The grab-bag... OF HORROR!!!!

It has been/is/will continue to be a rough week for the Improbable household. So, instead of complaining or whining, I'm going to post a bunch of NSFW videos and pictures... and a little rant about AMC's The Walking Dead which is a good show wrapped in a shitty show, wrapped in the worst dialogue ever.

For those not in the know, he're the completely spoilerific synopsis: there are zombies, the world is full of them, there's no government or law or nothing to speak of that we've seen, and 12 year old Carl Grimes is allowed to wander the woods and streams of this apocalypse-stricken world with a gun that he stole from a chopper-riding survival nut with a crossbow and white-supremacist connections. Without supervision, more or less day and night. People die horribly in front of him, and he shakes it off and goes for nature hikes by himself. Worst mother ever!

So, there's a new Internet meme thingy starting up... GET OUT OF HERE, CARL!!! full of funny photoshopped pictures of Carl wandering into places he doesn't belong. Like this:

Or this:

Or even the one I made:

I find your lack of supervision... disturbing.

And now, my favorite new NSFW song:






And let's wrap this up with some blasphemy:









Happy Hump Day!

My kitty loves me/is in heat

Oh boy...

Because I've never picked up a stray before, and I've always adopted from shelters that insist on spaying/neutering pets before cutting them loose, I've never actually experienced a cat in heat before. I thought Lily loved me, but it turns out she's just hoping some tomcat hears/smells her and buys her a drink, maybe invites her up to look at his etchings.

This is going to last a couple of days, and then never again. We're having her spayed this week. Maybe this explains something though. The other cats HATE Lily... well, not Ellie because Ellie doesn't pay any attention to anyone in this house except when she's sleeping and looking for a snuggle-buddy for nap time at which point she'll lay down and cuddle with the dog if that's the only one available. Maybe it is all the crying and pheromoning and what-not?

Maybe the most beautiful thing I've seen this year

Presented without any further comment:

every damned time!!

It is Wednesday, right? I sort of slept so long that it could be Thursday and I would not be surprised. I had a couple of beers last night... for a change actually just a couple... and after Monday's terrible night of sleep, my wife decided to take a couple of anti-anxiety pills. She'd got a prescription, and she could take them several times a day, but in practice she takes one or two at a time one or two times a month when she really needs them. So there's extras, and she offered me a couple. For some stupid reason, I said "yes" and I was off on a journey into SleepySpace.

I woke up at around 11-11:30, and luckily the dog hadn't crapped all over the house. Double lucky since we just switched her from the good dog food to the excellent dog food and her tummy is having a hard time adapting to good-quality kibble. First I tossed Tuesday's chicken carcass into the stock pot to simmer, and then I went back to bed around 12:30, and slept until 5:30. Yay? Whipped up a quick Shepherd's Pie for dinner, and figured I'd have a few more beers to help me get to sleep tonight since I slept the whole day.

And then it starts raining.

Having spent most of the last decade in Florida, at the first sound of thunder I start getting ready. Not anything fancy, but I make sure things are in the fridge that need to go in the fridge, I plug in all the rechargeable stuff, that sort of thing. Best of all, I have rechargeable cordless tool batteries that run a small flashlight, and each battery is good for a few solid hours of light. Great news, except for the new constant in my life:

It always rains the night before trash day. Always.

So here I've got this sloppy mess of chicken bones, meat, connective tissue, and skin to throw away. Don't want to leave it in the trash can to stink up the house, and before it stinks it will drive the dog nuts with the scents of concentrated nummy. I can stick it outside, but I really need it out and to the alley to be taken away, because the last think I need is vultures and stray cats circling my house. So I dragged the trashcan out in the rain, through the mud, out to the alley. Joy.

At least we''ll have excellent soup for Friday night. There's nothing better on Earth than Joe soup, because it starts with love, and a slow-roasted chicken carcass.

Pet Food? and other issues

It is weird having four-legged family the way we do. We started out with a cat for my wife, who pretty much immediately became MY cat. Then we got a dog for me, and my wife bonded with the dog immediately. I was going to rescue a second dog so that maybe he or she would love me best, which somehow magically transformed into a second cat who also adopted me as her Daddy. Then my wife's boss was going to get rid of her cat, so we took that cat too. Yet another cat that also loves me beyond all reason. When we moved here, we picked up the skinny white abandoned cat.

When we brought skinny white cat to the vet, the vet had a minor stroke when I told her we were feeding her Purina cat food. All the cats eat Purina! It is the name I know, the name I trust! Apparently, it is complete crap. CRAP!! How am I supposed to know? It turns out I've been feeding all of my pets the equivalent of Taco Bell for the last 5 years. I switched the dog to something called "Chef Michael" which is way more expensive than the Beneful (both by Purina!) but turns out to also be CRAP!! Makes me feel terrible, you know? Like I've been feeding them Twinkies and tree bark.

The cats are sort of fat, and since switching dog food the dog has been pooping in the house and acting weird. But how do you choose a better kibble? The Internet is surprisingly uncooperative in this regard, since it seems like everyone is trying to sell you their food, and there's not much that feels independent. I've decided on Wellness food, because really I still don't know anything but it looks OK and certainly tons better than Beneful. Mostly meat, plus veggies. Not mostly corn filler crap and coloring. It cost me almost over $75 for food for all the pets, but what can you do? Keep feeding your kids Taco Bell and Twinkies? Look at that face!

Perhaps she'll die!

Actual rant I went on this morning, more or less:

DOODOO CHICKEN!

