Woody Cavenaugh

It has been some time since my last blog post. Over six months, now that I've gone back and looked. My entries go back to 2002, and during that time I was averaging probably three entries a week. Not all of them gold, heck, not even a few of them gold, but if you toss enough characters into the aether long enough sooner or later you create gold and people like it. That's motivation enough to keep on doing it.

Then Twitter came along. Say anything you want, but say it in 140 characters. People use it for different things, and even I've not held to one purpose. I imagine if you broke it down, most Tweets are statements of where a person is at a specific point in time. The next largest chunk is current events little nuggets of history like a news ticker.

I like Twitter because it gives you a chance to make prose into poetry by limiting you. Haiku and couplets force you make each word specific and purposeful. No waste, no embellishments, no fancy trim. You get 140 characters to pack as much meaning into it as you can.

I've come to love the limitation. My favorite is when I have an epiphany, some wonderful turn of phrase that I absolutely must share, and I go over the 140 limit. Then I'm forced to make hard decisions, choose more compact words and carve the truth out of the jumble of words like a sculpture turning a slab of stone into a masterpiece. Its powerful, its fulfilling, its frustrating, its limiting, its art.

I work hard on most of my tweets, to make them fun to read. I want my friends and followers to look forward to seeing my next message, and I don't want to disappoint, either in quality or quantity. I need purpose, this gives me purpose.

The greatest thing that comes from it is when live and in person someone says, "When you said 'X' on Twitter, I just loved it. I laughed and laughed." That is the fuel that drives me forever onward towards the next tweet. Or to put it another way:

"I love it when I write something that makes people tell me how much they loved it. It does however raise the bar going forward."

And I had a whole twelve characters left over.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:02 PM | Permalink

I can't tell you exactly how many people have come up to me and told me that those first holidays after a death in the family would be really hard. Dear friends, trusted coworkers, and practically strangers have all at one point come up to me to make this point. I hold no grudge, though I personally think it is a little cold to walk up to a friend, coworker, or stranger and say "Hi, you're life is going to suck this weekend. Have fun and see you Monday!"

They also have no idea of what they speak. I guess they are imagining the Normal Rockwell paining of the whole family sitting around the table smiling at the giant roasted turkey. Does anyone really have that kind of Holiday Season? Be honest.

My life before dad dying has had exactly three holiday season stages. They went like this:

Stage one: Between the ages of too young to remember and my teens we had a big breakfast where dad would cut a smoked ham and we were a family for just long enough to polish off our grits. Then dad would say "Have dinner ready by the middle of the day", and he would leave. Mom would be alone in the kitchen where the forces of good and evil battled over her mortal soul. I'm not kidding. I heard voices...terrible voices... I sat in front of the TV watching parades trying not to notice my mother speaking in tongues to the turkey and casting dark magic with the giblet gravy. Dinner would be ready promptly between one and three PM. Dad would stagger in at about five PM, pass out on the couch and wake up still drunk at about seven PM. We would all sit down and eat a cold thanksgiving dinner. In truth mom and I picked at it because we had been picking at it since it was done. Dad would proclaim that it was the "best ever", then pass out on the couch in front of the TV. we couldn't hear the TV for his snoring.

Stage two: I was older, and so was dad and his friends and their interest. Rather than gather in someone's tool shed or garden barn to drink they all had wood heaters now. So after the big breakfast with the smoked ham dad would pile me into the truck and we would go to some woods somewhere where there was some free wood to cut. Meanwhile mom was left in the kitchen to wage holy war against the forces of holiday tradition. All dad's friends would join us in the wood cutting. They would cut until about noon, I would load up everyone's trucks with the wood they cut. Then the drinking would begin. Just before dark someone realizes that their truck still hasn't been unloaded, so they all break up and drive drunk with a truck loaded heavily with firewood. Good times. Dad would always help me unload- or at the very least show me where he wanted it stacked. If he was sober enough to help me unload he'd go into his shed after unloading to make sure he was good and stinko before the big meal. It is now dark, mom would be a nervous wreck, the meal would be cold, dad would proclaim it was the "best ever" before passing out on the couch in front of the TV. Happy Thanksgiving.

Stage Three: I was in college, and would come home for the holiday. Dad stayed home, and often helped in the cooking of the feast. Mom would fight for God and heaven in the kitchen and dad would cook and drink in his garage kitchen. There is a whole other complete story I could tell about the stages of The Man Kitchen and I promise I will one day. Because dad was at home, we would actually eat the meal hot. Dad who is drunk would proclaim this the "best ever" and go pass out on his recliner. I would eventually get tired of Dad's snoring and mom's war stories. Then I would go hang out at the Pizza Hutt with my friends for hours leaving mom to pick the bones of another holiday tragedy.

Norman Rockwell was never invited.

Yes. This Thanksgiving was different. This year I brought my wife, we ate at my wife's least favorite restaurant (it was the only one open). Then we came home and all tried to get along while mom obsessed over getting the house ready for Christmas wringing her hands the whole way. I think she feared that if she stopped for just one second she would be forced to realize that dad wasn't there and melt down. My wife was melting down because my mother wouldn't just sit down and shut up for five minutes. I was melting down because that's what happens to solid rock when you surround it with that much molten mettle. Because I'm so stoney, hopefully neither of them noticed me melting while all of their melting down was happening.

At any rate I commemorated this holiday season much like my dad would have. I showed up hours late with a truck load of wood. But hey, at least I was sober.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 5:35 PM | Permalink

I just rode in an airplane for the first time in my life. Three planes in four hops actually. Most people who find out I had never ridden in a plane before assumed I was afraid of flying. I never was, and I'm not now having done it. I've always believed that how you get there is the worthier part.

To that end I've seen most of the United States, and a little of Canada through the windshield of a ground vehicle. Sure, I could get into a plane and go from here to there in hours what would take me days by car. I suppose some would see the days in the car as days wasted. I have never wasted a second on a road trip. Every mile is something new to see. Every stop is someone new to meet. I like to listen to conversations had at restaurants and gas stations on road trips. What do they sound like? I like to hear how to they pronounce "tomato", "pecan", "house" and "about". I want to know if the weather is normal or unusual. I want to see if what they call cold or hot is just cool or warm to me.

Even clothing choices can vary by where you are. Its raining, do most people wear raincoats, or ponchos or do they use umbrellas? I find all this interesting.

Plane rides give you a chance to listen to and perhaps interact with the people around you, but for however many hours it is more of the same. Do I want to spend two hours talking with someone I'll never see again? Maybe I do, but wouldn't it be more interesting to spend 10 minutes with a person, knowing that you are going to meet someone completely different just over the next hill for 10 minutes later on?

In a plane you can only see a sunrise from one place, up. It is the same for a sunset. I'm not knocking it, a sunrise or a sunset over the clouds is something to see, but I like being on the road knowing that the next sunset or sunrise I see will be in a completely new place, and one I will likely never see again.

In a plane you can occasionally see another plane, in a vehicle on the highway there is no telling what you'll see. I like variety, I like not knowing what's over the next hill, I like the undiscovered country.

That and planes are kinda loud.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:57 PM | Permalink

First they came after the dogs and I said something but was shouted down and or ignored. The vicious puppy showed his teeth from 20 feet away (out of pepper spray range) and the poor threatened officer was allowed to use a shotgun to even the score.

Then they went after the war veterans. The hockey stick with a range of about five feet was substituted later with the much more dangerous machete with a range of about three feet. My guess is the truth is the man showed his teeth, the officer felt he was threatened and since the guy was out of the range of taser or pepper spray, was free to open fire. "He's comin' right for us!"

I now have a greater understanding of the problem. Originally I believed that the police were taking a shoot first ask questions later philosophy. But now I believe it is a gross lack of training. The police clearly don't understand attack distance. I can help with that.

I invite all police to take a fencing class where they will learn in a clear and systematic way at what distance they are actually threatened. Once they have had some proper training and perhaps compete in a tournament or two, they will be better prepared to deal with situations where they may or may not be threatened and act appropriately.

Once they master this simple fencing concept, they will cut down on bad PR, eliminate extra paperwork and SBI investigations. They will spend less time on administrative leave, and best of all myself and people like me won't have to rant and roar every time they screw up, and hide behind the extremely weak "standard procedure" excuse that sounds so dumb when they say it on TV.

For more information on important training opportunities please visit this link.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:44 AM | Permalink

Read this first

Then she noticed the shotgun in one of the officer's hands, aimed at her neighbor's 45-pound Labrador retriever.

"I said, 'Why did you have to do that? You didn't have to do that,'" Mrs. Kulers said. "He said, 'It showed its teeth.' He said, 'We have a right to do this.'"

Police shoot your dog in a similar manor you may shoot the officer's dog. If the officer has no dog, you may shoot his child, but care must be taken that it is only a flesh wound.

Thank you,
The Management

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I remember it well, just a few months ago we had two intelligent qualified guys running for president. It was going to be a tough choice. Back then it was about the issues. They didn't attack the other, that would be low and a waste of words, "Let me tell you about what I believe!" Good times.

But those times are gone now. Now we've reached the stupid season. It happened when the presidential candidates chose their vice presidents. The criteria for choosing a VP is different from that of choosing the president. The VP's job is to fill in the gaps in the president's armor, and hopefully at the same time help balance any niches the other team have. Obama is a minority, so the McCain camp chose a woman. No harm in that women can be Vice Presidents too.

So, did you flinch when I referred to a woman as a minority? Probably not. Should you have? Most definitely. In the 2000 census women made up 50.9% of the US population. Just saying. You can talk about the glass ceiling, but you can't compare a minority to a woman. Its apples and oranges, both are fruity arguments.

They've made a big deal in the news about "The Bridge to nowhere". The facts say that Palin supported this bridge, then the popular tide of opinion changed and so did her opinion. There is no harm in this. However, you can't really say that she was against it. That would be a half truth, which is a lie in sheep's clothing.

For most of my life I said over and over again that I didn't care for blond girls. My preference was for brunets or red heads (a man can dream). If you look at the facts of my dating record you will see that I tended to prefer small, brown haired girls who were looking for a knight in shining armor to protect them from the evils of the world. Then I married a tall powerful, intelligent, capable of killing me with her pinky blond. Can I really honestly say, "I have always preferred blonds"? Nope. I CAN say, I didn't used to like blonds but I saw the error in my ways and I now prefer them. So logically, Palin could say, "At one time I supported the bridge to nowhere, but after careful study of the facts I turned against the idea entirely." She could, but she won't.

Politicians are not allowed to learn, or grow, or change their minds for any reason. If they do, it summons the clown parade with their clown cars, and honking horns, chanting "Waffle! Waffle! Waffle!" while making horses asses out of twisted balloons.

That's why we've had eight years of an idiot president. He's not allowed to say, "Whoopsie daisy, I sure blew that call." Not only can he not apologize for screwing up, he's not allowed to fix his mistakes either because that would imply that he's realized he's wrong, learned from his mistake, summoned the clown parade.

Meanwhile, EXTREMELY well paid political wolves are going over every speech with a microscope looking for clips and phrases they can rearrange, and spin out to say something to damage the candidate. Or, to put it in a less politically correct way, "lie and slander". Here's one that John McCain approved of (or there is a sound bite at the end that says he did) where they accuse of Obama of passing legislation that teaches comprehensive sex education to kindergartners. Lets for a minute assume that it is the truth from the mouth of the all mighty himself. Guess what! You've just agreed that McCain supports pedophiles! If you don't want to teach kindergartners where your "no-zones" are and teach them to tell a parent, teacher, or police officer anytime someone tries to touch them there, than you are supporting the people who are out there (RIGHT BEHIND YOU) groping your babies for sexual gratification.

But that's crazy talk. Obama didn't pass legislation teaching little kids how to do the horizontal mombo. For one, the legislation states that the comprehensive material had to be age and developmentally appropriate. They wouldn't be teaching the little ones to use a condom, they would have been teaching little ones to protect their no-zones. Not that this matters at all, the legislation didn't actually pass. Those poor little tykes have no idea what is happening to them and don't know what to do about it.

But I digress...

These idiotic and false messages are getting front page headlines for two reasons, first the mainstream media is playing to the lowest common denominator. Second, anyone who is dumb enough to believe the lie, is going to click on the ad on the page asking the question, "Who was a better leader of the world: Britney Spears or Cookie Monster? Click here to vote!" If you actually clicked that link I've lost a lot of respect for you. You should be ashamed!

Do you want to know who I think is to blame for all this mess? Ralph Nader. You want to know why? Seat belt laws. First Nadar helped make the seat belt mandatory in all cars. Then the laws were created forcing everyone to wear them. This very small thing was a death knell of the human race.

If seatbelts were optional, people when they bought a car would have the choice. "Hmmm...seat belts for $50 dollars or a front drivers side DVD player for $200. Duh! Give me the DVD player!" Some weeks later this guy watching is Epic Movie while driving 80 miles per hour down the highway veers across the median and slams head first into the car which has no DVD player but did come with seat belts because it is an obvious choice for safety. The Epic Movie fan and his family are launched out of the windshield where he splats into a tree in a cow pasture, a Mack Truck, and a guy on a moped. The family with the seat belts are hurt bad but survive. Darwinism is at play. The idiot has removed himself and his family from the gene pool, making the world a smarter place. The car filled with those who chose of their own free will to buckle up survive, also improving the gene pool. Its a win-win.

You think I'm making this up? You think the world isn't a dumber place. Feel free to examine the evidence.

No child left behind. Lowering the bar, one school at a time.
Search youtube for "painful and stupid" I got 41 THOUSAND hits and most of them also included the term "funny".
Hole in the wall. If I even have to say why...
Protectionism in general

My absolute earliest memory: I had been put into my crib for the night and my parents were getting ready to go to bed themselves. I pull the pair of tweezers I had hidden in my PJ's out, climb out of the crib and find out for myself exactly what it was in those little slots in the wall. (Which I learned later were called electrical sockets.) I learned a valuable lesson that night that has stuck with me my whole life. Do you doubt this was a valuable lesson?

As long as there are people out there stupid enough to spend money on internet enhancement drugs there will be a market for the idiocy that defines today's politics.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My taste in music typically runs between the 80's, Celtic rock, and ska. The variety is good, but it has the potential to get you into trouble if you are the type who find yourself singing along without realizing it.

I can only imagine what someone would say if they walked into my cube after having heard me quietly crooning along with The Booze Brothers:
"The rest of us don't really feel it our business to know that you are both 'in the mood' and interested in sex outdoors."

Or Great Big Sea: "Clearly Mari Mac is the bell of the ball back in Benifee, but you're here, your wife's name is Sara and I know for a fact she can and will kick your ass for this kind of talk."

Or Winger: "You're one sick puppy. You know, the government keeps websites about people like you. Name, address, the whole deal. Do you need to register?

Or Van Halen Well, you've ruined baked goods forever with that talk

OR The Outfield* Yeah, I'm calling your wife. See you in hell.

Or Reel Big Fish While the tube top is not the sort of clothing a freshman should be wearing, I feel I need to remind you AGAIN that seventeen is illegal, immoral, actionable, and butt kickable. But don't take my word for it, lets go ask your wife.

Or The Red Elvises Look, I've been on the phone with HR and they say that perhaps you should go to health services and talk to a councilor. Now. They said that if necessary I could call security.

Fortunately a friend turned me on to a genre I will forever know as "work music". I don't know what genre it is and Pandora Internet Radio refers to it as electronics roots, trip hop roots, use of modal harmonies, acoustic drum samples and a tight kick sound . Umm...yeah. Anyway here's a sample.

All I know is, there's no singing with it, therefore I can listen without inviting wifely wrath, criminal charges, or a 24 hour involuntary commitment to an asylum. Its job security in my headphones.

Continue reading "Work Music" »

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:53 PM | Permalink

I've not posted as much as I have in the past. I truly miss the five day a week posts, but I have unfortunateness in every quarter of my life now and really feel the need to get lost in the woods. Sometimes, that's the only way to find a clear path.

That out of the way, let's let paragraph two be a warning: The rest of this post not only contains foul language, it is ABOUT foul language. I don't typically use foul language in my posts. I find that the foul language on my blog is in the comments section, where the unwashed masses tell me how much I suck. I may suck, but you still read it. Thank you for your post. I find foul language to be a shortcut to emotional meaning, and on my blog I tend to like to get their the long way around. I'm like that with a lot of things. I have never flown. I have no fear of flying, but when I go somewhere I want to experience the journey fully. Flying like cursing is a shortcut to a destination. I'm using foul language in this one. You have been warned.

One of the things I learned in my six years of failing French in college is that Romance languages have gendered nouns. Car is masculine in French, "Le Car". That's a joke by the way "la voiture" is feminine. Le Car is crap in any language. Car is feminine in all languages. In English where there is no gendered noun convention, all forms of mechanized transportation tend to be referred to as "She", usually as a term of endearment. Book is masculine in French, "le livre". But I digress.

They say that English isn't a gendered language. I think they are fucking morons. All curse words fall into three genders; masculine, feminine, and neutral. In the above sentence "I think they are fucking morons." "Fucking" is a neutral adjective used to describe the plural morons- which they are.

I can say "he's an asshole", but I can't really call her an asshole because asshole is masculine. I would have to use "bitch" which is the feminine term for the shortcut that caused you to use the curse word in the first place. The interesting thing is that, if I call a guy an asshole its OK, if I call a woman an asshole I'm a fucking moron. If I say she's a bitch its fine, but if I call a guy a bitch its probably a term of endearment. Unless I call him a "little bitch" which instead of being endearing is me saying that not only is he an an asshole he's a woman. Calling a woman a woman isn't necessarily a bad thing. Calling a man a woman is most definitely a bad thing. This is doubly true if they aren't trying to look and act like a woman. Calling a woman a man is like calling a dog an aardvark, it is a non-sequitur, it doesn't work. In order to be derogatorily about a woman's femininity you have to call her a dyke which is odd. I was going to make a joke here about my confusion about comparing a masculine woman to a wall designed to hold back water, but instead I went to wikipedia and became even more confused. I'm backing away slowly.

Masculine: dick, dickhead, fuck, fucker, fuckhead, ass, asshole, asshat, shit, shithead, shit for brains, the list goes on and on and on. There is a HUGE list of masculine predicates for the purposes of showing disrespect. Many of them have to do with bodily functions and sexual organs.

The list of feminine predicates is much shorter and on the whole I think the words tend to be more taboo. Bitch is about the nicest of the damned here. There are words on this list I won't use in conversation among close trusted friends, and I certainly won't use it in writing, even on a blog.

Slang of the penis is always masculine. Interestingly, slang for female sexual organs is almost but not entirely always masculine also. He is a boob. He is a pussy. Any slang for feminine organs used as a feminine predicate that I can think of are taboo, at least to me. George Carlin said one, but you can't repeat it on television- unless it is cable.

Douche, douche bag, masculine. Try it think about some guy that you dislike and think to yourself, "He's such a douche bag." It works! Now try it with some woman you dislike, "She's such a douche bag." It doesn't work. Does that seem right to you? A douche bag is a sack that holds a vinegar and water solution used for the cleaning of lady parts. One could say that if the liquid is transferred from the bag to the place it goes its gone from a plastic bag to a flesh one. Crude, tasteless, tacky, wrong, but not entirely inaccurate. Yet actually calling a woman a douche bag is incorrect. Douche bag is masculine.

Thus, while the English language doesn't have gendered nouns, in the realm of foul language the predicate is clearly gendered.

Some graduate student in English is about to read this and get inspired. When they write their thesis on it they probably won't credit me, though they'll credit George Carlin. George Carlin is an important social commentator, I'm just a fucking douche bag with a blog.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:58 AM | Permalink

I know I promised you something thoughtful and deep about the differences between the fencing mindset and the football one, but I'm too tired for meaningful. This time yesterday I was 900 miles away in Montreal having just woke up from five hours sleep. Today I am at my desk on five hours sleep, deep and thoughtful will just have to wait until I have had deep sleep of no less than nine hours in duration, and a meal that didn't come in a paper bag.

In the United States convenience store clerk is a job handled by those working their way through college, retired, or hope to get back to school one day. Fast food worker is a job held by high school kids, the retired, and others I can't quite describe at this level of rest. In Quebec, fast food and convenience store worker are jobs that aspiring models and actors work at in hopes of being discovered. Even the one working the fry vat has bright intelligent eyes, clear skin and a body that could not have ever eaten fast food. It was weird.

I remember walking into a convenience store in the middle of nowhere Quebec, my six years of failed french lessons a jumbled mess of misfiring synapses and emotional damage. This completely beautiful girl at the counter smiles at me saying "Bonjour, hello!" I manage to mumble a bonjure back while trying not to look at my shoes. She rings up the two 20oz bottles Pepsi Max and cheerfully says to me "Quatre dollars, et vinget-et-un cent ci vous pley" (Just like that, only spelled correctly). I hand her my card, I have no Canadian currency. I remember her asking something that I knew meant "Is that all for you?" I nodded red faced, noticing the soles on my Clarks were cracking and the shoes really needed replacing, maybe this time with a black pair.
She handed me my card and my receipt for the two drinks costing four dollars and change. I signed the slip and pushed it back across the counter. I managed to stammer, "Merci boucoups" as I scampered out the door. I climbed back into the Rav-4 thinking, aloud to no one in particular "The King of Dorkness has returned."

It was like that.

Even in the stands watching the football game I wondered if the game was being played on the campus of some sort of modeling school. Even the old people were healthy, happy, smiling, and model-esq. I felt like the frog prince's stunt double.

After the game, the members of the Blitz took off their helmets and shoulder pads and rushed over to the fence to visit with friends and family. They didn't look anything like a football team. They looked like they were auditioning for a women of football calendar and there just weren't enough months in the year to go around.

I packed up the wet computer bag, wet camera bag, wet video gear, wet tripod, wet notebook, and put the all in their respective wet bags. I slogged down the portable bleachers squelching in my wet shoes, my wet cloths clinging uncomfortably under my wet jacket. I looked worse than a clog in a medical examiner's sink. Funny thing was everyone I met on the slog over to the vehicle were completely dry and smiled a friendly smile, "Pardon moi", "Excuse me", "Bonjour", "Hi", each spoken with the sort of warmth you reserve for your closest friends during the holidays. Sitting in the car waiting for the team to return from the locker room I heard live music from a bar nearby, it was Celtic Rock, the fiddle player was on fire, and my toes squelched wetly to the beat. The air was clean and cool and the world was perfect, apart from the loss that is.

How can a city that looks so run down, with a highway system that looks like it was designed by a group of attention deficit disorder spastics having a group conniption fit with a plate of spaghetti all be so darned nice and attractive all at once? It is a mystery for the ages.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:17 AM | Permalink

They say an army moves on it's stomach. This assumes of course that everything else involved with moving that army is already taken care of.

As their first "full fledged-full membership" season with the IWFL the Phoenix can be said to operate on a shoe string budget- and that's giving shoestrings a lot of credit. They managed to fund themselves almost the whole regular season through dues, donations, and paying out of pocket. After a 7 and 1 season the barrel was dry for playoffs and the ever present championship game in Chicago. But before Chicago, they have to move 28 players, two coaches, and a blogger to a different country- and back again. It seems simple when you refer to 28 players as a group. The reality is when traveling you are moving a player and a player and a player (keep going until you reach 28, then add a coach, a coach, and a blogger (or after this gets published the "official team tattle tail").

So here's the break down, two coaches, a blogger and ten players climbed into a fifteen passenger van and a support vehicle. We left at 8am Friday morning. Our trip took us north to Liverpool NY where we were guest of TP's family. They had a house large enough to sleep us and were ready and capable of feeding the entier team. Saturday we'll climb back into the vehicles and drive the last four or five hours (depending on whose navigating) to the field.

Group two left about 2pm and will drive strait through to Montreal. They will arrive late, sleep later and rendeavous at the field.

Groups three through five or six are doing their own thing which includes getting their United Airlines flight cancelled (Boo United!) and getting hooked up by US Air (Horay for US Air!). Players as of Friday night, in New England, in NC, and somewhere on the highway between here and there.

If all goes well, all 28 players, two coaches, and a blogger will be at the field just outside of Montreal Quebec Canada at 5:30pm for the kickoff. Pray for us.

One more thing that separates football, and I suppose all team sports, from fencing occured this week. The IWFL mandates that each team must supply the next team they play with the game footage from the last game they played. Some teams don't do it, and they get fined for it. In one case that I am aware of the snubbed team got the film from the team the offending team played last. Its playoff time and now the gamesmenship has driven into overdrive. Two days after playing their last game, the Phoenix had the game authored to DVD and in the mail to Canada. The Montreal team made sure the game arrived the day before we had to leave. The rule about getting the film exchanged was fufilled without actually allowing it to be useful. Well played... So if the Phoenix win, they did it without the game footage (woot!), if they lose this pre-game foul will have had something to do with it. I can see it from their point of view- Win at all cost! Hoo raa!! Whatever. Lame.

The best team should win based on skill on the field not BS off the field. Rant off and goodnight!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:50 PM | Permalink

In the space what was Wild Magnolia, in the space what was a 3 bay garage, now lives a wood fired clay oven pizza restaurant. And it was good. Very good.

Sticks and Stones seems to have taken the motto "Think globally, eat locally". Most all of their ingredients are local to the point that they make note when something isn't. Some people and places claim to be "sustainable" but these guys are living it. It shows up in the seasonable menu and the waterless urinal in the mens room. These are details that I notice and appreciate.

They list the farms where they get their veggies. They list the farms where they get their free range meats. They list the Goat Lady Dairy where they get their goat cheese. They mention the herb garden next to the restaurant where they get their herbs.

The general feel of the place still reminds me of New Orleans with the three large sets of French doors in the spaces that used to be garage doors. The layout is pretty much just like Wild Magnolia used to be. The big difference between them and Wild Magnolia is they didn't hit the local landfill for all of their furniture and decor.

Everything is wood now. The table tops are all wood covered with glass. Sandwiched between are old newspaper and magazine articles, ads, and such. It felt like they were going for European countryside to me. I also think they got it. I'm all about the big open French doors for atmosphere.

The beer and wine selection is quite nice for a place that isn't a bar.

The Wife and I had an appetizer, large pizza, extra topping, drinks, coffee and dessert for $36.00. Which isn't so bad. Your mileage may vary depending on if you are in the mood to "eat" or to "dine".

The quality of the food was very high, while the portion size was fairly small. Our appetizer called the "Pinkheart" which consisted of "Old Mill Polenta battered Mortadella corn dogs with roasted tomato coulis and wildflower honey mustard" cost us $6.25 It contained five pieces which equaled about one hot dog. The roasted tomato coulis, though tastey didn't add anything to it. The wildflower honey mustard rocked with it. The dish was very tasty, but neither Sara nor I thought it was a particular value. On the plus side that means that next time we get to try one of the other appetizers.

Our pizza "To be the One", a "Margherita pizza with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, and fresh basil" we added pepperoni. Sized large with the added pepperoni cost $18.95. It was probably one of the best Margherita pizzas I have ever had.

Some pizza places see the crust as nothing more than a topping transport device. Some pizza places see the crust as the center of the pizza and toppings are nothing more than condiments. Sticks and Stones made the crust an integral part of the pizza experience. The organic flour comes from Lindley Mills in Eli Whitney NC. The wood burning oven is kept at 700 degrees. The effect is that at first glance you might find your crust a little more done than you would expect or prefer. The fact is that though the crust is dark compared to most pizza places, it is not scorched. That little extra heat seemed to bring out some of the character in the crust which I should add was not tough, overly crunchy or even soggy from the ingredients. Plus they used a little toasted wheat bran in their dough which will darken it a bit anyway. It was a nice detail, well worth it.

The pizza experience was amazing! However, the large pizza pan they put on our table clearly had a medium sized pizza in the middle of it. The Wife and I polished it off entirely and still had room for dessert. This turned out to be a good thing.

For dessert we had wood oven baked peach and walnut cobbler with Homeland Creamery ice cream. $4.95 We shared one, and it was excellent, the walnuts served in the place of the traditional cobbler crust and really helped bring out the flavor of the peaches. No pizza place I have ever eaten in can claim a better dessert.

The place was family friendly and in fact there were a surprising number of young professional couples with their "first child" eating there. They even have on their kids menu what they call a "Kids Cheese Pizza" on the menu "Tomato sauce, whole milk mozzarella" add pepperoni for extra.

What you can't do here: I have the menu before me and they have no ingredient list where you can make your own pizza. That said, the offerings they have are good enough that you probably wouldn't want to anyway. Five of the pizzas were veggie. They also have some really fancy salads that I am inclined to have next time. (Add wood-fire roasted chicken to any salad for $3.95)

Noise: I am sensitive to noise. The echo in Sticks and Stones was warm and tended to be voices, but not so you felt like everyone could hear what you were saying. Some places I have eaten in have the same volume but the quality is metallic and tinny. If we're going to have noise, let it be warm and pleasant.

They have a url but at this posting they haven't actually done anything with it yet (like make a web page). They have only been open a couple of weeks now.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:49 AM | Permalink

It is Sunday. Sunday means that the coffee taste better and I call my parents. The coffee tastes better on Sundays because that is the one day a week I can actually sit down and enjoy it. Monday through Friday coffee is my drive to work ritual. Saturday is a day where anything can happen. Sunday is, 90% of the time, the day where I can get up put on a pot of coffee and sit down with my first mug, where at 8am on the dot I call home just like I've done every Sunday since 1992 when I left my homeland to seek my fortune in the Piedmont.

Once off the phone I start up my other Sunday morning ritual of Celtic or bluegrass listening. That ritual began some years back when there was a bluegrass radio show on one of the local stations. The show went off the air but by then the ritual was established and I'm not going to let a thing like Buddy Michaels' show going away to change a good thing into a bad thing. Sunday is the day of the fiddle, and some day, sooner rather than latter I'll be practicing on the fiddle during this time as well.

Alright, we've established my Sunday, lets crack open the old anxiety closet and see what's on tap for today. Sunday is the only day of the week where I can, without guilt, explore my various and sundry emotional boogums. I've got a job to do the other six days and need to be on the clock as best as I can possibly be. Lately I haven't been very successful at that. So, lets do something light today shall we?

My mother mentioned that an aunt and uncle of mine came for a visit the day before. I hate that I miss those visits, as he's the one uncle I can relax around. He's not judgmental. Opinionated yes, judgmental no. It is always a relaxing visit with him. Plus he loves to eat as much as I do. The difference is, he's incapable of gaining weight, where on the other hand I gain weight for him and others just by being in the vicinity.

While we were talking about what they ate and how good it was, mom mentioned that my cousin...my professional writer cousin, had stumbled upon the humble blog of yours truly. Her voice was strained, but it didn't really sink in until after I had uttered the words, "Oh good!" For those following at home, mom is a nine on the Eneigram chart. Called "The Peacemaker", nines work extremely hard to avoid all conflicts. They don't vocalize opinions, and if they do have an opinion they will only verbalize it if the feel the group already agrees.

She taught...OK...tried to teach me that one should keep their opinions to themselves. The lesson, (obviously) didn't stick with me. My opinion on the matter is that if you keep your mouth shut all the time you allow yourself to be a victim. History teaches that "going with the flow" is one of the greatest sins of man. On this, clearly, mom and I would disagree completely, if we could actually have this conversation. So mom isn't what we would call a regular reader. Occasionally she stumbles upon something, but she won't read much because she doesn't want to feel humiliated by what I say.

So after saying the words "Oh good!" I had to immediately add, "I hope it was nothing that would be too embarrassing for you." Her response was as tactful as she knew how to make it. "I think she found one of your opinions." Translated into English, that statement means, "I can't believe that you say those things in public, and worse yet, on the internet where everyone can see it. Now your successful cousin with the three children has told your aunt and uncle and sooner or later the whole family is going to know my secret shame". OK, in all fairness I may have embellished the part about the secret shame a little. If you are reading this, it is no secret, but don't tell mom.

How do I feel about that? That's what my shrink is going to ask me next week. I hate that question. I was never really good with non concrete questions. It puts me on the spot. I have to find words to articulate intuition and words are poor tools to describe the feeling I get from seeing how everything works together and feeling strongly about something that I can't prove. All I can do is make my prediction of the outcome, and let time prove or disprove it.

