Another product I didn't know I needed

Organic Batter Blaster ™ - Original Pancake and Waffle Batter

Not just any Organic Pancake and Waffle Batter...Organic Pancake and Waffle Batter in an aerosol can a la spray cheese. Which kind of goes against the whole "organic is better for the environment" thing, doesn't it?

At least he's still humble...

So they're making a new "Star Trek" prequel with the characters from the original series - Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, etc. Nimoy's in, but Shatner's out. But at least, according to this story from CNN, he's taking it well:

'I couldn't believe it. I'm not in the movie at all. Leonard, God bless his heart, is in, but not me,' Shatner, 76, told The Associated Press on Thursday. 'I thought, what a decision to make, since it obviously is a decision not to make use of the popularity I have to ensure the movie has good box office. It didn't seem to be a wise business decision.'

Something else to worry about

I don't live in "The City", so this might not be a problem, but still...Pythons in the toilet? I have a friend who is buying a house, so I've pointed this phenomenon out to her so she can make sure the inspector checks the pipes properly.

I'd better get on it...

Now that I've been linked to from the mighty John Moe's mighty Monkey Disaster blog I should get of my butt and start posting stuff again. Which will, almost undoubtedly, be a bunch of stupid news stories that I find and blather about on the air (Radio KYA Ocean Shores...apparently the "sweetest music ever made", but I wouldn't know since I almost never listen). But I'll start off my return to (hopefully) more active posting with something a bit more "real": A recommendation that you listen to my nephew Matt in his early attempts at being a DJ.

Matt, like his uncle, is a college DJ. Unlike his uncle, his weekly college radio show can be heard world-wide thanks to the wonder of the Internet (in MY day we had three listeners in a prison and we liked it!). The station is VIC Radio out of Ithaca College (probably the "IC" in VIC, not that I've asked), and you can find their stream here. Matt, being a freshman, gets a fine graveyard shift: midnight to 2 AM Tuesday mornings. Which works out great for his West Coast relatives, since he's on from 9 to 11 on Monday nights.

So tune in, give it a listen, and don't razz him too much about saying "um" every other word. After all, he's new at this and hasn't learned the secret of turning "um" in to "uh" or "so" or "ehhhhh....yeah...."

Find Your Candidate for the 2008 Election

Apparently, according to this site's candidate calculator, I'm a Bill Richardson man. Not knowing anything about him other than that he's from New Mexico, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. And I'm too lazy to do the research. Hopefully I'll remember that when Caucus / Primary time comes around so I don't go voting for Jackson Grimes of the United Fascist Union again...

Genius. Sheer genius.

This guy knows something I don't, 'cause I would never have thought to stick a rattlesnake in my mouth if I wanted to impress my ex-girlfriend. A whole double cheeseburger, sure, but never a rattler!

Man hides sex toys in the wurst way...

Apparently "Schwartenmagen" is German for "latex dildo with a natural look"

People with too much time on their hands, entry #327

The guy (or people) who built this City of toothpicks. Because it must have taken an inordinate amount of time to make this sucker:

"I really amazed my friends with my nudity knowledge growing up." - Jim McBride

Adding to the list of "web site ideas I should have had" is mrskin.com, a site that logs nude scenes in mainstream movies by actress (they only do female nude tracking because, in ol' Jim McBride's words, "this job is so fun I didn't want to make it work." Whatever you say, Jim!

Here's an article about him from our good friends at Yahoo News.

My new fave web site

Hot Chicks with Douchebags. What's there? Pretty much what you'd expect: pictures of hot chicks and douchebag guys. The commentary is pretty funny, but not nearly as funny as the pictures of people like The Gator here:

1 - 0

The Seahawks, that is...guaranteed tie for the top of the NFC West, since St. Louis lost today and either Arizona or San Fran will lose tomorrow. The team looked fairly good today, although the offense was a bit slow to get things going. But the defense hit hard, and they kept the hapless Bucks out of the end zone, so it all worked out fine in the end.

First day of school

So yesterday was the first day of school for the mighty Seattle Public Schools, and after a nice healthy breakfast (Cinnamon Life and Captain Crunch, as you can see from the photos), the kids headed off.



That last shot is the classic Chicken family "heading off to school" shot. Which made me think...Logan is now in 5th grade, so this is the sixth time we've done this. How much have they changed? Which led to this little slide show right here:

To quote The Ogre...

NERRRRRRRRRRRRRDS!!!!!

Why? Because only a nerd would calculate a formula to explain why Jessica Alba has the perfect wiggle.

Genius!

The invention...clearly not the people writing in the questions. But it's nice that someone has finally invented the self-adhesive sunroof so you can look like you've got a sun roof without actually allowing any sun in through the roof.

Ah, the old seat belt 'Heimlich'

Please do as Sgt. Mozan asks and pull over next time you're trying to eat an eggamuffin on the way to work.

Seat belt 'Heimlich' saves choking man - Yahoo! News

A clear sign I'm now in mid life...

