Cats are strange.

Go find yourself a 100,000 square foot warehouse, empty.
Place an ordinary sheet of paper somewhere on the floor.
Lock a cat in the warehouse.
Come back 20 minutes later, and the cat will be sitting on the paper.

I don't get this behavior. I thought it might have something to do with a cat's need to be as high as possible, but a cat will often forgo a higher perch in favor of a magazine or some paper or your jacket or some cellophane from a dvd you just bought.
I don't get it. I just thought I'd put it out there.

Britney

Gimme more baby one more time. I'm not a girl, not yet a woman, I'm a slave 4 U. Girl in the mirror? Toxic. Ooh Ooh baby e-mail my heart from the bottom of my broken heart. That's where you take me, I run away before the goodbye. Let me be outrageous, I can't get no satisfaction. Don't let me be the last to know why I should be sad, freakshow. I was born to make you happy - get naked, I got a plan. Breathe on me, I got that boom boom, perfect lover. Early mornin touch of my hand - oops! I did it again.


the preceding was constructed entirely out of britney spears song titles.

A rose by any other name would smoke as sweet.

So we went to the big city for an Ob/Gyn thing for the twins, got an ultrasound, and found out everybody was healthy and great. I have another blog for that. On there, I wax poetic and gleefully report the minutiae of every trip to the doctor. I also keep it at least PG-rated, since like, normal people read it.
This is not that blog.
So we had a good time, went to drive home, and I wanted to stop somewhere and buy coffee. We stopped at a gas station in a sort of seedy area. I went in, crawled thru the store getting a cup of coffee, and a coke for Rebecca. While waiting in line I saw, in the case where they keep the trucker's speed, some "glass roses". I thought "hey, neat! a tiny rose in glass!" I have a thing about buying Rebecca roses in every variation that exists. If I see a rose made from a twisted-up coke can or something, I'll buy it. So I bought it. I get out to the car and shuck the box so I can present her with it. I pull it out and my thought process goes like this: "that's kinda pretty. Hey - why is there a hole up here by the head of the rose? Why is this hole in... this crack pipe?" This is when I suddenly realized that
I accidentally bought my pregnant wife a crack pipe.
It was a rose, alright - a little cheap one so they could sell crack pipes in gas stations. You're supposed to throw the rose away and place drugs in where the head of the flower was. I thought I was doing something nice. I thought I would surprise her with a little gift. Instead
I accidentally bought my pregnant wife a crack pipe.
I don't know how to describe the feeling I got. I really don't. I wonder if hallmark has a card for that? "To my understanding wife: I'm sorry I accidentally bought you a crack pipe. Had I known it was drug paraphernalia, You have to know I would have gone for the pencil holder instead." Other than that, and the baby stuff, it was a pretty uneventful trip. We went to the city, got an ultrasound, talked to the doctor, got soft pretzels, didn't see a *$, and oh yeah
I accidentally bought my pregnant wife a crack pipe.
Sorry, baby.

...and Jim Morrison's corpse hits 180 rpm.

I just Piratized© a copy of Ministry's latest (and apparently last) album, titled "The Last Sucker". It's got a cover of "Roadhouse Blues" by the doors on it. A hardcore industrial thrash cover of a doors classic. My brain is afraid and trying to escape my skull.

BUZZ!

(note that I use the symbol *$ a few times. The first part is a star. figure it out.)
I don't know if you personally (by you I mean you, the reader - not you, the baby hedgehog or you the surrealist purple floating firetruck-headed bride) have ever had espresso, but I have, many times, and I feel I need to discuss them here. What are you gonna do about it? Huh? You gonna try and stop me? Yeah... I didn't think so. You keep walking, punk.

Anyway.

First things first:
THERE IS NO X IN THE WORD. STOP SAYING IT THAT WAY.
I don't mind so much when Mr. John D. Maxwell House says "expresso", but when the dude at *$ says it... shameful. And you call yourself a barista. The hell you are, sir. Now pull me a doppio ristretto, and no, I don't need a lid.
Moving on.
The espresso is perhaps the perfect coffee beverage. It is the essence of coffee, stripped of all the accoutrements that usually accompany coffeehouse drinks. No sugary syrup, no milk, no nutmeg sprinkles, no leaf drawn in the foam - just the coffee, the cup, and you. In Italy, when an Italian orders a caffe, they get espresso. When an American orders one, they get an Americano, which is an espresso cut with an equal amount of hot water, because Americans are coffee wusses. I've had chicory-laced bilious swill made in a tin pot on a campfire, and I've had a caffe macchiato pulled by an expert at a college town coffee house. I bought a meat thermometer for the sole purpose of getting my steamed milk to 165 degrees Fahrenheit to achieve the optimal sweetness inherent in steamed milk. I aspire to home-roast green coffee beans. I'd say I am somewhat of a coffee aficionado. Thru my travels in the wild world of coffee, I'd have to say that the espresso, above all others, is as close to coffee perfection as one can get. Even the way the espresso is made is perfection. Take finely ground coffee, force steam thru it under pressure. Longer extraction time produces the lungo, which has more volume, but less strength. Less extraction time produces the ristretto, which is the perfect shot, with the most perfect essence of the coffee bean in a cup. I say all this because I just got back from *$ with an espresso and a drip-brewed coffee. They were beverages born of the same beans, but the espresso just embraced the qualities of the coffee. the espresso is making love to the coffee bean, while the drip-brew is merely having some cheap fun with it. On a side note - those percolators? Coffee bean rapists. They leave the bean feeling used, violated, and alone. And the poor souls who drink it are worse off.
In any case. If you like coffee and have never had the pleasure of a real espresso - go get one. If you can't drink coffee without french vanilla creamer and 8 sugars and a cinnamon sprinkle and a peppermint stick, or if you don't enjoy coffee, but rather view it as a tool to help you wake up in the morning - don't go get an espresso, because it will taste like boiled ass.

