The Thinking Homeschoolers assignment for June 30 was:

Losing My Religion - If you had to pick a new religion, which one would it be, and why? You can not pick any religion that you have been part of in your past, and you can not pick none of the above.

At the time, I had no idea what to choose, so I abstained. But now that I’m nine days past the deadline, I’ve finally found the religion that I’ve been searching for. Googlism. They have proof of Google’s existence, Google prayers, and even a holiday. What more could you want?

I hope they don’t deduct points for tardiness. As David Lee Roth once said “I don’t feel tardy.”

Awhile back we went to a used book sale put on by a local homeschooling group. Among other things we picked up some used paperback copies of a few books by the beloved children’s author Beverly Cleary. Christine and I both read books by Ms. Cleary when we were young and look back on them in fond regard. Actually, I don’t remember that much about them, but we thought they might keep the kids entertained for a couple hours, and that’s worth the dime or quarter apiece isn’t it?

Anyway, that’s not important. Just trying to set the stage though. After the books had taken up their spot on our bookshelves and gathered dust for awhile, someone finally pulled one down one day and we were surprised to find an autographed picture of Beverly Cleary inside. Our first thought was that we may have just struck it rich. Could we sell this one-of-a-kind celebrity item on eBay and retire early with the proceeds? We did a little research on teh internets and it turns out the picture is only worth a few dollars. Can you believe that? Beloved children’s author Beverly Cleary only worth a couple lousy dollars? Why, she’s beloved I tell you!

Anyway, that’s beside the point. The real story here is that careful scientific analysis of the one-of-a-kind autographed picture has revealed that Beverly Cleary is actually The Church Lady! I know this may be hard for some of you to believe, so I will present the evidence here, for all to see. Witness the truth and believe:

A google ad on our site that we just had to check out: homeschool ID cards. Woo hoo! I need one of these for each of my kids to show to the authorities or nosy neighbors or the cashier at Wendy’s to prove we really do homeschool. Uh huh.

I’m always on the lookout for stories of the scientific advancement, so when I came across this one, I knew I had to post it. Archeologists unearth a truly amazing discovery.

At Matthew’s Cub Scout meeting last night we found out that it’s “Scout Day” for this Saturday’s race at the Iowa Speedway. The race that day is part of the Hooters Pro Cup Series. Scouts and Hooters? How does that figure? Maybe it’s got something to do with the whole Boy Scouts anti-homosexual thing. You know, expose ‘em to some Hooters before they have a chance to turn gay or something. Whatever.

update: broken link fixed.

Absolutely warranted use of taxpayers money. Glad to see Orem has its priorities in line.

From CNN:

OREM, Utah (AP) — A 70-year-old woman arrested in a dispute over her brown lawn pleaded not guilty Tuesday. Betty Perry is charged with resisting arrest and failing to maintain her landscaping, both misdemeanors.

She was arrested July 6 after failing to give her name to a police officer who visited her home.

The city attorney still is pressing charges, and Perry is due back in court next month. A state investigation found that Officer James Flygare acted properly in arresting Perry after trying to get her to cooperate.

This happened in July, but apparently this article was incorrect when it said they would not be pressing charges.

Gloria Allred will be defending her.

I don’t care much for Jeff Foxworthy, but someone on one of my Yahoo groups posted this with the title, “What, this isn’t just plain normal?”. Lies. They’re all lies. I will now show you how many of these are pure stereotype.

Jeff Foxworthy says you must be an Iowan if………….

You’ve never met any celebrities…and you don’t really care. (What’s the big deal anyway?)

Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway. (That’s why they’re widening 235.)

“Vacation” means, driving through the Amanas or going to Adventureland. (We have Adventureland passes this year.)

You’ve seen all the biggest bands ten years after they were popular. (Not true. We saw some of them before they were popular.)

You measure distance in minutes. (Yep.)

Down south to you means Missouri. (Well, it is down south.)

You know several people who have hit a deer. (Yeah, but I’ve never hit one.)

You have no problem spelling or pronouncing Des Moines. (One of the few French words I don’t have trouble pronouncing.)

You know the answer to the question, “Is this Heaven?” (Why’d he have to bring that up?)

Your school classes were canceled because of cold. (Yep.)

Your school classes were canceled because of heat. (Yep.)

You know what “Hawks, Panthers, and Clones” are. (Duh.)

You’ve ridden the school bus for an hour each way. (Yep. But it was all city driving.)

You’ve had to switch from “heat” to “A/C” in the same day. (Yep.)

You think ethanol makes your truck “run a lot better”. (Cars too.)

You know what’s knee-high by the Fourth of July. (Uhh, corn?)

Stores don’t have bags, they have sacks. (Dang. I never noticed that. Do y’all say “bags”?)

You see a car running in the parking lot at the Quick Stop with no one in it no matter what time of the year. (That’s Quik Trip. Sheesh.)

You end your sentences with an unnecessary preposition. Example: “Where’s my coat at?”. (I’m not supposed to?)

All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable or animal. (pretty much)

You can locate Iowa on the US map. (Is there something wrong with good geography skills?)

Detasselling was your first job or that of a brother or sister. (I would never do that. Okay, my older brothers did though.)

You’ve been on a “Geode Hunt”. (Really. I HAVEN’T!)

Your idea of a really great tenderloin is when the meat is twice as big as the bun and accompanied only by ketchup and a dill
pickle slice. (and mustard please)

You learn your pickup will run without a muffler. (And you get better MPG.)

You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked. (As a kid our doors were always unlocked, but we generally keep them locked nowadays.)

When asked how your trip was to any foreign, exotic place, you say “It was different”. (Wouldn’t know, unless you count Mexico and Canada as “exotic”.)

