ICH - DN - SF, a day in San Jose: Part One of San Fran, Oh Man!

Didn't I say something about a friendlier post up on this blog what should have been 2-days ago? Yeah, well it didn't happen, did it? Today, it happens!

The last two weeks of June, my family had planned to go to San Francisco for a week, starting Monday, June 22. We were there technically longer than the average work week by a day, so I'm going to round-up and say two-weeks. Earlier Monday morning, June 22, 4 a.m., I am awoken and told to get around. I had everything ready, I even took a shower the night before - all I needed by this point was my phone charger, iPod, iPod car-charger, and to grab my carry-on and luggage packed a night before.

Our flight out of Wichita to Denver was sometime around 6:45 (I'm not getting into specifics; this early in the morning, I'm not running on much, so I'm dragging ass, and am being told where to walk) We're flying Frontier Airlines on a small, twin-propeller-engined plane no bigger than a city bus. With a snow leopard on the tail; I perceived the feline as a bobcat because of its pointed-ears and pleased-with-itself-demeanor. The saving grace of that experience was the view from the window, and the out-of-this-world attractive hostesses we had pacing the aisles. I wanted to get friendly with them.

We land in Denver an hour and a half later, receiving our luggage from the belly of the plane, and soaking in the 65 degree temperature of the Rockies. Owen lingered on the plane, for he had folded an Origami elephant and dragon for the flight attendants. And he probably wanted them to touch his mustache.

Our next flight was American Airlines, a larger plane, and a longer flight to San Francisco. Before boarding, I was hunting a sports apparel shop. I was going to California; what a place! But I knew I wouldn't find too many Denver Nuggets fans in the area, but I would find a shit-load of Lakers fans in the vicinity. And since the two teams are rivals, I wanted a Denver Nuggets hat. Unforeseen was the SF Giants vs. Colorado Rockies game the night before; I rarely watch baseball, and I don't ever keep up with the scheduling of games. I was informed on the flight to San Francisco that the Giants had been crushed by the Rockies. It would've pissed more people off had I worn my Rockies hat. There was DirectTV service on the plane, and I watched Sports Center for the most of it, flipping to Mickelson's runner-up in the U.S. Open, losing to Lucas Glover. I sat by a cute baby who dropped his toys all the time. I retrieved his toys to be courteous. The young parents reminded me of a few people in my life. That flight was delayed for a short while because of maintenance work on one of the air-conditioning units, but still great.

We got in to San Fran around 11:40 a.m., got our rental car and was on our way to San Jose by close to around 12:15-12:30.

San Jose has its history. One of its most interesting residents was Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, the producers of the rifle that won the West. The south during the Civil War used many models of the Winchester rifle, so needless-to-say, they were well off, and Sarah was left with more money than she knew what to do with. On the advisement of a fortune teller, she was told she would be haunted by the ghosts of the men who died by the Winchester rifle, and further, she should move out west. She travelled from Connecticut to San Jose, California, and began construction on a extraordinary mansion, now known as the Winchester Mystery House. Thinking she could allude the ghosts from harming her, she drafted a unique style for her house. One with blue prints insisting some rooms have secret hiding places, as well as trap doors and the most interesting, a room with five entrances, but one exit. Once the doors shut behind you, you were locked in to the room, and a secret door hidden in the wall-panelling was your only exit. There were stairs that led to ceilings, doors in the ceiling, windows - large-ass bay windows...in the ceiling, that could open if you chose to open a ceiling glass-door; no reasoning behind it. PICTURES!

This is a staircase that leads to nowhere, well, except for a ceiling. Weird shit like this was frequent.





This is a video of us walking the easy-risers. Did anybody spot Owen in the video? If you did, you receive nothing. Those steps were maybe an inch-to-2 inches apart, and as many as we trekked in that video, we were only deposited on to the second floor of the home. Other points of interest were:


An example of these easy-riser stairs; my pops was in front of me, and there's my leg.




One of many organs she had in the house. A grand organ is located towards the center of the house, and is one of the last stops of the tour. The room the grand organ is located in also houses a magnificent silver chandelier, originally holding 12 candlesticks. Being so unique as she was, 12 wasn't enough, and she had the manufacturers add a 13th candle-holder. 13, a number she used adamantly in her designs for the house.




Here's the bed she died in. Gross.




This is one of many botany areas, and not a greenhouse. She loved plants. And windows. Within this room was a sprinkler system, plus a hose which she'd use or whoever was doing the actual work, and all the water that didn't make it to the plants drained out through the floor, and was reused on the plants outside. What a conservationist ahead of her time!




















Sarah Winchester was very superstitious. Point in question. The infamous "Door-To-Nowhere" in the next shot.



Her acreage, which once consisted of pear, prune, and grapefruit orchards, was named Llanada Villa, with 13 palm trees lining the driveway up to the mansion. Those orchards don't exist anymore, neither the palm trees. The mansion was named Llanada Villa because Sarah Winchester knew 3-4 languages other than English, including Spanish. Everyone I've ever met who is fluent in Spanish have to somehow gloat the fact that they know Spanish, and Sarah Winchester was no different naming her estate the way she did. San Jose is heavily Mexican.


"Ah, you got any gum!?"

This should have been a living-statue.


Spiderweb pattern in the glass of some of the windows. She would've been pretty emo-goth in our time.





Here is a scaled-down replica of the house made of candy! No, it wasn't made of candy. I don't know what it was made out of; cereal? Here's the next shot of the replica.


I used my museum shot-setting to get this picture without all the glare. This was a part of the tour called the product museum. The Winchester Company, along with their line of fine fire arms, also developed and furbished flashlights, lamps, utensils, batteries, knives, and other household wares that I won't get specific with. I have more pictures of the inside of the Winchester Mystery House, but I'm not uploading them.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon around the premises before leaving for our condo at Angel's Camp, in Angel's Fire, CA. The drive from San Jose to Angel's Fire was roughly 120 miles, or 2 hours. It took us at least 3 or even 4, and that's because we ate as well as had a lovely and scary mountain excursion right after sunset. Angel's Fire to Angel's Camp to our condo is just about 20 minutes. It was 10 p.m. when we were settled in our condo.

The drive to Angel's Camp took us through pear and possibly pecan orchards, not to mention the many vineyards we passed, some erected on the hillside to allow the cold air from the coast to sweep through and chill the berries. The breathtaking scenery was further heightened due to it being sunset. Pictures of these beautiful landscapes don't exist on my camera.

Boy was I ready to sleep when we arrived at the condo! The next day would see us driving an hour to Yosemite to view the wonderful misty waterfalls of that National Park, as well as a bear sighting. This day also held my encounter with El Capitan. Please join me again for part 2!

Hasta Luego!

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Editor's Note: Download the video to see it much more clearer. Those dark areas are non-existent when I view it on my PC, and on the camera as well.

Pet-Peeved

If a certain library were to offer you free use of 22 computers set up in a small corner of their 2nd floor landing, would you change one computer's account name to read your own, save all your researched information in a folder labeled your name, or add programming you want to utilize on to the hard drive of the computer you are on? Of course you wouldn't! Why should the library grant you permission to do that? They didn't set up 22 computers for you to treat as your own - they are possessions of the library, and you are there to use the computer for research, social websites, and emailing alone.

Did you put money down for that computer? It would be like going to your favorite restaurant and once you receive the menu, you opt out of that, and place on the table a bag of mini tacos, and you order your waiter to deep-fat fry those sons of bitches to a golden brown and that's what you'll have. Using the restaurants own property, their cookers in the kitchen, to get what you want, well, that's not going to happen! Don't expect it to!

