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Nipple ring!! I just always wanted to start a post with that.

Question.. Do you still like popular music? Do you even like the popular music from your teenage years?

Okay, that being said, I must admit I am not watching the Grammy’s tonight. Its not that I don’t like awards shows.. I watch the oscars and golden globes religiously…

Really, its that I have lost my taste for popular music.

I watched the debacle last Sunday on the twilight of my anniversary, and I was bothered before I ever saw Janet’s Ninja Star Clad boobie. Justin Timberlake (with whom I share the first nine letters) doing New Kids dances or dirty dances with Michael’s sister and having her naked by the end of the song.. while Janet’s rhythm nation has become just commonplace and boring..

So, really, I don’t want to watch Beyonce do a Beatles tribute tonight, and I wouldn’t cry any tears if Shania were to suddenly “Feel like a woman (who gave up music)”.

I remember my father hating Martika and Tiffany and The Escape Club, and En Vogue (but I will stand by Cutting Crew till the day I die). I thought he was just old..

But no, I think he was right, all that just seems gummy to me now.. I find myself liking artists with a little more punch and a little less glitter (sorry mariah).. and that extends to today’s artists.. I may be tired of Evanescense, but I still dig that song.. and Eminem gets me worked up when he’s worked up.. and BNL and Ben Folds hit me with advanced (and sometimes absurd) concepts that challenge my mind and my heart just a little more.

What about you?

Nine days from today, the Most Dreaded Holiday arrives.

Yeah, that one.

The one most husbands and boyfriends learn to fear if they have been with their partners for more than a year.

St. Valentine’s Day.

The origin of this holiday seems fairly straightforward, according to legend. Claudius Caesar found that men were unwilling to enlist into the Roman legion around 496 A.D. because they did not wish to leave their wives and families. Claudius did the math, and figured out that if he forbade marriage for a few years, he’d have plenty of soldiers for his army. Valentine secretly married couples for quite some time before he was discovered and executed. The holiday takes place, probably not coincidentally, on the Roman day of the veneration of Juno, the goddess of women and marriage, February 14. Of course, I just gleaned that information from a few Google searches.

But enter next week. Some I’ve done the roses. I’ve done the jewelry. I’ve done the dates, dinners, roses, jewelry, deep massages, and even forgotten the holiday entirely a few years. I heard on the radio that there’s a zoo in Chicago (I think) where you can give your valentine the gift of their very own hissing cockroach, which they’ll have visitation rights with.

I’m not quite sure what to do for this Valentine’s day. I want to avoid being cheap, trite, etc. And to think that, if I live an average American lifespan, I’ll have another half-century to conjure up ideas.

What are your plans for this upcoming Valentine’s day?

So I was listening to 98 Rock this morning, and they were talking about pets and the silly/stupid/amazing things they do. Which harkened me back to my youth and one of the dumbest dogs ever to roam this earth.

Brandy was a male cocker spaniel, pure bred I believe. My sister and brother-in-law had some sort of papers, and the dog’s full name was something like Master Jason Brandy Boyd, so you get the picture. NOT that my sister’s family was hoity-toity, but that the dog came from that kind of background. As you’ll see, he shoulda had a DuPont thrown in there too…

My sister has a hardwood hallway, with a door at the end of it. I remember having hours (and I do mean HOURS) of entertainment when we would thrown Brandy a ball down the hallway. He would get up to speed, chasing the ball, only to have it bounce, hit the door, and go back over his head. Brandy, however, would keep going, according to Newton’s laws and the lack of friction on hardwood, and slide into the closed door at the end of the hallway. Then he would get up, retrieve the ball, bring it to us, and then beg to do it again. And again. And again.

It went like this:

run/scrape – bounce – slide – BANG – run/scrape – drool – BARK BARK BARK

So that may have been our fault, for continuing to play along with the dog’s desire to crash into doors…buit this one was all him.

I was out in a field at home, tossing balls up and hitting fly balls to my nephew Tim(Brandy’s brother, if you will). Brnady was there, and I’d hit the ball and he’d start to chase it, then as Tim would throw it back he’d chanse it then, and we’d repeat the process. I musta repeated the process 25-50 times, and each time, Brandy would chase out and chase back.

