Happy Birthday, Inky!

So, today was Pete Incaviglia's birthday.
Now I know, most of you are like, "Who?!!?" while a few others are like, "Why do you even care?!!?"
Okay, Pete was a sub-average player over most of career, but I'll tell ya, some of the most fun I ever had out at the old Arlington Stadium was watching Inky run like cow on fire down the first base line. He wasn't graceful and he wasn't fast, but man... he gave it his all. Same thing in left field.
He's best known as one of the greatest college players in history. He also never spent a day in the minor leagues (although maybe he should have). He was a slugger and he struck out... a lot. But I don't care. Next to Nolan Ryan, Pete Incaviglia is my favorite player.
Sure he's got a rep for being a jerk to fans. And yeah, his career was kind of pathetic, especially towards the end. So what that he was recently let go as aminor league hitting coach. He's Inky, and I think he's great.
For one thing, it's nice to like a guy that you can get memorabilia really cheap.
Once, I had a vivid dream that I discovered my living room wall could move. I pushed it aside and discovered that Pete Incaviglia had been living in a secret room behind my living room wall. He seemed annoyed that I'd found him, but he couldn't protest. He was, after all, living for free behind my living room wall.
This, like many other dreams, is not something I can figure out what my subconscious was trying to say. I don't think Freud ever covered dreams about former baseball players who live in secret compartments of one's home.
At any rate, happy birthday, Inky, wherever you are!

Wild animals

This is a baby cow (sometimes known as a calf to people who like to describe a juvenile bovine in terms above a first grade level) we saw at the Fort Worth zoo. Does anybody else find it just a tad bit silly to go to the ZOO in FORT WORTH, TEXAS to see a COW?

Resolutions

Yeah... so much for that New Year's Resolution to write in this blog more often...

Blah, Blah, Pumpkin, Blah, Blah!

Pictured above are some strange treat called "Pumpkin Dreams" or some such nonsense. They are a roundish bite sized ball that has some sort of cookie type inside and covered by a powdered sugar and spice outside. These aren't too bad. They have a lot of flavor, pumpkin and other assorted spices. The problem is that they are waaaaay too rich. One is plenty. Not like in a candy corn kind of way, but it's just that one of them is so strong that you can really only eat one and then wait a week before eating another.
3 pumpkins. Good flavor, too strong to eat more than one.

From the Book O' Stupidity, Volume 2:
Rules for Box Football
Box football was a sport that I had completely forgotten about until I read about this in the BOS. Back in High School, David and I were frequently bored and by ourselves. We liked to play football, but only having two people made it difficult to play an entertaining game, thus box football was born.
Box Football can be played in nearly any size area and the only requirements are:
1) a ball
2) a box that is larger than the ball
The offensive player had four downs to somehow get the ball into the box. Since we were terrible passers, this usually entailed running with the ball and dropping it into the box as we ran past it. Plus, once the brilliant defensive tactic known as "stand directly in front of the box" was enacted, there was a 0% chance of passing the ball into the box without getting intercepted. I'm not sure we EVER had a passing touchdown.
This game was normally played in my front yard. The box was placed on the other side of the driveway and the offensive had to move the ball from basically the middle of the yard, across the driveway, and into the box. I think we stuck socks into the back of our pants and used flag football rules instead of tackle. This was due to the fact that we spent so much time on the driveway and also because David was (and is) a big wuss.
Judging by all of the other incomplete entries in the BOS, it should come as no surprise that I never finished writing down all of the rules for box football. In fact, rule number four ends mid-sentence. At any rate, here the 4 (3 1/2?) rules I have for Box Football:
1) 1 run per possession
2) Cannot run on "shotgun"
3) On kickoff, can only go to beginning of driveway
4) If pass hits box (on fly) but does not go in, replay of down and
There you have it. With a little luck, some college will adopt this as an intramural sport and perhaps it will become an Olympic sport.
I just hope my Mom's front yard can withstand all the activity.

All hail, Samhain!

Happy Halloween! Wheeeeeee!!!!
Today's pumpkin entry is my favorite. The Jack-in-the-Box Pumpkin Pie Milkshake (not available in pubs or bars). This is fantastic. It's a thick, ice cream milkshake with pumkin flavor and topped off with whipped cream and a cherry. There really isn't much to say except that it is mad crazy pumpkin flavor. 5 pumpkins all the way. (Sorry, I don't have a picture. This is one of those things that doesn't last long enough to have it's picture taken!)
In more scary news, I recently came across one of my old High School notebooks. Back in 10th and 11th grade, I used to keep these notebooks attractively called, "Books O' Stupidity." On these wire spirally-bound lined pages, I would make notes of whatever silliness I came up with. Some of them are so goofy, I'vedecided to use them from time to time in my blog.
Today's entry deals with haunted treasure. I have no idea why I wrote these, but here are some rules for finding haunted treasure. There are four rules written in the book and a notation for a fifth, but I have no idea what the fifth was. I guess that's why I started writing them down to begin with.
Rules For Finding Haunted Treasure
1. Don't talk to anybody, especially not the ghost.
2. To dig up the haunted treasure, you must use a yellow McDonald's plastic shovel from one of the summer fun Happy Meals (preferable with Grimace on it).
3.Always look for haunted treasure in a graveyard.
4. Don't bring your dog with you because he might dig up the haunted treasure and the bark at the ghost. This is the same as talking.
5. ??????
I don't know who originally thought these up. It might have been me and or my "brother" Dave. It might have something to do with an episode of Ducktales. I just don't know.

