Battlewagon Impractica

Apparently I Lack Credibility

2012-01-12T11:47:00.001-05:00

"I think I gotta kill you dead."
"You gotta do that, huh?"
"Yah, I does. You bring me the knife."
"All right, but give me a minute to prepare myself."
"You're so full of it. You ain't gonna bring me that knife."

10 Things A Corporation Could Do If It Was Really A Person

2012-01-06T16:53:00.000-05:00

It has become fashionable in some certain sectors of our society to argue that corporations, because they are made up of people, actually are people, with First Amendment rights. Not that corporations are particularly interested in, say, having to worship whichever religion they believe in, but they are interested in spending money to get certain politicians elected. Lots of money. Millions upon millions of dollars, because the right politicians can pass laws that result in far more money flowing into the corporations' coffers. GE earned $14.2 billion in 2010, yet owed zero in taxes. All completely legal.

Mitt Romney, who will probably become the Republican nominee this year by virtue of being able to blast his rivals into oblivion with corporation-paid-for commercials, is a strong advocate for the "corporations are people" argument. But there's more to being a person than contributing to a political campaign. Below is a short list of life experiences that most of us have done at least some of, yet no corporation ever has. Some of us may even most of these. (If you've done all them, though, for gods' sake take a break and lie down for a while.)

Work at McDonalds for minimum wage.

Participate in a wet t-shirt contest during spring break.

Lose its virginity.

Wander around the house trying to remember where it left its keys.

Go on "Dancing With The Stars".

Have its entire body scanned through its clothes by the TSA.

Throw up after drinking too much tequila.

Join the Army and have to do what the drill sergeant tells it to do.

Clean up the accident the puppy had on the living room carpet.

Be executed in Texas.

Seriously, when Tom Bergeron announces, "Tonight, ExxonMobil will be dancing the foxtrot with Maksim Chmerkovskiy", then maybe I'll believe corporations are people. Not before.

I'd Want To Know, Too

2012-01-03T14:11:00.002-05:00

via

Julie Doesn't Like Taking her Top Off For The Cancer Doctors Either

2011-12-28T12:41:00.000-05:00

Don't know if Mardi Gras beads would make it better for her too....

She's Probably Right (She Usually Is)

2011-12-19T15:13:00.003-05:00

Julie: So what are you getting me for Christmas?
Me: I can't tell you. It's a surprise.
Julie: Is it one of the two things I've told you I want but didn't just go buy myself?
Me: No, it's something else.
Julie: How can you know it's something I want if I didn't tell you?
Me: I came up with it on my own - I used my brain.
Julie: You no have brain!

"We All Have A Burden In Life. I Am Your Burden. Your Fault You Chose Me."

2011-12-13T09:22:00.000-05:00

During my shower:

"I'm going to steal your towel."
"You can not! I need it."
"You do not, you big baby."
"I do. Otherwise I will drip."
"You crazy shit."
"Did you just call me a 'crazy shit'?"
"Ya, you like."

As I am getting out:

"Come here. I will pour root beer on you."
"You can not! I'm all clean."
"It's still in the bottle, you fathead. It's clean."
"It will get me all sticky."
"Don't be silly. It's diet."

Typical Monday Morning Conversation

2011-11-28T10:22:00.001-05:00

Julie: My snuggie is in the car. Can you come home and bring it to me?

me: there are no blankets already inside?

Julie: I need the snuggie

I am trying to sit up and read this text book

me: you could turn off the fan and the a/c

Julie: are you insane?

me: apparently

Julie: also

the humidifier needs to be filled

how am I supposed to function without you??

me: I thought you liked being in control of your life

Julie: you do NOT get to use my personality quirks against me when I am being lazy.

besides Buffy is asleep under the blankets lying on me, you don't want to disturb her do you?

me: she barks at signposts. she's already disturbed

me: aw. Buffy is learning Growth & Development

Julie: yah

Jabba the Pug

2011-11-23T16:43:00.001-05:00

Taken from here.

I'm Not Inspired Yet, But I'm Getting Close

2011-11-14T20:23:00.001-05:00

Back when we first started dating, Julie decided she was ready to lose weight. But then her dad died, and then she was diagnosed with cancer, and then her uncle died, and with all the stress those caused dieting just wasn't in the cards. Particularly during the chemotherapy, when all that mattered was "will this food stay down?"

But time has past, and life is much more settled now, and she's decided it's time to give it a go. For two weeks now, she's been monitoring her calories and taking herself to the gym nearly every day. She also signed up to do an extra shift at the hospital every week for the next few months, at the end of which she'll get a very nice bonus. So she's been pushing herself hard. And it's paying off - she's down about ten pounds so far, and while it's hard work, it isn't overwhelming her. Even the edema in her chest isn't any worse than usual (or if it is, she's fighting through it without telling me).

I'm very excited to see this. Less than two years ago, she was so weak from the cancer treatments. Just one night of work would leave her exhausted for days. But now, she's strong, she's in control of her life, and she's accomplishing her goals. I am very, very proud of her. I am even starting to feel a little motivated to start pushing myself to go back to exercising too, although not quite yet. Soon.

She just walked in here after taking a shower to show off how when she wraps the towel around herself there's no longer a gap at the bottom from not reaching all the way around her stomach. That is a big hooray (although the lecherous part of me thinks that means we need smaller towels...).

Shake It, Baby!

2011-11-11T21:26:00.001-05:00

I Couldn't Not Post This

2011-11-10T11:42:00.000-05:00

Okay, you can go back to your lives now.

Five Facts They Don't Teach In History Class

2011-11-07T14:27:00.000-05:00

1) A conspiracy of the founding fathers, led by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, assasinated George Washington in 1784 as he was leaving his Masonic lodge.

2) The Spanish-American War of 1898 was triggered by a dispute over whether the Havana Sugarcutters (now the Arizona Diamondbacks) would join the American or the National League.

3) The Declaration of Independence was actually written by two socialists and a Baptist minister in 1891.

4) The state of California sank into the ocean in 1961. A joint effort by the FBI, the NSA, and the Walt Disney Company maintain the illusion that it is still there.

5) Lincoln's brain was kept alive in a jar, now stored in a secret vault under the Lincoln Memorial. Once a month the president comes down to the vault to consult with Lincoln's brain on current affairs of state. Most of the rest of the time, Lincoln's brain plays Battlefield III and Mario Brothers.

You Giefs iPhone Right Nao!

2011-11-05T14:08:00.001-04:00

Julie: What you getting me for my birthday?

Me: A present.

J: What kind of present?

M: A wrapped one.

J: I know you're getting me a new iPhone, why you not just admit it?

M: You're birthday's in two weeks. You'll find out then.

J: That is too many long! I cannot wait.

M: Just be patient.

J: I cannot! I has a many fatigue and stress. You giefs me my present nao!

M: It's not your birthday yet.

J: I need!

M: I does not has yet.

J: you gonna forget to buy me one, I know it.

-- two days later --

J: I bought a new case for my phone that you're gonna give me for my birthday! See?

M: I guess I'm getting you a phone for your birthday.

J: Hooray! You go get it for me right now.

M: I don't have the money right now.

J: Well, don't you forget to buy it until the last minute and then I won't be able to use it on my trip to Florida.

M: I will get it on my next payday.

J: Good. We can go buy it together. This way I know you not screw it up, and then you can giefs!

M: But that's still a week before your birthday.

J: You're missing the point. You're not too bright, are you? That's okay, I love you anyway.

Story Time

2011-10-30T22:31:00.000-04:00

This all happened 35-40 years ago, and most of it is second or third hand, and kids don't always understand what's going on in the adult world. So I don't claim that what I remember is exactly what happened. However, my perceptions of it made a big difference in how I see the world and the people in it, and that's what really matters.

I was probably four years old (which would make it 1972 or so) when my parents invited a man to come over for dinner at our home in Pittsburgh. I remember that he was big (a lot bigger than my dad, who was roughly average-size) and black and rather intimidating to a little kid. Based But he was friendly and after a bit I got used to him, and decided he was okay after all. Pretty typical kid reaction to a stranger in the house. I don't think I ever saw him again.

