"Happy" Swearing.

Back in school, one of my teachers told me that dropping F bombs was a sign of low intelligence.  His thought (I think that it was a priest - but I'm not sure) was that when you were flooded with emotion, if you just went to one word, then you weren't thinking.  So, his suggestion was to vary what you say to express emotion.  So, for example, he suggested saying something like "George Washington!" instead of "Jesus Christ!".   I thought "Man, people would really look at you funny if you started doing that."  Obviously, I made it my mission to swear in the most creative ways possible.  (What can I say?  I'm the youngest of three - I thrive on attention.  Plus, I'm naturally a ham anyways...)

If you ever talk to some of my high school or college buddies, then they'll tell you that my random swearing really comes to a head when I'm playing video games.  Sadly, I still kept things salty during these times, but I will say that there have been some very creative uses of preexisting swear words.  However, since then, I have grown up a bit, and I have tried to clean up my cusses.  So, the following is a list of funny words that I like to use as opposed to real hardcore cusses:

• Lollygagger
• Lookie-Loo (Maybe "Lookie Lou"?)
• Silly Sod (Thank you very much, Monty Python)
• Falafel
• Nerf-Herder (yeah, I'm a Star Wars geek - does this really surprise you?)
• Dummkopf 
• Cheeky Monkey
• Wanka (a lot of British-isms...)
• Dude (but not dude, dude, or dude! - context is everything.)

You can use any of these.  Feel free to leave your best swears that I might be able to add them into my line up.

Splice ~or~ Well, There Goes 99 Minutes....

At the risk of turning this into a movie review blog (I know, I know, not a Mom-blog, not a movie review blog - what are you Diamond Shaft???), I wanted to review another movie for y'all.  Since I can't seem to get to a movie review without having a back story, here's the back story for "Splice."

A few weeks back, my buddy Skoot (you may remember him - he had one blog post a long, long time ago...) called me on my way to work.  He was really disappointed about a movie he saw last night with his mom and wife.  It was called Splice.  I had heard of it when it was out in the theater a little while back.  Basic story that I could derive from the trailer:  Sci-fi thriller where a couple of scientists create life and it turns against them.  Skoot also had a similar idea of what the film was supposed to be, but he was so disappointed in the movie that he spent the whole conversation (like 40 minutes) giving me a scene by scene break down of how bad the movie was.

After this diatribe, I said "OK dude, I'm totally seeing this.  It can't be that bad!"  Plus, Ebert loved it, Steven King loved it, and it got like 74% on Rotten Tomatoes.  So, I was totally committed to digging this movie just to mock Skoot.  Well, I was way off the mark.  This movie was *painful.*  Just pretty much from the get go things just didn't work.  At all.  Though I won't get into quite the nasty detail that Skoot gets into, I'll give you a bunch of reasons why splice sucks (warning - spoilers ahead):

