Sad Faced Boy

Merrrrrrrrrrrr

Friday, April 28, 2006

Sweet fairy sprinkle me with pixy dust and take this hang over away.

..... ...... Hurt. HURT! All I can do mentally and physically here is to sit at my desk at work and try not too move too much. I'm thinking about turning my monitors off because the flicker is making me want to vomit. Last night we had one of SG's coworkers come by so that SG could sew up some curtains for his new house. I never thought one could drink themselves into submission talking and watching someone else sew, little less drink oneself into a ritual cleansing. I think I'm at the state right now where the longer I am awake the worse I feel, when I had my little "ritual cleansing" I felt great, when I woke up today I felt pretty good, as I sit here at my desk I feel like a piece of shit. So in lieu of me feeling like a piece of shit and unable to concentrate I figured I would drop in some nice spam messages that I got this week at work.

Here's one that is pushing prescription drugs not that you would be able to guess.

The lifts, sir. Our very fast elevators. Why would guests use the
stairs?
Whats your name? asked Bourne, replacing his hat and, sunglasses.
Ishmael, sir.
Like in Moby Dick?
I do not know such a person, sir.


I have got to get me some of these drugs because these short little paragraph-stories really pull you in. I want to know more, who is Bourne, why is he asking this other person in the elevator if their name is Ishmael. I read it and I envision a detective scenario, it's evening the about the time of the day where night and day are equally balanced. A time when you are unsure if you should turn on your headlights or not. The man Bourne has been trailing is still ahead of him walking on the wide sidewalk in a large metropolitan city. When Bourne was hired by the Lady to follow a man named Ishmael it didn't bother him, why should it tailing people and digging into peoples business is what he does. Up ahead the man named Ishmael ducks into a six story hotel called the Towers. Bourne already knows that this hotel building just happens to be where Ishmael works, normally Bourne would walk right by and go get a cup of coffee at the Bettys Dinner on the corner. Maybe a piece of pie.. blueberry this time the rhubarb was too sour. This time however he decided that he is going to try to confront Ishmael with what he has found out. As Bourne walks into the lobby of the hotel he has to slow for a moment as his eyes adjust to the darker lobby. The lobby is neither fancy nor is it run down to the left of him is a desk where a man sits behind it reading a paper and smoking a cigarette. Bourne walks past the desk and heads to a grouping of chairs, sits down and picks up a paper that someone left on the coffee table. From where Bourne sits he should be able to see when Ishmael goes on duty manning the elevator. In the paper Bourne sees that McCarthy is on another witch hunt, this time it seems he is going after an actor. Up ahead Bourne sees that Ishmael just came out of a door in his uniform and walked over to the elevators. Bourne casually stands up, folds the paper and starts walking over to the elevators not 20 yards from where he is. Right as Bourne reaches him the elevator opens and Ishmael gestures for Bourne to enter first. Bourne steps in tells Ishmael the floor number he wants and the elevator doors close.

tree with me in it! Then after walking at least half the distance to the
Bronx, I was picked up by the only person I know who may have more loose
bananas in her head than I do. Her libido is unhinged and she's running
away from her trucker husband-hot on her French heels-who I subsequently
learned has the cuddly name of the Bronk. My hooker chauffeur proceeds
to hold me hostage with such wiles as threatening to yell Rape! in a


This one was from the same person, what it has to do with prescription drugs I can't figure out but the stories are great. So this coworker of SG just happens to be a guy who buys antique swords. I think I mentioned him once, so I asked him how much it would cost him to get his sword polished. Sword polished.... heh heh heh. No seriously sword polishing isn't just some guy buying some metal polish, I believe it's more like sharpening, and reshaping, cleaning up a bunch of things. Apparently it costs $90 an inch to polish a sword, and since swords are about 26" long what you have is a small fortune, and I thought scuba diving was expensive.

So someone came into my office a few hours ago and mentioned to me that Brad Pitt is going to be playing Jesse James in a movie called "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." I just don't see Brad Pitt as a famous bandit, and besides what's with this love affair with Jesse James. You'd think that a man who so strongly supported the confederate army and it's cause even after the civil war ended would not be someone that so many people would raise up and make movies, and documentaries about. Really in my mind it's that whole Confederate army thing, it wasn't like he was in the Confederate army. No he was with different hyper violent guerrilla groups that would go around and kill anyone who supported the union. So why love a man so much that supported slavery, killed children, stole the money out of your banks, inadvertently caused your mother to loose part of her arm when the Pinkertons went after him.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Luchadors step aside there's some new grrls in town.

