Category Archives: fun

A Tribute

Today we bring you the biography of one of my favorite bloggers, the illustrious Weaselmomma.

She was born in upper Mesopotamia in the second century, the youngest of twenty seven children. A fighter from an early age, the brash and arrogant girl rejected the simple agrarian life to which her family was dedicated and soon left home to join the huns and learn the ways of the barbarian. Her young life was spent looting and pillaging, plundering stores of mead and ale, and terrorizing small villages.

Weaselmomma: the barbarian

She eventually grew bored with her life in Ireland, so she emigrated to Chile where she studied with ninjas, becoming adept in the arts of stealth and surprise attack.

Mad ninja skilz

This provided the skills she needed to bully her way into a full scholarship at Cambridge University, where she studied under Sir Isaac Newton. During these years she led a quiet life working as a patent clerk while developing her special theory of relativity, which she released in 1905.

Ausgeseichnet!

Ausgeseichnet!

For many years she spent her life in relative obscurity, publishing the occasional breakthrough paper in theoretical physics and giving graduate student lectures.

The arrival of the Beatles in America in the early 1960s was a turning point for Weaselmomma. She cut her hair, donned a purple jacket and joined the group as the “twelfth Beatle,” with fellow alumni Scotty Pippen and Marty Feldman.

We all live in a yellow submarine.

While touring with the Beatles in Nova Scotia she became intrigued with the teachings of the philosopher Socrates, and after a late summer concert she originated the Toga party, inspiring a young roadie named John Belushi.

The constant touring and partying took its toll. Weaselmomma began to yearn for something beyond herself. She felt the need to leave a lasting legacy. So at the young age of sixteen, she enrolled in Harvard Medical School. After breezing through the master and doctorate programs, she graduated to an internship at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center where she specialized in disorders of the liver related to conspicuous consumption of domestic malted beverages.

It was while attending to a special case involving an aging Gene Cernan that she became inspired to join NASA and become the first woman to walk on Krypton. Sadly, there were no planned missions to Krypton at the time, due to the high expenses of traditional Earth-bound mission launches, and the fact that it was a made-up planet that had long since exploded anyway. She used her creativity and engineering skills to design an orbital observation and mission platform, launched in 1998 as the International Space Station. Tragically, she was never able to set foot aboard her own creation.

Determined to soar through the cosmos, Weaselmomma moved to California under the name Gene Roddenberry. Forming a lasting friendship with a kindred spirit, Walt Disney, she went on to star in one of the most beloved science-fiction television programs of all time, “Star Trek Voyager,” playing the part of Captain Janeway.

Where no man has gone before

The series lasted only three episodes.

Out of a job, broke and destitute, Weaselmomma was forced to return to her homeland, where she had little else to eat but scrapple.

It was while stalking pigs in Vermont that she had the epiphany that led to her greatest achievement. Seeing the vast numbers of maple trees in the area, Weaselmomma soon began collecting the sap from the trees to make maple syrup. Her grade A+ syrup became a local legend, and kick-started her maple syrup empire. Her syrup became an international sensation, and a treasured childhood icon that lives in the hearts and memories of us all. For despite her vast and checkered past, Weaselmomma will always be remembered most fondly as the model for her syrup bottles.

So rich and buttery!

Happy Birthday, Weaselmomma! Long may you reign!

BTW, you’ve been blunked!

Check out more blunking fun at Momo Fali’s, Suburban Scrawl and Nuclear Family Warhead.

25 Things

I have been tagged for another meme. Dear Mr Man has graciously passed along the torch of “25 Things About Me”, and I present that to you now.

1. Name someone with the same birthday as you. Arnold Schwarzenegger. There are others, but I tend to view myself most like Arnold. Except for the whole Governor of California thing.

2. Where was your first kiss? The first one I care to remember was right in my kitchen, about seven years ago.

3. Have you ever seriously vandalized someone else’s property? Seriously? No. But there were some minor incidents of which I am not proud.

4. Have you ever hit someone of the opposite sex? I don’t think so. Probably should have, in at least one case, though.

5. Have you ever sung in front of a large number of people? Yes.

6. What’s the first thing you notice about your preferred sex? No matter how many times I read this question, I don’t like it. The first thing I noticed about the love of my life was her smile.

7. What really turns you off? Meanness, cruelty, betrayal.

8. What do you order at Starbucks? Decaf Grande Mocha.

9. What is your biggest mistake? I’ll have to pass on that one.

10. Have you ever hurt yourself on purpose? No need to do that. I get plenty of accidental injuries to last me a lifetime.

