More Rain and Random Stuffs

• It is pouring down rain, lightning, and all that. I've got my giant flashlight at the ready, and that generator is looking more and more attractive. The power has already gone out once since I started this.
• My wife is looking to go back to her old employer, possibly in the next few weeks. I'm not sure how happy I am about it, but I could certainly use a new pair of glasses and we'll have vision insurance again.
• We've been in this house nearly two months, and I haven't hooked up the Wii yet. Still! I'm really that lazy I guess.
• We have a weird mail carrier. He is very inconsistent, which is annoying to say the least. There's a 4 hour window where he'll deliver the mail, and some days it seems like he doesn't show up at all. What's up with that?
• School books should be cheap this semester: I only need to buy a couple to start with, and then one more halfway through the semester. The benefot of taking pre-calculus and trigonometry at the same time is that they use the same book.
• I'm roasting a whole chicken for lunch. Overkill? Maybe. Nummy? ABSOLUTELY!
• Speaking of food, we're going shopping again Saturday morning, and I'm already starting to think about meals. You have to plan early, or you wind up eating meatloaf and tacos for half of your meals.
• I haven't shaved in almost a month give or take... I almost have a beard, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Well, besides itchy.

Gotta squeak in under the wire...

Billy Bob Thornton is still a dick.

I've spent my wife's potential raise for the next year, and she doesn't even have the job yet.

It smelled bad when I peed tonight.

I want new dishes!

The dog is asleep on the couch on a couple of pillows. Because she can't sleep without a little bit of luxury involved.

I want a burrito.

Did I blog today?!?!

I don't remember?!?!

When you're unemployed and relatively shiftless, all the days sort of blend together. Especially in the summertime, where there's little new TV on to remind you of the days. I know I MOWED, so it must be Sunday. Beyond that, any day could pretty much be any other day. You would think I would at least know because my wife works weekdays... except that in the two months she's worked she's missed all kinds of days, which has confused me more!

I keep wanting to have a plan, but I have a hard time remembering my daily blog entry, let alone doing something REAL. Plus, I don't have a desk... I don't have an office. I have a room full of trash and boxes and empty beer bottles. When I have an office again, things might change. I need a base of operations, a place to collect my thoughts, a spot where I can plan things from, put up notes to myself, leave things half-done to come back to later.

I don't have any of those things working from my laptop on the kitchen table.

Too much Doctor Who!!

Yeah!

I've been working my way through last year's Doctor Who DVDs, and tonight they showed last year's Christmas special on BBC. I'm having a blast, and the only thing ruining it is the fact that I'm almost caught up and out of new shows!

Of course, there's always Torchwood to watch... WOOHOO!!

Life is better when you know things!!

Yeah, it is a second entry in one evening. I know... but bear with me, I thought this was pretty neat.

I'm a big giant movie nut. I'm also a huge effing geek about knowing stuff about movies and TV shows, and actors too. I spend massive amounts of time on the Internet Move Database checking out who played what character in most of the stuff I watch and enjoy. For instance, the Sci-Fi Channel (or maybe Chiller TV?) showed old episodes of Tales from the Darkside all morning and into the early afternoon. I like the show, I remember being seriously freaked out by it as a child. I was probably 10-14 during the show's run, on late-night TV Friday nights. I remember watching it on a little TV in the dark, sitting close to the screen with the volume sort of low so that I wouldn't wake my parents. In the dark. In an old house on the outskirts of town with miles of woods in all directions.Check out the intro to it, and tell me if I was wrong to be scared!

Anyhoo, I'm watching the show and playing a sort of game of recognizing actors and thinking about the other things they've done over the years. It was lots of good times, and you'd be surprised at the sort of actors who were doing weird TV gigs in the mid-1980s: John Heard, Jerry Orbach, Penelope Ann Miller... the pilot was directed by Bob Balaban, who is probably better known for being a staple of Christopher Guest's improvised movies. The same Chrstopher Guest who is married to Jamie Lee Curtis, and is a member of Spinal Tap, and played one of the villains in The Princess Bride (the one with six fingers!).

I digress... but that's the point! The whole point is that just watching TV gains a massive amount of depth when you know stuff about it. It is great fun to watch an episode of Law & Order SVU where Diane Neal plays a woman involved in raping a male stripper and murdering her friend who helped, knowing that she goes on to play a District Attorney on the same show a season or two later. Or watching the Law & Order shows, and noticing that most of the regular casts and lots of guest stars were also regulars on OZ, HBO's prison drama. Even if the TV show or movie you're watching isn't that entertaining, knowing about the cast can add a certain something to the viewing pleasure.

That brings me to the reason I started this post, oh so long ago: I saw a commercial for Burn Notice, the show all of you should be watching. If nothing else, it has BRUCE CAMPBELL in it!! Anyway, I saw the commerical for next week's episode. The main character's name is Michael WESTEN. Next week's episode includes a guest-starring role for an actor names Michael WESTON. Not identical, but close enough to give me a chuckle... plus, I like Michael Weston. He guest-starred on Scrubs as Iraq war veteran "Private Dancer" and on House, M.D. as the private investigator House hires to stalk Wilson.

