Thanks For Little Things

for the past few months since i've been back in the state and at my old lab i've been noticing that all of my old lab mates (but one) have picked it up interms of work output, professionalism and willingness to learn new things. yes, i said all but one. and we will be calling her "But One".
when i left the state for greener and more lucrative pastures back in december of last year, But One was my heir apparent. i began to hear a bad thing or two about her as i attempted to run my first lab all on my own. stuff like "a bit lazy", "arrogant", "not keeping up with the workload". i paid it no mind until i decided to move back and return to my old lab.
that's when i got an eyefull and earfull from the labmates about what she had done to my old department.
i have to admit i was somewhat dumbfounded at the pigsty it had become, but i was taking over a new department within the lab and wasn't too concerned. not my problem. after a month of watching But One i began to get irritated. not so much at what she had done to destroy the clean, efficient area i had left her, but at the snail's pace at which she worked. and the backlog of pending work she had created. and the half hour conversations she would have with people about how backed up she was. and the disappearing acts. and the swagger. and the absolute unwillingness to work overtime. and the lack of reaction by management to this mess she had made and was getting away with not fixing.
after two months of my being back she gave her two weeks' notice. she had accepted a job with a competitor and even went through their required physical. management panicked, because she held almost enough state certifications (wasn't lazy in that regard) to certify the lab. management talked her into staying, even though when polled we (as the lab) stated that we were fine with her leaving and that it wouldn't affect us. she was given a sizable raise and unspecified incentives. she agreed and didn't leave. it had become a soap opera by that time and the lab in general wasn't too pleased by all of the hoopla. i, in particular, was blown away by how she manipulated the system (whether on purpose or not is a question not for me to answer) for a large raise and other stuff even though she was seen by the lab as a liability.
since then, she has fallen even further behind in her work and not stopped any of her bad and lazy behavior. management has asked repeatedly for me to step in and help her (to the point have suggesting that i work night shifts), but my manager has replied every time that i am not in that department anymore and my work is ever ongoing. for me to step away from my work would result in my department falling behind (my work comes in 365 days a year as opposed to hers, which is off and on).
well. today, not more than 5 weeks after the dust settled on But One's last "i quit" episode, comes news that she has given her two weeks' notice yet again. this time, i think, she will not be argued with. this time, i think, she will be allowed to leave. this time, i think, the core lab folks will get their wish that she be let to ride off into the sunset as quickly as possible so that we might clean up the pile of horse manure she built. so that we might rid ourselves of a noxious presence that poisoned the very air about her with her poor-me atitude, with her apathy toward her responsibilities, with her nonchalance about deadlines and turnaround time. and with the delicate manner in which management handled her by not holding her to the same standards the rest of us were.
i had actually gotten to the point where i refused to help her. she has been in that position longer than i had and was still coming to me with stupid questions that only helped to highlight her laziness. within the last three weeks i began to look at her and say "i don't know" to her queries, because i was sick and tired of her not doing her own research or even thinking out the logic of the question.
and, now, she is leaving again. and this time i think it will stick. and i am thankful for that. because no lab runs well when one person is allowed to get away with not carrying their weight. it builds resentment and resentment creates laziness in others as they see the one get away with floating. our lab has a lot of perks and flexibility, because we produce in a big way. we can take a few longer breaks, catch a couple more quick smokes, stop to chat, take a longer lunch, arrive late or leave early for personal reasons, create our start times based on the need we see. it's a great environment. but it only takes one lazy person in a critical position to take it all away. so, she can and must go.
as for fixing what she created, not a problem. we'll be caught up and on schedule within two months is my guess. hopefully, we save all of the contracts and clients that are currently in jeopardy.
as for lessons learned, probably not. that's a management issue and i think we all know that bad management is the only thing that's not better than no management at all and the only kind of management that most of us will ever see in our lifetimes.
(which would be part of the reason i moved back to this state and gave up my management position. there is a certain mental nerve ganglia that upper management expects you to cut out in order to rule over that which you just belonged to.)
so, long wind and strong wind in order to make the simple statement that i am happy for the little things: like an abcess about to be cut away from the otherwise productive and fun body of a lab.

