...a gray pube for the new year?

I'll be kind enough not to elaborate on the title of this post, other than to comment that I spend enough time on the crapper to be inspired in such ways.

But really, it's a sign of advancing years.  I'm not as old as most of my blogger buddies, many of whom are dealing with more health issues than I (I'm not dealing with shit other than my shitty teeth).

For me, it's more the realization that things don't work like they used to.  This year in particular, I've found my body not wanting to do what I want it to, be it an inconsistent sleep cycle or jumping/bouncing over shit.  And then there's my stiff neck, the easily stirred bitch headaches, and the general lethargy.  I had to struggle like fuck (and take off my blanket) to get up long enough to get the computer fired up.

Needless to say, this means I barely get shit done.

I've been scrolling through the channels since 11 o'clock.  The networks are running commercials.  The cable news channels suck ass.  I'm reduced to watching some motherfucker jump a river or something at midnight on ESPN to usher in the new year.  And considering I usually only stop briefly if at all, I'm nearly at the bottom of things to do on this night.  A couple more years, it's bedtime at 10 (if the boy stops pissing the bed).

I suppose it's inevitable that this happens to people.  I figure there's a point at which everyone hits their prime.  I'm past that already, unless I get something in the world that puts the fire back in me.  It gets to the point that I don't check the blogs, or the email, or any of that shit.  In fact, my Gmail has 17 messages, my Yahoo mail (which tracks comments on my blogs) has 31 messages (although I might not have deleted anything in over a week), and my Hotmail has 24, half of which are junk (and sadly, there are probably even more in the junk mail filter).  Hell, this is the first time today I've even been on the messenger.

 In the end, I'm going to probably go to bed the first hour of the new year, because it's not like I have anything else to do.  Of course, even if I did, I'd be struggling to find someone to watch the kids so I could do something.  Instead, I'm just going to post this and try to get it linked on Facebook while it's still 2009 (I have a couple minutes).

Fuck, I'm feeling old....

...getting back on track.

One thing that the holiday season tends to do is yank my world off the tracks, and it's in reaching the next year that I get things all steady and shit.

Like my car insurance.  I get a cancellation notice, plan to pay it, but it gets lost in the paperwork, and I get the cancellation paper on Saturday (Merry fucking Christmas).  To fix it, the paper and the website say I have to call my agent.  So I call my agent on the way their direction with the expectation that I have to stop in and sign papers.  But no, I have to call the insurance company directly to fix it (which I could have probably done before venturing out onto the shitty roads with a high potential for accidents had I known.  But I ironed it out, although I'm still a couple of bucks off (as the website posted a different amount than what they wanted and I paid that). 

Then there's the bank.  I go to the ATM before Christmas, pull out $20.  And when I open the mail Monday at lunch, that $20 overdrew me by $2, which cost me $30.  And my paycheck deposited the next day.  So the overdraft was legit, EXCEPT that the ATM let me overdraw.  And this at a time when money is tightest.

But oh well.  I did get my living room and the kids' bedroom cleaned, and the paper and cardboard from Christmas taken out and recycled by fire.  I tried to do the plastic too, but it was putting out too much smoke that the snowstorm wouldn't disguise it.  Yes, I was burning shit in a snowstorm.  But the kids were away, so it all worked out.

But the worst of it is that the weather is not cooperating for me to be at my peak.  I run slow when it's cold.

On Christmas Eve, we had snow.  It rained and melted all the snow away for Christmas day, replacing it with freezing rain (and I had to get up early to work, go to my family's (and eat bloody delicious prime rib and shrimp cocktail (YUM-fucking-O!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!  !)), got a bitch headache and fall asleep, then go back to work (although double time makes it worth it).  So I sat inside and relaxed the following sunny Saturday, only to have it snow like a bastard on Sunday.  Then it gets cold and icy and drifty on Monday.  Shit.

And then it's off to work, where the phones were ringing hard for the most part (one ISP we service has multiple problems and no one checking emails or answering phones (leaving us to stutter for pissed off customers)).  And that's on top of the usual cavalcade of the fucking dum.

Here's a hint:  When you call in to tech support, we don't expect you to know shit.  It's job security for us for you to not know shit.  We do expect literacy.  The ability to follow directions like "click on this" or "type this."  The ability to answer simple questions with some degree of accuracy, like "What lights are lit?".  If it's technical, then we'll do our best to work with the problem.  But if we have you type an email address in and instead of using the "@" symbol you type "dumbmotherfuckeratlalaland.net.com" then you should bathe with your computer.  At worst, your computer will fry.  At best, you reduce your impact on the gene pool.

To illustrate:



Scary thing is that I've had calls this bad in reality....

...tracking Santa and baking bread.

I'll be honest here in the fact that I've been feeling lazy and run down, especially in the face of the impending Christmas holiday.  It's why I've been lacking in my posts here and have gone mostly on hiatus on SPD until January 4 (with a new Asshat of the Week award to kick off the new year).  Namely, it takes work to keep shit going.  And I have been filled with more of a desire to hack and slash my way through the world of Dungeons and Dragons Online rather than sit up at night and blog. 

I think this shit always happens as the winter cold settles in.  Then, once January hits, I've been cold long enough that I get my fire going. 

But this being Christmas eve, there's no time for fucking around.

I started this morning relatively (8 o'clock hour) late (as the kids didn't get up until after me (and they were due to open gifts this morning!!!)), having time to fill stockings as the kids struggled to come out to see what they had gotten for Christmas.   It was such a lackadaisical response that I had time to get the NORAD Santa tracker (damn, I love the Internet) up before they tore into present one. Then I got them hosed down and shipped off with the Succubus, not to be picked up until I leave work on the way to Christmas lunch at my family's house tomorrow. 

Of course, when I got to work, up went the Santa tracker (as I write this line, he's in Egypt).  It's one of those quirky things that is only possible now due to the fact that we have assloads of information (and porn) at our fingertips.  So I keep tracking him until I conk out tonight.  Naked.

If Santa were real and liked man ass, I'd be a prime target, you know.

But before I take the rectal risk with the invasive nature of Mr Kringle, I must try something that I have never done and which requires a precision that my "throw shit into other shit (but not literal shit)' style of cooking is not known for.  In fact, my baking experiences are generally mixed.  I have cookies (chocolate chip and sugar) down well enough, but my pie baking experiences have been mixed (my apple came out somewhat ok, but pumpkin is beyond my ken).  And I've never tacked anything as fussy as a yeast bread.  And as I don't have a mixer with dough hooks (I might have a dough hook from a broken mixer though), or a bread maker, or even a decent mixer ($5 POS hand mixer), I face a daunting task.  I don't even have a recipe figgered out yet.  And I have under an hour to come up with one (before I get off work and go to the store for ingredients), only tonight to do the mixing proofing and baking, and no backup if I fuck the dog in the process.

Thankfully, my sister does have some crescent rolls she can chuck in the oven and bring tomorrow if chaos ensues.

So I will attempt the otherwise improbable tonight, to bring to the feast tomorrow.

And oh what a feast.  I'm not sure of all the tasty shit that will be produced, but I know that the table will be graced with juicy, bloody, rare, delicious fucking prime fucking rib!!! 

Now I don't get to eat beef (other than burger) all that often as I'm both broke and cheap.  And of cuts of meat, prime rib is one of my favorites, as it is a big-assed piece of meat, cooked low and slow, sliced thick (I like it around the 2-inch mark), and served in juices galore.  Add to that something potato (au gratin, from what I understand), probably shrimp scampi, something green, something sweet, a selection of adult beverages, and my bread (if I don't fuck it up), and there is no chance in hell I'd miss this.

And I get to eat all this after work.  And before work.  Of course, when you make double time for Christmas in exchange for sitting in a call center and getting people to connect shit to shit to watch people squeeze out and eat shit (a rare example of fetish porn that does disgust me), a split shift isn't so bad. 

So I have to return to the daunting task of narrowing down  on a bread recipe, maybe answer another call on Christmas eve (from some irrational fuck that will want their Internet to work NOW!), before I get off, go home, fuck up some bread, and watch A Christmas Story the first time it comes on.  Because that's the only time I have to do so in the next 24 hours.

So let me get back to you when I get some Christmas pics....

...an illustration of the beginning of my day.

This is a continuation of yesterday's post, because my body decided to up the ante (and up last night's supper).  The great part is that I also have to go to work, and I seem to get worse as the day goes on.  So here's how I started my day:




And this when I had a small window in which to get two kids out the door for preschool....

...undefined maladies and hemorrhoid cream.

(Warning:  if you know the specific orifice the aforementioned cream is used on, you can guess how shitty (pun intended) a post this will be before the end.)