I went to the first bout of the Columbus Ohio Roller girls Sunday night. Surprisingly this is something SG even wanted to go see, truthfully I was thinking this was going to be more heavily patronized by men than woman. Why? I dunno skanky tongue and cheak names, revealing costumes, girls beating up girls, kind of like mud wrestling on skates without the mud but with a lot more attitude and kick ass punk appeal. Does anyone remember mud wrestling? I don't, actually all I remember was that I was < ten years old sitting in my parents basement watching T.V. as a family. Whatever we were watching stopped and a commercial for a women's mud wrestling event came on and true to mother form my mothers hand flew out with a cat like quickness to block my young impressionable eyes. Sadly for her it wasn't fast enough before the image of women in bikinis wrestling in mud was burned into my retina's thereby burning it into my memory. I can't remember what I did yesterday but shit, I can remember a two second glimpse of 100% pure estrogen fueled mud wrestling. Anyway see my point, I just didn't think SG would be into this kind of thing since it is in many ways like professional wrestling, and SG loathes wrestling. The first inkling that my assumptions about this roller derby thing was off was when we followed packs upon packs of woman down the street into the convention center. Punk chicks, ex sorority girls, hippies, knitters, librarians, mothers, fathers, you name I saw it.

Let me drop the skinny on this to give a better idea of what this was like. The roller derby match was held in the Battelle hall which is I'm pretty sure one of the original large convention center rooms where they hold things like dirt bike races. Pretty different environment when compared to the last time I saw the Ohio Roller Girls it was at the same skating rink I went to for middle school class trips. Good times those were, times when I used to intentionally scratch my swatch watches crystal cause damn it one can't have something look new. I wonder if kids are still doing that, you know scuffing up new shoes and clothing to make them look old and worn. Here's the deal yo, Ohio Roller Girls are a part of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) which has women's derby leagues all over the US. They as the name says skate on a flat track which while not as dramatic and painful (believe me it looks more than painful slamming down on concrete time and time again) is probably a lot more practical. In the Columbus roller derby league there are four teams each with twenty members in it. Each match is made up of two 20 minute periods where two teams run jam after jam until we reach the end of the second period and one team has won. Each period went pretty fast due to the fact that there is little or no break between the jams and timeouts if called are very short. There's a short break between the periods and between matches there was enough time for a rockabilly band to play a short set. The first match was between the "Take Outs" and the "Black Eye Bullies" which saw the "Take Outs" beat the "Black Eye Bullies". The second match was between the "Sprockettes" and the "Band of Brawlers" where surprisingly "Band of Brawlers" won. I say surprisingly because "Sprockettes" had Holly Hot Wheels who just completely owned the exhibition match I saw in December which was mostly due to the rule that a Jammer can only score if they pass an opposing team member if they are in bounds. This is important as it seemed to be pretty easy for an opposing team member to shove, slap, push, or spear the jammer out of the rink.

What else did this have, well they had scores projected up on screens, a DJ spinning music during the match, beer, fights and some really great wipeouts. I believe on one of the jams in the second bout the jammer from the "Sprockettes" accidentally drove a knee into one of the "Band of Brawlers" blockers stomach causing the blocker to double over and careen out of the rink. Something else to look forward too is apparently there is going to be some inter city competition where (I'm guessing) they will take a subset of the eighty people in our Columbus league and create a single twenty person team then go skate against another city. Pretty sweet that. Oh and if bleacher seats are too impersonal, you can sit right down on the floor right next to the rink and potentially get hit by a out of control skater sliding into you like a baseball player sliding into third on a close play. Regurgitate, infuriate, investigate. So what are you going to be doing Sunday May the 14th? That's right going to catch some roller derby cause this time they are bringing a PBR truck for your beer drinking enjoyment and nothing says a good time like violence careening around a concrete ring with PBR flowing through one's veins.

This is one of those looks that says I'm a sensitive man with vampire tendencies who will talk feelings to you over a frosty glass of the Champaign of beers whilst the Sex Pistols are blaring in the background.

Today's Morning Song: Hang on Sloopy.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Sitting here working on a task I just think I realized one of my sources of being grumpy at work. Before I get into this realize that I understand that my being unhappy with this is kind of thing is silly. It doesn't stop me from being grumpy but maybe now that it's out I can deal with it better.

What I realized is this, everything I work on is fluff, eye candy it's non core important type stuff. Let me draw on an analogy of making a car, what I do is maybe design the interior of the car, the dashboard, the things that you would interact with that aren't associated with actually making the car move. They are the things that while important fall quite short of things like making the car actually move when you press the gas pedal or stop when you press the brake. Lately at Sprockets it seems I get all the non critical tasks that have indeffinite deadlines that get tossed back into the shadows to only be remembered when I look at my list of items that I have to do and realize that something I did three months ago still hasn't been pushed out for people to use. Realize this too this is the same work I was doing almost three years ago, it's just that three years ago things like interfaces and designs were critical because we didn't have any of that and it had to be written. The reasons why things keep getting pushed back basically boils down to the simple fact that we attempt to do something none critical, get it mostly done and then are suprised with a little emergency that puts other people in DefCon 1 and suddenly the non critical is forgotten.

