Yeah!... I mean "uh... yeah, I guess, but doesn't this suck?"
I've got a spotty record online with rubbing people the wrong way. I've often wondered why that is, when I don't have any problem at all in real-life interactions with real-life people. People love me! They really love me! I've always been cool with all groups, and I've always been able to fit into all sorts of situations. I went to a small high school, and I found myself getting along with people in every segment of the school. Even now... I'm a highly educated roughneck, I'm a genius who gets his hands dirty. I can appreciate high-class stuff without being a snob.
If people meet me online, they often think I'm all kinds of a giant jackass.
You know what the difference is, I think? In person, I can sell my positions with body language, tone of voice, a healthy portion of self-deprecating humor that can be inserted anywhere in a conversation. Online, I type and then you type. You get a whole turn, and then I get a whole turn, and then you get another turn. I'm awesome in real life because I can read people well, and can change my tone throughout a conversation in order to prevent the other person getting too pissed off. I can see where you're saying things that matter to you, and where you don't care either way.
Online? Not so much, and I come off like a bull in a china shop. Part of me doesn't give a damn, and I'm at least partially sure that I'm too much of a rough person to engage with the fucking pussy limpdicks who share my intellectual pursuits on the Internet. The rest is down to how there's no real interaction online, and I can't easily gauge my responses to not offense the poor little princes/princesses who live online.
Too bad. Prepare to get your asses kicked. Yeah!! :)
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Ugh... and YAY!
Good news and bad news. Let's take the bad news first.
I got drafted to cook green bean casserole for my wife's job. I sort of knew that I had been volunteered to do something or other food related, but no details and no further mention of it in the last two weeks or so. I thought I might be flipping burgers or making a dish of something or other. You can imagine my surprise and horror to learn that I was actually cooking food for the entire building's staff. All 100 or so of them. For tomorrow.
Yeah, not so happy about that. I'm totally going to guilt-trip my wife into buying me something special.
Speaking of something special... my wife got her new wedding rings. Yay! Too bad they are too big for her fingers, but that's a quibble. She'll get them sized at the same time I get my watch polished and her earrings cleaned. She's deserved a better, nicer ring since we got married, and I'm so glad she was able to finally get what she's always wanted.
I got drafted to cook green bean casserole for my wife's job. I sort of knew that I had been volunteered to do something or other food related, but no details and no further mention of it in the last two weeks or so. I thought I might be flipping burgers or making a dish of something or other. You can imagine my surprise and horror to learn that I was actually cooking food for the entire building's staff. All 100 or so of them. For tomorrow.
Yeah, not so happy about that. I'm totally going to guilt-trip my wife into buying me something special.
Speaking of something special... my wife got her new wedding rings. Yay! Too bad they are too big for her fingers, but that's a quibble. She'll get them sized at the same time I get my watch polished and her earrings cleaned. She's deserved a better, nicer ring since we got married, and I'm so glad she was able to finally get what she's always wanted.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
We went to Jared!
So, I wanna go snorkeling in Puerto Rico. Need a diving watch for that. Thank you Internet!
I got the box yesterday. It isn't a very special box, is it?
And there it is, the watch itself All high-tech and complicated and I have no real idea how any of it works. AWESOME!!!
BTW, I took all of these pictures with my new HTC Thunderbolt phone. Pretty impressive resolution, right?
I got the box yesterday. It isn't a very special box, is it?
But, you open the box and what do you see?
"He went to Jared... and bought something for himself!"
WTF is this? A watch or an emergency oxygen tank?
Yeah, it's in the shape of an oxygen tank. No, I don't know why either.
Open it up... and there's my watch! Thank goodness, I hear oxygen tanks don't keep very good time.
And there it is, the watch itself All high-tech and complicated and I have no real idea how any of it works. AWESOME!!!
BTW, I took all of these pictures with my new HTC Thunderbolt phone. Pretty impressive resolution, right?
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
We're getting married! Again!!
