Barry's Life in Napa Blog

From "News of the Weird": ... in Tacoma, Wash., in March, corrections officer Alan O'Neill, 41, was charged with bigamy after his long-estranged first wife found out about the second one when Facebook suggested the two be "friends." - KOMO News (Seattle), 3-9-2012 From The Telegraph: Forced to choose between her man and her scaly reptile's health, Lizzie Griffiths chose the latter. The 25-year-old schoolteacher from the London area paid approximately $4,700 so George, her bearded dragon, could get chemotherapy for tumors in his face. "George will always come first." Griffiths told the Sun. "I fell in love with George the minute I saw him and knew I'd do anything to look after him properly." Chris Fisher, who's been in a relationship with Griffiths for 10 years, understood the warm affection that Griffiths has for a cold-blooded creature."They have a special bond."  From USA Today: A Denver woman has been charg...

I would like to make the case today that reality is overrated. Reality is chock-a-block with disease, famine, genocide and infomercials. Reality imposes onerous taxation and rules and foisted Geraldo Rivera on the world. Reality has none of the redeeming qualities we seek out in our entertainments - try hard and success will come to you, the triumph of good over evil, true love always wins, bad guys get what they deserve, etc. In fact, reality likes to get right up in your face and make sure you're aware that the sleazy people usually win and have all the money, true love is irrelevant in the face of expediency, and trying hard and success are complete strangers. So in summation, reality can suck it. Counterpoint: reality, and the real people that cause it, can be damn funny. I offer as evidence two recent additions to the menu of amusing time wasters of which I am an aficionado. Shit My Dad Says is the brainchild of Justin Halpern, a guy from San Diego who started keeping track o...

When I was a kid there were always sweets in the house. Ice cream in the freezer, always. Those great big Hershey bars, the kind about four-by-six inches, stashed in a drawer or "hidden" in an electric fryer that sat unused on top of the fridge. And a cookie jar of some sort, on the kitchen counter, with some low quality and half-stale Fig Newtons or Nilla Wafers or some such. I knew where all the sweets lived because I was both a curious and fat kid. I made it my business to have a basic rolling inventory of everything that was in the cupboards, pantry or refrigerator. I think a "keep it away from the pudge" policy was the reason they were always trying to hide the good stuff. But being a sort of Sherlock Holmes of desserts, I sniffed it all out. That cookie jar, however, was always my last resort. If there was only one sort of crappy, cheap cookie in there, that might do in a pinch. But there was a tendency for two or three kinds of crappy, cheap cookies to end u...

Here's a useful (?) tip for a way to get your bearings when you have that thought "What the hell am I doing with my life?" or "Where does all the time go?" Take a look at your Google search history. (If you use some other kind of search engine - well, that's so 20th century I don't even know what to say. Maybe you should skip reading this and go see if "Fibber McGee and Molly" is on the radio.) Google keeps track of the words you type into the search box. Mine seems to go back about six months. So a quick review tells me right away what I've been thinking about, working on, and wasting time with. For example, a selection of my recent searches: Ryan Adams (obsessed with his music) Samuel French (obsessed with reading plays) Pubic hair fashion (would you believe it if I said I was writing my doctoral dissertation. No? I didn't think so.) Chrome (that's the new Google web browser for your cave dwellers) Meaning of love (if Google d...

Six Flags Visitor Arrested For Hitting Camel VALLEJO (AP) ― A man has been arrested for allegedly punching a camel on a dare at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Vallejo police say 24-year-old Christopher Allen was dared by a friend to enter a restricted area at the theme park where the camel was kept and punch it. He struck the animal and was arrested. Undoubtedly our top story today is this tragedy that was perpetrated in nearby Vallejo. On first instinct, you might wonder what kind of meth head would get exercised enough to want to punch a camel. But this clearly seems to me to be a copycat crime. This kid was either trying to duplicate the "Mongo cold cocks a horse" scene from Blazing Saddles , or more likely, a "Conan punches a camel" scene that can be found as a video game excerpt on You Tube. Then again, if you are in the captive animal taunting business, it's always better to choose somethi...

Get ready to fire off your best smears on the public education system - with the awareness that Mrs. Blogger is a teacher and I may get all medieval on you as a result - but go ahead, sure. Here's the trigger: OCEANSIDE, Calif. -- John Corcoran graduated from college and taught high school for 17 years without being able to read, write or spell. (This from San Diego's Channel 10. Full story here .) The story is amazing, sad, astonishing, and above all, a tribute to the human capacity to adapt to obstacles. Amazing to think a person could make it all the way through college being totally illiterate, but then to walk back into the fire by choosing to be a teacher - astonishing. I knew a local guy who was a successful businessman, pillar of his community, even a County Supervisor, who I swear could not read a word. I became suspicious of his literacy at one point and took an opportunity to test him in a way, sliding a note to him during an interview and asking "what do you th...

