*big flowery tribute to Chris Benoit redacted because I don't do tributes to murderous scumbags who kill their wives and 7-year-old sons*

Wow. That certainly fell apart pretty quickly, didn't it?

The number 4 search on Yahoo today was for "Cats That Look Like Hitler." I was intrigued.

From the site catsthatlooklikehitler.com:

"Do you wake up in a cold sweat every night wondering if he's going to up and invade Poland?"

Too funny.

Lady at work came up to me about 5 minutes ago and posed a scenario that was so mindbogglingly dumb that I still can't wrap my mind around it:

"Have I ever told you about Sandals pre-heating the microwave?"

I stopped dead in my tracks, like I'd been shot.

"Three different people have confirmed this, including myself," she told me. "Sandals will turn the microwave on, let it run for a little while, stop it, put his tea in there and turn it back on."

"..............." I said.

"Do you have any suggestions as to how to broach this with him?"

"............... What?" I replied.

"Yeah," she told me. "Three different people. Including me. I've seen it with my own eyes."

"Huh," I said. "Well. I appreciate that you've come to me for a solution. I will do my best to give you some ideas on Monday. I'm just not in a position - not right now, not right after you telling me the most incredibly stupid shit I've ever heard - to put my mind to it."

"Please do," she said. "Cause it's not good for the microwave."

The 40-year-old virgin and his child bride

At first, I believed that there was no good reason to comment on this story, but then I reconsidered for reasons that will become apparent. It's a bad story, about a bad man and a misguided, stupid teenager who thinks she knows what's best for her and honestly has no clue.

Trust me: that's not just the chastity-belt devotee in me talking, either. Rather, my personal experience in a somewhat similar situation gives me the authority to add my $.02 and halfway sound like I know what I'm talking about.

In a nutshell, the story linked above tells the story of a 40-year-old cross-country coach in the Carolinas and one of his 16-year-old female runners. The cross-country coach, who was also a teacher, resigned his position after marrying that girl. The Letorneau case brought to light a lot of these teacher-student relationships that are incredibly damaging to teens, to communities, to the concept of trust that is supposed to exist between educators and their young charges, and this is another sad example.

Here's my story:

I, too, was the Smartest Teenager in the World about 15 years ago. I fell in with someone twice my age at that point - amazing what a little "attention" can do for a boy who really didn't get any of that kind of attention up to that point - and am just thankful that I didn't marry her like she begged as time wore on. I can't imagine the shitheap that my life would be now if I had - not that it's the Ritz today, mind you, but still way better than what the alternative could have been.

Despite the best efforts of my friends and family, who I went on to alienate over the course of those three years, I stayed with her till the bitter end, because dammit, I was almost an adult and knew what was best for me, and the hell with everyone who tried to steer me down the right course. They didn't understand, I rationalized, so fuck'em. (Yes, this was my actual thought process. Not bad, huh?)

In retrospect, it was the dumbest three years of my life. And, truth be told, I regret it every day. It's a scar that will not heal, despite the fact that it's been almost 12 years since I went down in flames, standing in the rain at a payphone calling my mom with my last roll of quarters and telling her how right she was.

*****

If I had any advice for Windy, the child bride in the linked article above, it'd be this:

You're 16, so you don't understand the concept of "regret." Be assured that maybe 3 years from now, if you graduate high school and go on to college (a long shot, at this point - let's be frank here), or maybe 10 years from now, you will wake up and ask yourself, "What have I done?" And then after the end, after you've managed to move on and maybe even start a family with someone who's really way more understanding than you'll deserve, who will overlook the fact that you are damaged goods, you'll continue to ask yourself, "What was I thinking?"

This is something you'll have to live with, the weight you'll have to carry.

I don't know your supposed attraction (infatuation) with a predator who, right now, is 2 1/2 times your age. (What - is the word "predator" too strong a term? What else could it be, really?) And have you considered his "attraction" to you? Surely you don't think that your love was built on the fact that he shares your affection for The Cheetah Girls, do you?

Honest to God, Windy. I don't blame you. Not in the least. You made a decision that, in your mind, seems "right" - which speaks volumes for the quality of education in your school, I suppose.

You know how to run, so do it. Please. For your own sake, for the sake of your family, for the sake of your conscience some years from now.

Trust me when I tell you that everything I just told you is right.

****

I can't even muster the righteous indignation required for a response to the parents, who apparently (at gunpoint?) agreed to the sham of a marriage that their daughter finds herself in now.

