Moral Dilemma

Water, Water Everywhere And Not A Drop To Drink!

There's a crowd of construction types installing new offices just down the hall. Just down the hall, for reference's sake, is about 12 linear feet from my office.

They've been at this since last week. The noise is about to drive me completely bananas.

I'm not completely opposed to loud noises, but these come with no rhythym or regularity, so they're really jarring. Whether they're sinking nails into the concrete floors with a nailgun, or driving drywall screws into the framing, it's all ridiculously annoying. Add to that the random application of circular saws, drills, sanders, vacuums, and all manner of other electrical devices, and I'm about to have the top of my melon peel off and leak brain matter on my carpet.

I suppose these guys are working hard, 'cause they stop and slurp out of the water fountain directly across from my office door.

I never EVER use that water fountain. When we first moved to this floor three years ago, the fountains all had a big sign reading "NON-POTABLE WATER! DO NOT DRINK!!"

Since that time, the building management assures us on a regular basis that the problem with the drinking fountains has been rectified, and that the water is perfectly safe.

Naturally, no one believes them. The bottled water selection in the break room coke machine is always the first to sell out, and pretty much all of us carry in our own water.

So, should I tell these guys that the fountain water might just cause tentacles to grow from their spleen? Or do I remain quiet and hope they'll all come down with cholera, giardia and amoebic dysentery and grant me a few days of silence?

Decisions, decisions...

Blowneyed Bash Benediction

How Many Lighters Did Erica Lose This Year??

Well, there were no news reports of strange cult-like behavior and mass arrests outside Kerrville this weekend, so I'm guessing the Blowneyed Blodgers (Texas edition) were on their best behavior.

I can't wait to start reading the blog writeups of this year's TexFest. I'm just completely bugflustered that I couldn't attend!

Hope y'all had a great time!

Radio Daze

Paul Harvey, You Mercenary SOB...

#%&*@$*$@ Radio Douchebags...

About the only thing worse than listening to FM radio in Houston is listening to AM radio in Houston...

It's not just the crappy programming, though that's a big part of the Maleficient Suckularity.

No, it's the damn ads. On a 45 minute drive home, I get maybe 22 minutes of programming, and also 23 minutes of ads, station promos, DJ bumpers, and if I'm lucky, a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System.

The ads, though... Grrrrr...... I'm gonna find the jagoff that did the music for John Moore Plumbing and ram that clarinet up his wazoo. Also, the musical geniuses behind the Joseph A. Bank ads, the Amazing Siding ads, the IQ Auto Buyers ads... They shall all drown in lakes of blood!!!

They're not the worst, though. The top two spots are reserved for a couple of serious douchebags.

The runner up is some guy that's authored a book, probably published it either through the vanity press or a self-funded deal, and is spending Jeebus knows how much money on radio ads to shill it to the unsuspecting public. The ads are ear-bleedingly bad. I can only imagine that the actual book is much, much worse.

The guy's protagonist is named Matthew Wolverine, which stretches credibility to the breaking point. I've met people named Fox, Bear, Wolfe, Bass, Deere and even Roach, but 'Wolverine' just isn't a name found in phonebooks.

I suppose this protagonist partners up with Mark Badger, Luke Bobcat and John Marmot to defeat the treacherous Judas Weasel.

To get an idea of how awful this book appears to be, check out the guy's website and the entry on Amazon.com. The hyperbole is enough to reach out and strangle you. Here's just a taste:

Texas Secedes is a gripping, action packed novel in which the reader will most assuredly identify with and become personally involved with many of the characters. It is a beautiful story about love, religion, standing for something, taking action and difficult decisions. In many instances, action is fast and furious as dangerous and difficult situations are dealt with.

This work of fiction is so relevant to conditions existing in Texas in the early 21st century, that the reader may find himself wondering if it doesn’t contain some kernels of reality and truth.

We predict that you will find the rapid fire dialogue an easy read and that you will find yourself so caught up in this most intriguing story that you will have difficulty putting it down before you finish reading it.

I just heard the latest version of his radio ads this week... Now he's promoting himself as a public speaker, and even name-checks all the major radio hosts to beg an appearance invite... What a Douche Supreme...