To mark this blog's first birthday, I gift to you this real email I received at work this week. I am not making this up. After studying the anatomy of pigs and humans, I wonder if human is being served as pork. Pork has been called the other white meat. Why is pork so red and bloody now? Humans have a certain number of ribs, and pork has several more than human. I have studied the Niman Ranch web site, and wonder if their meat is really pork. Are the roasts really from the back of a pig? Could the ambulance drivers who do "dementia management" as discribed on the Sacramento First Responder website be actually taking the body to a butcher. Do ambulances have GPS tracking devices on them? Is there a GPS database of where the ambulances have been? The church of euthanasia has a how to butcher a human discription http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/e-sermons/butcher.html. (Editor's note: this site has a lot of really offensive stuff on it. I wouldn't go there if...

Being Friday and all, and having had my fill of being serious for the week, it's time for something completely different. The San Francisco Chronicle article turned me on to the sleeveface phenomenon, and I think it's worth sharing. A sleevface is "one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion." Here's an example: There are over 700 sleevefaces posted on Flickr. Lots of them are very direct like this one, but you'll also find increasingly creative, and sometimes disturbing efforts like this one from sleeveface.com: I won't spoil the fun by posting too many here (but if you send me one, I will certainly feature it.) Go see for yourself. The three main places you can peruse these are in the sleeveface pool on Flickr , www.sleevface.com , and Facebook (but you have to be a Facebook user to see those.) Notice how many of these shots appear to have been taken in record shops. A whole new ...

Reuters news 10/17/07 (Berlin) Germany, Mexico and Austria were world's top three searchers of the word "Hitler" while "Nazi" scored the most hits in Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom, data from 2004 to the present retrievable on the "Google Trends" Web site showed. Chile also came in first place searching for the word "gay", followed by Mexico and Colombia. Our perpetual American self hate leads us to assume that we are the most screwed up people on the planet. But I nominate instead, Chile-ers! Chile-ites! People from Chile! The nation most likely to Google the words "Nazi" and "gay" - now that's whack. (Needing empirical proof, I Googled "Nazi gay" and my top hit led me to "Scott Lively is co-author of The Pink Swastika: Homosexuals and the Nazi Party (Keizer, Oregon: Founders Publishing Company, 1995)." Do you think there are a lot of Chile-ites who are working on their Master's Th...

By Kimi Yoshino, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 9, 2007 The annoyingly catchy song at Disneyland's "It's a Small World" attraction reminds riders that "the oceans are wide." Whether they're deep enough is another story. Forty-one years after the whimsical ride debuted at the Anaheim park,Disneyland plans to shutter the attraction in January to give it a much-needed face-lift -- and deal with the delicate problem of bottoming-out boats. Heavier-than-anticipated loads have been causing the boats to come to a standstill in two different spots... Perhaps in an effort to protect visitors' egos, the park insists that fat tourists aren't to blame. The boats get stuck because "layers and layers" of fiberglass have built up where maintenance teams have patched and re-patched problem areas, said Disneyland Resort spokesman Bob Tucker. (Whole story here. ) Oh yeah. that's why my pants are so tight, too -...

My normal mode is enthusiasm on a Monday morning. When Monday rolls around, I have that feeling that if I just get a good early start, today will be the day I tie up all those loose ends and get caught up at work. Usually it takes until about 11:30am for the enthusiasm to wane. Today, the waning has already begun at 7:17am. Not a good sign. So perhaps today is a good day for some diversion, and I think I have just the ticket. It's a site called Uncyclopedia . I am a regular user of Wikipedia, and I ignore the small minds who criticize it's "wisdom of crowds" comprehensiveness, so this Uncyclopedia site is a hoot since it is a satire on Wikpedia. If you don't use Wikipedia then the whole satire thing is not going to gain much traction with you, so look, you're on your own today. In just a quick look I got some good smirks from Ice Cream Flavors Not in the Top 100 HowTo:Use IYDKWTAAMTYSUTOFRAITYTTAAMYYY to Help You Figure out What Other Abbreviations Mean Wood...

I am living in the World Wide Web these days. My waking hours, and sometimes my dreams, revolve around building web pages, uploading files, and trying to decipher little bits of code and the lingo of the Uber Nerds around me. Along the way, one can collect some entertainment if one tries. Case in point, the offerings here, contributed by people from all over who carry the exalted title of Webmaster for some public agency. These are some actual emails from actual citizens that were actually sent to some actual public employee somewhere in this great land of ours. I think you will find them inspiring. "When is some1 comin to cut my grass? I bought this house and the grass is gettng tall. My neighbor says if I wait long enuf the city will cut it for me." (Now that's what I call good old American ingenuity! Of course, this same person will complain loudly when the City sends a bill for cutting the grass after a bunch of complaints and time-wasting paperwork, all burning up ...