I read this story and instead of thinking "oh my god that's nuts" I thought "wow, that would be cool..."

So, is it mid-life crisis? Am I not willing to admit that I'm 40 and probably shouldn't be thinking about entering an 8-day mountain bike race that, according to the web site, covers "a distance of roughly 600 km (385 miles) and a vertical gain of 19,5000 m (65,000 ft.)"?

Well, looking at the pictures there are definitely a few riders older than me...I mentioned it to the wife and her first response was "Yuck!", followed by "that sounds expensive". Well, sure...it's 600 Euros to enter, which at this second works out to about $825. That basically covers food and transportation of your stuff each day of the race. And maybe a floor to sleep on, but that doesn't sound too comfortable.

So you'd have to add airfare - figure, what, $1,000 for that, maybe? Then train transportation to the start and back to the airport, maybe another $200 - 500 depending on where you flew in. Then if you want to sleep in comfort and eat real food rather than the pasta and tomato sauce the race provides, throw in a couple more hundred a night during the ride, figure $2,000 total. Then you'd want a week in a villa somewhere in Italy, preferably a villa staffed with professional massage therapists, so add another $2,000 for that, plus an extra week's food and tourist stuff at, oh, $1,000. So that adds up to, um, around $7,500.

Yeah, that is kind of expensive...especially when the CNN guy who did the ride has a photo of his bike, a $2,000 Specialized Stumpjumper, that he refers to as "one of the least expensive bikes in the race". Hmm...maybe my $750 Marin won't cut it. So we'd better throw in another $2,500 for a new bike, taking it to a nice $10,000 vacation.

And that's not counting getting the wife and kids over there too, so yeah...too expensive.

A guy can dream, though. And while dreaming, he can look at photos of this year's race. Fine photos like these:

Angels. Blue ones.

Man I've been crappy about the posting! You'd think I could manage to find something to stick on the ol' Blog once a month, but apparently not. At least, nothing interesting and worth reading...so instead, here are some pictures.

I've lived in Seattle for what, 37 summers or so (three summers away during college...), but I've never actually gone to the hydro races. Nor have I gone down to see the Blue Angels air show. Both of these were big events in the 70s when I was growing up, but I was too young to drink and didn't have a boat. And my dad wasn't really a "go sit in a crowd of drunks with my kid" kind of guy.

Well, I figured that now that I'm 40 and have kids of my own I might as well submit them to the expected joys of standing on a bridge with a bunch of other people while really sweet jets fly overhead. So we packed the bikes on the car, headed down to I-90, rode through the tunnel, and found ourselves surrounded by a teeming mass of humanity. Not a steaming mass, because it was still kind of cloudy, but definitely teeming.

When we got there the Patriots aerobatics team was doing their thing in, um, whatever kind of plane it is that they fly. I'm not a plane geek, so I don't know, but they looked like this:



I like the headlights they have on the wings...very sexy.

So anyway, after the Patriots finished we moved out on to the actual bridge - closed to traffic, thanks for asking - and waited for the Angels to show up. First on the scene was their big prop plane, Fat Albert (I think...). This is the plane that hauls all their crap around. It's like their tour bus, only instead of riding in it the stunt pilots fly around in their sweet jets and let the roadies (Marines, in this case...) fly the slow bus. Poor marines. It's still a cool looking plane, and can climb pretty damn steeply as the second photo shows.



Well, after Albert had left the scene the main show started. Well, not immediately...the planes take a rather circuitous approach, heading north from Boeing Field past downtown, around the top of Lake Washington, then down over Bellevue and finally coming back west across the lake, where they hit the smoke. And you need the smoke, 'cause they're kind of small and you can't hear them until they're on top of you...



And after that the show was on. If you've never seen the Blue Angels, the show consists of four planes working together - the Diamond - and two "solo" planes who do individual stunts and stunts together. The impressive part of the Diamond act is that they're so dang close together pretty much all the time:



Whereas the solo pilots fly apart, but at much higher speed. And they do crazy stuff like play chicken and then miss each other by what looks like three feet but is probably a very safe 5 or 10...



Anyhoo, there are more links in the album in case you're interested!

Quote of the week

Well, of the early week, anyway..." Police did not know if the same wookie was involved in Sunday's attack. "

From the illustrious news source MyFoxLA comes this great headline: Chewbacca Allegedly Sexually Assaults Marilyn Monroe, Flees.

It's pretty much my favorite animal.

The zebrula. Not as cool as the Liger, but still pretty cool looking.

Adding to the list...

The list of ways I don't want to die, that is. I would like to add these two to that list:

1. Die in dairy farm manure pit: "Exposure to methane gas led to the deaths of five people, but whether they suffocated from the fumes or drowned in 18 inches of liquefied cow manure may never be known, authorities said."

2. Shot in the face by a fireworks mortar: "A powerful firework exploded in the face of a woman trying to set it off, killing her as her fiance and 8-year-old son watched, police said...'She basically killed herself in front her children and her fiance,' Welch said."