Killing Me Softly

I noticed on my toothpaste tube that there is an advisory (not a warning) that says don't swallow. Don't swallow the toothpaste. I find that disturbing.

I am also undoubtedly getting radiated by my cell phone and by convenience store microwave ovens. I cook with Teflon pans and I reheat food in Styrofoam containers.

I don't even want to think about all the gas fumes I've inhaled in my gas tank filling years and all the saccharin and red dye number 2 I've consumed in my iced tea and cake frosting consuming years.

Need I mention the second hand smoke I've inhaled in countless bars and restaurants and from relatives cigarettes? I used to love to sit on the floor at my grandparents' feet and watch the smoke curl from their cigarettes.

I had no idea I was flirting with death on a daily basis. Come on bird flu. Give me your best shot.

Penny Lane Very Strange - Part 2

Last month, I did a post questioning the nature of reality and consciousness. A couple of weeks ago, I did another post about some strange coincidences that have happened to me in the last couple of months. Most of those coincidences were in some way related to The Beatles.

As I mentioned before, my son and daughter-in-law gave me a copy of The Beatles The Biography by Bob Spitz for Christmas. I have the book on my nightstand. This morning as I was getting ready for work I thought, "Okay, if someone is trying to tell me something through this book, lets see what it might be."

I picked up the book, opened it to a random page (page 564 to be exact) and, I swear to you, this is what I saw:

Chapter 28

Into the Cosmic Consciousness

New Kid on the Block

There is a new music venue in Beaumont and, last night, it immediately became my favorite. We (me, Terry, Dan, Roger and Melissa) started our evening at the best Chinese restaurant in Beaumont, Great China. From there, we went to the Star Bar to see a little of Jack's (formerly Wang Chi) favorite local band Nine Station Drive.

Around 11:30, we decided to go to The Back Room and see The Chris LeBlanc Band. The Back Room is a small club inside of Cactus Canyon. You can tell from the pictures that intimate is an understatement. The sound system is fantastic and the arrangement of the tables downstairs and rail seating on the balcony upstairs makes for an up close and personal music experience.

If you were anywhere else in Beaumont last night, you were in the wrong place. Chris plays a wide variety of music but his specialty is the blues. My favorite performance of the evening, however, was a cover of Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta love. It was an amazing rendition. Chris was joined onstage by Brent Coon (local attorney, music promoter, Image 6 guitarist) on backup vocals.

I have more pictures from the evening posted on Flickr (see the sidebar). Future shows at Cactus Canyon are Leon Russell on 3/9 and Little River Band on 3/30. I've seen both of them recently and they still put on fantastic shows. I don't know if they'll be in The Back Room or if they'll be in the front portion of Cactus Canyon in the larger room, but when we saw Styx at Cactus Canyon, the sound was excellent.

Check out Chris' website for future shows. He told us he'll be in Germany for most of March but if he is ever in your neck of the woods, do yourself a favor and get off the couch and go see him.

Jowling

This is a picture of my nephew Alec. He is jowling. Don't feel bad. I had never heard of it either. My sister sent me this picture because she was so proud that he made it onto the jowlers webite as one of the top jowlers.

According to Terry, true jowling takes great skill and finesse. You must relax your face muscles as much as possible, let your jaw go slack and shake like hell. She adds, from personal experience, a word of caution to lady jowlers, "Remove earrings before attempting to jowl, especially the large one or ones with pointy things. You could put out an eye or send one flying and put out someone else's eye. Yeah, it hurts like hell!"

I had no idea this was going on. I can't imagine how they can turn their heads that fast. Below is a picture of Alec when he isn't jowling.

Admit it. You're trying to do it right now, aren't you?

Baiting God

In my never ending search for a lovah-man, I have decided to try to create some good-bad karma by complaining incessantly about the allegedly wonderful men currently in my friends' lives in the hopes that God will say, "Fine, Laurie. Let's see how you act with a wonderful, romantic, loving man of your own. Let's just see how you like that!"

So, off we go...

