ChillyMama

A variety of certain truths

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:25:00 +0000

Some sights are worth spending any amount of money to see.

One of the most wonderful things about the Obamas is the fact that it is plainly obvious they are deeply in love with each other.

This Post Secret is so true. There's nothing quite like a nice ass. :)

'Tis the season to wish you all a Happy Christma-Solstice-Kwanzaa-kah!

(Photos courtesy of ICanHasCheezeburger, PostSecret, and your hostess, Chillymama.)

Drugs are bad, mmm-kay?

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:34:00 +0000

"Family Ties" star Brian Bonsall arrested again in Boulder

Somehow I get the feeling that if he'd started on pot instead of booze, he might not be so angry... :)

Rest in peace, Barrel Man

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:17:00 +0000

The Denver Post is reporting today that Tim "Barrel Man" McKernan has died after a long illness. He was a local icon for many years, showing up wearing his cowboy hat & boots and that famous barrel to home games in all types of weather. He became so well-known to Bronco fans that the team honored him in 2007. He even had a bobble head toy!

Not a bad bit of notoriety for a guy who just wanted to win a bet with his brother that he could get on national television.

The tale of Hans Solo and Luke the Farmer

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:49:00 +0000

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

The silliness continues...

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:26:00 +0000

Nail houses

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Now that we don't have children around full-time any more, Sweetie & I need an excuse to see kids' movies without looking silly. Unless it's playing at the local art theater, of course. But how often does that happen? So I was at the grocery store buying food for the holiday and I saw a display with copies of UP for sale. We hadn't seen it and I really wanted to ... so I bought it. The gal at the checkstand said she thought it was sad. I thought maybe I'd made a mistake, but upon viewing the film I think my choice was redeemed. It's a little sad but mostly funny and hopeful. I love that the house ends up landing right where she wanted it to be, and that in the end the curmudgeon finds happiness.

One of the most interesting things about the film is Carl's house, standing there all alone and defiant in the middle of that empty lot... Sweetie told me there was a name for that kind of home. He's right - it is called a "nail house." A nail house is one that is owned by a person who will not bend to the will of the corporates / developers just because all their neighbors have. And there are TONS of examples all over the world - particularly, it seems, in China.

Google "nail house" and you'll find all sorts of great examples and articles about them. One blog entry I found has photos and descriptions, plus the comments site all kinds of other examples. This article is about a "spite house" built in 1830 to keep people and carts out of the alleyway; the home is still occupied today. I read another story about a "spite fence" that was built by a man named Crocker in San Francisco because his neighbor would not sell the property to him. In the end Mr. Crocker and his family ended up losing the war.

But the stories I enjoyed reading most were about nail houses that exist all over the world, properties belonging to defiant homeowners who have no intention of giving up their homes no matter what. There's a property on the M62 near Yorkshire in England which is situated between the two sides of the highway. The builders built the homeowner a couple of tunnels under the highway so he can get off his property without having to use the motorway. Here's a story about a family named Spiegelhalter who ran a jewelry business back in 1927 and refused to sell their shop to the Wickham's Department Store when they came in to build. The architect designed the Wickham's property to be able to build around the old shop once the owners gave it up, but the downturn in department store shopping in the 1960s drove Wickham's out of business. The Spiegelhalters outlasted the big corporate!

Another homeowner featured in the first blog post I read was a Mrs. Edith Macefield of Seattle. She refused to sell her home to the big developers (and in fact, never did - she died in her house) and became such a heroine to the locals that a tattoo artist named Curtis formed what was to become "Edith Macefield's Army." Their symbol is Edith's little house, which you can have inked permanently on your body for a fee.

And then there are the not-so-successful stories, like the one about Mel's Lounge in Santa Barbara, which held out against the mall developers until the landlord doubled the rent and drove the bar - which had been in business there since 1963 - out of business last year.

