Greatest Halloween commercial of all time...

it actually is the greatest commercial of all time.

Happy Halloween!...

This is the day for all things spooky. Jack-o-Lanterns of all shapes and sizes. Ghosts. Witches. Spiders. Vampires. Frankenstein. Werewolves. Goblins. Skeletons. Democrats.

Man, that's some scary stuff.

Halloween is a great day. Dress up in costumes. Trick or treating. I have actually bobbed for an apple. As kids Halloween was a pretty big deal. It seemed there were kids everywhere. It was the one night we ruled the streets. Everyone participated. All the houses were lit up and giving candy. Or at least it seemed that way. It was probably just how I want to remember it. I have made return trips to playgrounds of my youth where the slides were as tall as trees and never seemed to end only to realize they were just normal slides not much taller than I am now.

Funny how that works.

It's not the size of the slides that matter in life; it's how we remember the size of the slides.

Halloween, despite some peoples misgivings, is a wonderful holiday meant to purge the earth of its evil souls. The original Celtic celebrations consisted of huge bonfires and animal sacrifices. But we stopped doing that in 1987. The modern day belief that Halloween is for devil worshipers is just that, a modern day belief. The Druids and Celts who are most associated with Halloween were pagans not Satanists. A pagan worships many gods. A Satanist worships Obama Satan. And nowhere in any historical text does it say that Druids or Celts worshipped a god of death.

Halloween has gotten a bum wrap over the years. It is the middle child of holidays. Thanksgiving and Christmas get all the accolades. Halloween is left holding the bag. Pun intended. Since it is around my birthday and I am a middle child, I have an affinity for Halloween.

I just don't like the teenagers who don't dress up and use a pillow case for a bag just to get free candy. Punks.

And finally for your viewing pleasure, The Doobie Brothers do Halloween!

You can't make this stuff up II...

Erica Jong, that was my reaction too, apparently she's an author/feminist gave an interview about the election. Here are her choice words...

"The record shows that voting machines in America are rigged."

"My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can't cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves."

"My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium."

"After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…"

"If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it's not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets."

"Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act.

In the immortal words of Maxwell Q. Klinger "Weeeeeeeeooooooooooooooo!"

Excellent Pro-Life video...

You can't make this stuff up...

CHAPEL HILL (AP) - Shawn Turschak of Chapel Hill was tired of someone stealing McCain-Palin campaign signs from his yard.

So the man with a degree in electrical engineering hooked up a third sign to a power source for an electric pet fence Monday. Turschak also put up a surveillance camera.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reports that Tuesday, a 9-year-old boy with an Obama-Biden sign grabbed the McCain-Palin sign and got a jolt.

The boy's father, Andrew Noble, then showed up at the Turschak's door, upset his son had been shocked. Soon an Orange County sheriff's deputy also showed up at the Turschak's home.

Noble says his son just wanted to see how the sign was put together. Turschak says the boy intended to swap out the signs.

Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass said he doesn't plan to file charges.

If I had told Dad that I just got shocked while I was grabbing someone elses property in their yard I think I would have gotten a spanking. Yes, my Dad would have gone ot the guys house...with me in tow to apologize to the home owner for not respecting his property.

The good old days.

What is it about a blanket...

Of all the things I do in this world, there is none that brings me more joy than tucking my kids in under a blanket. There is something symbolic about it. Whether it be in their bed at night or on the couch to watch cartoons or in my bed to watch cartoons or in my chair to watch cartoons, the blanket lets them know they are safe and warm and comfy and dry and happy and loved.

Madison was curled up on my chair the other night and I put a blanket over her. She said she was very comfy. She told me when she sees people who are comfy she wants to get comfy too. Not a bad mantra for all.

This morning I put Ian into our bed to watch his morning cartoon and I pulled the blanket up on him and he turned to me and smiled. In that smile, he relayed all of the things I said above. It warmed my heart.

Chompy isn't a blanket person yet. I have a feeling she will be.

I even had use for a blanket the other night. I mentioned to Kelly how I hated this time of year on TV because every station had a scary movie on. You can't flick through the channels without catching a glimpse of something you don't want to see. And after the Amityville Horror incident of 79, if I never see another scary movie it will be too soon. I still hear that music in my head and it scares the beejeebus out of me.

