Halloween Pumpkin Fun

We got one of those "PumpkinMaster" kits to carve pumpkins with this year. Mrs. Idiot totally rocked with it, producing the cat you see here:

Pretty Cool, eh?
You'll be relieved to hear that though she didn't wear safety shoes or gloves for this project either, she emereged unscathed and her manicure still looks fabulous.

Naturally, being an Idiot, I had to try carving pumpkins the "PumpkinMaster Way."
Normally when I undertake a project, especially an artistic one, it results in something close to what they must have been thinking of when they coined the phrase "catastrophic system failure." This time, however, I started the project BEFORE I started drinking, which might account for why my pumpkin turned out well:

Here it is in daylight:

But even better, here it is at night:


Exactly! I can't believe an idiot did that either!

To top all of us, though, The Younger One and Her Chum got hold of the pumkin kit and decided to "freestyle" their pumpkin. We're not exactly sure what this is supposed to be;

But, at night, it certainly does look kinda cool!


Our town did Halloween on the 30th, and not counting The Younger One and Her Chum, who came back several times because we were giving out Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, we had only five Trick or Treaters this year. Next year I'm thinking block party...

Lumber Jill

Mrs. Idiot is not exactly what we'd call "Outdoorsy".
In fact, much of our life here in New Hampshire reads like something right out of Green Acres.
You know:


"Fresh Air!" "Times Square!"

We finally got a beautiful day here in the Granite State, and I took advantage of it to get outside and get some wood cut, split and stacked. You can imagine how thrilled I was when my wife came out to help!

Then I saw Lumber Jill's outfit:

Note the footgear. Anyone who's willing work around chainsaws and splitting mauls wearing sandals has to be one baaaad mutha. (shut yo mouth!) Between the sandals and the velour track suit, it was like J-Lo had come out to work the woodpile.



Note also the perfect manicure:


Maintaining the integrity of the perfect manicure slowed the stacking process considerably, but, in the end, much wood was stacked and Mrs. Idiot's nails remained in their original spectacular condition.






Though she still gets allergic smelling hay, Mrs. Idiot is getting to be pretty good at life out of the 'burbs.

Speaking of Drinking...

A loyal reader and friend whom we'll call Janice sent this video link, and reported that she once witnessed a bout of drinking that was similarly en fuego.

Drinking with Flaming Shots

We may all be idiots, perhaps Darwin got it backwards.

One Million Beers

Way back on Wednesday, June 01, 2005, I discovered the 1000 Bars Guy. He is a guy who decided to try and visit 1000 bars in a year. He immediately became a hero of mine. I jokingly said at the time that I should try and accomplish something similar, but on a scale an idiot with no social life can handle. Thus, I set out to visit 100 bars. No time limit, no pressure, just visit 100 bars.

On June 1, the 1000 bar guy was on #530. I was on #0
On October 28, the 1000 bar guy hit #902. I was holding steady at #13.
He visited 372 bars in the time I visited 13.
Yeah, needless to say, the heckling from my friends has reached new heights.

So, because I am shallow and easily swayed by the opinions of others, I'm going to take on another challenge designed to totally shut my chums the hell up.
I hereby pledge to try and drink (insert Dr. Evil Voice here)

one million beers.

As with my fabulous 100 bar challenge, there's no time limit, but this task is far more difficult, because I aim to drink 1,000,000 different beers. I might drink five bottles of Sam Adams Light, but that only counts as one beer.

I know that there are lots of people out there who are keeping track of various things on their blogs, like the guy who drinks a bottle of hot sauce a day, the office snackers, and my personal favorite Please Steve, Don't Eat it! which is part of a blog called The Sneeze.
Knowing that these fine people have not only legitimized online food and drink lists, they've tirned it into an artform, I will hopefully be able to keep track of my million beers, my hundred bars, my campaign for king and all the other crap I post here. This should be interesting.

The clock just hit noon, so I can go get started.

(Yet another really bad idea brought to you by the Village Idiot).

Quit Messing with my Clock

I don't do well with this Daylight Savings Time thing. Every year, around the start of October, then again in April, I wake up on some Monday in a panic that the whole world has remembered to set their clocks back but me, and that I'm now either an hour ahead of or behind the rest of the world, and they're all laughing at me.

My wife resets all the clocks in the house because she's a good person. I'm too disorganized a person to do that. I suspect that she does it as soon as possible every year because she knows it would not go well if I did it. I can easily see me setting the kitchen clock, setting clocks upstairs, getting distracted, having some beers, remembering that I didn't set the kitchen clock and thus setting it again, making it totally wrong, and probably using that wrongness to reset all the rest of the clocks to match the kitchen clock. We'll call that the Idiot Time Zone.

In the twenty or so years that I've owned vehicles, I don't think I've ever gotten around to resetting the clock in one, and so it stays an hour off until the world changes their clocks back, or it drives my wife nuts enough that she does it for me, whichever comes first.