Men are dirty, good-for-nothing, rotten bastards. They can't be trusted. Sure they're all nice and sweet at first but just wait a while. He put rose petals in your bath water you say? Hasn't he ever heard of spider mites?! Aphids?! Sawflies?! Let's see if one dose of Diflucan can clear THAT up. Yeah, that's right. I said it. I bet he's married. Yeah, lousy lying skunk rat. He has a great job, my big white ass. It's all lies. Lies I tell you.

How was that?

Boudreaux Makes a Deal

Received by e-mail from Jen at Looking for Dave:

Boudreaux was driving down the street in Breaux Bridge in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place.

Looking up toward heaven, he said "Lord, take some pity on me. If you find me a parkin' place, I'll go to Mass every Sunday fo' de ress of my life and give up drinking beer and chasin' wimmen."

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.

Boudeaux looked up again, and said, "Nevermin', I foun' one."

More Guilty Pleasures

Last month, I posted some guilty pleasures. I have collected another gaggle of guilt.

Food and Drink
Starbucks Caramel Macchiato
Snickers
Mardi Gras King Cake
Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls
Monte Cristo sandwich (Battered and deep fried ham and cheese sandwich served with raspberry jam and french fries)

Music - Performers
Axl Rose
Slash
Tommy Lee
Beastie Boys
Wham
Boy George
Spandau Ballet
Meatloaf (the singer, not the food)
Dr. Hook
Captain and Tenille
Monkees
Hanson
Glen Campbell

Music - Songs
Muskrat Love
Who Let the Dogs Out?
These Boots Are Made For Walkin'
Harper Valley PTA

Video Games (based on cumulative hours of my life wasted)Tetris
Diner Dash
Civilization
Collapse
Sims (actually Sim anything)

At the Movies
Bad science fiction movies made before 1960
Kung Fu movies
1970’s cop movies
My Name is Nobody movies
Bruce Willis in Moonlighting
Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party
Bruce Willis in Blind Date
Tom Hanks in The Money Pit

Just Because...

Aieeeeeeeeee!!!

Several days ago I did a post with a poll question asking people how they say the word mayonnaise. Last night, as I was unloading groceries, a bottle of mi-nez (that's mayo to 23% of you) fell off the top rack of my refrigerator door and landed smack dab onto the tips of two of the toes on my left foot.

Luckily, it wasn't the glass jar of apple butter.

Unluckily, even though it was one of those new fangled plastic containers, it was full and hit those two toes at some kind of an angle that sent me into a cussing fit that would have embarrassed Andrew Dice Clay. I haven't cussed like that since Constantine got kicked off of American Idol last year.

First, I do a post about mayonnaise, then a container of mayonnaise jumps off the refrigerator door and smacks me on my toes. My life is just one big weird-ass, cosmic coincidence.

Yahoo!

I receive an e-mail every day from the Yahoo! Daily Wire which sends links to interesting sites. Today's site is Needled and it's about tattoos. The picture were amazing.

I won't, I won't, the hell I won't...

I received a piece of spam e-mail today from Mincemeat Q. Gonad. What kind of idiot would open an e-mail from someone named Mincemeat Q. Gonad? The answer is the kind that would be me. I couldn't resist.

Surprisingly, Mincemeat wasn't selling Viagra. He was selling educational software. That Mr. Gonad is quite the clever fellow.

Just a Joke

Man walks into his bedroom with a sheep under his arm and says: "Darling, this is the pig I have sex with when you have a headache."

His wife is lying in bed and replies: "I think you'll find that's a sheep, you idiot."

The man says: "I think you'll find I wasn't talking to you."

The Un-Bomber

Several years ago, not long after 9/11, we had a bomb scare here in Beaumont. Some alert children saw what appeared to be a pipe bomb in an intersection and called the police who sent out the bomb squad and evacuated a neighborhood.

We monitored the progress from our offices all day, following the regular updates closely. A special terrorist bomb squad from Houston was even called in. As it turned out, the alleged pipe bombs weren't bombs at all. However, according to the evening news, to be certain it wasn't a hoax in preparation for an actual bomb attack, a full investigation was going to be mounted.