See what I mean? It is like a weird sort of scavenger hunt every time I flip on the TV!

Getting ready for the weekend!

For most people, that's about getting sexied up, getting their groove on, or otherwise being cooler than me. For me, weekend prep means cleaning the house. Exciting, right? I like to take an hour or two to wipe down the kitchen, pick up around the house generally, and vacuum stuff. When I do it Friday, it means I DON'T have to do it Saturday or Sunday. More time for blogging! Woo!!

When I was in the Marines, we did cleaning on Thursday night. That way, the barracks could be inspected Friday morning. If everything was good then you were free to go for the weekend Friday afternoon. If not... well, having to spend Friday night cleaning your room was a good incentive to do it right on Thursday. It wasn't so much fun for whoever had to supervise you cleaning, which was an incentive for them to take a big giant dump on your whole weekend.

I screwed up the cleaning so much that I eventually became an expert on it... and eventually they put me in charge of it. Great fun, right? I knew all the places that they could possibly check, and the little things that they could use to fail your room's inspection if they were in a bad mood. So, every Thursday night I would pull the drain out of the shower, and the plates off the light switches, and soak them in metal polish. I wiped down the walls in the bathroom with pine oil until the fumes were sickening. I figured out every ridiculous place that someone could jam a finger and find dirt, and jammed my finger in there first.

I'm not that much of a neat freak now... who could live with that?... but I still like to have a clean house before the weekend starts, if I can gather the energy for it. :)

Still waiting for the bill...

For school, that is. They haven't set prices for the fall semester yet, and I'm halfway looking forward to knowing, and halfway dreading knowing. Either way, I've got student loans to cover it, but I'd like to know how much money will be left over at the end of it. Usually it is in the $1600-1800 range, but who knows how much it might go up since the economic troubles over the past year. Even $1500 would be useful, on account of how we can use that money for books for spring semester, plus odds and ends around the house... and, potentially, money to go to school over the summer.

Summer school is the big goal for me next year. If I can pick up an extra 6-12 credits over the summer, it puts me MUCH closer to graduation and getting a job. I can also avoid having to suffer through the misery of going to school for an extra year. Or, possibly having to suffer through some seriously impossible schedules. They don't give out engineering degrees to dummies. Then we can live the dream... VEGAS!

Well, OK... we can vacation the dream for 4-5 days. Then back to work!

Wednesday's random crap

S.C. governor Mark Sanford has returned from his week's vacation with his mistress in Argentina. Yay? What the fuck? His staff lied to the press, his wife told the media conflicting stories, this whole "runaway governor" story was surreal as all hell. Of course, Fox "News" has their own special was with dealing with a disgraced Republican politician: relabel him a DEMOCRAT!

Nothing new for Fox "News"... I think their viewers are stupid and ideologically blinded, but THEY think their viewers are drooling idiots.

In other news, the inside door handle on my car broke off today. Joy of joys, right? I'm expecting the door to fall off next.

I've got some sort of odd flu that's leaving me sick and ill and sick again. It leaves me too weak to go for long walks, which is sort of a bummer.

That's it until tomorrow. Back in bed for me!

Owwwww!!!!!!!!!

I slammed the first knuckle of my right ring finger in a door today. Closed that door hard, nailed myself pretty damned significantly. There is no pain in my life that compared to the pain I felt today. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not joking around, or blowing this out of proportion.

I know, I tend to do that. Not this time, I swear to Odin!

I was trying to answer the phone. I didn't manage to answer the phone. I didn't manage to take three steps before I fell to my knees shouting in agony. I would have screamed if I were capable of it... as it is I shouted myself hoarse. This went on for a good five minutes. I dragged myself to the freezer and jammed my hand in the ice bucket, but my hand hurt so bad that I couldn't even stand there, so I walked around shouting some more.

I only caught the first knuckle, and the pain reached all the way down to the wrist. I could not move any of my fingers on that hand for a few minutes. I scared the crap out of my poor dog, who was sleeping and woke up to me in obvious agony. She was afraid to get to close to me for a few, even after I stopped shouting.

Let's compare to other pain I have felt. I had my tonsils out a couple of years ago, and that was pretty bad, but the pain was amplified by exhaustion and frustration at not being able to eat. Over a decade ago, I broke my ankle in a couple of places, and I blacked out from the pain but never actually felt any long-lasting agony from it... I went a few hours with a broken ankle before getting so much as an aspirin. I've been beat up, kicked in the head, hit by a ricocheting bullet fragment, sliced 3/4 of the way through my thumb with a kitchen knife, nearly cut off the pad of my pinkie with a meat slicer, fallen off 2-story buildings a few times.

None of that matched the raw, thought-shattering pain of slamming my finger in the door today. Nothing has every been that bad... NOTHING.

Just five months to go!

Five months until summer is over. Oh boy.

We've been blessed with fairly mild summers the last two years... mild by Florida standards at least. You know, May through October with highs in the low 90s and lows in the low 70s. This year summer has just started, and the lows at night are in the high 70s and low 80s, and the highs have been creeping pretty close to 100. It is cooler today that it was yesterday. It is ONLY 95.