There are a million more stories like these out there, stories about defiant homeowners living in their nail houses, holding out against the big-money developers and corporates, protecting what is theirs, what's been in their families for generations. Typically the money eventually wins out - but it's heartening to read about the people who stand up for what they believe in, because they are the ones who always win in the end.

Wouldn't it be great, though, if instead of fighting we could just choose to go UP?

Shameless plug! Pick me! Yeah!

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:40:00 +0000

Anyone who has read this ridiculous little blog for any length of time knows that I'm a fan of David Malki! and his Wondermark strip. (Check it out, I just added a search box thing on the sidebar that allows you to search this blog for that kind of stuff. Go ahead, I'll wait.) He cracks me up on a regular basis; I subscribe to the strip via email - it's always a highlight of my day - and to his YouTube channel. Just recently he wrote a new story about a cop who follows all the rules - it's really silly but funny. David's obsession with beards and facial hair is practically legendary. I even bought his movie, Expendable, and loved it! (The story is about a henchman hired on to an evil organization and the events of his first day at work. Genuinely hilarious.)

David is running a little contest for bloggers and libraries and all I have to do to enter is blog about Wondermark! How simple / cool is that? It just doesn't get any easier! So here ya go, David, my entry into your Turkey Day contest! Pick me, dude! I'm bonafide!! :D

Don't watch this video!

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:03:00 +0000

Unless you don't mind another LOL song from Kelly.

NSFW!!!

Thoughts of Eireann

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:04:00 +0000

If I wrote a travelogue about our entire two weeks in Ireland it would send you, dearest readers, into a catatonic state - and get me a lot closer to that case of carpal tunnel I've been working on all these years. So instead, how about some highlights and random observations?

Dislikes:
-- The public bathrooms in Ireland are ALL COLD. Every single one of them. I mean sit down and cry out, 'oh shit that's cold!' cold. (I asked one woman working at a gas station how she did it. "As little as possible," she replied.) However, they are for the most part amazingly clean.

-- The tertiary roads, the small ones like those that run through small neighborhoods in the States? Are barely one car width across. Boy, does that make for a scary drive, especially when you're already driving on the wrong side of the road and there's someone coming at you from the other way and you're blocked on the passenger side by a stone wall. (I spent half the time cringing.)

-- The way people give directions is the same as the way people in the South give directions. 'Go down the road past the old pub and it's practically on your left, near the church. If you've reached the bakery you've gone too far.' And everyone is overly concerned about the weather.

Other than that, not much to complain about.

The people are a little stand-offish at first but warm up very quickly, and are full of advice and suggestions. Travelodge hotels in Ireland are as basic as you can possibly get - not even so much as a complimentary packet of shampoo - but are also cheap. We had a lot of luck with hotels in the city centers, they had good prices -- but don't buy the breakfast with the room. Find your own meals instead.

In Dublin we took the hop-on/hop-off buses in order to see all the touristy spots. I really wanted to see something of the Viking influence on Ireland so we went to Dublinia and Christchurch Cathedral. It's amazing to think that there is surviving physical evidence that the people of Ireland were defending their lands from invaders over 1200 years ago. We walked the quays, ate some fantastic meals, explored the small town of Swords in the north of Dublin. I became happily reacquainted with Oscar Wilde.

Drove up north through the country to Letterkenny (Sweetie had a business meeting) and managed not to get lost until we tried to drive to Malin Head. As the navigator, I'm here to tell you that those small roads are tricky to follow on a map! We ended up driving over a small mountain called Slieve Snaght instead of around it, so we had to take another shot at finding Malin the next day. Malin Head is the northernmost point of Ireland - and man, was it ever cold! The north Atlantic wind was blustering and pushing a chill rain around. Brrr!

We drove through a town claiming to be the "smallest cathedral city in Europe" (Raphoe), saw the harbor where Lord Mountbatten's ship was bombed (Mullaghmore), saw W.B. Yeats' grave (Drumcliffe), spent the night in Donegal, spent several in Galway. We drove through The Burren, a national park containing some of the oldest structures in Ireland including a megalithic tomb that is 1000 years older than the pyramids of Giza. Risked life & limb driving down one of those tertiary roads to The Burren Perfumery but I thought it was worth it; I learned a lot about the flora of western Ireland. We got threatened by small dogs protecting their home (hilarious) and saw sheep in just about every meadow we drove past.