As I was watching the evening news, Cory came in from the construction job he worked at while attending college. As he was crossing the living room, he abruptly stopped and asked, "Where was that?" I told him the neighborhood and he asked, "What did they find?" I told him that they had found some sections of pipe with duct tape on both ends at an intersection near a school. He asked, "How long did they say the pipe sections were?" I said, "Eighteen inches."
He said, "I made those."

I said, "WHAT?!"

He said, "My boss told me to cut several eighteen inch sections of pipe and duct tape both ends so they could be put into some foundation forms at the construction site at the school where we're working. Some of them must have fallen out of the back of his truck when we went to lunch. He drives like a maniac."

I told him he should call the authorities and he said he would talk to his boss first. I'm not sure if he ever spoke to his boss but we never received a visit from the authorities.

So, now it can be told, Beaumont. My son was the Beaumont Un-bomber. Is there a statute of limitations on un-bombing?

New Poll

Blog Flux has created a poll tool that maps the results. This should be pretty interesting although the poll question I came up with isn't interesting at all. Off we go...

Happy 50th Birthday Dan!

We celebrated my brother-in-law Dan's 50th birthday last night. He and my sister Terry have been married for 23 years and dated for a couple of years before that so we go WAAAAYYYYY back.

Here are some pictures and I will be adding the whole lot to Flicker (click on the little picture box on the sidebar to your left).

Neal in Antarctica

I have added a new blog link to my sidebar. It's the blog of a guy who is living and working in Antarctica.

I hate cold weather and I would love nothing better than to live in the chaos that is New York City or Las Vegas or the French Quarter. However, the thought of chucking it all and working for a year or so in Antarctica has always fascinated me.

I hope Neal keeps his blog going. It's very new. Pop over there and give him some encouragement. It should be interesting reading.

Things that make you go: Holy Crap

This was on my stat counter Friday:

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Maryland, Gaithersburg, United States, 0 returning visits
Date: 20th January 2006
Time: 08:00:40
WebPage: No referring linksearch.msn.com/results.aspx?srch=105&FORM=AS5&q=new pictures of New Orleans


I have three questions:

• Why is someone at the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission doing an MSN search for “new pictures of New Orleans?”
• Shouldn’t the NUCLEAR (!?) Regulatory Commission have a better way to obtain the most recent pictures of New Orleans than by doing an MSN search?
• Will this post get my wires tapped and e-mails monitored?

It's not amazing at all...

Posters and magnets available at Art.com

Penny Lane is in My Ears and in My Eyes...Very Strange

Sometimes several coincidences occur in my life that make me stop and wonder what the meaning might be. Most of the time, I can't find a meaning and this is one of those times.

When I was about 12 years old, my mom’s step-sister and her son lived in a duplex in Beaumont. The people who lived next door had a daughter named Penny. I remember her name because, that summer, Penny Lane was a big Beatles hit. I also remember that she loved the Cowsills which I found odd. I never knew anyone who was obsessed with the Cowsills.

Many years later, I got a job in Beaumont and the building I worked in was in the same neighborhood where I remembered my aunt and Penny’s houses to be. I always wondered if I could find those two houses. I knew I would recognize them because my aunt’s house was a brick duplex and Penny’s house was a wood frame house with a little porch on the side facing my aunt’s house.

Several months ago, after working in this building off and on for the last twenty years, I was looking out of my fifth floor window and it hit me like a bolt of lightning. There were the houses. I had a direct view of them from my office window. I had always thought the houses were on Liberty or Laurel when they were actually on Broadway. I've had this office with this view for about three years and never noticed the houses until sometime late last summer.

When I got back to work after the evacuation for Hurricane Rita, I saw that a tree had fallen through the roof of Penny’s house. Sometime around Christmas, I watched as they finally hauled the tree away and this week they removed the blue tarp and repaired the roof.

