Re-Pet

It's finally happened. The creepy woman pictured to your left sold her house so that she could afford the $50,000 price tag to have her beloved pet dog Booger cloned. There is a line that is crossed by an increasing number of pet owners in this country that seem to think of their pets as children, and it is so far in the rear view mirror for this lady that I don't think she can see it anymore. Referring to your pets as your children is really straddling the line of irrationality. Dressing your pets is a step over the line. From there it proceeds to pet vacations and, of course, leaving your inheritance to your pet. All of these are symptoms of a possible psychological problem and should trigger, at the very least, a serious re-evaluation of your priorities if not a straight jacket. Becoming homeless in order to clone your lost pet goes well beyond any of those, and I'm not really sure that this woman realizes that the clone is a different animal. And she really needs to watch the 6th Day in order to fully acquaint herself with the hazards of cloning.

Yes, I realize that loving a pet is completely natural, and I had some childhood pets that died and I did mourn the loss of. But death is a part of life, and the inability some people seem to have to cope with it really disturbs me. I sure hope that pet cloning never becomes mainstream, and certainly not human cloning.

Useless Trivia!

According to French tradition, how many pleats should there be in a chef’s tall starched white hat?

The Big Tease

I don't know about you, but I think that the tease of the upcoming story before a commercial break is going to go away soon. Both on radio and tv. Whenever I hear, "what longtime Seahawk is hanging up his cleats? Find out after this" the first thing I do is go on the internet and change the channel because I know it's Chris Gray before the commercial break is over. The news is traditionally the worst offender - 'what common household item causes cancer?' has become a joke. I've noticed that Bob, Spike, and Joe do that every morning on KZOK too. I think sooner or later they will realize that they lose viewers/listeners by doing that. I just find the whole tease to be annoying and ultimately counter productive. So don't fall for it. Use the internet for it's intended purpose and become a more selective viewer/listener.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

I will publicly admit that I enjoyed the original Mummy. I thought it was a fun, light hearted action movie, and when you throw in a drop dead gorgeous Patricia Velasquez painted gold (I've had a big crush on her for years), how can you not like it? Admittedly The Mummy Returns was a bit of a letdown, but still had it's moments. The third installment - The Scorpion King - was a huge drop in entertainment value despite having yet another gorgeous woman whom I've had a crush on for years showing a lot of skin - Kelly Hu.

Despite the steady decline in quality, the previews of the newest iteration - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - looked pretty good to me. Perhaps I was blinded by the special effects, but I thought that the series was turning things around. Adding Jet Li and the beautiful Maria Bello and Michelle Yeoh I thought added some credibility. But it turns out I was mistaken. As you can see from the tomato meter to the right, a whopping 9% of critics thought it was watchable. That is a dismal enough score that I'm not sure I want to even waste the time watching it when it is released on DVD. The harshest review actually says "Makes me miss Uwe Boll." Ouch!

I'm a little disappointed as I had hoped this would be enjoyable, and perhaps this movie will be retitled: Tomb of Brendan Fraser's Career.

Hello, 911....

....the sammich artists at Subway didn't make my sammich according to my specifications.

Some people might consider dialing 911 because you are unhappy with your sub to be over reacting. But when I saw this headline, my immediate thought was that it was my coworker who returned from lunch on Friday complaining about unwanted honey mustard. But as I read on, I learned that this occurred in none other than Florida - home of all manner of lunacy.

Here in the great state of Washington, when you wander into your local Subway and come to the grim realization that on this day your sammich will be assembled by the surly Latin girl with a limited grasp of English (to this day I've never heard her speak a word of English, she just points at things and glares at me as she awaits my yes or no. PGT claims that he witnessed her uttering the words, "I understand honey mustard" after telling her he wanted deli mustard, not honey mustard) you simply take your sammich and go, and perhaps grumble to whoever will listen. We certainly don't dial 911 a second time to ask why officers still have not arrived on the scene to square away your lunch issues.

But this story has a happy ending. After becoming belligerent and being locked out of the store, the unhappy patron was not calmed by the eventual arrival of police, and certainly not soothed at all when he realized that he was the one being arrested and that his precious sammiches were thrown away. Although I find that last part to be a little disappointing. The arresting officer could have enjoyed that sammich. So let this be a lesson to you, don't be an idiot, and if you must be an idiot, don't call the police and notify them of your idiocy.

