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 |   The only blog that will put hair on your chest... |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Turning from the Dark Side ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** < This is where I'll insert a cool new blog description. Someday. > |
| Everybody is a fucking samurai. At least according to http://www.quizilla.com/users/PainfulBliss/quizzes. I saw that quiz in novusfemina's blog, and I immediately took it. I came out a samurai, which I actually figured would be the result. I didn't bother posting all the accompanying drivel as a blog entry though, because apparently everyone is a samurai. In fact, I have not yet seen a quiz result in a blog that was not a samurai. Why do we all insist on taking these inane quizzes? It asked, I think, 10 questions. Oh yeah, that's enough to classify us. I wonder how many possible outcomes it has. Maybe like four? Yeah, these quizzes definitely have it down to a science. So why do we take them then? Because they're silly and funny, and because we're immensely bored. The era of the television is rapidly being replaced by MySpace quizzes. I was excited to be named a samurai, because it confirmed what I always knew. But then I noticed everyone is a samurai. Well, I hate to break it to you, folks, but you're really not. Why? Because you're not me. To my knowledge I'm the only Writing.com'er with a fully functional katana. Ask Holly Jahangiri  , she got to see it at convention. In fact, thanks to my inhuman dexterity I almost slipped and cut her. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.How many of you wandered into your backyard with a stick, sword, or whatever and battled imaginary foes? Oh yeah, well how many of you did it while in your 20s? How many of you choreograph and practice the fight scenes in your book with a sharpened Japanese longsword? How many of you have nicks on your thumb from sheathing your katana in traditional samurai fashion? Yeah, that's what I thought. This past weekend, Jodi and I found the greatest arcade game ever. It was a samurai game, and you weilded a plastic katana, which more closely resembled a wakisashi, instead of the old standby submachine gun. You could wave your sword around within the confines of a sensor, and your movements would be duplicated on the screen from a first person perspective. Some punk ass kid was doing his best samurai impersonation with this game. Modern day 12-year-olds should never be able to practice swordplay in my presence. It's insulting and disgraceful. They don't have the commitment to excellence I did as a child. They're too busy doing things like playing sports, reading books, and making lasting friendships to devote the necessary time to solitary swordplay. They should be spending their entire summer vacation hiding in the woods with a big stick and leaping out at invisible assassins. They should be practicing defeating several foes at once. They should be stealing watermelons and pumpkins from their moms' gardens to practice their beheading techniques. That's how I spent my childhood, and I think it's safe to say I'm a model citizen and a paragon of masculine perfection. But back to the game... The very first sword-weilding demon mopped the virtual floor with this kid. Why? Because he didn't have mad skills like I do. He walked away with a smile on his face. What a shitty samurai. A true warrior would have taken his own life for such a dishonorable defeat. Since the sword was plastic, he should have at least poked an eye out or something. Go back to catching butterflies, you littly pussy. And let me wipe that ridiculous smile of your face with a roundhouse kick. I stepped up to the game and inserted my four tokens. I drew the sword out properly, showing it the respect it deserves, and I hefted it before me, my hands slightly apart. Even an idiot who's only seen a mediocre episode of "Highlander" should know how to hold a katana. (Incidentally "Highlander" is the single greatest show ever, followed closely by MacGuyver.) Having downloaded hours of bootleg samurai footage and watching it in place of porn, I had mastered the grip. (Ooh, the double entendre in that sentence is even better than I could have planned.) I was transported into a virtual training session, where I decimated the competition. The game was most excellent in its realism. Not only could you make slicing, arcing, and stabbing strokes, all of which duplicated accurately, but you could also block and parry enemy attacks. My killer instinct and almost intuitive response to subtle enemy movements made me a master of the blocked attack. I'd block an attack, push their weapon aside, and promptly carved them up as any good samurai would do. Jodi snapped some photos of me schooling the game, and I'll post them tonight or tomorrow. Apparently, my fluid and convincing movements drew attention. I had a crowd of awed onlookers gathered behind me. I was oblivious to their intrusion, because a samurai knows only complete and utter concentration when engaged in martial arts. Also, I knew they posed no threat, because my spider sense wasn't tingling. I heard whispers of "Oh man, I wanna be like that guy!" and "Wow, how come he rules so much?" Luckily modesty and humility are also traits of the samurai, so I paid no heed to the accolades. I just went about my demon slaying deeds. My arms ached from hours of combat, but I ignored the pain and battled on, because I'm a hero like that. I crushed opponent after opponent, including a hulking, brutish cyclops of a beast. I blocked his axe with ease and disembowelled him. Shortly thereafter, I found the one weakness of the game. A giant cat, so enormous only his paws were visible on the screen, decided to attack me. Unable to block such attacks, I proceeded to dodge each assault and deliver devastating blows to the feral feline. Unfortunately the game sensor did not recognize my body as it did the sword. My dodges were ignored, and the cat-beast defeated me. There is only so much one samurai can do. And that, my friends, is what it means to be a true samurai. So take your silly quizzes and post your silly results, but know that Writing.com only has room for one samurai. A very problematic one. |
