Simian Farmer

I laughed so hard... and then I gave my lucky d20 a big ol' hug

Advocacy for getting together and actually gaming.  This rocks!

(click it for larger image)

If wishes were like dishes

If wishes were like dishes
They'd be stacked up to the sill.
And if all my cares were hamburgers
I'd surely have my fill.

If petty plights were Northern Lights
The sky would be replete.
I'd often stumble as I strode,
And rarely see my feet.

If idle thoughts were pans and pots
I'd cook a feast of fishes,
With lemons and admonishments
To put away the dishes.

If grumbled threats were household pets
I'd hie off to a farm.
My house is incommodious
For such a dearth of charm.

If moans and sighs were apple pies
There'd be gobs of skinny grannies.
Their idle hands with naught to do,
Nor much to pad their fannies.

If odious glares were horses' hairs
I'd invest in violins;
And cellos too and fiddlers' bows;
I'd rosin them with sins.

If worries were all flurries
Then I'd bid farewell to Fall.
And embrace the arms of Winter
As I'm held beneath her thrall.

If pains and aches were wedding cakes
I'd never doff my kilt.
And kiss all the pretty girls' cheeks
With not a whit of guilt.

If angry frowns were circus clowns
I'd live inside a tent.
And have to wear top hat and tails
Nearly everywhere I went.

If all my dreams were frothy streams
I'd quench the world's thirst.
And if squalour were a contest, well,
I'd come right near to first.

But late at night with this my plight
Running rampant through my head,
I'm becalmed by but a single thought:
I've a wife and son abed.

~Simian Farmer

I'm diseased

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.

~Peter Abelard (Letter 8 to Heliose)

First anniversary. Let's do some serious navel gazing!

Today, the 29^th of September 2005, a seemingly inauspicious day by all accounts, marks the first anniversary of my entrance into the blogging world.  (Yay me!)

So where do I sit?

16,304 visitors to this site up to midnight last night.  **waves hi!**
440 posts.  (This is now my 441^st.)
575 comments.  (Insert Sally Field reference here.)

I aim to continue steering this blog on a more personal course.  (Not so much with the current affairs unless I feel a desperate need to opine, and a bare minimum of linking unless there's an overwhelming NEAT factor that simply must be shared; you can go to BoingBoing for that.)  There are a number of things I'd like to express here that I still haven't.  Whether it's gussying up the courage to say something or finding the right way to say it, there are a few pokers I have in the fire that need their time under the hammer yet.

Until then, I've compiled a list of some of my favourites from the past year.  They may not necessarily be your favourites, but considering that I cater to countless tens of fans, somebody's bound to get something out of some of them.  And I sometimes just like making lists.  And using 'some-' words too often in a single paragraph.

I love you all.  Even that fcuker in Calgary who comes here, like, five times a day and NEVER leaves a comment.

Anyway, here's the list:

45 virgins and a pelican

I always wondered why in the hell Huey Lewis wanted a new truck.  And why he specified one that wouldn't keep him up all night.  Did the alarm on his old one inadvertently go off at odd times?  And how could it possibly make his head feel three feet thick? 

I just didn't get it.

Ohhhh!!!!  A new drug! 

Right.

No quarrelling!

We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God.

~Chief Joseph

Intelligent Design isn't

I normally like to keep myself relatively link-free on this site since it detracts from my self-aggrandizement but...

THIS is a site I will be following with great interest for the next several months.  The first court case to determine whether or not it is legal to teach Intelligent Design as an alternative to evolution in school.

Gawd, I hope the ID guys get their asses smacked something fierce.

Monoga... what?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Amy and I just watched both Kinsey and Ray this weekend.  (Both of which movies deal largely with infidelity.)  But I've been thinking this week about monogamy.

It may also have something to do with the sneaking suspicion of my wife's that the mother of the little girl she looks after is involved in some extra-curricular activities.

Harley wisdom

Wisdom can leap out at you from the least expected places.

This Sunday morning I was walking both dogs to the local Blockbuster to return a DVD rental.  (Kinsey, which, by the by, is an excellent flick.  Though it was a little unnerving to see Liam Neeson, described by my wife as the Man's Man, locked in a passionate embrace with another, er, man.  This later sparked discussion betwixt me and she regarding whether or not I would also deign to lock lips with a fella in a movie.  I replied in the affirmative, so long as the motivation and, of course, the money were right.  The risk is currently not that great, given my current status as an un-superstar.)

So we were walking -- it's just over an hour round trip -- and chanced by a leather-clad Harley-Davidson owner, standing beside his bike, locked in conversation with some Joe Normal just outside a mall entrance.

Harley Guy: Marriage and relationships are totally about giving of yourself, man.  All that other stuff is just bullshit.

Totally.

On snot and Newton's First Law of Motion

My darling boy, cherubic young thing that he is, had just gotten over the head cold that was the result of the bout of croup he had earlier this month.  (Seems to take about two weeks for him to divest himself of all the symptoms.)

He started sniffling again on Saturday.

Isabelle is the girl that Amy looks after several times a week when her mother is allegedly at work.  (More on that later.)  She was dropped off early last week with a bit of a head cold of her own.  I think she was overly kind and shared it with Declan.

There is something incredibly entrancing in watching your son sitting and quietly snuffling on your wife's lap in the living room and observing the snot bubble steadily inflate and deflate with every breath that the boy takes.  (His other nostril is the one that's completely plugged.)

What is not so entrancing is the ensuing sneeze that ejects a long, clear stream of mucous whose tail end just manages to retain a hold on the rim of the boy's nostril.

One of my favourite games that I remember from elementary school was 'Crack the Whip'.  Everybody would hold hands and run in a straight line like a long snake.  The 'head' of the snake would abruptly turn and run 180 degrees back down the body with everybody following suit.  The handful of people at the end of the snake would almost invariably get 'whipped' off, beautifully demonstrating Newton's First Law of Motion: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

a.k.a. - Inertia can be a bitch.

But I digress.

The tenacious grip of the tail end of my son's olfactory ejection resulted in two things:  One, it did not hit me.  Holding my face so close to my son's in a hypnotic trance resulting from his pulsing nose-bubble was not a good idea; thankfully, I didn't pay for it.  Two, the string that would have hit me instead got a good grip on the boy's nostril and cracked the whip to land on his own cheek, eye, forehead and hair.  And mom.

I'm almost ashamed to say I was giggling while I was sprinting for the kleenex box, my grimacing wife restraining our boy's arms from spreading the damage.  There is little else that grosses her out more than snot outside of its native environs.

So with a full weekend to fester, Declan's head cold went to bed with him last night and woke us all up before midnight with the barking cough reminiscent of just a couple weeks ago.

Today, we're blaming the little girl for our lack of sleep and my insistence on writing snot and mucous so many times in a single post.