bjciii: My twisted thoughts

Another 36 hours and change ’till December. I refuse to decorate before the first of December because I think people are starting to celebrate too early. What good is seeing Santa Claus in early November? It’s sad that commercialism has completely taken over. I think it should be a federal law that you can’t decorate until at least December 1st. There are a reason we have holidays (-s… plural) and not holiday (no -s… singluar): Each one means something different! Pretty soon we’ll be celebrating HalloThankMas! It’s horrible to think about. I made an appointment to get my awnings down and, once they come down, I’m putting my lights up again this year. I’m gonna decorate because I have a great house and I have to show it off!

Speaking of the Holiday Season, I’ve gone back to one of my first loves: Stage-Crew. God I love that stuff. I’m running spotlight for The Delaware Children’s Theater’s production of Scrooge. If you can’t tell, it’s a musical adaptation of Charles Dicken’s immortal classic: A Christmas Carol. This version is a tad different from what I’ve seen so far, but it hasn’t affected the overall story. Anyway, very good friends of my family are heavily involved in the DCT still and wanted to know if I would be interested in helping out. Now I’ve done spotlight, light-board, sound-board, props, and backstage work. I’ve also built and painted sets as well. Anything that can get me on crew, I’ll do. It’s a pleasure to be a part of that world. They’ve got me on a real old spot, but it’s cool… I’ve used “Bertha” before. I can’t describe just how cool it is being an overseer on this. Only people who work as backstage people (including directors) know how this feels. Actors & actresses are usually too self-absorbed to understand the nuances; they’re only concerned with how they come across to the audience (and believe me… that’s all well and good for them). The crew, however, is most concerned with EVERYTHING else. We deal with every single thing the audience sees and hears when you remove the actors and actresses. The costumes, sets, sounds, lights, effects, props, music… ALL stage-crew. It’s probably one of the most rewarding yet completely overlooked jobs there are. I still wouldn’t trade it for the world though. So buy some tickets to the show and say hi.

Now I’m trying to get organized for December. I’ve got my car going in on Friday for a “You’re Okay For Winter” overhaul. I’ve got the guys coming to take down my awnings. I’ve got to go get all my Christmas cards to send out. I’ve got to hang my TKD certificates (that one has been a long-standing task because I loathe and abhor and detest and HATE being on ladders) so my house will be all ready to decorate this weekend. After that I think I’m golden! Hope everyone else is in that good place too…

It struck me just how much we are brainwashed by advertising when I had a few conversations this morning with a couple of my co-workers. Let’s be honest people, was “Tickle Me Elmo” really a cool toy? Hell no! It was a fucking doll that had an annoying giggle! Were Cabbage Patch Kids the greatest thing in the entire world? Hell no! They were scary-looking dolls that had inflamed faces! Advertising made them gods and they made us suckers. Now you have people lining up to get into a store at 5am on the day after Thanksgiving to achieve what? Getting a new toy first? Garnering prestige by being a shopper before the sun comes up? I’m sorry. That’s utterly ridiculous! I’m going to do ALL my shopping online this year. No lines and no worries. If I do go out and buy stuff it’s gonna be gift cards. Pretty soon the entire society of shoppers will revolt and commercialism will crumble like The Berlin Wall… okay. I took it a smidge too far on that one didn’t I? Sorry… I was caught in the moment.

Anyway, my Thanksgiving rocked. I slept in a little and hung out with my parents pretty much all day. My sister was around for the first part of the day, then jetted to Steve’s for Thanksgiving with his parents. I got to see my friend Nic at her dad’s place, so that was cool. We have a date near Christmas to hang out (don’t get excited people… that “Date” also consists of her boyfriend, her sister, HER fiancee, and another friend of hers). This weekend I have to work tomorrow, put in some DCT time to learn my Spot-part again, and go see Missy & Steve tonight. It’s gonna be a mess getting down there by 6pm (they live in the upper-middle part of the state), but hey… what are friends for??

Other than that the Blog/Journal was flood-spammed again over the past few days. Another couple filters were added and you can’t see the stupid advertisments anymore. Don’t sweat it… I take care of you. So to everyone: Have a wonderful weekend and be safe. Don’t spend a lot of money and I’ll catch you all as soon as I can. Love to the ladies.

Sorry I haven’t been around in a few days; I’ve been trying to make sure I’m back in the swing of things and getting everything done. I am fully back to where I was which is either good or bad depending on your idea of where I was to begin with! Confusing? I think so too. Gotta vent, then we’ll rejoin our happy theme in a second.

