For My Birthday, I want to give Shoutouts... and be a ______.

Yesterday, I did my three of my favorite things for my birthday, which is today...

A. Recreational Deceit and Prevarication
B. Talk to a Good Friend Across the World
C. Laugh Heartily

It went down this way...


My friend Jessie is in Bethlehem (the original) with her husband Trey doing Racial and Cultural Reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Despite this obviously demanding task that requires them to be away from friends and family in a somewhat hostile and definitely stressful environment, she remembered, as she does every year, to wish me a Happy Birthday. Yesterday, she IM'ed me from across the Atlantic, saying "Happy Birthday One Day Early!"

Being the _____ (insert appropriate derogatory title here), that I am, I decided to give her a hard time and tell her "Thanks so much. My birthday was Monday the 6th, but thank you." Lying through my teeth. And she saw right through it. She knows me well enough to know that this is the kind of stuff I try to pull all the time. She didn't believe a word of it.

So after going back and forth for a while and arguing that she must have me confused with Bill or Amy or other folks she's got in her Google Calendar who are born in October, I finally feigned indignation and told her that I would go back in my emails and find proof that she had been wishing me Happy Birthdays for years on the "correct" date of the 6th.

I searched my inbox, found an email, changed the dates and the content of the message to back up my story. She bit, hook, line, and sinker. I convinced her.

When I finally revealed my lie, and graciously admitted that she was correct in wishing me a Happy Birthday for the 8th, she was so mad she started IM swearing at me in an amalgam of Arabic/Yiddish/English. The tirade was completely indecipherable and I laughed and laughed and laughed. Good times.

Anyways, I don't feel bad, because I'm a _______ (insert even more appropriately derogatory title now that you've read the story). But her being concientious enough to remember my birthday all these years did remind me of how awesome she is and how great the work that she and her husband are doing.

So, for my birthday, loyal readers, go check out their blogs:

The Middle of Nowhere

and

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Let them know how incredible they are. Let them know how much you miss them. Or if you don't know them from Adam, just let them know that what they're doing matters. They're both so ridiculously friendly and open that you'll probably make a life-long friend.

And of course, watch Jessie stick her hand up a Goat's vagina.

Aargh

HOLY CRAPATHON! I forgot.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day is TODAY, Sept 19th!

AARGH.

For anyone in Philly, I know there's an event at the Rum Bar off of Rittenhouse to celebrate happy hour of ITLPD.

And I just checked the TLAPD website and found all these other great events too:

Philadelphia - The Pirate Guys themselves travel to the City of Brotherly Love for a special Talk Like A Pirate Day appearance at The Franklin, as part of the museum's events surrounding the Real Pirates traveling exhibition from National Geographic. Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket will be in Philadelphia Sept. 17-21, with a Talk Like A Pirate Day reading/performance at the museum from 6-8 p.m. on Sept. 19, and makin' stops at other pirate gatherings around town as time permits. Keep a weather eye out!

Philadelphia - "As a history teacher I am taking my students to the Franklin Institute in Philaldelphia Pa to see the exhibit about the WHYDAH. A pirate ship found off of Cape Cod. I am going decked out with eye patch and head gear. After work its yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, then its on to the wench to shiver me timbers. Ahoy and may you never find your self in Davy Jones locker"

Philadelphia - Independence Seaport Museum celebrates Talk Like A Pirate Day with the closing film in its summer Starlight Cinema series, the classic Bob Hope pirate parody "The Pirate and the Princess." In honor of the date, everyone dressed like a pirate gets in free; there'll be a best-dressed pirate contest, free pirate snacks and tattoos (temporary, we think), and heaps o' pirate fun.

Philadelphia - And in still more Philadelphia pirate news, the crew of the tall ship Gazela, moored at Penn's Landing, will be in full pirate regalia for TLAPD. After storming the Independence Seaport Museum (see above), they'll have the ship open until 11 p.m. for late-night pirate ship tours.

Christmas Decorations... (AKA Whitman's Electrical Fire Hazard Sampler)

There's a lot of blogs out there that like to show you "before and after" pictures. SO Boring... I mean, linear timelines and sequential representations have always been the mainstays of the oppressive majority regime.

