Nuclear Family Warhead

I got a package today.  It didn’t do so well in the deliverysphere.  All I can figure is it has a really smart mouth and all of the other packages ganged up on it; or one really big bully box sat on him for no good reason.  Either way, his corregation is irreperably harmed.  He looks more like an accordion now.  Good thing the contents weren’t FRAGILE; or, Fruh-Gee-Lee like Ralphie’s dad likes to say.  No, it isn’t a leg lamp and, no, it isn’t a major award.  It’s Nukeboy1’s new face-mask.  Good thing, too.  A face-mask is one of the few things I can imagine surviving this journey.  What if it had been Aunt Mabels’ ashes, or Nukeboy2’s ant farm?  Well; the packing job would have been better, of that I am sure.  When I opened up the box the only thing in there was the face-mask.  No evidence of bubble wrap; not a single stinking packing peanut.  Just one face-mask and a whole lot of airspace.  Maybe that’s how they test your face-mask for strength and durability.  If so, then next time they should just send it in a big envelope, or better yet, just slap some postage on it and send it au naturale.  I’ll call them.  They could save millions on boxes next year.

I knew I should have bought The Biltmore when I had the chance!  Man!  I BLEW it!  I could have gone in with a library card, no job, no collateral and no hope of ever paying it back, and Fannie, Freddie or Countrywide would have given me a 6,000 year mortgage (Interest Only) with no money down.  How cool would that have been?  175,00 square feet of house for $185 a month.  I could be sitting in the conservatory with Colonel Mustard sipping on a mint julep while all of you poor saps grab your ankles.  A TRILLION DOLLARS?  Are you friggin kidding me?  Bill Gates can’t even count that high.  Remember when tax freedom day used to come in April?  Well, it’ll still be in April; only, it won’t be until April of 2150.  

Regardless of your political leanings, you should be royally pissed at every Asleep At The Wheel politician in Washington.  Bush will get blamed for it, even though he was one of the few to try and put a stop to it, while Chris Dodd and Barney Frank will come out smelling like; well, scotch and pre-pubescent teenage boys, I guess.  The old joke used to say that Barney didn’t need a bookmark because he liked his Pages bent over; I guess you can add taxpayers to that now too.  I could care less what he does or who he does it with, but he and his buddies are messing with my kids’ future now.  How the Hell are you supposed to pay off a TRILLION DOLLAR debt?  Is congress going to send each of us a little payment book like we used to get when we bought a car?  Maybe they can add it to our grocery receipts; that way I can look at the bottom and see;

“Thank you for shopping Harris Teeter today: Your VIC card savings today are $4.73, BUT you still owe the Government $494,987,033,289.21 for all of those beautiful little white picket fence houses they sold to people they knew couldn’t afford them, but thanks for doing YOUR part! It’s the PATRIOTIC thing to do!” 

How about this Franklin Raines character?  He pays himself almost $100 million dollars for running a company into the ground?  Steal $100 million, get caught, only have to pay back $25 million and not serve any jail time?  Where can I fill out an application for that job?  This is nothing but one big check kiting scheme with politicians and their buddies (Republican AND Democrat) lining their pockets knowing that you and I will end up paying for it.  Now they have the testicular fortitude to say; “Don’t worry about it, little taxpayer, WE’LL get to the bottom of this, don’t you worry!”  You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight, you don’t let the fox guard the hen-house, and you certainly don’t let the idiots who got us into this mess in the first place try and get us out!  Did you hear that Lehman Brothers staff are going to share $2.5 BILLION dollars in bonuses for doing such a bang-up job in that whole bankruptcy/end of the company thing they did?  Again; why didn’t I see that listing when I was looking for a job on Monster?  Sorry to go all Joan Crawford with a political wire hanger on you, but it’s all getting to be a little too much.  I guess that’s what we can expect when 30% of people get their news from “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”.  Don’t get me wrong, both shows are hilarious and a necessity to keep one sane, but whether you get your info from them, Limbaugh, Olbermann, Savage or Maddow understand that you are hearing what they WANT you to hear.  It’s still up to you to decide for yourself.  It’s too bad no one has, or makes the time anymore.  God help us. 

I’m NukeDad, and I approved this message.

