Injujasha

Let's see, off the top of my head there's Inuyasha, Kagome, Miroku, Kohaku, Sango, Shippo, Sesshomaru, Jakin, Kirara (pronounced Kilala kind of like "Flied lice") and Naraku. Well, I can't propogandize anyone into this show, but Alex and I got into this show by habits of staying up and seeking entertainment of some sort. Not for everyone, but if you're ever looking for some crazy anime entertainment, check it out.

Trekkie

I don't know how many of you who read my blog care for startrek, but I guess I have to admit I'm a bit of a trekkie. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the freak Klingon dressing, speaking, out of control weirdo, but I do like the trek at times. I found out that they're making a new movie that's coming out and I plan on seeing it. Good times.

Saturday Night Bonus: Robert LudlumTM

With all the hype that's been going on with The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, I decided to pick up The Bourne Identity for a bit of reading. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it and it's pretty good. At the back of the book, it has the little narrative about Robert Ludlum, the original author of the Jason Bourne series, and it says that he is happy, lives in FL, etc. So I decided to "google" Robert Ludlum to see what he was up to and this is what I found. Unfortunately he passed away back in 2001, but I noticed something else on the website that was weird. Notice the TM by his name. Is his family that petty to sell his name?! Pretty odd.

Weather “Climax”

I call it worthy of that title when we have an astounding ice storm and all the tree branches on our tree fall and damage the sidewalk and everyone loses power for 7-10 days and… you get the picture. NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and even CNN get that. The weathermen in Oklahoma, however, tend to think something is more than it really is. For example, I woke up this morning to a tinkle of snow, barely ½ an inch. The weathermen are out in the snow making snowballs (small ones I might add) and dancing around like it’s the biggest story since 9/11. I like Oklahoma ok, but I sure don’t get those moron weather guys.

Biology = Funny

Ever seen the wonders of biological science? Words can't describe this.

blogtime

So, I got a message from my sister that said that she wants me to add her blog to my blog as a "preferred blog" as a bloging favor to add flavor to my... blog. Well, sis, if you want me to do that I sort of need to know the address to your blog. :) By the way... Chipping ice off of your car sucks!

All I want for Christmas is...

A commodore 64. Yeah, that's right, the big brown box with a big floppy and old school internet. My dad bought one when I was about 6 years old and we had amazing memories of playing Pacman with the cartridge port. Good times.

The reason I brought this up is because I was looking at CNN.com and found this article. It's a good read and has some links to some old school games. Have fun.

Wow, they must like what I had to say! (or they just need some good old-fashioned controversy)

Last Thursday, I read in the paper an article about Richard Roberts, son of the founder of the school Oral Roberts University (ORU). I don’t know the whole story behind the university, but what I understand about it is that Oral Roberts had a vision and decided to found a ministry and a school. You can read about the University’s founding here.

I don’t know how important it is to remind everyone about what’s been going on with all of the evangelical preachers who are being investigated for breaking tax laws and using clerical monies for personal use. In the midst of all this, there is ORU which is either $50 million in debt or can’t account for it (I really don’t care/remember). The president of the university, Richard Roberts has been in hot water for the last few months due to having allegations that he embezzled money along with other financial improprieties which have contributed to this problem.

Pressure has mounted from external and internal forces to oust Mr. Roberts and he finally caved and resigned from the school as president. On the tails of his exit, the founder of Hobby Lobby and Mardell Books pledged $70 million to bail the school out of its financial woes. Shortly after this donation, Roberts responded as quoted in The Oklahoman stating that he knew that something miraculous was going to happen if he resigned as president.

Being disgusted with the fact that he seemingly did not learn anything from the ordeal I wrote a letter to the editor of the Oklahoman last Friday. It had been 6 days since I submitted it, so I felt that I had lost my entry and that it wouldn’t appear. Then, this morning, I received a phone call from my dad asking if I had written a letter to the editor and that he did not know if there were any other Ben’s in Warr Acres, OK. I ran outside, picked up the paper and sure enough, mine was the first one on the page. The Oklahoman also posts its articles online, so you can read it here.

