cruel intentions

this has got to be the funniest thing i have EVER seen.
http://www.compfused.com/directlink/968/

where in the world is kate?

some of you are probably wondering why my posts have centered around the news as shown on msn.com. well, i am currently in st. louis attending my third round of IRS training - corporate tax.
my life in a nutshell - fly to st louis on sunday.
sit through 8 hours of class, eat dinner, watch tv and go to bed - monday through thursday.
sit through 8 hours of class, eat dinner, and fly to milwaukee on friday.
lather, rinse repeat.

it's my party and i'll cry if i want to...

apparently, miami is planning a large party at the orange bowl following Fidel Castro's death.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16872448/?GT1=8921
i'm as anti-mean dictatorships as the next guy, but come on, is celebrating someone's death in a party fit for a stadium in good taste? i think not.

the doctor is in...

apparently grey's anatomy star isaiah washington has begun counseling because of a very inappropriate anti-gay word he called his co-star. i didn't know they offered therapy for being mean and homophobic.
Washington "regard(s) this as a necessary step toward understanding why I did what I did and making sure it never happens again" and also claims to have entered counseling with the support of his family.
my understanding:
- he did what he did because he was mad and wanted to make his co-star angry. or he doesn't like gay people.
- he could make sure it never happens again by never again saying the inappropriate word. there are plenty of other words you can call people to hurt their feelings without enciting a publicity riot. like butthead. or jerk. or any one of the names washington has inevitably been called since using the not nice word himself.
- you don't need the support of your family to enter counseling, you just go for an hour of so every once in awhile. as long as you have a car and driver's license, a limo, or a bus pass and some health insurance, you don't need anyone's support. and by the way, i'm pretty sure everyone's family would be supportive of him learning not to be a mean homophobe.

counseling concluded. someone owes me some money....

crying over spilled peanut butter

it has recently been suggested that britney spears is pregnant. again. this rumor stems partially from the fact that it appears as if she had vomitted all over her new boyfriend. both her manager and her boyfriend commented on the situation.
"According to Cohen (that's her boyfriend), the icky, sticky chunks paparazzi caught clinging to his hands and shirt while he and Brit were in his car (warning: skip this next part if you're eating or ever want to crave the creamy goodness of Jif ever again) was merely some spilled peanut butter. "
""It's ridiculous. Because someone didn't lick peanut butter off his finger, she's pregnant," Rudolph (her manager) tells Us of the morning sickness mumblings. "That's how ridiculous it is.""
i find 2 things hilarious about this:
- first, "spill" peanut butter, i dare you. i assert it's impossible. this guy seems really smart.
- second, did this noble prize worthy boyfriend forget to lick the "spilled" peanut butter off his shirt too?
maybe britney did yack all over her boyfriend. that would be a deal breaker in my world. but seriously, perhaps just saying "just because someone vomits does not mean they are drunk or pregnant" would be better. it would certainly make more sense than spilled peanut butter.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

I have more good news! And I can finally share it with the world! My little sister and her husband are expecting. She is currently about 12-13 weeks along and will be popping out the little one around July 21st. I specifically put in a request for her to go into labor the weekend of Scott and Jess's wedding, but not to actually get the kid out until after the reception ends!
so, I am going to be auntie kate TWICE in 6 months! I couldn't be more ecstatic!

Dad of the year

a gentleman in berlin sold his 6 year old step-daughter's pet beagle for $53. why you ask? to buy beer. he sold it to a bar owner to get a drink.
the bar owner gave the dog back to the little girl.
what a schmuck.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16390694/

Tis the Season

another news story featured just the other night - a deer slammed through the window of a bank, wandered around for awhile, and eventually jumped out the same window it came in through.
maybe the deer needed some "bucks" :)

Stranger than fiction

last night michael and i went to see Stranger Than Fiction on our rare night out together. we both really enjoyed the movie. it was will farrell, but with a very subtle humor. it was interesting watching him be in a comedy without being the one to make all the jokes and run down the street naked.
a few notes about the movie:
- in my opinion, there are not nearly enough movies centered around IRS agents.
- the IRS is not like how they portrayed it in the movie. i made sure to point out every one of them to michael.
- apparently not everyone counts while brushing their teeth or walking up stairs. i thought everyone did that. maybe only those of us with obsessive compulsive tendencies count everything....

only in the midwest...

