The Frog Bog Pontification from the pond. It's funny. Except when it's not. But it usually is. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 49 1471

Articles from The Frog Bog

Our Big Trip Part 10- Marriage, Parking Tickets and David Heitzmann’s Rocketship to Fame 2007-04-27 18:20:43 The background info about Our Big Trip is here. Sunday, September 7: The beginning of football season. Football has always been fun for our family. We never really enjoyed any other sports at all, but we always liked football. When we were younger, on Sunday we would get out a piece of paper and write our picks for the day. My sister Kirsten (Patriots fan), who is 10 years my junior, was so young that she would ask what color each team wore and pick that way. “Ok Kirsten, green or red?” “Wed.” And the Chiefs would go on to beat the Jets. She did quite well most of the time. Well, now she is older and doesn’t need to pick games based on the color of teams jerseys. She is learning much more about football, because she has to. She has to because she is living with Bob D’Haem (Lions fan). Bob is a big football fan. “So am I,” you think. Oh, no. Bob REALLY likes football. Bob likes football so much that Kirsten decided she had to become a big ...

A Great Big Taste of Chinatown 2007-04-26 08:34:51 This past Saturday we went to the “Taste of Chinatown” festival in NYC.  The festival featured food, food, music, food, cool bonsai trees, food, art, food, dancing, food and food.  Since we weren’t the only ones there,        we had to develop a plan.  We decided on the following strategy: eat everything. Fortunately, we had A Special Secret Weapon- Julie.  Here she is with Beth.       Julie lived near Chinatown for a few years, so she knew the best places to find food (everywhere).  We had to combine our efforts, since we all had our relative strengths.  I had the size and strength to force my way through the crowd to get to the food, Julie speaks Chinese and could order the proper food without resorting to pointing and Beth could hold the bags of food while we got more food.  Our basic food gathering tactic was: I threw Julie at the tables, Julie collected the food, and Beth held the food until we got more food.  Once Beth could carry no more, w ...

The Perfect Gift for Administrative Professionals’ Day 2007-04-25 08:46:07 There may be some people who already know the secret.  For the rest of you, I offer this helpful post.  At some point, when I upgrade my server and hard drive, I’ll put up a post listing all of the jobs I’ve had over the years.  I was a secretary/admin asst/whatever the proper term is today for a short time, and I’ve also worked with secretaries/admin assts/whatever the proper term is today as the guy telling them what they needed to do.   So I know the secret. The secret is that you only spend about half your time doing important things.  The other half of the time you email your friends, shop online, chat with your significant other(s), etc.  In short, the same things your Administrative Professional does when he/she thinks you’re not looking.  So, don’t send your Administrative Professional an e-card.  Don’t buy flowers.  Here’s what to do to insure that you have a happy Administrative Professional: Learn how to refill the sta ...

100 Frogster Facts- Fact 2 2007-04-24 18:13:18 Fact 2 about me is that despite the best efforts of television commercials, I do not believe that the type of car you drive makes you cool.  I believe that if you are cool, your car sort of absorbs your cooness via osmosis and becomes cool.  Remember what Fonzie said?  He said, “It’s not the jacket, it’s who’s in it.”  Well, I think it’s the same thing with cars.  I drive a Toyota Corolla.  It is not the “S” version that has fins and spoilers and parts carved out of it to make it look sleeker.  It is the “CE” version, which, I believe, stands for “Coolness Eliminated.”  It is a sensible grey color and has a sensible 5-speed engine.  Off the lot, not a very cool car.  I am quite cool, however, and since I’ve been driving the car, it has developed some coolness of its own to try to better suit my coolosity.  It sprouted a pair of fuzzy dice on the rear view mirror, which is pretty darn cool.  It a ...

100 Frogster Facts- Fact 1 2007-04-23 09:36:14 I’ve seen a few blogs do something like this, and some of the lists people put together are fun to read.  So I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and venture into the mysterious realm of, ah, me.  Fact 1 about me is that I remember at least a couple of dreams I have every night.  Now, I’m not talking about prophetic dreams, such as the one that former NFL star Reggie White had where he saw a Hebrew inscription that told him he had been redeemed, or philosophical dreams such as Li Po’s recollection about the philosopher Chuang Tzu waking up and remarking that he did not know if he was a man who had just been dreaming about being a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming that he was a man.  My belief, by the way, is that since Li Po even heard about Chuang Tzu’s dream in the first place, Chuang Tzu had to be a man, since butterfly mouths are straws made for nectar-sucking, not word-forming, and butterflies are incapable of holding a calligraphy br ...

