My Addled Brain

Happy birthday, Em’s Mom.

Teh One and I attended the Florida State Fair last weekend, along with MCG and his family, Madre, and members of Em’s Mom’s family. (Yes, I’m aware that one should not use two possessives in a row, but technically, the first posessive is part of a name, so it’s not really a possessive in this case. This aside was brought to you by: Teh One, America’s favorite grammar nazi.) We gorged ourselves primarily on food attached to planks of wood, as all good fair food should be, and I actually rode a fair ride for the first time in approximately ten skillion years. I’d spend time explaining exactly what said ride did, but it’s not really worth it - all fair rides involve the same primary element: a spinning platform/main joint. The only real variation is where the joint is attached, and how many other spinning joints come between it and your seat, the net effect of which I like to refer to as a ride’s “vomit quotient”, or the likelihood that, after riding your selected ride, you will regurgitate your recently digested fair cuisine, sans stick. I would say the “Twister”, a “Tilt-a-Whirl” meets “That Roulette Table-looking ride” contraption, rates about a four on a scale of ten. I would make up cute little icons of adorable 50’s style clip art children holding an airline style barf bag or something for this rating, but considering this was the only ride I went on, I’ll be satisifed leaving you with that lovely mental image instead.

The fair was really a day for The Princess, who is already becoming a thrillseeker in waiting. I expect that in six months, she will figure out a way to get on the roof of her house and basejump from it using a homemade paracute. In the meantime, I will hound MCG daily for a great pic he took of her on the swing ride - from the huge grin on her face, you’d think she was flying.

Congratulations to the Irish Stud and his wife, they had a baby boy two days ago. Now he can put all that experience wating tables, reading comics, and playing Magic to good use raising a child who, despite karma, we hope will be a well behaved chick magnet when he gets old enough to know better.

Yes, I’m a slacker, but a slacker who didn’t find out until well after the fact.

Teh One and I had an early Valentine’s Day dinner Sunday night at that bastion of culinary wonder, The Cheesecake Factory, where I had heard they make a mighty fine brownie. Or something vaguely dessert-ish, I forget exactly. For the completely uninitiated, TCF is located on Bay Street, the outdoor dining/shopping section of International Plaza, a fantastic place to shop as long as you’re not planning to buy anything at a remotely reasonable price. The mall has an Apple store, which is all you really need to know about this place and the average human’s reality - which is to say, the store is very clean and modern, with lots of sleek things in attractive packages that cost more money than I’m even going to entertain for that sort of thing. Picture a fashion show, only the runway models are sporting 30″ Cinema HD monitors instead of ridiculous, unwearable clothes. Now, fill the mall with lots of shops featuring the formentioned unwearable clothes, shoppers wearing various states of last week’s to last month’s unwearable clothes, the odd overpriced housewares store, and toss in a Bath and Body Works and a Chick-Fil-A, which I believe must have a space in every mall in the US by government mandate, and you have a pretty good idea of what it’s like.

At any rate, Teh One pointed out to me, as we walked around to kill time for our forty-five minute to one hour wait, that she couldn’t believe that the 80’s had come back. This got my attention - as my formative years were well cemented in the Reagan Era, I remember with pristine clarity the bizarre fashion of the decade. And sure enough, as I looked around, I saw Flashdance-esque leg warmers, brit-pop magazine collage blouses, and, later that evening, a tragic jacket that looked like someone had dipped a badger in electric blue dye, shaved rings out of it, added some sleeves, and called it a day. (I seem to recall, somewhere in my past, someone saying that it wasn’t how it looked, it was how much it cost. If that’s the case, then someone needs to apologise to that kid who won’t be going to med school because mom had to have that jacket, it’s divine.) Yes, it’s back, having clawed it’s way out of the closet of fashion tragedy like the near-Romero directed return of bell bottoms and two-foot platforms. But the biggest thing about the resurgence, to me anyway, wasn’t the presence of the 80’s - it was the lack of pink. I guess the recent spree of that color is wearing itself thin, and as such, it has been replaced with the equally eye-watering teal.

I swear, I’m not really a fashion honk - that kind of stuff generally goes unnoticed by me, as anyone who has ever met me knows. No other human would be willing to go outside with my general lack of zing without, at the very least, a wig and false mustache. But when that many people are wearing clothes that are that unappealing to the human eye…well, something must be said, if only to spare possible blindness to myself and those I love.

I saw this story earlier, but Gax e-mailed me to let me know as well, and that’s just too much pressure for one man to take. Remember the Navistar CXT? No? Well, click on the link. (And visit more often, we’ll soon be offering punch and pie to regular visitors!*) For those of you with long term memories, or perhaps have a very, very unhealthy obsession with this website**, allow me to introduce you to the RXT and the MXT, the little brothers of the CXT. The ad copy practically screams to the shallow, egocentric person who just can’t get over the fact that the me-first nineties are over and done with:

Let’s be honest. You didn’t become the success that you are by doing things halfway. For you, it’s go all out, or go home. Now there’s a lineup of trucks that shares your bold attitude and entrepreneurial spirit. The International® XT family. These aren’t just beefed up pickup trucks. They’re performance and beauty taken to the extreme. Of course, it helps to have strong bloodlines.