• Adrien Brody was cast in the leading role.  Sadly, he seems to be going down the Cuba Gooding Jr career path.  1 - Win and Oscar.  2 - Do a string of shitty movies.  3 - Start giving hand jobs for crack money.
• There was a character in the movie that I think was the main character's manager.  But I'm not sure.  In the first scene I thought that he may have been their agent.  Then, he seemed to be their manager.  But then towards the end of the movie Sarah Polly tells him to "wait until the real scientists come in."  Which implies that he's like a hack scientist.  And not a manager.  WTF?
• All of the actors tried to be playing characters.  However, I wouldn't call them human.  It's like they were playing aliens who had a vague understanding of how humans should act.  So, right off the bat, there's not really a lot of emotional attachment.  (And may I remind you that this is Sara Freaking Polly and Adriene "I got the orchestra to stop playing cuz dammit I wasn't done with my Best Lead Actor Oscar speech yet, Dammit" Brody.  So, you'd think that some actual good acting would be there...)
• The tensions that should be there which really aren't.  There are like 5 conversations throughout the movie that are resolved with "Come on, dude.  Don't be a pussy."  
• So, Adrien Peterson's character is supposed to be this buttoned down scientist, right?  Well halfway though the movie, he decides (completely out of nowhere) that he wants to bone this creation.  This is after about 4 months of chastising Sarah Polly for not keeping her distance.  Coupla things wrong here, going from the least repugnant to the most:  1 - He's a scientist - you *really* should keep your emotions out of an experiment.  (Where did he hear that before?  Oh, that's right - from him!!)  2 - The thing that he plows is bald.  I mean, bald chicks are hella weird.  3 - The thing is about 3 weeks old - that's crazy young, even for pedophiles.  4 - He is *married*.  And not to the creature.  Adultery!!  5 - Sarah Polly has already told him that it's her daughter.  So, it's not like it's *his* daugher, but still creepy as hell. 6 - The thing is like 5 different types of critter (and a plant, oddly enough).  So, that's gotta count as bestiality.
• This critter has the most amount of Deus Ex Machina ever.  It's about to be drowned - Oh, it can breathe under water.  It's about to fall off a roof.   Hey- guess what.  It's got wings.  It's horny as hell, but Adrien Brody apparently is bad in the sack.  So, it's only other option is to rape Sarah Polly.  So, it becomes a boy.
• "I am in you."  If you don't know why that is ridiculous to the point of insanity, congratulations - you haven't wasted 99 minutes on this shitty movie.
• By the way, I just wanted to stress that Skoot watched this movie with his mom and wife.  Yep, a movie full of rape, bestiality, incest, etc.  Yay boy - it's a fun family movie.
• The critter is just a cat.  It dies no less than 4 times during the course of the movie.  But it just keeps coming.

There's an assload more.  But seriously... just avoid this one...  It's really bad.

Now, I will patiently await Ben's smack down on my review of why Splice is the best movie of the year.  (As payback for District 9 of course...)

Shane!!!

Not sure if you've ever heard of the movie, but there was a Western in 1953 called "Shane", based off a book of the same title.  No, seriously, check it out:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046303/

I know, I know, you're saying to yourself, "Phil, why they heck are you linking to a Western that's over half a century old?  You don't even like Westerns all that much!!"  Well, it's because I just watched it and there's a funny story behind *why* this particular movie was on my radar.  Before I get to the movie, lemme tell you the funny story.

So, it was the autumn of 2005 (I think, not sure) and the wife and I were on our way to one of my buddy's wedding.  At the freaking Ren Faire!!  How freaking cool is that?  It'll tell you - very freaking cool.  I was in the wedding party, so I got to wear a dublet *AND* both my wedding sword and a dagger that was given to me as a groomsman present.  *Really* cool wedding - and the reception was pretty cool too.  Didn't happen till the next day - but they had a Dragon wedding cake.  That is, not a cake with a dragon on top - a freaking dragon make of three layers a super-delicious cake!  Only bummer in the whole day was that I got into my only car accident in my entire life coming out of the Faire itself.  Luckily, the lady driving the other car was a bit too buzzed to want to call the cops, so I got off scott-free.  (I was behind her, and she stopped short, so I nudged her.  Both parties in the cars were OK and the cars themselves just exchanged a little paint.  So, I dodged a bullet there...)  But on the plus side, after the accident, we ate at Jack In The Box, which I  had never been at before and was a good as the corporate mascot would have me believe...

Anyway, I'm getting a bit side-tracked here.  The wedding took place at around noon and lasted about 30 minutes.  So, the rest of the day, we had to wander around the Faire.  Like I said before, very cool.  Anyways, we were at a show (maybe the flying Kalamazov Brothers?  Not sure - there were two jugglers to be sure) and really into it.  About halfway through the show, a guy who was middle of the front-ish section of the audience gets up and starts leaving.  So, ,the two guys on stage, with their tongues firmly in their cheeks, start trying to convince the guy to stay.  Stuff like "O, you don't like the show so far?  Don't worry it gets better!" and "Come on, I know that my partner smells, but that's no reason to stop the show dead."  Anyway, as the guy is about 3/4 of the way down the aisle, both of the performers shout "Shane!" in unison.  Joy starts laughing and I look at her with my head cocked like a dog to whom you are trying to explain basic algebra.

