Contrast in Titles!

Some of these names cracked me up, so I couldn't stop making more and more! It's hard to be a pimp and fun to be a Barky Splinter!

Here's Mine!

Not to be left out, I made my hero, too, from The Hero Factory. It is so much fun! Thanks, Bob at I Should Be Laughing.

Speaking of Train Wrecks

Celebrity Apprentice 2009 Cast

from PopWatch

Take a deep breath and get ready to lose your remaining respect for: Clint Black, Andrew Dice Clay, professional poker player Annie Duke, Tom Green, boobalicious LPGA golfer Natalie Gulbis, figure skater Scott Hamilton, noted motorcycle enthusiast Jesse James, professional suitcase holder Claudia Jordan, Khloe Kardashian, Brian McKnight, Joan Rivers and Melissa Rivers, Playboy bunny Brande Roderick, Dennis Rodman, Heisman Trophy winner and former Dallas Cowboys running back Herschel Walker, and Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins.

I swear to god I just about started crying.

DWTS

Interesting line-up for the next DWTS season. We'll have to discuss this soon! No matter what, I end up watching the whole season.

The list: Lil' Kim, Steve-O, Nancy O'Dell, Lawrence Taylor, Shawn Johnson, Chuck Wicks, Gilles Marini, Denise Richards, Steve Wozniak, Belinda Carlisle, David Alan Grier, Ty Murray, and Jewel.

I don't know at least half of them. I like Jewel as a singer and Belinda Carlisle. Guess we'll see. The football players and Olympics medalists usually do well. It will be interesting to see who their professional partners/teachers will be.

Oh no! I heard about Denise Richards, and she'd better watch herself with Maks. Karina will cut a bitch with her fingernails!

Movie Marathon Continues!

I'll blog about the movies I've been watching tonight. As you know, I'm trying to see all of the nominated movies I can before the Oscars. I've already seen Frost/Nixon, and this weekend I saw The Wrestler, Revolutionary Road, and Slumdog Millionaire. Today I'm going to see The Reader. Next in line are Doubt, Milk, Benjamin Button, Vicky Christina Barcelona and The Visitor (now on DVD). I'll blog about them tonight.

Did any of you see the BAFTA's last night? Slumdog swept them! Kate Winslet won for The Reader and Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler. Penelope Cruz and Heath Ledger won for supporting roles.

Did you watch the Grammys? I watched most of it except for the parts I dozed during, so I missed some after the first hour off and on. Need to learn not to watch TV lying down! (even though I can nap in my computer chair)

More later!! Gotta get ready to drive to Nashville and sit in another movie theater!

Out of Touch

I won't have my computer tomorrow and Sunday. One of my former students from the gifted program is going to check it out and add some memory. It comes in handy having taught those geeks and nerds!

So I won't be on here and would be having withdrawal but plan to watch some of the nominated movies. Have a good weekend.

Hello, my name is Joy, and ...

80%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

What about you?

I'm also now addicted to Facebook. I really like it because of so many former students who are now in touch. It's great to hear from them and catch up. They make it easy to find people and see comments and are much better than My Space. Playing Scrabble with family and friends is fun on there, too.

Baby Animals

If you haven't been to Zooborns, check it out. They have pictures and information about baby animals at various zoos. Here are some examples of cuteness that will make you smile despite yourself. There's a link to it over there under my blog list.

Mother and Baby (San Francisco Zoo)

This totally cracks me up!

I love this expression on the giraffe baby's face! (Buffalo Zoo)

Awwww!

When Will We Ever Learn?

I read this on Mark's blog and just had to put it on mine. I hope so much this time will come.

Andrew M. Manis is associate professor of history at Macon State College in GA and wrote this for an editorial in the Macon Telegraph.

When Are WE Going to Get Over It?

For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans finally going to get over it? Now I want to ask: "When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?

Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk."

Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.

But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we're back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying -- that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."

Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?" How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can - once and for all - get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior? How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?

How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?

I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?

How long before we starting "living out the true meaning" of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that "red and yellow, black and white" all are precious in God's sight?

Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don't believe I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But here's my three-point plan: First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built, I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.

Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama. Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can "in spirit and in truth" sing of our damnable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."

Trivia from Cliff

During World War II, the Revlon company reinforced the war effort by producing dye markers for the U.S. Navy. Whether any of the same dye subsequently went into waterproof mascara, no one can say.

