Just play this with sound and hug your flag.

Aw, just have a happy 4th already!

Warning: Patriotic Muppet Alert, and stay tuned for the old guys at the end…

Hey folks, we here at Cuppacafe don’t rest, even on national holidays. So, if you missed the fireworks in your local community, or for whatever reason (your a stinkin’ commie) missed the fireworks in your own community. Well, that’s where Cuppacafe can help. first up, we have a few fireworks of our own.

Once you’ve watched the above vid, you can shoot off a few of your own fireworks by going here and here.

Have fun kids, me, I’m going back to by bottle of Uncle Jack.

The Perfessor

Happy Easter!

This Easter, as celebrated by Western Christian churches, will the the earliest on the calendar in your lifetime, and the earliest in your children’s lifetime, as well. Unless you’re older than 95, that is.

This Sunday, March 23rd, is the second earliest possible Easter, with the earliest being March 22nd. It all has to do with the particular calendar we win the western world pay attention to, and when the first full moon after the vernal equinox occurs. The first day of Spring was yesterday, and the first full moon after that was, uh, today, and the first Sunday after that is… well, yeah, you’ve figured it out… good for you.

The next time all this happens again will be in the year 2160 (Easter on March 23rd). You’ll see it only if you’ve paid your mechanic to keep oiling your robotic limbs.

If you want to live to see Easter appear on the earliest possible day, March 22nd, you’ve got a longer wait ahead of you. March 22nd, 2285 is when that rolls around. The humans may have taken the earth back from the robots by then…

[KansasCity.com]

Besides World Peace and the death of the Internal Revenue System, I suppose I am always on the lookout for a really unique gift to give others. I was fairly frustrated this year. Most of the time, I try to come up with cooler gifts than what I receive.

This year, I failed miserably. It’s fairly frustrating not to come up with neat stuff for others. I was simply terrible this year, coming up with boring gift after boring gift.

Now, I didn’t say expensive. Sometimes the smallest things go the longest way. My new daughter-in-law was impressed with my odd “stocking stuffers” last year, making her determined to start doing it back — I got a bunch of “stocking stuffers” back from her this year, and I smiled when she told me that I had some influence with the cheesy (but cute) stuff I gave her last year.

This year, I gave some crackers and some of those funny labeled hot sauces. And some kitchen utensils, and to Daughter-in-Law, a silly wooden figure you can pose.

Of course, wife Alison gave Daughter-in-Law something totally unique, and fairly priceless. If you don’t win the anthology with Alison’s latest novella, you can pick it up at your bookstore in a month or so. You can read the dedication. Taylor is now famous!

My wife wasn’t finished with the unique gifts. I got a four pound box of strangeness. Alison couldn’t wait to see my expression, and I was wondering ahead of time what she could have possibly had purchased for me to make her so happy and excited. Apparently, I did search this out in the past, thought it would be “cool” and then promptly forgot it. Well, Alison remembered.

I open this 8inch cardboard cube. Reaching in, I hit plastic bag, a bulbous stretchy “handle” under the plastic. Sponge? I lift. It’s a plastic bag filled with white… white, something. Alison is gleeful in my mystery. I look back at the box, and remember seeing a picture of the box and the bag before.

I was still holding the “handle” which I realized wasn’t a handle at all.

It was a mushroom.

I got a starter mix for mushrooms! The mushroom on top was like a leftover from the batch of starter stuff they filled the bag with, or an early riser from the starter material itself. My present had been quietly growing in the dark of the box all the while it was sitting under the Christmas Tree!

Yes, either extremely cool in a geeky way, or really really weird.

I think it’s the coolest!

This particular variety of mushroom is legal — It’s an “Oyster Mushroom” of some particular variety, and I can’t wait to get started.

Side note: I’ve tried “magic mushrooms” before (with mixed results!) and long ago vowed never to touch those god-awful things again. You know that scene in the Harry Potter movie where Harry, Hermione, and Ron all drink that shape changing sludge? Remember what their reaction is directly afterwards? The retching, the violent throwing up? That’s me in 1976. I remember that, the violent throwing up. Not a whole lot afterwards, though…

I want to thank all of my friends and family for their gifts, and I truly appreciate each and every one. Astros and Texans shirts are great.(Thank you, M&J!) Some shirts are more special than others.(You know who you are!)

And I want to thank my wife, who has been able to hold my attention all these years with not only her charm and wit, but also her ability to surprise me.

Wednesday, I’ll be spending taking all of my gifts I gave to Alison back to the store because I bought the wrong size, or because the Chinese Swedes at Ikea forgot to include the lamp shade in the lamp and lampshade box… Hooray for Christmas!

from HowStuffWorks.com

Yes, it’s that time of the year again, folks.

In order to keep our skies safe, we have to shoot down everything that’s not officially registered.
Well, that’s been every day since Pearl Harbor Day in 1941, but that’s another issue.

That’s why there’s OnStar on board Santa’s sleigh, and NORAD, that wonderful and highly paid section of our defense department, is looking skyward and is charged with tracking incoming Russian missles and incoming fat men on sleighs stuffed with presents for all good little Christian boys and girls.

Go here to see where Santa is Live! Watch him as he makes a quick stop in Iran to drop something special in Amahdouchbag’s stocking! The site uses Google Maps to track Santa, and if you have Google Earth, you can track Santa in 3D! [Google Earth Santa Tracker]