To Do: Child Abuse

In my misunderstood, unpublished novel, two advertising men who have been elevated to governmental posts are watching some of their greatest hits. One involves a bunch of kids playing some softball. Hit! Ball goes through upstairs window of adjacent house, kindly old man's face appears.
The next scene shows the kid who hit the ball seated in a chair in a sunny back yard, under a pilly yellow blanket. "Now y' jist sit there un-der th'...'Liktrik blan-ket..." says the old man, as the camera pans to the barometer, showing the temp to be somewhere in the high nineties.
Minor chord music, and the voice over: "CHILD ABUSE. THE TIME HAS COME."
Both of the ad men bust up laughing, and one asks the other, "The time has come for child abuse?"

I love advertising. And I love getting paid for things. There is a big, weeklong conference on child abuse at the convention center next week, and I'll be there from morning 'til night on each of the days, doing the AV thing. I have a funny feeling that any joking on our part will be unwelcome.
Like: A whole week, huh? That's a lotta abuse! Yeah, I'm just gonna have to shut up.
That gig comes courtesy of The Chief, by the way, who seems to have randomly stumbled upon my blog via Google (check last posts comments).

Note the updated blogroll to yer right, and down. Just look at all that. Note that The Man's Weekly Apology has already lapsed to the tune of one week. I'm imagining that if the World Court at The Hague has Parole Officers, he's gonna be picking up roadside trash in Burkina Faso.

Perusing stacks of used vinyl records, as you know, soothes my mind. Today, for only three-and-one-half dollars American, I purchased Herbie Mann's Memphis Underground, and Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners by Rod Stewart and The Faces. I'm a little unclear on why everyone's so orgasmic about that Herbie album. It's pleasant, but the flute is an inherently underwhelming instrument, to my mind. I dunno.
Other recent moosic puchases include Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, which caused my own daughter to laugh at me. Oh, just you wait She Bear: that old bastard Time's gonna get you too.
Also, local heroes Self-Fulfilling Prophecies just left on their first tour. Their debut album, Mercenary State, is excellent. It's like Gang of Four meets...Dunno. They're great.

Just got off the phone with The Chief. Here's how he found el blogue:
He is starting something called STAB (Starving Talented Artists Bank), and was Googling the phrase "stab stab stabbity stab". Aaand he found that post of mine regarding jokes. Still unsure about the provenance of said phrase, or whether or not anyone has copyrighted it.

The Honeybee and I are going to Monterey, Ca. later this week. I haven't set foot in California since one Sunday afternoon in early 2001, when I drove fifteen miles into the state to purchase liquor in a tiny town named 'Hilt'.
Before that, I suppose the last time I was there was 1987. Damn. For all my ancestral hatred of California, that still seems ridiculous. I mean, it's right down there and all, so what's my problem?
Well, I spent these many intervening years just getting to know the Northwest better and better, I guess. Like I say, I get so much information out of getting only a couple hours outta town, why bother? But on the other hand, if it blows my ever-lovin' mind to go to Montana, imagine how Japan would cause me to respond.

I dunno. I saw Grindhouse. Like pretty much every critic I've read says, the Robert Rodriguez half (and all the fake trailers) is wonderful, and the Quentin Tarantino part is a bunch of aimless pop culture referencing (and other-Tarantino-movie referencing) leading to a car chase of epic proportions. I liked Bee's observation that it seemed like it was written by a pretentious fourteen-your-old girl:
"There's this evil guy, right? And he kills girls with his car? But it turns out he's this big crybaby! HEEEEEEEE!!!!"

Got a lot of funny things, but really this post is just here to say Dropped Some Shit, to alert you to the blogroll changes, and to announce my return to the world of competitive spelling.
Tonight at Atlantis, up on scenic Mississippi Ave., they're having a spelling bee. I haven't competed since the middle '80's (when I took first place, then second, at State two years consecutively), and am looking forward to handing those SpelChek-impaired diaper bags their asses on an especially large chafing dish.
I gave The Smiler a ride to work this morning, and when I told her about the impending ass-handing, she asked if I remembered the word that led to my downfall. Well, after going down at County level, before my two seasons of glory, I determined that the word 'hemorrhoid' wasn't going to ruin my life, and would never give me trouble again.
Wish me luck.