Anywho, the other night I had a dream. A bad one. It was one of those dreams that even after you woke up and went back to sleep it just picked up right where it left off. Kelly and I had bought a new house. A big southern mansion type place. Of course it was haunted. We saw faces and shadows and heard screams and noises. You may be asking yourself, "If you're such a weenie why didn't you just leave?" My answer to that is, "Hey, I'm not a weenie." Well, OK I am. I don't know why we didn't leave. We never slept in the house. The dream took place only over a couple of hours as far as I could tell. The end of the dream occurred when Kelly was stuck in a closet and couldn't get out. I was kicking and pounding on the door to get it open all the while Kelly was crying hysterically and it sounded like she was saying no to something trying to hurt her. I finally got the door open and as I went to hug her I cried out "Go away!" Only it wasn't my voice it was some demonic God-awful cacophony of noise that chilled me to the bone. As I was saying these words I woke up. I could hear myself saying the words as I woke up and I am not a talker in my sleep.

I used the blanket to hide under until morning came. I couldn't go back to sleep. Or maybe I didn't want to go back to sleep.

When you go on a picnic what do you bring besides the food? A blanket to sit on. Doing something cold outside? Bring a blanket to keep warm. When we were kids we would go to drive in movies. We would bring some lawn chairs and set them up in the stall next to the car and sit in those and have blankets over us as we watched Herbie the Love Bug or Benji.

Blankets, quilts, afghans, what have you. Just get under one as soon as you can, alone or with someone else, and enjoy the warmth and security these magical cloth polygons provide.

I think this country needs a big ole blanket.

Happy Birthday...

To Me!!!!!

I am 41 years old today. Born in 1967 at 12:34 PM. A wish minute baby. I was lucky from the start. Wish minute baby? A wish minute is 1:11 or 2:22 or 3:33 etc. and 12:34. During this minute you wish. It actually works too. I don't know how many wish minutes I spent wishing Kelly would marry me.

On this date in 312 AD Constantine defeated Maxentius to become the defacto ruler of the Western Roman Empire. This was the battle where Constantine was greatly outnumbered but in a dream saw God. He had the soldiers paint crosses on their shields. He won in a landslide.

In 1636, Harvard was founded.
1858 - Macy's opens in NY.
1886 - Statue of Liberty dedicated.
1919 - Prohibition begins.

People born on this day:

Joaquin Phoenix, Terrell Davis, I'm ashamed to put this one down being the liberal puke that she is Julia Roberts, Lauren Holly, Jami Gertz, Bill Gates, Lauren Tewes the cruise director on the Love Boat, for a long time the only claim to fame I had was her and Bruce Jenner. That, my friends, is slim pickins. Sipowicz himself Dennis Franz, Randy Newman of Short People Fame, Charlie Daniels and Jonas Salk.

All good Scorpios.

Today is National Chocolate Day. Could there be a more apropos day for me? Strangely enough it is also Plush Animal Lover's Day. I had quite a collecion of plush animals when I was younger. In fact, one of the best Christmas' I ever had was when I received a 4' Yogi the Bear. It was outside the bathroom when I came out. I had opened all my presents so I didn't think I was getting it. But there it was.

I hope to leave work early today and bask in the chilly weather. Don't you just love it? Had our first fire last night. Cold night. Fire. Fall in the air. It don't get any better than this.

Thanks everyone for being there for me. I love each and every one of you. I truly do.

Being that it's almost Halloween...

I'm going to share with you two of the most frightening I have ever read.

The first is Obama in an interview he gave in 2001:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

Barack Obama complains that the Constitution is a “charter of negative liberties”. That’s because the Constitution was intended as a limiting document, to curtail the power of the federal government vis-a-vis the states and the individual. The founders intended at the time to limit the reach of the federal government, and built the Constitution accordingly.

The government does not exist to determine the acceptable level of wealth of its individual citizens. For government to assume that role, it would have to end private property rights and assume all property belonged to the State. That is classic Marxism.

Scary Thing #2

A little background, The Weather Underground is the organization Willian Ayers and his wife belonged to when they were blowing up federal buildings. Barack Obama started his political career in William Ayers living room.

Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl, who had infiltrated and joined the Weather Underground, described their post-revolution governing plans for the United States in this video taken from the 1982 documentary "No Place to Hide." The Weather Underground openly discussed exterminating 25 million Americans who refused to be "re-educated" into communism.

