The Q Brings Children Into The Battle

Proving what a scurrilous scoundrel he actually is the Q has started forcing children to try to wage his war. Reports are that Q has threatened to assassinate Santa Clause if the children did not take arms for his diabolical cause. Already the streets are lined with children mourning the promised execution that Q has brought upon them.

Update From the Front Lines
Soldiers laughingly say, "Q's Army Is a Joke"

Imbedded reporters with a division of The House's First Infantry say that spirits are high as soldiers find their opposition to be woefully outmatched. First Lieutenant D. Dutch says that, "apparently if they're not pushing around little girls for their lunchmoney or senior citizens for their retirement they're not too tough. Ha ha. Seriously, I'm not even sure they know how to use those guns". Even with the unprecedented success of the first few hours no one is getting over confident. They know that the Q's rise to such heights of evil does not allow for them to take the matter lightly.

Ground Troops Are Closing In On The Nefarious Q HQ

Early reports show that ground troops and scouts have been extremely successful in taking out Q cells in their many forms and hiding places. The extensive mission is covering every dark wooded forest, Godforsaken swamp, and under every slimey rock for the perpetrator of these serious crimes. Our highly trained soldiers are more than willing to go the distance to see this evil undone.

It Has Begun!

In the time it has taken for the world to react to the oppressive regime of the Q countless people have been victimized to suit his evil pleasure. The House of Dagromm will stand for it no longer. Even now troops are being mobilized to take immediate action. The Speaker of the House of Dagromm in a statement to media today said, "We vow to seek out the perpetrator of these crimes against the world. We will hunt him down no matter where he hides. Q, justice is coming for you, and it's coming with a vengeance".

Preparations Are Being Made

Consider this a warning to the entire Blog World that we are stockpiling supplies and preparing ourselves for a long overdue Blog War with the Q. After his most recent usurpation of the creative rights to the term "Blogment" we at the House feel this is our only recourse. Even now warehouses are being filled with Blogaganda materials that will be distributed should the Q not come to his senses. It will not be pretty and he has been warned that no amount of UN pressure will stop us from seeking justice.

Secret Santa

I tried to tell CyberD about this over the phone yesterday, but his network hates him so much that we continuously got dropped. After about a half dozen times we gave up and I drove my car into a retaining wall. I was trying to relate to him the conversation my wife and I had just had that I thought was funny, but she did not.







Mrs. Dagromm: We're doing a secret santa at the office and I have to go out and find something to get for $20. Any ideas?

Me: Why don't you get a bra?

Mrs. Dagromm: Because I don't want to get fired.

Me: How would you get fired? It's a secret santa.

Mrs. Dagromm: But when everybody starts claiming the gifts, I'll be the one stuck with the bra.

Me (misunderstanding): Make sure you get your size then.

Me (now comprehending that she meant in an investigation): Oh, just say you didn't know what you brought, because you sent your husband out to get the gift for you. He must have misunderstood.

Mrs. Dagromm: Goodbye.

Actual Conversation I Overheard, For Real

A little while back, me and my buddy Big Dirty were playing some frisbee golf at the park. While out there we happened upon a group of teenage girls who had gathered at the pavilion to hang out. This is what Big Dirty thought was a subtle way to make his moves:

Big Dirty: Hey, what's goin' on? Y'all havin' a party?

Teenage Girl: Uhmmm. We're just hanging out.

Big Dirty: Yeah, I love to party too. When I was in high school, which was just a few years ago, I must of partied like all the time.

Silence

Big Dirty: So are y'all drinking some beers and stuff? Don't worry, I won't say anything. Of course I'm old enough to buy beer now. It's pretty cool. I can get all the beer I want when it's time to party!! So let me know if you start running low.

Teenage Girl (tentatively): Thanks...we'll let you know if we need anything.

Big Dirty: We should all hang out some time. I have some awesome parties. I've got my own place so I don't have to ask permission or anything. I can even party during weekdays. Since we're friends you can use it sometime if you need a place.

Silence and the girls nervously look around

Big Dirty: So, who here likes My Space?

More silence.

Big Dirty: I've been on it for a while now. I'm linked to all sorts of people. Like the drummer for Nickelback. He's one of my best My Space friends. Y'all should give me your pages so we can all link up. Do any of you own webcams?

Really uncomfortable silence

Big Dirty: I've got some extras if you need one. That way we could totally party on line. It'll be awesome. I don't invite everybody to my parties so don't go telling everybody. I don't want girls with bad self esteem killing themselves or anything(motions not so subtley at goth girl). That's not cool. In fact if any of you girls have really bad self esteem you are completely invited to come to my place. Right now even.

Massive, oppressive silence

Big Dirty: Or later, whatever. I know you're thinking about it and I'm cool with that.

Big Dirty: You know what else is so great about high school? Doing whatever you can to buck the system. Am I right? Yeah, I know, I never listened to what "adults" thought I should and shouldn't do. It's all about finding out for yourself. That's what's so great about having a place you can go. You know like my place. You can do like, whatever there and it's totally cool.

