Category: General Musings

By:

The Dude on the Right
I’ve always had two answers as to why I haven’t found, nor actively looked for,
a woman to marry yet.  One was that right now I like all of my stuff. 
When the day comes that I only like half of my stuff I will then actively pursue
the woman of my dreams.  I can then be content knowing that if, or as seems
to be the case nowadays when, my marriage comes to an end, the only thing I have
to hope is that she likes the half of my stuff I no longer like.  In a
worst case scenario I am stuck with half of my stuff that I did like at one
time.

The other answer was because of a man.  I suppose that really isn’t
an answer, but rather his name led to a pathway of explanations that seemed to
make so much sense.  He explained many a time why marriage is the worst
contract a man can ever enter into.  He also explained, as he seemed to be
in complete bliss with girlfriend, as to why would he want to change anything
with the woman he loved since things were going so well.  He also explained
that if things did need to end, that by not being married it would be easier to
complete the split.  He explained that there didn’t seem to be a reason to
be married as neither of them wanted children.  And he also commented on
all of the things that would likely change with marriage, like less sex, more
getting ordered around, and the wife letting herself go physically, things that
he has seen happen with those around him who tied the knot.  That man was
Howard Stern.

But I
can use him no more because this morning he announced that he is officially
engaged to his long-time girlfriend,
Beth Ostrosky.  Yes,
congratulations are in order, and Howard tried really hard to explain, well,
that he is only engaged, and not married.  But lots of men, this morning,
lost their probable last excuse for justification to their girlfriend that they
shouldn’t get married.  "Honey, look at how happy Howard Stern is with his
girlfriend, and they aren’t married.  Why would we want to risk our love
with such a drastic change?" – Sorry dudes, you can’t use that line, anymore. 
"Honey, we don’t need to have a silly ceremony to profess our love. 
Everyone can see the love we have for each other by our actions, just like
Howard and Beth!" – Nope, dudes, forget about that one, also.

Being 39 I
suppose I could still use Howard Stern as my excuse, for a little while longer,
as to why I haven’t found the perfect woman, like when, at the local watering
hole, my buddies ask "Dude, why haven’t you found the woman of your dreams?", I
can simply say "Because she’s not old enough to get in this bar, yet."

Anyway,
congrats again to Howard (and Beth)!  Beth sounds like a sweetheart and he
seems totally lucky to have found her.  But this morning Howard Stern also
threw lots of dudes under the bus because all they will be hearing now from
their dudette is "… but Howard proposed to Beth?"  I’ve at least got a
little while longer to use Howard Stern as my reason for not finding the girl I
will marry.  After that, I guess, I’m just a greedy bastard because it will
take a truly special girl to stop me from liking all of my stuff.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
It’s amazing how much more productive I can be on a Sunday when there isn’t a
football game to distract me.  For whatever reason football is not a
multitasking sport for me.  Golf, baseball, basketball, or NASCAR I can
have playing on the TV above my computer work area and keep up and never feel I
am missing anything, but not for football.  Maybe it’s the fact that any
given play can be exciting, or there’s the action, then the stop in the action
to huddle, then the action again, then the stop again, and eventually a
commercial break to go pee.  Baseball, basketball, and NASCAR just seem to
plow along during their duration, and sure, golf has the action/break sequence
of football but unless it’s a hole-in-one, I’m not going to miss something
exciting.

But now that football season is done, today has been one of the most
productive Sundays in a while.  I read my newspaper with my breakfast, I
did some grocery shopping where I bought only the foods I needed to get back on
my healthy track this week, and I filled up the dude-mobile with go-go juice. 
I was going to get the dude-mobile washed, but with this being the first, sort
of warmer day we’ve had in a while, the line for each car wash I saw was over
ten cars deep, and I didn’t want to spend the next hour waiting in line to get
my car washed, especially when the forecast for tonight is snow, which means
more road salt, which means that if I drive anywhere tomorrow, well, my car will
look pretty much as it does right now, and I would have wasted an hour in line
at the car wash.  I didn’t plan ahead, I guess, on the car wash thing,
because the Turtle Wax
does have free internet access and gives you a
"Two
Day Clean Car Guarantee," so I could have actually been productive, and got
a free car wash on Tuesday, but alas, I’ll have to try to remember to bring my
laptop the next time.