Here's a transcript of his interview:

I bought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.

And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people.

The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.

They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them... how things were going to be.

I asked, well, what's going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.

And they were dead serious."

-- Larry Grathwohl, former member of the Weather Underground

Funny cartoon...

Interesting video...

Just try not to laugh at his Diddy impersonation.

Imagine the hate mail this guys gets. Just imagine!

Pause the music to hear this video.

The McCain-Obama Dance Off!

In which Maverick saves his best campaign stunt for last. The Obama footage is obviously fake — we know The One can’t dance — but check out those Palin moves at the end.

Dude, I think it’s real.

http://view.break.com/592648 - Watch more free videos

I have tried to say away from politics...

but with the election coming up I feel the need to inform. I will try to post things that you may not have heard from the MSM. Which is just about everything.

Little IT tip. If you want to keep this page open and keep listening to the music do a right mouse click on the link, in all of the cases below the word "this", and select Open Link in New Tab or Open Link in New Window. The link will appear in a new window or tab and this page will remain open allowing you to continue to listen to the music.

And the Obamanists sing...

If this isn't enough to get you to vote McCain, I don't know what is.

Well, maybe this.

Or this.

This one is long but is quite informative. Lots of video too.

Spread the word!

Last night I went...

to my first parent conference thingy. It was Literacy Night! With the exclamation point and all. The flier said learning techniques for you and your child. So, everybody brought their child. Apparently, that wasn't necessary. She was whisked away by one of the teachers to the gym where they "had babysitters!" Well, I had a babysitter at home with whom she could have stayed. Not good enough, apparently. As they pried Madison from my clenched fists, I actually asked, "I have to go in there alone?" I gave a little chuckle at the end so as not to appear to pathetic. It didn't work. Madison was even shaking her head at me.

After finding the largest chair in the room, I took a seat. I was actually worried all day about having to sit in the little chairs for fear of crunching that thing into a cube like the car smashers when it bore my full weight. As I sat, I noticed other parents had papers. I had no papers. What happened to my papers? I forgot to sign in. So I got up and went to sign in. On my return, I noticed my bigger-but-not-so-big chair had been occupied by an elderly woman of Asian decent. Picture any old Korean woman portrayed in a MASH episode. That was her. She weighed a buck soaking wet. I could literally have picked her up and moved her to another chair with one hand. Needless to say, I was a little perturbed. Probably not at her just myself for having forgotten to sign in. As luck would have it, I found a similar chair in the back and I took my seat.

The presentation started. Let's just say kindergarten teachers are happy people. Happy happy fun joy. It was all good though. They are very dedicated to our children and I couldn't be happier with the results. There was one aspect of the teaching techniques that I found odd. I guess it is like the new math. This was in the context of learning letter sounds. They said if a child spells cat with a K don't correct them praise them. If when you say apple all they write down is a "p", that is what they hear apple to be. The p is the apple to them.

Umm.....O.....K.....

I sort of, if I stretch it, can see their goal here. Let the child understand the letters and the sounds before we begin to correct the spelling which comes later.

But I still don't buy it.

I think this type of thinking has produced a generation of people that are going to vote for Obama...I bet you didn't think I could segway kindergarten learning techniques into an indictment on society for voting for Obama. I can pretty much do that with any topic...I guarantee you I can make my child feel happy about spelling cat correctly even if he/she started out with a K. Children need to be loved. Told they're loved. Shown they're loved. If you do that, someone can correct them when they spell a word wrong. The classroom is for learning. We'll handle the warm fuzzies. I can actually hear my teacher relatives rolling their eyes.

Moving on, she showed examples of children's writing on the board. She showed four advancing levels. The first one just had random letters on a page. But that's OK, don't get me wrong. If that's what the child "feels" then that's correct...even though it isn't...The second had the word "harid" which was hayride of course. The third had a sentence about going on a hayride. The sentence was read by the student on the film clip. Pointing at the words and reading the sentence in a choppy fashion. The fourth example was of a student with "very advanced" writing skills. She showed us the story had a beginning, middle and end. There were uppercase and lowercase letters used. (BF moment) It was Madison's.

I plan on attending many more of these learning nights. If only to have something to write on my blog.

