Brady’s Blog

this is a beautiful little piece of equipment..

it’s a simple device..

not much to it..

just a speaker, a battery, a little processor and timing chip..

but it can be so much fun..

and it’s the best kind of fun - the fun that happens at someone else’s expense!

in our case, that other person was homer..

poor, poor homer..

a couple of months ago, homer hid in tlb’s office and startled him when he opened the door..

and tlb vowed payback..

and boy did he get it..

with a little help from yours truly of course..

here’s the sequence of events in a nutshell..

1. homer scares tlb

2. tlb buys device

3. tlb sticks device to end of homer’s metal cabinet in his office - device starts beeping randomly

4. homer hears beeping, starts looking around room for source of beeping - terribly annoyed but still sane

5. cracker comes in with new guitar and amp and sets it up in his office and starts making noise

6. homer sees new guitar gear and starts to think it is the source of the buzz/beep sound

(the whole guitar thing was just blind coincidence and luck but we played it perfectly to make him think the guitar was somehow the source of the problem)

7. (couple days later) cracker takes guitar home, tlb removes beeper

8. (few days later) beeper is re-deployed without guitar present to throw homer off - homer’s mental health begins to decline precipitously..

9. (few days later) tlb redeploys beeper, cracker brings empty guitar case in and hangs it on door - homer doesn’t know it’s empty and assumes the return of the guitar is related to the return of the noise..

10. (couple days later) guitar removed again, beeper still deployed - homer at this point is scouring his office, unplugging everything, taking batteries out of stuff, could easily be admitted with a couple of signatures..

11. (few days later) we start moving the thing around his office - behind a frame on the wall, under his chair, under his keyboard, etc - homer is officially insane and on suicide watch..

12. (today) tlb finally clues homer in

13. homer vows to kill everyone..

some people like to listen to music when they run..

personally, i find most music to be pretty boring..

for some reason i’ve just never reached that level of sophistication in listening to music which would allow me to get totally wrapped up in it..

and when i’m running, i like to listen to something that keeps me interested, and therefore keeps my mind off the fact the rest of my body is in pain..

music just doesn’t usually do that for me..

so i listen to other stuff..

podcasts and the like..

my favorite podcast is the white house press briefing..

yes, it’s just as heart-pounding as it sounds..

it’s the press briefings.. from the white house..

here’s basically how this works from what little i know about it..

the secretary of the press (almost always referred to instead as the white house press secretary) decides to hold a press conference..

he lets the press corps know so they can all show up..

around 12:30 pm or so (usually), they turn on the cameras and let the reporters ask some on-the-record questions.. (sometimes preceded by a brief “here’s what the president is doing today” announcement)

so essentially it’s just a bunch of reporters asking questions..

many of which have already been asked and answered in the press gaggle earlier that day..

the press gaggle is a more informal, off-camera meeting with the press secretary where the press tries to get a read on the nuts and bolts of the president’s daily activities..

now obviously all of this would be as boring as day old white bread without some personalities..

thankfully, there is no shortage of those involved..

first of all, tony snow, the current press secretary, is just brilliant..

he has a style that is that perfect mix of super-smart, self-deprecating, and combative..

and he lacks the flop-sweat and aversion to eye contact that has plagued so many in his position..

perhaps rumbling with cancer a time or two makes helen thomas a little less exasperating and threatening..

and boy.. helen thomas.. wow.. give it up already..

if you don’t know this, old helen has been covering the white house since 1960..

that’s right.. 1960.. as in jfk..

and she’s just about the angriest little troll in the entire world..

her contribution to the entertainment is to ask the most blindly provocative and insulting questions possible and then bristle and spit at whatever answer comes her way..

it’s usually the best part of the show..

unless les kinsolving gets to ask a question..

les, like helen, has also been around a while..

and he’s almost as insane as helen, but in a much more fun way..