And what about this, Nahm ...

Mozart once composed a piano piece that required a player to use two hands and his nose in order to hit all the correct notes.

Not That Woman in California

A nullipara is a woman who has never borne a child.

Not me, either.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Elwood Edwards’s voice is heard more than 27 million times a day (which comes to more than 18,000 times per minute). Edwards is the man behind those special three words—no, not "I love you," but "You’ve got mail."

Cooking Woes

Back in the day at work, Debbie and Sandy would make fun of me when they saw little burns on my hands and arms. They'd say, "Oh, you've been cooking again." So last night I was chopping some cabbage and slicing some kielbasa in an attempt to make my house smell like Poland. I cut my thumb and immediately got out a test strip because then I wouldn't have to stick my finger and didn't want to waste some available blood. It took a couple of band-aids to take care of it. After the medical intermission, I continued with the cabbage and cut my finger. This one wasn't as bad and needed only one band-aid. Now you know one of the reasons I say that the only thing about me that's domestic is that I was born in this country.

Cliff Claven Time

During the War of Independence, more inhabitants of the American colonies fought for the British than for the Continental Army.

Not So Cliffie Trivia

During its debut 2000 season, the island location used for TV’s Survivor was a staging post for modern-day pirates. These pirates, with high-tech speedboats, used the remote island for international black marketeering. In retaliation for the invasion of their privacy by the Hollywood crew, several bad guys one day chased the show’s creator, Mark Burnett, in their speedboat. Burnett later said he feared he would be killed. No such luck.

Shankapotamus

That E*Trade baby on the commercials cracks me up. The expression on his face and the way they synchronized his mouth with that voice! Good stuff! Now a new word from it - Shankapotamus! Hilarious! (David, maybe we can use Stankapotamus)

I removed them because they were encroaching on my margins and covering things up. You can see them here. The singing one is here.

Here They Are!

These are the Chuck Lorre Vanity Cards that were on The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men tonight. Love them both but especially the FOX News one!

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #239

TO DO LIST

Live to see a highly educated, deeply thoughtful, articulate, cool, biracial President who is not overly crippled by childhood wounds and capable, in no particular order, of freeing the nation of its oil dependence, restoring its international standing, creating universal health care, resurrecting the economy, ending two wars, rebuilding the public education system, finally bringing about an end to the mindlessness of racism, encouraging science and technology, firmly addressing environmental issues and global warming, and uniting the nation - and the world - in a giant cultural, tipping point leap forward.

Meet super-intelligent aliens who disarm the entire planet, cure every disease and take us all for rides across the galaxy.

Play a round of par golf.

Trade solos with Eric Clapton.

Win an Emmy.

Get married, stay married.

One down, five to go.


1st Aired: 2 February 2009


CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #240

A wise man once told me that we are all God in drag. I like that. Sometimes when I'm in a public place or sitting at a stop light, I'll watch people walking by and I'll silently say to myself, "He's God. She's God. He's God. She's God." Before long I always find myself feeling a warm sense of affinity for these strangers. The experience is even more powerful when I do this while observing a person who is clearly suffering. On occasion I'll test my little spiritual practice by turning on Fox News. Within minutes I become an atheist.


1st Aired: 2 February 2009

For Melissa

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #237

At the end of Chuck Lorre TV productions, these vanity cards appear briefly that he writes. The one at the end of Two and a Half Men tonight is one I'll definitely post as soon as it is on the site. This one is from The Big Bang Theory, which is one of my favorite shows. I just love Sheldon!

I have no clue what any of this means, but my brilliant daughter-in-law Melissa does. What about the rest of you? Anyone? Gorilla Boy, Frogponder's son, probably does, and her husband The Engineer perhaps? Who else?

There's a funny moment in tonight's episode where Sheldon gets stuck on a rock-climbing wall and remarks, "What part of an inverse tangent function approaching an asymptote don't you understand?" I thought it'd be helpful to take a moment and examine that joke. A linear asymptote is essentially a straight line to which a graphed curve moves closer and closer but does not reach. In other words, given a function y=fn(x) with asymptote A, A represents a number that, no matter how big (or, given the function, small) you make x, y will never make it to A. The particular example Sheldon quotes is the inverse Tangent function, or Arctangent, which has two asymptotes. If you graph it, it sort of looks like a horizontal S:



No matter how big you make x (that is, how far you move to the right), the function is never going to hit that top line (π/2), and no matter how small x gets (moving to the left), y is never going to be smaller than - π/2.