But on my productive scale today, I also got a whole

butt-load of movie previews posted, and started working on redesigning our
home page a bit.  The
Grammy Awards are tonight, so I’ll probably try catch them and hope
something fun happens.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Here I am, some probably 25,000 to 32,000 feet up in the air, in a tube being
held up by a whole bunch of stuff I learned in college (something about airfoils
and jet propulsion), on my way to Houston for my favorite niece’s birthday. I
just got done watching last Monday’s episode of “Heroes” titled “Godsend,”
thanks to iTunes. Since I screwed up my TiVo Season Pass (how the hell did “Two
and a Half Men” get ahead of “Heroes”?) I was able to give Apple and NBC a
couple of bucks by downloading the episode yesterday as part of my pre-trip
planning. I also typed a couple of movie previews, and since I’m just killing a
little more time because someone already did the crossword puzzle in the
American Way magazine, I figured I would type this blog, which if things go as
planned, I can post tonight. Obviously, if you are reading this, things went as
planned.

Weird how things sometime turn out when you are flying, though, because at
first there was no one sitting in the seat in front of me, then these two girls
seat-jumped (worrying me that the one now in front would put her seat back), and
then the dude who actually was assigned that seat showed up. He nicely let her
stay in his seat, instead taking the aisle. He then proceeded to slur his words
a bit (by his own admission he was at the airport bar and almost missed the
flight), explaining to her that country music in San Antonio is a lot different
than country music in Chicago, and she nicely dealt with conversation. As my
luck would have it, the dudette decided to spend the flight staring out the
window, with her seat in the upright position, while drunk dude proceeded to put
his seat as far back as possible, and probably drool a little while he napped.
Two empty seats next to me, someone in front who didn’t put their seat back, and
a nice take off and safe landing. That’s about all I ask for in a plane flight.

Anyway, I should probably start to wrap-up this quick little blog entry,
which is really just a test of seeing if I have my laptop set-up to remotely get
my blog updated, thanks to the free internet access at the hotel I am staying.
Sadly it doesn’t look like internet access on the airlines will be happening
soon, but then again, maybe it’s a good thing because the people in back of you
could peak through the seat and see that you are looking at internet porn. Which
does lead me to an interesting dilemma because since I watched “Heroes” on the
way down to Houston, I brought a couple of DVD’s to watch on the trip back to
The Windy City, one being “Thank You for Smoking” and the other being “Artie
Lange’s Beer League.” The dilemma part: They both are rated “R” and they both
contain nudity. Hopefully on the flight back there won’t be anyone sitting
behind me to wonder what kind of pervert watches that kind of stuff on a plane,
or maybe, better yet, a hot dudette will be sitting behind me, moving to the
seat next to me because she is interested in the kind of pervert that would
watch that kind of stuff on a plane. But that’s a story for a later blog.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Here in the Chicago area it’s been a very mild winter, with one snow storm at
the beginning of December and then pretty much nothing for almost a month and a
half.  Hell, the weather has been warm enough that a lot of folks were able
to go golfing here in  January, although getting a tan didn’t seem to be an
option.  But once again a storm seems to be upon us, although the weather
folks still can’t seem to pin exactly what is going to happen.  My Weather
Channel forecast seems to be saying I will be getting two, maybe three inches of
snow between now and Noon tomorrow, the local dudes seem to have me in a swath
that will get between five to seven inches of snow, and I’m not sure what the
Farmer’s Almanac says for me since I haven’t actually read one since I was about
seventeen and my dad bought it.

With that, there’s a part of me that likes the
fact that even with all of our technology, even with all of our computer models,
even with all of our experts, the weather still gives us uncertainty.