About a year later, we had moved to Connecticut, bought a house in the suburbs and survived the great ice storm of '73. One day my mom said dad was going to be out of town for a few days, which wasn't that unusual an occurrence, since he traveled a lot on business. She asked if I remembered that man who had come over for dinner, and I did. Well, apparently he was having some trouble with something, and dad was helping him out. Okay.

I don't remember when it came up exactly, or why, but at some point mom filled me in on the story. I was older, but still a kid. Maybe about ten or so. Apparently, dad had spent some time going to prisons and counseling inmates as part of a church outreach program. Now, dad's religious beliefs have careened from atheist to born-again christian and back again over the course of his adult life, with stops along the way for Lutheranism, Catholicism, Judaism, and Anglicanism. Probably some other stuff in there too. I'm not sure where exactly he was in this colorful journey when he was visiting prisons, but I think in the early 70s it would have been more about social justice and less about saving eternal souls. Anyway, that's where he met this man, and he had just gotten out when my parents had him over for dinner. The trouble he was having a couple years later was about as serious as it gets - he'd been charged with murder. My dad had taken time off from work, traveled to another state, and testified as a character witness. Apparently having Dr. T. A. Cruse, PhD, a white upper-middle class engineer speaking on behalf of a poor ex-con black man impressed the hell out of the jury, and he was found not guilty.

Demographically, I'm about as privileged as it gets in this country. White, male, educated, intelligent, heterosexual, two parents who loved me and each other, the list goes on and on. But I learned a valuable lesson, watching my dad as I grew up. Having been dealt all the goods cards doesn't make you better than other people, it just means you were luckier. And sometimes, to be a man means doing right by other people - even if you have to step out of your comfort zone and stick your neck out a bit. I've been thinking about this story a lot this past week, with the BlizzCon kerfluffle. In addition to raising my voice on my blog I took a few steps I don't usually take to try to influence the president of a multi-billion dollar company. I have no idea if anything I did had the slightest impact on how it all ultimately played out, but it never occurred to me not to try. I was not targeted by that hateful video in any way, and I could easily have done nothing. But I know I did right by my fellow gamers, and I sleep pretty good at night knowing I did. Would I still have done it, had I not seen dad's examples - this story and a number of other times, big and small that dad did the right thing. I don't know. Quite possibly not. So thank you dad, for showing me how to be a grown-up, even when it's not convenient.

Too Old To Rock& Roll, Too Young To Die

2011-10-27T14:21:00.000-04:00

Julie (singing): I.... want to rock and roll all night!
Me (quasi-singing): And part of every day!
Julie: Um, you know, the line is supposed to be "and party every day"
Me: Yeah, well, I'm too old to do it full-time anymore, if I want to rock and roll all night. So I'm just going part-time.
Julie: Michael, you were born too old to party every day.

What Are You Thinking About?

2011-10-14T19:18:00.000-04:00

Next time someone asks me that, I'm just going to point them to this comic. Because, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on in my brain at any given moment...

Does You Need Me To Kill You Dead?

2011-10-09T20:48:00.002-04:00

Does you need me to kill you dead?
Why would I need that?
I dunno. I just asking.
Well, that was thoughtful of you.
Yah, I'm a nice person.

Does you need me to kill you dead?
No! Of course not!
Yes you do. Why you lie to me?

Does you need me to kill you dead?
I don't think so. Why would I?
Why wouldn't you?
Well, if you did, I wouldn't be happy.
How would you know? You'd be dead.
Okay, I guess that's hard to argue with.

Does you need me to kill you dead?
If you did, who would give you rubs?
Well, yes, that would be a problem. But it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the greater good.
That's very noble of you.
Yah, I know. It's my nature.

(Just a few conversations we've had over the past few days. I'm guessing not too many people have conversations that would sound this terrible if taken out of context.)

Time For A Darth Vader Pic

2011-10-05T12:52:00.000-04:00

'Cause, well, it's been a while. I have no other explanation.

Stolen from here.

I Don't Think My Stepson Gets Us

2011-09-29T13:26:00.003-04:00

There are the sounds of shrieking from our bedroom. Then water running. A few minutes later I emerge into the living room.

Me (faux indignant): Your mom just poured Dr Pepper on my head!

Stepson: Why?

Me: For her own amusement!

Ss: Is she okay?

Me: Of course not! She's freaking nuts!

At which point he retreats back into the stable and rational world of Spongebob Squarepants. Poor kid. It must be hard being a teenager and knowing your the only sane person in your family.

And She's....

2011-09-24T20:14:00.000-04:00

...painting my toenails purple again. Just on the left foot. Not sure why she enjoys doing it, but she does, so I just roll with it. She can't really say. Perhaps it's reassuring to her, a reminder that yes, I do trust her, that I don't mind minor strange incursions into my personal space. I figure tolerating this affront to my manly dignity is just karma, catching up with me for all the times I wouldn't let my six-year-old kid sister dress me up like an oversized Barbie doll.

When I was with Brett, we never did anything together that didn't make sense. And as time went by, we just did less and less together, until there was nothing left. I realize now, doing little things that bring us closer together, that keep us from drifting apart, are so very very important. They keep the love strong and rejuvenated. Who cares if they make sense?

Of course, for the next week or so I'm going to glance down towards my feet and mentally scream "holy crap what happened to my toes???!?" at least once a day. I can live with that.

This Is For Julie

2011-09-13T09:59:00.001-04:00

Is a dude.

We Have Our Own Language

2011-09-12T14:08:00.003-04:00

So, when we have a conversation like:
Julie (using her aristocratic voice): "Does .... does you need me to .... beat your heinie?"
Me: "What, with a giant black dildo?"
Julie: "Yeah!!! You will like!"

What we actually mean is:
Julie: "I love you and I am so glad I get to spend the rest of my life with you."
Me: "I love you and I am so glad I get to spend the rest of my life with you, too."

Just don't ask me why we use that language. There is, in fact, no beating and no giant dildo. All I know is, we know what we mean.

Is It Too Late To Trade In My Dad For The Cool One?

2011-09-08T16:58:00.000-04:00

I mean, I love you Dad and all, but holy crap! With this one I could have had Shadowcat and Lockheed with my lunch. Along with about a bazillion more brown bags of awesome...

Reality Has A Well-Documented Anti-Conservative Bias

2011-09-07T14:45:00.000-04:00

"Now, therefore, I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011 to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas." Perhaps he was counting on the prayers to make up for the planned 20% cut in funding to the Texas Forest Service.

And how well did that work? Here's some recent footage from Bastrop State Park, not far from the state capital.

Either god is a mean bastard who really hates Texas and its governor and the 500 or so families who have lost their homes, or else Texas is a hot dry place to begin with that has suffered from the combined effects of the cyclical weather pattern La Nina and overall climate change.

The people who founded this country but barriers in place to separate government from religion, because they realized that governments suck at metaphysics and religions suck at managing a world controlled by predictable natural laws that can be studied and learned. It's too bad many of our modern leaders lack their wisdom.

You Gotta Be Kidding Me

2011-08-27T22:05:00.000-04:00

Julie has to treat a lot of cancer patients as part of her job, because that's one of the things her hospital specializes in. Cancer patient in Austin area needs to be in ICU? They go to Seton Main. It sucks for her sometimes, having to deal with cancer patients when she is has cancer, but I think she's more or less accepted it and learned how to handle it, and probably sometimes is able to bring an extra degree of empathy. But tonight she tells me that she has a woman who was treated for Stage 2 breast cancer and thought she had beaten it, but now it's back and it's spread to her bones and liver. Which is almost always fatal. And there's about a one in five chance that the same thing will happen to Julie.

Fuck cancer. Fuck whatever insensitive fuckbrained asshole assigned that patient to Julie. Sometimes I hate her job almost as much as she does.

Is It The Weekend Yet?

2011-08-19T10:40:00.000-04:00

I has a sleepy.