How do I feel about my mom being humiliated by my publishing my thoughts, feelings and opinions for the world to see? I feel hungry. I feel ambivalent. My eyes burn. I want to fight. I want to flee. How do I feel about my mom being humiliated by my publishing my thoughts, feelings, and opinions for the world to see?

Same as I feel about everything else.

I know why I do it, I know why it is the right thing to do, I know why it hurts her, I know that where it may close some doors, it also opens others. I know that when the dust settles, I will have gained more than I have lost. I know all this because that is what my gut tells me. Only I can't prove it, I can't articulate it, and it frustrates me that I can't communicate it.

And that is why I started doing it to begin with.

Every person who agrees with me, every person who calls me an idiot, every person who finds a warm spot in their heart for me, every person who wishes I'd just shut up and go to hell, formed that opinion based on information I was able to articulate to them.

And that is what the past nine hundred and fifteen blog entries have been about. In exchange for being the black sheep of my clan, I will one day learn to understand the question "How do you feel" while being able to articulate an answer. So say I left my homeland to seek my fortune, say I banished myself, say I left to avoid being banished. It is little more than a label on a door. There are always other doors.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:20 AM | Permalink

So this African American guy walks into an Italian restaurant and he says to the Italian behind the counter...
Sounds like the set up for a racist joke but unfortunately it happened, and more unfortunately I was a witness to the sad stupid and racist punchline.

There is a certain family owned chain of Italian restaurants in the city that I really enjoy and eat at whenever I get the chance. They are good people who make good food at a good price. I was in there last night when this guy walks in. Apparently he called his order in and was showing up to pick it up.

Note: When you call a restaurant doesn't matter if it is Italian, Chinese, or Mexican, and the person on the other end of the phone speaks with a thick accent it is your responsibility as a patron to place your order slowly and clearly and listen to them repeat it back to you so you can be sure that what you get is what you order. As a corollary to this, you can also understand that you probably want to keep the order fairly simple to avoid confusion.

This guy apparently slept through his Captain Obvious training. He ordered two pizzas, he came in gave his name and paid his bill, his pizzas were handed to him and he opens up each box. One he is OK with, the other not so much. Please allow me to paraphrase the conversation.

What is this? I ordered this pizza with a lot of onion and a little bit of green pepper. What do you see here? This pizza has some onion and some green pepper. If I wanted that much green pepper I would have ordered it.

Understand that I am paraphrasing this guy because he spoke potty mouth like some sort of dime store Chris Tucker. He seemed to enjoy using colorful racist slurs. Plus he was yelling.

The manager on duty who was Italian, did what any good business owner would. He offered to remake the pizza on the spot. Not good enough. Our loud mouth idiot wants his money back and the new pizza and he DEMANDED that no Mexican touch his food. It was about this point that the woman who came in with him (and she hadn't said a single word this whole entire time) walked out. I can understand that. I would be ashamed to be seen with this guy too.

I was so offended I took his picture with my camera phone and uploaded it to the great wide internet. My hope was that the flash would go off so he would have no choice but to include me in the conversation. I really wanted to ask him, "You think Martin Luther King died so you could act like this?" Unfortunately for me, the flash didn't go off because the kitchen was bright enough that it wasn't needed. I never got to ask him my question.

His argument was that he was in an Italian establishment and he wanted an Italian making his food. The obvious truth in the job market is that there simply aren't enough Italians available to make all the pizza in the city. There probably aren't enough Italians in all the world to make all the pizza eaten in America alone. This Italian family is too busy owning and running a chain of very fine restaurants to make all the food they serve in them. They have to hire from the pool of people applying for the job just like everyone else. It just so happened that among the restaurant staff, there were a mixture of Mexicans and Celts and one dumbass racist African American customer who really needed to get slapped upside his head with The Dream. Thank you "Mr. Setting the Civil Rights Movement Back 20 Years"

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Recently I saw an ad on TV for a combination body wash and shampoo. Clearly this is marketed only to men because all women know its a dumb idea, and every man knows its brilliance. Men in their very genes are programmed to seek a place of "high speed, low drag". Perfection cannot be achieved by mortal man, but we strive on anyway.

Guys will instantly see the good idea a combination body wash shampoo is. One bottle in the shower in and of itself is a huge win. This is especially true when the rest of the shelves are taken up by her various and sundry hair and body care products. Instead of fighting for a corner of a shelf somewhere that holds his soap and combination shampoo conditioner, he can stand mighty and alone one bottle to rule them all.

Women know of course that this is the height of insanity.

Even the instructions on the bottle are written for the man seeking a place of high speed, low drag. "Apply to rag, sponge, poof, hand, whatever. Lather, rinse, go." They don't try to BS us with that silly repeat step that we aren't going to do anyway. Once is enough, now go and be mighty.

There are, of course some guys who scoff a this. They have known for a long time that having separate soap and shampoo only slows you down. They realized long ago that hair adds both wind resistance and water drag. They choose long ago to shave their heads weekly to ensure a state of high speed, low drag. They have been using one product all this time, one bottle to rule them all, and a brisk three minute shower.

Women realize that these men are complete idiots...even those who look hot with that Mister Clean looking slick and shiny scalp.

But there are men out there who look down their noses at those guys that claim to be high speed, low drag, yet weekly have to take the time out to shave their heads. These men are, of course, blessed by superior genes. As soon as puberty hit, the hair line started receding. By college they were naturally balled, or at the very least sporting a Speed Stripe down the center, or racing strips across the sides. They may touch up here and there to make sure no stubborn tufts of hair remained to diminish their god given drag coefficients.

Women of course can spot the signs of testosterone poisoning and started shying away from these guys the moment they hit puberty.

But guys know the truth. We know that every major battle in history has been won by the side with the shortest haircut. US Calvary vs the Indian Nation. Short back and sides beats hair metal locks. Cavaliers vs Roundheads, one nothing to the Puritans. Viet Nam, crew cuts both sides, ended in a tie. High Speed, Low Drag its more than a way to sell grooming products to men, its a way of life.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been something of a voyeur into a different world. Jacques Cousteau had the undersea world, Jane Goodall had the apes. I have the waiting room of a cancer center. They come in twos and threes, a patient and a caregiver or two. Most are older, but not all. All of the faces are poker faces, even those deformed by their afflictions. Everyone is keeping score but no one knows how they stack up to those around them.

They make friends fairly easily. Why not, they all have one thing in common besides the same scheduled radiation appointment time. They all have a reason to be radiated in the first place. The strangers, newbies, eye and are eyed by the veterans warily, as each tries to figure out where the cancer lives on each other. Some aren't as lucky, their cancers are as plain as the nose on their face, others keep theirs hidden deeply within. But are any of them really lucky?

The room's colors are faded, it isn't that the colors themselves are faded. Truth is there are brightly colored pictures, quilts, and fliers, but the room, or the people in it just drain all the color away. As pale as the people in the room are, it seems more like the colors themselves flee the room maybe seeking happier climates in daycare centers or McDonald's lobbies. I certainly felt a strong craving for a Starbucks, or anywhere else for that matter.

The veterans of this pale place talk. They talk mostly about the weather. They keep the topics topical and short term. Nobody is talking about their summer vacation plans. Certainly most of them will be there for the summer, but its all about the poker face, not everyone will be there, and no one knows who's going to draw the short straw.

And there I am sitting, waiting, watching, and wondering when I'm going to find myself a patient.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 6:27 PM | Permalink

I recently saw a headline about the Illinois university shooting where they used the term "Unthinkable" to describe it. Not only was the term used incorrectly, it is a dangerous term to be using at all.

Of school shootings in general, one could call Columbine "unthinkable" because it was so large and so successful (for the shooters), but don't think for a moment that the shooters at Columbine were breaking new ground. There have been murders in schools for as long as there have been schools. These guys weren't breaking new ground, they were just trying to beat the old record.

The recent university shootings are no different. They were not "unthinkable" at all, others had thought of it before and acted on the idea, these latest were just better at it (in terms of destruction).

Where people and the media and the government go wrong is all to often they see these acts as "unthinkable" -completely new, unique and unimaginable. Thinking of terrible things as "unthinkable" give too much credit to the perpetrators and take away valuable credit from those there to protect us from these acts.

I heard somewhere that some well meaning git in congress wants to create new legislature to prevent things like school shootings from occurring. Neat trick that, do they plan to change physics so guns won't work on academic ground? Do they intend to add a new commandment to the bible, "Thou shall not open fire in crowded auditoriums"? The first is impossible and the second is unworkable, people have enough trouble with the ten commandments we have already and don't even get me started on all of the other rules and regulations in the good book that we ignore on a daily basis. You know, a pork BBQ sandwich with a cold glass of milk and a side of fried shrimp would go over pretty well right now. But I digress...

What do you think campus security, resource officers, and all this existing policy was put in place for to start with? Were it not for the things already in place because long ago someone thought of it already, the tragedies of our time would be a lot worse and a lot more often. Did you think campus police were there simply to cut down drunken frat boys who have been duct taped naked to trees?

If people keep thinking of things like this as unthinkable they are sticking their heads in the sand and blissfully ignoring the obvious.

"Unthinkable" is discovering that President Bush is a high technology genius android sent from the future to bring us to a new age of enlightenment and velvet thong underwear which we wear anytime we want free steak ice cream from the locally owned and operated independent Starbucks.

A guy with a gun going into a crowded room and opening fire isn't unthinkable at all. Fortunately it is unlikely, but that isn't the same thing as unthinkable by a long shot.

"There is nothing new under the sun", and as long as we don't forget this we won't be caught unawares.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:21 PM | Permalink

I'm going to break the writer's strike picket line. I know that if I try to sell a script now, it will be sold. This film is important and it needs to be shot. Its a horror.

It is a story about a homicidal maniac who gleefully slaughters a large church group. The protagonist is the maniac who was driven to this homicidal state by the fact that the church group has the entire floor above him in his condo and keep him from sleeping because of their constant and flagrant noise and chaos.

I promise you, you'll cheer every murder because it is clearly the right thing to do. Some folks just need killin'.

Now pray for me that we can get some sort of relief before this fiction becomes our reality.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:42 PM | Permalink

With the title alone, I am sure that a great number of sword wielding individuals are loosening up their flame fingers as you read this, so I'd better get to the point right away and capitalize on my second intention. For the last several years fencing clubs and the USFA as a whole has had a marvelous period of membership growth that lead to larger better competitions, better fencers, and a stronger international national program.

Recently clubs and the USFA have begun to notice a decline in the growth rate. In some clubs its turned into a run away shrink rate. I am going to tell you why. Some of you may have already figured it out. For some of you it will be a surprise, not because it is some deep dark secret, its simply because you have never thought of it from this angle.

It has nothing to do with the price of membership.
It has nothing to do with rules changes.
It has nothing to do with rating systems, sportsmanship, or the price of gear.

It has to do with the movies.

Compare a list of the membership numbers for the past ten years with a list of the top grossing movies of the last ten years. You will find a spike that coincides with Olympic years and you will see increases that coincide with the release of each installment of The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars. The unwitting secret of our recent successes has been adventure movies. Now that we have no movies with swords, we've lost the wind in our free publicity sails.

Now we have two choices, we can go out and get some swashbuckling movies made, which is possible with our diverse talent pool, or we can bite the bullet and actually market our sport at the level where people will see it. Clearly one of these is cheaper and easier than the other, but if you are the gambling sort you can surely see the appeal of the other. Plus, hey if nothing else we have more movies with swords to go see with our club mates.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:15 PM | Permalink

I believe the Age of the Genius has come and gone. Sure, we have modern day geniuses, Kurzweil, and Hawking certainly count among them. But the golden age has passed and unless we as a society change, it will never return. I think the notes on Kurzweil's wikipedia entry sums it up pretty well.

# It may contain original research or unverifiable claims. Tagged since January 2008.
# Its tone or style may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. Tagged since January 2008.
# It may be too long. Some content may need to be summarized or split. Tagged since January 2008.
# It seems to contain too many examples (or examples of poor quality) for an encyclopedia entry. Tagged since January 2008.
# An editor has expressed concern that the article is unbalanced. Tagged since January 2008.

Da Vinci, a definite genius drew out designs for tanks, helicopters, parachutes, and many other things that were simply not possible to create in his day because there weren't materials strong enough, or light enough, to make the designs function as designed. Forget about the whole issue of powering the powered devices. These designs weren't published until after his death. I am sure he must have realized that people seeing a design for some amazing thing that they didn't have the technology to build would tarnish his reputation. If it can't be done, it isn't possible right? Therefore if he's designing the impossible, then he must be a nut right?

Prior to him in time genius was next to heresy. We all learned in school about people with great ideas that where seriously pooped upon by organized religion. I'm not picking on organized religion, I'm picking on the poop. People as a rule tend to mock or outright attack what they do not understand. It used to be that organized religion was responsible for stomping out free thinking and radical ideas. Today this task is sponsored by Zoloft and Prozac, and championed by well meaning people who when confronted with something they don't understand, attempt to "help" the situation through intervention, butterfly nets, involuntary institutionalization, and outright ridicule, via the internet.

Before the Industrial Revolution a genius might tell a few friends, or publish a book that only a few could read, and those tended to fear new ideas. During the industrial revolution, mankind's attitude changed and we lived in an age where anything was possible. Edison, Tesla, Bell, Colt, names that defined new ways of seeing and harnessing the world. These radical thinkers became heroes of the age. Now a person of genius has an idea, they probably create a website, the people who fear what they do not understand get a hold of it and ten websites spring up all trying to drag the genius back into the quagmire of normalcy. The people that do not understand, can't even attack the idea well because they don't understand it. Its like what would have happened if Da Vinci had published the design for the helicopter the day after he thought of it. He would have been ridiculed. Him, personally. Sure the ridicule would have been wrapped in a poor understanding of his idea, but they would have attacked the man. If the genius is to survive in this day and age they have to work alone and in secret. They may live and die in poverty believe to be a kook by everyone around them and all because the one missing piece they need to make their idea a reality is brewing in secret in someone else's mind. We have a tool that could allow the genius power of the world to unite into a new golden age of invention and it has been hijacked by Luddites.

It makes me sad to think that I can't grow four inches taller, shoot lightning bolts from my butt, and fly because someone out there is too afraid of being locked up and medicated, by the people who have made the decision that it can't be done because they aren't doing it already.

Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday I happened to read an article about some real life costumed crusaders, and I have to admit it set my mind a whirl. Why is all this so familiar? People putting on fancy uniforms and going out into the real world facing ridicule and worse to do good deeds. There is something that makes me think a person could gain a lot of satisfaction by adopting the way of the mask. Have I done this before in a different life perhaps?

Even Greensboro has one. Sharp costume, clear goals, a myspace page, what more could a city want?

Of course there are some who have perhaps lost the way and turned to vigilantism, but those guys will get sorted out in the end. If they don't break the law themselves the criminals will likely break them. Criminals like their police to follow the rules. Its what gives the criminal their biggest advantage and costumed vigilantes take away that advantage and replace rules with brightly colored spandex. Darwinism will sort it all out in the end.

The rest of them however are on a very positive path, and I salute them. Salute? Why is that so familiar?

Easily recognized uniforms, good deeds, charity work, values. A group of people who are trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, curious, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Yeah, I think I could find a place among them.

Wait a minute! I have! I was a Cub Scout, Webloe, and Boy Scout! But now I'm adult, and the Boy Scouts ends around 18 (at least it did for me). This is the next logical step! I'm trading the brown and the green with the scarf and the belt for a cowl and in some cases a cape (optional). That's what has been missing all this time, a civic organization!

I'm going to need to do some shopping before I apply for membership...

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

People have been using symbols to represent things for as long as we've been able to think of ourselves as people. Where it gets really weird, really not like language at all is the subjectiveness of the symbols. Some ancient civilization creates a symbol that for them represents the sun. A few thousand years later this guy named Hitler used the same symbol to mean "We're better than you are." Now that same symbol is interpreted to mean "We hate YOU." Put it all together and we have a symbol that REALLY means the Sun hates us because its better than us. Or, I suppose it could mean we hate the sun because we are better than it. Or We hate the sun because it is better than we are. Never mind. That's a confusing symbol that doesn't really mean anything at all universally. Sun, Better, Hate, these are concrete, the symbol that they are attributed to mean nothing universally.

Some groups aren't all that big on symbols, they don't use them often, others use them all the time. Hitler's Germany loved symbols. They had symbols for everything, gays over there, jews over there, polish over there, blonds over there, old over there, young over there, please have your papers stamped at the barbed wire just follow the signs.

Some symbols are made up of other symbols to make one big symbol. Take the American flag. One star for each state, one stripe for each original colony, the blue field means something the colors of the stripes all mean something. Take that flag to a boy scout meeting and they salute it. Take it to an al qaeda sewing circle and it gets burned on sight. To the boy scouts the flag means all the best of our country. In the sewing circle it means evil oppressor bent on world domination. The only thing both sides will agree on is what it looks like and how much fun camping out is.

Back during the War of Northern Aggression. Those who wanted freedom created a flag to represent them. It was their symbol. It meant to them freedom from economic and political oppression. But people have the power to reinterpret, reassign, and outright steal symbolism. Hitler stole the symbol for the sun and reassigned the meaning, "we're better than you are." the world stole the symbol from him and now it means "we hate you". The southern battle flag was stolen and reassigned to mean "we hate those of African descent". Now people fight over it, each assigning their own personal "universal" meaning to it and try to hammer the other into the ground with it. Some cultures have a bunch of symbols, some have a few, some don't have that many symbols of their own so they borrow others. Hitler borrowed the sun symbol and the world borrowed it from him. The southerners had a symbol that others borrowed.

People are constantly borrowing/stealing other symbols for their own purposes. The pirate's skull and crossbones used to be an identifier for individual pirates, now it has been stolen and turned into a generic symbol that means either "biker" or "trendy cool rebelliousness" (available now at Hot Topic). The noose used to mean "execution by hanging". Now it has been stolen and reassigned the meaning "we hate those of African descent". That hardly seems fair considering how many people have been hung who aren't of African descent. Didn't they hang Saddam Husein? (North African doesn't count.) There are still a bunch of countries that execute by hanging and not all of those countries are in Africa. Still, credit where credit is due, it was quick thinking, to steal a symbol and whip up some real fear and outrage with it.

It got me to thinking. Maybe we could have some fun with stealing and reassigning symbols.

They took the noose, so lets take the square knot. The cord knotted with the square knot now means "We hate the boy scouts"! McDonald's golden arches could now mean "We hate healthy people". The symbol for the book that used to mean "library" can now mean "We're smarter than you." The symbol for the phone can now mean, "You talk too much". The symbol for school can now mean "pedophiles buffet ahead". The shamrock now means "we hate the Irish" (puts a twist on St. Patrick's day doesn't it). Pizza now means "Italians think the world is still flat". Bling now means "we hate everyone...biatch". The color red means "we hate everyone wearing the color blue", the color blue means "we hate everyone wearing red". The color yellow means "we hate everyone wearing green". Pink means "we are gay". The color black now means "We're all unique individuals" unless you wear black make up or have a really good tan in which case it means "help help I'm being oppressed". White used to mean, clean, holy, angelic. Now it means "nah nah, we're better than you are". Oh wait, we can't do that, someone's already given it that meaning, lets find a new one for white. How about, "use hot water and bleach, tumble dry warm, remove promptly." I read in this article that a city in Colorado is banning the use of green or red lights during the holidays. I am just glad I don't have to drive there, because if I got pulled for running a red light I'd have to sue the city for displaying one. Heck, someone ought to do that anyway.

Does anyone find it strange that a kid can vandalize a wall with a can of spray paint and its "obviously gang sign"? Truth is, it is probably only obvious to him, the gang, and the couple of guys on the police force in the gang unit. If a krylon squiggle is so obviously a gang sign why is it that scientist cannot create a symbol that will still mean "danger keep out" in a few thousand years?

Its because symbols have no meaning in and of themselves.

Symbols only mean what the person that views it assigns to it.

Therefore a "symbol of fear and hate" is so ONLY because you made it that way.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:48 PM | Permalink

People use the term "story of my life" as a way to sum up their current events into a single pithy sentence. Often used in comedy, you have a string of slapstick events and the punchline is "that's the story of my life". Cue the canned laughter.

If I were to use the term "story of my life" I would have to open with this made up event that could be used to illustrate the story of my life.

"Get in there and jobik the gikzelen."
"Ugh...what?"
"You heard me."
"I think I missed something, could you repeat it."
"Get in there and jobik the gikzelen."
"I don't think I know how to jobik, and if I did, I am not sure I even want to attempt to do it to a gikzelen whatever that may be."
"Just do it."
"Do what?"
"Jobik the gikzelen, stupid!"
At this point the speaker stomps angrily out of the room, and I say "That's the story of my life." Cue the laugh track.

The joke continues as a running gag when every five minutes that antagonist comes back into the room furious because the task isn't complete and is completely unwilling to offer clues, hints, tips, explanations or anything else necessary for our hopelessly clueless protagonist to do anything but count to ten while breathing into a paper bag from a safe position under the dining room table.

And there it is the story of my life. Coming to you live from under the dining room table.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:17 AM | Permalink

As I was enjoying the rich full bodied taste of a cup of Newman's Own coffee it occurred to me that if a successful actor could do good works with a line of foodstuffs, the modern crop of wanna be's and has beens could at least pay their bills with clever marketing and the right product.

I remember a series of breakfast cereals all around a monster theme. Count Chocula, Boo Berry, and Frankenberry. Well, why not a series of breakfast cereals around the current crop of failed ingenues like Britney, Nichole, Paris and Jessica. You could put their pictures on the box and call them Breakfast Ho's.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:38 PM | Permalink

Recently in the mail we received a request for money from an animal rights organization that was pushing the "spay and neuter the animals" line. While I know that their hearts are in the right place, indeed none of our animals can breed, even the purebred. The problem was their word choice.

I read their letter again and where it said "pet" I substituted "person", where it said "spay" I said "hysterectomy, where it said, "neuter" I said "castrate". You can imagine how horrified I was by the end of the letter. I was holding my nards in one hand and the letter in my shaking other hand.

These are some bloodthirsty sex crazed folks who want to do unspeakable things... for a good cause.

I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm saying that they are perhaps on to something.

A boy and a girl drop out of high school because she gets pregnant (he may or may not be the father). Both get low paying entry level jobs to pay for the baby. Pretty soon since the only fun thing they can do that doesn't cost money is practice procreation they have a whole house full of youngens. This passel of little ones have little hope for a college education and probably have a substandard public education. The cycle repeats. Lets say that the drop outs above have four children, and those four have four of their own. Within three generations the original two have spawned 64 fast food workers!!! Just two drop outs in only three generations!!!

Please spay and neuter your drop outs so this doesn't happen to you! The world can only support so many fast food chains before the food chain is disrupted leading to mass unemployment and hunger!!!

It takes $2000 to neuter a human and $7000 for a hysterectomy. Please give now to the Save the Humans fund so we can stop the rampant birth of unwanted humans who will face abuse, starvation, and cruelties beyond imagination.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:22 AM | Permalink

In case you have been under a rock for the past couple of days this is worth reading. Essentially, the talk show host Ellen DeGeneres adopted a little doggie. She likes animals and forked out three grand for this little pooch that looks less than ten pounds total. So essentially she paid $300 per pound for a stray. Those that can, will while the rest of us adopt from cheaper sources.

Ellen forked out the cash and she got a dog. The dog didn't play well with their cats, so rather than dump the dog somewhere found a good home with someone she trusted. The mob front Mutts for Moms, said "No dice, you paid to keep the dog, if you want your friend to keep the dog they are going to have to pay, and since you are famous, you all should have to pay a lot.
Ellen cried, the children cried, the viewers at home cried, and I got pissed off with tears. It is my opinion that these so called "pet rescuers" need some rescuing themselves.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I noticed that Fall is coming today. Sure there is a little chill in the air, and the leaves are turning, but these are not the only signs. You see the stores start getting their Christmas stuff out in September, that's a sign for sure, but not the one I'm thinking about.

Yes, when Fall is upon us it is that weird wonderful time of year that you see, sweaters, sweatshirts, jackets, and the first scarves...worn with shorts and sandals.

Spring is as odd only sometimes in reverse. In early spring you can see snow boots, thick socks, and pants with t-shirts or tank tops as well. I generally don't see that in the Fall.

People aren't like trees I guess. Trees all leave at once, both coming and going. People for the most part start at one end and work towards the other. I don't know why, I just noticed it and thought I would share. Plus I hadn't written anything lately, and needed a little filler to hopefully kick start me writing again.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 5:04 PM | Permalink

Last week I wrote this. It got several good responses and I learned that I am not always as clear as I wish I were. At any rate, Joel Gillespie challenged me with a good debate topic and I promised that I would have a response of some kind by Monday.

Here we are, and here it is.

I've got to admit, I was a little daunted by the subject matter and figured it would take all weekend to come up with anything. I did it on the car ride into class Saturday. It occurred to me that debates on "suicide" are always going to fall apart because the word is too broadly defined across the population.

I looked up the word in an online dictionary and the major definition is the taking, or intention of taking one's own life. I think this is a great definition and I doubt anyone would challenge it.

Oh, if only the world were so black and white. 90% of the time it is, but that last 10% of the time is a doozy. I'm not even talking about the chicken and egg scenarios like a guy who finds himself on death row when all the appeals have all run out, who hangs himself with his bed sheet. He killed himself. Suicide. No question, but if he was about to be killed anyway all he did was take control of the last thing he had any control over. Should I ever find myself on death row and all out of appeals, take my bed sheets if it is really important to you that the tax payers have to pay even more money to kill me. From my perspective, I've saved the tax payers some money and in my final act stuck it to the man. Its a win win.

Everything I just wrote, though true, was just a distraction designed to put you off balance before I talk about what I'm REALLY interested in.

I contend that the definition for suicide is correct but thanks to modern miracle and wonder, incomplete. It makes an assumption, that up to a very short time ago was a reasonable one. It assumes you were alive when you killed yourself. No, I am not drinking.

We are alive thanks to a number of very complex systems all working together to maintain our lives. During this lifetime we spend our existences doing things that put this delicate system in danger. We eat too many terrible for you foods, some of may have used cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, trans fats, breathed asbestos, touched mercury, and any number of other deadly chemicals. Some of us did physically dangerous activities. We all accept a certain amount of risk because at the end of the day most of us know that our brains are going to tell our hearts to beat and our lungs to breathe, and our mouths to eat, and our hands to avoid the fire, and our feet to avoid the ravenous copper headed water rattler.

We all know that when our heart stops beating, our brains stop sending or the signals don't reach their destinations, our livers stop cleaning our blood, our digestive systems stop breaking down food and elimination waste, or we can no longer draw a breath. We all know when these things happen, we are dead. Its a cascade failure scenario, something goes, and knocks down the next thing, which knocks down the next thing, and the house of cards falls. If it didn't we'd all be college age forever. (How much would that suck!)

But thanks to modern medicine, they have a machine for most every situation. Artificial hearts, iron lungs, dialysis, the list goes on, and all of these machines are true miracles of science. With them you can keep a brain thinking long after most every other system has said its long goodbye. But when did YOU die? There's the rub.

The knee jerk reaction is to say you are "alive" until the machines can no longer do the living for you. It might feel right, but is it true?

That same online dictionary defines life thus.

1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
2. the sum of the distinguishing phenomena of organisms, esp. metabolism, growth, reproduction, and adaptation to environment.

I doubt anyone who agreed with the definition of suicide will disagree with the definition of life, or death for that matter.

1. the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism.

Again, no arguments, the assumption that everyone is going off of is the assumption that if you are alive, you are capable of maintaining life. Up until very recently this was a simple fact that no one would argue. But times have changed.

Now we can keep adding machines until there are no machines left to add. Its an interesting ethical quandary we've found the slippery slope and we're all screaming Weeeeee as we go. Every day someone comes up with either a new machine or an improvement on an old machine to eek out a few more cycles of something we aren't even sure what is.

So we have some new definitions of living to figure out.
You are no longer "living" when:
1. We run out of machines to hook you to.
2. You can no longer keep yourself that way without a machine.
3. You decide that you won't ever be able to maintain your own state of living without a machine.
4. You decide that you won't be able to be a productive member of society because of all of the machines in the way.

I think that the truth for you is inside of you and may change according to the situation. You'll say one thing again and again until you find yourself in that situation. Then you may or may not change your mind. There is no penalty for changing your mind. You might think to be interred is a penalty, but if the pain is bad enough, the penalty is to continue to hurt.

Thus the real debate is that there isn't one. Coffee, tea, or milk? Machine, machines, or au naturale?

It comes down to choice, and I say that choice is yours to make. My dear uncle made his choice back in April, and he's still with us. He eats with a machine, he poops with a machine, he breaths with a machine, his blood is cleaned with a machine, if you touch him, we will bleed, he is that fragile. But he lives because he says he does, or would if he could talk for the eating and breathing machines. Insurance has run out, Medicare has run out, the bank accounts have run out, and even the priest won't come to see him anymore. They're still pissed off that he chose to live in spite of them begging him to die back in June.

I for one am not sure which choice I'd make for myself, but it is my intent to be in heaven a day before the devil even knows I'm dead.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I noticed the other day that my neighbor has a "private property" sign. Not a big deal, these signs are at the edges of many lawns, and many vast tracks of land showing that the land is "owned", and the owner doesn't want people wandering across it. Sometimes you see these signs on chain link fences topped with barbed wire. I am sure that it probably didn't cross your mind, it certainly didn't mine, but isn't the barbed wire topped chain length fence pretty much a dead giveaway that the area in question isn't a public park?

I mean, do prisons need "private property" signs. Its sort of a "Duh!" right?

That neighbor I mentioned, his/her "Private Property" sign is not on the edge of their property but in the window of the house 75 yards from the end of their driveway. What's the message?

"No you may not come into my house and have a picnic in my living room floor"?

I myself have signs at the back edge of my property in the trees that say "no hunting" in the hopes that my house won't be critically wounded during hunting season this fall. Nothing says, "eek" like finding a bullet lodged in the opposite wall from where the bullet entered.

But I have no signs in my window. If anyone comes down my driveway unannounced and knocks on my door, they get a different kind of warning.

I answer the door naked, and holding an ax. I guess my real problem is I find the "private property" sign in the window idea cold and impersonal. It greets strangers just like it greets friends. My way, when friends are coming over, I put on cloths, pick up the place and prepare snacks. To each their own, but I think I like my way better.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Do you remember the old days when people were afraid to fly or they weren't. Thanks to our modern lives, we now have reasons to fear the airports themselves. Random terrorist, or artist attacks, losing your car, random strip searches, random strip searches ending in a dinner offer, and now going to the bathroom.

Yes, I am saying it. I was a little wigged out being in the airport yesterday and having to take a wiz. Guys have rules about peeing. But there are some new second edition rules I know nothing about yet and I don't want to get arrested...or propositioned. First edition rules are easy. No peaking, stay to the sides, never use the center urinal if the one to the left and the right of it are being used. You keep an empty urinal between you and the next guy and all is well. But now in the second edition you have to stand a certain way, and I am not sure what those rules are.

I was sort of hoping, being an airport they would have some easy pictographs hanging on the walls, they do for everything else. No guns, no food, no drink, pets must be on a leash, barf bags are on the left and your seat is a flotation device so in the event of accident the recovery crew will know where to dive for bodies. Do not stand with feet more than 18 inches apart. Do not touch the wall with either hand. Putting both hands on the wall is right out. Do not grab your neighbor's ass and comment about ham. But the walls however were bare. The room was packed, there was one open urinal that no one was going to and the only guy not worried about getting arrested for improper peeing was the Asian guy who was afraid of a whole litany of other things.

I wish for the simpler days, when the only thing I feared in the toilet was the dirty seat and the sharks, alligators, snakes, and rabid squirrels that could come out of the bowel and bite you on the butt if you aren't paying attention. Now not only do we have to fear the wildlife, we have to fear camera phones, and pants position while we do our business. Too high you poop on your self, too low you are retarded, off completely and you're just looking for trouble.

I just wanted to pee.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yeah, you heard me. Before you start checking the seas for blood content, you'd better let me explain myself. I've not lost my mind, though of late it feels like it more and more. This has nothing to do with that however.

