Happy Cinco de Mayo!!

Happy (belated) Cinco de Mayo!

Cinco de Mayo, which means “sink full of mayonnaise” in Spanish, is the day of the year Mexicans take a few minutes to go through their fridges and throw away any jars of mayonnaise they find that are past their Best Before dates. Think of it as the alimentary equivalent of checking smoke detectors on Fall Back Day.

Resurrecting “My Response to ‘100 Reasons Not to Look at Porn’ “

Just a quick note… I’m trying to get back in the blogging swing of things so I began looking through stuff and doing a little site maintenance. What I found was one of my posts was listed as a draft but I’m sure I posted it because it has a bunch of associated readers’ comments.

The bashful post in question is about whether porn is good or bad and is in the literary form of me making remarks to young churchgoers’ reasons why porn is bad.

Please go check it out at “My Response to ‘100 Reasons Not to Look at Porn’ “.

Thanks!

What To Do When Your Back Is Against The Wall

“The Italian Wall” is a bane to The Redneck Princess. From this angle it doesn’t look to me like a major eyesore but the imposition of obstructions can be vexing to those who for many years have had the benefit of scenic vistas.
Photo courtesy TheRedneckPrincess.net… if “courtesy” means that I snagged it off her site without her express permission.

Welcome back, boys and girls, to Uncle HoaiPhai’s problem solving club!

This week we will be tackling a problem The Redneck Princess is having with her neighbours in Abbottabad Abbotsford, BC — a problem so vexing to her that she has written at least twice about it on her own blog, here and here.

Revenge Inc. Part II: The Settling of Accounts

Revenge is never pretty (but it can be quite satisfying).

Last week in Revenge Inc. I made my readership an offer they couldn’t refuse. I don’t want to say that the vast majority of them refused my offer because should anything sudden and unfortunate happen to them a coroner’s inquest could infer that I might have a “motiva uvam acerbam” [sour grapes motive]. So, to be on the safe side, let’s just say that only two of them accepted my most generous offer.

Let’s dive right in and solve some problems!

Revenge Inc.

Oops! That’s a shame. How’d it happen?

Life can be frustrating, what with all the obstacles that it keeps throwing in our paths, but we have to remain philosophical… what choice do we have? I mean it’s frigging life we’re talking about here… it always wins in the end so we’re pretty much screwed. But when it is another person who is making things difficult for us, well, that’s a different story.

We could, I suppose, reason with the person causing us problems to achieve an equitable outcome but diplomacy tends to put us back into the position we were in before hostilities began and ignores compensation for any wrongs, real or perceived, done to us. This is where retaliation shows itself to be the better, more just, and more satisfying solution to many of life’s little problems.

The Be Your Own Boss Kit

We all need to feel useful, don’t we? One of the things that validates us is having a good job and that’s why being unemployed is so stressful, even if finances are not an immediate concern. If you know someone who’s out of work and want to really stick it to them and don’t mind hitting below the belt, start talking about their employment situation. I know how devastating it can be because I was once on the receiving end of the dreaded “Job Talk”.

My Response to “100 Reasons Not to Look at Porn”

Well, with exactly what kind of photo did you expect me to head off a post about pornography? Did you really think I would risk my blog’s more-or-less good standing as being family-friendly by having a nudie shot right up top for everyone to see? Anyway, a shaggy dog seems quite appropriate considering this post weighs in at around 8,000 words. Don’t worry, it’s long but fairly painless — most of it is in numbered point form.

I was sniffing around the interwebs and came across several references to what looks like a now-defunct comment thread entitled, “100 Reasons Not to Look at Porn”. As near as I can figure it, this page dates back to February of 2010 and was part of a site that had been around since at least as far back as 2007. TeensAgainstPorn.com described itself thus:

“Teens Against Pornography is an online community where teens who are struggling with sexual purity can seek advice, prayer, and support.”

My best guess is that the page was put up as a project for a church’s youth group that had a number of members struggling with resisting temptation to look at porn. Apparently someone came up with the idea that the group’s members could support each other in their quest to become porn-free by sharing their own private reasons for thinking that staring at porn is not the best way to spend time. I guess they opted for an on-line forum to discuss this issue instead of bringing it up at meetings because…

Last-minute Christmas Gift Ideas for Bad Little Boys and Girls

Even with Christmas right around the corner and Santa ramping up his reindeer-prod battery recharging schedule, some of you still have not finished your Christmas shopping. I know I haven’t.

Chances are you’ve already bought stuff for the people who are semi-close to you, like your alcoholic yet surprisingly-still-single drinking buddies or the gals in your Stitch ‘n’ Bitch Quilt Club & Coffee Clutch. Acquaintances like these tend not to be too particular when it comes to being on the receiving end of free stuff and even if they don’t like your gift, who cares? It’s not like your world would fall apart without these marginal individuals cluttering up your social calendar.

Buying something meaningful for spouses and/or partners is a completely different story. It’s a bit more of a challenge to shop for people you truly care about who might read into a poorly chosen gift a lack of effort or even a lack of love for them. There are three different shopability profiles for that complimentary component in your love life…

If You Could Have Any Car… ?

 

Wouldn’t it be great to have a real hot-rod?

I love cars. I don’t know nearly as much about them as I’d like and I would certainly benefit from some advanced driver training but I really do love them. And, being a guy, the question has come up many times between me and another guy, “If you could have any car in the world, which would you choose?”

August Fool’s Day 2012

Remember the excitement you felt back in elementary school when April Fool’s Day rolled around? Remember your high school years when April Fool’s Day could very well mean a trip to the nurse’s office and getting out of History and Phys Ed due to your injuries or a mandatory interview with local law enforcement? Wasn’t that fun? Why did all that have to end? Society, in the form of our educational institutions, beats the wonder and “fun” out of a child, that’s why.