Since the switch to digital signal this past year, there is a new “kids” channel called Qubo. This channel is designed specifically for kids and tends to show the cheaper range of cartoons and kids programming. Most of the shows they broadcast are the rejects from Sunday morning pbs, but recently I found that they have started a “Night Owl” session akin to Cartoon Networks “Adult Swim”. The Qubo version is much less adult, but they are catering towards a more adult crowd with their selection of programming. And this brings me back to the greatest cartoon of all time. It seems that Qubo has obtained the rights to the Filmation library and along with Brave Star and The Ghostbusters (not to be confused with The Real Ghostbusters), they have begun showing He-man and the Masters of the Universe. It’s truly an awesome thing!

It’s always interesting to go back and watch shows again that you enjoyed as a kid to see if you can try to figure out why you liked them so much, but with He-Man the answer is obvious. He’s a friggin’ barbarian with a magic sword that kicks the crap out of bad guys during every episode. Not to mention the fact that all the women on the show are of the “Amazonian” type that share the ability of bad guy butt kicking and all while wearing rather skimpy armor. There’s no question that the show is a bit cheesy, but unlike other cartoons from my childhood, I find myself enjoying the nostalgia of it. And the funny thing is, my kids love it too. I must admit that it’s kinda fun to share one of my favorite childhood shows with my kids and watch them get just as much enjoyment from it as I did when I was their age. I guess a good thing never goes out of style. So if you’ve got a hankerin’ for some good old fashioned Eternian barbarian butt kickin’, tune into Qubo around 10:30pm and enjoy.

I HAVE THE POWER!!!

For those who are unfamiliar (don’t worry, I had no idea what this thing was when I agreed to it), it’s basically a race that makes you pray there will be someone waiting at the finish line with a gun for you to shoot yourself with. The race begins in Logan and then winds 190 miles up the backside of the Wasatch to end somewhere round about Park City (Course Map). The race takes the better part of 2 days and we’ll be running straight through the night. Each of the 12 team members gets 3 legs of the race for a total of around 15-20 miles and spends all of their non-running time packed into a couple minivans which follow whomever the current runner happens to be. Basically it’ll be 2 days of tired, cramped, smelly hell. Fun, huh?

This is a happy pre-death picture

Anyway, the main point of this post is to solicit support from our dear beloved readers. Emily and I have joined up with several friends from my new job to be on one of two “Cancer Teams” that will be running the race. The main difference between a regular team and a “Cancer Team” is that all of our entry fees will be going to the American Cancer Society. The only downside to this is that the entry fees/donations for the Cancer Teams are much steeper than are those of the regular teams and this is where you, my dear readers, come into the picture. Emily and I are humbly asking for your monetary support in the way of donations to the American Cancer Society as we train for this brutal ordeal. Please feel free to donate as much or as little as you can and be assured that all donations will go to the ACS in the form of one lump sum donation that will be put together by the members of our team. Emily and I will need to come up with $700 for our part of the donation so every little bit helps. The only thing we can offer in thanks is the hard work we’ll put into trying to survive this thing as well as a promise to have someone post pictures of our limp and lifeless bodies located wherever we happen to collapse between Logan and Park City. Thanks in advance for your support and prayers for our survival. We’ll need em.

Donate for Mike

Donate for Emily

Bus to Beelzebub Team Donation

Or you can donate via PayPal below and we will include your portion with our team donation.

It’s just weird to think that my brain was working enough to get me from the Doctors office to the car, but I honestly can’t remember getting to the car or even getting home for that matter. I do remember talking to the nurse briefly as I woke up after the surgery. She asked me if I felt ok and if I was prone to puking. I told her I felt fine and that I don’t puke too often. Then she helped me stand up to move to the recovery room, but I don’t remember walking down the hall. I only vaguely remember laying down on the bed, but then I don’t remember anything until Emily got out of the car to get the kids from my mom. After that, the next thing I remember was laying on the couch at home. I don’t really even remember getting out of the car and into the house. It’s quite disturbing to think that I was up and interacting with people, but that I’m unable to recall most of it.

Anyway, the surgery went ok and aside from a little swelling I feel pretty good. My jaw aches a little, but for the most part there hasn’t even been any pain. I just hope the fix sticks and I don’t have to have that tooth worked on ever again.

You can see the original picture here for comparison. And if you’d like to try this out on your own photos, you can visit the tiltshiftmaker here. Or if you’d just like to view all the crazy pictures other people have made, you can check out the flickr group here (beware that some of the pictures in that gallery didn’t work out so well).

