Is it supposed to look like this when I blow my nose?

The last month and a half have been...particularly unkind.  But let's talk about something else!

Been one month since I started going to the gym.  Doing way more than when I started and already seeing changes in myself.  Yay me.  There's a dude I see there sometimes who I tell myself will be me in 20 years if I stop going so that's a serious kick in the ass.  I tend to push even harder when he shows up.

It's that time of year again.  Christmas.  I actually enjoyed last Christmas almost against my will.  I think I even would have enjoyed the one before that but as some of you might remember I had my first flare of acute inflammatory arthritis that day and it was a pain I can't really describe unless you really know what pain is.  Anyway, this year I was laid off for the first seven months.  I got the new job (hooray!) and got caught up on my bills (whew!) then started saving for this.  Then of course the car gets stolen so I have to give out most of what I had saved so now I've basically had to spend nothing since then to have money for gifts and such.  Can't even click Proceed To Checkout for my Amazon shopping cart.  It's been very very pleasant.  No, wait, what's the opposite of pleasant?

Today at work my boss was trying to remember someone's name and said, "You know, what's his lips."  It was one of those silly things you hear and for reasons you don't understand cause you to laugh yourself stupid.  Good times.

I've decided to quit caffeine.  For good.  My company gives everyone a big chunk of time off for christmas.  This year our last day is December 22nd and we go back January 3rd.  I will use this time to detox myself.  After I quit smoking this became the only thing I was addicted to and I don't like it.  Also if I quit I'll cut out the majority of my daily sugar intake which should help speed along the whole weight loss thing.  I figure it'll hurt like fuck for 3 or 4 days then slowly get better and I'll be more or less OK by the time I go back to work.  Wish me luck.

Memory is a silly bitch

So I was at work and got a form to fill out from the company.  They want permission to access my driving record in case they decide to give me company car or something in the next year.  Make sure I don't have 17 DUI's or that my license isn't suspended for being involved in a bunch of hit and runs or whatever.  Not exceedingly likely but I'll play along just in case.  I get to the section that requires taking info from the license itself to I take it out.  License number.  Blah blah blah.  License expires on...shit.  Expired on my birthday.

Which was, let's see, oh that's right, ALMOST TWO WEEKS AGO.

Luckily my boss is pretty cool and thinks I'm awesome so he shoves me out the door to go do it in the middle of the work day.  Have I mentioned I hate the MVA?  Because I do.  What with the metal benches and understaffing and taking 2 hours to do something that actually takes 15 minutes and having to be surrounded by lots of people who are ALWAYS way creepy.  Is it that most people are way creepy or is it just at the MVA?  The ratio of creepy people to normal people seems to be quite pronounced there.  Anyway, I get it sorted out, pay my money and rocket back to work.

Does this kind of thing happen to anyone else?  Ever?

Who dropped this other shoe here...oh, right

Five o'clock in the morning and I get a call telling me my truck's been stolen.  What fun.

Police tell me it's in the lot of a hotel by the airport.  Rosalita drives me over and the cops are waiting.  They say they got a call from hotel security and showed up to find a guy asleep at the wheel of my truck.  To make it clear, they have the stolen vehicle and the thief out cold inside it.

He got away.

Apparently he was a little guy and really fast.  Anyway I absorb this wonderful tidbit and check the inside.  There's a box in the backseat and I say, "That isn't mine".  They pull it out and it's a PS3, brand new.  Front seat has a backpack which ended up having a GPS thingy and other assorted shit in it.  The CD I had in the player was in the backseat so the little fucker had bad taste in music too.

Anyway I got it home and did some searching for repair places, waited for the one I picked to open, started my truck with a screwdriver, drove it over and got them to drive me back.  When we pull up there's a cop talking to a guy.  His car got broken into last night.  Busy little shitball, wasn't he?

To sum up, blargh.

If nothing else, me and Taco will definitely survive

Like most mornings, I stopped for a cup of coffee on the way to work.  I have a small (re: huge) caffeine addiction I need to feed pretty much all day everyday.  I don't know whether to quit caffeine right away since it almost got me killed or thank it for helping warn me about the end of the world.  I could go either way.

As I'm getting back into my vehicle with my cup o' love I hear a noise.  I look around and see him.  It.  Patient Zero in all his Romero-esque glory.  A fucking zombie.  Shuffling toward me, hands raised, mouth agape and ready to bite, he came.  I quickly remembered my rules and having no proper weapon with which to dispatch the walking dead I hustled into the safety of my vehicle, just in the nick of time mind you, and sped off.  

