Isn't This A Desert?

It's still pissing down rain as I write this evening, a puzzling thing that rarely happens here in the arid desolation of West Texas, and on the odd occasion when it does, all that happens is flash-flooding and a confusion amongst the general populace. People have one of two reactions, they either slow down their vehicles to a near stand-still, wondering over this strange moisture falling from the skies, or they go absolutely apeshit and drive like a bat out of hell, throwing all caution to the wind in a futile effort to avoid this presumably apocalyptic weather. Oddly, it's been raining more here than in areas of Texas known for their moisture, it's greener here than in Austin right now, which is a sad statement.

Had lunch with Daveyyojimbo this afternoon, and went with he and his missus to Home Depot to pick up some paint for the crazed Bible-Philosopher styled painter they've hired. I shit you not, we're talking about a man who actually used the words 'condemnation' and 'affliction' in general conversation, he's quite Biblically theatrical, so we countered with 'smote' and 'begat' and beat a hasty retreat into the house. But all that gets ahead of our Home Depot experience, which had us waited on by a woman slightly more rural than I'm accustomed to dealing with, a woman who looked as though she could possibly open a beer bottle with her teeth, a woman who said "I hate it when they open thet door like thet", in reference certianly to the reflection the outdoor sunlight put on her computer screen, but also in possible reference to bad memories it conjured of the barn in which she was raised.

Yee-Haw, folks, I'm talking hill-fucking-billy turned up to eleven.

I've also noticed via a weird hit on the Site Meter that they mum people may be watching. I hope that they don't take offence to my use of their product by way of example of what I was talking about, but if they do, I suppose I'll end up being sued for slander or defamation of mum or something, when I was actually more talking shit about the mums I myself am going to get stuck making, rather than the ones on their site.

Hello, mum people.

Started writing a review of the Entourage stuff for the Big Suck Loser, only to realize that sKincarver had already posted something today, and since I want to try and update that site as well as this one on a daily basis, or at least every other day over there, I'm holding off until the weekend to post anything. In the meantime, go and check out a review for Those Poor Bastards.

No relation to us here at Dear Bastards.

Back to the job tomorrow for a few days, I'm gonna try to crash soon.

Be seeing you.

Ouch

First of two days off, which I spent sleeping the fuck away, because I apparently happen to have some sort of acid reflux/sinus drainage hell that wakes me every hour or so with heartburn that feels like a very large person on fire sitting on my chest. So since I was up every hour on the hour roughly all night, I ended up sleeping until 11:00 this morning, which always pisses me off to no end, considering I usually have some sort of agenda for the day, which is now completely thrown off.

K and I grabbed Thai for lunch, then ran by Best Buy, because I'd decided to just pick up the first season of Entourage, since it was on sale, somewhat coincidentally on the week that I've been watching a lot of the series.

The dentist visit was somewhat painless, though I definitely felt a bit more of his yanking on things this time around, and I have a bit of tenderness of gum this time around. I've come to the conclusion that as nice as any dentist may appear, anyone who wants to scrape this hell out of my teeth with horrible metal instruments is my natural enemy, and any civility I am able to muster for him is part of me buying my way into Heaven with retroactive good Karma.

Continuing with yesterday's dork-fuck ramblings about comic books, I'd like to mention something I picked up awhile back, and finally read last night before going to sleep and being overtaken with vomitous heartburn. Joe R. Lansdale's The Drive-In, based on one of his earlier novels, was adapted by Avatar Press as a black & white mini-series in 2003, and collected as a trade edition later. Decent adaptation, it captured the story quite well, though a lot of the art was a little too European sketchy-looking for my taste, but the story itself was good, a blend of horror, sci-fi, and Lansdale's good old boy Texas flavor.

Watched The Transporter 2 this evening, TiVo'd from cable possibly in an attempt to squeeze it in before I try to catch The Transporter 3, oh, excuse me, Crank when it hits theaters. The movies are complete shit, over the top 'oh, please he'd be fucking dead by now' type of action films, but I like Statham in the role, I've been a fan ever since Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels.

I'm tired, I'm off to bed to wait for the heartburn to try to kill me once again.

Be seeing you.

Ramble On

In an effort to pull myself back into the primordial dork-swamp from whence I drug myself in my late teens, I'm still listening to the old Indie Spinner Rack Podcast when it comes up, which usually ends up covering current artists and books I've never heard of, but today was more of a trip down memory lane, with an interview with Roger Langridge, a New Zealander living in teh UK who gave us a lot of classic work such as Art d'Ecco and Knuckles, The Malevolent Nun. He's working primarily in illustration now, but a lot of his back-catalog is still available, give it a look.

Oh, yeah, and while I was in the dork-swamp, I happened to have a Barnes & Noble coupon handy, so I ended up dropping the bucks on the first two volumes of Mark Millar's The Ultimates series, since I'd liked his and Warren Ellis' work on The Authority so much. The Ultimates was cool, a basic re-imagining of the Marvel Universe Avengers book. I do see a pattern in these 'widescreen' comics though, in that everything is told on such an epic scale, it's quite possible for it to get boring easily, even if they throw in more real world problems, political intrigue/manipulation, and nods to the stories that have gone before. Most of the charm of this book seemed to be piecing together what they'd decide to use from the existing mythology versus what they'd decided to add of their own.

Homecoming is going to be upon us soon, and since I'm planning on being out of town that week, I've been trying to do my part and get things ready for the large, over-blown tacky homecoming mums that we have to make each year. One of our gals has moved here from California, and had never actually seen one of the ugly things, so if you have no idea what I'm referring to, look at this. In an effort to try and work ahead, I spent the entire workday cutting yards of ribbon to set aside that someone will be coming along behind me in the next few weeks and stapling and gluing into something resembling the monstrosity pictured in that link.

Killing the day with me was lil' Agador Spartacus, my faithful iPod and longtime companion, who brought me the aforementioned Langridge interview over at ISR, the usual daily show from (Cool) Shite, and several older Nate and Di Shows, which I'm still working my way through.

Wrote another review for sKincarver and I to talk about amongst ourselves over at Big Suck Loser, watched a couple more episodes of Entourage, and the better part of Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday on HBO, which has run a helluva lot of the Friday The 13th films recently, it's as if they're chomping at the bit for Halloween to get here or something.

Dentist again tomorrow, to take care of the left side of things, deal with that cavity, thorough cleaning and all, which I'm not looking forward to, but oh well, better now than later.

Click on all the above links for more interesting content than you find here, just don't get too spoiled.

Be seeing you.

Tangentially Speaking

I've got a few moments while the wife runs the Yorkie to puppy school this evening, so I thought I'd try to jump in here a bit early and get the hunting and pecking done, since I'm not particularly interested in anything on television, and I slept like shit last night and want to try to get to sleep early.

So there.

Having had a fitful night's sleep, work was greeted with even less enthusiasm than usual this morning, which was only exacerbated by everyone involved's half-assed behavior. Chatty Cathy is still in full-on Night Of The Living Dead mode, dragging her ass around the store with the interest and commitment of a death row inmate, which irks me to no end. Myspace is planning her fucking (assumed) impending nuptials to her favorite seaman (I couldn't resist), and Oldie Hahn processor bitch was on the phone for most of the day, all the while on the clock while the kid did her fucking job.

Oldie has apparently had some sort of loss in the family, which involved her being on the phone at least (no shit) every 15 or 20 minutes to handle some sort of family crisis. I don't know what all they were doing that involved her so heavily, if she was talking someone through some sort of home-remedies style do-it-yourself embalming or what, but what bothered me the most was that if she was that distracted from her workplace, maybe she should just go the fuck home and console her family. Whatever loss this had entailed wasn't one so grievous that she showed any signs of being upset herself, so I'm guessing this was some distant relation, which begs the question why she had to be so involved, but then again, a lot of shit that goes on at my job begs a lot of questions.

Tingling my earbulbs today was a great review of Silent Hill from the Land of Oz, via the (Cool) Shite guys, a new Pickled Embryo, which did a brief rundown of what to avoid at Blockbuster, and a couple of weekend leftovers. The newest Rue Morgue Radio which featured an interview with Chris Alexander, one of their cohorts who's actually signed on to fight uber-hack Uwe Boll in a boxing match, and the latest from The Subculture Collective, Evil A Go-Go # 4, which had the usual mix of horror punk and other assorted goodies.

