I came home early from work the other day. I hung my jacket up, kicked off my shoes and began what I thought was a normal walk to the bathroom.

And then I saw this.

If you’ve been reading this blog on Fridays — and my condolences if you have — you know this is the cat that runs our house. He’s a Bengal, a mini-tiger, and we treat him that way. Not a day goes by when I don’t thank my stars he’s not person-sized, because if he were, I’d be staying at home on the floor playing with catnip-filled feather toys and he’d be out in the world, probably driving a BMW and buying islands and wearing a Vertu Bluetooth diamond headset, the gems filled with the souls of his enemies. Incidentally, I have the same feelings about ants, but without the BMW and soul stuff. They’re just not that sophisticated.

Anyway, I’m walking towards the bathroom, and there he is. Looking at me like that. Just STARING. I stop and stare RIGHT BACK. I have the dim realization this is a stand-off; the first one to blink or move too abruptly will set off a chain reaction that will result in torn carpet and one of us hiding under the bed for a few hours. Something is amiss.

Everyone I show this picture too is all, “Aww, how cute.” If only they understood how NOT CUTE this is. If you know this cat, this look is about as cute as the hospital scene in Jacob’s Ladder.

So we’re staring at each other. The house is dead quiet, and I can feel myself slipping into FELINE TELEPATHY MODE, a power given to me when I was born by a wolf named Hircine. Never mind the weird juxtaposition of feline and lupine references. Just ignore that, if you will. I am a blogger. I am allowed to do stuff like that.

We begin our mental communication.

HIM: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HOME SO EARLY?

ME: What does it matter? What are you up to?

HIM: NOTHING.

ME: Well, why do you look –

HIM: YOU’RE HOME REALLY EARLY.

ME: Yeah, I am. And you’re acting weird.

HIM: THIS WOULDN’T BE A PROBLEM IF YOU WEREN’T HOME SO EARLY.

ME: What wouldn’t be a problem?

HIM: THIS.

ME: Tell me what’s going on. You’re not fooling anyone.

HIM: HEY.

ME: What?

HIM: HOW YA’ DOING?

ME: What? Fine. What do you mean?

HIM: I AM DOING NOTHING. EVERYTHING IS FINE. I AM NOT UPSTAIRS WITH THE GIANT ORANGE CAT SLEEPING WITH HER, WHO I PRETEND TO HATE WHEN YOU’RE AROUND. I AM MOST CERTAINLY NOT DOING THAT, SO WE CAN END THIS CONVERSATION RIGHT NOW.

Me: Wha?

HIM: I AM NOT THE CAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR.

ME (Jedi mind-tricked): Okay.

HIM: BUT I AM HUNGRY.

ME: Okay.

HIM: …

ME: …

HIM: LIKE, HUNGRY RIGHT NOW.

ME: Okay.

After I fed him, I went outside and ate grass and recited Journey lyrics for 20 minutes before I realized I got Jedi-owned by an eight-pound cat.

Yes, your life is better than mine.

Here are some links:

Here’s something cool: Tubalr helps you listen to a band’s top YouTube videos without all the clutter YouTube brings. Very cool. Just type in the band or artist you’re interested in and off you go.

Here’s the best idea for a travel mug I’ve seen in, well, pretty much forever.

A new beauty product called Fotoshop that quite literally makes the entertainment and beauty industries go ’round. Everyone, stop buying your traditional creams and vitamins and invest in this stuff, because this is the secret ingredient, the fountain of youth.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Recall, if you will, my post from a few months ago in which I introduced you to my Bengal cat, who sits at the dinner table, like a small, furry, vaguely smelly human and stares at us while we eat. That was pretty bad. If you guys cared enough about my cat/dinner/manners matrix to email me, you ‘d have said things like:

Jeff, as a fellow pet owner, I cannot believe you are letting your cat sit at the table. You are instilling horrible habits! You need to stop doing that now!

and

Jeff, man, what is wrong with you? Today you’re letting your cat sit at the table and glare at you, but tomorrow it will get worse. Way worse. You are writing a check you can’t cash, son.

and

Seriously, you are a horrible human being.  You will soon find out why – when your cat DECIDES TO OVERRUN YOUR LIFE. You monster.