Some kids around the Nuke neighborhood have acquired a go kart.  There was some debate as to real ownership of said go kart, due to the fact that it was snatched curb side on bulk trash pick-up day.  It had a flat tire and a broken chain.  Broken chain, flat tire, bulk trash day; it’s a no-brainer, right?  Wrong.  After the kids got the chain and tire fixed and were riding it around the neighborhood, some teary-eyed pre-teen began chasing them down the street yelling “THAT’S MY GO KART!”  He explained that his friend had “borrowed” the go kart, that it had “broke down” and that the friend was coming back to get it after dinner, “I swear”, but when he got there, it was gone.  “Honest”.  The Parents helped the group come to the right conclusion and the go kart was returned to teary-eyed pre-teen.  They were out a grand total of .94 cents; the cost of the new link for the chain.  The group later got together and formed a multi-national conglomerate and purchased the go kart from teary-eyed pre-teen.  They each now have an equal voting shares in the go kart.  All except for one of the Irish-Ten(or)’s.  He sold his share after an unfortunate mishap involving a steep hill, a stuck accelerator, a rapidly approaching creek, a mud puddle and an un-expected power slide.  I think tissues were involved at the conclusion.  Now TorgoTeen has 2 voting shares.  We’ll make sure he doesn’t abuse his new found power.  This incident got me thinking of kids and the ingenuity that they posses.

Growing up in El Paso, our neighborhood had it’s share of ingenious kids as well.  Everyone had the old stand-by playing cards attached with clothes pins in the spokes of their bike tires.  I got in trouble once because Dad could have drawn to a straight flush, had I not placed the 6 of clubs in the front tire of my Schwinn.  Some kids up the street discovered that you could get 6 kids on a mini-bike if you laid a 2×4 across the motorcycle seat and had a layman’s grasp of symmetry.  They tried it parallel off the back of the seat first and kept popping wheelies.  Finally one of them got smart and said “How about this way?” and laid it perpendicular.  They blew it when 3 got on the seat, 2 got on the left side of the 2×4 and only 1 got on the right.  They made lots of left hand turns until they reconfigured and placed 2 on the seat, 2 on the right and 2 on the left.  Finally balanced and semi-in control, they had great fun all afternoon until they tried to squeeze through those 2 parked cars.  That’s the thing about homemade motorcycle appendages; they’re eventually going to run into 2 parked cars.

The Guerrero family moved in 2 doors down from us in 1972 or 1973.  The two boys were named Eduardo and Guillermo, their sister was named Rose.  Eduardo preferred Ed, and Guillermo was called Mal (sounds like “Ow” with an M at the beginning).  It was a nickname given to him by his Mother.  The literal translation of “Mal” into English is “Bad”.  I’m sure she had her reasons; one of them being that yelling “Mal” across the neighborhood would sound better than yelling ”No Bueno”.  Our first encounter with them was memorable.  Some kids from the neighborhood had gathered in front of our house to decide on what to do that day when someone noticed something odd.  “Look at that.”, said Mark.  “What?” asked my brother.  “THAT!” yelled Mark.  Steve glanced up the street where Mark was pointing to see the new kids (Ed and Mal) standing in the street in front of their house flying a kite.  “Yeah, so they’re flying a kite, so what?”, Steve said.  “No, dumb-ass; look what they’re flying it WITH.” said Mark.  We all looked then.  We could now see what Mark was talking about.  The Guerrero brothers were using a Zebco fishing rod to fly their kite.  20 pound test line, I think.  We all rushed up the street to check it out.  We all watched and took turns flying the kite, which was a small dot in the sky somewhere over Oklahoma, we think.  That’s the thing about flying a kite with a fishing rod; you can have an endless amount of string fishing line and reeling it back in is a breeze.  Well, for the first 10 minutes or so, then you have to switch off so no one gets hand cramps.  The rest of the summer was spent flying kites with fishing poles.  We learned plenty more from the Guerrero boys through the years.  I watched Mal build an engine for a Jeep CJ-5 that was so powerful that he could pop wheelies in it.  No lie.  Ed taught us how to saw the ends off of old ski poles to make a perfect bottle rocket launcher.  Light ‘em, drop ‘em in, aim it, boom.  THAT one got us in trouble.  The manager at the Village Inn wasn’t too happy when a bottle rocket came zooming through his front door.  That shot was taken from a moving flat bed truck (whole ‘nother story) doing 40 mph on the OTHER side of the street.  About 135 yards, I’d say.  It was a 6 lane main artery in El Paso called Mesa street.  Hey, I said we were good shots, I never said we were smart.  Got off with a warning.  I think my brother always took me on those little jaunts because I was younger and I might help with the sympathy vote if they ever got into trouble.  It worked that day.