By God...

If I hear one more song about how far away Nashville is with a guitar on your back - I'm gonna burn the damn thing down.

YIKES!

So, Rebecca has a prescription for Clindamycin, and I was looking at the wikipedia entry for it and discovered that it can lead to a condition called

TOXIC MEGACOLON.

I just don't know what else to say. Never in my life have I heard a more dire sounding name for a medical condition. I just can't fathom how much it much suck to not only have a megacolon, but a toxic one at that. I also think it would be a great name for a band.
Just YIKES!

While I'm on the subject: I can think of a medical condition with a name so horribly humiliating that no person afflicted with it will ever repeat the name of their condition in public. A condition that somebody really ought to come up with a proper medical-sounding name for. It's called micropenis. I don't know if I would include something like that on my medical history, y'know? That's like having Shitonyourselfitis or Dangling Nipple or Severe Chronic Crotch Odor or Hooker's Knee or Pusface or something. Shouldn't they call it Phallodwarfism or Diminutive Reproductive System Disorder or something suitably Doctor-y?
They have a name for my disorder, too. It's called Jumbocock. I have to get my pants altered.

Titanium Spork!

Check it out!

More baby pics!

This is a picture of one of our babies. Taken today. Rebecca's at 11 weeks this week. The one above was up front on top, and apparently trying out for Riverdance. I've named this one "Jazzercise". The other baby, who we didn't get any good pictures of, was asleep on the floor of the uterus and behind his/her brother/sister. That one only moved when Dr. Northcutt smacked it in the head with the ultrasound probe. I've named that one "Eeyore".
It's just amazing how happy people are capable of getting. When Rebecca told me she was pregnant, I grinned from ear-to-ear. When I learned it was twins, I started vibrating. Today, seeing them squirm around and looking less like little white blobs and more like little people - I started floating. So imagine what I'll look like next month when we go back. I'll be grinning from ear-to-ear, vibrating, floating, and - hell, I''ll probably have rainbows shooting out of my ass.

Dark Side Of The Moon

So, I went and set up my camera last night to see the total eclipse of the hear- I mean moon. And I got some nice shots, I think. Problem is - the moon is a moving target. I had the choice of getting a darkish image that was sharp or a bright image that was blurred. I tried to get a happy medium. Oh yeah, and I couldn't focus for shit, given that I was in near complete darkness taking pictures of a dark thing in a dark sky. Pretty pics, tho. Above is a shot taken before the moon reached totality, including a nice flare - and below is a shot taken well into the dark dark shadow of our earth.

This is an ultrasound we had done a couple days ago. Notice the plural "babies" and the 2 (two) white blobs. Those white blobs are our 7 week old (probably identical) twin babies! WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
I honestly can't think of when I've been happier. Not even the time I fell in the white goo vat at the twinkie factory can compare to this. Not even when, after crawling out of the goo, I was licked clean by a thousand golden lab puppies, compares.
I am wicked super hella mondo stoked. Total awesomeness has been achieved.

"You sing funny"

So we went to a concert.
Went and saw "Weird Al" Yankovic. The show was amazing. I don't think I've ever been that entertained at a concert. The man must have the stamina of a horse - he did 15 minute medleys, had costume changes between almost every song (and in a couple cases he had multiple costume changes during a song) and he did a 10 minute song (my favorite - "Albuquerque") as an encore. All this was interspersed by these weird vignettes on the video screen behind him - faked interviews, random bits of tv, any mention of Al on movies or tv shows...
I'm not gonna post a concert review, but suffice it to say I loved it, and will go to any show he puts on near us again.
Oh yeah, and I met him before the show. he's cool.

Stupid, stupid windows.

Another of those really really dumb things microsoft put into their various windows products:
In windows server 2003, if you get the properties of a device in device manager, then try to close device manager - windows politely informs you to close all device property panels before closing the device manager. It does this by opening a click-to-close box, over the property panel - instead of just closing the panel for you, or heaven forbid just leave the damn thing open and do what you ask.
I used to postulate that the device manager should have a button marked "I don't have that" that you could click to permanently and completely remove a device from your system. If you looked at device manager in windows 95 or 98, you would likely see 3 or 4 monitors, every modem that has ever been within 10 feet of your desk, the scanner your brother brought over one time... tons of stuff you just don't have - but for some reason, when you remove them - they come back. Windows needed to have those ghost devices there, for reasons unknown to you, and refused to leave them dead. The "I don't have that" button would be for those devices.
Ok, done now.