I'm used to my bitch headaches.  I get one every few weeks or so, and it makes the day suck.  I even have another drug to try to see if it will kill them, although that need has yet to arise.  What I can't stand are the undefined sicknesses that don't fall clearly into one category or another, but could be caused by any number of things.

Like my daughter's puke-a-thon the other night.  It started that day with her not wanting to really eat, then complaining her tummy hurt.  I managed to get her to eat some butter toast. That ended up coating my seat on the couch (more on the cleanup in a bit).  She ended up getting down to the dry heaves, and ended passing out on the floor in her panties, wrapped in a blanket.  No fever, no other symptom, just puke.  The next day she was fine.  On the plus, she's gotten the sour stomach before, so no worries.

And no trips to the emergency room to make up for a lack of parenting skill.  That was where I had to go after work on Thanksgiving night, because the boy was puking and fevering, and was fine the next day, all thanks to the ministrations (or lack thereof) of the Succubus.  But that was another post (that I failed to write).

So back to my couch, which is past threadbare.  My ass cushion is particularly worn, and the fact that it absorbed prechool hurl deep was a bad thing.  I tried scrubbing it.  I tried spray odor eliminators (the cheap shit, not the Febreze brand).  Sit on it and you smell vomit.  Finally, I went with the old reliable of baking soda on it overnight.  I think I bought the couch a little more time, because it's breathable again.

Unfortunately, the real challenge of being a single parent is being a sick single parent.  Because, very simply, you can't just curl up and sleep. You can entertain your kids with tales of ass blood (although it's gallows humor when wiping is an issue).  But you still have to manage the younglings while trying to curl up and die.  On the down side, there was no puke involved.  I say that it's the down side because if you puke it out, it gets out of your belly quickly.  At least it gets out of there more quickly than the other end.

I'm not sure if it was food poisoning (I made chili. Good chili) or some light flu bug (which makes no sense because I don't have much human contact), but I'm still feeling the effects 24 hours later.

Needless to say, the progression from chunky soft serve ( the source of ass blood and screaming while wiping) to ass soup (which is still haunting me), aided by the cream (a necessity when you have as  irregular movement-ravaged a sphincter as I), it ain't good.  Then came the fevering, which caught me late in the afternoon, which challenged my ability to make supper.  I even threw myself into a sick soak bath (which the kids enjoyed tormenting me during, constantly, necessitating the (wet) boot to the head) before almost passing out momentarily, then curling back up on the couch until the kids bedded, then sitting on the unpuked portion of the couch (the baking soda still doing its work) curled up until it was late enough to roll the boy out for the late night pee (it's either that or definitely change piss sheets in the morning).

And whatever it is, I can still hear the rumbling and gurgling in the intestinal tract.  So I'm not over it by a long shot.  But I'm hungry again (I wasn't last night), so I'm guessing I must be on the mend, just in time for a bacon deluxe burger.  But until then, here's a clip that has little to do with any of the post other than the title "Asses of Fire" just captured yesterday's rectal agony.



Look on the bright side: At least I didn't write this post while on the crapper....

...failed miserably in the upkeep of the blog.

Note: All pictures in this post  are from the weekend after Thanksgiving, when we put up all the shiny decorations and I was too damned lazy to post them then.  I finally downloaded them to the computer today, as I am so not a camera person.

I last posted on Thanksgiving or so.  And now, we're already to December 7.  I've taken in plenty of Christmas stuff already (Charlie Brown, The Santa Clause (1 and 2 (fucking Disney)), even the oldest movie version of A Christmas Carol (after watching the Muppet one on DVD)).  And I've streamed a little Christmas music, including a little Messiah work (I have the score as well as the whole thing on CD and can sing a good portion of it). 

As well, I finally got around to watching the classic Casablanca.  It never really rated high on my priorities list because it was an old-assed movie.  But I have spent more time checking out stuff on TCM, and I've been discovering lots of movies that I wouldn't have given a rats ass about a decade ago.  Ask me about the songs in the Christmas playlist, and I'll be able to tell you, when we reach the Judy Garland version of "Have yourself A Merry Little Christmas," that the song comes from the movie Meet Me in St Louis, which has, perversely, been added to my list of holiday movies (and they're running it late night both times this month). Interesting side note, the movie includes in the cast, besides Judy Garland of course, June Lockhart, who appeared in the aforementioned Christmas Carol (uncredited), and is still acting today (I even remember the B5 ep she was in).  Damned circular, my movie watching is...

But back to Casablanca.  I can see why it makes the list of the best movies ever made.  Even with its age, the dialogue still cracks along at what was back then a staggering pace, and today would be respectable of any good dialogue-driven movie.  Too often, the old movies rely on cliche or dated conventions that are humorous in today's jaded pop culture.  Not so here.

That, or I didn't have the energy after the Christmas decorations, on which we commenced on Saturday, continuing into Sunday to finish.  I went with all white lights, some pearl beads, snow garland, and varying pearly, blue and purple balls this year.  And I'm considering a silver and gold theme for next year. One thing I've learned is the value

Of course, the younglings were enthusiastic, but about as much trouble as they were help.  I figure a few more years of training and severe beatings with flaming tinsel will whip their spindly asses into shape.

Yes, I'm a sadistic bastard.  But then again, I have to do something to get the kids ready to walk six miles uphill both ways in blinding snowstorms (and global warming) (in September) to school.  Maybe it'll make them motivated or something.

Other things of note while I was not posting shit.   The Succubus has access to a computer (she sent me email concerning the kids).  I have evidence that that's a bad thing.  

There used to be a day when I could stay up to three AM and get up in the morning.  Not anymore.

I really hate nights in winter because it's one of the rare times I freeze my ass off even with the heat cranked.  Takes all the fun (and (picture-free) nakedness) out of kid-free weekends.

Except on Christmas, snow sucks.

On the computer front, I have a short in my power cord, right at the plug.  If I didn't have it taped, I could see it spark.  I can still hear it if I wiggle the cord.  And it did short the laptop out temporarily today (would be a shit myself situation if I wasn't as good as I am).  But seeing as though I'm typing this post on the laptop, the cord isn't too dead.  Yet.

And as I'm both too broke and too cheap to replace it....

...how I spent Thanksgiving.

First off, a little video clip to set the T-day mood.  The whole Q&A can be seen here.

Actually, my family gathered for their Thanksgiving feast on Sunday. The food was good and the day was short, as I woke up when i was supposed to be there, got there an hour late, ate, and then left for work. Of course, considering it's one of those rough patches in family relations, it's for the best.  So that left me the week to get things in order for the big Christmas decoration blitz.  Yesterday I managed to get the kids' room and the living room clean (and even staked out the tree's position), and could probably knock out the dishes and the kitchen in short order had I the energy, motivation, or even gave a shit right now.  But that was important because it set the stage for Thanksgiving day

I got the kids up, bathed, dressed, fed, and shipped off with the Succubus for the whole day. I then struggled briefly with my recording setup (the computer doesn't like the copious volume I produce with the 12-string and the voice) before making a run to the store to get a few things for a T-day meal with the kids on Saturday before going to work.

For eight hours.  On double time (yay).

And I'm not even halfway through it as I type this.  But I can tell you the rest of the day.  I'll get a few easy-ass calls, and at least one person who should try surfing in the tub.  With their computer.  Fully connected and powered.  Bastards.  I'll also probably hit some blogs (which occurred when i paused in writing this post), maybe watch some TV, maybe break out the game.  Then I'll pick the kids up, go home, bed them, then pass out.

And then go through my regular routine tomorrow.

But for Saturday, I have the aforementioned meal planned, as well as the assembly of the Christmas decorations, all to the accompaniment of either my Christmas CD collection (which moved to my car today) or the Christmas playlist, which should now be gracing the sidebar on the right (and the top of SPD as well).  And all on Thanksgiving day, because I'm sitting in front of a computer. 

So have a happy one while I go to heat up a TV dinner....

...how I burned up a Friday alone after work.

My longest night free and clear of the kids started as it often does, in a trip to Wal-Mart for food and gas (the kind for cars specifically).  So Out the door I go as the free pizza is coming in (shit).  The problem is that as I perused the movie selection my night was shat on by blasphemy.

FUCKING TWILIGHT BULLSHIT!!!

There with all the better incarnations of the blood sucking creatures in the movie section was fucking garbage from the stupid assed Twilight movies.   And this is after every fucking commercial on TV seems to be about this overmarketed and subintelligent excuse to ruin a great story theme. 