Given that I'm already an idiot, and already bad at daylight savings time, you can imagine my distress at having just learned that thanks to President Numbnuts and his stupid Energy Bill, next year they're extending Daylight Savings time. That's right, the energy bill that they signed into law in August will change the date we change our clocks. Here's a little sumpin-sumpin about it from Wikipedia:

Starting March 11, 2007, daylight saving time will be extended another four to five weeks, from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November. The change was introduced by the Energy Policy Act of 2005; the House had originally approved a motion that would have extended DST even further. Proponents claimed that the extension would save "the equivalent of" 10,000 barrels of oil per day, but this figure was based on U.S. Department of Energy information from the 1970s, the accuracy and relevance of which the DoE no longer stands by. There is very little recent research on what the actual positive effects, if any, might be.

Yeah, this will be a disaster for me.
I was actually reading up on the Energy Policy Act because of the news of Exxon's profits caught my eye. In case you missed this:

IRVING, Texas - Exxon Mobil Corp. had a quarter for the record books. The world's largest publicly traded oil company said Thursday high oil and natural-gas prices helped its third-quarter profit surge almost 75 percent to $9.92 billion, the largest quarterly profit for a U.S. company ever, and it was the first to ring up more than $100 billion in quarterly sales.
Revenue grew to $100.72 billion from $76.38 billion in the prior-year period.

Gas prices went through the roof, for no good reason that I heard, and coincidently Exxon Mobil made more money than any company in the history of man. Huh.

Maybe it's time to steer some major tax dollars into other sources of energy eh?

I remembered ol' George's Energy Bill, so I went to read about it and was quite disappointed to find that while there is funding for research and increased use of altenative energy sources, there are also billions of dollars of tax incentives and direct funding for oil companies. Yes, Exxon-Mobil, a company that made more money than any company in history, is getting tax dollars from our government to develop new places to drill. I used to think our president was a boob, but now I think he's a genius. The man's family money comes from oil, and he pulls this slickery right in front of the American people and gets away with it. That's genius.

I don't like him because he messed with my clocks, and I don't support him because he's taking my money and giving it to the superwealthy. I don't trust him because he's appointing cronies, hacks, and people named "Scooter." Still, you have to respect him... don't you?

Prison is too good for this man

When I'm king, the behavior described in this news story will be punishable by death.
I'll be having no poo-loafs in the kingdom.

Cabbie Accused of Tainting Food With Feces

DALLAS - A taxi driver is on trial for allegedly tainting baked items at the grocery store by sprinkling dried feces on the food. Prosecutors have store surveillance videotapes of two alleged incidents in July.

Behrouz Nahidmobarekeh, 49, is charged with two felony counts of tampering with consumer products.
Customers had complained that the fresh-baked items smelled and tasted like manure.

The defendant, who allegedly had a beef with the store over the way he'd been treated, faces punishment ranging from probation, to two to 20 years in prison.

A measly two years? For "tainting"?
You people so need me as your king.

Dunkin and Drivin Don't Mix

Some of you may recall that not long ago I announced that Dunkin Donuts is the new crack. Yesterday my kids and I witnessed an event that puts the proof in that particular pudding.

Below you'll see that I've rounded up all the high tech wizardry that will be the hallmark of my reign as king of the world in order to bring the tale to you in full color illustration. (Thanks to the Younger One for the cars, construction paper and crayons that made this all possible).

Anyhow, the kids and I were driving along in Idiotville, and the Younger One announced that she would like some Dunkin' Donuts. As you know, I'm always looking for an excuse to hit the Double D, so we prepared to make a left turn across traffic, into our usual Dunkin Donuts location, fondly known here as #1. We were behind an older gent in a mini-van.
In the diagram, the Idiot family is traveling in the black hot rod behind the pink car.











Apparently, the older gent in the pink car was so fixated on his donuts, that he failed to notice the large white econovan coming along the other way, and he completely and totally plowed into it, as we see in the next diagram.


Now. This would just be another sad tale of bad New Hampshire driving if it weren't for what happened next.

The kids and I sat in the turn lane, stunned that this old guy had just totally rammed the big white van. It was quite a crash, (as seen in the diagram) (the big white van's driver's side tires actually left the ground). The big white van's driver was completely stunned also, and his car drifted across the lane toward us until he recovered his senses and got it under control.


Grampa, meanwhile, kept right on a-going, all the way to the drive-thru, where his car decided it had made its last Dunkin Donuts run and died.

Now, I'm a big fan of The Amazing Race, and Mrs. Idiot and I spend a lot of time wondering how we'd do if we entered, and what we'd do in various situations. Last season, there was an episode in which one team got into a car accident and another team stopped, made sure they were ok, and kept on going. The team that kept on going was criticized for not stopping to help, but I gotta say, what I saw at the old Dunkin Donuts proves that if there had been donuts involved, the other team wouldn't even have stopped to make sure everyone was ok.

Grampa's car sat there, blocking the drive-thru, smoking and steaming and generally unhappy. Within a few minutes, the drive-thru was backed up, and then people started driving up over the curbing to get past him to the order box. Have you ever seen a zombie movie where the living dead are just kinda mindlessly crawling over everything and everyone to get at the humans? It was a lot like that, only with donuts. There's gotta be crack involved in there somewhere.

