so i'm sitting at home at eight thirty in the morning, not faking sick, not really sick, not on a holiday or a scheduled day off, but rather to wait for a pair of appointments i have at our new building at nine and nine-thirty. i find it odd to be on the receiving end of an appointment. appointments were always something i made (or rather, that someone else made for me) in order to see a professional. i would hardly consider myself a professional at my business (i certainly don't dress like one), and the only thing i'm willing to call myself a pro at is comedy, which i haven't done professionally for over a year.
man, we gotta get a show together...
(poor) fuck(ing) bush (had to stop his month-long vacation two days early and come back to show some measure of leadership, the poor widdle baby)

the insanity is all around...
first and foremost, here's hoping that my surrogate family in la place, louisiana, is safe. ti, if you see this, let me know, otherwise, i'll be in touch soon.
second, congratulations to tomatohead and j-me on their who-knows-how-distant nuptuals. i know it's craziness that i was the first of my closest friends to get married, but if i were to guess at the second, it wouldn't be jah. don't know why, he just always seemed like the "living in sin" type than the "make an honest woman out of her" type. (not that i buy into either of those terms, but they sure are convenient right now.)
third, my neighbors up the street have installed a eight foot long stream in their back yard. now, it isn't as though an eight foot stream can ever look natural no matter what, but this is the same couple who have a dozen or so lawn ornaments scattered about, mostly tasteful, but not all. yesterday, when we passed by on our dog walk, they had a concrete pelican sitting by the stream. i find this fucking hilarious. every time i pass this little man-made natural wonder, i will picture a pelican diving into a stream and busting his beak (what can i say, i'm twisted like that).
fourth, and finally, james, the big red dog called my house last night at two am. i haven't heard from him in several years, and now the asshole drunkdials me during the work week. i'm glad to hear from him, but i got back to sleep a lot easier than siouxs! did, so she's not exactly thrilled about the whole thing. on the off chance that you read this, james, please don't call after midnight unless it's a freaking emergency. that said, i hope to talk to you soon.
ass.
fuck bush.

drinkin 

logo by Howlermonkey 

the wine business is far too stressful. i never thoguht that having someone else do my job would add to my daily hassles, but when it is taken away before i even have a chance to get to it, and then i am fed a guilt trip for not doing it sooner, i become slightly pissed off. perhaps i need to get into the beer biz, but even that seems overly businessy and frequently corporate.
what i really want to do is make people laugh for a living. in what capacity, i cannot say. i still get a charge from performing, and "yeah, i guess it's obvious, i also like to write. all you had to do was give humpty a chance..." and now it doesn't matter because i still can't dance. all tangents aside, how would i go about getting into the comedy or comedy writing business? do i send portfolio stuff, or a tape, or what, and to whom?
if anyone knows anything, i doubt i'll hear anything (thanks to ml for at least reading the blog and occasionally writing back), but just for the hell of it, here's the gthedamned call for ideas. to whom do i pitch? how do i put together a comedy resume? what should i try to do? what the hell else do i need to know?
a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar, fuck bush.

i guess pat robertson heard all of the wild and outlandish things that other arch-conservatives were spouting, like "ending the war in iraq would weaken america" or "karl rove is not a criminal." upon hearing such things, he must have thought the door was wide open. he found out quickly that such unchristian statements as "we oughtta assasinate so and so" are not to be touched with a ten foot pole, particularly in times when any number of political assasinations are in the works. here is my list of likely possibilities.
1) tony blair - he had to bend a little too left to get in last election. he has lost sight of the goal. take him out.
2) castro - that guy has been a thorn in our sides for too long. keeping him around as "the guy who confounded kennedy" is no longer amusing.
3) jacques chirac - his war record really wasn't all that distinguished. also, doesn't he look french?
4) gerhard schroeder - as long as were cleaning house in "old europe"
5) ted kennedy - how did this guy slip under the radar for so many years? i thought we killed all the kennedys. what do you mean, he's a vocal member of the opposition referenced any number of times in the last election to make john kerry seem more liberal by association? are you sure we missed a kennedy?
6) roh moo-hyun (s. korean president) - just to show kim jong il we aren't fucking around
7) vincente fox - shouldn't his name be vincente zorro? i don't trust him.

