(And becuase we know how boring political blogs really are, we’ve tried to avoid words as much as possible.)

What Planned Parenthood actually does:

Source: Washington Post

The crack research staff at theskinnyonbenny.com has done some polling, and it turns out that perception doesn’t line up with actuality. The polling results are summarized by the graphs below.

What Conservatives think Planned Parenthood does:

Interesting side note: We found that in fact, MoveOn.org tortures many more puppies than Planned Parenthood.

What Listeners of AM Radio Political Talk Shows think Planned Parenthood does:

Feel free to share, and in case any Sunday morning news show producers are looking, I’ll be available to appear, but only after Mardi Gras is over.

I thought of this as I made my mental checklist for stuff to take to the dog parade on Saturday: string. check. safety pins. check. duct tape. check. makeup.

Makeup was a new wrinkle this year, and I think we have to give it credit for our second first place ribbon in as many years. That’s right, losers. We’re gunning for a three-peat.

(See? I’m a pageant mom.)

But I always go into these things thinking that the pain-in-the-ass aspect of it isn’t worth the fun that we have. I remember all of the futzing with trying to make dogs keep wigs or hats on their head. Add a one-year-old and little time to prepare, and to be honest, I dreaded this from the starting gun.

We through together a float on Sunday morning. It was a wagon, turned into a rolling jail. It was a lot more flimsy and shitty than it was when I pictured it in my head, but since it was housing The Joker, the effect kind of worked.

So yes, the baby was The Joker, and we went back to a set of costumes from a few years ago, with Vanya as Batman, Lily as Robin, and Blossom resurrecting her role as Wonder Woman, in the same costume that I bought for Halloween 2004. No one can say that we don’t get our money’s worth out of a Halloween costume. Why we don’t find a cool little place on Government Street and open up a costume shop, I’ll never understand.

I have the whole photo gallery posted here, but there are a few pics that go into my folder of all-time favorites.

Our friends Andy and Danielle were walking around downtown Sunday morning, and one of them remarked, “Oh, look at that scary Joker baby! Who would do that to their kid,” realizing as the sentence completed that they knew the scary family.

The fact that I’m already thinking about how we three-peat (even considering scouting Barkus in New Orleans for ideas) has me worried that we have truely become scary people.

I start with this tweet from my feed for two reasons. First, it’s spot-on. Second, it relates to the story that unfolds herein. Although, come to think of it, if you’ve read the title of this post, and the tweet, you can pretty much fill in the rest of it all by yourself.

Some time this winter, I noticed that a good number of our cable channels weren’t coming in on the upstairs TV. I didn’t know this at the time, but Mrs. theskinnyonbenny had called Cox about two channels not coming in on the other TVs downstairs. For that, it turned out that they sent a technician out to troubleshoot, just to come back and tell us that for boxes with tuning adapters, those channels weren’t online yet.

But while he was in the house, I had him come up and look at the upstairs TV. He called the mother ship, tried pairing an re-pairing the cable cards, claimed that those were defective, and that he had no spares, and that he would have to schedule another trip. I had mentioned that the missing channels seemed to be the ones that we didn’t get when we didn’t have a connected tuning adapter, but he made no note of my comment.

Cox time spent at our house: 1 hour.

The next business day, another technician came out. I kid you not, the man replaced cable cards 3 different times. He spent hours on end talking to the people at the mother ship. And eventually, he told me, “None of us can figure out what’s wrong. Someone else will have to come out, but I think Bill Gates himself might have to come troubleshoot this one.”

Bill Gates, cable television master technician.

I didn’t spend all of that time with him, so I’m guessing he did some troubleshooting on the tuning adapter, since I mentioned it to him twice. In fact, now I recall that he distinctly told me that it wasn’t the problem.

He was at our house for five hours, so,

Total Cox time at our house: 6 hours.

That night, two other donkeys came by. They spent most of their time tracing wiring through the house and out to the pole (which doesn’t make sense, since the other TVs were getting the channels). They did take away the old tuning adapter and left a new one in its place, but after two hours, they threw in the towel as well.

We’ll call this one two people, at two and a half hours, so,

Total Cox time at our house: 11 hours.

These last two had told me to call TIVO and make sure that it had the most up to date software. I went to an information screen, noted the version, and checked tivo.com to confirm in one minute that my software was current. Then, I called Cox to set up the next batch of people to come out.

The woman who answered at least believed me about the tuning adapter. She had me go to the TIVO setup screen for the tuning adapter. I was surprised to see the screen say, in big, bold words across the top, “Tuning Adapter is Not Connected.”

I was thinking hardware problem at that point. But as the Cox woman held on the phone, I slid the cabinet out, looked in the back, and saw the end of the tuning adapter that plugs into the box dangling loose. Yes, my friends, they spent 11 hours troubleshooting what I told them in the first place, and then didn’t bother connecting the new adapter at all.

	Here is the DVR end of the tuning adapter cable.

When I relayed this to the woman on the phone, she had the only reaction that I could accept. “I’m so sorry and embarrassed about this.” And she really did seem to be sorry and embarrassed. It’s hard to be mad when that’s the case.

She promised to let the manager of these clowns know what the problem was. I doubt that he’ll care that they spent 11 man-hours troubleshooting nothing, but if he did, I would like to have heard the conversation.