I've been watching a good number of Entourage episodes on HBO recently, and have this weirdly conflicted feeling for the show, because while I find it really clever, I'm also repelled by the sheer idea of all your buddies riding your coat-tails if you have any kind of success in the world.

I want to go on record now as saying that if I ever become successful at anything, (which is highly doubtful) none of you fuckers will ever see me again. I'll be like a ghost that once softly brushed your cheek in a cold, dark corner of an old relatives house; you'll think you felt something, but I'm long gone, like a wild turkey through the corn, baby.

Be seeing you.

A Musical Number

I finally had an afternoon to try to get the computer room picked up a bit, burn a couple of CD's for the processor kid at the job and to download the newest Creeping Darkness Podcast, which was way cool, it's a lot like when sKincarver was still living here locally, and would pass off a CD of new odds and ends to me when we got together for lunch. The links to the left have officially been updated to include this fabulous new audio intrusion, hop to it and check it out, kids!

When I'm grabbing most stuff for the iPod, I don't tend to get too far outside the cinema and Hollywood gossip realm, so when I do happen to luck upon a music related show I like, I'm always pleasantly surprised, which has been what's happened with the Hellbilly Nightmare Podcast, and all three shows on the Subculture Collective Podcast feed. This week P-Rickey gave us a killer show that included stuff from The Kings Of Nuthin', The Revival Preachers, and many others. Of particular interest was the track by The Revival Preachers, The Ghost Of Hank Williams, which was waay cool, head over to their Myspace page and give them a listen, though from what I'm seeing there, the band in this particular incarnation looks to be defunct.

Hellbilly Wreckhouse was interesting this week, with a little too much gum-smacking going on, but sandwiched around that was some good music, from several people I'd never heard before, including The Rumblejetts and Soddy Daisy Hayseed.

Psychobilly Fury was up on Saturday, and Donny gave us some cool shit as usual, but what really caught my ear was Josh The Devil And The Sinners, and a track from The Head Cat, which features members of The Stray Cats and Lemmy from Motorhead, and reminded my a lot of Cry, Cry, Cry by Johnny Cash. It was an awesome song called Big River, go find it now.

I did have the time this afternoon to visually stimulate my twitching eyebulbs with a bit of cinematic entertainment, the latest arrival from those rental throttling pricks at Netflix, a film called Brick, which was reviled by my buddy sKincarver, and briefly reviewed by me over at Big Suck Loser.

That's all for today kids, I've been linking my little heart out, I'm over it for now, I hope you enjoyed our small musical interlude today, we'll be back to the complaints and grievances tomorrow, I'm sure.

Be seeing you.

The Big Two Oh Oh

Today will mark my 200th post in wasting your time and mine with the petty details of my life.

I'm taking a brief moment to open the lil' Blogger window, so I can make certian that this posts on the proper day. Taking this precaution because we have some folks coming over this evening, and since I have no idea how long that will run, I'm making sure that I don't miss my daily deadline.

More later.........

*************************************************************************************

Okay, it's now about five hours later, and I can bore you with the details of my life in full, rather than while pressed for time.

Work was fairly boring, and brought to the fore several of the usual pet-peevish problems that I tend to have with a couple of co-workers, specifically Chatty Cathy and someone I'll refer to here as Myspace, since she recently picked up a guy who turned out to be a stalker 'loving you from the bushes' type of cat who didn't want to leave her alone. The issue with Chatty, as her friends call her, is nothing new, she just moves as though she's auditioning for the latest George Romero feature, this slow fucking zombie shuffle that has to be seen to be believed. I swear I've seen lice falling off her because they think they can find a better offer that has enough activity to keep the fucking blood flowing through her veins.

Even when I'm doing nothing at all, I can still manage to move as though I have a purpose, dammit!

Myspace, however, is only recently making her way to my shitlist, but has nearly become number one with a bullet. For reasons stated in that previous post, which basically devolve down to making herself look better by drawing attention to any sort of suspect behavior on anyone's part, which includes her supposed frineds, I've recently taken a 'not interested' stance with her, since she can't seem to keep anything to herself for very long. I've also taken to referring to her as 'Myspace' because whilst dating her current soul-mate, who recently left for a career in the military, she's been trolling for booty on Myspace, and then managed to find the one stalker who wasn't just looking for a 12 year old. Not a month ago, I was introduced to her online booty call boy, at the time being called her new boyfriend, and now she's blathering on this afternoon about moving to California to be with her military love?

Huh?

Gimme a fucking break sister, a year from now is probably at least two men and a case of crabs away, why don't we slow down on the packing, okay?

Oh well, I'm tired and off to bed, I'll have some iPod links that no one will be interested in for you tomorrow, as well as a possible movie review or two.

Be seeing you.

Longest. Day. Ever.

It wasn't like we weren't busy at the job today, but for some unknown reason, things just seemed to drag the fuck on all day long. After thinking to myself that time was standing still about 68 times or so, I got the chorus of that damned Rush song in my head and spent the rest of the day trying desperately to drive it out, at first with the iPod, then eventually in the back parking lot with a bit of brick.

And what didn't I listen to today?

I heard the new Filmrot Podcast, several new Reel Horror Podcasts, since they've started breaking the shows into smaller portions, seperating out interviews, news, etc. into different casts. Checked out the newest Pickled Embryo, which had a theme centered around cannibal films this week, and made mention of the Emanuelle And The Last Cannibals film, noting that there have been any number of Emanuelle films, and actresses playing her. I've always associated them with the Lassie school of film-making, in that when the latest one gets a little long in the tooth, they seem to just put her down and bring in a new one without really acknowledging it.

I also grabbed a few older Nate and Di Shows, which are always bizarre and generally blasphemous, one of today's, for example, describing God's "feeble attempt at foreshadowing" in Genesis when he warns against eating to the tree of Yadda and Whatnot. Okay, so I paraphrased there for my own amusement, but the foreshadowing line is theirs and funny as hell. There's a shitload of content available over there, so I've been working my way backwards about three shows at a time, and I haven't even gotten to the beginning of this year yet, and there's still all of 2005 to check out.

We finally finished the remainder of Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, which wasn't nearly worth it after the goddamned epic battle it took to get the proper disc here. Couple that with the fact that King has the reputation for losing his steam in the third act of a lot of his material, which completely happened here, much to my horror. We're talking about a series that was 13 episodes long, and when you get to the, ahem, (alleged) climactic final episode, it seems to grind to a fucking halt with an roughly an hour and a half that was akin to watching paint dry, and not even an exciting color of paint, more something in a boring brownish earth-tone, possibly something in the fecal family.

Bah.

It was amusing to see the little girl from Silent Hill in an earlier role here, playing the little ghost girl. Maybe Hollywood has decided that she's just going to be typecast, and that's that. It looks as though she's starring in Terry Gilliam's next film, Tideland, which will finally be released later in the year, supposedly October, here in the States, if what I've read is true.

I did get a copy of Brick in the mail, I'm very much looking forward to it, I've heard good things about this high school noir revenge tale.

Downloading stuff for tomorrow, I'm out, kids.

Be seeing you.

Celebrity Waiting

An interesting evening to say the least.

The wife, as reported before, had been recruited to host a table for a fundraiser, the theme of which was 'celebrity waiters' and TVLand.

This had caused me to draw attention to K's lack of celebrity, per se, my concern stemming from my impression of things being more about local celebrities, rather than television ones. The event was quite entertaining, considering that people seemed to run with the whole 'celebrity' theme, which led to an entire table full of Marilyn Monroes (some of which were males), a Mrs. Doubtfire, and anything associated with Hollywood, rather than stuff actually relating to the theme of 'TVLand'. The wife dressed as Linda Lavin, 'Alice' from television's Mel's Diner, and turned out to be quite underdressed, considering the fucking table dressed as Batman, Batgirl, and any number of his Rogue's Gallery.

Had we known, we could've all got in on the shenanigans, and dressed as other waitresses, Mel himself, or just as the rednecks who frequented the diner on the show.