the army has announced that it wants to prepare for four more years in iraq at the present troop levels. there is a pro-bush pro-war rally going on in crawford in an attempt to combat/provoke the anti-war protests there. dubya is going on a five day push to explain to the nation why we need to continue the war in iraq.
escape is not an option. i feel something enormous coming on. i will be here in middle america for the showdown. we're split in this country roughly 50/50, but when it came down to it, who do you think could muster more shock troops, the red or the blue? i think we all know who has more people willing to make it a shootout.
i'm afraid of where our country is headed. i was never afraid of terrorism until bush the junior painted the target on all of our heads. now i just hope that i am not automatically grouped with them for being an american. sometimes i'm simultaneously proud and ashamed of my nation.
stop the madness, dubya, please.

this past weekend, i was lucky enough to fulfill the roles of both chef and jetski mechanic at the annual sister-in-law's-parents-in-laws' lake house spectacular. highlights included three child injuries, lots of drinking, fair amounts of underage drinking, more terrible jokes than any one person should have to bear, and fucking up an in-law-in-law's jetski by running it for an hour with the oil light on. but hey, what're you going to do?

since my actual birthday was spent sitting in traffic, i hope to have my birthday dinner tonight. we'll see if there are any takers.

i haven't been vigiling. though fiery political rhetoric may spew forth from this blog on a regular basis, i'm just not a vigil type guy. perhaps if my people held molotov vigils, then i could get into it. though i'm personally a pacifist, that doesn't mean i don't see the logic in kicking the occasional ass. it also doesn't mean that i prefer peaceful protest. i like loud protest that makes everyone look and actually have to think about what i'm protesting. i'm glad there are those like cindy sheehan out there for the other kind.

as acting technically saavy dude in my less than high tech workplace, i should probably get back to evaluating these phone system proposals, so until next time, junior revolutionaries, fuck bushrovecheneyhalliburtonrumsfeldboltongeneralelectric-ricewolfowitzlimbaughscaliabushandroveagainjustforgoodmeasure.

I understand scissors cut paper… that is pretty much standard, and certainly the primary use of scissors. To a lesser extent, I even get paper covers rock; it’s a little unorthodox (and hardly a victory for paper, if you think about it), but nonetheless, not out of the question. The easiest leg of this little triumvirate to pull out, however, is this; what troglodyte breaks scissors with a rock (or [showing a minimal amount more intellect] tries to cut a rock with scissors)?

will someone please shoot karl rove? i know i keep harping on this, but it seems everyone else has forgotten about how mixed up he is in a little thing called treason. at the very least, he has broken the law this time, and i would be inclined to go that next step that calls him a traitor to his country. every time i scream and rant and rail against the current administration, i am doing my duty to my country. i am keeping it strong through opposition. a country that is based on a single ideology is inherently flawed, because every ideology (even my own, however precious i may hold it) has blind spots you could walk an elephant through. it's just the nature of the beast (the ideology beast, not elephants). mr. rove, on the other hand, has no problem with simply silencing all opposition in the never ending quest for more power. he wouldn't be bothered in the least if people like me were imprisoned or even killed, as long as we were no longer in his way.
i too am capable of thinking of people as "the masses" rather than individual people with loved ones and such. most people are; it's one of the ways we are able to live with the attrocities going on in the world that aren't taking place in our own neighborhoods. however, i have never felt that my own ends (or worse yet, my own convenience) were worth the lives of anyone, even those people i don't know that i don't know.
if we took out rove, the rest of the world might have a fighting chance. that's all i'm saying.
for a change of pace, fuck karl rove. with a sledgehammer.

