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Kevin Pollack tells Christopher Walken anecdote

If you're looking for the doodlebops?

If you're looking for the doodlebops pictures, click HERE or HERE, leave a comment if you like. I implore you to leave a comment, 99% of the traffic to my site is on account of these freaks of nature. I want to know why they are so popular? Please tell me your reasons for hunting down these pictures?

Over here!

If you can't get enough of The Kaos Theory try this link, or this or this. If you haven't gotten the picture I've moved HERE.

Moved to Wordpress

You can find the "New" Kaos Theory over here. I got tired of the ups, downs, outages and poor customer service.

Backyardigans

Union Station

Cinco de Mayo

I vow never to celebrate this trully American Holiday any longer. I have nothing against Mexicans in general, it just the ones flaunting the law. Go through the legal channels like millions of others have over the last 225+ years. But walking around waving your flag, advocating the Reconquista and saying you were here first does not endear your cause to my heart. In fact I get the exact opposite feeling. If a backlash happens, don't come running to me for help amigo, it ain't gonna happen. I think we should have a day similar to the boycott that happend on May 1st. On this day, if you can't provide proof of citizenship/birth certificate at an emergency room, tough shit sherlock. If you're due to recieve some sort of government handout and you can't provide proof of citizenship/birth certificate , tough shit sherlock. If you're incacerated in one of the many fine prisons where you get 4 squares, a bed, cable tv and you can't provide proof of citizenship/birth certificate, tough shit sherlock. We'll send you down to Maricopa County and have Joe make sure everything is all right on the chain gang. Hell, we should just make this a whole month. This rant provide by me, whose father jumped through hoops for 15 years to get his citizenship the right way. All I can say to you is, Cinco de Fuck You! I think I'm gonna get some T-shirts made with CFY on them with little tiny type underneath expalining what it means. Hello to all from Outside the Beltway!

Cake Or Death?: A Train Wreck.... With A Melody That Haunts You

Go here and watch, Cake Or Death?: A Train Wreck.... With A Melody That Haunts You There are two reactions you will get from watching this. One, you can't stop watching it and humming the damn tune. Two, you get the distinct urge to scratch you eyes out with ground glass. You decide. Don't forget, I warned you. h/t It comes in pints. Thanks for visiting from Outside the Beltway!

Caught in the Act

Since I'm a site meter junkie, I'm always checking to see where people are coming from and what their looking for. Well, looks like I caught somebody at the LA Unified School District using a MSN search for "celebrities wardrobe malfucntion" and they happened to stop at the ol' Kaostheory for a peak of somebody's naughty parts. Which of course there are none to be found. I know it could be some student in the library fooling around but my bet is on one of the "Social Science" teachers doing some class research.