And I can't find the proper words for the teacher/coach in the story. Not without including the phrase "fuck off and die in a river of shit." That said - how dare you damage this girl who is 24 years your junior! 24 years!!! What, your life hasn't panned out as you'd hoped, so you might as well perpetuate the misery by ruining some poor girl's life/hopes/dreams? You are ridiculous and, quite frankly, you need stop being so Goddamned selfish, put your thing back in your pants and reconsider the harm that you're doing to her; I don't care how "beautiful" your love is.

A couple of months ago, I was at my local BMV to get my license plates renewed. In the window of a neighboring business, I spied a poster of Your Man Mitch (Indiana's Governor Daniels, for the uninitiated) posing with the lady from Martinsville who was on that weight-loss reality show some time back. They were promoting Indiana's "Eat Less Shit, You Lardasses" campaign or something.

I was able to get a hold of one of the shots that didn't make the promotional cut, and I'd have to say it is entirely more appropriate than the one they used.

I dropped out of the Coffee Achievers some years ago when I noticed that taking a full convenience-store-sized thermos of the stuff to work every day really cut into my work productivity (and increased my liquid productivity nearly tenfold).

So, when my wife returned from Chicago some months ago with a taste for Starbucks' chocolate-covered espresso beans, I scoffed.

Damned if I'm not addicted to the friggin' things now. This pisses me off.

Caution: Blog May Be Hot.

Delving a little further into the asinine:

I was making some spaghetti tonight. (That's not the asinine part.) And if you're going to have spaghetti, you've got to have garlic bread, right?

I pulled the bread from the freezer to check the time and temperature portion of it, and this instruction jumped out at me:

IMPORTANT: REMOVE BREAD FROM BAG.

I wonder how we got to this point in our civilization's evolution. More precisely, how we made it here unscathed, without burn marks on our hands.

This is probably the most asinine shit ever put out by an ad agency. Have you seen this crap at your local BP station? If so, what was your reaction? Mine was, "This shit is asinine."

It's a campaign begging to be photoshopped, so I withhold all punchlines until the final product is assembled.

Asinine, I tell you.

Comes from Tokyo this news that the island of Iwo Jima - which apparently was never officially named Iwo Jima, says the linked article - is being renamed Iwo To, which apparently was its name before the war.

I don't have anything to add to this, other than this:

When I lived in Bart Villa with The Captain and G.I. Matt, we had in our possession a VHS copy of John Wayne's "Sands of Iwo Jima." It sat on its end on the TV cabinet next to other movies. Our friend Lisa (horribly missed) came over one evening, spied the movie from a distance, and said, "...... 'Sands of Two Jims'?"

And you thought I'd put something pointless here.

Stop me if you've heard this one.

For a short time, the bananas at the supermarket where I shop had Curious George stickers on them. These were cute - they remind me of my son, and I've got five or six of them on my computer monitor at work.

But Curious George is no more. His stickers have been replaced by stickers that have Bobby Banana on them.

I don't want Bobby fucking Banana, I want Curious George!

Grrrr.

I think the dog's name is Tucker, but when the lady who lives down the road (who hates me) yells it, from a distance, it sounds like "Fucker." Which is about right, because the Fucker won't stay out of my yard or out of my trash cans.

Oh -- why does she hate me? Because when we had our puppy about a year ago, I was having some words with it one morning, and she was walking up the road in a half-hearted stab at exercise, and she saw me flip the puppy off. I think she saw me do it, anyway.

She's been a bitch to me ever since. Not overtly. But little things, like not waving when I wave at her when I pass her on the road, pooping in my sunflowers, spraying "Fuck Off, Puppy Hater" on the north wall of my garage, etc.

Hep.

In Indiana - especially in my neck of the woods - interest in football has never been what you'd consider "strong," save for an enclave up around South Bend. It took over a decade, and closer to two, for the Colts to engender passion among its fans statewide. Outside of Notre Dame, major college football in the state is a shaky proposition, as it's been almost 15 years since IU last went to a bowl game (and 40 years since its only Rose Bowl appearance), while Purdue has had occasional flashes of brilliance in its decades of mediocrity. Down south, the size of a lot of the high schools (like those in my area), not to mention the expense of fielding a team, preclude them from doing so. The state sporting landscape begins and, for a lot of people, ends with basketball.

