Ok. I spent a pair of days on the Redneck Riviera. I had a full room, full of people and full of...well...semi relaxation. No one pestering me asking me what we were going to do that day, no one handing me phones. I hate that sort of thing.

I fell into my kid's 'Sand Fork' he had constructed on the beach. Sand Fork being as in 'Fork Knox'. He had no clue how to pronounce it.

He really is a good kid. He gets so frustrated with himself sometimes that he shivers and cries. He asks me what to do and I try to help him. His brothers are no use and some of my friends pester him and put him aside when they come over, which really pisses me off more than they will ever realize. Yes, if you ask am I upset with you, when you treat any member of my family like that, I am.

But for right now, I love ya'll. So it's all good. But just know if you EVER act snotty, you'll hear from me. (and this can remain without useless comments on my comment page, if you don't mind. This is serious.)

=======

Now on to non-serious things of note:

My green chuck taylor allstars. My mother already hates them and that's something I strive for in life. *smirk*
(Imagine what she would have said had she seen the semi-mohawk I sported to town today when i went shopping for beads with the kids).

My wife also purchased me a t-shirt. It has a squirrel brandishing a baseball bat. It's standing in a defensive posture in front of a pile of peanuts. What does the caption say? "Protect your nuts."

Now WHERE the heck am I going to wear this shirt? I guess as a nice undershirt. Now the "I fart in your general direction" shirt is another story. I wore that to the store today, in fact.

I also did a science experiment last night, complete with photographs. See, I bought my best friend a can of Colt 45 the other day, and he, in his infinite snobbiness, refused it like a good ingrate (instead of taking it and throwing it away up the street as he left. He's got a lot to learn, poor guy. I've been force-fit into another culture and worldview, and flat-out refusing things is offensive to me now. Oh well. He and I enjoy cookie dough together and good beer so I'll forgive him).

ANYWAY...the experiment involved a Colt 45 taste test. The update is coming next week when i can get the pictures off my camera phone.

Also, i re-signed up for Ads on my site and they apparently were successful at plastering themselves on the front page. If you see them, PLEASE click them every time you come to my site. I get cash for this.

Thank you and God bless :p

Gonna go listen to Jimmy Cliff now.

My kid brought this home from school:

"My Gingerbread Fred Journal"

One day I met a GBMthat was called Fred. When I was hungry I started to eat his body parts. But then fred started to do stuff with my! body parts. Then I thu up. He formed back. Then me and fred went home.

The End

Hmm.

It would seem that the obnoxious pair was mixed up. I feel like an un-masked villian from Scooby Doo for some strange reason. Could it be my failure to see the obvious?

I thought sibling was someone else. And obnoxious REALLY sounded...well, like the obnoxious one we all love. But she wasn't he (or him? I dunno. Not eaten in 14 hours and I'm hungry).


You two crack me up. I don't feel as embittered now that I've giggled like a sissy today.

Ok, now you're going to get to hear me whine for just an ever-so-brief nanosecond.

When I had my second job, if I wanted something, I managed to get it within a month and a half. I paid my bills on time, and all was well in the world.

I am now 2.5 months behind on my mortgage, 3 months behind on my Dell account, and I may be lucky enough to get a PSP this time in April.

*sigh*

And I am expected to stay sane HOW?

Ok, so it's taken a little longer than a week. So deal.

Anyway, one of the things that really pissed me off about going out of the country was coming back in. No, we're not looking for terrorists. No, we're not keeping 'our borders secure'. All of that is political bullshit buzzwording. What we're doing is hiring bored, underpaid people to stand in a booth, ask if you are an american, and when you nod, you drive through.

That is, unless you get caught in a lane with a Hispanic-american person (aka chicano) running the booth and you happen to have someone of Hispanic origin in the car with you.

See, these people think they have a ton of stuff to prove. I don't get it. They're harder on everyone, including gringos. We went to a wedding one night in Texas, and it took an act of congress to get past the uber-bitch running the booth that evening. We stop, she asks where we're going all dressed up, I tell her, and in her disbelief, she goes 'wheres the present?' and opens the doors to the van without asking. I was at a point where I was about to say "If you'll hop in I'll take them a genuine 100% pet bitch for their wedding gift." Instead, all I muster is "I'm broke. My presence is enough for them. Here's an invitation sweetheart, wanna see it?" She goes through EVERYTHING with a fine toothed comb, even running a background check on the missus...something they NEVER do. When she finally came to the realization that she was bordering on being unethical due to our unusually long (and unfair) detention, she let us go without a word, just this bitchy finger motion.