Eddie Izzard is right, you can drive down any road in Europe and run into a fuckin' castle. There are castles and round towers and stone circles and old churches and stone forts and ancient cathedrals just about everywhere you go. In the middle of open fields and in the middle of cities. It is so very cool!

The weather was just what I had expected: cold at times, sunny at others, rained some but not too much. Irish television is an interesting combination of UK, Irish and Irish-Gaelic channels. We saw a show about road bowling that was fun and interesting; that's something we're going to try to see in person when we go back. They have a lot of antiques/collectibles and auction shows and tons of soap operas. Reality TV is so big there that the programs actually get regular coverage on the news!

Random observations made while out and about:
Irish horse butts (in a trailer) .. spotty cows and shaggy cows .. a 3-legged dog running down the street .. Broncos sheep (go orange and blue!) and counting sheep (they had numbers on 'em!) .. nuzzling cows .. an honest-ta-gawd jig-dancing old Irishman in a pub! Boys wear trousers that fit so one does not have to look at their underpants! I love that.

Oh, you betcha we're going back. There's still so much more to see!

(Click to enlarge photos)

UPDATE: Try this link for photos.

Irish holiday

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Oh my, oh my... I am SO TIRED. We really took advantage of our two weeks in Ireland. Walked practically everywhere (seriously, we must've walked more than 30 miles) and saw people and places I'd only heard of from others. The food was fantastic - for the most part, I wouldn't recommend the hotel breakfasts - and the people were generally stand-offish but warmed up very quickly. The roads were absolutely the most terrifying I've ever been on in my life! And everywhere we went there was just so much history and storytelling that it's overwhelming to relate in any coherent fashion right now.

I'll try to do a little travelogue thing later on, post some pix, maybe a gallery or slideshow somewhere. Today, sleep and catching up. Tomorrow, job interview (oh boy!). Gonna have to owe you a rain check, dear blog...

BOO!!!

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:42:00 +0000

Permission to speak freely, sir?

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:42:00 +0000

It has become apparent lately that I make the people around me uncomfortable when I speak passionately or emotionally. More than one person has told me to calm down recently. (It is then extremely difficult for me to fight back the need to go ballistic on their ass.) What the hell? Does passion now equal irrationality? I want to know when expressing oneself with fervor became too unpleasant for society to handle. Why is it that people say they value individual expression, but when you actually express a feeling or mood that is not upbeat you've become an hysteric in need of calming?

How can people claim to love a person when in reality they only want to see the parts that don't make them squirm? I am not happy all the time. I am not an automaton. I need occasionally to express anger, or grief, or displeasure, or sadness. This is a need, not a choice. I am an emotional human being, not a mannequin.

Every once in a while I'm going to be vociferous. Sometimes I'm going to need to yell. Or cry. Or speak forcefully. I believe I should be allowed to lament my regrets, if only for a moment or two, without judgment. Please stop trying to stifle me. It only makes me feel worse, less valued, and ultimately like an apologetic idiot (because I always end up fucking apologizing). If there's one thing I despise, it's having to apologize for being ME.

Well, that's that. Thanks again for listening, dear blog - at least you don't tell me when to shut up.

Weird & Creepy Ads

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:09:00 +0000

VIA

Sunday not-so-funny

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:22:00 +0000

I agree with the cartoonist. Roman Polanski is an admitted - and convicted - child rapist; there is no excuse for his behavior for the last 30 years. Actively fleeing the jurisdiction and getting away with it for 3 decades because he's a famous movie director does NOT exonerate him from the crime or the conviction!

