No Frills Posting

Truly a no frills post today, no links, no real humor to speak of, just a boring blow-by-blow of the day's events.

Last day of work before the big day, and I can quite honestly say that I've accomplished absolutely nothing this week, all two days of it that I actually went into work. Most of the time was spent running around with the boss looking for last minute stuff to piece together for the wedding, this detritus including concrete benches for the front of the museum, pvc pipe to mount arrangements on, fishing line, various beads, and silk rose petals to make floral curtains out of, and several urns to display arrangements in. I'm actually on Doan's back pills as I type this, as the concrete benches, even in 3 sections, still managed to give me a little hitch in my git-along, as the regionalistic slang goes.

Dinner this evening with K and Morris, then a long discussion with the crazy gal throwing tomorrow night's bachelor event, which also brought to light one of the soon-to-be sister-in-law's apparent agitation at her husband not being invited to the stag party. While we're talking about a man I barely have conversation with when he's in the mother-in-law's home, I'd certianly love to spend an evening elbow to elbow with him while staring at a stranger's g-string covered crotch.

Yes, please, sign me up for that tour.

Feh.

So now with a crowd including 8 or so guys, one wife, at least 3 gay men, and 3 lesbians, I now have the goofball brother-in-law to add into the mix, if he decides he wants to go. The entire evening seems to be spiraling past weirdness now into the depths of Fellini-esque surreality at an alarming pace. I only hope that I have the presence of mind to be able to properly document the evening in a manner that will truly do it justice. There has also been the threat that the bridesmaids may take their party over to ours and crash, which would be totally cool, but I doubt K can talk her girls into it, as at least two spring to mind as being a little uptight about the scenario, but who knows, they could very well surprise me.

Be seeing you.

A Manifesto And Two Brief Anecdotes

Work was average, with the daily orders slow as the store ramps up for the wedding, and I tried to just stay out of the way, run little errands and whatnot, because I have zero interest in being there right now. Particularly because each and every single woman in the store has asked me if I'm quitting after I get married, because I suppose that's what they would do if they married into a wealthy family, which is apparently all they can see me doing, on some kind of basic level, regardless of their rhetoric about how happy they are for me, etc. All that registers on their radar is that I'm marrying money; this is the vibe from the room, which just proves to me that they have never truly known me. The interesting thing to me is that they think that my personal disposition would change because of my financial situation. I ain't just whistlin' Dixie when I call this thing Dear Bastards, baby! I've always been kind of a prick, and I'll always BE kind of a prick, it doesn't matter what kind of car I'm driving.

Quoth the Marilyn Manson: "I'll step on you on my way up, I'll fuckin' step on you on my way down."

It is, however, nice to know that if I get tired of hearing this shit that I won't go hungry while I look for the next shitty day-job.

End of story.

Anecdote the first: Our chief delivery driver told me a story from her weekend that really cracked me up, we'll see how it translates. She and her husband are awakened by the barking of their Yorkie, all five vicious pounds of it, at 3AM on Saturday morning, and he goes downstairs to find two kids of indeterminate age trying to steal a bicycle built for two (?!?) out of their back yard, the gate wide open as they sneak across the lawn. He opens the sliding door, yells and startles them, they drop the bike and run, and he picks up the tiny, barking little Beverly Hills trophy-wife-style dog and gives chase.

In his boxers.

I find the image of a grown-ass man, half nude, chasing a couple of kids with a tiny little spitfire of selective breeding clutched like a yappy football in the crook of his arm quite hilarious.

She had the good sense to stop him before he left their yard.

Anecdote the second: Not as comical, but just interesting in a sociological kind of way, after dinner with K's friend Morris, we decided to drop into the old Baskin Robbins, which filled up like a Titanic lifeboat immediately after we entered, and the few people ahead of us seemed to be taking their sweet fucking time making their decisions. While we had nothing to be doing, it was entertaining to watch the little scooper girl barely holding it together as she tried to goad a customer into a decision, ANY decision. It's not life or death, it's just ice cream. By the time we left with our stuff, a line had formed to near the door, and everyone had that arms crossed, 'fuck this room and everyone in it' kind of look. I think the average training day at the DMV actually has a lighter mood to it, and you expect people to be testy there.

And Out Come The Worms

The post from yesterday seems to have really struck a chord with a lot readers, none of which have taken me to task for my religious leanings, which, while surprising, is comforting to me because it means that I'm reaching the proper audience, rather than a group of people who are constantly offended by this stuff and just come back to argue with me. A lot of the commentary was complimentary, and a few actually came in from people I had never heard from before, so it's nice to prompt response from folks who may not have been moved to speak before.

In a moment of ego last evening, and out of the curiousity at seeing the 'sites who link here' button on several different blogs that I've run across, I got the wild hair to Google the phrase 'who links to me?', and being barely functional with technology, was quite stunned to find the results from a website of that same name. This turned up 20 or so different links to this URL, most of which were the result of profiles on message boards, comments that I'd left somewhere else that used the URL in the signature, or quite surprisingly, a couple of total strangers who've added my bullshit to their list of links, which is totally cool, to possibly be read by someone other than the four people who usually check in here to see if I've attempted suicide or anything, or if the chickens have revolted and slain me.

In the interest of furthering the traffic of anyone who likes my stuff, check out the site maintained by one Bella Rossa, which seems to be like my stuff here, in that it's a little bit of everything, with a lot of amusing video clips.

Yesterday's post also had me thinking a great deal about The Invisibles comics by Grant Morrison, which gave us the King Mob character that I've derived my nerdy little internet identity from, a character who, during the course of those three series of books, referenced worshiping many different Gods, including Buddha and Ganesh. Toward the end of (I believe, and if anyone can out-dork me on this one and nail down the particular issue, please do) the second cycle of comics, the character, known for his rather cool action-hero-style killing prowess, comes to the decision to put down the weapons and fight the good fight in a different manner, ontoligical terrorism, as he puts it. Also within this series, in an earlier storyline, I recall the character, after a particularly hairy battle sequence, which was interspersed with a scene of a monk supposedly opening the door to enlightenment, King Mob pauses to shoot at and destroy a statue of the Buddha. Now knowing the nature of the Zen Koan, this has a much more interesting connotation to me than it did before, in that I just took it to be a destructive side note to the scene.

I have to admit that all of this talk of religion makes me think of several Bill Hicks routines, one in particular about having left the Garden too soon, in which he claims that if you can't name all the animals, we need to go back to the Garden of Eden. I also make this connection because he and Morrison both make a lot of noise about hallucinogenics and finding a higher power or consciousness, which is something I've never pursued.

Be seeing you.

Killing The Buddha

Considering my general apathy to religion as a whole, this probably isn't the can of worms I'm best suited to be opening, but since one of my sister-in-law's seems determined not to save my soul, but to make K and I feel bad about not attending church regularly, I had to point out this link she suggested that I check out. The Killing The Buddha website looks to be a collection of articles addressing questions of faith in a world less black and white than the one you tend to find in most religious arenas. The only problem I have with being pointed in this direction is the assumption that I'm in need of guidance, or that I want to seek answers for my inner turmoil. I feel pretty comfortable for the first time in a long time with my relationship with God, though I doubt it'd qualify as a 'relationship with the Lord' as most Christian organizations would define it, but as Tom T. Hall sang in a song that I remember from way back in my youth:

"Me and Jesus, we got our own thing goin', me and Jesus got it all worked out"

Amen.

I actually tend to feel the heaviest spiritual and religious connections in my life when listening to old Country/Western music that I remember from my youth, specifically because most of what was written about the subject speaks to a more personal connection with ones' faith, or talks about a simpler time. I can honestly say that I have never felt a driving ambition to spend time in a church each week, it was always done to appease my mother in my younger days, and not at all of late. K and I have had a very realistic talk about the faith in our upcoming marriage, which for me is summed up very simply, I believe in a God that will judge me by my actions in this life, if I lived within a moral code that wouldn't make Charles Manson blush, and by what I tried to do for the world around me, instead of being a completely self-serving fuck like a lot of people you encounter each day. I think my God has a sense of humor, I think my God rollerskates and plays a mean air guitar when his favorite band comes on the radio. I don't think he needs me in a special building each week, regardless of how boring I might find it, just because he takes notes of who's there each time. I'd rather be in a position to be doing that routine because it means something to me, rather than because it's Sunday and that's what we do each Sunday, y'know?