The Winnah and still Champeen of the radio ad douchebags is some dude named... Y'know what? I'm not going to help him advertise his product by even saying his name.

He's pushing what appears to be a MLM scheme utilizing some nifty plan that promises millions in income for the enrollees.

Whether his program is for real or not, that's not what bugs me about the ads. They are unprofessional to a degree that it evokes the Red Curtain of Blood just in the opening seconds of the ad. I suppose they're supposed to let you feel that the advertiser is a laid-back carefree beach bum that's stumbled onto a million dollar idea, but to have to sit through a supposedly unscripted 15 seconds of this douchebag laughing and joking with his buddies just gives me the red-ass. I turn off the radio whenever they come on, and won't turn it back on until my blood pressure returns to normal.

They recently updated the ads with an announcer that tries to insert some professionalism, but it doesn't work. Ad version #3 is just as bad as #1. If you're dropping your cash on this douchebag, you deserve to lose it.

So, any radio douchebags in your listening area?

SCOTUS Gets One Right!!

Look Upon My Boomsticks, Ye Gungrabbers, And DESPAIR!!

Guess I'll be able to keep my little popper a while longer... The Supreme Court ruled today that Americans have a constitutional right to own firearms.



I suppose I ought to be gracious, but I just ain't that type of guy on this particular issue...

So, to Handgun Control, Inc., Sarah & Jim Brady, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Violence Policy Center, the American Hunters and Shooters Association, Cease Fire, GunGuys, Americans for Gun Safety, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Freedom States Alliance, Goodbyeguns.org, Gunfree, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Mothers Against Guns, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Texans for Gun Safety, and all those Millions of Marching Moms...

PLEASE KISS MY WELL-ARMED POSTERIOR!!!

Truth In Advertising

If I Want Change, I'll Check The Seat Cushions...

In A Word

A Very Brief Q & A

Meme on loan from Nelly, who got it from Grannymar.

Only ONE word can be used in your answer and it can NOT be used twice.


1. Where is your cell phone? Charging

2. Your significant other? Nonexistant

3. Your hair? Disappearing

4. Your mother? Retired

5. Your father? Napping

6. Your favourite time of day? Night

7. Your dream last night? Intricate

8. Your favourite drink? Tea

9. Your dream goal? Caporegime

10. The room you’re in? Office

11. Your ex? Bizarre

12. Your fear? Spiders

13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Employed

14. What you are not? Slender

15. Your Favourite meal? Dinner

16. One of your wish list items? Breguet

17. The last thing you did? Peed

18. Where you grew up? Dallas

19. What are you wearing? Casual

20. Your TV is? Defective

21. Your pets? Cats

22. Your computer? Deceased

23. Your life? Lackluster

24. Your mood? Mopey

25. Missing someone? Jenni

26. Your car? Thirsty

27. Something you’re not wearing? Necktie

28. Favourite store? Gunshop

29. Your summer? Sweltering

30. Your favourite colour? Green

31. When is the last time you laughed? Yesterday

32. When is the last time you cried? Taxday

33. Your health? Uneven

34. Your children? None

35. Your future? Chancy

36. Your beliefs? Strong

37. Young or old? Old

38. Your image? Shopworn

39. Your appearance? Rotund

40. Would you live your life over again knowing what you know? Yes

Doin' The Tampico Two-Step!

Mi Culo Es Cansado, Rojo y Muy Caliente!

Didja ever notice that Cherry Pepto-Bismol smells exactly like pink cotton candy?

Sure doesn't taste like it, though...

Between the Imodium, the Kaopectate & the Pepto, the crisis is mostly behind me. Wait, who am I kidding? The crisis was ALWAYS behind me...

No clue what started this colonic flood tide. I got very little sleep last night. I just couldn't risk dropping off into a slumber, and having some nocturnal fart turn into a seweriffic version of Old Faithful.

Ever have a really bad cold where you blow your nose so often it gets red & chapped? Well, let's just say I'm regretting my purchase of bargain-quality buttpaper. I'm thinking I ought to stop off and get a tub of baby wipes on the way home, preferably with lanolin and lidocaine. I wonder if they even make baby wipes with a topical anaesthetic? I suppose I could just hose down each wipe with a spray of Solarcaine. That oughta work...