The more you know, the funnier it gets.

1st Aired: 19 January 2009

If you say so, Chuck. If you say so!

Oh the Horror!!

Well, I guess you've heard the news that Google Earth now included the ocean. You (intentionally saying YOU not I) can now explore the depths of the ocean, and I'm starting to hyperventilate just typing that. For those of you new to my blog, one of my fears (some say an irrational fear) is of those trenches in the ocean - especially the Marianas Trench which until now I could avoid by never going to Guam or even thinking about Guam. Not that I'll do it, but I could check it out, explore the Titanic, and travel all around under there. No, thanks!!

As soon as I heard about this on the news, I knew Earl would call me. He just did. He asked how I was in an off-hand kind of way, so I knew what was coming. He asked if I'd heard about ... and I interrupted him and said, "Google Earth? YES!!!" He laughed maniacally and kept suggesting that I watch it with a life jacket on and to start with shallow parts. There is a slight possibility that I might see if I can look at some of this.

One of the reasons I haven't gone on a cruise yet is the thought of all that deep water under the boat. There is no way I could travel on a ship all the way across an ocean. I went on a ferry from Ocracoke to Cedar Island in the Pamlico Sound where we couldn't see land, so it's not that.



It's knowing how far from land I would be. When I went to Europe, flying over the ocean didn't bother me. For one thing, that doesn't take as long, and the view from that high in the air doesn't look quite real. It was night during part of our flight, too. Also if the plane crashes, I'll be dead when I hit the water (I hope). If not, I'd have a worse fear than I would if I were on a ship or little island out in the middle of the ocean.

I'll calm down now or will when they quit reporting on Google Earth's new ocean feature!! Did I just cancel out my inspirational posts?

Weekend with the Boy

Brendan and I had a good weekend. He's funny and entertaining. We went to a few places where he could play and visited Paige and Carl and Mother Saturday. When we got home, we read some books together before bed. I have many of those books by Brian Cleary about the parts of speech, etc. I got Brendan some, too, and we always read some of them when he's here. A current favorite is Hairy, Scary, Ordinary, and the entire book is here. You don't have to say anything. My grandchildren realize some of the occupational hazards of having an English teacher for a grandmother. :-) They are really good books. I like the pronoun one best.


Ever since Brendan ran away from me at the mall, I've tried to explain to him about the possible danger of it without scaring him to death. It's important and unfortunately necessary but not easy to get across. I've been mentioning this off and on for years and told him to scream and yell loudly, "Help! Help! A stranger has me!" if someone tried to get him to go with them. Saturday we were at McDonald's not to eat but for him to play in that play area. On our way through there, he said in a regular voice, "I stranger has me." I told him not to say it unless it were actually true, and asked him if he knew what a stranger was. I'd bought The Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers, so we read it, too. It was presented effectively, and there were funny parts we laughed about in it, too, because I used different voices and all that. He wanted to take the book home with him, so I let him. It has a list of rules that are helpful and effective on the last page.

Yesterday while we were at the almost defunct Bellevue Mall at Macy's not-good-at-all sale, he got away from me again. When I got him back with me, he looked around and asked me if various people were strangers. He's never met one and is so friendly with everyone, which is charming. It would be unbearable if anything ever happened to him, though. I wish we lived in a world where we could be open and trusting with everyone and didn't have to warn children about any of this.

We went to eat at O'Charley's after doing some shopping. He was funny with the waitress when she came to the table to ask us what we wanted to drink. Brendan said, "I'm hungry." She asked him what he wanted to eat, so he asked her what she had. After listening to his choices, he said he wanted all of them and repeated everything she listed in order. Brian told him to choose one, so he ordered the children's pizza, which incidentally is just the right size. (Can adults order from the children's menu there?) She asked what he wanted to drink and he answered "lemonade" immediately. She turned in his order while we were choosing. It was cute, sweet, and adorable ... or is that just how I see it? :-) Yep, I've crossed the line long ago into obnoxious grandmother with stories!

We had fun and sang and laughed a lot. We read Snoozers and sang it, too. He sang that Sandra Boynton song "Snuggle Puppy" and definitely is one himself!






Check out Melissa's post on her blog about Brendan's first non-relative or family friend birthday party yesterday afternoon. It sounds like so much fun, and her description of it is entertaining!