Struck Down in the Spirit

A little something to go with the theme of Blessed Bulls




Oh yeah, I dug out this old candid of Jesus I snapped while he was working on his poses for the cover of his 7th album "Guess Who's Back?" (featuring the smash hits "Clap for Jesus" "New Testament Polka" and "The Macarena")

Blessed Bulls

Friends and neighbours
We have formed a new darts team after a lot of debate and hand wringing about how to pull a houdini from the 3 Alley team. We wanted to get a new team rolling with The Goat, The Bearded Wonder, and me, so we have moved to "Bless U" bar and are now called the "Blessed Bulls" We debated several names, including:

• Blue Bulls
• KC and the Sunshine Band
• VJ and the Vears
• Baklava Gina's (the owner's name is Gina)
• Balaclava Gina
• The 4 Ginas
• The Goat Footed Balloon Men
• 180 Degrees
• United Beard Growers Darts Society
• The Double B's
• AHHHCHOOOO
• Watch out for Jesus

Artists are working around the clock to come up with a new team Logo. We have given them a concept something like this:



















But instead of Bugs Bunny, we want this likeness of Jesus instead.




Ohhhh...that was offside.

Anyway, watch for our merchandise to be out just in time for Christmas...so if you are looking for that perfect stocking stuffer for the guy who has everything, remember, you can't miss with a "Blessed Bulls" T-shirt, hat, tattoo, cell phone cover, diaper set, cane, shoe horn warmer, Christmas tree ornament, personalized pencil, motor oil funnel, back scratcher or oven mitts.

White Ninja

This cartoon somehow reminded me of the kind of psychological warfare that went on among my sisters and I growing up, and to some extent continues to this very day. God I am looking forward to getting home for Christmas...woowooo. Let the mind games begin.

Oh yeah...and by the way, I just threw a 180. Kick ass!

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

Well, this will get you in the spirit of things I hope. My niece paid a visit to the Jolly Old Elf and I do believe that she asked him for a bonnet to keep her thin, blond upper story nice and warm, a bag of foil wrapped chocolate santas, and a pair of wild cougars to protect her from her brothers.

Post your Christmas wish list in the comments section. Uncle VJ will take a look at your internet ISP address history to decide if you have been naughty or nice this year and will pass along his recommendation to St. Nick personally.

Sometimes...sometimes...

Just like my old pal "Furious George" here, from time to time I get a deep guttural urge to tear someone apart. Today is one of those times. It is inexplicably unexplainable and unexplainably inexplicable. It is understandable actually...my patience is wearing thin - no, not wafer thin, but thinner...like as thin as the flap that is folded back during lasik surgery.

Tick...tick...tick...I gotta get on vacation before something outrageous happens. Serenity now...serenity now.

Darts Season Comes to a Close

Darts season wrapped up on Monday as we failed to make the playoffs this season. I have to admit though, that after being in the basement of the "C" division last season, we did well to scramble into second last in "B" division. The team is in jeopardy right now as there appears to be some uncertainty about returnees. The next season doesn't start until mid January, so plenty of time to sort it out.

Monday night we faced off against the #1 team in the league, which features the top three players in the league as well, so we knew it was going to be a long shot. As the "Bearded One" and I made it to 3 Alley, we discussed our impending doom and hoped to throw well and not get blown out. As luck of the draw would have it, I got paired up against a cat named "Duke" believe it or not in the first singles match. He is the top player in the league and had only lost one match this season (I am ranked about #25). I was pretty relaxed to play him, as I had no expectations and he is quite a friendly guy, so I knew it would be fun either way. I won the bull and chose 501 as the first game and was throwing well and keeping pace with him as we counted down...I started tensing up a bit as I began to realize that I had a chance to beat him if I kept on throwing well. I had a dart to win it, but missed a double 9 by a fraction and then ended up losing game 1. Just to have a dart to beat him though was exciting, and I was pumped up going into the cricket leg. I was right on the mark and closed out the first cricket game with a 3 bull combo. One leg each...wooohooo. We went at the bull again and Duke chose cricket for the rubber match. It was close getting down to the end of the cricket leg and I had 16 open and was 21 points down. I pulled a trick out of the Bearded One's book and took a look at 16 from an angle and sure enough, I threw the triple. I closed the bulls with the next dart and then had only to hit one bull to win. God...what a good feeling. Surprisingly Duke was pretty cool about it. There are lots of guys in the league that get really pissed off when they lose, but we went and had a Jager and a laugh after.

Beardy went up against the #2 player in the league and played well, but #2 played a spectacular match and never gave him any openings. He was able to win a leg from Duke and company in a doubles cricket match though with a hot 5 mark start on the 20's that Dukey couldn't recover from. Nice Nice.

Darts...there is not a more frustrating and satisfying game. Looking forward to next season.

