Nuclear Family Warhead

I don’t know if it’s bad blog etiquette to out your lurkers or not, but I just had a twinge of a million dollar fantasy flash before my eyes!  One of my 631 stat trackers came up with a hit for an ISP located at 20th Century Fox! (Cue theme from Rocky. I don’t know if they made it or not, just cue it!)  Can you see it?  Up there on the marquee next summer?  “Nuclear Family Warhead-The Musical”.  I’ve even made a poster mock up so that their PR department can hit the ground running. (You’ll need to click on it to get a clear view, it was a rush job)  Ahhh!  The possibilities are endless!  Private planes, limo rides to the Playboy Mansion for the epic party of the month, fisticuffs with Kid Rock and/or Tommy Lee at said Playboy party, telling TMZ to “GET LOST!” as they capture me walking out of Starbucks before I’ve had a chance to get my make up straight. 

Wait a minute; am I getting ahead of myself here?  What if the reader wasn’t Spielberg or Tarantino, but a gaffer or a key grip?  What if I’m assuming too much?  (Sigh)  I have had people at the Pentagon read my stuff, but as of yet, no 4 star General has called to consult with me on battle plans for Afghanistan.  Someone at Iowa State University reads rather frequently, but no Chancellor’s have called to offer me tenure, university housing and the Deans Chair of the Blogging College.  Yeah, probably just a false alarm.  Nevermind.

We made it home in one piece!  No “travel” issues either, unless you count $4 a gallon gasoline or the sunburned tops of my feet.  I know, I know; but I had my sandals on, I can’t be expected to remember EVERYTHING!  Well, sandals won’t be an issue for a few days.  Nor will any type of footwear.  I’m going Cro-Magnon for a few days, maybe the peeling skin will be the reminder I need next time I go to the pool.  Overall, a great time was had by all.  We’ve vacationed in Myrtle Beach several times over the last 13 years or so.  NukeMom’s brother has a time share there.  We hadn’t been since 2004 and this trip was just us, so we ended up staying in a new place.  It was nice.  The new rage in Myrtle Beach is to make your hotel a “Family Friendly Resort”.  I use the term “resort” loosely, because they certainly do.  Again, no complaints with where we stayed….well, I’ll get to that, but; some of these guys think that “Family Friendly Resort” means having fresh towel service every other Tuesday. 

Myrtle Beach is a beach town in transition.  Some of the newer high dollar mega-tels are really nice.  They have the obligatory indoor/outdoor pool area, lazy river for the kids, vastly improved beachfront areas and some are even investing in miniature water parks for the kids.  They have the best of both worlds in Myrtle Beach.  They get the millions of family vacationers in the summer, but their actual “busy” season is in the winter time.  They cater to the convention/golfer crowd.  Boy do they.  There are over 100 golf courses in the area.  I’ve played dozens, and most are excellent.  The downside of trying to cater to families and golfers on business trips is that you end up with “Thee Doll House” Men’s Club being located right next door to “Captain Bennett’s Calabash Seafood Buffet”.  I tried explaining to Nukegirl that the “Doll’s” in that particular house wouldn’t be the type that she would want to play with; and that even though I might want to, I was too old to play with dolls.  And too married. 

There is literally something to do for everyone in Myrtle Beach.  Every socio-economic group could find something to do here.  The rich can play the “fancy” golf courses; the average Joe’s can hack it around just as easily.  There is fine dining for those that drink wine with their pinkie sticking out, and there are restaurants that serve beer by the bathtub.  It is the ultimate American Melting Pot.  I think I have just as much fun “people watching” on the beach as I do anything else.  I’m sure people are doing the same with me, but who cares?  How often can you be looked upon as a Prince AND a Pauper on the same day?  The one thing we missed that I really want to see when we go back is Hard Rock Park.  I guess they finally made enough money selling $15 cheeseburgers to open their own amusement park.  The centerpiece is “Led Zeppelin-The Ride”.  It’s 15 stories tall, 6 loops at 65 mph all to the sounds of “Whole Lotta Love”.  What’s not to like?  Check out the link for more.  Nukeboy1 was desperate to go, but he and I couldn’t justify the break-away from the rest of the klan, or the $50 ticket price.  I’m sure it’s worth every penny, but we didn’t have an entire day to spend there; so, we’ll wait until next time.  His classic rock education continues as he shopped relentlessly for t-shirts.  He came home with an album cover shot of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell that covers the entire front of the shirt (featuring Angus Young in all of his devil’s horned glory) that he has already been informed will never be worn to church; a Kiss shirt that features the debut album cover and a Black Sabbath Paranoid/Ironman combo shirt that I had never seen before.  You’d think we named him Damien, but we didn’t. 

