Baboon Pirates

Scribbles and Scrawls from an unrepentant swashbuckling primate.

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Location: Texas, United States

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

A Decade Of Baboon Pirates!

Will Blog For Cigars.  Inquire For Rates & Deadlines.

10 years ago this week, I fired up this site for some personal amusement, and a way to get some writing done.

In terms of fun, it's more than paid for itself.  Moreso, 'cause it's on a free platform...

I've chatted & commented & emailed with hundreds of fellow bloggers, met dozens and dozens of cool folks in meatspace as a result of blogmeets, and have started what I hope are many, many lifetime friendships with those I've met through these pages.

I wish the momentum of the first few years had continued.  With the advent of Facebook/Twitter & other social media types, blogging has fallen off, and that's certainly true here.  I'm posting a fraction of what I did 5 years ago, and eventually things will grind to a halt.

Still, I've got some loyal readers who still come by on a regular basis, and for that I sincerely thank you.  I'll try and keep the lights on for a while longer!

Thanks for all who've made the last 10 years so enjoyable!

Muchas gracias, mi baboonitos!










Monday, October 27, 2014

Operation KinderSchitt

It's Fun Being A Mean Old Man!

OK, Halloween is almost upon us, and this year is gonna be the year to make some random child crap their drawers...

Now, you gotta understand, it's just the principle of the thing.  I ain't got anything against the little sprogs.  Hell, I used to BE one.  Still, it's Halloween, Devil's Night.  They expect to be scared, and I aim to oblige.

First, you lure them in.

I'm handing out some good stuff this year.  I picked up several dozen of the chemlight wands in assorted colors.  They don't get handed out until after dark, though.  Also, I've decided to go for premium candy.  None of that ghetto crap, like Mary Janes, Now & Laters, or those awful orange & brown wrapper peanut butter shitballs.

I'll be in plain sight under the porch light, just a big jolly fat dude smoking a stogie and holding a bowl of candy.

Just above the roofline, however, will lurk my leetle friend...

I'm gonna find a big hairy spider, or reasonable facsimile, and string it from the overhead branch on the oak tree outside the front door, and run some monofilament down around the porch and up to the back of my chair. 

After they turn to leave the porch, Mr. Spider can be dropped down to hopefully an immediate laxative effect.

We shall see...  You can always spend a fortune on a houseful of creepy-crawlies, or just have one completely unexpected scare...

Friday, October 24, 2014

Changing Of The Guard

In Sickness & In Health, We Blog Onwards

Well, that was fun.  Two days off work due to a last-minute summer allergy spasm of the upper sinus area.  The last slap in the face from the local allergens before they go dormant for the winter and I get some relief.

Heh.  As if...

Nope, the allergies due to plant pollens subside, to be replaced by pet dander, molds, mildews, and whatever other kind of funk lurks in your house over the chilly months.

Not to mention our special guest stars, Influenza, pneumonia, common cold, and possibly our African buddy Ebola.

It seems to be getting nastier as I get older, and new symptoms are cropping up.  F'rinstance, I never used to get the horrible eye-boogers when I was younger.  Now, I can wake up and have an eye almost sealed shut due to nasty goo leaking while I'm asleep, and drying my lashes together.

On a side note, one of my co-workers claims a sovereign remedy for the eye-boogers is to catch some fresh baby urine on a cotton ball and use that as an eye wash.

Um, no.  First, I'm fresh out of babies.  Second, I am *not* going to try & catch baby-whiz on a cotton ball, much less rub it on my eyelids.

This is coming from the same repository of old Mexican folk remedies that claims you keep a Chihuahua in your bedroom to attract all the diseases to the dog instead of yourself.

Sigh.  Is it any wonder they still live in mud huts?  This guy eats grasshoppers and corn mold, fer cripes sake...

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

"To Properly Serve Employees"

"It's A Cookbook!  It's A COOKBOOK!!!!"

Ever wonder why it's so frickin' painful to force yourself up out of drowsiness and back to a state of alertness?

I could swear there was a time in my life when I could nap at the drop of a hat, and pop back into 'real time' with no ill effects.

No longer...  I kinda ooze my way into drowsiness like wading into quicksand, and the return trip is never fun.