Natural Disaster

After the California earthquake last week, I got to thinking that according to seismologists, we're overdue for a huge quake here in Western Washington. They say that according to the geological record, every 300-500 years we have an enormous quake and it's been about 500 years since the last one. Then I got to thinking that the same thing goes for volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, tornadoes, snow storms, forest fires, etc. I am going on record right now and predicting that any day now, some major cataclysm will strike and set off an unprecedented chain reaction of every type of catastrophe known to man, and even a few unknown to man.

This will be so severe that everything West of the Cascades will just break off and float out into the Pacific Ocean. Only one hearty soul will be able to survive all of this, and that will be me. I will proclaim myself king of my new island kingdom. My first duties as king will be to procure cable tv and high speed internet access. I will then set forth to increase the population by making arrangements to import some beautiful women. The immigration restrictions are pretty strict and only the cream of the crop will be accepted.

And this is exactly why I shouldn't post at night. I don't have a great deal of focus normally, but once it starts getting late and I start winding down, keeping my mind focused on anything is nearly impossible. It wanders where it pleases. But I give you my solemn oath that this will be absolutely the last time I allow myself to do something like this. Tonight. All bets are off tomorrow.

Precious Little Snowflakes

Finally, a major study shows that overprotective parents who treat their children like precious little snowflakes are actually doing them more harm than good. I know if seems obvious to a lot of people that not allowing kids to do anything for fear of a little bump or bruise actually hinders the child's development, but we still have a generation of wusses who are afraid of their own shadows. The study doesn't say that you should go so far as to practice tough love by terrorizing children, but I'm going to go out on that limb. I don't have any hard evidence to show that scaring the bejezus out of kids will make them stronger, just an intuition. Plus it just seems like it would be good fun.

And it is at this point that I would like to include this disclaimer: it should be noted that I do not have children and have no plans of ever having any. Come to think of it, maybe it's for the best if there is a 50' radius between myself and anyone under 12. Once they hit 13, anything goes. I don't know if there's a person alive who wouldn't agree that teens need a good beating from time to time. It's good for the psyche.

Before I got off on that little tangent there, I wanted to mention that while I don't think one study will do the trick, if we get enough there's still hope that we might halt the pansification* of the world's youth.

*pansification - the act of becoming a pansy - is a word created by the Craw Fu Corporation, your leader in made up words.

Second Degree?

Thanks to the Sage for bringing this to my attention. On a bus outside of Toronto, a 40 year old man pulled out a knife and a pair of scissors and without warning began stabbing another rider. Following dozens of stabs, the man decapitated his victim, held it up for all to see, and then began hacking off pieces of the victim and eating them. Police arrived at the scene of the gruesome attack and arrested the assailant who has now been charged with second degree murder. Wait a minute! What the hell do you have to do to get a murder 1 charge in Canada? Do you have to eat the entire victim? If you leave left overs, does that drop it to a second degree?

And in what has become a tradition in grisly murders, someone was immediately on hand to say what a great guy the murder was and what a surprise it is. Usually it's a neighbor with the typical, "he was a quiet man, kept to himself, was always polite....." This time it was his boss who chimed in with:

Li's employer said in an interview Saturday that he was shocked to learn
that his "model employee" had been accused of the grisly attack. Vincent Augert,
an independent contractor who distributes newspapers in Edmonton, said that Li
was one of his most reliable carriers.

"He was very punctual and always cleanly dressed," he told The
Associated Press. "He was a very nice, polite guy. We would've had no reason to
let him go before all this happened."

Just once I'd like to hear someone just come out and say, "I knew something was wrong with that guy. I tried to warn the police." And FYI for everyone out there, I could also be described as punctual, cleanly dressed, very nice, and polite. I have no plans to ever eat "long pork" though.

Name That Quote

"That was so terrible I think you gave me cancer."

Preseason #1

The college football preseason polls are out, and I know that preseason polls are worthless so there is no need to tell me what a waste of time they are. Regardless, as it stands right now Georgia is the team to beat. They have a substantial lead on USC, who you really can't go wrong picking anymore. It's been so long now that I can't remember what it was like back in the days when USC wasn't ranked in the top 5.

I think that by the end of September, 3 of the top 5 will have lost a game and will be down in the teens somewhere. And the real tragedy of it all is that the UW is not in the top 25. Just because they have been terrible for 5 years in a row doesn't mean that this isn't the year they turn things around. Believe in the power of Jake Locker.