5.1 Surround Sound System

i don't know about you, but after a long night of drinking with friends down at the local watering hole it's nice to come home, open the box containing my new surround sound speakers that i got for 1/4 of the price circuit city was asking ($200), hook it up and experience massive noise fulminating from my wall. previously, i had two altec lansing speakers doing the bidness for me (and they do rock), but my wall air conditioner made them sound like two week old pussy kittens mewling for an extra bit of milk. now, i am concerned that my neighbors will never sleep again. i know i won't. i know i don't want to. music is good. loud music is better. pissing off the neighbors is bestest. plus, they're having a party tomorrow night and i will not sleep until they are done. good thing i'm invited. good thing i invited my own peeps. good thing i have booze stov=cked. good thing i own a gun. oh, shit. i sold it. good thing i own knives. good thing i'm a pacifist. good thing i like to drink. see you there. or here. or in between. you're all invited. if you know how to get here. up to you, not me.

Father Mechanic

for any of you going through lecram withdrawal i offer this little ditty, which you won't like nearly as much, but i don't care. so long as someone gets offended.

FATHER MECHANIC

(Scene: A mechanic's garage, front office. The waiting room. Bob is at the counter. Man enters, kneels and genuflects beneath the Tire Iron Cross on the wall. Approaches counter. Bob doesn't notice. Man waits a bit, finally rings the bell on the counter. Bob looks up, gives beatific smile. )

Bob: And another greasemonkey gets his flanges. Yes, my son?
Man: Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been 3,116 miles since my last confession.
Bob: You are overdue, but it's a venal sin. Tell me all.
Man: I mixed 20/50 oil with the 10/40 you prescribed.
Bob: Hmmm. What else, my son?
Man: My battery is trying to give up the Holy Ghost.
Bob: Ah. Are you having trouble in the morning infusing it with the Holy Spirit?
Man: Yes, Father Bob.
Bob: It could be a cable straying from the flock.
Man: There's more.
Bob: Go on, child.
Man: It shames me.
Bob: There is no shame when you repent before the True Light of the Tire Iron. Go on.
Man: Last month I tried to adjust the brakes myself.
Bob: Sweet Mother of All That Is Oily. That is serious. Why?
Man: The shoes were beginning to speak in tongues. I was scared. I heard weird sounds and voices in a harsh metallic language and tortuous screeches like demented, lost souls each time I attempted to control my automotive Ass. I panicked and tried to exorcise them with my Lay Wrench.
Bob: But you were not successful?
Man: No. Now my Ass balks and shudders when I wish it to simply stop.
Bob: It is good you have come to confess. I only wish it were sooner. I can save your Beast of Burden, your locomotive Ass. I comprehend the various tongues of the Devil and I can talk to your Ass. But I must know if you have told me all. Is your Ass flatulent and does its exhaust reek?
Man: Yes.
Bob: When put to bed at night does it complain and refuse to settle down in a timely fashion?
Man: Yes, Father Bob.
Bob: And, when unsupervised, does it excrete a dark, viscous discharge onto the floor from behind its manly pipe?
Man: Yes!
Bob: And you say it's been 3,116 miles since I last looked at your Ass?
Man: Yes.
Bob: By any chance, was part of your Ass manufactured by Germans?
Man: No, it's a fine American Ass. Corn fed.
Bob: Ethanol, eh? If I didn't believe in the Divine Schismatics I'd say your Ass was infested with demons. Wormwood. But I believe in the Healing Power of the Diagnostic. Your Ass will reveal all when I attach my clamps to its fuel-injected nipples and stick my probe up its glasspacked tail orifice.
Man: Thank you, Bob! Thank you! What is my penance?
Bob: (toting up on a calculator) Oil change, valve and brake adjustment, timing, tire rotation, smog check, oil filter, fuel filter, ring replacement, crankcase seal, biorythmic enhancement, possible Deomnic possesion and four mea culpas...$414.17. Oh and pray for a Hail Mary in tomorrow's Notre Dame game, would you? I have a twenty riding on it. Now, go and sin no more for the next 3000 miles.