So then, for some unknown reason, he gets “smart”. I toss the ball up, and he decides to head it off at the pass, so he jumps up to catch the ball as it falls!, somehow neglecting to realize the bat rapidly approaching his skull. I was watching the ball the whole time, and therefore didn’t see poor Brandy until my bat and his skull collided. And I clocked him! Poor dog, luckily I was only 13 or 14 at the time and didn’t have much bat speed. He whimpered and whined for a little bit, walked it off, and seemed otherwise okay, but he didn’t chase any more balls that day.

There were other events, I think he was hit by three or four cars in his day, and each time he’d come home with cuts/bruises/limps, but he’d heal and be the same ole Brandy.

Until I allowed him to commit suicide.

My sister’s house had a deck, which they had tore down to build a new one. By this time, Brandy was 10, and the injuries had taken their toll. He was blind, with a limp, and there was debate whether or not to have him put down. The main reason against was my niece and nephew’s vehement protests, but it would have been soon.

Anyway, poor Brandy is blind, and bumping into things all the time. I was to the sliding glass door where the deck used to be, to yell out a question to my brother-in-law. Only opened the door wide enough to stick my head out. This blind dog, somehow, manages to walk right through the 1 foot wide gap now there, and stpes onto the deck.

Which is no longer there.

I have had a lucky life, I haven’t seen much tragedy, but the Fall Of Brandy will be one I remember my whole life. He did a half rotation as he fell, landing on his back, which I believe broke on impact. He died about 5 minutes later.

Me & my bro-in-law buried him, amid many tears from the family. My family had told me over and over that it was for the best, which is true, but I can still see him falling.

Of course, my family has the sick sense of humor that my aunt came home one day, about 10 years later, with a t-shirt with Brandy’s picture on the front and on the back, it says:

“Who Let The Dog Out?”

Sorry about the long, pointless post, but hopefully you’ll see the humor in this story, as the dog WAS well loved, and just made some bad decisions.

For those of you begging me to get the pictures up, I’ve tossed up a few pics of JJ and family. I’m running a bit low on disk space for barnson.org, which is also part of the reason I’ve put off poor Sam for so long on mirroring their pictures 🙂 It’s about time to buy the next gigabyte I guess…

So I moved out of the city (Perryville, MD, pop 2000) to the country (Rock Run Road, 2 acres, only house on my “street”). No more using the townhouse mailbox cluster, now I had to dig a hole, sink a post, and have a good ‘ole American mailbox.

We were in a hurry to get everything finished while building the house, so when my builder told me I needed a mailbox set, I told him I’d do it myself. Having been told stories about evil mailbox marauders, I purchased a cheapy plastic one for about $5 at Home Depot, mounted it on a 4×4 wood post, and voila!!! I am a direct descendant of the Pony Express.

Until Saturday night, when it was destroyed…

The post is still standing, and the bottom of the mailbox is still attached to the post, but the rest of the mailbox is in tatters.

I know I was told it would happen, and I know I purchased a cheap mailbox to offset the replacement costs, but I was still pretty peeved about it. They destroyed my mailbox! They attacked me!!!

Now, being an industrious American, I figured now that I have time, I’d make me a iron-reinforced stone mailbox enclosure that could double as my bomb-shelter when they launch the big ones….but, my bro-in-law, who works for the Post Office, tells me that’s illegal. Something about having to give way to a car that might hit it, instead of splitting the car in two.

What’s THAT about? I can’t make my property resist destruction, in the case that someone who can’t drive might hit it??? Or I guess I should wait for the police officers to catch them? No thanks, I’d rather they be out prosecuting the real criminals, but please allow me to defend my property! I guess I COULD mount a motion activated video camera to get license tag numbers of every car that goes by…I’ll see if I can get a grant from MDOT for that.

You know, America has become the home of “take no risks because some idiot will mess up and then sue you”. When did bad luck or stupidity become the right of eveyone to profit from?

