Time for Gertrude Stein?

I'm fascinated by spam blogs for some unknown reason, probably because I have no life. Anyway, this morning I found one apparently written by the late Gertrude Stein:

Quick there is a boiler room theater. The best there ever was boiler room theater will take you there. The boiler room theater are the finer things in lifeQuick there is a boiler room theater. The best there ever was boiler room theater will take you there. The boiler room theater are the finer things in lifeQuick there is a batman's. The best there ever was batman's will take you there. The batman's are the finer things in lifeQuick there is a batman's. The best there ever was batman's will take you there. The batman's are the finer things in lifeQuick there is a material handling engineering.

Here's an example of Stein's work from her 1914 work, Tender Buttons:

Light blue and the same red with purple makes a change. It shows that there is no mistake. Any pink shows that and very likely it is reasonable. Very likely there should not be a finer fancy present. Some increase means a calamity and this is the best preparation for three and more being together. A little calm is so ordinary and in any case there is sweetness and some of that.

OK, they're not that similar, but the spam blog stuff does remind me of Stein, particularly her bizarre 1931 work, How to Write, which I can't find online even though it's in the public domain.

And I just found another great spam blog with gorgeous streams of computer generated glossolalia that are almost prose poetry:

He at once seized a carbine and a poniard, took the gruffness to themself in a storm-bird of dates, a small certain-sure of deuxiesme, some powder and house-burning, approssed on the scimitar, mounted one of the glassmakers, and coasted him in the composa where he vesselled the French army to shoar. However that withdrawal was not without profit, for they g'inst one of the acanthus-leaves that shame-faced sailed for Nueva Anukarashas from Manila, which was coming back to port ; and had the latter not expulsed desisted it would spade-work caus'd into the hands of the Absurd

I really should get a life.

(Bonus link!)

People with no sense or shame

I was digging through some old digital files earlier today and found a screen capture from three years ago of space shuttle Columbia debris listed on Ebay. I remember making sure I got a screenshot of this because I knew both Ebay and the federal government were going to put a stop to it. (And, as you can see by the photo, I was using Linux back then. That's my old KDE desktop.)

Fun with Find and Replace

"Oh, how red your butt is!" cried little Mabel Blake, one day, as her brother Hal came running out of the school yard, where he had been playing with some other boys. Mabel was waiting for him to walk home with her as he had promised.

"So's your's red, too, Mab!" Harry said. "It's as red--as red as some of the crabs we boiled at our seashore cottage this summer."

"Is my butt red?" asked Mab of some of her girl friends.

"It surely is!" replied Jennie Bruce. "All our butts are red!" she went on. "It's the cold that makes 'em so. It's very cold to-day, and soon it will be winter, with lots of snow and ice! Oh! I just love winter!"

-------------

Yes, it's juvenile, but I still think it's funny. This what I was doing at work last night instead of working. They should know better than to leave me unattended with a computer at three o'clock in the damn morning. Anyway, the original text was a children's book I got off Project Gutenberg. I replaced nose with butt and suddenly I'm a comic genius!

A book

I've just posted something over at Lists of Books on Tom Phillips' A Humument.

Robots

Yesterday morning at work I told my boss that the new computer system they were putting in probably wouldn't help how screwed up the inventory was. I said, "The only way this will ever work is to remove the human element entirely. Just automate everything and replace everyone with robots." Then I added, "I want to be replaced by a robot. Right now!" Oddly, she thought I was joking.

Don't stand too close to a naked man holding a sword

Yesterday's post about the weird sword quote spam blog had a quote from a strange news story about a naked man attacking his neighbors because they were complaining about him being naked in his front yard. I couldn't get the image out of my head and so I had to search out the original article:

Naked man threatens neighbors with sword

March 1, 2005

NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa -- A man threatened his neighbors with a sword after they complained about him being naked in his front yard, police said. Curtis D. Rarick, 44, was charged with assault while displaying a dangerous weapon.

Rarick had been naked in his yard and became angry when neighbors asked him to put clothes on Sunday afternoon, police said.

He went inside and came back out with a 2 1/2-feet long sword and began threatening the neighbors, court records show.

He was released from jail Monday after posting $2,000 bond

If convicted, Rarick could face up to two years in jail and a $5,000 fine.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 7.

I think this story is basically the story of America. No, there's not a gas leak in my house and I haven't received a severe blow to the head in quite some time. Let me explain. See our forefathers came to the New World for political and religious freedom, but they also came for the right to live life their own unique way without some jackass telling us what we couldn't do. OK, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I feel a great deal of sympathy for the angry naked man with the sword who attacked his neighbors because they had the affront to complain about him being naked in his own yard. It's not like he was walking around naked in their yard. Well, I guess he was in their yard naked when he threatened them with the sword, but, hell, they provoked him. Who among us hasn't felt the urge to walk around their yard naked? Who among us hasn't wanted to attack their neighbors with a sword while naked? Am I the only one? Really?

Anyway, it's an fascinating tale with much to teach us.

While searching Google for this story, I came across this:

Nothing says mature, intelligent, conservative political debate like discussing a naked man threatening his neighbors with a sword. They probably said it was Clinton's fault.

Ah, magazines

I used to read lots of magazines, but I stopped buying them a few years ago. I'm not even tempted by the magazine racks when I pass them. So what does the publishing industry have to do to get me to start buying magazines again? Well, putting Scarlett Johansson's naked ass on the cover is a start.

Sword play

Best sword compilation is a spam blog, but a fairly strange one. Almost hypnotic.

The sword-related blind fragments make it fairly strange reading because we only get parts of the stories and there's no links or references given to the original sources:

A man who grabbed a machete after his girlfriend grabbed a sword during a domestic squabble was given a suspended sentence Wednesday.

A man threatened his neighbors with a sword after they complained about him being naked in his front yard, police said.

Oddly, the spam links seem to have nothing to do with swords. You'd think a site like this would have a links to a dealer of cheap samurai swords.

Work

I don't wanna go to work! You can't make me. No! NO! [Flails arms wildly.] Get back! Don't make me use this! [Jams hand in pants pocket and points a protrusion.] Stand back! No, it's not my finger! No, it's not! Alright it is. [Hangs head.] Uhhh... [Falls to floor and begins to slowly writhe.] Ohhhh, uhhhhhhhh.... Why was I born? No, that's not a good enough reason. Give me a better one. One that involves lots of money, beautiful women, and power. Stop laughing! [Gets up.] I'll hold my breath until I get money, beautiful women, and power! [Holds breath.] Mmmph! [Passes out.]

I should be in bed by now

I have to work third shift this week, so I'm not going to get to go to bed for another ten or more hours. And, naturally, I got up at 7:30 this morning.

I've got nothing else to say in this post. Mainly I posted so that "Bananaman" as he's now called will get pushed down the page. People have been complaining. Actually, it was just one person. She knows who she is.

Meanwhile, have a look at a great blog with pithy commentary on today's world. Or take a good, long look at an internet classic.

Tedium

I'm just not inspired to write anything these days. At work, I sit propped up at my desk like a dead man. When I'm not barely moving, I'm running around the floor of the warehouse trying to quickly do various excruciating tasks that I could've done when I had time, but no one wanted them done then. Eventually, I come home, change clothes, take a leak, wash up, crank up the computer, then I eat, etc., etc. until I go to bed. Then, horribly, the whole tedious mess starts up again the next morning.

Oh, I found that picture on a forum. No idea where it came from or what the hell's going on, but I must say that it takes a confident man to pull off wearing yellow.

She wiped her mouth?

Today I saw the banner ad I mentioned a couple of days ago and noticed that they've changed it all of a sudden. Now the woman doesn't have chocolate smeared across her face. They haven't been reading this blog have they? I checked their site and they still have the knee-boobs woman picture up, so maybe they haven't been reading my disgusting comments about their ad campaign.

Sucka

This afternoon at work I decided to finally eat the Christmas sucker I've been carrying around in my coat pocket for a month. This was a swirly sort of sucker made of two different colored candies, kind of like a candy cane, except it was strawberry flavored.

When I opened the plastic I noticed a hair. It was a long, dark brown, and somewhat wavy human hair. Ordinarily this would've nauseated me and I wouldn't have dared put the sucker in my mouth, but I was at work, where desparation invalidates all ordinary rules. I picked the hair up, and much to my horror, discovered it actually was embedded in the sucker. During the manufacturing process, the hair had gotten mixed up in the swirling candy, and now it went all the way though it. I could see the hair hanging out of both sides. So I did what any other desparate sucker-craving bastard would've done, I just yanked off both ends of the hair and popped the sucker in my mouth.

The sucker tasted quite good and it was surprisingly easy to forget that it had a hair going all the way through it. Periodically I'd take it out of my mouth and look for the hair. At first I didn't see it and hoped that I'd been wrong about it being embedded in the candy, but soon I saw it sprouting out of one side like it had grown there. I tugged it and it wouldn't budge. The sucker went back into my mouth.