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| I missed it. Jodi and I returned from an anniversary getaway yesterday, and in my tired, euphoric state I missed the significance of the day. August 13, 2006. My third Writing.com birthday. Yup, three years old. Give me a couple more W.com birthdays, and I'll reach my actual mental age. I also returned to discover that I won "Invalid Item"  , which means I'm 400,000 GPs richer. It's my birthday and I'm GP rich, so can you guess what that means? Yeah, it's time for a blog game.To commemorate my third birthday, I think it appropriate to consider what Writing.com would be like if I never joined back on August 13, 2003. So that's your task people: write a brief (or verbose if you insist) exposition on how Writing.com and your Writing.com experiences would be different if I was never a member. Think of it as "It's a Wonderful Life," though you're not obligated to make me feel like I need to be around. Actually I'd expect quite the reverse from some of you. You can post your mini-entry here as a comment or you can post a link to it here. The prize(s) I disperse depends on how many people participate. Also, remember that I have an ever-shrinking attention span, so make it interesting or at least flattering. I usually manage to stay awake when someone is stroking my ego.  Now hop to it.I was also going to use this space to describe my own experiences over the past three years as a member. I've changed more in these three years than the rest of my life combined, and this site had a lot to do with that, but I'm feeling too lazy and drowsy to write all that out now, so you'll have to wait. Maybe later today, but I already have a couple entries planned. |
| I was a junior in high school when we made one of many trips to Florida. My father had always been afraid of flying, so we always drove for 19 hours before crashing in a hotel in Orlando. Sometimes we'd stop and spend the night in one of the Carolinas... That reminds me of another story. I'll definitely have to tell that one next week. But this time we were heading back from Florida in that Chevy Lumina my parents owned. A Lumina looks better suited for sucking dust bunnies than coastal exploration, but it conveniently seated 7 people, and we filled it. We were packed in like sardines, but what I was about to serve up smelled much worse than little fish. To set the stage, I had gorged myself at Red Lobster the night before. Red Lobster is the poor man's five star restaurant, and you can get away with being a total glutton. Right up my alley. I hate upwards of a pound of shrimp, some distant memory of an appetizer, and two fudgey, gooey ice cream-laden deserts that still haven't been completely passed. Yes, only two; I was such a pussy back then. During the early hours of our departure, I could feel my stomach churning. An all too familiar rumbling down below was easily remedied with chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate. I don't remember the exact candy I ate, but it was certainly enough milk chocolate to suck that poor cow dry. This cow, on the other hand, was quite enjoying it. By nightfall, we were approaching the mid-Atlantic coast, and I still hadn't moved my bowels. That's worrisome because I ship logs down the canal larger and faster than Paul Bunyan ever could. I ain't rolling mine though. His blue ox Babe would probably trip over mine. So my rectum was grinding, backing up, and otherwise preparing for an explosion. Now I don't know about you, but when I watch fireworks I much prefer a long, steady display to one, rapid fire grand finale. Ever the entertainer, I decided my own inflammatory artshow would last hours. Imagine this if you will (and you must because this is my blog): you're stuck in the middle row seat of a rolling Dust Buster, a 17 year old is belting out wave upon wave of noxious gas behind you, it's the middle of winter in Baltimore and no one's looking to crack a window, the only form of ventilation is the straw from that shitty Coke you bought at the last service station, and your husband is sitting in the front seat laughing his ass off. And oh yeah, it's 2 below outside, so the driver has the car heat cranked to the max. Well, that's what my aunt by marriage was going through, only worse. To add insult to injury, she was newly married into my family, and this trip to Florida had been their wedding gift from my father. She slowly turned green as I kept laying them out. Silent, but deadly, the whole lot of them. When she starting gulping uncontrollable, thus swallowing air so rich with methane that it was almost chunky, my uncle noticed and finally quit laughing. He's always been an asshole, so neither response surprised me. I never counted the number of farts, but I measured my success by how many inches the blankets crept over everyone's faces. My mother almost immediately pulled it right over her head, because even suffocation was pleasant by comparison. My brother covered his nose with his hand. Then his shirt. Finally a blanket. He was 11 years old and didn't think he would make it to 12. My new aunt though, sat there with no impromptu face mask. As the brave newcomer, she tried to maintain an air of dignity. How that can be accomplished when you're green in the gills and your eyes are rolling into the back of your head is beyond me, but I was laughing hysterically throughout the entire ordeal. Seeing that the newest Beckwith might be leaving us already, my father yelled up from the driver's seat to knock it off. As if I could possibly just stop farting. That gas was coming out one way or another, so if I squeezed my ass cheeks I was going to hershey squirt, a fitting demise after my chocolate binge. At this point I figured my unmentionables were skidmarked anyway, so I tried to suppress a particular potent toot. It had a rather remarkable and somewhat pleasant effect. Rather than squirting out via a compressed, liquid form, that gas shot straight back up and popped out my mouth. Sitting right behind my aunt, I blasted my aunt with a belch reeking of rotten eggs. Right in her ear. And again. And again. For an hour straight I belched loud and clear, filling the car with a mix of methane and sulfurous rotten egg odor. Burping right into the back of her head turned her face and her hair green. What can I say, they were juicy burps. Finally we pulled over for the night. More family members had been traveling in another car. A second uncle approached our minivan and slid open the side door. He started to stick his head in and suddenly recoiled. "Oh God!" he yelled just before he turned his head and started gagging. "What the hell is that?!" He stepped back three feet and started waving the air in front of his face. "What are you doing in there?! What the fuck crawled in there and died?!" My aunt crawled out of the van and started sucking wind. It's lucky for her she had been quite a swimmer. She crossed the parking lot, hungry for that crisp January air. My father kept yelling at me, my mother and siblings piled out with blankets still wrapped around their faces, and my uncle in the front seat started laughing again. I, on the other hand, had never quit laughing. |