the republikkkans are doing so many horrible things at once, it's all i can do to stay angry. it's a right confusing series of events. two recess appointments (the second one was just to make it look like this sort of thing happens all the time), karl rove still has a job, the radical right is way too happy about the latest judicial aaa call-up, several other things i can't even remember for the time being, and to top it all off, dubya has the balls to dedicate the continuation of an unwinnable to war to the memories of those (u.s. corpses only) who have recently died in it!
siouxs! and i have been catsitting (watch the master of the segue work, bitches) for her sister. in my humble opinion, the primary reason to have a cat in the first place is so that you don't have to worry about it when you go out of town. sure, they're good for your blood pressure, but as long as you scold it for doing things it isn't supposed to occasionally, and possibly throw it across the room from time to time, te best thing abou cats is that they take care of their own business (i don't think most cats would say "bidnes" if they could talk. just a feeling i get. stuck up little furballs.). anyway, siouxs! has to spend the night in elsah, illinois. i stayed there with her last night, but we have (less than wonderfully trained) dogs, which is kind of like having toddlers who become criminally insane when you aren't at home. so, on the fourth day sans-nicotin, i am writing a blog entry in the evening for lack of the company of my loving wife. i realize it's pathetic that i do miss her (it's only one night), but if nothing else, i'm coming up with a joke a minute that only she would laugh at, and i like to make her laugh.
the baseball... ah yes, the baseball. i don't know how, but the cardinals have been doing rather well lately considering that they have only two regular position players who started the year as such. i realize that i am clinging to an antiquated sport, a reminiscence of pastoral days amusement, a game that is woefully molasses-like while played in what is usually the hot summer sun (when no one is looking, baseball concession stand workers from st louis and all points south press their skin against the hot dog rolling machine to cool off). nonetheless, though i played baseball, soccer, playground ultimate frisbee, and ran track and cross country, the only thing i can really watch of those sports is baseball, and i stuck with that the shortest amount of time. well, perhaps if they had playground ultimate frisbee on network television, i might be able to watch that.
this is now officially my longest post in a long freaking time.

we've received two container-loads of wine in as many days (yesterday and monday). when i woke up this morning, my back let me know that it wasn't looking forward to a day in the warehouse. sitting at my desk isn't much better, but at least i don't have to pick things up off the floor all day at my desk. today could prove to be rough.
i still haven't forgotten karl rove. can someone take that son of a bitch out back and shoot him, please?
the ultra-right seems far too happy about the john roberts nomination. the senate seems far too ready to confirm him. if the far right were truthful in its statements, it would have to state "we don't want any activist judges legislating from the bench to lean left in their decisions." i'm worried about the state of our "democracy."
does anyone remember that we're still at fucking war? despite all of the bush administration's attempts to make us forget, i remember. the pentagon wants to raise the maximum enlistment age to allow men and women up to 42 years of age to join up. i suppose they're trying to capture that valuable "jealous that i couldn't go to vietnam" demographic that all the advertisers are courting. i hope they do pass that law, if only for the greater chance that some of these armchair super-patriots join up and leave us in peace for a while.
my (step)brother is still in marine boot camp. i'm worried about him.
kind of a depressing post, i know, so i'll end with a slightly different turn.
no superheroes wear flip-flops.

i knew that son of a bitch was going to pull something like this.
"surprise! here's your anti-abortion, anti-civil rights, and anti-common person supreme court nominee! you'd better not try to fillibuster, because we can take that too! in fact, maybe you should just stop worrying about the government altogether. other than when used in fiery rhetoric, it isn't like democracy works anyway, right?"
corproate lawyers have a tendency to know which side their bread is buttered on (it's part of the special training corporate lawyers receive. part of the process also includes the removal of their soul. then they have to murder a child with their bare hands.). what we need on the supreme court is someone who has thought out (or is willing to) each possible question that may come up during their tenure as a justice, not another idealogue who'll just rule the way he is told by the rnc.
predicted first case of the new supreme court: overturning the law (signed by ronald reagan) that says it is illegal to expose an undercover cia operative. i think that just might be unconstitutional, don't you? isn't karl rove (and that fucker of cheney's) a hero?
fuck bush. with few exceptions (mostly family), if you like bush, i don't like you.