Looks like BWW will be moving to a bi-weekly format until I can figure out how to insert 10 to 12 more hours in my week.  Posts have been trickling in since school started, and I’m trying to get my work life in order as well, so bear with me.  Now that the excuses are out of the way, let’s get to it.  This weeks first word is deliquesce which means; to melt; to disappear as if by melting.  Kind of like Obama’s lead in Ohio and Pennsylvania.  Better get George Soros to send another check for opposition research, pronto!  Our second word this week is satiate, which means; to supply with anything to excess; to satisfy to the full.  Kind of like what McCain did to get the conservative base to rally around him even though he’s a middle of the road/slightly left moderate republican.  He knew he couldn’t go with his 1st choice (Joe Lieberman) for VP because he was pro-choice, so he figured he’d better pander to the base if he wanted any chance at all of having the number 1600 in his address.  He nailed it.  He gave them a lifetime NRA-pro life-moose hunter.  Oh, yeah, she’s a woman, also.  That seems to be what’s pissed the Dem’s off the most; the fact that all these years they’ve been advocating women’s rights and equality, and he goes out there and actually finds one that’s done it.  Should be a very interesting month and a half.  Don’t forget to check out the BWW Home Page and Don’t Forget to VOTE!

I’ve been having some abdominal pains, so I had to have a CT scan done.  To be able to see your insides properly once they fire up the radiation donut, you have to ingest an un-godly amount of “reflector juice”; or, as they call it; Barium Sulfate Suspension.  They labeled it Berry Smoothie, as if that was going to trick my psyche, not to mention my taste buds, into willfully accepting this concoction as part of a nutritious breakfast.  My other option was Vanilla Smoothie.  Since I was given a choice, I picked Berry as the flavor that I would most like to detest for the rest of my life.  Vanilla holds too many past, present and future memories to give up; Berry, not so much.  One berry bad memory is the “Solo 1/2 gallon of Strawberry Ice Cream incident of 1978″.  I paid dearly for that indiscretion, but in 1997 I was able to eat strawberries again for the first time.  Time heals most wounds.  Just take my advice: If you feel like you have to eat something just to get “your fair share” because there are 6 other people in your house, drink a large glass of water instead.  Oh, and don’t watch TV.  Way too distracting.  You’ll lose all track of time; trust me.  Your Gastrointestinal tract will thank you later.   

The day of reckoning had come.  My instructions were to drink one canister between 8 and 9 o’clock, and the second one between 9 and 10 o’clock.  The canisters were each 450ml; about 16 ounces.  I can do this; I thought.  It’ll be like drinking a quart of beer in 2 hours, no problem!  Actually, there was a problem.  Beer tastes good; this stuff tasted like someone was trying to make something really bad tasting taste like a really bad berry smoothie.  They nailed it.  Slim-fast would be nirvana compared to this stuff.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but you shouldn’t have to chew a smoothie, should you?  Wouldn’t that be an oxymoron?  Don’t get me started on the sandy residue left on your teeth, either.  Drinking a sandpaper milkshake would have been superior to this.  The first hour wasn’t so bad.  It was like English class.  The second hour?  Like Calculus.  In kindergarten.  It’s hard to get 3 ounces down your throat when 27 ounces are trying to come back up.  I chased visions of Linda Blair out my head as I drove to the Doctor’s office.

The CT machine wasn’t too intimidating.  It looked like the super-collider, only sitting on it’s side.  Oh, and it was about 17 miles smaller too.  There was a bed in front of the machine to lie on.  This confused me until the CT tech explained that the bed moved, not the machine.  Made sense.  Then I had visions of Mr. Incredible trying to fit into the escape pod launch tube that would take him to Syndrome’s island.  I was a little nervous.  Visually, I could fill that donut hole.  I was a human Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkin.  I laid down on the bed and prayed for some donut grease.  Thankfully, it wasn’t needed.  There was plenty of clearance, Clarence.  Roger, Roger.  Over?  Dun!  I asked the CT Tech; “What’s your vector, Victor?”, but she gave me a look that told me she had never seen Airplane!, so I let it go.   The machine moved the bed in and out of the donut super collider a few times, told be hold my breath at all the right moments and in 5 minutes it was all over.  ”That’s it?”, I asked.  “Yep!”, she offered.  Off the bed, get your free lollipop and go home.  I didn’t even have to wear one of those paper gowns.  If there’s such a thing as remedial medical procedures, this would have to be it.  Except for that whole Barium Sulfate Suspension part.  I got home, shaved my tongue and celebrated my little victory.  The results came back and apparently, I may be pregnant.  I’ll get back to you.  They want to do some more tests.  Something tells me “Turn your head and cough” won’t be one of them.