Monster Cookie Metric Century Redux

Another weekend and another great ride, the Monster Cookie Metric Century, put on by the Salem Bicycle Club. Salem is 45 miles from our humble abode and to be able to get there for an early start I wanted to leave the house no later than 7:30am. Of course I was awake at 4:30 giving me plenty of time to get ready. Unfortunately, we had to wait for the babysitters. They(2 teenagers from the neighborhood) didn't get to the house until after my scheduled departure time but my wife made up the time on the road. The weather was cool and partly cloudy but was expected to warm up to 65 degrees, so I decide on shorts instead of long-johns for the ride. This was my sixth rally I've participated in but it was my wife's first. She was clearly nervous about the ride because should had never been on the bike for more than 15 miles at one time. It appeared to me the topo map intimidated her. I reassured her that the ride was mostly flat and she would do just fine. We got to the start line around 8:30am, signed in and got our ride packet. While waiting in the queue for the bathroom I struck a conversation with the gent in front of me. I asked him if he'd done this ride before and he indicated he had. This gave me an opportunity to once agin placate the demons tormenting my wife. I tried to get info from him about the ride profile and to my relief he exclaimed "it's basically flat, the only difficulty came from a headwind on the return trip of the loop. My wife was definitely a happier camper. We'll we started off from the front steps of the Capitol building and preceded through the city streets out of town and into the country. I kept the pace down to allow for her to become more familiar with riding amongst others. She was doing quite well for a nubie. At first she thought she'd be able to finish the entire 62 miles but after about 12 miles she indicated she was getting winded. At that point we decide that she could take the return route after the first rest stop and she agreed. With an average speed while riding with my wife at 12 mph, I was getting a little anxious to get going. At this rate I'd be in the saddle all day, something I didn't want to do. So she gave me the go ahead to ride at my own pace and we'd meet up at the rest stop. This rally is quite popular here in Oregon attracting about 1500 riders of all abilities including a subset of cyclist I call the "Groupies". Groupies are identified by their attitude and attire. Their attitude is smug and elitist. I don't know if it is because they all where the same team jerseys representing the cycling club they belong to or what but something about them pisses me off. My goal as always is to average at least 15 mph for the duration but at the beginning I felt there would be no way I'd be able to accomplish this. Remember the guy I was talking to? Remember the headwind was supposed to get you on the return trip? Well he was wrong, the head wind was in my face. I knew the only way I could make the goal was to latch on the back of a group and let them drag me around. Riding into a headwind by yourself is not a good thing. I was getting frustrated because I would latch on to 3 or four riders and get on their tails and try to keep their tempo only to be dropped after a few miles. Then I'd catch up to another group and do the same thing only to find their pace was too slow. This seemed to happen over and over. Finally, I found somebody riding the same tempo as me, Russell and Rebecca. They were very nice and talkative which is something the "Groupies" fail at miserably. As we were riding, off in the distance you could hear the dragsters at the Woodburn dragstrip. I piped up and said "Cool dragsters". This set Russell off. Best I could tell was he was a big motorhead. He talked on and on about his trip to see the Long Beach Grand Prix and his day trip to see the open wheel guys at Portland International Raceway for testing. Evidently while we were talking we had inadvertently dropped Rebecca so Russell pulled over to wait and I wave bye-bye and kept on going. As I got closer to Champoeg(pronounced shampoo-ee) where the halfway point was the headwind abated so I could ride at my own pace without the aid of others. I took a 10 minute rest, ate some food at the park and headed back. Once I got back on the road, the headwind had changed direction. Once again it was in my face. My legs felt good but for some reason I didn't feel comfortable in the saddle. I couldn't find a happy medium. I think some of this had to do with me tinkering with my seat recently to relieve a problem I had with the little general wanting to take a nap during my rides. Any ideas out there? On the return trip I came across a 2 riders going just the speed for me. Next thing I know we're going 19 mph with no problems at all. We keep this pace up for several miles before I tired a bit and pulled down the tempo and was dropped. For the rest of the ride I was basically solo. Overall, I was quite surprised at my final average time, exactly 15 mph over 62.2 miles in 3:58 minutes. I remember and email exchange I had with Dr. KBJ last summer stating that riding on mostly flat roads can be just as hard as riding some hill and rollers. I wholeheartedly agree. When riding hills you at least get the chance to recooperate on the down hils but on flats there is no such luxury. BTW, the wife, in her first rally managed 34.8 miles averging 12.7 mph. Awesome stuff girl! The only downside was while waiting for me in the car, the wife killed the battery, this amounted to an extra few bucks for the babysitters. Oh well. All and all a good day. Another aside, this was my first metric century, a full two months before I thought I'd try one. Next on the agenda is the Reach the Beach on May 20th, but I suspect I'll sneak another rally in before then.

Ironic, Isn't it?

Today is the one year anniversary of being "Reduced in Force" by my former employer. After which I enjoyed 6 months off to retool, retrain and recharge for the next step in my career. Back in November 2005 I was offered a contract position at the same company, I accepted it and have been working there ever since. Well the irony is dripping like butter off a giant stack of flap jacks because the same company offered me a full time spot effective today. This means I still get to keep all my seniority, vacation accruals and vestedness(?) as if I had never been reduced.

Ain't that Beautiful?

I was surfing around the internet before heading off to the neighbors house for poker and I found this cool pic from the Tour of Romandie. This is one of the many reason why I love to ride, especially up here in the Northwest where you can get a glimpse of these same types of views while on the road.

Yellow Bird

I finally got around to refilling the bird feeder today. About 1/2 hour later this appeared.

