The institutional mouthpiece of Kjel.org

The CEO has finally quit running around in circles with his hands in the air screaming “We’re all gonna die!”

I started doing it at about 6:00 last night.

According to the Jr. VP, I am no longer allowed to touch the CFO if she is holding him, feeding him, looking at him, or otherwise attending to him in any fashion whatsoever. He will forcibly remove my hand from her if he sees me touch the CFO.

Just another step toward eventually murdering me, marrying the CFO, and finally putting his own eyes out. Makes me wish I’d never visited that stupid oracle in the first place.

The CEO has some tough choices coming up, choices involving Bacon and how to best present the Bacon in a Suprising manner. I’ve got some ideas, but nothing solid yet. Past efforts have included bacon on a stick, bacon turnovers, bacon wrapped hot wings, and various meats and sausages wrapped in bacon. Some have worked better than others, but they’ve all worked. I’m sure I’ll come up with something by next Sunday.

If anyone reading this has a commercial-sized (or at least a big) deep fat fryer please give the CEO a call.

Lisa: No I can’t! I can’t eat any of them!
Homer: Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute. Lisa honey, are you
saying you’re *never* going to eat any animal again? What about
bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad! Those all come from the same animal!
Homer: [Chuckles] Yeah, right Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

Valuev himself strode into the gym recently during his triumphant return to Russia after the title bout, in which he defeated American John Ruiz on a controversial decision in Berlin to become the tallest (7 feet) and heaviest (323 pounds) world champion in history. He’s so big he usually steps into the ring over the top rope …

I’m guessing Valuev is the guy on the left. He reminds me of another boxer I used to go toe-to-toe with as a youth.

I was wondering why he hadn’t come around much lately. Now I know — he’s in Malaysia.

Jr. and I are going to have chocolate milk and cake for dinner, jump on the bed, shoot squirtguns inside, build a fort, make some prank phone calls, listen to heavy metal, maybe watch some cartoons, then top it all off by eating an entire quart of ice cream, right out of the carton.

The CFO has to work late tonight.

From today’s Seattle PI:

Nasty odor permeates Seattle

What’s that horrible smell? That was the question residents had Tuesday for the Seattle Fire Department, which fielded dozens of calls about the nasty odor.

“They came from all over the city,” fire spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said, adding that more than 70 calls came in.

Suffice to say, I neglected to tell the CFO about this until well after our little stinky God of War was attached to his name.

Raise that hammer, Little Thor.

I love the new Wendy’s TV ad where the babysitter says that she charges six Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers per hour. That is exactly the same unit of measurement for money that I use. That, and the Frosty.

I am happy that my financial status is such now that I’m no longer required to use the Aluminum Can as a measurement unit of my personal fortune.

I finally chose the right bandwagon to jump on; next week I have the happy task of choosing a keg of beer to bring to the Chief Educator’s Super Bowl party, a keg paid for by the good people at the Venetian Casino in Vegas since last May they were silly enough to accept a wager from me regarding the Seahawks and the NFC championship.

And for any fans making the journey to Detroit for Super Bowl, just be glad the Hawks aren’t playing the Detroit Lions: Imagine the scene in Detroit if the Lions were to lose the Superbowl, especially if it was on a blown call or a timekeepers error or something like that. Absolute anarchy would ensue. Detroit dwellers know a thing or two about rioting (see the annual Devil’s Night Arson Fest in Detroit. You ever see The Crow? That was Detroit on Devil’s Night), but I think the riots after a Lions Superbowl loss would make Devil’s Night look like a tea party with Polly Prissy Pants. Hopefully in the morning the city would still be standing, and all the Seahawk fans would have escaped with their lives, but I’m not so sure.

This guy probably has a decent shot at making it out, but I’d be worried about everyone else:

Sorry for the recent lack of activity here at Kjel.org. The CEO has been busy as hell at work, having to, for several days in a row now, devote the vast majority if not the entirety of his work day to the actual performance of his job. What a major league drag. I don’t know how you people do it day in and day out. You guys are the real heroes, not me.

The icing on the cake though is that in addition to the CEO now having to actually earn his keep at the office, the entire HQ staff has been sick for more than a week. Jr. got it first, then the CFO a few days later. I thought I might have missed it, as I generally don’t get sick. For this ability to stave off disease I credit either Jesus, clean living, or the Three Stooges Syndrome. Whatever the reason, I am normally well nigh indestructible to most germs, but no such luck this time. I think I was around this bug for just too long, long enough that on Friday it was finally able to overwhelm my defenses. My policy of letting Jr. stick his hands in my mouth whenever he wants probably didn’t help me either. May need to revisit that one.