Damn'it to hell! I had a spat with a patron today, and the argument ended with me saying: "We don't allow Limewire or any other site used to pirate music, movies, or pictures on our computers. That software is illegal, pirating copyright material is against the law, and if caught, we could be fined. It's not hard to get caught. Most ISP's frown upon such action, and we could lose our internet capabilities in this department if caught. So we don't allow it. Now, if you were to go out to Best Buy, Walmart, any place that sells computers, and you bought your own PC, do whatever floats your boat! That's your property. But while you are in here, you'll follow our rules. I should kick you out indefinitely for loading Limewire on the computer we have graciously lent out to you. That's not your computer! When did you start thinking you could change our settings on OUR computers? Oh, is buying your own computer too expensive!? Then you should be thanking your public library for allowing you a place like this, not abusing your privilege. What's the matter with you!?"

Every once and awhile you run into those such assholes who think we somehow owe them something, whether its through the tiring lines, "But I pay taxes to keep your doors open!" What a crock of shit! Your tax money is maybe going towards six fans that move the hot, stinky air around in the lab, or part of the budget money we use to keep our printers furnished. Maybe your hard earned money went to pay for the exterminators who had to spray for fleas in the lab - we had FUCKING FLEAS! I went home itchy!

Good point, asshat, let's just save what money we do get to provide computers for you, by moving them all down to the basement so you aren't allowed access to them. We could sell them off to employees and forget the general public; get rid of the lab altogether. Does your mother sew? Boom, have your mother sew that! Man, was I pissed off; what ignorance!

A more friendlier post will be up here tomorrow. One with pictures; do you like pictures!? And correspondance! I'm still making progress on the book. Hey, what excitement, huh!? A book!?! Stay tuned!

Charlie Brown Thermos

My family is one of those units that travels every summer, usually planning some extravagant trip, in fact, the same time each year, the last week-to-2 weeks of June. I was fortunate enough to be able to travel along with them to San Francisco. I'll have pictures up at a later time for your eyes to wonder at.

I'm also thinking of disabling the RSS link I have up on my Facebook. It relays a copy of my posts to my Facebook, so friends of mine can read my posts there instead of here. Convenient, but also a nuisance - if you wanna read my shit, come to Blogger. But that remains a thought and not yet an action.

Caught Transformers 2 last night with a group of friends. Had a blast. I left without saying goodbye. I think I left without saying goodbye. I was driving down 11th, and thought, "Did I say goodbye, or anything along the lines of it was great seeing you all again, we should do this more often?" No, I don't remember doing that. I remember acting a tad socially awkward, the result of a complete mind-fuck seeing Traci and Steven for the first time in like 8 months! Christ be the Jesus! I was beginning to think I was uncool.

Today, for me anyway, is NEW COMIC BOOK DAY!!! I religiously read Cable and am currently following the Dark Reign story arc, as well as periodically re-reading The Messiah Complex. Geek. Math-elite. Wearer of suspenders. Actually, I'm none of these things. I don't even label myself geeky. I'm tech-savvy, but I can't do fucking math; I barely made it through my third attempt at Intermediary Algebra in college! I once had to write a newspaper article about some peoples in the dorms who hated being called nerds - they were associated with the Tech Department in Lochman Hall - and even the department heads would call them computer nerds and the article dealt with their discrimination; one of those unread columns for the Student Life section. I could have done so much more with it, but who would've wanted to? It was malarkey, a group of gamer college kids pissed that others around campus referred to them as nerds when they wanted to be called geeks. I didn't give a shit! In fact, to spite them, I could see people who had read the article going up to the Tech Department and yelling in their faces, "You're ALL A BUNCH OF NERDS! NNNEEEERRRDDDSSS!" Come to think of it, it was The Collegians misdoing: we had called them nerds in a previous article. HA!

Needless to say, I realized the article was a fun, easy assignment for the week, but I still found it bothersome to locate and talk with the tech-department, whether they were out on some mission to stop a terrorist from blowing up the sun, or setting the security much higher on the library computers because of an influx of porn. Plus, I never found that plain-of-genius I usually land upon when in a state-of-writing - there was nothing humorous about that article, and it should have been a breeze. I remember handing in that article to Todd, and him and Mr. M had this broad smirk on their faces waiting for this article to turn them inside-out and melt their skulls, and then they read it and they most likely sat in silence, Todd finally breaking that silence by saying, "Could you believe that crap Austin handed in for this week. That makes four terrible articles in a row. You know what happens if he does it again," and under the table, he cocks a gun. Just another reason why I got out of the biz. I guess you could say I was a bit jealous of the fact that most writers for that paper could take any topic and churn out a solid piece of journalism and I always botched it. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, the more you read on the more a feeling of dread overwhelmed your senses.

This Week's Bargain Bag of Bullocks

Not much in the form of a post, but a post all the same. Talked to my co-worker who makes our schedules about getting some time off in July. Hopefully it happens, she threatened it wouldn't. I don't give a shit all the same.

A big storm hit Sunday. Saw it roll in toward dusk with swirling cloud cover. Then it poured. The wind picked up soon after that. The rain got thicker, choking; you can drown in such weather. I couldn't see the house across the street. The thunder was like a loaded bowling alley, and each starter at each lane rolled their balls down the lane to crashed into the pins one by one. And then repeat. It quieted down twenty minutes later. The storm got sluggish trying to build momentum on expired fuel tanks. By the thirty minute-mark it was over. Sorry, no pictures.

South Hutch got a wind drop, or wind-bomb from the sound of things. I'll repeat how it was explained to me. Think of a water balloon dropping from out of the sky and as it impacts, the water explodes out. Now replace the word water with wind, and get rid of balloon. That's what happened. Once the wind current hit land, it branched out like nuclear fallout. Collins lost a building, and it left debris and crap strewn all over the place including some insulation and planks of wood and metal in the streets. Forget wind drop. I don't like this term wind drop. Cyclonic-winds took that building out, don't bullshit me!

Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King landed in stores the 2nd. Went at midnight to claim my copy. The door greeter tried to be nice and start up a conversation. I told him I had to get a CD now, and walked off. I picked up the fourth season of Weeds as well, and came back. The door greeter was still there, though who really needs a greeter at midnight? Again, he tried starting a conversation by asking, "Did you buy anything for me?" I wasn't having it. I said, "Nope, sorry. Looks like you get nothing again." He tried saying something else, but I was already on my way out the door.

Gran Torino would have been on sale last night at midnight. Late night shopping is convenient because nobody is pushing their way past you. Last night I did not get a copy of Gran Torino on the off-chance that guy was door greeter again. I didn't care for him. I guess I'm a mean person. I don't linger when I shop. I find what I need and I get out. It doesn't make sense not to have a game-plan before going shopping. I usually look on the store's website, and then go to the actual store. To have someone stop you right at the door to ask what you are getting, or to chit-chat when I don't know you and I've never seen you work days - they keep you primarily locked-away when the normal crowd is there, and then release you right when everybody else has fucking gone home. No, I don't like that. I know you're being nice, but...ah, thank you for helping me with the bags, but I just had the one, and it's...please don't observe my license-plate number or the make of my car for future reference...you really didn't need to follow me to my car...

There are a group of people who are constantly at the store late. Pretty much every night you would spot these assholes walking through the aisles, cracking jokes at merchandise:

Queers drink Snapple. 90% of the water I drink has Koolaid mixed in it. We could get one of these inflatable pools and get women to take their clothes off; women that don't wash regularly or shave. My mother. I don't understand The Office. Whoever thought Spongebob would last this long? A-gee-gee-gee (giggling) breast-pumps, gee-gee-gee! Swedish Fish!? What about American-Fish! What is it, gummy bears with fins?