It is into this environment that Terry Hoeppner stepped when he came to IU in 2005 - his "dream job," he said! - to try to breathe life into a moribund football program (a program that was in such bad shape that it couldn't even make a bowl with All-Everything Antwaan Randle El calling the signals). People chuckled when, at his introductory news conference, Hoeppner placed a single rose in a glass bowl to symbolize his ambition of returning the Hoosiers to the Rose Bowl. "Not at this school, not in this conference," the naysayers said. "Rose Bowl? Heh. Do they still have the Poulan Weed-Eater Independence Bowl?"

And I was among them. Save for a few years in the late '80s, when Anthony Thompson was breaking records and IU was at least competing with Michigan and Ohio State, IU has never been considered a world-beater in football, and the best that they've often been able to hope for was third or fourth place in the conference. Usually, the results were worse than that; the Hoosiers have been prone, every couple of years, to laying an egg in a big game and getting destroyed. Even as recently as last season, when the Hoosiers had an opportunity to make a bowl game by winning but one of their last three games, they gave up 63 points to an awful Minnesota team, which was the closest thing to a "gimmie" that they had left on their schedule. And then, not unexpectedly, they lost to Michigan and put up a good fight before falling short against Purdue.

But - the Minnesota anomaly aside - you could sense a change in the program. I said in this space after IU's upset of Iowa last year:

In spite of the fact that Coach Hep will have them taking the field believing they can win, they'll take their beating against top-ranked Ohio State this weekend.

And they did. But the important thing was this: There is no doubt the IU team that took the field against Ohio State believed that they could compete against the Buckeyes' All-World athletes, even if the rest of the world didn't. It sounds too Hollywood, sure. But Hoeppner was a dreamer. He had huge dreams, and his team, his university, his community, his state were buying into those dreams.

What an inspiration, really. Optimism? Surrounding IU football? What, are you smoking crack???

If you've been following the story, though, you know that Coach Hoeppner wasn't doing well. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor in late 2005, and had two surgeries over the last 18 months. The saga took an ominous turn earlier this month, when IU's athletic director expressed "concern" about Hoeppner's current medical leave, and the fact that he hadn't even made a public appearance for months.

Last Friday, the university elevated one of the team's assistants to interim head coach for 2007 to give Hoeppner more time to (ideally) heal - if you were any bit of a realist, though, you had a gnawing feeling that for all of his fight and his spirit, Hoeppner probably wouldn't be back on the sidelines. The implication from the AD was that Hoeppner's brain cancer had returned.

Terry Hoeppner passed away this morning at 59.

Coach Hoeppner meant a lot more to other people than he did to me - I was only a fan - but my hands are shaking as I type this. A lot of people will couch his death strictly in football terms - "What a tragic loss for the IU football program; he really had things turned around there" - but when you consider what a great person he seemed to be, infusing everything he touched with an indefatigable sense of optimism and positivity, you realize that his loss is bigger than football. My condolences to everyone near him - his family, his team, his colleagues.

Will tomorrow be the day?

I hope so, because I photoshopped a nifty neat graphic to announce it.

****

This past weekend, we visited Connersville to take in the "Day Out With Thomas" deal at their restored train station. It somehow seems inappropriate to delve much further into it than that, seeing as how people who might visit this blog for my thoughts on DOWT would also see the post below, where the president is flipping off his supporters.

But it was a great time.

"See you at the bill signing," the president said when it became apparent that the "not-amnesty" bill (that was amnesty) that just died in Congress would soon be resurrected.

The arrogance is galling.

If he's ever on the ballot again for a national office, remind me that I'd be better off taking my ballot out of the machine, throwing it down and pissing on it.

By backing the wrong kind of illegal-immigration reform, in spite of the screaming - screaming! - from conservatives, he and his cohorts in Congress might as well be telling their base:

God, if the Libertarian Party were viable, I'd be so there.

And, while they're at it, they need to bring back Mr. Wrestling, too.

It wasn't quite a life-changing epiphany, but I had a cool thought a minute ago.

There oughta be a wrestler called the Virginia Creeper.

See, the selling point would be that he's from Virginia. And he, you know, creeps.

Also, like his namesake plant, his berries would be fatal to mammals, so he'd keep a bird close by (since birds feed off them).

And when he wrestles on TV, a fan would hold up a sign that would say, "Virginia Creeper Is Creepy."

But most importantly, he'd be from Virginia. And he … well, you know the rest.

