... 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.....