At the wedding that night, everyone was getting there late. Half of them mentioned a 'bitch at the bridge'.

Grrrr.

=========

I wish i had heat in my car. I'm tired of wearing an alpaca fur beanie in the car every day. I look like a 5'10" toddler.

Gone to Birmingham.

Final Mexico reflections coming sometime next week.

I have this really cute great-niece. I never have quite wrapped my head around it, but somehow I've turned into a great-uncle at the ripe old age of 27. I was 26 when the child was born but that's beside the point.

The interesting part is the fact that she's now a pretty 13 month old baby with pouty lips and eyes that make you melt. Since this is the evil internet, I will not disclose her name. Anyway, interesting thing is, she's 13 months and her mom is...as of October of THIS year, 2005, 15. Fifteen. Can you believe that?

I don't know what's wrong with kids these days. When I saw her 2 years ago, she was a little shorter than me. My niece is a sweet kid, honestly she is. She's been cursed with being built like a grown woman since she was 12. I fussed at her to no end when I saw her 2 years ago, due to her drug addled friendships, her boyfriend and the fact that she was living with her mom at the time. (Her mom is the reason I learned all about Napoleonic Justice back in the day).



I saw her this time around, as a 15 year old. A married fifteen year old. (wtf)
She ran off, and married this real winner. He has gapped front teeth, wears earrings, and is gainfully employeed as a burglar. My bro in law has informed him that if he shows up at their house, he will find out how much Kung-fu my bro in law really learned back in his martial arts days. So when my niece visits her dad (HERE SHE COMES!! HIDE ALL THE FOOD AND THE VALUABLES!), he stands outside by his bike.

He has her living in a dirt-floored house in a bad part of town (IS there a bad part of town? Read my last entries. Where we were was not a bad part of town. You be the judge) The kind of area where mosquitoes thrive, the prostitutes have track marks, and you will almost never leave alive if you enter at night with a fat wallet, a chain, and a decent pair of tennis shoes.

Before I realized what level of squalor/depravity/idiocy my niece has fallen into, she occasionally would be responsible for her sex trophy. (husband isn't dad) She would take her on walks, go out to eat, that sort of thing. Well, this last time, the baby came back with something wrong. It didn't make itself manifest until I was there. She got red. I mean REALLY red. She had a rash from head to toe, and she acted like she was in constant pain. She didn't let ANYONE sleep because she screamed like a posessed banshee all night every night. So we took her to the doctor. They claim it's dengue, but some non-life threatening form. I'm no tropical doctor, but I thought dengue was some serious sh*t. Anyway, she got some doxycycline or something or other. Sounds like it's strong enough to cure an 89 year old case of the clap, but it comes in a yummy bugglegum flavoured suspension.

She was therefore saddled with the nickname (at least in my head), Dengue Baby.

Dengue Baby is being raised by her grandpa (my 35 year old bro in law), and her great grandma in her 50's. It's a weird combination, but it's all she knows. It's sad that she is having to go through life like this, but I'm grateful she has at least TWO loving family members. It's all she knows.

Her mom came twice to see us while we were there. It almost ALWAYS seems to go into how much things cost: "Tio, how much did your cellphone cost?" "How much did that silver chain cost? I bet a lot." And it makes me uncomfortable. Especially since I found out from her dad that she's probably tooting nose powder up her nose now. He suspicioned this shortly before the deciding moment where he kicked her out and kung-fu threatened the street urchin husband, who did NOTHING but eat all day. NO work, NOTHING. And my broinlaw is a waiter and the sole breadwinner in the house.


There came a moment where he thought she was tooting, so he goes and BUYS some and catches her stealing it. He stopped letting her breastfeed the baby after that. Speaking of which, how do you tell a 15 year old to button her damn blouse up because she's got really obvious cleavage? It's uncomfortable, and plus people think you're a mongoloid because you're staring at the floor the entire time someone's talking to you.

I will not relinquish my hopes that somehow, some way, she will straighten up, and the rest of my in-laws will somehow come out of poverty.


Later:

Fun with US Border Patrol guards

Taterchip mens and wreck whore.
(or is it Taterchip Whore and the Wreck?)

