Speaking of Hockey Dads...

Remember Thomas Junta?

Man, did that guy ever get hosed! Hosed at his trial and then afterwards from the judge and parole board.

Basically, some skinny junkie *hockey dad* attacked him, wearing his skates if memory serves me, and Junta threw the guy down, punched him 2-3 times in the face, and the guy died. Junta served 8 years for defending himself. The judge wouldn't allow any of the *junkie* evidence in court and gave Junta TWICE the recommended sentence for involuntary manslaughter, 6-10 years.

And in an age when no one ever serves a full term and drug dealers walk left and right, the Parole Board made Junta serve almost his full term.  Ouch.

We're left wondering exactly what type of queer message this 'Commonwealth of sports pagans' was trying to send.  I KNOW these heathens weren't trying to codify *turn the other cheek*!

But what else would you expect from Massachusetts - the dumbest State in America?

See also - Massachusetts Morons Vote For Self-Taxation, Again!

Homeschooling Math Update

That's an *old* clip of my Princess (one month ago).

I started her on multiplication when we got to Florida. In about 1.5 months she's just about mastered the basics (1-10 tables).

All I did was make her fill out that homemade multiplication table - every single day. That's about it!

Though now we're working on her *speed* with Math Rider - which I've found very good for creating an urgency that my kids don't experience on account of not being in a conventional school with its quizzes, tests, and whatnot. I will have a full review of that product shortly. But so far, the Princess is doing very well with it.

Today my son is participating in his first *math competition*.

He's doing World Math Day in the 4-7 year old division.

It's an internet event. He squares off in 100 one minute rounds against kids from all over the globe -although the winners will be determined by aggregate score, by who answers the most most questions correctly. Contestants have 48 hours to play their *games* between today and tomorrow.

Anyone ages 4-18 can sign up just click the link above. And hurry!

So far my son is on his 25th game or so. The first 20 were simple math questions like "8+2" and "10+0".  But now the questions are getting tougher.

I'm ashamed to admit that I gave my son an earful when two blokes from Ireland beat him in one round. He was goofing around and not concentrating!

Ooh I do hope that I don't turn into a math version of the stereotypical *hockey dad*...

Me - A Useful Moron, Apparently

You know this was total BS...

The other day somebody - a family member no less! - asked me explicitly for my *honest opinion* on something.

I thought, "What was going on here?"

I mean I'm 37.74 years old, and in my ENTIRE LIFE nobody has really asked for my *honest opinion* on ANYTHING.

What made this request even more perplexing was the fact that this particular family member most certainly is not fond of my brutal honesty. They even went so far as to complain vehemently recently about some of the lighter content on this here space - saying it was *insensitive*.

I knew something was afoot but answered the request (email) anyways with a couple of short sentences. I did give my honest opinion....because, to a fault, that's all I'm capable of.

But this particular time that person AGREED with my sentiments and asked if they could forward my email on to someone else.

Aha!

This was a selfish ruse. That family member was really just exploiting me; using me like a cheap drunk woman from New Jersey!

I've never watched the show, but I think that's Deena.

On Web Pollution

I only recently heard the term *content farm*. I mean I certainly was well-acquainted with eHow, ezinearticles, and friends, I knew they were fonts of garbage, but naively I didn't fully understand their sordid business/economics.

Read this very interesting *article* - Google Kills eHow Competitors, eHow Ranks Up.

Warning - that guy really, really loathes all things Google!

The web has certainly gotten very crowded the past few years. While my blog output has been increasing in volume and quality(!)....my web traffic has stagnated for the past 1.5 years.

I'm not sure exactly why but I sense that while I've been focusing on writing, my website competitors have instead been focused on gaming the search results and whatnot.

We're a *blame society*, right?

So whom could we blame for polluting our glorious internet with dating advice written in broken English by Third World Asians?

Blame Google? Blame Google because it's their AdSense network that's subsidized these so-called content farms/mills?