Old Age

My birthday is in 2 days and every year I get a card from my grandmother. She always sends the corny poem card with the gold lettering - the works. You know, the stuff grandmothers are supposed to send. She also always sends $1 because she's poor, but gives what she can. It always puts a smile on my face.

There was, however, something a bit unexpected this year. She always puts a little note on the left hand side of the card saying how she misses me. This year it went like this:

Dear Ben,
I often think of the good times together when you were at BYU. I miss our contacts. I wish you a happy birthday. May the Lord bless you always.

Then the curious part:

Love,
Aunt Helen

I thought to myself, ok, so that was weird, and discounted it as a momentary lapse of reason. Then I looked to her signature on the right hand side under the card message. Once again, it read:

Love,
Aunt Helen

Now, I love my grandmother. She's a great lady, but... Oops!

Mayors and Tennis Courts

A few couples at church have started getting together on a regular basis to do sports. They invited us to come along and we went and played tennis about 5 miles north of where we live at an apartment complex where one of the couples lives. Here in the town we live in (Warr Acres), there is a park by city hall that has tennis courts. That park is less than 1/2 a mile away from where Alex and I live. We drove by last Monday after we had played and all the lights were out. The park had a sign that said that it was open until 11pm. My wife and I are the type to look for cheap plays, so we wondered what we could do to get those lights on.

Yesterday, I went to the Warr Acres website and found a tab "contact your city." So I clicked on that and typed this letter directed to the parks service it said:

I was wondering if there was any way that we could get the tennis courts lights turned on to use them at night. I noticed that the park sign says that the park is open until 11 o'clock pm, but the lights aren't ever on. Is there any way we can indicate to someone that we would like to use the park beforehand?

Well, today I came home and checked my email and what did I behold? A letter from none other than the mayor? It said:

Dear Mr. Young, I have read your e-mail to our supervisor of the Streets & Parks Department. He says that the timers at the tennis courts had been vandalized so that the lights were not able to be turned on. He has ordered new timers and will install them as soon as possible. You will be able to set them for 30 minute play times. Please let me know if they are not installed within the next week. And thank you for bringing this to our attention. Thanks, Mayor

Well, that was pretty cool. Not very often that you hear from the head of the municipality. Good thing that we have vandalism less than 1/2 mile from our house...

Monday night bonus

Here in Oklahoma Christmas time hasn't arrived until the BC Clark anniversary sale commercial comes on. It comes on every year the week after Thanksgiving week. I saw the BC Clark commercial for the first time this year tonight, so I wanted to share the love of seeing the commercial. You can see the commercial here.

Enchanted is still just another "chick flick"

My wife and I had been seeing the commercials promoting Disney's Enchanted in the theatres and both of us thought that the movie would be funny. The whole promotional scheme was befitting a comedy that made fun of Disney princeses and, to a degree it made itself out to being a man's version of a disney toon movie.

For example, in the previews, it showed Prince Cyclops getting bulldozed by bike riders and mcdreamy telling Giselle not to start singing and dragging her off.

I will hand it to Disney for taking on Shrek in this realm. The movie turned out to be comical and entertaining - up until that point. Immediately after that scene, Giselle started to sing. Then it became exactly what they were telling us (men) it wasn't. At this point the chick wins and gets to sing her song over the objections of the man.

To make things worse, the movie turns into a love triangle between cyclops and McDreamy and then Wormtail tries with futility to "snow white" Giselle (with a cinderella 12am death thing). Then comes the super happy ending. McDreamy's girl goes for Prince Cyclops and Wormtail learns his lesson and Giselle opens a shop for little girls. Only question, why didn't Giselle have her white dress moment with McDreamy?

Did I like the movie - mostly. Will I see it again - yes (wife). Do I recommend it - why not?

