Where are we going?

Recently my daughter (she's 4) has been paying attention to the compass on the rear-view mirror in the car. She's always watching it and blurting out "Now we're going North" when the "N" appears. Tonight on our way home from dinner she hadn't mentioned it yet. So I asked her, "Which direction are we going now, babe?" She simply replied, "Forward."

I was struck by this. It was funny as hell for a bit. My wife and I laughed quietly. After a bit though, I really thought about what she said. In a word she provided some sort of innocent reassurance that we are indeed moving forward, both physically and figuratively. She did nothing but provide the simplest possible answer. There was no deeper meaning intended when the word left her lips.

We are all so far beyond such an elementary answer that her perspective is refreshing to hear. I may have eventually come up with the same with some further questioning, I'm sure.

We're headed home.
"N" - we're going North.
We're going forward.

All the details and my ability to maturely analyze situations just flat would have gotten in the way before I ultimately came up with her reply. Yet, it took her little more than a second to utter that simple truth. "Forward."

Kids do indeed say the darndest things. There's always truth in those statements. There are so many things we need to teach children about the world. It's a constant process to equip them with the best possible information to keep them safe as well as foster their inherent curiosity about the world. I want her to see things sometimes as I see them in order to adequately appreciate what she's experiencing. But that education takes a back seat at times. The teacher then becomes the student. She teaches me to appreciate her ability to see things as she sees them, usually on the simplest possible level. And that is something that can keep us all going forward.

G-Rob's What is Up with Tyler Perry?

We all know who Oprah is. Besides being the woman with a million times more "kwan" than Rod Tidwell, she is everywhere. I think I had some Oprah Flakes this morning and followed it with Oprah Roast Coffee. That got the systems going and I ended the morning squat with some Oprah Ply Toilet Paper...that's heavy duty stuff, now. She can take any million dollar idea, slap her name on it, and turn it into a freaking trillion dollar enterprise. Part of it has to do with her lemming fans, but that's another post all together. Point is, no matter where you go, you can't go a day without seeing her name. I personally think she has a complex that makes her do amazing things for people less fortunate, but she gets off on seeing her name and face all over it. There's a clinical name for it, I'm sure, but I just don't know it. The amazing this is, her name has never (to my knowledge) been slapped on a piece of crap or dumb idea.

Then there's Tyler Perry. Who? You know. Tyler Perry. The guy who brought you these corn-riddled turds:

Tyler Perry's House of Payne
Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman
Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?
Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion
...and many, many more Tyler Perry's craptastic creations

Seriously, Tyler. Whose freaking family reunion is it? Yours or Madea's? Make up your mind. No wait, Tyler Perry is Madea. He tries to be funny by playing the lead female role in the film. That's hilarious. We'll call this movie by the working title, Eddie Murphy's Idea.

Tyler Perry produces crap and slaps his name on it to warn the viewing public that they are about to watch a steaming loaf of human waste. In a way, he is doing us a service. I'm able to avoid eating goodies out of my yard because they have forever been known as "poisonous". Poison mushrooms, poison berries, poison rat poison, etc. Similarly, Tyler lets us know in the title that what you are about to experience may cause nausea and severe vomiting or diarrhea. Thanks, Tyler.

If we could only get more public figures to throw their names on things. It would save us an assload of time and grief. I would not recommend any of these to anyone.

Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor
Yahoo Serious' Young Einstein
Jewel's Dentist

On second thought, no. The only things you need to put possessive labels on should be your belongings. So grab Tyler Perry's matches and construct a pile of Tyler Perry's wood. Put all Tyler Perry's projects on Tyler Perry's Big New Pile of Wood and set it ablaze. If needed buy some Oprah's Lighter Fluid because I'm not sure how well Tyler Perry's turds burn. Do this and give me a big helping of G-Rob's Satisfaction.

File Under: Why Didn't I Think of That?