Sounds like a Cat Stevens album...

Anyway, the sidewalk rapidly became our buzzards' roost of choice, when Niurka wasn't there.
(I want you to see why they call this guy Niurka. Now for all of you non-hispanics and non-hispanic affiliate gringoes, Niurka is this whacked out Cuban broad who left her rich, influential soap opera empire king husband for a hot, young, 'sexy' dude with pork chop sideburns named Bobby Larios. Her husband made a soap opera to launch her. She had this husband on-camera [enter Bobby Sideburns] husband, and she started banging him. After she left her real husband (who she said was impotent and *gasp* forced her to masturbate herself on her birthday because she's a whiny, long-nailed nympho island harpie), Niurka and Bobby started taking weird, fetishy pictures. Google image search 'Niurka' and you will find said island harpie naked and covered with mud, with mexican coiffe boy.) [ / whine ]

Mexico Niurka is a gimplegged Mexican dude with long, curly locks like Cuban nympho island harpie Niurka. He steals the pink apartment complex of loves' water to wash cars and rinse turds from the street. He does NOT live here, but he likes to drink his caguamas (read: quarts of beer) on MY sidewalk and make my life miserable. I gave him 20 pesos to go get a sammitch one night and leave me the hell alone.

Anyway, Niurka wasn't there this night, so we run outside and claim the stoop for our own. There are no moaning diabolical temptresses, no soliders, no turds, no roaches, so we enjoy the fresh air at 1 am. The buses are passing as workers are leaving the maquiladoras. And all of a sudden, BAM!!! *insert Batman 60's-era flash blurbs*. Out of nowhere, a beatup maroon car peels out and leaves. With the satisfying sound of crunching metal, we decided someone may have been run over and this bastard was leaving them to die. I run up the hill, in boxers and American Flag flipflops, and start crossing this 4 lane nightmare to see what's up.

I get there, and the windshield's crushed. A piece of the axle LITERALLY ROLLS up to my feet, and I step over it in my efforts to inch closer to the car I am expecting to find someone dead in, or at least lying nearby.

Airbags are deployed and there is a dude standing on the sidewalk, yelling into a cellphone. (bear with me here I've had several beers and 2 episodes of Stargate:Atlantis have passed since that last paragraph).

His hands are shaking, and he's like, 'no guey (pronounced 'way'...see El Mariachi to appreciate), we didn't hit him, HE hit us!!!'. He's eating potato chips nervously from a bag. Side note:I just opened another bottle of Sol! RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRICOOOOOOO!!!

Anyway.

He's standing there, i hear sirens in the distance, and due to my last brush with Napoleonic law, I'm wanting to leave before the pigs get there to avoid being 'taken in and processed' along with chip man and the car people. I see the other car WAYYYY off in the distance, exactly in the same spot where the moron was hit after inching foward from the red light into the highway. Asshole.

While I'm talking to tater chip man (yes, I did establish contact), I am asking him if he's ok. I look over after a second due to an excessive taterchip bag crumpling sound, and my nephew is digging into taterchip man's bag. He's TAKING HIS CHIPS FROM HIM. They are staring at the car, shaking their head, and my idiotic 12 year old nephew is telling him such helpful and meaningful things as 'Dude, you messed up bad.' He eventually finishes the guy's bag of chips. And on that note, 8 Ford F150's from the transito police show up. I nonchalantly begin to walk backwards, staring into the sewage ditch there on the opposite side of 4 lane nightmare, and i make my way into the darkness, across the other 2 lanes, and back down to our sidewalk. The crackhead is walking by but at this point the only thing left to do is half-heartedly check to see if my van is locked. We wouldn't want them stealing my club anti-theft device or change from the ashtray now, would we?

Finishing SG:Atlantis Season 1 tonight, I'm noticing that my 2 year old nephew is making Wraith sounds in his dark room, trying to scare his siblings. It's so cheesy it's cute.

Tomorrow:

Is that Dengue? And man, your chest has grown.

Ok. Now on our street, it's a relatively quiet area. Neighbours are friendly enough, despite the aforementioned midnight mewling from the 2nd floor window.

One night, a crackhead poked his head through the burglar bars to my motherinlaw's window and showed us a jar of Kroger(Tm) [wtf. In MEXICO?] peanut butter. He begged us to buy it, and finally we did, for 10 pesos [$1], and off he waddled into the darkness of 21st street. I went to the front door, into the 'courtyard', and peered into the black to see where he was going. My brother in law is behind me, and startled the crap out of me because I didn't see him follow. He says, 'Oh him? He's heading down to the piedrero four blocks down.