Monster Cookie Metric Century

After my internet friend , KBJ wrote some nice words about my Daffodil Classic post. I've found another ride to do before the RTB ride, Monster Cookie Metric Century. I wasn't going to do this ride this year but after last weekend, I just can't help it. An upshot to this is my wife is going to do the ride as well. She doesn't know how far she'll make it but she's gung-ho to give it a try. The route is mostly flat from what I know but 62 miles is a long way anyhoo. This will be the fourth rally this year for me. Let me tell you something about cycling, it's like crack, addictive as hell. Update** I found this ride at Bikeride.com which is a great site to find out what cycling events are happening in your neck of the woods. Here are a few links to site with different ride in the Northwest area. Here or here or here or here.

The Daffodil Classic Redux

Ok, finally made it back down home. Woo Hoo! Took today off, double Woo Hoo! Let's start with how I feel today and to be honest I thought it would be worse but I feel great. The legs are slightly heavy but other than that I'm ready to go. Yesterday, the weather in and around the Puget Sound was absolutely gorgeous, perfect for riding with the temperature at the beginning at around 50 degrees. I'm going to break down the ride into three sections. Section I, from the startline to the first rest stop, about 20 miles. Section II, from the first rest area to the second rest stop, about 13 miles. Section III, from the second rest stop to the finish line, about 15 miles. Section I. The town of Orting is located east of Tacoma in a valley situated between the Cascades and a small set of hills. We arrived about 8:30am and promptly found the regsitration area, thank god for pre-reg. There were a lot of people queued up at the registration desk trying to get their race packages and I hate standing in line for just about anything. The ride was divided into a 28 mile family ride, two 50 mile rides, one 70 and century. I was going to ride one of the 50 milers but had not chosen which one until I got a good glimpse at the topo map of the rides. The Kapowsin loop looked somewhat harder due to the multiple up and down rollers and to be honest with you this ride was supposed to be a training ride. So I chose the Buckley loop with it's relatively flatter profile. The first 3 miles or so was flat which was good because it gave me some time to warm up the legs and clear the lungs. I felt OK but since I wasn't sure what the course was actually like, I had some apprehensions. The next several miles consisted of rollers I handled with not to much difficulty. I kept seeing in the topo map in my head and I was trying to figure out when the first climb would start. I knew it had begin sometime soon. Before I could get the thought out of my head, it appeared. It didn't look like much at the beginning, slowly turning right then left, then it started to get steeper and steeper. After about 1/2 mile I was thinking to my self, "when is this going to end". It kept going on and on. I'd go around a corner with the expectation of SOME flatness but no just more up and up. Finally after about 2 miles it finally abated and I was rewarded with a nice downhill to recoup. I rode for the next half hour basically by myself enjoying the scenery, sipping on my Propel(that's for perverted Josh). Following the Dan Henry markers to make sure I don't get lost making a 50 miler into either a short ride or end up on the top of Mount Rainier. At this point I met my riding buddies for the day, Mike, Orrin and Doug at an intersection where the markers weren't exactly clear. It was a 6 way intersection in the middle of nowhere. Apparently the race organizers missed this one. I saw Manny, Moe and Jack(MMaJ) as I'll refer to them, on the other side so I decide to follow them. I finally caught up to them and decide to sit on on their tail to and get a feel for riding with more than one cyclist. Being a nice guy I decided to take a few turns at the front so they wouldn't get pissed off, I know I would. We rode like this for the next 5 to 6 miles up to the first rest stop. I enjoyed this immensely because out of all the organized rides I've done, it seems I ALWAYS end up riding by myself. It's amazing how nice it is to retreat to the end of the line after pulling for awhile and hugging the back wheel of the cyclist in front of you just being pulled along with minimal effort at all. We could keep a nice tempo, 18-19 mph, without killing ourselves. Especially if you add a headwind to the mix. MMaJ, as best as I could tell, varied in age from late 40's to late 50's but they