Nah....we rightfully have to blame the Morons who actually click on the ads!

My Travel Ambitions

My wife has to go to South America next month for 11 days for work. She asked me if I had any desire at all to accompany her to Brazil (and Uruguay). After all my sister and her family just moved to Brazil so perhaps I could visit them.

But it wasn't a serious question in the sense that I don't know what we'd do with the kids. I couldn't imagine taking them; we don't really have good/cheap family *help* that we could tap; etc.

Regardless of the children I told her that I had ZERO desire to go to South America....and she was shocked.

In fact, I have had ZERO desire to go anywhere exotic really for quite some time now.

Sure I enjoy Florida in the winter, but that is more of a negative trip - an effort to get away from the painful Northeastern winter.

If you pressed me, I'd tell you there are only a couple of places I presently have the urge to go to.

One, I'd like to visit the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

And two, I'd like to fly to California and drive all over the state - sightsee from top to bottom.

(I'd also like to hike Mt. Katahdin in Maine, something I hope to pull off this year since we have two weddings up there to attend.)

The other week my wife spent working in London and Geneva with those *global banking criminals*. I was surprised when she came back beaming about London. She said it was *hip* and *hopping* and that we should definitely think about her doing a 2-year stint there.

Say what?

NO FREAKIN' WAY!

For crying out loud, I told her, we live in New York - it's hip and hopping aplenty here.

There's no sunlight in London, take note you SAD sufferers.

I don't even have an urge to VISIT London, no less make it my 7th home in the past 10 years!

Sure I sound like a closed-minded, provincial here - someone not fit for educating young minds, but whatever.

I'm well aware that my life and family priorities will evolve over time. Heck if you told me 1.5 years ago that I would be moving to stinkin' Long Island - a place I've long detested - I'd have advised you to get your head examined.

Perhaps one of these years I'll tag along with my first wife to South America with the kids.

And perhaps one day I'll see a tremendous opportunity in moving overseas or something.

Realize it's only because we homeschool that these options will be available to us.

Raising Entrepreneurs?

I heard this guy a while back and couldn't for the life of me remember where when I went looking for him later on.

But I just found him again. Enjoy:

Two Illiterate Morons

Hah!

I just asked my son - even he doesn't know how to spell *eucalyptus*.

Thanks to GuyWhoUsedToDrink for this one.

Brainwash.com

So my son is sitting next to me at his PC and he takes off his headphones:

Prince - Hey Dad.

CaptiousNut - Yeah?

Prince - I think we should get a hybrid car.

CaptiousNut - Why is that?

Prince - Because it doesn't create any air pollution.

Hah! Laughing:

CaptiousNut - Well that's not exactly true....we'll talk about it later.

My son was on BrainPop.com - one of these $20 a month educational websites. They have tons of cartoonish videos that kids can watch and hopefully learn from.

Now I can't vet everything he reads, watches, etc. but most of what I hear from that site I like. Heck my son is riveted by it. Once last week he was on the site for 3 hours straight.

They have a free trial which we used up many months ago. In fact my son tried to simply re-register for the free trial only to be nixed for using the same email address. (I have to teach him how to create dummy addresses/names!)

Someone in town sent me their government elementary school's password so we are just using that. Our $9,000 in annual school taxes pay for it anyway ($14,000 total property tax!), right?

Anyways I relayed the above dialogue to my wife. She laughed and renominated the site - BrainWash.com.

There was more to come...

A couple days later my son informed me that we had descended from apes!

And then just yesterday I heard BrainWash.com use the avowedly pagan expression *B.C.E* instead of B.C. It stands for *before common era* and is a new one for secular revisionists.

Am I worried about my son's mind being corrupted from this type of content - like so many other parents are and would be?

Not a chance.

Not only do I relish debunking nonsense....it's quite often a great learning opportunity on a silver platter.

Starbury - The Sequel

While it was a good trade the Knickerbockers made and their fans have justified optimism...

I can't help but see the Carmelo Anthony era being a total replay of the Stephon Marbury one.