The conversation goes something like this:
Phil:  "I don't get it.  What's Shane?"
Joy:  "You know.. like the movie."
Phil: "....."
Joy:  "The movie Shane."
Phil:  "...uhh..."
Joy:  "You've never seen Shane?"
Phil:  "I've never even *heard* of Shane."

So, she explained that it was a cowboy movie from the 50s where a cowboy befriends a young boy.  There's an adventure, but in the end, the titular character (the cowboy) has to leave.  The young boy is left watching helplessly as he rides off into the sunset.  The only thing that the boy can do is to shout "Shane!" pleadingly as the titular (hehe - I love that word - titular!) character keeps riding.

Being the smart ass that she is, Joy picked me up a DVD of Shane for Christmas.  Haha....  That would be Christmas 2005, BTW.  Yes, it has taken me almost 5 years to watch the movie. But I have been busy.  Like, um, I've been writing a blog, which has kept me very busy....

So, that catches us up to this week, where I finally found some time to watch it.  (Not much going on when your body decides to wake you up at 4:30 on a weekday...)  All in all, a pretty blah movie, but enjoyable.  Kinda stereotypical cowboy movie - lemme give you a few examples.  The following actually happened in the movie, without the slightest bit of irony:

• Something exciting happens and a woman screams and faints.
• A bar fight breaks out and someone breaks a chair over someone else's head.
• There is a Swede in the movie and he doesn't get killed.  (How many cowboy movies have you seen where a Swede gets killed?)
• "The Law" is constantly referred to.  As in "Are you the law in the town now?"  and "The law is three days ride away."
• The boots are crazy reverbed out whenever anyone walks anywhere.
• Someone says a new bad guy just rode in to town.  The titular character says "Was he a gun slinger?"  The guy who saw him responds "I don't know."  So, Shane says "What did he look like?"  "He was skinny and had a black hat."  From this description, Shane concludes that not only is this guy a gun slinger, but he's actually Wilson, the baddest ass mofo that he's ever seen...

The one thing that stands in this film is how little the main characters care about thier son.  Here's the scene and you judge for yourself whether Child Protective Services should step in:

• A stranger shows up on the main character's property unexpected.
• Though he doesn't threaten them directly, the main characters are intimidated enough to pull a gun on him to get him to leave.
• This stranger has a gun which, when other jerks that the main characters do know are ruffians show up, scares them off.  The stranger seems to know how to handle a gun and has a bit of a shady past.
• So, the main characters invite him to stay for dinner, for some reason.
• The main characters has explicitly stated that their son it too young to handle a gun.
• The stranger teaches him how to handle a gun.
• When the mother catches the stranger doing this, the stranger proceeds to lecture her on why she's stupid for being worried about guns.
• (BTW, the stranger wasn't teaching safe gun handling; he was teaching the boy to quick draw.)
• When a gun fight is imminent the stranger convinces the father not to go (yay!) by beating the hell out of him (boo!) and when the stranger starts to lose the fight, he whips out his gun and pistol whips him, knocking him out (WTF?).
• Knowing full well that the stranger is heading to town to shoot and kill at least 2 armed men (and probably more..), the boy follows him.  The mother, seeing this, smiles as if to say "Boys will be boys!"

So, yeah, a little bit of WTF-ery comes in to play.  But overall pretty enjoyable.  Am I glad that I saved the DVD from like 4 DVD purges?  Yeah.  Will I save it at the next DVD purge?  Probably not....

I finished my first 5K!

There was running. I'm still upright. Success! That is all.

Turns out, hubby was laying even odds on my not even showing up today. I figured I had to or he'd look at me with that sad puppy face. Instead I got happy, cheery face when I finished the race. I'm really grateful that Phil and Sam came out and braved the cold rainy weather to be my cheering section.

