Category: Generic

Visitors

I’m working from home today and I was on a conference call when my doorbell rang. Welp, sorry visitors, I can’t come to the door right now. After the call ended I went to the door on the off chance someone was waiting there and I found this little nugget….

Aww, our JW neighbors* stopped by to say hi and maybe save my soul. Isn’t that nice of them (no!!!)? I wish I could have come to the door (get off my lawn, leave me alone!!!).

So I’m just going to drop this little guy into the ol’ circular file. Before I do, does anyone want it? Anyone? Woops, I’ve already chucked it (and crumbled it up and lit it on fire). Sorry, god bless.

*there is a big JW church (is that the right word?) in Methuen over on Jackson Street. When we were house hunting back in 2010 we seriously considered a great big house right across the street.

Two Instances of Hypocrisy

I’m a hypocrite.  It’s official.  Pull up a chair and I’ll bore you to tears with two stories of hypocritical hypocrisy.

First: When CBS released it’s streaming service I said no.  No way.  Even as a lifelong Star Trek fanatic I couldn’t do it.  I waited until the first season of Discovery came to iTunes and I watched it there.  I did the same thing with season two.  In fact, I just watched season two, episode four while eating my dinner tonight.

But… Picard.  How can I possibly live in a world where there is a Star Trek TV series about Jean Luc Picard without actually seeing it the second it comes out?  I can’t do it, I just can’t do it.  I promised myself I wouldn’t watch the trailer because it would make me want to subscribe.  It didn’t work.  I subscribed and then watched the trailer.  Hypocrite.  Hypocrisy to the max.

Second: I posted something not long ago about how the number of visitors to this page had doubled when I started posting every day (1×2=2).  I said I didn’t really care if anyone visited the page at all because that’s not why I do this.  I do this to yell at the universe.  It’s not Facebook, I’m here with the expectation that no one is paying attention and I like it that way.

Then last week I read a post on reddit where a user in the blogging subreddit mentioned that their traffic increased by a factor of 10 after they started employing some simple SEO techniques.  They started tagging everything and using categories, things like that.  Blah, said I.  I bet if I did the same thing it wouldn’t change anything.  For the last couple of weeks I’ve been tagging the crap out of stuff and I started using categories again for the first time in ages.

Well… ummmm… traffic hasn’t increased by a factor of 10, but it sure has increased.  Ummm… woops.  Hello to all you new folks who have stumbled on my hypocritically hypocritical stupidity.  Thanks for stopping by.  Donald Trump is a fascist… anyone still left?  Okay.

I like interacting with people on Facebook.  I kinda like interacting with people on Twitter, but I usually don’t.  My twitter is about 1/4 bitching about that fascist, Trump, 3/4 links back to this page, and a few random Bruins and Red Sox posts for flavor.  Tumblr… hehe, just kidding.  This page isn’t for anything like that though.  This is a blathering idiot blathering.  If you’re cool with that, fine.  I’m thinking about looking into turning off comments because 99% of them are spam and the wordpress.com spam blocker catches them all.

Whatever.  Get off my lawn, you nasty kids!  The hypocrite is hypocriting, or something.

Addendum: Good at hypocrisy, bad at SEO.  After all that I forgot to add tags to this post.  You can’t see me laughing at my own dumb ass self, but trust that I am.  Also, I think I need to add a television category.  Should I go through the previous 11,555 post (that number is actually accurate) and search for references to television so that I can add them to the category?  No.  The answer to that is a solid, hard, definite no.

Travel

I’m still making my way through the audiobook version of Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider as part of the on-going Neil Elwood Peart Memorial Festival.  In this morning commute’s “reading” (was it in a letter to Brutus?  Most of the book is letters to Brutus) he mentioned Nantucket.  He didn’t go there, although I did get a mention of riding through Massachusetts today, he just mentioned it.

I’ve never been to Nantucket.  I have never been to Martha’s Vineyard either.  Growing up we used to take occasional weekend escapes to Cape Cod, but its been over 30 years since I’ve crossed the bridge.  I’d like to go back.  I’d like to see the islands.  Maybe this summer I can talk the family into making a mid-week escape.  Getting to the Cape on the weekends is hell on Earth, so it would need to be a mid-week thing.

Today’s “reading” also included a discussion of the Pacific Coast Highway.  Jen and I have driven on some stretches of that road.  Hearing about it today made me miss California.  It made me miss the Pacific ocean.  It made me want to go back to San Diego.  It made me want to stick my toes in the water again.  It made me want to drive through the mountains to the desert and see Julian.  Neil’s description of the Saltan Sea was far from favorable, but Jen and I drove out to it once and even though it was bordering on ghost town I wouldn’t mind seeing that again.  What about Joshua Tree?  What about Palm Springs?  We drove through that town once, but didn’t stop anywhere.

Our last few big trips have been to Florida, and our next one will be as well.  After that there’s another one on the agenda for next year too.  I love going there and I will never say no to an opportunity.  I just don’t want to get used to it.  I don’t want it to become common enough that it stops feeling special.  I also want to go to other places.

Ah, just ignore me as I fantasize about world traveling.  I just need a vacation.

Aren’t You Proud

Aren’t you proud to be an American today (assuming you, dear reader, live in the United States.  If not, just roll with it)?

Today’s the day.  Today’s the day the Constitution gets used as toilet paper and flushed down the proverbial toilet.

First the Senate refused to hold confirmation for a presidential appointee for the Supreme Court.

