April 2007

Morning Workout.

I am working out as I type. Can you hear me panting and sweating and grunting? That’s what I’m doing, as the sweat falls and the calories burn. I’m sitting on the exercise bike and just pedaling and pedaling and pedaling.

I had to do something to make this interesting. Normally I’d be out on my road bike by this time of the year, enjoying the smell of the flowers and watching the grass turn green, as I ride along country roads with the sun in my eyes and the wind at my back. But you see, my road bike does not have skiis (I opted out of that accessory), and since the weather is whacked out and I don’t have a boat to pull me, I can’t water ski or snow ski on my bike so I’m stuck on the exercise bike in the cellar.

It’s not that I don’t like my exercise bike. I like it very much. The problem is, the only thing I have to look at while riding this bike is the clock. And painted cinder block walls. And that can be very boring. I sit there waiting for the clock to advance to the point where I can say, “I’m done!”.

I’ve tried listening to the iPod while working out, but the time thing still creeps into my head. I think, “This song is four minutes long. In five songs it’ll be 20 minutes. Perhaps that’s long enough.”

So here I am, trying to type and surf while working out. It’s not an easy thing to do, but at least it makes the ride more interesting.

1982 Eye Candy.

Looking through some old TV themes on YouTube, I was reminded of a hottie from my teen years.

Does anyone remember Michael Lembeck from “One Day At A Time”?

[Lembeck]

Wrong.

I was delighted to wake up this morning and find that it hadn’t snowed overnight. We had a lot of rain and some sleet but none of the white stuff.

There was no need for an Excalibur moment this morning. I have calmed down.

I really don’t know why meteorologists bother trying to predict the weather. Just for fun, I recorded their forecast for the next week. Today it was suppose to be sunny and 55 degrees. It’s pouring rain at 36 degrees.

It’s obvious that you can’t fool Mother Nature. She knows best.

In other news, I started messing around with Podcasting today. I enjoyed the experience and will be doing it again in the future. I didn’t plan any of the content and just rambled and threw on a new and old dance track. If you want to listen to me ramble, you can subscribe here.

Thank You.

It was announced today by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the Army tours in Iraq have been extended by three months. Anything that can be said about this has already been said by bloggers much more versed in the subject than I, so this is all I can say:

[Thank You]

~~~

Rosie O’Donnell has recently started doing a videoblog on her site. It’s quite interesting to hear what she has to say when she’s not being tempered by the influences of “The View”.

I have been a Rosie O’Donnell fan since her Star Search days. I have always loved her comedy, it’s great to see someone else that has as much useless crap as I do in her head (tv and movie trivia, etc.) and I’ve always been amazed at the amount of support and energy she puts into her charities.

Since she has substantially ramped up her personal views, observations and opinions on current world affairs since joining “The View”, my admiration for her has grown tenfold. I admire her courage to ask the questions that few have the balls to ask and I’m in awe of the amount of passion that she has in her convictions. I may not agree with her 100% on everything (usually 95-99% of time, quite honestly), but you can’t help but appreciate the compassion of her arguments.

Take a peek at her videoblogs where she answers questions from her blog readers. It’s very interesting.

Cheering Up.

The street date for “The Secrets Of Isis” has been announced. Ladies and gentlemen, arm your credit cards for a July 24, 2007 purchase! w00t!

“The Secrets of Isis” is my most favorite of the live-action superhero shows. And with Andy Mangels at the helm of the special features on the DVD set, I just know this is going to rock. Andy appeared on the Wonder Woman DVD special features as well. I’ve chatted with him on a number of occasions and he is a great guy. We have a lot of common interests.

Enough!

I think I am going to go postal. I am ready to lose my mind. I am ready to grab the closest thing I can find that resembles Excalibur and run out into the lawn and begin screaming at the sun. “Why are you doing this? Why can’t people see this isn’t right? Why? Why? Why? Why?”

The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for this area. It is in effect until tomorrow morning. We will see lots of rain, sleet and snow before all is said and done.

I am so sick of this whacked out weather that I am ready to seriously lose my mind and not in a funny ha ha sort of way. Are they fucking kidding me? Snow? Lots of snow? On April 12?

I don’t give a flying fuck. I’m not plowing the driveway. I’m not shoveling one single, solitary flake of it. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I’ve had it. I’m done with it.

And if I hear one moron utter something like, “Where’s this global warming you liberals keep chirping about?”, they will lose their head and it will not be done in a pretty matter.

And while I’m at it, if I get one more spam comment on this blog that incoherently screeches about the virtues of credit cards I am going to lose my mind. I will download viruses and I will just start e-mailing all over creation at these idiots until they plead and beg for mercy.

And since I’m all fired up, if I hear one more newsbrief about Imus’ idiotic racial comments I am going to rip the knobs off the nearest radio and mail them somewhere important. Between clips of Elisabeth from The View saying he should get a “time out” (someone should give the American public a reprive from her stupidity) to those interviewed on the street who obviously have to briefed as to who Imus even is, it’s enough to make a person gag. The man is an idiot and said some idiotic things. Get over it. (And yes, I would feel the exact same way if he said similarly spirited remarks about gays.) If you don’t like him, change the channel. You don’t even have to walk to the television and turn the knob, just sit on your lazy ass and click the remote. They tout “As a broadcaster, he should be ‘responsible’.” Please. Someone. Get. A. Life. He can say what he wants. His job is to say what he wants. Don’t like it, change the channel. I keep changing the channel trying to escape the coverage of his comments but it’s everywhere. At least Imus is confined to one network.

Where’s Don Knotts and his magic remote? I want to be in black and white. I want to go to Pleasantville. I want a malt with Wally Cleaver. I’m sick of this static we call the present.

Blog Maintenance.

I’ve updated my blogroll over there in the right column of my blog pages. Now my blogroll is up to date and if I’ve forgotten any that I read then I guess I’ll have to add them too. I’ve also changed my picture just for the heck of it. I just thought I’d throw that out there.

I’ve adopted this quasi-superhero sounding screenname of jp2.0 for various sign-ons I have scattered about the web. It makes me feel all techy. I guess I needed a change of pace or something.

I did have someone recently ask me about “Owl”, which usually appears up in the address bar of your web browser when you land on this site. He looks like this:

Owl

Owl has been with me since 1990 when I was using Microsoft Windows/386 (that would be Windows 2.1, golly I’m old). He represented a maintenance program on an old IBM PS/2 and I thought he looked pretty groovy, so I copied him and brought him along for the ride with this geek. I used to drop him on the desktop of any computer I worked on so I’ve spread some owl love back in my day. I also put him somewhere on every website I maintain (including the ones I get paid for). He appreciates the gesture.

Drag-A-Long.

A couple of years ago I noticed that a certain number of business professionals had migrated from the traditional briefcase or laptop case over to something you would normally see in a busy airport: luggage with wheels. I found this to be somewhat surprising, considering that technology is suppose to be leading us toward an increasingly paperless society.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed that the luggage with wheels has become more prevalent, this time on my college campus. One of my classes is in a large lecture hall, and there is often a “crunch time” where there’s a traffic jam at the entrance to the hall as students fight to get their body and tow-behind trailers jammed through the doorway.

I’m starting to think that this is indicative of a lazy society.

I can’t think of one instance where I’d need to drag my luggage throughout the entire campus. Yes, I sport the always trendy backpack, but even if I were to carry all of my books for all of my classes at one time I wouldn’t need to pack everything in a suitcase. I simply don’t have that much crap to take to class.

When did it become acceptable to haul luggage everywhere? Are they related to the baby buggy terror mobiles? Are people becoming so lazy that they can’t carry their bag and they opt to drag it instead? I’m thinking that this is the case.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. A while back I mentioned that I was seeing ads for a drug that makes going the bathroom easier. (“It doesn’t make you go, but it does make it more comfortable”.) The number of ads for this product has increased and a competing drug company has seen the dollar signs and are now advertising their version of the same thing. (If I see a lunesta butterfly fly out someone’s ass, I’m changing the channel permanently.) You can’t watch TV Land or Lifetime without being reminded that going the bathroom the way nature had intended, and we humans have been doing for a couple of thousand of years, is now wrong and the experience should be no more difficult than pushing rose petals out your butt. I don’t know why we just don’t go all the way and buy food that we simply flush down the toilet. It takes a lot of effort to chew, you’d save a ton of calories and you wouldn’t have all that effort of squatting or sitting down and pushing.

So if going the bathroom is hard then hauling your papers or books to the office or class must be damn near impossible without a wheeled assist.

Next thing you know they’ll tell us that it takes too much effort to suck on a cough drop or something and that we need something that melts on our tongue.

Meatloaf.




Meatloaf.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

After a successful presentation at school tonight (I got an “A”), Earl and I decided we’d splurge on a snack. Ice cream? Candy bar? Cookies? No, I did the sensible thing.

I made a meatloaf.