My Dancing Debut

Should old aquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind:

That's a married man on stage. Yep, that's a married man.

Wii Have Fun!

Tiffany's sister was one of the countless lucky ones whose Santa was able to find a Wii this Christmas. It's much more fun the Magic Bullet. Nintendo's newest offering is amazingly revolutionary with the remote control wand in lieu of what I think of as a regular controller, and after just a few hours of practice I feel like I'm ready to give a major presentation complete with laser pointer.

I should say that my idea of a regular controller is one that is first and foremost tethered to the game console. Moreover, it has a directional pad and an A button and a B button, which is almost always used to jump. Since then there have been some pretty big upgrades. A C-button, but that fell out of favor when X and Y came along. The top L and R trigger buttons were added too, but I don't like using those, because it changes how I hold the controller, then there was the directional pad and the joystick and a trigger and an A, a B, and six C buttons for a while. Then there was a second joystick on the same controller along with a directional pad, which I still don't understand why. But this is something entirely different.

All of those were attached. There was a wire running from you to the game box to the TV. Plus, they were all the same basic idea, they were just getting more and more complicated, not unlike an old one bedroom house that grows room by room as the family inside grows until you wind up with this strange amalgamation of a house that belongs on the pages of Mother Goose, with kids running all over the place.

In fact, I had a friend with this theory that today's kids will possess a much more greater mental capacity as a direct result of all those extra buttons. Growing up using 18 buttons is definitely more complicated than using three that I started out on.

The Wii just scraps the whole idea and forces you to actually swing a bat or roll a ball or shake a soda can or punch your friend. I probably could get into the idea that it's not the same as actually swinging a bat or rolling a ball or punching your friend, but I won't because it's just too much fun! I love it.

I love it so much that I'm afraid I've played it too much. Like the first days of summer growing up, after spending hours upon hours, heading to bed with a sore thumb, the beginnings of a necessary callous, I am holding my arm and wincing in pain from the beginnings of tennis elbow and a sore shoulder, but am eager to return and start up a game.

In honor of my friend, I'm going to take a moment to wonder how the Wii will affect the growth of little minds. They will probably all be experts at giving major presentations with laser pointers.

The Magic Bullet

I've finally succumbed to the power of the TV. I think I mentioned that we downgraded our cable significantly and we know only get somewhere around 15 channels. Of those two are fuzzy, three don't speak English, three are "community" channels, two are titled C-SPAN, and one brings the message of the Roman Catholic faith 24-hours a day.

With our old cable package, it was easy to find nothing to watch. There'd always be some rerun of some celebrity reality show or some movie that was on enough that you probably seen it all, just not in the right order. Our limited cable requires some work and finagling to find nothing to watch. You have to really know where to go and wait for nothing, and as a result I watch a lot of PBS concerts, and okay, my fair share of C-SPAN, which isn't very much.

Then there are infomercials, 30-minute gems of advertising. The crazy thing is is that they almost always get me. I start thinking to myself, well, I'm not much of a cleaner, but if I got that super clean spray, the stuff would stay clean longer. Or, I wonder where I could store a collapsible ladder. Or, I bet it would feel great to have all the build-up flushed out of my intestines. The winner though is the Magic Bullet. Make meals in 3 seconds... one, two... ... ... three!
So for Christmas, our first as Man and Wife, Tiffany got the Magic Bullet. While the name doesn't quite scream kitchen appliance, it's the greatest of it's kind that I've ever come across. The first night, we made excellent omelettes, just put in the eggs, the cheese and a couple slices of ham and in one, two... ... ...three! It was fully blended and poured onto a frying pan. It really was the best home-cooked eggs I've ever had, which is saying something! And to wash it down, Tiff mixed up some coffee and warm chocolate milk into a nice frothy mocchachino, or machiatto, or frappelatte, or something like that.

So I've officially entered the world of teleshopping, even if I found the Magic Bullet at Kmart. It's a pretty slippery slope, as I've already got my eye on another infomercial, and I'm starting to wonder just how much money I'm actually saving with my downgraded cable.