I'm a spiritual, but by no means religious person, and not what you'd ever call a good Christian, but I think doing the best one can on a daily basis will count for a lot more than a series of insincere appearances at services that would find me tuning out anyway.

Cast your stones.

Employee Of The Month

Long workday that ran from 8 until 7 in the evening, long for a normal day but particularly heavy for a Saturday, wedding set-up type of crap, which actually brought out the whining from several co-workers because next week's wedding (mine) will be even bigger/more involved. This I find amusing, because we've done as large or larger events, and no one went bitching about it to the customer, but because I work with these people I'm expected to feel bad for their plight, which for once in my career with the company isn't my problem. Interesting theory, but it doesn't seem to pan out like they thought it would. My point has always been, you get away with what you can at this job, and if you can't find a way to weasel out of next week, that's your funeral, not mine. I can proudly say that having broken the boss in over the past four years, I can pretty well convey when I've had enough and am ready to leave, whereas the others seem willing to just take anything said to them at face value, I.E.: "Hey, we'll be working today through lunch into this evening and until whenever the fuck I decide we're done, and the store's buying you take-out food, so why would you have a reason to bitch?" While my co-workers tuck into coldcut sandwiches, I'm forced to begin a rigorous routine of questioning that would make a television law drama proud, to plant the necessary seeds that will dawn on the woman that while she's married to this job, some of us have lives. The women are then amazed that I'm able to begin cleaning my desk and preparing to leave, asking if everyone can leave, which always gets the same response from your humble narrator: "I've made my deal, good luck with yours. You can't be afraid of the woman, she's your boss, too. Why the hell am I expected to negotiate a release for everyone, when I really only care when I get to leave?"

If this were Schindler's List, maybe I'd be trying to save a few lives as well as cover my own ass, but since we're not talking about life or death, these folks are on their own.

The chicken coop fiasco as I've come to refer to it, is the current bane of my existence, the damned tile guy has left me hanging for several days and....wait, the chances that the birds are reading this are slim and none, so let me level with you, dear readers. It's been miserably hot out here in West Texas recently, and I've not been of a mind to jack with it, frankly, and as much as I bitch, whine and kvetch at length about my job, I would absolutely fucking kill myself if I had to do shit like yardwork for a living, regardless of the random opportunity to nail the odd Desperate Housewife. I hope to finish said project tomorrow, and get things set up to the point that it'll be manageable for the person watching the house and the dog while we're gone for the honeymoon. If we can keep them contained for the ten days we'll be out of pocket, I can always rework things later.

Not a lot else to say this evening, spent a little time on the Horror Channel's website tonight after hearing about their Horror's Hallowed Grounds section, in which the Sean Clark guy, who was interviewed on the Reel Horror Podcast this week, goes around finding locations and houses used in horror films, and documenting things in words and pictures taken to show a comparison between the film and the reality of the sites. Of particular interest for the creep factor (to me, at least) was his exploration of the mental hospital used in Brad (The Machinist) Anderson's Session 9. This particular article also reminded me of a few websites that I'd run across in some random link daisy-chain a few years back that lead me to the world of urban explorers, which was something I knew nothing about, living as I do out in the sticks. Check it out here and here for a start, with the pics ranging from ho-hum documentation of illegal entries to really cool photography of places we'd never know existed if someone wasn't willing to risk arrest to wander around there.

Interestingly enough, a good deal of it seems centered in Canada, so what's up with that? Don't you people have a lot of mountians to go exploring in?

The Infiltration site did link to this site, which features a lot of photography of found objects from abandoned places, supposedly out of Lubbock, Texas, a scant two hours away, so it looks like everyone has a lot of free time to explore.

Subconsciously Losing It

In the recent weeks I've had people left, right and center asking me if I was getting nervous about the 'big day' next Saturday, and my pat answer has been "Not really, since we've been planning for this all during our year long engagement period, I'm just wanting to make sure that it's the wedding she wants." I've had some time to get used to the idea, so to speak, and my only anxiety was when one of the vendors started fucking up, things like that, as I want K to have the wedding she's been envisioning, not what was slapped together as a close approximation at the last minute. I've begun to believe that I may be feeling more stress subconsciously than I've realized , though, because after the car accident ten days or so ago, and then a series of fuck-ups this morning (which I might normally chalk up to the fact that I could give two tugs of a dead dog's cock about my job) have lead me to believe that I may be a bit pre-occupied.

I was loading up a series of arrangements for a party that my boss had asked me to set up for her, and ever so gently smacked the edge of a vase with the base of another, chipping it instantly, then not five minutes later, when moving more of the same vases around in the van, actually pull the glass lip off a vase when I tried to move it. I fixed both arrangements, delivered the party, only then to realize that I'd forgotten the pre-rolled cloth napkins that had a little added cross keepsake attached that would go so much further to make this luncheon special, not like all those other, shitty luncheons that these poor bastards have had to attend. So I had to spend another 30 minutes driving back and forth across town to deliver the napkins that I should've remembered in the first place.

This has lead me to believe that I may need tranquilizers by the end of next week, just to keep me from riffing into some kinda Redd Foxx routine during the toasts at the wedding.

Listened to the newest Reel Horror Podcast, which had a mention of something I have no desire to go looking for, because I'd rather not have the A.T.F. scrambled to head for my house when I hit the site, but there's apparently a video game in the style of the old Nintendo cartridges based on the Columbine shootings. There's a Washington Post article here, if you're curious, and I'd be interested how others feel about this, considering I have no vested interest in the subject, in that I don't play video games, but find it to be in poor taste, but would I say that this idiot shouldn't be able to produce the game...no. I would, however, be curious about the people who've downloaded it.

Al, I'm looking in your general direction....

The latest addition to my listening continues to endear itself to me, the Hellbilly Nightmare Podcast, dated 05/07/2006 contains a charming little ditty by a band called I Can Lick Any Sonafabitch In The House called Fuck Fred Phelps, or as I see it called on their discography, the slightly less incendiary Westboro Baptist Church. You may recall him as the charming Tall Man from Phantasm look-alike who rose to notoriety spreading Jesus' teachings about a gentle answer turning away wrath and God hating fags, a sentiment he feels that his grandchildren are perfectly suited to carrying signs proclaiming. Fuck him, indeed, and since the I Can Lick Any Sonafabitch In The House guys seem to be on Myspace, you can give them a look and ask for an add, but be sure to check out their mp3 and Realplayer formatted clips that are available on their site if you want to hear more from them.

They Made Me Do It

Today found me sifting through 30+ useless comments, all of a generic, 'nice site, I'll be back' type of bullshit content, so I've decided to use the little word verification option to hopefully slow down, or, God willing, stop this altogether. I've had the option on which sends me an e-mail when someone comments here, and when I opened the e-mail and saw over 30 e-mails waiting for me, I knew something was up, as I don't receive 30 e-mails in 3 days, usually, certianly not in one morning. Apologies in advance for the hassle, but it seems to have become a necessary evil, and I do enjoy legitimate feedback. I guess this must be the work of one of those 'bots' Satan's Lil Helper was talking about a few comments back.

The chicken coop fiasco has turned me into something of a building contractor, in that I feel like the birds are ready to move in at a moment's notice and I'm the guy stalling them, saying shit like "the tile's not going to be in until next week" because I've decided to put off the finishing touches of the new containment field until the weekend. They've begun pecking me more when they get fed in a brazen show of retaliation, but I don't blame them.

I finally got around to listening to the latest of the 'normal' (Cool) Shite On The Tube Podcast today while trying to avoid the ladies drama at work, and they had an interview with the gentleman responsible for the Academy Award nominated short The Mysterious Geographic Explorations Of Jasper Morello, the trailer for which can be viewed here. Anthony Lucas speaks in great detail about the technique used in creating the animation, which reminded me a lot of the mid-eighties Vortex comic book Mr. X, by Dean Motter, for a number of reasons, the stylish silhouettes, the futuristic settings, etc. Give it a look, it looks pretty intriguing, from the brief snippet we see in the trailer.

I also grabbed several episodes of the Hellbilly Nightmare Podcast, gave a couple of them a spin this afternoon, and apart from an interview with Hank III that sounded as if he was calling from a fucking well somewhere, the rest of the shows were really cool, with an interesting mix of stuff, psychobilly, hellbilly, etc. Definitely something I'll be adding to my regular rotation of time wasters at work, the P-Ricky fellow seems to have numerous sites going simultaneously, so if it tickles your fancy, you should also check things out here and here. Aw, shit you may as well go here, too, while you're at it. Between this show and the Psychobilly Deluxe Podcast, I've been able to sample a good number of bands that I'd never even come close to hearing on radio here locally, or at all, since it's nothing that MTV can really promote to today's youth, because Beyonce has nothing to do with it.

