Magnum

Leaving work one friday at the beginning of November, I was a bit excited and lit 'em up. I thought I was about 10 feet to the right of the giant dip created by a storm drain in the center, but I was right on top of it. Total retardation.

I heard what I can only describe as the sound of a ton of bricks falling out the back end of my car and coasted to a stop. I figured I just hit the dip and the wheels hopped off the ground, and that was it. I looked down and noticed the transmission was in neutral. Ahhh, that explains the coasting. I put it into gear and hear a slow and steady sound of metal grinding.

Freaking out that I tore a damn wheel off or something, I jumped out and checked out the back end of my car. My expert math skills deduced that there were 1+1=2 wheels on the back, so I poked my head under and couldn't see any damage. Of course, it was getting dark and the underside of my car wasn't any brighter.

Where did the gate go?

Nicer interior

Dorky antenna.

The dash was familiar. There's a weird new cruise control stalk.

Crappy radio, but at least an AUX port.

I swallowed my pride, opened my glovebox and got the towing assistance card out. I called up Chrysler and played dumb. They sent out a flatbed truck for my car (it's low enough that towing with a standard rig is guaranteed to destroy the front or rear fascia). Decker's sent a standard truck. Luckily he had dollies with him.

We had some fun getting my car hooked. He'd back the grabber bar up to touch my front wheels aaaaaaand it'd roll back a foot. Yep: no drivetrain means no Park gear. I got in and held the brakes while he hooked up.

He towed my car over to Benson's, which was the closest dodge dealer. A couple of my friends picked me up and we went to dinner to cool off after the incident.

The next morning I called up and the news was that I snapped a half axle like a twig. It'd take about a week to get one from Chrysler. How in the hell can I get a hard drive from singapore in 4 days, but a chunk of metal from detroit takes a week?

I inquire about a loaner since I was sorta boned. Well, the news was, Benson's doesn't do loaners. They do, however, have a deal with Enterprise whereby I can get a rental car (has to be a chrysler product) as close to my car as possible from their on-hand inventory.

I pout a little and ask what they reserved for me, remembering rows of bright gleaming PT Cruisers parked out front every time I drive by.

"Hmm..." he says, "looks like they have a Charger on hand. It's an '08. That gonna work?"

Yeah, I think so.

I went to pick it up. It had about 200 miles on it and smelled like new car. As a rental it was the lowest trim-level and a V6 (don't know if it was the bigger or smaller V6, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and guess bigger). Despite the bottom-of-the-line trim level, the '08s have an upgraded interior and I was jealous. This thing had soft armrests and a few other refinements that my car (top trim level 07) lacked. Aside from that and the strange not-a-key-keyfob it was so similar to my car that often I'd hit the gas expecting it to be there, only to be reminded that it was, indeed, not.

I drove the charger around for about a week. Sadly, I notice dudes checking out the magnum. Chicks check out the charger. C'mon, groceries!

They get the half axle, put it in, and make sure the transmission isn't also hosed. Everything appears good and I pick my car back up. I missed my CDs, but damn the aux jack was handy on the charger.

As I was waiting for the paperwork to finish up I wandered into the sales floor. A manager tracked me down and frantically tried getting me to sign the papers for the repair. I was pretty cautious because I was short on money and I wanted to be sure of exactly how much they were going to charge me for this learning experience.

I checked the papers over and over while he watched. "Just sign on the bottom, sir."

Diagnostic. Parts. Labor.

Total ?

"I can't find on here how much this costs, am I signing for any money?" He gave me the best "What the hell are you smoking?" look I've ever seen.

"No, sir, everything's covered under the warranty."

Magnum

Okay Atheists, now's the time for the big question: Christmas or not?

First, let me dispel one silly notion often propagated during the holiday season. Folks, there is no "War on Christmas". There just isn't. There's no big Atheist conspiracy trying to remove your holiday from you and stamp out the good times like a heathen, hellbound, Scroogy, Adolf Grinchler.

The fact is, Christmas gets bigger and bigger every year. More and more spending is done every season to placate the consumerist fallacy that presents = love. When was the last time you saw thanksgiving decorations? Yeah, exactly.

Christmas ceased being about December 25th and now takes up a good 2/12ths of our calendar, with no signs of abating. Hy Vee started staging their christmas candy and other seasonal items a week or so before Halloween, and I'm sure they're no exception. The silliness grows.

So, what are we, dyed in the black-sheep wool atheists, to do? On the one hand we hate God, Jesus, sunny days, and kittens. On the other hand, our families might be a little upset if we don't participate in their consumer-driven pagan-borrowed not-actually-religious traditions.

The standard atheist screed against Christmas goes as such:

We shouldn't participate in Christmas because it's a Christian holiday. Christians constantly try to force it into the public square by many means. Some of them are innocent enough; wishing everyone "Merry Christmas" regardless of their beliefs. Some are an insidious co-optation of public funds for sectarian purposes; public displays of blatantly Christian nativity scenes. Most are in-between; the over-abundance of Christmas decoration in our neighborhoods, work, and commercial areas. At the very least, Christians beat their religious holiday into everyone at every turn.

So there's plenty to be mad about. So this war on Christmas business? Still, not happening. Arguing that you should tone it the hell down isn't the same as trying to take your holiday away. We just wish you'd simmah dahn nah.

Merry Christmas

With that introduction out of the way, let's get this War on Christmas started in earnest, shall we?

