second attempt post-x-mas post

ok, so after yesterday's perfectly annoying post disappearance, here is today's feelings on my christmas holiday.

 

haven is spoiled utterly rotten, but is still cute as all hell

for the second year in a row, baseball tickets are part of the presents between me and siouxs! 

siouxs! and i bought ourselves a new computer last night.  it was expensive, and currently isn't working well.  we're pretty pissed.

i felt bootsy kick several times over the past weekend.  the whole thing is still kind of surreal to me, but amazing too.

i stopped and got some forties on the way back to make up for the lunatic anti 40oz laws here in st. louis.  i also picked up 4 22oz guinness extra stout (one of my favorites), which i drank last night.  i've been less than stellar today.

 

fuck bush

 

 

 

 

 

stupid launchcast

the goddamned launchcast crashed my internet, so the thoughtful post i had composed disappeared into the ether.  i will not be typing it all out again.  suffice to say that i hate the holidays.

dramarama-orama

friday night was "family game night" with the inlaws.  it was a pretty good time.  saturday, siouxs! went to some u-city dance concert.  i stayed home and polished off my fifth of bourbon (note to self: buy more bourbon).  spiderman was played, skip came over, siouxs! came home, a good time was had by all.  sunday morning, no hangover, but that empty-stomach feeling that sometimes comes with a long liquor drunk.  the inlaws "family christmas cookie exchange."  drove into the city.   drove to the farthest place that can be possibly considered in the "st. louis area."  a good time was had, by both cynic and listeners alike.  lunch wa good, everything was good, then, drama.  who needs the fucking drama?  i'll tell you who it isn't.  me.

 

conspiracy theory for you.  all of this talk about calling it a holiday tree instead of a christmas tree is a neo-con whisper campaign.  it smacks of karl rove.  what a great way to recharge the semi-christian masses, who don't go tu church, but do feel threatened when some atheist is accused of trying to do away with christmas.  how can the republikkkans lose this one?  once the accusation is in place, there's no taking it back, and the damage is done to atheists, church-and-state-seperatists, and non-christians alike.  (i'm sure paul wolfowitz won't mind)

 

fuck bush.

not stalgia

i was thinking about the snoopy sno-cone machine this morning.  i loved my snoopy sno-cone machine, but i have been thinking all day about it's many shortcomings.

 

"you put an ice cube in, and get a sno-cone out" which i remember distinctly from the jingle is nothing if not an oversimplification.  "you put an ice cube in, you put all of your seven-year-old weight into pushing down on the snoopy shaped plunger (but not the little rubber nipple like hat) while trying to simultaneously turn the impossibly flimsy crank which won''t move as long as you're putting all of your seven-year-old weight into the plunger, you eventually get a little shaved ice floating in the meltwater from your efforts of the first five minutes that in no way resembles a sno-cone" would have required a different jingle, i guess.

 

what was up with that little rubber nipple hat?  have you ever seen snoopy wear a hat in any other situation?  an aviator helmet, sure, but never a hat.  when it's cold, he always had a scarf, but no hat.  secondly, what was the big idea putting it right on top of the plunger?  how could you not squirt out your sno-cone flavoring all over the place?  with all of your seven-year-old weight going into the plunger? the thing only held two teaspoons or so of liquid anyway, which has never in my life been enough for even one sno-cone.

 

lastly, would it have killed them to put some kind of sturdier base on the things?  the whole rig was only about two inches deep, which falls over mighty easily when a fair amount of pressure is applied (as it would be to the plunger when all of your seven-year-old etc etc).  i remember conking my head on the counter on several occasions because the sno-cone machine collapsed under me.

 

it's rants like this that are the reason i'll never really amount to anything "important"

 

fuck bush

turkish hangover

i hope everyone had a pleasant turkish day.  ours was pretty good, and the four day weekend was most welcome in this the busy season for social drunks and therefore we in the vino slangin' business.  a few high and low points:

 

-turkish day was held at the home of siouxs!'s oldest brother and his not so popular wife.  they moved out to eureka, home of six flags over jesus christ.  the neighborhood is sterile and sickening, but is on one of the few large hills to be found in the greater st. louis area, so at least you can see the sameness for miles and miles.  the turkey was good, the high-life was better.

-walk the line... i recommend it.  there were a few times i couldn't stay in the moment, but on the whole, it was quite good.

-i seem to be a tony hawk's xxxxxxxx whichever ps2 game savant.  i'm not that good at other video games, but by god can i play that series

-friday was "buy nothing day," so that's what we did.  no after thanksgiving sales, no eating out, no filling up the tank.  it was a good day.

