i'm a guy, we notice

I’m going to be blunt. I’m going to be honest. I’m a guy. Call me a sexist pig if it makes you feel better.

I was once asked what part of a woman I notice first. My reply was quick and simple, “It depends if she’s coming or going.” If she’s coming toward me I notice her face and particularly her smile, or lack thereof. If she’s walking away, I notice her butt. Plain and simple.

Smiles are very important. They’re inviting and friendly. Land’s End catalogue has the best lookin’ models. Take a look for yourself. Compare it to other similar catalogues. They’re not in the super-model category, but they all have smiles on their faces. That’s very appealing. The best lookin’ woman on earth loses several points when she doesn’t smile. The “skin” magazines are infamous for their scantily clad (if clad at all) frowning models. Yuk, what a turn-off! Give me a pretty smile any day.

A shapely butt, aaah, what can I say? For you women out there who obsess over the size and or shape of your butt, chill out. Skinny butts are no good! I’ve known several women who always looked much better with a little flesh on their bones. Maybe even a little Rubenesque (google rubens or zoftig).

I know you’re out there wondering if I’m pulling your leg. Well, not really, I will discuss boobs too. There, do you feel better? I said it. Boobs. What a friendly word. Boobs. Say it out loud. You can’t help but get a chuckle out of it (unless your Tom DeLay, and I’ll bet he’d chuckle in private). Boobs. There are numerous synonyms, but boobs is my personal favorite: yambos, hooters, tits (my least favorite), puppies, hoolies, babies, honkers, breasts (sounds too clinical), balloons, bongos, etc.

There is such a thing as “too big” boobs. Most of them are store-bought. Very few of the “too big” variety are the products of genetics. But alas, too big is too big whether store-bought or hereditary. There is also such a thing as “too small” boobs. Remember Twiggy? The ideal boob occupies a wide and varied range between too big and too small.

I’ve noticed that boobs can appear to change in size from one day to the next. Plump and perky one day and small and sad the next, then back again. What’s with this? Is it one of those wonder bras doing the magic? And how does one go about “training” a boob? Can they do tricks? I wonder.

Am I obsessed, or just honest? Ladies, be proud of your boobs! I’m sorry, I’m a guy, we notice.

I’m so proud to accept this award...

I am no longer a white man. I’m really more of a pinkish-beige. After a good sunburn I’m a bright lobster-red. I’m not white. People with albinism aren’t really white either. A piece of typing paper is white. The cream filling in an Oreo cookie is white. The cream filling in a Twinkie is white. The powdery coating on the inside of a frosted light bulb is white. I’m not white. Cherokee Indians aren’t really red, nor are Chinese people or Communists. People from Africa aren’t really black, they come in a myriad different shades.

Calling me white is insensitive to my cultural background. I don’t think I’m caucasian either. That word is a derivative of Caucasia, a geographic region in southeast Europe between the Black and Caspian Seas. The Caucasus Mountains are in Caucasia. Parts of Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia are in the Caucasus Mountains. None of my people came from there.

My people are Krauses, Coopers, Knoxes, Hummers, Reeds, and Westons to name a few. Primarily from England and Germany. Some of the English part of the family comes from Uxbridge near London, England. I’m not sure where the German part comes from. My English ancestors arrived in North America long before the German side. My Great Grandparents were all born in the U.S.

From now on, whenever I have to fill out a form indicating race, I’m going to write-in in the “other” box, European American. Why not? There are lots of people here whose people have been here longer than mine who call themselves Something-or-Other Americans. Why can’t I? I feel so much better now that I’m now a member of an ethnic group. Come and join me, we’ll have picnics, festivals, and our own awards shows. I can’t wait for the annual European American of the Year Awards. We’ll call it the Erpaman.

read garvers' article on kids' rules

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/18/opinion/garver/main696175.shtml

This is too good. Why didn't I think of this. Rock, paper, scissors will, from now on, by the grand arbitrator in my life. Furthermore, I suggest everyone adopt it as well.

Concentrate on the second-to-the-last paragraph.

what a day

Sometimes I bitch about my job. Being a non-engineer in an extremely engineer oriented world can be overly frustrating at times.

On the other hand... This morning it's 51 degrees outside. It’ll warm to the mid 70s. Little fluffy clouds everywhere. Bright sunshine. No chance of rain. And I have to make a road trip to get a little community started on a project. It's a project the community is real excited about so they'll be real happy to see me. I told my boss I might be late getting back. He asked why. I told him it will be a pretty day and I always drive real slowly on pretty days. He told me to be careful.

Sometimes it sucks to be me.

it makes you wonder

A few days ago some moron flew a small plane into the restricted airspace around Washington, D.C. The White House, Capitol and several other government buildings were evacuated. Vice President Cheney was loaded into the black suburban and whisked away. The First Lady and her guest Nancy Reagan were hustled into the bunker deep beneath the White House. Congressional leaders were also spirited away. The Homeland Security folks called the alert a great success. The only thing they missed was the occupants of all those buildings lining up at predetermined locations and having their names called to make sure they were all there. One big (and probably extremely expensive) fire drill.

I’m not questioning the process. You have to assume the worst and hope for the best. If it had been a suicide terrorist attempt the occupants of those buildings were better off outside where they couldn’t be trapped beneath tons of building rubble. Even a small plane packed with high explosives can do a great deal of damage.

The most interesting thing to come from the alert was the fact that President Bush didn’t know anything was happening. No one took the time to tell him. He was bicycling with a friend and the obligatory entourage of secret service personnel somewhere in Maryland. Here we are in the midst on another 9/11 type scare and the President is totally unaware. The didn’t move him into Air Force 1 and skidaddle like they did when the Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked. The Vice President was tucked securely away, but his boss was in some park on a bike oblivious to the events. What does this tell us?

