The Big Ass Chair Company Inc.

Now here's an idea I've been sitting on a good 15-20 years.

Everybody has been to a backyard get together at one time or another, when one of the larger friends or family members has had the unfortunate experience of ripping the ass out of some piece-of-shit made-in-China patio furniture.

Happened to my brother-in-law at the family reunion just this past August. Gets up to fetch his fourth plate of appetizers, sits down, and snap! He's sitting flat on the deck with his ass ensnared in one of those flimsy folding Walmart lawnchairs.

You know what happens then. There's a moment of awkward silence, followed by enquiries as to his well-being, followed by, depending on how the victim is reacting to circumstances, either raucous laughter or a quick change of subject.

Here's the idea; a line of patio furniture that's guaranteed to handle the biggest of backsides without exposing folks to the humiliation and indignity of one of these chair episodes.

The Big Ass Chair Company.

Truth be told, I've already made a couple of proto-types. About twenty years ago there was a gal working in the front office of the shop asked if I could maybe undertake a side project for the benefit of her son. Seems he'd had the same problem, and she was worried that he was going to develop a phobia about sitting down at family picnics.

I was too polite to bring it up, but I'd met the son, and I knew that although he was a big lad Mama had a good fifty pounds on him. She really needed these chairs for herself.

I was able to accommodate her, and she had a couple of great looking patio chairs a couple weeks later. 3/4 solid round bar for the frame, solid 1/2 inch bar for the cross members. Made it a little wider than what you'd find in a store, for obvious reasons. I was able to book both the time and material to one of the big jobs in the shop at the time, so it was a win-win all round.

As a side benefit, these babies come in at around seventy-five pounds each. They'll stay put right there on your deck in anything less than a Cat five hurricane.

Then I got to thinking. There's got a be a huge market for stuff like this, and if even a fraction of the scary stories you read about obesity are true, that market has grown like topsy over the last twenty years.

It's also one of those beautiful products that has appeal across all kinds of religious and ethnic barriers. A chair fail is every bit as likely to smite an Indo-Canadian family in Mississauga as an Afro-American family in Mississippi.

Like I said, it's an idea I've had on the back burner for a long time, but with the turning of a new year, I find myself pumped to make something happen.

2012, year of the Big Ass Chair.

First day of 2012 and sky still falling: NYT

First day of a brand new year, and oh my God, it's the same old same old all over the front page of the NYT.

The euro-crisis. It didn't quite sink us in '11, but for sure it's gonna get us in 2012. That she-beast of Berlin, Angela Merkel, spent her first day of the new year wagging her finger at the lazy Greeks and reminding them they need to make more sacrifices to save the German banks.

And if that's not bad enough, this will blow your socks off: IRAN SAYS IT HAS PRODUCED NUCLEAR FUEL ROD!!!

Oh my God, run for the bunker... they've got a nuclear fuel rod? Why, they must be, what, mere days from a nuclear weapon, and then they're going to start WIPING US OFF THE MAP OH MY GOD!!!

And remember, Ron Paul WANTS them to have nuclear weapons.

Everything wrong with Russia is Putin's fault: NYT

The sanctimonious twaddlers at the New York Times are at it again.

Every Sunday the local paper offers up a New York Times supplement. You get a sampling of what the finest minds in American journalism are up to without feeling guilty about the half-acre of trees that give up their lives for every copy of the gargantuan NYT weekend edition.

Today there are no less than three articles bemoaning the lack of democracy in Putin’s Russia. Bill Keller begins his massive op-ed with a gratuitous slander of a communal housing program in the last days of the Soviet Union, and moves quickly to the discomfort that a certain segment of contemporary Muscovites have with the "soul-sucking consumerism" that now defines them. The failures of both the socialist housing scheme and the capitalist money-above-all attitude are of course in some way attributable to Putin.

Andrew Kramer relates the sad story of Nikolia Maksimov, a man once on the Forbes billionaire list, now reduced to a net worth of a few hundred million. Mr. Maksimov was one of those lucky dupes who was in the right place at the right time when the invisible hand of the free market was let loose in the land to redistribute state assets to the oligarchs. Because of Putin he has been forced to squirrel away the remnants of his fortune in Britain.

