Alright, napalmreaders. I've just had my mind melted by the Lackhead (aka the contributor of the Sesame Street clip below that I stole from him, to whom I owe a correction, because our social circles do overlap a little, which is how we've come to know each other).

So, in the spirit of publishing the unbelievably wacky, let's take a poll - which one is the bigger mind trip - the video you can see in the link above, or the video below?

WARNING - watching the two simultaneously may cause seizures of getting totally weirded out, overload, or you may just waste your entire weekend with the many, many, many viewings just to make sure you DID see them.



End Transmission, Continue with Disbelief.

So a couple of posts ago I commented on the irony of Tori Spelling's outrage at the violation of her privacy caused by members of the paparazzi, all whilst being filmed 24 hours a day. Well, as if Heaven itself reached down to hand me a slice of Humble Pie, I was recently made aware of a couple of other ironic tidbits in my own life:

1) There's this band called Maroon 5 that some of you may have heard or read about. Poppy, youthful, successful, they proudly wear the seal of approval stamped upon them by the MTV generation on their sleeve.

I don't really take to them. Granted, I don't really take to much that's on the radio nowadays (in fact I arrogantly live my musical life by the adage, if it's on the radio, it's not worth listening to), but I took a particular disliking to the Maroon Quintet when I really started listening to what they sing about. Good heavens! I didn't expect to hear such tales that would even make Howard Stern blush.

So one day one of their songs comes on the radio, and I'm just not in the mood. I may say something to the effect of "what is this world coming to putting such teeny-bopper grunge nastiness on the airwaves. I don't know how kids today listen to this stuff without paying attention to the misogynistic lyrics." So to calm myself, I put in a CD. What do I put in? That's right: the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Ever hear the lyrics to a RHCP song? Oops! (for further musical commentary and argument, please see the comments page to this post.)

Moral: glass houses, kids.

2) A couple posts back I was commenting how busy my life is about to become. Six days and counting, by the way. Secretly, I have been wishing that I didn't have to work so much so that I could have a little breathing room in my schedule.

In the mean time, the president of the company, along with the director of my department, have been creating positions and interviewing people for those positions that would effectively eliminate their need for me to work for them anymore. What am I going to be thinking in a few weeks? Gee, I wish I could work more so that we could have a little financial breathing room.

Moral: Be careful what you wish for, kids.

Which brings us, and more to the point, me, to an interesting crossroads. My company is actually offering me a full-time position, on the condition (of course) that I take a leave of absence from school. I am completely torn down the middle as to what to do. Any advice? Please?

End Long-Winded Transmission.

Shark Attack!



This happened like ten minutes' WALK from our house. Not that I expect to have to beat the sharks off of our front porch, now, or anything, but STILL.

Reality TV is about the funniest thing on the planet to me. I just don't get it. I must not be their target demographic.
Here's a re-enactment of a ten-second clip that I recently saw on the show featuring Tori Spelling and her beaux:

Tori runs out of the house.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

Camera pans from Tori to Tori's husband as he comes stomping across the one-acre yard, absolutely purple in the face.

"Can you believe it? A photographer!"

Tori, off-camera: "A what?!?!"

Husband, finally having crossed the field: "A $#$^$ photographer, on our property! I can't believe it. The nerve! The violation of our privacy!"

Tori: "Oh, no! Where was he?"

Husband points, camera pans over to where husband points: a copse of trees on the other side of the lake on the far side of the acre lawn.

"Right over there, in those trees. Can you believe it? A cameraman on our property, taking pictures of us!"

I change the channel.

Here's an old Sesame Street clip that I have to admit I stole from another friend's blog, but seeing as he and I don't have overlapping social circles, I think it's okay that I rebroadcast this greatness.

I'm the one with the hair.



So I'm exactly ten business days from re-entry. Into school, that is. I expect to be quite busy:

1) I'll be working 20 hours a week at my current job
2) I'm going to be working 6-10 additional hours as a TA for this one computer class
3) I'm going to squeeze in 16 hours of class somewhere in there, about half in the week and the other half as weekend seminars - luckily this activity doubles as exercise, as I'll be riding my bike the 10 miles from home to school as much as I can.
4) Sheri and I will become parents about half way through the semester (right in time for mid terms, I think) to a child who has shown every sign of being a full-time track star right out of the womb.

It's all coming, sooner than I think.

I'm not complaining - I mean, I'm the one who signed up to do all this stuff in the first place, and there's not one part of it that I'm not looking forward to, but at the same time busy-ness has its drawbacks. Like being incredibly, incredibly busy, for example. After the "leisurely" summer I've had working full time and caring for my darling pregnant sweetheart of a wife, it kind of feels like I'm standing against a wall waiting for a bare-knuckle punch from an Evander Holyfeld-type heavyweight.

End Transmission.