Big Dirty: Who here likes to watch The Real World? Man I love that show!! MTV right? It's awesome. Wouldn't that be cool to like just live with a bunch of people that're our age in an apartment or something? With a video camera? That would be totally rad.

Big Dirty: Did I mention I have a video camera?

It turns out we had arrived just as the party was ending though and the girls left shortly after. BD seemed to think he'd made a good impression. I was just glad that I had never ventured near enough to be associated with.

HR is my life!!!

I like to spend about 15% of my time doing HR work and the other 85% of the time pursuing personal interests. Now what HR work consists of differs from company to company, but normally it involves one of a few different aspects. Involving yourself in hiring, training, benefits administration, employee files, employee relations, and coaching managers because seriously a lot of managers have their heads up their asses and have no idea how they come off to their employees. It can also involve inviting yourself to other departments happy hours and pot lucks without actually contributing anything. That's what I focus on the most.

Self Evaluation

I recently had to complete my self evaluation for work. For those of you in the Blog Universe that are unfamiliar with the concept, it comes around once a year when managers are supposed to give their direct reports performance appraisals. It makes things easier on the manager because you're basically going to do all the research on whether you hit your target numbers. Well in my case I wasn't even given my target numbers until two days before hand. Astoundingly enough, not only did I hit all my targets I far exceeded every one of them!!! According to my research at least, and the flawed statistics that we've kept, and my math (I'm not paid to be an accountant so you can't fault me!!!). I spent all of yesterday at the office working on it, except for the time spent blogging and reading blogs and of course going to lunch, and doing a little internet shopping, and sports reading. By the end of the day I was exhausted. Putting so much effort into letting my manager know how invaluable I am is really tiring. So, I'll probably blow off today too.

Sit Com Idea

I first heard the term, "jumping the shark" on the radio about five or six years ago and from the moment I heard it, I knew exactly what it meant. It's a reference to an old episode of Happy Days where after running out of ideas for what to do next, the writers had the Fonze test his cool by doing a ski jump over a shark tank. This comes after episodes in which Arthur Fonzerelli had already done motorcycle jumps over cars, demolition derbies, and rumbles with gangs, kung fu experts, and an alien (remember Mork). Since the common complaint is that Hollywood doesn't ever have new ideas I feel that we should embrace our own unoriginality and really run with it. In it we would follow a typical American family and their wacky neighbor as they encounter all sorts of odd hijinx. Every episode would shamelessly force in every trite T.V. fallback idea and play it up in the campiest tongue in cheek way. To set the precedent we would have a character literally jump a shark in the very first episode. In the second episode, uh oh Donnie's got amnesia!!!! The third episode "We're having a baby!!!". The fourth epsiode the baby is now inexplicably five years old and doesn't he say the cutest things. The fifth episode Janie's got a boyfriend, and she's thinking about...kissing!!! The sixth episode Donnie finds out it's not cool to fall a victim of peer pressure, also the youngest kid has now inexplicably dissapeared. I was tired of him.
Let me know what you think blog world. I think it could be genius! If it anybody would like to buy this idea from me then I'd be glad to sell it.

Movie Reviews

A Prairie Home Companion

This movie had a few chuckles but ultimately left me wondering why it was made. I've heard some people complain that nothing happens in episodes of Seinfeld. Well this movie makes Seinfeld look like The Marine so little happens. It meanders and scenes happen for seemingly no reason. Since Robert Altman recently died I will give this movie an A-.

The Illusionist

The Illusionist is based off a short story and watches like one. It is deceptive in it makes you think there is more depth to the movie than there really is. In the end though I found myself asking, "Is that it?". It does have Jessica Biel in it, whom I believe to be overrated, so I have to give this movie an A-.

The Fountain

There's a lot of different things going on in this movie which makes it hard to explain in a blog format so instead I will transcribe my thoughts at different junctures during the movie.
5 minutes-What the F?
10 minutes-huh?
15 minutes-Crap, I could've been watching Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny, or Stranger Than Fiction, or Happy Feet, or The Prestige, or Saw III, or ....
25 minutes-...or Borat, or Flushed Away, or The Guardian, or Santa Clause III: The Escape Clause, or Deck the Halls, or....
40 minutes-I wish Wolverine would hurry up and kill some people.
50 minutes-I'm not getting any if I leave this thing. I gotta be good through this to earn the panty points.
55 minutes-All out of popcorn?!?? Damn, I should have gotten a hotdog, or nachos, or a Nestle Crunch, or Twizzlers, or M&M's, or Gummi Bears, or ....
1 hour-...or Junior Mints, or Raisinets, or malt balls, or chocolate covered almonds, or a pickle, a movie meal wouldn't have been bad, or a Hot Tamales, or Goobers, or Sour Patch Kids, or...
1 hour 5 minutes-I wonder if there are any good looking girls in this theater.
1 hour 10 minutes-Nope.
1 hour 20 minutes-That's a lot of snow. Maybe Sabertooth is going to show up. Or Lady Deathstrike, or Pyro, or Magneto...
1 hour 25 minutes-...or Mystique, or Juggernaut, or Callisto, or Phoenix, or Toad, or ...
1 hour 30 minutes-Oh God!! Was I snoring??? Gotta hold it together. I've almost made it. Maybe I can do some jumping jacks in the back of the theater without anyone noticing. Panty points. Panty points.
1 hour 35 minutes-Damn, it's quiet leaving this theater. I hope she doesn't ask me what I thought of the movie.

