IT IS OVER!

Another Thanksgiving with the in-laws, and I survived with most of my sanity intact. We ate one of those $300 meals last night, which was super-awesome-groovy! I drank too much! I ate too much! My sleep rhythm is completely fucked!

Tomorrow, I guess I'll go back to real life again. Drat.

Thanksgiving VICTORY!

Well, the votes are in, and my Thanksgiving was a complete success. My mother-in-law normally doesn't eat much, and doesn't like green bean casserole. She had a big plate of food, and then she went back for seconds of the green bean casserole, and kept raving about it. My father-in-law said it was one of the best Thanksgiving meals he's ever had. Then the wife's brother and his family showed up for talking, drinking, and Star Trek on Blu-ray. Good times.

The turkey was perfect... I'm going to brine the turkey every year from now on. The timing was awesome. My wife and a ran like chickens with their heads cut off to make sure everything finished at the same time, so we could serve it all up hot and all at once. The only bad part was that it was WAY TOO MUCH FOOD!

The most impressive part? When I went to bed last night, the kitchen was as clean as when I woke up in the morning. Not a single dirty dish or piece of trash in sight, or even hidden in the dishwasher. That's some fucking skill right there.

24 hours from now...

The turkey will be eaten, the dishes will be in the dishwasher, and we'll know how Joe's "cooking for the in-laws" experience went. It is a little nerve-wracking, since I'm really used to eating whatever, and they are used to eating the one specific thing they eat. I swear, in a way they are like small spoiled children. Once, my mother-in-law decided she was going to cook something, and she asked me where the garlic salt was. I told her that I didn't have any garlic salt, but I had plenty of garlic and salt that she could put together... she seemed to be almost insulted at the suggestion. My father-in-law is just a complainer.

Wish me luck... I might kick them out of my house. Just watch me!

Thanksgiving is going to be a NIGHTMARE!!!

I's has to cook Thanksgiving dinner for my in-laws Thursday. I don't think they've ever eaten anything I've cooked, so this should be interesting. We're having turkey, sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, corn, green bean casserole, corn muffins... something else? I can't remember. Brownies and cookies for dessert.

I got my turkey today. It is frozen solid, but since I didn't pay for it I'm not too worried. Free turkeys always taste better. I guess I'm going to brine it, if I can find something to brine it in... a trash bag in the sink is an option, come to think of it. Yummy. Then I'm going to "stuff" it loosely with a quartered orange, a cinnamon stick, fresh rosemary and sage, and a medium-sized monkey. It should all be good... and if not, maybe I can get my in-laws drunk enough so that they don't notice?

The neat bit is that we're eating on my wife's new plates and stuffs. I've never owned a gravy pitcher before... fancy stuff!

Well, my childhood was raped again...

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra... terrible goddamned movie. My 12 year old self is clutching his buttocks right now and wondering if he sat on a broomstick or got too close to a Catholic priest. It was dumb, loud, violated the laws of physics, ignored basic storytelling... and I still found time to nitpick the goddamned thing.

For instance, why is it that the Joes can afford ridiculous sci-fi hardware and a secret underground base, but can't buy Scarlett a fucking bra. She just got done fighting bad guys with laser-guided crossbow bolts. She should probably invest in a sports bra at some point.

Really? I can live without a logical arc for the character, or any sort of characterization, or even a couple of really good lines... but do her tits really need to flop around that much?

The rest of the story is about as well-supported as Red's boobies. Something about a group of evil folks with ultimate weapons, in a scheme to get an even ultimater weapon... ultimatist? Super-hyper-ultimate? It is FUCKING STUPID. Also, the American black dude in the movie is a weird moronic racial stereotype who is also brilliant enough to be a 1st Sergeant in the Army and also join an elite G.I. Joe team. The other black guy in the movie is Mr. Eco from Lost, but with an Australian accent and big machine guns, so that's ok.

Random Thursday doodads

• I decided to make steaks tonight. Unfortunately, I didn't pull any steaks out of the freezer until a couple of hours ago. Which is fine for my wife, she's got an 8oz. steak that thaws in the skillet. My steak is like a small roast, and may not be thawed until Easter. Oops.
• Speaking of holidays, my wife's whole family will be here next week, in shifts. Her brother and his family will be here one night, and then the in-laws will be here from Thursday until what will only feel like until Easter. Also, they are taking us to the Chart House restaurant, where the meals are scrumptious and cost a million dollars a plate. Caviar on the salad bar!
• I installed Windows 7 on my laptop last night. It is a free copy that "came with" the computer I bought in September, but only arrived yesterday. It was kind of cool to install the drivers in school, after a test.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the coolest game I've ever played. It is almost like REAL LIFE... except I don't get to kill that many people in real life, at least not on a daily basis.
• I need new glasses. I hate the idea of having to wear glasses, but I hate it even more that my glasses are so scratched up that I sometimes have a hard time seeing though them.
• Sarah Palin's new book, Shooting My Grandbaby's Daddy from a Helicopter, is already a huge bestseller... because right-wing organizations have bought thousands of copies that they are giving away for free. It reminds me of those school candy sales where the rich kids would get their parents to buy 400 boxes of candy the first week, so they could be top sellers and win cool prizes that they didn't deserve... which is A LOT like Sarah Palin, come to think of it.