on thursday night, i was watching the local news. thursday nights are my favorite news nights, as they have a feature called "dirty dining". they basically just go to local restaurants that the inspector has written up and try to talk to the owners about being yucky. the owners never want to talk, but for some reason, i find it hilarious.
anyways, as i was waiting for dirty dining to come on (they always save it for last!), there were 2 news stories that were blog worthy:
1) a man was working late at night at nearby Richfield as the guy that cleans up the dead deer along the road. while he was sitting in his truck completing dead deer paperwork, he swears that he saw a 7 foot creature jump into the back of his truck and steal the deer. he said it was bigger than a bear. he called the police and four officers were sent to the scene (might i add that milwaukee has a VERY high crime rate). they spent the next few hours looking for bigfoot. seriously. bigfoot. the man who saw bigfoot refused to speak to the news because he was sure everyone would think he was crazy.
2) the next story, i swear, was about an 8 point deer that got stuck in a target in a Target in West Des Moines. the workers tried to chase it out, and eventually the deer went out the front door. there was pretty funny, yet sad, footage of workers chasing the deer and the poor deer totally wiping out.
bigfoot and a shopping deer. don't see that everywhere.

dad's midget disease

i just found out my dad needs brain surgery. if you could keep him in your thoughts and prayers, that would be great. we're not sure when the surgery will be (it has to be in iowa city, no neurosurgeon in dubuque!), but i'll keep you all updated.
strangely, this is dad's second brain surgery. while mom was pregnant with me, he was knocked out at work while chasing someone through backyards. the jury's still out whether he was hit on the head or whether he ran into a clothesline. :) but he had persistent headaches and eventually they found a large blood clot.
now, he has an arachnoid cyst. you don't know what that is? me either. i'm beginning to think i should have gone to medical instead of law school just to understand what's going on with everyone in my family! from what i do know, strangely, from watching little people, big world, is that it is a cyst full of some stuff in his brain. they need to install a shunt to move the stuff from his brain to his stomach. the midget kid in little people, big world had to have his redone because if the stuff doesn't end up in the right place, it makes you feel yucky. apparently, my dad's problem is very common in midgets.
i think it's named arachnoid because it looks like a spider? the doctors would probably laugh at me for saying that.
the cyst is putting pressure on his brain (which i think explains a lot about my father!) and has been giving him headaches. they thought they could just ignore it, but he had an MRI today and turns out they can't. it's pretty big. i have no idea what that means either.
so, iowa city is going to call him in about a week (it's not an emergency). then they go for the consultation, and then i'm sure we'll all treck to iowa city for another fun wait in the hospital while my mom or dad or other family member has some surgery.
hopefully it won't be a big deal (as small of a deal as brain surgery can be), but it would still be great if you could all put in a few extra prayers!

suggestions please

jeep and geocaching have teamed up and created a fun game. they have put into circulation a bunch of "green jeeps" (they're like little matchbox cars). you find them and track them online and move them to a new cache. finding one of these is no easy task, there are a lot of people constantaly monitoring the jeeps and they find them pretty quickly. tonight i got an email saying a jeep had been placed within reasonable driving distance, so despite the darkness, we loaded up the puppies and were off to find it. this jeep was probably about the 10th we've frantically gone looking for, so imagine our surprise when it was actually there!
part of the contest is submitting a picture of the jeep showing a certain theme. this month's theme is adventure. so, this is where i need help. i need ideas of what sort of photo i should take of a green jeep portraying "adventure". suggestions please!!!

Irresponsible business owners suck

turns out, when brides and bridesmaids went to Blushing Bride Bridal Shop here in Milwaukee on Tuesday, the shop was closed and there was a sign posted on the door saying that the owner was filing for bankruptcy and the bank was seizing the store's inventory. Turns out the store is behind in taxes (state taxes, so it's not my problem!) by about $75,000+.
For those of you that have not yet had the pleasure of experiencing buying a dress (the shopping is fun, the buying is ridiculous), here is how it goes. you find the dress of your dreams, you think. you can only guess because the dress is a size 10 and you are not, so you stood in front of the mirror with either the dress falling off or some sort of bungee cord holding the thing on you, with your undergarments displayed for the whole store. but you decide this is the dress, so you order it. you pay in full and wait 6 to 8 weeks for the dress to arrive. and that's optimistic. then you have to have the dress altered because the bridal store measurements for what size you are are about 2 sizes too big, and you don't know any better because the only one you've seen is a size 10. you have to have the dress altered at that shop because other alterations people are hesitant to alter other stores dresses. with any luck you'll end up with the dress you want and it will fit and not fall down.
so these poor girls that ordered their dresses are SOL. there is no way they can get a dress in time for their wedding. some have weddings as close as this weekend. the only store that sells dresses off the rack (you don't have to order them) is david's bridal, and even then, they need to be altered, which can take awhile. not to mention, they have probably already dropped at least $500 (and that's really optimistic) on their dream dress and now have to pay another couple hundred for a dress that will just serve its purpose.
the good news is that several local vendors are coming together to help these poor brides out. they are offering dresses at cost or donating discontinued styles. one DJ is even offering $50 to any girl that got screwed. past brides are donating their used dresses. with any luck, no one will have to get married naked.
i can't believe these brides have not come together, found this woman, and beat her up. but then again, i suspect they're all probably busy trying to find new dresses.
here's a link to the story - http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=508317

On a happier, less soapboxy note...