So, the CEO is sick as a dog. The CFO was able to stay home from work on Thursday and Friday and get a little rest when she was at her worst, but I cannot do that at work right now. I just hope I’m able to maintain and not be too intolerable to the boys down at the plant tomorrow. It can be very irritating having the guy one or two doors down cough all day, and I’ve no need to give my colleagues yet another reason to shun me.

This could be a good sign: I think I’m better today than I was Saturday, so maybe it’s the start of a trend. We’ll see how tomorrow goes, and how gross I am at work; hopefully less gross than I was this weekend. I’ve churned about a pint of lung butter over the last 48 hours, and I think I am about ready to be done with that. In fact, I’d really like to discontinue lung butter production before I get to my office. So if by tomorrow the churning has stopped and I am only blowing my nose and bitching about a sore throat, I’ll call that a victory, of sorts.

Here’s some bonus coverage of Monty Burns discovering that he too suffers from the Three Stooges Syndrome:

Doctor: Mr. Burns, I’m afraid you are the sickest man in the
United States. You have everything.
Burns: You mean I have pneumonia?
Doctor: Yes.
Burns: Juvenile diabetes?
Doctor: Yes.
Burns: Hysterical pregnancy?
Doctor: Uh, a little bit, yes. You also have several diseases
that have just been discovered — in you.
Burns: I see. You sure you haven’t just made thousands of
mistakes?
Doctor: Uh, no, no, I’m afraid not.
Burns: This sounds like bad news.
Doctor: Well, you’d think so, but all of your diseases are in
perfect balance. Uh, if you have a moment, I can explain.
Doctor: Here’s the door to your body, see?
And these are oversized novelty germs. [points to a
different one up as he names each disease] That’s
influenza, that’s bronchitis, [holds up one] and this cute
little cuddle-bug is pancreatic cancer. Here’s what
happens when they all try to get through the door at once.
[tries to cram a bunch through the model door. The
“germs” get stuck]
[Stooge-like] Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo! Move it,
chowderhead!
[normal voice] We call it, “Three Stooges Syndrome.”
Burns: So what you’re saying is, I’m indestructible!
Doctor: Oh, no, no, in fact, even slight breeze could —
Burns: Indestructible.

Moving in for the kill:

Anyone with a small child will be familiar with the phenomenon of baby claws. The Jr. VP has a nice set of them himself. His fingernails are sharp like tiger claws, and filthy like them too. He is a little boy who spends a lot of time on the floor after all.

People are looking at me funny today, much more so even than usual. It turns out that Monster Boy got me pretty good with his claws this weekend; I have some nasty scratches on my neck. And since his fingernails are somewhat less than sterile, the scratches are redder and puffier now than they were over the weekend. Thanks a lot, son. Appreciate it.

My neighbor across the gravel just pulled into his driveway. He came in fast, bass thumping, power sliding through the curve. It’s not like he sat out there bumping his stereo for a half-hour or anything, but still, it’s 11:30 on a Sunday night in a residential neighborhood, and both the CFO and Jr. are asleep. Irritating. [Pay no attention to the time stamp on these posts. Right now I think they are only an hour fast, but the discrepancy seems to change at random]

Of course I peek out my kitchen window as he pulls in. The dude was not exceptionally steady on his feet as he got out of his car and walked to the door, and it took him about 3 minutes to get his own front door open. I know that at certain times those keys can be tough — The CEO thinks someone might have been out celebrating his day off tomorrow . . .

The clincher is that the guy left his car door open when he went inside. The dome light is still on but growing dimmer as I write this. I sure hope it doesn’t rain tonight. A nicer man would go over there and shut the door, but well, here we are. Should have turned down the radio pal.

Plus, if I were to go over there I’d wake up the CFO, since I’d first need to procure some pants or other suitable covering for my lower half, or at least my middle third. The CFO needs her sleep, and I absolutely positively cannot go outside again without such a garment, even in the dead of night to do a good deed. No way I’m going down that road again, thank you very much Mr. Overzealous District Attorney. Sorry neighbor; not gonna happen.

