It's almost an oxymoron. MTV - Music Television. Turn on MTV at almost any hour of the day and you'll see partying teens or a reality show. The few videos they still play are during request shows and it's the same 10 videos as last week, every week.

Over the weekend Lovely Wife and I watched an hour or so of "classic" music videos on VH1. These are videos from the 1980's for the most part. It was quite a trip through retro-ville, let me tell you.

And I now know why MTV started moving away from actually playing videos in the 1980's. It's because these videos suck with the terrible and inexorable strength of a black hole.

I'm just saying.

Posted by: Jim at 04:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yesterday evening we got a visit from some new neighbors. It was not a pleasant experience. They just bought a house down the street and moved in a short while ago. They've got a fenced back yard where they keep two dogs.

Nine-eye, our much loved neighborhood dog, went visiting. Although he is very timid with people he is very social with other dogs. Being a large boy and an experienced fence jumper he has no difficulty getting into their back yard. Our new neighbors are not pleased with his actions.

Perhaps "not pleased" is a bit of an understatement. What they are is angry enough that they threatened to kill Nine-eye if he goes into their yard again.

Yes, the mister said flat out that if we didn't keep Nine-eye out of his yard he would kill the dog.

This upset me greatly, but wasn't what brought me within inches of my first adult fist fight. What pissed me off even more than his threat was his qualifier, which he kept mouthing as if it absolved him of any consequence of his actions.

"I don't mean to be hateful, but..."

"I don't want to sound hateful, but..."

"I'm not trying to be hateful, but..."

Finally I couldn't hear that any more. My blood was boiling and I was about to pop. I looked him straight in the eye and said "I cannot imagine anything more hateful than that". Proud of me? I sure am. What I really wanted to say included colorful expressions about his person and a goodly dose of vitriol.

As it was, my simple words calling him on the carpet difused what was becoming a very bad situation. After I said that he got quiet for a few moments and when he spoke again the belligerence was gone. I got him to agree to call us if he saw Nine-eye in his yard again. Hopefully if we scold Nine-eye it will be more effective than him chasing the dog out of his yard.

It will not be a permanent solution. Nine-eye is very canine social. He wants to be with other dogs. He will return there eventually. Although we were able to reason with these new neighbors I do not think they will remain reasonable for very long. A person who'll come up to your house and tell you he is going to kill your dog is not the kind of person who strikes me as being reasonable for any length of time.

So what can we do? The best long-term solution is to get him out of his dangerous environment. Lovely Wife has started looking for a permanent home for him. He's a wonderfully friendly dog, very gentle and easy to handle. Once he's comfortable with a person, that is. He is very timid with most folk but recognizes "dog people" pretty quickly. He is quite smart and very social. I think he would be an excellent house dog after some patient training. He would also do very well as a yard dog but the fences need to be jumper-proof and he would absolutely need other dogs around him.

If you're in the Atlanta Metro area and would like to own a wonderful animal, please let me know. Heck, if you're outside of the Atlanta Metro area but would like to own a wonderful animal this is the perfect excuse to come see the delights of the area and pick up a pet while you're here. If you know anybody who might be interested please point them to this entry.

Update: Lovely Wife took some new pictures of Nine-eye. They're at the post linked above. Damn, that's one handsome dog! Here's one of them. He's tied up so he won't go into that backyard. This makes him very sad.

Posted by: Jim at 11:52 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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We've got morning traffic reports. We've got web-based mapping services. Combine the two.

Introducing MyTraffic.com*! Pull up the site before you head out the door. It shows you the best route to work taking into consideration slow traffic flows, accidents, etc.

* This is not a real site. Yet.

Posted by: Jim at 11:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Valentine's Day - you either love it or hate it. Or ignore it, I guess. Or, like the vast majority of humanity, have no idea whatsoever that it even exists.

Where was I? Oh, yeah - it seems that posts on Valentine's Day fall firmly into one of two camps. There are those who hate and despise it as a Hallmark Holiday full of false sentiment and overly public displays of affection. Then there are those who embrace it for its celebration of true sentiment and overly public displays of affection.