SPANISH LESSON:
Piedra=rock

Do I need to go further? Thought not..

Anyway, dude's going to see the crack dealers, two dudes who are unassuming and sit on a stoop all night eating ice cream and cookies (which makes me think they spend their evening smoking herb, not crack, but that's another story, as it turned out that my suspicion was correct).

NEXT DAY...

We are driving around running errands (Read: seeing divorce lawyers, threatening people that owe my brother in law money, etc).

There are SIX FRIGGIN HUM-VEE's on 18th street!!!! It wouldn't bother me, but they AREN'T the yuppie mobile H-2's we've seen lately. They are old, olive green, and have MACHINE GUNS mounted on top, loaded, with short little brown people aiming them menacingly. I thought in a short instant, "Is this it? Am I a statistic a la Nuevo Laredo on CNN?"

We drive by, and for kicks, drive back the other way after pulling a U-turn. Turns out they are at the 'tiendita' (the 'little store'), a housing project building where hard dope is sold in that neighbourhood as well. They're supposedly 'busting' the drugpushers. Yeah, right. We go home, and ALL the monkeys are over on our street!!! ALL the piedreros from several blocks. They're hiding, also eating junk food, squatted down on the sidewalk and laughing. I get pissed, and enter into manifest-destiny cowboy of justice mode. We turn around (by this point, G n R are on the Sirius radio playing 'my michelle', which fit), and go back to the checkpoint. We roll down my window, and say the following in spanish: 'Yo, army dude. The rock slingers are on our block. Why don't ya'll actually do something about it? Thanks.' and drive off before he can respond. We get to the end of the cross-street we've barrelled down...AND IT'S CLOSED OFF AND IMPASSIBLE DUE TO REPAIRS (arrrrgh). We have to turn around, and drive back towards short brown men with machine guns, who flag us down at this point. I contemplate urinating in my pants as i picture my parents with a bad VHS tape of me chained to a shower head sans an ear and two fingers, and dude pulls us both out. He checks my papers to see if I'm 'legal' in Mexico *snicker*. He goes through our van thoroughly and after finding a Bible under my seat, he lets us go. We leave, and 4 to 6 hours later, my butt begins to un-clench.


Tomorrow:
Wreck boys and tater chip thief.

Ok. Let's try and get some of this down in 1's and 0's format.

On the way down, jamming to the satellite radio, I run over a diamondback rattlesnake. Eastern? Western? I have no clue. All I know is that the sucker was/is fat. It kept crawling afterward.

(Anyone seen the expose' on North Korea on CNN? I'm watching it as I type this and it never ceases to amaze me. Google 'Camp 22' and read articles. Why the hell isn't someone doing anything about this?)


Anyway...

I get there, and everyone has to pee. Again. So we stop. Then sisinlaw has to go get money from Western Union. So we have to ask directions for a W.U. depot. Finally we get there. Sun is failing, and I hate driving in Mexico at night, after driving from Mississippi. Damn. We get the cash, and head down the last 4 miles or so. We get to the bridge, and the sun is in my face to the point where I can't see anything. Not the toll sign, not the signals, nothing.

I get there, and we hold our breath as we slowly head through the 'Nothing to declare' lane. The traffic light is green as we go through, and we breathe a sigh of relief. A red light means a document check and customs check. Anything made in China is usually taken, since there is bad trade blood 'tween Mexico and China. Yeah, for some reason the US like to give 'most favoured trade partner' status not to its neighbours, but to a semi-hostile Communist country on the other side of the world that likes to crush the genitals of political prisoners and...and...blah blah.

So back to the point. We begin to drive down Avenida Alvaro Obregon, which is like the main drag from the Puente Nuevo. God, it's different. The moment you drive across that damn bridge it's different, and I don't just mean the traffic. The buildings are different. It's like someone played pick-up sticks with buildings, signs, and power lines. It's fun. It's VERY random. People also drive like buttholes.

We get there, hugs, crying, kisses, and gifts are handed 'round. Sleep on the floor comes. Brother in law gets off work, kicks me, wakes me up and tells me to sleep on his mattress. He sleeps on a blanket. Don't flush that toilet paper! Into the garbage it goes, else the sewer backs up and there is a square pit under the sidewalk you can peer into outside that has turd soup boiling out of it. More cockroaches that Joes apartment in the thing. Good thing it stays shut most of the time. ..