Lady VonJackass

Lady VonJackass is currently on a European road swing for work, which ostensibly seems like it should be a great way to enjoy some travel on the company dime and do a little work in between. However, unfortunately her boss has come down with a severe case of chronic, debilitating "Ajossi Syndrome" that affects the medulla oblongata and corpus callosum, resulting in a severe loss of brain activity and the inability to think with reason, logic or compassion for other human beings. In effect, the level of cognitive development gets stunted at the pre-operational stage, resulting in a grown human form with the social skills and cognitive functioning of a 3-4 year old child.

Case in point, as they traveled from Germany to Paris, Lady VonJackass was feeling quite sick with a sore throat, stuffy nose and fever, so upon arriving in the "City of Lights" she decided that she would not accompany the group to dinner and drinks, but rather take some cold medicine and get some much needed rest and hopefully be feeling better for the next day's meetings with the French Olympic committee. She woke up the next day feeling much better and did an excellent job during the official meetings; however, was the boss happy? No, he pouted because he said she was too selfish because she didn't go out with them the night before. He spent most of the day not talking to her or anyone else and then when evening fell, he wanted to spend some time and tax payers money at a casino, so he dragged the staff from the hotel down the street to a nearby gaming house and told LVJ and another staff member that they should sit and watch him play the slot machines just in case he needed to talk to a casino staffer and needed them to communicate. After about 2 minutes of this idiotic idea, LVJ said to hell with this and went back to the hotel with a few other coworkers, leaving the boss with his secretary, who for some reason was more than happy to sit idly by and watch this numb nuts play the shot machines for 4 or 5 hours. Again in the morning the boss was pouting like a child because he thought it was rude that everyone left the casino (they didn't want to play in the first place) and left him there alone (apparently the secretary doesn't count as a person). The only upswing to these incidents for everyone it seems is that when the boss gets mad, he pouts and doesn't talk, so then nobody has to listen to him whining like a spoiled child.

Sunday I am supposed to drop by the airport to pick her up, and I have been daydreaming of kicking her boss right in the yarbles or slapping a sleeper hold on him when I see him...Somehow I know though that no matter what anyone does to him, he can't change his behaviour. It is his natural state and he doesn't know any better. After all, he is afflicted with Ajossi Syndrome.

R.O.C.K. in N.O.R.K.

I can barely even comment on this, but check out the North Korean music charts below. With a toe tapper like "Juche (Self Reliance) farming method is the only method" topping out the charts, there might be hope yet for my band's (VJ and the Toll Gate Auditors) latest release "The best way to snare a muskrat is with 13 gauge wire."

KOREAN TOP 20 SINGLES CHART

TW-LW
01 - 06 The Farming Collective of the Northwest - "Juche Farming Method is the Only Method"
02 - 01 Latoya Jackson - "C'est La Vie"
03 - 03 MC Cho - "Love The Americans (Hate The Imperialists)"
04 - 05 Hong Sae-Mi featuring MC Cho - "Golden Star for the Fatherland"
05 - 02 Kim Yong Yok - "Together In Defense of Socialism 06"
06 - 08 Bananarama vs. Kim Yong Yok - "Juche In The First Degree"
07 - 11 Korean Anti-Fascist Protection Assembly - "Bombs Over New York City"
08 - 04 The Pipettes - "Pull Shapes"
09 - 14 Scissor Sisters - "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'"
10 - 12 Shark Attack from Tumen River - "Dance! (Give It Your All For The Motherland)"
11 - 07 Mr Jong-Sung - "I Am Blind (But I Can Still See The Revolution)"
12 - 15 Kasabian - "Empire"
13 - NE Lee Jin and the Songun Heroes - "Let's Gather Mulberry Leaves"
14 - 17 Lily Allen - "Smile (Censored Version)"
15 - 09 Bob Sinclar - "Everybody Movin'"
16 - NE Psapp - "Hi"
17 - 13 Bae Cho-Won - "If Our Party Decides.... We Do"
18 - 19 Lisa Miskovsky - "Mary"
19 - 10 Old Lesbians of Choson - "(People Hold On) Socialism Will Set You Free"
20 - 16 Lee Ji-Ma - "Please Accept Our Salute, Dear Leader"

Banking Magic

Ohhh the bank...always full of wonder. I always get the feeling that no matter what I am doing in the bank, the teller reacts like it has never been done before, and then proceeds to phone 9 other people in the building to see if it is indeed possible. There is a lot of head scratching and breathing through the teeth until finally money goes where it should and I am on my way...usually wondering if I have just deposited money, or in fact I have donated to the bank employee Christmas fund.

