Thursday, December 31, 2009

Sodey Pop


Sidral Mundet apple flavored soda. I stumbled upon it in the Hispanic section of my local Kroger. It was cheap too, two for a buck with the Kroger card, and oh so delicious. It went well with my chicken fajitas and Sriracha hot sauce.


Goya pineapple soda. I'm not a big fan of pineapple unless its been cooked on top of a big juicy ham, but this soda wasn't bad. I wouldn't, however, pay the exorbitant price for it at the Chinese deli again though.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Fabulous Cartoon Review®


Tex Avery's Droopy - The Complete Theatrical Collection

One of, no, the, no, one of the best gifts I got for Christmas this year.

Tom and Jerry and Droopy are the cartoons that I remember the best from formative years watching channel 56.

I already have the Tom and Jerry DVDs and they have provided the kids and I with hours of fabulous entertainment. The Droopy DVDs are fantastic and I still remember some of those episodes that I haven't seen in 25 years. The only problem is that there aren't as many episodes of Droopy as there are of Tom and Jerry. The later episodes from the mid to late 1950s suffer from a lack of imagination and boring artwork, just like Tom and Jerry, but the early episodes are some of the greatest cartoons you will or could ever watch.

You might even get me to admit that I enjoy Droopy more than Tom and Jerry.

Here's a video of my favorite episode, The Three Little Pups . Probably the greatest single cartoon ever produced, man. I've been whistling that tune for years, never really knowing or remembering where it came from.




Come on over and watch it sometime. You have an open invitation.

A Christmas Story

Is the most overrated movie ever. It's not bad, don't get me wrong, I just don't think its worthy of a marathon every Christmas.

Trash

I think that troll doll* is the equivalent of white trash in her country. Lazy, shiftless and she talks funny.

*There is no more Thing 2. You can't have a one without a two. Then it would just be Thing.

Polishing a Turd

My neighbor got a new mailbox for Christmas. A right purdy one with cardinals on it. When they installed though they left the old one in the gutter. Kind of ruins it, you know? Well, that and the backdrop of trash.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Pleasant Day for a Not So Pleasant Task

Yes, I am procrastinating.

I bought a pair of vinyl coated gloves this morning at Pleasant's Hardware for $2.49. I figured they would keep my hands dry at least.

Why did I go to a hardware store? I'm glad that I asked. It's Christmas Eve and the roads are clogged with last minute shoppers who have, well, waited until the last minute and Pleasant's Hardware is located in kind of an out of the way location so I knew I wouldn't get stuck waiting at stop lights.

Additionally, old timey hardware stores are cool and while I wouldn't shop there for a 1/2 inch DeWalt Hammer drill, they are perfect for little things. Hardware stores, the good ones, despite being miniscule in size compared to a Lowpot's, have an uncanny ability to stock things you would never find anywhere else. Like muriatic acid for $2. I doubt that Lowpot's would have that. THINK OF THE LIABILITY, MAN!


Whats for dinner? Meat.


I bought 7 pounds of rib roast last night. Now, how do I cook it? Yoinks.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Make it Stop

Kitchen sink is plugged up again. It's really plugged up this time too. The water isn't even slowly going down. I replaced a big section of the drain pipe a couple of weeks ago (I had a picture in my blog of my crawlspace) and in the pipe I found grout, which I assume the minimum wage inbregnorants who tiled my house before I bought it dumped down the drain. There must be more down there, but the rest of the piping is inaccessible (under the house), meaning I can't replace it. Crap.

I might rent one of those heavy duty drain augers or buy one that I could power with the drill. Those are only 25 bucks. The hand operated one isn’t cutting it. Guess where I am spending Christmas Eve Day.

I read in a bunch of places on the interweb, google "grout in drain" you'll be surprised how many people think its okay to dump cement down a drain, that muriatic acid might help break up the grout. At least I have a few options before having to call in a professional.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Don't Do It, Jason Bay

You know I say this not as a Red Sox fan, but just as a baseball fan in general: if I had two offers on the table, one from the Mets and a lower offer from the Red Sox*, I would choose the Red Sox every time. The Mets are just a black hole for talented ball players. I can’t think of any team I would rather play for less than the Mets. Really, I can't. Well, maybe the Blue Jays.

*Yes, I realize the Red Sox offer isn't on the table any more, but it was.

Fabulous Movie Review®

Coraline

Really a great movie and something I could watch over and over. Very imaginative, creative and stylistically appealing, but I had one problem with it. Two problems actually. Two large problems.

Is this really necessary in a movie geared towards kids? I was going to buy it for my daughter who read the book and l-o-v-e-d the movie, but this...ugh. Come on.



This screenshot doesn't really do it justice. It was in full jiggly effect.

8 out of 10 (Very, very good)

(coulda been an 8.5)

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Snow Fort

My camera lost its marbles trying to take a picture of all this whiteness.





I fiddled with the settings a bit, but all I could get were these blue tinted beauties. Oh well.


Snow Deep

Me stuck.



I didn't have a rope or tow strap long enough to pull it out with my truck, so I strung a couple of tie downs together and inched my truck out of the driveway and into the yard a bit. Then my truck got stuck because under the snow is a yard that has been saturated after a month of rain. I got the truck out, and discovered that the snow was dense enough that with my son pushing and me pulling the ATV would almost float on top of the snow. We got it up into the driveway and I got a running start, all downhill, and put it back in the shed. What good is snow if you can't ride in it? No good, thats what.


Tuesday, December 15, 2009

A Lesson for You Kids

If you look at Facebook while at work, you could possibly get kicked out of your office for "violating a trust."

All those smoke breaks you've never taken, the lunch breaks you skipped to finish The Project, the time spent at home on the VPN...ah, well. A warning would have been nice.

