Happy New Year's Eve!

Thanks to the Scotch and Drambuie, I love everyone right now. So here's the best opportunity I'll get to wish everyone a fun night, and a Happy New Year.

Tomorrow, I'll be too screwed up to wish anything but pain and death on everyone who is not as hung over as I am. Death and Destruction!!!

I will spend the first day of the year practicing the kung fu discipline I have created, Hung-Over Dragon style. It involves blinding the enemy with my breath (which will resemble the smell of a dragon taking a dump in my mouth), and then puking on his shoes before crawling off to a quiet, dark room while trying not to cry.

I've decided that my New Year's resolutions are these:

• Buy a Fender Stratocaster. I don't even like them that much, but I'll need one for the album cover photo.
• Record album, take album cover photo.
• Learn how to sing like the dudes in European power metal bands like Dream Evil

How I get to spend my New Year's Eve

Tomorrow morning when I wake up, I have to go grocery shopping first thing. I mean FIRST thing, I'll be home by 8:30. Then I get to strip down the entire home theater system, and see if I can't figure out why it is crapping out on us... I can't afford a new one. After that fun, I get to put together yet another bookcase, since we filled our two new ones within minutes of assembling them. I have a terrible headache and a cough that I can't shake, and I have no doubt that I'll be suffering more of the same tomorrow.

Luckily, I already did my positive version of the year in review, because at this point I'm barely capable of not shouting at my wife.

If I survive all of that stuff tomorrow, we'll settle in for some movies (probably without surround sound for the first time since we've been married...), munch on some whore-derves (or however you spell it...), and go to bed early (unless I'm neck-deep in the drink, in which case I'll be up all night and sick all weekend.) Fun fun fun!

I gotta tell you guys... any excuse to eat chicken wings, jalapeño poppers, and mozzarella sticks and call it a meal!

Things I'm Happy About

Yeah, friends and far-off neighbors, I'm still alive and kicking. My Internet has been buggy, and I've really been too... something... to blog lately. Too much free time leads to procrastination, which leads to me not doing anything, which leads to me not feeling great and having more of an urge to procrastinate. I'm kind of moving past it now. I still have three weeks until school starts back up, and I have tons of stuff I want to do and almost nothing that I MUST do. It is a weird place to be.

It is about to be a new year in just a couple of days, and as I'm sort of taking stock of the year, I'm consciously choosing to focus on the positive. Shockingly, it is not that hard at all. Here's a quick list, just the stuff off the top of my head:

• My wife is physically and emotionally more healthy than she has been in probably two or three years. It has been a rough road for her, and I'm glad things are looking up for her. I think I might even be able to convince her to leave the house occasionally!
• I'm physically not so great, but I think my own head is in a better place as well. I've got to sort of look out for me now, so that I'm doing as well as my wife, so that we can sort of both be in the same place... and the outlook is better than it has been in awhile.
• Speaking of that headspace, I'm not so consumed with my Gear Acquisition Syndrome. I don't find myself so driven to get stuff just for the sake of buying stuff. I'm not cured by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not spending sleepless nights dreaming of guitars and amps and new computers.
• School is going great. I'm done with the bullshit prerequisites, and I'm getting started on the hard/fun stuff like physics and calculus. I'm also going to try really hard to not stress out so much about school. I'm doing well, I'm smart enough to learn everything they have to teach me, and I'm not going to spend sleepless nights over that shit either. I don't need to get the highest grade on every test in ever class in order to be happy with my performance.
• My Man Cave is a wonderful thing, finally. I have a desk in here, my guitar stuff is set up just about the way I want it to be. I'm still trying to figure out a place for my bobbleheads, but it is always a work in progress.
• I have a giant stack of books to read, which means I don't need to buy any more of them for a LONG time. GIANT STACK OF BOOKS!

Anyways, yeah... Happy Merry Whatever to everyone!

Xmas at an Atheist's House

Just because I don't believe in a magic sky daddy who watches everything I do and who really cares what I do with my penis, it doesn't mean I can't deck the halls and what-not. More importantly, it doesn't mean I can't give and receive prezzies. Unfortunately, I'm not good at keeping secrets or waiting to open my own presents, so we're down to two gifts apiece under our $7 make-believe tree. That's down from what seems like several dozen over the past month or so. I've gotten movies, books, graphic novels, an electric razor, and a new chorus pedal. My wife has gotten a CD, books, clothing, and bookcases. There's four more movies sitting under the tree, and I have no idea what three of them are.

Weird, since I bought two of them.