“Early morning, April 4, shot rings out in the Memphis sky” are of course lyrics from U2 referring to the shooting of Martin Luther King. I’d never realized before that Bono screwed that one up: King was shot in the evening, not the early morning. Turns out that Bono acknowledged his error right after the album came out, and ever since usually sings “early evening” when performing the song live. Ah, the internet: useful for something besides gambling and porn. Who knew?

On a related note I’d be surprised if Fox didn’t think twice about the opening scene of the new season of “24,” airing on the eve of MLK day and all. While April 4 1968 wasn’t gratuitously evoked, the shooting of David Palmer on the show tonight made me think of it, and trust me, I am not what most people would call a sensitive fellow on issues like this.

The CFO and a few other ladies went out to dinner and then saw “Brokeback Mountain” last night. Jr., the Chief Educator and I stayed home and watched football. How’s that for some gender stereotypical behavior?

I’ve not seen Brokeback Mountain, but I feel compelled to issue a statement nonetheless: when the CEO announces that he is going fishing with a friend or two, we are in fact going fishing. Nothing more. Not that there’s anything wrong . . .

In retrospect 2005 turned out to be, using just about any metric you can think of, a very prosperous year for the CEO. In no small part I credit my old friend and protector, Dumb Luck. They say that eventually everyone gets what they deserve, and that idea scares the bejeesus out of me. Luckily I don’t really buy it, or else how could I sleep at night? Anyway here’s to 2006 being even better than ‘05.

I’m also very happy to note that in 2005 many a good thing came to pass for those associated with the organization. Kjel.org auxiliaries got married, bought houses, hatched or prepared to hatch kids, launched new careers, and changed over to natural gas, among other things.

This picture is apropos for the end of a great year: a happy ending to 2005 at the HQ:

Remember that time machine I talked about? Going back in time maybe is not as cool as I thought.

Researcher: Early Man Was Hunted by Birds

A South African anthropologist said Thursday his research into the death nearly 2 million years ago of an ape-man shows human ancestors were hunted by birds. “These types of discoveries give us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors, the world they lived in and the things they feared,” Lee Berger, a paleo-anthropologist at Johannesburg’s University of Witwatersrand, said as he presented his conclusions about a mystery that has been debated since the remains of the possible human ancestor known as the Taung child were discovered in 1924.
…
Researchers had speculated the Taung child was killed by a leopard or saber-toothed feline. But 10 years ago, Berger and fellow researcher Ron Clarke submitted the theory the hunter was a large predatory bird, based on the fact most of the other fossils found at the same site were small monkeys that showed signs of having been killed by a predatory bird. Berger and Clarke had until now been unable to show damage on the child’s skull that could have been done by a bird. Five months ago, Berger read an Ohio State University study of the hunting abilities of modern eagles in West Africa believed similar to predatory birds of the Taung child’s era.

The Ohio State study determined that eagles would swoop down, pierce monkey skulls with their thumb-like back talons, then hover while their prey died before returning to tear at the skull. Examination of thousands of monkey remains produced a pattern of damage done by birds, including holes and ragged cuts in the shallow bones behind the eye sockets.

Berger went back to the Taung skull, and found traces of the ragged cuts behind the eye sockets. He said none of the researchers who had for decades been debating how the child died had noticed the eye socket damage before.

If I do finally get my flux capacitor working (unlikely as I am still missing my sawzall) , I hope I remember to bring a helmet back in time with me. A giant bird poking a hole in my skull, waiting for me to die and then eating my brain is something I’d like to avoid if at all possible.

Aw, who am I kidding? The CEO will be armored like a tank and armed to the gills once I get that baby up and running. No reason to risk an unarmed run-in with a hungry Velociraptor, a ticked-off Neanderthal, or an angry Mongol. A marauding Viking Horde though? I might try to join, or even start one of my own.

Just so everyone knows: I’ve officially jumped on the Seattle Seahawks bandwagon. This week I will be wearing my Bosworth #55 replica jersey and saying Go Hawks! to any and all comers. I will not refer to my newly beloved Seahawks as the Chickens as has been my wont in the past. And on the morning of the big game, I will paint a big blue and green “S” on the CFO’s belly while she sleeps.

My pledge: If the Seahawks somehow manage to make it to the Superbowl, the CEO will spring for a keg of beer for the Chief Educator’s Superbowl party. A pony keg, anyway. Of Olympia.

Kjel.org was recently in Seattle celebrating the Jr. VP’s birthday with the Kjel.org elders. The weekend was nice, but boy howdy did the driving suck. It poured rain the entire time, up and back, and the highway was full of Maniacs and Idiots. Maniacs, by the way, are anyone going faster than the CEO, and Idiots are anyone going slower.