Along with my revelation last summer that the houses were right outside my window, here are the other coincidences which really started piling up this week into one surreal moment:

1. For my birthday last September, my sister found an old Beatles poster we used to have hanging in our bedroom when we were teenagers and she had it framed and gave it to me as my birthday present.
2. For Christmas, Cory and Jamie gave me the two DVD set of the Concert for Bangladesh. I had been looking for it for years and I didn’t even know it had finally been released and Cory didn't know I had been looking for it.
3. Cory and Jamie also gave me the new Beatles biography for Christmas and this week I read a passage about Penny Lane (the actual street in Liverpool, not the song).
4. That same night, my cousin Zina sent me an e-mail telling me that one of the Cowsills died in New Orleans sometime during Hurricane Katrina and his body was found this week.
5. The next day, after reading the passage about Penny Lane, I came to work and as I watched the workers patch the roof, the song Penny Lane played on my satellite radio, which I had bought for myself for Christmas.

Penny Lane playing on the radio, as I watched the men work on the roof of Penny's house, after reading about Penny Lane the night before, was strange enough, but then I suddenly remembered Penny's fascination with the Cowsills. When I had received the e-mail the day before from my cousin, I hadn't thought of Penny. I was only thinking that it was another sad story from New Orleans.

Weird.

Why Won't It Work?

I loaned my electric stapler to a co-worker in need this afternoon.

Did you know that a manual stapler will not automatically staple paper when you shove the pages into it's mouth, no matter how long you hold them there?

How do you like your chocolate?

CNN story regarding New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin's chocolate remarks

Poster by Laurie Ransonette Anderson

Houston, We Have a Problem

My 14 year-old niece and I went to Houston this weekend to see my son and daughter-in-law. This was my first road trip to use my XM satellite radio and it worked great even without the antenna being installed on the outside of the car. While we were in Houston, we ate at Floyd’s Cajun Restaurant and at a Mexican restaurant in the Marque Center and both were delicious. I highly recommend the Bloody Mary at Floyd’s.

We also went to Ikea. I had never been to Ikea and loved it even though I got lost like a 5 year-old. Now I know how I’m going to furnish my fantasy waterfront downtown loft (kitchen, bathroom, the works) as soon as Beaumont builds some non-fantasy waterfront lofts.

The most exciting part of the trip was on the way home when I thought I was losing my brakes. Katie and I were driving down NASA Road 1 and, as I approached a stop light at a busy intersection, I began to apply my brakes and nothing happened. I kept pushing until we finally came to an abrupt stop about two feet from the car in front of us.

I didn’t say anything to Katie because I thought maybe it was my imagination. Exactly when is the right moment, I wondered, to alert your passenger that they are in imminent danger of death or, at the very least, a really bad airbag burn? I didn’t want to say anything too soon and freak her out. Plus, I’m really good at denial. Sometimes when the air-conditioning is going out at my house or in my car or if I’m beginning to get sick, I can briefly convince myself that it isn’t happening:

“It’s not hot…it’s not hot…the air-conditioner is working…yeah, it’s cool now…fuck, it’s broken.”

“I’m not getting sick…I’m not getting sick…my throat isn’t getting sore…yeah, I’m fine…fuck, I’m sick.”


“The brakes are fine…my seat is probably just a little further back…this is a new car so there can’t be anything wrong with the brakes…FFFFUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!


After a couple more stoplights, it became evident that there was a problem. Right when I was about to say something to Katie and pull over to the side of the road to decide my next move, I looked at my dashboard gauges and noticed a warning light. The good news is that there was nothing wrong with my brakes. I had simply been driving for about twenty minutes with my parking brake on. The bad news is I had been driving for about twenty minutes with my parking brake on.

The parking brake lever was barely pulled up, but it was enough to affect the feel of my brake pedal. When it’s pulled all the way up, my car doesn’t move at all. So, hopefully, it wasn’t engaged enough to do any damage to my car. As soon as I lowered the brake all the way, all was well.

