Things That Are Impossible

#54 - Looking tough playing the flute


#78 - Understanding the lyrics to Come Together by the Beatles


#12 - Having any good reason for skipping

#32 - Re-reading a mystery novel with any enthusiasm

#33 - Reading Moby Dick with any enthusiasm


#6 - Believing someone who has to use the phrase, "Trust me"

#15 - Playing Super Mario Bros. without humming or whistling the theme song.

The Book Parade

My wife loves is when the local library has their book sale. She spends hours perusing and then comes home with a load of grocery bags full of books we never read.

The Outdated Western Farms Garden- How to maintain your garden in bell bottoms and leisure suits.

The Router Handbook- 100 completely unsafe things to do with your 1/2 hp fixed base router in a series of poorly drawn diagrams.

The Jello Book - A disturbing collage of chiffon dresses, pipe smoking dads and lobster shaped jello molds.

The English Breakfast Book- Jellied Eels and everything else you never wanted to know about what British people will put on toast.

The Whispers of Tarnis- Book 25 of a 85 book fantasy series, that you will never understand without the 24 previous books.

Discovering Inner Failings- A self help book written to show you why you need another self help book.

Silicon Valley in 1979- How boring people can take a boring subject and craft it into the definitively useless coffee table book.

How To Clean Practically Anything- Whisk aways hours you could be spending with your kids or spouse agonizing over a stain that no one ever even noticed.

Anything by Charles Dickens- Why even your worst childhood memories are better that anything that ever happened to people in a Dickens novel.

The next one is coming in April. I'll try to contain myself...

Fantastically Lacking Post Collage

In looking over the suggestions remaining in the Will Work For Posts post I decided to combine them into a fantastically lacking post collage. Why a collage? It sounds better than hodgepodge....

Suggestion by Homestyle Mama (with a side of autism):"I really liked your coffee post. The one where the cup never emptied :)"

I don't think this was so much a suggestion as just a reader being polite. Sort of, "I kinda liked it when you lost your mind and driveled on about nonsense for like 400 words." I'm glad you liked that and equally surprised that you got through the post in it's entirety. These posts are a main reason why I blog. To get this stuff out of my brain.

My wife used to have to listen to my hair-brain theories at length while driving in the car or lying in bed. She too is glad that I now post them instead of talking to her about them. Don't fret, more like this will always be supplied by my semi-broken brain. Stick around...

Suggestion by Tina:you could train to be a firefighter! "Kludge on Fire"!"

No. I would actually die. I have enough embarrassing stories, I don't need my eulogy to be one as well...

Suggestion by Tim:"Why is it that commuters all have ADD. I see the same commuters every morning with their gps on. Did they forget how to get to work after going to sleep the night before?"

Totally got this one... I uh... because aliens...er unicorns...no...ah because they're stupid. Yeah. They're a bunch of dummies.

I honestly don't know. I really want to make something cool out of this one, but I'm failing. You win, Tim. I got nothing. Sorry.

Suggestion by Tina:"why is it that a kid can have 6 pounds of food caked around his mouth, and he's okay with that - but if his hands are in any way remotely dirty, everything has to stop and we have to "wash up"?"

Having two kids I have found out that they really don't make any sense. Who programs the new kid models coming down the pipe?! Has it always been like this? Did our parents just pretend that we were smart because they didn't want to lose face in front of their friends?

For a while I thought it was just my kids. My eldest girl, Alexis has down syndrome. More often than not Alexis makes sense. You can't explain things to her, and she's not caught up developmentally but she rarely behaves in a matter that doesn't make sense. We turn off the TV and she gets mad. We tell her we have to brush her hair, she cries. We tickle her and she laughs. It's not easy, but it is logical.

Hannah, my five year old, on the other hand is broken. She refuses to go to the bathroom until the last possible second. She has to scream and run in an effort to 'keep the pee in" She likes corn, peas, salad and refuses to eat pop tarts.

She can fall and scrape up half the skin on her legs and be fine. "No big deal Dad, see? It doesn't hurt," but put a fly in the room and she'll start bawling and freaking out.

They're all broken models with buggy code. I can't think of any other explanation. We have to keep upgrading them with knowledge and hope their little processors can handle the strain...


Thanks everyone for the ideas! I appreciate it!

How People See Me: PC Gamer

A little mindless humor...

Let me know what you think, or do one for yourself! Here's a blank template for you. It's pretty fun.

Slamming Headache

Suggestion by HMC4ever12 : "What are your thoughts on slam poetry? have you ever been in/seen a performance?"

I have a headache. Not one of those little nagging ones. I mean a real mother-lode type headache. The type where you can feel the blood pulsing through your skull "thump-thump. thump-thump" It's rhythm is haunting, its beat is entrancing and the pain of it is just at the edge of bearable. It hurts you but in a strange way...you almost like it. You wear it like a badge of honor, a shield of office. I'm tough enough, I'm strong enough to feel all this pain and keep on going. I can handle the harrowing, throbbing, pulsing, pushing, pain that is Slam Poetry.

I know that's the cause this headache. It all started with HMC4ever12's comment to my "Will Work For Posts" entry. Seriously. I looked at that comment for a week straight thinking to myself. Yeah, maybe I'll try to tackle that one. I seems like a fun premise for a post. I was thinking of some 1960's stereotype, sporting a goatee, black turtleneck and round dark sunglass. There he is in his beret, sipping a latte snapping his fingers and yammering on about nonsense.

That is not slam poetry. Slam poetry is a headache waiting to pounce on you. I watched about a dozen performances on the net at various Slam Poetry Soapboxes. Apparently the heart of this competition is the urbanizing of poetry. You dress casually, grooming is optional and the audience is allow to hoot or hail with interruptions. Walt Witman, Lord Byron and Odgen Nash would have no place here. Slam poetry isn't for the aristocrat, it's for the great unwashed.

Yeah that's right, it's for the little guy! A way to let his voice be heard by the man! You can't rhyme, but you are allowed to yell. Yelling means you're passionate. Oh and swearing. Swearing means you're REALLY passionate. You would think that poets would be able to find more descriptive words to relate their meaning to the ever 'hooting' crowd but not so. Adjectives, it seems, are a tool of the upper crust and not for use in Slam Poetry. The more swearing the more hooting from the gallery and the better your score.

So, while it might not be for me I can certainly see the appeal. I used to perform poetry in completion very similar to that. In college I was in many interpretive speech competitions. It was fun. I liked the crowds, the other competitors and the way it felt to bring life (or death) to a piece of poetry. Besides the microphones, hooting calls, swearing, yelling and dreadlocks it almost took me back to my college days...

...almost.