Hold On... I'm in the Middle.

Look, B&E readers. I've just been busy, okay? I've got a tough nut of a project that I'm working on in all of my spare time, and it's a bit all-consuming. So you'll have to accept my apologies. If you don't accept my apologies, well, up yours.

Also, it's looking like I'm going to have to migrate this blog soon, because Blogger has decided that it doesn't want to use its resources to allow people like me to use their blogging tools without a blogspot address.

I would say something insulting to Blogger now (like the "up yours" I gave to the readers who don't accept my apologies), if Blogger weren't owned by Google, which is a company that could hurt me very badly without my ever knowing it was Google that hurt me. They're very crafty that way.

Anyway, everything should still be on the same B&E channel, but it's probably gonna look different. That's alright, I suppose. While I'm at it, I'll probably update my links too. Since it's been a few years.

Mordant Has an Awesome Name

It's that time again, B&E readers. I have recently received some terrific comments from some terrific readers, and I'm now sharing one of them with you.

Some of you may recall that when the missus and I visited Sweden a few years back, I had a few thoughts about the many Swedes with their many dreadlocks. Well, a fellow called Mordant, if that is indeed his name, took umbrage:

I don't usually post on blogs either and I live in Sweden and what you are talking is utter rubbish..You are a closeminded moron btw. And furthermore I have dreads and a doctorate, I don't see your point! What have you done lately to improve your society. You should go out and do some social work rather than write utter drivel on blog sites!

Well, Mordant, if that is indeed your name it is the most awesome name in the world. Oh, wait, excuse me, Mordant. You said you have a doctorate, so I should be calling you Dr. Mordant. Dr. Mordant, I apologize to you and your dreadlocks. I'm sorry to have insulted you, your dazzling intellect, and your style sense. Please forgive me my trespasses against your person, your higher degree, and your locks aplenty. And seriously, Dr. Mordant, I wish I had your name. It is awesome.

And as a point of clarification, Dr. Mordant. I don't write utter drivel on blog sites. I write utter drivel on MY blog site. Technically, you are the guest here. But hey, since you have the post-college degree and the tangled, matted hair, you can be as rude as you wish to be. On my blog. Please visit any time, Dr. Mordant.

Your name is awesome.

Thank You for Your Patience

Oh, B&E readers, I do not take you (all seven of you) for granted. I know I have been terribly lax during my time in the wilderness, especially in the past couple of weeks. But I have been thinking of you.

And as I return to the land of the urban, I shall regale you with stories. Oh, yes, I shall.

For example, I now know how to take down a goose. Not that I've had to. But I could. So if, on my way off the farm, that gray bastard of a gander comes my way, I'm fucking ready for him. In or out of my car.

Comments That Make Me Happy

I've had "a week," as people say, so I haven't focused much energy on B&E in the past few days. I still don't have much to say, so let me turn to people who say things in the B&E comments section instead.

For reasons probably having to do with Google, several old posts seem to garner more attention than others and continue to reap the benefits of comments long after they were written.

To my screed against dreadlocks (in relation to their ubiquity in Sweden), I received this comment, from Anonymous (if that is indeed his or her name):

I usually dont comment on blogs, but the sheer stupidity of this post left me with no choices...

Get a life man....seriously..

This one really made me happy. I offer no defense for my stupidity except to say, "Watch your use of ellipses and apostrophes. And your dreadlocks don't look nearly as good as you think they do, Whitey. Shave them."

Some of my posts on the Bad Advertising on NY1 seem to get some late attention, too. Related to my post about Hillside Honda, Anonymous (if that is indeed his or her name - gosh, I wonder if it's the same person as Dreadlocked Whitey above) writes:

Dat's my daughtah Angelah ... she's a beautiful goyl!! Ohhhhh!

What I really wish is that I could hear that last "Ohhhhh!" the way the writer intends it because I'm not sure that my reading of it is what Anonymous had in mind.

Apparently, those Binder & Binder ads are international. Who knew? Well, I know that now (and so do you) thanks to Rossvegas (if that is indeed his name):

Hey, I'm up here in Canada and we get the amazing Binder Lid™ here too. I'm guessing he's hiding a bald dome, because that hat is just WAY too ridiculous to be worn otherwise.

Nice touch on that little TM after "Binder Lid."

Those are just a few of the recent comments inspired by the latest ramblings of B&E.

I'd be remiss if I failed to mention two other things:

First of all, a special shout-out goes to Curt (Bald Bro), if that is indeed his name, for keeping us all informed in the latest of head-shavings from around the country and world.

