More pictures of Moe

Moe was a studly kitty...

We often made reference to how our cat, Moe, was a stud. He weighed a whopping 20 pounds and was as big as one my old dogs, Snoopy, who was a rat terrier/fox terrier mix.

We got Moe and his sister, Murphy, from a farm. My wife wanted a cat bad. She wanted just one because she had always grown up with just one cat. I insisted that we get two because I didn't want her to just have one cat that loved just her. I wanted a cat, too. Besides, I argued, the cats will have each other to play with.

We picked out our two cats from the farm. One was a gray tabby cat and the other was a mostly grayish-black cat with a front of white fur with white paws. We named them Moe and Murphy. We mainly picked those names because we had seen a George Carlin skit in which he had two cats and a dog name Moe, Murphy and Verne. In this skit, Moe (his dog) tries to get it on with the male cat named Verne. We laughed so hard at that skit that we were reminded of it when it was time to choose names.

Moe’s full name was Mulder Moe. The Mulder part came from the popular show, The X-Files. We were big fans, so that’s what we thought would be cool to name our cats, so Moe was Mulder and Murphy was Scully. After a week of that, I was worried that it would sound really dated years later (and it does). Mulder and Scully never did stick.

When we picked up the cats, one thing really surprised me. They were practically the size of a full grown cat. Laura assured me that both cats were 8 weeks old. We assumed that they were going to get a lot bigger. We were right.

From the start, we knew he was going to be quite the character.

As a kitten, Moe was built with the shoulders of a bull dog. He would do a kind of strut waddle when we ran into a room. Before too long, he would get the nickname, Studly, because of the way that he would announce his presence to you. If he wanted affection from you, he’d walk over you, butt his head into your chin and plop all 20 pounds of him on you chest.

Moe quickly established himself as the dominate kitten. He would often chase his sister around the apartment. When we got a mouse toy on an elastic string that’s attached over a door, Moe went to town on it. He was so determined to get the mouse down that he, after many attempts of batting it down, grabbed it with his teeth and started walking slowly towards us. Meanwhile, the elastic was stretching and the door overhand part was bending. Before I could stop him, his grip on the elastic broke and off the mouse flew in the opposite direction. It wasn’t long after that that Moe gave up on it. He may have been an animal, but he wasn’t stupid.

Moe’s demeanor changed when, a year later, we moved to California. We had packed up the moving van with all of our stuff and the last thing to go was Moe and Murphy. They had decided to hide on top of the refrigerator. Moe was drooling, which is what cats do when they are stressed. On the way to California stuck in a truck cab, Moe hid under the seat and wailed. It was only after I reached behind the seat and touched him that he calmed down. From that point on, Moe would be very dog-like in that he seemed to develop separation anxiety.

We would be up all night with Moe wailing and it was only until he had a hand on him, that he’d be happy. Sometimes, my wife Laura, would have to sleep on the couch with her hand on him to keep him quiet. In the end, I would play with him for 30 minutes every night to wear him out.

Laura called a vet about it and she suggested we talk to one of the local colleges because it sounded like Moe was suffering from separation anxiety and she had never heard of a cat having it.

From that point on, Moe became an attack cat, the muscle of the house. If he didn’t know you or knew you didn’t like him even if you knew him, he’d hiss, jump at you or both.

We went on vacation and our friend, Jeff, was to come by and feed our cats periodically. He reported that he was terrified as our cats jumped out at him from corners, chased him downstairs and out the door. He had to bring his girlfriend back to help. “They’re just cats!” she exclaimed at him.

When we were trying to sell our old house, we kept the cats in the garage with the note: “Please don’t open the garage. Cats in here.” Of course, some people wouldn’t listen, so invariably we’d come home to messages that read, “The customer opened the garage door and let the cats out. We tried to finish the tour with them in the house, but the cats chased us from room to room. We cut the tour short and fled the house. Great attack cats!” We even had a realtor open house cancelled because the cats were let out and lunging at realtors. From that point on, Moe and Murphy were locked in a big pet carrier.

When we moved to Omaha, we had to find a baby sitter, so a co-worker of my wife’s offered her daughter. We had her come over to get acquainted with Moe and Murphy while I was there. Thinking it was all right, we left Julia and the baby sitter alone on another night. The next day, it was reported by the mother that the cats on several occasions had chased the babysitter and blocked her in the kitchen and the bathroom. All the while, Julia giggled and laughed while exclaiming, “Moe doesn’t like you! He loves me!”

Another babysitter’s father commented that we could write them off on our taxes “As horses!”

You had to be careful what you left out around Moe. If you had a drink of water on a table, it’d better be in a solid, heavy glass or hidden because usually when you weren’t looking, Moe would walk up to it, sniff it, reach up his paw and pull the glass down. He’d lap up your water that was spilled all over the table while you cursed at him and cleaned it up. He’d fake you out by not doing it for a while and then just when you relaxed, ‘DUNK!’, he’d do it again.

Because of Moe’s protective, bruising nature, we were a little concerned when Laura gave birth to our daughter, Julia. We had read from some people that they would get rid of a cat that would try to jump in a crib with their baby. I knew that wasn’t going to be an option, so we installed a screen door on Julia’s room to keep the cats out.