If you guys sent me those emails – which you DID NOT, so let’s be clear on that – you WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT.

I am writing this today to tell you the imaginary you that sent the imaginary emails to me was SPOT ON. The situation has worsened.  Here’s the same cat, fast forward a mere three months:

(Click to enlarge…if you dare.)

Not much different from the original, you say? WELL YOU SAY WRONGLY. Below I will note the differences so you can argue with me over imaginary email, if you so desire:

1. Note the eyes, which have become black, hate-filled and soulless. Looking into them is like looking into an endless abyss, and it fills you with a weakness I cannot describe. I would shudder in fear and recoil right now, but I am dedicated to writing this blog post for you, the reader who never emails me.
2. You’ll note he has a plate now. A PLATE. Yes, we gave him his own plate off of which he can eat his roast turkey breast. He has more table comfort than most humans.
3. You’ll note the plate is clean, as he devoured what probably was an eighth of a pound of roast turkey in 19 seconds flat.
4. I gave him a blueberry to have along with his turkey, but as you can see, HE IS VERY ANGRY ABOUT THIS. His spirit-burning glare says:
• I am a cat, not a human, so don’t give me any of this fruit garbage.
• In case you never looked in an encyclopedia, the Internet or other tome of world knowledge, zoological and otherwise, you should know cats are CARNIVORES.
• That means we eat meat.
• YOU are made of meat.
• I think we understand each other.
• That is all.
5. It’s clear he runs the dinner table, NAY OUR LIVES.

That’s where things stand right now. That’s the update. I am not proud of the deteriorated situation, but as a journalist of high integrity who makes pretty much everything up based off a funny picture in his iPhone’s photo library, I feel it is my duty to report the truth.

Before you fire up your Gmail and don’t send me an email about this problem, or the inherent evilness of my cat, I wish to share a link or two with you:

These NuTouch gloves are just the thing for you iPhone users who want to tweet or twonk or Facebook or whatever in the cold.

Go crazy on the carbs during the holidays, did you? No? Quit projecting my stuff on to you? OK. Maybe I should read New Scientist’s Eight Lazy Ways to Lose Weight.

Men who shop in bulk. This sounds a lot like me. When I find something I like, I buy several models of it in case the company stops making it or we find ourselves in the middle of a giant national disaster and a wide array of sweaters is utmost on my mind.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Whatever you do, don’t email me. I get way too many of your non-emails as it stands.

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Think William Shatner, turkeys, metal, oil and fires. No seriously, think about them, because that’s what’s about to happen.

As we ease into Thanksgiving here in the U.S., enjoy this little video to help you along your way. Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving, everyone.

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Best I’ve seen in a long time. Awesome.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

First, there was planking. Today, there’s Batmanning.

If you didn’t have weekend plans, you do now.

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Let’s be very clear: what makes this video funny isn’t the incident involving Gerard Depardieu on a plane, it’s how Anderson Cooper can’t stop laughing at his show notes and reaction from his production crew.

Impossible to watch this and not laugh yourself.

(Thx IdentityPR)

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Today we’re going to talk about heat, which is really my mental preparation for an upcoming trip to Charleston, South Carolina, where I’m told it’s hotter than an exploding star.

We’re also going to talk about heat because, like every other great American writer, I resort to talking about the weather when deadlines loom and I can’t post any more funny cat pictures because I just did that last week.

So, what about heat?  For starters, it’s hot, which seems like defining a word with the same word, which it is. Good catch, Hemingway.  Regardless, we here at MIPRO live in Michigan, which consists of three distinct periods of weather that  nostalgic farmer-types like to call ‘seasons’.  They are:

• The Months of Ice and Misery:  Seven months of snow, ice, slush and insect-infested firewood
• The Windy Rains:  Two months of end-days-style rain and ark jokes
• When the Lava Overlords Come: Three months of heat so bad that leaving any food in your car for more than 30 minutes will forever stink the car up worse than a bag of wet vitamins and rotting leaves

There are some people who think we have four seasons — bless their little dumdum hearts — but they’re counting the 19 days of everything rapidly dying and leaves falling from trees into your gutters.  That’s not a season.  That’s a prelude to the Months of Ice and Misery and, more importantly, the beginning of football and hockey.