So that's my story. You'll be happy to know that no one was hurt, the kids and I went in to the store to get our food, (we figured that since the drive-thru was blocked and all... silly us), and we were lucky enough to watch an old mini-van die in what I can only assume is the automotive equivalent of dying with his boots on, dying in the Dunkin Donuts Drive-Thru.

It's Sweeps Week

Occasionally, just for kicks, I check out the keywords that bring people to this site.

What that means is that someone searched for "Kicked puppies" and their search engine led them here. Most of the searches of course, aren't that genteel. More on that later.

Because each new posting of this blog is saved as its own page, people might find a particular article I've written if they search for something like cat chews toothbrush or constipated bassett or humungous burrito.

Mostly, though, because you can go back and read a whole month of this crap at a time, people wind up stuck here because they were looking for something completely different. On the April page, for example, there's an article about mountain lions, an article about feminine hygiene products, and an article about Michael Bolton, so anyone looking for some combination of words like Lyin' Douchebag Bolton might wind up here by mistake.
(Ok, that one came out of nowhere).

Anyhow, the actual keywords that bring people here are almost never that clever, and usually involve the word "nude". My recent homage to ESPN analyst Suzy Kolber, for example, brought about a zillion people here, all looking for Suzy Kolber in combination with various other colorful words I might have tossed around in other articles.

Thus, to boost my traffic, and hopefully in that way bring attention to the problems of bassett constipation, I now shamelessly post some keywords that I expect will totally send my internet traffic figures through the roof. Here we go:

Angelina Jolie dipped in chocolate, nude! Brad Pitt riding a bike, nude! Star Wars, the whole damn cast, nude. (You have to know your internet audience). Rush Limbaugh fully clothed! (I do have some standards). Al Roker and Katie Couric's love child! Regis Philbin Martha Stewart gambling ring, nude! Survivor winner revealed, nude! Amazing Race Winners revealed, nude! Jennifer Aniston dates George Clooney, nude! Janet Jackson picks nose, picks friends, pichachu, nude! President Bush and old flame Harriet Miers go to Iraq, nude! Hurricane Wilma and Katarina form love triangle with Tropical Depression Alpha! Nude! Karl Rove's testimony about the area 51 aliens nude! Avian Flu hits Pittsburgh, nude! CIA takes a Leak beside the road, Nude! White Sox up 3-0 in World Series, Nude! Dow Jones, nude!

Yeah, sadly, this out to get me a LOT of traffic.

Buttercup Relief

We have had a solid month of rain. This is not my normal hyberbole. The next week ain't looking so great either.

A week or so ago, I had the Idiot Relief Telethon in honor of the flooding in New Hampshire and I put a link on my page so that y'all could donate to the Idiot's Beer Fund. (I'm still waiting for th first donation to come rolling in, by the way).

In the meantime, I need to bring a serious matter to your attention.

Because of all the rain, my dog buttercup hasn't taken a good dump in like thirty days.
Seriously, look at her:

This is clearly a dog on the edge.

She hates to go out in wet weather. She hates to walk on wet grass. As a result, she makes her trips outdoors as brief as possible, and as a further result, the weather is causing her some serious gastric distress.

So, I appeal to you, kind readers, donate to the Idiot Beer Fund. When the fund hits $25.00 I promise to go find my golf umbrella so that we're both covered when we go a-poopin'.

Give from the heart, the constipated bassett you save may be your own.

Some Videos for Monday

What better way to start the week than to waste some company time watching dumb videos?

Here you go:

Stick Fight (why is it funny when people get smacked in the head?)

Hot Mirror (yeah, they're idiots too).

Honest Machine and another of a similar theme

Redneck Recycling (Did you know that the last words of an alarming number of rednecks are "Hey y'all, watch this!"?)

Covered Wagon (yeah, speakers help) But they're a must for this one.

Too Much Gas- This is a different kind of gas, still a moron involved though..

Skateboarding Mishap- The slow-mo is especially painful.

Happy Doughboy. Yeah, um, this is absolutely awful.

I Have a Themesong!

You might recall that Mrs. Idiot wanted a themesong.
This has nothing to do with that, but it's a good excuse to get y'all singing the mahna-mahna song.

Today the ol' Ipod served up Warren Zevon's Mohammed's Radio for the first time in ages. It has a line I had totally forgotten about.

You know the sheriff's got his problems too,
He will surely take them out on you.
In walks the Village Idiot, and his face is all aglow,
He's been up all night listening to Mohammed's Radio.

Here is the clip of the song from Amazon.

Eh? My own themesong by the late great Warren Zevon. How cool is that?

Taking Larry Bird to the Hole

I thought I was a sports fan because I sometimes watch SportsCenter back to back. This guy is hard core:

Larry Bird Inspires Man's Longer Jail Term

OKLAHOMA CITY - A man got a prison term longer than prosecutors and defense attorneys had agreed to — all because of Celtics great Larry Bird.

The lawyers reached a plea agreement Tuesday for a 30-year term for a man accused of shooting with an intent to kill and robbery. But Eric James Torpy wanted his prison term to match Bird's jersey number 33.