I almost wish I had the toilet wired for sound... when that baby wipe hits the bunghole, it's gonna sound just like when you take a piece of red-hot iron off the anvil and toss it in the quench bucket!

'Scuse me for a minute... gotta go hit the facilities. Can't trust a fart these days...

George Carlin 1937-2008

A Little Bitter Near The End, But Always Tasty!

A Seven Word Memorial Service:

Shit

Piss

Fuck

Cunt

Cocksucker

Motherfucker

Tits

So long, Mr. Carlin! Hope you finally find a place for all your stuff.

Fat Rats Shat Flat Hats

Sartorial Scribblings In A Satirical Style

I don't much care for berets.

Yeah, yeah, I know, they're worn by 82% of the world's military, including the most skilled, deadly and heroic outfits known to mankind.

It's just that aesthetics aside, they're one of the more useless items of headgear available. No brim to shield the sun, no trailing edge to keep your neck covered. A knit watch cap would do a better job of keeping your head warm, and a lowly boonie hat would be better in the rain. The only hat more functionally useless than a beret is the garrison cap (aka pisscutter or c**t cap).

I'm not even all that wowed by the looks of a beret. Ever since I saw this picture of Oolong the Rabbit, every time I see a person wearing a beret, I mentally substitute a bunny wearing a pancake on his head.



Making things worse are the people that wear military-style berets that just aren't suited to that style of hat. If you're an unwashed French painter, you can wear a floppy beret with the nipple on top and be perfectly OK. If you're a Scottish, you can wear their variety of beret, the tam o' shanter. (Not to be confused with the Tam O' Sixguns!)
If you're a scrawny black guitarist from Minneapolis, you can wear a raspberry beret. If you're fit and in shape, and have a lean & hungry look about you, you can wear the military-style beret and no one will say 'Boo'.

If, however, you resemble John Goodman after a cheesecake bender, perhaps you ought to look into a different hat choice than a military-style beret. You'll just end up looking like a poseur, no matter how well the beret fits.

And alas, it rarely fits. I can't count the times I see some doofus with his beret pulled so low it looks more like a chef's toque. It's not a condom, dude. Quit rolling it down!

Here's a handy guide to beret-wearing that I stumbled across. If you must wear a pancake on your head, heed these instructions!

The Man Just Keeps You Down...

I'm Pretty Sure It's A Required Class At The HPD Academy

You Request, We Provide!

The Writing On The Real Donkey Has Faded...

Just for you, Connecticut Yankee...

Here's a reasonable facsimile of a certain concrete donkey that shook the pillars of the earth:

Photo Phunnies

No Time For Actual Blog Content At The Moment...

Found these at I Can Has Cheezburger, your regular stop for LOLcats and related amusements.

Invasion!

You May Take My Office, But You'll Never Take... MY FREEDOM!!!

Dammit...

After they swore that the invaders from the 6th floor wouldn't be interfering with our current setup, I've found out that I've been slated for removal from my current digs.

We're getting about a dozen folks moved in from another floor. Crowding is starting to take its toll, and instead of moving these mollycoddled sumbitches out into pup tents on the annex roof where they belong, they took a look at our floor and decided we had too much square footage.

"Oh, no! We wouldn't dream of making any of your staff move! We'll just fit our folks in where we can!"

Damned liars.

As it stands, they're going to build three more offices in the big empty hole previously occupied by our document storage area. I'm not entirely sure where our documents went, but I feel pretty confident that you, the taxpayer, are giving them a nice home somewhere at a premium rate.

Instead of moving the newcomers into the spiffy new offices, me and my next-door neighbor will have to relocate, and let the invaders have our offices. They swear that the square footage won't change, but they swore we wouldn't be moved, either.

Well, I'm not taking this lying down. Time for the resistance to start!

I'm gonna get me a couple of those PLO do-rags, and we're gonna have a two-employee intifada! Car bombs, Qasim rockets and molotov cocktails seem a bit extreme, though. Maybe just a bit of rock-throwing to start things off...

Donkey Day!

I Got Yer Burro Right Here!

