My son ate a blueberry today. One. He didn't like it. But he tried it. That's kind of important.

My other son caught a ball for what may be the first time. He's tried it before, and now he's done it. Good for him.

My wife made a shrimp salad with dill and snow peas today. She never made it before, and didn't have a recipe, but she remembered something she ate somewhere about 10 years ago. She tried something, and it was good.

I was just getting to the point where I couldn't come up with anything new that I attempted today. But I did try something.

Her shrimp salad.

And it was good.

photo by audreyjm529

I'm amazed at what actually makes me go from "Gee! That would make a great blog posting." to the actual logging in and typing and making with the linky-linky. I think some of my best ideas have retreated to the 95% of my brain we feeble humans are incapable of using.

So why am I posting today? I'm really not sure. Sometimes I have a fascination for the mundane, the seemingly useless, or the completely stupid. Maybe I realize somethings are only stupid skin deep, and all those somethings are really smart on the inside. And yes, I mean somethings, I'm using it to describe a singular unnamed or possibly vague individual thing (or a just one concept, event, phenomena alone in a vcacuum), and not a group of ...you know I do this some times and it really works...but right now I'm not feeling the "really works" part. Sorry for the brain tease, but let's get back to why I'm posting.

I added Lar as a friend. You know one of those friends. Lar looks a little like my one sister's dumpster diving neighbor, except a bit younger. But that's irrelevant.

I added Lar because when I looked at Lar's profile, I looked at Lar's other friends. Not because they were "Cool New People" (another post in itself, perhaps), but because there were a lot of Lar's (plural, does the apostrophe go there?) It seems that Lar searched or ran a script to find anyone with "lar" in their profile name, and then invite them to be friends.

Does everyone have an urge to belong to something? Is that why I felt like I needed to add Lar as a friend? Do I even still want to finish this post now that I've been bullshitting with my nephew for the last half hour?

I can't answer any of that. But I'm a Lar. And I'll always be one. Perhaps I'll even join Lar's for Lar.

So this isn't essential linking or anything. Just commentary on searching for Lar's in the world we live in. But if you're a Lar, too, there's a place for you in this crazy, mixed-up, online world.

There's too much going on in my head right now. And none of it can describe how irritated I am by my own stupidity, because for the umpteenth time, I did not open a separate browser window and consequently lost my entire post. And, here I sit with less of an urge to try to recapture the rare magic that comes along when a post flows beautifully from my fingertips to its pixelcoated fruition.

I sit here with more of an urge to throw things, a complete counterproductive measure that will not prove anything, except that it will fortify my claim of stupidity since it's highly likely that such throwing would wake up my not quite two year old in the adjoining room. There's a reason time's are listed on blog posts, so shift your irises and peek somewhere nearby and things will make sense.

Alright. Spit out the rest. Post what you were gonna post, and get out.

I found a video clip that reminded me of how dominant Bo Jackson was in the original Tecmo Bowl game for the NES. Actually Game | Life found it, or GorillaMask.

Well, I wouldn't have found it if I wasn't searching for an online version of an article on Lord British that just appeared in Wired. (Didn't find it, by the way.)

But Game | Life featured the unstoppable, uncontainable, un-hip-injured 8-bit Bo Jackson footage in a post about the next Tecmo Bowl. It's safe to say I won't be pre-ordering that one. I'm not sure the current generation of systems could reproduce the fun quotient of the first two Tecmo Bowl releases. The beauty of Tecmo Bowl was in its simplicity.

And I still think the picture on the box looks like Robin Williams from that football movie he did with Kurt Russell. Was it called The Best of Times? [Blogger jumps to new window to fact-check,then returns to finish post.] Yes, it was.

...nothing.

For the last couple weeks, I've been talking and thinking about posts, and at last when there's a free moment the tank is empty. I seem to be changing into more of a morning person than an evening person, but the evening is still when the optimum times for me to post come up. This is one of those "take up space" kindof posts, that only serves to remind me, that indeed, I'm still here.

Film by Robert Greenwald and Steven Connell.

Steven Connell, the slam poet, Stupid. Not that other guy, he created The A-Team.

I was going to tag this one under politics, but the whole mess goes way beyond that.

Interesting printbyte from a Philip Rosedale Rolling Stone interview.

I'm guessing by now you're either fully immersed, or have chosen to ignore any buzzing static on Second Life. Perhaps you're even blissfully ignorant. But I'm guessing that group will start shrinking soon.

I don't like to explain my allusions, I figure people pick up on them or they don't, and being clever has sort of worked out for me, at least somewhat, so whatever. Perhaps that's something I can include in my upcoming10 Reasons You Don't Read my Blog post that according to consensus (of one, namely me) will never materialize, but as you're not reading anyway, you won't miss it.

Architect. Rosedale. Matrix. Get it, or don't. It's a free country. Mostly.

Perhaps Rosedale should move to acquire The Matrix Online since his world's "not going to turn out that way".

Lest I forget what generated the most traffic to this blog, I link to the Rockstar Games trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV. Perhaps calling it a teaser site would be proper. But proper and GTA kind of make for strange bedfellows. It looks like a return to Liberty City. Maybe they'll take a cue from San Andreas and expand the territory and have some road trips through the Northeast, or at the very least down the Jersey Shore.

Despite what McCain says, it's not getting any better. I've heard similar things from clients that have loved ones over there.

This Wolf Blitzer clip compares John McCain's Baghdad with the real Baghdad, as described by Michael Ware.

Reality bites.

No sir, No sir, not with yams.

Not tomorrow, not today.
Not according to the FDA.

Will they label the cloned meat?
No sir, no sir, not this week.

Not tomorrow, no not ever.
FDA may not be clever.

