiles brushing with their product, But when your model isn't wearing anything, how does this sell your product?! Am I supposed to look at this photo and think, "Man he's got great hair, I should go buy some of their jeans..." I mean come on!! Is it because your clothing is so over priced that even the model couldn't afford to buy any of it?

Either way I'm not going to shop there. Call me old fashion, a prude or even a heterosexual, but young naked men just don't me want to go out and buy a company's clothing line.

Bacon FTW

Bacon = awesome. Most understand this simple equation but there are still a few out there that just don't get it which is just a terrible tragedy...

Bacon is a well used meat. It's made its way into breakfast, lunch and dinner. It can be found by itself, sprinkled on a salad or in a big beefy burger. Most of us out there feel that bacon has been taken to its limits, but there are still a few bacon trail blazers out there continuing to search for that untouched, virgin soil where they can expand in the name of baconie goodness.

I recently found examples of two such baconeers.

Firstly, the bacon cake. Genius! Combining our love of cake with that of bacon. Who needs to blow out the candles and make a wish? Its already been granted. Happy birthday indeed!

Secondly, bacon ice cream. Stupendous! Imagine the distant sound of the ice cream truck with its lullaby like music slowly drifting in the breeze to your ear. The music gets louder, as does the sound of voices, many voices, cheering loudly. You walk to the front of your yard and see the truck stop on your road. Men from all over the neighborhood clamor to get their orders to the man in the paper hat in first. Why all the commotion?! What flavor could be driving them to such levels?! BACON!

Lets play a game!

My son’s digestive tract is a long and twisting road. It is fraught with hairpin turns, cul-de-sacs and is at the very least 300 miles long. It’s Lombard Street on acid. It is in such a sorry state the commuters on this interstate of woe take the better part of a day to reach their destination. Trying to relieve the pressure that causes such consternation for my child is a task not easily accomplished. To you uninformed people out there simply holding the infant over your shoulder and patting them on the back will not coax all the trapped air out. It will let some out, yes, a clever ruse to mislead you into a false sense of accomplishment but there is much more still lingering in there…waiting…


To effectively rid the afflicted of this gas you must play a game, Baby Gas is what I have coined it. Imagine the labyrinth game of old where you tried to negotiate the steel marble from point A to point B by tilting the board on its axis while missing the holes that littered the board’s surface. The concept is the same with Baby Gas. Your steel marble is the gas trapped somewhere inside your child’s tiny body. You must navigate through the corkscrews of their system by any reasonable* means to one of two exits. More points are given to those who are able to release the air from the upper exit instead of the lower. The game begins the moment your baby starts crying that frustrated cry that every parents knows and dreads, the one that is not easily solved by a bottle or change of diaper. Once the game has started you are given a predetermined amount of time to remove the gas. There is no judging of skill or form only of results. A variety of maneuvers have been used to win this game; the over the shoulder, the football hold, the starfish, the whack-a-mole, the pendulum and the hippy hippy shake are just a few. Magical liquid such as gripe water or Mylicon are allowed because everyone, you friends, your neighbors, people in the grocery store, desire for you to win this game as quickly as possible.

Of course the game is completed once the foghorn that is your child has stopped their ear crippling scream and have resumed their normal placid drool laden expression. Congratulations! You’ve won and don’t be surprised if people around you cheer at your success. For those of you who fail, migraines, facial ticks, and glares from bystanders will accompany you day and night.

To the victory goes the spoils but remember you’ve won but one game and there are many, many, manymanymanymanymanymanymanymany more where that came from…

I love the smell of latex paint in the morning...

To all of you who think that maybe someday you might want to take up smoking, I beg you not to. Everyday across the globe cigarette smoke is killing hundreds if not thousands of innocent ceilings. Three years into this house and we’re finally getting rid of the “natural” orange khaki color the nicotine and tar made our ceilings throughout the living room, and I assure you it is not an easy process. We bought a 5 gallon tub of Kilz2 which pours out with the consistency of a smooth milkshake and after the first coat the ceiling was a whiter shade of tan. KILZ!!! Its name states its objective quite clearly but even it couldn’t stop it from bleeding through the first coat! The stain also infected the roller causing the nap to turn into a disease-laden yellow after only a few passes. Towards the end of the first coat just as I was loading the roller up for the last little section I started smelling cigarette smoke. I think it was the ceiling letting me know that it would not go quietly into the night, and it most definitely has not gone quietly…

I’d also like to say that to all of you with a house built after the Harding administration and have sheetrock walls, know that you are a blessed people. A consistent surface texture, the ability to cut new outlets into it with ease, simple to patch, and relatively inexpensive; your world is foreign to me. Our walls are made out of shiplap or horizontal wood boards that have a thin covering of heavy paper glued over them. That’s it. Of course on top of that we have a veritable (potentially toxic) stratum of paint and wallpaper layering the surface. Two to three layers of wall paper (not including the top one I stripped off), three layers of paint, a thin layer of pure evil with a white primer on top. This does not create the smoothest of surfaces even if there weren’t eight-five years of cuts, gouges and scrapes riddling its ancient shell.

Spackle is a cruel mistress! Did you know that? It tempts you into thinking that if you just put a dab here and a skosh there that all your troubles will disappear. Lies! You’ll find yourself coming back time and time again to get your fix only to find that the more you use it, the worse it gets! You sand it down to try to smooth it out but that creates some dips in the surface so you add more but now there’s a bump in the middle so you sand again, over and over this cyclical life flows until your fingers are so caked with spackle that they form a sort of mitt and when you sneeze a white unidentifiable substance comes out!

If I can get through this experience without painting the furniture, floor, or animals, without falling off the ladder and without sanding my way through a wall I will consider it a success.

Is it bad that no matter where I am I smell paint?....

Lego Cake FTW!

I love that my generation is now influential and productive in our society. Geek movies abound, being a nerd is almost trendy and lego related products are flooding the market. It's a glorious time!

Baby hand soap

creepy...really really creepy. I think I might have to buy some...