It has the effect of making you feel like what you are working on isn't very important. So you start to feel useless, and then the feelings of apathy start to form up in the bottom of your gut. I mean what's the point really to get something done immediatly if there never is a priority for it to pushed out for people to use. Granted the things that push the things I work on back are problems like saying your car can go 0-60 miles an hour in 4 seconds when actually it has a top speed of 40 mph. See what I mean it seems so petty when you talk about it but when it happens, over and over and over again it starts to get a little old and greatly affect your motivation to get anything done.

For this reason I was touring around the interweb trying to find new blog content to read. Sure I could read news, sure I could read reviews about cars or electronics or the best shaving cream to use but why bother. BOOOOOORING. BBBBOOOOOOORING. So I choose instead to try to find more blog jems like The Hot Librairan, which reminds me I could always just read her old posts from the beginning and roll forward.... yeesssss, that and I'll find more blogs. Because like Tivo watching blog reading I have found is addictive, I find that I am in a constant search to find more blogs about other peoples lives. Not so that I can live vicariously through them, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO so that I can be a big nosey fuck with my big nosey nose. Eerr could you believe that for me reading a nice well written blog has a feeling of a novel or short story and I do love to read. If I could somehow put the books I want to read somehow on a webserver so that I could read them online at work I'd do it in a heartbeat...... wait a second that's not a bad idea. Hold on there conductor lets stop this train of thought before it leaves the station. My only point was that in my blogourney (blog journey) I found a blog done by a woman who was doing volunteer work in the Sudan. She's done with her tour of duty there so no more entries, but it's really interesting nonetheless. I also found a blog off of a blog of a british guy teaching english in Japan that is about some guy who is volunteering in Vietnam. Some guy who linked to some guy who then knew this other guy who's brother went to ... that last sentence was too hard to follow. That blog could be good stuff, not so sure but what I found that was better was a link he posted about a Eco Resort on an island called Phu Quoc. No AC, no fridges, no TV's and all that but it's like $45 a night for a bungaloo that sits not 20 yards from the beach. It sounds wonderful! Now it's just the getting to Vietnam and then to Phu Quoc that may be a little more difficult, "Da Nang me Da Nang Me, I'm gonna get a rop and HANG ME~!"

Super Brain Goose Conspiracies.

I am in a position that probably 90% of the cubicle working world would be envious of. I have an office, and a window that actually looks to the outside. No grips right, nothing to complain about right?


WRONG.


Ever since I got this office me and the Canada Geese have never hit it off. I'm sure they are very nice birds once you get past the explosive shitting, shedding of feathers, incessant honking, HONKING, HONKING, the hissing the biting and the general dirtiness of these fucking sky carp. Move on over red rover pigeons because the new invasive species on the block is Canada Goose. At least a half a dozen times a day a pair of them will walk past my window honk honk honking with glee, a small smile plastered across their little billed faces and a butt wiggle in their walk. I think they get confused by the window's reflection and think they are seeing another goose invading in their personal goose space and are basically saying "Step back fool." What really must boggle their little goose brains has to be when I hit the window with my hand. All of a sudden they get this startled look on their duck faces like "Geese don't thump, they honk... what the hell was that." The final straw, the proverbial straw that will break my camels back will be when a goose walks right up to my window, turns around, wiggles it's little goose butt and then plants its ass right up against my window and then craps. If this were to happen I think you'd find me 6 hours later sitting in a parking lot covered in dirt, grim, goose shit, blood and feathers with no recollection of how I got there.

What if this escalation in the size of the goose population combined with the fact that many populations migratory patterns have stopped is actually the precursor to an alien or Canadian invasion. Seriously hear me out. Where are the geese? Always around our corporate parks, company headquarters, doctors offices. They like the terra-ist know that the way to really hurt the U.S of A is to kick us in our financial crotches. So they send their little forerunners to do a little recon, see all this irritating honking and hissing and never leaving is just away that these brain geese have free access to learn the pattern to our security systems and daily patterns. They then relay this information back to invasion HQ thereby allowing the invaders, be they aliens or Canadians, to build a more complete picture of how to hurt us best. BASTARDS, I knew it. I've got to dial Dubya on the horn and get him on this, he'll be all over brain geese working for either a terrorist organization, the Canadians or the aliens. Can you imagine the terra it will cause when this gets out, it will be like Hitchcock's "The Birds" but not so menacing with lots more honking and a bit more cursing and lots of mentions to Al-Kada and Terra.