Out of nowhere, women start coming out of this outside bathroom. Now, let me describe the house. It's at the base of a 4 lane thoroughfare. Concrete sidewalks, and concrete houses. The entrance to the multi-home dwelling is an iron gate that shuts. Inside, there are 3 apartment-houses in a boxed in 'courtyard'. If you can call a pink concrete room a 'courtyard'. Everyone's clothes washing machines are outside. You fill them with the hose, and when they are done washing, you put the washer's drain hose into a plastic PVC pipe that runs into the bathroom I'm mentioning. The door to this bathroom is several boards nailed together and also painted pink. Like saloon doors. It's the bathroom to the prostitutes' apartment. Yes, I said whores.

Our apartment had its own bathroom and they keep the place clean, but it's not a paradise. Don't drink that damn water! Can't you see it's brown?

I wake up, and can't remember what I did, but that night i had a few beers and sat out on the sidewalk waiting for my brother in law to get off work. He usually walked home around 12:30 AM. While waiting, I hear a woman, that, pardon my graphic description, is apparently getting nailed. She's moaning and barking and yelling. I, horrified, go into fat-kid mode and start hyperventillating. I start coughing gently hoping they'll shut up. And to my surprise they do. Finally my brother in law comes home and we immediately get sent out to the store to go buy milk for dengue-baby. It's dengue? I don't think so, but it's definitely some damned mosquito-borne illness that has her covered from head to toe in some red rash.

I have to finish this later.

Tomorrow: The Army Checkpoint and the Piedreros.

I'm back and in one piece. Too sick and zonked on Benadryl to post, but I will post in the next couple of days my adventures involving tequila, a scorpion, the INS, a rattlesnake, the Mexican Army, prostitutes, a bad-ass car wreck, and antibiotics without prescriptions.

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything. I got things going, things on my mind, and plans in the works.

Getting ready to go see my inlaws in Mexico this weekend. I'm burning movies to take to them so they can have some entertainment goodness.

Am I wrong for wanting to subscribe to the Weekly World News? There's an article this week that is GREAT. It talks about a new, secret, all-powerful weapon that the us has developed. More powerful than conventional nuclear weapons. They have been forced to confirm it due to our president accidentally referring to them in a speech. Yes...I'm referring to...

Nuculer weapons. It's true!

ok. So WHAT THE HELL is that noise in my blinds?

It's Mulder and Scully. Bastiches wait until we're "asleep", then get out of their infant playpen.
It's this scary pitter-patter, running about the entire fecking house.

I had brie tonight. And grilled tequila chicken. And Samuel Adams Creamstout, and white russians, and Boddington's Ale. Wonderful day it's been, today.

My wife's blood test came back negative for pituitary tumors, which I am grateful for. Tomorrow a mammogram is scheduled, so please keep your collective fingers crossed for us. I'm tired of crying myself to sleep at night. It's getting old rather quickly, as is the cats running across the floor in the living room darkness.

Time for Firefly reruns. Fox network bastards.


Let me know if you haven't seen an episode of Lost. I'll burn it for you.

I haven't had a chance to update lately. You know, being idle, sloth, and all of that.

You know, a friend of mine ran over my rose bushes. I still haven't figured out how the hell he did it, or why, or what he was doing when it happened. He managed to miss the cheap bush, but plastered the two that had serial numbers and pedigrees and a stamp tied around them that said 'asexual reproduction prohibited by law'. I'm debating choking him. Not that it would bring them back. So there. You owe me a pack of Boddington's for the $45 worth of roses, YOU HEAR ME?!

I'm not totally enraged at you, mind.


=====

So I found a copy of Gary Numan's "The Pleasure Principle". If you have not heard this cd, drop what you are doing and order it. You won't find it at the local yokel music shop. Yes, it's the guy that did the song 'Cars' but it's so much more than that. It's moog, strings, drums, synth, and a glimpse into a machine future. I also picked up The Cure's "Disintegration" (FINALLY) and can't keep fighting the urge to wear dark eye makeup and poof my hair up, teased to the ceiling. I already have started by getting an English-type driving/rain wool coat. I have the boots.
Oh, why bother. It'd be lost on the local rednecks who would accuse me of being anything from a homosexual to a maniac. (I have a weak defense for the maniac part). I mean, it's autumn and to cheer myself up I spend thousands on those around me when I really shouldn't. It works for a few gleaming moments and then fades. So I produce the debit card again.

