Brady’s Blog

i am now officially a terrorist sympathizer..

here’s why..

i picture myself as mrs. abedzadeh, wife of al qaeda operative bill abedzadeh..

i’m just hanging around the tent one day, surfing the web by satellite..

and by the way, darn the latency on this satellite - makes playing america’s army just about impossible - lags out every time i get a decent sniper shot - why can’t we get a cable modem like the jews?

anyway, so i’m surfing..

cruising target.com - mostly just because i like the name..

and i run across a series of products called baby wipe warmers..

now keep in mind, while ole bill is out playing cowboys and iranians from cave to cave, i’m stuck here in the dirt floor tent eating deep fried goat rinds and wiping little osama’s butt with the camels tail..

meanwhile, in the land of the great satan, all the little american babies are getting a nice, fresh, warm wipe accompanied by the sounds of mozart..

i tell ya, sometimes i think this whole terrorism thing is just silly, but if those people are going to keep inventing things like baby wipe warmers..

man..

that’s just rubbing our faces in it..

when john karr was arrested for the murder of jon benet ramsey, i heard a spokesperson for the ramsey family on the radio saying everyone owed them a big apology..

then today, after the dna test, i heard john karr’s brother on the radio telling us we all owe the karr family a big apology..

so..

on behalf of all of us, i’d like to apologize..

dear ramsey family,
we’re really sorry we thought you might have been involved in the murder - we now know somebody else definitely would have been glad to do it if he hadn’t been in georgia or alabama or wherever at the time.. so.. we’re sorry..

dear karr family,

we’re sorry we thought john might have done it just because he said “i did it”..
please forgive us for mistaking him for a murderer when he is in fact just a regular old psycho, pedophile freak who admits to murders he did not commit just for fun..

our apologies..

so sorry..

won’t happen again..

locks are believed to be around 4,000 years old..

it was a good run..

so.. if you were thinking of joining the local lock-picker’s club, you better hurry..

this story really starts about a year ago..

mrs. cracker and the kids were at walmart or somewhere..

davis saw some floam..

this stuff is basically the rebirth of something called slime they used to peddle to us as kids..
it’s just some gooey.. well.. slime.. that is fun to play with..

only floam is soooo much more advanced.. because it’s mixed with styrofoam granules..

so basically, they take some accidental byproduct of the plastics industry, mix it with recycled styrofoam, and sell it to kids..

oh and they color it..

and as soon as the stores in any given town stock this product, furniture and carpet sales quadruple inside of a month..

anyway, davis had seen the commercials on tv about 4,000 times so his appetite for the stuff was already whetted before he ever saw it on the shelf..

and when he did..

davis: “mommy mommy mommy!! i want some flooooooooam!”

mommy: “no davis..”

davis: “oh mommy please please please!”

mommy: “no”

the next week..

davis: “oh mommy mommy mommy they have flooooooam!! i want some!!”

mommy: “no davis..”

davis: “oh please oh please!!”

mommy: “no”

and so on for a few months..

then..

davis: “oh mommy!! floooooam!! they have floooooam!! it’s only seven nine eight dollars!! i want some!!”

mommy: “no davis..”

davis: “come on mommy!! i want some! oh please oh please!!”

mommy: “you have a birthday coming up, maybe you can ask for that for your birthday..”

this went on for a few more months - the whining supplications of the child, the rock solid determination of the mother not to give in..

then..

davis and i went to the toy store..

davis: “oh daddy look! they have floam here!!”

daddy: “floam? hmm.. looks like slime mixed with styrofoam.. let’s get some..”

what can i say?

i didn’t know about the floam embargo..

i have broken my collar bone 3 times..

the right one twice, and the left one once..

and now for some great james bond tales of danger and intrigue which led to these injuries..

first time was goofing around on the couch - i was 4 or 5 maybe..

the second was a few years later, trying to do cartwheels in the yard..

i’m an adrenaline junkie, what can i say..

i don’t remember the third, but i’m sure it was equally as exciting as the first two instances..

just goes to show you - if you live life far enough out on the edge, you pay the price..

a little setup here..

we have three kids..

stew and claire are redheads - total redheads - complete with light skin, freckles, and all the anger of northern ireland in the 70’s..

davis has brown hair which blondes some in the summer.. and he’s pretty dark complected..

all three of my sister’s kids (kgg) are very dark..

so anyway..

mrs. cracker was out last night..

the kids and i went for a walk..

we didn’t make it far - our friends down the street were just arriving home and asked us in..

they just got a cat not too long ago..

davis is kind of our animal kid (double entendre recognized and intentional)..

he started to play with the cat and then hesitated, cautioned by some thought or memory..

cracker: “what’s the matter bud?”

davis: “that cat bites dark people..”

cracker: “what?”

davis: “that cat bites dark people..”

cracker: “what makes you think that?”

davis: “it bit gage.. and he’s dark..”

hard to argue with that..

excerpts from an email exchange last week:
——————————————-
my boss (to me and a few others in the office): “so and so’s grandfather died last Friday and he is a ball bearer in the funeral on Monday so he will be out.”

cracker (reply to all, of course): “wow.. so he’s a BALL bearer at the funeral?
interesting..
remind me not to die.. ”
——————————————-

it was just a typo, of course..

pretty good idea though..

you put that kind of thing in the funeral announcement and people will remember you with fondness and some amount of awe..

it could be a new trend..

like a status thing..