And finally, I was pleased to learn recently that if you Google "feckless weenies," B&E is the second result. I can live with a silver medal in the "feckless weenie" category. I'd like to thank my mom and dad, my agent, and God.

Please Be Patient With Me

Ho, there, B&E readers. I'm going through a generally uninspired patch at the moment, and when you couple that with the general busy-ness that happens after returning from a lengthy vacation, well, it means All Quiet on the B&E Front, I'm afraid.

Bear with me, and I'll soon be returning to regularly scheduled programming.

Another Belated Comment

A semi-regular and odd occurrence takes place here at B&E: someone finds an old post while doing some zealous Googling and then leaves a comment. I get my alert and am occasionally disappointed that the rest of my (six) readers don't get to enjoy the brilliance therein.

Yes, it's happened again. Long-time readers may recall that the missus and I took a fantastic vacation back in 2007 to a place called Sweden. It's in Northern Europe, in an area sometimes referred to as Scandinavia.

In one of my vacation reports I discussed the shocking number of dreadlocks to be found on this nearly exclusive white population. I'm not a fan of dreadlocks on white people, as I wrote back then.

It seems that my report ruffled the feathers of a certain Will (if that is indeed his name)...

Wow both of yous are close minded fucking losers.. Stop looking at
other men and judging them if you dont like their hair and get a life,
out of all the things u probably saw you pick out peoples hair haha

"haha" indeed, Will. Good one.

There's much to respond to in Will's insightful comment, of course, from punctuation to spelling and back again, but I think that rather than get into all of that sort of snobbery, I shall instead leave it at this:

Cut off your dreadlocks, Will, if that is indeed your name. They don't look as good as you think they do.

Please Allow For Some Narcissism

(Although, let's face it: blogging is in general an exercise in narcissism.)

It had been quite some time since I reviewed the stats around B&E, and my kind host friend (and occasional troubleshooter) was good enough to link me to a summary. I won't go on and on about this, but there were a few things I found curious.

What are people Googling when they find my humble website? Six of the top seven query results are related to tattoos, with some variation of "bad ass tattoos" taking the top three spots on the list. In fact, if you do a Google image search for "badass tattoos," it is a photo of the missus' tattoo on B&E that is the first search result. I can't say that I expected that. But it sure does please me.

Slightly more predictable is that some people are still finding B&E by searching for "Rex Tillerson" or "Rex Tillerson salary." I was happy to see "dachshunds" on the list and a bit disconcerted by seeing "huge dick" on there.

Perhaps the best news of all though is that a fair number of people found this humble site by searching for "bald lesbians." I'm proud to be a friendly place for the lesbian community, particularly the bald lesbian (or bald Lesbian) community.

And since I was just the other day accused of writing about lesbians (or Lesbians) every fourth or fifth post, I thought I would try not to disappoint that particular reader by ignoring the l/Lesbians this week.

Request for Hotties!

Although I rarely reply to the comments people post here on B&E, I do read them. And apparently, my diverse readership has equally diverse taste in hotties. "Eye Candy," "Butch Babes," "Asians," "Six Toes," "Cream Puffs," "Beef/Cheese Cake," and the like are all fine descriptors, but it will be very difficult for me to please everyone without names. Put names below, anonymously if you must, and I will attempt to find hot photos of those hotties to include with my baseball posts.

Thank you for your readership.

Sunnyside Drugstore Update

Long-time readers will need to tolerate some exposition.

Sunnyside was once home to Bloom's, the finest pub around. It (and much of the block) burned to the ground. For years, the Bloom's half-block was a hole in the ground. Demolition/construction workers cracked the foundation of a neighboring building. Rumors of a cursed block wafted through the neighborhood (or at least on B&E).

The cursed block became a mostly unattractive apartment building with retail on the ground floor. Because we need our drugs here in Sunnyside, the retail space became a CVS.

That CVS has quickly become the shittiest drugstore in the neighborhood, and we've got one Rite Aid that redefined shitty.

I went into CVS today because the missus and I needed some new hair clippers. With two head-shavers in the family, we can burn through the $20 clippers. Anyway, the hair clippers were locked up (fair enough). There were more employees in that store than customers, and it still took a good ten minutes before someone could help me. There was a line clogging up the entire front of the store, and every time someone left, the alarm system went off. They had one employee standing by her register waving people through. And it just sort of feels dirty in there. Dirt-dirty and a little sleazy-dirty both.

In other words, dear B&E readers, that block remains cursed.

And I also really like linking to myself. (Those are just a couple of random selections.)

