I googled myself, and now I think I'm going blind

Because I care about you, the taxpayer, I spend a lot of time at my federal job, where I am the communications officer for my battalion. I lead 12 highly motivated Soldiers (and one dud, but that's another post...) and we are a streamlined, efficient machine, dedicated to communications excellence. Because of our efficiency, I spend a lot of time on the Internet, and frequently will browse around looking for information on my favorite topics. And thus it was, early one afternoon, that I googled my name. The first two hits are this blog. But then I saw this guy:


What? Yeah. My dad is all over the web, in three languages. That's depressing. You'd like to think that you make a difference, and it ends up that all you need to become a web icon is a larger than average forehead.

There are some other Waldo Galans out there, too. For instance, I also saw this guy:


This gentleman's name is Waldo T. Galan, and he's from Mexico and Texas. He apparently recently passed away, which is sad. The world needs more Waldo Galans.

At first I though this was just another guy blessed with an awesome name like Waldo Galan. But then I looked closer, and started noticing similarities between him and my dad. Well, mostly one similarity: Forehead Size. I don't believe this is a coincidence.

So someone tell me- do you all think I'm related to this guy? Am I doomed to have a giant forehead? And how can I become so efficient that I don't even need to show up to work?

An open letter to writers on strike

Dear Striking Writers:

I am writing on behalf of television and movie viewers everywhere to tell you that we are disappointed in your decision to stop writing and instead strike. I think I speak for everyone concerned when I say that your unwillingness to continue working in spite of conditions you think are "unfair" and "cheating you out of money you've never had before and wouldn't know what to do with if you had it" is making things pretty hard for us, the common viewer. I am, of course, speaking of tonight's last episode of "the Office."

Let me give you a completely hypothetical example of how this strike could affect a person. Say, for instance, that you are a Captain in the military, and that you loved watching the Office. And then, say, you found out one day that the show you loved to watch, because it made you laugh and gave you something to talk about with your coworkers, your comrades, literally, in arms, well, say that show was canceled without any kind of plot device telling you that it was going to happen. If that happened, you might be so frustrated that you said really hurtful things to your Soldiers, causing them to not be able to focus, causing them to fail to complete a seriously mission-critical task, causing the national security to be compromised, allowing Al Qaeda to attack, and causing American Soldiers to be killed. So you see, your strike is killing Americans. And puppies.

Please, writers, be American Patriots. Start writing. Write the Office again. Or I'll report you to Homeland Security.

Love, Waldo

names have been changed to protect the innocent

Greetings, one and all. I am posting yet another one in my series of (nearly) annual blog entries. I intend to make these much more frequent, so we'll see how that goes.

You may have noticed that I changed the name of the Blog. It was formerly "title goes here." It is now "wandering thoughts." I did this for a number of legitimate reasons. Firstly, I thought that three years was enough time to come up with a title. Second, I like the multiple meanings implicit in the title. See, I am going to be deploying to Kuwait in approximately two months and so, in addition to my thoughts wandering around my brainal cavity, my head and brain themselves will be wandering around the world. Multiple meanings. That's the kind of economy the whole world should adopt, so we wouldn't be wasting resources. Studies have shown that if we could all adopt that kind of economic mindset, gas would cost 80 cents per gallon.

So I'm on vacation. This is the first vacation I've taken this year. We left El Paso and drove to California to spend time with family. Also, we were able to attend a movie screening for my good, close, personal friend and movie star, Chris Clark. His movie is called Stalking Santa and its available in Wal-Marts across the land RIGHT NOW. We saw it at a fabulous theater in the Grove mall in Los Angeles. Here's the pic of the front of the DVD:


As you can probably tell from the cover, it's awesome. I'd also like to think that my influence has been felt in the making of this movie, but that's probably not true. Here's a funny story that happened, though. As we were leaving, we were accosted by some random girl who told my wife she knew her. "I know you" she said, which was confusing for us because we had never seen this girl before, ever. Ends up, she knew Jen from the Blogosphere. Her name is Emmy, which is probably the right spelling but who knows (E, I'm sorry if I misspelled your name), and she is very nice.

So that's my brush with celebrity. I gave Chris Clark a hug, met someone new, and saw an awesome movie. I am still in the LA area for another day, so we'll see if I meet someone else. The writers' strike is on now, so I'm sure I'll meet a writer at a restaurant somewhere, as he brings me my Dr. Pepper and burger.

That's all for me right now. I will post again soon, I promise. Have fun out there in internet land.