Is It A Full Moon?

Lunch today found us seeing at least three near-misses while driving across town, all within the space of an hour, which left me twitching and more than a little scared for my life, wanting nothing more than to get the fuck out of a motor vehicle for the rest of the day, as usually cars can't get to you in the privacy of your own home.

Weird trip down memory lane this evening with K and I going through a trunk of my mother's, which proves that I come by my pack-rat nature quite genetically, as my mother never threw away anything from her childhood up until a few weeks before her death. The trunk contained everything from a Christmas gift card type thing that she'd done for my grandmother while in grade school, to several AT&T bills that my grandmother herself had saved, that my mom took over the care of, and now I suppose it'll be my job to keep this shit safe for the next generation, until someone, somewhere finally wises up and throws it away. It is, however, really freaky to look at a $7.31 phone bill. Digging deeper into things, this ended up being a bit depressing, as I have a tendency to get a bit maudlin about my poverty-ridden youth, and just find the whole period of time to be a bit depressing. When you couple this with the fact that the family I'm marrying into is fairly wealthy, it puts things into an even sharper contrast, but thankfully the woman I'm marrying isn't put off by this.

To qoute Satan's Lil Helper, my life has taken a very strange path.

The upcoming bachelor party, which is to be hosted by a middle-aged friend of K's mother, is shaping up to be quite interesting. It's now going to be attended not only by male friends of mine, but also by at least two gay men, and a handful of lesbians, and we have a feeler out to at least one friend's wife, because I personally want to completely freak the shit out of the jaded, g-string peeling hoochies (hoochies aren't work-safe, kids) at the strip club with our sheer diversity and mix of people.

A recent fun time waster, with thanks to the Blue Glow blog, which is brought to us by Chris Holland from the Stomp Tokyo website, is the Tetris/Rubik's cube riff called Tringo. Of course, while I was digging up these links, I got fished in for at least 15 minutes, which speaks volumes about my obsessive nature, and why I'm much better off for never really getting into the whole video game thing.

I received the DVD's that I'd won in the recent Mondo Movie contest in the post today, which I'd actually almost forgotten about, and they play beautifully in the recently converted region-free DVD player. Possibly the best $40 one can spend, if you want to invest in a region free player, is the Cyberhome 300, which can be made region free with a simple touch of the remote.

Spent the evening watching most of The Robinsons series courtesy of the old TiVo, and I'd have to say that the show has grown on me, as the partial episode I'd looked at the other day was apparently the 3rd of the six, rather than the first as I thought. Watching them in the proper order, I'd have to call it a pretty amusing show, with at least one thing per episode that makes me laugh out loud. Trust me, I've seen much worse on network television.

The Most Bang For My Buck

This morning I began sizing up the 2 x 4's for the coop, and also was outside when our rooster happened to do his crowing routine, which now involves crowing three times, no more, no less. Our culprit wasn't either of the birds K and I suspected, neither yellow nor blue made a peep, it was green's strangled little cries we've heard recently.

Picked up my glorious new copy of The Boondock Saints, the reviews of this guy be damned. I find it very amusing that he makes a comparison between a more personal vendetta held by two people in a film against, um, CRIMINALS, and the mentality of foreign terrorists who attack the United States. Sorry, sport, but I find it a pretty long fucking stretch from what I personally wouldn't even deem to be a religious stance, but a fucking moral one to reach the extremes of terrorists who want to kill us because of....well, I have no idea what the fucking terrorists agenda is, but I don't think they're pissed off because we've ran them out of their neighborhoods with ballbats, or other general Mafia-style crime, which is what the basic plot of the movie in question consists of. Vigilantism doesn't equal terrorism if you change a nationality, sorry, I find a huge difference in the events of September 11th and Deathwish. I wasn't really as bothered by this until I re-watched the film tonight and read Dale's comment from yesterday, which mentioned the scathing review, and caused me to go and re-read it to make sure that guy was as full of shit as I thought on first glance.

Listening to another Nate and Di Podcast this evening, this one involving the couple taking a dare to find a stranger's car in a parking lot, and smoke a joint in it before the owner comes back, while recording the experience. As I don't have any interest in recreational drugs anymore, these are entertaining, but a little lost on me with the high level of drug-related content. Since I've only heard the last two episodes, so I can't say if this is their average show, or just a recent focus, but I did enjoy their news clips this time around concerning the conservative right who apparently have a lot of sexual skeletons in their closet. Check out their show notes with links to all the creepy news stories.

Spoke to the body shop this afternoon, found out that since no used parts are available, everything will be ordered new, to the tune of $10 grand+, which means that the insurance company may end up totaling out the whole thing and calling it a day. I started doing the math, and after finding out that I'm going to end up paying a $160 ticket for the accident itself, it occured to me that with the deductible, and other incidentals, I may thankfully end up getting out of this for less than a grand. In America, you can completely derail the lives of four people who were involved in this accident for less than a thousand dollars, which leads me to believe that those fools who were paying upwards of $20 grand to kill someone in the film Hostel were really getting screwed. If you can ruin someone's life for less than a grand in America, why the hell would you fly to Bumfuck, Slovakia just to overpay to kill a tourist, surely you could find somewhere here in the good old U. S. of A. that'd let you waste somebody for around $10 grand, tops.

Shop around, that's all I'm saying, get the most out of your murder-dollar.

I'm off to Gieco now to see how much that Gecko is going to be screwing me for when State Farm drops me like a hot fucking rock.

Time Doesn't Fly When You're Not Having Fun

Monday passes uneventfully, with the usual amount of outright hunting for things to do, as we seem exceptionally slow. I have occasion to pause briefly and wonder, am I really getting paid for this? This kind of question usually comes up when dealing with a job that you enjoy so much you have to wonder at being paid to do it, not at one that is so slow and lackluster at times that you wonder why anyone in their right mind would pay you to be there.

iPod, take me away. And if you're too young to remember those old Calgon television spots, maybe you shouldn't be reading this, it'll just make me feel old.

The newest DVD Weekly Podcast was lousy with Nascar DVD info, which I could give two fucks about, but did mention the new special edition release of The Boondock Saints, which I think I have to pick up about ten minutes after Best Buy opens tomorrow. One of my favorite films, bar none, which stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus as Irish Catholic brothers living in South Boston who, upon feeling the touch of the divine power, become the Lord's avenging hand in a war against organized crime in their neighborhood. Stylish violence abounds, and hold onto your hats for a truly bizarre role for Willem Dafoe, as the FBI agent in pursuit of the MacManus brothers. Billy Connolly has an equally strange role, keep an eye out for him, truly a great film, why are you still reading this shit when you could be out buying it right now?

And to try and segue into another movie subject, as The Saints are a genre item that you have to have a specific taste for, I also listened to Mark Kermode's Podcast via the BBC Radio this afternoon, which is nice to have found a film critic who doesn't have a snooty disdain for genre films, specifically horror, as you find with a lot of American critics. Kermode can appreciate trash films for the enjoyable romps that they are, and the May 19th show had him shouting about the recently released Da Vinci Code film, which he quite literally hated, for reasons too numerous to list here.
Check him out here.

Up to this point in the afternoon, the biggest surprise I had was this little tidbit via the now daily (Cool) Shite On The Tube Movie Stuff Podcast (Whew). This episode (#7) had a bit about French action director Luc Besson, who I know and love for movies like La Femme Nikita, and Leon, The Professional, violent masterworks of quirky cinema and style has apparently been writing childrens books in his spare time, which is akin to finding out that Quentin Tarantino likes to spend time with Catholic Charities when not filming his latest blood-soaked opus. The books have spawned a film, directed by Besson himself, which looks interesting, judging from the visuals on the site.

The biggest surprise of the day, unfortunately, was going to our storage facility and finding the creepy molester delivery guy taking his lunchbreak, indeed shirtless, as previously reported by our flower processor, laying sprawled in the front seat of one of our parked delivery vans. Our temperatures here have been in the mid to high 90's, and even with the windows of the parked vehicle down and a door open, we're talking about trying to nap in an oven with a breeze. What the fuck, over? He then tops off the post-lunch creepiness with a liberal dousing of his Axe body spray, and a nice bit of water over the head so he has that 50's slicked back greaser look, leaving me looking for Ponyboy and the other Outsiders. Considering he's been sweating into the passenger seat of that van for the better part of a month that we know of, I'm fully prepared to fight the women at the job for driving priveleges when we have to use that van, I'm NOT sitting in that seat, come hell or high water.