---------- One day later.

After writing this I kept pondering the honking, and the waddling of said geese. I think I started to finally realize that what we have going on around here is a little bit of goose gang turf warfare, I think I need to step in like the US does in foreign affairs and arm one side with some modern tools of warfare. The only problem is going to be when the the group that I support exterminates all other groups, then I'll have to name them a hostile government or combative terrorist organization and find another set of geese to arm and fight the original group that I armed. Ohhh the cycle of goose violence will continue. Another thought on all these geese I had was that we could attempt to feed them raw meat in the hopes that by doing this they would get a taste of meet and become carnivorous. Kind of like those bugs in SG-1 that the one scientist feeds meatloaf. Only the hope here is that by feeding the geese meat we might get our own force of crack geese troops ready to eat intruders to death. Yeah.... Geese, I think I need to stop this now.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Flossing, my anti-drug.

Tuesday was my bi-yearly poke and bleed appointment with Herr Dentist. I swear going to the Dentist is a lose lose for me, I brush two times a day, I floss and still there is always something for me to come back for. You name it cavity, replacing of a seal, bleeching, root canal, adding another gold tooth to my magnificent mouth always something. I've been pretty good about my flossing of late, I've been doing it on a regular basis so I was positive that on walking in and receiving my cleaning that there would be none of this,

"So how's flossing been going, have you been doing it on a regular basis?"

Naa naa baby the hygenist must have sensed the general healthiness of my gums and thought,

"His gums look far to healthy, I shall practice my WWII bayonet technique lunge, stab, and retract> on his gums."

Half way through my cleaning I get my favorite little how's the flossing going question. Come on woman my fingers have permenant indentation marks due to all the jabbing and stabbing that you are doing with those dental picks. I actually felt that I had to defend the blood trail found on my little bibby to my Dentist otherwise I was afraid he was going to send me home because there was too much blood in my mouth to actually see anything. He actually did that once, there may be nothing worse than having to come back to the Dentist not because you need to have work done but because your mouth if so filled with blood that the Dentist can't see your teeth clear enough to evaluate them. Having DK (Dentist) look at my teeth is always a questionable decision, I swear DK is probably some mutant Dentist that was crossed with one of those cavity sniffing dogs. Just by the use of his trusty ol' dental pick the man can find a cavity three years away from happening just by a casual poke. I keep asking him how he finds all these cavitys and he keeps responding to me about how a healthy spot on a tooth feels different than a spot that has a cavity when poked with a dental pick. Something about the dental pick sinking into or being a little tacky when it pokes a future cavity. Whatever, this time no cavitys, no return checkups, no sealent fixes.

If you needed a dose of he who is RA let me lay down another one of the great deeds of RA. When RA was in school he didn't feel the need to take world history as he knew all of it already. Which makes sense really if you were a God and had been around since the big cosmic fart then I'd imagine you wouldn't really need to take history.

Introspective......

Do I have a right to be introspective on my own blog especially after I know that people who know me read it? Wait a second, "I know that people who know me"... that seems poorly phrased. I think I do and besides it's not so much about having the right as it's about me feeling comfortable with other people I know reading this. But you know what, fuck it this thing was originally here for me to rant and just type things out when I couldn't sleep at night. It mainly started after my grandfather died and I had trouble sleeping for a couple of weeks. Have you ever tried to sleep, laid in bed for hours and it just feels like your mind is running a mile a minute jumping trains of thought like one would change a channel. I never thought my grandfathers death would shake me up so much. Let me respond to that, I don't mean to sound cold or impersonal it was just as I got older I saw less and less of him to the point that I didn't really feel like we had much more of a relationship than neighbors might. His death was like someone threw a cold bucket of water on my face and I realized that I would no longer see him. It's one thing to know someone is dying it's another for them to die and I realized you never are prepared for that. Death frightens me, sure if you are Christian you believe you will go to Heaven, Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and off the top of my head I don't remember what the rest of the world thinks. I remember lying in my bed as a child unable to sleep because I kept having visions of my own funeral. How fucked up is that to be in fourth grade and unable to sleep because you keep thinking of yourself dead. What does this have to do with anything.... I don't really know, this is just me thinking. I started listening to samples of "Imogen Heaps" latest album off of Itunes and it made me feel introspective. As far as the album goes it's almost too pop-ish and cute but I like it in a guilty pleasure sort of way.