Let me clarify this for those of you who are fans of this unholy dreck.  Bram Stoker and Anne Rice are rolling over in their fucking graves.  I have a desire to watch the first 15 minutes of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie (and it was the worst 15 minutes in an otherwise good movie, ever).  Brad Pitt is a much cooler vampire now, and even Neo's performance in one of the Dracula remakes is now fucking golden.  And the only thing that would be better is if Sarah Michelle Gellar got to meet Twilight's douche-vamp, Edward, and break out Mr Pointy:



.For the backstory on this excellent vid, click here.

Now, back to the point here.  Vampires are generally bad guys, with notable exceptions, and even then they're fucking monsters or demons, dispatched by stakes, sunlight or the Daywalker.  They run fucking strip bars to trap truckers and whorehouses to suck men dry (of blood, you pervs) like in Dennis Miller's cinematic opus, Bordello of Blood.

They don't fucking sparkle! or angst over some clumsy high schooler for no discernible reason other than to make tweens and emo-worshiping girls wet their fucking panties and shit.  Stephenie Meyer, the insipid twat who spilled ink on paper and produced this vomitus (or had a room full of monkeys on depressants bang it out in between shit throwing and piss drinking sessions) needs to give up trying to be an actual writer and churn out those softcore fuck books in the stupid romance section of the Wal-Mart bookshelves (not a real bookstore).  You know, the ones with the sultry damsel in the flowing dress being embraced or held in some way by the somewhat or totally shirtless studmuffin with chiseled muscles and flowing hair (every cover looks like that.  WHY!?!?!?!). 

And if you don't know what all this shit is about, here's the best (and funniest) synopsis of this projectile vomit-inducing book/movie mistake I have found. And if you're a Twitlight lover, sorry your taste sucks.  I'd suggest reversing that lobotomy.

So I got home with serious attitude (and the first part of this post half-figgered out). And since (FUCK ANOTHER TWITLIGHT COMMERCIAL!!!) I was feeling in the mood, I managed to scrounge up my guitars and tuner (kids do terrible things with tuning knobs) and bang out a little music (when not chatting incessantly with people).  Alas, the night went fast, and then Beth posed a question to me that got me searching.  She asked about my Christmas playlist.

I had put up a playlist last year on SPD, because I have a serious passion for Christmas music.  Of course, the playlist will be appearing her and there this year, but NOT UNTIL AFTER THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!!11!  Let me be clear on that.  With occasional exceptions, Christmas music does not get regular play in my world until after Thanksgiving to the end of the year.  Otherwise, it becomes absolutely worthless in the world.

So since I want to have the playlist up (I'll probably do it at work on Thanksgiving evening) I set out to check links, update and change songs around, and find new stuff.  So I searched a couple of things.  Then I widened it out to search for anything with 'Christmas' in it. 

For your information, there were 5,528 songs to check out.  Many of which were duplicates. Much of which was shit (Kenny G, Clay Aiken, any Disney-spawned musical rapists, the fucking Chipmunks).  And yet, I found new, excellent, and really messed up stuff.  I kept the most perverse off the list.  For example, one Jingle Bell Rock parody was titled 'Suck on My Cock.  That's the premise of the whole fucking song, and it's a mess (in every way imaginable).  And I got through 100 pages of it before quitting.

So it's now 2:30 in the morning (no kids is great sometimes), because it was after updating the list that I started writing this.  But a good time was had by all (me), so happy happy joy joy and shit.   Now if you want to preview the Christmas selections this year, here it is, 45 tracks of Christmas-y goodness.  And if you have any requests, you know where the comment section is.  I'll look into finding a good rendition.  And if you have a thing for Mariah Carey Christmas tunes, go watch fucking Twitlight, then go stand in traffic and see if any sparkly fucks try and save you.

As for me, I'm too old to do much more at this point other than spank it and sleep....

...the limitations in being an open book.

This post began after a long silence after I finally found myself back on eHarmony.com after a couple of years (I last visited there with no results in the waning days of the Succubus). Yeah, I finally got my ass to eHorny to see what I could find.  Of course I did so because I spotted that it was a free communication weekend.  But, after getting everything filled out, I balked.  Probably because while I am as open as all fuck out here, I tend to hesitate when there's a chance at rejection (which probably explains the disastrous relationships I end up in.

In fact, it's my disastrous prior relationships that make me hesitant as all shit out.  After all, unlike the past, I have to make any relationship (or even a mutually horny fuck buddy) secondary to my children.  Always.  So I can't get another succubus latched onto my ass (or other throbbing appendages).   Which makes single mothers look better and better to me (because they have the same baggage and bullshit to deal with).

So let me show you what I found, names omitted, and get your opinions.  Both women are at least an hour south (somewhere around Dayton), which means a date will be a significant drive.  Here's the general info:

Match #1

• Occupation: Customer Service Rep
• Age: 39
• Height: 5' 2"
• Ethnicity: White, non-Hispanic
• Religion: Spiritual, but not religious
• Want Kids: No
• Drinks: About once a week
• Smokes: About once a week

The one thing xxxx is most passionate about:

• Music

The most influential person in xxxx's life has been:

• I have a friend that will not work; therefore lives with whoever will have her that week. Believe it or not, she influences me b/c I do not want to be like her. She keeps me motivated to do what I need to do! :)

xxxx's friends describe her as:

• Articulate
• Intelligent
• Outgoing
• Funny

Three of xxxx's best life-skills are:

• Using humor to make friends laugh
• Continuing to expand my knowledge and awareness
• Raising and/or caring for children

The most important thing xxxx is looking for in a person is:

• I need to be with someone who laughs and plays jokes and harmless pranks. I love to havr fun, especially when the joke's on me.

The first thing you'll probably notice about xxxx when you meet her:

• I would have to say the fact that I'm in a good mood all the time, and that I love my job.

xxxx typically spends her leisure time:

• I enjoy computer games, playing with the kids, and watching movies

The last book xxxx read and enjoyed:

• My school book of Constitutional Law. Don't scoff, please! I was very interested in my rights and I learned far more than I ever thought possible.

Match #2

• Occupation: Management
• Age: 30
• Height: 5' 5"
• Ethnicity: White, non-Hispanic
• Religion: Spiritual, but not religious
• Want Kids: No
• Drinks: A few times a year
• Smokes: A few times a year

The one thing xxxx is most passionate about:

• Sports, love football and baseball. My family, music-country and rock.

The three things which xxx is most thankful for:

• I am thankful for my children.
  
• I am thankful for my career. I have a four your Bachelor's degree that I have worked very hard for/
  
• I am thankful for my family.

xxxx's friends describe her as:

• Hard Working
• Passionate
• Warm
• Romantic

xxxx typically spends her leisure time:

• i love to watch the nascar races, I sponser a family at Christmas time, and I love to lounge and watch the football games.

 Now remember, eHorny matched a whole bunch of other compatibility things up to give me these matches.  And I'm trying to decide still if I want to get in touch with one or both in some way to see what happens.  Of course if I do so, all I have to do is drop the link to this blog and they have my world in view.  And they get to see that I asked readers of this blog which one I should try to contact.

Of course, there's also the option of letting my profile float out there and see if anyone decides to respond.  That's the safe (pussy-assed) option.  Now it's Thursday night, so I have until Sunday night to communicate for free and hope they respond. and we can progress enough to take it off of eHarmony (in other words, I give her my Gmail (which is wholly public).  And it looks like I can do so.

Of course, if I get her to the blogs, she may read and decide to do a runner.  Then it's back to the excessive masturbatory references.  And since I've been this horny since my teen years (where I first developed my inability to score), I've had enough practice.  Maybe I'll get more details of my sexual history another day (although without positions, pics, and gooey descriptions).  In general, I can say I had a good time, mostly, even in the worst of circumstances.  But I'll leave it at that for right now.

I think I've probably said too damned much already....  :)

...thankfully, I didn't post until today.

Read on, I'm going to ask for a date by the end of this post.

I occasionally suffer bouts of fun and irrational depression, usually stemming from things that are reasonably depressing.  And I was geared up to chronicle that sadness and shit last night.  Of course, after a couple of hours of yammering abut bullshit with my buddy who is soon to forsake his New Zealand home of a decade and return to the land of his birth (where we'll be in the same damned time zone), as well as discovering some decent Kiwi (New Zealand) bands and burning an hour on YouTube in the bursuit of bad gaming jokes, I kind of got some of that melancholy out of my system.

But not all of it.