(Man exits and at the same time a woman enters. Woman genuflects and approaches Bob)

Woman: Forgive me, Bob, for I have sinned. Can you remove semen stains from leather upholstery and unwrap a bra from my rear axle before my father returns tonight from his vacation?
Bob: I'm not omnipotent, child. Go next door to John Paul and Traci of Lourdes Miracle Car Wash.

The Celibate Life

they say that the hardest part of quitting any drug is the first so many hours or days. then it's a matter of putting the psychological behind you.
first, you leech out the chemical you've abused, then you change your lifestyle to move away from the habitual ritual.
why then am i, after only being on a medication for three weeks and now off it for a full week, still having the random regimen of withdrawal symptoms that turns me into an asshole and recluse as i combat the hypertension? i went through this last wednesday and (now again today). grinding jaw, neck and shoulder tension, dark cave searching. i'm damn well not going to take another pill to mitigate this, but fuck if i've ever been through this type of thing before. and the shit was prescribed to me for quitting smoking! i did a bit of weaning before i stopped, but i guess it wasn't enough.
sorry to any of you who have had to deal with this so far.
which leads me to the topic of:
paris hilton. she's giving up sex for a year. a whole year. 365 days (i don't know if she's counting holidays). she's 25 years old and tired of the games, by gum! the naughty videos, the paparazzi, all of it. she gets lady di. she really does. so much so that she is going to go 8,760 hours sans the the baloney pony...525,600 minutes without a muscle in her bustle...31,536,000 seconds not attending a premiere at the Hard Cock Cafe. that seems a long time without a skank shank.
if the average woman lives to be 80 nowadays, this means that paris is declaring herself offlimits to the bloke poke for .08% of her lifetime. laudable, but what does it really mean? she claims that she has only had sex with two men so far and she is 25. according to these numbers, she has been having sex with a different man on an average of 12.5 years so far. at this pace (if she lives to the average age) she will have sex with 6.4 men. and if we equate heighth with a whole number, she will only have to have sex with tom cruise once to take care of the .4.
to put this in perspective, let's say that i am (hypothetically) 41 and i have had sex with (hypothetically) 35 different women. in order for me to remain celibate for an equivalent amount of time based on the number of encounters i've had in my life vs. hers i would need to...
cut my dick off? well, that can't be right. ah, 4.1 years. and i have done this multiple times with no effort. and i can tell you that, after the second year, you don't even notice anymore.
however, i think it is safe to say that she really doesn't need to take a year off from the public eye sexually in order to maintain her (for lack of a better word) virtuessness or virtuosity or...whatever. but she should think about the fact that she has had sex with only two men and one has made a videotape that she knowingly engaged in. that's one out of two, which equals over her standard lifetime to 3.2 naughty videos that she knows of. that i know of.
that she knows of...
so, i take my hat off to paris hilton, but that is all. for now. and i think i speak for all of us when i say that this would make for one hell of a reality show ala The Simple Life. call it The Celibate Life.

edit: redid the math. paris will have to have sex with tom cruise twice to make up for that .4.

Fuck You Friday #4

Stepped on my cat's foot last night. So, it was the big Fuck You ScarySquirrelMan! Yeesh, what a bitch.



Happy Fuck You Friday to y'all. Go here to find the creators of this sordid little weekly affair: Tequila Girl.