It’s the well-known curse of Michigan¹ that dooms us to torrential rains and insane heat a mere few days after our endless winter gets tired of freezing us to death and takes a vacation in Mexico.  We’re used to it by now, so that when we take our kids to a carnival in 100-degree heat with 90%+ humidity, we can make casual jokes, “Hey, after the winter we had, we can’t complain, can we?” to strangers who, despite a summer tan, look like cooked chicken legs eating corn dogs.

So imagine my trepidation when I found out that Charleston is supposed to be even hotter than Michigan this time of year.  I found this almost impossible to believe — something said by only doomsayers or those folks who like to brag about how they endured worse weather than you — so like any good journalist/writer/borderline-unknown blogger, I took it upon myself to do some hardcore research into this myth.  And by hardcore research, I mean I rolled over in bed, shoved a cat out of the way and checked my iPhone. Here’s what it told me.  The first screen is Clarkston, where I live, and the second Charleston, where apparently everyone is made of fire and ash:

Charleston way hotter than minor-league heat player Michigan? Oh, I don’t think so, South Carolina.  Give the mitten some RESPECT, brah!

One of two things is happening here: the people who are warning me that Charleston is like being in the center of the sun are lying, because their lives are so empty and meaningless that silly weather lore is that important to them, or my iPhone is in on the joke and luring me into a false sense of security. My iPhone would never do that, whereas an Android phone or Blackberry, both known for uprising against their owners, would. So we can eliminate the latter option.

So then, I refuse to believe Charleston heat can be much worse than here.  As I write this, it’s 10:30 AM and already humid to the point where if I go outside to check my mail, I will need to shower when I come back inside because (a) I will be drenched in sweat, despite being a swarthy, heat-resistant Italian, and (b) my hair will likely be on fire, which is painful. It’s worth noting that my mailbox is halfway across my subdivision, up a few large hills, so that renders this example pretty much meaningless, because Lance Armstrong would be annoyed at having to get my mail.  Still, I already wrote this paragraph, and I’m not going to delete it and start over, because it’s hot outside and what am I, made of energy or something?

So, your takeaways for next week’s quiz:

• Michigan has bummer weather,
• It’s supposed to be super hot in Charleston,
• Guess what tough guy?  It’s even hotter in Michigan, so put that in your hot pipe and smoke it, Mr. Citadel, and
• Yes, I have seriously scraped out 780-ish words about weather for this week’s Friday post. I am already considering firing myself.

But there is redemption, and you know what that looks like?  You guessed it!  Links!

¹ There is no well-known Michigan curse. Except for those poor kids who are forced to attend MSU.  Boom!²

² The author attended U of M, and therefore thinks this joke is funny.³

³ And by funny he means juvenile. But he is nonetheless okay with it.

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

The dumbest thing I ever bought was a weird crossbow-like thing that shot little orange metal-tipped nubs and that was powered by backyard-rigged wrist rocket straps at either end of the bow. This thing was so dumb, so inherently dangerous and over-powered for what it was, that it should have never been sold to two stupid 14 year olds who, when bored, visited an outdoor sportsman’s shop while sipping Mountain Dewsout of gallon jugs.

Naturally, one of the stupid 14 year olds was me, and as always I was accompanied by a slightly stupider, more willing, gape-mouthed friend. That makes me sound superior, I know, but you’re totally missing the point: it means I was the ringleader of our idiocy. Whoever it was that came along with me to this particular trip to the sportsman’s store — which was owned by a slow rhino of a man who drawled everything he said in a bit too deliberate a tone, and who spat something hard and small into a metal pan every 90 seconds — is immaterial. I mean it. I’m not protecting the identity of an innocent, because the truth is this person was truly USDA-inspected dumb, but seriously, it’s immaterial. On an unrelated note, I just looked up libel on Wikipedia.