"He said if he was going to go down, he was going to go down in Larry Bird's jersey," Oklahoma County District Judge Ray Elliott said Wednesday. "We accommodated his request and he was just as happy as he could be.

"I've never seen anything like this in 26 years in the courthouse. But, I know the DA is happy about it."

Bird was one of my faves too,though I was also a big fan of Robert Parish, a former Celtic great and a teammate of Bird. Since Eric James Torpy is already doing a stretch in honor of Bird's jersey, if I were being sentenced I guess I'd have to ask to do Parish's number.

Any Celtic or hoops fans out there who remember what Chief's number was?

Ask an Expert: The Bird Flew

The other day I was reading on Yahoo! news about the Bird Flu because it killed a guy in Thailand: here's what the article said:
Concern about the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu centers on scientists' fears that it may mutate into a form that passes easily among humans, sparking a pandemic that may kill millions.

Ok, that's plenty scary. I don't know what a "pandemic" is, but it's very close in spelling to the word "epidemic" and even closer to the words "that may kill millions". The article definitely had my attention. Here's the next paragraph:

Possible clusters of bird flu among members of one family in Indonesia have raised concern among health experts that this feared mutation may be happening.

Ok, I found that part terrifying, because if there's going to be a terrifying pandemic launched by some family, some horribly infectious strain of bacteria or virus that cuts down people like a knife through butter, I have no doubt that the god damned thing will get its start in The Teen's room. I don't even breathe when I walk past her room for fear that some year-old poptart and a forgotten science experiment have somehow bonded into a deadly vapor heretofore unknown.

My secret fear is that The Teen's room will soon go through one of those cosmic accidents that you read about in comic books. You know, the two and a half tons of clothing, make-up, junk food, cd's and techno-gizmos will have achieved some sort of critical mass and then get struck by lightning just as the Teen spills the critical ingredient, nail polish, onto exactly the right spot thus begetting some horrendous clutter monster that only kryptonite or Will Smith can dispatch.

We recently rented a bagfull of movies from Blockbuster. Three movies went into The Teen's room, but only two came out. I'm serious, the third one disappeared from the face of the earth. The monster stirs...

So, having seen her room, AND the younger one's room, which is equally funky and twice as gross, let me just apologize now for being the family that will launch the Avian Flu, or the clutter monster, whichever comes first.

Ain't She Special?

I need to start by thanking Mrs. Idiot for all the kind things she said. Actually, I can only assume she said nice things 'cause I kinda drifted off at the end.

Then, I want to thank those people who left her nice comments. That was the Mrs's first blogging adventure and I hope she'll come back for more.

Mrs. Idiot Goes to Washington

Well, it had to happen sooner or later, a guest blog from the Mrs. Idiot. I tend to interrupt and talk over Mr. Idiot in normal conversation and at parties, so this is just the natural progression of things, I guess. I had to ask permission, because, knowing I tend to ask forgiveness rather than permission usually, the Idiot has high security on the blog access. But, he graciously has agreed to give over the soapbox because I just got home from Washington D.C. and have several thoughts to share. I went for a seminar for tax attorneys, which you might think would not produce any chuckle-worthy moments, but you'd be wrong. Random musings of the Idiot's idiot wife, in chronological order:

1. I arrived the same day as the Million More March. I discovered this when I walked out of my hotel, right down the street from the Capitol. It was readily and immediately apparent. I was the only white girl for miles, or at least many blocks. It was a million black muslims and one white catholic girl milling about. I began singing the "One of these things just doesn't belong" song from Sesame Street in my head to calm the extreme self-consciousness, but I suspect my smile and casual, breezy strolling style (trying for a certain "look, I could have been raised in the ghetto too" jauntiness) looked more like full rigor had set in and I was still trying to move muscles despite that. I made the quick calculation to get dinner somewhere close, to go, and disappear back into the white suburban enclave of my hotel room. I suspect I amused many a person with my jaunty rigor style and someone is probably off blogging right now about the zombie white girl.

2. Although I don't need to hit 100 in my lifetime, I did go to a bar. It was a regular looking microbrewery with sports on TV, The Capitol City Cafe---housed in the former main Post Office or something like that-- but it was manned by Washington wannabes. I asked for something "like a Sam Adams Light" and with total horror and snobbery, the bartender says "I don't even know what that is". Right. So I said "ok, that means something that is the opposite of Guinness" (I know, I know, Mr. Idiot bravely puts up with my terrible beer taste) and he brought me an Apricot Wheat Beer. Which was terrific for those of us who drink beer but don't really like it--kinda like a Zima with a pinch of Orange Schnapps. Mmmmmm!