| Okay, so some people have been pestering me. They want to know what the ninjas are up to. It's actually quite heinous and dare I say problematic. You probably know I've been working on a website to detail the ninja exploits, to document my efforts to end the threat they pose to me and my ass cheeks, and to otherwise look for help in exterminating the ninja pests. I bit off more than I could chew just now, so the website isn't finished. It is, however, complete on a very basic level. I still have to add my ninja blog, provide a behind the scenes documentary, make a guestbook for my visitors, complete the ninja FAQ, and other miscellaneous activities. But, because I'm under pressure from the ninja fans and because I don't want anyone to forget about the hell I'm experiencing every day, I decided I'll post what I have set up so far. The panel on the left shows must of what I intend to include, but black links are incomplete. Likewise I have lots of formatting to do. The only graphical feature, which is the banner image, was designed by our very own Jedi Moose . He also made a mini logo for me, which I show below. Every time I make an update to the website, I'll post the mini logo in a blog entry here to give you a heads up.Please do bear in mind that I still have a lot to do with this website, especially in terms of navigating the chronicles. I appreciate any and all feedback. I'll also warn you that it looks best under 1024x768 resolution. If you don't use that, you suck anyway. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** The basic URL: http://ninjachronicles.problematiccontent.com If you've already been following the ninja chronicles, you might want to jump ahead: http://ninjachronicles.problematiccontent.com/navigate.php?ninja_id=20 |
| If any of you were wondering how exactly Jodi has changed me, here's an example. I am currently contemplating deleting my previous entry. I think it's a good entry in more ways than one, but I'm thinking about deleting it simply because it might offend someone. Not very problematic I know, but it's a battle raging in my head. Her sweet influence is slowly winning. Ironically she now posts things she would have never posted prior to hooking up with me. Just the other day she posted a link to everything you ever wanted to know about dog poo. Not too mention her blog reference to http://www.ratemypoo.com. She's getting more problematic, and I'm turning into a teddy bear. I hope to hell this isn't a total metamorphosis. |
| Okay, today is deserving of a particular kind of entry. Unfortunately for some of my readers, that practically calls for a vomit bag. And no, it's not what you think. There's nothing problematic about this one, but I think I'm allowed to express myself now and again. I might as well since so many of the voters in that ridiculous poll have me pegged for a teddy bear anyway. Bastards... Today marks the first year of a new beginning. I've changed so much in the past year. I was an oft-depressed, ever-disatisfied, lonely, bitter, 40-something 25-year-old. A year ago today though that all began to change when two Writing.com acquaintances that fast became friends decided to pursue something that burned within both of us. We began as almost opposites, a contrasting ying and yang, so very different, but inexplicably and irreversibly intertwined and attached to form a perfect whole. A year later, our dissimilarities diminish, and we've melded together. Her love has changed me, in ways I cannot begin to count. I know I am not the same man I was that first night we chatted on AIM all through the night until I had to go to work the next morning. I've grown. I still have more growing to do, but nothing is impossible anymore so long as I have her love and support. She brought me out of my shell, made me into the cuddly teddy bear you all take me for, and finally prompted me to grow up. Above all that though, I finally understand love, friendship, and what it means to put someone's happiness and well-being ahead of my own. I do things now I could never do before because I know she's always by my side. I can show the world, and especially the offline world, the real me, because I no longer care about being judged. I don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks of me, because I know she loves me, and that's the only thing that matters. I've seen her change too, though it's been more noticeable to the people that don't see her everyday, to the people that aren't changing and melding with her as I am. People who met her at the 2004 convention were shocked at how much I've changed her. She too has come out of a shell, expanded her sense of humor, and has inherited some of my problematic tendencies. Everyone says we complement each other, and I couldn't agree more. We're two parts to a whole now and both better people because of it, though my changes were profoundly more beneficial. I'm actually sorry she's adopted some of my more offensive traits. Today marks the one year anniversary of finding the best friend I've ever had. Today marks the one year anniversary of finding a love many people only dream about. By some karmic twist of fate I've been blessed. Sometimes I stop and wonder what I do to deserve it. When I can't come up with any good reason, I remind myself again and again to appreciate her gift of love and friendship and do whatever I can to make her happy. But my endeavors to make her smile and warm her heart are not mere signs of appreciation. Rather there is truly nothing more important to me than her happiness. I would gladly sacrifice everything for that cause. When I came to that realization several months ago, that's when I knew she was the one I wanted to spend my life with. Someday soon we'll be married, and then we'll have another, more traditional anniversary to celebrate. This one will always hold a special place in my heart though, because it heralds both the birth of a perfect love and the beginning of being pulled from the darkness and learning what it means to truly be alive. I love you, Jodi, in ways I can never adequately describe. Thank you for being my best friend, my confidant, my companion, my supporter, my lover, my better half to this whole, and my fiancee. Happy Anniversary, my love.  |
Someone made a poll about how perfect I am, and for once it wasn't even me. I don't know who the jokers are that voted I was a teddy bear or some such nonsense, but I bet the person who voted for me being "the perfect man" had his/her head on straight. It's good to be loved.