Via Women's Enews & Mikhaela Reid

Rest in Peace, Soupy

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:07:00 +0000

I remember as a child watching The Soupy Sales Show and wondering why Mom laughed so hard when he was on. The only thing I ever found amusing was the pie-in-the-face gag he would do on pretty much every show. As an adult type person, I have a much greater appreciation for his ad-libbing and studio antics. Go to YouTube and check out some of his 60s era stuff...

Soupy Sales, slapstick legend for generation, dies at 83

Ever look at The Smoking Gun mug shots?

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:06:00 +0000

You should - they're hilarious. (VIA TSG)

Two weeks...

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:20:00 +0000

...until we begin our Ireland adventure! I am so excited!!!

The falafel suit

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:29:00 +0000

The Smoking Gun reminds us that this week marks the fifth anniversary of the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former FOX producer Andrea Mackris against BlowReilly. Y'all should read the pleading, it's a masterful piece of lawyering filled with verbatim ravings by a sexually stifled lunatic - especially considering it drew a complete settlement a mere two weeks later.

O'Reilly Falafel Suit Turns Five

They can't help themselves

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Obama's High Bar
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award? Glenn Beck has a conniption fit and demands that the president not accept what may be the world's most prestigious honor? The Republican National Committee issues a statement sarcastically mocking our nation's leader -- elected, you will recall, by a healthy majority -- as unworthy of such recognition?

Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?

Okay, I know, it's just some conservatives who've been exhibiting what they, in a different context, surely would describe as "Hanoi Jane" behavior. Others who haven't taken leave of their political senses -- and are familiar with the concept of manners -- responded to President Obama's unexpected award with equanimity and even grace. Sen. John McCain, for example, offered his good-natured congratulations.

Some of Obama's most strident critics, however, just can't give it a rest. They use words like "farce" and "travesty," as if there were always universal agreement on the worthiness of the Nobel peace laureate. Does anyone remember the controversy over Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat or F.W. de Klerk?

The problem for the addlebrained Obama-rejectionists is that the president, as far as they are concerned, couldn't possibly do anything right, and thus is unworthy of any conceivable recognition. If Obama ended world hunger, they'd accuse him of promoting obesity. If he solved global warming, they'd complain it was getting chilly. If he got Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu to join him around the campfire in a chorus of "Kumbaya," the rejectionists would claim that his singing was out of tune.

Let the rejectionists fulminate and sputter until they wear their vocal cords out. Politically, they're only bashing themselves. As Republican leaders -- except RNC Chairman Michael Steele -- are beginning to realize, "I'm With the Taliban Against America" is not likely to be a winning slogan.

More interesting, but no less goofy, is the recommendation -- by otherwise sane commentators -- that Obama should decline the award. This is ridiculous.

If the award just represented the political views of a handful of left-leaning, self-satisfied Norwegian Eurocrats, as some critics have charged, then it wouldn't matter whether Obama had won it or not. But of course it means much more. The Nobel Peace Prize, irrespective of the idiosyncratic process that selects its winner, is universally recognized as a stamp of the world's approval. For an American president to reject such a token of approval would be absurdly counterproductive.

Obama has shifted U.S. foreign policy away from George W. Bush's cowboy ethos toward a multilateral approach. He envisions, and has begun to implement, a different kind of U.S. leadership that I believe is more likely to succeed in an interconnected, multipolar world. That this shift is being noticed and recognized is to Obama's credit -- and to our country's.

The peace prize comes as Obama is reviewing war strategy in Afghanistan. Some advocates for sending additional troops are complaining -- and some advocates of a pullout are hoping -- that the award may somehow limit the president's options. But the prize is nothing more than an acknowledgement of what Obama has been saying and doing thus far. He hardly needs to be reminded of his philosophy of international relations -- or that he once called Afghanistan a "war of necessity." Threading that needle is not made any easier or harder by the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision.

What I really don't understand is the view that somehow there's a tremendous downside for Obama in the award. It raises expectations, these commentators say -- as if expectations of any American president, and especially this one, were not already sky-high. Obama has taken on the rescue of the U.S. financial system and the long-term restructuring of the economy. He has launched historic initiatives to revolutionize health care, energy policy and the way we educate our children. He said flatly during the campaign that he wants to be remembered as a transformational president.