The beach was great, though the waves were a little rough the first couple of days.  The pools were clean and well maintained throughout the day.  Nukegirl loved the lazy river, which in true NASCAR fashion travels counter-clockwise.  I think it’s a law, actually.  I think one hotel paid fines of $150 a day until they got their lazy river flowing in the right direction.  Sandcastles were built, sun-screen was applied (except for me and my feet) seashells were collected and crab legs were eaten.  By the plate full.  I think they lost money on me.  I ate so many crab legs that the next morning I didn’t even have to flush.  True story.  The only drawback to the trip?  The parking garage.  Getting in the first night required an 8 point turn for the first 2 levels.  I had 3 inches of clearance on the right side and 2 on the left.  That’s if I made the turn perfectly.  15 minutes to park the first time.  I ended up on level 4.  The guy in the parking space next to me took another 5 minutes to gather himself and stop the tears from flowing; it’s that emotional of an experience.  It is the most painted parking garage on the eastern seaboard.  They put up a new coat about every 30 minutes or so to ensure that new visitors don’t see the scrapes.  They have a stucco crew that operates like a NASCAR pit crew.  They can patch a bumper induced dent or hole in under 3 minutes.  They even have uniforms.  I got a little better each time, and by the last day I was zooming past the amateurs and paint crews at breakneck speed.  Tony Stewart would’ve been proud.    

I’ve talked about our little house guest before.  If You don’t remember Bob, read this first.  Go on.  I’ll wait.  OK; back?  What did you think?  Crafty little S.O.B. isn’t he?  Well, he brought a friend with him this time.  He smuggled him in through the one thing that was designed to protect us: medicine.  That’s right, the medicine NukeMom was taking to make her “better” actually made her much, much worse.  But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s back up a little.

Bob and his merry band of Virusmen were traipsing through our neighborhood like a group of Johnny Appleseed’s on crack.  They hit the Doc’s house and took down him and little Ebola.  They hit AP’s house, but didn’t gain a foothold there.  AP stocks enough vitamin C to last through 3 nuclear winters, so they came out OK.  They crossed the street and got 2 of the Irish Tenors (there’s ‘ten or’ fifteen of them, can’t remember).  They hit Klan Torgo’s house too; in fact, Ms. Torgo was at the Dr.’s office at the same time NukeMom was for the same thing: sore throat, general “blah-ness”.  They each got their Big Pharma fix and went home.  That’s where the stories took different paths.  While Ms. Torgo progressed to welldom, NukeMom got progressively worse.  By the beginning of last weekend, she was holding down food about as well as Britney Spears holds down her skirt. 

NukeMom’s food intake waned day by day so that by Sunday she was ready for an IV drip.  Water, Sprite, Ginger Ale, bananas, rice; all of the “safe” foods to eat were proving useless.  Little did we know that the cause of all of this was the antibiotic NukeMom was taking to help her throat.  The throat was feeling better now, but I think she’d have taken the sore throat back if it meant she could get some relief from the stomach gymnastics.  I got her to the Doctor first thing Monday and they did blood work and took some “samples”.  Just trust me on this and use your imagination, it wasn’t the type of samples you get from the cart jockeys at Sam’s or Costco.  Test results came back Wednesday and showed that NukeMom had a bacterial infection brought on by the antibiotic she was taking for her throat.  They promptly prescribed another antibiotic to counteract the original antibiotic.  It’s kind of like pouring alcohol on an open wound; you know you have to do it, but you’re not exactly excited about it.  We finally got the new antibiotic in her system, and she started to see a little relief.  She limped into work on Thursday, and almost made it through the day.  She made it all the way through today and was actually able to hold down dinner for the first time in a week. 