What really got me thinking about stuff was the other night when a friend of mine was talking about how he wants to start his own company due to feelings of being limited professionally. Where I am now I feel completely hemmed in and it's a little bit of (A) and a little bit of (B). The (A) is all about me and the (B) is mostly about Sprockets. The (A) is that I just sort of gave up, I should have continued to try, to take more responsibilities, learn more things, not leave my pager by the front door where it wouldn't wake me up at night. Instead I decided to do nothing and atrophy like a bicept. I keep doing work but I don't attempt to think up new things, rethink old problems or speak up and take the initiative to tackle a project anything that would improve me professionally. So my lack of growth professionally is because I gave up and choose to take the easy route. The (B) is that there really isn't anywhere to move up to in Sprockets, where I am is where I am and no amount less than Herculean effort on my part will give me a promotion and even if Zeus himself came down from the heavens and told me I was one of his bastard sons I doubt that would make a difference. Even if I could get a promotion would I really want one? In truth I don't think I do however at least by working towards one I'd feel like I was working towards something instead of just trying to paddle a raft with a broom handle... up stream... with lots of hyper active 18lb bunnies in it. Guess I need to work on that resume, maybe apply for some jobs, see what's out there before I get anymore grumpy. Who knows I might apply for other jobs, interview and find that where I am is actually not that bad. At least then I know this and then can settle down and try to figure out what I need to do to become more.......

Here's a little something something for those thinking that owning a house is what you want to do, you know get away from having neighbors get a little peace and quiet. My neighbor was working on his car trying to get something to work until 1am in the morning. This doesn't bother me too much, I mean look at the post date yo, I'm still awake. For those of you out in the burbs you may be thinking big deal right? It wouldn't be a big deal if our houses weren't 15 feet apart separated by a shared driveway and your bedroom window is facing said neighbor. Then we throw into the mix that he keeps revving the engine which is irritating two fold. It first makes lots of noise and second it spews enough exhaust fumes to choke a horse. Disconcerting no when one walks into their bedroom and it smells like a five o' clock gridlock. I'm not saying I don't understand what is going on, he probably started much earlier in the night and things just kept getting worse and worse and he wanted to get it working. I know this feeling, that's why I never start working on a computer after 9pm because that's practically asking for trouble. You are basically signing, sealing and delivering a letter to your computer saying "Please show who's the bitch."

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Is that you Jesus? I'm sorry I mistook you for the Gardner.

Sunday when I was finishing the landscaping project at casa de SFB and I kept looking over my shoulder to see if Jesus was going to smite me as I was doing work on not just the Sabbath but also on the day of his rebirth. What can I say the weather was nice. Though I will say between looking for the Lords holy wrath and the potential stone being lobed at me by the passing devout driver it WAS quite nerve wracking. SG claims that when Mary Magdalene went up to Jesus grave the day after he was placed there she mistook him for a Gardner. So I figure right, if Jesus was doing some pruning of the burning bush while he was waiting for Mary to show up he may not mind me doing some landscaping. Don't believe me, fine make me open up a Bible will you.


At this, She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"

Thinking he was a gardener, she said "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him , and I will get him."

--John 20:14 - 20:16


See, John doesn't actually say that he was gardening but why would Mary think Jesus was a Gardner unless he was doing some weeding and what not. I wonder if Jesus would have been a good Gardner, come to think of it he'd be quite handy to have around. I mean if you can heal the sick, fix the lame, cure the blind then he should have no problem keeping black spot off the roses.

Why didn't someone kick me hard when I wanted to buy a house. This weeks task, digging up path stones, raising them up, leveling them with leveling sand and dirt and then putting them back down was a success. This doesn't all and all sound too bad until you take into account that these aren't your garden variety pavers that you get at Lowes. Nope this suckers are 4-6" thick and must weigh close 30lbs. When we first dug them up we thought that were actually stone when in fact they are some sort of man made baked clay stone, just 3 times thicker and heavier than current pavers. So my semi nefarious plan this summer is to get SG to do some of the gardening, it's not like she doesn't have a degree in Biology and a masters in Ecology and can name most of the plants in our backyard using their Latin names or nothing. Latin plant names.... well the nefarious plan is to tear out things that look like weeds. Not so nefarious you say? Well see I went to college for business and computers so to me anything that isn't flowering is a weed and it's life is thereby forfeit. I don't do this to be mean, I really don't know what is a weed and what is not. There is that and the fact that a lot of this "ground cover" in my opinion is a weed.... WEEED! So in the theme of all my home improvement jobs I am expecting the ground on which I leveled the stones to suddenly subside and look more like a giant British persons teeth sticking out of the ground than a path.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

