Trick-or-Treat

What do you get when you combine a favorite holiday, a much-loved pet and horrible judgment? Halloween costumes for dogs.

The Bridal Dog. Isn't s/he lovely? Good luck throwing the bouquet when it's sewn to your artificial limbs.


Scooby-Doo. I don't understand why you want to dress your dog up as another dog. Someone help me with this.



Herro Kitty. If there's anything worse than dressing up your dog as another dog ... it's dressing it up as a cat.



Pippy Longstockings(?). I don't even know what this is supposed to be. But I do know that if this dog had any idea how ridiculous it looks, it would kill and eat its owner.



Raggedy Ann. I wasn't even sure what this costume was supposed to be at first. Is "Red-Headed Amish Woman" a Halloween costume?



Dorothy. Toto is now Dorothy. Oh the irony of the role reversal. This dog's sad look reminds me of the look I will soon have on my face when I have to go back to St. Louis for the second time in three weeks. Ugh.



The Rest of the Wizard of Oz Characters. Ahhh, that lucky dog doesn't just have one costume -- it has 4 Wizard of Oz inspired outfits. If I were the dog, I would change the words of "If I Only Had a Brain" to "If I Only Had a Clear Shot At My Owner's Jugular."



Kenny From South Park. Could this dog look any more depressed? This one is definitely high up on the Britney Spears suicide watch.



Tiki Dog. Two things immediately struck me about this costume. First, I guarantee you that its owner is a huge Jimmy Buffet fan. Second, Hawaiian shirts look no better on ugly dogs. I would rather wear a t-shirt that says "I like to lick myself" than this gawdawful shirt.

Red Sox Win

For those that weren't closely watching it on TV (and seriously, I know everyone was), the Boston Red Sox prevailed over the Colorado Rockies, by sweeping the best of 7 series.

This is small karma for me having wasted several hours earlier in the week trying to buy tickets online -- only to have the feeble Rockies' website crash repeatedly, before being taken down entirely .... and then have it up again, only to watch it be entirely impossible to access. But I'm not bitter.

In a replay of 2004, the Red Sox -- who were down this year to the Cleveland Indians 3-1 just as they were to the Yankees in 2004 -- won seven games in a row to capture their second World Series in four years (and 3rd in the last 90). And to top it off, the Yankees are on the brink of mediocrity having fired their manager and losing their best player to free agency. Not a bad baseball weekend at all, come to think of it.

2007 Rugby World Cup

It had to end. After watching 48 matches over six weeks totaling more than 70 hours, the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France has finally come to an end. As no one reading this likely knows, South Africa defeated the reigning world champions, England, with an impressive showing in Paris on Saturday.

The USA finished ….. uhhh, not first. USA rugby is years behind other nations, mostly due to the fact that it’s a poorly organized, amateur sport that’s not shown on network television. Hell, it’s difficult to find any coverage in the U.S. despite the fact that over four billion have watched at least part of one match.

And of those four billion people, guess which who put off sleep and work to watch every match? Me. (Ironically, that’s also the same answer to the question “Who doesn’t have a life?”)

And of all the games and tries (i.e., touchdowns) that I saw scored, the best one was scored by none other than a USA rugby player. Takudzwa “Z” Ngwenya scored the try which was named try of the year but the International Rugby Board.

On September 30, the soon-to-be champions South Africa defeated the United States by the score of 64-15 in Montpellier. This would technically classify as a drubbing. However, the highlight occurred just before the end of the first half. It began deep in the USA’s territory, when flanker Todd Clever (in the red) intercepted a South Africa pass and proceeded to deliver a nasty stiff-arm to the face of SA’s flyhalf (Butch James), who then flipped it to one of his teammates. Two passes later and the ball reached Z Ngwenya just inside his own half. As South Africa’s Brian Habana -- who was named Rugby Player of the Year and who’s widely regarded as the fastest man in rugby -- came across to make the tackle, Ngwenya checked, juked, sidestepped and then absolutely dusted the South Africa wing to score the try.

Even the commentary is great. “Chase me ... I’ve left you, mate .... I've left you.”

Sorry the video quality is so poor, but the video keeps getting taken down by the rugby elves. I guess it has something to do with copyright violations or something like that. Oh well, here it is. Enjoy it while it lasts.

A Funny Thing Happened To Me On My Way To The Blog .....

