Month: May 2012

Categories
Critters Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Meet Explorer Earl

Dork HelmetOkay, I only thought this stuff was buried under a mile of soft peat somewhere.

Sometime in 1994, at the first TV station where I worked, I got shanghaied into being on-air talent during kids’ programming. Our kids’ club talent had just left, and there was a perfect storm brewing:

  1. The Humane Society did pet-of-the-week spots in our kids’ programming, which helped the station to fulfill its “local public service” quota. Those spots now had no host.
  2. The station had just gotten a pith helmet in a National Geographic promo kit.
  3. I was already on the payroll.

With no contract, no additional pay, and no perks, I was suddenly… Explorer Earl. … Read more

Categories
Home Base

The fish tank

WooooooOne of the things I’m hoping to accomplish with my blog, aside from “not running completely dry of material to write about,” is to leave something of a written history of me behind for my son. I’d love to say I’m going to write down the whole family history, but I’m no genealogist. I can’t vouch for the rest of my family. I can only vouch for me. Sometimes these stores will get a little outside your comfort zone (hell, imagine how I feel telling you about them). This will probably be one of those. But understand that one thing it is absolutely not meant to be is a sob story. I came out of this one intact. … Read more

Categories
Gaming Home Base

You’ve got to cut the rope

It’s the end of an era here at der Greenhaus: the rope lights are coming down from the game room shelves. We’re talking about a lighting scheme that I’ve leaned on pretty hard since the last house I lived in, Game Room 2003so… nine years exactly. And the funny thing is, a lot of these rope lights have been around since then, so at the very least it was time to look at replacing some of them.

But that’s not what the plan is. As with every other room in the house, the carpet has to come out of my room, so everything has to be disconnected, moved elsewhere in the house temporarily, and then moved back in when it’s torn down to a smooth concrete floor. Even that is temporary – at some point when we can afford it, we’ll get flooring put in (but not carpet – never again), so it’s kinda like all the fun of moving repeatedly, minus the fun of actually moving it to someplace new and exciting. … Read more

Categories
Serious Stuff

Company Man

Burly BrawlAs I sit here, secure in my stay-at-home-dad-hood, “decolorizing” and repurposing scans of arcade marquees I once owned so Little E can have coloring pages with Dig Dug characters on them, and continuing to send out applications for gigs that would allow me to bring in some money without sacrificing the stuff I do for my family by staying at home. No problem, right? It’s more of a tightrope walk than you think, since I’m currently the guy who does the dishes, laundry, cleaning, cooking, lawn work, homeschooling, and fighting like hell to make sure no one handling my son’s therapy is slacking off on their end of things. Throw even a part-time gig into the middle of that pond, and it’s going to make the kind of splash that washes me up on the shores of the living room sofa around bedtime. … Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff

Calm the beef min

A long time ago, seemingly in another life, back before I had a kiddo, I spent inordinate amounts of time hanging around the video-game-centric Digital Press forums. One thread pointed toward a pre-release video of some game or other on Youtube – I don’t even remember the game itself – whose comment-section responses were rapturous to say the least. Well, except for one guy. … Read more

Categories
Critters Home Base Serious Stuff

A Saturday of ADVENTURE!

How you been doin’? Here’s a quick rundown of the things I’ve done today:

  1. Babel fishSat back, obeyed the rules and did nothing as Mrs. G and Little E fished in the mon & son fishing tournament at Carol Ann Cross Park. No fish were caught by this family on this day. Man, I wanted to jump in there and help… but the rules specifically forbade it. I just had to sit back and shut up. Now I’m jonesing to go fish rainbow trout on the White River. Just me, a boat, a rod, a reel, some bait, some lures, a hat big enough to keep the sun out of my eyes, some tunes, absolutely no cell phone signal whatsoever, no wi-fi, no nothing. If you don’t hear from me in a few days, I’m probably sleeping with the fishes. In a good way.
  2. Went to the Fort Smith Public Library for the used book sale and, just as we pulled into the parking lot, saw a wheelchair-bound woman zip down the access ramp, way too fast, and took a tumble out of her wheelchair when she hit the curb instead of the ramp across from her. She landed in the grassy divider and not concrete, which is a good thing, but that scared the hell out of me. Bet it didn’t do her any favors either. Me, a mail carrier and one of the library employees tried to help her up, but her daughter showed up in a panic and told us that either the fire department or EMS has to help her with that; we would’ve just injured her worse.
  3. Woofles McBarkleberry, Ph.DogAs if that wasn’t enough to draw a crowd, among the crowd were two big, friendly stray pit bulls roaming around in front of the library. I stopped and petted them for a bit until they moved on, mainly to keep them from freaking folks out. Since Xena and Gabby were crashed when we all left at the crack of dawn, these two were the friendliest dogs I saw all morning. They had very obvious dogfighting injuries, and yet they were all over me, stinky-breath dog kisses and all.

    Pit bulls aren’t bad dogs. Some pit bull owners, on the other hand, like whoever’s obviously keeping two injured fighting dogs around and letting mange eat them alive, are real pieces of shit. If not for the likely conflict of personalities with the existing canine security staff at my place, I might’ve taken them home. Great dogs. Didn’t ask for whatever’s happened to them. I couldn’t get them to stay long enough for animal control to show up. Good luck, pups. I want to find your ex-owner and keep him from ever breeding again (whether you read that to mean breeding dogs to fight or breeding more people like himself, you didn’t land too far from the truth). But I’ll settle for you two love-starved mutts finding a loving home.

    Sadly, the BS myth about pit bulls being four-legged killing machines across the board will probably prevent this from happening.

  4. Gargoyle gargling GershwinGot soaked in pit bull slobber right before walking in for the library book sale. Also, next stop after the book sale was my niece’s birthday party at Fuji Steakhouse. Woohoo! Uncle Earl showed up smelling like pit bull slobber! Happy birthday! 😆

Little E got a book about doggies at the book sale; I was sorely tempted by the big box of old Star Trek novels, but I passed. Perused the LPs and tapes to see if there were any out-of-print, not-released-on-anything-but-vinyl movie soundtracks (library and estate sales are awesome for finds like that). No dice, or someone got there before me. (You know, the one other soundtrack nut who lives in this area, if indeed there is one other.)

Next week is the “mostly non-fiction sale.” As the former governor of California once said, “I’ll be back.” Hangin’ with my dawgs, no doubt.… Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff Gaming

The destruction of the great temple across town from the Sphinx

Whoa... I need a ziggurat.A completely true story. And this time it has nothing to do with broadcasting.

It was the summer of 2003, and I had just flown into Las Vegas for the first time. Wide-eyed, but mainly jet-lagged, I took the complimentary shuttle bus from the airport to the Plaza Hotel and started the whole “trying to check into my room” process. It should be noted that, at this point in the story, I was meeting with very limited success, and by very limited, I mean “none.” … Read more