NukeMom lost 19 pounds in the process.  While that is an impressive number, it’s not a diet plan that I would recommend.  Or should I?  Maybe a little infomercial action?  Late at night I’m sure we could sell a few hundred thousand copies of “Dehydrating to the Oldies”, or “Involuntary Stomach Pilates”.  Better keep it hush-hush for now.  Knowing Bob, he’ll want a percentage for being a “co-creator” or “technical advisor”.  He’s probably long gone from our neighborhood now anyway.  I’m sure he’s trying to cash in on the whole tomato salmonella outbreak thing.  They’re only in 19 states right now.  If they bring Bob and his bunch on board, they could be nationwide just in time for July 4th weekend.

Today is Nukeboy1’s day to have Dad bring him lunch at school.  He went with the healthy option this week and decided on Subway.  Finally!  After suggesting it all year, he finally decided that this; the last lunch of the year, would be the healthy one.  That’s fine, except that today I am in full carnivore mode and I’m craving a greasy cheeseburger the way a chubby Britney Spears craves spandex; foolishly and relentlessly.  I suppose I could go to 2 different places, but then I wouldn’t be “leading by example” now, would I?  Subway it is.  At least they don’t cut that ridiculous “wedge” out of the bread and then place it back on top like they used to.  Remember that?  The first time I ever ate at Subway I thought the sandwich maker was some part-time scrapbooker who just got carried away with my bread.  I looked inside the sandwich fully expecting to see tomatoes cut into hand-holding paper dolls and pickles cut into cloverleaf’s.  Was I seeing things?  Had she spelled out “Have a Nice Day” with the squeeze bottle of mayonnaise like on a birthday cake?  I was seeing things.  She got the “H” done and then the manager yelled at her to hurry things up.   

This started me thinking of other not so great moments in the world of food.  Remember the “McDLT”?  It kept the hot side hot, and the cool side cool; if I recall.  George Costanza himself (Jason Alexander) did the song and dance for the commercial.  It’s a great exercise in early attempts at diversity, also.  The only thing I couldn’t see was an Indonesian Phlebotomist.  Here’s the video.

After seeing that, it’s hard to think of all the classic Costanza-isms: the marble rye, the wedding invitation death glue, shrinkage, “Is anyone here a Marine Biologist?”  But back to our subject; the marketing people at Taco Bell have been working overtime the last decade or so.  I think it all started when they were overstocked on flour tortillas and needed a way to unload them.  Some genius in marketing who is probably CEO by now, said; “Lets just slather some re-fried beans on it, wrap it around a taco and call it a gordita!”  The 3am munchies would never be the same.  Come to think of it, late night diners can explain about 74% of Taco Bell’s menu.  No sane, sober person would eat that stuff.  Eventually it will lead to this:

I wonder if Taco Bell’s long range marketing plan is to eventually have customers order by the pound rather than the item?  Could be; look how McDonald’s and Burger King have trained our children to choose where they eat based on the toys, not the food. 

It’s not just the restaurants who do it  either, there are plenty of examples of food abuse on the home front as well.  Think about the absolute worst thing your parents ever fed you.  Now, have you tried to feed it to your kids?  What are your kids’ least favorite items?  My list isn’t huge, but then, it’s not only one item either.  With apologies to my Mom, here is a list of my least favorite dinners as a kid:  Chicken livers and onions with beets.  No kidding.  At the same time.  It took all 5 of us kids to rebel one night at the table together.  Our solidarity paid off next time Mom & Dad had this meal and we got hot dogs and mac & cheese.  How about beef liver and apple rings?  See the above scenario to see how things turned out.   Thankfully, my parents’ venture into the wonderful world of animal organs ended there, and we were never subjected to cow’s tongue or calf’s brain.  We lived in El Paso, the menudo capital of the world.  Menudo isn’t just a boy band from Mexico, it’s a dish made from the stomach lining of a cow.  It’s supposed to cure a hangover, but I was never brave enough to think that I could hold that down when I was having a hard enough time holding down the previous nights Taco Bell.  There was pineapple salad, which was 2 leaves of lettuce with pineapple tidbits on top.  Yum!  A slight variation of this salad was usually served with fish sticks and you simply had to substitute a dollop of mayonnaise for the pineapple.  Are you getting hungry yet?  Cream chip beef: they have another name for it in the military, ask a veteran.  Cabbage and vinegar is in there somewhere, along with brussel sprouts, creamed spinach, creamed corn; basically any vegetable with cream that has no business having cream in it in the first place.  In their defense, my parents’ list of menu items is 10 times what I serve my kids, and 90% of it was excellent.  I still call my Mom today for recipes and reminders.  I just don’t ask about the ones that used to give me bad dreams.