Looks Like A Fun Way To Waste Time

2011-08-18T10:34:00.000-04:00

Solar System Builder

A Slight Miscommunication

2011-08-15T15:11:00.000-04:00

"Why on earth would you want to jump over me? Just go around me. You are such a dork."

"Um, no, actually I just said 'I want to jump you'. No 'over'."

"Oh. Ohhhh. Well, in that case, by all means carry on."

What I Was Up To One Year Ago Today (Sort Of)

2011-08-10T17:00:00.000-04:00

Actually, it was one year ago yesterday. But I was doing other stuff yesterday.

It was a wonderful day. The rain stayed out in the gulf, the store we ordered the food from fixed their mistake in time, we didn't lose the rings, and I was the happiest man in the world.

One year later, I still am.

Reason #732 Why My Wife Is Effing Awesome

2011-08-03T17:46:00.000-04:00

Many thanks to xkcd.com for pointing this out. In Julie's case, they went with a sharpie pen instead of tattoos (somewhat different treatment regimen, I believe), but just as hardcore.

End Of An Era

2011-07-21T16:45:00.002-04:00

So, the last space shuttle mission ended today. I've read and heard a number of people say that it is a sad thing. But, I don't see it that way. The space shuttles had a degree of coolness, but to be honest I'm glad they're done. In fact, I belong to the school of thought that manned space travel is a bad idea.

I shall explain.

One of the issues you have when you put a man into space is that you kind of need to bring him back. This means that in addition to the man, you need a vehicle. This vehicle needs a lot of fuel. This in turn means that you need a lot more fuel to get the man and his vehicle and its fuel into space in the first place. A Saturn V rocket was 363 feet tall and weighed seven million pounds, all necessary so that three men could go to the moon and back (and only two of them actually got to land - one had to stay in orbit). That's a lot. No other rocket comes close. I can't imagine how big a rocket you would need to send men to Mars and back.

Of course, going to Mars would mean a multi-stage mission, not a single shot. Probably an enhanced space station would be built to support a permanent moon base. The Mars mission would depart from there, probably with the crew in one rocket and supplies in other rockets. All just to get some men there who would take some pictures, collect some rocks, and then scamper for home.

Meanwhile, we are already exploring Mars. Mariner, Viking, Global Surveyor, Phoenix, Pathfinder, Odyssey, Spirit and Opportunity, Reconnaissance Orbiter, ... The list keeps growing, and each mission is more sophisticated than the last. There have been plenty of failed missions as well, but the price of failure is a hundred pounds of scrap metal smeared across a Martian plain. That's a lot cheaper than a half dozen human beings smeared across the same plain. A robotic explorer doesn't need food or water or exercise equipment or a toilet, and it doesn't need fuel to bring it back to earth. A human explorer may be able to do more than a single robot, but every year the gap is narrowing. How many robotic explorers could we send to Mars for the cost of a manned mission? Hundreds? Thousands? Not exciting, not glamorous, but we'd learn far more about another planet.

The space shuttle is basically a dump truck. Big payload, powerful but short-range rockets. To keep the cost down, it was designed withe the rockets, the fuel tanks, the payload, and the crew all side-by-side, rather than stacked like a conventional rocket. This meant that when something went wrong, as it did with Challenger in '86 and Columbia in '03, the crews were vulnerable, and they died. In both cases, cost- and PR-conscious NASA administrators overuled attempts to actually solve the problems, and the crews died. NASA has become as clumsy and badly-configured as the shuttles themselves.

Seeing people be launched into space, and safely return, is a stirring sight. But is it worth it, when there are cheaper, better ways that don't put brave people at risk? I don't think so.

Go Away Monday

2011-07-18T05:46:00.002-04:00

No want.

Because Pugs Are Awesome...

2011-07-11T14:10:00.002-04:00

...if a tad on the short side

It's Friday!

2011-07-08T07:41:00.000-04:00

I so excited.

Messing With The In-Laws

2011-07-06T10:44:00.001-04:00

J: I'm going to change my Facebook relationship status to "It's complicated."

M: Why would you do that?

J: Because then your parents will call you and ask what's wrong.

M: Yes, they will freak out and they will want to know what they can do to help, and they won't believe me when I say everything's fine so they will keep calling.

J: Yeah, you will like. It's good to talk to your parents.

M: No, it's going to get old after the second call.

J: Yes, but I will be amused, which is the most important thing. And then tomorrow? I'll change my status to "divorced". That'll really drive them crazy!

<thirty minutes later>

J: Ha-HAAAAH! I had a better idea. I'm going to make the change to your Facebook status! You will like.

M: Great googly moogly.

Why The Hell Is This An Issue?

2011-06-29T17:46:00.000-04:00

An article in Salon is talking about politeness and sexism and manners and "benevolent sexism" and punching feminists and all that stuff. The thing that jumped out at me in all this was how many people obsess about holding the door open for someone else. Is it acceptable? Is it sexist? Is it both, or is it just rude? Everyone's got an opinion, or an anecdote, or something.

What. The. Hell?

Here is my experience: when I go through a door (or open a door and am about to go through it) and I see someone approaching with the obvious intent of also going through the door, I hold the door so it doesn't close in their face. Usually I get a "thank you", sometimes there is no feedback. Conversely, when I am approaching a door someone else has just used, they almost always hold it open so it doesn't close in my face, and I say "thank you". It all takes about a second, and then we go on our separate ways. Certainly, nobody has ever yelled at me or threatened violence over it.

Now, nowhere in this is anybody's sex a factor. Ever. I hold the door for women and men alike, women and men alike hold the door for me. There's no chivalry, no condesencion, no fears of "does it make me kind of a fag?" It's just people being polite to each other, and it's never mattered whether I was in Texas or New York or California or Iowa.

Does these dynamics suddenly alter when neither party is a middle-aged nondescript guy? Or is the whole thing nothing more than a memory from how things were in some antideluvian era when everyone let the door close in guys' faces, a memory that keeps us from noticing how the world actually works today?

Umm.... Oops?

2011-06-23T06:00:00.000-04:00

The Internet Brings People Together

2011-06-22T17:00:00.000-04:00

Julie's in Florida this week, visiting her family. But thanks to the magic of the internet, we can stay close.

Julie: I miss you honey

Julie:here, I will help you not miss me

me: uh oh

Julie: Michael, will you write my paper?

Julie: My feet hurt.

Julie: I need rubs

Julie: can you get me a soda babe?

Julie: I hate school.

Julie: I am quitting my job

Julie: its all your fault

Julie: everything.

Julie: I will give you 5 dollars

Julie: there, feel better?

me: it's like you are right here with me

Julie: I NEED MONIES

Two Of My All-Time Favorite Aliens

2011-06-22T14:30:00.000-04:00

Right up there with Chewbacca, Mr. Spock, and that dude with the, you know, things.

A Follow-Up To That Last Post

2011-06-17T12:57:00.000-04:00

via Damn You Autocorrect dot com.

Yeah, I Thought People Might React Like This

2011-06-17T11:17:00.000-04:00

Poor Ned Stark.

Cancer Update

2011-05-27T13:32:00.000-04:00

Julie had another full-body PET scan this week, and the results were negative - no cancerous cells anywhere. It's been about a year now since she finished her treatments; just four more to go until she is considered "cured". Which is really an aknowledgement that you've been cured the whole time, but we weren't sure until now. Very inconvenient system, but it's the best they've got. Of course, there's still about a 20-25% chance that there's still mutant cells somewhere in her body, just laying low until they decide to start making tumors again. And if they do, well, that would be really really bad. So, every few months we'll be going through this, worrying and scanning and then worrying more.