Anyhoo. If takes me back to when I was a kid, where I used to pretend that I had a big score under the Xmas tree by taking whatever Xmas money I got, plus whatever I had saved up, and buying as many used books as I could. Then I would wrap them all individually and pile them up under the tree. That way, my under-the-tree would resemble the stuff I saw on TV. Fucking rich people on TV.

The only sucky part of this year is that my wife has to work Xmas day. I'll be forced to sit and watch a ton of comic book movies all by my lonesome. I'm going to start with the Watchmen extra-long cut, which is like seventeen hours long. If I survive the experience, I'm going to watch the greatest movie of all time.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Punisher: War Zone. And it is going to rape your eyeballs with awesome!

In happier news!

We're having semi-cold weather in Florida today, so I'm going to make my world famous Best Clam Chowder in the World. Fresh clams, poblano peppers, and bacon.

My wife is a very lucky woman. :)

Now that my grades are in, it is time to bitch about my professors!

To be fair, mostly bitching about that idiot English Lit teacher who I'll never have to see or deal with again... and thank goodness, because I want to punch that sorry dried-up cunt in the face. :)

Where to start? We could start with the end, and move our way back. The end consists of the grades being posted late Friday night, even though our last graded assignments (as per the syllabus) were turned in two weeks ago. For some reason, she kept having us come to class and turn in more assignments... even though she couldn't get the required shit graded, she kept assigning more shit! Shit that wasn't really for a grade, though... since she told us on the last day that if we showed up and she didn't complain we would all get 100% on class participation. Nevertheless, she wasted our time by having class and giving homework assignments for the last week of class. The last day of class, during FINALS WEEK, she made us turn in homework, write a stupid poem assignment in class, and then instead of letting us leave when she was done she tried her hand at stand-up comedy for 10 minutes. What the crusty fuck?!?!

Stupid shit before that? She announced on a Tuesday that 10% of our grade would be to read our research papers in class on Thursday, pass/fail and no make-up. So anyone who didn't turn in their paper on time ALSO lost 10% of their final grade. Classy, and good teaching skills. Speaking of teaching skills, the lesson I learned from this semester is that men and white people are bad, and women and minorities are noble and oppressed by The Man. The whole class was just fucking nasty and offensive and the worst class I can remember ever having, ever, ever, ever.

The History class wasn't great, and the tests required way too much studying and preparation, but at least the class was interesting and the teacher wasn't a complete moron. I wish my Precalculus teacher was teaching Calculus too, because he's one of the clearest and most patient teachers I've ever had, which is why I managed to get over a 100% in that class. Trigonometry was OK, that professor was a little dorky and not the best teacher ever, but he was obviously working harder than any teacher I've ever had. If you failed his class, it was because you weren't trying, because he posted EVERYTHING online and lived in his office all week if you needed to ask him questions. Hell, he was there Thursday 90 minutes before the final, answering last minute questions and doing a quick review.

All in all... it is over, I got a 4.0, and I get to start taking the hard stuffs. Yay!

Done with finals!

Holy sweet crispy chocolate-covered caramel Christ on a stick!

Now I get to wait for the grades to trickle in, but it looks good so far. In the meanwhile, video games to play, books to read, vacation time to be frittered away on nothing and lots of it.

My new middle name is "Slack".

There's a 12-pack of beer chilling in the fridge, crying out for my attention. As soon as all of my grades come in, I'm cleaning out my desk and computers and car of all things related to this semester, and I'm done with it. I'll be ordering my books for next semester tomorrow, and I'll see if I can't find each class's syllabus online before class starts. The sooner I start working, the better chance I have have at maintaining my GPA.

One thing I promise myself, and I'm going to try to hold myself to it this semester, is to not work so damned hard. Good grades aren't worth some of the shit I've put myself through this year.

Almost done....

Just a quick note while I figure out whether or not this cold/flu is going to kill me.

I got a 100 on my Precalculus final, which nets me over a 100 average for the whole class... yeah, I'm that fucking good. The history final went... not so great, but I only needed a 61 to get an A in that class, and I don't think I could screw up that badly, even though I only got about 2 hours of sleep. Thursday is my last final for the semester, and it looks like my 4.0 GPA is safe for another little while.

I'm sitting typing this on my laptop, at our little table, with the kitty-girl laying beside my mouse like that's just a normal thing for her to do. She NEVER does anything like this, so I'm trying to not make any sudden moves and see if the moment lasts. The kitty-boy is in his bed, and the pooch is crashed out on her pillow, on her couch. My wife is running a little late, but she'll be home shortly and then we'll have tacos. Since I'm celebrating, I might have some beans or something with the tacos. Why the fuck not, right?

