Everybody meet. . .Mojo! You, blogging world, chose the name. Mojo just beat out our second choice for a name, which was Suck-it-Saleem (see comments for last post).

With all of the hoopla for Mojo of late, I thought it would be nice to dedicate a post for Roxanne. I caught up with Roxanne today in the backyard and she was kind enough to answer a few of my questions. Here are the transcripts.

How have you been adjusting with a new puppy around?

Pretty well, Matt. It was difficult to transition from a home where there was abundant canine interlocution and butt sniffing. I have enjoyed having Mojo at home and look foreword to the next time he bites my ear and tries to drag me away with it.

You brought up butt sniffing. Could you tell me a bit more about that particular practice.

Butt sniffing is an age old tradition wherein one dog is able to ascertain what the other ate for breakfast that morning, or even dinner the night before, depending on the time of day.

Would it be fair to say that poop has a fair amount to do with this practice?

Yes and no. There are certain glands in that area, the perineum, if you will, that do create a certain interest to fellow dogs. But, if one is to discuss poop in this matter, it is necessary to have a firm grounding in poop theory. The first thing one should know about poop from a dog's perspective, is that each morsel of dookie is a veritable journal entry in that dog's life. What has this dog eaten? Are there any lingering gastrointestinal issues? Is the hydration significant? In anyone looking in case I would like to eat this particular specimen? One needs to take a very nonjudgmental approach to another dog's excrement. If you knew when someone was examining your butt-butter and they were thinking “Heavens! This dog lack the proper nutrition to sustain a decent session of chase-and-bite,” you would be reluctant to allow someone to sniff you butt, or eat your poo, for that matter. You have to be confidant the other dog is thinking something like “Wow, a pancake must have fallen on the floor this morning!”

Fascinating. Tell me, there seems to be a lingering animosity between dogs and cats, would you care to comment on that?

Sure. While I can't deny there has been any hereditary antipathy between our two species, there has been significant progress in repairing all of the acrimony that has kept us separated for so long, an interspecies detente, if you will. It appeared that there was going to be real progress when representatives were sent from each species to a conference which was held beneath a bridge near the Howard Johnson's in Topeka. However, talks broke down when the Honorable Ambassador Sprinkles scratched Viceroy Pepper after splashing him with water. Shortly thereafter someone found a half eaten sandwich and all hell broke loose. I have to be going now. I hear the mailman and would like inflict some kind of bodily harm on him.

Thanks for your time, Roxanne. See that the mailman gets what's coming to him.

Everyone say hello to . . . ? Well, we don't have a name yet. But fear not. We are allowing the blogging world to have some say. Please vote in the poll and give us your feedback. If you vote "other" please leave a suggestion in the comments. But about this puppy.

We always told ourselves that, after we get a home of our own, we would like to get another dog. Roxanne also has been a bit pouty since we've moved away from the other dog Sasha. So we've been visiting shelters and looking on craig'slist. We came across this guy on craig'slist and went out to see him today. I really liked him, so here he is.

His previous owner has no name for him yet. He was born on February 12th and is the biggest boy in the litter. I saw his dad and he was a big boy. Both of his parents are Pit Bulls. Looking at his paws, this guy could end up pushing 70-75 pounds, just a guess. He is very mellow and has vacillated between following Kaaryn and me around the house and approaching Roxanne in her house. I made the mistake of giving her a rawhide chewtoy, so she is not making him feel at home yet. I post more as we learn more. For now, just weigh in on the name. I'll leave the poll up for a few days.

This is just about the only face shot I could get where he didn't close his eyes.


As you can see.


He was awake here. Just closed his eyes. Look at those paws.


This is the Mr. Magoo shot.


He really likes Salem and has already bathed her once.

I'll go ahead and cover two things in this post. But I want everyone to know, since I'm doing a double cow to the masses, with many pictures, that I will not be posting anything fun or vaguely interesting in the near future. It will be all lists and things that only I find funny. So be warned.

This post will be dedicated to two things: First, Salem ate food for the first time this week. It was well documented. Second, we've been getting a lot of requests for house pictures. I will post some.