p.s. aughra's about to "give" birth in the next who knows how many hours (c section). go and let her know she's got support for a difficult journey.

another small pictorial with no editorial. you rascals know who you are, where you were and what i think of you:

Saturday Night the 9th

on this particular night about two of them ago i went to a gig at the starline put on by Ticket To Ride. got there early as usual and set up camp on the wallbench. it was 8:45 and no one was there yet. about 25 people, but no one i knew. i took a walk and wound up in front of the stage. this is what i shot:

very soon after, the friends i was expecting arrived. not all at once. and not at all together. drinking ensued as did tactless jokes:
somewhere (in all of the joviality) the band showed up:
then the drunk brit exposed himself, wet all over the bar and performed the most herculean projectile diarama i have ever seen:
he was subsequently invited up on stage to reprise his cameo with the band:
after that, well...we had us a beatle rave. or a bugrant. whichever y'all wanna call it:
except for stan who never raves or rants. he is an island in the sea of chaos:
however, chaos soon reintervened:
women were talking to men, men were listening, drunks kept being drinked, a camera's flash wasn't on, and liaisons erupted like pimples on a cold sore (have no idea who is in this picture, but, shit, it looks sexy, don't it?):
finally, it got bad. everyone was feeling blurry. but still dancing and carrying on as if it was the end of the world...(which it could be, i suppose...if i hadn't just sent $100 to pat robertson to save the souls of the jews and get him to tell God that i really am wealthy and ready to ascend after the Fresno Fair):
and that's what i remember. i do not remember leaving early, because my blood sugar had dropped precipitously. i do not remember waiting at the checkin at lipari's for 5 minutes and then leaving. nor do i remember going to livingstone's and sitting, ordering and waiting for a chicken salad. i don't remember getting up and asking for the chicken salad to be boxed. i didn't know i wouldn't go back to the club to tell people i had to get home and eat NOW! i do remember someone getting home later and asking me what happened and being okay with it.

i got even by kicking her out of bed in my sleep.

update (9:55 pm): yahtzee is a fun game and was just played to christen my oak table.

i'm pretty sure katie cheated. i don't think you're allowed to roll four 2's and a 4 and call it six of a kind the hard way.

Amazing What Friends Will Send Me

i received the following missive in my email inbox today. normally, this emailer sends "jokes". i just thought i would share it with you, because it made me reflect on the importance of only exalting God so that i might live forever (and i mean that in the corporeal sense based on the following):

NEVER MOCK GOD!
Make a personal reflection about this.
Very interesting, read until the end.It is written in the Bible
(Galatians 6:7): "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Here are some men and women who mocked God:
JOHN LENNON:Some years before, during his interview with an American Magazine, he said: "Christianity will end, it will disappear. I do not have to argue about that. I am certain. Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, Today we are more famous than Him" (1966). Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.

TANCREDO NEVES (President of Brazil):During the Presidential campaign, he said if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency. Sure he got the votes, but he got sick a day before being ma de President, then he died.

CAZUZA (Bi-sexual Brazilian composer, singer and poet):During a show in Canecão ( Rio de Janeiro ), whilst smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said: "God, that's for you." He died at the age of 32 of AIDS in a horrible manner.

THE MAN WHO BUILT TITANIC:After the construction of Titanic, a reporter asked him how safe he said: "Not even God can sink it" The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic.

MARILYN MONROE:She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show. He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her. After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said: "I don't need your Jesus". A week later, she was found dead in her apartment.

BON SCOTT:The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang: "Don't stop me, I'm going down all the way, down the highway to hell". On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit.

CAMPINAS/SP IN 2005 In Campinas, Brazil a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend. The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter - holding her hand, who was already seated in the car: "MY DAUGHTER, GO WITH GOD AND MAY HE PROTECT YOU."She responded: "ONLY IF HE (GOD) TRAVELS IN THE BOOT, CAUSE INSIDE HERE IT'S ALREADY FULL"Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died, the car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the boot was intact. The police said there was no way the boot could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the boot was a crate of eggs, none were broken.....Boot means trunk.

Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus. Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive. JESUS!!!

P.S: If it was a joke, you could have sent it to everyone. So are you going to have courage to send this?. I have done my part, Jesus said "If you are embarrassed about me, I will also be embarrassed about you before my father."What benefit does it have, if a man gains the whole world but loses his soul? What can man give in exchange of his soul? (Mathew16:26).

Vote For Evans Or The Librul Might Win

DeLay no 'Idol' threat
Former majority leader urges Republicans to vote for 'Dancing' contestant

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Tom DeLay once twisted arms for votes in Congress.
Now the former U.S. House majority leader is rounding up votes for ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."
That's right. DeLay has e-mailed his supporters urging them to vote weekly for contestant Sara Evans, a country singer who sang at the 2004 Republican convention because she "represents good American values."
It wouldn't be DeLay if he didn't find a cultural split among the contestants.
"One of her opponents on the show is ultra-liberal, talk-show host Jerry Springer," DeLay wrote. "We need to send a message to Hollywood and the media that smut has no place on television by supporting good people like Sara Evans."
Will political scientists track Evans success or failure as a harbinger of the mid-term Congressional elections?
Who's next on DeLay's radar: "Survivor" or "American Idol"?
Admit it: You'd watch a smackdown between DeLay and Simon Cowell.

(the above is from the Statesman and I can't vouch for its authenticity, although it sounds exactly like something the "Hammer" would pull...or pound...or hit on...)

some quotes from the news today:
On Tuesday, kicking off the mid-term elections campaign, Bush delivered a speech that cited Bin Laden's screeds, Lenin's What Is To Be Done? and Hitler's Mein Kampf, and promised "complete victory". Rice contributed her own comparison of the "war on terror" to the American civil war. "I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the civil war to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," she said.
But the more delirious the rhetoric, the more hollow the policy. "There is no plan for Iraq," a senior national security official with the highest intelligence clearance and access to the relevant memos told me. "There is no plan."
· Sidney Blumenthal is a former senior adviser to President Clinton

Newsman to Tony Snow (Bush's Press Secretary during a press conference):
"Don't point your finger at me".

Richard C. Woollam, who was transferred to BP's Houston offices in 2005 amid concerns that he intimidated potential whistleblowers, invoked the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution in refusing to answer all questions from a House subcommittee.

Oil services contractor Halliburton Co. said Tuesday it has received a contract worth more than $70 million (€54.6 million) for cementing and related services from the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Production.

Bin Laden Got Back

from ABC News.com (that vital so non-partisan bastion of a free press that's also broadcasting the 9/11 docudrama that blames former president clinton for not killing bin laden and thereby causing 9/11 to happen) comes this little not a bombshell bit of news:

Bin Laden Gets a Pass from Pakistan
September 05, 2006 5:41 PM
Brian Ross and Gretchen Peters Report:
Osama bin Laden, America's most wanted man, will not face capture in Pakistan if he agrees to lead a "peaceful life," Pakistani officials tell ABC News.
The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a "peace deal" with the Taliban.
If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden "would not be taken into custody," Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, "as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen."
Bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere in the tribal areas of Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border, but U.S. officials say his precise location is unknown.
In addition to the pullout of Pakistani troops, the "peace agreement" between Pakistan and the Taliban also provides for the Pakistani army to return captured Taliban weapons and prisoners.
"What this means is that the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership have effectively carved out a sanctuary inside Pakistan," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism director.
The agreement was signed on the same day President Bush said the United States was working with its allies "to deny terrorists the enclaves they seek to establish in ungoverned areas across the world."
The Pakistani Army had gone into Waziristan, under heavy pressure from the United States, but faced a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.
"They're throwing the towel," said Alexis Debat, who is a Senior Fellow at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant. "They're giving al Qaeda and the Taliban a blank check and saying essentially make yourselves at home in the tribal areas," Debat said.

p.s. check this video out (may have to wait through the ad) for the most pissed off cat i have ever seen. i would adopt it in a heartbeat.