Unfortunately, not having any cancer doesn't mean she's free of the consequences. Between the cancerous lymph nodes being taken out and the scarring from the radiation, Julie gets a lot of swelling in her chest and arm as fluids build up and can't drain efficiently. It can get very painful, and pretty much the only thing that helps is for me to massage the affected areas. It may get somewhat better with time, but for the most part she's going to have to deal with it for the rest of her life. I was talking to a friend whose wife underwent treatment for leukemia about seven years ago, including a bone marrow transplant. We agreed that if ordinary people were coming down with these kinds of chronic issues, it would most likely be labeled a major health issue and billions would go for finding cures. But since it's cancer, the medical industry shrugs its collective shoulders and says "well, it's better than being dead isn't it?" Yeah, it is, but that doesn't make the pain any less.

Cancer sucks.

Out Of Context

2011-05-19T15:41:00.000-04:00

Talking to Julie while she is playing World of Warcraft can be damaging to one's self-image:

"Can you bring me a soda, baby?"

"Sure, love."

"You asshole!"

"Huh?"

"Stupid gorilla."

Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-08T16:15:00.000-04:00

"I love you more than you love me."

"That's not true!"

"It is."

"We both love each other more than we can count. So how can you say you love me more?"

"Because I do."

"If you love me more, how come I'm the one who logged out and am giving you a backrub so you can keep playing?"

"Because it's Mother's Day, beeyatch."

Daaaang.......

2011-05-02T15:41:00.000-04:00

Well, there's your problem!

From seniorgif.com

5 Things I Have Never Done

2011-04-24T14:05:00.000-04:00

...and really hope I never do.

1) Follow the "Shake well before opening" instructions on a can of Slim-Fast, forgetting that I'm actually holding a can of Diet Coke.

2) Drop my cell phone in the toilet.

3) Use two cups of salt instead of two cups of sugar when baking a pie.

4) Call my wife my ex's name.

5) Convince myself I can manage to carry a really big really expensive tv up the stairs without help.

AvP Poker Faces

2011-04-20T14:41:00.001-04:00

Yeah. I nerdgasmmed.

Winter Is Coming

2011-04-14T11:49:00.000-04:00

This Sunday, at 8:00 pm Central time.

Pimp My Sith

2011-04-13T17:51:00.000-04:00

Culture Fail

2011-04-12T15:24:00.001-04:00

Julie: Turkey is Emerilized!

me: is wha?

Julie: BAM!

me: are you drunk?

Julie: YOU DONT KNOW WHO EMERIL IS?!

me: no....

Julie: FFS use Google, Michael
he is probably one of the most famous chefs of current times

me: ok
does he say "bam!" a lot?

Julie: YES MICHAEL
GOOGLE BAM

me: ok, I got

Julie: omfg
you have just traumatized me
guh.

me: I sorry

Julie: I just don't get how you didn't know who he was
and since you didn't, you don't realize how nice it is that I am using his recipe to make you a turkey

me: I am sure it is awesome

EDIT: Yeah, it was the best turkey dinner I've ever had. BAM!

World of Warcraft: Now What?

2011-03-27T12:22:00.001-04:00

For the most part, I have been quite pleased with Cataclysm. In particular, the difficulty levels in the dungeons and raids suited me just fine. Julie and I were in a brand new guild, with people who had similar ideas of how to balance fun and progression, with minimal personality conflicts, and a raid schedule that happened to line up exactly with the only times we could both make. Oh, and for the first time ever, I was getting to do real progression raiding on Ratshag, the character I've always thought of as my main. We had two bosses, if not yet on farm, at least dying predictably, and were making good progress on the next one. It was all going as well as I could have hoped.

But the fact that things were just as I wanted them did not mean it was working out for the other people. Two weeks ago, one of our raiders announced he was canceling his WoW account, and within the hour four more raiders made similar announcements. Clearly, there was a general sense of wanting or needing to do other things, and folks had been holding off, not wanting to be the one to break the camel's back. Julie wasn't officially part of the exodus, but she had a lot on her plate between work and classes, and the only thing holding to raiding was not wanting to let me down, so when it happened it was a relief to her.

So... now what?

I like raiding. I like the feeling of being part of a team, of achieving shared goals. I also like the structure which comes from having a fixed schedule. Unfortunately I don't see a way to fit a raiding schedule anywhere into my life right now. Julie works three nights a week (except when she doesn't), she takes classes several nights a week (except when she doesn't), Taylor spends a couple nights a week with us (except when she doesn't), the dogs need to be walked (no exceptions), dinner needs to be cooked (usually), homework needs to be checked (often). Right now, there just isn't much room for any commitments - I was able to bend life a bit to fit in a five-hour-a-week schedule, but life has now snapped back and that window is shut.

This summer things should be different - Julie's plan is to be taking more on-line classes, the hospital workload will drop some, Taylor's stays will be longer allowing for more flexibility. It's probable that if I gear up one of my Alliance toons that I could get to raid at least part time. But nothing is certain (as recent events have shown), and the gearing up process is slower and harder than it was a year ago. So, I'm feeling a little gun shy, I suspect. Do I want to invest the time and effort again, knowing that it might not pay off? Or do I just want to level alts, learn professions, complete achievements - all low risk activities, convenient, not dependent on others? The other night I had the rather disturbing idea of converting Ratshag, with all his hard-fought raiding gear, into an Alliance race. Would simplify things, sure, but I think it would cost me a part of my soul to lose the amazingly virile one. Weird to care so much about a lump of pixels, but I do.

So, now what? This weekend I've been leveling my paladin, Kinnavieve. Got her to 84 last night. When she gets to 85, will I keep on playing her, pushing through the gearing up grind for the potential rewards? Or will I change to leveling another character, perhaps with the goal of raiding on that one? I'm really not sure. Wish I could just figure out what I really wanted to do.

Does Brett Have Any Marbles Left?

2011-03-22T15:24:00.003-04:00

We got to visit my parents last week at their new home in Colorado (They're not in Ohio anymore, because Dad gets insanely restless every few years and needs to move. When he dies, my sister and I plan to put his ashes in an urn and move it around the country periodically so he doesn't get annoyed and go haunt people or something. Anywho.). While we were there, we had several discussions about Brett. We know Brett thinks that she can use Taylor as leverage over my parents when I start cutting off the money flow, and we wanted to make sure they understood that we won't let the utilities get cut off or the food run out. We just aren't going to give Brett cash anymore (much of which I'm sure is going to support her cows and goats and whatever else she's keeping).

Along the way, an interesting datum came up in all this. Brett's secret plan for when I cut her off is to take me to court and claim she is entitled to .... who knows what ... because I was seeing Julie before the divorce went through. Which shows she is pretty ignorant of the law. If at the divorce trial she could have shown that I had spent some of our joint money on Julie (which I admit I did) she would have been entitled to that much more than 50% of our net worth. However, I was already voluntarily giving her significantly more than 50%, so it would have been moot. And of course, there's the small fact that the trial happened over a year ago, and there's no do-overs.

But it's not her secret plan that dumbfounded me. It's just sad, that she thinks she can still avoid having to, you know, support herself like any other adult. What amazed me was that she confided her secret plan to my father. She actually believes that she is so in the right, and I so in the wrong, that my own parents are taking her side. The reality is that they think she is a lunatic who should be committed for her own good.

Twenty years ago, I fell in love with a bright, ambitious young woman. It hurts my heart to see what a pathetic, delusional, train wreck of a human being she has become.

THIS Is Far Freakin' Cool

2011-03-09T17:12:00.001-05:00

Ward Shelley's map of the history of science fiction:

click to embiggen

I was particularly pleased to see Cyrano de Bergerac's Empires of the Moon included in the pre-SF speculative branch. Awesome as Jose Ferrer's portrayal of the man was, he was much more than a swordsman/poet with a big nose.

Oh Shi-

2011-03-08T16:46:00.002-05:00

It's Not Easy Being Green

2011-03-03T13:42:00.000-05:00

I'm still wondering what's keeping her car on the road....

Partners

2011-02-26T22:30:00.000-05:00

Julie's at work tonight, her third twelve-hour shift of the week. That's what she is supposed to work, but for the first seven months she's been at this hospital it never worked out that way. Either she was in too much pain from the lingering effects of her surgery and had to call in sick, or there weren't enough patients and she would get put on call. But last month, for whatever reason, the patient load finally picked up enough to match the staffing level, and she hasn't been called off once. This is putting demands on her she hasn't had to meet since before her diagnosis, but she is handling it.

