Brady’s Blog

if there’s one thing in this world i know something about, it’s global commodity trading..

now, keep in mind, i did not say “there is one thing in this world i know something about, and that is global commodity trading..”

i said IF..

in programming parlance, we just “fell through” the above logic..

but if i were the kind of person to allow my lack of knowledge or expertise to get in the way of my writing, i would have shut this joint down about eleven hundred posts ago..

so here we go..

oil..

oil topped out at over one hundred and forty three dollars per barrel today..

sounds a little high, huh?

i mean, that would not be a bad price if you were at wal-mart or kroger’s and you saw a big sign that read “OIL $143″ over an end-cap full of big oil barrels..

but i don’t think that’s how most barrels of oil change hands (again, i said IF)..

so yes, $143 is high..

highest ever..

but here’s what i’m here to tell you..

it’s going to come back down..

there are people out there predicting gas will be over four dollars a gallon by this time next year..

it won’t..

you know how i know this?

because there are people predicting it..

and anytime you hear the words “experts expect” you can rest assured you are about to hear a load of complete and utter bull crap..

now.. here’s my prediction..

yes i know about the preceding sentences and the sentiment they convey about predictions..

as i have been trying to tell people my whole life - that rule does not apply to me..

my prediction is this - on october 1st of this year oil will be back down under $100 per barrel..

and gas will be back to around $2.75 or $3.00

mark my words!

no seriously, take a marker and write on your computer screen right now - just put a big black line under my words..

$100

$3

that’s my prediction..

i’ll go even further and put my personal guarantee on this..

if oil is more than $100 per barrel on october first of this year, i’ll pay the difference for anyone who can show me a receipt..

offer good on first four barrels..

this, i can promise you, will be one of the all time most ridiculously convoluted, confusing, and unsatisfying posts i have ever written..

it may, in fact, rival the great recipe post of ‘06 in its utter stupidity and worthlessness..

impossible you say ryan?

we shall see..

here’s the deal..

i want credit for a joke i came up.. on the fly.. in a conversation today..

it was a one liner..

all of my jokes are one liners..

one line..

two dots..

that’s my system..

now, i’m going to give you the line first, then i’m going to go back and setup the scenario and bring you back around to the hilarity that was this joke..

the line was “aloha! la cabeza no esta aqui!”

now..

here’s what happened..

i was talking about a translator who happens to be a very soft-spoken individual..

i said “i wonder if she only talks like that in english, like in spanish she’s really loud..”

(that’s a decent joke right there.. i know..)

then, i proceeded to give my audience (one friend) an example of her loud spanish voice..

so i yelled out “ALOHA!”

accident.. was supposed to be “HOLA!”

and for some reason it came out hawaiian..

pretty funny..

my friend busted me on this of course and started making fun of me - i would have done the same thing.. can’t blame him.. it was funny.. i am an idiot..

now you need to know about one more thing before we get back to the joke..

the friend i was talking to happened to be privy to an inside joke regarding another friend who always messes up jokes and misspeaks (as i had just done)..

the example of this behavior by that other friend involved him mistakenly offering the following as the punchline to a very dirty joke that i will not here repeat..

“the head was missing!”

so, as a way of tying my own gaffe to the inside joke already established, i offered the absolutely mindblowingly quick and hilarious “aloha! la cabeza no esta aqui!”

roughly translated as “hello, the head is not here!”

and if you think that’s a long way to go to get credit for that joke, you are absolutely right..

but i stand by the joke itself..

it was funny..

it was lighting fast thinking on my part..

and it definitely had two dots on the end of it..

even when spoken aloud..

and in any language..

in elementary school, our music class had windows facing the playground and every once in a while a kickball would come through the window..

and it was always just the greatest thing..

it was like christmas only better because christmas could never be a surprise..

and a ball breaking glass was always a welcome surprise..

sure, sometimes you got glass in your hair..

but if it got you out of an hour of triangles and tambourines..

small price to pay..

man, just think of this though..

what if somehow you could keep christmas a surprise from someone?

how awesome would that be?

just not let on at all that christmas is coming..

just keep telling them “nope.. couple more months..”

and then BOOM!

“guess what? it’s CHRISTMAS DAY!”

i think you could just about kill someone with joy doing that..

still a felony i think.. technically..

but no jury in the world would ever convict..

i didn’t know this when i wrote about the triathlon the other day, but i actually received a medal for my effort..

each member of our team did in fact..

turns out it pays to be third, no matter how many teams are entered..

and it’s a actually a nice little medal..

and no.. i have not been wearing it around the house all week..

(only at work - it’s very prestigious)

so claire had not seen it until she noticed it on the kitchen counter tonight..

claire: “what’s this daddy?”

me: “that’s the medal i won..”

claire: “for what? oooh.. it’s heeeeaaaavy..”

me: “that’s from the race i was in the other day..”

claire: “cool.. i know why it’s so heavy..”

me: “why’s that claire?”

claire: “’cause you’re heavy..”

did i ever tell you about the smoking area at my high school..

they took it out after my freshman year..

but that first year..

my high school had a smoking area..

like.. for whomever..

students..

you could just walk into this kind of hallway area near the front of the school and just light up and smoke right there..

it was like amsterdam for tobacco..

crazy..

can you imagine this today?

you might as well propose a cocaine and heroin option for the head start program..

those were the days..

breakdancing was illegal on school grounds..

but we had a smoking area..

now that’s a school that understands priorities..

