Running out of steam...

Yeah. I'm exhausted and constantly hungry and I'm taking NyQuil every few hours because it is the only thing I have found that stops the coughing. The coughing gets so bad that I get a terrible headache from it. Didn't sleep last night. Wife had to get up at 3:30AM for work. That didn't wake me up, but the dog woke me up at 4-ish wanting to go out for a walk.

The reading has sort of fallen off too. I've been busy, been playing Dead Space 2, been walking and watching my girlish figure and whatnot. I started reading American Taliban by Markos Moulitsas, and stalled out halfway through. I'm just going to have to put it down and pick up something else. More Jack Reacher novels, most likely. One of these days I'm going to read all of those Philip Pullman novels I've got. One of these days...

I did get the garage cleaned out and things moved around so that I can start using the Bowflex again. Unfortunately, the power rod things are old and warped and probably won't work properly anymore. I can order the 50-pound rods, but the smaller ones... I guess they are what they are. Oh well, If I replace the 50-pound ones and get an extra 100-pound upgrade that should be more than enough weight to work for me.

Finally, and completely unrelated: as I was cleaning the garage, I listened to the WTF podcast hosted by former Air America non-celebrity Marc Maron. He had on fellow D-lister "comedy legend" Gallagher on the show... yeah, the sledge-o-matic clown. Gallagher has been making a name for himself recently as a giant racist homophobe goon... and when Maron confronted him about it and didn't accept his rationalizations for shitty and offensive jokes, Gallagher stomped off in a huff. I don't know about the racist homophobe is how he really feels, or if it is just lazy comedy for lazy audiences... but it IS lazy comedy for lazy audiences, coming from a guy who sounds like a bitter, jaded old failure who had a brush with success and never managed to convert it into anything meaningful or productive. Gallagher spends most of the interview complaining about how crappy other comedians are, how complicated jokes and sort of alt-comic subtlety and obscure references aren't really comedy... and ripping off the idea of the sledge-o-matic from Saturday Night Live and calling people fags and ragheads is real comedy.

Here's an example of a Gallagher "joke": "Tracy Morgan? What a no-talent hack. Had him onstage once and he wouldn't smash a watermelon. I thought those guys LOVED 'em!"

And no, it doesn't help when you defend your lazy racist and "fag" jokes by saying that you got them from other people, or that those jokes make your old white conservative Christian audiences laugh. It just means that you're a joke thief and pandering to the lowest common denominator. Fuck that shit, it is an insult to the audiences. Most people are smart enough to appreciate smart humor, and smart comedians can tell jokes that appeal to those folks while still being funny to folks who aren't quite as smart. Twenty minutes of smashing fruit with a giant mallet after forty minutes of props and puns and queer-bashing and racial stereotypes isn't funny or clever. This fucking Gallagher guy is like George Carlin's slow-witted ne'er do well brother who was in marching band while his brother was star quarterback, still sleeps on their mom's couch and borrows money a couple of times a year when he drinks too much and blows the rent money on strippers, trying to do sharp social commentary with a dull mind, mixed with a bunch of Carrot Top sadness and pulped produce at the end.

Hmmm... maybe I'm not as out of steam as I thought?

oh damn...

My in-laws are coming to town today. Crap. I had to clean the house, because even though they aren't staying here, they may stop at the house after dinner. I guess I should also clean my office... it isn't 'Hoarders' messy, but I wouldn't want to have company in there either. I showed my wife the mess, and she sort of scoffed at me because it is just cluttered a little and might take 20 minutes to clean if I could just work up the interest. So far, no good.

Ugh. And I stopped drinking, which is going to be weird at a sports bar with my father-in-law who is a big drinker. Oh well... I can drink in Puerto Rico in June. Upshot is that hotel bar drinks are expensive and if I don't drink for 6 months I'm going to be a crazy cheap drunk!