The Amazing Levitating Pith Post HNT

Some of you may know about the Almighty Pith and the way in which i loved it up in my last HNT. Some of you may know that it belongs to Lecram. Some of you may know that lately Lecram has been leaving his helmet behind when making a grand exit. none of you, however, know (until now) that I have unlocked its magical powers. I, yes I, have opened its little box of fairy dust and managed to create........The Levitating Pith!
Here in picture #1 you see me caressing its contours in order to coax out its witchy potential:

After a few minutes in which I called on the supernatural powers to help and guide me in my most mysterious and arduous task I was able to release the Pith and let float gently on the wings of my wind:
And, finally, I was able to recline and enjoy the awe of magic well done. Now you might be thinking I used some earthly mechanism to prop the pith aloft. Verily, though, i say to you that this pith touched not my body in any fashion. It is truly magic:
Thus ends this week's HNT. Thus continues the defiling and desacration of Lecram's Pith. Happy HNT, everyone!
P.S. According to a recent HNT post of Katie's I will only get my hat back if I do a full frontal HNT. I believe that this should qualify. What say all of you?

it's funny how when i start thinking of changing companies in search of better financial security my guts get all wiggly. but i sent out the emails with my resume that i needed to. now i only hope it isn't seven months before they even consider me. oh well. my current job isn't so bad as they go. it just doesn't pay very well for the skills i possess. certain among you may be used as references. so let me know now if that isn't a good thing to do. other than that, i got nothing. so i'm outta here.

WARNING!WARNING!WARNING!

did donald "the fuck" rumsfeld just call me an appeaser? because i think this so-called war in iraq is a fuckup of the nth magnitude? because i think that invading iraq was something that was on the table long before 9/11 even happened? because i was yelling about the fact that none of the bush administration's arguments for invasion actually squared with the information coming out of any of the intelligence agencies? because, while i had nothing against going into afghanistan to root out al quaeda (since they were nested there and the taliban had publicly proclaimed its support for the group), i had just a teensy weensy little problemo with taking out saddam hussein under the totally crap guise of destroying his WMDs? which didn't exist in the first place and EVERYBODY in the intelligence community knew it? because i think that donald, dick and george don't care about stopping terrorism so long as it makes them and theirs lots and lots of money? because i'm convinced that george believes he is doing God's will by bringing about some kind of Armageddon in his lifetime? because i believe that adding "by killing people" to everything these "neocons" say makes what they say the truth (got that from jag)? because i believe that $212 million and more could be better spent securing our country than it could bombing and shooting iraq back to whatever came four ages before the Stone one? because i believe that power is first and foremost in the minds of these thugs who rule our country and couldn't care less about the concept of governance?
remember that those who rush to war and call others appeasers are usually, in fact, the very ones who should be feared the most.
do we need to protect ourselves from harm at this time in history? you bet. but at what time in history shouldn't we have? at what time in history did we not have enemies who would destroy our way of life given the chance? never. as soon as we declared independence from the english we had an enemy dedicated to our quick demise. as soon as we began landgrabbing we had enemies in the french and germans, then the indians and mexicans. any and all of them would gladly have slit our throats in order to rebalance the board as it were.
now we have an enemy who has decided to fight us here rather than over there (if you believe our administration) so we must fight THEM over THERE instead of here.
but we can't even take care of ourselves. we can't even stop fighting with ourselves over healthcare, gay marriage, hurricane katrina, south of the border immigration control, voting irregularities, alternative fuel sources, global warming, the minimum wage, race relations, blahblahblah...
if you want a country unified against a common foreign enemy, then unify it by coming together on those things that affect it in its daily life. come together in the spirit of everyone belonging to each other. come together, because we're all we've got when we get up in the morning and walk out our doors. we are all different, yet we all are the same. we are the same in our basic needs. we are different in how we approach them. we are the same in bits and bytes and stems and seeds. we are different in how we smoke it. we are the same in wanting the high that comes with being american and human.
so, donald, don't call me an appeaser. call me your brother who wants to walk a different path to the same destination.
you fuck.