The Fearless Frog’s Stock Picks for April 23, 2007 2007-04-23 09:27:33 The background info about The Fearless Frog is here. The more recent background info about TFF’s patented Alphabetic Inversion and Chart Reversal Strategy is here. Today Citigroup downgraded XRX, so TFF is upgrading it.  XRX opened at $18.60.  Citigroup also upgraded O, so TFF is downgrading it.  TFF is not picking on Citigroup, but palindromic tickers is what TFF is all about.  O opened at $28.96. The TFF portfolio took a bit of a hit this week, and now trails the Wall Street portfolio by about a percent and a half. The complete numbers for the year so far, complete with closing prices from Friday the 20th, are here. - ...

Our Big Trip Part 9- Joisey, Old School Plowing and Bruce Springsteen 2007-04-20 01:51:46 The background about Our Big Trip is here.  An Overview We have been spending a lot of our time in and around Trenton, NJ, where Beth’s mother, brother and future sister-in-law and your humble narrator’s father, father’s wife and half brother live. This is the part of the trip where we have done more visiting and less exploring, and as a result, there is not as much day-to-day activity that would appeal to the masses who devotedly read these updates. As a result, the daily travelogue will be suspended in favor of a travelogue when something that would be univesally exciting happens. For instance, if I write that my sister Kirsten cleaned the inside of her car, that would be VERY exciting, but only to a select group. So I’ll try to keep the updates on a more universal level. Day Somethingorother- Thursday, August 28: We got tickets to go see the Trenton Thunder’s final home game. The Thunder are the double-A farm team affiliated with the New York Yankees. ...

Breakin’ Off A Little Sumthin’ For the Bots 2007-04-19 09:23:53 The first thing they tell you, whoever they are, about blogging is, “know thy reader.”  If you’ve got a site that gives tips on how to make lace doilies, a review of the upcoming Xbox 360 game “Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway,” with a special commentary about the gore factor, probably won’t be an enjoyable read for your crocheting, knitting and tatting audience.  I’ve put forth the suggestion in the past that this is not MY site, it is EVERYONE’S site, and I will gladly pontificate on any subject any of my hordes of readers suggest.  I realized something terrible today, however, which made me inconsolable, disconsolate and other words with four or more syllables.  I have ignored some of my most frequent visitors to this site- bots.  Are bots alive?  Do they think, feel and desire?  I don’t know, but if I’ve learned anything from watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, it’s that we cannot simply lump som ...

Top 5 Songs That Are No Longer Timeless 2007-04-18 22:35:54 This is not a reflection of my musical taste.  I sometimes forget my cool Sirius radio thingy, and have to resort to normal FM programming while in the car.  Sometimes I listen to public radio or jazz or a CD, but sometimes I just put on the local rock and roll station (whatever that is for the area I am geographically in- a lot of my trips start in the New York area and end in the Philadelphia area, and an almost uncannily similar number are the reverse, so that generally means either NY or Philly radio stations). This is not a reflection of my musical taste.  My musical tastes run the gamut, from free jazz to hip-hop to jazz standards to headbanging metal to classic rock to classical to, well, you get the point.  If you want, I’ll email all 7,927 tunes in my Itunes library to you.  This is not a reflection of my musical taste.  Some songs may be timeless.  But some songs seem to be thought of as timeless, when, after 1,437,543 listenings, they are, in fact, quite tim ...

RU, Imus, Alanis and Assessing the Decline of Western Civilization via YouTube Comments 2007-04-17 09:25:12 This blog is about original stuff that I (usually) think is funny.  This is not a blog where I link to the best YouTube videos or top news stories- there are a jillion blogs out there that do that.  But I had some time today, since The Tadpole is away on vacation, and I had some patience, since I’m feeling a little ill.  So, in our unending quest to entertain and inform, The Frog Bog Research Team did a little fieldwork today. First, everything that I feel I have to contribute about the Don Imus/Rutgers/hip-hop culture/media responsibility thing and relevant or not so relevant comments made in the wake thereof:   Beth and I lived in The Castro in San Francisco for a few years.  On weekends, we liked going to eat at The Cove Cafe on Castro near 18th.  The other diners in the cafe were musclebound white guys with huge beards, petite Asian women with buzzcuts and more tattoos than your average San Quentinite, college professors with tweed jackets,  stocky Latino women ... Youtube