Sleeping It Off

I ended up celebrating my buddy Rob's actual birthday by sleeping in until noon, which if you know the Rob, is quite a fitting way to celebrate this, the day of his birth.

K and I spent a rather uneventful afternoon, save for picking up some of the supplies for the chicken coop fiasco, which I plan on tackling Tuesday morning, since it's been so miserably hot here recently, and I hope to get in some labor before it gets too stifling.

Somewhat on that subject, while I have been telling you people about the chicken situation, this woman has gone so far as to document every mundane detail about the lives of her newly acquired birds, which amuses me in a morbid way, there but for the grace of God and all that, y'know? My favorite line from skimming over her text was something to the effect of 'handled all the chicks, noticed that about half of them calmed down, while others fought more', which pretty much sums up life as a man, welcome to our world, lady. Best of luck with that.

Thank you, 'Next Blog' button.

Happened to run across more comedy on the BBC America channel this week, a series called The Robinsons, starring the lowkey everyman from The Office and The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Martin Freeman, I only had a chance to give the first episode a partial look before we went out to run errands, but it looks amusing, though nothing immediately grabbed me as happened with The Office. I'm looking forward to the TiVo grabbing the rest of the six part series later in the week, and possibly having a little marathon sometime before the wedding.

Talking of the television and the time spent worshipping bathed in the holy glow, we caught what turned out to be the season finale of Desperate Housewives this evening, which caught me by surprise, as I didn't realize I was signing on for a 2 hour episode, but damn if it wasn't amazingly well-done trash tv. I can say with no amount of partiality to the show that tonight's show was amazingly well paced, with each return from commercial break being a flashback to one of the main characters first arrival to the neighborhood, which then contrasted with their current state of life, which was an interesting framing device, painting a lot of the shows' backstory in more detail than we'd previously seen. Marcia Cross' character Bree Van De Camp, who at the end of the last episode was seen admitting herself to a psychiatric hospital for observation after a season of alcoholism, the manipulations of her sociopathic, recently outed son and her daughter running away with the weird boy from down the block (and we're not talking about that quasi-redeeming American Beauty kind of weird, either) managed to pull herself together in astounding fashion, and I'd venture to guess that this actress could go toe-to-toe with many of Hollywood's A-List actors if given the chance.

I've always been a sucker for a soap-opera, and this one takes the soapy conventions and turns them up to 12.

Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting (But Better For Eating Italian Food And Then Having A Cocktail Back At The House)

The chickens officially made the move outside today, as I had decided to have company over for drinks this evening and didn't want them to feel as though they were bellying up to the coop for a cocktail. The blue chicken, now mostly white, pecked me as a parting gift. He now joins the list of people who can kiss my ass. I begin construction of their new lair tomorrow, which could turn into a total fiasco that could be condemned by the housing authority, so we'll see how that goes.

Work was it's usual Saturday mixture of boredom and busywork, and the assistant manager eventually found me standing in back talking on the cell phone and sent me home about 15 minutes early, though in spite of the circumstances wasn't even annoyed or angry. Not that I'm looking for her to be a bitch about things, but what exactly is my motivation to do anything if you just good naturedly send me home early (which I was fishing for anyways) if I don't?

I received my second bit of spam to the blog, and it turned up to the same post as the first bit of spam from about a month ago. I don't quite know what was mentioned in this specific post that draws in this attention, but I'd be curious what these folks are searching for, since it's so far back in the archives.

Had dinner with my friend Rob in honor of his birthday tomorrow, and then met a few friends back at the house for drinks. The Dachshund turned out after work, as well as two of our featured artists for the wedding reception, Elliott and his girlfriend Amanda, whose artwork isn't available anywhere that I can discern online. K and her friend Brian spent time downtown at the arts festival, had a good time at the street concert, and then came back to the house to join us late. A good time was had by all, but on a more solemn note, I have to say that my heart goes out to my best friend David, who has had a rough time of it this evening, and I hope he knows that I'm thinking about him.

I'm actually finishing this off at 4:30 AM, so good night and good luck, I'm out.

Podcasts And Evening Mingling

Happy 100th post to me, we here at Dear Bastards appreciate you turning out for our centennial celebration!

Please feel free to make your own alcoholic refreshments at home, along with balloon animals, clowns and Martha Stewart Morning Glory Seeds for you and the kids, it'll probably help pass the time a lot easier than what I have lined up for your 'entertainment'.

Blah workday, slow and boring with only the iPod to keep me warm as we watched the time slowly tick by on the clock. Listened to several new editions of the now daily movie show from the guys over at (Cool) Shite On The Tube, a new Cinemaslave covering the 3rd Star Wars prequel, and a re-listen to the last two (#'s 17 & 18) of the Psychobilly Deluxe Podcast, which featured great stuff from Concombre Zombi and Rezurex.

The workday also included one of the front-end phone lasses walking out on the job after getting that 'last straw' bit of attitude from one of her peers, replying to someone who thought she'd be back after lunch with "I'm not fucking coming back!" and turning on her heel and exiting, stage fuck you.

Also of at least brief note is the fact that the creepy molester delivery guy, who has taken to spending his lunch hour sitting in one of our extra vans that sits down the block at our remote parking/storage facility, was seen today sitting in said van shirtless, which is presumably due to our high temperature being in the high 90's, but is still terminally creepy.

Having finally taken tux measurements yesterday afternoon, I had a conversation with Satan's Lil' Helper, my best man, about the fact that I've actually gained fucking weight for this wedding, and he assured me that the pants expand three sizes (!), whereupon I was forced to tell him that if I, God forbid, need to expand more than TWO fucking sizes, feel free to shoot me in my pie-filled fucking face.

This evening was spent at a preview party for a local arts charity event, which was entertaining to say the least, as K's flakey family all bailed on us at the last minute, not to say that I neccessarily missed them, but if they'd bothered to give any kind of advance notice, perhaps we would've been able to fill their seats at the table. As things panned out, I was making fairly desperate calls to friends answering machines shouting shit like "Open bar and free food, I know I'm speaking your language dammit, where the hell are you?" Her uncle did attend, so I was amused watching him sling some mack with a few ladies in attendance, this coming easily to him since he's apparently never met a stranger. We looked at fairly boring art that I had no interest in buying, regardless of the price, and I got a nice buzz going before taking the edge off with a trip to the little food area outside. All in all, a great evening, and certianly a lot less stressful than last year when K was chairing the event.

The Inevitable Bridal Portrait

This is one of my random days off, and where I would normally be spending time with the bride to be, I find myself having to fuck off and amuse myself because the bridal portrait is being taken this afternoon and the entire process will take up most, if not all of the day.

Thus I'm enjoying a cocktail midafternoon and checking e-mail and such, and of course I find myself gravitating to the blog to exchange comments and update things, which leads into this minor rant about what we here at 'Dear Bastards' find to be the most annoying thing about this form of expression.

My largest complaint with the blogging format is that the 'next blog' button, which serves as a parachute from stupidity when you read about four lines into an entry and suddenly realize "This guy's fuckin' stupid!" and lets you evacuate, toot sweet, also has a way of trapping you when someone takes it upon themselves to remove said button. It's quite an egotistical move, and is generally accompanied by webdesign that is so fucking avante-garde that I haven't the slightest idea what the hell I'm looking at: there's a fuzzy graphitti-style image, with a lotta of scratches torn through it, and a lot of words piled upon each other until nothing is readable, and now my fucking cursor has turned into a plus-sign and there's a weird Canto-pop song droning in the background. Where the fuck am I? Is this The Matrix?


I can totally appreciate your HTML skills, as I possess none, I was fairly pleased with myself for adding a damned hit counter to this crap, much less making the entire site look like a website for a corporation that I can't afford to do business with, my point is that if I can't even begin to figure out how to navigate your site, what's the point in having it available to the public? Unless you are promoting a highly stylized art-film, rope it in a bit on the wacky visuals, your random traffic will thank you, I assure you.

Although this guy, with a gallery of asses THAT ARE NOT WORK SAFE, KIDS, is certianly on my shortlist of favorite people now. I now forgive the 'next blog' button all its previous trangressions.

And this seems like either a pedophile lurking in my internet bushes or an FBI sting in the works looking for said pedophile. Because all children I've ever known look to random internet sources for answers to all their problems.

