I read a quote by Drew Barrymore in my local newspaper recently that made me nod my head in agreement. She was talking about dating when she said this, but I think it applies to other relationships as well: ”The only fundamental rule for me is to just be yourself. Let your freak-flag fly, and if someone doesn’t get you, move on.” 

Everybody has a freak-flag. We’re just cautious about waving it around too many people for fear of criticism. One of the ways I fly my freak-flag is by playing a word game with my oldest niece. I made it up when she was small and we’ve been playing it ever since. We’ll drive by a Taco Bell and call it Burrito Flute. Or we’ll see a Hardees and call it Soft-C’s. Over the years, I came up with dozens of these.

Applebees = Orange-C’s.

Hy-Vee = Low-W

Walgreens = Ceiling Blues

Burger King = Steak Queen

Outback = In Front

Buffalo Wild Wings = Chicken Tame Legs

Wendys = Breezies

Village Inn = City Out

On and on it goes. We have so many of these that my niece and I have our own lingo now. We’ll use this lingo around our friends or family sometimes and they think we’re crazy. Maybe we are. But we have a blast doing it. And we’re always trying to come up with more.

I can’t help but think about a time far into the future when I’m no longer here. Maybe my niece will be driving down the street one day with the burdens of life troubling her, and she’ll drive by an Outback Steakhouse and smile to herself as she whispers “In Front.”

Nobody else will understand it, but it won’t matter because she will have made a connection to the past and drawn a slight bit of comfort in remembering a time when her crazy uncle let his freak flag fly.

     

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Little Nuances You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

I hate the format war. I hated the DVD/Divx war, and I’m hating the HD-DVD/Blu Ray war even more. I want to upgrade to High Def disks for my DVD collection, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to choose one of these formats.

Drew posted earlier today about Microsoft announcing a price drop on the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. Which is good for HD-DVD. Today Target announced that they will only be stocking Blu-Ray players in their stores. Which is good for Blu-Ray. It’s not a HUGE win for Blu-Ray, though, with Target still selling HD-DVD players online. Plus they’ll still be selling HD-DVD disks, and the Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on. Target even went on record to say that they haven’t chosen a side. “We are not proclaiming one format vs. the other as the preferred consumer technology.”

My money is still on HD-DVD because of Wal-mart and Porn. We’ll see what happens.

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Forever Geek You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

From some Iranian newspaper via the BBC via the Washington Post, dubiously sourced, definitely implausible, but please dear god let this be true:

A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country’s borders.These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes.

According to the announcement made by Iranian intelligence officials, alert police officials caught these squirrels before they could carry out any task.

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Boing Boing You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

I’m going to tell you a story so scary you will never be able to look at a lift (or elevator for you Americans) in the same way again. Stairs will become your new best friend. What I am going to tell you is a true story and it happened to me. The dictionary describes a lift as such: Function: noun A platform or an enclosure raised and lowered in a vertical shaft to transport people or freight.

But I describe a lift as so:

Function: evil A platform dangling over the void of darkness or a claustrophobic enclosure of terror raised and lowered in a vertical shaft of doom and death to transport and create fear in people or freight.

It all started one Saturday about two years ago. I was working the weekend due to deadline time (and surfing the net) and I was the last person in the building. Around 10pm I finally decided it was time to go home, shut off my computer and got in the lift to go from the fourth floor to the ground floor… if only I had taken the stairs.

As the lift moved down the shaft it suddenly jerked to a stop. At first I thought nothing of it. I thought I had arrived at my destination. Only the doors did not open. I tried hitting a few buttons, nothing happened. It only took a few seconds to realize I was trapped between the first and second floor. It was a Saturday. Monday was a bank holiday. I realized there was a good chance I would not be getting out any time soon and I might have to eat my own arm to survive.

I don’t mind telling you that for the first couple of minuets I was scared like a little girly man. Visions of the lift falling down the shaft danced through my mind. Shouting and using the emergency buzzer did no good. There was no one else in the building. No one was coming to my rescue. In my panic I tried to open the doors with my bear hands. They opened easily but what was behind them was another horror like something out of the “Twilight Zone.” An old red brick wall up to waist height and then the outer lift doors. I tried to force open the outer lift doors but they would only open an inch and no more. For a while I let the panic in, pacing up and down the small space of the lift (but being careful not to shake it too much).

Then, as I started to calm down, came the moment that every man who grew up watching 80s TV dreams of… MacGyver time. Also known as “The bit at the end of the A-Team where they made something cool”. So I found myself thinking, “What would MacGyver do?” I took stock of my inventory.

1. A laptop with only a little battery power remaining
2. A mobile phone with a dead battery
3. Some paper
4. A technical drawing pencil
5. A can of coke
6. And my back pack itself

I started thinking things like, “Maybe I could somehow wire up my laptop battery to my mobile phone and charge it up. No.. wait… the lift is a dead spot for mobile phones.”

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Invading Holland You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.

(more…)

Cesar Millan was not a name I was familiar with, although I had heard people talk about The Dog Whisperer. This TV show is a take off on the “Horse Whisperer,” a movie about a guy who could work with troubled horses by simply getting intimate with them. The Dog Whisperer guy does the same thing, more or less, supposedly with dogs instead of horses. 

Actually, if you watch a few episodes you’ll notice that Cesar Millan doesn’t work so much on the dogs. He “fixes” the humans who own the dogs. He has an intense gaze, and he starts by asking a lot of probing questions. Then he begins to work on changing the pet owner’s unwholesome state of mind.

“Oh, the dog was rescued from a horrible life? And that’s why you indulge him and let him control you?” “Well,” he says matter of factly, “this dog doesn’t live in the past. It lives in the here and now.”

The Dog Whisperer teaches people that animals understand elemental communication best of all. They will allow themselves to be ‘managed’ only by someone who first establishes dominance. A leader establishes dominance and is firm, without being rough or abusive. To have maximum influence a Leader has to know how to work from the present moment.

If you haven’t watched ‘The Dog Whisperer’ I highly recommend it. The basic message is enticing and yet also elusive; in other words, it’s easy to see it applied to other people. The question is how do you apply that lesson to your own life?

This Best Blog post was excerpted from Ernie the Attorney You can submit a blog post for inclusion in Blogger Blog. Just go HERE for more information.