-saturday was siouxs!'s ten year high school reunion.  i went to dinner with them.  the dinner was good, siouxs!'s friend kate was a nightmare.  she couldn't stop talking about how much money she'd donated to the school or the reunion committee, how much she loved living on the east coast and the culture boost that implied, and how hot all the boys found her.  had i not been under promise to not be deliberately mean to her, i would have had a much better story to tell here.

-i was supposed to have a forty drinking evening with the wife's sister's boyfriend, but it never materialized.

 

there was a bit more, but i'll get into it in a later post.

those bastards

we all knew it was happening, now some guy's written a book about it.  check it out

 

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/war_on_science.shtml

 

please, can we at least advance to being like the third most backwards nation?  must we be number one, dubya, huh?

monday morning cool

the ultrasound went well.  everything is normal with bootsy.  "he" is big; thirteen ounces at the moment when the average fetus is 10-12, and is about the size of my hand.  the nurse kept trying to get a good shot of "his" face, but bootsy kept "his" arms up in front the whole time.  perhaps we have a boxer in the making, though we'd prefer a baseball player.

the nurse kept shaking the ultrasound thingy around on siouxs! belly in an effort to make bootsy move "his" arms, but to no avail.  the shaking bugged me a little.  i guess she would know better than i, but why would that work in the first place?  "he" was squirming around a lot, but didn't move those little arms enough to get the good face picture.  in the next day or two, i'm going to upload an ultrasound photo, which i may or may not post (they don't mean that much unless you saw them in motion.

thanks for the good juju, sr. leab.  thanks also to emily, my friendly blog comment spammer, who feels certain that she has something of interest for me.  no thanks to statcounter, who has shown me a big zero for way too many days (not all af which can possibly be for true).

and a big fucking wad of meanfuckery to our dear friends and protectors the republikkkan party, for reminding us all that rich boys who got draft deferments know a lot more about patriotism and righteous causes for war than those who actually served their country in uniform.

friday morning nerves

for any number of reasons, i'm a little nervy today.  i'm at a sticking point at work, so there's not much i can do without getting into a huge project i won't have time to finish today.  they've been talking about hiring someone at work via an internet wine jobs posting, but haven't talked too much to me about it, which makes me wary of my own status.  third, and most nervewracking, today siouxs! has an ultrasound, so we can see that the baby is progressing nicely.  i have missed the first two this go round.  the last ultrasound i was present for (last year), we basically found out that we'd lost the baby, though it took a few more days for it all to seem final.  i know that there's no connection between the two, but there's also the fact that today is one year from the date last year when it was certain.  circumstances are wildly different this time, but i'm scared still.  i have to be the strong one for siouxs!, but times like this, it's pretty fucking hard to do.

pray (if you do that) or think about us.  it will be greatly appreciated.

monday morning bourbonsweating

last night, i made siouxs! and me a steak dinner, complete with baked potato, broccoli and bread (i skipped the red wine/bordelais sauce, because of the fetus, who for the sake of brevity and class will from now until the birth be known as bootsy).  afterwards, i was so full that a beer would make me burst, so instead, i had a double bourbon on the rocks.  that one was so good that i had another.  during the second double, skip came over and had a rum and coke, so i switched to that.  i had perhaps three of them.  then i switched again, this time to beer (as by now, i was not so full).  then i found myself on a magical journey to blackout island.  today, i woke up woozy, but no headache.  the only symptom so far has been the booze sweat, which i can feel more than smell.  i've heard not to switch liquors midstream, but it seems to have worked out ok for me (this time at least).

dubya is still smarting from his ass being burned many times over, so i feel no need to rail against him today.  i will however mention that he called critics of the iraq war "deeply irresponsible," which is a gut wrenching laugh if i've ever heard one.

fuckin' sons of bitches, when will they learn?

i forgot to mention in my last post that i spoke to my (step)brother on tuesday. he is doing well at camp pendleton, and i expect will make a really great marine. though i don't agree with how his government will use him, he will be quite good at whatever they put him to. i just hope he is capable of retaining his inherent kindness after he returns from "the sandbox" (his name, not mine), where it seems likely he will go, even with his amphibious vehicle training.
pentagon sons of bitches.
fuck bush.