Tonight I'm doing a triple shot of NyQuil and sleeping until noon. Tomorrow I'll study for a bit for my trigonometry final... I need a 57 on it to get the A... and by noon Thursday I'll be FREE.

... until next semester. Then the fun starts all over again. At least I don't have any more English classes to take. I'm sick to death of classes where I get "sort of an A" and am at the mercy of the teacher's whims and opinion of me.

It took me long enough...

Finally, after a week of my wife coughing on me all night every night, I've finally got the same upper-respiratory whatever that she's suffered through since last weekend. Yay. And I've got finals coming up that I just can't miss. I mean... I could pass the classes with a really low grade on the final, but I really want the 4.0. I might not get it, thanks to evil/stupid English teacher, but I have to try.

In the meantime, I'm focused on what I can do something about. I've got most of my history study guide put together, and I'm going to spend tomorrow studying. I hope the medicine doesn't make me loopy and misremember things. Also, no cheating. Apparently lots of people have been caught cheating over the last week or so. If folks would put half as much work into studying as they do into cheating, they might not need to cheat. If they worked as hard as me, they would have a good grade too.

It could be worse, of course... I could spend my whole month off being sick. That would be MUCH worse.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It is the "holiday season" once again, which means a couple of things:

• I'm sick with some sort of weird cold that makes my throat scratchy and my head hurt, and have hot and cold flashes. Could be the flu, could be menopause, who knows?
• It is finals time at school again... well, for everyone except that idiot English Lit teacher I have, who has allowed the class to get away with not reading the material all year and has now, on the eve of final exams, decided to assign our first-ever homework assignment. Every other class is having finals next week. We're having regular classes. WHY??
• I have to wish bad things upon the bell-ringer assholes, and hit the drive-thru at Wendy's to give to the Toys For Tots guy.

Soon, it will be that much happier time of the year: winter break. A whole month off of school, before I start taking my REAL classes. Calculus and Chemistry and Physics, oh my! I'm already starting to come up with things to do over the long break:

• I have a huge stack of unread books to plow through, starting with the latest Stephen King monster Under the Dome, continuing through a five-book vampire pulp action series by Charlie Huston, a pretty huge pile of graphic novels, the six or seven Kim Harrison supernatural detective books that I think I got this time last year and never worked my way around to reading, a couple of books my wife bought me, and a shitload of free fiction PDFs I've downloaded... I could take a year off.
• Video games are always a good time killer. I'm playing Assassin's Creed 2, a fun little game set in both 15th Century Italy and some science-fictional future. The fate of humanity is at stake! Or... something?
• Lots of guitar playing. Easier in the winter because my office gets really fucking hot between the computer and the amplifier.

I remember being a kid and getting a couple of weeks off, and just sort of sitting there like a lump under a blanket, reading tons of books. Some things never change. I guess the real difference is that I'll be eating home-made soup instead of canned stuff. I LOVED canned soup as a kid, but once I started making my own I have a hard time imagining going back to it.

Today's soup is split pea and bacon... and it smells like it is almost done!

Me and Green Lantern

I am trying to keep things positive and not at all too ranty... and today was a good day for it. I had a precalculus test that I think I did really well on, and then shortly after I got home the mail carrier came with the books I ordered Friday night. Amazon's free shipping option is pretty fucking amazing! Got the stack of Charlie Huston novels, they look great on the new bookcases... but they are sort of really short novels so I'm glad I got the online discount instead of paying $14 for each one. Also got a stack of new Green Lantern graphic novels. For those of you not hip to the slang of the young dudes, a graphic novel is a big-size comic book, usually collecting several issues of a series. Usually each one covers one complete story arc, so that you can get entire stories in one big serving rather than getting bite-sized chunks over the space of months.

Green Lantern is probably my single most favorite comic book ever. Instead of having inherent superpowers, Green Lantern has been granted to use of a Power Ring that allows him to manifest his willpower in the form of both energy blasts and solid constructs made out of the green energy that powers the ring. So Green Lantern can blast through a wall, make a wrecking ball out of solid light and smash through the wall... or can send a little green hand made out of energy under the door to unlock it from the inside. Unlike heroes who get their powers from radioactive spiders, or because they are aliens who get their powers from Earth's yellow sun, Green Lantern had to earn the Ring... and it can be taken away from him if he screws up badly enough. He answers to the Guardians of the Universe, little blue guys with enormous power who run the whole Green Lantern operation.

For instance, when Green Lantern Hal Jordan (above) went a little bit batshit crazy, the Guardians chose a new guy to take his place. Of course, he needed a fancy new costume... no reason, except that I guess the artists thought that with the same costume how would you tell two brown-haired white dudes apart?