Merry Christmas

Here's to wishing you the best this Christmas.

Fresh from Jamaica, Tiff and I looked a bit too hard for music that would gap our beach-lovin', no worries reggae vibe with the Christmas carols and stumbled upon this... there's no good way for me to do it, so go here and switch the music player to the "12 Days of Christmas."

It's a great song as it has what is truly important in life, whether you're a Rastafarian or just some white guy in Virginia. I would gladly take five songs to sing over five golden rings any time of the year.

UPDATE: The singer is Peter Broggs... here's the album that he's on. You can listen to thirty seconds of it. Tiff found it on myspace, usually a great place to find music, but I guess it was taken off, which happens all too often.

The Three Finger Theory

I have long held on to the belief that mankind is evolving. Not so much in the superpower sense that Heroes promotes and not so much in the two paths sense of HG Wells' Time Machine. Both of those could happen, I'm not contending that. I would love to be able to fly or shoot laser beams from my eyes or whatever. I'm thinking of something far more subtle, but potentially just as significant.

I developed this theory in the prime of my brain activity years, college, and grasped onto the idea immediately and have let it percolate and bubble over as time has gone by. As I was deep in thought studying the back of my hand one day, I noticed something about my fingers.My fingers naturally stay with a gap between my index and middle finger and another between my ring finger and pinky. It only makes sense that the result of this one day in the not-so-distant future will be a generation of babies born with only three fingers. Yes, it is my belief that the future will bring a joining of the middle and the ring finger in what will undoubtedly be known as the middling finger. Or the ringiddle finger.

But then recently, something happened that made me rethink that. I looked down at my beautiful hand to ponder my future middling finger and this is what I saw:Complete and catastrophic heartbreak slowly sank in. How could I have been so naive? My wedding ring throws the entire Three Finger Theory out the window. It is a defenestrated theory! Not only is the ring a physical barrier to the blissful union of middle and ring, it's done so forcefully and painfully as I become accustomed to wearing the very symbol of blissful unions!

As I must slowly recover from the shock and grief brought on by this startling discovery, I will turn to my shiny new ring to brighten my day and my shiny new wife to tell me everything will be okay.

Skittlers

We, at the Muted Guerrilla, would like to introduce to you the greatest game in all the world. The game is simply called skittlers. We stumbled upon this addictive game of skill and precision while on our honeymoon in Jamaica's beautiful Runaway Bay. It's look reminds me oddly of the old cigarette vending machines, but I don't have any pictures suggesting that.

I am confident, however, that you have never seen anything like it or even near it's demanding level of pure enjoyment... for it demands that you have a good time. How can I be so confident? I challenge you to look up skittlers on the internet... you can't find it. Of course, if you type in "skittle" and "Jamaica," you might find the website of our honeymoon destination, but that's asking too much.

Skittlers is similar to billiards in that it's a table game with a green top with holes and you use a cue stick to swat at balls, but the similarities end there. In fact, a better example is golf. But imagine, if you will, if golf were played for speed, and if you have a bad hit you have to start all over, way back at the beginning. That's still not quite right.

So you have yourself a starting point, like a tee, and you have to hit the balls into any of nine holes in order to score points. Each hole has a different value. Every time the ball goes in a hole it rolls down the inside of the machine and out a slot that is worth points. Standing in your way are four menacing wooden posts, guarding the front four holes. If one of these precariously balanced sentinels topples over, which they will undoubtedly do, you lose all your points and start over. The winner is the first to 500.

Oh!! It is so much fun. Tiff and I became pretty good at it too.. We still had our share of start-overs but it never lost its fun. I'm bummed that I probably won't find it here in Virginia, but I guess that's another reason to go back to Jamaica.

And I Didn't Even Get a Toothbrush

My writing and posting seems to go in spurts; it was about this time last year that I trailed off only to reemerge in the summer. It must be something to do with the shortened days... it must be.