Found out today that disarmageddon has begun. A key piece has moved and I am saddened by it. Not that the piece was special to me or anything, but because it carries with it an inherent idea of what is what and that pretty much means doom for the remainder. Once enlightenment is reached, the rest of us are fucked. I’m being especially vague, so don’t try to understand… this is my journal and my ranting, so suck it up. It just sickens me to know that promises were made and, day-by-day, promises are being bent to breaking. It’s still a Civil War mentality regardless of the happy faces, but still… it blows. I was a huge flag-bearer for it too… I thought it was fantastic, but I guess everything is relative huh? Time lends perspective even the wisest man cannot see immediately. Feel free to e-mail and ask “What the hell are you talking about?” if you’d like…

Back to happiness. Thanksgiving is this week and I love that holiday. No, it’s not because of the incredible spread of food, but it’s because I get to be with my family and we get to enjoy a day of peace and tranquility and football and togetherness. It’s sappy, but it’s fantastic. Tradition is everything to me and this is an extremely important day for tradition in my family. I’m psyched to spend it with everyone.

As for the rest of the world? I’m pretty happy with where I am right now. I’ve got friends, I’ve got interests, I’ve got family, I’ve got the best dog in the world… who could ask for anything more? As paranoid and suspicious as I am, I’m in a great place. Scary huh? Oh well… time to go back to the grind. Talk soon.

I get this e-mail yesterday from some woman I never met telling me to quit sending her e-mail. Before you go and think that I was cyber-stalking someone, you should know that I never sent this woman ANY e-mail. Apparently some SPAMmer grabbed my e-mail address and used it to spoof SPAM mail to this woman (and probably a million others). Since that’s the case, I’ll probably be transitioning over to my new site AND e-mail a lot sooner than I had expected. I’ll make sure to keep you all in the loop, don’t worry about that.

So I’ve been in the office for almost 2 hours. Yeah, waking up at the ass-crack of dawn sucks, but I just think that I can leave at around 2:45 today and I’m happy. It’s only an hour or so before my normal time, but it makes a difference at the end of the day I can tell you! So I’ll finish testing this project that I just finished coding and I’ll be a happy boy.

I went to Theology on Tap last night and that was fun. The discussion was about the similarities between Islam and Christianity. The speaker was wonderful. He’s some guy who holds 7 U.S. Patents that works for DuPont… anyway, he spoke about how the Qur’an was written and how it has been faithfully transcribed since the days of Mohammed. Apparently it’s a sin to change a single word in that holy book. Kinda makes me feel inferior as there are more copies of The Bible than of a TV Guide! Anyway, from what this gentleman said, it seems that the Islam people who are doing all the crazy shit against everyone are NOT following the teachings of the Qur’an, but of another book of Mohammed. I can’t remember exactly the name of it, but he said they were 70% verifiable from that time to now whereas The Qur’an was exact and 100% true. Listening to him, I got an appreciation of the Islam religion and just how peaceful it CAN be if the people are willing to live as their holy book says. Too many radicals twist religion into a war-fan and cause more destruction in the name of that religion. Look at Chrisitanity! We had The Crusades and The Spanish Inquisition!! Bloodier than hell. Now all of the radical Islamists are screaming “Jihad!” and blowing people up. It’s a shame that a few bad apples spoil the bunch. After the discussion I had an idea to actually travel to Mecca and see what it’s all about. Don’t know if I’m allowed though… must research.

Anywho… I’m off. Have a good weekend and try to get some rest. I know I will!!

Last night was a good night. My Eagles demolished The Cowboys 49-21 and, on the strength of that victory, I won my week in Fantasy Football AND jumped up a whole lot of spots in my football pool. Of course I’m exhausted today, but it’s the price we pay for rooting for a great football team.

Anyway, I’m back in the swing of things. All of my vacation e-mails have been sorted and responded to. My projects have started up again and my bills have been paid. It sucks how responsible I am… adulthood just gets in the way of fun ya know?

There’s really not much to talk about today beyond the fact that everyone’s e-mailing and saying hi, so thanks. I love getting e-mails… I feel so loved.

Howdy do buckaroos and buckarettes? I’m baaack!

