ScaifeNet because we can't let Soros have all the fun...

While my posting has been light to non-existent as of late, I should point out that February marks my 10th anniversary for blogging. I was 26-years-old when I sent out my very first blog post, back then on Blogger. Ten years of blogging, and what a ride it's been. It's been at different times a fun writing exercise/distraction, a modest money-making venture, and a crucial sanity saver during one of the darkest chapters of my life. So, yeah, I think it's been worth it....

I try not to delve too much into politics nowadays, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I find politics jarringly boring. Also, I've discovered there are a lot of people in the world who have an almost cult-like devotion to their political views and believe they have a divine right not to be offended. Such people are known as "soul crushing jerks." But, I also have a deep appreciation for the art of puns, and with presidential candidates with names like Newt and Mitt, I can't help but jump in with my own brand of political punditry. Sure, it's been suggested puns are lazy writing, but I'm a lazy writer, so I'm fine with that. First, a nod to the Republican presidential candidates who have already bowed out of contention. First, there was the former Minnesota governor who we heard Pawlenty about, even though he was about as exciting as soccer. Another Minnesota politician--the only woman in the field--also dropped out, which is too bad, because her craziness made politics almost entertaining, so it would be nice to have her Bachmann. The Republicans also briefly fielded an African American candidate, but it eventually was revealed that if there was a woman he worked with in the past, chances are he harassed Herman. In the end, Cain wasn't able. Which brings us to the remaining batch of candidates vying to take the country Barack from our current Obamanation. I...

For those of you who have been wondering what my wife and I have been up to when it comes to the business I've mentioned here over the last few months, well, here you go....

I've always been fascinated by marketing, by which I mean I've never given marketing much thought unless a company does something colossally stupid, marketing-wise. Take this week, for example. In a keynote speech given during a presentation in Las Vegas, a Mercedes-Benz spokesperson used an image of Che Guevara to augment the concept of technological revolutions taking place in the automobile industry. Leaving aside the irony of a luxury automobile company invoking the image of a Communist revolutionary who was anti-capitalist to his core, Guevara was, also, basically an insane guy who didn't mind killing a few hundred or thousand people who happened to disagree with him. As good ideas go, this wasn't one of them. It's a bit like if La-Z-Boy were to use an image of, say, Hitler, reclining in front of a fireplace, saying "Ahh, Mein Kampfy chair!" I always like to try to imagine the marketing meetings during which horrible ideas like this were hatched and approved. I mean, it takes a considerable amount of historical illiteracy to think Che Guevara is a good icon to rely upon for selling vehicles most people can't even afford. That's my polite way of saying it had to have been a room full of fairly young marketing interns, one of whom was maybe wearing one of those hip Che Guevara tee shirts that proves he's an outside-the-box thinker. MARKETING INTERN #1 (MI1): Okay, we have to come up with...

I've never thought much of Eugene Robinson's opinion writing, which always tends to resort to the lowest common denominator where everything boils down to racism. But his recent remarks on the Rachel Maddow show made me feel compelled to comment on his willfully ignorant stupidity: "He's not a little weird, he's really weird," Robinson said of Santorum. "And some of his positions that he has taken are just so weird that I think that some Republicans are off-put. Not everybody is not going to be down, for example, with the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child. It was a body that they took home to kind of sleep with it, introduce it to the rest of the family. It's a very weird story." For obvious reasons, this addled bit of thinking bothers me more than just a little bit. First off, it's not accurate; Santorum's son lived for two hours after birth. But that doesn't even really matter. A baby that was deeply wanted and loved, yet was stillborn or short-lived, is an epically tragic personal event. And it's not just the loss of the child. When I think back to the loss of my son after only two all-too-brief days, we also mourned the life we had been planning (with ultrasound images we cherish), the family of five we were going to be but were no longer, the dream of raising a twin boy...

My wife and I are continuing to pursue my wife’s dream of opening a small business, which means we spend about 40 percent of our time getting the business ready, 60 percent of our time arguing aggressively, 50 percent of our time trying to take care of two children and 40 percent of our time being atrociously bad at calculating percentages. Because we both spent most of our lives avoiding mathematics and accounting the way Keira Knightly avoids anything resembling food, we weren’t adequately prepared for the complexities of keeping accurate small business accounting records. To help us track our accounting, we purchased an accounting software program called QuickBooks which, contrary to its name, is neither a book and is in no discernible way quick. Hoping to save money on an accountant consultation on how to use QuickBooks, my wife bought a copy of “QuickBooks 2012 for Dummies,” which seemed appropriate but, after reading about 70 pages, it became painfully obvious to me that we needed “QuickBooks 2012 for Lobotomized Chimpanzees with ADD.” I thought, after reading 70 pages, I was prepared to at least tinker with QuickBooks, but as soon as I fired up the program, I realized the author of “QuickBooks 2012 for Dummies” was an absolute liar. Worse, judging by the tone of the book, he really enjoyed being a liar. I can’t help but believe he sat in front of his keyboard, tapping out lie after...

This is simply too amazing not to post on my bl. . . THUNDERJOURNAL!...