Alas.

It was all quite strange and surreal, and I am pleasantly buzzed on free wine, so I have no room to complain.

Oh yeah, and the workday was boring as shit, I can only hope to say the same about the weekend as well, considering that I'm not interested in working late and building someone's wedding who doesn't matter to me in the slightest.

I'm buzzed, I'm off to bed.

Be seeing you.

The Pleasure Of My Leisure

I have to say that one of the best things about having the laptop around the house is that one can chill on the couch with a drink in the mid-afternoon, half-watching an old episode of The Avengers and still hunt and peck out today's post, rather than being tethered to the computer room as I usually am.

Have a couple of things I want to write up for the Big Suck Loser, but I'm unsure what order I really want to post them in, since a lot of the stuff I've been watching lately is older stuff, and I don't particularly know how interested anyone is in my thoughts on a 20 year old film. Actually, when I think of it that way, I'm not so sure anhyone should really be giving too much of a shit about my thoughts on anything at all, movies or otherwise.

Since I've had several days off in a row, I'm now dreading going back tomorrow more than usual, but I apparently need to be there since our assistant manager is going to be going on her vacation, and they seem to want to treat me as if I'm going to take up some of the slack. I don't know that this is going to happen, but whatever gets them through the night, right?

As I tell anyone who asks me questions at the job, "I barely even work here."

We watched the latest Girls Next Door, which had one of the most surreal scenes I can imagine anyone ever having to deal with, which was Hugh Hefner meeting one of his girlfriend's grandfather, who's obviously the same age as Hugh. I really do find the show strangely fascinating, just because of shit like that, interactions with the families and whatnot, where I just can't imagine it not being vaguely awkward somehow. If I were dating my wife's MOTHER, rather than the wife, I'd figure she and I would have odd conversations about the weather and shit like that, because you can't just blurt out "What the fuck are you thinking?" without it ruining dinner, y'know?

We also watched a bit more of the Kingdom Hospital mini-series this evening, since Netfux was kind enough to finally send me the actual disc I needed in the proper envelope.

Tired now, more tomorrow, since work always tends to bring hassles and drama.

Be seeing you.

The Hills Have Silence And The Planes Have Snakes

The good news is that the plumbers were able to fix the inexplicable leak beneath the kitchen sink with no hassle whatsoever, with neither their involvement with fixing a warrantied item, nor in the actual repair of the leak. A quick visit and then they're on their merry way, without my even having to sign anything, a rarity when it comes to my involvement with repairmen.

I was dreading the bad news myself, because it was the leak in the same place that of course drains into the closet where I store my billion DVD's, rather than into some place that I don't give a shit about, like my neighbor's bedroom, for example.

We did indeed have the opportunity to catch a mid-afternoon showing of Snakes On A Plane, and I have to agree with the opinions expressed by both Corinthian and Reese over at 2 Minute Movie Reviews, this film knows it's pretty cheesy, but plays it well. Quite fun, and well worth your time.

Listening to the Twin Peaks Soundtrack this evening as I write this, for a nice jazzy vibe.

After a nice dinner of leftover chicken spaghetti ( the wife's been very Holly Homemaker recently, I suspect an affair), we watched what the kids would probably refer to as a shit-load of television. I'd bought the Chappelle's Show: The Lost Episodes DVD today, because Best Buy had one of their random sales and had it for the really low $8.99, which was great for me, but would've probably enraged me had I bought it a few scant weeks ago when it debuted for a sale price of $14.99. This happened to be one of those few times when waiting it out didn't end up screwing me out of a few extra bucks.

We watched Chappelle, which was okay, but obviously not up to the usual run of the show, as these were cobbled together from material after Chappelle quit. Does anyone out there have the full story on that one? I've been curious....

Watched an episode of Entourage, TiVo'd off HBO, which was something the (Cool) Shite guys talked about awhile back, that I'd decided to give a look. While I can't really get into the whole idea of someone making it big and basically deciding/being expected to bankroll all their friend's lives, I have to say it's an entertaining show, and Jeremy Piven's Ari character is such a prick, it's hilarious. K and I have been using one of his catch-phrases "Let's hug it out, bitch." for nearly a year, as we'd caught it while flipping channels, and thought it sounded great. Worth a look.

We watched Silent Hill tonight, which K really enjoyed, and I had seen before, but was impressed enough to write a review for the Big Suck Loser site, even though I'd already reviewed it here, back in the archives. Great film, dreamy and creepy, check your plot-hole nit-picking at the door and just enjoy the creepy atmosphere and visuals.

Tired, off to bed...

Be seeing you.

Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They're Not Googling You

I was somewhat relieved to learn that the odd hit on the Sitemeter that was based on a Google search from someone looking for our names coupled with the keyword 'wedding pics' was from the processor fellow at work. He'd mentioned this awhile back, and I was happy to hear it was a friend looking for us rather than an in-law.

This in mind, I've finally completed the somewhat daunting task of excising any incriminating names from the blog, all near two hundred posts of it, so I'm feeling quite proud of myself. I'm just glad I had this brainstorm now, rather than in a year or so when I really had a shitload of crap to dig through.

During said housecleaning, I was able to listen to a couple things, including the newest Rotcast, which had their thoughts on the Snakes On A Plane film, as well as the latest Evil A G0-Go, and what the hell, a (Cool) Shite Daily Cast, just for shits and giggles.

Watched another disc of the Family Guy stuff this evening, giggity giggity goo, as Quagmire would so succinctly put it. Finally got around to watching the Thai import Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, which was pretty impressive, if only for his stuntwork, and did indeed suffer from what I'd heard about in numerous reviews, which was an annoying habit of showing each stunt/fight from several different angles repeatedly, sometimes in slo-mo, which, if removed, would've possibly shaved about 10+ minutes off the film's running time. At first it was a cool effect, "Oh, cool, you get a different angle" then that devolved into "Okay, we get it, he's cool as shit, he slid under a car, why aren't we moving on rather than re-playing this scene three times?"

We have a date tomorrow afternoon to catch a matinee of the Snakes, which I'm quite excited about, as well as the DVD debut of Silent Hill, which I've been wanting to re-watch since I saw it in the theatre a few months back.

Be seeing you.

TVLand Part Two

A nice day off, spent on the couch for the most part, enjoying a lot of television and a couple of movies. Possibly a subconscious move on my part, but I found myself watching and then writing a review of Flightplan for the old Big Suck Loser this afternoon, possibly to continue with the 'planes in peril' theme begun with Corinthian's Snakes On A Plane review yesterday. Check it out, Jodie Foster fans, and tell me how full of shit I am.

I also re-watched a TiVo suggested Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson, which was recorded of their 'secret stash' segment, which airs un-edited, and was quite funny, particularly Sarah Silverman, Lisa Lampanelli, and Courtney Love looking more fucked up than your average...shit I don't know, who's usually more fucked up than Cortney Love? I'm at a loss.

Watched a couple re-runs of Dave Attell's Insomniac that the TiVo had taken it upon itself to record, which makes me think I've recorded too much stuff about drinking and debauchery if the TiVo decides I need to watch Attell booze it up with the dregs of humanity.

Since the Kingdom Hospital was a no-show, I decided to throw in the first disc of the second volume of the Family Guy, which was interesting because it was something I've owned for awhile, but have never watched in its entirety. Fun stuff as always, I nearly lost it in the season opener when they did the parody of any drama series coming back from a break with all manner of cliches played out before settling on "Brian's moved to Hollywood?!?"

What with all the comedy of the day, I ended up listening to several bits off You Tube as I wrote this crap up this evening, which makes its lack of humorous content even more unacceptable.

Be seeing you.

When It's Not Netflix Screwing Me, It's The Netflix Users

We finally received the next disc of the Kingdom Hospital series in mail yesterday, which was a nice plan for the weekend, four more hours of King's creepiness. The only monkey wrench in this plan turned out to be the fact that the last fool who had the discs happened to place disc four into disc three's sleeve. Annoyed as hell, but hoping against hope, I waited to be truly pissed until we'd seen the next shipment, which came today, praying silently that the third disc would somehow arrive in disc four's sleeve, the same way Santa Claus saves the day in some sort of child's fairy tale. This did not happen, because, as we all well know, the Easter Bunny killed Santa Claus a couple years ago in a knife fight at Snow White's house. Sitting as we are, on two copies of the fourth disc, I even braved the local video store, dusting off the rental card I've not used in nigh on to a year or more, while Netfix has been screwing me via the postal service, in a vain attempt to rent a copy of our errant disc locally, but to no avail.

