Band Names

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I’ve decided to create a post where I can put all of the things I say would be good band names. I will add to it as I remember old ones or come up with new ones. If you remember any I have said to you, please remind me. Here they are

The Turd Brown Jesus Sleeves

Another Dead Cat

The Lopsided Kittens

The Suicidal Squirrels

Tuesday Night Cake

Hidden Onions

Licking Tacos

Dumpster Pie

Adjective Vegetables!

Inappropriate Orange

Sudden Onset Melancholy

Burnt Macaroons

Sunken Blackbottoms

Shitwater

Mouth Potato

Supernatural Bush

Amish Kindergarten

Hipster Dude Ranch

Terrible Donut Experience

Radical Islamic Sniffles

Drunken Goats

Rancid Nuts

Transient Anus

Unclean Widow

Pity Meat

Cherry Sulfur

My Year in Blogging 2019

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I’ve decided to go ahead and do a recap of my blogging year since I doubt I will post much before I head to Kentucky next week.

First, my overall stats for the year. They are actually not bad for my boring little blog. I’m still ahead of last year even though I stopped posting regularly last month:

Views – 8467 Visitors – 5104 Likes 2310 Comments – 566

Visits by Country – USA – 5661, UK – 859, India – 781, Canada – 251. No other country broke 3 digits.

Top 5 posts:

  1. The Lori Loughlin Scandal in Full House GIFS – It is what the title says. The college admissions scandal in GIFS from Full House.
  2.  I’m Done: A Tater Rant – A profanity-filled rant inspired by me being done with a lot of stuff. I’m still done. Probably more done than before.
  3. Tater Talks the Crazy Disney Mom Rant – My thoughts on the mom who ranted that people without kids should be banned from Disney. Spoiler alert – I disagree.
  4. Tater Talks Teachers – A post for National Teachers Day where I talk about some teachers who made an impact on my life.
  5. Tater Talks Leadership – Some thoughts on what I think it means to be a leader.

I was on a roll there for a while. I was writing stuff. People were actually reading my stuff. I thought maybe my blog would grow a little bit. Then a lot of my little daily frustrations exploded and left me is a state of mind that took me out of the blogging mood. I’m still pretty pleased with my stats. I’m sure most bloggers get 10 times the traffic, but it was a good year for me.

I’m thinking that whenever I start up again I might go toward more thoughts on TV and current events and less on my actual life. It might make it easier to want to write.

I guess this is a good time to post the link again where you can give me money to support the blog or to buy me a cup of coffee to drink while I’m writing. So, click this sentence if you feel the need to give a random blogger money.

 

In Search of the Christmas Spirit

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It’s a dark and dreary night. I’m spending my second night home alone. My wife is out of town for work. It’s still one week away from my daughter coming home from college. My son is at his house. I’ve done nothing really Christmasy this year. Last year at this time we were at Zoo Lights at the National Zoo and then went out for dinner. This year, as mentioned above, I’m alone. The dark and dreary weather matches my mood. I can’t seem to get in the Christmas spirit this year.

I dressed up as Santa for work yesterday and had multiple kids get their picture taken with me. It still didn’t get me in the mood to celebrate.

We have our work holiday party tomorrow. Usually, I would be looking forward to some time with coworkers having fun instead of working. I’d rather have a snow day and stay at home alone.

Our Christmas tree is up and next to the couch where I’m writing this. Still not helping.

It might help if all this rain was snow.

It might help if I didn’t feel ill about leaving the house every day.

It might help if I wasn’t alone so much.

It will help when we get in the car and head toward Kentucky.