We've also gotten much more rain that normal, which is making me nervous about an impending disaster of a hurricane season. We'll HAVE to buy a generator, if the money becomes available: I can take the heat if I have to, but I'm not so sure about the pets.

Anyhoo, we bought a couple of fans. One stand fan for the bedroom, and a big honking air circulator for the living room with a remote and everything. Even though it is 80 degrees in the house with the AC running constantly, it only feels like... well, 78 but that's better than nothing!!

I am, however, regretting my decision to cook a large pot of steaming-hot chili for dinner tonight...

Sunday Stealing: The Finish the Sentence Meme

Cheers to all us thieves!

Sunday Stealing: The Finish The Sentence Meme

1. I've come to realize that my last kiss... was less than an hour ago, but I miss it already. Luckily, my true love is only a room away... :)

2. I am listening to... the fan humming away. It is past midnight and still way too hot in my house. That's the downside of living in Florida.

3. I talk... a mile a minute, every chance I get. I am a shy person, until you get me started!

4. I love... bunches of stuff, with my wife at the top, followed by my pets and my family, and everything else hardly matters.

5. My best friend/s... is my wife, the coolest chick in the known universe.

6. My first real kiss... led to my first real heartbreak. I'm years past it, and thank goodness!

7. Love is... what keeps me from giving up. My wife and I are a team, and when I feel weakest I remember that I need to be strong for her sake.

8. Marriage is... the best thing that has ever happened to me.

9. Somewhere, someone is thinking... something. Isn't someone always?

10. I'll always... be aware of where I came from.

11. The last time I really cried was because... my feelings were hurt. Why else?

12. My cell phone... cost a billion dollars, has lots of cool features, and is now obsolete. That's just how it goes.

13. When I wake up in the morning... I try not to move, so my dog doesn't wake up...

14. Before I go to bed... I have to shove my dog out of the way.

15. Right now I am thinking about... answering these questions! How many times will we be asked this question?!?! "Oh, no, Mr. Sunday Stealing, I'm answering your questions but I'm really thinking about world peace, the cure for cancer, and the Grand Unified Theory that physicists have been worrying over for decades!"

16. Babies are... smelly little monsters.

17. I get on Myspace... as infrequently as possible. Are you my REAL friend? Why haven't you called me? Fuck you, pretend online friend! You don't know me, and I don't know you.

18. Today I... went grocery shopping. Big thrill for me and my wife.

19. Tomorrow I will be... the same as I am today. Pretty kick-ass, a little bored, in love with my wife, compassionate towards yet slightly frustrated with my pets, willing to play power chords through 1200 WATTS if I am pushed to that extreme, and yet not particularly interested in mowing the lawn...


And finally:

20. I really want to be... the same guy that I am at my best, except I want my best to be the person I am all the time.

A house full of food!

I am a shopping GOD! Worship me! Bring me a sammich!!

I had a budget of $350 for food and various stuffs from the grocery store today. I got $340 worth of food. I only paid $270 for it! Woohoo! I've been planning meals around what's on sale, and since I started doing that we've been paying about $130-150 a week for groceries and getting more stuff every time. Last time we spent $280, but had to go back for $20 worth of stuff. This time we got everything on the list, plus extras like ice cream and popcorn.

It was actually sort of fun too... kind of like a scavenger hunt. Looking for the 2-for-1, the family pack, the buck off. Lots of meat was buy one, get one free. I have so many beer brats that I am going to need some Pepto and extra TP!

And I got a whole chicken! and 72 cans of Pepsi! It was everything I could do not to buy a giant package of crab legs, just because!

Can you tell I'm excited?

I got Hot Pockets! Making some tacos tonight. I've got BEERS!!

Actually, I bought some beers at the gas station because the prices are so much better. It is odd... the gas station charges $12 for ketchup, and $4 less for a 12-pack of Shock Top. Woo!

Next time? I try to get even more food, for even less money. I might use a... dare I say? I might use a coupon!!

Grocery Shopping in the AM

...oooohhhh, I'm so excited!!

My wife has budgeted $350 for two weeks. Considering we've been trying to squeeze in under $250, I'm kind of thrilled. So, I'm going through the weekly flyers from the local grocery stores, trying to find the best possible deals. All two grocery stores... not much variety here. I'm also unwilling to shop in Walmart.

So... fun times! We've been in a food rut for the last few months, not much in the way of variety. Lots of peanut chicken, taco bakes, meatloafs and meatballs. There's got to be something else, something MORE... what that is, I don't know. What I do know is that I need to prepare 14 meals, and I need to spend no more than about $15 per meal. I also need to produce enough leftovers for me to have something to eat for a second meal of the day. At this point, we do not have the money for both of us to eat three meals a day, so I eat pure righteous for breakfast... and my wife eats Fiber One.

So... what to eat, what to cook? I don't know... really, I don't! I know we're having brats and sauerkraut at least twice in the next two weeks. That's pretty cheap(buy one get one free brats!), which frees up cash for something else. I might roast a chicken or something. Beyond that I'm sort of at a loss. I mean, I can think of fancy meals. I just can't afford them!

And now for something completely different!

I talk a lot about my dog, and she IS a sweetie and batshit crazy and a lovable annoyance worth talking about. I've also got two cats, in this tiny house we live in. The younger of the two, Ellie, is an odd sort of cat. I think that she thinks she's a puppy.