Why do we fault Christians for saying "Merry Christmas"? I don't understand it. It's their holiday, and they have freedom of speech. Why get huffy about it, and why only about Christmas? If a Christian says "God bless you!" when you sneeze, do you get bent out of shape? No? Why not?

Now, suppose a Muslim says "God is great!", do we fault him for not saying "God is great, Jesus is great too, and no god at all is also great!" Obviously we don't fault the religious for expressing an honest thought they have. So why isn't "Merry Christmas" the same?

It sure as hell should be. If a Christian tells me "Merry Christmas" it's because she wants me to have a merry Christmas. Nothing more or less. That's not so bad at all. People can say what they want.

There's something to be said about being exclusionary. "Merry Christmas" excludes non-christians. Well, you might have a point that I can't readily address right now. However, as I was getting at in the previous few paragraphs, people say religious things all the time without us taking them as exclusionary. If "Praise be to Allah!" isn't exclusionary (I don't think it is), then why is "Merry Christmas!"? I don't see it, the mere phrase used as a season's greeting, as exclusionary.

Finally, and I think this might just be an aesthetic thing, I'm offended at these ridiculous multi-phrased "inclusive" cards. I find them more exclusive than anything. When someone sends a card that says "Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, and Happy Solstice!" it doesn't mean that they actually want you to have a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, joyous Kwanzaa, and a happy solstice all at once.

That'd be patently ridiculous! Only if you were a Jewish Christian African (I really have no idea wtf Kwanzaa is) secularist/wiccan would you truly have all those at once. What they really mean is "Merry Christmas! Also, stop whining you fucking whiners!"

Why can't people just have different religions and admit that? Christians want you to have a merry Christmas. Jews want you to have a happy Hanukkah (not really, since it's not a happy holiday, but whatever), and Atheists want you to have a happy Tuesday.

Overt Religiosity Sucks

So here's a bit of the normal argument against public celebration of Christmas:

Christmas is a religious holiday. As such, it shouldn't be propped up by our government. It shouldn't be paid for by non-Christians. And by all means, Christians shouldn't be forcing the rest of us to participate in their sectarian celebration.

Certainly governmental support is right out; public lands, money, or effort (paid for by all and representing all of us) shouldn't be used for religious displays such as nativity scenes. The argument is sometimes extended to things like Christmas Trees. I disagree with that, but I'll explain more about that later. I think since you're reading my weblog we can pretty much agree on that one core point: Public money/land/etc should never go for private religious practice.

But what about stores? What about private people expressing their beliefs? Well, it's not very cool to try to force your beliefs on others, right? Suppose a bunch of Muslims started pushing you around, trying to get you to pray 5 times a day and not eat for a whole month? That'd be ridiculous. Sure, Christmas isn't that bad, but there are still some pretty deep social pressures that you might not experience living within the Christian viewpoint.

When everyone around you is talking about Christmas, and everywhere is decorated for Christmas, it makes anyone who doesn't celebrate that holiday or isn't Christian an outsider. The things a community chooses to do together help define it; Boone has Pufferbilly days, Pella has a tulip festival, Chicago dyes the whole damn river green for St. Patrick's day, etc.

The United States celebrates Christmas. If you're not down with Christmas, get the fuck out!

It's Commercialized Anyhow

Besides, our learned Atheist friends remind us, Christmas isn't really a religious holiday anyhow. So you shouldn't get all worked up celebrating it. It's a pagan ritual to begin with, you shouldn't take my bah-humbuggery as a direct affront to your lord and savior, lord baby lord jesus laying peacefully in the manger, lord, amen.

This is true, for two reasons.

First, Christmas is really an amalgam of pre-Christian rituals and marketing. The tree is from pagan fertility rituals. A common practice for religions trying to gain converts is to take over or coopt the local holidays to make the new religion seem more familiar to the converts. To be fair, this isn't just an "ooooh you sneaky Christians!" thing: Pretty much all religions do it. But anyhow, there's almost no chance that Jesus was born on December 25th. No pregnant woman would be walking around at that time of the year, and likewise no herdsman worth a damn would have animals out to pasture in the winter like that; the story doesn't add up. Still, being infinitely generous, there's a 1/365 chance Jesus was born on Christmas. Wouldn't that suck anyhow? You're going to be crucified in 33 years and every year you get screwed out of gifts. "This frankincense is for your birthday and Christmas!"

Santa Claus is a newly-improved and updated version of Sinterklaas and didn't even wear a red suit until Coca Cola started using him for an advertising campaign. Why red? To match their corporate logo, of course! I'd go on, but you're a big kid and perfectly capable of reading that wikipedia article yourself.

Now, look what Christmas has become (been all along?): It's brazenly used as a general-purpose advertising platform by any retailer with half a brain. They don't even hide the fact; retailers calculate how much they're likely to make in the upcoming holiday season and then plan on that income. They carefully consider advertising campaigns to divorce consumers (that's us...everyone) from their dollars, and Christmas is the lever they use for that. Every possible consumable item from baby clothes on up to Lexuses are touted as the "perfect" christmas gift for your loved one! They can't all be perfect gifts. Well, this one is, but that's about it. From the plain view of what all this means, there's nothing religious in how we (as Americans) celebrate Christmas.

At its very heart and origins (as we now know the ritual) Christmas is a blatant power-grab designed to fool natives into joining Christendom, festooned in great swaths of corporate branding. What room is there for something as humble as the Son of God in all that unabashed cynical manipulation to liberate pagans from their pantheon and consumers from their cash?

