Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Beware the WLF

Reha and I were driving near a park last night and we saw what looked like million tiny feathers billowing and swirling around in the summer evening breeze.

R: Wow, look at that. What do you think that stuff is?

J: Hm. No idea. Looks like feathers. There is a duck pond right over there.

R: That’s a lot of feathers. Seems like far too many. I think it’s just petals from a dogwood tree or some other flowering tree.

J: Maybe a duck exploded.

R: What?!

J: Oh sure. Ducks can spontaneously combust, you know. Happens all the time.

R: …

J: You look skeptical, but this one time, I went camping and I was just calmly and normally feeding the ducks some bread scraps and I saw this duck get out of the water, walk toward me and then it just exploded. You never saw so many feathers in your whole life. They got everywhere, too. I was spitting feathers out of my mouth for about a week after that. Now that I think about it, maybe it wasn’t so spontaneous. Maybe it was a terrorist act. A suicide duck. And you know how geese have it in for me. Ever since that one time last fall when those canadian geese overheard me pointing out that their “flying V” formation was lopsided and looked more like an upside down check mark. I’m telling you, we should go home right now and watch the news and see if there are any reports of water fowl terrorist groups taking credit and responsibility for what must have been a heinous and horrible act of violence. Seriously, you don’t hear a lot about it on the news, because of how the mainstream media has been completely co-opted by bird watchers, but the Waterfowl Liberation Front (the WLF for short) is very active around here.

R: I knew getting ice cream and allowing your sugar levels to increase was a bad idea.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Someday She’ll Be Impressed

Ellis (5): I like the way Mommy does my hair.

Me: Really?! What does she do that I don’t do?

Ellis: She’s better at tying ribbons. And brushing. [hair]

Me: Well, sure she is. But can Mommy configure OS X Server 10.5 on an Xserve and set up Apache and MySQL?

Ellis remains unimpressed.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

We Have Ways of Making You Talk

I got home the other night and after having spent the day at home with all her siblings, Ellis handed me her “report on the day.”

In case you have trouble reading her handwriting:

Dear Jon

Lucas has bin [been] bad & mean to Ellis and Jonah.

I love you Daddy

In the future if her chosen career, “Sparkle Princess” doesn’t work out, at least we know that she has Stasi levels of monitoring techniques to fall back on.

Monday, June 23, 2008

The Bad List

Ellis is at that age where she needs to keep track of everyone who gets in trouble at our house. Though now that I think about it, it’s not an age thing at all. She just likes to monitor and judge every one around. Later, this will be called “being confidently assertive” or “a huge pain in the butt” depending on your perspective.

She made this chart:

NOTE: She started out with two “bad” marks because she wouldn’t help clean up her mess in the living room.

Also, Carrie (or “Cannie” depending on how you see the chart) didn’t really have any marks and neither did Reha ("Mom").

And Ellis’ bad marks got circled, because “once they are circled, they aren’t bad marks any more.”

I’m not telling why I got a bad mark. I’ll just say this: Totally worth it.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Ball of Confusion, Indeed

Moltz and I put together another edition of Technology! Whiskey! Sexy!

Espisode 04: Francophiles

And lo! We called forth demons from the depths of Hell and we installed XP.

Or something like that.

Also, John basically loses it and “Angry Moltz” has to be one of my favorite reoccurring characters.

Also! I have a question for you, my dear reader(s).

Should I continue to post here on Ransom Note when TWS (Technology! Whiskey! Sexy!… we like to call it “TWS,” gives it that nice “insider” feeling, don’t ya think?) has a new episode? I kind of get the feeling that the two audiences (Ransom Note and TWS, that is) are radically different and the one probably has zero interest in the other. Plus, if you have subscribed to the TWS podcast in iTunes you’ll be notified, right? And if you haven’t already subscribed, you probably don’t care? Am I right?

Also! My toe is much better, thank you all for your kind words and expressions of concern. I can walk fairly comfortably now and I’m completely off the pain meds, though that was kind of fun while it lasted, I must admit. Opiates… shame about them being dreadfully addictive and all, you know? Soon I’ll be able to contemplate getting out and running in the same way I had been contemplating running in previous weeks, i.e., “Man, I really should get back to running. Oh hey, look! I could also just stay here in this comfy bed, too! Works for me! Hand me another tub of ice cream, will ya, please?”

Anyway. Happy Friday! Tomorrow is June 20, the summer solstice and the the longest day of the year. Rather, it’s the day with the longest amount of daylight, since if you want to get all technical and snippy about it, all days are the same length, and only the amount of sunlight varies appreciably.

Remember your sunscreen! Re-apply as necessary!

Proximus

 

Favorite Entries

If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

• From the Office of Mis-directed Email
• Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago
• Dear Gratuitously Naked Conversationalist at the Gym:
• A Peek Inside the Writer’s Guild and Producers’ Negotiations
• We Regret the Error
• What I Did There
• Hermaphrodite Administrative Assistants and Receptionists Need Not Apply
• Giving Me an IM Account Was Obviously a Huge Mistake
• Official Ransom Note Typography Vista vs. Mac OS X Shootout
• I Need a Real Hobby
• Beat Down
• Big Fat Lies
• True Love
• Now MY Ovaries Hurt
• Don’t Get Her Started
• Disturbing Trend
• Had to do it
• Mooshy stuff
• Ransom Note Typography End User License Agreement “EULA”
• Diva-licious!
• Just so we’re clear
• PETA may have a point

Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

©2005-2008 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.