Ian is recognizing more letters everyday. He is putting puzzles together all by himself. He still has an issue with someone getting in his space when he's playing but we're working on it. He can be so kind and caring. But then he can be like me too. We are working on potty training. Hopefully soon. I'm sure Kelly is tired of changing diapers. We'll just keep loving him and see what happens.

I'll bet Chompy is walking before Halloween. She is so close. It helps to have two older siblings showing her what she's missing. She is into everything. Not unique I'm sure but jeez louise; I'm talking everything. In less than a month, we're off formula and onto milk. We're in the money. Woot Woot Woo!

All is well under our roof. Hope it stays that way a while.

New Lance...UPDATED...

Haven't we seen this guy before?

The music is from SWAT. A very underrated 70's cop drama with an awesome theme song. I remember waiting for this show to come on just to listen othis song. I remember the guys running out of the back of that truck with full riot gear on ready to smash some heads. Awesome.

I apologize for yesterdays...

blog. It was a half-hearted effort. But man, writing these things everyday is tough. You try being witty and urbane talking about clam chowdah. Not an easy task.

Enough excuses. Let's get down to the nitty gritty. We are in the midst of a surprising number of awareness weeks. Here's a partial list:

National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week - sponsored by the Chinese Toy Manufacturers
National Forest Products Week - I do my part everyday with the copious amounts of toilet paper I use
Synergy Week International - This is much more successful than the Farmers Branch Synergy week we had last month.
National School Bus Safety Week - Thank God that's only one week out of the year because how much time do we really need to focus on that?
YWCA Week Without Violence - Which unfortunately runs in concurrence with the YMCA's Chock Full O' Violence Week. Tragic.

The weekend was good...

Friday night we had dinner with Mom and Dad. It was Dad's birthday and we hadn't seen them in a while so it was a two-fer. Went to Mimi's Cafe and had a good bowl of clam chowdah along with a French dip sandwich...

best bowl of clam chowdah I ever had was at a place in Maine called Nunan's. It was right on the ocean. You could see the boats come in pull in their lobster and bring them to the kitchen. They threw them in the pot and cooked them. Talk about fresh. Kelly and I stayed at a bed and breakfast near Kennebunkport. I told he proprietor that I wanted to go to a place where the locals went. I didn't care if I didn't understand a word they said I just wanted to some good lobster. He sent us to Nunan's. The second I walked in the place I said. "Hello they-ah. We pahked the cah oveh they-ah and we would like a table fah two with plenty of chowdah and fahks. I would like the 3 and a quahtah pound lobstah with lots o buttah." I checked my "R"s at the door and proceeded to have the best lobster I had ever eaten. This was the first and only time Kelly has ever had lobster. She is spoiled...

Mom and Dad had root beer floats for desert but I was too stuffed to have one. I look back now and wonder what kind of goof am I, turning down a root beer float.

Saturday Kelly and Madison went to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Ian, Reagan and I stayed home and played cards. Reagan has quite the poker face. I went over to Steve's house to watch UCLA after Kelly got home. They won! Woohoo! On a last second touchdown too. It's nice to win one like that.

Sunday was church and a birthday party for my mother-in-law and me. We both have October birthdays. Mmmmm...chocolate cake. Kelly made a cake for the occasion that was delicious. Pat had my college diploma and Sig Ep initiation framed. Pretty cool. Now everybody can ask me why I work in computers when I have a BS in Biology.

I'm not even going to mention the Cowboys. Bye bye Wade!

For those of you who don't know...

I like to point out the hypocrisy of the main stream media. (MSM) Here is a perfect example.

From HotAir.com:

Yesterday, the Tanning Bed Media discovered unpaid tax liens against Joe Wurzelbacher. Two days ago, we would have said, “Who?” He’s better known this week as Joe the Plumber after his impromptu dialogue with Barack Obama produced a blatantly redistributionist answer from the Democratic presidential candidate.

In their haste to pillory Joe for the audacity of asking a tough question of Obama, the Tanning Bed Media missed a couple of other interesting tax liens. Patterico does the work of the TBM:

Oh — I almost forgot to mention: Martin Nesbitt, the treasurer of Obama’s campaign, has tax liens. So do his companies.

You’d think that matters more than the tax liens of Joe the Plumber, wouldn’t you? But good luck finding a Big Media story about Nesbitt’s liens.