Be very thankful I didn't include the picture from the Tijuana Donkey Show.

This one made me giggle quite a bit:



This one was my creation, a variation on the "I'm in your base, killing your doodz" theme. (NSFW link)



This? This is just a donkey. Give him a kiss.

Things I Crave, Part 346

Wish In One Hand, $h!t In The Other, See Which One Fills Up First...

I want one of these in the back yard... I've been craving one ever since I first saw one outside the Museum of Natural History in Houston many years ago.

The globe balances on a thin cushion of water supplied by a submersible pump. A child can easily rotate it in any direction, though stopping it to reverse course it a bit tricky!.

I'm a bit of a map & geography nut, I've got hundreds of paper maps, some quite old. My favorite globe is one from the pre-WWI era, it's a bit old & ratty but shows a world long passed into history.

These globes aren't cheap. I can only imagine what it must cost to ship a 4000 lb granite sphere.

Ah, well. One of these days...

Ew! No Thanks...

Next Aisle Over, There's Dysentery Brownies

Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome?

Almost Worse Than A Sharp Stick In The Eye

I'm on my bed last night doing my best imitation of a geriatric sloth with a pretty severe Quaalude habit, when for some reason I felt the need to stretch my feets out.

BIG mistake...

Usually one or both of the cats are down at the foot of the bed, so I have to be careful how I fling my feet about, lest I punt a cat into the hallway. Last night both Betsy Cat and Pookie Cat were elsewhere in the house, so I was able to stretch freely.

Left foot? Ah, good stretch. Get the toes wiggled sufficiently, and rotate the ankle to get the blood stirring.

Right foot? Point the toes and stretch the foot downward and...

AAAAAIIIIGGGHHH!!!!

Pain, glorious pain. Pain to make your bunghole clench up. Pain like you get when you have a charleyhorse, but this was on the front of my leg, not deep in the calf muscle.

From about midway up my shinbone all the way to my toes ran a solid band of agony. I tried moving my foot in the opposite direction, lifting my foot and pointing with my heel. No help. It hurt to move it, but when you stopped moving, it got 10 times worse. Left, right, up, down, rotate, no help at all.

Usually a charleyhorse will kick your ass for half a minute, then fade out. This was more persistent. I pulled myself up to a sitting position, and tried placing pressure on the floor while I stretched. No help at all...

At that point I figured "If they're gonna amputate, I'm going to have one last walkabout", so I got up and hobbled around the house, finally ending up in the bathroom. Not one to waste an opportunity, I took advantage of the sitting facilities and conducted some business.

At the conclusion of the transaction, the pain in my foot was gone. Completely. Not even any lingering stiffness.

I have no clue what happened, or if it will recur. All I know is, (using Liberal Moonbat Universal Healthcare Logic) if your foot hurts, take a dump and it gets better.

Keep The Loaves, We Wants Fishes!

Who Put Abalone Shells In The Collection Plate?

It's Hurricane Time Again!

Bend Over And Kiss Your Ass GOODBYE!!!

Once again, my friends, we're in that silly season of multiple tropical storms named for Lower Slobbovian immigrants, tracking any puff of clouds that appears in the South Atlantic with a micrometer, and hoping like hell a Cat 5 hurricane doesn't slide right up the Houston Ship Channel and punch the high hard one up our collective wazoo.

If you're a resident of the Gulf Coast, and you haven't started gathering your emergency kit and making plans to exit the flood zone in a forthright and rapid fashion, you should really get to it. Stock up on bottled water, prescription medicines, emergency rations, pet food, etc. and be ready to get the hell out.

This goes double for you folks with mobility issues or dependency on powered gadgets to keep you breathing/excreting/eating. I know, Reliant Energy has a program to keep power flowing to the houses of those equipped with iron lungs, etc., but when a bus lands on the Reliant call center and knocks the phones out, you're not getting through, and at that point, you're basically phucked.

Let me make that point abundantly clear one more time. If you live in the floodplain, and you rely on the Fed, State, County or Local government to ensure your safety and comfort during a major storm...

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!!