It was a close call but there's no time to feel good about my escape.  The end is well and truly fucking nigh.  Don't bother repenting, get armed and prepare for the war.

Of course it might have just been a mentally off homeless dude but why take chances?  I'll find out tomorrow when I stop for more java.  With a couple of dead blow hammers.  

Honkin' : Adjective 1. Giganimous

Stealing a page from Taco's playbook, I bring you an installment of COTD:

Tim:  Voltron or Ultraman in a fight?

Me:  Voltron, yo.  That sword beats all.

Tim:  But Ultraman knows space kung fu.

Me:  Voltron knows robot aikido.

Tim:  Outer space Steven Seagal?

Me:  With a honkin' sword.

Tim:  But no Chinese stars.

Me:  Indeed.  But the lion thing has to count for extra.

Tim:  Do they breathe fire?

Me:  No but one lives in a volcano like a DRAGON.

Tim:  But aren't volcano dwelling dragons evil?

Me:  Only by human standards.  By dragon standards that's just "Bob".

Tim:  Regular Bob or Silent Bob?

Me:  Depends on sleep cycle.

Tim:  Roger.  Over.

There is joy in the world again

So I'm at work today and we're talking about football.  One of my coworkers walks in and I ask what his favorite team is.

Him:  I guess since I'm in Baltimore I'll say the Ravens but I don't really follow it.  I'm a pastor so I'm mostly in church on Sundays and don't have the time to watch football.

Me:  You need to get your fuckin' priorities straight.

My boss:  *nearly chokes trying, and failing utterly, to hold in laughter*

Anyway, I told you that to tell you this:

Football season started tonight.  The world makes sense again and everything is made of yay.

Something made me mad. What a shock.

So the Swiss have decided not to extradite Roman Polanski back to the US.  Now I'm not going to get into the legal aspect of their decision, I want to talk about him and the people that support him because they're both making me fucking sick.

For anyone who might not know, Roman Polanski, a famous movie director, drugged, raped and sodomized a 13 year old girl when he was 43.  He had a trial, admitted guilt, went to counseling and then when he was supposed to report for sentencing he fled the country and went to France and has since avoided going to countries that might catch and send him back.  What a great guy.  I've seen and heard people say things like "It was a lapse in judgement" and "He's suffered enough" and "It's just wrong that he couldn't accept his Oscar in person" and other assorted idiocy.

Firstly a lapse in judgement is you deciding to do something wrong one time that goes against your normal behavior.  How many child rapists do you know of that have only ever done it once and then decided to stop?  On top of that once he fled to France he started "dating" a 15 year old.  That's not a lapse, it's a pattern.  And he's suffered enough?  HE'S suffered enough?  A child molester can never suffer enough you useless brain dead fucking imbeciles.  Oh yeah it's a terrible burden to have people say you're a child rapist when you're an admitted child rapist.  How terrible.  And the 42 days of counseling had to have been awful and this last time when they had you under house arrest in a Swiss ski chalet must have been hellish.  If you think he's suffered at all let alone enough do us all a favor and lay your head down on a busy road and wait for it.

Apparently the lesson we're to learn here is that if you want to rape children you should first become wealthy and famous.  That way even if everyone finds out you did it you'll still never have to pay for it.

Now my head hurts so to sum up:

Roman Polanski, I hope you get ass raped by a gorilla then get cancer of the dick you fucking worthless piece of shit.

Polanski supporters and apologists:  Shut.  The fuck.  Up.  Liking someone's work doesn't give them a free pass to do whatever they want.  If Martin Scorsese came to your house and ass rapes you is it OK because I really like his movies?  No.  So if you support this guy go jump off a tall building you fucking retards.  Barring that keep your fucking ignorance to yourself.

Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?

Why do English muffins come out of the toaster so much hotter than other things? Like nuclear hot. Holy shit I don't have fingerprints anymore hot. Do they store extra heat in the nooks and/or crannies? That shit ain't right.


Why is there an April Fool's Day but not, say, a July Smart People's Day? Shouldn't there be a day where we'd purposely go around using long words and saying things to confuse the normals? Moreso than usual I mean. Write your congressman about it.


