There was a spider on my knee. Before I really knew it, it was dead and in the garbage can (conveniently situated to the left of my left leg) and my left knee was ringing from the sting of my strike. The strike beautifully killed the spider and flung his body into the garbage can in one motion. Kinda funny how I was still sitting there wondering what was happening, and feeling a little pulse of adrenaline. Weird how our bodies react to certain things.

I like having my windows open. Wide, wide open. I can hear the birds in the hills. The rattle of the cars and trucks as they pass. And I can smell the freshness of the cut grass on the field across the street. And, as I just witnessed, there is also the benefit of being able to make people fifty feet away on the other side of the street jump when I hawk up phlegm.

Yes. It's such a great letter, isn't it? Why don't you just fill in what is stands for? Wait, they tell you to do that! Oh those crazy Asians!

I was up with the sunrise this morning. I woke up, and drew the curtains back. Two minutes later, the sun shone into the room. First time that's happened in a while... Especially for a saturday.

Well, the fever broke completely last night, but I still have all the nasty effects of broncitis and whatnot...

[emphasis is mine]

I love computers when...

...you see a internet news article on a few hundred more riaa lawsuits and your first thought is: "oh, I forgot to startup my file sharing program this morning, damn..."

I've always thought that the reason I can no longer play computer games (except for every once in a blue moon, normally I just lose interest too fast these days) was that I had started doing computers for a living. I figured it was that that broke me of the habit that formerly inclined me to spend many hours on many consecuitive days staring at a crt.

But now I am beginning to wonder if maybe it was something a little different.

When I was dying of pneumonia in the Spring of '01 (one of the doctors thought that I may have TB, due to the quantity of blood I was coughing up, and the quantity of stuff in my lungs), I lived a miserable life. I was in a small dorm room, at a small college. People would go to McDonald's on wednesday and pick me up thirty of the $0.39 cheeseburgers. I would then refrigerate these, and live off them primarily, as they were easy to eat and whatnot... And the way that I kept alive was be throwing my soul into a computer game, and forgetting about and becoming numb to all the pain and agony that my body was going through.

So maybe computer games don't work for me because the act itself of projecting my mind into something and out of my body is a reminder of my body's pain at that time.

Just a theory... I have also used "computer game therapy" to pull myself out of a few sinus infections or head colds since then, and it works pretty well, cause the good games anyways pull you out of your body and therefore your suffering pretty well...

Sorry folks, I've been too sick to blog for four days now. This is the first day where I've gotten out of bed... 102-104 fever, chills like the dickens, aching in the bones,coughing up green gunk, the works. And more stuff. Anyways, so wish me well: I have travel-plans for this next (!) week, and this sickness was definately a PPS (post-party-syndrome) sickness, so I may have to revise some of those plans...Ugh...

Well, until next time.

(I'm almost scared to blog while feverish. My mind is coming up with some crazy things when its like this.)

I just changed the oil on my car, as well as changing a few key components in the electrical system.

I had left this electromagnetic switch in there, and it was slowly, constantly draining the battery anytime someone left the key switch on. Which was like every other day.

So I have been jumpstarting my car every other day.

And on the odd days that I don't have to jumpstart it, the slow leak in the front left tire has drained it completely.

So I'm either inflating a tire or jumpstarting the car or both anytime i want to use it. It's enough to make someone want to walk everywhere, or alternatively, go nowhere.

But I believe that some small things that enforce patience should be built into all of our lives. As long as they make us stronger but don't make us snap.

Anyways, the oil. As a testament to my incapacitated (due to illness) mental state, I made the biggest mess that was possible.

"Oh, I know, I'll pour gallons of oil into this already half-full quart can. That will go over (pun intended) well."

"Oh, let's spill oil all over the headers. And the exhaust manifold. How about over the entire engine block? Yeah."

You get the picture...

I selling something on ebay.

This time I am not testing any real theories, though I was tempted to test the one that says "People pay more than retail on ebay." Because it's true, they do. What ebay offers is selection. Ease of something...

[found 20040617, written scrawled in red pen on a scrap of toilet paper]

[the toilet paper was subsequently used as a kleenex]

I was just told that I look like an orphan.

It's the dirty, oil-stained shirt, with the ragged, torn, faded shirt on top of it, and the inside-out-watch-cap, as well as the general scruffiness that comes from not shaving in four days.

3 browsers, 3 different web pages. When it's just supposed to be one web page. That means that two of those are WRONG.

Why, oh, and I cry unto the heavens, must it be this way?

