matthearn.com

This, this right here, is why the Onion is the best news source available for any topic, from politics to sports to sex (AKA “nooky”).

Oh heck yes:

The Bacone
A bacon cone filled with scrambled eggs and country gravy topped with a biscuit.

I’m in love.

A conservative blogger shows the usual right-wing class. (Warning: very naughty words.)

I am so tired of the rain that I may do an Anti-Rain Dance. I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but I think it will entail drinking a crapload of Olde Fenestre while shaking my fist at the sky and yelling “Thank you God! Thank you so bloody much!“

Phillies games keep getting rained out, I can’t mow my knee-high grass, and worst of all, Charles has SERIOUS cabin fever and is bored as all get-out. (Actually, if you ask him, “Charles, are you bored?” He replies, “No, I’m a little boy.) It looks like Thursday is going to be nice, so Charles and I are planning to hit the Flower Market for one last fun evening before the baby comes, so obviously the baby will probably come early because, based on the insane acrobatics she does inside my wife’s torso, my daughter is a saucy wench.

After Thursday, of course, it’s going to rain some more, except for Mother’s Day, which is fantastic except that we’ll be in hospital enjoying hospitality. On the plus side, the lawn is growing nicely, except that I have no idea when I’ll have time to cut it, so I’m sure I’ll get to it after the baby comes and it will be 17 inches high. Unless the neighbors complain, and the county comes to do it and bills me, which if the price is reasonable may become my means of lawn maintenance for the summer.

Let’s kick off the day with Texts From Last Night, a place which archives texts that people would probably regret sending, and almost certainly regret seeing on the interwebs. Warning: very bad words, along with some pretty raunchy sexy thangs. If you’re, like, a prude, I’d not click.

From roflrazzi.com:

Even if you don’t care much for basketball, this article by the inimitable Malcolm Gladwell is worth a read. The basic gist of the story is: even if you aren’t particularly good at something, you will be more successful than those who are by simple effort. This is something we tell our kids but tend not to believe ourselves; it’s nice to see it examined and proved.

Great job, “fans.”

Here’s the rule I propose: if you’re at a home game, don’t mess with the opposing fans. They’re the insurgents; you’re the US Army. Screwing with them is just like torture. It just pisses them off.

Let’s face it: Mets fans aren’t that bright. If they were, they wouldn’t be Mets fans. (Ha ha! Just kidding, Mets fan who might be reading this! Please don’t torch my car!) Now we’ll have thousands of them showing up at the Vault all season, rolling 15-20 deep, just itching to beat the crap out of someone. And some poor guy in a Cole Hamels jersey who’s taking his daughter to her first baseball game, and asked an idiot in a cheap David Wright knockoff jersey to stop dropping F-bombs, is gonna end up in the hospital. That’s gonna be so…great.

Some schmuck “fan” just created a baseball environment in which somebody’s going to get maimed. Thanks, douchenozzle.

It really was, I tell you. We reorganized our pantry, people. Reorganized our pantry. Because that is how we roll.

Friday night I managed to fit in my last organ lesson for a few weeks, since we’re having a baby in four days and everything. Then I went home and entertained my existing offspring so my wife wouldn’t go all My Lai on the neighborhood (too soon?).

Saturday we spent the day, and I mean the entirety of the daylight hours, cleaning and organizing. Sarah’s homey Jeanmarie brought her daughter over, so she and Charles played while we cleaned up the nursery, ate donuts, did some yardwork, buried a hobo, and cleaned out my car. Major productivity, people.

Saturday night I sang in one of the better concerts I’ve ever done, with the Mastersingers of Wilmington. We performed a few old “chestnuts,” such as three selections from Randall Thompson’s Frostiana, along with some classic renaissance and baroque motets. We also did a lot of modern works, particularly some Italian madrigals by William Hawley (I hope and pray he owns a pet of some kind named “Smoot“), some fun anthems by Craig Phillips, and the pièce de résistance, “Cloth’d In Holy Robes” by Judith Bingham, one of the hardest pieces of music I’ve ever put in a folder. I actually had to bang out intervals at the piano to learn the piece, something I haven’t had to do in years due to my awesomeness (note: I am also the picture of modesty).

Sunday I had church per usual, followed by a trip to Infants Be We to pick up some little clips to make the infant carseat base fit in my whip. Then home for naps, more cleaning, and a complete and utter rebuild of our pantry, which, I swear to The Deity Of Your Choice, contained an item with an expiration date in the Clinton administration, which you may recall preceded the Eight Years Of Darkness covering most of this decade.

It was a box of rice, or something, and it had been moved, by us, from house to house, at least twice. Given the shelf-life of rice, it’s entirely possible I bought it when I lived in an apartment prior to our marriage. We hoped that just simply reorganizing things would make everything fit better, but you know what really did the job was throwing away two-thirds of the food on the shelves. The rice, or whatever it was, was not an isolated instance: the average expiration date of the stuff we threw out was mid-2007.

Just another wild and woolly weekend at Hearndom II. Keep on rockin’, Amurica.

Since we’re having a baby, HW and I get a lot of people asking us “Hey, have you picked a name?  What is it?”  To which we have to reply, “Yes, we’ve picked a name, and no, we’re not sharing it.”

(Sarah is getting extra saucy about it; someone apparently asked her, “Have you picked any names for the baby?” and she replied “Yes, the last one.”)

In the spirit of sharing, here is a list of names for our daughter that we will not be using:

• Sophia – One of my favorite names.  Sadly, it is also one of America’s current favorite names; it’s more popular right now than “Madeleine,” another name I’m fond that is highly ranked at babynames.com. (Some people spell it Madelynn; those people have a special place in hell reserved for them.)
• Sadie – Can’t not think of the Maharishi.
• Millicent – Sadly, Sarah thinks this name is dorky. I love it so much I’d give it to two daughters and have to number them like George Foreman did his sons.


• Charlotte – Sarah pushed for this one, but the thought of having two kids named “Charles” and “Charlotte” made me cough stomach acid.


• Victoria – Another favorite of mine that’s sadly in use by a close friend’s daughter. Things would just get confusing.


• Brooklyn – I would pour boiling mercury into my empty eye sockets first. Also: why “Brooklyn?” Why not “Staten Island” or “The Bronx?”


• Clara – Another personal favorite that’s kind of on an uptick. Unacceptable.


• Deborah – I like the name, but not the diminutive form.
• MacKenzie – One of a father’s primary tasks, as we all know, is “keep her off the pole.” (Stripper pole. Keep up, America.) Not using a name like “MacKenzie” reduces her pole-riding odds from 90% to about 8%. See also: Madison.

In the interest of full disclosure: the above may or may not be true.