(i should note here also that he was about a year ahead of everyone else on the AIDS story when it broke)

les has brought up every touchy subject from Juanita Broaddrick to cheney’s hunting accident and always in a way that makes you wonder if he was born insane or somehow went crazy later in life..

of course, i have only so much room to talk when it’s 15 degrees at 5 am and i’m out there running listening to the white house press briefing podcast..

and giggling..

good times..

totally recommend it..

i’m not breaking any ground here i realize..

but allow me to remove this from my chest..

are the scientists who tell us the planet is going to get hotter and hotter until we all die the same scientists who keep telling me it’s going to snow tomorrow but it never snows today?!

how are we supposed to believe they know what’s going to happen over the course of the next 100 years when their forecasts only go 10 days out and even those are wrong?

and the terminology they use now shows they’ve pretty much given up even pretending they know that much..

recently, we were forecast to have a 50-70 percent chance of snow..

50 to 70..

i guess the 50 comes from a coin flip and the extra 20% comes from the fact that it’s WINTER..

here’s another one they’ve been doing lately..

“the high for your thursday will be in the upper 40’s to lower 50’s..”

oh gee.. thanks a lot for that info..

i could have never come up with that kind of precision without the help of 4 billion dollars worth of satellites and computer modeling..

and why is it always my thursday? or my weekend?

is that so when they’re off by a mile they can say “hey.. it was your thursday.. how was i supposed to know?”

the rest of the newscast isn’t like that..

they don’t say “a train derailed in your pakistan today..”

“or your dow jones industrial average moved ahead 30 points in heavy trading..”

but the weather.. that’s mine..

all mine..

and then when the weather plays out and proves them wrong, it’s always a huge surprise.. a story in itself..

“well folks, we narrowly avoided one of the largest winter storms of all time - all that snow and ice we were expecting pushed north of us..”

that’s one way to put it..

here’s another way..

“we told you it would snow.. it didn’t.. we were wrong..”

it’s not like they had it right for a while and then something changed..

like mother nature said “ya know.. i was going to snow there.. but now.. i don’t know.. i think i just won’t..”

mother nature never had any intention of snowing there at that time..

they just thought she did..

actually.. the computers thought it..

and that’s the part that really angers me about all this..

not only are these jokers consistently and perfectly wrong “50-70″ percent of the time, they don’t even come up with these miserably, terribly, and wholly wrong predictions on their own..

all they do is look at the computer and tell us what the computer thinks is going to happen..

it’s complete foolishness..

and then they come to us and say “the glaciers are melting!! we’re all gonna die!!” and we’re all supposed to panic..

and change..

we have to change..

because if we don’t change we’ll kill the planet..

as if the planet cares one whit about glaciers melting or oceans rising or whatever else..

that stuff affects the planet about as much as it affects me to trim my nose hairs..

the planet isn’t going anywhere..

at worst, the planet will become unfit for humans.. at which point the planet will thank us politely for removing ourselves and go on about its business..

and they’ve been telling us this should be happening any minute for about as long as they’ve been predicting the weather..

doing a great job on both fronts..

which brings me back to my original question..

are they the same scientists?

i really don’t know..

but if so, why should we believe them?

and if they’re not the same.. if the scientists who are working on all this global warming and climate change stuff are not currently predicting the weather, why aren’t they..

if they’re so smart, let’s see them prove themselves in a way that actually matters..

it’s easy to sit back and say “oh.. greenhouse gas.. global warming.. blah blah blah..”

try and hit tomorrow.. just try and nail that down for me.. just once..

then you can worry about what’s going to happen in 50 years..

there..

i feel better..

i mentioned a few weeks back that the kids were playing an online game called club penguin..

it’s essentially a children’s role-playing game where you build a penguin character and go around in this virtual arctic world..

the penguin names in our family are as follows..

gage - hgage
katie - katie lane
grayson - corn456
stew - redcrckr
davis - jettydavis
claire - clairebear03

part of the object of the game is to earn coins by playing different games and then spend those coins on little pets called puffles and other things..

our crew has puffles by the names of jettyjack, blueberry and strawberry, corndog, mack, mike, et al..

some of our penguins have been around for 30 days.. which is a big milestone because at 30 days old you can become a secret agent and solve mysteries..

at 45 days old, you can become a tour guide..

katie and stew even had virtual jobs at the virtual pizza joint for a while.. doing what i’m not sure.. but i’m guessing approximately as much work as real kids do at real pizza joints..

