Brady’s Blog

i’m not saying the arkansas football razorbacks are horrible this year..

but i did see an interesting new piece of apparel for sale on their website..

it’s called the fleece pushover..

available only in L..

and..

if you act now..

they’ll throw in an actual game-worn jersey..

all you have to do is actually wear it in a game..

oh and guess what..

i’ll be recycling this post once the basketball season is underway..

i am about the last person in the world who is going to begrudge someone’s success or good fortune..

ok.. maybe second to last..

but when something is ridiculous..

well..

it’s ridiculous..

so here we go..

you see that house?

that house is 11, 343 square feet of furnished living space..

do you know who lives in that house?

the chancellor of the university of arkansas..

do you know why?

neither do i..

to me this makes about as much sense as having your junior high principal flown to and from the school in a helicopter made of silver and gold and crushed angel wings..

i saw the fowler house in person the other day..

my bride and i strolled past this lovely home and it’s 2.5 to 3 acres on our way to the football game..

we were on the way down the hill from our $20 parking spot..

along with about 40,000 other people who were all paying $20 or more to park beyond this piece of property from the stadium..

you’ll be happy to hear the home was being put to excellent use on game day..

there were about 10 people sitting out on the patio eating brunch when we went by..

in formal attire of course..

because if you are attending a football game.. in arkansas.. against alabama..

you would obviously want to wear a suit to that..

did i mention this house is furnished?

i’m sure that’s to keep the chancellor’s wife from slinging a bunch of lazyboy and ikea around the place..

and that makes sense..

but this kind of opulence has to make even the wealthiest friends of the chancellor jealous..

and i would think you’d be down to pretty much rich friends only at this point..

it’s not like you can host poker night with all your old buds..

those guys don’t need all that rubbed in their faces..

oh and here’s the kicker..

“..the residence will be maintained and cared for by the UA’s facilities management department..”

so.. he doesn’t even have to mow?

or at least hire his own crew to mow?

they really should have at least made him mow his own lawn..

they should have said “look.. we’re essentially making you an instant billionaire here..

you’ll be living in the biggest house in the world..

for free..

and there’s even a grand piano for some reason..

so you’ll have that for whenever billy joel comes over..

but there is one catch..

you have to mow the lawn..

and you have to use a push mower..

we know it’s a pain..

but we’re pretty sure it’s the only way to make sure a poor person doesn’t kill you in your sleep..”

reader erik commented on my post about silver dollar city and reminded me of the fatal accident which occurred on one of the rides at silver dollar city..

it happened back in 1980..

i don’t remember the details, but somehow a guy got left in one of the cars and they routed him down into the maintenance area and smashed his head against an overhang..

yeah.. turns out that’s not supposed to happen..

not part of the ride..

but that reminded me of a thought i had on the way home from silver dollar city that slipped my mind before i made it to the computer..

every roller coaster, even the smallest kiddie ride, scares the crap out of me..

because in my head i know the odds..

and the odds of getting hurt at an amusement park are insanely slim..

but there is a chance..

it does happen..

and i know that..

but..

if i could somehow ride a ride right after a fatal accident..

i think i could completely let loose and enjoy that..

because there is just no way the same ride is going to have two accidents that close together..

the already long odds just become truly astronomical in that case..

it wouldn’t keep me from grunting and groaning from the feeling of having my guts flapping around in my ears..

but at least i wouldn’t be so scared..

i think i’ll try that..

i’ll find some really scary ride, get in line, and when i get to the front i’ll just start letting people by..

“oh no.. you go ahead..

i’m just waiting for someone to get hurt..

have fun!”

we went to silver dollar city today..

“sdc” as some folks call it, is a 19th century themed amusement park..

but other than the blacksmith and the glass blower, it’s just like the mid-range amusement park in your area..

rides..

“rolley-coasters”..

funnel cakes..

a “lost river” ride where everybody gets soaked..

the usual stuff..

i am scared to death of just about every ride in the place of course..

i end up being forced to ride because some of the kids are too young to ride by themselves..

well.. not too young..

too short, right?

because that’s how they measure..

by height..

which is pretty dumb..

i mean.. if a kid wants to ride a ride.. and he’s five or six years old..

let him ride..

what difference does a quarter inch in his height matter..

is that the part of his body that’s going to save him in an emergency?

if you’re going to measure anything, test his grip..

that’s how they should do it..

if a kid looks a little small for a ride, they should make him squeeze an orange or something..

make sure he has what it takes to dangle for a while if it comes to that..

oh and under the height law, if a kid is found to be too short..

then that kid must be accompanied by someone twelve years old or older..

because when the “thunderation” roller coaster decides to disintegrate in the middle of a run, that twelve year old will simply stick out his feet and stop the eighty tons of locomotive stock he’s riding in and save everyone..

makes sense..

speaking of feet, i was one of about eleven people in the park today who was actually using feet..

i’m sure you’ve seen this at your park — anyone under thirty is in a stroller..

and anyone over forty is in a motorized scooter..

it’s just crazy..

pretty soon there won’t be a single ambulatory person in the joint..

it’ll just be scooters pushing strollers and strollers pulling scooters..

that’s how they did it back in the old days..

i’m pretty sure..

this is a story about a dumb thing i didn’t do..

but easily could have..

this was last weekend..

hurricane ike had lodged a giant tree right in front of my folks’ place out at the lake..

we wanted to remove it because there was quite a bit of debris stuck behind it..

as you can see from the photo.. it was a mess..

so.. dad and i were going to take the boat out and haul it away from the shore..

the idea was to free it from it’s stuck position, haul it out to deep water, and let it float on downstream..

so dad tells me we’ll need a rope and a knife..

the rope makes perfect sense.. pretty obvious..

but a knife?

i didn’t get it..

any older gentlemen reading this, or those of you with maritime experience..

or.. actually.. anyone with any sense..

you probably know what the knife is for..

it’s to cut the rope in case the tree that is “floating” turns out to not be all that buoyant and decides to suddenly go davey jones on us..

if i had been given about twelve years to ponder the situation, this possibility would have never dawned on me..

i saw a floating tree..

my mind only saw it floating.. forever and ever, amen..

my dad saw the potential disaster..

once we had it out from shore a little dad clued me in somehow..

he said something like “keep that knife handy in case it decides to turn on us..”