So doesn't it make sense to just do away with it?

Wait, back up

No, it doesn't make sense. Let's put it all together.

A. Christmas is a religious holiday and thus shouldn't receive the attention it gets in the public square.

B. Christmas as celebrated today by the vast majority is completely commercial and secular, so Christians shouldn't be personally upset if a few people sit it out.

Can you see the contradiction there?

The argument simply doesn't hold water as a general-purpose indictment of Christmas. I think the second argument can be switched around to be used in favor of public celebration of Christmas; that it's a secular holiday (much the same as Thanksgiving) and thus is a-ok for public celebration.

Just because this line of argumentation doesn't work to bah-humbug Christmas as a whole doesn't mean that everything overzealous Christian merrymakers do is kosher. While I don't have a problem with christmas trees (secular) we still have the problem of them trying to shoe-horn nativity scenes into public lands (sectarian). That's still bad. Officially recognizing christmas as a holiday? That's fine, but couching it in religious language isn't cool.

Just because the event itself is secular (the purchase and exchange of gifts near a pine tree) doesn't mean that everything you do during that event is secular. It's obviously possible to inject sectarian nonsense into any secular activity; witness any kid praying before a math test in public school. So long as we take a reasonable and pragmatic approach to it, I see no problem with the public celebration of Christmas. Not just "Happy Holidays", but honest-to-whatever Christmas.

So instead of fretting over what you, a fine updating Atheist brimming with moral character, should do, rather, enjoy the fruits of the season. If you really want to celebrate Christmas go right ahead. If you'd rather not, then that's fine too. After all, that's what we're really after, right? The freedom to do and believe what we want?

And this atheist wants the freedom to get a fat bag of loot on the morning of the 25th.

Topics

While searching for an unrelated file, I found a conversation I had with a friend. Here's a snippet:

Start of buffer: Sat Dec 29 2001
keith:  you know what I'd like?
friend:  what?
keith:  1 fucking date
friend:  I WANT A DATE TOO
keith:  i'd like a girl to go to the movies and sit next to me, 
or go to dinner and eat with me, and then i'd take her home, and that'd be fine.
friend:  yes, no kissing or anything.. just a damn date
friend:  haven't had one in too long
keith:  i want someone who will watch a damn movie or eat with me
keith:  that's all
keith:  anything else would be bonus

I exchanged a few emails with an interesting girl on okcupid. It seems she's gotten bored and moved on. I didn't think it'd go anywhere, really, but at least having that stimulation was fun.

My roommate and I put up more plastic sheeting to try to insulate our house more. I also filled in the mailslot with expanding foam insulation and we attached a regular mailbox to the outside of our house.

Women

A couple days ago I went to walmart and bought insulation for our windows and foam tape for our doors to cut our bills down. My roommate and I installed 2 doors-worth and he did a couple of windows. We're slowly going to get the rest of the windows done. I'm going to go buy some foam sealant and I'm just going to seal the drafty front door closed.

Somehow Amica's tie-out got broken, so I went out around midnight yesterday to buy a replacement. I bought a trolley thing but it won't reach to the weird little playhouse thing behind, so I had to go back and buy more wire and I got the whole thing installed today. I rock.

I finally found the 09 Camaro concept bumblebee transformer I've been looking for. In fact, I found two. This was at the afore-mentioned walmart trip.

I didn't notice there's so many pictures of me on facebook. I'm very very fat. I pretty much don't like anything about how I look at all.

The landlord still hasn't salted our walkways or driveway. The faucet in the basement still drips. If they don't soon, I'm going to buy a bag of ice melt and deduct the cost from our next month's rent. It took 3 tries to get my car into the driveway today. I got stuck on the last try and my roommate had to help me rock it out. Lame? Lame.

A girl on OkCupid has actually been replying to my messages. Yeah, I don't understand either. Let's see how this goes, I suppose. It'd be nice, at least, to have someone who will go see movies with me. Is that too forward?

There's about half a dozen movies out now or soon that I want to go see. I've stopped asking.

My family's oldest dog, Tasha, is going to die soon. She has inoperable tumors on her ear and in her lungs. She's not in pain and still moving about. She can't really see anymore. I hope she makes it through christmas. She's gotta be at least 16 years old now. Such a good dog. Why does she have to die?

There is nothing out there making sure things are fair. In fact, far from it. Never forget that. Do it yourself.

On my way back from the store today I almost got into a car accident. I was travelling south on Stange, on a big hill, and it's very slippery and slushy. A guy in a burgundy pontiac 6000 pulled out in front of me, from my left, turning south, crossing all 4 lanes of traffic. I had to swerve into the center lane to miss him. He was on his cell phone. It was a razr. He had a blue coat on. Yes, I was close enough to see all this, in the dark.

My cold is essentially over.

My car needs to be washed very badly.

I'm sick of one-sided friendships.

I can't ever remember a time I've felt at home in regards to dating. Sure, there's been a few moments of peace and tranquility, but that's never been an overarching theme.

Looking back, in each case where I've felt something strong for someone, it's felt like a heist. Careful planning, the exertion of will, trying to make sure everything went as I hoped. In the few cases where I actually got what I wanted from whom I wanted it from, I felt like a thief. This was someone else's happiness. I was just stealing it. Or that I was cutting in line. Sorta like a burglar. Always looking over my shoulder, fearing for the moment I'd hear the jingle of keys in the front door lock, the homeowner entering and stomping the snow off his boots, and innocently turning the lights on, catching me in the act.

