Boxing Day tedium

It's back to normality. Almost. I don't have to go back to my crappy job until tomorrow. But the smelly, filthy, drooling, shedding, screaming beast has gone back to Richmond--and she took the cat with her.



Also, Americans have no use for Boxing Day. So there.

Infected

Somebody gave me a cold. Or maybe it's the early stages of the flu. Better not be the flu. Who gave it to me? Did I get it at work yesterday during the free meal we had when all 300 of us were shoehorned into the not quite big enough break room? Was it my sister? Was it that damnable, filthy cat of hers? [See below.]



Fat lot of good all that vitamin C did. Might as well have been Chicklets.

Woe is us?

I found a detailed blog post on installing Haloscan in Blogger Beta. Looks interesting. I may work up enough nerve to try it later.

Ooh, I also noticed when I logged into Blogger that the new Blogger stuff isn't beta anymore. I wonder how long those who haven't switched over have before they're forced to switch?

Update: Hey, it works so far. Welcome back Haloscan!

Duh

I can't figure out how to put the Haloscan comments code in the new template. The old Haloscan code is HTML and the new Blogger Beta code is XML. I'm not sure if they'll play nice, so for now I'll just use the built-in Blogger commenting system. But I want the Haloscan comments back; I've got four years of bizarre dialog on that.

Changes

I switched over to the new Blogger Beta a week or two back, but hadn't changed the template. Blogger Beta lets you do all kinda whiz-bang crap with the template where you don't have to soil your hands by touching filthy, nasty HTML. Anyway, since I changed to the new template system, I figured I might as well change the template itself. How long did I have the previous template? Two years or more? This new one reminds me of the first two I had, which also had a blue bar across the top. Exciting, no?

I'll fix the other stuff in a bit.

Fluffed or stiffened?

I bought a cheap Chinese yo-yo at a dollar store yesterday to add to my growing collection. The warning on the back of the package features the following bewildering advice: "Yoyostint is wasting please replacing while it fluffed or stiffened." I think this refers to replacing the yo-yo string. Or at least I hope it does.

Yuletide misery

I hate Christmas. Really, I do. And, sadly, the older I get the more I hate it. I sort of figured I'd get more sentimental and weepy in my old age, but the opposite is true. I'm the grouchy old bastard who tells you Santa got shot down by the Strategic Air Command because they thought he was a Soviet missile. Or something like that. Anyway, I hate Christmas. All of it. Well, I like getting time off. And I like the food--for a while at least. Like I need to eat more. Dick Gregory hasn't shown up to help me yet, so I'm guess I'm in the clear for a little longer. But I digress.

I find the gift-giving thing particularly miserable. The whole process makes me feel both embarrassed and guilty. I'm not sure why, but I just hate the whole thing. I hate buying gifts because I never know what to get and getting gifts makes me feel more or less like crap for reasons it would take a battalion of psychoanalysts to plumb the depths of. It would suit me just fine if I just got some time off from work and got to stuff my face with garbage I don't usually get to stuff it with during the less festive times of the year.

I don't really like getting together with my family either. Sorry, family, but I don't really like being around people that much. I can tolerate my sister and her drooling, shedding cat for a while, but that's more than enough. I don't need to see every single person I'm related to and their mysterious offspring. Go away.

Automation

Thanks to the Point Horror plot generator now I can turn out crap with ease! Writing is so much easier now.

Susan was having a happy normal day in Harvard. She had lunch with her best friends Belinda and Jennifer, and completed her work for Dr. Boeldeke. It was all going wonderfully, until she discovered aphids in her locker - she had a terrible fear of them, and wondered who could do such a cruel thing.

'I bet it was Amy,' said Belinda. 'She's been jealous of you since she heard that you were going to the prom with Ralph.' Susan sighed.

'Did you read the Daily Bugle?' said Jennifer. 'There was an article about Dick Cheney, who shocked everyone when he dropped his pants and showed his horrible arousal.'

'Really?' said Susan. 'Can I read the article?'

Jennifer gave it to her.

The Daily Bugle has heard rumors that Dick Cheney is back after the shock of many years ago when he dropped his pants and showed his horrible arousal. This is not true. Dick Cheney is in Mongolia.

Susan scanned the article and was startled to discover that she and Dick Cheney were alike - They both had the same DNA structure.