That’s when I decided to tell Katie that, a few minutes earlier, I thought there was a distinct possibility that we would ram another car in the ass. She was glad I had kept that to myself.

Laurie's Back From Her Trip and All We Get Are These Lousy Japanese Inventions

(Received in e-mail from Tara)

Laurie Went Out of Town and All We Got Was This Lousy Cartoon

Magnets and posters available at Art.com

The Way We Were?

Tim's Nameless Kitchen

If you haven't been there lately, please pop over to Tim's Nameless Blog and read about day to day life in post Katrina New Orleans. He has posted pictures of his house which are heart breaking.

Silly me, as I read the post and looked at the pictures of the place he used to call home, I was thinking, "I wish he would have posted some before pictures so people could more deeply understand the extent of his loss." Then I realized that there probably aren't any before pictures. They were probably destroyed along with everything else that was left behind when Tim and his family evacuated.

Our government promises to rebuild the levee system in New Orleans back to the way it was. Obviously, that isn't enough.

Tim's Nameless Bedroom

They Hurtsssessss Our Feelingsses

I was watching a commercial for the Golden Globe awards which featured all the beautiful, talented, and charismatic actors and actresses and genius writers, directors and composers arriving at the festivities in all their finery. These people are what we used to call the In-Crowd back in the day.

Things might be different now, but, when I was in Junior High and High School, the drama club crowd was not exactly the cool group. There were a couple of exceptions, but mostly those guys seemed a little on the strange side. However, when these odd creatures mature and go out into the world, a lot of them become the people who are most admired and envied by a large portion of the population.

The same holds true for the band geeks and art class freaks that later become the Grammy winners and the toast of the wealthy artsy fartsy types. We should also note that the wealthy artsy fartsy types used to be the brains back in their school days and certainly suffered through some hard times at the hands of the popular kids.

I guess this is what Earl would call karma.

Never Tell a Woman She Can't Cook

(Received by e-mail from Poodles)

I'm So Far Behind

A couple of days ago I did a post complaining that my hands were cold and wishing someone would invent gloves that people could wear and still be able to type. Jennifer left a comment that the Japanese have already invented heated gloves which plug into your USB port.

Here are other interesting USB devices that I must have:

USB lava lamp

USB heated computer keyboard
USB heated gloves
USB heated slippers

USB drink chiller

USB pencil sharpener

USB snow globe
USB darts

In Laurie's Brain - Beautiful Laurie Haiku

Beautiful Crapping Doves
Two patio doves
Cooing in the morning mist.
Why must you crap there?

Beautiful Roofer Man
Man on the high roof
Balanced like a mountain goat.
You are scared shitless.

Beautiful Bird Flu
Bird flu of Asia
Has flown the coop to Turkey.
That is ironic.

A Guaranteed Money Maker

It's cold in my office today. Would someone please invent a pair of gloves that a person could wear and still be able to type?

I know that Lorna in Wonderland would buy a pair. Old Horsetail Snake, are you listening? This could be a way for you to make your pile.

That Would Hurt

Three months after Hurricane Rita, someone is finally replacing the shingles on the roofs in my townhouse association. I haven't been able to park in my garage for a week because there are shingles and fork lifts and dumpsters in the driveway behind our townhomes. I can't complain though because a lot of people still have blue roofs.

I can, however, complain about the mess in my courtyard in the front of my house. I found tar paper and nails and shingles which had evidently fallen off the roof as the roofers worked. My main concern is that they'll drop something in the courtyard and break one of my glass tables.

Then I thought about what would happen if one of the roofers tried to stop the tar paper from falling off the roof. I pictured him sliding down the front of my townhouse, crashing through my glass top patio table and bleeding all over the patio.

It was a lot easier picking up all that trash than it would have been to get rid of a dead roofer with all that paperwork and everything. Not to mention having to clean up all that blood and the glass from the tabletop. Yeah, it's all good.

Today's Fortune Cookie

Next full moon brings an enchanting evening.

The next full moon is January 14th. Bring it on.

