Lazy Thursday: Movie Day 3

Last weeks turnout was ginormous. I would be a bad host not to try it one more time... And since my Thursday folder is a little shy (Brendan maybe next week.) Were going to try it again. This could either be more fun or a bomb if we've all expired our movie quotes.

I'll start the game with a quote from a movie. Whoever knows it can respond, with the movie it's from. Additionally add a new movie quote in your comment This continues till we all get stumped or bored.

Only two little rules
1.) No R or greater movies
2.) No cussing

"Nobody tosses a dwarf."

What to do at work when your bored:







Or just escape:

Ode to a Rubbernecker

I’m driving down the highway
As I’m staring at the mall
I slow the line of traffic down
To just a trickling crawl

I must see what is happening
If it’s important or inane
I’ll slow right down and slack my jaw
And mutter ‘that’s insane’

I’m not too hard to spot
I am the leader of the pack
With fifteen cars behind me
They wind around in back

Cops they need my presence
Or they couldn’t do their job
If some accident I missed
I’d drive right home and sob

When I drive I always know
That I’ve got alot of friends
There are strangers honking horns
And waving hands 'round bends

When I get out upon the road
I have no place I need to be
I'm just hoping for a pile up
Wow now that's a thing to see!

I’m a rubbernecking driver
And I love to watch the shoulder
I don't do it to be rude
I’m just practicing for when I’m older

-Peter Brown 2006

Catan Take It Anymore

Got Wood for Sheep?

Recently I have been playing a lot of Settlers of Catan. It’s a board game. Patricia and I were introduced to this new lifestyle by Brian and Esther. We had them over and I was worried about what we would do. I asked them if they played cards and they said that they had been playing Catan recently and hadn’t played cards in a while. I had heard about the game and expressed and interest to play.

I didn’t know much about it when we started to play, but I was hooked from the very first move. For those not in the know about Catan, just understand that it has moved from a simple board game to an all out irrepressible addiction. Settlers of Catan has stolen my soul and turned me into a resource craving lunatic. People I once considered my friends have become grain hoarding, ship building, road blocking adversaries.

In the game the goal is to collect resources: grain, wool, ore, wood, and brick. This occurs by dice rolls. The more resources the more Catan structures you can build which will allow you to accumulate even more resources. It’s a vicious cycle of greed and conquer. The game only ends when one person has reached a certain number of points, and stomped all over his fellow players. I have a highly competitive nature. No it would be more accurate to say… I’m a ravenous beast that will only be content play if I stand a chance to win.

Okay now that you understand the basics let me mix it up a little. There is always a wrench in the gears of commerce. The robber. Even if you’re winning and collecting vast resources, a simple roll of the dice can change everything. When a seven is rolled a piece called the robber is played. He sits on your resources and you cannot collect any as long as he’s there. Rolling a seven will allow you to move him. Seven is the most common dice roll there is. So why is it that for the last eight rounds you have roll three 2's , two 5's, two 11's and a stinking 12!. While the resource you should be collecting sits in a pot and your empire rests stagnate. Your opponent whom you’ve been crushing is now dancing a jig on the table. Imagine Rockefeller collapsing over one seven!

Patricia and I are getting a Catan divorce. We start off the evening having a nice dinner then singing with the girls. We end it foaming at the mouth over a pile of cardboard! We can no longer play nice together. Additionaly neither of us is going to give up playing! I have begun pasting up pro-resource propaganda on the walls of our house.

“Equal rights for farmers, and ranchers! Keep the robber at bay! Let the Government deal with his kind! Keep our children safe from brick stealers, ore pinchers and wood snatchers!”

So far my support has been waning. Meanwhile Patricia has been pushing her own agenda.

“Manufactured for use! All pieces have their purpose! The robber deserves existence as much as the roads! Robber stimulates competition, competition essential for growth”

If you haven’t played yet I would recommend it. Additionally we would welcome the opportunity to play with you and pound your amateur playing tail into the ground. Setters of Catan, the soul blackening marriage destroying game of resources and accumulated contempt.