Every time I go out to do Midnight-shopping I see that same group of people and it's aggravating! You know my friends and I used to go to iHop and dick around. But we ordered food. We didn't just sit there and crack jokes about the food or what was on the menu, and we rarely went to iHop every night. Find something better to do. I suggest blogging.

Lakers/Nuggets, Going on Holiday Soon, A Birthday, Best Friends, Scooters, and Horses

I will be taking my very first flight in the next month, which seems pretty awful - 22 years old and I've never flown before. Probably a lot of people have never flown, so I guess I'm grateful I'm not that person, and who knows, maybe their afraid of flying. Ha, I laugh in the face of their fear!
You see, I'll be in San Francisco the last of June with the good ol' family. I'm gonna make funny faces at fish, eat fantastic seafood and walk into bars alone wearing Denver Nuggets attire. What a rabble-riser I yam! If you think about it, Lakers fans could be all over that fucking state. It would also be nice if the Nuggets would just bury the Lakers in the next 2 games of the playoffs. I really don't like those Los Angeles Lakers.

Speaking of 22, I celebrated a birthday on the eighteenth. It really wasn't much of a birthday. I went to work, and then I bought myself some beer. The hours I was at work really ruined the day. Every day that I work is a ruined-day...

I think I'm writing a book. It sounds like a book, it's expansive like a book, I've written a lot of words and it's expletive with many a detail like a book. Before, I had called it a writing project, but now, I'm confident in calling it a book. I've started many writing projects that have gone nowhere, so I won't be surprised if in three months I've torn up everything to do with this project. Let's not get any one's hopes up!

Just about every weekend now I've been stopping by the drive to talk to Jay. He's my best friend's dad. I like it that no matter how mature a person gets, when it comes to friends, that person isn't ashamed to admit he still refers to that one special friend as his/her best friend, and why should that person be ashamed! He's not my good friend, Jon is my best friend! And then follow that up with a and don't you forget it! That's just one thing I'll never let go from my childhood, the feudal system of the friends. The best friend is at the top, no one can trump his/her position. He/she is there for the long-haul, like the Pope. They've been with you the longest, you can tell that person literally anything. Below that person are your good friends. They might also be an acquaintance of your best friend. You hang out with them many a-time, and they might treat you like family. This top portion of the feudal system is your extended family more than likely. Below that are friends, or people you talk to a lot, maybe hang out with, and you all enjoy each other's company, but that's about it. Then acquaintances and so forth.

Like I stated, I've been visiting my best friend's dad on the weekends. Usually later in the night, for a good 2-3 hours, we stand out on the driveway of his home, and talk. It's been a lot of fun. And since his son has been out of the country, I think it's been rather helpful so Jay doesn't get lonely. Jon is the baby of the family and they're not used to him being away for so long. So I step in and do my part. And on most occasions, the weather is cooperative. Jay has a lot of entertaining stories, and I really like listening to the man talk.

A couple days ago, I busted out the scooter and went for a ride in Carey Park. I've noticed from time to time that motorcyclists will signal me, either with a peace sign or just their index finger out to the side of their ride. I flash a peace sign back, and never my index finger alone, I still don't get that. What is this some sort of commune? I'm riding a scooter, not a Hog. I'm not comfortable with the exchange. This isn't a gang, I just like riding a scooter...
If I was on a motorcycle myself, still, I don't want to have to signal everyone else on a motorcycle each time I pass them. What if I signal someone twice, or it's a group that ride, is one signal enough or am I being disrespectful? And why are a lot of them wearing leather and chaps!? You don't have to wear those clothes in order to ride a Harley. Hell's Angels my ass, the Hell's Angels would stab you if they saw you trying to act tough with your gloves and steel-toed boots. Shit, it's pretty hard to try and look cool riding a scooter, don't signal me! What are you trying to do, snub me!? Look at this jerk, I'll signal him as a joke, see if he does it back. He did it back! Oh my god, what an idiot! Can I start riding a horse around town? Maybe a group of us equestrians can ride up and down the road, maybe come up with our own signal.

Post.

I don't understand why some people will ask you to guess a certain number of times something has happened to them, or, ask you to guess the price of a certain item. I'm never right in my guess; I'm not even close to the fucking number! "How much do you think my new sinks were?" "I don't know." "Take a guess." "60 dollars!" "...no...637 dollars!!" And I'm left saying to myself, 'I'm such a dumb fuck!' Because I don't know the street-cred of anything, I don't know the value of shit - what this or that costs - I don't have a fucking clue, and you know what, I like what you might be talking about or what has transpired for us to reach this point of the conversation, but I seriously don't give a fuck what the value is...of anything!

And who argues against a good deal!? It's half-priced burgers at Spangles, and my aunt is complaining that it's still too much money for food...tonight, if you choose to select one of five or more different variations (different toppings) of (on) hamburgers, you get the meal half-priced! And you argue about it!? I say, if you're at a restaurant, you order what you want and forget about price! If it's high, oh what the fuck, you treated yourself for once. You only live once. You Only Live Twice is a pretty good Bond flick, though it doesn't hold a candle to Dr. No, From Russia with Love, or Goldfinger.

I can't believe how out-of-the-ball park I am with guessing the price of shit or the value saved, I suck at reading minds. I'll have to add that to my list: I can't fly, I don't have X-Ray vision, I can't pass through objects, I can walk through fire and get burned severely - that's a draw-back, and I can't read any one's mind. It's a sad existence.

On my Break

Today I took a 40 minute break and went for a drive. Driving can be fun. I like to think of it in the same respect as probably the pioneers would have if they went on a leisurely ride through hilly pastures, you know, maybe with their pioneer-wife, or whore they ran off with after a drunken visit to the mining-town saloons. If they were with the wife, the couple would gallantly gallop to a fresh Spring meadow, lay out the table cloth, and they might engage in a picnic. If the pioneer were with the whore, though, the two might engage in a forced-three way with a toothless backwoodsman.

My drive was 35 minutes, down Adams off 10th street, through a residential area past 30th street, then on to Thunderbird Lane, north to Kisiwa/Kansas Avenue, then out north on Plum Street as far as 82nd, and then I made a loop and came back to work. I was alone in this excursion, and I entertainment myself with the iPod. Sometimes I feel inclined to jet, or leave a certain place and drive around, then come back. I'm an advocate for driving.

As I came back, heading south on Adams, I made a left at 10th street. At the time, I was listening to Race Car Ya-Yas by Cake, full blast, of course, and with the windows down. A mom and her daughter were outside, the mom up by her house or shanty from the look of things, and the little daughter, about 5 or 6-years-of-age, riding her bike on the sidewalk. I completely forgot the lyrics for that song are:


The land of race car ya-yas. The land where you can't change lanes. The land where large, fuzzy dice Still hang proudly Like testicles from rear-view mirrors.


As I passed the little girl, I thought: you know, my music is just loud enough that she could probably hear it very clearly as I pass her. And then in the song, the words like testicles from rear-view mirrors were sung. And then I couldn't help, but think: did that little girl hear the word testicles as I passed her in my car? I took a glance in my rear view mirror, and it's kind of hard not to think she did hear the lyrics because when I looked back, her bike was on the ground, as though she threw it down as she fled to her mom, screaming, "Mommy! Mommy! Testicles!" She had ran from her bike on the ground and had ran to her mother, I'm oblivious to what apriority the girl expressed as she ran back to mom.