No crowd surfing


How out of it does one have to be that when your mother calls up and asks if you know where you are going to be going for Easter this year and you're like "Huh, is that coming up or something?" Jebus is gonna strike me dead this year I think. I will say that I have been quite lacking with my regular observances to Ted. Ted you say? Yes I say Ted. Ted is my name for the God of fitness, Ted Fitlinx if you're all prim and proper. This week hasn't been good with me and Teddy F, see first there was this whole Spring thing, you know yard work, trees blooming me gasping for air between gurgles of allergy induced mucus rivers and then there was the Claritin incident, and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's concert in Cleveland. Monday I ran out to get some little Claritin D wonders in a box and was greeted with the next stage in the state of Ohio's on going battle to fight meth labs. Apparently it wasn't enough to limit my ability to buy more than two weeks of allergy relief, now they are making me sign a little formy thing kind of like the piece of paper you sign when you go to vote. I don't get it, I mean how are paper records going to help the State of Ohio fight the ever increasing problems of home and mobile meth labs. How do you search a paper form efficiently? Not thinking popped a couple of Claritin D 24 hour pills within 12 hours of each other leaving me in a fidgety dazed state where I was only able to get sleep in two hour bursts the whole night.

Wednesday night I got a chance to go up to Cleveland to see they Yeah Yeah Yeahs play a show at the Agora. Excellent excellent even if the entire smoking population of Cleveland showed up in mass. I think I read somewhere that said the percentage of people that smoke in Ohio is something like 26% of the population. Apparently when you take the subsection of the people who listen to punk music you find your percentage something closer to 90%. At one point I realized what I thought was fog from a fog machine wasn't actually fog but the residual blue haze of cigarette smoke. Shmoke. Toke, Broke as a Joke. The show... well the first opener was downright wretched the best part of their set was when they would announce themselves they would play this little musical interlude which was a sample from a Public Enemy song. What was the cover of the sample from a Public Enemy song? How should I know a friend of mine told me that it was a sample, he didn't say what it was. That was funny, the screaming screetching equivalent to a toddler banging a couple of pots over their head was less so. There was so much twitchy pelvic thrusting yelling going on that it felt more like a middle school talent show than an a group of practiced musicians. Next up was Blood on the Wall did a real nice set that led us into the Yeah Yeah Yeahs which I said already were spectacular. The set started of with the track "Phenomena" which I might just like more than "Gold Lions" mainly because it's a lot edgier and less produced sounding and has some really good simple grinding driving beats and rifts. As far as album coverage they ran through all the tracks off of their first album and then played the tracks "Black Tongue", "Y Control", "Maps" and "No No No" off of "Fever to Yell" amongst others. I can't remember the other songs and for that I blame PBR in your garden variety 24oz cans at $4 a pop.

At the concert next to the stage were these giant signs informing the concerting public that there was no crowd surfing allowed. I think there was a time when people used to think more about what was fun and less about what could maim or kill you. There will always be those proud few that do things like attempt to shoot an arrow of their buddies heads and for that we salute you the cavorting jesters of stupidity. So seriously when did the fun leave the world, wasn't there a time when you could ride your bike without a helmet and not worry about the 1 in 1,000,00 chance that a rabid squirrel will race out from underneath a car with it's glowing red eyes right in front of your bike causing you fall of your bike land on a small rock instantly kill you by driving the rock into your head. Wasn't there a time when Ozzy would eat raw meat and not worry about avian bird flu or mad cow disease... sad times we are living in.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

The lessons that home ownership teaches you.

Lesson number one when owning a house, you never stop learning that you don't have a clue. Take my latest plumbing home improvement minny mee project. We were able to procure a lightly used utility sink from one of SG's uncles. It is bigger, lacks the little tiny rusting iron hairs in the basin, has a faucet, and handles for better hot and cold water management. Like any of that really matters, this is a utility sink for God's sake not a bathroom sink or a kitchen sink. Plumbing in general and specifically in my house is one of those things that I loath more than all other improvement tasks. Why? Well because once you start my friend there ain't no turning back. It's not like once you take off that faucet and find that you need a part and that you don't have said part and cannot find said part that you can then put it all back together and then wait till tomorrow to find our call your handy dandy plumber friend. Nope, because once you put a wrench on that old plumbing thingamabobber all bets are off, initiate improbability drive honkies.

What made all of this that much more fun initially when we bought the house was that the main water shut off valve didn't actually shut the water off to the whole house. It reduced the water coming in to a mere trickle but a trickle can be down right exciting when we are talking about open plumbing orifice's. The ghetto solution was to turn the valve off and then turn the water on at the utility sink thereby reducing the water pressure to nil and making it impossible for water to go above the basement. This wasn't the first project and by no means think that I with my complete ignorance of all things useful did this. Nope we called a plumber who then said that we had to have the city come out and mark and check that the shut off at the street was working. Once that was done we had a new shut off valve installed and all was once again as kosher as dill pickles. The first adventure in plumbing occurred when gave a facelift to our bathroom a little nip tuck if you will. I was removing wall paper one day when low and behold I found a large discolored spot on the plaster wall that adjoins the plumbing for the shower. Ahhh yes the beauty of wallpaper and it's ability to hide any and all imperfections that may be going on. Fixing your plumbing shouldn't be that big of a deal unless your plumbing looks more like a torture machine for the Spanish inquisition. You think I'm kidding don't you? Well here.
As you can see we have two handles to work the shower and two separate handles below to work the spout for the tub and lastly a handle in the middle to close the drain on the tub. It just so happens that this style of plumbing was probably discontinued about 50 years ago due to the fact that you probably needed a civil engineering degree and a small army of lackeys to actually get anything fixed. Eventually we found out that the cold water stem (the do hickey that stops the water from flowing to your shower head) was leaking and that we needed new seals. The only problem no one makes these anymore, the solution put a bunch of waxy ropey looking stuff called packing in the stem and pray to as many Gods as you can remember. It just so happens that Vishnu was the winner.