I have been on an Indian eating jag of late and that means cooking curries at home and occasionally having some Indian "astronaut food" style side dishes in the boil in bag. Many of these side dishes are either vegetarian or vegan. Last night's side was a vegan selection, and I just didn't like it. It simply wasn't good. However, once I stirred it into my nice thick chicken curry the whole thing changed and I just yummed it right up.

The lesson: If it isn't tasty you just need to add what was missing to make it good again. In this case, all it needed was meat. See, even I can eat vegan food. Not as tasty as eating vegan, but when all of the vegans have been eaten, we're going to have to be clever with what's left.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Its been suggested that perhaps I shouldn't ever mention when I screw up. I don't get it. As I have no respect for public office, and would never lower myself to attempt to hold such, I don't have to lie and tell everyone I'm perfect.

Personally, I feeling that being honest about my short comings is the best way to keep people from being disappointed later. An example of this would be our president. How many of you voted for that git thinking he would be good only to discover he's a complete and total git.

You'll never make those mistakes with me.

However, my mother once told me that If I don't have something good to day I should just keep my mouth shut. I'd like to say I'm keeping my mouth shut. However that would be a dirty dirty lie. I simply can't think of anything to say, and to me that's worse.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:13 AM | Permalink

Sara and I were in Reidsville over the weekend and happened to see that someone had moved into the old Hardies by the (s)mall. The sign said "Latinos Tikal Grill Churasqueria and Antojitos". More important, it was open, and we decided to give it a try. I am very glad we did.

The atmosphere was about as best as it can be when you're working with an old Hardies. You walk into the front door to see the two buffet tables, the waitress took our drink orders and asked us to help ourselves to the buffet and our meat courses would be brought to us as they came off of the grill.

The food on the buffet was a mixture of vegetables, and other dishes that we learned were of Guatemalan origin. It was a Guatemalan family who opened the business only a month before and were working hard to make a go of it in of all places, Reidsville. I enjoyed everything on the all you can eat buffet I had. Then the first course from the grill arrived and I found heaven. Well, if not heaven, as close as you can get to it, on Scales street.

My concern was how they could pull off the food cost. When I think Churasqueria I think of gaucho's with huge skewers of fire grilled meats. The quality of the meat was exactly the same as that, but they defeated the possibility of waste by cooking a serving of each meat one at the time in a rotation, by the time you finished one, the next was delivered to your waiting plate. After the first round you could pick your new order having only those things you wanted more of. I ate a lot. The seasoning on the pork and beef in particular were mouth watering, so much so that I'm having to watch the drool as I type this. Everything was excellent, and there was the variety I crave.

Best part, our all you can eat lunch was only ten dollars. Dinner is twelve dollars. We talked to the owner who told us he wanted to allow people to have the whole Churasqueria experience with the red and green marker, and hot meats and seafoods brought right to your table, seasoned in the Guatamala way at a price that made it possible for the common person to enjoy. My only complaint is that working in Greensboro as I do, I can't have lunch there daily. For those with small appetites, they had a regular menu with regular plate meals for around six dollars each.

If you happen to find yourself in Reidsville, and have a taste for really good food, you've got to give Tikal Grill a taste. This is the best food I've ever had in Reidsville, and I am positive your mouth will thank you for your generosity by going there.

Tikal Grill
1519 Scales St.
Reidsville, NC 27320
(336) 342 3135 (Take out Available!)
Open daily 10am through 10pm.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:17 AM | Permalink

While it is well known to have existed pre-internet, the existance of the Information Superhighway was previously thought to only encompass the door to door bible seller, newspaper delivery people and the Book Mobile. This undated photo has recently surfaced showing that information traveled the highways and bi-ways in unexpected ways.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I had hoped that this sort of thing was something we could call a part of our primitive history. It seems however that pockets of primitive thinking linger on. Homo Honkius is alive and well and living in Jena Louisiana. Send in the cryptozoologist.

From Color of Change:

I just learned about a case of segregation-era oppression happening today in Jena, Louisiana. I signed onto ColorOfChange.org's campaign for justice in Jena, and wanted to invite you to do the same.

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=1437-264161

Last fall in Jena, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."

A series of white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

It's a story that reads like one from the Jim Crow era, when judges, lawyers and all-white juries used the justice system to keep blacks in "their place." But it's happening today. The families of these young men are fighting back, but the story has gotten minimal press. Together, we can make sure their story is told and that the Governor of Louisiana intervenes and provides justice for the Jena 6. It starts now. Please join me:

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=1437-264161

The noose-hanging incident and the DA's visit to the school set the stage for everything that followed. Racial tension escalated over the next couple of months, and on November 30, the main academic building of Jena High School was burned down in an unsolved fire. Later the same weekend, a black student was beaten up by white students at a party. The next day, black students at a convenience store were threatened by a young white man with a shotgun. They wrestled the gun from him and ran away. While no charges were filed against the white man, the students were later arrested for the theft of the gun.

That Monday at school, a white student, who had been a vocal supporter of the students who hung the nooses, taunted the black student who was beaten up at the off-campus party and allegedly called several black students "nigger." After lunch, he was knocked down, punched and kicked by black students. He was taken to the hospital, but was released and was well enough to go to a social event that evening.

Six Black Jena High students, Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16) and an unidentified minor, were expelled from school, arrested and charged with second-degree attempted murder. The first trial ended last month, and Mychal Bell, who has been in prison since December, was convicted of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery (both felonies) by an all-white jury in a trial where his public defender called no witnesses. During his trial, Mychal's parents were ordered not to speak to the media and the court prohibited protests from taking place near the courtroom or where the judge could see them.

Mychal is scheduled to be sentenced on July 31st, and could go to jail for 22 years. Theo Shaw's trial is next. He will finally make bail this week.

The Jena Six are lucky to have parents and loved ones who are fighting tooth and nail to free them. They have been threatened but they are standing strong. We know that if the families have to go it alone, their sons will be a long time coming home. But if we act now, we can make a difference.

Join me in demanding that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco get involved to make sure that justice is served for Mychal Bell, and that DA Reed Walters drop the charges against the 5 boys who have not yet gone to trial.

http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=1437-264161

Those wondering about my inflammatory blog title, it has been edited several times. Originally I was going to go in the direction of Outbreak and liken the racism to a deadly virus. Then I said, "Nuke Reed Walters". My thinking was that if you kill the head vampire the others would be freed. But who the heck is this Reed Walter's guy anyway and why should you care from just a blog title. So I went back to nuking the town, but I cracked myself up when I thought of racist as a hopefully extinct scavenger. The problem was the title "Mysterious Cryptid found in Jena Louisiana" would simply attract the wrong crowd. So I went with the hellfire and brimstone Southern Baptist title but kept the mysterious creatures entry. Now you've seen into the mind of the writer.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:54 AM | Permalink

First some background. Downtown Fencing Club at the Downtown YWCA in Greensboro was created by Dr. Sally Robinson as an outreach program to bring the sport of fencing to what she referred to as "all zip codes". Since the start of the club in 1998 the club has grown by leaps and bounds in, number of students, number of instructors, quality of instruction, quality and quantity of equipment.

We have reached a critical mass, and to use a more geeky term, we are "ready to level up". We have reached a critical mass and are ready to grow and expand. The goal as I see it is to keep up the same quality of fencing instruction at the same low price as always, at our core we are and forever will be an outreach program at our heart as part of the YWCA's mission. It is now also time for us to expand our focus, by taking those students with the talent, and desire to the next level competitively. This of course will require two key ingredients, coaches with the talent and skill necessary to take the student to the next level competitively, and students willing and able to pay for that privilage.

Of course, because of our history and background, we would be able to help "sponsor" students with the desire and the talent, who may not have the bank account to pay for the very valuable instructors. What remains for us as our one year goal is two fold:
First - Make sure we have capital to pay for the elite level coaches.
Second - Make sure that we have a system in place to keep from leaving any less fortunate students behind.

My model? The Peter Westbrook Foundation

Of course, I am not the spokesperson for the YWCA or even the Downtown Fencing Club. I am just one coach among many, and I'd like to see the students we teach go farther and be better than we can make them now.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:04 PM | Permalink

"Northeastern grad key to resurrection of women's professional football team. Team reborn as a player-owned club"

Sure, I could brag about the teams 5-1 season, and doing it all with a tiny roster, and no budget. I have done it, and I'll do it again, but not today. Today I'm going to brag about my super kick butt wife, who has been gracious enough to allow me to be her husband.

Why wouldn't I? Here's a hottie who came to UNCG with a degree already under her belt, gets an undergrad degree in theater education, in points while living in her car, and just kept on going. She's finished her masters degree in film by day while working nights. She is living proof that desire is enough, if you are willing to keep your eyes on the prize and never give up.

Currently a Project Manager in IT, it was a natural for someone who has always been accustomed to time lines, budgets, and coordinating others to see a job done well. Playing football is what brings her joy, it allows her take a break from all of that leadership and be a cog in a well oiled machine, a teammate in a team of friends and equals. Sure, she was made team delegate, a role she excels in because excelling is what she does. A small price to pay because in exchange for this, she gets to play, and playing the game brings her joy in a way words can't describe. You just have to see her face at the end of a game when she pulls her helmet off. Through the sweat, and the dirt, and the bruising, there is a glow, born of pure joy and love of the game and the team.

Yet with all of this success and joy in her life, she still takes the time to love my sorry butt, while I attempt to scrape out a meager paycheck. She's patient with my low paying job because she wants me to better myself as well by trying to balance a paying job with my own half baked dreams. It takes the patience of a saint, to stay married to a guy who answers the question, "What do you do?" with the answer, "I write, and I teach fencing." The asker always translates my answer into "Oh, you're a bum." Yeah, maybe I am a bum, but I'll bet my spouse is better than YOUR spouse. In your face haters.

My wife filmed a black poetry night last night, managed IT projects today, and tonight is working on the 48 Hour Film Project. (Nice segue huh?)
I might be a bum, but I'm one heck of a lucky one.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:14 AM | Permalink

I saw tonight on the first of two nights
at the Manbites Dog Theater in Durham
a night of black poetry. Come see, come see
pay only what you can afford, to a minimum of five dollars
not free
but who gives words for free, besides the man who has nothing (except perhaps a blog)
A small price to pay for such pleasure, and privilage

Techno in the lobby, the producer wondered "Is this right?"
I thought it was to me, techno is the music of the beat poet
beat rhythm, beat rhythm, the emotion of the composer, the instrument's the thing
The beat of tonight's Black Poetry was the rhythm of the dance, and the emotion of the words
words with meaning and emotions beyond the dreams of Webster, Funk, or Wagnel.
(probably even Jeopardy)

Was it perfect? Nothing is, but they created something beautifully imperfect,
and would have been better still had I seen more of the shining faces, of the voices, whose words moved me to tear in more than a single place.
(an admission, I'm sure I'll hear about later)

To teach and to touch the reason for the theater
and that reason was reached tonight
Come watch, come see, come listen, come experience
leave your worries at the door and be lifted by the right words of the two acts
(with ten between the two for intermission)

You'll won't leave unmoved.

Next showing Friday August 3rd 2007 doors open at 7pm, curtain goes up at 8.
www.apetheatre.org or www.manbitesdogtheater.org

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:06 PM | Permalink

Some lessons are learned the hard way, for instance, the rule about emergency pants. Specifically the one about emergency underpants. They must be clean, dry, and close at hand for best effectiveness.

Mine are in a box clearly labeled "Emergency Pants", kept in my office where if I need them, I can call upon them at a moment's notice.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There are pens all around us. Rich men have expensive pens, that no one sees but them until the moment their valuable signature is required, or yours is required to make them richer. You see it all the time in the movies. Rich guy trying to steal the farm from the poor family because he knows there is oil there...watch for the really nice pen. Every villain in every movie has a great pen. If Darth Vader had needed to sign anything, you can bet his pen would have been impressive.

I once saw a pen store. Hand to god. They only sold pens. The cheapest one I could find was sixty dollars. Most on the rack pens were around a hundred dollars, locked behind display cases were multi-hundred dollar pens. I left immediately after I saw the six hundred dollar pen. I suspect those are the kind the devil uses, the ones that write with blood. It would take a very special pen indeed to keep it from constantly clotting.

Students have them. Go into any college classroom and you will see a bunch of pens. Some of them are bought and paid for from the book store, good pens, with a good feel, and if they splurged for the three dollar model, why not? They are using them all the time. There is always one guy using the sixty dollar pen they got for graduation from high school, it has their initials on it but is really hard to use because it keeps sliding down their hand. Those pens are really shiny and slick. Those pens are best for having in the jacket pocket of your suit. You never use it, but everyone knows you have a nice pen and you can pretend to be a rich man. A big shot and his pen. Before long that guy will join the other three to five people in the class who are using the pen they picked up off of the sidewalk on the way into class.

The rest of the class are using pens they just ended up with, they say things on them like "John's Plumbing, Heating, and Hunting Supplies". John paid about three to six cents each for them and he's got another couple of hundred at the office.

As we are moving away from a cash society we are moving further into a pen society. To write a check, you must have a pen. You've lost yours? No problem the lady at the register has one. It probably says something on it like "John's Septic Service and Home Decor". I don't know what you are writing it for though, most likely these days, as soon as you give them your signed and filled out check with the right phone number and the address circled, they give it right back.

If you eat out, and sit down to do it, you've probably paid with some form of plastic. The waiter left one pen for your entire table of seven separate checks to share. None of you probably have a pen.
Though, the lady dining with you might have one in her purse, but if she finds it at all, it is probably out of ink or just plain dried out. Both of these pens have things written on them like "John's Tree Service and Donut Emporium" or "John's Gun, Bait, and Bail Bondsman". They are really cheep to make and has John's phone number right there on it. A good investment for John, though there is a betting chance it won't make it around the table without dying on you. Sure you'll scratch it on the napkin in hopes of coaxing that last bit of ink, but its pretty much a lost cause. I mean what did you expect, it's only cost six cents to start with?

At every grocery store, pharmacy, retail chain store, convenience store, card shop, and pen store you can find a pen section. In all but the pen store itself you can pick up a pack of six for less than five dollars. You've probably bought them before, yet when you look over at the jar you keep your pens in (I use a gargoyle shaped coffee mug) you probably don't have very many. I myself have only two of these pens. I've got two from the office that ended up coming home in my shirt pocket, a highlighter, two pencils, and five of those six cents pens. You know, the ones with stuff like "John's Towing and Adult Video", and "John's Bar, Grill, and Day Spa". If I were to close my eyes right now and reach for a pen, it wouldn't be the one I bought in a pack of six for three dollars on sale at the drug store. It would be the one from "John's Plastic Surgery, Soaps, and Gifts."

Not to take anything away from John, but I see a need to help make the world a better place. Next time I go to the grocery store I'm buying two of those six packs of pens and I'm going to keep a few with me at all times. At the drive through, when I have to sign the credit card receipt I'm going to switch pens with them. Because you already know that the person at the window has handed me a pen from "John's Pet Shop, and Korean Buffet". That way the next person who comes through the window will have a decent pen that will write their whole name without running out of ink.

You gotta think globally, while you act locally, to make the world a better place. I'm doing my part, one pen at a time.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:15 PM | Permalink

After leaving acupuncture yesterday, we went to the grocery store to get a few things for dinner. Perhaps it was the euphoria of being nearly pain free for the first time in 12 days. Maybe it was being essentially high on the new dosage of blood pressure meds, maybe it was just sinking in truly that my brain was in no immediate danger. Whatever it was, when we walked into the store I found myself staring fascinated and child like at the TV next to the ceiling that was showing a top down view of Sara and I. I could see the top of my head and it was soooo cool. I am sure it was put there to be a friendly warning to would-be shoplifters that big brother was watching, but for me it was a magical toy.

From there, I went immediately to the men's room, as I suddenly had to go. Also a childlike response I suppose. While in there I saw something in a new and completely unintended way.
I saw this:

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On the internet you can exist in ways you don't realize. You can strive to build an alternative "Net Identity", or you can embrace it and be who you are in all places. Often regardless of what you try to accomplish for your net identity, there are always connections made that you don't realize or intend. Just the other day someone called me on my cell phone who thought I sold fence. Sell a man a fence, and he is defended for a day, teach a man to fence and he is defended his whole lifetime.

Many of the internet youth, have learned or are learning that nothing on the internet is every truly anonymous. They imagine or imagined that the internet is so big their college exploits will fall into the void and no one will ever see it again. Not so they are learning, as the megacorps are scanning myspace, facebook, and others seeking information necessary to decide, "Do we want this person working for us." The lawyers will argue, and rightly so, that the less information that exist about you, the more doors are open to you. IE, nothing said off hand is going to bite you in the behind 20 years later when you run for public office. On the other hand, if you avoid drugs, prostitutes, or earning yourself a headline on Fark, it seems no one really cares what you do with your free time. Its also probably a pretty good idea to avoid talking about your workplace, and coworkers in general. Yes, people really do have enough free time on their hands to make a hobby of trying to find dirt on you for nefarious gains. Why make it easy for them. All hobbies should be a challenge, both the wholesome ones as well as the petty ones.

From early on I took the attitude that I am who I am both physically and in the electrons. I have nothing to hide, and I am not ashamed of who I am. Sure I have things I am not proud of, but the more people try to hide things like that the faster they seem to see the light of day. Ask any politician.

Part of my reasoning was for the future. I expect to make friends and acquaintances both live and electronically, and I see no reason why there should be a line between them. Part of my reasoning was also the past. I have had many friends and acquaintances in my past that have slipped away from me, due to moving, moving on, growing up, and just plain changes of taste and disposition. For those, I have an interest in reconnecting with. I am not saying picking up the friendship that died on the elementary school playground, but wouldn't it be neat to know that they are doing well, have a spouse and a family, and are doing something they enjoy?

For that reason I leave these internet bread crumbs, better known as blog entries under my own name. Anyone who wants to find me, need only look me up in their favorite search engine. Others looking for things and places near to me may stumble upon me, and go "Hey! I know that guy!"

And that is how Chris and I reconnected. As it turns he also left the untamed wilds of Carteret County to seek his fortune in IT, by pure coincidence his life also lead him to Greensboro. By amazing coincidence he works about a block from where I work.

Pretty cool huh? Hi Chris!

All we have to do now is avoid witches with a penchant for baked architecture and we're home free.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:17 PM | Permalink

Think Geek had me at "Han Solo". Their Gadget Hip Holster, was a must have, if for no other reason that it reminded me so darned much of Han Solo's holster in A New Hope.

It promised to hold all of the things a geek on the go would want to carry, and I certainly needed that. Keeping up with an mp3 player, camera, phone, and reader is hard enough, but when I want to keep some mints close at hand, and my multi-tool ever ready it is downright difficult. This product promised to solve all of my on the go needs.

Then it arrived. I'll be the first to admit, I was disappointed. It was so small, and my needs were so big. I strapped it around my waist and leg (leg straps are sexy). Sara spent the next half hour teasing me about throwing money away for something that makes me look like some sort of rebel smuggler wannabe. I took it off and put it down. I spent much time seriously considering sending it back. It occurred to me however, that it might be a good strip bag for fencing. It could hold small tools and things I would take to strip with me at a fencing tournament.

The next day I wore it around empty while I thought it over. I wasn't sure it would hold any of my fencing tools either. On a whim I attempted to stick my cell phone in the cell phone pocket. the pocket stretched out easily to accommodate it, the back half of the phone stuck out, but it was secure, even though the pocket was orientated horizontally so the opening was on the side.
Huh. Nifty. Later on, I thought I would stick my Palm Tungsten C hard case and all in the PDA pocket. The pocket not only stretched to accommodate it, it held it secure, and surprisingly didn't look like I was stuffing a lawn and leaf bag with cardboard boxes. It looked made to fit. Next thing I know I even have my digital camera securely tucked away in the pouch with two outer pockets as yet unused.

I haven't been anywhere without it since then. This thing is amazing, and I recommend it to geeks on the go. It holds the big things, it holds the small things, it is going to hold my Buckaroo Banzai special order pen, it is comfortable, and best of all, I look damn good in it.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have been to several women's football games so far, but Saturday was the first time I got to see the game as a spectator and not as a videographer. So rather than see tiny images flicker on a 2X2 screen, I got to see it all with my own eyes, focusing on the things that draw my attention.

More than half of the Phoenix came to watch this game as well. Their season ended last week with a 5-1 record, better than most of the full fledged teams. They wanted to see a game as spectators as well.

One of the teams we saw was really large, they came from a big city, and had a big budget. They brought their own team of announcers with them. These announcers filled the booth, but they didn't talk over the loud speaker. They weren't there for the game, they were there for their team. Camera, laptops, sound equipment, the whole deal. They recorded the game to play back on the internet later.

The team was big as I mentioned, and rich. Big enough and rich enough that they had their own bus they came in. Their uniforms were all modeled after their home city's NFL team. There were things that really impressed me about their team. For instance, they scored a touch down and are going for the extra point. By the time the whistle was blown at the end of that play, the kickoff team was already in place waiting to kick again. This team had an entire offense, defense, kick off, and return team and back ups for each of those teams. They moved on and off of the field with precision, and never got tired, because they really didn't have to be on the field all that long.

I spent some time talking to their teams videographer. He was very proud of his team and wanted everyone to know it. He spent the game talking about all of the ways that his team was better than all the other teams. He talked about how much money they had. He talked about their big college educated coaching staff. I gathered the coaches had all played college ball, and some of them probably coached college ball. He told me about the individual players. Congratulations to the player who just graduated from law school. He told me about how each of their players has a personalized workout designed by Velocity. Then he went on to tell me a whole bunch of other things that, frankly I lost interest in. He started trying to impress me with his personal football knowledge. Thing is, since I have absolutely no football knowledge at all, his words had no meaning to me. I was polite though. I think I nodded and smiled in all the right places.

Based on all I saw on the field and all he told me, they can be easily be beaten by a team of 22 with a good coach. Everything else is just window dressing really. Impressive, but in and of itself won't win you any football games.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:47 AM | Permalink

I can't let this go, so I looked up the "spiritual care" department at New Hanover Memorial Hospital.

Chaplains in the Spiritual Care Department are members of the hospital's "healing team" who are trained to help patients and their families tap into their own spiritual resources to facilitate healing and recovery. In providing care, our chaplains respect the traditions, fait and beliefs of our patients.

OK, so they are capable of healing spells, and claim to respect the beliefs of the patients. If my uncle was into death worship would he even BE in a hospital?

I've been looking at the facilities they have for worship. They have a chapel, Bible, Qu’ran and Islamic Prayer Rug, but I don't see sacrificial daggers anywhere. I assume all faiths could share an alter, you'd just have to clean it after each service so the next faith wouldn't see the blood. Maybe daggers are considered "personal gear" or something. It may be the sort of thing you don't share with everyone for sanitation reasons. I noticed they don't list communion chalice, rosary beads, or Brit Milah knife, so sacrificial daggers may be lumped in with these sort of artifacts.

I am willing to accept the possibility that in all of the mountains of paperwork, someone accidentally checked the box next to Kali, Anubis, or Pluto in the religion section. So now my only question is why were they so insistent? A follower of a death god would be pulling the tube out themselves, not fighting the priest trying to do it for them.

Do these guys work on a quota system with their god?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:40 AM | Permalink

She has "A Fat Rant", and she says what most of us super sized have probably thought. It was the right message at the right time for me, so I share with the rest of you.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am a Cavenaugh, and like all Cavenaugh's we die precisely when we mean to and we don't lolly gag around. If a Cavenaugh is in the hospital, they are either dead in eight hours or going to make a recovery. We do not fear the next step. One thing we discovered we hate more than anything is to be told to go ahead and die, and that is just what has happened to my uncle.

He survived esophageal cancer, but the chemotherapy caused the muscles in what was left of his esophagus to stop doing their thing. He couldn't eat well, he got weak, he was hospitalized. He was so weak he couldn't breath well anymore so they put him on a machine that would breathe for him and inserted a feeding tube into him so he could get nutrients. This worked out pretty well so long as the tube stayed properly inserted. He's on his fourth feeding tube now. Every time it clogs or falls out or whatever, he gets weak again and he can no longer get rid of the carbon dioxide in his blood, he goes on the machine, they reinstall his tube, pump the nutrients to him and he perks right back up.

Most of the time he has been lucid and awake. If there is a tube down his throat he writes notes, if there is no tube down his throat he talks. His mind has remained sharp this whole time.

It is during one of the "tube slipped out" times that the clerics showed up. They are the ones paid by the hospital. I wonder if New Hanover Memorial hospital screens these people. I am a big supporter of the freedom to worship, whoever you follow, and I even try to keep abreast of the various and sundry sects that are in vogue these days. Sooner or later I am going to end up meeting, working with, or near a follower of one deity or another and I don't want to cause any unnecessary faux pas.

I admit that I don't perhaps do as good a job at knowing about them as I should. For instance, I had no idea that there were currently any death gods in vogue these days and definitely not enough of them for the hospital to have two clerics on the payroll dedicated to one. I wasn't there to see them myself so I couldn't look for icons or other clues so I have no idea who they served. Wikipedia list 67 death gods and it will take time to figure out which one these clerics were serving.

All I know is this. They went to my aunt and tried to convince her to take him off of his machine so he would go ahead and die. They told her it would be best for everyone. They were insulted when she told them, "No, he is going to stay on the machine, thank you very much." Plus he signed a form that says, "Keep me plugged in". He will die when he is good and well ready to do so.

So what do these two people do but go into the room and try to convince him to go ahead and die. Isn't this precisely the opposite of what hospitals are there to do? Let these guys administer to death row inmates, or even work the suicide hotlines (who is to say they don't already). I just don't think it is appropriate for them to seek out sacrifices in a hospital. A hospice, sure, a hospital definitely not.

If I am to meet them I will find out which god they follow, and I will ask questions to make me smarter. For instance, does it matter who dies? Does the manor of dying matter. I can think of no greater sacrifice to a death god than one of their own clerics. It would be best for everyone right?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You may recall from the other day, someone from Greensboro Sports.com spoke some discouraging words about women's football leading me to issue a challenge.

There were some more words said. I am not sure what they meant, and I waited for perhaps some commenter (heck even troll Nefarious Prime) to help me understand the words that were written. I think the challenge was declined. Here's the quote, see what you think.

Woody Cavenaugh said that if I would quit laying around then maybe I might have time to cover the Phoenix and that I’m probably washed up and just plain mad that I can’t compete with these young ladies.

Woody is good writer and he has nice blog but if I’m slowing down then I must be missing something because the five miles I put in this morning went by pretty quick. I have a tight schedule and don’t have the time to coach these women but if I did they couldn’t handle what this old hound-dog would be bringing to the table. There’s not a soul in town that can keep up with me. Like I said before, “Everyone is looking for a Leader, if chosen I will Lead the People”.

What started my confusion is he seemed to be saying that I said something that I don't think I said, or even implied. I gather from this that he is too busy and doesn't think the women are capable of learning from him. But I'm not sure that is what he meant either.

Meanwhile in the comments there were words spoken both for and against women's football. The negative ones surprised me. No one has ever accused men of being incapable of performing any sports. I admit, I know only this about sports. They come in four varieties. Ball Sport, Non-Ball Sport, Individual Sport, and Team Sport. The Greensboro Sports blog seems to be more interested in team ball sports, so to me women's football would be right up their alley. I have always been more of a fan of individual non-ball sports.

Just like there are people who prefer to play turn based strategy games, and others who prefer to play first person shooters. Football is clearly a turned based strategy game, and fencing is more like a first person shooter. We know what we like and generally we don't talk smack about what the other person does or likes, at least in computer gaming anyway.

For all I know this bad mouthing women's sport is nothing more than a bonding ritual performed by hard core sports fans and I simply don't have the background to pick up what he's throwing down. Either way, since I have no way to communicate with a sports fan I should probably just stop trying until I understand their language, written, spoken, and that grunting scratching thing they do when they are together. Can anyone recommend a good beginner's sports bar?

Meanwhile I can't say enough nice things about WGHP FOX 8 who put together this really nice story about the Phoenix.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Everyone knows the old saying, "You can have it fast, cheap, or good, but you can only pick two." In the world of project management this isn't just an old saying it is the law. Time, Money, or Resources, and the best you can ever hope to control is two. I contend that the triangle is a true natural law and applies evenly to all things, including women's sports.

The three sides of the triangle in sport are sponsorship, roster, and talent. I have seen teams with large rosters, good sponsorship and only a little talent. I have seen teams with large rosters, little sponsorship, and some talent. I contend the Phoenix is a team with a small roster, plenty of talent, and almost no sponsorship.

Sports has two primary goals, one to be an outlet for the players, and two to be an entertainment for the fans. Without a nice evenly sided triangle these goals can't get met. If you have a team with major backing, and a nice stadium, and they never win, you won't hold your fan base, and your players won't be happy either. If you have a very talented and successful team which no one knows about, the stands of the rented stadium remain empty, and the players have to pay their own way every step of the way to every away game. Thus you have the relationship between talent and sponsorship. Take a talented team with a small roster, and play them hard, and by the fourth quarter you have a tired team making mistakes. If you have a huge roster, but perhaps not strongly talented (that's players and coach by the way), you get creamed unless of course you are playing a small unfunded team of talented players, then you can try to capitalize on their fatigue if you can. In these situations where all things are not equal some games are going to be good and some games are going to be train wrecks. It all depends on who comes closest to the isosceles triangle. Large or small, symmetry has its advantages.

Children's sports takes care of this as best as they can by hopefully balancing the teams evenly at the beginning. High school sports takes care of this as best as they can by breaking up the schools into size groups. Sports wants the perfectly symmetrical triangle facing off against other same sized perfectly symmetrical triangle. NASCAR works hard to make sure that all of the cars are the same, and no team has an unfair advantage. Many larger fencing competitions are split up by gender, age, and rating. The NFL, has the draft, the teams all have similar and fairly proportioned sponsorships, the players are the cream of the crop, the coaches are, the best money can buy with proven records.

Starting next season the IWFL is splitting the teams up into tier one and tier two based on roster size, sponsorship, and performance. When that happens the scores will be closer because the teams will be better matched. The players have more fun, the fans get a better show, and everyone wins.

Meanwhile over on the Greensboro Sports blog, someone speaks a discouraging word about women's football in general:

Women’s Football? That’s all I need. A woman trying to say she’s better than me in Football after all my years of training.

I am issuing a challenge, not an insult. If you're so worried about a woman claiming she is better than you in football, you need to step up and prove your worth. The Phoenix has two very good coaches, and a trainer, but most teams in the IWFL have a whole crew of coaches, trainers, volunteers, fund raisers, publicist, and roles I probably don't even know about. Put up, or shut up.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I have now operated as the team videographer for two games now and I am ever so slowly coming to terms with the differences between Football and Fencing. Besides the obvious, one being a team collision sport and the other being an individual contact sport, one being indoors and the other outdoors, what I discovered is that they are more alike than differing.

Both rely on rather expensive equipment for protection. Mask and helmet, jacket and shoulder pads, underarm protector and girdle, appropriate shoes, and long socks. If you don't have the approved equipment, you don't get to play.

Both are combat oriented with territorial objectives. Football wants you to get the ball past the enemy defenders to an objective, the end zone. Fencing wants you to get your tip past your enemies defenses to an objective, the target.

Both rely on strategy at the macro level, knowing your opponent, knowing how much time is on the clock and what your own strengths and weaknesses are. If you are a fencer with low stamina you will want to end the bout as quickly as you can anaerobically. If you know your opponent tires easily you will want to keep your distance and wear them out. In football it is much the same, does the other team have a lot of fresh players that can be substituted regularly, or do you only have just enough to play. Does the other team like to pass more than run?

Both rely on tactics at the micro level in order to outplay, out think, and outwit your opponent. In fencing it is important to keep your your weapon's bell guard in a good position to protect your target area. Careful placement will limit your opponents options. In football it is important to coordinate your line to either create or block openings where the ball may move, limiting what your opponent can do.

In fencing, if you film a bout for training purposes , you want to see the whole fencer and at least a little of the opponent. If you film fencing for an audience you must have enough camera angles to show in post production how each fencer scores and where the blunders and successes occur. In football, if you film a game for training purposes, you want to see your whole team and at least a little of the other team. If you film football for an audience you must have enough camera angles to show in post production how each team scores and where the blunders and successes occur. Each rely heavily on slow motion to convey the action to the audience.