Like most people, I’m waiting with bated breath for the Indiana Jones sequel.  Can’t wait to see Harrison Ford beat down some Nazi’s with his walker and bedpan.  Is it just me, or does he look older in the previews for Part 4 than Sean Connery looked in Part 3?  Look for the Metamucil and Depends product placements, they’re bound to be in there somewhere.  Probably when they’re in some temple miles away from a bathroom.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Harrison Ford, he’s made more blockbusters than anyone, but hopefully he’ll be passing the hat and whip off to Shia LaBeouf. 

We’re taking Nukeboy1 and Nukeboy2 when it comes out, and over the past 2 weekends the Indiana Jones movies have been playing on the Sci Fi channel, so we got them caught up on the first three.  Last night, after Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, the Sci Fi channel ran a special called The Mystery of The Crystal Skulls.  Lester Holt from NBC/MSNBC, Today Weekend and God knows where else he’ll be showing up next, was the host.  After the first 20 minutes of the show, I began to wonder; who did he piss off in order to get stuck with this?  Did he forget to pick up Matt Lauer’s dry cleaning or something?  I mean, the poor guy gets bounced all over the place.  One minute he’s on MSNBC as a political analyst, then he’s on NBC doing investigative journalism, then he’s on Today Weekend having a coffee klatch with the NBC babe du jour talking about the best way to keep the dogs from digging in your garden this summer.  Lester; buddy, meet with your agent and slap them upside the head.  One of you needs to be in control of your career, and it looks like it ain’t you.

Enough about Lester, let’s get to the “show”.  Mystery of The Crystal Skulls could have been an educational show.  Instead they went with the “Weekly World News” option: make outlandish claims, back it up with no proof, over promise and under deliver.  This was the type of show that spends the last minute and a half before commercial telling you what’s coming up after the break.  After the break, they recap what they have covered so far, and then tell you what’s coming up next.  Then they show you what’s coming up next.  Problem is; at that point it’s time for another commercial break and the cycle starts all over again.  This show had more filler than a prom dress.  Total running time of pertinent information?  About 17 minutes.  Total running time of actual show?  Two hours.  Cheese molds faster than that.

This show was all over the place.  It talked about the skulls, the Mayan calendar, 2012, the end of the world and how we had all better get ready.  What?  Again?  Doomsayers have been around forever; hell, they still quote Nostradamus today!  Look; when it’s your time to go, don’t bother packing a suitcase, it’ll be over before you know it.  It might be an asteroid (Potato?) tomorrow, or a late running city bus the next day, but when your ticket is punched, there aren’t any refunds.  In my lifetime alone I have survived a lot of things that were supposed to kill me, or very well should have killed me.  Here is a partial list:  Skylab, H.R. Pufnstuf, the 7th grade, Disco, DDT, the ‘69 Mets, Chunky Peanut Butter, Punk Rock, Y2K, Saccharin, Aspartame, Splenda, Olestra, Drilling in ANWR, Voting for Reagan, Reading too much Stephen King, My 1971 Volkswagen Beetle, 501 jeans, Voting for Reagan again, Nicholas Cage Movies, Anthrax, Tearing off those mattress tags, Playing Led Zepplin backwards and Shopping at Wal-Mart.  Any one of these could have easily done me in.  Can you imagine what would have happened if I had worn my 501’s into a Wal-Mart to buy chunky peanut butter in the 7th grade?  We wouldn’t be having this conversation; would we? 