Perpetual Peddling

So he's opened up his lawn again to all his treasures. Things you wouldn’t normally want to part with. He has four broken coffee pots, seven dirty stuffed animals and a Donna Summer’s cassette in excellent condition. One of our neighbors down the street has been having the eternal garage sale. It seems that every week we go by he has unloaded his house out onto his grass. Setup the four card tables and labeled all his nearly priceless trinkets.

I don’t have any issues with garage sales. It’s a good way to get rid of the things you don’t want to keep anymore. You sell what you can. Donate what they’ll take. Throw away the rest. Then you can enjoy a little extra cash, satisfaction and more open space.

I always feel a bit strange at garage sales. It’s a little odd sorting through someone else’s junk and finding something that will one day become your junk. Some people try to unload the strangest stuff. Word to the wise never buy a, pet-brush, hairbrush or toothbrush at a garage sale. Even if it does have a Winnie the Pooh handle on it. Why do people think just because you put a price sticker on it someone will buy it? No one wants your church mouse toaster cozy!

If no one buys from your first eight garage sales, odds are you don’t have anything anyone wants. You would think this would be a simple concept to grasp?

“Maybe no one saw this lamp?”

“Mel,” his wife sighs “It’s a plastic artichoke lamp; they just aren’t as popular as they used to be. Maybe we should just throw it away.”

“Do you remember what we paid for this?!”

“Forget I mentioned it...I’m sure it will go this week…”

So he sits in his driveway every week with is Panama hat, cargo shorts and flip flops. Itching to make an exchange, hoping to haggle and dying to deal. His lockbox is shined and hungry for gobbling up greenbacks.

“Thanks so much for coming” He waves, “All deals are final!”

Drinking Problem

Story Circa 2003

It was a rushed morning, I was running late to work. I was working for a computer consulting firm. Plenty of face time, working with clients. I was required to do a good job and look nice. Everyone wants a clean computer tech, especially with our rates!

I was out of hair gel, and this is already a very bad thing. My hair is a giant cotton ball. I was wearing a white dress shirt and black pants. I looked like a waiter from the '70s.

I was in the office reading my email and drinking my coffee. Getting ready to start my morning routine. Just before I was heading out from my office to my first client of the day I decided to finish off my coffee.

There was only a small amount of coffee left in the bottom of the cup. I threw the cup back and realized it was still half full. Clearly this is not going to end happy.

Coffee ran all over my face and down my white shirt. I looked completly ridiculous. I put on my coat and started the day. The drink spilling, cotton-headed, 1970s waiter.

Convalescent Magic

On the way home every night I drive by an airplane museum. It’s sort of like a convalescent home for aircraft. No one thinks you’ll ever have the ability to fly like you did when you were young, but you can play checkers and talk about your glory days. A quiet and serene quiet place to rust in peace. People come to visit you once a year just to check in. They reminisce, take pictures with you, but they're mainly there to be in awe of the fact that you’re still in one piece. The main attention is on the air for the new planes and the few old timers still able to take off.

“Hey Henry” one bellows, “You remember when we used to do that?”

“No John I don’t,” he sighs, “My flight recorder was removed years ago."

I’m not a plane buff by any means and honestly cannot tell you model number, cruising speed, or year commissioned. Maybe reading Brian’s posts has showed me how little I know about planes, because when I drive by, all I see is big one, fast one, old one.

To me some things are just magic. I mean I have head knowledge of how a plane takes off. I understand the passage of air over a curved wing and how that coupled with thrust can give a plane lift. It makes sense in my head. Seeing it on paper is different than watching a plane take off. I just have to think, that’s magic, there’s no other way to explain it. I’m always in awe of the fact that we can leave the ground and land in reasonable safety. Seeing these old planes also makes me realize we have been doing magic for quite a while now.

The old planes, some covered with tarps or wood to keep elements at bay, rest on the lawn never moving never changing. They get to sit and watch the new planes that land and take off at the airport over the chain link.

