After the last two weeks of plumbing disasters, I think I'm going to have to swear off bathroom repairs once and for all.

Last week: I took it upon myself (with no small amount of prompting from my mother) to fix the slow drip in my brother's guest bathroom. Despite all of my might, the stupid Moen Posi-Temp 1222 cartridge embedded in the tub faucet would not budge. Not with the official Moen replacement tool, not with a wrench, not with a hammer. I know when I'm out-matched: rather than risk breaking the pipes permanently, I called a plumber.

At least it wasn't just me. When the plumber arrived -- at 4:45PM the same day, a Friday! -- he admitted that it was the most stubborn sink cartridge he'd seen in at least 15 years. I'm sure he said that to soothe my ego, and it worked. It turned out that some knucklehead had overheated the pipe when soldering with the cartridge already in place, causing the rubber gaskets to fuse to the pipe walls. I'm certain that Moen doesn't cover "installer stupidity" in their Lifetime Guarantee.

[For the record, wriphe.com 100% endorses Tom Donnelly Plumbing. If you're in Dublin and your tub has started floodin', call Tom Donnelly.]

Yesterday: while trying to make my father's bathroom more handicapable following his foot surgery, I tightened the tank bolts and replaced the wax ring below his leaky toilet. Trying to maneuver the toilet back into place in the cramped space, I managed to spill toilet trap water all over my shoes and the floor. Of course, I promptly slipped -- Jerry Lewis would have been so proud -- dropping the toilet and breaking the base of the intake valve. This necessitated a third trip to Home Depot on the day to buy a replacement valve, a trip during which my car window motor broke in the down position. Grrr.

Finally, at 10PM, I got the toilet into place and turned the water back on, only to discover that the new intake valve stem and the existing water line don't play well together. So in the end, I replaced a leak at the base of the toilet with a leak at the tank. Truly a worthwhile endeavor.

[For the record, wriphe.com is 100% opposed to Oldsmobiles. If your car's AC is running hot and its electrical system's not, you're driving an Oldsmobile.]

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I think I need a vacation from my family. True story: when I was younger, I thought my parents were normal, like you would see in a Norman Rockwell painting. How could I have been so wrong?

My mother suffers from chronic depression and anxiety. My father is a manic depressive sociopath. I have no idea how they stayed together long enough to have me.

For my father, I cut his dog's hair for two hours in the summer heat, and get yelled at because I didn't try hard enough. For my mother, I juggle one home improvement project after another but she's still not happy inside her own house. It's all a lot of work with nothing much to show for it. To keep trying to help them, I must be the crazy one.

On second thought, a vacation may not be enough. Maybe I need to move to a different state and take on an assumed name. How about "Dirk Rambo"? Yeah, that should be inconspicuous enough.

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I was really hoping that 2011 would be better than 2010, but that looks less and less likely. I sadly announce the death of Marquessa, my father's Black and Tan Coonhound.

Always afflicted with an insatiable wanderlust, Marquessa apparently escaped from my father's yard while he was out of town on New Year's Day and was struck by a car. She died on the side of the road, like her father and brother before her. My father found out when he returned home yesterday.

Marquessa would have turned 6 this year. She spent her first year with Chere before her death. That was just long enough for Chere to teach Marquessa all of her bad habits. Rambo has spent his first year with Marquessa. So thanks to Marquessa, Chere's bad habits live on in Rambo.

She was a good dog, and I loved her.

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Though I don't care for parties, champagne, ball drops, singing, resolutions, hangovers, Dick Clark, or anything else that is traditionally associated with "New Years" ("why do you have to be so negative all the time?" grumbles my father), I do like to start the year out on the right foot. Therefore, I present for you my favorite poem, written almost 2 decades ago by a man destined to be a reality tv-show star, to get you in the proper mood for the New Year:

We both lie silently still in the dead of the night.
Although we both lie close together, we feel miles apart inside.
Was it something I said or something I did?
Did my words not come out right?
Though I tried not to hurt you, though I tried.