Procrastination is AWESOME!!!

It is 5:15 AM, I have class in less than three hours, and I JUST finished the research paper that I was assigned on September 1. Yeah, that's some major procrastination right there. Not as bad as it could have been, since I had a rough draft started Monday night, but still. I also have a precalculus test that I haven't really studied for, but fuck it. My average is so high in there that I would have to get a 65% in order for my average to drop below 100%.

That's right kids... and yeah, I'm fucking bragging, so suck it!... my average is so high right now that I could LITERALLY answer a third of the questions correctly, write in "Angelina Jolie" for all the other answers, and my overall average would still be a 93%.

I'm sort of borderline-A in Literature, so I have to do acceptably well on this paper. Still don't care, but I have natural ability, charm, and I guess I could suck up a bit if I had to. I can't wait until I'm only taking science and math classes, where there's one and only one right answer most of the time. That's what I like, as opposed to giving opinions and hoping that they match what the teacher wants to hear.

Next, because I promised...

Christian-bashing!!!

There's nothing I could say that would be much worse than the rant I turned in to my English Lit class yesterday, where I called the Catholics in particular a demented death cult. I hope I wasn't too unclear about my position on religion in general. I would hate for the teacher to think I was just picking on the Catholics. I hate ALL religion. I bash Christians and Catholics because they are a bigger and closer target, and because most of the people I know would agree that the Muslims have some fucked up beliefs but pretend that their beliefs are somehow better. And you can't even start in on Judaism without being called an anti-Semite on account of the Holocaust... which is like if O.J. Simpson's trial testimony consisted of nothing but recitation of the history of slavery and Jim Crow laws: past and even current oppression of and bigotry towards certain groups is a terrible thing, but it doesn't for a second excuse the actions of individual members of the group, or make their beliefs or behaviors immune to criticism.

Anyhoo, the most very recent example of Christian cuntery is this Carrie Prejean. She's the pageant contestant who hates the gays, and who got stripped of her crown when she tried to use the celebrity pageant winner status to promote her anti-gay bigotry. Then she sued for "religious discrimination" which for Christians means "not being allowed to be a fucking cunt because I claimed Jesus approved of my twattish behavior." She's a super-Christian, which means that she's got a sex tape, fake tits, and a book out. She went on Larry King to plug her book, called "How To Hate The Gays And Get Paid For It," and this is how it went:

WHORE! She didn't want to answer the question because she settled when she got busted diddling herself on camera.

Here's part of the issue for me... she walks around with this giant entitlement delusion, most of it faith-based. She's a rich dumb cunt of a blonde, and she sucks up to Jeebus, therefore she deserves to win beauty pageants, she shouldn't have to follow any rules, answer any questions, or ever face any criticism for her ugly and hateful belief system. Nope, she's fucking special in the eyes of "God"... well, except for her man-made chesticles.

And, because she said "Jesus" while being a stupid, pathetic excuse for a human being, she's got ever right-wing creep in the country defending her. The deluded fuckers stick together, I guess.

****

This blog entry was brought to you by the letter "C"(Christian, cult, cunt, chesticles).

I've sort of snapped...

Yeah, I'm on the edge and I'm going to fall over the edge any second. Here's an example:

Had to read a story for English Lit, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor. For homework we had to describe how "heroic" the main character was to try to force Jesus down the throat of the man who just had her whole family murdered, so that she could try to save her own life. Fuck that crazy action. The author was a Catholic, and you can see the depravity of her death cult in her story... and that's what I wrote in my homework, in a two and a half page screed against religion, religious hypocrisy, and the incredible arrogance and ignorance of the book's editor to suggest that we should discuss the "heroism" of a stupid old cunt who is responsible for the death of her whole family, who starts calling her murder a "good man" who should pray to Jesus. Why is trying to convince someone to join your immoral religion just to save your own skin an act of heroism?

I look forward to seeing how much I pissed off the teacher, but I really don't care. I've sat mostly quiet though the semester, as we've read one bullshit story about ugly people after another, and then had to discuss the stories using the framing of the teacher and the book editor that spun every shitty character, mostly women, into some form of victim or hero. The whole thing is sickening and disgusting, and I've fed the fuck up about it. I didn't sign up for a women's studies extreme pseudo-feminist propaganda class. It is wearing me down... I don't think I've ever actively hated a class this way, but it is the last of the English crap I need to take.

I don't know, folks... I just don't know.

Happy Birthday Marine Corps!

Yay! Here's a formation run cadence I remember from my time in the Marines, back in the mid-1990s:

And here's one I made up to the same tune:

Yellow smiley faces on a paper strip

I'm gonna go on an acid trip!

Stand up, stumble around, melt through the floor

Seeing shit I ain't never seen before

Look at all the colors

Psychadelic colors

I love all the colors

But I'll fail the piss test!