Julie is taking a heavy class load at Austin Community College - eighteen hours. This year she has started working towards earning a bachelors degree in nursing, to open up career options that aren't available with just a two-year degree. Possibilities like becoming a nurse anaesthetist, with great pay and regular hours and no muscle-pulling labor. She had intended to do this a couple of years ago, but then some guy came into her life and thoughtlessly disrupted everything. And then the cancer disrupted things more. But she is stronger now, the strongest she has been in over a year. And she thought she was ready to take on both work and school. It was hard at first, and she was afraid that maybe the cancer and the chemo had damaged her brain. That she might not be as smart as she once was. But after a couple weeks, the rust got knocked off, and her brain remembered how to learn new material and take tests and write papers, and she currently has an "A" average in all five classes. This is putting further demands on her, but she is handling it.

At home, there is much to do. Cooking and cleaning and laundry and grocery shopping and managing the animals and harassing the teenagers to at least make token gestures toward living like civilized human beings. It isn't fun, it isn't very rewarding, but it is so important to me that these things are covered, that Julie not feel like she needs to worry about anything more than what she has to. This is putting demands on me, but I am handling it.

I am very, very proud of Julie. Her ambition, her strength, her determination. She has made it clear that she loves me more than ever for stepping up and supporting her. You know what this feels like?

It feels like we are partners.

For so many years I wanted to feel like Brett and I were partners. Like we were working together to make a better life for both of us. But it never worked out that way. The more I tried to make it happen, the more she focused on herself. But now, with Julie, I finally have that. And it feels wonderful.

One. Million. Coconuts.

2011-02-19T10:52:00.003-05:00

'Cause I's fuhggin' worth every one of'em.

Vader vs Goats

2011-02-18T15:55:00.001-05:00

Because there is no such thing as too much Darth Vader. I should make him a weekly feature or something....

Atheist Vader

2011-02-07T21:23:00.004-05:00

This

2011-01-31T17:33:00.000-05:00

Cutting the Umbilical Cord

2011-01-30T22:30:00.002-05:00

It's been nearly two-and-a-half years since Brett and I separated. Nearly two years since I filed for divorce. Fifteen months since the divorce was finalized. In all this time, Brett has made no move towards finding a job so she can support herself. Instead she continues to life off of the $1600 a month I give her (on top of the child support payments). Nor has she gone back to school, which she had talked about doing and I had said I was willing to extend the support for. Much of this money is probably going to support her livestock hobby (cows, goats, whatever) which she pretends is a business but is really a hobby.

Well, I'm done waiting for her to get her shit together and become an adult. I'm not going to cut her off cold turkey, but I need to make it clear she does not have unlimited time. So I e-mailed her this:

About spousal support. These payments are intended to give you time to find employment so that you can support yourself. As I said several times during the divorce process, I was also willing to continue this support for up to three years so that you could go back to school. Now, it is your life and I have no interest in telling you what to do. However, at this point I feel no further moral obligation (nor do I have one legally) to continue making payments to you while you do neither of these....I will keep the payments at their current level through September and then stop them. (This does not include the mortgage payments, which I will continue to make until the September following Taylor's 18th birthday.)

So how did she take it?

This is not something which you get to decide unilaterally....Well I guess we will go back to court only this time I will show up. I am still seeing a therapist and on medication, but am no longer clinically depressed to the point of only marginally functioning. So I won't be such a pushover. Agian, you have rationalized that you are "the good guy" and don't have to be "generous". Well, we disagree about what is fair, about what is legal, about what you get to unilaterally decide.

Well, guess what Brett? If you check the divorce decree, it says I only have to pay you $1000 a month through last September. What I am paying you now is entirely my choice. The law is completely on my side. I can be as unilateral with my money as I want. You've got eight months to become enough of an adult to at least attempt to support yourself. Get cracking.

She's Trying To Kill Me

2011-01-17T08:30:00.000-05:00

A lot of people sometimes bring home stuff from work. Pens, a stapler, maybe a tzotchke with the company logo on it. But what does my Julie the ICU nurse bring home?

She swears it's just melted ice she used to keep her cokes cold, but I know the truth:

She's trying to kill me.

As Happy As The Pope In The Woods

2010-12-25T21:51:00.000-05:00

I hope y'all had a very merry christmas this year, or whichever winter solstice holiday you observe (as a Unitarian, I feel free to borrow whatever holiday traditions appeal without asking permission. Doesn't quite make up for when they use to burn us at the stake, but you take what you can get. Anywho.)

I worked hard to instill an appreciation for reading in Taylor when she was young, and refused to let myself freak out when she wasn't already reading Russian novelists or "The Monster at the End of This Book" when she was three. Or four. Or five. And now, at thirteen, she reads like a maniac. Whenever she goes anywhere, she has to lug around several books to read, and she usually finished them all before she gets home. I worry that she's going to give herself a hernia the next time she is packing for a two-week vacation.

So, for christmas this year, Julie and I bought her a Kindle. Her reaction when she opened it? "This is good. This is very good," whispered over and over in a hushed awe. "I can carry all my books with me everywhere..." We got her set up and downloaded the latest Harry Dresden book, and she's been curled up on the couch with it all afternoon. Now that she's a teenager, I have no doubt that there will be plenty of times when her parents are clueless dweebs who just don't understand anything. But this year we got it right, and I am happy.

I Don't Think The Grocery Store Carries Those....

2010-11-30T13:29:00.001-05:00

Saturday morning I'm at the grocery store to get some rations to see us through the weekend. Night before, Julie had texted me a shopping list because she knows I won't remember what she tells me we need, and she certainly doesn't want me to call and ask her when she's sleeping. So I pull out my phone and check the list:

sodas
milk
eggs
cat food
cat litter
puppy numbing
bitch
fuckerhead
sonofabitch
dammit
damn
prostitution whore!

In The Spirit Of International Goodwill

2010-11-25T01:00:00.002-05:00

To any non-US readers:

Okay, so, you didn't grow up with a heavily sanitized version of the tale of a bunch of snotty religious fanatics leaving England for a land they were so unequipped to survive in that they damn near had to eat their own dead to survive. Zealots who were pretty much rescued by the native tribes whom they re-paid by giving them smallpox and stealing their land, paving the way for hysterical persecutions of single women for witchcraft a couple of generations later. And you probably have to go to work today, because for you it's just another Thursday.

Nevertheless, Happy Thanksgiving!

Sneak Preview

2010-11-21T20:59:00.000-05:00

Did a little photo editing this weekend, and I feel like showing it off. This will end up in a Need More Rage post, probably sometime this week.

Click to embiggen

"Get off my city, or Ima gonna break your iron frickin' jaw!"

He's The Best There Is At What He Does

2010-11-10T14:24:00.002-05:00

But what he does isn't very nice....

Thoughts On The Upcoming WoW Expansion

2010-11-09T13:34:00.000-05:00

Two years ago I was looking forward to the upcoming Wrath expansion with the expectation that things would pick up where they left off. I had been raiding quite successfully the previous spring and summer with Aetherial Circle, but that had come to an end as summer doldrums, pre-expansion doldrums, and general burn-out took a toll on the roster until the GM called a halt. But with the expansion, everything was going to go back to how it had been before. Right? Eh....

There were tensions that I had not been fully aware of. Tensions between people who wanted to go farther, faster, and people who were in it for the sense of being part of a team. There was a struggle for the soul of the guild in the early days of Wrath, and my side lost. At the time it seemed like a really huge deal, and I was hurt and frustrated. Then came the bizarre, twisted destruction of Sidhe Devils, which had been my place to go chill out. Again, I was hurt and frustrated.