bottom line is, the whole thing is completely out of control..

it is absolutely all any of the kids want to do..

and they are all way too involved with their penguin counterparts emotionally..

for instance, davis just came to me crying because some other penguins told gage they didn’t like his igloo..

technically, they didn’t really say that because we have all of our kids penguins locked into servers where you can’t really talk to anyone beyond pre-specified messages.. but they came to gage’s igloo and then just left.. bad form in penguin land apparently..

claire (3 years old) can boot a computer, open the browser, find the URL in the history on the address bar, and get to the website to play..

she calls her character a “pink one” instead of a “penguin”..

and they are all completely obsessed about becoming members..

because, you see, only members can buy clothing and accessories for their penguins, customize their igloos, get all the different colors of puffles, and even buy furniture for those puffles..

which is obviously a steal of a deal at 6 bucks a month..

gage would point out the fact that you can get a discount on that price if you pay for a whole year up front..

oh.. and he also assures us if you become a member and buy a bunch of stuff and then cancel your membership, you’re allowed to keep all of that virtual merchandise..

all of them have been told they can become members when they turn 18..

which is one of the reasons i’m writing about this now.. so i can send this to each of them on their 18th birthday with a gift certificate for 6 months of club penguin membership..

should be a big hit as a birthday present..

while i am writing this, mrs. cracker just came in to tell us davis is sending heart and flower messages back and forth to some little pink penguin..

sounds like just the kind of floozie little penguin of the night his mommy warned him about..

i’ve been running for almost a year now..

in september i started tracking my workouts using the nike+ system..

very handy i must say..

i might also note if you’re interested in doing the nike+ thing, you will need an ipod nano, but you won’t necessarily have to have the nike shoes..

i have found a little bit of duct tape works nicely to transform any old shoe into a nike+ companion device..

so far i have 44 runs in my database for a total of just over 186 miles..

counting the estimated 200 miles i ran before i got the nike+ gear, i’m closing in on 400 miles..

which is just about 400 miles farther than i ever thought i would run in my life..

i really do enjoy it though..

you’ll hear people talk about being addicted to running and that’s not that far from the truth..

i actually look forward to my run days now..

even this time of year when i sometimes return from running with a nice beanie of ice frozen on top of my sock cap..

i’m still pretty slow..

with the way i started off way back when i figured i’d have 2 or 3 marathon wins under my belt by now, but it looks like the east africans can rest easy for another year or two..

i can totally take most of them in hockey though..

i’ve never played hockey..

but i think i could take ‘em..

have you ever watched one of those “caught on tape” type of tv shows where they show crazy things happening to people?

one that comes to mind as an example is the one where they show these people going down devil’s backbone in like a bronco or something..

the truck gets out of control and just goes flying down the side of this big rock..

wild..

and of course the video is 11 seconds, but the tv show is 30 minutes..

so they have to have about 10 minutes of interviews and 10 minutes of re-enactments..

and no matter what the event is - shark attack, fell out of a plane, got shot in a robbery attempt - the people interviewed always say the same thing..

interviewer: “what was going through your mind at that moment?”

daredevil/unlucky person: “i have to say.. i thought i was gonna die..”

they never say “right at that moment, i was envisioning myself living a long, happy life full of prosperity and wonderful moments with my grandchildren..”

and they always place the “i just knew i was dead right then” portion of the interview intermixed with the video.. as if you as an audience member will buy into it just a little..

like “oh my goodness.. i hope this person who was obviously interviewed after the fact doesn’t actually get killed here..”

not a lot of suspense there..

but there is room for a trick..

and the biggest tv plot twist since jack bauer was a babe..

here’s how it’s going to work..

i’m going to go around filming interviews with people as if they have been in some kind of accident or life-threatening situation and lived..

it’s a real generic script.. and they’re all pretty much the same..

i just have them say things like “well.. that was when i saw my whole life flash before my eyes..”

and “right about then.. i really thought ‘this is it.. i’m dead..’”

and then, when one of them does get killed, i’ll have the tape..

and i’ll run video of their deadly mishap.. and then show them saying “i thought i was gonna die”..