Synth landscapes of depression, rain, clouds, thunder noises. It's too much. Echo and the Bunnymen, the Cure, Sisters of Mercy, all lead back to Joy Division.

If things keep going this way I may go buy 'the Downward Spiral'. Watch out then. Angst to the max from someone pushing thirty.
Makes me recall this moment I was listening to that cd once, I was around 15 or 16. It had me in this mood I can't describe. I laid down in the closet area of the hotel room while my friends were picking on me about it and playing the Super Nintendo to pieces. That cd does something unhuman to me and if you EVER see me with it, shoot it out of my hand. I was going to DISNEY WORLD for God's sake and couldn't get out of my funk.

====


so I have a bag of depression meds at home. Waiting to be taken, but I won't take them. Hard headed? Proud? Scared of what they do to me? A combination of all of it? Who knows.

"kiss me goodbye" pushing out before i sleep / it's lower now and slower now the strangest / twist upon your lips but i don't see and i don't / feel but tightly hold up silently my hands / before my fading eyes and in my eyes your / smile the very last thing before i go...


i will kiss you i will kiss you i will kiss you / forever on nights like this i will kiss you i will / kiss you and we shall be together...


Wow.

It's bad enough living with eight people in your house.

It's even worse when you get a virus or some other nasty bug running through the tribe. Everyone falls ill, one after another.

Little kids get the runs, puke once or twice, and that's it. Us adults, on the other hand, try and hold it in during the commute home because you can't stop by the side of the interstate to vomit. Comedy gold ensues. Literally. It issues forth like gelatinous bile and the clothes go into a garbage bag when you get home.

I had three layers of clothes on last night and honestly felt like dying. But I wake up this morning, after throwing up 13 times during the course of the afternoon/night, and I'm FINE. I even went for pizza at lunch.

But now my other son is sick.

*sigh*

The Miller High Life (lite heh) has been downed. The beef is simmering in so much red pepper that your nose hairs would burn at the slightest whiff. The yard is STILL shin high and the grass has gone to seed, but guess what!? The flood marks are disappearing. You know, how the ebb and flow of several inches of water tends to deposit straw and sticks in wavy patterns...it's disappearing.

BECAUSE I'M RAKING THE S*IT UP, THAT'S WHY.

I also fixed my lawn mower. The diagnosis? Engine full of water.

Now to get the tire reinflated.

This chili is going to ROCK. Seriously. Am I the only guy that does the family cooking?

I wonder. It's a great excuse to drink, anyway.



Love you all. And if the google adsense ads pop up, click them. I get paid!

Ok, so what's the deal? I mean, FEMA sucks.

A lot of things suck. The mall smells like wee. It also is a haven for mold and mildew. But what do i know...


Figuring out a list of lost groceries from Katrina and the ensuing 2 week plunge into third world wonder. Comes out to almost $340, the stuff I lost. You don't think lovingly about pork chops until you realize that your pork chops are indeed gone. Makes me think of the cinderella power ballad.

==========

I still haven't seen Serenity. The office secretary (And fellow Firefly fanperson) just totally ruined it for me. She saw it and has the visual companion book thingy that has SCRIPT AND PLOT SPOILERS AND TURNED THE PAGE RIGHT TO THE PART WHERE (Name) is (Verb, past tense) by the (plural noun) and they have a (noun).

I could choke her. I really, really could.

What's the deal with me getting comment spam the minute I update? Will never understand that. I think out of all the comments I've received, one or two were legit.

=============

Also,



heheh

Ok...I finished Lost. All 25 episodes, plus or minus. That show is the bomb. I also downloaded the first two episodes of Season 2. One tomorrow, one Tuesday, and by Wednesday, I'll be caught up for Episode 3 when it comes on. I haven't been this pumped for a show since E.R. or C.H.I.P.S. (But we won't get into the latter.)


Dealing with migraine sufferers in the house. Lately, I've started having cluster headaches again. But it's really hard on kids when their mom has a 'graine and the dad has a cluster, both are whacked out on pain meds, moaning and agonising, and feeling like doing absolutely nothing apart from dying.

