Foster Parents?

An animal sanctuary here in Las Vegas burned to the ground the other day killing over a hundred birds, injuring others, and leaving many without a place to call home.

Enter my wife whose heart his bigger than her brain - and I mean that in a good way.

She called them this morning and offered up our house/yard/birdcage - in short, she offered us up as "foster parents" for displaced animals.

Of course Jake and I had a riot with this. Picture swans in the pool, parrots, cockatoos, conures and canaries in the bird cage and then of course an Emu or an Ostrich racing back and forth across the backyard pulling out and eating all the flowers I just planted. A camel would just about top it all off.



Will this really happen?

Don't know yet - haven't had a call back. But you know it would provide some hilarity.

Headline News

These were just a couple of the headlines on CNN.com today - sometimes I just can't help myself....




"NFL star Roethlisberger accused of sexual assault." After the FIRST allegation last summer about the Lake Tahoe sexual assault "incident" the summer before that (I know, it's tough to follow the trevails of BB) you would think the Steelers braintrust would hire a guy just to drive Big Stupid Ben around and make sure he behaves himself. To be like Bob Sugar in the film "Jerry McGuire." Keep track of the stuff that needs keeping track of. In fact, that any athlete or celebrity is dumb enough to ever wind up with their mug shot on TMZ is beyond belief. Memo to Celebrities: Buy a limo, hire a driver and make sure he has spare clips in case a gunfight breaks out. Am I the only one who realizes this?

"French team destroys pirate boats." Well it's about damn time. And the French were the aggressors no less. The ship they were protecting must have had some seriously delicious baked goods and wine to warrant such aggression. But I like it. Shows some backbone. Leadership. To the French, my ancestors: Outstanding. Well done. Cheers. Let's take a look at this situation a little closer shall we? Huge cargo ships are being hijacked all the time in the Indian Ocean by Somali pirates in skiffs (THINK big canoe with a rickety, smokey outboard engine that takes like a dozen pulls to start up and just chugs oil and overall is just a very unsanitary ship).





Sure the pirates have a menacing look, stink to high heaven and even have those laughable handheld grenade launchers that they aren't sure which end the projectile is actually going to come out of if they do pull the trigger. Sort of a "Fire at Your Own Risk" type of weapon. But I reckon that somewhere in the Southeastern United States there are literally thousands and thousands of guys who would happily ride alongside these ships as security for these vessels using only their bass fishing boats or jetskis for free beer and all the rounds they could shoot.



Tempting I know.

"Paparazzi turn tables, fight back." I'm not sure what this means since I'm stilling laughing out loud just looking at the headline. Does this mean we could have a reality TV show with paparazzi duking it out with boy band members or have that geeky Edward guy from the Vampire movies in the Octogon? On pay-per-view? I'd watch Danny Bonnaducci climb in the ring....all drunk, piercings still in..... Or if Mickey Roarke wanted one last chance at glory. All puffed up, hair all thin and clumped together, dimwitted, scuffed up shoes, different color socks and wreaking of booze and marlboro reds. In fact, Mickey would have to have a clause allowing him to smoke while he fought. Mickey is one of the few people on the planet who smoke WHILE they sleep.

"First stimulus project almost done." I admit, this one stumped me. I kept going back and forth trying to guess what great stimulus project would be trumpeted out upon our nations news headlines... A new airport runway, a neutron collider, an electric car, a spaceship?





Surely it would be something that says "WOW. Look at the USA! We are back to kickin' ass again." Nope. In the middle of nowhere an $8 million bridge is nearing completion for a town of some 220 people.



"Congressmen: Exonerate Navy SEALs in Iraq incident." This is where our elite Navy guys captured a really bad Iraqi guy and roughed 'em up a bit. The Iraqi bad guy is responsible for the torture and killing of some US contractors in '03. This is a bad man. Our guys acted like how Jack Bauer operates on 24. Apparently a liberal faction believes that even terrorists should have the very same rights as US citizens. My argument and that of 99.999% of America is that the rules of war are short - probably fit 'em on the back of a business card. Killing the enemy is perfectly acceptable, even meritorious, behavior. This very nasty bad man who was roughed up was an enemy of the United States. Becuause of this, right now several Navy SEALS await trial in Iraq for their behavior. Our government has just turned logic upside down. Again.