Now on to our celebration lunch! I think that will probably be the best part.

I think that I may be turning into a redneck...

Take a look at my boots.  These are actually the boots that I wore out of my house today:

Yes, those are duct taped within an inch of their lives.  However, before I tell you what actually happened, lemme share with you a few other facts, and you tell me if you think that I'm coming closer to redneck status:

1. I worked at the state fair all night.
2. My job was mostly explaining gun safety.
3. I had a choice of what to do when the boot started falling apart, and I decided that this was the best possible solution.
4. All in all, I wasn't all that embarrassed.

Yeah....  I think that I may need to turn in my Yankee Card.  :-)

So... here's the story.  Every Autumn, the Raleigh Jaycees (the community service group of which I am part.) runs a few fundraisers.  I've fallen in love with one of them - the Haunted House, but I really dig the other - the Turkey Shoot at the State Fair.  Generally, I work the Haunted House more since they generally need more people day to day.  This year, the Haunted House was canceled since we could not find a place.  So, I picked up a few shifts at the turkey shoot.  Woo-hoo!

I worked on Wednesday night, wearing the boots above, sans duct tape since they were in mint condition.  No problem.  Tonight, Saturday, I was getting ready for the fair and I put on the boots.  I kept feeling like there was something wrong in the padding or something in the right boot until I left.  Then, I stopped for gas and noticed that there was a tiny crack in my boot.  Ah - the padding problem was that the sole was starting to come off.   No worries, it would last for one shift.  Boy was I wrong...

Since it was a Saturday night that I was going to the fair, I had to park out in the boonies.  By the time that I got to the gate, half of the sole had come off.  So, I was faced with a decision:  go back to my house and change or tough it out.  Then, I remembered that there's a role of duct tape at the turkey shoot.  So, I decided to keep going...  Long story short(er) is that I barely got the turkey shoot before 3/4 of the sole was off. So, I taped it back up.  Looked good, and held for the entire shift.  (OK, it looked lousy, but it was functional....)

Why was the left boot taped too?  It held for most of the shift.  But right at the end I noticed that just the front and back of the left sole was still attached.  And it held!  Well, it held until I started heading back to my car.  Then, the whole freaking thing fell off.  And I headed back to the turkey shoot to get the tape.

I'm still a bit confused as to what happened to the boots.  Granted, they are about 10 years old, but they just went downhill so fast.  I'm actually thinking that some of the hay at the turkey shoot got into the boots and started to dry out the glue holding things together?  I dunno.   I just know that now I need a new pair of hiking boots...

Phil's trip to court....

So, I hope that I'm not burning myself out with back to back blog posts, but I was planning on blogging about this topic and I wanted to get it on paper while it was still fresh.  However, I figured that it was bad form to just ignore the last month that I took off.  So when I started to write the intro of my previous post of "Sorry for being gone so longer", it just kinda spun outta control.  So, I made an executive decision to split the "Sorry for the lack of updates" post and the "court" post.

Anyways, today I went to court for the first time in my adult life.  Technically, I went to court once when I was a kid for when my parents were taken to court since they didn't pay some parking tickets that they got.  (The story goes that they had their car at a mechanic's garage for repairs.  Being in a city, parking space is at a premium.  When the garage ran out of room, they just started parking illegally.  When the tickets starting being issued, the mechanic just threw them away.  So the cops then sent a court date to my parents.  Since Mom was stay at home was too young to either be in school or stay by myself, I went to court with them.)**

Today, I was unjustly (read:  justly) convicted of a crime that I did not commit (read:  did commit, and kinda got off light).  So, the facts are that I was driving too fast, and I passed someone (in a turn lane) when they were going really slow and making a right turn.  This wouldn't have been a big deal, but I did it right in front of a cop.  D'oh!  I definitely deserved this ticket since I violated two of the three rules on driving that my dad gave me when he was teaching me to drive:
1 - Never be the fastest one on the road (which I clearly was).
2 - Don't be the asshole / let the asshole be right (the guy did cut in front of me and was going really slowly, but it was definitely an asshole move for me to pass in the turning lane).

