:: This Feels Brown

I was laying next to Mrs T last night in the dark caressing her hair and had the sudden thought..
"This feels brown."
Suddenly my logical half, we'll call him Mr. Right, springs to action.
"What do you mean this 'feels brown'," he asked, "how could you possibly feel a color?"
"Just what I said, it feels brown. I'm laying here in the dark and everything is black but feeling her hair I can see it being brown."
Mr. Right scoffed. "Perposterous, her hair could be any color and it would feel the same." He was determined to set me straight.
"I don't know, I think if it were blonde or even black it would feel different. Have a different texture. I've even tried to imagine her hair blonde to see if I could fool myself even before making the statement Mr. Right and the result was the same... brown."
He fumed, "You are simply taking what you know to be true and applying it to a sense."
"Yeah, that may be true, but it still feels brown."
Flabbergasted, Mr. Right bid me good night and mumbled something about not letting me stay up so late anymore.

:: Killer Banana Milk Shakes

Not that I want to give away my trade secrets or anything... but considering I'm not in the professional Milkshake Making business.. I can make an exception here.

I've been told by my fans (primarily my wife and two kids) that my Banana milkshake is "totally awesome". And while I would certainly like to pride myself on this culinary delight, I can't really take the credit for it. I got the recipe from my wife's grandmother by way of my 8 year old son. You see, he asked me to make him and his sister a banana milkshake "like gramma makes them" on one decidely hot CA day. A day where it actually hit 105 in the partial shade. I thought it was a splendid idea but had no idea how to make them like "gramma" so I asked him, "Just how does Gramma make them?" Which he replied with a seriously perplexed look on his face, "With bananas, duh!" How stupid of me.. of COURSE... BANANAS go in banana milkshakes.. it amazes me at how simple the universe can be at times. We preceded to discuss how to properly make this milkshake to Gramma's specifications and decided on the following procedures:

• 1 banana per person (minus the peel)
  
• 2 scoops per person of Breyer's Natural Vanilla (the vanilla beans are essential!!)
  
• 1/2 cup milk per person (more or less depending on how thick you want it)
  

Blend to your heart's content but I have to warn you. It MUST be Breyer's Natural vanilla. I accidentally used normal vanilla and was meet with great disdain for changing the recipe. And remember if its not Breyer's is not ice cream.*

*This is not a paid advertisement for Breyers, in fact you don't have to use Breyers but Gramma does and Gramma's typically know their shit about food. Just make sure its Natural Vanilla with the vanilla bean specks.

:: Dawn of the Weird

Ok, first let me start off with some history.

Finally watched the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Very creepy, seems this type of horror is the only thing that can get my skin crawling... End of the world, hopeless, killer viruses, zombie movies (28 days later freaked me out, no joke).

There is a weapon testing lab just east of where I live (approx 10-20 miles).

There was a grass fire moving dangerously close to said lab.

I don't typically remember my dreams when I wake so remembering them is freaking in its own right

Don't remember eating anything unsettling before bed time.

Ok, now to my story.

I'm on a con call with a customer (several employees of customer actually) and a few guys from development and support discussing the current hot issue with customer. I am half way listening as its boring and my engineers are dropping in for quick questions about this and that. The conversation perks my interest when they start speaking about Zombies. Why? I guess because zombies don't usually come up in topics and because of point one above and the dream I had last night. In their context they were speaking about processes being zombied, which is where a process will appear to be running but its really just sitting there (maybe waiting for another process to come by so it can eat the innocent passerby). In my mind, I immediately replay the spotted memory of the dream I had last night (or this morning which would explain why I actually can remember most of it).

The fire spreads uncontrollably, greedily gobbling up the grassy fields of the country side.. over the hill stands the Weapons Testing Lab of Neverwhere. People scramble to fight the fire but its hopeless, in a matter of minutes the lab and last remains of the non-evacuated employees are consumed. Like all good horror flicks the supposedly impossible becomes possible. The frantic employee in charge of securing the lab's secret bioweapon facility forgets to lock down subject X43123 (Z virus). The heat and destruction releases the virus from its containment and is released. Luckily its localized to the lab. Unluckily, there is a survivor who is found and rushed to the local medical facility. Virus is then unleashed savagely upon the unaware public in a matter of hours.. meanwhile, the T family are resting cozily in their beds. For some reason I'm not there, or at least not in scene. I'm aware of it all but from a "director's" point of view. Oddly enough the kids are older, by 5-6 years. Maybe its the future and I'm dead? Anyway. Zombies flood the nearby neighborhood creating chaos... a few attack the house, immediately waking the kids and Mrs. T There are few close calls and when all seems lost, zombies breaking through the barricaded front door... a skylight appears in the ceiling and is broken through by a man dressed in a black hardshell suit.. darn it if it doesn't look like batman only not as buff.. and his mask if off showing off a head of fro-like curls.
Ok this is going from horrific to just plain weird. The stranger does a few ninja like moves and pulls out a set of nunchukas and then turns... its Napoleon Dynamite dress like batman saving my family (where I seem to be absent) from a horde of zombies.
Why I dreamed this I do not know. Any analysis would be welcome.. I can only guess that I've had a lot on my mind and these few items were on the fore front due to their proximity in my timeline of recent events. Either way, I found it very odd to not only have dreamed this but to have remembered it as well.