Something like that... anyways.

To all my fellow Devil Dogs, past and present... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Oh, my wonderful readers, how I love you!

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately... unless you've been a little annoyed at my previous daily postings, in which case I'm sorry that I'm going to be posting more frequently again. It has been a pretty rough couple of weeks for me, school-wise.

I've put out the call before, and didn't get much or even any result, but I'm going to try again in a slightly different way:

If you read and enjoy my blog, can you leave a quick comment letting me know why? If you feel up to it, let me know what sort of things you'd like to see in the future. I'm not just doing this for me... I can talk to myself just fine without all the typing.

Anyhoo, the next week is going to be pretty exciting. I've got a nightmarish history test to take, but otherwise I'm good on that score. My wife is going to be out of town from Thursday through Sunday, which normally would mean lots of drinking, but this time will probably just mean eating the sort of foods that my wife doesn't like. I'm going to make a pot of ridiculous chili, and probably write a whole post about it with pictures.

There's going to be a post against Republicans, and another against religious people. Maybe something about my childhood, and an explanation of the universe and how it all works. Possibly, if you're lucky I'll post some guitar playing, and if you're really lucky I'll forget to post it after all... it isn't the most pleasant sounding thing in the world.

So, readers... things are going to be fun this week!

Had a terrible day...

... maybe I'll talk about it tomorrow. I'm hunting for a new shrink to write my prescriptions and the hunt goes badly.

In the meanwhile, I didn't get a chance to cook dinner before my wife got home. She just ate some cereal, and I was trying to figure out what to have. I remembered that I had some cans of chili in the car, that I bought for the canned food drive that my history teacher is doing, and that she'd giving extra credit for. I need the extra credit, and so I bought the cans this morning. My wife and I had a whole conversation about it... that she didn't remember.

Anyhoo, I say to her "maybe I'll just grab a can of chili out of the car." She looks at me like I'm a retard, and I kind of start saying "you know, we talked about it this morning..." at which point she says "What do you have a can of chili in your car for? Is it like an emergency supply of chili?" We both got a big laugh out of that... and I needed it, big time.

School is getting weird...

Yeah. Took two tests today. I don't know what I got on the precalculus test, but I know I did well and I have a cushion of about 24 extra credit points. I would have to get a 75 in order for my test average to drop below 100%. The trig test, that I was actually worried about, I wound up getting 100 on after the extra credit was added to it. That puts my current average in the class at just a hair under 99%. I got back the papers I turned in two weeks ago. I got another A(she only gives letter grades) in Lit, and a 98 on my history research paper, to go with the 99 I got on the first test. I have a history test on Thursday, and by my math(which is fucking AWESOME, in case you skimmed over the beginning up there) every point I get above an 82 is a point I can get below an 82 on the final. My econ class is a breeze since it is mostly math, I got a 100% on the first quiz.

All in all, it looks like I've got a lock on another 4.0 GPA. My classmates, especially in trig? Not so much.

Because of the miracles of modern technology, I can see my grades on the online trig quizzes and my test scores as the teacher enters them into the system. I can also see the approximate grades my classmates are getting, and how I rank compared to the class average and individual students on each quiz and test. Mind you, it is all anonymous: all I see is how many people scored in each 5-point range from 0-100, not individual names or exact scores. So, I know that 5 people, including myself, scored at or over 100% on today's quiz. I can also see the class average.

The class average on today's test was a whopping 58%

To be completely fair, there were five scores in the 0-5% range, which means that five people probably just didn't take the test(let's hope!) but still! More than half of the class who actually took the test got a D or F. Of course, about a third of the class failed all of the online quizzes... and you get two tries!! The funny part is that the teacher goes out of his way to point out that he's bored and lonely during his office hours. The class is pretty full most days, which means that people are attending, learning nothing, not asking questions, not taking the quizzes until 11:30 the night before the test, not doing the homework, not doing ANYTHING but sitting there taking up fucking space.

Shit. I would sleep in, as long as I was failing that badly! That's the part I don't understand. because of the modern technology, the teacher can see who is taking the quizzes as the material is taught in class or waiting until the last possible moment, who is taking their time and who is finishing the tests so fast that they must be just making random guesses. He knows who is coming by his office for help and making an effort, and who is just wasting time. I think some of these kids actually believe that if their attendance is good enough, the teacher won't notice how little work they've done, and will give them a passing grade out of the kindness of his heart.

I've talked to the teacher outside of class. He's a decent guy, cares about teaching and likes math. He also has ZERO kindness in his heart for people who aren't working as hard to learn as he is to teach. Good. He's going to fail half of the class, and no bad student evaluations from the losers are going to carry any weight compared to the cold hard statistics he's been collecting on his students. Since the people who are passing are the ones who take their quizzes early, take their time with them, make BOTH attempts at the quiz if they get a low score, and come ask questions when they need help, the rest of the class is shit out of luck.

That makes me really happy... FAIL THEM! FAIL THEM ALL!!!!!