Not really a resolution, and other stuff

Yeah, I know... EVERYBODY tries to lose weight in January. I know I know I know, I'm a lemming. Fuck. But I have a different reason, namely the Puerto Rico vacation that we're taking in June. We've already got a 7-night reservation in a suite with an ocean view and a hot tub on the balcony. I've got to get fit and buff and tan and shit for the vacation, so I'm working on losing weight, exercising, and all that sort of nonsense. So I'm tracking calories and walking a little here and there and I might even dust off the Bowflex. In the meanwhile, I've lost 9 pounds. Not bad for a new year...

... but even better since I started the diet on January 18th. Nine days later, I've lost nine pounds. Hey, maybe quitting drinking wasn't such a bad idea after all. Oh, and here's the room:

Other than that, we've got all sorts of cool plans and somehow we're being crazy practical and crazy extravagant at the same time. It is a new look at how we spend our money... we actually PAY OUR BILLS! And it turns out that we're rich and stuff, I just didn't know it because we've been spending money on useful shit instead of blowing all of our extra money on junk for the last year or so. My wife had surgery last spring, and that created like $6-7000 worth of bills, my wife needed a new laptop, I needed a new desktop, my wife went on vacation with her mom, and we did really big for Xmas this year. Just bills and bills and bills, and we're still paying on the medical bills. Tomorrow we're paying off a $850 med bill, and in 2-3 weeks we'll get our income tax check that will pay off the last $2050 bill. Then all that money we've been spending on bills and such will be devoted to...

...ummm...


...what?...


... spending on stuff we want!!

We're going to save money for the vacation, in a big way. We're going to buy luggage and a new wardrobe for me after I lose all this weight and who knows what. It is going to be so goddamned awesome!

In the meanwhile... Dead Space 2 is an awesome video game, I'm going to go play some now.

Wow, a classic movie! Let It Ride (1989)

Let It Ride starring Richard Dreyfuss, 1989. Holy crap I love this movie. It plays on cable every so often, and has done so for as long as I can remember. In my head, I think this movie has actually been playing on cable since before it was made, which just tells you how funny memory can be.

Anyways, gambling addict Jay Trotter(Dreyfuss) spends a day at the track. We meet his friends who are there when he loses, and hate him when he wins. We get into the whole horse racing and betting world. It has got Buster Poindexter in it, and Jennifer Tilly's boobs falling out through half the movie. Fixed races, track security, and one very VERY good day for Trotter. It is sort of one of those fantasy movies that happens in the real world. Also, terrible 1980s movie soundtrack songs. One of those sort of minor classics from a long-ago time.

They just don't make movies like this anymore. Maybe they can't do it anymore, because everything has to be angst-ridden or ironic. Or movies have to be over-broad and slapsticky and turned up to 11. A movie can't just be earnest and open and subtle, and allow the natural humor of a situation guide it. You see these kinds of real characters in indie dramas sometimes, or sort of self-aware and pretentious characters who are obviously playing at being these sorts of real people in indie comedies. You don't see people just being real in comedies anymore, unless you think mentally stunted man-boys breaking things out of childing rage counts as "real", or frigid pissed off harpy women who bust balls as a hobby. I don't know any of those people. I know people who are down on their luck and stick together and are sometimes ugly towards each other but really do mean well.

In Let It Ride, those folks get a good day for a change.

Shweeeeeet!!!!! It is a cable post again!!

Gots my new Xbox 360! A day earlier than expected too. Magically, I've eliminated a bunch of the cables from the back of the TV, and you longtime readers know about my obsession with cables. Three cables to the back of the TV, one out of the TV to the receiver, and power cords. All of the other audio and video cables are out of there. I know it isn't much of a big deal, but it makes me happy.


In other cable news, I am slowly learning how to work a soldering iron. The goal, the plan, the whole messy deal is to cut and resolder the cables running into my guitar amp. Right now I have a big ugly tangle. Someday soon, I'm going to have cables cut to just the length I need, and no mess in the back and side of the amp. I know, right? It is a nothing of a thing, but what the hell. That is, if I can ever learn to work a soldering iron. The last time I tried to use one I wound up wrecking the thing I was working on and set fire to a pair of shorts. Yeah, not exactly the most successful operation I've ever engaged in. 