Resigned to our evening of alternative entertainment, we made a brief visit to K's mother, and then ran out to the nephew's ballpark sleepover party, which he and 7 friends were settling in for, then came home and chilled out, relaxed with a TiVo'd copy of Batman Begins. Wrote a bit for the Big Suck Loser site, you should all go and check out Corinthian's review of Snakes On A Plane, which I'm planning on catching early next week, everyone's online suggestions of crowded theatres be damned, I'm doing a matinee on Monday.

I'm just that anti-social.

Today at the job was pretty slow, which makes for a nice relaxing day to top off the week, and also is quite conducive for the listening pleasure, so I was able to squeeze in several shows this afternoon. The latest Hellbilly Wreckhouse is up for your listening pleasure over at The Subculture Collective, who I recently noticed have reciprocated the link I've given them, which was way cool of them, go check 'em out. I also hit up a lot of the usual suspects today, such as Mondo Movie, DVD Weekly Podcast, and The C.H.U.D. Show, which interviewed the Broken Lizard guys about their new film Beerfest.

Tired, off to bed.

Be seeing you.

And To Think I Was Worried About Jinxing It

The workday was, like the tortoise, slow and steady, with one of the broads working on the boss-lady's wedding flowers, while the rest of us did daily orders, and at the noon hour, I had a strange feeling that we might get out at a normal time, rather than end up working late as we usually do on Fridays before a wedding. I'd no sooner thought this than I had a small panic attack, as I was convinced that letting the thought out into the metaphysical realm might jinx things for us and end up, as the kids say, fucking me in my goat ass.

My goat ass turns out to be fine, however, as the rest of the afternoon went by fairly smoothly, and we left at a normal hour.

Chugging away with the iPod ready media, I was able to listen to several things this morning, including the newest Rotcast, which had been recorded whilst one of the guys was in the middle of a blog-a-thon, in which he posted stuff at least once an hour for a 24 hour period, which sounds crazy enough to try one of these days. I'd be curious what kind of stress test that might end up being, what with the normal content here, because with his usual content of movies, news, gossip, etc., he at least had some kind of stuff to be searching for, whereas I can't even begin to guess where I'd be linking you poor fuckers to after about 14 hours of it.

I had a chance to check out the newest Night Of The Living Podcast, which had even more in-fighting than usual, and was funny as hell, covering a couple of things sKincarver has recently reviewed for our other site, Zombie Honeymoon and The Descent, give them a listen, it's worth a download.

I also heard the latest (Cool) Shite Daily Show, Reel Horror Podcast, Cinemaslave (who read an e-mail from my pal Ellen Aim), and this weeks Mark Kermode Podcast, which had interviews with both Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Smith, so I was able to kill time right up until the bitter end at work, which works out famously.

I've long been plotting a re-painting of the computer room, not the least because I tend to spend a good amount of time (at least a few hours) in here every night, and the turquoise walls just aren't to my taste. It's the one room K was a little protective of, color-scheme-wise, and of course, it's the one that makes me nauseous, so since the wedding, she's consented to my plans to change the wall color to something darker. With this in mind, I've been planning a bit of decoration for the walls as well, which will entail a band of framed pictures and art, probably 2 feet high, that I want to run the circumference of the room, slightly above waist height. Most of this I believe I can grab fairly cheap on e-bay, just some random horror posters that I've run across, little Japanese style flyers, actually, mini-posters about the size of a sheet of typing paper, along with a few other odds and ends to make up the dead space between pictures.

Decorating in mind, I'm off to shop a bit.

Be seeing you.

My Own Personal TVLand

Since I've had an odd run of days off this week, I've had a chance to work through some of the stuff I've been hoarding on the TiVo, which included a couple episodes of The Prisoner off BBCAmerica, a couple of Poirot films, featuring Agathie Christie's favorite Belgian sleuth, and a couple of random Futurama's. This was helpful this afternoon after I had gone to the dentist and was laying about waiting for the drool to dry and the feeling to return to my face, the filling went well, and I get to go back in two weeks to do the other side, as I apparently had a matched set going.

I also wrote a couple of new reviews for the Big Suck Loser pop-culture wank-fest that should be on everyone's list of where to go for reviews of old obscure shit that they might want to rent on DVD if the video store is out of the film that they really wanted. Mr. sKincarver has been hard at work, actually giving the thing an archives page, so you can now search alphabetically through the reviews for either music or video, without having to page through all the damned entries just to find out we've never reviewed anything you want to watch anyway.

I also sat down with The Fog re-make with the wife last night, there's a review forthcoming after I try to put the amount of indifference and boredom into words that will somehow capture the feeling of despair I felt after watching it, or as Mark Kermode would have you put it: "I believe that film represents the death of narrative cinema as we know it."

I'm off to hit my usual suspects and call it a night.

Be seeing you.

Who The Hell Left All These Typos In Here?

As I've been running through all, and I mean all of the past posts on this stupid thing, carefully editing and nipping and tucking all the named names that I don't feel need to be available for the Google search-engine, I've noticed a good number of typos, which annoys the hell out of me, as I thought I fairly well fine-tooth combed these damned things before they become available to the general public. Thankfully most of it seemed to be simply inverted letters when I got ahead of myself in my hunting and pecking, rather than me spelling shit out phonetically, so I at least have that going for me.

Since I have very little to add to this bullshit this evening, I've decided to try and turn out a few reviews for a couple films I've watched recently, over on the old Big Suck Loser, since it's not been updated in several days. I'm not sure what will actually drum up traffic for that site, since it's updated somewhat irregularly, and when it is, it's not usually anything very topical.

Had an eye appointment today, just to see what my vision was like, which in spite of reading in shadows and stuff against my mother's best wishes, I'm still 20/20, which is cool, I expected some kind of bad news, just because if there's a doctor involved, I usually get bad news. He did mention that I could have a little fuzziness of vision with distances at night, with street signs and the like, but until it becomes a problem, I should just continue to drive through people's lawns. Okay, I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea, I'm okay, if it ain't broke, don't make it wear glasses.

I also made a pass through our one comic shop here in town this afternoon, which had recently moved to a new location, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that you can't go home again.

When I was a young nerd (as opposed to the old nerd you have writing for you now), I worked in the stereotypical comic shop, which was dirty and had an odd odor, with debris piled to the ceilings and just a treasure trove of old crap to be dug through. It was later bought out by another owner, who, while not a fan of the material at all, knew there was a buck to be made, and dived in with both feet, and with my actual knowledge of the merchandise, and a great amount of cleaning, we made his store pretty damned successful, as a more high-end version of what had gone before. It was a decent stab (for this town, anyway) at creating a retail outlet that happened to sell comics, clean and organized, rather than the dirty 'hole in the wall' cliche that most stores of the mid-eighties were ghetto-ized as. Once I left his business, and the market for his wares crashed in the early nineties, we were left with only one shop standing here in town, which has undergone a series of face-lifts and re-vamps, and now functions as a combination of (no shit), comic-shop/cell phone outlet/printing shop. So if ya need a copy of Spider-Man, a new cell phone plan, and a couple t-shirts printed that read "I'd rather be doing something dorky", this place is your one-stop wonderland.

Holy Christ, this is a random tangent, but seriously, it's a weirdly depressing thing to realize that even if I was interested in getting back into an old hobby out of nostalgia's sake, I'd have no end of frustration with trying to do it here in town, as the one game around has very little inventory to support the walk-in clientele. He operates on the assumption that people want to come into his store with an idea of what they want, and then have him order it in for them, over the next couple of weeks, which isn't necessarily how this hobby works. People generally want to actually see the merchandise, and actually having it on hand allows for crazy shit like impulse purchases, which doesn't happen if all you have to show your customers is a catalog.

Hell, I have the internet at home, it's like a really, really big fucking catalog!

