Mother of the Year?

I was in town visiting in August 1999 and staying at my sister's haunted crack house.

It was a typical conversation as we sat on the couch when we suddenly heard a loud thump on the floor in her bedroom. We looked at each other wide eyed and then a moment later Maddie was screaming bloody murder.

Stacy jumped up off the couch and ran in there and brought out the screaming 10 month old who had fallen off the bed when she rolled over.

"Shhhh!" she urged her as she tried to calm her.

She then looked up at me and said, "I can't believe she did that again."

"AGAIN!!!" I shouted in disbelief.

And I got in trouble for leaving Calvin in a theater by himself for 90 second to run to the bathroom?

Madison does not seem to have suffered to much from the injury all these years later. Kids must be made of rubber.

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A Geeky Guide to a Practical Joke

Some history

"Star Trek" and the all the spin offs can be a very polarizing subject. People either seem to love it or hate it. I admit the cheesy special effect and overacting by William Shatner from the first series can be a turn off.

I began watching "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in college during it's third season. During season three through season five, it was probably some of the best written television despite being in the science fiction genre. It was not long before a group of us would plan the evening around it and watch it.

The next year, Rob, Chris, Jeff and Matt moved into a house that sat behind the Frisch's located at the corner of Brown and Stewart on the edge of the University of Dayton. I would walk down there and watch it with the guys every week. (Sadly, the house has long since been demolished.)

During the fourth season, the franchise announced there was going to be a new series called "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine."

The Episode

There is an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" called "Cause and Effect." The Enterprise enters a time loop where they keep repeating events over and over similar to "Groundhog Day" which I believe actually came out two years later. The episode actually opens with the 45 second teaser showing the destruction of the Enterprise. It was thoroughly confusing to the viewer until it came back from commercial and you see the ship floating along only to be destroyed 12 minutes later in the same manner. Then it came back from commercial and repeated itself.



The Joke

One of the guys, Cort, had a class, so the guys were always taping it so he could come home and watch it after us. Either Chris or Matt told him the tape was sitting in the VCR, but then the following conversation took place.

Matt: "Did you know this was the last episode of the series?"

Cort: "Really?"

Matt: "Yeah. They have the new series, Deep Space Nine, coming out next year, so they are canceling it and tonight is the last episode of the series."

Cort: "Wow, I'm glad you taped it."

He turned on the TV and saw the opening.

Cort: "What the..."

Matt: "Oh my God! I forgot to rewind it!"

Cort went berserk thinking he saw the end of the episode and the guys could not stop laughing because he got more and more pissed the more everyone laughed!

And as much of a highlight that was, they also got to retell the story over and over to everyone who watched it elsewhere that night.

It was a great joke actually to play on a Star Trek fan.

White House begins selling naming rights to National Monuments

In a move to try and refill the money taken from Social Security over the last several decades and prevent the inevitable bankruptcy of the retirement plan, the Unites States of America has announced they are selling the naming rights of our monuments.

YUM! foods spokesperson Dean Warner stood side by side with the President of the Unites States as the two closed a deal to rename "The Liberty Bell" to "The Taco Bell Liberty Bell."

"This is a huge opportunity for us to spread our brand name to people in America who may not have heard of Taco Bell."

"This is a wonderful opportunity for businesses to advertise as we follow the same business plan of many arenas and stadiums that sold their naming rights to raise revenue," said the President.

He added with a wink of an eye, "The next ceremony is going to be announced this evening, so I don't want to steal the thunder, but I think all Americans will be excited to see who bought the naming rights to the Jefferson McMorial."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs answered questions after the ceremony, in particular, some of the corporations the White House is courting.

"We would love to be able to sell the naming rights to Mammoth Cave to Vagisil. It seems like a perfect fit to us. And the Grand Canyon, the biggest crack in the earth, we are hoping to talk Preparation H regarding naming rights."

Grandma scares Avery

In February 2005, I was forwarded a maze game. This was "The Scary Maze Game." If you google this, you'll see several links. There are also numerous videos where you can watch people's reactions as they try and solve the maze. As they press their face close to the screen, an image of Linda Blair from "The Exorcist" pops up with a horrific scream.

I later forwarded the maze game on to friends and family.

What was funny was the reaction I received as many friends fell for the game. I was called a few names actually as it scared the crap out of a couple friends.

My mom forwarded it to my sister in Florida.

Stacy was maneuvering the mazes with ease until she got to the third screen. When the image came up and the scream occurred, she heard a second scream as Avery was standing next to her.

Avery was three at the time and Stacy had no idea she was standing there. Stacy tried to calm her down as she screamed in horror at the image. When she calmed Avery down. She was quiet for a few moments and then stared screaming again without needing to see the image again.