My Buddy = funny

I was perusing through Clark's blog and decided to take a look at his friend Adam's blog and he was talking about the old 80s turn-a-boy-into-a-girl doll, my buddy. It was pretty funny.

What's more funny was that the only thing that I could think of while reading that blog was one of my friends while growing up had an 18 year-old brother who said that when he saw the my buddy commercial, he could only think of singing to the tune instead of the words "my buddy," the words "my buttcheek". So, when I clicked on the link this time, I decided to sing along using those words and had a pretty good time. Here's the link, so that you can give it a try too. Enjoy!

Group think

So I was at work on Wednesday and found out that because of the fact that we were projected to not be busy today by the forecasting team, a chief underwriter decided to pile on a little extra work for us in the Learning Exchange department. Funny thing about that is that the reason that they wanted us to do their work is because we would have time. Funny thing about time is that they were spending it on their duffs at home with their families while we were at work. I bet they didn't think about that.

Another joyous addition to our day was that because of that, other members of our team decided that in the spirit of things, they would pile on the work that they were responsible for while they were at home, sitting on their duffs because, hey, that was such a great idea.

Awesome day, don't you think?

More funnies

Alex and I were at it again. The reference to Lax came from what Alex was called by her roomates. Sometimes she laughs so hard that she makes some weird noises.(Like she needed X-Lax) You don't really get it here, but close. Anyways, enjoy!

Follow up

Here's the scene I promised you. To make things even better, I caught Alex on Lortab (she has a bad back and uses it sometimes to help her sleep). Enjoy!

1 is laloleum number

RRR... rurrr... rurrrrrrr... rurrral... Rural. Try to keep the baseball out of your mouth!

I was talking with my beautiful wife Alex about Uruguay and she said, "most of Uruguay is rooral." Incidentally we spent about an hour and a half trying to tame that latin tongue of hers. Hopefully you can see for yourself soon on a youtube. Towards the end she asked if I had trouble saying linoleum. Then she tried to say it and out came laloleeum. If those of you are asking if the laughing fits came. They arrived. Good times!

And the blame goes to...

the president of Virginia Tech and the police. Well of course it's their fault that a psychomaniac busted into the school and blew 33 people away. Don't you think? Unfortunately, a lot of people think this way and are bickering about the fact that there were mistakes made with respect to locking down the campus. Although I can see the point of those who complain, I think that it is unfair and foolish to lay blame on the police, or anyone aside from the shooter. A decision was made. Sadly, that decision turned out to be the wrong one. In my opinion, it is impossible for anyone to divinate what would happen. There was an apparent domestic issue that everyone thought was over. Tragically, many want to lay blame and fire people for "mishandling" the situation and that we should ruin a few more lives in order to satisfy some sort of rage or vengeance.

Now, don't you think that it's difficult enough that 33 people died? I know that this is terrible. My heart goes out to all of the families who lost loved ones. Yes, these deaths were needless and aweful and blame should be placed on somebody, but we must remember that it is not the fault of anyone except for the shooter. Fortunately, hindsight is 20/20. We should use that 20/20 vision to do things better in the future - not come down in wrath in a time of such sorrow.

Don't get too excited

Cloark Blockburger accurately points out in his blog that I update monthly - which is true. I only have a few things to talk about today. The LDS General Conference just completed it's 2nd of 4 general sessions and it was interesting. Nostalgia was the feeling that everyone got and got me thinking about the good ol' days. Well, are there ever the "good ol' days" or is it just the propensity of the human brain to remember the past in a good light. A lot of bad crap happened in the past and it seems that there wasn't as much bad crap going on, but I don't know. Is it really worse now than it was back then, or is it just our minds that forget bad things that tricks us into thinking that?

Note: This blog was altered from it's original version. Call it a "Lucasization."