Lately, I’ve had to come to terms with an unfortunate truth about parenthood, which is: I have absolutely no idea how to properly dress a baby girl. Our first child, Aiden, was, and remains, a boy. The cold hard fact is, you can dress a boy in anything. Cut head and arm holes into a garbage bag, and you have a perfect rainy day poncho for a boy. Try that with a girl and people will likely think you’re trying to throw her away, at worst, or punishing her, at best. The thing is, I mistook the ease by which I could dress our boy as some sort of talent on my part. The fact I could put jeans and a tee-shirt on Aiden and have him look presentable was something I viewed as a great parenting accomplishment. But then our daughter came along and totally torpedoed my inflated opinion of myself as an accomplished dresser of young humans. This torpedoing didn’t happen right away, mind you, because for the first several months our daughter’s wardrobe consisted almost entirely of onesie outfits. Unless you have a deeply ingrained fear of zippers or buttons, you’d have to be a colossal idiot to mess up dressing a child in a onesie. So, my inflated opinion of myself as a brilliant dresser of infants remained intact until our daughter went and grew big enough to require “outfits.” Girl outfits are astronomically more difficult...

Opening a business requires a lot of thinking. I hate that....

Husband dives into nine tons of trash to find ring That's the lead story on MSNBC.com. Seriously. Economic stagnation? European chaos? That's just boring stuff. Let's lead with a story of a guy who went dumpster diving to find a ring. The fact I graduated with a journalism degree 13 years ago and now I'm looking to open a secondhand furniture store with my wife is COMPLETELY coincidental....

A few months ago, my wife became seriously dedicated to the idea of opening her own business. Without going into the details of her business plan, I can divulge that it requires her husband, who is me, to lift and move vast quantities of furniture from a U-Haul trailer into our garage and porch. My wife grew tired of constantly renting a U-Haul to go pick up more furniture for me to lift and move, so she started looking for good deals on large freight box trucks. For those unfamiliar with box trucks, they're basically some of the largest vehicles you can drive without having to obtain a commercial driver's license. As with the unexpected constant furniture moving, I likewise didn't expect to be the primary pilot of the box truck once one was procured. But, if there's one thing I've learned about marriage, it's to expect the unexpected. Well, last week, my wife officially obtained a 1992 Ford box truck which gets, roughly, five gallons per mile. This thing drinks more fuel than Lindsay Lohan drinks booze. I'd driven a couple box trucks before, but only over short distances and always through very rural environments. The box truck my wife purchased, however, was located in the heart of the Twin Cities. This struck me as completely unfair. People who know me know I'm an easily stressed out guy. Ask me to do something completely out of the ordinary, and...

They were just following my advice. . . You know, sort of: A neighboring hotel's staff alleged voiced concerns about having to recently escort hotel employees to and from bus stops late at night due to inappropriate behavior, such as public masturbation, from street protesters....

This video was of Aiden reacting to my reaction while watching this:...

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demonstrations continue to confound those trying to understand what it's all about. Which isn't surprising, since no OWS protester seems to be able to adequately or coherently verbalize exactly what OWS is all about. According to one MSNBC.com headline/article today: "Another idea for student loan debt: Make it go away." That's a peculiar solution, and it's a solution that indicates such protesters probably didn't take a lot of critical thinking classes whilst packing on their student loan debt. But, that brings me to my own personal great OWS protest idea. I think the OWS protests and the ideas expounded by OWS participants need to be more critically debated. I mean, mass protests are great and all that, but the OWS protests seem to be descending into general chaos, which in turn leads to inevitable clashes with law enforcement, followed by arrests. And, arrests tend to be counterproductive to getting ideas out there. So, rather than simply protesting, I again say we need debate. Mass protests need to turn into mass debating. I'm a huge advocate of mass debating. In my opinion, everyone should take some time out of their busy lives to mass debate. A daily mass debating session would almost certainly relieve a lot of the OWS stress we see building up. If the OWS movement would simply get together and mass debate, I genuinely think we'd see a lot of progress. I know...

Last month, science was rocked to its core when it was announced the speed of light may not actually be the interstellar speed limit after all. And, since it was science that was rocked, pretty much no one else cared. Unfortunately, I'm a journalist, which means I have to both pretend to care about science AND write like I know what I'm talking about. So, let me just say, this announcement is huge. Maybe. Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" holds that nothing can travel faster than light, because the faster an object moves, the more mass it requires, and once an object approaches the speed of light, it would need infinite mass--which means any time you're standing in light, you're being crushed by mass. As a journalist, I have to think about this concept in layman's terms, so imagine the impossibility of Rosie O'Donnell running a three minute mile, and you can begin to understand Einstein's point. Although, I personally think he just smoked a lot of marijuana--patent clerks have a lot of extra time on their hands, if you catch my drift. Anyway, last month scientists observed some quirky little particles called neutrinos outpacing light particles by 60 nanoseconds. I wrote that last sentence with such confidence, I'm betting you think I know what neutrinos and nanoseconds actually are. I don't, of course, but "Neutrinos" sounds like a super healthy cereal, and "nanoseconds" sounds like a second helping of "Nanos,"...

I'm not dead. Just exhausted....