Trivial Tuesday

This week’s question is probably going to be answered rather quickly, but I’ll ask anyway.  There will be no hints given, so take your best guess.

This man’s voice was cobbled together from an AT&T answering system from 1980.  Although antiquated by today’s standards, he refuses to update it because it is so recognizable.  Who’s voice is it?

Now that I’m reading the question, I would guarantee that the first answer will win.  Oh well, that’s the way it goes.  Good luck.

Non-Technical Issues

I was getting ready to go out yesterday evening when I decided to have a bowl cereal.  I was upstairs at the computer writing last night’s post prior to going down to the kitchen for my snack.  I pulled out the bowl and box of Mini-Wheats Maple & Brown Sugar when I heard something on the counter on the opposite side of the stove caught my attention.  By the time I looked over, it had fallen to the floor and scurried under the stove.  Damn it, another mouse in the house, this is the fifth since I spotted my first in December.  So, I finally decided to call an exterminator.

The guy got to my house at about 9:00 this morning and immediately surveyed the situation before getting to work.  He laid out bait traps that the mice will eat and get sick, so they run outside to find water and drink and, well, you get the idea.  He also inspected the outside of the house and filled in the possible entry points with steel wool.  Steel wool is effective because mice will try to chew their way in and it’s not quite that good for them (it’s deadly).  The exterminator also sprayed the outside of the house for ants and gave me some better ant gel (I was using Terro) that will take care of any remaining ants in the house.

Thanks to Mrs. Hairy Woman’s latest post, I went and looked at some dumb laws.  In Cleveland, OH it is illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.  Luckily, I live in Parma, which is a suburb of Cleveland and has no such laws on the books.  I have a couple other things to take care of, like cleaning out the basement drains to keep the drain flies at bay.  I feel like things are finally taken care of, I’ll let you know how things go.  Trivial Tuesday will be up at 4:30pm EDT, 1:30pm PDT

…and the Award Goes to…

Finally.  The sentence was finally handed down today and that money-hungry, greedy piece of shit, Bernie Madoff will spend the rest of his natural life in a medium security, non-country club prison.  The sentence he was given is 150 years and there is no parole in the Federal Prison System.  Also, because his sentence is so long, it does not give him the luxury of a minimum security facility.  So, good for you, Bernie, you greedy asshole, enjoy yourself, make new friends.

Why does it appear like I’ve gone off the deep end with this sentence?  Simple, it’s about damn time that somebody learns that greed is not good, that ripping off innocent people is wrong and there are penalties.  Yeah, Madoff stood up and apologized to his victims, his wife released a statement that she didn’t know what he was doing.  Sure.  Now that she knows, is she going to return the ill-gotten cash that she probably already spent?  Probably not.  This is a good decision, my hat’s off to the judge who handed down this stiff sentence.

Now this brings me to the presentation of a very prestigious award, to be given to somebody who truly deserves it.  Ladies and gentlemen, especially the new people, I am giving this award to the Ponzi schemer himself, Bernie “Inmate #1234567″ Madoff.  You scammed many, many people into giving their hard-earned money to you to invest and help them get further ahead in life.  You took their money and kept it for yourself, making billions of dollars just to try to satisfy your own greed, but it wasn’t enough, you wanted more and more until you finally got caught.  I give this award to you because you’re a greedy asshole who screwed over good people, trusting people, people who are now broke or close to it.  I give to you the coveted (by me) Pyrite Moron Award.  I haven’t decided how you’re going to get it, so I will let my readers decide your punishment.  Here are the ways I could present it to him…

1. I give it to one of his victims and let him try to hug each one in order to find it.  Whatever the victims do is up to them.
2. Give it to his future cellmate who will, undoubtedly, know exactly what to do with it.
3. Present it to him when he finally gets out of jail.

Please choose, and have some fun with it.  And Mr. Madoff, have fun in your new digs, I’m sure they’ll feel like a Manhattan penthouse in no time at all.  By the way, to the newcomers to my blog, the Pyrite Moron Award is the award that I created and hand out on occasion to stupid people in the news.  I try to find interesting and fitting ways to present it to the recipient, and it’s pyrite because no moron deserves gold.

Gardening With the Alien, Week #16

Gardening With the Alien will focus mostly on the tomatoes for the rest of the season.  Pretty much, my garden will not be all that productive this year since I won’t have too many cucumbers at all, no jalapenos, probably no peppers, my spinach was a disaster and the herb garden is overgrown with weeds.  The only things of promise are the Chinese vegetables and the tomatoes.  So, here’s what I got this week…

The cherry tomatoes are growing very well.  If they keep growing at this rate, I am going to be overflowing with red, ripe goodness.