were all in pretty decent shape. I found out later that they used to ride together a lot. We finally pulled into the first rest stop in the town of Buckley to grab some grub. At this point I went and introduced myself to MMaJ. The first thing they said, almost in unison, we can't keep the pace your doing for the whole ride. Each providing various reason why, sore kees, bad back etc. I took this in stride because I don't think I could have kept it up either. I ensured them that I understood and agreed to keep it mellow. Section II. I chowed down during the rest, it's amazing how hungry you can get while riding. Banana, oatmeal cookie, peanut butter bagel and a couple of orange slices and I was on my way. Coincidentally, this was the same moment MMaJ decide to leave along with two other lady riders. The ladies took the lead and we followed in a nice line letting them break the air for us. A nice thing when you're going in to a steady headwind. One thing I learned on this ride is some bike etiquette. For instance, when you are leading the pace line and you see something in the rode like glass or a pothole good riders will point these out for the rest of the line. Well, one of the ladies failed to notify the rest of us as we all bounced through a big pothole. Thankfully no one flatted or broke a spoke but that didn't make Moe happy. He fumed a bit but got over it. Somewhere about 2 miles from the first rest stop on the gang lost his powerbar out his pack so they all slowed to wait but I kept going on. At this point the ladies had advanced about 100 yd in front of me so I decide to catch up to them. My main reason was I didn't want to ride into the headwind by myself. Once I did catch up, I just sat on their back wheel and enjoyed the draft. I did this almost the whole way to the next rest stop. I didn't offer to take a turn, I guess in a sort of payback for not pointing out the pothole earlier. After a while their pace had slowed to the point that I need to pass because I wanted to get going. I ended up catching up with another rider and then another using each to rest while I sat on their back wheel. Finally I arrive at the last rest stop in Bonney Lake with some fatigue in the quads. Section III. Ate the some food regimen. It seemed to be working, as best as I could tell. Called my wife to tell her when I'd be getting to the finish line. MMaJ arrived about 3 minutes behind me but didn't stay as long as I did and took off. I left about 5 minutes after MMaJ. Once I started back out my legs were real heavy and stiff. The rest had tightened me up good. It took me about 2 miles before the stiffness went away. Lo and behold I found myself behind the ladies again but I dropped them on a short hill soon after. After that I rode solo for several miles around Bonney Lake. Based on the topo I knew the middle part of the ride was going to be fairly simple, I also knew at some point there was a exhilarating decent to be had. I have to say going down a nice wide, smooth road at 38 mph is awesome. Once I was down to the valley floor I knew there was only one more climb to get over. Bombing the long decent enabled me to re-catch MMaJ about 2 miles before the last climb. As I passed them one of them shouted out, "There's that guy from Portland again". They were impressed I came all the way up from Oregon to ride. I started talking to them about where they were from etc when the one called Doug asks me "Have you ridden this before" and answered "No, why?. He goes on to tell me about the hill we're going to climb. Steep, very steep. I knew there was a climb coming but I wasn't expecting what I was about to find. It was only about 3/4 to a mile long but it was nasty steep and at one point I could see it continuing up to the left and I started to get demoralized. Was I going to have to get off and walk it? Thankfully, I saw we were going off to the right at a fork in the road. I could tell this by the gaggle of cyclist perched at the top of the climb, resting. Once to the top, Orrin, who had some sort of device on his bike enabling him to determine the percent gradient, mentioned at the steepest part of the climb it was 13%. Folks, that's Alp d'Huez stuff. To say I was gassed is an extreme understatement but I knew the rest of the ride was flat so I was home free. Overall I had a great time, met some interesting people and got closer to the shape I want to be in. Here's a photo of me at the finish line. Stats: 47.75 miles in 3 hours 23 minutes and 11 seconds, average speed 14 mph. Max speed 38.4 mph. Once again a selfish traffic inducing moment from the Kaostheory courtesy of Outside the Beltway traffic Jam.

