Random Thoughts On Groinal Garments

Idle Speculation To No Real Purpose

So, I'm sitting here with the midseam of my skivvies neatly bisecting my Balzac, forcing a periodic stand-up/wiggle/shake/adjust/sitdown to avoid having an involuntary orchidectomy.

Part of the problem is, of course, too much El Capitan and not enough room in the pants, causing the pinching.

The other half of the problem is the abysmal method that underwear is constructed.  Why on earth would you put the seams on the INSIDE??  No one's gonna be looking at them inside your pants, and you might as well put the smooth side towards your skin.

"Well, just turn 'em inside out!" you say.   OK, but then the fly is bass-ackwards.

Feh.  It's just a bad design.  Don't even get me started on the mess that are boxers.

Also, while I'll give props to those manufacturers who use 100% cotton, can we get an increase in the quality?  If I can get 1000 thread count sheets, it stands to reason I ought to be able to get the same in my tighty-whities.

Actually, I'd like to experiment with a mink-lined hammock arrangement, but I'm afraid it would A: Smell terrible after a hot day, and B: shed and leave me with rodent hair ingrained into my crotch.

Sigh.  Maybe something in a microfiber/memory foam??

This Post Has No Title

Ask Me About My Horrible Horse Joke

Damn.  Another week when I don't get a post up until Wednesday...

Been crazy busy at the Salt Mine.  Meetings, offsite conferences, training sessions, and the fun is just gearing up for the spring.

I had a crack-of-dawn class in far South Houston yesterday.  Man, those suck.  Getting up before the poultry is never my cup of tea.

I saw the tail end of the midtown smoke plume on the way back into downtown.  Apparently some welders sparked a fire in a brand-spankin' new apartment loft complex that was finishing up construction, and burned the 5-story structure to the ground.

Check out YouTube, it's quite the weenie roast.

No gun purchases lately.  Most of my spare cash is being banked in anticipation of a complete overhaul of the truck's undercarriage.  I need a swap of all the shocks, struts, ball joints, tie rod ends, Pittman arms, and assorted jimcrackery that makes the thing stay on course.

And, of course, the "Check Engine" light is on.  Again.

The fun never stops.  The bills just get larger.

Fishy Dreams

Next Time, I'll Try The Shrimp

'Tis the Lenten season, therefore every purveyor of fast food has a variety or two of fish sandwiches on special. 

For all the folks giving up meat for the season, they have some mackerel for their snapper.  The rest of us just get an additional menu item.

Still, a non-stop diet of dead cow does no one any good, so I've been sampling the alleged filets of deep-sea fishies.

Best of the bunch so far has been Burger King's Deluxe fish sammich.  Had a couple last night.

And, of course, had some really, really effed up dreams.

Dunno if I can blame it on the fish, but why not...

OK, here's the deal.

Somehow, I had come into a shitload of cash, and I was buying a house.  And what a house it was...

Imagine a tri-level ranch house, built using a vaguely hexagonal floorplan that had all the bedrooms and offices surrounding a central living area, and each connected with heavy swinging glass doors. 

Now, coat every bedroom, walls, floor and ceiling with thick blue shag rug, while the common rooms resemble a corporate office/hotel lobby.

The house was owned by a venture capitalist, who had commissioned an enormous oil portrait of himself that was in one of the bedrooms. It had the look of a collaboration between Ralph Steadman and Leroy Neiman.  I can recall saying to the realtor "Well, that's gotta go..."

For some reason, there was a home office still being run in one of the rooms.  It looked suspiciously like a department store right before they declare bamkruptcy.  Kinda seedy & run down.  There were a couple of young interns there, and one of them had that horrible pageboy-ish haircut that you sometimes see on little kids to try and disguise the fact that they've got a peanut-shaped head.  Looks like a layer of dangling curtain fringe...

For some reason they started giving me shit.  Something about "Don't eat the help!", implying a fat guy with a windfall of cash would somehow feel the need to consume his domestic staff.

That seemed rude, so I grab this guy by the scruff of hair and say, "You know what you need? You need a Krugerrand!  And your buddy here, he maybe wants a Panda or a Maple Leaf?"

Next thing you know, I've got both guys hung on either side of a tall concrete wall, both with a hand pinned underneath a length of chain.  Within reach of the chain is a pair of gold coins (I'm assuming the aforementioned Krugerrand and Canuck or China coin)  and each kid has a hatchet in the other hand.

The object is to cut away the other guy and grab his coin without severing the chain.

They both lost...

Blade Fail

Adventures With Knife-Like Objects

In the quest to collect a barrel full of sharp pointy things, you win a few, and you lose a few.

This go-round, it's one for the "LOSER" pile...

I was looking for a workaday version of this blade:

That's a Cold Steel Tai Pan.  AUS-8 laminated blade.  Kraton handle with skull-crusher pommel.  Definitely *NOT* a loser.  While it is a step down from the Damascus-bladed & silk-wrapped haft Imperial Tai Pan, it's also not in the $1200 price range.  I think I paid between $200-300 for this one.