When we brought Julia home from the hospital, we set her down in her car seat down in front of Moe. Moe froze in his tracks with wide eyes. He then crawled forward and sniffed Julia up and down. He didn’t hiss, but he seemed a little freaked out.

I was a little worried about Moe around Julia, but Laura was sure of him. She said, “I think Moe will be her protector.”

While he never had cause to run protection, he did act like he was guarding her. While Julia crawled or played on a blanket, Moe would sit there like a sphinx in front of her. As Julia got older, she’d grab on to his fur or his ears. Sometimes, she’d climb on him. Moe would always take it without even trying to nip at her. As Julia’s adventures took to the back yard, Moe would be out there with her following her around. Some of her first words were “Moe!” or “Moe Moe!” as she’d call out to him constantly when he’d walk away.

His patience towards Julia was almost never ending. One day, Julia draped a necklace on his neck. He walked around with it all day and ended up wearing it for several days before he snagged it on a table and the beads went everywhere.

To my wife, Moe was her ‘Baby’. He had to have access next to her on the couch. If he didn’t get it, he made noises of displeasure. Then again, he made noises of displeasure for anything: if he didn’t have water, if he didn’t have food, if he wanted to be rubbed.

My wife always made alone time for Moe. At night, he’d curl up beside her and she’d stroke him for a long time. He’d always have his eyes closed with pleasure.

Then he’d get to me. He also had to have alone time with him lying on my chest. Sometimes, I’d be barely lying down and he’d saunter up my torso, nudge me in the chin with his head and plop down. I gave him what would probably be a face massage as I rubbed his chin and face while he purred in contentment…

Last week, Moe jumped up on our breakfast bar and laid there for hours. When it came time for bed time, my wife noticed that he hadn’t come up for his alone time. I went downstairs and found him eating. I grabbed him and brought upstairs to bed. He didn’t stay long. He ran out and went back to the breakfast bar. He didn’t come back.

The next night, he sat again on the breakfast bar. He wasn’t sleeping and he looked a little irritated. My wife mentioned that he didn’t look good and that we should make an appointment for him.

By Wednesday, Moe was still heading for the kitchen counter, a place he never spent time at. He sat with his paws curled in towards his body. He also was starting to smell a little as if he hadn’t been cleaning himself. I just assumed that he had a virus. I made the vet appointment for Friday morning.

Thursday night, I came home and Moe was not on the kitchen counter. He was in our guest bedroom. He was drooling. His arm was crusted with it, which led me to assume that he’d been doing this for a long time. I rushed him to the emergency vet and they noticed right away that he was extremely dehydrated.

We got the call later that night that Moe’s blood work indicated that he had chronic kidney failure. Their suggestion was to run IV on him for a full day to flush him out and see if the levels come down. Most cats don’t recover from this. I had to break the news to my wife that her favorite cat was dying.

The next morning, I had to go pick him up. Moe didn’t look happy. He looked weak and unhealthy. I had to take him home for about 30 minutes while I waited for the vet to open. He managed to jump up on the kitchen counter again and curled up in the same place he had been most of the week.

Laura went to see him at the vet. She called in tears. She said, “He doesn’t look good at all. He looks horrible.”

The next morning, we talked to the vet. He informed us that the new blood work was back and his levels were still off the charts. He wasn’t recovering. The vet did note that they had to put him in a kitty bag to get him out of his cage because he was really mad at having been there all night! We laughed at that because even in his poor health he was feisty.

We made the decision to end his life because he wasn’t going to recover, and we didn’t want his final days to be ones of discomfort. I grabbed his head and looked him in the eyes. I rubbed his cheeks another time and gave him a hug. Our daughter also said goodbye.

My wife stayed in with him when it was over. The vet came out of the room and gave me a thumbs up (which I thought was odd). We did manage to laugh at that later. I wondered aloud what sort of signal would you give that an animal had passed away? The slash to the throat?

The day before we talked with our daughter that Moe would not be coming back. I don’t think she truly understands. As far as she knows, Moe is at the vet and isn’t coming back.

When my wife talked to her about it, Julia said, “I want to keep a picture of Moe, because I don’t want to forget him.”

When I talked with her about it, Julia said, “I’m going to miss him, because he’s a stud.”

I said through tears, “I know he is Sweetie. I know he is.”

I saw Saw III, but it this Saw is rusty

Here I am with my timely review of a DVD that came out several weeks ago...

I am kind of a fan of the Saw series. I saw the first one and was blown away by some of the twists and turns in the movie. I also liked the main villains plans to test people by playing games. In the movies, his victims are kidnapped and usually wake up to find themselves in a precarious position and a very short time to get themselves out of it. Most of the time, the game player has to do something very unappealing to get themselves out, but the end result if they don't is death.

It's a grim movie, but from time to time, I feel the need to watch grim movies like this. I think I get in the mood when I'm under some stress.

Another reason I watched them is because it's like driving by an accident. You wonder how it happened and who's hurt. I watch and wonder what I would do in these situations. Probably as well as the victims in the movies since I'm kind of a klutz and prone to injure myself at any mundane moment.

I thought Saw 1 was pretty good. Saw 2 was good, too. Then I rented Saw 3. From the get go, I'm a little uneasy about this Saw. Things just don't seem right. Stop reading if you don't want spoilers by the way.

It takes a long time to set up this movie. By the time we get to the actual game, the movie is well over 30 minutes in. The first set of games probably could have been set up in flashbacks.