Consider my situation, most of which is a combination of my quirky collection of talents, behaviors, and choices (mostly bad).  I have an ideal job that doesn't pay enough in a high-unemployment economy and state.  I have two children, which is both a joy and a constant responsibility.  I have an ex (the ever-vexing Succubus) who is unemployed (no child support), unburdened of children (which was the right thing for me to do), and is getting laid (because she has a vagina and the time to sucker another guy in), and whose presence reminds me of what I don't have.  My social life consists of typing sentences on this computer and posting them on blogs and Facebook (although this is an improvement over past years).  I have a bachelor's degree (in business) that I have practical use for, the debt to accompany it, and no clear career path (because I've switched directions several times, and may finally be getting a bearing on what I do best).  Of course, what direction I can go is severely limited by my responsibilities.

And this is what weighs on my mind as we crawl toward the holidays.

Of course, this creates even more tension with the rest of my family.  More on that later, when more shit hits the fan.

Right now, I have to come up with a lot of things.  One thing I don't have time for is my personal life (beyond the blogs).  Because between the lack of money and utter lack of time, any dating scene I might come up with is non-existent.

So here's where I put the word out:  Someone out there has to know a single woman somewhere close to my age (36), with or without kids, likes the kinds of things I talk about (politics, electronics, minutia, utter perversion), and is also looking for someone and having shit for luck in said process.  Anybody who's read me has a pretty good bearing on who I am, because I don't hold a lot back.

One obvious caveat:  If you're too far away and you don't have any of these single females within driving distance of New Bremen, Ohio, it's much less likely for anything to work.  But if she's got money and likes travel (to the middle of nowhere), then maybe.

So let's see what you can come up with....

...worse before it got better.

So I write my post, knowing that I'll have two days without kids, which means two nights of creativity/fun/alone/naked time, depending on my mood/whim/testosterone level.  Good times, right?  I was feeling a little down, but I figured that since the boy was throwing snot and my head was feeling a little chunky, ti was just the allergies fucking in my cabbage patch.

Alas, I get home feeling like dog shit in a flaming bag.

(On a side note, can't wait until i can teach the kids that trick and have a reason to deploy it.)

So I get home after a run to Wal-Mart for any necessities that may arise (pretty shirts for a daughter, including something Tinkerbell, cheese and spinach tortellini, ice cream) to find myself fevery and shivering.  I feel bad enough to soak in a tub, then crawl on the couch by nine to pass out.  I wake up at midnight long enough to strip and crawl into bed where the fun of fever hallucination makes it a crazy-assed set of hours.  I then crawl out about 8:30, still feeling shitty.  I manage to get some food down (pork fat rules when frying eggs and hash browns) and watch some movie, but not much else as I need some energy to work (sort of).  And I'm still dragging a little.  Although I have the energy to write this. 

Of course, all the free time I had just went to shit.

But at least being sick gives me a reason to fuck off.

One advantage of being me is that I don't get that sick.  Sure, I get my bitch headaches from time to time.  I fight allergies and at least a cold a year.  But it's a rare thing that I'm that bedridden.  I can't think of a day of work I missed because I was sick.  And I've gone to work in such condition that I spent much of the time just trying to muster the energy to actually work.  Thankfully, the jobs I've been sick during have been ones where there is an opportunity to sit if necessary.  Right now, I have a desk I can put my head on if necessary.  If I was working from home, I could probably work from bed if necessary.  Although by last night, even my brain wasn't exactly working.

On fever hallucinations, the last couple of nights (and tonight, if the feeling in my eyes is any indication) have been rather messed up.  In a semi-conscious state, my brain was running at full throttle.  I was remembering and living through stuff (I can't remember the specifics).  Imagine hearing half a dozen audio streams, several videos, and a few people talking at the same time, trying to take all of this in at once.  Normally, I can take a lot of information at once.  Last night, not so much.

I just need to burn this shit out of my system so I can get back to the level you've come to expect from the greatness that is me.  Because my head is starting to buzz in a good way again.  That, or the sickness is working its way back in.  Shit.

Now, although it didn't help last night (and ended up on the blanket, I was so messed up), it's time to explore the healing power of ice cream....

...living in malaise.

Since the last time I posted, I've lost track of so much time that I couldn't tell you shit about what happened over the last five days.  I know I got the kids to school on time.  There was an election.  I watched the reboot of V (good enough to keep watching).  I know we had dinner at Wendy's on Tuesday (the Bacon Deluxe rocks!).  And my buddy from New Zealand is in town, and despite 15 years and some bad shit (the short version was that there was youthful indiscretion that ended a friendship, which was mended by time), it's as though we never split, never went on to deal with succubi, produce children, deal with the law, get married, bounce from job to job, and so on, and so forth.

I'd borrow the Forrest Gump phrase "peas and carrots" if it didn't make me sound like I was ready to drop down and take a mouthful of cock.

But for the most part, I'd swear that nothing else happened for hours on end. 

Perhaps it's one of the worse patterns I fall into.  When messy things happen (like the Succubus dropping off the radar in terms of child support), I avoid shit.  In fact, it was only the need to make sure checks written would be covered that motivated me to get back into my finances today.  And there's no good news there.  Meanwhile, another week has gone by that shouldn't have.

But there are a million ideas swimming in my head again, whereas there wasn't shit for the most part for the prior week.  But my challenge is always translating those ideas into something concrete.   The best I've done is the blogs (and if you noticed, I've slacked here). 

So since I don't have the kids (the Succubus is good for something once in a while), maybe I'll get something done....

...hadn't blogged for days.

I have a tendency to get locked into things and spend a lot of time on them without accomplishing anything.  This weekend was one of those.  The kids and I spent way too much time in front of computers on Saturday (so much so that the end of daylight savings time afforded me another hour of burning my eyes out), breaking only to get necessities done.  A good time was had by all.

So I got up surprisingly awake and seriously unshaved on Sunday with a goal of not getting on the computers all day.  I did so by simply running maintenance (spyware, optimization, antivirus, disk defrag), so while they were technically on, no one was doing anything (and thus the silence until Monday morning).  What my plan was for the day was to get stuff cleaned up, as well as not bog down and get locked into a malaise.

However, I noticed something on the now-banned network, SyFy (formerly the Sci-Fi Channel, now a network with a stupid-asssed name that I mispronounce si-fee).  It's the original V miniseries.  I'd heard that ABC was doing a reboot of the series (similar to Battlestar Galactica, except probably shittier).  But I had wondered if I could find the original miniseries online.  So, seeing it was on all day, I flipped it on. 

This was a series we watched as a family back in 1983, and the second in 1984.  I was yet to be 10.  This was before TiVo, before cable, before we even had a VCR.  This was event viewing.  We actually rolled the TV to the kitchen doorway to watch it while eating (we could do that in those days).  For me, it had aliens and something vaguely reminiscing of Star Wars (as the original series aired between Empire and Jedi, when Vader being Luke's father was still a revelation).  Looking back, it was intended to be that way, referencing the Trilogy on the news early in the movie and having a marching band murdering John Williams' main theme for a couple of minutes. 

Obviously, this time around, I got a lot more of the references, like the whole Nazi theme.  And overall, the series held up, despite some laughable special effects (the skin peeling wasn't bad, but the baby lizard puppet was ridiculous).   Of course, I expected it to look a little hokey, as it was in the days of optical compositing.  Any creatures before the days of digital (with the notable exception of Yoda) look humorous now.  But since it was mostly about people and the Visitors (who conveniently never took off their people skins), most special effects were either sticking a ship in the air or shooting lasers and blowing up shit.


But progress was made, and my living room is clear.  The kitchen is in ok shape (nothing that a little cleaning won't solve.  The kids' bedroom is easy.  My room is still a grabtastic clusterfuck.  But as i have some time to clean and it's cold enough to not let the kids run outside, it should be possible to get shit clean.  If I can stay off the Internet most of today, that is.

And since one of my friends just got into town (from New Zealand), I'll probably be busier than usual....

... blogging for trick or treat.

As I sit here in front of the apartment, I'm looking out on a lawn that is relatively free of leaves.  This is because I took the combination of my leaf blower and a rake and mad a big fucking pile of them on the curb.  the pile takes about half of the front.  And the worst part is that I only need to look UP to see that the trees are still pretty full of leaves (2-3 more piles to rake, at least).  On one side, the neighbor's tree is mostly empty.  The other side, two barren trees.  Of course, my leaves go flying into his yard, so....

So we get done with that, I cram some PB&J into them and throw together costumes.  This year it was a fairy (which was fun to put together for $4) and some kind of Road Warrior-ish looking thing (a chestplate, shield, gun, $4).  As you have surmised, I'm a cheap bastard. But when you have a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, and the 5-year old doesn't give a shit until he actually sees the candy, why blow lots of cash?