11. Say something totally random about yourself. I’d really like to lose about 80 pounds.

12. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity? When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was told I looked like John Ritter by some, and Beau Bridges by others.

13. Do you still watch kiddie movies or TV shows? Absolutely! Having kids gave me a great excuse for doing that. SpongeBob has been a favorite of mine since it first came out; my kids thought it was sort of strange that I watched it with them, but they came to like it. Phineas and Ferb is one of the more recent shows that I like. It has complexity and depth to it that most other modern kids shows don’t.

14. Did you have braces? No. There were plenty of other reasons to pick on me as a kid; I didn’t need that to add to the mix.

15. Are you comfortable with your height? Yes. I can see over cubicle walls and the tops of most people’s heads.

16. What is the most romantic thing someone of the preferred sex has done for you? Drove all the way across town to deliver dinner on my doorstep, complete with a secret message constructed of letter-shaped cookies.

17. When do you know it’s love? Step one: Wait at least five years after being a teenager. Step two: picture yourself and your intended in your nineties, and you’re changing his/her Depends. If you can do that with a smile, it’s love.

18. Do you speak any other languages? Ich spreche ein wenig vom Deutsch, aber nicht besser als ein kind.

19. Have you ever been to tanning salon? Shamefully, yes. Someone convinced me that I needed to be tan in order to be acceptable.

20. Have you ever ridden in a limo? Yes, a couple of times.

21. What’s something that really annoys you? Being utterly dismissed. Like, basically being treated like a gnat. Once I pulled up to a stop sign at the end of a street to make a left turn. As I was looking for traffic, this other guy pulled up along side me on my right, didn’t even acknowledge me, and then turned left in front of me just as I was going to go.

22. What’s something you really like? Hawaiian music

23. Can you dance? No, unless everyone else is doing the “Little Kicks” step.

24. Have you ever been rushed by an ambulance into the emergency room? Yes. First time I had atrial fibrillation, my wife gave me the choice: either she wakes up the kids and we all drive there, or she’s calling 911. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. I felt like a complete dork.

25. Tag five people to answer these 25 questions on their blog. If I don’t, what will happen? Seriously… I think everyone I know has been tagged on this already.

Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned From Scooby Doo

1. Even phantoms need to print counterfeit money.

2. Breaking and entering is okay with the police as long as you do it because you’re solving a mystery.

3. Pizza is best eaten by spinning it on your finger and taking rapid-fire bites.

4. Bad guys know where to buy glowing paint.

5. Bad guys don’t know how to get out of the way of a gangly teenager and a Great Dane even if there’s plenty of time.

6. If you’re completely covered in wet sand due to the carelessness of a teammate, just wait until the next scene. You’ll be clean and dry.

7. Never stop to help Velma find her glasses. It just wastes time.

8. Whatever the venue, there will always be sufficient raw materials for creating an ingenious bad guy trap (bowling ball, peach basket, bow and arrow, anvil, coil spring, steam iron, etc.)

9. Green vans never need gas.

10. Even if it’s abandoned and dilapidated, a castle or mansion will still have functioning electrical and water service.

From the Archives: Not Gentlemen

Since I’m still without an original thought extremely busy, I’m dragging another post out of the archives. I originally posted this on The Anthill some years ago. Feel free to smirk if you believe it merits such.

So I’m watching the news and a story comes on about an attempted robbery that left the suspect unconscious.

The cop being interviewed described the actions of the two guys involved: “One gentleman came out of his home and witnessed the other gentleman attempting to break into his car. They got into a struggle and at some point during the fight, the second gentleman was rendered unconscious.”

A very typical police-esque narrative. But for the life of me, I can’t quite understand why they have to refer to these guys as “gentlemen”. The thief certainly wasn’t being a gentleman. And since the story came out of a bad part of town, I have my doubts that the intended victim was a gentleman either. I could only loosely accept them being called “men” as that term implies a sense of upstanding behavior. These two would be rightly called “males”, “guys”, or “dudes” maybe. Not that the cops would use those words, but they should. It would make a lot more sense in my opinion.

I could only imagine them being gentlemen if their interaction were more civilized than it was.