So our villain Jigsaw is still testing people. He also has an understudy in the whiny Amanda. Amanda kidnaps a doctor to keep our Saw alive, who is suffering from brain tumor. The swelling on his brain is causing him very limited mobility. The game starts with a dual game of the doctor having to keep Jigsaw alive while wearing a trap tied to his heart rate. At the same time, a game is starting with a man that had his son killed by a driver. He can't get past it and even scolds his daughter for touching his 'things' in the kid's room. He wakes up in a crate and must go through a series of tests. In a twist on the first films, he's not stuck in a trap, people related to his son's death are in traps. He must decide to free them or let them die.

In my opinion, this was a huge mistake. The traps are too easy for him to get out of and yet he manages to mess them up.

This live-or-die scenario is only interesting for a short time. Much of the time is spent watching the traps move as the people that are strapped in edging closer to death while Jeff agonizes about saving them. To me, this would be a no brainer. As much as I would be angry about a family member's death, I'm not a killer and I could find it in my heart to forgive someone, especially when it was circumstances beyond my control. Jeff, as with all of Saw's protagonists, they never learn their lesson, so we are forced to watch Jeff, close his eyes, moan, curse the sky, agonize, yell, scream, cry, etc. You name the emotion, Jeff emotes it.

It was right at this spot when I realized why things didn't sit well with me. The man in the last test is strapped up in a large machine that will slowly twist his arms, legs and neck (in that order). This man is not a small man (probably around 230 pounds) and is off the ground a bit. Seeing him in that state suddenly made it clear, who in the hell put this guy up there? Jigsaw is a zombie and his assistant is barely 130 lbs. Besides the fact, Jeff, the "hero" in this movie, is no spring chicken himself.

Also, by my count, there were 6 people kidnapped and put in place for this test. How does one accomplish that in a big city and not get noticed? Amanda would literally have to have a large delivery truck complete with huge vials of chloroform to keep people knocked out. Think of all the planning that would have to go in this. You'd have to kidnap them one at a time in various locations around the city. One person gets kidnapped in a hospital locker room of all places. I'm sure the security guards and camera caught none of that.

So you have to break in to someone's place of residence, kidnap them, drag them to the van while avoiding detection, tie them up, drive to another place, kidnap that person, drag them to the van while avoiding detection, repeat until all are kidnapped, take them to their various places (all the while making sure they are chloroformed enough to avoid waking up too early) and getting all the traps in place without dying yourself. It's no wonder Amanda is freaking out at this point. She's running herself ragged!

So Saw tries hard to break their own molds in the third incarnation, but I think their emphasis on emotional traps runs a little hollow, especially since the only thing I found disturbing in this movie wasn't even violent. A little girl is scolded by her Dad for playing with her dead brother's toys and after all the gruesome incidents in the movie, all I can think of it how sad she looked.

If you like this sort of thing, I guess I'd recommend it, but if you aren't a fan of these types of movies, I'd avoid it.

Going stir crazy after this blizzard...

Wednesday night, I could have gone to the store and stocked up on some things that I was out of like Diet Mountain Dew, Diet Dr. Pepper and the like, but instead, I chose to wait until I got paid. I guess you could also say that I was procrastinating, which is kind of what I tend to do around my house.

For example, I had two shelves to hang in the bathroom. I hung one on Sunday and I finally hung the second one yesterday. The rest of the time, I kept walking past the toolbox next to the bathroom thinking about it. And boy did I have plenty of time to think about these past few days!

I mentioned to my wife that Wednesday night that it was supposed to snow about 6 inches and we may have Julia's day care canceled, which mirrors whatever the local school system does. Otherwise, I was thinking about coming in late anyway because I've been having this sort of virus that people have been getting around work. It's king of like a cold, but not really. It's not as annoying, but seems to stay with you longer. You're full of yellow mucus and you feel tired in the afternoon. Otherwise, it's tolerable. I was hoping to get some rest on Thursday so I had already cleared it with my boss that I was going to come late to try and shake it.

My wife grunted that it was only going to snow 1 to 3 inches and that she didn't think day care was going to be canceled.

So I wake up that morning to the winds howling and swirling. I look outside and it's like a scene out of John Carpenter's The Thing, in which a bunch of workers up north in very snowy conditions encounter a monster. It looked like that except no monster.

I tried to get a read on how deep it was but it was hard to tell. At first, it didn't look like it was going to be that deep because it didn't look that much snow on the driveway.

Sure enough, the public schools were closed and so was my work's day care, so I was homebound.

I can log into work from home, so I tried to get some work done before my wife had to go to work. She told me she was going to leave, so I quit for for a while and went to see if she'd need me to shovel her out. Sure enough, she did.

Laura walked out and then walked back in from the garage and muttered, "Yeah, you're going to have to help me get out."

I open the garage door (after getting bundled up) and sure enough, there was a lot of snow and why I couldn't tell how deep it was was obvious. The snow had drifted because of the strong winds. I got my snow blower working and cleared a huge drift off from in front of the garage (about 3 feet high) and the finished the rest of the driveway. Near the end of the driveway was a scary sight. The snow looked very deep. I thought that there was no way she was going to get out. But my wife, fresh from her fantastic weather prediction, said, "I can make it. My car is great in the snow."

