Brady’s Blog

believe it or not, there is a new procedure available where a “doctor” will inject botox into your hands to stop them from sweating..

man, is there no end to the number of ways the human body can malfunction?

someone out there has so much sweat pouring out of the pores on his hands he’s willing to have an out and out poison pumped into his body to stop it..

holy smokes..

those have to be some seriously sweaty hands..

like start your own emergency goldfish rescue service hands..

oh, there’s also some evidence out there now suggesting botox may go from face to brain..

so that’s encouraging..

my job here is to write jokes..

there’s no rule that says each and every joke has to be for everyone..

if you keep reading with some dedication and put in the hours, you too may eventuallly have the luxury of having a joke presented just for you..

this one is for ryan..

he’s the only one in the world who will get this..

i promise..

you ready ryan?

here comes the joke..

never mind..

–update - just re-read this and there’s a pretty good chance he won’t get that joke..

bad news: i was stuck in the car for about four hours on saturday..

good news: it rained in chicago on friday night..

i know, right?

how lucky is that?

what’s that?

how is that good news?

oh, well you see.. the orioles were supposed to play baseball in chicago friday night against the team whose socks are white.. (they are known as the white sox)..

but since it rained, the game was postponed and they played two games saturday..

and the first of those two games took place during my four hour drive..

so i got to listen to almost every pitch..

a rare treat indeed..

anyway, i think it was around the sixth inning when i heard the inevitable and unavoidable major league baseball disclaimer read aloud by the chicago radio announcer..

you know the one..

“blah blah blah.. expressed written consent of major league baseball.. blah blah blah”

basically they’re letting you know if you share video, audio, or any other “depiction” of the game with someone, or really just tell someone who won.. you will be put to death..

now..

here’s what else i heard..

right after the mlb disclaimer..

i heard this.. and i paraphrase..

“today’s major league baseball disclaimer brought to you buy matterly and garrett law firm of chicago, illinois.. for all your legal needs..”

that’s right..

it’s not bad enough they enslave us and bore us to death at the same time with some legal rigmarole..

they have the audacity to turn it into a commercial as well..

next thing you know they’ll have a sponsored segment where they list the sponsors who sponsored the sponsorships..

and now i will very bravely tell you this..

the orioles won that game i listened to..

five to one..

please come see me when i face the firing squad..

some people see the glass as half empty..

some people see the glass as half full..

i see an imprecise measurement inherent in the premise..

because there is no way it is either one..

not really..

there is no way for a glass to have exactly half of its volume filled with water..

it could be close..

but not exactly..

and that’s not even taking into account surface tension..

is “half” considered to be fifty percent of the possible volume contained given the surface tension at a certain barometric pressure?

or just halfway to the rim?

also, i realize this little experiment is designed to divide us into two groups, optimists and pessimists..

is that the best test we could come up with?

does how one describes a glass of water really say that much about that person’s overall outlook on life?

i don’t see it.. couldn’t the most dismal pessimist see that as a glass half full simply because he’s focusing on the water half of it and not the air..

which.. wait a second..

that’s the real thing about this..

the only sensible answer to the half full versus half empty thing is this..

the glass is completely full, obviously..

it has some air in it, and some water in it..

but it is definitely full..
—————————-

p.s. that’s pragmatists two, everyone else zero..

i can’t say i’m proud of this but i have some updates to apply to my list of zombie movies..

i put four of these beauties down this week..

it wasn’t easy..

but if it was easy, everyone would do it..

ok.. obviously that’s not true..

no matter how easy it is, no one should watch these movies..

because they’re pretty bad..

of course, if they weren’t so bad, like say.. if they were good..
then i guess it would be easy..

in which case everyone should watch them..

also in which case they would not be these movies..

anyway, here’s the one’s i punched out this week..

night of the living dead
diary of the dead
day of the dead
return of the living dead

i’ll be screening a wonderful film entitled simply “zombies” as soon as i finish this writing..

don’t ask me to review any of these or anything..