Favorite son from the Boroughs, cocky, lazy, and fundamentally unsound, comes home with a big contract and bigger expectations....only to crash and burn.

Mark my words!

See also:

A Little B-Ball

Another Dissembling Retiree

Read This Book!

I briefly saw that Greg Laurie was raving about it on his blog....and then I saw that it had an astounding 800+ reviews on Amazon and still held a rare 5-star rating.

Fortunately my library network had the book. I went to *reserve* it online and was informed that 21 people had holds on it ahead of me. Shoot! I figured whatever....I'm too busy to read now and will enjoy it when my name comes up in the summer or something.

But for some reason the book was delivered for me right away. It turns out I mistakenly reserved the LARGE PRINT edition which must have been flying under the radar. The librarian looked at me in all my gloriously youthfulness and almost yanked the book back. She said that LARGE PRINT was for 'old coots' and 'old bags' only.

Anyways, I escaped with my score and read the 637 pages (496 pages of standard-sized print) in two sittings - it was that riveting. So much for opening a book at night to help me fall asleep!

Unbroken will most certainly break you to tears. And it's probably a perfect, easy gift for the 'old coot' men your life.

Personal Luddite Problems

A local friend, that filmmaker dude who is going to get me cast in a romantic scene with Reese Witherspoon, on account of his industry has access to and possession of just about every motion picture DVD there is out there.

What a terrific resource to have nearby, right?

Recently he lent my first wife a few flicks: A Harry Potter movie for my son, True Grit, and something else.

The only problem was - as we found out the other day leaving our kids with their babysitting aunt - that the Harry Potter movie wouldn't play in our DVD player?

Why was that? I investigated when I got home to my disappointed brood/sitter.

There was no label on the disk but I think I figured out that my circa 1998 DVD player won't play what appears to be a Blu-Ray DVD.

Crap.

No problem. I think I saw $85 Blu-Ray players at the Sony Store around Christmas. And I have about 150,000 Sony Points on my credit card so I can upgrade our DVD player for free.

Oh wait, there is a problem.

It seems, after some Googling, that my fat-screen, circa 1998 32-inch color television (not a Zenith!) isn't able to display or perhaps even connect to a Blu-Ray player.

So now I'm going to have to buy a new freakin' TV too if I want to take advantage of this new friend of ours' motion picture collection. Double crap!

Oh well. I'm trying to construct a completely TV-free household. At best I think I'll be able to give up watching major sporting events, get rid of the cable box, and get by with one of those newfangled web-enabled TVs - perhaps with a $8 Netflix subscription.  Once I can pay for The Masters and Celtics/Patriots games a la carte I'm done with old-fangled cable - as I suspect many other people will be.

See also - Goal = Motion Pictures

More On #1 Chinawoman - Amy Chua

Surely y'all remember that AMERICAN woman of Chinese ancestry - Amy Chua - and her unblinking racism?

See my first post here and my more entertaining follow-up here.

Anyways the woman's embarrassment(?) has been most likely mitigated by all the books she's sold via her notoriety.

That homeschool-friendly psychologist Peter Gray held his nose, bought her book, and reviewed it if for no purpose other than to prevent others from buy it.

Read - Amy Chua Is A Circus Trainer, Not A Tiger Mother.

Is it wrong to root for Ms. Chua's daughters to read all the people, GLOBALLY, that think her mother a POS?

Perhaps.

It reminds me, to an extent, of that POS woman I blogged on 5 years ago:

Consider the case of author/journalist Amy Richards.

She got pregnant (out of wedlock), a sonogram revealed triplets, and she disgustingly revealed her fears,

"I’d have to give up my life," Richards thought after getting the bad news. “[N]ow I’m going to have to move to Staten Island. I’ll never leave my house because I’ll have to care for these children. I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco [a wholesale club] and buying big jars of mayonnaise.”

What did Amy do? She aborted two of the fetuses.