So she backs out to the end of the driveway.... and promptly gets stuck.

Laura tried to go forward and backward to gain momentum, but there was no getting her out. I tell her to just forget it. Pushing on her car, I managed to get her unstuck and we get her car back in the garage. Inside, she calls work and secures a ride from a co-worker who's out west on an assignment.

While we wait for the ride, we watch the live weather coverage and it not only says that we've had a major winter storm, but that it's blizzard conditions.

I joke with my wife, "Boy, you really guessed that one right. I'd hate to have you as our weather person. 'Folks, it's only going to be 1 to 3 inches, so suck it up!'"

Laura gets to work and I'm stuck at home with Julia. Now don't get me wrong, I really love my daughter, but it can be a little much with her lately. She's on this question fix. She constantly asks what would be affirmative questions. For example, we watched Flushed Away while I made her lunch that day and it was non-stop questions like:
"Sid is a naughty rat, right?"
"Roddy doesn't like Sid, right?"
"Sid flushed him down the toilet, right?"
"He doesn't know how to swim, right?"
"Roddy thought he was falling, right?"
"He wants to get home, right?"
"He's trying to find a boat, right?"
"That fish was talking, right?"
"Those slugs are afraid of Roddy, right?"
"I like the slugs. The slugs are singing, right?"
and on and on...

After a while, I worked again and then had to play with Julia. I started to notice something disturbing, I was running out of supplies, mainly Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Mountain Dew.

I like to mix up my diet pops. I usually have a Diet Dr. Pepper on the way to work, following by a Diet Mountain Dew bottle at my desk. For lunch, it's Diet Coke on ice. On the way home, it's another Diet Mountain Dew. Yes, I'm addicted and it was even more apparent these past few days.

I kept looking out the window for any signs of a snow plow, but there were none to come. I grabbed a Diet Dr. Pepper and noted the pop count, I was down to two after the one I just took. A quick check of the fridge showed an already open a few days ago Diet Dr. Pepper two liter bottle.

Conditions outside remained horrible and by noon that day, a minivan had gotten stuck on my street. Later, a Jeep Cherokee got stuck. Did I mention that this was in right in front of my house? Yes, both cars were stuck in the middle of the street in front of my house. The odds of plows coming was not looking good.

I tried to ration the pop, I really did, but when you drink as many as I do, you start jonesing for a pop fix fast. It wasn't long that early the next day, I was officially out of my stash of pop. I then had to start drinking my wife's awful Diet Cherry Pepsi.

Day Care was closed again that Friday as the winds had kept the plows from doing a decent job on the roads. People were encouraged to stay off the roads if they could.

By the end of the afternoon that Friday, I had had enough and so had my wife. Like me, she was off that Friday, but she couldn't go anywhere. As the day progressed, she reported some more bad news: we were down to our last role of toilet paper. This was getting serious! Who knew how long we would be stuck before we got out!

I started thinking how I would have had a hard time coping if I was stuck in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina. I could barely muster the mental stamina to go without my usual soft drinks, so I wasn't thinking too positive on my survival skills at that moment. I'm sure I'd be stuck in my house when people in boats would paddle by asking me if I needed any supplies. I'm sure my request would be, "Do you have any Diet Mountain Dew in bottles? Oh and bring back some ice if you can. Thanks!"

I now realize why my Dad was always so diligent about stocking up before a storm. If bad weather was coming, he would go and buy a few more cases of Budweiser just in case.

One time, I came home from college to visit and my Dad asked me to get the beer out of his trunk and put it in the garage. I opened the trunk and pulled out 6 whole cases of beer.

After stocking his beer shelf, I went inside and said to my Mom, "You know, Dad just asked me to get his beer of his car and he had 6 cases in there."

My Mom looked confused. "Six? He usually buys, Nine," she said without kidding.

I'd be willing to bet that this practice was the result of our family being without power after Grand Island was decimated by a Tornado in June of 1980. A third of the city was destroyed and we were without power, so we toughed it out... for about a day. Then we packed it up 30 miles to the east where we had a trailer at a "lake". We'd always only spend time there Friday through Sunday during the summer, but it had electricity and running water so off we went. Plus, it was next to a small town that had the basics in food supplies, so we stocked up and was good to go. The big downside was that I had to endure about 2 weeks of no cable tv. I almost went insane trying to not to imagine all the great HBO entertainment I was missing. It was a tough time in the Homan household having to endure these basics while our fully intact house roasted in Grand Island, but we made it through some how.

...

My wife ever so gently reminded me that it may be possible to dig out and get to the store.

"Someone just passed by!"

Both cars had been dug out, but the path that was being driven on by cars was only one car wide and the only cars I had seen try it were trucks with those double wheels on the end. My car may be an SUV, but it's not a very tough one.

"I keep seeing someone passing by!" she said later. "We could totally make it out! Come on! Wuss boy!"

So now I was a wuss boy.

So we marched outside and started shoveling the end of the driveway to get our car out. Rather, I shoveled while my wife had to continually take cover from the blustery wind every two minutes it seemed. I started calling her Wuss Girl. Finally, I busted through the snow drift. We decided to chance it and got in the car. I made it out okay and we went to the store to get supplies.

I grabbed a 24-pack of toilet paper (just in case), a case of Diet Dr. Pepper and a 12-pack of Mountain Dew bottles because it was supposed to snow again and you never know...

