The look that made Jonas a Griner.

We finally got a decent photo the other day for our Christmas card, and when I saw Jonas' expression, it seemed familiar. Eventually, it hit me. It looked almost identical to the photo taken at the pound in California.

On the left, you can see the original photo that ran on a rescue group's adoption page. I was actually just visiting the page to ensure I was printing the Web address correctly in our newspaper's weekly Adopt-a-Pet feature. Jonas (actually called Wally at that point), was at the top of the page, and I was smitten right away.

Obviously, the Christmas card photo is on the right. Three years have elapsed between the two shots, but Joe still knows how to fire up the charm on occasion. (Especially if the cameraman -- my dad in this case -- makes a weird noise right before the shot.)

Do not, repeat, do not arm yourself with the bones of Godzilla.

In one of those "don't ask how I got here" kind of moments, I found myself perusing the Godzilla page on Wikipedia today. Scrolling through it, I started to notice that the page is a treasure trove of hilarity.

Here are my favorites:

• "In the movie Godzilla x Mothra x Mechagodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., the two shobijin fairies warn that using Godzilla's bones as a weapon is a big mistake."

• "Indeed, a translated conversation between Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan in said film reveals that Godzilla's ire towards humans is merely due to what he perceives as unprovoked attacks towards him."

• "The American version looked much more like a badger like than the original version."

• "He is also shown to have a high degree of physical strength and dexterity, often utilizing martial arts techniques in combat."

• There's really no excerpt that will do this justice, so here you go:

In Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, it is discovered that the time-travelers that had attempted to prevent Godzilla's creation had left in its place on Lagos island their own creation—three tiny Dorats—mutating and combining them into a three-headed golden abomination, King Ghidorah.

Unfortunately, they are unaware that the Godzilla they had planned to erase was later mutated by the nuclear submarine crash which would lead to the events of The Return of Godzilla. In an effort to stop King Ghidorah's rampage, an extremely wealthy corporate developer plans to send a nuclear submarine into the Bering Sea in an attempt to create a second Godzilla. Instead of finding the Godzillasaurus, the submarine would come face to face with Godzilla himself, unchanged and still recovering from the ANEB.

The Futurians’ ignorance of the past leads them to create the second Godzilla in the first place rather than removing him from history. Godzilla absorbs the power of the nuclear sub, purging his system of the bacteria and increasing his size further to 100 meters (328 feet), becoming big and powerful enough to defeat King Ghidorah.

Godzilla proceeds to attack Japan itself, but is stopped when Emmy, one of the Futurians who had turned on her fellows, resurrects Ghidorah as a cyborg in the future and returns to the past to battle Godzilla with the new Mecha-King Ghidorah. The two battle in Tokyo, with both falling into the sea, but Godzilla is still alive.

•Finally, some actually interesting information:

"One characteristic that has remained stable is his roar. It was first created by Japanese composer Akira Ifukube by rubbing a resin glove over the strings of a contrabass."

If real life were like Rock Band.

So I got a chance to try out the new game Rock Band this weekend at friend Bill's house, and it is truly spectacular. Like Guitar Hero stepped up to the Nth degree. (You can read Bill's summary of the game here, or check out videos like this one to see how it works.)

Anyway, so yeah, the game's a blast, but to make it as fun as it is, the programmers had to really change your notions of how a live performance should work. Below, I've done my best to recreate what it must look like from the fan's perspective.

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Hey man, how was your weekend? Good good. Yeah, no mine was fine. Went and saw a show. What? No, I wouldn't really say it was good, but it was pretty friggin weird. No, nothing like that. Let me see if I can do this justice:

At the beginning, the band just kinda walked out on stage and picked up their gear. Then they started debating who should play what instrument. The guitarist picked up a bass, then changed his mind again and sat at the drums. The drummer picked up the mic, then seemed to get shy and handed it to the other guitarist. I thought maybe they were just joking around, but then it really got crazy.