I’ve learned to enjoy the moment; don’t get yourself all worked up over something that will probably never happen.  Even if it does happen, what can you do to stop it?  Nothing.  Just go to a Van Halen concert featuring David Lee Roth and wait for the Apocalypse; or is that an oxymoron?

This is unbelievable.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  God willing, I’ll never see anything like it again.  THAT’S A POTATO PEOPLE!  All 2lb’s, 12oz’s of it.  You’ll excuse me if I take some liberties here, but I’m calling it a 3 pound potato.  It’s 8 1/2 inches long!  If Arby’s made a curly fry out of it, it would circle the globe twice.  If I thought it would keep, I’d put it in the freezer, buy a cowboy hat and enter it in next years  County Fair.  That’s a blue ribbon tater if I’ve ever seen one.

Where did it come from?  That’s what I’d like to know.  Technically it came from a local store that will remain unnamed until the NEST crew has had a chance to put away their Geiger counters.  The bag said: “Island Potato’s”, I just didn’t realize that they meant Three Mile Island.  I cut it in half and used one half to make mashed potato’s.  We had them last night.  And tonight.  Probably on the menu tomorrow night as well.  The other half will be used to make potato salad.  I”m sure there will be plenty left over, so if you are interested, send me a self-addressed, stamped 55 gallon drum and I’ll be glad to send you some.  This offer is only open to the first 400 people who reply.

I have a theory on this; so stick with me.  I’ve been doing some leg work, and I’ve come across a few things.  I’m not trying to be Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, but follow me here.  Exhibit A is a picture of an asteroid slamming into the earth at 500 gazillion-billion miles an hour.  Looks to be about the same size as the one that took out the dinosaurs.  A “Global Killer”, they call it.  Now, knowing what I pulled out of my bag of spuds the other day, the photographic evidence of which I have just shown you, I ask you: does there seem to be something familiar looking about that asteroid?  See any resemblance to a certain vegetable that has been persecuted on this planet for thousands of years?  No?  Require further proof?  Fair enough.  Take a look at this:

I give you Exhibit B.  The one in front is shaped more like your classic russet potato, rather than the longer, more tubular Idaho spud, but the family resemblance is there.  Now, do you see what’s lurking there in the background?  See it?  Back in the shadows?  Ducking for cover behind Uncle Tuber?  THAT’S MY POTATO!  I’m convinced of it!  See the straight clean lines down the sides?  The eyes that will be plucked out during the peeling process?  I think the evidence is overwhelming.  My potato came from outer space.  Probably some planet called Spudtron, or Tater Centauri.  The aliens on that planet have been hurling these giant spuds at us for millions of years, and only now is the truth coming out.  I know this to be true, because I saw Starship Troopers and that’s what the bugs did in that movie, so my theory carries some weight, don’t you think? One last question: Do you think that right before the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit earth that the dinosaurs heard; “Would you like fries with that?” I think they did, they just shouldn’t have ordered them extra crispy.

I escaped from TiVo hell.  It wasn’t easy, but I did it.  What was at first a cool, easy way to save shows for my later viewing pleasure soon turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.  At one time, these were the shows that were set up in the Season Pass Manager: House, Desperate Housewives, Lost, ER, American Idol, The Office, The 4400, Nip/Tuck, 24, Heroes, Brothers and Sisters, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Grey’s Anatomy, Holmes On Homes, Intervention, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles.  Now, before anybody goes and calls me a girl, or a “chick” (Mr Lady) understand that I wasn’t watching all of these shows.  NukeMom had quite a few in there.  I’ll let you debate over which shows she watched, which ones I watched and which ones we both watched.  I swear, drink one wine cooler while listening to Delilah in your bunny slippers and you’re a prissy boy for life.  Besides,  they were Nukegirl’s slippers, and in a court of law I could still plead the fifth.

The original idea of TiVo is sound; record shows when you don’t have time to watch them, then come back when you do have time and get caught up.  Simple, right?  Yeah, that’s what I thought too.  My portion of these programs came out to 9 1/2 hours.  When you factor in the shows that I was watching “live” while recording another one showing at the same time, you can add another 4 hours, giving us a grand total of 13 1/2 hours of television. That’s about how long it took Da Vinci to paint the Last Supper.  Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in less time, and I think I’m going to watch all of this TV in one week?  Well, if I don’t get through all of it this week, I can just save it, and catch up NEXT week!  Genius!