I drove around a bit today, to organize my thoughts. And I came to this realization; that I do this. That settled, should it be so? I hope not. And if this really just is how things are, then please lie to me and say it's not. I don't want this anymore, and if that's all there is, I'd find it unacceptable. It doesn't feel like I deserve a happy relationship. Or, at the very least, that I'm not in the class of people who 'get to' have them.

A friend of mine is pretty sad right now because she isn't anybody's Number One. I can understand that. As an analog, it really feels like I'm not even anybody's option. Nowhere on the list. It feels like I have to claw and fight my way up; either everyone gets a head start or I get held back. Love is a shipwreck, there weren't enough life boats, and I'm in the water freezing.

So what, now? Well, I don't really know of any sort of plan I can take away from this. However, I have a hunch. I'm not sure if it even follows logically, but in my gut I think I'm right:

I'll know I've found someone worthy of my attention when it doesn't feel that way. When it's just there, and there's no scheming, no panicked worrying that it'll all crash down. Then I'll know I can be happy. And then the roaring static I feel in the back of my mind will finally die out.

My sister is in the hospital.

Sunday I got a call around 2pm. I was still in bed. It's my sister. She's sobbing uncontrollably. She's going to the hospital. I don't really get the whole story. Something about a CT scan and a blood clot in her lung.

I got to Des Moines around 3pm. I don't know Mercy very well so I park near where I've parked before. Eventually I make it to the ER. My sister is in Room 1. Mom and Paul are there; I told jess I'd call them so she could get to the hospital faster.

My sister has had pneumonia the past few days. She gets pneumonia and bronchitis all the time. And she has asthma. Her left side hurt, but it was a different hurt than the standard coughing ache she was used to. She went in to the Mercy Clinic on Saturday night to tell them about it. They took a CT Scan and said it was okay, and that her pain was normal muscular/skeletal pain associated with coughing.

The next morning another doctor looked at the CT Scan and they immediately called her to come back into the Emergency Room.

This brings us up to yesterday.

When I arrived she was sitting on a hospital bed covered in one of those shitty hospital gowns. It was mostly just her, my parents, and myself in the ER, with an absentminded nurse coming in occasionally. She had to be reminded 4 times to bring her some pain medication for the pain in her side.

Several doctors came in one by one to give her an exam. She doesn't have any of the normal things associated with blood clots. Normally they're from smokers or from people with leg trauma. Her legs are fine and she doesn't smoke. It could be that their assessment of the CT scan was wrong and that she was fine. She was still in pain and very worried.

My parents left after an hour or so I think. Jose came back into the room. There's only supposed to be 2 visitors in the ER, and we had three anyhow. They wheeled my sister out for some more scans and tests. They had us leave so they could catheterize her. Still nobody knew how the blood clot got in her lungs or what was going to happen.

Dr. Korte, our childhood physician cum Hospital Bigwig even came in to see her to make sure things were okay and to take a look. It was very comforting to see him there. Best case scenario: The diagnosis was a mistake and they'd let her go home on Monday, the next day. Worst case: They'd keep her for a week, put her on blood thinners for 6 months, and hope the body digests the blood clot (and any others that might be hiding). They still didn't know how it got there or anything.

Eventually I had to go.

Monday came and went. They did another scan of her legs. Still nothing there. She could not go home. She was feeling a little better and at least less stressed out. She is on 100% bed-rest.

Tuesday came. They scanned her lungs again. When the results came back, if they were negative, she'd get to go home. They weren't. There was a blood clot there, but now it was gone. They could tell that it had probably dissolved on its own, but it had indeed been there. So that's pretty shitty. They still don't know where it came from. They are keeping her for 3-4 more days of 100% bed-rest and she would have to do the full 6 months of blood thinners.

She started crying to me on the phone. I tried to comfort her. She really is in the best place now, so they can catch anything that happens. Sure it's not great news, but it's not as bad as it could be. I couldn't really tell her I've been crying about it too. Her friend Kathy left a portable DVD player there for her, but she doesn't really have any movies she wants to see with her. I'm going to go visit her tomorrow after work. I'm bringing a few DVDs with me. I hope she likes at least some of them.

I hadn't been in a great mood anyhow. This just made me dwell on my sister's situation, and on my own mortality. I feel pretty shitty that this makes me think about myself some, but it does. I worry about a lot of things. I want my sister to have a long and happy life. As I want for myself. It makes me worry about my plans and what I want out of life. Mostly it just makes me sad. Very sad. I just want everyone to be okay. I want my sister to be okay.

I didn't even realize it's been this many days. They just run together. I can't really think about anything else. It's all just a spiral. It's times like this where my loneliness is all the more sharp.

This isn't very good, guys. Not very good at all.

Update

November 14, 2007 So I went to visit her again today, Wednesday. I got off work at 5, picked the dog up, dropped her off at mom's in des moines, and hung out with Jess until about 10ish. We talked about weight loss, getting out of the hospital, and watched a movie. She's in good spirits. They let her get out of bed now to use the rest room and sit in a chair.

A friend had brought a portable DVD player for her, so I picked out a bunch of movies I thought she might like and let her borrow them. The flowers I sent look pretty I suppose. I didn't know exactly what they'd send; I used Mercy's giftshop and they didn't really have details. My mom sent flowers, my sister's friend, and my dad too.