But if there's one thing we here at The House Rules are all about, it's bucking convention, progressive thought, and liberty from social conformism. (Actually, at the moment, there's a couple things we are all about but they fall under the Leftover Dessert and Serial Television on DVD categories. But excluding those, we're all about the convention bucking.)

So, we bring you our Christmas Decorations... well after the fact. And we successfully staged some photos of the assembly and dissassembly so that you'd have no idea what stage in the process you're looking at.

















"Yeah, Christopher Nolan, director of Memento, you're MY bi-atch now!"

But I digress... As usual, one of the more successful motifs was the front window Christmas Baubles.

Now, in the interest of preserving my manhood while writing about Christmas Decorating "motifs", it should be noted that every night when we came home from work, we'd immediately plug in the front window lights while I made varying references to "My Balls" often with accompanying song lyrics set to the tune of classic Christmas Hymns from the Trinity Hymnal. I guess technically this actually preserved my obnoxious adolescent boyhood rather than my manhood, but either way its still MALE so I'll take what I can get.




Damn It! I digressed again. The point is, my parents gave us my Grandmother's old Christmas lights which had been on the family tree at the farm for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, when my Grandmother got them, it must have been a Depression year and they must not have had copper or Intelligent Electrical Engineers.** Because the bulb sockets don't have any threads. So its a very loose form of friction that holds the bulb in place and the contacts making the circuit complete leave something to be desired. The bulbs are always going out... not burning out, just going out.

So every year, there was a standing rule in the family that every time you passed the tree you had to scan the entire tree and find at least 3 bulbs to push back in so they'd light up. If you do the math, 5 kids X 3 bulbs X 25 trips past the tree per day each = BUTTLOADS of bulb pushing.

So, It really isn't convenient to use these strings but I guess Nostalgia has reared its ugly head and made me ITS bi-atch. (Which by proxy makes Christopher Nolan into NOSTALGIA's bi-atch as well.) I wrapped all the strings of bulbs (plus a few extra from the Home Despot) around a foam ball and made these Christmas Baubles... AKA My Balls.

In conclusion, as this closeup photo shows, there is doubtless a huge fire safety issue in the way these things are wrapped around themselves. Especially when you consider that I had to connect 4 to 5 successive extension cords to power the lights from my ungrounded outlet with no coverplate in the front entry. But now that smell of overheating PVC insulated wiring will forever remind me of Christmas...

Footnote**: True story... Almost all Intelligent Electrical Engineers disappeared around the time of the Depression. I'm pretty sure they're still hiding in Uzbekistan somewhere leaving the building electrical system design industry to their dumbass inbred cousins. True Story.

24 Postings This Week!

Its been almost two months since we've posted, which breaks all the cardinal rules of blogging. You know the recommended blogging rate by the "experts" is like three times a week? Yeesh. So I guess we owe you about 24 postings this week. We'll get right on that...

Let's be frank. The Holidays are busy for everybody. On top of that, there were final papers, travel for work, and project proposals to write. So you'll just have to spread a little Christmas goodwill and forgive us. Besides, we didn't do that many home projects during the last two months anyways. I mean, who can do any good work with power tools while simultaneoulsy being "lit up like a Christmas tree" on my brother's kickass Bloody Marys?

But we did chronicle a few of those illustrious items and we'll be getting them to you in the very near future.

In the meantime, we leave you with this belated Christmas present. A verbal interpretation of a striking image from our imagination:

So, you're lying there on Christmas morning all snuggled up in blankets and pillows when what to your wandering eyes should appear? Your loved one arrives with tray of Christmas breakfast in bed! Now, being a despiser of all things breakfast foodish, in my head, Christmas breakfast involves a Chocolate Eclair. You smile at your baby, grab the Eclair and open your mouth to take a giant bite. Just before you make contact, a baby kitten pops its head forth from the end of the eclair, tilts its Bavarian Cream covered head slightly to the side, glances at you out of the corner of its eye, and quietly emits a quizzical "Mrow?"

That's What Christmas Means to Me...