I moved into a new office yesterday. The office itself is actually much nicer, it's in a quieter location, and it's got a little more cache than the old one.
Unfortunately, the woman who moved into the office directly adjacent to mine is a ghastly posterchild for Bring Your Gun To Work Day. Firstly, her perfume reeks. It's so bad that I assume she's marinating potpourri in turpentine for a few days, then bathing in it each morning. The whole suite of offices smells like a goddamn whore house, and she's only been here one day. There's about six offices here joined to a main atrium, and when you walk into the central room, it smells faintly of urine; or maybe a wild animal in full rut.
As if that's not enough, she's in her office right now singing. Okay, I don't give a shit if your Mariah fucking Carey; don't sing at the office. Who the hell behaves like that? She's a total hack too. I can't even recognize the song she's singing. It sounds like vocal Muzak, and that's before she starts faintly wailing along with the melody. Her voice reminds me of a violin being played with a hack saw.
Topping it all off is her ridiculous personality. A full-on Obnoxious Yankee, Jersey variety, early baby-boomer vintage. You know, the guttural raspy tone, weird giant jewlery (giant bracelets clanging around her wrists, giant earings weighing on her sagging giant ear lobes, giant teeth jutting out of her giant lower jaw - wait. That's not jewlery is it? Anyways, back at the ranch...), and one of those laughs that makes you want to punch a baby. Good Lord, how I would love to punch a baby right now.
The upside to all this, is that she's retiring in five or six weeks and they're already recruiting for her position. I can only hope that Fate and Irony will not collaborate against me, and find a replacement that's even worse. I mean, the only way to insure my sanity is to weasel my way into the interview process. At least then I can attempt to control who will be invading my space on a regular basis.
Is it just me, or does this song not make you damn near cry every time you hear it. I know nothing about this Cactus Cuties thing (it sounds really suspiciously dirty, if you ask my old perverted ass); but they sing it so nice.
I'd embed, but the embedable version just isn't as good as this one.
It doesn't matter if I'm standing on the field waiting to play, standing in the stands (or at home) waiting to watch a game, or just plain old hearing it at a ceremony - this song brings tears to my eyes. I think of my parents and grand parents and great grand parents; and the sacrifices and lives they lead and friends they lost so that I could (at the very least) have this song grace my ears. On a regular beautiful basis, mind you.
Pleasepleaseplease feel free to post links in the comments to other great renditions.
Via the Don Instapundit, the blogfather himself; a posthumous post from one of our men who died in Iraq recently defending freedom.
I put the post in the extended entry below, just because The Wife and I read it together and found it so moving that we had to do something to preserve it for posterity's sake; but if you don't follow the link, you'll be missing out on the links to Olmsted's own milblog.
No political commentary here please, in respect of Olmsted's wishes.
I work as an RN in a busy Emergency Room. One night recently I had an odd little man in one of my rooms. He had been retching for the last 2 hours in the waiting room and was continuing his gastric emptying. The catch is this-I walked by when he wasn't aware I was there and I see him with his fingers down his throat making himself puke. I don't know about you all, but I don't particularly care for the bulimia lifestyle-my stomach contents need to stay put.
Shortly after witnessing this, I was called into a trauma and when I returned the man had finally quit with the puking. I went into the room and began to check his vital signs again and get his story. Somewhere in his long story about smoking since he was 9 years old (now in his mid 40's) and his current ailments he shows me a sore on his arm. The conversation, pretty much verbatim was this:
"A dang 'ole spawder bit mee. I jest laynced et wif mah knife to git da poison out. Then ah leet mah dawg lick it."
(trying not to let my disgust and dinner be visible)
"Huh, interesting. Why did you decide to do that?"
"Weel, dawgs mouts is cleener dan humans."
"That may be sir, but all the same, I'd use peroxide next time."
The Wife, RN: "...and that's okay, because I know I get on your nerves too sometimes."
shank: "Sweetheart, you never get on my nerves."
The Wife, RN: "You lying cuntass fucktard."
shank: "I love you too dear."
~ ~
(Dancing to romantic music)
shank: "Hey, it's going to be okay. Why are you crying? We're going to have kids and they're going to be fine!"
The Wife, RN (crying): "But what if our kid has an imperforate asshole?"
shank (falls over, laughing hysterically): "A what?" (choking laugher) "Wouldn't that be a blessing, considering his gaseous lineage!?"
So, for the second time in approximately a week, I almost burned the house down. And once again, it happened while I was left at home unsupervised. Well, Dad was there, but he's about as much help in the kitchen as a Yugo at a tractor pull.
The Wife was finishing her day shift down at the bar, and the old man and I were at the house preparing the compulsory Super Bowl fare: homemade potato chips, black bean salsa, and Buffalo wings. The Wife was born and raised in Buffalo, so the wings (and football) are a pretty big deal around here. Dad worked on the salsa while I deep fried the thinly sliced potatoes. We were moving along at a pretty good clip for a spaz and a kitchen-illiterate widower, so I decided to start the wings. I mean, I figured The Wife would think it considerate of me that I went ahead and started the wings, instead of waiting for her to get home from work and do it. I'd seen her do it countless times before, and had gotten a general recipe from her over the phone; so I figured I was all set. So the old man finished the salsa and went to watch the beginning of the game while I took care of the wings.
I let the fryer heat back up, and when ready, I plopped about ten wings into it. The damn thing promptly started foaming and spitting like a jungle cat. Within a second or two, the sound was deafening and boiling oil was flowing steadily out of the kettle, all over the counter, and onto the floor. "Dad. Dad! DAD I NEED SOME HELP!" Luckily, deep friers are made with morons in mind; and come equipped with magnetic power cords that can be unplugged easily. I snatched the cord out of the socket, and the crackling died down considerably. We both kind of stood there, absorbing the absolute mess. It took us most of a half hour to clean the oil off of everything.
Upon returning home and hearing our tale, The Wife gave me a frightened look. "Can you imagine what this place is going to be like when we have kids? Should we even have kids at all!?"
"Well, yeah we should have kids. I mean, I don't think I could bear telling people we had to hire a babysitter just for me!"
When I say this story is true, I'm saying it's true. Not only factually true, but universally true. Sometimes you have to make decisions immediately. Sometimes you make good ones, and sometimes you burn the living room carpet. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Awww yeah, bitches. Y'all remember the drunken movie reivew! Today's installment - V For Vendetta
What can I say? Natalie Portman as Yentle. Hottest damn bald chick since Sigourney Weaver in Aliens.
And talk about your kick-ass leads. 'V' has it all going on - bitchin' karate moves, Keeanuesque attire noir, and a Guy Fawkes mask.
Which reminds me - Guy Fawkes - what the fuck's up with that? A guy (pun intented) tries to overthrow the British government, gets caught, executed, and they make a holiday for him. Where's our Benedict Arnold holiday? Dammit, this has to be rectified! They're already 15 to 20 holidays ahead of us!
Why can't we have Boxing day? We've had more world champion boxers than the damned poms anyway!
Where the hell was I?
Oh, yeah - If nothing else, this movie gave Malcolm McDowell another chance to act. It deserves props for that if nothing else.
Go rent it today. And send me a dollar if you like it.*
Project Black Widow has claimed another life. That brings the total body count to 4 and a half for managers and above. (One fellow was "lucky" enough to escape. Unfortunately the horse he rode off on turned out to be Project Widowmaker.)
This puts Black Widow way out in front of Project Lizzie Borden. Lizzie has a measly 2 so far. Then again, BW will actually be closing in the next half year. Lizzie could be morphing into a four year global implementation. That would give her plenty of time to catch up and pass the Widow.
Now don't go thinking that the only projects I handle are career killers. I just commissioned project Fluffy Green Leaves. Unfortunately, after defining the business case, it became apparent that the leaves were raw spinach from California.
In other job news I've been offered a promotion of sorts. I'd still be a project manager for all of my current projects but would also coordinate all projects for our largest internal client. More work, same pay, same title, but fantastic leverage and networking opportunities. The down side is I'd have less time for blogging.
Decisions...decisions...decisions...
In the middle of my second day of all day meetings about how to beat project Lizzie Borden into a semblance of order I received an instant message from another one of my clients.
Carol says: do you or any of your cronies know if we're moving to IPv6? it's a discussion topic in one of my classes this week.Jim says: IPv6 has been an approved standard for a decade. Nobody is going to go through the pains of implementing it until we窶决e all out of IP addresses. Then it will be a huge rush to implement, just like Y2K compliance was. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Doomsayers will spin tails of woe about all electronic transactions failing and the crash of the Internet porn industry causing global financial collapse.
Jim says: Then after nothing much happens for a while the news will refocus on terrorism and the latest Gallup poll showing that 47% of registered voters really aren窶冲 qualified to pick their noses much less a president and the whole IPv6 story will fade to its proper place as a Trivial Pursuit question.
Carol says: you're a bit cynical
Jim says: Flatterer!
Two things jumped out at me when I reread this. First, I'm the only person I know who uses capitalization and punctuation in instant messages. Second, I'm a geek of godlike proportions.
I'd spent Tuesday and Wednesday out of the office at management seminars. You know, those time honored boredom marathons that become sound more and more alike with each passing quarter.
So I got up this morning with a real fire under my ass. I was looking forward to going into my office, shutting the door, and getting some work done. No interruptions, no drop-by shootings ("Hey! Can I just have a minute of your time buddy?"), no bullshit. I'm up at seven and leaving the house at 7:15. Seriously, hair gelled, teeth brushed, the whole deal. I'm from a military family and was trained at a young age to shit, shower, and shave in five minutes or less.
I get to the commuter lot, hop out of the car and realize two things. Firstly, I'd forgotten my lunch. I pack food everyday so I have the option of eating something that's not meant to kill me from the inside out. Shit. Secondly, I've forgotten to wear a belt. Again with the shit. I decide neither item is worth driving back home for. I'll find a salad somewhere, and the slacks I wore weren't center-button; so I decided to keep truckin.
I briskly walk across the lot, jump on the bus, and check my pocket for the office keys. Shit. Nobody's going to be there this early, so if I don't have them I'm going to have to bother some security guard to key me in. I ask the two or three folks waiting in the bus to not let it leave without me. I'm speedwalking, walksprinting back to my car. Unlock, check the console...Oh, sweet Jesus the keys are there! I'm in a dead walkrun back to the bus, make it just in time; and flop down in the seat.
Whew.
Then I hear the man sitting behind me lean forward and whisper in my ear, "Hey man, your zipper's down." I fight the urge to have a fit wherein I throw my shoulderbag across the bus, emptying it's contents on several passengers; and throw random fists. Fists of fury.
"Thanks," I say to the guy. I actually mustered an honest laugh. I mean, what the hell else could I do, right?
Besides, like we don't all play a little pocket pool in rush hour traffic every once in a while. Seriously, that could be the only explanation for the way you people drive.
This is totally random, but I figured what the hey.
The Wife and I cleaned the house from top to bottom a few weekends ago. I mean, made a pile of shit to give away to goodwill and a pile of shit to throw out. You know, cleared out the garbage and used the created space to organize those things which we've actually used in the past year or so.
However, we ended up with a small pile of things that we felt would be stupid to bring to The Salvation Army, but equally stupid to just chuck in the trash. If you're interested in more details of the following objects, or seeing photos of them; just email me.
If any of the four people who read this blog actually take any of this stuff off my hands, I'll come back and update to avoid confusion. I'm not listing any prices because it's totally negotiable (and by that I mean, all the way down to $0); though I'd expect the buyer to pay shipping. Actually, there's only one item with a price tag.
With the doubling in size of our company comes a corresponding increase in the workload for those of us in the Project Management and Quality Assurance department. Fortunately we are taking measures to grow our department to meet the needs. Unfortunately that means I'm back in the interviewer seat for a large chunk of my exceptionally scarce time. As a public service to job seekers and an attempt to make my life easier, I present Jim's Rules of the Interview:
First, the resume:
1. Proof your resume. Proof it again. Hand it to your spouse / significant other / mom / nearby hobo (hobos will work for beer so it's very cheap) and have them proof it. There should be exactly zero spelling errors on your resume. When you are applying for a position with heavy documentation duties there is even less tolerance than that.2. Don't mix cases. "Proofed corporate news documentation and implemented a redaction policy" is good. "Performed systems evaluation tests and modifying active test plans" is bad.
3. I have a limited time slot to conduct the actual interview. There are questions I have to ask and questions that I want to ask. The ones I have to ask are the same as the ones every other interviewer has to ask. Answer those on the resume. Tell me why you left IBM. Tell me why you want to leave Sprint. Pull your major accomplishments and essential qualifications out and put them right at the start of your resume. Put a one-line description of what the companies you worked at actually do. Nobody except you and the other four people who work there know what "Synergy Systems, LLC" is or does.
It's true. It happened on Wednesday. I was leveraging around for a scratch and put a bit too much pressure on it. I felt it bend a bit awkwardly but didn't think anything serious had happened.
When I whipped it out yesterday morning I saw the damage. The tip was bent over at a 15% angle. I straightened it out but there must be something wonky in the area where the tip and the shaft meet. As soon as I start using it the damn thing bends over again.
This is very distressing for me. I use the hell out of it - multiple times a day, sometimes for hours at a time. I like a precision instrument. Even if I'm just messing around with it I expect it to perform perfectly. Now my aim is all off and I don't even like using it anymore.
Lovely Wife bought me some "replacement units" a while back. I can use one of those to take care of critical tasks but it's just not the same. They don't have the smooth feel of my original equipment and (not to brag) they're smaller. They don't fit very well in the receptacle either, if you get my meaning.
Speaking of original equipment, that poses some problems all by itself. I'm not saying that mine is one of a kind but I guarantee they aren't making any like it any more. Trust me, I've Googled it. (Interesting images in that search, by the way.) I've been sending messages to the creator to see if there's any way to get mine repaired or replaced with equivalent equipment but I never got an answer back.
So, anybody know where I can get a replacement stylus for a Dell Axim 4 PDA?
To celebrate the new year my company bought itself a large travel company in the UK and a larger one in Germany, catapulting us from the second largest business travel company in the USA to the third largest in the world.
As you might expect the workload for Enterprise Technology in general, and the Project Management / Quality Assurance group in particular, has not decreased. In fact, you would not be incorrect if you guessed that our workload has increased substantially. It's one of the reasons I haven't been posting a whole lot. Where I used to get up bright and early, read a bit, write a bit, shit, shower and shave, I am now catching up on emails and project statuses, shitting, showering and shaving. I've tried to eliminate one or more of the "S" class morning tasks to make room for more blogging but have had mixed results with such experimentation.
But help is on the way, and the sooner the better. We have authorization to hire a QA Manager, 2 Project Managers and a Business Analyst. Experience in the travel industry is a plus but not a grand requirement. Similarly, living in the Atlanta area is a plus (that's where HQ and our department are located) but not required. We also have departmental offices in Chicago and Kansas City (Missouri).
So, who wants a job? If you want more detail on any of these just give a holler.
Well, he would be if he was alive. Just look at the quality of this piece of juvenile art!
(Click here to see it in all its majesty.)
The part that looks like the tree trunk is exploding is water damage. Can you guess which Peacock household prodigy is the artist of this original marker masterpiece?
We'll do some points here...the point pool will be equal to the total number of players. The points in the pool will be split amongst the players who get the answer right.
Bacon also has a pig. It's name is Blanket (Named as such because it was under a blanket when I asked Bacon what its name was. At least it's more creative than "Piggy".) and it is a plush piggy bank. It did some initial service as an actual piggy bank but was somehow defective. Any money we put in there would seep out (through osmosis we think as Bacon swore he never took a coin out of it) and get lost so we eventually stopped putting money into it. Blanket serves as one of Bacon's favored stuffed animals, along with a kennel's worth of little bean bag puppies.
Bacon: I've got a new puppy!!Lovely Wife: You do? Where did it come from?
Bacon: It's Blanket's baby. It was in her tummy and then it was born.
Me: Your pig had puppies out of wedlock?
Bacon: Just one.
Me: Alrighty then.
So we've got one son incestuously wed to his baby sister pig and another fathering bastard pig dogs. I'm just thankful we never got a pig for Bear. They're a very bad influence.
Burger has a piggy. He cherishes Piggy (Okay, not the most creative name. Give him a break, he wasn't even a year old when he named it.) and it alternately holds roles as little sister or baby. He's had it since he was a wee tot. Once it was the cutest, softest stuffed animal in the world. He loves it fiercely though and the pig has suffered over the years. Like the Velveteen Rabbit its coat is worn smooth. It has had many surgeries, once it was even brought to the School of Veterinary Science at UGA for repairs. Its coat became too thin for sutures to hold so it has many skin grafts (duct tape) as well. It is, in a word, "used".
The scene: We are driving in the van on the way to the farmer's market. Burger brought Piggy along for the ride.Burger: I married Piggy yesterday.
Lovely Wife: You married Piggy?
Burger: Yup. Yesterday.
Me: Eww. Isn't that like ... incest?
Burger: Nope. She was the princess. I was the king.
I guess it's okay then. Royalty does as royalty does and they've been marrying cousins or worse for generations. The Pharoahs married their sisters after all and, with all of those duct tape repairs, Piggy does somewhat resemble a mummy.
The Scene: Lovely Wife is typing away at her computer. Bacon comes up to her with a marker and a blank piece of paper.
Bacon: Momma, how do you spell "Everybody stay out of my room especially Burger"?
Lovely Wife: [stifles laugh] Ummm...it's "E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y S-T-A-Y O-U-T O-F M-Y R-O-O-M E-S-P-E-C-I-A-L-L-Y B-U-R-G-E-R".
Bacon: [wearing a crestfallen expression] Oh. That's a lot.
Lovely Wife: Yes, it is.
Bacon turns and walks out of the room, dispirited at the effort required to make his sign. Late the same evening Lovely Wife noticed a sign, carefully lettered and taped to Bacon's door. The resourceful lad had rethunk his requirements and reduced scope on his sign project. The completed work read:
NO BURGER!
I've been pretty quiet lately so I figured I'd pipe up and let y'all know what's current.
Monday was our seventh wedding anniversary. I took Lovely Wife to the newly opened Georgia Aquarium. Highlights included skipping the 2 hour wait for security by taking advantage of some severely harried guards, smuggling in contraband and drinking beer with lunch. No, those last two aren't related - they sell beer at the aquarium cafﾃｩ. Unfortunately they don't sell fish there. They could make a killing if they sold some fish fry. After looking at fish for a couple of hours I was dying to eat one.
Dinner didn't work out as planned. We were out of the aquarium earlier than we expected so we went Christmas shopping. Our travels ended up putting us quite a distance from our target restaurant when the hunger finally hit. We opted for a shorter journey to a different restaurant that we'd been meaning to try. We hunted for it, finally surrendered and called 411 to find it, arrived and found it closed. Closed as in "out of business" closed. That was a bummer. We ended up at our family favorite restaurant.
I'm currently reading A Feast for Crows, a Christmas present from Helen. Helen continues to kick ass in a seriously hardcore way. Thanks, Helen! :-)
I continue to despise taking a crap at work. My bowels tell me that I'll be doing so a bit later this morning. Feh.
The boys visited the dentist. Bear has an extra set of teeth up top that'll need to be removed. He also had two adult teeth coming in but trapped behind a couple of baby teeth that refused to relinquish occupancy. Tooth extraction was scheduled. Over the weekend I offered him $5 if could remove one (it was wiggly) before the big day. He took the challenge, earned himself $5 and saved us $80. The other tooth turned wiggly too so we cancelled the extraction and will let nature take it's course.
Work continues to be demanding. I'm taking over four projects from a coworker who's a bit overloaded. Oddly enough, two of them are ones she took over from me several months ago when my mega project became too demanding.
After Friday I'm off for 10 days in a row. Ten days in a row? Damn, I haven't seen that since high school. To be specific, ten days off and then having a job at the end of it hasn't been seen. Ten days off due to job loss has happened a couple of times.
Dopple-G and his fiance came over last night bearing gifts. The boys were thrilled with their presents and spent the better part of an hour finding plastic toys and bottle caps to wrap up in order to return the favor.
That's about it for the moment. More later. But probably not today.
Last night I found this true story about the worst Christmas party I ever attended. In the end I triumphed. Sort of. It was dated December 2003 and I窶况e no idea if I ever posted it or not. Reflecting back on those days, a case could certainly be made that I was an asshole.
It窶冱 that time of year again. In order to make things easy on you, and insure that I get exactly what I want, I offer the following shopping guide:
I need some decent earphones for the iPod. The stock earphones are uncomfortable and lack the required dynamic range for maximum enjoyment.
Sony Fontopia MDR-EX70LP Earphones
Price: $49.99
These are available online from many retailers so order now to avoid an uncomfortable wait on my part.
I窶囘 also like something to help me wind down from a hard day at work. There窶冱 an add-on to Rome Total War, the video game I have driven into the ground. It窶冱 called Barbarian Invasion Expansion Pack, $24.99 on Amazon.
If you could make these two happen I窶囘 be happy.
Aside from that, you could always make a deposit into my 窶special account窶 at the bank, you know the account number.
Last, but certainly not least, can we just buy this damned thing and get it over with? I swear by all that is holy that you can drive it on Saturdays.
Please have the courtesy to make a similar list for me. We don窶冲 want a replay of the shoe incident, do we?
True Story (from my original blog):
The women窶冱 shoe store. We were Christmas shopping together and she took me in and pointed them out. I looked down at them.
"Look closely."
"Okay," I said.
"Do you see the heel?" she asked.
"Yes, I see it."
"And the toe? See the difference?" She held up another shoe.
"Don't worry. I understand."
We left the mall. Several days later I went Christmas shopping alone. I had bought her every gift on her list. Only the shoes remained. I went back to the store, back to the exact spot where the shoes were. But they all looked the same.
Granted, I tend to tune out when people talk to me. I'm in my own world most of the time. I guess I wasn't paying attention. And now I'm looking down at these shoes and every pair looks the same. I tried to guess the exact spot I was standing in when she showed them to me, thinking I might find the right ones by dead reckoning, but I had no distinct landmarks. Meanwhile, it's a few days before Christmas and the place was packed. These things were flying out of there. Women were grabbing shoes and holding them up over their heads yelling sizes. I had been at the mall for a long time. I was hungry. I was tired. I had no hope. I picked a pair and bought them. I was certain I had narrowed it down to two pair and I chose one.
Fast-forward to Christmas day. All the presents opened except for one box. She opened the box and took out a shoe. Not only was it the wrong one, but it was the one she used as example of what she specifically did not want. She went berserker. I thought at one point that she would actually beat me with the shoe.
That was about five years ago. She still reminds me of it constantly. She uses it as an example when she points things out in stores now. And every time she brings it up, it is with the same intensity as that first time when she opened the box.
You really can't imagine.
The best thing about Wednesday is that there's usually no turds waiting to greet me in my toilet when I get home. Two out of the three boys have "flushing issues" (guess which ones). On Wednesdays my Lovely Wife takes the kids to a neighborhood homeschooling thing so they're not in the house much. Plus, the chief perpetrator (guess which one) makes it a point to poop over there.
Robitussin messes my shit up. I've got a bit of a chest cold and took some before bed last night. The objective was to prevent coughing so I could sleep. Wrongo. It worked on the coughing but I journeyed through the evening in and out of sleep, coming out of and back in to a seriously freaky dream about linear scaling and druidic ceremonies.
My biggest project is losing its chief architect. The guy who designed the entire system that it's being built on. Just as it's starting to get built. The guy who's taking over is very good too, but doesn't have nine months invested in crafting the application. If that isn't enough to bother me there's the fact that today is his last day and I found out about it yesterday. From my client. I'm finding new levels of pissedoffedness to master.
I had six days off in a row (Thanksgiving through Tuesday). Out of a "to do" list a half yard long I accomplished...nothing. Curiously, that gave me a wonderful sense of accomplishment.
It's "World Aids Day". How are you planning to celebrate?
Yeah, that was pretty cold of me. I just lost all respect for these things when they added "Pretzel Appreciation Day", "Hotrod Month" and "Give NAMBLA a Try Week".
The big question will be how many people burn down their house this year trying to deep fry a heavy frozen bird inside their house.
Most people don窶冲 have the common sense to put the bird in, fill the fryer with oil and then take the bird out and get the oil hot. Instead, the fill the fryer with too much oil, get it close to the temperature of the sun and throw in a thirty pound, partially frozen Butterball. When that thing hits the oil it goes up like Michael Jackson窶冱 hair on a Pepsi shoot, not including the displaced oil that splashes out of the fryer and onto linoleum, which I believe is extruded from petroleum products. Last year something like 400 homes caught fire attempting this trick and I predict the numbers will double this year.
In days of old, boiling oil was a great weapon when poured over the castle walls. Imagine the potential in the average American kitchen. Somebody窶冱 Uncle Frank will probably learn a lesson the hard way.
Aside from the skin, I have no use for turkey. I find it unappealing in taste and texture.
But even though I don窶冲 care for turkey, I am a fan of Thanksgiving. I窶冤l be at the in-law窶冱 with many friends in tow and the drinking always starts early. We usually drink champagne on the holidays and no one is about to complain that it窶冱 too early to drink when you窶决e uncorking the good stuff. We generally stand around in the kitchen patting each other on the back and swilling drinks and demanding to be fed.
I find the waiting to be the biggest problem. That窶冱 because my family are liars. The day before we always call over to see what time we窶决e eating. They窶冤l say 2:00PM, when they know damned well it won窶冲 be until 4:00PM. They lie because they want to spend time with us, which is odd, because I can窶冲 comprehend anyone wanting to spend time with us.
On the way over there I guarantee that some doofus will be outside hanging his Christmas lights, which will start my wife up and I窶冤l have to listen to how I窶囘 better get our shit up right away and not wait too long like last year. And when we finally arrive we窶冤l walk in on a shouting match about the turkey, and how it窶冱 not cooking fast enough or hot enough, or when the tin foil should be taken off to brown the skin, even though it won窶冲 be ready for hours.
So we stand around the kitchen and drink champagne until a card game breaks out or we can start poaching food. Some will sneak out for a smoke, others will incite slanderous talk about other relatives and the majority will bitch and moan about anything that comes to mind. And when the bird is done everyone will argue about the proper way to carve it and how this family, 窶彭oesn窶冲 have a goddamned sharp knife窶 and there won窶冲 be enough of the same type of plates for everyone and it will ruin the photos.
Somehow, I find comfort in all this. There we are, all together and complaining as a family. It窶冱 hard to describe. And when the time comes to trot the bird out everyone takes on a solemn demeanor and we go around the table and everyone expresses what they窶决e thankful for this year. I never use to participate and this whole thing used to make me very uncomfortable. The first couple of years tried to hide in the bathroom for this part but they refused to start until everyone was seated. Nowadays I don窶冲 mind so much. I have a lot to be thankful for.
Since I don窶冲 eat turkey I窶冤l fill up on my old lady窶冱 pecan crusted sweet potato pie and mashed potatoes and gravy and swill more champagne. And towards the end, when the pumpkin pie comes out I窶冤l fill half my coffee cup with good cognac and reflect on the fact I don窶冲 have to work the next day. And while the mess is being cleaned I窶冤l sit there with my daughter on my lap and plan a graceful exit strategy as the old lady packs up as much of the leftovers as she can before her siblings can get it all.
And when we get home and put the kid to bed I窶冤l pour myself a single malt and sit on my lazy ass窶敗ated窶蚤s my wife and I look through the pay channels for amusement.
Happy Thanksgiving.
窶廛addy, I want to eat lunch there,窶 she said as she pointed out the window.
I looked up and saw that she was pointing at Taco Bell. This was a strange development. We窶况e driven by the place a thousand times since we lived in these parts but have never stopped. I had no intention of doing so this time either.
窶廛addy, stop! You said we were on a date and I could pick where we eat!窶
窶弋hat窶冱 because you窶况e been reasonable up to now. You pick Wendy窶冱 every week.窶
窶廝ut today I don窶冲 want Wendy窶冱. I want that!窶
I swung around and pulled into the parking lot. After ten minutes of reasonable discussion we went inside, against my better judgment. Soon afterward we sat at a table and unwrapped our bounty, which was somewhat disturbing. I have a thing about Mexican food. I like it a lot. I窶囘 lived in California long enough to know good Mexican food and my expectations were minimal窶巴ut this was hideous. I made the mistake of looking inside my burrito and it appeared to be made out of brown paste.
窶廴ine looks like dog food.窶
窶廛addy, stop saying bad things and eat your lunch.窶
I hadn窶冲 been to a Taco Bell in roughly fifteen years. I had no idea what to order so I got four burrito supremes. I could only stomach three of them and it was tough getting them down but I was starving.
An hour later I was watching the game when the storm hit. The first wave wasn窶冲 as violent as I thought it would be, but the next wave had all the elements of a classic green meat attack. I窶冤l spare you the details, but I was in there long enough to miss almost an entire quarter of the Eagles game. The kid was unfazed and unaffected. The entire time I was on the throne she was drawing pictures and shoving them under the door, which might have cheered me up if they weren窶冲 pictures of doggies eating Taco Bell.
She kept singing, 窶廡art, fart, fart, FART窶ｦfart, fart, fart, FART.窶 To the tune of the opening of Beethoven窶冱 fifth symphony and then laughing hysterically.
I refused to reply.
My wife eventually got in on the act, humiliating me even further, before taking a more serious note and rattling off a long list of chores that needed to be done, including measuring the windows for the new window treatments and taking the car to the dealership on Monday. All while I sat there, depressed and cramping, and wishing I was someplace else. If you can窶冲 get some peace in there, there窶冱 truly no hope. I stayed in there until they had gotten bored and gone about their business. And I slinked back to the couch and pretended to be asleep for a while.
And thus, another Sunday gone the way of Hades. Mocked by my family and frowned upon by the gods.
Acta est fabula, plaudite!
UPDATE 10/26 (see extended entry)
'Tis the season for spooks and scares, and some good laughs. Anyone out there have a good story they'd like to share about scaring someone, or being scared by someone? Are you the I-don't-scare type that once flipped out in a haunted house when someone grabbed you? Fondly remembering scaring your little sister so much she wet herself? Were you that little sister that grew up and screamed so loudly during a scary movie that your brother and his popcorn went flying off the sofa? Let's hear your stories!
My stepson jumped three feet off the couch and yelled SHIT! when my wife crept behind him and grabbed his shoulder during the final scene of Carrie.
She made ME jump three feet when she let out a piercing shriek (on purpose, mind you) during the scene in The Hand That Rocked The Cradle when the husband's hand came from behind the stairs and grabbed the wife's ankle.
Others?
Did Microsoft release Sign Generator XP or something? Get a load of this beauty that's up in front of our office building right now.
Anybody care to posit the two word phrase that would be superior to this verbose and wandering phraseology?
All three boys have done the bulk of their growing up here in Atlanta but only Burger was conceived and born natively. Sometimes it shows.
Me: Everybody ready? Let's get in the van and get going.[Kids begin climbing into the vehicle.]
Me: Woah there, Burger! You've got to finish that soda before you get in the van. Drink it or toss it.
[Burger looks up at me like I am a complete moron. A complete moron who has deeply offended him.]
Burger: It's not a SODA. It's a COKE.
I ended up holding it for him while we drove home. It being a COKE and all, we couldn't let it go to waste.
Diamond Dave here, throwing in his two cents worth.
My wife works at Georgia Tech at night. She was witness to some of the relief efforts going on there for the storm refugees from La/Miss. Some of the things she heard and saw concerning these efforts upset her greatly. Here is a copy of the email she sent me, which she also sent to various news organizations:
Mass hysteria gripped Atlanta yesterday. It started with a broadcast by Governor Sonny "Not the chicken guy" Purdue. In a move that could best be called ill advised, he went on the air to say that the fuel supply to northern Georgia had been compromised but people were working on it and it would all be back to normal in a couple of days.
People freaked. There was a generalized run on the gas stations. Prices started skyrocketing.
Sonny went back on the air to say there was no emergency and that people should calm down. The compromised fuel supply was actually only 20% of our normal fuel delivery (most of our fuel is shipped in and then trucked), it was only a temporary problem, the worst that could happen would be a two day shortening of Atlanta's normal 10 day fuel reserves. People should stay home and play with their kids instead of spending hours in a line at a gas station.
This message came way too late and did nothing to counter the alarm generated by his earlier message. By then prices had topped $3.50 in most places and some stations were running out of gas. People freaked more. Prices went higher. More stations ran out of gas. People went into gas panic frenzies.
The panicked jackasses continued the run on gas through the rush hour and later. By the time it was over the price of a gallon had spiked over $5 in some locations. The highest I saw on my ride home was $4.19.
This morning the talking heads were out. The AAA regional manager explained that in the best of circumstances if everybody filled up on the same day we would likely run out of gas in the area. Fortunately only about 60% of the people in Atlanta are morons so we are in a shortage situation now instead of a crisis situation.
On my way into work this morning about 80% of the stations were out of gas. The ones that did have some left were selling for between $2.89 and $3.19 with one discrepant station still trying to get $4.09. None of them had many customers, of course.
Stupid people irritate me. Stupid people who affect my life anger me. Stupid people who affect my life by costing me money really piss me the hell off.
For more on the situation see Trey about The Price of Gas or my Lovely Redneck Wife about the Crazy People.
For somebody to say the devastation in New Orleans is God's punishment for their sins and depravity. I know it's coming. I know it's already been said somewhere, probably many somewheres, I've just been avoiding the places where it's most likely to happen so I've been able to miss it.
But eventually, somewhere, whether it's on the street, waiting in line at the store, in the break room or while out having a smoke, I'm going to hear those fateful words.
And then I'm going to punch that person right in the throat.
UPDATE: Not sure how I got back into it but I did and this is topical again. The game is on!
I had an interesting imaginary conversation with our normally sweet though rabidly lefty neighbor. It went something like this:
Neighbor: I can't believe you voted against Kerry in the primary.[Note - I'm not a registered Democrat but in Georgia all voters may vote in whichever primary they choose to. Since voting for or against Bush in the Republican primary was a moot point I voted in the Democratic primary.]
Me: I don't like him. If Bush loses I want the person who is President to be the best possible candidate and Kerry isn't that candidate.
Neighbor: IIIIIIFFFFF Bush loses?!?!?! Of course he's going to lose! We're going to knock that lying bastard out of the White House!
Me: Oh, Lordy. You aren't one of those "Bush lied, people died" folk are you?
Neighbor: Of course. He did lie and those lies led directly to people dying so damn straight "Bush lied, people died".
Me: What lie did he tell?
Neighbor: He talked about all of...
Me: Woah! I didn't ask what he talked about. I want to know what he actually said.
Neighbor: He said that...
Me: Stop! I don't want to hear that "He said that...", I want to hear what he himself personally said. What literal lie came out of his mouth?
Neighbor: I'm trying to tell you what he said!
Me: No, you're trying to tell me an interpretation of what he said. Tell me the exact words that came out of his mouth that were deliberate and calculated untruths.
Neighbor: Nobody knows exact words. That's crazy. I couldn't give you the exact words for this conversation we're having right now.
Me: Anybody who wants to can have the exact words that Bush said. They are all recorded for posterity and publicly available. Let's forget about knowing the actual words for a moment. Have you yourself heard the actual words?
Neighbor: Don't patronize me. I keep informed, Jim. I do listen to the news and read the paper.
Me: I know you do, otherwise I wouldn't bother to have this conversation with you. I'm serious here - have you yourself heard and recognized a lie out of Bush's mouth? Have you read his actual words, uncut, unexerpted and un-ellipsed and seen a lie there? Or are you propagating a personal attack on a man based solely on what third parties have said.
Neighbor: [Fuming silence]
Me: Okay, why don't we pick this up later after you've had some time to do some research?
So I've got a challenge to anybody and everybody who's part of the "Bush lied, people died" crowd. This is not sarcastic and it's not meant to denigrate anybody. I've seen dozens of people who I respect react with this knee-jerk slogan. I myself have never seen or heard an intentional untruth from Bush. If he actually did lie then the proof of it is out there. Show me. Prove it. If you are willing to mouth the words against the man then the least you can do as a person of honor is to verify that what you are saying about him is true. Since you'll be out doing that for your own peace of mind, share it with me here when you are done.
Here's what I'm looking for:
- Actual literal quotes from George Bush
- They must be in context, unedited, un-ellipsed, unmodified in any way. Exactly as they came from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
- They must be linked and referenced. I must be able to go and view the source for myself.
- They must contain intentional fallacies that directly led to US forces going to war in Iraq.
Leave them in the comments to this post. Each instance of a qualifying Bush lie that is reported here will be rewarded with a Snooze Point or two and the eternal thanks of the masses.
Three weeks of the most intense development imaginable. Two separate groups of subject matter experts flown in. Two UI developers, 2 DBAs and 4 contractors working hell shifts and weekends for 10 days. Three completely new component systems learned and implemented. Four new technologies developed. A last minute 100% setback. A brief reprieve. And then...
The demo was a smashing success.
The top 20 officers in the company saw just what our developers can do when given their heads and qualified direction. There was oohing and aahing. There were exclamations at the speed of our product (504 page reports off a 17 million record set live database in under 4 seconds).
They did not approve our proof of concept for development. Although we met every reporting requirement we were tasked with we failed to meet the invisible requirements of matching the back-office capability of the very expensive preferred vendor. That capability took a score of hungry Romanians two years to develop so there's no way we could do it inside the 6 month implementation deadline. 7 months, maybe - they're only Romanians after all.
But all is not lost. Enterprise Development got to show off big time for the biggest brass in the company. Many of the tech advances and components from the proof of concept will get used in other applications. Our street cred is huge now. Our collective ballsacks are silky smooth and engorged with massive testosterone loads ready to fire at the slightest provocation.
We kicked serious ass.
Just when I say I'm on hiatus, I make a post. Behold the dichotomy of Jim.
I give you...Xtreme Paper Disposal:
By the way, I got me a new mini-digital.
I just got a trackback spam for "oral sex for women". What the hell is that?
Tuesday through Friday were all-day meetings at work. Every day. The whole day.
On Tuesday I went out for some celebration drinks after work. It was much fun but I payed the price on Wednesday. If Lovely Wife hadn't woken me up I would have missed the beginning of the Wednesday meeting.
There's a decent chance that if she hadn't woken me up I would have missed a significant portion of that meeting.
Wednesday's meeting was 11 hours and then dinner afterward.
I worked from home until 2:30 today to catch up some of the critical stuff I missed while I was in the critical all day meetings.
I'm wrecked and once again 150 odd posts behind in my blog reading.
The celebration drinks on Tuesday were because I officially got my Project Manager title on Monday. Yay!
We have three dogs now. We got a new lab/Aussie mutt puppy a couple of weeks ago. Pictures soon, I promise.
We have 8 cats now. Stitch, slut that she is, went into heat some time after we pulled out of the driveway for our Spokane trip. She spit out the bebe kats a week and a half ago.
I still have Morrigan's microwave plate.
I'm now three of the top application development projects at work.
And will be adding another next week.
One of those three became an emergency last week - this accounts for two of the four meeting days this week. And two more next week. [sigh]
Three of the five kittens have adoption promises already. All to women who work at the same office.
One of their clients is one of our biggest clients. Small world.
We may be boarding another lab for one of the folks who's taking a kitten.
I'm not sure that trading a kitten for an adult dog gets us out ahead anywhere, pet-wise.
Both of my parents tried to call me on my birthday. They called at home. While I was at work. This bummed me out severely.
I got my favorite selection of tasty beers for one of my birthday presents. This cheered me up considerably.
Lovely Wife rocks.
At the dinner on Wednesday I had enough prime beef to compact a tiger's colon.
There's something oddly satisfying about letting loose a $40 beef shit.
Unions are in the news lately. Seems the big annual party for the AFL-CIO is missing some of the biggest partiers this year. Yup, the two largest single unions, the SIEU (pronounced "sue", as in that's what they do) and the mob Teamsters have called it quits and started up their own little group called The Coalition To Win, or TCTW (pronounced "Tick Two" which is very fitting when you picture two blood sucking insects).
And there was much rejoicing! Yay!
There really is nothing like a freshly shorn scrotum. You really should try it.
I'm just saying.
Because I got the most fantabulous birthday present in the mail. Helen, you rock!
Points
Can you guess what splendiferous present Helen bought me? Three points for the first person to get it right!
And yes, there is enough clue in this post to get it right.
When the heat tops 95 and the humidity goes with it, when just walking out the door causes a film of sweat to sheen upon the skin, when walking across the parking lot is a painful experience and even the act of sitting down no longer brings comfort, it becomes very apparent that it is way past time to trim the ball hair.
I just figured out how to use my desktop monitor and my lappy monitor at the same time to double my screen size. How cool is that?
Now if only I could learn how to multi-task...
We had such an awesome time on Saturday. Boudicca, her three young Celts, and her sister Morrigan came over for a BBQ. There's always a bit of trepidation when you meet somebody for the first time and (for me at least) this is there regardless of how well I know somebody online. This evaporated as soon as Bou got out of her car and gave me a big "Hi" and a smile. If you've read her writing - she's just like that for real.
Of course now that I've been with her (not in the biblical sense - get your minds out of the gutter you dirty birds) one question does arise. What's up with the diet thing, Bou? Completely unnecessary - you're gorgeous.
The more perceptive of you will note that I brought that up here instead of in person. Like grampa used to say "Never talk to a woman about her figure. It's much safer to post it openly in a public place frequented by hundreds of people after ensuring that there are several hundred miles between you." Heh.
We have flags flying at my house. Until very recently we had two "porch sized" ensigns at the front of our house. Some people think that's an excessive display of patriotism, flag waving and/or a sign of rampant Republicanism. Y'all know me well enough to figure that I don't give much of a fuck about that. I like the flag, I respect it, I am proud to fly it in front of my house and I fully and completely believe that excess is good.
Anyway, we are down to one now as the other had achieved a tattered state. What to do? It was one of those all weather nylon types made to stay up and out for years at a time. I couldn't toss it in the garbage can. I wouldn't be comfortable thinking about it sitting inside a pile of refuse for a couple hundred years. Fortunately, precedent, custom and even law came to the rescue:
United States Code Title 4, Section 1, Item (k): The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.
I folded it up into the Widow's Triangle and we said the Pledge of Allegiance. Lovely Wife did a chorus of The Star Spangled Banner. Just the first bit of course, that sucker is murder on the voice. Then I put it in our burn barrel and we all dove aside to avoid the toxic fumes and spitting bits of molten plastic. It was a really nice moment and I think the kids picked up something from it.
Now our Congressmen, apparently lacking any real work to focus on, are busy making it possible for me to be arrested for doing this. H.J.Res. 10 changes the constitution to allow legislators to make flag burning a crime. A crime as in penalties, fines, jail time.
They've been trying to do this for a long, long time. It has been either ignored or struck down by the Senate every other year since 1995. Now they think that there are enough Senators willing to pass the amendment. They feel confident that enough states will ratify it as well. This is mainly because they will present it as protecting the flag and not as altering the constitution to remove a subset of our rights. They will most assuredly not make any sort of note to clarify that the actual actions that are being prohibited will be determined at a later date.
They couldn't pass laws against flag burning, because that violated constitutional protections.
They couldn't pass an amendment against flag burning because there is slightly too much sanity on The Hill.
So they went the back route. Make a generic amendment that creates a brand new set of illegalities possible and then pass laws on the state level to flesh them out.
I have two things to say to these vigilantes against sanity and freedom. First, keep your fucking hands off of my Constitution. Second, just fuck off period.
(Hat tip to Lovely Wife)
Still crazy busy.
Interviewed two people so far for the PM position. One decent candidate, one very strong candidate. Position is still open as of now though so let me know if you're interested.
I was about finished with Medieval: Total War. My Spaniards were mopping up the last of the Egyptian rebels. Spain spanned across the width of Africa. We were eating paella in Cairo. It was a beautiful thing.
Then the gutless French bastards, my long-time allies I might add, launched a surprise attack on my northern province of Aragon. A quick redeployment of the African Expeditionary Force smashed them back into France but the bloody Pope told me to stop attacking their poor Catholic selves or face excommunication. With much grumbling the Spanish forces withdrew to Aragon.
But a short two turns later what should happen but the French got themselves excommunicated for their relentless assault upon the Brits. Woo hoo! Free for all time. Married off a daughter to the English crown, relaunched the attack into France and the Froggies have been folding between my hammer and William's anvil ever since. It's a beautiful thing.
I'm about 400 posts behind in my blog reading. Ouch.
We have a multi-tiered phone system at work. For inter-office calls we use our own lines or VOIP. For external calls we use Sprint. This normally works pretty well. Yesterday it did not work well.
My cube neighbor popped over and asked me if I knew what the light on the phone meant. One of the unlabeled buttons on the phone was lit up with a red light. The lights are always red when lit so the color itself wasn't a concern. What was a concern was the fact that an unknown light was lit.
I pressed the button for that light. The phone did nothing. I picked up the receiver and pressed the button. The phone display changed to "Sprint unplugged". Interesting.
My first thought was that Sprint had followed in the hallowed steps of Nirvana and other lesser rockers and released an album sans electrics and were simply taking advantage of their wide distribution of phone services to market it. Then I recalled that Sprint is a telecommunications company and not a rock band. And apparently they are a telecommunications company that only has one plug.
I hung the phone up, picked it back up and pressed a button for an outside line. The display changed to "Cannot find ARS". Now that made perfect sense. Sprint simply can't find its own ass.
...that Kitty rocks!
I just received this fantastic little number in the mail.
Many hours of educational enjoyment lie ahead. If the kids are good I might even let them watch it.
Thanks Kitty!
I had two little projects. They had a lot in common and seemed like they would get along with each other really well. So, I played matchmaker and put them in a meeting room together for a couple of hours.
It's a week later now and I just assisted in the birth of a mega project.
Damn things breed faster than bunnies.
This worked so incredibly well* that I'm going to dip into the well again.
I need another round of happy thoughts, mojo, considered discourse, best wishes...hell, whatever your bag is it's wanted. Half of you can guess what it's for. Four of you know for sure what it's for. For the rest of you, rest assured it's going to a very good purpose.
* Although it did so apparently by causing a tropical storm. Hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.
Or if prayers aren't your style you could work up a bit of mojo. Transfer some good karma? At least think some happy thoughts.
Sorry I can't tell you who it's for, what it's about or why it's needed. It's just not my story to tell. Direct it to me and I'll make sure it gets where it's going. I can assure you it's for a good cause.
Went to return some coffee and found all three urinals full of piss! Woo hoo!
I am surrounded by scum.
In other news, it's moving day. We're heading to our new offices all of 1.2 miles down the road. In typical fashion it's a bit of a cluster fuck. There were supposed to be functional servers over there this morning so the people who planned ahead and obeyed the order to disconnect all computers before COB yesterday would be able to work from the new office.
Not.
So I'm back at the old place listening to 100 people packing up their shit instead of working in quiet solitude. Bah.
Our last grilling session:
By "last" I mean "most recent" of course. We're full on into grilling season now so this is a fairly common occurence.
The burgers you see there aren't just any old hamburgers - they're Jimmy Burgers™, my world famous recipe. I'd be happy to share the ingredients with you but then I'd have to kill you.
No, wait. It's the recipe for my chili con carne I'd have to kill you for. I'm free to share this recipe. Except that I can't. Because there isn't one.
The actual ingredients of the Jimmy Burger™ vary widely depending on my mood, relative sobriety and what's in the kitchen.
Burgers aren't a science, y'all. They're an art form.
Getting hungry Bou?