The Daffodil Classic

I know you are waiting breathlessly for a blow by blow account of my ride at the Daffodil Classic. However, I'm beat and my mind thinks only of Beer and it's making it very difficult to write anything. I will have an update once I get back to Portland. Cheers.

Bloggin from Seattle

We're up in Seattle visiting my wife's dad and doing the tourist thing. Pike's Place Market and Pioneer Square are on the agenda. We drove up late yesterday afternoon in time to see the wonderful sunset on Puget Sound. Since the Daffodil Classic is on Sunday and is located outside of Tacoma we can head down early from here instead of getting up at 0'dark thirty and driving up from Portland. I'm alittle nervous about the ride since my training hasn't been as extensive as necessary. What the heck. This was supposed to be a ride to train for the Reach the Beach ride but it's going to end up being harder based on the profile they provided. I'm going to do both of the 25 mile loops which equates into almost 1600 feet of elevation gain. I know I can do it because I've done harder rides in the past. I'm just hoping the wind is not a factor but you never know. I'm taking a disposible camera with me so I should have some pics soon. The scenery is supposed to be fantastic. Update** I read the evevation wrong. It's 2,757 feet for one loop and 2,625 feet for the other, Holy Shiite!

NBA Playoff rankings are a JOKE!

The way the NBA sets up it's post season is a complete fiasco. I was looking at my local dead-tree sports page where the list the records of all the teams vying for playoff spots. Just because you win your division should not make you automatically put the team in the top three of the conference. At this moment the Denver Nuggers with a 44-36 record are the 3 seed and Dallas sporting a 60-21 record are a fourth seed. This make absolutely zero, zilch, nada sense. Memphis, LAC and LAL all have better or the same record as Denver and Sacramento is only 1 1/2 games back. This means if Dallas and San Antonio win their first round series the will meet in the conference semi's. That's great thinking on the part of the NBA. Denver should be no higher than a 6th seed and more likely a seventh seed. One way to fix this I think that after the first round they should reseed the teams based on their records. Don't let me go off on the Eastern conference where only 5 teams have a winning record, for you people in Rio Linda that means they won more than they lost. Another one for the OTB Beltway traffic jam.

My Top Ten Favorite Comedy Movies

These are in no particular order. Airplane Caddyshack Animal House Office Space Duck Soup Monty Python and the Holy Grail Brazil Blazing Saddles This is Spinal Tap The Princess Bride Honorable Mention High Anxiety The Blues Brothers The Odd Couple.

Easter Bunny

Now if you were a 3 or 4 year old, would the sight of THIS Easter bunny scare the shit out of you?

Celebrities are idiots

Here are some various quotes from the mentally challenged Hollywood elite. Brooke Shields - "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life." How about this gem from Alicia Silverstone - "I think that the film Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it's true lightness." Hot is cold, up is down, where the f*ck am I? Celine Dion, paragon of wisdom - "My child was not only carried by me, but by the universe." I guess that's one way not to get stretchmarks. Keanu Reeves - "I'm a meathead. I can't help it, man. You've got smart people and you've got dumb people." I got to give him credit for his self-realization. John Travolta - "I called my son Jett and I wanted to call my daughter Qantas but my wife wouldn't let me." At least he didn't name him L. Ron. Russell Crowe -"I enjoy the company of cattle. I really enjoy knowing them, running my hand over them." Not to know them in the Biblical sense I hope. Hey Bessie, why don't you grab me a beer and get over here so I can slap that ass of yours. P. Diddy - "'I feel safe in white because deep down inside, I'm an angel." But when I'm around whites that's a whole different ball game, get my shizzle nizzle? Martine McCutcheon(I have no idea who she is but she's a genius) - "Some men send me condoms and underpants. I'm not sure what they want." First word, Cuddle that is all. Another one for the OTB Beltway traffic Jam.

Obsessed with my Site Meter

Lately, I've been obsessed with checking my SiteMeter stats. Like some narcissist staring at myself in the mirror. It's cool to think that people from all over the world have passed through the Kaos portal eventhough the don't stay very long or comment on anything. I've been keeping a list of where they are coming from. Most are from the US but I've had people from as far away as China, Pakistan, Thailand, Serbia-Montenegro and Guam to mention a few. 99% are looking for the friggin doodlebops or Kajagoogoo pics I used in a post months ago but some come from other sites I've done some comments on.

Robert Deniro SNL skit

The venerable cheesehead Todd sent another gem for me to share. It's a SNL skit with DeNiro as a spokesman for Homeland Security. Another one for the Outside the Beltway Traffic jam. Click here to go to my video page. It's not much of a webpage but it'll do in a pinch. **Update** Sorry if you can't view the movie. I clobbered the code I wrote to view the video. I'm trying to get it re-hosted over at my Wordpress page. Sorry for the inconvenience. **Update II** I've recreated the code so you can click on this link to get to the video.

Crappers

I don't know what it is up here in the Northwest and Port-a-potty names but I found these 2 right next to each other. Whcih would you use?