But I guess that's why they say,
"Every rose has its thorn.
Just like every night has its dawn.
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song.
Every rose has its thorn."

Yes, it does. You'd do well to take these words to heart. That's not negative; it's just the way it is. I'm sure that the lesson that you learn could get you into Heaven one day.

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I would like to go on record as saying that Vonage has the worst television advertisements in the history of recorded man. Essentially, their commercials boil down to the simple phrase, "idiots and criminals use our product!" Now, I'm all for the peer-pressure approach to mass marketing, but I really think that Vonage has done something wrong here.

Vonage's previous marketing campaign, something that can only be called the "Hey, look! Things are happening in the world that are much more interesting than our sales pitch" sales pitch, was bad enough. But now their ads feature an orange-painted van, some cross between the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine and B. A. Baracas' A-Team fortress, driving by and hitting people in the heads with pizza boxes like some twisted Grand Theft Auto side-mission. (I'm sure these pop references are intentional, as Vonage is trying desperately to reach people like me who are computer literate and have a, shall we say, invested interest in popular culture.) While this would seem to be a step in the right direction, rising from "please ignore our product" to "assault and battery," the recipients of the products are always the lowest common denominators of society: the stupid, clueless, or criminally stupid or clueless.

Some people will tell you that the purpose of television advertisement is to simply get the name of your product stuck in the heads of potential buyers so that when the time comes, they think of your product. And, granted, most people don't think about the commercials on tv, their eyes simply glaze over as they wait for bumper music to tell them that Wife Swap is coming back in seconds. (I had a roommate once — hi, Jason! — who had the uncanny ability to perfectly time all commercial breaks in his head. We'd be watching something and he'd channel surf during commercial breaks. I'd always get nervous about returning from commercials and missing the cliffhanger resolution, but he'd always click back exactly as the show was coming back. Really, I think it qualified as a super-power. I'm sure that he'd make a fascinating case study for some up-and-coming Raleigh St. Clair. As a result of this ability, however, he NEVER watched tv commercials and had no memory of any ads.) However, I think this approach to television marketing is too simplified. What you don't want your customers to do is to think about how they don't like the message that your sending.

Take, for example, the recent Visa ad where a well-oiled machine of holiday shoppers wanders in lock-step through a cafeteria line until some well meaning but unenlightened individual pays with cash instead of his Visa card and the entire operation is halted in its tracks as the cashier fumbles with change. Visa, while everyone does wish for smooth transactions, telling them that they are robots when they use your card isn't going to endear yourself to anyone's use. Mindless automatons hate to be reminded that they *are* mindless automatons.

Vonage is trying to hit that same market that Quiznos tried to tap with those two talking rat-toejam things a few years ago. (I once heard them described as Mr. Potato Rats, but I think they are officially called spongmonkeys.) As Quiznos soon learned, having unidentifiable rodents pitch for your sandwiches is a bad idea, even if it does get people to recognize your product. I haven't eaten at Quiznos since, and for the same reason, I won't even consider using Vonage: I just don't want to be among the people who respond positively to your bad advertising. (On a related note, Quiznos recently ran ads calling prime rib the "king of steaks," which so angered my father, I got an hour long lecture on cuts of meat. Needless to say, he's not eating a Quiznos, either. Related note number 2: It may come as no surprise that an Executive Vice-President of Marketing for Quiznos was recently arrested for soliciting an underaged girl for sex. Clearly Quiznos' marketing department has a hard time figuring out what their target demographics should be.)

Why do I mention all of this? No reason, really. I just hate those Vonage ads.

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Georgia beat Georgia Tech for the 6th year in a row today. My father, a Tech graduate, was very irritable in the stands after Georgia scored the go-ahead points in the final 2 minutes. But even he still had a good time. I suspect that we'll be playing in the Dec. 30 Chick-Fil-A Bowl, but I'll be damned if I know what ACC team we'll play against.