as i sit here in the office, if i turn my head thirty degrees to the right (literally, not politically), i am confronted with possibly our (meaning my warehouse foreman and myself) most benign prank ever. whenever my immediate boss, liz, goes out of town, we have fun with her desk. we have traded drawers, rearranged the desktop, and in what is still our finest moment, put the whole thing on 2 inch blocks, which she did not notice for three hours (and only then because the box we used to hide one of the blocks seemed out of place). today, we merely wrapped the desk, computer and all, in christmas paper easily visible from the parking lot. believe me, this is much nicer than blowing up a picture of her drunk at the christmas party and putting them up in a frame that always hangs in the office. the probable reason for this much tamer prank is that she is taking ron, siouxs! and me to the baseball game tonight. i am a much nicer person when baseball is involved, especially when people are rooting for the cardinals with me.
had brunch with my peruvian neighbor, ney, yesterday. i can't believe i had brunch, and i can believe even less that he suggested it. i am not much a fan of brunch, having had to cook it for people at one time. while i had to be to work at 5:30am to get ready for brunch, the brunchers strolled in any time before 2pm, still looking for french toast. french toast is a pre-11am food. anyone who still desires french toast at 2 needs to seriously question some of their life decisions. the really frightening part is that the night shift told me of people still asking for french toast as late as 5pm. i guess they all had their insulin shots scheduled for 5:30.
by the way, don't worry that my fiery political spirit has not yet mentioned the whole karl rove/cia leak thing yet. i firmly believed years ago that karl rove needed to be put to death for everything he has done before this, and have not change my opinion, just what i'm yelling. that cheney aide, too, needs to have his priveleges taken away.
if alberto gonzales gets the supreme court nod, i may have to hijack a boat and sail south.
fuck bush (and his brain).

i miss the mountains. st. louis has a lot of really great points, and i like discovering new things about it, but i'm starting to miss the elevation of home again. it's so flat here (not like oklahoma flat, but pretty fucking flat) compared to my home. i miss the horizon being well above eye level in all directions.

on our home trip, siouxs! and i went swimming at the townsend "wye." *i can't footnote, but at least i can asterix* this is effectively "the ol' swimmin' hole" up in the mountains. at a place where the main road splits, leading to cades cove on the right and gatlinburg on the left, the creek finds a deeper place to flow for a few minutes, and hill people come out to play. there were perhaps 150 people there, but i still preferred it to a public pool. there were kids cliff jumping and flirting, little ones splashing about, and their parents sitting around getting sandy. i loved it. i hope that siouxs! understands just how much fun that has been over my childhood years, and i hope she had a good time. if you're ever in townsend tennessee, just ask about the wye at any gas station, and go have some hootin' and hollerin' fun. warning: the water is moving, and it comes out of the mountains. this means it is freaking cold. goosebumps and nipples go up, male genitalia goes down. that said, have fun.

*(they call it the wye instead of the y so as to not make people think one is talking about the ymca, i suppose. the only ymca i know of in east tennessee is in knoxville just south of downtown proper, and is a truly scary place. my daycare center used to take us to the pool there once a week. after a few years, the slightly churchy daycare people decided they'd had enough of knoxville's handful of homeless people ogling the freshmeat elementary schoolers, so we started going to another pool, much further away, where the creepiest people were the pimply concession stand teenagers, all of whom had verifiable addresses.)

and no, i didn't forget. fuck bush.