i wonder..

that kid ted..

i think that was his name..

played on our football team in junior high..

did he really land his dad in the hospital with a baseball bat?

that was the rumor..

but who knows..

he seemed like a pretty rough kid the little bit i was around him..

but man..

beating your own father senseless with a bat?

that seems..

i don’t know..

somewhat disrespectful..

insubordinate even..

i think if one of my kids did that to me i would be forced to express my disappointment verbally as well as suspend some privileges..

and if someone broke his or her favorite bat over my skull, that bat would just have to be replaced out of someone’s allowance..

what can i say..

tough love..

on an unrelated note, here’s something that’s been bothering me..

it was a word i used in my blog vacation announcement from a couple of weeks ago..

dribble..

i used that word instead of drivel..

since that time i have been very much annoyed to hear such phrases as “mute point” and the word “supposebly” and all i have been able to think of is my having unwisely employed “dribble” when i really meant drivel..

so..

anyway..

just in case that bothered any of you as much as it did me..

i apologize..

keep in mind i am not apologizing for almost three solid years of sentences ending in two dots..

that you are just going to have to deal with..

today i competed in my first triathlon..

and came in third in my division..

my division was co-ed team - and there were four teams..

so.. yeah..

go me..

by the way, if you’re thinking of doing a triathlon, team is definitely the way to go..

i did just the running part and it was perfect..

because if i have to run four very hilly miles in eighty degree weather, i want to make sure everyone i’m running against has already had a good thousand yard swim and a nineteen mile bike ride that morning..

and there were still a lot of folks blowing by me..

little bit of an eye opener you could say..

if you run as much as i do, it’s easy to convince yourself you’re in some kind of shape..

until you hear the voice of a female twice your age saying “on your right!” as she prepares to pass you on the hill..

oh and the hill..

yeah.. let me tell you about this hill..

i swear it was a 360 loop like a roller coaster at one point..

it had downhill parts that were more uphill than most hills..

and long.. oh my.. it just kept going..

oh and the track was a loop..

so we had the pleasure of that one hill two times..

i told myself i wasn’t going to walk.. and i didn’t..

but my second time up that thing i was jogging slower than a dead turtle with a broken leg and a headache..

it was a real hill..

we went by and drove the course last night so i could at least see it first..

stewart, our oldest boy, heard me talking about the hill and issued some concern..

stew: “well.. what if you don’t make it?”

daddy: “well.. you can have my pocket knife i guess..”

stew: “i want your phone..”

and that’s why i race..

for the children..

have i ever told you about that one time i did something kind of dumb?

no.. not that time..

the other time..

oh.. sorry.. no.. not the moroccan snake whiskey armored car stunt..

the other other time..

this would have been the fall of 1999..

i was working with our largest client at the time..

they were going through upgrading a bunch of computers to windows ‘98 and adding software to a bunch of others..

basically wholesale changes all over the network..

and that’s why i was there - extra hands on deck basically..

and i did pretty well..

out of the seventy five or so machines i worked on during that period i think i only completely destroyed two..

the first one belonged to a girl who decided she wanted to have access to basically every font ever created..

so i just went around the network grabbing every font file i could find and dumping them in her c:\windows\fonts directory..

yeah.. turns out back then windows had a little thing called the “font installer tool” or something that you were supposed to use to do that..

her machine completely freaked out and never really booted correctly again.. format.. reinstall..

the other one was a windows 98 machine that was getting some kind of error - i used this cd all of us geeks carried around back then called “windows95b hack”..

this was basically a bootable windows 95 cd that needed no registration or key to install and afforded a very quick way to get a machine up and going without a lot of driver installs, etc..

it also turned out to be one of the best ways to absolutely fry the existing operating system, which is what happened to me..

format..

reinstall..

to analogize for the less geeky of you out there, the two above scenarios are both akin to my having been hired by someone to spray for ants only to burn that persons house to the ground and tell him “i got the ants..”

not a great situation to be in..

but i survived..

man i wish i really had a moroccan snake whiskey armored car stunt story to tell..

someone is one step ahead of me..

why waste time improving the pickle when the technology exists to perfect the bacon stick?

sometimes the genius of people in this country just moves me to tears..

–

update - tlb informs me others are ahead of me as well..

pickles have not always existed..

someone had to figure out how to do that to cucumbers..

before that, if you ate a cucumber, it just tasted like a cucumber..

and a cucumber is fine, but it is miles away from the flavor experience of a good pickle..

and cucumbers still exist..

so we can now eat a cucumber and then a pickle and realize the people who lived before the advent of pickling totally missed out..

which begs the following question..

what is the next step?

will someone eventually figure out some other process to apply to the cucumber to once again exponentially increase its flavor?

will it be discovered that putting a pickle in a cedar box full of cherry juice and gunpowder makes it taste a thousand times more delicious?

the pickling process had to have sounded no less ridiculous to the first few people who tried it..

or what if somebody comes up with some concoction that just blows salt and pepper out of the water?

and we won’t ever know about it because we’ll all be dead..

you know there were at least a few poor souls who died right around the time people first started pickling cucumbers who thought “oh i just hope i can live long enough to taste a pickle..”

what if there was some poor guy who died right as the first batch was being finished?

and he was probably like me and didn’t even like cucumbers that much..

but he would have loved pickles..

oooo.. scary..

chills..

i have to go now..

i’m off to find cherry juice and gunpowder..

worth a try..