Tuesday, October 07, 2008

End of a (brief) era

hi all - i don't think i've posted since July; been busy with this and that and whatnot. can't really recall what i did in August...

however, during September in short order we had a hurricane roll through Houston, Grace and i went on vacation for our 2nd anniversary to Cancun right after that, and from there piggybacked into a weekend in Chicago to attend my cousin's wedding and see a lot of the family on my dad's side.

and i grew a beard.

basically, Ike rolled through on Sept 12 and I stopped shaving the day before that. with the Houston area in general disarray afterwards, I didn't look out of place for the four days that i returned to work after the hurricane and before our Cancun vacation (people probably thought my house lacked electricity). My facial follicles soaked up the Mexican sun and saltwater and grew strong. with my wife's support i kept the shaving ban in place for our Chicago wedding trip so i could surprise a whole slew of Sobczaks with the new look.

having passed the three-week mark of beard-dom, the continued growth brought me to a crossroads: if i was to continue in this fashion i'd have to make the monetary commitment of buying some clippers and a clipper guard to keep the beard at a neat, uniform length. ultimately i decided i was not yet ready to make such a bold statement of lifestyle.

still it was a lot of fun. i have a memory of an Olan Mills family portrait taken some time in the 1980s when my dad had elected to grow a full, glorious beard (my mom, i learned in Chicago, hated it).

mine never grew to such stature, but all the same, i present a picture of it to you for your consideration as well as, for your amusement, the pictures of its deconstruction yesterday evening.

Behold the beard:















Deconstruction, Phase 1: Ready to Attend a Motorhead Concert


Who took my trucker's hat?

















The Ace of Spades!

















I'm a nice guy















Deconstruction, Phase 2: Wolverine or 19th Century Politician? You Decide


I hereby sign this potato tariff into law!

















Who took my adamantium claws? and costume? and 25 extra pounds of muscle?















and finally, Back to Basics:


Ah...young again

Thursday, July 24, 2008

the past past tense

not much humor to be found in the recent court case brewing over the illegal alien who is alleged to have killed a father and two sons and is hiding out in San Francisco under protection of its current sanctuary city laws

but Fox News of course rolls on with its pillaging of the English grammar countryside:

"Can Widow Of Slained Husband, Sons Sue To Overturn Sanctuary City Laws?"

Fox News has introduced us to the past past tense

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

FOX News Grammar Watch

things the Fox News spellchecker cannot detect:

"Jailed Track Star Asks Asks For Help From President"

stuff that would get a junior-high yearbook editor fired, or at least a B- in the class.

...but this isn't a junior-high yearbook, this is a nationally-televised grown-up news network.

i would say that they're in too much of a rush to catch mistakes but with all of the endless re-hashing of news items throughout the day that i see i can't say they have a justification to stand on that particular leg.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

the LOLkid effect

chances are that if your computing experience includes the following two things:

- a pair of speakers, in either stand-alone or headphone variety
- instant messaging with Trillian (the all-in-one app that combines your AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, etc. IM applications)

that you have heard the spirit-lifting peal of a child's laughter whenever you or the person you're conversing with types "LOL" in response to some hilarity-inducing quip that was just sent by the other party

this LOL kid appears, based on multiple observations of mine, to have broadened his reach outside of instant messaging into the medium of film and television (maybe beyond that too; is his pure innocent squeal bouncing off of meteorites as part of a government attempt to contact alien life?)

on more than one occasion i've been watching a movie or tv show and suddenly, "hahhahahahaha", there it is , the Trillian "LOL" kid laughing it up, his young voice hanging in the air above a bunch of kids that just ran by the screen or are enjoying the great taste of Cocoa Puffs or something.