My Mantra

Magnet available at Art.com

Comment E-mail Notifications from Blogger

I haven't been receiving comment e-mail notifications from Blogger for the past couple of days? Is it just me or are others having the some problem?

Flickr!

I've added a bunch of pictures to Flickr if anyone would like to check them out. It's over there on the sidebar to your left - Laurie's Pictures. Just click on the box of pictures and you can scroll through them.

The Book of Daniel

Our local NBC affiliate (KBTV - 4) is one of four stations out of 230 NBC affiliates nationally who has taken it upon themselves to save my mortal soul by not airing The Book of Daniel.

I hadn't given any thought to whether or not I was actually going to watch this program until I found out that the decision had been made for me and the entire southeast Texas television viewing public. I cannot begin to fathom the arrogance of a station manager who arbitrarily makes the decision that I (along with 250,000 other southeast Texans) should not see this program. I haven't been told what I can and cannot watch on television since about 1963.

Whether or not this program is suitable for viewing is a decision to be made within each individual household. Next thing you know, these bastards are going to be telling us it's against the law to smoke marijuana in the privacy of our homes and that certain sexual acts between consenting adults are also illegal.

Is That a Word?

My blogger friend Astrid in the Netherlands has a funny post about her word for the right turn signal in a car which got me to thinking. My family calls both turn signals (whether right or left) blinkers. I've also heard them called clickers.

Does everyone call them blinkers or is that a Cajun thing? Also, does anyone use separate words for either the right turn signal or the left turn signal? I was just wondering.

Another item that seems to have a lot of different words for it is the baby pacifier. My family called it a fa-fa. I have no idea why. My baby sister called milk num as in yummy, I think. I had a cousin who called donuts toomies as in give it to me. My family also called spaghetti pasgetti for years.

When my son was about a year old, one of his first 'words' was gink, as in Give me a drink. Sometimes he would really draw it out if I wasn't paying attention to him, "Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnk."



Edited to add: A commenter wants to know what people call the remote control. I call it the remote control. I didn't realize people called it anything else.

Friday at the Dixie

I took this picture Friday night at the Dixie. Front row is my sister Bonnie, my sister Terry and my brother-in-law Dan's sister Christi. Back row is Terry's husband Dan, Christi's husband Jimmy and a guy who works with Dan and Jimmy.

Antone's was having a highly unorganized open mic night and the Black Cat was having Retro Disco night. I was very disappointed in the lack of direction at Antone's and there were about twelve people at the Black Cat. That left the Dixie which is always fun for people watching. I've never seen so many people having so much fun on the dancefloor. From where I was sitting, I could also look all the way across the huge dancefloor and see people trying to ride the mechanical bull. Just your typical Friday night in Beaumont.

A new guy attached himself to our group and he was an excellent country western dancer so I danced a lot more than I have in years. Now, I remember why I used to be skinny.

The night started out at the Spindletop for dinner and then we went to TEN for Rick Danna on guitar and Sugar Baby Martinis before ending up at the Dixie. But mostly, I didn't do Jack.

Oh, no, Mr. Bill!

I fear the power of computers. I fear that one day my work computer will develop (if it hasn’t already) a sort of HAL artificial intelligence and turn against me. All it would have to do is drop a calendar item here or a database entry there and I would be toast.

My co-workers would hear the weeping and moaning and rending of cloth as I’m being escorted from the premises, “It wasn’t me! It was the computer! It hates me! The database is corrupt! The calender program is obsolete! That fucker is the spawn of Satan! A pox on you Bill Gates and all your minion! I fart in your general direction!”

Another Confession

I have another confession. I miss the Macarena.

In Laurie's Brain - We Are Forty(-ish)

I Am Woman
Words and Music by Helen Reddy and Ray Burton

We Are Forty(-ish)
Words by Laurie Ransonette Anderson

We are forty. We are bored.
Let’s go out drinking. Say the word.
Then, we’ll go and shake our asses in a club.
We need a break. We need a drink.
My fucking nerves are on the brink.
We’re gonna flirt with every guy inside the pub.