My Kentucky pie from Mcalisters tasted like styrofoam ass. What's up with that?

I'm tired of dwindling funds and lack of ....I dunno. I'll just shut up because this isn't really a productive post.

Anyone that's reading --- if you aren't trying to:

• Enlarge my penis
• Enlarge my breasts (lol mantits)
• Sell me V1@grA
• Peddle smut
• Peddle anything else for that matter, including yummy narcotic medications

Thank you. Anonymous as you may be or not. I know I have several dearly loved spiders ensconced in their respective webs looking down from dark corners at me, and thank you. You know who you are.

*sigh* I hate 'embedded' and 'ensconced' now. Makes me think of Fox News Channel reporters. And that makes me think of Hannity and Colmes, which makes me think of Toby Keith and Rush Limbaugh and talk radio and politics and I work myself up into a bloody, frothy, angry mess and want to open fire. So I'm going to bed now.

I have, and probably always will be, a red-headed stepchild when it comes to my professional situation.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, it means I am handed around by managers who are essentially Luddites and are intimidated by technology. I am not a person, I am merely a tool used to fix something. I'm sort of a sock puppet that is placed back in the drawer and doesn't see the light of day until something once again breaks.

I came up with a quote during my cough syrup haze...

"It's a fine line we walk, you and I...fixing stupid things without making them feel stupid."

It's true. Do that in my line of work, and you're canned by upper management.


Well, now I have been handed off by all the Luddites to the main IT department. So I am now *actually* answering to my peers instead of someone who has no clue about my job.

Before, I was accused of being idle if I sat at my desk all day. What they couldn't work their minds around was that I fixed machines and servers REMOTELY. They wanted to see me get in the car and drive 3 or 4 hours to B.F. Egypt, and then fix it, get done around 6 at night, and drive home and never see my family.

Not so anymore. Our supervisor told us: "Do your job, I don't like structure and schedules. Just do your job." Roger that, thankee ma'am.

====================

I bought the first season of the series 'Lost'. I AM HOOKED!! ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY ADDICTED! If you've never seen it, start at the beginning...it's simply brilliant.

In other news, looting cops are being busted all around, and apparently people are realizing that Katrina did, in fact, damage Mississippi. New Orleans is flooded and will have to be stripped down and rebuilt. Mississippi is better off, you see. It destroyed our coastline to the point of there being nice, clean foundations for building homes and businesses. Emptiness is eerie in those situations, where you look left, then right, and all you see in an entire subdivision are concrete foundations from where houses used to be. Occasionally a doll stuck in some branches...someone forgotten couple's wedding picture. I have a hard time leaving those images at work.

It makes me flash back to a tornado that came through my area 18 years ago. We were walking in the woods, and I found someone's marriage liscense, their pictures, and their childrens' birth certificates. I tracked them down, knocked on their door, and silently handed the grown lady a bag full of pictures and books with their names on them. Me being 9 at the time somehow made it not feel as bad as it does now.

Oh well.

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I'm burning cd's to replace all my scratched/stolen cd's of favourite artists and then I'm heading home. Will I see Serenity tonight? Doubt it. :(
Maybe some other day this weekend.

On a side note. What do you do to a woman who abandons three children in your house, waits until they've been with you 5 years, and then moves in with you along with her two 'other' children? What do you do when she starts claiming your kids as hers when it comes time to receive some small financial benefit? What do you do when she lives there for free, makes messes, gobbles up water, electricity, and gas, and when she IS home only sleeps? What do you do when you leave her there asleep all day while her two small children roam your house unsupervised, like little animals, drinking toilet water that had urine in it?

What do you do when she brings home two cats with no consultation with you, the owner of your home? What do you do when she says she'll take care of them, but every day when you come home, they're outside in a cage, starving, and are soaking in their own fetid urine and feces they've wallowed in until it's a frothy slurry?

I grow more weary with each passing day. I wish I had a bottle of diazepam but alas I do not. Once again, oh well.

Well, it's come and gone. Kasabian and Oasis were simply magnificient. It's been 12 years since I had decided that I was going to see Oasis one day...and the day's passed now. Too sleepy to say much, but if you are in a position to go see an Oasis show while they're over here, by all means do so.

Boiling water is hot. Did you know that? I did..or so I thought. See, I left my deep freezer filled up to the edge with ice in the vain hopes that my frozen crap would stay good when the electricty was of third-world class. It didn't. So now I have a frozen 3'x3' block of red bloody ice and chicken parts.