Salem likes to begin with an appetizer of dirty socks.


She has trouble focusing. This picture is just before she challenged to camera to a duel.


But she does like the solid food.


After we're done, it's cleanup time.


Now for the house. A couple of things. We're not quite moved in as of yet. The yard is a mess and I haven't had time to tackle it yet. But I look foreword to it. Believe me, the world hasn't seen something reclaimed like this since Hannibal was defeated at Tarentum. The inside of the house is as disorderly as a Libertarian convention and is therefore off limit to pictures, says the boss.

Beginning with the house from the street.


Same house, new angle.


The street on which we live.


The backyard is pretty small. I'd guess about twenty feet from house to fence. The family before us built the deck so as to be wheelchair accessible. I think they got their mortgage from a loanshark and wanted to be prepared for the worst.


This is our dining room. Tables are for suckers! That fireplace burns wood, or, in the case of the Nixon whitehouse, incriminating documents.


This is the Master bedroom on guys' night out. Athos and I had been doing some serious partying.


I hope you all enjoyed this post. Because for a while I will not be humoring the humorless. Lucky for you, I don't have any ideas yet.

Perhaps some bad news this time. We're a bit worried about our neighborhood after what happened yesterday. Right across the street from us, there was what appeared to be a gang initiation. A couple of guys got beaten pretty badly. I did what any self-respecting man would do. . .I hid in my house and called the police. I did, however, manage to film the whole thing on my cell phone. Here's the video. I'll warn you, it's not for the weak of stomach.

Greetings from Crowley, Texas. I'll make this post short and incoherent, since we've both been exhausted since Thursday. We have arrived safely in Crowley, which is just southwest of Fort Worth. We spent all day packing. Kaaryn and I loaded our entire storage unit ourselves, which contained the vast majority of our stuff. Kaaryn is a lot tougher than she looks. Friday, Kaaryn's dad, Shane, and I drove the stuff while Kaaryn flew to Fort Worth with Salem. Shane and I left at 5:30AM Arizona time and arrived at 11:00PM Arizona time. We made no superfluous stops. Kaaryn left 10 hours after us and arrived 4 hours before us. You gotta love air travel!

Our house was quite a mess when we got here. We've been trying to clean and settle and whatnot nonstop since Saturday, and we still have a very long way to go. So stay posted for updates. I have been getting hounded for more pictures of Salem, so this posting should get some of you off of my back.

Here we are striking a pose in front of the house. Shane made us.





Roxanne makes herself at home on the deck.





Roxanne and Athos picked up right where they left off. Here they are in the cab of the moving truck.





Salem after vomiting in her exersaucer. Note the chin.





Salem after Kaaryn told her the Dodgers won that day.



Kaaryn and Brianne took some photos of Salem and Dalton. These two are cousins, for those who don't know.


Here, Salem embraces the spirit of the South, and tries to make out with her cousin.

New York City?!

That’s right, last week my mom took me to Manhattan for my birthday and to do some family history. (I never found the infamous salsa factory of commercial fame.) We had loads of fun and did all sorts of remarkable things. Which I will prove to be true by presently remarking on them. Enjoy the pictures. I had trouble getting the formatting correct. The captions are the for the picture beneath them.

Here I am at St. Patrick's Cathedral the day before the Pope did a Mass there. He let me borrow his hat.

This is the cemetary where we were looking for our family. It was in Queens. Three million people are buried there.

This is Trinity Church viewed from Wall Street.

This is where George Washington took the oath of office.

I believe this is where the current president took the oath.

This is ground zero viewed from Trinity Church. They removed the viewing platform and put a fence around it, so you can't see it anymore.

Times Square at dusk.

The Statue of Liberty.

We went to the Museum of Natural History, which is like a zoo, if nothing moved. As you can see, things can get pretty dicey around there. We saw elephants. . .

Tyrannosauras. . .

And a Triceratops. . .

This was a filming of The Oreilly Factor.

All in all, we had good fun. Stay tuned for news on the move.