Some Quick Updates to B&E

I've been thinking of the many ways I could debunk Mitt Romney's claims to be the savior of the economy (beginning with the failed logic that someone who knows how to become individually super-rich will also be good for the people, the masses, the country), but instead I opted for some housecleaning on this here blog.

That's right, dear B&E readers: Link updates!

I won't tell you who's now gone, but suffice to say some of those people don't update their sites enough. Nothing personal against any of you who may still visit B&E, but I was getting tired of clicking on my own links to your sites only to find posts leftover from almost a year ago.

Because of the addition and subtractions, I've reorganized the links back into their original two categories: Bald & Effective.

Under Bald Links I give you bravenewfrickenworld. Why she's bald and why it's a bravenewfrickenworld will become clear upon reading. This woman can write her ass off, so be prepared for enlightening frankness.

Flabbypants I predict will be a baby/motherhood/why-do-my-nipples-hurt site for a while, which may interest some of you. The writer throws up the occasional gossip item as well, and she remains on the Bald Link list because for reasons I can't recall we decided she was going bald in high school. Hey, Flabbypants, were you going bald in high school?

Other than the missing, we've got the usual suspects, clickable over there to the right. A couple of reminders if you haven't checked them out lately. In addition to our new links above, under Bald Links:

Foster Park is a new photo link from a regular linked presence.
Frank Dodge continues his misadventures in the woods of Vermont.

On the Effective side of the links, I'm happy to introduce you to I Don't Know, which rather likes to ponder the larger questions in life and manages to find some genuine insight in her outlandish claims to not know. I'm onto you, I Don't Know.

Then, the other usuals under Effective Links:

Titivil offers smart snark in addition to his diligent posting schedule.
Virgil's always there with an absurdity (more frequent updates, please?).
bshort takes the pretty pictures.
Babble On keeps me up-to-date on life in Topeka.
Early-Adopter comments on the art world.
Hall Farm continues its terrific arts and education programming.
The Nation reminds us what all journalism should be.

And by the way, with my two lists a little unequal in size, I'd appreciate it if any of you Effective Links would be willing to admit that you're bald enough to be included in my Bald Links. Just let me know if you think you are bold and bald enough. I'm talking to you, The Nation.

This is Scotland Calling

It's that time of year again, dear B&E readers, when instead of having no excuse for not writing, I have a perfectly good one. I'm heading out of town for a few days, and I don't expect there to be much happening here at B&E.

But hey, maybe one of my resolutions for 2008 will be posting more often than twice (and sometimes thrice) weekly. That'd be a worthy resolution. We'll see if I bother to resolve, and if I do bother, whether or not it sticks.

Whatever you celebrate, I hope you celebrate well. Git stuff't wi' ye Rabbie Burns kilt-wearin' selves on a plate o'haggis. And while that doesn't actually mean anything, it sure sounds Scottish to me.

My Favorite Day

No, it's not my birthday! It's not Christmas, Easter, or Arbor Day! Today is No Pants Day!

No more screwing around, B&E readers! Take off your pants! Anything worth doing is worth doing without pants!

Driving your car? Drive without pants! Taking a flight? Fly without pants! Visiting your mother? Visit without pants!

For the love of all that is great in this world! TAKE OFF YOUR DAMNED PANTS!

God, I love you all so much...

Happy Easter!

As you tuck into your leg of lamb this evening, I hope you'll remember the true meaning of Easter.

For when the angel rolled the stone away, and Jesus presented his resurrected self to those still mourning his death, his first words were, "I've been to hell and back, so give me some freakin' chocolate." They did, and behold: it was good.

So gorge on chocolate, dear readers. It comes in many delicious forms, and any should be considered appropriate for Easter:

Chocolate kisses, chocolate nuggets, chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies, high-end chocolate, low-end chocolate, domestic chocolate, imported chocolate, fair-trade chocolate, children-made chocolate, organic chocolate, conventional chocolate, liquid chocolate, solid chocolate, molten chocolate, powdered chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, semisweet chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, pure chocolate, peanut butter and chocolate, coconut and chocolate, fruit and chocolate, caramel and chocolate, peanuts and chocolate, hazelnuts and chocolate, almonds and chocolate, toffee and chocolate, nougat and chocolate, chocolate bars, chocolate cookies, chocolate brownies, chocolate cake, chocolate pie, chocolate creme brulee, chocolate wafers, chocolate chips, chocolate shavings, chocolate ribbons, chocolate drizzle, chocolate icing, chocolate ganache, chocolate-covered cherries, chocolate-covered blueberries, chocolate-covered espresso beans, chocolate-covered graham crackers, chocolate-covered cornflakes, chocolate-covered Cheerios, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and fudge.