I know… it’s been a while, but I have a good excuse. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll remember that I was entertaining a guest from 11/3 to 11/13 and I just didn’t have the time to update like I should have. At least it will make for a comprehensive update right? So what’s happened in the last 12 days? Hmm…

There was the United States Election. No one outside their respective area really cares about the local elections, so let’s skip right to the Presidential Election. George W. Bush won re-election and we’re stuck with the idiot for another 4 years. Of course the friggin liberal bastards tried to contest it and then, when it was obvious it was over with, they started calling the 51% of the country who voted for Dubaya “uninformed.” Now isn’t THAT sour grapes? I swear… I hate politics. Kerry would have been a shitty president and Bush IS a shitty president, so let’s pray that 4 years from now we’ll have a decent one okay?

Bernadette flew in for a wedding and crashed with me. We went shopping a lot so she could take advantage of the exchange rate between The U.K. and The U.S. We also went to Philadelphia and did the historical stuff (Independence Mall) while finding time to walk to South Street. Fun. We also went around Wilmington and she got to see a few cool things along the way. We did Rehobeth and the outlets AND Washington D.C. where we walked all over the damn place. Again, we did a lot of shopping. We also ate out a lot. I think we went to about a dozen different restaraunts. The wedding was fun, Sharon made a cute bride. Bernie left yesterday and was exhausted. I guess she wanted to sleep a lot! Good enough because she swore she had fun. I’m glad. It was a great time and I need to work on my “tour guide” skills for the next victim!!

Now I get to go back to work tomorrow. Of course I’m not looking forward to it (I’d much rather sleep and laze away while getting paid for it), but I am looking forward to it. Back to normal ya know? I can’t tell you the last time I took more than a few days off for a non-medical vacation. So this is a kind of quick update since I’m in the midst of laundry, dishes, AND cleaning before the boys arrive for Survivor Series. I love PPVs… they’re so much damn fun.

Hope y’all missed me. Drop me a line and tell me so. Women: Attach topless photos. Men: Don’t attach ANY photos!

My first “double-category” post! I’m putting this under both “Commentary” and “Journal” because it is a little of each. Ready?

Today is Election Day in the United States of America. We basically run under a two-party system and that doesn’t look like it’s gonna change until some celebrity decides to run as a Libertarian or something and gets mad votes from uninformed voters who go for name recognition. Anyway, this year we have the incumbent Republican President George W. “Brain Dead” Bush going up against the Democratic challenger, Massachussetts Senator John F. “57 Varieties of Traitor” Kerry. As you can tell, I’m not too keen on either of them. It’s a sad state of affairs when you are forced to choose the lesser of two evils rather than the better of two men. If I were to go out and vote for a 3rd party candidate, then some would say I was throwing my vote away because I wasn’t choosing someone who could win. Screw you! My votes are made by myself. Who says that a Libertarian cannot win? If enough people are disgusted with the current choice, then those people would vote elsewhere. It’s this mindless bullshit of “throwing your vote away” that is keeping this a Two-Party system. Just think about it. How many liberal hippie bastards would get scared if Nader got twice as many votes this year as he did last election? How many uptight conservative assholes would shit the bed if Nader got twice as much support as he did last election? Twice as many votes for a 3rd Party candidate means that there’s that many people who are coming out of the media-induced hive-mentality coma! Nice to think about isn’t it?

I used to be one of those people who said “Yeah, people fought and died for my right to vote, but then, in other words, they also fought and died for my right NOT to vote.” I realized that I was a dumb, dumb, DUMB kid for thinking that way. No one fights for your right to be apathetic people. People fight for your right to be allowed to speak and express your feelings. People roll over and die for you to be apathetic. People just open the gates and let the enemy swarm because they are apathetic. Your right NOT to vote? Yeah… you’ve got every right not to vote, but don’t be so immeasurably stupid to think that The United States soldiers fight for your right to be a self-absorbed lazy asshole. They fight for your right to better yourself and to express opinions. So go vote and make a K.I.A. proud.

As for who I’m voting for? None of your damn business. You can’t win if you tell people Bush. You can’t win if you tell people Kerry. You sure as hell can’t win if you tell people “None of the above.” That’s not why I’m not telling though. I’m not telling because it really and truly isn’t any of your business. If I vote for someone, I do it for my own reasons. I am voting for that person because I entrust my safety, happiness, and financial security to that person. I can’t run the country, so they are my proxy to speak on my behalf. I may (and most certainly do) have different priorities than you do and that may change my vote from yours, so never the twain shall meet. Ya pross? I will leave my office at 4pm and go right to the polls. It will take me (barring lines) about 2 minutes to select my candidates. I press some buttons and then I wait to see if my fellow citizens agreed with me. We’ll see tomorrow won’t we?