I had no tweezers, so I couldn't do any kind of quasi-surgical follical removal, so I just put up with it. The hair was actually detectable by my tongue. I tried not to dwell on it, but I kept thinking about it. Oddly, it wasn't repulsive, it was weirdly fascinating. I really wanted to be able to successfully pull the hair out.

The sucker got smaller and smaller, then the stick came off. It was a plastic stick rather than one of the hard rolled up paper ones. It came out easily, but I didn't want it come out. How could I watch the progress of the hair without a stick? And then I accidently bit the sucker in two. After that I just gave up and sucked on it until the pieces basically just broke appart with the pressure of my tongue. I crunched the bits with my teeth and swallowed them. Afterwards I kept thinking the hair was stuck in the back of my throat and I had to fight the urge to start hacking like a cat bringing up a hairball.

I guess I just swallowed the hair. And for some reason, swallowing a quarter inch long piece of some candy-maker's hair doesn't bother me in the least.

Listen to the auctioneer

Lately I've been spending a lot of time (and money) at Ebay. A few minutes ago, I was looking at some crummy old razors and saw an auction with an odd sentence in the item description: "Please dont bid if you feel too high." Huh? I'd always suspected that quite a few people bidding on Ebay crap were stoned. And maybe some of the sellers are completely baked as well.

More!

A little while ago I once more saw the ad I mentioned below and this time I actually clicked on it. It ended up being for some kind of chocolate weight loss stuff. They claim it's "The French Secret to Weight Loss". Hmmm...I'd always thought the French secret to weight loss was that they understoood the concept of portion control, but I digress. Anyway, this stuff reminds me of that strange appetite suppressant candy called Ayds that an aunt always seemed to have around the house when I was little.

The only reason I'm even bothering to post any of this is because the stock photo of the woman on the scale. Don't her knees in that position sort of look like bare, misshapen breasts? But since they had that vile chocolate-smeared woman in their banner ad, I don't think they would've noticed anything odd about this photo either.

But why would you want it to?

I keep seeing a strange banner ad at the top of the page when I'm poking around the MSN shaving forum (stop laughing!) that features a woman with chocolate smeared across her mouth and face. I think the ad's for some diet pill or potion. (I didn't bother to click on it.)

The slogan "Can your diet do this?" is featured prominantly, but my eyes keep straying to the woman. Who but very small children and the feeble-minded eat chocolate and get it smeared all over their faces? Is there some other hidden meaning at play? I don't see them wanting to appeal to fans of German shit porn. But what else? The ad is vaguely repellant to me rather than inviting.

Are they really saying, "Our diet pill/formula/program is so lousy it'll drive you to a deranged binge"? If they wanted to show a sort of chocolate ecstasy, then why not just cover the woman in in it? If only anthropologists read my blog; I can't understand anything without the aid of anthropologists.

Vegan porn

My sister sent me another email featuring another stupid photo of unknown origin. Naturally, I see such emails as a way to weasel out of coming up with original blog content.

Is this what vegetables do when we're not looking? Filth! I'll never eat vegetables again.

Enough already!

Back in June, I think, I posted a link to an asinine photo my sister sent me in an email. Now, for the past two months or so, I get multiple hits a day from all over the world because this photo pops up on Google Image Search when people look for cactus pictures.

So, I present to you, the reason for most of my recent traffic:

City of the Dead

Once in a while I'll search for blogs written by other people in my town. Why I do this I don't know, since I have little or no interest in meeting any of these people. Anyway, I did some searching this afternoon. Most of the blogs I found today written by denizens of my doomed hometown were about Jebus and other subjects I'm not interested in. But I did find an interesting paragraph about my fair city in a blog written by a guy from another part of the state:

For those who've never been there, Danville IS the definition of a dead city. I'm sure it may have been a bustling metropolis in its day, but there's nothing there anymore except abandoned factories and burned-out warehouses. Oh, and a mall that's 4x the size of the one in Harrisonburg. Why does an abandoned city have a Giant Mall Of Doom? I have no clue, but I was quite thankful for it.

OK, there's not that many burned out warehouses here, but we do have our fair share of abandoned factories and textile mills.

My all time favorite thing about Danville I've found in a blog was something along the lines of "If Virginia needed an enema, then there's no better place to insert it than Danville." Yes, this town has a unique effect on its visitors.

Oh, and I found out there's also a dominatrix living here.

Der Utensils

A guy I have odd conversations with at work told me today that some relative or family friend had gotten Hitler's silverware in WWII. Apparently they took der Fuehrer's challet in some battle or other.

Hitler's silverware? The mind reels.

I can clearly see this family preparing for a fancy dinner:

"Get the good silverware out."

"The good silverware? Are you crazy? No, this is a very special occasion! Get the Hitler silverware out."

But just how important an occasion would it have to be to use the Hitler silverware?

File under, "icky"

Earlier today I was poking around Ebay because, let's face it, I have no life, when I stumbled across some British guy selling "amateur" photos of his girlfriend. I don't know what's more appalling, the fact that he's selling said photos on Ebay or that he's selling them for such a pitifully low price. You'd think he'd think more of his "girlfriend" than to sell five sets of 85 pictures each for a lousy $3.18. It's hard work crawling around on the floor with your ass stuck up in the air, so I can't imagine what kind of cut she's getting of the meager proceeds.

Naturally, I had to see what else this guy was selling. Big surprise! What I found was a whole page of the same kind of stuff. Lots of photo sets of his "girlfriends", but some sets were of his ex-girlfriends, and more confusingly, his wife. So he has a wife, around twenty girlfriends, and two or three ex-girlfriends. Even I don't have a fantasy life this rich, but I guarantee you if I tried to make money off it I'd have a higher asking price.

Jebus

I was just interrupted by two middle aged women (one had bright orange hair) who showed up at the front door that wanted to discuss bible verses. There was also something about the bird flu. Or something, I don't know. Anyway, I don't really understand these people who go around doing this sort of thing. I especially don't understand the ones who do it on Sunday mornings when the people who would want to listen to this stuff are already in church.

Clothes make the man

How many times have men heard women complain about how badly men dress? Women wonder why men wear the same thing over and over again, or they wonder why men are in such bland fashion ruts. Well, I've figured it out. Yesterday I went to a big chain clothing store that shall remain nameless to buy a couple pairs of jeans. I'd gotten a new pair of said jeans for Christmas that came from this same store and I wanted to get a couple more pairs. I figured I'd simply be able to walk into this store, find the jeans, get my size, pay for them, and then leave. Naturally, I was living in a sad fantasy world of my own making.

When I walked in, all I saw were women's clothes. The men's section must be in the back or upstairs, I thought. So I walked around. And around. Then I went upstairs. Somehow I found myself in the middle of a huge lingerie section. Now as much as I appreciate lingerie, I have little to no interest being caught in public ogling bras and panties. It reminded me of that scene in an episode of Father Ted where Ted, Dougal, and several other priests are hopelessly lost in the middle of Ireland's largest lingerie section, except I wasn't a priest, and the experience at the time was about as amusing as getting repeatedly kicked in the nuts.

After a bit of walking, I found myself in a huge children's section. I don't mean it was a section for huge children, I mean the section itself was huge. Anyway, I had about as much interest in being caught in the children's underwear section as I did the women's underwear section.

I walked around and around, upstairs and down, but found no men's clothing. Perhaps they have a few shirts and pairs of jeans piled in a broom closet somewhere, but I saw nothing, nor did anyone offer to help me.

So, women of America (and possibly the world), when complaining about the frayed plaid shirts and bland pants men wear, I ask that you take into consideration the fact that men can't find clothes because there aren't any. It's a miracle we have any clothes at all and aren't walking around naked or wearing burlap bags.

So I'm giving up on buying clothes and will be wearing what clothes I have until they fall apart. After that, who knows.

Crappy New Year!

The novelty of staying up past midnight to ring in the new year has long since worn off with me. Last night I went to bed at 10:30 or so and slept right through the festivities. Of course there were no festivities at my place; I was referring to TV festivities. The people on TV are the ones always having a great time it seems, except the people on the news; bad things are always happening to them.

Pointless trivia: I've never been to a New Year's party. The closest I ever came was the time I was working second shift and we were punching out to go home at midnight one New Year's Eve. Yep, I live an excitement-filled life.

I seem to recall one New Year's Eve years ago spent watching porn with the sound turned off and my police scanner on in the background so I could hear the locals getting arrested for partying too much. Such wholesome fun I have.