If tax liens are such an indicator of character and trustworthiness, wouldn’t it have more significance for the treasurer of a presidential campaign than for a man who just asked a question of the candidate? If the national media has such an interest in investigating a plumber who made a couple of national appearances, why wouldn’t they have at least the same interest in the people running a major party presidential campaign? Of course not. The same people who instruct us that Barack Obama’s 20-year membership in Jeremiah Wright’s church while Wright called 9/11 “chickens coming home to roost” now interrogate Joe the Plumber on national TV about his brief flirtation with the Natural Law Party.

Because, you know, associations matter when choosing a plumber, but apparently not when choosing a President.

Picture Day...

We ordered Madisons school pictures. Her first real set. She had some taken in day school but come on who are we kidding. Kindergarten is when the action really starts. Running from 5th graders, watching for bullies in the bathroom. Slashing the teachers tires. Good times.

With the invent of digital cameras this generation will be the most photographed generation in history. Imagine running for office with this burden. I know there are a few pics out there that would keep me from becoming anything but dog catcher. And that's in the old style film days. These kids will have their pictures from kindergarten to college graduation available at the click of a button. Talk about a permanent record.

When I was very young, I had a crew cut. Just like Johnny Unitas. Now there's a haircut you could set your watch to. Simple. Easy. Just rub some of that goo that came in the red tube on your hair to tame the cow lick and off you went. You know the red goo stick. You pushed it out like a push up ice cream. It wasn't goo though. It was more like wax. Goo makes it sound viscous. If it was anything it wasn't viscous. It was...wax like...waxy...hard as wax...yea...waxy.

As I got older the hair got longer and ultimately made me look like a stoner. One of my pictures, 4th or 5th grade, my tongue was sticking out. Not in the "nyah nyah" fashion but in the "I have ketchup on the side of my mouth which I will try to retrieve with my tongue" fashion. When the picture was taken I knew something was wrong, I just could not put my finger on it. Until the day came when they put the pictures on the front desk and everyone scrounged through everyones pictures to find their own. Of course, they came in the big 8 1/2" x 11" envelopes with the big picture window on the front with your mug staring back at the world. Everyone started laughing. As I approached the desk, I saw my picture complete with tongue out. I think they brought in students and teachers from other classes to laugh at me when my classmates got tired. Well, something like that.

Suffice it to say, a stoner pic with his tongue sticking out is not something easily overcome.

That reminds of another tragic episode in my elementary career. We were having a lesson on the body and it's different types. We were talking about face types. The teacher brought three of us up to the front of the class. I was one of the three. She put ther hand over the first childs head and said what shape is her face. A few people said long some said oval some didn't know what to think. The next student inquiry had the same result. No certainty. No exclamation. Until of course she put her hand over my head and asked what shape my face was. On cue as if they had been practicing for weeks they shouted and I mean shouted to the heavens without any trepidation, "ROUND!". I started to ball. I hope that teacher felt like crap. I know I did.

What was she thinking? Putting a heavy set boy up in front of the class whose corduroy pants were so loud when he walked you could hardly hear yourself think. That's not right! She's like a crazy person!

The high school years? That's another blog altogether.

Another Lance...UPDATED

because I love the music I have downloaded for these so I want to hear it.

Mike had a 45 of this theme song. I wanted to hear it so I went in his room and tried to play it after he told me not to. I broke it.

Jim Rockford was cool. He was Magnum before Magnum was Magnum; except for the trailer he lived in in a parking lot. But at least it was on the beach. He did have a cool car. The gold Firebird. (Hat tip to Steve) He did all his own driving stunts. Apparently he was a race car driver back in the day.

Yep. Jim Rockford was cool. I didn't like his friend Angel though. Always gave me the creeps. Even his appearances on MASH and The Love Boat made me uneasy. Don't know what it was. Maybe just his face.

Why do I bother...

Why does football mean so much to me? It is very frustrating when the two teams you follow religiously...and by that I mean yes I have at one time in my life decided to watch a football game rather than go to church but I know God is a Cowboys fan, what with the hole in TX stadium and all, so I think he would approve; approve may be a little strong of a word perhaps he understands...are getting beaten up. Both the Bruins and the Cowboys just got physically whooped this weekend. Why do the teams I follow have to be a bunch of...whoa! that was close.