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it would seem that the republikkkans are melting down.  with scandal after scandal, dollars for influence, and entrenched power being recognized to be something other than divinity, i get the feeling that we're about to see a paradigm shift.  i for one would love to see a less evil republikkkan party, with sane fiscal conservatives like john mccain in positions of leadership.  i still won't be voting for any of the bastards, but at least i won't have to hate the people who vote for them so much.  wouldn't it be sweet if the religious bastards got so pissed off they formed their own party, thus forever splitting the "conservative" vote?  perhaps this is a bit of a pipe dream, and wanting the religious right to organize more than they already are is like wanting your enemies to do marching drills so they form a more consolidated area at which to shoot. 

i don't know if i mentioned last post, but i had to go to kc for the last couple of days.  our driver/warehouse guy out there gave us one day notice on thursday (though from the state of the warehouse when i got there, he seems to have checked out well before that), so i had to drive there monday morning and back tuesday night.  in between those two four hour drives, i got to make deliveries and unload a container-load of wine.  i'm not trying to bitch to all three of my regular readers, i'm just saying that i had a hard start to my week.  tomorrow is the dreaded sales meeting (my favorite useless bitchfest of the week), so at least the weekend looms large on the horizon.  and to anyone that knows him, kingston says hi.

post

ok, i'll speak to the alito nomination in another post.  right now, i'm more concerned with tax reform.  watch the bastards.  there seems to be a shift toward "taxing consumption" as opposed to taxing wealth.  while i have no doubt that the individual upper-class citizen would pay more in dollars were there a national sales tax, the percentage of their income would be virtually nothing in comparison to those in lower tax brackets (at least the proposals don't get rid of tax brackets).  this is a sneaky way of txing the poor and the middle class harder than before, since the poor and middle class are likely to have to spend a large percentage or even all of their income toward "consumption."  this means the wealthy, who have money that is sitting in a mutual fund somewhere not contributing to "consumption" (or trickling down, for those assholes who still think reaganomics might fucking work) are not being taxed.  one of the biggest problems with wealth in this country is that not enough of it makes it into the economic mill, and if these plans are put into place, it won't even be taxed to speak of. 

perhaps i need to take some economics classes.  i have only the most basic understanding of these things, but thank god for my mom the accountant.  oh yeah, simplifying the tax codes could also put as many as half of tax preparers out of work.

fuck bush

post

the primary program that we use at work is housed on our server, which has been down since roughly ten this morning (it's now four).  i have officially done everything i can do around here without the use of said program or other server based files, so i have been thouroughly bored for god knows how many hours.  however, here i am (and maybe coming in tomorrow for a few hours...) so i'll post a little post for both my readers and the accidental finns who find my site.

 

libby down!  if we can get rove and (god willing) cheney, we will have effectively cut the head off the administration.  for those who believe, pray.  for those who don't, hope.  for those who don't hope, drink or smoke or something.

 

fuck bush

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i don't know what to think about the retracted miers nomination.  i'm worried that w's gonna break out some serious wack-job to appease the christian wrong-wing sons of bitches.  does no one understand that a supreme court nomination shouldn't go to anyone who might rule direct from the days talking points?  as if there aren't already enough ways to wave ones ass at justice, now we may just be lucky enough to have reverend justice evan jellical determining that masturbation is unconstitutional, while cheating an electorate is not.

on another note, i was glad to see alissa (and jamie, though i don't know you as well.  from all two or three encounters, you get the seal of approval) this past week.  i also saw two friends who actually live here in the stl, but whom i don't see much thanks to their law schooling.

i'm looking into finishing off my last few hours of wash u.  for those that didn't know, i ended my four years at wash u eleven hours shy of my b.a.  at the time, i was convinced that i was actually owed those hours anyway, so i would have no troubles getting my diploma in the next few months.  well, here it is, five plus years later, and i'm still degreeless.  i'm talking to some people, including my old advisor, with whom i had something of an adversarial relationship.  so, hat in hand, i go back to wash u to see if i can manage to keep my head in for a few classes a semester.  wish me luck.

fuck bush.

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it was a weekend of spend, spend, spend, little capitalists.  siouxs! and i did our parts for the economy all weekend long, and we'll not say that it's all done yet.  we still need a fix for the computer at home, but at least there's a new playstation to be utilized.  we also have a new swiss army knife (ok, i got a leatherman; more on that in a moment), new leashes and collars for the dogs, some tools, a bunch of books, and a flogging molly cd.

back to the leatherman... i don't think they could have chosen a worse name for such a product.  for those unfamiliar with the leatherman, it is basically like a swiss army knife with genuinely useful tools like pliers and screwdrivers on it.  for those unfamiliar with leathermen, they are homosexual men into wearing black leather as their sole form of clothing, popularized by one of the village people.  i'm not saying that no leathermen have a leatherman, but perhaps they're not the target market.  i'm just saying.

i'm going to continue not saying much about the bush administration.  they seem to be shooting themselves in the feet as it is, and i don't want to jinx it or anything.

however, i will say

fuck bush.