So, the USDA has decided to let the poultry plants self-regulate. There's a good plan! That will save money! Of course if you stop doing your job then it costs less to run your agency. You've got to love that kind of thinking... I guess we could save money on the police force if the cops tell us to do our own policing! We're going to start saving money on groceries in our house too, because we're going to stop eating! OK, that won't work... you eat today, and I'll eat tomorrow, and we'll cut the bill in half!

It is the sort of thinking we've come to expect, sort of bonehead dumb solutions to everything. No jobs? Start your own business... because no one has dibs on that part of the market and you can just jump right in and put a JoeMart next to the Walmart and become a billionaire! Solve issues with public schools by sending everyone to private schools, and while you're at it close down the state colleges and universities and send EVERYONE to Harvard! I'm sure they can handle 17 million incoming freshmen every semester!

It is just a great idea the USDA has come up with. Take a notoriously filthy industry, that is this filthy when they know someone's watching, and stop watching! They'll magically become cleaner, because that's how it works. When you have a lazy employee who doesn't do much when the supervisor is checking up on them, they become a perfect employee if you fire the supervisor and leave them to their own devices...

Unless you're a pregnant woman who wants an abortion, in which case YOU CAN'T BE TRUSTED! Gotta have 3 different sonograms and a long explanation of the whole pregnancy issue, because even though she got herself pregnant and managed to dress herself and get down to the doctor's office all by herself, there's a slim chance that she doesn't know she's pregnant. She might think that she swallowed a pumpkin seed back at Halloween, and in a couple of months she's going to produce a fully-grown Jack-O'-Lantern! Have to get a couple of sonograms to make sure that's not what happened! Or maybe she swallowed a fly, and then she swallowed a spider to catch the fly, and swallowed a bird to catch the spider to catch the fly...

PERHAPS SHE'LL DIE!!

... and then I bought a new knife.

Really the whole damned thing bothers me all up and down, left and down. In every way, every day, and will continue to be a thorn in my side from my 37th birthday until the day I die. And if the transhumanists have their way, even past my physical death.

I own a bunch of weapons. I'm actually not a generally violent person, regardless of what my Drill Instructors said when I was at Boot Camp!

Seriously...

Anyhoo, I'm generally armed to the teeth. I've got a Springfield XDM .40 handgun, that is rarely more than 2 feet from me, and often rides on my right hip. It isn't the M-16 I carried in the Marines, but it will do in a pinch. I'm also used to carrying a knife in my right pocket. For the last four years, that knife has been a limited edition Benchmade Presidio Auto. I've also got several fixed-blade knives, and an extra-long fully-functional katana that I once used to cut through a 2-3 inch branch with one stroke.

No, this is not excessive... the machete I almost bought would have been excessive.

When we moved to Virginia, I learned something interesting and important for my long-term freedom. While I'm allowed to walk around the neighborhood with my loaded pistol on my hip, with four extra magazines for a total of 81 rounds. I can strap on any or all of the big knives I've got, on the same belt as my pistol and magazines... it gets heavy, trust me. I'm pretty sure I can even carry the katana, as long as I don't unsheathe it in public. But I can't carry my Benchmade Presidio, because it is a "switchblade" and therefore illegal. It opens by way of a button, which releases the blade in a spring-loaded manner, which makes it more dangerous than any other weapon I own?

Guess which one is a danger to Mom, apple pie, and freedom? The second smallest one, second from left.

Of course, to add jail time to fines the government decided that if you OWN an auto knife, you also intend to sell it to someone and they charge you for trying to sell it. Bastards! So I had a choice, to carry the illegal knife and roll the dice, or buy a new knife and follow the law. I've never been one to duck the grave responsibility of going shopping for new gadgets... I'm willing to make that sacrifice. So I ordered a knife online. It sucked, and it is going back to Amazon on Monday. So I drove a half-hour to Dick's Sporting Goods and picked up a cheap Chinese-made Kershaw.

One of these has a button, which makes it SCARY!!!

As you can see, the Kershaw (top) is actually very slightly larger. They both have partially serrated blades, and they both clip to your pocket. They both have springs in them, so that the blade opens very swiftly and one-handed. The only difference is that the Benchmade has a button-activated opening mechanism, while the Kershaw has a small flange on the blade that you flick with your finger and as the blade begins to open the spring engages. They call it "spring-assisted opening" and technically it dodges the law against switchblades even though they are identical in practice.

To recap: guns, large military and hunting knives, spring-assisted opening folding knives, and possibly ridiculously long and sharp swords? LEGAL!! Small knife with a spring and a button? ILLEGAL!!

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It is breaking my brain!

I've gone over to the Dark Side...

... which is in this case super-duper white.

Yep, I broke down and got an iPhone. Yes, I am a bit ashamed of myself. No, this doesn't mean I've abandoned Android for all time.

Yes, I did it because I want cool accessories for my phone that are unavailable for Android phones. The one main upshot of the iPhone is that because it comes in one shape and size, there's a billion accessories for them. There are so many Android phones that no one really makes anything cool for them. The irony is that I had to get an iPhone in order to dress my phone up like a Star Wars droid...

Me and the cops!

Cops keep coming up on my porch. I keep answering the door with my gun strapped to my hip. The cops with say nothing, or say something fun and cool.

Today a cop stopped by passing out a notice to watch out for burglary. I thought it was the mailman and opened the door, and he turned around to chat for a minute. At the end he says "just be careful and lock your doors" so I angle my hip in his direction and say "We're good here man." He notices the gun, smiles, and says "yeah, I guess you're good here!" and we tell each other to have a good day and that's the end of it.

It's cool being the local gun nut/"neighborhood watch"... actually much more fun than I imagined! :)