Now it was bad enough that she did what she did and for the reasons she gave, but it is worse than that. Shouldn't she have at least has the shame to keep quiet about it? No, instead proudly publicized her deed in the New York Times Magazine.

Is it wrong to wonder who is better off, the aborted babies or the one that gets to be raised by such an a**hole? It probably is.

One day that kid will google her mom, "Amy Richards", and will learn probably more than they want to know about the circumstances of their birth. Perhaps they will even be directed to this blog.

Predictable Big Government Misdirection

Hah!

Hey guess what though...

The bogeyman for this additional blow to Joe6Pack has already been well-sculpted.

Big Government, Wall Street plutogogues, and their clueless toady Big Media (along with the vast interests of Big Military) all agree that it's 7th century cavemen in the Mid-East to blame for $3.50+ gasoline prices. See the current uprisings and stone-throwings in Libya and Egypt.

Meanwhile they are printing money (and handing it out their cronies) faster than we can grow trees! Yeah, that has nothing at all to do with skyrocketing commodity prices. Move along, nothing to see here...

Recall I, most uncharacteristically, and most presciently bought a car in November that gets 32 mpg. Outside of my disastrous advice to short into this bull market rally - 2 years ago, not far from the bottom, I have never in six years steered y'all wrong.

The financial markets will roll over again, perhaps soon. And the pols will unfortunately crank up the printing press another notch upon the mistaken presumption that it *worked* in 2008-9.

To those of you who think $5 gas won't happen here I'd like to throw out another question: Did you ever think college tuition would top $50,000 a year?

A few years ago I figured that my family burned 1,000 gallons of gasoline per year. We probably are over that level now - as are most households where both life-partners work out of the house - and am not counting heating oil either.

But even at that baseline number, a jump of 50 cents per gallon in the price at the pump minimally takes an additional $500 a year out of the family budget. Again, I'll bet that the real impact for the average family when considering miles driven and heating oil is probably closer to $700 or $800.

AND on top of that the higher oil prices will hit just about EVERY OTHER GOOD AND SERVICE in the economy.

Move along here....if anything blame Bin Laden and Co., be a good (mind) slave now otherwise they'll cut the school sports program at your local government school.

See also:

Going Small

Gasoline - A Forgotten Scapegoat

Stoopid Yet Talented?

I first heard of that group yesterday . The guy next to me the bar said he had just erroneously referred to them as *Somewhat Stupid* in a text message to his teenage daughter and was summarily ridiculed.

He said they were a *white reggae* band. I didn't hear anything that I would say fits in that category. But they don't sound bad, at all.

Of course a band with that moniker would have over a minute of black nothing on its YouTube video.

And I'm just going to guess that's a Kfell kinda group...

Cold, Bitter, And Mysteriously Unsatisfied!

You know, last week was pretty warm here in New York - 50 on Thurday and 60 on Friday.

Although the week before (my first week back from snowbirding in southern FL) there was a day where the high was like only 20 degrees or something.

Big deal - I put a jacket on, turned the heat up a little, and just handled it like a grown-up. That cold day wasn't so bad at all.

But when I was in Florida last month, despite my best efforts, I couldn't tune out all the *winter whining* din from up north. It was flat-out insufferable, the whining that is.

All y'all NEasterners have to man-up (and cuddle-up?) already!

Big Government - Marginalizing Work

With Welfare It Makes Sense To Work Less

Remember when Mississippi used to have new manufacturing plants popping up weekly? What happened?

If you ask the business leaders, the problem is a lack of skilled labor. People don’t want to work. Especially in the Delta, people just won’t show up on time and often fail drug tests.

"How can this be?" you may ask. You have to work to eat. Well, that’s really not true anymore. In fact, our welfare state rewards not working. You can do as well working one week a month at minimum wage as you can working a $60,000-a-year, full-time, high-stress job.

"The line at 50 South Clinton Avenue is crazy -- people get there early in the morning, a lot of the people are cursing, yelling and screaming," Hernez said.