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| At some point in the recent past my blog hit its 10,000 view. I never even thought of it until Pia Veleno mentioned hitting number 2000. I guess 10,000 is some kind of milestone or something. Judging by my ranking on the journal/blog list, not too many people hit that mark. Some people can spout off their view numbers on demand, but until I made it into the top 20 blogs I never paid much attention to it. I'm an attention whore sure, but I want to know that lots of people are waiting to see what I'll say next. Views are proof of it, but so many of those views are faceless. I guess that's why I don't put much importance on it. Instead I measure my success by the number and content of the blog comments I get. I figure if someone leaves a blog comment, the entry inspired them somehow. Maybe they were entertained, annoyed, appalled, amused, busting a gut, or whatever. In any case, my entry was worth commenting on. And that means I did what I set out to do. That's why I'll always have a blog, and not a journal; I need the interaction. When this one fills up, I'll start another blog. Losing all these comments terrifies me though, so I might copy and paste every single one of them into a static item first. That's also why I periodically delete the boring entries that have a few meaningless comments. They were a failure on my part, and I may as well free up the space for more entries. I get an adrenaline rush every time someone leaves a blog comment. I daresay I even have a mini orgasm when a new person leaves a comment. Alternatively some people IM me about my entries instead. That's nice and all, but it defeats the whole interactive purpose of my blog. *cough* shannon *cough* Ahem. That's why I won't tell anyone what I'm writing until it's done. Likewise all my replies come in blog comment format. It's an open hormone-rich forum where the PC-lovers and PC-haters get to duke it out and engage in a wild orgy of dung-flinging and... Or something like that. I guess I should be flattered or something that I'm getting all this attention. Actually I figure I pretty much earned it. (Yup, here comes a healthy dose of egotism.) This blog is living proof that I love the attention. I taylored the damned thing so I'd get some. And you all fell for it, you lonely voyeurs! Now I'm going to go take a leak or something to celebrate my 10,087th view. |
| Okay, folks, it's finally that time; I'm finally going to spell out everything that happened at convention. I'm going to dig deep, get messy, and regale you with ribald tales of conventioners gone wild. I'm going to make you privy to all the juiciest gossip and expose everyone for exactly what they are. So buckle up, and prepare to be shocked. Actually, I don't feel like it right now. I had you going for a minute there, didn't I? Heh, suckers. Nah, instead I'll bore you with the details of yesterday's company picnic. The picnic was slated to be a lakeside barbeque, complete with catered buffet, activities, and prizes for the winners. Well, the lakeside part was right anyway. Thank goodness for the scenic Berkshires. They let us wear shorts to work on Tuesday, which was perfect timing since it was the hottest day of the year, quite literally. Of course the one day I come in to work somewhat scantily dressed, the AC units were cranking all night, and I had to scrape the condensation off my monitor. The picnic was also on this 110 degree day, which was horrible timing. By the end of the afternoon I felt like a greased pig, only smellier. I was able to wring my shirt out when I got home though. Part of the agenda involved a scavenger hunt over the trails around half the lake. Let me just tell you; trapsing around beaches, coves, and park benches under the open sun with 90-something percent humidity made little Onota Lake seem like Lake Ontario. (I chose Lake Ontario from the list of Great Lakes because Canadians are cool.) Food was scheduled for 5:00PM, so naturally everyone wondered where the caterer was at 4:00 and then 4:30. Still no sign of him at 5:00 or even 5:30. When we got back from our ridiculous scavenger hunt around 5:30, I thought the pavilion was going to transform into a scene from Lord of the Flies. I had no interest in being the sacrificial Piggy, so I took a ride on the pontoon boat. It provided a cool, pseudo-refreshing escape from the heat anyway. I was damned hungry too, but fortunately dehydration was already setting in, and so I was too sick to my stomach to think about eating too much. This despite drinking more Gatorade than the Florida Gators. Even with heatstroke-induced hallucinations I still possessed enough cognitive thought to realize I was having fun in spite of my company botching the entire thing. The best part of the evening was actually the beginning. My supervisor talked me into being his partner for the horseshoes tournament. I had played only once in my life when I managed to sneak the horseshoes away when I was 16 or so. So needless to say I was nervous about making an ass of myself. Growing up I had been restricted to silent observer while the men played at family picnics, reunions, and graduation parties. You couldn't play horseshoes unless you could vote, and only then if you were a registered Republican. So for years I had just watched, now and again refilling someone's cup from the keg, because the men-folk were too tied to those pits to fetch their own. Ah, it brings me back. I can almost smell the burnt hot dogs, draft beer, and manure in the pasture. Oh wait, that was dog shit. But I digress. It turns out the people I work with have about as much athletic ability as a three-legged chihuahua. And that's saying something since horseshoes requires almost as much prowess as that paragon of athletic perfection they call curling. They weren't just bad at horseshoes though, because they equally sucked at bocce and checkers. How either of those compare is beyond me, but the point is I suddenly wasn't so nervous about my own raw amateur skills. I saw a few other people throw some shoes, and I knew we couldn't win, but I knew I wouldn't be the worst player either. My supervisor was pretty gung ho about it, so I was hoping I could coast along on his coattails. If I could just keep pace with the crappy players while he battled the pros, we'd have a shot. We came in second place, after losing two