It's been a long, puzzling season for the Bulldogs. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that we finished with a respectable 8-4 record. After the Homecoming loss to Vanderbilt, I figured we had no chance against Auburn or Georgia Tech. I guess that goes to show what I know.

Looking back at the season, I remember the hecklers during the Tennessee game, the buffalo on the sideline at the Colorado game, and the UGA tailgaters offering the Vanderbilt faithful barbecue after their victory. Yes, it's been a pretty good year, all things considered. And there are only 280 days to go until our September 1, 2007 kickoff against Oklahoma State. Go Dawgs!

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Two years ago, my father decided that he wanted to start keeping bees. So he invested in a hive, a suit, and a starter swarm. This week, he finally collected his first honey, which he put into those familiar little bear-shaped squeeze bottles.

He gave me a bottle and let me sample it. The locally produced honey does indeed taste fantastic. Then he revealed that after dividing the cost of the enterprise by the number of bottles that he was able to produce, he figures that each bottle was worth about $85.

It doesn't taste that fantastic.

Maybe I'll be able to afford a bottle when costs come down. In about 5 years.

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I'm back, and I have some catching up to do, don't I?

First game of the UGA season: victory! Dawgs win, 35-14, over the Oklahoma State University Cowboys. Word on the street was that the Cowboys sold out every seat that we offered them. Quite an impressive display of fan loyalty, there.

I know it was the first game and all, but I was surprised that the lady who owns the season tickets in the row in front of me didn't recognize me. She recognized my brother, and remembered my mother and father, but not me. I must have gained a lot of weight since last year.

Second game of the UGA season: defeat! Dawgs lose, 16-12, to the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. The Bulldogs performance was utterly uninspired, and the generally low expectations for this year's squad were proven uncannily appropriate awfully early in the season.

The crowd was barely involved in the game. I don't know if we were too shocked or if we had resigned ourselves to the loss early. In last year's SEC home losses, the fans were behind the team until the final second. But this time we seemed to be as stunned as the players on the field that South Carolina, who most of us had written off as beneath us, was having their way with us. Damn you, Spurrier! >shakes fist in rage<

Of course, the NFL season kicked off this weekend, and my team, the Miami Dolphins, lost. The teams of my couch-mates, my brother and his girlfriend, respectively cheering for the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants, also lost.

So far, this does not have the makings of a very good Batman and Football Month.

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It almost seems a requirement to follow a blog posting about choking with an entry about chickens.

It was brought to my attention that chickens are gaining ground on dogs and cats in the pecking order of pets in America. You can now order your own pet chicks via the internet at sites such as mypetchicken.com. (I think it's amusing that they have a shopping cart that lets me put items in a "basket." It reminds me that I should not buy all of my chicken related supplies from them alone. Think of the consequences should they make a mistake and lay an egg with my order. Boy, would they have egg on their faces!)

I don't understand this upswing in poultry popularity. Even my father is now raising chickens in his backyard. He spends half his day running around like a... well, you know, tending to his peep, which is apparently the word for a group of chickens. What does he get for it in the end? Nothing but aches and pains. (After all, he's no spring chicken.) It's hardly a cheep hobby either.

Personally, I think this trend is for the birds. I blame this cuckoo fad on advertising, which places a premium on the sex appeal of chicks in our society, especially the size of their breasts and thighs. It raises my hackles to think that someone might prefer a fowl hen over an impeccable puppy as a best friend. Chicken soup for the soul morally can't be made from a processed pet! If this trend isn't reversed mid-flight, we could have entire generations counting on chickens before they're hatched. And that's a recipe for disaster.

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This weekend, my father taught my poodle how to climb under fences on his ranch. My poodle immediately took that newfound knowledge and climbed under the fence protecting the chickens and ate one. Though father was very, very angry with Chere, I still think he should reward her. I mean, applied knowledge is a clear sign of intelligence.

On the up side, dad won't have to bother feeding her any more. After all, if you give a dog a bone, she eats for a night. Teach her to climb under a fence, however, and she'll eat forever!

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