The unfortunate aftermath of last weekend's need to go beg child care from the Succubus  is that it gave her an opportunity to ask to take the kids out trick or treating.  And since at least one of the kids wanted to go with her, I relented.  It meant that I could sit in the cold and hand out candy to all the other kids (and have some leftovers for me).

Luckily it's not that cold, have the neighbors on the porch handing out candy as well, I don't have to chase after the kids, and I have time to blog about this (it's 6:51 at this moment).

It started out pretty lively, but as the darkness falls, it gets quieter.  I had the opportunity to carve my pumpkin (right, with the blog post in progress behind).  I got artistic, deploying the heavy blade, the thin blade, and the electric hand saw.  I had some lights left over, so being the geek that I am, I wired the bastard up.

For the most part, the costumes were good, mostly bought, some creative.  Thankfully, there were no punk preteens too lazy to actually put on a costume.  I was thinking either rocks or eggs.  The egg would be cool because it would be intact when I put it in.  But at some point, crack.  As long as the bastards don't see it go in, victory is mine.  Although the rock would be more evocative of the It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

And since I have the time to look it up: 

Now if the Succubus would just get the younglings back, I could call it a night, snap a pic of them in costume (I forgot to prior), dump the pics, and shut this down (with significant candy-age left).

(hours later)

Yeah, I'm done, but I have to add the pics before I post.  And since the kids were late in getting back and I bedded them first, I let the post sit for a few. 

But the pics (without the kids in their costumes) are here....

...finally got it up.

Love that title.  Love it.

With the kids off to school, the news came again.  And boy was I excited.  It's the kind of thing I like to watch.  Doesn't matter the time of day.  And I can watch the same thing over and over and over and still get turned on.

Okay, enough with the running double entendre (you fucking pervs).  I'm talking about the launch of the Ares I-X rocket today.  This is the first test of the next-generation rocket system which will replace the near-retirement Space Shuttle fleet (after several years of impotence (had to fit that one in (because I, too am a fucking perv))).  The Constellation program (of which the Ares is a part) is a combo of Shuttle ans Apollo program technology.  It didn't explode.  And it was beautiful.

Now I've gone on on the value and importance to the country that the space program is over on SPD, so I'm going to let that subject lie.

(Total  sidebar:  I remember writing the line above from a damned dream.  I have these flashes of deja-vu/snippets of the future every so often, and I figure they'll pay off in the end because I'll be able to save my ass by seeing the future.  If this sounds fucked up, consider the source.)

But seeing it happen from the beginning (I can vaguely remember Columbia launching), as well as major triumphs/tragedies (the Challenger disaster is seared into my brain) is always an improvement to trying to recapture history after the fact (my movies include The Right Stuff, the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, and Apollo 13).  So here's what I saw today (yay for CNN's video selection):



On watching this unmanned test flight (about 6 minutes including descent) with my kids, as well as numerous replays (NASA TV makes C-SPAN look exciting, but they do give you replays of every camera angle), it reminded me of another short (15 minute) flight on April 15, 1961, which I have seen mostly in two of the movies listed above.  In one of them (The Right Stuff), our first astronaut, Alan B Shepherd, pisses himself, then gets shot into suborbital history.  Here's the other version:



When they're older, I'm taking the kids down there for one....

...after I got the blogs organized.

With the unleashing of this blog, I felt the need/desire to clean up SPD a little bit, mainly clearing the old blogs and deadweight from the blogroll.  In that, I took a couple of blogs that are really not about politics (Dmarks' Throwawayblog and Arthur's Arga Warga) and move them to my non-politics blogroll.  So give them a try if you haven't done so because you found them all mixed in with the politics.

To that I added the hot new favorite, People of Wal-Mart.  Scary thing, I have at least 2 pics (both cars, thank Me) that are definitely from around here (and the one on the right I KNOW where the place that rented that piece of shit out is).  It's pointless and accurate and very much what ices the cake when you go into the glorious belly of the beast.

My final addition is not a new one to mentions, but with this blog being much about me and my life, it calls for the addition of Free-Range Kids.  For a lazy-assed parent like me, it works.  Plus, I don't want my kids to be complete pussies.

Speaking of which, I began trying to put together costumes tonight.  I'll have to work on the boy as he is quite as uninterested as always.  I'd do him up as a Padawan, but the lightsaber would probably violate some dumb-ass zero tolerance law.  On the other hand, a pair of fairy wings and some purple hair extensions, and one of the younglings is all excited and shit.

Real plus, I flipped on to TCM, and found the 1982 classic Poltergeist.  I got the kids bedded before the movie got too intense (except for the boy-eating tree part).  But, they've seen my ass,so not much else can scar them.  I was impressed by the Star Wars swag in the one kid's bedroom.  I saw shit that I had when I was his age (and I was that age when the movie came out.  All in all, the movie holds up. 

Now if I could just find a scary movie or two....

...too much time on Wookiepedia.

After an actual busy day (damned unconfirmed outages), I gathered the younglings and brought them home.  To pass the remaining time before bed (and a night of watching Cops (gotta love tasers)) we polished off Star Wars Episode VI:  Return of the Jedi, as we had watched Episode V the prior day or so (strangely, my favorite of the movies is his favorite as well:



The point of the above clip, as well as the rest of this story, is that you find layers. The layer that came to me last night was as those annoying teddy bear stand-ins the Ewoks, were hauling Luke, Han, and Chewie off to their village. To quote C3P0 (from memory, bitches!): "I'm afraid you're to be the main course in a banquet in my honor." Didn't happen, of course, but that meant that the Ewoks eat people. So we come to the end of the movie, everybody's all happy and shit, dancing to the inferior filler music that came about in the Special Edition release of the movie. And like it was from the first time the movie hit theaters, the Ewoks are banging melodically on drums, stormtrooper helmets and armor and shit, and making those annoying cute sounds.

One question: What happened to the stormtroopers that were in that armor? After all, that's a lot of delicious meat (much of it cloned) that could fill the bellies of those ravenous little furballs.  So did the Ewoks eat the stormtroopers?  This leads us to the tagline, "Stormtrooper:  the Other White Meat," as well as a new way to scar impressionable youth (not my kids, they're already warped enough).

So this meant I had to Google to see what other information was out there. Not surprisingly, others beat me to the punch.  But this also put me onto Wookiepedia, which is the Star Wars Wiki site.  It's a little more comprehensive than the highly produced and harder to wield Databank over on StarWars.com.  And then I had some other things I wondered about.  Like:  When did Luke Skywalker die?  100+ years after the movies, from old age, if you want to know.  Then I got into the rest of his family.  And the wars and trials that came after beating the Empire the first time (no, killing the Emperor didn't end the Empire, or kill the Emperor (yes, cloning technology)).  As well as the fates of some other characters (some were left open, some were corpsesicles).  And lightsaber fighting styles.  Etc.

I started this before Cops came on (7 o'clock hour), put the boy to bed reading from the Wiki, fell asleep on the couch reading, and then finished this morning before seeing the kids off (giving me a couple of hours to myself to clean, eat, , shit, and pen this shit (and probably tug one out)). With interruptions, I got a better grasp on the post-movie canon over about 6 waking hours.

Six hours of reading and I only brushed on the scariest possibility of them all from the Star Wars universe: Luke's love interest.  Guess who was listed first.

I think this inspired a Wikipedia search on the subject in the real world at some point....

...after much procrastination.

The advantage of going to work is that it both structures my day tightly that I get the hours used productively.  In addition (and ironically) it also affords me the option of time to punch out some blog posts.

I had let SPD sit with Monday's Asshat of the Week post until today for that very reason, despite having an idea for a follow-up post about the demonization/deification of political figures, thus losing any perspective a real person brings to a discussion.  I may get around to writing it.  I know I have seen something about it on other blogs not too long ago. 

But I was simply too busy between running around trying to get shit done in the morning, and enjoying time with the kids for the rest of the days (because it was warm enough for shorts!).  So I slacked, because it was going to take some application of my ginormous brain power, which was in seriously short supply after the mad scramble that was only resolved by having to argue with the Succubus (who, for some reason, doesn't want to see her children despite weak-assed text messages to the contrary).  Hell, I'm still fighting that battle with her.  I've got a few ideas for the long-term, but as long as I'm working weekends, the problem will continue. 

In fact, my brain has been far enough out of things that I've neglected both the news and the blogroll.  The only blogs I even got to were ones that were dropping links to Facebook (on which I only spend a couple of minutes, so I'm not joining a damned game!).  and the worst part is that I forgot about today until today.