matches and winning two. The two we lost were close matches, and I did much better than I figured. In fact by the end of the afternoon I was regarded as "The Closet Horseshoe Player." In fact, in one match we beat out the horseshoe afficianado who set the whole thing up. Actually, I single-handedly beat him and his partner, because my enthusiastic partner never scored a point during that match. In fact, in four matches he only managed one point total. I had somewhere around 20 points total, which was most likely the highest single person total. Figures I'd get stuck with the only sucky male participant. It still amazes me that the ability to toss a hunk of metal a couple dozen feet or so in close proximity to a steak could be so difficult for some people. Getting ringers is something else altogether, because that requires precision accuracy and the ability to get the right number of revolutions. My technique was pretty simple: throw the shoe with a low arc, hoping it only revolves once or twice, and land it somewhere in front of the steak. I had to go with a low arc, even though I figure that's bad technique, because I have atrocious depth perception. Basically I just wanted to land close or hit the steak. I tried to minimize revolutions and hit the ringers, but I was mostly just praying for those. I actually had only 3 ringers after throwing 40 shoes. That's 7.5%. Nowhere near the 12-20% of our resident shoe guru, Zoo - Salted and Roasted . Two of those ringers came in the clutch. One cancelled out another guy's ringer that would have eliminated us right then and there. The other put us back ahead when we were down by 2 points with only 4 shoes left. I could have been the hero of the day if not for my craptacular partner. Instead he rode on my coattails. Ah well, such is the story of my life. Besides, I owe him something for pulling me back into the mystique of horseshoes. I suddenly feel so manly and all grown up. The lone caterer finally showed up at 6:00PM and we ate at 7:00. It was not the world's greatest meal to say the least. I'd elaborate, but it's traumatic and I'm trying to block it out. Dinner was followed by awards. The horseshoes champs won techi-color bottle holders that didn't even fit around standard bottles, so I suddenly didn't feel so bad. Likewise, when I saw the accounting team win dollar store "immunity idols" for winning the scavenger hunt (another event the IT team finished second in), I didn't feel guilty for refusing to run or even jog to the next clue. Then came the door prizes, for which we got little raffle tickets. By the time I finally won, which is the first time I've ever won anything at a company event, the gift certificates were all gone. That left me to choose from thumbsized citronella candles and a hodgepodge of key hiders. My company spares no expense! I took the butterfly key hider, because Jodi loves butterflies so much. Though frankly I didn't know it was a "key hider," or even what a key hider was, until the HR lady explained it to me. Yeah, I can definitely see its use. No self-respecting buglar would take the time to look for a key under a plastic rock with a butterfly etched into it. Genius, I say, genius! That's how I spent my Tuesday afternoon. That and a whole lot of sweating. |
| I'm artistically illiterate. I'm fine with that, and even appreciative that it supports my claims of 94% masculinity, but sometimes it comes back to bite me. Sometimes I wish I could see the inherent beauty in something and have the eye for creating art. I'd settle for a trained skill in generating something at least moderately pleasing or aesthetically acceptable to the eye. I've spent the last four days or so working on a website. That's mostly why my blog entries have been conspicuously absent. Many of you have followed the ninja saga, and I've teased you with hints of their most recent misdeeds. I have not posted the recent pics of their exploits because this website will be dedicated to exactly that. In this blog I'll merely let you know when the website is updated. I've wrote code to nagivate the ninja chronicles, leave comments regarding their exploits, and make the addition of all new photos a seamless and simple process. I actually bit off more than I should have for a first version, but I've always been a glutton. I'm going to pump this thing full of functionality, because that's what I know and that's what I'm good at. Last night though I decided I better start working on the style and layout of the damn thing. I generated a complex stylesheet so I can play with the color schemes and table schemes until I get it right. And play I did. Nothing came out well though. For all the mirth and functionality I've instilled in this website, I can't make it look good. I've moved a navigation panel around. I've changed background colors, text colors, table colors, link colors, fonts, image sizes, links, and anything I can think of. But it just doesn't look right. I have no graphics to work with either. I've got my photos, but no banner images, logos, etc. I daresay I know more about poop-freeze than graphic design. In fact, I'm proud to say I know I do. I commissioned Jedi Moose to make me a banner of sorts. I'm hoping he'll deliver his creative genius to me, and the colors will inspire the color scheme and layout of my site. I don't understand original art, but I know how to steal an idea and exploit it like it's nobody's business. I guess I'm kind of like Bill Gates in that regard. Though I'm actually going to compensate the Jedimeister.If all else fails, I'm going to make the site look intentionally childish and grotesque. It'll be basic and craptacular, in a charming, "this guy is mentally unstable" sort of way. I'll even write up some bogus explanation of why it's so cruddy visually in the FAQ. I may not be an artist, but I am a bullshit artist. I'll let you all know when the website is up and running. I won't be around next weekend, so I'm hoping I get it done this week. Although Jedi's contribution will certainly factor in to that. I just wanted to warn you that it might be a bigger eyesore than a yard full of pink flamingos, garden gnomes, pinwheels, and wooden cutouts of country ladies in aprons bending over. I guess if it makes you laugh, even if you're just laughing at my pathetic web design, I'll be happy. |
