NEW 4.6
"The old repeat themselves and the young have nothing to say. The
boredom is mutual."
--Jacques Bainville
10/1/03
I really wish that I'd had a camera in my hand this morning.
At 3 and a half months old, Byron can climb just about anywhere his claws can get traction, but his legs are still too short to let him jump very far. Kill Kill is the Olympic gymnast; she can leap to the kitchen counter in one fluid movement. Every time Byron has seen one of her graceful flights, he's stopped what he was doing and literally flopped onto his ass in amazement. "Whoa!" he seems to say. "Wish I could do that!"
He can't even jump onto the bed yet. And she knows this. Whenever he chases her, she always jumps on the bed and sits on the closest corner to the edge. Byron jumps up, misses, falls down, she smirks, he then runs to the other end of the bed where he can climb up. As soon as he's on the mattress, Kill Kill jumps back down and runs out of the room. She does this purely to make him waste the effort of getting up there.
This morning, as I was getting dressed, Byron ran up and tried to jump on the bed. He was so close, flailing his paws at the side and digging his rear claws into the side, but he fell off again. He ran away, then raced back at top speed and jumped. And he made it! He stopped and looked around in a way that said "Holy shit! I DID it!" Then he hilariously stood up on his hind legs and waved his arms around while twisting his body. It was his touchdown victory dance! He squeaked "Iiiiioo! Iiiiioo! Iiiiiooo!", which I think was his version of "Who da man? BYRON da man!! Gonna GITcha, Big White Cat!!!" The moment was so cute and the dance so funny. Sorry you missed it.
And I'm glad I caught it. I'm sure that more stumbles and falls will be the norm until he gets it down, but I hope I'm there that first time when Killsy smugly jumps into that near corner, and suddenly finds the Grey Fury landing right on top of her.
10/4
Note to holders of fake IDs going to the college up the road from our liquor store: When asked for your school ID, don't say "My roommate has it." Since you need that ID to get on campus and enter your dorm, this means that you're sleeping outside tonight. And it really doesn't help your cover story when you bring a friend who's wearing her high school "CLASS OF 2003" shirt.
I made the mistake of sitting down to eat 2 days ago, so confident was I that Byron Binge Eater wouldn't eat what I was having. But he started noshing on it, probably because of the cheese. So I broke a bit off thinking, Once he hits that tomato sauce, he'll bail. Nope. He chowed it down and demanded more. Byron eats pizza.
Yesterday, he ate ramen. If he gets a fake ID, maybe it's time to enroll him in college.
Don't read this unless you care who the next Dr Who is, or you're Lilly.
The idea of this game is more entertaining than the execution (And click here if you don't get the punchline).
I was wearing my Animal Rescue Site shirt today. It's a really nice cotton denim shirt with the site logo stitched above the pocket. It was only $15 and buying it contributed 28 bowls of food to animal shelters. A customer recognized the logo, but was surprised when I asked her if she clicked on the other sites associated with it. She didn't know that there were four more.
I thought of my own collection of charity site links, but didn't say anything. It's always better to suggest that someone look for a phrase on Google than tell them an url. Googling -free online charity sites- brings me up at number two. Number one was a site that, with a few exceptions, automatically clicked through to a bunch of charities! I've updated my charity page to include it. It takes a bit to load while it clicks on all those sites, but it's quicker than clicking on them individually. It misses a bunch that you still have to click manually, but they're all on my page.
It's my personal start page, but I don't care that it's "my" page. There's no hit counter there. I do care that you click on these sites daily. It costs nothing but time, and very little time at that (open a second browser window, and switch back & forth while you read your mail or whatever). And by "time," I mean very little. A few minutes. There are very few reasons why the Internet is truly irreplaceable, and free online charity donation sites are one of the best.
10/6
Just another weekend in paradise here. Sunday's highlight twas doing the dishes. Today I multi-tasked, doing the laundry while defrosting the 30-year-old fridge while installing another RAM stick and hoping that the bad memory was the reason the scanner didn't work. I was successful on all fronts except the scanner. Maybe it doesn't work because it...doesn't work? I've lost track of how many scanners I've bought over the years, but I'm not buying any more.
And, of course, today was the first day all year that I really could've used a scanner. I got a package from Japan!
From Luna/Aviv, of course. I know you can't really read it, but it includes the Little Mermaid proclaiming "bill rocks the casbah!" and an angry black cat labeled the "anti kill kill." Unseen is the tape that seals the package, named CRAM CREAM CAFE in utterly Japanese style. And what's inside?
Since I'm so a Man's Man, she sent me the all male kit. Men's Pocky, not your effeminate NORMAL Pocky (yes, I should've taken the picture before opening it, or at least noticed that opening it ripped across the title). No idea what's so Manly about it. I ate a whole pack'o Pocky, and never once scratched my crotch while watching ESPN and loudly burping in public.
The other item is the new, 2003 edition of Monchichi rubbers! And yes, that is Monchichi in a full-body condom there.
Sadly, she didn't find Godzilla Canned Meat. Happily, that allows me to once again fail to put new content here, and instead put up another summer rerun. Even if it's not summer.
(And if you don't feel like revisiting the distant past of this page, visit the distant past of the present: George W. Bush's Medieval Presidency. The site's registration is ridiculous; if you want to be legal and go through all of it, click here. Why do they need to know my home address, phone, and income to read an article? Otherwise, click the first link; it's the same article pasted onto this site)
10/7
I passed a coupla milestones at the New Job today. I broke my first bottle! I didn't even drop it, I just placed the box it was in on the floor a bit faster than I should have. When the box is full of Carlo Rossi gallons, it weighs a lot and the bottles can just go. Four liters of Rossi Paisano became a floor-filling flood of Piss-On-You.
