kapgar

Ode to Joy...

Well, more accurately, An Ode to Pat and Lisa...

It was a quiet morning, the ninth of December,
A day the state will forever remember.

The Feds pulled up and knocked on the door,
Of our governor whose jaw dropped to the floor.

Is this a prank, a joke, a really bad gag?
No sir, you're under arrest, tell your hag.

Word spread like wildfire, news crews deploy,
to cover the fourth busted gov in Illinois.

A Senate seat they claim he tried to sell,
"Golden" he called it. For free? Like hell.

Mr. Fitzgerald, our shining white knight,
Explained to the press the extent of our plight.

Seventy-six pages, the charges did span,
Read it all through? I doubt any [bleep]er can.

The crimes were varied and truly quite stunning,
Were Blago and company really that cunning?

What kind of idiot would be such a yutz,
And effectively kick his state in the nuts?

If we're lucky, Lisa Madigan will succeed,
At reclaiming the power on which Blago does feed.

If Roddie is allowed to continue his reign,
The people of Illinois will keel over in pain.

Appoint friends and family? Flush our taxes down the loo?
Or maybe just give Obama's seat to some yahoo.

The hellish possibilities cause uncomfortable laughter,
So please Patrick and Lisa, end this sad chapter!

I never said I was a good poet.

Hey, and if you're reading this on any site or feed that doesn't have "kapgar" in there somewhere, it's stolen! Come on over to www.kapgar.com to read the real deal!

Sum, sum, sum, sum, summertime...

Hey all! Happy Saturday to you.

Nothing much going on here right now, so let me direct you over to Secondhand Tryptophan where yours truly is guest blogging as part of Karl's Summer of Love.

I was nervous as hell doing this guest post, but it seems to have gone pretty well. So if you have a moment, drop on by and check things out. Talk atcha soon!

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I don't care what the naysayers say, Katie and I loved The Dark Knight. Awesome! And Heath was fantastic. It's not just hype. Seriously.

Cry for the feeling... all for the prize...

I guess I have been somewhat negligent in my duties as a cosponsor of the GBBMC2008 project with Carly... I forgot that I was going to mention the weekly blogging winners here on my main site and not just over on the GBBMC site. Whoops. Please forgive me.

Well, we've had two weekly winners so far and I'd like to give them both a little love. They are:

• Week 2 (April 7-13, 2008) - Daisy, daisybones, "the primal scream"
  
• Week 1 (April 1-6, 2008) - Jen, Low Minded Lover, "They're gonna be mad at us for all the things we wanna do"

But there's also something I feel I need to admit... I get a bit of an odd feeling by doing this. No, it's not as though I don't feel they deserve it. Not that at all. Both are fantastic writers and both of these were spectacular posts.

The reason I feel, well, off about this is because it strikes me as though I'm playing the role of host to a truly bad game show. "Wow! That's a horrifically painful story you just told us about one of the most difficult things a person can possibly go through! Great! Now tell her what she's won, Don Pardo!"

Don't get me wrong, not all the posts written on behalf of this project are painful stories of survival or bearing witness to some terrible deed. There are many that are heartwarming, inquisitive, and even some downright hilarious. But still...

Am I weird for feeling this way?

Should I feel this way at all?

Does it bother any of the prize recipients or other participants as much as it bothers me?

This post was written in support of the GBBMC2008: Sexography project. Please consider donating to the Rape and Incest National Network (RAINN) and include "GBBMC2008" and the name of any one of our participants in the comments section of the donation form. And while you're at it, please visit our participants' sites. You can also check out applicable posts on our Shared Google Reader.

As a note to participants... please remember to mention and link to RAINN's donation page in any post that you are writing on behalf of GBBMC2008. It's the only way we know that it is intended to be a related post. If we don't see the reference and link, we don't tag it, and you likely won't win much of anything. I hate to be so blunt, but it's the truth.

And the flowers and the trees...

Is the age of the old "Birds and Bees" speech dead and gone?

I'm not sure why I'm asking this or why I'm even thinking it for that matter, but here I am. And I'd seriously like to know if the days of dads sitting down with their sons (and mothers with daughters, for that matter) and delivering some insanely awkward diatribe that is intended to convey the concept of sex from one generation to the next has gone the way of the DoDo.

Did any of you have such a speech from a parent or, as a parent, have you delivered this load of hooey to your kids?

To the best of my recollection, I never received "the talk" from my dad. And, to be honest with you, I'm not entirely positive how I learned about sex other than from the three moving boxes worth of magazines that one of my best friends discovered his dad had hidden in the basement of their house. I'm dead serious here. Three flippin' boxes worth. And they weren't even particularly well hidden.

Of course, every time we visited this friend's house, we were in said basement checking out the goods, as it were. It's amazing how quickly a youth can evolve from being a giggly kid excited about any little piece of illicit porn and chanting words like "boobies" to being a discriminator of what images are well shot and which models look better in which situations. I think that took all of two weeks.

There were other lessons learned from a variety of other sources throughout my formative years, as you might expect. But this Library o' Hef was my formal introduction.

And I'm sure my dad is happy he never had to suffer through "the talk."

So how did you learn the story of the birds and the bees?