These are the Roma tomatoes.  They too are also doing quite well and I may end up overloaded with these as well. If you happen to be around the Cleveland area this summer, let me know and you could have some homegrown tomatoes.

I have decided that next year, I will only be growing tomatoes and maybe have my swimming pool herb garden (this time using the potting soil, peat moss, compost mix).  I will be trying my hardest to get the rest of the ground in shape for the following year, building up nutrients and trying to break down the clay.  I’ll get into that more as the season progresses.  Thanks for dropping by.

We’re Not the World

Last Wednesday, I asked a simple question, list all of the performers on USA for Africa’s, “We Are the World.” Well, only two people guessed any of them correctly. I was hoping it would run on for a while with people coming with new guesses. Laura B. got 14 of them, Manuel got 7. There were still 17 to guess at and nobody tried. Ladies and gentlemen, if I have a list like that, guess and guess and guess until I finally say we’re done.  The only hint I gave during guessing was that Laura B. cleared the Jacksons, but there were more to guess.  17 pop stars of the 1980’s were left unguessed.

Al Jarreau
Bette Midler
Billy Joel
Bob Dylan	Manuel
Bob Geldof	Laura B.
Bruce Springsteen	Manuel
Cyndi Lauper	Laura B.
Dan Aykroyd	Laura B.
Daryl Hall	Manuel
Diana Ross	Laura B.
Dionne Warwick
Harry Belafonte
Huey Lewis	Manuel
Jackie Jackson	Laura B.
James Ingram
Jeffrey Osborne
John Oates	Manuel
Kenny Loggins
Kenny Rogers	Manuel
Kim Carnes
LaToya Jackson	Laura B.
Lindsey Buckingham
Lionel Richie	Laura B.
Marlon Jackson	Laura B.
Michael Jackson	Laura B.
Paul Simon
Randy Jackson	Laura B.
Ray Charles
Sheila E.
Smokey Robinson
Steve Perry
Stevie Wonder	Laura B.
The News
The Pointer Sisters	Laura B.
Tina Turner	Manuel
Tito Jackson	Laura B.
Waylon Jennings
Willie Nelson

The answers in red are the ones that were not guessed.  Manuel, you could have had one more had you simply completed an answer.  The News (Huey Lewis’ band) is listed on the sleeve.  So now you know, keep guessing until I say the contest is over.  Oh well, I tried, have a good day.

My Final Words on the 80’s

The week of the 80’s has come to an end and I am pleased with the response I’ve gotten.  I’m pleased that quite a few of you decided to join me in the festivities and post your own thoughts on the decade.  There was quite a lot that I was unable to post about, but that will just serve to revisit this idea again.  Of course, if I do celebrate the 80’s again, I am going to pick one aspect of it post about it for the week, whether it’s movies, music, TV, toys and games, etc.  I will let somebody else discuss the fashion since I really never kept up with it.  I also picked up some new readers this week, which I’m happy about.

So I am already trying to cook up another week long celebration for sometime in July.  I’m not sure what direction I want to go, so if anybody has an idea, lay it on me.    I hope you enjoyed my posts this week, now I have to get back to geeky goodness.  I have some really fun stuff in mind, I just have to write it all up.  One of things I want to talk about is a small primer on wireless router security, but I need some time to crunch some numbers.  Thanks for your help in making this week a success and I hope you will stick around for more geeky goodness.

My Musical Memories, #1

Welcome to the first official week of my new music feature.  As I wrote last week, music has always been present in my life.  My primary exposure to music came from Mom early in my life.  I remember hearing a song on the radio that was so infectious, so fun, that I felt like I had to hear more of it.  Mom let me borrow her album with that song and I was hooked.  No, it wasn’t Pink Floyd.

The Police
Ghost in the Machine
1981

Back in my youth I didn’t understand the concept of political lyrics, I just enjoyed the music I was listening to.  Ghost in the Machine features many great songs including the hypnotic “Spirits in the Material World,” the darkly themed “Invisible Sun,” and the first song I heard, “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.”  I dare everybody reading to put that song on and not dance in their chair.  That song is definitely infectious.  The rest of the album, including “Hungry for You,” sung mostly in French, “Ωmegaman,” written by Andy Summers and “Too Much Information,” which is still relevant today, make this album what it is, perfect, in my opinion.