Summing up: Don’t be a schmuck. Take a couple minutes and vote. I don’t care WHO you vote, just vote damnit!

I went over to Brian & Shanna’s on Friday night and watched the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. It’s a good thing I love those two and enjoy their company because the movie was a colossal waste of time. It got me to thinking why it sucked though. It wasn’t the piss-poor plot or the never-ending stream of zombies, but the characterization. I guess you could tack up a lot of horror movie failures to the fact that most characters portrayed in the horror genre are complete fucking idiots. Okay… here’s a scenario:

You’re surrounded by flesh-eating creatures and you’ve befriended a dog. A dog that none of those monsters give two shits about and completely ignore it, but that dog goes running through that crowd of them. You, as the loving pet-befriender (The Dog Whisperer if you will), stand there screaming. What do you do next?

If you say “Nothing. The dog is proven to be fine going back and forth between the flesh-eating monsters, so I just wait around until Skipper returns,” then congrats. You’re a thinking human. If you say “Damnit all to hell! That’s MY dog now and I don’t care that those monsters are ignoring him, I’m going headlong into that crazed pack of things waiting to dine on my flesh because I love that dog… even if he’s not in danger,” then you’re a fucking idiot… I mean: you’re a horror movie character!

Think about it. You’re watching a film and, even though you make fun of people like this most times, you can’t help but shout at the screen “No! Don’t go in there you idiot!” and they still walk through the door getting a hatchet to their head for their troubles. I sit back and watch these dipshits thinking “This isn’t a horror film, it’s an educational film for idiots!” Horror movie characters that scare me are the ones who do exactly as I would and still get turned into fish-food. The thinking characters who make the logical decisions and keep their cool but still end up getting knocked off… yeah. Those are the movies that scare me.

I still say the scariest “horror” movie I ever saw was The Exorcist because I believe in God & The Devil. I can see something like that happening and I saw the humanity in the priests. I saw the helplessness in the mom. Shit like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street make me laugh because you have these psychotics preying on idiots. Good! Way to go Jason! Hurrah Freddy! Cleanse that gene pool for me! Of course, then you have the movies where the guy who figures it all out gets killed right before he tells the assembled group how to kill the monster. Those movies are shit too. Formulaic! I need a thinking man’s movie. Something that keeps me riveted. Something with characters that I have an emotional tie to. I haven’t seen one in a long time, but they are out there folks!

So anyway, skip Dawn of the Dead unless you like zombie-flicks. Shanna and I pretty much laughed at it the entire time and kept saying “Why. Why in God’s name are they being so dumb?!?”

The best news is that my patio-bricks (save 6) are all laid in the back. I woke up at 08:30 yesterday morning and moved around 800 of them myself. Wow is my back hurting today! I could have probably had better form, but eh. The good news is that Bernie is arriving in a little over 2 days and I get to see that gorgeous pal o’ mine from across the pond. The bad news is that I think the wax seal in my toilet is leaking which is causing the damn thing to run a lot. I really hope it doesn’t cause any problems until the plumber calls me back today. It seems that, every time I get one thing taken care of, another breaks. I am not really complaining since it’s better to do things in succession than it is concurrently. Imagine if I had all this going on at once! That would suck.

I had a bunch of fun on the 2004 Halloween Loop in Wilmington on Saturday night. There are a bunch of pictures that I took, but I haven’t had a chance to edit them yet (they’re monster huge). If you care to look, this is the URL that you should go to: this page right here. Okay? What are you waiting for? DAMN YOU!!! You’ll notice that there are girls sucking on something in there… those are Jell-O filled syringes. Jell-O shots dressed up for Halloween. Isn’t that keen? Yeah… I thought so too. There’s no pictures of me because I was taking all the pictures. As soon as I get one from my sister, I’ll post it. Promise. Everyone thought I looked much too close to reality for my own good (I went as a Priest). Scary.

That’s all for the personal stuff, but here’s a quick preview of tomorrow: It’s the 2004 Election in the United States of America. Even though I have to work, I’m going to vote. Even if I think both Presidential candidates are idiots, I’m STILL going to vote. Explanations tomorrow.