well, the office is moved, the warehouse is moved, and within the month, i suppose things will be as back to normal as is possible. some pros and cons

pro: i have "my own" office
con: it's only "my own" when our new hire is in the warehouse
pro: i won't have to be in the warehouse so much, including my back's least favorite, loading the truck
con: i can't escape to the warehouse so much
pro: i can listen to music while i work now
con: i'm guessing it can't be "offensive"
pro: i'm five minutes away from home
con: i'm only five minutes away from work
pro: i have a nice sexy new computer
con: it still doesn't work on our network, so i have to use the dumpy old computer for virtually everything.

ok, this list is long enough for now. perhaps i will add more later. i am much more capable of posting during my workday now, so there may be more posts. or maybe not. we'll just have to see.

fuck bush.

this weekend is the big office move, so i apologize for the lack of posts.

however, i have one announcement that needs to be made.

as of april 4th (according to the cardboard wheel) gthedamned will officially be gthedaddy. mommy-to-be-siouxs! is doing well, and we're both fucking psyched to have the rugrat. more to come as events warrant.

first of all, a storm is a force of nature, and therefore can be neither cruel nor wasteful which both imply intent. secondly, i'm amazed that anyone still believes you, dubya, considering the amount of lip service you've paid to so many things, from helping in africa to finding the terrorists resposible fr september eleventh. lastly, tax breaks to the companies that help with the rebuilding effort is a great way to continue lining the pockets of your cronies while not actually changing an economically depressed area in any lasting way.
all in all, i'd say that the neatly thirty minute address to the nation, well tailored to dovetail with the regularly scheduled broadcast was a success, assuming that the goal was to pacify those with no connection to the gulf region other than having seen it on tv these past few weeks. bra-fucking-vo.
fuck bush

our computer, that lovely frankensteinian machine that sits atop our computer room has turned to a thousand dollar paperweight, at least for the time being. i think i can make the fucker work again, if only i can figure out how to make a boot disk so as to get past the disc read error at startup. i'm not exactly computer saavy, so i really wish i had someone in town who knew enough about computers to just come fix it for me. i can do minor repairs to a pretty high percentage of things around the house and office, but serious repairs to none.
it's a real bitch to be a rennaissance man in this age of specialists. i have just enough skills to always find work, but never get paid truly well for it.

the roberts confirmation hearings today should be an impeachment trial, and yet, look at this buffonistry. (yes, i think i made that word up.)

fuck john roberts and alberto gonzalez.

well, dubya's approval rating has dipped below 40%. i think they need to measure that a little more accurately than asking people on the phone if they approve or disapprove. if they factored in my negative approval rating, he'd be down in the twenties (let's just say i don't stop at -100%).

the move is ever more stressful at work. every time it seems like we've almost got everything ready, something new comes up. the latest is that the fire marshall determined that since we don't have sprinklers in our warehouse, we need a firewall rated for two hours of burn time. this amounts to slapping some drywall up, but it's still an annoying expense. not my expense, but every little annoyance has a trickle-down effect, so that we can all be closer through sharing.

has anyone seen or heard from the big red dog?

fuck bush.

two days in a row of warehouse work... good god i'm beat. to think, i used to do this every day, and even made it through a holiday season at faster than this pace...

i do so certainly hope that everyone is having a pleasant and work free labor day. to those who have to work, my condolences. i personally have accomplished making dinner (it is only right now one o'clock, but chili needs at least a few hours) and grocery shopping. siouxs! is spending one last day at the pool with her sister. labor day is the last chance for laziness of the season for me, as the next month is the busy preparation to the busiest time of the year. due to our overly capitalist society, it is also the busy time of year for virtually everyone else nationwide. we even manage to export our holiday rush to other countries who have adopted our harried way of life. even formerly relaxed europe is starting to do things our way, if only for the sake of competition with us and the other third world countries using wage-slave labor to create things (and non-things).

dubya must be stopped. he's using a tragedy he couldn't care less about (*except inasmuch as the other republikkkans might disown him quick) to take attentions away from the evil things the government is working on for us right now. john roberts has been resubmitted for the supreme court as the chief justice to replace rehnquist, so now he's going to find some preacher's wife abortion-picketing mother of a combat veteran to fill o'connor's spot. the war is still going on unchecked and more violently than it was even six month ago. karl rove still has a job.
don't believe the bastards... watch your television (i hate to advocate it, but turn the sound off).
if our nation were in shock from "earthquake katrina" that ripped through orange county with a vengeance, causing billions of dollars worth of damages to upwards of three houses, dubya and co. would have been there seconds after to survey the chaos, like the pool being out of water and the china cabinet being scratched.

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.