Like a Train Wreck

You can't create a global market trading sunspots...

2012-01-30T09:28:00.000-05:00

... but I'm sure they'll try. Seriously, at some point they'll have to stop digging and focus on pollution instead of a trace gas heavier than air that feeds plants.

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

Bring back the crying Indian guy on TV, litter is way up. Graffiti is back too, symptoms that people no longer give a crap about ruining other people's stuff. Not surprising given today's political climate. When people are jealous of others, they'll act out. In four more years it'll be like the nineties and aughts never happened.

But hey, some people think "Let's be hungry and cold, in the dark!" is a great political slogan, sure to get the economy moving.

Heh. I could help

2012-01-27T08:37:00.000-05:00

UVa has claimed no attachments to any emails were preserved on their system

mistake

2012-01-23T11:36:00.000-05:00

I made the mistake of starting to read a story about a family who had a child killed. I had to stop. I was two chapters in and I felt physically ill.

All the reviews of this particular story were extremely positive. How "life affirming' and "beautiful" this story was.

I can say it is well written. I can say it's effective. That's about it.

Maybe I'm getting more sensitive as I get older? Maybe my frame of referenc has changed? Maybe this story just hit too close to home? I don't know.

I can understand writing this book. I can't understand wanting to read it. Does that make sense?

This is the second book over the past year or so that I've had to put down. The first was the second part of a trilogy that has been at the top of the charts forever, or so it seemed to me. I read the first book on a recommendation, and liked parts of it. I was a little disconcerted toward the end. I got the idea in my head that the guy who wrote the book wasn't being honest with me.

Allright, I'll cop to it. I couldn't finish the second Stieg Larsson book because I got a sick sense that this guy was writing porn.

I've read some books that could be called "torture-porn", they are easy to pick out. The last couple of Hannibal Lecter books, Brett Easton Ellis, a couple of airport best-sellers that were knockoffs of the Lecter books... and I cringed when I should have cringed, and was shocked when I was supposed to be shocked. But the Larsson book gave me the seriously disturbing feeling that this guy was interested in sex trafficking in a completely different way than he was presenting. There was no completely over-the-top imagery, no underlying dark humor, no fourth wall.

I got the distinct impression that even though all of the correct assumptions were made, even though all the correct platitudes were mouthed, even though the good guy wins in the end (or so I've been told), the hero was just an excuse to have a victim. Something, in fact, made me sure of it. I started, but put down the second book. I'm sure there will be people who think that I'm reading my own hang-ups into the story. There will be people that think I'm some kind of PC Puritan who would force everyone to read nothing but the Bible. Go ahead and read it. There's plenty of violence against women in the Bible, but I never got the feeling that the guy writing it wanted us to skip the dialog and jump to the dog-eared torture scenes. I couldn't help thinking that the guy wrote those parts first and filled in the rest.

This other story didn't make me feel dirty, but did make me feel bad. Bad enough that I bailed. I'm not saying that the author of this other story wanted to kill a kid, I'm saying that I made a mistake in thinking that a story about a dead child would be a relaxing read. If something should happen to my wife or any of my children I think I would probably go insane, I pray every day that nothing does. All this story did, as well written as it was, was make me realize how little influence I have on the actions of others in regards to the safety of my family. I don't need to dwell on that. It's not a good thing to do. It will lead to depression and paranoia, I have enough of that in my personality already. I have to think happy thoughts.

Good Lord, I should probably just watch cartoons.

Everthing I knew in kindergarten I learned when I was forty

2012-01-17T09:39:00.000-05:00

I'm having one of those weeks. Strike that. I'm having one of these weeks; i don't believe I've ever had a week quite like this one and probably won't again. What can I say?

I have just realized that I have hit that point in my life where I no longer have the time or inclination to have a hobby. Even to the point where I am thirty minutes away from hiring some poor meth addict to come and paint the boy's bathroom. It's a seven foot by seven foot box. A litter box, by the smell.

A couple of years ago I re-tiled the bathtub and shower, and for some reason there's a section of grout that doesn't want to stay grouted. I think the grout was mixed bad or maybe the gap was too big for unsanded, or (more probably) it didn't have enough time to fully dry before someone took a shower. Whatever happened, it crumbled and I re-grouted. I just noticed that it happened again, the re-grouted section had gaps. So this time I scraped all of the loose, wet grout out and dried everything with a space heater before using PRE-MIXED Grout with LATEX(it's got 'lectrolites ™), letting that set for twenty-four hours then covering the base of the tub with an inch (approx 1/36th of a meter)-thick layer of caulk. That should, if my theory is correct, prevent water

OK, I had to stop and lost my place. The Cocker Spaniel asleep at my feet farted so bad he woke himself up. It sounded like someone dropped a bowling ball into a kiddie pool full of yogurt. I think he thought he was dying. He barked and was shaking. I had to leave my office and get the damn animal outside before he exploded. The entire basement still smells like warmed-over death and it's been about half an hour. I tried spraying an air freshener, but all that did was add a flowery aftersmell to the unbelievably strong shit smell that came out of that dog. The other dog hasn't moved, if it's true that gas is heavier than air, I think he might be dead. What the hell happened? Whatever, I don't have time to finish, so you get a dog fart story instead of a home-improvement rant. If you don't hear from me, assume I've been overcome by fumes and send the fire department. Please.

So, why aren't you on Facebook?

2012-01-16T13:54:00.000-05:00

Oh, I don't know...

Facebook Gives Politico Deep Access to Users’ Political Sentiments via Slashdot.

Maybe because Facebook is... SATAN?

Interesting, but wrong

2012-01-12T16:18:00.002-05:00

How to Disappear Completely (From the Internet)

The easiest thing to do is to start a blog. No one will ever hear from you again.

I speak...

2012-01-11T11:45:00.000-05:00

Ta-Dah!

Been a week, so I figured I should post. My analytics for last week were pegged at 0, which is nice.

I just found out that half of the Catholic schools in Philly are closing, including West Catholic, Conwell Egan, Prendy and I smell B-O-nner. Will this be the death of that classic cheer? I do think it's sad that the Catholic schools are closing, really, but what are the options?

I went to a private Catholic Prep school, there's multiple private prep schools out in the suburbs and city. If your kid is smart enough, he'll get in. You'll pay through the nose, but have a better chance of getting into a private college. If you happen to live out in the suburbs, most of the public schools are close to, if not as good as, the private schools in the area, so why not save your money? If I lived in Radnor, PA; there's no way I'd pay money to send my kid to Archbishop Carroll. None. To top it all off, the goddam Catholic School teachers are unionized! How and Who the hell let that happen?

The Catholic grade schools in Philly are at 40% capacity. 40%. Here in Indiana, the Catholic schools are going to get vouchers. What are the odds of that happening in super-Catholic Philly?

Less than zero in my opinion.

These guys screwed themselves(and countless little boys). They spent years supporting "progressive" social causes instead of providing an alternative. They hid the problems they had internally until it was impossible, and now they have to retrench and hope against hope that eventually they'll come out smaller but stronger. They won't though.

The progressives have made "tolerance" mean something good. It doesn't. Like forbearance, tolerance is not something that should be given away. God is a lot of things, he is kind, patient, forgiving, but he's not especially tolerant. It might have done the Catholics a bit of good to have remembered that back when the Evangelicals were getting out in front. Now look. A church full of European art-house sissies who can't make a move without worrying about how it "looks".

They're like Republicans trying to get the Hispanic vote... it looks like a good fit, but it ain't ever going to happen. Give it up. Get serious. Get MAD. Get back to basics. People will come back. (Provided they don't have to wipe off theirs after serving Mass).

urgh : UPDATED

2012-01-05T13:39:00.001-05:00

I have a craaaaaazy headache. A real bastard of a thumper. I did it to myself. I was clenching my jaw like I had tetanus all morning while I was on the phone. I was doing that because my headset wasn't plugged in last night and I had my cell phone on speaker. I had it turned up all the way because the guy I was talking to talks like he doesn't want anyone to know that he's actually, you know, talking. Like how a 12 year old Catholic school girl with huge tits walks all hunched over? He talks like that.

My speaker, when turned up all the way, has this great "feedback" feature that is really the only noise that I can honestly say makes me grind my teeth. So now I have a headache. THINK WHEN YOU SPEAK PEOPLE!

I also have to pee so bad I'm afraid to move anything but my fingers...

UPDATED:

I no longer have to pee. I'm freezing now, since I opened the door to my office, and my head still hurts. I think my right eye is going to fall out. My toes are numb because the floor is cement and it's winter... oh, and I also have to work out today.

It's January and that means I'm on my yearly quest to lose all the weight I gained since Halloween. This year only eleven pounds, but it actually looks worse than last year's 15.

I'm not giving my money to Weight Watchers this year; I'm going with something different, something that costs about the same and may produce the same results. I've got two options on the table. First option: Massive amounts of Peruvian cocaine. With any luck I'll slim down and get that nose job I've been thinking about. Maybe even do some man whoring, who knows? It's been a long time since I last spent my food budget on hard drugs; I think it'll be interesting to see what's changed. The second option is medical. No, I'm not getting my stomach removed or my ass fat liposuctioned and turned into fragrant candles again. I'm thinking more long term. Like food poisoning or a really good parasitic infection. Maybe both. The kids have sports tonight, no time to get dinner made. I could chow down at the local Subway and chase it with a nice long sip from the Junior High pool. If I survived, I would probably lose some pounds. Aside from the one giant elephant leg from the persistent edema I bet I'd look pretty damn good when they finally figured out what was causing the blackouts, rectal bleeding and gas. It's worth thinking about, and I probably wouldn't have to learn how to fly a small plane and speak Spanish.

Either option is more fun than the goddam elliptical.

Whatever. 190 by March 19th or bust. I'm really aiming for 185, but I have a very heavy penis and I usually subtract that from the weekly weigh in. Don't start, it's only fair. Last year while on a carb bender I got into a fistfight with that woman from the Weight Watchers group who always subtracted for her giant breast implants. I was all, "Whut? Eleven pounds? Why not take another thirty out for your huge ass implants?" And she was all, "Ah No You Di'en't" And I was all, "Don't you shake your neck at me you fat bitch, I am aaaaaaaaall real!" And she was all, "It's ooooon you fat BITCH! You don't talk like that to me! I am abuuuuv you. You don't know me!" Then she broke my nose with her handbag. It's ok though, when no one was looking I snuck out and took a shit in the back seat of her Camry.

It's all good.

Creepy Morning

2012-01-03T08:23:00.000-05:00

Thirteen degrees. Dark. Snow and Ice. Had to drop my car off at the shop thanks to an unexpected off road jaunt the week before Christmas. I passed St Pat's cemetery twice, once on the way and once on the way back and couldn't help but notice that there's no fence. Fairmount cemetery has a fence, a nice wrought iron fence, but not St Pat's and none of the cemeteries relocated from the Jefferson Proving Ground have fences.

So now I'm freaked out.

I suppose what I should do is go and find Sister Mary Margaret McShillelagh and punch her in the throat. Imagine telling a six year old that cemeteries have iron gates, not to keep people out, but to keep spirits in. That horseshoe over your door isn't for good luck, it's to keep your dead relatives from visiting. That old frog told me that in 1978, and the week before Christmas, 2011, while we were finishing up the Prince's Eagle Scout project, I found myself scouring the ground looking for any nails he might have dropped in the cemetery so that no angry Civil war soldiers followed us home.

Speaking of cemeteries, look what we found during our trip to Philadelphia last week. If this ghost shows up I guess I'll have to take her to the zoo.

Eye of the Tiger

2011-12-30T11:51:00.000-05:00

This is next year's Christmas Card

Hey...

2011-12-23T17:19:00.000-05:00

Happy mother f'ing birthday to me.

Lotta snow up there at the north pole...

2011-12-15T13:50:00.000-05:00

Hi. I'm maddad, this is my brother maddad and this is my other brother maddad...

2011-12-15T13:32:00.000-05:00

Back from Vermont and yes, all the Vermonters I met are weird. Not just a little weird, either. Really freakin' weird.

And I know weird. When I first moved out here everyone I saw seemed to have some kind of limp. If they weren't limping they were talking funny, had a wonky eye, bad teeth or missing fingers. However, on speaking to the gimps, it was clear that most of them weren't insane.

This is not true in Vermont.

I would say that three quarters of the people I met in Vermont looked normal. They walked fine, they didn't move like a shell-shocked WW1 vet, from far away they even looked like they dressed well. Unfortunately, when you got closer you realized that there was something, well, off.

Only one person I talked to in Vermont looked me in the eye, and she was originally from Dallas (or so she said, you can't trust anyone from Dallas, even if they're not really from Dallas). I'm serious. I spent most of the first day up there looking behind me. I even went to the bathroom to heck if I had shaving cream on my ears. Yes, it was that bad. All I saw were profiles. When I entered the conference room to start my meeting I felt like a Border Patrol agent opening a shipping container full of chinamen. It freaked me out.

The other thing that they did was talk funny. I'm not talking about the goofy Pepperidge Farm accent they play up in the commercials. I'm talking about that weird breathy voice Ginger would put on when she wanted Gilligan to do something for her. I couldn't tell if they wanted to jump my bones or if they were afraid I'd punch them in the neck. I swear to God I thought this one guy was going to run screaming from the room every time i asked him a question. Was everyone in Vermont beaten as a child? Seems to me Ethan Allen must've had regressive traits.

Let's face it, I like Indiana because I fit here. I fit the stereotype of reticent Hoosier guy perfectly. I shout never find myself the most boisterous guy in the room. EVER. And yet... Vermont.

Now I'm not even going to bring up their driving. They are way too close to Boston to have any skills in that area at all. That's actually OK, since the cars are so damn dirty that I can only assume the extra padding will help distribute the force from the wreck that will ultimately happen when you lock up the brakes on your Subaru because the guy in the passenger seat said something and you had to quickly look out the rear driver's side window.

So... Vermont. It's West Virginia without the charm and friendly natives. It's not as pretty, it's too close to Massachusetts, Canada, and New York, the people are freaks, the politics are bad, the weather sucks and it takes a month to get there by airplane. But I have to admit, the crappy little restaurant in the Burlington Airport made a great Reuben.

And then there's New York City. What the hell has gone wrong with the world when New York City is the fucking place to be?

Why is it that the richest and most powerful city in the entire fucking world has three airports that each belong in some war-torn West African city? I landed in the USAir terminal at LaGuardia and tripped over a crate full of chickens. The men's toilet was a door that opened to the alley. The flight information screens were old black and white TV's with vertical hold problems (true). The terminals were not connected so I had to leave the secure area and WALK ACROSS THE FUCKING PARKING LOT to get from the USAir terminal to the Delta terminal (true). The escalators and elevators to get from the baggage claim area to ticketing were broken (true again). There were only two security lanes open and all of the self check-in kiosks were BROKEN (true again). There were no signs to tell you what terminal you were in, no gate agents to help with connections, and none of the OH SO HELPFUL customer service or security people SPOKE ENGLISH!

I hope that place burns. I really do.

Be afraid...

2011-12-07T13:10:00.000-05:00

You'll think it's cute until the damn thing eats your kids.

The best movie i've seen since Citizen Kane

2011-12-05T16:52:00.000-05:00

The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters

I am not lying. I'm not kidding. It. Is. Awesome.

I saw it Saturday night on ESPN Classic and I couldn't turn away. Even if you hate video games... and for the record, I hate Donkey Kong... you have to see this movie. You should make your kids see this movie. You should send this movie to the Pope.

OK.

2011-11-29T12:02:00.000-05:00

Elvis Costello: Don't Buy My $225 Box Set

It's not often that I'll support an artist who's put himself out there to prop up some cause or another... but I can totally get behind not buying an Elvis Costello box set. How should we spread the word? A bumper sticker on your Subaru? "Don't buy Elvis Costello -- Pretentious Music Lovers with Pretentious Cars Against Pretentious Music" How about a magnetic penis for your early 90's Jetta?

We'll call our group: Occupy Shitty Pretentious Crap Music That Only Music Reviewers For Shitty Magazines, Aging Bartenders, People Who Use the Word "Installation" Instead Of "Exhibition", Forty-Year-Old Dickheads Who Make A Big Deal About Not Owning A Television But Spend Hours In Front Of YouTube Watching Children's Cartoons Like "Rugrats" And Justify Forcing The "Superfriends" Box Set On Their Nieces And Nephews Because Of The "Subversive" Gay Subtext, And Muzak Programmers For Starbucks, Target And Unemployed Music Buyers For Borders Books Will Ever Listen To. Or Occupy... Hey, That Bon Jovi CD In My Car Is An Ironic Statement, I'm Only Listening To It For A Laugh... or Assholes, for short.

I think I won't buy the Talking Heads Box Set, the Patti Smith Box Set any Springsteen, Paul Simon, post-heroin Lou Reed, anything with "Acoustic" in the title, just to start... we'll overcome BABY!

Oh yes you are...

2011-11-28T12:28:00.002-05:00

When I’m a mom I’m not going to get a job...

The comments on that post are fascinating. My take, there are a lot of people out there who are paranoid, maybe for good reason, that someone's trying to take advantage of them.

When I got married I assumed that my wife was going to work. I think my wife did too. That changed. It changed because one of us, I won't say who (rhymes with me, spelled the same too), didn't make enough money to pay for daycare and "we" were expecting. I could have stayed home with the prince, but without boobs I was at a disadvantage. Anyway, it all worked out. I think our kids have grown up with some really good parenting, and I have managed to keep employed. Maddmom has managed to keep out of prison, and I haven't had time to consider crack as an alternative to my morning coffee.

Now that maddmom is employed outside the home, all of this will change, I'm sure. But I feel that when it does change, it will only be for the good. I figure that the more people she is in contact with, the more likely she is to slip up. Maybe she'll even mention where she hid the body. I'll eventually end up with a proper burial. Which is nice.

Is it chilly in here...?

2011-11-22T15:32:00.000-05:00

Uh oh...

Climategate 2.0 emails dumped.

Sooner or later this will end up on the news... for the time being I'll just use it to help my career...

Anyone else have a teenager?

2011-11-19T10:55:00.000-05:00

Posted without comment

It's blurry because it's trying to eat me

2011-11-19T10:52:00.000-05:00

Never get off the boat... never get off the boat...

Need danger pay for leaf collection. This SOB was under the hostas.

Ooooofa

2011-11-15T11:48:00.002-05:00

So I was on a conference call today with a friend from Russia. We were comparing colds, his is worse. He sounds like an elephant seal with TB. I'm not coughing a lot, I'm just miserable. I think his esophagus prolapsed while we were on the phone.

I, however, am in worse shape. The last time we hung out, at a conference in DC last year, I did 30 pull-ups to his 13. Since then, he's been doing some slavic version of crossfit and I, I have done de-NOTHINK!.

I mentioned that I was probably too fat to do pull-ups now (not really true, but I'm not doing 30 in a row without stopping for a doughnut and a milkshake) and the next time I saw him I may need him to help carry my extra chin.

At any rate, this young guy who pushes 230 and is close to 6 1/2 feet tall has been doing some crazy stuff with body weight exercises based on gymnastic training. He sent me a link to this video of some Ukrainian guy who's getting famous in fitness circles over there. Check it out:

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFAAAAAAA. That's insane. I'm not saying that I couldn't do any of that... but um... let's face it, I can do a pull up. That's not the same thing as Spidermanning all over Tartary. I'd have to lose 40 pounds. Easy. 60 pounds if you count all the snot. If my friend can get into this kind of shape, assuming he survives the plague, on a diet of beets and vodka then I'm moving.

Incidentally, I just found out he's older than me. He looks 20. Seriously. I should probably stay out of Russia. I don't want to go to bed one night and wake up the next morning drifting on an ice flow because I have a few spider veins and wrinkles. I suppose I could pack on a few hundred pounds and pass as a woman...

Blocked

2011-11-07T11:03:00.000-05:00

Really. I've had writer's block since 2008. And by 2008 I mean 1992. So when I decided to try and write 50,000 words in one month< didn't have very high expectations. Until I read "The Most Important Thing an Aspiring Author Needs to Know", a blogpost by Jim Butcher.

Nice motivation, didn't help. I'm still blocked. Maybe hypnosis, maybe drugs, I don't know, something might get me over the hump. Sitting down and dropping words on page doesn't work.

It's not that I haven't tried. I spent most of Friday looking at the word "It's" typed out in OpenOffice. I replaced it with "The" around 2:30, but by the time I gave up I had put "It's" back up again.

When I was younger I could, no shit, bang out 15 - 20 pages a day, free of pop culture references and heavy on character development and style. Most of what I churned out was garbage, but I could do it. There was a zone I could get into. I would re-read what I had written the day before, bang out what happened next. I would seriously get into a zone, I could hear the characters talk, I could see what they were seeing, I had a pretty good understanding of where events were taking them. Not any more.

I read an interview with some music star once, I can't remember who they were, but I do remember that I thought he sucked. I ended up having respect for the guy, even if I still didn't like his music. He was talking to the reporter about his favorite albums and one of them was from a group who had one big record then crashed and burned. This guy said he knew that group was going to blow it with the second record because they didn't work on it while they were touring. He said that they had five years to get their first album made, but instead of using the next two years of touring to focus on the next record, they waited until they went into the studio to put pen to paper. He said that for two years these guys were totally immersed in music, touring, playing and hanging out with other musicians, and they didn't take advantage of it, and it showed. I remember thinking it took quite a bit of moxie for this guy to sound off like that, seeing as he was most famous for singing songs someone else wrote. But what he said sticks with me. I had years where I was surrounded by creative people, physical and virtual, who I could have collaborated with, talked to, studied, emulated or just bitched at. I didn't do it. I had the time and the opportunity, but I didn't use it.

Now I'm blocked. Too self-conscious to write crap and not good enough to write anything good. I'm like a fat seventh grader in gym class, stuck at the top of the rope. I don't even have ideas for stories any more. Urgh.

Live and learn, I guess. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

PS: The most motivating speech I've ever heard is this one, maybe I'll start playing it on a loop:

Let's go eat a goddam snack.

Can We Do It?

2011-11-01T12:09:00.000-04:00

not a chance in hell...

It's National Novel Writing Month. I signed up. I will have to write a 50000 word novel by midnight, November 30. I found the site this morning, so I'm already 12 hours behind schedule. I have no ideas, no time, and no talent. So why not sign up?

I won't make it, but I guess it'll be fun to try. I'm going to start posting excerpts over on the other site, this one, but I'll be typing it in Word. Riiiiight.

My handle over at the project site is... wait for it... Lost My Cookies. If any of you have signed up, come see me.

Oh yeah, don't expect anything out of this.

I'll update my word count and maybe post a link or two here every week or so , so check back.

I can see clearly now...

2011-10-24T10:52:00.000-04:00

The pain is gone... SING WITH ME BOYS! Even my laser vision doc is groovin' to the tunes...


$11.95 an eye... even if it works!

I can see. It's a really neat feeling. I still have some double vision and some blur, but over all I can see as well or better than I could with my contacts. The burns on my legs have healed, mostly, and the antibiotics have really helped with the trash monster bites. I'm excited.

I honestly didn't think it would take this long to get better, but I should have known better. When you have the skin that covers your eyeball scraped off with a shovel, then told to look into the bright light, well expect a bit of residual smarting.

It was the fall that hurt the most.

It's a really weird feeling to be able to read things from far away without glasses or contacts and now I understand why the rest of you are so messed up. I'll probably never be right again. Knowing when I wake, terrified, to some horrible screeching noise in the middle of the night in some lousy hotel, the angel who appears at the foot of my bed is actually Nancy Grace.


I'll eat your soul... with fava beans and a nice Chianti..fffffff

I guess I'll get over it... eventually.

Driving is a lot more fun now that I can see. I can finally tell if it's a squirrel, chipmunk, snake or small child on the road. It's going to be great to finally get an accurate score.

Fixing my eyes is just the first step. In eight weeks, when I'm off the steroids, stop shitting blood, and my balls revert to their pre-operative girth, I'm really going to work on improving my appearance. I'll maybe shave every couple of days, whiten my teeth, get back to my diet, get that boob job I've been talking about for years... you know, good honest maintenance. I am after all, getting older.

Friggin' lasers...

2011-10-17T10:25:00.000-04:00

Three days after getting my eyes friggin' lasered, I still can't see. Like seriously can't see. Like getting worse every day can't see. I was told that it might be a bit goofy, sight-wise, for a couple of days but this is ridiculous. I can't even see the keyboard. Really. This is maddad touch typing.

This is my own fault, of course. I should have done more research. Everything looked good, clean and professional. Diplomas on the walls, everything was highly polished, he wore a mask... I just can't figure out what went wrong...


maddad's Eye Dr's Class picture.

Shave the mustache hipsters! Irony's DEAD!

2011-10-10T15:53:00.000-04:00

Like, Seriously?

Seriously.

Al-Qaeda joins those questioning legality of U.S. killing of citizen Awlaki

Dammit. I just spent $60 on ebay for a speak and spell. What? I was going to make it say dirty words... at the playground, of course... I refuse to lie to children...

Stupid, sentimental bullshit...or Aging Bitter Gay Jewish Artist Hates Republicans, Writers who Give Him Bad Reviews and Gwyneth Paltrow...

2011-10-06T11:13:00.000-04:00

Look, let's be fair. Steve Jobs helped start Apple. He got the concept of a personal computer before most anyone else. The SI-FI idea that everyone would want to own a personal computing device that would allow us to do all that cool stuff that couldn't be done when he started selling it to us. We bought it. We bought super expensive typewriters and game consoles with bad graphics and terrible gameplay. Then we went to school and learned BASIC and PASCAL and FORTRAN to write our own terrible programs. Then we went to work and learned how to use a million different business programs running on a different operating system on a computer that could be taken apart and put back together again, one that we could build in our dining room from parts bought at Radio Shack. It would run the programs we used at work. Then we all went out and bought PCs. Steve Jobs wanted us to buy super-expensive home computers that looked great and did pretty things, but no one but artists and architects knew how to use them and none of our friends knew how to fix them and parts and software were mail-order only in most towns. They didn't have the power to run the best games, if you could find the games, and you couldn't share things with your friends or co-workers if you had one, because they had PCs. He was selling a super high end German component stereos with direct-drive turntable and a tube amp, when the rest of us were buying Japanese boom boxes with dual cassette and high-speed dubbing. Oh sure, everyone thought Mac's were better, everyone wanted one, but why? Were they really better? Enough better that they could charge the premium they charged? Nope. Things got worse when they tried to go down-market. At the time, there was no reason to buy a cheap Mac.

Then came the innertubes... content.

Jobs didn't invent the internet, HTML, mp3s or ebooks. What he did do was convince people that all these things were better when viewed, listened to, or read on more expensive, frustratingly over-designed, limited devices.

He was a salesman, a great one. He had a gift for design and the ability to exploit the weakness of the average joe for 'aspirational brands'. Let's face it, anyone who has ever used a Zune and an iPod knows that the Zune is a better device, but who would be caught dead in public using a Zune?

Bill Gates was showing touchscreen tablets years ago, no one could understand why that was a good idea. Steve Jobs removed CD drives from Macs, limited ports and made them virtually unupgradeable, but people bought shitloads of them. Jobs told everyone to 'Think Different' or, in other words, 'This thing does exactly the same thing that the other one does, but it's way cooler. You're cool, aren't you? Buy this one.'

What Steve Jobs did that made him great was to show the world that what we are is a bunch of shallow, selfish, immature poseurs who like cartoons.

A lot like this guy...I refuse to lie to children. What bullshit. We've all seen your act. Get over it. Is everybody in the world still mad at Mommy and Daddy? For fuck's sake, I'm taking a European vacation just so I can piss on the graves of Freud, Lacan and Klein.

Is there anything in this interview that you didn't see coming? I've been more surprised at the end of Murder She Wrote.

Party at maddad's house...

2011-10-04T10:15:00.002-04:00

A video mix from Dangerous Minds

Remember to hose off the cat before you leave...

INTERCONTINENTAL SUPER GRIND from Django's Ghost on Vimeo.

01. “Srey No” - Lady Named No
02. “Saman Doye” - The Black Brothers
03. “Shake Me” - AKA
04. “Cumbia Pop - Los Beltons
05. “Generations” - Variations
06. “Songs Of A Sinner” - Top Drawer
07. “It Happens Every Day” - The Lemon Drops
08. “Paint It Black” - Patti Smith
09. “Lorke Lorke” - Siluetler
10. “Slave” - Sabana Breeze
11. “Leila” - Chiitra Neogy
12. “Pink And Green” - Shirley Hughey
13. “Treat Her Right” - The Bombshells
14. “Rule The Nation” - U Roy
15. “Kick Out The Jams” - Tubthumper
16. “Shake A Tail” - Big Wheel
17. “Caterpillar Crawl” - The Lively Ones
18. “Hold Me Now” - The Rumours
19. “Look At The Owl” - Sat Tee Touy
20. “Cat Walk” - The Soul Emissaries

Good luck with that job hunt...

2011-10-03T13:00:00.002-04:00

... no, really, I mean that. I can't wait until you are back, fully employed, and have a few bucks to spend on... oh I don't know, maybe a new set of tires. It'll be precious when you twitter on about how rude the salesman was because you didn't know what size you needed or what rating you wanted or really anything about them except how much you wanted to spend. Then the tire guy will make you feel cheap by recommending used tires, or worse, the store brand. Then you'll have to sit in the waiting room with... horrors... other people who need tires, while people who are dirty and probably don't have a college degree wander in and out of the front and yell. Don't those people have jobs? Why are they sitting there waiting? I hope none of them talk to you, especially the old man with the US Navy ballcap on, he looks like he'll talk to anyone. Must be PTSD. You should blog that. Maybe daytime TV or... oh no... Fox News is playing on the 20 inch TV fastened to the wall or chained to the table. The volume is probably too high and no one knows where the remote is. Make sure the book you're reading doesn't have a dust jacket or a picture on it, and make sure everyone knows you'd be reading it if the noise from the TV didn't keep distracting you. Goodness gracious, the magazines are ancient... and why, in this day and age, anyone needs to hunt anything is probably beyond your ken. Take a few snaps of the ads for deer and pig urine and any full page ad that has a girl in a bikini holding a rifle. You'll need to Tumblr that stuff, it's hilarious! Don't forget to be all funny and sarcastic with the kid who comes out of the garage to ask about the CV boots or joints or whatever. I mean, seriously, right? Like you're supposed to know what the hell he's talking about... you were in AP classes, not shop for God's sake!... And that mustache he's trying to grow? Totally awesome, right? He is totally serious about it. ANyway, like I said, good luck with the job hunt. Sorry Borders closed, I guess. I hardly ever shopped there, I could never find anything I was looking for and the customer service sucked.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'...

2011-09-27T16:33:00.000-04:00

I was over at Winding Road Magazine just a second ago (no link, I was there because it's the slowest loading site in my favorites, bloated and hard to read...) and there were two discussions going on that I really wanted to join in.

1) Are VW's really unreliable?

Yes, unless you get them used. All new cars are unreliable. When you pay what you pay nowadays for a new car, if anything breaks, that's a problem. I own one of the cars that is legendary for being unreliable, a 2001 Volvo V70 T5. Look it up. It's probably the worst car you could ever own. It's not, and I'll tell you why. When you buy a used mid-luxury European car, buy it from a specialist. You buy it from a local Volvo shop, or used Euro car specialist, you'll get a great car that has had all the bugs, recalls, maintenance alerts, little tiny fixes and niggling details worked out. It might have higher mileage... you might pay more than you would at Carmax, but the guy who sold you the car knows every little thing there is to know about the car you're buying and will detail you to death. I've had my car for six years, it's over 130k miles. I've had one major malfunction and two sets of tires (my fault on the tires). Regular maintenance, oil changes and such, get done by me, the 100k service gets done by the independent Volvo shop. things that would kill me to have to fix on my wife's car, I can let ride on mine. Broken trim, a bad turn signal, a burnt out LED, a broken rear wiper. I can let that go until I fix it myself. If my car was new and the turn signal flashed fast? I'd freak. BUT... I bought the car from a Volvo nut. We spent hours talking over the recalls, the software upgrades, the replaced bushings, etc...

Now, my son bought a Jetta. The Mass Airflow sensor failed, the dipstick tube cracked, there's a couple of issues that need to be sorted... BUT... he'd been driving on sludge and fumes for weeks, he had about a quart too much oil in it and he's 16, so he drives like an idiot. Still, a little maintenance and the car works fine. A little on line research and parts can be found for pretty cheap. A couple of minutes with a manual and small fixes are pretty easy to do. Reliable? It works, would I buy a new one? Prolly not. Used? Maybe.

2) Would you buy a wagon?

Yes. I did and would again. As a matter of fact, there's a '91 240 wagon I have my eye on for under $2k. I might buy it and store it if I can get clearance from maddmom. Seriously, you have no idea. My last one was an '89, I sold it for $5k in 2006 when I bought the new one. If I didn't have to report to anyone, I'd have that car in my driveway right now.

I'm in lust. With a wagon.

Close call

2011-09-21T10:14:00.000-04:00

Minor freakout. The template I've been using since 2006 changed when I changed to the new Blogger interface. I just noticed because my analytics reported a flat 0 for the second straight week. Normally I would use that 0 as an excuse to whine about my horrible friendless existence, and I still might, but this time i knew the number was wrong. So I went to my blog and it was baby blue.

Good lord.

So I tried to upload my template backup, which I made in 2006, and of course Blogger shit all over it. So I tried to fix the new template to look like the old template, and I just don't have time to mess with it now. For a few seconds I decided that changing the background to my old paisley would be enough, but then all the stuff on the sidebar would still be missing. I didn't want both of my readers to think I had deserted my only fake internet friends. I panicked for three seconds at the thought of not getting my two weekly page views, but then I found a button to revert to the old template.

I guess I'll eventually have to update to the new stuff. Maybe I'll work on it tonight. Probably not. You'll take what you get and like it.

Ger-owl

2011-09-19T12:36:00.003-04:00

I was just talking to a group of people. (Shocking) No one in this group was a scientist. Not a one. Not even an engineer. Quite honestly, none of us were even exceptionally smart. I would like to think that since I was there in a consultative capacity, that those in the group thought highly of, at the very least, my skills, if not my intelligence.

I will say that there was no doubt as to the groups opinion of their collective intelligence.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH they thought they were smart. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH they thought they were sophisticated. OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH they thought that they were witty and clever.

One of them even said that "The average American nowadays can't tell the difference between science and magic." To lots of guffaws and self satisfied grunts of masturbatory pleasure.

I let it go.

I know that "science" to the average American is exactly what they learned it was in school. You take a hypothesis, and through observation and experimentation, you prove it wrong or right. But what it comes down to is simple. Science isn't "guessing".

To the decidedly un-average Americans in my conversational group, "science" is guessing. A credentialed "scientist" reports a study that supports a theory that gets reported on the news. That theory is proved. SCIENCE! An acquaintance relates an anecdote... PROOF! The first paragraph of an article reports results of a judgment sampled survey. Those results are extrapolated to the entire population.

Statistics and surveys aren't science. Science is observable fact and repeatable results. Gaming, modeling and estimates are interesting and fun. They can even lead to "science". But until they are proved, they are not and never will be settled science.

You can believe some of these theories and anecdotes and studies to be true, I know I do. But they aren't settled science.

Anyway. It was a long meeting and eventually I had to tell them that the report they gave me (based on a sample of documents from a single repository) was not accurate because, while the whole number of items they reported was a pretty close approximation, he failed to take into consideration what type of user was using each repository and the type of files those users would put into said repository. That's why their shit don't work. In other words, close is for horseshoes and hand grenades assholes. You want results? Count. Read.

It's

MAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGIIIIICCCCCCCC.

antsalysis pantalsysis

2011-09-12T13:56:00.001-04:00

That's the scientific term for wanting to do something so much that you can't figure out how to get started. It's really a super pain in the ass."Barriers to entry" is the nearest buzzword to what I mean. When you look at the target and you break down all the steps you have to complete to get there and you freeze. Most of the time the freeze is caused by a time issue. Not that there's a deadline, but the amount of time it will take to go through each step, in turn, freaks some people out. Other people see procrastination, It's not procrastination. Is it procrastination when a deer freezes in your headlights? No. It's fear. Feeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrr. Blah. Fear of change, fear of failure, fear of missteps, fear of being poisoned (by a serial killer who puts some kind of luminous poison in your truck stop coffee when your back is turned and then texts you that he's kidnapped your family and you have to spend your last two days on earth trying to find them with the help of the spunky, young waitress who you shanghaied into driving a stolen car after the truck you think might belong to the serial killer but actually doesn't, instead it belongs to the cement company that is owned by the man with whom your wife has been having a torrid affair while you've been on the road working to keep her and the kids in the style that she's been accustomed to ever since her estranged step-father, who started the company you work for and will leave controlling interest to you when he finally passes away from ALS cut off her allowance because he thought she was a "round-heeled", over tanned, spoiled brat. ), heck, just plain nervousness.Whatever you call it, it's annoying. Mostly because when you do finally make the call and start moving things along, your "wants" conflict with everyone else's "needs" schedule. Blah.Sometimes forward movement calls for a bit of selfishness on the part of the mover. You're never going to get where you're going if you let every other car merge in front of you. The mergers won't respect you and the people behind you will get pissed off and go around you.

Uh oh.

2011-09-06T14:11:00.000-04:00

Blogger changed things. I like the new editor, I just hope it doesn't mess up my classy blog thing here. I honestly don't want to spend the time it may take to change, repair, back up or otherwise fix this thing.In other news, I've been informed that not having my meatspace profile on facebook is probably not a good thing for my career.Listen. I've seen facebook, OK? I find it hard to believe that facebook is good for anyone's career except for the people who work for facebook. Still... I was told that someone was looking for meatspace me and couldn't find me. I don't believe it, but what can you do? Maybe I'll get a facebook profile...But then I'd have to change my sidebar. Changing my sidebar would mean messing with the blog. Messing with the blog would mean spending time on it. I spent my time. Back in 2004. I don't want to have to update anything. What if I lose my cool "last decade" vibe?

Things fall apart...

2011-08-31T14:39:00.000-04:00

... actually, the center is holding pretty well. It's the hands that suck. I've managed to totally mess up my hands. I cut the tip off of my left pointer. All of the callouses got ripped off when I went bouldering with the scouts, I tore open the backs of my hands cleaning the gutters and I've got splinters under each fingernail from mulching the front beds.

Ow.

On the other hand, the heart is good, blood pressure's fine, weight still holding at 195 two months after quitting Weight Watchers, and my penis has grown three inches thanks to a successful bet over fuel economy made with an elderly Gypsy woman.

So, I'm healthy and finally well endowed.

Yay.

Not only that, but I think that if I pile all the stuff I had in my pockets together with my shoes on a scale, It'd be close to five pounds. Not to mention my new job as a drug mule. Ok, it's not really drugs. I just need a good story in case I get X-rayed.

Anyway. It's been an entire month since I've been on an airplane. Scary. So I've decided to spend all of September on the road. I'll let you all know if I make it.

SPIKE!

2011-08-23T13:02:00.000-04:00

This got nine hits last week.

I don't know if it's because the Warrant guy died, or... nope. It's gotta be the Warrant guy dying. I do need to correct the post. Where it says "Aldo Nova" you have to read "Tesla" Spelling and the rest, you can forget about me ever, and I mean ever, correcting.

Other news, I haven't had nine hits on a single post since 2008. I'm currently getting under 20 hits a week. Which is just about nothing and why I noticed that that old post got 9 hits. You know once I was actually getting almost 300 hits per day. That lasted just long enough for me to consider putting ads on this here site. Heh. Heh.........heh... *sob*

I'll freely admit that both the quality and quantity of my posting has hit pretty much rock bottom. This is bad. But still...

Nine? Thirty hits all last week? A 90% bounce rate? 24 comments in what, seven years? I don't even get spammed any more!

OK. I did quit. I admit that. I was getting shit hits back then too, but dear lord!

I think I'll do nothing but post pictures of my penis. I'll dress it in historical costumes.


My Penis

Hmmm. Maybe that's more of a Tumblr...

Seriously?

2011-08-23T12:19:00.000-04:00

$110 for Desert boots?

Wait... Desert Boots? Don't they know the nuns won't let us wear those to school?

I didn't even search for those. I got the ad while surfing. This means that somewhere I indicated that I was fucking old as dirt and somehow nostalgic for the late seventies or early eighties. I'm not, although it seems much of the government is, as is the Fed and the housing market... but I digress... no, I really don't digress. I was going to buy the Beast a pair of Docksiders for school, because he doesn't want to wear sneakers all the time. $120. For size 7 Docksiders. What the hell. Even at the outlets the damn things are $80! My damn Sperry boatshoes, the Mr. Rogers kind) are out of stock and over $70! Food is insane. We still have $4 gas. But mileage is still $0.55, same as it was when gas was $2.50. Interest rates are historically low, but I can't refinance my house because I'm not in danger of default (I'm not kidding. If I stopped paying my bills I could refinance), not to mention the house is only worth about $200 and change now.

When Skippy was born, maddmom and I decided to do the Dave Ramsey plan. Buy only what you can afford, with cash. If you want something, save up for it. Pay off your debt. Don't use credit cards. Look for deals, plan for retirement. So we did. Guess what?

That backfired.

I should have borrowed every cent I could. Then paid off my credit cards, car loans, vacations, giant TV's, plastic surgery, etc... with a fixed rate home equity loan then defaulted. Maybe I should have gone to one of those "credit counseling services". I should have bought the $400,000 house instead of the $100,000 house. I should have spent $200,000 on home improvements instead of $50,000. I should have been as irresponsible as possible, everyone else was. Hell, I'm paying for it anyway.

I've just about had it.

When I first started working, a friend of mine was looking into starting his own business as a "credit counselor". A nicer version of a collections agent, he figured he would work on a flat rate or percentage, or both. His big idea was student loans.

Back in the day, and I have no idea if this is still true, if a schools student loan default rate went over a certain percent, they lost the ability to provide Pell Grants. Now, a Pell Grant wasn't a lot of money per student, but it went directly into the school's pockets. That was the reason EVERYONE had to fill out a FAFSA, even if they were paying cash. F'rinstance, I knew a handyman making $12k a year working for *insert large hotel chain here* who went to school for free thanks to his company's tuition benefit. Paid in full every semester. Still got $450 in Pell Grant money. That check got signed over at registration or he didn't get in. I don't think he even knew what it was. It was just, "Sign here. Here's your schedule." School administrators counted on that money, and if it was reduced, there would be no Christmas party that year for the staff.

My friend and I worked together in the financial aid office of a well known for profit school that had a pretty high default rate. We spent about a year digging around and trying different things to keep the default rate low. He was the talker, I was the muscle. I built a skip trace database and tracked students who reported no income on their FAFSA and 1040. He called relatives and roommates, employers and old teachers, not as a collection agent, but as a "counselor". He didn't collect money himself, he talked the student into getting in touch with the bank and helped negotiate payment. We had the idea that we could free-lance, get a flat fee from the school per student and maybe a percentage from the guarantors. We never got too far with this. He got promoted and I moved away, direct lending would have killed the percentage anyway, I think. Anyway, I think this is how those counseling rackets work nowadays and I'm sorry I didn't get the jump on them when people actually cared about their credit.

Obviously no one does now if a company can make money selling $100 desert boots. Seriously, I wish I had paid attention when they liquidated all those Army-Navy stores in the 90's.

Odd day

2011-08-16T09:05:00.001-04:00

Dangeresque and I were driving home from Louisville when, from nowhere, we saw a rainbow shoot though the sky...

It seemed to be moving away as we drove towards it. As we went North, it went West. Finally, when we got to to the Sligo exit, it took a sharp jump over the river and looked for all the world like it was sitting right on top of the McMahonsion!

It was! The rainbow ended right at our front door! Wouldn't you know it? ( I was shocked too.) It was seriously bright, at the bottom of it, and all the gold coins around made it really hard to drive through the neighborhood. I should really think about getting a four wheel drive.

When we finally got close enough to the house to get a good view of the whole scene, I noticed what looked like a crowd of people milling around. That pissed me off, let's face it, if a rainbow ends at your front door, your neighbors should have the courtesy to keep their hands off the gold. Seriously. Or at least check to see if you're on vacation before they rip you off. That's what I do. I never steal my neighbor's paper unless I'm sure he's golfing or in the office that day. Anyway, it wasn't the neighbors, when I got closer I could tell that whatever it was milling around and tearing up my lawn, it wasn't full size.

There were masses of freaked out leprechauns all over the front of the house.

So many, in fact, that I had to park all the way at the end of my driveway, which was choked with miniature carts and donkeys. Miniature donkeys, by the way, must eat like regular donkeys, because they shit like nobody's business. Getting out of the car, Dangeresque and I had to use my jumper cables like bullwhips just to clear a walkway up to the garage.

Unsurprisingly one of my other kids had left the garage door wide open and the little green leprechaun bastards had already raided my beer fridge.

Now, drunk or sober, a freaked out leprechaun isn't to be trifled with, and unfortunately for Dangeresque, leprechauns are extremely sensitive to any slight on their size. You see, Dangeresque's voice is changing and every third word comes out as a chipmunk-y squeak. I heard him say, "Would you excuse me, please?" to the group of surly midgets blocking the door to the house, and all hell broke loose. The last I saw of him were his giant sneakers sticking out from under a pile of tiny cast iron pots. I was close enough to the workbench that I was able to grab my trusty DeWalt drill (still had the hole saw on it from the weekend) and keep most of the lilliputian brutes at arm's length. I received a nasty bruise on the back of my head when one of the little ginger freaks started chucking bottles at me from the recycle bin, but I managed to get through the door otherwise unharmed. Two minutes later I discovered the reason for the tiny riot in my garage...

The king of the leprechauns had laid an egg.

FIrst day of school yesterday

2011-08-11T09:56:00.000-04:00

Schmutz on the phone, but you get the idea.

I looked in the mirror today...

2011-08-11T09:40:00.002-04:00

and saw this...

We visit NYC...

2011-08-09T11:25:00.000-04:00

Post vacation reality vaccination

2011-08-09T11:23:00.000-04:00

I'm going to pretend I'm still on vacation. A good vacation, too. It's not that I had a bad vacation, I had a great vacation, I just want to vacate my house and go back on vacation and vacation in a really nice vacation destination. Like say... I don't know, someplace nice.

Today the Prince got his driver's license. He's the man, now. I will now begin the decline common to all men who have kids who drive. I will begin to forget how to do it. First, I will begin to go slow, then I will grow out my ear hair enough that I will no longer hear the "ticka-ticka-ticka" of my turn signals. I will eventually buy a Toyota. I will be unable to make a right turn without coming to a full stop, and I will drive around aimlessly during the day, listening to minor league baseball and traffic reports from far-off cities, looking for a hardware store, barber shop or bakery that's been closed for years. (You know, Milt had the heart right after his wife had the cancer. His kids came back to clean out the place and they thought Tommy would take over, but his wife was from up north and didn't want to leave her big house. I heard he was in insurance, too. You know, you can make a good living as a baker, but you have to get up early. Kids these days don't want to do that. I'm sure Tommy would've... he was a good kid, he worked concessions at the park summers... basketball player. Nope, too short. Had some heft to him too... not much of a jumper. She's no shrinking violet either, I saw them at church last Easter. She was letting the kids have it in the parking lot. The oldest was on the phone the whole service! In my day we would've been humiliated...) Soon my legs will atrophy and I'll end up on one of those scooters, drifting aimlessly through Wal-Mart looking for plumber's putty and bacon bits.

Before I do that though, I've got to get the kids ready for school. Maddmom has a new job, the kids go back to school, and I'll be alone with my speaker phone and email, pretending to have co-workers and friends. I'll turn my webcam on and say "Workin' hard or hardly workin'?" to the old man looking back at me.

Oh. I've also decided that since it is impossible for me to get under 195 pounds and I still look fat in all my vacation pictures, that the proper response is for me to get obese. I was on the beach quite a bit last week and noticed that the fat people looked a lot better than the "a little heavy" people. They are filled out more, more solid looking. More comfortable looking. I look like a melted candle. They look like a ripe peach. I figure I should just give up and start cramming down the food. Or maybe I could starve myself? I'm torn. Should I go for dessicated, old, overly tan guy or big, fat, old pale guy? Either way has got to be better than this (red and white striped semi-fat middle aged guy).

All righty. Off to hang myself.

That's Nuts!

2011-07-28T14:11:00.000-04:00

A $400 ticket for trucknutz? I don't know what is going on in South Carolina, but I think every official in the state needs to be put into a re-education camp.

Lesson one: You can't just fine people because you don't like their choice of automotive decoration.

Lesson two: You can't fine people because they interrupt graduation by cheering for their kid.

Lesson three is an excercise: I'm going to drive through your town twice. One time I will have a bumper sticker on my car that reads "If you can read this thank a little Chinese fellow who made it or the honor student who wrote the Union work rules that made it cost effective to have this piece of sticky paper shipped almost 7500 miles instead of making it here." The other time I will have an enormous black double ended dildo attached to the front of my car like Boss Hogg's steer horns. When is it OK for me to be stopped and ticketed?

A) When I see your out of state license plates.
B) Close to the end of the month, so I can meet my quota.
C) What kind of car and what color are you.
D) When the driver breaks a traffic law.
E) All of the above.

Now the obvious answer is E, but I am honestly hoping to get a D out of at least one law enforcement officer in South Carolina, maybe a blushing, young Enos type who hasn't realized yet that "breaking the law" means doing, saying, wearing, writing, building, thinking or being something that puts a crimp in ol' Sheriff Asshole's too tight Wranglers.

I can't wait for the end.

I was going to wear this same outfit...

2011-07-27T12:52:00.000-04:00

That's what I get for searching for an "atheist hymn". Don't ask. Besides, it got me thinking...

oooh yeah...

Now, before I have to shower. One more. Oh dear me.

Posted without comment...

2011-07-25T15:38:00.000-04:00

doesn't need one, really.

Noah... Waaat?... How long can you tread water?

2011-07-21T10:11:00.000-04:00

The Ruins of Villa Epecuen

Some Pig

2011-07-18T17:51:00.001-04:00

Went to the 4H fair and met Reggie. Reggie is a big pig.

Really large. Stinky too, but I didn't notice much. It was about 400 degrees out and I was hanging with the Beast and Skippy. We were wandering up and down the rows and playing with giant farm equipment, you know, doing cool stuff.

We stayed until it got dark, saw lots of tattoos, ate junk food, smelled pre-teen puke and signed up for many raffles.

It's summer. It's nice.

Grim grinning ghosts...

2011-07-12T09:51:00.002-04:00

Images of the Hatbox Ghost

via boing boing

I'll have to go to Disneyland one day. I love the Haunted Mansion in Orlando. It's the only thing I have to do when we take the kids. I actually have to go back, because they've re-done the mansion since I was there last.

I've heard the one in California is better. We'll see...

god talks back to the library of congress

2011-07-09T23:01:00.000-04:00

Christ Margaret, would you shut the hell up and let me finish my me-damned waffle?

Oh good lord. Get over it...

2011-07-07T09:36:00.003-04:00

Entenmann maker apologizes for 'insensitive' tweet Please. The woman is NOT GUILTY. She's nasty, but NOT GUILTY. Entenmann's makes the best packaged cheese danish with a crumb top ever, it's not nasty and it's also NOT GUILTY.

There. I feel better. Jonesing for Entenmann's cheese danish, but better.

I realize that with a nickname like "maddad" I'm supposed to be perpetually butthurt about everything. I do try. I really do. I guess I may be getting soft in my old age, because 'insensitive tweets' don't bug me. Sending pictures of your married dick to college girls doesn't bug me. Asking someone if they're a 'flake' doesn't bug me. Even (and I know this is a 'bad thing') bombing the shit out of Libya and sneaking into Somalia to kill pirates and terrorists, holding pirates without trial on a warship at sea and attacking crazed Muslim extremists in Pakistan with hellfire missiles fired from drones. I thought 'Global War on Terror' meant global war on terror.

What I am butthurt about is the economy, inflation, airline travel, the pussification of the American male, gas prices, not being able to find a replacement spool for my 30-year-old electric string trimmer (It's electromofied!), freakin' Weight Watcher's Points Plus, how I can gain 5 pounds in one day, a day when I worked out like a sonofabitch, the bank telling me I have a $200 limit on my debit card, when I have a $100 limit on my debit card, this year's blackberries not ripening on time, the weeds in my front garden, too many emails, the GOP taking it up the ass from a bunch of proven incompetents, the guy who wants my vote and thinks he'll get it by telling me he's a 'Christian first, father second, Conservative third' (seriously, fuck you guy), my cellphone being a piece of shit, the size of my office, when am I going to have the time to get my eyes lasered, the guilt I feel over wanting a new car, semicolons, and the weird red spot in the middle of my chest. Other than that, I'm good.

I don't really give two shits about much else, so spare me your 'outrage' over a fucking joke about doughnuts. That poor bastard didn't kill anyone... and seriously, Nancy Grace is a proven liar, a bad lawyer and a hateful skank. If you are taking your outrage queues from her, you should probably pray to God you don't have a kid who plays sports in the ACC. Big motherfucking chickens will come home to roost. And he'll probably come home with Casey Anthony.

A little patriotism can be good for the soul...

2011-07-05T10:05:00.002-04:00

if it's done right.

Only one person has ever done a better version of this song... this guy was the best. Seriously. If you ever heard him sing this song, you would know what I mean. Every time I hear it, I hear it in his voice. Can't be helped. No pictures of the guy on the web, but they named a school after him, which is kind of awesome. They should have to sing that song as recessional at every school mass.

A bittersweet July 4th...

2011-07-04T09:46:00.005-04:00

Skippy went Reb and joined the 6th Kentucky Infantry Regiment, Company C.

A week later he was captured outside Vernon, IN while riding with John Hunt Morgan's raiders. So at least his mother can visit him until they ship him north. We were hoping for a parole, but it's much too late in the war for that.

On the other hand, the Madison Regatta was a big success this year. The rain didn't start until late last night. Seems it was an exciting day of racing yesterday.

A year old, but a good introduction to the Regatta:

Are you kidding me?

2011-06-28T16:35:00.002-04:00

Amazon's picks: "Essential Books for Young Adults"

Dear lord. We got the Holocaust, Suicide, the "Evil Catholic Church", Rape, Drug Addiction, psychotic bullying, "the Native American Angela's Ashes" and, of course, a great big gay guy. And these are the "essential" books for kids. It's pretty obvious that the people writing these books are the adult versions of the kids who spent every free minute sitting alone and hunched over the most distant lunch table, scribbling torture fantasies into the notebooks they carried around everywhere. It took them forever, but Mrs Wilson their freshman English teacher was right! They were destined to be a writer. Writing about the same shit they fantasized was happening to them in high school, and approved and published by people who think they know what goes on with "the kids today" because they read "Catcher in the Rye" once and shared a couple of bong hits with her niece and her niece's boyfriend that one weekend when her sister had to go out of town with her asshole salesman husband. This woman became a book editor because her mother loved Jackie O and she heard book editor's got laid. She doesn't know good from shit. I know this is true. You know this is true.

Every fucking book on this list is a damn stereotype of a depressed teenager's favorite book, as if it was really that hard to depress ~~Young Adults~~ teenagers.

Oh boy

2011-06-24T10:13:00.002-04:00

Just for the record, I do not work for Southwest Airlines. But I do agree with almost everything that pilot had to say on the subject of flight attendants. Particularly because on my way here (on the tiniest plane imaginable) the flight attendant was about twice the width of the aisle and had a limp. This is actually the third time I've flown with this particular flight attendant, one of the "perks" of my job, and every time I have, the flight has been nasty, brutish, and short.

I'm really trying not to rant. Really. But if the flight attendant can't walk and there's an emergency, isn't it possible she might spill my drink? I'm going to need that to keep calm. You don't want to be sitting next to a sober maddad during free fall.

Oh, I would also remind young DC lawyers who occasionally have to fly to and from podunk "midwestern" cities like Cincinnati, to please shut the fuck up. Really. Don't talk. You almost got murdered, and I don't think your pal across the aisle would have cared a bit. When you are on a 50 seat plane, you force yourself to be polite, or some guy just might jam your oversize bottle of water so far up your bad suit that your boyfreind will think you went all hydrocepheletic while you were out in the jungle with the great unwashed. Also, after your crack about "paying full price for this flight" I found myself praying. Not that the plane would land safely or that I would die quickly, but that the horrible gas that I had earlier in the day would return so I could sit quietly and read my book while you gagged on your organic granola due to the impossibly awful silent, juicy, saurkraut farts I'd be squeaking out. You're an asshole, guy. We all know it. And now, so do you.

I've found my calling

2011-06-21T16:37:00.000-04:00

I'm off to the mines!

Seriously, what a great idea.

How long before he gets arrested?

Never do this...

2011-06-13T18:03:00.001-04:00

Sit with your sick son in a hospital room all day... and only bring one book...

The Stand

i can't stop washing my hands... or sneezng for some reason.

Blogging in bed and browser problems

2011-06-11T09:07:00.003-04:00

but first, the big news... Obama has created or saved a job for maddmom. Of course he did it by killing off some old person, buy hey, a job saved is a job saved. maddmom was having a fit while I was out of the country, she thought that maybe she wouldn't do well in the interview, I disagreed. So she took my advice and wore her belly dancing outfit to the interview and called the guy "Master" and wiggled a lot and what do you know? She starts in two weeks.

In other news, I'm blogging from my old Windows 98 laptop that I installed Puppy Linux on about a year ago. I updated it a couple of months ago in the hope that I'd do more blogging if I had a computer upstairs in the bedroom, 'cause that's where all the funny stuff happens. But I was wrong.

Here's why. Firefox is too heavy and SeaMonkey takes too long to load. Opera was god for a bit, but now won't open, and unless I open the mobile version of most modern websites, I might as well shut down. Flash and images lock this sucker up good. Java? Please. Remember, this laptop is a Pentium 2 with 96 megs of RAM.

Email works, office works, better than the once new-fangled Office 97 that came installed on this thing. I can listen to music from my network, the speakers on this thing are really good, probably because it was built right before the heyday of Napster and everyone was using the CD-Rom drives in their computers to listen to music. When I ordered this thing for an engineer at work, the CD drive was an option. No network port, no modem, I had to order a PCMCIA modem (3Com 65k with dongle, WOOT!) that is still in the bay under my PCMCIA wireless card and god only knows how long it would take to load a modern website with that damn thing.

At any rate, what I need is a super-lightweight browser that pretends to be on a phone, so I can surf and post, and it has to work on linux and run on really, really weak hardware, like weaker than my Blackberry.

Doesn't matter, I've officially been "on the computer too long" and it's Saturday, so I have to fix things and follow the kids around.

Obviously

2011-06-02T10:33:00.000-04:00

My blog's been hacked. Someone's used my login to post a picture, from my computer, in my album art directory, an nsf share on my home NAS, that only I and the administrator account have access to, that is on an internal, wired network

In other words, I'm not sure if that's mine or not.

I'm just holding it for a friend, officer.

Holding this up

2011-06-01T09:01:00.001-04:00

Just a placeholder for a hotlink. Go on, complain.

I'm not king of mexico yet...

2011-05-31T12:20:00.000-04:00

But when I am, this teacher gets to be Minister of Cool. I'll even let her wear my hat.

I'm thinking maybe the principal of this school should have just sent the sheriff out there to give the narcos tickets for disturbing the peace. What do you think?

One night we were in the old section of Monterrey for dinner, it looks a lot like old Santa Fe, and our waiter was extremely nervous. They had been closing this restaurant every night at eight for about a year. It was killing him financially. This was a high end restaurant in a "good" area, and there are a lot of wealthy people in Monterrey, he said used to do really well. These days, he said, its just too dangerous for people to be out on the streets, even during the day. But during the day people don't have a choice, they have to go to work, so they'll take their chances on someone wandering in for a nice lunch. After work, all bets are off.

Now, I worked in Camden, NJ, went to school in North Philly and worked in Chester, PA for years, I thought I knew dangerous. Typically "dangerous" here means, "don't do anything stupid and you'll be OK". The natives usually know what to do. When I was in school, you didn't wear your Walkman walking to the subway. In Camden, if you went out for lunch, you went in a group, you always dressed like you worked for government agency (truthfully, if you worked at all in Camden, you worked for a government agency or for an agency that worked for a government agency). In Chester you parked in the fenced lot near the lights and didn't stop for red lights if you could help it. Point being, if you had to be there, you could get tips and tricks on what to do and how to behave from the locals. Everyone knew that if you were a white guy in Camden during the day, you were working. If you were a white guy in Camden at night, you were buying drugs. Simple. There really wasn't any reason to kill a white guy in Camden.

Not so Monterrey.

I mean, there's still no reason, but if you're in the way, you're in the way. The locals there are terrified. Parking under a street light won't help if you find yourself in the middle of a firefight between some narcos and the Mexican Marines. It's a damn war zone. The narcos even have tanks. What needs to happen is a full-scale occupation, instead of the drip-drip of rotating deployments they have now. The army needs to really clamp down, a surge like in Iraq.

How do I know I'm right? Simple, the UN is against it.

Plus, you know, the whole, "we need a dictator" thing.

Up against the wall ...

2011-05-27T09:40:00.002-04:00

...motherfuckers!

Granted, cheering, annoying. Also annoying, high school administrators and small town cops. Who's going out first when the revolution comes, loudmouths with a High School education? Or the asshole who made their lives a living hell for four years?

Seriously, at the end I wouldn't want to have ever been a High School teacher, Little League coach, have had anything to do with the town soccer league, shop foreman, sheriff's deputy, on the zoning board, tax assessor, video store rental clerk, used car salesman, librarian, wal-mart security guard, pharmacist, bouncer, have worked at the BMV, county clerk, town police (sorry James), or the guy with the perfect lawn who complains about the noise from passing motorcycles and cars at every town council meeting. They'll be the first ones to come down with machete poisoning, and that's just my list. Imagine if you were that old lady who tried to outlaw Trick or Treating, and the guy who gets all huffy that they serve beer at the outdoor festivals, Jesus Christ, don't these people ever think about their own safety?

Now, I'm not threatening anybody, because as long as society is still limping along, good manners are important, and I'll go along to get along. But if a goddamn High School principal sent the cops to give me a $200 ticket because I wooted after my kid's name was called? Me? An adult?

I'd probably have to be forcibly restrained from shoving that ticket up 'ol Mrs. Henderson's ass. That big, giant, sweaty, ass in the ugly fucking pantsuit that she thinks makes her look like a fucking big shot but makes her look like a midget in a lab coat balancing on a big brown beach ball.

Fuck it, I'm keying her car anyway.

If I Could Fly

2011-05-21T20:35:00.000-04:00

From Boris

Bannanas

2011-05-18T08:38:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon, I was eating a lunch of kid goat (yum) and two sips of clamato and beer (not yum) in downtown Monterrey with about eight Mexican businessmen who had just returned from a trip to Chile. The conversation turned to the security situation in Monterrey and economic policy in Mexico. The consensus was that Chile was doing really well, mainly because they had had the right kind of dictator. I shit you not.

So I took the job. Just wait until you see my hat.

Oh

2011-05-09T16:35:00.002-04:00

It took me three days to type the last post on my blackberry*...as if you couldn't tell*.

*with my penis

*80% accuracy. Watch out baby!

Raw Fish

2011-05-04T23:17:00.005-04:00

Uncooked, that is. Sushi. I'm not a fan.

Oh I'll eat it, I don't hate it. I just would rather eat some animal raised on corn, and it it isn't available then any warm protien will do. I'm a big fan of char.

Problem is, out here on the left coast, everyone wants to show you how cultured they are, and since everyone I'm my industry out here is Asian, Indian or Asbergers, I have to eat a lot of Sushi, because they don't haave it here, curry, because there's no Indian food in Indiana (what kind of food is more fucking Indian than corn for chrissake? Did Sacawagea not sell a bag of Fritos to Lewis and Clark? Do these people not know history?) And the Asbergers guys have to show everyone how much smarter their high school guidance counselor thought they were and pretend ti like both. With a diet coke.

Like I said, I don't hate sushi, but I'm not going out of my way to get it. But this week I've had to, and last night I went to my first, honest to goodness, gourmet sushi restaurant. And unfortunately, it was exactly the same experience as if I was out to dinner at Bucko's Sush Bar, Tackle and Tanning Parlor in Buttfuck, Oklahoma.

Crappy beer, cheap, warm saki that tastes like my urine on Monday morning (don't ask), and a quick devolution from "isn't sushi interesting and fun" to "let's see if we can get the round-eye to eat garbage". So after a couple of hours of California rolls, high-carb rice, tuna, salmon and salt, the one guy at the table who knows all the Japanese words for bait turns a nice dinner into the never broadcast, NC-17 rated pilot of "Fear Factor".

You see the glassy stare before you hear the giggle, but you know what's coming when you see him wave the waitress over and he's not looking at the menu. At this point, all the sober people in the party start to beg off, "Not me, sorry. I couldn't possibly eat any more today..."

"Don't be a wuss, they don't have this in Indiana, we need to let maddad try this.. Look, how's the Mitsubishi Fuso?"

"Oh, very good. Yes we ha dot."

"We'll take four... no six. For the table."

"Siiiiix? OOOOO-Kaaaay" At this point the waitress starts looking nervous and several of the more knowledgeable sushi eaters at the table suddenly have to take important phone calls. I, of course, simply look confused.

"What's Mitsubishi Fuso?" I'll ask the guy next to me. He'll answer, "Well, if you've ever had Hitachi, it's a lot like that." And the bait-master will overhear and shout him down, "It's not like Hitachi at all, it's like Sumitomo or Toshiba! Hitachi isn't perch!"

And I'll be relieved, because hey, who doesn't like perch. Then the half Asian guy across the table will perk up, "Hitachi? We ordered that? Not my favorite. I don't like the texture." The guy next to me will say, conspiratorially, "Not Hitachi, we're getting Misubishi Fuso." and the half Asian guy will look sick for a second and ask me why in the hell I ordered that and storm off in a huff.

I'll finally ask the waitress what Mistubishi Fuso is and she'll tell me the truth, that it's the shit gland of the North African White Rhinoceros Perch, an endangered species who's venom has been used for centuries by the Afar tribe of Somali to reduce the size of the tribal elder's scrotal sac during the annual migration. The painful side effects and homicidal mood swings are nothing compared to treading barefoot onto your bag while running from a lion in the middle of the night. Of course, the actual cut of fish tastes exactly the way the homeless guy who is "guarding" my rental car smells, but it's the texture that's really the kicker... I mean, I'll never be an East European gonzo pornstar, but that doesn't mean I can't sympathize.

airport CNN

2011-05-03T08:54:00.000-04:00

So there's this guy on the airport CNN who wrote a book on how to survive on a teacher's salary. He says he's been a teacher for 15 years, looks around forty and according to his book, he makes 41k a year.
That's either bullshit or he's a fucking moron.

I'm boarding so it's up to you to figure out why.

Uh oh

2011-04-28T16:18:00.000-04:00

It's getting a little wet down by the river. Gonna have to move my van.

Guess my balls will drop soon

2011-04-27T10:51:00.000-04:00

Poly Styrene died Tuesday. She was the leader of X-Ray Specs.

Not one of my favorites, really. I honestly hate saxomophones. I try and like saxomophones, but nothing comes of it.

Freshman year I had a girlfriend (more friend than girl, except for the night we met (embarrassed both of us later (her more than me (I enjoyed myself tremendously (I believe she did too and I may have had proof if it wasn't for my psycho "real" girlfriend following us back from the firehouse that night) who wouldn't?) she had a rep to protect)because her girlfriend was a bit of a man hater) long story, malt liquor was involved) who had a car and exactly two cassettes, the goddam Sugarcubes and a mixtape full of of X-Ray Specs, Bongwater and Siouxsie. I must have heard that Bondage song fourteen million times that year while driving to and from Niagara Falls or the Flats in Cleveland.

I remember loving the car, it was a 1982 Ford Granada wagon that reminded me of my Pontiac, except it had electric windows and cloth seats and mine didn't. I helped her replace the single dash speaker after the stock one blew with a cheap paper cone from Radio Shack. That was one of the coldest days I have ever felt and I am serious about that.

I was in the library, here, a little bit ago and for about five minutes I swear I could smell that car. A mix of old lady perfume, hairspray and Marlborough reds in just the right amounts, one of those smell memories that are just about the worst thing to happen to your productive day. Kind of like hearing that the lead singer from a band you listened to as a teenager died.

At any rate, I was eighteen then, I'm forty now. The last time I listened to X-Ray Specs on purpose was more than half of my life ago. That's creepy. Just think, back then we had to make our own electricity from pin oak leaves and bat guano. How did we ever survive?

Between this and the constant rain, I'm so down in the dumps all I want to do is watch infomercials and drink coffee. Yet another reason the Greeks thought Nostalgia was a disease.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

You know that commercial...

2011-04-26T20:42:00.002-04:00

Where the Russian guy talks about opulence and how he has it, then kisses a tiny giraffe?

Switch the word "opulence" with "vagina" and the tiny giraffe for my paycheck and he could be every single man I've talked to in the past month.

Our entire fucking country is full of goddamn bleeding heart, ignorant, stupid, simple, jealous, pussies. The worst part of it, is that despite all evidence, these jackoffs think they're the smart ones.

You know who's smart? The freaking godbothering Jesus freak who bought gold in 2009 with the cash he had left over every month because he paid off his mortgage early, because Glenn Beck came to him in a dream and told him to. Not the man who "cares so much" he's got tits growing where his brains should be, a lien against his house and a wife who works more hours for more money than he does just so they can afford to put the kids in daycare.

Want to tell us how to fix the economy? Tell you what, learn how to balance a checkbook first, you moron.

Pussified Assholes.

I'll repeat myself; when someone tells you we should do something "for the children", hold on to your fucking wallet.

You aren't doing it for my goddamn children, because I'm already doing it for my goddamn children, and if I'm not, then they don't fucking need it. I don't want your kind of help and I don't want your money. Keep your fucking hands off mine.

I believe that this blog has just come full circle. Get ready you pansies, my back is up.

Annual Earth Day post

2011-04-22T10:49:00.000-04:00

Updated this year with the best headline on this that I've seen in a while: Earth Day leader killed, composted girlfriend About says it all.

Here you go, Ira Einhorn; Earth day founder, woman hater, murderer and fugitive, supported for years on the lam by celebrities and stupid people, because he was... wait for it... a great man.

Counterculture Killer

Something about Philadelphia hippies... they're a hell of a lot more violent than other city's hippies.

Thursday nitght in the well of souls

2011-04-21T16:49:00.002-04:00

Egad. It's Holy Thursday. I need to go drink myself stupid. Hey, beats washing feet.

It's going to storm again. Rain tonight then we'll get tornadoes through Good Friday and Easter. My lawn is four foot high. I may pretend to mow it later. But I probably won't.

I should do this blog thing at three am. I'm smart, witty, and literate as hell at three am. By ten in the morning I'm useless, by five pm I'm comatose.

Oh. Helpful hint. If you are feeling blue, a little down in the dumps and maybe the weather sucks and you aren't sleeping well... don't read Cormac McCarthy. Jesus Christ. Just don't. I just burned through 'The Road' and "No Country for Old Men" and now I'm about two drinks from Hari Kiri. Thank God for Lent... and the fact that no one likes me and all my friends left me and I have no one to drink the traditional Holy Thursday case of Foster's with.

See? Happy as shit. Fuck You McCarthy, you fucking Irish barbiturate.

Why Lent? I gave up suicide this year. Not like last year. What a mess last year was. Still have dirt under my nails...

Sanity? Never happen...

2011-04-18T10:46:00.000-04:00

From the Boston Herald:grown-up talk on drinking age

Beer and wine should be 16 to purchase. Hard liquor should be 18. There should be no rule against drinking in the home. In other wods, I should be able to give my kid a glass of wine at Christmas. Thousands of years of tradition spoiled by a bunch of crybaby nannies who want to parent the world but couldn't control their own kids.

It is possible to have a beer without getting drunk, if it's illegal, that's not worth it. So kids will binge. It's economics. No underage drinker is ever going to "just have a sip" or "just have one" no matter what they tell their parents the day after puking all over the duvet and pissing on the couch. But if they are at dinner with mom and dad, if they aren't going to get thrown in jail and raped by some tweaked-out freak over an 18 pack of Bud Light, they would be a hellovalot more responsible with booze. Kids like to be all grown-up like and sophisticated, and besides, a lot of booze tastes plain awful, if they knew that going in there'd be a lot less drinking going on.

Face it Puritans, most of the people who get wasted on the weekends are well over 21, and everyone knows that you have too much time on your Carrie Nation hands to have any idea where your particular kids are.

Back later

2011-04-11T07:56:00.000-04:00

No time... nothing to say... too much to do... back later

I would have liked to have met him

2011-03-28T11:18:00.002-04:00

Frank Buckles, 110, Last of the Doughboys

I love talking to elderly people. Particularly those people who were around before and during the Depression. They have the best stories and the best advice. There's not a lot of them around any more, but the ones you do meet are usually fascinating.

My day's gone to shiot

2011-03-24T11:11:00.003-04:00

One controller? Really? This had better be bullshit.

I don't like flying into Reagan any more than I like flying into Midway, but price is everything, and if I have a late meeting in the city, I'm flying out of Reagan. With everyone else.

Worst rental car pickup in the world, though, The absolute worst. Maybe they should switch the tower guy with the car rental guys, there's always at least two of them bullshitting in the middle of the night while I'm trying to get the hell out of the garage.

As an aside, It's goddamn cold in Buffalo. I realize that most people know this, but seriously... Why don't these people move?

What do you see?

2011-03-22T11:52:00.001-04:00

"I'm not sure. Hold the light a little closer."

"Is it worth anything?"

"Oh my... Jensen! My notebook! Quickly!"

"What is it? Is it important?"

"I don't think anyone's seen this for a very, very long time."

"But..but..what is it?"

"A blolrg, Jensen. A blolrg."

"What is it for?"

"In ancient times, when one wanted to... how should I say it... 'get attention', one would make a blolrg."

"Really? What kind of attention?"

"Well, you know that today, in modern times, if you have an enormous bowel movement it is proper to commemorate the event with a large gathering of witnesses and make an engraving for your wife or fiance?"

"Of course. In my town it is customary to make a plaster cast if it is large enough."

" Well, a blolrg is much the same. If, for example, you believe yourself to be the world's greatest parent because your nanny does a fine job cleaning up after your children, you would create a blolrg about parenting. If you were a lonely, fat, homosexual man, you would create a blolrg about the fashion failures of beautiful, famous women. If you ..."

"So, if you believe yourself to be smarter than everyone else...:

"Not exactly, Jensen. If you believed yourself to be smarter than everyone else you would limit yourself to leaving comments on an existing blolrg."

"Like how the great artists work!"

"Yes, by covering up poor art with illegible scrawl in permanent marker, feces and spray paint."

"Fantastic! What happened to all of these blolrgs?"

"Progress, Jensen, progress. Using a blolrg was much to slow and unwieldy, as more and more people became outrageously intelligent, the blolrg was laid aside for the Terded and the Scrootube."

"The Scrootube came from blolrgs?"

"Remember your scripture, son. The great prophet Saget said in the Book of GameShows, 'Look unto the trampoline, for in him thou shalt find the source of all greatness. Record your falls and your pain, so that generations may laugh at your expense.' That was the founding document of the Friars of the Scrootube."

"And the Terded?"

"Humiliation in 140 letters, almost perfect penance"

"Fantastic. I never would have known. How will we exhibit this find?"

"Get your camera. Now, hold my beer and watch this..."

St Pats Day

2011-03-17T16:13:00.000-04:00

Have some chicken. Riverdancing chicken.

Nerd alert...

2011-03-09T13:53:00.002-05:00

And a stupid nerd at that.

I've been using OpenSuse 11.3 and KDE4 for a while now, and about three weeks after I started I lost the taskbar for my work profile. I added an application launcher widget and I've been using that for a bit, and I've been miserable but OK. Then today I was on the phone and messing around with my desktop settings (because I am going blind) and managed to completely hose the crap out of my desktop. So I decided to just start over. I opened Opera and googled "fix KDE Desktop" and in 2 seconds I had the default desktop back, taskbar and all.

Now that just pisses me off. Months of hacking around and all I had to to was to delete the hidden .kde directory in the home folder.

Two seconds. That's it. Now I suppose you all think it's my fault for not searching for an answer right away. It may be. But I'd like to think that I'm a pretty nerdy guy, and I'd also like to think that somewhere in the approximately fourteen thousand desktop and settings and preferences menus that litter KDE4 that I would find a setting to add the taskbar back. Like "Settings-->Desktop-->Taskbar Options--->Show Fucking Taskbar. Is that too much to ask? Yes. Yes it is.

I think we should all just chill...

2011-03-07T14:31:00.002-05:00

I do. And I'ma tell you why...

I just got back from a week long vacation.

I was lavished with fine food and liquor in the lap of luxury by beautiful women wearing flowing silken cloth tied around their long, supple, tan bodies. I was rolled in warm sand and washed clean in cool salt water by scores of naked nymphs who poured jars of fragrant oil over me as I ate exotic fruits held to my lips by blindfolded, mute eunuchs. I was given many colonics of the finest kona coffees by large, hairy, German women in too-small white nurses uniforms stained with the feces of only the most important of the worlds tin-pot dictators and most accomplished fetishists. I hunted only the most endangered of large game, with the most dangerous of explosives, and burned hundreds of hectares of exotic tropical wood at the evening ritual suicides. I was inducted into the most secret of societies by having sex with a full-grown female peacock and pledging the offspring's virginity to Viktor Yanukovych. I tipped like a Canadian and peed in the hot tub.

Maddmom was there too.

You might think that I would be relaxed and refreshed after such a vacation. You might think I would be feeling like I could conquer the world. You might think a couple of shots of penicillin would be all that I needed to get right back into the swing of things.

You'd be wrong.

I went back to work at eight this morning and by quarter after I was up in the proverbial tower with the proverbial rifle. (This, by the way, is very close to last Tuesday evening's entertainment, "Snipe the Suckers". Where we were brought aloft in a hot-air balloon made of orphan skin and powered by the burning of rhino horn and given points for shooting blond-haired American women off of the decks of cruise ships. It's great fun, but may be getting way too popular. The pros have their own channel on cable.)

By noon, my acid reflux had caused me to down four bottles of very expensive, polar-bear flavored bottled glacial water and I really felt that it was time to either get a new job or go on another vacation. Since I can't really do either, I realize that maybe the reason everything sucks is because everyone thinks everything sucks, but doesn't realize that everything sucks just as bad for everyone else. Consequently, everything sucks. So. I think we should all chill. Expect the worst, prepare for the worst, and enjoy the mild surprise if it isn't the worst. Like when the lights come on at a blindfold orgy. It might not be super fun if you spend all your time thinking that you're getting hoovered by the seventy year-old Italian guy with the hairy back you saw at the buffet, but if that's what you're thinking, then the old lady from Florida with the leather-like nipples the size of dinner plates and the orange wig won't seem so bad at the end. You know?

Anyway, that's what I'm going with.

I'm shocked..

2011-02-22T14:37:00.000-05:00

I just found out that my State rep is probably, at least I heard he could be, and so far I've seen no evidence one way or the other, and I'd need some real serious proof that he wasn't, a fucking pedophile rapist. At least, that's what I've heard. I can't prove it, and since he ran away I'm guessing the sick motherfucker is guilty as sin. Otherwise, why would he not show up for work?

I'm actually shocked at how many pedophile rapists are in state government here in Indiana. Wisconsin? Absolutely, the whole state's full of them, but Indiana? Shocked I am.

And to think I shook the hand of a guy who may or may not be a pedophile rapist. I'm sure if he comes back to work he could clear all of this up. Of course, he may not come back to work, and that makes me fear the worst. It would be kinda yucky being represented in state government by a pedophile rapist, so I really hope this is just a nasty rumor.

I'm sure he'll clear this all up tomorrow when the piece of shit slacker shows up at work. After all, only Union members get paid for skipping out of work for no reason. Well, public employee union members, state representatives, and pedophile rapists. And I'm not saying they are all the same thing, although it's hard to tell just by looking. Some pedophile rapists have never worked for the government. I'm not really sure which ones, but some of them, I'm sure. Some are clowns. And not every clown is a state representative. Again, it's hard to tell which clowns are not state representatives or child rapists or for that matter not in a union. From what I understand, the public employee unions really only fuck people with jobs or cars, or houses, or kids in school, or have a recently deceased family member, and of course, they are gonna fuck your kids. That goes without saying.

Hmmm. Still sounds bad. I'll have to do my best to try and figure it out.

I'll just assume that if my state representative shows up for work tomorrow, he's not a child rapist. If he doesn't show up... well then that's something else then, isn't it?

Hang them in view of the shore

2011-02-22T12:15:00.000-05:00

4 Americans on hijacked yacht dead off Somalia

It's worked for hundreds of years. The gibbet, hanging, summary execution, shell the harbor. You have to retaliate against pirates or they will continue.

I suppose this could be useful..

2011-02-17T12:23:00.000-05:00

Local beers to those of us not on a diet.

I gotta say, I'm no supertaser. I like what I like and I make no excuses. I dislike Fat Tire, I lurves me some Shiner Bock. Molson Canadian is a favorite, and anything Yuengling puts out. I openly dislike Sam Adams... and not just because it's brewed by a bunch of Massholes. I can eat maybe one Dogfish head, and the last time I had anything from Madhouse (I'd like to apologize to everyone who was in that bar that night) I blew it out like that guy in Dumb and Dumber... Now I was supposed to blame that on a dirty tap, but a friend of mine who was drinking the wheat (I don't like wheat, I drank the Pale Ale) was on the shitter all next morning, which made for an interesting meeting.

What I am going to assume is that my body has become accustomed to mass-produced food. Like livestock nowadays I am used to eating the castoff parts of my brother animals. I like dago red, hot dogs, frozen hamburgers, any kind of pizza and cheap beer. Lite beer, now that I am a fatass, thanks. When and if I am ever able to eat and drink what I like again (and now that Hallie Berry's divorce is almost final and maddmom is seconds away from kicking me out the door, that might be sooner than I expect) I may try some of that fancy shit you have to drink with your pinky crammed up Anthony Bourdain's ass. But now, fizzy water with some beer flavor in it is good enough. For me. And for the children. Who could possibly get obeseness from watching me drink sixty non-lite craft brews. I'm saving our fatass kids by showing them that drinking this slop will save our country the expense of medical bills and the super-ambulances with the crane thing that they use to winch giant teenagers out of the second-storey window. Those fuckers are expensive, $300 an hour to rent and the crane operator is Union. Just imagine how much Medicare is paying that bastard.

SO drink cheap, drink lite and save the planet or the fat kids or something. Otherwise the Unions, who are almost Communists, have won. And believe me, it's no secret that the jagoffs with the bad facial hair you see in most brewpubs drinking bottles of Homoerotic Soap Wheat Amber Morning Tea Dark Pale Ale are fucking Communists. With bad attitudes, haircuts and probably a Macbook in the back of their VW. Just ask Glenn Beck, he'll tell you. I heard that asshole knows everything.

Don't let no drunk chicks run nobody over...

2011-02-16T13:55:00.001-05:00

Or it's Game Over, man.

The Great Gatsby For NES

A confession...

2011-02-08T10:42:00.003-05:00

I just don't like Elvis Costello's music.

Lord knows, I've tried. I had "My Aim is True" on cassette for what, twelve years? Never listened to it. I even paid money for "Armed Forces" and "King of America". Ditto. Never. But the worst was an old Maxell 90 minuter I found just yesterday in an old tape case in my closet. It had "Spike" on one side and REM "Reckoning" on the other. I remember making that tape. I remember buying that blank in the Sam Goody's in the King of Prussia Mall. Weird what you remember. "Veronica" had just come out, and a girl I kinda liked liked it, plus it was on constant rotation on morning radio, and I liked "So. Central Rain" and finally figured out what album it was on. So I borrowed both from a guy at school, (I called it school, but it was really a lot of time spent sitting in his diesel Rabbit and learning to appreciate malt liquor and Community College cheerleaders. Yes, they have them.) and spent like $10 on a really good tape. I usually went with the cheapest TDK crap I could get, but this was important music and should be treated as such. Lord knows I tried. But "Disintegration" came out that year, so did "Sonic Temple" and "Buzz Factory" from the Screaming Trees. Why the hell would I want to listen to "jangle, jangle, I'm a troubador, I wear a hat..." Why? I sure didn't, the tape that I found, still in its case, still had the extra labels inside, and the little plastic nubs that hold the case closed. Seriously, in the twenty years since I made that tape I've had four store bought copies of "Mars Needs Guitars" and three of fucking "Combat Rock".

Now I totally understand that people like Elvis Costello. I do. I just don't. I can't fake it any more and I won't. I realize that having Elvis Costello on in the background at a party, or in your shop, or whatever is supposed to mark you as some kind of sophisticate, and that all cool people like Elvis Costello. Fine. But all of you are wrong. He sucks. For that matter, most of R.E.M. blows a dog too. Nirvana? Why the fuck do I need Nirvana when I've got Steve Earle?

Now I have to be honest and come out and say that I like some shitty music. But I know it's shit. I'm not pretending it makes me smart or cool or hip or more intelligent because I've got Gordon Lightfoot starred up in iTunes. Even though, and I need to make this perfectly clear, even though it does.

So today I went though my iTunes and deleted every single Elvis Costello song, I feel so clean. I feel fresh. I feel smarter and more hip. I feel cool.

And I am, really, looking down my nose at you uncultured losers.

My favorite historcal quotes...

2011-02-05T09:31:00.004-05:00

"OO AAAH. I sessy. Down cho think I sessy? But I yam. I yam sooooo sessy. You need some sessy bidnez? I geev you that. I can. Because I sessy. You can't be as sessy as I yam, but I can make you more sessy than before. You watch. You come close. I get my sessy on you and you get more sessy." - Abraham Lincoln, 1862

"Oh God, Oh God, Oh God... Hold my my hair back, Laffy... blearrrrrghhhhh!" - George Washington's prayer at Valley Forge, 1777

"Can we just stop here? I gotta piss like a racehorse." - George Washington, 1777

The End of Blogging

2011-02-03T12:04:00.000-05:00

The End of Blogging | The New York Observer

Is it? Really?

I "stopped" blogging over a year ago, after years of posting every workday. I still haven't gone on Facebook, my Twitter languishes unloved in the ether and my 'creative outlet' has what, three posts over two years? I don't even know, I haven't looked in months.

Three of my favorite bloggers have died, one quit completely, a couple got boring, a couple more became "all God, all the time", several joined some kind of news service, a bunch more went politically over the edge (both ways) and a whole lot started posting too many damn videos. My favorites list has shrunk from over twenty to two. That's right, two. And Imma tell you why...

Most of the blogs that I used to read post the same shit. Seriously. Same stories, same opinions, same comments. And it doesn't matter if it's a political blog, news blog, tech blog, car blog, sports blog or art blog. Every blog has some issue with Sarah Palin. Love her or hate her, if she takes a shit, it's on the blogs. Every blog has some bullshit "pop culture" sensitivity, so you have to wade through the latest "outrage" some one hit wonder or teen TV star caused and I don't care. Almost every blog nowadays exists to feed traffic to larger, corporate blogs, who suck traffic from the weirder places that made the innertubes the innertubes. Hell, even the porn sites have gotten boring. Where are the characters? Where are the weirdos? Where are the blogs were you could start reading the top post and not stop until you were two years deep in archives? Where are the blogs where the comment sections are wild, loose and untrolled, or hell, even empty?

Where's the entertainment?

Gone.

I don't post more because I just don't have much to say anymore. And when I do have something to say, I rarely have time to say it. And by the time I decide I'm going to say something, I just don't feel like it any more. Plus, everyone's on Facebook and no one would read it anyway. Not that that bothered me before, but it kinda does now that I'm mashed in the face with Twitter updates and text messages and status updates.

For the record, I hate texting.

I fucking HATE texting. Don't text me. Leave a voicemail. Call me. Send a fucking email. Write a letter in pigeon blood on parchment made from human skin, I don't give a fuck, just don't text me.

... and I've lost almost twenty pounds on Weight Watchers. Seriously. I posted a while ago about how I got fat as hell by eating like a pig and not exercising, because really I just wanted to eat like a pig and not exercise. But I can only get so fat before I start feeling like shit, and my limit is 215. It's happened twice now. After I quit smoking (which makes me a better person than you, even if you've never smoked), I put on about forty pounds. I ended up going to the doctor because I felt crappy, I got weighed while I was there and found out I weighed 215. So I freaked and started exercising and eventually dieting and changed the way I et. I was at a good weight, between 180 and 190 for about five years, depending on how much salt or booze I had eaten or drank the days before. And then... I gave up. and BLAMMO! Fat as shit. So. Back on the horse, trying hard to get my activity points in every day, and eating the points I'm assigned, and the flab is really melting off. What took years before with no help is going to take months with help. I really recommend the Weight Watcher's online. Especially if you travel and eat out a lot. It's great, I can see my dick again.

I also changed the way I work out. I was doing splits...I'd pick some body parts and say, this is my leg day... this is my bag day... it's arm day... And what ended up happening is that I got lazy. My squats and dead lifts disappeared first because it took too much time to move everything out of the way, then the same with pullups. Then I got an EZ bar, so dumbell work went out the window, then my shoulder started aching so I quit benching too. So eventually my workout became four sets of standing EZ bar curls in between conference calls. Better than nothing, I thought, but I was wrong. So I'm doing full body complexes now. I have to get my four activity points in a day, and they call for vigorous effort, so it's one point on the elliptical and three points weight lifting. The weights are lighter, but damn... it's hard.

I do think it's interesting that the scale can tell me that I've lost almost twenty pounds, but the mirror shows no change and my pants don't seem any looser. I take that back, my fat pants (good God, what have I become) are loose, but my regular dress pants, that I bought just last summer because my fat pants looked bad all bunched up, are still too damn tight. My guess is that this means I was fatter than I thought. Which makes sense now that I think about it, because my dick looks smaller than I remember. I'll continue to blame it on the weather, it's freezing here, but if it doesn't grow back I'll have to have liposuction.

Again.

Sleeeeeeep in heeeeeeeeeaaaaavvvvveeeennnnlyyyy peeeeeeeeaaaacccceeee...

2011-01-27T09:48:00.003-05:00

My alarm went off regular time this morning. I woke up at 9:14 having slept through my kids leaving for school and my wife leaving for work. Not to mention an 8:30 conference call I had scheduled.

To be fair, I was a bit sleepy. I flew home yesterday, drove home from the airport, worked until 5:30, then played Wii boxing with three of my four boys and one of their friends until about 9. (I'm a baaaaaaad man!) I watched a bit of TV with maddmom, made the kid's lunches and the coffee and WHAMMO! 9:14 am. It's like I totally shut down.

To be fair to me, I have been having a couple of busy weeks, with a bit of stress. I was in Detroit (always stressful) and San Fransisco (don't get me started) and there's been a whole other mess of distractions to keep me up at night. But still. I don't think I ever in my life totally blanked like I did last night. Even now, after three hours of work and two-thirds of a pot of coffee, I feel like I could go back to bed and sleep for a month.

Maybe I have mono? My poor liver couldn't handle mono.

Oh and hey, my last Weight Watcher's weigh in had me at 202.5. That's 13 pounds down baby. I'm going to eat a gallon of pig fat to celebrate. I didn't work out Tues or Wed (if you don't count four hours on the Wii) so today I have to get back at it. But damn, I'm tired. And busy.

I'm wondering if I should just stay fat.

Let's see how they like $100 a bushel grain.

2011-01-14T10:49:00.001-05:00

OPEC ministers say world can handle $100 oil

Christmas

2011-01-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

Eh. So I'm late.

Important announcement and request

2011-01-12T11:47:00.000-05:00

He gets to it eventually... just wait...

Honesty

2011-01-11T15:18:00.002-05:00

Here's the deal. I'm fat as hell. For me, fat is anything above 190. I'm 209. Down from 215, but still fat as hell. Last time I was 215 I freaked out and it still took me a full two years to get to the weight I want to be at, and should be at which is around 180-185. And that is still fatter than the web gods say I should be, but I know what 175 looks like on me, and it ain't pretty.

I got fat by slacking off and eating like shit. Simple.

I had an excuse the first time I got fat. I had just quit smoking, and I quit smoking by eating jellybeans and ice cream. I had promised myself that as soon as I was completely done with smoking that I'd start working out and eating better. And I did, but not until I went to the Dr and he told me that I was 215 pounds. I was 33 then. I'm 40 now. I've been packing this lard on for about a year. My last weigh in at the Dr was 188, in Dec of 2009. I went up to 200 last Spring but maddmom started Weight Watchers, so I did too and I dropped to 190 by July without really trying. Since then I've turned into goo.

Why? Because I didn't care. I stopped working out because it took too much time. I ate what I wanted because I pretended I was going to work out and I could afford it. Now I'm forty, fat, and in a job where I travel a lot. The deck is stacked.

So here's my goal. 185 by Summer. If I can continue on this path of losing 4-5 pounds a week, I should be able to do that no problem. I will start working out again. And I mean it. I started already (and already excused myself twice, go figure) but this time I will go back to keeping an exercise log. I will go to sleep on time and not stay up all hours of the night, and I will be good when eating on the road.

I re-joined weight watchers, because 1) it worked for me last time and 2) I can track what I eat on-line through my phone. They set my goals automagically and I like that. Plus, I can't really cheat.

By February, I hope to be a little more presentable, but it's already the end of January and I'm still fat. I need to get off my ass. My fat ass.

Is this a New Year's Resolution? Yeah, sorta. But One I'll have to keep now that everyone (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...) has seen it.

DuPont dead

2010-12-31T11:03:00.002-05:00

John du Pont died today at 72. AP gives the date of Dave Schultz's murder at 1996, I thought it was earlier than that, but I guess I was living in New Jersey when DuPont killed him and not still in college. Still, only 13 years?

Maybe I'm not as old as I think? Or maybe I'm older and I don't think 13 years is a long time any more? Because I'm old?

And fat?

The suit is 150 years old?

2010-12-29T10:00:00.002-05:00

Suitably dressed

Must be time to get a new one.

When I'm not sitting unshowered in my underwear in my basement, I often wear clothes. These clothes can be business or casual. For business clothes I usually wear slacks, fitted dress shirt with either a straight or spread collar, no tie, and a blazer or sport coat. Unfortunately I have to wear slip on shoes or boots when I dress up to make it easier to get through security at the airport, so I've found some nice looking, square-toed ankle boots that look much less casual than loafers. I don't wear a suit, though it would make life so much easier on my if I did, and I may actually go and get a couple of suits with two pair of pants this spring when I have to refresh my business wardrobe.

I'm more comfortable wearing a jacket than not even when eating, and believe me, I even get grief from the people I work with when I show up for a meeting "suited up". Totally ridiculous, since I'm not wearing a suit. When we do have to dress up for a meeting, especially if it's a long day, I'm at an advantage because I'm not uncomfortable. In fact, even when we don't have to dress for the meeting, I'm at an advantage, I always have a place to put my stuff. I carry a ton of crap with me when I go out; a pen, small notebook, smartphone, headset, wallet, cards, keys, and I can't stand having anything in my pants pockets, (I'll usually put my hotel or office keycard in my rear pants pocket though, dunno why.) and I won't carry a man purse. A good blazer or sportcoat (not the same thing) solves that problem.

The reason I'm not uncomfortable wearing a jacket (and tie if I have to, mostly I don't) is simply because I had to wear a coat and tie my whole life. I went to Prep school where I was forced to wear a jacket and tie every day. Sounds terrible to do that to a kid, and I thought so at the time, and I rebelled when I got to college and dressed like a homeless, drug-addled, ex-roadie.

Later, of course, I got a job. Had to wear a shirt and tie every day again and it felt like I had just made it home after a trip around the world on rollerblades. I was back on familiar ground. Then, about 1998, the company I worked for went "business casual".

For those of you who don't know, "business casual" was a nefarious plot by feminists to get even with Bill Clinton by forcing average white collar American man to utter a sentence heretofore only ever uttered by their wives; "What am I going to wear today?" Completely emasculating the entire herd of American office cattle, right about the same time as they were moved from the free range to the veal pens of cubical culture. Effectively taking a belt sander to our way of life. Sanding down the dangerous and aggressive sharp creases of a nice, clean shaven man in a chalk-striped Brooks Brothers, into a soft, wrinkly, pudgy, cushy, blue and tan marshmallow with a disgusting half-assed Vandyke all over his fat face.

For years I worked with a bunch of fat, bald men, advertising their feminine friendly, non-threatening nature by growing a vagina on their face. As soon as i could I got out, cut my hair short, bought contact lenses, banished my sneakers and bought some hard-heeled dress shoes, trashed the windbreaker and slid into a dark, structured sports jacket. When people see me (outside of my cave) they see a man.

A lot of the time I make sure of it by not wearing any pants.

Oh no

2010-12-29T09:46:00.000-05:00

Denis Dutton, Founder of ‘Arts & Letters Daily,’ Dies

Christmas is ovah!

2010-12-27T17:17:00.002-05:00

Back at work. And it's tough to go back to the daily grind when you, like me, have become a world-renowned Mario Kart for Wii CHAMPION!!!!!! Seriously. I hope you are bowing. You should bow. I'm making my kids bow. I had to hit the neighbor in the back of the legs with a snow shovel, but he eventually bowed.

"Bow to the fastest Yoshi on the planet motherfucker!", I yelled. Eventually, he did.

Today is the eleventh anniversary...

2010-12-23T12:06:00.001-05:00

...of my 29th birthday.

Yay me.

I'm still alive.

I'm getting in a holiday mood

2010-12-17T14:45:00.001-05:00

Delicious Japanese salmon declared extinct 70 years ago found swimming in lake

2010-12-16T12:37:00.000-05:00

Japanese salmon declared extinct 70 years ago found swimming in lake Yummy.

Greensleeves

2010-12-08T09:09:00.001-05:00

Japan. Of course.

Interesting

2010-12-06T14:04:00.002-05:00

And by interesting I mean not interesting at all.

It snowed this weekend, we got a couple of inches on the grass and trees, none to speak of on the roads. Didn't help my mood.

I am in a funk. A bad one. I've gained 15 pounds since April, slept maybe six hours total in that time, re-injured my back and stopped taking all pills.

I should probably start taking pills again. I should start sleeping again too. And maybe working out?

Nah.

Thanksgiving was good. Christmas shopping with the boys was fun, I'm taking a four day mini vacation with maddom soon and that sounds fun. But I'm just so blah.

Blah.

Bleargggggghhhh.

Plus work.

Busy.

Blah.

Blech.

Bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop bleep bleep bleep bleeeep.