Beer is the only friggin way to tolerate this, I swear.

I'm going to see Oasis, Kasabian, and Jet tomorrow night. So I probably won't post any tomorrow. Not that anyone is reading this anyway.

Satisfaction in life is derived from knowing that your 10 year old son doesn't like 50-Cent, eminem, or God forbid, Linkin Park. No, your kid likes what you like.

My kid took my Ramones cd's and AC/DC cd's on the road with him and rocked out. It's wonderful, man. He even got his own guitar now. He wants to go with his dad to see the Drive-by Truckers (Go to their site!), but there's that problem of being ten and not being able to get into bars just yet.

Anyway, music is good people. New York Dolls, Blondie, the Ramones, Oasis, the Beatles, hell, the Carter Family. Listen to some. It'll cure your ills and make life seem a little more bearable. If Osama bin-Laden would listen to some honest punk rock or bluegrass, I think he'd turn his ways around.

More photos of dead people in New Orleans, la la la etc. I'm getting sick of hurricane season. I can only hope that next year this crap will not be as bad.

Well, I guess it's time to start something else. My Diaryland.com diary being gone, I was rather inspired by RSF's cyber-dissident guide about blogging where it's not exactly legal to do so. Me, being the fat American oaf I am, am not fully taking advantage of this medium.

This is, of course, not to say that I have an interesting life. I don't, actually. But occasionally weird, creepy, or downright cool things happen. Things that deserve their own space, or pictures that deserve to be shown to the world. That being said, I am a Katrina survivor. Three weeks without electricity, two days without water, and fighting crowds for 6 hours at a time to get a trickle of gasoline. Sitting in lines at the local home improvement store in the vain hopes of getting a generator to run a fan or a TV to see what exactly the hell was happing around me.

I got the generator, but when I finally cranked up the TV, the only station available to me at the time was showing something that wasn't exactly informative. Yep. Katie Couric trading makeup tips with someone. "Ok," I thought to myself, "maybe later they'll show us where to get some supplies." I cranked it up again, spending gasoline, mind you, and it was LIVE WITH REGIS AND KELLY. I was ready to shoot someone.

The voices in the dark streets, the whispers in my front yard of God-knows-who. I didn't know if we were going to live through it. And then, a week into it, Popeye's chicken opened. It was mild and not spicy, but I could not be choosy. After a week of Vienna sausages and hot bottled water, I didn't complain at all. The next day, we began another round of canned slop with lukewarm water.

I had my first cold beer since the storm last week, and it was everything I had hopes for. Enough talk, on to the pictures.



My front yard could be confused with a lake. I stood out on the porch during the worst part. The tornado sirens were buzzing all through the city. Paranoid freaks like me will recall that one day this could also signify an air-raid warning, but we'll just worry about the TWELVE (12) tornadoes that touched down in my county. Notice the floating debris and the sticks jammed into the ground. Those sticks were driven a foot and a half in the ground!

This is my back yard afterwards. Note that the trees are touching my house, but aren't on TOP of my house. I was actually QUITE fortunate, considering what my parents and neighbours looked like.

This is what my parents' old van looked like. They didn't use it much, so it only had the bare minimum insurance. We used it to go on vacations and to football games in the fall months. Obviously, it won't be doing much of anything anymore.

All in all, I am glad we're alive. The response from the government was slow, but nowhere as near as bad as some Louisiana government officals would lead the world to believe. New Orleans is a cesspool of feces, bodies, and filth due to stupidity, plain and simple. To end, I am going to post a few pictures from the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

I have no idea why this is here, considering it's on the side of the highway and all.

This boat was found all fouled up. It was found in waters where a boat in similar conditions was hauled up and found to have a group of 12 Vietnamese fishermen aboard. Apparently they died huddled together on their boat, the 0nly home a lot of these guys ever really know. It's really sad to think about. This may actually be the boat, but since I didn't check my facts, I won't say. So be sad and unsure of it, just like I am. :(

I like this picture of what's left of the famed Beavoir home, which at one point was the "White House" of the Confederacy and home of its only president, Jefferson Davis. The sign is hilarious and reflects the dark sense of humour these coastal people have developed over the years. They painted this while there were coffins lying on the ground. The storm surge forced them out of their tombs and left them strewn about.