Fluffy Strikes Back

You ever hear a story that had you sort of dumbfounded? Like, the story either amazed or confused you so much that you just sort of stared, mouth agape, at the storyteller, resting your chin in your hands, drinking the whole thing in?

If you've read this blog for long, you'll know that I often troll the Indianapolis Star for interesting reads in the news department. For one, I like to keep up on what the dumb broad from Carmel is doing about the Victoria's Secret model controversy at the mall. I also like to scour Indiana for morons in the news so I can contribute just a little bit more to the Karma Police blog.

And then, sometimes, I read a story just for the sheer delight of reading a story. Or, let's say, that the headline features something about a man beating his wife to death for not emptying the litter box.

If you read that story, you might understand why I sat here for a few moments, mouth agape, peeping the details of said sordid affair. Number one, who beats their wife for not emptying the litter box? I mean, do they have a pet cougar, or is Fluffy just rolling out human-sized turds? I get it, some guys are total douches and beat their wives for stupid shit. Clearly, this guy is a douche.

But then, she's 18 years older than he? And, he's a convicted sex offender? And the two of them moved from California to live with another convicted sex offender? Double-u, tea, eff. There's a lot more to this story than what we see right here, and it kind of pains me that I'm not back home to work my "sources" for the truth behind this thing.

Overall, though, just...fucking...wow. What a messed-up house that must have been. If I can find anything else about this, I'll be sure to keep everyone up to date. Not that this is funny or a topic to make light of, but I want to know the fucking truth here. This is messed up and it takes place in what I consider my "home town".

Stay tuned.

Warning: Fluff(y) Post Ahead

Sorry for the lack of reading material this week. I've been busy wrapping up my current project so that I can get all my stuffs moved to the other building and start my new project on Monday. What? You didn't know I was getting transferred? Yeah, I got transferred to a different department where I'll not be battling the wretched hordes of cancer everyday. No, instead, I'll be trying to fight the wretched neglected diseases that are afflicting sub-Saharan Africa. Yeah, it's something I can tell my mom about and she can brag to her church friends about me.

To that end, I promise to supply something other than fluff posts in the near future.

As busy as I've been, however, I haven't been too busy to read your blogs and sometimes comment on them. I've also not been too busy to not see shit like this: Shitty Cat Jewelry. I mean, seriously? C'mon. You're kidding, right? Who buys this crap? I mean, someone must be buying it, as they have a whole catalog of garbage. And more, who wears it? The broad in Carmel, IN should be campaigning against these sins against artistic endeavors rather than Victoria's Secrets models.

I mean, it's enough to make Wizard Cat gather together a posse and kick some ass. Right after the one on the right can figure out how to use his new tiny little arms.

I Can Has Komuhdee Now?

Long about the sixth grade, I thought Garfield was the funniest thing going. This was fostered by my teachers, as Jim Davis--Garfield's creator--was from Muncie, IN. Being a born and bred Hoosier, I was spoonfed from an early age that all things Indiana (minus the things sullied by Purdue) were practically set upon the Earth by the Almighty himself. I guess feeling proud about your state meant that you had to love Garfield (and Robert Frost, but he's still pretty cool, and beside the point). It was impossible to check out a Garfield collection from the school library; all the copies of all the books were already taken in someone else's name (incidentally, the picture book that came out about the Return of the Jedi was also impossible to get ahold of...when I finally did lay my hot little hands on it, I was underwhelmed...but I digress). We would sometimes have a reading of the daily Garfield strip aloud in the class. My teacher, Mrs. Van Dyke, would read it in her awkward, not-quite-connecting-with-the-kids old lady way. I think that actually made the strip a lot more funny than it was.

A lot of things have changed since then. For instance, I've found a sense of humor. And some common sense. Both of these things have led me to realize that Garfield is pretty lame. Imagine my confusion a couple of years ago when the computer-generated fat cat made it to the big screen (only about 13 years too late, as I feel Garfield's height of hilarity was sometime in the late 80s). To date, I have not seen either of the Garfield movies, and I don't plan on them, either. I don't care if Jennifer Love Hewitt appears topless and is rolled in a vat of honey. I have zero desire to see those movies.