If you are familiar with the myspace bulletin, this will make sense. If this does not make sense, well, you know, it's Friday and it's been a long week so get off my back! 1. What is the status of you and the last person you kissed? still married as far as I know 2. What's bothering you right now? Brenna 3. What is in your wallet? i don't have a wallet, I carry everything in my hands all the time 4. Wallpaper on your computer's desktop? i don't have wallpaper but the desktop is freshly painted 5. Background on your cell phone? well, it's a Razr and I bought it at the mall. It's black. 6. What do you want in your life right now? bowl of cereal but there isn't any 7. Listening to? the voices in my head, always the voices 8. Have you ever kissed anyone named Billy? actually yes, which might be embarassing but he's 14 months old 9. Eating/chewing? i am in favor of both. 10. What's your favorite thing to have on your bed? a canned ham 11. Do you b...

Just the other day some friends were talking about a new game they had developed in their office. More intellectual than wadded-paper-and-trash-can basketball, or the uber-nerdlinger four square that's now popular in Silicon Valley , this game is all about mixed metaphors. The objective is to come up with a combination that, while failing to make sense, is funny. The oldest example of this kind of mixed metaphor that I can recall is "smokes like a fish," which combines "smokes like a chimney" (logical) with "drinks like a fish" (not really logical since it refers to alcohol consumption and I don't think fish really hit it that hard, except on weekends.) That one's been around a long time, and I have a feeling somebody came up with on purpose. Likewise, "that's not rocket surgery!" which always tends to get a delayed laugh, feels like a line that belongs to some stand up comedian. Most of your most entertaining mixed metaphors jus...

You may have seen or heard this since it's been making the rounds this week, but it is worth a second or third look. It's from the Miss Teen USA pageant that aired on Friday August 24, 2007. I like this version of the video because of the subtitles - you can confirm that the gibberish you think you're hearing is really what's being said. And now she's trying to spin it? Miss South Carolina Teen USA: 'I misunderstood the question' This is an example of how not all fame is good fame. "More Fun From AOL News Blogger: Use her words to rewrite her "answer": WIN BIG: It's The Miss South Carolina Word Scramble!!"

MESA, Ariz. — An Arizona woman has been charged with suspicion of first-degree murder after allegedly stabbing her estranged husband in the chest during sex, MyFOXPhoenix.com reports. ... husband, Juan Carlos Gonzales, 26, fled to neighbor Tony Ballard's home.... "I've never had a naked man run to my house bleeding, you know what I mean?" Ballard told MyFOXPhoenix.com. "She was on top and she...pulled a knife out of a bag and drove it into his chest," Ballard said of the incident. "She apologized first," the neighbor told MyFOXPhoenix.com. "She said 'Juan, I'm sorry about this.'" So I'm curious - I guess "love means never having to say you're sorry" is out of date now? August 22, 2007 (GamePro) -- Japanese game maker Atlus said on Tuesday that it would remove 150 Arm Spirit arm-wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms while wrestling with the machine's mechanized ap...

If you read the Parade magazine in the Sunday paper, or watch Letterman, you might be familiar with Marilyn Vos Savant . She's that super brainy woman who reportedly has the highest IQ measured. Naturally, what you want to do if you have a really high IQ is answer questions in a newspaper column. So she does. Along the way, she gets some real doozies, questions that only make sense to the not-so-super-brainy individuals who posed them. Here are some samples: Didn’t Louis XIII have any furniture? Everybody’s heard about his son’s furniture, but what about him? — from a reader in Philadelphia, Pa. Suppose we could get all living beings on Earth to face one direction and then begin running. Would this influence the speed of the Earth’s rotation? —Waterloo, N.Y. I notice you have the same first name as Marilyn Monroe. Are you two related? —Portland, Ore. Do you think daylight-saving time could ...

Today's most intriguing news: Full swimming pool stolen, not a drop spilled Superman putting out a grass fire? PGA TOUR Notebook: One golfer is on steroids, but they're legal Like golf doesn't generate enough rage as it is? Grim reapurr: The cat that can predict death What's the deal here? Does this cat read the tracks in the litter box like tea leaves? Does this cat have a cable TV show? (If not, why not?) Producers: `Cavemen' Not Racial Metaphor Has this been cleared with Al Sharpton? Is it true the first episode features a cameo by Don Imus and Michael Richards?

In the news... VP Dick Cheney will have a procedure to replace the battery in his pacemaker. While he's in the shop they also plan to polish his glass eye, tune up his bionic legs and give him a complete sneer adjustment. A hundred foot-deep lake in the Andes just up and disappeared. Not the first time this has happened - same story last year in Russia , and in 2004 it happened in Missouri . Apparently Michael Moore gets mighty thirsty after eating a boxcar or two of salted peanuts. It's good to see we're all still interested in getting the hard news and keeping up with the challenging issues. Here are the sfgate.com most read stories today: Stolen 1956 Thunderbird recovered -- 31 years later SF Gate: Entertainment: Horoscope Should You Get A Bad Tattoo? Why not? It's easier than ever to get it... No copping out allowed Yes, 'Die Hard 4' is rated PG-13, but the action is... BART'S NEW VISION: MORE, BIGGER, FASTER Readers clicking on #5 are generally disapp...