There is always that one trusty employee though that a guy has been to a few times and seems to get the hang of the forms and number crunching involved, and I try to stay loyal to that clerk...however, in this age of MBA's, some flea bag manager usually rotates the staff in the following order (which "Wharton Hyundai Ivy Princeton Yale Business College of Korea" has richly instilled in graduates in their "Secret American Business Tactics" class since 2005):
teller to loans officer to security guard to washroom cleaner to pamphlet straightener to fund manager, and then back again. Thus, the average bank customer has a better chance of playing pick up sticks with his anus than drawing a teller that actually knows what is going on.

Midnight Special

After hearing Paul Maurice describing Darcy Tucker as a "special player" 38 times in one interview, it started to get on my nerves. Maybe it's just me, but the use of the word "special" in hockey journalism is ridiculous. There are adjectives upon adjectives for describing people, and I would assume that writers / journalists would be able to crack open a thesaurus now and then to come up with ingenious expressions now and again rather than relying on a worn out word that has been stripped of all real meaning. As the saying goes though, many writers get unlimited mileage out of a limited vocabulary.

Here is a brief list of examples describing everyone from Gretzky to Nolan to some no name hack that played 3 games for the Devils back in 97.

• Bowman said. "You were a special player, and a special player in my heart."
• Ken Hitchcock, coach of the rival Philadelphia Flyers, hailed Lemieux as a "special player, special player, special talent."
• Orr did everything by himself with tremendous injuries and I believe he was the most special player to ever play…
• On Crosby “He’s truly a special player.”
• Gretzky truly is in his own category. Love him or hate him , you have to admit he was a special player
• "But we feel Owen Nolan is a special player."
• "I spent six years here that were very special, so I'm sure I had a little extra tonight,"
• "It's a special feeling when you come back to your former team.”
• "It is a pretty special feeling to know you have the community behind you,"
• Boucher has special night in Stars' 5-3 win

Come on now...I know that most players have the equivalent of a 6th grade Jethro Bodean education and coaches maybe a 9th grade education, but writers have supposedly gone to school to get what Mr. Valiaho called "The Dictionary Habit" back in grade 4.
Regardless of all this jive, it makes about as much sense listening to professional athletes talking as watching Leno and Letterman face off in a game of canasta against Larry King and Oprah while they all eat sunflower seeds.
Is there a sports cliche getting on your nerves? Post it up in the comments section and I will pass it along to Dave Hodge. He will throw pencils until something gets done about it.

A shot at some video

The Goat told me just how easy it is to get some vids on the blog, so here is a first attempt. What better way to kick it off than with Sakuraba kicking some ass...

Eggs and Darts

Yesterday kicked off with "Breakfast at Barry's" with the Barrister whipping up eggs benedict and pouring up a few spicy caesars to get a jump on the morning. He had a bit of clamato left over from a trip back to Canada, so he thought it would be a nice way get sharpened up for the darts tourney going on in the afternoon.

Lorne, Barry and I made it to 3 Alley right at 1pm, the start time for the event, but we could have shown up a few hours later as it was a slow haul getting through some of the preliminary rounds with only one dart board. Anyway, we shot a bit of pool, had a beverage, a snack, a chat, a few cigars, read the paper, took a siesta, shopped on ebay, solved a few sidoku puzzles, wrote and recited a couple of limericks, figured out our taxes, and thumbed through the underlined passages of War and Peace; then we waited.

Darts finally flew and we got some pretty decent games in. The Goat got short changed in doubles by being the odd man out and having to choose a partner from the lower division, who turned out to be not bad though. My partner was a wizard at bulls, so it gave us a bit of an edge on everyone right off the bat cuz he was pretty accurate at piercing one or two in the first couple of rounds. We squeaked through a rematch with Roddy and Colin and walked away with the cash.

Singles was a bit wilder. Colin and I met up for the third time of the day, but both of us got off to slow starts and chipped along until finally I got through. The Goat and I met up in round two and he was handing me a beating, but a sturdy 5 bull comeback took me into the finals where Roddy and I locked up in 01. He is a cricket master, so I wanted to stay away from that if possible, but in the end it didn't matter as he sent me on my way after we battled for the double out.

A quick steak at Hollywood's after and I was home for some shut eye. The only problem with going to bed so early is that I then wake up early, so I was up around 4am seeing what was on the tube...nothing, as you might expect. I am burnt out today...my class might not be up to par...oh well, I have given them all the knowledge I have already, so what more can they expect!

Well, I don't really want to get all political on here, but this is a little something that I read as I linked along several blogs which eventually brought me to wikipedia (ahhh, you know how that goes...next thing you know, 3 hours have gone by!)

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

Any guesses who the "His" in the first sentence refers to? Roh? KJI?

Find the answer here! And don't blame me if your whole work day is then shot from surfing through wikipedia for hours...

VJ is Back. Watch out for flying debris.