It should have gone like this: Gentleman A, dressed in a grey pinstriped suit and sporting a bowler hat and a handlebar moustache, approaches Gentleman B, who is also sporting a handlebar moustache, is dressed in a pair of rough tweed trousers and an oxford cloth shirt with rolled up sleeves, and who is attempting to break into Gentleman A’s automobile.

“I say, my good man! Here now, what tomfoolery do you purpose toward my motorcar?”

“Right, then! Sir, my sincerest amandation is offered forthrightly, for my business is burglary of a sort most grievous.”

“Burglary indeed! The deuce you say! And can you attend no honest occupation save thievery?”

“Have a care, sir! Proffer your deductions elsewhere!”

“You sir, are a jackanape, and I shall give you a right proper fetch.”

“Ah, then fisticuffs will suffice to settle the matter.”

“Have at it then, good sir! You will find my pugnastics nigh upon insurmountable!”

Gentleman A then whacks gentleman B with a tire iron.

Now, if the scene went down like that, then I would accept them being referred to as gentlemen. Bonus points if the police officer reports the incident as a “row”.

A Sound Mind

This is complicated, and probably isn’t all that interesting to most, but I’m still geeking out about it.

Some background: I’ve always been auditory-oriented. Sounds are more significant to me than images in most situations.

For example, to me, the startup sound for Windows 95 was one of the most glorious things ever created. Turns out, it took the author quite a bit of time to work that sound out, because it was so short and needed to convey so much.

I have perfect pitch. That talent doesn’t help me in daily life, but it does cause me some aggravation when listening to a symphony or other musical production if even one instrument is the slightest bit off. One time I impressed the entire church choir during practice by correctly identifying ten different random notes played on a pitch pipe from across the room.

And I love sound effects.

This probably started during the original “Scooby Doo” years, 1969 and 1970. There were some sound effects that were repeated many times (including this one particular laugh on the laugh track that sounds like a cat meowing – to me, anyway), such as the one they used to indicate the casting of a magic spell, or the one they used whenever a ghostly, glowing figure was seen.

Recently I’d come across some sites where old (and very much public domain, thank you) sounds and music archives were kept.

I found a set of files for “Spooky Sound Effects” and snagged them.

On one particular mp3, there was this:

I immediately recognized a portion of that as being one Hanna Barbera used quite a bit.

It was simple to take a portion of that sound and loop it to create this:

In my glee, I showed it to my wife, the one person in my life who may not share all my interests, but certainly shares some life experiences (such as Scooby Doo) and raves enthusiastically about any geeky thing I might present to her. She’s such a sweetie.

She knew that sound, being a devotee of the old school cartoon genre.

The surprise came when Michael suddenly got up.

“Oh! Where’s my game?” he asked, frantically searching for his Leapster. His mom and I looked at each other, puzzled.

He searched through the game cartridges, jammed one in place and turned the thing on.

“What are you doing? It’s time for bed, you don’t have time for that,” I said, annoyed.

He said nothing, but continued his work.

“Like this!” He said, and clicked on one character in his game.

The little game unit instantly played that same looped sound effect.

He knew exactly what I was talking about, and exactly where he’d heard it before.

“Michael! That’s it! That’s exactly the sound I meant!”

He beamed at me, proud of himself.

My little audiophile.

I gave him an extra fifteen minutes to stay up, just because I was proud.

Sunday Matinee

Okay, so this isn’t so much of a matinee as a newsreel… but it was a ton of fun to make.

This is a promotional video for the livestream channel “Suburban Wow”, hosted by WeaselMomma and Melisa with one S (from World of Weasels and Suburban Scrawl, respectively).

They had a “contest” calling for all of us bloggy types to come up with a promo video for them. This is my shot at it, coming from my own bizarre but entirely g-rated sense of humor.

Enjoy!

Bonnie and Mike

It’s the morning rush; daddy is making coffee in preparation to head out the door to work.

Michael is playing with mommy on the couch. I’m trapped at the coffee maker and can only listen to their interchange.

“Are you going to take me to church camp, mommy?”

“Yes, in just a little while.”

“Can I drive with you?”

“Well, no, you have to ride in your car seat like always,” she said.

“Pleeeeeeease?” he asked in his typical attempt to wheedle his whim into her permission. Please note that Michael has NEVER ONCE ridden in the car without being firmly secured in a five-point car seat. Never. Where he gets the idea that maybe this time it’ll be okay to skirt the law, I don’t know.

“No, Michael. The policeman will get mad!”

“Aw, mom!” he complains.