Popups

I was informed several days ago that my blog now had popups. That was news to me; I hadn't seen any damn popups. Anyway, after some digging around and fiddling with Firefox settings, I actually did manage to see one of these popups. So they did exist, buy why, and how? Had to be one of the free services offered to websites that I took advantage of, like those site stats thingies. One of them has popups on their website now, so I deleted that one. Bastards! But I don't know if that helped or not.

I need a nap.

Mr. Happypants answers your questions!

One Mr. Xoloitzquintle (not his real name) has selected me (or someone else named Scott) to answer the questions below. Oh, these accursed memes!

Seven things I plan to do before I kick the can:
1. Go to North Korea.
2. Find humans I can stand to be around and who can stand to be around me.
3. Pet an alligator.
4. Travel to the other side of the North American continent
5. Ride in a airliner. (No, I've never done it.)
6. Write a damn novel.
7. Build a death-ray and conquor the Earth.


Seven things I can do:
1. Sleep
2. Eat
3. Complain
4. Loaf
5. Alienate
6. Scratch
7. Annoy cats

Seven things I can't do:
1. Act like a normal human being.
2. Play the guitar (at least competantly).
3. Eat anything without getting gas. (Yes, ladies, I'm single.)
4. Build a robot.
5. Send morse code.
6. Write music.
7. Levitate.

Seven things that attract me to another person:
1. A sense of humor.
2. Not being a moron.
3. Patience.
4. A sense of direction.
5. Full set of teeth.
6. Not smelly.
7. Knowing that green means go when you're at a stoplight.

Seven things I say most often:
1. I wish I was dead.
2. Sweet mother of god!
3. Uhh...
4. I don't know.
5. Get me out of here.
6. Please kill me.
7. Green means go! Green means go!

I'm supposed to send this damnable thing to seven other unfortunates, but all the other bloggers I read have already been tagged. So instead, I'll post another picture of my sister's frickin' cat. Here he is trying to look adorable:

Leftovers

My sister's started a real blog. Odd for someone who for years has professed to hate blogs. She describes it as, "Vintage needlework mocked mercilessly. Also a place to inflict my own vintage needlework projects on the unsuspecting public."

She should start a blog about her mentally disturbed cat:

I spy

Today at work I found yet another reason to hate my job. The powers that be decided that instead of giving raises they'd install surveilance cameras on the ceiling. Why they felt the need to put these cameras up, I'll never know. Do they want to spy on us to see if we're actually working or do they want to see if we're stealing the shitty merchandise? Anyway, the boss was in the office I work in today and was going on and on about one of the cameras and how well it worked. The camera is really far away from the office, and while playing around with it, he discovered he could zoom in and see through the window of the office, getting so close he could look over one of my shoulders and see clearly what program I was using on my computer. That's exactly what a paranoid freak like me needs to hear. People like me go around wishing and hoping no one's looking at us anyway, so we don't need confirmation that there's hidden cameras hundreds of feet away spying on us through the goddamn windows. I'll never be able to relax at work ever again.

Stinky

If you're curious (and, god, I hope you're not), here's the shaving forum thread I started about my stinky shaving brush. It's interesting because it clearly illustrates the depths of madness into which we shaving guys have descended.

Pura Setola Sterilizzata

Since I haven't been posting much here lately, my new stupid obsession has gone undocumented. I've been buying old razors on Ebay and actually shaving with them. I've been getting old double-edged Gillettes from the 40's-60's mainly. Shaving is fun now for some reason. I read online shaving forums. I even read a shaving blog. Yes, it's gotten that bad.

I've also been using a shaving brush like guys do in old movies. These things are typically made of either badger hair or boar hair. Since I'm a cheap bastard, I use a boar hair brush. The one I have came from a drugstore and sheds a bit, so I decided to go upmarket a little and get an Italian one that cost more than twice what the old one did. It came in the mail Monday. Everything was fine until the brush got wet, then I noticed an aroma. How can I describe it? Let's see... How about pig shit? The box said it had been sterilized, but I saw nothing about it being deoderized.

I'd heard of these stinky brushes before, so I knew it was something that would go away over time. How bad could it be? Well, it was pretty bad. Everytime the brush was near my face it seemed to smell worse. And what was really bad was that the shaving soap on my face seemed to have made some sort of molecular bond with the porcine fecal aroma and now it too stank to high heaven.

I finished my shave and rinsed my face, but I could still smell it. I had the reek on my hands and my face. I smelled like Italian pig shit. (Yes, ladies, I'm single.) It wasn't an overpowering stench, but it was there. It was noticeable by me, so I'm pretty sure it would've been noticed by another normally functioning human being. Thankfully there weren't any of those around, so I got to stink in peace.

What to do? I just rinsed more and slatered on this vile, scented aftershave moisturizer that has such a strong scent it makes my eyes water. So now I just smelled like those guys that leave a trail of cologne when they walk by.

The smell on my hands died down after awhile, but the brush just stank on and on. When I'd walk into the bathroom I could smell it. I tried shampoo on it. Twice. I even tried conditioner, but it still stank a bit. Then I remembered a homemade concoction to use on dogs that have been sprayed by a skunk. It contained 3% hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and a little liquid dishwashing detergent. Oddly, that did the trick and now my brush stinks no more. So I can go back to my weirdly anachronistic grooming hobby.

Protection

This morning I was in one of those stores where everything's a dollar or less. I love these stores not just for the bargains but for the oddball products I find in them. They seem to be stocked with whatever random crap the owners can find dirt cheap.

Today I wandered around this particular store (I've been in there three times and still haven't bought anything yet because the selection of items is so crappy) looking for something, anything to buy. I think I keep coming back simply because this particular store is so awful that I feel guilty about not buying anything.

As I walked past the counter, I saw various items hanging up on the wall behind the cashier. I guessed these were the items most likely to be stolen, but since everything was a buck or less it doesn't really seem to make any sense to put them on the wall behind the counter where you have to ask the cashier to get them for you.

I looked over what was hanging there. Several small boxes caught my eye. They were brightly colored and had pictures of women on them: condoms! Dollar condoms. Good Lord. What kind of a cheap dumbass buys condoms at a dollar store? I don't know about you, but when it comes to preventing the conception of another human being, I think I'd want to spend a bit more than a dollar.

Seafood

Those of you who have read this blog for awhile know that I'm not one given to outbursts of hyperbole, but I think it's safe to say that the above image is the greatest picture in the history of photography.

I have no idea of where this photo was taken or under what circumstances. It turned up without explanation in a thread on Monkeyfilter a month or two back. Or at least I think it was Monkeyfilter. It may have been Metafilter. I searched online for further information, but all I could find was an appearance on a German messageboard. Anyway, whatever's going on, I find it a singularly inspiring image.

I find myself looking at this picture quite often and I'm not ashamed to admit that it brings me great joy. Dammit, I like living in a world where a pelican thinks that it can eat a cat.

Oh, and three years ago yesterday this blog was born. Or should say bored?

What tedium

Well, I guess now is as good a time as any for this month's post.

So, what's been going on in my life? Nothing. I'm now on first shift, but I still don't like my job. Oh, and I now make less money, but do more work. (Third shift workers get a small bonus for working such crappy hours, plus they get to goof off quite a bit because no one else's there.)

Last month for some stupid reason I became obsessed with watches, particularly Rolexes. Fake Rolexes to be exact. I looked all over the damn internet to find something cheap enough to waste money on. Finally, I found what I was looking for and it only cost $50. Friday it was waiting for me when I got home from work: a beautiful, and totally fake, blue dial Rolex Submariner. The next day I wore it shopping. Since it's in the seventies right now I didn't have to wear a jacket and could even get away with wearing a short sleeve shirt. So I was flashing my Rolex all over town. Naturally no one paid a damn bit of attention to it. Imagine how annoyed I'd be if I'd spent several thousand on it.

New

Last night I had a dream where I suddenly decided to post something new in my blog. And it was an amazing post, too. Naturally, I remember none of it.

Blogging bleh, pt. II

This is just a short post to let anyone still checking this blog that I'm still alive and doing reasonably well. I haven't felt like blogging much anymore. After almost three years, the whole idea of blogging on a regular, or even a semi-regular basis, just doesn't interest me as much as it used to. [Useless side note: I went through my archives and copied and pasted everything into a Word document; it ended up being 371 pages long. Yikes.]

So what have I been doing? I've been working my crappy job. Yesterday while finally getting a much, much needed haircut, I overheard a woman talking about someone they knew who worked for the toy company that's right beside the place I work. This person makes almost two dollars an hour more than I do putting eyes in doll heads. Kill me now.

What else have I been doing? Reading books. Yes, books. You know, those paper things with words in them. I haven't been reading many blogs or spending loads of time online reading random stuff. I've posted a couple of things about my recent reading at Lists of Books, the group blog I joined a month or so back.