The only reasonable response is McCain's: Congratulations. Nothing, not even the Nobel Peace Prize, can set the bar any higher for President Obama than he's already set it for himself.

Sunday wingnut funnies

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:45:00 +0000

(Good stuff - I don't read FYE nearly as often as I should.)

The importance of being equal

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:00:00 +0000

And don't forget National Coming Out Day on Sunday, October 11th.

Damn scientists, think they're so smart

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:11:00 +0000

Italian scientist reproduces Shroud of Turin

Garlaschelli expects people to contest his findings.

"If they don't want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world's best laboratories they certainly won't believe me," he said.

A thousand words

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:14:00 +0000

Amen. (ModBlog)

How did humanity survive before magazines?

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:06:00 +0000

OMG, we're all gonna die.
==========================

5 Germy Habits You Should Probably Try to Break

Think you're getting an A+ in Germ Prevention 101? Maybe not if you're doing any of these things...

It might be time to stop doing these five things:

1. Not washing your hands after using the restroom. Have you ever heard the line that "urine is sterile" so there's no need to wash up. Um, sorry, you need to wash your hands. Sterile urine aside, there's still the business of wiping, flushing, and touching door handles--all of which could lead to cross contamination that can make you sick.

(Um, excuse me? To exit the room we have to touch the door handles *after* we wash our hands. Got any tips for how to avoid that?)

2. Eating food samples at grocery stores. For the same reason you wouldn't lick a stranger's hand, it's best not to dive into the freebie bowl of chips at the supermarket. Ask yourself: "Would I open up a bag of chips and share it, communally, with 50 people on the street right now?" Probably not.

(Once again, specious argument. Most demo people do not expect you to "dive into" communal anything. They keep samples in individual servings, they wear gloves, and they take the food directly from the manufacturer's packaging to comply with safety regulations.)

3. Coughing into your hand. Maybe it's just me, but everywhere I'm looking these days people are coughing into their hands--instead of the inside of their elbow. If you tend to do this, try to retrain yourself to cover your cough with your arm and not your hands--it's polite and it also helps protect others with weaker immune systems from catching any bug you've got.

(Hey, girlfriend: The inside of the elbow thing just came into the social lexicon. Expecting everyone to automatically know it is ridiculous. Be happy the person used their hand instead of broadcasting the cough out into your tiny universe.)

4. Rubbing your eyes--ever. After a fairly icky eye infection years ago, a doctor told me this: Think of your eyes as sacred and untouchable, and retrain yourself not to touch them with your fingers (no rubbing or messing with your eye makeup until you've washed them first). The second you touch a dirty hand to your eye, you're introducing all kinds of harmful bacteria and viruses, which can lead to annoying and even serious infections.

(I've been rubbing my eyes since I can remember. No eye infections, no drastic consequences. I'd bet more than half the population can say that. 'Never ever!' pronouncements are not helpful.)

5. Letting your dog lick your hands then not washing them. Guys, I'm a dog lover, but when my golden retriever licks my hands, I go wash them. Yes, it gets tedious to do this (because she's always giving me kisses), but it needs to be done. I will remind you that dogs and cats get into unsavory things (I'll just be blunt: mine likes cat poop).

(Oh gosh! Germies! Ewwww! For fuck's sake, how do you ever develop immunities if everything has to be sanitized the moment you *suspect* it's dirty? Geez.

Honestly, unless you are in the hospital - where the germs *are* going to kill you- you really shouldn't have to spend all your time worrying about a little dirt on your hands. Wash when you feel dirty, when you know your hands are dirty, and don't cough, spit or sneeze at other people, and I think we'll all live.

But that's just MY opinion, I could be wrong.)

I think I have to sneeze

chill6759@yahoo.com (Chilly) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:53:00 +0000

VIA