Another difference here is a fencer won't ever spread out to cover half the strip. Football teams will do that especially when the ball slips past the defenders and is careening wildly towards the target...err end zone. During these moments, I can only guess the most important part of the team is that closest to the ball. If I'm wrong, someone will tell me, or replace me with someone better at videography.

Therefore, if fencing can be called chess at a hundred miles an hour, than football must be chess with very heavy duty pieces.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:24 AM | Permalink

The other day I was in a major non-wally world retail store shopping for a mother's day card. They had cards from mothers, to mothers, to mothers to be, to mothers to be from unborn children, to grandmothers, step mothers, god mothers, and just plan general mothers.

I wanted to get two cards. One for my mother, and one for my grandmother. I didn't see the need to get a "You might be a mother one day" card for Sara. It just seemed pushy somehow. Cards come in two general types. Make your mama laugh, and make your mama cry. Very early on, deep down in the subliminal parts of my mind there are two very important rules. First you do not make your mother bleed, and second you do not make your mother cry. I suppose these rules came about from my own personal "original sin". Being born I did both of those things then demanded fresh warm milk immediately after. I think she's forgiven me for this, but the rules are now forever in place. I swear it won't happen again mom.

I do NOT buy make your mama cry cards. I ONLY buy make your mama laugh cards. So when shopping for that perfect card I only have to read half of them. It was here I discovered a horrible terrible discrimination already in progress. There are no funny "grown men to their mother" mother's day cards. The "from son" collection starts in the womb and goes up to about puberty and then...nothing. The "from grandson" collection was exactly the same. What's up with this? Are the greeting card companies saying that guys stop sending their mothers cards once the guy discovers grass on the field? I call foul! Puberty and the years after it have been one hell of a distraction I admit, but I couldn't have forgotten mother's day more than a couple of times in all those (short) years after.

In the end I had to get both my mother and my grandmother cards found on the "from daughter" rack. Yes, the cute little cartoon characters had bows in their hair. Yes. The funny little joke was definitely slanted in the feminine. Yes. The greeting card company forced me into wild gender bending for the sake of Mother's day and didn't even have the courtesy to get me drunk first.

That my friends is a party foul of the highest order. My only hope is that my mother won't notice, and my grandmother won't remember. In this, there is hope.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:38 AM | Permalink

Being the furthest away from the source of our power I am, I feel, in a better position to see my clan for what it is. First and foremost a Cavenaugh is incapable of doing wrong. If there is a disagreement between a Cavenaugh and anyone else, you need look further than last name to know who is in the right. If a Cavenaugh does wrong, which they can't, but if they were to, the rest of the clan would form a tight circle around them and protect them to the bitter end.

Second off, a Cavenaugh is stubborn. How stubborn? Stubborn enough that we won't even die until we are good and well ready and not a day before. The only thing that can override this is if through our own stubbornness we cause ourselves to die in spite of ourselves. I know that sounds confusing, but it has happened and therefore it is a rule. How long have we been so right and so stubborn? The first known record of this occurred in Ireland long long ago.

I only mention this because my dear uncle who on Sunday was in such poor shape that the family was gathered to see him to his end is today less than a week later out of Super Everyone Has to Wear Hazmat Gear ICU to a normal room. And I think I spent some time in the waiting room sitting next to Death. He seemed pretty impatient and put out by the whole thing.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:46 PM | Permalink

I sometimes wonder what purgatory is like. Some people say it is like drifting in darkness all alone nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to smell, nothing to taste, nothing to feel. Others say it is probably like an airport terminal during a snowstorm when all of the flights are canceled. Me, I believe purgatory is like being in a hospital waiting room while a loved one is in intensive care. You have all of the worry and the fret of an airport in a snow storm with all of the sensory deprivation of floating in the void.

It takes brains and more than a little skill to come out of a day in a waiting room unbroken. For me it also takes a backpack. I typically bring a book, mp3 player with plenty of extra batteries, jump rope, computer, note pad, travel coffee mug, flashlight, two tins of mints, a digital camera, a windbreaker, an extra pair of socks, and a spare pair of underwear, and of course, a towel.

Over the course of the day I was able to use the book and the mp3 player to put myself in the world of the story and not in the cold plastic, with constant ringing phone of reality. Never sit near the phone. If you sit near the phone you are expected to answer the phone. On the other end of the phone will be someone whom you don't know looking for someone else whom you also don't know. Tomorrow I am going to find the number of that phone and when the room needs a tension breaker I will walk outside to the smoking section and prank call it. I can't wait to hear some poor old woman shout; "Is someone here for my crotch?" Yes, I am well aware of the irony of prank calling from a place filled with smoke and angst. If purgatory is the waiting room and heaven is the coffee shop, hell is definitely the smoking area.

There is nothing more horrible than a bored anxious smoker. Unless it is a bored anxious smoker who has just gotten some bad news.

Worst of all, the people in the waiting room of intensive care, besides being bored, worried, and anxious, are almost always as old and as plain as the art reproductions on the walls. Where do the young sexy people wait anyway?

MP3 player to protect you from reruns of Walker Texas Ranger and the telephone. Book to protect you from having nothing better to look at. Jacket because it is often chilly in these waiting rooms (I think it is to keep the old people fresher longer). Towel because you will probably want a nap eventually and rest your eyes. Computer in case you finish your book. Notebook in case you have something interesting to write down for later and don't want to wait to boot your computer. (Fact: Computers boot 10 gazillion times slower in intensive care waiting rooms.) A jump rope, to tie up any loose children, or I suppose you could jump some rope to get the blood moving (untie toddler first). A tin of mints so you can have clean fresh breath. A pair of socks and a pair of underwear in case you have to eat in the hospital cafeteria. A tin of mints in case you had to eat in the hospital cafeteria.

So there, now you have had a lesson on hospital intensive care waiting room survival. Aren't you glad I brought a notebook along with me? I should get some more batteries and mints, tomorrow is going to be another long day in purgatory.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:55 PM | Permalink

For a while I had been saying that what I really needed was to walk the world a while, find some peace on the open road. I just didn't realize that the destination was preordained, and the hours were long and late. For two nights the wood woke before the Woody had even gone to sleep. Surreal times. At any rate,for the Shreveport game I found myself, the driver getting the team up and back safely, and taking video of the game while there.
I got to see my wife play center. That was pretty cool. In case you didn't already know, my wife kicks ass, and not just mine. It was one of the first times I got to see a football game where I wasn't playing, or I wasn't given only the view of the game the producer of the TV show wanted me to see. It turns out football and fencing isn't all that different. Offense, defense, control of territory, objectives, the only real difference between the pigskin and point of a sword is the player. One on one battle tactics and strategy VS group tactics and strategy. I can't say I understood all of what I saw, but I knew enough to know that when I feint deceive on the strip, and when they do it on the field the goal is the same. Confuse your enemy into protecting something that isn't being threatened so a hole in the defense can be created to achieve your objective.
I also know enough to know that the mind of a football player and the mind of a fencer are as different as can be. Its no wonder why so few people can excel at both individual and team sports. I wasn't any good at team sport. I didn't like having to depend on others, and I didn't like feeling like I failed the others. In fencing, success, failure, it is all of my choosing, and for the sake of my own desires. If I want this touch, I take it. I am a bigger part of my own destiny on strip than the person I am facing.
I suppose that makes Sara and I a very complementary pair. You thought I would say "great team" didn't you.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:06 AM | Permalink

In light of recent events at Virgina Tech, gun crazies from all sides of the issue are all screaming "SEE I TOLD YOU SO" like hungry baby birds. They should all be hung from the yardarm by their feet, each and every one. They should be hung by alternating views so finally they will realize once and for all that they actually have something very important in common.

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution states that: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Wikipedia to the rescue.

The emphasis on this statement has been skewed in my opinion. These days people seem to read it like this:"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

What I think we need to do is step back and restore balance by focusing on this emphasis for a while: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

What I'm saying is that gun control is not the issue. (And I'm sick to death of both sides saying it is.) Lack of service in the militia is. You want to carry, then you have to have served in the militia. If you have served in the militia you are highly trained. Not so much as a combat soldier, but way more than your typical gun safety class. Think of it as a cross between the national guard and the sheriff's office, with a dollop of community watch on top. No, this would NOT be the military. The military couldn't be involved really. It would be conflict of interest. The military serves the government and the whim of the commander and chief. The militia serves the people.

During your stint you would be available to be called upon by the police or the national guard to serve during local disasters. I wouldn't even mind it being required, knowledge is power.

For those pointing fingers of blame at the tools, I say the real issue is the lack of knowledge of their uses. You can be sure that in situations like work place shootings if there were militia trained people around the end result would be less damage not more. Even if no militia person in the room was actually carrying a weapon, they would be more trained to respond correctly a violent attacker.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:16 PM | Permalink

I happened to catch this article from The Sun. The Sun is a tabloid paper from the UK, so I was prepared to take what I saw with a grain of salt. The gist of the article is that the furry subculture is getting traction in Britten. The pictures in the article were supposed to be proof, but I tend to have my doubts that these are the costumes that are lighting up the bedrooms of British households.

Furry, is just one more of those subcultures I don't understand like Scientology, Filipinos, Evangelical Christian Republicans, or The JCs. I figure I can't be alone here so I went out and educated myself and I'm willing to share my new found knowledge with you.

Wikipedia to the rescue! So what I learned was that these people enjoy dressing up in plush animal costumes looking for all the world like cartoon characters. That doesn't seem so bad. I have been looking at the pictures from the conventions and it is clear that the costumes are elaborate, expensive, time consuming to make and possible uncomfortable to wear. But they are plush, and they come in many colors. They are also organized enough to have their own Wiki, which they call WikiFur. These costumes are inspired by cartoons, comics, and the fertile imaginations of people who have looked at an animal and seen a piece of themselves. It boils down to having an animal themed costume party.

But there is something weird going on. I have to admit, I was really intrigued by all the pictures of the costumes that I have seen. That takes talent folks. These are not costumes picked up from the costume shop. These are cool. So being a follower of the interwebs, I did what anyone else would do if I wanted to see more pictures of people in their furry costumes. I did a Google image search for furry. DO NOT DO THIS.

Apparently, there are two sides to everything. There are the really cool costumes and the conventions on one side and on the other is an infinite amount of cartoon animal human hybrids having sex. Its weird... The costumes in the photo's are all plush and kid friendly and stuff. The art is all tight fitting and... anatomically correct...it is like there are two different sides of the Furry Force out there, one side sews and the other side draws, the only thing they have in common is a love of animals and a talent with their hands.

Based on what I have learned today I have no desire to go find stuff out for a while. Who knows what horribly scaring thing I might learn about evangelical Christian republicans. I don't think I can go there right now. Curiosity has made this cat crawl under a table and rock.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:02 AM | Permalink

Same as it ever was... The future of America, rest in the hands of bunch of kids who can't read. Either that or choose not to obey in the hopes they will be hit so they can sue, and live the lower class American dream.

This is us in the car herding idiot children. Where are we?

Just past this sign.

Every freakin' morning. Same thing.
We even have a theme song
Rawhide!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sometimes life is stranger than fiction. As a holiday rolls around celebrating the resurrection of a Christian prophet, children, who have been up since before sunrise, frolic around in fancy new cloths (covered this year by very warm coats), looking for highly decorated eggs and gifts from the Easter Bunny. You've got to admit, you take a step back and look at for what it is its pretty weird. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan. I grew up in that world and it is sacred to me. I miss decorating the eggs, I miss the chocolate, and I miss standing outdoors surrounded by people all wearing new cloths. No, as a matter of fact, I don't miss it enough to go back. The religious holidays as a whole have been ruined for me by the people who celebrate them.

For instance I submit stuff like this. You have a Mormon church where a group of peaceful Christian non-Mormon types try to have intelligent discourse with a group of people whose religion is exactly the same except for the extra profit. This situation gets crashed by a bunch of wandering profits who are not so much preaching fire and brimstone as bragging "Nah Nah, I'm going to heaven and you aren't!" The wandering preachers are not interested in discourse, they are not interested in brotherhood, they are out and about passing judgment willy nilly. They don't like the Mormons, and they don't like the peaceful Christian discourser's. Their message is "You go to hell, you go to hell and you die, and I'm not. Ha ha! Praise King James." Needless to say this didn't end peacefully.

I have always found it ironic that in a world where the major religions all share the same god, so much can be made over little things.
"Thank you for choosing God how may I take your order?"
"Hi, thanks I'd like to order a single god who created everything, a heaven and a hell."
"Would you like a side of prophet with that?"

Your choices are none, one, two, or three. Technically even if you pick none, you actually get a profit or two free of charge like ketchup on your burger, but the metaphor holds. So most of the world is going to the exact same fast food drive up. They are all getting the same main course and picking their side dishes as they choose. By the time you get back into traffic with your holy happy meal, you're ducking fire from the guy behind you who saw that you picked the onion rings instead of the small fries. Meanwhile there's a guy with a yogurt and diet coke whose about to drop a bomb on the whole damned intersection.

Since I have discovered ebooks, my reading has gone from one book a year with good behavior to reading every moment I can so long as the battery holds out. I read enough strange facts and persistent rumors at work, so for pleasure I read science fiction and fantasy. Its funny, in our world more people have died over the choice of which prophet to follow than anything else, yet in the fantasy novels you can have three people with three completely different religions with absolutely nothing in common and they always get along.

The book I am reading now, three friends, one's family god is a god of sheep herders, one's god was a soldier who died in battle and ascended to godhood because of his valor, the thirds god came from the first living thing. One of them gets hurt, the other two go out of their way help the victim pray to their god, for help. "Please hear my prayer, though I am not one of your followers, my friend is, they have been hurt bad and need you please watch over them."

Meanwhile in reality: "Mix an evangelical Baptist, a crotchety Mormon, Good Friday, and a motorized wheelchair. What do you get? An entry in the police blotter". Leave it to a FARK submitter to sum it up best.

My Easter message? Why can't we all just get along and celebrate our differences? Its because you're stupid isn't it?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:32 AM | Permalink

I don't know why this suddenly bothers me. Its not like I am ever surrounded by pregnant women. But someone needs to take a stand. Its a tough row to hoe, but I am just the Joe to hoe it. Woody, defender of the pod people.

There are laws folks. If I grope someone, at best I get my face slapped, and a simple assault charge. At worst, its sexual assault, and lord help me if she's under age. These are good laws, and they aren't a surprise to anyone. One of the earliest things you are taught as a toddler is no hitting, no pinching, no biting, no bad touch. And tell an adult if someone touches you. If you see someone groping someone else against their will you help the victim get free of the attacker. Its chivalry. Its personal space. Its proper civilized behavior. Its not just a good idea, its the law.

So why oh why does society tell us it is OK for one and all to grope pregnant women? Is the baby bump some sort of sign that she's impure and therefore community property? Everywhere I've ever seen a woman with one in the oven I have seen people, friends, coworkers, and total strangers who suddenly feel entitled to rub the buda's belly without any warning, or permission. Do you think these woman suddenly want you stroking the fruit of their loins just because it grows ripe? Hell no! It wasn't OK before and it isn't OK now.

You have been warned. Don't make me go over there.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:27 AM | Permalink

Back in the day I was an instant fan of Men at Work and I still proudly own all their albums. That's right, vinyl. Old school. I was pretty broken up when the band broke up, but I happen to luck up one day and see that the lead singer Colin James Hay had released a solo album, "Looking For Jack". It was awesome.

Sadly I never heard of another release and he drifted into obscurity in my mind. Another great performer bites the dust. The problem, it turns out wasn't that he stopped making music. The problem was he was in Australia, and I was in Podunk USA buying my music from Roses.

Fans of the show Scrubs brought to my attention that there was this guy Colin Hay that was performing songs for the show and sometimes in the show. I caught a link from Youtube and it turned out it was the same guy, only better.

Time has a way of making male performers voices richer, and their lyrics better. This was true for Sting, Billy Joel, and others. It was also true for Colin Hay. Plus he is one of those rare performers who sounds exactly the same way live as he does in the studio.

One of the first tracks I have heard in my rediscovery has been "Beautiful World". I don't know if it is mostly the sound, mostly the lyrics, or the package as a whole. It pretty much is exactly the song I want to hear because it feels like the song which describes how I'm feeling. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the song as much as I do. Check it out below, in this live performance. You know, it really is a beautiful world.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

There has been a scientific study that shows that men like an hourglass shape. Finally! In spite of women's instance to the contrary several billion men really aren't wrong.

Nah! nah!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:02 AM | Permalink

What is it with shrimp these days? I remember the days of my childhood up all night in the bow of dad's boat sorting shrimp. Well, more like sleeping among the life preservers, I was really little at the time. At any rate, I grew up eating shrimp in two fashions, first lightly floured, and even more lightly fried. Second, head off, shell on, boiled up with a generous dose of Old Bay. In both cases shrimp were a finger food, one just required more work than the other to eat.

These days I am a little too employed, a little too inland and a little too smart to go catch my own. My own father fondly remembers the day he pulled his boat ashore, parked it in a field and set fire to it. A boat, for those of you who didn't already know is a hole in the water into which you pour money. Burning that boat saved my dad a fortune! And no, there was no insurance or plot to scam an insurance company. Dad built the boat, as many in that part of the country used to do.

These days my shrimp come frozen, or from a restaurant. I have been noticing something a lot lately and it is really starting to tick me off. My mother went to a lot of trouble to try to teach me to use utensils, some people have even managed to devolve me into chop stick usage. I have worked hard to get where I am being able to eat most foods without getting my hands dirty. Modern shrimp meals do vex me so. Why oh why are there so many shrimp meals out there these days where the tail shell is left on? Is it suppose to be some sort of proof that this is real shrimp or something? All I know is that if I get Japanese shrimp sushi, or Italian shrimp and pasta (in that yummy pink sauce), I am going to end up getting my fingers dirty because I am going to have to pull the shells off of the tail. I HATE getting pink sauce on my fingers. It reminds me too much of my childhood in the days before I had really gotten the hang of the fork. I am no master of the fork today, but at least in most meals I will put forth a solid effort to have table manors. Shrimp shatter the illusion. Fried, I don't care about. The way the people around here overcook their shrimp the shells are crispy and crunchy and eat as well as french fries. But steamed, sautéed, or any other way I have to put down the fork, pick up the shrimp and remove the tail section, or at the very least, fork it, put half of it in my mouth and pinch off the shell (carefully such that the meat is left behind and only the shell gets tossed on the table beside my plate).

And no, as a matter of fact I am not going to stop eating shrimp. Could this be a plot to make me give up shrimp so the rest of you can have more? Well played....

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:59 PM | Permalink

I have been silent too long. It is time to speak my mind on a matter most pressing. Guy socks come in every length from footie to thigh high, but in far to few colors. Yes, I suppose that between medium blue and indigo there is an infinite number of shades of blue, just enough to keep your socks from matching for all of time. Same with white to black, same with tan through taupe. You can also have any pattern you want, so long as it is paisley or squares. When I was a kid I spent hours with my father's socks trying to separate the different shades of burgundy, gray, and dark blue. One bad decision on my part, and dad got teased at work for having a colorblind wife. No one actually believed that a child could be made to match socks. I was mixing and matching in defense of my mother's very pride!

Meanwhile, women's socks come in all of the same lengths of men's socks but in all the colors of the world, plus every pattern imaginable. Why the inequity? I can buy a florescent colored shirt, why can't I have matching socks to go with it? In fact, I have a bunch of brightly colored shirts that need matching socks and my choices are white, or mismatched shades of not quite black. Where is the equity in that?

Tell you what I am going to do though, I am going to have to replace many of my socks soon. Far too much of my sock drawer has found religion and become (w)holier than thou foot can bare. The day of reckoning for my tootsies draws nigh, and I will have to shop for socks again.
When I do, I won't be in the men's department. Turquoise is my Shepard, I shall not want navy.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:00 PM | Permalink

Last night just before my Saber class I was visited by one of Greensboro's finest, and I am not speaking ironically or sarcastically. The police department was aware of my previous entry on the safety of the area surrounding the YWCA, and the excellent comments it attracted. The officer outlined what they were doing to help improve the security of the area. I outlined what we were doing to improve our own safety.

Each of us was satisfied with the action plans the other was taking and I taught my class as the solo coach no longer feeling like I had to keep one eye on the door to the front desk in case I needed to be called to instant action. I liked being able to focus wholly on my students again. I felt they got a better lesson. At the end of class, we left in groups. As the last fencer out (and usually the last patron), I pulled the external doors to, assuring that those YWCA employees left inside were secure. It was a good night.

Many thanks to the Greensboro Police Department for coming by, it was appreciated.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was in the grocery store last night and like most times you go into the store you see a cross section of humanity, the haves, the have nots, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Last night I saw something I thankfully don't see all that often.

Before I reveal what I saw, I feel it necessary for you to understand me. Without that context, my reactions are at best meaningless, at worst just plane crazy. Though I am actual size when you see me, yes morbidly obese, but actual size. You see my dimensions as they truly exist, but in my own mind, I seem much bigger to me. In my mind, I am the bull in the china shop. If you have ever managed to even catch me in one of those little gift shops with all the fragile glass figurines, you would have noticed that my hands were in my pockets, my elbows pulled tightly to my side. I move in slow motion and I want nothing more than to be outside in the wide and safe outdoors. I avoid fragile things, (I decorate my house in wood and steel), I avoid babies, and children under fencing age except under special circumstances. For instance, Jake Quigley, gets the occasional fencing lesson from me. I won't throw him over my shoulder but I will teach him the skills he is going to need as he gets older, as I have a duty to do so.

In the store was a young woman who might have been beautiful once inflated. She was an "instant hotty" just add water (or in this case 30 pounds of fat might do). I wasn't judging, I wasn't assuming she had an eating disorder. There are people out there who can eat most mortals under the table and never gain a pound. She may have been one of these, she may have even had a medical condition that kept her from carrying bodyweight. But I also never went down the same isle as her. I'm actual sized but I seem much bigger to me, and I'm pushing a shopping cart. So I went out of my way not to get within harms distance of her.

This all worked out fine until it was time to check out. Most registers were open, and instinctively I headed for the shortest line. As it would happen once I got there, she was in front of me. At the moment I realized I had chosen a bad line, she looked up and registered my presence. If I moved now, she might take it as an insult, and that isn't my intention either. So I put my cart between her and myself and I didn't attempt to put any of my food on the belt until all of her food was scanned and she moved to the check writing area.

It was here I realized I had an opportunity to truly know her. No matter who you are, or how you try to hide who you are with cloths, makeup, and fancy ring tones on fancy cellphones, the checkout of a grocery store reveals your true naked self. Now I would know. Is it medical? Is it high metabolism? Is it an eating disorder?

She had "lite" wine coolers, fat free ice cream, uber healthy snack cookies, a diet coke, a fashion magazine, and baby food. I am not a doctor, but I paid attention in my health classes. A woman with so little body fat wouldn't even be able to menstruate, let alone carry a child to term. Plus I saw the nutrition label on one of the jars. Baby food is fortified with vitamins and minerals, is low fat, and pretty low calorie.

She had fat free junk food, baby food, and a fashion magazine. I rest my case, she had an eating disorder. Heck, the fashion magazine alone was enough to get a circumstantial conviction on, the other stuff was the smoking gun. Case closed.

I have always tried to lay bare my soul, not pull any punches, and guarantee that I would never hold public office. So in keeping with these facts I am willing to share with you the contents of my own shopping cart. A jar of horse radish, a bottle of ketchup, a box of dryer sheets, 2 bags of coffee, a roasted chicken, a half gallon of skimmed milk, a quart of low fat low calorie ice cream, and an apple pie.

Now you know me.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:18 AM | Permalink

I don't know whose idea it was to organize the parents of youth athletes into a volunteer force of nature, but my hats off to them. Wow! We got ourselves some of that booster club and I can't say enough good about them.

What normally takes the coaches hours to do getting ready for a tournament, cost our club hundreds of dollars in the process, is taking very few hours to do now, and almost no expense to the club at all.

It went so well for the tournament setup that we had time to give the children competing in the tournament a group lesson. We have never had that kind of extra time before. We have never had that kind of volunteer force before!

If your youth activity doesn't have a booster club yet, you really need to get one. They rock!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:46 PM | Permalink

I sat upon a public throne pondering earlier indiscretions, of a dietary nature. Nature can be a harsh mistress sometimes and speaks to us in dark and burbling tones when her mood warrents it.

On the wall next to me, someone had made a proclamation of love to a specific portion of the female anatomy. I thought, considering where I was sitting at the time, he was really preaching to the choir more than creating enlightenment to the downtrodden. It would be like a fish proclaiming his love of water, sure there are a few amphibians within earshot who heard the message even if they couldn't wholey agree with it. That's just the nature of things.

My real issue was the proclaimer's short sightedness. Had he never really stopped and taken the time to appreciate the whole package? Clearly he had arrived at a destination but had he ever paused to appreciate the view or stopped to smell the flowers on the journey there?

If not, I feel bad for him. He has no idea just how much splendor he has missed. I guess that helps explain why I don't ride in airplanes when I could just as easily drive. The journey is just as entertaining as the destination, and sometimes you might even discover new destinations on the way.

My dispute with nature done, I wiped clean my mental whiteboard, flushed the writer's intention from my mind and joined my wife in the throws of outrageous retail (already in progress).

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It is already a well established theory that kittens, puppies, babies, and mammal young in general are all cute for a reason. Mammals respond to beauty. Humans especially respond to beauty. Vacation destinations are beautiful. Visual art is beautiful. The written word is beautiful. Language, theater, film, these things are beautiful, even when they are about ugly things. When a car company designs a vehicle, they want to create something that will ultimately attract buyers, that thing they do is to make the car beautiful to its target audience. When they fail, the car fails to do well in the market.

There is a certain truth to beauty. Hugh Heffner knows it, Jackson Pollak knows it, George Lucas knows it, Maya Angelou knows it, and the throngs of people who lust after George Clooney certainly know it too. We design buildings to be beautiful, we design cities to be beautiful, we landscape our world to be beautiful. When the paint on your house peals, you paint it so it will be beautiful again, when a part of a city is blighted, you do some urban renewal to make it beautiful again. When your 1965 Ford Fairlane 500 Sports Coupe sits abandoned in your driveway you dream every day of making it beautiful again. The truth of beauty is that we all want something beautiful and we all respond to beauty positively.

When you walk down the street and a beautiful person is walking towards you, you look at them. You have to, they are beautiful and your eyes are drawn to beautiful things. A red rose, a redhead, rosey cheeks. You look because it brings you pleasure to do so.

We know also that people are attracted to symatrical shaped faces as mates because deep down in our lizard brains we know that beautiful symatry comes from superior genes. AKC registered dogs are paraded around and judged on how close they come to the standard of the breed.

The beautiful thing about beauty is that there isn't just one. If there was just one beautiful building all buildings would look like that. If there was just one beautiful work of art there would be only one art museum and no artist at all. If there were just one perfectly beautiful dog there would only be one breed in the Westminster Kennal Club award show year after year. If there were just one perfect human beauty each year Miss America would look exactly like the last Miss America and Miss Universe would look just like that too. Either Playboy bunnies, would be modeling in cloth as well as skin, or the walking coat racks would be on the catwalk as well as in the centerfold. Won't happen. (Thank the lord)

My mother always used to look me up and down at my un-ironed ill fitting cloths and messed up hair and she always said "Don't you have any pride?" It always struck me as odd, I have lots of pride, I'm just sick with it. I now know she was asking the wrong question. It isn't about pride, it is about a personal obligation to be beautiful. I am sure more than one reader just read that sentence, glanced over at my picture and thought to themselves, "That ain't happening". But for every reader that scoffed at the idea that I could ever be physically beautiful there is another who not only knows it is possible but has seen it for themselves at least once. (It may have been a long time ago.) My mom thinks fondly to my highschool freshman year when I played a season of football.

The reason there isn't one kind of beautiful is because there isn't one type of person, and there isn't one specific definition of beautiful. We can take a crack at it, philosophers and artist all have. The one I like the best is "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." So while it is our duty each and every one of us to be beautiful for the sake of humanity, there are more specific beauties, and more general ones. Angelina Jolie comes to mind when I think of "general beauty". She has a beauty that seems to appeal to a very large group of people, man and woman, homosexual or breeder.

This fact should remove all the pressure one may feel to look like a walking coat rack modeling cloths in Paris or Milan. This fact should take away the need to feel like you have to go under the knife to resemble a playboy bunny or Fabio. You have a responsibility to be true to yourself and be the most beautiful you can be, not someone else, and certainly not TV's definition of what beatiful is. Some will have mass appeal, some will have more specialized appeal. In my case, I wouldn't mind appealing to anyone at all.

When I walk down the sidewalk and I see some beatiful woman, I smile and aknowledge them. Not with cat calls or sexist remarks but with a smile and a nod and when I pass them I feel better having seen beauty and look forward to seeing more around the next corner. Seldom do I get a nod or a smile in return, we tend not to notice the plain, and we are revolted by the hideous. I rarely get a smile, and I just as rarely get the revolted shiver. As these things are equal I don't worry too much. I make it a goal to improve myself so those who look upon me warmly will outnumber those that are revolted by me. I had forgotten that goal along the way, but The Counting Crows reminded me, "We all want something beautiful. Man I wish I was beautiful."

Just like there is beauty in music, paint, sculpture, film, poetry, and literature, there is beauty of character in people. Remember back when Brittney Spears was beautiful? Do you remember when she suddenly wasn't? What changed? Ok, what changed first?

When I walk down the sidewalk, only a few of the strangers I pass may see me as beautiful. To those who know me, I am willing to bet that for the most part, I am better looking than I am to the total stranger. Believe it or not, I am working just as hard not to be an ass as I am working towards dropping 140 pounds. I couldn't tell you which is the easier task, I love fried chicken, and I love being an ass to those who I feel diserve it. I hope one day I will be 200 pounds and as curteous to my best friend as I would be to a true asshole. That day hasn't come yet, but I will keep working on it. It is my duty to be as beautiful as I can be to the largest group of people as possible using what clay I was given. That is all of our obligations for the good of all humanity.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:19 PM | Permalink

You've heard the news about The McMissile incident.

VA law says that any object (including a McDonalds cup) that flies under any power (including being thrown) is a missile attack and punishible by law.

So this poor woman is facing 2 years in the pokey for littering in someone's general direction.

How lame is that?

My advice when traveling in Virginia: If you feel the urge to toss your empties at some idiot in a fit of road rage, don't. It isn't worth it. Instead use an RPG (available on the black market), a pipe bomb (available in your garage), or at the very least hurl a brick. If you are going to do the time anyway, you may as well earn it, instead of ending up a joke on the letterman show.

Don't make a mockery of the law, make the law mean something, and break it right.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Three nights a week I volunteer at the Downtown YWCA teaching the sport of fencing to all manner of willing student. Our youngest is 10, our oldest is 56, both men and women. The YWCA is nestled between a library, the cultural arts center, Center City Park, and the historical museum. By all accounts this ought to be a safe and snug harbor for folks to come out and expand their horizions in whatever way they choose. Sadly this isn't the case.

Last night at 8pm I am called out of my foil class to give aid to a woman who was attacked in the parking lot of the YWCA. As she was getting into her car a man attempted to steal her purse, and were it not for that lady's quick thinking and the awareness of the nice lady at the front desk, he would have gotten it and possibly more besides too.

Whenever this sort of thing happens, there are those who want to analyze what the woman did that made her a target. So lets cover those bases.
Where did she park? She parked in the handicapped space directly in front of the front door of the YWCA under a street light, which was working.
What did she do? She was holding her keys in her hands and as soon as he grabbed at her, she started screaming and she hit the panic button on her keys.
Where was her purse? She put it in the passenger seat of her vehicle under a coat.
What did he do when she started screaming and making a fuss? He just stood there looking at her all annoyed like.
Why did he leave? He saw the woman from the desk running out the door, me just seconds behind.

Now why was he there? I am not making any accusations, but I can't help but note that on the very same night that this happened, some group or another was feeding homeless people next to the library on YWCA Place. I'm not saying that those good, honest, but down on their luck folk are responsible, but maybe them being there is the cover that a more unseemly crowd needs so they can persue their criminal intents. Doesn't matter to me one bit one way or the other.