I would also like to note that in my travels this afternoon looking for these example links I did run across one woman who listed 'contemplation' as one of her interests, which I found very fucking corny, so if I change one of my own interests to 'pretension', please bear with me until it passes.

This is also pretty amusing.

I would like to close with the realization that this blogging thing could very well bite me in the ass, as my friend Anastasia Beaverhouszen and her husband attended our little food tasting thing last night, and I happened to overhear her hubby telling another guest how great my writing is, and that she should definitely check it out. How fucking mortified was I to turn around and see him speaking to a woman I've actually mentioned in my ramblings as being "K's friend who stands on your toes and shouts in your face"? The answer you might be searching for is 'quite mortified, verging on the panic of shouting why don't you keep your trap shut?!?', which is generally frowned upon at quiet dinner parties. Luckily her interest was very passing, and she didn't bother to ask about where she could find said writings, and I'm sure as hell not going to be volunteering any information.

Whew.

Amazing How Fast The Day Flies By When You Sleep Til Noon

In reaction to yesterdays' misery and vomit, I spent the latter part of the evening on a self medicating whiskey and soda jag, noting the time with bleary eyes at around 1:20 in the AM and dragging my sorry ass to bed. K had to catch a red-eye flight to Dallas this morning, so I got up at some un-Godly hour with her this morning and changed the bandage on her wounded foot, and went back to bed, read for a bit, then finally fell asleep again around 8-ish. I awoke with a start at 12:30 in the damned afternoon, half of my day off gone, knowing full well that I had plenty to do, not the least of which was borrow a vehicle from the soon to be mother-in-law so I could actually run a few errands.

The afternoon literally ran away from me, but I did manage to get all my rat killing done in a fairly timely manner, even sneaking in a late lunch with one of the groomsmen before K made it back into town with her newly minted wedding gown. This was just in time to change clothes and go to the small food tasting that our caterer had organized for us along with a few family and friends. The best part of the evening was the Q & A that the manager wanted to have about what we liked and didn't like about the food, etc., and his confused "Are they fucking serious?" kinda look when he asked what kind of ice sculpture we'd like. He's describing hearts, or ornate bowls and whatnot, and we tell him that we'd love a large chicken or rooster sculpted from ice, if they can make that happen.

We'll see.

The car has moved from the wrecking yard to the body shop for an estimate, I don't know if I should be pulling for it to be totalled out and look for something different, or if I want it to be fixable and just have the entire front end re-worked. Time will tell, though since they were supposed to call when they got it to their building, and didn't, I'm not sure these guys are going to be exceptionally easy to deal with, and don't even get me started on the fact that my next deductible will probably jump to $6,000 or something.

I've never noticed the stupidity of others to be this costly, but maybe I'm only concerned if it effects me.

Closing out as usual with several random notes, I need some of you to check out this guy's blog and tell me if he's crazy or what? Do people really talk about each other like this? It's like that nauseating Schmoopy routine from Sienfeld. I was actually so baffled I had to read through the 6 or so comments on the thing, and they read like cheesy e-mail conversation. Haven't these fools heard of instant messenger?

Moving on, something actually worth checking out for the sheer curiousity factor was the Nate and Di Show, a podcast linked from the fine folks at the Psychobilly Deluxe website/podcast. Their most recent show (#83) was devoted to a news story they read in the Washington Post relating an alleged 'epidemic' of teens using Morning Glory seeds to simulate an acid trip, which prompted the hosts to run out and buy some Martha Stewart Morning Glory seeds to ingest and record the results. Possibly the best bargain anyone has ever found at a K-Mart, check it out and give the show a listen, if only for the amusement of people trying to explain why they can no longer type.

God And Damn And Christmas

Things are always going too smoothly.

K calls me at 5:20, asking if maybe I can get out of work a little early, because she'd apparently been doing some foot maintenance and cut herself pretty deeply with the callus shaver device,and now the heel wouldn't stop bleeding. I got home as quickly as possible, slightly alarmed by the smeared bloody footprints that trailed from the kitchen, through the den area into the hallway and finally to where I found her in the bathroom, standing on a slightly soaked towel. After an attempt to clean the heel with a wet cloth to at least try and find out what I was trying to band-aid, and finding a small bacon strip nearly an inch long and a quarter inch wide missing, exposed raw, periodically dripping flesh, I realized that we had nothing in the house that was going to soak up that much blood, only a bunch of tiny band-aids. Leaving her standing on her soaked towel, and with her cell-phone handy to call a friend and let them know that she would be missing or at least late for a meeting this evening, I dashed back out the door to buy gauze, Neosporin and some type of tape to wrap the whole mess in at the local drugstore.

My mind racing with the 'what ifs?' of shit like the possibility that it wouldn't stop bleeding with a bit of packing, and the fact that there was so much missing flesh, I wonder if stitches are even an option? I stopped at a stop sign, looked to my right for cross-traffic, not realizing that I was at the one way street headed the other direction, and promptly pulled out on front of a minivan with a mother and two children doing about 35 MPH, who plowed into the front of the Saturn, shifting it sideways, and I fought the metal digging into the wheel to navigate to the right hand curb, the radiator wheezing in complaint, trailing its lifeblood. The minivan ended up on the opposite side of the street, her left wheel on the curb from her vain attempt to avoid my dumbass pulling out in front of her.

The upshot of things is that no one was hurt, though her kids were a little freaked out, everyone had insurance, her vans front panel and right driver's side tire are ruined, the Saturn's entire front end is well and truly fucked, and I received a ticket for 'failing to stop at a posted stop sign', which I didn't feel like arguing should be 'failure to yield the right of way', as I did actually stop at the stop sign, I just went when I shouldn't have. I decided that given my shitty judgement for the evening, I should just keep my mouth shut.

K limped out to her car, her foot quasi-bandaged with several of the tiny band-aids we had on hand, and picked me up after I called her to let her know what was going on, we went to the drugstore and got her foot taken care of, finally, then I spent the next 45 minutes cleaning up what looked like a murder scene around the house.

I basically feel like a total jackass, because we're less than three weeks out from the marriage, and I can't even keep a straight head enough to get her foot bandaged up without wrecking a fucking car, how the fuck am I supposed to take care of her in life?

My Goddamned luck, in two or three years time, she'll be ready to give birth, I'll mistake my keys for a fucking steak knife and then fall on it while running to get the car or something.

The Always Anti-Climactic Day After

Monday after Mother's Day, featuring time spent with regular orders, no phones ringing off the wall, no groups of people jostling for a better space in line at the front if the store near the registers, all seems back to normal, and very anti-climactic, after the fast-paced week we've just had.

One of our ladies is currently looking for volunteers for a charity event this weekend, because she needs someone to work the ticket booths, and trying to find some sort of teenagers who need community service credits for school was brought up. The idea of me calling the school and saying that I had an event planned this weekend and needed to borrow a couple cheerleaders, can you possibly help me out with a few phone numbers? was quickly nixed, much to my chagrin. While I'm not a huge fan of prank calls, it might be nice to see what someone's reaction would be to such a ludicrous request, since I've noticed that they loan out teenage girls who need community sevice credits for college applications to this local gentleman who does balloons and stuff for parties, and this guy looks as creepy as anything you see on an episode of COPS, so I wonder what the average person off the street would be trusted with.

K and I went to a 40th wedding anniversary party this evening, and as with our last major function, at one point in the evening I had to turn to her and remark that we were the only couple in the room under forty, most of whom seemed to be in their mid 50's to early 60's, at a guess. Which I personally find very amusing, as I like to kick it 'old school', and I don't mean old school like rap music from back in the day, keepin' it real and shit, I mean old school like 'be careful there sir, you don't wanna fuck up your hip stepping over this carpet runner'.

A good time was had by all, and we made a quick appearance and then split, my only issue with the event being that I've become strangely numb to K's friend who stands on your toes while talking to you. I realized that she was nose to nose with me, and I was touching her arm as if she might get away, which is weird for me, as I hate touching/being touched by strangers, yet this is her natural state, so there must be some kind of natural pheromone that she gives off that's lulling me into a state of relaxation with her invasion of my personal space. Note to self: buy nose-plugs for the next party.

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Wow, I had posted the above section, and was scanning through my normal blog activities, and found this set of links that I HAD to forward on to anyone who will listen. Via the Blue Glow blog from Christopher Holland, one of the minds behind Stomp Tokyo, two links to You Tube videos of Samuel L. Jackson on Ellen promoting Snakes On A Motherfucking Plane, baby!

