The Severed Cortex

Link: http://tedjesuschristgod.org/

Just in case you happen to be worshiping the wrong jesus christ god, I wanted to make sure you were aware of Ted Jesus Christ God. I like how Ted hedges his God bet. He's not sure if he's the Christian God or the Jewish God, so he's not really sure if he is the 2nd coming or perhaps the 1st. He's not even sure if it is his only visit. One thing is for sure, he's got flags and Christmas trees to cover all bases.
Even after reading a fair amount from the book of Ted, I still don't know if Ted is against religion, or for religion, or if he is in fact, religion himself. Hey, there's only so much one can decipher before one's brain explodes.

YOU SEE even with MANY UPGRADES CREATED for self this is God had NEVER Created a SINLESS and or INFALLIBLE and or PERFECT BRAIN for self! These BRAINS do NOT even exist yet!

Yes, Ted. These BRAINS do NOT even exist yet.

I was notified yesterday that I had raised more money than any other individual. Thanks again to all who donated and made that possible. I feel like Miss America. Literally.

Why would any man for that matter? They have to be the most uncomfortable things ever invented with the exception of maybe a misaligned athletic supporter. Ouch. For those women that read this, let me give you a small piece of advice. Not once has any guy ever been attracted to you because you are wearing high heel shoes. No guy has ever said, my god that woman is hideous but because she's wearing high heel shoes I'm attracted to her. We are either attracted to you for other reasons or we are not. Maybe I'm alone in that sentiment but I doubt it.

I arrived at the designated location to see roughly 100 guys in high heel shoes. I was really glad there was a strong turnout. I was afraid there would only be 20 or so and I would stand out. (Literally at what was most likely 6' 5"). My joy would turn to sadness when I saw the shoes they picked out for me; shiny gold stiletto heel pumps with a 3+ inch heel. My first thought was there's no way I can walk in that. When I put them on and stood up my fear was confirmed. I could barely stand and almost immediately the front of both my feet started hurting. By the time I made it over to the starting line I had figured out how to walk in them without a) breaking my ankle and b) falling over. There was a pronounced bow-leggedness. Let's just say that in an undercover sting operation, my gait is not fooling anyone except the truly desperate or the incredibly stupid.
I was able to talk Robert into walking with me but he wouldn't wear high heel shoes. I'm not sure I would have fared as well without him for support along the way. One block into it my feet were killing me. Once we made the turn for the last four blocks to the Capitol, my dogs were on fire. My toes were numb and the balls of my feet felt like they had been treated as if they were Al Qaeda suspects. The worst was the rally though. Walking is one thing. Standing in place is quite another. Luckily 30 minutes later Nancy brought me my boots and the front of my feet got a reprieve. That's when I noticed my calves had been stretched farther than a Depression era can of beans. All for a good cause though.

Thanks to all of you that donated. Your generosity helped me raise $570 for Prairie Center Against Sexual Abuse and for that I am eternally grateful. Robert has agreed to walk with me next year and I know that to reach the same level of money raised I will have to up the ante. The tentative plan is for both of us to walk either dressed up as football players or in gorilla suits. Other ideas are welcomed.

As promised, here are your pics.
Check In
Lacing Up The Skates
Trying To Stand
Headed To The Parade
The Crowd Lines Up
Robert And I (you can sense the pain in my face)
Shlameil, Shlamazzo, Hossenphef, Incorporated
How Much Longer?
The Home Stretch

Nancy took plenty more pictures. If you are interested in more of them let me know.

Springfield Register story on the event.

Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001UDUR9U?ie=UTF8&tag=veryshortlist-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001UDUR9U

This is for those of you that read the Dengue Fever review a couple of weeks ago and checked out their music. If by some off chance you liked it, here's a just released DVD documentary of their tour through Cambodia. Like most of the world, they are probably not fans of Pol Pot either.

Link: http://www.floridatechsports.com/article.asp?articleID=3218

He's still depositing poorly located fastballs over the Michelin tire sign. This weekend he picked up a 3 inning save.

Tobacco road in the context of country music conjures images of being back home living the country boy life. Tobacco road in the context of hip hop is something totally different. And tobacco road in the context of David Lee Roth conjures a rise in bile within my esophagus. Let's go back to the previous one, since Common Market is indeed a hip hop group. A socially conscious hip hop group. I love a good beat, but if you actually say something over the top of that beat ... well that means a lot more.
You can guess with the title Tobacco Road there are things to say, and in fact there are. Conventional wisdom, given a title like Tobacco Road, would conjure up themes structured around planting, growing, tending, and harvesting. Perhaps you'd even throw in a reference to slavery, or rednecks, or how about the tried and true white man keeping the black man down. You'd be surprised to find out that there really isn't much of any of that on here. Well, maybe you wouldn't be surprised, but I was. If you take a swipe through the lyrics you'll find a little bit of those themes here and there. Be prepared to bring a dictionary and an internet connection to Wikipedia though. At one point I said, that's not a word, and was promptly handed my dumb ass right back to me by dictionary.com. (proscenium - a theatre with a prominent archway). Like I said, I expected Common Market to go the typical route, and instead they touched on themes of hard work, the damages of the bottle, domestic abuse, the Virginia Tech shooter, and most prominently the idea that one must press on even when things look hopeless. Worthy topics indeed.
As a hip hop artist, rapping about themes you would expect with such a title of this one requires nothing short of screaming in your face. Public Enemy invented the genre and in the process abused bagpipe samples as a signature. You'll get no such harshness here. Take away the lyrics and you've got beats that with eyes closed could be attributed to trip hop artists Portishead. The entire CD is very laid back from end to end. You'll get a real hip hop beat on a couple tracks, but most of these lean heavy on trip, not hip. It just furthers the intellectualism of this release if you ask me. But, smart as it is, it is largely scattered thematically when judging it as a whole. Am I faulting it because they named it Tobacco Road, put a tractor on the cover, and then neglected to utter the phrase kill massa. Yeah, probably. If they called it Two Brothers Smarter Than You I would have probably liked it more. The bottom line is that these really are two smart brothers who put nice beats and street poetry together like few others can.
At eighteen songs and an hour of music, you can't say you get cheated. The problem is that there are about five or six that maybe shouldn't be on here. Yes, they are better than most, but putting twelve of these together and tightening up the themes would have vaulted this to the top of all hip hop CD's. Not hellified gangster top of the list, but maybe in a De La Soul kind of world it would rank high. Trouble Is and Nina Sings are just plain and simple outstanding. Gol'Dust and Weather Vane are also fine. The rest is just serviceable. I'd say if you get those four and have 99 cents for one more song, give me a call and I'll recommend another.