I had a different post ready to go for today, but it wouldn’t be appropriate.  I usually like to keep it light-hearted and funny, but today isn’t a day for light-heartedness.  I have a problem.  I have a problem with those that would be happier if this day would pass as any other day; mundane, and without consequence.  With those that say; “Don’t show those horrible pictures, they’re too hard to watch”.  They are wrong.  Those images may be hard to watch, but that is precisely why they need to be seen.  Sticking your head in the sand and hoping it goes away doesn’t work.  Pretending that by ignoring the reality of that day will lessen it’s impact is the act of a cowardly soul.  There are children standing on a stage at Ground Zero at this very moment reading the names of their parents and other victims.  At the same time, there are people in offices and kitchens wallowing in ignorance and the false idea that diplomacy and love will take care of everything.  That’s a wonderful idea, if only a foolish one.  The barbarians that flew 4 airplanes into buildings and a field in Pennsylvania have no interest in diplomacy or love.  Their sole reason for living is to see to it that you die.  Why is it that some people can’t understand that concept?  Why would someone who would surely fight to the death to protect their children believe that their country should practice pacifism in the face of Radical Islam?  Why would someone who lives in the longest sustained democracy in human history turn a complacent blind eye to a movement that seeks to enslave them?  The goal of Radical Islam is to convert the infidels (us); if conversion fails, the alternative is death.  Those are your options.  Agree with their religious ideology, or be killed.  I think the right option is easy to choose; others don’t see it as clearly.

For the people that are in their offices or kitchens today wondering how the world got this screwed up; I have a question for you:  Do you fully understand the sacrifice that has been laid at your feet that allows you to be so narcissistic?  Can you even fathom the thought of walking off of a boat on the beaches of Normandy, knowing that you were probably going to die?  Would you have been part of the rebellion on Flight 93 knowing that even if you took over the plane that you were most likely going to perish in a horrific plane crash?  Could you stare out of a gaping hole in the side of your WTC office and have the courage to look for other survivors before trying to find your way out?  Would you walk away from a 4 million dollar NFL contract to enlist in the Army to defend your country?  I didn’t think so.

Complacency is the cancer that kills free thinking people.  You don’t turn away from these images because they are too hard to look at; you turn towards them explicitly because they are.

I’m thinking of asking Rick Astley to be my VP.  No offense, WeaselMomma, but Rick is giving me some mad props on the referrals, you know?  Even though my Rick Astley post is 3 months old, it continues to send unsuspecting Rick fans to my site.  Maybe VP is too lofty a goal for Rick; maybe create a new cabinet level position for him?  Secretary of Dance?  Ambassador to American Idol?  How about a symbolic appointment; kind of like when Arnold Schwarzenegger was Fitness Advisor to Bush I.  Rick could travel to elementary schools nationwide and teach skinny white kids how to sound like Barry White.  He could even teach them how to dance like Potsie from Happy Days.  Surely we can find a spot for him somewhere in the administration; any suggestions?  Thanks to Mr. Lady for sending me this gem of a video.

Let’s get political.  With the Republicans wrapping things up in St. Paul tomorrow night I thought we would visit a couple of words from the realm of promise breaking politics. In honor of Al Gore, who invented the Internet, Big Word Wednesday, Global Warming and Humility, I give you gravitas.  It means; seriousness or sobriety, as of conduct or speech.  It could also mean a serious or dignified demeanor, which would explain why Al Gore chose it to describe himself.  He wanted to use “God-like”, but even he realized that using it would thwart his ability to earn millions giving speeches in the Middle East at the end of his term in office.  His staff also had to talk him out of “Buddha-esque” and “Mohammed-ish”.  Don’t fret for Al, though, he sold the rights to these terms to Obama and made a handsome profit.  Our second word this week is casuistry.  It means;  Specious or excessively subtle reasoning intended to rationalize or mislead.  Think High School when the object of your affection said; “Thanks for driving me to school all semester! And I really DO like you…as a friend”.  Or Al Gore when he justifiably states; “We have a special needs Beagle; that’s why his 4,295 square foot doghouse has a pool and central air”.  Even Obama is guilty when he says; “I am my brother’s keeper”.  Too bad he forgot about his 1/2 brother who lives in a hut in Kenya on $12 a year.  He’ll never be held to account; though, as months from now he can state; “I said I was my brother’s keeper, not my ‘brother from another mothers’ keeper”.  Oh, semantics; gotta love ‘em.  Don’t forget to check out the BWW Home Page for all of our selections thus far and DON’T FORGET TO VOTE!  If you don’t, I don’t want to hear you cryin’ about it later.

Go by and say Hi to Joeprah, he’s finally resurfaced.  He said the aliens treated him fine, but due to excessive “experimentation” by the aliens, he has to stay lying down for at least a week.  Doctors orders.  He also said he now prefers Reese’s Pieces to M&M’s.  Wierd.