The Available Time Fairy has yet to make an appearance, precluding my writing up fantastically amusing anecdotes for your amusement. Instead, I'll give you a relatively dry bullet point presentation of the trip. Hey, I'm in project management now. This is how it's done.
- Da plane! - Had an excellent trip. All three boys behaved like angels for the entire 12 hours of travel. Lovely Wife and I kept waiting for the bomb to drop but it never arrived. It must have been using a French targeting system.
- Airport - They've got the cutest little airport in Spokane! I wanted to just put it in my pocket and take it home with me. It's an International airport because they fly to California.
- "Spokane" - They pronounce it all funny. It should be "spo-cane", right? Nope, they pronounce it "spo-can". I kept pronouncing it the right way and anytime a local looked at me like I was a tourist I told them if they want to pronounce it "spo-can" then they had to get rid of the "e" at the end.
Oh, Rob. You poor, misguided man. I gave up on music a decade ago. I listen to talk radio in the car. I'm possibly the worst person in the blogosphere to be tagged with this meme. Regardless, I shall endeavor to rise to the occasion and hope that my answers don't inordinately degrade my cool status.
Total volume of music files on my computer:
Zero. Nada. Nil. I have no music files on my computer. I should win some sort of prize for this.
The last CD I bought was:
Ray, the soundtrack from the movie of the same name. I bought it during my Spokane trip. The rental truck had a kick-ass stereo system but I couldn't find any station with acceptable background music. Talk radio was out as I was always with passengers. Thusly, Ray was acquired.
Song playing right now:
None. Nothing. The extended version of 4'33". It's not because I'm at work, either. The only time I hear music is if Lovely Wife puts some on.
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
Someone to Watch Over Me by George Gershwin. Played for Lovely Wife and I by the strolling violinist at The Friar's Table whilst we celebrated our first wedding anniversary.
Georgia On My Mind by Ray Charles. The reason for the above noted CD purchase. This song is gorgeous. The Ray soundtrack has two versions, one studio and one live. You can hear Ray Charles alternately smiling and crying during the live version. Breathtaking.
Speaking of Ray Charles, did you get a look at that new grand piano he's using now? No? Neither did he.
Back in Black by AC/DC. This was the first song I heard after boot camp. It was like emerging from a dark room into blinding light. Any time I hear it now I get an emotional lift. Plus, AC/DC just plain out kicks ass.
Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd. This song puts me in a happy place. I guess it's just part of being a voluntary southerner.
No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley. Everything gonna be all right.
Five people to whom I窶冦 passing the musical baton: I need to make up for a couple of lousy answers so I'm going to pass this to six people: the inestimable Snooze Crew™!
I bet you're all wondering where the anecdotes and stories of our Warshington trip are. They're coming, I just haven't had a chance to put them into pixels yet. You see, I had a very exciting return to work that has had me quite occupied and distracted...
Wednesday was my first day back to work. It was also Boss's last day at work. This came as quite a surprise because as late as Tuesday evening I was confirming future meetings with him. Needless to say, he was as surprised as I was. So I'm getting a new boss starting on Tuesday. What does this mean apart from putting that butterfly feeling in my belly?
The mega project I'm doing business analysis for now has no project manager at all. Boss was working PM for that project, you see. He was in the closing stages of contract negotiation with our biggest information provider as well as holder of the project plan. I'm keeping it together on my own and am getting decent support. I'll be meeting with Almost Boss and Boss2 today to see what we need to do to keep it on schedule.
My move into an official PM position is no longer as tight. This was my Boss's plan and he's gone now. On the plus side I've got the full support of Almost Boss. I'm meeting with Boss2 later today to discuss. Fingers crossed, please.
The department is in a bit of turmoil. We're very deep into defining processes and procedures. Work on this has been going like gangbusters since our Chicago meeting. This was Boss's initiative. What happens now? We've decided to keep going full steam until somebody tells us different and are meeting for a strategy session today.
New Boss has extensive experience with organizing and training project managers. This is very, very good. I expect training resources to become available and strong support for our streamlining and process development efforts.
So my overall opinion is mixed. Boss was a great boss. He was very personable and an extremely straight shooter. He also had the confidence in his people to assign tasks and then back off unless his help was needed. In the age of micromanagement this mix of traits was priceless. He's going to be missed. On the other hand New Boss has more experience with this particular department type and specific experience in getting a young department up to speed.
Good? Bad? Ugly? We'll have to wait and see.
Hello faithful SBD readers! I am one of the beloved Snooze Crew that has taken over in Jim's absence.
I had to beg for help on some ideas of what to write about here while Jim is gone, and someone gave me a stellar idea. Favorite Summertime Memories.
My Favorite Summertime Memory happened about 10 years ago when my eldest daughter was 5 years old.
After I posted that editorial yesterday it put me in the mood to write another one. Today's is about general failings of today's schools and a glimse of the light at the end of the tunnel.
...NOT the brown wire with the yellow stripe.
We had some excitement at work yesterday. Around 2:30 our receptionist made an announcement along the lines of "If you discarded a black bag in the garbage can out front we REALLY need to talk with you. Please come to the front desk." I didn't think any more of it until I was outside catching a smoke with some building neighbors and the subject came up.
One of said neighbors was an agent of the ATF. They own two floors of our office building. The FBI offices are in the next building.
He was saying that they did have to take things like that seriously because they really did get things sent to them and threats made to them. Constantly. Several times a week in this office alone and the FBI had it worse.
On the ride home yesterday my eye was caught by motion in the car to the right and a little bit in front of me. The passenger of said vehicle had just done a full head turn and was looking at me. The young, female passenger. Traffic separated us before I got more than a glance.
A minute or so later the traffic flow brought me back alongside them. This time driver and passenger both gave me a look. That's young, female driver and passenger. The young, female driver smiled. I smiled back and did the "Howdy" head nod. Traffic flow separated us again.
I know what you're thinking 'cause I was thinking the exact same thing. Visible booger, right? A quick check put the lie to that assumption. Next most obvious thing was to verify that I was indeed driving in my milk white mini-van. There's always the possibility I accidentally got into a Maserati when I left work and just hadn't realized. But no, I was definitely in the mini-van. Neither was I inadvertently shirtless, topped with messed up hair, nor obviously discolored by ink or food.
Traffic brought us alongside a couple more times until we both turned off in separate directions at the same intersection. Each time the girls would look over at me and the driver would have a big smile for me. With all other options eliminated I was forced to the only logical conclusion: I'm a hottie.
(Either that or they recognized me from the infamous cow pic.)
On Sunday we took the boys to Stone Mountain Park, our favorite place in all the outdoors. With the possible exception of just outside the carport in front of the burn barrel while drinking beers and tossing back vodka shots.
Where was I? Oh, yeah - Stone Mountain. We had the two boys from next door as well since their adults were off to Taladagua Taluhdagua Tailadaygua Talladega to watch redneck drive-bys NASCAR race. For those of you who don't know parent math, five boys are approximately four times as many as three boys after putting them through the "Outdoor Nature" algorithm and multiplying by the "Peer Impression" conversion factor.
They were suspiciously well behaved. I began to think that I had made an error in my math calculations. Perhaps I'd failed to carry the 1? We went to a classic car show in the fair grounds and the worst they did was an occasional touch of a highly polished muscle machine. I couldn't fault them too much for this as I myself was having a difficult time not rubbing my groin on some of those beauties.
The next stop was a ride on the SkyRider (aka sky-lift) to the top of the mountain. Again, they behaved almost frighteningly well. The only gaff here was Bear(5) walking into a puddle after being specifically told not to walk into a puddle (no extra socks or shoes on hand, otherwise we turn them loose). Maybe we didn't see their typical boyish terrorism up there simply because we didn't have enough time. It was right chilly on the top of the mountain, we had no coats, and the trip was aborted pretty quickly.
We got some pretty terrible news yesterday. My dad was put in the hospital for a collapsed lung. More properly known as Spontaneous Pneumothorax, this is one of the recurring side effects of emphysema.
Emphysema destroys the elasticity of the lung walls and structures. The alvioli become rigid and weak and trap air instead of transferring it. Eventually an air sac will rupture allowing air to collect in the chest cavity and collapsing the lung. Treating pneumothorax involves cutting open the chest wall and sticking a tube inside. This lets the air escape and the lung will typically reinflate within a few days.
It is not a pleasant sensation.
Mom had a couple of ectomies to treat her cancer. Her sister (my auntie) is in her third or fourth remission after some seriously rude treatment. Grams and Nana both had emphysema. Lung cancer killed Dad's sister. Everybody smoked.
I guess it's time to wake up and smell the nicotine.
Hold onto your hearts ladies as you take a gander at these three hotties.
This is the year for me meeting bloggers. Last year I met one fellow blogger - Trey Givens. That worked out so well you'd have thought I'd have been jumping in front of cars just to meet some more. Or just for the adrenaline rush. Things didn't turn out that way though. Most of my online friends live far, far away and it turns out my insurance has a problem with the whole jumping in front of cars thing.
This year is turning out very different.
I've already met Elizabeth and Clancy and had a blast with them. In just a couple of weeks I'll be in the presence of blog queen Margi. This summer we'll be barbequing with Boudicca and her three boys (And sister? She's invited too, Bou.) Later this year I'm hoping very much to be able to get together with Simon, RP and my very favoritest blogstress in the world Helen.
And all of this without attending a blogmeet. How's that for awesome?
April 26, 2005
Gwinnett County
Board of Assessors
75 Langley Drive
Lawrenceville, GA 30045
Re: Appeal of Gwinnett County Board of Assessors Property Reassessment
Dear Sir or Madam:
I received a "Notice to Taxpayer" regarding the appraised value of my home. This notice shows that you have reappraised my home at [$Governor's Mansion] compared to the prior year value of [$Single Family Ranch]. While I would certainly love to have a home that raises in value this quickly my unfortunate reality is that my home has not increased in value by 16% since the time I purchased it less than a year ago.
If an actual inspection to assess my property were to reveal this startling increase in value I would be more than happy to sell it and realize a tidy return on my one year investment. Judging by the house on the next lot that has remained unsold for over two years as well as the frequent utility outages in the neighborhood I fear that my dreams of a quick profit are for naught.
Please accept this letter as my official appeal of the County assessed value of my property. I apologize for any irregularity in my missive but the phone number provided in the Notice has been constantly busy since I first received it so I have been unable to verify exactly what is needed in this letter. Perhaps other taxpayers are taking exception to their own reassessed values?
Sincerely,
James R Peacock
In three weeks the Peacock Clan (Atlanta Division) will be traipsing off to Spokane, Washington to attend my Lil' Bro's wedding. We've (by "we" I mean "Lovely Wife") been preparing for the festivities, including buying clothes to wear for the ceremony. Well, no clothes for me as I've got my Fabulous Interview Suit(tm) but outfits for the three boys and Lovely Wife. This shopping was completed just this past weekend.
Yesterday my Lovely Wife IM'd me that she was thinking of bringing back her skirt and shoes. She's got an old skirt and old shoes that could still be serviceable and she really, really wanted to pick up Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events on it's Tuesday release.
Let me rephrase that: I am married to a woman who would rather have a Jim Carrey movie than a new skirt and shoes.
So I ask you again: Am I the luckiest guy in the world, or what?
Postscript: I surprised her with the movie last night for a birthday present so don't y'all worry about her taking those shoes back.
The good news is my inbox is down to 19 items.
The bad news is that 14 of them are flagged for follow-ups. Yuck.
The Good: I had a conference call about the project I went to Denver for. At the end of the call I received kudos from two Senior VPs and the Product Owner. It's a good thing I don't normally wear a hat because there's no way it would fit right now.
The Bad: Remember The History of Sales and Technology? A meeting earlier today took that it one step further.
Cave Salesman: And by the way, we'll need that club perfectly balanced.Cave Techguy: Perfect balance? You're talking about technology we don't even have yet!
Cave Salesman: What's so hard about balancing a club?
Cave Techguy: Well to get perfect balance on a club I'm going to have to invent the lathe and to get a lathe I have to invent gears and to get gears I have to invent the freaking wheel. You're talking about technology that we are three generations away from!
Cave Salesman: Okay, as long as I get the club by Tuesday.
The Ugly: My email inbox is bloated like Michael Moore at an all you can eat Twinkiefest.
Yesterday's meeting in Denver was a Technology support effort for a current partnership arranged by Sales and Marketing. Our initiative is to exploit utilize our partner's services while they do the same with ours. This meeting was about them using our technology.
Did I mention that this business relationship was built by Sales and Marketing?
As in, the only knowledge of our products and services was from salesmen.
It was an interesting meeting and it brought to mind an ancient anecdote about The History of Sales and Technology.
Cave Salesman: Hey, what's the deliverable on one of those new clubs?Cave Techguy: Two weeks for the standard model. Three to five for customized models.
Cave Salesman: Two weeks?! No way. It's only a club.
Cave Techguy: It's only a club? Look, I've got to locate an appropriate tree, chop it down, cut off an appropriate limb, shape it, fire harden it...
Cave Salesman: Well I already sold it and delivery is next Tuesday.
Cave Techguy: I told you - it takes at least two weeks!
Cave Salesman: I don't see why. It's only a club.
Things worked out well once we clarified a bit of what we can and can't do.
When we took our walk through Millenium Park in Chicago we saw one of Chicago's finest. On a Segway. With a bright orange reflective safety vest, like the crossing guards wear.
You pretty much lose all of your Cool Cop points if you are on a Segway.
I got an email this morning from somebody who says they want to buy snoozebuttondreams.com.
As.
If.
I just noticed that there are a handful of Dove chocolate eggs in my inbox. I dumped them when I was packing up my laptop case for my trip and forgot all about them.
It's like Easter has come eleven and a half months early!
The number of statue types you must find in order to get to the good parking near Millenium Park in Chicago. To be specific:
Gargoyles!
Indians!
Lions!
(Parents will no doubt be hearing either "We did it!" or "I'm the map!" in their heads right now. This is normal and you should not be concerned.)
That's how many blog posts are sitting in my aggregator.
What? Did you all save up a week's worth of posting for Monday and Tuesday while I'd be gone?
My meetings went very well. This is surprising as hell. You see, normally a meeting that has more than four people is useful only for brainstorming. Once you hit the magic number it's just about impossible to get actual constructive work done. Monday's meeting had 7 people and we actually did everything that we had to do. Admittedly it got a bit flighty toward the end when everybody was starting to burn out but overall it was an exceptionally well behaved crowd. Sunday's meeting was with project people instead of product people and we didn't get anything done except some brainstorming. This was okay though as the purpose of the meeting was to actually meet each other (my division is spread all over the States) and do some brainstorming.
More importantly, I met up with Elizabeth and Clancy. Elizabeth is a beanie (or "Chicagonian" if you prefer) and Clancy happened to be up there on his own business trip. We went out Monday and had a great time. Elizabeth is like a professional tour guide and showed us all around the fancy and touristy parts of downtown. A free tour was pretty cool because if I took a regular one I wouldn't have been able to expense it. Here are some of the tour highlights. Incidentally, I forgot to bring the camera so I don't have any pictures to post. Instead, I've just made helpful links for each of them:
Self-serve kiosks to check in and get your boarding pass are an excellent idea. Just swipe a credit card for ID, confirm your flight, take your boarding pass. Very fast and efficient. I even got an earlier stand-by flight on my return trip via kiosk.
Self-serve kiosks at Burger-King are a very bad idea. There are too many options, they're laid out badly and it takes far too long to just place a simple order.
Actually, those might work if Burger-King implemented a stupid people line.
Getting through security at the Atlanta airport is fast. They keep people moving by using a clever implementation of the 80/20 rule. In the case of airport security the rule says 80% of the people will do things correctly and 20% will be stupid. They identify those 20 percenters and send them to the dedicated stupid people line.
Security Guard: Identification and boarding pass, please.80 percenter: Here you are.
Security Guard: Thank you. Please proceed to that line over there that is moving incredibly quickly.
[Next traveler approaches]
Security Guard: Identification and boarding pass, please.
20 percenter: Oh, right. I've got those somewhere. Just hold on a sec... Wait... Ah, here it is!
Security Guard: That's your boarding pass, ma'am. I'll also need to see photo identification.
20 percenter: Oh! You already said that, didn't you? I'm so sorry. I've got that in my wallet... In my purse... In my carry-on bag... Here it is! Aren't you proud of me?
Security Guard: Please proceed to the stupid people line. Enjoy your flight. If you manage to find the gate.
20 percenter: Thank you!
The system works very well.
Incidentally, Hartsfield-Jackson (Atlanta) kicks O'Hare (Chicago) ass all up and down the runway. In Atlanta I had wireless available and a power plug to use. In Chicago - nada.
I have inherited nine folders of legacy documentation for The Big Project. Actual folders full of paper. I feel like I just stepped backward a decade.
I should be forgiving though - many of the documents actually are from a decade ago. Still, the vast majority of them are printouts so why the paper?
I could probably bring myself to forgive the presence of this pile of dead tree sheets except for one thing. The folders are pink. No, not "rose" or that very light pastel pink. These are PINK. Flaming pink, you might say. I've already had one coworker walk by my desk, pause, and say "Damn, those are really pink".
Now I've got to get a lock for my filing cabinet.
And a filing cabinet.
As I parked the car last night the song playing on the radio was "Soak up the Sun" by Sheryl Crow. Weirdly enough it was the first song on the radio when I started up the car this morning.
I like listening to Sheryl Crow. She's got a voice that is pleasing to the ear. The problem I have is when I listen to the actual words of Sheryl Crow songs they have a tendency to piss me off. This is mostly because she's one of those au natural dirty hippies and her songs tend to reflect that fact.
Anyway, I tried very hard not to listen to the words of "Soak up the Sun" this morning because it's an enjoyable song and it was pleasing to hear Sheryl singing to me in the early morning hours. Unfortunately I couldn't help hearing this lyric:
It's not having what you wantIt's wanting what you've got
Dammit, no! Sheryl, not even you can possibly believe that little bit of tree hugging wisdom. Yes it's a sweet sentiment. Sure, it would look great on a Tender Moments card or plastered to the back of a flower patterned VW bus. But please! That's about the least true truism ever spouted by a hippie rocker.
If this was true - that it's not about having what you want - then Sheryl would still be a nobody stoner folk singer playing on open mike night 'for the love of her music'. She wanted a bigger audience. She wanted better equipment. She wanted her own band. She wanted to make shitloads of money. And she achieved these things because it IS about having what you want.
I can't imagine what my life would be like if I had been raised to just be happy with what I had. Can you imagine? I wouldn't be married. Wedding my Lovely Wife was something I didn't have that I wanted. I wouldn't have kids - they were also things I didn't have and that I wanted. I wouldn't have a house. Wouldn't have a car. Wouldn't have a job.
What a sucky life I'd be living if it was all about just wanting the things I already had.
Complacency is spiritual death. Living is about pursuing your desires. Sheryl knows this, it's just too bad she doesn't sing it.
I think it is...let's see, England is 5 hours off, right? That means it's also 19 hours off the other way. So if we ignore the spin of the earth, carry the 3, multiply by the average airspeed of an unladed swallow, divide by Ted Kennedy's liver...and we get... close enough to tomorrow for today to be April 1!*
Happy Birthday, Helen!
Your present is in the extended entry.
* Cold medication, after several days of heavy abuse, may cause loss of critical function and time disorientation.
The one who comes into the office with sickness oozing out of his pores. I didn't want to come in today. In fact I would happily (well, as happily as possible bearing in mind the sickness) have worked from home but I left all of my project notes at work. I did this on purpose so as to avoid the temptation of working over the weekend. I made a special effort not to work over the weekend because my dad and step-mom were visiting us for the weekend.
Incidentally, that's why there wasn't anything here on Friday. We were enjoying 80 degrees and sun as we traipsed all over Stone Mountain.
We had a great time with the visit. Bacon was attached to Papa's leg for close to 4 days straight. Bear taught him how to get pummeled in record time playing his favorite video game. Sunday's festivities included hunts for two baskets per child (I told them the Easter Bunny was overstocked so was liquidating some of his stock), egg decoration with Nana and Papa (I have no idea how they kept these three ruffians so clean during the dying phase), an egg hunt (Burger won hands down with 21 eggs), and dinner out at our favorite family restaurant the Golden Corral (when you have three kids, the buffet is your friend).
I've been battling the sickness all weekend. I think I'm past the contagious part but just in case I've taken steps to avoid infecting my coworkers. I have a spray bottle with bleach in it and any time somebody walks into my cube I squirt them. This works well not only to kill any germs they may have inadverdently picked up but also to discourage future visits.
It seems that I'm not the only person offended by the frequent flushing violations in our 2nd floor mens room. Yesterday somebody printed out and posted the following sign on the inside of the bathroom door:
Way back in 1953, the U.S. Department of Health (now the CDC) determined that flushing toilets and urinals in public restrooms reduced the spread of disease by more than 88%. Today's society has acrimoniously decreed that flushing should be an automatic function (hence the many infrared toilets today). This company has determined that the use of a paltry 1.5 gallons of water per flush is worth the investment to keep its workforce healthy. So, the question to you is...Why Don't You
Flush?It's disgusting, rude and unsanitary.
Go back and flush.(and then wash your hands.)
Just got a friendly "TO: Everybody" email about mailing things from the office. Item 1 reminded us that the deadline to drop mail in the mail room is 4:00 PM, M-F. Item 2 reminded us that the post office picks up from the mailbox out back at 4:30 PM, M-F. The third item dealt with personal mail:
Metering your PERSONAL mail is a COURTESY and not a company requirement. As always, your payment should accompany your personal mail unless you窶况e communicated otherwise. With that being said, please place your mail in the appropriate outgoing tray before 4PM. NOTE: If your personal mail happens to include renewal subscriptions to any pornographic magazines, materials, and suchlike, please make sure you take care of that on your own personal time!
I really want to know what inspired that note but the receptionist isn't talking.
Well today was definitely interesting. I arrived at work to a message from my boss asking if I could join a meeting. He's remote and was having connectivity problems and there was too much visual going on for him to follow well over the phone. When I got into the meeting he dropped out.
So I was in a meeting with the execs from a new division of the company. The division is new because we just acquired their company. A morning and most of the early afternoon was spent helping them define their business objectives and doing business analysis and requirements for their web portal and consumer online presence.
Weird activities for a quality assurance specialist, eh?
Got a call from my boss during the meeting, asking me to call him back when I had a few minutes. Don't you hate messages like that? Ones that give you no clue why you're calling? I sure do.
So I called him and he explained that the very large project I am consulting on now was being reorganized. He was taking over management of the project himself. Problem being, he can't be on-site here to actually manage the project. So, could I help out by doing the business analysis and business requirements locally?
There's those words again. Business Analysis. Business Requirements. Not QA stuff. Program analysis and standards are QA things. But I love doing this stuff so I said of course I'd be happy to help. That's when he popped the question.
Would I consider leaving QA for a Project Management position? He wants me on the business side of the business, said I excelled there. Yes, QA is very important but he has a critical shortage on the BA side of his house. He reassured me that it wasn't a do or die thing. I was hired for QA, I am doing a fantastic job here, this job is secure if I want to stay in it. But, would I like to step to the next level under the executorium?
I said "Hell, yeah. What took you so long to offer it? I've been here waiting for five freaking months already! Hello?"
Well, maybe it was more along the lines of a gracious acceptance. The position switch will come about in the near future after we wrap me out of some QA projects.
Say hello to Jim Peacock, Project Manager elect.
It's March 15th and that means The Grande 2004 Peacock Invitational has come to a close. So, how did we do?
Of the five of us, two made it. Tiffany's breasts did not get bigger as planned but except for this small setback she made it through a smoke free year without a problem. Tig made it too and keeps his last unsmoken ciggarette as a war trophy.
I lost it sometime during my pain filled unemployment days. Ironic, eh? Lose a job and pick back up an expensive bad habit. Jeremy didn't make it either. Busy stress life brought this valiant warrior low. And what of Joey? He got busy with school and work and disappeared many moons ago. It's possible that he survived but signs point to no. If he ever resurfaces we'll ask him and collect cash if what we suspect is true.
So over the course of a year we had a 40% success rate. That's hella better than any professional system out there. Think I should pattent this?
Over the weekend I received an email from a phisher trying to get my eBay log-in information. I'm not exactly sure why my eBay log-in information would be of any value to anybody. It's a buy-as-you-go type of place so it's not like they would have gotten any of my money or anything.
But it really pissed me off. It pissed me off enough that I went through the email headers to find the originator domain and sent this email to their abuse address:
One of your customers is a motherfucking, cock sucking, phishing bastard. I sincerely hope he dies with his severed cock shoved up his ass as he gags on his own vomit.Just thought you'd like to know. Headers below, followed by the phishing email:
[headers]
[original email]
You can tell I was really angry because I never say "gag" unless I'm seriously burnt.
Unbelievably, I got an actual answer back, from an actual email address, from what (if I close my eyes and click my heels together three times) could be confused with an actual person!
Hello,We are currently investigating who sent that message.
Kind regards,
Vlad Georgiev
Technical Support
Sure, it's an auto-response and yeah, it's probably from the same group that is doing the phishing. Still, through an alcohol induced haze it appeared like I was making a difference, and isn't that really what it's all about?
Appearances, yeah.
Yesterday's stank source has been identified. I was more correct with the stink bomb theory, except the perpetrators were our IT guys.
We have a large server farm located downtown (production) and a smaller farm locally (development). The server room is protected by an advanced fire retardant system. If fire is detected it floods the room with a gas that eliminates all oxygen therefor extinguishing the fire. The gas is harmless to electrical components and is odorless.
Odorless, that is, until a chemical is added to it to produce a strong odor. This is done to give an olfactory notification that the system was used and the room is compromised and possibly dangerous until completely ventilated. A very good idea.
Unfortunately the chemical used produces a smell like burning sulfur or Zeus's own gaseous expulsion. Why in the world would they choose such an obnoxious odor for the telltale? What's wrong with cinnamon or vanilla? Maybe a fresh pine scent would give just as much notice that something happened and yet allow everybody within the building work without constantly fighting their gag reflex. Hell, I'd settle for new car smell.
Personally I think it has something to do with the fact that the corporate IT guys work downtown. I bet their system smells like roses when it goes off.
Got on the elevator this morning and was immediately assaulted. Somebody had fouled the beast.
Got off of the elevator and was met with a stronger version of the same odor. Apparently somebody had done a preliminary attack in the elevator and then launched the atomic blast in the atrium.
Walked to my cube and found no lessening of the odoriferous monstrosity. The terrorist must be somebody in my department.
Went to the break room for coffee. Stank present. Now I began to worry.
In amazement I made a full tour of the floor. The smell of anal exhalation was everywhere.
Either we've been stink bombed or somebody's guts have turned feral.
Lovely Wife is a huge U2 fan. She even likes the crap that came out after The Joshua Tree. Now THAT'S dedication.
Anyway, they're currently touring and there's a decent chance they'll be coming through Atlanta. They're continual teasing about it anyway. Lovely Wife went online to find out how much U2 tickets are running at their other venues on the tour.
Here's a serious question for y'all. What flavor of stupid do you need to be to pay $4,800+ for a ticket to see a band? Any band. Led Zeppelin reunited - not worth it. The Beatles in their prime - not worth it. Lynrd Skynrd's Back From The Dead Tour - with an intermission show where they "Go Southern" on the Dixie Chicks - not worth it. Well, maybe. Depending on what I meant by "Go Southern".
The point is that if I'm paying $4,800 to see U2 the concert better end with Bono giving me a blowjob while The Edge juggles my jewels. Whoever else is in the band can serve drinks and pastries and provide towels as needed.
I'm just saying.
I've written a short essay on the fundamental problem in our current public school systems. You can find it at Zero Intelligence.
RP's post here is what sparked it and his post is a good read as well.
The first issue of the Vacant Funhouse, an online webzine featuring short stories and poetry of a horrific and macabre nature, is up. Issue #1 features the short story Hunting Todd by everybody's favorite blogger with an alarm clock themed weblog title.
Spread the word. Do links and things to the Funhouse. Make them ubersuccessful so they'll buy lots more of my stories and make me rich so I can retire to a tropic isle and blog full time.
1. The Author grants permission to include his/her story entitled ___窶扎unting Todd_," a work of approximately _2726____words, hereinafter referred to as the Work, in THE VACANT FUNHOUSE...
What's that about? Well, I've just sold my first story! The Vacant Funhouse is "A Webzine of horror, mystery, suspense and crime short fiction and poetry." More importantly, they've recognized my genius and purchased one of my light horror short stories for their debut issue.
Said issue will be up later today at which point I will link it prominently. Y'all should do likewise so they become amazingly successful and continue to buy my short stories.
It's one of those mornings...
It was very cold this morning. Cold enough that I cranked the heater in the van up all the way. As such things go it eventually got too hot.
So I turned the radio down. Amazingly it was still too hot.
I turned the radio down some more. Still too hot.
In exasperation I turned the radio off. The heat did not diminish.
Great, I thought, now I have to replace my radio.
Where's my coffee?
Update: We have a nice coffee set-up here. For creamer we have those little half-and-half containers that you peel the top off of. The first creamer went into the coffee cup normally. The second one emptied successfully. The third one caused a spill. It took me several seconds to realize that container two and three had been poured into container one.
Now you see why I need a secretary.
We just had a hailstorm here. It was beautiful but short. You wouldn't think frozen precipitation would delight an old Buffalo son but I think this was the first real hail storm I've ever seen.
The granules were very small, maybe a millimeter, and came down strong and steady. Looking out through the hail was a curious mixture of snowstorm and rain shower. They fell like rain but had the luminescence of snow. The tiny balls of ice bounced through the leaves of the trees like the disks in a Kerplunk game. Just beautiful.
It's been over for a couple of minutes now and the accumulation is already melted. Ah, nature's wonders are ever transitory.
It's almost an oxymoron. MTV - Music Television. Turn on MTV at almost any hour of the day and you'll see partying teens or a reality show. The few videos they still play are during request shows and it's the same 10 videos as last week, every week.
Over the weekend Lovely Wife and I watched an hour or so of "classic" music videos on VH1. These are videos from the 1980's for the most part. It was quite a trip through retro-ville, let me tell you.
And I now know why MTV started moving away from actually playing videos in the 1980's. It's because these videos suck with the terrible and inexorable strength of a black hole.
I'm just saying.
Yesterday evening we got a visit from some new neighbors. It was not a pleasant experience. They just bought a house down the street and moved in a short while ago. They've got a fenced back yard where they keep two dogs.
Nine-eye, our much loved neighborhood dog, went visiting. Although he is very timid with people he is very social with other dogs. Being a large boy and an experienced fence jumper he has no difficulty getting into their back yard. Our new neighbors are not pleased with his actions.
Perhaps "not pleased" is a bit of an understatement. What they are is angry enough that they threatened to kill Nine-eye if he goes into their yard again.
Yes, the mister said flat out that if we didn't keep Nine-eye out of his yard he would kill the dog.
This upset me greatly, but wasn't what brought me within inches of my first adult fist fight. What pissed me off even more than his threat was his qualifier, which he kept mouthing as if it absolved him of any consequence of his actions.
"I don't mean to be hateful, but..."
"I don't want to sound hateful, but..."
"I'm not trying to be hateful, but..."
Finally I couldn't hear that any more. My blood was boiling and I was about to pop. I looked him straight in the eye and said "I cannot imagine anything more hateful than that". Proud of me? I sure am. What I really wanted to say included colorful expressions about his person and a goodly dose of vitriol.
As it was, my simple words calling him on the carpet difused what was becoming a very bad situation. After I said that he got quiet for a few moments and when he spoke again the belligerence was gone. I got him to agree to call us if he saw Nine-eye in his yard again. Hopefully if we scold Nine-eye it will be more effective than him chasing the dog out of his yard.
It will not be a permanent solution. Nine-eye is very canine social. He wants to be with other dogs. He will return there eventually. Although we were able to reason with these new neighbors I do not think they will remain reasonable for very long. A person who'll come up to your house and tell you he is going to kill your dog is not the kind of person who strikes me as being reasonable for any length of time.
So what can we do? The best long-term solution is to get him out of his dangerous environment. Lovely Wife has started looking for a permanent home for him. He's a wonderfully friendly dog, very gentle and easy to handle. Once he's comfortable with a person, that is. He is very timid with most folk but recognizes "dog people" pretty quickly. He is quite smart and very social. I think he would be an excellent house dog after some patient training. He would also do very well as a yard dog but the fences need to be jumper-proof and he would absolutely need other dogs around him.
If you're in the Atlanta Metro area and would like to own a wonderful animal, please let me know. Heck, if you're outside of the Atlanta Metro area but would like to own a wonderful animal this is the perfect excuse to come see the delights of the area and pick up a pet while you're here. If you know anybody who might be interested please point them to this entry.
Update: Lovely Wife took some new pictures of Nine-eye. They're at the post linked above. Damn, that's one handsome dog! Here's one of them. He's tied up so he won't go into that backyard. This makes him very sad.
We've got morning traffic reports. We've got web-based mapping services. Combine the two.
Introducing MyTraffic.com*! Pull up the site before you head out the door. It shows you the best route to work taking into consideration slow traffic flows, accidents, etc.
* This is not a real site. Yet.
Valentine's Day - you either love it or hate it. Or ignore it, I guess. Or, like the vast majority of humanity, have no idea whatsoever that it even exists.
Where was I? Oh, yeah - it seems that posts on Valentine's Day fall firmly into one of two camps. There are those who hate and despise it as a Hallmark Holiday full of false sentiment and overly public displays of affection. Then there are those who embrace it for its celebration of true sentiment and overly public displays of affection.
Once upon a time I was firmly in the anti-VD camp. That changed and I think I've pinned down just where the change happened. I started to enjoy Valentine's Day when it changed from a day of obligatory gift giving to an excuse for gift giving.
Let me splain. We have a single income with 3 kids. We make do with one car and not a whole lot of superfluous stuff because we are willing to sacrifice such things to bring up our kids the way we want. The downside is a relative dearth of expendable income (aka blow money). I don't have very many opportunities to spoil her like she so richly deserves. I welcome Valentine's Day as it gives me a well established excuse to do what I'd like to be doing every day.
So Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!
iPod Shuffle is neat but it isn't really random. Everything it plays is one of your songs. Your selection only gets bigger when you add new songs and you have no chance of hearing a new song.
The new Napster is also neat. For a fixed fee per month you can listen to anything you want out of a monstrously huge selection of songs. But in your MP3 player it's still the same old thing - you program what you want to hear and there's really no big help to find new things.
What we need is MyFM. Here are the requirements:
Saturday morning I was working on the computer. Bear came over and we chatted while I did some mind-numbing report review. He started doing the pee dance. That's the move where he stands there grabbing his crotch and gyrating a bit. If you don't have kids you're probably most familiar with this move from its common occurrence in rap videos.
Me: Bear, do you need to go to the bathroom?Bear: No.
Me: Then why are you doing the pee dance?
Bear: My penis keeps bothering me.
Me: Your penis is bothering you?
Bear: Yeah. The penis part keeps sticking to my sack of balls.
'Sack of balls' has now been permanently entered into the family vocabulary.
Some movies can actually change you. Change your attitudes, your thoughts, even your beliefs. Any story can do this if it has a portion that touches you in a special way. By 'touching in a special way' I don't mean the way that pedophiles do, I mean in a good way.
The movie Singles changed me in an actual measurable way. Ever since I heard of 'gesundheit' it had been my sneeze response of choice. I mean, what's cooler and more worldly for a little kid to say than a foreign word in popular use, especially when said little kid knew how to use it appropriately. And the word wasn't a cuss so he could say it anywhere without having wooden spoons broken across his backside.
Well, in the movie Singles there's a scene where Bridget Fonda's character (just broken up with her boyfriend) gives her 'shopping list' for a guy. It's long and very detailed. But then she says that she's lowered her standards quite a bit and doesn't use that list anymore. Now she'll be happy with a guy who says 'gesundheit' when she sneezes. Or 'bless you'. 'Bless you' would be better - she really likes that. Skip to the end of the movie where Bridget and her ex are in an elevator together. She sneezes, he says 'bless you'. She jumps his bones.
I'll still occasionally say 'gesundheit' because that was my ingrained sneeze response for so many years. But since I first saw that movie anytime I actually think before doing the sneeze response I say 'bless you'. When a 'gesundheit' slips out I'll have a mental dammit moment when I realize that I missed a 'bless you'. And when I do the 'bless you' I get a nice warm feeling.
Okay, it's a very small thing. But that movie was directly responsible for a change in my attitude and behavior. In a good way too, I think.
So has a movie ever changed you? Big or small, good or bad? I'm keen to know.
Sounds dirty doesn't it? Like something immoral you might do with corpses.
On the way in today we passed the Atlanta Nephrology Referral Center. Lovely Wife asked me what "nephrology" was. My response was an unexpected "Duh...I don't know". That bugged me. I spent years drinking and partying studying like a dog to learn medical terms and here I'd gone and forgotten one. One big and important enough to have a medical referral center dedicated to it.
It bothered me on and off all day long. Every time I tried to think of what nephrology was the Isles of Langerhans kept popping into my head. Those are in the pancreas and I knew 窶從ephro窶 is definitely not the Latin for pancreas so I was at a dead end. Then I got a flash and I remembered a little memory trick I used for a biology test in OR Tech school. It was a drinking song little poem we memorized to help remember where the organs are located (in relation to each other) inside the abdomen. The part that was sticking in my head was something about 窶徂arvesting kidney beans under the Isles of Langerhans窶. That bit was to remind you that the kidneys are below the pancreas. As soon as I remembered that bit I remembered that 窶從ephro窶 is kidneys.
I rock!!*
So Nephrology is science of and relating to the kidneys. Do not confuse it with Necrophilia** or Necromongers***.
* Yes, I am fully aware that I could have looked it up online at any time and saved hours of fretting. That wouldn't have told me why my brain was misfiring between "nephro" and "Isles of Langerhans". Besides, figuring it out for yourself is way studly.****
** To which it is only cursorily related.
*** Space age bad guys who wear leather dresses (yes, the guys) and mullets in Vin Diesel movies.
**** Seriously, it really is way studly. I'm half tempted to give myself some points for this one.
I had the most awesome dream. You know that fiction short story that Paul and I wrote together? I dreamed that we were offered $20,000 for it with an option for 3 more.
Now I'm just trying to think of what to do with all that money.
Via Harvey I found a tale of frightfully vicious customer service at Lee Ann's View. Lovely Wife recently ran into a customer service nightmare of her own.
We love dollar stores. I'm sure I mentioned it before but the whole family thinks that dollar stores are the cat's tits. Just walking into a retail establishment knowing that you can buy anything that strikes your fancy is a heady feeling for folks like us with limited discretionary income. It's great for the kids too - they know if they walk in with 4 dollars they can get 4 things. Any four things. (Mom and Dad pick up the tax, you see.)
So we make a stop at the dollar store once or twice a month plus anytime we need a gadget or small tool. Our dollar store of preference was the Dollar Tree right around the corner from our last apartment. It's big but not too big, has a fine selection of useless paraphernalia and a friendly staff. We went to that one even though there are bigger ones not much further and similar ones closer to our house.
The Dollar Tree doesn't take credit cards or check cards. We use check cards almost exclusively. It is a very rare occurrence for us to have any actual cash on hand. For the Dollar Tree we use actual paper checks as that is their only non-cash option. Because we use check cards for just about all purchases and pay most of our bills online we go through actual paper checks very, very slowly. We still had several books left when we moved to our new house. I printed out address labels and we affix these over the old address on the checks when we use them. Hey, I'm a cheap bastard. No way am I ordering new checks when I have perfectly legal ones left. What else would you expect from somebody who shops at the Dollar Tree?
I hate being treated like an idiot, especially when I'm reading a book for pleasure. Today's bitch is against a particularly heinous affront perpetrated all too often by today's authors.
Introduction of villainThe villain is introduced by description. He is anonymous and mysterious. One unusual aspect of the villain is mentioned, generally more than once since the retarded readers can't be expected to notice it the first time. He plans something diabolical that shows he is actively working against the hero.
Hero meets "Bob"
The hero encounters "Bob". Bob is either a friend, ally, antagonist or other person who's on the same side as the hero. They might be friendly or they might hate each other. The key points are that they should be working together and that Bob has the villain's unusual aspect.
The writer thinks we're duped
Of course the writer now knows that he has tricked us into figuring out that Bob is the villain. He plays this up throughout the book but Bob is always known as Bob and the villain is always described by his unusual aspect.
The hero comes to suspect Bob
And the writer thinks we're all "shouting at the screen". No, hero! Don't trust Bob! He's the villain!
"Bob" has the hero in his clutches
Eventually the villain captures the hero and prepares to do something villainous to him. The hero is helpless and has no chance of rescue.
Bob saves the day
The real Bob arrives and saves the hero. Generally he also dies, leaving the hero (and supposedly the reader) anguished over his callousness in ever suspecting that Bob was the villain.
There are many variations on this little hammer blow of inept writing. Maybe the hero never suspects Bob at all, maybe it isn't Bob that saves the hero during the 'reveal', perhaps Bob really is a bad guy (just not the villain). What they all have in common is a pulling-the-reader-by-the-nose-ring condescension from the writer.
A good writer uses details to tell his story, not trite little tricks.
Rick Cook is dead to me.
I won't say we made it through yet since it's not quite over and I don't want to tempt fate. I'll just say that the expected power loss from the ice storm hasn't happened yet. The freezing rain from Friday and Saturday is mostly gone now. It left many thousands of Georgians without power (for various lengths of time - some are still down), led to many automobile accidents and caused the closure of major highways.
But it was breathtakingly beautiful too. It encased all of the trees in a sheath of crystalline majesty. Last evening the low lights of our front porch lit these up magnificently. Unfortunately our nighttime picture taking capabilities are almost non-existent and none of the photos came out well. This morning the view was still beautiful as the crystal encrusted trees groaned under their icy burden.
(Click here if you can't see the thumbnail.)
All of the ice is melting now and it sounds like a battleground outside. Chunks of ice fall like the rat-a-tat of a machine gun. The occasional large ice block or failing tree limb is like the crack of a mortar. Our entire yard is covered with broken shards of glass as if the remnants of the world's largest crystal chandelier lay shattered and abandoned there.
(Click here if you can't see the thumbnail.)
At least with this mess we don't have to worry about the cleaning up.
I've been invited to a 'webinar'. This is the term being used because 'web seminar' is far too understandable. Jargon is of ultimate importance in business so a clear and concise phrase like 'web seminar' cannot be permitted to survive. No, a grotesque substitute must be crafted. Something that executives and PR people can say with pride alongside such trite and overused staples as 'paradigm', 'leverage', and 'out of the box'. Proper use of these craptacular phrases causes an executive to achieve a mental woody so great they can actually mentally ejaculate.
"Today's webinar will explore the paradigm shift resulting from our leveraging of out of the box thinking."
SPLURT!!! <--- mental ejaculate
Can I just say no? Can I refuse to use the word 'webinar'? Why can't I just use 'web seminar'?
If I do refuse to use this bullshit word will my coworkers look at me funny? Will they joke about my archaic word choice during project planning sessions? If I send out invitations to my own 'web seminar' will there be no attendees because they don't understand what such a thing is?
Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. I refuse to use 'webinar'. I am officially adding it to my list of prohibited phrases. I will not add it to my spell checker dictionary so every time I see it it will have the red underlined squiggly of rejection. Call me antiquated, call me conservative, call me Al. Just don't call me a sycophant.
I must go now. I have to engineer visionary metrics in order to deliver seamless convergence with my incentivized best-of-breed partnerships.
We have two cat doors inside our house. One is on the laundry room door. That's so the cats can get in there to do their 'business' without the smell of cat box taking over the house. The other is between the living area and the sleeping area of the house. That door gets closed so we can keep the dogs (and children) in one half of the house or the other, also to save on heating/cooling during sleepy time. The cat door is a necessary there again so the cats can get to their toilet.
Henk and Apple (the grown-up cats) take the doors in a stately fashion, very dignified, very careful. Stitch (the hell spawn kitten) takes them like a panzer division crossing the French border. She'll start by the laundry room and tear ass across the kitchen floor. She'll slowly build up speed as she gains minute amounts of friction on the tiles, much like a cartoon character or dragster. There's a 50/50 chance that she'll make the turn into the dining room otherwise there'll be a loud "thwunk" as she banks off of the oven cabinet. Once she hits carpet the claws come out and she accelerates as if she just turned on the nitrous. The sound of ripping fibers increases until they conclude with a door jarring "THA-WANG" as she dives through the cat door and sends it smacking into the door on its hinges.
The cat doors are pretty good ones and have little switches so they can be set to open both ways, either way alone, or lock closed.
All I can think of every time I hear her assault the door is this.
So far I have resisted my natural urges but I'm unsure how long I can hold out.
Burger: I'm not a baby any more.Me: No? What are you now?
Burger: I'm a big guy!
And so he is. Happy 3rd birthday, Burger!
Many more pictures (including Trey being attacked by a horde of midgets) at Flaptrap.
No, I'm not suggesting we serve up reindeer fillets. Rudy's still my number one cervidae. The red-nosed freak I'm speaking of is none other than Ronald McDonald.
What in the name of all that is holy were the McDonald's food developers thinking of with this culinary travesty?
Sausage? Yeah, that's a good start. It's a breakfast staple. A thin patty of greasy sausage with an assortment of impregnated unchewable bits is a fine beginning for a breakfast sandwich. Scrambled egg patty? Right on! If it's got eggs in it, it's breakfast. You can add eggs to any normal food and instantly transform it to a proper morning repast. Steak? That's dinner. Steak and eggs? Breakfast! Eggs are just dandy for the breakfast sandwich.
But then they went for a 'unique' change. Something different. Something never tried before. Something that would complement the sausage and eggs in a way never before attempted.
Pancakes.
Yes, pancakes. Pancakes instead of a bagel (good), biscuit (good) or muffin (good). Pancakes with a layer of maple syrup inside them. Cause, you know, nothing goes with greasy sausage and dry eggs quite like the taste of sugary maple syrup.
Oh, the humanity.
You might have guessed by now that I had a sausage and egg sandwich on pancake for breakfast. You'd be correct if you did. Oh, I didn't get it at the clown house - mine was purchased at the breakfast hot plate at QT (gas station / convenience store). I still blame Ronald though because he started it.
Incidentally, when one section of the breakfast hot plate is completely full it is not because they just finished making those particular sandwiches and they are fresh. No, it is because every other customer has already had their own vomit inducing experience with that particular sandwich type and is now avoiding it like the plague.
The aftertaste is exceptional and has proven to be resistant to coffee, water and soda. My mouth tastes like maple grease.
I envy the fellow who was ahead of me in line at QT. His breakfast selection was:
- A selection of snack-sized packages of pretzels and chips.
- A large coffee. (Starbucks translator: "venti")
- A gallon of green generic Kool-Aid style beverage.
- A pack of cigarettes.
- A Corona big boy.
Now THAT is a breakfast of champions.
They're doing electrical work in the building and we were without heat until about 20 minutes ago. It's about 25 degrees outside. It's about 55 degrees inside.
I'm the only person who wasn't bitching about it. You might assume that this is because I'm from Little Antarctica* but you'd be wrong. It's because my Lovely Wife bought me one of those massage/heat chair pads for our anniversary and I've been toasty warm and laughing on the inside* all day long.
* Also known as Buffalo.
** Okay, occasionally I laughed out loud too. There are some pretty efficient bitchers here with some fairly eloquent vocabulary.
That's me. Bloody sick and bloody tired. Sick enough that I'm going home shortly. Tired enough that my eyes keep going unfocused. This is despite enough drugs to keep Snoop Dog flying and about 24 hours of sleep in the past 2 days. Bleh.
Damned flu!
Anyway, here's a thought for the day:
Some people are like Slinkies . . . not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.
Oh, the traffic wasn't any worse than usual so it was a relatively fast 45 minutes to drive in. Getting up to my office was the hard part.
I hit the button for the elevator and after a minute or so the right side elevator car (there are two elevators) arrived. The doors opened and I was greeted by darkness. The lights were out in the car and the little back-up light was on casting a feeble glow about. I figured what the heck and got on. I pushed the button for the second floor. Nothing happened.
I pushed the button numerous times but nothing continued to happen. After a little bit I realized I was acting like a lab rat clicking the lever even when it was obvious no food pellets were arriving. I exited the non-functioning elevator and pushed the call elevator button again. It didn't light up. Since there was an elevator already arrived on the floor it wasn't calling the other elevator.
This presented a problem. You may recall from previous posts that the stairwell doors are locked on the first floor so people are forced to go by the security desk to get to the upper floors. The security desk was currently unoccupied.
No elevator. Can't use the stairs. Nobody to report the problem to.
I was going to have to wait until somebody came down to the first floor on the elevator.
I waited several minutes and suddenly the defunct elevator closed its doors and headed upwards, no doubt to confound and irritate somebody on another floor by sitting idle and dark while they did their own lab rat routine. I pressed the call elevator button again and was rewarded with its cheery familiar glow.
The left elevator arrived momentarily and I was able to proceed to my offices without further mishap.
If anybody asks why I was late I'll just tell them I had trouble getting up this morning.
I had the weirdest thing happen to me yesterday. While preparing the plates for dinner I started getting a nauseous feeling and a pain in my gut. No, it was not a biological commentary on Lovely Wife's cooking - the food was excellent as always.
I ignored it and we sat down and began to eat. The pain got worse. Quickly. Within a minute or two it was so bad I couldn't sit up straight and I was breaking out in a cold sweat. It felt like somebody had smashed me in the belly with a mattock.
I excused myself and laid down on the couch. Within a few minutes it had passed. I went back to the table where Lovely Wife, after making sure I was indeed okay, told me about this weird thing that had happened to her earlier in the day. She had an episode with nausea and intense gut pain that hit her and left within a couple of minutes.
What the hell was this? I've heard of the 24 hour flu. Is there some freaky 5 minute flu going around?
It's 70 degrees and sunny. On January 1. Global warming kicks ass!
We've procured a stash of fire wood for some burnin' this evening. Trey's coming over and I'm making my world famous spinach stuffed portabella mushrooms with butter sauce.
I have no hangover. I can't remember the last time I had a January 1 without a hangover. I think I was 9.
The new year is starting out smashingly well.
And, as I look back on the year in review it doesn't seem nearly as bad as it did when we were going through it. True, I lost my job. But then again I got a better job. True also that I got very ill. I'm mostly better now. The only thing that's still bothering me much about that is my feet and they're on the way to getting fixed now.
Add into that our menagerie. Sure I bitch about hosting the Peacock Zoo but the truth is I love animals and as long as I'm not cleaning litter boxes they get a net positive balance.
We've got a new house in a neighborhood that we love. The firework displays around the neighborhood last night might have been a shade less dramatic that professional shows but they more than made up for it with enthusiasm and variety. That's the kind of neighborhood I want my kids growing up in.
Friends - I've made loads of them through this weblog this year. I've greatly strengthened other ones. We rediscovered friends we'd sort of lost over distance since we moved. It was a great year for friendships.
So even though there were some very dark roads to walk down this year we not only made it through the dangerous parts, we ended up in a much better place. 2004 was a very good year.
Here's hoping that 2005 is even better (which it will be, with a bit of work) and wishing the same for all of you.
Happy New Year!
I'm in shorts and a t-shirt. We're going to burn stuff tonight in the big steel barrel. Outside. In December.
I love Georgia.
Generally speaking I work every Monday through Friday. The drive into work is pretty busy. It takes forty-five minutes to an hour (down to about a half hour at the moment with half of the workforce on Christmas vacation). I estimate that I probably see about 2,000 other cars on my way to work. That includes both lanes of traffic and a passing view of the bumper to bumper throughway. The vast majority of them have only a driver. Since this is a pretty rough estimate we'll just say I visually encounter 2,000 people on the way to work.
The ride home is even worse. Call that 2,500 people.
Sometimes I stop at the QT for gas, a danish, maybe coffee. On a busy morning I'll see 50 people there.
I work in a four story building. We've got about 300 people here on any given day. True, I don't interact with but a small fraction of them but we'll stretch the definition a bit and say they're part of my daily encounter.
I might stop at CVS on the way home to get some milk (they have Mayfield milk cheaper than any of the supermarkets and I loooove me some Mayfield). Another 20 people or so there.
Sometimes we might need something from the supermarket. A Wal-Mart stop might even be in order. That's easily another 1,000 people combined.
I also see the most precious people in my world every day. That's four more people.
How many is that now? Let's see...2,000 plus 2,500 plus 50 and another 300...add 20 and another 1,000 then top it off with my four reasons for living. I encounter somewhere around 5,874 people in a busy day.
Now let's say that on my drive to work there were no other cars on the road. None at all. And when I stopped at QT it was empty. Nobody at the pumps. Nobody to run my card for my purchase. When I get to work the parking lot is completely empty. There's no guard at the security desk. There's nobody in the hallway. Nobody in the breakroom. At my stop at CVS I get a deja vu of the QT experience of the morning. Nobody is there. It's the same at Kroger and Wal-Mart. These massive consumer edifices lie starkly abandoned. Normally teeming with people, they are now vacant and deathly silent.
When I arrive home there is no jumble of kids at the door yelling "My Daddy's home!". There is no Lovely Wife waiting to greet me with a kiss.
Say that this happened every single day for half a month. That is about how many people have died from the tsunami in Asia.
I've been trying to wrap my mind around that number - 77,000 dead. I'm afraid that I've managed to do so.
It tolls for that stinking rat bastard*.
The battles were harsh and more than once our courage faltered but we finally got him using bacon in the traps. He was a valiant foe but he was not a match for the power of bacon.
All told he cost us a squirrel, two birds, several days of rat banquet service as he stripped the traps and a crawl space completely covered with scattered rat shit.
* This is not an empty disparagement. As Georgia in its infinite wisdom has modified its Constitution with limits on the definition of marriage we can be certain that this rat's parents did not form a legal union prior to his birth.
We went light with dinner on Christmas Eve. The whole day was full of snacking and egg nogging so a big dinner would have been a waste. In any case, the kids wanted to keep it light so they'd be in fighting trim for Christmas morning. The dinner itself was light and refreshing but the conversation was another story.
[The Scene] The Peacock Clan sits around the table eating spiced fries. Occasionally one or more children (and one or more adults) will break into a Christmas Carol. The mood is festive and gay.Bear: [sings] Jingle Bells! Batman smells!
Bacon: [sings] Robin laid an egg!
Bear: No, Grandma laid an egg.
Bacon: Did not!
Bear: Did so!
Burger: [sings] Grandma got run over by a reindeer...
Bear: [sings] Walking home from our house Christmas Eve!
Bacon: [sings] Robin laid an egg!
[A vocal squabble errupts wherin the relative merits of the Grandma and Robin versions are discussed at length. Eventually a strained silence is achieved.]
Burger: [Leans to the side in the "letting one sneak out" pose] I'm pooping!!
Me: No, you are not.
Burger: Yes I am! At the table!
Lovely Wife: Do you need to go to the potty?
Burger: I'm pooping in my pants! In my pull-up!
Bear: No toilet talk at the table!
[Chaos ensues]
They say that awareness of bodily functions is one of the critical steps towards potty training, so this is progress. That's what I tell myself, anyway.
Lovely Wife has the replay.
Okay, so I'm getting pretty experienced with pain management. The crap I've got requires some form of external medication in order for me to function like a relatively normal person. I say relatively because, let's just face facts here, I ain't never gonna be accused of being normal. Hehe.
Anyway, the specialist I saw (the last doc I saw about whatever I've got) gave me Vioxx. This worked pretty well. When i was taking Vioxx I was pretty much back to regular function. General lack of pain, free body movement, wrestling with the kids, lifting heavy objects, stuff like that. The only thing it didn't really tackle was my feet. Still, it worked and I was in better shape for using it.
Then Vioxx was recalled because it kills people. People on Vioxx have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Fuck.
I kept taking it anyway, seeing as I didn't have that many left and am not in any particular risk category for heart problems. I looked forward to the day when I could see the doc again and get a prescription for Celebrex, which was the drug that Vioxx users were being switched to (in the majority).
In the meantime I needed something of the over-the-counter variety. I went to my old friends acetaminophen and acetylsalicylic acid. They'd carried me through many a hangover and headache. They sucked. Didn't really get rid of the pain at all. I tried ibuprofen. That worked pretty well but not for a very long time and I had to take a pretty large dose for it to work. It also started to make me violently ill.
Enter naproxen sodium. More commonly known as Naprox or Aleve. Aaaaaahhh!!! (<--- Angels singing)
It worked. Really well. Maybe not quite so well as Vioxx but well enough to function and no stomach problems, no need to overdose. I was happy and relieved that I had found something that worked to take me through to when I could get Celebrex.
Then late last week some problems surfaced regarding Celebrex. It seems that it kills people. People on Celebrex have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Fuck!
What the hell is up here? Now the FDA is looking into the entire class of drugs and it's possible that they might all be classified as unsafe. The entire class of drugs! This is the class of drugs specifically designed to get rid of the pain I've got.
Fuck!!
But wait, there's more. On my ride into work this morning I heard about a test that is being aborted because the drugs being tested were greatly increasing the risks of patient's suffering heart attacks and strokes. The drugs involved? Celebrex and naproxen.
Fucking Aleve, which has been on the market for 30 years, over the counter for more than a decade, regarded by all as one of the safest pain killers available, is suddenly found to increase risk factors for heart attacks and strokes but this isn't discovered until I need it?
Fuck you, universe!
I've been laughing myself silly at Boudicca's rodent adventures (Parts I, II, III, IV, V and Conclusion). She had a mouse move into her mini-van and she tells the story in fine style. Somebody was listening to my laughter. Karma, as they say, must balance.
Saturday eve I was standing in the carport waiting for man's best friend to finish her business and return to the domicile. It was cold. Damned cold.* I was shivering so hard my balls thought they were epileptics. My mind wandered a bit and I thought about what I'd do if I got locked outside of the house. I decided I'd be forced to skin Kota for her fur as I'd need something to wrap around myself for warmth once her body cooled and the blanket of entrails (a la Luke Skywalker in Empire) no longer sufficed.
I was brought out of my reverie by a skrinching sound. A sound remarkably similar to the noises that the homestead's resident rodent** makes when traveling about his cage. A sound of tiny claws on a hard surface. This sound was similar but had a different timbre. It included a bit of that nails down the chalkboard cringe inducing noise.
Tiny claws on metal.
I think of the odds against our meeting. What are the odds that the ICQ random chat button that you hit would come up with me? What if I hadn't had a funny tagline in my profile that caught your eye? What if you hadn't had the courage to cross an ocean for me, or if The Godfather hadn't been there to help you? The odds against us ever getting together mean we're statistically luckier than a PowerBall winner.
I think of the things we've faced. Family frictions, culture shock, enduring terrible solitude, relocating, hard pregnancies and health problems. The list of things that tried to break us apart is monstrous but we defeated or dealt with every one.
And then I think of the things we've built together. Trust, love, passion, friendship, a family, a home (and one freaking huge menagerie of pets). And that's when I thank you for the one hundred eighty nine million presents you've given me, because I treasure every moment with you like the gift that it is.
Happy Anniversary my Lovely Wife.
*KISS* *HUG* *NIBBLE*
Bad: The Dear Any Servicemember mail service I mentioned yesterday is apparently suspended. :-(
There are security concerns about anonymous items (anthrax, etc) being sent directly to the frontline troops. The anonymous nature of Any Servicemember made this a dangerous and uncontrollable vector for anybody who wanted to harm the troops.
Good: There are other ways to send smiles to our boys and girls overseas. :-)
Operation Dear Abby was started many a year ago to allow people to write letters to our troops overseas. The modern (security conscious) system allows you to send a note that can be read by any servicemember with internet access. Posts can also be printed off by division personnel with internet access to distribute to troops who aren't online.
For a more personal touch, join SlagleRock's Letters to the Troops campaign. A friend of Slagle's is being deployed to Iraq and will hand carry letters that bloggers post on their sites. Just write a letter and trackback to Slagle's post linked above and they'll take care of the rest. Be quick about it though - the deadline is today!
(My letter follows in the extended entry.)
I've got some friends who would love to receive one. Here are their addresses:
ANY SAILOR
USS NIMITZ CVN 68
FPO AP 96620-2820ANY SAILOR
USS RONALD REAGAN CVN 76
FPO AP 96616-2876ANY SAILOR
USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN CVN 72
FPO AP 96612-2872ANY SAILOR
USS HARRY S TRUMAN CVN 75
FPO AE 09524-2875
These are the carriers currently on deployment in the Pacific Ocean and Persian Gulf. Make a sailor's day - send 'em a card.
If you're afraid of the water you could adopt a platoon, or if you'd prefer a more direct contact consider adopting a soldier.
The little things mean so much more when far from home. Send a card to a serviceman overseas and you can make two people smile with each one. (One of those people is you.)
(Hat tip to Lovely Wife)
Audio only:
Sultry female: Hey, what's that you're holding?Studly fella: A little something I call 'total happiness'.
Sultry female: Well you got some total happiness on your shirt.
Now what are you thinking right now? Yeah, that's what I though. You dirty, dirty bird.
With video:
Female suit walks up to an office building security desk.
Female suit: Hey, what's that you're holding?
Security guard sits up from his half-reclined position, holding a 12" meatball sub in his hands.
Security guard: A little something I call 'total happiness'.
Security guard smiles goofily.
Female suit gets the "what a jackass" look on her face.
Female suit: Well you got some total happiness on your shirt.
Security guard looks down at his shirt while the goofy smile turns into the "I'm such a jackass" look.
Switch to close up of sub on Subway wrapper.
Sometimes less is more.
(Lovely Wife pointed this one out to me.)
An announcement came over the intercom this morning. We are scheduled to have a fire drill. An actual fire drill. As in, stop working, walk down the stairs, go outside until they say we can come back inside.
It's just like being back in school! Just like in school they've waited to the coldest day of the year, too.
Oh, another announcement just came on. We can carry personal items but nobody is allowed to carry beverages down the stairs. It's a violation of the code. The code of what? A couple people just took their coffee and went down into the lobby via the elevators. I guess the code says that it is okay to bring beverages into the elevators.
I think the anti-beverage code must be a part time thing because I don't recall any signs or warnings on the doors or stairs themselves warning against carrying beverages. I use the stairs every day (going down only - the ground floor stairwell is locked from the outside so people can't sneak in the back door and go upstairs without passing security) but I guess it's possible that I missed a sign. If there's no sign there I'm going to put in an official request for one. Safety first you know, and who wants to be a code breaker?
I'm currently fighting a powerful urge to pull the fire alarm. What better time? Everybody's expecting it so nobody would panic but you still get all the benefit of sticking it to the man!
This will be my first fire drill since 1987. I thought that graduating from high school meant I had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that I knew how to exit a building.
Off to the pisser now. Nothing worse than standing around in freezing weather with a full bladder.
[Twenty minutes later]
Damn, that thing was loud! Annoyingly loud. And it was indeed cold outside. Very, very cold. And they kept us outside for over ten minutes. Sons of bitches.
Did I mention that I don't generally wear a coat? I don't really need one seeing as I go from the house to the car then the car to the building. Fucking cold.
Well, the building administrators can now rest assured that several hundred mature (to varying degrees) adults know how to walk down stairs and mill about smartly.
The building where I work is four stories high and is shaped like the number 8. In the empty spaces in the middle are nice little park like areas with trees, bushes, flowers, gravel strewn walking paths and stone benches. Windows look in on these idyllic areas on all sides of every floor.
To all appearances there is no way to get into them. There are no doors to them. None of the windows in the building open, including the first floor windows where these gardens are located. I've been confounded by this since I started working here. The grounds are tended, bushes trimmed, paths cleared - obviously maintenance people are getting in there. I figured I was missing some obvious ingress and have been casually searching for them for a month. How do people get into these micro parks?
Today I discovered the answer. The maintenance people lower a scaffolding from the roof, much like the window-washer scaffolds on skyscrapers. There really is absolutely no way for people to get into these park areas. They are faux paths, unused and unusable.
Why in the world would they go through the trouble of creating and maintaining these areas while keeping everybody out? What brilliant architect came up with this idea? "Oh, I've got a good one! We'll put little park areas in the center of the building. Trees, bushes, flowers, bird baths, nice paths and benches to sit on - people love stuff like that. But to limit maintenance costs we won't let anybody get to them. That way we don't have to worry about litter and things like that."
With all of the rampantly moronic things I've seen in my life you'd think that new evidence of professional grade stupidity would cease to shock me. Fortunately I retain my childlike wonder that people can be this dumb and continue to function.
It has been a few years since I traveled by plane. The last time I flew was before 9/11. Things have changed. Now when you go to the counter to check in there are self-serve kiosks to help speed the way. Unfortunately these require many of the same skills that you need to operate a microwave oven (besides pressing the "popcorn" button). Also very unfortunately the average traveler seems to lack so much as the ability to use a calculator. The net result is that it still takes the same amount of time to check in but now you are pissed at your fellow travelers instead of the counter personnel.
A cheeseburger and a slice of cake will cost $35 if you order it through room service. This includes tax, $2.50 delivery fee plus mandatory 19% gratuity. When you sign the slip to charge it to your room there is a line for additional tip. Yeah, right-o Buckwheat. Try again.
Michigan Ave in Chicago is a full strip of some of the greatest boutiques, shops and vendors you'll find anywhere. It can stand toe to toe with upscale merchant districts in any major metropolis in the world. The bag most frequently seen in my travels down Michigan Ave? The Gap. You can take the rube out of the mall but you can't take the mall out of the rube.
Next week I'll be in Chicago. A business trip, can you believe it? The last time work sent me out of town was three years ago but that was to Atlanta. Since I live in the suburbs of Atlanta and was only there for eight hours I don't think it technically qualifies as a business trip. The last actual business trip I was on was almost a decade ago.
To Chicago.
I lived in Chicago when I was just a lad. In fact, I wrote about some of my Chicago memories a time or two. You can take the boy out of Chicago but apparently you can't stop sending his ass back there.
So anyway, advance notice that there won't be much happening here next week. Hmmm...maybe I should leave y'all with a comment party post. It might help mitigate the damage frustration caused by my absence if I can lock y'all up in a secluded location give you a place to play and commiserate with each other.
Nine-eye: A delay was caused by non-dog related issues. Nine-eye will be getting his shots next Saturday instead of the Saturday just past. Grooming planned for the Monday after the shots.
Kids: Bacon had the croup Thursday night through the start of the weekend. Thanks to our kick-ass neighbor we didn't have to buy a nebulizer or Albuterol. Burger got it Saturday and is still kicking it. Sleep was at a premium at our house over the weekend.
Pets: I've come to a conclusion regarding the relative evil of kittens and puppies. Specifically, why do kittens do so much more damage than puppies? I believe that both species have the same amount of total evil but because kittens are smaller their evil is much more concentrated. Incidentally when Stitch purrs it sounds like a warthog with asthma. She starts purring at midnight. Every night. Concentrated evil, I'm telling you.
International: Breaking news from the mid-east. Yassir Arafat is still dead! And there was much rejoicing. Yay!
Work: The new job is awesome. Totally and completely awesome. And busy. I'm currently working on four projects, heading two of them.
On the commute home today I was pleasantly surprised to hear the radio announcer say "This traffic report is being brought to you by the Island of Aruba".
Can you imagine that? Atlanta traffic is so bad that they've heard about it in Aruba! Not only have they heard about it but the Island (the whole freaking island!) cares enough to sponsor traffic reports for us.
Wow. Just wow. I am so touched I can't adequately put my gratitude into words.
Thank you, Aruba. Thank you so much.
Lovely Wife has it over here but it bears repeating. Thank you, thank you, thank you! The response to the Save Nine-eye fund drive has been outstanding. Special thanks to Boudicca, Jen, Susie, Ed Flinn and Dave Ferrell. They've all contributed to the Save Nine-eye fund either directly, through spreading the message or both. Thanks to y'all we've raised enough to get Nine-eye set up and legal. Yay!
But wait, there's more.
We turned a big corner this weekend with Nine-eye. He's letting us really pet him now. He let Lovely Wife put a slip lead on him, let me put a collar on him (A very studly leather collar. That's studly, not studded. He doesn't go that way, not that there's anything wrong with that.) and walked with Lovely Wife on a leash. That was Nine-eye on the leash, not Lovely Wife, just to clarify my syntax.
We've got a coupon for a very good local vet so we can get his shots, a full physical, worm check, the works. We should also have enough left over (since we don't need a trap after all) to get him groomed. Boy does he need some grooming. This guy's got long thick fur and there is some serious nastiness hiding out in there.
Nine-eye's legalization visit will be this Saturday. Hopefully the groomer as well. Since we can pet him now it would be nice to do that without worrying about just what that is that we're touching underneath that fur coat.
We'll keep you posted and thank you again!
Lovely Wife and I have embarked on an ambitious project. We're going to help rehabilitate a homeless person. Well, okay, he's not precisely a person. He's a dog. I guess he's not exactly homeless either since he's welcome at our house and others in the neighborhood. He is in danger though and we want to make him safe.
Lovely Wife and I both recently wrote about Nine-eye, our neighborhood vagabond. Her post is here and mine is here. (She has more pictures than I do.) Our great worry is that Animal Control will get a hold of him and take him away. Following some great advice from Boudicca and Simon we went out and got some information and some help. As it stands now he would be gone forever if AC caught him. However, if we get him tagged and legal with his immunizations they would return him to us if he got picked up.
So that's what we're going to do - take him to the vet for shots and a check-up, get him some tags and make him AC proof. The problem we have is money. As you know we're sort of up against the wall with that at the moment. We're going to try to drum up some donations from the neighborhood. We're pretty sure that at least one family (the ones who keep a bed for him) will help. For our contribution we've got...um...well, we've got you.
We're not talking about a huge amount of cash. A trap to catch him is a $25 rental. The vet is $100. We've already got a high quality leather collar that was too big for Kota and the tags are something like $5. $130, less whatever we can scrounge from the neighbors isn't a whole lot to pay to keep our neighborhood mascot safe. Hell, just the piece of mind that it gives Lovely Wife would make it worthwhile for me.
So pardon be buddy, can you spare a dime?
The PayPal button in the sidebar there will be dedicated to the Save Nine-eye Fund until we've raised enough for his entry into polite society. Hit it. Or tell somebody else to hit it. Or both?
A huge thanks to Simon and Rob who've both donated funds to help us with our mortgage problem. You guys rock. Hard. And don't worry - that money is completely dedicated to the mortgage, it won't be used in the Nine-eye fund.
Also, anything we get beyond what we need to make Nine-eye legal will go to wards making up that mortgage payment, so all y'all don't have to be afraid to give too much.
Thank you, spread the word, and go hug your furry four footed friend for me. (Hopefully that will be an animal but for some of my regular readers I'm not too sure.)
This is Nine-Eye. He's our neighborhood mascot. Lovely Wife wrote about him yesterday. She's got more pictures in her post (I stole this one from her).
He's got a bit of urban legend about him. About a year ago the father of a teen down the street committed suicide. The next day Nine-Eye showed up. Animal control was called but he wouldn't let them near him. He's made his home in our neighborhood ever since.
He's an older dog with white showing up on his muzzle but he's still spry enough to play with the pups on our street, even our psychotic lab Kota. He is the low dog on the totem pole, deferring even to the mutant sausage dog from the end of the block. He's so timid that we're pretty sure he was seriously abused by his owners before escaping or being abandoned.
Several families in the neighborhood have adopted him. Some people feed him, others have set up sleeping areas in flower beds, everybody greets him with happy faces and kind words. In fact, I'm pretty sure that a couple of houses (including ours) feed him on a regular basis. He just goes from one to the next at each specific supper time.
When the kids are out playing Nine-Eye is there, a cautious distance apart but ready and willing to put himself between them and anybody dangerous. When the dogs are out he follows them around, plays and runs with them. When Lovely Wife and I go outside at night for some quiet and to enjoy the beautiful fall weather he's there, excited and happy to greet us. Early in the morning he waits with the kids at the bus stop next door and then he comes back to see me off to work.
I mentioned how shy he is but let me describe in greater detail. He won't eat near people or the other dogs. When you put food down he waits patiently until you walk well away from the bowl. It took quite a while but he'll now take a treat from my hand. He's incredibly gentle and if I don't release it right away he won't take it by force. Even on a successful transfer he walks well away before eating the treat. He's to the point where I can give him a little scratch or rub as he walks away and he won't run but that's the most contact that he'll allow.
Yesterday morning was special. I went outside with my coffee and my PDA to check my email and enjoy a beautifully warm, wet morning. He'd spent the night in our carport to stay dry and when I sat down he walked over and put his head on my leg. I scratched him behind the ears for a few seconds before he walked off. He sat down a short distance away (much closer than typical) and we spent the time in companionable silence. It was a great start to the day.
What's in the future for Nine-Eye? He seems to be in excellent health. He's mobile and active and has his own little niche in our community. Many of us welcome his presence, some don't, at least one neighbor is actively set against him. Will Animal Control get him one day? Are we making that more likely by teaching him to trust us?
There's no way to know what the future holds but I hope he's with us for a long time, and hopefully with ever increasing trust.
NOTE: There is a long line of people ready to kick the shit out of the person who beat this phobic timidity into this dog. Lovely Wife and I are at the front of the line.
Halloween was a blast this year. We made it a three day affair. On Friday we had a party and the kids dressed up in costume and pigged out on hot dogs and candy. Our boys were a trio of deadly pirates. Or maybe they were buccaneers. I never could tell the difference. Either way, they had a blast whacking each other and anything that did or didn't move with their cutlasses. The muskets were a bit of a disappointment, firing their rubber suction cup darts with almost enough force to stick on a glass window provided the barrel was no more than two inches from the target and the target was coated in tree sap. Then again, seeing what they managed to do with plastic swords this may have been a good thing.
After the kids were bounced to bed high on mountains of kiddie crack the grown-ups sat about the smoldering barrel fire (hey, I can't help it that we burned off all of the good wood over the past couple months - the massive log that served as the fire base smoked away slowly for three days) and talked shop. We all came to the conclusion that Tuesday couldn't come fast enough and we'd never seen an election with such incredible acrimony.
Cool spot of the evening - Trey's pumpkins. Holy cow, I've never seen pumpkins carved like that. They were a cow and a cowboy and they were built onto RC trucks so you could drive them around and have the cowboy chase the cow. Interactive pumpkins. Sweet.
Saturday we went to dinner at Trey's and took the kids trick-or-treating in his neighborhood. Secondary outfits were used for this official candy grabbing event. We had a Pikachu, a ninja and a Buzz Lightyear. Shut up, they were incredibly cute.
The jingle has changed a bit since my days of a youth:
Trick-or-treat smell my feet,
give me something good to eat.
If you don't I don't care,
I'll pull down your underwear.
We didn't have that second verse when I was a lad. It must be because we're a kinder, gentler nation now. We never used to give warnings of what we were going to do to the villains that provided improper or insufficient treats.
After trick-or-treating we retired to Trey's house where the kids hopped themselves up on sugary goodness and we grown-ups discussed the not-so-subtle undertones in GQ magazine. The ads (of which the magazine is 80% comprised) basically fall into two categories: flaming and smoldering. What happened to this magazine? I remember years ago you were almost guaranteed to get a couple decent boob shots per issue. Now you get male models in underwear and handcuffs being manhandled (I used that word on purpose - my subtlety is returning in spades) by the po-po. It was like opening up a Playboy and seeing two guys playing wang tag. Well, it differed in degree but the sense of betrayal was the same.
Sunday marked the closing of ceremonies for the holiday, capped off with another round of trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood. The neighbor kids came with us and we had an escort from the neighborhood stray. What a great dog - I'll have to tell you all about him in another post.
Little legs were failing by the time we finished our neighborhood but spirits were still high so we trucked over to the neighborhood behind us. This was a madhouse. Kids all over. Big kids. Kids who should not be trick-or-treating. I think it should be a rule that once you get your driver's license you should not go begging for candy. We saw one high school aged kid with no costume using a backpack for his goody bag just biking from house to house. If I ever get one of those at my place he's getting the hose.
We aborted that neighborhood and finished up with our own next door neighbors. For the third day the kids indulged in sugarfest. The choclavores were relentless in their consumption. After a suitably gluttonous period we removed the stimulants and enjoyed the show. Actual conversation snippet:
Bacon: I'm not hungry! I like chocolate! Hey! I think I'll go climb that tree!
When their buzz wore off sufficiently we packed them into bed. Being the responsible parent that I am, I was concerned about the amount of candy they had been eating over the past couple days. Having only my children's wellbeing in mind I filtered their pumpkins for the most dangerous candy - Snickers bars and M&Ms - and put them in a place where the poor lads wouldn't be tempted by them. Out of sight, out of mind, and in Daddy's desk drawer. Heh.
We then retired to the comfy chairs for a relaxing adult beverage and some blessed solitude. Halloween was over. At least until Tuesday...
I'll get some pictures in here too, as soon as I snag 'em from Lovely Wife's computer. The ones of the kids will need to include a uterine flutter warning - they really are that cute.
EPILOGUE
The kids learned several very important lessons this Halloween:
1) Signs that say "take one" on the abandoned bowl of candy at unattended houses are meant as a suggestion.
2) Sucky candy can be quickly disposed of by either trading it, giving it to the parents as no-cost presents or by licking it once and cleverly discarding it when throwing out the wrapper.
3) Halloween comes once a year but if properly exploited it can keep you in candy all the way to Easter.
I was just a few weeks too late getting back to work. The book says we're short by about one mortgage payment. I contacted the lender and they've extended the pay date to the end of the month, which would help shitloads if there was magic money coming in before that. Drat.
The part that really sucks is that we'd be just fine if I had been able to collect unemployment for the time that I was unemployed. Y'all probably think that this is a reasonable thought. Once upon a time I was as deluded as you are. You see, unemployment is not based on being unemployed. It's based on being unpaid. Since my severance from my former job was parsed out instead of being paid as a lump sum I was disqualified from collecting unemployment for the entire time that I was receiving my severance.
Speaking about unemployment, I have a couple of bones to pick with them. First, what's with all of the jumping through hoops? I PAID for this. I gave many thousands of dollars over the past twenty years so I would have a cushion in case my job situation went bad. When I finally need it I find out that my pillow is one of those display models with a styrofoam core. Mandatory re-education classes? No benefits if I refuse any job? No benefits if I make $350 from any and all sources in any particular week? No benefits if I'm physically unable to work in any particular week? And if I do meet all of the criteria and jump when you tell me to you will reward me with a whopping $300 that I'm supposed to use to feed my family and pay my utilities, car and mortgage with?
Gee, color me unimpressed.
Privatize unemployment insurance. If I'd been paying into even a low-yield bond instead of into the black hole of bureaucratic inefficiency I would have had no problems whatsoever and would still have been problem free for quite a few more months. Unemployment insurance as it stands now is a joke, just another government handout program paid for by the working class but next to useless to the vast majority of people paying for it.
If I had my druthers I'd be sending my unemployment insurance premiums to Monster.com. It was their networking service that got my headhunter into contact with me and yielded a fantastic job.
Fuck unemployment insurance and fuck the Department of Labor.
[/rant]
Anyway (sheepish grin), if anyone would like to hit that button in the sidebar I wouldn't mind. Hell, screw that - you'd have my undying gratitude. I might even send you a picture of my hairy nipples. Or not, depending on your preference and tolerance.
UPDATE:
Wow, I'm a dumbass. I just looked back in the archives and realized I've been seriously remiss in some thank-yous. First off a bunch of folks hit my PayPal button when I first got the pink slip. They all had my personal thanks but they deserve some public love too. Many thanks to Harvey, Ilyka, Susie, Simon and Ed Flinn.
Secondly, thank you to all of you. Every single one of you. All of you who commented, emailed, cheered me on, commiserated with me, helped with my resume and cover letter, helped keep me focused or just helped keep me sane. The amount of support I got from you, my very extended, disparate and somewhat dysfunctional family, was absolutely unbelievable. You helped more than I can adequately relate to you now.
Thirdly, a special thankyou to Dopple-G. Cousin, friend, loanshark, bookmobile. Dopple-G came through when I needed to buy a new suit for the interview that landed this job. He also rocks on general purposes.
Lastly, but most importantly, thank you my Lovely Wife. You never lost faith in me, you supported me when I needed it, you kicked my ass when I needed that and you kept me believing in me. I love you my Sweetie.
It's a complicated question. Actually, it's a simple question. I mean just look at it - six little words, maybe seven if you don't use the contraction. Can't get a whole lot simpler than that and still impart meaning. What I meant is that the answer is complicated. In fact, here it is:
A) Because his ass got fired and he wasn't in the mood any more.
B) Because his ass got fired and the time he used to spend on blogs was put towards finding a new job.
C) Because his ass got fired and he no longer car pools to work with his number one source of blog inspiration.
D) Because he had some nasty freaking serious health problems and had physical problems sitting in a chair.
E) Because the drugs he's on for the health problems have taken his inner muse, tied her up and put a ball gag on her.
So as you can see the simple question has a complicated answer. So what can we do here? How do we fix it? Well, getting a new job has corrected A and B. There's no way to fix C but I can try to substitute for Dopple-G with people at the new job as I meet them. D is way better than it was, to the point where I'm getting rid of E. I'm in the taper off phase and I can already feel my writing bug returning. Hell, I'm writing this now, aren't I?
As I get back into a morning routine for work I should be able to get back to the blog. Stay tuned for the entertaining and thought provoking commentary you've been missing, things like what condiments work best for masturbation and similar offerings.
And thank you to the 300 people a day who kept coming back even though the blog was sucking harder than a neophyte puffer. Y'all rock.
My last job was as a QA Analyst backing up an established team of 3 (or 4) programmers. Development, documentation and process were very well defined, though the QA was very basic. It was all manual with only the scantiest of program assistance for the documentation side.
The job I am taking is to set up QA for a team of 40 programmers. Currently the developers test their own work as there is no Quality Assurance group. This is just about the worst way to go about things, except having no testing at all. I will be defining the development, documentation and process for the newly forming QA group.
Yeah, you read that right. I am the man. I'll be going into a company and starting up their formal Quality Assurance from scratch. Once we're set up we'll expand the QA group to provide comprehensive coverage. The rule of thumb is one analyst for each three developers so while I'm the sole analyst I'll only be concentrating on top projects.
Challenging? You bet. Rewarding. Oh, yeah. Will I be a busy boy? Damn straight!
I'm incredibly excited over this job and unbefuckinglievably relieved to be back in the provider seat for my family.
I got the job!
Thank you so much to everybody who's been pulling for me and supporting me with good wishes and much twisting of digits.
More later. Right now I'm too delerious to type. :-)
Interview number 2 went smashingly well. It was three on one and very convivial. I may hear as early as today whether I get the job or not.
I'm terribly excited. This is a dream job and a fantastic opportunity.
Please pray, cross fingers, or bargain with the Devil (as appropriate).
Just got the eagerly awaited call from my headhunter. I've got the second interview set up for first thing Friday morning.
I'm all a-twitter!
The interview went well. Very well. Really, really well.
Except for one little bit. Say there were 10 categories, I aced 9 of them. I mean totally aced and annihilated. That last one smacked me right in the gobber though.
They use a client/server application built on a .NET framework. I have exactly zero experience with this particular bit of computerdom so I've just acquired several .NET books and am getting a head start on my learning curve.
I also let the interviewer know what I'm doing and informed him that I'm similarly aggressive with other workspace challenges.
Did I do good? We'll find out some time next week.
UPDATE: Yeah, I did look like all of that and a bag of chips in my new suit. No pictures as I was in a bit of a rush this morning. If I get the job I promise photos of me wearing various parts of it at the celebration party.
It's getting ready to make me look good for my interview on Monday.
Wish me luck, y'all!
The picture is in the extended entry, to spare the innocence of Harvey my tender readers.
We had dinner at Trey's place last night. All of us. That is, Lovely Wife and I plus three (count them: 1 - 2 - 3) children ages five and under.
Trey has a very nice house. It's new. He is a very, very brave man.
Dinner was fantastic. Sangria and veggie dip started us out. Ever have sangria? I was a sangria virgin and I quite enjoyed it. Lemon juice, sugar and red wine (in the correct proportions) make a light and refreshing drink. This one might become part of our regular repertoire.
The meal was centered around chicken Creole and it was to die for. I had chicken Creole dreams last night. No joke. Damn, that was good.
The storm was pretty impressive and the aftermath was unexpected. In our neighborhood alone there are eight or so trees down. That's in a neighborhood of around 30 houses. On our side of the street there is a string of houses that lost trees in a domino effect, one tree falling and hitting another and then again and again.
Two houses to the right had their house hit by a tree, damaging the roof. Fortunately it was a branch hit and not a trunk hit so the damage isn't too severe and nobody got hurt.
Three houses down the other way they were saved from a direct hit by the slightest of margins. A very large oak fell into a pine and the pine held it. It's bent over at a fifteen degree angle holding the oak up. When it lets loose, both will be hitting their house. They are looking into options now.
We got through with no house damage. There are lots of branches down all over the lawn but all of our trees held up this time.
We did lose a freezer full of food though and that bites. We even went out and bought more coolers so we would be able to put all of our chilled goods on ice. Unfortunately it just took too long for Georgia Power to get us back online and it had all defrosted.
Being without power was frustrating but also enjoyable. Flashlights doubled as strobe lights for an impromptu kids' dance party, neighbors congregated and shared storm stories, there was far more consumption of alcohol than normal and we all figured out how to wipe our asses by candlelight.
Good times.
We got pounded pretty well by Ivan's bastard offspring. Trees are down all over the neighborhood. We lost some sizeable branches but all of ours stayed up. Yay!
We have no power until tomorrow at the earliest. UPS power is failing and I need to save some for Lovely Wife so I'm outtie. Talk to y'all tomorrow.
We started teaching Bear to read last Monday. Today he read the sentence above.
He should be blogging by next Wednesday.
She's wondering if she's sick enough. My Papa used to say "If you're sick enough to notice, you're sick enough to stay home". Or was it "If you're sick enough to notice, you're sick enough to drink a half gallon of my home-pressed vegetable juice cocktail".
I have a disturbing feeling it was that second one.
She speaks from the heart.
Then you're probably either leading too much or you are jerking the trigger. Squeeze it slowly.
Yes, I do realize just how naughty "jerking the trigger" and "squeeze it slowly" sound. I'm like that.
Anyway, we went to the Yellow Daisy Festival at Stone Mountain yesterday. Biggest arts & crafts show in Georgia. 450+ vendors, yadda, yadda, yadda. Me and 5 cops may have been the only males there out of the 10,000 people in attendance. I swear it was worse than a Sarah McLachlan concert. I was on my best behavior but occasionally I would tremble and collapse into a fetal position, just to be on the safe side.
Good times. Good times.
Nicky is very inexperienced and somewhat at a loss about how to go about things, especially without the generally required equipment. He ends up 'mounting' whatever end of Kota that he happens to be located nearest.
It gives new meaning to the term "Fucked in the head".
As you know, Kota (aka Scarface) is in her first heat. She's a bit 'off' in the head but seems to be handling things okay. Nicky on the other hand, is not. Nicky is nutless in a literal sense but he is still responding to the pheromones/hormones/whatever that Kota is putting out.
He keeps trying to hump her.
It's such a sad and pathetic scene. He has as much experience with female dogs in heat as Kota has being one. That is, none. He can't do anything productive since he has no balls. She's so much bigger than he is (labrador vs. terrier) that it's almost comical to watch. Perhaps the funniest thing is that Kota doesn't even pay attention to him. He'll try to grab on and go to town and she'll just lie there playing with a toy or whatever she was doing until she gets up and walks away leaving him with a sad and bewildered look on his face.
I was laughing (quietly, so as not to further humiliate the dog) at this yesterday when I had a disturbing thought. Nicky is incapable of doing what he wants to do. He is following deep rooted commands that are a part of his very being, he has no option not to keep trying to do what he can never do correctly. He is acting and reacting based solely on how he has been conditioned and bred to act and react. No matter how stupid he looks or how much people laugh at him or what an ass he makes of himself he will not stop until the conditions that are prompting him are removed.
Nicky is John Kerry, Kota is the USA and her heat is the election cycle. Is that spooky or what?
Bear: Daddy, can I punch you?
Me: No. That should be "May I punch you".
Bear: Daddy, may I punch you?
Me: Sure, buddy.
I'm all about the grammar.
The Scene: A cook-out at the Peacock house (slow cooked beef ribs, chicken breasts and bun length hot dogs). Sounds of bad karaoke float over the hills from a neighbor's house.
Dopple-G: What is that noise? Is somebody else having a party?Lovely Wife: It's some karaoke or wedding singer or something. He was doing Dido last night.
Jim: There's nothing quite so sad as an off-key tenor singing Dido.
Dopple-G: The problem with wedding singers is they all sing the exact same songs. They need to expand their repertoire, put in some songs that rock. You know what they really need? They need to sing some...
Trey and Jim: (Interjecting simultaneously) Metallica.
Dopple-G: ...Metallica.
The spooky part here is that to the best of my recollection Trey and I hadn't ever gotten* into a discussion about music in general or Metallica in particular. Are we just both warped in the same fashion or did we both just read Dopple-G that well?
Either way I think we've successfully addressed two things here. First, we're obviously a natural team so the Flying Pig party isn't going to be subject to the divisive inter-party sniping that plagues the big parties. Second, Bread Fan will make an excellent replacement for Hail to the Chief.
* I really hate "gotten". Yes I know it's a real word and yes it is used correctly here but I really, really don't like that word. I use it now in self flaggelation just in case I've got some karmic debt that I don't know about.
Besides getting the heave-ho from work there was a bit of other drama here yesterday. Nicki got out wandering (he's our older dog). Kota was out too (9-month old lab, in case you don't remember). Kota is always out when the kids are out because she sticks by them and protects them from evil neighbors, ice cream men and other suburban menaces. Nicki isn't supposed to be out because he is a dumbass and because Kota will follow him around.
Nicki ran across the street in front of a pick-up truck. Kota was following him. Nicki may or may not have been hit - no injuries in any case. Kota was lucky that the driver stopped the truck so fast but she still got tagged. She's got a 2 inch patch of fur and skin scraped off of her face on the orbit of her left eye and the same on her chin. I treated the wounds and Lovely Wife put a bandage on the big wound.
She's okay and none of the injuries are health threatening. She sure is timid now though - I hope she gets her spunky nature back soon. Also, she looks like a complete dumbass and that can't be good for her self esteem:
(Click for biggie size)
That's Don Juan de Burger relaxing on top of her. Notice the underwear too? That's one of Bacon's night time pants. She started her first heat just now too.
Lovely Wife went out and got her some very sexy dog lingerie to hold her maxies so she's not in pull-ups any more. No pictures of that due to threats from PETA.
Dopple-G made it. Barely. His group was cut 70%.
Turns out they aren't going without QA on my product, they're going without QA on his. The new QA person for my product is somebody from his group who will be retrained for my group. Actually she worked on mine years ago before there was another product so it is literal retraining for her. She has many years more seniority than I do so I can't really fault the decision.
Many many thanks to everybody who has chimed in with support. I owe a couple of you responses on things I couldn't answer off the top of my head and today quickly got too crazy to look for the correct info.
I am very gratefully consuming the beers that were sent to me via PayPal. Muchos gracias to Susie and Harvey. By the way Harvey - Susie one upped you. She bought me two beers. ;-)
To the several who have expressed regret at not being able to help financially - please do not worry about that. Between our finances and the severance pittance from the Collective we are okay for now. I very much appreciate the sentiment though.
Got some very big news just a short while ago. The Borg corporate realignment plan has been completed. Apparently assimilation isn't inevitable after all.
I've lost my job, y'all. Effective about two hours ago.
I have a lot of respect for people who are working to lose weight, get healthier, get into shape, etc. But for the love of God please wear body-style appropriate clothing. Driving around Stone Mountain on Sunday we were treated to the sight of a twinkie intolerant young lady wearing a tighter-than-skin black lycra body suit. It looked like a nest of pythons trying to fight their way out of a hefty bag.
My eyes still burn.
I was out yesterday getting my license renewed. I had hoped to have some excellent blog fodder from my DMV experience but the bastards were smooth and efficient. All of our preconceived notions of the long lines and horrific treatment were left unfulfilled and we emerged from the experience in dastardly good spirits.
Bloody useless for blogging.
I recently found some old (couple years anyway) pictures on the relic Windows 95 system I use for some regression testing. Among them is one from Memorial Day in 2001 that I've put on my desktop. The only problem is that I'm drooling every time I minimize a window.
(Click for biggie size)
Please, please, oh please, go to this guest post at Lovely Wife's blog and say how very much you agree with the poster. Don't forget to throw a "Yay" in the comments, just to make it official.
Thank you. The check is in the mail.
UPDATE: Never mind, y'all. LW purged and closed the comments as it was getting way too serious. My thanks to the ones who figured out it was humor, though!
Tiffani rocks like no other. Thanks to my blogdaughter's largess I stayed up way too late watching this:
(Click for biggie size)
Scarface is one of my all time favorite movies. You need to ignore all of the white actors with bad accents playing Cubans. Seriously, y'all - who the hell cast Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio? She's too white to play most white people. And once you get past the amazing amounts of gratuitous violence (chainsaw. bathtub. 'nuff said) you're left with a wonderful tale of an immigrant who saw the American Dream and reached out to take it with both hands. Both hands, a submachinegun and a few keys of yeyo up the nose. But you get the picture.
Thank you, Tiffani!
The most frequent question we get when people discover that we're homeschooling is "But aren't you worried about your boys' social skills"? You know - how are they going to become socially adept without being in a group of their peers?
No, we're not at all worried about that. Contrary to the ready myths, schools are not about socialization. They are really about institutionalization. Where in the world are you regulated in every aspect of thought and deed the way you are in school? Where else are you restricted to dealing only with people the same age as you are? Where else are you given so little autonomy as in school? Take "school socialization" into the adult world and it's as funny as it is ridiculous. The following examples are from an excellent article by Lisa Russell. I can't find the original but Lovely Wife has a copy:
We didn't get acquired by the Crimson Permanent Assurance after all. We've been assimilated by the Borg Collective. That might sound scary but it's pretty awesome being on the inside of the all-powerful cube of destruction and menace.
I'm not joking about the assimilation either. A day after the acquisition was announced we were no longer TheCompany. We are now The Duluth Office of the Collective (formerly TheCompany). We will be fully integrated within 90 days. Seriously.
The Collective identified our vertical market (Distribution software) and bought a dominating share of it in less than 5 months. And they're not done. They are currently (right at this very moment) busy assimilating 4 more companies.
Prophet21 was our bogeyman for years. They had financial backing that we couldn't match. When we competed head to head they would undercut us so badly they'd make themselves hemorrhage but they'd steal the sale. They did the same to our sister companies. If you went through the hallways here and said "Prophet21" to somebody you'd likely get the finger and a "fuck you too" back. In the span of just a couple of days Prophet21 has turned from a source of nightmares into a target.
It's good to be the Collective.
I spent a half hour on the phone today with a recruiter from BigCompany.com, who needs both network admin types as well as QA people. She's sending me some things to look over.
Nothing for forever then as soon as my job isn't being eliminated I get hits. What's up with that?
Well, actually not. The new boss is an order of magnitude larger and doesn't need to get rid of Quality Assurance in order to hire another programmer.
My position is no longer being eliminated. Yay!
Now this is no guarantee that my job will remain the same after the acquisition operation plan is cemented. I might be part of a QA group, I might be working from headquarters instead of this building, I might be working on my product and the other major one from my (former) company. We'll know what's happening there by September.
The important thing is I've got a job and will be continuing to have a job.
Thanks to all of you who have assisted in my job search. You've done everything from reviewing my resume to cheering me up to sending me job notices to whoring out my resume at your places of business. You've been absolutely awesome.
You're all invited over for a beer.
I am working for a new company as of yesterday. Sorry I didn't tell anybody but I didn't know about it until the company meeting a couple of minutes ago.
As of yesterday the company I work for was acquired by a multinational. This is exciting in many ways. Primarily it is exciting because this same multinational has acquired two of our biggest rivals in the past 5 months. The three of us together now form the largest business unit for distribution management in the world. A business unit with a projected revenue of $100 million this year.
I won't really know until tomorrow but it is looking very good that my job has been saved.
Can I get a WHOOP-WHOOP!!!!
POINTS: One point for the first person to source the title of this post (without searching).
Show me your war face!
(Click for biggie size)
Points: But of course! This will be open for a couple days. Probably to next Monday.
Sunday afternoon we were out enjoying the beautiful weather. [ed - The weather was really, really wonderful. Just ask Kelley.] The wading pool was filling up and the squirt guns were on semi-auto. When the pool had filled I went to the faucet to turn it off and noticed the two sprinklers that had been left by the previous owner (the kind that makes a fan of water that goes up and over and back again, not the 'chut-chut-chut-chut-chut' spin around kind). A light bulb appeared above my head - the boys had never had the experience of running through a sprinkler.
Without delay I set up the first sprinkler in front of the house, just far enough that the spray didn't go onto the front porch. The kids were getting curious and were edging closer to see what was going on. Bear(5) asked me what I was doing. I replied cryptically "Setting up a sprinkler". Okay, so that's not really cryptic to you and me but to somebody who doesn't know what a sprinkler is it is fairly abstruse. He nodded sagely with an "Of course he's setting up a sprinkler. How silly of me to ask" look on his face.
With the sprinkler attached and positioned I went over to the faucet to turn it on. The boys stared eagerly, wonderful anticipation and raw curiosity on their faces. I turned the faucet with a loud "Tah-dah!"
And water dribbled out of the obviously busted sprinkler.
Bacon(3) had a bemused look on his face as if he were looking for the joke and not willing to admit there wasn't one. Bear gave an encouraging "Wow Daddy!" and then walked back to the picnic table. Burger(2) tackled the dog.
Okay, not exactly an unqualified success. I turned the faucet off and switched over to the other sprinkler. I actually took a minute to monkey with this one to get the gear doohickey lined up with the spray whatsit so the water shooter part pointed the right way. (I'm considering a career in sprinkler maintenance. Please send all offers to my regular address.)
With a much subdued "Tah-dah" I turned on the faucet and lo and behold, water shot from the sprinkler like flecks of food from Michael Moore's mouth um...like a fan of dihydrous oxide under a hundred or so pounds of hydrostatic pressure like, like...uh...like water from a garden hose when you put your thumb over the end to make that hard spray fan of water oh, screw it. Water shot out like water from a sprinkler is supposed to shoot out. Unless you're in Pre-K and lived all your life in apartments you should know what the hell water from a sprinkler looks like.
(And just how good are your metaphors at 7:00 o'clock in the morning in a pre-caffeinated state? Yeah, that's what I thought. Bitches.)
The boys gave a gleeful scream of pure excitement and then looked at me with dumbfounded expressions. "What do you do with it, Daddy" asked Bear, apparently the designated vocal representative for the children during this story.
"You run through it" I replied. "Oh!" he exclaimed and then tentatively did so. He was a natural. Well, as natural as Martin Short playing a palsy victim during an epileptic attack would be. He did make it over the sprinkler though and he did get a bit wet and he did get a big smile on his face. Success!
As the other two followed his example and ran through the sprinkling water I went to coil up the hose and make things a bit neater (don't ever forget how anal retentive I am). As I turned toward the flower bed my left foot came down on something sharp. Something really, really sharp. Sharp enough to draw an involuntary naughty word out of my mouth. I jerked my foot up and stood there doing a crane impression while I looked for the sweetgum ball or bramble or thorn that I had just stepped on.
I found a curved piece of glass about two inches long. With blood on it. My blood. I looked at my foot and found it fairly covered in blood. Lovely Wife noticed my giant bird impersonation at about this time and called out to ask if I needed help. I informed her that the lawn was covered in glass caltrops and that if she ever wanted to see her children walk again she would rescue them from this hellish place post haste. Or maybe I just said that I stepped on a piece of glass. I know that I was thinking the former anyway.
She did rescue the children and repositioned the sprinkler on the other side of the lawn for them while I hobbled over to the table and used a towel to staunch the flow of my lifeblood upon the earth. I knew I shouldn't have given blood last Friday. You're just asking for a vascular crisis when you put yourself a pint low.
Lovely Wife brought out the first aid kit and I bandaged up the foot. I won't gross you out about the wound. Suffice to say that the meat in my foot looks remarkably like top sirloin. Ironically, the shard got me in the exact point for "expression of pleasure" on the old acupuncture of the foot chart. I guess that explains the raging erection I've had for the past two days.
To add insult to injury (literally) the boys ran through the sprinkler for approximately one minute and forty-five seconds. They were finished with it before I could even stop bleeding. If it had been Mario's Sprinkler Party game they'd still be playing it.
The Scene: It's dinner time at the Peacock family table. Since it's my Birthday I've spent the past hour assembling a new bike for Jason. No, I'm not exactly sure how that happened either. Anyway, nobody was hungry and it was a celebration day so we skipped dinner and went right into the cake. This sort of made cake the dinner using my well primed kid-logic.
Jason (3): I want ice cream!
Me: No ice cream until you finish your dinner.
Jessie (wife): It's cake, Jim.
Me: Doesn't matter. Cake is dinner so no desert until he eats his cake. [ed - There was just enough chocolate ice cream for a big ol' bowl for daddy later in the evening. This explains my resistance to sharing.]
Jimmy (2): I wan tizzurt!
Jason: I want desert!
Me: You got a bike. You don't need desert. [ed - There was vanilla ice cream left but that belongs to Momma. Although I was weakening by this point I was wise enough not to consider offering the vanilla.]
Jason: Please can I have...
Me: 'May I'
Jason: Please may I have ice cream?
Jimmy: Pease can have tizzurt?
Jeremy (5): Please Daddy?
Me: Well, okay. [ed - There's really no saying no at that point. The combined cuteness of the three of them cuts through any defense like Han Solo's blaster through a wet jawa.]
[Break - Ice cream has been dished out to all 3 children plus Daddy. Momma abstained. All of the chocolate ice cream is gone. Score, Jason 1 - Daddy - 0.]
Jason: I want chocolate!
Me: You have chocolate.
Jason: I want more chocolate!
Me: You've still got cake on your plate. Eat that.
Jason: No. I want more ice cream.
Me: There isn't any more.
Jason: No more ice cream?
Me: No more chocolate. There's only vanilla left. [ed - Damn these inquisitive children and their many questions! What is this, the Inquisition? I am determined that there will be some sort of ice cream left for my own very greedy purposes whilst relaxing before heading off to slumber.]
Jason: Can I have some zafilla? [ed - Jason used to say 'tamilla' for vanilla. He can say 'vanilla' with no problem now but subs in different letters out of his unshakeable sense of tradition as well as a desire to irritate me. It doesn't work - I pretend to be annoyed but I really think it's cute as hell.]
Me: That's Mommy's. You'll have to ask her.
Jason: Momma, can I have some familla ice cream?
Jessie: You need to ask your Daddy. He'll have to go get it. [ed - I am the official ice cream scooper of the household. Proper scoopage of decently frozen ice cream requires manly upper arm strength or one of those heated scoopers. Only losers use heated scoopers.]
Jason: Daddy, can I have some rabilla ice cream?
Me: No.
Jason: (shocked silence)
Jeremy: Burn!!
[Final score: Jason 1, Daddy 1. I retire with the tie - no need to press my luck on such a festive occasion.
I ended up not having any ice cream that evening. But I could have!! Go me!]
Yup, sometime around the very end of November 1968 or very early December of the same year my Mom got knocked up. Each 2nd of August we celebrate one of the two instances where we're reasonably certain that two of the people I care deeply about both got laid.
Congrats Mom and Dad on this 35.75th anniversary of your "lucky" day!
Update: It's a celebration for Serenity's folks too!
Let me preface this by saying that I love werewolf movies. Dopple-G hates them - they absolutely terrify him, and not in a good way. I freaking love them. I love werewolf mythology too. Canines are my favorite pet and wolves are by far my favorite wild animal. It's important that you know this background as it could color my review.
Let me also say that my very own chocolate lab just tried to kill me. I was walking to the computer to type this, beer in my hand. The evil creature intercepted me in the dining room, cutting directly across my path. I skillfully adjusted my beer to prevent foulage and stepped off to my right foot. Just past the point of no return the crafty beast turned in between my legs and to the right, neatly turning my ankle and sending me to the floor. I'm happy to report that I managed to throw my left knee out far enough that I could piston my beer hand and prevent bottle corruption and massive beer loss. Not that it matters a lot seeing as that particular carpet is getting cleaned tomorrow but it's the effort that counts.
And yes, my ankle hurts like a mother. It's important that you know this as it could color my review.
Dog Soldiers was a good movie. I mean good overall, not just as a horror movie. The acting was actually really good all around with the exception of that loser who played Captain Ryan the Special Forces jackass.
As far as horror movies go it was pretty standard. I didn't actually get scared at all during the movie but that's pretty much the way of things since Alfred Hitchcock died.
It did well for the spook-at-shadows afterward score. I thought it was going to be a non-register there as I'll normally get a crawly feeling while taking a piss with my back to the closed shower and I didn't get that at all from this movie. However, I just walked the dogs and when we got to the dark part of the street (my house is the ONLY house on my street with a street light) and Kota turned towards the woods and stopped dead and growled deep in her throat I nearly shit myself. Wait a second...lemme check here...yeah, that spooked the shit right out of me.
I recommend this movie for anybody who likes a "last man standing" pick-em-off-style movie, werewolves, general monster, armed conflict, small engagement army or general spooky popcorn movie.
My only major beef (excuse the pun - you'll see what I mean in a second) was a scene in the beginning of the film when the platoon of soldiers is at their campsite and a dead cow gets thrown on their campfire. They seem reassured and business as usual when they discover that the cow died of a natural attack (teeth and claws). Cows that die of natural causes do not generally launch themselves into your campfire. The entire troop should have freaked at this point because unless they missed a cherry picker or catapult in close proximity to the camp there's no realistic human way to hurl a cow into a campfire.
Except for that and the loser actor playing Cpt.Ryan a standard suspension of disbelief should pull you through this one.
Addendum. Sgt.Wells had all of the best lines in this movie and there were a bunch. Top three (all by Wells) were:
I am not breaking radio silence just cos' you lot got spooked by a dead flying fucking cow. (Part of the stupid cow scene described above.)
If we do happen to make contact, I expect nothing less than gratuitous violence from the lot of ya. (Gratuitous violence quotes are my favorite.)
We are now up against live, hostile targets. So, if Little Red Riding Hood should show up with a bazooka and a bad attitude, I expect you to chin the bitch. (I've always despised Little Red.)
My apologies but this is only a 3 beer review. Hens' Night was late starting and the kids kept interrupting so I didn't get into a decent swilling tempo until the last half hour or so.
Hellboy is decent. It could have been much better. It could also have been much worse. Characterizations were pretty poor and they assumed the viewer knew a lot of backstory that wasn't presented. Unfortunately I don't know that backstory so the movie suffered.
That chick that made out with Buffy in that movie a few years ago about rich mean college students was looking pretty good. She kept speaking though and that's really not her forte. They teased hard on the nudity at the end but failed to deliver and that pissed me off a bit (yeah, like she'd really be wearing a tube top in winter in Moscow).
Overall I'd give it a go as a rental. It's a one-timer though, I wouldn't bother watching it again.
Coming soon to a blog near you: Drunken Movie Critique
Tonight's selections include Hell Boy and Dog Soldiers. That's right Susie, I'm finally watching Dog Soldiers. Woof woof!
A full bladder and the sound of running water.
Seriously though, an email saying just how great the last release of our software was and how a record low number of bugs have been reported in the field despite the fact that this release involved a monstrous rewrite of three critical program modules and how the 140 systems already purchased and installed make this the most successful incremental release in the history of the product.
That pisses me off. That makes me want to go up to the Pres and walk him through the base logic involved here and ask him just what the hell he was smoking when he decided to eliminate the Quality Assurance position for our product.
I can't do that though. His goons would pound me.
(Okay, he doesn't really have any goons. That I know of. I still can't do it though because I would not be able to hold my temper in and I've still got a paycheck here for the indeterminate future. Also, our Product Architect has already done that with the result that QA is being eliminated. If I tried it he'd probably figure it a good idea to whack all of Development.)
Okay, it wasn't actually NPR that pissed me off. More precisely, this particular thing I'm about to relate to you wasn't NPR's fault, I just heard about it while listening to NPR. To set the matter perfectly straight, NPR generally pisses me off at a low grade level. I had a spike of pissedoffedness this morning whilst driving to work with NPR on and yes it was on NPR but it wasn't a part of NPR's programming. Okay, it was sort of part of their programming in the sense that anything you hear broadcast by NPR is part of their programming. This was an announcement, not a newsie bit. So there it is - an announcement (actually two) that I heard on NPR really pissed me off today. What were they? Well let me tell you.
Before and after program segments (that's actual "shows" I mean; as noted above anything they broadcast is technically part of their programming) this advertisement free station has advertising. They read off the name of the segment's sponsor or a general sponsor and give a quick blurb. As advertising goes it's pretty low key stuff but it pisses me off that they claim to be advertisement free while doing ads every 10 minutes just like everybody else.
Anyway, two sponsors that were plugged are what has me really pissed off. The first was the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD sponsors National Public Radio. What the fuck does NPR have to do with Housing and Urban Development? HUD is completely funded by our taxes and their only responsibility is to put roofs over people's heads. What the fuck is HUD doing giving money to private interests? That was MY MONEY! If I want to contribute to NPR then that's my business. It is not the business of a dedicated government department to take my money and give it to NPR.
The second was the Gwinnett County School System. WHAT?!? The Gwinnett County school system submits a budget to the county. The county looks it over, axes some books and classes and teachers and then hands a pile of money (including mine) to the school system. The school system then gives away a chunk of it to National Public Radio.
That goes beyond pissing me off. The County and the School System never EVER stop crying about budget constraints and lack of funding and they are giving money away to a radio station. School programs get cut, teachers have to buy their own damned markers and kids spend their days in butler buildings instead of actual classrooms and they are giving the fucking money away!
Where's my damned copy of Robert's Rules? I need to brush up for the next school board meeting. Any locals might want to keep an eye on the Gwinnett blotter 'cause this is going to get ugly.
From Helen comes a delightfully British item about the Doody family. Seems they've just been named The Faggot Family of Britain.
A West Midlands family is playing a central role in the quest to raise the profile of ... faggots.The Doody family from Wolverhampton has been crowned The Faggot Family in a national competition, and to kick off their reign they will launch National Faggot Week.
"...all too often the faggot is left off [the national] list," said Janet Doody.
Her husband Fred added: "It's unfair because faggots were British ... long before any of the others.
"The great British faggot is full of flavour and a great belly warmer at this time of year."
Some little known facts:
- Faggots were called "savoury ducks" in the Middle Ages
- Faggots were named after the Latin word for bundle
- Fans have published the Good Faggot Guide
Well it wasn't a lamb, or even the traditional donkey. The piﾃｱata (notice the squiggly line over the 'n' there - am I good or what?) at the party on Saturday was a watermelon; sort of a meloﾃｱata. It wasn't just any watermelon either. It was a gargantuan watermelon filled to the brim with useless plastic trinkits, geejaws, whatsits and enough concentrated sugar treats to choke Oprah.
The cheap cardboard blindfold that came with the meloﾃｱata failed early. The other parents there had a problem with using Lovely Wife's leather blindfold (comes with matching ball gag) so we just had the kids close their eyes.
My job won't be ending at the end of the month. It will be ending...um...sometime else.
My neighbor in the MegaCube is the product architect for the software I work on. He's also the defacto head of our half of Development since we are still without a vice president on our side of the building*. He has been procrastinating a bit with submitting my termination paperwork. Well I guess you could say he's been procrastinating a lot with handing that paperwork in seeing as he's had it for the better part of two months. Seems he had a plan in case I didn't find another job in time.
At an offsite managers' meeting yesterday he requested and received an extension for my position. I'll have a job until they actually hire a new programmer. As there is no serious contender in the pipeline at the moment I've got at least a couple of weeks of continued employment.
Today's party will be much more festive now.
(Click for super-celebration size.)
The big guy is 5 today!
We actually do have pictures of it, too. Lovely Wife took a bunch a few weeks ago. Only problem is they are just after we moved in and stuff is everywhere. Due to some problems (Dell sucks) with Lovely Wife's laptop (hard drive crapping out after less than a year) I've been using the old monster desktop PC (it works just like a regular computer, only slower). This has the side benefit of being the computer that's attached to the base unit of the digital camera. The one-touch Kodak digital camera. I was out of excuses to procrastinate about taking pictures.
I took a bunch last night but they're not ready to post yet. I am not what you would call a professional grade (or really even 'acceptable' grade) photographer so most of these need some digital assistance before they'll be usable. Little things like compensating for Jim forgetting to turn on any lights and things like that. I actually don't have time to do that at the moment as I'm trying to get enough work accomplished to take tomorrow off.
In the meantime I threw together a quick diagram showing our house's layout. You can't see where we live yet but now you can at least imagine it.
... True, and they have many other fine qualities as well."
Due to some problems with Lovely Wife's laptop I've been to sleep a bit late the past couple of nights. This morning I woke with that pain in the head that clearly stated "You have not slept long enough, go back to bed", which I of course ignored seeing as this is a workday.
I was stumbling about through a mockery of my morning routine when I spied Henk, our sexy main cat.
Do you see how cruelly he teases me? Now that is a professional. (click for mondo size)
POINTS: Caption this picture. The best three captioners will get points (5, 3 & 1 respectively). Contest runs to some time on Friday.
MORE POINTS: 6 points to the first person who correctly attributes the post title without searching.
Damn, do I smell good today. I'm not talking just a little good. I mean I smell freaking good. I am seriously afraid to go near any of my female coworkers for fear that they might not be able to control their baser instincts and I can't afford any more torn clothing.
Yeah, that's how good I smell.
I think a little background is in order. Two things I'll never compromise on are toilet paper and my bath bar. I want a TP that is strong and soft and can quickly and efficiently scrape the shit from by butt crack but do it with the softness of a newly slaughtered baby bunny rabbit. My bath bar must leave my skin in a non-dry state and have me not smelling like a flower or a chemical.
Next Saturday (the 24th) we're having a housewarming party. We'll have the grill going with burgers and dogs at 2:00. We're asking people to bring a side item with them (side dish, snack, soda, beer, etc).
Kids are very welcome. It's doubling as Bear's 5th birthday party so there will be games and a wading pool, sprinkler and fun stuff like that.
Please let me know by next Wednesday or so if you're coming and how many people you're bringing so I'll have an idea of how much beef and bun to get. (Yes my vegetarian friends, I'm planning on getting veggie meats too. Just let me know how hungry you'll be for soyburgers and/or fauxages.)
An RSVP also gets you directions to the lovely party location in Lawrenceville, GA.
We sure hope y'all can make it!
Well it wasn't a twister but there was a twister warning. We spent a couple of hours in the hallway Wednesday evening because there was a tornado warning in our area. That's the only area of the house without at least one window.
We locked the doors so little fingers wouldn't "accidentally" open them, gathered pillows and a couple toys and had ourselves a little floor party. I made sure the boys didn't get concerned while Lovely Wife watched the newscast.
Some funnels were seen in neighboring counties but nothing near us. Still, it was good to go through a practice run. It made Lovely Wife fell better to do it and it was a learning experience for the boys. Plus it would seriously have sucked if a twister did hit and we had ignored the warning.
Some thoughts on our (not) nearly death defying encounter with a (non-existent) twister:
- It's really weird when the Doppler radar shows the darkest red evil violence right over your house and you look outside where it is as calm as a graveyard.
- Explaining a tornado to kids aged 2, 3, and 4 is not easy.
- Explaining a tornado warning is even harder.
- The hallway gets hot really quickly when all of us are in it.
- I left the scotch on top of the fridge. What was I thinking?
- It really sucks that our wireless isn't working yet. Damn you Comcast!
- It's odd what can lead to rekindling your love of Legos.
- No matter how big she is a chocolate lab will still get underneath the bed when she needs to.
I can't get the dead horse off of me until the alarm goes off again.
Our bedroom is really dark this early.
Ouch. The laundry basket could have been in a better place.
I wish the fan didn't come on with the bathroom light.
Damn, that fan is loud.
Look at the time. I hit the snooze three times. That can't be good.
Where the hell are the dog collars? Sorry bud, you'll have to wait for Momma.
That's not enough returns on my job searches.
My resume is smoking, my cover letter is professional. What's the problem?
Fuck professional. New cover letter today.
Need to get some more points out before my blogiversary.
Coffee.
What's the most Atkins friendly food out there? Why, meat of course! How can we cut the nasty carbs from our favorite frozen treat? The Japanese have found the secret. Instead of high sugar items like fruit or chocolate, use ground up animals!
Two great tastes that taste great together. Raw horse and vanilla. Mmmmmm. Or maybe some oyster ice cream? Talk about intersting consistency - you can't get much more unique than a frozen oyster.
Thanks, Trey! I almost vomited!
Rawhide!
We took possession Saturday eve and have been moving heavy things since then. The sudden squalls today netted us a wet couch, love seat and mattress. Nice.
I'll most likely not be posting tomorrow. We won't have Internet until the cable guy gets to the new house (goodbye Charter, hello Comcast) and I'll probably be occupied in sweaty man labor regardless.
If I can find the digital camera I'll take some pics for the next entry.
I just deleted (permanently) about 20 emails that I needed to follow up on. Every morning I eradicate my overnight spam with extreme prejudice. This morning I highlighted all of the messages in the folder just like I do every day, held down the "shift" key and pressed "delete". When the happy little pop-up popped up and asked "Jim, are you absolutely sure that you want to delete these emails in a frightfully permanent, never to be undone manner? I mean - you will never, EVER see these again and that's no joke Homey. OK or Cancel?" I hit "OK" like I do every day. Imagine my perplexity when all of the emails in the folder disappeared but the number next to the "Junk" folder in my Outlook bar stayed exactly the same. Follow along with my thought processes:
that's weird...what just happened there...something wrong with the Outlook bar...did I just go through the delete sequence or am I so sleepy that I messed it up...mmmm coffee...folder's definitely empty so why does it still say there are unread messages...weird shit...oh, wait...when I click on the folder it's full again...was I even on that folder...where was I...what did I delete...sonofabitchshitdammitarghhhhh!!!
Damn. There were emails from Melissa (the car Pimpress) and some new Pimp Dogg in there. I think I can fake it responding to those though. At least 3 or 4 leads for Zero Intelligence just bit it and that hurts. Good leads aren't as easy to come by now with summer break in session. There were two for Memeblog; hope Simon will catch those. Oddly enough there were some work related ones too. How did those get in there...
If you mailed me and were waiting for a response please mail me again.
On the plus side, my Inbox hasn't been this clean in three and a half years!
It's time to impart some of the pearls of wisdom we've acquired up to this point.
Get the paperwork requirements early. Late last week after we had signed our agreements and everything was set between us and the sellers we got a package from our broker. (A broker can be of great help in acquiring a loan at an excellent rate, helping to get you through special purchase requirements like HUD, FHA and VA and otherwise make the money side of house buying much easier.) The package from the broker had a stack of forms to fill out and sign and a list of papers and receipts we needed to provide within 24 hours. WTF? Granted some of these could not have been completed until after the purchase agreement was signed but the vast majority could have been gathered and/or filled out at any time if we'd known about it. Turns out this is a standard thing in the industry because brokers don't want to spend money on your paperwork if you aren't committed (in writing) to a house. They only make money if you get a mortgage. Insist on the list right away because you'll pull out hair trying to gather everything at the last minute.
Keep off of the bank account. My Mom wanted to help us by paying for our inspection and she also wanted us to get some nice housewarming things. She sent a check. We deposited it. BIIIIIIG mistake. You see, if there are any unexpected deposits or withdrawals the lender wants to know what they're for. They want you to PROVE what they were for. They need to know that you didn't just incur an additional debt or that you aren't paying on an undisclosed debt. This is a hassle, especially when you find out that it is needed on Friday evening and the closing is on Tuesday. And the check was a gift from your out of state Mom. And because it was from her credit union account and they have barely mastered paper processing and are terribly frightened of any terms starting with an "e-" so there's absolutely no way to get a copy of the canceled check. You end up having to forge your mother's signature on an affidavit saying that the check was a gift but take the time to write her name out a hundred times or so in order to get a smooth flow since you haven't had to forge it since you were in Junior High.
Ask for the world, their draperies and their pets. House Lady was really good here. She asked for absolutely everything we could think of and added some things we didn't think of. When you put that offer in the only way it can go is down. If you don't have things that can be cut off of it then you are not going to get some of the things that you really want/need. Plus if they're desperate enough you just might get their pets.
Don't ever think of skimping on an inspector and get a good one. Another place House Lady came through for us was hooking us up with an excellent inspector. Earl knew his shit and based on his inspection we had a long dozen things (actually it was a dozenty-three things) that we wanted repaired. Similar to the point above we asked for everything to be fixed, even stuff we really didn't care about. They gave us everything. He shoots, he scores! (There was an issue with one fix - a 30 amp fuse that didn't get placed but that was ultimately by my choice.)
So is house buying a pain in the ass? Yup. Is it stressful? Yup. Will it make you yell at your puppy for sticking her wet nose on your legs one too many times in the morning? Yup. But it'll be worth it when you pop open that bottle of bubbly on your first night there and then go shag each other rotten in your very own house.
The deed is done! Or, more precisely, the deed has been transferred and then put in hock for the next 30 years. Either way we're now homeowners.
Damn, what a relief it is. The paperwork crunch over the past several days (including last night at 8 PM) has almost driven me to drink. But all that's over now and all that's left is the move.
We had a celebration dinner and our first stop at Home Depot to buy things for the house - fire ant treatment and plant killer. No fire ants now and we want to keep it that way. The plant killer is for the poison ivy in the back yard. It's not bad (just two plants) but I want that stuff dead in a very final manner. We also bought wall anchors and hooks 'cause you can never have too many things on the walls.
Right now I'm debating whether to open the bottle of champagne that the lawyer gave me at the closing. I'm sorely tempted but I think we'll save that for our first night in the new place.
Everybody should be planning on being in the Atlanta area some time in the early middle of July for our breaking-in celebration. I'll let you know when we get the date set. :-)
In approximately an hour and a half my Lovely Wife will be picking me up from work. We'll go home and have some lunch. I'll then travel to a lawyer's office where I will sign my name for close to an hour straight. At approximately 3:30 PM I will be a home owner.
I am so freaking totally butterflies and needles right now.
Hot damn!
As you can probably imagine, getting ready to move into our first house has kept the finances tight. As a result I wasn't expecting any Daddy's Day prizes. My Lovely Wife is not one to be put off by something so simple as lack of cash though.
I ended up with a big-ass Coleman propane grill with side burner, 2 magnolia seedlings and a 2-stroke gas powered weed whacker. I was also in temporary custody of a stuffed shark, a marble, a Barney car and a bag of rubber balls. The little people reclaimed the smaller gift items throughout the day.
How'd she finagle such largess? She found this group called FreeCycle that connects people who don't need stuff anymore with people who could use it. Very, very sweet. I need a fuel line for the whacker but that's no big deal. The grill needs a propane tank but our broker (may the angels smile upon him) is donating one of his extras.
Is my Lovely Wife awesome or what?
My eyes are giving me a headache. Let me expound - I've had a headache for a few days (obviously stress related from the house and the job) but since yesterday it's been getting worse with light. Bright light builds up the pain to unbearable levels and no drug I have access to can touch it.
So I've been sitting here in my brightly lit cube with my brightly lit monitor feeling the shearing grip of pain extend through my head like a tentacled horror burrowing through my skull. All of a sudden I had a V-8 moment. You know - when you slap yourself for not thinking of something so obvious as to be ridiculous? Yeah, one of those moments.
I've turned off the lights in my cube and reduced the monitor brightness to "way low". The overhead lights provide plenty of light for anything except novel reading and since I don't have any excellent works of fiction here that's quite sufficient. With the monitor turned down low it's actually almost soporific to gaze upon.
Ah...feel the fingers of bright shiny pain receding...
The closing won't be tomorrow but it will be on our original planned date of the 23rd. That's Wednesday. I'm going to be a homeowner.
Holy shit, y'all!
Our broker is just fan-freakin-tastic. Not only has he bought down our rate (this is banker talk for "I'll give you money now instead of later), he's finagled the closing numbers so well that our out of pocket expense for buying this house is hovering at or below zero dollars. Yeah - at or below zero dollars to get into this house.
As in, pay no money and get into the house. Have a month on us and just pay your mortgage starting in August.
The appraisal also came in at just a hair under $135,000. Our mortgage is for $130,000.
We're putting zero dollars down to get into a house that we'll have almost five grand of equity in as soon as the ink dries.
I love the Navy. I love the VA. I love my broker.
We had our team meeting this morning. This was a bit odd since our Product Architect and temporary team director (did I mention that there's STILL no executive in charge of Development yet?) is in Hawaii. The reason became clear when Project Manager Girl ran out of things to say and admitted she was dragging it out because President Guy had said he wanted to stop in on the meeting. For all y'all who aren't in a corporate setting this was the equivalent of Project Manager Girl standing on the conference table and screaming out "This is a set up! This meeting was only held because President Guy wanted y'all for a captive audience while Product Architect is away!"
Except she's stubbornly clinging to her Pennsylvania speech patterns so she wouldn't have said "y'all".
He wanted us to know how proud he is of our product and how important it is to the company. He went on and on about how the quality of the product is so fantastic that we are in a position to leverage our synergies to extemporate our marginalizations, or something like that. The vast difference in product quality since release X.0 was mentioned a couple of times. How life was horrible at X.0 and earlier but that now we've only got legacy issues left from the bad old days. Everybody who's using X.1 through X.4 loves us to tears and wants us to have babies with them.
Know what the big addition was after X.0? The big change that was made to address the massive quality problems? The one constant that has been in place during the increasing reliability and decreasing incident versions of X.1 through X.4? A dedicated Quality Assurance Analyst. Me. I came in to a product that had devastating quality problems. Now we have a product that is so reliable they don't even need to think about quality any more. So they're getting rid of the QA Analyst position.
Stupid mother fuckers.
I'd like to say that I don't hope the product tanks when I leave but that would be mostly a lie. It doesn't really matter what I hope for anyway. Programmers working as part time quality people are not going to put out a reliable product. They already proved this in the pre-Jim versions.
History will repeat itself and by version X.6 this product is going to be a dog again.
These are movies that are so bad you killed them (had to turn them off or leave the theater because you could not stand to watch them any more). I'm pretty tolerant and have a high pain threshold. I can generally watch even really bad movies (like Lifetime channel ones). Either I'll mentally ridicule it and amuse myself that way or I'll just use it as a two hour brain nap. But even with my inhuman resistance there are movies that I simply could not finish watching.
I want to work up a list of these killer movies, sort of a "worst of" list. I'll start it off with one of mine and then y'all pile in on the comments and I'll update the list periodically. No rules except you must literally have walked out on it or turned it off, never to return to it again. Let's keep it limited to first run movies too. If it was direct to video even the distributors knew it was lousy. Give some sort of clue why it was so bad, too.
The List of Killer Movies:
About Schmidt (Trey): I hate him for peeing on the floor. I hate him for making me see those huge, gross boobies. I hate this movie because like Eyes Wide Shut it is boring, except instead of being about walking, this movie is about driving, which is just as boring. At least it's day time.
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (Mark): As if watching Jim Carrey talk through his butt wasn't enough, there's a truly excreble love scene with "In The Jungle" in the background. My brother and I, though only having paid a dollar to witness this cinematic treat, raced each other to the car after that.
Battlefield Earth (Ilyka): My boyfriend rented it as an exercise in masochism. Turns out he's a much bigger masochist than I am, because he made it all the way through and I had to quit at about 45 minutes.
Blood Work (Trey): This is a movie about how some women really just want to have sex with really old, gross, wrinkly men. That's their business, but it should have been on the poster so that I would know to avoid it. Also, there is some boring talking. I swear I saw a boom mike come into the frame a couple of times. Oh, and there's a kid that stands as a good argument for abortion.
Cabin Fever (Trey): Ok. I take it back about there being an exciting movie about flesh-eating bacteria. This movie has that and it's just dumb. Dumb + about 75 million gallons of fake blood. It's a movie about how movies sometimes don't have any relationship at all with reality. The only good thing about this movie is that it's the movie TGD and I watched on our first date.
Eyes Wide Shut (Trey): This is a movie about walking. Tom Cruise is a good walker especially after dark. It was almost a movie about Nicole Kidman's Heiney, but it doesn't show up enough to make it worth watching. There are some other naked people, too, but they also do not outwiegh the apparent vast importance this movie places on walking. And also some talking about boring things. [ED - This one's on my list too. It's a terribly serious movie too. I turned it off when I realized I was waiting for a crying clown to appear.]
Farewell my Concubine (Simon): Had me wishing I was in a room with someone actually draggin their fingernails down a blackboard. Not only did my girlfriend at the time and I walk out, it was so bad it put paid to any chance of sex that night. Damn that movie.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Me): Yeah, the definitive 'guy' movie was so bad I turned it off. It was shortly after Lee VanCleef's character beat some information out of a whore that I realized that this movie just flat out sucked. The dialog is too over the top to survive even the suspension of disbelief rule. The characters are so universally reprehensible that I was hoping for a three way shootout with no survivors. The dubbing and sound effects were unbelievably bad. There was at least a half-second difference between the video track and sound tracks and that gave it the feel of a Japanese monster flick. There were no sounds except dialog and guns and an occasional door. Just a horrific train wreck of a movie overall.
Insomnia (Trey): Insomnia is not an exciting affliction. Name a movie "Flesh-eating bacteria" and then you can talk excitement, of course, the movie would be much shorter than Insomnia, which if the movie IS insomnia wouldn't be a bad thing. Robin Williams isn't scary like Hannibal Lector. He's scary like Chester the Molester and that's also not good. I don't think there's a likable person in the whole movie. I want them all to die.
It's Pat (Emma): Proof that Hollywood hasn't had an original idea since 1940 and that not all SNL skit rip-offs are a good idea. Horrific.
Johnny English (Me): It was so trite, juvenile, predictable and plain not funny that even the promise of Natalie Imbruglia in tight cleavage-revealing outfits could not entice me to endure it.
Lost in Space (LeeAnn): Such horrendously "written by the sappy woman at the end of the assembly line" Hallmark dialogue that even Gary Oldman couldn't save it. One of the few movies I've walked out on.
Lost in Translation (Trey): This is movie about an old and not very funny man who fancies himself to be either not as old as he is or way older than he is and definitely more funny than he is. And he stays up late at night. This movie should be stopped after the "Lip my stocking, Mr. Hallis" scene. Again, boring.
Meet Joe Black (Harvey): Beloved Wife & I figured it ought to be good, what with Anthony Hopkins. Bleah! Bad dialogue, turtle-paced-plot, a lot of blank expressions, and conversations that did nothing to advance the plot or story. I think we lasted half an hour.
Naked Lunch (Me): I only rented this because it starred Peter Weller. If Robocop was the star it had to be good, right? Oh man was I shocked when I discovered it was actually a porn/snuff flick featuring a lunatic fucking a typewriter. This one got turned off the first time Gizmak the Typer licked itself clean with its twelve inch tongue.
Passion of the Christ, The (Helen): I had thought it would be inspired, but instead it was like watching defrost meat get whipped on a kitchen counter. Dude, can you say "gratuitous"?
Punchdrunk Love (Trey): This is a movie about what if Adam Sandler were just a smidge more retarded than he already is and is still able to convince a pretty lady to put up with him for more than five seconds. If I were Adam Sandler in this movie, I wouldn't be retarded, but I just might kill everyone I know with a tire iron or a steak knife.
Scream (Mark): I also made my friends get up and leave the theater after the beginning of Scream (when the girl gets her throat slashed and can't scream to her parents) because I realized I could no longer stomache slasher films. We saw Beavis and Butthead Do America and had (at least I did, and I'm not much of a fan of Beavis and Butthead) a grand ole time.
Seabiscuit (Ilyka): I probably could have stayed with it if I'd tried harder. As it was I was mocking the condescending narration a lot: "Now y'see, back in the 1930s was a time known as the Great Depression, because it was very depressing not being able to find 'nuff to eat. But it was Great if you were rich." But I cracked and we walked out of the theater halfway through.
Starsky & Hutch (Susie): I think it was the first movie I literally walked out of the theater on since The Man Who Fell to Earth. Thank God it was playing at my theater and I hadn't paid anything to get in. The absolute bottom-scraping of "let's turn old tv shows into movies between making remakes and sequels because thinking is hard" school of film making.
Touch of Evil (Ilyka): One of mine is one which repeatedly makes the "best" lists by people who know far, far more about the art of filmmaking than I do: Touch of Evil. Couldn't watch the damn thing. Couldn't take Orson Welles' mumbling. Couldn't buy Charlton Heston (yes, Charlton Heston) as a Mexican. Couldn't stand the female lead. Couldn't even follow what was going on because, oh my God, did I mention the mumbling? So I guess I have no taste in cinema.
Toxic Avenger, The (Clancy): I remember being in the video store with my (then) girlfriend and looking at the (then) old campy movie section. A guy stranding next to me said, 窶廩ey Pal, watch this one. I just say it and it was good.窶 So we took it home. And had to kill it about 30 minutes in. I still wonder about that stranger. Did he really think it was good, or is he still laughing?
Truth or Dare (Dopple-G): It was all about girlfriend secrets and stuff like that. I was really looking for tits and ass - you know, spank material - and this was targetted for girls and homosexual guys.
Possible problem with the new house (which is still going pretty smoothly and still scheduled for closing on the 22nd but our broker said don't count that day as gospel cause it could be a day or two later and why did we bother specifying an exact date on the legal documents if it's subject to change based on stuff we have no control over anyway but that's not what this post is about so I'll drop it for now). The current air conditioner isn't the original air conditioner. That's not a problem at all. Newer is generally better and in this case it's a very nice air conditioner. The problem is that the original fuse and breaker are 40 amps and they weren't changed when this new unit was put in. This unit is rated at 30 amps. More modern, more efficient, pulls less juice.
Is this a problem? We made changing out the breaker for a 30 amp breaker one of our requirements but the sellers have been advised that it's a no-use change (no reason to do it, in other words) so they don't want to do it.
Is there a real problem if the cutouts are rated at 40 amps and the unit is rated at 30 amps?
It was a bit too sweet and the hot fudge was too runny.
Actually I really did have one. I'll clue y'all in later after I flesh it out and talk to Lovely Wife about it.
There are a lot of sucky things about job hunting. One of the suckiest is that you have to give at least a cursory examination to all of your email. Even the ones that SpamBayes absolutely guarantees are spam. I know that SpamBayes is 99%+ efficient but if I miss a chance at Ultimajob because their HR guy uses too much marketspeak and SpamBayes equates his missive with a cia|is mailing and I didn't catch it before deleting it I would be seriously pissed. No, wait a sec. I wouldn't be pissed because I wouldn't actually know about it if I didn't catch it.
Ah, hell. You know what I mean - I don't want to miss anything and as a person looking at a lack of employment I'm motivated enough to do something that I haven't done in months - read the Subjects of a hundred or so porn and drug spams on a daily basis.
On the plus side I got a genuine giggle out of this one from Grover Oneill (no apostrophe please, thank you very much): The Beeeeeest Lubeeeee For Your Johnsooooooon.
Hehehehe. Now I can't stop thinking about my Johnsoooooooon and what the Beeeeeest Lubeeeee for it might be.
Hehehe - Lubeeeeeee. That's a winner.
I took today off. Filled out many, many online resume thingys. Many. My eyes are buggy.
We're still waiting to hear back about our list of things that need to be repaired by the sellers at the new house. It's been a couple of days. We're getting irritated. Grml brgl rmnl*
*That's sort of like the "robble robble" of Hamburglar fame.
The inspection went well, more on that later. First we talk about the purchase. There's been a bit of back and forth regarding when the sellers will vacate. Last night featured the signing of the latest (and last, please Lord?) version of the purchase/sale agreement. The biggest change is that we'll close on the 22nd instead of the 23rd and they'll vacate by the 26th (Saturday) instead of the 28th (Monday). Pretty cool, eh? We get the house for the weekend move instead of taking multiple weekdays off.
And get this - it was their change! Yeah, Lovely Wife wanted to give them time to move out so originally offered 10 days between the closing and boot-out dates. Our House Lady shortened that up a bit and then the sellers themselves shortened it up more. Fan-freaking-tastic! Why in the world wouldn't they want the option to stay longer just in case? Don't know, not going to worry about it.
Back to the inspection. Earl was awesome. Talk about thorough. He showed me parts of a house that I didn't know existed. Old timers here may recall that I used to help build houses. Yeah, Earl was good. To make matters even better, he had that fantastic central Georgia drawl that just oozes confidence about construction knowledge and other things of a manly nature (inclusive of coon dawgs and NASCAR). He also looks like a slightly older Sam Neill and if you can't rely on Dr.Grant then who can you rely on?
The inspection turned up a couple of things. He found everything that we had noted, everything that the sellers had disclosed and a few more. Nothing big, which is very cool. There's a condensation line from the air conditioning that stops at the foundation - that needs to run a few feet away from the foundation. A couple bushes need trimming to give proper clearances. Ground cover needs to be cut back away from vents. An outlet cover is missing in the main bath. The crawl space under the house needs a moisture barrier put down. Windows are painted shut. Little stuff like that.
No major items, nothing that the sellers should balk at fixing before the sale. Can I get a "boo-ya!"?
In about an hour I'll be going to the new house to run through it with the inspector. Almost $300 and it'll be about three hours. Yeah, I know that this doesn't really mean I'm paying him $100 an hour but boy does it feel like it at the moment!
Oh, wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. The last thing y'all knew was that I was expecting House Lady on Friday morning. She did indeed show up and we filled out many copies of the agreement to purchase. Then on Saturday we didn't hear that the sellers had signed. On Sunday we found out why - they had another exclusion in a newer version saying that they were keeping some shelves from over the front window. You needed to hold up my contract for this? Sheesh.
They were also concerned that they might get labeled for massive heating system repairs. That's warranty stuff, we just want the unit serviced with regular maintenance so we don't have to do it this year. That's straightened out now, fortunately.
So now we've got the inspection tonight and hopefully pick up our copies of the finalized agreement. Continue crossing fingers, but you don't have to squeeze as hard now. ;-)
I've uploaded the preliminary version of my resume. If anybody would be so kind as to take a peek at it and give some feedback I'd be grateful. Be as critical as you can - the better this gets, the better my chance of finding a job.
What's missing? What's superfluous? How's the formatting? Pleasing to the eye? Short enough? Too long? Lemme know.
This is in MS Word format. If you need it in a different format I'd be happy to oblige, just email me and I'll send it right to you.
Thank you to everybody who's sent sympathy about the job loss. We really appreciate it. :)
House lady will be here in about two hours to sign the papers. We're going to buy the house anyway.
I'm much loved at work, so much so that they're keeping me in a job until the end of July. I'm confident that I'll be able to find something decent within two months. If I only find a middling job we have options - there is a lot of fat in our current budget. High speed Internet, cable with all the trimmings, private school for the little guys, stay at home Mom for the little guys. There's actually enough fat for us to get by just fine with me on unemployment. In short, it's not an absolute requirement that I be the single bread winner with a big salary. That's the ideal situation, but it's not the only possibility. It might be a bit risky to go ahead with the house purchase but it's only a little risk.
Also, if worse comes to worse, it's way harder to kick a family out of a house than it is to evict them from an apartment.
But not really that much. Cause things are not as bad on second look as they are on first look.
Still, I could use a good smoke. Y'all suck for keeping me honest.
We got the house. Yay! The sellers agreed to our last counter offer and we're supposed to sign a binding contract tomorrow morning.
I lost my job. Boo! They're eliminating my Quality Assurance and adding another Programmer. I don't program in ProvideX so...bye bye Jim.
Got a lot to think about before tomorrow morning.
House Lady came over last night with the counter offer and we put together a counter-counter offer. The whole thing so far has sort of been like this:
Us: We'll give you 3 grand more than you're asking for but we want about 13 grand (for a relative lowball figure of about 10 grand) in concessions, kickbacks, closing costs, etceteras. We want your refrigerator, washer, dryer, trampoline and pets too. You can keep your kids.Them: That's mighty white of you. How about "No"? Let's clarify a thing or two, here's a better way to fix this and that and altogether this gets your lowball to around 4 grand. We're keeping the trampoline and the pets. The kids are negotiable.
Us: Those changes are mostly acceptable only your legalese on this one is a bit off so we're correcting it and we'll go ahead and specify a couple of things that were generalized before. The lowball is about 5 grand and that's really where we need to stay. We really don't want your kids.
Hopefully we'll have a binding contract this evening. Your finger crossings are working wonders!
The sellers didn't accept our offer. A couple of the things we want were based on the wrong info so it's not too surprising. See, we didn't have a copy of their Seller's Disclosure (this is the form where they say how old everything is and what is included in the house purchase) when we made our offer. House Lady had an unofficial one that Mister Seller had whipped up really quickly but there were errors on it. The biggest error was for the HVAC system. The unofficial Seller's Disclosure said that the HVAC was 17 years old and the water heater was 7. Part of our offer included a replacement HVAC. Turns out the HVAC is 7 and the water heater is 17. No need for a new HVAC.
So, we're now waiting for their counter-offer with the HVAC replacement part removed, hopefully a water heater replacement added, and assorted other niggling changes. Hopefully we'll get it today and hopefully it'll come complete with a genuine Seller's Disclosure. Then we'll put together a counter-counter offer!
Have I told y'all about House Lady yet? No, I don't think I have. She's...motivated. She talks too fast, too. Like somebody from Maryland. On crack. We've been in Georgia for over three years - we can't listen that fast any more. But like I said, she's motivated. That first evening that she came over for house surfing said a lot. She went through the realtor listings with us. The actual realtor listings with all of the super secret house information that lowly buyers aren't supposed to have access to. She also left with her Realty/Company accoung logged in. Not that it mattered since she didn't really hide her password (slightly easier to remember than '1-2-3-4').
We've spent a bit of time cruising around the Realty/Company database, by the way. We can't help it. I'm naturally curious and Lovely Wife is female. No way we could leave that alone. I'll just say that they could definitely use some new programmers, at least one of whom understands the concepts of crafting a user interface.
So to summarize, waiting on a counter offer, probably will lead to a corrected offer. Still working the same (very cool) house. Continue to cross fingers, please.
UPDATE
Just found out that they're supposed to be getting together with their agent this evening to craft the counterproposal. They're not happy with our earnest money. For those of you who haven't purchased a house before, earnest money is sort of like a deposit. It's the money you'll be out if you change your mind at the last minute and stick it to the seller. We don't have a whole lot of earnest money - we're credit rich and cash poor as they say. Apparently the buyers are concerned that we might not be serious about buying the house because we've put in about as much earnest money as a speculator might.
I'm getting the feeling that brokers and agents just get in the way and that if we could sit down with those folks face to face we'd have this whole thing wrapped up in a half hour or so.
It's quite intense and very expensive and it hopefully won't last very long. Ryan was into it. So was Clancy. Michele almost had multiple strokes doing it. Yup, I'm talking about home buying.
On Friday we got our preapproved mortgage and the House Lady came over the very same night so we could surf for houses. We identified a short dozen that we liked and House Lady and Lovely Wife planned on looking at them the next day. In a couple hours. Can you say "stressful shopping"?
Fortunately we managed to eliminate half of them so the tour de houses was actually possible in the time frame allowed on Saturday. Four of the houses visited were eliminated. That left two. On Sunday the boys and I joined Lovely Wife and the House Lady to see those two and two others that sort of surfaced while we were out. Both of the ones that popped up were quickly eliminated. Both of the ones that Lovely Wife had pre-scoped for us were very cool.
They each had their advantages. The one was closer to Dopple-G (important for commuting). The other had a workshop (important for manly beer drinking while using power tools). The one had a fenced back yard (we've got two dogs and three kids) and a sun room. The other had a mostly fenced back yard and a den. The one had a nicely sized eat-in kitchen. The other had a bedroom right off of the kitchen. What's up with that? The one had a big two-car sized carport. The other still had that workshop, and a nice dry crawlspace under the house. The one had a magnificent magnolia tree. The other...um...hardwood floors! Yeah, that's it. The one had landscaping and was on a cul-de-sac. The other was right on a major road and had lots and lots of things to mow around.
We put in an offer on the one house. We'll hear back by 8 o'clock tonight.
Keep your fingers crossed.
I was watching "Humanimals: Wild Makeovers" on Discovery Health over the weekend. This is a show about extreme body modification. Things like facial tattoos, implants, split tongues and other such things. They profiled several people who've gone to various levels of body modification. Two were relatively minor - the reptile man has the tattoo of lizard scales all over his body (face and head included) plus a split tongue. The cat girl was similarly adorned with tiger stripe tattoos.
The other two were quite a bit more severe. Cat man had the tattoos as well as a surgically cleft lip (yeah, the thing that people pay money to fix in their kids so they can talk normally), sharpened teeth, whisker implants, cheek implants, 4 inch long finger nails and cat eye contacts. Enigma has the tattoo of a jigsaw puzzle over his entire body with blue tattooed over his face and hands. Oh, he has horns implanted too.
You know how at the end of every commercial that contains a promo there's the little speech by the guy who talks too fast to understand? So that the commercial for BRAND NEW FORD TRUCKS FIFTY-NINE DOLLARS DOWN FIFTY-NINE DOLLARS A MONTH FIVE THOUSAND MINIMUM ON YOUR TRADE-IN PUSH PULL OR DRAG IT IN BAD CREDIT NO CREDIT BANKRUPTCY WE DON'T CARE WE'LL FINANCE YOU OR MAY SATAN DRIVE A RED HOT POKER UP OUR POOP CHUTE AND LET MICHAEL MOORE TICKLE OUR BALLS might be followed with some-restrictions-may-apply-offer-not-valid-in-contiguous-forty-eight-states-alaska-hawaii-or-any-protectorate-or-territory-of-the-united-states-the-term-brand-new-describes-models-from-nineteen-twenty-or-later-the-term-fifty-nine-dollars-is-nineteen-twenty-equivalent-dollars-equaling-current-amount-of-six-hundred-fifty-nine-dollars-and-seventy-four-cents-we-are-under-no-obligation-to-finance-your-broke-ass-or-give-you-anything-for-that-piece-of-shit-you-are-driving-satan-and-michael-moore-can-both-lick-our-ballsweat or something remarkably similar.
Well last night I saw an ad for Heineken and they're giving away music, sort of how Pepsi did it recently. Code or whatever is in the box, go to Real and get a free tune. Mister Talks Too Fast mentioned something about "two free in every twelve pack" and then "no purchase necessary to win". I immediately thought "Bingo! Free beer!" Go and point out their gaff and demand some free twelve packs, right? Well as you can imagine I was sorely disappointed in that effort. I did however find out how to get the tunes without buying the beer. In retribution for so cruelly crushing my hopes I want each and every one of you to follow these instructions and get some free music. I want an Instalanche and whatever other 'lanches I can get. Spread the word, share the glory. Pay these monsters back for teasing me by getting free music and making them pay for it. Join the new revolution!
TO RECEIVE YOUR UNIQUE PIN CODE WITHOUT BEER PURCHASE (good for 2 downloads except in PA where 2 PIN codes will be supplied for a total of 4 downloads), send a self-addressed, stamped envelope and a 3x5 card with your name, complete address including zip code (no P.O. Boxes), daytime telephone number with area code and date of birth to Heineken Music Download Offer, P.O. Box 7430, Wilton, CT 06897-7430. Requests must be postmarked no later than 7/30/04 and received no later than 8/6/04. Limit one PIN code request per envelope, individual, household, family or address. Neither Sponsor nor RealNetworks are responsible for lost, illegible, incomplete, late, postage-due or misdirected mail. Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery of PIN code without beer purchase. Delivery cannot be guaranteed unless you include a zip code. No P.O. Boxes accepted.
Attention Heineken: I'll call off the attack dogs if you send me a coupon for a free 12 pack.
Warning: This post is
It wasn't intentional but every post so far today has held a dig on France's favorite so I might as well go with the flow.
Here's one from Rachel Lucas that tickles me. She's designed the Orca (tm) Michael Moore range target (full size version available at her place).
What Moorisms do you have? Trackback or link it in the comments here. Or just spout off in the comments here. Openly vitriolic comments encouraged. I'll start you off with some humor:
Q: How many Michael Moores does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. That fat fuck wouldn't have a clue how to do something constructive that would actually reveal things that are in darkness. And what's with suggesting that there could be more than one Michael Moore? You sick bastard.
UPDATE: Claire has the scoop on Mikey's eveningwear. Monitor/liquids warning for this one.
* Title corrected. As LeeAnn notes in the comments, nobody in their right mind would fuck Michael Moore.
My PC died right after opening the day for Michael Moore bashing. That greaseball somehow sabotaged me.
Anyway, I'm going to be generally incommunicado as far as email goes as the computer I'm on now is (besides being in the middle of the training room as part of the class that I am currently attending) lacking in any communications capabilities. On the plus side I can now fake a phone outage and completely ignore everybody in the building when I get back to my desk.
Can anybody explain to me why it is that you can get a warning from SmartDisk that your drive is failing but Dell still won't replace it until it actually dies? And why is it that corporate admins refuse to just buy another damned hard drive when the customer service contract that they have with Dell proves to be foolishly lacking in common sense? I just happen to be in class today but I can guarantee that Dell won't have a replacement hard drive in my machine by Monday morning. Maybe sometime on Monday it'll get here and the machine will be loaded with software by the end of business. I'll spend the entirety of Tuesday setting it up for me.
That's two days of lost me. How much does a new hard drive cost compared to two days of my salary? How about losing two days from an already compressed production schedule? I really hate stupidity.
I've finally found the perfect gift for him. And under $20 too!
The 窶廴ind Molester窶 produces a one-second electronic chirp about once every 4 minutes. Due to the chirp窶冱 duration, frequency, and sound characteristics, it窶冱 a very, very difficult, time-consuming, frustrating and maddening task to locate the unit. And even if they find it, they窶冤l have no idea what it is. The number of effective locations to plant the 窶廴ind Molester窶 is limited only by your imagination. Of course, this device is for use on deserving subjects only.
I wonder if there's a discount for bulk purchases...
(Hat tip to Dopple-G)
Charter sucks. That's our cable company. If you're in the market for video on demand that cuts out constantly or high speed access that's as reliable as AOL was in the olden days then Charter is the company for you.
We lost our internet access on Friday. A call to tech support could not fix the problem - a service call to replace the cable modem was to be made on Saturday. Saturday came and went with no call from the friendly Charter technicians. We were at a graduation party for the latter half of the day so did not contact Charter about it again until Sunday.
Yesterday morning (bright and early riser that I am) I called Charter again. Where the hell was my new modem? Well sir, that service call was changed because when the trouble ticket was reviewed they noted a couple more things to try. But nobody called us to try them. Wankers.
Completely erasing the modem's configuration file and downloading a new one actually got the modem working again. I was happy.
Until noon. That's when the modem failed again. No more service. A call to Charter determined that a new modem really was needed but not to worry, it would be there before the end of the day. Do I really need to say what (didn't) happen next?
Okay, for the record then...no new cable modem arrived. Another call to Charter let me know that the service call bringing the new modem on Sunday was rescheduled to first thing Monday morning. Again nobody had called the customer. They rescheduled an appointment without telling one half of the people involved in said appointment.
This now qualifies them as fucknuts.
They are supposed to contact my Lovely Wife first thing this morning to arrange a time to bring the new modem. I am not holding my breath.
Fucking monopolies fucking suck.
The latest in a long line of inanity:
Vision is the art of seeing things not visible.
I could be kind and say that I understand what the author was going for here. He wants to say that being able to recognize possibilities is what being a visionary is all about. But I'm not kind to people who obscure their meanings behind foolish pedantry so I'm calling "bullshit" here.
The premise itself is bunk. These sayings are supposed to be supportive or indicative of successful business culture. In business you do have true visionaries - they are the guys in the white coats down in the lab who tinker with doodads, gizmos and whatsits. They are markedly different from the people with corporate vision who assign budgets, verify cost and yield figures and do market analysis for the new product lines.
The real success of a business is not in seeing possibilities but in recognizing probabilities. In other words it is much more important to see what's directly in front of your face. Steve Wozniak was a visionary. Bill Gates had corporate vision.
For all y'all that missed it, I was participating in corporate scholastics this Monday and Tuesday. Specifically, I was getting training on distribution replenishment from a lady who knows more about it than everybody else. This might not sound all that exciting until you remember that replenishment efficiency equals profit and profit equals money. Money is always interesting.
- There are lots of little things wrong with our product that we don't see because we aren't using it and people aren't telling us, probably because they're the little niggling things that aren't really "wrong", they're just irritating or not as good as they could be. We need a way to discover these things. They are generally very easy to change and can make a great difference in the usage experience of our customers. User Interface really is important, y'all.
- Our demo data is pooched. It's usable, technically, sort of. You just can't actually simulate the workings of an actual business with it. We need somebody to fix this. Somebody who isn't me of course.
- If you go to a class at a corporation and you don't really know the subject that is being discussed, don't wear bright orange nail polish. In fact, just as a general theory for life, don't wear bright orange nail polish. Thanks.
- Supplier efficiency is what kills distributors. WalMart really does kick ass. They are bigger because they really are better.
- Scan the bathroom before the students/customers have the opportunity to go potty. If one of the Morning Crew has left reading material on the back of the shitter, go ahead and toss it in the garbage. Reading material in the john says things about your company that you really want to have kept in the family.
- Especially when that reading material is a paperback copy of The Exorcist.
- eBay really is the new sales paradigm. Of the three distributors in my class, two were using eBay heavily to reduce overstock as well as clear inventory and make it economically feasible to order special items that come in standard packs. eBay is letting them give better supply service and helping them to run a leaner ship. eBay rocks like WalMart.
- In a customer-centric situation like this training class all company titles are swapped for "Salesperson" as you pass through the door. I think I sold three upgrades just by talking about the items in the latest product version. Do I get commission on that?
UPDATED 08 May 2003 (At bottom of post)
This was a difficult post to write. You see, there are two things in this world that are absolutely guaranteed to set my deeply repressed reptilian brain into instant violent response mode. One is child abuse. The other is wife abuse ("Wife" is colloquial and includes significant other/girlfriend/fiancee/fuck-buddy/whatever). I don't speak well on either subject because I find it very difficult to get past my emotional response to them. That general response to abusers could most concisely be represented as "Fuck the guy up".
So when Jeff at Protein Wisdom posted about an article by Cathy Young in Reason you can get an idea of my default mindset as I approached it. Jeff just cut and pasted the bulk of the article and added a snark at the end so we'll ignore him and concentrate on this whack Cathy Young.
Cathy has a problem with the response scheme in place for wife beaters. You see, there are many jurisdictions that will prosecute a wife beater even when the abused party doesn't want to.
numerous jurisdictions and states passed laws that mandated arrests for domestic assault ... and encouraged prosecutions even when the alleged victim was unwilling to press charges.
Weight costs money, right? So does size. To transport, I mean. Smaller, lighter packages are much cheaper to move around. They're also better for retailers - more stock can fit in the same space.
Diaper wipes are basically just wet fabric toilet paper. Why not ship them dry and have the user add a 1/4 cup of water when they open the pack?
The size savings would be immense (y'all have seen the sponge the size of a business card that expands to a 4" x 8" dishcleaner, right?). The weight savings would be phenomenal.
Am I brilliant or what?
Long-time readers might recall my penchant for jotting down topics to write about later. When an idea gets into my head I'll just note a few key elements and those will allow me to recall the thought process and gist of what I was thinking at a later time. It doesn't always work.
While reviewing my notepad here at work I found a few lines in one corner of a back page that are an obvious topic note to myself but I can't recall what the hell I was thinking. (Therefore the title of this post! See how it's all coming together?)
Here is the note, reproduced in all its glory:
"Hit the head"Ozymandias
smack his head
Long Meeting
have to pee
Why is the first line in quotes? Was I looking for etymology of the phrase? What did the King of Kings have to do with Navy bathrooms? Why is he smacking his head. Or is that a command to smack Ozy in the noggin? The last two lines seem to go well together until I tell you that in Jim shorthand that capitalization is for a reason so "Long Meeting" is a title.
Can anybody put these together into cogent (or amusing) form?
There is one certainty in motivational sayings: The more pretentious the saying, the more inaccurate it will be. We can call it Peacock's Law. Today's welcoming message to the office is a perfect example.
Behold the turtle! He makes progress only when he sticks out his neck.
Um...no. A turtle will make progress by sticking out his legs. Sticking out his head will give him a wider field of view but has no effect on his ability to progress.
Is this bad saying salvageable? I'm not sure. Let's try some modification:
Behold the turtle! He can make steady progress without exposing himself to undue risk.
Yeah, in today's business climate that one is a winner and it has a more businesslike ring than the flip side:
Behold the turtle! No matter how much he exposes himself he can't come any faster.
That last version could get a lawsuit started.
It's really great that you're trying to make your stores seem like higher class retail establishments. Hey, whatever works is fine with me. If your objective is attracting the folks who get embarrassed at Wall Mart then you go ahead and do that.
My problem is with your television commercials. You got rid of the dog and for that I am thankful. A pit bull with redeye just wasn't the greatest mascot. Spuds Mackenzie should have taught you that. But now you've gone to these freaky thirty second art student pieces that are impossible to "get" without a sufficient amount of narcotic assistance. A commercial should not be reminiscent of a French culture piece minus the crying clown.
Tell me what's on sale and then get the fuck off of my television.
Thanks.
According to my nifty program that tracks how long I've been cigarette free I have been off of the cancer sticks for two months, two days, 1 hour and 35 minutes. That's 1241 cigarettes not smoked, saving $195.38.
What I want to know is, where the hell is my $195.38?
I want my money!
POINTS: Be the first person to name the inspiration for this post title and pick up a quick 3 points. No searches, please.
Not just any iron, either. One of those fancy Oreck cordless irons. Retail is $129.95 but you can get it for one shitload less at Lovely Wife's auction.
We bought the Oreck vacuum a few months ago and Lovely Wife loves it. The bags are a bit expensive but it does everything they say it does. It came with a little canister vac that gets used a lot and this iron that got used exactly once (just to make sure that it worked when we received the shipment). She's already got an iron that she likes so this has just been sitting there lonely and unused.
So adopt an iron today!
They're annoying fuzzy beasts. They puke on the carpet right next to the linoleum. They won't come when you want them to and when you want them to leave they won't go away. We have two of them living with us.
Henk is our primary cat. He's named after The Godfather. Yeah, the one who showed me the joys of firing fully automatic weapons. Similar personality. Henk the cat works out his agression by walking over your food and chewing on your hair. Even though his front slashers are gone he is still the boss of you, the other cat and both dogs. In fact, he was raised by dogs and we think this is what warped his personality.
Apple is our secondary cat. She was a birthday present to Lovely Wife a couple years ago and she was supposed to be a companion for Henk while we went out and about. At first she only liked me but in the past year or so she's come around to Lovely Wife too. She still doesn't like the kids. She is a traditional cat-style cat. As you can see in the picture below, she couldn't possibly care less that I need to use the computer. Would you try to move her? Me either. I have a PDA now.
Yeah, they're annoying and a pain in the ass sometimes. They're not the most trainable pet, that's for sure. Then again when a cat comes up to you and rubs on you looking for some lovin it's not because you told him to, it's because he wants to. There's something to be said for that.
James Lileks asks how to get rid of knives:
A question: how do you get rid of knives? I have three old knives that couldn窶冲 cut through a month old banana, and they窶决e from a set we no longer use. You can窶冲 throw them out 窶 they poke through the bag and stab the trashman, and I suspect he窶冱 angry at me already. (Every week! I come up with more trash! It never ends!) You can窶冲 drop them in a dumpster.. You can窶冲 drive down by the creek and throw them out the window. Well, you can, and if you roll your window up fast enough you may not hear a jogger shouting SON OF A BITCH! but I don窶冲 advise it.No, you get knives, you窶决e stuck.
Knives are easy. You just put them inside old Tupperware. You want to know what is virtually impossible to throw away? A garbage can!
I spent three months trying to throw out a particular garbage can. I ended up cutting it into little pieces with a sawz-all. You just can't discard an essentially intact can. What are you going to do? Put a sign that says "Garbage" on it? Tried that. After you smack yourself in the head you can then try variations like "Please discard", "Take can", "Can is garbage". After a month or so of this stilted speech style note writing you'll tape a veritable letter written in regular English politely requesting that the garbage men please take the can itself. It will be impossible for anybody to misinterpret your intent to discard the can. If they read the note. Which they will not do.
Maybe you could get one of those huge bags they have for Christmas trees. If the can is physically inside a garbage bag that just might do it. Otherwise just chop the bitch up. If it's metal just pound it down into a man-hole cover.
Don't forget to put your old knives in the bottom before you collapse that sucker.
This disjointed stream of my consciousness courtesy of Ilyka who's recognition of my brilliance far exceeds my own. Slightly edited for comprehensibility.
Master and Commander was decent. Russel Crowe was wasted [in the role]. Movie sucked compared to Horatio Hornblower movies.Putting on Matrix III. Out of beer. Moving to wine.
Pray for me.
(almost wrote "prey for me". is that prophetic or what?)
Bad...very oh so bad...failing...wasn't wine...it was...PINK CHAMPAGNE!!!
Neo...want him to die so the movie will end...how much time left? Oh, Lord no!
Where is Trinity in leather?
Vinyl even?
What the fuck? Link is some sort of major character?
Oh the humanity! All the cool characters suck now! ALL OF THEM!
Even Mr.Smith!!
I cry softly into my chapagne...
More later...if possible...
My kingdom for a homicidal albino
[fade to black]
Warning to Roger Ebert: Jimmy's in the house!
On April 2 I put up a Petition Online petition for moderate Muslims to show that they are against terrorism. Three full weeks later there is a single signature.
A lot of people would see this as discouraging. One person in twenty-one days is not a fantastic average after all. A lot of people would question just why it is that there aren't more signatures on something so intrinsically correct. I mean there are tens of thousands of signatures on petitions to "save Michael Jackson". There are way more Muslims than MJ fans in the US and terrorism is a far more important topic than whether Mike dribbled Jesus Juice on his youthful guests.
I'm not discouraged. Even though it's only one signature, it IS a signature. A person who has enough faith in his humanity to speak it regardless of what his religious guides seem to be saying.
I want to personally thank Khalifa Al-Boinin for signing the petition against terrorism. I hope you will soon be joined by others that share your faith and convictions. If not, I'm still very happy that you made the choice to make your feelings known. (And if you are a female, my apologies for the gender errors. No insult intended, I'm just unfamiliar with Arabic naming conventions.)
This is how the cookie crumbles. Please read it carefully. Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh $7.
The eighth $12.
The ninth $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20." So, now dinner for the ten only cost $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So, the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six, the paying customers? How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share'?
Just north of Taccoa is the little town of Lavonia. This is one of those little places where the town square is occupied by the Mason's building and the gun store. Where the supermarket is called "Lavonia Food". Where the roadside food includes "Latino's" (it was their grand opening) and a nameless shack proudly featuring "Meat Stew and Sandwiches!" (If you have to ask what kind of meat, you can't afford to eat it.) Just outside of Lavonia is Lake Hartwell. Unlike many bodies of water in Georgia that are somewhat less than advertised (see "Yellow River", which I have personally stepped - not hopped - over), Lake Hartwell is of a significant size to actually be called a Lake even by a hard to please ex-Great Lakes Yankee like myself. Lake Hartwell is the focus of our story.
I took the boys up to Lake Hartwell for the weekend. "All three?!" you exclaim in sympathetic fright. Yes, all three. "When you say 'I took' do you mean that Lovely Wife did not accompany you?!" you further interrogate me. That is precisely what I meant. No Lovely Wife in attendance. And please calm down, you're getting me terribly excited with all of those exclamations.
Warning: This post is
I was having a conversation with Ilyka about cats and, as you'd probably expect, the term "flying fuck" made its way into the conversation. I believe that in context it was something like "I don't actually give a flying fuck" and that it wasn't at a point in the conversation that actually related to my cat problem or even cats in general but it certainly could have been worked into that angle if I'd given it a moment or two of thought.
But now I'm thinking about the phrase itself. "I don't give a flying fuck." That's pretty freaking vulgar, right? I mean, it's got the most commonplace and pedantic cuss word in the world in there, plus flying. Okay, so it's not as vulgar as it appears at first. Still, it's a pretty potent exclamation of disdain. The Allwords dictionary defines the idiom as Not to care about something; not to give a damn about something.
But why? I mean...it depends upon a "flying fuck" being something so worthless and inconsequential that the target of the phrase is practically nonexistent by comparison. It's along the same lines as "I wouldn't give a plugged nickel", if you see what I mean. So a flying fuck has to be roughly equivalent to a plugged nickel in value (that is, completely worthless, bordering on being a burden) to pull off this phrase.
So what exactly is a flying fuck? After a bit of research I've discovered that it is sex on horseback. Sex on horseback, y'all! The etymology of the phrase indicates that it originates with this (not work safe) broadside ballad entitled "New Feats of Horsemanship".
Okay, y'all need to help me out now. I don't get it. That looks pretty freaking cool to me! Any dissenters? Any chicks out there who think that riding the stallion while riding a stallion is of completely negligible value? Any guys out there who think riding in the saddle while riding on the saddle is a totally worthless experience? Hell no! I'm putting this shit on my list of things to do before I croak.
So this phrase is now ruined for me forevermore because I can never leave well enough alone. For me English is a scab that must be constantly picked.
(But at least I've got that broadside ballad now. Anybody know the tune to go along with it?)
I'm just busier than a co-op cashier on food stamp day. I've got two actual story-type posts brewing but will get a maximum of one out today. Let me know if you'd rather hear about my camping expedition with all three boys (and no Lovely Wife) over the weekend or yesterday's adventures in jury duty.
While y'all are waiting for actual content here, head on over to Spirit of America and toss em a buck or two. Every little bit helps our Marines overseas to make a difference through projects that THEY personally started.
There are two gray doves that spend their springs and summers at our place. They are calm and peaceful, hardly even walking away when you approach them. They don't even fly off when you're mowing the lawn, they just hop out of your path. We hadn't seen them this year at all until yesterday when Lovely Wife found one. It had been attacked by a cat. Its right wing was snapped at the pinion and it had wounds to its neck and belly. We wrapped it up to immobilize the broken wing and we put it in protective custody overnight.
(Click for supah size)
Lovely Wife called all over creation to find a place that would help it instead of euthanizing it. She brought it to the doc this morning. It's bad enough that these feral cats abuse my car. It's bad enough that they are a menace to my dogs. Now they are (literally) killing off the ambiance of our woodland home. No more mister nice guy. Lovely Wife checked and it's legal to trap and/or destroy feral cats here.
It's time to get biblical on those cats. I'm talking Old Testament.
This one transcends stupid, blows right past inane and lodges firmly inside rectal oddity. (That means it's a piece of crap.)
Life is like riding a bicycle. You only fall off if you stop peddling.
Where to begin? First, everybody knows by now that any simile of life will be compared to "life is like a box of chocolates" and if it can't stand up against that Gumpism then it should not be used.
Second, there are shitloads of ways to fall off of a bike even if you keep pedaling. You could get pushed. You might hit a stop sign or a utility pole. You might get creamed by a semi. You might just run into a bit of tightly strung piano wire across your path. Hey, it happens. Thusly the simile fails right at that point but we'll not stop there as it also fails on the other side of the equation.
Thirdly, any moron can stop peddling without falling off of their bike. It's called putting your foot down. It's the normal and accepted manner of stopping a bike. It's instinctive. Or how about coasting? If you are at speed, going downhill or maybe trying to not go faster (anybody ever hear of braking?) you most definitely are not pedaling and yet, surprise of surprises, you are generally not falling off of the bike.
Fourthly, what the fuck is falling off of your life? Yeah, simile isn't supposed to be a literal transitive but I can't even figure out a metaphorical one for this winner.
We've got guests in this week. I am so freaking embarrassed for my company.
Thanks to Paul at Sanity's Edge I am now a legally ordained minister! That's correct, I may now be adressed as the Right Reverend Jim Peacock. Or maybe the Center-with-a-little-right-tilt Reverend would be more accurate.
I can now legally perform weddings, baptisms, blessings, sacrifices, excommunications, you name it! In fact, I can do almost anything except circumcision. That's okay though as I'm morally opposed to the ritual mutilation of children anyway.
Pixy has gone ahead and taken the plunge too. A brace of ministers make Munuviana one of the holiest blog communities out there. Can I call for a blogcrusade yet?
I've been angry lately. Moody. Pissed at stupid little things. My temper seems to grow a hairsbreadth shorter each day and I don't see when i'm losing it until it's lost. The other day after dinner I took the boys upstairs to clean the playroom. They did their usual "Don't wanna" routine and instead of teasing and joking and making it a fun thing like I normally do I yelled at them to clean up. I was like a boot camp drill instructor.
This morning I was writing a note to somebody. Can't tell you much about it yet except that he's one hell of a guy and the note I was writing got way more patriotic and emotional than I first intended. I just started crying. Like a baby. Tears are still coursing down my face right now and I can't stop them.
I'm pretty sure that I know what is screwing with my head so much lately. I am so fucking furious that I'm losing my grip. Every day I read about another atrocity committed by my own countrymen simply to promote their twisted agenda. In the past week I've seen a woman openly speculate that one of the men murdered, burned and paraded around Falluja might have been a nazi. Not that she had any proof or anything but simply because it suited her agenda to vilify a murdered American. I saw the woman who pointed out that perfidity attacked simply for saying "Hey, it's wrong to do that". I read a story of a small group of American soldiers who barely escaped a compound with their lives. They made a courageous 20 hour stand against completely overwhelming forces while protecting assets and non-combatants. A true act of unmitigated courage and dedication. But I cannot find this story on any news site. I can't find any story like it on any news site. I read about a student in Savannah who was suspended from school. A gang of kids invaded his school and attacked him in the cafeteria and he committed the crime of defending himself. Zero Tolerance to violence means you are not allowed to be a victim either.
And it's not just those stories. Those are just the snowflakes on the tip of the iceberg. It's all around. Every day. It doesn't stop. Ever.
I just want to stand up in the middle of a crowd and scream out "Can't you morons get a fucking clue? Can't you just use some common sense? Can't you stifle your fucking private agenda long enough to remember what being a human fucking being was like?"
And I think "Oh, God dammit, how am I going to protect my kids from these people?"
And I start crying again.
The tongue must be heavy indeed; so few can hold it.
(Hat tip to Dopple-G)
I get these things constantly. Email messages from corporate servers telling me that my message was not delivered because it was infected with a virus and that I am a scumbag and that women are secretly turned off by my exceptionally shapely nipples. I know that they are incorrect on the nipples - I mean just look at the activity on that nipple post! Yowza! I'm pretty sure that I'm not a scumbag either. I know my older brother was one and I'm about as unlike him as possible so that's gotta make me some sort of anti-scumbag or something. I am also damn bloody sure that I did not send anybody a virus.
We've got antivirus at the provider level, at our mail exchanger level and at the local desktop level. I don't use the preview pane in Outlook. I don't open anything that anybody sends me unless I know exactly what it is. I don't download anything (excluding nudes and pictures of kittens of course). My non-work email also has anti-virus at the mail server level and we've got anti-virus software at home that Lovely Wife updates religiously.
So why do I keep getting messages saying I've sent out a virus? Why do I keep getting emails returned to me that I didn't send in the first place? It's because I'm being spoofed. And that leads me to the entire point of this post: this Security Watch article by Robert Vamosi. It's concise, no big words, semi-entertaining, and explains spoofing far better than I could. Go give it a read. What? You don't have 3 minutes to spare? Humor me.
We have a bottle of Pert Plus "Fresh" in the shower. I guess it was on sale or something and Lovely Wife picked it up. Being the inquisitive fellow that I am I of course gave it a gander. It has a refreshing 2-in-1 formula that is enhanced with a natural cooling ingredient you can feel. It's our coolest experience for lively hair! Well, what's not to like about that? Shampoo and conditioner in one - that alone will save me at least 15 to 20 seconds. And a natural cooling ingredient that I can feel? Why that does indeed sound like the coolest experience for my lively hair!
So of course I tried it. It lathered up quite nicely and as I was working my finger magic I started to feel it. A little tingle. A bit more tingle. A distinctive coolness, like when you dunk your head in a rain barrel on the hottest day of summer. Oh, what a cool experience! Truth in advertising and a product that worked, who'd a thunk it?
A whiff of the scent coming off of my head revealed how they did it. Eucalyptus...nice touch. A bit of menthol in the shampoo and you've got a whole new bathing experience. Gimme that koala juice, baby. I'm loving it.
And then I rinsed the shampoo from my head and realized in a grand hurry why it is not a good thing to have menthol in your shampoo. You see, shampoo is used on your hair which, for most people, is located on the top of their head. Just south of the top of your head is your face and smack dab in the middle of your face you have eye balls. Eye balls and mentholatum do not mix well. Not well at all, buster.
My eyes were closed and that is the only reason that I can see well enough to type this missive. I felt the chilling burn of menthol rinsing down my face, covering my eyes and face. I immediately felt the burn in the soft sensitive exposed parts - the corners and along the lid. And it was getting worse by the moment.
I frantically scrubbed my face with soap, trying in vain to get the napalm off. As anybody any guy who has used IcyHot can attest, menthol does not wash off of skin (think hands) well enough to allow the handling of sensitive body parts (think penis). The same rule applies to menthol that is on your eyelids and face - you can't wash it off enough to open your eyes with confidence.
Eventually I had to stop washing my face and get out of the shower. As soon as my eyes cracked open the slightest bit they were assailed by the burning fumes impregnated in the skin around them. The burning, the watering, blurry vision and pain lasted for an eternity, like the very fires of hell that await Michael Moore a good fifteen minutes as I stumbled blind through my morning ablutions.
In summary I cannot in good faith recommend this product. Although it does clean and condition as advertised, the side effects are too eerily reminiscent of coating the inside of your eyeballs with Vicks Vaporub unpleasant.
Quite a few of the blogs I read regularly have questioned why there is no grand hue and cry from the muslim community against the actions of al-Quaeda, Hammas, and other hardline fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups. I mself was curious about it and asked one of my muslim coworkers. She said that the average muslim is as horrified as everybody else at what these people do in the name of their religion but the majority of Islamic organizations are not run by average muslims. She compared it to the Catholic priest/pedophile thing. Catholic churches and organizations tied to the Catholic church were not the voices heard screaming about these abuses. That is simply because they take their lead from Rome. In a similar fashion the Islamic mosques and organizations here are tied very closely with sources in the Middle East. Many are directly dependent upon funding from those sources or were started by those sources or simply take their cues from those sources.
I countered that you heard plenty of Catholics quoted with their opinions on pedophile priests. She counter-countered that the same happens when moderate muslims are quoted. The problem is that they generally aren't approached and the ones that try to get heard just aren't. Single voices aren't heard and the organizations that could be heard aren't talking.
The answer seems pretty clear-cut to me. Get those single voices grouped up so they can tell the groups that are supposed to be speaking for them what they want them to say. To that end I've started up a petition to help. Muslims Against Terrorism is pretty simple. It defines terrorism, rejects it, rejects people who support it and rejects fundamentalist proponents of it. It asks that Islamic groups do likewise.
Please do me a favor (maybe do all of us a favor) and spread the word. Either link to this post or link to the petition itself at http://www.petitiononline.com/islxterr/petition.html and let people know it's out there.
Many people have a problem with April Fools Day. For the most part it's because they see April Fools pranks as juvenile, cruel and stupid. Boy are they right (for the most part). The problem with most April Fool jokes is that they just aren't funny. The object is not to "get" somebody, it is to craft a unique and unexpected situation that the victim reacts to and ultimately appreciates. There are no points for playing a joke on somebody who either doesn't get it or doesn't appreciate it. That's just being inane or cruel, depending on what you do.
A proper prank takes planning and build-up. It should wash over the victim in distinct stages:
- Victim encounters prank and suffers a moment of total confusion. The changes to their environment do not match what is expected and they have to pull out of autopilot and react with intentional reason.
- Victim undergoes brief but severe disorientation. Realization that the expected environment is not there has reached the reasoning centers. Perhaps the victim looks around - is he in the right location? Did he make a wrong turn or somehow enter the wrong office?
- The victim gets a spike of anger, fear, loss, humiliation or other negative emotion. As he realizes that the environment truly is altered and no simple mistake on his part can explain it away he'll suffer one or more negative emotions. Which emotion is suffered depends on what the specific prank was and how his personality reacts to the changed environment. Knowledge of the victim is very important in order to evoke acceptable negative emotions. People react to things differently and you need to have a good idea of how the victim will react. If a negative emotion is too strong or misplaced or simply not one the victim can handle then the humor has turned into cruelty at this point.
- The victim feels immense relief as he realizes that the changed environment was the result of external intentional influence (a prank) and that his original environment has truly not been compromised in a harmful fashion. Coming from the negative feeling in the last step this can be an actual euphoric sensation. This is where many pranks fail miserably. If there is no reference for the victim to catch to realize he's been pranked he's stuck in the negative emotion above. If that lasts for any serious length of time there will be no emotional recovery when the prank is revealed.
- The victim enjoys the humorous aspect of the prank played upon him. This stage works much better when the prankers are there to share it with the victim. Smiles and guffaws are passed around with "Man, you really got me" and "Oh, you should have seen the look on your face!", etceteras. If the joke doesn't bring the victim to this stage then it wasn't a joke.
Since they insist on continuing to put up fantastically lousy sayings on the welcome board I've made Bad Sayings an actual post category. With such regular fodder for my acidic wit I'd be a fool to let such an opportunity pass by. Today's tragedy is:
Excuses are the nails to build a house of failure.
My first thought after reading this as I came in this morning (okay, my second thought - right after "what the fuck?") was "what do they use for the boards to build a house of failure?" This was followed quickly by "if the house of failure is a functional house then is it really a failure at all?"
I like that second question (okay, third if you count the "what the fuck?" as a question). I mean, if it keeps the rain off then how can you call it a failure? And if it doesn't keep the rain off you can fix it really fast just by making up a couple of excuses. Leaky roof? "I was caught in traffic." Bang, bang, bang, all fixed. Door falling off? "The vendor never called back." Bang, bang, bang, door is rehung.
If they wanted to use a good saying to denigrate excuses they should have used the old tried and true one:
Excuses are like assholes. Everybody's got one and they usually stink.
(Half credit to Dopple-G)
Happy Birthday, Helen! It's not quite your birthday here but it is where you are so there you go!
Godspeed and safe travels on your vacation. Have fun (but not too much fun) and don't do anybody anything I wouldn't do.
I had my first memorable nightmare in quite some time on Saturday night. It was one of those genuinely distressing heartwrenching real-emotion emoting dreams.
Most of the dream was fuzzy and I don't remember it. The scene that so affected me was in a garage with a generic androgynous friend (does anybody else have generic androgynous people in generic roles in their dreams?). He/she was smoking and offered me a smoke when he/she realized I didn't have any. I said no but took a drag of his/hers.
Then it hit me. I had just had a damned cigarette in my mouth and I smoked on it. Immediately following that realization was crushing guilt and extreme anger at myself. Then I was pissed and basically said fuck it. If I had a puff I might as well have a whole cigarette so I took one from generic friend's pack (generic friend wasn't there anymore - can't blame him/her as I was quite irate and most likely not fun to be around).
I smoked that thing in an absolute rage. I was so unbelievably mad and feeling like crap because there are a whole bunch of people pulling for me to quit smoking successfully. There's also a $100 price tag on the first puff of nicotine and I was mad as hell that I screwed up that bet too.
The dream sort of faded out (at least out of memory) after that. I woke up angry, which is never good. When I realized that I had dreamed it and that I had actually not smoked a cigarette I felt blessed release and a great calming.
I'm going to make it, y'all, but this psychological warfare that my subconcious is playing on me is totally unfair. Damned id.
Been off the Welbutrin for over a week. Occasional cravings but otherwise doing quite well.
One month, three days, 5 hours and 6 minutes. 644 cigarettes not smoked, saving $101.47. Life saved: 2 days, 5 hours, 40 minutes.
A lot of people just don't quite understand what the big deal is. I mean, if you break the law you go to jail, right? Well, here's the best way I've found to explain it:
WEEEE-OOOOOOO WEEEEE-OOOOOO (that's a siren, y'all)A State trooper with the lights on and siren blaring is in your rear view, letting you know that you're screwed now. You pull over to the side, heart a bit a-flutter and sharing confused and slightly frightened glances with your passenger. The trooper walks up to your window with one hand on his gun and the other holding his shoulder mike. He leans in menacingly, never taking his hand off of his weapon.
Trooper: Do you have any idea how fast you were going?
You: I'm sorry, officer. I thought I was going the speed limit.
Trooper: And just where did you get the idea of what the speed limit was?
You: Um, from the road signs?
Trooper: ARE YOU SURE?! I think that your passenger there told you what the speed limit was. I don't think you saw the sign at all!
You: Please, officer. I really saw the sign. It said "Speed" on top and then it had a big "55" in the middle and it said "Limit" on the bottom. I swear!
Trooper: You're under arrest.
You: For what? I wasn't speeding!
Trooper: Because you lied about seeing the speed limit sign.
You were cruising along, not breaking any laws. The cops stopped you without cause and started interrogating you as if you had broken a law. You really were told about the speed limit from your friend but you panicked or were intimidated or freaked by the situation or whatever and you said you saw the speed limit sign. Even though you didn't speed and there was no reason for you to be pulled over you are now going to prison for lying about where you got the information that you used while not breaking the law in the first place. The kicker is that you were allowed to get the information from the sign or your friend so there was no reason to get flustered over it in the first place.
That is why the whole Martha Stewart thing irks me. There was no crime until the feds germinated one.
Expect nuthin' today, y'all. The weather is gorgeous and I've got serious Spring Fever. I'm playing hooky and will be spending the bulk of the day in relaxation at various outdoor locations.
Ahhhhhh...Spring...
Every parent thinks their kid is special. Well, unless the kid has to wear a helmet or something. In that case they think their kid is special, meaning retarded. What I'm talking about is pre-politically correct special, as in actually special.
Yesterday I was helping the Bear fill out his Murphy Journal. Damn, need background here. Murphy is a mouse (stuffed) that goes home with the kids of Bear's class on the weekends. One kid per weekend, that is. The kid who's hosted Murphy takes pictures of the rodent and writes about the things that Murphy did in their Murphy Journal. Seeing as these are pre-schoolers they're obviously not actually writing the stuff in the journal - they dictate to us secretaries parents. So anyway...
Yesterday I was helping the Bear fill out his Murphy Journal. Crap, need a bit more background. Bear learned lower case letters in preschool and also how to sign his name. They haven't learned any upper case letters in school but he's picked them up all by himself through a combination of observation and questioning us. The point is, I already knew that he knew his printed alphabet in both cases. So...
Yesterday I was helping the Bear fill out his Murphy Journal. As intimated above this means I was writing in the journal as he dictated to me. (Hah! Bet you half thought I was going for more background in this paragraph, didn't you? Joke's on you 'cause the story's on, Baby!) Lovely Wife had done the previous entry and that was in script. Being the toady follower type person that I am I was also writing in script. After a rather longish bit of dictation Bear looked over my arm at what i was writing, rather in the stern aspect of a strict and micromanaging employer. He began reciting the letters as I wrote them down.
He knows letters in script. We did not teach him letters in script. His school most certainly did not teach him letters in script. I don't think he's picked this up from SpongeBob or the Power Rangers either.
Is my boy precocious? How will I ever know, seeing as my proximity in affection and location makes me a hopelessly compromised judge?
And more importantly, if he is a child genius, do my genes kick ass or what?
Just came across this book excerpt. This looks frighteningly accurate, doesn't it?
Islam and the Palestinian ProblemPublished by: Dar al-Salam, Cairo, Egypt
Year Published: 2001
The author: Dr. Abdallah Nasih AlwanNo other nation in ancient and modern times has carried the banner of fraud, evil and treachery as has the Arab nation. No other human race throughout history or from anywhere in the world has acted in such a cruel and corrupt manner and provoked such conflicts between nations as has the Arab race. (pp. 23-24)
... [in] their [the Arabs'] machinations in present times, at the beginning of the 14th century after hijrah [the "Prophet's" journey from Mecca to Madinah], the Arabs (may Yahweh's curse rest upon them) have been using devious ways of conspiracy and deceit in order to achieve their aspirations and carry out their plans of establishing their rule over the world, and take control of the world's core powers. They are targeting three main objectives:
- The first objective: spreading dissent among the nations
- The second objective: corrupting the faiths of the nations
- The third objective: founding the State of Palestine, with Israel as its center, and stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile. (p. 36).
Isn't that amazing, coming from an Egyptian publisher and by an anti-Israel radical? Well, I have one little confession. I altered the excerpt according to The Radical Islamic Cypher of Truth ™. It's really pretty easy. Take anything written by any Murder Bombing supporter and switch "Jew" for "Arab" and vice versa and "Yahweh" for "Allah" and vice versa. You will transform tripe to truth faster than Jesus changed water to wine.
Pretty cool, eh?
POINTS: Where does the title of this post come from? 3 points to the first person to tell me. No searching, y'all!
As you can likely tell by the title to this post, it is Tactlessly Correct essay time. The subject of today's conversation is profanity and the misperception that camouflaging profanity allows us to discuss it in a non-profane manner.
Take the title for example. When you read it you did not interpret it as F!Bomb you, you fcuking f*ck!. You interpreted it as Fuck you, you fucking fuck! That is of course what my intent was. So what did I accomplish by obscuring the actual words? Well, I made it a bit clunky for the reader. It adds another level of forced interpretation so it takes a short bit longer to read. If the reader is not familiar with F!Bomb then I've added a confusing element where the message will not be understood until yet another level of interpretation is completed.
Look, language is all about interpretation. If i say F-word what I mean is fuck and what you understand is fuck so why would I say F-word at all? Because it's more polite? Whatever we're discussing it has something to do with fucking so it's not going to be targetted towards delicate sensibilities, right?
Dopple-G loves MUD games. That's Multi-User-Dungeon, like the famed Everquest and others. You buy the game and then buy time on their servers to play at the same time thousands of other people are playing. They're not called MUDs any longer but I don't know what the current term is. They aren't my cup of tea.
Anyway, Dopple-G is all excited over an upcoming MUD game called City of Heroes. You get to make up and play a super hero. What could be cooler than that? Who hasn't dreampt of having a superpower? Hell, in my imagination I've had dozens of them. Still, I'm not into the playing nicely with others gaming concept so I doubt I'll play City of Heroes.
Besides, I doubt they have the superpower that I'd want.
POINTS: 3 points to the first person who can name the hero who yelled out the title to this post. No searching, y'all!
...I had this wierd drunken rambling incoherent thought. It rattled around in my skull for the better part of a couplefew hours without getting much farther than the initial concept stage. Basically, it's this: Political Correctness sucks.
Yeah, that's about as far as I got. Join with me as I mentally expound without actually organizing my thoughts prior to writing them down (this should be interesting or horrific, not sure which).
Political correctness sucks. Big time. I mean, I got ragged on the other day for saying "Oriental". You can't say "Oriental", you have to say "Asian" now. Well, I didn't mean "from Asia" I meant "from the Orient", therefore I used "Oriental" which was a perfect description for what I was talking about. Doesn't matter. You have to use "Asian" because persons of Oriental origin might be offended if you use the word "Oriental". So does that mean I should go shopping for "Asian" rugs now? No, apparently it's still okay to call rugs "Oriental". So now how do we call a person who is of formerly known as Oriental heritage so as not to confuse said person with somebody of Russian or Indian heritage? Well, you just use "Asian" and then everybody knows that you really mean "Oriental".
It's been known for a long time that appeasement doesn't work. Kipling put it very eloquently a century ago.
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
窶弩e invaded you last night窶背e are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.窶
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you窶况e only to pay 窶册m the Dane-geld
And then you窶冤l get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
窶弋hough we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.窶
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we窶况e proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:
窶弩e never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!窶
Rudyard Kipling
(1865-1936)
(Hat tip to Dopple-G)
[Click to biggerize]
What's your job like? Mine is a whole lot like that picture above. I take tools (in my case they are computer programs) and use them in ways that the designers never contemplated having them used. Anything that I can do is fair game. The designer never intended me to use my forklift to pick up another forklift that was picking up industrial tanks and lifting them way, wayway higher than allowed in any of the specs? Well, if the designer doesn't prevent me from doing that I'm going to do it 'cause you can be sure as hell that eventually a user is going to try to do it (the proof is in the picture).
Of course there is one big difference between how I abuse product and the way it's being done in that picture. They're stretching the limits in an attempt to get something constructive and necessary done. If it was me doing QA testing I'd be rocking that thing back and forth until something broke or crashed.
The moral of the story: I love my job.
Another moral of the story: It's probably a good thing that I work in software and not at a forklift manufacturer.
Lovely Wife went out with her galpal last night to get nails done and do some kbitzing. That gave me just enough time for an abbreviated Guy's Movie Night. I decided to watch Underworld. I'd heard mixed reviews on it but since Susie recommended it I knew it had to be good (five points for Susie, by the way).
As far as vampire movies go it wasn't very good. As far as werewolf movies go it wasn't very good. As far as action movies go it was awesome. The vampire/werewolf thing was really just used as a story device and to add flavor and I thought it did really well as such. The action was excellent with lots of nifty Matrix-like effects.
I was really sad that Spain elected a communist socialist government. I mean, hasn't the failure of the socialist system been more than amply proven? Seriously, name a socialist country that isn't bankrupt or rife with monetary problems.
Perhaps more apropos to America's interests, it also means that Spain will be pulling out from the Coalition of the Willing unless we turn over control of Iraq to the UN. As that's remarkably akin to turning over a gas pump to a pyromaniac I seriously doubt that Dubya is going to go that route.
Spain pulling out of the only organized anti-terrorist coalition in the world really struck me as bad. I mean, the terrorists are definitely going to be looking at this as a win. They blew up some trains, murdered a whole bunch of people and scared the Spaniards enough that they elected the Appeasement Party. Al Qaeda and the rest of those scum are going to look at this as proof that their terror tactics work.
The 2004 Peacock Invitational is now in progress. Our contestants are:
The five of us are now on our honor to not smoke until March 15 of 2005. That's no smoking, period. No taking a single puff off of a buddy's cig. No pipe or stogie in the champagne room. No chaw or other sneaky ways to get nicotine either*.
The penalty if anybody fails is to pay each of the other betters $25 each. That means that for all of us the next cigarette we smoke in the next year would cost us $100. If that's not an incentive not to suck on a butt then I don't know what is.
Good luck my compatriots. I sincerely hope I don't see a dime from any of you.
* Exceptions are valid quit-smoking aids like Nicorette Gum or the Patch.
As mentioned previously tonight was Guy's Movie Night. The festivities began with Die Unendliche Geschichte, more commonly known as "The Neverending Story" (and just what the hell is up with IMDB putting up a title like that as the primary one? Sheesh!). The boys loved it (the two older ones that is, the little guy didn't make it to movie time) and I appear to have been spared from anybody screaming over scary wolf nightmares (knock on wood). Helen gets the points for this one. She didn't just recommend it, she bought it for us. Helen, you're awesome beyond words' poor description.
Once the lads were abed the grownup fare came out. I watched Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. I'd been putting this one off for a long, long time. You see, Terminator is one of my all time favorite absolutely most loved and cherished movies in the universe. Terminator 2 is quite likely the first sequel I've ever seen that didn't totally piss me the fuck off. On the contrary, it rocked as much as the first one (although in a different way). So I've been terrified of watching #3. I mean, Cameron wasn't even involved in this one! What if it totally sucked? Or didn't totally suck but went all eXtreme and shit and pissed me off in those more subtle suckass ways? Well, it didn't. It wasn't the movie that 1 or 2 were but it wasn't that far behind and it most definitely didn't tarnish its predecessors. Once I started to relax (when I acknowledged that it wasn't sucking ass) I really started to enjoy it. Very excellent ending, too! So long as they keep Jerry Bruckheimer very very far away from it, I'll watch #4 too (you just know that there's going to be a #4 after an ending like that). Points for this recommendation go to Christine.
Honorable mention go to Underworld and Intolerable Cruelty (Susie and MojoMark, respectively). Those were my next choices and will probably fill my slate on the next Guy's Movie Night.
Lovely Wife will be going on hens' night this Saturday, leaving me all alone and at the mercy of the three spawn boys. This is cool for a couple of reasons.
First, she gets out and away from the kids to bleed off some of that accumulated kid rearin' pressure. Sure our kids are an unbearable trial great but she's got at least one of them 24 x 7 except for the rare occasions when she runs out to the store when I'm home. This lets her relax so the chance that she'll snap and just de-skin one of the buggers is dramatically reduced.
Second, she comes back with cool stories. Like the older lady that was trying to pick up The Godfather (part 1) when he was visiting from The Netherlands. Or the time she got touched by Bill Gentry (while she was wearing her galpal's shirt so she can't possibly give that shirt back now). Or even the infamous Purple Velvet Cowboy. Yes, an actual human type person went to a night club in a metropolitan area dressed in a purple velvet cowboy outfit. You just can't get stuff like this from a night at home.
Third, and most importantly, I get to watch movies. Don't get me wrong, we do watch movies together as well. It's just that those movies are ones that only she likes we both like. Ones from the Lifetime Network or Oxygen or The Oprah Channel or like The Usual Suspects or From Dusk Til Dawn. Pretty much anything that makes a temporary vagina grow on male viewers or ones that are mob, true crime or vampire related but not a lot else. Specifically, no sci-fi or fantasy or general horror.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to suggest movies for me to watch this Saturday evening. They should be very good ones that are available now on DVD and for the love of GOD, no chick flicks. They don't have to be recent ones - I sure haven't seen everything.
POINTS: Why the heck not? Five points if I end up watching the movie you suggest. Points awarded to the first suggester only.
We're getting close. The 2004 Peacock Invitational starts this Sunday night (at midnight). We've got 5 people who are willing to pony up $100 if they smoke at any time for the year of the bet. Care to join us?
I started a bit early, having had my last smoke on Feb 27. That puts my quittin' stats at: One week, five days, 22 hours and 5 minutes. 258 cigarettes not smoked, saving $40.70. Life saved: 21 hours, 30 minutes. (Stats courtesy of this nifty little proggie I heard about from Tiger.)
Most arcade game manufacturers go for racing, fighting or some sort of shooting galery concept. As far as I know the repeatedly ram a giant plastic finger into a virtual rectum milieu is virgin territory. Or it was until recently anyway.
The Boon-Ga Boon-Ga game allows the intrepid player to sodomize one of eight characters including ex-girlfriend, mother-in-law, prostitute and child molester. As you spank and invade the nether regions of your selected victim they scream in agony on the game screen. At the end of your session you get a card that gives you your sexual proficiency rating.
Although the game might seem a bit gratuitously violent (and otherwise disturbing) at least it is promoted by big soft cuddly characters. One is a giant version of the probing fist of doom and the other is a six foot tall shit monster.
I don't have anything else for this one. It's well beyond any satirical skills I may have previously possessed. I'm pretty much just stunned and running on at this point. Let me leave you with a portion of the game review from SeanBaby:
This game does more than threaten the future with an army of highly trained madmen proctologists, it shames America's industrial complex. First we lose the space race to the Commies, and now Japan and Korea have beaten us in the great Virtual Digital Rectal Stimulation Simulation race. And if you're anything like me, you've already asked yourself about the dangers of this ass technology being in the hands of two foreign powers known for giant radioactive monsters and nuclear weapons, respectively. And again, if you're like me, this train of thought quickly hits a wall when you realize that you're not an accredited expert on foreign colon-probing policies. So until one of us is, let's just assume that we're all going to die, but not quite as quickly if we stay far away from Boong-Ga Boong-Ga.
Amen, brother.
(Hat tip to Dopple-G, may he burn eternally for exposing me to this)
A powered dish scrubber? I couldn't believe my eyes when i saw a commercial for this one. It's a powered screwdriver with a scrubber at the end! The commercial showed the happy housewife getting a bunch of fresh food residue off of otherwise squeeky clean plates, just like any other dishwashing commercial. The difference was she did it with this extrememly slowly rotating two and a half pound appliance.
There is no poor-man's dremel that is going to make dishwashing fun and easy and this seven dollar toy isn't going to do anything that some hot water and a sponge can't do faster and better.
It's a shame that Wal-Mart is going to sell a bajillion of these things and encourage some other dumbass to give birth to the next useless helper appliance.
I've got this love/hate thing with cats. Some are ultra cool. The cats living in my house are this type. Henk is a sexy black beast who thinks he's a dog. He comes when you call, wants to play and be petted constantly and gets along well with the canines in the house. Apple is a fat lazy thing and the only doglike quality she has is that she's a bitch. In other words, she's more of your typical cat. She's still cool though since she likes me and comes out specifically for a Jim petting when the mood strikes her.
I've lived with cats that I thoroughly hated as well. When I was in high school my sister had an evil black monster named Misty (which was also the name of one of my cousins and boy did I get a couple laughs out of that). She hated men. No matter how nice my dad and I tried to be with that cat it would hiss and run away and get its fur in a bunch just like those Halloween stereotype cats. I still kept making the overtures until one day when I got home from school and noticed a nasty smell in my bedroom. Specifically from my dresser. Because that spawn from hell had pissed on my clothes. It was open warfare after that and I took extreme glee in waging a guerilla campaign against that beast that made the last years of its life a frightening glimpse into the hell in which it would spend eternity.
So what has got me thinking about evil cats all of a sudden? The feral beasties that live around my house. I am sick of finding dead bird pieces in my yard. I'm sick of cat prints on my car. I am sick of cats shitting where my kids play. I have had enough of these half wild, half starved, vile, disease carrying felines. I am declaring war.
I am buying a pellet gun and any time I see any of the 8 or 9 miscreants anywhere near my property I am going to shoot the fucker. I'm going to shoot it as many times as I can before it gets out of my range. I'm going to teach Lovely Wife how to fire the gun so she can defend the castle when I'm at work.
And if that doesn't do the trick I'm going to escalate the conflict and get a paint ball gun. I'll put out cat traps. I'll go Carl Freakin' Spackler on their asses!
This is your notice, cats. I'm coming for you and there's not a damn thing your friends at PETA or in France can do about it.
POINTS: 2 points for the first person to source Carl Spackler. No searches, y'all.
Caption contest!
(Stolen from Speedscape)
RESULTS:
This was a riot. 17 contestants and a load of decent belly laughs among the submissions. Thanks for participating and congrats to the winners!
1st place (10 points)
Senator Kerry is told Howard Dean is re-entering the race. - Simon
2nd place (5 points)
GOTTA GO, GOTTA GO, GOTTA GO RIGHT NOW! - Tiffani
3rd place (2 points)
The power of GEE-ZUS commands you! - Susie
Honorable Mention (no points but a cheery hi-oh and a good day chap!)
The circle of life ended when Kerry dropped the baby lion. - tommy
Allegations of John Kerry's french-ness were proven today with this shot of the girlie-man attempting to catch an American football. - Clancy
POINTS: Hell, yeah. One point goes into the pool for each person who submits a caption and they'll be distributed 60/30/10 to the top 3 captioners. (So if 10 people submitted, the #1 caption would get 6 points, the #2 would get 3 and the #3 would get 1.)
Enter as many captions as you'd like.
I read The Littlest Angel Box early this morning. It's about the box of things that Helen sent ahead of her move so they'll be waiting for her when she gets there. Things too important and special to travel with furniture or clothing or common goods. The little mementos and important minutiae of life that you just can't lose. I read that and thought "Neat, I'll leave a comment with the stuff I'd put in that box". And I have been trying to "fill" my box all damned day but it's still almost entirely empty. And that really confuses me. I've got nothing so important to me that I would go to extra steps to guarantee its safety.
There is one exception, the sole item I've "got in my box" right now. That's Bruff. He's a bear. He's in his own box right now, safe and secure and ready to go anywhere at a moment's notice. He hasn't been out of his box in daylight since we had kids. He's way too cute and way too delicate to take any chance that they'll want to touch him.
I remember when I first got Bruff. I wasn't a stuffed animal sort of kid. I had a couple but never played with them (except when using them as targets). One Christmas I was about half way through the presents (we started with the little stuff and worked our way to the big presents) and I opened Bruff. He was a golden brown bear with a very handsome face, a green shirt and a nametag that said (you can guess this, can't you?) "Bruff". I was intrigued. Why would a bear be named Bruff? I didn't know any Bruffs. There weren't any Bruff Bears in any of the cartoons or shows or corporate tie-ins. Bears didn't have name tags. Did they?
Bruff did. He wasn't afraid to buck the system. He had a name and he wanted the world to know it. So what if bears didn't wear nametags? He didn't care. He was Bruff and he did what he wanted to. It was love at first sight (well, after I figured out that little bit I just explained).
Bruff has been though a lot. He lost an arm once. Surgeon Mom fixed that but the skin graft is very noticeable. He lost an eye once and Optrician Mom removed his other natural eye and gave him two brand new very cool button eyes (from the big can of Grandma's buttons). His fur is a bit less than spectacular. That's probably because he spent a lot of time wrestling and playing Karate Joe (that's what you play when you want to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but all you've got is that foot tall GI Joe. And a bear named Bruff). He also caught a good bit of vomit and other nastiness over the years, seeing as he always insisted on staying with me when I was sick.
And his reward for those years of selfless companionship? What does he get now in exchange for the countless hours spent as my foil, boon companion, mascot and assistant? He gets stuck in a box.
That's not quite all he gets, though. He also gets the knowledge that no matter where I go or why I go there, that box will be coming with me.
Why is it that we have to rename land-bound animals when we eat them? You don't eat a cow, you eat beef. You don't eat a pig, you have pork. Sheep become mutton when we eat 'em. Tortured baby cow? Not when it's on the plate - then it's veal.
This doesn't happen for birds. Chicken are chicken no matter if they are on the plate or in the coop. Same with turkeys, duck, geese, and the rest of them. Fish too - perch stay perch and a humuhumunukunukuapua`a stays a humuhumunukunukuapua`a. We don't suddenly call shark flesh by some new moniker just before we eat it.
Now that I think about it though, it's not every land animal. Bedouins eat camel, Argentinians enjoy llama and the tribes of the steppes never ever let horse go to waste. It's only the traditional western feedstocks that get renamed when they become food. Why is that?
It's been a while but the board monkeys have once again put up a winning loser on the message center as you come into the office. This gem now greets everybody who comes into the building:
Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.
Okay, let's look at this from the position of a customer. Do I want to have a business relationship with a company with a philosophy of "take risks"? Hell no. I want a company with a saying like "Grab the low hanging fruit first". That shows efficiency and a direction towards taking in profits. It's saying "collect that easy money before you waste effort on stuff you don't have the reach for yet". It's also saying "take care of the customers you have now".
And what does this bad saying tell us employees? It's telling us to take chances, take risks, drive for the objective regardless of the consequences. "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" If it were my company I'd prefer a message like "If you can't reach the fruit, get yourself a ladder". Or maybe "What the hell are you doing picking fruit by hand? Get your ass into that harvester!"
I don't mind pithy sayings, I just can't stand idiotic ones.
A Stink-O-Meter(tm) would be nice.
The basic model would just be installed on the bathroom door and indicate the relative stench in the bathroom by flashing a color code similar to the terrorism alert color chart thingy the government uses. Nah, better keep it simpler than that. Green is safe, yellow is use at your own risk and red is extreme danger - avoid at all costs, voluntary entry voids life insurance.
The advanced model would prevent the door opening from the outside during red states to prevent accidental entry and to protect the visually impaired.
A deluxe model would tie into your wireless network so you could evaluate stank levels from your desk and arrange alternate waste disposal methods if necessary.
Yes, there is a specific event that brought this thought process to fruition today. No, I am not ready to talk about it.
The Grande 2004 Peacock Invitational (update)
Want to know what it is? The original post is o'er yonder. In a nutshell, March 14 is the last day any of the participants will take a puff for an entire year or they'll pay blood money to the others.
Folks can still get in on the bet until midnight (your local time) on the 14th. So far we've got 5 people in:
I've also put up a sidebar item for the bet. This will remain up for the entire year that the bet is in effect. I've also handed out the points these folks earned by signing up. I've been a busy boy!
I got my feathers ruffled a bit yesterday. Wellbutrin can only go so far and some things that normally wouldn't bother me much now bother me out of all proportion.
The first was Dopple-G doing something that's normally just annoying. I yelled at him. At work. In the bathroom. Not exactly professional.
The second was in the van on the way home from voting. Bear was doing a repetitive mantra "Will you give me your autograph?" over and over and over and over and over. No, he wasn't looking for an answer and no he wasn't actually addressing anybody. Kids will just do this with new phrases. Normally it just gets ignored. This time I snapped and yelled at him.
It's definitely a successful (so far) and (relatively) event free withdrawal. I'll just have to do a better job regulating my snappy tongue.
POINTS: 2 points for the first person to name my source for the title of this post. No searching please.
Thanks to the Welbutrin there wasn't any shaking or unbearable fits. Lots of lung cookies as the ol' breath bags tried to clean themselves out.
I did have some moody periods this morning. Until the mail came. With the awsomest and unexpectedest spirit lifter ever! Helen, you rock my world. Thank you from all the clan. That's a pretty prodigous thank you, you know. Seeing as there are five of us and all. :)
To the winch, wench!
I'm a quitter. A lowsy quitter, granted, but a quitter nonetheless. Kate's a quitter and so is Kelley. I quit for almost a year and a half back 'round '96 and Lovely Wife and I quit together for better than half a year in '01. I've tried quitting solo quite a few times over the past 16 years, never with any real success. Lovely Wife and I have also tried quitting together a few other times, also without success.
This time it's going to work. See, I'm quitting again. Lovely Wife already did and has been nicofree since Monday. In support of her courageous effort I've refrained from smoking around her or even bringing the deadly tempting cancer sticks into our domicile. This weekend will be the first days of my quitting for real since I'd be an absolute idiot if I started up again on Monday after going without for the entire weekend, returning only to this crazy half-smoker state where I get a mini withdrawal each and every day.
So I'm looking for support. Not moral support, financial support. Here's the thing - the absolute best I ever did was that year plus stretch. It was a year plus because I quit with my Dad, Brother-in-law and Brother-in-law's brother-in-law and we had a bet. Anybody who smoked again, even a puff, for the next year had to pay each of the others $25. The thought that my next cigarette was going to cost me $75 was instrumental to fighting down the urges when they hit. (Incidentally, Bro-in-law and I made it. Dad didn't make it and paid us our blood money. Bro-in-law's bro-in-law was a jackass and renegged on the bet.) So I'm going to go back to what worked and inviting y'all to come along.
No, that wasn't the setup for a joke. An aquaintance needs a very good lawyer in the Augusta and/or Atlanta area. The issue involves a student and a school and said school's policy that improperly forced said student into a youth detention center. Any help/leads would be appreciated.
I had got a problem that very few people know about. It was a habit that sometimes affected my life. It was soemthing I wasn't emotionally committed to but just couldn't stay away from. It was not an addiction! I am a mature person in total control of myself. I'm no addict. Anal retentives don't get addictions, we get compulsions. Well, maybe you could call it a need but only occasionally. Definitely not an addiction!
It's not like it filled my entire day or something. It was just one in the morning, maybe another at work, one or two at night. Maybe some practice while I was having a cigarette or on the crapper. You know, when I wasn't otherwise engaged anyway. It's just something I used to keep my mind occupied when I was bored. Well, okay, sometimes I got a bit lost when I was doing it and didn't realize that Lovely Wife was talking to me. And maybe once or twice I didn't hear a kid screaming while I was doing it. Does it really matter that I zoned a bit when I was concentrating? Isn't that the mark of a committed mind?
And so what if I did it a lot? I'm good at it so why shouldn't I have? I don't think anybody ever went up to Jordan and said "You know, Mike...you're playing an awful lot of basketball. Maybe you should give that a bit of a break and try something else for a while". Damn straight they didn't.
Well it's a gorgeous day here. We're pushing 60 degrees with a very nice breeze so I'm taking the rest of the day off and going to the park to fly kites with the boys.
Cross your fingers and maybe Ilyka will show up to entertain y'all in my absence. ;)
By the way - Munuviana will be moving to its new high powered home this tomorrow evening. The site won't look any different but there won't be any posting or commenting for the duration of the transit. Maybe 4 hours or so.
I haven't really written about this issue for a couple of reasons. First, unless I somehow catch homosexuality from one of my gay friends it isn't likely to ever be an issue for me. Second, it's one of those issues where nothing that anybody says is really going to change anybody's mind one way or another. People have decided their position either emotionally or logically. There's nothing changing in the debate to affect a logical decision and you aren't going to change somebody's emotions via your arguments.
So why am I piping up now? Because I've heard "to preserve the sanctity of marriage" one time too many. Every time I've heard this particular argument I've cringed a little bit at the hypocrisy of the statement. I've run out of cringe room. (Plus the retort finally came to me earlier today at Trey's place.)
The people who are arguing for amendments defining marriage as being a union between one man and one woman do not care one whit about the sanctity of marriage. The people fighting for laws defining marriage as being a union between one man and one woman do not give a damn about the sanctity of marriage. The people who are fighting against any and all legislation that would make homosexual marriage legal couldn't give two shits for the sanctity of marriage.
Want to know how I know this? It's because if they actually gave even the slightest weight to preserving the sanctity of marriage they would be fighting for amendments, laws and legislation to bolster marriage instead of this hypocritical hogwash they are involved in.
Want to preserve the sanctity of marriage? It's easy. Make that "til death do us part" portion for real. Make the marriage contract an actual contract. Make marriage a rare and precious thing instead of the "discard after use" recyclable it has become.
Imagine if marriage was permanent. First off there would be a hell of a lot less of them. People wouldn't be getting married for idiotic reasons any more. Britney would have stayed single. Rock stars and celebrities wouldn't count their spouses with sillhouettes on their car doors. People would be forced to actually deal with their partner and make things work. No quick outs.
So if you care about the sanctity of marriage stop putting your efforts into keeping people apart and start putting it where it should be: keeping marriages together.
I've never been a flosser. It could be because I come from a family of non-flossers or maybe it's because my teeth are fairly tight and when I tried flossing way back when it was too uncomfortable. Maybe the seeping blood from your gums if you misjudge and hit them with the razor wire floss just turned me off. Whatever the reason I've just never been one to floss. I made up for it by being a militant tooth brusher. Once as soon as I wake up, once before leaving for work, once when getting home from work, once before bed. I used to also brush at work after lunch. I'll still add another brushing in there as needed if my mouth feels nasty.
Bear and Bacon recently had dental hygienists into their school to teach the kids how important tooth care was and to give the basics on brushing and flossing. Now anybody with kids will know what that means. They learned something in school that we didn't do at home. This became the absolute most important thing in the world to them. If they didn't floss then all of their teeth were going to fall out! They'd be overrun by plaque! Their breath would stink so bad that they could conceivably kill the birds with the poisonous gasses issuing from their orifices. (Personally I think that this was a bit over the top. If the birds could live through years of babies with crap pants I doubt they'd kick the bucket from nasty breath. Anyway...)
So Lovely Wife found these neat pre-loaded floss doohickeys. No fumbling around with the wax string and shoving fingers into mouths. Oh, no. Not with these sexy dental beauties. They are slick, easy to use and very efficient. So I tried 'em out.
My teeth are still very tight and it was hard to work the string on down between them. I still misjudged a couple times and was rewarded with crimson spit as my gums protested being sliced by the razor wire floss. And my efforts were rewarded as I dislodged some unidentifiable thing that smelled vaguely like raw sewage. I gagged. Seriously. I fought down the urge to puke. I then realized that I had just found evidence that there was something rotting inside my mouth. I fought down the urge to puke again.
I am now a militant flosser in addition to being a militant brusher.
I was cleaning up some old emails this morning when I ran across a gem of a conversation between Ilyka and myself. It was from the time when she was hosting the Bestofme Symphony and suffering the deluge of spam that goes with temporary stewardship of the public submission address. As this email was right next to one from Nguzo Makagbo I took it as a sign that this must be shared with the world at large.
Ilyka: I've received one other submission, so the forward's working okay.Oh, and spam. Definitely have received some spam. Want to go into business with a Ghana national who only needs your bank account # in which to transfer the secret-secret proceeds from his father's failed kingdom?
Jim: Sorry about the spam. One of the drawbacks of a publicly posted email address. At least you can be comforted that the spam stream will be flooding someone else next week.
PS - Never reply to the emails from Ghana, they're all a bunch of thugs and liars. The Nigerian classic is the way to go.
Ilyka: I don't know why you have to be hatin' on Ghana like that. They didn't invent the spam; they just perfected it! And Mr. Nagodobo assured me that he is a well-bred gentleman of royal descent. He gave me his WORD.
Jim: Mr. Nagodobo? I don't know if I'd trust him. I had a message from Doctor Ndroge's widow and she told me all about how her good husband the doctor had loyally served the insurgent government while acquiring a fortune of several million US dollars only to be slain in a royalist uprising. She had to be telling the truth BECAUSE IT WAS ALL CAPITALIZED. The poor thing needs my help badly as both the good doctor's former employers as well as the royalists want her inheritance.
Beware Nagodobo. He's probably just using you to find Ndroge's hidden funds.
Ilyka: Oh--you know I can't top "She had to be telling the truth BECAUSE IT WAS ALL CAPITALIZED." I'm out.
Jim: Sorry I had to GO CAPS on you, but you know what they say - a weapon unused is a useless weapon.
The morals of the story? Stick to the Nigerian scam - the original and still world leader in online scams.
And don't mess around with Jim. ;)
Because it has the Bold hint of guacamole! The bold hint of guacamole? Yes, that's right. The commercial talks about the bold hint of guacamole.
Let's get a couple things straight. First, there is no such thing as a bold hint, okay? It's an oxymoron like "government efficiency", "PETA cares" or "French courage". Either it's bold or it's a hint but never the twain shall meet. Secondly, guacamole cannot be bold. It's a squashed avacado. Avacados are nature's milquetoasts. Finding bold guacamole is about as possible as finding a rational fundamentalist.
Those of you who read yesterday's post on my hosting problems may have noted that we were taking the boys to the dentist. I took off a half day of work for it. I invested 4 hours of my precious time off to take my kids to the dentist. I figured that three kids, all at the same time, all of them dental virgins...there's going to be some seriously good material here! Who wouldn't take off from work to gather amazing writing fodder like what was guaranteed to be generated in a situation like that?
I was so freaking robbed. The kids behaved the entire time. The staff was great. The place was great. No screaming. No tantrums. No whining. No. Freaking. Anything. No material whatsoever.
Well, I could maybe bitch a bit about the mounds of paperwork but that'll just make me a whiner. I mean you've got two ways to go with paperwork bitching: tragic and humorous. Tragic doesn't work here because every one of you have done idiotic paperwork so you're not going to feel a bit of sympathy for me. Humorous doesn't work either - what's funny about a pile of tedious paperwork? That's like trying to make being smothered by a pillow into a funny anecdote. Just doesn't work.
So I've got nuthin' for you. I had planned on having some fantastic humorous or touching material for y'all to read today but we were stiffed. Despite sacrificing an entire half of a work day to the cause we've got a net zero. Why did my kids have to pick this of all days to behave? Why, God? Why?
I swear, next time I'll amp them up on coffee and candy bars before we take them in. I won't let you down again.
PETA, through one of its sham front organizations, is getting the message out to just say NO to mad cow beef. PETA wants us to avoid eating beef, totally concerned over our health and the dangers of mad cow disease, right? But we really, really, really like to eat meat. Is this an impasse?
Heck no! I'm always trying to help folks out and I think I have the perfect solution here. Any time you were going to eat beef, substitute veal instead. See, it takes quite a few years for mad cow disease to manifest to a communicable state. If we kill the cows when they're babies we'll be safe, just like PETA wants!
Just say NO to those 100% USDA all beef burgers. Go for veal burgers instead! Meatloaf is a no-no. Cook up some wholesome and satisfying vealloaf! Beefsteak, no. Vealsteak, yeah!
There are some great side benefits to removing beef from our lives and going for veal instead. All those cows don't have to spend agonizing years in miserable captivity (PETA's very sad about this). They'll only spend a fraction of the time that they are now since they'll be slaughtered for veal while quite young. With the demand for beef going down and the demand for veal going up the price of beef will rise (this will make PETA happy) and the price for veal will decline (this will make us safety concious diners happy).
Everybody wins if we switch from beef to veal. We're safe from the dangers of mad cow disease and PETA doesn't have all of those grown cows to fret over! Support the cause, eat a vealburger today!
(Hat tip to Michele)
The other night things got a bit frisky at home and Lovely Wife and I got a bit happy with the old digital camera. Hey, it's a free country, it was the privacy of our own home and the kids were all asleep. While reviewing the resulting incriminating evidence it became apparent that we had a difference of opinion. I thought that they were very beautiful and considered them artistic photos. Lovely Wife thought they were basically porn and that I better not even think of posting them.
Since I'm naturally contrary and I've got a good 8 hours or so before she can physically harm me I've decided to post a select couple of pics. I'm not trying to showcase the Peacock Family nudity here, I'm genuinely interested in whether you think these are artistic or pornographic.
If a female spreads her legs is it automatically porn? View image
If it's tastefully done can a penis be artistic? View image
Let me know what you think.
A lamb!
Which begs the question, what do you stuff a lamb with? Chickens, obviously.
Does the recipe for stuffed camel put you in mind of The old lady who swallowed a fly?
(Hat tip to Dopple-G)
From Zero Tolerance for Violence in Schools blogged at Zero Intelligence.
And just last Friday, Janae Thorpe claims she was trying to break up a fight between her sister Ashley and another student at Groves High School when Janae was stabbed in the eye with a pen. All three girls were suspended and are also awaiting an expulsion hearing. "I didn't do anything," said Janae, who feels the school's policy is "stupid."
If Michele gets that laptop so she can cover the Republican convention in NYC I am so going to buy this T-shirt for her.
This is not a political blog for one basic reason. Politics (and specifically politicians) generally disgust me. I do my duty and keep informed. I vote. I'll discuss particular items with interested parties. I'll joke and make fun of them. What I don't do is get involved in battling against the retards and asshats that get off on the partisan bullshit screeds that so pervade the blogoshpere and the Internet at large. I'm making an exception.
Sue is an AOL user and died* in the wool Kucinich vigilante who befouled my comments with a 500 word rant ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS!WITHOUT SPACES BETWEEN THE SENTENCES!AND ENDING EVERY SINGLE STATEMENT WITH AN EXCLAMATION POINT!IT WAS, ODDLY ENOUGH, IN A REGULAR WEIGHTED FONT!MOST LIKELY BECAUSE SHE IS NOT INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO USE THE [BOLD] TAG!
MY FIRST INCLINATION (oops, let's take that "caps" button off) was to just blacklist this mentally deficient character and be done with it but I decided to draw swords instead for a couple of reasons:
- Although she's a retard it's quite possible that she is an honestly misguided retard. Too long under the aluminum foil and anybody could be convinced to put the Kucinich gun deep into their oral cavity.
- I'm pretty strongly against censorship. This was pretty obviously a cut and paste screed so I wouldn't really feel bad about deleting it but there's still the principle of the thing. I was offended by the comment but I certainly wasn't harmed. It was also a reply to a post where I critized Kucinich for his heartless assault against our GIs so it was at least correctly placed.
- I think that it's important that people who pretend to be a "Sue" be exposed for the idiots that they are, when they make it oh so apparent exactly what idiots they are. I know a bunch of "Sue" types and all of them are bright and lucid. It's painfully honest that whatever this freak is, she isn't a genuine "Sue". If I let this go unpunished I would be doing a disservice to the "Sue"s that are being impersonated.
- How can I pass up the opportunity to pour out buckets of backloaded vitriol on such a worthy target?
Disclaimer: My political beliefs center around the concept of an elected official performing their job well and doing so within the bounds of the constraints laid upon them. For the President these constraints include little things like the Constitution, the Legislative Branch and the Judicial Branch. As Kucinich has openly stated he has no intention whatsoever of giving even lip service to those three (and others) I have classified him and anybody who supports him as a nuckfut. If you are a Kucinich supporter then you are a nuckfut. Yes, really honest and for true. Therefore, nuckfuts will quite likely be highly offended by reading the contents of the extended entry. I guess it's quite possible that they've already been offended by my words above as well as from being called out as the nuckfuts they are and I should probably have put this disclaimer way up at the top of the post for it to be the most effective. But that's okay - like I really care about offending a bunch of nuckfuts.
The Real Disclaimer: This is a long fisking. I was pissed when I wrote it. Seriously pissed. Over several days. It is not a jocular taking to task of a misguided commenter, it is a furious diatribe against a target of opportunity that has provided me with an outlet to unload months of accumulated pissedoffedness. I did not open a can of whoop-ass here, I tapped a keg. If you love Snooze Button Dreams for my lighthearted quirky humor, anecdotes of life & family and the occasional kooky jack-ass maneuver recorded for posterity then this is seriously not the entry for you. You've been warned.
With that said, let us continue to the extended entry where I fisk this jackass's screed.
Apparently I'm a shoe in for Bush, which is pretty much what I figured already. Some of the other results were surprising though.
Bush: 100%
Leiberman: 93%
Edwards: 86%
Not unexpectedly, Kucinich was number last.
Find your perfect match.
I guess I've been around a bit. This map shows the states that I've actually lived in. It's supposed to be a "visited" map but that just turns most of it red for me. If you're curious about what states I've visited just figure every state that touches one of these and that'll be pretty close.
create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide
(Hat tip to Susie)
POINTS: 2 points for the first person to name the inspiration for this post title. No searching please, you naughty little monkeys.
UPDATE: Lovely Wife's visited states and visited countries are in the extended entry. Wow, she really gets around, doesn't she?
If you've been reading me a while you've probably figured out that one of the things that most irritates me in this world is intentional stupidity. Come to think of it, that might be the only thing that really irritates me. Anyway, the height of this stupidity in recent years has been the preponderence of zero tolerance policies. These are the rules made up by school systems out of fear or knee-jerk reaction that forcibly compel school administrators from using common sense or whatever intelligence they might normally posess.
Gone are the days of leniency for honest mistakes, compassion for lack of understanding and any concept of letting the punishment fit the crime. Taking an Advil at school is now the same as pushing crack. Leaving the tools from your lawn care side job in your locked trunk will get you arrested. Having the wrong pencil sharpener or wallet earns expulsion. This lunacy has got to stop.
To that end I have started a new website called Zero Intelligence that will collect stories of the harmful effects of these policies as well as showcase the abuses caused by them. We will explore the reasons that they are adopted and point out the errors that lead to these very poor solutions. Although there is a great amount of indignation about zero tolerance policies there doesn't seem to be any organized discussion or action against them. I hope that Zero Intelligence will provide this greatly needed forum.
I would like to send humongous mountains of thanks to Matt Drachenberg (of Overtaken by Events). Matt volunteered to help with the site before it was even set up and there is absolutely no way it would be ready for use now without him. He did all of the plug-in stuff and the widgets and doodads and made it all actually work. Matt is serving as the site admin to handle all of the boring and frustrating technical problems that will pop up while I get to relax and handle the human element. He'll also be contributing content of course.
Speaking of content, it's light at the moment as we're just starting out. You can help in this regard by sending tips, commenting on the posts, or even becoming a contributing poster.
- Puppy teeth are the second sharpest thing in the world, next only to samurai swords.
- Puppies like to take a nip at anything and everything that grabs their attention, especially mobile things that will fit nicely in their mouths.
- Puppy noses can open any door that is not firmly latched.
- Human flesh is at its most sensitive directly after a hot shower.
It was toes people. Toes. Get your minds out of the gutter.
The taxman is now my bitch. I've got my W-2 in hand and it's high time that the gubmint gave me my damn money back. Boo-ya!
Say that you've forgotten to turn off your email at work so it continues to pull your emails when you go home. It is set to poll for email every 20 minutes, starting at 5 after the hour. Your computer at home looks for email every 10 minutes for the same address, starting at the top of the hour. If there are 12 emails sent to you during the time both computers are pulling email, how many of these would you expect to find on the computer at work the next day?
Points: 2 points to the first person with the correct answer. No wild guesses, please - you have to explain your reasoning.
The laws of physics still limit the number of vehicles occupying the same space to one single unit so perhaps the next time you swing over a solid white line into the non turning lane without the benefit of a turning signal because heaven forbid you would want to warn other drivers of your impending lunacy and you couldn't be bothered to switch lanes a quarter of a mile back before your lane became the home of left turning commuters you might wish to take a quick peek to be sure there are no other vehicles occupying the location you desire so you can avoid the tires screaching quick brake then foot to the floor acceleration move to cut in front of said space occupying vehicle while flipping the bird manuever that you decided to use today.
Have a nice day,
Jim
PS - I fucked your sister. She's nowhere near as good as your mom, no matter how much your dad disagrees.
I've mentioned before how the message board as you enter the building sprouts the occassional inane quote. It's getting uncomfortably frequent. Here's what we have now:
The most important thing that you can wear is your expression.
This is just starting to ring too close to those insufferably smug motivation posters. The most important thing you can wear is your expression? Give me a break. I've never been asked to leave a bar because of my expression. My expression has never been the defining factor in losing a job. I've never been arrested because of my expression. I'll tell you what the most important thing you can wear is: pants. Trust me on this, m'kay?
The Burger (aka "Hamster", see the picture and you'll know why) is 2 years old today. Happy Birthday, short man!
Baby being Lovely Wife, of course. And puppy being...well...a puppy.
Lovely Wife loves dogs. And cats. And birds. And fish. And hamsters. And turtles. And just about any other pet type creature excepting ferrets. So what better gift could I give her than a puppy? Well, yes, a diamond ring would probably be a better gift but I can't get her the one I want at the moment so that's out. Okay, a new car would indeed be better but you're not thinking of the right class of gift here. Should I rephrase the question? Okay - What better gift could I give her than a puppy, said gift causing little to no strain upon my barren wallet? Nuthin', that's what. Glad you agree.
The household has grown by one. Info will come when I can put it out. Gotta go, the new baby is crying.
Yesterday my Lovely Wife, she of normally impeccable style and grace, perpetrated a horror upon my household. An unmitigated affront to all that is good and holy was brought into my castle, shattering the previous sanctity of the household. While at the dollar store
[break for diatribe on the dollar store]Isn't the dollar store the bomb? Damn! What a feeling to be able to go into an establishment with the certain knowledge that you can have anything, anything, that your eyes alight upon. Even the certain knowledge that the base concept of the dollar store is either to get people to pay money for landfill items or that it's a complicated plot by the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy to lull the working class into a dull statis of conformity and acceptance of our lot can affect the pure joy rush feeling of financial power that us po' folks get when we walk into such an establishment.
[/break]
she happened upon bags of M&M candies. These are the ultimate favorite universal candy of our household. Any trip to a store that has checkout aisles will elicit joyous and demanding cries of "MMMMSSSS! MMMMSSSS!" in three part harmony. Lovely Wife quite quickly took advantage of the presence of large M&M bags for a dollar and stuffed several in the shopping cart. Without. Looking. At. The. Bags.
Our mutt is in need of a doggy dentist. He's got some bad tartar build up as well as gingivitis. As a result, his gums are sensitive. He's come up with a solution to the hard dog chow problem until we take His Dogginess to the cleaners. He picks up the dry food and drops it in his water dish. He leaves it and comes back to it a while later when it is soft and mushy so it's easy to eat.
Is he overly clever or am I anthropomorphizing?
We lost another couple of people here. We have three software products, each with their own teams. The one that was affected was the very old static product that was purchased whole from Big Blue years back. They were re-organized to fall under Customer Service instead of Development and one full timer and one part timer (both tech support) got pink slips.
It really was a reorganization though, not a cost cutting manuever. I talked with the full time fellow and he said he's been expecting it for a while. It's an aged product that has not been able to replace customer attrition with new sales and there simply wasn't enough work to justify the number of support personnel. He's not overly concerned about the job loss either. This will give him the chance to join a professional bass tour. I work with unique individuals here.
We also had a company meeting where the Pres explained the changes, why they were made, and told us that this was the extent of organizational changes that are planned. He meant, of course, to tell us that no more positions are being cut but I wish he'd just come out and said that point blank. The way he couched it sounds like there are no more changes planned at all and I know of at least one position that is being added. I hope that doesn't come back to bite him with a loss of credibility.
Am I in danger? No. There's no realistic way that my position could be org'd out and I am a virtual wizard at my job so there are no performance reasons that I'd be sent off. What bothers me the most about the recent terminations is that I didn't know about them before they happened. You see, in my last job I knew about such things well in advance of them happening. I knew about them in the discussion phase and was a part of the decision process for some of them. In this job I'm totally out of the loop and that's a big change that didn't really come to my attention until now.
And I don't like it. I love surprises when they are of the gift wrapped variety but I do not like them at the company that I get my rent payments from. I guess I'm going to have to see about growing into a management position.
"Thee" being Howard Dean, of course. Don't worry, this blog is not in danger of becoming a political soap box. I just had a conversation with a Dean supporter that made me actually think of why I don't like him, both as a person and as a candidate for the presidency. Don't worry, it's a short list.
- I'm still pissed that he called me a gun lovin', fag hatin', racist, religious fanatic.
- I don't like the fact that he wants to triple my personal federal tax burden.
- He's a class-A hypocrite. I'm talking Hillary level.
- He's a socialist.
I could forgive any of these (especially the last one, since it's totally made up) except #2. Stay away from my money, you stinkin' blighter.
There's a message board as you come into the office. They'll put up things like "Welcome Company X" when we have visitors coming in or "Product Y Classes Are Being Held In The Training Room" and stuff like that. When there's nobody due to visit and no other message to be displayed they put up quotations. Some are good, some aren't. I have a problem with the one that is up right now:
The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.
Isn't this comparable to saying "Our product blows monkey chunks. We have a shit load to do before we can pass this crap off as worthwhile"?
We lost a vice president and the alarm and door lock codes have been changed. The alarm code changes when somebody who has it leaves the company. The door code changes when somebody is "evicted from service". This brings us to one of the company maxims here:
The door code is only changed when somebody is fired. If you get here in the morning and the door code doesn't work, it was you.
Anybody have an amusing company maxim to share?
...and rather difficult when firing on full auto.
A few weeks before the holidays I had the pleasure of going to one of the local gun ranges with Dopple-G and The Godfather. That's The Godfather of child #1, as opposed to the Godfather of child #2, who would be Dopple-G himself.
It was a blast. I haven't done a lot of weapon firing in my life. In fact I believe there were a total of 3 occurences before this trip to the range. The first was as a youngster, maybe 9 or 10, while down at Uncle Namesake's farm. One day everybody loaded up into the Suburban and went to the firing range. I had a fun time with the .22 rifle and then a very painful time with the .30-06 rifle (which I fired exactly once and nursed a sore shoulder for the next couple of days).
Well, I'm "protected" now. Lovely Wife went out last night and bought me a 12 pack of the little plasticine things. It's not that I didn't want to use them earlier, honest. It was more a question of price than anything else. I mean, you don't "need" them so it's really just wasted money, right? And why are they so bloody expensive anyway?
I put the first one on as soon as she got home last night. That was a bit wierd, let me tell you. Fortunately the fit wasn't off by as much as I'd feared. Almost a perfect fit, actually. They make these things in a bunch of sizes but Lovely Wife has a good eye and matched them up very well.
Hope you had a wonderful celebration and that your noggins are in one piece this morning.
Our household has been battling the plague flu since Christmas. On Sunday the boys and I spent a good chunk of our day passed out in the living room. I started feeling better on Monday and yesterday I actually felt pretty good. I figured I was over it and well on my way to my normal, healthy state.
Wrongo! This morning I woke up to find that somebody had snuck in while I slept and pumped about a gallon of mucous into my sinuses. Chewy mucous. That would have been bad enough but he also aparently used my head for a bass drum for a few hours and inserted a feather duster into my windpipe.
I got an email from a disgruntled reader (as opposed to my many gruntled readers) who accused me of being a homophobe and "perpetuating the stereotypes that homosexuals battle on a daily basis".
First point. Am I a homophobe? Absolutely not. I have no fear of homosexuals. I am extremely confident in my own heterosexuality so I don't have any problem with joking about that of others (or my own). It's not a reflection of fear, it's an attempt to make people laugh. And they do. Are they all homophobes?
The scene: Driving home with Dopple-G, listening to some Christmas carols on the radio.
Dopple-G: Who's singing this one?
Me: Tammy Wynette.
Dopple-G: Really?
Me: Sounds like her
A new singer takes the next verse. It's a dreaded multi-singer carol.
Dopple-G: I hate when they do that. A song should have one singer.
Me: Unless it's a chorus.
Dopple-G: Yeah, like the Vienna Boys Choir. They rock.
Me: Or if it's meant to be a duet.
Dopple-G: Like what?
Me: That medley one...Little Drummer Boy.
Dopple-G: Little Drummer Boy isn't a medley.
Me: You know the one I mean. With Bing Crosby and whats-his-name. That gay guy, Commander Tom.
Dopple-G: That gay guy, Commander Tom?
Me: David Bowie.
Dopple-G: I know, I just never heard him described as "that gay guy, Commander Tom".
Me: But you knew exactly who I was thinking of, didn't you?
Dopple-G: Harumph.
Let it be known far and wide that from this point forward David Bowie shall forevermore be known as "That gay guy, Commander Tom".
Holiday greetings go out to all of my regular readers. Heck, same for all of my readers who aren't regular. A bit of constipation is no reason to deny greetings now, is it? ;-)
It was pure unadulterated chaos here this morning but things have settled down a bit. For a couple more minutes until our shortest child (the evil one) wakes up from his nap anyway.
Here's hoping your Christmas is as happy as ours!
Robert at XSet won the auction for Tidings of Comfort and Joy. Robert has asked that I extend the holiday wishes and thanks to all of the people who participated in that auction and I am very happy to oblige him.
To Robert, Suebear, Clancy, Mog, R Stevens in Meriden CT, The Wizeke Family (Lara, John, Fido and Talum) in Princeton NJ, and those participants who I could not identify beyond their eBay handles (igorxa, argyle-, ccalzone, jchammons and katrus), I say thank you from myself and my family. You caught the spirit of my auction and responded well beyond my wildest dreams. I sincerely hope that you and yours will enjoy a beautiful holiday and wish you the very best of new years.
The proceeds from the auction have not yet been spent, though they do have a dedicated purpose. We had our own friends and family in for a holiday visit so did not have the opportunity to complete our holiday mission yet. The money from the auction will be used for ice skating by myself, my Lovely Wife and our three children. Here in the Atlanta area there are not a whole lot of opportunities for skating. There is a seasonal rink in downtown Duluth and the $42 will just about cover skate rental and rink fees for the five of us (with maybe enough left over for some hot cocoa). This is something that we would simply not be doing without this unexpected good fortune. You've given us a very wonderful gift - a celebration of family and fun with an experience that will be new and special for our children (and hopefully not too hard on the fannies of myself and Lovely Wife).
Once again, our sincerest thanks go out to you along with our wishes for a wonderful holiday and a spectacular new year.
And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them! And they were sore afraid ... And the angel said unto them, "Fear not! For, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all my people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord.""And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace, and good will toward men."
Lovely Wife is out with Dopple-G's wife and their friend from N'Orleans. I was sitting at the dining room table on the lap top (actually I'm doing it again right now!) working on a deliverable for tomorrow and the doorbell rang. I figured it was our next door neighbor and sauntered over to the door and opened it. It was not our next door neighbor.
It was a man. A man I've never seen before. On the tall side, good looking in that all-American quarterback slash valedictorian way. I opened the screen door to shake hands (it's a Southern thing) and said "Hi, what can I do for you?" He replied "I've got a special delivery here for the Peacock Family from a Secret Santa" with a huge and very friendly smile on his face.
Now my mind was in a tizzy at this point. First, when I'm in writing mode my brain tends to get into what I'm writing. Getting my brain functioning in the real world is not a "flick the switch back on" type of deal. Second, the doorbell never but never rings at night. Third, it's some guy who I've never seen at my doorstep. Fourth, there was a car that drove into our dead end street last night, parked across from my house (there are no houses on that side of the street), turned his lights off and sat there idling. After a few minutes he drove over to our side of the street, still with the lights off. Lovely Wife went inside citing the freakiness of the situation. I finished my smoke and started down the walk to see what was up. He drove off down the street with the lights still off.
So what glimmers are sparking in my mind at this moment have little similarity with the situation at hand. He seemed to catch on that I wasn't exactly catching on. With another smile he handed me an envelope. I recovered enough to say "Oh, who is it from?" He gave a friendly laugh and said "Can't say that. It's a secret." Well, duh, Jim. Secret Santa, hello? I thanked him and we exchanged happy holidays and he walked back to his car.
I walked back inside and opened up the envelope. It's a nice holiday card with money in it.
This is just amazing. A Secret Santa delivery to my house. From who? I can't imagine. Rather, I can't help but imagine. Is it someone out there? Thank you, if it is. Heck, thank you whether it's a reader or not. This is so completely unexpected that I'm just flabbergasted. Totally stunned.
Wow.
Happy Anniversary, my Lovely Wife.
The five years that we have been together have been the most fantastic of my life. It hasn't all been roses of course; we've had our fights and disagreements, our problems to work out and things to fix. But for the first time in my life I am in a relationship so completing that there was never an option not to work it out or not to fix things. You are the other half of me and I can't even conceive of life being anything else but together with you.
You've motivated me, inspired me, shown me and guided me. I am so much of a greater person since you came into my life. Thank you for letting me be me but helping me to see just what "me" could be.
You've given me three children who I couldn't love more (despite the little one being so evil) and a life that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.
You are my love and my life, my heart, my wife. Happy Anniversary, Sweetie.
*KISS* *HUG* *NIBBLE*
PS - Sorry about using your last Cubis thingy. Maybe you should try it again. And how is Topsy playing these days?
I loved my last job. I mean, it was a seriously kick ass job. I was the Executive Assistant and I set my own tasks, answered only to the President and supported the various Vice Presidents and company officers. I was also the Internal Sales Trainer and filled in at that position during the periods it was vacant. I was also the Network and Communications Assistant. The second part of that meant I managed the phone and email systems. The first part was a bit of a misnomer as the Network Admin was a Unix guy so I was the defacto Network Admin for the Windows computers, servers and supported systems. I also handled analysis and defect tracking for Quality Assurance, wrote apps and databases for QA, the Lab, Sales and Accounts Receivable in addition to scheduling and setting up the Christmas Party (yes, we had an actual Christmas party, not a non-denominational winter get together) and the summer picnic.
I know what y'all are thinking right now. An office of 10 people where I was the Jack of All Trades. No, my friends, it was a manufacturing company with a couple hundred employees and over $10 million in annual sales. I just worked like a dog in my many roles. And I loved it. There was always something to do and always something to learn. I was depended upon by the majority of the non-union staff and a goodly portion of the union boys (and gals) as well. It paid squat but we made do with the salary and I was compensated with just about any training class I could at least partially justify.
So why did I leave this job that I liked so well? I'm glad you asked. Partially it was because we were aiming to move down south. Partially it was because that meager salary was getting closer and closer to not quite covering things. Partially it was their fault. You see, they destroyed my faith in the management and direction of the company. They lied to me, y'all.
Mine costs five and a half million.
Mom lives in Arizona. She used to live there with my Auntie and Dopple-G and his sister. I lived with them for a couple of months and visited other times. One of the cool things we would do was to drive up to Tortilla Flat. It was old and small and incredibly cool. The smallest town in America to have a Federal Post Office!
There was a song we made up about Tortilla Flat. Actually I think my cousin started it up (that's Dopple-G's sister, not Dopple-G himself. Let's just call her Dopplette-G to avoid confusion) and the rest of us just might have added bits to it. I can't remember much of it except there was a line about "They've got roaches in the corners" and the refrain was "If you don't know where you're at it's Tortilla Flat". No, there weren't any roaches and I always knew exactly where I was when we were there. There were only a couple of buildings so it was hard to get lost. It was a fun song though.
I remember there being dollars all over the walls and ceiling in the restaurant. It was like wallpaper. Tourists would write their name on a bill and the proprieter would tack it up. And they had the coolest stuff to buy (I was a kid then, remember). Rattlesnake heads, stuffed coyotes, cactuses. I bought an egg (like the pantyhose used to come in) with a pack of seeds in it and a picture of a giant suguaro cactus on it. Grew that thing for years and it got to about 2 inches high. I think I've still got the can of jackalope milk that I bought there too. Probably cheese by now.
We had a lot of fun there. A lot of memories were made. And now they're selling it.
Anybody got a couple million I could borrow?
(Warned of impending sale by this article)
"Reflections" by Kurt Wenner in the extended entry. Hover your mouse over the picture if you can't figure out what's disturbing you about it.
You've probably seen this poem before but it's such a good one that I'm posting it anyway.
This holiday season there are hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women who aren't with their families because they've chosen duty over comfort. I'm very grateful to the men and women of our armed forces for the work that they are doing and the sacrifices they are making for our protection and the benefit of the world.
...going to be revealed in 2 hours. That's how long the auction for Tidings of Comfort and Joy has left.
This has been an absolutely spectacular auction, magnitudes over what I expected. I need to think up something special and Christmasy to use the proceeds on as I hadn't thought of anything bigger than candy canes and spekulaas.
Any ideas? We've got one Lovely Wife, 3 rugrats from 1 year old to 4 years old and one cow sucker (that's me) to be invovled in the festivity.
UPDATE: The winner is Robert from XSet, who got in a last bid virtually under the wire to sneak past Sue. All's fair in love and auctions, they say.
The auction is going well, thanks to a kick start from Clancy and Johnny Huh? putting it up on MetaFilter (which isn't taking new people at the moment, thank you very much, not that I feel slighted in the least, the dirt bags). At least one commenter has some serious need for Tidings.
Looking at the bidders I see some I recognize and a bunch I don't. We've got Clancy, Rob and Sue among the 9 bidders currently competing for my affections. Nah, that's not right. Y'all already have my affections. But they are competing for some genuine cheerful wishes and feature placement in a custom crafted story. Who couldn't use cheerful wishes?
By the way, if you are a member of the clueless masses or know somebody who is you can solve your problems right here.
I did it for my amusement and its humor factor but I was expecting at least a tiny bit of activity. I offer Tidings of Comfort and Joy at absolute rockbottom prices and nobody's interested? What's up with that?
There's real value in this auction, you know. The custom story by a fantastic and humble author has to be worth a quarter all by itself.
Now go and bid on my auction or I will pout like a little bitch.
Let us compare two popular female musical artists. One is a serious songstress who uses intensely personal lyrics and an entrancing voice with absolutely amazing vocal range to express herself through her music. The other does a peep show while mouthing pop ketch that somebody else wrote. Which of these artists would be classified as "sexy"?
Answers in the extended section.
And it's cheap too! Get yours here.
Spread the word!
I despise cranberry sauce, most likely because of early childhood trauma caused by the cran gel. This year we had some homemade cranberry sauce made by Bear's pre-K class. Of course I had to try some as stuff like that is a requirement for maintaining my "A" average as a Dad.
Can you imagine my trepidation? A confirmed cranophobe having to taste cran sauce that was made by a class of 4 year olds? Oh, dear.
But it wasn't bad. In fact it was quite good. Really good. What a difference between homemade with real fruit and that gelatinous mass I have been exposed to for my first 34 years. I actually ate it and enjoyed it.
I have a strong suspicion that if we were still in Buffalo, Bear's class would not have made their own cranberry sauce. 2 more points for Georgia.
Everybody, this is Lovely Wife. Lovely Wife, this is everybody.
I finally exposed myself to her over the weekend. No, not that way - I do that on a hourly regular basis. I mean I finally gave up on trying to get the blog exactly the way I wanted it before inviting her in. Being anal retentive as I am I realized that I could be facing retirement before I actually get it "just right". And besides, if I can't show some warts to my wife who can I show them to? And more importantly, would that person pay me anything for a wart showing?
Anyway, she loves the blog and my near godliness has been reinforced in her eyes. Hopefully she'll be a regular reader and commenter. Who knows? Maybe I'll even get her to start her own weblog eventually.
Everyboy say "hi" now and welcome my sweet baby to the wide world of weblogging.
I usually have a lot going on but only part of my brain engaged on whatever I'm doing. My stream of conciousness has a lot of creeks branching off. Now Dopple-G is another story. Instead of a stream of conciousness he has a white water rapids. But I digress.
To make sure that I don't forget any of these thought streams before I've had a chance to explore them I leave myself notes. I have a post-it note dispenser on my desk at home. At work I have a steno pad. There's a dry erase board on my refrigerator. I've got an Ideas.txt file on my desktop. I leave notes all over, like rabbit droppings. Hey, good analogy there - we'll call them "thought nuggets".
The dry erase board gave me a pause this morning. I haven't cleaned the ideas off of it in a while so it has accumulated a little pile of nuggets. I had also used it to put down some recipe parts while I was cooking. The end result is peculiar to say the least:
Solar powered kids
325 degrees
10 to 12 minutes
If they aren't screaming, you're not doing it right.
Sounds like a recipe out of The Hansel & Grettle Cookbook. I better get that cleared off before Mom flies down. Sheesh.
Don't you think that somewhere in the design and manufacturing process, someone who had a finger on this from the original conceptual artist to the engineers to the mold crafters to the manufacturer to the last guy who tightened a screw, somebody would have caught enough of a clue to step back and say "What the FUCK!?"
The news is in and it's not of the happy variety. Our Everyday Stranger has been cut in a round of layoffs by Company X. Go visit Helen and leave some love.
Makes me glad that I don't have a phone from a certain large Swedish telecomunications company.
I'm going to offend some people with this post. I'll probably get some hate mail and some harsh comments and may even lose some regular readers. That sucks but it's also the way of the world. If you have an opinion there are going to be people who disagree with it. If you can state it in an obsequious manner you'll probably do okay. People will line up to defend a timid speaker. Be nice, they'll say. He's wrong but it's because he's confused. Explain it to him in simple terms and you'll see that he's not truly evil. If, however, you happen to be the sort of person who states his opinion in a raw and coldhearted fashion then you'll piss off many folks. Even some who might ordinarily support your position. Can you guess which one I am? Let's begin:
Midgets Need To Get Their Heads Out of Their Asses
I saw a special presentation about an operation that little people(TM) can undergo in order to get taller. It involves implanting an external metal brace into the long bones of the legs. The bones are broken and separated. The bracing is then continuously lengthened. The healing process of the broken bones causes them to grow towards each other. As the gap of the break is consistently maintained the effect is a gradual lengthening of the legs.
It's painful. It takes a long time. It's good for only a couple of inches. There are many post-procedure problems including weakened bones, arthritis, bone and muscle pain. Sense of balance is seriously compromised and the patient is clumsy and awkward for quite some time.
One of the patients who was interviewed told of all of these problems but dismissed them as negligible. You see, he can now do things like drive an unmodified car. He can ride on a roller coaster. He uses the cupboards at his apartment. In fact his only regret about having the procedure is that he is now an outcast from his community. You see, those jokes on Seinfeld about little people(tm) "heightening" weren't jokes. It really is viewed as a serious breach of etiquette to wear tall shoes or otherwise compensate for (lack of) height. Having this operation makes a little person an outcast from the little person community.
This leads to an obvious question which I will direct to the little community at large:
How do you get such an oversized head so firmly implanted in your anal sphincter? Come the fuck on! It's a birth defect. It is not normal to be a midget/dwarf/little fellow. It is neither amoral or foolish for somebody with a birth defect to use devices and procedures to overcome that defect. Should somebody born with one arm forgo a prosthetic one? If I had a procedure that cured Downs Syndrome do you think that all of the Downs' afflicted out there would rally to attack a person who went through that procedure because they wanted to be normal?
YOU ARE NOT NORMAL. Get it through your skulls. I'm not saying that you should be ashamed of being small. I'm saying that you shouldn't be carrying around a chip on your vertically challenged shoulder because of it. It's a birth defect, a freak happening of nature, one of the more common of literally thousands of documented and understood genetic mishaps. It should not be either a badge of honor or a Sysephean burden.
If you have a chance to correct it then do so! And if you are so wrapped up in a communal pity party that you can't bear the thought of fixing what's wrong with you then at least have the fucking courtesy to support somebody with the courage to do so himself. The way that guy was treated, the exposure of the intollerance and antagonism in the little community, was sickening. He showed bravery and courage, going through a painful procedure in order to make his life better, already knowing that his friends would turn on him. He didn't deserve the way he was treated and to be quite frank those "friends" certainly didn't deserve him.
Fire away.
UPDATE: I wrote this quite a while ago and never posted it. Generally I try not to post things when I'm pissed about the subject. A decent rant is fine but when I'm very irritated I tend to get more insulting than descriptive so a "Jim is pissed" post generally won't do anything constructive. I figured that I would let it sit and revisit it, edit it in a calm voice and then post it. It ended up getting lost and forgotten until yesterday. I looked it over with the intent of editing out the more inflammatory insults and profanity but have decided to present it as-is instead. It's not as overwhelmingly antagonistic as I thought when I first wrote it and the anger the subject raised in me back then has been fairly well rekindled by rereading it.
Nothing much coming from here today. I'm busier than a Bangkok whore with the 6th fleet in port. I'll give you a teaser though. Another short story is percolating through my gray matter. What will it be? Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy? Maybe some more porn? Find out tomorrow, or whenever it's finished brewing. The biggest problem with it right now is there are 3 endings and I can't pick which one I like best. Maybe I'll give you all three.
Oh, wait. I do have something quick to share. Captain Corelli's Mandolin was a decent movie destroyed by two things. The first was Nicolas Cage. Sorry, but he can never ever play a romantic lead. No matter what the character is supposed to portray you will never escape the image of Cage in Raising Arizona. And what was with that accent? He either got it from an intense one week session with a voice coach in the Bronx or from watching too many Olive Garden commercials. The second problem was the normally spectacular John Hurt who was almost but not quite completely unlike Roddy McDowell a Greek provincial doctor.
DO NOT FART!
There is absolutely no guarantee that it is gas that you will pass. Immodium is your friend. No, more than that, it is your lifeline.
Given my abhorrence of the crappers here at work and my current state of being on antibiotics I am trapped in my own peculiar little hell. Any time I have the bowel urge I must assume that bad things are happening, no matter how much it feels like plain old gas. This means that any time I wish to feel gastric comfort I have to truck into the ol' shitter, whip out a paper ass gasget and alight upon the ceramic throne.
This is all because of the Paris Hilton gag, isn't it God?
Helen has a beautiful post this morning about a simple little thing that made a huge difference in her life.
I've got a similar story. After the worst breakup of my life I was in very sorry shape. I won't get into the gory details but it was so bad that Captain Responsibility (that's me) lost his license for driving drunk during this period. I started replacing food with alcohol and things were deteriorating rapidly. Get up in the morning, have a beer, go to work, come home, drink until sleep comes. Basically just plodding on though a semblance of my former life through inertia and not having any clue what else to do.
One day after work I flipped on the radio, grabbed a beer and sat down to start drinking. The song that was playing was "No woman no cry" by Bob Marley, a song I'd heard many, many times before but never really listened to. This time I heard it and listened to the lyrics, the drum, Bob's voice. I got it. Bob was telling me "Everything's gonna be alright". I dug through my CD's, got out Legend and played that song in a loop the rest of the night.
And I stopped drinking like an ass. I finished that open beer of course, I'm an alconomist after all. But I ordered a pizza for dinner instead of finishing off the case. I still remember that pizza, it was the fucking best tasting pizza I'd ever had in my life. First actual food I'd eaten in I don't know how long.
And I called my Mom. I basically hadn't spoken with anybody in weeks. They'd called but I'm an expert in avoidance. I also have a black belt in not-being-part-of-the-conversation-when-you-think-we-are-conversing-itsu. I hadn't spoken with Mom in even longer. I love her like you wouldn't believe but she's a nut and can be very trying to speak with. I'd been avoiding her for a while.
I called a bunch of other people too. My best friend E, who had been trying to get me out of the house for weeks. Made dinner arangements for later in the week with him. I called Doppel-G (he was down in Georgia by this time). I think he knew something wierd was going on but he didn't press, just talked about everyday stuff for a while. I think I even tried to call Lil Bro but I can't remember for sure.
After that night I put my life back together. Very quickly I might add so I guess I had caught it in time before I hit the big cusp. Basically all I had to do was get back into civilization, turn on the afterburners at work for a while to catch up and (most importantly) stop getting drunk every night.
Now whenever I hear that song and it gets to the "Everything's gonna be alright" part I get a tickle in the back of my throat, my eyes water and I have to fight hard not to cry. And sometimes, when I need it, I play that song and I don't fight the tears.
Lousy day for this blog, sorry. The thing with my entry being held out of the Carnival had me up stewing much of the night and much of today was spent following up on the multiple conversation threads dealing with it. On the plus side the censorship controversy brought quite a few visitors to see the post, almost guaranteed that it was more than would have come just from it being in the Carnival.
Much thanks to all of the people who supported me and argued on my behalf. Especially Ilyka, who was like a rabid bull terrier today. I can't express how much I appreciate your help. :)
Tomorrow - good stuff. I promise.
I wasn't left out of the latest Carnival accidentally after all. I was straight out censored.
That was a personal call based on the nature of your post. I do apologize if you feel slighted, but it was just my preference not to add that one particular post.-Max
The post I submitted was The Somnolence of Clouds. This is my erotic vignette from a few days ago. It was well received in comments and email.
Do I feel slighted at being censored? Yeah, I do. It's pretty easy to just note that the post is erotic fiction in the Carnival description. That's the actual description I submitted it with, after all.
People who want to go there do so. People who don't, don't. Same as somebody sick of the metrosexual meme wouldn't go to Andrew's post based on the description that was put with his link.
Christianity is a thought crime. That's an okay topic. The Pussified Toit thing? Also okay. Bush, France, Iraq. All okay.
The only censored item is an erotic vignette. A piece of tittilating fiction. War, death, politics, sexuality, religion are all valid but my well written story is not.
I'm more than slighted. I'm pissed.
No it isn't, you jackass! If it's new then there wasn't a previous substandard product that needed improving. In order for something to be improved you have to start with an unimproved item. That old unimproved item might have been new but just making it better does not magically erase the fact that it was already there previously.
You cannot have something that is both NEW and IMPROVED.
[/rant]
Michele's post cheered me up quite a bit and I just got an email from the Pres that has put a big smile on my face.
I did not know until this afternoon that you were a veteran and just wanted to pass along my thanks for having served.
That's the President of my company, of course, not Dubya.
The sickness that is rampaging through the household for the past week and a half has finally beaten me down into a pulp. I'm home today and won't be blogging much, if at all. The worst part is that Lovely Wife is coming off of her own sickness so can't get into full nurturing mode. What's the sense of being sick if you can't get babied by your wife? Ah, well. Such is life.
A surge of support has carried Doppel-G to a strong victory in the poll, therefore the illustrious G shall furthermore be known as Doppel-G in these hallowed halls.
Thank you for your support and participation. I thank you, Munuviana thanks you, and most importantly Doppel-G thanks you.
Final poll results were:
Moondoggie (22)
Doppel-G (26)
G-Whiz (6)
G-Muse (4)
Undecided. The poll for G's new name is tied at 21 votes apiece for Moondoggie and Dopple-G. The polls shall remain open until tomorrow morning! So it is said, so it shall be.
Today is G's 30'th birth anniversary! That's right, he's now a man. As an extra special present, his new nickname will be awarded today. The poll is very tight with only one vote separating the top contenders. Your vote could be the difference!
And remember, we're using Chicago voting rules. Already voted? Vote again! Because if you're willing to press a button twice then I care twice as much about your opinion as everybody elses.
Vote soon as the poll will close an some unpredictable time today (basically, whenever I get the time to edit the blog template to remove it).
Can you hear the crickets?
Sorry, no truths of life or amusing anecdotes today. I spent the morning getting a tire fixed. The same tire that was replaced two weeks ago. Actually that's not exactly true. I took the morning off so I could get the tire fixed and ended up sleeping in. It went something like this:
Eyes open.
Look at clock.
Clock says 6:30.
Thought processed begin.
"Great. It's 6:30. I can get up, have a relaxing cup of coffee, blog a bit, shower and still be at the tire place when they open. Isn't that great?"
Thought processes refine.
"I took a half day off. If I do all of that then I'll still be at work fairly early but not early enough to not take a half day off."
Thought processes crystalize.
"Screw it."
Eyes close.
Sleep resumes.
So I slept in late and boy was it freaking awesome. No sleep feels as good as naughty sleep. But the end result is I'm at work with a day's worth of work to do in half a day. Come on now, y'all know that you don't actually get time off when you take time off. Compounding this is a company meeting that starts in 10 minutes that will take about half of my half day leaving me one quarter of a day to do a day's work.
Net result, the 80% of my brain that is usually reserved for tracking absurdities and formulating humorous anecdotes out of the ridiculousness of life has been hijacked for actual rational thought. Bummer.
But while you wait in vain for something amusing to be issued on these pages, a wait doomed to result in heartbreak I might add, you can send an email to Jen for my upcoming interview. Don't you have something that you've always wanted to ask me but were afraid to posit for fear of my maniacal retribution? Now's your chance.
Bacon is watching Lilo & Stitch. From the walls and ceilings that he is bouncing off of. In other words, he's feeling pretty good and is amped on steroids and whatever other crap is in his medicine.
Got the call from Lovely Wife a bit after 3:00, carried the two sleeping babes to the family truckster and went to pick up the lost family members. We were back home and in bed finally by 3:30.
Lovely Wife has taken the other two out to do some errands to give our little sicko some peace. Not that he seems to want any, of course. He sounds like a harbor seal but he's in hyperactive mode. Kids - you just can't keep 'em down.
Daddys, on the other hand, are easy to keep down. Make em stay awake half the night worrying and then wake em up early. I'm wondering how early I can put the troops to bed tonight so I can sneak off to my own repose.
1:30 AM on a Saturday night. I haven't seen many of these over the past couple of years. Unfortunately most of the ones I have seen have been because of stuff like tonight.
Bacon is at the hospital, taken there by an ambulance. Lovely Wife is with him while I stay here with the other two boys. They're sleeping, which is both expected and the reason I'm here instead of all of us being there. It's a disadvantage though because if they were making some noise it would be easier to stay awake.
Lovely Wife called just a little bit ago. Bacon is doing fine. He has a nasty case of croup. Before we called the ambulance he was struggling to take any breath at all. Very scary.
But like I said, he's doing okay now. Not great but not in danger. He's in a hospital, after all. He's getting a steroid inhalation treatment and then he'll need to be there for a couple hours to be monitored. He should do okay after the treatment. If not, they might be there for quite a while.
Drinking coffee and playing Snood to keep awake. Hey, my normal bedtime is 9:00 PM. This is LATE for me.
And there's one of the boys crying now. Good - gives me something to do besides fret.
The semifinals are over. Results of the second elimination series are:
Doppel-G (9)
Gee (2)
G-Spot (8)
Moondoggie (10)
Moose (0)
Squirrel (1)
Gorney Huy (1)
G-Willikers (1)
That Guy (1)
Why Not (1)
That means that "Doppel-G" and "Moondoggie" will compete against the first round winners "G-Whiz" and "G-Muse" to determine for once and for all what G's nickname will be!
Good luck and may the best name win.
First step, pick a kid friendly name, like The Wiggles. Do not pick a name that stands for terrorizing children.
We took Pooh Bear and two ninjas to a costume ball at a local mall yesterday. It was a one hour concert by a kids' band followed by a costume contest. The band was pretty good. They were high energy and got the kids, especially the little ones, dancing and participating in the music. Something bothered me about the band name though.
They were called "The Bugaboos". At first hearing it this sounds like a cute name. It's got "bug" in there and bugs are pretty popular with kids. They don't understand that "bug" also means "cockroach", "fire ant" and "black widow". For kids, "bug" means "daddy longlegs", "lady bug" and "cricket". But "bugaboo" sat wrong with me. I've got a fairly decent vocabulary but I couldn't think of specifically why it bothered me but it certainly did.
When we got home (none of our munchkins won the contest - it was rigged) I looked up "bugaboo" at Miriam Webster and found the definition:
1 : an imaginary object of fear 2 : BUGBEAR 2; also : something that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance
Yup, they named their band after the boogeyman. I seriously doubt that they intended to make their band name synonymous with childhood horror but that's where they ended up.
Moral of the story: When you pick a name for your band, go ahead and verify that it doesn't mean the exact opposite of what you are going for. When in doubt, use the Band Name Generator. Then again, Billy Manlove and the Amazing Hamster System might not be the best name for a kids' band either. Unless you're a priest.
Daylight Savings Time,
Oh, Daylight Savings Time,
You suck.
Warning: Vulgarity ahead.
Y'all thought that Kevin Bacon was the most connected actor in all Hollywood? After all there's that whole "6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon" thing. Nay, nay, Fluffy. The truth is that the coveted spot is occupied by the one and only Rod Steiger who, despite having 119 films under his belt, is most famous for causing people to scratch their heads in consternation wondering "Who the hell is Rod Steiger?"
Steiger has an average separation of 2.651939. That is, there are about 2.65 degrees of separation between Steiger and any off-hand actor. Bacon has an average separation of a staggering 2.941131! That puts Kevin 1221 places out of first for best center of the Hollywood Universe.
This and other myths of the Hollyverse exposed by The Oracle of Bacon at Virgina.
(Hat tip G)
So this morning I opened up the old email and had 3, count them 3, spam mails for spam blocking programs. There's just something fundamentally wrong with this marketing approach. It's like a kevlar manufacturer drumming up business by walking around and shooting people.
Normally I delete spam faster than it can register (Spambayes filters the crap out into my "Delete me, I am an intrusive mass marketing email" folder where I summarily dismiss it after a cursory glance at the subject field) but one of these anti-spam spams happened to be the first in the folder so I got a look at it in time to halt my fingers in their automatic pressing of shift-delete. Here's the jewel that caught my attention:
Description:The Most Powerful, Effective & Intelligent ANTI-SPAM BLOCKING program EVER!
Automatically cleans spam messages out of your mailbox before you receive or read them!
Anti-spam blocking?
Do they even proof this crap before subjecting the world to their drivel? Spam blocking software would block spam. Anti-spam software would work against spam. Anti-spam blocking means that their software works against techniques to block spam. In other words they are saying "Use our product to make sure that all of the spam sent to you gets around any spam blocking systems you have in place."
Retards.
No, that's not true at all. I love to say "I told you so". I lurve to say it. It's one of my all time favorite phrases.
Rejoice my brothers and sisters in arms. Straight from the horse's mouth, the pronunciation is crik.
Yes, it's spelled "creek" and the crEk pronunciation is also correct. The point is that crik is valid too.
To all of you people who throughout my entire life have told me that saying crik was colloquial and incorrect: The line to kiss my ass forms to the right. One at a time please and no cutting.
The first round of the Great G Name Contest has concluded. Results:
G-Whiz (7)
G-Muse (7)
G-Stringer (3)
G-Riffic (4)
Golly-G (0)
Spot (5)
Zone (0)
Wingman (3)
Giblet (3)
Goober (1)
The second semi-final poll has been posted. The top two here (G-Whiz and G-Muse) will compete with the top two from the new poll in the final poll to saddle G with a nickname.
Let your voice be heard! Vote early and often!
We went to the park yesterday. The kids gather stones to throw into the crick (Yes, Lovely Wife, the term is "crick" and you will have to do more than withold favors to get me to utter that profanity of normalcy "creek". It's been "crick" since I was a wee lad on Aunt Evelyn's farm and "crick" it shall remain until my dying days. And I will polute our childrens' vocabulary with this anachronistic styling if it's the last thing I do. It is one of my missions in life.) and the canine does his best to add flavor to every tree, bush, fallen stick and clump of grass in the forest.
The alarm didn't go off this morning. Actually I can't guarantee that - it's possible that it went off and I turned it off and fell asleep instead of getting out of bed. It didn't go off because the alarm switch was firmly in the "off" position. So even if I didn't screw up this morning and turn it off then go back to sleep it's still my fault for not turning it on last night. That really blows because I'd like to blame this morning on somebody else.
Normally it wouldn't be a big problem if the alarm didn't go off. I usually wake up at around 3:50 and stare at the alarm clock until 4:00 hits and it lets off its piercing (and quickly silenced) bleat. That happens when I go to bed on time, anyway. Last night, due to some nocturnal activities that don't need to be spelled out and will resurface later in this diatribical self flaggelation, I went to bed late. This morning I woke up with that self congratulatory sensation of "Ah, I woke up naturally. I shall now turn over and gaze fondly at the digital countdown as it marches its way towards my assigned time of arrisal."
Contrary to whatever I was thinking, Pollhost offers 10 options in a poll, not 20. Guess they don't go in for "California balloting". I can't get the 20 finalists down to 10 by myself (I lack that degree of determinalistic confidence) so we'll do two rounds of semi-finalists and then a Grand Pubah of Polls, Winner Takes All final round.
The first set of ten options is up now in the sidebar to the right. Go forth and vote!
References:
My original plea for help
The Culling of the Herd
Fantastic feedback on a new name for G. In fact, too much and too fantastic. We'll poll to see what G's new name will be but I needed to pare down the field a bit. If one of your suggestions is in the recycle bin here don't take it as an insult. I still appreciate your effort, it's just that you obviously don't love me enough.
I've got a problem. My primary source of humor content and obscure insight is feeling slighted. You see, I have witty and clever aliases for the people in my life when I write about them in my blog. There's Lovely Wife and the boys (Bear, Bacon and Burger), Lil Bro, etc. But G is just "G". Yesterday he left a comment here and signed it "Mysterious" G and I ragged on him for it. He's not at all mysterious and I teased him that he was being a little bit self-aggrandizing taking a moniker like that.
Well, I could tell that he was hurt by my wicked barbs and that he feels slighted to have only an initial when everybody else has a nickname. He posted another comment and signed it only "G" and you can feel the disappointment dripping off of it.
People, we must keep G happy! As he supplies better than 80% of the decent content on this site his happiness is of critical import. I must come up with a nickname for G!
But I've got a problem there. The basic reason that I use "G" is because I don't have a nickname for him. The last nickname he had was G-Dog but that was back in the mid to late 90's and it is just too dated. I need something new and fresh and maybe even appropriate (although I'm not married to that last one) and I can't think of a damned thing. I know him too well and for all the years I've known him I've only thought of him by his name. Even G-Dog was an appelation given to him by my old housemate E-Dog. And this is why you must come up with a nickname for G.
I'd say that I want to go for quality over quantity but that's not strictly true. Quantity has benefits too, not the least of which is better odds on getting at least a couple humorous suggestions. Please give this subject a serious bit of thought (at least 5 to 15 seconds) and leave your suggested nicknames in the comments.
Depending on the number of responses I might do a poll for the winning nick and give away fabulous prizes*.
I thank you, the soon to be renamed G thanks you, The Snooze itself thanks you.
Update: And no sour cream references, please.
"You can't beat that with a stick."
Yes you can. You can beat anything with a stick. And for most things a stick beating has a definite effect.
Go ahead, try to think of something that I can't beat with a stick. And let me warn you, if you go for something metaphysical or allegorical or hypothetical I am going to whack the shit out of it with my metaphysical, allegorical, hypothetical stick.
The point is that there was a perfectly good phrase: "You can't beat that."
Simple, to the point, clear meaning. You can't beat that. That can't be bested. This thing I'm talking about is the best. See? It worked.
Then somebody (probably the same jackhole that came up with "eXtreme") decided that the best wasn't enough. We need better than best. Not "you can't beat that". Oh no, that's not enough. We need "you can't beat that, not even with a stick."
It's clever, see? A play on "beat". First we mean "do better than" and then we add that second "beat" for a physical beating component. Well, no. It's not especially clever. It's pretty moronic. The two just don't go together. The original was never meant in a physical sense so adding the bastard addition does nothing but confuse the intent of the phrase.
But then the original and the addition were folded together. "You can't beat that with a stick." No more separation to show the intended play on "beat". Now it's either a blatant literal falsity or a tangenital impossibility, depending on the subject of the phrase. It doesn't mean anything anymore.
It's not clever. It's stupid. Stop using it. Stop encouraging idiocy in my beloved language. What's next? "You can't beat that with an eXtreme stick"?
Oh, the horror.
Just when I think that there's nothing to write about, the boys' preschool comes through for me. They're having a fundraiser now and instead of pizza kits or cookies they're offering selections from a catalog of inspirational materials. My jaw dropped and my fingers started itching to type when i saw the Bibleman collectible Action Figures. You just can't make this stuff up, folks.
The Bibleman Theme Song
(With my apologies to the webbed one.)
Bibleman, Bibleman
Rosary in his hand
Spouting verse, benedictions
Watching o'er congregations
Look out!
Here comes the Bibleman
Is he wise? Listen hun,
He's as good as Solomon
Can he run confessional?
Like a true professional
Look out!
There goes the Bibleman
When Satan rears his head
And there's danger to the flock
He's there to break the bread
In his cassock and a frock
Bibleman, Bibleman
Savin' your soul, Why? Because he must
Bibleman, Bibleman
Savin' immortality, yeah, In God we trust
Look out!
Mortal life is just parole
Cause heaven is his goal
That's right, he's Bibleman!
There are nine different ways to pronounce 'ough' in English, each exemplified in this sentence:
"A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
(Hat tip G)
It's Friday but where's Johnny with my Cheese? I'm just going to go ahead and answer the questions that were posted to the board - they're most likely the ones that would be in the Cheddar X this week.
Where would you be if you were in a band?
Some dive bar where we'd be lucky to make $20 plus booze for each set. I have no musical ability whatsoever and I have to assume that any band that would have me in it would be so desperately bad that a great set for them would be one where they didn't get thrown off the stage.
Who do you support in Mapwar I, the Mappist Coalition (Snooze Button Dreams) or the Fairy Defamation League (Everyday Stranger)?
Hmmm...this is a tough one. After due consideration I must throw my support behind me. There's just no way I could give that support to a fairy killer.
There has recently been quite a bit of exposure regarding biased reporting from Iraq. Is it the responsibility of the news agencies to report good news as well as bad news?
No, it isn't. News agencies are either state run or they are corporations. If it's state run then its only responsibility is to spew the correct propaganda. If it is a corporation then its duty is to provide the consumer with the product that they wish to purchase. Generally speaking, death, misery and freakishness sell and that's what I expect from broadcast and print news sources. It's also why I don't watch broadcast news or subscribe to a newspaper. I get my news online where I can select varied sources that I believe represent a full spectrum of what's happening out there. That being said, I believe that the major news organizations will begin putting more human interest and success in Iraq stories out because the public has let them know that they want to hear these things. Demand and supply, that's all there is to it.
What should the age of consent be and why?
In an ideal world there shouldn't be any defined age of consent. People mature at different ages and different stages. There shouldn't be an automatic ability to drive at 16, vote and screw at 18, and drink at 21. Some people are ready earlier and some are ready later. Let people qualify for restricted activities through testing and proof of maturity.
Are you a Stealth Blogger? That is, do you let the people in your life know you blog? If so, why? If not, why not?
The only people in my life that know I'm a blogger are G and Lil Bro. G actually reads the blog; I don't know if Lil Bro does. I'm not hiding my blog - I use my real name, real location, etc - but I'm not promoting it to friends and family either.
NJ has just passed a law banning people from driving while drowsy. Do you think that this will be effective in preventing accidents, or just another law that will fall by the wayside after a few years?
It won't have any affect whatsoever, just like laws about cellphone use, eating, whatever. It is already illegal to drive under diminished capacity and if you get into an accident because of your diminished capacity then you will be judged at fault. This is just another redundant law that will further clutter up the books.
What is the best book that you have ever read? What made it such an excellent book?
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. This is beyond any shadow of a doubt the more detailed and entrancing tale I've ever read. Martin makes it come alive to such an extent that there were certain times that I had to put it down and walk away from it to process everything and settle down from the story.
Lovely Wife and I aren't very religious. Depending on the state of the world I wax from agnostic to part-time believer. She's much the same but trends toward the believer side. As a result we're not the most regular churchgoers. You might say that we're not churchgoers at all but then people might look at you funny and wonder why you were talking to your monitor so I advise against it.
As far as religion goes we'd like our kids to make up their own minds. That requires a bit of exposure to religion that, as previously noted, we're not the best at providing. To get them that exposure the two older ones go to a religious preschool. This has a couple of side benefits as this particular preschool is both eminently affordable as well as being the best school, hands down, in our area. In addition to the normal preschool stuff learning letters and numbers, playing, learning to get along with other kids and celebrating September 8 birthdays on September 11 (I'm not bitter, why do you ask?) they also attend a mini service once a week and do other little religious things. One of those little things is a "prayer angel". A prayer angel is a little white stuffed bear and a prayer journal that the little guys take home on a rotating weekly basis. The kid gets to pray with the angel and after a week the kid and parent can write down how they pray, what they pray, etc in the journal to share with the class.
We don't pray. I shouldn't say we never pray. We just don't pray in the traditional sense. We pray in the profane sense that is a no-no according to one of the big 10 rules. We don't do it often, generally only at especially painful mishaps or unusually offensive drivers, and never around the kids. This prayer angel was a problem for us. Bear brought it home yesterday and we were at a loss what to do with it. Fortunately for us Bear is a bit better at this than we are.
We had the prayer angel on the desk all night and since that's in our bedroom we forgot about it when we put the kids to bed. Bear woke up and remembered it and hollered until we brought it to him and he slept with it all night. That's not really what it's for but we figured "what the hell, might as well get some use out of it". (That's one of those not-quite-a-traditional-prayer-things I was trying to explain above.)
This morning he greeted Lovely Wife with a hug and instructions. "Mama, write in the book that I prayed for the soldiers. I like soldiers, they are heroes."
Do I have great kids or what?
In order to do this, left click over the Z (below) and hold the button down as you drag it over to the J. This will test the click/drag coefficient of your mouse.
ZStop farting around and get back to work!J
Acocdrnig to an elgnsih unviesitry sutdy the oredr of letetrs in a wrod dosen't mttaer, the olny thnig thta's iopmrantt is that the frsit and lsat Ltteer of eevry word is in the crcreot ptoision. The rset can be jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy.
That's 9/11+1 by the way. That's actually only part of it as the number goes on forever. I'd love to turn that into a fitting allegory but it's quarter to 12:00 and I'm starving, over caffeinated and under nicotteinated so the brain juices aren't flowing too well.
It's the day after 9/11 and I'm feeling much better, thank you very much. A tour around the blogosphere shows that I wasn't the only one who was a bit out of sorts yesterday either. As things return to a more normal atmosphere (mostly my mood) I remembered something else very important that I discovered on 9/11/01. You don't have to be a citizen of the USA in order to be a patriot. My wife is a German citizen (Don't bother calling the INS on us, she's here legally). On 9/11/01 and the following days my Lovely Wife showed a love and passion for the States that I have seen on very few Americans (and I served with Marines for 4 years). She was just like a mother whos child was attacked. She was fierce and outraged and unbelievably frustrated that she couldn't help.
I guess the mother/child allegory is fitting as this is her adopted country. She does not wish to become a citizen - Germany is her homeland and always will be. At one time this bothered me. After all, if you're going to be living in a country for the rest of your life shouldn't you, at a minimum, embrace that country as your own? Well she has embraced it and far more intimately than a great many people who take the tests, pay the money and say the official words. She embraced the United States in her heart and the events of September 2001 allowed me to finally see that.
That's my Lovely Wife. German. American. Patriot.
My 9/11 post received a very lovely response from H over at Everyday Stranger that caused me to reread that very same post. Yikes! Don't worry, y'all. I'm not in that bad shape. I wrote and posted angry yesterday so it was a lot more fierce than it probably should have been.
Anyway, my reply to her ended up on the longish side and both include some valuable stuff so I'm putting 'em out here in the open instead of just commenting or mailing back.
Ususally I tend to align with how you think, but on this one I think you are a wee bit angry and it is tempering what I have suspected is, deep down, an extremely giving nature.
The thing of it is, punishing an entire race for the wild, horrible fuck ups of a twisted brainwashing sociopath who is more in desperate need of decaf than anyone I have ever known is not something I would have said you were about.
I was just in Turkey, and the musical call to the mosue drifting in the evening air was absolutely beautiful. I talked to a number of Muslims there (it is predominantly Muslim) and they told me one thing that I take with me-the Koran is a list for the following to live by, but is a matter of interpretation. I was told, a few times, that they are Allah's suggestions.
I'm going to be ripped apart for this now, but is this really different than the insanely Christian nutball who felt it was ok to gun down a doctor and his driver as they worked at an abortion clinic? He interpreted the Bible in one way. Bin Ladan has interpreted the Koran in one way.
But to punish a whole race, a whole faith, for the ignorance of a sect, makes us no better than them. After all, they think ALL Americans are bad. If we think ALL Muslims/Arabs are bad, then we have fallen down the slippery slope.
Fight the hate, man.
//H
Thanks for the kind words and concern, H.
I was writing angry yesterday so that post came off a bit stronger than it should have. But not by too much, unfortunately. I don't want to be a bigot, racist or hatefilled person. I never was before 9/11 and the fact that it is so difficult to fight down these base impulses, and the way it makes me feel when I recognize my own attitudes, makes me hate them even more for what they've stolen from me. It's a nasty and vicious circle that feeds on itself.
But it is getting better. Educating myself has helped enormously. Time helps. Afghanistan and Iraq are helping - seeing that progress can be made in that region and that the psychos really do seem to be a minority. Ironically, France is helping. The way they are totally screwing themselves over their own fundamentalist problems has gone a long way towards showing how much stronger we Americans are as a country and a collective culture.
I don't blame all arabs anymore. Yes, I am initially leary when I run into someone of obvious arabic heritage, but I'm at least ashamed of my emotional reaction and can conciously master it now.
I do still believe that fundamentalism is a problem that will never go away so long as there are fundamentalists. Fanatics of any stripe, whether islamic terrorists or anti-abortion snipers are dangerous by their nature. Fundamentalism, especially when tied to the arabic culture, breeds fanatics faster than free range bunnies. To actually defeat terrorism we must educate the arabs and bring them into this century. A change in their culture is absolutely required in order to end the worldwide terrorism problem but if that change is suffrage, education and franchisement then is it really such a bad thing?
Warning: 9/11 post ahead. It isn't a sad post but it is an angry one.
This isn't really going to be about 9/11, per se. Not really about the terrorists, the horror, the many hours spent glued to frightening images being played over and over again. It's not going to be about the dread anticipation as we waited to find out what was happening with that missing plane. Not about the mental inventory of family and friends to determine if anybody we knew was in the towers or the City. It's also not about the frustration of being at work and not being able to get any news or the partial relief when Lovely Wife started sending simulcast emails as she watched everything on CNN. It's not about the tremulous "Did you hear"s as people arrived in the office or the silence when their look told you that yes, they most certainly did already hear. It's not about the many phone calls with Lovely Wife that day as we took turns calming each other down. It's most certainly not about the shattering of my illusions.
No, wait. That's exactly what it's about. The shattering of my illusions. Not the illusion of safety that many people lost that day but the illusion of my own lack of bias. This is about how I became racist for the first time in my life.
I've lived and worked all over the States. As a kid my best friends were Suman and Parul (who were from India) and Mark Mittlemark (who was Jewish). In High School I was in with the Jocks, Brains and Stoners. I was in the Navy for 8 years, serving with every minority you can imagine. I've lived in suburbia, urbia and borderline slums. I've lived in a house of women and roomed with a homosexual man. The personal trait I am most proud of is my lack of racism and bias and I've spent a lifetime minus two years enjoying the benefits of it.
Before September 11, 2001 I was a borderline apologist. Oh I didn't go so far as to voice support for the PLO or anything like that but I was always the one person who would say that we couldn't paint all Palestinians with that brush. Similarly, I was the one who said we needed to respect the culture of the Arab nations. What's normal for one people is not normal for another but that does not give one the right to criticize the other. When talk turned to Islamic terrorists I very quickly spoke up that the vast majority of muslims were just as peaceful as anybody else. When fundamental Islam came up I made sure that everybody knew that most of them were simply firm believers and we shouldn't let some bad apples spoil the bushel.
Boy was I an idiot. And it only took 3000 deaths and one day of emotional hell to educate me. There can be no respect for things that are, by their very nature, abhorrent. If your culture says it's okay to target civilians to achieve your ends then your culture as a whole is wrong. It is not just this person or that person, it is every single participant of that culture. If your culture says that it is okay to mutilate your daughter and cut off her clitoris then your culture is wrong. Every member of that culture is just as guilty as the person who wields the razor. If your culture says it's okay to kill your daughter or sister to protect or avenge your family honor then every member of that culture is a murderer. If you drive an airplane into a skyscraper and your people dance in the streets with joy at the mass murder of your civilian targets then those people need to be dancing at the ends of ropes.
9/11 taught me how to hate an entire people. It opened my eyes to the fact that some cultures are simply wrong at their very cores. It educated me to the fact that some people are evil and dangerous and wrong simply because they are part of something that is evil and dangerous and wrong.
I know now that there is no such thing as a good or peaceful radical fundamentalist. I know without a doubt that anybody from the Middle East really should be viewed with distrust and suspicion until they can prove they are trustworthy. I know that arabs don't want peace and they will never, ever leave us alone. And I know that there is only one realistic way for us to be safe and it does not include autonomous muslim states.
That was then, this is now.
Pretty scary stuff, eh? It scared the hell out of me, that's for sure. I felt that way for a decent portion of 2001 and right into 2002. Gradually I came out of that cloud of hatred and bias. I no longer think that our best bet would be to give Kansas to Israel and then create the Great Glass Plains out of the former Middle East. I'm not quite back to where I was though, and I doubt that I ever will be. I still think that fundamental Islam is wrong by its very nature. I'm still a bit leary of arabic people. I'm still quick to think any act of violence was muslim terrorists until proven otherwise. I still think that any permanent solution to the terrorist problem must involve a wholesale change of arabic culture and the elimination of fundamentalist dogma. I am still more than ready to blame every single supporter of the cultures that breed this evil for the actions of that evil.
That's my legacy of 9/11. I doubt that's what they wanted - to galvanize the people of America against themselves and their kind - but that's what they got. As you sow, so shall ye reap. Reap it, you bastards.
Apologies in advance for the people who will be offended by this post. No insult is intended. I could be totally wrong in my suppositions or simply lacking enough exposure to get the full picture. Then again, I could be completely right. Either way I welcome discussion and comments on the topic and hope that bashing, slamming and/or verbal dismemberment will be kept to a minimum.
I read quite a bit. Generally 2 to 3 books a week or more. Reading has been a part of my life since I was 3 or 4 years old and is my one obsession that will probably never fail. My book reading is mainly fiction - fantasy, sci-fi, or real-world.
The book I'm currently reading is Rules of Engagement by Elizabeth Moon. Moon has made the rape and abuse of her heroine a central focus of this book. I've been reading this book and I've been getting more and more uncomfortable with it but I'm continuing because the it is well written and the story, apart from those elements, is pretty good. But those elements are totally and completely unnecessary. I have a tendency to edit a book as I read it, rewriting or replaying it in my head with changes that would have made it simpler or better. With this book I can completely remove the raping and abuse with absolutely no deleterious effect on the story. Nada. None. The story works perfectly well without it. So why is it in there? It adds nothing and is actually making this book less enjoyable than it should be.
This thought got me thinking along another tangent. Many of my favorite female big name SF & Fantasy writers (McCaffery, LeGuin, Roberson, Rawn) have written rapes in their stories. Rape and rape fantasy is a staple of Harlequin style books, which are written for a female audience generally by female authors. Anne Rice, one of the biggest names in fantasy/horror literature, has made a franchise of sexual conquest, rape, abuse and sexual acts with children in her writing.
As I explored this in my head it became more and more apparent that rape content is not generally used by my favorite male authors. I can't think of a Martin, Roberts, Henlein, Brooks or Asprin book that had a rape in them. Weber used rape in one book of the Honor Harrington series but he handled it en post facto. He didn't describe it or dwell on it. He concentrated on how enraged it made his characters.
So what's up here? Why do female writers tend to write about rape, abuse, etceteras more often and more graphically? And why? My basic thought would be just the opposite - wouldn't women writers tend to avoid a subject like rape? I'm at the wild conjecture stage but here are some of my thoughts. Try to overlook the generalizations and see the intended points:
- Women are closer to, and more affected by, rape and abuse. As it is a subject that they think of more often they naturally fit it in their writing more often than males.
- Rape is frightening for women. Men have a different basic fear set. A female writer might tend to use rape as a scare tactic when a male writer will use something that generally frightens males.
- Similar to the above, a female writer might use rape to paint her bad guy as bad where a male writer might tend to use murder or some other nasty deed instead.
- Also similar to the above, a female writer might use rape survival to show how "tough" her heroine is while a male writer would go elsewhere.
- (I'm going to get slapped for this one.) The "Harlequin" mentality indicates a fascination with rape fantasy that ties into the fear of rape itself. The brutish man forces himself on (and in) the heroine but midway through the act she surrenders to his inexorable charms and falls in love. This is reflected in the writing of female authors.
- Because females are the general victims of rape (there just aren't a whole lot of male rape victims outside the penal system) they "own" it. Female writers can write about rape simply because they are female. Male writers are uncomfortable writing about it because they fear being tarred with the rapist brush. This would be similar to how a minority comedian can make jokes about his minority but a white male comedian better not.
That's all I've got. I'll put on my helmet and cup and prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.
Update: One more I thought of in the shower today:
- What's the market slice for fantasy/sci-fi? If it is significantly male, could female writers be putting in rape and abuse of women because they think it tittilates their male readers?
9/8 is Bacon's birthday. That was yesterday. He's three now and he had a blast at the little party we threw for him. It was just the family - Lovely Wife, me, Bear, Burger, G and G's wife. He hasn't been in school long enough to have made any friends yet and all of his little friends from last year fell out for one reason or another. He still had a lot of fun.
9/11 is not his birthday. If it was, we would celebrate it on that date. 9/9 isn't his birthday either. 9/11 is when his preschool teacher wants to celebrate it. You see, he only goes to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Today (Tuesday, 9/9) is a birthday party for another kid who's birthday is also not today so the closest day available for Bacon would be 9/11.
We told his teacher (Ms. Nancy) that we did not want to have his birthday celebrated on 9/11. We explained that if his birthday was actually on 9/11 that would be totally different but that we have a serious problem with moving a party to that date. We feel it is disrespectful and just...wrong...to have an anniversary party on that day when the actual anniversary isn't actually on that day.
She said that she understood but that if the birthday wasn't celebrated on 9/11 then they would not be able to do it at all this year. The calendar was drawn up before the school year started and there is not another day that could serve. This strikes me as bullshit. These littles have a school year of around 36 weeks. Two classes a week makes over 70 days of school. For the next 8 months there is not a single day that is not scheduled so heavily that there's no time between now and the end of the year for her to lead the kids in a round of "Happy Birthday"? Bullshit, Ms Nancy. Bullshit.
So what do we do? Forbid the in-school celebration? It's just the above-mentioned singing during snack time and an activity or two. No huge loss. He doesn't care about the attention at all - a birthday to him means that he gets money. Since he won't get money there he's not going to care either way. It could actually make him sad when he gets the lead-up and then there's no cash reward. But all of the other students will have their birthday day, will he wonder why they all do but he doesn't?
We don't want to rob him of his due but we also want all of our kids to understand the solemnity and importance of 9/11. Oh, don't worry - I'm not going to push it down their throats. Just as much as they are ready to understand, same as Easter and Memorial Day and the rest of the days of import. But is there a way out of our rock and hard place dilemma?
Where the hell did that phrase come from? This is a complement on a girl's figure. A compliment. Comparing a supposedly lucious bod to a an outhouse in the most vulgar manner imaginable is an apparently logical function in the English language? No wonder the migrant workers here stick to Spanish. Damn. Double damn. Now I've got that awful Commodore's song running through my head.
Lil Bro is a cultured enthusiast of the spiced delight and has not been able to get a decent wing for years (They do not exist in the North Left - there's some trade agreement between Starbucks and Microsoft that precludes them). Coming home late from Stone Mountain we decided to partake of dinner at a local eatery. This particular place is called Buffalos and they claim to have been made famous by their exceptional Buffalo Wings. They are foul and cretious liars. They do not love the wing. Lil Bro and I both ordered "Scorchin" wings. This is the level beyond "Hot". In a decent wing house in Buffalo an order of suicidal wings ("Suicidal" is the correct term. Their use of "Scorchin" should have clued me in right away that they were impostors.) would be remarkably close to my own handcrafted beauties. These were not suicidal. They were not scorchin. They were not hot or even medium-hot. They were barely medium. They were not crispy on the outside and delicately juicy on the inside. They were served with a profanity of vegetable matter assaulting them. They were served with "Bleu Cheese Dippin Sauce" that most closely resembled ranch dressing with black spotules in it. This uncouth offensive against my palate shall not go unrevenged. The karmic backlash alone should, at a minimum, result in the near destruction of their foul establishment.
This is perplexing and worrying. Perplexing because I consumed better than a six pack last night in a span of only two hours. Perplexing because I was messed up enough to jump out of bed late for work and dive in the shower only to have Lovely Wife yell out an interrogation of my efforts as it was only 12:30 in the morning. Worrying because I'm not a drinker any more. Oh, I used to be. Back when I lived at E's place there was a keg fridge in the basement and we rotated those on a very regular basis. But since marriage and children happened, my semiregular bouts of debauchery have ceased. My once legendary tolerance for the amber potion has evaporated. In the past 4 days I've consumed more than I probably have in the past 4 years. By all rights I should have an explosive cranium today but all I have is an unquenchable thirst and drooping eyes from lack of sleep. Am I exceptionally lucky or is the bod returning to its party form? Hopefully its luck. I can't keep up with Jim of 5 years ago.
Found a link to The Political Compass Quiz over at Ilyka's place. The idea behind the compass is to show another dimension of political ideography beyond Left/Right. Specifically it separates the traditional social metric from the traditional economical metric. As the site says:
A larger but less obvious problem with the quiz is that the questions lack weight. You may agree or disagree with a quiz statement or you may strongly agree or disagree. The quiz does not ask you how much that statement matters to you. Let me show you why. The four items in the following table are scored in the same manner as the ones on this political compass test.
I take this test and my answers are A,D,A,D. The results of my test indicate that I am dead center on both the social and economic scales. My agreements cancel out my disagreements leaving me at 0,0. But wait. I don't give a fig about the issue on question #1, I just strongly disagree with the statement. Now question #2 I am both strongly in agreement as well as passionate about the topic. If we can record this "weight" for each question we can reduce the effect of topics that don't matter (question #1) and increase the effect for topics that do matter (question #2). With the points weighted I'm suddenly a good distance to the right on the social metric.
Weighted polls like I describe have been going on for a long, long time. They have never really caught on because they are generally not needed - most polls are simply constructed to assign beans. "Will you vote for Bush? Yes/No". It doesn't matter how much you care about voting for Bush because you have one vote and it will either be cast for him or it won't. You can't half vote or 2/3 vote. They care only about the absolute values.
The poll/quiz they are using for this compass cannot work without weighting the questions as it is trying to determine relative values. As I illustrated in the example above it is far too possible for the results to skew without weights. So overall I don't put much stock in the results I got for my Political Compass but I like what they are trying to do here; the inclusion of a second major metric in political placement is absolutely necessary in my book. I'll wait impatiently for a proper quiz. In the meantime, go to the site, take the one that's there to see what it's all about and then place yourself on the graph where you feel you should be. It'll probably be more accurate than where the quiz places you.
By the way (in case you haven't guessed already from the post title) my results were Economic (Left/Right): 0.12 and Social (Libertarian/Authoritarian): -0.10. Those are on a scale of -10 to 10 so I'm about as dead stick stuck at the center as it's likely anybody could get.
My Lovely Wife was born and raised in Germany and also spend a decade living in The Netherlands. This gives her a unique viewpoint on many of our staid American traditions and mores. One we discussed recently was underage drinking and I have to say that the Hollandaise solution seems quite superior to our own. Let's take a quick look at typical teen drinking in the USA:
1) Teens sneak into parents' liquor cabinet, steal booze, get blasted, get caught, get punished.
2) Teens are now cut off from parents'booze so the oldest looking one in their clique is now Mr. Beer and they buy illegally, get blasted, generally don't get caught so generally don't get punished.
3) Teens get blasted away from home in some "secret" location and have to get back. Maybe there's a designated driver, probably not.
4) Teens either die, get caught by cops and have their life screwed up or make it home safely , thereby reinforcing their belief in their natural immunity from all evils and encouraging them to do it again.
Not a pretty sight. Now let's look at your average late teen, twenty year old:
1) Drink illegally at a bar that doesn't care about their age. Sometimes they'll need to alter their license just enough so the bouncer can pretend he thinks they're 21.
2) Alternately, go drink at a friend's house.
3) Get blasted away from home and have to get back. Maybe there's a designated driver, probably not.
4) Either die, get caught by cops and have their life screwed up or make it home safely reinforcing their belief in their natural immunity from all evils and encouraging them to do it again.
The basic problem is that in the USA you are either a youth or you are an adult. There's no middle ground. If you are 20 years old plus 364 days you pretty much can't drink legally anywhere. This despite the fact that you've been old enough to elect the leadership of the country for 2 years and 364 days. O'er in the nordic lands they acknowledge that there is a middle ground when a maturing person is not an adult but wants to be one. They have a special classification for these tweeners that allows them some of the rights and privileges of an adult under greater supervision. Here's how Nederlander teens go partying:
1) Bus to the tweener club.
2) If you're 15 you can have some beer. If you're 17 you can have some actual alcohol.
3) You don't actually need to get drunk. You're at a club legally. No sneaking. No special thrill for breaking the rules. No need to drink everything you bought because there's nowhere to stash it until the next time your crew has a chance to get blasted. You actually learn to use alcohol responsibly and in moderation. Plus, the club is highly monitored. Mess up and you could get banned. You do NOT want to get banned from the club 'cause you can be damned sure that this would be the figurative end of your social life.
4) Bus back home at a reasonable hour because the club closes at a reasonable time. Maybe you caught a buzz, maybe not. You had a good time though so will likely do it again instead of trying to go the illegal route for a bender.
In the USA we cultivate an atmosphere that encourages teen drunkenness and violation of arbitrary laws. On the other side of the pond there is openness. No brick wall saying "Keep Out" that makes burdgeoning adults want more than anything to get in.
I put together a hypothetical situation and Lovely Wife has presented it to some of our friends with kids:
Your kid has been invited to a party. The parents there are buying beer for the kids. Both parents will be there the entire night supervising the festivities. Every effort will be made to prevent drunkenness and maintain a casual atmosphere. Keys are going to be collected at the door. Kids are welcome to spend the night. Those who do not spend the night may taxi home or may be brought home by one of the parents when the party is over.
Poll question:
Would you let your kids go to this party?
Results:
Yes: 42 (76%)
No: 12 (21%)
Maybe: 1 (1%)
So far three out of three that Lovely Wife spoke with would let their kid go. All three put in the proviso that we were the host parents. I can understand this as you can't really ask this question fairly, even hypothetically, without a bit of information on the hosts. What thinkest thou? Would you let your kids go? Comment and vote your opinion.
UPDATE:
Poll closed and results recorded above. This is excellent support. It should mean that there's a decent chance I won't get arrested when I throw one of these parties for Bear in a dozen years or so.
Wasn't even going to post today as I'm in still recovering from my illness but I took a minute to peruse my favorite blogs and came across something that absolutely demands that I do so.
As you can tell by my archive depth I haven't been doing this very long. To tell the absolute truth I'm fairly new to the blogosphere even as an observer. In the relatively short time I've been here, and in the shallow corner that I've actually visited, I've encountered two of the most despicable actions of my life. In the first, the "Moxie" war, an inane online feud resulted in a woman losing her real life job. Now, a vindictive bastard has done it again. Some fucknut has taken an online disagreement and made it a real, human, personal attack. Some psychoanal addict has tried to screw with Kate in her real life. Not just with Kate, oh no. This scumball has tried to have her kids taken away from her.
HER KIDS!
They called Child Protective Services on her, claiming she is an abusive alcoholic. Exactly how evil does somebody have to be to do something like this? How fucked up do your thought processes have to be for this to seem like a rational thing to do? Can't people even think? Can't this fuck tell the difference between verbal argument or misunderstanding and what it means to totally fuck someone over? To try to strip kids from their family in order to "punish" somebody? I am totally fucking over the top pissed.
And I am unbelievably impressed by Kate. She is showing ungodly restraint. If somebody, anybody, ever tried to pull something like this on me - try to take my kids - I would be calling down the lighting on their soon to be sorrier than ever before in their lives ass. You attack me, fine. I've made myself a public target. But attacking my kids? Nothing this short of hell would protect you from me. Kate hasn't even stated who the argument is with. Kate's definitely a better person than me because at this point I would be slamming that name at every opportunity.
Whoever did this, I hope you understand how karma works and I wish to hell I could see you when this comes back at you. You suck and the world would be a better place without you.
So we're at The Crick (see My Life Kicks Ass for the background) and Burger keeps running off. The candlemaker is across the way and he really, really wants to go in there. And Miss Katie's sideboard restaurant is right next to us. He wants to go in there even worse. And there's the long path down Crossroads that he can't resist running down. He'll be happily splashing in the water one second and then slyly look to see if Lovely Wife or I are watching. If at least one of us is occupied he trundles out of the crick and ambles toward his objective.
He gives a look over his shoulder every couple of steps to see if we're coming after him. When we do he giggles and takes off at top toddler speed, his 18 month old legs competing to keep him upright against the off kilter swinging of his little arms. Incredibly cute and just fast enough to make a parent jog to catch him. And he has a blast with the "Catch me if you can" routine.
But it started getting old. Lovely Wife has gone to the car for drinks and there were a couple other kids in the crick now. I had to actually watch the boys now. It's one thing if my own get crazy and whack each other, it's quite another when Bear plays Godzilla and scares the bejeezus out of some two year old little girl or Bacon starts Hulk jumping and lands on some tot.
Burger took off for the third time since Lovely Wife went on her errand, that's three times in under 5 minutes. Bacon and Bear were arguing about something and the spat was threatening to end in a push. My rational male mind was overloaded by the simultaneous need to handle two crises. I yelled at Bear and Bacon "Y'all knock that off!"
That's not so bad. I'm a willing user of "y'all" and its many derivatives. English has lost the plural posessive and as a lover of the language I was happy to adopt this elegant southern solution. No, my above statement is not the cause of my current self dismay. It's the one that followed.
With the Bear/Bacon problem solved I turned in Burger's direction and yelled out "Burger, git on ovah heah!"
Git on ovah heah? Unbelievable. Git on ovah heah! What the hell was that? It just came out, all natural like. I was floored. I couldn't believe I had just said that. An erudite yankee sunk into the contusive flow of southern jargon. I couldn't move. Couldn't think. I dimly recall Burger turning back and looking at me like I was some sort of alien. Fortunately Lovely Wife appeared at that point and gathered the errant child. She looked at me funny, probably because I was sitting there with my mouth open, self stunned by my own verbal bombshell. Though she hadn't heard my statement herself she sensed my distress and let me alone in my befuddled state to work out whatever my problem was.
What would be next? Maybe "How y'all doin'"? Possibly "Ain't nuthin' wrong witcher motor"? God forbid "Y'all come back now, y'heah".
Two and a half years in Atlanta and I've already been corrupted. Do I fight back? Do I make a concentrated effort to reclaim my fading grasp of scholarly diction? A concerted assault on this intrusive provincial vernacular?
Nah. T'ain't wurth th'effort.
Note: This post got a bit long and rambly. So sue me, I was having fun writing. Anyway, you've been warned.
So I took Lovely Wife and the kids to Stone Mountain yesterday. We love this park. From the top of the mountain you can see clear to the Appalachian Mountains and you have a stunning view of the Georgia countryside. You get a very nice view of Atlanta too, especially on low smog days. The kids have a blast at the petting zoo and we never get tired of walking through the antebellum plantation. But I digress...
Lovely Wife has been feeling steadily better since her surgery so we decided on a trip to Stone Mountain since it would be my last day home (yes, I'm back at work today). It's close enough so we could return home quickly if she started ailing and we figured the fresh air and sun would be a nice change after being mostly cooped up in the house for a week.
We went on a nice trip around the mountain on the Stone Mountain Railroad. Our first time this year and Burger's first time ever (since evacuating the Momma belly anyway). Best part about going to the attractions on a weekday after school starts is no lines. Worst part is a lot of the actors and special stuff isn't there. Usually the train stops about a third of the way around for a comedy sketch of a train robbery. When we reached the spot where the stuff is usually set up for the robbery the train slowed down. Bear started getting excited - he remembered it from the last time we went on the ride. The train chugged past the spot and we saw all of the familiar props were gone. No cart full of TNT and nitro. No outhouse. No water tank. I was bummed. Bear got quiet and looked confused. The train continued to creep on and we saw a whole new area set up. There was the cart! The water tower! And a whole new little ghost town! Awesome! It got bigger and better! Bear got excited again. Bacon started to catch the fever too. Burger started wiggling on my lap and pointed at the Old Tyme buildings. But the train didn't stop. It just slowly chugged past and then picked up speed again. Double bummer.
After that dissapointment the rest of the ride was a bit subdued. It's always a nice ride, y'all, don't get me wrong. Beautiful scenery and very peaceful (once you filter out the train engine, anyway). There were hardly any people on the train and that was nice too. We were just a bit put out by the missing show.
After the train ride we figured we would walk over to the plantation so the kids could say hi to the animals at the petting zoo. We've been regulars for years and they know most of the animals. We started walking through Crossroads. This is supposedly a recreation of an 1870's southern town. I suppose it is, in the same manner as a mega mall is a recreation of a village green. There are lots of places to buy things and several of the things look like somebody could feasibly delude themselves into believing they resemble items from America's past. I'm sure Hello Kitty purses and Coca Cola trains were popular gifts in 1873. They do have a blacksmith, glass blower and candlemaker though and I get a kick out of watching them.
It's usually way crowded in Crossroads but seeing as it was a weekday with school in session there were only a handful of people walking around. We stopped at the fountain (it spits water at you - quite fun to watch tourists get nailed) so Bacon could throw in a penny he found. Burger bought a blast of agua right in the kisser. His expression was priceless. Where the hell did that come from? He looked around for the perpetrator. Lovely Wife got an accusing glare, as did Bacon. Bear and I apparently weren't considered criminal material 'cause we both got a pattented Burger smile.
So we continued our jaunt through Crossroads and came to...The Crick. The crick is a 25 foot or so span of running water designed for kids to get wet in relative safety. It's in the shade, smooth bottom, pool safe refiltered water. Normally you can't get near it but today it was completely empty. What to do? We have no swimsuits with us and only have a change of clothes for Burger. But this is not an opportunity to be missed. We give the orders of necessity: Shoes off. Wading only. No splashing. No jumping. Attack!
Bear walks in with his shoes on. Bacon rips his shoes off and jumps in. Burger waddles in, sits in the middle of the stream and starts splashing happily. Ah, well. The best intentions don't matter a hill of beans when you add kids to water. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Lovely Wife goes to the car to get her sandals. I deshoe myself and start splashing kids while she's gone. What a great time.
After the kids exhaust themselves in the crick we head for home. It's a miss on the petting zoo but there isn't too much complaint. The boys are tired and hungry so they just mutter some half hearted whines about the animals. On the ride home the shorter two fall asleep and Bear gazes out the window with a dreamy glaze to his eyes. I look over at Lovely Wife and see her eyes half closed and a smile of contentment on her face. I take her hand and kiss it. She turns to me and mouths "I love you".
It just doesn't get any better than this.
Ryan has a problem with his buddy Marc. Rather, Marc has a problem and Ryan is concerned. You see, Marc is in an unhealthy relationship with a psychobitch and can't end it. This story is especially poignant to me because I used to be Marc. I was the nice guy with a codependency issue with a slut. My slut wasn't the bitch that Kelli is. There was never any physical abuse. There wasn't really any verbal abuse either. Just a manipulation that I was totally unfamiliar with and completely unable to recognize. I willingly jumped through hoops for her and played idiot doormat.
My term of exile was much shorter than Marc's - only about a year for me. After our breakup I did the same thing Marc is doing. Trying to hold on to the tattered remnants of the relationship because I still couldn't let go. She'd cheated on me, stolen from me, lied to me constantly. All of that was excusable to me so long as I could maintain my fantasy of a relationship.
I helped her pay her rent. I loaned her my car when hers broke down. I let her borrow my TV. I let her come to my apartment to use my computer when I was at work (hers sucked and she no longer had internet access). I adopted a puppy "with her". Whatever it took to keep her in my life.
It was a sick, sick time in my life. I knew what my family and friends thought of my continued contact with her and didn't really care about that either. It took time and the constant support of the people close to me to finally shake her off.
So here's my advice to Ryan. Make it clear that you don't like Kelli because of how she treats him. Make it very clear that you do not want to be lied to. If he is going to break a date with you to see her he should either tell the truth or say no comment. This is actually more important that you might think. He knows he is in an unhealthy relationship. He knows he is being foolish. Reminding him of that will not help at all. Even after the breakup I was still avoiding friends and family because it was a constant barrage of "why are you still talking to her", "why are you still seeing her", "when are you going to cut her off". When I could see the people who were important in my life without the misery of defending my undefendable position I started seeing more and more of them. That was the turning point. As I came out of my shell I started feeling better about me. I got back into my life and enjoyed myself away from her. I was then able to compare my life without her favorably to my life with her and that's when I cut the strings.
So tell Marc that you're his friend no matter what. Don't hound him about Kelli. If he brings her up (and he will eventually) you should either politely agree and offer support if he's in anti-Kelli mode or politely remind him that you are respecting his position by not ragging on her so he should respect yours by not forcing you to sit through a Kelli excuse session. He'll come around in time, just be patient.
I don't have excellent dream recollection but I woke up last night with this one bright and steady in the ol' noggin. I jotted down the principle stuff and have been able to remember a good part of it.
The basic theme of the dream was fixing up a house. Not my house and not me fixing it up, I was just an observer. The guy fixing up the house was big and very mean. The house was already looking good because it was brand new but the components were all cheap and kept breaking so they had to be replaced or repaired. The overall condition of the house was getting worse and worse because this brand new stuff kept breaking faster than it could be fixed. The dream had a very strong feeling of inevitability and being overwhelmed.
So then there's a helper. A sexy brunette dressed up like a porn star trying to look like a French maid. Really long high heels. She's trying her best to clean but she's just as inevitably overwhelmed as the guy. He's angry that she can't clean fast enough so he smashes her with an axe and tosses out her body. Then he opens up his aluminum brief case and takes out a new, uninflated girl. She self inflates and is exactly the same as the first helper. She's more motivated but still can't keep up with the increasing mess.
She starts to get frantic 'cause she knows that if she can't clean everything up she's going to get the axe so she rushes and gets careless. She vacuums up the M&M Guys!! For some reason this was about the worst thing she could have done. The dream follows them through the tube system of the central vac system. They're making their dry, deadpan comments to each other through the entire trip. They make it to the collection bag at the end (it's a fine mesh bag instead of a vacuum canister).
Now they're in trouble. The M&M Guys are suffocating in the mesh bag. I'm now in the dream. It's just so urgent to save the M&M Guys that I have to be there. I start yelling and screaming for the guy. I can't actually touch anything so I'm powerless to do more to solve the plight of our candy heroes. He arrives and starts trying to rip open the bag. I'm telling him that it was an accident but he has to hurry. He gets more and more angry as he can't save the M&M Guys.
Here's where it gets wierd. I'm everybody now, in turn. One second I'm the red M&M, yelling that I'm suffocating and somebody better save me. The next I'm the chick, apologizing to the M&M guys for killing them. Then I'm the guy, absolutely furious and ready to kill, still unable to actually do anything constructive including saving the M&M Guys. Then I'm back as me, no longer a party to the dream but in my observer roll.
I'm the chick. The guy abandons his attempt to save the M&M Guys and turns toward me. He picks up his axe. I'm the yellow M&M. I can breath after all. I see the guy about to chop up the gal. I know that he's making a mistake since I'm okay after all but I don't yell for him to stop or anything. I'm the guy, swinging the axe. Time jump a couple seconds (I don't actually see the axe hit). I'm me as observer watching the guy take another deflated chick out of his aluminum briefcase. I know that he is very foolish. How long does he think he can get away with killing these girls? They're not just going to take it forever. I don't warn him though - I don't like him and I want the girl to win.
The girl self inflates (and is exactly the same as her departed sisters) and is terrified. She knows everything that happened to the other two. She picks up the axe and starts swinging at the guy. She's crying and not too effective. He's a big guy and he almost catches the axe. She does get him though and stands there crying and panting, covered in gross bits. She's probably hurt too cause I think he managed to land a few punches. The M&M Guys make one of their sarcastic deadpan comments.
I wake up.
How's that for vivid and freaky? Maybe I should send this one to The Dream Doctor.
The following includes examples from Lovely Wife's recent surgery. Although this serves only as anecdotal evidence the theories espoused are well corroborated through other experiences of myself, Lovely Wife and Burger. In addition I have second hand knowledge from many colleagues, family members and aquaintances. If you, the reader, have had experience as a patient in a hospital setting there is a damn fine chance that you have experienced much of the same as it appears to be endemic to the industry.
In this article I'll give you a bit of background on me so you will know my perspective. I'll give you a brief explanation of Lovely Wife's condition and her diagnosis and prognosis. I'll then take you through each main portion of Lovely Wife's surgical procedure telling you what was supposed to happen and what actually happened. I'll occasionally expound on how poor performance affected us in an especially bad manner.
Background:
Although I am a software analyst by profession my scholastic training was in medicine. I spent eight years in the US Navy as a corpsman, operating room tech and fleet hospital corpsman. I have worked in Naval Hospital Balboa, Naval Hospital Portsmouth, Naval Hospital Oakland, Fleet Hospital San Diego in Camp Pendleton and Veterans Administration Hospital in Buffalo. I have had personal experience working in patient care, pre-operative care, surgical procedures, recovery and post-op. I know how the entire proces can and should work from front to back.
The Condition:
For several years Lovely Wife has had an acute recurring hyperthyroid condition. This means she would quite suddenly have a thyroid that suddenly and unpredictably put out way too much thyroid hormone. This causes nervousness, weight loss, heart arythmia, raised pulse, blood pressure problems, restlessness and exhaustion. The first couple times when it was noticeable enough to require medical attention were immediately or shortly post-partum. She has been diagnosed with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, hashitoxicosis, hypothyroidism and post-partum hyperthyroidism. The reason for the many different (and sometimes contradictory) diagnoses was due to her returning each time after a few months to normal or borderline normal thyroid function.
She was problem free for over two years until about 5 months ago when it came back with a vengeance. She went from a thin but healthy weight of 135 pounds to just over 110. Her condition was finally pegged as Grave's Disease. The necessary treatment for this is destruction of the thyroid. This can be done with radiation that kills the thyroid tissue or with surgery to remove the thyroid. There is also a drug treatment that counteracts the overactive thyroid but there are possibly dangerous side effects to this drug therapy so it was eliminated as a course of treatment very quickly. The method we ended up with was surgical removal of the thyroid.
As a side note that won't be expounded upon here, the decision for surgery over the more common and generally safer radiation treatment was made necessary due to monetary considerations. Our insurance coverage made the cheaper radiation treatment too expensive for us to afford right now and her condition made waiting impossible. Yes, that's right. Our insurance pays almost everything for inpatient surgery but almost nothing for outpatient procedures. Sucks, doesn't it?
Pre-op:
Expected - Lovely Wife's surgery was scheduled for 9:30 AM. She was told to be at pre-op by 8:00 AM where she would be put in a pre-op room, an IV started and she would be given a shot to calm her down. The anesthesiologist and surgeon would both see her there to go over procedures again and answer any questions she had before she went in for the operation. Children under 12 would not be allowed. A maximum of 2 people would be allowed with her.
Actual - We arrived at 8:00 AM on the nose. We were told they were not ready for her. They would be ready at 8:30 AM. She was supposed to be there one hour before her surgery, not an hour and a half. We showed them her pre-op instruction sheet that told her to be there at 8:00 AM. Sorry, whoever filled that out made a mistake. We waited in the hallway until 8:30 AM when they took her into pre-op and I booked to the babysitter's to drop off the boys. She was nervous as hell but was not given the shot to calm her down as she had to see the anesthesiologist and surgeon before they could drug her. When she had finally seen them it was only 5 minutes before her surgery so it was way too late for it to be any benefit.
Special Problem - Our plan was to drop her off and I would take the boys to the sitter's. I would then be back in time to be with her for the last 45 minutes or so before she was taken to surgery. As she was not allowed into pre-op until 8:30 AM I barely had time to get them dropped off and get back in time. As there was a decent chance I would not be able to return before she was taken into surgery I had to take all of her personal effects with me. That meant that she spent almost her entire pre-op time with nobody with her and nothing to distract her except her own thoughts and worries.
Surgery:
Expected - The surgery would take approximately 4 hours. When the surgery was done the surgeon would come to me in the surgical waiting room and give me a report on how it went.
Actual - Exactly as expected. Lovely Wife's surgeon is very, very good and has an excellent rapport with his patients and their families. He explained everything clearly and concisely without using med-speak or talking down to me (and no, he was not aware that my background was medical/surgical).
Recovery:
Expected - Lovely Wife would spend about an hour in recovery and then would be taken to her room. One family member would be allowed to stay with her in recovery. Patients in recovery are in semi-private areas provided by rolling curtain partitions. The purpose of recovery is to monitor the patient for post surgical trauma and help them comfortably recover from the effects of anesthesia. Blood samples would be taken to start verification of her calcium baseline (this is a concern in a thryoidectomy as the glands that control calcium absorption in the body are directly behind the thyroid).
Actual - No family members, no visitors period, were permitted in recovery. There are privacy concerns with the other patients. Actual length of stay in recovery was three and a half hours. This was because there were no rooms ready for occupation. No rooms in the Short Stay Ward where they know precisely how long people are staying and exactly who will be coming to the ward days in advance. Lovely Wife witnessed a patient being wrestled down in order to remove his throat tube. She was denied a pillow after having her neck hyperextended for two hours during surgery. A volunteer found me in the waiting room and asked if I could go get her pillow because they didn't have any in recovery. She was ignored and then put off when she first came around and asked to go to the bathroom. They told her she could wait until she got to her room. Remember that she had been on constant IV fluids for almost 4 hours at this point. When you are on an IV you pee constantly and furiously. She was finally given a bed pan. She had never used a bed pan before and was still groggy from drugs and in pain from surgery with a neck that hurt furiously from 2 hours of hyperextension. She struggled into a sitting position by herslef and successfully used the bed pan. She then noticed that the privacy curtain hadn't been closed and she had just given a free show to the throat tube guy across the room. A lab tech came to take the blood sample. She asked him to take it from her right arm as the left was very sore from previous samples and a missed IV insertion. He said it had to be the left because her IV was in the right but he would take it from her hand to avoid the sore area. He took it from the sore area anyway, apparently forgetting in just a few seconds where his target was.
The Ward:
Expected - Lovely Wife would be in a private room with minimal disturbances. She would have the IV removed. Sleep was the most important factor for her getting over the surgery. A sample would be taken the next morning to check the calcium again. Me and the boys could visit.
Actual - She was in a private room but it was very far from disturbance free. For the first 4 hours she was woken hourly for vitals checks. She fell asleep shortly after getting to the room so I told the nurse that I was going to pick up our kids and to make sure that she knew that when she woke up. When she was woken up for vitals check the nurse said she didn't know where I was. She called me on my cell, crying because she thought I just up and left her. Shortly after she hung up with me the nurse gave her the message that I had left to get the boys. I arrived back with the boys and was informed that a maximum of 2 visitors were allowed at a time. I reminded them that the hospital policy said 4 visitors and walked by. We stayed for about an hour until the boys couldn't stay still anymore and Lovely Wife couldn't stay awake any more. The IV was not removed because she had not started drinking again. Remember that she was totally and completely infused with fluids from being on an IV for seven hours by this time. It also was very painful to drink as she had just had her throat operated on. They finally removed it when she told them to bring bandages because she was taking it out herself. She was woken up just before midnight for vitals. She was woken up at 4:00 AM by an incredible ass of a lab tech who was shouting her last name at her to wake her up. This was for the calcium test.
Special Problem - Lovely Wife has a slight curvature in her cervical spine (neck) and easily aggravated neck pain. In surgery the neck is hyperexted (head pulled back to expose the throat). She was in agony from this, far worse than the pains from the actual surgical procedure. No pillows in recovery? No ability to go get a damn pillow for someone who had neck surgery and is stuck on a gurney for hours? Since the surgery the main problem has been the neck pain. In fact, Lovely Wife is at her physician's office right now because of this incredible neck pain.
Post-op/Release:
Expected - The morning after the surgery Lovely Wife would be released from hospital so long as her calcium levels were sufficient. Her thyroid doc and surgeon would both see her before she left to give instructions.
Actual - As expected, with a twist. She was given verbal and printed instructions from 3 sources - her thyroid doc, her surgeon and the hospital itself (nurses). In each case the verbal instructions contradicted the written ones. The instructions from the hospital/nurses contradicted both the thryoid doc and the surgeon on several points.
Special Problem - The day after a surgery when the patient was under general anesthesia is not a good day for verbal instructions. How sharp are you after a night of frequently broken sleep? Add in the mother of all hangovers from the massive drugs that you were pumped up with. Add in that you are not familiar with the field being discussed. Also put out contradictory information from three separate primary sources. Fortunately I was there for the bulk of it and I am familiar with the field and didn't have an anesthesiology hangover.
Summary:
At each step of this surgical procedure we were given incorrect information. There was no evidence of efficient process and communication between the different groups involved. There was little to no consideration of Lovely Wife as a patient and customer, only as a job or commodity. (Exception to the last - both the surgeon and the thryroid doc had excellent bedside manner and both listened when we asked questions and answered clearly and concisely.)
Interpretation:
The advent of the health maintenance system and conglomeration of hospitals has completely changed the way patients are viewed. The patient is no longer the customer, the HMO is. Patient satisfaction doesn't matter because when the bill is sent out the hospital's client is still going to pay. Hospital administration has no incentive to make their hospital the best for patient care because no matter which one you go to in the area you are going to one of their hospitals. Taking care of patients in a manner that the patient wants costs money. More nurses, better training, more collaboration and communication. Our current system makes it less profitable for a hospital to take care of its patients in an acceptable and expectable fashion.
Epilogue:
How do we fix this? I honestly don't know and don't even have any major insights except to go look at the Naval Hospital system. We didn't have any of those problems in the Navy. Systems were worked out and implemented. Departments knew what was happening in other departments - they talked to each other. Scheduling was done on a macro scale with implementation on a micro scale. A Short Stay ward would never be overbooked causing a backup of scheduled surgery patients in the recovery room. The largest apparent difference is that the sole objective of a Naval Hospital command is to make sick people better. They have no concerns over cash flow or accounts receivable. So is socialized health care the answer? There is worldwide evidence that it not only doesn't work but is one of the first steps to a broken economy. So look one level deeper and you see other important differences. Organization, cooperation and the enforced belief that taking care of the patient is the primary goal make the real difference between my Naval experiences and what I've encountered in civilian medicine.
Tell me more:
I'd love to hear anecdotes from y'all. I'm not inviting a bitch session - good or bad, it's the experience that matters. Did you or a loved one have similar encounters with the medicinal kind? Tell me about it. Did you have a good experience with surgery or a hospital stay? Lemme know.
Thank y'all for the kind emails. I appreciate it and Lovely Wife got a kick out of having virtual well wishers. Her surgery went just fine (but with enough hospital admin goofs to feed a scathing write-up later) and she'll be coming home today. I'll be blogging again by tomorrow.
Lovely Wife will be having surgery to remove her thyroid tomorrow. Not sure how much I'll be posting in the next couple days as it's going to be a bit hectic with running the kids to various sitters and visiting with Lovely Wife to get her spirits up. Then again I've got a night or two with no Lovely Wife here so there's a good chance I'll be hanging on the computer to avoid insomnia. ;-)
Stay with me on this one. Although it seems to be a long and meandering miscourse of disparate anecdotes (and, truth be told, that pretty much pegs it) there is a point in there.
I'm out of the dart tournament. Here at work there's an annual dart tournament (although this is my third year and this is the first one since I've been here). It's double elimination. I'm out after two games. My second loss was to a girl. A girl who sets her throw with her hand a good 8 inches from her head, off to the side. And kicks up her rear leg when she throws. I used to be good. No, check that. I used to be Damned good. I used to get on the board at the local pub and not get off until it was time for wings. What the hell happened? 7 years of not throwing darts happened. 7 years of not worrying about winning the next game to save a buck (loser/challenger pays and electronic Cricket was a buck a game) so there'd be another buck in the booze pool.
Since my ignominious elimination last week I've played at least a game each day at lunch and an occasional one in the morning. This morning, every mark closed ('cept bulls) in 5 rounds. Boo yah! The kid's still got it. Lemme back in the tourney! No dice. I'm a spectator until the next annual tournament (in 2006?).
Got a haircut. Short. Number 3 blade on the sides and back with a nice soft blend to the slightly longer top. Short hair has lots of advantages. First, it's hot in Atlanta. I'm outside a lot these days (3 kids will do that to you). With short hair you don't have massive sweat build up under the hat and when a breeze starts up you doff that sucker and feel the glory of natural air conditioning cool your brain. Ahhhh. Second, it's easy. Shower, towel, brush once each side. Done. Stays there all day without hair gunk. Lastly, the hairs stand a bit higher. Their numbers are not what they once were. Before they could lay in ambush, well camouflaged by their peers. Now my follicle army must rise and present their strength boldly to do battle with the encroaching Army of Forehead.
I've been teasing Pop about his ever increasing balditude pretty much since I could speak and realized that it pissed him off. Bear looked at me the other day and said he could see my head inside my hair. Soon it will begin. Karma sucks.
Thought about fighting it. There's a lot of options now. Plugs, transplants, Rogaine with Minoxidil, lots of new stuff you hear advertised lately. Maybe a nice rug? Maybe take the initiative and just go bald like Ryan did? Nah. The only one of those I could respect myself after implementing would be the ultimate shave treatment but I was in the Navy and I remember the trauma of seeing what I look like bald. Some guys look good totally bald. I am not one of those people. I'll resign battle and wait it out until I have a heavenly halo surrounding my pate, just like Pop has now. Then the two of us can sit back with a beer and laugh at Bear when he realizes that he's losing his hair. Sometimes Karma is okay.
There are two sorts of people. Those that masturbate and those that lie about it. My three boys fall firmly into the first category. I swear, as soon as the pants are off it's open season. Bacon is the worst offender. The other two will run around nekkid having a great time with an occasional grope to pacify them. Bacon's first priority is rolling the wurst and all other considerations are secondary. I was a bit concerned about all of this at first but Lovely Wife assured me it's normal and healthy behavior. Apparently it is. They don't do it when they have clothes on so there's no fear of the uneducated seeing this behavior and thinking that Lovely Wife and i are pervert child molesters or anything like that. So, what the hell. Let 'em go, I say. I mean really - I would give a lot for it to be socially acceptable for me to drop trou and choke the pope on a whim. You go boys! Enjoy it while you can.
Did a lot of running around yesterday. At Borders, little Burger had a blast yelling out his favorite new word. "Memo!" That's like Nemo, not the annoying things at work. In fact, it is supposed to be Nemo but he can't do "N" yet. That's Nemo the fish of course, not the star of the classic work of fiction. "Hey, Burger. Nemo!" Big smile on little face and "MEMO!" at the top of the little lungs. Daddy: "Nemo!" Burger: "MEMO!" Daddy: "Nemo!" Burger: "MEMO!" We attracted some disapproving looks but who gives a damn. When you can get a smile that big from an impromptu accapela round of "Nemo!" "MEMO!" nothing else much matters. You want to read your book for free go to the bloody library, jackbutt. (Due to parental considerations I've been replacing "ass" with "butt" lately. It works. My kids will grow up swearing in PG.)
At Petsmart Bacon walked off while I was distracted by Burger. ("Nemo!" "MEMO!" Man, that shit never gets old.) Lovely Wife was with Bear in the potty because some butthat had locked the men's room door as they left it. Anyway, I had an odd sensation when I realized that Bacon wasn't rifling through the cat toys anymore. It was a moment of stark terror possibly accompanied by a mild cardiac infarction. Burger got quiet immediately even though I hadn't said a thing. Kids know. Picked up the Burger and quickly (and calmly, I thought) walked down the aisle looking for my dwarven escapee. End of the aisle, no Bacon. Quick the other way to the fish tanks (he loves looking at fish). No Bacon. Very quickly (and no longer calmly) to the front entrance. Lovely Wife had relayed a story about how Bacon and Bear ran out of Walmart while she was at the register. Despite constant instruction Bacon still has no respect for parking lots. Streets, yes. He just refuses to accept that parking lots are just as bad, if not worse. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had just been hit by a car. There was no other solution. Except that somebody had taken him. He's a good looking kid. And smart. But way too friendly. I need to expose him to some mean people because he doesn't seem to grasp that there are mean people out there. There's people at the entrance. Oh, God. It was a car. Terror hits again just as a familiar voice yells out "Daddy! Want a penny!" And there he is next to the big offering jar for dog and cat shelters. Turns out he found a dime (all coins are still "pennies") and went to put it in the "piggy bank". And he wanted another penny to put in. If I had one I would have given it to him. As it was I took his hand and walked back towards the rest room to meet Lovely Wife and Bear. "MEMO!" Smile. Thanks, Burger.
Watched Without a Trace last night. It's a movie from '83 about a 6 year old kid who goes missing. Definitely dated but well done. I watched about a half hour and then went outside to smoke and read Harry Potter. Lovely Wife called me back in for some back rub action (her back, not mine). Watched another half hour or so then decided it was bedtime. It's almost over, why not finish it? Cause I know that the kid is going to be dead. It wasn't telegraphed in the movie but it didn't have to be. 1983. Kid missing movie. Not a comedy. There was not going to be a happy ending. Scare me with Freddy Kruger and Alien monsters. Keep this real terror away. Don't want it. Probably should have told Lovely Wife about Bacon and Petsmart.
My birthday was pretty cool. I know that birthdays aren't supposed to be special after 25 or so but I still want a fuss made over me. Lovely Wife sent me off with G to see Pirates of the Caribbean. Awesome movie. Best adventure since Indiana Jones. Based on a lowsy Disney ride. Oh, I don't think so. This appears to have had the Disney name slapped onto a previously fantastic screenplay. Don't put it past them. Check out the computer game. A great game with excellent reviews. It should be. It's the successor to a great game that got great reviews. You see, Pirates of the Caribbean the game is actually Sea Dogs 2. Late in the production cycle Disney gave Bethesda Software a bushel of money to put their name on it. I'm pretty sure they did the same thing with an excellently written pirate movie that had nothing to do with any Disney name or property.
Anyway (that's my favorite segue in case you haven't noticed yet), the movie was excellent and I had just as good a time as I ever have had in a movie except once (I don't remember what that other movie was but that's irrelevant because it was the activities of my movie watching partner that made the experience memorable). Got home and the house was festooned with balloons and banners and Bear launched into the Happy Birthday song. There were fudge brownie cupcakes and vanilla ice cream. There were pictures lovingly drawn by the kids that will soon be adorning the walls of my mega cube. There was playing of the Hulk video game as well as Yahtzee. There was much ado about the birthday from Lovely Wife. Life is good.
So, I promised that there was a point here, didn't I? It's a bit of an abstract but essentially it is this: I'm getting older and that's okay. It snuck up on me. I'm still not really ready to be 34 but I seem to be doing a pretty good job of it. I miss things from when I was younger but I find that most of them aren't really that important. Most of them are still here with me if I go looking for them and the ones that aren't recoverable are more than eclipsed by the things that have taken their place.
In other words, I'm going to have to fake my midlife crisis so I can get my sports car.
Or How Many Pets Can Our Apartment Hold?
Allow me to give you a rundown of our current pet situation, in their order of appearance:
Henk:
5 year old mostly male black cat. Henk thinks he is a dog. More accurately, he thinks he is a puppy. He assaults every visitor with demands to play and pet and allows all forms of abuse from our kids including tail pulling, fur removal, and eye gouging. Henk is the only pet we have that follows instructions that are not accompanied by the opening of a food container.
The Fish:
A half dozen tropical fish in a 3 gallon cheater tank. The fish were a one-up man purchase by my wife as I had set up a nice little 2 gallon tank at my office. The temperature swings in my office let to repeated fish loss. My wife's tank lost 2 to 3 times as many fish because it was a nasty under-gravel setup and she didn't take care of it. When my tank gained enough notoriety that people outside of my department knew of the "Tank of Death" I took it down. At that point my wife stopped caring about her fish and decided that she wouldn't replace any fish that passed on. She stated her intent to put up her tank when they all died off. Since that point over 6 months ago she has not lost a fish.
The Birds:
Two finches. Their cage is strategically located so they can spray me with water when I sit on the love seat in movie watching position. There is no other location in all of our 1300 square foot apartment where the finches can be placed. The finches make finchy noises whenever I am concentrating on writing and during the quiet dialog portion of any movie. The finches belong to my wife. I do not like them.
Apple:
2 year old mostly female tabby cat. This was an anniversary present for my wife. She was concerned that Henk was getting lonely when we went on weekend trips or long days out to the park. She picked out the cutest little kitten and showered love and affection upon it. I ignored the kitten. The kitten grew into a typical cat - evil, secretive, enemy of children and adults without can openers, startled at the drop of a hairball and frightened of all things that move. She also latched onto the only person in the house who never tried to be nice to her. She is my shadow and bosom companion. She doesn't like my wife.
Nicky:
The Easter Bunny brought more than eggs this year. We are now the proud owners of a beagrier. Or maybe that's "terrgle"? Anyway, he's a 5 year old partially male beagle / terrier mutt. It was important to get a dog despite living in an apartment that is already as full as it needs to be and comes with the burden of a $500 non-refundable pet deposit. (PER PET!! And what the heck is up with a non-refundable "deposit"! Back in yankee territory we called that a fee!) I can't recall the reasons that it was important but they were very compelling. They may have included such things as safety in the house for a housewife mom and the irrefutable evidence that kids brought up without a dog are more likely to end their effective lives in a church steeple holding a high powered rifle. Anywho...I know what you're thinking because I was thinking the same thing: "What combination of dogs would create the most hyper and obnoxiously yappy dog possible? Oh, yes! A beagle and a terrier!" Well, we're about as wrong as wrong could be. Nicky (the worst part about adopting a used an adult pet is getting saddled with a lousy pet name) is the calmest canine I have ever met. This dog simply does not get excited. About anything. Food? Okay. Going out for a walk? Whatever. Attacked by psychotic 2 year old? It too shall pass. This dog is so calm that even Apple adapted to him after less than a day. This is the same cat that runs and hides when the finches get too active. The dog did not react when the next door neighbor (with her own dog) came up to the porch to chat. It did not react to our homecoming after it had been alone for several hours. Perhaps Nicky (I can't call him that anymore, it's just too lousy a name for a male dog. I'm going with "Nick" from now on) will regrow some virtual testicles after he has been with us for a longer time and is more comfortable in
his new home. I'll let you know.