Anyway, the other night I was having a strange dream regarding the seemingly endless supply of energy that the Axiom ship (that’s the human “life raft” ship in the movie) seemed to have. As I dreamt, I recall wondering how, after 700 years, the ship was still able to power all the lights and billboards and robots and other electrically powered items on the ship. Keep in mind I was dreaming so the possibility of some alternate source of energy didn’t really enter my mind. I was thinking strictly in terms of energy storage circa 2009 so my mind was boggled while trying to figure out how they hadn’t run out of energy yet.

I pause for a moment here to acknowledge that to this point, there really wasn’t anything interesting about this dream. It might be an odd subject for a dream, but I’m sure many of you have had stranger dreams. However, the thing I found interesting about this particular dream is how it seemed to be a result of my physical situation at the time. I’m sure many of you have experienced something similar when you can’t seem to stop dreaming about water and then when you’re forced awake, you realize that you’ve never had to pee so badly in your life. Same sort of thing here.

As most of you probably know, I have a little ailment called Diabetes. One result of the medications that I take to control this ailment is that I occasionally experience the effects of hypoglycemia which is basically what happens when the sugar content in your blood gets too low. Basically, without a high enough content of sugar, your body literally runs out of gas and it results in weird side effects like shaking, sweating and loss of concentration. So to tie this back to where I started, as I lay there dreaming about power consumption in a fictional space and as I wondered how power could be maintained for 700 years without a recharge, it happened that I was at the time experiencing the effects of hypoglycemia. Luckily this condition tends to wake me from sleep (which, if any of you know how heavy a sleeper I am, you may find this rather miraculous). As soon as I woke up, I started to put the pieces together. As I rushed into the kitchen to shove anything I could find into my face I was a tad amused at how the brain works. I couldn’t help but find it amazing that as I lay there sleeping, my brain was still interpreting input from it’s surroundings and trying to put that information into some sort of context that made sense. I was literally running out of juice and my brain subconsciously turned that into an apparent need for a quick recharge via my hideaway solar panel.

It’s things like this that make me wonder about our true capacity for knowledge and learning. Brains are amazing things and it’s my opinion that they can do so much more than we can even comprehend presently. Guess we’ll just have to wait for that next sphere of existence to learn all the secrets. Until then, I should probably investigate some way to rig up a personal limitless energy supply so I can survive the next 700 years in space… or something like that.

There’s not much content in this post other than a couple pictures of the babies sleeping. I just like how peaceful (and silly) they look while sleeping.

Either way, it’s probably the greatest idea EVAR!!! (Yes, I meant to spell it that way, please refer to my post from Oct 22nd, 2007 for details.)

Anyway, I woke up from a dream this morning at 5:51am in what can only be described as “a moment of genius”. Emily and the babies probably wouldn’t agree because I woke them up as well as I scurried to the computer and began furiously typing in order to get it all down before it fluttered back to the land of dreams, but I’ll let you judge for yourselves. I won’t go into the details or the scenario around which the dream was centered (let your imaginations run wild), but here it is…

Conan O’Brien circa 1979.

I googled it and found no results that matched my idea so I can only assume my brain concocted it during REM sleep, but the brilliance of the idea makes it hard to believe that it could have come from my own brain. Some of the details of the dream wouldn’t have really worked so I guess that adds fuel to the dream argument, but in the dream Conan announced that they would be doing a whole seasons worth of shows from 1979. He announced that due to some crazy snafu, all of the Late Night shows from 1979 had mysteriously vanished and were no longer in the archives (yes, I’m aware he wasn’t on the air then). There was some contest or another in the dream, but basically they would be doing an entire season of shows as if the year was 1979. The theme would include retrofitting the set and making sure that all costumes were chronologically correct (guests included). All musical guests would also have to conform to the time shift and Max and the band would cover all sorts of hits from the 70′s during commercial breaks.

- Typed this evening -

It’s been a week or so since I first had the dream and the idea doesn’t seem nearly as amazing as it was after being startled awake at 6am, but I still think it would be a clever running gag for a few shows. And if there’s anyone that could pull it off, it’s Conan (or maybe Craig Ferguson). Anyway, Conan, if you’re interested, feel free to use the idea but please give me some sort of acknowledgment in the credits. Or you could fly me out to be a stupid extra for an episode. Regardless, I’d love to see the end result put into practice. It’s just too bad I’m not a comedic writer for Conan’s show or maybe I could show you all what a great dream it was.