We get back to our home subdivision and we promptly get stuck at the entrance. We get pushed out and my wife wants to drive because she feels she's the better driver. I let her and she promptly gets stuck in the driveway.

No Contact, but I wish I had made Contact...

Now it can be told...

I'm usually a pretty easy-going guy. I really really hate confrontation, especially with strangers, but there was one time at the movies when I so lost my cool that I not only yelled out loud, but I also almost chased down a total stranger to let him know exactly what I thought.

Contact, the movie based on Carl Sagan's book starring Jodie Foster, was coming out and it looked really good. In retrospect, I can now safely say that it's one of the most self-indulgent pieces of tripe that I've ever seen. In addition, it's filled with acting that fills almost every niche: overacting, wooden, laughable, stiff. You name it, it's in there.

For some bad reason that I can't remember, I thought it'd be fun to see it on the opening weekend. Being that I hate crowds and so does my wife, it was a stupid idea. The odds that we'd not only get a good seat and not be bothered by people were pretty slim. As it turns out, I was bothered by someone more than I've ever been bothered by someone at the movies. It was worse than the time I saw The Mummy Returns with my brother and some yahoos behind us started screaming "Yeah! Rock! Yeah!" We looked at each other, nodded and moved to the other side of the theater. We had no such luxury this night because it was sold out.

The movie Contact is like that old capsule cold remedy of the same name. The Contact cold medicine commercials had the visual of slow-motion-pulling the cold capsule apart and all the multi-colored medicine beads fell out and bounced around. That is how this movie feels. It's like a mishmash of people throwing in every idea under the sun because it might be neat.

In the theater, the movie starts. Contact starts with a view of Earth with music and other atmosphere noise. The view then pulls back as it races through solar systems, stars, planets, etc. It's semi-neat, but way too long at 3 and a half minutes of mostly silence. I had a feeling right then we were in trouble. In the row I was in, there was an empty seat to my right. Then there was a lady, who was next to the empty seat, with her husband, who was three seats away from me. I could hear him murmuring to her during the sequence such obviousness as "They must be going through other universes."

They were an interesting pair, those two. She was silent save for the popcorn bag that she felt compelled to roll up when she was done eating a handful or two and then she would unroll it when she wanted to eat more. During this movie that was every 5 minutes of 'CRUMPLE' 'CRUMPLE' CRUMPLE', MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH, 'CRUMPLE' 'CRUMPLE' CRUMPLE'. That alone was almost enough to set me off. If you're going to be eating it during the whole movie then why in the hell are you making a shit-ton of noise opening and closing it!?

The husband was even worse. He felt compelled to make a comment, explain things to his wife or guess at every upcoming thing in the movie.

Right off the bat, after the second scene starts, we see a young Eleanor Arroway, or Ellie, on her ham radio. She's calling for someone to pick up. A guy finally comes on the other end. She asks him where he is from. The guy says "Pensacola." She asks her father, "Pensacola. Where's that?" Before her father can answer, Mr. Helpful responds in a hurried whisper, "Florida!"

Back to the movie, we see Jodie Foster playing a grown-up version of Ellie starting her job with SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) in South America. She's now a scientist. From the start, her character makes no sense. She listens to stars for noise. Her first one is one that was a parser cataloged in 1982. This is all well and good, but shouldn’t' she be tracking stars that haven't been analyzed before? Soon, she runs into a long-haired man named Father Palmer, a man that almost became a priest, but now writes about human relations in technology. They hook up and she never calls him again.

Along the way, we're introduced to characters like the sympathetic blind scientist, the smarmy politician, the crazy cult leader, the lovable scientists, etc.

Later, we're shown a flashback clip of Ellie as a girl. She's looking at stars outside her home and calls her Dad to come see them. He doesn't answer so she goes to investigate. The guy in the theater now turns into Mr. Guesser and offers this nugget, "He's dead!", which is sort of correct. Her father has had a heart attack. She slow-motion rushes to get her father's pills which are down the hall to which Mr. Guesser responds with "It's the wrong pills!" Um, no jerk, she was just too late! I start seething. It's only 15 minutes into the movie and already I feel like strangling this guy.

Back in the movie, Ellie goes into a meeting for private funding to use a bank of satellites in the New Mexico desert for SETI use. When the trustees have the gall to question the practicality of listening for life in space, Ellie responds in here usual mature fashion by ripping them a new one. She makes an impassioned speech about crazy ideas like someone flying or breaking the sound barrier and only asks them for some ingenuity. Coming from someone that sounds like a raving lunatic, how dare they question the importance of finding other life? In a normal world, she'd be thrown out and made a laughing stock, but this is Hollywood where impassioned speeches get people to change their minds everyday so she gets her funding.

At the new place, she quickly gets word that her funding isn't getting cut, but rather the use of the government-owned antennae dishes. Again, it's that same Washington guy played by James Woods that shuts her down. She reacts in the same way by throwing a hissy fit. In true Hollywood fashion, shortly after she's told that she has three months left on the project, she hears a signal coming from space soon after and the movie is off and running as they excitedly start cataloging the signal.