I think the big downfall for me was the introduction and continued use of Nermal, the world's cutest kitten. About the only thing that I gained from that was a sense of where Abu Dhabi is on a map. Also, what the fuck ever happened to Lyle, Jon's buddy who came over from time to time? Concurrently, the Garfield cartoon on Saturday mornings sucked. Hard. The only saving grace was that there were also episodes of U.S. Acres included in the episodes, and even calling those a saving grace is a stretch. And by "stretch", I really mean "my ass is way to fat for these black spandex pants". Again, the cartoon suffered from way too much Nermal, who was not only most definitely not the world's most cute kitten, as he claimed, but also had one of the most historical instances of a really bad name. Odie is saved from this title simply because I made a joke in the ninth grade during a vocab section of English. We were discussing the meanings of our new vocab words, and I defined "odious" as "Garfield's Latin friend." Mr Cotton (my English teacher) and Kathy Jeandevin, the girl who sat in front of me (and who I thought was cute until she wore a Purdue t-shirt to school one day--no lie!), thought the joke was great.

I did find a new appreciation for Garfield a couple of months ago when I was shown the following cartoon:


Yes, that would be a near perfect mixture of Garfield and lolcatz, two things which, taken separately, are annoyingly unfunny (I will admit to being mildly amused by lolcatz for a brief time, but the grammar-and-spelling Nazi inside of me has since won out and now I simply find them tiresome), but put together are suddenly sheer, comedic brilliance.

Another thing that I've learned, thanks to my stumbling across "Garfield Minus Garfield", is that Garfield is hilarious once Garfield no longer exists in his own world. Feel free to follow either the link provided to you above or the one listed in the sidebar. I feel that the brilliance of the man behind Garfield Minus Garfield knows no bounds, and he should be celebrated for the magnitude of his comedic genius often and loudly.

If you're a Robot Chicken fan, you should also appreciate the greatness that is the sketch titled "Cat Court" in which Heathcliff sues Garfield for being a copycat. I won't ruin the end, but it's very satisfying. The final joke of the segment is hilarious, especially if you sat through the shorts during the Saturday morning cartoons as a kid during the 80s.

EDIT: Ok, I found this. It's totally nerdy, but if you've dedicated time to any of the Final Fantasy games (I think this is a take off of the American Final Fantasy III), you'll appreciate the hell out of it: Youtube Link

Baby Name Remorse?

I know there are some parents who read this blog. I just read this article on CNN about parents feeling regret over the names they gave their children. And it's nothing like "I shouldn't have named him Cadillac" or anything like that. It was more people concerned that they picked popular baby names.

Having a popular name isn't all that bad. One of my best friends in high school was Matt Webb, and I lived with Matt O. in college. Even now, I hang with Matt O. at work (different O.). Matthew is a pretty common and popular name. Back in the dating days, I would always get "I love that name" when I introduced myself to the ladies. Usually, it was followed up with "I always wanted to name a baby that name" which made me move along because I'm not one to have a junior hanging around. But that's just me. Even now, the commonality of my name is...troublesome...at times, especially when it comes to hanging with my wife's family. See, her sister married a man named Matt and she has a cousin named Matt, so when we get together there's me, Matthew (my brother-in-law) and "Cousin Matt", who is the cousin (and who hates the Red Sox and Cowboys more than I do...so he's a good guy, in my book).

I've never wanted to change my name due to it being common. If I did change my name, I'd change it to Alexander, just because I like the name. Now, my children, both have good names, I believe. We've never (we as in the buxom and comely Boudicca and I) regretted naming our children what we named them. We did have a conversation once as to why we didn't consider the name "Peter" for our son (he is named after a certain Doubting Apostle...not a certain cheeky tank engine). I reminded Boudicca, in all her buxom and comeliness, that we didn't want him to think he was named after Peter Griffin (insert Peter Griffin laughing noise here).

So, my question is...have any of you had remorse over what you named your children? Or remorse over what your parents named you? Just curious. I'd like to see if this is really as common as the article makes it out to be. And for parents, was it really that tough to pick a name for your child?

Sexual Images Make Children Have Sex Earlier

Apparently, a Victoria's Secret store in a mall in Carmel, IN was made to take down mannequins posed in "suggestive" ways featuring "sexy lingerie". Now, I may be from small town Indiana (much smaller than Carmel, certainly), but even [i]I[/i] know what Victoria's Secret is all about. My mom would refer to it as "whorewear". I prefer to think of it as a toy store.

Anyway, check out this article from the Indianapolis Star. Be warned: one of the mannequins in question is shown in the inset picture. It might make you want to run to the bathroom to relieve some pressure; I just returned from there, myself.