(seems i'm not alone in noticing this phenomenon - this less-lazy-than-me blogger also posted a sound clip of LOLkid, feel free to take a listen)

Crowdspark laments the dearth of actual laughing children available for sound mastering in media

pay no mind that this guy scooped me on the subject by a year and five months

Recent occurrences of LOLkid include:

i saw a pretty weird but good (but really twisted) movie called Oldboy that i recall had some childhood flashback scene where LOLkid made an audio appearance (or maybe it was LOLkid's adopted Korean cousin)

also, most notably and in his most dangerous role, LOLkid pops up in the new Rambo movie as one of several Burmese (Myanamerese? Myanmaran?) village children playing chase amongst the thatched straw huts in happier times - moments before the evil military rides through and blows them all up.

it's just kinda strange - i'm sure, in Rambo let's say, that when they were filming the kids running around and playing the kids were more than likely actually laughing and generally sounding like happy kids. did some grip record over that audio while making a kick-ass mix tape for the cute caterer's assistant?

who knows, LOLkid probably just has a very persuasive agent; trust me, after you've heard LOLkid once you'll find yourself noticing him a lot more often, guaranteed

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

bitcoms

if you watch any amount of evening TBS (and if you have the need to catch up on reruns of Family Guy, The Office, and Everybody Loves Raymond, chances are that you do) you may have seen one or two of TBS' newest marketing venture:

Bitcoms (i think they're called bitcoms, something like that)

basically it's thirty seconds of a comedian/comedienne doing stand-up in front of a small club crowd.

BUT, if you listen closely, you'll notice that it's actually a commercial!

they're real subtle about it though, like the following exchange about I Can't Believe It's Not Butter:

Lady Comic: so i'm eating healthy now; no-carb, low-carb, all-fruit, no trans fat[and so on] [audience laughs for some unknown reason]

Lady Comic continues: but i just can't give up butter [mild joke about spreading it on a roll or something] that's what's so amazing about I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.....[trails off into some minor praise of the product previously mentioned]

the crowd..LOVES it

too bad for them that they don't get to enjoy the full-length actual commercial for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter that follows the bitcom.

up until now, i had absolutely no awareness of any of the 'comedians' who have appeared on this particular entertainment(?). that is, up until now.

Chris 'Kid' Reid was just on, shilling for Sonic. i didn't immediately understand the 'Kid' moniker until i realized i was looking at one half of the previously famous Kid 'n Play duo (current whereabouts of Play unknown), the very light-skinned black guy with the mile-high fade haircut who was on record as having partied during the 90's on several occasions in, or at least adjacent to, a house. (to his credit his current haircut is much more restrained). his whole deal was basically a rhyming talk-song about going to the drive-through and bringing back food to his girlfriend.

i believe the joke was that he ordered cheese on his burger and mistakenly felt that this aspect made him unique apart from others.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

10-4 good buddy

gotta love AM talk radio

in the spirit of the previous post just published, here's a slightly different example of media laziness / distortion that i encountered just yesterday:

turned on , i think, 1560 AM, here in Houston on the way home yesterday and caught the radio guys marveling over the latest batch of Stella Awards, instances
of ridiculously frivolous lawsuits.

#1 was this:

Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, who purchased a new 32-foot
Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game,
having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph
and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to
make herself a sandwich.
"Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and
overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not
putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the
driver's seat while the cruise control was set.
"The Oklahoma jury awarded her - are you sitting down? - $1,750,000 plus
a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result
of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might
also buy a motor home."


of course, a quick search on the internet shows that and the other cases
mentioned to be completely made up:

http://130.80.29.3/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/5325241.html
http://www.snopes.com/legal/lawsuits.asp

completely made-up crap read as fact on public radio, which no doubt many people heard, much ire / indignation was raised, and many other people were told about it secondhand.

how do i know? because i was one of those people - i drove straight from work to the Astros game to meet my wife and told her about it. i was sensible enough to say that i hadn't checked out the veracity of what i'd heard but i didn't have the chance to do that until at work this morning; so any people sitting near us at the game might either A) have overheard and be (misleadingly) outraged, or B) know that the case was fiction and think me a moron.

of course there are stupid lawsuits out there filed by greedy lawyers and mouth-breathing "victims" looking to score some quick cash, otherwise we wouldn't have "Caution: do not use hair dryer in bathtub with water", "Caution: Do Not Drink Paint" warnings.

point is that people who spread information to the public (even if it is on measly AM radio) should at least have enough professional self-respect to do an internet search before they start reading as gospel truth some mass-forwarded email that popped up in their hotmail inbox.