Onward to glory friends, because we are at last entering into the the utility sink adventure. So we have this sink right, going to set up this sink, get some system that will go from the washer hookups to the faucet handles and then get something that will connect the existing drain to the new utility sink. On the first trip my father-in-law and I befriend an unsuspecting teenage clerk named Nick little did Nick know that after this little fiasco I wasn't going to forget his name. Two hardware store trips into this ordeal we had all the pieces to connect the faucet to the hookups and the drain to the sink but when we hooked it all up water came squirting out of the cold water faucet like a tiny little baby boy lets go when you change his diaper. At this point we realize that the fiber washer that was inside the little nut thingy that holds the stemamabobber had degraded to the point that it was no longer stopping the water when the hookup was open and the faucet turned off. After some precursor diggings, pokings and cursings the Dremel in all of it's high whining glory is brought out to do things man style. That's right this thing was so gone we had to take a Dremel sanding attachment to it, even then it still took about 5-10 minutes of work to get it out all the while hoping that we weren't sanding the threads right off the nut. The third trip saw me buying a washer that looked like it was going to work until I of course got home reassembled everything and once again was pissed on. Trip four, the trip to end all trips saw me buying an assortment of washers, at this point it was either fix it or go take a shower over at the neighbors. Did it work? Well I didn't shower at the neighbors but I almost didn't have hot water and that's just another story.

So part of this little fiasco was that SG no longer wanted the washer to drain into the utility sink. She found it unclean or something so we got another tube to extend the existing drainage tube to the hole in the basement floor. No problems there right? Well on Sunday SG started doing some laundry at about 8pm, by 9pm I wanted to take a shower only to find that there was no hot water. Chalking this up to me intermittently turning the water off and on mixed with using hot water made me think that maybe we had just used all of the hot water through out the day and the shutting the water on and off stopped the hot water heater from heating more water. Besides by 12:30am or so I hot water, no stink no foul right? Fast forward to Monday when SG tries to run the same load again, I in my neurotic bustling went downstairs to put away some stuff noticed that the washer was still running and didn't seem to progress on this whole washing of the clothes thing. I call down the fury by yelling up to SG that the washer didn't seem to be working. Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp down SG comes to scowl at the washer and then scowl at me as if I somehow broke the washer when I installed this sink. After being called a lurker,

Main Entry: lurk
Pronunciation: 'l&rk
Function: intransitive verb
Etymology: Middle English; akin to Middle High German luren to lie in wait -- more at LOWER
1 a : to lie in wait in a place of concealment especially for an evil purpose b : to move furtively or inconspicuously c : to persist in staying
2 a : to be concealed but capable of being discovered; specifically : to constitute a latent threat b : to lie hidden


of which how could I be if I was in front of her and five feet to the left I will never know, I went upstairs and got the manual for the washer at which point we find out that the drainage tube has to be higher than the water level in the washer otherwise the washer will never fill. HUZZAH for modern machinery.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Everyone who loves hip hop say 'YE~A'!

I started out thinking that I was going to describe the Blackalicious concert that I went with a friend mind last week. I wanted to do it, and then my muse never hit me.... maybe it's only because my muse was passed out after a drunk binder. Maybe it's just that I keep drinking coffee at work that tastes like Juan Valdez's piss after he had a nice cup of coffee or maybe I'm thinking that I don't have much to say about it because I was under-wowed. Under-wowed I wonder if that's a word I'm sure my editor will nail me on that one. Headlining with Blackalicious was Pigeon John, Fat Lip formerly of Pharcyde and Life Savas. It wasn't even until the next day while thinking about the show that my little dusty light bulb went off and I realized that Pigeon John and Life Savas were each featured on a track from "The Craft" album. Kinda makes sense that they were touring with Blackalicious I'd say.