Right when the band looked like they were finally ready, they just stood there staring straight ahead. So someone yells out, "Play 'Run for the Hills' by Iron Maiden!" Then the drummer freaks out and starts trying to hand the sticks to anyone who will take them. Everyone else in the band tells the bassist to play drums, but the drummer wants to play guitar, so the guitarist switches with the singer. Then the song starts after what felt like forever.

So the drummer begins playing, but he can't figure out the beat, so it's just random banging. And just when I'm thinking, "wow, this sucks," the singer gets going. And it's like she has never heard the words in her life. She's reading the lyrics off some kind of karaoke machine, at least until she gives up and just starts saying "roo roo roo" for the next, like, 6 minutes.

Right when I'm about to go get a beer, things actually got pretty interesting. The drummer, who looks like some kind of nervous, caffeinated monkey, gets forcibly yanked off the stage for playing so incredibly bad. Then it's kinda creepy, because the song keeps going without any percussion.

But that only lasts 30 seconds or so. That's when the guitarist, who's actually pretty good, starts crotch-grinding his guitar and doing this weird ride-that-pony dance across the stage. I guess that won over the stage manager or whoever, because the drummer got to come back out and play the rest of the song. Strangely, this happened two or three more times. The drummer even got kicked off stage a second time, but he got to come back yet again, apparently because the bass player started shaking his butt and using a wah-wah pedal.

Anyway, at the end, they try to do this big finish. But it's not like one of those jam-band finishes where all the different melodies come together into one triumphant finale. No, it's more like they all just start hitting random notes and drums and cowbells and whatever. I swear my ears were bleeding.

At the very end of the song, they all hit their instruments one last time, but the bass player hits his note about a half a second too late. Everything goes quiet, and they all stare at him like he's an ass. He apologizes to the rest of the band and says he should probably just sing the next one or two. Then the audience got to vote on who was the "most energetic" or some crap. I threw my bottle at the stage and went home.

Home security redefined.

Found this photo while I was organizing our external drive and decided to give it the lolcats treatment. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Hoboy! I have an Amazon wish list! And my unborn daughter has a charity!

This feels self-serving and materialistic, but I personally like when friends have Amazon wish lists. Because even if I know you well, come Christmas crunch time, I don't really want to do any more thinking than I absolutely have to.

So anyway, here's mine...



If you've got one you'd like to share (or see something that I'd love but is blatantly missing from my list), post a comment here.

Oh, and I almost forgot, with all the baby registry stuff also going on this year, Karen and I are offering an easy alternative to gifts of any kind.

We're trying to collect donations in our daughter's name for kiva.org, so you're all invited to take the easy route and send a contribution of any size (seriously...$1, whatever) via check. Just make it out to us and write kiva.org in the message line. Contact me if you need our address.

Five years ago today....

...it was an icy-cold, blustery day in Chicago. And mere minutes after our friend Matt snapped this photo, it started snowing and didn't let up. Thankfully, I don't live in a Victorian novel, so the weather didn't end up being a portent of things to come. It just made the bridesmaids cuss a little.

I doubt I have to tell any of you how incredible it's been being married to Karen. She keeps me excited about life and energized about learning new things. We've gone through some pretty dramatic transitions in the past five years, and Karen has always been the voice of enthusiasm and optimism, although she's enough of a realist to actually make me plan my life more than a day ahead.

I could obviously spend countless posts talking about how great she is, how much she's added to my life, how cute she looks when she's killing samurai on the XBox, but there's really no rush. We're only five years in.

Happy anniversary, Karen.

When no one's looking.

Had to run home today for a few minutes so the TV repair guys could pick up the set. When I got there, it was quiet. Too quiet.

Assuming Jonas had not again broken INTO the house, I decided he probably just hadn't noticed me pull up.

So I carefully went into the house, grabbed the camera and snapped a photo of what he secretly does when no one's around during the day.

Witness the SHOCKING TRUTH. If you dare!

A (not so) quick wrapup of the many things going on.