The death defying leap (or shot)

What a month it's been, work. Uh... work. Uh... work. Yeah, you get it. But I did have something worth blogging about today. My wife required a shot in the belly the other day (no she didn't have rabies, but it was close to the belly-button). We have a friend who's mom is a nurse and she usually gives people shots if they need them done. However, this last week she had surgery on her shoulder. Alex thought that she was going to have to give the shot to herself, which freaked her out, but when we got there, our friend said that because Alex was so nervous, that I was going to have to give the shot. For most men, this is scary business. I survived though and my wife now has an "ouchy" on her belly. Yippie.

Junk email lists

I was reading in my office email and came accross an email sent from my manager on it it had this question, "What happens if you get scared half to death twice?" I thought about it for a second and then thought to myself, you'd be 75% deader than you were at the beginning.

And when we were bored...

I don't know why I haven't gotten on the blogger for a few days, but I was highly motivated by a burning desire not to watch American Idol. Few of you are aware of the pink tassel that I labored 4 years to achieve in music. Well, that gives me the right to freak out when people think that Taylor Hicks is a good singer. He may be charsimatic, but not good.

But, I digress...

The reason that I'm on the blogger tonight is because I have intended on blogging about my boredom over the past weekend. I received a phone call on Friday afternoon that I was not to come in to work on Saturday due to the icy buildup that would be forming on the roads. When the Hartford closes the office for a non-scheduled closing, we get paid for it. So, I was glad to hear about that.

My wife and I were adequately prepared for the weekend, so we decided to only leave if absolutely necessary. Saturday rolled around and we were extremely bored. Apparently, the roads weren't too terribly bad, so we went to Wal-Mart and bought way too much junk food for a weekend (we still have some right now). Then we spent the night burning firewood and watching movies.

Sunday rolled around and absolutely nothing to do. So we watched movies again and burned more firewood. In the middle of this, Alex thought she would make up a game. This was a game that she made up. She thought that it would be a great idea if first she could make a funny face, and then I could try to duplicate it. Then I would make a funny face and then she could try to duplicate it. Then whoever couldn't duplicate the face would lose. The only problem is that how do we know if we can't duplicate it.

Well, that was an exciting day wasn't it. I feel like Ben Stein sounds.

Only in Oklahoma

Well, the weatherman was correct. The temperatures did drop significantly and I don't have to work tomorrow. I'm pretty glad about that, but the point I want to make (and I'm going to be brief because we're soooo busy here at home) is that last night the temperature was about 65 degrees. Tonight, it's about 18. That's what happens when you don't have mountains around.

Because...

I fear for my life, I decided to post this outside the "comments" section so that everyone knows that I did in fact get the reaction that I intended, but did not expect death threats from Alex. So today, I need to confess that Alex was not stoned and never did get stoned. She went through a very small period of rebellion at one point in her life, but she is a much better person than I am. And I leave you with that today.

Stony

When we got home after the end of stockpiling for the onslaught of the super chill storm coming our way, my wife was going through some of her old papers that my mother-in-law dropped off while she was here and discovered some papers. The things had some of Alex's senior pics.

I took one look at them and noticed something odd. Her eyes looked all hazy and funny. And then it came to me how guys look on TV when they're all drugged up. I simply stated. Honey, you look stoned in these pictures." Sadly, Alex agreed and told me the truth. I'll post a copy of the picture when I have access to a scanner.

Bunch of Bunk

Give me a break. The people's choice awards is on right now and Johnny Depp (sp? like I care?) was on "live sattelite feed." The hosts were all, "way to go Johnny", and he starts of saying something like, "thank you to all the people..." without any acknowledgement to the announcer.

I don't know what you think, but nobody takes a compliment and then doesn't aknowledge it. Therefore, I say that the whole thing is a bunch of bunk. The people pre-recorded their "acceptance speech" and the network lied to us.

"I have to blog"

I was sitting here at the computer wondering what I was going to say since nobody comes here and was sitting here and sitting here, and then Alex came over and said. "What are you blogging?"

I replied, "I dunno. Why?"

Alex said, "Because I have to blog."

What was that all about?



By the way, I was eating this delicious "Spain" Spanish treat. Then I read the box. it says:

For those of you that can't read that, it says "precutted" just above Almond and Honey Crunch. Good job translator.