Because it's such a huge discovery, the government gets involved. James Woods shows up as a government official. He's the one great thing in the movie as he flings semi-condescending zingers to the scientists. Angela Basset also shows up as (I'm assuming), the secretary of state and in my opinion is extremely wasted in this role. Oh sure, she does make a complaint about Hitler being the first thing the aliens see (they transmitted back the 1936 Berlin Olympics broadcast), but most of the time she is delegated to such hard hitting dialogue as "Doctor, what does it mean?" or "What do we know?"

Meanwhile, Mr. Guesser in my row is offering all sorts of guesses. He guessed wrong about what the first transmission was. Later in the movie, Ellie gets an email and he shouts out, "It's the priest!" Wrong again, but I started guessing that I was going to have to kill him if he didn't shut up soon.

Back to the movie... Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about this movie is the use of the whole CNN staff. I can understand using Larry King as a host because he does play himself very well and has done so in several movies, but to use the whole network roster? It gets a little sad and it now looks very dated to see stiff newscasters reading fake copy about a supposed real event. It comes off more like they were reporting the weather, as opposed to the historic event that it's supposed to be.

Even more cringe inducing is the use of a real President Clinton speech in the place where the president comments on the transmission from space.

Look, I know that Hollywood really loved Clinton, but the speech comes off as extremely vague for such an event. I would have to believe that a monumental event such as this would have to call for a president to be extremely involved, especially with what comes later. Where was Morgan Freeman when we needed him? He's played a credible president before. For that matter, if you're going to use the real president at the time, why wouldn't you at least try to cast the rest of his staff as their real-life counterparts? Without familiar names it just appears as it is, a bad use of stock footage. I think it's the only movie that's ever used real-life footage of a sitting president in a fictional film.

Later, a blueprint is found in another layer of the transmission. It calls for a pod to be built on top of a tower around what looks like those rotating hula hoop things from Superman: The Movie. The pod calls for just one person to ride in it with no food or bathroom. Apparently the aliens didn't plan for a long trip. This brings me back to the president. I would have to think that a real president would again be really involved in this process.

The day of the pod launch comes and it gets destroyed. Apparently, they'll spend billions of dollars on a high-tech space pod, but cut the security budget so that Gary Busey's kid gets up to the tower to sabotage it? We have the Army and we even have the technology of a photo ID coupled with an appropriate security roster. And isn't that a warning sign to run when you see someone that looks like Gary Busey's kid? I don't know about you, but if I see Jake Busey anywhere near, I'm running.

By the way, Mr. Guesser became Mr. Obvious and commented 'Uh Oh' when Jake Busey showed up. While he didn't put two and two together about Jake being the leader of a doomsday cult until they pointed it out in the movie (his response: "Oh that was the guy!"), he did appropriately point out that some shit was going down.

So with the sacrificial lamb out of the way, Ellie gets picked to go into space. It's an overly long sequence that requires her to emotionally stroll down a long walk way to get sealed in the pod. I know she's crazy, but don't you think that she'd be excited as hell to go visit ET? She walks down the hall like she's going to a firing squad.

Thankfully, this whole sequence was really loud so I could only hear the murmur of Mr. Obvious/Guesser/Helper. Ellie is thrust up and down worm hole after worm hole until she gets to the end. There she meets the alien representative, who shows up as her father! Apparently, it would be too distressing to see a real alien? As if the horrific space voyage wasn't horrible enough?

She's sent back home and the pod falls into the safety net. At this point, the bad news is given. She had never left! Now I know I'm not a scientist and that I don't know squat about how technology works, but I do think that if I was going to send someone into space using a new-fangled pod delivery system that I'd test it out first to see if it worked.

At this point, Mr. Guesser burst out loud, "I knew it!!!!" I'm thinking, "Sure you did!"

So of course there's a congressional inquiry about the debacle and Ellie is put in the spotlight as someone who collaborated on a multi-billion dollar scam. Of course, she responds in her usual respectable demeanor, by crying and yelling that it was true. Way to not appear as a raving lunatic!

After the hearings, Angela Basset, in one of her small lines, says to James Woods that the static that was recorded by Foster lasted a whole 18 hours, which would mean that even though it was instantaneous, she was gone for 18 hours. James Woods' response: "Really?!" Mr. Obvious' response: "Really?!" My response was to glare in his direction.

At the end of the movie, right before the credits, the following appears on the screen: "For Carl". Mr. Obvious responds with, "Carl Sagan!"

I yell out, "No f^&*king shit!"

The credits roll and everyone picks up their stuff to leave.

I turn to my wife and calmly say, "I'm going to tell this motherf^&*er how much he ruined this movie for me!"

I turn around and start walking toward the guy, who seems very oblivious to how annoying he was. Laura is desperately clinging to my arm. She keeps saying, "Don't!" "Stop!" and "It's not worth it!" several times. I finally calm down, but inside I'm still fuming at this guy. I just can't believe that he can't understand that no one wants to hear his commentary. I also couldn't believe that his wife would put up with his helpful suggestions through every show or movie that they'd watch.

I can just picture him watching Seinfeld with her and when Kramer walks through the door, he'd chime in with "That's Kramer!"

I think I might have enjoyed Contact had I watched it at another screening. It taught me a valuable lesson. Don't go see Jodie Foster movies if you don't enjoy overacting... that and don't go see a movie on opening night if you afraid of someone ruining because odds are pretty good that they will.

A funny Julia story and Bill critiques my finger story...

One of the ladies that works with Julia over at her pre-school is expecting a baby.