:: Womanese, a brief translation

As I continue to explore the finer points of intercommunication, I have stumbled across what might be the biggest discovery since ebonics. There is a hidden language being used by the female gender of H. Sapiens. A language so secret that their male counterparts for centuries have yet to completely understand it. I, for the sake of this article, have dubbed it... womanese.

Here are few snippets from my journal that I have been able to translate:

• "Honey, can you help me with this?"
  "Honey, Can you do this for me as I'm too busy and important to belittle myself with this task."
  
• "Are you going to the kitchen?"
  "Go to the kitchen and bring me some water."
  
• "Honey, I'm out of ideas for dinner. What would you like?"
  "Take me out to dinner as the 101 things in the pantry that I could make are not doing it for me."
  

As you might have noticed that some speakers of womanese give hints to their secret language by prepending words of endearment to the secret message. I can only guess that this is used as a subliminal signal to the male's brain to activate the "Of Course, Dear" portion of the male's brain.


Some speakers of womanese use a different indirect approach:

• "Daddy's going to give you a bath"
  Give her a bath and no complaints as it was your idea
  
• "Do you want to take her upstairs?"
  Take her upstairs and make sure she rides on your back like a pony.
  

Here there are no markers so the listener has to be very careful to listen out for them. Typically they present themselves as suggestions on your behalf that spawn the thought: I am? Wow, she's psychic. I hadn't even had that thought yet but there she is telling it to the world. I should take her to Vegas.

I have uncovered but only the tip of this volumous discovery but by understanding even a small portion of womanese, the male gender of this species puts himself in a precarious position. He is safe if he keeps this knowledge of the language secret but runs the risk of being labeled as "understanding" his female counterpart if he uses it to his advantage. When this does occur a form of punishment is used by the female gender of this species for discovery of this knowledge. Not only is this punishment a form of torture but also serves as a method of producing memory loss. The female takes the males to a large establishment and forces the male to endure hours of walking and sitting as the female exhibits every article of merchandise in these establishments. The mind numbing effect causes a small amount of brain damage which in some cases causes memory loss of said knowledge and in most cases a pavlov effect in the male that deters him from using this knowledge to his advantage again.

With that said, please use this information with great caution and respect. The female species can be cunning, clever and ruthless if provoked. Approach with care.

:: Got a new laptop, doing a happy dance

It always amazes me that for an IT company and that my department is actually revenue generating, that we always seem to get the latest hardware updates about 2-3 years too late. We get are treated like rejects even though we are the only department that meet our quarterly numbers EVERY quarter. I only got this laptop because the harddrive in my previous laptop took a dive this morning. (Right before an important conference call, to make matters worse)

So it takes me all day even after logging a critical ticket with our internal MIS first thing this morning to get this "not-quite-latest-technology-but-as-good-as-we-are-ging-to-get" laptop, but its not bad.

At least know I can sit and make a depression to match Mrs. T's on the other side of the couch.

Just thought I'd share.

:: It's a Very Brady Life

Last week I talked about the GenX generation being the "outsiders" and "rejects" because of the awkward era we grew up in. Well, GenX'rs are taking another stab at the younger crowd. First we charged them top dollar for our old back-o'-the-closet clothing we wore when we were younger. Now we have devised the ultimate "See what we had to live with"/"Let's humiliate the young" revenge. This revenge manifests itself in a game show where a group of TRL wannabes are asked to come to a 70's styled house complete with State of the Art HiFi Record player/8 track and wall to wall shag carpet. Premise? To life in this Brady's styled home and live the life of a teenager in the 70's Sounds easy enough right? Ha! Not only is EVERY aspect of this house 70s (right down to the entertainment console that only plays PONG! JOY!;) ) you have to live, breath, TALK and DRESS 70's This is the "see what we had to live with" portion. The clincher on this show is that they take these newly made 70's cats into the world of tomorrow (actually today) and they have to keep up the 70's mindset and dress. HAHAHAHA, obviously this is the humilation part and I'm loving every moment of it. Its a must see! Finally a MTV show worth watching (outside of Viva La Bam, of course)! Tuesdays 10:30pm ET/PT Its Mondo-cool!