By the middle of October I had enough shows stored in my TiVo to prompt Bill Gates to go out and buy more  of their stock.  If I had started watching right then, skipped through commercials and gave up some frills like eating and sleeping, I could be done by Christmas.  Hey, it was a tangible plan at the time.  The problem was, no matter how hard I tried, I could rarely stay awake for an entire episode of ANY of the shows.  It would go something like this: I would start watching a show, fall asleep, wake up, watch some show,  fall asleep, on and on until around 4am when I would wake up on the couch because Billy Mays had yelled “BAM!” loud enough to wake me up.  I’d turn the TV off, go to bed and dream some very strange dreams.

The problem with trying to stay awake while watching TV is that everything runs together; shows, commercials, dreams, everything.  Ever been dreaming and when you wake up you realize that your dream is strangely consistent with the plot of the show on the TV?  Seriously.  Try rewinding next time you wake up on the couch with the TV on and see if I’m not preaching some gospel here.  The murkiness in my head was toying with my ability to separate fantasy from reality.  It used to take quite a few Miller Lites to do that; now TiVo was doing it.  Jack Bauer was waxing poetic about the attributes of Oxi-Clean and Orange Glo, while Billy Mays was kicking some terrorist butt.  Dr. House was running, er, hobbling on his cane around the Washington Monument in a suit patterned with question marks telling me how to get free money from the government.  At the same time, Matthew Lesko was taunting his interns, popping pills and ogling Dr. Cuddy.  I couldn’t keep it straight anymore.  My cerebellum hurt.  It was time for a change.

I have finally come to my senses.  I have 3 shows that I refuse to miss.  I make time after everyone has gone to bed to watch them, and my new plan has been working famously.  At weeks end, I am at shows end rather than at wits end.  It’s a win-win.  I win, my sanity wins and Franz Kafka can move out of my brain.  At least I won’t have to worry about Dwight Schrute trying to get me to go to Free Credit Report dot com anymore.

I finally saw my first episode of “30 Rock” the other day. It won’t be my last. I was especially taken by the character of Frank and his cornucopia of head-wear.  I used to be like Frank.  I had hundreds of hats. Since this was while I was in High School, the majority of them were either beer hats or State Line Steak and BBQ Restaurant hats.  That’s where I worked.  They changed it later to just “Barbeque”, and most of us old timers were pissed, until we realized that possession of a “Steak AND BBQ” hat was a sign of status and possible future wealth.  Like Mr. Krabs trying to get back his soda drink hat from first Spongebob, and then Smitty Werbenjaegermanjensen and the army of the dead, we knew they’d be valuable one day.

So it was with great trepidation that I ventured into the garage, or, the “Wastelands” as NukeMom likes to call it, to find my treasured hat.  Would it still be out here?  Would I be able to remember where I had put it?   What color was it again?  I searched high and low, and all I could come up with was a “Sticky Fingers” restaurant cap, which is strange if only for the fact that I’ve never been to one and have no idea  where it came from.  I also came across an old “Lite Beer Super Bowl Something Roman Numeric” hat.  I can’t tell you which Super Bowl, I didn’t look.  Did I mention that I’m on a MISSION here?  Oh, and I found my official Masters golf hat!  Hand delivered from Augusta National (Thanks, Ted).

After 15 minutes and thoughts of  hopelessness, something green caught my eye.  It was under the belt sander, and partially under the circular saw.  Not a good sign.  With the care and gentleness of an EMT extracting a crash victim from a smashed up Miata, I pulled the belt sander and saw off of my poor hat.  It was faint, but I could feel a pulse.  Two rounds of mouth to bill resuscitation (blowing dust off of it), and my hat was able to sit up on my head without falling off.  Here’s a picture from ICU; taken post-op. 