| My supervisor doesn't just beat a dead horse, he castrates it, draws and quarters it, and then flushes the dead horse flesh down the toilet one teaspoon at a time. But first, he kills the horse himself with mind-numbing powers that cause the horse's bodily functions to fail just before its brain explodes and it collapses. It takes a monster dump all over everyone and everything just before it bites the big one and he starts pounding on its lifeless form. He just came and sat down in my cubicle with a manual. Whenever I see a manual in his hands I cringe. Apparently I should have taken that as my cue to get up and use the toilet or something, but I have a nasty habit of being polite to my boss. He proceeded to open the manual and talk about an issue that was solved three months ago. A while back our accountant reported a failure of several retired assets in our system to diminish accurately in ledger value. After much insistence by several people that something was wrong with our system, I used my infinite wisdom and eternal skepticism of all things user-based to find the root of the problem. The woman entering all these asset retirements was doing so incorrectly. While making this discovery, I conclusively proved the system works and determined the exact process needed for accurate results. We showed the woman how to do it properly and supplied documentation. Three months later it's still an issue, and once again I've proven that it's the user doing it incorrectly. You can't fix stupid, people. My supervisor knows I'm right, and he has said as much, but now he wants me to document the entire process. Did I mention I already did that and the manual he suddenly produced has done exactly that as well? Yeah, let's forget about all this work on my desk right now. Instead I'll sit down with the engineering department all day long, so I can learn how to do their jobs. That way I can make a third copy of an existing document and know how to do all their work for them when they fail miserably at it. Now the not so interesting thing about this manual he brought over is only about three pages of it are relevant to the topic at hand. This means he spent a half hour in my cube reading, re-reading, re-reading, and finally re-reading the same three pages over and over. The first time through I followed along. I even stared at the crusty bits on my shoe while I waited the six minutes for him to read the first page. It was 5 lines long. After reading the section the first time, I pointed out how it was exactly what I had written down before and had told the dipshit whose head could double as a bowling ball. He knows she's an idiot, and he didn't disagree. A lot of nodding and "yeah yeah" ensued. Then he started flipping to other sections of the manual. An "oh shit" almost escaped my lips before I consciously shut down my cognitive thought processes and set my neck to Auto-Nod. He'd stare at other pages for several minutes, half mumbling as he spewed something about that page to me. It was a lot of talk about how the system used to work, etc. etc. blah blah blah. He used to be in the engineering department, so whenever we talk about this crap he meanders even more than usual in an effort to convince us that he actually knows what he's talking about. He'd flip from section to section, commenting on each in turn briefly, before quickly returning to the original topic and staring at those three pages for several minutes all over again. I wish I could detail his inane comments, but at this point my eyes were already getting droopy and I let myself contemplate nothing but the poorly written number 9 on my closest post-it note. I actually lost control and my eyes completely shut for seconds at a time more than once. Luckily he was too busy staring at those blasted pages in awe, as if they might leap off the page and punch a midget or something, to notice. Had there been a midget around, maybe I would have been more interested. Each time he actually glanced at me, I nodded. If he chuckled, at the idiocy of the system or something like that I presume, I'd smile and then nod. I was clearly comatose, but I doubt he noticed. He actually enters his own little world when he beats these dead horses. For thirty minutes straight he'll mumble, with no outside stimuli from his supposed audience. I say mumble because we only half understand him, and we wouldn't understand much more even if we were paying attention. About 10 minutes into his horse beating he told me what he wanted me to do. Excellent, now leave and I'll add it to the list. But it's never that easy. We spent the next 20 minutes with me staring at my shoes and struggling to maintain consciousness while he repeated everything he already said at least 36 times. It was as if someone locked me in a car leaking carbon monoxide, and he was the hose that was going to put me out. For a few moments, that demise seemed pleasant by comparison. He finally left, leaving the book with me. That's good, because now I can cleverly conceal it, thus preventing recurring episodes. Incidentally he's the master of reruns. When he left, I nodded and said something like "Yup, yup, I'll do that." He disappeared around the cubicle wall and I went back to IM'ing people on Writing.com. I'll leave the manual out on my desk for a few days, until he forgets he ever gave me this meaningless, redudant task. In the meantime I'll get real work done. |
| You can cut the tension in our apartment with a katana. You can hear a pin drop or a cat fart. Something is brewing, and I'm almost afraid of what may come of it. I really don't want to buy groceries twice this week, but I'm worried our first batch may not survive the week. At the convention auction I bought some of catwoman  's awesome fudge, and I got a free bag for having the highest winning bid, an ordeal I shall journal about once the financial anxieties wear off. We put it in the fridge for snacking on at our leisure. The Grey Fridge Ninjas have other plans though. Those creamy peanut butter blocks are perfect for constructing refrigerated fortresses. Or so the ninjas have proven...Invalid Photo #1004196 |
During convention several tiny ninjas escaped from The StoryMistress  's candy baskets and traveled home in my Writing.com tote bag. They have since crawled out, formed ranks, and established defensible positions among our residence. Terrifying but also astonishingly amusing, I present their escapades for you here...