A Moosical Post

"Cows have regional accents, a group of British farmers claims, and phonetics experts say the idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds."
i believe it. after all, new york birds say "choip" and new york pigs say "ernk".

update: a friend sent me this picture and i thought i should share it with you: it's a male camel toe. what accent do YOU think it speaks with?

Well, he said it...finally. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. And when did we come to have a "freedom agenda"? Seriously, Bush admits that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and who's going to call him on all of the crap propaganda his administration was trotting out in the run-up to our invasion concerning Iraq's ties to al-quaeda and its backing of the group? Watch the video and listen for yourself to his bluster, defensiveness, dismissal, and condescension. Right there and then is the bullet by which he should be brought down.

Rantless Thursday

Note to Steph: why should I go on a rant about the Jon Benet Ramsey case? Why should I care? Thousands of little children are murdered each year. The majority of them are not white and garner no attention from the Press, national OR local. So, a blue-eyed, blond haired dress-up doll was brutally victimized by someone (we still can't be sure even with a professed confession). So what? It's not the murder that is so heinous as it is the manner in which she was being raised by her parents. Do you remember the photo stills that made her to look as if she was giving a come-hither pose? Do you remember the pageant videotapes in which she flirted with the camera as if she were ten years older (which still would have left her a minor)? Do you remember the parents who wouldn't allow police access to certain parts of their lives, documents and interviews while claiming the whole time that they were innocent? What did they have to hide? What was so shameful that they couldn't speak to the police in order to help find her killer? It's not her death that I find despicable. It's the manner in which she was led to it by parents who cared more for the glamour she brought them than the light she carried within. This was not a financially strapped family hoping to enrich an otherwise bleak future with her possible success in the modeling field. This was a family obsessed with caste, not cash. This was a pair of parents who looked outward to others within their social class and decided for their child what she would do and become. Jon Benet was a Barbie in every sense of the word, dressed and made up and told who she was at all times by the very people she trusted to take care of her and allow her to grow up as an individual. I think of her and Paris Hilton comes to mind: vapid, vaccuous and inured to the realities of the everyday world by money and manipulation.
Perhaps, they have found her killer. In my mind, though, that does not exonerate her parents one whit. They lied to the police, they refused to cooperate with the police, they hired lawyers to shield them from the police and they accused the police of targeting them (which all police do in this situation, because most often it is a family member or family friend who did the deed). They used this little girl for their ends. They made her up to look like a tart, then basked in the glow of her lolita-esque success. They claimed there was nothing wrong with what they did, that beauty pageants were good, clean, wholesome fun for little girls. They would not "see" what she looked like as she pranced around on stage and made suggestive dance moves that adult males were watching. They were creating a Madonna/Whore. Innocent, yet seductive. Chaste, but naughty. And all for the almighty dollar. All for the vicarious thrill. All to kick sand in the faces of the Joneses. All because they could not do it themselves.
That's the tragedy of this. Not that she was murdered, not that she never had a chance to grow up. But that this happened to her, because the very people she should have been able to trust with her life chose to use her in an absolutely indefensible and disgusting way to fulfill some neglible void in their neglible lives and it incited someone else to kill her.
And that's why I won't write a rant, Steph. Because it would (in my mind) just add more attention to a family that deserves none. Jon Benet was not a real girl like the ones we see running to school every day. She was a plastic figurine her parents bent into a new shape every day as it suited them. They did not give birth to a real child. They ordered one from Mattel. And they incited lust within the bodies of grown men by dressing her up as a prom queen and coquette every chance they had. So, fuck them.
By the by, they've made quite a bundle from their interviews with the press and the books they authorized to be written, yes?
Oh, and I know the mother died recently. But I don't care. The fact that she died doesn't make up for what she did to her child before then.
So, no rant today from me, Steph. Sorry.

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.