For the past few days they've been telling her she's going to get out in 4 days. So the chances of her getting out before the weekend's over is pretty slim. So far she's been in the hospital since last Sunday.

After an episode where I lost my goddamned car (Mercy has two parking ramps, apparently!) and felt like a total idiot, I made it home. Now that I'm finally home, sitting and relaxing, I feel...crappy. Why must everything be about me? What an asshole.

Update 2

November 18, 2007 She got out today! Woohoo! Her levels of whatever they were tracking weren't as high as they wanted, but they decided she could go home anyhow. She's still got horribly bruised spots from the injections she was getting and will have to be on blood thinners for the next 6 months, but otherwise she's so happy to be out. I took her and her husband out to El Rodeo for dinner, and then we went to pick her prescriptions up. I'm so happy to have her out of there.

1. Flash Phone
2. Align screen, set time.
3. Allow Sprint customizations to run.
4. Insert memory card.
5. Install Total Commander to memcard
6. Copy pim.vol back to main memory.
7. Soft Reset.
8. verify PIM data in calendar and contacts
9. change windows theme from annoying yellow back to bluegreen.
10. install devicelock to main mem
11. in settings -> device lock -> lock on wake
12. install fp7 (flash player) to memcard
13. install google maps
14. install HTC home plug
15. install oggsync to memcard
16. install ppcgeeks MMS to memcard
17. allow device to restart
18. install PHM regedit to memcard
19. install SiriusCE to memcard
20. install tcpmp to memcard
21. copy fonts to windows/fonts
22. copy rings to windows/rings
23. copy start menu items
24. copy windows/ to windows/
25. launch regedit
26. import slidesound.reg
27. in settings/buttons, change email button to Left Softkey
28. in settings/buttons, disable keyboard backlight sensor
29. in settings/input, unselect "add a space after word"
30. in settings/menus, remove everything, activate calculator, device lock, google maps, running programs, shopping list
31. in settings/owner information, type my name
32. in settings/phone, choose oldPhone ringer
33. in settings/sounds and notifications, new email->vibrate, new txt->fanfare-short+vibrate, voicemail->donttazeme
34. in settings/today, remove everything, activate htc home, device lock, calendar, tasks
35. in settings/screen, enable cleartype and bump font size up a notch.
36. in connections/beam, uncheck.
37. open pictures & video, find optimus, make him the today background with 0% transparency
38. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shell\ShowTitleBarClock = 0
39. add stuff to HTC Home's launcher
40. Set up email accounts.

Phone

Haven't felt like updating lately. I do have a list of shit to finish up writing about my sister's wedding, so don't worry. I'll get to it all.

Girl I've got a major thing for is in town this weekend. That's pretty cool, huh? Well no, not really. Okay so, see, I'm awful at picking women. I really like her. She doesn't like me as anything other than someone to chat online with when she's bored at work. She's got a boyfriend she kinda sorta loves, but he moved out to California without her. The idea was that eventually she'd move out there too. She's been considering breaking up with him because she doesn't really want to move out there, and she's been looking for a local guy because she's pretty lonely anyhow.

Could I be that guy? Honestly? No. Not really. The shitty thing is that I'm perfectly capable of knowing this fact and also knowing that it doesn't really matter to me. I'm not really local anyhow. I'm closer than california, at least. But there's a lot better guys (in just about every way) even closer anyhow. That's fine. I wasn't an option. I wish, though. It'd be nice. I think we could get along.

Soooo anyhow. She's in town. We were supposed to hang out. At least get a beer or something, and then on sunday both go to a local car detailing event.

But her current/former/quasi-/yes-really boyfriend flew into her local airport instead of DSM. And she has to drive him to iowa, and cart him around for all the things he wants to do. So she's a glorified taxicab for the weekend. I mean, this guy is ostensibly her boyfriend so naturally she's going to gravitate towards hanging out with him. I can understand that.

But then to make plans to hang out with me, and at the same time talk to me about how inconsiderate he's being about the driving him around thing? Well, I dunno. It's a shitty situation all around.

I don't like this guy. He doesn't give her the respect she deserves. She certainly deserves better.

Amica's birthday was the 17th. She's 3. Since I got her, I haven't had any relationship, significant or otherwise. She's 3. Folks, it hasn't been about sex for about 2 1/2 years. I'd like a nice date every now and then, that's all. Just enough to keep me going. Just enough to get by.

Women

Why do you ask me for dating advice?
I'm not very good at it.
I last had a date a year ago.
Why would my advice be any good?
I suck at dating.
At any rate, I'm averaging approximately 1 pity date per year (on my birthday) with no sex.
How in the hell am I supposed to manage my own love life along with those of every girl I know?
I wish I knew. I wish I had some bomb-ass great advice that would get us all laid with whoever we want.
I'd tell you, then write it in a book.
Then i'd be rich.
Women

I started tracking my weight again last September, mentioned here. In one year, I have lost 26 pounds.

Weight Loss, September 06 - September 07

If you're curious, the blue line represents my weight, taken daily. If I miss a day, the program I wrote to make these graphs fills in the intervening days for me by averaging them out. Those are the occasional green lines you see. The red line represents a running weighted average weight. The basic idea behind that is that it smooths out the rough ups and downs while giving more weight to the most recent measurements. If you ask me how much I weigh, I'll tell you the number according to the red line. Make sense? The black line is a simple linear regression over the time frame, it's what's used to calculate the calorie/day and lbs/week measurements.