Today, Windows XP officially becomes the old operating system.  Vista, the unholy love child of Bill Gates and diehard Windows ME users, is now relegated to the scrapheap of OS's that should have never been.  And as soon as I can get a legit release copy, I'll be reloading my laptop with what has proven (in release candidate form) to be the best thing since sliced bread (or Win98 SE or XP SP2): 

Windows 7

Now I'm not one to flog any of Microsoft's shit, because I'm not a fan of near total market domination by overpriced and sucktastic programs (Microsoft Orifice, Idiot Exploder, etc) when there are all kinds of open-source free things that do the job as well or better (I think that's the Google model).  But when you get shit right out of the box, it's worth a congrats.  My two previous beloved OS's were patched to be made right.  (98's Second Edition, and XP after Service Pack 2).  But as I have mentioned in other places, I've been running the release candidate of 7 on my laptop for lack of another option initially.  Even with a couple glitches (inevitable in a pre-release), it has outperformed my XP computers with ease.  So if you're running Vista (which almost runs right now), ditch the bitch and get the upgrade if you can afford it.  I've got about 4 months before I have to (or come up with a *shudder* Vista disk).

And I already miss the sun.  After last week's cold/cloudy combo, it kind of made yesterday too damned nice.  So nice that I enjoyed it rather than sitting here blogging about it.

Of course, since it's that time of day, it's time for me to go home rather than salivate about a new 7 installation....

...you pissed yourself again?

After a mad scramble this morning, $44 to replace the missing birth certificates (and the fee went up $6 from a WEEK ago), and finding the solution of my crisis was to get hold of the Succubus (abandonment will have to wait) and get her to be responsible (the excuse being she was "too busy to call" and do her visitation for the past month), I was feeling the significant lack of pressure (this week). 

Of course, then the kids came home. 

I remember an old Eddie Murphy routine where he was talking about his first attempts at standup comedy.  He talked about taking a shit.  I thought it was funny at the time.  Partially, because talking shit about shit is funny as shit.  Also, because I have far too many stories of my own, like the tale of the triple threat (drop a ball, then a mound of soft serve, then the soupy fire of the assplosion).  And because toilet humor is always funny.  Because it is. 

But when you have two preschoolers that take the day and piss themselves silly, not a fun time.  I think they BOTH had to change undies 3-4 times.  Hell, even the neighbor girl pissed herself before my younger one pissed herself the last time, just after the boy pissed himself while going back to the house to piss.  And that was after we went to the playground, the boy pissed himself, we came back home and got him pissed/squared away, then went back, and repeated it with the girl.

Well, on the plus, I get the laundry done more often, because if there's one thing that's worse than piss, it's week old dried piss clothes.

Finally, to avert a complete mess of the day, we took advantage of family night at Wendy's.  I get a good sandwich (that bacon deluxe they're advertising on TV now) and they each get a kids meal for 99 cents a piece.  The sandwich (bacon makes EVERYTHING better) was damned good and we go out to eat on the cheap (otherwise, I get the cheap ass dollar sandwiches). 

If it weren't for such things as a 2-meat magicifence in my mouth (not like that you pervs), I'd probably snap and start Force throwing shit.  But that's why they make video games for  the purpose.  In this case, Star Wars: the Force Unleashed (PS2 version).  There's nothing to take the edge off more than picking up a Stormtrooper with the Force, choking him, moving him away, throwing him at yourself, then slicing him as he flies by.  Violent, I know, but when the game gives you credit for rocking the Dark Side, you rock the Dark Side like a motherfucker.

And sometimes it's just fun watching a 5-year-old slicing Wookies with Lord Vader....

...the desk is emptier.

One thing I have learned is that I'm an epic procrastinator.  Right now, I'm paying for that.  I finally got into the clearing of my desk.  The result is that I'm finding things are messier on the paperwork front than before.  A simple example (partially due to some acquisition of my shit by the Succubus):  I'm having to get copies of birth certificates.  I had to mail off for mine (as I was born a few hours away), so that was $20 plus 2 stamps (1 for a self-addressed stamped envelope).  And the magnicifent Auglaize county is going to smack me for $22 for a copy of each of the younglings' certificates.   So there's $64 I don't have.  Another situation is brewing this weekend, as I'm a little out on the babysitter front (it's hard to work with two kids, especially when you have to be on the phone).

But I'm good at pulling miracles out of my ass (although I'm going to run out one day.

But there are positives.  Once I get the desk situation under control (I was slowed down today due to equipment malfunctions), then I can get some other things in the pipes to bring in some money.  I also got the energy to dig into my pantry.  Half a box, half a stick, and one bag later, Rice Krispy Treats!

This takes me back to simplicity.  Simplicity is kind of something that I have lost in the speed I function, with a TV and a computer and two rugrats running at a gazillion miles an hour at the same time.  It's probably why on days I don't work, the headaches come.  It's why I end up overwhelmed on a weekly basis by something on the homefront (while the external pressures don't even faze me).  It's probably why I started this day at 8AM (and the kids get on the bus around 8:12 (yeah, it was a fast start)).

So now I just need to get fired up and get back to work since the kids are in bed.  Although having to deal with the controlled chaos of the kids kind of leaves me with little energy to continue.  It's far too easy to sleep.  Especially when another constructive use of the quiet hours would also be to exercise the fat off my ass.

But alas, something else beckons....

...I got grooving on vinyl.

It started on Friday, when I took the kids to get stuff to make costumes (I've spent $6.50 so far for BOTH).  Something about getting out really eats into productivity.  I did do the Friday Football Fried Food Meal (chicken, fried; onion rings, battered and fried; zucchini, battered and fried to mush (first time, failed)), although we did abandon football (due to losing teams, a theme that would be repeated through the weekend).  But since I had nothing planned on Saturday, no problems, right?

Saturday comes, and with it the bitch headache.  The problems are many.  First, the headache is there from the minute I get up.  And usually, that getting up involves having to take care of the kids.  What it doesn't include is cleaning (which is already falling behind from Friday.  Fuck beans.  It also is only cured by a nap. Did I mention the kids?  Between one who sits at the computer until he pisses himself (literally), and another who likes to jump on her daddy, and the fact I can't just go completely to sleep (I drift with something over my eyes), it's an iffy proposition.  I did manage to nap a bit after they were lunched.  And I woke up in time to get supper going, although I was groggy.  And really out of it.  Naturally, I did manage a good supper, which

So I get up on Sunday, still dragging from Saturday (I'm unmotivated as fuck when I don't have anything scheduled.  I honestly don't know how the day goes so fast.  But I finally got moving on stuff later in the day, accompanied by the most ancient of recorded media:  vinyl records.

Despite growing up mainly with cassette, then migrating to CD, and despite the proliferation of the MP3 format, I have also been building a collection of records.  I also have an old turntable (just old enough that I need a preamp to feed it to any current electronics (really, you have to have a device that can handle the output from a magnetic cartridge)) on which to spin said albums.  It's really easy to collect if you're up for scouring bargain bins and shit.  So if you're the type that ONLY listens to music on your Ipod, this ain't for you.  Now it may be hard to understand, but there is a warmth in vinyl that you simply can't find in the clean-scrubbed, digitized music.  And compressed shit like the MP3 is fine for getting music really compact, but it's the best way to rape sound quality.  And when I'm at home, I do want quality.


Some highlights of what I had on:  Side one of the self-titled Night Ranger (if Sister Christian doesn't do something, you have no soul).  The In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida side of Iron Butterfly's album, also named In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (which I had never really run through).  From the "I had the album on tape but never replaced it because it was the 90's and there were other CDs to collect" bin, Huey Lewis and the fucking News, Sports (fuck you, I grew up on that shit).  And for dinner (which the kids didn't eat worth shit on again) I broke out an old favorite, The Blues Brothers Soundtrack (why I don't have it on CD, I don't know).

Needless to say, were I alone and cleaning, shit would be done.  Of course, with kids I managed to just about get caught up to where I should have been Friday.  And now that Discovery's got hours of storm chasing (I have a hardon for tornadoes), It'll be a matter of just taking care of odds and ends before bed, and deployment of the younglings for "school time, school time, school time" (at which point I wake my voice and their asses at full volume with the preceding invocation).  And maybe I'll even shave tomorrow and try some video, now that I have my cable (and found the missing one 30 minutes after that).

Of course, that still leaves the pile of shit on my desk to deal with tomorrow.  And time is running out....

... on cool and rainy days bringing on the malaise.

In trying to figure out how I'm going to meet my financial obligations in the next moth, let alone this year, I find myself staring at my desk full of paper.  And I come to the realization that I have to dig in and deal with everything.  The problem is that I've let it build up to the point that it will take hours.