Other than that, nothing much here. New book came from UPS along with the XBox. Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: A Book by Patton Oswalt is the strangest memoir I've ever read. There's a couple of autobiographical stories, an epic poem, and some weird vampire comic book excerpt? Also a description of a future movie script "punch up" where Patton tries to somehow repair the worst movie of all time while maintaining the basic plot outline. And that's the first third of it. For anyone not familiar with Patton Oswalt, here's something off of YouTube that you must watch, and it is NSFW and possibly not safe for your home, car, or large swaths of North America.



The first time I heard that, I started laughing and didn't stop even after I came very close to puking all over my office I was laughing so hard. It never, ever, ever gets old. Listen to it!!!! NOW!!!!

R.I.P: Joe's Xbox 360: 2007-2011

This morning after a period of illness/strange grinding noises, my Xbox 360 finally died. We've been through a lot together. We fought in World War II, Vietnam, the Middle East, Siberia, various other planets, several versions of the afterlife, and alternate timelines and dimensions. We battled terrorists, every military in the world and several dozen off-world, demons and angels, gods and demigods.

I remember our first game together... Halo 3. Oh, the times we had! And the multiplayer games of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, who could ever forget? Not to mention the hundreds of TV episodes streamed to my TV, the music we listened to... we shared so much together! I don't know how I'll... sorry, I'm choking up here... I promised I wouldn't cry!... how I'll get along without you, Xbox 360. :(

Well, until Wednesday, when I get my new one from Amazon.  

In a reading mood this year

Just a few of the books I plan on reading this year...

I don't know. I hit a long reading dry spell, that lasted from the summer until a few weeks ago. I was able to read graphic novels, but with the exception of a couple of very short books and stories I wasn't able to commit to anything. Then my in-laws got me the latest Stephen King book, a collection of four novellas. I sat down to read one, with the thought that I could keep my focus at least long enough to finish a 150 page story in a day or two. I ended up reading the whole thing in less than 24 hours. 

While books have got my attention, I've decided I'd better start pushing through as many as I can as fast as I can. Three books so far this year, which isn't half-bad. I'm not always going to have this much free time, but while it lasts I'm going to enjoy it. Not drinking doesn't hurt though... it frees up a lot of my time, in a way that I didn't expect. When I'm drinking, I'm sort of not doing anything else or interested in doing much besides typing angrily at dumb people and watching streaming TV shows on Netflix. Nice to have the extra time every day. 

On to the next book!

Can't imagine why people are getting shot...

I'll have more on the whole Gabby Giffords shooting over the next few days, once the news settles down and there are more facts on the table. In the meanwhile, let's talk about something that we DO have facts on: Arizona has some of the most lax gun control laws in America. You can pretty much buy anything you want no matter how batshit crazy you are. Maybe that's something that can be addressed without getting into a left/right squabble?

Here in Florida, if a person has $1000 and a clean criminal record, they can buy a cheap M-16 ripoff and enough magazines and ammo to hold off a zombie hoard for days. Sure it is not high-powered ammo, but .22 LR rounds can be had online for $205 for a case of 5250 rounds. Maybe that's something that should be a little harder to do than just getting a credit card and an Internet connection? Possibly?

Things Joe Don't Get: Vol. 1

As I walk through this world, sometimes I feel like I'm an alien... or that the rest of you folks are aliens, and I'm in a Twilight Zone episode. I mean, we all have more or less the same body design and speak similar languages for the most part. I talk to people and they seem kind of like me, same sorts of concerns and same general range of likes and dislikes. Then I run into shit that confuses the hell out of me, and makes me wonder if other people are batshit crazy, or if it is me. Could possibly be me, but you be the judge.