Hah! That's an *assistance line* in New Jersey; and it's two years old.

How long are the lines now?

You'd be angry too if you were 250 lbs, 5 feet 6 inches, and had to stand out there in the winter!

Now check this out - South Carlina's food stamp calculator.

I entered *family of 4*, *monthly rent of $300*, and *monthly utilities of $100* (satellite color TV).

And you can click the image, enlarge it, and read the GOOD NEWS - an idler like that qualifies for $588 of food stamps per month.

I don't care what anyone says, that's a LOT of money for food. I've seen infomercials late at night that declared kids could eat for 17 cents a day...

Talking To A Runaway Printing Press

I might of linked to one of these videos a while back, but am not sure.

Nonetheless it's worth another watch:

Off-The-Chart Homeschooling

My son, the 6.24 year old Prince is euphorically assembling his new $50 LEGO kit on the dining room table...

I, as I so often do, start teasing. I pick up the box and tell him I have to take the LEGOs away because they are only for edades 7 - 14.

He ignores me, as HE SO OFTEN DOES.

I jab again:

Dad - You're not old enough to do this.

Prince - C'mon Dad.

Dad - I'm serious. Look at the box. You're not 7 yet.

Back to ignoring me...

Dad - It's a law. The LEGO police is going to come and take this away from you.

Prince - Dad, IT'S NOT A LAW, it's only a RECOMMENDATION.

Now I'm chuckling.

Prince - The thing is a piece of cake.

Dad - A what?

Prince - A piece of cake.

Dad - It's not cake....It's made out of PLASTIC.

Prince - I know it's not made out of cake. Don't you know what an IDIOM is?

HAH! An *idiom*... He must have learned about that on the edu-website I've got him on - Time4Learning.com ($20 a month).

And just last week the petulant pedant was trying to inform me of the *difference between a fact and an opinion* (!) that he also apparently learned about on that website.

Today he just about took my queen from me during our daily chess game - and that wasn't the first close call either!

Check him out his sister's *baby math game* - which he insisted on playing:

Again, we haven't done hardly any math in the past 12 months; we essentially stopped when he hit algebra before he was 5.25 years old. But presently we are going to ramp it up again. Check out his math post today on linear equations. The Prince is anxious to get through algebra SO HE CAN START CALCULUS.

Offhand I would say this is about the third time in the past couple of years that he's taken an noticeable, jaw-dropping leap off the charts.

BTW, that's MathRider in the video above. I've procured a copy of the software and will have a full review up in a couple of weeks, after my daughter puts some more time into it and I am able to assess progress.

Eighties LoDef Color TV Time Warp

Y'all will be amazed at how many of the *details* you remember from these opening clips!

And some of you wimps might even tear up in a fit of nostalgia - or from the realization of HOW FREAKIN' OLD YOU ARE!

Shorting Tiger Woods

Normally this is the type of clip I'd put on my near dormant golf blog - Marginalizing Hackers - but it's so well done I think *general audiences* may approve:

Don't think for a second this guy is simply Marginalizing Eldrick Woods...

No, he's also at the same time trying like heck to get himself hired!

There are a whole lot of people out there rooting against Tiger. I wouldn't put myself in that category by any stretch BUT like the guy on the video, I'm rooting at least for the drama of his continued struggles.

The Self-Marginalizing Forum

Are any of y'all happy members of *forums*?