I then put in my dinner order (way too much food but I was going back to white island and didn't want to venture out again, so felt like I was getting supplies) and waited. That is where the strangeness came in. The bartender started talking about what he did in his off hours with the patron next to me. You know how in Hollywood every bartender or barista is an actor? I think the Washington bartenders want to be pundits. This guys spends more than 2 hours each morning reading all the papers--all of which papers I'm not sure, but all of them, whichever mattered. Then he reads Internet stuff then the TV. Why, why, why??? is what I was thinking in my head and then he said "and it was awesome, in the 2004 election? I called it down to the .5% difference. I got each state right, except one or two, but I got it, man, I called it." He then talked about his research which included going to Irish betting sites where one can bet on the US presidential election. So, I says "did you bet then? if you were so certain?" He glared at me and said, "No, but I will next time." He glared at me a little more and then ignored me as a clear example of the hayseeds who live outside the Beltway who deserve nothing except to be shot.

3. My new favorite show is Inked on the Discovery Channel. Not to be confused with Miami Ink, this is the one with Pink's fiancee, Carey Hart (not to be confused with Corey Hart) and some other guy who own a tattoo parlor in the Vegas Hard Rock. I stayed in bed for a good portion of Sunday morning watching bad TV (guilty pleasure!) and saw several episodes in a row. I love it because it shows that everyone works with idiots and blowhards, and some are way more tattoo'd than the ones I work with. And it shows that really really drunk people in Vegas have straaaaannnnngggggeeee ideas.

4. Ok, this is getting long, I fear the Idiot is going to complain, so I'll hurry along. Sunday I walked the Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument and giggled several times thinking of a recent conversation with the Teen. As an aside--while walking the Mall the day after the March, I doubt that a million people showed up, but a million empty Aquafina bottles sure did. Anyway, the Teen is going to Washington for her 8th grade trip and in bringing me the forms and telling her dad and I about the trip, she said she would need extra money because they were going to the "mall" and she might find a cool shirt or something to buy. We should probably be ashamed that our otherwise extremely bright Teen thinks the Mall is a mall, but it is too funny to feel too bad about. There are so many years of future therapy racking up already by our parenting skills, no doubt, this can't be more than one or two additional sessions.

5. Washingtonians think wayyyyy too highly of themselves. I disliked their self-importance immensely. Ok, I was dealing with fellow lawyers, who tend to be tools as we all know, but this bunch was extra special. They seemed to think, not by virtue of any individual beauty or brains, but simply by virtue of living in Washington that they were to be congratulated, that they were better than the rest of us and generally, were some sort of higher beings. The women and men I came across were totally prissy and uptight neurotics--and this is coming from a recovering prissy and uptight neurotic (I mean, I am doing this "in chronological order")---they wore slacks and suit coats or full suits to the seminar. I always thought a seminar was the same as Casual Friday. Back in Cincinnati, it would have been a mix of casual, business casual and the oddball suit, and here in New Hampshire there is a lot of flannel at seminars---really, I mean it, there aren't a ton of attorneys up here and the ones here haven't received the manual yet on how to dress like an attorney (Rule #1 being No Flannel), but these people were so totally impressed with themselves in their khaki slacks, loafers and gold-buttoned navy sport jackets, I couldn't believe it. Smug bastards---I think we should just get rid of this Beltway, wherever it is and make them mingle with the rest of us and our pedestrian Sam Adams Light tastebuds and Levi's and see how they cope. Blech to them.

6. I have learned that I am currently without a culture. I'm not quite from the Midwest anymore and not yet from the Northeast, so stuck somewhere in between--like Tom Hanks in The Terminal (it may, in fact, be nothing like that, as I haven't seen the movie, but it seems like it could be like that) I've taken on some disturbing New England qualities: I started almost every conversation with something about the Red Sox and I was HOT in DC when all indicators (other tourists, the Million More, the thermometer etc) said it was chilly. I had to put the hotel room temp at 55 and snuggle under the duvet in order to sleep---simulating home conditions best I could. I considered it might be early onset menopause, but New England onset is more likely. Also, I was not overly chit-chatty--this being totally against my Midwestern roots. Mr. Idiot has blossomed back here into the true curmudgeon he was born to be (in flannel), but I thought I had withstood the appeal of not even trying to be polite. Not so, it turns out. I even wore my iPod in the airport to AVOID conversation. That has never happened before and I think I may have lost my membership in the Midwest club for doing so. I'll continue to fight it, but there may come a day when I am as bad of a driver as any other New Englander.

7. And finally, the most important thing I realized this weekend, is that I talk to my husband A LOT. He used to complain about it all the time and shoot me looks that said "are you STILL talking?" but had given that up in recent years because the Younger One talks way more than I do and we've apparently just beaten him mute on the subject. So I had forgotten how much I jabber on to him every day. I started almost every other sentence this trip with "I was telling my husband...." or "I was saying to my husband...." and I realized, "wow, I talk A LOT and I talk to him A LOT" because I was also thinking all the time--Oh, I wish the Idiot was here so I could tell him about this or that or the other. I only called him 4 times the first day (and once was just for reassurance in the sea of muslims--he was with me when I was afraid of some Lutherans up in Wisconsin one time---I had just seen "Children of the Corn" and it seemed rational to be fearful at the time---so knew he could talk me through it) then once a day (or so) after that. But, props to the man for pretending to listen most of the time!

The Idiot Relief Telethon

A big thank you goes out to all the people who expressed concern when they saw on the news that the state of New Hampshire is flooded. In fact, there were parts of the state that were really badly damaged, but here in Idiotville we remained largely unscathed.