Finger Food? HNT

so, last week i think i showed a naked shoulder and wondered to myself what could be too naked about it. well, this would be it:

that's my new tat and i am so fucking stoked about it i want to shag all of you one by one by one and then by twos.
however, something happened in between the tat and tonight that truly disturbed me and made me question my inherently heterosexual sexuality. despite the beefy tat and manly arm holding that manly ink, something was, well, um, lacking. it wasn't so much that a yearning overtook me for no reason. what actually happened was a "present" fell into my lap, so to speak. a certain friend of mine forgot to take his hat with him one night when he suddenly jumped up and left the bar. for no apparant reason. for no discernable reason. no je ne se qois that i know. jump and run.
so, we looked at his hat. we looked at each other. we looked at his hat. we looked at each other. we looked at his bar tab. we looked the other way. we casually exited the bar . i ended up with the "Hat". i took it home. i made sweet love to it. i kissed it goodnight. i slept well for the first time in a month. when i awoke i made sweet love to it again. then i cooked it pancakes. then it bade me goodbye and disappeared. i thought i would make it through and live with the memory of that hat clutched between my tight toes. it never came back and i am left with that memory. and only that. i am not resentful or bitter. but i can't help but wonder what might have been

if i'd made waffles instead.

happy hnt, y'all.

This Is Dedicated To The One I Love: Steph.

Rumsfeld = Asshole. Too busy? Doing what, may I ask? Commiting more troops to cover a royally blown foreign policy? Spinning damage control throughout the Mid-East? Stumping for political candidates who feel too closely tied to this administration and its myopic idealogies? Meeting with Swiftboat morons who are now attacking Sen. Murtha?
And College Republicans are now actively campaigning for "Say It Ain't So" Joe Lieberman who has thrown off his sheep's clothing. Of course, when the GOP is willing to fund a Green Party candidate to run against a Democrat and a Reublican I shouldn't be surprised, especially when the Republican involved is Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum. Rick, you may remember, is the man who suggested that if homosexual marriage was legalized, then we would have to legalize bestiality as well.
And in Kansas, it's Evolution 1, Creationism 0. Of course, this score is subject to change. And rest assured that no one will ever score more than 1 point. They'll just keeping handing it back and forth. Me, however, I think of the question:
Which is more true?
A) Without us, God would not exist.
B) Without God, we would not exist.
If you think A is more correct, then you should be pushing for religion in all aspects of public life in order to bolster your "theory". If you think B is more true, then it really shouldn't matter one way or the other. In fact, I think keeping "Him" low-key would further bolster the argument that religion is only for the faithful.
This is sweet. Roy Blunt says he will not allow any meaningful forward movement on global warming so long as he is in charge. nice. Not until he has more info on whether or not it might be truer than what just about every fucking scientist in the entire galaxy is saying. Yep, best to remain skeptical up until the fuzzies on your eyelids burn off and you can't blink away the truth anymore.
So, what is it about Iraq and soccer that scares so many of those insurgents and terrorists. To date, national team members have all been threatened with death for wearing shorts in public (kind of hard to compete on the international level in oversized sarongs or bhurkas), the coach resigned because of death threats to him and his family, and now hidden bombs are blowing up children on playing fields. In this war for minds by both sides, no one is winning because only the extremists are calling the shots. Moderate voices are drowned out by the violent, executed by the insane, and called traitors by the traitors. How do the civilised on either side stand up and be heard without fear of attack?
Finally, this is too good not to share. The government has identified Exxonmobil, the New York Times, AP News Service, USA Today, PBS and Microsoft as small businesses. There's your Zen moment of the day.

The Revolution Will Not Be Seen At This Time

well, kiddies, it seems that the great squirrel has been duped. scammed. snookered. hooked, lined and sinkered. taken to the proverbial cleaners.
there shall be no mars opposition as i had been told there would. it happens next year. and the "great mars opposition", which i had posted about earlier happened three years ago. see, what happened was someone found a reposted article on that opposition. the date on the repost was this year and, quite naturally, the reader didn't research further. neither did i until just now. so, no mars this year.
and those of you who attended a certain barbecue and were treated to a view of saturn's rings were luckier than you know. the rings' visibility will not be that good again until 2014. so, keep that memory intact.
however, jupiter is still cruising around the night sky and that is what i shall be taking aim at in the coming days. if i had more of an easterly view i would, also, shoot for uranus and neptune. alas, i'm hemmed in by redwood trees.
and there is a meteor shower approaching sometime this month, which is always worth a latenight blanketwatch.

