Ultranormal

  • Pepsi Spew

    I just tried Pepsi Blue, the new cola variant from the folks who brought you Code Red. I’m a big fan of Code Red. I love it so much, you could call it an addiction.

    Pepsi Blue, on the other hand, is crap. Think, carbonated blueberry Kool-Aid with all the sugar removed and replaced with vinegar. It’s that bad.

    The cola industry is batting 0 now on their new cola “fusion” products. Vanilla Coke tastes like cough syrup and Pepsi Blue is even worse. When will they learn? Cola is best when it’s just cola. Cherry and Lemon are acceptable variants. Blue is not. Vanilla is only acceptable if fresh.

    Why didn’t they ask me before they did this? I could have told them.

  • Bloggers Unite (or not, it’s up to you)

    An interesting article from the Washington Post: How Weblogs Keep the Media Honest by Howard Kurtz (who has one of the only shows on CNN worth watching). Read it for yourself, but it’s interesting to me that while the web has loudly turned into the world’s strip mall, it has quietly turned into the world’s op-ed page and town square. And it’s great that we’re not all voices in the same camp. There’s room here for everyone to say anything, and up to the readers to decide for themselves. If the “regular” media gets it wrong, you have a good chance of finding the right out here somewhere (oh no, not here, go some place else).

  • The Royal Tenenbaums

    I can’t believe I didn’t blog about this right after we saw it. Jen and I watched The Royal Tenenbaums a couple weeks ago. If you haven’t seen it yet, drop what you’re doing, rush to your local video store (as long as it’s not Blockbuster) and rent it. Heck, go to your favorite purveyor of videos or DVD’s and buy it.

    Ok, wait, come back. I loved this movie. Better yet, it has the most joyful scene I’ve seen in a film in a very long time. Gene Hackman plays Royal Tenenbaum, a real bastard. He left his family 22 years ago, is out of money, and tries to ingratiate himself to his abandoned family by telling them he’s going to die. One of his ploys is to win the love of his two grandsons. I won’t tell you anymore about the storyline, except this scene. The two boys are extremely sheltered by their father (Ben Stiller). Royal thinks this is a tragedy, and takes the kids out to commit some mischief. There’s a three to four minute montage of them committing several misdemeanors around town, driving go-karts around (I think) a high school football stadium (it could be a track), hitching a ride on the back of a garbage truck and throwing water balloons at passing cars. Gene Hackman deserved the Oscar for that scene alone. He and the boys were full of uncontrollable joy and vitality.

    If you like True Stories, Bottle Rocket or Magnolia, you’ll love this movie.

  • And Then, The Screaming

    So, I kind of lost it today. I’ve been in the process of losing it for over a month. I was in an emergency meeting for four hours today and was a raging ass. I couldn’t stop myself. I had to yell and point and turn red. I got a headache that’s now ten hours old and shows no sign of slowing down. I’m exhausted and sick to my stomach.

    When I signed up for this job, I knew it would be more reponsibility. I had no idea how much, most of it unplanned, and thrust on me by circumstances.

    Three more days, and then I think my pager will have an unfortunate accident in the toilet. Rest in peace, pager.

  • More Love For HBO

    There’s more to love about The Wire. Last night’s episode was TiVo’ed, and I got around to watching it tonight. The opening scene with McNulty sending his kids off to follow Stringer Bell around using the old “front and follow” method was incredible. It was really funny, and just perfect.

    It’s such a great show, well done, well written… just about perfect. I’ve talked about it before, so I won’t keep going on about it, but you should definitely watch it.

    In other news, there is no other news.

    It seems that all the pain at work has been worth it. Things are fast, people are happy, and it’s just nice to know that something is working out of all this mess I’ve had to deal with for the past three months.

  • Ok, It’s Not Bad…

    Last night’s episode of Sex and the City completely made up for last week’s snoozer. It was funny, snarky and back to the quality I’ve come to expect from the show. I retract my previous comments about the show. I was worried, but I think the girls will be just fine.

  • Wow, I DID Get Something Out of Church Today!

    Church today was fairly tedious. The youth just got back from an apparently moving trip to Ohio, and the first half of the meeting was some teenagers being called on to come up and give their impressions impromtu-like. It was deadening. My favorite was a teenage guy who got up and said “awesome” about 30 times. He mumbled through the rest of whatever he said. The general point thought could be summed up as, “It is my testimony that it was awesome.”

    And that made the rest of it all worth it. I will be using that line until the day I die.

    “I do solemnly swear that the testimony I am about to give shall be awesome, the whole awesome, and nothing but awesome, so help me, dude.”

  • I Didn’t Even Know You Could Pronounce Paella!

    So, I made something approacing paella tonight. Jen made this really simple sauce last night with fresh tomatoes, olive oil and onions. It was awesome on pasta, so I figured it might be good with some of the tilapia we had in the freezer. Jen didn’t want pasta again, so we agreed on rice.

    I defrosted the tilapia filets, cut up the last three large cherry tomatoes, the rest of the onion from last night, and grabbed a bunch of spices out of the cabinet. I put two splashes of olive oil in the big sauce pan along with a pat of butter, a bunch of garlic, a dash of cumin, two pinches of cilantro, a buttload of paprika, the chopped up tomatoes and onions, and about half a can of diced tomatoes. I started them on the oven over medium heat, while I put the rice on with some of the chopped up onion and a little butter and salt.

    After the concoction in the sauce pan was boiling pretty good, I put the tilapia filets in and covered the whole thing. I let it simmer on medium-low until the rice was done (it was instant so it was only five minutes). I then dumped the finished rice on top of the tilapia, stirred in some of the juice, and covered it again for about 10 minutes.

    It was really good when I got a bite of something other than rice. I think with twice as many fresh tomatoes, some other veggies like celery, and some more garlic, it would have been perfect. I think we’ll try it later in the week with some shredded chicken.

    This was pretty much a perfect weekend other than my misadventures in home improvement. Max and I played a lot, we had great family time and had a lot of fun. I think I just may be ready for this last week of work before my vacation.

  • We Have A Rebuttal!!

    Nicole from Not Content To Crawl has posted a rebuttal to my Goldmember review. Since seeing the movie, I’ve read some reviews, and maybe I was just in a bad mood. I had just made it through a harrowing day of launching my baby (twice as fast as it was last week, and I did it in two days), and a horrific two months of last-minute changes, humongous projects and well, other unpleasant stuff. So, I may not have been in a scatological humor mood. I’ll give it another shot on DVD.

  • I Ain’t So Handy

    I’m taking a break from putting up shelves. I am not a handy guy to have around. I’ve successfully stripped two screws that are both at varying degrees of in-ness. They are so stripped that I can’t even muscle them in with a big flathead screwdriver. Now, if this were the bottom screw of the bracket, big deal. But, they’re the two top screws of a bracket, and now I’m kind of… well, screwed.

    I hate handyman projects. I suck at them. They make me get angry and sweat. The make me swear, something I’m trying not to do. They make my blood pressure go up, also something I’m supposed to avoid.

    Now the shelves are in a state of disarray. How do I get the stripped screws in all the way? If I can’t get them in, how do I get them out? They’re 2.5″ long, and 3/4’s of the way into the stud. I’m smart enough to know that’s not a good place to be if you’re a stripped screw.

    So, I’m in here, not working on the shelves, trying to come up with a good explanation for myself. “Sweetie, you know, I saw a wonderful set of prefab shelves at Costco this morning. I think those would work much better than… this.” I can follow Swedish directions. Swedish is a lot like Tcl, lots of arrows and numbers and labeled parts.