Now I've got to cozy up near the Troll Doll. Better dust off those headphones and put on my best surlyface. Come on, economy!! You can do it!

Fabulous Movie Review®


Taken

If you know me at all and/or have eavesdropped on my diatribes on international travel then you know that I have no desire to leave this country, because only bad things happen to Americans who travel abroad.

This movie is the perfect example. If you are American and you travel to Europe then more than likely you are going to be kidnapped. I can't say it any clearer. Stay home. Or if you must travel outside of our borders then go to Canada. Or Australia if you are feeling particularly adventuresome.

So, anyway, this movie is great. Besides teaching you a valuable life lesson (and that lesson is...?), it is well made, and not over the top. Liam Neeson, who I always assumed was a big man, 6' 4" 200 at least, seems small and old in Taken, is the perfect preventer.

8 out of 10 (Very, very good)

Monday, December 14, 2009

Spaceman and Troll Doll



Stay tuned.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

It's been raining for approximately 40 days and 39 nights, the temperature is barely above freezing, and the imbregnorant's dog is barking presumably because he is either cold, hungry or both. How soon until it is shot with a BB gun (not by me) to shut it up?

Riiiiight

I like the part where it says I can disconnect from the internet now because I am way over the megabyte limit on my free Juno dialup connection. That 185MB download killed me. I started it on Friday.


Sunday, December 13, 2009

Ayuh


I was watching the Winnie the Pooh Christmas special the other night with my daughter and, well, I never noticed before that Pooh has a Maine accent.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

G Body LS1

I was supposed to go to the DMV this morning, but instead I'm watching YouTube videos of GM G Bodies with LS1 V8s.

Monte Carlo



Cutlass



Regal (LT1, couldn't find an LS1)



Sorry, couldn't find a Grand Prix...

Friday, December 11, 2009

Fabulous Movie Review®

One of the fun things about watching spaghetti westerns is that its pretty much a crapshoot whether or not a movie is going to be good or bad. Chances are you don't know anybody who has seen it, so you never know what you are going to get. I recently got a four movie set from Netflix, four movies on one disc, two on each side, of some obscure spaghetti westerns, and I was surprised, no, astonished, no, shocked, that all four were good, almost great, movies.

Blindman

This is the movie that I actually added the four movie set to my queue to see. It's the only one of which I had heard. Surprisingly, it wasn't my favorite of the four, but it is still good. You wouldn't think that a story about a blind gunfighter would work, but it does, in a spaghetti western type of way. Most Nicolas Cage movies are less believable. Maybe all of them.

7 out of 10 (Good)

Massacre Time

Easily my favorite of the four and thats not because the others were bad, it's just that this one was so good. Starring Italy's answer to Clint Eastwood, Franco Nero, who also starred in Django, the fact that Massacre Time is not a classic and not on its own remastered DVD is mind boggling. I consider it to be at the top of the second tier of spaghetti westerns (anything not directed by Sergio Leone or starring Clint Eastwood). I will own it someday, even if I have to buy this four movie set togetit.

8.5 out of 10 (Very, very, very good)

One Dollar Too Many

A comedy caper film of sorts, with some plot twists and turns, and entertaining and carefully choreographed fist fights. A pretty good and totally unexpected movie.

6.5 out of 10 (Pretty good)




The Beast

Stars Klaus Kinski who turns up in a lot of spaghetti westerns, but unfortunately his character and all of the other characters are rather dull. It's a good story and worth seeing if you are a fan of the genre though.

6 out of 10 (Ok)

She's from Heaven, My 307, My 307, My 3...0...7


I am trying to determine what vehicles Buick made in the 70s that might have had 455s in them and then set up RSS feeds for each from craigslist.

I found an 86 Regal yesterday with a 307 V8. A 307?!, you say. Yes, that’s what I said too. I think it was an Oldsmobile motor that they used to appease the senior crowd who didn’t like V6s.

Anyway, I’ve always thought that if I had a Regal it would be really cool to put a Buick 350 into it, instead of your garden variety Chevy. So, as I often do, I started perusing the internet reading about Buick 350s, hopping them up and such, and one guy on a forum made a statement that really stood out.

If you are going to go through the trouble of rebuilding and swapping in a Buick motor, you might as well get a 455. In completely stock form it will run circles around a modified 350.

So, I don't even have a Regal yet, and I'm not saying that it's even the kind of project I have settled on, but I am curious to see if there is a 1976 Estate Wagon rusting away out there somewhere.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

First Frost

I think today we had our first frost. The first that I've seen anyway. I guess that means the remainder of my flowers are going to die.

Finished putting my truck back together. Only one leak in the new brake lines that I put in. Thats not bad. Three functioning brakes is more than I have had in some of my other cars/trucks.

I started taking the front bumper off in order to repaint it, but after the 12th bolt I gave up.

I offer this picture only as proof that the project is complete as some have speculated that I am a fraud, and only pretend to fix things.

As my neighbor the inbregnorant®* would say, "Ain't she purdy?"


I also put up the last of the shutters. I still have some minor trim painting to do, the eaves above the living room windows and the front door, which I have tentatively decided to strip, stain and polyurethane, and I haven't done the back either. All of which may have to wait until spring. This picture is a little dull because I waited until 3 in the afternoon to take it. You know, at dusk. Need a new storm door, and what to do about the black lights and railings? Didn't think of that when I painted my house blue.


Here's a before picture for those of you with an extreme makeover addiction. It's actually kinda old as you can see by the for sale sign in the yard. I know that I have more recent pictures of it, but of course I couldn't find any.

I spent most of friday in my crawlspace. I'm finishing it off and making a true man cave. It's cozy in there. And quiet.


*Inbred + ignorant = inbregnorant.