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| Sometimes, once every six hundred farts or so, the Great PC gets a little sentimental. Give me this, dear readers, and forgive me for being a whiny, sappy bitch for just a few moments. About 5 hours ago Jodi and I departed from the 2006 Writing.com convention. We are now home, safe and sound and back to the daily grind. But I feel empty inside. I feel like Jodi and I are alone in the world right now. I have the urge to go visit my parents and brother just to be around other people. For the past four days we've been surrounded by a crazy and wonderful group of people. Yes, I said wonderful, but that's all you're getting out of me for now. Don't worry, I'll tear them all apart later. Parting is such sweet sorrow as the saying goes. And so it was that noontime as we all swapped goodbyes and began our treks in different directions. Some stole hugs from me, much to my chagrin, but I was too depressed to notice... much. Bittersweet puts it best. I made new friends and strengthened long-standing online friendships. Suddenly these people became tangible, and people I wasn't sure about before suddenly became really cool people. I miss the comradery, the laughs, the activities, and the fun we had together. With this being the last convention, I wonder if I'll ever see anyone of them again. Even with possible future events, it's likely I'll never see at least a few of them again. And the Great PC is sad. I actually started wondering if maybe I shouldn't have gone to Convention at all; then I wouldn't have known what I was missing. Ignorance truly is bliss. |
| Convention is awesome. I could write about what I've endured so far, but I'll wait until Monday so I have something to do while I'm at work. In the meantime I just wanted my readers to know that I'm thoroughly enjoying myself and offending vast amounts of people. And right now I'm currently resisting the urge to begin spilling all the sordid details. Outlining convention for my readers will be an all day project, and in half an hour I'm off to convention breakfast. *points and laughs at the people stuck out there in cyberspace* Sucks to be you!  Yeah, yeah, I'm a bastard. I've already been called that more than once here. In fact, a total W.com stranger called me an ass yesterday. It warmed my heart. By the way I'm deleting this entry soon after I return. It's a craptacular entry with no real point, and I've consciously decided to conserve my entries so my blog can make it into the top 10. I'm greedy like that. I still had to post this though, mostly just so I could point and laugh at those not attending. And yes, it was well worth it.  |
| People say I'm controversial. Apparently writing about poop, freakish people, and feigned delusions of grandeur is controversial. Well, if I am truly am tagged as controversial, it's about time I wrote something that earned that label. So hold on to your socks, because the aftermath of this entry will leave the blogging world shaking, especially among a particular blogging bloc. It's going to be long, but I've been wanting to make this point ever since I read someone else's blog yesterday. Here's the gist of it: Religious zealotry: the cause of and solution to all of the world's little problems. Religion's greatest contribution to mankind is its teachings on one how to live one's life. All the religions pretty much agree there is a code of morals and ethics and honor by which we all should live. What exactly this code is or why we should adhere to it is never quite the same, but in general all the various codes teach us to be better human beings. Why we need to worship someone or something in order to be decent human beings is beyond me, but to each his own. But humans can never draw just decency from religion, probably because its humans themselves that have devised these religions. They all have doctrines and dogmas, and all the practicioners have convictions. Convictions are a great thing so long as they're giving you some sort of comfort, but religious zealots turn convictions into a narrow-minded excuse for hatred and lunacy. We're all entitled to our beliefs and our convictions. But what pisses me off more than anything in the realm of religion is when one person is convinced that his convictions are right and everyone else is wrong. His convictions become the truth, and what he says will happen will happen. He preaches his faith to anyone who disagrees, because he knows he's right. He learned it from some religious doctrine that he believes in, therefore it must be true. Anyone who doesn't believe it isn't a true follower of that religion. Let's see where that kind of attitude has gotten us, shall we? The Romans had convictions when they slaughtered the Jews and crucified Jesus. The Christians had convictions when they embarked on the Crusades, a empirical conquest of the Middle East and an exercise in genocide. The Muslims had convictions whenever they declared jihad. The Isreali Jews had convictions whenever they attacked and/or persecuted Palestinians and other Muslims. Hitler had convictions when he insisted on genocide. Members of the Klu Klux Klan had convictions when they murdered non-white Americans. Caribbean cannibals had convictions when they consumed European explorers. Columbus had convictions when he slaughtered the heathen Native Americans. The Catholics had convictions when they slaughtered countless "heretics" during the Spanish Inquisition. How many intertwined political and religious convictions have resulted in the deaths of millions? Throughout history people have committed countless acts of atrocity in the name of their god(s). All because of religious conviction. Were they all right? Well, according to the behaviors of modern religious zealots, they must have been. Even today, right here on this website, we're plagued by countless bigoted, religious zealots who assert that only their convictions are the accurate ones. This narrow-mindedness is a breeding count for oppression of thought and expression. To insist that your beliefs are the only valid beliefs is no different than any of the examples I highlighted above. Moreover, these bigoted religious zealots concoct "explanations" for the validity of their convictions. Christians claim it's in the Bible, a document composed, edited, withheld, translated, and transcribed by men. When pointing this out, they remind us that these men communicated the gospels with the Holy Spirit. What about Islam then? The prophet Mohammed communicated directly with the angel Gabriel from what I know of Islamic history. So if his teachings are directly from his god and the teachings of the Bible are directly from the Christian god, but both insist the other is wrong, who do we believe? The same can be applied to all the religions. Religious zealots fail to recognize the existence of other spiritual beliefs and instead have the audacity to claim the other religions are all lies. Never mind that the creation of their own religion is just as suspect as the rest. So am I claiming that religious zealots who insist their convictions are the only right ones are just as bad as Hitler, Islamic Fundamentalists, the perpetrators of the Spanish Inquisition, etc? Well, they're not quite that bad, but they're pretty darn close. That level of narrow-minded bigotry is where almost every large-scale violent and oppressive event begins. Mix in some politics and you have yourself holy war and perhaps even genocide. Because when you insist your line of thought is the only correct one, but no one will believe you, then it becomes of matter of "might is right." So go ahead with your religious lunacy. Preach until your heart's content about the truth. Call others false prophets until you're blue in the face. But don't come whining to me when some other religious zealot kills your whole family because you worship the wrong god. That just makes you a hypocrite, and I'm fairly certain most religions would agree on the value of a hypocrite. |