"The Labor Department said the economy lost 36,000 jobs in the month, fewer than the 68,000 jobs economists were expecting, according to a survey conducted by Briefing.com." Who REALLY keeps track of all this stuff? I mean the numbers are certainly eye-popping. The continued loss of jobs is creepy. This concerns me. Start studying your Chinese folks.

"Report warns of low morale at Embassy in Afghanistan." That this is even news is laughable. How much did this report cost the US Government? Afghanistan? Even Afghanistan's don't want to live there. It's like living at the Nevada test site when the government detonated atomic bombs in the '50's. No A/C, 3 TV stations, closest grocery store is in downtown Kabul and the drivers there are suicidal (pun intended), bus service isn't consistent and they tend to blow up on occasion... Hell yeah morale would be low.

I'd rather be on a cruise.... off the shores of Somalia.

With a rifle.

Fighting pirates.

A Week in Solitary Confinement

Among my shorting comings is a lack of patience. This is something I struggle with every day of my life.

Add that little personality hiccup to being sick to the point of not leaving the house or shaving for the past 6 days and I look like Ted Kaczynski.



Scruffy, hair unkept....... Being stuck in the house for 144 hours is taking it's toll on me.

Janae was out of the country for a spell so I was left to my own to self-medicate....I never do this good and it obviously didn't work out well. I was using leftover antibiotics from some shoulder surgery last summer....I even found some of grammy's cough medicine that had to be at least 13 months only, and tossed down whatever else Google and I could thought might help me. Didn't work. But I did watch some Patrick Swayze films over the weekend that were breathtakingly bad. Women liked this scrawny dude?

When Janae got home, things began to look up. She got the Doc on the line and hooked me up. I now take pills the size of batteries and wash them down with vitamin powdered water.



This has helped my throat and the itching in my ears that earlier made me want to take a piece of iron rebar and insert it in my ear to scratch the hell of it - push it through even...Yeah, that itchy.

Since the first few days swallowing felt like I was tossing back shots of broken glass I really didn't eat much and just groaned like all men do thinking this is it. This is the illness that will take my life. I just made sure that my underwear was clean like mom taught me.

I am also on some steroid medication that aside from shrinking my testicles and making my head big I'm not sure what it supposed to do. But I'll be a force to reckon with come softball this spring. Chicks dig the long ball.

I've been out of the loop so long I have trouble figuring out which day it is. I am deeply saddened that I cannot make the trip to Utah for the Ute-Cougar game. The Utes are going to run all over these guys - the crowd will be electric and the hatred between the squads is legendary. Possibly the most heated rivalry in the galaxy. I will be fiercely cheering on the Utes from afar.





Thoughts go out to the folks in Chile after their recent earthquake. Chile's quake was 8.8 on that scale no one knows what it means. This was one of the biggest quakes ever recorded...to the point it SHIFTED THE EARTHS AXIS so we lose like 1 millisecond a day now. That's a monster quake people. I looked up the formula to the richter scale and I found it had 3 numerals, 10 letters and a couple of symbols equation. My math uses numbers - thats it. Alec, little help on the richter scale eh buddy?


Olympics? They were okay. Even with the games on the west coast, ESPN still beat NBC by telling us the winners since the TV coverage was just so assbackwards. Things about the Olympics stick out:

1) I loved the hockey and was bummed that the USA lost the gold. Should have played double elimination.
2) I'm was sick of hearing aboutg Lindsey Vonn's shin - worse than Albert Freeney's ankle pre-SB.
3) Love Bode Miller. He does it his way. I like his attitude.
4) Freestyle skiing and freestyle aerials are my favorite competitions to watch.
5) Shawn White is a likeable dude - and his stunts are jaw-dropping.
6) Finally, I'm tired of Apolo.

I heard that some people actually go into a post-olympic depression that requires medical treatment. While this sounds absurd, I know for sure that millions of men go into a post football depression so maybe there is some truth to that statement.