It's too pretty to play with and possibly ding up, so I also bought the fiberglass trainer version.

While the dimensions are identical, the weight's not even close. Any spinny-flippity hijinks won't carry over with the steel version, leading to sliced fingers and punctured feet.

So, the search was on for a replacement.  And a few weeks ago, I thought I had an answer, courtesy of the ThinkGeek website. This is their 1942 Leatherneck dagger:

And, it's pretty much a POS knife-like object.

See how the centerline misses the point by almost half the blade width?  That's quality Chinese workmanship, right there, folks.  The stacked leather handle is so lacquered that it's as slippery as a peeled egg.  Kinda funky-smelling, too.  Probably made from the hides of political prisoners and Falun Gong supporters.

When you grasp a nice blade, you should be hearing... Oh, I dunno.  The theme from 'Patton'.  'Stars & Stripes Forever'.  A swashbuckling overture, at the very least.

Pulling this one from the sheath, all you get is an elevator-Muzak version of 'The Girl from Ipanema'...

What's All This Fuss About Pie??

Yeah!  It's Weekend Already!!

March 14.  3.14.  OK, I get it.  Whatever...

Good news, in small doses.

Had a fun time last night in traffic court.  In real life, it's not nearly as amusing as that TV show 'Night Court' made it out to be.  Same collection of freaks and weirdos, though, and that was just on the "official" side of the bench.

Got $500+ of citations reduced down to $288.   The judge also ignored that I'd attached my license plate with baling wire instead of a holding bracket.

Wear your seatbelts, folks.  That's a pricy ticket...


Did a bit of movie watching recently, via the Redbox.  'Pitch Black' is one of my favorite skiffy/horror flicks, and I hoped 'Riddick' would be fun.

Um, no.  Not so much.  Even getting a nice peek at Katee Sackhoff's big lesbian boobies didn't really save that one.

'Ender's Game' was... long.  Full of whiny kids. Full of whiny Harrison Ford & Ben Kingsley.
Didn't much care for it.

'Catching Fire', the second of the Hunger Games films was OK.  Felt a bit disjointed and rushed at times, but it's the middle act of a three (four, really) act play.  Jennifer Lawrence is cute as a speckled pup, as usual.

'Thor: The Dark World':  Two hours of my life I'll never get back...

Back On The Train Gang

Rebraiding The Whips & Sharpening The Gouges

Finally!  A new crop of... noobs!

One of my "other duties as assigned" is helping out during the New Hire Orientation for The Man. 

Every so often we get a crop of folks who have abandoned all hope at an honorable career, and instead decided to work as minions of the Nazgul and the Dark Overlord aka The Man.

It's my job to "inflict some larnin' upon 'em".

So, an 8 hour stretch tomorrow over at the Buford T. Justice Memorial Leper Colony & Indoctrination Center.  Of that 8 hours, I get a whopping 30 minutes.  The rest is "observing" the other presenters and deciding what gets weeded out before the next session.

After all, 8 hours to prepare you for a lifetime of toil & misery?  Perish the thought!

Make it 2 hours, TOPS!

No News Is Good News

To Err Is Human, To Suck Royally Requires The Divine Right Of Kings

And, I mean that literally.   I have no good news.

I'd like to spew something other than hardship or woe, but it hasn't been in the cards this past few weeks.

Had a deposition with the Legal beagles yesterday.  I feel like one of Imhotep's victims from the Mummy movies, sucked dry after all useful knowledge has been extracted.

Adding insult to injury, the complaint leading up to the deposition was entirely the fault of a boneheaded decision by some mid-level bureaucrat over in the Blah-Blah-Blah department of The Man's Realm.

Ah, who am I kidding.  We're all mid-level bureaucrats...


After fighting with the staff of my PCP and Cardio doc and my local CVS pharmacy for the past two years, I finally had the renewal schedule hammered out to have sufficient refills staggered in such a way that I could spread them over both paychecks and not get hammered with co-pays.

Today, we get notice that next year's health plan drops CVS as a vendor.

Excuse me while I drain my high blood pressure pill bottle...

Death From Above

Houston's Winter Follies

Winter threw us (hopefully) the last curveball of the season yesterday morning, a nice blast of freezing rain in the wee hours of the morning.

Against my better judgement, I crawled into the truck for the morning commute, and marveled at the thin layer of ice that coated all the trees and wires in the neighborhood.

That marvel quickly evaporated as they started falling...

Seriously, it was worse than a case of drop bears.  While waiting for a car to pass by at the stop sign at the end of the block, I hear this CCRREEEEEAAAAAKKKKK SNAPBOOMM!!, and about twenty yards behind me a frozen-over pine bough hits the pavement.

I see this happen twice more within a couple of blocks, and there's fallen limbs all over the subdivision.

So, ice on the roads & bridges?  No problem.  Ice in the trees?  HUGE problem!