This is what makes me mad as hell. There are folk out there preying on me and mine and I am not going to stand for it. We were lucky last night as the eight girl scouts (ages 13 and 14) that were supposed to be here last night stood us up. Lucky also for us was the fact that because we knew we were going to have an additional eight on top of our usual 10-12 students we had plenty of coaching coverage. Had this happened on a night where we didn't have an abundance of coaches that would have meant that in order to protect the gentle souls at the Y, I would have to abandon my class. That doesn't make for a good fencing lesson, and that doesn't reflect well on me as a coach. Now imagine how I'm going to feel if I happen to find myself in charge of one of these miscreants sitting around NOT teaching a fencing class while waiting for the police to arrive.

I would hate to be that miscreant. It takes a great man to show compassion in a situation like that, and at best I'm just a good man. Well, maybe I'm ok. All I'm saying is this, if any of my people get attacked I swear by my spikey modern haircut there will be hell to pay.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This Saturday at UNCG's Health and Human Performance Building, UNCG and the Downtown YWCA are hosting "Girls and Women in Sport Day". If you watch the video link to the right of the article you will see that fencing is heavily involved, and that I look fat in my whites.

The event isn't local or small time, it comes from a much larger national association. The message? Sports aren't just for guys, and they aren't just for school girls either.

Speaking of Girls and Women in Sport, You might have noticed that I am a fan of women's football. Being married to the center for The Carolina Phoenix, it was either be a fan or be a hitting dummy. Check out this link. If you've been under a rock and unaware of women's football, here's your wake-up call. Are you ready? Tim Holmes head coach of the Phoenix has a great bunch of players and is getting them ready for the 2007 season. If you are interested in being involved with the Carolina Phoenix please contact the team at carolinaphoenix at gmail.com

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:20 AM | Permalink

I could not have been more happy with the group of people who opted to travel down to Wilmington for the Iron Maiden. Our fencers were upbeat, happy, and ready to have fun. Our male supporters all had different reasons for going besides the fencing, and the trip seemed to be just the balm they needed.

The trip down Friday night was swift and smooth, and we were in location and bedding down at a good hour with three fencers each getting a bed to themselves, the host in the master bedroom, and my humble self opting for the living room couch. I'm not fencing, I don't need a thing other than a place to put my bedroll. Many thanks to our gracious host for making his family retreat available to his fencing family.

Saturday morning we woke up in good time, had coffee overlooking a cove just off the intercostal waterway, and arrived at the meat locker just when we meant to be. The tournament wasn't really in a meat locker, it was in an unheated ground level salle just below a Catholic school gym, in February. The room was good for fencing, it was just cold. Our foilest needed gloves on both hands and probaby could have used ear muffs under her mask, as she could see her own breath kicking off our day at 9:30am. I myself wished for longjohns from the moment I arrived til the moment we left. Who can predict the weather right?

Our foilest did well in pools, even if she was frozen solid, and went into direct elimination sitting pretty. There is just one thing that none of us considered. In most sports with referees there are multiple referees. Even in sports that are "judged" more than reffed, there is always a pool of judges each with their own opinions of what they saw. Fencing only has one, and one is all you get. Good, bad, horrible, biased, incompetient, you play with the hand you are delt. Our foilest was blessed by never having a bad referee, until this tournament. She had only ever known technique, tactics, truth and justice. She had never had to fence the referee before and it was an experience you just can't prepare someone for. She knew what she was doing, she knew what the other fencer was doing, she did the exact right thing, and the referee called it the other way. Had the direct elimination bout made it to the first break I could have given her a 60 second introduction into how to fence the referee and not the fencer, but alas it wasn't to be. At that point our group broke into tactical teams each with its own game plan. Some worked on the offensive referee, some worked on the bout committee, some went to console a very angry and confused foilest. We couldn't go back into time and right the wrong, but we could make sure that the wrong didn't get repeated. In that I feel we were at least successful.

Foil for us suddenly and unexpectedly over, we turned our focus to the future and to epee. As our fencers, five in all, were spread over three strips, I am not even going to try to give a play by play. Let me do something better by summing it all up in a single satement: I have never been more proud of a group of fencers in my life. Each to their own level, lived not only up to my expectations, but beyond them in every case. In one case, beyond my wildest dreams, thinking not only tactically on strip, but strategically at the tournament level. It was so beautiful, it transcended sport altogether, landed firmly on art and claiming it for its own.

In the end, and the way things go when you field five fencers in a tournament of 15, yours will be forced to eliminate your own, and I think all but two of ours were forced to fall to our own. Its hard to cheer in a situation like that when you have teammate against teammate. However, one thing I can say is no one made it easy for anyone. The ones who lost made the winners work for it and that's good fencing when that happens. Plus, everyone goes home happy.
Best of all we had a terrific spread overall. We may not have taken first, but we made sure the person who did take home first earned it by being truly the better fencer. I can say that very cheerfully as we took both second and third place prizes home with us. In case anyone's wondering I believe as a group our women's epee is the best around. In case anyone disagrees with me, you'd best keep it to yourself. I would hate for our disagreement to have to be settled with diplomacy.

After fencing we joined our outstanding tournament host in Downtown Wilmington for tapas and conversation. Fencing, food and fun, that's what I call a perfect day. I could not get to sleep fast enough after a day like that. Cold, concrete, outstanding edge of your seat fencing, and a sore and swolen knee that kept me up all night. Advil is best taken in fours I've learned.

On our second night we had two more in the DFC beachhouse, and as this was a women only tournament Sunday was spent shopping downtown in Wilmington. As I like to spend money with the best of them, I had a blast! Even if I couldn't find that top in my size. Did I say that out loud?

DFC Women. Best. Fencers. Ever.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:20 PM | Permalink

The PMI (Project Management Institute) has taught me that a simple lie is much better than a complete truth. I suppose it should have been obvious, politics has been teaching us this for years. Truth? You can't handle the truth? Politicians only get into trouble when their lies start to get so complex they start to resemble truth, then they get into trouble.

So for anyone out there thinking of becomming a certified project manager with the project management institute I would recommend you create a simple lie about your past experience.

For instance, they didn't blink when I told them I spent 10 years working with Lyndono, and the past seven years with Virgin Intergalactic leading the Firefly class freighter project.

Maybe I should run for political office or something. Clearly I am qualified.

Nah. I can't do it. For one it isn't the Banzai way. And for two, I believe in an afterlife. I'd hate to screw that up. On the other hand, I'm going to be pretty pissed off if I find out that this was it, and I wasted so many opporunities because I was fretting over an immortal soul.

I'm not taking any chances. I don't care how many opportunities at career, wanton sex, and wealth I miss out on. In your face PMI!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Big Oil, you know the guys who are raking in record profits while you pay over $2.00 per gallon? Besides getting a substantial portion of your pay at the pump, they get a big fat check from the government. This means you pay them TWICE! Isn't THAT cool? Unless you own stock in Exxon, I suspect the answer is an resounding HECK NO!

As you may be aware we have a brand new majority in congress and they are all looking to score some points with us Americans. This being said, we need a good big loud voice to them saying that we are tired of paying twice for the same tank of gas! We are tired of them diging up the world looking for oil. We are tired of the pollution. We know better ways of powering our cars exist, why can't we use them?

A petition has been created to give you this voice. Lets get them to make their first 100 hours memorable and not wasted. Here's How

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:36 PM | Permalink

Unless you have never read anything I have ever written before, or have never spoken to me about politics, you already know that I am unsatisified with the job President Bush is doing. The world holds the United States to a higher standard because we are the most powerful country in the world. Thus, we hold our president to a higher standard. It isn't just me, let us not forget that Clinton was practically burned at the stake for being a man. Bush on the other hand has, to the best of our knowledge kept it in his pants, but he makes up for it by acting like an idiot monkey at every turn. But people change...

Earlier this week I was looking at a picture that the Voyager probe took from its vantage point outside of our solar system looking back at Earth. At that distance the Earth was less than a pixil across, but by some amazing stroke of luck it managed to capture us, "A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam". I am not quoting Carl Sagan exactly but I mean to. Go here to see the image and the article about it. In case you aren't into clicking links I want to quote a part of Dr. Sagan's speech because it is an amazing revelation.

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

Maybe it was this. Maybe it was the fact that I watched Dead Man's Chest last night. Maybe it was the box of Bojangles chicken I ate before bed. For whatever reason, last night I dreamed that I was standing in Center City Park listening to people talking about politics and war (these topics are inseparable). Then I flew, I just rose above the park, the city, the county, the state, the country, the continent, the earth. I stood there in space above our little blue world and I realized that America isn't the largest or the most powerful country in the history of man. In the entire history of man the greatest human ever was still just a human. I realized that Bush isn't a really bad president of the greatest country ever, he is an amazing Pirate King, leading a country founded on revolution, built by broken promises, and fueled by priacy. We are not a rogue nation, we are a nation of rogues, and the king of all rogues leads us.

I awoke a changed man. My approval rating of Bush grew seven sizes that day.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:56 AM | Permalink

Recent events have made me spend some, time eyes cast ceilingward, pondering the nature of work.

A hobby is work that you do because you enjoy it. You will get little or no compensation for this work, but the act of doing it makes your life feel more complete. My father gardens as a hobby. Most things in excess he simply gives away, but his collards he sells. The money he gets for his collards barely covers the fertilizer that grew them and goes nowhere towards the hours of labor he puts in to create his harvest. He is happy, and in this example his hobby puts food on the table, but it won't pay the bills.

A job is what you do in an attempt to keep a roof over your head. Most people have jobs. They probably don't enjoy their work, they may even hate it, but they have to do it or they will be on the streets. They probably aspire to do greater things that they feel they would enjoy but for whatever reason, lack of training, lack of certification, too old, too young, too scared, to beaten down by the man, they won't or can't follow their dream. I imagine you can think of entire industries that are filled with people doing a job.

A career is the highest form of work. This is the work you love doing that more than puts a roof over your head.
You may not be able to go out on a whim and buy an new Corvette, however you could save up for one if the Corvette was that important to you. If asked, you would probably say that you live a rich, full, and satisifying life. You have everything you need and you don't have to worry about basic human needs.

After comming up with those definitions I realized that I have two hobbies. Fencing doesn't bring in a dime, infact, it cost me money. I enjoy it, it does good things for me physically and emotionally, and it allows me give to the community. It is a warm and fuzzy rolled into a healthy lifestyle regime. Meanwhile I have my state job doing Knowledge Management. I love this work. I enjoy making connections in information figuring out how things really work and using the knowledge to help protect those who make three times (or more) my salary from themselves. Its like being a superhero, I am using my special skills to save the day. It is very rewarding. However rewarding or not, even with our combined salary, my wife and I are always exactly one paycheck from homelessness. If the car suffered a major system failure today that I couldn't fix myself, we would be down to Sara's truck, if Sara's truck suffered a majore system failure tomorrow that I couldn't fix myself, we wouldn't be able to get to work or anywhere else unless I manage to get one vehicle or the other limping again or we can find a garage who would let us pay in installments.

If I hated my work, it would be a job, if I got paid proper wages for my work it would be a career, as I love my work, but don't get paid properly for it, it is a hobby. This said, clearly something is going to have to happen somewhere if I want to rise above the one paycheck from homeless status. As I see it, I need to give up one hobby or the other for either a career, or at the very least a job that pays enough more than my hobbies to allow for a safety net.

The funny thing is, and this is clearly a failure of my own character, I don't want to give up either hobby, I want to shoehorn in a third hobby that I could dream might possibly add a little money to our lives. I am torn between being a good responsible provider, and having a full life. Its a good thing I am a Master of Bitterness.

Bitterness is the full and complete understanding that life really isn't fair and the mechanisms necessary to go on living it in spite of that fact. - Woody Cavenaugh

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:38 AM | Permalink

Everyone has a movie that changes their lives. Buckaroo Banzai was the one that did it for me. I learned many things including you can be smart and still dress well. I also learned that the only limitation of the human mind is the will of its owner. One thing we should all take notice of is the science behind it all. So, in the spirit of education here's this article written by Dr. Cary I. Sneider on that very subject.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was just reading this article about the value of a liberal arts degree and it certainly rang true with everything I know today.

Back in my communittee college days I had an outstanding Sociology instructor whose first name is Jack. I hesitate to mention his last name because being a sociology professor he was a bit eccentric and I don't want to offend him by mentioning his full name. At any rate, the first day of class he had each student say their name and their major. After each announcement of major he made a comment, usually of the smarty pants variety that summed up our prospects in our chosen path. Many laughs were had by all, but the smart ones in the class were left thoughtful by his predictions. Most notibly his final prediction. He said that it didn't matter what we were going to college for. It didn't matter how many times we changed our major or what major we ended up with. He told us that in the end most of us would go back to school and get a second degree in the thing we actually wanted to do with the rest of our lives.

Smart guy. I suspect, if I ever bother getting my first degree I will look forward to one day finding out what I want to do when I grow up and persue that degree too. To this end I can't stress enough the value of a liberal arts degree. Once you have a general knowledge of everything and you've walked the world a while, then you can go back and focus on what it is exactly that brings you joy.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:12 AM | Permalink

I grew accustomed to the stores being in full Christmas mode the day after Thanksgiving. I am struggling with the stores being in full Christmas mode the day after Halloween. I was completely unprepaired for the stores being in full Christmas mode the week before Halloween.

Oddly I have less trouble with folks decorating their houses for Christmas on Thanksgiving day. I still struggle with the folks who decorate their houses for Christmas the day after Halloween where they unload one color light and put up another. Down with the orange, up with the red and green. This was going on over on Hicone road and all I could do was stare in disbelief. Smashed pumpkins on the highway, Santa on the lawn. Now it all sounds like a John Meloncamp song.

Don't mistake me, I am all for the season of giving attitude lasting all year. I just wonder how often these folks have to replace the bulbs in their lights. Not to mention how the season of giving is giving them an outrageous power bill. More power to them, I say, at least they aren't beign somber.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:52 AM | Permalink

Props to Mario who made this bunch of hooey enter my radar range.

Woody took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Wants to make a favorable impression and be recogn..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

Like him I will post my results below so you won't have to go somewhere to read it for yourself.

Continue reading "No, I use my writing to put my cold callous exterior in sharp relief." »

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:26 PM | Permalink

As someone involved with a non-profit where money is always an issue I keep my eyes open for opportunities at fund raising for my org. The other day I spoke to someone who had worked in a program out of the Greensboro Coliseum and I though I would share in the event that others are looking for ways to raise funds for their groups.

As you probably already know the Coliseum is like a boat that the city owns. It is a hole in the city into which they dump taxpayer's dollars. In a way to help the community and help stop the hemoraging of hard earned dollars they created a way for groups to volunteer at the concession stands during events. This means that there are fewer people on the payroll. In return for volunteer hours the groups get a percentage of the gross of their concessions. Pretty sweet deal when the beer is six dollars a cup!

In order to be included everyone who is in your group must take a class on how to sell beer, and pay about $318.00 to the coliseum for "insurance". Your group sells all it can and at the end of the night a staff member takes your cash drawer to the back room where they count it. You get a percentage of the gross of what you took in minus whatever the drawer is "short". The person I talked to said that the first night they were "short" slightly more than they were due to make so they got nothing. The second time they did it, the eight of them brought in for their organization $40.00 total.

They had a problem however completely unrelated to the cash flow. Apparently someone who was paid staff requested sex from one of the volunteers who said "no". The staffer reported to the person in charge of the volunteers that this particular volunteer was practiving a "devient lifestyle". Faster than you can say "sexual harassment", the volunteer was told they were no longer welcome. While this was going on one of the volunteers was told they looked "racist" by a regular paid staffer.

The lesson here, if you are trying to raise funds for your organization and someone asks you for sex you say "Yes daddy." I am sure there may be another lesson in here but I'll let you work that one out for yourself.

I gathered that the offending staffer got in big trouble with the higher ups and that's a good thing that reflects positively on the coliseum as a whole. But the person I talked to, was unsure if their group would return. They didn't want to put any of their volunteers in a position where they had to trade integritity for an opportunity to possibly make money for their group. So in a bid to make money for their org, if they don't continue, they will have lost a bunch of money instead.

Your milage may vary. Me, I'm going to pass on this opportunity. In my opinion if what I was told was even half true it is too high a risk for me.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Carousel Cinema hosted the Greensboro screenings of Horror Fest this year and of the 10 films the festival showed, nine were available in Greensboro, and I saw five of them.
I watched in no particular order The Abandoned, Penny Dreadful, Wicked Little Things, The Hamiltons, and The Gravedancers.

Of these, my favorites were Penny Dreadful, Wicked Little Things, and The Hamiltons. Penny Dreadful and Wicked Little Things were worthy of major release and full priced tickets. The Hamiltons, suffered on the big screen because it was shot in DV (and you could tell). This movie is DEFINATELY worth renting.

The other stuff, eh, not so much.

I am thrilled that the theatre picked up this festival so folks in Greensboro could see movies they might not normally see on the big screen. I was doubly thrilled to note that many showings were sold out. It had been my plan to catch one of the ones on Friday night, but it was sold out before I got there. I went home, bought my five tickets online and lived happily ever weekend.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:10 PM | Permalink

Fencing friend Mario created the intro to October 27th's The Show with Zefrank. I think even Ze was impressed with the quality of Mario's work. Plus, The Show was awsome.


the show with zefrank

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:58 PM | Permalink

First things first, many thanks to Sara for making this connection in the shower this morning. Bathing seems to bring the best out of intellects. I hope no one ever outlaws it!

War is good for the economy! I used to hear that all the time in both history and economics classes. While it is a pretty crass statement, it is also true. Back in the day, wars meant that average people had plenty of good jobs making uniforms, ammunition, equipment, weapons, and more. Nowhere was this more clear than in the first and second world wars. Pretty much an entire middle class made their livings on the war effort.

But times they are a changing. Modern warefare uses fewer troops, thus less equipment. Modern manufacturing technologies means that fewer workers are needed to make the same amount of product. So the middle class sees little econimic gain. The money is still there of course or we wouldn't still find ourselves in these foreign wars. It is just being made by the few elite people who own the companies who make the wartime goods and services.

Its just coincidence that it takes money to run for public office, so only people with money get elected and they make their money on oil, weapons, and services used in the war effort. Right?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:55 AM | Permalink

October 22 through 28 is International Disadvantaged People's Week. Please send an encouraging message to a retarded friend, just as I have done. I don't care if you drive badly, interfere with your strangers' lives, vote republican, or occasionall crap yourself. You hang in there sunshine, you're freakin' special!

Was that too wrong? I never know.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just read a story filled with moral outrage. That's not unusual as I am a regular reader of Fark. For some reason however this one left me of two minds.

The story is this. Ashley Paige a designer of knitted bikini's who is apparently famous in fashion circles puts on a show and in it, one of models is a 10 year old girl. There is a picture in the article. When I saw the picture I wondered what all the fuss was about. Its a ten year old girl in a bikini.

The article quotes a conservative spokesperson who says that children in swimwear is a "promiscuous image". I just didn't get that. I suppose it is in the eye of the beholder. A perv might see that and see it as a promiscuous image, the rest of us only see a child in swimwear. If that's the case, it doesn't matter where the child is, catwalk or boardwalk. Personally, I imagine that if the fear is that perv's are about, she would be a lot safer on the catwalk guarded by photographers, parents and security, than she would be walking on a boardwalk.

I can open any sales paper in the spring and know what swimwear the normal parents are putting their kids in. I wonder what the perv's and the conservatives put their kids in? Is it odd that a perv and a conservative looks at a picture of a ten year old girl and swimwear and thinks exactly the same thing? The only difference is the conservative feels guilt and blames others.

So is guilt the only thing separating the perv's from the conservatives?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Namely explain the entire voting process in a way that everyone could understand and leave them wanting to participate. In case I haven't said it before, this guy really impresses me.

the show with zefrank

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:19 AM | Permalink

Bloggers all over Greensboro will keep a low profile on Wednesday as the Commander and thief himself is comming for a visit. I guess he's getting tired of that "idiot monkey" joke.

Maybe I'll take a sick day and keep out of the county. The last thing I want to see is a couple of suits coming to take me to one of those spiffy new homeland security resorts. Of course, if they come for me, they'll come for at least half of the Greensboro blogging crowd. I might disappear, but at least I'd be in good company.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I read this article this morning about an Ohio girl who was suspended because she was caught with a comb in school. This tap danced on my "outrage" button and so I am now on a mission. I will find this secret list of banned items and expose the dangers of combs and...stuff. I donno.

The Guilford County Schools Student Handbook a sprawling 94 page tome of enlightenment has this to say:

Rule 22 - Possession of a Dangerous Weaponor Other Instrument
Students shall not possess or conceal or transport any weapon or other instrument
that could cause or that is intended to cause bodily injury or other harm to another
or misuse otherwise acceptable objects in a manner intended to cause harm to
others at any time while a student is at school in any school building and on any
school premises, attending school-sponsored activities, on or about any schoolowned
or operated vehicle, off school property at any school-sponsored or school
approved activity or function or during any period of time when students are subject
to the authority of school personnel, and at any time when the student's behavior
has a direct and immediate effect on maintaining order and discipline and protecting
safety and welfare of students and staff. N.C.G.S. 115C-391(d1) mandates a 365-
day suspension for students in possession of dynamite cartridges, bombs, grenades,
mines, or powerful explosives. Fireworks are excluded from these provisions.
Consequences
• Elementary - Up to 10 days OSS. Confiscate weapon. Law enforcement will be
called. Repeated offenses may result in long-term suspension.
• Middle School - Long-term suspension up to 365 days. Confiscate weapon. Law
enforcement will be called.
• High School - Long-term suspension up to 365 days. Confiscate weapon. Law
enforcement will be called. Principals of high schools on a block schedule must
consult their School Support Officers prior to suspending a student out of school for
more than five (5) days.

Well, that doesn't seem so bad. It implies a comb is only a weapon when used as a weapon. I approve. Wait a minute, 94 pages and I couldn't even find a dress code? Hmmm...

Ok, the dress code for the county was strait forward enough. If you smell, or your cloths are disruptive, you are in trouble. The definition of "Disruptive" is left to the individual school. Aycock doesn't allow anyone to wear red for instance.
Wow, secret societies are banned in guilford county schools. Take that you Masons! And you, vile members of the Reel Big Fish fanclub. Ban the tube top!

Door to door selling is allowed up to twice a year and only by High School students. So you middle schoolers selling wrapping paper and stuff for your school are breaking the law.

You know, its odd. I really expected a list like the TSA post for things not allowed on airplanes.

It looks like in leu of a list, what is being said is "We get to decide on a case by case basis, what your child may or may not have subject to change at any time." So relax parents, your child will be suspended for the oddest things at any time. You can use common sense to help keep it to a minimum but basically if your child looks crosseyed, they will be suspended for having a book, and when they return to school without books, they will be suspended for not having their books.

My advice, save some vacation days and when the man goes all arbitrary on your kids backside, you can smile and enjoy a day at the zoo.

"OMG you got suspended for a ruler? What are you going to do now?"
"Me, I'm going to Disney land."

Meanwhile I will be quietly designing a training program so my children will be able to kill with a book, pencil, crayon, or white long sleeved polo shirt with between 2 and four buttons by the time they leave pre-K. You can never be too careful these days. People are killing Amish kids, no child is safe anymore.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

While yes, obviously I would think a single red bra would be more dangerous than 99 red balloons. In the song, 99 red balloons lead the the end of civilization. Still, it was only a song.

However, one red bra can do some serious REAL LIFE damage too according to the Toledo Blade.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 6:44 PM | Permalink

People are hardwired to find patterns where there may not be. Therefore, please strap on your tin-foil hat, and walk with me a moment.
The International News, an English language Arabic website reports that a high level Talaban leader is asking: "Muslims living in the US to leave the country as soon as possible “because God’s punishment would fall on America in the month of Ramazan.”

Meanwhile in North Korea, They celebrate the successful test of the newest weapon in their diplomatic arsonal, with this op/ed piece from the Asian Times Online.

Meanwhile on the homefront, "Experts warn of an accidental atomic war Nuclear missile modified for conventional attack on Iran could set off alarm in Russia"

And in completely unrelated news, the RINF Alternative News has compiled a partial list of US concentration camps to be used on patriotic Americans when the constitution is suspended. Complete with a list of all the already in the books laws they will use to do it.

That was fun! Don't forget to remove your tin foil hats, and enjoy your day!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Of course, that title is so self evident that even I am going to stop for a moment of "DUH!"

There, I feel better. The Westboro Church of Idiot Children blackmailed the state of Pennsulvania into a deal whereby they leave the Amish alone in exchange for an hour of time to polute the airwaves. Thought they got their deal they still say that the Amish got what was comming to them. The logic seems to be, If something bad happens to you, then you diserved it and it is their god's will.

OK. So if I stub my toe on the corner of the bed and shout something like "gosh darn it", their reply would be, "he already did sinner."

Fair enough. So by that logic all someone has to do is strap on a TNT vest and go to Westboro Baptist some Sunday with the intent of meeting god, and bringing friends. If this happens then the congregation all had it comming to them, so its fine.

I guess then the bomber would be a Hero in their eyes (those that still had eyes of course, we can assume the rest would be taking an eternal bath of fire).

By that logic, does that imply that murders on death row are all marters of Westboro Baptist? I wonder if Charles Manson then is a candidate for Westboro Baptist Sainthood?

While all of this is just my humble opinion based on the information I've gathered and processed in the past ten minutes or so, It sounds to me like that would make them a nutjob cult or something. I mean, why would any sane person or group pick on the Amish anyway?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

While on the coast with Dad I had access to cable TV. One of the shows on was about really bad jobs. Sure, the work was often dirty, smelly, and dangerous, but I know a job worse.

While dad was in the hospital he of course ate hospital food. Even recovering from a heart attack, dad had a good appitite, but at each meal he could only eat about half of what he was given. At first I thought it was because he was sick, but as time passed I realized it was because the food wasn't that good tasting. No salt, no seasoning of any kind, and most of it came from a can. At first he tried to use the included packet of Ms. Dash to fix the worst tasting thing on the plate, but he eventually gave up. Some foods were so bad that the smell of them turned him off the rest of his meal. He would cover them with the lid to his plate and try his best to eat the rest. The worst offenders were the leafy green veggies. Ironically, leafy greens are among his favorite foods. Once he gave up on Ms. Dash, mom started collecting the packets to use at home.

The first morning home, mom made grits and had not used any salt on them, instead putting her collected packets of Ms. Dash on the table. I stirred my eggs into mine and needed no seasoning. Dad ate his grits with black pepper. Mom went for the Ms. Dash. From the look on her face, both the initial look as the food hit her tongue, and the look of pitty she sent in dad's direction, I could assume a whole lot about Ms. Dash. Ms. Dash wears a spiked black leather apron and her black chef's hat zips over her mouth and nose. She clearly whips her cream with a riding crop, and beats her eggs with wild abandon.

And that's when it hit me. There is a job out there worse than cleaning septic tanks, worse than diving for golf balls, worse than being a product testor for mosquito repellant. This job deserves a real american hero song dedicated to them (along with a tasteless Budlight beer).

Hospital Chef is clearly the worse job EVER. Think about it. You have to come work every day and make a meal that will be eaten almost entirely by a population who are at best, "unwell". You have to make this meal for the lowest common denominator. The person with high cholesterol, diabetes, an intestinal infection, heart attack, and on medications that react to food. They are allergic to certain foods and religion dictates that other foods can't be eaten. To add insult to injury, for a portion of your population this is their last meal...EVER.

I bet the suicide rate among the hospital chef population is up there with that of white male physicians. Come to think of it I wonder if hospital food is causing the spike in suicides among white male physicians. Ms. Dash must get really turned on knowing that her slaves are sharing their soul sucking misery with others.

So here's to you Hospital Chef, may the end of your misery come with flavor and fresh ingredients.

On the other hand, perhaps hospital chef is a field rife with sadist, in which case this would be dream job. Think on that the next time you or a love one get "served" while on the inside. But bring a picnic basket.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:25 PM | Permalink

Herritage not hate, that is why I bother. Now listen ya'll, I ain't gonna but say this but once, so pay some attention here:

I don't pretend to understand dem dar team sports. But I respect dem recreational / church teams for bringing folks together to blow off some steam and have a good time in the fresh air. This ain't the big leagues though ya'll. Old, young, fit, and unfit, are all thrown in together to have a good time and not a thing more. Iffin ya'll only care about winning, you might be in the wrong place. Iffin, ya'll think its a'right to shove a lady around, you're dead wrong, but for the sake of argument lets just say it wuz. You'd better make good and damn sure the lady you're pushing around ain't playing professional women's football. Boy, you will get your ass stomped. Now one of ya'll learned this the hard way one county over, over the weekend. I reckon you deserve what ye got considering it ain't never proper to hit a lady, but for the sake of the rest of ya, I figured I'd better jest let the rest of ya'll know. Don't be that boy who got his ass whupped by a woman. Dat's a shame you jest ain't gonna get over. You want to be dat boy at the family reunion won't nobody share a beer wid on account of you not being a man anymore? I think not.

Let that there be a lesson fer ya.

(English)

Continue reading "Attention Rednecks! (Southern, subtitled in English)" »

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:15 PM | Permalink

The wandering prophets have repopped. They are great experience if you are of lower levels, but be careful, they will track you. That's probably only funny if you've every played any sort of fantasy game (LARP, roll playing, MUD, console, or PC). The rest of you are free to scratch your heads in confusion, or shake your heads in mild bemusement. The fact remains that the streets of my workplace are coated in an even layer of men in suits trying to give everyone small green religious books.

Don't get me wrong, I am a great supporter of religious freedom, the rub is when their freedom is oppressing someone else (or at the very least making them uncomfortable). This is a fine time of the year if you worship from the small green book, but what if you are worshiping from the large black book, or one of various scrolls, or anything else for that matter. Is that the day the others stay in their rooms and order takeout?

I believe I wasn't the only one with that train of thought. In past years you couldn't really get anywhere without comming across them. One year I was persued by one. I had to duck into a building to escape.

This year, it wasn't bad. I actually got from the parking lot to my office without having to cross one of their paths. That is all I really ask. I just want to get from the parking lot to the safety of my green chair without being bedeviled by suits with green books. So this year was perfect. Keep up the good work gentlemen, and may whoever you're worshipping smile upon you in the manner that they do.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:27 AM | Permalink

Apparently there have been some folks in this country who seem to have gotten the United States of America confused with Colombia South America. It is an honest mistake, both of them are in America, one in the north and one in the south. The difference is that South America is generally warmer, the beaches are generally more tropical, and the obsession with looks is WAY greater than ours.

We have TV shows featuring women with plastic enhancements. They have TV shows ABOUT women getting plastic enhancements. The Simple Life was a tragic reality show here. There it would be a tragedy about a young woman and her friend who want love and frienship inspite of their lack of "aftermarket options", and their eating disorders.

They say that if you are ever feeling bad about yourself, you only need to open your eyes and see that there are people way worse off than you. Thanks to this piece of news I can now rest comfortably knowing that the US is still pretty darned good, and the folks in Colombia need to embrace mother nature's gift of wonderous variety.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

the show with zefrank

I have also learned that having a job at a university is sorta like a job in the real world. I'm not complaining, we get free food twice a year and the view is to die for.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:38 AM | Permalink

Hungry Like a Wolf Baby!

Rock stars are more primitive than we previously believed.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:00 PM | Permalink

I am in a position where every day I can witness the new fads and fashions, and happily rip them apart with my lunch friends. Don't get me wrong, I see lots of good use of clothing, but I also see my fair share of "WTF were they thinking??"

For instance just today I saw a girl in nice clean well fiting jeans, a tasteful pink top and a cute little white sweater. It would have been very flattering (and parent approved) except for one tiny little flaw. Her shoulder length hair had not been brushed this week yet. So instead of thinking about how nice she looked I was thinking instead, "BRUSH YOUR HAIR! You are not the star of Cold Case. She doesn't get away with it anyway." (In fact in recent seasons her hair has even been styled)

One of my lunch companions brought up that if you are going to wear a shirt that shows a little belly, your pants can't be so tight that it forms a roll of flesh at the waist line. Even if you need to eat a twinkie, you're going to look like you're the girl who ate Manhattan. Cam's rule of fashion is simple and elegant, you can wear a tight shirt or tight pants, you may choose only one. Sound advice.