CHORUS
Oh, yes, we look good
But we’re over twenty-four.
The men here like them young,
And they’re looking for a whore.
Yes, they want sluts, who will do anything.
We are bored.
We are invisible.
We are forty.

We will shake the breasts God gave us,
And we'll dance upon the tables.
Our hotness surely no man will resist.
But now we're here at this back booth
As we drink gin and vermouth.
Like Bruce Willis in Sixth Sense, do we exist?

CHORUS
Oh, yes, we look good
But we’re over twenty-four.
The men here like them young,
And they’re looking for a whore.
Yes, they want sluts, who will do anything.
We are bored.
We are invisible.
We are forty.

Now the hour's getting late
The dicks who couldn't get a date
Come back to where we sit drunk on our asses.
But we didn't take the bait
With these pricks we wouldn't mate
Even if they flaunted Lakers season passes.

CHORUS
Oh, yes, we look good
But we’re over twenty-four.
The men all like them young,
And they’re looking for a whore.
Yes, they want sluts, who will do anything.
We are bored.
We are invisible.
We are forty.

Trend Micro Pc-Cillin, Roadrunner and Internet Connection

For a couple of days I lost my internet connection. I called Roadrunner and the support person had me turn off my virus protection (Trend Micro Pc-Cillin). After I did that, I got my internet connection back. However, every time I restarted my virus protection software, I lost my internet connection.

I tried to contact Trend Micro but couldn't find a phone number so I sent them an e-mail but never got a reply. I uninstalled my Pc-cillin and reinstalled it and now everything is fine.

The reason for this post is so that, if anyone has the same problem and does an internet search (like I did a thousand times), this might help them.

In Laurie's Brain - When was the last time you...

• Hopped on one foot?
• Sat in the grass and made a clover necklace or looked for a four leaf clover?
• Rode a bike at top speed standing up while riding someone on the back?
• Walked barefoot on a hot asphalt street?
• Rode in your car with the windows down without the radio on and just listened to the sounds of the city (or country or beach)?
• Stuck your arm out the car window while driving down the highway and let the wind whip it back and forth?
• Passed by a kid’s soccer game or baseball game or football game and stopped to watch even though you didn’t know any of the kids?
• Walked down the toy aisle at the grocery store and looked at the toys?
• Walked down the cereal aisle at the grocery store and bought the cereal with the best prize?
• Ate that cereal while watching Saturday morning television?
• Played jacks?
• Played Red Rover or Swing the Statue or Hide-n-Seek or threw a ball over a house to someone on the other side of the house?
• Went on vacation with someone and let them plan the whole thing and get up every morning while on that vacation and just go with the flow?
• Read a Dr. Seuss book or a Mad Magazine?
• Woke up, brushed your hair, brushed your teeth, put on the first thing you grabbed out of your closet and ran out to meet your friends and didn’t give a second thought to what you looked like?
• Sat and watched a lizard?
• Played on a see-saw or slid down a slide or tried to see how high you could swing…while singing Beatles songs at the top of your voice?
• Chased boys?
• Played office or doctor or Man from U.N.C.L.E. or Murder in the Dark?
• Played Candyland or Mr. Potato Head or Cootie or Hi Ho Cherrios?
• Tried to talk your friends into starting a garage band?
• Said Wait Up or Groovy?
• Wrote some guy’s name over and over again in big bubble letters or wrote your first name with his last name?
• Passed someone a note when you shouldn't be passing notes?
• Pierced someone’s ears with ice cubes, a cork and a really big needle?
• Had a slumber party and watched movies that made everyone scream and movies that made everyone cry?
• Rode past a guy’s house that you had a crush on?
• Thought about Jacques Cousteau or Carl Sagan or Wild Kingdom?
• Saw your neighbors playing driveway basketball and joined them?
• Did a somersault or stood on your head?

To be continued.

By Laurie Ransonette Anderson

You Woke Me Up For That?