The dumbest part of the article? The woman who "spearheaded" the effort, but is displeased with the pajamas that they put over the mannequins instead. Her response? "Sexual Images Make Children Have Sex Earlier."

No, bitchy moms who try to shield their children from the real world make kids have sex earlier. Or at least encourage them to. I have yet to see a sexual image that forcibly held down a teenager and told them to have sex. Anyone want to place odds on how many copies of Harry Potter this slice of heaven has in her house? I'll bet she makes her kids sleep with the door open.

Note to the mother: If you're going to be stupid, at least do it in the privacy of your own home. And buy a push-up; them things is sagging pretty bad.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to call the buxom and comely Boudicca. There's a sexually-explicit image of a mannequin on the internet that's making me have inappropriate thoughts.

Terror in the Skies, Terror in Disguise

It wasn't until I had children that I realized just how awful the legend of Santa Claus is. I mean, seriously. Once a year, we parents get to wage mental warfare upon our children, using a "right jolly old elf" as a means to scare them into behaving. "He's making a list, he's checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty and nice." I remember getting told these things as a callow youth, which, naturally, forced me into a rigid sense of righteousness toward the end of the year. Couple that with my birthday falling three days before Christmas, and I was pretty much terrified of not receiving any presents if I wasn't a good little boy.

My parents, however, took this a step further. Not only was Santa Claus watching me, but he also had erected an intricate Elven spy network to help double check my goodness (and not necessarily for goodness' sake!) and every once in a while when I would do something out of line, my parents would off-handedly mention that they just saw one of Santa's Elves doing their double check on me. Wow. So not only were the Elves forced into slave labor to manufacture my Transformers for the impending holidays, they were also pressed into the vital information gathering service to report back to the big man in red (and not Bobby Knight...).

This behavior, of course, is being trotted out once more in my household to hold my children to a standard of what I believe to be "good behavior" (as a note, I'll just add that dumping out a box of packing peanuts and laying down in them to make "snow angels" is not, in any way shape or form, good behavior). But when I was sitting back and thinking about this, it suddenly dawned on me what a terrifying proposition Santa Claus truly is.

Not only is he watching every young child in the world (presumably peering in their windows at night...so he's a pervert, to boot), but he has indentured services also doing his dirty work. He runs a sweatshop at the North Pole where he forces captured midgets to do his bidding...or else. He commands an elite strike force of flying reindeer that not only can fly at approximately the speed of light (without vaporizing themselves due to friction in the atmosphere), but they're also elusive to radar sweeps and satellite photographs. They can stop on a dime, land on a rooftop (silently), and take off once more (again silently) all in the course of a few seconds. AND, if some of the Christmas specials are to be believed (Rudolph, I'm looking right at you), they're expert tactical bombers with precision aim and deadly accuracy.

And then there's the big man himself. Able to steal into your homes in the dead of night. Fortunately, we see him as an agent of good, leaving behind presents for all to enjoy. However, couldn't this be a clever ruse? I'll leave you some stuff that I just forced my sprawling network of slave labor to manufacture from raw goods that I buy for pennies on the dollar, and it's all a distraction because I'm in Ur House, Taking all Ur Stuffs (apparently, Santa just morphed into a lolcat). And we're all blinded to this because of the "joy" of Christmas morning. I mean, how many people, after the holidays are over say "Where did all my money go?" Uh huh. You can thank Santa for that one.

I realize that Futurama's Santa Bot has several of the same qualities that I've outlined here. I thought of that after I got done with most of the meat of the post, but great minds and all. Anyway, I'm here to tell you, people: do not be fooled. He's watching you will ill intent roiling just under his skin. It's true.

And if this doesn't get me on the Naughty list, I don't know what will.

Not Quite Sleeping Beauty

This just probably proves that I'm a sadistic bastard (but some of you would have it no other way), but this story is too good to pass up. At least in my quaint little corner of twisted reality.

I was in the lab the other day, waiting for my column to finish running on the Companion. While standing there, I was staring out the windows and noticed a body sprawled across one of the benches of one of the picnic tables outback. I immediately assumed it was someone from one of the companies that has offices and labs on the front side of the building, and I also assumed that it was a certain Chinese guy that works there. Now, before you get upset with me and label me a bigot, I'll just point out that most of the guys who work there are Chinese, AND it's the only company that has no offices on the backside of the building. This guy, though, always throws me off because he looks like a Chinese version of my friend Ozzy. The very first time I saw him, I thought "Shouldn't you be playing catcher for the Dragons?" Ozzy plays semi-professional baseball in the Chicago area, in case you were confused by my thought pattern there.