Then I had it out with a customer. He was a cranky old man buying (what else) Lotto tickets. He handed me a pair of Cash 5 tickets and said (in an impenetrably thick accent) he wanted to play the numbers again. They were Advance Action, meaning that he was playing them for the next 5 days. Then began the huge yelling match, when he said that because he didn't tell me to not play them Advance Action, I should've known that when he said "I want these same numbers," I should've known that he didn't want to play the same numbers the same way. We can't cancel Cash 5s (or Lotto or Powerball; this is because the state wants screw-ups like this to occur, so that we eat the tickets and they get the money). Another part of how I was supposed to read his mind was because "Why else would I give you this money!" meaning that he gave me $29 for $42 worth of tickets. "Because you gave me the money AFTER you told me what you wanted! Which was THESE TICKETS the SAME WAY!"
The ridiculous part was that he'll just play those same damn numbers again tomorrow. We kept the tickets, and he'll bring in the $13 tomorrow. And since he's a Lotto Junkie and terrified that he'll miss that one time he didn't play those same numbers he's been playing for years (and has lost on them every time he's played them), he'll be back. But I'm not going to be waiting on him if I can help it.
Today I also had my first time (trying to) discipline Byron. He's suddenly decided that he hates the 4-year-old spider plant that replaced the 10-year-old spider plant that kitten Kill Kill killed 4 years ago. He knocked it over this morning, and I picked him up and said "No! No!" while holding him in front of it. No yelling, no shaking, just "No No!" That always cured Killsy of her negative urges. I went back to bed, and he immediately attacked it again. I did the "No! No!" again, and he got mad and ran away from me. When I got home from work...Oh, guess. One No No to Kill Kill always worked. The morning glory that's intertwined with the spider plant looks pretty dead, meaning that he must've smacked the whole tangled plant down as soon as I left, and it didn't get any sun all day. These kids today.
Watched a coupla movies over the weekend. One was Dark City, which I wanted to see when it was in the theaters...in 1995. I'm not really good on following through on movies. The DVD was at Best Buy for $5.99. I usually don't buy movies I've never seen, but $6 with an Ebert commentary track? Watch it twice and the rental's covered. And it was worth it. I really wish I'd seen it 8 years ago, when it was revolutionary. Gee, do you think that movie called, whatsis, Matricks or something, ripped it off a mite? It's worth rewatching just for the visuals, a retro-noir faded-photo look. A la City of Lost Children. And it's that rare Hollywood sci-fi flick with ideas, rather than just shit blowing up or pseudo-philosophical mumblings like The Matrix: Retarded.
The other movie was my second attempt to get through 007's Thunderball. As Tom Jones sings in the theme, "And then he strikes!!--Like Thun-derballlll!" I'm not exactly sure how one strikes like a thunderball, but I'm glad that no one's struck mine!! Ha ha ha! You see, that's a weak double-entendre! Just like every other line in this movie!
I really liked all the Bond movies when they started being shown on TV, at the same time I was entering puberty. And for a very good reason, it seems: They are cool when you're 13 years old and male. Bond's either killing people or having random sex! The kids today, they have their rap music, and that's the same thing. The kids of the 80s, they had their heavy metal MTV videos, which also answered some testosteronely need.
Goldfinger is really entertaining movie. Yeah, it has the 60s sexism and all. But I think the real reason it works is that, unlike most Bond movies, it's less than 2 hours long. About 40 minutes shorter than every one since. That means that the plot has to move, and to make sense. Unlike Thunderball. The plot makes no sense at all. It's entirely driven by coincidence. I'll grant any movie one bit of coincidence, as long as it's not totally ridiculous. I mentioned the scene where 007 gets picked up randomly hitchhiking, and the driver is not only the number two SPECTRE agent, but she's wearing a ring that identifies her as SPECTRE. I'd forgotten that it begins with Bond in a health clinic that also houses the number 3 SPECTRE guy, and the number 2, and the guy who's going to replace the pilot of the bomber that they're going to steal H-bombs from, and the pilot that they're going to replace--and they're in the next room. Crimeny.
More insanely, Bond knows that all the bad guys are SPECTRE and SPECTRE knows that he's Bond. Isn't the idea of being a secret agent not to be a famous agent? If George Tenet and Osama bin Laden met in a casino, would they politely play Baccarat while exchanging overripe bon mots? No, they would kill each other, as soon as possible. So why don't they kill Bond and vice versa? Oh, wait, that would mean that the movie ends, and we've still got an hour to go. SPECTRE 2 actually kills SPECTRE 3 while 3's trying to kill Bond. What, you couldn't have used that rocket-firing motorcycle to kill your actual enemy before you went after your coworker? And why does 2 kill 3? Because he "failed" by hiring a guy 2 years ago who wanted a raise at the last moment and didn't foresee it. I've never worked for a secret organization, but I think that potentially being killed by not accurately reading someone else's future decisions would inspire me to abandon SPECTRE and join the MI6 witness protection program.
There were good moments in Thunderball, particularly that climatic battle between SPECTRE frogmen and CIA aquaparatroopers. Cool not just because it was astonishingly bloody for 1965, but for the simple idea of "aquaparatroopers." It's raining frogs!--Frogmen, that is! But it's amazing how they went from the perfect Bond movie, Goldfinger, straight into what was simply a higher-budgeted self-parody like the Flint or Matt Helm movies, after only one year.
Every--and I mean every--line of dialogue that Bond directs to women in the first half of the movie is a double-entendre. But they're so arch or vague or 4-decades-old that I had to think about them before I got that they were meant as double-entendres. Not that they're funny, mind you, just that they were meant as funny. "Do you think that she's worth going after?" asks M at one point, and it was only the "long pause for hysterial laughter" that made me realize that it was a d-e. And Bond says "Well, I wouldn't put it that way!" with another pause. And I have NO IDEA WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. It's not even a SINGLE-entendre that way!
This was also the 007 flick that institutionalized the "one-liner after killing somebody" that's plagued us right into the Schwarzennegger era. Bond shoots a baddie with a spear gun and quips, "He got the point!" Other lines they could've used:
"He just turned a whiter shade of impale!"
"Having Wonderful Time! Wish You Were Speared!"
"Who wants gum? Hope you like Trident spearmint!"