Madison went on a field trip to a pumpkin patch this Friday with her class. She had great fun. What with the pumpkins and all. Who wouldn't have fun at a pumpkin patch? A Halloween scrooge I suppose. Or in other words fundamental Christians. Now don't get your panties in a wad. I mean those freaks who think it is the devil's holiday and would never let their child dress up to celebrate it. That argument shows the willful ignorance of those people. Halloween is actually the day when candy company's try out their new products. It's kind of their Super Bowl. Crazy fundamentalists. What would be a good name for a Halloween scrooge? Comments please.

Anywho, Kelly went on the field trip with Madison. Some time during the trip she and Ms Chaffin, Madison's teacher, were talking and she told Kelly she had been teaching kindergarten for 13 years and in all those years she had never seen a more advanced reader than Madison. (Read this next line in your best Barney Fife (BF) complete with nose sniff)

That's my girl!

Now, if we could just get her to write better. It looks like my writing after a fraternity party.

Ian is beginning to speak volumes. It's not that he's saying anymore, it's just that he's really loud. He is talking more and other people are beginning to notice as well. We had a few people at church tell us he is speaking much better. He loves to read like his sister. That is a great sign what with Madison being the most advanced reader her teacher had ever seen. (BF) He counts to twenty and sometimes counts to forty-ten which apparently in the new math is 50. Last night we were flicking through the channels and he said "Sleeping Beauty" even before I knew what was going on. Sure enough, it was a commercial for the Sleeping Beauty DVD. I asked Kelly,

"He knows who Sleeping Beauty is just by sight?"

"He knows all the princess'."

(after changing the TV back to the football game)
"OK Ian, that is a quarterback and that is a linebacker."

Reagan knows what she's doing. She likes to pull the wipes out of the box and suck on them. When you see her and start walking towards her she takes off like a bat out of Hades. She knows we don't like her doing that. She is pulling herself up and walking on the edge of things. It's only a matter of time before she is walking. She'll be one years...year...a one year...12 months old in a month. Time is flying.

Sometimes, I look at my family and think how surreal it all is. How Kelly came to love me. How our children are so beautiful. How they are mine. How did I get so lucky? How did I get so blessed?

It may have been a bad football weekend but it was a glorious life weekend. Aren't they all?

Everyone deserves a good Lance-ing...UPDATED

Another Lance for you enjoyment.

The music this time is from one of my favorite PI shows of all time, Magnum PI. I was going to have you guys guess the music but it's right in the title in the music box so that would be kind of easy. If I can figure out how to change the name or something I have some good ones coming up.

Magnum was...the stud boy. Lived in a mansion in Hawaii, drove a Ferrari, played minor league baseball, carried a gun...I wanted to have his baby. Only later in life did I find out Tom Selleck is a Republican. That pretty much sealed the deal.

This theme song is only one of three I ever pulled out the tape recorder for. I put the black flat-top microphone up against the speaker on the turn-the-knob-to-change-the-channel TV in mom and dad's bedroom, pushed the Rec and Play buttons simultaneously and hoped no one walked in to ruin my recording.

The other two themes were Taxi and Mary Tyler Moore. I loved the part in Taxi at the beginning of the song when the guy hits the top hat, or cymbal for the percussionally challenged, ti-tsssssss boom. He does it right before the whole band kicks in right after the flute solo. Good stuff. I have already regaled you with the Mary Tyler Moore theme once here in blogville. Let me just say the opening BA-NA-NUM cacophony of horns still sends a chill up my spine.

I always liked the Welcome Back Kotter Theme as well. Good guitar riff. 70's folksy sound to which I am partial. The clothes were groovy to. This leads to the inevitable Chico and the Man mention. Good song. Jose Feliciano. Things will be better for Chico and the Man. Indeed.

I could go on but let's get straight to Lance. Please remember these were drawn and written in the 40's so solving a murder with garters is not as crazy as it seems.

Lancey, Lancey, Lancey...UPDATED

he so smart!

I've changed things up on the music. I still like the Mission Impossible theme but I have scoured the music archives looking for apropos tunes. I think I have succeeded.

This first selection is one of the most well known police drama themes of all time. The opening helicopter shot with the shaky camera angle as it makes its way to a Jack Lord closeup. Classic. Need I say, "Book em Dano. Murder One."