La Connor Washington

The family went this weekend up to the sleepy little hamlet of La Connor, Washington about 1 1/2 hours north of Seattle for the annual Skagit County Tulip festival. Eventhough the weather was less than spectacular, overcast and cloudy, it was a fun time had by all. I took Friday off so we could drive up early and hang out with my Father-in-law at his pad on Alki Beach in West Seattle. Since my wife used to live in Seattle in the late eighties she has some friends we like to visit. We had a great dinner with them at a little Italian place near the University District called Ciao Bella. The food was tremendous and the company even better. I expected that if I went into the kitchen I would find Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro chowing down at a little table in the corner. The atomosphere had a touch of Goomba, if you know what I mean, right down to the fact it had a mysterious fire awhile back. Well the next morning we set off to see the Tulips, hoping they would be as good as last year. Unfortunately we were about 2 weeks early but there were a few pockets of blooms. The town of La Connor is a cool place and this particular weekend was the kickoff for the festival so they had live music, jugglers, unicyclists and plenty of local food like CRAB, mmmm. I was going to bring my bike with the expectation of a nice ride around the tulip fields but at the last moment I decide not to and I regretted it the whold time we were there. Why do you ask? Unbeknownst to me there was the bike rally going on that day. Everywhere I looked there were colorfully donned cyclists peddling around on wonderful roads. I will kick myself everytime I think about this. Damn, Damn, and double Damn.

The Daffodil Classic

Just signed up to ride the Daffodil Classic in Orting, Washington on April 23rd. It should be fun and a good training ride for the Reach the Beach ride in May. This was one of the rides I wrote about in one of my earlier posts that I wanted to do this year. I almost forgot about it until I checked my archives and found the post.

Pakistani Fucking Movie

I was just going over my stats on my sitemeter and I've found some weird shit. Someone in Karachi Pakistan found my site through a Yahoo search for "Pakistani Fucking Movie". WTF!

Ride Stats 4/4/06

The weather was perfect today making it difficult to concentrate on work. I kept looking out my home office window waiting for the clock to strike 4:00pm. Once it did I pumped up the tires, oiled the chain and headed of to the open road. All in all it was a good ride. My goal as always is to do my rides averaging 15 mph. I got closer this time. With about 4 miles to go I was at 15.62 mph but I still had Strawberry Hill to conquer. Invariable this streatch brings down my average and this time was no different. I went up the hill fairly well, stronger than the last time I did it which is a good sign. But the hill did it's damage and when I returned home my final average was 14.7 mph for 20.74 miles. Slightly better than the last time. Like I posted earlier I love DST and living in the Northwest. The time change and being above the 45th parallel means the sun stays up a lot longer than when we lived in CA.

Spring Time

I love Spring in the Northwest. The weather is absolutely beautiful today, currently a nice 58 degrees and sunny. Add this sunshine to tulip blubs we planted last year and ...... Combine this with Daylight Savings Time and it means.... pounding the pedals after work. Yee Haw!

A Day at the Farmer's Market

Saturday was the first day the Portland Farmer's Market opened for the season. Being a decent enough day by Portland standards, read NOT RAINING, the family all decide it would be nice to get out of the house and see what was up. We headed downtown at about 8:30 am to get some breakfast at Mother's Bistro. Usually this place has a long wait to get seated but we got in rather quickly eventhough the place was packed. The food is always good and consistent, you know that if you order the Eggs Benny it's going to be ths same as the last time you had it here. We chowed down and set off for Portland State University where the market is staged. The pic to the left is of the Parks Block section near the entrance to the University. I'm not sure who the statue is, somebody famous I'd guess. As we drew closer you could tell many Portlanders had the same idea we did. We started by traversing up and down each aisle scoping out anything we might need. Plenty of stalls with fresh herbs and vegetables, organic produce and flowers like daffodils and tulips. One of the cooliest things were the dyed Thistle. They were so fluorescent I had to snap a photo to prove it to people. Whenever we go to something like this where people bring their dogs, my daughter has to pet EVERY ONE. We've taught her to ask the owners first so she reduces the chance of having her face bit off but even that doesn't always work. She spooked a Jack Russell and he nipped her but no damage done. One dog we loved was a fat bulldog that couldn't seem to keep his tongue in his head. He had a cool name which I can't seem to remember.