Have I mentioned that my wife is totally the most perfectest wife in the entire universe? Yeah, totally true. That's why when we're in Puerto Rico, we're renewing our vows. It will be romantic and whatever, the hotel has a spot picked out and several folks on hand to read the words, I can set up the camera and it will be a lovely experience. More importantly, it will let us finally be able to get a restaurant on our anniversary.
Let me tell you the story of our marriage. We got married back in 2005, in the springtime. We didn't have much money, so my wife got a plain band and I got nothing. We spent what little money we had on an expensive hotel in Orlando, and got married at the courthouse. We were stuck in traffic forever, and the hotel turned out to be less than impressive. No elevators, the stairs smelled like urine, the miniature golf course was covered in moss and rot, the power went out, all sorts of issues. the $45-a-night hotel we stayed at when we were dating and commuting was nicer than the place we paid more than twice as much for. We couldn't find any restaurants that weren't packed to the gills. Then on the way home, stuck in traffic AGAIN.
Lesson learned? Don't get married within 100 miles of Daytona Beach during the Daytona 500 weekend. That's why the roads were so bad, and the restaurants so full. That's why the hotel was so expensive, to gouge tourists. That's why for the past half-decade, we've had to celebrate our anniversary on a night other than the actual night, because it always falls during Race Week. Not anymore. Our new anniversary will be in June, when we're on vacation, and several months away from Race Week, Bike Week, Black People Drinking Week, and whatever else they do in Daytona.
And since we're doing real vows, and my wife is getting a real ring, then we can "officially" change our anniversary. At least that's what my wife says, and if it is good enough for her, it will have to be good enough for the people at Edible Arrangements. :)
Speaking of rings....
Yeah!
Let me tell you the story of our marriage. We got married back in 2005, in the springtime. We didn't have much money, so my wife got a plain band and I got nothing. We spent what little money we had on an expensive hotel in Orlando, and got married at the courthouse. We were stuck in traffic forever, and the hotel turned out to be less than impressive. No elevators, the stairs smelled like urine, the miniature golf course was covered in moss and rot, the power went out, all sorts of issues. the $45-a-night hotel we stayed at when we were dating and commuting was nicer than the place we paid more than twice as much for. We couldn't find any restaurants that weren't packed to the gills. Then on the way home, stuck in traffic AGAIN.
Lesson learned? Don't get married within 100 miles of Daytona Beach during the Daytona 500 weekend. That's why the roads were so bad, and the restaurants so full. That's why the hotel was so expensive, to gouge tourists. That's why for the past half-decade, we've had to celebrate our anniversary on a night other than the actual night, because it always falls during Race Week. Not anymore. Our new anniversary will be in June, when we're on vacation, and several months away from Race Week, Bike Week, Black People Drinking Week, and whatever else they do in Daytona.
And since we're doing real vows, and my wife is getting a real ring, then we can "officially" change our anniversary. At least that's what my wife says, and if it is good enough for her, it will have to be good enough for the people at Edible Arrangements. :)
Speaking of rings....
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
... and the man cave is operational once again!
Yeah! Go Joe! The shelves are up and level, the walls are painted and bright and shiny. I have a home for my bobbleheads. I feel about a million times better about the whole thing, although I got sort of testy and irritated towards the end of it (sorry, hunnybunny!).
The last thing I did was to hang the guitars back up on the wall. They were in the closet in their cases, so I open the closet... and the little cat Ellie was in the closet chilling out. Not sure when she got in there, or for how long she was in there, but she didn't seem to be in any great hurry to leave. *shrugs* The kid is strange.
Goldilocks in reverse, or "how household projects break your spirit" (not safe for anywhere)
You know the story. Goldilocks goes to the house of the three bears, and finds three bowls of porridge. One is too cold, one is too hot, and one is just right. Then she goes up to the bedroom and finds three dildos adult novelty massagers. One is too small, one is too big, and one is just right. Then the bears come home and the bestiality begins... isn't that how the story goes? Anyhoo, the point is that doing work around the house is sort of like that story, in this case including the metaphorical being raped by a bear family that happens at the end.