Thinking back on it, this isn't the first time a child has ran from me, or been frightened by me. I frighten kids. It's the reason why I don't like kids, that and screaming. I had to talk to a little kid one time visiting a co-worker's house. I didn't know what to talk to her about. I asked how she was doing, and she said fine. And I nodded my head, and looked off in the distance. Why did I look off in the distance? Maybe hoping out of the blue, somebody, another adult, would come up - definitely not another kid; one kid is enough, I don't need two to be awkward around. I then asked if the little girl had gotten any new clothes for the new school year; school was just around the corner, and it was only, at most, a week away. And I thought she'd be in to clothes; she was a second-grader, I think. She said she got a new dress and some shoes. I said FUN! I then commented on her dress she was wearing that day. It looked new, and I thought perhaps this was the new wardrobe she had gotten for school. I told her her outfit looked cute, thinking she'd like that. And then she ran away. And here I thought we were having an absolutely engaging conversation. Why do people make you meet their kids like the tykes are adults? And then to leave me alone with the little person...what the fuck are you expecting us to talk about!? Exit strategy? The plight of the newspaper business???

Questions and Or

I am inside my head throughout a lot of shit. As I'm nearing a theater to go to a matinee with a friend, to waiting in line with a steamy plate in hand at a buffet, some times at the pump at a gas station...questions are firing off. Just a random assortment of questions. Was iced tea supposed to be an inside joke for us Yanks back in the states when we saw Brits inhaling that shit as a hot beverage? How did British people feel traveling the U.S. for the first time, and catching some guy out on his porch, putting cubes of ice in his tea instead of sugar and cream? Did they just laugh at us; were they appalled!? I don't really care to know the answer, but the question is still in my mind.

Does the Hockey profession have the best dental plan? Why don't smoke-shops sell designer smoking jackets or knock-offs - there's people out there that don't care whether they have a knock-off smoking jacket! You don't see a lot of weather-based films; I could maybe name off two right off the top of my head: Twister and Tornado. Wasn't there a Bruce Campbell film called Night of the Tornadoes??? There, that's possibly three off the top of my head. I'd like to make a hurricane movie, and I'd definitely watch a hurricane movie if it followed up the last of the Living Dead series by George A. Romero. Call it Hurricane of the Dead, or some shit. That's not a bad idea, folks.

I wanna know why it's considered a courtesy to call and remind a person about an event or an appointment the person had signed up for or got arranged for them. An implied incompetency is what I detect from that exchange, unless the person is elderly, or older than 35. I've had to make calls like that, reminding the person that they had signed up for a computer class, and reminding them what time and date that was. If you can't mark down on a calender when you are supposed to be somewhere at a certain time, or neglect to write it down or make a reminder for yourself of the event than obviously you didn't want to attend or arrive at your destination at that scheduled time. I would rather have a real person call you, if they insisted on calling you, instead of the automated courtesy-call because usually, if you ignore an automated courtesy-call, they have the courtesy to call you back...three minutes later, and so on, until you answer...

I received one of these automated courtesy calls as I was sitting down to dinner, did not answer it because I did not recognize the number - I do that frequently - and as I sat down at the table, and was cutting up a pork chop or stuffing a chunk of buttery, sour-creamy baked potato in to my mouth, the fucking phone rang once more. I answered, and the principal or superintendent for USD 308 gave me a lovely, recorded message about early education enrollment and pre-enrollment for grades 6 through 12. I...didn't fucking go to a USD 308 school in my past, nor did I have siblings younger than me. I don't have children of my own, so there is no possibility that they were trying to sway me in to transferring my kids from another district to there's; in fact, the only reason I can think of for why I'd receive a call like that is because my dad is a carpenter for 308 and his name is on a list. Grr, it's fucking hideous! If someone in the house has a doctor's appointment, it's like, "Let's call them and remind them of their appointment at...8 A.M.! They should be up, right!?" If I don't have to be up that early, I'm not, and to be woken up by the phone...you fucking cock suckers! I'd like to know their schedule, and personally call them at home to remind them when they have to be at work.


"This is a message from," the robot-voice changes to a recording of me saying, "an annoyed observer" back to the machine, "by our records, we've noticed that you have to be at work at 9 A.M. You have 4 hours and 37 minutes until your shift starts at 9 A.M. This is an automated recording, reminding you that your shift at your," and the electronic voice let's me interrupt by saying, "PRECIOUS," then immediately back to the automated voice, "job begins at 9 A.M. Thank you, and God bless Jesus." Then, an hour later, same call, same message, only, at the end of this message, we have an automated commercial for Hooters, that is overpoweringly loud for the other person's receiver, and causes them to pull the phone away from their ear. And if they opted out of answering the phone, it would give them 30 seconds to get back in their bed, and then call again. Makes my heart burst with joy!

Trailing Off

Who doesn't like a double-post?

Recently, I had a person comment to me that they hated those Microsoft commercials where it shows the little 4-year-old downloading and emailing pictures. To them, this was Microsoft's way of snubbing all those people who can't work a computer.

The person commenting actually thought Microsoft was offending them by showing a little girl doing something this person couldn't.

Here's the deal: this commercial is only one of like a dozen like it, most are shown on the web. That little girl was the first -- a 4-year-old who was sending a picture she had taken of her fish to her mom. The other commercials consist of other kids doing easy picture and picture slideshow-projects using Windows Photo Gallery. The 4-year-old was to show how easy it is to use Windows Vista Photo Gallery because if a 4-year-old can do it and you can't, obviously, Windows is wanting to alienate you from its market so you will never want to buy one of their computers. Yeah right. This has nothing to do with the fact that the person commenting about the commercial was an idiot.

If you've seen all the commercials, one here or there/know anything about what I am rambling about, or, at least can figure out the gist of this latest commercial campaign, you will have then figured out that Windows is holding this benign contest where a 7-year-old goes up against a 70-year-old trying to do a task in Vista, an 8-year-old and her/his 72 years-older counterpart, and a 9 and 90-year-old, battling to the death.

The commenting person asked me, "Then why haven't I seen the older folks' commercials," where I said immediately after his comment, "because they probably died mid-way through their task." I don't know, and I don't care. So a little kid can do something on Vista that takes us incompetent people with computers 10x as much time to do. I have some pretty awesome (ossom, or l337) computer skills, and Windows Photo Gallery, I could most likely, work with in my sleep. It is what is expected of a person who has worked around various computer systems his whole junior high/high school/college/employed-life. And by person, I mean myself. Plus, I take the advice of friends, and what they've done with computers, and added that to my experience after learning said-skills through advice.

I'm really glad a 4-year-old can work a camera and computer in the same day/time-frame. I was beside myself after hearing that Japan once again beat the U.S. out of the World Baseball Classic. No I wasn't. I could care less, but I did theorize that Japan took the title for the second consecutive year because they play with honor, and most likely practice way more hours than we do. Hell, they go to school longer than we do, study more than we do - out-performing us academically each year - and to really kick us in the balls, their children can dismantle-then-rebuild a plane using no instructions. If you are 3 years-old, you can build a plane in Japan. So, to see Americans aged 4-9 working a computer like a pro makes me feel less depressed when I think of our country's standing in education. We're not even in the top 10 on that list.

Am I apart of any worthwhile causes? Absolutely not. So where do I get off commenting on our country's education-system? Let's see, the past couple of weeks, me and Nathan have been playing Resident Evil 5. I like to play as Sheva, the badass female mercenary. Check out these moves.

God, those are some shitty videos. So pixellated. Thanks youtube! You'll also notice not much action from Sheva - most of the time, the camera system is tracking Chris, the dude, but she's back there, and she's tough! Most of all, in my opinion, she's the best character in the game, maybe even the best protagonist in the whole series of games. The girl has some pretty fantastic knife-skills. A lot more versatility than Chris Redfield. Yep, that was a video of the chick hopping on the shoulders of the majini and crushing the infected-man's head into the ground.