Pigeon John was a really good opener bouncing around the stage with the energy of an ADD child. It didn't even seem to faze him that there was only 20-30 people on the floor in front of him. That's nice you know, I mean I've seen opening acts that either got boo'd off stage or were practically talked over. This one time I went to see NIN when Trent was touring for the "Downward Spiral" album. Marilyn Manson was opening for NIN at a time when know one had heard of him and yo know what no one paid attention to him, eventually he got so disgusted he threw down his mic and walked off the stage still wearing his big black strap on dong. Where was I, dongs concerts, oh yes. I don't really remember that much about Fat Lip other than he did a part of the Pharcyde song "Yo Mama" and while I don't remember much from the Life Savas set I have some impression that they were pretty good. It wasn't that I was drunk, it's just that I don't have any of the three headlining groups albums so it was hard for me to follow along or get into a song that I had never heard before. Blackalicious was good but their style just didn't seem to translate real well into a live show. I'm not sure if that could have been fixed by reducing some of the bass or if the acoustics of the Newport were also a problem. I do know that rock concerts while ear splittingly loud still generally sound good but I think rock music in some ways is a lot simpler than hip hop. Anyway Gift of Gabs style of rhyming is fast, and their music is pretty complex and multilayered. I wanted to hear all of what was going on and all I really heard was a lot of loud bass, incoherent background vocalist and Gift of Gab trying to rhyme over it all. Even so hearing tracks Supreme People, Rythm Sticks, Lotus Power, Side to Side, Ego Sonic War Drums along with Chemical Calisthenics off of "Blazing Arrow" was a joy.

Biggest shock of the whole deal might have been the crowd that showed up. For a group that so good the crowd was kind of small, and for a hip hop concert the crowd was kinda.... white like 98% college student white. Cool thing was there still seemed to be plenty of energy even if the the arm waving, head bopping and dancing was entirely too white boy-ish. At one point in the concert a girl walk by wearing a t-shirt hanging off of one shoulder followed by a mesh top over the t-shirt, a short mini skirt, boots and teased hair.. felt more Whitesnake than Blackalicious but who am I to say one way or the other.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

My Name is Uncle Dog, Aloha!

Against my better judgment I decided to get a season pass to "Dog The Bounty Hunter." If you don't know what a season pass is, I pity you, if you don't know what "Dog The Bounty Hunter" is I envy you. I'm totally confused, I mean totally wholly, completely confused how a dude with a widows peak bleach blonde hair and a belly like a 14 year old chubby girl can intimidate people. I mean I'm sure he's at least 6' tall something that I in my wildest most erotic dreams can never top. I think I might top out at 5' 10'' and that's on a good night.

Tummy's, yes. Alright so this "gnarly" dude walks around wearing black jeans and a leather vest. He looks more village people than he does mean, lean, bounty, dog hunting machine. Then he straps on a flak jacket and once again we are priviledged with a view of his glorious belly dangling out for the whole world to see. I mean what does a person who is out on bond who is suddenly shown this belly peaking out of a bullet proof vest think. Do they think "Fuck I'm screwed, I'd best not mess with this cat" or do they think "I will call him tubby and he will cry at which point I will escape."

Did I mention that I am two margaritas and one giant milk glass of rum and a splash of coke into the night watching "Dog The bounty hunger"? No? Well I am. Drunk is where I am heading and drunk is where I will be. Dinner tonight was with the padres at a local Mexican joint, I think when I downed my first margarita before dinner even showed up my mother looked a little nervous. Meh, she doesn't know what good standing me and JD are on, and you know I think good ol' Jack Daniels would whip Cap'n Morgan every day of the week and twice on Sunday given the chance. That is if either one of them were real people, at this point who cares.

So how do you take a bounty hunter type man serious who tries to then talk feelings with a convicted felon. At one point he asks this guy they are "tracking" what was the thing that led him down the dark path. I think I started yelling "GODLESS-NESS" over and over again to the point at which SG came up to find out what I was yelling about. Did I mention the rum? I might have drain bramage since SG smacked me in the head cause I was being down right irritating and possibly a terrorist combatant. At which point I'm sure it is deemed ok in the sight of our fair government to give me a good smack in the head.

Oh fuck me I think they held a prayer ring in the parking lot before they left to pick up one of the "bad men". A prayer ring.... because I bet you didn't know swearing like a slayer and praying to the almighty is ok by Jesus. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth Dog? Did I mention that they don't carry guns, or billy clubs, or bats, or slingshot's, bb guns, bear traps, tazers or even fucking boomerang's just mace cans with handles. How do you intimidate criminals man sized cans of mace... with handles.

Oh man Bra I think a season pass of "King of Cars" on A&E is going to HAVE to happen. King of Cars this will be great, hip-hop music, hoopty cars, and bling bling baby. I'm so game. Did i mention the name of the episode is "We Dooz it Large", WORD!