Once upon a time I was firmly in the anti-VD camp. That changed and I think I've pinned down just where the change happened. I started to enjoy Valentine's Day when it changed from a day of obligatory gift giving to an excuse for gift giving.

Let me splain. We have a single income with 3 kids. We make do with one car and not a whole lot of superfluous stuff because we are willing to sacrifice such things to bring up our kids the way we want. The downside is a relative dearth of expendable income (aka blow money). I don't have very many opportunities to spoil her like she so richly deserves. I welcome Valentine's Day as it gives me a well established excuse to do what I'd like to be doing every day.

So Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!

Posted by: Jim at 06:05 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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iPod Shuffle is neat but it isn't really random. Everything it plays is one of your songs. Your selection only gets bigger when you add new songs and you have no chance of hearing a new song.

The new Napster is also neat. For a fixed fee per month you can listen to anything you want out of a monstrously huge selection of songs. But in your MP3 player it's still the same old thing - you program what you want to hear and there's really no big help to find new things.

What we need is MyFM. Here are the requirements: more...

Posted by: Jim at 11:59 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Saturday morning I was working on the computer. Bear came over and we chatted while I did some mind-numbing report review. He started doing the pee dance. That's the move where he stands there grabbing his crotch and gyrating a bit. If you don't have kids you're probably most familiar with this move from its common occurrence in rap videos.

Me: Bear, do you need to go to the bathroom?

Bear: No.

Me: Then why are you doing the pee dance?

Bear: My penis keeps bothering me.

Me: Your penis is bothering you?

Bear: Yeah. The penis part keeps sticking to my sack of balls.

'Sack of balls' has now been permanently entered into the family vocabulary.

Posted by: Jim at 07:59 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Some movies can actually change you. Change your attitudes, your thoughts, even your beliefs. Any story can do this if it has a portion that touches you in a special way. By 'touching in a special way' I don't mean the way that pedophiles do, I mean in a good way.

The movie Singles changed me in an actual measurable way. Ever since I heard of 'gesundheit' it had been my sneeze response of choice. I mean, what's cooler and more worldly for a little kid to say than a foreign word in popular use, especially when said little kid knew how to use it appropriately. And the word wasn't a cuss so he could say it anywhere without having wooden spoons broken across his backside.

Well, in the movie Singles there's a scene where Bridget Fonda's character (just broken up with her boyfriend) gives her 'shopping list' for a guy. It's long and very detailed. But then she says that she's lowered her standards quite a bit and doesn't use that list anymore. Now she'll be happy with a guy who says 'gesundheit' when she sneezes. Or 'bless you'. 'Bless you' would be better - she really likes that. Skip to the end of the movie where Bridget and her ex are in an elevator together. She sneezes, he says 'bless you'. She jumps his bones.

I'll still occasionally say 'gesundheit' because that was my ingrained sneeze response for so many years. But since I first saw that movie anytime I actually think before doing the sneeze response I say 'bless you'. When a 'gesundheit' slips out I'll have a mental dammit moment when I realize that I missed a 'bless you'. And when I do the 'bless you' I get a nice warm feeling.

Okay, it's a very small thing. But that movie was directly responsible for a change in my attitude and behavior. In a good way too, I think.

So has a movie ever changed you? Big or small, good or bad? I'm keen to know.

Posted by: Jim at 07:50 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Sounds dirty doesn't it? Like something immoral you might do with corpses.

On the way in today we passed the Atlanta Nephrology Referral Center. Lovely Wife asked me what "nephrology" was. My response was an unexpected "Duh...I don't know". That bugged me. I spent years drinking and partying studying like a dog to learn medical terms and here I'd gone and forgotten one. One big and important enough to have a medical referral center dedicated to it.

It bothered me on and off all day long. Every time I tried to think of what nephrology was the Isles of Langerhans kept popping into my head. Those are in the pancreas and I knew “nephro” is definitely not the Latin for pancreas so I was at a dead end. Then I got a flash and I remembered a little memory trick I used for a biology test in OR Tech school. It was a drinking song little poem we memorized to help remember where the organs are located (in relation to each other) inside the abdomen. The part that was sticking in my head was something about “harvesting kidney beans under the Isles of Langerhans”. That bit was to remind you that the kidneys are below the pancreas. As soon as I remembered that bit I remembered that “nephro” is kidneys.