I have my radio beside my bed set to a radio station out of Houston that promotes itself as an all news radio station. I have my radio alarm set to that station because the morning radio shows with all their stupid jokes, cackling disk jockeys, endless idiotic conversations and be-caller-number-99 contests do not put me in a good mood to start my day. The guy who reads the news and the weather/traffic reporter and the sports guy on the Houston news station all have pleasant voices which gradually wake me enough to drag my lazy ass out of bed.

This morning, the first thing I heard when the radio came on was, “Weather alert! Hail, damaging winds and heavy rains are expected…please insert twenty-five cents to hear the rest of the report.” Then an announcer came on and said, “Radio should be free.” It was a flipping commercial. A fake severe weather alert is no way to wake up an area of the country still suffering from post Hurricane Rita traumatic stress syndrome.

Terrestrial radio is still free, as are NBC, CBS and ABC. However, if you want choices and interesting programming, you pay for cable television and you pay for satellite radio. Yesterday, I heard Alan Parsons Project and Jo Jo Gunne on Deep Tracks (XM – Channel 40). When was the last time you thought about, let alone heard, Jo Jo Gunne?

Free radio is necessary for purposes of local news, weather and traffic. If they want to compete head to head with satellite radio musically, they need to add more variety. The vast majority of radio stations still program one music format per radio station. Surely the owners of those stations (and the advertisers) realize that most people do not listen to only one type of music. When a person tires of listening to country music, they turn to the 80’s music station or to the hard rock station. People are flippers.

There are stations popping up around the country that play a wide variety of music. (You can listen to them on your computer if you can’t catch them locally.) When a person listens to those stations, my guess is that they tend to stay longer partially out of curiosity as to what will be played next. The I-Pod generation is much more musically sophisticated than we could have ever dreamed of being when we were teenagers and they want to hear everything. We didn’t even have FM radio until I was in high school and then I had to use some sort of cassette player adapter in my 1962 Chevy (4-on-the-floor, mag wheels, dual exhausts…yeah, I was cool) to catch it.

I assume the ultimate goal of a radio station is to encourage listeners to not be flippers. If that’s the case, the solution is simple. We understand that advertising is necessary in order for terrestrial radio to remain free to listeners, so you can keep the commercials. However, please tell the disk jockeys we want the name of the song and who sang it, nothing more. Also, mix up the music and stop boring the shit out of everybody. Then, free radio might become a viable alternative to satellite radio

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WARNING!

I bought one of those Scrubbing Bubbles Fresh Brush toilet cleaner things because, unlike the rest of you, I really hate that plastic toilet scrubber thing I've been using to clean my toilets for the past few decades. It's about time some scientist spent the better part of his career searching for the perfect toilet brush. I wonder if there's an award for that.

Along with the usual warnings printed on the package in lower case letters (don't get it in your eyes, stupid; don't flush the wand, idiot; wash hands after use, moron), there was also this warning in all caps:

DO NOT USE FOR PERSONAL HYGIENE

After working in the legal field for twenty years, I don't think that warning is specific enough. Might I suggest the following:

If you have personal hygiene problems so severe that you feel a need to have a go at them with a SCRUBBING BUBBLES FRESH BRUSH TOILET CLEANING SYSTEM, step away from the cleaning products, do not touch ANYONE or anything else in this store and proceed to the nearest emergency room or free clinic. NOW!!!

By the way, if you are a regular reader of this blog and you use the SCRUBBING BUBBLES FRESH BRUSH TOILET CLEANING SYSTEM for personal hygiene, I have a strict *Don't Ask, Don't Tell* policy. I mean it. We don't want to know.

New Year's Night in the House

Bonnie, my niece Katie and I celebrated New Year's Eve at my house. My mom had all the aunts and uncles and some other friends at her house and Cory and Jamie went to a party and came back to my house later.

Best toast of the evening was from Bonnie (who is still living at mom and dad's because her house is still unlivable because of Hurricane Rita):

"Happy New Year 2006! 2005, you SUCKED like a Hoover."