Musings and such...

This one is a hodge podge.

This morning Ian came into the bedroom about 3:00 am. Kelly went to go sleep on the couch. He crawled up on my chest and fell asleep in my arms. That was a very real moment for me. Just me and my son. He was safe secure and warm. And apparently tired. I held him for about a half an hour before putting him on Kelly's side of the bed. It was marvelous.

Last night in the debate Obama said he had cuts to pay for his $800 billion dollar spending proposals. If I was McCain, I would have said when given my opportunity to speak:

"I would like to give the balance of my time to Senator Obama. I would like him to list the cuts he plans on making to cover the $800 billion dollars he plans on spending. Please be specific. Senator Obama?"

What is it with people? Saturday night I am in a Quik Trip and the line is relatively long to checkout. A lady is waiting in line behind another person who seems to have made a tent in another line. The lady had drinks and kids and chips and all sorts of stuff. I told her she could go ahead of me but she politely declined and said Thank you for that. I went on my merry way. Today I am in a Quik Trip, what? it's cheap gas, there are about 4 of us in line. I am next to go. A guy walks up with some stuff it looks like he wants to start a new line or something, the clerk eyeballs him and starts to help him. First off, what's up with the freakin clerk? He can't see the line already formed with people patiently waiting. And the customer, "Get in line, pal!" You're no more special than the rest of us. I looked at the customer and he was wearing an Obama shirt. As I walked by I said as I pointed to his shirt:

"Obama, huh?"

"Yep" he said excitedly

"Figures."

And I walked out.

I am almost over Tony Romo. Pull your head out! What are you doing looking for rings when you should be concentrating on football? I swear these games mean more to me than they do to the guys paid millions to play it. If Tony Romo were a Saved By The Bell episode, it would have to be the one where they discovered oil on the school property. The initial reaction was great. Instant euphoria. Then the fighting about the money. Finally the oil spill and the ducks in the pond got covered in oil. All did not end well. TO is the oil.

As for Saved By The Bell, I used to be able to tell if it was a KKIB episode before the opening credits stopped flashing. I had way too much time on my hands.

KKIB? Kelly Kapowski in Bikini.

I think the thing that is most disheartening to me is when you watch the news or read the papers, both of which I don't do often, it seems like there isn't anyone out there who thinks like I do. There isn't anyone in the main stream media (MSM) that asks anyone to defend their pro-abortion stance, or their anti-gun stance. Why isn't Joe Biden getting the scrutiny Palin is getting? Why isn't Obama since he has been around about as long as she has. I know there are conservatives out there but they have absolutely no voice in the MSM. No one comes at a story form our point of view. It kind of beats you down, you know?

Maybe that's their plan.

I have yet to blog...

about something very near and dear to my heart...football.

There is nothing better than a fall afternoon donning a sweatshirt of your choice, as long as it says Cowboys or UCLA on it, and watching a battle of titans on the gridiron.

I'm getting watery eyes just thinking about it.

My love for the game goes back many many years. Dad knocking the wind out of me trying to teach me to tackle, spraining all ten of my fingers at one point or another...it seems I always had a splint on at least one of my fingers between 1st and 8th grades...as a matter of fact I'm pretty sure I was a lefty until I sprained my left index finger in the first grade and switched to righty and, well, the rest is history...going to the bathroom right before weigh in so you could make the 83 lb weight limit. Yep. Good times.

My love for all things UCLA started young. We would go to the Schultz's house every Thanksgiving. He was a Trojan fan. Ugh. And we were of course UCLA fans thanks to Dad. We would play a football game every year. If it was us against them, we would have killed them. There were six of us including dad and all they had was a daughter and a son. Julie, I think, and David...David when he ate an apple would eat the whole thing. The whole freakin thing. Core and all. That's his claim to fame...a football player he wasn't.

I think the renaissance of all things UCLA came in 1995 when the bball team won the National Championship. After that, the yearly UCLA football game came to be, Pfaff Pfest. Don't get me wrong, UCLA was the team all along. I received a No. 5 UCLA jersey from my college roommates Mike and Mike. So, the passion for the Bruins was there it just seemed to intensify as the years rolled on.

