Mike Browne’s Blog

This absolutely faked up version of a Christmas classic is exactly how I’d love to see it done. I knew Ralphie was a psycho. Enjoy!

A Christmas Gory

It’ll do more than put your eye out. Oh, and make sure you click the “inspiration” link.

Cross my Heart! A Stage For Fathers to be Heard

Arnie is biking across Canada in the hopes of raising funds and awareness of fathers’ rights. Its an interesting site with lots of fascinating opinions. Some of what Arnie has to say may be found quite provocative by some folks, especially those who’ve been through this.

I can only imagine the pain of this kind of thing for all involved, especially the children. I personally know many people, some very close to me, who have been through this painful ordeal (on both sides). I hope I never have to feel it myself.

At the end of Arnie’s story he says, “Together, with media, I want to pressure politicians to make changes to Family Law so it will endorse a healthy family situation, particularly in volatile divorce scenarios.” Arnie’s heart is in the right place for sure. Anything that has an aim of healing is worth a peek.

This was sent by my buddy Paulie of RadioNL in Kamloops who you can see smiling broadly (and baldly) on the Cross Canada Trek page with Arnie and Dan, who is covering Arnie’s trek.

The above photo shows John Lennon signing a copy of the last album released prior to his death, Double Fantasy, for the obsessed Catcher in the Rye reading fan who would murder him later that evening – still a chilling image.

I was only 11 years old and I remember it very well. I knew who the Beatles were as I appreciated their music even at such a young age. I could not sleep that night, and in Nova Scotia at the time our AM station was not on all night, so I used to play with my purple transisitor radio and were able to pick up far away stations. That night I ended up listening to stations out of New York talking about Lennon’s being shot and then announcing his death sometime later.

Although too young to understand the significance of that night and its events. Now I am just grateful to remember.

Here are some of today’s web articles remembering Lennon 25 years later:

Lennon’s death lingers for those who were there – MUSIC – MSNBC.com

Northern Songs – John Lennon in Canada, 1969 – CBC

Liverpool, NYC remember Lennon – CNN.com

On This Day – December 8 – BBC

We still miss you John.

‘Tis the season. Have a shot at Sober Santa 2. Get Santa hammered by walking him from glass to glass wth your arrow keys (the ones near your numberpad on the keyboard). The burping and farting is hilarious. *Hiccup* After you’re done wiith that one try Sober Santa 1 from last year

I love Charlie Brown’s Christmas growing up. I still do. In fact we have the DVD. I think we’ll watch it agin soon. Over at fark.com there was a link to a trivia page containing 5 things you didn’t know about the show. From there I did a little quiz about the classic Christmas special. I scored 90%. How did you do?

Who the hell is Sinterklaas (I know the page is in Dutch) you say? Well, its none other than Saint Nicholas aka Santa! Being of dutch heritage (as I now find out) I get to open presents on the eve of the feast of Sinterklaas which is December 5th… Today!! Apparently christians and non-christians (I guess that would be me. I’m such a heathen) all celebrate in the Netherlands.

This morning Sinterklaas came in the form of a box of goodies from birthmom Dianne! Wee!

The text on the box, I think, roughly translates to Merry Christmas. And it is December 5th so I opened the box. You’ll see what I found inside after the jump.
[continue reading…]

Now comes the unpacking. I hate this part.

Basically we’re still living out of boxes. If you have seen my underwear there is a reward. I am “going commando” as the kids say today, or “regimental” as those whacky kilt wearing Scotsman like to say.

It seems we had more stuff than we thought and this whole moving twice in 6 months thing is making me very tired. My office is coming along nicely and looking much like NASA’s control center in Houston. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Below is a picture of a work in progress. Eventually everything will be put in its place, books will be on the shelves and wires will be neatly squared away:

This morning I rolled out of bed and went at it again. After putting away my 450+ DVDs and setting up Carol’s computer I headed outside to the dreaded garage. We still had stuff to move from the garage into the house as our helpers (at my urging as I felt sorry for them) left many boxes there. There was so much crap in there that I couldn’t fit the car in. It’s a two car garage and we have a Hyundai Elantra. Yikes! Yes, what you’re visualizing is probably fairly close to reality. I moved all of Art and Jo’s stuff (they’re our landlords) to one side and ours to the other. Then I took what belonged in the garage from the house and vice versa. All this took about four hours, but there were rewards:

REWARDS
– The car is in the garage.
– I got some exercise.
– I have a strong desire to stay in one place for a long while.
– All the boxes the belong in the house are in the house.
– All the boxes that belong in the garage are in the garage.
– I have something to blog.
– I get to have a shower as I smell like a ball’s nutsack (the smell is not a reward).

That’s it for now. I may write more later. Now I have to eat a litle lunch, walk the dog and tackle the living room.

There! All done. I don’t think we’re forgetting anything. Wait a minute… what’s that in the photo? Oh, dustbunnies… We need to vaccuum a bit more. Dog? We have a dog?

Yes, this is one of the reasons why I have not been blogging as much. We’re on the move once again. In fact we’ve been dragging stuff for a few weeks. As I didn’t move once when I was a young’un moving tends to make me slightly (an understatement for sure) crazy. The fact that we’re moving twice in one year is nothing short of insanity. However, we couldn’t turn the place down when we knew of its existence and the deal we could get.

Our friends, Art and Jo-ann, have retired and moved northward to Endako, BC aka the middle of nowhere. As a resullt of their move they have a 3 bedroom /2 full bathroom house with a two car garage and a fireplace in Burnaby just 10 minutes up the street that needs tenants on whom they can rely and we fit the bill. Its dead quiet there and twice the size of the loft we live in now. The kicker is our having to pay $400 les for our rent per month. Who could turn that down? I’m crazy but not stupid, so away we go.

I’ll have a cool new office with plenty of shelf space and so will Carol. Our bedroom is huge and has an ensuite. The living/kitchen/dining area is open and will fit the 52″ TV we’re looking at very nicely.

So here we sit among the boxes again, ready to go. Breakfast at “Rotten Ronalds”, a rented piece of shit one ton from U-Haul and help from some friends and Carol’s uncle should get the job done.

I’ll post pictures of the move later. Poor Moosh doesn’t know what hit her.