I've seen cats sit in people's laps, or snuggle with them in bed. I've never seen a cat follow someone around until they sit or lay down, meowing the whole time as if to say "hurry up and sit/lay down, I want some snuggle time!!"

Speaking of which, both of these cats are the loudest, most talkative cats I've ever run across in my life. Ellie has this weird sort of whining meow, like the Knights who say Ni! except more drawn out. It is sort of a drawling "Niiiiiiii" over and over again until she gets her way.

I've seen cats who like to drink water from the faucet, or bat at running water with their paws. I've never seen a cat stare at the faucet, the coffee pot, and the iced tea brewer. Just stare, motionless and completely transfixed as though dripping water is the most interesting thing in the entire world. Even stranger? Ellie has a fixation with the side of the sink with the garbage disposal, because that's where the water from the dishwasher drains out. The whole time the disposal is running, she's sitting on the counter staring down the drain... WHY?!?!?!

Here's a picture of Ellie I took this evening... cute, right?

I'm feeling so droopy!

It must be the heat.

It is going to be in the 90s all week. Good fun! The AC can't keep up, which means it gets close to 80 in the house every day. It saps my strength, leaves me limp and listless.

I just wanna take a nap. And then another nap. And possibly a third nap. A quick snack and then one more nap, then 8-10 hours of sleep. Wake me in November.

I need to get my head back in the game here. I've been doing OK with the walking, but not a lot of weightlifting. Also, I've got all sorts of computer work that I should be doing. I'm going to try really hard to get back into the things I need to be doing, because when I go back to school this fall I have to be able to hit the ground running. I might even have a desk before school starts!

Saved by the rain, and Holywood's remake fetish

Here in Florida, we seem to have entered Monsoon Season. It is raining AGAIN, which is awesome because I still have this giant puddle in the front yard that hasn't been mowed since April at least. Since I mowed the yard at the other house yesterday, I'm glad that I can't mow here today!

Instead, I have a sixer of Shock Top beer, the Friday the 13th remake Blu-ray in the player, and some chicken pot pie for dinner. Life is pretty good!

Speaking of remakes... can't Hollywood come up with a new idea? No. Everything is an adaptation of a book or TV show, a remake, a sequel, a prequel, a remake prequel sequel, or a sequel adaptation remake. From Korea. Think about it. Here are the top-grossing films in America last year:

Gross		Movie
533,316,061		The Dark Knight (2008)
318,298,180		Iron Man (2008)
317,011,114		Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
227,946,274		Hancock (2008)
223,808,164		WALL·E (2008)
215,395,021		Kung Fu Panda (2008)
191,465,414		Twilight (2008/I)
179,982,968		Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
168,368,427		Quantum of Solace (2008)
154,529,187		Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

In order, starting with The Dark Knight: Comic book sequel, comic book movie, sequel, crap, kid movie, kid movie, crap book adaptation, sequel, sequel, adaptation. At least a couple of the kids movies were original!

That's what happens when you have a creative enterprise run by capitalists: profit becomes the motive, and the movies are nothing but product. Everything is a sequel, adaptation, or remake, because they have a built-in audience and are less of a risk. I'm not saying that there's no art involved, because some of these movies are pretty OK. The Dark Knight and Iron Man were both decent movies. The problem is that for every one of those movies, there's a steaming pile of Hancock to counter it. Comic book and cartoon "properties" are in these days, so expect Transformers and G.I. Joe to be followed by Voltron, He-Man and eventually a Go-Bots movie. Look forward to Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, Avengers... and Spider-Man 4. Yay.

Again, I'm not blasting these movies, I'm hoping that they are all awesome. On the other hand, I wish there was more room at the theater for movies like Special, an honest-to-Satan ORIGINAL movie about a superhero. Take a look, go rent the hell out of it, and maybe more movies like it will get a chance.

All I want is to win something!!

I'm a lifelong loser when it comes to contests and such. I don't think I've ever won anything in my life besides an umbrella in a drawing, and a couple of bucks on scratch-off tickets my wife brought home. Otherwise, zip. With the Internet, I have access to all sorts of drawings and such, and I STILL never win.

I want the new guitar or amp. I want the motorcycle. I want the three days in Vegas. I want...

... I want something to break up my day-to-day between now and when school starts.

Also, stuff. Lots of stuff. Like this guitar. But I'd settle for a used DVD and some gummi bears.

Not in a meme mood... too damned hot!

Lord Odin, it sure is hot in Florida in June. It was 90 effing degrees. It was close to 80 in the house most of the day. Not wonderful weather, and we've got about 5 months to go. It will cool down around Thanksgiving, give or take. HOT!

So, we drink a LOT of iced tea. I try not to wear pants. We have blackout drapes in the bedroom, and a fan that sits on my nightstand, so that room stays kind of cool all day and night. Well, except for today. Today the fan follows me everywhere I go. #1 on my Home Depot list is a couple of fans to move air around the house.