My $.02 Weed

Today is my wedding anniversary. Seven years. It doesn’t seem like I’m old eneough to be married seven years, but somehow, I have been.

Happily, too. The weird thing is that I have friends who have actually expressed a certain jealousy for how happy we are, but we are. Its really quite cool.

SO.. here it is, TEN RULES FOR BEING A GOOD HUSBAND

1) DONT DO THE OBVIOUS BAD THINGS. This means cheating and hitting. Not even once. Never threaten violence of any kind, and never threaten infidelity.

2) Never go to bed angry. Resolve the matter before you go to sleep.

3) Date night, once a week. Preferably out of the house, but in if it needs to be.

4) Be free with compliments. Look for things to say, and keep track of them in your head. If its been a while, compliment her, and try to make it specific. “You’re pretty” is nice, but you look fantastic in that outfit, or “your hair is great” is even better

5) Establish rules and follow them. For us, screaming, cursing, name calling, or statements like “You always do..” are against the rules. Even if you were right in your point in the argument, if you break a rule, its over and you surrender.

6) Say I’m Sorry. Man this is hard, but it goes a long way. Even for little things, being 5 minutes late.

7) Say thank you, and again, be specific. “Dinner was great” or “Thanks for doing (whatever), I appreciate it”, again goes a really long way.

8) Let her spend some money. You see that stereo and TV and computer? I know we don’t see things like a new outfit or a haircut or new makeup as important, but it might be to her. We’ll never understand a 50 dollar pair of shoes, but then, look at the junk we like to collect.

9) Ask her about her day.. and ask her how specific sagas are going. And listen, take mental notes, and come back to those specifics later.

10) Look for opportunities.. roses, candy, cards. it may all be cliche, but I still get mileage out of the good old 1.99 7-11 rose, or a box of donuts delivered to her work.

And thats all, I could list a hundred more, but the point is that you should love someone. And notice that Love is a verb, not an adjective or noun like other emotions. It is not something you feel, its something you do.

www.skype.com

I need someone to set this up and skype me.

Free P2P internet telephony, anywhere in the world. Skype is labeling themselves as the first P2P telephony provider, avoiding any form of traditional circuit router.

I’ve been using Vonage as my voice-over-IP provider for the past five months. It’s neat being able to call anyplace in the U.S. at anytime for $40 a month through my ISP. But the idea of having a P2P app that enables people to contact each other directly, with better then regular phone quality, for FREE, is way cool.

Seek me out as sam_graber as a contact, interface is the same as any IM program. Make sure you have a VOIP microphone set up first!

Sam

On my way home last night from work, I turned on the radio. I generally only listen perhaps one way to or from work, not for any philosophical reason, but because often I have tunes going through my head that I’m working on, or I have a particular problem I’m thinking about that I need quiet to figure out the solution to… whatever. I caught the last few minutes of the “Most Requested” nightly countdown on 97.1, KZHT.

The first thing that struck me is that there was a song I really enjoyed at one time that I no longer enjoy. It’s by Linkin Park, called “Numb”. The first twenty or thirty times I heard it on the radio, I was really impressed at the unique sound, the powerful lyrics, and the emotional delivery of the lead singer. When I heard it last night, after hearing it so frequently on the once-an-hour rotation schedule over the last several weeks, I was just sick of it. It still has the cool qualities that made it a kick-ass song, I just stopped liking it.

Anyway, after about twenty minutes of commercial break between “number two” and “number one”, “number one” finally came on. I have no idea who sings this song, what their musical history is, or what. The weird thing is, I listen to the radio periodically, and I’d never heard this artist. How’d they get to be “most requested” when they aren’t even on a local rotation?

I figured it out shortly. You see, “Most Requested” is a nationally-syndicated program on Clear Channel. The Utah Audience wouldn’t appreciate this piece of work.

The chorus went, literally, something like this:

F— this for some reason.
F— that for another reason.
F— you, you B—-, I don’t want you back

I wasn’t sure whether to be mortified or laugh really hard. It was like one of those angry songs I wrote when I was fifteen and ticked off at some girl, only worse. The funny part was that they actually cut the works apart so that you only heard the first consonant of the swear word, and a healthy chunk of this otherwise lovely-sounding song was cut-off swear words by the lead singer. And what the heck was it doing on the radio?