Take mowing. Mowing is usually a fairly small job, even though it sucks hairy monkey balls. In my case, it involves pushing a mower for an hour, and then about 30 minutes of edging to clean it up a bit. I know that if I start the job at 9-ish, I'll be done by noon even if I take a break in the middle or include sweeping the garage a bit while I'm out there. No big deal and nothing that will wreck your mojo.
Or, say you're going to repaint the biggest room in your house in a new color. You know it is going to take the whole weekend, so no big deal. You might move all the furniture on Friday night, do masking and a first coat Saturday, and hit the second coat and putting the furniture back on Sunday. You KNOW you aren't going to finish it all in one day, so you don't stress if you don't finish the first coat on Saturday, it just means you'll have to get up a little early on Sunday and you might have to wait until Monday to move the furniture back. No skin off your dick either way.
And then... there's the medium sized project, and the bear rape issue.
I have spent the last couple of weeks buying small amounts of paint and trying to match the colors so I could do some touching up, patching holes, that sort of thing. I found the best possible match yesterday although it is just a hair off, and bought a can of spray texture to match the texture of the walls in here, so that the patches are nearly invisible. It worked like a charm, and you can't easily tell there were holes in the wall unless you know where to look for the patches.There were more than a dozen holes, and my wife could only see one of them after the patches and texture spray and whatever.
Anyhoo, that's not the issue. The issue is that because my office has the most holes, and the most obvious scrapes and scratches and stains on the walls, I couldn't just slap on some touch-up paint, I really needed to just paint the whole thing. Because the paint isn't an exact match to the old paint, little spots of new paint all over the place would be more obvious than slight mismatch at the floor, ceiling, and corners. While I was painting and patching, I thought it would be high time to replace the crappy old shelves I had up with new and properly leveled shelves. That means drilling new holes, which means wall dust on the floor.
So. I move everything into the center of the room, lay some cardboard boxes down on the floor to catch paint spill, and get to work. About one wall into it, I realized that this was really more work than I wanted to really do. Not more work than I can do in one day, just more work than I really wanted to do in one day. Not too small, not too big, just wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.
So here it is, 7PM on a Friday night, and I'm typing away at my desk in the middle of my office. I just got done putting up the last shelf. Now I need to vacuum, wipe down everything, move everything back where it goes, put stuff up on the shelves, rehang my guitars on the wall.... I can get it done, but by Satan I just don't feel like it!
Take mowing. Mowing is usually a fairly small job, even though it sucks hairy monkey balls. In my case, it involves pushing a mower for an hour, and then about 30 minutes of edging to clean it up a bit. I know that if I start the job at 9-ish, I'll be done by noon even if I take a break in the middle or include sweeping the garage a bit while I'm out there. No big deal and nothing that will wreck your mojo.
Or, say you're going to repaint the biggest room in your house in a new color. You know it is going to take the whole weekend, so no big deal. You might move all the furniture on Friday night, do masking and a first coat Saturday, and hit the second coat and putting the furniture back on Sunday. You KNOW you aren't going to finish it all in one day, so you don't stress if you don't finish the first coat on Saturday, it just means you'll have to get up a little early on Sunday and you might have to wait until Monday to move the furniture back. No skin off your dick either way.
And then... there's the medium sized project, and the bear rape issue.
I have spent the last couple of weeks buying small amounts of paint and trying to match the colors so I could do some touching up, patching holes, that sort of thing. I found the best possible match yesterday although it is just a hair off, and bought a can of spray texture to match the texture of the walls in here, so that the patches are nearly invisible. It worked like a charm, and you can't easily tell there were holes in the wall unless you know where to look for the patches.There were more than a dozen holes, and my wife could only see one of them after the patches and texture spray and whatever.