You HAVE to take responsibility for your own evacuation and survival, it's that simple. If you rely upon the kindness of strangers, you might be OK, but more likely you'll have a group of concerned strangers in a electricity-free emergency shelter staring at you helplessly as you painfully expire as your last ventilator battery runs out or your unrefrigerated insulin explodes your pancreas.

I met a nice lady the other day at one of the many Emergency Preparedness meetings and briefings for citizens I attend this time of year. She uses a ventilator and a powered wheelchair, and without a reliable source of power, she can't move or take a breath. This lady (who I'll call Dorothy Vader, her vent rig's kinda noisy) has a 10 day supply of batteries for her scooter/breather, as well as a portable genny capable of recharging them all. Plus, she's got people committed to getting her evacuated if necessary, backups for those people, and backups for those backups.

That kind of preparation ain't cheap, but at some point you need to decide what's more important, a steak dinner next Friday night, or the supplies needed to keep you alive when the alligators come sailing in your front window on a stiff breeze.

There's some links below to helpful sites that can assist you in preparing for the worst. Keep in mind that after the hurricane season dies down, you can use all the consumables in your emergency kit and restock again next year.

Remember, all you Houston bloggers... When the fit hits the shan and the water starts rising, we're all meeting up at Miss Feisty's place up in the hills. Out of all the bloggers on my sidebar, her recipes are the tastiest. Might as well eat like a king while you're a refugee!

(OK, Jingles, put the chef's knife down... I'm really going to my sister's place down the road!)


Red Cross Disaster Supplies Kit

Disaster Preparedness for People with Disabilities

The City Of Houston Emergency Plan

FEMA Guide to Citizen Preparedness

Duct Tape Is Your Friend

If Women Don't Find You Handsome, They Should At Least Find You Handy!

If you've never seen an episode of 'The Red Green Show', you're missing out. This is one of my all-time favorite TV comedies.

I used to watch it on KERA-13 up in Dallas, one of the local PBS stations. In addition to their run of British comedies, they snuck in this gem from Canadian TV.

This clip is one of the funniest, IMHO. Hit the link at the bottom of the post to get a page full of Red Green clips of off YouTube!




Watch some Red Green!

I Suspected As Much...

Saddle Up, Pilgrim!

What Kind of a Western Bad-Ass are You? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as John Wayne You're a classic all American cowboy who does the right thing. When you're sober. Which means occasionally. You like horses, the outdoors, whiskey, hot tempered women, whiskey, and bourbon.

Effed In The Ay Once Again...

Financial Solvency: "To Dreaaaam The Impossible Dreaaaaammmmm!!"

Well, those filthy knob-gobblers at the IRS have done it again. First they sent out a notice saying I'd get a $600 tax rebate. Then, I got another notice saying it would arrive this week.

I've been on the ragged edge financially for some time. Struggling to finally get my student loans paid off, increasing medical bills, and paying $80 per fill-up was making things tough. I've got about $1200 worth of work that needs to be done on my truck, and it needs new tires as well.

This was the paycheck to get it done, though. I'd managed to scrimp and save and tuck enough away that between this paycheck, savings, and that stimulus check, I could get the truck fixed and re-shod, pay all my bills, and still have enough left over to go to Mom's family get-together at the end of the month.

Ha. As if.

Yesterday I got a nice letter from the aforementioned filthy IRS knob-gobblers saying that they would be keeping that $600 stimulus check and applying it to my outstanding tax debt.

Bastards...

Look, it's not like I'm denying I owe the IRS money. I do. OTOH, The Fed is in the process of handing out about 110 BILLION DOLLARS in rebates. My $600 is not going to cause the Federal Reserve to default or anything. It's a question of who's got the most pressing need for it right now.

Sigh. I expect I'll come home tonight and find that raccoons have occupied the attic, black mold has coated the air ducts, and the dishwasher has exploded. That's the way my year is going...

Explaining My Weapon Choice?

Just So There's No Question About It!

Regarding the lightsaber choice below...


how jedi are you? :: by lawrie malen

Zombie Fight!

Playing The "What If" Game Yet Again!

Via Ernunnos via South Park Pundit via Blogonomicon!

Here's the deal... Play along if ya wanna!