purple monkey dishwasher

the title of this post comes from a Simpsons episode where, during a teachers' strike at Springfield Elementary, Bart spreads a rumor amongst a crowd of teachers that Principal Skinner "claims that the teachers are going to crack any minute". this gets whispered amongst the strikers and, in the time-honored tradition of that child's game Telephone, the message gets changed and appended as it bounces from person to person until the penultimate teacher races up to the head striker to announce:

"Skinner says the teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher"

i hear and see this all the time on video and radio media (especially AM talk radio) where somebody says something in the news and the media commentator either hears or reads about it secondhand, gets some of the details wrong, and then proceed to get all bent out of shape about the misinformation that they think is unblemished truth and proceed to spread that inaccurate recollection to other listeners, who absorb the commentator's take on the story as fact.

current example might be the Wesley Clark comments on John McCain's presidential bid:

here's an excerpt of the comments he made:
______________________________
"In the matters of national security policy making, it's a matter of understanding risk," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "It's a matter of gauging your opponents and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war.

"He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee and he has traveled all over the world, but he hasn't held executive responsibility," Clark said. "That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded - that wasn't a wartime squadron."

Moderator Bob Schieffer, who raised the issue by citing similar remarks Clark has made previously, noted that Obama hadn't had those experiences nor had he ridden in a fighter plane and been shot down. "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," Clark replied
_________________________________

AP article on Kansas City.com


so basically Clark is asserting that McCain is saying he is qualified to be president based on his military service and the experiences it provided; that in itself is a debatable claim and as i'm not sufficiently versed on the candidates' platforms i won't agree or disagree with it here.

for terms of discussion here, though, in print and voice media there was an outcry of people against Clark claiming how dare he belittle McCain's service to his country, etc. the "getting shot down" comment seemed to get the most stand-alone observation and if you look at that quote without the context of the rest it does sound a bit snarky. so this ball got rolling that Clark was trash-talking a veteran, which stirs up a lot of instinctive resentment and patriotic outpouring from listeners who A) love their country and/or B) were in the military or had a friend/ loved one in the military at some point.

doesn't seem to me that trash-talking was ever intended; even in his remarks Clark made note to say he praised McCain for his service, he just didn't find it an appropriate reason (if indeed that is what McCain is using as his #1 argument for the chief executive spot) that McCain deserves to be president.

why not address whether Clark's assertion about McCain using "military service" as basis for presidency is true? or compare length and type of public service between Obama and McCain?

(Author's note: I had to struggle to overcome Steven's Banality Interia in posting these questions as a more preferable method of discussion)

gets on my nerves because this type of politic-Telephone game is quite good at derailing and preventing rational discussion that might otherwise move us forward in talks on politics, the economy, global conflicts, etc. i can only hope that the media voices committing these acts are doing so out of ignorance or laziness and not deliberate manipulation for ratings or agenda (but i'm not holding my breath)

Thursday, June 19, 2008

bad santa

at an office White Elephant party a couple of years ago, i ended up with the following item (most certainly procured at a local Spencer's Gifts):

- a clear pint glass, unadorned except for a smiling cartoon Santa extending both middle fingers and exclaiming, via caption: "You ain't gettin' shit!"


it went home with me and saw semi-regular use both during holiday and non-holidays alike

starting a few months ago, i decided to reduce my consumption of disposable plastic cups at work and instead started keeping the bad santa glass at work to hold my drinking water.

as a vessel to contain liquids i have no complaints against it; is it odd though that it feels...weird.. to have such a decidedly seasonal (and moderately crude) item on display at all times? after some time to appreciate its presence at my desk i'm actually inclined to replace it with a more benign glass that doesn't express any particular sentiments to the passer-by

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Clear Play

on the fox news tv station i sometimes see advertisements for a new tech product called Clear Play

basically it's a DVD player with software inside that allows you to download information to the player about controversial scenes in movies (sex, nudity, violence, etc.) and when you play a particular movie you can tell Clear Play to cut out those scenes entirely

Clear Play

i'm confused on the target demographic though - it's obviously targeted to parents with kids who don't want to expose the kiddos to content that they're not yet mature enough to handle. but wouldn't family-values parents dedicated to safeguarding their children from bad influences likely not be interested in movies with that type of content anyways?