I want a toupee. I mean a really bad one. Like I found it on the ground and gave it a scrub and it might actually be a dead raccoon anyway bad then wear it everywhere and act totally normal. "What is that?" "What?" "On your head." "Oh I got a haircut. Like it?"


I was at the deli counter a while back (Cheese. Because cheese.) and the deli woman asked me if anyone ever told me I look just like Heavy D. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.


I can still hear Billy Mays screaming at me to buy shit I don't want. Make it stop.


If a blind guy grabs a woman's breasts does she still say, "My eyes are up here"?


I've been told I have sarcastic eyebrows. That's pretty fucking awesome.


Ever get a really great parking spot at a crowded mall and then when you leave you judge the person that queues up to get it from you? If they look OK you pull out and give them the "Enjoy the spot" head nod but if it's some douchebag with a poppped collar and hair that looks like a bloomin' onion you give them a dirty look, put the car back in park and shut it off. Or even better two people arrive at once and you judge them both then award the spot to one of them by puling out and blocking the loser. No? Just me then?


Fuck pronouns.


Y'know what still bugs me? What the fuck did Bill Murray say to Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lost in Translation?


I feel like I should buy Red Stripe beer and lots of it. Their slogan is Hooray! Beer! How can you not support that?


There's something about the word "meats" that I find funny for reasons I can't explain. Meats. Hehehe.


I don't remember what I was watching even remotely but there was a band playing music and one of them had a washboard-tar. That's right. A washboard inside a guitar shaped piece of wood. A washboard-tar. How is this not in every band in the world? It's like keytar times a a hundred. WASHBOARD-TAR! The awesomeness of the thing itself has blasted the memory of where I saw it right out of my head so now I can't find it to see it again.


Seriously, has there ever been a person funnier than John Cleese?

See ya in another life, brotha.

After 6 seasons Lost has gone off the air for good (there are no spoilers here. I hate them). Lost hooked me right from the start and quickly became one of my all time favorites. While The Wire is still the best show ever (it's not open for debate) and Breaking Bad has arguably more compelling characters and Deadwood has dialogue like no other show, Lost is the show that I craved most week to week. The show that made me need the next episode like no other show could. It had a mythology so dense it could sometimes make The X-Files look like a sitcom. I mean that in the best possible way. No other show had so many eye widening, jaw dropping, what the fuck moments and not just in season finales, though Lost's season finales were the best, bar none. Every single episode had the potential to bring new and holy shit reveals, and they often did.

It's the only show I know of that the creators negotiated with the network to let them end it sooner rather than later. They wanted to tell their story and then end it instead of dragging on until it turned into a parody of itself or just became bad like most popular shows do.

Even at two and a half hours the finale didn't answer every question and y'know, I'm happy about that. Remember when X-Files tried to tie up every loose end in the final 2 seasons? Yeah, could have done without that. Anyway by the end of it all the questions and answers weren't even that important anymore. In the end it was all about the flawed and tormented characters seeking peace in themselves. They weren't just lost physically, they were all lost in every possible way and the island was the place that gave them the opportunity to find themselves and each other.

I could go on and on (and on and on...) but instead I'll simply say to everyone involved in making Lost from highest to lowest, thank you. There will never and can never be another show like it and I could not appreciate all of your efforts more if I tried.

Insert Valentine Michael Smith reference here

I keep forgetting to tell you faithful few about my trip to Ohio. We went up for Rosalita's grandmother's 90th birthday. Since I freak out a little just looking at a plane we drove up which means we had to drive through Pennsylvania.

What a shithole.

Aside from the mysterious pockets of unexplainable stink you have to drive through from time to time, the place is crawling with Steelers fans. I wish hell were a real place so the Steelers and all their fans could burn in it. Because I hate them in case that was in some way unclear. (GO RAVENS!) Rosalita yelled at me approximately 183 times for informing the natives that their state is a hole and their various sports franchises are worthy of nothing but ridicule and contempt. Some of this when we stopped for gas and to stretch our legs. Apparently it's "rude" to "insult" people. Who knew? I was just trying to help them see the truth!

So yeah we get there and meet and greet and obviously grandma loves me (I mean really, was there some other way for that to end?) and at some point we end up in a store. There's an old lady in there, easily 75, buying lottery tickets. When she's done she turns to me and says, "Am I going to win?" to which I reply, "Of course you are." then she smiles her sweet old lady smile, walks behind me and grabs my butt and walks off.