Susan walked home feeling very troubled. When she got home, there was a note on her doorstep. She opened in and screamed. It was full of aphids. There was also a letter.

To Susan. Watch your step. Ha ha ha. Signed, Dick Cheney.

Who could it be? Was it really Dick Cheney or someone closer to her? Susan suspected everyone - Amy of course, who always sneered at her. Ralph, even though he was the dreamiest boy in Harvard. She even suspected Jennifer who had a great love for aphids and had been acting strangely recently. The only person she could trust was Belinda who had been her friend since they were small children.

The night before the prom, Susan went with Belinda to the town square, and they discovered it was empty. Susan was pleased to have Belinda with her, because she was very nervous about Dick Cheney, as well as avoiding Ralph, Jennifer, and Amy. 'Isn't it strange,' said Belinda. 'How much we have in common?'

Susan remembered that they both had the same DNA structure. She became uneasy. 'Belinda, don't you have family in Mongolia?'

Belinda laughed manically. She threw some aphids at Susan, then attacked her with a homeless man, and Susan was forced to fight back with litter. She ran away and was found by Ralph and Jennifer, who had a perfectly rational explanation for her strange behavior.

'We came to save you from Belinda,' said Jennifer.

The next day they discovered that Belinda had died horribly. Susan was sad - Belinda had been her friend for years, and becoming a crazed psycho in the space of a few days could happen to anyone. But she placed her trauma firmly behind her and went to the prom with Ralph, much to the dismay of Amy.

#@$% meme!

The shameless Jammies has tagged me to do a meme. Me, a meme! I never do those. Ever. Except that one below from a few days ago. That one doesn't count. Or those other ones either. Nope. Don't look in my archives either. They're broken. Trust me.

Oh, the meme? I'm supposed to list things I want for Christmas. But I assume it's supposed to be stuff I can't get in real life, so the list won't have things on it like new socks and underwear. Although I really do need new socks and underwear.

1. A job I don't hate. I've given up on ever finding a job I actually like, so I'll settle on one I don't hate. And I think I'd be OK with one I hated if they paid me enough. The people who decide what we make at the current job don't seem to comprehend concepts like living wage and not being poor.

2. A hovercraft. Why? Because it's my goddamn list, that's why.

3. A Vox AC30. I can't play the guitar worth a damn, but I've wanted a Vox AC30 for twenty years. Don't know what I'd do with it. Probably just sit and look at it all day. Maybe sniff it obscenely. Rub up against it. Something nasty, no doubt.

4. A high-speed internet connection. Sad, really. I'm supposed to be listing pie in the sky stuff and this is probably what I want more than anything.

5. An alligator. Don't know what I'd do with it and it would probably kill me, but I'd still like to have one. My sister's old enough to remember seeing baby alligators for sale somewhere in Florida on a trip in the early 70's. I don't even remember going to Florida because I was two or three years old.

6. Someplace to put all my books, CD's, records, etc. so that I can actually enjoy them instead of feeling like they're sucking the life out of me.

7. A new laptop. I don't need it, but I want it. In fact, I'd probably drop it if I had one.

8. Enough money to retire. Forget about the job I mentioned above; I want to retire. And then I'll slowly descend into madness!

9. A tank. You know, an army tank. And lots of stuff to run over with it like old cars, houses, etc. I have to do something with my time after I retire.

10. A battalion of trained monkey assassins with which to conquer (yes, conquer) the world.

I'm supposed to tag other people to do this, but I think everyone's been tagged except Xolo, Sara, and my sister. Xolo will say he's too busy. Sara will just say something like, "bleh". And my sister will bellow, "I WILL KILL YOU!!!" Therefore no one will be tagged. So there.

The literary life

Since I've gone and written a 50,000 word first draft of something resembling a novel, I decided to go to a copy place and have them print the thing out. It's all fine and good to have the manuscript on a computer, CD, or USB thumb drive, but I want something tangible. And, of course, I can't spread it all out on the floor and roll around naked in it if it's on a CD. Nope, I need paper.

At the copy place I gave the woman behind the counter my CD and she opened the file. Immediately there was trouble.

"What is this," she asked, with more than a little confusion in her voice.

"It's my novel."

"You wrote this?"

She didn't seem the least bit impressed, only bewildered.