More fun state official craziness. He's not my local state rep, but he is for my parents, and he's decided we need to put the state's name on the state flag. I guess that's important, but I would figure that most people who see the flag would already be aware they are living in Pennsylvania, and for a certain sector of our population, it's really best not to remind them.

I'm kind of reminded of the bit George Carlin had when our license plate slogan was "You've got a friend in Pennsylvania!" "I sure hope so, most of these people live in Pennsylvania. Guy with no friends in the state stares at that all day, he's going to road rage."

S'anyway...he's put up a website devoted to the having people vote on the choice of where to put Pennsylvania on the flag, which does two things for me:
1. Fails to include none of the above, which would be the sensible "save the state money by not forcing us to buy thousands of new flags from China" option.
2. Demonstrates that what evolution is to Kansas, anti-aliasing text is to Pennsylvania.

Now for the fun part. In practice, my mother has lunch with the rep's mom once a month. (My mother was a school board member, his was a teacher.) Which if I know how it works will be next Monday. I'm genuinely curious as to whether you guys can get me in monster amounts of trouble in five days. Nothing obscene, nothing destructive, folks, but let your voice be heard.

I guess I can go off of Defcon 1, but only down to Defcon 2. The second most stressful thing going on near me has finally climaxed. (story here) The company's been in my mother's family for 80 years, and this is where I got my first job, cleaning shelves in the parts department. This has been over ten months of crazy, and even if I'm not the directly affected, it was topic one in every Sunday dinner since. So now, we go to the second act.

Still, even if I feel knocked off kilter by it, I feel insulated from it. It's not even the craziest local crime story I can relate. (watching your family's insurance agent get nailed for arson, by fleeing a building with his pants on fire. With a gas can in hand. And the building explodes. Yeah, that's going to top anything.)

Still, at least nobody died in it. More than I can say for this killer. Just look at him, he dressed to facilitate his killings, and his eyes, no remorse there. Probably jacked up on Peruvian marching powder when he did it. If we let him out there, he'll do it again.

Okay, which is the better reaction to this:
You paid for an Official License for that?
or
This agression will not stand, man.

For the record, I didn't have my terrible towel last year for the playoff run. For some unknown reason, I was given a black and gold dishtowel for Christmas last year. It was handy, and if we are to believe in these things, we have to think IT WORKED!

I for one hope this makes it over to America and ends up sticking around. After you've had an argument with a five-year old, I can imagine there's just something very therapeutic about being able to come back with:
"Shut up and eat your clown, kid."

Liquids you drink, solids you eat. It's not nearly as hard as it sounds. But once again the people who conceptualize things like the Krispy Kreme Donut shake, coffee steak, and brussels sprout soda have gone off the rails. I shouldn't be surprised a state fair was involved.

Deep Fried Coca-Cola

Next year, I think I need to go to one of these, set up a sign that says "Deep Fried Pop Rocks", then when I've gathered a crowd of people who actually think that's a good idea, drop the pop rocks in using a very long ladle, and run like hell.