It's made a lot worse by the damn heat in this office...   Winter is almost upon us, and rather than continue to cool the building for the last few 80 degree+ days, the building management has turned off the AC and left us to parboil.

So, you've got a tall building full of warm sleepy employees being slowly poached into prime tenderness.  All the better for fixing the budget woes.  Just push a few of the really juicy folks into the stew pot, and the rest will snooze right through lunch anyway...

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Do Your Job, And You Will Be Rewarded!

Usually With A Big Fat Weenie Up Your Keester...

A bit of the ol' bureaucratic BS is a-rollin' down the hill, and yours truly is doing his level best to stay out of the path of travel...

We (meaning the collective employees of The Man) received notice some months ago alerting us to a minor quibble regarding The Man's adherence to one of the billion or so Federal regulations that we're supposed to keep up with.

This notice came to my office, and as I detest the thought of having to deal directly with complainants, I did what comes procedurally and forwarded it to the relevant parties.

So, assuming this complaint dealt with the lack of suitable air fresheners attached around the necks of the flock of penguins owned by The Man, my notice was forwarded to the following August Personages and Grand Poobahs:

The Man's Associate Director Of Avian Operations
The Man's Assistant Director Of Flightless Avian Assets
The Man's Deputy Assistant Director Of Flightless Antarctic Avian Assets
The Man's Associate Director Of Strategic Purchasing of Chemical Air Cleaners
The Man's Assistant Director Of Legal Mumbo Jumbo, and about 5 other people who deal with this kind of crap.

The following notice was included in big bold letters:
"Once your department's decision has been made regarding the purchase/nonpurchase of penguin body odor eliminators, please ensure that a suitable reply is sent to (Complainant) by (relevant date) as to avoid his intent to file a formal complaint to (relevant Federal agency)."

Naturally, not a fucking soul did a got-damned thing.  We just got the complaint notice from the Feds sent to the Grandest High Poobah-malot over in Legal.

He, of course, came looking for someone to blame.  Guess who's name is first on the list???  Thank God for dated email records...

These lazy fucks people are all 5-10 pay grades above me, making double or triple my salary.  WTF do they do all day that they can't make a decision and generate a form letter in 4 weeks?

Clearly, there is some bureaucratic fellatio and/or felching that I have not mastered yet.

Friday, October 10, 2014

Poodle Racism

Just When Life Couldn't Get Any Weirder...

Apparently, my parent's miniature poodle hates black people.

The poodle, stuck with the *ahem* adorable name of 'Coco Chanel' by Mom, is pretty good at raising a ruckus whenever someone walks by their house.

She drops into doggy overdrive if the intruder fails the brown paper bag test, however.

The male Asian letter carrier?  Coco loves him.  The black female postal worker?  Set teeth to SHRED!!

I'm gonna start calling her Ofay Cracker, just to annoy Mom...

One Less Baboon In Africa...

Another Blogger Passes Over

Sad news from the Facebook today.  It appears that Oom Keesie, aka KeesKennis, the purveyor of baboon wisdom from deepest darkest Effrica, has been eaten by a leopard.

OK, that's just not true.  Keesie died of cancer.  Still, he'd be the first to tell you it would be funnier to be eaten by a leopard.

Keesie sort of came out of nowhere back in the early days of the Blowneyed Blogcrew.  A lurker from the distant shores of Africa, he took a shine to the assorted blogs up and down our collective blogrolls, and made himself at home.

By made himself at home, I refer to his habit of dropping in on your blog from time to time and leaving completely outrageous comments in some weird patois of Afrikaans & English.  The man had no filter, and very little concept of "you don't know me that well to make such a comment!"

Still, there was no malice involved on Keesie's part, just a great blustery boisterous camaraderie that grew on you after a while.  A long while...

Gonna miss you, Keesie.  You were one of a kind! 

Thursday, October 09, 2014

Slouching To Catch Up

Where's My F#&$%ing Cold Front???

The original post title was "Racing to catch up", but who am I kidding?  Racing is something I don't do if I can possibly avoid it...

Busy week, as evidenced by the lack of bloggy activity.  Work's been dumping piles of bureaucratic offal on my head, and my umbrella's MIA.

Had a brief bit of fun over the weekend.  The Umpteenth West Houston Smoke & Powder Crawl met at the usual locations for a day of cigar smoking, handgun shooting, and general buffoonery.