You consider being called a “Pork Queen” an honor. (I would take offense but it’s a really big deal to some.)

People from other states love to hear you say Iowa and other words with “Os” in them. (Sorry, Jeff, this one is dead wrong. It’s Minnesotans with the round “O”s.)

You carry jumper cables in your car. (Very important and necessary. Is this really just Iowans?)

You drink “pop”. (Yep.)

You know what the numbers 80, 35, 280 and 380 mean. (He forgot 235.)

You know what “cow chips” are. (Yep.)

You actually understand these statements and pass them on to all your Iowa friends. (Ahem.)

See, you should not pay attention to those, um, false stereotypes.

In case you missed it, yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the end of the war in Iraq. It was May 1st, 2003 when ol’ G. Dubya Bush, standing under a “Mission Accomplished” banner on deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, declared “major combat operations have ended”.

Boy am I glad the war ended when it did. I’m thankful that the US didn’t end up in a long-term occupation resulting in massive Iraqi civilian deaths, with more American troops dead than the number of people killed on 9/11. A long-term engagement like that could have caused an ever-increasing number of insurgents in Iraq, who would then carry out more and more attacks, killing even more troops and civilians.

Yeah, I’m glad that didn’t happen.

Snopes confirms that this letter to the editor is real:

You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two.

This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?

Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.

CONNIE M. MESKIMEN
Hot Springs

What an amazing grasp on science this woman has.

No, not those awards. We don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning that one (unless y’all get voting.), but we’ve been awarded ODonnellWeb’s Homeschool Blog Award in the category of “Best Cow on a Blog that would likely serve me a very fine beer.” See our fancy award in the sidebar —–>

I am just overwhelmed with happiness at winning this, it’s something I have dreamed of and worked hard to achieve since I was a child. I’d like to take a few moments to thank those that have made this all possible, I couldn’t have won this without their undying support, there are just so many of you. Gosh…my mom, my web designer, Caleb Bradham, the people that just moved into the house behind us, the Aztec who invented chocolate, the guy at the beer store by Don’s work, our babysitters Mario and Luigi (who took most excellent care of the kids while I spent endless hours researching my part for the role of Mrs. thegookins.net), the makers of Prozac and Xanax, Don -whose hard work has allowed us to afford such fine beer, Dr. Feel, the neighbor that reported us to the school district for our kids never going to school, the “hey, appoes!” guy, our RV, the Warnock and Pearl families, my brother the comedian, PMS, Google…sorry if I’ve missed any of you. Oh, and most of all I’d like to thank our cow, who allowed us to photograph her for the blog, despite her worries about the bushes not providing enough “coverage”. Without her, we couldn’t have won this award. Thank you. God bless.

I was just looking through our stats and noticed that someone came here from Google with the query “is homeschooled children at risk?”

What do you think? Is they at risk? What about public schooled children; is they at risk too? And people who can’t even string together five words for a search query? Is they at risk?

I think they is.

In another example of the stunning innovation being done at Microsoft, Bill Gates and Co. have filed a patent application on a system that would allow users to attach smilies to an email so the sender can indicate the intended emotional tone of the message. Basically it’s using emoticons in place of follow-up flags. They’re calling them emotiflags. Woo-hoo.

Now, about fixing those security holes in your operating system…

(via Slashdot)

At least that’s what this nutjob is saying. His reasoning is that soy contains estrogens, so eating large amounts of soy products must turn kids gay. In response, I’ve written an open letter to the author:

Dear Mr. Nutjob,
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect. I do have some questions that were unanswered by your article, though.

If I eat some soy products, but not enough to make me gay, will I just start dressing more fashionably and liking dance music?

What about if you’re already gay and you stop eating soy? Will you turn hetero?

Can I use soy products to turn gayness on and off? For example, can I eat large amounts of soy in December if I decide I’d like to be gay in January? Then if I don’t like being gay, can I stop eating soy to become straight again?

Please respond as soon as possible. I need to make out my grocery shopping list, and need your guidance.

Love, (and I mean that in whatever way you want to take it)
Don Gookin

A killer whale attacked one of his trainers during a show at SeaWorld in San Diego yesterday.

Following the incident, the whale’s publicist released the following statement:

Killer whale. Hellloooooo. I mean, duh.

Since we began our various remodeling projects a few months ago, it’s become clear to us that the previous owner was a do-it-yourselfer. But not a very good one. There have been numerous things we’ve found where we just went, “what the hell was he doing?!?” One example was the caulking job around the outside of the big picture window that overlooks the backyard from our living room. We found copious amounts of sloppily applied caulk all over - except right where the bottom of the window meets the trim - no caulk there at all. Of course after years of exposure to rain and snow, the wood was all rotted out and we had to replace it.

It’s gotten so bad that we’ve begun to sarcastically refer to the old guy as “Mr. Fixit”.

So today I decided to rip the old carpet off the basement steps. We have a split level, so there are only 6 steps between the main level and the basement. They were covered with this really ugly 1970s brown shag carpet. I’ve taken carpet out of entire rooms before easier than this carpet came out. This relatively small area was covered with four separate but overlapping pieces of carpet that were held down by - and I am not making this up - over 100 roofing nails. Now, normally if you’re not stretching carpet, you could stick it down with double-sided tape, or you might tack it down with a few staples. If you were in a pinch, maybe you’d use a few nails, but they’d be small nails and you’d only use a few around the edges right? But not Mr. Fixit, he’d go for the nails with the largest head possible, and he’d use over 100 of them in what amounts to about 3-4 square yards of carpet.

So here’s to you, Mr. Fixit. For assuring that our projects will never get boring, and supplying me with ample blogging material, I lift my pint glass and salute you.