My pleas go unanswered except: IE is not standards-compliant.

So when you code for Opera, you have a wonderful website...that crashes and burns under MS.

And don't even get me started on Mozilla. I love Firefox, but...

There's nothing quite like staying home while sick, and drinking mate while listening to the Grateful Dead and coding PHP.

Wait, that sounds like what I do every day!

I keep having repeat dreams. The last two nights I have dreamed a amazing, clear, and protracted dream. Then, as soon as it was over, it started again. The second tiem was the same, but I was more relaxed, because I knew what was going to happen.

I don't remember so much now about my dream of last night, because it has faded since I got up, but it involved blood, a huge firefight, good guys and bad guys, and automatic weapons. The good guys won.

The most vivid scene I remember was when the bad guys made their last attack, and courageously, without thought to their own personal safety (just for that of their friends and those under fire), the last group of good guys attacked with overwhelming force. The bad guys were destroyed in a haze of smoke and pulverized blood.

Wake up world, and do something about the situation in the Sudan. Yes, UN, that includes you.

Or does the US need to go in on its own?

Perhaps we do.

Well, I went from not drinking at all for six weeks to two weeks of glorious indulgence.

Now I am going to take a hiatus again, and get back in shape. I am remembering thos glorious six weeks for feeling good in the mornings.

It seems that I have a soft spot for budweiser, but it certainly doesn't mince its feelings about anyone.

RR and I stayed up late playing each other at a mind-numbingly-addictive game that comes standard on SuSE. Frozen Bubble. Of course, the Rusty Nails didn't do wonders for our computing ability, but it certainly up'ed the comic level of the threats and taunts being exchanged.

I am sitting here with a 7-inch scar on my back, a 1-inch gash in my hand, a whistful smile on my face, and the memory of two of the most wonderful weeks of my life.

I thank God for this blessed time that we have had, and I wonder how things can be so good. I look ahead and I see times of trial, sacrifice and suffering -- but during those times I will look back and remember these two weeks of bliss and peace.

I have 5 minutes remaining on my cell phone for this billing cycle.

I have six days left in this billing.

Can I do it?!?

Only time will tell!

Oh blessed hour of free-airtime, swiftly heed my call! Oh blessed weekend-of-limitless-microwaves, enrich me with thy lingering!

Um, er, ok.

The real question here is What makes these people think that they can change their gender? by surgery or hormone therapy?

WTF? They are not changing their gender anymore than someone who surgically attaches a tail and begins to walk on all-fours has become a lion.

Gender is not one of ther things that you choose for yourself. Much like you did not choose to be born, or to be given life in your mother's womb.

It is, however, one of the things you can lie about. So I guess it's no surprise that people do...

Just disappointing and disgusting and pitiable...

Wow. Had a killer weekend, partying with a stellar crew.

More later.

I like to use the phrase "But seriously" to mean anything but.

Wow, I learned two new things today.

[1] people still use Yahoo search

[2] Equivocal Catharsis comes up twice on the first page of Yahoo when searching for "sexual catharsis."

I think my work here is done.

*smokes a cigarette*

Ain't that one of life's profundities: we have to watch what we can't have rise and devop and mature and ripen, until finally, perhaps, if we live that long, we may pick the blossom from the rose.

Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

For those of you using the excellant Firefox [mozilla] browser, install the Tabbrowser Preferences extension. This makes it operate like other tabbed browsers, allowing you to change the settings so that each new window opens up in a new tab, either foreground or background.

I just looked through a computer magazine from a major online retailer and noticed a lack of something:

There was not a CRT in the whole blessed thing. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

So, this morning I check my bank account online. It's in the red. Negative sixty bucks! Guess I forgot about the $87 tab at the Heart and Crown in Ottawa.

So, I exit my office, stroll down the sunny San Anselmo street to the local Bank of America. Where I deposit my check that I just received for services rendered by providing email accounts via my email server at AgentIntellect.com. This, together with a little of the cash paid back to me by the fellow car renters in New York brings the balance up. When I check it again, back in my office, not seven minutes after depositing the stash, my online bank balance shows a positive $27. That's in the black, my friends.

...for those of you who seldom visit the onion...

So let me get this straight...

Moxie gets PAID by Kerry campaigners to SCATHINGLY RANT about him.

The world is not fair! Not fair!

The Nefarious Punster over at All Blogged Down is going all blog-crazy over there, living up to his title! He has a wonderful collection of RR quotes as well. Check it out!

