Category Archives: Brain Dripping

I’ll never grow up until The Simpsons dies…

The past two months have been tough for my “never grow up” edict. First I went and turned 35. It’s not just another year… it’s the first one that rounds up to 40! Next I had to admit my limitations on my quest to run a half marathon sometime this year. Every time I start training I injure myself. Just minor complaints mostly but enough to slow me down or force me to take rest time.

Now the biggest blow – possibly ever – has knocked my perpetual puerility for a loop. The Simpsons is no longer on in syndication. I’ve been enjoying my daily D’oh for as long as I’ve been shaving. Since before I could vote. Almost as long as I’ve been driving. How could this be? The Simpsons still was the highest rated show in its time slot this past Sunday, even in reruns, and Homer was just declared TV’s greatest character so again I ask; How could this be?! The worst part? They replaced it with life-long Jon Stewart wannabee Craig Kilborn’s new show. This is the guy who thinks he owns idea of asking his guest 5 questions and is so painfully uncharismatic that he originally needed writers to create a persona for him. I’ll say this for the guy: He’s apparently in good with the roaches… he just refuses to die.

Of course, my venom is mostly just in reaction to what he has replaced. I wouldn’t have had a cow, man if Fox overlayed TMZ. This almost felt personal and I had to find answers so I hit Fox.com. No mention of the Kilborn show. Interesting. Google was a bit more enlightening – it turns out the show is being tested in only a few markets! That means somewhere children of all ages are still enjoying 10-15 year old 21-23 minute comedic masterworks from the glory days of the show. There is hope! The test-run is only for 6 weeks – ending August 6th.

There are those who say the show is no longer relevant. Those naysayers have apparently allowed themselves to get old. For shame! Truth be told, I don’t watch the re-runs every day or even every week but it’s a comfort thing to know they’re there. I will also admit that the show isn’t what it used to be. It couldn’t be because I’m getting older and no longer fall into their target demographic. Impossible! No, the blame lies squarely on The Simpsons itself – in setting the bar too high. In a few years the Powers That Be will decide that the show has run long enough and I will… probably cry like a baby. Until then all I can do is wait and enjoy it while it lasts. Six weeks from now I may return to the glorious TV of my youth. Until then, Craig Kilborn can eat my shorts.

The 12 Days of Christmas

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One of the reasons I haven’t been adding many new posts here in 2009 was that I’ve been doing more on Facebook. Yeah, I know, as stated on the homepage: I suck. I wont proclaim that I’ll post more updates here in 2010 but I will aggregate some of my FB stuff. To that end, let me begin with my 12 favorite Christmas songs as posted on Facebook but with more information (and not necessarily in order). I know that the true 12 days of Christmas are from December 25th through January 6th (The Epiphany) but I wanted to count down to the big day as we currently celebrate it. Music is my favorite part of the Christmas Season. This list is long overdue (and far too short).

Day 12: A non-traditional and a great start to any holiday season! I heard it first on 33rpm long-play record – John Denver & The Muppets – A Christmas Together – When the River Meets the Sea. The song was written by Paul Williams for Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas which is another one of my Christmas favorites.

Day 11: A non-secular classic today. When making my Christmas “mix tapes” back in the day, I excluded Jingle Bells because most recorded versions were too childish. Then I heard this version on an oldies station by accident and it became a favorite. Sing, clap or stomp, just make a joyous noise for Fats Domino’s version of Jingle Bells!

Day 10: Carol of the Drum, better known as The Little Drummer Boy with words and music by Katherine K. Davis. Check out the interesting side bar on the link – the song dates back to 1941. This is the “original” recorded version arranged and sung by the Harry Simeone Chorale.

Day 9: Oh Holy Night – my favorite traditional and the first song ever broadcast via radio. Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Ignore the video. Just listen. The true beauty of this song is its legendary history. My favorite line is usually not sung: “Truly He taught us to love one another, His law is love and His gospel is peace.“

Day 8: With snow on all of our minds, I have to go with White Christmas. Written in 1940 and introduced two years later in the musical Holiday Inn, not the 1954 movie of the same name. I love Bing’s version, but The Drifters have way more fun with it. Their video can’t be embedded so I present the always fun animated version.

Day 7: Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song – Although its been sung many times, many ways, it was written by Mel Torme in 1947 who was just trying to keep cool one hot summer. Nat changed it slightly by adding the strings section and the song became one of the biggest hits ever. I couldn’t imagine Christmas without it!

Day 6: Another old stand-by – Burl Ives singing Holly Jolly Christmas. I still love the 1964 “claymation” movie where most of us heard this song for the first time. This one was written in by Johnny Marks who, though Jewish, wrote many other Christmas classics including Rudolph, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and Run Rudolph Run.

Day 5: It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas as sung by Bing Crosby. “But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be on your own front door.” Every year I make a pilgrimage to some remote forest in NJ and harvest the annual sprig of Holly. This year I visited the maritime forest on Sandy Hook with my wife and a good friend of ours. Good times & happy memories!