Only 9 days to go…

 

 

Christmas Viewing Musts

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One more Christmas “classic”

The World's Common Tater

There are certain shows and movies that I try to watch every year during the Christmas season. Today’s post in the month of Tater is just a list of these in order of importance:

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

The Year Without a Santa Claus

Elf

It’s a Wonderful Life

Miracle on 34th Street

A Christmas Story(I will also try to watch the live one this year as well)

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Home Alone

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

I guess that’s it. I actually already watched Elf and Christmas Vacation last night and Santa Claus is Coming to Town is on tonight.  I don’t really care about Frosty, the Grinch or Charlie Brown. I’m sure they are all pretty high on other people’s lists.  I do consider Die Hard a Christmas movie, but I would watch that any time of the year, so it is not on…

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The War on Christmas

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Setting: The North Pole, Santa’s Compound

It is going to be hard to infiltrate Santa’s bunker. His intelligence department is one of the best in the world. They see you when you’re sleeping. They know when you’re awake. Trying to take down Santa could be a big mistake. Luckily, the Happy Holiday Alliance had a man on the inside. A disgruntled elf has promised to provide inside information in exchange for asylum in the states and admittance to dental school. We thought we could turn a member of the Reindeer Force, but he was promoted to lead reindeer and guide, so that is no longer an option.

Another issue – their secret weapon – the Christmas Cheer. We’re not really sure what it is, but it seems to give them extra power. We’ve also hear that is spreads when people sing loud for all to hear. We have distributed noise canceling headphones to the troops to combat the issue. Our corporate sponsor Starbucks is lending a hand by distributing non-specific holiday cups and wishing people happy holidays as we’ve heard that saying Merry Christmas and putting non-religious, but Christmas specific symbols on the cup also increases the Christmas Cheer quotient.

With all of these precautions in place, we are ready to take the compound and finally win the war on Christmas. Hopefully, tomorrow I will check in during a victory dinner of grilled reindeer and Santa will be defeated.

 

Santa Problems

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Soon I will write a fresh post. Until then, I will share some of my favorite Christmas themed posts. First, my problems with Samta.

The World's Common Tater

rudolph

I saw this picture on Twitter this morning and started thinking about some other issues with Santa.

In addition to the above, Santa was also very rude to the elves in Rudolph. He really didn’t come across as a nice person at all in the majority of the show.

In Santa Claus is Comin to Town he is a much nicer person but spends the entire time breaking the local laws. I also find it disturbing that a man comes to town, seduces the local teacher and uses her to convince the kids to leave their doors unlocked at night so he can sneak into their houses. His best friends are a confused penguin and a reformed evil wizard.

In Year Without a Santa Claus, he is depressed and quits his job because no one respects the work he does. I can relate to this one more than the rest…

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My Quiet Thanksgiving

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One more of these and then next year it’s possible both kids will be out of town and it’s even quieter and just two of us(hopefully going out to eat)

I don’t really have much to report on reading and watching this week. I haven’t finished a book this week. I didn’t watch anything new on TV this week. We watched one move – The Spy Who Dumped Me – this week. Not enough for a full blog post. I plan to do my What’s Good in Tater Town post on Sunday as usual, so there’s no need for a “thankful” post. I’m going to work today, so I have no Black Friday things to post. Thus are the hazards of being a boring guy who blogs. Sometimes there is nothing exciting to talk about. Here is a brief synopsis of my nice, quiet Thanksgiving.

I picked my daughter up from college Tuesday afternoon. I worked Wednesday and came home to my son and daughter both being home. We watched the Kentucky basketball game, Survivor and the movie and then went to bed.

Thanksgiving is just the four of us. We slept in a little. Had a nice, late breakfast, watched some of the parade, watched the WKRP Thanksgiving episode on YouTube(which I’ve discovered I can watch on my TV by connecting my phone), watched some football and a little bit of Luther because my son randomly started watching it this week. I read some of my book while all of this was happening. We had dinner around 5, cleaned up and then eventually played two games of Life. It’s not exciting, but it is nice to have a calm day with just the four of us before the crazy Four Christmases schedule we have next month.

I head back to work today and the kids head back to school on Sunday, but we only have another month before we are all together again in Kentucky.