I keep wanting to write epic blog posts about all the different things we've got going on lately, but I never have the time to actually write them. So I'm going to cop out and just give you guys some big updates in bullet form.

• We're having a daughter. Sorry if you're just now hearing about it, but yes, it's true. We're quite excited, nervous, etc. Karen's about halfway along and has had a pretty much ideal pregnancy. (No sickness, no super-crazy cravings or aversions, etc.) Read more over at Karen's blog if you haven't already. If you're my daughter reading this in the distant future and wondering how your dad announced the big news....um, sorry about this.

• We're adopting a cat. That's the plan anyway. Tomorrow, we're scheduled to pick up a kitten that was brought into our vet. It was found hiding under a car and has since been named "Volvo," which I assure you will not last. If this ends up causing too much craziness, our vet has assured us we can bring her back at any time and they'll find a good home. So at worst, we're fostering, but I hope it'll work out long-term.

• We're painting our house. And it is an epic affair. After two steady weeks of work, we've only completed about 1/6th of the house, but it looks INCREDIBLE. (We're going from horrible mint green to a sort of dark cedar. I love it.) Again, I steer you to Karen's blog for the backstory. We'll have some great in-progress photos soon, and I'm especially excited about my parents coming down to help next weekend.

• I got to see They Might Be Giants Friday night in Atlanta, which was great. They played a good mix of old and new stuff, although they did seem pretty exhausted from all the touring they've been doing. (Thanks to YouTube, you can see a video clip from the front row, which is far closer than I was.) I picked up an autographed vinyl copy of their new album, which will make for a fun memento. Had a great time with my old California friend Jeff at the show. Maybe too great a time, because....

• Saturday was one of the worst days of my life. Not really sure why. I didn't drink a tremendous amount Friday night, and never even really got that tipsy. But Saturday was literally a gut-wrenching day of frequent, sudden stops along the interstate. I came home, passed out and woke up about 20 hours later feeling quite a bit better. I'm blaming the gypsies who fed me before the show. They'll probably come for my baby in a few months, too. (Actually, the restaurant was tasty, if a bit underwhelming in terms of menu choices.)

Sadly, I had to miss our monthly Supper Club with friends and family (sorry again, guys), but another drive up to Huntsville was far, far out of the question.

• I've been playing around quite a bit on Facebook, which is a world of better than MySpace. If you're on there and you haven't found me yet, let me know. All sorts of friends from college, high school and elsewhere have come out of the woodwork on there. I even started a group for advertising bloggers, and it already has more than 80 members from around the world. Crazy. (If you have a Facebook account, here's the link to the group.)

• Work is going wonderfully, but it's definitely keeping me busy. Just embarked on a huge new project that should be fun. It comes on the heels of this huge project, which was a good time. I have an office now, which is a first in my career. It's quite nice and serene, and I'm actually somewhat close to my colleagues now.

I don't have much recent stuff I can really show off, but here's a fun "save the date" card I made with designer Miles to promote an HR conference. The client is a local law firm.

FRONT


INSIDE



• Our TV is broken, and it's become quite an ordeal. We took the 180-pound monster into a repair place, which eventually said they fixed it (for $125....not terrible). After dragging all 180 pounds BACK home, I realized it was still broken in the same way. (But thanks to Greg and Valerie for helping load it into and out of the car.) The repair guys are picking it up tomorrow and waiving the $50 pickup fee, but we'll see how it goes.

If it ends up costing too much more or being unfixable, we're looking at this 37" LCD by Vizio, which sells for about $750 at Sam's and has gotten good reviews for such a cheap model. Anyone out there have any other recommendations? We're replacing a 34-inch CRT by Phillips, if that gives you a sense of perspective.

• Jonas has ballooned to 73 pounds. I'm starting to think he's actually a manatee.

OK, that's plenty of updates for now. There's so much more going on, but I'll try to be better about keeping you all up to speed more regularly. As always, you can enjoy my blogging antics somewhat daily over here.