And we added Arizona, too!

Overheard in line at The Gas Station That Sells Candy Cigarettes:

"I just heard on the radio that they sold the winning Powerball ticket in New Mexico. I can't believe that some Mexicans won."

Reminds me of the fact that New Mexico's license plates (at least used to - don't know if they still) read "New Mexico USA," and that their tourism bureau had the hardest time convincing other Americans that they don't need a passport to visit.

I know that American geography isn't one of our strong suits, but still.

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Relics

Saw something this morning at the gas station that I thought was long, long gone.

Candy cigarettes.

I know that the settlement with Big Candy Tobacco put the impetus on candy cigarette makers to reformulate their candy cigarettes so that they didn't look so much like real cigarettes. And true, these boxes looked longer (think 120s), but there was no mistaking the packaging.

Still, I thought they had just faded away into our past, like metal icepicks or Jarts. Man, I can't wait to get my kid hooked on them.

(Kidding!)

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Adventures in shuffle

As the Captain will tell you based on our collective experiences in our Roaring Twenties, everything I own is shit.

This maxim was most accurate when discussing any electronic equipment I owned. I'd jerry-rigged any number of CD players, cassette decks, RCA jacks and AC adapters together solely to listen to music. It's really any wonder I'm a music fan at all, given how much of a chore it was to be able to even listen. (It's also no small achievement that I didn't burn down whatever house or apartment I was living in, given the tendency of my electronic equipment to short out with the slightest 3-millimeter movement, not to mention my tendency to compensate for those flaws with cardboard, books or other paper-based items.)

Unsurprisingly, although my earnings have increased and I'm better able to afford more reliable listening equipment like iPods, my luck has remained the same. The controls on my MP3 player are boogered up to the point where if you are listening to an album or a saved playlist, hitting the "advance to next song" button will, about 50% of the time, act as the equivalent as a "shuffle entire catalog" button.

And so it went this morning. I wanted to jump to a certain Sloan song, and instead shuffled the entire catalog.

Rats.

"Well, this might not be so bad," I thought. "There's about 5,000 songs here, and I tend to listen to about a tenth of those pretty constantly. There may be something I've forgotten about."

First up was Buck Owens. Wasn't in the mood. *skip*

Dwight Yoakam. See above. *skip*

XTC. Ditto. *skip*

Cadmium Orange. "Small Bodies of Water."

Perfect.

*turn shuffle off*

I'm in 1998 again, in a house on Hunter Street in Bloomington, crammed in a basement with 40 or 50 or more other folks, watching them tear through "Rocket Pole" and knowing that it was light years better than whatever was playing at the rock clubs in town. So raw, so visceral, yet so hooky and poppy and punky and memorable and sweaty. My ears still ring from those nights.

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Well, that blew.

Kind of a bad pass-interference call on 4th and 1, but the Colts shouldn't have been in that position. Colts are 2 games back on the Titans, who I hate almost as much as I hate Jacksonville and New England.

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1:07 left. Colts just scored to take the lead, 21-20. I don't trust Garrard to make a game-winning drive.

Marvin was *huge* on the last drive.
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4th quarter of Colts-Jags (and I almost hate Jacksonville as much as I hate New England):

The way that Jacksonville is running the clock in the second half is almost like how I would play some of the old Madden or Tecmo Bowl games on Sega Genesis. Hang on to the ball as long as you possibly can, and you are much more likely to win as long as you can keep the opposing QB off the field. It's working, and now the Colts have 2 1/2 minutes to get a touchdown to win.

Also:

My wife thinks The Luke is cursed.

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First, let it be known that I don't like animals. I don't hate them, and I don't go out of my way to hurt them. I've owned pets before, and I've never felt that warmth and happiness that a lot of pet owners have. And I have never understood the line of thinking of pets as children. It doesn't mean that I don't have a soul, it's just that I feel that actual children are much more rewarding and bring you a much wider range of emotion and experiences.

That said, I'm thisclose to placing a call to my local Humane Society.

My dumbass neighbors (well, I have lots of dumbass neighbors - they're not all dumbass, but it seems to be more the rule than the exception) breed Boxers. The most recent litter of puppies have wandered into our yard on more than one occasion. It's funny how our neighbors have taken the time to clip the puppies' tails, but don't take the time to feed them. You can see their ribs. I don't know a lot about Boxers, but it would seem to me that if you can see their ribs, this would illustrate how underfed they are.

They have been trying to scavenge in our yard for any sustenance. I tossed some chicken their way earlier, and they seemed grateful. But whatever the case, they're not eating enogh (seems to me), and it's wrong. I'm pro-profit, and so if my neighbors make a few bucks off selling these puppies, so be it, but damn - feed your dogs.


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garfield minus garfield

It's a one-note joke, but the one note is pretty hilarious.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

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Your daily nature shot:

The problem with multifamily yard sales is that, while you may put out some quality crap for sale, others might put out things like this and set them out for sale between your National Geographics and your mint condition Ricky Rudd coaster collection.