Not to say Mr. Redfield doesn't have any game. The guy punches through heads!

So that game is a lot of fun, and so are the prequels I'm playing through again.

I'm starting a writing project. Don't know what it'll be yet - an idea I've been toying with for 2 years now, and I'm finding a medium in which to do it in, but I'm not sure what to classify it, so it's just a writing project.

My hands smell like chicken. It's hard for me to get behind a good-flavored grape pop. A lot of it tastes like Dimetapp back-in-the-day, and not to be confused with today's Dimetapp. Today's Dimetapp could be cherry or that disgusting yellow, with that I don't know what that flavor is, but I don't want it in, or near, my mouth-taste. Or the almost as dreadful orange. There used to be a sweet orange flavor, until people started drinking cough medicine for fun. Our day's Dimetapp was grape. And no matter how hard you convince me, no one can stand to drink grape pop all-the-time, even if it kicks ass and tastes like back-in-the-day Dimetapp. No sir, or madam.

I have found a grape pop that I can stand to sip on once and awhile, but not chug or depend on for the rest of my days. It's Welch's and it's a pop that tastes like juice. I will get it occasionally, and on that note, whenever I rarely drink soda. Spontaneously, I might prefer a Coke over all else, or even Dr. Pepper, diet or regular. I can stand to drink just water or ice tea all week, sometimes all month. That, and the occasional booze. Coincidentally, I am a grown-up.

It's sickening how some people have to depend so heavily on pop or sugar. Sometimes it's beneficiary especially with diabetics. Blood sugars low - what's this? - GUMMY BEARS! A couple minutes later, you're bending cars in half once more! Other times, a person isn't consciously thinking about how much sugar they ingest, and tis not good.

Night Vision Goggles

You know you're a geek when someone catches you browsing night vision goggles on the internet, and you're actually serious about buying them. I fuckin' hate stubbing my toe late at night because I had to walk from the kitchen to my room in pitch black darkness, trying desperately to avoid obstacles and failing; I don't want to wake anyone up from their precious sleep by turning on lights. I do, however, end up waking everyone up when I stub my toe on the dishwasher, and exclaim, "FUCK" in the middle of the night.

These are called the NIGHT OWL

TACTICAL GOGGLES NOTG2

"The shit, in night vision-technology." - Stephen Hawking

The NOTG2 is one of the most advanced commercial night vision units around...and blah blah blah - what bothers me is the price of these goggles: 2,000 to 3,000 dollars!

Well, I guess I can't be too surprised. These look like what are issued to Splinter Cells.



And then there's these. Jesus - you'd look like the fuckin' Borg from Star Trek: TNG wearing these fuckin' things! I realize these are the kiddie-type night vision goggles, but Christ, I don't think I've ever laid eyes on something I could break easier; one misstep and oops, butterfingers, I've broken this headgear. I'd hold a contest where we'd see how long, or how short of time it takes to destroy these goggles. I reckon 10 seconds for me, in a room with a hardwood floor. $70 for goggles that take like 6-7 D-Cell batteries. Oh, sorry, 5 AA batteries, so these things can power up and be useful for an hour and a half. What a fantastic value!


No, I'm not going to buy Night Vision goggles. For one thing, I'd look like Buffalo Bill stalking Clarice Starling in Night Vision goggles. I'll save my $3,000 and try and lease a car! Show me a pair of night vision goggles that doubles-up as a vehicle I could drive to work in, for $3,000, and maybe we'd have a deal. I'll more or less rip off my pinkie-toe by stubbing it so many times than lay down that kind of money for something I'd maybe use for 5-10 minutes a night. And even then, I'd probably be stupid enough to flip on the kitchen or bathroom light wearing these fuckers and half-blind myself. I wonder if there is a way to make night vision contact lens???

A Snowball in Summer

This guy sweats way too much. He's the men's college basketball coach for Marquette - Buzz Williams - and the reason why he's so down-dressed is because he sweats too much. At the start of the the Marquette/Louisville game yesterday where the Louisville Cardinals fought hard and won with a 58-62 victory over the Marquette Golden Eagles, Buzz Williams had a snazzy dark sport coat on. Then he threw it off, perhaps in a fit of rage. While his back was turned at the end of the 2nd half, with a minute or so left in the game, I noticed why he displaced his sport coat - his back was almost entirely covered with dampness; it was a sight I'll never forget! Just imagine a wet stain on your clothes, about the size of Asia...he had that on his back; it was unforeseeable and devastatingly noticeable.

I've come to realize there are some pretty wet-looking people out there, or, at the very least, some people with overactive sweat glands. I had a problem with this back in high school; I don't know if it was the lights in the old gymnasium or what - because that was usually when I'd be the sweatiest, or if it was because I was playing a musical instrument; again, it seemed like I would sweat more in the old gym while playing in a music recital, or just stand sweating it out under those fucking old gym lights. And maybe it was not a conscious thing. Maybe deep down, I would sweat more in the old gym because it was a gymnasium, where most people would go for P.E. class or to work out or have sex... Or, again, maybe it was the lights. They were suspended from the ceiling and looked as though one might fall at any moment. And the heat omitted from them could easily start a fire if the light were enclosed in a small room full of flammable material. Yes, I was a person who should have used clinical-strength deodorant - all over his body - in that old gym. Buzz Williams would've melted in that old gym, and would here-on-out have to coach from a glass his coaching assistants would have to pour him in. The glass would most likely have a tiny sport coat around it, complete with a tie, to look professional.

Humpdy Dumpdy

We depend too much on technology. Way too fucking much! I feel sorry for those of us who aren't ready to take the leap in to the techno-emergent-multimedia and informational-universe known as computer science, and for those who really have no reason to do so, are being forced into such a dilemma because their medicare is organized and supplied online, or, like one shriveling, pruney-old man - Jesus, his credit card company was forcing him to pay his credit bill off online. Unemployment benefits are dealt with the same way - sure, they give you a number to call, but the person on the other line is just feeding these callers with bullshit, to force them to file through the internet. And to do so over such a fragile infrastructure like the internet...that's so awful.

I work around computers constantly, 22 to be exact, sometimes, at one time, and the internet times-out a good 3-4 times a day on a minimum...

I used to think it was malarkey when people would say, "One day, the internet will have so much bandwidth running through it at one time, it will clog the pipes, and you know what happens with clog pipes - no information goes through," but I've got to say, from the experience I've had with it, that days coming. Especially in this day-and-age where we depend too much on something that's not what would be described as a fail-safe. The internet is just as fragile as the world market, and look what's going on there...we've literally whored out the internet so much, she's cryin'...and we've just explored the first of many possibilities the internet has, and like most resources we get our greedy little fingers on, the internet will tap-out.

A Work Post

All last week was staff training where I work. Basically, everyone in the Tech department were assigned 5 or so employees to train on the new database/security system we will be implementing within the first quarter of this year. So for a whole week, my department was scattered to all the other departments, and then the staff training portion took place up in the computer lab because we had the space. And computers. And a Rancor. But mostly computers and the space-thing.

Steve, my boss, thought five days would probably be sufficient enough time to train the employees. I got mine done in two. That's right, two. My boss got his done in four. Loser.

His training did consist of one or two days of setting up the computers so they'd run for his trainees. I just stepped in, trained my people, and left, leaving him and Gina to answer questions, while they phoned around, looking for me. I wasn't gonna sit around answering questions.