Entry for October 12, 2006

Today's entry into the 2006 Pumpkin Taste Test is this package of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. These came from Target.
They looked promising. Big ol' cookies with a nice pumpkin orange color... plus chocolate. MMMMMM, right? Well, I wasn't impressed. There was very little pumpkin flavor that I could taste and the chocolate chips were almost crunchy. It helped if you heated it up in the microwave for a few seconds, but overall, just not worth it. The wife liked 'em though...
These get 1 pumpkin... low on pumpkin flavor and really disappointing.

Special message to the Texas Rangers: You want to get pitching and actually win something? Turn The Ballpark in Arlington (note: it is not "Tom Hicks personal advertising choice" Field... the taxpayers paid for it and the name should reflect that) into a dome. See, pitchers don't want to come pitch here because of the insane heat. Notice how the team usually does well until after the All-Star break? That's because it isn't 110-degrees every day yet. Houston gets to the postseason and they have pitching... because they have the ability to pitch in air-conditioning!
Of course, some people may whine about domed/roofed stadiums not being "traditional." Well, the Rangers "traditionally" suck in the heat of summer and then miss the playoffs. Which tradition is more important?

Attack of the Pumpkin Boy!

Well, it's that time of year again. Pumpkin season. MMMMMM! Every year, it seems like there are more and more entries into the "what can we make that tastes like pumpkin" corner of the kitchen.
One thing that I'm required BY LAW to do is to try any pumpkin based food that I come across (another law is that I must stop at any Stuckey's that I find). So this year, I've decided to review all of the pumpkin crap that I try. Believe me, this will give me entry material for weeks.
The first entry is made by Little Debbie. Before Debbie grew up and did Dallas, she made cheap snack cakes. Presumably she made a lot of snack cakes because I believe what you find in the store has been stored in a warehouse since Debbie originally made these things back in the 19th century.
Anyway, this year, I found these things called "Pumpkin Delights." I figured I'd pick them up because:
A) They were cheap
B) They were suprisingly not really that nutritionally bad for you
C) As I said, I'm required by law.
"Pumpkin Delights" are soft cookies supposedly shaped like pumpkins with poorly detailed jack o' lantern faces. Inside the eyes and mouth of the face is an unidentified goo that is presumably supposed to be pumpkin guts.
These were surprisingly not too bad. They didn't have a really strong pumpkin flavor (more gingerbready maybe), but they were still a cheap, tasty little snack treat. They fit nicely in a lunchsack or are a good in between meal snack when you get sick of eating Sun Chips.
3 out of 5 pumpkins. Mid range pumpkin flavor but high snackability.
And now onto something to irritate you.
I have no idea why this popped into my head the other day. I suddenly thought of this moron of a customer I had while bartending. We'll call him "Mr. Small." Mr. Small was a dumbass. I mean, textbook case. I could really go into why this is, but I'm going to focus on the specific part that popped into my head.
Mr. Small started dating this girl. A girl he would bring to the pub. A girl he would buy drinks for. He used the fact that we all knew him and thus didn't think he anything of the fact that he was buying drinks for his underage girlfriend. We found this out when he proudly brought her up one night and announced it was her 21st birthday and then claimed he didn't know.
Anyway, Mr. Small and girl broke up. Shortly thereafter, girl discovers she is pregnant with Mr. Small's moron spawn. They don't get back together, but they do decide to have the kid. After the birth, Mr. Small comes up to the pub and proudly struts around showing pictures of his kid. And boy was he proud.
And then it hits me... what the F$%# are you so proud of? You didn't really do anything that the majority of males of any species couldn't do. You didn't plan on it, you didn't actually give birth to it, you spend most of your time broke and unemployed, mooching off other people. Okay, so you made a brand new human. Wow. What an accomplishment. You had unprotected sex and made a baby! Don't see one of those everyday. Every morning while I sit in traffic, surrounded by people in cars, I think to myself, "Isn't it a shame that there are so few people. If only it were EASIER to make more of them!"
I apologise to those people who would make exceptional parents and really want kids but for some reason or another are unable. Those circumstances make Mr. Small's pride even less warranted. People who SHOULD be parents and PLAN to be parents and are RESPONSIBLE enough to be parents are unable to. Meanwhile, a guy who probably couldn't get hired at that place where all the CareerBuilder monkeys work, helps create human life by just plain being irresponsible. Yeah, that's fair.
Of course, Mr. Small isn't the only guy I've seen do this. There have been others. And most of them were just as irresponsible and just as proud. Okay, you had a kid. Congrats. Now, quit patting yourself on the back for forcing some woman to eject a bowling ball because of your carelessness and grow up. It's embarrassing when you pre-schooler is more mature than you are.