I guess I’m officially “old” — I don’t appreciate that kind of art on the radio.

My original point wasn’t that including “bearing arms” didn’t make sense at the time of Constitutional Drafting (it definitely did make sense given the circumstances). My point was that if the Framers had access to a crystal ball that let them see how outrageous the gun-death toll would eventually become, “bearing arms” might not have been part of the Constitution.

I’m against the individual ownership of guns. I don’t need them to feel personally safe or equalized. And owning them and weilding them as an individual ensures great risk.

Here’s why: in the global sailing/cruising coterie, there’s an industry rag called “Cruising World”. Everyone reads it who dreams of sailing around the world or is actually active in sailing around the world. There’s always news from the latitudes that discusses dangerous areas to cruise. These include the coastal waters of Columbia, Yemen, Africa, etc. As part of these articles is always the terrible, sad story of cruisers killed by pirates or drug lords. As it always turns out, the cruisers aren’t killed for their boat or personal possessions. They’re shot the minute they decide to pull out a gun from below deck.

In the international waters of no-holds-barred, you get killed when you pull out a gun. Every cruiser knows that owning a gun is the surest way to get killed. Owning a gun under the pretense of equalization is subscribing to the arms-race fallacy that led to the U.S.-Soviet buildup: peace is only attained when through a balance in firepower. What’s worst is trying to gain superior firepower because cruisers can only provoke. Many stories of boaters pulling out big canons and scaring off pirates temporarily until all the pirate cavalry comes in.

This is in international waters. At home we have laws and a somewhat higher standard of criminal conduct 🙂 But the truth is set in my mind — I don’t win by owning a gun because I don’t set the field equal, I only provoke. To me, the gun is an instant death instrument, not a sense of security or protection.

As most barnson.org readers know, my wife and I just had a baby on Saturday. We received some humorous and valuable tips to pass on to our new arrival, Joshua, when he is old enough to understand them.

It seems curious to me that, often, the greatest of joys are balanced by the greatest of sorrows.

Yesterday, Jackie Broadbent, mother of two grown daughters, wife of Lynn, aunt to my wife Christine, sister of my mother-in-law Marsha, died near Twin Falls, Idaho, in a car accident. She was broadsided and died shortly thereafter.

I always liked Jackie. She helped me with my taxes when I was younger. She helped me start my first business up in Idaho. She worked in the state tax office, and we’d drop by there from time to time when we lived locally just to say hello. She was a fat, jolly woman, who always had a good word for everyone. The first time my wife and I ever had a long kissing session was on her back porch. Waiting for her to show up, I might add 🙂 She never showed up that day; we “waited” for a very long time! We went to Christmas celebrations at her house, and performed the Nativity together down in her cellar, which remarkably resembles a cave. I used to play loudly on her piano, and smile when she’d ask me to play more. We attended her daughter’s wedding reception at her house.

We were never really close, though. I’d see her about once a year, either for a few minutes, or a day or two. And I’m really not sure how to react to this event. My mother-in-law is staying with us, and I’m certain this is very hard on her. For me, knowing Jackie’s gone fills me with a vague kind of sadness that I won’t be seeing her again. I don’t plan on attending her funeral; we have three small children who’ll be home while their mother goes, and I’ll still need to be working since money’s very tight for the next 6-8 weeks as we catch up as the paychecks start arriving in from my new job.

Death is a troubling yet poorly-understood phenomenon. Other than the narrowing of vision to a pinpoint of light, and frequently a great deal of pain, there are no consistent descriptions of what it’s like to die, although often people who have “died” for a few moments and then been revived report some kind of religions visitation that varies by faith. We don’t have any report from someone who’s been stone-dead for a month or two to tell us what it’s really like — or if there’s any existence at all. Other than birth, there’s no other experience in life so dependable for every human being on the planet.

And yet it still causes us, and those around us, grief and sorrow. Is the sorrow for the person who died, or for ourselves that we will no longer see them before it is our day, too, to pass on?