Day 4: Happy XMas – John Lennon with the Harlem Community Choir. Yes, the song is titled “XMas” not “Chirstmas”. “So this is Christmas and what have we done? Another year over, a new one just begun.” Actually a protest song but the message is simple – Peace. On Christmas day remember the man but honor his message.

Day 3: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas works beautifully in duets. One of my favorite versions features Bing Crosby & Frank Sinatra but that isn’t one of YouTube’s favorites. This version features two performers which I dearly miss. …”Through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow.” I tried to not go back to the well with my most favorite Christmas Album of all time… although the lyrics have changed a lot over the years, I could only find recordings where Bing misses a lyric (He says Self instead of Heart) so I go with what works.

Day 2: From the Emmy Award winning Charlie Brown Christmas Special – Christmas Time Is Here by Vince Guaraldi. “Christmas time is here. We’ll be drawing near. Oh, that we could always see such spirit through the year!” This video features an excellent edit of the special and includes Linus’ monologue (Luke 2:8-14). The inclusion of this word-for-word reading originally horrified CBS executives but Charles Shultz insisted saying “If we don’t tell the true meaning of Christmas, who will?”. Read more of the interesting history here.

Christmas Day: John Denver & the Muppets – Alfie the Christmas Tree. Anyone that knows me probably had a good inkling that this would be my final song. It’s one of John Denver’s favorites and it was inspired by the Muppets that helped him perform it. Merry Christmas! The video features the entire segment of the special including a duet with Kermit. Great stuff.

Monthly Update – January

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I only seem motivated to drop a post here once a month so I’ll make it a tradition.

This has been a turbulent month for me in a lot of ways. It all started when I returned to work after the New Year’s break and discovered our parent companies had filed for their country’s equivalency of bankruptcy. The American division is ok so far but it’s not a pretty sight overseas. I hear about companies all over laying people off left and right and I can’t help but feel a bit worried, especially after my other New Year’s surprise – my property taxes went up 10%. Thanks Corzine!

Other turbulence: The other Saturday I flipped on the old boob tube (which doesn’t have a tube. Oh well.) and found nothing but infomercials for hair products & yoga mats. What the? When I was a whipper snapper I lived for Saturday Morning Cartoons and now they are nowhere to be found. I suppose they’ve moved up the dial. You can always get something animated on the Cartoon or Nick networks but Yoga and Hair curlers? Damn… kids are going to just have to go outside to find entertainment!

Two days later I was shocked to hear G-Rock, my favorite radio station, suddenly change formats. Without warning they went from a progressive alt-rock station to a soulless top 40 cookie cutter TMZ mess. The station had been the anchor of my presets and it left a giant hole where “4” used to be. I wasn’t alone in my disgust. By that weekend 7500 people had organized on Facebook (yeah, I got drawn in) and 3500 signatures had been signed on the Bring Back G-Rock petition. As of this writing Facebook has 9500 members & the petition is up to 4600 signatures.

I’m disappointed but I’m afraid the station wont go back to what it was. Nor will the institution of Saturday Morning Cartoons draw children together on weekends. Times they are a changing and terrestrial radio will be the first to go. Network Television may eventually follow. The Internet is largely to blame and though I love some of the changes, I’m sorry to see my options diminished. I could go with Satellite Radio but then I’ll have to get subscribed. I could get a plan on my phone… but once again, they make you subscribe. Not for me, man! Information & Entertainment was meant to be free. I’ll reconsider when “data” isn’t a “plan” and “commercial free” really is free from commercialism. One day in the hopefully distant future I’ll look back at the early 00’s and remember them as the golden age of entertainment & information – when it was still free and available in multiple ways.

On one hand it will be excellent to turn on The Fiosion to check your email, pull up the latest pictures of your nephew and instantly begin watching the latest episode of The Simpsons (Now in it’s 33rd year!) but the flip side of that coin is that you’ll be locked into a 5 year deal with T-Mobile/Verizon (Officially branded as T.V.) and subject to personal commercials directed right into your psychy based on the things they know about from your Gmail account. Don’t think it’s possible? Get a glimpse of the future on Facebook. Change your birth-date to something in the 50s and watch the ads change to wrinkle cream & arthritis pills. Mark yourself as “Single” and the dating ads will fill your sidebar. Just wait until they know your car just went over 100,000 miles, that you’re addicted to Chap-Stick, and that you never returned that overdue library book (ya know, from back when Libraries still existed).

Ok, that’s enough grousing for one month. I’ll be back next month with less insight and more hindsight.

Just because I haven’t shared anything in a while…

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In the Summer of 1779 the land of Tatum Park near Middletown, NJ was a small farm owned by a family that was struggling to just keep the farm running. To make matters worse, British soldiers were occupying their land. Young Emily had a magnificent garden of native flowers, but the wildflowers that grew in the meadows were her favorite. Emily watched with irritation as the troops made camp in a field that was being allowed to grow natural that season. They crushed down her beloved wildflowers & greedily ate the berries she had been cultivating all Spring.