Anyhoo, that's not the issue. The issue is that because my office has the most holes, and the most obvious scrapes and scratches and stains on the walls, I couldn't just slap on some touch-up paint, I really needed to just paint the whole thing. Because the paint isn't an exact match to the old paint, little spots of new paint all over the place would be more obvious than slight mismatch at the floor, ceiling, and corners. While I was painting and patching, I thought it would be high time to replace the crappy old shelves I had up with new and properly leveled shelves. That means drilling new holes, which means wall dust on the floor.
So. I move everything into the center of the room, lay some cardboard boxes down on the floor to catch paint spill, and get to work. About one wall into it, I realized that this was really more work than I wanted to really do. Not more work than I can do in one day, just more work than I really wanted to do in one day. Not too small, not too big, just wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.
So here it is, 7PM on a Friday night, and I'm typing away at my desk in the middle of my office. I just got done putting up the last shelf. Now I need to vacuum, wipe down everything, move everything back where it goes, put stuff up on the shelves, rehang my guitars on the wall.... I can get it done, but by Satan I just don't feel like it!
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Its is beginning to look a lot like vacation/list time
Hey friends and far-off neighbors!
The sun is shining, I'm mowing the lawn every week, the pets are shedding everywhere, and it is just about 7 weeks before we go on our first vacation since we got married six years ago. Yeah! My wife has been handling the vacation planning itself, the flight and hotel and various tours and such. My job has of course been to do a metric ton of shopping. I have bought or am about to buy:
The sun is shining, I'm mowing the lawn every week, the pets are shedding everywhere, and it is just about 7 weeks before we go on our first vacation since we got married six years ago. Yeah! My wife has been handling the vacation planning itself, the flight and hotel and various tours and such. My job has of course been to do a metric ton of shopping. I have bought or am about to buy:
- luggage
- pocket video camera and accessories
- 6 short sleeved shirts
- 3 long sleeved shirts
- 2 pairs of jeans
- 1 Green Lantern T-shirt
- five pairs of shorts
- 2 pairs of swim trunks
- new sunglasses
- 4 pairs of shoes
- new socks and underwear
Let's take a closer look at some of the things on the list. We can start with the shoes. Counting the shoes on the way, I own 11 pairs of shoes. Is that a lot for a guy? I own:
- black leather dress shoes
- brown leather dress shoe
- black leather casual shoes
- brown leather casual shoes
- motorcycle boots
- leather death metal guitarist boots
- slip-on outdoor shoes
- two pairs of running shoes
- some sort of sneaker/sandal business that I don't quite understand
- beaters I wear around the house
Wait a minute... "death metal guitarist boots"? WTF?!?!?!
Yeah.
Next, we have the pocket video camera, which required me to buy:
- camera
- camera pouch
- extra battery
- extra battery charger
- mini tripod
- 16GB SD card
- fancy colored skin for camera
- backpack to throw all of this other crap into
Notice how nothing is ever easy? Ever?
And then you've got the socks and underwear. I don't know about you, but when I travel someplace new I buy all-new socks and underwear. I think I got into the habit in the Marines, after I broke my leg in the field and wound up in the hospital. When they stripped me down for surgery, I was wearing... ummmm... not new underwear. I was sleeping in a tent for a week and only got the one shower, so I packed and wore old underwear, with the expected stains and nastiness. After that, I started buying cheap boxers two for a buck, and when I was in the field I would wear each pair once and throw it away. At that price, it would only cost me $7 for two weeks out in the woods, and between that and the baby wipes and talcum powder I felt clean for the whole time. Ever since, when I pack for anything I always feel the need to pack socks and underwear straight from the package to the luggage. And just in case you thought that would be simple? Not so simple. I've ordered mesh packing cubes to put my socks and underwear in, so that they don't get strewn all over a TSA counter at the airport.
