StumpTown Blog

I wanted to get a bunch of quick movie reviews posted and will try to do that this week, but haven’t had time yet. So first, the picture that is posted with this blog comes from a website that sells replicas of signs from London. This is apparently a real sign in London, England. Of course, the imagination is running wild with the possible contents of the box, but I also like how forceful it is. Apparently it is not enough to provide protection, but you must clearly direct someone to use it. Nice. Here are my thoughts on what might be in this box: 1. A note containing a strongly worded reprimand which is what the English Bobbies are armed with instead of guns. Not surprisingly, English criminals are still foregoing these notes in favor of guns. 2. A sandwich. Not only nature’s perfect food, but a recipe for peace on earth. Probably roast beef. 3. It’s not a real box, but one of those “air boxes” created by mime’s and street performers…oh no wait, that would likely encourage an assault,...

Day 4 There is a risk scheduling Disneyland on the first two days of a week long vacation. What do you do to follow that? Since we weren’t getting on a plane to fly to Disneyworld, anything else was going to be a let down right? I mean, it would take trained miniature animals, hand feeding a camel, exotic cross-breeds, children of moviestars riding million dollar horses at a beautiful ranch regularly featured in TV commercials. Now that I think about it, even that wouldn’t be enough unless you also threw in the opportunity to see family you don’t see as often as you would like. Now if you could find a place where you could get all that, then maybe, just maybe you would have yourself a decent follow up to toxic watermelon gas and Jedi training. Fortunately for us, there was just such a place only a few miles from where we were staying in Thousand Oaks. No, it’s not the Neverland Ranch (yikes), but rather the ranch where my Wonderful Aunt Sis (“WAS”) works along with my cousin Mark and h...

Day 3 was Day 2 in house of mouse. Our game plan was simple and straightforward. 1. Breakfast at IHOP to start out with a good fuel level as we started our day. For reasons I can not explain to this day, it was by far our most expensive meal of the trip. 4 people, two of them children, and it was more than anything we ate in the park by a wide margin. I looked at the bill up and down, but I still think I must have missed something, like the fact that I agreed to buy a round of pancakes for the house or something. It may be a long time before I try IHOP again. Just makes me nervous like traveling in Europe with your wallet in your back pocket after all the stories of pick-pockets. Ok, so I’ve never travelled in Europe, but I’ve heard stories including one where my lovely wife fought off two gypsies in an Italian bathroom and chased down a third to reclaim her backpack. Lovely and ferocious! It is very likely that if there really are people with superpowers living among us, she is one of...

Still buzzing with excitement from our victory over the evil empire, we charged off to ride the Finding Nemo submarine ride. This was a new attraction relatively and the kids were excited to ride it. How did they even know about it you may ask? I’m not exactly sure. My best guess is that Disney has spiked our drinking water with nanotechnology that sends messages to our brain on a cellular level informing us about the latest Disney rides, tv shows and movies. But I’m not completely sure. Just going with the most simple explanation. Anyway, the line for Nemo was going to take more than an hour and had no fast pass. You know about the fast pass right? It’s ingenious really. You grab a ticket for the ride that tells you when to come back to the ride so you can go stand in line for other rides and then come back and stand in a slightly shorter line for the ride you initially wanted to ride. It is possible that for a major ride it makes sense and I give Disney total credit for trying to do ...

And now the continuing saga of our recent vacation… Day 2, Part 1 – Disney, baby. Disney. The night before day 2 we sat with our friends to decide what time to leave. We wanted to basically get there when the park opened and my friends live “across town” from Disneyland which in LA means approximately 16 hours away if traffic is light. Also the term “traffic is light” in LA means your car is not moving in reverse, away from your destination. I find that many every day terms need to be defined when living in LA. You just need a different frame of reference for questions like: 1. Is that an expensive car? 2. Is that surgery medically necessary? 3. What do you mean the coke you’re selling doesn’t come in diet? 4. Do you know anyone in the business? 5. Do you know how to find the Paris Hilton? Anyway, since it was going to be a bit of a haul, we had to make a plan. Why is it that it can be so difficult for 4 otherwise relatively normal adults who are good friends to arrive at a plan with c...

More good news today about my Dad. He got scanned today and talked to the doctors and they all declared his surgery a success. Ding dong, the tumor's dead. Sadly, it took a big chunk of liver with it which is resulting in some fairly extreme pain for my Dad, but the surgery went well and the remaining tumor in his chest is stable so today was a day of good news. Praise God. No time to provide Day 2 of the Vacation extravaganza. Instead my thought for the day is I bet the ability to read other people's minds is the most overrated super power. It sounds like something that you would like to have, but I'm guessing it would make most people miserable. Think about the people you know with absolutely no social filter. Now think about how much fun it is to be around them. Now consider if everyone was like that. See what I mean? I would much rather have invisibility or the power to turn any rock into a sandwhich.