This is a picture of people I don't know
paddling around a flooded town not in
New Hampshire, but it seemed like a
story that is at least remotely related
to flooding should have a picture like this.

Having seen Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky flood, and now having seen New Hampshire flood, I have to applaud whoever it was that handled Hurricane Katrina's public relations work, because there's sheer genius at work. I mean, the City of New Orleans is not only below sea level, it's in a part of the world known for hurricanes. (Isn't the drink of choice at Mardi Gras actually named a "hurricane"?). Despite all this, instead of seeing the flooding of New Orleans as a big case of "yeah, I saw that coming", America, including the Idiot fambly, opened their collective wallets and gave and gave and gave. There are still little jars at a number of local establishments where we can drop in change for the victims of Katrina, and I read in the paper today that a whole slew of slightly aged rock stars have a benefit album in the works which won't be released until November! I think that the key to all of this is threefold:

1) FEMA et al. The government dragged its heels in crisis and the average citizen, appalled, did a little more.
2) It's New Orleans. Yeah, uh, something about guilt...Mardi Gras, beads, uh, the details are foggy....
3) The Cool Name. Our recent flooding was caused by two solid weeks of heavy rain. (Yes, it started raining right after the Red Sox got knocked out of the playoffs). I mean, I'll give to people called "Katrina Victims," who the heck is gonna give to "Victims of Two Weeks of Heavy Rain" or "Those Poor Wet People in New Hampshire"?

So, with none of those three things going for us here in the Granite State, I'm not holding out much hope that there will be an All-Star Benefit Concert for us anytime soon. Don't get me wrong, this is not a case of flooding envy or sour grapes: I don't feel left out, and in fact, if Bob Geldof or Elton John is reading this, I think we should shift our attention to the victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake in Kashmir. In USA Today today, the same paper that told me about the planned Katrina benefit album, I read that horrendous weather is causing big problems with the rescue efforts in Pakistan, and thus they can't even begin to estimate the number of casualties over there.

While I am as always thinking globally, I try to act locally, just like the bumper stickers tell me to, and as such, I resolved to hold my own little flood relief telethon here at Chez Idiot. That's right, I watched a LOT of television this weekend. Saturday was an awesome day of college football which would have been even better if Notre Dame and Penn State had won their games. Sunday was of course pro football day, which was tragically interrupted for a couple of hours when the power went out because of the wind, rain, plague of locusts etc. It would have been better if the Patriots had won, but hey, into each life some rain must fall. At the end of the telethon weekend I really didn't feel the relief I was expecting, more I just felt a little drunk from all the beer I consumed, and depressed that the weekend was over.

So there you have it. The Idiots are all well and fine and the state is recovering. Should you want to donate to my Relief Telethon, I'll gladly accept as I'll probably have one every weekend until the Superbowl and I drank most of my beer last weekend. To this end, I've put a link on the right hand side of the page that says "Make a Donation," but you should know that that money goes straight to me and will probably not ever be used for anything charitable, unless you consider sedating me with Sam Adams to be a work of charity. (Friends of Mrs. Idiot tend to donate to that cause heavily).

Further Multi-Culturalism

As y'all can well imagine, my thirst for knowledge is unquenchable, so when one of my relatives recently moved to China, I immediately saw it as an opportunity to learn about that foreign culture. Below you'll find actual excerpts from actual e-mails I actually traded yesterday with this relative, who I'll call LeRoy.
As you will see, and as you might have surmised from my exploration of foreign languages in yesterday's posting, I am all about learning the important things that the world has to offer.

Idiot: Do the toilets flush backwards over there?

LeRoy: Toilets? You have traveled wide grasshopper....

Idiot: Ok, your response cost me a whole mouthful of Dunkin Donuts coffee, possibly a computer keyboard, and thanks to all the people who were here when Vesuvius erupted, a big chunk of my dignity.

LeRoy: You wouldn't be laughing if you were trying to take a dump over here....

Which was a response so perfect I'm still laughing about it. Thank you LeRoy. Hang in there, I'm saving up to have an American Standard sent over ASAP.

Of Dungarees and Sunday Monkees

This morning I was listening to the radio and Ben Harper's remake of the Beatles song Michelle came on. You know the song: "Michelle, ma belle, ce sont tres mots qui vont tres bien ensemble.."
Apparently no one clued Ben Harper into what the Beatles actually say there, because he sings: "Sunday Monkey Vault Tree Been en Song". Go listen to it, I'm not kidding.

That got me to thinking about how fortunate I am to be multi-lingual. In addition to a smattering of French, I speak English, Jive and all of the known dialects of Yankee. (I also have an excellent command of Hip-Hop and have mastered Spanish to the point where I can tell you what almost everything on the Taco Bell menu is).

I think my love of languages comes from my mother, that sainted lady who taught me both English and Yankee. She was down here visiting the other day, and was talking about a pair of "dungarees" when I realized that my kids had no idea what she was talking about. One of them knew that dungarees were pants, but the other was sure that only cowboys wear them. We straightened the kids out- "dungaree" is simply Yankee for "jeans"- but it did my heart good to see that my kids are growing up in a home where multiple languages weave themselves through the fabric of our lives.