I have again stabilized. That's not a ball-bustingly horrible thing; it's happened before and I've gotten through it before. I just need to do it once again.

I will be attractive some day.

Weight

I went for a walk to clear my mind. It worked too well. I didn't really think about anything at all while I was out there, so my problems were waiting for me when I got home an hour later.

Had a big stupid fight with a few hundred miles away girl. It really felt like she was pushing my buttons. Through the entire thing I just felt so helpless. It felt like she was pushing my buttons and that's what made me so angry. Not what she was saying, but the fact that it felt like she was trying to anger me. I wanted nothing more than to not be arguing, but there I went. I felt so bad about it. It's been a long time since I've really gotten angry about something so inconsequential. it's been a long time since I've gotten angry at anyone worth feeling bad about. This whole thing is so frustrating. So very frustrating. I just want everything to work out as best it can. I feel so bad for making her unhappy.

On a lark I asked one of the girls I met at my sister's wedding out for a dinner thing this week, no big deal. Apparently she's too busy. That's cool. It wasn't a big deal. At least I didn't get the pocket veto.

Oh, and few hundred miles away girl told me something very unsettling while I was at work earlier today. So much so, in fact, that I must mentally run away from the topic without looking back on pain of my mind being turned into a pillar of salt. Salt flavored like every single negative emotion I can experience. My mind fills with a red static. I want to hurt things. It's all in there, all at once. And salt.

Women

This is Part Two in a Four Part series about my sister's wedding. There's just way too much for one post. Part One

Another quick wedding-related note. Two, in fact.

I went back down to Des Moines Friday night in a hurry because I got word that my grandma was in the hospital with chest pain. She's doing fine now and back home. Anyhow, there was a wedding on Saturday of an acquaintance of mine. A friend, Jen, wanted me to go with her since her boyfriend backed out, so I went. Why? I love weddings. Shut the fuck up. I'll kick your ass if you tell anyone. The wedding was nice, and I went back to Ames that night so I could relax for the rest of the weekend.

In more-important news, Iowa (briefly) legalized gay marriage. And a couple guys I (sorta) know managed to get married. No shit? Yeah, really. You may have seen pictures of them on CNN or whatever. Here's the Youtube Video. Congrats to them and good luck.

Shopping

So after I rolled out of bed and took a cursory shower, I emerged from the faraway land of upstairs.

Mom had prepared a list of everything I needed to buy, painstakingly inscribed on a small notepad. Hey, did I mention she was drunk when we wrote this list out? After rewriting it to make a little more sense and making sure I understood everything, I opened the gate and drove my big fancy automobile out into the world.

If memory serves, I went to Dahl's (which is like Hy Vee or any other chain-type grocery store). Did you know the french word for market is 'marche? Guess what the french word for supermarket is? Okay here you go: supermarche. Hope that tidbit gets you laid; hasn't helped me any. The highlight of the Dahl's trip was buying a case of cheap sparkling wine. I have my very own bottle I'm saving up for a trashy occasion.

I also visited Sam's Club and then Wal-Mart later with my sister. Sam's club didn't have the cheap sparkling wine, so I guess I've caught myself in a logical trap. Maybe I went to Dahl's twice? Someone get timecop on this one. I bought a big friggin jar of pickles. This much I know is true.

My sister needed a new speaker setup for her computer since she wanted to use it to play music for the wedding and reception. I helped her pick one out. We got the cheap one, since they all suck.

Cooking

Going from my mom's cooking out into the real world, I've noticed two main facts:

• My mom cooks better than everyone else's mom, and everyone else agrees.
• Her dishes are given names of other totally unrelated dishes.

The first point is self-explanatory, I think. If you disagree, it's simply because you haven't sampled her cooking. Are you busy this Thanksgiving? As for the second, let me give you a few examples: Goulash, sopapillas, mostaccoli. They have almost nothing to do with the dishes you're thinking of. Interesting, huh?

I made the mostaccoli salad, baked beans, loosemeat for sandwiches, tomato salad, and probably some other stuff I forgot. Oh, and some shrimp dip. And some other meaty dip stuff. It was a big dippy, fatty, caloric blur.

Saturday

My mom has this thing where she rents 5-10 DVDs at once. She just picks them out by their cover art, I think. She brings home the weirdest shit. Friday night I recall trying to watch the Number 23. Let me spare you this shitty movie: The number 23 didn't do it. It was really 27. Where did the Eternal Sunshine performance go?

Oh, Saturday. I tried watching "Are We Done Yet", which she inexplicably rented. Oh, mom.

The sun set, and the sun rose, and it was the day.

Shopping Again

My job for saturday primarily consisted of getting the final few things we'd forgotten. Also, a keg of beer.

I lobbied for a full 1/2bbl keg, but we got a pony keg instead. Turns out it was the exact right size. Oh, that's in part 4. My car has a movable cargo thingie in the back (go look at the pics, I'm sure there's a dozen of the cargo area). It's pretty good for keg-related hauling.

Cooking Again

Cooking was limited. We broke out the heavy machinery for slicing the tomatoes and onions. Mom has an old spinny slicer. Sorta like a professional meat slicer, except made out of plastic, with a dulled blade, and about 400 times more dangerous. It sliced the onions just fine. It sliced the tomatoes just fine. It sliced my fingers down to the second knuckle just fine. Not really. This thing could be used for pickle slicing.