Now, going into Cataclysm, my expectations are a lot lower, and I think that is a good thing. Part of that is a better understanding that guilds do break up and die. Part of it is the experience I had with The Left Claw, where I was able to gear up, join an existing raid, and be a contributing member even as we did the hardest fights in the game. Part of it is the dungeon finder tool, and the freedom it offers to join a group and reap the rewards whenever I feel like it. And part of it is having a real life family I can play with.

So, I go into Cataclysm with some vague plans. I will level to 85 and raid some. I will level some new alts. I will play with people I like. But I don't have any concerns about the lack of specificity. I don't needto be driven. I don't need to reach the point I can raid before day X, or risk losing it all. I am free to do a little of this, and a little of that. So, I am looking forward to this expansion too, but in a very, very different way.

Terms Of Endearment

2010-11-08T12:35:00.000-05:00

Her: Come over here. I want cuddles.

:: cuddling ::

Her: Aiyeeee! Your foot is freezing!

Me: Yeah, it was sticking out from under the blanket.

Her: You cannot do that! Crazy motherfucker.

Me: ... I'm your husband. You cannot call me a "motherfucker."

Her: I just did. Bitch.

Me: This is so going on the blog.

New Rules

2010-10-26T13:09:00.000-04:00

Rule 1: Oatmeal raison cookies from Tiff's Treats are a legitimate substitute for the planned evening meal.

Rule 2: Dogs are no longer allowed to pull the insole out of my sneakers and bite holes in them.

Rule 3: In all future residences, the television where the teenaged offspring tend to congregate on Friday and Saturday evenings will not be located right outside of our bedroom door.

Rule 4: No one will talk about Rule 4. Ever.

Rule 5: When inviting relatives for the weekend, make sure they understand this does not mean "show up on Tuesday."

C Is For Cookie

2010-10-21T16:22:00.002-04:00

That's good enough for me.

(Shamelessly lifted from the comments on this post.)

The One Where I Talk About My Sex Life

2010-10-21T10:36:00.000-04:00

Back when I was still with Brett, I used to be pretty unhappy about my sex life. Year after year, the frequency would decline, and while sometimes it could be very good, sometimes it could be not good, sometimes even to the point of being downright bad. The six months or so that she would break out in hives at the end was particularly memorable, but often things were more mundane. "You've been really sweet and kind and attentive and helpful today, but I'd just rather stay up and watch this thirty-year-old sitcom than go to bed with you." "OMFG. You guys were like roommates. I think I would kill myself," was Hydra's response when I told her what it had been like. Looking back, I can see that a lot of what I thought was love and affection was really just her hormones kicking into overdrive for a few days. When that had happened to her in college, she'd go on a tear and sleep with a different guy every night. But then I came along, and I was safe and reliable and dependable, so we would be romantic and passionate until her itch was done being scratched. I would take it as a sign she really did love me, and cling to it through the following dry spell. But when the dry spells grew to be multiple months long, even I caught a clue.

Then, Julie entered my life. She not only enjoyed sex as much as I did, she really did love me. (And, yeah, it was a brand new, exciting relationship. That never hurts.) We made love whenever could, in person during our too-infrequent visits together, over the phone or on-line when we had to be apart. For eight months, it was wonderful.

Then came the cancer diagnosis.

We tried to keep the passion going, we both did. But when you don't know if you're going to live or die, when you're being cut into and poisoned and irradiated, when you throw up after every meal and your hair falls out and your breasts are removed, it's pretty damn hard to feel sexy. And I was far too scared I'd lose her, and concerned about her health, and focused on trying everything I could to make life easier for her to be much of a horndog either. But, there was always affection, always a desire to be close to each other as much and as often as possible. I never, ever felt alone the way I did with Brett.

So now, four months after the treatments ended, where are we? In a lot of ways, Julie is recovered from the ordeal. Much of her physical strength is back, and she (and I) aren't fighting a constant battle with fear anymore. (The fear is still there, for me at least, but it's down to a quiet background hum.) Unfortunately, though, her interest in sex hasn't come back. As she said to me the other night,

"I miss wanting sex. I know that sounds weird, but it's like my sex drive took off. I want it back."

It's not that she objects to sex, it's just not something on her radar anymore. Combined with the facts that she works 3-4 nights a week so we often only see each other for a few minutes in the morning and the evening, and we now have her son (and on weekends, my daughter) living with us so there's a lot less privacy, it just doesn't happen all that often. Like, about the same frequency I had with Brett. She's apologized to me, a couple of times, about the irony of it all, that I'm still not getting any. But it's not the same.

For one thing, there's still a lot of physical affection. Cuddling, backrubs, and tickling - I never was particularly ticklish as an adult, but Julie can get me to shriek hysterically. For another, there's still some pain, as her body struggles to adapt to having several lymph nodes removed. This will get better with time. I know she's having to deal with body image issues. I still find her sexy as hell, but it's hard for her, after years of having big magnificent knockers, to accept a pair of small, uneven lumps of fat and scar tissue. This will get easier with time, particularly next year when things have healed enough to get cosmetic surgery. And someday, in a few years, the kids will go off to college - Whoo hoo!

So, yeah, the era of frequent, easy sex is gone. And I miss it, sometimes. But I am loved, and I get to give and receive affection, and I know it'll get easier with time, instead of the slow steady decline I had before. So, I'm okay with it. Gods know, there's a lot worse things that could happen.

I used to write her erotic stories, back in the pre-cancer days. Sometimes featuring us, sometimes our warcraft characters. They could get her (and me) very excited, and add some very enjoyable spice. But I stopped doing that when things got grim a year ago. This week, I started writing a new one. I'll show it to her this weekend, when we both have some time, and we shall see what happens.

Things I Have Learned Watching Television

2010-10-12T16:07:00.000-04:00

Towing an expensive car and needing to go to the bathroom really really bad is a dangerous combination.

You should not wear $1600 shoes if you are going to be marooned on a tropical island.

It is hard to keep a secret from your wife if you have a camera crew following you around.

If your "learning disability" is causing you to flunk out of law school and you are petitioning for "special consideration", that may be a sign that you aren't cut out to be a lawyer.

Bringing your mistress to a first date does not go over well.

Happy Monday

2010-10-11T11:24:00.000-04:00

An oldie, but a goodie. Pretty much says it all....

Any Day Now....

2010-10-06T15:59:00.000-04:00

....gonna start exercising. Really. I mean it. Just need to find the right motivation.

Reunions

2010-10-04T15:46:00.003-04:00

This weekend my friend Laura came to visit. It was a short stopover as she does a whirlwind cross-country trip, but for twenty-four hours we got to hang out and catch up. We'd been really good friends in college, and while we've kept in touch over the years (mostly), this was the first time we'd managed to be in the same place at the same time in about fifteen years.

(I'm the one with the really big head)

It was a super visit. Even though we are both a lot older than we were when we were seventeen, and have very different (and way more complex) lives than we once did, we still got along great. We talked about what we've been up to, where we hope to be going, what we watch on tv, what we think of certain political hot-button topics, the works. I thought she was interesting even though she's kinda quirky, she thought I was interesting even though I'm kinda quirky, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. The only regrets were that it had to end so soon.

Hopefully we won't have to wait another fifteen years to see each other again.

Meanwhile, my 25th anniversary high school reunion is later this month. When I went to the 20th, I found myself being pulled into a group that I had been somewhat associated with in school. Friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, and the ex-wife and nearly adult children of one friend. When I broke off to go mingle with other people, I wasn't literally roped and pulled back in, but somehow I kept finding myself with the same group of people. Many of whom seemed to want to act as if it was still the 1980s. "Let's go eat at the same restaurant we always used to!" "Tomorrow let's go to that place we always hung out at." It wasn't interesting. It wasn't fun. To be honest, I found it all a little creepy. And some of those people I really couldn't stand at all.

This time around, Facebook is all a-flutter with "hey let's all get together at so-and-so's house, and then we do X and it'll be just like old times." I'm sorry, but I'm not a teenager any more, and I'm not interested in reliving those days. So, I think I'm going resist the siren's cry of nostalgia, and stay home with my family instead.