Meanwhile, I find what energy I have being sapped by the cold and the rain.  And the fact that it looks like the next couple of days will be that way (there's hope for sun on the weekend) just makes me want to curl up and watch a whole season of something depressing.  Or maybe all 6 Star Wars movies with the dry-assed commentary track on(only mildly interesting if you're a Star Wars geek (thankfully, I am)) while eating lots of fried (and therefore grease-hot) things.  It certainly doesn't inspire the desire to rock out, because the kids get stir crazy far too quick.  And productive uses of my time (like keeping up with the cleaning)?  Yah.

I'm looking at this screen and wondering what to write about next.  Although I have a gazillion and one (.347862876297469243) ideas a second sometimes, it's on days like this that I barely have the energy to dig through my email, let alone go ape shit on the political blogs with my wit and wisdom (and wang).  In fact (clumsy segue moment to address question asked)  it makes me start to wonder about the meaning of life.

And since it was asked, I'll pinch off a response (which describes where I get my philosophy in general) about the meaning of my own life

I haven't got a fucking clue.

I think that's the way it's supposed to be.  You either head a specific direction or you drift somewhat aimlessly (drifters on my blog, UNITE! if you feel like it, and if you get around to it (let's wait on the procrastinators)) and you continue forth until you arrive in the right place at the right time.  This is where my faith leads me.  Because I know there is something important for me to do.  I just don't know what it is, where I must be, when it will happen, who will be touched, and why I'm the person.  I'm certain I know how to do what I must do, but since the other questions aren't answered, I'm guessing it's a combination of things in my unique skill set (computers, writing, driving, cooking, singing, masturbation, spewing inane catch phrases).

The worst part is that I have to make sure I finish this before I go home.  As it is, I need to get my bill for my Internet paid, and the office will be closed until tomorrow.   In other words, if I'm off, I'm off until tomorrow.  Ick.  On the plus, I have enough offline stuff to keep me busy.

Of course, I'm not sure where I put the CD with the stroke vids....

...trying to capture the fun of my college days.

The illustrious one that is the wisdom and the light that is he who is I Myself has actually been spewing out these overrated catchphrases and shit for almost a couple of decades.  From some early prototype stuff produced with my best buddy in high school with a couple tape recorders and a shitty stereo condenser mic (that mic is still in my sound equipment in a crate in my room here) to my short-lived and tumultuous time on college radio down in Dayton, Ohio, I've been trying to capture the spontaneity that a wit such as mine possesses.  I've kind of learned over the years what does and doesn't work.

First, I'm really at my best when I have another person to bounce off of.  Some of my early solo attempts were flat and boring.  But when I had another person who kind of provided the straight man to my insanity (and if you've read enough of my blogs, you know what I'm talking about), some funny shit came out of it.  I actually have the evidence.  On tape.  Although a couple of them have deteriorated, and the digital copies I made are missing. 

Second, music doesn't soothe the angry beast, it get's the bitch all up in the mothafucker like a bitch on the skinny crack-crack.  On crack.  Either way, I've always been someone that really keys into music, from the sublime to the crunchy, and everything in between.  Except Toad the Wet Sprocket.  That band just depressed the shit out of me because their music was all slow-assed depressing, even the fast stuff.

Third (and this it's something I've learned through my writing more), I do best when I'm me, not a caricature of me.  That's actually the whole purpose behind this blog.  I can, in essence, pull my nuts out and not be embarrassed about talking whatever shit I'm talking about while I type with my mansack flapping in the breeze (FYI, my testicles are contained snugly because it's too cold to sit around naked (and I have kids)). 

The only problem I have is that in writing, I can't keep up with the thoughts as fast as they come.  Plus, I usually have something else on when I write, thus distracting me at times.  For example, I wrote this while watching Robot Chicken, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Metalocalypse.  It means that while you get the gist, I'm bound to miss something somewhere, because I come up with a dozen ideas a second when I get the jism flowing.  An example is the mention of my college radio days.  I had though about that a few days ago.  I forget what I was going to say originally.  But I got it in there.

Which brings me to a fourth thing that works:  Feedback.  And not just the kind when you rub the mic over the speakers to hear the scream.  I'm mainly talking the kind that I get from the people who can't turn away from the mental carnage that flows from my various orifici. This post began when I got an Email from Beth about my proposal to whip it out in the YouTube-iverse (my intellect, you perv bastards, I'd get flagged for pulling out my junk). 

So for those of you reading, ask me some questions.  I'm pretty certain I can take it and turn it into a long-winded answer after a log and possibly pointless rant.  And in answer to Beth, I'm trying to recapture the best of me by by rockin' the 'Tube.

Right now, I just need sleep, so I can roll out the kids for school.  It's too late and I'm too tired to even make the requisite masturbatory reference....

....the reason I have a job.

One thing I hear a LOT during my time on the phones doing tech support is "I'm really computer illiterate."  No shit.  Now, this is not a complaint, because clueless computer users are job security for me.  In fact, the only requisite skills a caller has to have when they call in are the ability to read, look, listen, point, click, and type what I tell them, and maybe pull some cables out (usually power, occasionally network).  Not surprisingly, some people don't have most of these skills (like reading).  Yes, I get illiterate people trying to operate computers.  It is possible (my preschoolers can, and they're just learning to read), but when you're trying to tech a problem, most of it involves me trying to gather the information I need from the caller.  And inaccuracy, or flat out wrong information, means that the process gets drawn out.  When it's a slow day, and this is my last call, and it's my late day, and my off time is passed because of utter stupidity, it becomes ridiculous.

(Note:  For those of you who missed it, check here for my last computer tuneup post.  It will make your computer suck less.)

This gets me to a central premise in life (and I'm pretty sure I bought a book that says this): People are idiots.

And what is surprising is where you find the idiots.  Doctors, for example.  They know their shit when it comes to the intricacies of the human body (depending on their specialty), but seem incapable of understanding the simplest common computer things.  It may be that way with most specialists, where' they've trained their brains to work intensely on specific subjects and problems, but forgot to study common fucking sense.  Trust me, I have at least one doctor in the family (who was also her high school class's valedictorian) whom I'm sure I could run circles around in ANY subject of study other than her profession.  Of course, that's because I'm the opposite.  I'm a generalist.  I've studies a little of almost everything.  While this means I can learn to do a multitude of things, it does mean that the high demand and high pay of a specialist is currently out of reach (which I figured out AFTER four years of college studying for nothing in particular).

the idiot theory also explains the current state of our political system, but that's a post for another blog, so....

Interestingly, I arrived at my current job after spending my post-college career doing things I don't have a natural inclination toward.  I've discovered there are two things that come naturally:  working with technology (thus my misdirected energies in the RadioShack universe) and writing (which was relegated to paper and word processor work until almost two years ago).  And right now, I'm thinking that applying the latter in the freelance realm will be the key to making enough money to get out of the financial rut I'm in now (because, at heart, I'm also a lazy fuck).  Of course, this will be once I get my home office properly fired up (especially clearing the desk of mounds of overdue paperwork), as my employer does frown on doing other people's work while working for them (and they are probably reading this sentence (the fine-ass great employer that they are (*kissing of the ass*))).

Of course, all this is predicated on keeping my bills paid, which means it's time to start cutting the crap out....

...if I could find the damned cable.

I have a camera.  It's a decent camera, despite my tendency to not pick up anything more than the bottom end of electronics.  However, that cable I need to connect it to my computer has gone missing.  I've got 5-6 cables that are for connecting small devices like cameras.  I have one for an old and broken camera.  I have one for a cheap pink shit camera that I picked up for my daughter.  And I have a couple cables that I'm not sure what the fuck they go to (and trust me, I am that good at finding cables.

Thus I'm limited in both downloading the pics I've captured, and documenting the progression of my mess wrangling, as well as seeing if I can turn said camera into a webcam, as the pos webcam I have sucks.  I've seen pinhole camera porn made by awkward-ass teens that are gleefully making their first and worst fuck vid loook a thousand times better than the blurfest my crapcam does.  And of course, it was the cheapest piece of shitty shit I could waste money on.

This comes to mind because I've been considering throwing my glowing visage, perverse and broad vocabulary, and insanely rapid patter onto the YouTube so that you can listen to and watch my ass (not literally) rather than have to slog through my excessive verbiage.  I don't know if it will save me time, but I've resigned myself to the fact that the secret to getting a name out there is to turn your video viral.  And I have a perverse ego to feed (and it may (but probably won't) get me laid).

Hell, I suspect my tech will conk out before I can bring all this to fruition.  I tried to start this post and the computer got all locked up for a minute or two.  And since Windows 7 appears to be stable, it's more perplexing yet.  Perhaps it's a nudge from God to stop fucing typing and tackle the clusterfuck that is the bedroom. 