Link: http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/squeez-bacon.html?cpg=93H

First they brought you the Swedish bikini team and now they give squeezable bacon. Those Swedes really know how to talk to your id. And you know my id is all over this. It even squeezes out of the container like a strip of bacon. How awesome is that!

I actually wrote the moving story way back in early February and never actually published it. It was buried in the unfinished posts section and I didn't notice it until today.

Box Mountain Before

Box Mountain After

If we knew that we would close the sale of our home on one day and close the purchase of a new home the next, we would have never moved our stuff the way we did. We expected to be 'homeless' for a couple of weeks. At least. Because of that, we needed some storage and PODS seemed to be the answer. A cheaper answer, and one that probably would have worked better had we known, was ABF UPack. The problem was that our stuff would have been stored outside. PODS are stored inside. Or so we are told.

Moving the stuff off the UHaul truck the night we closed was easy. We even took a break for several hours and drank beer.

Me: I'll have a Guinness
Nancy: I'll have a Fat Tire
Waitress: (looking at me) That will be $7
Me: I'll go ahead and pay for both
Waitress: It's $7 for both
Me: Sweet!
Nancy: Dude!

I may have made up the dude part.
All told, the two of us emptied a 26 foot truck in about two hours. The next day I dropped the truck off. Again, I can't say enough good things about UHaul, especially the guy at the West Alton store.

Eight days later we got our stuff from PODS. Yes, you heard me right. Eight days. If you've come this far with the moving story you know that we packed the last POD another 5 days prior to that. Meaning, of course, that we've slept on a floor for two weeks now. Well, slightly less. We stayed in a hotel a couple of those nights. And on the 6th day Moses came from upon the mountain and he brought with him 2 PODS trucks. They dropped two PODS and surprisingly both were filled with our stuff. That night we unloaded most of the POD that I originally packed. I was pleased to find out that none of stuff I packed got damaged. I damaged them after they were already moved into the house. We're going to fast forward past that part. This POD was loaded with boxes and it took a good solid 3 hours for us to unload only 3/4 of it.

The next morning I started attacking the remaining 1/4 and in an hour or so I was done. The movers showed up just after that, right on time. We only asked for two movers because unloading takes far less time than loading. It took them a solid three hours to unload the POD full of heavy stuff plus move most of the heavy stuff out of the garage. They managed to get all of it moved with only minor damage. A heavy entertainment center had some damage that I had to fix, but then again this was the fourth time it had been moved. Stuff happens. All in all I have to say Sims Awesome Moving Company did a pretty good job. They were reliable and for the most part they were careful with our stuff. If you want a no frills, get some guys to move stuff, Sims can take care of you. I tipped them heavily and bought them lunch, which we ate while watching Sportscenter.

It would take several more days to get the bulk of stuff put away, but there are still a number of things laying around in boxes. I hope to get them squared away this weekend. Finally getting the unfinished part of the basement clean was a big step in getting that project moving and this weekend I'm dedicated. I'll post a before and after picture. The before pic will be titled, Box Mountain.

We did have a full service company come in and give us an estimate. For them to pack, load, move, and unload the cost was $8500. That's quoted in American dollars, not Italian Lira. We managed to do it for slightly less than half of that, but that has a couple of caveats. One, we had to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Two, the full service quote did not include any storage time, which as it turns out would have been very little. We didn't know that at the time. To tie up one of their trailers for two or three weeks would have been another $1500 at least. PODS I could have left in storage for another 2 weeks past when they delivered at no extra charge. For another month it would have cost a small fraction of $1500. All in all, despite the long wait to get our stuff and the snafu with them unable to accommodate us last minute during the load process, PODS was a good solution for us.

Next time we move, and as far as I'm concerned that can be a long time from now, we are hiring full service. And we're getting rid of a lot of our crap.

March Madness is great, but I am really ready for baseball season to start again. Once the NFL is over it seems like it takes forever for April to roll around. Thankfully it is here finally.

Which of course means fantasy baseball. These are the players who will be winning me this year's championship.