P.S.
I installed a 2 computer network this past week. No big deal, except that both computers were in these big heavy computer hutches. I officially declare my hate of computer hutches here and now. Don't get me wrong - I like the things. I just hate installing and maintaining computers in them. I had to saw half the back off of mine to fit my 21" monitor in it, and I had to completely unhook my computer in order to slide it out to install a network card. I hate 'em.

magic

Once in a while, you get a great photo from an unusual place. I took an out-of-focus shot of one of those fibre optic laps, and got this gorgeous thing.
It's my desktop wallpaper now.

This is the title of the post.

MY HANDS TASTE LIKE GRAPE!

You may ask yourself

And you may ask yourself - "who is that gorgeous child?"
That's me. I took some of my childhood pics (up to age 4, I think), scanned 'em, and got me a random image loader script. Now you'll see one of 12 images of me as a lad above my blog content. I don't know what the random person might think of these, but I wanted to add something personal without being *too* personal.

day people

As a "night person" I have faced this issue a lot in my life: If you work or stay awake during the night, people who spent that time sleeping think you are lazy for sleeping during the day. I've worked graveyard shift, and been woken up at 10 am by somebody who slept for 10 hours and was expecting me to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after 3 hours of sleep. I don't get it. if I work 9 to 5, just like you - only mine is 9pm to 5am - why can't I sleep during your 9 to 5?

concert surrealism

So I went and saw a Billy Joel concert. The weirdest part of it (other than the fact that I liked it) was when his roadie, Chainsaw, performed a religious song to give Mr. Joel a potty break.

Randomosity

Here's a series of random things.
I type this as Rum Tum Tugger is introduced on the cats dvd my fiance is watching.
I want a gas-powered skateboard.
Here's how silly string works.
A bus.
The dirtiest video ever.
Parakeet.

Cripes I'm lazy!

Yeah, so... been a while. What've you been doing? Not much here, ya know, same old thing. Your dad still into those trains?

Yeah so it's been awhile.

Anyway, You ever notice how cats have this sort of precognitive walking ability? I mean, every cat I've ever known has had the remarkable ability to walk in front of me, anticipating my moves. If I'm, say, moving a piece of furniture - the cat can sense where I need to set it down and will go there and meow at me. Do they go to a school to learn how to be underfoot or something? If I'm going to the kitchen - that's where they were going. If I'm going to the bathroom - of course they were planning on enjoying some fresh cool toilet water. This is why I like dogs. A dog will walk next to you or behind you, in case you drop any food.

Excuse Our Mess.

I finally decided to upgrade my blog to the new system. My readers (both of them) will notice some new stuff, like the new template (which will change at my whim) and the tags. I have to manually tag all my posts, and some of them might end up with 3 or 4 tags - so it's going to be an ongoing process. When the tagging process is complete, you'll be able to sort by tag, so you read only posts dealing with alpacas or britney spears, if such is your desire, you sick fucker. Anyway, this post here is the first one I will give the tag of "upkeep". the "upkeep" tag will be applied to all the posts dealing with blog upgrades, downtime, and so on. I'll post and describe what all my tags mean once I'm finished. Here's a tag that isn't intuitive, and as such needs explained now: brain farts. Brain farts are the weird little random posts that serve no purpose and inform of nothing. If I just get the weird urge to say "mexican belt!" or something, I'll tag that one a "brain fart" Anyway, Enjoy.

I've got the no-talent blues

Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Brooke Hogan are examples of a truism: fame can make up for talent. You don't need to be able to sing - protools can fix that. If you are famous and want to make an album - no problem, go make it, and sit back and collect the money from the platinum sales of your horrible crap, laughing at all the musicians with real talent who struggle for 10 years and can't get their demo listened to.
By the way - what the fuck is Paris Hilton famous for, exactly? I mean - she acts, sings, models, has a perfume line - but all of that came as a result of her fame. So what made her famous in the first place? What does she do? It's a death-knell for human civilization when somebody can be a real, honest-to-god celebrity just because they party a lot and have a rich dad.

word of the moment: Schlock. It's when something is utterly without value, like that Paris Hilton autographed cd you'll get 35 cents for 2 years from now on ebay.

My sweet love.

My fiancé bought me, among other things, a subscription to architectural digest, and another one to mental floss. She also got me a book on Salvador Dali. I love her so much. It's exactly what I would have gotten for myself, if I was buying a gift for me, which I do all the time, only I usually buy Twinkies or some Gold by the inch.

Wisdom from a 6-year-old.

History is moving.

Hey everyody! It's a -

MEXICAN BELT!

It's almost poetic.

Last night, our 8-week-old miniature pinscher was viciously attacking a heart-shaped pillow - while simultaneously humping it. There has got to be an anecdote in there somewhere.