A Tater Hibernation

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It’s been over a week since I posted about my trip to Kentucky.  I’ve thought about at least doing my weekly posts, My Week in Books, Movies and TV and What’s Good in Tater Town, but never got to the point of opening the laptop. I may be wrong, but I feel like I’m posting less on my personal Facebook page. I still look at social media a lot, but I’m not as engaged as I used to be. I don’t know if it is the stress or depression or the shorter days but I just feel the need to mostly hibernate and withdraw from the world.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m reading more. I read the new John Grisham book in one weekend. I finished Mobituaries by Mo Rocca. It was very good and allowed me to bore people with odd facts from the book. I’m caught up on more of my TV shows. I’ve watched a lot of football. All good things to help take my mind off of how bad my normal day has become.

I have left the house, My book club went to see a movie in Baltimore and then played Cards Against Humanity.  The movie was Parasite. It was very good. I highly recommend it. I would have won Cards Against Humanity but they kept changing the final score needed to win until someone finally passed me. I plan on filing a complaint with the league office. I will leave the house again for book club next month. I also hope to get someone to go to some sort of Christmas lights or market thing with me.

I am hibernating. I’m not staying away from the world completely. I’m just shrinking my circle and trying not to let social media idiots add to my stress. I will try to start posting more here. I just need to decide where I’m going with it so I don’t become the person who just posts about being stressed.

Is This Thing Still On?

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I struggled for a bit with being in the right frame of mind to write anything. I struggled with thinking there was no point in posting anything because no one cared anyway. My days were(are) sometimes stressful and demoralizing. I needed a break.

Fortunately, I decided a couple of months ago to take the day after Veteran’s Day off and take a short trip to visit family in Kentucky. I found a very cheap flight($90 round trip) on Spirit Airlines. I was able to pack all of my stuff in a backpack that counts as a personal item and I let them pick my seat so I had no other charges. Both flights were on time or early, the crew was friendly and the seats were comfortable. I would recommend them for anyone who is fine with no frills, no snack flying.

I got there early Saturday morning and spent the day at a school watching my niece’s 8th-grade basketball team play.  Doesn’t everyone fly hundreds of miles to watch middle school basketball? I did go out to lunch between games, so I had that going for me.

Sunday my sister came over to my brother’s house, we grilled out, hung out and played Scatergories. This gave us the funniest part of the trip. One of the categories was states. My niece rolled a K and wanted to roll again saying “There aren’t even any states that start with K!” Remember, we were in Kentucky…

My brother took Monday off. We went out for breakfast. We went bowling. I won. We stopped for coffee. We played Madden on his old Play Station. I lost. We went out to dinner with a friend from high school. We went to another middle school basketball game and then drove home in the snow. It was a good day and really made me want to retire. It was much better than going to work.

On Tuesday I drove to my hometown. It had been a while since I’ve been to my hometown. I walked around downtown a little, had lunch with my sister, and got a doughnut at the new doughnut place in town.  I went to the public library to see how much it has changed since I was a kid. I stopped for coffee at a new coffee place in town and then headed back to my brother’s to get ready to go to the airport. Since my niece’s game was canceled that night we had time to meet my other niece for dinner before my flight.

As you can see from my very boring synopsis, it was a nice, stress-free four day weekend. I really needed it. I really need to retire so my life is more like that on a daily basis.

We will see if it has revived me enough to feel like writing more. The stress came back strong.

Some Mondays are Very Monday

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I stayed up late last night watching the Ravens beat the Patriots on Sunday Night Football. I got a little less than seven hours of sleep. That’s not terrible. I would like to get eight hours, but if I can hit seven I feel like I’m OK. A little less than seven and I’m verging on struggling the next day. So, I started out the day in a less than stellar way. It went downhill from there.

I just deleted a paragraph because I don’t think I should write about why this Monday was a very Monday Monday for reasons mentioned here.

It’s very hard to come home and write anything when your day sucks. It used to be that the blogging helped me deal with the stress of the day. Now the stress of the day is winning and I spend a lot of time staring at a blank screen. It’s also hard to write when you are boring. If I could think of interesting stories from my past it would be easier. I have no interesting stories left.

So, I can’t write about my stress because I’m not anonymous. I have no interesting stories to tell. I guess I need to do more posts about politics or TV or just give up.