It's Easter, and Jesus ate the chocolate, thus fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy. So if you don't eat some chocolate, you're being a bad Christian.

All About Me and You

I've spent much of my spare time since the holiday known by Christians as Christmas doing two things:

The first is filling my iPod. This is time-consuming because my iPod is considerably larger than my computer (in terms of memory, not physical size). So I load a CD, transfer it onto my iPod, then erase it from my computer again. There's probably an easier and quicker way, but since I don't know what it is, this is how I'm doing it.

The other has been the retooling of B&E, which I mentioned in a previous post. Blogger is no longer in beta and can do things it couldn't before. So I've now labeled most of my previous 750+ posts with headings. Hilary, for example, has been wanting to read just my baseball writings for years. Now she can. In fact, if she wants to relive the play-by-play of my Mets live-blog during the playoffs, she can click on "Mets." Or if she wants to read all my non-Mets baseball writings, including my own baseball-playing adventures in Vermont, she can check out the entries labeled "baseball." Hilary will never be without my baseball writings again.

There are still some problems, though, I must admit. The archives, for example, don't seem to link to the archives. This is a problem.

I've also added a few links. Under "Bald Links" you'll notice two old links renamed. And I've added Frank Dodge and Ali. I've never met Frank in person, but I'm assuming he's bald. If he's not, he has my apologies, and I will alter the location of his link sometime in 2009, when I get around to it. The other bald link is Ali. I went to high school with Ali, and for reasons I can't quite recall, we used to tease her about going bald. She wasn't remotely going bald. But I wanted to even out my list of bald links, so for our purposes, Ali is once again going bald.

Under "Effective Links" I finally updated Ballpeen Hammer's name to Virgil. And I added a link to The Nation because everyone should read The Nation.

Then I added some "Topeka Links" for my Kansas people. Most of you know that I grew up there, and these are the people who (with one exception) knew me then (Ali was among us, of course, but it's funnier to keep her under "Bald Links"). Early Adopter is actually a New Yorker now, but we knew each other back when we looked alike. And Early Adopter, let's not let our current greatness cause us to forget our humble beginnings, eh?

Current greatness. That's a good one.

Doing a Little Retooling

Blogger got all upgraded on my ass, and now I'm spending more time than I want to be spending making updates to B&E. Eventually, I assume, this will include updating some links.

I've already begun doing some labeling, with the idea that if you want to see all the Dickheads at once you'll be able to do so. Labeling more then 750 blog entries is fairly time-consuming, so you might have to wait for that process to be complete. The labels, though, aren't appearing on the actual site where it says the labels will be on the template, and I'm finding this to be very upsetting at the moment. The labels look stupid where they are right now, and they're supposed to be under the comments, which is what makes sense. I think I'll complain.

It's Saturday and I have to go to the post office. Some of you, then, will know why I'm feeling a bit cranky.

May Your Bald Year Be Effective

I had me some days off of work to hang out with the mom, who came into town with her latest man. I swear to Christ that woman goes through men faster than bears eat honey. Not really, of course, but once in a while I gotta make sure she's still an avid reader. Hell, she might be my only reader.

Anyway, we all had ourselves a lovely Christmas holiday, and took in pretty decent hauls. I'm looking forward to going blind using my new video iPod.

Now I'm back at work again, and the world is minus one James Brown and one Gerald Ford. We can go back and forth and on and on about who had a bigger influence on America and Americans, but the one thing we can all agree on, I suspect, is that never has there been a death-pairing of two more-alike public figures.

Please allow me, dear B&E readers, to take this moment to wish you the happiest of all 2007s. OK, maybe not the happiest, since I'd like to keep the happiest one for myself, but there should be plenty of happy in the world for all of you to have a little happy of your own.

And how about some peace in the Middle East? Anyone? Hello? Is this thing on?

Months Later and Still Pissing People Off

I don't believe that admitting I'm wrong makes me less than a real man. It is many other things that make me less than a real man.

To summarize a continuing saga, I'm still receiving occasional comments to my April post naming CEO Rex Tillerson of Exxon Dickhead of the Week. Yesterday's post by anonymous (which I had no idea was such a common name!) reads like this:

Talk about a dickhead... you don't even know how to spell the name of the company!

Well, anonymous, if that is indeed your name, you're right. I did misspell the name of the company. Apparently, it's ExxonMobil, not Exxon Mobile.