Earth's Green Lantern isn't alone. There's a whole Green Lantern Corps, 7200 people from thousands of different planets, each assigned a sector of space to patrol. In one case, there's a Green Lantern who is a planet... alien stuff is weird. Point is, they are like an intergalactic police force, taking care of big emergencies and interplanetary wars and what-nots.

Why do I like it? Well... for starters, it is a merit-based system, where the best guy for the job gets the ring. As a short fat kid, that meant that I could be a Green Lantern in my head much easier than most other heroes, because it depended on mental strength instead of just being tall and muscular. As an adult, I dig the stories because you can do more things with a guy who is part of an intergalactic peacekeeping force than you can with Batman or Spider-Man. You can do the "hero stops a crime" stories if you like, but you can also do big sweeping space opera stuff. There's a real science fiction element the the book that's really cool.

Right now, they're doing a HUGE story spanning most of the comic books DC puts out, where the Green=Willpower thing is played out across the entire color spectrum. So Yellow=Fear and there's an army of guys with yellow Power Rings who feed off of the fear they generate in others. Red=Rage, Blue=Hope, and so on. That's all cool and neat and whatever, and would generate interesting stories on its own. The REALLY neat part is when we hit the end of the spectrum, and run into the Black Lanterns... three guesses what black equals?

That's right, friends and far-off neighbors. Zombies.

Superheroes, science fiction, and super-powered zombies... what more could a guy ask for?!?!

Since you didn't ask, there IS one more thing a guy could ask for. Since I've got a dozen Green Lantern graphic novels, there's just one thing I need to get to display them properly:

Trying to keep my blood pressure down

It is hard, because if you're not screaming mad at the world, you're not paying attention! (And if you're mad because Obama is a socialist Marxist Kenyan terrorist black supremacist, you're too stupid to deal with right now.)

We've got wars, and a "healthcare reform" plan that gives our money to the insurance companies without getting anything substantial in return, and no jobs, and Democrats acting like Republicans, and Republicans acting like shit-flinging monkeys... and that's just politics. There's TV, where my shows get canceled or bumped to next year, and Dr. Drew is exploiting Z-list celebrities on VH1, and everything is barely acceptable at best but none of it is compelling me to watch.

I've got tests this week, exams next week, and then a wonderful month off of school. Until then, I have a week to prepare my LAST 12-page history study guide. I have 3 hours to take my next-to-last online quiz, plus a test tomorrow and another one on Thursday. I need to remember to buy some Scantron fill-in-circle sheets for the multiple choice exams... remembering stuff is hard.

In the meantime, my wife is sick, it is cold out, I am feeling isolated by the crap going on in my brain right now, plus the fun of changing meds right nows. I'm terrible company, and I'm hiding in my office... not from my wife, and only a little bit from the dog and cats. :) I'm not feeling much like doing much, and if I sit on the couch with my wife I start ranting about everything that sucks, and I don't much feel like doing that.

And, truth be told, I don't much want to do that here either.

For some folks, ranting takes the pressure off. They feel better for getting things off their chest. It has never worked that way for me. Ranting just brings everything into sharper focus for me, and even when it starts out joking and fun it tends to spiral up into something pretty intense. It is why when I get upset, and my wife wants to talk about it, I almost want to scream at her to get the fuck away from me... because while I might not be that pissed off to start with, talking about it makes me start to get furious. The more I talk, the more whatever I'm talking about starts to squeeze out everything else in the world.

So, at least for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to try to avoid that. Problem is, I'm not sure I have anything else to say, or think, or feel... I'm not sure how much "me" there is beyond that stuff. Let's find out?

Something a little different...

So, my wife and I were graced with a little bit of extra money this week, so we decided that we should go ahead and do our Xmas shopping for ourselves. Being pragmatic, atheistic, and sort of lazy, the whole thing quickly degenerated into a plan where we would buy bookcases, and then split the rest of the money two ways and buy our own gifts.

This is Friday night. It is cold and rainy out, we're both tired, my wife was getting sick, and I was bored out of my mind. So, off to Target.

Yeah, I'm a genius. 9PM on a Friday night, buying DIY bookcases and hunting for movies and video games and such. Luckily for me, all the stores are on holiday hours, and everything was open. I was really looking for Fight Club on Blu-ray... I'm a guy, and I was just the right age when I saw it so that I think it is good. If I was a chick, or had been slightly older or younger it might not have mattered either way. I was a bit anarchistic, back in the day. Anyhoo, no more copies, so I bought Terminator: Salvation, a scratch pad for my cats, and a pair of bookcases. Woo.