:: Mind the Gap

I thought about doing a post on the tragedy that rocked London's Underground, then realized everyone was doing it. I think I'd rather have a moment of silence to remember the victims of the London bombing and also the victims of all the past terrorist attacks: WTC (9/11), Spain's Train blasts, Insurgent kidnappings and bombings in Iraq to name a few.

So if you will all gather 'round and join me in a moment of silence....

:: Too old and yet not old enough

I always thought the early teens were the most awkward years of my life. The pimples, the unruly hair growth in places that didn't have hair just a couple of years earlier, the high-low of the pubescent voice, getting that funny feeling around girls. Yeah, they may be awkward but they have nothing on the mid-20's to mid-30's. The awkward years of being too old to be cool and hip and yet too young to hang out with anyone outside of this age group. Maybe its just my generation... we are the in-betweeners, the genX, baby busters. Can't relate to the baby boomers as we are the younger generation and the younger generation is like ANY younger generation, they react to us and anyone else older than 21.. "You're over 20.. you're OLD!!" So what are we GenX'rs supposed to do when in mixed crowds? We huddle. We huddle for survival. The youngsters ignore us with their arrogance that comes with youth and the baby boomers call us elitist. We can't win. Though some of us try to mix with the baby boomers and become prematurely old. Sitting in on the weekends and complaining about the noise from the neighbors. Going to the grocer and complaining about the high prices as we buy our starbucks frappaccinos and Ben and Jerry's ice cream. These are sad people... a lost people. What happened to the vibrance and energy that was associated with the GenXer's We were supposed to change the world. We saw the end of the Vietnam War, the WALL fall in Berlin, the crumble of the Soviet Union, birth of the Internet and the modern dysfunctional family. Nevermind, I think I see where our energy went.. maybe we did change the world and now we're tired. We're slackers for a reason damn it! Take that baby boomers and take heed you snot nosed kids... what we threw out as trash is what you kids call retro. We've been there, done that... and you're wearing our T-Shirt.

:: Jealousy, Camping, and the bug magnet

So my wife's friend is going camping. I have to say I'm green with envy. Which is funny because she's *snicker* a gardener and gardeners have thumbs *snicker* that are... oh nevermind. I'm jealous. Why you ask? No really ask why? "Why would you be jealous" the collective asked. Well, I'll tell you and thanks for asking. Its not like I'm a serious camper, not even a once a year camper, heck, I can only remember camping one time in my life in an actual tent and it as miserable. Sure I'd been "camping" before.. but when you are a stone's throw from civilization and your tent is a 1000 sq foot cottage that's not camping. Camping is roughing it. Getting back to nature and the neanderthal workings of hunting for your food (fishing mostly), taking it back to your cave (tent) and cooking it over this new thing we discovered (fire). To go hiking and exploring... to survive on your instincts and most importantly to leave the world behind for a short time. No more people, work and the leashes we bear. Ah to be camping... Ok, now you're probably wondering, "If you like it so much why don't you just go already?!" A good question.

Enter the bug magnet, otherwise known as my wife. She is the only person I know that can douse herself in the strongest pesticides known to man and STILL get a bug bite. The two of us could be standing side by side, me clean of any sprays, oils, etc and she doused as usual... SHE will be target of the bloodsucking tyrants of the forest. And of course to top it off, she's just a tad bit allergic. Go figure.
So needless to say the extent of our camping experiences are in the single digits and involve lodges that are a short car ride to the nearest Piggly Wiggly. Now don't get me wrong, there are some hidden advantages to this... I get to do all the gardening (like to garden) and yard work (which may be machoismo of me but I think is a man's job anyway.) So I do get my nature fix but that's about the extent of it.
To her credit, she's been sporting the idea of actually going camping.. real camping but I think its more for my sake than her actual enjoyment of it. But I have yet to get any equipment out of fear that it will sit in the garage with the other artifacts of outdoor enjoyment. *Sigh* So now you can see why I would be envious of the Garden knitter. She is doing what I can only dream of doing. But I'm ok with that. I can live vicariously through her simply because my bug magnet is actually willing to put herself at the mercy of the "let's eat Mrs. T for dinner" bug club for the sake of allowing me one night/weekend of enjoyment. You can't look at that and not say, "Wow, that's great."

Maybe I'll take her up on her willingness one day, when the weather's right and she's recovered from her upcoming tonsilectomy. Who knows maybe she'll enjoy it despite the bugs and will want to make it a regular holiday for us. Right, and on that same day, I'll find the golden ticket to Will Wonka's chocolate factory. Wheeee!!