Hello all. Long time no blog. We are freshly back from a much anticipated, much needed, long overdue vacation. We went to Disneyland and California Adventure and Windy Hills Ranch with the two Indiana Jones doppelgangers pictured along with this post. My hope is to describe our trip in a new series of posts as time permits. First though, a brief update on my Dad’s health. My Dad is now home from the hospital (and has been for more than a week) and recovering well. He’s certainly not back to 100%, but the recovery seems to be going as anticipated. He’s in pain and it interferes with his sleep and it is no fun by any means, but he is on the road he needs to be in and recovery seems to be going well, so praise God. He will talk to the doctors again today and get another scan, so we may know shortly (though probably not today) how effective the surgery was in killing the tumor. Oh, by the way, this tumor was only the size of a baseball as opposed to his last nerf-football sized mass. That’...

Just a quick note from the hospital. My Dad had his surgery today. It went well. They were able to go in with the scope, so they didn’t have to open him up. The surgeon feels good about how it went. There were no other tumors visible which was a pleasant surprise. It went as well as it could have. Praise God. Thank you all for your prayers.

Two 13 year old boys have been charged with breaking into their school and attempting to rape an assistant principal who was working at the time. 13. 13!!! It makes my stomach turn and makes me sad and angry and disappointed. It also makes me wonder, are we doing all we can as a society to keep things like that from happening? One of the heavy burdens we have put on our legal system is the responsibility to mold society. Our legal system punishes unwanted conduct for the sake of justice and compensates the injured in the name of fairness, but as much as any other goal, our legal system is designed to motivate certain behavior we deem desirable. In the regulatory arena, that is the primary goal. We fine companies who pollute primarily because we want them to stop polluting. In the civil and criminal arenas controlling behavior is only one of the three goals (at least 3) that I mentioned above. But it is with that goal in mind that I find myself wondering, when should parents be ...

We interrupt this blog inactivity with some news/information of actual importance. It has been a while, but I think I should post an update on my Dad’s (pictured above in a very cool old picture my wife unearthed recently) health situation. This will just be a brief summary, so if you would like more details, please feel free to email me. If you are new to the blog or to knowing me, you may not know that my Dad was diagnosed with a relatively rare form of cancer a couple years ago. Successful surgery removed a tumor the size of a nerf football (sorry to be graphic, but it still blows me a way to think about) from his abdomen. Unfortunately, all too soon, the cancer returned. My Dad has been living for several months now and maybe more like a year now that I’m thinking about it with multiple tumors on his Liver and one in his chest. There is a drug that has proven to be effective against this type of cancer that my Dad has been taking and the regular CT scans had been showing that the d...

I love to make fun. I mean who doesn't like fun? So here is one way to make it as I recently posted to someone else's blog comments: Try this out, just for fun tomorrow. Whenever anyone tells you some simple fact about their life or day, smile knowingly, nod your head and say “it takes two to tango, if you know what I mean.” No one will but at least half the people you say it to won’t want to admit it and that is funny. For example, "Hey, how's it going? I just got the best deal on a new speed boat." "Well, it takes two to tango if you know what I mean...." Or, just try adding “if you know what I mean” after some obvious thing, like: I’m going out to get some milk at the store if you know what I mean.” This will freak people out, trust me. Then you have a little fun at the awkward moment and later they make fun of you for being such a dork and everyone has fun thanks to you. Sure you will get a lot of wierd looks and people will think you are compl...

Both of my sons share many of my better qualities. Both are witty and intelligent to an almost alarming degree and both lead secret lives as ninjas. Like my youngest son, I too have these really cute freckles and could charm the spots off a leopard if I were in the need of spots (which of course I am not as I don’t even have room for all my stripes). And my oldest son has already begun to see the world like a products liability attorney. Ok, in truth, unlike G2, I have no freckles to speak of and even less charm, but the last comment about my eldest is true. He brought me a Frisbee today that is your standard hard plastic Frisbee roughly 10-12 inches in diameter. It is made for or by the fine people at Colombia Sportswear Company and contains the following warning. Remember, I’m not making this up and this is on a large, blue, hard plastic Frisbee. “WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD – Small parts. Not for children under 3 years. For ages 4 and up.” This spawned the following conversation: G1: Da...

It isn’t exactly and elegant term, but that is of little consequence given its likely paucity of use. However, "Blogtigation" is the term I’m coining to describe when a dispute comes up on someone’s blog through the comments, responding posts on another blog or the like. For example, if someone wanted to argue that is better for our society to have so many “reality” tv shows that feature people yelling at each other and responded to my post and then I responded and then we went back and forth, we would be in informal blogtigation. Then, if each side got blog lawyers involved to help them settle the dispute you would be in formal blogtigation and be at real risk of being a huge dork and perhaps, with some luck at least mildly entertaining. Recently I have been retained to serve as blog counsel in some blogtigation over the name of a certain blog further confirming what you already knew about me being a huge dork and possibly even providing some entertainment. At least, I wa...