Part One

Part Two

The Landmarks Reached And Those Still To Come

As I sat down to write something this afternoon, I realized that the hit counter on the site has now reached and surpassed the 1000 mark, which is nothing in the great scheme of the time-sink that is the internet, but for me, considering that I have a small handful of personal friends that I know might be checking this crap out daily, I find the number quite impressive, unless one of them is especially mischevious and is sitting at work hitting the refresh button instead of returning memos.

I also just realized that after two months and some change of writing in this, sometimes more than once a day, I'm about four or five posts shy of the 100 mark, so that makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something, doing my part to add to the litter and detritus blowing past uncaring travelers on the internet super highway, as they steam past this site to something much more entertaining (careful, the guy in the clip has a boner, don't watch this with your boss standing over you, unless he's way more cool than any boss I've ever had). The best that I can hope to do is to make them turn on their wipers with disgust as something sticky hits their windshield, or possibly chip it somehow as they blow past me in the fast lane, flipping me the bird in their pursuit of pics of swimsuit models and the like.

I did very little today, after the craziness of the past week, it was nice to sleep in a bit. Truth be told, I had a couple whiskey and sodas last evening whilst typing the post, and in my slightly buzzed state and extremely fatigued condition, proceeded to fall the fuck asleep with the lights on in the bedroom, something I usually have a very hard time doing; K actually woke me up sometime around 5 AM when she finally got up and came around to my side of the bed to turn off the lamp.

The afternoon was spent on the couch, got caught up on a lot of television that the TiVo had so lovingly saved for me, including an episode of the Sci-Fi Channel show Ghost Hunters, which I had heard a little blurb about on a podcast this last week and decided to check out. I should've known that if you've seen one of those corny shows, you've seen them all. Nothing more than dramatically played soundbites and obvious music cues. If you see a moment in the commercial that has someone exclaiming "Oh my God, what is that?" it invariably leads to the "Oh, it's just Bob's jacket, there in the closet...not a ghost at all." reveal when they come back from break, same as the "I wonder what we'll find?" being followed up with an establishing shot of the alleged 'haunted' building, with an omnious soundclip played for dramatic effect. If I had absolutely nothing else to watch on television, this might be interesting, but I have at least six movies I could've been watching while I watched these people say things like "Well, we heard a weird noise that we can't explain, but that's not enough for us to tell you that your restaraunt is haunted."

The funniest part of this was K asking "Why the hell do they call it Ghost Hunters when they wear those funny outfits that say something completely different on them?"

A little web-searching reveals that their multi-merchandised acronym T.A.P.S. refers to their affiliation with The Atlantic Paranormal Society.

Pass. Give me the good old B.P.R.D. any day of the week, go get 'em, Hellboy.

And to end on a humorous note, look here for a story about a Paris Hilton video game. I was excited to be able to play a dim-witted celebutante famous for being rich and stupid enough to be filmed fucking some random loser, but unfortunately it's only a game in which you try to find diamonds or something, on your cell-phone, which will give me something to do in between watching episodes of The Simple Life on a screen the size of a postage stamp.

That's Hot, kids. That's Hot.

And a Happy Mother's Day to all that it might apply to.

All Over Now But The Crying

I've been at home from work for several hours now, had a shower and a short nap, so I feel more sufficiently prepared to do this than I have the past couple of nights. I want this post to function as a kind of wrap up for the week, catch up any strange stuff that's happened that might've fallen through the cracks considering my crazy, exhausted state.

First and foremost, I wanted to relate a story I heard when I spoke a couple times with my friend David while I was at work, just to have some small semblance of what life was like in the real world, and he mentioned his amusement with the recent McDonald's related post, noting that he's been craving their food recently, and that it's helped with his chemo-induced nausea, possibly because "I think the chemo is attacking the food rather than the cancer as it sees it as the bigger threat." I think this could be a great marketing plan, but I don't see the Mickey D's folks going for it, no matter how much good they might be doing, even if it's probably inadvertent.

A new discovery this week, since I appear compelled, driven even, to share my newest iPod listening habits with all four of you, is the Psychobilly Deluxe Podcast, which includes under its 'deluxe' banner all manner of musical styles, psychobilly, rockabilly, horror-punk and surf, anything in the general incestuous area, and tends to feature at least two songs per band covered each week. If you're even vaguely into the music, or are just curious what the hell psychobilly refers to, check out The Minister Of Deluxe's main site, and even if you don't want to jack with the iPod thing, there's a direct feed that streams via the site. I can honestly say that my personal tastes tend to gravitate towards the psychobilly and horropunk styles, but there's something catchy about this music. Worth your time if you've ever bobbed your head to a 50's rock song, or hate what our current state of popular music has become. You can even check out a (God forbid) Myspace page here.

In a vaguely related note, a friend who's email addy is rockabillysomething at hotmale.com sent me a link to a bizarre article from an online magazine called Yargh!, which has a couple of amusing features on cheap wine and more close to my heart, a summer camp for those of us who grew up with Snake-Eyes and all the gang.

And to close on a truly strange and unrelated note, I caught a TiVo'd episode of The Showbiz Show with David Spade (yeah, I know he has the weekend update schtick, and that's it, but it's usually pretty funny, dammit!) which featured him interviewing Michelle Rodriguez about her recent decision to do 5 days in jail rather than working community service. My biggest problem is that she's somehow seen as a sex-symbol, as I think she has that same weird vibe that Pink does, except while I think Pink has a pretty face and a creepy, mannish body (her hips freak me out), Rodriguez instead has a nice body, but an odd face. She puts me in the mind of Vasquez from Aliens, (particularly in Resident Evil) a little too butch in the role to be considered for a Maxim spread, but she still turns up in shit like Blue Crush as one of the 'hotties' in a bikini. Feel free to check out the links to all of her glamour shots, but if you watch her in a film, at some point you will find yourself wondering, "What the hell? Why is this girl a star?"

I think it's something about her large forehead that bothers me.

Argue with me all you want on this one...

Up With The Cock

As with last evenings post, regardless of the time that I opened this post to ensure my self-imposed daily commitment to insanity, I find myself writing this at 2:10 AM, on the morning of the 13th, which to me is still the 12th, thanks to an 18 hour day.

Stumbled out of bed this morning, began to get ready for work, and was talking with Karmen in the hallway when we heard this odd strangled sound from the kitchen area.

"What the hell was that?" I asked, and then it sounded again.

"One of them is crowing, we've got a little rooster!" said K, as Bella ran past us barking at the new interloper making noise in her house.

Ah, domestic bliss. Seriously, these birds need to move outdoors, and soon.

Mid-afternoon I dropped the iPod into a bucket of flowers, which got it partially wet, and had me praying for the welfare of the device, to all three members of the Holy Trinity as well as Steve Jobs himself. Steve being the forgiving sort, the Pod is alive and well and charging for tomorrow as I try to string an anecdote together about my day.

Today is a prime example of why I've grown to hate my workplace, which is that we end up working every holiday until we're nearly incoherent with exhaustion, all because my boss seems to overestimate our timeliness and productivity each and every time. We're in the store til 2 in the morning, then expected back at 8 sharp the next day (or later that morning, depending on your level of cynicism) and expected to be in top form, which simply isn't possible, but would we ever consider changing this method?

Naw, that'd be crazy.

This is why I find myself here right now, trying to wind down, since I've consumed a heroic amount of energy drinks and coffee during said 18 hour workday just to try and stay alert enough to accomplish something, and now find myself wired for sound with no real interest in sleep, despite cutting off the stimulants at least 8 hours ago.

It Begins To Get Uglier

And later, each night. Regardless of the time listed on this post, I'm actually composing it at 11:26 PM on the night of the 11th, after a 14 hour day.

Happy Mother's Day.

Walking in this morning from the remote parking lot down the alley, I pass a woman that our head delivery driver has brought in numerous times to help with deliveries when we have a busy holiday. I know her, at the very least, by sight, so I smiled and prepared to say hello or some such pleasantry. She walked past me without so much as a look or a word. I believe I exclaimed "What a bitch!" aloud without even realizing it, and I didn't bother to look over my shoulder to see if she heard me, as she's now joined the ranks that are near legion, of people who are dead to me. This didn't bode well for the rest of the day, if this was any indication of how things will go when I have to deal with the other humans.