Worn looking denim is all the rage now. I realize that most Americans of this age group are far too lazy to actually wear holes into their pants, so they buy the pants pre-worn out. Whatever, it's your dollar. I have a pet peeve connected to this however. When you wear pants with the holes in it I can at least imagine the possibility that you got your holes through honest wear and tear. When you wear the denim miniskirt with the holes in it, there is only one way you could have POSSBILY earned the wear and tear honestly, and that is by having sex in a car and tearing the hole in the skirt with the gear shift. So when you're walking around in your miniskirt with the holes in the butt I'm not thinking that you are someone who isn't afraid of a little work, I'm thinking you're cheap and easy. Is that the effect you were looking for?

Camo is also not that unusual, you can usually see camo pants on a daily basis. Here's a tip. If you choose to wear a green shirt with your camo pants, be sure that color green exist in the pants. You can wear any color you want with your camo and it will be fine, but if you choose green and it is a shade not already in your pants, you FAIL. Its that simple.

I have been noticing something new this year, its a thin lace button up overshirt. Often they have some ruffels in the front. I like the concept, but I haven't actually seen a proper execution yet. Two tips. One: Silly boy, these are for girls. Two: Wear it over a solid shirt not over a t-shirt with text printed on it.

Today for some reason I have seen maybe as many as six shirts that are plain except for a large number on the chest. Not a jersey, not even sporty really. It is just a shirt with a number. I have no problem with it personally, but for me thanks to this it has meaning WAY beyond what you're probably thinking. It makes me smile. :)

Dredlocks. Face it, white people will never be really good at this hair style. You can make it work in the back, but up top you look fuzzy. There is nothing you can do about this. Its the other mullet. Fuzzy on the top, Rasta in the rear.

A message to skinny girls who wear tank tops as their only shirt (as opposed to an undershirt). If we can see your ribs, eat twinkies until the condition improves. You don't look healthy even if you are. You may be perfectly healthy, just unable to gain weight, my tubby butt doesn't hold it against you (I'd probably injure you if I did anyway). I just don't think you want others thinking you have some kind of eating disorder.

Early in the spring the half-jacket started making an appearance among the ladies. This was a jacket, it could even be denim, long sleeved but in length it stopped just below the bust. I like it because it allows the wearer to do something different with the layering effect. Instead of the layers only showing at the neckline, the layer can now show lower. As summer came the material went from warm to mesh so now not only do you get that nice layering effect, you also add texture. It is shaping up that this half-jacket top is going to be this years Jessica Alba's Dark Angel inspired one shoulder top. However, there is something one should know when buying one of these. It fits BELOW the bust. It doesn't tie across it, it doesn't tie above it. If you buy the right size and wear it correctly, it will be a hit. If you don't, you'll look like a tard. We'll smile, we will wish you well, but we'll always be afraid that at any moment you're going to pick and lose a fight with an inanimate object. Don't do that.

Look for other tips and tricks in the next installment of BIG WOODY'S FASHION PARADE.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

As you may recall, I am a big fan of the Roomba. Roomba filled a hole in our married but still somehow bachlor lifestyle. Roomba makes us pick up our stuff, then it vaccuums our floors. Roomba is family. But there was still a hole in our lives. Sara would occasionally use a swiffer wet to try to get the kitchen floor clean. By occasionally, I mean time measured in full moons. I'm not knocking her, I've never touched the swiffer at all except to move it out of my way. The same can be said for the vaccuum cleaner in the days before Roomba. Yesterday thanks to woot.com, our Scooba arrived in the mail. What roomba does for dust, dirt, cat hair, and other particles, Scooba does for our kitchen floor with the power of mopping!

So how does it work? It brought tears to my eyes. While Roomba made our lives such that we didn't have to worry about tracking mud outside when we got out of the shower, Scooba makes it possible to reintroduce the 5 second rule to foods dropped in the kitchen. Those cheese puffs won't get away that easily anymore! Thank you Scooba!

Scooba uses a particular "Scooba Fluid" made by Clorox, it contains no bleach and is designed especially for this amazing plastic pal. It takes only a small ammount of scooba fluid and Target sells the Scooba and its fluid should you run out today to get one. The device itself is ever so slightly taller than roomba, and when you see it in action most of what you are looking at is its tanks. One for clean water, one for dirty water.

The Scooba will check the room out, mop, squeegie, and dry itself off before shutting down. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology the Scooba is even smarter than the Roomba and is even more user friendly to use. The Roomba will tell you what's wrong with a series of beeps, the Scooba will tell you with text and friendly lights.

Scooba will clean our kitchen and hall in about 45 minutes. All we have to do is empty the tank, clean the easy to clean parts, drop the battery in the charger and wait for the floor to dry before we serve food on it. I LOVE SCOOBA.

But don't take my word for it. Read the Woot! blog on it or better yet, listen to the podcast. "I'm in your kitchen and I'm cleanin yer floorz"

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wow, just wow. For the third year running I have been fortunate enough to be on the "bridesmaid" team, awsome buzz, awsome product, excellent award collection, never quite enough to take the "Best Of Greensboro". I think this year my team took more awards than we have any other year with seven. I am very proud to have been a part of that. Especially since the "Best of Greensboro" film only took two awards. The other teams comming closest to matching our "medal count" did so with four each.

Now, as something of a disclaimer. The judges this year did a winner in each category as well as a runner up. Different people have different opinions of the "runner up" award. My opinion is that "runner up" equals second place. Second doesn't suck. As I have never been first in anything, second is as good as a win as far as I care. However, for the sake of those who see "runner up" as "first loser" I will break it down your way. Team Underexposed took first three times and "first loser" four times. The "Best Of Greensboro" won one and was tied for "first loser" with one. The two teams that were second in medal count one team had no first and 4 seconds. The other team took first 4 times.

Each year three different judges are chosen and they make their own rules for how they award. This is a good thing in my opinion as it means that you can't "play to the judges". If you knew exactly how the judges were going to judge you would probably end up spending all of your time trying to get all of the technical marks and this contest would degrade into figure skating. The downside of this is that each year the teams walk away not knowing how they were judged. They have no feedback on how to get better. So after the applause dies, there are always little groups of folks trying to figure out what happened and why. Especially when their favorites are snubbed.

In previous years the team that brought home the most "medals" took best overall. The judging then became clear even if you didn't agree with it. This year was odd because the team that took it all only one a "runner up" in one category (and that was judged by the fans not the Judges). I have a theory on this that might shed some light on the situation. Remember Judges perrogitive, they make the rules their way just as it should be. This year I believe that the judges wanted more teams to receive awards. They did after all give "runner up" awards in all of their categories. If I'm right, and I am just guessing here. The judges went through and judged each film. the team with the most awards took "Best of Greensboro". The judges then went through and removed them from all of the other categories, and everyone got bumped up by one. "Runner up" would become "winner" and the unnamed third got to get an award as "runner up". But this is just my theory of how it was done. I have heard some other theories that are just as plausable.

One of the outstanding members of our team Todd Williard went through and assigned a point value each "win" got two points and each "runner up" getting one point. By his system our team scored 10 points for the win. It does not take into account that the "Best of Greensboro" winner only scored one point by that system. However, if you use his scoring system with my "take the winner out and push everyone else up" theory I think it stands.

All of this of course brings up another ethical delima. Do teams do this to do it because it is fun, or do they do it to win. The first year when we did "Purely Platinum" we did it solely to have a great time. And we did. It was by far one of the most fun shoots I have ever been on. The past two years with Underexposed the emphasis has been on turning out a high quality film, excelling in every possible area, and have fun too. The third reason to do it is to make a film that the audience absolutely loves and to heck with winning anything but the audience award. For those folks a jury of their peers picking them is far superior to the technical awards given by the three judges. All in all, there is no right way to play so long as you come away happy.

I for one am pretty gosh darned happy. Maybe even happy enough to play again next year....

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Over the years our representitive democratic government has been frought with scandle, politicians bought, votes bought and sold, votes stolen, elections stolen, presidents that dare not to hold to a higher ideal. Thanks to the power of the internet, these events are being uncovered more and more because more people with equal voice (like bloggers) are watching. I have heard folks say that the corruption in our government was some new thing brought on by a lack of "Moral Values". Nobody can agree on what those values are by the way. "Moral Values" seems to be defiinded as "How I want you to behave."

I remember back in High School history class where the winners were always right because they wrote the history. In this class there was never any corruption worth mentioning because the winners always stomped it out. In this class we were taught that in ancient Greece all citizens had one vote and they all participated in government. It worked because the population wasn't all that great, they all lived in a city state, and women, slaves and foreigners were not citizens. (Slaves and foreigners could buy freedom and citizenship however.) This system stopped working when there were too many citizens too far apart geographically to really effectively govern themselves. Throw in a couple of invasions, and the sytem eventually evolved into something like we are using today.

I contend that the very technologies we use to keep a fire lit under those people who claim to represent us could be used to create a system whereby we could bring back the true democracy. There are more than enough smart people in internet land to make that happen. The power of many over the power of few and all.

Off the cuff we would need a system where by each eligable American voter can authenticate into a system and be allowed to cast a vote on issues that concern them. True majority rule. We can even use some of that freedom were giving up anyway to make it where we have to use a fingerprint or retina scan to prove who we were and each of us would have a complete record of ever vote we cast. Why not, we're all spewing our opinions online everyday and more and more people are comming to realize that nothing is truly anonomious.

In the bright side of my little dream, beurocracy would shrink. No more electing a guy to represent you only to have him get bought out by some corporation through a well paid lobbiest firm. Now those corporations have to pay lobbiest to buy YOU out.

True, Exxon would surely monitor the voting practices of its employees and frown upon those who "vote against the best interest of the share holders" but good news folks, there are other corporations who probably like the way you think and you could work for them and safely vote your consious.

Could it be fudged DiBold style? I am sure it could, but with each person getting to see their vote in action and so many of us looking for bugs, it would quickly evolve into a ironclad bug free system.

Would it require each eligable voter to keep abreast of current events. Yes. (That's a good thing.)
Would some people still not vote? Yes. Either they don't know the issue well enough to make a educated vote, or they choose not to participate. How is that different from today? I mean other than the fact that there could be an obstain button for folks to use when they didn't know how to vote.

Is it a perfect plan? No, I only starting writing this entry a half hour ago, but you have to ask yourself, would it be any worse than what we have now? And you lobbiest can just obstain from that question, I wasn't talking to you.

There is a phenomonom called various things like "collective wisdom", "crowd intelligence" and "Wisdom of Crowds". It works like this. Fill a jar with marbles and ask everyone you know to guess how many marbles are in the jar. Write down all their answers. You will find that the answers range widely and infact no one may guess it correctly. Now average all the guesses. Whatever that answer is is proabably frightenly close to the actual answer. This method is so accurate that it is pretty standard practice in Project Management to use it in determinining timelines for work you've never done before. It is powerful, and it could be leveraged in a true democracy.

Think it over. Shoot all the holes in it you want. Holes can be filled.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Yes, the main stream media and the blogsphere had me convinced that the stupidest people in the whole great big wide world were liberals and conservatives, I now know I was mistaken. Liberals and Conservatives are now officially the second stupidest groups of people in the entire world. The new Champions of Lunacy aren't even American. This sacred honor has been bistowed upon the british politicians who came up with the "Anti-Social Behavior Laws" and those morons who enforce those laws. Just like with our own idiots who really and honestly believe they are doing the right thing, the summery of the law doesn't seem too terribly stupid. It is how the law is applied that brings the term "numnutz" to its new and lofty position. Wait, they are from the UK, so I believe the term is acutally numnutze, note the "e" at the end.

I'll bet you are wondering what started this entire tirade? Two stories almost in the same day put me on this rant, in the first one police are busting little girls for playing hopscotch. Apparently the chalk on the sidewalk constitutes an anti-social behavior under the law. I can only imagine how that must have played out. Little girls hopping up and own the sidewalk doing their little sing song thing while they hop and a bobby saunters up.
"Whot's this then?"
"We're playing hopscotch."
"A likely story. A likely story indeed. You know what I see here? Gang signs. That's right, you little tarts are marking your territory. No doubt every one of you have a record down at the yard as young ladies of the night. You're a clever bunch, you probably turn your tricks, and still make it back before your bedtimes. Well teddy isn't going to be there where your're sleeping tonight."

I actually let this one go. I read it, rolled my eyes, mumbled something offensive under my breath and kept skimming the news. Then I see an article about three twelve year olds who were arrested, finger printed, photographed, DNA sampled, and tossed in a cell. Their heinous crime? Climbing a tree. Specifically suspician of damaging a tree by climbing. I suppose when this goes to court they will also tack on attempting to build a treehouse without the proper permits and as there were two girls and a boy a possible felonious cohabitation charge of some kind.

Once when I was in high school we did a children's show around christmas. The show was very successful and we felt we had pulled off quite a performance. After the last show we gathered back stage and ended up spontaniously breaking out into song. The total cast and crew were about 20 if memory serves and every one of us were joyously singing our collective hearts out. Meanwhile....out in the main auditorium a teacher's aid from one of the local elementary schools heard the faint sounds of joy and teamwork comming from somewhere back stage. Two hours later we're all sitting in a classroom being screamed at by a frothing at the mouth principal (named Gordon Patrick btw). We were threateded with every punishment up to and including expulsion. We were not allowed to speak. We were not allowed to raise our hands. We were not allowed to talk to anyone. We were not allowed to go to the press. Our crime? Apparently after the show we went back stage and worshipped. I'm not kidding. That was the charge. Gordon Patrick really helped to shape me into the mildly paranoid, angry, and disrespectful to authority person I am to this very day. Thank you very freakin' much *sshole. You just reminded me to add your name to the list. Since I am going in Chronological order your name goes near the top of the list just under Ms. Hesser.

On the other hand, without his asinine behavior shaping my fertile little mind I might not see a problem with kids being harassed by the british po-po for hop scotch or climbing a tree. My lord! Worse yet I might have been a conservative who wouldn't have allowed the tree to grow in the first place or a liberal who would have granted the tree welfair and voting rights. The more I think about this the ANGRIER I GET.

Swell.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:46 AM | Permalink

The awards night for the 2006 Greensboro 48 Hour Film Project is comming Sunday at M’Coul’s Pub, 110 W. McGee st. and The Green Burro Sports Bar, 106 W. McGee st. and I though it might be fun to show you some of the submissions curtesy of YouTube. To be eligable, you must have used bubblewrap as a prop, B. Jones television personality as a character and the line "Its like my mother always said", it must be no longer than six minutes with one extra minute for credits. It must have been turned in by 7pm on the Sunday night. And there was a paperwork component with location and people waivers that had to be included with the movie. Those films above were missing one or more of those elements and thus can be posted right away on YouTube as they are ineligable for judging. After the judging, on Sunday night other films may pop up at this link if they can compress it down to 100MB or less and it didn't win. The winning project goes on to the finals and no one will want to risk their eligability in that.

Even though these films were not eligable or did not win don't think for a minute they are poor examples. Quality will vary, but this stuff isn't bad, especially when you remember that they were made in 48 hours from elements to concept, to script, to finished product. In a nutshell, the worst thing here is a triumph given the short time span allowed and the sheer number of things that could possibly go wrong.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you are the type to get a shiver up your spine when coincidences happen like I am, you'll love this story.

In a nutshell:
A backhoe operator digs up a book burried in a bog since between 800 and 1000AD.
He doesn't destroy it accidentally with the backhoe during the discovery.
He happens to realize that something like that doesn't need to dry out so he covers it in peet while waiting for the authorities to arrive.
It is in perfect condition.
It is a religious book 20 pages in length.
It is open to Psalm 83.
Psalm 83 is essentially god listening to complaints about nations trying to wipe out Isreal.
Hezbollah is more or less currently trying to wipe out Isreal. (Ok, maybe more accurately Isreal is defending themselves by attempting to wipe out Hezbollah, just go with it!)

Cool coincidence huh? I got chills, but then again I love this sort of thing.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I recently read that a soldier who died for his country has been denied freedom of religion by the military. Apparently "Freedom of Religion" means You may be Christian, Jew, or Muslim. You are free to choose from one of those three. In military graveyards, the symbol of your religion is placed on your tombstone, Crosses for the Christians, Stars for the Jews, Halfmoons for the Muslims. Suddenly Lucky Charms cereal is starting to sound all spiritual to me.
The problem is, this soldier is Wiccan, and wiccan's have no religious freedom with reguard to being burried in military graveyards. I had always wondered why in military graveyards there were never epitaths. Now I know, because his would surely say, "I gave my life for my country and all I got was this lously blank stone". Nice.

This lead me to the train of thought of what I would want put on my tombstone as an epitath. I see it this way, graveyards are generally sad places. The dead have one last opportunity to speak to the living through their epitaths. I figure since my goal each day in life is to make someone smile, that ought to be my goal in eternity as well. Plus, I am sure you have noticed that some folks write epitaths for their loved ones. "Loving father" clearly the man in the grave didn't write that. He might agree that he was, but I am sure that isn't all he wants to be remembered for.

So here's a list of things that I wouldn't mind seeing on my tombstone.
"Yeah, its dark in here, but at least it is restful."
"I'm not available right now, at the tone, please leave a message"
"Send rum"
"Party tonight three graves over"
"Please have sex on my grave, I like to watch"
"Hello, I am listening"
"Nice shoes!"
"We love it when the living come in skirts and dresses"
"I see dead people"
"The doctor said I would be on my feet in no time"

I am sure there are more, I will think of later.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:48 AM | Permalink

Either the world needs to switch to decaf, or its a global Midol moment. Either way, the madness really needs to stop. I mean both the "crazy" madness as well as the "angry" madness. Lets do a recap:

Isreal is going ape all over Lebanon
India blames their mortal enemy and neighbor in both nukes and borders Pakastan for the train bombings.
Japan wants a piece of North Korea
Condi and her Russian counterpart have some sort of sexual tension thing happening. (Click to listen, they're like teenagers!)
I don't even have to post a link about the US's World War Against "Terrorism". It seems terrorism is the new communism, now that we have won the cold war against the communist superpower we decide to take on the entire world anywhere we can find a "terrorist". Shhhhhhh...I'm wunting tewwowist!"

There is more but all of it seems to come down to four points.
-The US Wants oil
-Israelis want Independance (and a piece of the middle east)
-North Korea's spewing hot molten crazy was far and as wide as they can.
-Militant Muslims want to take over the world. (The normal Muslims seem to be fine though.)

Four things and almost the entire globe is affected.

Is there anywhere in the world that isn't dealing with one or more of the above. If so, I want to consider retiring there. If there isn't, lets get on with the space exploration! Space is the next best thing to peace

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:40 AM | Permalink

Friends and neighbors, that is good advice. It doesn't matter if you are trying to be famous, or just trying out the southern battlecry "Hey ya'll watch this!".

Speaking of watch this....

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:19 AM | Permalink

Ok, maybe not specifically your pleasure. Everyone likes something different and that's true if you are the user, admirerer, or owner. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I'm talking about America's average bra size. You think I kid? Time Magazine says so, and that's good enough for me. They're not always accurate, but they are within acceptible tollerance. Plus my own eyes give me ancidotal evidence. Basically America went from a 34B to a 36C.

It should be noted that we're talking about bra sizes and not what fills them. That's another entry I haven't worked up the courage to hit publish on yet. By the way, any other bloggers out there write stuff they just can't click "publish" on? There are probably several reasons working in concert for this sudden "growth". I am sure part of it is the fast food lifestyle, we're all packing on the pounds and the ladies have a garmet designed to support some of them. Also, it's hard to get good advice about something that is so often considered an "unmentionable". So maybe because of Oprah, maybe because of the internet, whatever reason, women are becomming more willing to talk about their boob slings using scientific method to come up with a proper good fit.

Me, I'm not there yet. Yes, there have been times I have really wanted to walk up to the stranger on the street and politely mention that her bra doesn't fit so she has the quad boob thing happening. Rarely, but occasionally I witness empty bra syndrom where due to its not being filled one cup colapses. Talk about sunken chest! But I will never approach these women. One, I am shy about that stuff, and two not even my own wife will tell me when my zipper's fallen down on the job. At least in your case you can see your own fit or lack there of in the mirror. Men's rooms aren't famous for the full length mirrors required for us to notice our zipper's down fall.

So to summerize, I am in support of the bra boom. Like batteries they are engineered in different specific sizes for different specific needs even though most of them deliver the same voltage. Lifted, separated, and equal to all others.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I always thought it would be idiot politicians, or stupid drivers that lead to me ending up on the six O'clock news in spite of my promise to my mother. I have to add one to the list. Microsofuckint Project is now on my list. I'm not the type of guy who studies the bible or goes to church every Sunday to have someone else's interpretation of the bible force fed to me, but I can take it on faith that god didn't grant man the ability to create software for the purpose of pissing man off. (Although some would argue that there is ample evidence for this.)

This is a test. I have to remind myself that this is a test. It is a test of my patience and forgiveness. I must not break things, I must not throw things, I must not go to any meetings this morning, I must not throw heavy things out of my office window. However, it is comforting to know that thanks to Barry at Leons on Tate Street yesterday my hair looks OUTSTANDING! So, if I fail this test, I can smile knowing that I will have great hair on TV later this evening. Actually, I'm looking pretty fabulous today so if I do intend to break my promise to my mother, today would be the best day to do it.

More news at 6pm on your local station...

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The List:
1. Owners = None
2. Managers = None
3. Publicist = None
4. Coaches = 2
5. Name = None
6. Team = 14
7. Game = Orlando Florida
8. Coaches who went to game = 1
9. Players who went to game = 14
10. Players well enough to play at game time = 12
11. Equipment = Borrowed
12. Uniforms = Borrowed
13. Departure time = 11pm Friday Night
14. Drive time = 10 hours
15. Kick off time = 7pm Saturday
16. Rented 15 passenger Van due back in GSO = 6pm Sunday
17. Previous games played = None
18. Previous practice scrimages played = None
19. Wins = None
20. Value of team who plays despites all of the overwelming odds against them = Absolutely Priceless

After all of that above and now the mad rush back to GSO to drop off the rented 15 passenger van the spirits of the team are high. If they can play a game with so much against them just imagine how they will be with a year of practice and organizing behind them. A couple of fund raisers and maybe a newspaper article wouldn't hurt either. It is my understanding that the league is allowing them to have homegames next year because they are going out understaffed, underfunded, and under equipped to the four corners of the IWFL this year. I do believe we are going to see some football next season!!!!

Maybe its my theatre background but all I can think of are the greek plays where the wives stayed behind while the men went off to fight wars in strange countries. That reminds me, I had better stop blogging via modem, get the groceries bought and put away, and clean house. My hero is returning and I need to plan something special. Heck, I might even have to put on pants to mark the occasion of her safe return! Come to think of it perhaps a chiton would be more appropriate.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:59 AM | Permalink

People make decisions every day. Each decision, each choice, is based on an analysis of all possible outcomes and the decisions one makes usually have to do with what is safest. This isn't always true, but it is the minority that choose for other reasons. I myself have only made a few small decisions that require bravery. I chose to blog using my own name. I chose to remove the "costume" I refer to as "phycho repellent". I choose to refresh my gear, and begin competing again. Most of my very difficult decisions are all based "safe", and really they come down to the dumbest reasons you can imagine. I don't kill that idiot who just cut me off in traffic because I promised my mother I would never do anything that would get me on the six oclock news. Huh? Come to think of it, every decision I make revolves around that promise to my mom. Kind of silly when you put it like that, living every day in a state of denial like some sort of cloistered priest. But it is my decision and for whatever reason, I stick by my guns and live my life The Cowboy Way, or if you haven't seen that movie, I choose to live my life modeled after the teachings of Dr. Buckaroo Banzai.

But in so much as I can possible write about anything that isn't "about me", this blog isn't about me. It is about decision, risk and the people that make those decisions in the face of risk and failure. These people are the heros, and they come in all sizes. Running into a burning building to save a life is a heroic action. Facing the unknown against adversity to attempt a feat knowing that each step of the way is an uphill battle is heroic too. The top of this might be the person who fights for their lives against an overwelming enemy like cancer, where every day you fight is harder than the last and in the end you may still not win. That is a powerful and brave decision indeed. But let us not forget the smaller acts of bravery that should not be taken for granted. A child who learns to walk, or ride a bicycle. A senior citizen who embraces the internet. Fourteen women, abandonded together who pull themselves up by their bootstraps, beg and borrow, risk time, money, injury and possible failure to get into a van at 11pm drive through the night to Orlando Florida, sleep for a few restless hours to get up again, put on that begged and borrowed equipment to go out on the field and play football.

Lets forget a minute the fact that they were abandoned, lets forget the fact that they had to beg and borrow equipment enough to play, lets forget the fact that they had to pile into vans and drive themselves in the middle of the night to a strange city four states away. Take all of that adversity away and what do you have left? You have fourteen women who made the decision each and every one to play a sport that since its inception has been "men only". Forget golf, sure it has always been a male dominated sport, but golf is and never has been a collision sport between armored individuals played as a strategy game on a field of battle.

At this moment my dear wife is in Orlando Florida. She made the decision to risk convention by playing a male dominated sport. She made the decision to risk doing it even after their leader left. She made the decision to spend good money for shoes, pads, travel, hotel, and league membership to put on uniforms borrowed from here there and everywhere. She made the decision to face off against inerta and go from zero to athelete in a matter of a few short weeks. As I write this, I hope she is sleeping, probably in the floor of a hotel room. In eight hours she is going to be in a strange place, on a strange field, wearing strange cloths, surrounded by the screaming fans of the other team to play for the first time in her life the game of football. It isn't a burning building or a deadly disease, but the emotional and physical risk is great, and you know what? That makes her a hero to me. And I couldnt be more proud of her.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The other night the Vermin Robinson camp struck again with terrorist 1/2 messages on my answering machine. This racest tirade has got to end. (And I KNOW tirades) Now he's going after the Mexicans, how soon before he comes after me. As an person of Irish decent and a Caomhánach to boot I take offense in a big old historical way. If I called your house playing "Mammy", talking up grape soda and fried pork you'd chase me up a tree and set fire to it (and you would be well within your rights to do so).

Will the Vermin Robinson representitive whose autodialer uses the number 336-499-6570 Stop calling me and harassing me or I will take legal action! You have no right to terrorize me in this way! I'm not even in your stupid district. Come to thing of it, YOU aren't in your stupid district! You are as bad as the blog spammer who is leaving the message "You have a great site, but I'm so sorry you have a lot of spam :-(" on my blog. Also a slanderous lie by the way. My blog is spam free thanks to dilagence and hard work.

Of course, on the other hand we haven't heard much out of Ashton Kutcher lately. Perhaps he is shooting the movie Punk'd America, and the joke (Vermin Robinson) is on America. Why else would this cross between Boss Hogg, Hitler, and a professional wrestler be in my voicemail spewing hot molten crazy all over the place.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've been in a mood lately. A mood filled with chaotic rage. I have simmered quietly, taking deep breaths, counting to ten, throwing heavy objects from high places, the usual patches. While I haven't found the exact cause yet, I have discovered one of its symptoms.

You own a cell phone don't you? Its OK, I have two, work has a way of doing that to a person. When it rings, you answer it right? I am assuming of course that you have checked the caller ID and it isn't some person you don't want to talk to. For the sake of this rant, the phone rings, you check the caller ID and you don't mind talking to the person who is trying to reach you so you answer it.

With me so far, phone rings, you answer? Now modern cell phone companies are making a mint on selling special ringtones, often times songs that you like. The goal is that you will go out and pay anywhere from one to three dollars per ringtone. It is seen as a consumable, like a soda, a tube of toothpaste or a nice dinner. You may know someone who buys ringtones or you may buy ringtones yourself. Do you buy ringtones?

Do you?

There's no harm in buying something that makes you happy (unless the government has decreed that it is illegal to do so, in those cases your happiness doesn't matter). So you bought the ringtone? You thought about buying the ringtone? Why not, it is fun, and hip, don't you want people to hear your ringtone? Don't you want to listen to the latest song by Smeg Head on your phone? It seems like every other commercial and google ad is about buying ringtones. I am not sure but I suspect that the average phone can hold several ringtones and you can mix and match at your leasure.

I have one question though. If you are enjoying your ring tone, doesn't that mean that someone somewhere is trying to get in touch with you and you are not answering? It isn't that you are ignoring their frantic call, you are very well aware that your phone is ringing, but you are choosing not to answer it. The upside is that you get to hear the ringtone that you paid good money for. The downside is that the person calling you doesn't get to hear anything but your voicemail when they FINALLY get sent there. The really downside is that I and others like me have to listen to your phone blast the new hit from The Stinky Pinkies or Funkmaster Stank. Shut your damn ring hole and answer it! The phone is for ANSWERING. Thats why since Alexander Graham Bell asked his assistant to join him the phone rang like a bell. *Ring* "Hey, my phone's ringing, I'd better answer it!" Not anymore though nope. Now it goes like this, "I WANT TO F_CK THE B_TCHES, BUT THE B_ITCHES WON'T F_CK ME" on and on until the person on the other end gets sent to voicemail or gives up. Do you want your mother calling you with that ringtone?

My phone? My phone goes *RING*, and when it rings I answer it, or I look at which bill collector is calling and I hit the button that sends them to voice mail so my phone will stop ringing. That's how phones are supposed to be used. When I am in meetings, restaurants, or movie theatres my phone is either on vibrate or it is turned off entirely.

But you're going to go on downloading songs like "Lick My Baby Back Behind". You're going to listen to the whole damn thing, then you are going to check your voicemail. You're going to call them back and you are going to have to sit there and wait while their ringtone plays through. Then you are going to leave them voicemail and the whole process starts over again.

Well you know what,? One day I'm going to decide that enough is enough. One day I am going to record a simple ringing phone. One of the old ones. I am going to loop it and I'm going to burn it to a high quality CD. Do you remember the term "Ghetto Blaster"? A CD holds about an hour of music, or in this case an hour of constant ringing. I'll best I can last longer than you can. I've had more practice...

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

No Publicist.
No Fund Raiser.
No General Manager.
Owner walks away and salts the earth behind him so to speak.

UPDATE HERE5/25/06

The information I have gathered has led me to the opinion that a possible misunderstanding between the owner and the team or league about certain manditory fees that the owner required the teammates to pay may have played a part the series of events that have taken place in the last day. Specifically Wednesday the team met inviting the owner. At the meeting the team talked about ways they could help offset the cost of competition. Players were prepared to beg and borrow from other local football programs for pads, a player had a line on some plain numbered uniforms. Some team mates researched some of the league required fees and found some of them to be optional. They recommended that for this season, they hold off on things like optional suplimental insurance until the team could get on its feet. Each player agreed to buy their own helmet, mask, pads, and cleats. They asked that the owner help with travel and rooms. During this meeting apparently the owner may have found some possible offense.

Thursday at 10:24pm the owner sent this notice to the team:

Effective today, the Carolina Cardinals-Women's Football Team is no long
a member of the IWFL. It is my understanding that the league officials have
worked out an agreement with some of the former players of the Carolina
Cardinals, and at this point my organization does not have any
affiliation with the IWFL. So, after being informed of this new
development I have ceased all Carolina Cardinals-Women's Football
operations. The Carolina Cardinals name or any affiliation to this team can
not be use without the expressed written consent of the ownership of
the Carolina
Cardinals. The Carolina Cardinals is a registered business entity of
[Name withheld] with the
State of North Carolina.

Dedicated and driven local Women's Professional Football Team and talented coach looking for dedicated and skilled management staff. Should have drive, ambition, the ability to raise capital and excitement. Both proper verbal and written English a must. Players will adopt your team name.

As bad as this sucks, there is a silver lining. The name "Cardinals" for a football team is pretty darned weak, state bird or not.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

For those of you new, a quick recap. My wife is a member of The Carolina Cardinals professional womens football team. She plays offensive center as well as on the defensive line.

The team is very dedicated and hard working, the coach a true professioal loved and respected by the team and everyone connected to the team. Everyone involved is very good at what they do, but the team lacks one very critical element. It has no publicist. Most of the news about the team I have seen so far is from the blogging community, and that mainly from my own blog. The fund raising efforts have not been going well, such that even the party at the Radisson was cancelled 11:30pm the night before it was supposed to happen due to lack of interest. I imagine that if the team had a publicist, even a talented volunteer would do, these fund raisers would be heard of out side of one proud spouse's blog. Am I volunteering? Heck no, I've got enough to do already with my fencing life.