It makes
me sort of remember when I was a kid growing up in Ohio.  As a kid, and
because there wasn’t cable TV yet, all we had was

Dick Goddard to tell us what was going to happen.  Sure, there were
probably some other dudes on some other channels, but Mr. Goddard always gave a
breath of honesty to a weather forecast:  That as much as he could look at
the way things were taking shape, Mother Nature has a mind of her own, and he
had no way of totally reading her mind.  He also had the power of the

Woolly Bear, a strange caterpillar that Vermillion, OH, has adopted as its
own.  Anyway, as a youngin’, we would hear about snow coming, but thanks to
Mr. Goddard, there was always an uncertainty about how much snow was actually
going to make it.  That led to one thing, and one thing only – going to bed
knowing most likely we were going to have to go to school, but there was always
that chance, that Mother Nature decided it would be better for us to stay home,
build snowmen and snow forts, have snowball fights, make our parents drive us
through the snow-covered streets to the great hill in Amherst, and thanks to
Mother Nature, and not Dick Goddard, we got a snow day.

The fun thing to hear,
a year or two ago when I was visiting my parents in Ohio, was that Mr. Goddard
still knows that Mother Nature has her own mind, even as far as the computer
modeling, the forecasting, the satelliting, have come in all of these years. 
There he was, in front of the weather map, telling everyone in his viewing area
that in the next twelve to twenty-four hours he couldn’t tell them how much snow
was coming.  There was a chance of anything from less than an inch to
almost a foot of snow, depending on how the cold front moved, and in my head, I
knew that he knew that Mother Nature still has her own thing in mind, even
though I wouldn’t go to bed dreaming of a snow day.

And so, with the winter
weather that is supposed to come tonight, I wait again to see what Mother Nature
has in mind for my Monday.  It’s not nearly as exciting as when I was a
kid, because there is nothing like a snow day when you are ten year’s old and
you can build a snow fort, but I would like to know if I can sleep in tomorrow,
maybe pretend I was ten again and build a snow fort, or if I’m going to have to
head out, in a measly inch or two of snow, and do some business consulting. 
As I do every time I hear a snowstorm might be coming, since I was like five
years old, I pray Mother Nature wants me to make a snow fort.  And that
Dick Goddard (or now, in Chicago, it’s Tom Skilling) just can’t read Mom
Nature’s mind.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Maybe I should just listen to the couple of commercials
Howard Stern has on
Sirius, because while flipping through my local Chicago radio dial for a couple
of minutes this morning I started yelling at the radio in my car.  A
way-overpaid radio dude (at least in my mind), and a reporter, were talking
about things at the
CES (that’s
the Consumer Electronics Show for everyone).  They had the audacity to
question who would want a

103" plasma screen TV, complained about the cost of LG’s dual-format DVD
player (you don’t buy it now, you wait a few years while the price keeps halving
itself), and then, couldn’t figure out who would spend $600 on the coolest phone
to come around in years.  That’s
the iphone, of
course.

I’m just bummed the iPhone won’t be available until June, and the fact
that I can’t get a lame, morning, radio show and make over a million bucks a
year.

Thanks for listening and your comments.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
On my

MySpace page blog I listed a few of my goals for the New Year.  Along
with a Chicago Bear’s Super Bowl win was my winning the
Mega Millions jackpot
when it was over $100 Million.  But now that the jackpot is over $100
Million, I have created a new dilemma for myself, especially with my big win
with yesterday’s jackpot, a $10 win that gives me the cash for buying new
tickets for Tuesday’s drawing.

You might ask, "What kind of dilemma is there
when buying lotto tickets?" but because I’m nuts, well, here goes.

Many, many
years ago, when I finally had some of my own income and would buy a few lotto
tickets when the jackpot got into that "What the hell would I do with fifty
million dollars?" range, rather than, in my head, bask in the glory of being
able to imagine the great new house, a cool car, not working for the man, well,
my thoughts turned to my family.  Not so much mom and dad, other than
figuring I would have to pay to get their phone number changed and maybe buy
them some cool stuff, but rather the thoughts turned to my brother and sister. 
If they were in a financial bind would they come to me for help?  Hell, if
they weren’t in a financial bind, would they come to me expecting a hand-out? 
And even if I gave them something, what would stop them from coming back to me
later, looking for more?