In fact, this whole “extreme” thing drives me up the wall. (Might be a big reason why I find Harold and Kumar go to White Castle so damn funny.) Does everything have to be the battle of the giant schlongs? At Navistar, the answer is a resounding “damn straight”.Well, have fun cockfighting, kids! And let me know how that gas card bill thing goes. Why do I get the feeling that Shell is going to have to start extending lines of credit to these people?

* This is not true.

** I do not actually believe this is possible, unless this person does not have the ability to go anywhere else on the internet.***

*** Or outside.****

**** Or a method of stabbing out their own eyes so they don’t have to read this anymore.

Tech question.

My site is constantly under a barrage of comment spam from numerous sites. I’ve tried blocking IPs in .htaccess files. I’ve tried blocking URLs. I’ve tried moderating comments. But no matter what I do, I end up with 12-15 spam comments per day. My big question is: is there a way to block referrers? For example, here’s my list of top referrers, pulled from Webalizer from this month (Links stripped out to prevent clicking on these SOB’s):

Yeah, it’s hideous, I know. (Oh, and thanks to Gax for driving up legit visits to my site - I think I may have to sponsor him or something to compensate him.) But I’m tired of deleting posts for free-online-poker. Any ideas, kids? Keep in mind, I don’t have admin access to this server, so anything I do is pretty much limited to Apache, as well as any tricks you might have for Wordpress, for those of you who have freed themselves from the opression of Blogger.

Importing the old website? Yeah, I’m doing that. Except the old database files I had were gone, so I’m having to do it by hand. The first set is in, covering about a four month period of posts.

Looking back on the older stuff, I am struck by two things:

1. I used to be more creative in my output.
2. I used to go outside more often.

The two may be related.

At any rate, feel free to check them out. Highlights include monitors and rayguns, a day on the high seas, the first mention of The Princess, and what I consider to be my best review ever (for Minority Report). Did I peak on this website three years ago? *sigh*

And if you need an explanation for Robby…something will be forthcoming.

I have discovered the practially ancient reminants of the original AddledBrain.com, from the days where I didn’t even have comments, and posted e-mail from the three or four people who dared to send me correspondence. In the interests of keeping things whole (ok, because I can’t stand not having my older, more embarrasing posts available for public ridicule consumption, I’ll be integrating them in as I get a chance. There’s 156 posts, just over two years worth (yeah yeah, keep your comments about my posting speed to yourselves - count your lucky stars I don’t share some of my worse ideas with you all), so it’s going to take a while. If I feel real frisky, I may try to figure out how to move the comments (which I started about three months after the site did) as well, but that may not work out since the database that drove the old site is long gone. At least, I think it is…

In light of the decisions of some rather creative advertising writers and their massive Superbowl budgets, I almost feel like some sort of prophet. Hot off the heels of the recent restyling, we have both Careerbuilder.com and Verizon (sorry, no linky) busting out the chimp trump card. Truly, I am blessed with a vision that surpasses all others. To celebrate this, I offer up these other predictions for the near future:

• MCG will manage to somehow warp the barriers of time-space, thus allowing fourty people (twenty more than last year) to watch the Arizona Cardinals run roughshod over the Miami Dolphins, 73-4 in the 2006 Superbowl from the comfort of his living room, and still have room for his daughter’s toys..
• Hot on the heels of his successful London musical run, Bat Boy will return to the US and, in 2008, run for office on the Republican ticket. (Sorry, this is only predicting a headline for the Weekly World News. Whoops.)
• Having gotten fed up with the 9 to 5 grind, I will quit my current day job and start a brand new genre: 24 hour blogging. I will rattle off anything that should pop into my head and feed it directly to the web, no matter how banal. I will go through three hosting companies in a year as the traffic to my site eventually grows to a quarter-million a day. I will make money by strategically placing Google AdWords liberally throughout the site, disguising them as links to humorous sites. Soon, others will catch on, and Blogging will eventually surpass both tech exports and porn to be the top grossing field in the nation. Eventually, the economy will collapse and the United States will fall into ruin. (Start sending your hate mail now, in case this actually works.)

Please send your money now, so I can continue on my impressive streak of predictions. I sense I shall soon be rich beyond my wildest dreams…

Congratulations, Philadelphia! Your dream does not die this day.

We’ve gone bananas for chimps. Inspiration courtesy of the refrigerator magnet MCG gave me this week. No, really. It’s the crowning touch on a new look I’ve been thinking about for a few weeks now.

No clue what I’m talking about? Click here, maybe that will help.

Now then, back to the grind.