This post was written in support of the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign 2008. Don't worry, neither this post nor I am eligible for any prizes. Damnable thing about being the creator of the promotion.

Please help support the Rape and Incest National Network by making a donation on their Web site.

Let's talk about you and me...

Just a couple quick notes before I break into the meat and potatoes of today's post.

Sadly I'm not going to TequilaCon this year. Sorry. I really, really want to, but Katie and I are going to Florida again in May and the chance to tour south Florida and see Miami and Key West for the first time in our lives kinda trumps Philly. Sorry all. I will miss you. And I am still going to try to eventually hit up one of the TequilaCons in the future. I just don't know when.

But that's no reason why Hilly shouldn't be allowed to go!

Help send our Hilly Sue to Philly Poo! (Actually, I guess that should be "Philly, PA" but that just doesn't rhyme).

As a note, clicking on either the image at right or the link above will take you to Avitable's site. If you've never been there before, I must warn you that you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. You must be cautious. Oh and NSFW (as in NEVER Safe For Work).

Love the tiara, BTW.

I would also recommend going over to Brandon's site for a well-thought-out reason why ham is the #1 choice of Easter party-goers. Fantastic story that reeks of being made into a South Park script. I miss the SP Jesus.

Oh, and now that I've got you in a charitable mood. Guess what's back!

Yes, for the first time in two years, I'm resurrecting the Grassroots Blogger Book Marketing Campaign!

No, Paul is not releasing another book that I'm aware of. This time, the benefit was intended to be for Carly Milne's Sexography: One Woman's Journey from Ignorance to Bliss. However, once she realized that April was National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, Carly decided to take it one step further and turn this promotion into a fund raiser for the  Rape and Incest National Network (RAINN). Well, it took a lot of begging and promises on her part (check's still in the mail, right Carly?) before I finally relented on my wholly self-promotional ways and agreed to turn my grassroots effort into a fund raiser as well.

If you are interested in joining, please head over to the GBBMC2008 homepage and check out the details. All kidding aside, it is a great organization and we both hope this promotion can help them out in a positive way.

Oh yeah, and did I mention there are prizes? I mean SERIOUS PRIZES. You're clickin' now, aren't ya?

Just as a note, unlike the last time I did GBBMC and agreed to post on my blog for those who wanted to participate but didn't have blogs of their own, this time, you must have your own blog. Even if you start it up solely for the purpose of participating in this promotion. That's fine with me. We'll hook ya yet.

Gonna write you a letter...

I really dug on this post idea that Alissa threw out there yesterday. So, I stole it. Plain and simple.

Basically, you write a letter to a younger version of yourself. The person Alissa took the idea from wrote to her 17-year-old self, Alissa wrote to her 18-year-old self. I think I'm just going to write to high school senior version of myself. Here you go...

Hey Kevin,

This may be coming completely out of left field and you may not really believe it, but this is you writing this letter... just 16 years in the future. Yeah yeah yeah, this is some pretty trippy time-space continuum violation crap. But, get over it now. Let's get to the meat of this, okay? I am here to give you some tips that can guide you through some interesting times that I know you are going through and will go through in the next several years. Sit back, listen, and don't take offense, okay?

Stop dating your friends' sisters. Move on. Oh yeah, that cheerleader in study hall who you think must be on drugs because she's actually nice to you? Ask her out. According to things you'll find out after graduation, she wants you to. It won't likely last long since college is coming soon, but it could be fun and then you'll have that "I dated a cheerleader" story to tell your kids.

I know Mike is away at college, but give him a call and see if he'd be willing to hang out with a lowly high school kid like yourself. You'll thank me later.

If there is still some time left in the football season, put a little effort into your practices and game time. You know all those names that the defensive coordinator is making out of your last name? He's not making fun of you; he's trying to motivate your lazy butt. Maybe he sees something in you that even you don't see. Put in some effort and see what happens.

At this moment, you are in the best physical shape of your life. Don't fuck it up.

Drop calculus. It's pointless. Your teacher will call you a quitter for wanting to drop, but steel up your nerve and walk out. You won't be the last to leave that classroom.

"Undeclared" and "Liberal Arts" are not bad words. I know you're struggling to figure out what you want to do in college, but architecture is not the way to go. Not for you anyway. Grad school, on the other hand, is. Don't let people tell you you're wasting your life by going back for another degree. Katie will thank you.

Oh, and when you meet Katie, just because it feels too good to be true doesn't mean it is. Take the leap.

Don't be afraid of computers. In fact, in another year, something called HTML is gonna make itself known. Jump into it full bore along with several other computer languages. Learn them, love them, and start a search engine called Google. I know it's misspelled, but trademark the name immediately.

In 1994, scrounge up whatever money you can find and invest it in Apple Computers. Yep, the old Apple IIGS's in your junior high computer lab. The company may not look like much at the time, but you'll thank me.

Wishing you all the luck in the world... you're gonna need it,

33-year-old Kevin

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): Dariush sent this to me the other night as he is wont to do every so often. Just some random piece of Web humor... this one contains tips as to what to do and what not to do with regard to babies. I should keep some of these in mind as it appears I've been misled thus far. It's pretty damn funny.