It was then that I realized how daunting it must be to come to New England. My wife, a native Midwesterner, had to adjust to a new climate, a new region, and most of all, a new language. Most people assume that we North Easterners just mess up our R's and mispronounce words that end in vowels, but it's far more complex than that. Allow me to flex my redneck and show off some Maine-iac:

"I's out fishin' yistday when the wind breezed up sumpin fierce. Yessah, by jaysus, I's afeared I's in an awful gaum, cause it looked like we's in for a hum-dingah of a blow, but god-dammah if I din't make it to shore. Course I'd took the beatah fishin' steada the good cah and course it din't have a skrid of gas, so I had to hump it to the mahket, and it was stahtin' to get wicked nipply out theyah in the puckabrush. Yessah, you know that stoah, run by that jo-jeezly son of a hoah Pinkett? I guess ta hell he's a pieceawork, jeezum-crow, I coulda cahved a bettah kid outuva banana. Anyhow, it was gettin nippy out theyah in the williwacks, so I's mighty glad to see that stoah, cause ain't nuthin a pissah like havin to walk in the cold. Well, Pinkett had a stoah full of leafpeepahs, and two uvum said they'd take me upta the cah cause they liked to heah me tawk. So on the way back to the cah, I tell's 'em a stretcher, and they's a couple of drybone old biddies from away, and I git them a howlin bout somethinorutha that's happened to me the Sadday last, and I guess probly they weren't too used to drivin' and laughin' all at the same cause I'll be god-dammed if they din't catch their christly tiya on the shoulder and get threaded off into the woods and I hadda hump it back to my cah and tow them stupid sumbitches outta the friggin ditch."

So, leaf peepers, flatlanders, Sunday Monkeys and people from away beware: In Yankee, "Ayuh" means both "yes" and "Of course, you stupid sumbitch."

New Cabinet Position

Readers with very long memories might remember that I'm running for king of the world.
Yes, I know, it's been a while since I've done any campaign work. It's time I get back to work.

Picking my cabinet before the election is key to my campaign because I feel it's important that y'all see exactly what you'll be getting. I've been mulling my options lately, and thought I would update you.

Keith Richards
Secretary of Education


When last we left the campaign, I had definitively named Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards to be my Secretary of Edumacation, because he's every bit as qualified as that incredibly unqualified woman that Bush picked.

ok. that's as far as I got.

Now, I've got a new one:

Juan Gonzalez
Secretary of Unbefrickinleavable


Did you hear about this guy's season? He had ONE at bat. ONE! The man went to the plate, hit the ball and then injured himself running to first! He never made it back after that. The best part is that they cleared out his locker in the middle of August, so he didn't even have to stand around and pretend he was working like the rest of us do. No, actually that's the second best part. The best part is that he earned $600,000 for that one at bat. I'm not kidding. (USA TODAY).

So. I figure that if he can pull that off, he's got to have a place in my cabinet. Whenever the media gets bored with their normal beat and starts looking to take shots at my cushy gig as King, I'll send old Juan out to do something unbefrickinleavable and it will buy me a week or two of peace, depending on the magnitude of Secretary Gonzalez's misadventure.

So that's as far as I got, the King needs a nap. Secretary Richards will take your questions from here.

Saturday I'm Running Wild....

Last night, Mrs. Idiot and I went to see David Gray perform at the Agganis Center in Boston. It was an awesome concert.

Several years ago, my friend Tito said I should listen to David Gray. A few days later, I happened to be wandering around in a music store killing time, waiting for Mrs. Idiot or The Teen to finish shopping, and I happened to remember Tito's suggestion. I bought White Ladder, and the rest is history. (If you don't have this album, click on the picture and buy it. It's one of my all-time favorites).


Tito had mentioned that David Gray is "spastic" in concert. "He's like a spaz, you know?" he said. English is not Tito's first language, (it's not even his third language), so I nodded and smiled like I do when I don't understand what someone is saying.

Now I know.

In the middle of the first song, Mrs. Idiot leaned over and said "OOOooh Look! He's got a big roly-poly head!" which is exactly how one should correctly describe David Gray's stage presence: he has a big roly-poly head and it waggles and wobbles all over the place when he'd not using it to sing. Other moves he busts include the "jimmy leg" which bounces up and down when he's playing piano and guitar, and the "I'm four years old and almost have rhythm" dance, which he breaks into at odd moments.

In short, the man is a complete spaz on stage, but his songs are terrific, his voice is strong and soulfull and his musicianship is excellent. Tito pretty much nailed it, despite the language barriers.

In another happy note, he closed the show with his biggest song, Babylon, which we had heard that he refuses to play in concert. Either he's made peace with the song, or we were such an appreciative crowd he decided to give us a treat.

