Vehemently Vitriolic

Spitz are a fickle mistress. They stare at you from the store shelves on every trip you make for sustinence. You’ve overcome her before and been clean for months. You haven’t even had the urges. The ugly, ugly urges. You’ve beat it before and shunned her…and this is a one-time only thing. You certainly won’t call her in the morning. Plus they’re like 2 for $5, so really, you’re SAVING money, and getting them this way rather than on the street where who knows what the Hot-N-Spicy might be cut with is way safer. Rationalization is the addicts only true friend.
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I spent last Easter weekend doing very traditional Easter things. Such as stuffing pieces of spun-glass fibre in between pieces of wood on a wall, then covering that with plastic. And drywalling. Not traditional you say? Well, historians now believe that Jesus (being a carpenter and all) was actually brought in to install some cabinets and a granite counter top into a residence on a pilot for a show called “Flip This Yurt”. He was helping “resurect” it, and the whole thing about him coming back from the dead was a mis-translation. (more…)

It is with a certain amount of pride that I have never had a cavity. In my whole life, not a single one. I’m also proud I have all my vestigial pieces (well, okay, not the tail as thats only during embryonic development. But how cool would THAT be) as well, but that may soon come to an end. Lousy mother nature and her wisdom-tooth money.

This also means I’ve never had to be mutilated any fillings done, nor had to see my friendly neighbourhood DDS for anything worse than a cleaning. So, it came as a bit of a shock when I found out I had the dreaded cavity. Oh sure, tartar and I were bussom friends for a long time, but I never thought my teeth would cheat on me with decay. (more…)

Last evening around dinner time, I was visited by the perennial pain-in-ass people known as the the Jehovahs Witnesses. They usually come on Saturday afternoons, but I guess conversion have been falling in this 3rd quarter, so the outreach program has been ramped up. “Goal oriented” are words I would use to describe the Witness breathren.
I’ll admit to being a godless heathen. I don’t believe or have faith, or whatever. I live in front of computer screens, so if there was a god, I’m pretty sure he would have given me some form of cancer (though, I use LCD’s now, so I guess I’ll have to find out what form of cancer they give off. Damn CRTs….such an easy stereotype) so I don’t sweat it.

However, I also have no problem with what people believe in. Whatever you believe in the privacy of your home is fine with me. Christ, Yaweh, Beezlebub, Welsh Rarebit, I really don’t care. I am quite aware that faith can be a huge thing to people, so I will even listen to their opening monologue before politely telling them I am not interested and to not bother us again. I don’t engage people in biblical inaccuracies or pretend I worship the devil. (more…)

So I bought Guitar Hero II a couple months back. Once I learned it, it didn’t take long to finish it off. It was ultra-addictive, but after finishing it on Hard, I needed…..more. Sure, theres Expert level, but after playing non-stop for a month, the same songs get a little tiresome. So, I bought Guitar Hero I. And finished that on Hard in two days. Ho hum.

Then a friend of mine showed me Frets On Fire and I instantly thought it was awesome. It’s essentially a FLOSS version of the Guitar Hero franchise, with the ability to add songs on your own (or from others at the great forum site) which really is the reason I bought GHI. Not to finish another game, but becuase playing the songs is fun (though, it must be said, if you know how to play even a little bit of real guitar, starting with the controller is a little cumbersome and just, well, wrong).

The big problem with FoF is that you need either to play on a keyboard, or get one of the mods (I like the RF-Mod, which seems to be about the only one compiled for Linux). You can also use a joystick using joy2key to emulate keystrokes. But, the holy grail, obviously, is to play on the guitar. I already had one for my PS2, so I went about finding an adapter to USB. (more…)

My wife is gone again for another tour to the Alaskan wilderness. This time she’ll be gone for a whole month, about the time of her previous stay. This is her third time leaving me for an extended period, and this time was profoundly different from the other two. I never like to see her go, it is literally losing your best friend in the whole world, but it never seems to have struck me as hard as it did this time.

It made me remember a truism I was told by a Canadian armed forces parachute instructor. He was explaining how the third jump with a military parachute (substantially smaller than a recreational one) is the worst you will ever do. It went like this: [WARNING: The rest of this is basically a sorrowful, self-indulgent introspection and is likely pretty damn boring if you’re not me or my wife. You have been warned] (more…)

I needed a holiday. Everyone says they do, and in my case, it happened to be true, so I did something about it. The name’s Johnny Rocket, and I’m a PI. At least, thats what it says on the door I rent.

I sat in my office, looking over the days racing form. Nothing to write home about. I had a T-bill to play and it was burning a hole in my suit. File Put Contents in the first to show maybe. I put my Camel down long enough to grab for the phone to let my bookie know, when my door opened, and she walked in. A short drink of water with blond hair. The kind of dame that will lead you to nothing but problems, and I couldn’t wait to follow.

“Whats the deal, sweetheart?” I said drinking her in. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. No matter. I was having whatever she was selling.
“Um….are you ready to go to the airport?”

So that was her game. The Airport was a two-bit gin-joint about an hour out of town. I had been there before. Nothing good ever came out of it. I couldn’t figure out why a bird like this needed to go such places, but I played along. (more…)

Ah, the sites and smells of the hospital. Just got back from the emergency center at Eagle Ridge hospital for my massive wounds.

Well, okay, perhaps “massive” and “wound” is not really what the medical industry would call it. I was walking down my landlords steps to build a MAME machine in his basement, and, for whatever reason, they felt that the carpet on the stairs was causing some sort of serious barrier to people enjoying the runners and stringers in all their glory, so they removed it.

But left the tack strips. (more…)

I have become single (again) while my wife is away fighting space zombies and mortgage lenders in a sub-prime post apocalyptic meltdown, also known as field geology.

As the time passes, I realise that me becoming a completely sloven git is not my own doing. No, like everyone in the US who refuses to take responsibility for their actions, I proudly pronounce:

I have a syndrome!

Its called Rational Female Brain Syndrome® or RFBS as the name on my inevitable patent and Nobel Prize statue will say. It follows the ideal of “behind every great man is an even greater woman”, though this phrase was shortened from “behind every half-assed male is a brilliant, and exceedingly patient, female making the man half-assed as opposed to some infintesmely small fraction-assed male if left on his own”. (more…)

I used to have really bad insomnia. Like ten years ago, before I met my wife, I would regularly pull all-nighters simply becaase I could just not pass out. But my wife has a very soothing and calming demeanor in dealing with this. While in bed she would say things like “Sssshhhhh….just relax and stop moving the bed, put your head on the pillow and rest or I’ll cave your skull in with a hammer”. Just like mom used to do.

But, now that she’s been gone for close to a month on a tour of duty in Alaska, I have been in a steady decline back to primitive-man state, which includes not sleeping overly well, and using only a single frying pan for every meal (eg: spaghetti. Figure that out). (more…)