It's Dawn of the Dead. You're in a mall. You have one weapon, one song, one famous person to fight alongside you. Weapon can be real or fictional, with endless ammo if applicable.

OK, I'll play...

Weapon: Lightsaber (green blade!)

Song: Let Me Go, Rock & Roll by KISS!

Famous Person: Monica Bellucci (wearing Princess Leia's metal bikini) armed with a Thompson 1928A1 submachine gun!

Fire Ants Suck

They Bite & Sting! They Serve No Useful Purpose! They're... DEMOCRATS!!

It looks like both GuyK and Eric are trying to kill some ants!

Killing fire ants... It's an almost futile practice, akin to trying to keep liberals out of public office. Still, I have seen it done upon occasion, and not with bags of Amdro.

One peculiar gizmo I've operated was meant for attacking fire ant mounds out in cattle pastures. It used boiling hot water and a huge spade bit for churning up the nest. The whole shebang set up on a trailer, and you'd hook it up to the PTO on your tractor. It had a propane burner under the water tank, and this huge rotating blade that looked like some medieval jagged head-lopper set on the vertical. You'd wait for the water to get steaming, then throw the tractor in gear and go in search of a fire ant mound.

You'd center the drill rig on top of the mound, then throw a lever. The spade bit would start spinning at about 1000 RPM, and slam down into the dirt to a depth of three feet or so. Simultaneously, jets of boiling water would inundate the soil.

The theory was that you'd completely break up the nest deep enough to get down to the queen's nesting chambers, and parboil the little bastards until they were all bulgy and medium rare. Then, you'd raise the bit and drive on to the next ant mound.

It never failed to toss up a double handful of pissed-off ants onto your pants legs, despite the drill shield. I'd always have my grubbiest blue jeans on for ranch work, which meant many holes for the ants to crawl into. Trust me, you never want a fire ant trying to bite your 'nads. It's hard to leap off a tractor and drop trou in a hurry in order to brush them loose.


The other proven ant killer was some mystery chemical we used at summer camp.

I never learned exactly what the unholy concoction was. All I knew was that it was toxic as hell, and illegal in most civilised countries. Rumor had it it was left over from the IG Farben nerve gas experiments in the 1930's.

The head ranger had a big drum of this stuff locked away in a shed with several other dented and corroded drums full of EPA-banned substances. Every summer at the start of camp setup, he'd gather a few of the older staffers and we'd trek out to the hidden dump where the camp's evil secrets were kept. He'd pull on some rubber gloves about as thick as whale hide, take a deep breath, then duck inside the shed and pry loose the bung on the drum lid. After a dash back outside for more air, he'd use an old length of copper tubing like a wine thief to draw off a pint or so into an old Mason jar.

We each had a 2-gallon pressurized sprayer full of water. The head ranger would dose each sprayer with about a level shotglass of the filthy brew, and that was more than enough concentration to do the deed.

He was very specific about usage...

"Now boys, don't yew spray this on anything but a fahr ant mound, and don't spray that more than 2 or 3 seconds. Jist enough to wet tha soil good. Don't y'all get any of this-here stuff on yer boots, neither... It'll eat right through and you'll grow a frog flipper outta the top of yer foot!"

I'm convinced to this day that the stuff was distilled from equal parts mamba venom, DDT, cyanide, hemlock, nuclear waste, the liquid that oozes out of fast food trash dumpsters, and a smidgen of whatever strange glowing substance leaks out of a Happy Fun Ball. Whatever you sprayed it on died within seconds. Ant mounds treated with the DeathJuice came to resemble Ground Zero at Los Alamos. Even ash juniper shrubs, which can grow on bare rock and live through 20 year droughts withered and died if they were within a foot or so of the treated ant mound.

If I ever develop foot cancer, grow extra toes, or my kids are born with tentacles, I'll know who to blame...

For the absolute best-ever radio commercials for fire ant killer, go to this page, scroll down to the bottom and listen!

LOLowls

Boredom At Work Is A Dangerous Thing...

One Foot In The Grave?

Oh Mama, We're All Geezers Now!!

I went to a birthday party last night. Been a while since I've been to one meant for someone over the age of 5.