Ok, so I'm back from the East Coast. It 'twas a great trip, albeit a whirlwind. Here a few highlight quotes, more to come later:

Well folks, I'm heading out east, and then up to canada. I imagine blogging will be somewhat sporadic over the next few days, as I have not implemented my cell-phone-to-blog software yet. Never fear. Um, yeah! Hang tight! Be good! I will return! Wish me luck! Yeah! YEAH! WHOOOEEE!

It's Official. I no longer have a "room" in my house. I have an Electrical Field.

So I thought it appropriate and even necessary to label it as such, in case some hapless person wandered in and electrocuted themselves. In fact, I was worried about blind people in particular. So, a many, many years ago, I swiped a sign from a school where we were participating in ACADEC [academic decathalon]. Typical kids-who-are-supposed-to-be-model-students-pulling-teenage-pranks stuff. Anyways, here's the sign, because this site is largely a product of my "Electrical Field," as it was called.



The running joke is that after I "stole" the sign, the local newspaper ran a story like this one:

Yikes, I just had one of those days where you go to work, come home, and then eat the lunch you left by the computer, after consuming heaping plates of dinner.

Yes, so I starved all day at work, and then ate and ate at the end of the day. And suddenly, I'm sleepy as hell.

I'd have a nice beer to cap it off and go to bed, but I have to pickup my brother at the airport in two hours. Damn!

I dunno about you, but I think the bigger shock for me is that THERE EXISTS A GROUP NAMED "FROGWATCH," and it's NOT CONCERNED WITH THE FRENCH!!! Now THAT would be cool! Of course, then it wouldn't be concerned with anything nearly as dangerous as these killers!

Thanks to Acidman

The following is a selection of topics and such from my workdesk selected at random to impress my techy-readers, make my non-tecky readers scratch their heads (or posterior regions, if they're my redneck readers), and to re-assert my Alpha-Geek (tm) status.

(That's only a small and relatively unimpressive selection, but I just lost interest in this whole thing... hee hee...)

But to top it all off, while in the office, I am listening to my home computer play mp3s via a SSH-encrypted tunnel and a Remote Desktop (RDP) connection. Woweee!

In non-technical language, it means that I have complete access to my entire library of music at home, as well as being able to tap into my calendar, data, etc, all encrypted, secure, and accessible from anywhere. Nice.

There, I see the Crown of Much Geekiness (tm) descending. My work here is done, methinks, at least for now.

Um. Seriously, guys, c'mon...

This is just a little ridiculous, don't you think?

And, no, I'm not drooling over it. Yeesh. Yeck.

The domain of The Mountain Man (tm) and the domain of The Geek(tm) are not supposed to overlap. Although, mountain men don't actually carry swiss army knives, either...

Speaking of timeless characters, if you haven't see Ghost Dog yet, go watch it.

While it is weird and quirky, it also has some of the most timeless characters ever...

The Shipbuilder, the Ice Cream Man, Ghost Dog himself, etc...

Just finished reading A Canticle for Leibowitz again last night. I had forgotten how good it was. Some of the images and the characters are of the timeless variety that stick in your mind forever. I was also (pleasantly) surprised by how fast I can still read several hundred pages. I thought I was losing that ability -- now I realize that it's highly conditional based on the level of interest in the subject matter.

Rule: The sum total of the hair in the universe stays constant.

I.e., if you shave off your goatee, some swinger in East India sprouts a Fu Man Chu.

So remember, what you do with your hair has international consquences.

This is kindof like the laws concerning the conservation of energy and matter and so on.

Thanks to Instapundit.

(Thanks to Capitalist Lion for the link)

I've met a few of these. That's all I'm going to say right now, though mayber, just maybe, if you catch me at the right time, and pro-offer the right drink, I may say more.

Thanks to Acidman.

If you have any understanding of honor, if you have any understanding of self-sacrifice, patriotism, loyalty, or brotherhood...

Anyways, this made me cry.

And I'm proud of it.

I'm proud of Cpl. Dunham, God rest his soul.

Did you know that goat milk is naturally homogenized?

I have officially reinstated myself has the local food scrounger. The dude who eats all the leftovers from the fridge.

I like to think that I am doing a great service for householdkind, but perhaps it is just laziness or the lack of a drive to "fix" a meal.

A bit of cheese here, some old oatmeal here, a cold steak halved and thrown into the two last tortillas, together with some ground turkey meat -- virtually all of my meals today have been scrounges.

Every house needs one, I suppose.

If you're not aware of Cox and Forkum, it's time you were.

via sharp marbles

I just saw the bus to heaven.