Then the people of the United States elected a fascist to the white house.

Now the fascist has been impeached by the House of Representatives and the US Senate is going to rubber stamp the fascist’s desired outcome for the impeachment trial.

The President of the United States of America has been impeached for, among other things, coercing a foreign government into interfering in a Presidential election and the Senate impeachment trial is going to proceed without either side being able to call witnesses.

What do you call a country where the outcome of criminal trials are pre-determined based on political party membership?  A dictatorship?  A fascist regime?  I’m not sure, but you most definitely do not call it a democracy, that is for certain.  The rule of law doesn’t apply to you if you are a member of the right political party.  The Constitution of the United States of America does not apply to you if you are a member of the right political party.

We should all start rehearsing our nazi salutes, because that’s where we are headed right now.  Everyone take your personal copy of the Constitution and throw it in the trash.  That is much more polite than what #MidnightMitch McConnell is doing.  He took his copy of the Constitution, crumpled it up into a ball, shoved it up his ass, covered it with shit, and then flushed it down the toilet.

God Bless America, let fascism reign.

Saws-All and Other Fun Topics

My foot still hurts.  It is more or less a non-issue when I’m barefoot, but it hurts like the dickens when I have shoes on.  I think I’m a little swollen, but not a lot.  It’s actually a lot better than it was last week, but it’s still an issue.  I really don’t want to go to the doctor for this, but my resolve is weakening.

I was discussing Plantar Fasciitis (hence forth to be known as Plantar Fascist-itis in honor of our nazi putz of a president) with a friend today who has had it in both feet, one after the other.  His suggestion was to just get it over with and cut the bastard off now.  I’m not that far gone, but it’s something to keep in mind (yup yup).  It actually made me think of something from a few weeks ago.  My father in law and I were in a store looking for a tool to help install our new door lock.  Right at the front door with a whole stack of potential impulse buys was a Saws-All.  I almost got it.  Why?  I don’t know.  Now looking back I think I should have picked one up.  It would be a perfect cure for my friggin’ foot.

Yuck yuck yuck.

In the immortal words of the evil doctor in Hellraiser II, “I recommend… amputation.  No anesthetic at hand… shame.”

Yuck yuck yuck.

I don’t think I’ve seen that movie since the late 80’s or early 90’s so I can’t remember for sure if those two sentences (complete with the dramatic pauses) were from the same scene or not.  Probably not.  That was the first horror movie I ever saw, and it lead to my becoming a serious Clive Barker fan.  Not just movies, but novels (stop what you’re doing and go read Weaveworld.  Right now.  I’m serious.  Do it right now) and short stories and even a couple of plays.  It was at Brian G’s house.  I can’t remember who was there exactly, but despite all of the awesome, quotable lines it had (and there were countless) the one phrase that will never leave my memory and will always come to mind as soon as I think of that movie was someone in the room saying, as the movie ended, “rewind to when Julia comes out of the mattress!”

I just took this picture while I was putting the finishing touches on our chicken and a side of quinoa dinner tonight.  I thought I’d share because… why not.

Untitled

The RPM Challenge is 11 days away.  I haven’t given it thought one.  My next gig is also 11 days away.  I have given that many thoughts, most revolving around how much practice I need.  Note: I am sitting at my desk typing this blither instead of practicing.  I had a day off work to honor a great American even though our nation is in the hands of fascist pieces of dog shit and did I practice at all?  No.  I thought about it, but I didn’t do it.  I even thought about asking the other guys if they wanted to try and sneak in a rehearsal tonight seeing as we wouldn’t have to wait for my endless evening commute.  Nope.  Nothing.  I’m still physically beat from having to deal with shoveling on top of all of the previously discussed pains.  I’m getting better.  Don’t worry.  It just sucks to be me today.  It will suck less tomorrow.

My step son, Harry had the day off from school.  This was a mom’s house weekend so he woke up here this morning.  Mondays are dad days though so I knew he’d be leaving shortly after he woke up.  I did something sneaky to try and get him to stick around and hang out with me for a little while.  I watched a Marvel movie.  He was still asleep when I started but I figured he’d wake up and watch it with me.  It was Captain America: Civil War.  Awesome freakin’ movie.  It worked, but not as well as I’d hoped.  When he finally woke up (teenagers and sleeping late, ya know?) there was only 30-40 minutes left in the movie.  He stuck around a little after it was over.  He had some breakfast and watched an episode of Phineas and Ferb because… why not?  (sing it with me, doobie doobie doobah, doobie doobie doobah, A-Gent-P!!)

Speaking of Harry, we had a seriously great moment on Saturday that I think I want to share.  My wife and my step son both have February birthdays.  My wife thought that maybe it would be fun to celebrate her birthday at Disney World.  We started making plans.  Then she decided it would be better to wait a few weeks and bring my step son with us.  We booked a room in the Yacht Club for a few days and made all the park arrangements.  We did not tell my step son.  My step daughter won’t be available due to college, and Jen has a little Canadian get away planned with her already, but we ran the plans by her just in case and she was okay with it.  On Saturday we had a mini-pre-birthday-birthday celebration for Harry.  We gave him two presents: His park ticket and his luggage tag.  He never saw it coming.  Awesome.  He says he is really excited about it, even though he’s going to be stuck down there with two old people.  He’ll adjust.  It’s going to be fun, and I can’t wait to go away and hide from reality for a week.

Here’s hoping my foot feels better by then because if not it’s Off With His Foot!

Yuck yuck yuck.