I was a Rams fan growing up; Nolan Cromwell, Jack Youngblood, Jack Snow, Vince Ferragamo, Jim Youngblood, Lawrence McCutcheon. I was distraught when they lost the Super Bowl in 1980 to the Steelers. But when they moved to St Louis, I moved to the Cowboys.

America's Team.

The Troy Aikman years were the best years of my life, football wise. After all, he is a Bruin who led the Cowboys to 3 Super Bowl victories. It doesn't get any better than that.

If I had to choose, I would watch the Bruins over the Cowboys. I love college football. I wake up early on Saturdays because I can't sleep in preparation for the game. My stomach starts to churn several hours before kickoff. If we win, I rewatch the game on Tivo, the greatest. invention. ever., to analyze blocking schemes and offensive and defensive play calling. Sometimes I'm up until 2:30 am re-watching a game I have already seen. Tragic.

I tried to get Kelly involved in the hype to no avail. She's too far gone. Madison is very happy when the Bruins and Cowboys win and sad if they lose. She doesn't like to sit and watch the games though. The outcome is good enough for her. Ian will sit with me and watch periodically shouting out "Go Cowboys!". Which is great but at the time we were watching the Jaguars Steelers game. The boy is a trooper though. Chompy still isn't quite ready. She likes her UCLA ball and plays with it often but somehow I get the feeling she is just humoring me.

Pfaff Pfest is at the University of Washington this year. Nov 13-16. I can't wait. Cold weather. Bruins. Family. Hot tub. Booze. Tobacco. Eyes watering again. We have been to some great venues, The Big House in Michigan, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, Notre Dame and of course the Rose Bowl or Mecca if you will. I have a prayer mat in my office that faces west and I pray to it everyday at 8:47.

Some of you may know that time as 13 to 9.

Madison's magnificent...

month-long birthday extravaganza is finally over. It started on Sep 11 her actual birthday with lunch at her school and a small party and ended this past Saturday with a party for her friends and cousins of like age. Note to Gigi: no horns at kiddie parties. They all played in a gym with a bunch of gymnastics stuff. I think they had a good time. It looked that way anyway. They kept the parents in a parental Siberia. Your child only observable through a thick pane of glass while they traverse across a 3 inch wide piece of wood suspended 2 feet above the ground or as they bounce on the most dangerous toy ever devised by man, the trampoline. That seemed to please all of the mothers.

Cup cakes and ice cream were served. Everyone received a goody bag and paint on their face. That was interesting. We actually stood the kids in a circle and threw buckets of paint at them. They really loved that. Mothers again, not so much.

As Madison gets older she sure is getting wiser. I was talking with her the other day and something came on TV about 9-11. She asked what happened. So I told her some bad men killed some people in a building a long time ago.

"Why?"

"Because they don't like us."

"Why?"

"They don't like the way we think. Their religion tells them not to like people who aren't like them."

"Do they believe in God?"

"Yes"

"If they believe in God, how can they be bad?"

...

The ends justify the means...

That is a phrase I have been thinking a lot about lately. Mostly in the political spectrum of course. There is a pattern on the left that to me is a little disturbing.

I could go back further but in the scope of things I will just go back to Dan Rather's National Guard memo debacle. Dan had on his CBS news cast a letter supposedly written in 1976 about George W Bush by a superior officer. The letter questioned his integrity, his service and just about everything else. Within hours of the broadcast the letter was determined to be a hoax which lead to the inevitable resignation of Mr Rather who to this day defends his actions. Now, either they knew the letter was fake or they did not do any investigation into the letter and its origins. Everyone involved with the letter pretty much said it was a fake, except Dan of course. So, knowing full well the letter was a fake they put it on the air anyway to question Bush's service. One of their main arguments is so what if the letter is fake just answer the questions it brings up. The ends justify the means.

Fast forward to this race. Someone broke into Sarah Palin's email account, a felony by the way, to see if they could get anything incriminating on her. They did not. But committing a felony is a perfectly acceptable act to get what you want. The ends justify the means.

There have been many, many examples of this phenomenon, the van tire slashing of Republican vans in Wisconsin. Voter intimidation in Florida. The ACORN organization being in court everyday for illegal voter registration.

Where will it end?

What won't they do to get what they want? What price is too big to pay for the utopia they want America to be? To them...

the ends justify the means.

A lighthearted Lance...UPDATED

no murder or mayhem. Just a misunderstanding.