I'm most certainly going to add one to my edu-site, but stuff like the following, which I just pulled from a widely read *homeschooling* forum gives me pause:

I think my inner Momma Bear has calmed down enough to write about this in a coherent manner. Last Friday we had a group Valentine's Day party. We met at a church to exchange Velentines and have snack. Then we went to a paint-your-own-pottery store. I had all three kids there sitting at different tables. Oldest dd went up to put away her completed artwork while I was managing the other two. She came back and acted as though everything was fine. After finishing up at the pottery store, two other moms and I went back to the church to clean up. One of those moms came up to me and said "Did you see what Mrs. X did to your dd?" I didn't think anything of it since Mrs. X often says stupid things to everyone. Apparently, while dd was putting away her pottery, Mrs. X walked right through her, pushing her out of the way. No apology. No joking. She just completely pushed my kid out of the way without so much as a grunt, nod, or blink of an apology. A 10yo! A skinny, scrawny 10yo! After I got over the impluse to slash this woman's tires and scratch out her eyes, I casually asked dd about it. She said she was standing out of the way and Mrs. X just ran right into her, pushing her out of the way. Poor dd didn't understand why Mrs. X did it, but it didn't seem to bother her.

Now, this is not the first instance of Mrs. X somehow attacking my dd when I am not around. Last Christmas we had a hs choir program. The one time I dropped off dd and ds without staying, Mrs. X called out my dd and started yelling at her for no reason. I had two other moms tell me the exact same story concerning the incident. Again, after taming the urge to pull Mrs. X's hair out, I asked dd about it. She didn't understand why Mrs. X was yelling at her when she(dd) was following directions. The mom in charge said dd was not a problem.

There have been other stupid comments that I have ignored. Mrs. X is the mom that has to yell at everyone else's children to distract attention from the fact that her own children are usually physically fighting one another, throwing huge tantrums, or otherwise making a huge spectacle. She often, and I mean OFTEN picks out faults in other kids, then casually notes how wonderful her children are. That type of behavior I can ignore. I cannot ignore her singling out MY dd any longer.

So give me some advice on how to handle this situation. This woman also attends my church. making things a bit more complicated. I don't think I am over-reacting anymore. I've gotten over the urge to strangle her and leave a flaming bag of poop on her doorstep. I know another mom who has had to confront Mrs. X on her behavior, so I don't think it's just me. Help me! I'm not good at confrontation, well, at civilized confrontation. I don't mind it, but I tend to get a little loud when my kids are involved.

Usually I'm all for the messiness of open dialogue and look with scorn upon those afraid of unminced words, unfiltered information, and the whining of insecure homeschool moms...

There's definitely need and a place for such outlets, I just don't know that one of them is on my doorstep.

I mean doesn't she have a husband she can ask for advice? Or a non-virtual friend? Perhaps even a brain of her own to tap?

I don't know, maybe it's not as bad as I think. Personally I'm just so swamped and short on time widely-articulated nonsense like the above flat out perplexes me.

Website Building Chronicles 1 - For Morons

Even though I've been blogging for 6 years, there's a lot that I DO NOT KNOW about web publishing. In fact, since I've been using the user-friendly Blogger.com I never had to learn even the BASICS.

First you have to buy a domain name for $10 through GoDaddy or someone else. For lack of a better idea (and available keywords!), I bought HomeschoolDad.com. There's nothing there, probably won't be much on it for a while, and I may indeed find a better domain and switch it....but for the meantime that's my new site.  Trust me, it most certainly will not look like that much longer.

Then you have to pay someone to *host* your content - I'm using DreamHost for something like $5 a month.

These are the easy steps that most of y'all, even the Luddites, know well.

But then I installed Wordpress - a *semantic personal publishing platform* - and the complications started to arise, er....the learning curve started to steepen.

Normal blog publishing can be done in much the same manner as with Blogger.com - by going to the right website and simply *logging in*.

But the major reason for going with Wordpress is that as an *open source* platform, one can add all sorts of gadgets, plugins, and software embellishments to the bones of their website. Many are free but the good, snazzy ones cost $$$$ and, to the frustration of relative n00bs like myself, require manual installation and potentially mid-level HTML coding.

Another thing I learned, after a few hours of angst on Saturday, is that to communicate with my new website, I have to FTP - File Transfer Protocol - whatever files (i.e. software, plugins, video files, PDFs...) I want to utilize on my website. Who knew? For that you have to download one of the many FTP programs available. Upon the advice of Paul Mitchell, who's much further along with his commercial website....I went with Core FTP Lite. And even after figuring all that out, downloading the uploader, and whatnot I still had problems zipping files up to my website. I had the freakin' *port number* wrong!

