I Ain't No Bum, Mick. I Ain't No Bum.

"Hand grenade" or "Grand parade," which one?

My Choice: Fire in the hole! That reminds me; I ate spicy food today...

Greetings, fellow infidels! It is I, Dave the Wagner, with a bunch of empty words for you to wade through. What an odd hobby, that. You'd think that wading through empty words would get old after a while, yet still you show up here, every day, wearing that ridiculous hat and that bolo tie and those duct-taped Birkenstocks and smelling of garlic, Old Spice and a hint of cinnamon-curry haggis. You tromp all over my blog, ever the optimist, looking for that rare flash of insight, that mildly amusing anecdote, that warmly comical cat video, but no, I am a source of nothing but endless disappointment to you, and you scream and yell and you box my ears and...

What? Oh, I'm sorry. I had you confused with someone else, my mistake!

Went into the rug shop today, gettin' things done. Laying out a plan for the evolution of our current website, which is suffering from lack of love, like it's designer (ba dum dum!). But unlike it's designer, there is hope on the horizon for the site! We have plans! Plans, I tell you! Big plans! Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future!

Sorry, got carried away a bit.

Shannon is rockin' the Movie Quote leaderboard so far. I thought about mixing things up a bit by posting at different times during the day and/or making an "honor system" scoring twist, so that if you know a quote without having to look it up on Google, you get extra points. But I fear that making the scoring increasingly complex will only hinder things, so I'm leaning more toward keeping it simple. Of course, it's all moot, since at the last minute, I'm going to award myself 250,000 points and win the contest in a landslide...

Plus, I think I'll change the prize to the winner. Gone is the $400,000 Rolls Royce Phantom, and instead, the winner of this months Movie Quote Contest will win the Space Shuttle Enterprise, currently housed in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum at Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C.


It was the first Space Shuttle built for NASA in the mid seventies, and was originally named the Constitution, but was renamed to honor the Star Trek TV show after a successful write-in campaign by a bunch of sci-fi geeks with too much time on their hands. It never actually flew in space, though - in fact, it's maiden flight and last flight were both in 1977. It was basically built to test the shuttle design before they made the "real" ones. I'm telling you this in case you win the thing - you'll have something to chat with friends about when they come over to your house for a tupperware party and see the thing on your coffee table next to the Ansel Adams book and the small faux-crystal bowl half-filled with stale mixed nuts.

Of course, it's handy that it is housed near Dulles International, since I'm going to have to break into the museum and steal it. I'll create a diversion by starting the engines on the Spirit of St. Louis, then stuff the Enterprise into a backpack and carry it onto a flight back home, giddy with triumph. I'd fly it out of there, but it isn't mounted on a giant booster rocket...

So, while I was at work today, the Wagner Women celebrated the end of school and the beginning of the Summer of Freedom. They all get the Summer off, including wifey, who works for the Ramona School District - today was her last day. So, no doubt, the trips to the beach will be fast and furious and soon-coming. Of course, I avoid the beach like the sandy plague, but I've covered that here before - no need to dredge it up again just so I can milk the topic for a few courtesy laughs... If you want to offer up a few stale courtesy laughs, you'll have to track down the old posts about the topic yourself! You have to work hard to harvest my mediocrity around here, I'm tellin' you! Jerry Seinfeld I ain't!

OK, fine, fine already! Here's a video of stuff getting smashed, shot, and blown up in slow motion. Nothing like a good piece of hickory.

Sorry about the self-impressed music....

On an unrelated note, why is it that eating 6 regular tacos from Jack in the Box seems like such a good idea at the time? I mean, you always end up regretting such a move, right? Then for the next several hours, you taste them again every time you burp, and as your face scrunches up and you smack your lips a bit, you wonder why you thought it tasted so good the first time when obviously, you were sadly mistaken... you vow not to do it again, but that vow usually lasts 3 to 4 weeks, max... then you do it again...

Come on, back me up here! Tell me I'm not alone in this! Here, have a little more of this rather disappointing brandy... life is tough... but it's tougher if you're stupid...

Finished reading Point of Impact (by Stephen Hunter) today. My first reaction? Wish I hadn't seen the movie version (Shooter) first! I think the book would have been very good had I read it fresh. It was well-enough written, but obviously, I knew the way the story would unfold, so it held no surprises for me. Well, looks like it's back to Terry Brooks...

Also saw a Sci-Fi movie the other night, called Sunshine. I'd love to gripe about the plot, but I doubt any of you have seen it, or even heard of it. So let me just say a quick "What the heck!" and leave it at that. Rough business, the movie business. I'm gonna have to go back to loan-sharking just to take a rest...

Does it bother anyone else that our President is making cameos on late-night comedy shows? Does that seem sort of disrespectful to the office to anyone else? He was on The Colbert Report (from Bagdad) on Monday, in the segment where he orders a four-star general to shave Colbert's head... He popped on the big screen while Colbert was interviewing the General, and said he overheard their conversation about Colbert's inability to fully relate with the military audience because of his hair. Colbert said "You overheard the conversation? Are the military satellites really that powerful??" Obama said, "No, my ears are really that big."

Anyway, part of me chuckled, while the other part of me said, "What on EARTH is POTUS doing? And why does the phone always ring when you're in the bathtub?"

Meh, maybe I'm way off-base being a puzzled by that decision. Obama was on Conan O'Brien last week as well.

Ah, well. No biggie, I guess. Worse problems in the world, I suppose. I mean, I could be this guy...


I think he's going to be late for work...

Guess that's that for tonight. Good luck with the movie quotes tonight! Until tomorrow, remember, there will be joy again in this house! We will celebrate, among the dust and cobwebs!