This lady told me that during her class today that she sat the class down to give the big announcement. When she told the class that she was going to have a baby, Julia put her hands to her head and exclaimed, "Oh NO!"

Then she asked, "You're not going to have a chimpanzee are you?"

Her and her co-teacher were laughing pretty hard at this while the rest of the kids looked confused.

I need to explain the chimpanzee comment. We got Julia a For Real Friend toy for Christmas that is a baby monkey that she calls "Chimp" or "Chip". We thought it was Chip at first, but it's sounding more like Chimp.

Chimp can hug you, eat a banana, be tickled and generally just 'ooks' and 'eeks' for about 5 minutes until he falls asleep. He'll interact with you if he keeps getting attention. Julia carries him around like he's her baby.

...

Bill gave me some feedback on my story about his cutting off his finger. I really should have consulted with him prior to publishing the story because I forgot one key detail that made part of it a lot funnier.

Right after I told Bill the 'as a rule of thumb' comment and his response about it being funny (Bill disputes that, but I swear I remember that comment), Bill asked, "How long have you waiting to ask that joke?"

I responded, "Pretty much all day."

This is where I can cut him some slack. As much as it seems like he's a major pain in the ass sometimes, and he can be (kidding), he generally never gets mad as me for writing about him. I think he secretly enjoys it.

My brother, Bill, almost cuts off his finger...

I got a call from Bill the other day that was a little surprising and not surprising like "I'm moving to New York City and never talking to you again" surprising, but more like "I cannot believe you did that surprising". I've been there. I ought to know the difference. I've been on the latter end of that conversation before.

Bill asked, "Hey, remember when you had your accident with the hedge trimmer?"

Do I remember? How could I forget that? For those that don't know. I almost cut off my finger with an electric hedge trimmer in the most humanly stupid way possible. Well, I suppose that the stupidest way that I could have done it would have been to turn on the hedge trimmer, stare at it and put my finger in it. What I did was not really as stupid as THAT, but it ranks up there.

One hot summer day, I am cutting my stupid hedges, which I call that because I really, really hated those hedges. They were a blight on my nice house and after almost cutting off my finger; the luster wore off even more. The hedges were on the left side of my yard and were obviously put there to shield my nice yard from the blight that was my next door neighbor's yard. His yard was more of a collection of small shrubs, crab grass, field grass, bare patches of dirt, an above ground pool, a shed, a hot tub, a dog kennel in a cage complete with a dog house, a dog that barked a lot... Did I mention weeds and patches of dirt? While the hedges did indeed shield my precious eyes from the blight next door, I really hated cutting those hedges... a lot. I hated cutting them so much that I put it off until the branches were practically falling over from the top. When I trimmed the top, I pulled 4 foot long branches off every time.

What really sucked about the hedges is that they were grown very close to the neighbor's fence. When trimmed, there was just enough space to squeeze my 22-inch cutting path lawn mower between the fence and the hedge to mow the grass that had grown high. Before this could happen, I had to cut a path between the hedge and the fence. Seeing as how the fence was so close to the hedge, I had to cut a path like one would cut a path in the jungle with a machete. Unfortunately, I didn't have a machete. Well, maybe that was fortunate.

So with a rusty hedge trimmer, no gloves, and shorts on, I started to cut a path down the side of the hedge by the fence. Using a nifty arching motion with my right arm, I swung the trimmer up in the arm, over the branches above me and down by my side again. With my left hand, I pulled the cut branches down. It was a nice system of swing, cut, pull, swing, cut, pull when BUZT, I stopped after cutting because I hit the cord that was powering the trimmer, nicking it, but not quite cutting through to the wires.

I thought, "Wow. That could have been dangerous. I could have cut through that power cord."

I should have been thinking something else that could have happened, something that happened not ten seconds later.

I started again with my swing, cut, pull (I’m getting tired of this, so I move faster), swing, cut, pull, swing, cut, pu... BZZT! There was that sound again. I look down to see what happened. I'm staring down at my left hand. My index finger has been cut... deep. My skin that was around the top of my finger now look like I've cut the top of my finger and started peeling it like a banana.

I yelp, "Ow." I stare at my wound for another second. Now blood is starting to rapidly emerge from my wound.

"Oh no. Oh no. Oh God. Oh crap!"

I am cursing myself for doing this. In vain, I shake my hand, which causes a pain tremor to shoot down my arm. I head for the sliding glass door that will take me back inside. In my haste to get back inside, I realize that the hedge trimmer is still running. I can hear it on the other side of the hedge. I start to run toward the hedge trimmer, but decide to just pull the plug.

I run inside and yell, "Take me to hospital!" I'm holding my hand.

Laura looks at me like "Yeah right."

"I'm not kidding!!!" I yell.

She took me to hospital and I endured a nice set of stitches and pain for a few weeks followed by humiliation and finger numbness...

But this story is not about me...

So Bill calls me and asks me if I remember my accident with the hedge trimmer.

I answer that yes I did.

He says, “Well, I may have just topped you today. I just got back from the hospital”

So what happened was that Bill was splitting boards with a table saw. He was pushing boards through a table saw for some unknown project that he’s been planning around the house.

Bill was originally supposed to come over to visit me by the way. We had it all planned out that Bill would come over to visit with his kids so that Julia could play with her cousin, Bill’s daughter, Tess.