I thought I’d invented this system of driver classification, but it turns out that George Carlin had a bit about maniacs and idiots on the road many years ago. I must have osmotically absorbed it somehow without consciously remembering it. Or maybe I just heard it somewhere. I wonder how many other funny (funny to me, at least) things I say that I think I came up are actually like this? Probably best not to know.

You just haven’t lived until you’ve stood bracketed on the thin cement strip between the Max tracks as two trains go by in either direction. I won’t go into all the details about how it came about, but let’s just say that there was some personal negligence on the part of the CEO, primarily involving not looking both ways when he crossed a street. Or even one way for that matter.

Double kick ass!

Kick ass.

LONDON - One of the four London suicide bombers left behind savings of $212,460, a court service spokesman said Friday.

Shehzad Tanweer, 22, who police say killed seven commuters on a subway car July 7 near Aldgate station in east London, left behind the money, which will go to his family. In all 52 people were killed in the transit system bombings.

Tanweer, a Briton of Pakistani descent, worked at his father’s fish and chips shop in Leeds in northern England, and was not known to have had any other source of income.

How the hell does a 22 year old who works in the family chippie have $212,000 in the bank at the point when he blows, along with a distressingly large number of innocents, his own worthless ass up? I love fish and chips mind you, and I’m happy that chippie operators don’t know what I would pay for their wares, but I doubt that that wanker Shehzad found a wealthy equivalent to the CEO in Leeds.

Artist Accused of Vandalizing Urinal

A 76-year-old performance artist was arrested after attacking Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” _ a porcelain urinal _ with a hammer, police said.

Duchamp’s 1917 piece _ an ordinary white, porcelain urinal that’s been called one of the most influential works of modern art _ was slightly chipped in the attack at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the museum said Thursday. It was removed from the exhibit for repair.

Just slightly chipped? I’ll give the French performance artist the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he was using some sort of ineffective artist’s hammer, or perhaps a croquet mallet. I’ve hit porcelain urinals with a hammer before, sometimes even in the course of a paying job, but when I do it they violently explode into a million pretty little pieces of jagged shrapnel.

I think I understand where this guy is coming from: while I can’t give you a definition of art, I know it when I see it and/or create it, and an exploding urinal is art of the highest order and ranks high among my personal artistic achievments. Bravo for the effort, sir, even if it didn’t come off so well.

W salutes the Longhorns, and also perhaps invokes his Dark Lord and Master. I don’t care which: I’ve hated USC for years and years, and if Texas somehow figured out how to harness the power of Satan against USC, well, I’m all for it.

I will say I’m pretty happy to see those USC pretty boys lose, and quiet that damn marching band with the one song they know.

The last Pac 10 team to beat Texas?

I’ve started to implement the earmuff policy with Jr., both when Daddy or someone else says something that should not be repeated. Deployment of said policy has revealed some interesting insight into comparative offensiveness in this day and age. At least at Kjel.org. Example:

We were listening the other day to a little Cyprus Hill, and, quite understandably “earmuffs” was called many many times. The lyrics generously use the F word, and the N word; both were of course earmuffed for the Jr. VP. Certain music choices at the HQ may need to be re-thunk in the upcoming months.

Obviously you’d like your one-year-old to never hear or say either of those words, but if it was a certainty that Jr. was going to yell one or the other loud and clear in a crowded Fred Meyer, which would we prefer he choose? For Kjel.org anyway, there was no need for discussion. The CFO and I pretty much immediately agreed that, of the two choices, we’d much prefer Jr. to announce the F word to the assembled shoppers.

“Wow am I glad that Jr. just screamed FUUCKKK!! at the grocery store and not something really terrible.” An odd thought to have really, but well, here we are.

We didn’t consider the original four-letter friend-getter itself, “the C word” (and I’m not talking about crap), or calculate where in the hierarchy of unwanted toddler exclamations it would place. I’m guessing it doesn’t do much worse than third or fourth.

Hard to believe it was a year ago today when the Stink Boy first graced us with his presence. If he could have hurried it up a few hours and arrived in 2004 Daddy (and Daddy’s accountant) would have appreciated it, but oh well.

We had a party for him the night before his birthday, but he stayed up until midnight and saw his birthday arrive. At least he thinks the party was for him. I’ll never get tired of trying to convince the lad that festivities on the 31st are in his honor.