Since I had nothing better to do than make sure my column didn't over pressurize, I kept an eye on the figure. Finally, after about fifteen minutes (I had changed to a new column at this point), he stirred, sitting up and confirming that it was, indeed, the False Oz. However, my delight at pinpointing the guy from an educated guess was amplified when he tried to stand and, evidently, did not realize that his legs were numb. CRASH! to the ground he crumbled, eliciting a tumult of giggles from my oh-so-mature throat. Pulling himself to his feet, he tried to walk again and BOOM! to the ground he fell. I'm chortling with delight at this point. Finally, he pulls himself up onto the bench and sits for another five minutes, bouncing his legs to work feeling back into them. Finally, he stands and, slowly, begins to walk with the shambling gait of a bog zombie or a newborn calf. He manages to make his way across the road to the building and from there, he disappears from my sight.

Having been thoroughly entertained for a good twenty to thirty minutes (give or take), I return my vigilent watch to the column. When it's done, I clean everything up and decide to make a restroom run (I've been drinking a lot of water of late...more on this later). As I complete said task, I wash up, leave the bathroom and make my usual jaunt through the lobby area where I see the False Oz just now getting up the steps and making his way over to his work.

Wow. Now, I'm not exactly a ball of fire on most days, but even I draw the line at napping on park benches during the day. No sir, I always take my naps on the toilet (after waltzing in around ten a.m., googling my own name for two hours, and then taking a donut break...unfortunately, I yelled this out while making love to my wife one night, so she's onto me).

Moo Means No

I was perusing the Indianapolis Star yesterday when I came across this article.

At first, I was disgusted. Then, I was intrigued.

I grew up in Indiana. I've heard rumors about what lonesome farm boys do out behind the haycock when they think no one's looking. I've actually heard whispers that someone knew someone who knew someone who did these acts. My cousin even witnessed a guy taking indecent liberties with a tractor tire once. However, there's a usual list of suspects that come up when talking about such agrarian indecencies. Usually, these are the ever-popular sheep, goats, horses (see Catherine the Great), cows, llamas, pigs, dogs...but never, ever have I ever EVER heard about chickens.

One wonders if this is a banner day for the Chick-Fil'a cows. Do you think they are holding signs that say "Molesst mor chikun"? You wonder if this particular hen had a nice set of legs and large breasts. I could always go for the classic "time to take out your cock and poulet" joke. Or pretty much any cock joke. But I think three is enough.

Now, I know northwestern Indiana has a lot of chicken farms. And when I say a lot, I mean, a lot. Around Rensselaer, where St. Joe is located (my undergrad), there were a couple, and then you saw several huge barns on the way north to Merrilville from St. Joe (we would always go to Merrilville because, well, Rensselaer isn't exactly the swingingest town on the face of God's green earth). But, you'd think with all the worries of avian flu that the more traditional targets of bestial lust would come to mind first, especially if it was a cold night. Wool is a better insulator than feathers (I'm pretty sure...).

But then, I began to wonder: Indiana doesn't have bestiality laws already? And, do we really need these laws? First, the lack of a bestiality law confuses me. There's laws prohibiting oral and anal sex in Indiana (sodomy laws), so I would naturally believe that there is a law somewhere on the books against sexing chickens. Or any animal. Let's not discriminate.

The second question is a bit more serious, as the end of the article points out. It's important to protect the animals, especially in cases where the family pet becomes the target for some asshat who doesn't like the way you cut your lawn. Or worse, when you threaten your child's pet because you're afraid that she's going to rat you out for beating her. So, in those cases, I completely understand.

I don't like to see government meddling in the everyday life of your common man. However, in this case, I'm hoping that it gets a unanimous pass. Let's get this one on the books and move to more important things. Honestly, this should have been a blip on the radar.

One other thing, though. I was struck by the end of the article, where they were talking about the abuse case and the threat against the puppy. They were quick to point out that, after the abuse was reported, the puppy was moved to another house for safekeeping. However, there were no assurances for the girl. I realize that sometimes you need to cut articles for space, but you'd think they could have left in or inserted a line to let us know that the girl was okay, too.