It is hard to get up the motivation to do much of anything, when it is hot enough to make you sweat just walking to the mailbox at the end of the driveway. Here I am, wanting to go walk a mile or two tomorrow. I'll do it. I won't like it, but I'll do it. I would like to wait until it cools off in the evening, but if I wait that long I lose all motivation, and I rarely walk when my wife is home, which means I'll be walking during the hottest part of the day for the rest of the summer. Yay!

Skin cancer is awesome!

I'll have to be a little more thoughtful about taking the dog on these walks, though. I'll fall back on one of the tricks I learned from high school track: I'll go out in the morning with a couple of bottles full of frozen water. I'll set them out every half-mile or so, and by the time we go walking the ice should be melted but still cold. I don't have to carry water, and Ginger doesn't have to get heat stroke. No water for me, mind you: we only used the water bottle trick for runs over 10 miles, otherwise we didn't bother.

I hate the heat. But since there's nothing I can do... there's nothing I can do!

Would you guys believe it is raining AGAIN?!?!?!

Not just a drizzle, either... looks like another full-on storm. Where's my giant flashlight, before the power goes out?

I just bought a new unbrella. Let's see if it survives the weekend.

Just a down day...

Well be back tomorrow, I guess.

Tonight? Tonight I'm hot and tired and worn down and not bad, but not got much to say either.

Ring-tailed lemurs? You've got it!

If someone can help me figure out the handgun "fetish"

... that would be a good thing?

I've been out of school for the last 4 1/2 months. I have another 2 1/2 months to go. I'm bored, I'm poor, and I'm lonely. So, what am I doing? I'm looking at buying a gun! I know it doesn't make any sense at all, and I really don't care. I can totally see a need for a gun if I squint really hard, and that's good enough for me.

It used to be that when I was feeling bored, I would shop for guitars. Now, I'm kind of satisfied with the guitars I have, and I'm not interested in anything new. So, now I'm shopping for guns. My wife isn't too pleased, since she's all kinds of anti-gun, for all kinds of reasons. That means I'm shopping for guns AND fancy ways to lock them up for the sake of safety. I have no problem with 2-3 layers of security for my pistol if it makes my wife feel safer about having a gun in the house, and my military service makes me see safety as a priority. I'm the sort who ALWAYS makes sure a weapon is unloaded, even at the gun shop. If I have to throw a cable lock through the barrel of the gun, and then lock the whole thing up in a safe, with the ammo locked up in a separate case on the other side of the house, that's cool with me.

To be fair, the shooting isn't completely out of the blue. I've been a fan of guns since I was a tiny little kid. I was a crack shot with any dart or BB gun on Earth when I was a kid. I was a marksmanship coach in the Marines, which means that my real shooting experience is pretty legitimate. I was really good at shooting... REALLY good. I had a lot of fun with it too.

Anyhoo... should I drop it? Should I be worried? Should I get a 10mm or a .40 S&W?

My dog got high today!

Well, more like "sedated" but she was staggering around in a drunk-like manner, which was HUGELY entertaining for me.

Yesterday we did the big 4 mile walk. Today, Ginger was sort of lazy all morning. Then, my wife sedated her in anticipation of her claw trimming appointment this afternoon. By the time I tried to get her into the car, she was barely able to walk straight. It was... fun? She got the claws done in about 5 minutes, and we came home. I was going to get her some fries from Wendy's on the way home, but she was barely awake in the car.

It has been a few hours, and here's where she's been camped out the whole time since we got home:

I have little doubt that she'll be there most of the night. I'm nearly as tired, but if I lay down now I'll be asleep until 2AM, and then up the rest of the night.

I'm going to Hell? You're getting my foot in your ass!

Inspired by one of my favorite bloggers, Mrs. Chili (thanks again for the inspiration!), I want to talk a bit about the threat of Hell, and why anyone who pulls that out is a terrible human being.

This morning, Mrs. Chili shared an experience she had concerning the fate of people who don't believe in Jesus the "right" way. Go click that, and read her entry. No, I'll wait.

Yes, there WILL be punch and pie, now go read her blog!

Ok, welcome back. Mrs. Chili is a gentle soul, the type who believes that everyone is entitled to their viewpoint, and that we should try to always respect those viewpoints. The world needs folks like that for... well, for something. Raising children maybe, or giving out random hugs. Maybe there's a bald eagle chick that needs to be nursed back to health after its mom is killed in a freak fruitcart accident. Mrs. Chili is the sort of person you call for those sorts of things.

Clearly, I'm not one of those people. Not by a long shot.

"Hell" in this case is "the eternal torment for the entertainment of those in Heaven, delivered by a 'loving God' of the Christian variety, for the 'crime' of not kissing his son's ass in the proper way." That son is also the deity in question, who was sent by Himself as a sacrifice to Himself, to allow people to avoid the damnation created by Himself as punishment for things that He made happen by His own design. Confused? Yeah, me too...

THAT'S WHY I'M AN ATHEIST!!!

Ahem. Moving on. The point is this: we're talking about eternal torture as the accepted Christian response to not being a Christian, or not being the right kind of Christian. This somehow fits in with the idea of their imaginary sky daddy being all-loving. It somehow also fits into their concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful being who made everyone and everything according to a big plan. The problem is that it just doesn't hold together logically. If "God" made everyone and everything, has a big plan, and knows what's going to happen, then he intentionally made some people who were predestined to burn forever. That's hardly a loving "God," is it? Don't feed me that "free will" nonsense either, because that doesn't fit with an omniscient, omnipotent creator either. That, by the way, is all you need to reject the Christian deity: it is self-contradictory.