But in fairness to myself, I'm not sure that misspelling the world's most profitable corporation's name makes me a dickhead (even a lowercase dickhead). There are many other things that make me a dickhead (even an uppercase Dickhead), perhaps, but poor spelling is not one of them.

If anything, I'm guilty of being able to tune out the ExxonMobil corporate branding efforts. At worst, this makes me clueless, autistic, or even retarded. At best, I am an unsusceptible consuming American. And we are a rare breed indeed.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm sitting here watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade... oh, excuse me... the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade... and it occurs to me that other than the warm feelings of nostalgia I feel, I hate the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Lip-synched musical numbers, tacky floats, silly marching bands... who needs it?

Hey, look! Tom Otterness did a balloon! Cool!

I found the parade on NBC first, but it's also on CBS. How the hell does that work? And why?

That new (old) Snoopy as World War I Flying Ace balloon kicks ass, though. And it's brought to us by United Features Syndicates. Why do I need to know that?

Maybe I don't get it because I don't have any damned kids, but what's the deal with Laurie Berkner?

And why the fuck does Barbie get a goddamned musical number?

OK, I'm not turning this into a live blog of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But it's an idea for next year, assuming I'm not doing any cooking.

Seriously, the parade is stupid. And yet I can't stop watching. I hate it. I love it. I hate myself. I love myself.

Eat lots of turkey, everybody. Can we get a "Bah Humbug!"?

Might Be Spotty

pretty farm
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Dear B&E Readers,

I'm currently at Hall Farm, conveniently pictured for your enjoyment. Although rather than looking like the picture, it's raining like a banshee (yes, banshees rain), and the place is in utter chaos.

You see, it's less than a week before their artist residency season begins, so it's time to finish the beautifying. At the moment, it's mostly just a mess.

I say this because I don't anticipate having much time for regular posting this week. If I did, I might say something about these items...

-- As Phil pointed out, Lastings Milledge (the Mets top prospect) is being called up to join the team because Xavier "Who?" Nady had to get his appendix removed. Looks like I was a bit hasty with the Xady Watch this week. Ah, well. So Who's on the DL, and now we'll get a chance to see if the prospect is all his prospectus says he is. Boy, if he is, I'll gladly retire the weekly Xady Watch. Although it might be fun to have reports from the recovery room... Hey, Who! A guy on the McNeill's Brewers was pitching less than a week after an appendectamy. And he's not getting your salary. I'm not calling you a pussy or anything, Who, but if you're not back on that field by Monday, I'll be considering it.

-- Dickhead of the Week would almost certainly be Senator Bill "Frisky" Frist. Frisky's about to introduce a constitutional amendment based on discrimination. Discrimination against whom, you ask? Well, the queers of course. For when the Right fails at everything else, they need to distract the masses by reiterating their hatred for the queers. Fuck you, Frisky. That's not what our constitution is for. What a Dickhead.

-- And then, out of the darkness, a reasonable Republican comes forth. I'd probably give a special Anti-Dickhead of the Week award to Mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg. I've got my issues with the mayor -- millions in contributions to Dubya and bringing the Republican National Convention to our fine city are but two shining examples -- but in his radio address this week, Mayor Mike said he's ready to let gay couples marry. If the court says it's OK, he'll go right ahead and have City Hall get on it. He spoke clearly and eloquently about why he thinks Frisky's move is nothing but assholery (my paraphrase), and believes that the government is in no position to say who can marry and who cannot. Good for you, Mayor Mike.

I'm sure there'd be more, and maybe I'll have some time to touch on those mores, but in the meantime, I'm sanding and painting, sanding and painting, sanding and painting...

I hope you, my fine B&E readers, will understand a brief absence.

WTF?

If you do a Google search for Rex Tillerson, B&E's DotW entry for April 7 is at the top of the second page of searching. I did the search myself because for reasons I couldn't quite explain, this old entry has gotten a couple of recent comments.

I'm so Bald & Effective I'm taking over the internet(s)!

Bwoo-ha-ha-ha-HAAAAAAA!

After a Short Break...

I think I'm back up and running. I'd like to thank you, dear B&E readers, for your patience as I've been transferring my domain name over to a new host (or whatever the fuck the technical jargon is).

A special shout-out to bshort, whose photography you should all go look at now, while I figure out what to post next. Without bshort (the man, not the photography), the transfer would never have been possible.

In the meantime, I'll need to figure out what to shoot you all in the face (and heart!) with first...

Happy B&E Thanksgiving

Here's a fun little project, if you need a little time away from the family on this turkey day of days. It all starts off simply enough, but then it gets complicated in ways only engineers could conceive of. Enjoy!