I know it's been a long time and I really have no excuse to not post a note indicating "I'm alive" or what have you. But October has been a hectic month, filled with a bunch of distractions, hobbies and the like. So without further ado, I present the "Top Ten List of Things With Which I Have Been Preoccupied," which have precluded me from blogging more recently:

1. The Nintendo Wii. I bought the Wii two weeks ago ostensibly "for the kids." However, I think I can conservatively estimate the amount of Wii playing time as me - 97%, kids - 3%. The games are fun and intuitive and quick to play -- which is the real danger. I'll finish a conference call (or hell, I'll even be on one) and I'll play a little golf or bowling, which games usually last 5 minutes. Of course that presumes I only play one game. Uhh, hi folks. I won't go into the gory details about how fun the game is, but I will say that the worst part of the Wii is that you get a message indicating the amount of time played on the Wii and which games were played. Goodbye two hours of my day, hello unemployment.

2. Cal Golden Bears Football. Cal's heartbreaking loss to Oregon State this past weekend. Honestly, it was the most crushing defeat of any sports team that I care about that I can recall. I was honestly been numb for like 3 days. It all came down to the very last play which, to this day, is still too painful for me to watch. I would honestly rather watch my own colonoscopy than the last 10 seconds of that game. And no, I would not characterize this as a healthy relationship. Cal is basically the Ike Turner to my Tina. I think I need some help here.

3. Rugby World Cup 2007. To date, I have watched all 46 rugby games played at the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France, which is approximately 70 hours of rugby over the past 6+ weeks. You do the math. Not pretty. I'm now faced with the dilemma as to who to root for in the final -- England or South Africa? Root for England and you get 4 more years of insufferable boasting. Root for South Africa and I feel like I'm tacitly rooting for apartheid. It's really a lose-lose situation.

4. Loathing Our Administration. Seriously, only 459 more days until GW is gone. The day can't come quick enough.

5. Scarlett Johannson.


6. Baseball Playoffs. I know I'm only one of 17 people or so that give a shit about baseball, but my team (Red Sox) is in the playoffs, although they are on the brink of elimination. While the playoffs have been someone anticlimactic, it's fun to see teams like Cleveland and Colorado go far in the playoffs, as one team hasn't won the World Series in 60 years and the other has never been before.

7. Ellen DeGeneres' Dog Fiasco. Okay, not really. Let's move on people. There are far bigger issues in the world. Don't get me wrong, I care about animals -- just not celebrities' animals.

8. Napping. Really, this is totally underrated. I would suggest everyone try it more often.

9. Halloween Planning. I think I may decorate the house, although I'll probably be out trick-or-treating (a/k/a "Operation Get Daddy Needs Some Snickers") with the progeny. I haven't sorted out costumes, although I think that Kiefer Sutherland might have already locked up "Halloween Costume of the Millenium" award:


10. Work. Oh yeah, that. Yes, I've actually been doing some work, notwithstanding items 1-9. I will not re-hash matters, but things have been better recently. I'm headed to Shit Louis next week,

The Week's Recap

So Monday and Tuesday I enjoyed the distinct pleasure of working closely with the BPB. And by "enjoyed the distinct pleasure of working closely with" I really mean "got kicked in the nuts." Honestly, those two days were some of my worst days at my job. My stomach was in knots all day, I didn't sleep much, and was generally on edge and short all day long. I got positively reamed for something I worked on briefly over 3 months ago and which recently surfaced. I honestly didn't do anything wrong, but the BPB entirely blew things out of proportion and grilled me nonetheless for something that wasn't my fault. After talking down to me a couple of times, I was assigned a bunch of inane, busy work as my penance, which occupied most of Wednesday.

Today was much better, though, as highlighted by the BevoMo's insane 5 cent wine sale (buy one wine bottle of certain wines at regular price, get another bottle for a nickle). Seriously, how can you not love that? But after Tuesday, I was tempted to eat some "Angry Dog" supplement food myself:

Yes Virginia, It Is Monday ....

It's not three hours into the work day and I've already had an awkward call with my boss (hereinafter referred to as the "Bi-polar Bear or "BPB"). You ever have one of those calls where you cringe the entire time and then thank the 8 lb. 6 oz. baby jesus once it's over? It was like that, but more painful. It's like the feeling every male gets when they watch the answering machine scene from "Swingers" (which remains the most painful scene in movies, worse than Ned Beatty's infamous scene in "Deliverance"). Oh well, I guess I will torture myself further by watching what I'm sure will be a significant Ireland loss to Argentina in rugby. Happy Monday!

P.S. This cat is supposed to be a moving gif file, where the cat repeatedly throws punches. Still funny but not what I thought I had posted. Ugh, this day is not going well.