“Drive with me here! Let’s go!” she says, forming a “car” with her lap and setting him on the edge of her knees. “Vroom! Vroom! We’re driving!” They both have a grip on the imaginary steering wheel.

“Yay! I’m steering with you!” Michael is totally into the game now.

“Uh, oh! A policeman! We’d better go really fast!” my wife says, grinning at me.

“What?” I shout from across the room, not pleased with this particular turn of events.

“Don’t worry, I’ll shoot him! Bang!” Michael says, now fully engaged in an imaginary felony. “There, now we can keep going!”

My mouth is dropped open in utter horror, and Michael’s Mommy is choking back laughter.

“So, we’re training him to end up on ‘COPS’, then?” I ask, incredulous.

I get no answer, as my wife is laughing way too hard.

If he ends up on Fox wearing a set of handcuffs and no shirt with a cop’s knee in his back, you’ll at least know why. I’m not bailing him out.

Saturday Matinee

Today we bring you a fun little piece that we’ve been working on for a while.

If you have three minutes to spare, give it a look.

Note: they say in the biz that movies are never completed, just abandoned. I had more ideas for this, wanted to re-shoot those dark parts at the beginning, re-record the dialog, add in a few scenes for clarity, etc. But, I ran out of time and suitable conditions. And the fact that Windows Movie Maker drops title letters randomly is something that can be neither predicted nor avoided. Thank you for your understanding.

Reason #51,422 Why My Wife is The Best

Last night after dinner, my wife was sitting on the couch flipping through channels. I sat down next to her.

“I don’t remember the last time I saw you channel surf,” I said, somewhat proud.

She went past the History Channel, which was airing a “Modern Marvels” episode about 1970′s technology, and continued up the list. I said nothing, but silently hoped she would go back to that or maybe stop on the Golf Channel rather than land on “HGTV”

Without a word, she went back to the History Channel and put the remote down.

“Thanks!”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“Are you reading my mind, or something?”

She turned around and looked at me, and smiled. Then, without taking her eyes off of mine, she picked up the remote and keyed in the number for the Golf Channel.

The fact that she knew I was thinking about it proves we have a good connection.

The fact that she knew the channel number off the top of her head proves she loves me a whole lot.

As I’ve said before, she’s a keeper.

Creative Play

My kids are infamous for their skills in finding ways to use toys completely wrong. Aside from merely leaving trails of board game pieces in their wake all about the house and setting up “Mouse Trap” just to spring the trap (I don’t think we ever actually played that game), they find ways of using pieces of their games and toys that I’m certain the designers had never imagined.

Michael is the current reigning champion of toy abuse in our house. On any given day, you can find him sending bowling pins, magnetic building pieces, blocks and musical instruments down his Step2 plastic slide. He’ll toss rubber balls into his crawl-through tubes or cram them into empty plastic Easter eggs. Bubble wands become swords to brandish against our aging cat. Toy golf clubs become battle axes to brandish against whichever sister is closest. I recently found horseshoe stakes crammed down inside his wiffle-ball tee and marbles from his block runway set squirreled away to all corners of the house. Wooden sticks intended to serve as musical instruments are regularly discovered jutting out of couch cushions, to be used as levers for some imaginary, demonic machine. Don’t even ask where the legos end up.

I had to hide a little baseball game he has that uses small metal balls. He’s already lost four of them, and when I saw him cramming the remaining four into the couch cushions, I knew if I didn’t act quickly they’d be gone for good.

Are there any children out there who actually play with toys the way they’re meant to be played with? Any who keep the pieces together? Sure, kids are messy and they don’t put things away. But are there any who actually use the game pieces with the intended game? Any who don’t find alternate uses for them?

“He’s being creative! He has a very active imagination!” I hear this a lot. “He’s exploring his world, thinking outside the box!” That’s great. Maybe I should invite these people to come over and put all this creative thinking back into the box so I don’t step on it and lacerate my foot.

If you turned our house upside-down and gave it a good shake, I’m certain you’d see, cascading down in a rainbow-colored plastic hailstorm, every toy piece that’s ever gone missing. And probably Jimmy Hoffa too.

I know I am not alone in this.

But to shell out the big bucks for these whizzy toys that he doesn’t use is an exercise in bad economy.

So I’m thinking next gift-giving occasion, I’m not going to bother with the forty-piece set of educational toy play. I’m just going to get him a clock, a hammer, and a pair of safety glasses.