(The last rule of course being if you shake more than twice then you are just having a good time.  A bit of explanation on this - we had a pee jar.)

So, I did my research on what to expect, I spoke to a few of my lawyer friends (and one that just has had a few brushes with the speeding tickets in the past), and was all prepared for my court date today.  Now, let's do a brief exercise on what happens when Phil's imagination has 6 weeks to run wild.

Here's what I had imagined to happen:
I was expecting to check in and then agree to plead guilty and then head over to the judge to make it nice and official.  Of course, this would be the epic showdown of the century, the DA would be a Jack McCoy type - I would be defending myself.  However, far from being a foolish client, I would ring of Atticus Finch, with truth and justice on my side.  Let's say that the judge would be a cross between Bowser (From Sha Na Na) and Chuck Norris.  (And while we're at it, let's throw in a pinch of Ang Lee's Incredible Hulk).  I would put the whole system on trial.  "You want the truth?  You want the Truth???  I'm out of order?  *You're* out of order!!!  The whole stinking SYSTEM is out of order!!"  The end result would be that I would get the ticket knocked down to 9 MPH over, so that my insurance wouldn't go up.  Then, I would have a nice scotch with the hottie prosecutor, who would throw herself at me.  Then, I would dramatically walk away saying "Sorry, baby doll.  I'm already spoken for", while twirling my wedding band.  Then, the honorable Chuck Hulk Na Na would come and sweep the hot prosecutor off her feet and they would proceed to have a torrid love affair, knowing that if this ever came out then they would surely have to revisit all of the cases where they were both involved.

Now, what actually happened:
So, I got up in the morning and suited up.  I was advised that if I did that, then people would probably just think that I was a lawyer.  But I figured that there were worse things to be.  I  headed over to the courthouse (which, BTW, their websites list two different addresses on two different streets, but I think that this was that the building is wide enough to span the whole block.. but I didn't check...).  First thing was that I had to go through a metal detector.  I guess that makes sense, but just kinda threw me off.  Then, I wandered around a bit until I found courtroom 1A, which is where I was told to go.    There were a few lines, but not a lot of people, so I picked one and hoped for the best.  Good news is that I chose properly.

When I'm called up, they ask my name, which I give.  Then I start handing them my official driving record, plus my ID and start to ask if we can get this ticket knocked down.  The lady looks up and smirks a little, and says that I should actually talk to a District Attorney about that.  I said "Oh, where do I do that?"  She pointed at a line with a sign over it that said "DA Line".  That made sense so I thanked her and headed over to that line.

(Funny side note... OK *I* think that it's funny, but that may or may not mean much...  When I had initially saw the sign, I read it as "da line."  As in - "Where should I go?"  "Go over there and stand in da line."  Putting periods after each letter may have made it easier to read, like so:  "D.A. Line.")

Anyway, I  head over to the line and I wait to see a kid, who's probably 5 years my junior, looking throughly bored.  He asks what I want to do about it, and I say that I'll pay it, but can we knock it down a bit.  Without thinking, he says "Sure.  No problem." and knocks it down to 5 MPH over the limit.  Even better, think I.  Though I still haven't handed my ID or my official driving record to anyone (I only mention this since it's clean and I paid $11 for it).  He makes a note and asks me to wait in a line around the corner.

So, I head over to the line and see that it's the place to pay tickets and not actually a courtroom. O well, I guess that the $11 (for the official driving report) is well wasted, but hey no problems, I got what I wanted.  So I'm waiting in the line and eventually it's my turn.  The lady behind the counter looks at me and asks what I'm here for.  I tell her to pay a ticket.  She looks at a piece of paper thoroughly confused and says "Margaret?  Are you Margaret?"  I tell her no, and she says that she doesn't have the paperwork, so I should go back to the DA to see where it is.