• I don't get this whole "search for your birth parents/children" business. Who gives a shit, and why? If you were given up for adoption and find out as an older child or young adult, why would you have some burning desire to find the person who threw you away? Hoping that it turns out to be Bill Gates and you can get a cut? Adults who are looking for their throw-away kid? That kid did however they did for years and years without you coming along and complicating their life to serve whatever narcissistic impulse is driving you so fucking just drop it... unless I'm the kid and you want to give me money. 
• Speaking of children... I don't want any, but I DO get that other people do; biological imperative and all that. What I don't get is when chicks go all batty about the baby squirting out of their squishy, even when their biology leaves them particularly unsuited for baby-birthing. All those fertility treatments and frozen eggs and implanting embryos and all that shit... costs money and medical resources that could be used for a good cause. Like anything besides making some more shit factories. That goes double for the multiple miscarriage bunch. Yeah, I'm sorry you can't make a baby right... I can't play shred guitar, we all have our burdens. Stop wrecking your health, your mental well-being, and your relationships by subjecting yourself to a self-inflicted medical emergency once a year. Go adopt. It is the same thing, except without the stretch marks.
• Speaking of adopting... Americans going on a world tour to buy babies. They're children, not fucking exotic birds. Instead of the normal swing set most kids get, Angelina Jolie probably bought her kids a United Nations playset for the backyard. 
• Speaking of exotic pets... I don't get that shit either. I have good, happy, healthy cats and a dog from the local humane society. Who the fuck needs a $600 dog with "papers"? Does it love you more? Does its poop smell less horrible? Or are you just some piece of shit who bought an animal as a fashion accessory? 
• Speaking of pieces of shit... the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives read the Constitution, and left out the part about slavery and taxation. Yeah, that's a real respect for our founding document there, fuckwits. I'm surprised they didn't just read the Second Amendment twenty-seven times and call it a day. Admitting the flaws in a system is the first step towards improving it. While these jackholes scream "USA #1" at the top of their lungs and call anyone who says different un-American, we drop further and further on the lists of things that matter like standard of living and health. 

That's it for today. I'm on my wife's old laptop, and the keys are falling off while the screen goes black every few seconds. Happy weekend!

If there's something strange in your neighborhood...

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters, or a trio of housecats?

I have no damn clue what goes on in the backyard, but occasionally it is strange enough to attract the attention of all of the cats. There are mounds of dirt that my wife says are created by moles, and we have rabbits and deer in the neighborhood. Rarely, all three cats are attracted to something.

Then inevitably the dog gets curious, and scares the cats off. Oh well. At least there's no Rick Moranis.

Videos games can be scarier than movies!

I've been replaying a game called Dead Space on XBox 360, in anticipation of the release of Dead Space 2. The game is a from a third person over the shoulder perspective, and takes place on a spaceship that brought up people-eating aliens from a far-away planet. There's a bizarre cult around an ancient artifact that was also brought up from the planet, and talk of the end of all of humanity if something or other isn't dealt with pronto. Turns out that the aliens are mostly winged weirdos who attach themselves to the corpses of the crew and transform them into "necromorphs"... bad juju, believe me.

YES, THIS IS A MUTATED DEAD BABY!!!

Anyhoo, shades of the Alien flicks, with lots of jump scares and scary noises. Also lots of cool lighting effects and creepy shadows and atmospheric music. Standard action/horror stuff, not bad for a video game but pretty standard for horror movies. Nothing special, nothing fancy.

Then you reach Chapter 10: End of Days...

You enter the level, which seems to be crew quarters, recreational facilities, and a movie theater based on the posters on the walls. You walk into the entrance lounge which looks decorated for a party, and into a nightmare worse than any monster chasing you down a hallway. There are candles on the floor, along with scribblings on the walls and floor in some alien language. There's a ghostly voice softly singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", but the lines are out of order like a tape that has been shredded and spliced back together randomly. Intermittently, a softer voice calls out your character's name.

And then there are the bodies. The corpses of the cultists who are waiting for the artifact and its alien servants to bring them back to "life." As near as I can tell, they tied sacks over their own heads, sat down, and then their leader shot them in the head one by one. THAT'S FUCKING SCARY! It is the scariest thing in a game full of creepy stuff because this is real. We all know about the Jonestown cult drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid, and the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult in the 1990s. People do this sort of thing in real life. The fact that they are going to turn into bloodthirsty mutant monsters later is secondary. 

When you add that to the horror movie music and action, plus the necessarily immersion of video gaming, and you've got something that creeps me out more than any horror movie I've seen in the last couple of years. And the sequel comes out in three weeks. I'll keep the lights on. 