I did the best that I could; nursing it back to health.  It wasn’t until my hat was out of the woods that I noticed something: It was only a “Barbeque”, not a treasured “Steak AND BBQ”.  Bummer.  There goes my ebay feedback score.  I cooked steaks later that night, and proudly wore my new found old friend.  I could still smell smoke from the BBQ pits from all those years ago lingering in the material.  Memories started flooding into my head; could they be coming from the hat?  They must be!  How else would I remember that the last “Steak AND BBQ” hat that I owned was lent out, in good faith I might add, to Kyle.  Kyle, if you’re reading this, I want my hat back.  And when I say back, I mean like yesterday.  Don’t forget; I know where you’re living now.  Well, the city anyway.  2nd day air will be fine.

I first saw this computer game at the in-laws when we were there for a visit.  The kids were having fun with it, and eventually Nukeboy2 convinced me to give it a try.  If you’ve never played, it’s kind of like Tetris in reverse; with 8 different “heads” to shoot upwards instead of shapes dropping down on you.  To eliminate the characters you must shoot one “head” into two matching heads that have to be touching each other.  OK, so I guess it’s not like Tetris at all, but it is just as, if not more, addicting.  Don’t believe me?  Go here and download the shareware.  E-mail me two weeks from now at 3:00am, right before your family’s intervention and your trip to The Betty Ford Clinic-Video Division.

There are several different categories to this game, ranging from “Easy” all the way to “Armageddon”.  Then there is one called “Puzzle”.  Puzzle is my addiction of choice.  It gets under your skin, makes you want it more and more until you can’t control yourself.  Next thing you know your playing 20 to 30 games in a sitting.  The phone is ringing, but you don’t care; you have to beat this level!  It is like luggage, it will be with you for life.  Since it is shareware, you can play up to 100 games on each level.  But puzzle is different.  You can play the first 15 levels of Puzzle until the end of time.  That’s how they get you.  See, there are actually 50 levels in all to Puzzle, but you only get to sample the first 15.  Like a drug dealer who gives out “samples” until they have you hooked.   If you want to see the rest, you must register for $19.99.  This is fair, and the developers should be rewarded for their hard work and I WILL register, it’s just; they made a mistake. 

Each time you start a new game, up top is a graphic that tells you how many games you’ve played, and how much that would average out to per game if you would only REGISTER!  Mine tells me that I have played 783 games; “that’s only 0.03 per game” they taunt.  Well, I accept their challenge: I will play for free until my message says: “that’s only 0.00 per game”.  I figure I have about 1,217 games to get it down to a penny, after that, who knows how long it will take me to roll back the game odometer to zero.

Proceed with caution!  Don’t send the Vice Squad my way claiming I was your supplier.  If you get caught up in it, you’re on your own.  Don’t stand up in your “SA” (Snood Anonymous) meeting and blame it all on me.  Once you have your feet back under you, maybe you can try out Snood Towers.  Did I forget to mention that one?  Oh, yeah, just as addictive; maybe more.  You may fall off of the wagon and break both ankles.  Can you say “Relapse”?

$1,000,000.00 offered to the person or persons that remove Dora the Explora’ from television.*

This insanity has gone on long enough.  I do my best to keep her out of the house, but like an annoying insect she slips through the door when you’re lugging in groceries, or letting the cat out for the morning.  Then she attaches herself to your brain stem and starts feasting.   This girl needs to be in the care of a good psychotherapist in order to get a handle on her OCD.  She has to ask herself where she’s going 3 or 4 times before she can get started.  Even then, she’s not really sure so she asks my kid for help. 

It turns out that the producers of Dora didn’t think that she and her boot wearing monkey were irritating enough.  She has a cousin too!  Diego.  He runs around with a dangerous predatory cat as a pet and thinks nothing of bringing this man-eater around the general population.  What is he thinking?  Well, admittedly, they do describe him as a “very special child.”

Dora and her monkey alone would be enough for any grown man to have to endure, but she has an entire menagerie of aggravating inanimate objects to draw from.  Chief among these being The Map.  I can tell you’re a map, you don’t have to repeat it 12 times.  Write some new lyrics for your song before you pop out of the backpack, backpack, backpack, backpack… again.

I care not as to how it’s done, just get her off the air.  Bring her to the Lair and collect your reward.

* Reward paid out at $1 per year for 1 million years.