I head back and start to poke around, but the DA that I talked with like 2 minutes ago was not there.  So, I turn around and he's *right* there behind me.  He asks if there is a problem and I tell him that the lady doesn't have my paperwork.  He asks who he talked with.  Awkwardly, I say that it was him.  (You've gotta remember, I kinda stick out.  I'm 6'4", 230, full beard, and in a suit - BTW the advice that I got was pretty sound - pretty much the only ones there wearing ties were official types.)  So, he fiddles around for a few minutes, finds the paperwork and we head back to the pay line.

I wait until I get to the head of the line and this time, I actually pay.  So, all is good.  And thus ends my very boring trip to pay my speeding ticket.

A few things that I learned from this experience:
1 - Dad was right.  Don't be an asshole driver.  (Especially true when you are entering into a speed trap.)
2 - The court is ridiculously efficient.  Including walking to and from the parking deck, the whole experience took 34 minutes.  How do I know it was 34 minutes?
3 - I parked in a parking deck since I figured that it would be a little time.  The deck cost a buck every half hour, rounded up.  So, I just barely was pushed to the second half hour.  (And if I hadn't had to go back to get the paperwork squared - I would have made it!  Damn.)
4 - The court is really serious about proper attire inside.  On the courtroom door, there are no less than three signs explaining no hats, you have to tuck in your shirt, etc.
5 - No, I mean really serious.  There is an armed police officer, whose job seemed to be almost exclusively to tell people that if they didn't tuck their shirt in, then they would be held in contempt.
6 - The difference between a 14 MPH over ticket and a 5 MPH ticket is about $20.
7 - That doesn't really matter since the court costs pretty much screw you.  After I paid, there was an itemized breakdown of the court costs.  I glanced briefly and from what I remember, it read something along the lines of:
Screw you Cost:  $23
Piss Off Fee:  $36
Thank you, sir may I have another surcharge:  $17
Yes, of course you can:   $53
8 - As soon as you get a ticket, you will get flooded get mail from lawyers.  Holy cow, there was a lot of it.  Granted, my infraction was pretty slight, but I can't figure out exactly what a lawyer (who would have essentially doubled (or more) my costs) would have done differently.

All in all, not a bad experience.  Painful enough that will definitely discourage me from speeding any time soon, but not so painful as to piss me off for being too excessive.

**This is the official story that my parents told the very young child version of me.  I'm assuming that the real, real story is that my parents were running a meth lab/white slavery ring from our basement.

A little bit meta (No, Phil hasn't gone on sabbatical.)

Well, shiza!  Looks like I fell straight into a a nasty case of new-blogitis.  You know what I'm talking about. A dude gets a new blog, gets all excited and throws out a bunch of posts all at once and then all of the sudden te updates just stop for like a month.   Then, that dude is all like "I'm so sorry, I've been super busy, I'll do better, blah blah blah..."

Well, I can't exactly say that I've been all the busy - i'm just a lazy, lazy man.  However, I will try to update more frequently.  I'm doing this for two reasons:
1 - So that Ben and I will stop having this conversation:
Ben:  "So, is the blog dead yet?"
Phil:  "Fuck you."
Ben:  "Cuz you know, it would be ironic since I was the last update."
Phil::  "Fuck you."
2 - Actually, you know what?  That's really the only reason I want to update more.  Not so much to give back to the world, or even to have the same repetitive, expletive-laden conversation.  Mostly, I just want to spite Ben.

So, there you go.  I will beat back my laziness with spite.  And if that isn't the American way, then I just don't know why I even watch Fox News.

PS - I don't foresee my updates coming that much more frequently in the coming months.  Work is promising to be nasty until Thanksgiving and I'm the commissioner of a Fantasy Football league.  I do a write up once a week or so, and that takes a good deal of my creativity. (I mean really.  How many different ways can I bitch about random picks doing random things?)
PPS - Don't let that stop you from keeping your eyes there though!  The quantity may be going down, but that just means that the quality is going way up!!