The Setlist:
1. Nos da Cariad
2. Please Forgive Me
3. The One I Love
4. Lately
5. Slow Motion
6. Now & Always
7. Sail Away
8. This Year's Love
9. Long Distance Call
10. Hospital Food
11. Alibi
12. Disappearing World
13. Freedom
______________________
14. Silver Lining
15. The Other Side
16. Baltimore
17. Aint No Love
18. Babylon

Bar #13

In all the excitement, I forgot.
Last week after the Sox game, we went to bar #13 in my quest to reach 100 before I die.

13. Longhorn Steakhouse, Boston
Yes, I know it's a restaurant, but we stood in the bar part and didn't eat, ok?

While we were in there, a phalanx of Boston cops dressed in riot gear marched by. (Boston had deployed over 800 policemen to keep the peace during the NY series).


It was pretty awesome to see them march by in formation like that, though kinda surreal to see them marching in an American street.

Holy Crap! I got tagged!

I just got tagged by the lovely goddess Hanni.

In accordance with the rules of my parole, here's what I have to do:

THE RULES
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same.

In what may be the coolest bit of coincidence in the history of the world, here is the fifth sentence from my 23rd post:

After two weeks of occasional mulling, which is, I might add, a lot more mulling than I've heretofore done on any topic, I've decided to throw my hat into the ring and run for the position of King of the World.

(I can't believe it took me only 22 posts to think of that).
I'm off to do some tagging of the following peoples: Don't Miss, Marti, Badaunt, Jodes, and 3T

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend

Even the skies are sorry to see the 2005 season end for the Red Sox.








Speaking for myself as a life-long Red Sox fan, I'm just pleased that they made it to the playoffs. The pitching staff was beset by injury, plague, and even a baseball off the noggin of Matt Clement. (Mike Timlin is one of the few people in America to have made more appearances than Ben Stiller). It was a fun season to watch and it will be interesting to see who comes back next year.

So, with that said. Watch out next year, and Go ( insert name of anyone who beats the F$#@@ Yankees)!

Amusing Internet Videos

The other night I tried to explain to a friend about the basketball video, you know, the one where the kid runs out of the bleachers and gets smacked in the head with a basketball.

Then, another night, Mrs. Idiot and I were telling some other chums about the Lightning Bolt video. (You'll need sound to hear the guy yelling "Lightning Bolt!") Then we had to tell them about the Star Wars Kid.

Since I'm an idiot, I assume I'm the last one to find out about stuff, so I'm always especially tickled when that's not the case. Just in case tou haven't seen some of these, here are a few videos that made me laugh out loud.

Anne Heche Interview (you REALLY need the sound on for this one).

Cat Fan

Kitty Flip

Bad Skating

Pet of the Week (you should have the sound on for this one).

Birthday Surprise (You REALLY need the sound for this one)

Matt Lawton, This Year's Goat

You read it here first. Matt Lawton of the New York Yankees will be this year's Bill Buckner, this year's Steve Bartman, this year's goat. When he is, and the Red Sox sail into their second consecutive World Series, y'all will have to come back here and thank me for my efforts.

Regular readers of this space may recall that way back in July, one of my fabulous relatives was kind enough to take me to watch the Yankees play the Red Sox. Well, I've just promoted that same dude to the prestigious title of The Idiot's Favorite Relative, because last weekend he took me again. (Yes in fact, I am that easy).

This was the third to last game of the season, against the Yankees, and his seats are right behind the Yankee dugout. (Family members still vying for the 2005 favorite relative award take note).

Since I still have nightmares thinking about that prison yard stare that Gary Sheffield gave me in July, I did no heckling, except to tell Yankee pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre that he needed a bigger wang. (Uh, the Yankees started 6'3" pitcher Chien Ming Wang, who lost). The Sox won, of course, and won again on Sunday, and as a result are one of the eight teams for whom the season didn't end. I behaved myself and we all returned home without incident and without having any run-ins with the 867 riot police that Boston brought out for the games. (Actually, the Yankee fan in our midst DID step in a big pile of horse shit as we were leaving the game, left by one of Boston's mounted police, so that's kind of a run-in, but more correctly it's just plain old poetic justice).

Now, on to Matt Lawton.
As I said, these seats are RIGHT BEHIND THE DUGOUT. When we buy beer, which I feel is a good thing to do at ball games, we need a place to put them, and the roof of the dugout, which is right in front of us, seems like a great place. Sadly, Fenway is trying to be "family friendly" and has hired a little googly-eyed man to come over every once in a while to tell us to keep our beers off the dugout. Matt Lawton, Yankee benchwarmer, (who's hitting a robust .128 since joining them), thought he would be helpful and called little guy over a few times when he noticed that our beers had made it back onto the roof. I'm not kidding. This guy is a major leaguer, playing in one of the most exciting season ending series in the history of baseball and he's not paying any attention to the game at all- he's looking over the roof every couple of outs to see what we're doing. His interest in the beer free roof was, interestingly, non-partisan, as the guy next to me was all decked out in Yankee apparel, so it was clear that Lawton is a hater of all beers, not just Red Sox brews.

Since haters never prosper, and since Lawton is a hater, and a beer hater at that, I'm certain that he's due for some horrendous karmic event. See, my small part of bringing glory to the Sox.

Now, 162 games later, the season really begins.