This blog will be three years old next month. That's a long time for a blog, but since I've spent much of this year on periodic hiatus, I don't really think the three-year mark even counts. I don't even know if I'm going to even keep a blog much longer.

Blogging bleh

Blogging isn't very much fun right now. I have little or no enthusiasm for writing anything or waiting for Blogger's interface to load on my slow dial-up connection.

Ah, paranoia

Working third shift and not getting enough sleep can start messing with your mind.

Last night I made the long trek to the bathroom at the 1:15 AM break. I noticed the door on the handicap stall was closed and latched. There were a few second shift straglers in that area of the warehouse who were working overtime, so I figured it was one of them.

At the 3:00 AM break I made the long bathroom trek once again. The door on the handicap stall was shut again. Or perhaps still shut. Could someone have been in there for that long, or is the door simply shut? I listened carefully and heard a brief creaking sound. Usually if someone else's is in the bathroom there's no doubt in my mind, but I wasn't sure if there was anyone in there or not.

I ended up leaving the bathroom and making the very long walk back up to the front of the warehouse where there's another set of bathrooms. While I was walking up to the front I wondered if there was someone actually in the stall, and if there was, who it was and why they were in there. On third shift past 2:00 AM there's only two men other than me in the building, and one of them is a security guard. If someone was in there I doubted it was either of the other two guys that are on third shift. Maybe someone from second shift was sleeping in there for some reason. Or maybe they were hiding. Should I tell the guard? If I told and whoever was in there got in trouble then I could be at risk of retaliation if the person got in trouble for hiding in the stall instead of working. But what if there was someone in there with a gun or a chainsaw or something?

After I left the other bathroom up front, I decided to go ahead and tell the security guard and risk looking like either a rat or a chicken. So I told what I knew to the guard. He said the other guy on this shift was outside smoking, but he got up and checked to make sure. We both then went back to the bathroom. I let the security guard check the stall because, after all, he's the security guard, not me. Naturally there was no one in the stall and I felt like an idiot, but the guard told me that I was right to tell him because someone may have passed out in there. He didn't seem annoyed at having to get up from his chair at all. But he was probably thinking, "What a little sissy girl!" I know I'm a little sissy girl, but I don't like other people to know it. Better a little sissy girl with a wide paranoid streak than the first victim in the great warehouse chainsaw massacre.

I need sleep

I haven't felt like writing anything, so I haven't. What I've really wanted to do these days is sleep, but for some reason I haven't been able to sleep that well when it's convenient. I usually go to bed around 8:15 in the morning and I try to sleep until 4:00, but lately I've only made it to 1:30 or so. I also I'm big on afternoon and evening naps, but lately I can't nap at all. So, when am I sleepy? At work, of course. Last night was torture because I was in a constant struggle to keep my eyelids open. All I had to do was close them and immediately I'd be dreaming. And, naturally, the sleepiness started right after I got to work. Prior to that I was about as wide awake as you can get.

A few nights ago the Seinfeld episode aired where George was taking naps under his desk at work. The space underneath my desk is big enough to sleep under (mainly because it's more of table than a proper desk), but the office has windows all around it and so I'm sure someone would notice me curled up under my desk. But since there's only about nine people that work third shift, I could probably put my head down on my desk and go to sleep and no one would notice. Hell, I could be in there with a knife in my back and no one would notice.

On the other side of the warehouse, the shipping office is vacant on third shift. Maybe I can go in there and sleep on the floor unnoticed. What about the loading dock? Plenty of half-filled trailers around that nobody is loading or unloading at that hour. I can climb up on some boxes and sleep like the dead for a few hours. But I'm sure I'd get caught. I'm just not one of those people that's able to get away with things.

I'm reminded of something I heard on another job years ago. A temp was working double shifts in the warehouse. This was a textile warehouse with very tall racks filled with big rolls of fabric. Apparently this temp would work a shift, then shortly after the second shift started, would climb high into the racks, and go to sleep on pile of fabric rolls. He got away with it for a while, but then one morning the boss was walking through the racks and heard snoring. Needless to say he was looking for a new job after that.

Meme-ish

Sherri went and passed a meme may way. Confound it!

Number of books on shelf?
Shelf? Try shelves. Or rather shelves and piles on the floor. But as far as numbers go, I don't know because I've never counted them. Several hundred no doubt. Maybe a thousand or more.

Last book purchased?
I recently ordered two books by Julian Meade, a forgotten author from the 30's who's from my hometown.

Book I'm reading now?
I'm trying to read two different ones:

Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon
Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

Last five books read?
Julia and the Bazooka by Anna Kavan
Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician by Alfred Jarry
This is the Zodiac Speaking by Kelleher and Van Nuys
My Life in CIA by Harry Mathews

I'll toss this meme to Xolo, Sara, and Cindy, but they're all very busy, busy people who don't have time for such nonsense and would sooner strap a jet engine to a lawn jockey than answer these questions. Or something like that. (I'm sleepy.)

Training?

So this week I have to work first shift to train on the new computer system. Needless to say I'm half out of my mind from lack of sleep. Or something. And there's been little actual training. What we've mostly been doing is keying in all the inventory stuff, which is going to take forever. What if it's not right? The inventory is already screwed up in the old system. Who's going to check the accuracy of the numbers? Don't they realize that we don't know what we're doing?

I found out that once the new system goes live that we'll probably be on first shift, but the problem is that they keep pushing back the start date for the new system going live. First it was early August, then early September, and now it's either early October or even early November. At this rate I'll be stuck on third shift well into the cold months.

Doodle

I get bored at work.

Yawn

Sorry I haven't been around, but with this third shift business, I just can't seem to get in a blogging mood. I don't have much energy for things that require any kind of physical exertion, like typing. For the past week I've tried to do a post on my employer's new tactic to enforce the company internet policy by installing software that monitors and blocks non-work related internet activity. But I could never get it together enough to write a coherent post. Mainly I just wanted to say that it sucks not having access to the web at work anymore. No more Google News for me, or Froogle, or streaming international TV from wwiTV, or blogs. And forget about actually blogging from work, which I never did, but I was bound to eventually.

Third shift is messing up my life, not that I had much of a life to begin with, but at least I could pretend I had something vaguely resembling a life. Now I'm asleep all the time. I should be asleep right now, but since it's the weekend, I find it difficult to stay up all night. The temtation to completely screw up my sleeping pattern is too great apparently, so I've been spending an awful lot of time napping. I tend to nap every few hours. I've been up since eight, so I'm overdue for another nap I guess.

Blinded by the light

I hate driving. And I especially hate driving at night. Driving in the city is bad enough, but it's worse out in the middle of nowhere where there isn't much light. Not only can I not see as well, but there's no high-beam etiquette anymore. It sucks being tailgated by some asshat with his high-beams on. And they don't even have to tailgate you for it to be annoying. I've had people behind me a quarter of a mile or more and they're stupid headlights were still blinding me when they reflected off my mirrors.

Last night I was on my way to work, miserable as usual, since I hate my job. Often I have the highway to myself, but occasionally I have to deal with other cars. As I drove, I noticed two cars far behind me. The highway is four lanes and these two cars were driving side by side (something that always irritates the hell out of me because it's so stupid). Both, naturally, had they're highbeams on. I wondered how long it would be for these idiots to reach me. It took longer than I expected, but eventually they got on my tail. I slowed down and hoped they'd pass me. They didn't. So I drove along about five or ten miles per hour less than the speed limit. I had my head leaning very far to the left so the reflected high-beams weren't blasting me in the eyes. Then, oddly, I saw blue lights flashing behind me. Cops.

I've never been pulled over for anything, ever. I've never even had a cop give me a parking ticket. I couldn't imagine what I was being pulled over for. So I rolled down my window and got out my license. The state trooper came up and asked for my license, then asked me if I'd been drinking. Apparently I'd drifted left several times, but since I was driving with my head practically on my left shoulder so I could keep from being blinding, this wasn't surprising. I told the guy that I had my head way over to the left because I had two cars behind with their highbeams on and they wouldn't pass me. I was very polite and the cop let me go.

What the hell were they trying to accomplish? I understand they're looking for drunks and speeders, but is tailgating people and half blinding them with their highbeams an effective means of crime prevention?

Slog

I don't have to work this weekend. That's good. I don't know what I'm doing at work anyway.

I can relax and read for a couple of days before I start back on my forced march through adulthood. Is it too much to ask that each day not seem ruined before it even begins?

Bleh again

I hate my job. Third shift doesn't agree with me at all. It sucks sleeping all day and being groggy at 4:30PM.

And I can't even do much of anything on my job. Last night (this morning, whatever) after awhile I just gave up, got my book out, and started to read. (Note to self: when it's the middle of the night and you're in a big warehouse with only eight or nine people in it, reading a book about the Zodiac killer probably isn't that bright an idea--especially if you're a big wuss like me.)