First Iranian Carwash or Carwash at the Casbah

Carwash First a little background on myself. I don't usually provide such information but I thought this was inetersting. My Dad was Iranian, I say this in the past tense because we lost him to cancer a few years ago. One of the businesses he created in Iran was the first carwash. That's him on the left with my Grandmother on my Mom's side, next is my Mom and I think my oldest brother. I'm not sure who the other guy is but he must have worked with my dad. One of the funny things, at least I think it's funny, about that carwash was the ability of the machinery to obliterate car antenna or any other appendage sticking out of the car. Dad was constantly having to replace parts of peoples cars frequently and to calm down irate customers with damaged autos. I think this was taken during the mid-sixties based on the size of my brother. To say the least, the business was challenging and eventually he either sold or closed it.

Woo Hoo!

Looks like I came in second at the bi-weekly caption contest at Outside the Beltway. Outside-standing!.

Shameless Traffic Inducer

Welcome all who have visited from Outside the Beltway, I know this is a shameless attempt at driving traffic my way but I gotta try. Please feel free to roam around and don't forget to check the archives.

Phone Books, What are they good for?

Should the phone book manufacturers go the way of buggy whip makers? With all the vast information right at your finger tips via the internet, why would anyone need a phone book? When was the last time you used one for it's intended purpose? Sure they can come in handy when you need to prop open a door or something like that. The reason I ask this seemingly innocuous question? Well, within the last week I have been delivered to my front door, not one, not two but THREE different phone books totaling 5 inches in thickness. There is one from DEX with a combo white and yellow pages and 2 from Verizon. Like the DEX, there is the standard version from Verizon and it appears a mini version in which the font is so small it is impossible to read without a magnifying glass. Also they all stink to high heaven, I mean not in content but they have this funky smell to them like they were printed in a combo Elmers glue and dog piss.

Movie reviews

I finally got around to seeing a couple of the Academy Award nominees. First movie we watched was "Walk the Line'. I enjoyed it. I can say it was the best movie of the year since I haven't seen the rest of the list but it was highly entertaining. I didn't know much about Johnny Cash until I saw it but the movie has sparked an interest in me to learn more about him and his life. Joaquin Phoenix handled the characterization quite well, understated but seemingly understanding the complex nuances of the man. Who can't love Reese Witherspoon, she also did an admirable job depiciting June Cash Carter. It was the type of movie you can sit and watch with your Auntie and not worry about having to explain to her why the f-bombed is dropped every 10 words. Overall rating, 7.5 on the Kaos scale. The wifey had been in CA to visit her mom and they had all watched "Crash". When she got back she implored me to rent it which I did. I had heard many reviews and comments in the blogosphere so I was jaded but my jadedness was completely justified. I have lived in LA for 37 of my 41 years so I have an understanding about the different cultures and peoples who inhabit the City of Angels. From Korea Town near downtown to the affluent areas of Beverley Hills to the beach cities, I don't recognize the directors vision of LA. One thing I can say is how disgusting it is how he pigeon holed races into neat little stereotypes, right out of the Leni Riefenstahl school of film making. Might as well make Jew into rats as far as I'm concerned. Being half Iranian I take umbrage with the shopkeeper/would be child killer. It appears the director has never been in a middle eastern market himself because if he had he would realize 99.999999999999 percent are not wild-eyed lunatics he so causually depicts. By doing this he impugns all the good people who get up each morning and work hard at the jobs, providing for their families and lumps everybody in the evil stewpot of racism. This also goes for the remaining "characters" he fits into his nice little stereotypical box. White Police officer/Opressor of minorities, Black youth/Carjacker thugs, Hispanics/Steal your house whicle you're not looking, Chinese/Slave importer, Jew/ruler of the world, it just went on and on. He even mocks black people who try to overcome this perceived racism by making them Uncle Toms. I understand the director tried to make all this go away but having the characters "realize their wrongs" towards the end therefore making the "point" of "racism". Why do that? Why not go all the way and show how racist EVERYBODY is and keep it as that? Wouldn't that be a more salient point? I'm sure he had to modify his theme to make sure he got his picture made because I believe if he had any balls at all he wouldn't have made the characters all stay the same to reinforce the hubris of "All Racism, All the time USA". Kaos scale 5.5 out of 10. The last movie was "The 40 year old Virgin", not on the nominees list I understand but highly enjoyable anyway. We watched the unedited version which is why I think I liked it so much. Lotsa poddy humor with a guy walking around with an erection in the morning. Come on guys, we've all done that haven't we? My favorite was the Pakistani guy. Almost wet the pants everytime he opened his mouth. I wish I could remember some of his lines, they will be classic in the future like, "Did you get the memo on the TSP reports?' from Office Space. As the King Julian of the Lemurs says it's time for me to "Move it, Move it". BTW, I like to "Move it Move it".