Of course, first I have to tackle the table.  I managed to get a pot roast just right, but failed to impress those children of mine, as they have yet to have taste buds.  The gravy was spot on, yet it got rejected.

*pause to check a cable and piss*

But I'm here in my bedroom now, with it partially organized, and I'm trying to figure out where the cable went.  I have stacks of paper, patch cables galore, splitters, adapters, and the ability to wire most anything out there.  I've got three extra keyboards in a milk crate beside me, alongside a dead laptop, a shitty router, a microphone older than my, and a few other various pieces of electronics.  I've even got the turntable and accompanying vinyl back in here.  Yet for all the crap, I'm missing stuff.  Of course, this extends far beyond simple things such as the cord for that camera, but said cable would be a start. 

Because another day burned away with little accomplished other than a damned morning meeting.  On the plus, it gave me a reason to rocket down the backroads in the morning light with Green Day's opus American Idiot blasting at full volume while I'm hitting the vocal marks spot on.  That, coffee, and donuts tends to get me going.

But upon returning home, rather than having the juice to rock out with my cock out (figuratively because of the kids), I find myself back where I started.

So let's see if I can find that fucking cable....

...after the Pellenor Fields, the playing fields and the Secret Cow Level.

Fall always gets me in the mood to watch The Lord of the Rings. It's probably because in the first movie, it's fall, and much of the themes are the ending of the Middle Earth as it was.  So I've managed to watch it twice in the last few weeks.  Between the reflections of the smallest among us rising to the great occasion and the fact that watching an army of 100,000 orcs get ridden down by 6,000 horse is just fucking cool, it's a good way to eat up a little time.  What I really need is the extended version of the movies.  Because 9 hours and 17 minutes in Middle Earth is not enough (that's the total run time, I added it up).

I'd like to companion it with a reading of the books, but unfortunately, my books are falling apart.  I tend to read the shit out of books until they do, indeed, fall apart.  When it's a thin crap book that won't fuss me if it collapses, not so bad.  But it's always the big paperbacks that are both the best and the quickest chewed apart. 

Of course, a fall day off would not be complete without a trip out to watch someone play soccer.  Today (and tomorrow) it's my nephew that was playing.  I can report that they won 2-1.  Yay.  And I actually saw all the scores, despite my children.  They are preschoolers, they have legs, and there was a play area within line of sight.   I don't think I need to elaborate.

The great thing about playing through a game is finding all the Easter eggs and bonus shit they pack in.  In Diablo II, it's the Secret Cow Level.  Imagine herds of cows, on two legs, sounding like people saying "moo" and chasing you down with poleaxes.  It's fun.

The problem is that after all this, I get the kids bedded and I find I'm still behind on cleaning the house.  It's mostly clean, if that's any consolation to myself.  It won't be when my mother shows up, so perhaps I need to stop blogging long enough to clean this mess up.  I have to get up for a damned meeting in the morning (Sunday morning is really quiet in the world of tech support), and that means sleep by midnight.  It's ten minutes until 11 now. 

With ice cream and "personal time" still to fit in, I'd better get cracking before the snacking and whacking....

..and since it's a Friday during football season...

Something I've noticed is that I get stuck in horrendous ruts.  Of course, when you're juggling younglings with a bedtime, and going out is not an option, both financially and logistically, and I wasn't shit for going out prior to the younglings, or the Succubus*, it's not fucking likely that I'm going to go all social butterfly suddenly.  Besides, I have the Internet, so fuck the people.

(*I've decided this is the name I will give my ex.  And due to the fact that I have two children who may have to deal with their mother, I'll be guarded in what I say, for both their sake and for the legal repercussions.  I think referring to her as a succubus should convey the necessary feelings)

Fridays are a perfect example.  Now that high school football is in season, and having been brought up in St Marys, where football is a religion (you should have seen it when we went to state and won), I have my radio tuned in to football every Friday, pregame starts at 7pm EST (WKKI).  Originally, I started with a plan to sit out by the fire and listen in peace.  The first week, I was interrupted by rain, then the next week by a space shuttle launch (although a fire was possible with the wireless network and the laptop).  And then I got a couple of good weeks, and fires before the next complication.

Of course, that complication was season 2 of Star Wars: the Clone Wars.  The new season started at 8 beginning last week (in the first quarter of the game). Naturally since it's a half-hour show, football gets shelved. The great thing is that I have at least 1 1/2 of the kids (depending on mood) as big fans of Star Wars, which is something I was geared to love when I was that age (I was that young in 1977).  How often does this shit really jump generations?  I can't really think of any shit that my dad was into that I was also fascinated by.  I was too busy rocking the Star Wars.

So since I've got the kids in bed and the game is over (St Marys won), I'm resorting to sitting here typing this out while trying to see the other scores (the local broadcast Christian station has the best coverage for some fucking reason), determining whether tugging one out will relieve the fact that I'm essentially home bound every night, and lack any reason to try to get someone to watch the kids.

Okay, that's enough, I need ice cream before more cleaning, spanking and bed.

Holy shit, my adopted hometown of New Bremen won again this week.  They keep this shit up, they might actually have a winning season....

...another damned blog? Are you cracked?

This kind of takes me back to the formation of my first blog, Sane Political Discourse.  When I began churning out SPD in near anonymity, it was mainly because I wanted to stretch my writing muscle.  Of course, between stretching that and other parts of my anatomy (the big reason most web browsers have a privacy/porn mode), I started sharing some of my personal life.  I did that mainly because it helped explain why I reached my conclusions.  Some people got it, and some missed it.

But I noticed something was missing.  To keep the blog somewhat on my stated purpose, I had to try to relate shit to a political, philosophical, or religious point.  And there were a few posts that strayed a little, but I stayed on topic for the most part (despite some whiny wingnuts and moonbats going goofy because I didn't put their required position/dick in my mouth).

But I like talking about whatever shit comes to my mind.

Now the first reaction would be to go to Facebook (where I am probably going to link this blog) and pour it out there.  But the problem with Facebook, as well as Twitter, is the space available to do so.  As you noticed,  I'm one verbose motherfucker (with a proclivity for use of the word fuck).  In the political blog, this can sometimes take away from serious points (which is why I self-censor use of that language for the most part on SPD (really, I do)).  But here, since I'm just talking shit about my shit, your shit, and shit in general, I can say shit as much as I want.  And shit.  So up goes the blog.

Now there are three inspirations for what I'm going to do here.   First is director Kevin Smith.  I spend a little time now and then peeping his shit.  One of his things is his blog, My Boring Ass life.  It's kind of cooled down now, but if you were to make a book out of it (and he did (and I bought the fucking thing)), it makes for a good read.  Most of it is a day-to-day enumeration of watching movies, eating, shitting, boning, etc....  Wanting to produce something where I could talk daily was one of the original motivations for SPD.  You know that story.

Then there's fellow blogger, and pain in my ass, Satyavati Devi Dasi.  One of the things that kind of surprised me is the friends I found when I got to the blogging, from my first visit to Dee's Conservatism with Heart (where I first found Satyavati, by the way), to every liberal blogger I seemed to stumble across, it's been a rich tapestry of ideas that get flung at me.  The non-political shit, of course stays off the political blog.  Not here.  And considering the length of exchanges we've had (from the politics, religion and philosophy, to the practical necessities of drug addics, the perversions of a thousand pervs, and the minutia of daily life, I think I've already lost assloads of great materials and stories.  Not gonna pass that up.

The third comes by way of Satyavati. A blog called Death's Door, the view from the Spanish announcers table.  The author of this blog was dead less than two months before I started blogging.  She pointed me to this blog last night, which was just spectacular for how it was written, being descriptive, and smooth in storytelling, and a purified use of the word mothafucker.  Gotta respect that.

It was after that, and after I dragged my ass to bed with the remnants of a headache (which I beat, but was cursed with the insomnia that a slight doze (interrupted by those kids that were running around, necessitating my waking back up so I could put them to bed) always created) that the idea for this blog popped into my head.  Luckily, you can create a blog in less than five minutes, so.....

Now the blog's look will be changing from the time I write this to the next post, because I have just started working on it.  And I still have a house to clean.  It's become a little more important now, because I have a damned mandatory meeting on Sunday morning, and my mother's coming over.  More on her later, but I really don't want to have to hear THAT speech.

Ok, I'm out of here, because I have to get the house cleaned, the kids beaten (for whatever reason) and the blogs fixed up.  And that's not counting a parlaying of my copious writing skills into some money, due to the nature of the universe necessitating cash to keep the cable modem on.

Fuck, this was a longer post than I planned on.....