Happy Birthday

Wolfden V is one year old today. To celebrate, I offer you this no doubt delicious dark chocolate (is there any other kind?) cake.

Photo from j and l products.com

When I grow up I want to be a weather man

Oddly enough, Valpo's meteorology program is one of the primary reasons I went to that school. Now, I merely cut and paste colorful pictures revealing obscene temperature swings and brutal cold. Not like there's a Walgreens truck to unload or anything. And it's not like it was freaking 45 degrees the other day.

Images from weather.com

I took a dump today!

It was THIS big!

(Standing ovation)

I never understood of the State of the Union's repeated interruption for unnecessary applause. I also do not understand how people in the House chamber can fall asleep when the most powerful man in the world addresses them. Furthermore, I do not understand a Democratic response that includes "let's get a good night's sleep."

I just don't get politics. It could be that I'm still trying to figure out who the President is after Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and now George W. Bush have all made a play for the position. Where's Tornado Tom when you need him?

Photo from State.gov

Seriously?

From Weather.com

The Baby Primary

Personally, I think this would have been a marvelous time for a sticker that says "don't abort me" to reveal itself on the baby's behind leading to both a comical reference to the diaper's contents as well as an awkward photo for Hillary.

Anyway, I am not above plugging another website when it deserves special attention. While I hate to do it too frequently lest I show my own unoriginality and inability to deliver fresh new content, sometimes a site simply deserves a link.

The gentlemen to whom I will now send you shows the same irreverence for this election that I thus far have. The gist of the piece is that the he lives in New Hampshire and made it a point to have his new born baby daughter photographed with every major Presidential candidate. While someday it will be a great picture for the little one to be held by the future President, the father's willingness to thrust his child through a crowd adorned in whatever candidate's stickers the situation warrants strikes me as absolutely terrific. Drew Junior - in your unconceived state - beware.

Photo from Slate.com

The United States falls in political coup

So just a few days ago, I made a post congratulating the next President of the United States Barack Obama and his second in command Mike Huckabee. So much has changed...

All was well with the good ol' U.S. of A. Times were peaceful, the streets safer, and the harvest plentiful. The country - nay the world - was grateful to the meaningless state of Iowa for properly taking it upon themselves and choosing the leaders of the free world. The campaign commercials subsided and news programs struggled to find stories to fill the time allotted, eventually opting to move toward bears falling out of trees.

But now, a mere five days later, the world is in chaos. Invest in gold and grab your shotguns, we've got an old fashioned political coup. Seems that always feisty state of New Hampshire rejected Iowa (go figure) and decided to elect their own Presidents. Cars are driving into one another in horrific accidents, the fertile fields are flooding, geese are flocking to Cooperstown, and worst of all, no one can sell a home!

These are troubled times, my friends. We've taken the greatest social evolution for granted as no longer can we bank on a peaceful transfer of power. Beware the McCain-Clinton cyborg army and take solace in the one remaining constant in the universe.

Photo from CNN

Contender reeeeeady! Gladiator reeeeeady!

Uncle Don!

This menacing 6'4", 250 lbs. drink of water is my absolute favorite part of the new American Gladiators. I find it wonderful that one of my relatives made fame and fortune and that any contender who dares cross paths with Wolf will no doubt receive a ferocious bite. That and he looks like a wolf. Or a vampire. I did enjoy the crowd laughing at him when he said he "smelled fear." We'll have to work on family trademark infringement with references to him being the Wolfman, which we all know is he not the family Wolfman.

The show isn't that great once you get past the nostalgia that has transformed the old version into Emmy award winning TV that it really never was. Laila Ali isn't much of a host offering such hard hitting question as "that was really great," which of course isn't a question. The camera shots are unnecessarily fast and furious that when interspersed with crowd cheering shots in the middle of a 30 second competition make it impossible to follow what action there is.

But it's not all bad. The eliminator is pretty nifty even if a wall of fire hovering above a pool is completely unnecessary and merely a pretty TV shot. Overall though, I love the water everywhere and cannot wait for a contestant who can't swim to go tumbling backwards. Hulk Hogan is a part of the program, which alone makes it totally awesome. While I didn't see it this evening, I want to see a gladiator go flying in assault. And we've already covered gladiator-family member Wolf.

In all, it's fine. I can't say I'll be setting Tivo to watch every show. For one, I don't have Tivo and for two the show is not on the same level as say The Office. But, with the writer's strike, NBC could do worse to fill their Monday nights.

Photo from American Gladiators

How many of these are in your home right now?

I saw an interesting piece on the top ten best selling CDs in the SoundScan era (the electronic tracker of sales which began in 1991). The angle of the article I read was that if current sales trends continue, Metallica will top this list in a few years. Take that Shania! Naturally, I was excited being that it is my all-time favorite CD. The others for your amusement:

01. Come On Over - SHANIA TWAIN (15,449,000)
02. Metallica - METALLICA (15,077,000)
03. Jagged Little Pill - ALANIS MORISSETTE (14,557,000)
04. Millennium - BACKSTREET BOYS (12,099,000)
05. Bodyguard Soundtrack - Various (11,798,000)
06. Supernatural - SANTANA (11,643,000)
07. Human Clay - CREED (11,504,000)
08. No Strings Attached - N' SYNC (11,104,000)
09. Beatles 1 - THE BEATLES (11,097,000)
10. Falling Into You - CELINE DION (10,768,000)

For the record, I can claim three of these ten in my personal collection. Backstreet is back alright!