| mood indigo claims it's been too long since I hosted a blog game. I seem to recall hosting a game for people to write flattering stuff about me not too long ago, so I don't know what kind of magic dragon she's puffing. That game did little for my ego however, given the lack of entries, so maybe it shouldn't count. Because I first and foremost seek to please my readers, this one's for you, shannon. Actually, it's partly for Holly Jahangiri too, whose entry today inspired me. She wrote about a rude exchange with a dirty old hippie. By now my readers know what I think of real hippies. shannon doesn't understand why I loathe them so much though, so I think we should convince her.Support my distaste for hippies. Write a hippie anecdote or a diatribe about potheads wearing tie-dyed shirts. Remark on your disgust for men with greasy pony tails or hemp-fashioned sandals. Tell a tale of circular glasses and hash brownies. Do whatever it takes to proove that hippies need to be contained. Here's the rules:  Write something about a hippie, any hippie, or just hippies in general that supports my dislike for them. Post it here as a blog comment or link to a journal entry about it. No existing entries count. (Sorry, Holly.) The best one gets a merit badge. I might give out more than one or throw in some GPs though.DISCLAIMER: In case you're a total dipshit who hasn't figured it out yet, I don't really hate all hippies. Just most of 'em. |
| I am stunned and amazed. I am disappointed and apalled. I am speechless and immobile. Well, actually I'm not speechless because I hardly ever am, but at the very least I have begun to question my own faith. A faith not in God, but in a vocabulary goddess. mood indigo has fallen from her lexicon heaven, fallen from her syllabic pedestal, fallen from her wordy ladder built of lies. She challenged me to another game to restore her name and champion status. I was reluctant to accept because I didn't think I could catch lightning in a bottle twice. Let's fact it, despite all my bravado, shannon is my immense superior when it comes to word games. That's why she decimates all of us at Literati, which is the online Yahoo! version of scrabble. I've never come close to defeating her at that game. Jodi did once and might have actually pulled it off, but I can't remember. But not only does she own us in that game, but she owns us. She scores insane points on words no one has ever heard of before. We have to pull up Dictionary.com just to get a definition, because sometimes even she doesn't know. For the longest time it baffled us. We had dictionary.com at our disposal, but that's only good for checking if a word is actually a word. You still need a possible word to begin with. So how did she do it? We assumed she just knew all those words. Lies! Horrible, horrible lies! *makes a symbol of the cross with his fingers* During our game today we got to MORO. She wisely put down an S, expecting me to resort to MOROSE. Not to be beaten I made it MOROSI, thus beginning the word MOROSIS. Ever the schemer she made it MOROSIT. I checked Dictionary.com. MOROSITY was a word, but MOROSITIES was not. Even if it was, I was doomed to land on either the Y or the S. But since I had lost either way, I hatched a brilliant plan. I posted MOROSITI with the hope she would think it was a word. She responded with MOROSITIE, which I promptly challenged. She had missed the opportunity to challenge me, and now she had fallen into my trap. Genius, I know. If I could not beat her at her game, I had to outmaneuver her. She insisted that by Scrabble rules, MOROSITIES was a word. I demanded a link to the source that claimed that. She happily gave me the following link: http://www.jockanddeb.com/cgi-bin/scrabbleword.cgi?word=morosities Scroll down on that link, folks, and you'll see the horrifying truth to it all. Beneath the definition of "morosities" is a host of anagrams of all or some of the letters that make up that word. This website supplies you with a near limitless supply of anagrams for any word, words many of us have never even heard of. It is a treasure trove of Scrabble winners. And dear, sweet, articulate shannon is one of those hording its secrets. The way to vocabulary godhood is paved by a website. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. |
| Everyone knows mood indigo is the undisputed master of vocabulary. Number one contender at the very least. Sure she throws out big words now and again without quite understanding their meaning, but that's all part of being a literary wizard. Baffling people with $5 words during simple conversation and working 23 syllable words into idle chitchat is all part of the bravado. And when it comes to superlative lexicons, shannon is the man! Er... woman. That's why I take even more pleasure from defeating her at her own game. Yesterday we played a vocabulary game. Luckily for me the meanings of words was mostly irrelevant, so I was able to hold my own against this human embodiment of a thesaurus. Each of us would give one letter at a time, forming a chain of letters. The first to spell a word received a point. However, points are a bad thing, because the first to 5 is the loser. So you take turns adding letters to the chain without forming a word. But the letter you add must make the chain be the beginning of a word. Obviously the target word can change after each turn. If you think your opponent put down a letter that won't let you spell anything, you can contest it. If you're wrong, you get a point, otherwise your opponent gets a point for trying to cheat. And yup, I whooped her ass. In fact, I inflicted her with two points right off the bat. She lured me into writing FUCK with FUC, but I countered with a brilliant FUCH, leaving her with nothing but FUCHSIA to spell, a word that ended on her turn. Sometimes my own strategery amazes me. Next I started with S, giving lots of room for the vocabulary goddess to make a move. I figured I'd give her a chance this time. She fell right into my trap with SH though. From there I stunned her by not using a vowel. Instead I countered with SHR, and I knew I had the match. I was thinking "SHRAPNEL," but she threw up SHRU, which made my job even easier. SHRUN it was, forcing her SHRUNK to earn herself another despised point. And so the match continued. She did inflict one point upon me however before I mopped the floor with her. It was such a menial and inconsequential word that I can't remember it anymore. Suffice it to say, my victory was swift and decisive, yet again proving there is a thin line between genius and insanity. She has challenged me to a rematch, and already I've jumped ahead. I plan on taking it easy on her this time though. Sages and elders always let the toddlers win once in a while. Otherwise they'll never want to play again. |
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