or if the parents like watching movies with some 'blue' content to them couldn't they just, i don't know, watch them when the kids are asleep or playing over at someone else's house? can't see what the point is of watching T2 without the violence or Glengarry Glen Ross missing entire scenes because someone dropped an F bomb - the films wouldn't make any sense, it'd be like experiencing a constant and sudden attack of amnesia every few minutes.

the new Rambo movie sans action scenes would probably be ten minutes long; kids would think all Rambo ever did was walk around in a jungle for a bit, then mysteriously be in a village, then suddenly be in another part of a jungle or on a boat, the end.

might be fun to get one just to mess with the different filters and level of filtering to see what kind of strange product you could make out of your favorite movies

Monday, May 19, 2008

i'm sure Fox News didn't mean it...

...but they left out a key descriptive word in the caption for a news article just now.

as read on Fox News:
"Historically Black College Has Its First Valedictorian"

film footage accompanying the caption confirmed that the college was graduating its first white valedictorian, not its first valedictorian ever in the history of the school.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

the Material Matron

so grace and i were in Target last evening picking up a few things and, happening to be near the music section, i noticed a prominent display touting Madonna's latest CD.

the title? "Hard Candy"

now i know she and/or the record execs were going for a naughty/provocative imagery kind of thing there but given the fact that she's been rocking out since the 1980s i think there's also an inevitable and unintended second set of images in that title, that of the bowls on the end tables at grandparents' houses with that striped hard fruit candy all stuck together in one big mass. or maybe a nice collection of butterscotches; she could be the new pitchman for Werthers' Originals

Friday, April 18, 2008

confetti throat

i've got that feeling at the moment - something (or my psychosomatic projection of something that may not actually exist) has taken up temporary lodging in the back right part of my throat. the kind of little bit of something that causes a mildly unpleasant tickling sensation of "hey you usually don't feel something here".

like a piece of metal/plastic confetti that got stuck to the back of your throat and its edges are sensed acutely by all the nerve endings or whatever in the area. i actually did get a piece of metal/plastic confetti stuck there one time when i ate a mint out of a tin that was filled with the confetti and a piece had gotten stuck to the candy without my knowledge.

and no matter what you do, how much water you drink, how much horrendous hacking and hocking you make in the bathroom to dislodge it (and cause your significant other great concern over your well-being in the process), it will not go away but of its own accord, at some point in time far past when you've already started to mentally block out the sensation. then suddenly it's gone, for reasons unknown, and the nightmare is over until the next time some bit of detritus decides that the back of your throat is the cool place to be.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Goodbye blue sky

i've been a fan of Pink Floyd since i guess someone in college gave me a copy of Dark Side of the Moon, or Wish You Were Here, or both, i can't quite recall. not something you can listen to while you're spring cleaning, or on a summer road trip, but still has its place as creative, ear-interesting music.

i'd watched The Wall movie once all the way through before, mostly remembering the phantasmagorical WW2 animation of marching hammers and black eagles spreading across the landscape; with the visuals, though, the music of the soundtrack didn't really have 100 % of your attention.

just recently i got a copy of the 2-disc Wall cd set; having listened to it a few times now at work i can say that, while i have never personally been mentally insane and therefore not an expert on mental instability, it does seem that no one is going to make a musical saga that better captures what you feel would be an accurate portrayal of the roller coaster of someone going bonkers from the combined weight of daddy / mommy issues, drug addiction and rock'n'roll stardom.

i think it's something in the vocals that's different from other albums in their catalog; the music is not so much different from other Pink Floyd psyhcedelic weirdness, but the singer sounds genuinely strung out and weird.