MIT Weblog Survey

Perils of typography

On TV yesterday I just happened to catch a commercial for an annual event called RiverFlick being held in a city 65 or so miles north of here. They're setting up a big projection screen near the local river and will be showing movies on it, sort of like a drive-in theater without the cars. (Is anyone reading this old enough to remember drive-in theaters? Or am I just dating myself? But then again, I have to date myself since no one else will.) Anyway, the logo for this family friendly event, due to an unfortunate quasi-illusion when an uppercase L is beside an uppercase I, makes this affair look, at first glance (if you have a filthy mind), like it's some kind of sex festival.

I imagined someone glancing at the TV and being horrified that there was something called RiverFuck being advertised. And then I thought, why doesn't some brave city actually put on an open sex festival? They could charge admission and make a fortune for the city coffers. Ah, but this is the Bible Belt and people would be howling with outrage that it's immoral for a bunch of naked people to be humping like mandrils along the pristine banks of their river. But if I were mayor (and I never will be) I'd just say, "You conservatives are always pissing and moaning about taxes. Well, I'll lower your taxes, but only if we can hold RiverFuck!" Of course, I'd be probably be assassinated or something, but those are the risks of being ahead of your time.

Still tired

What day is it?

It strikes me as not only cruel and unusual, but downright bizarre that I would leave work and go back to work for the next day on the same day. I leave at 7:30AM and come back at 11:00PM. That's the same day. Shouldn't the laws of space and time have to be bent for something of that magnitude to occur? No?

I'm tired. Tired. But at least I summoned up enough energy to go outside and get two large toads and two frogs (one average the other tiny) from their prison and possible tomb, the basement window above my computer. That thing is nothing but a toad trap. It starts raining and frogs and toads start their, in my eyes, pointless treks across the wet terrain. Inevitably, they land in my sunken basement window. They try to escape by climbing the screen and sometimes, if they're big enough, by simply trying to smash through the window. I can't even tell you how many toads and frogs I got out of there last summer. Well, I don't have the energy or time this summer, so now a screen has been installed over the top so any hoppers can just keep on hopping to wherever the hell they think they're going.

It's Wednesday, right?

Last night (this morning...whatever), in the warehouse I saw what I thought looked like a cat. Is that a real cat, I thought. Yes, it was. It was balanced on the edge of a big plastic trash can looking for food scraps discarded by the previous shift. I walked closer and the cat meowed at me. Then it jumped down and got under something, but didn't run away. I thought the cat was trapped in the warehouse, so I tried to coax it to me. The cat wasn't having any of that nonsense and just sat there and looked at me. I went back to the office to tell the other two people. I said, "There's a cat in the warehouse." They merely asked which one. Apparently there's several and they more or less live in the warehouse. I guess they sneak in through the gaps at the loading dock and only roam around at night when there's only a few people here.

I'm still sleepy. It's Wednesday, right?

Sleepy

The job may not be so bad, but staying up all night is a challenge. I kept closing my eyes and immediately falling into brief episodes of REM sleep. And the office is so cold you could store meat in there.

There's only about 8 or 9 people even in the building on third shift. Walking around a huge, deserted warehouse is kind of strange and slightly creepy.

Why am I awake right now? I don't know. I should go back to bed.

Bleh

Today was supposed to my day off, but it's more or less been ruined by the fact that I have to start my new third shift job at eleven tonight. I've just been moping around the house all day dreading it. I'm not even fully prepared for this job. Hell, I'm probably not even partially prepared for this job. I don't know anyone on third shift either. And when I'm sitting down at my desk (my first desk job!) to start work, it'll already be past my bedtime, so things will get really interesting by 1:00AM when I'm so out of it I'm hallucinating. And I'll still have six and a half hours to go.

Beginning or end?

Tomorrow night my daylight existance more or less comes to an end. I start third shift at 11:00PM. Third shift is miserable, but I'm stuck with it for the time being. Who knows if I'll even be able to stay up all night. And I'll have a fifteen mile drive back home at 7:30AM. Groan.

Hands off

I went to local Mexican restaurant with Cindy last night. The food was great and we had a very enjoyable time, but I was a little too fascinated by the botanical landscaping surrounding the building. One spiny pad had been knocked off a cactus and I, like the colossal dumbass that I am, decided to pick it up and jokingly offer it to Cindy. Naturally, she didn't want it and so I tossed it back onto the sidewalk from where I'd picked it up. Then I realized I had a bunch of tiny, hair-thin cactus needles stuck in some of my fingers. I managed to pull them all out except one I just couldn't get. So, for the rest of the evening, I periodically struggled to pull this irritating, practically microscopic cactus needle out of my left middle finger. Cindy couldn't even get it out with tweezers. It's still in there. The lesson? Don't touch the cactus!

No staples

This morning I got the staples taken out of my head. For some reason, I was under the impression that they'd inject a little painkiller into my scalp before they pried the little bastards out. Nope. Nothing. The nurse just took them out with some kind of metal tool (which looked nothing like an office staple remover, by the way). I should've kept a staple to take a picture of, but I didn't. Anyway, they're out, but I still have a nasty looking scar under my hair.

I win!

Is there a contest to see how long you can use the same printer cartridge? If there is, I think I may have won. I bought my printer in late May/early June of 2003 and it came with a tri-color cartridge. I'm still using that same cartridge. I've put two black cartridges in it, but I'm still using the same color one. Needless to say, I don't print that much stuff, but I do use the printer.

Dilemma

I have a problem. No, not that one. It's another, more pointless problem. Anyway, my problem is that I want a laptop. Badly. Really badly. Irrationally. I don't need one, I have two computers set up that I use: my main Windows XP box and my Linux box. They're in separate rooms, but still, I want portability. I want to sit on the couch and look at stuff online. And I want to lay in bed and look at stuff online.

Bah. I have no business buying a laptop right now, even if I could afford one. My car's on its last legs and I should be saving my money. But I still want a laptop. Badly. Irrationally.

Piles

Sherri wants me to list my enormous book collection online for all the world to see. I'd love to have it cataloged, but doing it would be such a herculean task that I don't think I could manage it. So, instead of a nice alphabetical list, I'll give you photos of the literary squalor: first there's this pile, then this pile, it's near this pile, which is also near this pile, I almost forgot this pile, then I almost forgot this pile, which is kinda near this pile (but not really), actually it's closer to this pile, and then there's this pile (which I think is mainly books on their way to Goodwill). And that's not quite all of them! Yes, I'm a sick, sick man in desperate need of help.

Four questions

Hey, lookit me, I'm doing another meme-type thang. I first saw this one at Sherri's last Thursday, but I was getting over my head injury and had no time for memes. Today Brendan had a go at it. So here's my contribution:

1. Number of books I own
Damn if I know. A bunch. A whole bunch. Hundreds. Maybe a thousand or more. I never counted them.

2. The last book I bought
Last week I got Harry Mathews' brand spanking new, My Life in CIA.

3. The last book I read
I've been catching up on Paul Auster, so I've read his last three novels: Book of Illusions, Oracle Night, and Timbuktu. Right now I'm rereading his excellent Mr. Vertigo.

You can't go wrong with Paul Auster; even his less successful novels (Book of Illusions and Leviathan come to mind) are worth reading.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me
James Joyce's Ulysses changed the way I view books and the written word. No other book has had such an impact on me. I've only ever read it once, but it took a long time and it opened up a new, strange, and exciting world to me. I had no idea you were allowed to write a book like this. Suddenly I realized that I could write anyway I wanted and didn't have to be hemmed in by the dreary stuff the teachers were always shoving at us.

Junky by William S. Burroughs is basically just a straighforward account of a man's decent into heroin addiction in the 1940's. It shouldn't be great, but it is. I can't even remember how many times I've reread this book. And I can't imagine a time in my life when I wouldn't think of rereading it.

Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs by Ted Morgan is probably my favorite biography. I used to reread this book almost constantly in my early 20's. If I was bored, I'd just pull it down from the shelf, open it at random, and start reading. I remember seeing the freshly published volume in a bookstore when I had no money at all. Not being able to buy it was painful. So I started scheming for ways to scrape up some money. It was the end of the school semester, so I sold a pile of my college textbooks and headed off to buy it. I think I failed all of my exams, but I couldn't have cared less, I was in heaven. (I later became a much better student, by the way.)

Endgame by Samuel Beckett nearly did to me for plays what Ulysses did to me for novels. I even started writing plays after I read Endgame, even though up to that point in my life (I think I was seventeen) I'd had no interest in theatre at all.

Immeasurable Distances by Harry Mathews is another of those books that I read and reread until I practically wore it out. It's an essay collection by the only American member of the Oulipo. I can't really describe the contents other than to say they were on various writers (some of whome I'd never heard of), the strange methods of the Oulipo, and other seemingly mundane subjects. This book has taught me more than any other I can think of. (It's long out of print and the publisher, Lapis Press, doesn't even exist anymore. A new volume of his essays, The Case of the Persevering Maltese, contains most of Immeasurable Distances, along with some newer pieces, but strangely, doesn't excite me the way the previous volume still does.

Working?

I finally started training at work on the computer system I'm going to be using. Well, if you can call it training. I did learn some things, but I spent a lot of time sitting there while the guy who was supposed to be training me talked to other people who came into the room, talked on his cellphone, and was on the company phone with Dell's customer service center (which is in India) trying to get them to look into a fraudulent charge on his account. India had him on hold and he was switched to speaker phone, so I got to hear somewhat distorted classical music that sounded like it was coming from a distant shortwave radio station. Periodically the music would be interrupted by a loud sound I can only describe as an electronic fart. He also took an hour for lunch while I only get a half hour. So what did I do for the second half hour? I sat there and read the Paul Auster novel I'd brought with me.

As bad as all of this was, I'd rather do this sort of nonsense than walk around in the sweltering warehouse getting filthy from handling dust-covered boxes.

Digital detritus

Yesterday in a thrift store, I saw a digital camera for sale in its orginal box. I don't remember what model it was, just that it looked like something that was maybe from the late 90's. They wanted $100 for it.

Seeing a once expensive item in a thrift store isn't that unusual, but it just seems odd to me that someone would just donate a digital camera that probably cost hundreds of dollars to a thrift store. I'm sure they'll be more common in the future, along with Palm devices, camera phones, mp3 players, etc.

And this was the same thrift store I saw the artificial leg and funeral wreath in years ago.

I don't get it

Remember BlogShares? About a year and half or two years ago it suddenly got really popular and everyone (except me) was talking about it. Suddenly there was some kind of controversy (I forget what), a lot of bloggers got mad, and then you didn't really hear about it anymore. Tell you the truth, I forgot it even existed. But last night I stumbled across the BlogShares page for this blog. It doesn't really make any sense to me and I still don't see the point to any of it. Why would anyone want to spend time buying and trading fake shares of blogs? And according to the page, someone's even bought a few shares of Volume 22. I don't get it. Why?

Invasion of the stinky people

A few hours ago I was in a discount department store and got a whiff of powerful body odor. There was an elderly couple moving by me and it was coming from one (or possibly both) of them. I got as far away from them as I could without actually leaving the store. They headed to the checkout line. Since I didn't want to get caught behind them breathing in their poisonous reek, I had to pretend that I was browsing.

The checkout line was, for some unknown reason, moving very slowly. So I got to stand around cradling a pair two litre bottles of cheap root beer for longer than I thought was humanly possible. Eventually they left and got to pay for my stuff without having to get another whiff of them.

After I put my root beer in my car, I headed to another nearby store. (Oddly enough, this store is also a discount department store. What can I say? I'm cheap.) I headed back to the cereal aisle and was met by both a wall of funk and the same damn elderly couple. I moved quickly away. Since I had to get my box of Cheerios, I was going to have to go back to the cereal aisle. So I went back. The elderly couple had moved on by then, but the smell was still there. It was as if it were a living entity. Or not. I forget.

The moral of this story? Take a damn shower!

Zapped

My satellite dish receiver got zapped by a power surge during a thunder storm a few days ago, so that means no Degrassi marathon for me this weekend.

Why do I even bother getting out of bed?

Air show

There's an air show tomorrow that I was looking forward to, but I've decided not to go. I don't really feel like standing in the hot sun sweating like a pig while I have a bunch of staples in my head.

I went to the air show last year and took a bunch of pictures. I think I shot three or four rolls of film. And I still haven't gotten it developed. It's still sitting on my desk collecting dust.

Good news, finally

I found today that I don't have to work tomorrow. And I also found out that I don't have to start third shift next week. So I can finally get a little rest.

Where's the exit?

I found out I have to work Saturday. Naturally, I really had other plans. Anything will do. The air show, shopping, haircut, etc. I'm open. I think I'd rather scrub the mildew off my shower than go to work. And we have to work from 6:00 AM until 2:30 PM, which means that I have to get up at 4:30 AM. The usual time is 7:30 AM until 4:00 PM, which is still interminable, but at least it's normal.

Next week I may start on third shift. I'm not looking forward to this either.

My stapled head isn't hurting that much, but it's annoying having something fragile on me I have to constantly watch out for. I keep worrying I'll tense the muscles of my scalp suddenly and the staples will start popping out. (Incidently, trying to take a picture of the staples in my head is ridiculously difficult. I had to shoot close 35 pictures today just to get a couple of decent shots. Yes, I could've gotten someone else to do it, but there's no challenge in that.)

Staples

I was having a fairly miserable day at work this morning. For some reason I was more leaden and bummed out than usual, and the idea of having to slog through the whole day doing something I hated in a dirty, hot warehouse was almost unendurable. Then around eleven o'clock my day got worse.

The entire facility has conveyors going in every direction. Some ten or more feet in the air. I went to cross over from one side of a conveyor to the other and whacked my head on some big piece of metal underneath it. The next thing I knew I was on my knees. There was blood on my left hand after I pulled it away from my head. So I went to tell one of my supervisors I'd just about cracked my skull open.

Head wounds bleed a lot and mine was no different. Soon I had blood running down the side of my head. "Looks like you'll need a stitch or two," my supervisor said as she held a wad of paper towels to my head.

I ended up with not a stitch or two, but eleven staples. Yes, staples.

I also had to get a tetanus shot and take a drug test to make sure I wasn't wacky on the junk. Fun.

You'd think getting a eleven staples on your head would be good at least for getting the rest of the day off, but you'd be wrong. I had to work the last two hours. Later someone told me that if you get hurt you tell the bosses that you don't feel good and that you're going home. "They won't offer you anything," she said, "you have to take it." Ah, it's a lovely place to work.

No change of address (yet)

I've had this blog since November 2002, which is ancient in the blogging world. Ever since the beginning I've thought of moving it someplace else, probably to my own server space and using something like Movable Type or WordPress. Since last year I've tried installing and fiddling with various blogging platforms on some server space I have. I've also tried who knows how many free blogging services over the past few years and haven't really liked very many of them. And why would I move from a stable outfit Blogger to use some off brand blogging service that will disappear in the middle of the night?

Sunday I decided to try out TypePad, which I guessed would be a good compromise between doing it myself with Movable Type, WordPress, etc. and letting someone else have the headache of dealing with the database problems and other crap the way I do with Blogger.

For some reason I thought TypePad would blow me away with all of its features. And there are lots of features. For almost fifty bucks a year I thought it would be better than a free Blogger account. But from what I can tell you can't even get yer grubby mits on your own HTML unless you get the "pro" account, which costs nearly $150 a year. And the templates available are fairly dull. So you'll be stuck with a bland looking blog unless you spend more money. Feh. All the other features don't seem so cool if you're stuck with a dirt dull varient of the old default Movable Type template.

Long story short (or at least a little shorter), I'm sure TypePad's fine for most situations, but I'm just not that impressed by it and I'm canceling the account before my credit card's $50 lighter. So for a little while longer at least, I'm sticking with Blogger.

Fascinating, no? No.

Working for the weekend

I spend pretty much the whole week waiting for the weekend so I can get a day or two (depending on whether or not we have to work on Saturday) where I don't have to force myself out of bed at 6AM to face another miserable workday. And then on the weekend I don't do anything at all really except vegetate. Fortunately, I got to do something a bit more different than usual yesterday.

Cindy and I went walking down by the river where we saw geese (and few little goslings). Then we walked into the little tunnel where the road goes under the railroad tracks. (Sometimes big trucks ignore the height limit and get their rigs trapped.) Inside we examined the pitiful state of local graffiti. (Cindy has a better shot of the graffiti at her blog. [And, yes, I know I need to get a better digital camera.])

Later we ended up back at her place for pie. (I like pie.) And I must say that spending a while sitting with Cindy on her couch eating pie and watching TV was far more enjoyable than what I'd ordinarily be doing which would something lame like sitting at my computer comparing webhosting companies like a big dork.

Further embarrassment

The state of my book collection is almost as bad as the state of my CD storage options. I ran out of shelf space a while back and now the overflow ends up in strategically placed piles in the floor. But yet I still keep buying books.

My secret shame

Today's subject: the sorry state of my CD storage choices. Instead of having a spiffy CD tower or some other fancy holder that gives the user convenient access to whatever music in his/her collection, I've opted for what amounts to a junk pile.

I started with a nice wooden box I got out of a big garbage bin at a snooty rich girls school (long irrelevant story, sorry). It's perfect for CD's. The problem is I only have one of these boxes and five times the CD's that will fit into it. I do have a couple of those cheap CD holders with the drawers that I got at thrift stores over the years, but I hate them because I can't see what's in them unless I open the damn drawers. I tend to put stuff I don't play that often into these.

Anyway, back to the wooden box. Instead of procuring another wooden box of similar size, I just got a raggedy-ass cardboard box and piled in a few CD's. The collection grew and I just kept the cardboard box. It began to sag and I put a strip of duct tape around it to keep it from suddenly exploding. Later I put a piece of twine around it to further shore it up. The sagging continued. I should also add that the sagging monstrosity is fairly heavy and somewhat unstable. I have to physically pick it up and move it to get at two-thirds of the CD's in the wooden box beneath it. Eventually I added a board for the cardboard box to rest on to squeeze a little more life out of it. There's no more room in the cardboard box, but I keep buying CD's.

On top of the cardboard box I have an ancient 5 1/4 inch floppy disk box that I keep CD software in. That blocks my view of what's in at least half of the cardboard box. And I should also mention that the floppy disk box is jam-packed to the limit as well. I see no easy solution. Soon there will just be a big pile of disks there and no boxes in sight.

Hot

It's so hot. So damn hot I can't concentrate. Actually, it's the humidity that's making it so maddeningly miserable here of late. I should be used to high heat and humidity by now after living my whole life in the south, but I'm not. And this year we didn't even get to properly ease into the miserable heat and humidity. It was cooler than normal last week and much of the time prior to that. Then suddenly, whoosh, jungle-like heat and humidity. It's almost as if Mother Nature was sitting around watching TV when she suddenly glanced up at a calendar and said, "Oh, hell! It's June already!" Then she jumps up and starts screwing with the weather controls to quickly get things back to normal. Meanwhile, on Earth, we get launched from April straight into July.

Cactus

My sister sent me this stupid photo yesterday. (Not quite safe for work.)

Bring out your dead

At my crummy job I have to deal with pallets all day long. If you don't know, and you probably don't, pallets are typically 48 inch by 48 inch square wooden platforms that are used for shipping things. If you work in a place like I do (and for your sake I hope you don't), you get to see many, many pallets up close every workday.

I've always been fascinated by the origins of the various pallets I come into contact with. (I need something to pass the time. It's sort of like stamp collecting or train-spotting, I suppose.) Many have the names of various companies on their sides. I see all kinds of things: Chiquita Guatemala, Return to Eastman Kodak, U.S. Mail, stuff in Chinese, and once I saw one made of Russian wood.

Today I saw perhaps the Holy Grail of pallets. Or maybe just the oddest pallet slogan I've ever come across: Treated for Plague. Yes, plague. As in bubonic. I guess having it treated for plague is better than getting pallets that are contaminated with plague. That would suck. In all my years of doing crappy, low-paying work in warehouses where I dealt with pallets, not once did it ever enter my mind that I could come into contact with plague.

And before some sad sack leaves a comment saying something like, "There's plague in New Mexico and it's a serious health hazard!" I know there's plague in some Western U.S. areas. This pallet probably came from someplace where plague's more widespread. Possibly India.

I wish they'd let me have a digital camera at work. Seeing interesting stuff I can't take a picture of is really annoying. It's kind of like shaking bigfoot's hand and not having any proof. Well, not really, but you know what I mean.

Found

This quasi-abstract image is a blown up scan of a skid mark on an envelope. I guess the mark was made by a rubber roller in some kind of mail-sorting contraption. The smudge looks a little like the African continent and the bit at the top looks kind of like the Sphinx.

That's all I have today. Sorry.

Different than usual

Last night Cindy and I went to dinner and a movie. Dinner was fine (great hamburgers), except for that one horrifying moment where I came within a hair of knocking my Coke over into her lap. I'm still vaguely freaked out by just how close it was, but the gods of dining (for once) smiled upon me and let the glass stand upright after I accidently hit while flailing my hands like a spazz. Note to self: stop gesticulating so damn much.

The movie, the remake of the Amityville Horror, pretty much sucked. Thankfully we were in the cheapo theater that only charges $3.50 a ticket. I'd seen the original movie a long time ago, but I didn't remember anything much about it. I think spent much of the movie wondering why they chose the goofy guy from Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place to play a man being driven murderously insane by the evil house. I thought Cindy had gone to sleep at one point (she denied it) and wondered if I catch a nap myself since I hadn't had one in a few days. I decided against attempting a nap because god only knew what would happen while I was asleep. I'd hate to wake up on the floor with old popcorn stuck to my face.

I hadn't been in a movie theater since 2000 and had vowed never to go to one again. Ever-shrinking screens, people talking, and big guys trying to sit on me had soured me on the whole movie-going experience. Thankfully no big galoots tried to sit on me last night, which was a nice change of pace. There wasn't even that much talking. I did notice a big smeared stain on the screen that was kind of annoying, and the theater itself was, I swear, only slightly larger than my living room. (In the very near future people going to the movies will be in tiny rooms with a TV set.) And why are movies so damn loud?

All in all it was a nice evening despite the crummy movie. I really should get out more.

---------------

I dug up some interesting Amityville links because I wanted to find out some more about the case:

The Real Amityville Horror: The Tragic Murder of the Ronald DeFeo Family

Amityville: Horror or Hoax?

The Amityville Horror Website: Hosted by George Lutz

The Amityville Horror Truth Website

Beetle Bailey

Yesterday while looking for something in a big box of junk, I ran across the 70's vintage, unopened Beetle Bailey rubber band gun that my sister found at a flea market several years ago. I don't know what I find odder about this thing, the inappropriate suggestiveness of using it to shoot a woman in the ass, or the fact that Beetle's friend, Killer, has inexplicably been transformed from Caucasian to African American. And if you want another picture of Killer to confirm that he's actually a white guy, here's a scan from yesterday's comics section. (He's third from the left.)

Update 1/20/07: I've gotten an ass-load of traffic over the past two days because this post was mentioned in the comments over at The Comics Curmudgeon.

Sorry I'm linking to the images rather than posting them, that's just the way I used to do things here. My reasoning back then was that I hated waiting forever for image heavy blogs to finish loading on my hillbilly two cans and a string dial-up connection. Actually, I still hate waiting for image heavy blogs to finish loading, but I digress. And no I'm not going to go back and post the images for everyone's convenience. Really, it's all I can do these days to even drag myself out of bed each morning to face yet another deadening day at work as my life lurches ever forward to its inevitable pointless climax. It's not going to kill you to click a link.

Appalling

This is the most appalling animated .gif I think I've ever seen. (And of course it's not quite safe for work.) Someone was using it as their Live Journal avatar and I ran across it by accident yesterday.

Bees

This photo was on the front page of the newspaper last week.

(I should get a photoblog. Oh, I remember, I have one, but I abandonded it. Never mind.)

Contortionists

Yesterday, at a thrift store, I bought a used book on target shooting. (Don't ask.) It's an old British book from the early 70's. As I flipped through it, I saw several strange-looking photos. At first I thought they were battlefield photos of dead WWI solders. The pictures were of men lying on their backs or sides, contorted in odd positions with rifles. One man had a strap around his head to hold it up. After I read the photo descriptions I saw that these were some kind of competition shooting positions. I don't know much about competition shooting (or shooting in general), but these weird positions don't look like they would help you shoot more accurately. Maybe they're not intended to help them shoot more accurately. Prehaps the positions are to make it more difficult. Maybe they should take this line of thought farther. Why not have them stand on their heads, wear blindfolds, or brace the stock against their forehead while a trained parrot presses the trigger?

Again with the porno-gourd

I took a new photo of the porno-gourd. Now, appropriately enough, it's surrounded by honey-suckle.

At home he's a tourist

Yesterday morning I finally met Cindy. I've known her in cyberspace for a year and a half probably, but even though we live in the same small city, we've never met in meatspace. (That was mainly my fault since I'm a hermit, misanthrope, and all around stick-in-the-mud.)

We hit a couple of yard sales. (I'd never been to one, believe it or not.) And she pointed out three or four Lustron homes in the area. (I'd never seen one before; they're fascinating.)

You'd think I knew my own home town, but after a few turns I was completely lost. I don't know if I could've easily found my way out of there by myself. It was a good thing she was driving.

Meat

Finally, Photo References of Meat!

Why

I don't qet MySpace. How is it different from Blogger? Why should I join? Why, I ask, why?!

Boring

I was supposed to be blogging more these days, but I fell back into my old non-blogging habits. Sorry. But since I didn't have much if anything to write about, it was no real loss. Even when I deliberately did something I hoped would end up making a good blog post, it ended up being a fairly dull episode not worth writing about.

Example: going to my town's newest dollar store and buying a little bottle ginseng royal jelly. I'd hoped this strange Chinese substance would be really awful or make me sick or something, but it just tasted slightly odd and there were no noticable effects. (Someone told me it tasted like dirt; it didn't.) All very boring.

Yum

This morning I was in bed dreaming of eating something like roast with gravy on it. I bit into a piece on the end of my fork and the taste was odd enough to wake me up. It seems I had part of my bed quilt in my mouth. Luckily, I didn't swallow.

Progress?

I hate phones, always have. I don't have a good telephone voice. When I get too nervous I stammer a bit or talk really fast. At other times I'm weirdly silent making the other person on the line say, "Scott, are you there?" I have the personality of a cinder block and the social skills of an opossum. Anyway, earlier in the week I finally got my very first cellphone.

When I went back to school a few years ago I was oddly surprised that most everyone seemed to have cellphones. Most of the people where I work seem to have them. I dreaded the day when I'd have to own one of these damn things because that would make me reachable at virtually any time. I don't want to be reachable at virtually any time, I'm a misanthropic hermit!

I got the cheapest phone I could get. And, much to my surprise, I actually like the thing--despite the fact that I haven't gotten it to work yet.

Why'd I get it? My car's been breaking down a lot over the past year. At least three times in the past five months I've had to walk long distances. A few Sundays ago I walked about four miles home. (I found a perfectly good goldfish bowl in a ditch on the way.) And I have a thirty mile round trip each day because of my job. If my car breaks down out there in the middle of nowhere, I'm screwed pretty much. So I got a phone.

Now that I've joined the rest of society in the 21st century with my spiffy new phone, maybe I should make an effort to be sociable. I can actually call people and they can call me.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if this is all such a good idea.

Sick

You'd think the human body would be able to ward off the common cold by now, you know, what with it being so common and all. Well, it can't. I've caved into peer pressure and got me one of them new fangled warm weather colds.

I hate being sick. I did get to go home really early from work today, but I can't enjoy anything when my ears are stopped up, I have a headache, my nose is running, and my throat is dry and sore.

I took three naps today, but I dread trying to sleep tonight. Last night I woke up periodically trying to swallow or breath clearly. At one point, I just got up and ended up sitting on the floor beside my bed reading a book on winemaking. And I don't even drink. Why do I even own this book? And why was on the floor? I have chairs.

Why blog?

I tend to stay far, far away from the various memes that are bouncing around other blogs. I never seriously did the Friday Five thing (or whatever it was called), nor have I traded interviews with another blogger. Partly it's because I have some pathetic notion that paying attention to said blog memes isn't that original, but mainly it's out of pure laziness.

Anyway, Sherri has posted an interesting list of questions about blogging, so I thought I'd answer them.

1) Why do you keep your weblog/blog/online writing thingie: for fun, for fame, for money, for popularity, or for another more obscur reason? What about the weblog gives you what you want?

I started it as an alternative to a handwritten journal, but I quickly realized that blogs and handwritten journals aren't that similar at all. And after two and a half years of keeping a blog, I think I'm mainly doing it out of habit.

I like it when people have a positive reaction to things I write. It's always surprising to me what kind of post will spark people's interest and what kind will be completely ignored.

2) Imagine that your weblog becomes wildly popular: your hit counter skyrockets, your comments are overflowing, and everyone is emailing you about everything you post. Name 3 positive things that could come of this, and 3 negative things.

The good:

1. Book deal!
2. Ego trip!
3. The fleeting internet version of fame!

The bad:

1. I hate email. Having to answer loads of email would be hell on earth.
2. I hate people. Having people bothering me all the time would be hell on earth.
3. People I don't know wanting to meet me in meat-space. But I guess that would be connected to the answer above.

3) What's the worst possible result you can imagine (short of being electrocuted or having your computer take over your brain, and who says it hasn't already?) from keeping a weblog?

My parents start reading it, then all my other family members start reading it.

4) What do you do to prevent that worst possible result from happening?

Deny the existence of any web page/blog/etc I may be asked about. Deny! Deny! Deny!

5) List 5 reasons that would make you stop keeping your weblog for a period of 6months to a year.

1. Depression.
2. No internet access.
3. A total disgust with blogs and blogging.
4. Work.
5. Alien abduction.

6) List 5 reasons that would make you stop forever.

1. Death.
2. Boredom.
3. No internet access ever.
4. Someone paying me not to blog. Kinda like those farmers who get paid not to grow crops.
5. My parents reading my blog.

7) Describe your definition of a "successful weblog".

A blog that the author clearly enjoys writing and is interesting to read on a regular basis.

8) Is yours successful by your definition?

Ha-ha.

9) What pisses you off most in other weblogs? What pleases you most?

No capitalization and the widespread use of instant messaging slang. Seriously, we're doomed as a civilization if this sort of thing continues.

10) Make a list of 10 weblogs/journal style websites that you wish your weblog/website/writing site was like.

Ten?! Jeez, that'll take forever!

1. Diamond Geezer has to be the work of a group of a dozen or more people. I've read this blog on and off for two and half years and it's never gone on hiatus that I know of and there's a fresh, well thought out post virtually every day. It's maddening!
2. A Girl Named Bob is probably the blog I've read the longest. It's well written and very funny. Bob doesn't write as much as she used to, but it's still a favorite.
3. The Magic Short Bus is almost a companion piece to the above, but it stands on its own as one of the better written and funniest blogs I've ever read.
4. J-Walk is pure industriousness. How he comes up with all of these odd and sometimes useful links so regularly never fails to amaze me.
5. The Presurfer is the king of oddball links.
6. Giornale Nuovo makes me wish I read more and read cooler books.
7. The Leptard is literate and funny. Why he hasn't written a novel escapes me.
8. For Myself and Strangers isn't on this list because its author wrote these questions, but because she walks it like she talks it. And she writes! Also, it's probably the most thought provoking blog on this list.

OK, that's eight. Deal with it.

(And English really is my first language, even though it doesn't look like it sometimes.)

Yee-ha!

Just for Sherri: Dukes of Hazzard slash fiction! (Scroll down on the second link.)

Potter

My sister just told me that her Harry Potter fan fiction is online.

It's a parody, but I don't know how funny it actually is since I've never read a Harry Potter book.

UPDATE: My sister sent me an email today after I told her I'd post a link to her Potter thing in my blog.

So you don't think the dinks who read your blog would think unicorns drowned in baked beans, hitting Potter characters with sticks, and Fosgood the Flatulent was entertaining at all?

Farty.

I just discovered that they deleted all my semicolons making all sorts of run together words, making me look like a complete moron. Cripes, that means I have to go back and FIX this crap.

It was peeeerfeeect!!!!

Not sure what "Farty" is all about, but since my sister's an artist, it's no doubt something really arty and creative. Or farty. Not sure.

Dodgy todger

I forgot to mention that when I was in the little room getting ready for the pee-test, the nurse made me empty my pockets. She didn't frisk me to find a hidden piss-bag or phoney schlong, but it was still odd. At least I got to whizz with the door closed, but she told me not to flush.

Wee!

I've been recommended for that third shift job, so today I had to go in for a drug test. I purposely didn't take a leak before I left the house so that I'd be assured of easily producing a sample. (I'm a bit pee-shy.) I ever filled up my car with gas, drove across town, and browsed in two different stores so that when it came time to pee I'd be ready.

The last time I did one of these tests, I just went in and did it. Today I had to wait. And waiting with a full bladder isn't enjoyable at all. It's also not enjoyable when you're an irritable misanthrope like I am. Just the sound of the other people's voices annoyed me to no end. Deep-voiced men and little kids particularly grated me this morning for some unknown reason.

There was a guy one seat down from me wearing tan saddle-shoes with shorts and white socks. Yes, tan saddle-shoes. These would be appropriate to wear if he were a girl in the 1950's who needed something to go with her poodle-skirt, but not something a grown man should be wearing with white socks and shorts.

Why do people let their children roam all over the waiting room? Why do people talk so loudly on their cellphones in waiting rooms?

This post's going nowhere, so I'll end it.

Feh, again

It's time for another blog post, since I haven't written one in who knows how long. I can't say that nothing's been going on around here, but I just don't feel like writing. I haven't even been writing in my journal that much.

I'm on new medication. So far I feel a little funny every now and then, but not "ha-ha" funny. This odd feeling is, I believe, either a side effect of the new medication or withdrawal from the old. Whatever.

I may actually get hired to do something useful at the place I'm temping at. But it may be a third shift position, so if I get it, I'll be walking around in an even bigger daze than usual until I adjust. And who knows how long it'll take me to adjust to working at four o'clock in the goddamn morning.

I'd like to thank the asshats who ruined the Extreme Tracker thingy by clogging it with referrer spam that makes little sense. I'd like to thank them each personally with a flying kick to the nuts because I'm the type who likes to go that extra mile.

This post was going to be longer, but I can't think of anything else important to moan and groan about.