I hope the writing on the tag is visible in this picture. Next to the price and the initials of the seller is this handy piece of information: "5 left."

I've never priced these, so answer me this: is 10 cents each a bargain?

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Your daily nature shot

"I will crush you!"

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Your nature shot for the day:

From the genus Big Ol' Fuckin' Bug.

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Because you can't spell "community organizers" without "Communist."

Much has been made in the last 72 hours about Sarah Barracuda's dig at Barack Obama's past as a "community organizer" on the south side of Chicago during her VP acceptance speech at the RNC the other night. The slight was in response to the Obama camp's belittling of her experience as a small-town mayor.

"Being a mayor is kind of like being a community organizer, except a mayor has actual responsibilities," Palin said. (I may be paraphrasing just a bit, but not by much.)

Naturally, this has rankled some people who fill the role of "community organizer." I suppose, in a very, very broad definition of the term, some of the disgruntled folks have a point - that is, if you want to include charities, ministers, and people who are actually doing good works in cities and towns all across the country.

But I don't.

When someone uses the term "community organizer," here's what I think of.

I think back to my first year of college, back to the group of people who were stationed just outside of McDonald's, casting verbal stones at people who were going in to eat, including me.

I think of the filthy hippies in that college town who had nothing better or more productive to do with their lives than be pissed about something, whether it be cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal's incarceration or the death penalty or titty bars or new apartments for people who really needed them.

I think of people who have plenty to contribute to society but choose not to, who feel that the world is unjust because we have haves and have-nots since we don't live in a socialist utopia, who are into various causes only to feel better about themselves and not because they've ever believed in anything substantive in their lives. These are the same people who wear the Che Guevara shirts without any inkling of who that POS really was.

So, when I heard Sarah Palin take a shot at "community organizers," I thought she hit the nail right on the head. And I still do.


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I spent part of my Labor Day evening sobering up and reading some of my old blog posts about my old job. (They can, for the most part, be found under the category "Wage.")

It's been a year and a week since I finally got the call and made the move into project control. I can't say it's been smooth sailing for 53 weeks, but I feel like I've learned a lot. There have been times when I've feared for my job because I'm just not up to its demands; Nemesis, for instance, works about 50-55 hours a week, and it's not that I can't do it - I just won't. My family comes first, and while I'm sure that everyone loves their families, I feel confident in my decision to put my money where my mouth is. If that's not good enough for the position I am in, then I will be happy to go back to dumbass menial Very Important Front Desk Work.

And I've made some mistakes that have been pretty glaring - ultimately, they're my responsibility, but there were some circumstances surrounding those mistakes that I won't delve into here, other than that I have had the distinct misfortune of meeting someone who I've actually wished death upon, much to the consternation of my wife.

This particular waste of sperm and eggs is no longer a part of my life, as he no longer wished to work with me because of my supposed incompetence. Which ... well, I may be a lot of things, but incompetent isn't one of them. He's the one who's micromanaged the ever-loving shit out of his contract, even though he couldn't manage his way out of a wet paper bag. I tried to keep up the best I could. And I came up short.

It frustrates me, though, that I failed in my dealings with him, because no matter what an awful human being he is, I still wanted to see it through, no matter how it was affecting my life at work and my life away from work - and I'll just say that it was affecting a lot of things pretty negatively and leave it at that. Still, up until this person stepped into my life, I had never met anyone who I couldn't win over with my general outlook and attitude, but he is the meanest, most abusive, most hateful, most malicious, most despicable piece of shit that I've ever known. And I've known a lot of useless human beings, but most of them had at least one redeeming quality. Hell, I might have said a lot of not-very-nice things in this space about Doom, but he trusted me most of the time, and that means a lot.

Compounding things in this mess was the fact that I got no support from the manager of this particular contract. We had a pretty close relationship at one time, but it has deteriorated in the last couple of months because she has no backbone to stand up for her employees in the face of unreasonable demands from this "customer"; instead of "You have no right to treat my people that way," she instead pointed the finger at me and asked me why I failed. Listen - I don't care if I am in the wrong, but at least have the decency to stand up for your employees. I don't care what kind of potential dollar figures you're dealing with - if you're too scared to confront a bully when that person is causing your support staff all sorts of problems, then you don't deserve to be a manager.

Conventional wisdom says that the customer is always right, and that's one of the worst phrases ever put to paper. It's a built-in excuse for so much abhorrent, assholish behavior: "I can yell and scream and point fingers and call names and be an overagressive, tiny-penised bully because I am the customer and, ergo, I am right."

Fuck the customer. Not my call to make, but if I get asked, they can put me down for one "yes" on the question, "Should he get gangfucked by angry goat-scorpion hybrids in a very warm place for all eternity?"

I've been reassured by superiors that I have a "bright future" in my company, which doesn't really make me fear any less for my future. (After all, how many coaches in sports have been fired shortly after receiving the dreaded "vote of confidence" from GMs or owners?)

Other than all that, everything's fine at work, thanks for asking.