Not much has been going on of late. Our bid for the house we wanted was accepted. We opened escrow and things are looking good. Kaaryn and I have both been sick this week. Some kind of flu appears to be going around. I vomited enough to properly review a Jerry Bruckheimer film and had a fever that left me soaking wet all night. . . at least, I think that was the fever. But I felt better after about a day. Since not much has been happening, I went ahead a wrote a letter to the recording industry. Enjoy.

An open letter the the RIAA.

To whom it may concern,

I have lived these last years in complete compliance with your request to rightfully purchase all music I own or download. I have patiently suffered as I hear all of the accounts of your pursuit of offenders, listened to your arguments without expressing my boredom, and wagged my proverbial finger at those who steal your music and esteemed them as thieves. All of this, I believe, puts me in accord with your strict desires. Now the time has come for me to make a few demands of my own, which I believe you will find to be reasonable and should not cause too much trouble for you to implement. I will list my demands according to musical genre.

Rock and Roll, including Alternative and any other applicable genres.

• I never again wish to hear the words “voices in my head,” or any variation of the words, repeated in a song. The phrase has been used far too often and has become about as clichéd as a politicians use of the word “change.” Please ask depressed and uninteresting artists to come up with a better way of failing to convince me they are mentally abnormal. In fact, to claim one hears voices has become just about the most normal thing in rock music.
  
• Please restrict the age of any artist singing about high school dances, parental tyranny, or any other such puerile topic, to 20. It gets really creepy to hear a 30 year old man sing about the most popular girl in school.
  
• Certain bands will need to add a second chord to their repertoire.
  

Rap Music

• Please require each artist, at least once in his career, to admit that their music does in fact affect people for good or for bad. We've all heard their argument and nobody is buying it.
  
• I would like if people would stop making me feel foolish for not being able to correctly pronounce your artists names. This is somewhat negotiable, but it may come off better if you consider me somewhat handicapped in the matter.
  

Jazz

• Thirty minutes is far too long for one song. Otherwise, Jazz musicians can go on quietly starving without any further complaint from me.
  

Classical

• Ordering tickets to an event should not land one's self on a telemarketer's list who calls fortnightly to request a donation. Believe me, I gave you a donation when I paid $60 to sit in the balcony next to a man with emphysema.
  

Country

• As much as I appreciate the living lesson on market demand, I will need a letter signed by no less than three artists explaining exactly what is so bucolic about suburbia.
  
• Furthermore, if this genre is to continue as the spring from which all musical patriotism flows, it will need to be proved that at least one of the artists has read the Constitution, or can at least spell Constitution.
  

Pop Music

• I'm afraid that I don't have room here to adequately discuss this genre. However, I would like to tour the factory where this music is produced.
  

Signed,
Matt Palmer

I came across a video this morning on espn.com that I found hilarious. If you don't follow the NFL you probably won't find this very funny. However, if you are one of those people who has some deep and irrational hatred of athletes, you might enjoy this also. This is Chad Johnson on Sports Center showing us all the educational standards when playing for Dennis Erickson.

I apologize for the lack of update lately. Kaaryn and I have been terribly busy. But, today, we post some big news. We have made a decision on grad school and made an excursion to shop for houses. We decided on Texas Christian. They offered us the best funding package, but that wasn’t the deciding factor. I think that TCU is probably the best match for my educational interests. Kaaryn really wanted to move to Fort Worth. So everybody couldn’t be more excited. I won’t bore you with more details on the educational side of things.

We got back late last night from Fort Worth. We drove. It was 14.5 hours each way. These are probably the fourteen most boring hours one could spend in a car. I couldn’t put into words how ugly southern Arizona, southern New Mexico, and West Texas are, but this picture I took at the Fort Worth Zoo should give you a pretty good idea.



We shopped for houses and made an offer on one. We haven’t heard any word yet. We’ll let you know. However, we found time to go do a couple of fun things. The picture below is from Trinity Park. It is a very nice park right on the Trinity River.



This is downtown Fort Worth from Trinity Park.




Here are a bunch of shots from the zoo. This gorilla is doing his Marlon Brando impression.