Apparently there's a whole lot more to it. There's *encryption* for FTP-ing; I can enable others (*clients*?) to upload files to my website; etc. Arrgghh!!

Meanwhile I'm still baffled by *roots*, *subdomains*, *directories*, etc. I never know what files go where OR what 80% of the files I see in these folder freakin' are. Such are the bumps and potholes along the stubborn DIY path, I guess.

I told y'all I was a n00b!!!

Though the wealth of techno-information I have get up to speed on is vast and daunting, not only am I fully capable, it's also invigorating to USE MY BRAIN for a change. And that was one of the major problems with my career as a trader. After 15 years watching the tape, I could trade with my eyes closed. Someone could give me $100 billion today to allocate and I could do it without ANY of that useless analyst research, without a trading desk *team*, without expensive *sales-trader* brokers, without reading the WSJ, etc. All I would really need is a PC and a buxom secretary and I'll bet my positions would just as *good* as what these slick skimmers come up with.

I'm A Single Dad, Again

Driving home last week from my month-plus winter reprieve in Naples, Florida....my first wife informed me telephonically that she had to travel for work.

So today she boarded a flight bound for Europe where she'll hobnob with those members of the global criminal banking cartel in London and Geneva.

If I had known she was going to be gone this week too I would probably have just stayed another month down there in Naples!

It's actually pretty easy to find a rental WHEN YOU'RE DOWN THERE. I saw *seasonal rental* signs all over the place in Naples Park in January. How exactly do these clowns expect to rent to snowbirds - WHO ARE UP NORTH - via a lawn sign?

That's the thing....there are tons of empty condos and houses in Florida BUT the 'old coots' and Morons who own them don't have a clue how to take a couple of pics and advertise over Craigslist!

BTW, the 'old coot' Moron whom we rented from in January is playing games with our $650 security deposit. I did protect myself against such a slimy maneuver but hopefully I won't have to open my can of whoop-a$$ on him.

Why does it seem like these things are forever happening to me???

Ripped from West Coast Tom's first *mix tape*:

Fat People Going Bananas

In the old Weight Watchers point system eating a banana cost fat people *2 points* - whereas other fruits were all 1 point apiece.

BUT recently they've revamped the entire scoring system. I believe now they have all fruit, including bananas, equal at *zero points* or something.

Big deal, right?

Except that my wife said you wouldn't believe how furious TONS (pun!) OF PEOPLE, who were avoiding bananas all these years, are now. In fact she said that instead of being excited to eat bananas with relative impunity now, many of these chronically obese lazy people refuse to believe that bananas aren't *twice as bad* as other fruits.

The way these Morons cling to their firmly held beliefs!

My Edu-Site, In Utero

I'm looking for a handful of parents with youngsters (ages 3-6?) who would like to help me develop, design, and essentially volunteer to be guinea pigs in the launch of my new educational website.

The site's format is starting to take shape in my mind and now I'm looking to really get it going. At the outset it will be geared toward the young'uns - all of them, even the ones who might(!) be attending government school down the road.

So those interested should just shoot me a quick email ("captiousnut at gmail dot com") on the side.

I should say that my site will not be a generic blog; ultimately it's going to be paid membership site (albeit very inexpensive) with tiers of content access. There will hopefully be a couple of other important dimensions to it but we can talk about that later.

Obviously  whoever helps me out in this endeavor will not only benefit directly from my *expertise*, they will also earn lifetime access to whatever it is I end up marketing down the road.

I'm just wondering who the bleep was commissioned to take that picture!

Frosty Friday Night Levity

A couple of these images you'll have to click to ENLARGE:

The MyFace.com ones were the funniest (*blonde* and *likes*). And if you don't agree, you just don't have as well-developed a sense of humor as I do!

Overdoing It...