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good god am i bored at work today.  i have done virtually nothing taxing of my brain, ond only a very little taxing of anything else.  this is the sort of time squandering that i so desperately need a few minutes of a day, but when stretched into several hours, it becomes a awfully depressing enterprise.

tom delay seems terribly confident in his chances of being acquited, and perhaps with good reasin.  i mean, we are currently living under the most corrupt/corruptable administration of the last fifty years (including nixon!), so who's to say that the new judge put into place by republicking cronys won't just throw the case out?  scooter and rove seem to be a little stickier, but will probably end up cheating justice as well.  clinton lied about sex, and nearly got impeached.  dubya and the boys (yes, condi, that means you too) have lied about everything from the economy to the war, and appointee credentials to national security, and yet will probably be remembered fondly by "the history books."

i'm scared of the economy, people.  it isn't going to get better the way we're going, let me assure you.

fuck bush

post

well, the baseball is over.  i suppose i can say go white sox still, but it's just too depressing.  by the time there is baseball again in st. louis, siouxs! and i will have other things on our mind (the baby is due at the beginning of april).  until then, there's always winter league ball, various offseason trades and developments, and such.  and since we're going into the busy season at work, i'll have less time to obsess over the baseball.

i hope i'm convincing you, because i sure as hell ain't buying it.

 

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once again, i have worked on the weekend.  there was a time in my life that i would have preferred to forcibly remove puppy ears than work for even a moment on my weekend (as opposed to "the weekend, " meaning friday evening through sunday night).  now, they didn't even ask me to, i just came in saturday because i needed to catch up and sunday because there was a truck coming in.  ok, to be fair, i came in saturday in the hopes that the truck would come in, and then stayed because i was up, and the dogs were walked, and what else was i going to do?  then i came in on sunday to show my trucking company i mean business when i say i need that product yesterday.  the whole thing was primarily so i wouldn't have to go pour wine with a businessy jerk at the st. louis wine festival.  in that, it was a success.  in watching every second of the cardinals astros came, it was a miserable failure.  the truck arrived at game time, so i didn't get back to the house until the fourth inning or so.  and then we fucking lost, at least somewhat due to bad umpiring.

since everyone seems to pretty much agree with my feelings on bush (approval rating in the mid thirties!), i think i'll give him a slight break. 

dry hump bush.

fuck with all violence and filth and a louisville slugger (nlcs game 4 home plate umpire) cuzzi.

went to game 2 of the nlcs last night... a bit disappointing to say the least, but fun nonetheless.
if i bust my ass this morning, i can get back to zero in the office. i'm roughly four hours of work behnd, not including the extra stuff being piled on me at all times. since i haven't totally finalized my desktop filing system, it's still a big fucking mess, but i'm trying here.
but who cares about that stuff.
the baby still consumes let's say thirty percent of my thoughts. in some ways, i can't wait, but in others, i'm a little bit worried. most of these worries are selfish, but i have no problem admitting to some selfishness (i don't think it's my defining personality characteristic or anything). i suppose most new parents with an adult level of maturity discover that they are capable of more selflessness than they thought they would be. i hope i can at least come close.

fuck bush

another one (mostly) down

i announced to the sales team today about the baby.  they seemed unable to care, though the sales rep i would be least able to handle were we not co-workers told me he thought i'd be good at raising them.  my mom was thrilled (presumably still is) and most of siouxs!'s family was too, but i think after the occurance last year, everyone is still a litte tentative.  to put minds at ease, everything is going well.  siouxs! rented a doppler thing to check the fetal heartbeat, for which i made fun of her, but nonetheless, you should have seen the grin on my face when i heard it for the first time (i have been forced to miss a few of her doctor appointments for work).

i'd like to hope that i won't be losing my edge as a comedian as most seem to after their children are born (think denis leary or chris rock).  my theory is that since they hit before the kids and then continued after, they were perceived as getting softer.  since i have never hit big (or small, for that matter), there will be no basis for comparison.  plus, i fully intend to corrupt this kid pretty early, so i won't have to watch my language around the house as much, adn that's got to help...

i'm going to be someone's dad.  (peals of maniacal laughter)

fuck bush.