I'm going to be an aunt again! Erin and Nate will be giving me a new niece or nephew sometime in mid-March. Yea!
And just for the record, I think it's going to be a girl!

Bumhunting?!

i was watching 60 minutes on sunday (the football game was late, so 60 minutes was late, so the amazing race was late and i was waiting for the amazing race to come on) and they did a special on bum hunting. apparently it is the new "activity" sweeping high schools.
the main goal of bum hunting is to kick the crap out of a homeless person, generally using either a metal pipe or a baseball bat. if you can't find one of those things, just plain kicking the bum is good enough.
apparently this "activity" was originally devised by a bunch of buys producing a series of movies call "bumfights". this series of movies has sold over 300,000 copies. in the movies, guys offer homeless men alcohol or a few dollars to do Jackass like stunts, which look terribly painful and dangerous. in a few "skits" (as the producer likes to call them), the guys sneak up on a sleeping homeless person (who has no idea he's part of this movie), bounds and gags him with duct tape, and beats him. "skit"? how about assault?
the story focused on 4 teenage boys who had been arrested and put in jail for most of their adult lives for killing a homeless man who had the misfortune of stumbling on them smoking pot in the woods. they beat him with a metal pipe, a piece of wood with a nail in it, and their bare hands. the poor guy died. when asked by the host why they did it, the kid responded "for fun". the boys' favorite activity was to watch the "bumfight" movies. the kid wanted to let other kids know that even though they might be beating homeless men for fun, they shouldn't cause they'd go to jail. not because it's wrong, but because they'd get in trouble.
i think this is one of the most disturbing things i have heard in a long long time. movies about beating homeless people and feeding on their addictions and situations. kids beating anyone, "for fun". and the worst part, these stupid movies have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. and we wonder why the world is in the state it is.

Making law school a little less boring...

michael is taking law and economics this semester. i have no idea what this class is about. but that's irrelevant.
in determining whether a case should be litigated, there's this formula that takes the cost of litigation and compares it to the probability of winning times the amount likely to be won. or something like that.
michael's professor writes this formula on the board consistently throughout his class.
he chooses to abbreviate the cost of litigation as C sub lit.
which makes it difficult for anyone to pay attention. everyone abbreviates it c sub l in their notes to avoid any giggling during finals studying.

A new experience

mike bought me a GPS for my birthday (thanks scott for all the help!). tonight we tried geocaching. our first trip was to an athletic park. we found our way to near the point, but couldn't find anything. and mike had to go to the bathroom, so we left. we probably should have looked at the hint before we went!
when we got home, we found out that it was a super difficult cache. so we decided to pick an easy one. we drove our way down to a different park and walked towards the point. and then i found it. about 20 2002 Playboy magazines. in a cardboard box under a giant pine tree.
we decided that wasn't the cache we were looking for. shortly thereafter, we found a small film canister like thing under a rock under the tree! yea!
geocaching rocks. can't wait to try it out in different places!

Pepto stains

so butler wasn't feeling well. so we went to give him some peptobismol. i, in typical kate fashion, knocked over the bottle, spilling it all over the bedskirt, sheets, nightstand, and carpet. and molly. good thing she's a girl.

southpark the movie rocks.

mike had never seen southpark the movie. so we bought it.
we were enjoying the movie the other night. sadaam is hilarious.
then mike turns to me and asks with complete sincerity:
"was sadaam dead when this movie was made?"
to which i replied:
"no, given that he's still alive now."
mike's hilarious too.

he who came before us...

when we moved into our new apartment, the young girl next door told us that they guy that lived there before us was really weird. he had boxes piled full in the garage and never seemed to stay there.
we get mail from the old resident. it is usually addressed to kitten toy store. at first, i figured that it was some sort of pet supply store. how wonderful - maybe someone will send a free sample someday!
then last week, we got something very un-petlike. it was a catalog. a fairly thick catalog. wrapped in black plastic. and the contents of the catalog were most definitely not pet toys. let's just say there were things in this catalog that i would never have imagined and am still not sure what to do with. let's hope they don't send a sample.
suddenly it all became clear - the guy before us was apparently running some sort of porn and sex toy distribution center. my only comfort is that he apparently did not live there.