Lately, I've not been able to find a tool more useful than TinyUrl. It's simple. You ever have a URL to which you want to refer someone, but you find it is about 300 characters in length? For example, if you've ever gotten a link from Google Maps, you've seen something like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=3+Abbey+
Rd,+London,+NW8+9AY,+United+Kingdom&sll=51.532196,-0.177576
&sspn=0.001176,0.002511&ie=UTF8&ll=51.532073,-0.177332&
spn=0.000588,0.001255&t=h&z=20

Unwieldy and potentially an issue if you email it to someone. (Sometimes email clients tend to word wrap gigantic URLs rendering them useless as a link.) Instead the person is left in copy-paste hell trying to reconstruct the proper URL in a browser -- if they even bother to work with the broken link, that is. Also, if you ever Twitter, you only have 140 characters per post. I'll be damned if I'm using 135 of them for a link. Enter TinyUrl. Paste this enormous URL in and submit it. And it spits out a nice, neat, tiny URL.

http://tinyurl.com/2eznr7

BAM! Clean, concise, and easily fits in any email or Twitter post leaving plenty of room to accompany the link with a brief explanation. You now have a permanent redirect to your URL that is good forever, or at least until Google Maps goes tits up in my example....so effectively, forever.

TinyUrl also offers a browser toolbar to make it even more handy to use. Actually, about the only really, truly awful thing about the service is the fact they link to Ron Paul's official website in the left side navigation. (This would be a good place to insert a contextual link to Congressman Paul's site I realize, but then I too would be part of the problem, you dig?)

The best use of TinyUrl yet is intentionally hiding a URL from the recipient's sight. This is useful for business reasons or just plain old fun.

http://tinyurl.com/2tcnbl

Truth be told, TinyUrl was my second favorite service like this. My favorite was SwiftyUrl. Similar premise, but upon returning a shorter URL for you it also placed that URL into your clipboard. You didn't have to bother highlighting the new URL then copy-pasting the URL anywhere. You're good to go paste it anywhere you want right away. Yeah, may be a bit intrusive for some hard-cores out there having a website insert something into your clipboard, but I found it handy. Also, as a Twitter user, you could follow SwiftyUrl and use them there. Start your post off with @swiftyurl and it would convert any link in that post to a shorter URL. Again, handy.

Now, you educated types can pick up on the past tense here. Something has happened to SwiftyUrl. It's gone from Twitter and the SwiftyUrl website is completely blank. What the hell happened? Perhaps infringing on the TinyUrl premise a bit, not sure. Either way an explanation is due, people. For now, TinyUrl will do nicely.

Get your cup ready, it's back...

October 28, 2006. That was the last date I entered an update to my blog here. As you might imagine I was off gallivanting and seeing the world; opening my eyes to the scenes and experiences that can only be experienced outside of our own country. These are the places from which one draws inspiration. They are foreign lands that offer perspective that allows us to continue to trod down the path of our own "normal" existence with some newfound hope that one day you will return to see them again. And when you do, it will be as though you're visiting old friends in familiar taverns. You are no longer a tourist but a confident visitor no longer needing a map. You are simply there blending in.

If that is what you imagined I was doing over the past year and a half, you're smoking something really good. Mostly it has been time spent with the family and being lazy about penning brilliantly insightful posts to the fine readers of the Nut Punch. Yes, if you imagined any of that, you were gravely mistaken. Since October 1006 I've seen another addition to the family in the form of a little boy. My daughter has nearly turned 5 and is a real whiz. I've gone through three full bearded phases and the gray hairs have easily tripled, but only on the sideburns and beard thankfully. My love of baseball has not waned, though the shadow of performance enhancing drugs has grown larger. My Colts have won a Super Bowl against my second favorite team, the Bears. Yes, some things have changed in the time since my last post, but many things have not.

We're still mired in a dreadful conflict in the Middle East. The country is still run by wankers who still seem to have only their own interests in mind. The Cubs are, well, still the Cubs -- providing hope yet eventually leading to disappointment. Good friends are still good friends. I'm still happily married. In fact, my wife and I are about to complete our tenth year of marriage.

I have been able to approach the Nut Punch with new found interest as of late. I'm ready to get this ball rolling once again. I feel as though I'm prepared to build some momentum and keep it rolling until my next uncalled-for hiatus. Let's just hope that is a long time from now. Ready? OK, good.