back from a trip to the homeland. some highlights
(one of) my grandmother(s) is relatively fond of the idea of hillary clinton for president, but not the idea of white and black people having sex.
my mom is seeming rather tired these days. having a three year old when you're almost fifty is no doubt difficult.
got two letters in one week back from my stepbrother the boot camper. i take that to mean it isn't quite the groovy time he thought it was going to be. i hold out hope yet.
barely saw my aunt or cousins. strangely ok with that.
couldn't drag my friends out for a drink. just goes to show something, but damned if i can tell you what.
making the 500 mile drive at three thirty in the morning isn't much better than doing it at night, at least as far as the arrival day is concerned.
new knoxville india pale ale: still fantastic
new knoxville traditional pale ale: way too fizzy. it took twenty minutes to pour one. fairly good after it died down, but seriously, it doesn't take that long to pour a guiness, and this isn't even a marketing ploy.
more later, perhaps...
fuck bush

perhaps it's lack of sleep (i only have about 6 hours out of the past 55) but i am overcome with a sense of dread. my workday has featured not one but two major (though brief) stressful upswells. at the end of the week, siouxs! and i are going to knox vegas for a week. all i know is that i have to get out of here as soon as freaking possible. our car is being worked on today, and i think i'm a little freaked out about that.
being of less than wholly sound mind (though still more so than plenty) can be downright scary sometimes. i wish these fucking brain chems would balance, because i'm not taking any meds.
fuck bush and his pharmacydical buddies.

sometimes i actually start to worry about making myself stupid. i drink. quite a bit. from time to time, i toke the reefer. apart from running between ten and twenty miles per week, it isn't as though i live the most healthy of lifestyles. i don't get enough omega three fatty acids in my diet, because i don't really like eating fish if i'm not near the ocean (no, st. louis is not close enough). i'm burning the brain cells without replacing or rejuvenating them. i think i have a ways to go before i'm that crafty old guy who's smart enough to run after he steals some booze, but not to talk his way out of trouble when he gets caught. those of you who haven't met that guy should keep an eye out for him. he's pretty funny in a "aches-at-my-soul-to-see-humanity-so-far-gone" sort of way.
today marks two weeks since i last had a cigarette. weekends are still rough, but siouxs! and i have made it through two so far. be proud of us. it's fucking hard.
fuck bush and all his tobacco-pushing cronies.

headed into another eventful weekend, i could use a rest
last weekend was fairly quiet, but not quite the best
too much to do, too many people to acknowledge
sometimes i wish for a forest park acid trip like saturdays in college
mind refurnishing, spirit refinishing, laughing at the amazing
strange nighttime occurances despite the fact that the sun is blazing
good friends, good times, good afternoons on good drugs
can't fall asleep for the mental twitching, but good rest on bathroom rugs.

it has been suggested recently by an old and somewhat mysterious friend that i should go to canada. i have spent years voicing a vehement anti-canadian sentiment, but in all reality, it has been in jest. i've never met a canadian i didn't like (i've only met like four). i think the reasoning was that they're much cooler about the marijuana up there, so i would enjoy it more. while it is true that i do occasionally enjoy a toke or two, it is no longer such an all-encompassing aspect of my life. i couldn't tell you how long it has been since i smoked the herb (ok, it's not like it's been years or anything), but i have always been a drunkard disguised as a pothead. so mr. leab, if i do go to cananananada, it will only be for a visit.
good god, though, this country is fucked up. last week, i got an e-mail from a certain liberal political action committee who shall remain nameless (hint: it rhymes with smoov-ron) that informed me of a british document from the highest levels of british government detailing american manipulation of intelligence data as a case to go to war. the problem is that we the liberals and even the open minded centrists out here already knew or at least believed that to be the case, and you can't convince the bushies of anything not told to them by our evangelical christian god on high's voice on earth himself, george w. cockmongering bush.
when i do get the fuck out of this country, it won't be north. i'll see you in the carribean, beet red and happy.
fuck-diddly-uck bush (and busch, for that matter).