Flight Safety & Story Time

2010-09-28T17:34:00.001-04:00

Bit of a blip in the news today: a regional jet landed at JFK with one wheel up. One dingleberry passenger decided to video the view out his window and post it on YouTube. Lots of sparks, but since a wheel-up landing is something pilots routinely train for there was no real drama, and everyone walked away unharmed. On the video, you can hear the flight attended repeatedly commanding the passengers "Heads down! Stay down!" Now, in a serious situation which is totally out of their control, people have a tendency to want to know what is going on, which in this case would tend to involve looking out the window (or possibly fiddling with your video camera). This maximizes the chances that your head is going to get bounced around like a rubber ball, doing all sorts of unpleasant things to your neck. So, strong, assertive, repeated, unambiguous instructions on what to do are a pretty good idea, and that's why flight attendants are trained to do this.

Yet a number of people left complaining comments on the various articles. Some said she's shrill. Some said she's annoying. Some said they have the right to do whatever the damn well they please, if they're going to die anyway. Some said she wasn't calming and soothing. All of them are pretty damn ignorant fucktards.

Flash back to 1937 or so. TWA DC-2 at an airport in the Midwest, with some serious storms in the area. The two pilots (one of whom, Tommy, would eventually become my grandfather) are discussing whether to take off or cancel the flight. They of course had far less meteorological information available to them than modern pilots would, so there was a fair amount of educated guesswork to the process. The stewardess, (Ruth, who would later become my grandmother) stuck her head in the cockpit and asked if they intended to take off.

"Yeah, we're thinking we might," says one pilot.

"Okay, if you decide to go, let me know so I can jump off," Ruth replies, and goes back into the cabin.

There's a pause. "You think she means it?"

"I think she does," says Tommy. They decided to cancel the flight.

Flight attendants. Keeping passengers safe for over seventy years.

Nurses Make The Worst Patients

2010-09-21T14:51:00.000-04:00

"I burning up!"

"Well, you're warm, but I wouldn't call it burning up exac-"

"You be quiet! You don't know nuthin'! I the nurse! I know these things! I gonna fuckin' die."

Let the record show: She didn't fuckin' die after all.

Buffy in Repose

2010-09-07T14:35:00.001-04:00

Buffy in Repose
Originally uploaded by Captain Oblivious

If she was any more relaxed, she'd slip into a coma....

When Netflix Says, "Yeah, I Got Nuthin'"

2010-09-01T16:27:00.000-04:00

I added Max Headroom: The Complete Series to my Netflix queue, and the site suggested I might also be interested in movies starring Max von Sydow. Or I might want to see Max Payne.

What, no Mad Max? Sam and Max Hit the Road? Maximilian Schell?

C'mon Netflix, I clearly have an interest in movies or shows with characters and/or actors named Max. Help me out here!

Countdown

2010-08-25T10:42:00.002-04:00

Monday, Julie's cancer was declared to be in full remission - a PET scan showed no signs of cancer anywhere in her body. This means one of two things: either her cancer is cured, or there are pre-cancerous timebombs hidden away in her body that cannot yet be detected. The only way to know which is to undergo regular full-body scans (every three months) to see if the cancer re-appears. If it does, then it is likely to continue to do so for the rest of her life. But if after five years it doesn't, then we conclude it was cured after all.

It kind of feels like being in a real-life Schrödinger's Cat experiment.

To help pass the time, and to encourage positive thinking, I'm setting up one of those cheap-ass web countdown timers.

Julie's Cancer is Officially Cured

Just FYI

2010-08-12T16:31:00.001-04:00

August in Texas? Yeah, not a good time or place for your car's air conditioner to stop working.

That is all.

The First Rule Of Jane Austen's Fight Club Is...

2010-07-27T09:44:00.002-04:00

...you do not talk about Jane Austen's Fight Club.

Raiding Icecrown Citadel

2010-07-21T17:34:00.001-04:00

Took this screenshot of my guild, The Left Claw, fighting the frostwyrm Rimefang. The green-haired elf with two swords by the dragon's elbow is me. You can also see Fonzy (the bear at the left), Boogoola, and Jessika. Thought the picture looked pretty cool, but it didn't quite fit the narrative I have for Need More Rage, so I'm just posting it here.

Click to embiggen - you know the drill.

Never A Dull Moment

2010-07-19T12:38:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I was awakened by a delicious aroma, and Julie's voice saying, "Here baby, I fixed you french toast."

This morning I was awakened by one hand clamped around my ankle, the other vigorously tickling the bottom of my foot, and a cackling shriek of "IS PROCEDURE!"

Wonder what tomorrow will bring...

The Dog Days of Summer

2010-07-10T12:37:00.000-04:00

Ya know, dad, it's too hot for me to walk....

I know! You pull me!

Why I Like Dogs More Than Cats

2010-06-30T15:26:00.000-04:00

The Dogs' response when I get home:
Hey! Dad's home!
He is?
He is!
Ow wow! We were afraid you were gone forever!
Hurray! Dad's home!
Dad will you take us for a walk?
I haven't licked your face all day!
Hope! Did you hear? Dad's home!
I'm so excited I gotta chase my tail!
Dad! Dad! Dad!
Best dad evah!
I'm so excited I just gotta nom on your leg!
Buffy! Did you hear? Dad's home!
Dad will you take us for a walk?
We missed you soooooooooooo so much!
I gotta sniff dad's feet!
This is the best thing that's ever happened to me!
Yay! Dad's home!
Dad, will go for a walk with me? It's my favorite thing!
Dad! I brought you my best chew toy!
Dad! I love you!

The Cats' response when I get home:
... hey.

A Fashion Request From Julie

2010-06-22T17:14:00.000-04:00

"Fuck, I gotta do laundry again. Why can't you just not wear clothes?"

Weekend Chore

2010-06-01T11:01:00.001-04:00

Spent some time this weekend on my knees cleaning the carpet in the room the dogs hang out in with the Bissel carpet shampoo thing-a-ma-dohickie. Tedious, but it made a big difference. At some point Julie came over and sat on the floor, just quietly watching me, for about five minutes.

I guess she thought it looked sexy.

The Energizer Bunny Ain't Got Nuthin' On Me!

2010-05-27T17:19:00.000-04:00

In 1984, I bought an HP 11C calculator. Once I got used to the reverse-polish notation, I liked it.

I took it to calculator speed competitions. I took it to college. I took it to my first job. I took it to grad school. There, another student told me it belonged in a museum. That was 13 years ago. It's got some grime between the keys now, and the little rubber feet on the back are gone. Last year I had to replace the batteries. But it's still going.

To put this in perspective, in 1984 the Energizer Bunny didn't even exist yet! They hadn't introduced his predecessor Jacko, some big Australian dude holding a giant battery over his head shouting "Oi!", yet. They hadn't signed his predecessor, Mary Lou Retton, yet.

It keeps going and going and going....

Don't Panic!

2010-05-25T17:20:00.000-04:00

It's towel day! Do you know where your towel is?

Mario Brothers

2010-05-23T13:19:00.000-04:00

I am a total Mario noob. About all I am able to do is run and spam the jump button until I eventually die. Listening to Julie while she watches Taylor and Patrick play, however, is most entertaining.

"Stop jumping on her head!"
"Look out!"
"Why you do that?"
"Ahhhhh!"
"Omigod!"
"Don't be picking her up!"
"Turtle!"
"Get it!"
"Don't do that!"
"Why you die?"
"Do the whizzy spin thing!"
"Up!"
"Stop picking her up!"
"Oh no!"
"Pop her bubble"

and so on and on and on
:)

Update-y Stuff

2010-05-17T17:37:00.000-04:00

Julie had her first radiation session today. She needs to go back five times a week for six weeks. Despite being nervous about, her only complaing after was that her back was sore from having to lie on the table not moving for so long. Later on there will be skin irritation and fatigue, but we will cross those bridges when we get to them.