"Oops! I did it again!" (Only works because she's not named Britney Lawn Darts)
"I just changed him from a Mister to a Shiska!" (Only works if the villain is named Mister Bob)
10/8
Byron is still attacking the spider plant. I woke up this morning to find it flipped over; I got home tonight to find it flipped over. I righted it, held him up in view of it and said "NO! NO!" Minutes later he tipped it over again! I gave him the "NO! NO!" treatment again. Why can't he be smart like Kill Kill and just STOP?
Another funny Xoverboard comic, about the NFL's latest color commentator. Or was Rush an "I hate the Coloreds!" commentator? For those of you who don't follow that sporadically published comic, the featured guy is a regularly appearing character. No, really. He is.
Scalzi rips California a new one--or should I say newer one, given who they just elected. Personally, I think that what comes over the next few months will be hilarious. But only because I don't live in California.
Don't eat this ice cream! It'll make you sick! In the HEAD!
THIS is why we were right to invade Iraq! It's a propaganda cartoon called "FUCKING USA!" that ends with them BLOWING UP THE STATUE OF LIBERTY! PROOF that they're terrorists with WMDs who hate us because of our FREEDOM!! And they're trying to confuse us by singing in KOREAN!
Oops. Apparently it's in Korean because it's from North Korea. But we don't need to worry about those xenophobic paranoids! They may have the Bomb, but they don't have anything that Halliburton wants!
Okay, enough with the politics already. And I thought that the Vomiteer was the worst superhero idea ever.
10/10
Byron didn't attack the spider plant yesterday, and I spent all day at work wondering: Has he figured out that attacking the plant was Bad, or that attacking the plant when I was home was Bad?
He hasn't attacked it since. I need to stop holding him to Kill Kill's standard. Tell her anything once, and she remembers it forever. He needs repetition.
Stupidest underage buying technique yet: A very distinctive-looking guy--he's apparently Turkish from his accent, and has braces on his teeth--insists that I let him buy without ID last week. Sorry, don't remember you, I need to see your ID. "Wait, him, that guy eating, he was here." "Do you know this guy?" I ask A. No, A. doesn't. "SHE was here, too!" Does T. remember him, braces and all? No. "HIM! Him! He was here, too!" he says of W. Turkish accent and all, no, W. seems to have forgotten him too. "SHE! SHE!" G., who's here all the time? Seems he's slipped into her Memory Hole, too.
FIVE people don't remember him. I was surprised that he didn't start dusting the counter for his own fingerprints. "The FORMICA remembers me!"
Bush finally finds some sucker country to send troops to Iraq. Who's the real turkey here? (a PINR report, which some may find rather dryly factual--which is the point. If you want exciting drama without facts, let Fox eat your brain)
10/11
When I bought Dark City at Best Buy, I also picked up a free DVD called, quite imaginatively, "Coming Attractions." A bunch of coupons (mainly a mere 10% off, but you'll buy another DVD or CD at some point soon, right?), and a bunch of trailers. I figured that it'd just be the usual bunch of corporate-owned subsidies, as the cover showed The Hulk, No Doubt and that...skateboarding guy who's so incredibly famous that I can't remember his name 30 seconds later. And so I was shocked to see a trailer for...KAIJU BIG BATTEL!!!!!
10/13
...Yesterday, Kevin and I were going to Trinity College to see Devil Music Ensemble perform live to a showing of the silent film Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Beautiful sunny day the day before, beautiful sunny day the daY After, but pouring rain Sunday. We got on the highway onramp and saw a sportscar racing down the embankment backwards, hood crumpled up to the the front windshiled, back windshield smashed out. Teenagers, they'd hydroplaned and smashed through the guardrails. He pulled over and dialed 911; I got out to see if they were okay.
And they were, The End, I don't fucking care anymore.
10/14
There was much more, but that's how my attempt at an entry ended yesterday. I haven't really been too enthusiastic about updating.
The concert was very good. I wish that the band had said upfront what bothered me through the whole showing--What the hell was up with that grey bar at the top of the movie? Videophile Kevin knew: It was a flaw on the best print of the 85-year-old movie. Most copies just crop the image at the top. The music was excellent. We've seen other showings of silents with live accompaniment before, such as Gary Lucas' The Golem or Alloy Orchestra's Nosferatu. They were all good, although Lucas kept rerunning the same theme throughout his score (granted, he's a guitarist and thus the only one-man-band in the group). I'm not sure if I like Alloy or Devil Music more. I lean towards Devil Music, but I heard them the most recently. I did like how they used their instruments (xylophone & electric violin, programmed synth, electric guitar & steel guitar, and "batterie," a bunch of percussion) to also add "sound effects" to the score.
They took addresses for a mailing list, but if Devil Music has a website, I'm damned if I can find it. Get it? DEVIL MUSIC! DAMNED!
I'm a day late on this, but if you haven't read about the latest brilliant tactics the US is using in Iraq, there it is. These are the same tactics that have led to the eternal peace we've had between Israel and Plaestine for the last 55 years.
If these farmers weren't on the side of the guerrillas, we just put them on their side. If they were, we just put them even more on their side. Hey, why don't we just napalm the countryside and drop Agent Orange everywhere? IT WORKED SO GOODLY PERFECT LAST TIME.
Amusingly-written article about how Dumbya may've picked the wrong guys to fuck with in the CIA. One wonders if Poppy's the only reason he hasn't been Salvadore Allende'd yet.
I've got short genes. What length are yours?
10/15
So much for that legendary "Beautiful New England Fall Foilage" that people who don't live here love and I hate. I love leaves that are green, not dead. After they die, there's 6 months of grey. But it rained torrentially last night, and today the wind was a mild 25-30MPH sustained, with balmy gusts of 55-60MPH. It was so windy, it actually opened my garage door a few feet. And now your precious and beautiful dead leaves are GONE, motherfukkas! Autumn came and went in EIGHTEEN HOURS! Know what comes next? Your RAKES! AHH-hahaha! Enjoy your ONE DAY of Autumn in New England, you dead-leaf-raking idiots!
There's a guy at my New Job--which I guess that I should just start referring to as my job--who's kinda this store's version of Poopie Pants. He's not on that slime's epic level of coke-headed auto-excrematory thievery, but he is a loudmothed lazy egomaniac like him. He was helping a customer a few days ago, who offered him an $800-a-week job as a restaurant manager after talking to him for a full 5 minutes. The rest of us told him that nobody would offer a job paying that much to someone with no restaurant management experience--and with the money under the table--unless it was the worst job ever, with a turnover rate so fast that it'd make a toy top dizzy. But he gave his notice yesterday.
I haven't known the guy for long, but the store manager B. agreed with me when I said that A. was probably planning on taking the job just to get out of working our busy holiday season, then quitting after 2 months and walking through our door and expecting us to prostrate ourselves, begging him to come back. Unlikely; B. told me the news by saying, "A. just gave his notice. This is the best fuckin' thing that's happened to me all year!" But such is the blindness of an egomaniac. He's also become incredibly rude to B., so much so that B. wanted to fire him. I pointed out that if he did, A. could collect unemployment, and as the new job was under the table, collect it while working. Maybe that's his plan
My first thought was, Oh crap, I hope they don't want me to work his early shift until they hire someone! Which was their Plan A. I'm probably the only person who likes a 12-8PM shift, unlike most people, such as...as SHELLEY! My fellow battler against Poopie at the Dumpstore! The store got sold to some guys who offer NO benefits. I don't just mean "no medical," I mean "no sick days." Her greatest fear is that they'll keep her through the holidays, just long enough to have her teach them the computer system, then throw her away and pay some relative from the Old Country to do her job for $8 an hour under the table, and a cot in the backroom he can sleep on. But I told her when I left that if there ever was a daytime opening at my job, she'd be the first to know. And she was.
It hasn't happened yet, but it'd be awesome for everyone involved if it did. Except for A., if he's planning on coming back. And, of course, the asshole who tried to get a job with me 3 weeks ago, because, like A., he doesn't want to work for a living. Poopie Pants. As Lucky the Leprechaun might sing, "Frosty Karmic Harms! They're Schadenfreudally Delicious!"
Funny: "Just don't eat the cole slaw, all right?"
Not funny: “That’s a real dumb fu..ing question to ask me. You know what my rank is, of course I knew them, I was the head NCO for years in our unit. I knew most of the guys who died and I held a lot of hands as they were dying. You tell me that’s not gonna to give you nightmares!”
Interview 2: “For every one of us that dies for no reason the whole country ought to get out and protest and riot. That is one thing I’ve seen the Iraqis do very well. When we kill some of their people they come out by the thousands and make it known that they are pissed and won’t tolerate it any more. That is what all the American people need to do."
And Interview 3: “You know I think you hate being an American, and you make me sick! You damn protester and commie scum. I’m done wasting my time talking to you, you are the most unpatriotic asshole I have ever met. Fu.k off and die!”
10/16
Possibly Toemaster B's obsession with people food has reached the point where he needs an Intervention.
And, yes, he did lick a Pringle so bad that I gave it to him. And he et it. Kill Kill went through the stages of denial rapidly:
"JEEZ! Dude, tell me that you're SO not eating a freakin' PRINGLE! As Shakespeare once said, 'Odds bodkins! Mayhap thou shouldst cease partaking of the CRACK?' JEEZ!!"
"Whatevah. Dude be whack."
A pair of girls--and I mean girls, as in "very young"--came into the store today. I should've carded them as soon as I saw them and before they started carrying piles of booze to the counter, as I'd be the one carrying all of it back. Rather predictably, the carrying infant had no ID. That meant "No sale." In this state, you can't even point at liquor without us being required to card you. Female foetus #2 whipped out her ID, of course, although that selling to her would mean that the law read not that you must be 21 to buy alcohol, just that you have a friend that's 21. I could see even at a distance that it was from out of state, and those are always the fake ones. I bid said harlots hence, telling them that what they needed to do was for the no-ID girl to stay in the car while the yes-ID one did the shopping. ELSEWHERE. I went to drag their non-purchases back to the beer cooler.
As soon as I left the counter, the zygote with ID re-entered the store and tried to buy all their crap again. With me STANDING there. A. carded her, and said "This is a fake ID." Oh, nononono, she said. So he consulted the Hall of Horrible Heads Book of Every ID. The Leak in her Father's Condom had bought a Pennsylvania fake ID that was astonishing in its fakeness--it was clearly made by someone who'd never even seen a PA license. It wasn't just a matter of it using the wrong typeface, every bit of info on it was in the wrong place. The eye color, the signature, the DOB, the picture--it was like they were placed on it using 52 Pick Up. The signature looked like the card had either been laminated before the ink had dried, or was done with a Sharpie. And the bottom of her sig wasn't even on the card! There was a hologram, but there isn't a state in the union that has a hologram that says "SEAL OF AUTHENTICITY, GUARANTEED GENUINE, ACCEPT NO OTHER." A holographed Hello Kitty would be as believable. She left without her booze. Or her $70 crappy fake ID, as it was too laughable to not keep. It was the second worst ID I'd ever seen.
First worst? It was a guy who went into the DumpStore and handed me a laminated piece of cardboard that had been run through a typewriter. Not a computer printer, a typewriter. The picture looked like one of those little pictures you get with your high school yearbook shots. I laughed when I saw it, thinking that the guy was just messing with me. Then I looked at his face and saw that he was getting mad. "C'mon, quit kidding, where's your real ID?" I asked. "That IS my ID! That's what licenses look like in Maine!" I wanted to say, "Dude, they don't have IDs that look like this in fucking Candyland!! What are you gonna pay me with, a five that's a picture of Lincoln that you drew on a Wendy's napkin?" I stayed professional and just kept asking for a real ID. "I don't have any other ID!" he said, getting really mad and storming out. And driving away in his car with Connecticut plates. Yeah, I'm so very sure that the DMV accepted your investment of 50 cents at the laminating machine in the CVS photo department, and those tireless seconds you spent slaving on your mom's Smith-Corona. Not to mention what you spent on cardboard! Whatevah, Professor Moriarty, Master of Crime. Dude be whack if he thinkin' Splut takin' THAT shit as age props. Peace! and Splut, Kays and B-Toes out.
No, wait, not yet! I got a button in the mail today from my 70-year-old Mom.
Gotta love your mom!!
10/17
Kill Kill requested to go OUUT!! a few nights ago (into the common hallway). Soon after she left through the propped-open door, Byron trotted out after her. I knew what was coming next: the sounds of Byron attacking, Kill Kill hissing, and the stampeding of cat feet back inside.
There was silence. Eventually, Kays wandered in and Byron followed. And this happened for 3 days in a row.
One cat in the bed with me is a sleeping pill; two is an automatic coma. The clock radio went off this morning, and after a minute or so, I rose up and took at look at the foot of the bed. His arms wrapped around her, Byron was spooning Killsy. He's finally figured out that he can snuggle with her.
YAY! This is a true milestone.
From Wakboth:
Now, in Finland, making, using, owning etc. of fake IDs is a criminal offense (as is probably anywhere in the world). It is not a criminal offense, however, to make fake IDs that _say_ they are fake. (Don't know about US here.)
Which is what he did. Basically, he photocopied a real, legit ID, and using it as a model made the fake one, with the words "This ID card is a fake!" and "Not authentic!" written on it prominently.
He added to the unreality of the ID by having it issued in a non-existent town, by a nimismies (sorta like rural police chief or sheriff) whose name was taken straight out of a then-current, very popular TV comedy.
The only thing about the ID card that was even moderately genuine was the photo of himself he pasted on it, before "laminating" the whole thing with contact plastic.
The thing is, it passed OK whenever he went to buy beer with it; he was carded a couple of times, and nobody minded. Nobody actually checked it, of course; they saw a vaguely authentic-looking ID with a vaguely authentic-looking stamp, a face that fitted the guy offering it, and a birth date that made him over 18.
He got bored with it and stopped after a few weeks, but at least he got a good story (and some beer) out of it.
UPDATE: Further research indicates that it's the Ren Faire. Odds bodkins, what was I thinking! For Monkeys! No, wait! Not monkeys...SOOTHS! Forsooths! Yeah, that's it!
10/18
10/20
Surrealism of the Day: An old man hiking in the woods, wearing a hat and a heavy winter jacket and shorts, using ski poles without skis.
Yesterday was cold and rainy and generally unpleasant, so I slept in. Way in. XTREME sleep in to the MAX! assuming that one can sleep xtremely. Until 3PM, to be precise (and also XTREME!). I do this every few months. Dunno why; I always feel discombobulated, unmotivated and vaguely depressed after I finally do get up. But Sleep is Fun! Some people dream in color, I dream in IMAX. And they're lucid dreams; I always know that I'm in a dream, and I can influence them while asleep. I can even rewind them if I don't like where they're going. My dreams fade fast after awakening, but there's always some fragment that sticks. Last night's was briefly watching a new TV series, CSI: Nazi. The main characters were in the Gestapo. I'm assuming that it was on Fox.
I read comic books later. Ya see, you go download this thing and then go to this place where you can get all sortsa stuff I don't want but also comic books, and then use this program to read them. I apologize if the instructions are too technical.
Is it copyright infringement if you download something that, if you bought it, the original rights holders wouldn't get anything out of it anyway? That's how out-of-print comic books work. Plus, you might pay for some uninteresting crap like "Galactus the Devourer" or "America vs the JSA." It's like buying used CDs at a store that won't let you listen to them first--buying crap that sucks makes me a lot less likely to buy the next thing. Me, I'm digging on finally reading "The Watchmen" and "Agent X," the hi-larious series that I would've actually bought if I'd known that it was written by Gail "YABS" Simone. Agent X goes to the latest overpriced cutting-edge Manhattan eatery, which serves the cuisine of Latveria (if you're not an utter geek, that's the country that's run by Doctor Doom).
My endoscopy for Young's Syndrome was in the morning, but I wasn't worried. More precisely, I wasn't worrying. A fine distinction, but there's no point in actually fretting over--or even thinking about--things that haven't happened yet. I did the same thing when I changed jobs--or, more precisely, didn't do anything. Did the same not-anything. Just refused to worry. And the same thing happened--I had confused, less-than-pleasant dreams on the subject the night before. I never have nightmares anymore. I did as a kid, but that's probably how I developed my lucid dreaming ability. They don't become nightmares because I always know that I'm in a dream, and I can alter the plot if I want to. I'd looked at Mapquest before going to bed to see where the endoscopy place was. It was on the way to the DumpStore, but I didn't recognize the street names, despite driving them for years (I'm famous for that; when Kevin and I saw that car crash last week, he asked what the number of the nearest exit was. "It's in the 60s," I replied, despite having driven on it almost every day for 17 years). I needed to find McKee Street, and I had a pretty good idea which street that'd be. In the dream, I overshot the street in the dense fog that the weathermen hadn't predicted. So I did the logical thing: I pulled over and ran through every building I'd passed. They were all crumbling brownstones, filled with flea markets and 1950s-style diners, just like the real neighborhood isn't. Every street had a different name, but never McKee. The fog kept getting thicker. Get how metaphorical that is? Lamely metaphorical, but y'know.
Then the alarm went off, and I awoke to...a dense fog that the weathermen hadn't predicted. Fortunately, I wasn't also late for school and in my underwear.
The street was the street I'd thought it was, although I did slightly overshoot the building. This time, I stayed in the car until I got there. I discovered that this was one of those doctor's offices that makes you wait even if you're the first and only patient (with the Lite Favorites station DJ announcing that they'd be giving away tickets to "Harry Potter Jr's Big Band Christmas Concert!"--I think she meant Connick Jr). And guess what! It wasn't an appointment for a camera-down-the-mouth endoscopy as I'd thought, it was an appointment to make an appointment for an endoscopy! I spent 45 minutes telling the PRN all the things that she could've learned by reading my doctor's notes on me. So I get to wait ANOTHER month before the real thing.
On the plus side, they shoot me up with enough drugs that I'm told that I not only shouldn't drive afterwards, I shouldn't walk. Hey, that's at least something to look forward to, right?
Maybe you don't look forward to CT-related monkey news, but I sure do!
10/21
A blast of thunder pushed me out of a poor night's sleep, unsurprisingly causing Kill Kill to dash to safety under the Lay-Z-Boy and Byron to not twitch a whisker. Lucky the power didn't go off, I thought. A thunderstorm and highs in the 70s today and a chance of snow the next 2 days--welcome to New England weather. When the alarm went off 45 minutes later, I sure needed a faceful of warm water in the shower to get my higher brain functions synapsing right.
Toothbrush in hand, and glurgle grooan hissss went the bathroom sink. The power was on, but the water was off.
Verdammt condo association! They send out these stupid monthly newsletters that never tell you anything that you need to be told, like "We're shutting off the water on 10/21," or "We're fixing the gutters using some assholes that park their truck in the middle of your driveway, so don't expect to be able to go to work today" (fuck that, I said about the last, and drove under their ladders while they were on them. The workers seemed a bit hostile about me doing that, but I guess that they then realized that the only other option was for them to move all their shit to let me by). I briefly thought of calling in sick to work, but I guess I really shouldn't be calling in stinky. I brushed my teeth using ice water. I had to shave, since I hadn't since Saturday. After I lathered up, I remembered that I'd stored some water for just such an emergency. Unfortunately, it'd been down there a long time--it was in a Gatorade bottle from 1998--and it was hard to open, what with 5 years of closure and Barbasol still on my hands ("The brushless shaving cream supreme," if you were wondering). After several solemn invocations of names of the mightiest of the Jug-Opening Gods (Bastard, Shit and Fuck), I got it open. Shaved, then I splashed enough on me to make my hair less sleep-frizzed looking. As to the importance of a shower to one's mental abilities, I thought "Better turn off the coffee; there's no water," and it took me until I was 10 minutes from home to realize that turning off the heat under the teakettle wasn't going to change things. There was water already in it.
I went to work feeling like I'd fallen off the swamp buggy. I used my break to drive home, and YES! the water was back on. Sure, it coughed and sputtered and then barfed brown when I first turned the faucets on, but after the bilge pumps were emptied, I got all minty fresh.
DumpStore ex-co-worker Shelley, sadly, will remain an ex-co-worker. The guy she was to replace was full time, but had no bennies and made much less than her. So instead they've rehired a guy that everyone was glad to see go when he quit. To join the carnival. At age 30. Apparently, he's very dumb, somewhat mentally ill, constantly babbles about nothing and has severe personal hygeine issues. Poopie Pants Redux!
This is going to get an "Oh boy, now did you really, oh do tell" from everyone, but I redid the Free Online Charity Page yet again. Given that I was linking to a Google cache page, I was expecting that that "One Click" page would go goodbye. It did, and so...I guess it's my page now. I copied the source code, removed the pages that didn't work, added a few that did, and it more-or-less seems to work. Still don't know where that Espagnol pop-up comes from, or how I can get Care2's Rainforest site to autoclick. I'm working on it. I can only tweak code, not write it. And again, for those of you who don't use it--It's for charity. Three minutes of clicking a day ain't gonna kill you. And it truly may save someone else.
Via Cruel.com, Bum Wines. It may strike you less funny than it does me. I do that for a living, after all. And, no, we don't sell Cisco, so don't ask for any.
The truly frivolous lawsuits are the Corporate kind.
10/22
New policy: If one has nothing to say, one will blogilly post some links so that you have not come to one's page for nothing. And Bill will forever and henceforth refer to himself as "one." So, yeah, it's a tradeoff.
Yom Sagrir: The worst-case scenarios if Arafat is "removed from power" by Ariel "I might not be insane if my parents hadn't given me 2 girl names" Sharon. But don't worry--notice how Dumbya is SO all over this pending crisis! By doing nothing! He calls it "The Roadkill to Peace"!
10/23
One has something to say: When one went to work at 1130 this morning, there was still snow on the ground. One says that this sucks more than a supermassive Black Hole, one does.
(It's supposed to get back into the 60s over the weekend, and one hopes that the recent pattern of Harsh Summer--Harsh Winter--Mild Summer--Mild Winter--Harsh Summer, & etc continues, as one has to drive 20 miles one way to ones work and one would like a Mild Winter, onedammit [One also tires of calling oneself One {One also likes nested parantheses!}])
HMMM....Taylor Rental, a local place that--umm, rents things, such as Halloween costumes, has a radio ad listing...umm, Halloween costumes you can rent (for those of you who wonder why I gave up a potentially glorious career as an English major--umm, there you are). They describe various scary costume things, but the sound effects in the background don't have a terrified SCREAM! until they say "We don't have any George W costumes yet." Read into that what you will.
The Scalzi/Gregory War. Some of the insults hurled are quite amusing.
Just curious...Does anyone have insurance for their pets? If so, who do you use? thoughtviper ate fastmail dork fm, as always.
Speaking of pets...
"?" indeed. Maybe he's eating his other dog?
(And before you email me saying "the punchline is that he gets sad when he sees the sad dog," 1), he really doesn't look all that sad, and 2), explain WHY THAT'S FUNNY. CAUSE IT AIN'T.)
10/24
5cott says of Ferd'nand:
10/27
Note to (one's) self: Don't go promising at-least-a-link-a-day, as one might not find any good ones for 2 days. One instead now makes the most iron-clad promise one can: One Will Update When Feels Like It!
Almost didn't feel like it today. Young's Syndrome again. It's finally starting to actually worry me. Not the symptoms, as they haven't changed--in fact, I've been less pukey if anything. It was the PRN's comment after I reported slight pain when she pressed on my sternum: "You might have polyps." Polyps, she said, but my brain said--Or pre-cancerous lesions! I've got sternum cancer! Probably all those Slim Jims I ate as a kid!
My real fear is that, just like all the various prescriptions and the bloodwork and the Barium swallow, the endoscopy will turn up nothing. Then I'll just have to assume that I'm insane everytime I start vomiting.
"Bloodwork," hmm, that'd make a good title for a horror movie. I'll bet that someone's already used it. At any rate, we'll use that as a weak segue to this British list of the 100 Scariest Moments. Some of these I just don't get, as it's so Anglocentric. Others I don't get because they're lame. There was a scary part of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?! All I remember thinking when I saw that movie as a kid was, Does this end at some point? (It was like 2&1/2 hours long, which is an eternity for a kids' movie) And this is coming from someone who took repeated viewings to get through Wizard of Oz even once (GAHHH!! FLYING MONKEYS!!!).
I wonder how the original poll's questions were phrased, given how many "scariest moments" seem to be childhood memories. Seriously, who crapped their pants watching the "Thriller" video by Michael Jacks-off-on-your-son? The King of Pap is today far scarier than the video (FLYING NOSES!!!). And "Captain Scarlet"? With the Thunderbird puppets?! I remember being scared by that show, but it wasn't because of the Mysterians. It was the opening titles, in which "our hero" Captain Scarlet, with his blank marionette face, emotionlessly shot and killed somebody from the viewer's POV. You went "OOGH!" and crumpled down dead, while this uncaring, unfeeling man in a snappy military uniform watched you die. It was some kids' show from that alternate reality where the Other Side won World War II. Captain Gestapo!! Toys by Mattel!
Another lame segue, but even scarier, The 10 Worst Days of the Bush Presidency. (It looks accurate, although numbers 1 & 3 say "2002" when they mean 2003) Which segues into today...
Feeling all Syndromish, I didn't crawl out of bed until noon. One PM, really, now that Daylight Savings Time has ended and Nighttime Spending has begun. I really only managed to get out then because it was time for WNPR's noon news. After hearing about the Iraq car bombing attacks and thinking "MY GOD! Three dozen dead, 200 wounded?! They're killing Red Cross?! WHY are we over there?!" was I the only person to think, "And I'll bet that Bush claims that this is only because we're doing so well!" And sure enough, his was the next voice I heard, saying exactly that. The more they kill, the more we succeed! They're killing us because they hate all the schools we're opening! YEAH, THAT MAKES SENSE. Hey, if those schools are so great, maybe we should send our retarded President to one! He actually carefully thought through the entire Iraqi situation and, using his Yale education, said: "They hate freedom. They love terror. They love to try to create fear and chaos."
Whoa, slow down there Junior! You could've used a 3-syllable word! You'd rip yer jaw clean off! The next time people die for fuckin' Halliburton, try this one: "They gots cooties. They love big smelly poops! I wanna watch Sponge Bob! GIMME JUICE BOX!!"
Gourddamn namby-pamby Liberal blogs. Say it! SAY IT! It's TOO BAD that WOLFOWITZ DIDN'T GET KILLED. I don't want anyone to die over there, but if I had to choose between the hundreds of soldiers killed who were forced into this, and one of the utter BASTARDS who put them there, who can only say how GREAT IT IS when THEY'RE the ones who DIE...Maybe if a Neocon All-Star croaks there, even Dumbya can't claim that he got splattered because things are going so great. Remember what Donald Regan said 20 years ago about AIDS? "Who cares, so long as the right people are dying?" When the chickenhawks start dying in Iraq, watch how quickly Bush goes AWOL. Again!
But we'll win. "Bring 'em on!" as Bush said. Hey, remember those guys? You know, those losers? Who thought that they could take on the most powerful country on Earth? They thought that they stood a chance against the numerically larger, better-trained and most technologically advanced army on the entire planet using hit and run tactics and primitive weaponry! Y'know, those losers...something about a tea party and crossing the Delaware and a guy named George W... Whatever happened to those losers?
(That's a military comparison, not a moral one. Sam Adams didn't set off car bombs to kill the Red Cross. The Cong would also fit the same description, and I wouldn't want to live under them any more than I would under Saddam. I'm just saying that nobody thought that the Redcoats would get their asses handed to them, just like BushCo thinks that they won't. Give Iraq to the UN NOW, before they don't want it anymore!)
I pretty much forced myself to go the Mall Area again. My Converses are ready to implode. And that's what they do; after about 2 years, they simply disintegrate. Bob's was having a sale. Not wanting to recreate my last visit there, where I found a pair of 7&1/2 black hightops that were size 9s, I made sure that there were actual 7&1/2s in the box. They were only $5 off. While in line, a woman found out that she couldn't use her coupon, so she gave it to me! That's $6 more she just saved me! Then I discovered that in my determination to make sure that they were the right size, I'd failed to notice that they were lowtops. One has worn black Converse hightops most of one's life, and I ain't stopping now. As part of the vast Conspiracy to prevent me from replacing my current ones, the only other ones in my size were red. "I don't know how desperate you are for new sneakers, but I could call our Enfield store for you," offered the Bob's guy. That's close to 20 miles away, and I'm not driving in the rain to go there. I hate driving in the rain--actually, I hate the way others drive in the rain. Hated it more today, when in some weird recreation of The Miracle of the Windshield Wiper, a yellow leaf fell exactly under both the driver's side wiper and over my field of vison, leaving a big smear with every stroke of the wipers. I can wait for sneakers, said I. Just waiting for these to disintegrate. They do that after 2 years. "I know!" he said. "I threw out a pair of my own just yesterday!"
The coupon didn't save me $11, it saved me the entire purchase price. As I didn't buy any.
Then I went to--let's see, Best Buy, Circuit City (whose DVD section had a title card--you know, like the CD section might have "The Beatles"--that read "Ed Gein." What a great country we live in!) and Borders trying to find the Galactica 10 Pack. Failed. After the last stop, I thought of what a waste this drive was, and it's not over yet! I could get in a car crash on the way home! And very nearly did, when some "polite" asshole came to a dead stop on the busiest road in town to let someone cut in front of him. Just like the last car crash I was in, except that this one would've involved 5 cars if it had happened.
Then I got home and ordered it from Amazon, like I should've in the first place. It's all utter garbage, of course, with the exception of the original Little Shop of Horrors. I remember Journey to the Center of Time from seeing an ad in the paper as a kid. In fact, I cut it out and kept in a scrapbook that's largely old Peanuts strips. It had dinosaurs!! Then I saw it on TV a few years later, and it bored me more than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Some of the films on the set I've simply never heard of, such as Idaho Transfer, which is a pretty dopey name. Pass the potatoes! Google says that it was directed by Peter Fonda in 1971, so maybe "doped-up" would be more accurate. One movie, Neophytes & Neon Lights, actually appears to be a new one, released in 2002. From its distributor's site comes this description (apparently, they spent so much on the neon lights that they couldn't afford a spellcheck):
Okay, Byron thinks that it's great entertainment to swat at my fingers from the other side of the keyboard, and in fact I've just fired the Pookie back up after he made Windows close. Guess I'll stop now, after I check my mail...Oh, great. Amazon just canceled my payment on Galactica. Guy doesn't have it. What a waste of everything today was.
But maybe not for you. If you downloaded all those comics-reading&downloading things last week, Suprnova has Strikeforce Morituri up. It was one of the best hard sci-fi comics, at least through the first 12 issues, after which it changed creative teams and kinda fell apart. This is a comic that should be a movie.
This is your brain on drugs. This is your brain on drugs at the Democratic presidential candidates' debate. Any questions?
10/28
Before I enthused over Strikeforce: Morituri's appearance for download, I should've actually seen the download. And its appearance. What a crappy scan.
A few years ago we had one of those "I see the VIRGIN MARY! In that TREE!" things here. Those people want to see those things to verify their faith in a world where religious craziness should be passe. I don't know what to think about these people--they're either very deluded, very gullible, or very stupid. Although it would explain God's general ineffectiveness if He was putting his energies into making icons appear in taco shells or mildewed shower stalls, rather than ending human suffering. Thank G-D fanatics like that aren't being given sensitive positions in the government! Especially ones that directly deal with interacting with religions that think we're trying to destroy them! Umm...
10/30
Via Negs:
| My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul |
|---|
| monkeymaniac goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as World's BIggest MONKYE!!! |
| govynda tricks you! You get a dead frog. |
| kitsplut gives you 17 mauve cinnamon-flavoured pieces of bubblegum. |
| luna306 tricks you! You lose 3 pieces of candy! |
| monkeypeople tricks you! You get a broken toy car. |
| rembrandt13 tricks you! You lose 1 pieces of candy! |
| snard gives you 9 pink grapefruit-flavoured jelly beans. |
| monkeymaniac ends up with 22 pieces of candy, a dead frog, and a broken toy car. |
| Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern. |
I think that it's pretty funny that it decided that Kitsplut should give me gum. Especially since it randomly picked the color mauve, but only I know why that's funny (you see, there's the Grey Aliens, but we really should fear the MAUVE...oh, never mind). I'm surprised that I have so few LJ "friends"--I thought that I gave that designation to anybody who posted to monkeymaniac. Where's Negs and Kiru? I guess I was lazy, as it was only a throwaway joke LiveJournal. (Although the joke was one of the few things I've done that I think really was funny)
Elvis-s-hound-dog-snapped-up-at-auction-----but-it-doesn-t-go-for-a-song-name_page.html. Wow, who wrote that url! "I am just an ardent Elvis fan and just wanted the one thing that had been touched by Elvis and had not been washed." Umm, having read that, it's one thing touched by Elvis that I'd REALLY want washed...
The Kids have decided that the best time to have a whole-house rampage is an hour before the alarm goes off. I've lost an hour's sleep each of the last 10 days. The running through the rooms I don't mind, except that one room has a bed and I'm in it. And that they also use my body as part of their playing field. If it happens again tomorrow, I'm giving them the heartless and drastic punishment of shutting the bedroom door.
I want them to rampage, I just don't want them to do it while I'm trying to sleep. The funny thing is, the instigator is Kill Kill! She loved it when I'd chase her. Some cats like to chase, some like to be chased, and I've got one of each. It's good to see them be friends.
I mentioned Byron's doglike obsession with food to the divinely gorgeous Jessica today. I assume that it's caused by some memory from his kittenage. KK still does the thing where she scoops up food from her bowl, runs 6 feet, drops it, eats it, and then calmly returns to the bowl to eat. No doubt that her litter was fed from one communal bowl, and she learned a way to at least get some food before her bigger siblings shouldered her away.
No one knows how long Byron was abandoned and alone before his rescue. But he was 2&1/2 weeks old and too young to eat. He not only wasn't weaned, he didn't have any teeth. The only thing he couldv'e put in his stomach was water. So now he eats like a pig and drinks desperately, as if there's no tomorrow. For at one point in his life, he didn't know if there really would be a tomorrow.
He used to wake up like a SHOT! sitting straight up instantly. Wide-eyed and open-eared, he'd nervously scan the room. Then you could see the tension leave his body, and he'd loudly purr. He'd awakened in some scary places when he was lost, and he had to make sure that this wasn't one of them.
If he was asleep and I knew that he'd wake up soon, I began rubbing my chin against him and purring. Like a momma cat might with her child. Now he awakes, knows he's safe, bursts into purrs.
We all have our childhood baggage. The trick is in turning it into lost luggage.
Jessica's cat Marjoriam also eats Pringles. The favorite food of her husband Ron's cat Bogart is...watermelon. And I thought Byron was strange.
10/31
Just what country (and what decade) are we living in again?