Is it safe? Wait and see.
Try some, no, not I, not me.

I do not want cloned eggs and ham.
I don't. that's just the way I am.

A little Seussical fun with a serious topic. You can send comments to the FDA regarding your feelings on cloned meat. Here's the link to the docket. Here's the link to the comment area.

If this stuff is going on the market, it should at the very least be labeled so the consumer can tell the difference, and make their choice. Yes, they say cloned meat is safe. Yet, there's no history of humans eating cloned meat over time to determine if it really is safe. And they'll still feed these cloned cows the same GMO-corn and hormones and whatever else they can concoct, so Lord only knows what the entire concoction will yield.

This has been a public service announcement from thisblogismblog.

I'm ending the drought. I wasted enough of my time on this, considering I don't have a square to spare. I pass it on to you to eat away your precious minutes. Maybe I can find a few of mine lying around in the aftermath.

5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself)

found at Kotaku

Don't get this confused with the Def Jux dj RJD2. I'm referring to Ryan vs. Dorkman 2, so there should be no confusion. Type in 'light saber' on Ye Olde YouTube, you'll get close to 10,000 matches. And there's a good chance these arch-nemeses (is that right?) will appear at the top of the results.

Arguably the epitome of Star Wars fan film light saber battles, my son and I had the good fortune of viewing the sequel at the end of the NY Comicon, courtesy of the folks of nyjedi.com. RvD2 premiered on the 'tubes' March 1, so the rest of the world can view it in its infinite goodness. Enjoy.

I went to a couple sites to find some perspective into average home size in the United States to possibly shed some light on the concerns regarding Al Gore's electrical bill.

Google Answers responded to a question about average home size in 2002. The average U.S. home size in 2001 was 2,300 square feet. I realize this is five years ago, but it takes some time for the majority of the country to upgrade the size of their homes, so I would suspect the 2006 number to still be below 3,000. Google Answers also listed their sources for determining the answer.

I actually escaped chatter about Bald Britney and Deceased Anna Nicole for a whole five minutes, and heard about something that may have some relevance to something else. It was difficult, but it actually happened.

Some no-name right wing group attacked Al Gore over his electricity bills, saying they are 50% higher than the national average.

Yet they don't say how Al Gore lives in a 10,000 square foot house. I could count on one hand (with fingers to spare) the number of people I know personally (do mySpace friends count? cus' I haven't been to too many of their homes) that live in such homes.

I think this blog is too small for the smear machine to try to extract from my brain all the people I know personally to cross-reference their names in some super computer that will match this info up with their property tax bills and compute the square footages (footages? feetages? overall square footage was better, but this sentence was on a roll like I haven't had in awhile, so let's get back to it, shall we?) of their homes just to get to the number six and call me a liar. I doubt they would do their due diligence to be certain I don't have six fingers on my hand, because a bell curve would probably show that the likelihood of me having five fingers on the other hand would fall within two standard deviations.

I am not going to do my due diligence, cause I'm sensing the inherit truthiness in claiming that Al Gore's home is at least 70% larger than the national average. Elementary school students could make the clear determination, that indeed, even while making steps to ceonserve energy, Mr. Gore would still have a bill much higher than the national average.

Can he not be an advocate for green energy because of this? Rush Limbaugh apparently believes environmentalists want to downsize the American lifestyle. If Rush makes a claim that Gore should live in a smaller home, he would contradict himself? Walking contradiction occasionally do such things, by the way. I'm just sayin' is all.

I'm pretty sure Rush doesn't live in a glass house.

And, I'm just wondering, are our electric bills public knowledge?

Blogs I've read reporting on this include:
The Anonymous Liberal
Seeing the Forest
Crooks & Liars

It's tough enough trying to make a living on retail wages. It's despicable to see how many places shave employee hours. Yet somehow I'm not surprised to see Wal-Mart in the list of offenders. And that they even had a name for the "one-minute clock-out". It makes you think it was a known moniker for a shady practice, one of those shady practices that continues until there's lawsuits and wrist slapping.

How many times did you hear "I can't believe it's February already" today?

How many of these people already derailed from their diet, and have written off that New Year's resolution already? I don't know. I bet quite a few, but Vegas is busy with Super Bowl odds right now, so they're not takin my money.

Wow! I think I found an answer and it was similar to my expectations. Although the CNN article is three years old, I wonder if the percentages have changed very much.

The last two paragraphs have nothing to do with January's quick cup of coffee and back to wherever January goes for the next eleven months. January is possibly the Monday morning of the year. A month in which many continuously check e-mail, linger longer at the coffee pot or watercooler, listening to voice mails, all the while still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, wishing for the warmth and comfort of their comforters.

I've actually been quite busy this January, and mostly if not completely in a good way. Perhaps it's a bellwether for my year. Or perhaps it's just happy happenstance.

February 2nd must be the day that the Groundhog realizes it's the end of the elongated Monday, peeks out of its hole, and wonders where January went. Sometimes he looks around for it a little bit, sometimes it goes back to sleep until Wednesday, when nobody gives a fuck about what it does.

This just in. (An article that is only one year old.) February 3rd is the date the average dieter gives up. Those struggling need to hang in just another 48 hours to break the curve. But you might not want to stop there if you'd like to reach your goal.

Apparently, I've been sleeping on this. I clicked on the RocketBoom link on my blog, then decided to play Where's Amanda? with Google, and found her at ABC. This is good for the tubes. I'm speaking Ted Stevens-ese.

Amanda Congdon at ABC News. Is that the best title they could come up with? And frankly, what's a title worth anyway? Without a raise it's just a bunch of words attached to more work that you don't necessarily want, especially since you're not getting the extra money to do it.

Hey, I thought I deleted my Rocketboom link. I guess all is forgiven.