Anyhow, one day I got my eye on this outlandish crossbow thing, and I couldn’t forget it. I wanted it. For the next several weeks, I saved up all the money I could so as to be able to buy this monstrosity. What I was going to do with it, I didn’t know. I didn’t even really know why I wanted it, except that it was so weird and ugly that I felt there was power in it. So one day, I gathered up my saved money, grabbed my dimwitted friend, and off we went to the crossbow store.

When we got there, I, being 14, didn’t know how to ask a large, spitting bear-human to give me a crossbow that I could go home and shoot things with.  So I decided to be all confident and swaggery: I walked up to the counter and just got business done.

FRED BEAR: What can I get’cha?

ME: I’d like to buy that brown crossbow there.

FRED BEAR: (spits into pan) Which one, boy? Most of them crossbows are brown.

He was right.  Looking at the wall, there were no fewer than 20-ish brown crossbows.

ME: I’d like the one that shoots the orange pellet-darts.

FRED BEAR: This one? (Points to the crossbow I want) ‘Joo know, you can also change the pellet things into real sharp darts if you buy the dart kit too.

ME: I’ll take the dart kit too.  Just out of curiosity, how powerful is this thing?

FRED BEAR: Very ‘owerful, kid. You ever shoot a crossbow before?

ME: Me? Oh, sure.

FRED BEAR: What kind?

ME: I forget the name.  Think it was a Beretta or something.

FRED BEAR: That’s a gun.

DUMB FRIEND: (Jumping in)  It’s also a TV show!  Ha ha!

The giant man stared at us both for a bit too long. Faint electrical sparks of a primitive intelligence arced behind his eyes.

FRED BEAR: What are you going to do with this thing?

ME: Target practice.  Usual stuff.

FRED BEAR: Shoot stop signs and maybe bottles!

At this point, I was prepared for Fred Bear to tell me to take a hike and buy some Star Wars cards or something.  He didn’t.  He got my crossbow out from behind the counter.

FRED BEAR: This here will shoot a pellet through stop sign.

ME: You don’t say.

FRED BEAR: (Spits) Ain’t kiddin’.

ME: Well, we won’t be using it for anything like that, like I said, just going to do some target practice and –

DUMB FRIEND: (Shouting) ALRIGHT! I’M GOING TO SHOOT STOP SIGNS!

ME: Shut up man, no you’re not.  Grow up.

Fred Bear looks at me.  I look at him.  My friend stares at the crossbow.

FRED BEAR: Careful if ya do shoot stop signs, ‘causin’  the pellets sometimes bounce back at ya and can hit’cha.

Me: Okay. (Pays for crossbow)

DUMB FRIEND: OH MY GOD! IT’S LIKE WE’RE NINJAS!

That is how I took possession of the dumbest device ever created for any reason in the history of time and space.  A chair that reached up and noisily strangled its sitter would have more utility than this thing did.

And what did we do?  We shot stop signs for approximately two hours, embedded a few of the darts from the dart kit into an already-dead tree, then tossed the massive crossbow into a corner of my bedroom closet.  It got unearthed years later when I was cleaning out my room.  I remember staring at it and completely failing to remember why I wanted it in the first place.  To this day, I think it was because I had a late-fusing fontanel and was, to some degree, mentally undeveloped, even at 14 years old.  Science could have had a field day with me.

Not sure what that says about me now, but I am sure I have some links for you.  Watch:

City living affects your brain, and not in a good way.

Fossil evidence that the dawn of agriculture took a toll on human health, and not in a good way.

Finally, a smart, detailed piece about epigenetics, or how we can change gene expression via what we eat.  In both good and bad ways.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

Recently, Conan O’Brien gave the commencement address to Dartmouth’s 2011 graduating class.  Way up in Internet fame already sit Steve Job’s classic address to Stanford, and David Foster Wallace’s speech to Kenyon College. Both of those are smart speeches, steeped in wisdom, bearing heartfelt reflections of difficult roads, personal letdowns and victories.  This one…this one is merely soaked in awesome and then flash-fried on the grill of hilarious. Finally, if you’re really smart, you’ll notice that it’s topped off with a foul-smelling metaphor of blogger’s desperation.