But wait, there's more.

Before I can think to react on how awesome it is to get goosed by the elderly, she comes back and gets a handful of the other cheek. Clearly this is already the best trip ever.

Skipping ahead...skipping ahead...

We get to the actual birthday party and it's like a parade of old ladies. What's more, the more they come the shorter they get and it's not like the first ones were anything but short to begin with. Tiny, tiny women. I swear I was 3 inches taller than the last one to show while I was sitting down. Seriously there were so many and they were so short I wanted to hand out dark robes, whip out a silver ball and re-enact Phantasm. I practice pointing menacingly at people and calling them "BOY" for just such a chance. It would've been great.

I also got to hang out with Noq, which was mucho yay. All my friends live forever away in places that are not here so getting to see them is always a big win. Move here you heartless fuckers!

*ahem*

So yeah, we met at a bar to watch the Cavs game (there ain't much else to do in Ohio when it's not college football season, they tell me) and I'm pretty sure one of us accidentally ate the waitress, mistaking her for a single pork rib. It's the only way to explain how long we waited for someone to take our order. Eventually there was beer.

Delicious beer.

I introduced him to Rosalita (Seriously dude, Mexican. Don't believe her lies.) then we geeked out at each other for as long as we could. It was glorious.

Eventually we had to leave which involved another drive through PA (mystery stink, shitty state, terrible people, etc) then finally back home. YAY! I like going other places mostly because they remind me how much I love my home state. Thanks for that, other places! I appreciate your efforts to be less awesome.

Have to remember to mail some to your mom...

I was thinking about all the things I'd want done with my ashes after I die and get cremated and then started thinking about different places I'd want some of me spread around. Then of course it occurred to me that I'd be dead and wouldn't know what was going on anyway and the whole thing would be a waste. The point seems to be to have some of yourself be a part of places you love and such but once you're dead it's kind of pointless. You're not exactly going to get any enjoyment out of it.

Solution!

I'm going to start saving my fingernail clippings and spreading those around in places while I'm still alive so I can enjoy the fact that part of me is in an awesome place. Bonus in that I assume someone at some point will find them and be completely freaked out.

Sorry I...haven't been sleeping well.

Movies '09

Last year was a slow year for me for movies. Saw only 119 (it's hard to get out to the movies when you're a shiftless layabout) so there will be some gaps here. Netflix will help me catch up soon enough. Anyway, on to it and obviously worded to avoid spoilers, which I hate.

The best movie that came out last year was The Hurt Locker. Your differing opinion is wrong. Change it. It not only has no weak spots, it is strong in every area. Writing, directing (Katherine Bigelow should win every directing award there is this year), acting, editing, everything is top notch. As I said before someone finally made a movie about the war in Iraq that didn't suck. The tension ramps up right from the get go and never subsides. This movie makes you feel tense and anxious the entire time it's running. Jeremy Renner playing the adrenaline junkie bomb squad leader is, not to be a cliche but it's true, a revelation. I've been tracking down other movies he's in that I missed just to watch him work. This is THE movie to see from last year, hands down, bar none.

Next is District 9, a movie that got you in by pretending to be an sf action movie but turned out to be a complex study of bigotry. Not to say there was no action, there was, but even that was better than normal. This movie featured perhaps the best screenplay of the year. Can't wait to see more from both the director and star.

I'll admit to a bias for Sam Rockwell but Moon really is as good as I think it is. Rockwell plays a psychologically stressed astronaut on a mission to the moon. Alone. Maybe. He thinks. He makes a discovery and then, well then it goes from very good to great.

In comedy you have The Hangover which successfully walked the line of crude and smart where most just flop into crude and stupid. This is one of those rare movies that causes genuine full out laughter again and again while you watch it and unlike a lot of movie the humor holds up on repeat viewings.

You don't get a lot of horror that's actually scary but Paranormal Activity got to me. This is exactly my kind of horror. Don't show me a lot, let me fill in the blanks mentally, build tension slowly and make me feel actual dread for the characters and, later at home in the dark, for myself. Take note Hollywood, there's a reason this movie crushed the latest Saw shitfest. Try to learn from it and not fuck it up.

Other (very) worthy releases:

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus
Zombieland (the cameo alone is worth t he price of admission)
In The Loop
Coraline
An Education
Precious
Adventureland
(500) Days of Summer

Notable misses (refer back to shiftless layabout status) to be caught on DVD that I have high hopes for:

Up In The Air
A serious Man
Where The Wild Things Are
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Up
Extract
The Informant!