Planes that rattle your chest, or make you wish you were heading out somewhere on a trip. Sitting in a tight seat, barreling down the runway thinking about your voyage and waiting for the cart. Nothing says vacation like a daisy cup of ginger ale and five salty peanuts.

Lazy Thursdays Blues: Movie Day Reprise

Okay now that we all got the hang of the game from last week lets try it again.

I'll start the game with a quote from a movie. Whoever knows it can respond, with the movie it's from. Additionally add a new movie quote in your comment This continues till we all get stumped or bored.

Only two little rules
1.) No R or greater movies
2.) No cussing

"Daddy, I got cider in my ear"

For those of you that just come to point and click... Here are two campingcentric videos.

1 - How I want my tent setup to be.




2 - The more likely turnout.

The Way to Work

I’m already running late to work this morning. I got up late and just was having trouble getting going. I was ten minutes late to work yesterday and didn’t feel like repeating that again. I finally get into my car and I have eight minutes to get to work. I’ve made it in ten with perfect conditions but eight might be stretching it.

7:52 AM - I drive a fairly beat up Nissan pickup. I decided a long time ago I didn’t want to own a car I would obsess over. I put the first scratch in my pickup so someone else wouldn’t do it. It has a CD player put no rear view mirror. We all have our priorities and why should I care where I’ve been? It is currently a gray pickup but if I ever washed it the paint job is a nice silver.

7:54AM - So me and my pickup are barreling down the road when we hit ‘the stoplight’. There are lots of stoplights on the way to work but only one has the prestige to be called ‘the’. Einstein theorized that the closer humans came to moving at the speed of light the slower time would move in proportion. I have a theory of my own. When sitting at stoplights time around it is moving at normal speeds but the light itself is in a reality that time has nearly stopped in. This time slowdown is in proportion to how soon you need to be somewhere.

7:57AM - After an immeasurable period of time I’m in motion again. I’m approaching the high school. I always forget in August that summer was a fluke and I will not make it past the high school in the mere seconds as I did during summer. Add some extra time today for the two brain surgeons who decided to jay walk in front of my car. Squealing tires will not scare you if you’re not smart enough to be afraid of death.

7:58 AM - I zip through the hamlet on the corner where the workers line up to get vineyard jobs for the day. I never get through here fast, my luck must be changing. I have made it from here in 3-4 minutes before. I will be late but only by a couple minutes. I can deal with that...

8:00 AM - There is a shortcut I take everyday and it can make or break me. It is a two lane road by definition only. The yellow line is hard to stay off. The fact that I’m trying to make up a minute or two is only increasing the chances that I will find myself in wrapped up in the business end of some grape growers heavy equipment. I come around the corner to the show stopper. There is a wine tour bus in a major pickle.

8:03AM – I don’t think buses are allowed on this road. Certainly not tour busses! This road ends at a single lane bridge and this bus has gone and got himself wedged in it pretty badly. There is a line of cars behind him. I’m number two of at least fifteen in this bizzare parade. The cars wind behind and out of my view. I cannot see the other side of the bridge but I imagine it is similar. We sit and watch as the driver executes a painfuly long forty-nine point turn. He then backs off the bridge, as we all do a synchronized reverse routine that Ester Williams would have been proud of.

8:15AM – As I drive over the bridge all I can do is laugh. It was just too funny to do anything else. Additionally there is a biker with a video camera on the opposite side who got this all on film! My morning could easily become some very nice You-Tube fun.

Fruits of Your Labor

Manual labor. The term is a trifle confusing for me. I understand the labor part well enough but isn’t the manual a bit redundant? I’ve never heard of anyone saying mind labor, or head labor. That’s called thinking. Being a geek I’ve read a lot of manuals and I can say that some were quite laborious, but somehow it’s not the same. Is it maybe to differentiate manual type labor from giving birth type labor? I’ve seen childbirth first hand. If it’s not manual labor than nothing is! From this point on we will simply call it labor.