I do have to confess, I have denied this album its deserved recognition, but I think I made up for it this weekend.  In order to prepare to write this post, I listened to the album again.  At first, I was listening to the songs on my iPod.   Then I decided to listen to it as I originally heard it, on vinyl.  The copy I have is the same one I borrowed from Mom all those years ago (she gave it to me).  It’s still in great shape and sounds excellent.

This was the album that turned me on to The Police.  I wanted to hear the other albums, I bought Outlandos d’Amour, Reggatta de Blanc and Zenyattà Mondatta.  All of these albums are excellent, but I kept returning to the album that started it all.  That is until the next album, Synchronicity, came out.  This was the primary reason why I put Ghost on the back burner, but thanks to the CD and the 4-Disc set, Message in a Box, I was reacquainted with this superb album.

In case you might be wondering about the cover and don’t already know, the LEDs are representative of the head of each band member.  I hope you enjoyed this first post in what I hope will be a long-running feature here in the Swamp.  Have a good rest of the weekend.

Conjunction Junction, What’s My Function?

Welcome to the Saturday Scavenger Hunt for this week.  This week’s word was chosen by a newcomer to the club, 3GirlKnight and he chose FUNCTION.  Well, I thought about it, got tired, went to bed, woke up, thought about it some more, drank coffee and ate breakfast and finally figured out what I wanted to do.  When I figuredout what I want to do it turns out it’s quite anti-climactic.

Yes, it’s a keyboard and the focus of this shot is top row which contains the FUNCTION keys.  It is an old “clicker” keyboard from the Win 95 days (it does have the Window key).  I’m sorry to disappoint, I mean, with a title like that, I thought it would be better.  Oh well, kick me off the Internet, remove my link from your site and make me stand in the corner.  I’m hanging my head in shame now.  Have a nice weekend.

Leave it There, Please

Don’t forget the Trivial Tuesday, Redux from Wednesday

Yesterday’s post was about cheesy 80’s stuff, but it was good cheese, like the cheese filling of Combos filled snacks.  Today, I want to discuss the rotten, smelly, moldy cheese like that stuff sitting in the back of the refrigerator since the days when people considered Denny Terrio to be cool.  Question, is it true that if I mention his name two more times, will he appear to me and force me to dress like a Solid Gold dancer?  Anyway, yes, it’s that kind of cheese, so if you have a weak stomach you may want to leave now.  Yes, I know he was really the host Dance Fever and replaced in 1985 by Adrian Zmed (man, the bad 80’s names just keep coming and coming, don’t they?).  Well, let’s get this awful show on the road.

This decade was a breeding ground for some really bad movies.  Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, Howard the Duck, the countless awful, schlocky horror flicks and the highly overrated big movies that everybody loved.  Yes, E.T., I am looking at you.  Let me just state that this movie was pure, sickeningly sweet glurge (thanks to Snopes.com for that word), not to mention that it also gave aliens a bad name (did I also mention the horrifically bad video game that destroyed the industry?  Don’t believe me, look it up).  The 80’s were full of movies that would result in Netflix’s, “If you like <Insert Title of Awful Movie Here>, you might like…” would result in Netflix either calling a psychologist or informing you that must really get a life.  As an aside, I am totally prepared to receive all sorts of backlash.  Oh, just to state my proof that the 80’s was the worst movie decade, Staying Alive, a movie written and directed by Sylvester Stallone (is that legal?) and Tony Manero is dancing on Broadway.  Let’s just keep all of these movies right there in 1980’s for our protection the preservation of future generations.  OK, keep reading, I talk about music next.

I love talking about the music of the 80’s.  Most of it is so awful and so….80’s, what else could describe it?  I will admit, there was some good music that came out of the 80’s, but it had to searched out and, in some cases the secret handshake, or having a relative with access was the only way to find it.  If you unfortunate enough to not have the precious “in,” you were pretty much forced to listen to Culture Club, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, A-Ha and, if you were still denied at the end of the decade, New Kids on the Block.  This was also the decade of the cheesy duet.  ”Almost Paradise,” the sappy song by Ann Wilson, a female powerhouse of the 70’s and Mike Reno of, blerg, Loverboy.  There was also the Paul McCartney thing, too, with the duets with both Stevie Wonder (Ebony & Ivory) and Michael Jackson (Say, Say, Say and The Girl is Mine).  I think this makes the former Beatle the king of the 80’s duet.  There are plenty more, look them up, please, don’t make me do it.