This whole reading thing is going well?

So as per my immediate goals, I've been trying to hunker down and read some of these stacks of unread books around the house. I started with a little something called Killing Floor by Lee Child. It is sort of a cross between a detective novel and one of those semi-classic "men's adventure" series like The Executioner(700+ books and spinoffs) and The Destroyer(150 or so novels, plus comic books and a movie called Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins).

Like those old books, the main character is a bad-ass motherfucker who sets shit right, gets the chick, and then leaves the chick for the next adventure. You know, Captain Kirk without the spaceship. The plot of Killing Floor even has that same sort of ridiculously unbelievable coincidence that occurs in your average pulp action story. The writing is better, but not so much so that it isn't the same sort of galloping "action movie on paper" that is engaging without being excessively "thinky."

Speaking of galloping, I dashed through the first book in the series in one day. All 524 pages of it. This sort of book, I can average about 100-125 pages an hour if I'm comfortable and not too distracted. I've started the second book, and I'm already 10% done with it in about a half-hour. Should take me another 5-6 hours to be done with it, so late tonight or first thing in the morning. Two down, and like 14 more books to go. At least Lee Child puts out: he's good for 1 book per year like clockwork except for 2010 when he published TWO books.

Not a coincidence is that I found out these books and their main character Jack Reacher from another hugely prolific writer: Stephen King. Uncle Stevie likes to plug the books he likes, and he even included mentions of Jack Reacher in his book Under The Dome as a character in that universe. Me and Uncle Stevie have similar tastes in books to an extent, in that we're both big fans of book series that are the equivalent of the Carrabba's chain of restaurants. We're talking nothing too fancy like a casual Friday sort of thing, with better than average quality and consistency, without being particularly snobbish or challenging. It ain't Dom Perignon
but it ain't Miller Lite either.

Anyhoo, happy reading! Anyone else stumble across any good books, feel free to share.

Habit is a bitch

We've got this $25 gift card for Cracker Barrel that we're probably never going to use. It just seems like such a hassle, you know? You have to shower and put on clean clothing, drive 2-3 miles to the restaurant, and then wait in line for a table. Plus, my wife and I don't get up at the same time by about 30-45 minutes, and she is on autopilot and usually has breakfast before I'm up. And we only do the Barrel for breakfast, so I don't know what to do about that.

Plus, and I hadn't thought about it until recently... but eating out and going to the movies and generally driving places is part of our "old life". The life before our financial situation crashed and burned around our heads. We're in a better place financially since then, probably better than we've ever been. We are current on bills and aren't constantly buying things on credit that we don't need, and we stick pretty close to our budget. It is really cool, and sometimes my wife and I just take a few minutes to brag on ourselves to each other about how kick-ass we are doing.

But at the same time we're more money conscious and better disciplined and have improved our spending habits, we've fallen out of the habit of just going and doing stuff. And as we are creatures of extreme habit it seems almost impossible to yank ourselves out of this one. On the other hand my wife has quit smoking, and I quit a few years ago, so maybe we can struggle our way to breakfast tomorrow morning?

Happy New Year!!!

No resolutions here, but I do have a couple of projects on my plate:

1. I'm going to read as many of my books as I can, and log the list somewhere in a sidebar or something. I have a giant pile of books, I could go most of the year without buying another... not that it will stop me, of course! I'm always like 20 books behind, and I'm really going to try to get that down to more like 5-6.
2. I built a computer in 2010, so in 2011 I'm going to build a guitar. From parts, of course... I'm not planning on first spending thousands on woodworking equipment. For that, I could just buy a crazy expensive guitar and be done with it. I'm also going to swap out the vacuum tubes in my amplifier... just because tubes are pretty cheap and it will be interesting to see how it affects the sound.
3. I'm going to try to blog more, just because I feel like getting this stuff out keeps me more focused. I need to be more outward-focused, and this blog is about as much as I can tolerate so I've got to keep at least this much going.
4. I'm going to get a tattoo of a ring-tailed lemur riding a koala having a lightsaber fight with a monkey wearing a miner's helmet.