In my mail yesterday was a letter from the US Census Bureau - I thought "Sweet! No huge booklet for me this time!" But no, it was a letter telling me in a few weeks, we will receive further instructions on the census.

Brilliant.

What a waste of paper. Why isn't the Census electronic yet? I'm thinking it's a conspiracy with the Post Office, to help boost their numbers for a bit. Blah. Actually, why is there a Census at all? All of the information gathered is somewhere else already, can't it just be gathered together? I have the same issue with taxes - if my W2's are known by the gov't, why do I have to re-enter all of this redundant info? Lame.

***

Barack Obama Doesn't Care About Chilean People
Have you noticed that nobody cares about the Chile earthquake? I don't see a big "Text Chile to 5130957" on every website I go to. I haven't seen a telethon yet. No "We Are the World in 3-D". Nine days later and it's not even on the evening newscasts.

My theory? The Haiti earthquake was used by certain liberal outlets as a referendum on Bush's handling of the Katrina situation. You had a similar population (very poor, mostly black, lots o' creole) in a similar situation (mega natural disaster), and this was the Left's chance to show how they could run things.

But once that was over, three weeks later, Chile has the third biggest earthquake on record, and it seems those same folks (Sean Penn, the Baby Stealers, Wyclef) just decided "Chile? Meh. We already proved our point." Just seems weird. I'm not advocating that Sean Penn attend every Natural Disaster, but the two events were so close and the reacion was so starkly different - it's rather jarring.

Ah! At least we can finally confirm it wasn't voodoo that caused Haiti's quake.

On Tuesday, I went to an intranet meeting the other day at Avery Dennison. In their lobby they have pictures and samples of all of the products their company produces.

What caught my eye was their original product, invented by their founder over 75 years ago.



I now understand why they are a multi-billion dollar company - it addressed a need that for centuries had been filled by "old sock" or "Stim's hair". Brilliant.

"Kum-Kleen! It kleens kum."

Liam built his first snowman on Saturday. 206 bones, 50 miles of small intestine, full pouting lips. Why, this fellow is less a snowman... than a god.





A good time was had by all. Not sure what creature pecked out its eyeballs, for they were gone the next day.

More snowman goodness here

The rest of the weekend was fun, we stayed in and enjoyed that sweet, sweet carbon monoxide.

It's too flippin' cold to cut down my raccoon-infested tree, so I put up a scarecrow!



Thank God for old Halloween decorations - it's the scariest scarecrow (er, scareraccoon) I've ever seen - a charred, bloody skeleton wearing a very flamboyant gold glitter cape!

So far, no raccoons for two days.

I'm generally paranoid about my house being broken into. Every noise I hear makes me nervous that this is The Night. So of course I was freaked out last night when at around 2am, there came loud and furious pounding from several corners of my house.

I crept out of bed, scared to find some hoodlums rummaging through my porn stash... but no one was in the house yet. But the noise kept coming. I peeked out the kitchen window, and in the shadow of my house, I saw this HUGE raccoon's shadow up on my roof. This thing must've been half bear or woolly mammoth or something. So I crept outside to try to scare it away. Instead, I just scared it further up the roof, to my chimney - where I noticed 2 other raccoons gathering.

Great.

So it's 2am, and 25 feet up on my roof are a raccoon family having a party. And it's 11 degrees out. I did the only thing I could do - threw snowballs at them.

That only pushed them back - now they were in a remote part of the roof I couldn't reach. I had to think quickly - then I remembered I had a huge Super-Soaker in my basement, so I rummaged through the clutter to find it, filled it with scalding hot water, and went to clean my roof.



So, there I am at 2am, skulking around my backyard holding a gun. Thank God nobody called the police on me.

A couple of well-placed streams of scalding water managed to scare 2 of them away and far off into someone else's yard. The other one remained huddled next to the chimney (probably to keep warm, awww - or to lay babies). I let her off the hook.

Did you know that raccoons talk? They make this freaky monkey-squeak noise, and can click as well. It was scary - it sounded like they were plotting against me (or making fun of my hair).

There wasn't any noise after I scared them off. Tonight if it's nice enough out, I'm cutting down the tree that they use to access my roof - or at least putting a barrier up that they can't cross.

Boobs.

"Gimme your lunch money!"

Reason #4324 to love the British: The Prime Minister is currently in a heap of trouble for being a bully. A bully! How cute is that? They even have a bullying helpline that people call and say "'allo - the Prime Minister is a bully!" I wish American politics were as fun.

****

ALERT: BONER IS MISSING!!!

Andrew Koenig, who played Boner on Growing Pains, is MISSING for over a week! I hope they find Boner. Boner.

Cleveland has been ranked as America's Most Miserable City - suck it, Pittsburgh!

While I don't disagree, I think part of Cleveland's charm is its unambiguous mediocrity. We know we're the pits, and we love it.

Well, I love it. Most of the time. Balls.

*****

This is cool - Exit Stencil, a local record label, is making their entire catalog available as a free download. So check it out, and if you like the bands, go see them at the Phantasy or something!

This is fantastic in so many ways.

Fun weekend everyone? Me too... well, relaxing at least.

Becky and I had a romantic Valentine's Day dinner from PJ McIntyre's. Liam enjoyed his chicken fingers and the romance. Apparently he loves Merlot! Just kidding. He hates it.

We also cleaned up our basement to make it more presentable to humans and less cat-poop-smelling. That stuff gets into the walls, the floor, it climbs up your nose and latches onto your brain! Stupid cats.

I painted some shelves.



Becky and I looked at new daycares for Liam yesterday. The one he's at is fine, but with my new job, it turns my commute into a 2-hour zigzag across Cuyahoga County. We found some really nice ones in Lakewood. Now the question is - do I uproot my son so I can have a more convenient morning? Is that selfish? I guess so. But I pay the bills, eh? Meh.

Have a wonderful Mardi Gras everyone!