The first day of not doing work, I did work - I worked on a presentation for my group (in November, we had an all-staff day full of festivities...and work, and some exercise where we played with Legos and Play-Doh. We were put in "groups" and were given a problem that needed a solution)

This "problem/solution-thing" consisted of feedback from a survey we had given out to the public last summer. And the public bitched and complained, as usual, about the most ignorant shit you could possibly imagine. Your library should be open 24 hrs. Mainly the computer lab-area, not necessarily the library itself. Thanks for the feedback; okay everyone, the library will now be open 24 hours, 7 days a week, running up our utility bill, not to mention all the money we'd have to pay employees to be here that long, hiring more staff, cleaning up after selfish people who fuck up anything that's not their property. Not gonna happen. And yes, if the lab were open 24 hours as well, we'd have people here ALL NIGHT. And then it would be, well, since the library is open 24 hours, and the computer lab is opened 24 hours, then patrons of the computer lab shouldn't have a time period on the computer like they do now. Basically, I don't have a home, so I'll live in a library like FUCKING From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler only, in a fucking library because I'm homeless; I want hand-outs! I'll live on crackers and soda pop!

My "group's" problem was to come up with ways to make our library quiet because someone had wrote on their survey that libraries used to be quiet, and ours wasn't, and it needs to be quiet again; people who live in this town don't understand the word "advancement." The presentation I was working on that day included everything my group had discussed and debated in our meetings, plus my own ideas and data I had collected from other libraries; it was legit work, and it didn't take me very long to complete, either. That was the first day of not doing work, and the explanation of the work I was doing.

The second day was the 20th; Inauguration Day for President Obama. I talked to my supervisor for about thirty minutes and kidded around a bit, checked some email and some internets, then went to the business office, sifted through a desk drawer until I found a familiar-looking silver key, then walked across the library, unlocked one of the conference rooms, and played my Nintendo DS for twenty minutes. Then I remembered there was a television in the basement, that was never used, except for meetings. This is one of three down there, so if there happened to be people wanting a set for the Inauguration, there was one everyone was enjoying in the staff room, and one that had been moved to the auditorium (that one is a BEAST) with chairs outlined adjacent to it for the public to come in and watch the Inauguration. Not many people were in that room. With that in mind, I knew the last set was unoccupied, and so I commandeered a dolly, and went down in the elevator to retrieve it. Did so without any one asking me questions. By the way, my conference room was wired, most are, so I had limited cable. I trucked that set up to my conference room, shut the door, turned out the lights after plugging shit in, and tuned in C-SPAN for Inauguration coverage. After that was all said and done, and the Inauguration was winding down, it was 12:30ish, so said my clock in the conference room, so I unplugged everything, moved the television on a dolly to the auditorium; I DID NOT put it back where I found it because then it looked like someone had moved it in to the auditorium (because we have stupid people on staff who would do this) figuring that no one had taken the time to set up a television in the auditorium, which they had with THE BEAST, so that imaginary person, who our maintenance supervisor Kevin would assume worked in Reference, just decided to leave the television in the auditorium because they had done all the work to get it upstairs where it wasn't needed, and were too lazy to take it back downstairs. I know -- this clever, improvised scheme I had concocted sounds like it took a lot of thought, it didn't. I just know people. Kevin is against Reference, and the Reference department doesn't give a shit about anyone, so I played the two forces off each other. Office politics can work in your favor.

By 12:30ish, this meant I only had a half-hour left in my shift. And since I was still on the clock, technically working, I was entitled to a break. So I took mine. I went down to the staff room and one of my co-workers asked if I had gotten the message to talk to Gina. How could I have gotten that message, I was hiding out. I took a twenty minute break, eating leftover Chile from a Chile-cook off the staff had the previous week, and then I talked to Gina who wanted to know where I was at. I told her Children's had a security threat on their computer that I handled, then I went down to the Tech office for CD's, which, by the way, was a problem we had in the lab last week; one of the part-timers left a note saying we had run out of CD's in the lab, and I told Gina I thought we might have had some down there. After finding out we hadn't, I went up to the Business Office, where they informed me CD's had been ordered, then I helped Steve make cable (Steve wasn't actually there, I had told Gina, but I knew he needed to make some for the wiring-changes because of the new security system, so I volunteered)

That excuse covered my ass for about two hours, and it was bullshit! Steve needed wiring, but fuck, I wasn't gonna strip it. And I was out the door in 30 anyway, it didn't matter what I told her. Then I told her the rest of the time was spent on working on my presentation for my group, and then taking a break, and watching the Inauguration. She didn't take too kindly to me working on this "presentation" - apparently, they (she) had stuff I was supposed to be doing for them (her). I didn't like how she was ordering me around like her subordinate, so I went over her authority and talked to Steve. He told me to work on the presentation because I mentioned my "group" was holding a meeting that week Thursday afternoon, which they were.

And Steve also told me not to listen to Gina.

I walked out at 12:54, clocked out at 12:55 right as the time clock switched to the next hour, and went to my grandma's to take a nap, and watch some college basketball.

Editor's note*** Wednesday-Thursday I trained my people; yeah, you thought I had done that before the shit with the TV in the conference room...haha. That Friday, I was called in to work, which corresponds with my last post about talking with my boss about voicemail.

Something Discussed, Followed by Something Else with Sprinkles of Random Somethings in the Middle...like Nuget

My supervisor was hacked off at me the other day because he tried to call me, to ask if I could work for another employee, and I didn't answer my phone. At the time, I was sleeping because that's what I do when I don't have to be at work in the morning...is sleep. It's a whole new concept; I wouldn't expect anyone else to know about sleeping in on days when you don't have to work...

His name is Steve. He has a mind much like my own, only, he actually enjoyed math back in high school, excelled at it, and now has a job where people who aren't as smart as he is bug him with questions all damn day. His hobbies include, but are not limited to, listening to an instruction one time, and fully understanding it, answering other people's stupid questions, drinking coffee out of a ceramic mug that says, "Monday Mug" on it -- when it's Thursday; re-wiring the building on a wobbly ladder that will one day split in half and most likely kill him or impale a sharpened bit of shrapnel through his abdomen, not killing him, but damaging his pancreas, which will later kill him. If he subscribed to social networks, that would be his description for his hobbies, not including others I have opted to not mention.

Steve wanted to know why I didn't have voicemail on my phone. He could've easily left a message and I could've gotten that later in the day. I told him I wasn't a big fan of voicemail because I hate getting the alert on my phone, punching in a code to get the message and then having that message be a "hang-up" where the person stayed on the line (God knows why!) I guess to listen to the lady feed him instructions on how to use voicemail, and then that person hung up when that ladies' voice wasn't followed by my own. I mean, what else do you expect -- you think I'm gonna magically answer, and be like, "Hello. I felt my phone vibrate; knew it was probably you!!" New rule: if you get to the voicemail options and the person hasn't answered, hang up, don't leave a hang-up voicemail. Or the, sigh, mumble a curse word, then hang-up-voicemail. Steve then said, "it's a lot easier to reach you if you have voicemail." Where I parried, "What's the point!? The odds are still against you that I would even reply to your voicemail message." Seriously, if I had voicemail on my phone, I still wouldn't answer it. No matter how annoying the alerts got, I wouldn't check my voicemail because I know that only my friends leave a voicemail, then follow it up with a text message; only work would leave a voicemail and leave it at that. Which I told my supervisor, so he'd say, "you purposefully ignore calls from work?" "Yes."

Steve would do that same thing if he had a more competent work staff, or a clone. Steve 2 would be assigned to the dirty work, and Steve 1 would smoke cigars and drink all day. And if he cloned Steve 2, Steve 3 With Avengence would clean shit up, and be responsible for Steve 1's girlfriend, except for encounters with her, of the intimate nature. Steve 3 houses the feminine-side of Steve 1, so he'd cook and clean to his heart's content and be able to express himself emotionally with Steve 1's girlfriend. Basically, the plot for the movie Multiplicity with Michael Keaton.