And so I developed a "buying lottery ticket’s" plan.

If the jackpot was small I would buy a quick-pick ticket or two.  If I won
– great!  But if the jackpot was larger I would buy five tickets, all with
the same numbers, based on my family.  My thinking was this:  I buy
five tickets, all with the same numbers, and they come in.  I give my
brother one ticket in exchange for a dollar and I give my sister one ticket in
exchange for a dollar.  I keep the other three tickets, with the agreement
between us being that I will take care of any need’s mom and dad might have
(since I have the other two tickets), and if any of us are fiscally
irresponsible with our winnings, in the future, well, we can’t go to any sibling
looking for a hand-out.  We would all be on our own with what where my
winnings and now part of those are theirs.  So say the jackpot was $100
million and my five tickets were the only winners?  That leaves my brother
and sister with $20 million each, and me with a nice $60 million dollars. 
(On a side note, imagine if there were six winning tickets, and I have five of
them – that other person first finds out that they won and thinks they have $100
million, then they find out that there are six winning tickets and they are
still happy because they at least won over $16 million bucks, then they find out
that I have $83ish million dollars worth of tickets to their $16ish million. 
Would they be mad at me?  I’m sorry I digressed.  Back to dilemma-ing.)

But this morning I came up with my new, "buying lotto ticket’s" dilemma.

I
have a favorite nephew, and I have a favorite niece.  In fact, right now,
they are my only nephew and my only niece.  And I wondered, in the shower
this morning, if I should now include them in my lotto ticket buy?  My
nephew is in college, so he is supposed to be an adult, and my niece will be 16
in a few weeks, making her an adult in at least a country or two in the world. 
Does this now mean they deserve their own tickets?  And really, can I trust
my sister to make sure they are taken care of, or would my fear of them coming
to Uncle Dude, looking for money in the future, become a new reality?

But then
the financial reality of including them in my ticket buy came in.

Let’s see: 
Instead of five tickets I buy seven.  The jackpot is still $100 million
bucks and I have the only winning tickets.  Instead of being worth $20
million each, now each ticket is worth about $14.3 million.  That means my
brother, sister, niece, and nephew find themselves with $14.3 million apiece,
not a bad chunk of change for them thanks to my good fortune.  Meanwhile my
jackpot diminished from $60 million bucks to take care of myself, my mom, and my
dad, to a paltry $42.9 million.

So I have to decide if my favorite niece and
favorite nephew are worth a little over $17 million bucks to me, or should I
count on their mother to make sure they are taken care with her winnings?

Then
it occurred to me that instead of five tickets with the same numbers, well, I
could up that to ten.  With that same $100 million jackpot each ticket
would be worth $10 million.  I’d give one ticket to my brother, one to my
sister, one to my favorite niece, and one to my favorite nephew, leaving me with
six tickets, and I’m back at $60 million buckaroos!  Now my brother and
sister are pissed because their winnings went from $20 million to $10 million
(and especially my brother since my niece and nephew aren’t his kids), my niece
and nephew are pissed because if I weren’t so greedy about the $60 million
they’d each have another $4.3 million, and if there happened to be another
person with a winning ticket, that poor bastard goes from winning $100 million
to less than $10 million, all because I wanted to stake my claim at that $60
million dollar mark.

See, I told you I was nuts!

I’ve got a $10 winning Mega
Millions ticket and now I don’t know how to spend it.  I could buy ten Mega
Millions tickets all with the same numbers with the potential to piss off a lot
of people; I could buy seven Mega Millions tickets all with the same number and
maybe lose $17 million bucks for me; I could stick with my "buying five tickets"
plan and hope my sister takes care of her kids; Or I could, oh hell, maybe I
should just buy two "Quarter Pounder With Cheese Meals" and be happy for an
hour, until I realize that it  means I will probably also lose a bet with
my sister.

You see, I’m nuts, and also with dilemmas!

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!