So what I am I whining about exactly? Don't think of it as whining, think of it as the admission that the team needs help and the plaintive call for some talented individual(s) to swoop in and save the season. The first game by the way is scheduled for May 20th and the team doesn't even have helmets, pads, or uniforms yet.

To this end Sara is trying to get the team to meet this week to talk about the possibility of who would be willing to/able to buy their own equipment in hopes that it might just be enough to let them play at least a couple of games this season. Will it be enough? You'll know soon after I find out.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In one bold sentence I will confuse both the left and the right. I do not think illegal immigrants should have the same rights as US citizens, however HR 4437 is a crock of bull.

Crazy huh? I'll bet some readers expected me to burst into flames just then.

Before I rant on, you might need a quick breakdown of what HR4437 is. Here's the Wikipedia article Here is what it means to immigrants. Here's how Haliburton and their government payouts intend to profit from us. Finally, here's all the other things you can do with detention centers. Most of these things smack of concentration camps.

There are some out there who will undoubtably say this is an either or issue. As always, these people are still wrong. The United States has a system of Immigration. Some would say that this system is broken. I am not so sure. Misapplied, mismanaged, poorly funded, unevenly applied, these are all things that might describe it, but it isn't a failure, it simply hasn't been allowed to work. HR 4437 is an invitation to fascism. I cannot and will not support that, even if this means that in 10 years my blog will be used to put me in Haliburton detention center. When in doubt, always go with the forefathers. I think it is a good rule of thumb.

So what we had May 1st with the Immigration Rally was for the most part an extreme response to HR 4437. Extreme both in its big and peaceful turnout (something they should be extremely proud of), and extreme in their demand of a general amnesty for non-citizens of the United States who reside in the U.S. illegally. You don't get amnesty, you're not a citizen. Go get citizenship. (Yes, easier said than done, but still the correct answer.)

HR4437 should line the cage of a tropical bird. Should the border patrols be steped up? Absolutely. Do we need to build a fence on our northern and southern borders? Extreme, and expensive even if it were effective. I wonder by the way if the northern fence is meant to keep the Canadians out or us in? Should an illegal who gets caught driving drunk be charged with a felony and tossed into Halliburton Land guilty until proven innocent? Nope. Should we break up mixed families and make it so they can never see each other again? No Pat Roberson, no Rush Limbaugh, and no Jim Sensenbrenner, (R) Wisconsin.

Ed Cone is correct, it is a complex issue. I just want to make sure everyone understands it isn't a black and white issue. (Or even brown and white if that is how you view the world.)

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Illegal imigrants and supporters are taking to the streets in protest in order to demand rights. They say that by not working or buying today they will prove that they can cripple our economy. They demands rights! Apparently a large population hasn't gotten the memo about how rights work in this country. They would have gotten that information had they looked into the process of being legal. Besides human rights that everyone gets including them, citizens of the United States get rights as citizens, which include voting, good roads, free school for the kids, help for the poor, etc. There is even a government office whose sole purpose is to help people become citizens.

But these people are illegal. They didn't go get citizenship. Admitedly some of them might have tried, and they might have gotten turned down for whatever reason. If you aren't a citizen, or you don't have a greencard, or visa, then that would mean that you are breaking the law and thus "illegal".

Did you know that criminals convicted of a felony lose their rights as citizens? No more voting, no more being a gun owner. If you are breaking the law now just by being here, what makes you think you are going to get rights as a citizen? What makes you think you should?

Do you want to be a citizen? Great! There is a process you go through to become a legal US citizen. It might not be easy, but nothing good ever is.

If you are illegal, you need to get legal or go home. Just because someone else breaks the law by exploiting you in the work place doesn't make you any less illegal. You say that you are willing to do work that none of the real Americans are willing to do. You might be right, but the homeless on the streets and the otherwise out of work Americans get first dibs. If we as a country have jobs we can't fill with the already legal Americans, perhaps those jobs will end up oursourced to your own country. If they can't, then your chances of going through the process and being made a legal US citizen are boosted big time.

As it stands, you don't get much sympathy from me. I can understand why you want to come here, but there are better ways of doing it. All I see now is a bunch of illegal people undercutting the compeitition for jobs and using resources meant for US Citizens. (Like public schools.) That isn't very nice.

All you are doing by taking to the street now, is making it easier to get rounded up and shipped to your country of origion, which I suppose come to think of it probably isn't a bad thing.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I read this article and it was worth sharing. In a nutshell they are talking about a drug now known as PT-141 or Bremelanotide. What does it do? Think Viagra, only this works on women too, and to put the cherry on top it is a nasal spray. Where Viagra increases blood flow to "down there", PT-141 goes into your brain and puts you "in the mood".

Think of every party you have ever gone to. Think of the parties where you had the most fun. Were you "in the mood" at the time (reguardless of wether or not you scored)? Probably. All I can think of this being the next hot thing on the streets. Victoria Secrets fills their air with a smell that makes you want to buy underwear. Krispy Kreme fills the air with a smell that makes you want to eat donuts until dawn. Night clubs could fill the air with a drug that makes you want to have a VERY good time.

Gone are the days of date rape drugs my friends, enter the new age. Did you have sex with this woman? Yes officer, I did! Did you have sex with her against her will? No officer, we were both VERY willing. Case closed.

I can't decide if I want to buy stock or run screaming in a panic.

Based on the disapproving looks my wife gives me whenever I bring this up, I am guessing stock is completely out of the question. I suppose I can dream....

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I have a "Body Mass Index" of 42. Well, what do you know? 42 IS the answer! It is down from my starting number of 47 by the way. To find this on the government website Shape Up America. I had to look at their body mass indicator page. I found my height, and I followed the line over to find my weight. It wasn't there. Odd. Then I noticed that at the bottom of that page was a link that said, "High Range BMI Chart". I clicked. I'm not positive, but I think the red got a shade darker. I found my weight about half way across the page. Huh. So, on a whim I backtracked looking for my target personal ideal weight. The good news was I got to go back to the normal chart that has yellows and greens on it. Strangely, my personal target ideal weight was still firmly in the red.

On a whim, I continued to track back to find out what this chart would view as an ideal weight range. I am sure I was that weight once, but it was well before the 5th grade, and no I have no intention to ever be there again. (5th grade either for that matter.)

Of course, the BMI chart has a few fundimental flaws, and to the government's credit they list them.
* It can misclassify up to one out of four people.
* It does not take into account location of body fat.
* It cannot accurately classify elderly individuals who are frail and sedentary.
* It cannot accurately classify body builders.
* It does not distinguish between body fat and lean body mass.

So why does my western doctor treat this BMI chart like some sort of holy scripture? More and more I am beginning to think of her as the witch doctor. It explains why my blood pressure pills come in an oversized bottle so all of the warning stickers will fit.

Still, as far as educational websites go, I have to say that the content of Shape Up America is pretty good, though I won't be book marking it.

A site I like better is from of all places the USDA. IT is their My Pyramid Tracker site. (Sponsored by Sweet and Low) On it, I found not only informaiton, but tools. It isn't perfect though. There is a place where you can enter in your height, weight, and the food you ate in a 24 hour period and it analizes it for you, to let you know how you are doing. I tried this and when I hit analize this it brought up a two radio button questionair. "Do you intend to maintain your weight?" and "Do you intend to slowly lose weight?" I clicked on the lose weight one. I was sent to a page where in bright red capital letters it told me under no uncertain terms that I really shouldn't even get out of bed without a doctor's OK signed in triplicate and submitted for peer review. The message (and it wouldnt' let me go further) led me to believe that I shouldn't even watch fencing on TV let alone teach it. I had no option but to go back.

Quackery says I. Next the government will be saying that I should consider surgery. I suppose I diserve that, I've been saying they need a president-ectomy for nearly four years now.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Yesterday I went to the zoo, again. Again I had a wonderful time with good friends. Yes, that was three times in a single month. I am sure there are those amoung you who wonder why I would possibly want to go back so quckly. It isn't like the animals are on some sort of fast rotation. The truth is they are.

I love looking at the animals. I like the meercats, fennec foxes, chimpanzes, and ocelots, but my favorite animal of all is people. They entertain me to no end and their antics are simply unending. Being a avid fan of people watching and being in the same place so often I have made one observation that I have no explenation for. There is a huge percentage of pregnant women at the zoo for some reason. I don't have an explanation, but I do have a theory. The zoo, should you see everything is about a six mile walk with plenty of places to stop and rest along the way. It could be that the zoo is an ideal place for those with child to get a little excercise. The exercise was what first attracted me towards a family zoo membership, so from my perspective it certainly seems possible. Again, it is only a theory and I could be wrong.

Sometimes when you stair at chaos long enough patterns emerge. The pattern that emerged for me yesterday was what I have titled "inappropriate T-shirts on teenage girls day". I am not making this up. I actually shared my observations early on with a famale in my group and she saw what I saw. Should a 12 year old be wearing a "Spring Break Cancun '06" shirt? If you say "where's the problem", I have a few websites to show you. I saw, "Taste these round ripe juicy melons". Just to make sure everyone was on the same page, on the front left and right of center where two watermelons. Fruit was popular, I saw one that said, "Do you like my peaches?" I saw two girls in their early teens, everything they knew about how to act they learned from The Simple Life, and apparently no one saw fit to correct them. At the first of the day they were doing the whole Paris and Nichole thing, fortunately as the day went on, they relaxed and became real girls again. Even the one with the "You can't afford to date me" shirt. By the end of the day I figured maybe I could design some children's clothing for the children of Rocky Horror fans. The boys shirt a preshrunk cotton tee. 5-point left chest pocket. Seamless collar. Fully double-needle stitched. Taped shoulder-to shoulder, would read, "Asshole". The girls shirt would be a soft and durable cap-sleeved tee to mix and match with her favorite pants or leggings. It would read "Slut". I could be a millionare overnight apparently.

I also have a new theory on why some children aren't doing well in school these days. Apparenlty some of the parents of those kids are idiots. I was standing there looking at the meercats. Near me is the sign that tells you the name and information about the animal. A woman brought her young child up to the glass between me and the sign. She points to the animals on display and says to her child, "Look honey gophers!". I can see mistaking a bison for a buffalo, but meercat for gopher? With a sign right there???? I can even cut a little tiny bit of slack on the person who looks at the chimpanzee and says, "Look at the monkey". That is of course the same thing as looking at your neighbor and mistaking them for a monkey. I've made similar mistakes myself. I once thought that my nextdoor neighbor had married a sasquach. As it turned out, he had married a six foot four woman with some serious face and body hair issues. Big feet too. Still, I have to confess I nearly went "ape shit" when moments later at the chimpanzee exhibit, I heard a father tell his son, "Look at 'em baby apes." I've got your baby ape right here dumbass. Clearly this debate will rage for well into our future, is stupidity genetic passed down from generation to generation, or is it learned? In my opinion it may be a mixture of both.

Lastly, I have to tell you a funny story. It was a little sad, and very cute, but funny none the less. At the lions, a little boy runs up to the glass to see the lions. *GOOOOONNNNNGGGG* The whole rail reverberates as his little head smacks it at full speed. Just as this happens, his mother not realizing what has just happened, says "Do you see the lions". Nope, but I bet he sure see's stars! Fortunately, he didn't get hurt, he was just so stunned and surprised he only managed an eventual whimper before he was distracted with a bottle of water. (He drank half of it without a breath much to MY shock and surprise.)

I'm looking forward to my next trip to the zoo, who knows what I might discover!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I am sure everyone reading this has experienced a phone call from some pre-recorded phone spam firm who wants you to listen to their spiel and either press a number to speak to a sales representitive or leave your contact information so a sales representitive can contact you. Have you had them call during dinner? Have you had them call you on your cell phone?

I have had both, and I have had enough. I admit, in the past I simply hung up. I suspect you do the same, but it just isn't satisifying. It isn't a human that is getting disconnected, it is a machine.

I have allowed my genius to fully tackle this problem and I have come up with a solution that is clever (very), pointed (clearly so), and evil (you're welcome). I didn't want to go public with my master plan until I had had an opportunity to test it for myself. That opportunity arrived and gleefully I struck passionately with wild abandon!

This particular message wanted me to leave my contact info at the beep. The moment of the beep is the single moment where I have their full and complete attention. The moment where they are at my mercy.

While the automated message was comming in to me, I found suitable material from my blog, and at the sound of the beep, I began to read, with feeling, in a nice rich metered tone that only nine years of college theatre experience can train in me. I ended only when the recording itself stopped.

It was glorious, it was educational, it allowed me to target a new audience, during their working hours, and best of all I know they listened to each and every word. The beauty of this plan is I took the time to answer them, and instead of giving them what they wanted I gave them what I wanted them to have. They couldn't hang up. Shock kept them listening. Perhaps they even got a collegue to listen to it again. What sort of man listens to their speil only to read to them in a rich and metered tone a blog about the value of every touch in fencing.

My path is clear. I will be known at the telemarketing conventions as the Terrorist Pod Caster! They will fear me. Some may even take me off of their calling lists, but sooner or later, fate will put my number on their auto dialer, and low I will strike once more!

FEAR MY CLEVER WORDPLAY!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My wife sent me this earlier today and it was just so good I had to share. For some time I have been really cynical about the different and conflicting nutritional information available out there. Much of it from supposedly respectible places like The American Heart Association. I always suspected it was all crap, and now I know it is all crap.

The only meaningful advice in the world is:
1. Eat a variety of foods.
2. Don't eat a lot of food.
3. Exercise.

Follow those three things and 80% of the world's overweight population could right itself.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is my own opinion and I have been known to be wrong on occasion. Fred Phelps is way older than me, so baring divine intervention it is fair to say that he will kick the bucket before I. This being said, when my day comes and I get to hell, I will see Fred Phelps and he will have a very shocked and surprised expression on his face. Most of the world eats from the Christian buffet, I feel he and his stick to the old testimate section doling out heapling spoonfulls of crazy onto their plates.

I believe that most, even on high, might agree with me that going to the funerals of fallen soldiers to celebrate their deaths as the hand of god striking down the wicked is a not good act. Not even a little. First off, if Mr. Phelps wants to rub it in the faces of the fallen, he's missed his chance. He needs to be in Iraq just as the IUD explodes to mock the dying. Once they are dead the only people getting the message are the parents of the dead, and they are innocent of the "sin".

His whole campain seems to miss his own point. He seems to be saying that he is revolting against the US Government for not stoning the homosexuals. Has anyone seen him cast any actual stones? If he's in America fighting a revolution against the American government, isn't he a terrorist? Isn't he using the act of desecrating Military funerals to strike fear (and loathing) in the hearts of all Americans? Isn't that how they define "terrorism" these days?

At least The Patriot Guard exist to oppose him. The world needs hero's and like in the comic books, they also wear leather.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

First off, while I wasn't thrilled that Sprint just tossed us over to Trinsic without so much as a "be seeing you", I have to say I am VERY pleased with the service. When I got home last night not only did we have dial tone, we didn't have someone sharing it with us. That is a huge improvement over the past several days. (Just got off the phone with their customer service letting us know they did have to make a repair.)

That said, high speed internet means little to me in a place where I can't even get consistant reliable land line phone service, cable TV, DSL, or delievery pizza. You know, my cell phone only started to get signal at my house in the past six months or so. The first time my cell phone rung while I was at home I was sure it was spirits from beyond calling me with dire warning. (Turned out it was a fencer reporting on his tournament results.)

However, for the rest of you, I realize it is important and for some of you at this point it must feel like a right given from on high. This blog is for you. My good friend Rob wrote a very good article about how every American who thinks they have high speed internet access at home is just fooling themselves.

Check it out. Are you really getting what you are paying for?

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:38 AM | Permalink

I love this time of year, as the days get warmer and the sleeves get shorter, some UNCG student's thoughts turn towards campus politics. The goal of student politics of course is not to hold power but to draw attention away from it. It is really a cute way of making students think they have power. They don't of course, but instead they get trained in how politics works in the real world. I suppose it is like in the military training without ammunition.

What makes this time of year so much fun is the campaining, the signs, the fliers, the meetings, the wild promisses for things that they couldn't deliever even if they wanted to. Every year just about every candidate says that they will fight to lower tuition and fees. That's like Bush claiming he can bring world peace to the middle east. That's like me saying I am going to change the shade of the color of Mr. Sun. There are forces in this universe that are outside of your control. Happieness comes from identifying those and accepting the situation for what it is. For me, I like Mr. Sun just the way he is.

I only wish I knew of some student candidate websites I could link here. It is interesting to see what is important to them, and what they think they have control over. Better still would be if I had a digital camera that I could take pictures of the campain posters and fliers. It is really an interesting exercise.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:18 AM | Permalink

Generally I understand that everyone has one of those days where events turn them into demons behind the wheel. They flip you off, cut you off, stop in the middle of the road for no apparent reason or even speed. I can forgive these people easily, so long as they don't make a habit of it anyway.

Today I had the misfortune of being in the way of a guy who gets no quarter. In my humble and unsolicited opinion the driver of this truck is a grade "A" jackass, and I don't use that word lightly. I have a whole slew of four letter words that I keep around for using lightly. The moron in the maroon and black mid 90's GMC pickup truck with the bed cover and the license plate number TWJ-3847 was so daffy duck behind that my wife felt it was necessary to call him in. This while everyone around us are snapping camera phone pictures of him. What could a guy do to possibly get my ire this far up?

1. Passing (me) in a no passing zone...
2. During school zone speed zone hours....
3. In a school zone!!
This happened this morning in front of the Brown Summiit Monticello elementary school on HIghway 150 at around 7:45am.
Then just to make absolutely sure that everyone noticed him, upon reaching the 150/29 interchange the asshat drives around vehicles patiently waiting their turn to make their turns, while others are turning onto 150.

Upon hitting 29 himself, he stands on the gas and fades into the distance noticable only by the taillights of the people he cut off to get ahead of them.

Now, I am not heartless in this matter. What if he was a volunteer fireman rushing to help someone in need? Oh wait, they have lights for their vehicles, and when they don't they use their hazard flashers. Well, maybe this guy was rushing to the hospital where some loved one was being treated in the emergency room for some horrible accident. Again, if the guy had been using his emergency flashers, the rest of us would have probably worked to get out of his way. That isn't an invitation to turn on your flashers and play "Streets of San Francisco", or "Dukes of Hazard." However, if you have a real emergency, you have a real method of letting the commuters around you know.

Rant off.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:30 AM | Permalink

There, I said it. Not only did I say it, I stated my opinion immediately instead of waiting and hoping it would just go away. This was going to be about "Dead Eye" Cheany and The Most Dangerous Game, but as interesting as that story is, the one going on at the press briefing is more interesting, and less likely to be covered by Letterman and Leno.

I heard a sound bite this morning where the press secretary blasts a reporter for being more interested in the fact that the White House is sitting on all of the news of the shooting, than something like perscription drug legislation. Well duh, we've heard that line of bull for years, we want to hear the new line of bull! We don't want to have to wait 14 hours for our serving of high velocity poop splater also known as press releases.

Someone tell the tool to stop asking stupid questions and start spinning out the news.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:48 AM | Permalink

Take it for what it is worth, but I can't help but notice with things the way they have been locally, police scandals, free speach "zones" on campus, redistricting, voting irregularities, none of this "censored news" really sounds like news anymore.

Very interesting reading, some of it you have probably heard, some you might not have, none of it will surprise you.

Still not amused.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 6:53 PM | Permalink

ABC News has the story, so does Reuters.
The FARK headline read:"Then: "Congress is preparing an investigation, and I will work with members of both parties to make sure this effort is thorough." Now: White House resists Katrina probe"

Will someone tell the idiot monkey in charge that you can't simply opt out. Congressional investigations are funny like that. If congress came to me and asked me about something, I couldn't just say, "I'll tell you a little, but I am not giving certain information to you." They frown on that. Infact, they would without question lock my butt up. Unless of course they subpoena me, and then I plead the fifth, that's legal and good. Yet, the damned dirty ape can sit back and say, "This information is off limits to you." What? Is this part of something larger? Is Katrina the work of the nefarious Osama Bin Ladin? Well in that case, by all means keep that a national secret. NOT. What, do you think we are stupid? If so, please let us know. One would think someone in the white house would be there familiar enough with the rule book to quickly whisper into the appropriate ear, "We can't do that." Did they fire that guy or something?

Separation of powers people, that's all I'm talking about. Don't think I have forgotten the other presidents that have done this, the difference is now I am blogging about it, and the idiot monkey is the biggest offender right now. Again, don't get me wrong, its a great racket. You get made president, you do everything during your administration possible to get as many of your closest and dearest rich beyond their wildest dreams, and you retire after 4 or 8 years to write a book (or in some cases, maybe to learn to read). Meanwhile everyman is getting slowly ground into paste under the boots of "The Man". Maybe he could get someone to write a book for him about that, "How to Succeed in Business Through Politics". I guarantee it would be a best seller.

The way things have been looking lately Chapter One would be titled, "Don't let them fool you, President = King of the world".

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:08 AM | Permalink

Last week one of my friends was telling Sara and I about walking though the Eliot University Center on UNCG's campus, and passing a small group of girls who were waiting for a male friend down the hall. When the male friend realized they were waiting for him, he exclaims in a very loud and flamboyant way (emphasis on flame), "I'm the most popular girl in school!". The reason the story got brought up was because universities seem to always have certain social archtypes to fill, and this guy was clearly doing his duty to fill his niche.

Flash forward to last night's American Idol Greensboro. I am not a regular watcher, but since it was in Greensboro, I got interested and thought it was definitely worth a look. At one point a guy comes on to audition and he was flamboyant to the extreme, (emphasis on flame). He announced that he was from UNCG and he was the next American Idol. Sara and I looked at each other and agreed that it would be hysterical if it was the same guy from the previous weeks story. It turns out that it WAS the same guy. As he's doing his shtick working up to the point where he actually starts to sing, there was maybe three or four references to him being a UNCG student. I kept having this mental picture of UNCG administration dying just a little inside while they kept chanting the mantra "Any publicity is good publicity.". On the positive side, even though the guy didn't make it to holywood, it was clear he had a lot of fun hamming it up for the camera, so it wasn't all a loss.

There was a girl who came out in something that turned out to be lingerie, it was the kind of outfit that someone who was already a star could get away with wearing because the tabloids love that stuff. For someone who wasn't a star it looked ridiculous. I think she had real promise as a singer, but her chances were hurt by her outfit. I hope she trys again next year and wears something more mainstream. I'll bet she makes it.

There was a guy who came on and the minute he opened his mouth, I knew he was from Carteret County. There is an accent that only exist in a few island communities of Carteret County. This guy had that accent. Sure enough, when they put up his name and hometown, it was Salter Path. He did my birth area proud. Not only for being there and doing it, but for making it.

There was one guy, I think the last one they showed, he came in wearing his father's fireman uniform. I have this theory that I will call "Klinger's Syndrome". In the TV show MASH, Maxwell Klinger dressed in women's clothing in order to be sent home. In Klinger's Syndrome, the sufferer dresses in some insane way in order to be sent somewhere they want to go. In this case, Holywood. Hey, its either that or they are simply attention whores. In this guy's case, I don't think it was attention whoring though. He didn't have any of the other symptoms like loudness, obnixousness, flamboyance, etc. I felt bad for him because I knew the outfit was really hurting his chances of getting sent to Holywood. It did too. Fortunately for all of us he was so darned good, that he managed to squeek by on his voice alone. Had he been in street cloths, he would've been accepted immediately.

I couldn't talk about the show without mentioning this one last person. She was a character on the level of William Hung and they worked her into every teaser before every commercial break for the whole two hours. You know, I don't actually know where to start. I took a half page of notes on her. Should I start with the top, the bottom, the attitude, or the string of expletives? The first comment Sara had on her was the moment she show her doing a high kick in her mini-skirt. (one that required an "American Idol" logo to be placed strategically so the show wouldn't break any decency laws.) "Her coochie scares me." Actually, it scared me pretty badly too. When I asked Sara if I could quote her on that, she replied as if in a trance, "The power of christ compels you". It wasn't the last time Sara said that last night either. You know, even today I refuse to mention the contestant's name for fear I might somehow invoke her.

New Rule: If you are wearing a mini skirt you may NOT do high kicks. The exception to this rule is if you are on the Jerry Springer show, then it is required.

Next comes the sequined tube top. There are remarkably few women who can pull off wearing a tube top. I think that reason alone is why I love tube tops so much. One of my favorite bands, Reel Big Fish has a song called "Ban The Tubetop". Clearly these guys understand what I am talking about here.
On the 10pm news Mayor Holiday has a sound bite where he talks about how good the publicity of American Idol will be for the city. Clearly this was recorded before the show aired. Ok, in his defence, we can always fall back on the old adage, "Any publicity is good publicity." Getting back on a topic I so dearly love, the tube top. This woman could be a wikipedia entry on the tube top and the dangers therein.

As if to add insult to injury she not only wears exactly the wrong thing, she can't say a sentence without cursing in it. She was bleeped so much it sounded like a test of the emergency broadcast system. She might be good for TV ratings, but she was bad for humanity. After reading the Viewfinder BLUES blog about working the event, all I could imagine is poor Lenslinger pulling hazard duty as this woman rampaged around the place adding hours to the editor's work, as they had to bleep this, and cover that up.

I believe that there may be an American Idol subculture forming. While the mainstream Idol auditioners are really trying to sing their way to stardom, for this sub group, their goal is simply to be seen on TV. So much so that they will leave self respect and good taste behind. I am also the first to admit that "good taste" is in the opinion of the beholder. Technically, I suppose this subculture has a place on the show. The attention whores get you to start watching, the talent of the singers is what keeps you watching. If the ratings start to slip they can always bring back an attention whore for a segment. Who knows Tube Top just might raise Attention Whore to the level of a profession. Or did professional wrestling alreay do that?

All in all, of the cast of thousands that auditioned either 9 or 11 made it. Those they showed were really very good. I have not idea how that compares to other cities, but I hope in the end it was worth it. I came away kind of thinking "Wow, I gotta remember to stay away from that Greensboro place....oh wait."

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If the allegation is true it is not only going to be the subject of a lot more bad outsourcing jokes, but a smoking gun showing the world to what lengths our government will go to to circumvent its own laws.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am getting tired of constantly being told that we don't know what is good for us. I will be the first to admit that the elected president is some pretty strong evidence that we really don't know what is good for us. Fortunately, (or unfortunately) we have seen so much evidence lately of breaking, rewriting, or circumventing the law, who knows, we might not have voted our estemed leader into office. Could be someone thought they knew better than the rest of us what is good for us and relieved us of the burdon of choosing a president.

If the news is wrong and torture isn't being outsourced, then who is snatching people from the streets of the world and torturing them? Terrorist? Pat Roberson? The Teletubbies? I don't know about you but I wouldn't mind getting the truth once in a while. On the first try. Even if it was a horrible truth, it would be true, and that's about the best starting place I can think of.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:17 PM | Permalink

I am hearing this morning that the people of Oregon voted in favor of assisted suicide. Bush had a different idea, he said in so many words, "I don't care what the majority of Oregon people want, I say "no" and that's final." Fortunately, the Supreme Court still remembers that this is a democracy and the majority rule. I am shocked and appalled at how much of what goes on in our government every day would make the founding fathers spin in their graves. I sometimes wonder that if they were alive today would they try to repair what was broken, or lead us in revolution. I personally hope they would try to fix what was broken, but it is hard to know the hearts and minds of the undead.
News article here.

I always found it funny that people have a lot less trouble with killing someone, than letting someone kill themselves. Most states allow capital punishment, but to my knowledge only one or two allow assisted suicide, and only Oregon has a law allowing it outright.

I believe it probably comes down to power. People want power over other people, governments want power over people, people and governments ultimately don't like it when other strange people can choose for themselves. I can do whatever I want, paint my house pink with green polka-dots for instance, but if YOU do it, I'm going homeowners association all over your weird butt.

We can't of course talk about right to die without bring up religion. I am no expert here, but from what I remember from bible school, the King James was pretty consistent about suicide. I seem to remember the New Testimate being pretty consistent about killing, but I recall that the Old Testimate couldn't seem to make up its mind on the subject. Yes, I said it. The Almighty was a flipflopper on the death penalty. The very first one in fact, so I guess that means it is ok to change your mind. Take that Senate Judiciary Committee!

Myself I am pretty ambiguous on all life taking debates (right to die, capital punishment, and abortion). Is it really my right to tell someone else what they can and cannot do with their own life? I think that if I had the 100% legal choice over whether or not I could take my own life the fact that I chose not to end it would count for more when I am judged. Choice is power. Is that what scares you so much? I tend to think that I would support capital punishment if we were sure, not just legally satisfied that someone is guilty of the crime. Thus, I am very much for doing any DNA testing possible on all death row inmates. If you are responsible for sending an innocent man to death row how do you figure that is going to look on your eternal record at the pearly gates? I smell brimstone? Do you smell brimstone? Finally, abortion this one is the trickiest of all because we can't even agree on when someone is a living human being, without that we really can't go any further. Although there is some promising research with bunny eggs out there that may make the argument moot. Nobody cares when a rabbit is a living rabbit being. Well, nobody worth mentioning anyway....

late edit: Please check out this article from Brenda Bowers on the subject of "right to die". (Thanks for getting me the link Brenda!)

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau, I just have to say that if I intended to only read two books in 2006, I am glad this was one of them.

In a nutshell the book explores three very different technological senerios for the near future all based on the concept of The Curve. The Curve is summed up nicely by Moore's law, processing power doubles every 18 months. The Curve is an expansion on this to say that the sum of all technology doubles at a constant and accelerating rate. From The Curve, three senerios emerge Heaven, Hell, and Prevail.

The Heaven Senerio championed by Ray Kurzweil (a personal hero of mine in the class of Benjamin Franklin, or Thomas Edison) is the idea that technology is inherently good and through it the first human to live to be 150 is already alive today. In the Heaven Senerio, immortality and true artifical intelligence is just around the corner. The Curve is quickly going up to the point of singularity a point where the persuits of men will turn solely towards learning and these amazing technologies that make us better, stronger, faster, and smarter will have reached everyone.

The Hell Senerio championed (if that is the right word) by BIll Joy is the idea that far far too often science happens more by "oops" than by "eurika!" and the big boo boo that destroys all life as we know it is just one oops away. If by some miracle we manage to create technologies that make us better, stronger, faster, and smarter first it will create three classes of man, the haves, the have nots and the choose not toos. The haves are the rich folks who can afford the tech and will be first on board when the tech arrives. The choose not toos are those who turn against the technology and want to remain pure of flesh, the have nots are the rest of us who will never be able to afford the technology to get ahead. He believes that one day the rich will tollerate those who choose to remain pure as quaint, those that want the tech but can't afford it will be seen as subhuman.

The Prevail Senerio suggested by Jaron Lanier believes that The Curve isn't a constant. It suffers from fits, starts, and reversals just like the humans that gave rise to it. It is his belief that technology will improve, people will live longer, horrible diseases will be created in labs and released, ipods will cause deffness, the industrial revolution will lead to obeasity and mankind will generally trudge forward like we have always done.

In all three there is talk of Transendence, the idea that one day will stop being homo sapian sapians and will become, thanks to technology some new thing. Since technology is based on knowledge and knowledge of how stuff works is pretty much zipped up by god than what we are doing for better or worse is becomming closer to god, or in some cases becomming little gods ourselves. Radical evolution huh? At this point the author notes that the religious types may be going about technology in the wrong way. Currently all they do is say "No!" to technology that is ethically challenging. He suggest that perhaps the religious types could be more proactive, in both guiding the ethics that leads to discovery as well as creating the rituals of the future in reguard to technology. As he says, there is a ritual for birth, a ritual for death, and various rituals for comming of age, marriage etc. Perhaps what should be happening is the creation of ritual for technology. Perhaps if someone gets a knee replacement there could be a ritual for the acceptance of the technology joining the biology. Titanium and plastic joins bone with the blessing of the almighty. I think these are splendid ideas.