Next up was the GameStop, looking for a video game. I realized that I will be playing Modern Warfare 2 for the next year, and in any case I have two weeks of school left and don't need to start anything new. Moving on... and boy were they happy to see me leave, since holiday hours are mandatory and company-wide for them, even though this town dies when the sun goes down. The less I stood there wasting their time, the closer to 10:01 they could leave. Onward!

Went to Books-A-Million. That was a weird time, walking those 30 or so feet. There was a little girl, maybe 7 or 10 years old. I don't know, I don't have kids and can't tell how old the little fuckers are. She was also walking towards the book store, and there's something a little bit off about how that might have looked from a distance, a guy in a hoodie with his face covered, following a little girl in the dark. We live in a strange world when I have to worry about someone thinking I'm a pervert or a pedophile because I'm vaguely near to a young kid.

Anyways, books. I want all of them. I read a free one, "Already Dead" by Charlie Huston, as a PDF file, and wanted the rest of the series. Of course, after the weird shit outside, I drew a complete blank on the author's name. I kind of wandered around a bit, and then I hit the graphic novels.

At that point, I had a mini-epiphany.

My in-laws sent me a gift card for my birthday a few months ago. The prices on Books-A-Million's website are like 40-50% less than what's in the store. I love supporting the local guy as much as the next guy, but they're a chain and the prices are too low online to argue with. So, back in the car and slightly-too-fast driving in the rain to get home.

Got home, and too late to watch the movie, but not too late to order a shitload of stuff on Amazon.com, since they offered free shipping. My wife ordered books and a pair of pants, I ordered five books and three graphic novels. In my head I'm doing my little math thing, like I do with everything. In my head, the real joy isn't in the buying, and not completely in the getting either. What makes it a complete experience for me is figuring the difference in the store's price versus what I actually paid. Or, in this case, how much more stuff I got by ordering online. The difference in price was so high that it was the equivalent of getting four of the books for free.

Good score!

Last night, we got around to watching Terminator: Salvation... I don't know why it "bombed" or why the critics hated it, other than the director has a douche-nozzle name (McG) and he acted like a giant idiot promoting the movie as some sort of "greatest film ever." Bold words from a man who's biggest previous "artistic" project was "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle." Turned out to be a not bad movie, and certainly not the giant pile of shit it was made out to be. Plus, it had Michael Ironside in it.

Speaking of which, last night I had a dream about Michael Ironside training me to shoot pistols. It was hard because, in true dream-logic fashion, the ammo wasn't labeled, and I had to sift through box after box. Also, I shaved just the right side of my face, and couldn't find a razor to finish the job. I'm suspending my atheism for the moment, to claim that this dream is some god's way of telling me, and by association telling my wife, that I need to get a pair of HK P30 pistols, and an electric razor for Xmas. I haven't picked which god or goddess is sending this message, because I don't want to hurt my chances by narrowing down the field.

Stuff I've been up to...

BEING DRIVEN MAD BY SCHOOL!!!

OK, so I've got finals starting on the 14th. In the meanwhile, today I had an hour-long writing assignment that might or might not have been my English Lit final (my Lit professor enjoys not letting the class know what the fuck is going on...), Monday I have a quiz, Tuesday I have a Precalculus test, Thursday I have a Trigonometry test, and the following week I have finals. Yay? Or will my head explode sometime between now and then?

I don't like not knowing what's going on. I really hate that, which makes me hate English Lit that much more. I have never hated a class like I hate this one, and I'm not alone. A bunch of us like reading, usually like English classes, and we all can't stand this one. The professor grades easy, I guess... too easy, since half of the class has never cracked open the goddamned book. It is just frustrating to ask a question and not get a straight answer.

All of my other professors seem to get it. My economics teacher gives a quiz every week, and the final comes straight from the quizzes. Same for my precalculus professor. My history teacher posted a detailed study guide, and my trigonometry teacher posted an 87-question practice test. In my other classes, I have a good idea of what's going on, they give me NUMBER GRADES so I know where I stand, and everyone is happy... well, not happy about an 87-question practice test, but it helps guarantee a good grade since I have two weeks to study for it.

I think the English teacher is a giant fucking turd who is going to just sort of make up grades, all A's and B's depending on your attendance and whether or not she likes you. I heard her tell a kid that his ridiculously late research paper wasn't going to hurt his grade "too badly." Well, that's a great goddamned example to set, and it is why the kids in my math classes don't know how to work a fraction, and didn't bother to learn the stuff on the first test, that has also been on EVERY TEST SINCE THEN. If I have to hear that teacher say "that's just the unit circle" one more time I'm going to get up and start screaming at people.

The madness is creeping in... thank goodness this semester is almost over, and I can start just taking science and math classes exclusively.