Naturally, with the music of the 80’s come the videos of the 80’s to go with them.  We all know that The Buggles, “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first video shown on Empty-V, but that was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  Let’s not forget the crossover of professional wrestlers with a few Cyndi Lauper videos that featured “Captain” Lou Albano, Rowdy Roddy Piper and quite a few others.  Then along come Michael Jackson with “Thriller,” which was like 3 1/2 hours long or something like that.  That was a tad excessive in my opinion and I think congress should have passed the video time-limit law after that.  Videos haven’t gotten much better since those days either.  I think it’s an art form that should have stayed in the 80’s.

This has been my argument for why many, many things such as movies, music, music videos and Denny Terrio must remain safely in the 80’s away from current society where they will not destroy the futore of this planet.  If I have not compelled you, allow me to present one more final piece of evidence to sway you.  Yahoo Serious was a movie star in the 1980’s, if that does change your mind, I don’t what hope we have of surviving as a species. I hope you enjoyed this past week of looking back at the 80’s. There are still two more days left for this week, feel free to keep partying like it’s 1999. Greed is Good.

Entertained in the 80’s

Be sure to check out the previous post for a new trivia question

I was a bit young in the 80’s to don my checkered tie and hot pink shoelaces and go out to any number of the local dance clubs playing the latest hits by Kim Wilde and Flock of Seagulls.  Instead, I had to entertain myself at home with TV, music on record and cassette and movie on video disc.  I know what you’re going to say next and I can assure I did not make a typo. This is a video disc exactly like the one we had when I was young.  The video disc was an analog format similar to the vinyl album.  The movies came in 12″ sleeves that you slid into the opening at the front and the disc and holder would hold in while the sleeve came out.  It was a pretty cool technology that my dad won from a radio station.  Of course, the movies weren’t the most convenient things to store as they were even bigger than albums because of the spare room needed for the holder.  It ended up going obsolete before the decade was up and dad finally broke down and bought a video cassette player.  Of course I saw a lot of movies on that video disc player.

There were plenty of movies that ran through the video disc player, including such favorites as Footloose, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire (and many more movies featuring the Brat Pack) and of course, The Karate Kid.  No, I’m not doing a review on The Karate Kid, but what 80’s post would be complete without that iconic cover with the famous crane kick?  You know which one would be complete?  None, none at all.  So there it is.  We rented movies every weekend and it was a special occasion.  We usually had chips and dip, soda pop and I was allowed to stay up late (I was a youngster with a bed time at this time).  Of course, I was entertained by more than just movies during the 80’s, the TV offered up some of the most entertaining programming.

Television of the 80’s was a spectacle to behold.  There were so many great shows (great as in, I thought they were great when I was 10 years old, but would probably fall over laughing if I watched them today) such as Knight Rider (starring The Hoff, sorry, no picture), Night Court, Cheers, Miami Vice and, naturally, The A-Team.  Again, I am not reviewing this show, I just figured no 80’s post would be complete without Mr. T’s happy face.  It’s shows like these that bring back those fond memories of being watched by grandpa on Tuesday nights while my parents escaped my brother and I went out for the evening.  They don’t make shows like these anymore, full of frivolous violence and slapstick humor.  Of course, regarding the former, was The A-Team really that violent? I mean, for these guys being special ops, they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with an M-16.  Sorry, where was I?  Oh yeah, I loved 80’s TV when I was a kid. It was such fun.

When I wasn’t watching TV, I was playing on it with my beloved Nintendo Entertainment System.  My brother and I each owned one so that we wouldn’t fight.  Of course, get us together playing Blades of Steel and you never know what would happen.  Between us, we owned a whole pile of games.  I was more of the platform gamer with favorites such as the Mario series, and I also liked role-playing and adventure games such as Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda.  I loved playing my NES, beating Super Mario Bros. for the first time, playing a really cool game called Baseball Stars (SNK) for hours on end trying to build the ultimate baseball team.  By the way, Manuel, can you tell me what Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start is?

There is one thing I must mention because it is so important.  One of the greatest things to come out of the 80’s, The People’s Court’s own Doug Llewellyn.  I mean, if his hair doesn’t scream 80’s, I don’t know what does.  I swear, when this week is over and done with I will still think about creating the Doug Llewellyn fan club.  Everybody thought that Judge Wapner was the star of that show, I know better.

I hope you enjoyed this fun-filled entertaining look back into my younger days as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you.  I am really enjoying 80’s week, and I hope you are too.  I’m still not sure what Friday will hold for me, but if there’s anything you would like me to write about regarding the 80’s let me know, I always enjoy suggestions.  By the way, no, I don’t do fashion.  Have a good day.