My old friend Dan from high school was turning 40. 'Tis the season for that sort of thing, it seems. I'd gotten an email a couple of weeks previously from his wife, setting up the scene for a surprise party.

There turned out to be quite a crowd. There always is when Dan's little brother is there with his family. I tried to count how many kids he and his wife brought, but they move really quickly. At least 6, maybe 7. Add to that my friend's two rugrats, one more toddler from the French horn player from this story, and we had a certified herd o' young-uns. My ears are still ringing...

My friend Boo-Boo was there, he was a year behind us in high school. He was fresh off a trip to Spain & Switzerland. The Mad Scientist phoned in his regards from Princeton or Rensselaer or wherever he is. Stymie, Zibig, & Eublie were unfortunately MIA.

The surprise guests were my ex-girlfriend from high school, who I hadn't seen in a dozen years or so, along with her husband, another alumni from our high school. Seeing her was a decidedly odd experience. We've each changed so much there was no point in any idle wondering of "What If..." or anything like that. It was pretty clear two years out of high school that things had run as far as they possibly could. Still, it was good to talk with her and be able to fall right back into that comfort level of easy conversation with someone who once knew all your secrets.

We had the shindig at his parent's house. They still live three blocks from the high school, and are the most gracious hosts you can imagine. We feasted on comida del Mexeeko and chatted until almost midnight. His parents pulled out snapshots of our band geek posse that are now almost a quarter-century old, and it was amazing to see all those full heads of hair and trim waistlines! I'd forgotten about the toga party pictures...

A couple more months before I roll the odometer myself. I may have to do a "Back To Our Youth" shindig, but most of our old hangouts have disappeared! Even Astroworld has been plowed under...

What A Weird Weekend.

No, Sir! I Didn't Like It!

Well, there's no better way to start off a weekend than to open your mail and discover you've received your AARP membership card. A decade early...

Add to that my auto insurance company sent me a notice that they'd lost my renewal documents yet again... Oddly enough, they never seem to misplace a single premium check. Weird how that works.


Rockhauler, an occasional blogger and my partner in deviltry and deviousness let a hacking cough get away from him and almost pulled a Jim Henson on us. He went into the hospital with double pneumonia, and has been hooked up to various tubes and needle-y things as well as The Machine That Goes 'PING'. He's doing much better now, and after they drained multiple liters of fluid off his lungs, his condition improved, and he's making a pile of cash selling pink phlegmonade down in the ER waiting room.

So, if you get a suspected infection, go get it looked at! If you're too far above going to the County clinic and waiting for hours amongst the Great Unwashed, at least go by Petco and buy $20 worth of fish antibiotics. (AKA the Penniless Chemistry Grad Student Health Plan) It might just save your life.


I went to the used bookstore to feed my fiction jones. As I perched on the chair next to the rack of Recent Arrivals deeply engrossed in book browsing, I realized some person was attempting to communicate with me. Reluctantly surfacing back into reality, I cognizant of the fact that it was a female-type person doing the communicating, and she was wanting to know how I liked a certain SFnal series, as I was holding one volume of the series in my basket.

Now, advancing years have increased my general curmudgeonhood, and I felt a small wave of annoyance at being interrupted. As it stands, though, I've got enough social skills left that I can still communicate with strangers without being a complete A-hole. I managed to convey my general approval of the series, though I have misgivings about the author's politics.

This lead to a general exploration of the various SF alternate history series, as she sounded me out on my reading list and sidetracked into movies, politics, etc. It gradually occured to me that more was taking place here than just a discussion on books. By gum, this gal was flirting!

If I seemed a bit slow on the uptake, you have to realize that the frequency of actual females putting the flirt on towards me is only exceeded by the frequency of Hillary Rodent Clinton offering to fellate Bill without alcohol, Rohypnol or a lost wager being involved.

Truth be told, she looked a lot like me, only with stringy blond hair and minus the mustache and goatee and a foot in altitude. At this point in life, I'm open to just about any female, regardless of diameter, but there was no future in this one. I was intrigued by her Sanskrit tattoos and her obvious SF geekery, but the twin repelling factors of green mossy teeth and overpowering aroma of Eau de Benson & Hedges just didn't work for me.

Oh, well. There's always internet p()rn...