More On The Tat

update: i went to tower tattoos this afternoon in order to give monet a note of thanks and monetary tip (she did not charge me what she should have, but artists are quirky that way. maybe my attitude or that i let her play with the tattoo or that i didn't show any pain or need to take a break or flinch...who knows?). i ended up with a circle of workers and customers surrounding me and oohing and ahhing today. the front counter guy who had initially checked the jpeg i sent over and told me we would have to simplify some of the detail had a grin that morphed shiteating with awe. and i'll say right here and now that monet blows away any of the work i had done at Slave To The Needle up in seattle.
and that outfit has an international reputation for excellence. the tats i had done there got the same response from other artists present on those dates. but monet's...well...perhaps she saw a challenge or an opportunity to stretch her wings. whatever, she is amazing and anyone who reads this and is thinking of getting ink, more ink, or rework on ink already done should make an appointment with her.

just a bit of detail on this tat. unfortunately, picasa won't do a complete cleanup, but monet's impressive talents can still be seen. by the way, don't mind me, please, while i spend some time obsessing on this new piece of artwork i acquired.
if someone has a higer magapixel camera than 5.0, i could use help on a couple of cleaner shots.

Fuck You Friday #3

i'm in a pretty fucking good mood, so fuck you, Fuck You Friday!!! HA!

Reasons To Die: Version. 2.0

a good day. fun filled. great show at full circle brewery. steven was mesmerizing as usual. so was the tattoo artist. talk about touch and stroke. she was amazing. her shading, blending and outlining blew away anyone who ever worked on me at Slave To The Needle up in seattle (which has one of those holier-than-thou reputations and well-earned i might add). i got to show off her work at the show tonight and i think i may have won her a few converts. just fantabulous.

plus, i got in the mail today my copy of the english translation of the Quran. i had found a website many months ago, which claimed to be willing to send free copies of it to anyone who asked. so, i asked. then they wrote me back and said they were all out. then i thought to myself that i was now on someone's watchlist. probably the fbi or team america. then i thought that maybe i could be on a terrorist's watchlist and some crazy muslim was going to befriend me and then steal all of my credit cards, i.d. and social circle (because they can be charming motherfuckers when american death is on the line). then i forgot about it, because i tend to sign up for these kinds of things when i've been drinking.
but tonight i received about 100 pounds of mail from my old address in the 'no (most of it crap and/or threats like the one from the unemployment office and the one from the child support office and both are full of donkeyporn bullshit). why it all sat at the old place for so long is a testament to the laziness of the people who moved in there after me, but knew i had moved back and where this last may. now they're moving in next to me and they evidently can load it all into a car and bring it the half block to me. not that i resent them or anything. mostly it's that i think they suck. cock. lots. but i don't judge them, because i'm not that way.
anyhoo, i got my Quran and am hoping to find out just why i'm an infidel and deserve to die. i think i'm (at the least) owed that.
and, oh yeah, the quitting smoking is a bust. i spent three weeks on The Pill and within two weeks i was back to my normal routine of a pack a day. once my body adjusted to the meds i was putting in it found the tolerance level and raised it a grand. so, i've gone off the Pill. stopped three days ago. found out today the hard way that quitting the Pill cold turkey is not acceptable. muscle aches, stiffness, crankiness. i left work early in order to go home and sleep. i also took half a pill and when i woke up my back was just fine. so i have to wean myself off this fucker. the doc forgot to mention that. the internet and past users at work didn't. half a pill a day for a week, then half a pill every other day for a week, then half a pill once a week. that's the recommendation from the other junkies...
...of course, the last time i listened to a junkie he picked out screw top wine for me and i didn't realize it until i'd gotten back to the party.

half nekkid thursday on a wednesday when it's still light out and no one cares

ya like that? ya want some more? can't get enough of this nekkid hunk? too bad. this is it until next week when i post the second half of this. because curiously this isn't finished. somehow, something's missing. don't know quite what it is...well, yes, i do. but i'm not telling yet. you'll just have to tune in next week to see what is not here yet, but will be here. in the meantime
have a hell of a great Half Nekkid Thursday. for a link to what this is about go to my sidebar and click on the osbasso link. and just remember that this nekkidness will be not so nekkid next time. hey, you can see a smallpox scar in the upper right corner. cool.