The day actually goes by at fairly decent pace, and as I am scheduled to work a day ahead on our orders, I'm doing work for Saturday's delivery, so I don't even have to be aware of what orders are coming in for today, and exist in my own little world.

A recently discovered diversion is the Hot Buttered Pop Culture Podcast, which features general coverage of movies, celebrities, etc., by two guys who can be laugh out loud funny to fairly dorky, depending on the subject. I've caught it the past two weeks, and have found something interesting about it each time, with this episode (#39) being no exception, the story that made me laugh out loud was the fact that McDonald's is undergoing a change in image, which involves forcing their franchise owners to remodel their restaurants to reflect the newer, more upscale image the company wants to impress on the public. They want to have a fucking lounging area with couches and chairs, in a fucking McDonald's. How nasty do you think those couches will be after a week or two of little Timmy spilling his sundae everywhere, or stuffing the remains of his Happy Meal into the couch cushions? And for that matter, who the hell wants to hang around in a McDonald's any longer than it takes to choke down their food anyway?

It's late, I'm out, but I appreciate the traffic and comments of late, and will be back tomorrow evening, work permitting.

Wednesday (Or: I Should've Known That Something Would End Up Screwing Me)

Having had a somewhat light day of it at work, all things considered, I should have been looking for whatever would end up hosing me in honor of the weekday traditionally known as 'hump-day'. I had several bright spots throughout the day, including a strange moment on the way back to the shop during the lunch hour in which I spied with my little eye a jogger wearing something that didn't quite qualify as an 'outfit', this particular ensemble could really only be described as a 'get-up', in the sense that one might describe it with a phrase along the lines of "What the fuck's the deal with the guy in the weird get-up?" Out for his mid-day jog, the man was wearing a pair of black bicycle shorts, no shirt, a cowboy hat complete with the little chin-strap-cinchy thing and of course running shoes. The hat totally lost me. Ballcaps I understand, but a cowboy hat is beyond the pale.

Also brightening my day was a new podcast, from the folks over at Night Of The Living Podcast, which has an amusing assortment of guys, along with the token wife, and her voice and personality reminds me a great deal of my friend Shawn's wife. Danyelle, who I know is a fan of Myspace and who probably hates my guts for the comments of the past few days. But then again, she's a fickle sort, so I think she'll come back around, for I'm as charming as the very devil himself. The NOTLP site has very little to offer, as they only recently started the show, and are 3 episodes in thus far, but the banter and camaradarie is quite funny and charming, and their reviews of a few recent straight to video horror flicks were very amusing.

Speaking of straight to video, I had the unfortunate displeasure of watching a movie that TiVo took it upon itself to inflict upon me, Bram Stoker's The Burial Of The Rats. A Roger Corman production, this barely a film (what with a 70-some odd minute running time) featured bad community theatre or worse acting chops, and a group of outlaw females that tended to lounge around in little pleather bikinis. Now, before you start reaching for the Kleenex, let me add that I've never been so bored with onscreen nudity in my life. This movie was terrible, and all those involved should be punished, especially Adrienne Barbeau, who should beat her agent to death for letting her even see this gawdawful script. I also love the fact that her IMDB picture is about 35 years old, from the look of it, and that her first bit of trivia on that page is her bust size.

The true hosing today, for the record, was the fact that I got in a film from those rental throttling pricks at Netflix, Luciano Ercoli's Death Walks At Midnight, which is part of a Giallo festival the Mondo Movie guys are covering this month, and having heard their review, I was eager to check it out. The disc, which was released no more than a month ago, comes in looking as though someone has played skeet-shoot with it. I should have a different copy in by the weekend's time, but I'm sure I'll be too fucking exhausted to care at that point, thanks to the rest of the Mother's Day Shenanigans. Oh well, at least I'll have something to do Sunday afternoon.

My friend Jenny was asking recently where I came up with the screen name, as well as the e-mail address' variation on that handle, so if anyone actually wants to read about it, go here, which gives a pretty thorough overview of the comic book stuff that still colors my adult life. Comics about a terrorist cell fighting against alien gods from outside our dimension, in a crazy non-conformist anarchist kinda vibe, but comic books nonetheless.

There's A Lot Of Catching Up To Do (If You're As Crappy A Friend As I Am)

I spoke at length with my friend Cheryl this evening, which was very nice, just getting caught up, exchanging anecdotes and frustrations about our jobs, and reminiscing about the days gone by. Her main reason for calling was the recent entries here about some of my recent lunches and birthday escapades with our mutual friends here locally, people she misses because of her Fort Worth location, and she was telling me that she hasn't kept in very good touch with me, which I assured her wasn't a big deal, as I have friends across town here that I don't keep up with. I'm a so-so friend, I think, because I tend to get into my own rut, and not pursue friendships as much as I used to, which is something I sometimes think may be relating to adulthood, and growing into a different set of responsiblities, or perhaps that's just a cop-out that allows me to not feel as bad for not making more of an effort. I have been in contact recently with several friends, mostly regarding the upcoming wedding, but it has been interesting in that most of them, in that 'true friend' fashion, have dropped right back into conversation as though no time has passed, which is pretty nice.

But enough sentimentality, on with the airing of today's grievances.

As you may or may not recall, a crazy friend of ours gave us an assortment of chicks for Easter, which are of course slowly growing into chickens even as I type the very words. This is all well and good, as I fully plan to build some sort of containment field, a 'coop' if you will, in the backyard area, once they are large enough to beat the stuffing out of the fat, lazy neighborhood housecats when they wander into the chickens' domain. What I wasn't counting on was how fast they might come to cross words with one another in such close quarters as they are currently confined. Each morning sees a new series of power struggles of a near epic nature, while I try to do simple shit like change their water, all to the tune of flapping, scratching and squawking. These little feathery fuckers are just shy of getting booted out into the elements if they don't learn to rope it in a bit, you can re-establish the pecking order all you want, fellas, just let me get out the door to work first.

The dog is in a perpetually dejected state, as K has been out of town for upwards of 4 days, so Bella has been quite beside herself, especially with me being out of the house for long workdays. She's so down-trodden with her lot in life, she doesn't even follow me to the door, she just raises her head from the couch as I leave, as if to say "Fine, be that way. Bastard." and lays it back down. If only we could attach the back of her paw to her forehead, woe is me. I can only hope to come back as someone this pampered in another life. Yeesh.

I then spend near 20 minutes in the drive-thru of a restaraunt waiting for my breakfast burrito, I assume that the car at the head of the line was broken down and that they had to send a runner down to Auto Zone for parts. Nearly late for work as a result, the day seemed to be heading south fast, the clock reading merely 8:27 in the AM.

I got a call mid-morning saying that the museum has pulled some strings that will allow for the Modernist exhibit currently on display to hang around for the wedding reception, which I find really exciting, a definite bright spot in an a thus far blah week. I also have a suitably pessimistic notion that these people just left us hanging for a few days, just so they could call back and say that we could use the art, while it in actuality doesn't have to be anywhere for a few weeks, they just wanted to look like our heroes. Either way, I'm elated, it's one less thing we have to fight someone about.

Work was long and blah, and our featured annoyance, Chatty Cathy, wore a sweater draped over her shoulders in what I perceived to be a very grandmotherly fashion, one that didn't allow for a lot of movement, as the sweater would fall, clearly indicating that she had zero intention of getting in a hurry about a single Goddamned thing happening today, which is a nice thing to see at a busy holiday. Therefore, tomorrow, I'm coming to work in a robe that doesn't quite close, and some missmatched slippers.

The day after that, I'm taking a walker and an earhorn.

A nice lunch with Becky, an old friend who won't be able to make the wedding, who I hadn't seen in forever. Like I remarked earlier, it's been a week for renewing old acquaintances.

Once I got home from work, I ran across the strangest thing I've seen in awhile, which was in the upper reaches of our cable channels, because we'd recently added a new block that contains BBC America, so whilst searching for episodes of Coupling (Mmnnn, Gina Bellman.) that I've not seen, I noticed a channel immediately below the BBC called Fuse, which was showing a program called Pants Off Dance Off, a title too intriguingly stupid to ignore. I imagined a dumbass play on words involving "I'll dance the pants off of you.." or some such, but this actually has average idiots stripping down to music of their choice, while the video plays behind them and they themselves pop onscreen occasionally, telling you about themselves. Curiously, they don't ever seem to mention their obvious lack of self respect, although several do mention needing money, so I assume there is a prize involved somewhere in this insanity. If I were 14, this would probably be like a Godsend to me, but being 31, and having access to actual hardcore pornography, this just makes me want to wince, because it was like watching a car accident with a play by play from the victims and a soundtrack. The nudity is pixilated, and if I want pixelated titties, I can just check out the Girls Gone Wild commercials, their participants are generally a lot hotter than the ones on display here. As with any reality television, I firmly believe that at least one of the losing contestants should be put to death, preferrably with a handsaw, because it would encourage everyone to bring their 'A" game, if you know what I mean. No more "Ha Ha, lookit me, I made it on television!"-type of half-assing it, if you know that you might be playing for keeps.