and you as the audience will be thinking “well duh.. you obviously didn’t.. you’re sitting there talking about it..”

and then i’ll come out and say “BUT WAIT! we fooled you.. that person really did die!! GOTCHA!!”

and after that, it’ll be a weekly show where we run some video and people go online to bet on whether or not the person lives or dies..

we’ll call it “dead or alive - you make the call”

and with that i have once again set out to make some ridiculous joke and instead stumbled onto something that will probably actually happen..

should be killer ratings..

i got to play a wii for a while today..

pretty good time..

played golf mostly.. couple of frames of bowling also..

there’s stories out there about people tearing stuff up with their wiis..

after playing it, i can see how someone could accidentally let go of the controller and throw it into something..

i could also see how someone could accidentally walk into walls or step on a rake or slip on a banana peel..

if you’re enough of a stooge, anything could happen..

and i can see how you could damage a plasma or lcd tv using a wii improperly..

but there are people out there who claim their wii smashed up their tube tv’s, and that’s just nuts..

old school tv’s just don’t give up that easily..

i know..

we were cleaning out an old theatre one time in fort worth and there were a couple of old televisions there that no longer worked..

so we decided to smash the screen on one..

this is me and a bunch of theatre geeks so i took the lead..

first we threw rocks at it - nothing..

and i mean nothing.. didn’t even scratch the glass..

then we put it at the bottom of a dumpster and stood up on the dumpster and threw huge stones down into it as hard as we could..

that scratched the glass..

but that was about it..

finally, i found a huge iron rod about 10 feet long and stood up on the railing above the dumpster and pounded the middle of the tv screen repeatedly until it finally blew..

made a pretty cool sound when it died..

tube imploding or whatever i guess..

point is, you’d have to throw a wiimote (don’t look at me, that’s what they call the things) about 300 miles per hour to do anything at all to a standard television..

or 80 miles an hour 5,000 times..

which i totally recommend..

and don’t forget to put it on youtube..

at the risk of becoming a sports blog, here’s another sports related post..

here’s a picture of razorback starting center and stewart’s favorite basketball player ever in the whole wide world, stephen hill..

and no, that photo wasn’t taken on a fashion runway, that’s him playing with his hair during a game..

now i have no problem with basketball players having long hair..

as long as they are not actually trying to play basketball with actual hair that is long..

i myself had long hair and played basketball for a while, and i can tell you from experience, it just doesn’t work..

i mean, at least in football or baseball you have a cap or a helmet holding your hair back some..

basketball players have two options - ponytail holders or sweat bands - neither of which work for more than a few minutes at a time..

hill wears both most games and still spends 15 minutes a game goofing with his runaway locks or looking like this..

maybe he’s got some kind of samson thing going..

i saw some of the lsu cheerleaders trying to weave his hair into a loom on the sideline but i thought it was just a louisiana thing..

who knows..

anyway, stew won’t let us cut his hair now..

thanks steven

sometimes i do dumb things which lead to dumber things..

for instance..

last week while i was off work, i bought homer (my boss) a big thing of rainblo bubble gum as a peace offering since he had to cover my work all week..

then he left town for a few days so i thought it would be funny to chew as much of that rainblo myself as i could and save up all the spit from it in a water bottle and present him with that when he got back.. (dumb)

so i was sitting at my desk, chewing away on some rainblo and spitting it into a water bottle, when i accidentally missed the bottle and spit rainblo juice all over the front of my shirt.. (dumber)

then i told you about the whole thing.. (dumbest)

here’s me trying to get davis to take some medicine..

daddy: “ok davis.. this stuff is going to taste terrible but it will make you feel better..”

davis: “no.. no.. no.. i don’t want it!!”

daddy: “come on buddy.. it’ll just take a second..”

davis: “no daddy!! no!!”

daddy: “i’ll let you punch me in the stomach as soon as we’re done..”

davis: “no!! i don’t want to punch you!! no!!”

daddy: “ok.. i’ll let you punch stewart in the stomach..”

to his credit (and to stewart’s relief), he passed on this offer also..

but he sure thought about it..