Lesson Of The Day

an interesting event this afternoon. i pulled into my driveway after work and as i got out of my car i heard someone call "hello!". i looked around, but didn't see anyone. so, i locked the car and walked the rest of the way up the driveway (it's quite long). as i got to my front door i heard "hello!" again. i looked around once more and still didn't see anyone. i unlocked my front door, opened it and was about to enter the house when, once more, i heard "hello!". it sounded as if it was coming from the front half of my duplex. i thought to myself, someone is at that front door wondering if anyone was around since the unit is empty and the person wanted to get a look inside. so, i walked over in order to tell this person that the unit was already rented and they should go ahead and fuck off (in a very polite manner since i am nothing if not goddamn polite).
as i sauntered past the side of the unit i heard it again. "hello!". i looked to my right and there was a face peering out from one of the rifle slit windows. an older lady was staring intently at me. i stopped and said (very wittily) "hey". she said " can you help me? i locked myself in the bathroom and i can't get out". after briefly toying with the idea of asking her why she doesn't have one of those emergency police cowbells for idiots with the red button on it, i responded with "um, what seems to be the problem?". her answer was "can you come in and open the door for me?". again, i paused for a mental shakedown: is this one of those penthouse stories i've heard of (but, of course, never read since i buy the magazine for the pictures and wonderbra ads)? will i go in to find that she is naked and holding a sawed-off shotgun right next to the whip and handcuffs? am i on candid camera?
but being the uber-gentleman that i am when damsels are in distress (no matter the age or wrinkliness) i said i would. i proceeded to the front door, which was "conveniently" unlocked and entered the domicile. i scanned the place for surveillence cameras and tripwires and nets hanging from the ceiling and large bags of drugs just begging to be kiped and open mouthed blowup dolls of george bush and hillary clinton. i saw nothing. so i went to the bathroom door. there was no knob on it. and there was a very sweaty and wrinkly woman inside. i looked to the kitchen for a moment and there i saw a lot of cleaning equipment. that's when i knew she had commited a murder and was trying to cleanse the place of the evidence. at that moment i knew i would be okay. no murderer wants to compound one killing with another unless it's a CSI episode. i bent and put my eye back to the knob hole.
"so, what seems to be the problem", i asked.
"i closed the door and it locked on me."
"you don't happen to have the door knob in there with you, do you?"
"no. and i've been in here for two hours."
"well, let's see what i can do for you...is your purse in there with you or is it out here?"
"um, what?"
"just kidding...are you married? anyone going to miss you in 48 hours?"
"um...what?"
"kidding! you look awfully hot in there. maybe you should take off your clothes while i work on this lock."
"what?!?"
"ma'am, i'm kidding. you've been in there a long time and must obviously have been under a lot of stress wondering when someone would happen by to help you. i'm just trying to lighten the load. by the way, my name is lecram and i'm a good friend of the landlord. so, you're a sweater, huh? i'm into that."
after 30 seconds of playing with the recessed lock i freed her. she was drenched in sweat and i believed that she had been in there for some time (and maybe the wrinkliness had more to do with the humidity than with her age). man, that had to suck. and she still had a lot of cleaning to do. she began to fan herself and puff out her tanktop, which gave me the unpleasant opportunity to look down her shirt (which i wouldn't have if i wasn't already trying to not look at her and she walked into my line of view just as she partially and momentarily disrobed and i had just blinked so i was caught unprepared) and i discovered that the wrinkles were not temporary tattoos.
she said thanks, i said welcome. she said thanks again, i said no problem. she said lecram, i said yeah, l-e-c-r-a-m, middle name steph. she said is there anything i can do for you, i said yeah, grab that toilet plunger and call me kowboi.
and then i got the hell out of there. because no good deed goes unpunished in my book.