Anyhoo, I don't believe any of that, and that's not the point. What matters is what the Christians believe, whether or not any of it is real. Christianity says that not sucking up to Jesus earns you eternal torment. You can rape and murder little kids for 50 years, and if you're really sorry and kiss the ass of the Allmighty on your deathbed you got into heaven. If the kids you raped and murdered were of the "wrong" faith, they burn in Hell forever and you get to watch and laugh from heaven. That's just the Bible, I didn't write it. If you twist the Bible to avoid what the Bible says, then why follow ANY of it? If you don't avoid it, then you're an asshole.

You're an asshole because you're walking around smug and superior, claiming that everyone else is going to suffer forever for not being a grovelling sycophant to an imaginary being. That's not a good reason to withhold a slice of pie from someone, let alone hurt them for an infinite number of years. You're embracing an amoral system of "crime and punishment" that any child can tell you is completely bogus. Every human system of justice is more ethical than what is described in the Bible, because they all contain the idea that the punishment should fit the crime. How is infinite pain a fitting punishment for not being a kiss-ass bitch?

The only "crime" that gets you Hell is not dropping to your knees to worship a being that either doesn't exist, or has used its infinite power to create the illusion that it doesn't exist. We have minds that can use logic to understand the world. We have the ability to build machines that allow us to explore the farthest reaches of space and the subatomic world. Children today know more about the universe before puberty than the combined knowledge of the entire world back when the stories of an angry, jealous desert god were first being created to explain why the crops went bad. And yet, to hear Christians tell it, if you don't throw out all of that in favor of blind faith in NOTHING, you deserve to suffer for all time. That's what they see when they look at me, for daring to think and reason instead of accepting and grovelling.

Anyone who tells you that is a bad person. What you should do is try to get two of them together. Mormons come in pairs, which makes them useful for the next bit. What you do is distract them, get them to turn around, maybe yell "Look! Burning bush!!" and point over their shoulders. When they turn around...

... and here's the tricky part...

YOU SHOVE A FOOT UP EACH OF THEIR ASSES!!

Then you wear them around as slippers for the rest of the day. Hey, at least it isn't eternal damnation?

Thanks for reading, now here's your punch and pie:

My dog is CRAZY for walking!!

So, I've been exercising now for a little over a week, walking and weight lifting. I haven't done any real walking, no more than a mile or so just to sort of get into a groove. Yesterday I mowed the lawn, and since that took well over an hour of constant walking, I considered that my exercise for the day. That meant no long walk for the dog. No long walk make Ginger a sad dog.

So, to make it up to her I took her for a walk this afternoon, and I planned on taking her again this evening. Well... it started out pretty cool and overcast, we walked a mile, and I brought her inside for some water. I asked her if she had a good walk, and she got all excited and ran to the door! I figured what the hell, and we went out again. About 30 minutes in, the cloud cover broke, the breeze died down, and it got very hot.

There's still water on the ground from the last time it rained, so I wasn't too worried. I took Ginger into the shade, splashed water on her, and continued to walk. I did that a couple of more times, and she seemed to be OK. Hot and breathing a little hard, but otherwise her same energetic self.

We walked about an hour total the second time, and 20 minutes the first time, in the space of less than two hours. I was a little worried about heat stroke, so I sprayed Ginger down with the hose and made sure she drank some cold water first thing when we got back. It still took her about 30 minutes for her breathing to slow completely down to normal, which is a valuable lesson for the future: dogs need more frequent water breaks than people!

Anyhoo, she seems to be fine now, and I'm going to take Ginger to the vet tomorrow anyway(claw clipping) so I might ask about some hot-weather strategies while I'm there. The upshot of the story is that after all this, after she got two good long walks in the summer heat, I happened to say the word "walk" out loud. Guess where Ginger went?

ENOUGH WALKING, GINGER!!!!

Insurance and Guns

We almost sort of have insurance! My wife applied online today, and it should be processed by the end of the week. Yay!

This means I pay $5 a month for my meds, instead of $98. It means we pay not much different from COBRA, unfortunately, but it is a little cheaper and covers both of us.

Next up? I get a desk. And a gun. I want a handgun. I WANT a handgun. I want a Glock!

There's absolutely NO good reason for it. I just wanna shoot stuff.

I made a snowman!!

The top hat texture was a bit... "metallic." That's why it looks almost white, it is reflecting all the light back at the camera. Otherwise, not shabby for my first real attempt at 3D rendering. I mean, I guess? Yay me!!

Sunday Stealing: The Hate Meme

Cheers to all us thieves!

Sunday Stealing: The Hate Meme (I can't imagine me loving this one... MWAHAHAHAH!!!)

1. Most hated food: Pickled Herring

2. Most hated person: This week it is a thousands-of-people tie between the jackhole who shot Dr. Tiller for providing abortions, the religious organizations that supported and conspired with him, Bill O'Reilly for painting a giant target on his back, and the FBI assholes who didn't arrest the shooter months ago for his constant vandalism of abortion clinics. This didn't need to happen, and it wasn't just a "lone nut."