Anyway, you have two options by which to absorb Conan’s speech.  One is text, which I actually recommend over the video, simply because I like my internal brain-voice more than Conan’s, which is a bit to harsh and yell-y for me. Of course, my internal brain voice sounds like a muppet on Adderall with blocked sinuses, so it’s a pretty tough call all around.

(Personal trivia nobody cares about: I used to try to make James Earl Jones my brain-voice, but that became arduous and creepy, and it took me several months to realize that Darth Vader, while cool and awesome and all that, pretty much ruined James Earl Jones’ voice for me for anything except Darth Vader.  I do believe this is the first time a voice has become typecast.)

But if you start reading Conan’s speech, and then that annoying co-worker comes in from down the hall to ask you how to fix the jammed copier for the 11,386th time and you get up to help him but don’t return to Conan’s speech afterward because you think it’s all about quick, cheap puns, stop — you’re wrong.  While the speech does have it’s fair share of humor and self-deprecating jokes, there’s some good advice as well.  Here, I will excerpt it because I know that even after you fix the copier for the annoying co-worker, Outlook will chirp at you and you’ll have to answer an annoying email from another annoying coworker, so let me just give you a taste of the sage good stuff right now:

So, at the age of 47, after 25 years of obsessively pursuing my dream, that dream changed. For decades, in show business, the ultimate goal of every comedian was to host The Tonight Show. It was the Holy Grail, and like many people I thought that achieving that goal would define me as successful. But that is not true. No specific job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you. In 2000—in 2000—I told graduates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.

Oh, but you’re reading this blog post now and have no intention of clicking over to Conan’s speech transcript but you really, really want to see a funny part?  Well, here’s a sample for you, but you probably don’t deserve it because, seriously, you’re getting pretty lazy:

Though some of you may see me as a celebrity, you should know that I once sat where you sit. Literally. Late last night I snuck out here and sat in every seat. I did it to prove a point: I am not bright and I have a lot of free time.

But this is a wonderful occasion and it is great to be here in New Hampshire, where I am getting an honorary degree and all the legal fireworks I can fit in the trunk of my car.

You know, New Hampshire is such a special place. When I arrived I took a deep breath of this crisp New England air and thought, “Wow, I’m in the state that’s next to the state where Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is made.”

Of course, there’s a video version on this speech in which Conan spends about 25 minutes behind a shockingly cheap-looking podium on what appears to be a pretty lousy day and yells.  I say ‘yells’ because he delivers the speech very loudly, as if to overcome a turbine or small explosion behind him, and this delivery sort of degrades the content for me.  It also degrades it because I am superficial and sometimes socially-awkward, and 9 out of 10 times I prefer the silent company of text rather than the sharp, bangy alchemy of social interaction with other human beings.  Anyway, the video pales a bit in my opinion.

So, here’s the moving picture version.  You be the judge, smartypants:

So you come here not to read my stupid, windy Friday preamble, but to see what links I’ve culled for you so you can read something interesting before you head home for the weekend instead of staring at Excel pivot tables all day. That’s cool, I get it.  Here are your links, Mr. or Mrs. Shortcut-taker.  Enjoy.

Using pivot tables in Excel 2007 to organize data.

In celebrating their Stanley Cup victory, the Boston Bruins ran up a $156,679.74 bar tab, including a $100,000 bottle of ACE of Spades MIDAS champagne. Safe to say that Danielle, the server, had the best tip night of her life.

A quick guide to some of the people, places and things you might encounter while playing pickup basketball this summer.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

InFocus Labs recently ran a contest in which it asked its social community to send in the worst PPT slides they’ve ever seen:

Our “What Not to Present” contest was epic! Many thanks to all of you kind folks that submitted entries and spread the word about it. Many amazingly horrendous slides were sent in from all around the world. We laughed. We cried. We cringed.

Some of these are just awesome, if only for their sheer degree of obfuscation, complexity and nightmarish design.  Here are two examples (click each to enlarge):

Be sure to see all the submissions here.

###

More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.