"i got wild, staring eyes; i gotta strong urge to flyy.... but i've got nowhere to fly to (fly to) (fly to)"

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Threshold for Item Returns

catching up on some old posts on the 'draft' backburner:

back in late January i found myself in need of making some sports equipment repairs to my goaltender's chest protector.

the chest protector is essentially three individual pieces, two heavily padded arms and one high-density-foam-filled chest area, made as one functioning whole by the use of laces tying the arms to the chest area.

as weakest links in the places of highest motion-generated stress go, these laces are worn down over the course of many games by my save-related arm gyrations until one day you're making a stick save and you realize that your right arm padding has become segregated from the rest of your otherwise whole and impenetrable armor.

being a resourceful man i drove myself to the nearest Academy less than a mile away to pick up some replacement laces. as per usual with most of my repair parts shopping, though, i prevented the selection process through my own internal deliberations from being as simple as it could have been for someone else.

sidling up to the shoelace display, i reviewed the candidates on their merits and eventually whittled down to two options: a pair of thick black cotton sport laces and a pair of square-shaped leather hiking boot laces.

after that point, however, the ability to pick a clear winner proved difficult.

the hiking boot laces were a little thin but they were leather so they might last a while. would they, though, hold a tight and lasting knot?

the sport laces were made of a less durable material but surely the knot that could be secured with them would be second to none!

in the end i made the call to buy both of them as the additional cost to buy the second, possibly unneeded, pair was negligible.

tests of the laces at home on the chest protector proved the sport laces as the appropriate choice and earned them the right to become a component of the goaltending equipment arsenal.

thinking back, i believe i had no intention of returning the unused laces to Academy; they would surely be used for some other miscellaneous application (tying a small box closed or some such thing) and even if they went unused the dollar value sunk into them did not exceed the value of the use of my car's gasoline and my time.

somehow, though, on a day not long after the original purchase i found myself at the Academy with hiking boot laces and receipt in hand and walked out of the store with my refunded monies of one dollar and sixty-one cents.

my reasons for going back against my original conviction to leave sleeping boot laces lie are still unknown today but it got me thinking and you could ask yourself as well..

What minimum value would it take to motivate you to transport an unneeded consumer good back to a nearby (in the general area) store to convert it back into freely transferable, government-backed currency?

my spoken beliefs may say otherwise, but apparently my actions tell me my personal answer is $1.61

Monday, February 18, 2008

Knight Rider

was at the in-laws on sunday night; the new and improved Knight Rider movie was on tv; i watched about 15 intermittent minutes of it, but in that time i learned a lot.

depending on your level of interest you may or may not know that they changed Kitt from the original car type (trans am i believe) to a souped-up Ford Mustang. also, the guy driving it this time is Michael Knight's son. also, he's called Mike.

also, apparently when they were designing this Kitt, this supercar, they forgot to throw the bulletproof windows because the passenger side got shot out, but good

also, in the final chase scene we came to understand that Kitt can withstand, without noticeable damage, a side impact collision from a speeding SUV into Kitt's driver side (but the glass, surprisingly, did not break..... SUV-proof glass, as it were)

also, they had this weird way of cutting to commercials, not necessarily when the tension at its apex or anything, more like people are talking and someone just decides to say something and then stand silent for a moment or two, staring blankly, until the cut to advertising.

also, one of those cuts to commercial came at the end when, yes, we spot long-missing father figure Michael Knight (aka Hasselhoff!) in the blurry distance.

also, Michael Knight said something to Mike, i'm not sure what, i wasn't paying attention. also, Mike didn't want to drive Kitt anymore after the mission was over but then something (wasn't paying attention) made him change his mind. suppose Mike will be cleared for his first of many exciting new adventures each week once the execs crunch the viewership numbers and find them acceptable.

my one-sentence summary of the movie and the majority of its commercials (or the portion that i saw of each):

"Michael, I'm detecting a 99.4% probability that even a high-risk youth with a troubled past like yourself can still get an attractive seven-year loan on a great new car like me at your local Ford dealership"

(UPDATE! the always-enjoyable TV Club feature over at the Onion's AV Club tells me the reason that KITT's passenger window was shot out but its driver's side window remained unfazed from a direct SUV hit: nanotechnology! you see, the nanobots repair all of the car's body structure but only when the on-board computer is enabled of course. just so happened that they had to shut down KITT's computer earlier because the bad guys were about to override his codes and take control of.... eh you don't care)

Lady in the Black Mercedes SLK

Lady in the Black Mercedes SLK, driving south on highway 288 on sunday afternoon, you are a special traveler, a beacon of magnificence among us commoners.

