Stop me if I have told this story before. I met a magician who was pretty cool and funky. He had chickens instead of doves. There were tricks that involves a bit of the macabre (BLOOD!!!).

I thought he was pretty good, and I didn’t know exaclty how he did some of his stuff. He did make it perfectly clear at the end of his act that no chickens were harmed. I prefer the term slight of hand to the word magic.

There’s a sad end to the magician story. He lived in the city limits and some meany neighbor complained about his chickens. He wasn’t in a zone where he could have farm animals so he had to get rid of them. I’m assuming that they were eaten.

There is a website that gives away the secrets of magic tricks.

The other day I stumbled upon a 30 minute pretend TV pilot starring Jack Black. Two of my kids gathered around my computer and watched it with me. In the much the same way as the Scary Movie franchise, this show makes fun of many different old television shows all at the same time. There is the Six Million Dollar Man, McGyver, Knight Rider, maybe even a touch of Highway to Heaven. Ben Stiller is the Producer, and he does a silly introduction, where he disses George Lucas, even asking George’s photo how many Emmy’s he has won.

Yes, this is the story of my life. In fact, I’ve been starting to get some strange crashes again so it seems that a registry scan and repair is overdue. Actually, I have a confession to make. All the registry troubles are in the hand-me-down computers that I give to my children. My computer is just fine. Registry repair free scan websites are a good place to start when you think that your computer may have registry problems (90% do). These sites can point you to registry fixing software to find and fix problems, back things up, and prevent future trouble. It was the answer for my son’s computer. Now, if I could only get him to delete some stuff so his computer is not 99% full.

Over the weekend Britney Spears was rushed to the hospital. Those of us who spend any time at all worrying about these things worried — had she relapsed? Prolapsed? Collapsed? Synapsed? No, luckily, none of the above. Britney just had a toothache and as we all know it’s hard to find a dentist on a Sunday afternoon.

I saw a bit of the movie The Pick of Destiny the other day. The opening scene features an young actor playing Jack Black as a child. His father is the artist intermittently known as Meatloaf. Cool.

Anyway, Meatloaf does one of the most nasty things that a parent can do. He ripped all of young Jacks posters off the wall. It was dramatic. Why? Because people are emotionally attached to their posters.

Patriotism is an emotion that is celebrated through the art of posters. Dads tend to respect patriotic posters more than AC DC posters too.

This clip is part of a series of instructional videos on the celtic harp. Isn’t YouTube useful? You can learn how to open locked doors illegally, or you can learn to play a jig on a harp. I wonder if there is any overlap? Some person in the world is going to figure out the whole burglary technique specifically so they can get themselves a sweet harp and learn how to play it. I actually think that this is quite unlikely.

Did you know that cord blood is rich in hematopoietic stem cells?

Maybe I should first ask if you even know what cord blood is. When a human being is born, the umbilicus is no longer needed for the normal functioning of the mother or the baby. It is generally cut a few inches from what with become the baby’s belly button and the rest is thrown away. First, though it is possible to withdraw blood from the cord as a valuable resource for both transplant medicine and medical research.

Paris Hilton allegedly had a $100,000 watch stolen by an LAX airport security worker. The man returned the watch immediately after he realized that he was being observed. The man has been arrested as part of a crackdown on this type of crime at the airport.

My source didn’t bring this issue up…if these security worker are busy waiting for their chance to score some bling to sell to support their gambling habit or drug habit or whatever it is that drives them…do you think they were keeping an eye out for terrorists as well?

I convinced my daughters to put their laptop in checked baggage recently even though I knew it put it at some risk of being stolen. I did so specifically because I thought that to distracted teenagers with a computer would look like a mark to a criminal mind, where all the bags look the same. Theft from baggage is more of a random act, your bag happens to be in the control of a dishonest person when his supervisor is not watching.

I found out about this frightening phenomenon from BrickhouseSecurity.com. The skills and techniques used by burglars to open locked doors are being taught over YouTube. I actually notice one of the How To videos on the most viewed list yesterday. In my opinion, the news coverage is not helping the situation. Calling more attention to the method will likely increase its use. I thought that my neighborhood was free of crimes like break and enter, but then I heard that an elderly lady had been violated in this way a few months ago. Many people knew that she had the habit of saving her money in her house rather than at the bank. The temptation was to much for someone. I don’t think anyone has been caught for this particular crime.

It is possible that your front door may have a bump key proof lock. The best solution is a fingerprint activated lock. These are becoming more affordable and they are as easy to install as conventional door locks.

I hate to say this but a row of houses in a suburban setting is kind of like a herd of antelope out the savanna. I thief is like a Big Cat looking the herd over and picking out the weakest and the slowest before making its move. You don’t want your house to be that weak slow antelope do you?

Before I started the splendiferousness that is TotalDismay.com, I was dividing my time blogging about a slew of different celebrities. I still update a handful of these regularly. Lindsay Lohan is one of the celebrities that I let fall by the wayside.

That’s why I was surprised when I saw a jump in traffic going to the site that I had devoted to her. I can only assume that bloggers with more traffic have begun to ignore her even more than I have been. It’s kinda sad when you are famous for being a screw up and then somebody more famous than you does a bigger show of screwing up. Even climbing into a car with the major train wreck is only good for a few days of ink.

Oh…I just checked the celebrity news. Lindsay was showing her vulva to strangers. Is this ever going to get old ?