One of the soldiers took notice & saved a large bouquet of flowers, which he presented to her one morning. Despite their differences, the two fell in love. Though she never tried to change his mind, her love of the land was infectious & soon after being deployed into battle the young soldier defected to the Colonial Army. He promised to marry her when he returned. He wrote to Emily frequently over the next year but one day the letters stopped coming. The years piled up, the war ended & she lost hope & began to despair. She was inconsolable. As Emily’s health began to fail so did the farm. Crops withered, fruits dried on the vine & not a flower could be seen on the property.

On the occasion of the first frost in 1783 Emily took a walk in the North East meadow, sat down to rest under a willow tree & never woke up. She was buried in that same meadow. On Christmas Eve of that season her lover finally returned. He had been captured by the British & sent over seas as a prisoner of war. The revolution ended before he could stand trial & eventually he was able to make his way back to the colonies. Her soldier was saddened when he heard the news of her death but war had hardened him & he could shed no tears. Emily’s mother led him to the gravesite. As he knelt by Emily’s final resting place, her Mother placed a bundle of dried flowers alongside the headstone. The soldier recognized the flowers as the very bouquet he gave her when they first met. His heart finally broke & he began to weep.

On the first day of Spring life returned to the farm when a lone Morning Glory bloom unfolded to greet the dawn. It had sprouted alongside Emily’s grave where her love’s tears fell to earth.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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This is our first Thanksgiving in our new home and we decided to spend it in said home. When faced with the delicious decision of which side of the family to visit over this holiday we decided that we’d just stay here and avoid the drive, the traffic, the headaches and… did I mention the drive? Since nobody is actually From New Jersey, everyone Leaves New Jersey on Thanksgiving. That puts us in our cars in what amounts to a mass exodus and the roads just aren’t wide enough for Everyone at once.

Don’t get me wrong, family is always worth the trip but if I spend 4.5 hours making a 2 hour trip they wouldn’t want me there, ya know?

Anyway, so… yeah we stayed home. We cleaned up the house a little, ate a big pancake & sausage breakfast, cleaned up the house some more, had a nice lunch of leftovers from this past week and then decided to go for a hike in Cheesequake State Park. We explored the new trails, the lake and a marsh we hadn’t been in before. I caught leaves and climbed horizontal trees while Heather found some lovely moss. We had a nice hike too & even borrowed time to find the Geocache that’s closest to our home. I dropped my “Moving Man” geocoin into the cache. It can do the moving from now on! While signing the log a Turkey Buzzard lighted heavily on a nearby branch. Cool.

Back at home it was time for Thanksgiving Dinner! We microwaved a turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes & cranberry green-beans. We shared it while eating over the sink – just as the pilgrims did! I gave thanks for the microwave bounty that we ate. Of course, this wasn’t the last of the meal… since it was such a nice day we fired up the grill for one last time and cooked hot dogs & the last of the bacon wrapped filet mignon. For desert we had chocolate.

That’s my kinda Thanksgiving. I’ll close with a short poem from our dear friends at Rathergood.com. Happy T-Day everyone!

It’s the best day of the year.
Every body shout and cheer!
Because there no religious reason
Why we’re all gathered here.
It’s secular you see?
And that’s alright with me.
Now say your thanks and eat a Turkey Knee!

Quad Cat Info Blast!

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I’m filing this one under just about everything because it contains one pertinent bit of info from most of the categories. Whee! Here we go:

News: I’m upgrading my computer so my connectivity is somewhat limited. I dropped in a second video card to complete my SLI upgrade path & swapped out my old Athlon 64 3000+ for a shiny new Dual Core Athlon 4400+. I would have went with the 4600 but couldn’t find the part on the cheap. I ran some benchmarks before and after and it looks like my (synthetic) FPS scores nearly doubled in games while my gigaflops (processor speed) actually increased by a factor of 2.4. Very nice and well worth the upgrade. Just wait until I start cranking some multi-threaded apps. 🙂 The downside is that Windows was horrible unstable when I got done so I’m reinstalling the OS and it’ll be a few days before I’m fully productive again.

New House: We’ve passed another “final” deadline on gettig bank approval. Then he attorneys went on vacation. Now we’re waiting (over a week now) for the seller’s attorney to return the phone call & emails that our side has been sending. In the mean time we’re looking at other houses. The bank’s delays have now cost us over 5 grand in interest (over the full term of the loan) thanks to the ever-increasing rates.

Geocaching: Heather & I woke up at 4:30 AM this past Saturday to make it to the “07/07/07 at 07:07” Event down near Cherry Hill. The turnout was unbelievable! Any cacher who’s missing out on events is missing out on a lot of the fun of the sport. Afterwards we teamed up with 7 other cachers and hit 7 additional caches. Funny how that worked out, eh? We took off for South Jersey after lunch and ended up meeting a cacher from the early days of the sport at the family BBQ. We’re everywhere! Also, for the past 17 days I’ve had a streak of geocache finds. I’ve set a new record and I’m still going! Check out my statistics at It’s Not About The Numbers.com.

Brain Dripping: I hate to see news like this. In a nutshell, someone named Eric Dalton got shot in the chest in Winston-Salem NC. If Sarah Connor had paid more attention to the news she could have beat feet before The Terminator found her and killed her friend. But seriously, I hope he’s Ok. I’ll keep ya’ll posted if I can dig up more news.