This Meerkat is famous for being involved in the Watergate scandal. In fact, I believe most members of the mongoose family vote republican.



This is actually a black tiger with white stripes.



We caught this bear on his break. He spends most of the day handing out towels in the men's room.



This being Texas, Salem would not have been the first baby that gator tasted.



We went downtown for dinner that night. Fort Worth has a really cool entertainment district downtown. This picture was taken right down there among the highrises. All of the buildings on the ground floor are restaurants and shops.



This is the historic courthouse downtown.



Stay posted for more updates soon.

This last week may go down as the greatest week since Kaaryn and I were spliced. This week we took the leap and purchased an Xbox 360 and Rock Band. For those of you unfamiliar with Rock Band, I will explain. Rock Band is a lot like singing Karaoke, but with no cocktails or Japanese business men. To play Rock Band, one takes a toy guitar, which has five button and a strum bar, and presses buttons while strumming the bar. The television then rolls notes at the player who is expected to play said notes on the toy guitar with a look of pain and consternation on their face, but an ineluctable feeling of pride and accomplishment within their souls. There is also a drum set. The drum set has four pads and a bass pedal. Drums work the same way as the guitar with two differences: 1. The drums must be struck and not strummed. 2. Replace the look of pain and consternation with an open mouth and a look of stupor. The false sense of pride and accomplishment remain. To top it all off, Rock Band also includes a mircrophone which one uses to sing to the music and play like a cowbell on occasion. When singing, the software measures one’s timing and pitch, so anything less than a person’s A game, will be met with derision by the virtual fans in the game software. In short, pushing buttons hasn’t imbued ordinary folk with this much sense of power and importance since the advent of the hydrogen bomb. I highly recommend it.

Kaaryn and I have started our own band: 1.21 Jigawatts! Since we are now rock stars, we’ve had to alter our plans for the future just a little bit. I will explain.

First of all, we will have to change Salem’s name to Starlett United-Nations Palmer, both as a satire on our fellow celebrities’ names and to grease the wheels for future diplomatic appointments. Starlett will be followed by the birth of our son, Mount Rushmore, who will be accidentally named by Kaaryn when she gives birth in a drug-induced haze and mistakes our baby for a tiny stone replica of Theodore Roosevelt’s bust. (For more on Kaaryn’s planned drug abuse, see below.)

I will be accepted into a respectable graduate school. However I will drop out within the first semester because my hot temper does not lend itself to the cranky instruction of veteran professors known to me as “the man.” I will burn the educational bridge by doing something legendarily outlandish such as defecating on the dean of students’ desk, or attending church weekly. This, however, will give Kaaryn and I more time to focus on our band and our upcoming gig that will see us banned for life from Branson, Missouri for my controversial onstage remarks about the mayor and “his (expletive) parking tickets.” The free publicity will only serve to further our careers.

Kaaryn, meanwhile, plans to develop a terrible heroin addiction and a hidden love/hate relationship with limes. By the time of the birth of Mount Rushmore she will have entirely lost control of herself and will be arrested for nibbling on our only son after placing him between two large slices of rye bread to make what police and hipsters call a “California Cheeseburger.” We regain custody of Starlett and Rushmore after a short stint in rehab.

Just after rehab, we release our first album: “Flux Capacitating.” “Flux,” as we call it, shoots to #1 thanks in large part to the hit satirical ballad “I love you like I love Fresca.” I, however, begin to fall apart because of my jealously for Kaaryn’s success as a songwriter and her status as band front man and officially file for band breakup the day before we are supposed to play Carnegie Hall. I am granted custody of our children and most of the roadies.

After both of our solo careers go nowhere, we reunited for a failed album entitled “One More Chance to Hate.” The failure of the album marks the death of 1.21 Jigawatts!. Nobody notices. Once we are released from jail after a failed robbery of a high school teacher’s lounge, we each attend Bible college and start nondenominational ministries in separate states. Kaaryn’s church will be named Rock! Of God. And mine will simply and forthrightly be called I Will Preach to You for Money.

And then, in 2009. . .

This photo has nothing to do with Rock Band. We just thought everyone would enjoy it.