My motto: there are no problems, only opportunities... opportunities to buy overpriced gadgets to solve the problems. That's why I carry a $250 pocketknife. :)
Saturday, April 9, 2011
I can't believe how much money I spent!!!! And also, sometimes people are awesome
Yesterday was an expensive day, let me tell you all about it... :)
I bought a half-dozen shirts for my Caribbean vacation, plus four pairs of shorts and a couple of swim trunks. Also a boonie hat. And new sunglasses because my wife looks better in my old sunglasses than I do. Must have cost me a grand total of a million dollars. Ok, like $800 on clothing, which is probably $700 more than I spent on clothing in the past year. In one morning. Scary stuff, but now I'm done with clothing for my vacation. I just need some shoes and I'm set.
The better part of it was that my wife likes what I bought. Thank you Judy at Dillard's! She was kind enough to dress me and keep me from looking like a total douche on my vacation. I'm not a complete idiot, I know that I'm not a fashionable guy by nature. I'm smart enough to know that the saleslady at the store probably has a better idea of what I should wear than I do, so I just let her pick out all my outfits for me. Seems to have worked: I tried on one of the outfits when my wife got home, and she was all like "Ooooohhh, sexy!" at me.
Of course then I changed back into a T-shirt with grease stains on it, and that was the end of that.
Also picked up a new soldering iron at Radio Shack, which was a second pleasant experience. I told the guy that I was looking to learn how to solder as part of a larger mission to learn to build guitar effects pedals and then maybe even amplifiers someday. He dipped into a bin of old resistors and just outright gave me a handful of them, and then went in the back and found some old guitar parts he had laying around and gave me those too. Basically just junk parts to practice on, but it was nice of him to do it.
People were nice all day though. I got to take my new guitar for a spin on a Slash signature Marshall amp. It is the first one I've seen anywhere, since I heard Marshall( a British company) had some issue getting them safety certified in America. There are rules about super-high-voltage stuff being imported I guess. Anyhoo. Can't afford it, wasn't going to buy it, let the guy at the guitar shop know I had no money or intention of buying it. It costs like eight billion dollars, and the dude was like "here's a cable, knock yourself out!" and let me fool with it for 10-15 minutes. It was a good time.
Anyways, at the end of it my wife looks at the budget, and after my shopping spree and her new glasses and contact lenses (yes both, no I don't know why either) we were left with a grand total of about $3. Oh well... I have enough stuff to keep me occupied for the next two weeks.
I bought a half-dozen shirts for my Caribbean vacation, plus four pairs of shorts and a couple of swim trunks. Also a boonie hat. And new sunglasses because my wife looks better in my old sunglasses than I do. Must have cost me a grand total of a million dollars. Ok, like $800 on clothing, which is probably $700 more than I spent on clothing in the past year. In one morning. Scary stuff, but now I'm done with clothing for my vacation. I just need some shoes and I'm set.
The better part of it was that my wife likes what I bought. Thank you Judy at Dillard's! She was kind enough to dress me and keep me from looking like a total douche on my vacation. I'm not a complete idiot, I know that I'm not a fashionable guy by nature. I'm smart enough to know that the saleslady at the store probably has a better idea of what I should wear than I do, so I just let her pick out all my outfits for me. Seems to have worked: I tried on one of the outfits when my wife got home, and she was all like "Ooooohhh, sexy!" at me.
Of course then I changed back into a T-shirt with grease stains on it, and that was the end of that.
Also picked up a new soldering iron at Radio Shack, which was a second pleasant experience. I told the guy that I was looking to learn how to solder as part of a larger mission to learn to build guitar effects pedals and then maybe even amplifiers someday. He dipped into a bin of old resistors and just outright gave me a handful of them, and then went in the back and found some old guitar parts he had laying around and gave me those too. Basically just junk parts to practice on, but it was nice of him to do it.