Last spring, as I was in writing hibernation, I came close to posting something all of one time. I envisioned it in letter format:

Dear Mom,
I finally made it to the dentist. They cleaned my teeth really well. I only have nine cavities!
Much love,
John Duffy

I'm not sure why it was a letter to my mom, I don't even think she reads my blog.

Anyways, nine months later, I'm finally cavity free, although the dentist said five of them could potential become root canals. Great! More trips to the dentist!

It took two trips to the dentist to get all my cavities worked on; I'm beginning to figure out the proper dentist chair etiquette, if there is any. I haven't experienced stuff like colonoscopies, but the regular dentist visits are surprisingly awkward. I mean the dentist's face is maybe ten inches from yours and they are staring at you the whole time, with their rubbered hands wedged into your mouth. Getting cavities done, I had a second face near mine, with a third and fourth hand working in my mouth.

With two faces right in front of me, I had a hard time finding something to look at. I closed my eyes for a while but that made me swallow more, so I tried to keep them open. I can report the ceiling was a dreary cream color. There is a TV in the office, but it's at my feet so I couldn't watch it. The dentist surely did though, occasionally making comments that I responded to through grunts with hands in my mouth. The second time I went I was unusually tired and felt myself drift off to sleep once or twice. I twitched and jumped and couldn't explain, as I had hands and drills in my mouth.

All in all, I'm done with the dentist for a while... at least six months or so. Hopefully, I'm not done with the blog for six months or so. We will see though.

The Goat Race

So I got married... Tiffany is now my wife. Jamaica was amazing, absolutely amazing, and we had a truly wonderful time. There are many, many stories to tell, including some of actually getting married, but Tiff and I agree that the first one shared definitely needs to be the Goat Race.

I was in the fourth heat of racers. The three heats before me were all very close match-ups, where it was anyone's race right down to the finish line. My heat was extremely intense from the beginning. Here's me at the starting line getting pumped up along with all my competitors.

I hope you can see the focus and determination on everyone's face but mine. Here's the actual race:

So I didn't take home the grand prize but I feel I gave it all I had... I'm not sure if the goat put forth all his effort though.

I'm Getting Married!!

Tomorrow I head off to the Caribbean, where I'll be getting married on Friday!! I'll be back next Thursday with a ring on my finger and a wife on my arm. And I'll eventually share a story or two, but for now... I'm off to this gazebo: And I'm getting married!!

Christmas Convoy

The federal government has quite a few resources at their disposal.

The other day... over a week ago now - the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Tiff and I drove up to a long line of cars and trucks on the highway all blinking their hazards. They were driving way too slow for I-95 and were really making heavy traffic become dangerous traffic. I muttered more than one word that I shouldn't repeat.

With the first five or six cars we saw, along with a blue-light police car, we assumed we were passing a funeral, but a funeral procession on the highway? Hmmm... a little peculiar. When we went over a hill, things became a little clearer, albeit a little stranger. We didn't see many at first, but we did see one of them. A giant flatbed truck was just ahead covered with no less than 75 Christmas trees. We soon caught up to it and noticed it was a U.S. Forestry Services truck.

The federal government always gets the best. These trees, judging by their liscense plates, are hauled down from Vermont. I guess that's where true authentic Christmas trees are born. The Christmas tree farm just up the rode from where Tiff grew up, maybe an hour outside of DC, aren't quite good enough. The federal government deserves the best.

We passed maybe ten more trucks each with Christmas trees stacked high and then we caught up to the lead one. An equally large flatbed truck with one giant Christmas tree wrapped up in a traveling coat fully decorated with lights with a big sign reading:
I'm not sure about that dog there. We stopped at the next rest stop to rest and as we were getting ready to go, in comes the Christmas Convoy, one after the other. I got to take a few pictures.Looking back on it, I probably could have gotten some better shots. Just to note, these are not the National Christmas Tree. That tree is planted in the ground outside the White House. Even though it's there year round, it was a gift by the state of Vermont... it's authentic.