Functionally ReTodded

I found a blog courtesy of Larry Wachs and www.regularguys.com called Trash Dog. I don’t know who the guy is and I’ve only read one entry, but I like some of his ideas.

Now, I obviously am not in favor of all of these things, but they should make for interesting debate around the old beer table over the weekend.

His blog states:

IF I WERE KING:

YOU COULD NOT VOTE in STATE or FEDERAL ELECTIONS IF YOU COULD NOT IDENTIFY:

the President
the Vice-President
the Speaker of the House
your Congressional House Representative
your Senators
the Secretary of State

Reason: You are obviously too stupid to vote!

B.) YOU COULD NOT, have Children if you are earning MINIMUM WAGE.

Reason: You can’t afford them, don’t expect somebody else to pay for them!

C.) IF YOU ARE ON WELFARE:

1.) You Could NOT buy a Lottery Ticket.

Reason: You are pissing away OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY!

2.) You Could NOT buy anything but cheap cuts of meat, (neckbones, ox-tails, pigs feet, etc.) with your FOODSTAMPS.

Reason: Why should you eat Steak when the people you are getting your money from are eating Rahman Noodles.

3.) You Could NOT Buy cigarettes or Alchohol.

Reason: IF you smoke your are an IDIOT, if your buying booze, use that money to feed your sorry ass instead of using MY money!

4.) Every Child you download while being on Welfare would immediately be put up for adoption, no parental rights, no contact period!

Reason: Why the hell are you having kids when you won’t even support your own sorry ass!

5.) When you swiped your EBT card or turned in FOODSTAMPS at the grocery store, a giant red beacon at the register would start flashing and a loud alarm would sound off to let every tax payer in the store know that another sorry-ass is buying food with THEIR money!

Reason: Maybe if you were humiliated every time you spent someone else’s money, you might get off your sorry ass and get a job!

D.) IF YOU WANTED GUN CONTROL

You would have to put a sign up on your front door stating that there are and never will be guns allowed on this property.

Reason: Criminals would LOVE you, and they just might stay away from me and my family!

On a note that will not have me accused of being a racist or a facist, Lauren got to go fishing for the second time in her life last night after I got home from work. Uncle Todd and cousin Jack were going and invited us, and that’s a pretty nice gesture coming from an angler as serious as young Jack.

At 8 years old he doesn’t want to corn or bread fish with bobbers under the dock. He wants to baitcast and look for lunkers. He was very patient with Lauren (as he often is) and she had a great time.

Lauren only stopped catching fish when she was tired of fishing or watching me chase crickets that fell out of the bait box. In about 15 minutes of actual fishing, she caught six fish (two perch and four brim) and had a GREAT time doing it.

She also tried to lure ducks with crackers, found that a chain makes a wonderful noise when banged on a dock piling, that when you jump on those steel plates that link one section of the dock to another, it makes a great noise too, and that fish stink.

She ate about half a pound of boiled peanuts, and only stopped because I put them away.

My favorite uncomfortable moment of the evening however, occured when Lauren was standing with Uncle Todd and I was asking Jack what he was fishing for and where was he looking?

Jack replied that “This spot right here used to be my honey hole.”

Ummm…what? Did I just hear an 8 year old utter the phrase “honey hole?”

Uncle Todd got a big laugh when I told him that.

Next stop: weekend butt and brisket cooking along with a little racing at Talladega.

Cheers everybody!

Warning: For those deeply ensconced in the Catholic Church, you may not enjoy this blog. I warn you so you can come back for the next offensive edition, where I bust on fat kids, asthmatics and local televangelists.

So there’s a new pope. After having the same pope for a generation, the Cardinals got together and voted for their new leader and the leader of the Catholic world.

And they picked a 78 year old dude.

Anyone remember the guy that was Pope BEFORE JP the deuce? No? That’s because JP2’s predecessor was elected at age 66 on August 26th, 1978 and died just 33 days later. Not exactly time to get a lot done.

I was hoping “The Church” was going to elect a more foreward thinking next Pope with the energy to tackle The Church’s biggest problem: a pattern of child abuse and pedophilia among its priests.

But alas, they named a guy whose over-under on the dead pool can’t be very big, and he’s certainly got the deck stacked against him with the moderate Catholics.

Oh well. I hope he does some good and lives a long and fruitful popeness until the next guy comes along.

While this whole Pope voting thing was going on, several of us at work were discussing how it works, especially as it relates to the naming of the Pope. There were two schools of thought:

a) There was a list like there is of hurricanes, so the next four or five Pope monnikers were already chosen, or

b) The new Pope gets to pick his own name.

Answer B won out and turned out to be true. My question is, why couldn’t you modernize a bit and instead of naming yourself after a Pope from 80 plus years ago, try picking a name like Pope Dee-Oh-Double Gee the One or something?

Oh, while searching for a little info on this blog, I stumbled across the historical list of all the past Popes, and it was pretty cool. The new Pope is 265th Pope. He took his name from the guy that was Pope when he was born back around the turn of the century or so.

I especially like that there were popes named Linus and Cletus. Those are cool Pope names that people can get in touch with and appreciate. There was a Telesphorus, which sounds a lot like “tell us for us,” which is kind of what I feel like “The Church” does anyway.

I’m running out of Papal steam here. I’m hoping this guy lives long enough to get our global news cycle back on the right track. NO ONE should be staring so long at a European apartment window. Unless of course it’s after the Neverland Ranch trials, and Michael’s fled and we’re all waiting for his ass to jump.

