I’ve shown you the Captain America action figure I have on my work office desk, and I’ve since then added an Iron Man action figure. (I want to add a Hulk figure, too, but I haven’t found one I like.) But I haven’t mentioned my other action figures on my desk. They’re MagWarriors — their arms, legs, and heads are connected by magnets, and their weapons are changeable.

They’ve been on my desk for a few months, and I used to fiddle with their poses occasionally when I needed a break from my computer screen. I eventually got them into positions I really like, so I don’t mess with them anymore. Then the other day, when I came to work at 7:00 in the morning, I found them exploded in the corner.

It looked like someone had thrown something at them and knocked them down and scattered the pieces. Arms and legs and a couple of heads were scattered about — one head was over two feet away. Fortunately, nothing was really broken. I picked up all the pieces and attached them back, and set the guys back in their places.

The figures are under a large metal shelf, so nothing could have fallen on them from above. None of my paperwork, including papers stacked in a wire rack right beside the figures, was moved in any way. The figures were not messed up from being played with — the “scatter pattern” of their pieces didn’t suggest one or more was dropped. It really looked like something was thrown at them, intentionally or accidentally. Something fairly big, like soccer ball sized. The two in the middle were shattered, the one on the left was smushed but still in one piece, and the one of the right looked untouched.

I asked my coworkers if they knew what had happened, and I explained that I wasn’t mad, and nothing was broken, but I was just dumbfounded by the strangeness of it. No one knew/admitted anything about it, but one suggested that maybe Cap’n A and Shellhead had fought them.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

“Pam it.”

The Calvesgrit were in their bedroom playing nicely, when Calfgrit3 started saying this.

“Pam it. Pam it.”

I stopped what I was doing and listened. What’s he saying?

“Pam it. Pam it. Pam it.”

Calfgrit7 asked, “Why are you saying that?”

“It’s a bad word,” the little one replied.

“No it’s not,” CG7 said.

“Pam it, pam it, pam it. It’s a bad word.”

Oh jeez. I stuck my head in the door, “Then don’t say it anymore.”

“Okay.”

Obviously, Cowgrit and I need to watch our language more carefully. But this one is probably Cowgrit’s fault — such words he would get from me would be a little worse. I’ll accept blame when he says “Puck it.”

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

The 24-hour national news stations were covering the Texas landfall of hurricane Dolly yesterday. The southern U.S. gets hit by hurricanes on a fairly regular basis, so I’m used to paying attention to the news reports on them — especially when I lived on the coast.

I’ve never been in a city while it was being hit by the eye of a hurricane, but I’ve been in a couple shortly after the drama: water, water, everywhere…, and debris. I’ve been in a city while it was being blown and washed by the middle-range bands of a hurricane, and I’ve seen the outer bands many times.

The thing that makes me laugh about news coverage of hurricanes is the “we’re reporters; we’re immune,” attitudes. The anchors and weather folks in the studio spend five minutes explaining the danger of wind and water and flying/floating debris, and urging folks living in the targeted areas to leave the city or seek secure shelter. Then the next 55 minutes of coverage goes from reporter to reporter actually standing out in the storm.

A couple of years ago a reporter, bracing herself from the wind, against a building, saw a “civilian” struggling across the street. The reporter went on a rant about how foolish the civilian was for being out in the storm like that. It never occurred to her or the folks back in the studio that she was an idiot for chastising someone else for doing what she was stupid for doing.

Yesterday, on CNN, the anchors gave the standard spiel about how everyone should have left the Texas coast or sought safe shelter. They showed images of the harbor, before the storm, and showed all the boats they were predicting would be strewn everywhere or sunk. Then they went live, over the phone, to a reporter in one of those boats. The reporter went into great detail about how dangerous it was, with the wind and waves threatening to capsize the boat, push the boat into other boats, into pylons, or into the docks.

You know, if a reporter is “brave” (read: “stupid”) enough to stand out in the wind and debris, someone in the news organization should tell them to not compound their obvious idiocy by telling everyone else they shouldn’t be out in the storm.

If the news agencies really want other people to be safe during events like that, they should show the potential results of being an idiot in a hurricane. Whack a reporter down with a stop sign, then push them into a raging street flood and film them washing away into a storm drain. That will illustrate the point very well.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

During an email exchange among my group of friends, one guy came up with a strange idea. I pointed out that he was nuts for the idea. His response was to say, “I’m just thinking outside the box.”

To illustrate my thoughts on that response, I quickly created this image:

All arguments should be supported with slapdash graphics. They lend logical credibility to all concepts.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com