Kajagoogoo vs Doodlebops

Awhile back I did a post noticing how much Kajagoogoo and the Doodlebops looked alike. I used Blogger's image uploader to post the pictures on my blog. Well it seems if you do this the picture is sent to Google images with a pseudo link to this site. Lately since I have been doing more trackbacks with some of the bigger named blogs, I've been checking my visitor stats regularly to see what kind of traffic it's generating. You wouldn't believe the number of hits I get from these pics. I would guess at least 9 out of 10 are for the Doodlebops and not just from the US but from all over the world. Very strange indeed. Here's the link.

Finally fixed the archives

For the longest time, well since 1/1/06, I kept getting the infamous "HTTP 404 not found" error when I clicked the link for Jan - Mar 2006 archives. The weird thing is I could see the files on the server for my posts. So I did some bulletin board diving at my host and found out my answer. In order for the link to work, my archive files needed to be in the public_html folder and not on the root. When I copied the files over, Voila!, they are there. Woo friggin Hoo! I had dreams about this last night so this was the first thing I did this morning.

Ride Stats 3/18/06

Since we were having Granny's 90th birthday party at our house at noon, I needed to get out early. Starting at about 8:45 am I left the house fully bundled up. I mean it was 45 degrees and cloudy, brrr. I decided to I needed to push the distance some this week and talked myself into riding out to Estacada and back. It was one of those rides that my head tried over and over again to talk me out of it, like I had one of those gremlins on my shoulder from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. You can always ride tomorrow or why don't you turn around here, it's so nice and toastie in the house? Each time the little devil tried to discourage me from continuing, I kept pushing on. I had to because I knew when I finished the endorphins would give me the buzz and I like that buzz. So I trundled off down the steep hill from my house and out to the open road. I felt good and kept a nice tempo for the first three or so miles while my legs and body warmed up. As Emeril would say I "kicked it up a notch" for the next 4.5 miles when the gremlin visited. That when I saw a sign that said "Damascus 3 mi". Why don't I just cut this a little short I thought, I'd still be putting in some mileage. I turned on to the road and preceded to do a short climb up around a corner when I saw what I feared. An extremely steep hill seemlingly going on forever. I was committed to this now and plodded up the hill. After about 1/2 a mile in was gassed, my legs felt like they'd fused in a straight position. Alternating between standing in the peddles and sitting in the saddle didn't seem to help. I pulled off to the side to catch my breath and decide what to do. While standing, well slumped over the handlebars, I espied a lady unloading her trailer in her driveway. I better find out where this hill ends so I called to her and asked "How far to the top?" and she nonchalantly replied "Oh, you're about halfway there but you haven't got to the steep part yet" This time the gremlin and I were in complete agreement and I headed back down the slope. But the gremlin hadn't got the best of me yet, I could have easily continue back to the warm abode by turning right or I could continue on by going left. Overcoming the steely glare of the gremlin I went left. Somehow the sight of the neverending hill gave me new life and my legs came back. Once again the evil green thing on my shoulder reared his mug and whispered in my ear, "Did you know it's raining now?". I could barely see as the rain splashed in my face. Tempted again to capitulate to the G man I continued on. This scenario happend again at Barton, the 211 interchange and Eagle Creek but I finally arrived in Estacada with a sense of accomplishment. I'd overcome that little bastard and spit him out. Funny thing, I didn't see him on the way home. I hope I left him on the park bench outside the city hall of Estacada.(BTW, that's a picture of it in the link). Almost forgot the stats portion, 33.62 miles with an average speed of 14.3mph.