Personal Injury Protection

Just wanted to go over an insurance coverage that I think is worthless. In several of the 50 states of the United states there is a compulsory insurance called "personal injury protection" or "no fault." This coverage is, for those of you who don't live in a "no fault" state, this coverage is comparable to your own medical payments. The US prides itself in its tort laws. Many people think that the reason that insurance is costly is due to those tort laws. Legislators, in order to combat those tort laws decided that they needed to have insurance pay for the injuries of the company's own insured, thus deferring the cost of lawsuits to the companies just paying for their own.

Here's an example of a regular tort law state:

Joe hits Shmoe's car and causes Shmoe bodily injury. Shmoe makes a claim against Joe's insurance. If Schmoe doesn't like how much he gets on the claim, he sues Joe and gets more money. If Joe is also injured, he calls his company and makes a claim on his own medical payments, if he has that coverage.

Here's an example of a "no fault" state:

Joe hits Shmoe's car and causes Shmoe bodily injury. In this case, both people have No fault insurance. Shmoe makes a claim on his own insurance through personal injury protection. If that's not enough, he can sue Joe. If Joe is injured he makes a claim on his own insurance.

So you're wondering what is the difference. Well the only difference is that in no fault states, both parties can claim for work loss and for other economic losses that may have occurred on their own policies. Whereas tort states limit the payments to be for medical expenses. So, we're back to where I started - which is that it costs the insurance companies about the same, or even more in a no fault state because of the higher potential of both parties making larger claims. Perhaps that's part of the reason auto insurance in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan are much higher than anywhere else in the United States. Legislators can be morons sometimes.

Doggy diarrhea

Yesterday afternoon, I put a semi-frozen, cubed six pound butt roast of a pig in my crockpot along with onions, barbeque sauce and honey. When I was done cubing the meat, I had a bit stuck to the bone and since my hands were frozen, I decided to just toss the part that was stuck to the bone. It was about 6 oz of meat and bone - no big deal.

This morning, due to my extreme exhaustion from staying up watching movies, I neglected to take out the garbage. For those of you who read my wife's blog (you tend to do that much more than mine), you know that I have two dogs - Sirius and Minerva. Well, Minerva (Mini as we call her) decided that she'd had enough smelling the raw meat while Alex went to her friend's house today and decided to knock over the trash can. It was doggie heaven. Fortunately, I got home to clean up the mess before Alex did.

I am afraid that since the meat was pig meat, it's not the best stuff for anyone (or anything) to eat raw. Of course, both of my dogs have diarrhea at this time and there is a bit of a stink in my house that will have to be remedied with our bissel steam vac. I'm so excited.

Oklahoma City Hornets

Yes, it has been a long time. However busy is as busy does. Christmas was lots of fun. Who could ask for anything more than burned carpet, a visit by the mother-in-law and, of course, plumming problems.

Enough about the good things, lets talk about the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets. Or was it the Oklahoma City/New Orleans Hornets? Anyway, my brother is a controller for a risk management company here in Oklahoma City and as such, he has "hookups" for tickets to events every now and again. He obtained some tickets on Wednesday this week and invited Alex and I to come along. We said sure.

Well, the game was against the Detroit Pistons. Aside from the fact that they are ranked number 9 in the nation, they also shoot better and actually know how to draw fouls. The game was a disaster. I think that the closest it was after the first 10 minutes was 13 points. We left at the end of the third quarter.

We did have a special treat. Duo Design - Jarek and Derek. Nothing is better than a pair of guys with butt hugging gold spandex and gold dust on their skin hanging on each other and holding poses. Now don't get me wrong, they are strong and can do some amazing things with that strength, but well, if you saw them you would understand. If you'd like a peek, go here: http://www.statue-duodesign.com/

So the night was entertaining to say the least. I hope all have the opportunity to see the Hornets and a few people have the opportunity to see Jarek & Darek do their thing.