I just added a link to Ike Graul's blog called Trinisonic. I've been reading that blog for a while and should have added it long ago, but it takes me a while sometimes. Ike is a good friend and an amazing talent. I owe him for ever for agreeing to help me with my interest in writing music by arranging the first song I wrote and several others after that. Anyway, check out his blog when you get the chance.

I would describe myself as naturally curious. Not in a way that leads me to soak up knowledge like a sponge and constantly try to better myself, but more in a way of I spend a lot of time wondering why things are the way they are. Here are a few of my recent ponderings: 1. Why are Americans fascinated by reality shows that feature some rude, angry person belittling some other person to the point that the person is in tears? American Idol, Hell’s Kitchen, that new show about dog groomers that has to be one of the signs of the end times. They all (as it would appear by the previews) rely heavily on this and are all popular (well I don’t know about the groomer show, it just started, but the format is so identical to the dozens of design, singing, modeling, etc shows before it, that it proves the point anyway. I don’t get it. Who are these people that enjoy that and why aren’t we putting them in jail or sending them to the arctic or something? As I recently remarked to a friend: “W...

A good blog post sent to me by my friend Cheryl about slippery slopes reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to rant and rave about here for a while now. (Have you ever noticed that you may rant about something and may rave about something and may rant and rave about something, but while you will go off on a rant, you will never go off on a rave?) In undergrad, one of my majors was in philosophy. Like all other college degree programs, this one had various requirements before graduation. You had to take modern philosophy, ancient philosophy and existentialism. You had to grow a beard and spend at least half the day scowling intently at no one or no thing in particular. You received extra credit for obscure literary or philosophical references tattooed somewhere on your body. You had to do a 150 hour practicum sitting on steps and pontificating over things like whether Plato used the Socratic method or if a philosopher speaks in the forest and there is no one there to hear him, doe...

When I drove in this morning from Beaverton (which is a lot like Bosnia except for the government, economy, culture, architecture and geography), a van full of commandoes shot out the tires on my truck. I swerved and narrowly missed a group of penniless orphans crossing the road. Just then a grenade hit near the passenger door and the whole cab burst into flames. I smashed the driver door window with one strong blow from the handle of my TEC-9 semi-automatic and dove from the flames. Guns blazed as I dodged the cross fire to plant myself between the evil gunmen and the terrified orphans. My head was bleeding from crashing my truck. My clothes were ragged and burned. I had taken two bullets in the arm and one in the leg. I was barely able to remain upright and struggled to draw enough breath to allow me to stand and fight. But fight on I did..... This morning I fought to protect our freedom and our way of life and our penniless orphans. Seeing my inner strength that embodied a...

I was listening to Prince or whatever he calls himself these days and was tempted to write this whole post like he does, but I decided the title would be enough. Today’s randomness: 1. I have a new blog to recommend. My friend Cheryl Russell just started blogging and the link is in my list of blog links to the left. Even with the recent start, there is already lots of good stuff over there. She’s a Christian and budding author and apparently a samurai. Go check it out. You know I wouldn’t steer you wrong. Ok, I totally would, but I’m not right now. 2. Back to the goofily written title of this post, you can add to my list of pet peeves abbreviations to words that have no connection to the spelling of the original word. Some of my “favorites.” X-mas (the absolute worst); “’nuf said” (what word got shortened there exactly? “eenuf”?); “thru” (not a word, I don’t care if it is in the dictionary. You put that “gh” right back on there where you found it!!). I mean, c’mon,...

I know, I'm going crazy here with 2 blog posts in one day, but I couldn't resist sharing this picture. G2 is seen here in his daily hulk transformation. When he's hulk, he doesn't just play the small green toy guitar. He becomes the small green toy guitar. The music flows through him. He can often be heard around the house belting out that great American anthem: "Bye bye Miss American Pie. Drove the Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry And good old boys were drinkin Pepsi and Sprite Singin this will be the day that I die.... This will be the day that I die."

Shorter post today. I thought it would be better if you knew up front. I teach a business law class to junior and senior business students at a couple local colleges. I do it because I enjoy it and one of the colleges is a local Christian school I like to support. One of the things I have come to enjoy is how predictable people are in groups. Get a group of people together and you will always have certain personality types and people playing certain rolls. It is like the various versions of the expression that goes something like, every group of people has at least one person that the rest of the group makes fun of when they are not there. If you can not identify that person in your particular group it is because that person is you. ....or so the saying goes. Anyway, every year I teach this class the "same" people sit in the same places in class, dress the same and make the same comments. They are actually different people, most of whom don't even know each other ...