It can't be any worse than The Boogeyman, an actual WWE character.

Update: You could probably also call any particular car that Ward Burton or Ricky Rudd is driving, or any Wood Brothers car, the "Virginia Creeper," which isn't an indictment of their driving abilities so much as it is that their cars have the speed and aerodynamics of garden slugs. "Well, the Virginia Creeper qualified in the back this week, but we'll try and use pit strategy to make us a top-20 car. As long as my gasman doesn't pour salt on my car, we should be fine."

Earnhardt to Hendrick Motorsports; "Son of a bitch," says everyone who is tired of Hendrick Motorsports

That is all.

In a minute, it will all be coming down.

And they know it now, but no one makes a sound.

More later.

With apologies to The Captain and his concept of Mankind Temporary Agency franchises, I have recently come to believe that Lemmy Kilmister, Microsoft Office Expert would be pretty funny. Will post a resumé later.

My 15 favorite Belle & Sebastian songs:

1. Simple Things
2. Seeing Other People
3. Ease Your Feet In The Sea
4. Piazza, New York Catcher
5. If You're Feeling Sinister
6. The State That I Am In
7. The Boy With The Arab Strap
8. Beautiful
9. I'm A Cuckoo
10. She's Losing It
11. Step Into My Office, Baby
12. Like Dylan in the Movies
13. Dirty Dream Number Two
14. Me and the Major
15. I Fought In A War

Before the Dover race last week, with Ricky Rudd coming off a fuel-mileage-aided 7th-place finish at Charlotte, I was going to calculate what it would take for Rudd to catapult roughly 2o positions and make The Chase. "The corner, while not completely turned yet, is imminent," I assured myself.

I'm glad I didn't bother now, as he was crashed out by his teammate at Dover, and bitten by the rain at Pocono, though for the life of me, I'll never, ever, ever understand what the 88's crew chief was thinking, keeping him out as long as he did (other than the 5 bonus points that would have came if he'd led a lap, which he didn't). It's not like Ricky's fuel load could have lasted till past halfway, when rain was assuredly imminent. A needed top-20 run, blown apart by bad strategy.

And how's your driver doing? If his name isn't Michael Waltrip, he's likely doing better than Ricky.

Stop draggin' my heart around.

My second interview for that position was 10 days ago. At that point, I was promised that it would be that Thursday or Friday that I would hear something, because the hiring manager was going on vacation the following Monday.

Of course, as you well know by now, Thursday and Friday passed without word, and I came crashing down to earth. Knowing that I had to endure at least another week before hearing something was crushing.

That week has passed, and the hiring manager is back from Walley World. And it starts again: "Have you heard anything yet?" My coworkers want me to have the job as much as I do, which ... speaks volumes for how much they'll miss me when I'm gone, I guess. Please. Go!

Good Boss called me this morning from home. "Have you got a phone call yet?"

Me: "Stop fucking with me."

Good Boss: "No, seriously, have you gotten it yet?"

Me: "No. Why? Should I be expecting one?"

Good Boss: "I don't know."

Me: "Come on, man. Stop fucking with me. Should I be expecting to get a phone call about the position today?"

Good Boss: "I don't know."

I don't know whether he was being coy or honestly didn't know. Whatever the case, it has artificially inflated my hopes again. And I waited by the phone all day, with no phone call to speak of at the end of it.

The world is an ass.

Lileks linked to this last week.

Gawd.

It's mindless, probably the most mindless thing since this, but it does answer the question that has haunted men since the days of Martin Luther:

Do you has a bucket?

Well, does you?

(I wrote this last week, before my interview. As for the interview itself, I thought I killed. Apparently I didn't kill, or even injure, since I still haven't heard yet.)

The e-mail made my heart skip before it fell into my stomach. (My heart, not the e-mail.)

"Would you be available for an interview Thursday morning at 10am?"

Does the Pope … ahhh, nevermind.

This is a second interview for the position I interviewed for a couple of weeks ago. My confidence has mostly ebbed in the interim, and more than once in the last couple of weeks have I felt like I'm going to be stuck in my current position forever.

But yesterday … getting that e-mail yesterday was better than crack. (Not like I'd know.) But it's like someone has changed the 100-watt at the end of the tunnel, and now that it's shining brightly once more, I can sprint toward it again instead of groping blindly along the wall and stepping in rat shit and ending up with spiders down my shirt and getting harassed by bats.