People were nice all day though. I got to take my new guitar for a spin on a Slash signature Marshall amp. It is the first one I've seen anywhere, since I heard Marshall( a British company) had some issue getting them safety certified in America. There are rules about super-high-voltage stuff being imported I guess. Anyhoo. Can't afford it, wasn't going to buy it, let the guy at the guitar shop know I had no money or intention of buying it. It costs like eight billion dollars, and the dude was like "here's a cable, knock yourself out!" and let me fool with it for 10-15 minutes. It was a good time.
Anyways, at the end of it my wife looks at the budget, and after my shopping spree and her new glasses and contact lenses (yes both, no I don't know why either) we were left with a grand total of about $3. Oh well... I have enough stuff to keep me occupied for the next two weeks.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Finally finally FINALLY!!!! New Guitar Day!!!!
Ignore all the damage to my blog format, and enjoy the glory of the Gibson Les Paul!
I'll just let the pictures speak for me, ok?
I'll just let the pictures speak for me, ok?
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Isn't it about time for more dirty words?
Sweet crispy chocolate-covered caramel Christ on a stick!
Here I am, in an America where we have one corporation-blowing party that's selling out women, children, the elderly, the Constitution and rule of law, and almost every value held dear by modern civilization... and then there's the Republican Party, doing all of that plus wanting to blow up the rest of the world too. Shouldn't people be standing up and saying "suck a fat baby's dick, you rat bastard sheep fuckers!" instead of politely asking that somebody maybe be 10% less evil this week?
We've got crazy Muslims in the Middle East killing UN workers because some batshit crazy Christ-stain in Florida burned a Koran. We've got Muslim riots in Europe and racist white Christ-stain Europeans trying at every turn to ban immigration and keep immigrants second-class citizens. Here in America we've got Christ-stains planning and committing terrorist attacks on Muslims, blacks, women, and the government... and claiming that Muslim extremists are a problem in American. Every other problem can be put on Obama because he was born in Kenya/Indonesia/Mars and is a Muslim/black separatist Christian/Marxist/baby-eater. Forget that all of his policies are Republican ones, and he's to the right of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush on some issues. The only reason he didn't run as a Republican is because they are batshit crazy anti-American racists who want to roll back progress to before the Civil War (which should be officially entitled "the War of Southern Treason" from here on out) and the Democrats are spineless pussies who just want to roll some things back to the early 20th Century. Nope, no need for foul language with all that going on!
It is far past time to stop being polite to those people. The religionists, the free-market cultists, the racists, the Ayn Rand worshipping morons, the conspiracy idiots, the war-mongers and profiteers, the whole fucking steaming shit-pile of them. And double fuck you fence-sitting "centrist" cowards who allow and encourage the extremists with your bullshit notions that everyone's opinion deserves respect and we shouldn't be too rude to anyone no matter how goddamned harmful and destructive their views and behavior are. Fuck you "moderate" Christians and Muslims who provide cover for your bomb-throwing fellow travelers, with your nonsense justifications for believing things for really bad reasons, because you are the ones who create the space where evil thrives. Fuck you to the political "independents" who sway with the wind and "throw the bums out" attitude that replaces substantive knowledge of issues with contrariness and know-nothing refusal to pick a goddamned side. The right answer isn't the difference between two random views you heard on TV once while eating fucking nachos, sometimes one of the two positions is correct, and sometimes they are both bullshit that you should feel free to ignore.
Fuck all of you asshole chickenshit chickenhawk motherfuckers who support wars overseas while refusing to put yourself and your families in harm's way. Fuck all you morons who thing a goddamned yellow ribbon magnet counts as supporting the troops. Fuck all you anti-tax buffoons who don't seem to understand that it takes taxes to pay those troops and take care of their injuries when they fight the wars that your cowardly ass won't go fight. Triple fuck you Second Amendment spouting gun toting limp dicks who want to carry guns in national parks and college campuses and all those other safe places in America, so you can feel like a real man without actually having to be one.
Fuck this. I'm going to go play guitar while the world burns, because the people who could do something are the ones holding the flamethrowers.
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