No, seriously. I was out walking, and this old, chromed bus came steaming up the road.

I glanced up at the sign above the cab to see where it was heading. It said HEAVEN.

And it was going past me, so I was going the wrong way.

I stopped and watched it go by, and it was going ratherly slowly, but making a regular howl of a noise. I thought several times about running and catching up with it. A stylized sun was painted on the back, all Azteca-style.

I stared after it until the droning howl became a whine and eventually the sound faded into the ambient noise of the cool May evening.

I missed the bus.

Then I trudged on, with a burst of hope brought on by the sudden realization that the way to heaven was to trudge on. At least for us poor bastards who aren't on that bus.

Then on the way home I was stalked. Ok, not really, but an ominious figure dressed pretty much in black with arms askew made ominious footstep noises behind me most of the way back. But she was just a innocent, listening to her headphones and keeping a safe distance. She will probably go home and blog about the ominious dude in the leather jacket who was walking curiously slow in front of her, and who kept suspiciously turning around.

Next stop, Republica...

via newsfeed.

They call this the Information Age. Perhaps they were not thinking too clearly when they coined that phrase. Perhaps they should be calling it the "Misinformation" Age instead. Certainly the dissemination of information has never been easier in past times, but the distribution of wrong -- either intentionally wrong or accidentally wrong -- information is the plague and the curse, the shadow that comes along with this blessing.

It rained last night, and when I stepped outside to dumb my used tea grounds, it smelt wonderfully like fresh-cut grass. The sun made my eyes blink involuntarily.

Interestingly enough, my blog now responds seventh on google for "php redirect syntax," and sixth for "mechanic wiper schema."

And, even weirer, that "php redirect syntax" search was done on "Google - Viet Nam."

from a dream last night:

I had five (5) regularly-scheduled appointments today.

That's after weeks of sitting around on my butt.

Wow. I'm going to bed.

(And if you average all the early and late time out, I was exactly on time to every one of them!)

That's a Navy Cross, boys and girls.

Thanks to Seldom Sober,
Thanks to Bill INDC.

This makes me mad.

And I have gained a new respect for little green footballs after reading this. Which everyone shold read, regardless of whether they are politically active, or party-happy, or whatever. Chris over at Dangerous Logic directed me to it. Thanks.

Call me what you will, but this gives me the warm fuzzies...

Hit up the listening post for a fellow Volvo 240 Wagon lover.

I am tempted to buy another one ofthese beauties on ebay RIGHT NOW! Except that it's in connecticut. Er, connecticut? CONNECT-ICUT? Huh?

This s'morning, when I rolled out of bed, a song was running through my head... So I grabbed my gee-tar [which was a convenient 4 feet away] and belted it out...

Here it is, with the proper subtext, for your reading pleasure...

Ok... 12:45 pm.



If getting out of bed counts...


I quit three years ago, dude.



Well, Birkenstocks.



How about three:
College. Women. Booze.

Make that two: College Women. And booze.

Or maybe it's just one: College women booze. Specifically buying college women booze. Hmm.



Hey, when did things go wrong? Things are great, man!

So then I played some more cheery songs and started the day...

Anyways, I can still...

This is just too good to pass up, and too copyrighted to syndicate.

Check it, one time...

Um, does that apply to bloggers, too? Yikes...

Life ever do this to you?

Hmm.

Nature, Society, and Religion have dictated, for thousands of years, that the proper way for the human race to raise children is to take a male and a female, establish a bond of love and commitment between them, ratify that bond with sex, the physical manifestation of their love contract, which actually produces the children, and then to actually raise the children within the context of the same love in which they were conceived.

This is the path to happiness. This path necessarily involves suffering, and the surrendering of one's own desires and will for the common good of the marriage. Given the selfish nature of just about every man [myself included] and woman it is no wonder that history has shown many, many deviations from this simple path, and consequently, many, many miserable people. But that only goes to show the way more clearly.

Marriage is this contract, this bond of love, between man and woman. The formal ceremony is the celebration of the decision that the man and woman have made to give their lives to each other, and to their potential children.

Those who seek to tear down marriage as an institution will have to work much, much harder than they already have if they wish to succeed. Because they simply don't have a leg to stand on. They do not have a cohenrent definition of marriage. They bankrupt it completely. In order to defend marriage as a procereative union, you have to criticize unions that work explicitly to prevent procreation. Infertile couples, older couples, etc do not try to remove the procreative aspect of their union. It simply vanishes as a course of natural events, and there is nothing wrong with this. It is the couples that explicitly remove procreation from their union that err. Those who use contraception, those who surgically tamper with their reproductive faculties, those who join themselves in a union that cannot be fruitful, by definition are the ones who err in this fashion.