This was my 6th or 7th outing with the crawlers.  I skipped a year, then the Crawl was cancelled the next year, but the Crawler folks haven't changed all that much in the interim.

Free cigars were handed out, targets were punctured, and then the gang retired to Paul's Boat on Hwy 6 for some seafood and adult beverages.

The Crawl continued onward to several cigar shops and a dinner at a smoke-friendly restaurant up in Tomball, but I headed to the house after lunch to seek the perfect horizontality of extended nappery.

I'll try and remember to publicize it a bit more next year.  It's a fun day, and we need more participants.  Plus, someone to unseat the Cisco Kid as the reigning champeen of the shoot-off...

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I have acquired a secondhand videocamera off of FleaBay.  Aside from the limited motion picture capabilities of my cell phone camera and the pocket Canon digital, this is my first foray into owning a video cam.

There's a long-range blue-sky purpose for it, but I may or may not ever get there.  I made sure to get one of the old Sony Nite Shot cams with the see-in-the-dark option, and if I ever shake loose the spare cash, I'll get a lens adapter and mount it to a high-power scope.  Along with an infrared emitter and one of my "hush-a-boom" repurposed flashlights, it should make a dandy vermin-splatticator when mounted on top of something .22 caliber or larger.

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Words of wisdom for us all:

Friday, October 03, 2014

Don't Be That Boiled Frog...

Life's Little Lessons, Courtesy Of The Uncivil Servant

Is everyone aware of the tale of the frog in the pot of water?

I'm told it's not literally true, but as the tale goes, a frog dumped into a pot of hot water will immediately leap out.  A frog placed in tepid water that is slowly heated won't notice the increase in temperature until it's much too late, and will be boiled alive.

The metaphor is meant to warn folks to keep an eye on their surroundings, and be ready to jump at all times.  People that get complacent and unconcerned with their environment could find themselves as the guest of honor in the stewpot.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to deal with this at work.    You'll get a call from some employee that's been given their "Come to Jesus" talk by the boss, (For non-Texans, that's the "Fuck up just one more time, and You're Fired speech)  and now they're desperate to transfer out to a different supervisor before the axe falls.  Other times, they want HR to give them a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card, so they can keep on doing the same slack-ass job they've been doing before, and remove the threat of unemployment.

Statistically, it runs 80% female/20% male.  There's also accompanying issues, usually of a medical nature.

The time to call me was when the first bubbles started to appear at the edge of the pot.  When you got your first written warning, or got the first sub-par annual review.  When you've got an inch-thick stack of disciplinary forms in your personnel jacket, and you've just been sent home for a paid day off to decide if working for The Man is in your immediate future, it's way too fucking late to call up El Capitan and accuse the boss of mopery & dopery and being an awful meanie.

Let me be very clear about this.  The HR department is NOT necessarily your friend, bestest buddy or white knight.  We're here on the Support side with the sole purpose of keeping the Operations side of the house operating at a smooth clip.

Sometimes that means greasing the gears and making the squeaks between labor and management quiet down a bit.   Sometimes that means scraping the squooshed frogs off the pavement so they don't hinder our progress.

I don't mind wielding the grease gun if I get sufficient notice, but I'm a bloody whiz with the frog-scraper, and using it doesn't bother me at all.

It's your job & your career.  If you don't care enough to pay attention to how it's going, and taking the timely steps needed to preserve it, I'm certainly not going to care a lot when you find your lower limbs peeling off and bobbing around you in the boiling cauldron...

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

P.E.T.S.?

Green Thumb?  Not On These Hands...

P.E.T.S. - People for the Ethical Treatment of Shrubbery.

They'll be coming for me soon.  I've almost killed this potted plant in my office.

My boss gave everyone in the section a potted plant earlier in the year.  Someone was doing a fundraiser, and as a result I became the owner of some kind of green vegetation.

It's not doing too well.  Given only fluorescent light and my extremely irregular watering schedule, it's got more brown shriveled leaves than green ones, and it's looking kind of sickly.

I probably ought to take it home, but likely it would never make it out of the bed of my truck, and would get bounced to death in a couple of days.

If you listen closely, P.E.T.S. people, you can hear it whimpering...