Stacy calmed her down again and Avery was fine for a few moments and she began screaming again.

Finally, Stacy called mom and told Avery that it was grandma that scared her!

Avery chastised grandma telling her it was not nice to scare her and it hurt her feelings and she should never do it again.

Mom was trying not to laugh as was my sister, but to hear Stacy tell the story, it was all she could do not to laugh as Avery was randomly screaming for no reason after the initial scare.

Madison 1 Grandma 0

Mom was talking with Madison (about age 4) on the phone one day when Madison began a game she often played with grandma. They had played this game many times in the past.

"My grandpa owns a farm.  On that farm he has an animal.  The animal is white, yellow and orange."

They had played it enough that when Madison said "White" mom knew it was a dog. When Madison said "White and brown," mom knew it was a cow. When she said "Pink," it was a pig.

Mom barely let her get the colors out when she pounced on the question with the answer "A DUCK!"

Madison was momentarily quiet before she asked, "But how big is the duck grandma?" She was a little mad, I think, that grandma got it so quickly.

"What does that have to do with anything?" she asked.

"How big is the duck grandma?"

"I don't know? What does it matter?"

"How big is the duck grandma?"

"I don't know. Two pounds?"

Madison huffed loudly as grandma was now wrong and she won. "Hmph - No! It's as big as all the other ducks."

Grandma and Stacy had it coming from that point going forward after teasing her so much as a toddler, she was developing her own teasing skills now.

Madison 1 Grandma 0

Juan Williams - fired from NPR

Juan Williams was fired today for comments he made on Fox News on The O'Reilly Factor.



What I find not surprising is how folks on both sides of the political spectrum have rushed to denounce NPR's actions.  Whoopi Goldberg and Bill O'Reilly just a week ago were the biggest internet sensation with Bill's visit to The View are now in agreement that what NPR did was wrong.

The only group I have found that does not seem to be bothered by NPR's action is CAIR.  CAIR stands for Counsel for American-Islamic Relations.  They called for something to be done regarding his comments and NPR bent over backwards to please them in my opinion.  CAIR said in their released statement, "Such irresponsible and inflammatory comments would not be tolerated if they targeted any other racial, ethnic or religious minority, and they should not pass without action by NPR."

I personally wonder if they have ever released a statement that Muslims beheading people and showing it over the internet is inflammatory.

NPR handled this poorly on another level by doing the deed by phone.  They never brought Juan in to speak face to face and simply released a statement of his termination after notifying him by phone.

Because some of their funding comes from the federal government, this may become a fascinating legal case to determine if this constitutes censorship of the media.

I think it was definitely an overreaction by NPR.  I think they may even reverse their position considering the backlash that is coming from the rest of the media.  I don't think Juan will be unemployed long however.  When I have seen him, I have not agreed with all his views, but he's been a professional on TV and his integrity has him held in high regard by both the left and right leaning media sources.

This is going to hurt NPR a lot more in the long run than it will hurt Mr. Williams.

Halloween 2008

The past two years, I went over to Lyle and Chandra's on Halloween Night.  Sadly, the tradition will not continue this year since I have relocated to Kentucky, but I did come across an old email telling of the evening.

***

It was another fun Halloween giving out candy last night.  Of note, I upset a little girl who was dressed as a clown. I was telling her I didn't like clowns and she thought I didn't like her. She went and told her grandma on me. I explained to grandma, it was clowns I didn't like. She replied, "Oh, you're one of them (clown hater.)" I thought, WTF? Is grandma some sort of clown lover to refer to me that way?

This years Halloween was different for me. Instead of handing out candy at my house, I went to Lyle and Chandra's and handed my candy out there with them. There was bloody punch available made by Tina, chili, hotdogs and brats. Oh, and beer. We had plenty of beer.

Tina was making the blood punch and as she opened up the club soda, It sprayed all over her shirt. I told her a little club soda could get that out.

There were a ton of kids on their street. I had 263 last year. This year, there had to be 500. A lot of ninja turtles, a couple Scobby Doos, about 7 clowns and several girls dressed as Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz." No real standouts though as the flow of kids was a lot and I could not make detailed notes.

I gave out suckers to the kids (along with a couple extra for the moms walking the kids around.) The problem was that with so many kids, there would be multiple parents and I didn't know if some of them were the dads
with the moms although I did get a look from one mom though and I had not even given an extra sucker. Our eyes met a couple times as she stood there as I handed out candy to a horde of kids and as she walked away, she turned back around to me and said, "Happy Halloween." I replied the wishes back and she was off into the night.

I'm glad it was a warm night compared to days earlier this week. It was fun.