“oh” i thought..

“that would be pretty bad..”

and i instantly had a vision of what could have happened..

i could have gone out by myself to move the tree..

i would have been sans knife of course..

i could have tied on, pulled the thing about ten feet, and sunk the boat..

and dad could have looked out from the living room and seen the upturned vessel with only the last few inches of the bow out of the water and me standing atop my own private titanic..

it didn’t happen that way..

thankfully..

but that doesn’t make me any less dumb..

i admit it..

i’m a geek..

i apologize to no one for that..

i like computers..

i like gadgets..

i like things that click and snap and bang and crunch and smash and burn and whiz and slide and bump and thump and break things and fix things and DO STUFF..

i’m a geek..

i don’t think of that as a bad thing..

however..

i do think it’s time we set some guidelines with regard to the boundaries people are allowed to draw around people when they throw out the word “geek”..

not all geeks are into star trek..

or even star wars..

though admittedly we are all crazy about star jones..

not all geeks know all that much about tvs and cameras and audio equipment..

even the computer.. the center of geekdom.. means a lot of different things to different geeks..

some folks are pretty big computer geeks but couldn’t program a “hello world” if their lives depended on it..

and others could code the next version of “world of warcraft” in assembly language in their sleep, but might spend two hours trying to install a printer driver..

why is all of this important?

oh..

it’s not..

these are just a few of the everyday things that are funny when certain nationalities swap the l’s and r’s in words..

if anyone has a racism detector, you might run this through it and see what kind of reading you get..

i’m guessing it will come up hot..

but it’s nothing different from the singers at “bo ling chop suey” in “a christmas story”..

i’ve been wanting to post these for a while and that’s the best justification i could come up with - someone did it in a movie once..

oh well..

so here they are..

1. holy crap

2. neutered

3. double click

4. paper clips - (bonus points if you get the joke i made about this: “that’s when the pope joins a gang”)

5. free election

6. printer cartridge

and my very favorite..

7. hole punch

ok..

i have made some subtle requests here for you people to befriend me on facebook..

now i’m going to have to insist that you do so..

because my lovely bride is now on facebook..

and she has more friends than i do..

so let’s go folks..

this is a rally cry..

a call to arms..

this is your chance to do something meaningless and shallow..

finally you have an opportunity to grasp the freedom our fighting men and women have afforded us and click on a button on the internet that will put you in a database that has pointers to a number corresponding to my approximate identity!!

this is it!

let’s get out there and ignore the fact she is nicer, smarter, and a better person than i am!

let’s band together as a tribe and show this woman once and for all that being all goody-goody and sweet and thoughtful and kind and pretty is for COMMIES!

and please.. by all means..

in these confusing and troubled times..

let us completely disregard the meaning of the word “friend”..

this is facebook guys..

i’m “friends” with patton oswalt for pete’s sake..

people do a lot of things at sporting events that don’t make sense to me..

first of all, everyone forgets how to eat..

the second we enter a sporting facility we’re just chewing and gnawing on everything and spitting food everywhere and spilling everything all over the place..

where else would someone dump 45 ounces of dr pepper on your shoe and just smile at you with a mouth full of hot dog?

like “oops.. me spill..”

and the trash.. holy moly..

trash everywhere..

it seems like once upon a time people would at least pretend to pick up a cup or something on their way out..

now it’s like people feel like they didn’t get their money’s worth if they don’t leave at least an acre of debris in their wake walking out..

also..

you know when they show a stadium at night.. and something big is happening..

and there are all these flash bulbs going off?

do you know how much of the light from those thousands of tiny flash cameras is reaching the subject of the photographs?

exactly zero..

and do you know how much umbrage i should take with that?

considering i’m not really even sure that’s true, know nothing about photography, and the flash is automatic and difficult to turn off on most of those devices?

probably about zero..

but i might just get super angry about that one of these days if i can work out the details..

and another thing!

people..

listen to me please..

and i’m serious on this one..

this isn’t just some made up flash camera stretch of a scenario setup like that last thing..

this is real..

no one cares where you are sitting..

you do not need to call your friend on the other side of the stadium and wave your hands and flail around until that person sees you..

we get it.. you’re at the game..

we’re ALL at the game..

how is the knowledge of your exact location going to change the life of that other person in even the slightest way..

are they going to say “oh! ok! great! we have the exact location of jerry now!! carry on athletes - you may resume play!”

and of course, we know why you’re calling..

you’re showing off..

no one ever calls someone who is sitting closer..

oh no..

they’re always calling people back behind them or above them..

in order to say “hey!! look at you!! you are WAY up there!! must be nice to be up so high where you can see the big picture! ok.. gotta hang up now.. i’m better than you!! bye!!”

seriously..

unless whoever you’re calling has your insulin..

just let it go..

does any of this warrant the word “seething” in the title?

no.. no it does not..

but that is an excellent play on words..

so i’m leaving it..

and now..

i will perform..

SUNFLOWER SEED EATING!!