Finally, Ellen Barry provides a profile of a group of young people who are affluent, upwardly mobile, and social-media savvy. Because of Putin they are forced to take time from their winter vacations in Egypt and Turkey to protest the results of the December elections.

But she unwittingly makes it known that in Russia young people have jobs!

Things can’t be that bad with Putin.

Surfers to face drug testing

The Guardian reports that the world of professional surfing is about to be scrubbed squeaky clean.

In the 1960s and 1970s, surfing was the counter culture's sport of choice. With the long hair and beach bum lifestyle came marijuana and LSD. But the sport is set for a radical image change as its international governing body prepares to introduce comprehensive drug testing for professionals for the first time.

Andy Martin, author of Stealing the Wave, said surfing was caught in a dilemma. "Part of its appeal is that it is counter cultural, marginal and in some way subversive and that's where the association with drugs comes in, whether real or mythic.

"How mainstream can surfing be before losing its soul?"

Martin said marijuana was a key part of community life when he lived among surfers in Hawaii around a decade ago.

"There was a view in Hawaii that marijuana smoking in particular was actually good for surfing because you increase your lung capacity with all that drawing in of the smoke," he said. "So it was good when there was a big hold down under the waves and you could stay down for longer. The more marijuana, the better the surfer.

Look for the hard-core guys to form a break-away professional circuit, replete with their own drugs testing.

Anyone found not to be under the influence will be disqualified on the spot.

Digging in at Falling Downs

Last year I was such an exceptionally good boy that Santa found room in his sack for a backhoe.

Not one of these new-fangled air-conditioned sissy machines with the girlie toggle controls.

Nosirree Bob, we're talking eight tons of manly Allis-Chalmers excavator here!

And let me tell you, this thing is more fun than I could have possibly imagined. The busybodies at the Township office want all sorts of permits and environmental impact studies before you dig a pond, so I'm not.

I'm digging holes all over the place though. Practice holes. Starting to get the hang of it, I must say, even though the farm manager seems to have a better aptitude for it. She was simultaneously swinging the boom and dumping the bucket the first time she took the controls.

So I need lots of practice, but practice is fun with this puppy. There's nothing like the satisfaction of pulling a brim-full bucket out of the unpond and dropping it twenty feet away without spilling so much as a grain of sand along the way.

I've got some major plans for the marsh across the way. With a little bit of creative rearranging of the eco-system I should be able to have boat access to the Indian River right from my property!

Unfortunately the marsh has some sort of an environmental sensitivity designation, so that's going to have to wait a couple of months till the spring foliage provides a bit of a screen.

Anyway, times a wastin'. Gonna fire up Big Yeller and dig me another practice hole!

Black Spring is just around the corner

From the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea black Africa is in turmoil. Radical Islamic movements are a growing force in Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Nigeria. Will 2012 be the year that these diverse resistance movements coalesce into a unified regional uprising, a "Black Awakening"?

In Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and biggest oil exporter, the aptly named President Goodluck Jonathan celebrated the new year by declaring a state of emergency, purportedly in response to a wave of violence by the Boko Haram fundamentalist group.

Having declared a state of emergency, his next move was to announce the elimination of the subsidies that keep gasoline and heating oil affordable for the majority of the people. Although Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer, it's people are amongst the poorest on the planet due to the rampant corruption of the ruling elite.

It was mass discontent with the corruption of the ruling elite, more than some imagined thirst for western-style democracy, that motivated the Arab Wakening from Tunisia to Yemen.

This year Arab Spring will move south.

Black Spring will be the biggest news story of 2012.

How about those Leafs?

With last night's well-deserved loss to the Jets, the Leafs have gone 0-3 since coach Ron Wilson went on the twitternet to boast about his contract extension.

That was a real head-scratcher. Who gets a contract extension as a reward for three years of failure? Seemed to be Brian Burkes way of telling the critics to go f*ck themselves.

Alas, Wilson is just a symptom of the leadership vacuum that permeates the Leafs both on the ice and in the front office. Brian Burke lucked into a Stanley Cup ring in Anaheim with a team he had virtually nothing to do with building. What's he managed to build in Toronto?

Phil Kessel was supposed to be the foundation of the new Leafs. While Kessel is finally having a decent year, he's not a leader, either on the ice or in the dressing room. Trade him while he's hot, and bring in somebody who can inspire the troops.

Sean Avery's available!