3. Most hated job: My last job. Third shift machine work, with stupid hateful people.

4. Most hated city: Don't blame the city, it is the fault of the citizens. Also, any little shit town in Tennessee.

5. Most hated band: Coldplay, and not because I'm cool and trendy, and it is cool and trendy to hate them. I've ALWAYS hated them, and then they ripped off Joe Satriani.

6. Most hated (non-blog) website: FoxNation.com

7. Most hated TV program: Anything on Fox Noise Channel

8. Most hated politician: Today? Any of the Blue Dog Democrats: go back to the fucking Republican Party where you belong!

9. Most hated artist: Any of those "modern art" fucks who throw crap together or splash paint on a canvas and put a velvet rope up to differentiate it from the stuff in the dumpster.

10. Most hated book: The Bible.

11. Most hated shop or store: Walmart.

12. Most hated organization: Christianity.

13. Most hated historical event: Tie: The Holocaust, and the creation of Israel

14. Most hated sport: "Women's" gymnastics... part child abuse, part pedophilia, part beauty pageant... basically, all kinds of child abuse. Nasty stuff.

15. Most hated technology: Technology is one of the few bright spots in my life, I won't hate on it.

16. Most hated annual event: Easter.

17. Most hated daily task: Exercise.

18. Most hated comedian: Douche-nozzle... what's his name... Dumbfuck... ummm... Dane Cook!

19. Most hated blog: Yours. Unless you follow my blog, in which case I love your blog, I love you, and your little dog too. :)

20. Most hated song: Any rap song, ever.

Dawn of the Dead

Or, rather: 10:00AM of the Nearly Dead: My Trip To the Grocery Story

Holy crap, old people suck. SUCK!! I mean, for the love of fuck, get out of my fucking way! There's nothing new in the canned peas section, how long do you need to stare at the shelves? How many times are you going to block the entire aisle so you can masage each and every bag of flour to see which one feels more full, even though they are packed by WEIGHT not VOLUME? Move your old ass! I live in a fairly well-off neighborhood, populated with rich retired folks. They aren't pinching pennies because they really need to. They are just being giant cocksucking pains in the ass.

For instance, the cunt in the electric scooter acting like I'm offending her by shopping during HER shopping hour. Or the old guy who made a snotty comment to my wife when she politely asked him to move so she could get past him, who I nearly punched in the fucking face. Or the... well, it just goes on and on and on, doesn't it? Old people, slow old people, dragging themselves around for the sole purpose of getting in the way of younger, more important people like me.

Here's the thing: I don't have time or energy to waste analyzing each and every shelf at the store. I have a list, I scan the prices real quick-like, and I get my stuff and go. I can imagine when I'm in my 60s, my time will be MORE valuable to me, not LESS. As little patience as I have for doing mundane maintenance stuff at 34 years old, I doubt I will want to spend any time at all doing it when I'm 68.

How empty is your life, when you feel driven to spend 2 hours buying a few days worth of groceries? I'll eat a bullet first.

Yay POWER!!!

It rained, it poured, I still have a pond in my yard...

... and then the sun came out! Woo!! Mrs. Chili must have burned a magic canldle for me or something. *chuckle*

Since I have power, I can work on my 3D rendering project. Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration. I'm going to work on figuring out how to make the 3D rendering software do anything. I've never ever done any rendering before, but it gives me something to do over the summer. My first project, once I figure out how to work the software, is an "Improbable Joe" 3D logo. No good reason, just because.

Anyhoo, you kids have a good weekend, we'll hopefully see you tomorrow. :)

Gotta get in my daily blog entry!

Now, before the power goes out for good. The lights are already flickering. The second day of what appears to be 10 days of rain, and the power is already getting wonky on me. On the positive side, I have a massive flashlight capable of lighting most of the house from the center, and the drought is most certainly over. With this rain, we've probably gotten two thirds of the average yearly rain in the last 30 days.

Wish me luck!

OMG! MORE RAIN!!

The water from the last big series of storms hasn't receded yet, and it is already raining again. All day today, all day tomorrow, and a chance of rain for about 8-8 more days straight after that. There's still this huge patch of unmowed grass in my front yard where the water has been sitting for the past three weeks, and I guess it it going to get even longer. It is getting pretty depressing for me. 

Don't get me wrong: I know we need the rain, and any excuse to not mow is a good thing. On the other hand, another week and a half of rain is probably going to put us underwater! 

So, here's the plan for tonight:

• Comic book movies, starting with the new animated Wonder Woman, and then whatever I have on hand: Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, or maybe the two most recent Batman flicks?
  
• Jello! I made 6 boxes of Jello last night, and I'm probably going to eat half of it today. Sugar-free Jello... it fits into my diet and exercise program quite nicely. 6 boxes filled 8 mugs and glasses, and each on is 30 calories. If I eat one of them every movie, I'll consume a grand total of 90 calories, and won't be tempted to overeat for dinner.
• Dinner: leftover taco bake. Nummy stuff!

Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Not much else to do on a rainy Thursday night. 