I rock!!*

So Nephrology is science of and relating to the kidneys. Do not confuse it with Necrophilia** or Necromongers***.

* Yes, I am fully aware that I could have looked it up online at any time and saved hours of fretting. That wouldn't have told me why my brain was misfiring between "nephro" and "Isles of Langerhans". Besides, figuring it out for yourself is way studly.****

** To which it is only cursorily related.

*** Space age bad guys who wear leather dresses (yes, the guys) and mullets in Vin Diesel movies.

**** Seriously, it really is way studly. I'm half tempted to give myself some points for this one.

Posted by: Jim at 02:59 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I had the most awesome dream. You know that fiction short story that Paul and I wrote together? I dreamed that we were offered $20,000 for it with an option for 3 more.

Now I'm just trying to think of what to do with all that money.

Posted by: Jim at 06:48 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Via Harvey I found a tale of frightfully vicious customer service at Lee Ann's View. Lovely Wife recently ran into a customer service nightmare of her own.

We love dollar stores. I'm sure I mentioned it before but the whole family thinks that dollar stores are the cat's tits. Just walking into a retail establishment knowing that you can buy anything that strikes your fancy is a heady feeling for folks like us with limited discretionary income. It's great for the kids too - they know if they walk in with 4 dollars they can get 4 things. Any four things. (Mom and Dad pick up the tax, you see.)

So we make a stop at the dollar store once or twice a month plus anytime we need a gadget or small tool. Our dollar store of preference was the Dollar Tree right around the corner from our last apartment. It's big but not too big, has a fine selection of useless paraphernalia and a friendly staff. We went to that one even though there are bigger ones not much further and similar ones closer to our house.

The Dollar Tree doesn't take credit cards or check cards. We use check cards almost exclusively. It is a very rare occurrence for us to have any actual cash on hand. For the Dollar Tree we use actual paper checks as that is their only non-cash option. Because we use check cards for just about all purchases and pay most of our bills online we go through actual paper checks very, very slowly. We still had several books left when we moved to our new house. I printed out address labels and we affix these over the old address on the checks when we use them. Hey, I'm a cheap bastard. No way am I ordering new checks when I have perfectly legal ones left. What else would you expect from somebody who shops at the Dollar Tree? more...

Posted by: Jim at 05:26 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I hate being treated like an idiot, especially when I'm reading a book for pleasure. Today's bitch is against a particularly heinous affront perpetrated all too often by today's authors.

Introduction of villain

The villain is introduced by description. He is anonymous and mysterious. One unusual aspect of the villain is mentioned, generally more than once since the retarded readers can't be expected to notice it the first time. He plans something diabolical that shows he is actively working against the hero.

Hero meets "Bob"

The hero encounters "Bob". Bob is either a friend, ally, antagonist or other person who's on the same side as the hero. They might be friendly or they might hate each other. The key points are that they should be working together and that Bob has the villain's unusual aspect.

The writer thinks we're duped

Of course the writer now knows that he has tricked us into figuring out that Bob is the villain. He plays this up throughout the book but Bob is always known as Bob and the villain is always described by his unusual aspect.

The hero comes to suspect Bob

And the writer thinks we're all "shouting at the screen". No, hero! Don't trust Bob! He's the villain!

"Bob" has the hero in his clutches

Eventually the villain captures the hero and prepares to do something villainous to him. The hero is helpless and has no chance of rescue.

Bob saves the day

The real Bob arrives and saves the hero. Generally he also dies, leaving the hero (and supposedly the reader) anguished over his callousness in ever suspecting that Bob was the villain.

There are many variations on this little hammer blow of inept writing. Maybe the hero never suspects Bob at all, maybe it isn't Bob that saves the hero during the 'reveal', perhaps Bob really is a bad guy (just not the villain). What they all have in common is a pulling-the-reader-by-the-nose-ring condescension from the writer.

A good writer uses details to tell his story, not trite little tricks.

Rick Cook is dead to me.

Posted by: Jim at 01:27 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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