Jeff Watson AI Threat Level: Green - The reader may proceed without danger of reading anything related to American Idol.

- - - - -

Missed the video of George Bush dancing onstage with Africans, banging bongos and making chimp face? Already seen the clip but need something to kickstart your morning? Click here.

Yvette S. once said, “I’ve heard Bush is a great guy, a guy people can relate to, someone they feel like they could hang out with down at the local bar. The problem is I think for President of the United States and Leader of the Free World that we should aim a little higher than ‘good drinking buddy’.”

- - - - -

The NFL draft was this weekend. Minnesota drafted seventh in the first round and picked Adrian Peterson, a running back out of Oklahoma. I think Vikings fans are going to like Mr. Peterson very very much. Watch this (especially the two back-to-back runs starting at 0:52 and then the last two runs in the clip - ZOINKS!) if you want to feel old and slow.

- - - - -

I ran fifteen miles on Sunday, watching the second day of the NFL draft to keep my mind occupied, then mowed the lawn afterwards. I could barely walk to push the mower, not because of muscle soreness or tiredness, but because I’d chafed the sensitive inner bits of my legs. I spent half of Sunday walking around like a bow-legged cowboy getting ready for a shootout at the Tender Thigh Corral. By the feel of things, today will be more of the same.

This would be way cooler if I had some chaps.

Total miles run to date: 203 miles
Longest distance run to date: 15 miles
Upcoming longest distance: 16 miles.
Upcoming miles this week: 32 miles

Congrats to my Aussie buddy Tim Maddocks, whose film, Death’s Requiem (a Maddfilms production) will have its World Premier at Method Fest, a film festival in Los Angeles. Tim and I go way back, to our bull-running days in Pamplona. Here’s the scoop on the World Premier – if you’re in LA on March 31 stop by and check it out. And shake Tim’s hand – he’s the guy with the shiny dome and the funny accent.

Death’s Requiem

March 31, 1:30pm

Louis B. Mayer Theatre
Motion Picture & Television Fund
23388 Mulholland Drive
Woodland Hills, CA 91371

—–

Allen Shen, a former colleague of mine at The Place of Evil and Darkness, sent me a story about a Dutch guy who plans to climb Everest in boots, shorts, hat and gloves.

Apparently, said Dutch person (code name: Wim Hof) has achieved some sort of inner control over body temperature which allows him to run a barefoot and shirtless half-marathon in Finland in winter with temps in the -4 to -22 range (-20 to -30 for you Euros).

And now he wants to take a whack at Chomolungma.

That’s all well and good. A hat, boots and gloves will trap the vast majority of escaping body heat (a hat traps 40% of your body heat all on its own). What he’s going to need at 26,000 feet, though, is skin of steel to withstand the wind. The world’s top mountaineers are slowed to a crawl once they hit the Death Zone above 26,00 feet, often taking 30 or more seconds between each step. And the top of Everest is another 3,000 feet past the start of the Death Zone - that’s a lot of very slow upward steps…and a long time to be in savagely cold temperatures with no skin protection.

My guess is that he succeeds but returns with the mother of all frostbites.

—–

Finally, they are kicking my dad out of the hospital today. He’s decided his recent condition was nothing mortal and that he’s perfectly ready to spend another couple of decades playing golf, messing with computers and watching “24″.

Glad to have you back home, Dad.

I’m reading a great book about the Roosevelts (Franklin D and Eleanor) during the war years. William gave me the book and it’s called No Ordinary Time, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Brilliant book. A couple of things I found interesting:

In 1940,

• 17% of the workforce was unemployed
• 1/2 of men and 2/3 of women made less than $1000/year
• From a population of 132 million, only 48,000 taxpayers earned more than $2500/year

Granted, those are 1940 dollars. I don’t know what that translates to in 2006 $$$, but it doesn’t sound like much.

Also in 1940,

• Only 40% of Americans 25 or older had been to school past eighth grade
• Only 25% of Americans 25 or older had graduated high school
• Only 5% of Americans 25 or older had completed college
• 31% of 35 million dwelling units did not have running water. One third!
• 32% had no indoor toilet
• 39% lacked a shower or bathtub
• 58% had no central heating (and AC was just being invented – today we are under a heat warning: “more humid compared to Monday…temps ranging from upper 90s to around 100…high humidity…heat index between 105 and 109 degrees” Imagine what that would feel like without AC – ick)

1975 was (roughly) 30 years ago. It was also 30 years after the end of WWII. In 1975 I don’t think there was much, if any, of America that did not have running water, an indoor toilet, and a bathtub. Over the last thirty years, the only ubiquitous household items that were added (that I can think of right now) were the microwave and the VCR. Not quite the same, is it?

And in the days before Pearl Harbor was attacked, “casual visitors were allowed to stroll around the White House grounds during the day…feeding the squirrels, taking snapshots and hanging around the portico hoping someone interesting would come out.”

Hanging around the portico? Hanging around the portico? Can you even imagine that? You can’t even drive a car past the White House now, with Pennsylvania barricaded the way that it is, much less “hang around” the portico sipping lemonade and waiting for Jar-Jar to emerge so you can chat about foreign policy and the electoral process. What a different world it was sixty-six years ago!