I must announce that my tutoring of young Nicholas has started yielding results. The last quiz on the exceptionally difficult material at the end of section 11.4 of his text resulted in an 85 on the quiz. Now, it’s not perfect, but since the rest of the class ate it on this one, I feel pretty good. Plus, I can see that light flickering ever so slightly hinting that he may finally be grasping the evil demon, Algebra.

More to come. I have to order some Chinese food. Just so you know, I’ll be having the sweet and sour chicken, an egg roll, and a bowl of egg drop soup, complete with the deep fried crunchy things I pour on it.

Later, I will be dehydrated, bloated, hungry and finally tired.

Wish me luck…

What a weekend. As I have mentioned before, this past ten days encompass my favorite ten days in sports. You get the NCAA final four, opening day, Bristol, Martinsville and The Masters. Can it get any better than that?

The NCAA finals were as close a game as we’ve had in years, Roy Williams finally won a national championship and got the nay sayers off his back, Kevin Harvick ended his 54 race winless streak by sweeping the events at Bristol, Bobby Labonte became the 12th driver to win in all three of NASCAR’s top divisions when he won the Martinsville truck race, Jeff Gordon came back from three laps down to win at Martinsville (but not before he blatantly took out Kurt Busch in the process), and Tiger Woods overcame a six shot deficit after 36 holes, including a run where he birdied seven holes in a row in his third round to take a three shot lead going into Sunday’s final round, and eventually his winning a fourth green jacket with a win in sudden death. Tiger shot his two best rounds and the overall two best rounds of the tourney in rounds two and three where he shot 66-65, and stormed back into the tournament in the process.

You can watch The Masters your whole life and you may never see one like this again. There have only been five other playoffs in Masters history, but how we get to extra holes will probably never be matched. Coming to the 16th hole, Tiger led by one, DiMarco was about 8 feet away and Tiger was over the green to the left, similar to Davis Love III in 1999 where Love hit the ball about 20 feet left of the cup and 30 feet past it, hoping the ball would come back (which it did) and get close. It fell in instead.

Woods had a much worse lie than Love III had, but he managed to get it out and up the hill, and then it trickled back down and as Nike Chairman Phil Knight experienced the marketing version of a wet dream, Tiger’s Nike Logo hung on the lip for well over a second or two before rolling into the cup, giving him the two shot lead he needed to get to sudden death.

Woods then birdied 18 in sudden death from about 15 feet to win his fourth green jacket to tie Arnold Palmer. And folks thought his best golf was behind him. Shows what “they” know…

Anyway, back to my story.

Saturday, Uncle Todd asked if we all wanted to go to the lake with the Z’s and a bunch of kids, and we said “Sure.” Lauren loves the lake and the boat, so we were all very excited. Lauren was so excited in fact that she wore her life vest for about two and a half hours during the day leading up to our departure. I wish I had taken some pictures.

Anywho, we left a little before six with Molly and I knowing full well that this group wouldn’t return until well after Stinky’s bedtime. I figured it was Saturday, so what’s the big deal?

We headed out and got started, with Lauren moving back and forth and to and fro, looking for every different view of everything she could see from the boat. Uncle Todd even let her actually steer for a little while, and she loved that.

checking out the sites

driving the boat

We got to Up the Creek (a restaurant on Lake Lanier) and the kids (Jack, Nick, and Nick’s friends R-dizzle and Miskyle) decided to do some fishing with some crickets.

That didn’t go too well as Jack dumped all of the crickets out on to the dock. Most were re-captured, but some did flee only to be eaten by ducks and fish. Too bad, fellas.

Lauren caught on and desperately wanted to try fishing. Young Jack kindly baited her hook and gave up his rig to my urchin. She dropped a line in, waited about ten seconds, and then it was “FISH ON!!”

I let her reel it in (left hand over the top of the reel trying to do it a millimeter at a time and taking forever in the process), but we finally got it to the dock.

Lauren’s first fish

She was beside herself with glee, as you can tell in the following shots:

glee part one

glee part two

glee part three

Seeing this, the older boys got serious for a few minutes until Nick finally caught this whopper:

Nick’s big ‘un

Here was where UnkTodd was wandering toward the shore and gave us the “Hey!! It’s a turtle!!” shout.

We all came running to the massive shape in the water, only to discover it was a trash can lid. Lauren, however, interprited that as “trash can turtle,” and now she can’t stop talking about the BEEEEEEEG trash can turtle she saw.

Here are two of my very patient sister in law teaching Lauren how to fish:

sweet picture

sweet number two

So we got seated around 8:15, had a great meal and good company to boot. My meal highlight was Nick’s friend Miskyle pulling 30 bucks out of his duct tape wallet and then ordering the filet mignon AND the baby back ribs. Nice job, playa.

We got back on the boat and headed for home abou 9:30, well past Lauren’s bedtime. She was asleep on my lap before we got out of sight of the dock, and didn’t flinch all the way to the marina. She didn’t move when we got her out of the boat, out of her life vest, into the carseat, or even into her pj’s. When I was putting her in bed she said “why you not read to me Daddy?” to which I replied “because you’re asleep, honey.”

She replied “okay,” and slept until 9am the next day.

But this is where the fish story gets good. After breakfast and our usual “what was your favorite part of yesterday” game, Lauren said “fishing.”

Then we asked, “How big was your fish?”

She replied (with hands spread wide) “This BEEEEEG!!”

And how big was Nick’s fish?

With thumb and index fingert pressed tighly, she simply replied “small.”

Needless to say, there were laughs for the rest of Sunday after that one.

UnkTodd decided that fish tales must be in your genes, because no one taught a near 3-year-old to lie about her fish and diss someone else’s.

Can’t wait to hit the water again. Thanks T-clan.