The Fearless Frog’s Stock Picks For April 16, 2007 2007-04-16 10:35:25 The background info about The Fearless Frog is here. The more recent background info about TFF’s patented Alphabetic Inversion and Chart Reversal Strategy is here. TFF could have downgraded T today, but there was no Wall Street downgrade that inverted to a valid ticker, and since the goal is to keep both portfolios as market neutral as possible (I don’t want someone to accuse TFF of having more “buys” on its side and benefiting from a general bull market, etc.), we’re just going to have to let both portfolios ride again this week.  And speaking of weeks, what a week TFF had!  Looks like The Fearless Frog has had enough of being behind in 2007.  After an incredible week, the TFF portfolio now leads the Wall Street portfolio by .22 percent.  I love the smell of money in the morning.  The complete numbers for the year so far, complete with closing prices from Friday the 13th, are here. - ...

The Frogster Interviews Pacman 2007-04-12 23:00:02 I’m a big sports fan, so I stop by some sports-related sites from time to time.  Having read all of the news recently about Pacman’s suspension, I thought it was my journalistic duty to interview him and see what his side of the story was.  This was easy, because he lives near The Frog Bog, so I knew I wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of writing off the expense of this journalistic and entirely work-based trip.  Plus, a juicy morsel of an interview like this could really put this site over the top.  Pacman lives in a huge house in a gated community, as befits a star of his stature.  I showed the guard my press pass and was allowed in.  I got a little lost, but finally found my way to his mansion.  After a moment of indecision, I rang his bell.  I mean, from the stories I’ve read about him, he hangs with a pretty tough crowd.  Pacman answered the door.  “Yes?” he asked.  “Hello, sir, I’d like to, well, I’m a journ ...

Our Big Trip Part 8- Devil’s Tower, Sturgis and a Light-Speed Trip to Cape May 2007-04-12 10:25:34 Our Big Trip Weeks 8 to 10- August 3 to August 23 The Background about Our Big Trip can be found here. Been a bit of a rushed couple of weeks, full of events.  Then not full of events. When we left you, we were in Gillette, Wy.  From there (this would be Sunday, August 3) we drove to Devil’s Tower National Monument in northeast Wyoming.         The tower doesn’t look that big when you’re driving up to it. But that’s just because of the remoteness of the area. There’s not a lot around (and not a lot of polluting people around). So you can see the tower from a long way away. By the time you get to the tower, you realize it is big big big. You can get an idea of the scale from this photo of some adventurous souls.         The tower itself is actually the result of erosion around the tower. The tower is the remains of a lava core from an ancient volcano. The tower has “grown” because the surrounding area has been eroding over the y ...

Ron Oates 2007-04-10 08:52:38 The privilege of being the first person inducted into my brand new category, which you can read about here, is Boulder, Colorado luthier Ron Oates.  Congratulations, Ron!  Well done.  Ron makes stringed musical instruments, or he used to, anyway.  He’s made instruments for many musicians, including members of The String Cheese Incident, Carbon Leaf, Leftover Salmon and me.  Well, I think he made one for me.  He said he did.  It may still be in the mail.  Ron n’ Me, the early years- In September 2004, I contacted Ron and spoke with him about making me an electric mandolin (that is, manufacturing an electric mandolin for me- obviously, I wouldn’t want to BE an electric mandolin.  Although it would be better than being a snare drum and getting whacked all day, but- no, no.  I digress).  He told me to send the money out and the mandolin would be ready in three months.  His exact words were, “You’ll be pickin’ on Christmas Day.” ...

A Spring Cleaning for the Bog 2007-04-10 08:30:47 It’s springtime, and that means time for a little cleaning here at The Frog Bog.  I’ve dusted off the lilly pads, scooped the scum off the water surface and pruned the overhanging branches.  I’ve decided to scrap the “Teenspeak Shakespeare” and “Celebrity Guest Blogger” categories, because I just don’t post to them often enough (and because translating Shakespeare into teenspeak takes me forever).  The posts are still here, but they are now located in the “Daily Post” category.  If you have a favorite Shakespeare play you want translated into teenspeak or you think a certain fictitious celebrity would be a valuable contributor, please let me know, either by sending me an email or leaving me a comment.  I’ve also added a category, “Urban Runoff.”  Frogs are fragile.  Even minor changes in climate or pollutant level affect them drastically.  So, given their fragility (and their environment), frogs ...