Plus, I don't have to push my way through all the nerds in your store to order my stuff on the internet.

I'm off to shop.

Be seeing you.

Was Today Payday?

Weird, the things that slip your mind when you're enjoying the day off.

Oh well, while I wasn't even vaguely worrying/thinking about work today at all, I made the time to catch up with Robbb for lunch, and a bit of running around, got caught up on his rather hectic life, and saw the originals for the art he's been posting on his site, which can be viewed here, for all those itching to be dazzled by fabulous art.

K and I had to run the mother-in-law to the rehab for her hip this afternoon, which gave us the hour to kill, so we spent it picking up greeting cards for one of the nephews, whose birthday party/cake/gift opening thing was this evening. (I only term it that way because his birthday is actually tomorrow, which is his first day of school, and his actual party with his friends isn't until the weekend, so tonight's get together was simply a family affair, and half of the family wasn't even able to attend.) The Hallmark lady had the vaguely hostile demeanor of a woman who has just entered her living room to discover that one of her guests has taken a shit on her table, and she has no idea who it was, and suspects everyone. You know how most stores you enter actually force their employees to acknowledge you? Hallmark hasn't caved to this whole 'making you feel welcome' pressure, apparently, because we entered to a silence not unlike that of a wake, and a store that had three different sets of customers, us, a single father with a child, and a woman shopping with her two children, all of whom this woman was glaring at as if the entire fucking group of us weren't a normal mix of clientele, but a sticky-fingered group of teen hellions, all bent on loading our pockets for bear with as many greeting cards and cheaply painted trinkets as we could possibly carry. When I was un-shaven and had hair down my back, dressed all in black and looking generally moody and out of place, I was accustomed to being eyed suspiciously, but looking pretty normal these days, fuck this lady in her goat ass for giving me the evil eye as if I might even want to own any of her lousy product, let alone be bothered to steal it.

"Trust me, bitch, if I wanted to steal this stupid owl-shaped paper-weight with a Psalm engraved on its' ass, you'd be the last person to catch me doing it!"

So anyway, that's why we can never go back to Hallmark...

In a random bout of paranoia, which I rarely have, I've decided to go back through the body of the text on the blog and possibly re-edit a few things, not for content, as I stand behind anything I've ranted about here, and hold a grudge like a Muslim, but to eliminate the wife's name, save for an initial, which I would imagine may put anyone who might be searching for us a little off our trail. I realize that references to both our names may be floating around the comments, which are beyond my power to edit, save for simply deleting them, which I'm not committed enough to do, since I figure anyone who turned up and expressed interest in this shit has a voice that's not mine to quelch, and the comments aren't necessarily the first thing someone might hit upon anyways. Of course, since I have wasted a good deal of my time on this stuff, this may be a several session process, over the next few days, excising a little here and a little there, but the content will remain the same, just with 90% less incriminating names.

Not that I think anyone's watching, but I don't think you can ever be too careful.

I'm off to dig a shallow grave, and hide my incriminating evidence in it.

Be seeing you.

Sarcastic Americans

If anyone was concerned, the computer has decided to straighten up and fly right, so it has earned a reprieve from the smashing I'd seen in its immediate future when last I was on this site, posting my bitter little heart out.

I was surprised to see one of the (Cool) Shiters lurking on Ellenaim's blog today, when I was running through her commentary, and happened to notice a comment from Dion of Shite fame, teasing her as to her annoyance with the Aussies about the question that they posed a few shows back: Do Americans 'get' sarcasm, or irony?

Trust me, we get sarcasm, we've given the world George Carlin, Lewis Black, and Larry David, haven't we?

Color me fucking surprised when I read a later post on her site mentioning her getting called out by Chris on the daily show today, which I thought was hilarious. Funny stuff, I never fail to be amazed at who might be reading, small world that the interweb is, though strangely (probably thankfully), none of the people that I routinely talk shit about have contacted me yet.

Having said that, I'll be expecting to post tomorrow about my pending slander lawsuits, as all my wronged parties will converge on me at once, if my luck remains the same as it's been in the past.

Speaking of people who will most likely one day sue me into oblivion, Robbb has been producing some extraordinary art for his own sweetcandymarys site, which you should all visit and lavish love and praise upon, because as much as he hates us all, Robbb loves attention and praise. It's what makes him grudgingly human.

He hates love, though.

I'm tired as fuck, I'm off to bed.

Be seeing you.

Apparently Technology Is My Nemesis, Not Google. Sorry, Google, No Hard Feelings?

I spent a frustrating afternoon cleaning out the old iTunes library, some of which was again burned to disc, fighting tooth and nail with the Goddamned albatross of the Lightscribe burner, which does sweet fuck-all of its described duty, save for burning music. I'm labeling with a Sharpie out of habit now, just to try and save the computer's life, as I was getting into that level of annoyance that could very well lead to something being thrown through a fucking window in a fit of blind rage.

Add to this the fact that the computer, which is less than a year old, has begun to act suspiciously slow of late, taking longer and longer to open simple things, and showing no signs of improvement when defragmented. I've begun to suspect a conspiracy of some sort, as if the machines are plotting against my simple happiness and creature comforts.

Perhaps the machines are somehow in cahoots with the chickens and their devious schemes. I'd like that, I think. I'd prefer all my crazy paranoia wrapped up in a neat little package if at all possible.

As a result of the afternoon, I find myself feeling less than forthcoming with anything humorous or interesting this evening, brooding as I am over what the fuck might be wrong with this stupid machine.

We did finish the second disc of the Kingdom Hospital series, which is feeling a bit like the Six Feet Under show in the way that it introduces new characters at the beginning of each episode, though on Six Feet Under, they died in the first few minutes of the show, the Corpse Du Jour, as it were, while these folks only suffer some sort of ailment/accident, and are then whisked away to the haunted hospital. Still veering back and forth across the original series plotlines, and adding King's own spin, it's been pretty interesting so far, but I'm wondering if it will fall apart in the third act like a lot of his work is accused of doing.

Watched Romero's original director's cut of Dawn Of The Dead this afternoon, a film that I had always thought I had seen, but apparently I was just aware of the plot, and had seen bits and pieces here and there. Great stuff, fairly slow-paced, but very engrossing.

Tired and agitated, I'm off to try and sleep, or just lay there for awhile and then get up at 3 AM and try to troubleshoot this damned computer some more.

Be seeing you.

Floral Dilemmas And People Who May Be Going To Hell Faster Than I Am

A minor beef I have (as opposed those that aren't exactly beefs, but more in the neighborhood of a psychotic break that involves blackouts and waking up covered in blood that I don't think is mine) would be with the odd requests that occasionally come through at the job involves the random arrangement being sent to a man. Most men don't give two shits about receiving flowers, hell, I work with them every day and even I can take or leave them.

But we do get the occasional order that specifically requests a 'masculine' arrangement, which I always imagine involving an athletic cup or something, or perhaps a fucking tool belt draped throughout the roses, just to let everyone know that he's a real man. Lord knows, any man receiving flowers is in grave danger of being mistaken for some kinda faggot-fairy nancy-boy, right? Yeesh. Then at the other end of the spectrum, the phone gals do have the note of 'make very feminine' added sometimes, which to me involves a sanitary napkin or a tampon floating in the vase water, but so far, no one has gone for that idea, either.

My genius is being wasted on these fuckers. If you want to start designing specific arrangements based on gender roles, don't puss out on me when we make it very, very obvious who the arrangements are for, dammit!

I sometimes make the assertion that I'm on a bobsled to hell (particularly after writing things like the above rant) and I'm always pleasantly surprised when I find folks who may actually beat me there. I'm referring to the latest podcast to fill my boring workplace hours, The Nate And Di Show, which I'd heard about via a link from the Subculture Collective website. A couple from South Carolina, they run an interesting gamut of subject matter, involving news stories, personal lives, strange dares from their listeners (They smoked a joint in several public places, including an elevator in a hotel, and someone else's parked car at a mall, all recorded for our listening enjoyment), as well as an episode that involve them using a vacuum cleaner to remove a parakeet from the bowels of their recliner. I'd mentioned them a couple times before, but hadn't really had occasion to listen to several shows in a row until recently. Very enjoyable show, pretty offensive content at times, check your PC hang-ups at the door and give it a listen, there's a wealth of material to go through, as they've been at it since mid 2005.