they are all running together into a big mess of bad acting, bad jokes, and very fake-looking guts and brains..

i will say this though..

i think return of the living dead is bottom of the barrel so far..

and probably dawn of the dead (2004) is the best overall..

maybe..

hard to say..

its kind of like picking which baldwin brother you’d like to hang out with..

no good way to go there..

also, i left fido and planet terror off the list before..

and i had two people tell me i left shaun of the dead off the list the first time around but i didn’t..

and i expect each of those people to take out a full page ad in the wall street journal and new york times to apologize..

and that’s one page per guy per publication..

not one ad in one paper and one in the other..

you know who you are..

also, here’s one i don’t get..

if you’re doing a zombie movie spoof with that name, why “shaun”?

you don’t choose “shawn” there?

just me?

updated list:

*fido
*planet terror - 2007
*night of the living dead - 1968
*dawn of the dead - 1978
*day of the dead - 1985
*diary of the dead - 2007
*return of the living dead
*day of the dead - 2008
*dawn of the dead - 2004
*shaun of the dead
*land of the dead - 2005

*resident evil 1,2,3

*28 days later - 2002
*28 weeks later - 2004

zombie - 1979
city of the living dead -1980
re-animator
the evil dead 1,2
bio zombie - 1998
cemetery man - 1994
army of darkness (evil dead 3) - 1993
dead alive (braindead) 1992
the beyond - 1981 - E tu vivrai nel terrore - L’aldilà
children shouldn’t play with dead things
flesheater - 1988
zombie hunters 1.2 2007?

davis is our middle child..

he’s 6..

kindergarten..

that’s the kinder, gentler garten..

his class went on a field trip today to what i am told was an indoor farm at the university of arkansas..

i don’t know much about it..

but apparently the main attraction was a fake cow which the kids had the pleasure of milking..

some kind of plastic and rubber contraption which has fake milk in it’s fake udder..

keep in mind this is arkansas..

i looked it up.. there are about 1.8 million head of cattle in arkansas..

probably close to a thousand of those cows are standing between our house and the university..

in fact, there are about 15 cows grazing at our back fence on any given morning..

so this is the equivalent of loading up a bus full of kids and driving them somewhere to show them a fake hamburger..

or taking kids from new york city up to columbia university to check out the artificial taxi cab exhibit..

kind of silly..

and of course, leave it to davis to get some of the fake milk on his hand and then taste it before they could stop him..

i’m sure whatever gunk they use for fake cow milk had to be delicious..

can’t be much worse than skim i guess..

first of all, this is not a rant..

there was a time it might have been.. but at this point this kind of thing is more amusing to me than annoying..

with that in mind..

people think if you know something about computers you must know everything about all computers and everything even remotely related to computers..

for instance, a network geek such as myself will be asked all kinds of questions about web site development.. or digital photography..

subjects about which i know very little indeed..

oh sure.. i may have some knowledge..

in much the same way an airplane mechanic might have some idea of how to drive a locomotive..

he knows there’s probably a throttle and a brake.. and if you put him in the engine he could probably actually find them and get the thing moving..

but he shouldn’t be the go-to guy when it’s time to actually move a train..

it’s worse when you’re a computer type too i think..

because when that air mechanic says “uh.. sorry.. plane engines are more my deal..” he’s instantly off the hook..

no one is going to say “oh come on.. you’re the transportation guru!!”

a geek on the other hand has to explain to everyone exactly why it is he thinks he shouldn’t be responsible for some set of knowledge or expertise..

it’s like we’re constantly passing out resumes and interviewing trying to not get hired for something..

and while it’s not always the case, generally we’re not avoiding helping with something..

we just really don’t know any more about it than anyone else..

and we assume other people know how to do a google search.. which is all we’re going to do if pressed into service in some area outside the rim of our teacup..

and that is, i think, where it gets a little bit frustrating for us geeks..

often people are not looking for someone who actually knows something..

they’re just looking for someone who is willing to learn it for them..