And with voicemail, and this is the funnest thing with all answering-machines, you get to come up with a message all your own. What sucks ass are the people who act like they answered the phone, so their message might be, "Hello?" and you say, "Hey, it's *so-and-so* what's up," and they're like, "Huh?" so you repeat, "It's *so-and-so*, how's it going..." and about this time, they say, "You reached my answering machine, I'm not actually here..." Son of a bitch! Why'd you trick me!? Those people never get called by me again. If that's your idea of creativity than here's my idea for excluding your creative upheaval -- I don't call your ass anymore!

I can't think of one thing I'd put as my answering-machine message. Just some dull salutation and a number in which you can call me back at. That's a true test of creative integrity, and those people who fake you out, have failed the test. And the punishment for such failure is the removal of that person's tongue. Since I don't "subscribe" to any type of voice-messaging service, I get to keep my tongue...and my dignity.

Babies and the Other Side of the Spectrum

I hate the elderly and babies. My grandma is elderly...don't worry, I don't hate her. But old people are fucking helpless sometimes. Especially the elderly in front of computers. You pretty much have to lead them by the hand when they are on a computer. And they always use the same excuse. "I'm so used to a typewriter. That's how we typed anything, is with a typewriter." I used a typewriter before I used a computer. Before my parents got our Gateway with Windows ME loaded on it which was bullshit; I hated that fucking operating system! Before the parentals bought their Gateway machine, we had a Hewlett Packard because that's what it was known as before HP - we had a Hewlett Packard piece of shit with Windows 3.1. It would freeze up loading Minesweeper. And before that, we had an electric typewriter that was my mom's when she was in college in 1978.

I remember writing short stories and then typing them on that old typewriter. The type bars would always get stuck on the platen, and the ink ribbon, if this ever occurred, would smear and make a god-awful mess on the paper...it was ALL bullshit! That machine was frustrating, not a computer. To be honest with you, because I've worked with both, I prefer the computer over the typewriter, hands down! It's more convenient, and if you think about it, because I write all the time, and rarely print off, I've saved money with a computer compared to a typewriter. Try finding an ink ribbon for a typewriter NOW! Jesus Christ! Paper is so much cheaper than a new ink ribbon, or repairs to a sticking type bar(s). I just can't comprehend how it's so difficult for the elderly to get behind computers.

I guess there is too much of a generation gap, which again, is bullshit. The term generation gap was made up by the elderly as an excuse to be lazy and not learn technology. You've gotta keep up with the times, no matter how stubborn you are or how thick-headed your disposition is.

Here are your two tools when controlling a computer; your mouse and a keyboard -- which should be familiar to all those in allegiance to the typewriter. It's the same damn standard keyboard as before. I don't get it. How simple does it have to be for an elderly person to just get it? Windows Vista has a program for people who hate using their fingers or hands to manipulate the computer -- or for elderly people whose brains are covered in cobwebs -- where you speak a command and the computer complies. That is ridiculous! And you're cheating if you subscribe to it. What!? -- you have a hand wrapped around your cock when you're on a computer, and the other is holding a Kleenex -- you don't want to have to dismount to switch to another porn file, you'd rather speak to your computer and say, "Open Gushing Twats Gangbang!" And bam! A nice, quivering vagina leaking clemen in to a pool, and a loud, orgasmic scream of pleasure...fantastic!

I already know that if I live to be an elderly-person, I'm gonna be tech-savvy.

Babies. I don't get it. You might as well get a cat, preferably one that's sick and vomits too much, and howls for no reason, oh, and wears a diaper which is always filled with a huge load. Don't get me wrong, babies can be fun. You teach them everything you were taught -- there's a whole tradition-thing goin' on with babies and toddlers and adolescence and tweenies and teenagers -- with toddlers, when they first begin to talk, you can teach them bad things to say; I don't condone you do this because once they learn something, they say it, even when you don't want them to say it, and it spoils their minds, and usually these kids are assholes and you find yourself wanting to stab them. Babies are funny. They make noises like R2-D2, they like games -- it's like a little person high; they're always doing something silly and outrageous. I LOVE those babies. I hate babies who are tired, but their parents don't seem to get that they are tired, and drag them around all afternoon without a nap. I hate babies who cry for no reason. Oh, my juice spilled -- oh, I hit myself with a toy I shouldn't have been flinging around -- oh, my bath-water is scolding hot and I now have a third-degree burn -- waa, I'm being abducted! Those babies suck! I like babies who like to rub it in my face that they can get away with sucking on boob all day -- it pisses me off, but I'm relieved that the baby wasn't born gay. I don't think I've ever seen a gay baby. Damn gay-community and their myths...

So, with babies, the good outweighs the bad. With the elderly -- they are just a nuisance, all of them, except my Nana. She's too sweet to be rotten. And now I'm done rambling. Look forward to another post by me here in a month or so about nothing.

A Short Post About Winter Weather and Gloves

This is one of my only personal posts I have on my blog. My life is uneventful, I've discussed this many many times before. But sometimes I'm just so content that I have nothing to argue or complain about....

Let me revoke that last statement because I still have things to complain about.

It is cold, and I mean cold!! It could be colder, and for the love of God let's hope it doesn't get any colder. This morning, the temperature was in the single digits. Now, let me just put this out there, the temperature could be in the negative single digits...this is not to jinx myself or the good folks of south-central Kansas. What I don't like about the cold is the cold. It hurts my face. My hands, when I step outside, freeze and contort into these talons and they stay in that grappling, claw-like position the rest of the day. I can't pick anything up - if I had a baby boy or girl, I would not be able to hold him or her in my arms, in fact, he or she would probably turn in to a block of ice and crumble in my palms. Damn these hooks!

We have too much moisture in the air. Every damn morning, I have to scrape off the windows of my car -- I have to maneuver my hands in such an unnatural way because they are talons at this point to open the driver's side door of my car. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but -- nylon gloves -- I don't really know if that is the material these gloves are made of, but to describe them, they are heavily-fibered, stiff-bear-traps for your hands with little-to-absolutely-no-mobility. Without them, my hands are talons, with them, my hands are stiff, mannequin's hands. My house is an obstacle course because if I have to open doors with these gloves, shit doesn't work. My grip just continues to slide on the surface of the doorknob. I would burn alive if their were a fire in my home and, for some unexplained reason, I was wearing these gloves. Just these gloves alone; no pants, no shoes, no shirt, no service!

For some of yous, yous is thinking I'm fucking nuts! Felted gloves are absolutely mobile, they don't transform your hands in to useless dead trout-hands or turn yous in to a mannequin -- they are comfy, they are all-around versatile, and if you're lucky, JC Penneys has them on sale for like $5. Ever tried brushing your car of snow caked on your hood and roof, not to mention, your windows with felted gloves? They're like a god damned sponge! Snow gets on them and melts, and the fabric absorbs the water, and stepping out in this kind of weather with wet gloves is 10x worse than no gloves-at-all. So your choices of hand-ware in temperatures as low as these are few and far between. If they could make a glove from the total opposite of the ShamWOW! material, that would be uber-bitchin'! You could pour a 24-cube of Mountain Dew on the carpet, and the ShamWOW! which is wizardry-all-in-its-own would absorb that shit up by you just placing the fabric over the wet area, no pressure applied whatsoever. If the glove I was speaking about earlier were to be made from the opposite material as the ShamWOW! not only could liquid not get in, but heat could not escape, which means once you start sweating in your gloves, your hands slick with sweat, the glove would become almost vacuum sealed, and now you always have gloves on your hands; never can they be removed or even cut from your hands because the fabric is indestructible. Obviously, because of these conditions, no such glove will ever be made, and I would never wear it.

