A link for you

I don't like telling people that they need to do something. But you all need to go here and watch this clip. Where else can you combine finger-wagging, beatles haircuts, pseudo-militarism, jumping around and whistling?

This also serves as a link to a friends blog - which I'm told is a good thing.

Speechless in Shannon

I have some numbers for you
75 x 2000 = 150,000
Remember that number and here's another:
3000
And:
50


Second set of numbers
100
and
8

And one last number
10,000

Now to set the stage for the story.
I had gone to work, just like any other day, sat in my office most of the morning working on bulletins, powerpoints, spreadsheets, etc. all very normal Wednesday activities. Around 11 I started to think about lunch. Around 11:30 I decided I wanted pizza from Casey's, and around noon I got my pizza and went home. I walked in the door all ready for lunch - watch some sportscenter, talk with Kay, etc. Kay is watching a show on the DIY network called "Clean House" which (ironically enough) is about people cleaning up (or out) houses, mostly houses that are lived in by hoarders. Most of my readers will have some type of knowledge about hoarding - some of you may even have stayed in a hoarders house. As Kay and I were eating we began chatting about the show, what we thought of the people, the state of the house, and gradually the talk shifted to other shows that had been watched. Which is when she told me about Oprah yesterday.
(Quick note of reassurance: I don't really have much to do with Oprah, any person as rich as she is doesn't really know how to relate to me - although she does pick good books).
Oprah was/is also doing shows on hoarders (apparently its going to become the new add/adhd - all it needs is its own designer drug) and she had on one of the grossest, most disgusting, shameful exhibitions of American wastefulness I have ever seen.

Remember those numbers? Take a minute and go look at them

Ready?
Here's the explanation
75 TONS of garbage. Thats 150,000 lbs of junk
In a 3000 sq ft house (thats about 50 lbs of garbage per sq foot)
Thats just what was thrown out.

The cleanup operation took 100 people 8 weeks

Oh, that last number - the 10,000?
That was the size of the warehouse in sq ft that they rented to hold the garage sale to get rid of stuff. Needless to say, it was completely filled.

The lady hadn't had any visitors in 12 years. She hadn't seen the oldest son and his family in 5 years. And it took the youngest son and his sister to call Oprah in for help.
Lest you take the cheap way out and blame it on being a redneck - the lady and her husband are very nice middle class people, their house is in an older looking suburb, it has an inground swimming pool, three car garage and is generally a fairly nice house.
FILLED WITH 75 TONS OF GARBAGE!!!!!

There's so much stuff in the house its taking Oprah two days to do a show on it.
Tonight, after church, I'm watching Oprah.

UPDATE: They had a garage sale for all of the saleable items left in this house (actually a lot of this was still reasonable - it had never been touched - it was underneath 75 tons of garbage), they mad $13,000 dollars on a garage sale. This does not count the 3 semi trailer loads of stuff that was donated to Goodwill the dumptruck loads of stuff that was thrown out or the still sizable quantity of stuff that was returned.

To the worst invention ever.

On June 2nd 1875 the world ended.

No more would we be able to ensconce ourselves in a cocoon of solitude. Our "life in the woods" would become a life in the wire. Our communities would be destroyed, our families wrecked, and I would have to answer the phone. On June 2nd, 1875 the first documented sound traveled through an electric wire - a sound that would ruin our lives.

Alexander Graham Bell was the servant of the devil on that day.

I don't want to hear about how the telephone is a good thing because it keeps us connected and informed. Don't tell me about all the good things that the telephone is able to do. I'm not interested in hearing your useless drivel about "oh! I can't imagine being able to not call my friends at any time, not being able to order pizza - oh, the horror!" You only say that because your all idiots. The telephone is horrific - it has produced the breakup over the telephone (and led to the truly despicable: IM breakup), it has created a whole host of new criminals and it has helped in creating a world in which it is easier for me to order authentic Indonesian food at 4 am on December 24th than it is for me to pay my taxes.

All in all, it would be a far, far better thing if all the phones would make up their collective minds to destroy themselves (yes they are sentient beings -BEINGS OF EVIL!), they would rid this world of at least one problem. (just don't destroy the internet - because life then would truly end).

I would call this post "23 times" if that number weren't already tied to a really dumb Jim Carey movie

On this day, March 2nd Anno Domini MMVIII I would like to celebrate the coming of a very special day.
Depending upon your religous affiliation and/or your national heritage you may celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Yom Kippur, Ramadan, Easter, Boxing Day, ANZAC Day, Chinese New Year, New Years, Corpus Christ, The Day of the Dead, Labor/Labour Day, Guy Fawkes Day or others (look here for a list of all the holidays that I could have mentioned but chose not to). But in all my extensive research (10 minutes on google and wikipedia - hurrah for a college education) I could find no country that currently celebrates one of my favorite days of the year.

THE IDES OF MARCH

This would be the point in which your boring high school teacher would go on a really, really boring rabbit trail about why its called the ides of March and would reference good 'ole Julius (who gave us a calendar, and a good definition of benevolent dictatorship), Brutus (of et tu fame), the Senate (the older, [possibly] more corrupt version - but not the Athenian one, thats too old), and other people who have been dead so long that most historians don't care about them anymore (except for the ones who are like your high school history teacher). Anyway, I don't really feel like putting all the details in for you: you don't care enough to read them and I don't care enough about your willful ignorance of western civilization.
And normally this would also be the point that I would insert portions of Julius Ceasar wherein it has been written "Beware the ides of March" and then lots of other dialogue and then "et tu Brutus?" and then a denoument. But I will refrain from those edifying quotations.

Instead I will give you the reasons for my love of this day.
1. It sounds really, really, cool. Try saying the phrase "the ides of March" without going into your scary, movie trailer guy/demonic - possession voice, try it, its just not possible to do.
2. It signaled the end of an era. After this day the Republic of Rome was no more. We get Marc and Cleopatra's rather interesting love story and Octavian, and then a line of emperors, gradually declining in authority and power that would lead inexorably to the Visigoths sacking Rome in 410, the Vandals in 455, and the eventual replacing of the Western Roman emperors with barbarian warlords in 476.
[in a short, meaningless aside: the Germanic Tribes have the absolute coolest names EVER: who would you pick in an octagon fight: a Cherokee or an Ostrogoth . . . see, not one of you could pick the Cherokee. I would link to a list of their names but I prefer not be responsible for the headless corpses that would result].
3. If its good enough for Shakespeare to immortalize its good enough to celebrate.

I've batted around ideas for how to celebrate and here's what I'm thinking. I'm going to celebrate with a traditional Roman feast complete with: toga's, cushions, a whole cow stuffed with pig stuffed with lamb stuffed with goose stuffed with chicken stuffed with pheasant, eel and fresh-caught sturgeon and my own vomitorium, then I will repose to my room and watch 300, Ben-Hur, Gladiator and A Clockwork Orange (I do have a reason for picking each of those movies); and then finish up with a little Ovid and Catullus.
But what do you think? do you have any suggestions for entertainment? food? guests? if so please let me know soon, THE IDES OF MARCH wait for no man.