Just don't stick your dick in the pickle slicer. Speaking of putting your dick in the pickle slicer, Blaine did that. Her name's Cecilia. Since he couldn't come to the ceremony I took her. Some McHoes are hot. More on that in Part 3.

Gazebo Hoooo

Okay, so gazebo in the middle of a park. There's no seating there, so we have a bunch of folding chairs. They wanted me to bring 5 over, since I could fit 5 in there, right? Whatever, I threw all 20 in the back and headed over to set things up.

What else is there to set up? Well, music. At weddings there are certain pieces of music that are expected to be played. I copied the requisite songs to my laptop and my mp3 player so we'd have a backup.

Music. Gazebo. Speakers. We bought speakers. Come on guys, what are we missing? What didn't we think of. Electricity. Damn straight. You need to plug that shit in, mang. Guess who thought of it and assigned tasks? Okay so I unpacked the little speaker things and hooked the mp3 player up and made sure they brought the power inverter (hooked up to a nearby minivan, obv) and bigass extension cord.

Since my car has the cleanest interior (by a margin of a zillion to one) of anyone my sister knows, it got coopted into transporting my sister, the maid of honor, and the flower girls (MoH's kids) to the ceremony.

Everything's fine, and we're ahead of schedule. I've got to kill about 10 minutes, then go get them.

Go!

My phone rings. It's Kristina (Maid of Honor). Jose's car broke down on the way to the Gazebo. We need to go pick him up before the police show up.

See, when you're an illegal immigrant, a lot of public services are cut off from you. For example, if your car is stalled out somewhere, you don't want to get the cops involved. For another quick example, if you're in a traffic accident, you definitely don't want to be there when the cops show up. Luckily his car was just broken down. It's not like he got rear-ended or anything.

My phone rang again.

Jessica's Wedding

My knees ache, a constant reminder of my largest flaw. Not my most major flaw, but my largest. I can't really blame her for not wanting me in return; she's got so much more to choose from. It's just so frustrating to talk to her every day, my feelings growing stronger, knowing that, even as I haven't felt this way for someone in a long time, my feelings will, by necessity, never be returned in kind. I get jealous that she's visiting her boyfriend, but not as jealous as I am when she talks about her new friend. Jack or Jake or something like that. She constantly talks about him, now. I'm certain that when she does eventually break up with her absentee boyfriend, this will be the new guy. And I'll be expected to stand here and watch the whole thing. And why shouldn't I? He's everything I'm not.

Late edit due to questions: This entry is not about super-maybe girl. This is about few hundred miles girl.

Women

This is Part One in a Four Part series about my sister's wedding. There's just way too much for one post.

Just a quick foreword about the party I hosted this recent Friday: It didn't go well. Less than 10 people showed up, but at least we did have fun. In retrospect, it was a bad weekend to try to host a party. I just don't have quite the fantastic drawing power of my youth.

Super Maybe girl stayed overnight twice; Friday and Saturday. No, that's not really a good thing. I wouldn't really mind her monopolizing my weekend if there was even an inkling that things were going to go anywhere with her. About all I got out of the deal was a sore neck because one of my pillows was parked on the couch downstairs.

anticipation / what i thought would go down

For the bulk of my summer the specter of my sister's impending wedding hanging over my head like a mixed metaphor. They announced it rather recently, as far as preparations go, leaving little time to work things out. Also, she couldn't afford jack squat.

Our conversations about the wedding tended to sound very similar as time went by. She was in a time crunch, because she didn't give herself enough time to prepare. She had to make a lot of concessions to get things planned in time. They rented a gazebo in Union Park. She had a big problem finding someone to officiate the ceremony, but got one at the last minute.

A lot of our conversations as time went on were of the form:

Jessica: Oh my god I need to reserve/buy/pay for <something> for the wedding but I can't afford it! Keith: Sounds like you can't afford to get married.

I sorta hoped in the back of my mind that she'd wise up and postpone or cancel the wedding. She didn't.

Side Story

Side story: I remember one day when I was a kid with a paper route one of my bundles of Sunday comics (the sunday papers came in 3 chunks and the paperboys had to assemble them) got soaked in the rain. My parents were ecstatic because that weekend there was a kickass coupon for cigarettes (the Comics section has all the ads in it). So they dried the ruined papers off and had 30 copies of that coupon.

News from Headquarters

So time just hummed along with little to no update as far as when things would happen for the wedding, and what I'd have to do. Jessica dragged her feet enough on sending out the invitations that they arrived rather late, and a lot of people she wanted to be there simply couldn't change their plans in time. Personally, I didn't receive my invitation until the day of the wedding, so I didn't know when it was or where it was. Since I was the bride's brother everyone would ask me where and when the wedding was. Except I didn't know. Embarrassing? Yes.

Since I was on deck for giving the bride away, I called early in the week to see where I needed to go to get a tux and when/if we were doing a rehearsal dinner or how that was going to work out. Also to find out when the thing was. Well, they weren't doing tuxedos for the wedding. That's a shame, because I look like a P I M P in a tuxedo. I can't lie. Also, I wouldn't be giving her away since we'd patched things up with Dad; he'd be doing it. No problem for me.