Bush: All Human Lives Are Precious.

according to this report, the requirement of americans in lebanon to pay back the government for evacuation costs has been abandoned.
on the bright side, though, evacuation proceedings are going at such a slow and confused pace that our emergency missiles to israel may actually begin killing americans still in lebanon within days thereby saving our government the hassle and cost of further evacuations. kind of a win-win all the way around...except for the collateral damage.

Insanity

sorry, steph, no comment on suing the prez, but i did stumble across this little gem wherein the editor for the Wall Street Journal thanks God for the bunker busters we're sending to Israel, claiming they will save lebanese lives.
huh??? can you say "we didn't get a chance to really use these in Iraq, so here's the next best thing"?
thanks to rawstory for this.

Every Single Fucking One Of You

so, terra naomi came to town and rocked the house at club fred despite some local musician deciding to change the playing time on her. a very good time and thanks to all of you who came out to support someone who took a chance on our rogue festival three years ago for no better reason than a friend asked her to. it was great to see y'all. i mean that. great to see all of y'all. every single fucking one of you.
lecram may have a pic or two of the show up in the next couple of days on his blog. hopefully, not the one of me flipping him off, because i want that one for my fuck you friday post.
and terra may agree to be part of rogue year round, which is a happening gig.
speaking of which, this thursday at full circle brewery, our friend steve from san francisco will be debuting his one man show called "are you dating" before he takes it to the edmonton fringe festival (yeah, canada). isn't that cool? he's driving down for no better reason than he's done the rogue and still wants to be a part of it. steve played the rogue two years ago (?) and received great kudos from us and the fresno bee. it's a one night stand so you don't get to play the fresno "maybe i'll see it after i hear that it's good" card. enough of that shit anyway. victor desroches will also be on the bill, playing music with his geetar and whatnot. it will be fun. if you need directions, they're simple:
west on ventura (through downtown and over the crappy traintracks) past G street (which is a stoplight), turn right on F street (which is the next street) and it's right there on the right with neon. park anywhere and come on in.
show starts at 8:00 pm. be there, drink, buy merch, clap and hoot loudly, find your own date. simple rules for simple people. see ya there. just like tonight. every single...

Terra In Town

hey. terra naomi's coming to club fred tomorrow night at 8. check the link to sample some of her songs. see some of you there hopefully.

I Have A Dreamsicle

this link should take you to stephen colbert's "i have a dreamsicle" speech. extremely funny.
also, this one is a great spoof on the pc vs. mac commercials.

Fee To Flee

(from CNN)
Before being evacuated on U.S.-chartered ships, Americans are being asked to sign promissory notes to repay the U.S. government for the journey.
That demand outraged House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who said the United States has an obligation to get citizens out of harm's way without "quibbling over payment."
"A nation that can provide more than $300 billion for a war in Iraq can provide the money to get its people out of Lebanon," the California Democrat said in a statement. "I call upon the president to remove one worry from the minds of stranded American citizens in Lebanon and their families back home by declaring immediately that their country will bear the costs of bringing them to safety."
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Tuesday that the payments -- or "reimbursements" -- to the State Department were mandated under the 2003 Foreign Relations Authorization Act passed by Congress.

hmmm...i suppose a small price to pay in return for being swept to safety from a foreign country one has chosen to live in. however, pelosi does have a point. makes me wonder...

Fuck You Friday #2

all this week i've been sinus problems. lots of snottiness, making me cough, sore throat in the morning and generally cranky. and i'm fucking sick of it. so, you know what?
Fuck You, Sinuses! and a Happy Fuck You Friday to all!!!!!

now, go to MG's site to play and/or comment and check out everyone else's.
Man, I love saying "fuck". fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.