OK I saved some space to talk about Avatar and the madness that is swirling around it. To get it out of the way, I saw it and liked it. Visually it's spectacular and like nothing you've ever seen since the tech that was used to make it was invented specifically TO make it.

However...

First it was nominated and then won the Golden Globe for best drama (congrats Globes, you've just lost ALL your credibility) and now is nominated for best picture at the Oscars. Granted the Oscars lost all their cred long ago so this was an expected thing for them, but still. A note to both these orgs and people everywhere, huge box office does NOT equal quality. The story was nothing you haven't seen before (literally if you've seen things like Dances With Wolves, Medicine Man, etc), the writing in not particularly notable, the directing is standard action movie directing and so is the acting. There is utterly no reason this movie should be in conversations about best movie of the year. No reason and no excuse. It's Titanic all over again. Huge box office drives what is basically a mediocre movie to steal awards away from truly deserving films.

Reading '09

I wasn't going to do these this year but looking at too many shitty lists and yelling at them is forcing me. Plus I'm pretty sure Taco would make that sad face he makes and I just can't have that.

I'll start with a longtime favorite of mine, Dan Simmons and his novel Drood. It's a fictionalized account of the final years of the life of Charles Dickens when he went a bit wonky. It's narrated (very unreliably) by Wilkie Collins who was a popular writer of the time (and should be more widely read now) and was a friend (and enemy) of Dickens. Since this is a Simmons novel it's not just historical fiction but is dark and disturbing and complex and weird beyond measure. There is also no need to like Dickens or to have even read a single word he ever wrote. Simmons, you can do no wrong.

Next is Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. It's a follow up to her excellent Oryx and Crake, a post-apocalyptic dystopian wonderland. Read both of these and thank me later.

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem is a kind of alternate reality story of Manhattan (ugh, New York) that makes wonderful use of magical realism (yay!). Not very plot heavy it more uses its characters and weird and yummy writing to drive it.

What to say about Lev Grossman's The Magicians that will do it justice? Well since it's about people going to a school of magic it draws comparison's to Harry Potter but it's nothing like that. This is very much not for kids. It's part love letter to fantasy tales like Narnia and Oz and part study of what it's like to want something so badly it makes you feel like you're dying and even when you get it, it's still not enough.

Incognito by Ed Brubaker. A supervillain forced to go into witness protection told in Brubaker's style? Yes please.

The Unwritten by Mike Carey. Fantasy + speculative literary geography + dark fantasy + metafiction + ...yeah just pick up the first collection and read it, it's too much to try to blurb about.

Other (very) worthy releases:

The Red Tree - Caitlin R. Kiernan
Dark Places - Gillian Flynn
The Domino Men - Jonathan Barnes
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death - Charlie Huston
Breathers - S. G. Browne
The Financial Lives of the Poets - Jess Walter

And many many more. Get reading, slackers.

At least Im not pissing in your houseplants

So I was thinking the other day about bodily functions. Specifically those that people feel they have to respond to with their words. I find the whole thing ridiculous and as such have come up with something to show exactly how ridiculous I think it is. Details below!

First you have burping which everyone does and everyone seems to think is rude and expects you to excuse yourself for. Utter nonsense. How is it rude to do something that EVERYONE does and that no one has any control over doing? It's like apologizing or expecting someone to apologize to you for having to pee. Oh I'm sorry! I had to go to the bathroom! How rude of me! It's idiocy. Admit it.

Next we have sneezing and everyone's desire to bless me and have me in turn bless them every time it happens. Talk about dumb. Look up all the various things that are put forward as the origin of it and none of them make a lick of sense in the 21st century. Are there really still people who think their souls get ejected from their bodies when they sneeze? How about that they spit out their sins or evil spirits and they have to be blessed lest they jump back in and so on and so on? Doing something because it's been done for a long time is a seriously fucking stupid reason to do anything let alone something that didn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place. And not to start a theological thing but what about those of us that don't want your or your god's blessing? Keep it to yourself, thanks.

Anyway, for the last few days I've been barking at people when they sneeze or after I burp. It's no more ridiculous than the stuff they expect and instead of irritating me for being illogical and stupid it makes me giggle because I do love a bit of light absurdity in my day when I can get it.

Woof.