I also offer one further in that same vein. I challenge that in all the years that went into the creation all of the various works of religion the ethics of technology is already written in based on the technology that existed at that time. Spiritually we don't have to break new ground so much as continue on the path that was started so long ago. Just because we have better metal than iron, and know of plants and animals smaller than the eye can see doesn't mean we are in some strange new world. We are simply on The Curve we were always on, it is just that some people feel frightened and lost because the terrain has changed.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It is my opinion that there needs to be some sort of legal document that constitutes a generic threat of bodily harm. Every day idiots sue for the dummest things, break the law and then attempt to use the law to implicate the victum somehow. More often than not, all that is needed to come out on top of any legal hassle is to invest in a really good lawyer.

We live in a day and age when someone can spill hot coffee on themselves while they are driving and successfully sue the restaurant who sold them the coffee. If I had a restaurant with a drive through I would have a sign posted that says:
"We do not sell coffee at our drive through window because we feel that a minority of our customers are not responsible enough to drink it and drive safely, for this reason we have to protect everyone from possible stupidity. We thank you for your understanding."
I would be sued of course. Right, wrong, justice, law, common since, none of these things actually matter. I want your money, I can get it by suing you, soon your money will be mine.

Cease and desist letters are almost as common as bills in the mail these days, I wouldn't be surprised if you can buy them in pads from Staples like "While you were out" message pads.

We (your name here) order you to immediately stop:
__ Harrassing,
__ Selling,
__ Not Selling,
__ Visiting,
__ Not Visiting
__ Calling,
__ Not Calling,
__ Breathing,
__ Other (please specify)

Failure to do whatever we tell you to will lead to us suing you.
For faster service, please include all of your money.

Thank you,
your name here

What I think we really need is something equally as lazy but represents a different attitude. I call it the "Generic Threat of Bodily Harm". What the generic threat of bodily harm does is state in plain and legal terms that if I actually cared more about the stupid things you do I would attempt to help you overcome your short commings via percussive maintainence. This has an important difference from suing. The goal of suing is to take something from someone else because you successfuly argued in court that they purposely harmed you. The generic threat of bodily harm doesn't want money from anyone. It only wants to let you know officially and legally that it is my opinion that you are a complete idiot.

I am even thinking of starting a "Generic Threat of Bodily Harm" list. I am not interested in them enough to call them or send them a letter or email with the "Generic Threat of Bodily Harm", but at least I would have a running list so if the day ever came where I did have the time or interest, I could check them off one by one. Were I to start making that list today I would add Eric and Neil Bauman because in my opinion they are entitled free of charge to one Generic Threat of Bodily Harm each.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As sure as falling leaves means that cold weather is on the horizion, the holiday season brings forth these little thirty second fantasies on the boob tube. Loved one opens little gift box under the tree to reveal a set of car keys the open the door of the middle class surburbian dream and a big shiny red bow is on top of some new vehicle or another. The implication always is that if you give your love one a car for christmas they'll put out or something but that's not the great fantasy I am talking about.

Do you or anyone you know have the ability to just pop out Christmas eve and put a spiffy new car on the old visa check? Don't think I didn't notice that the ads all clearly show that the mega gifter paid the extra hundred for the gi-normous gift wrapping service at the dealership.

These are cars most of which cost more than my house. This is definately not a trip down to the general store for socks and a stick of horhound candy. Why do these marketing types think we are going to respond positively to their little fantasy of impulse buying items that the average American needs six years just to pay for?

On the one hand we have the government trying to make sure that every American has a TV and high speed internet (still waiting for my high speed internet) to keep the poor content, while on the other hand you have these marketing bozo's reminding us of all the things we can't have making us discontented and even more aware that we are infact poor.

When the revolution comes, I'm going after the marketing industry. Ruin my holiday fantasy will you....

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:25 AM | Permalink

Here's a list of words and phrases that should be banished from our vocabularly. While this list is good, I think we could all add a few things to this list.

I for one would like to see an end to the phrase "Fair and Impartial" which as best as I can tell means "My opinion is better than your opinion.".

Another one for the axe ought to be "Read My Lips". This is the verbal version of a slight of hand technique, "Look over here while I do something sneaky while you are distracted."

"Ask your doctor about..." This is in the language of corproate drug czars "You've got cooties! You need to buy our stuff, but unfortunatly your doctor has to perscribe it...damned doctors....Make them write you a perscription now or you will die...and your little dog too."

"Easy View", while this is a very clever way of saying "Rerun" it just seems slimy. Like Pre-owned, or "Gifted and Talented" You never really know what you are getting. I remember when it was suggested I start attending "Gifted and Talented" classes. My mother had to ask if it meant I was up for a college scholarship or a helmet and mittens.

There are a whole bunch of terms worth banning that are specific to the State System those of you who work for the state will recognize them. Things like:

"Transparent Change" This is IT for "It worked ok for me".

"Functional Title" This phrase means, "you are going to do high level work for low level pay."

"Reorganization" translates into, "We have no idea what's going on, so we hired a contractor for a hundred thousand dollars a month who is going to tell us what they think."

"Functional Manager" this means, "That guy who makes less money than you is now your boss, just not on paper."

"Candidate search process" is state political speak for "We already know who we are going to hire but we have to pretend we don't and interview a bunch of people to satisify state law" In the colloquial South this is also know as a "Possium Hunt". <--spelled with a P and not an O.

"Recommendation" means "Something we ask for so you think we actually care what you think."

On second thought, I probably shouldn't bring up bannable state phrases, this blog could take days to write and in the end communications in the state system would become nothing more than a series of meaningless hand gestures. All that silence would get on my nerves.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I heard on the news last night that there has been a hoo-ha over the name "Christmas Tree". Apparently some Political Correctness Nazi wants to change the name of "Christmas Tree" to "Holiday Tree". This is of course complete nonsense. Only Christmas HAS a tree in the month of December.

Kwanzaa? No tree.
Chanukah? No tree.
Boxing DayNo tree.
Solstice? There are trees, but not in the same since.
Festivus? No tree.
New Years Eve? No tree.

We in America are free to celebrate Christmas or not at our own choosing and in our own way. No one has the right to further dumb down this or any other tradition (so long as it hurt no one). This whole Political Correctness movement is a pet peeve of mine. I really don't think we should remove everythings meaning just in case someone is to thin skinned to deal. Or to put it another way, Political Correctness offends me and therefore must be stopped in the name of Political Correctness.

If you need me I'll be at my house this weekend decorating my aluminum pole artifical tree with little boxes, Mazao, Menorahs, glass apples, and cats. My nativity scene will be tastefully lit, and my zawadi will be enriching (if small and inexpensive). The mistle toe will be in the arch, and the Yule log will be burned during the Yalda at the solstice.
The egg nog will be potent, and I am returing fire on anyone shooting deer on the 24th. See if I don't.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A power we have but often overlook is our power of choice. No matter what happens, no matter how much we feel that we have no control, we do. In all things we either choose, or we become paralized by our situation, and choose not to choose. The great power of our ability to choose is the near infinite range of choices we can make for either positive or negative.

Are their things outside of our power to change? Perhaps, we still can't choose to fly simply by waving our arms like wings, but we can choose to fly a plane, choose to hang glide, choose to design the aircraft of the future, or choose to shoot birds out of the sky out of pure jealously.

This weekend I was faced with a choice. I was wronged pretty mightily by a certain tubby [explitive deleted], I could tell you the name his mother gave him, but it wouldn't describe him in quite the way tubby [explitive deleted] does. I had a choice, I could go across the table and beat him until his mother wouldn't recognize him. Its what I wanted to do, even now days later it still seems like a pretty good idea. It would've been good for me and even better for the local fencing scene, but I choose not to. The event was for teens, and we the coaches of the sport must at all times be a positive influence on our students. No matter how much it hurts. Others choose not to be a good influence, and tubby [explitive deleted] is one of those. I choose not to be the same bad example he is.

Every day we are surrounded by people who exercise the power of choice in small ways. Every day we exercise the power of choice in small ways. Less often we see people who exercise the power of choice in big ways. When we do it is on the news. Either it is a crime report or it is a human interest story, someone somewhere made a choice so extreme that the world needed to know about it.

Big choices are always harder to make of course, either you have to live with the consequences like prisons full of inmates are, or you have to see the big decision through to the end like Urban Ministries or the YWCA's Downtown Fencing Club. Things happen to affect these big choices as well, the police arrest the criminal before the big crime is committed, or someone makes a choice that harms the completion of something like the Civil Rights Musieum in Greensboro.

I happen to believe that if people spent more time making big choices for the positive we would live in a better world. I also realize that choices born of disappointment, pain and revenge are really easy to make and feel great when you do it but in the end you have chosen to destroy and not create.

Is that how you want to be remembered?

Recognize the great power that you have in choice, and use it wisely for the greater good. Especially when this choice is a response to a poor choice by someone else. Doing so proves you have the greater power.

The choice to choose the positive solution may lack instant gratification, but in the end it holds greater rewards.

The poor choices of others often leads to greater opportunity for positive choices for you.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I heard this morning that the conservative Republicans had a real problem convincing the rest of the Republican party to push through a funding cut to many of the more popular programs targeted towards the lower class. Through some hard wheeling and dealing and I am sure more than a little hardball they just managed to get enough votes to do the job.

Yes, I have heard the poor excuses, "Stopping a standard increase is not the same thing as cutting funding." Bullpucky. If the money doesn't change and the cost goes up for the same services it does exactly the same thing as a cut. Give up on your semantics game.

Meanwhile there is the push to make the tax cuts for the rich permenant. Please.

Stop pussyfooting around and just do what you want to do you conservative dolts. Clever is not your forte, you need go with your strengths.

You don't want people from Mexico and Central America crossing the border and taking bottom rung jobs. You would rather Americans work for those wages digging ditches. The problem is the Americans who used to be counted on to dig dithces are getting all uppitity, getting financial aid, getting educated, and getting better jobs. The only thing to do to halt the rapidly shrinking naturalized American poor is to shove them back down in the ditches and chicken processing plants. You demand a white pool boy! You demand a return to traditional values!

Quit blowing smoke then. Pass a law that the rich split up the taxes paid by the poor get that lower class back in the field where they belong. Quit lying to us. Lying to us only going to make it worse when we rise up as one and pee in your swimming pools.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 11:54 AM | Permalink

I heard on the news last night that the Baptist State Convention has decided that if your church isn't Anti-Gay you can't play. I wouldn't have made that decision myself, but I am not a member of the Baptist State Convention. My childhood church might have been a member, but I left there under my own steam and I have no regrets. Here's my opinion of their stance.

The Baptist State Convention is a private club for member only. They can make whatever sort of rule they want and it is ok. Theirs is an exclusive god. If that's what they want to do fine. I see on TV constantly where little boys have club houses where girls are not allowed. The first time I saw it was on The Little Rascals. They aren't breaking any new ground here. Lots of golf clubs won't let you in if you are a woman, a minority, or poor, and that seems to work for them. Occasionally it makes news but it shouldn't. If you aren't allowed to belong to an organization make your own and if you want to exclude those people who excluded you. You are free to do so.

The boy scouts won't allow you in if you are female, gay, or non-christian. Private club for christian strait boys and the men who love them. Sort of like NAMBLA with camping. Whatever floats their boat. Same with the Babtist Convention.

We are surrounded by exclusory rules, I am a member of the YWCA, I am not a woman, and I don't belong to a church, but I can be a member of the YWCA. I teach fencing there. Anyone over the age of 9 can fence with us, but ONLY if you are a member of the YWCA. We are excluding young children and those who aren't willing to fork out $40.00 per year to be a YWCA member. I haven't seen or heard of any protest going on at the Y. Must be ok.

And though I can't speak for the gay population, I have to wonder if they would even want to belong to an organization who openly objects to them. There weren't many jews and gays in the Nazi party if you catch what I'm saying. Bonus! I got to say "Nazi" and "Baptist" in the same blog entry.

Its been a good day.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Good food, good friends, good opportunities to learn and share. My office presented our project management presentation and no one had a stroke at our "cool and edgy" presentation. If you wanted stodgy and boring you wouldn't have a master's in film working on your powerpoint!

We played to a standing room only crowd and got exactly the sort of reaction we expected. More than half were ready to jump onboard right then, some were interested with mild reservation, and of course we had the traditionalist who sat back and repeated their tired mantra over and over again "It can't be done". Those are my favorite folks actually. Those are the ones who will tell you it can't be done, and get steam rolled by you as you do it in spite of their best efforts anyway. It seems like these encounters end in retirement.

One point which was saved for last that I think did sink in was that our new UNC System President is bringing portfolio planning to the UNC system, you can profit by this knowledge and ride out to meet him, or you can be ambushed by it when you least expect it.

After recently getting my personal lesson on the "Power of blogs", a lesson not only to me the blogger but to the audience who took the "That Guy" fable and honestly seemed to learn from it. Thus, I made the decision to blog about project management just as I currently blog about fencing. However, the difference is I will do my PM blogging in a new UNCG PM blog environment. Perhaps next year, we present "Ah the Power of Blog".

Lead, follow, or get out of the way...

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:35 AM | Permalink

You never truly know a person until you find yourself moving offices on the same day they are. Our building has been doing a little square dance in the name of progress, something I highly encourage. Change is good, productive change is really good. This change should be a productive one. Even when it stomps flat the hearts and souls of aging programmers and database administrators, a demographic sent into a frothing frenzy at the mere mention of the word. What can I say, I get sadistic pleasure from their angst.

This whole shaking of the ant farm really gives me insight into the people around me. I find about three distinct groups, though a good sociologist could and would break it down better. There are those who enjoy change because it gives them an opportunity to try something new. There are those who accept change as inevitable and plod on. Finally, there are those who fear change with all of their being.

These reactions to change are either inherent to who they are to the point of guiding their career decisions, or it is a learned behavior perhaps brought on or further strengthened by their careers. Either way, I enjoy things and task that are varied, and my past jobs and interest have all reflected this. I will have to keep this in mind as I consider what I want to be when I grow up. My wife keeps asking me, and I had better figure out what I am going to tell her as soon as I can. ;)

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

On the way up to Alexandria VA, we took the Cresent 20, as we boarded the train we were shown to our seats by one of the conductors and they checked our tickets. They also wrote our destination code (ALX) on a slip of paper and put that above our seats. Every so often a conductor would come by to make sure we were comfortable and happy often striking up random conversations with the people around us. One of the conductors looked and acted just like he steped right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, right down to his ducktail hair style. When we got close to our stop the conductor came by to make sure we were awake and ready to depart. When we hit our station, they even helped with the carry on luggage. All we could talk about was just how pleasant traveling by rail was and how we would always look at train travel first where possible.

On the way back from Alexandria VA, we hopped aboard the Cresent 19. The conductor instructed each of us as we got on to take a left at the top of the stairs and walk back until we found a seat. The train was well underway when the first person in line turned around and announced that we had reached the end. By this time a little over half of the nine or so people had found seats. At this point, we all turned around and started walking the other way in hopes of running into a conductor who could perhaps guide us. My group walked all the way up to the cafe car and saw no conductors so we sat down there and plotted our next move. No conductor ever greated us or punched our tickets. A line quickly formed in the cafe car for snacks and drinks, and for about two hours was half the length of the car. People waiting, many of them regular train goers were upset to find that the snack bar was only staffed by a single person and he had clearly had enough. Suddenly three conductors show up and take seats in the end of the cafe car. There is a guy looking and sounding for all the world like a Sawyer reject. (right down to the aligator shoes) He apparently made his connection to the Cresent 19 (he was going all the way down to New Orleans) at Union Station in DC. But his bags didn't. I couldn't tell if he forgot his carry on luggage or if he was supposed to pick up his checked bags and check them again for the new train. Either way, they were working with him trying to get the bag situation figured out. Once he went back to his seat the conductors set to work to figure out where the three missing riders were. Um...dude, we're right here. They never asked us if we were the ones, and we made a group decision not to offer. They were the railroad professionals after all. They never so much as said "hi".

The train stopped as it did several times before without any sort of announcement and we just happen to overhear that we were in Charlottesville VA and they were taking a smoke break. The snack bar closed almost on the fingers of someone waiting to buy. The was potentially good news as we observed that the crew changed before in Charlottesville. Great news for everyone except the the snack bar guy who we found even more irate and still alone when the snackbar reopened.

The train began again and for a time the situation was unchanged. Then the train stopped. It was pitch black outside, no moonlight, no stars, nothing. After an hour of sitting here with no explaination Sara finds a 1800 number on the ticket and calls it on her cellphone to figure out what was going on. The automated system didn't tell her why we stopped, but it did tell her that we were going to be two hours late getting into Greensboro. I overheard someone ask the snackbar attendant. He didn't know anything, and wouldn't care if he did. My boss finally decited she had had enough and gaffed a passing conductor. Apparently a freight car had broken down somewhere ahead of us and we would be waiting there until it was repaired. He said they thought it would be cleared in two hours. When she asked about any seats opening up he told her that a bunch of folks had gotten off at Charlottesville and if she walked down far enough she was sure to find something.

I was sent to go find something.

Four cars later I found a car with only four people in it total. Sara and Jeanie joined me. At this point it is after midnight. It would probably be a great time to sleep. We couldn't go to sleep however, because we had no indication that anyone would let us know when we were going to hit our stop so we were left to fend for ourselves. That meant that until the train pulled into Greensboro, we were all peering out of the windows trying to figure out where we were. When the train finally arrived in Greensboro we all felt like we could finally relax.

That was of course, until we found out that one of our checked bags didn't make it. The best they could tell us was that it was either still on the train, or still in Alexandria. Sara filled out a form and they said we should call them.

On the plus side, Sunday afternoon we got the call that our wayward bag had made it back to Greensboro, so after work today we will go get it.

I still like the train, but I like Cresent 20 much better than Cresent 19.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:38 AM | Permalink

The trip was definately worth it and every session I sat in, I got an ace that I could keep. For those who need an analogy Imagine if you will that this was a world wide local food conference. In each session someone comes in and tells you about a local food that they have unique to their area and all about its nutritian, difficulty to harvest, difficulty to prepare, and maybe even difficulty to eat. You have never seen this food before, and you probably won't ever. You have your own food and it has its own ups and downs. The conference is all about food, but at the same time little of it directly applies to you. That was Project Summit to me. How about another analogy. Lots of religions have the same bible, but everyone gets something different out of it. Make since? I am thinking we will have to present next year so the guys with a quarter of a million employees, (like the Veteran's Administration) can see how PM works for a group who only has 130 employees. Same processes, just used very differently.

Today check out from the hotel is at noon, the train leaves at 7pm, we will arrive back in greensboro sometime after midnight. Fencing is at 2pm. Piece of cake!

Of all the things I am leaving behind, I think I will miss the sausage the most.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:15 AM | Permalink

Sara and I wandered into town today to visit some of the sights and sounds beautiful DC had to offer and we did it like locals. We rode the bus to the metro and took the metro into DC. It was a good way, and very inexpensive as well. The public transportation system here is very easy to figure out even if you aren't familiar with public transportation.

First stop, brunch at the Smithsonian Native American Museum. We had a sampler plate of six different Native American dishes. I liked them all, Sara liked all but one. That one was a cold slaw/salad that had cabage, and pinapple in it among other things. I didn't hate it, but I wouldn't order it again. After brunch we wandered the musieum avoiding the gift shops to some extent. Things there were in two categories, themed trinkets or rare authentic artifacts. At least they were priced like rare authentic artifacts. In the end, I went there because I thought Sara would enjoy it, Sara went because she thought I really wanted to go.

Misunderstanding solved, our next stop was the Air and Space musieum. This was a place I really wanted to go see, and couldn't last year. We spent what really wasn't enough time there, and moved on. We refused to even glance towards the gift shops. I think Sara knew that if I went, I would want to get something. Outside, we had Hebrew National hotdogs and bottled water from a McDonald's cart. Two dogs, and two bottles equalled $13.00. Darned find hot dog though, even if they didn't have chili, slaw, or onions. Apparently McDonald's carts only have mustard, catchup, relish, and sour kraut. Still, tube steak has never tasted so good. I am sure some will argue that bitterly in many directions but I'm not going there.

Finally I managed to get Sara to tell me someplace she really wanted to go. Talk about a morose individual! She chose the Holocost musieum of all things. Of course, in hindsight, I can't imagine someone like her wanting to do anything else. What more could one really expect from the person who is going to save the world. I felt like going in that she intended to know every person who ever lived and died during that dark time. She might have too were it not for the fact that there wasn't time, even rushing we weren't able to see half of it before they closed the place. If you are ever in DC you need to see this musieum. Like the Native American musieum, the building itself is a part of the experience, only where the Native American musieum was natural and made you feel closer to the earth, the Holocost Musieum wanted you to experience life from the perspective of the victums. it was both powerful and moving. You really probably ought to have three or so hours to take a quick tour of the place. If you have longer, slow down and take it all in. Its important. Maybe you can explain to me the fact that they have a restaurant. If my questions seems odd, you will just have to visit the musieum and see for yourself.

Tomorrow it is back to the seminars, and brown nosing sessions, back to perspective.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I give Sara the credit for the title. It came late in the eight hour workshop, a time that found us burned to a complete cinder and there was no coffee in site. I did learn something today. The word "intermediate" to describe a class doesn't mean that the class is for folks with a couple years of PM experience. It means, you need to be in an environment where you use on a daily basis at least 50% of the PMBOC. (Project Management Body of Knowledge). They were discussing fusion while I was trying to figure out what color the wheel ought to be.

Yes, today I was in over my head. I'm not talking about out of place like a viking in the Iraqi war. I'm not even talking in terms of being a cro-magnon enrolled in Harvard. I am sure you heard about scientist finding on some far away island a group of tiny little humanoids that they have named "hobbits". Yeah, well that would be me, a semi-evolved sapian made president of the United States. Ok, based on events of the last six years perhaps that isn't the best example. Suffice it to say that my primitive PM world was crushed today under the weight of a very rich and mind numbing process.

Speaking for myself, I think I came away with about 10% of what the very good instructor wanted me to leave with.
Much of what I learned came in the form of observations and bullet points written on a 4X6 mini legal pad. The class was titled, "Harnessing the Power of The Project Management and Business Analyst Partnership in Your Organization." It could have been titled "Blah blah blah project management blah analyst blah blah your organization." At least I walked away with an understanding of what a Business Analyst was. It isn't what I do, it isn't what I would really want to do and it really should be called "requirements management" because the whole gist of the job was figuring out EXACTLY and unquestionabily what the client wants, what the client plans to use it for, and why.

Other observations I discovered was things like the larger project management gets the less "PM Success" you can find. I hope one day that they discover and accept that thermodynamics effects business process as well physical ones. Who knows, perhaps the PM process is what is flawed. perhaps they expect too much and overestimate to much. Their "patch" is Business Analysis which is a job and a layer added to the planning side of the process. It seems the idea is if they know exactly what the client wants to start with, they will have a better chance of actually delievering it with project management.

I also learned that this year's #1 buzword is "Synergy". Based on my observations, "Synergy" is the process of hobknobbing with your peers at other companies with the idea of selling yourself to them, or hiring someone for your company. Synergy is like prostitution with business cards. At least that is the way it is used here. I actually heard this sentence, "Get together, mingle, create some synergy!" Well, if you insist, but I don't do anal.

I think it was about 3pm when I turned my glazed eyes to Sara and she whispers to me a song she made inspired by the great musical "Oklahoma!" Oh the PM and the BA can be friends. I smell a Tony!

The best I could come up was
Our PMO's got BA too,
CI-CIO,
with a process here and a process there,
here a risk, there a risk, everywhere a risk risk,
Our PMO's got BA too,
CI-CIO
(We're gonna need a bigger cowbell.)

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 6:22 PM | Permalink

That must be the plan. It is all part of the FBI anti-obscenity squad's plan to shut down a text only web site because the words found within were deemed "obscene". Apparently, the pay site in question accepts submitted stories of the erotic nature and was shut down for it. If they took down a website with erotic stories, surely Vladimir Nabokov (author of Lolita), and Anne Rice (who has written quite a few erotic tales herself) are next. Will they dig up the corpse of Nabokov and slap the cuffs on him in the name of "Smut Busters". I don't know, but my freedom of speech alarm is sounding off.

I look forward to how this goes down in the supreme court. Will they allow the Feds to decide what is decent and what isn't, or will they allow all Americans to have freedom of speech?

I know it isn't excatly "real" free speech. I know a whole bunch of things I could write right here that would get me visited by the feds. Sure they would bat me around a little, perhaps even violate me analy, but ultimately they couldn't do anything legally (unless I meant what I wrote and they could find evidence of it.)

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

一条母狗的儿子 !

There ain't no goram reason why a science fiction movie has got any right to make a grown man cry like a babe in arms.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:29 AM | Permalink

Remember back when Katrina was poised to hit New Orleans and the ultra conservative christian fundy types were saying that Katrina was the hand of god smiting the evil in New Orleans. (There were certainly other examples of this, many I read on Greensboro101.) I guess before I take the next step I need to drop my disclaimer. I enjoy reading the ultra conservative bloggers I find on Greensboro101. There is no wisdom in spending your days only reading the people you agree with. Best of all, if I don't have enough information about a topic I can learn enough from the ultra conservatives that I can take a strong opposing stance and still be hotly disagreed with by the ultra liberals. Plus left or right, nut jobs are entertaining and educational. I find that in social situations I have really enjoyed the company of the extreme left and right, and there is always plenty of good conversation to go around.

Now back to topic. I would like to get a little exercise. For the sake of this blog entry, lets make the assumption that the statement "Katrina was the hand of God..." is true. Its a really controversial statement but just play along with me here. Everyone who reads this knows that they either read that idea recently, or stated it themselves.

My take on this is if this were true than the rest of the sentence we heard "...smiting the great bastion of sin which is New Orleans" is false. Did it really punish the pervayers of sin and vice? Nope, they left the city and put their insurance agents on speed dial. The people punished were the poor and or elderly folks who could not flee the city. The strip club owners and other "organized sin" types lose a little short term business but they profit in the end as they use emanate domain to take the land where the poor people used to rent tiny appartments and put in casino's and even larger strip clubs which have smaller casino's inside where inside you can find tiny strip clubs. So the "organized sin", groups are rewarded for the collateral damage which was the impoverished masses.

What was the target then? Well the city got flooded, poor people lost what little they had, many lost their lives, the organized sinners profited, the oil pipelines got damaged, some refineries got tossed, we lost a few oil platforms.

Now the hand of god through Rita is getting ready to smite Texas. (Remember we are accepting for the sake of argument that hurricanes are the hand of god.) I haven't read anything about Texas being a wretched hive of scum and villainy. (Political jokes asside) So what are they standing to lose? Homes, businesses, a few lives, and the island of Galvaston come to mind. Oh yeah, and 1/4 of all US oil refining capacity.

If we are going to accept that these storms are the almighty's bitchslap to the wicked, then it looks like the man upstairs is ticked off at United States oil production. Now why would that be?

Maybe it has to do with the US breaking that whole "thou shalt not kill" thing over in Iraq or the everpopular turn the other cheek thing that Jesus was fond of. It could have to do with avarice over the oil in the middle east. It could be the oil itself, though the ultra conservatives would argue that it was put there specifically for us to use and it will never run out thank the lord.

Swish it around in your head for a while like Listerine.
But don't forget to spit.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you have been reading long you might remember some time back I received a coffee care package from Hawaii. I really appreciated it and I kept all the empty bags, but over all those coffees weren't all that good to me because I couldn't get away from the chemical taste in them.

I recently received a new care package from Hawaii this time with some coffee from The Bad Ass Coffee Company, and a bag of Lemon and Salt Marlin Jerky. Yes, Marlin like the fish. Both rocked, and I'm chewing some Marlin as we speak having finished the last cup of Hula Pie earlier this morning.

The Hula Pie coffee is a flavored coffee with no chemical aftertaste at all. The flavorings themselves are subtle, like a good wine. Chocolate and coconut with other delicate flavors gave it a sweetness and flavor that did nothing to hide the kona beans. Or to put it in a less snobby way, the flavor was more like an tastful accessary to a great outfit.

I would certainly recommend this to anyone, and if I were able to order my coffee online Bad Ass would be at the top of my list.

Thanks Guys!

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

First off I love the fact that it is still called a "crisis". This has been going on for years without solution, it isn't even building, it is just holding steady. It is a problem. It could even be called a huge major problem. But it isn't a crisis. When I think crisis, I am thinking of raw stump hemorrhaging blood. The airline thing is a stump certainly, but its not a raw gaping wound with the patient dying on the table.

Ok. Maybe it is. Lets go with the patient on the table analogy. The airlines are certainly hemorrhaging money. But it really isn't their money that is hemorrhaging. If you took a person with their hand ripped off hemorrhaging blood to the emergency room the first thing they would do is stop the bleeding. Then they would add more blood to keep the patient alive, and if they couldn't carefully sew the hand back on, they would fix the stump so it wouldn't be open raw and bleeding anymore.

So the man with the ripped off hand is the airlines, and the emergency room is congress. What congress is doing is going "Oh my gosh! That man is bleeding to death! Quick add more blood! They aren't trying to stop the bleeding at all, they are just adding blood for the patient to squirt out on the floor. Maybe congress thinks that the hand will magically just grow back. Maybe they are so freaked out by the stump they refuse to acknowledge it. Either way, how many billion dollars a year end up squirted out of the stump onto the floor?

Yes, that analogy is probably not for the squeemish. Lets make a new one.

Darwinism says that in a place with limited food resources only the strongest most able to adapt animal will survive. Most of the dinosaurs failed to make it because they couldn't adapt to a cooling environment and limited food resources. The whooly mamoth who evolved and thrived in the frozen world, didn't make it when the world thawed out. Thunderdome, two men enter, one man leaves. It is odd but man has a funny habbit of trying to pull a fast one on the natural order of things by stubbornly refusing to let the weak ones die off. This same habbit has manifested itself where airlines are concerned.

Walmart, Dell, Google, Microsoft, giants in their respective fields became giants because they adapted quickly and crushed their competition. So now they make gobs of money offering products and services on the cheap. Any competition they might have pales before their trememdous bottom line might.

ATA, Delta, Southwest, American Eagle, American West, Continental, Northwest, Southwest, United, US Airways, these are only the major airlines in America. There are a 177 other smaller carriers. That might count a few air freight compainies, when I got my list of the major carriers they included, UPS, and Fedex. If darwinism were just allowed to take place here in a few short years you would have a handful of carriers, and one major player. The major player wouldn't be that expencive because the volume of tickets they are selling would keep the cost down just like shopping at Walmart. Best of all this major player would be solvent all by themselves and wouldn't have to be bailed out by the federal government every few years like is taking place now.

You know when I woke up to NPR this morning they didn't say "airlines going bankrupt", they said, "airlines going bankrupt again". How can anyone expect that many competitors to survive and thrive with such a small number of passengers to go between them. They do what they have to, they try to undercut their competition, and there is so much competition that they end up operating at a loss. But that's ok, because when the money runs out they can just go to Uncle Sam and have their bank accounts refilled again. (blood transfusion if you like the first analogy)

Let the bankrupt airlines die. Let the strongest and most able to adapt survive and prosper.

Or, if you are bent another way, you can just let the government take over the airlines completely and run it like the post office. (For those of you who had a stroke at that last sentence, I drink to your memories.)

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:36 AM | Permalink

The book is called YOU: The Owners Manual and I read it. If I am only able to read one book a year, I made a really good choice. I had health in highschool, and I had health in college. I have had at various points in my life Red Cross first aid, CPR certification. At one time very recently I even had Red Cross first aid CPR AED instructor's certification. This book was better than all of that put together.

Are you one of those people when they get a new car of some new piece of electronics where you sit down and read the manual. Ok sure, maybe you don't read it before you hooked it up, turned it on, or drove away, but you did read it. If so this book is for you.

The authors Michael F. Roizen, Mehmet Oz, both doctors by the way, wanted to write a useful health book that would make since to the typical end user. They didn't write it for doctors. To use the car analogy, this book is the one in your glove box, not the repair manual in your mechanic's garage. The book in your glove box is really an amazing little book. Within its pages it explains all the major systems of your car, and what to do when that warning light goes off. It also tells you the recommended fluids, and maintenance schedule, so you can get the maximum enjoyment, and life out of your car without being stranded on the side of the road.

That is what YOU: The Owner's Manual does for you and the meat sack you walk around with. And again, it was written for the end user, not a trained professional. That means no long latin words, clea