The spin was this was a planned response, that the President’s active participation in time of imminent crisis was not called for due to all the local authorities preparation. Their reasoning behind no Air Force 1 skidaddle was that the small plane was a localized risk focused in an area that offered no risk to POTUS.

Why tell him anything that could result in him fouling up the works. Don’t send an idiot to check why the gas hot water heater’s not working and hand him a lighter so he can see. Why hustle him away if we’re not terribly concerned with his safety? The VP was, after all, perfectly safe; he had been evacuated.

It makes you wonder who makes these decisions. I’ll bet Carl Rove was perfectly safe.

advice to high school senior girls

For the purpose of simplicity, the words boy friend and fiance are 100% interchangeable.

If your boy friend lives in a trailer down the gravel road from his folk’s trailer, run like hell.

If your fiance has no ambition to attend and graduate from college, run like hell.

If your boy friend’s long term financial plan consists of you going back to school and him buying a bass boat, run like hell.

If your fiance asks you to highlight passages in the plumber’s manual to help him study for his test, run like hell.

If your boy friend plans to trade in his five year old truck for a new one while you’ll continue to be stuck in your 12 year old Lumina, run like hell.

If your fiance takes you to Walmart to pick out your wedding ring, run like hell.

If your boy friend tries to convince you the two of you can get along with one truck so he can soup up your 12 year old Lumina for the Saturday night dirt track races, run like hell.

If your fiance will eat anything as long as it’s fried, run like hell.

If your boy friend’s belly hangs over his belt in front and his crack rises above his belt in the back, run like hell.

If your fiance is proud that he owns more hats than books, run like hell.

If the longest thing your boy friend has ever read completely through is the entry form to a bass tournament, run like hell.

If your fiance has been out of high school for a year or longer and has not held the same job for over two months, run like hell.

The bottom line is... run like hell! Run like a scalded ass ape. Despite what you may think, you've got all the time in the world.

happy mothers' day

A belated Happy Mother’s Day to all my favorite mothers!

My Mother died when I was 22. I’m now 48. She’s been gone longer than she was with me. But seldom does a day pass that something doesn’t remind me of her. I’ll see or hear something, and there she is. Time does indeed lessen the pain, but the occasional pang persists forever.

My stepmother died last summer. Dad married Doris six years after my Mother died. Doris never tried to be my “new Mother”. I’m sure that’s why we got along so well. She was a great companion for my Dad. I worried about him less when she was here. She saw him through quintuple bypass surgery, prostrate removal, and both carotids rotorootered. She introduced him to friends he’ll keep forever. For being there for my Dad, she was as much of a mother to me as could be expected. I miss her.

So, to Jennie, Lana, Nancy, Ellen and many more of my favorite Mothers, Happy Mothers Day! You may unfortunately never know how much you are truly appreciated.

Where’s Dr. Doolittle when we need him?

I have watched cows. I know why they’ve been labeled as contented beyond the obvious alliteration. They meander across a dewy pasture in an amazingly random pattern. Rarely looking up to see where they are. They possess no internal GPS to inform them where they are, they just don’t care. As long as the grass is plentiful they munch away. You can stand in the pasture after they’ve left and observe their weaving, circuitous, perfectly random path by noting where the dew has been munched up with the grass. It’s a path about ten or eleven inches wide that resembles a wild yet extremely calm scribble.

If you watch birds enough you know when they’re going to poop. You can recognize the bird’s body language.

We don’t take the time to see what’s going on around us. We’re way too caught up in our own little daily routines. We’re too busy, too much on our plates, too many pots on the stove. Because of this, most of us have lost out tie to nature.

We’re the top of the food chain. There are no predators for us to worry about unless we live in the wilderness. We’ve become extremely arrogant in our manufactured environments. We don’t care about what’s going on around us unless it directly affects our daily routine. It’s sad.

Some people still live close to nature. The Onge tribe from India’s Andaman Island suffered only a couple of deaths as a result of the December, 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Thousands of years of living close to the sea had taught them that after the ground shakes the wave comes. When the earthquake hit their tiny island they knew to move inland to higher ground.

Animals are still attuned to hidden signals humans don’t recognize. They know to eat more as the barometric pressure drops presaging an oncoming storm. They feel pressure waves that can foretell earthquakes. We could probably relearn a multitude of useful things from them if we took the time.

Legend has it that humans could once converse with the animals. We lived in a more harmonious atmosphere. But after time, we grew arrogant and gave the animals names that they didn’t use for themselves. To punish us they quit speaking to us in languages we could understand.

Go to the woods. Go to your back yard. Find a comfortable spot and sit on it; the ground works real well. Turn off the radios, ipods, cell phone, and all that other crap we seem addicted to. Chill out. Look. Listen. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn. Do this often enough and you might understand the animals again.

good news

I've noticed something real interesting lately. Look around your town and neighborhood. Maybe you're seeing the same thing I'm seeing. Bush-Cheney stickers have been disappearing off people's bumpers. Folks once proud to flaunt their republicanness are seemingly having second thoughts.

The 2004 Bush-Cheney stickers are not lasting near as long as the 2000 version. Did they buy cheaper stickers that didn't last as long? Did "low bid" result in faulty stickers? Are Roger Moore inspired Air America listeners covertly scraping these stickers off the bumpers of their neighbors' SUVs? Nay, Nay I say! Methinks the right is less proud of late of their chosen family values poster child!

I well remember the "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Bush" stickers. Maybe it's time to pull out the "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry" stickers.