The basic principle that causes the errors we see is a certain mentality, and that is what we must work to change. In our selfish day and age [and has man had any other kind?], we belive that we are the ones who decide when life begins and when it ends. Not in the abstract sense, but in the real, down to earth sense of creating babies and killing elderlies. We must relinquish what we have grasped with our own selfish paws. We are not to take matters of life and death into our own hands. If those matters are thrust into our hands, and we are forced to act, as in wartime, we must always bear in mind that we are not acting on our own authority, but as stewards, placed in charge by the Creator Himself.

It does not, therefore, surprise me that the advocates of gay marriage simply keep themselves occupied with feelings-based ad hominem attacks. They revert to these, because logic and rational thought easily trump their vain arguments.

Marriage is the contract between the male and female as seen through society's eyes. It is the bond that establishes a firm, stable ground for people to raise up firm, stable children, and it is what helps create a firm, stable society.

In the Christian ceremony, the Sacrament of Marriage is performed between the two people, and the Church is a witness to this bond, before man and before God. Society further accepts the bond and contract as its fundamental building block. Marriage, and the family created by it, is the basis of all civilized cuture. Now society seems to be attacking marriage and the family wholeheartedly: we must defend marriage from those who seek to destory it. By defending marriage, we defend society and civilization, and all that is good and all that causes happiness in this human life.

In response to the "Jimmy Massey" situation:

It seems that every time I venture into the lovely city of San Francisco, it seems to me that a Demonized Squad of Vicious and Dirty Steet Cleaning Denziens are assigned to my vehicle.

Why do I think this?

Because I have gotten three parking tickets. Recently.

And they all seem to be for street cleaning.

I walk down the street to my car, still congratualting myself on the dynamite find of last night: a parking spot, complete with accomplice cars, no "No Parking" signs -- the ideal spot.

Then I see the telltale paper, wedged under my front left wiper. I wonder if I should perhaps remove the wipers, and smooth the entire surface of the car, leaving no place for these tormenters to leave their calling cards.

I look around, up and down the street. No other cars have tickets. I look at the ticket itself. The offense? I blocked the Street Cleaning operations that were scheduled to take place.

But what about the other cars? Did they only wish to clean the fifty-two some-odd square feet beneath MY car? What about the rest of the bloody street?!

And then I see it. There is a demonic squad that follows me around, determined to clean the very street that my car occupies, and that this squad operates on an ad hoc basis, every time my car crosses the city line. Either that or my car is SO DIRTY that it actually pollutes the street beneath it so much that the city has ruled it a health threat, and has appointed a special committee to clean up after me.

Either way, I have also discovered a Blessed Angelic Defender, who [frequently, now] changes the license plates on my car, so as to avoid the fees. Twice now, in three or four tickets, the leaders of the evil squad have misread my plates, mistaking a "N" for a "M" or some such piddling mistake.

And so the spiritual battle revolves around my vehicle...

Well, back from surgery.

It was pretty easy, really. I mean, aside from hauling myself out of the bathtub, sticking that morphine in and... just kidding.

The doctor was not a maniacal genius! The whole thing was cake!

My favorite part was when the anesthesiologist [and no, i did not spell that correctly the first time] said he was going to turn on the juice.

I said okay, and then the walls and the room turned to liquid. Zzzst.

"You should already feel it," He said, nicely.

I nodded.

Then I woke up.

So there ya have it.

In the two-and-a-half weeks during which we had all the windows in the entire house redone, airborne vermin by the myriads have buzzed into our humble little abode.

And I thought that I was good at hunting the nasty little buggers before.

Since that fateful day, I have become a veritable master [not to toot my own horn] of the one-handed-grabbing-catch-and-squish move. These little mosquitoes, gnats, and flies have now been put into their place.

Early on I enlisted the aid of certain gallonippers, or "Mosquito Hawks" as some of the unwashed masses refer to them, but now, with the lack of prey, those brave soliers have had to forge on ahead -- to the outside.

There are many styles and methods, different and opposing schools of thought and camps all concerning the proper way to become an Anti-Air Aficionado. At least as regards the insect aggressors. And this is a just war, by the way. We've found the legendary just war.

Of course, Noah could have just swatted the infernal pair [to paraphrase my father], but [to paraphrase myself] then it wouldn't be nearly as much fun!

Whether it be the two-handed-clap, the flinging-of-the-birkenstock, the one-