Check out the *highest rated comment* on the video this ab-narcissist posted:

Ha!

He does looks sort of ugly - and I say this with an unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality (George Costanza!).

The ladies can probably get more specific. I just think his proportions are out of whack - with his abs being so much more developed than his chest. It's as unsightly as a gut on a skinny guy (how I used to look when I was drinking Yuengling - the most fattening beer around! - 5-6 days a week).

BTW, I've been back to my 45 lb kettlebell for almost a week now. I've been swinging it every other day about 90 times (3 sets of 30) and the results have been phenomenal. Tim Ferriss recommends only doing 2 long sets of 75 per week. I think I'll be there soon and will have to up the weight (ouch $$$!).

I highly, HIGHLY recommend this exercise. The thing is, the kettlebell swing is laser-targeted, effective, AND time-efficient. Who wants to go for hour-long runs or do 90 minute yoga sessions anyway? Who has the time???!!!

I ordered a 30 lb one for my wife yesterday too - $38 from Walmart.com, the best deal out there - to get her started. They'll ship it for free to a your local store (or Kinko's). It seems that Walmart is dabbling in the online procurement space now. Look out Amazon?

Public Intolerance For Diverse Stupidity

Did y'all see this Buffalo Congressman who was caught emailing pics of himself to a classy broad? One who was trolling Craigslist for eligible bachelors...

As far as I'm concerned, what she did constituted borderline entrapment!

Just kidding.

I mean really....what kind of guy uses topless photos of himself to virtually flirt with women!

Realize that he didn't do anything extraordinarily immoral beyond the ill-advised flirting and lying about his age (that was hilarious!).

My sources tell me that he was a bit of a Tim Ferriss 4-Hour Body cult member; that he had just recently gotten ripped on the Slow-Carb diet coupled with a regimen of kettlebell swings BUT his wife wouldn't even take notice - so he went looking for some physical appreciation.

It amazing however, that politicians can steal money from taxpayers hand over fist, and they can vote for the worse, most Moronic legislation imaginable...

But if they do something oddly DUMB like leave an electronic wire trail to high-end escorts or respond to a Craigslist ad with their personal email address....they get pilloried in the public square!

Weird Yet Still Cool

Check this out:

Now for a better, more informative video - click here.

Although it gets somewhat loopy when the guy starts talking about the design problems our *creator* (i.e. God) might have had to confront.

Passive Investing Misconceptions

Despite 10% (at least) unemployment, ubiquitous bankruptcies, and $100 a barrel oil the Dow hit a 30 month high or something today. When will this insanity end?

Probably soon, as my puts are almost all gone and I haven't any inclination to buy more. I just don't have any desire to have to pay attention to the Wall Street casino any longer - fifteen years of it was plenty!  I'm busy and excited trying to reinvent myself as a productive entrepreneur in the realm of education; I'm trying to become what I always should have been on track to become - had my life's script not been hijacked and written by devious third parties.

Remember, a high stock market is TERRIBLE for young people, TERRIBLE for corporate wage slaves.

The only people who benefit from high prices today are those 'old coot' plutocrats - buttholes that control our enslaving Big Government and 'old coot' retirees. Just take a sober look at what all the bailouts are explicitly designed for - to bailout property owners (not people with 25 years left on their mortgage!), to bailout government pensioners, to bailout 'old coot' entitlements, and to bail out stock and bond holders, I.E. WEALTHY OLD PEOPLE THAT DON'T WORK.

All y'all Morons could be buying the market with your monthly and annual retirement contributions at 8k instead of 12k...

I used to rib the plutogogues at Forbes about this all the time.

They would get all geeked up when the stock market upticked and I'd interrogate them, "Look, if you believe the market will be at 40k in 25 years or whatever...if you REALLY believe that then why don't you want stocks to go down? Why don't you want the market to dive so you can CONFIDENTLY buy more at better prices???"

They never had an answer for that not only because they were Morons of *little faith*, but because they were flacks for the monetarily wealthy.