Talking of the Subculture Collective earlier, the latest Psychobilly Fury is up and running, and well worth your time, as usual.

I'm off to dinner and the next disc of the Kingdom Hospital series.

Be seeing you.

Speaking Of Cool Shite...

As I'm known to do, it seems that my unflagging shilling for various podcasts I enjoy has been noticed by another site, which is way cool of them, and much appreciated. The (Cool) Shite On The Tube guys gave the old Dear Bastards a mention on their daily show yesterday, and summed up my site with something to the effect of 'a guy who is very bored at his job, and really dislikes his co-workers', which is amazingly succint and to the point, though I'm a little alarmed that my life and writing can be wrapped up in a single sentence.

This also explains the odd jump in traffic yesterday, which I'd been curious about.

I also listened to any number of other things today, since I awoke feeling weirdly body-achey and like general shit, and had even less desire to interact with the co-workers.

I gave the last two episodes of The Pulsing Cinema a whirl, which are interesting, but make for a weirdly scattered show, in that the guy seems to repeat himself a lot, and has a lot of tangents that he goes off on, which, while interesting most of the time, could wear thin if you're actually trying to get any pertinent information out of the show. For my time wasting purposes, it's fine, but the guy honestly comes off as if he might have burned one before the show, so be prepared for some odd side-stories. I will say that his last show was quite amusing to me for the comic-book related tangents he got off on, including Dave Sim's Cerebus, which was always one of my favorite books back in the day.

The wife and I enjoyed a wonderful meal in this evening, and then watched the first disc of Stephen King's re-working of Lars Von Trier's fantastic series The Kingdom, which was a mini-series called Kingdom Hospital here in the States. Interesting take on it, but I have to wonder what kind of medication King was on when he wrote this stuff, because there's a talking ant-eater and a fucking dance number by the third episode, which had us scratching our heads a little, but perhaps all will become clear eventually, as it is a four disc set.

Tired, off to hit a few more blogs before sleep.

Be seeing you.

Google, Art Thou Mine Nemesis?

"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me."-- the character Brick Top, quoted from Guy Ritchie's crime caper film, Snatch.

Is that you, Google?

Are you my 'orrible cunt?

You continue to send poor souls here on a daily basis, in their search for the fabled 'milf Isabella Rossa', only to have their hopes dashed upon the jagged rock that is my daily written jackassery.

I realize that using the phrase will only drive more traffic here, but what I am finding truly puzzling is why anyone clicks on that link. Believe you me, I've done some searching for porn in my interweb explorations, and I can't fathom why anyone in their right mind would assume that my link, Dear Bastards: Whiny bitching about life and random iPod bullshit that I listen to at work while trying to do as little as possible, wah, poor me, etc, fucking etc. is somehow more porn indicative than all of those other websites that spell the word come with a 'u' instead of an 'o' and an 'e'.

In the spirit of friendship, hiya to all the pornhounds, and I'm deeply sorry that you've been led so far astray.

We went to dinner this evening and ran into a guy that used to be buddies with our friend Buckaroo Banzai, who'd had a falling out with Bucky after he tried to sue a company that they both worked at for a pre-existing medical condition, and Bucky refused to side with him and perjure himself in court. Now those of you who have read even a smidgen of the stupid crap on this site know about my past/present infatuation with comic books, horror movies, and any number of other cheesy, childish pursuits. Nothing I am necessarily ashamed of, but I don't tend to broadcast it in front of God and everybody in a crowded restaraunt, nor does Davyyojimbo, who'd joined Karm and I for dinner. I wasn't prepared then, when the goofiest-looking fucker in the place walks up to us and immediately asks Davey about some fucking Mego Dolls that he'd owned about ten fucking years ago when they first met.

Collector that he is, yes he still has them, and so do fucking I, I'd just never have the sledgehammer tact required to walk up and ask a grown man about his fucking superhero dolls in a public place unless I were prepared to have the shit slapped out of me, and have him call me a vicious liar.

"I own no such thing! You, sir, are an asshole! Security!"

This is the type of guy who'd ask you about making him a dub of a porn tape in front of your 78-year-old neighbor and wonder why you nearly had a stroke.

I did however, get a chance to do my best Tim from the British Office series, looking helplessly at K as this fool rattled on about whatever popped into his head, oblivious to the fact that we just wanted to order our food and run the opposite direction of he and his family.

This town is waaay to small, shit like this is a glowing recommendation for metropolitan living.

Be seeing you. (Unfortunately)

This Is Precisely Why I Don't Tell You People Anything...

Oh, is there any combination of words in the English language that strikes fear in the hearts of men more than the phrase 'family dinner'?

Since everyone has been out of town or otherwise engaged for about a month and a half, we haven't had any of the customary extended family feeds where we all hunker down over whatever is for supper and try not to tread on anyone's personal baggage or tear through anybody's thin skin. While the wife's family is accustomed to this type of event, I, being an only child and very out of touch with my extended family as a general rule, get a little wigged out by it, either wanting to just blurt out what no one else wants to say, or wanting to call people on their passive/aggressive bullshit. Neither of these hysteria-induced reactions are an option, so I do my best to muddle through, chew with my mouth closed, say please and thank-you, and generally be inoffensive.

Where I am offensive, however, is the web,where I can let the expletives fly, and call a spade a spade, or even a motherfucking shovel, if I so choose. I can also vent my various rages regarding shit like the workplace, family dinners, and of course, my beloved in-laws.

I made the mistake, during the cruise, when the mother-in-law wanted to know where the hell I got off to every night around 11:00, of telling her about the blogging activity. She's now blathered a bit about this to the in-laws, who are curious to read it....

You see where I'm going with this.

This is why I don't tell you people anything.

I bluffed and said I'd deleted it as it wasn't getting any traffic, which is only partially true. This shit's still here, but a few people are reading it. I just don't need the wrong people reading it.

I don't think they bought it, but I also don't believe them to be curious or industrious enough to actually try to run this thing down via the old interweb search options.

I was able to catch a matinee of The Descent this afternoon, which was very, very cool, I enjoyed it a lot, check out that link for a review by sKincarver, my brother in arms in the grand circle jerk we call Big Suck Loser, everyone's favorite pop culture bukkake. I also took a few moments to YouTube it and check out the original ending (Spoilers, kids!) deemed too much a of a downer for American audiences, which wasn't dramatically different from what we saw, so I'm not too sure why the change was even made.

After dinner, K and I sat down for the latest installment of one of her favorite horror franchises, Final Destination 3, which was cool as shit, because I love to see teenagers die, and this series was paid off like gangbusters. A review to be forthcoming over at the BSL site, today or tomorrow, time permitting.

Looked further into the Hank III concert, which is to be later this month in Odessa, on the 24th of the month, which I'm planning on trying to attend, since I have no idea when or if I'll get to see any of the various bands I've been listening to, particularly in this area, so I feel obligated to check it out. I know he's played here a few times in the past, so I assume it's worth his time, but I suppose that could change at any time.

There's a new Hellbilly Nightmare up for your listening enjoyment, featuring a lot of great stuff, including Hank III himself, The Saints, Batmobile, and Creech Holler, along with many others. Give it a listen, it's always an interesting mix of stuff, twangy country, metal and psychobilly for your downloadable pleasure.

Speaking of pleasure, and the listening involved, you will want to head over to sKincarver's main site, and download his first ever podcast, his mixtape to the world, which will most assuredly date-rape your trembling earbulbs into submission with his rather eclectic and esoteric selections.

Listen or suffer the consequences...Actually, listen and suffer the consequences.

Be seeing you.

Dear Lord, Why Isn't It Five Thirty Yet?

Today was a big waste of their time and mine, but let it never be said that I'm unwilling to accept the fact that a company's willing to pay me just to fuck around all day.

In fact, I prefer companies like that.

Being that it's never a good sign when we're out of orders to do for the day at nine in the AM, I elected to simply excuse myself from the festivities of daily orders and go help our receiving lady with a bit of fall cleaning, since we're already trying to find places to put our incoming Christmas freight.