The special effects were ok, but it needed more action scenes. I give it an A-.

All I Want For Christmas

...is the next Harry Potter book. In the mean time I will accept the newest HP movie. In this time of national tension due to the current war I wonder when we will call upon Dumbledore's Army to clean up the mess that we've made.

What am I Doing Here???

I'm in the office and for the second straight day our e-mail and voicemail are out. What does that mean for me? Almost guaranteed silence. I will be unable to do much of anything along with most everybody in the office, and yet here we all are. The company is outsourcing IT and I don't know that the executives realized the extent of the problems that they would face once they made the announcement. I can almost guarantee that a large portion of the numerous systems outages are due to internal sabotage, but oh well. You reap what you sew. If the employees liked and respected the company then they probably wouldn't act out like this.

Hot Stove League

Well, it's that most entertaining time of the year for youth soccer once again. That's right it's the time in the off season when players and coaches have to register for the Spring soccer season. So what does that mean to friendly Coach Dagromm??? Recruiting!!!! Time to trim the fat and add some muscle to our team. This is when I get to have my kid go to school analyze some prospects and then sell them on how great it would be to join our championship caliber team and our winning tradition. This also the time when I get to tell players from last season how much I hope their back, or how great I think they would be in something like ballet or gymnastics. You know something that doesn't involve a ball or the need to kick it. This is when I contact players from teams past to see how their doing ('cause you know I care. Right) and if they'd like to sign up for the new soccer year with Old Coach Dags!!! This is when I try to lure away the players from other teams to form my ubersquad that will totally dominate other teams and give me a sense of self worth. I've already got half of my team back from last season, just 24 hours into registration time, but I'm worried that I might be losing one of my best players. My daughter keeps telling me that this girl isn't going to play this season. So you know whose house I'll be visiting pretty soon!!!

A Shout Out to Becks

"Somewhere, Bo Schembechler is smiling.'' -- ABC's Brent Musburger, after Michigan scored on its first possession against Ohio State.

Exactly what is Brent Musburger implying? He obviously knows that Becks isn't missing or anything. He is in fact deceased. But I guess Brent feels that his final destination is in question. Way to not so subtly say, "Burn in hell Bo Schembechler".
Well I'm not standing for it. I'm writing my congressman today to have Brent Musburger removed from office.

Two Things I Would Recommend

Akeelah and the Bee
I rented this movie and watched it with the kids this weekend. It was the best movie I've seen in a while and the kids immediately wanted to start studying for the spelling bee afterwards. I thought the kids were very impressive actors and I can't wait to see them in other things as they get older. Laurence Fishburne played the mentor/coach/teacher which is the type of character that he plays best. In "What Ever Happened to Bobby Fisher" and "The Matrix" he shows that he would probably be able to teach anybody anything. A really nice movie and I'd definately point anyone towards it.

Jonah Hex
I recently picked up some back issues of the latest Jonah Hex series and have enjoyed all of them. They capture the western feel very well without coming across pretentiously, and the art and writing are very well done. Add to it cool cover art and the fact that the stories are self contained, and you've got yourself a winner.

I haven't been away that long from the blog, but I had written a nice long post a couple of days ago and when I went to add a picture Blogger dropped me. So the great work of literature that I had so lovingly crafted was lost to the world forever. I could try to recreate it, but I'm too pissed.

A Brush With Greatness

I just want to kick a shout out to Cyberman for his recent dialogue with Cowboys all-time great Drew Bledsoe.

My Idea For Voting Reform

Before I get started on this let me say that I'm not arguing that I think this will ever happen, but I do think it's an interesting idea. It occurs to me that many Americans have a general dissatisfaction with the election process that we currently employ. From the candidates, to the negative campaigning, to the lack of information available about the people that we are voting on. So my idea is that at the beginning of the campaign each candidate that has been selected to be on the ballot is sequestered into a room where they take a 200 question (random number I just picked) profile quiz in regards to where they stand on different policies, current issues, and hypothetical situations. The on election day voters go in and take a similar, but shorter quiz (25 questions) and their vote is then automatically cast to the candidate that is most reflective of their beliefs on the issues. I realize that there would have to be some weighting of different categories and in fact that would probably be part of the quiz. So instead of voting for a candidate or party, people would vote their beliefs on issues and if the best candidate for them happened to be from another party then that person would get their vote. This would also cause a change in campaign ads and funding as it no longer becomes necessary to spout rhetoric and defame opposing candidates, instead candidates would be forced to push issues and ideas. I'm not saying this process doesn't have bugs in it, or would be universally lauded, but no process ever is. I do think though that it takes a lot of the animosity out of politics and elections and really puts the onus back on the American people to think about what they are doing when casting their votes.

Just When You Think You Know Somebody

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/07/pot.burgers.ap/index.html

It almost makes me change my stance.