Alright, so Concours is over, and since most of the sweeet rides that I saw were on the freeway and I couldn't get the camera out fast enough as they passed me, here are some pics of the highlights. There were:

LOADS of these:



As well as tons of other cool ones like these:




The highlight, for me at least, was that on two occasions I saw a truck hauling around the Ferris Buhler & Cameron Fry Dreamcar: The 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California:



Just passing it on the freeway gave me the urge to rub it with a diaper, and afterward get a nice stretch limo with a teevee and-a bar to drive around in.

Anyway, apparently the $200 entry fee (along with a $75 brochure) gets you a peek at more than simple Ferraris. The real showpieces all arrived, and left, in large trailers, their tires never to touch Monterey asphalt. Here's a picture of the winner of "Best In Show":



An interesting story about this Duzenberg. It's known as the "Mormon Meteor." Once owned by Salt Lake mayor Ab Jenkins, it held the 24-hour speed record in 1935 and was sold in 2004 for a record $4.4 million. Just in case you were curious. Anyway.

Let's see, anything else going on?

I've found a cool bunch of single-track mountain bike trails that I've taken to riding. Frankly, I didn't think I'd ever really find anything that geographically interesting to ride out here, but these provide plenty of hills for my fat bottom, plus the occasional sand pit, so that you can be cruising down a nice slope and then all of a sudden find your front wheel 4 inches in the ground. good stuff. Oh yeah, and I sat on my pouf the other day and squashed a spider. That was gross.

Sher's still doing fine. We're all extremely anxious for the Arrival. Especially Ash. You can see it in his eyes.

End Transmission.

So this weekend is "Concorso" here in Monterey, the annual world-famous car show. You know, I'm not much of a gear-head, but some of these cars driving around are really neat. I saw a "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang" car today, and a line, a long line of Red Ferraris from twenty or thirty years ago. That was fun, and besides them I've seen probably a million other high-end sports cars driving around. You know, it's funny - you know it must be a high-class event when the passing modern sportscars become unimpressive.

RANDOM PHOTO UPDATE

Picture #1: Cute Pregnant Lady!!!!



Picture #2: "You're Good Ash! ...And I'm Sad Ash..."



p.s. - If you don't get that joke, run to a video store immediately and rent Army of Darkness and get edumacated. Which is a funny thing about video stores here in Monterey versus good ol' Salt Lake: Salt Lakers must be much more avid movie buffs, because frankly the average selection at any local Blockbuster really stinks. They don't have Sneakers, can you believe? Sneakers! The outrage. And forget about trying to find anything at Hollywood Video. Browsing through the Comedy section, I once saw The Passion of the Christ right beside Halloween. But I digress. Ash was very sad that day, but was cheered by a bonus chew treat in his bowl that afternoon.

And now, the conclusion of the Saga of the Romney Lawn:

Before:



A better representation:



After:



If you look closely, you can see Ash peeking out of his house in the upper left-hand corner, as if to say, "Any one of you primates even touches me..."

This was quite a journey, the kind that you can't really document in pictures. When we moved in to this place last November, our yard was little more than a sandbox with a dead scrub brush in the middle of it. After a couple months of sheer and complete neglect, the grass had grown so high that we could see the tips of it level with the kitchen window. We hacked it all down, then hacked it way down, reseeded, fertilized, bought a powerless mower, and watered until our neighbors called the cops. That last bit didn't happen. Anyway, it's a joy to walk out there in bare feet, now, and Ash is very content.

In other news, Margaret and the Girls spent last week here, which was full of fun and games. If any of you have not been to the San Francisco Exploratorium I highly recommend it, regardless of your age. As stupid as it is now that I've posted all of the above pictures, we didn't pull out the camera once while they were here. So here's a pic of them at their last visit:



End Transmission.

As the late (?) great Joe Jackson said, Everything Gives you Cancer.

So the computer in my office is right on the other side of the wall from the break room , and where my head usually is is right on the other side of the wall from the microwave. Now for the past few months, I could tell when someone was using the microwave, because my computer screen would jiggle a little bit. Now I always assumed that this was due mainly to the fact that my computer and the microwave shared some wiring, or something.

I began to think differently, however, when I started to get really bad headaches, like two and three times a week. Well, I decided to play the "caution" card, and I took the initiative to rearrange the break room so that the microwave is now on another wall. Mind you, I did not have to move the cord to the microwave at all.

I haven't had a headache since.

My computer screen doesn't jiggle anymore.

Should I be:

1) Relieved because I'm no longer receiving microwaves to the brain, or

2) Alarmed, because, contrary to my earlier suspicions, I've been getting microwaved all along?

ps- I think The Bad Plus have a similar yet distinct effect on head/brain areas, because the past two times I have listened to one of their albums in the car, I've come out with my left ear completely stopped up.