Photo from a non English speaking website.

Finally a winner

I, like most of you, have long been tired of the campaigning and advertising and headline hoarding and accusations that so and so likes orange juice instead of apple juice. It is with great relief that we have selected our next President and Vice-President. I seem to remember doing this in November and electoral votes, but I also seem to remember weighing under 150 pounds. Regardless, just a relief that it's all over and that we never again have to hear from anyone named Clinton, Romney, Edwards, or Giuliani.

Photo from CNN.com

Hello new year

It's been awhile (cue Staind). The last two weeks for me, like most Americans, has been a whirlwind of business. As we ease into writing "08" on deposit slips instead of the totally out of fashion "07," I thought it prudent to take a moment and reflect on the last two weeks.

I survived Christmas - barely. Most people use this type of over dramatization to characterize a slew of activities they consider "busy." Unless you work retail, you cannot conceive what a busy season really means. Stretches of work that last 12 hours in 12 day consecutive chunks with 30 second interactions with someone whose entire Christmas hinges on having some As Seen on TV product (some push-up bar was the hot item of the season with the always popular Ove Glove coming a close second) creating ridiculous amounts of misplaced tension are what people refer to when they say the commercialization of Christmas has gone too far. Blame retailers all you want, fine people, but when you point the finger, just remember four more are pointing right back at you.

The low point may have come yesterday, seemingly safe from the Christmas rush. An elderly lady asked me if we had any more Christmas tree disposal bags. My brilliant post-Christmas reconstruction side panel of this item has sold out two days ago, and sadly I had no more to offer this woman. She responded, "There are a lot of fast people in this store. You...you are slow and useless."

For whatever reason, this kind-hearted comment triggered a recollection of having seen one last Christmas tree removal bag that was sitting in the back room waiting to be disposed of because the packaging was so damaged that it was unsellable. Figuring that this nice woman needed the product so badly she was willing to insult the best gray smock wearing assistant manager Golden Valley has ever seen, I brought it to the front where I caught her just moments before checking out.

The customer was completely baffled as to why she would want THAT. Whatever, fine, I left. The lady, a regular, proceeded to tell my front cashier that we have too many fat people working this store and she doesn't like it.

If there's two things I'm not, it's slow and fat. Devastating on my self-esteem.

Anyway, enough of Walgreens, let's talk about the goodies of Christmas. One of the reasons you have suffered through my absence is the writer's strike. While not directly a part of the guild or union or whatever the hell is on strike, I figure that as a writer for Wolfden V, I deserve better compensation. As such, I hope to reap the benefits of the new deal between writers and producers, which by my calculations should occur sometime in 2101. But if Letterman can return, so can I. Inspired by his beard, I type for you this fine Thursday morn.

I do so on a nice new laptop. With my electronics death touch having worn down my previous laptop (only one of two mouse buttons worked, only one of two USB ports worked and that if jiggled in just the precise manner, the "n" button was repeatedly falling off, the internal fan worked overtime if I so much as thought about watching an on-line video, and this is to say nothing of the complete hard drive crash a few months back), I simply needed a replacement. I have it and it uses Windows Vista. The learning curve has been sharp at times, overrated at others. It only took a week to open Microsoft Word, which is nothing really. (XP! Where are you??).

The family visited for Christmas which was fantastic. My parents came in from California and my sister from Dallas. Since I worked every day they were here except for one, I took to starting work at 4am so at get out at a decent hour. I love them all dearly, but for my poor worn down body, it's nice to get back on a regular schedule. While here, though, we did have the opportunity to take in the Minnesota Science Museum, which on any other day would warrant its own post. However, now a week later the best recollection I have is of that awesome tornado thingy on the first floor. Cool, you know.

Unknown to me until about a week before it occurred, the University of Phoenix offers its students a two week break from classes during the Christmas season. The last task we were asked to complete for MBA 530 prior to our respite was to write a week four recap, touching on topics and ideas we learned, liked, or otherwise summarizing the material in the last seven days. Mine, for point of reference, touched on themes of leadership, strategic implementation, budgeting techniques, and communication. On the other hand, some students used it for free-for-all:

"I to am going to leave my summary now. It has been a crazy week trying to get all of my work done which I have not yet completed. My wifes dad is in the hospital in Oklahoma with heart failure so having to make a trip up there soon so she can see him. So I am hoping that I am able to complete my assignment at some point before monday night. The material is pretty much the same that it has been the first three weeks for this class just different scenario with the same company. I have found the UOP likes to be repetitive with the material that is used. Anyhow hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Years."

Stunning.

I would wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy new year, but I seem to have missed that boat. Plus, it would be unoriginal and forgotten about in mere moments. Instead, I wish you all a delicious lunch and as an attractive of a haircut as the one I am about to receive.

Photo from Amazon.com and a movie that had a fun cover.