*Side-note*
It is already duly-noted that some people in this world are so fucking cold, they have transformed themselves in to yetis, and that maybe I should be grateful that I don't have to experience that kind of hellish weather.

Barely Baring my Soul; Bare with Me!

I need a vacation. A long, long, long sunny and not windy or cold or frosted, but not exactly snowing-vacation...near a beach with a wide assortment of alcoholic beverages, and maybe a thick book. Yes...some reading and drinking...and if a bikini-clad woman were to lounge next to me, I'd accept her company...with opened arms. It's been a while since I had a day off work. Here's how annoying it gets when you've worked as much as I have, with no relief, and bare with me - I realize my job isn't what most people might call hard or, in a better adjective, excruciating; I'd describe what I do as a walk in the park. But it's the attitude I get from the people who come in, or simply, the amount of the same people I have to see every day of my life, that gets me down. The same caliber of people I have to see every day...EVERY DAY, those same buffoons come in here, do the same thing on the computer as the day before...people, do you not have anything better to do with your time!? So again, as an example of how trite this job can be, last night I was supposed to chill with a few of my friends, and I didn't get to because I fell asleep at like 8:30-9 p.m. That is absurd! I couldn't keep my eyes open that early in the night, and so regardless of how many times my friends tried to get a hold of me, I was out! My one break away from work and doing nothing, and work, and coming back home and being so bored I just stare at a television to pass the time, was ruined because I was so, either exhausted from my mundane atmosphere or quiescent by the stupidity of these people. I think my mind was fried. I mentioned above in this somewhat-similar-to-all-my-posts-diatribe that I'd rather take a vacation, away from all this vexatious shit; I have plenty of stuff I'd rather do than babysit these adults! I need to explore my calming center...that sounded really gay.

TV Land has been rerunning episodes of The Cosby Show at about 10 or 11 o'clock at night. That's a fantastic show to fall asleep to. I caught it on the network about three days ago, and can't get enough of it. About a year or so ago, any time I just wanted to veg or chill to the television, while channel-surfing, I'd miraculously come across The Cosby Show on like Nick at Nite (I think it was Nick @ Nite) Aside from the ridiculous Cosby sweaters, and his goofy, shuffling dancing at the beginning of each episode, the show is just so chalk-full of heart! YAY! Actually, Bill Cosby is very funny in his role as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable; this was still before he became embittered by the death of his only son, and became the douche bag he is today, demanding a lapse of violence and sexuality in all forms of media, particularly television and video games. I'm almost willing to go out and buy The Cosby Show on DVD, considering at Target I can get the entire series for like $70. Just depends if I want to spend $70 on something I can watch on cable for free.

What else? I never have anything good to talk about. Which is why I'm so quiet if I go out to dinner with people, or go over to someones house where people I know are at, chilling. Or, if I run in to someone out-and-about and we get to talking, I'm always the one shaking my head in agreement or going, "uh-huh...uh-huh...yeah, that's true....really!?" like I'm actually fucking shocked; "Really!? You don't say!" The bad that comes with that is I then sound like I'm uninterested in what the other person is talking about or I seem distracted. Folks, that's my A.D.D. kicking in, and my lack of social skills; I'm sociable, but I've also been flung bullshit all day while at work, and had to deal with some pretty crappy people, so bare with me if I don't speak up. Like, for instance, about a week ago, I went over to a friend's house and my friend's sister - my friend wasn't there at the time - her sister decided to color a 'Welcome Home' dangling banner, with the letters 'Welcome Home' or whatever the fuck it said, dangling and separate from one another. Good for her, right? Wrong. Everyone in the room had to color a letter, now, I don't know about you, but coloring or doing anything creative, being forced in to doing creative-things is not my favorite thing to do. Especially after I had to work. But there was no talking my way out of this one, and arguing seemed trivial, so I sucked it up, grabbed a letter, and went to town, as the saying goes. Only my way-to-town was through a briar patch, or in sensible-terms, I was thoroughly stumped on how I wanted to decorate my letter. In fact, my friend's mom even noted that I looked stumped. So, instead of coloring, I just drew a slack-jawed, whimsical character I refer to as "The Rambling Man" peeking over the letter 'O'. And that ended my participation in coloring letters for a banner. Again, not that I didn't care, I was inebriated and unable to be sparked by creativity. As we all attempted to start a conversation, our attempts were futile. I had nothing interesting to say, and it didn't seem right for the parents of my friend to carry all of the conversation - it got awkward.

I'm amazed I've been able to supply this blog with a post just about every month! I was thinking about how stupid people are any more. Like this morning, I had a guy come in who wanted headphones while he "worked"/played around on the computer. See, we rent out headphones as well. The only problem is, like everything you give other people, they break it, or in this sense, break the headphones. The funny thing is, we have a whole cabinet to the back of the room full of the headphones we use. I tell people whenever I run out of headphones that they will have to wait until someone returns a pair, when in fact, they could have a pair of headphones right now if I wasn't lazy and didn't want to walk over to the cabinet to grab a few pairs. What made this incident "stupid" was what the guy said to me when I told him I didn't have a pair of headphones for him to rent. He asked, how could I run out of headphones? And I told him I had a limited amount of headphones to give out, and all of my pairs are in use at the moment. He then said, that's dumb...you need to buy more headphones then..., where, upon him saying that, I thought, no, what you need to do is bring your own headphones with you if you are planning on using them with one of our computers. This fuck is so acclimated to using a pair of our headphones that, once we ran out of them like we did today, he wasn't satisfied without headphones. Let's do a little math to further ridicule this creature; each day he comes in and gives me a quarter for headphones. If he were to come in for seven days straight, or a full-week, he has spent a $1.75 on headphones alone. And he's a regular, so tally that up for a month, that's $7 a month. He could have bought his own headphones, headphones only he is using, headphones that will always be there and never taken by another person, we hope, and we need to buy more headphones...but I don't tell him that.

Some of our practices here in the lab, and by that I mean our list of rules we have compiled, have different variations in other fields of work, but otherwise, they are unique. We have a 60-70 page report just on people we've had to warn for unacceptable behavior. A lot of the people on that list are repeat offenders. We have an equally compromising not-paid list. There's a person in here now, no matter who you are, if he sees you coming up to him, he says hello. Doesn't matter that it's the fifth or sixth time I have had to come up to him, to either give him a pair of headphones that have just become available or to tell him his time is up, each time a person comes up to him, it's hello. And it's not because he's nice; he's just weird, but has a good attitude on life. A lot of these people who come in I know on a first and last name-basis; now that's sad, and it's all because they come in so often. Whenever we have a problem-patron come in, and our newest employee is unsure of who it is, they come to me. Because I've seen them all, dealt with them all, know how to deal with them, hate to deal with them, but don't have a choice in the matter. All it takes are a few haphazard descriptions from a co-worker of how the person acted or looked, and I'll instantly know who they are talking about. One time, it was simply one of my co-workers saying the person was incredibly loud, no matter what his demeanor was, meaning, even if he was being nice, he could not control the volume of his voice - that and the fact that he always carried around a neck pillow, and a large quilt. Instantly, I knew who my co-worker was referring to. I mean seriously, I could bring along a camcorder with me to work for 2 or so months, and have an interesting story to tell. From the assortment of posters we have tacked to the walls to make the place "homey"-to- the oddest part of this room; how, some days during the summer we are stuffy as hell and so damn hot up here, and then the next day, freezing cold...I can almost state that I like my job...