kind of like saying “we need someone to move this train.. and since you work on airplanes we’ve decided we’d like you to be the one to buy a book on trains, read it, and figure all this stuff out.. one of us could read the book and do the research, but we think you’re more suited for it..”

like i said at the front, this kind of thing doesn’t really bother me that much anymore..

just strikes me as funny..

still though..

sometimes i do think it would be nice to be a rodeo clown..

i recently hired on as the assistant and first base coach of my oldest son’s baseball team..

we are currently two games below five hundred and struggling some at the plate..

but we’re all having a pretty good time anyway..

which somebody told me was the whole point..

i laughed at that person and said “ha! yeah right!”

and then that person said “no.. seriously.. it’s just supposed to be about having fun at this age..”

to which i said “then why are we keeping score? why is there even a home plate? and why did i just kick one of the other team’s players as he went around first base and call him a shrimp?! huh?! answer me that!!”

exactly.. i think i proved my point..

my son stewart is eight.. and this is a team of sevens and eights..

so stewart is one of the older kids..

and as a result he’s one of the kids who have started to figure out some of the rules don’t make that much sense..

for instance, our league has a six run per inning rule..

no matter what the score is or who is ahead, a team can only score six runs in an inning..

so when stew knocked in a run in the top of the last inning the other night to put us up by seven runs, he took off his helmet and started toward the dugout saying “it’s over.. we won!”

i had to explain we were going to just play it out anyway.. which he did not like all that much..

there are other rules in this league which i have some problems with too..

number one on that list is stealing..

this is the first year they’ve been able to steal, and it’s way too early for that..

why is it too early?

well, mostly because no one has ever been, or will ever be, caught stealing..

so there’s no risk involved in stealing a base..

so.. it’s not really stealing..

it’s more like leave a penny take a penny..

as with all rules in all sports there are of course consequences which go along with this..

since no one can be thrown out stealing, everyone steals..

so anyone who makes it to first makes it to second, and then to third..

it’s just automatic runner advancement..

which means there are very seldom any force plays anywhere..

which means less outs and of course more runs..

which brings you right back to the six run per inning rule..

the end result is a less interesting game where the kids learn less about baseball and more about math..

not much we can do about this of course..

i guess if it really bothered us too much we’d just not steal..

but the other team is going to..

so we have to..

it’s just like the arms race and the cold war..

only instead of saying things like “we will crush you!” i just kick their players and call them shrimps..

doesn’t stop them of course..

but it makes me feel better..

i don’t wear a watch..

i have, in the past, occasionally worn watches..

but they would always stop working..

they’d work fine for a while.. a couple weeks.. or a couple months..

and then.. dudsville..

i’d get the battery changed out or even have the watch “repaired” by a jeweler and it would last a little while longer and then fail again..

i thought this was all just bad luck but i have recently discovered it was in fact more likely due to a rare and inadequately documented phenomenon which occurs in around one in every six hundred thousand american males..

it’s a condition known as “subcryogenic temporal generalia”

commonly known as being too cool to wear a watch..

not to be confused with “subcryogenic scholastic generalia”

yes.. that one is when you’re too cool for school..

i suffered from that one as well..

anyway, i’m pretty sure that’s what the problem was.. just too cool..

it could have also been one of the magnetic theories running around the internet..

or possibly i bought some cheap watches..

who knows..

i ran another 5k race today..

in world record time i might add..

i probably won’t add that since it’s not true..

but i might..

i will add it was my personal best time..

25 minutes flat..

41 seconds better than my previous record..

and i got beat by zero people pushing strollers!

oh sweet victory!

one thing that helped me this time around was i started the race closer up to the front..

with the “elite” runners..

and boy did i do a lot in the way of diluting the word “elite”..

there were a quite a few of us in the front stretching that definition, but as is often the case with large races one has to choose between sheepishly moving toward the front or spending the first mile of the race walking in a huge biomass with thousands of people who aren’t really there to run anyway..

so when they said elite runners to the front.. i went to the front..

or..

wait..

maybe by “elite” they just meant there were twelve of us per linear inch..

typewriter humor!

BOOM!