Yes, Christmas freight, there is no God, or if there is, he truly hates us.

Rattling around my head via the iPod this fine day we find a new episode of Mondo Movie, which covered the history of the Superman film franchise, the latest Night Of The Living Podcast, filled with the usual bickering, sexual innuendo and in-fighting, interspersed with a brief discussion of horror, great stuff as always, and a random episode of The Nate And Di Show that I grabbed on a whim. I also gave a listen to the most recent Rue Morgue Radio, which reviewed The Descent, splitting the Caustic Critics right down the middle in their opinions of the film.

In preperation for a possible venture into the theatre to check out The Descent for myself tomorrow afternoon, I decided to watch the other 'spelunkers in peril' film that came out recently, The Cave, which I'd TiVo'd this past week. Bottom line, this was an action film with horror/sci-fi overtones, and I liked it better when it had Marines in it, was directed by James Cameron and called Aliens.

The image of people on lawn chairs in the back of a van in yesterday's post apparently cracked a lot of you up, so let me clarify, this wasn't a couple of simple folding lawn-chairs one buys at a Wal-Mart, these were fairly high-end lounge furniture, sitting on a swivelling base, so picture these poor broads spinning like disco balls at the slightest change of speed or direction, and then imagine that they wonder why I had no interest in going to this floral show.

And with that, I'm out, kids....

Be seeing you.

Slow News Day

Fairly boring workday, spent the entire morning out of the store, which is always nice, as it allows for a glimpse into how the rest of the world lives, and that there is life aside from the petty squabbles and power struggles that congest the workplace.

I do have one funny story about the job, because there was a floral trade-show/design workshop thing this past weekend, and several of our women, my boss included, all went to check it out, but since it was happening two hours away, they decided to meet at the store at 5:30 AM on Sunday morning, and drive there to be at an event that started at 8:00. Since five people were going, rather than take two cars, my boss has the standard answer of putting lawn-chairs in the back of one of our delivery vans, which leaves two or three people basically rolling around in the back of the vehicle amidst a pile of lawn furniture every time you take a sharp turn.

One of the girls canceled, the morning of the trip.

They took the fucking van anyway.

About an hour into the trip, around the old halfway point, my boss, most likely after nearly dumping someone on their ass out of the lawn furniture, said aloud :

"Hmm, I guess we could've just taken a car, since there's only four of us."

Classic. This type of logic is why I'm naming my first ulcer after her.

My aural entertainment today consisted of the newest (Cool) Shite Podcast, which reviewed the Renny Harlin masterpiece of action and cheese The Long Kiss Goodnight, which made me wonder why it's been so long since I've seen it. It's worth it if only to see Samuel L. Jackson telling a guy that if he somehow avoids a prison sentence, he'll personally hire a group of guys to come by his house and butt-fuck him, just for spite. Funny, funny stuff, from back when Harlin still made a decent film.

I also listened to the newest Pickled Embryo, a podcast produced right here in the Lone Star State, which is usually pretty entertaining.

Watched a flick this evening, which will be seeing a review over on the Big Suck Loser site, again as a part of Rue Morgue Magazine's little forum selection. Check out a review soon for Lamberto Bava's Demons. Amusing stuff, if you're into the gore thing.

I've noted odd activity on the Site Meter before, but today had an amusing hit, from a connection via Carnegie Museums dot Org., which left via the Evil-A-Go-Go link I posted a couple days ago. Who in the hell could possibly be reading this crap from Pennsylvania?

Which is a funny thought, considering that a good 10-12% of my traffic is Canadian, and that doesn't make me blink, but Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania baffles me to no end.

I blame the Carnegie Museum connection, because there's nothing here of museum quality.

Be seeing you.

Possible Mild Retardation

As I happened to spend a bit of time online this afternoon, I did several things I'd intended to do for quite some time, picked up the clutter around the house, cleaned off the computer desk, made a point to go over the random notes floating around there. When I'm writing this crap, I tend to make a series of small notes over the course of my workday (seriously, I'm that anal, though I doubt you'd ever guess it based on the quality of the final product), either things I want to talk about, or things I want to hit the internet to look for once I get home, and they tend to pile up after awhile, since I may not touch on everything in one specific post, or whatever. So while I did laundry this afternoon, I went through these notes, carefully consolidating and tossing them as each line was checked off, periodically checking e-mail, which had various bits of feedback about Friday's post, and replying to each of them in turn, each time kind of wondering why no one had bothered to comment on Saturday's post. I even paused at some point to go in and open the Blogger draft thingy for today's post.

This is where the possible mild retardation title comes in, as I was even on the Blogger site this afternoon, and never fucking noticed that I hadn't published last night's post!

I don't get high, I wasn't even necessarily that tired, and I wasn't drinking, so I haven't the slightest fucking idea why I hit save draft and moved on rather than publish last evening. I've written more of this crap than I'd care to admit three sheets to the wind after an extremely fucked up day at work and still managed to get it online without a hitch, but last night I had a total brain-fart and simply moved on to whatever the hell I was looking for on the web without a second thought.

Maybe I was subconsciously trying to hide my shame over 'outing' myself regarding my Myspace involvement as well as my guilty pleasure of The Girls Next Door.

This afternoon I watched three episodes of the second series of the Spaced show via the posts that have been appearing over at Electronic Cerebrectomy, which was a lot of fun, but I made myself stop, since there's now only two that I haven't seen. I decided that I want to savor the last few, since that's it, that's all she wrote after the seventh episode of the second series.

I also checked out the short film that The Reel Horror Podcast guys talked about on a recent show, called The Day They Came Back. They interviewed the director, Scott Goldberg, and gave the film fairly high marks. It was pretty standard zombie fare, but very well shot for a small budget, and had a definite cinematic flair.

While cleaning out the iTunes tonight, burning a few music shows to disc, I've come to the conclusion that the Lightscribe bullshit on the computer we have, either the burner itself, or the discs themselves, was basically just a waste of fucking money. The CD's burn fine, but when you go to burn the label onto the disc, the machine wigs the fuck out and won't read the 'media', and refuses to put jack shit on the label, and you end up resorting to writing a label on the disc with a Sharpie like a savage in a third world country.

Technology as always being the double-edged sword that I can't stop grabbing hold of and then wondering at the bloody stump that I draw back.

Hopefully I'll be publishing this as planned this evening, rather than sometime next month, after I regain my faculties.

Be seeing you.

The Girls Next Door

I finally took the plunge last night and took the time to 'claim my blog' on the Technorati site, which was interesting, since you get to choose what tags apply to your own writing, but I couldn't get it to accept phrases like "Cooler Than Jesus" or "Bitch-Magnet", so I had to settle for shit like "Rant", "Horror", "Psychobilly", Etc. I'm really unsure what kind of descriptive tags I'd give my meanderings here, since they veer from personal bullshit to plugs to movie stuff and back again.

During the course of said 'claiming', I was pleasantly surprised to find that a blog I tend to frequent, Tolerated Vandalism, has linked not only my bullshit here, but the Big Suck Loser and the Creeping Darkness as well, so big thanks to him, and a reciprocal link has been added. He does an interesting mix of essays and reviews for all things horror, and while I don't always agree with his tastes, it's never a boring read, give it a peep, kids.

I find myself on the slippery slope that is Myspace recently, not slipping exactly, more like tumbling ass over tea-kettle, since a friend's wife invited me to join and be her friend several months ago. Created the account with the intention of doing absolutely nothing with it, linked it to this blog and nearly forgot about it. I added a couple of my wife's high-school chums that are dear to my heart, and then the page sat there, untouched, for a couple months, until I got a request from P-Rickey of Hellbilly Nightmare, presumably since I've been shilling for his podcast recently, and accepted, then made a request to the Subculture Collective that I was going on about yesterday, and now this evening I get two random requests, one from some hot chick who supposedly is so bored that she wants to show me pics and videos, and then another from a Christian Hip-Hop group out of Austin. After denying both , I have to wonder about the activity that might've sent these people my way, considering that if I want to look at videos of hot chicks, I certainly don't want to fuck around with getting to know them on fucking Myspace, y'know? And as for the Jesus Rappers, way to target market the fucking guy with a site called Dear Bastards, fellas...seriously, way to market.