“he was an extraordinary man - 10 ball bearers at his funeral i heard..”

would make one hope and pray for a closed casket ceremony..

i guess you could have a juggler at the wake..

i have done so many dumb things in my life..

i’m constantly reminded of them..

usually the reminding comes at the hand of a family member or close friend..

it’s those closest to you who are quickest to point out your foolishness past or present..

and would we want it any other way?

yesterday we were talking about someone getting a parking ticket at the university of arkansas..

it was mentioned that i had at one point collected quite of few of these from that very institution..

in mrs. cracker’s car (back when she was just miss cracker)..

so many in fact she was informed she would not be allowed to graduate until they were paid..

i have no idea how many there were or how much the tab was..

but i will say this..

if i know mrs. cracker, there is probably a good reason i have some memory loss regarding this particular lack of judgement..

also explains my constant headaches..

and one droopy eye..

and the plate in my skull..

i used to work for an internet service provider in branson, misery..

standard dialup service as well as some bleeding edge wireless stuff..

that was the part i worked on, climbing water towers, troubleshooting radios, etc..

somewhere along the line, the owner had discovered he could save some money by hiring blind people..

it was all done through some kind of partnership with the state..

now i don’t mean like blind blind.. just legally blind..

and frankly, you’d be amazed how unblind some legally blind people can be..

of course, they don’t let you choose when you order them up - “i’d like a couple of sorta blind workers and 3 not very blind at all..”

so we ended up with a couple that were pretty blind..

one of the things this program provided was money for huge, expensive monitors for the blind guys to use..

which is a nice bit of biting irony for the regular old seeing joes working there..

gives you a good feeling to look up from your 15 inch piece of junk to see a blind guy with his nose 2 inches from a $900 21 inch beauty with the resolution turned all the way down so the icons are as big as a fist, following the mouse cursor around with his entire face, knowing that if he lets it stray too far it may take him a while to find it again..

most of the blind guys that came through there worked phone support - answering calls and troubleshooting connection issues..

you might keep that in mind the next time you talk to tech support over the phone - there’s always a chance the guy on the other end is trying his hardest but just can’t see..

a blind pakistani would be the worst of both worlds i guess..

there was a guy named chris who worked there for a while - he was pretty darn blind - not air traffic control material no matter how much they spend on monitors..

he struggled for a week or two, but once he got the hang of it he could get through just about any issue over the phone without ever looking up from his magazine.. these he read with his face literally touching the pages like they were written in some kind of nose-braille or something..

and inevitably the blind guys would tire of the mundane world of phone tech support and start wanting to climb towers with us..

one guy finally convinced the owner that he could see well enough to do just that and they put him on a tower crew..

i think that was about when i decided to move on..

my sister and i watched this movie the other night..

we happened to be in the back seats during a long drive and there was a dvd player on board.. and my brother had the movie sitting there.. so.. we watched it..

frankly, i can’t think of any other circumstances under which i could have been tricked into watching it..

i honestly don’t know how one could make a movie this bad without really trying to do so..

so many bad things had to happen at once to result in such a pitiful excuse for a film..

in fact, i heard some schools will soon be allowed to teach the theory of intelligent design based solely on the fact that it’s impossible for something this bad to simply occur by pure chance..

there must somewhere be a higher being and he must want us to suffer..

like many movies before it, the problems started with the accents..

i counted about 5 different kinds of scottish, irish, and english accents..

then there were the spanish, cuban, and italian dialects..

and angelina jolie sounded like natasha from rocky and bullwinkle..

and of course all of these people are supposed to be from ancient greece or egypt or macedonia or wherever..

and it’s not just the accents that provide us with goofy language anachronisms.. they also throw in phrases and sayings like “you old sod” and “ma lord” and “ma lady”..

this would all detract a great deal from the dialogue i guess if there was any meaningful dialogue to detract from..

at one point, there was a pre-battle pep speech that must have lasted at least 5 minutes..

almost every scene was too long and absolutely packed with worthless back and forth cliche..

about an hour in, i discovered part of the problem..

cracker: “wow.. this is bad.. do you think they even had an editor working on this film?”

sis: “it’s the director’s cut.. i forgot to tell you that, didn’t i?”

cracker: “uh.. yeah.. you did.. thanks..”

the battle scenes were no less obnoxious than the dialogue and harder to understand..

they actually tried to label different parts of the battle as they came up, by placing titles on the screen like “macedonian left”, etc. — real helpful..

it was like “we don’t expect you to have any idea who is fighting who or how or why, but this is the left part of their army..”

then there were the time jumps..

i don’t mind a time jump - if as a director you tell me it’s 6 months earlier.. hey.. it’s six months earlier.. i can dig it..

but if you say “macedonia, 9 years earlier”, then jump back to the native time, and then once again tell me “macedonia, 9 years earlier”, well then - i’m going to expect to see the exact same scene again.. like the scene in spaceballs when they start fast forwarding, catch up with time and start watching themselves on screen..

there’s really too much bad about this movie to detail it all..

i think another conversation with my sister might sum it up..

this was about 100 minutes in i’d guess:

cracker: “wow.. this is actually getting worse..”

sis: “it really is.. the time jumps are the worst i think..”

cracker: “yeah.. do you see any reason they couldn’t have just presented all of this in sequence?”

sis: “no..”

cracker: “and in about 40 minutes for that matter..”

sis: “or not all..”

thankfully, we reached our destination before finishing the movie..

there’s a possibility i’ll actually try to complete it at some point just out of pure self loathing..

but i doubt it..

i don’t think i hate myself that much..