What is labor? Labor is not doing something hard. It can be labor but it doesn’t always have to be. As Mark Twain demonstrates in Tom Sawyer a person will do labor if he believes it to be fun. Because of this truth Tom’s friends pay him to whitewash his fence. If this same job was called ‘work’ nothing would get a body to do it cheerfully.

I spent an afternoon running myself to exhaustion chasing and throwing a Frisbee. If some muscle headed coach in Phys Ed would have planned that same activity I would have been muttering curses on him and his lineage the whole period. This is a simple truth and I will go so far to say that I believe we have all experienced it.

So I ask you again, What is labor? Labor is easily defined.

You go outside believing you are going to spend an hour cutting back a bush in front of your house and throwing the leaves and branches into a trash can. You then perceive yourself back inside with John Wayne for the rest of the day.

When after the first thirty minutes of sheering you discover that the ugly squatty bush in front of your house is actually anchored to the ground with a root system that is making the oak tree green with envy. In another hour of digging sawing and prying you have made zero progress. You've pulled out your entire entourage of equipment, from sawsall to framing hammer. Your feeling rather like the losing side in a battle of wits.

You tie one end of your only rope to the root and attach the other end to your only truck. After one minute without motion the rope snaps. You go to the local hardware store and buy a stronger rope. Once tied off in a similar fashion to the first rope, you again try the truck tug. The bumper on your truck begins to dislodge itself from your truck. The sound brings out your spouse. You lie and say 'everything's fine.'

You buy a pry bar, and for two hours have the unbridled joy of rotating between bashing the root with a twelve pound iron rod, and hacking at it with your grandfather’s authentic Saudi Arabian machete.

When the root is removed you collapse on the lawn. You’re now completely unfit to breath, eat, or drink. Congratulations, you have just completed labor.

Breath Easy

They can be aggravating, annoying and generally disruptive. They can take focus away from your attire, good nature or new hair cut. If you have them the odds are good it’s the only thing folks will notice about you till you get rid of them. We refer to these menaces with odd endearment as 'the hiccups.'

I’ve decided that hiccups are the body’s way to blow off steam. No one is one hundred percent sure why humans hiccup. I think I know. The human body hiccups when starved for entertainment. If you are ever bored, find someone suffering from hiccups. I'm telling you, watching a room full of people trying to solve one fellows hiccups is more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

I have seen some odd solutions to hiccups in just the few short years I’ve been on earth. Everyone has a solution to the hiccups. Most think theirs is the only effective way. I know people who swear by their ridiculous solution and will not listen to another soul no matter how sane they might be. My personal method is highly effective for me and also supremely boring. I can stop my hiccups normally before three come up the track. I will not share it because this would provide little fun at parties.

Lets go back to that poor soul who had the misfortune to hiccup in public. Now everyone is swarmed around them and assaulting them with the most unusual homeopathic remedies you ever heard of.

“John you have to drink a glass of water,” fake doctor 1 yells “Not like that silly. Upside-down!”

“Don’t listen to them John,” fake doctor 2 bellows “Just do some jumping jacks and you’ll be fine.”

• Drink an entire glass of water without breathing


• Drink a capful of vinegar


• Induce a cough or sneeze


• Scream whenever you feel a hiccup coming on


• Drink a shot of lime juice with Tabasco sauce added


• Be scared (everyone loves to try and scare the afflicted person)


• Touch your uvula gently with the handle of a spoon (I wouldn’t if I were you)


• Hold your breath as long as you can


• Smell the fumes from a lighted candle


• Take five fast, deep breaths; after the last one exhale


• Breathe slowly into your shirt


• Count to twenty with your fingers in your ears


• Say "pineapple."

The last one makes me laugh. How did that ever come up as a possible solution?

"No! not kiwi I said 'say pineapple!' What's wrong with you anyway?"

Who can guess. I suppose there is more than enough room for everyones hiccup cures. If none of these seem like you, there’s always the more ‘scientific approach.’

Got any good hiccup entertainment?