The little one from work (as I call her, K tends to call her my girlfriend), who just turned 21 last week, came by this evening to pick up a gift Karmen had gotten for her. Since both she and K share a fascination for E!'s show The Girls Next Door, about the lives of Hugh Hefner's fairly vapid trio of girlfriends, and I myself have a 'can't turn away/car accident' kind of reaction to it, it gives the three of us a weird common ground for Monday morning conversation. K decided to give her a copy of the first season of the show on DVD and a tank-top with the show logo on it. She originally wanted to buy her a set that included a tank-top and matching panty, but I had to nix that idea, as I didn't feel comfortable giving barely legal co-workers underwear as a gift. K and I also watched the first episode of the new season this evening, which found Hef celebrating his 80th birthday, and still fucking a trio of women ranging in ages from 21 to their mid-thirties, which is a really trippy sentence to even type, let alone do, this guy is a very strange anomaly in our world.

Tired, sleep now....

Be seeing you.

Open Sesame

It's 8-something in the morning as I open this, just to it'll post on the right day, because with a wedding looming for Saturday, Christ knows when I'll actually get to write this, probably Early Saturday morning, at a guess.

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I'm officially shocked as well as awed, I'm writing this evening at my usual hour, though we did put in a 12-13 hour workday today. They also managed to keep us as late as they could without having to feel obligated to feed us, which turned out to be 8:30 in the evening, ignoring the fact that I for one am accustomed to eating around 6-ish, so by 8 I'm ready to start hitting people. If you want to schedule events that we have no chance of preparing for during actual business hours, and expect us to work some sort of mandatory overtime, then at least do me the courtesy of feeding me a meal every now and then.

End of work-related rant, fuck work in its stupid, stupid ass.

Moving on, while waiting patiently for a new Hellbilly Nightmare to gently molest my trembling earbulbs, I was surprised to find a different podcast dropping in my iTunes yesterday, as the Psychobilly Deluxe Podcast has now been replaced with a feed called The Subculture Collective, which is to be comprised of three seperate shows under one feed, PBD being replaced with Hellbilly Wreckhouse, and joined by two other shows, called Psychobilly Fury and another called Evil-A-Go-Go. Great stuff, interesting blend of genres over the three shows, give it a look and worship at the altar of the anti-mainstream music message.

I'd bought a few older issues of Rue Morgue Magazine from an online bookstore recently, so I've been thumbing through those a bit, and wondering if any of the advertisers are still in business, so I'm off to Google some shit and then catch some sleep.

Be seeing you.

More Thai Than You Can Shake A Stick At

A post title which will I'm certian get a lot of oddball Google hits for 'thai stick', which will go along nicely with my ever puzzled searchers wondering how in the hell 'milf Isabella Rossa' led them here rather than to some sort of site that requires a credit card before proceeding any further.

Seriously. I get at least two hits a day based on a comment Bella Rossa left on the blog awhile back about the whole 'same name as' phenomena she suffers from. I, along with countless porn-hounds, feel her pain.

If I were looking for porn and found this shit, I'd be super-pissed.

Work, blah, who gives a fuck, let's get into the only thing that makes it manageable, today's iPod worthy entertainment.

I finally got around to listening to last week's (Cool) Shite On The Tube, which spoke highly of Y Tu Mama Tambien, a film I saw awhile back and liked okay, but was a little surprised that the guy who directed such a sexually charged film went on to direct Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban. I'd have loved to be in on the meeting where someone screened the story of two swarthy young men trying to fuck anything that moves and then turned to their boss and said "We've found our guy. Harry Potter, here we come!"

A new Cinemaslave, recorded to be run during Joe's time away for surgery was posted recently, a 'best of' which featured stuff from his earliest shows, interesting to hear him really ripping on a few films, notably Because Of Winn Dixie, which I was disappointed to find out was directed by Wayne Wang, a man who has directed some really good films, but has apparently fallen into a cinematic abyss that includes Maid In Manhattan and Queen Latifah's Last Fucking Holiday!?! When the hell did this happen?

Dinner again this evening at the Thai place, I come to believe that they place an addictive chemical in the food that makes one crave it insanely often. Joined tonight by David and Tubb, Tubb telling us of plans to move to the Philippines for a six month period, promising to blog all about it when he does, which I think will make for interesting reading. More on that as it develops.

Back at the house, we visited for a bit, I decided to blow off the V For Vendetta viewing for this evening, push it back for the weekend, after all the upcoming wedding fiascos, and just show the guests a few TiVo'd episodes of the Spaced program, since it's all I can type about recently.

Be seeing you.

The Day Off Wrested From The Claws Of Defeat

Nothing much to be said about today, save for spending a lot of time around the house, watched a couple of movies, reviews of which may or may not end up on the Big Suck Loser site, which currently features a review by the recently re-christened sKincarver for a film called Zombie Honeymoon.

Picked up a copy of the V For Vendetta DVD, planning on giving that a peep soon, but spent today watching a couple things from the rental throttling pricks at Netflix, Fight For Your Life, an exploitation film recommended by The Rue Morgue Forums as part of an impromptu film discussion thing that they do each week, Werewolves On Wheels, a crazy biker film that has cursed bikers turning into (duh) werewolves, and the last few episodes of the Spaced tv show that I'd TiVo'd off BBCAmerica. I felt a bit of pressure to watch this stuff because one of the Acquaintances to the left over there, Electronic Cerebrectomy has recently started posting You Tube versions of the second season of the show, and I really, really wanna watch them, but had no idea what all went on in the first season. The show, from 1999, is still not available here on DVD, despite the popularity of other Simon Pegg projects like Shaun Of The Dead.

I may have to break down and order the complete series, which releases later this month on Region 2 DVD in the UK, since the series is 5+ years old and shows no sign whatsoever of turning up here for purchase.

I say this as if I don't have boatloads of stuff already sitting around unwatched, yet am vaguely stressed about not being able to purchase something else to probably not watch.

Let it never be said that I'm not doing my job as a consumer.

Be seeing you.

The Work, The Pod, And The Dinner

The work bloweth mightily, as one might expect it to after a 4 day weekend, but I just went in and did my thing, tried to mind my own business and do my orders like a good little drone. Of course we had someone out sick today, in addition to two people being scheduled off, so it was a little tight, warm body-wise. Then the bitch who seems to think she and I are real good buddies made a point of joking that I wasn't doing anything, right in front of the boss this afternoon, and things began to get a bit sideways. "Oh, friend, I thought you'd left, I couldn't find you for awhile, I thought you didn't want to work on tomorrow's orders or something."

Right in front of the boss, who then says "Oh, we need to be working ahead as much as we can."

No shit.

"Actually, " I said, to all those present, "I went to use the bathroom, and can give you vivid details of the event if you'd like, I wasn't aware that we had started making announcements about that sort of thing."

I walked away to alleged friend's protestations of how she was only joking, pausing to add "Yes, well, it'd be a different matter if you didn't make a point of 'joking' about it in front of our boss, wouldn't it?"

It'd also be a different matter if our boss and I, gossip that she is, hadn't had a few different conversations about how this same co-worker will sell anyone out in a heartbeat just to make herself look better.

The end of the day then brought the revelation that the boss thought my asking for yesterday off meant I was giving up my Wednesday off instead.

Au Contraire, Mon Bitch.

I explained in a very simple lie that I had already made plans for tomorrow, and that I thought she understood that I was only interested in working four days a week. She maintained that I had misunderstood, but that it was "okay, she guessed" in a vain attempt to guilt-trip me about it.

Better luck next time, lady, you should've gotten to me back when I still had a soul.

The Pod rocketh out with its cocketh out, with new stuff from all the usual suspects, (Cool) Shite, The Reel Horror Podcast, Night Of The Living Podcast, DVD Weekly Podcast, and an older Rue Morgue Radio that I'm still getting caught up with.

Dinner with another couple this evening, we had Thai now that our favorite restaurant is open again, and then home to settle in and try and write something.

This crap is all that I could muster, I apologize in retrospect for wasting your bandwidth this evening.

Be seeing you.