not satisfied with the 80 mph pace set by myself and the rest of the highway occupants on the relatively uncluttered road, you weave in and out of traffic, tailgating and generally demonstrating the kind of driving maneuvers that would be inconsiderate at best, dangerous at worst, in a more 'pedestrian' automobile.

but you are the lady in the black Mercedes SLK, and as such in line with your high-performance luxury vehicle must necessarily possess steering, acceleration, and braking skills the likes of which i and the other drivers sharing the road with you that day dare only imagine.

it was rather insolent of those three cars to line up abreast at that one point across all lanes but your quick problem-solving skills easily circumvented that moving barrier. using the exit lane to go around the line of cars and cut back onto the highway at the last second was a masterful move and was surely recognized as such by the car in the right lane as he regained his composure from having almost merged into you, who at the time was passing him on the right at a high rate of speed, while he was trying to use the exit lane for its actual purpose of exiting the freeway.

speed on, lady in the black Mercedes SLK; i and my other moving obstacles cheer your journey and thrill at what feats of driving you may divine to exhibit to us in future days.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

the grammar monster surges forth from within!

as my loving wife will gladly tell you, i am annoyingly fixated on proper grammar and spelling (though not so much on punctuation and capitalization in informal writings, as this blog will no doubt validate)

where i got this fixation i'm not quite sure; in my early years the deed/reward system was most lucrative in the field of arithmetic, where those who won blackboard math races (to see who could finish a math problem the fastest) were lavished with candy bars as the spoils of victory. not those pathetic fun-size candy bars; the REAL kind, full-size.

maybe it's just a small piece of personality derived from my overall desire for accuracy in the world, who knows

point is i can find myself standing at a coworker's desk as we work on an issue and as she types an email to parties related to the matter, i scan her monitor and see that one of her email folders is labeled

"Ethanol Bill of Ladings"

and the grammar monster inside me makes silent note that the folder should be properly labeled

"Ethanol Bills of Lading"

but i control the grammar monster, he does not control me; and so i am not seen to involuntarily grab the keyboard away from the user and make the change but instead leave it labeled as is , of my own free will, and continue to harbor my terrible, technically-correct-but-eye-roll-inducing-to-those-less-emotionally-invested curse.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Graffiti-ed!

the men's bathroom on our office floor (outside of our actual office, near the elevator bank) has been vandalized by graffiti!

one of the stall doors has, i believe, something like "Crips H Town" written on it in that hastily-written Gothic English font

i didn't realize our building was the subject of a turf war; what wanna-be gangbanger takes an elevator up fifty-one floors to claim a bathroom?

guess i should be more careful, stop wearing so much red to work.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Monkeybutt

hi (and happy new year) to any loyal readers who still check in despite my not having blogged in a while


busy at work here but i'll put down a quick anecdote to satiate until i can get around to my backlog of post drafts

back in August of this year we brought in a new member of our pet family, a 1 1/2 year old male pug named Louie (named so on account of his Louisiana origins)

we've watched him transform from a shy and cautious rescue case to a very energetic and happy-go-lucky dog and he has melded well with Nerf and Pugston since his arrival. he's also a world-class lap dog, settling in place quickly on most nights during movies / TV / Xbox with admirable efficiency and economy of motion.

for christmas the dogs received several new toys, one of which is a small stuffed monkey. Louie seems to enjoy playing with that particular toy quite a bit and will often leave him lying in one of the dog beds in our room.

one night on or around the New Year, we had come home and dressed Louie in his belly band (basically a dog diaper, he has not quite mastered the self-restraint that Pugston possesses and has been known to still mark or pee indoors so we had to take preventative measures)

the velcro had not been fastened particularly flush so there was still some portion of the sticky velcro side exposed. Louie sat down in his bed for a while, actually sitting down on the monkey.

the monkey became stuck to the sticky velcro on the band; when Louie got bored of the bed and rose to walk around and see what was going on, the monkey went right along with him, seemingly stuck to his behind. but not for my efforts (after some amount of time spent amusedly watching the duo travel around together) the monkey might still be riding his posterior.

and therefore to me his secondary name will from now on always be Monkeybutt.