Three weeks of working day shift left her cranky and annoyed. This week she starts night shift, and I expect it'll leave her in a better mood. It fits her sleep schedule better, there's a lot fewer doctors and relatives to deal with, and sometimes the patients mostly just sleep. The plan is to work Thurs-Fri_Sat nights (7 pm to 7 am) as often as possible to minimize the overlap with the M-F radiation sessions.

I did my first progression raid in like a year last week, taking Vyp to the Ice Cream Social with K and Jess and the rest of The Left Claw. We attempted to get Sindragosa down, the last boss before Arthas. No sucess, but I was having way too much fun focussing on trying to do my job right to be bothered. Last time I did progression raiding, it was roflstomping Naxx with AC. This was much better - victories are more satisfying when you earn them. Not looking to get back into full-time raiding, but hopefully they'll have some room for me once or twice a month.

Things I Learned Last Week Watching Television

2010-05-10T20:00:00.001-04:00

A "glam wedding" does not mean everyone looks like Ziggy Stardust.

Mike Rowe from "Dirty Jobs" and Gene Simmons from "Kiss" are interchangeable.

It is possible to hit someone hard enough to "knock their socks off", provided (a) they aren't wearing shoes, (b) they are wearing low-friction material socks, (c) they shave their legs, and (d) you hit as hard as a five-ton steel beam traveling 65 miles per hour.

Idiot young women from the Jersey Shore grow up to be idiot Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Somewhere, there are parents gullible enough to believe their children's imaginary playmates are real.

Motorcycle racing is not, in fact, completely safe.

Walking around with a big rock in your pants will make people not vote for you.

So Much For That Friendship

2010-04-21T01:04:00.000-04:00

About 2 years ago, BBB announced on his blog that he was quitting his raiding guild and opening up Sidhe Devils as a social guild. I was one of the first to join, first with a little level 1 gnome warrior, and soon after I created Palintera, one of my favorite characters. I made new friends in that guild, including Bellwether, who has been a close and valued friend, who has been incredibly supportive through the ups and downs my life has gone through. SD was not my primary guild - it was always a lower priority than my weekly sessions with my RL friends and my raiding with Aetherial Circle. But it was always a comfortable place to escape to a few times a month. It was something I valued, and my level of involvement seemed to be fine with everyone.

Last summer I decided to consolidate all of my Alliance toons on one server. Because I felt I no longer fit well in AC, but SD was still a pleasant place, it made sense to move them all to that server. So in came Kinnavieve and Ratdorf, Phoenicia and Vyp. Based on my recommendation, several of my blogging friends looking for a more casual guild chose to transfer there. And, to my surprise, Julie decided to leave AC and move her characters as well. It was a good time. I got to do heroics, Julie and I could play together as a way to bridge the distance between us, and the guild was a happy place.

Last October life took a horrifying turn, when Julie was diagnosed with cancer. My involvement with the guild, and everyone else, dropped off. I stopped writing Need More Rage. All that mattered was focusing on supporting Julie as much as I could.

About this time I was vaguely aware of issues cropping up in Sidhe Devils, but I wasn't paying close attention. The guild had started raiding on Thursday and Friday nights, neither of which I could make, and apparently there were some tensions between the more focussed (compared to AC I would hardly call them hard-core) raiders, and some more casual guild members. Then, suddenly, Bear announced he and Cassie were quitting the guild, effective immediately. But they didn't leave; instead, people started getting kicked out of the guild. Bear had always struck me as a little heavy-handed with insisting on certain rules, such as logging in regularly to avoid being removed, but this was new. Long-time guild members were being kicked with alarming frequency. There were a few posts on the guild forums about issues being talked out between the GMs and the officers, and all was cool now, only to have the gquits and gkicks flare up again. Some of the former guildies started a new guild called Parallel, and apparently it would focus on casual raiding, while SD was going to be a non-raiding guild. However, it quickly became clear that moving one toon to Parallel mean that all your alts would be immediately kicked, and your guild forum access removed. Morale within Sidhe Devils plummeted, and the exodus accelerated. Stop took his main out to join a raiding guild on another server, and within an hour all his alts were kicked. It became very clear to we who remained that we were to be Bear and Cassie's friends and no one else's or we were out, as if we had never existed.

Like I said, I was busy dealing with Real Life during this, and I pretty much kept my head down. I thought it sucked, but I wanted to be loyal to the guild that had been my home, and I hoped once things settled down that there could be a recovery. But there never was. In the end, there were only a handful of people left. Even Bear, who hadn't been around much for months, bailed, converting his main toon to a Tauren and finding new opportunities to raid on the Horde side. So Julie and I talked about it, and decided that being members of a social guild with no one left to talk to was just too depressing. Rather than sneak off into the night, we posted our intentions to leave on the forums. Since the guild was clearly dead, and abandoned by its leaders, we didn't expect much of a response. Silly us.

Bear replied with one of his enormous walls of text, mostly complaining about how much he and Cassie had put into the guild, how hard they had worked, and how unappreciative everyone was. How terrible it was that everyone had walked away from them. But he also found time to tell me what a crappy guild member I had been, how I didn't say enough in gchat or participate in enough activities. Apparently there was a secret quota he hadn't bother to tell anyone about, and I was lacking. When Julie responded that he was being unreasonable, he ran off to his blog and posted a couple of rambling, vague, whiny posts about how mean everyone had been to them. Nowhere did he mention that he had been absent for months while pugging heroics with random strangers, or that people who had tried to fill the leadership void had been squashed because they didn't follow his vision of how a social guild ought to be.

You know what, Bear? Fuck you. If you can't accept that you were the one in charge, the one who made mistakes, the one who tried to have his cake and eat it too, then you need to grow up. Attacking the people who stuck around the longest, who stayed with you while you were busy kicking out our friends for merely trying to enjoy the game, for "sucking the life" from your guild is bullshit. I valued our friendship, but you've gone too far. Way, way too far. Life is too short to waste with people who think that friendship means they can control what you do and who with. Most of us outgrew that sort of thing in high school. Why didn't you?

Book Meme

2010-04-18T22:42:00.001-04:00

Picked this up from Bananrama Shoulders.

Bold the ones you've read COMPLETELY, italicize the ones you've read part of. Watching the movie or the cartoon doesn't count. Abridged versions don't count either. BTW, according to the BBC if you've read 7 of these, you are above the average.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy- Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi -Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madam Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Things I Now Know About Laundry

2010-04-15T15:42:00.000-04:00

1) I am not qualified to operate the precise and delicate instrument that is our washing machine.

2) Dryer neither.

3) Folding my clean underwear is cute, in a quirky sort of way.

4) Folding Julie's underwear is cute and endearing, in a "Dude, I never bother to do that" sort of way.

5) Putting my t-shirts at the bottom of the drawer, so they all get rotated, makes me an "oh my god you are such a geek" geek.

Ah, Spring

2010-04-01T13:38:00.000-04:00

When a young dog's thoughts turn to getting pulled through the grass on her back....

Been A Long Year

2010-04-01T12:58:00.000-04:00

It was a year ago yesterday that I proposed to Julie. We knew it was going to be a long engagement, in part because we were both still married to other people at the time. Possibly also because, well, it was only the fifth day that we'd actually been in each other's physical presence. We didn't know how long my divorce would drag out, for absolutely no reason. And we certainly didn't know that we were going to have to deal with cancer. But we both knew it was what we wanted.

As I write this, Julie is driving across Texas, to our home. And when she gets here, she's going to stay. Forever. She is bringing Patrick, her fourteen-year-old son with her, and the last of her stuff that was still in Florida. In eleven days she starts her new job. And we will finally be able to start building our life, together.

Been a long year. So, so glad we went through it together.

A Warcraft Whine

2010-03-12T00:26:00.000-05:00

We are such bloody amateurs.

Kinnavieve, my paladin, has 112 raid boss kills, versus 27 deaths. These were all done with appropriate level gear.

Since my Horde guild started raiding Naxxramas a few weeks ago, we have killed 7 bosses and I have died 17 times. Granted we only have 8 people, but we also have much better gear than what Naxx was designed for.

Gods we suck. Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall.