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.

A meme thing involving letters

Ack! A meme! From The Leptard! Involving letters!

OK, I'm supposed to come up with ten things starting with the letter I was issued yesterday. My letter? M. [Warning: Many Wikipedia links below.]

Murphy - Both my surname and the title of Samuel Beckett's first published novel. It's also the maiden name of a certain blogger who comments here often. We aren't related. But I am a distant cousin of legendary late jazz musiciain, Bleeding Gums Murphy.

Michael - My first name, which I rarely use. Why my parents decided to give me a name they didn't like is a mystery still unsolved after many, many years. But why they gave my sister a name no one can spell or pronounce is a far more amusing mystery.

Money - Something I need more of. One day I hope to have a job that pays actual money instead of rejected whoopie-cushions and irregular balloons.

Meat - In short, meat is good to eat.

Monkey - Why not? Monkeys throw poop!

Monkees - I'm not the leat bit embarrassed to be a fan of the Monkees. Nope. I am on the other hand more than a little embarrassed to own a Culture Club album, but since it doesn't have anything to do with the letter M it won't be discussed.

Mullet - I had one back in the mid eighties. And quite recently I was almost rockin' the bald guy mullet. Thankfully there was an intervention by a licensed hair care specialist.

Macaroni - Macaroni and cheese isn't quite the Food of the Gods (that's bacon in case you're wondering), but it is quite darn close.

Mercenary - I wanted to be a mercenary when I was about twelve or thirteen. Thankfully I grew out of that nonsense. Now I want to be a porno magician.

Mongolia - Without the great nation of Mongolia this blog would probably only have a third of the traffic it's gotten. So thank you internet freakos of the world for your undying lust for Mongolian Porn. I just wish I had some to sell you; I'd be rich now.

OK, I guess that's ten things that start with the letter M. I suppose to could count the list, but that's taking the easy way out.

I think I'm supposed to give out letters to people who ask for them in the comments. I don't feel like doing that, so I'll just list some letters here: h, s, n, e, f, o, s, z, i, c, d, v, and q. Have fun.

Enough!

The goal of National Novel Writing Month was to write a 50,000 page first draft of a novel in a month and I've done it. I hit 50,007 words before noon and stopped. Enough already!

I had to pad it out to get there. Yesterday morning I was using Find and Replace in Word to get rid of contractions. That added a few hundred words, but it screwed up the syntax in some parts. I haven't edited those out yet, and probably won't any time soon because I'm sick of looking at this thing.

No idea if I'm going to do anymore work on it. I'm sure there's an actual novel hiding in this rambling mess somewhere, but I don't know if I want to bring it out. This novel wasn't what I wanted to write. I was planning on a weird, funny thing filled with strange inventions and bizarre adventures, sort of like Alfred Jarry or Stefan Themerson, but I ended up with something else entirely. Something far duller and gloomier than I wanted to write.

I'm glad it's over. Thanks to everyone for their support and abuse. Big thanks to Sherri for making me do it and big, wet sloppy smooches to Dr.'s Xolo and Sara for giving me the laptop on which I wrote most of it.

And I'll let any of my regular readers who really want to lance this festering boil of a first draft if they really want to. Just ask in the comments.

Problem solved

This is the only solution to the big city pigeon problem. [Link via my sister.]

OK, I'm going back to bed.

Speaking of crap

I have less than 10,000 words to go in my excruciatingly bad novel. I think I can get that in a week. I'm going to try and write as much of that as I can before Monday because who knows how much I'll be able to write what with my job sucking the life out of me.

And I should probably say right now that I have no intention of letting all of you read this novel. Nope. It's vomit. I'll let Sherri read it if she wants to because she let me read her novel last year. And there's one other person who demanded to read it and I'm going to let him/her read the damn thing because said person is er...persistant. And, no, it's not my sister.

Backup time!

OK, kids, it's time to back up yer blogs. I just found out Brendan's blog went and mysteriously disappeared on him and now it's some kinda spam thing. His blog is over four years old; thankfully he backed it up.

So while I ate my Thanksgiving turkey I sat in front of my computer and backed up what I hadn't backed up since September of last year. Now I have a 430-plus page Word document. And it's all crap!

Ancient blog

On this day four long, tedious years ago I started this blog. Most blogs that are actually updated on a semi-regular basis supposedly last about six months. I don't know what it means that mine has lasted eight times longer than the typical blog other than I have no life and get attached to pointless things.

At first I used to approach this blog sort of like a job; for the first year I wrote something, even if it was a single short sentence, almost every day. I think I missed maybe two or three days the first year. Things rapidly went downhill after that with various hiatuses over the years.

I've thought about stopping doing this over and over, but I still keep on doing it. I still think about quitting, but it seems like too much trouble.

So thanks to all three of my regular readers. Of all the people I know who don't suck, you don't suck the least.

D'oh!

Why didn't one of you overeducated geniuses tell me I'd misspelled the word century in the title of my previous post? Don't you people know I can't spell? Work with me, dammit!

21st century boy

I finally joined the rest of the modern world and bought myself a really cheap DVD player to hook up to my TV. My computer has a DVD drive, but watching movies on a computer screen sucks a big donkey dick. Now I can watch Frankenstein's Daughter while stretched out on the couch the way it was intended. What I need now is an endless supply of really old monster/horror movies.

Lurching

Today's writing goal didn't go as smoothly as yesterday's. It ended up taking almost two hours and was a bit excruciating, but I did get 1,970 words, which gives me a total of 3,662. So I'm on schedule at least.

I'm not writing at my main computer because this computer equals internet which equals major time suckage. So I'm not writing in my office. I have an old Dell laptop given to me by Drs. Sara and Xoloitzquintle that I've set up in my bedroom.

I cleared off all the crap piled on my desk, put the laptop on top of an old American literature textbook (hopefully some of it will soak into the harddrive by osmosis), and plugged a spare desktop keyboard in it. Works great. And I'm doing the whole thing in Notepad of all things because I don't really need anything fancy to simply type text.

And before someone implores me to be sure to back up my work, I do back it up. I'm not relying on a seven or eight year old laptop I got free from people who got it free themselves. Nope. I back it up with a USB thumbdrive and then copy it to my main system and then email it to my Yahoo account. Paranoid? Yep. Totally.

Ugh

It begins! Actually, it begins tomorrow. But tomorrow will be here in less than six hours and I'll be at work. So I doubt there will be much if any working on it since I'll be too busy and miserable. It'll have to wait until after work. I'll be fresh as a daisy when I wake up tomorrow afternoon. A freshly stomped daisy.

And speaking of work, it's gotten excruciating lately. The guy I worked with decided to just stop coming to work, so that means I have to do everything now. My job is mainly doing stuff on the computer in the office, but with no one to help me, I have to move nasty, dust-covered crap out in the warehouse too. The stuff also has to be reboxed, relabeled, etc. It's gotten really anal and bureaucratic all of a sudden. And I think I'm going to have to start wearing my steel-toed boots again since I spend most of the night in the warehouse and have a knack for running over parts of my feet with the pallet jack.

Sweet Mother of God, What Have I Done?

Last year, Sherri took part in NaNoWriMo and actually wrote a novel (which I read). She told me that I'd do it next year. (Apparently I had no choice in the matter.) Well, I planned on doing it, I really did, but work dragged me into the depths of misery and apathy, so I decided not to do it. I felt guilty about deciding not to do it, but since I was running out of time, I really didn't feel too bad. And then suddenly last night I decided to do it. So I signed up. Now I have to write a 50,000 word draft in a goddamn month. That month starts in a little over a week. I have no idea what the hell I'm going to write about. Plus, I'm illiterate!

I'm counting on all four of my regular readers to heap abuse on me (I mean more abuse than normal) if I fail.