About being tired... good times!

I am TIRED! The idea of taking Benadryl as a sleep aid only seems like a good idea when you are awake at 2AM and only got 4 hours of sleep the night before. The next morning, THIS morning, when you wake up with a terrible hangover you realize that maybe it wasn't such a brilliant plan after all. I don't know about anyone else, but for me drug-induced sleep is never anywhere near as good as the real thing. I don't actually feel rested at all. 

I've always had a bit of a problem sleeping. Or, rather, I've always been someone who has been very "early to bed, early to rise." I used to fall asleep at 9-ish, and wake up and 4 or 5 in the AM. No alarm clock, and I used to roll out of bed like a bat out of hell, all bright-tailed and bushy-eyed. I would be showered, shaved, and ready to start the day in about 10 minutes. It was reinforced by an enlistment in the Marines, who live on my schedule for the most part.

Because it was a lifelong habit, I was totally sunk if I had to stay up much later, because I would still wake up relatively early. If I had to get up for some sort of guard duty in the middle of the night, I would be screwed for days and days after. I was OK if I was first or last, but if I was in the middle I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep at all.

The worst of it was when I first moved here, and started working 3rd shift. I never got any sleep, for three years. The most miserable thing to ever happen to me was when I decided to go to a doctor, which meant not going to bed. I wound up seeing the doctor at 10AM, got home with my prescription of Ambien by noon... and proceeded to NOT SLEEP FOR THREE DAYS. I'm that 2% whose insomnia is made worse by Ambien. Yay Joe!

These days, it is not so bad. My wife gets home at 11PM, we go to bed about 12:30, and I get to sleep around 90 minutes later. In the plus column, I can sleep in until 9-10AM, sometimes. It isn't so bad, but I don't exactly hit the ground running either. I sort of miss that... my wife and I have trained each other to be the opposite of what we were: she used to sleep in and take a long time to wake up. I'm a little extra beat-feeling on account of the exercising, but what can you do?

I've got another 12 weeks or so. Then? School starts, and my first class starts at 8:00. This should be exciting, right? I'm going to have to learn to hit the ground running once more.

For a Few Dollars More

Funny thing, cable companies: they don't always make sense, but every now and again that works in your favor. 

Today is an example of that. We hooked up Showtime a few months ago so that my wife could watch the latest season of The Tudors and not have to wait for the DVD. We sort of formulated a plan where we would go with Showtime for a few months, then switch to HBO, and then switch back. Any of you who have either channel knows that they show the same stuff over and over(and over and over and over...) We figured we would switch back and forth, catch all the series on each channel, and not spend the money to have both because it would be a waste. Fuck a duck, we already spend $169 on cable and internet a month. Yeah, that much. It all adds up.

Anyhoo. The wife gives them a call, and tries to cancel one and get the other. They offer to let us keep Showtime, plus get HBO, Cinemax, and Starz. I could only hear half of the conversation, but I knew something was "off" by the tone of my wife's voice. When she hung up she told me the news. They made her an offer she couldn't refuse. All those dozens of channels, including HBO and Showtime in HD, for...

...wait for it....

not yet...

$2 more than what we were paying for just Showtime.

Sometimes cable company stupidity works for you, not against you.

The cats we not amused. 

I am so frakking OLD!!

Well, Day One of my quest to become an International Male Model has begun. Crap I am out of shape. I walked 20 whole minutes, lifted weights for 45 minutes, and I feel like I'm going to DIE. Of course, it doesn't help that it is 90 degrees outside, and my Bowflex is in the garage. The heat is bad, but my old and weak muscles are worse.

I used to be a real athlete. Back in the day, I could go run hard and continuously for an hour or more, lift weights for another hour, and then play basketball all afternoon. When I was in the Marines, I was in the sort of shape that even when I was at my most out of shape I could score at least a 250/300 on the Physical Fitness Test (minimum of 180 to pass, IIRC). When I needed to get into shape for a promotion, I lost 30 pounds in about a month, by running to the gym and riding a stationary bike 2-3 times a day.

Now? A mile walk with my dog leaves me exhausted, and I'm going to be chewing Tylenol like Pez for the next month or so. I can only do a few push-ups before my arms are quivering. The whole thing is just sad and pathetic! I'm also on a new diet, called "run the garbage disposal." That means no leftovers. None. I just dumped about two meals worth of leftovers down the drain, for fear of getting a munchy feeling later. Anorexia, here I come. I'm also looking around here for some laxatives, because that's really healthy too!

The problem is that I have a LONG way to go. When you weigh as much as I do, losing a pound a week means you aren't going to see any really visible progress for months and months.It isn't like I'm a 140 pound chick who needs to lose 15 pounds. I'm like TWO 140 pound chicks who needs to lose 2/3 of a chick. Yeah, pretty picture, isn't it? 

So, anyhoo, what winds up happening is that I try really hard to drop like 10-12 pounds a month, because otherwise I'm not going to be able to stay motivated. Otherwise, it will be like watching paint dry. I can do this... I have 13 weeks until school starts again, and 4 weeks after that is my 35th birthday. I can lose 75 pounds by then, right? RIGHT?!?!

This is going to be a LONG summer...