*****

In other news (some of this not so fresh because I’m slow to post):

• Oops. Pete Coors, the Coors brewery’s silver-haired TV spokesman, seen on Sunday afternoons hawking dog pee beer, was arrested for drunk driving.
• Batwoman is a lesbian. This doesn’t surprise me in the least - comics have always tried to be edgy and hip. Remember in the ’70s when Nick Fury started swearing and talking like a “real” person? And when comics discovered African-Americans were underrepresented (slang for “completely missing”) from the comics world and suddenly we had a bunch of superheroes with either Black or references to Africa in their names? (Black Lightning, Muhammad X, Nu’Bia, Black Panther, Brother Voodoo, etc. – my fave, BTW, was always the Falcon). So now we have lesbian superheroes? I’m not at all shocked. She’s a hot redhead, too. That’ll bum out all the fanboys when they realize that A, she’s not real and B, she’s unavailable.

Thanks to Mr. Gosa for the leads!

It’s been a busy week and El Raymundo is tired. There were family festivities with the relations in Baltimore all last weekend and The Debra’s folks have been in town this week. Workload at the Place of Toil and Labor has skyrocketed and I think my body is confused because last week was a four-day work week and this morning, Friday, I woke up and my body said, “Huh? We’re going to work? Again???”

But it’s Friday evening now. The Debra is cooking dinner with MegaJan and William is reading Mutiny on the Bounty. I’ve poured myself a small glass of pre-dinner goodness – a bit of Lagavulin – and am ready to relate a few non-linear snippets of life.

The UltraHot Geo Coleman sent me a link whose by-line read thusly:

“ST. PETERS, Missouri (AP) — A woman, angry that her new puppy had died, pushed her way into a dog breeder’s home and repeatedly hit her on the head with the dead Chihuahua.”

Now that’s a hook!

The story continues: “As the woman drove away, she waved the dead puppy out of the car’s sunroof and yelled threats at the breeder, police said.”

I would be remiss to leave out the fact that the UltraHot Tiffany Taylor also forwarded me that story today. No, not the pron star Tiffany Taylor (Google that one at your own risk, sports fans). The Time Warner Cable Security Analyst Tiffany Taylor.

Alert: Approaching non sequitur

John Holmes, a colleague of mine at the Place of Toil and Labor, mentioned that I was not going to get a real person to staff the position on my nascent Change Management team. It’s been decided, he said, “to use an NPC.”

“An NPC!” shouted Shinnguard. “A Non-Player Character! Will it be a Paladin with a longsword +1?”

“No, it’ll be a Paladin with a Holy Avenger +5 and a Helmet of Very Intentional Goodness,” I said.

“Whoever it is, they’ll have to be Lawful Evil or Lawful Good,” said John with a shrug. “One or the other.”

“I only roll twenties,” bragged Scott.

“I don’t know about you, but I only roll twenty-twos,” said John.

“On a twenty-sided dice?”

“He rolls deuce-deuce.”

“I roll fours when all I need to hit is a seven,” I said. “And then my character is run through the chest with a spear and skewered to an oak tree. And then druids light him on fire.”

Alert: Approaching non sequitur

A chat window popped up and Michelle D. was asking me:

Michelle D: When you think of country ho’s, what do you imagine?
El Raymundo: Huh?
Michelle D. I’m going to a pimps and ho’s party tonight and I want to go as a country ho. What do you think one looks like?
El Raymundo: I have no idea, Michelle. I grew up in the suburbs.

I asked Bernard if he had any idea what a country ho looked like. He said Tonya Harding.

I sent Michelle the link to my Angelina Jolie/Village People/hot tub dream.

El Raymundo: This will make you laugh: (the Me and Angelina Jolie post)
Michelle D: You are borderline obsessed.
Michelle D: I had a dream last night too. I was trapped in a mud pit with alligators.
(pause)
Michelle D: I think I prefer your dream.

Which leads me to the Camel Joke.

A military detachment was sent to the deepest corner of Iraq. The men expected to be there for a very long time and knew they would be isolated and lonely, so they brought a camel along “for emergencies.” You know, because they would be lonely.

After a few months a captain was sent to join the detachment. When he arrived he asked what the camel was for. “We get lonely here,” said one soldier, “and the camel is for emergencies.”

Several months pass and the captain is feeling the isolation, so one day he takes a box and sets it on the ground behind the camel. The captain mounts the box and becomes one with the camel. When he finishes he zips his pants and asks a soldier, “Is that how the men do it, soldier?”

“Not really,” replied the soldier, “usually we just ride the camel on into town.”

In News of the Clever - submitted by Terrill Gosa - a dirty old man in Florida was nabbed after molesting two women in their homes. Apparently in Florida it’s quite common for 76-year old doctors to go door-to-door giving breast exams. Why else would presumably sensible women have let Philip Winikoff through the door? The women were tipped off when “Doctor” Winikoff, a shuttle driver for an auto dealer when not fondling the female populace of the Sunshine State, performed an examination of their genitalia without wearing rubber gloves.

It’s always a case of “wish I knew then what I know now”, isn’t it? College sure would have been different had I known that women would throw open not only their doors but their bathrobes if I simply showed up with rubber gloves, a black medical bag and a smile.