The day before, Bill calls and cancels. He said that Sawyer, his son, had come down with a cold. I could understand that.

So Bill gets to work splitting boards. I need to mention that Bill is downstairs in his non-finished, dank basement doing this. He’s wearing work gloves, goggles and a dust mask.

Bill was guiding the board through the saw blade when (I’m assuming) ZING! He lops off the side of his left hand by the nail. It cuts clean through his thumb, shearing off the far right side of his right thumb. Did I mention that he cut through the bone? Oh yeah, Bill cut through the bone on his right hand. He really upped the ante on that feat. Not only did I not cut through my finger bone (I just cracked it), I also managed to retain my skin. Beaten on both accounts.

In shop class, we were taught that if you ever use a table saw that you should always use something to push the boards through past the blade. The one thing you should never do is to guide the boards through with your bare hands, well that’s exactly what Bill did. When I mentioned this to Bill later by asking, ‘You know you’re supposed to use a guide when using a table saw right?’, Bill got defensive and claimed that when he usually does something like that, he notices that he needs a guide and uses one. This time, he noticed at the same time as the accident.

Now Bill reacted much in the same way that I would have reacted. He noticed that he had cut off part of his thumb and he raced upstairs and screamed, “HELP ME!” to his wife, who I’m told not only did believe his cry for help and not think that he was kidding, but she helped stripped Bill of his mask, goggles and gloves before racing to find a baby sitter from a neighbor nearby.

So long story short, Bill goes the hospital, they spray it off, clean it up, x-ray it, and send him home with some kick ass medication.

The next day, I had to think of a joke. Whenever someone in our family gets injured, we of course tend to the injured, but when it’s apparent that they are okay, it’s open season. When I injured my foot one summer, my older brothers called me “Crip” because I had to hop around the house until my foot healed. After I injured my index finger and had it in a splint for several weeks, I heard a lot of “Don’t flip me off” jokes from co-workers and family alike.

I sought out the perfect joke for this incident, one that would be kind of subtle, yet obvious enough to be slightly mean, but still funny. I did a search for “Slang: Thumb”.

I had my joke, so I just had to call Bill. On my way home from work, I asked Bill how his day was going. He had taken the day off from work because of the pain and was seeing doctors on what to do about the thumb. He might need a skin graft or they might just let it heal over.

“Any diagnosis on how much time it’ll take to heal?” I asked.

“They didn’t really say,” Bill said.

“Well, as a rule of thumb, it takes a few weeks for this type of injury to heal.”

I wait. Bill kind of grumbles.

“Hmm… Is that supposed to be FUNNY?” Bill intones in a slightly annoyed voice.

I laugh.

“I couldn’t help it. I just had to come up with a joke.”

“Well it’s not really funny yet. I’m in pain!” Bill exclaimed.

I get off the phone with Bill and I just have to call people and try the joke out on them. Perhaps I just need to try it out on people that have all of the fingers, have no pain or both. So I scan down in my phone book on my cell phone and dial the first name I scroll across, my brother Joe. He’s not at his office, so I call home. He’s not home, so I talk to my sister-in-law, Jackie.

I ask her if she had heard about Bill’s accident. She hadn’t, so I gladly and helpfully fill her in on the details. I then proceed to tell the joke how I told Bill.

Her response?

“Oh, you’re terrible!” she exclaimed while laughing.

She mentions that Joe is out of town at a conference. So I call Joe on his cell phone. He happens to be in his hotel room at the time. I tell him about Bill’s accident and my subsequent joke.

His response? Laughter and chuckling.

On a roll, I call my Mom and my brother, Paul. Both found the joke funny. So it wasn’t the joke, it was the context of it that Bill couldn’t appreciate. I guess he had to have a little distance from the joke, like not be the one involved…

Now that isn’t exactly the end of the story. While I was off calling other people and telling them the joke, Joe happened to receive a call from Bill a short while after I had called him with the joke.

Bill called to ask Joe what we wanted to give Mom and Dad for Christmas. During the start of this conversation, Bill did not mention his accident to Joe, which was surprising to him. Bill suggested some things that Mom or Dad might be interested in. Joe wasn’t sure on what we should give them.

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “I’m all thumbs when it comes to giving gifts.”

Bill yells, “Did you talk to Bob??!”

Joe laughs explains that he had just talked to me a while before that.

I talk to Bill later and he’s a little peeved at being thumbed at for the sake of a few jokes.

“So you and Joe were just laughing it up at my expense, huh?” Bill asks.

“Sorry. I thought the joke was funny and needed to be repeated.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh come on!” I said. “It’s not like I’ve never gotten shit for doing similar things. I got lots of crap when I almost cut off my finger with the hedge trimmer. And don’t you remember when Joe almost broke my foot and I had to hop around for a few weeks? I kept getting this from Joe and Paul, ‘Move it, crip’”

“Yeah…”

“So just have a little sense of humor about it.”

“Well at least you still have you whole finger left. It’s not funny because I lost part of mine.” Bill retorted.

I thought about that and dismissed it. If anything, in our family, that makes it a lot funnier. Now if he had cut off his whole hand, now that wouldn’t be funny… for while. We’d probably have a moratorium on that one until he was free from pain, fitted with a prosthetic and could use it functionally. After that, the Captain Hook references would undoubtedly commence at some point.