My best costume idea is to dress the dogs like WW2 American soldiers. Then, I’ll have Vanya dressed as a Nazi, pulling the wagon with Kolya in there, wearing a gray suit and a Hitler mustache.

Although I think this would be hilarious, I think I’m going to reject it. First of all, Baton Rouge isn’t necessarily edgy enough (read: stupid enough) to take this as a joke. Second of all, we still owe placement reports to the Russian government. I would hate for them to do a little searching, find a picture of their newest adoptee being pulled around in a swastika-laden wagon, and have that cause an international incident.

If I’m going to be featured on Nancy Grace, I at least want the satisfaction of having murdered my wife.

(Baton Rouge: that was another joke, just so it’s clear.)

It was a great win for the inaugural Louisiana Marathon, which managed to parlay the weather with a long holiday weekend in January to come up with a destination event for runners. On Saturday, there was a 10K, followed by a 1.2-mile kids run. I had taken Vanya for a couple of practice runs, and he was set to have a good go of it. On our last practice, he ran a mile in 13 minutes, despite skipping for the first quarter mile and tripping, skidding along the road, and stopping to cry for a few minutes. I really expected to run it in 10 or 11 minutes, which would be about as fast as I’m capable of pacing him.

	Getting excited for the race.

The morning of the race, he was excited, and we ended up lining up right at the front of the pack (mistake #1). He sometimes gets a little overwhelmed with sudden loud noises, so I warned him about the starting gun (mistake #2). He got nervous about the boom to the point where when it did go off, he bolted upright in terror and started to cry. To make it worse, the hundred other kids zoomed past us, adding a million chaotic sounds and images to his already overloaded senses. I couldn’t get him back to his normal self, but he braved through the race at the back of the pack, in a hurried walk. We finished nearly last, in 17 minutes.

After that, we had a talk about how it was brave for him to keep going, even though he was really scared, and by the time we got home, he had something to be proud of.

The next day, we got a beautiful morning, so I brought the kids out into the driveway, turned up the music from the Jeep stereo, and we sat there watching the honest-to-goodness marathoners pass. They passed our house both coming and going, at about 14.5 and 22.5 miles. I kept telling them that from here, it’s downhill, both ways.

The marathon started at 7:00, and when I went out at 9:00, there was already a guy passing on his way back toward the finish. This pretty much blows my mind. For the past couple of years, I’ve been running pretty regularly, so now I have some context for this. I just can’t see how a body can go that far, that fast. I could certainly stand to drop 25 pounds, and I’m sure that would improve my stamina and speed both, but when Halloween is followed by “the Holidays” which is followed by king cake season, which is followed by Easter, which leads to St. Patrick’s Day…. Well, let’s just say there ends up being two weeks in August where I can dial back the junk food and booze.

I had a lot of fun interacting with the athletes. I think a lot of them appreciated someone clapping or saying a word or two for them. Some of the ladies liked seeing little kids on the route. One person thanked me for having music blaring. I always liked blaring music when I would do long bike tours too.

If you’re interested in keeping virtual tabs on each other, hit me up on RunKeeper. I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done in January. For some reason, I came back from Russia with the stamina to go forever, although at only a glacially slow pace. All that walking with a backpack of tourist gear on my back and a 400-pound baby anchored to my chest did me some good, I guess.

So I watched every game without a stitch of underwear on. I went all season without washing my hat. (Note to self: don’t buy any more white hats.) And I didn’t praise our team in writing.

Of course, what was to be the best season in my lifetime, possibly the best season in school history disappeared.

	This season’s lucky hat, as it looks today. I bought this late this summer.

My thought the next day was that every fan would have to identify what was different in his or her life on the day of the championship game as compared to the rest of the season. One of the first things that occurred to me was that my friend Jeremy would have to have his new marriage annulled. Wow, I’m sure that will be very disappointing to them both.

Then, I realized that in order to get back to how we were all season, I would have to send Kolya back to an orphanage in Russia. I don’t think we can take our superstitions quite that far. Besides, I’ve always observed that these sorts of things reset themselves between seasons. That said, you can blame Jeremy and me for the pitiful play, which I will never mention again after this paragraph.

(But I am going to have one really bad in the context of a story from here down, so bail now if you don’t like the foulest of foul language.)

One odd thing about this season is that due to the game schedule and a mid-season Russia trip, we only had a single tailgate party. It was a good one, for the Auburn game, with the normal pre-dawn setup, breakfast, and then drinks all the way through game time. It was an afternoon game, so it was a little easier than the 15-hour marathon that happens for ESPN night games.

The most story-worthy part of the game was a young and very drunk fan who walked into our tailgate some time late in the first half. She walked right to the food table and without looking at or speaking to anyone, she started fixing herself a plate.

Craig yelled over to her, “While you’re over there, can you fix me a plate?”

She looked back and slurred, “What does this look like? 1940s?”

She sat down in the nearest chair — one with a much better view of the game than most of the people who we know and like had. She had fixed herself a lovely plate of pastalaya, except that she had put it on a bun. The buns were really for the brisket, which she had passed over.

We started peppering her with questions. “So did you come from the game?”

“Yeah, I was sitting next to some old cunt in an Auburn shirt.”

“Well where are your friends?”