Just a thought.

Why Is The Only Sound In My Head Lately That Scream Charlie Brown Makes when Lucy Yanks Away The Football?

Home late this evening, I find it amusing that I've now qouted Futurama's Bender two days in a row as I clock out and head for the door, "Well, I'm sick of this room and everyone in it." I'm not so much amused by the fact that I get to work dorky qoutes into my workplace, but that I'm dead serious and no one seems to realize.

Seriously, this has long week written all over it. It's also occurred to me lately that if I'm this much of a whiney bitch just working in a flower shop, I can't even imagine how bitter I'd be if I actually had a job that was hard, physically or mentally.

An amusing diversion we have on occasion is the funeral work for people with the same name as someone famous, and today we were burying one Mr. Bruce Willis. All day I stifled the urge to change banners reading 'Loving Husband' to shit like 'Yippi-Ki-Yay, Motherfucker!' or the possibly more appropriate 'I See Dead People'.

Lunch with my friend Jenny, who I see rarely between her work and school schedules, so it was nice to get caught up, and rail against Myspace with a like-minded individual. The younger people at her job want her to get an account, prompting her curmudgeonly "I'm 35! Get the hell out of here!" response, which has always been kinda my feeling, that it's aimed at a much younger target audience than me. Plus the general bad web-design, "Siezure-inducing" as Jen calls it, tends to make me want to steer clear, save for a few band-related pages. I don't want the last thing I remember before I pass out to be some kind of 'thanks for the add' comment written in Day-Glo purple glitter flashing at me as I try to grip my computer mouse between my teeth so I won't swallow my tongue before the paramedics find my twitching body a few hours later.

But really, check out Myspace, it's neat.

I also added a new link to the time sink portion of the blog, so go and check out Reese's trashy little page, Speak Of The Devil, it looks like a lot of fun, especially if you're an underage kid looking for advise on sex.

Mother's Day Sucks (Or: Tell Me Again Why I'm Working On My Day Off?)

We put in a little over a half day today, because we have to start gearing up for Mother's Day, which I find to be a little anti-climactic, since my mother is no longer with us, but all I received for my simple question of "My mother's dead, do I really have to work all week for this bogus holiday?" was a few exasperated/shocked gasps from the other workers.

I thought it was a legitimate question.

After draining the venom and bile from my reactions to last night's birthday bash, I would also like reflect that these gatherings are precisely why I was single for as long as I was, because aside from a couple of German(!) women who aren't a part of the regular rotation at those functions, most of the females in attendance tend to be a little dim, and/or a little on the skeevy side.

In this weeks' post was a new horrorpunk compilation from the fabulous ghouls over at Horror High, which has now been in near constant rotation in the iPod and in the car. Horror High Presents: Prom Queen Massacre features a great selection of bands, which includes stuff from The Browns, Blitzkid, Michale Graves, The Rosedales, among many others (20+ tracks total), all narrated by Wednesday 13, and closed out by a great track from Frankenstein Drag Queens. I'm totally loving the full-on comic book hokiness of it all, sue me. This horrorpunk and psychobilly stuff is the only thing that's gotten me truly excited about music in a fairly long time, aside from my current curiousity about some of the darker film scores available.

Relaxing tonight with a vodka and Rockstar, watched a couple of Takashi Miike films, so I could drop them back in the mail to the rental throttling pricks at Netflix. Dead Or Alive 2 and Dead Or Alive: Final, both part of a trilogy starring the same two actors, though each film was vastly different in plot, and none were particularly connected save for possibly containing re-incarnated versions of the previous film's protagonists. DOA 2 was about contract killings with an almost meditative lull in its middle portion, and the third film was near straight up science fiction. Good stuff, all the way around, the films are offered currently as a boxed set from Kino Video. Give it a look.

Maybe You're Not As Funny As You Think You Are (Or: Sometimes People Laugh To Be Polite)

I attended a birthday party this evening, for a friend whose parties I attend very infrequently, and I now remember one of the drawbacks to said gatherings.

Birthday Boy has a friend, who for the life of me I cannot discern how they know each other, but who has the 'life of the party syndrome', and makes damn sure that everyone knows who's in charge of the entertainment. This isn't a position that I usually occupy myself, and I admire anyone who has that kind of chutzpah, but if you don't represent well, why are you wasting your time and mine?

Two themes become glaringly obvious in his 'material' over the course of the evening: A) someone once told him 'repetition works' and B) if you throw enough bad jokes out there, someone will eventually laugh at one or two of them just to shut you up.

I'm not the most cerebral of people, but if you throw a bunch of bad jokes, puns and low-brow humor at me for long enough, the only thing I'm going to be able to give you after awhile is a polite smile, which only seemed to make this fucker work harder.

This was something my friend Rob and I ran into with this guy before, because he's been at more than one party, where we both just kinda stood there and smiled, as he seemed more and more determined to crack us up because we refused to bray with laughter at his antics. This is the main problem, when your supposed 'off the cuff' sense of humor becomes an obvious 'routine' that you're working through material from. This isn't your monologue for your talk show or some kind of open mike night, and you've crossed a line in my book. The guy even ran through a 'comedic' pantomine, titled "The Weightlifter" that had him struggling with imaginary weights that he eventually, after much struggle, pressed over his head. I just wanted to tell him that no one here was an agent, and this isn't fucking Star Search.

And if it were that shit you just said would be one and a quarter stars, tops.

I just don't get it. Obviously, I think that I have a pretty well developed sense of humor, which weaves from dry to low-brow to downright silly at times, but dammit, I don't think I ever try as hard to entertain as this guy does, particularly with such lackluster success. Which isn't to say that no one laughs at his jokes, but just moaning and saying "Aww, that's terrible" when told a horrible pun doesn't read as a glowing endorsement in my book, but it's all this fellow needs to encourage him with his next 'bit'. Personally, if someone isn't into my humor, fuck'em, I cut bait and move on, I don't just redouble my efforts in an attempt to annoy them into a strained laugh.

Supposedly the whole trick to humor is being able to 'read' the room, and I don't think this guy can tell the difference between amusement and pity.

Friday (Or: One Shit-Storm After Another)

The day best described, to quote Bugs Bunny, I knew I shoulda stood in bed.

I always feel odd knowing K is going to be out of town, so I had a weird vibe when I got up this morning, because I knew she was leaving to meet friends in Las Vegas for the bacheleorette weekend.

The unsettled feeling increased tenfold when I went into work and found my desk moved from the original location. Things could be worse, I could've ended up in some kind of Office Space boiler room crying about a stapler, but I still hate it when they decide to move workstations without really telling anyone, and you just come in to find your shit moved around and vaguely fingered through. And what they don't realize is, I will burn the goddamned building down, if they don't stop finger-fucking my personal stuff when I'm not there, vengeance is mine, sayeth the Mob.

Found taped to the desk was a note from two days ago, (because these people can't just give someone my home-number, or at least let him know I'm off for two days) saying that I needed to return a call from a gentleman at the museum, which is our wedding reception venue, because there had been some issues as to whether or not there would actually be artwork in the largest gallery in the museum the night of the actual reception. Which I thought was the whole fucking point of having it in a museum, to have the museum feel, not a big empty fucking building, I'm sure if we'd wanted a big empty fucking building, we could've rented barn 'F' at the local fairgrounds for much cheaper than these pricks are charging for the use of the museum. The last word that I'd heard was unless the current exhibit had to be somewhere by a specific time, they would try to leave it up for the wedding, and having been a child once, I should've known that maybe generally means no, because that's the resounding answer the fellow had for me today, so now we have to scramble to try and fill this enormous space with something for the reception, so it doesn't look like an empty warehouse.

Shit.

This facility has been the biggest pain in the ass out of any of the vendors we've had to deal with, and I have no idea why. The way these people run their business, you'd think we were running them and their family out of their own home for the evening to throw a party, not paying them to use a public landmark.

There is no joy in Mudville, the Mob has struck out.

Double shit.