Then word came down from H.Q. (Mom) that I was expected to come home early on Friday to help get things ready. As this was news to me, I had to practically beg my boss for the day off. He capitulated and it was all set up. My vacation time decimated from the 3 days I took off to move at the beginning of the month, the day off for the fair, and now the finaly day I'd accrued for wedding preparations, I decided to grin and bear it. Who am I to bitch? It's not my wedding.

friday morning wake up

I made it down Thursday night, rather late. I think the holdup was finishing up my laundry; I needed to wash and iron my nicest shirt. I stayed up talking to my mom really late. I like those conversations we have. We just talk about anything, you know? It's just fine. So the plan was to wake up early on Friday and get to work. Mom had been making a big list of stuff for me to go out and buy so she could stay at home cooking. After I bought all the stuff, I'd come home to help cook.

So I rolled out of bed around 2:30pm.

Jessica's Wedding

(slightly updated August 15th)

I'm pretty moved in. There's room in the garage for the car, All my stuff that's going inside is inside, the living room is livable, the kitchen is cook-in-able, and the bedroom is bedroomable. There are still quite a few boxes to go through, however.

Back Thing

So I had a boil on my back. It's gone now. A boil is like a super zit. It was about an inch deep. I took some pictures of the stitches on my back, but have no idea where they went.

I plan on telling chicks the scar came from a knife fight in a tijuana brothel. So please don't tell anyone elsewise.

Lapdance Died

Lapdance, my trusty IBM Thinkpad X20 (Pentium 3/600mhz, 320MB ram, ultraportable), is dead. The hard drive in it finally gave up the ghost. Sure, I could get another hard drive for it, but there's plenty of other stuff wrong. Namely, the screen is way messed up (several lines through it and extensive damage to the polarizer) and the battery is dead. I don't think I'll bother fixing it. Okay, maybe I will. It depends on how expensive a new screen is. Okay, I will fix it. You convinced me.

Went to the Fair

Today I went to the fair! It was pretty fun. I took the day off from work and went down to des moines last night to stay at Blaine's. We played some WOW together, hung out for a while. Today we dropped his kid off at her grandmom's, got my car, and went to the fair. I didn't get sunburned! I wore my Captain Morgan hat I got in minnesota. I think I look ridiculous in a hat, but it kept the sun at bay a little.

Me, Blaine, and his wife went to the fair together. Despite some knee and ankle problems, I had a lot of fun. We went through most of the buildings and looked at the stuff. I really like the dollhouses, photos, and tractors. The spa sales varied industries building was a necessary evil; you have to visit. They had a Creation exhibit from some Baptist church. I looked at the ridiculous ark model they had. This one didn't even have any dinosaurs! One of the booth workers what I thought, so I matter of factly told him it's all full of crap. He was heartbroken. We left the exhibit.

Okay, so food!

From memory, I had a funnel cake with strawberries (and cream, sir? What the hell, why not?), a pop, a strawberry smoothie, a nitro-sized cup of vanilla blue sky creamery ice cream (sold at a booth under the grandstand, GO GET SOME!) that I didn't finish, a bottle of water, a cup of blue moon beer, a cheesesteak and some sweet potato fries from the Depot, and another cup of blue moon. It was the first time I'd drank at the fair, actually.

I want to go back just to eat the rest of the stuff. Hopefully this sunday.

Girls

Been having some girl problems lately. Dames is nothing but trouble.

So first off, big troubles. It's not often I feel a big connection with someone. The last time I felt this way was a few years ago. It didn't work out so well either. This one won't. I've told her what's up, and she's still talking to me, so that's cool. I don't want to lose her as a friend. However, she lives a few hundred miles away, has a boyfriend that she's really in to, and is planning on moving even further away to be with him. And let's not kid ourselves here. If she were single, I wouldn't even be near the top of the list. She's just way too nice to say so. I have to move on. It's just not going to happen. Ever. Do you hear me? They say never say never. Well, I'm saying never right now. Never. You can't always get what you want. Well, maybe you can. I sure as hell can't.

So then there's this other girl. The Super Maybe girl. Why Super Maybe? Well, some times it feels like she likes me as more than a friend, and some times not. And on the same token, some times I feel like I should pursue her company, and some times I don't think so. Maybe on both ends, I think. Plus, she broke one of my policies already. However, I think she maybe is worth a shot, so I'm willing to overlook it. She seems like more than a handfull, though. I really don't know what to think of her. Maybe she doesn't even like me at all, and it's all my imagination?

I talk to a cool woman in Des Moines. We met a few times a long time ago, when I worked at McD's. She's all grown up and has some kids, but she found me on myspace and we chat occasionally every now and then. Lately we've been talking a lot. She's really fun to talk to, and even lets me flirt with her some times too. It's good for the ego. And I've got a giant glass ego with a hair trigger. Anyhow, she's really cool. I talk to her about these other women, and she's supportive. Cool. She reads bbp.com too. So, Hi!

Dish Drawer

So I'm watching a commercial on Food Network. A guy is sitting on his couch, lazily staring into the kitchen. His (presumably) wife is bent over, unloading the dishwasher and placing the dishes in a drawer a couple feet away. So she picks up a dish, he says "dish". She puts it in the drawer, he says "drawer". This happens over and over again, and the camera never waivers from her SWEET ASS. So he's just sitting there, watching her ass as she puts the dishes away.

So a few things go through my mind. So far, I have no idea what this commercial is for. I'll spill the beans: It's a company called Fisher & Paykel, and they make a product called the "Dish Drawer". It's a low-profile dishwasher apparatus that blends into your kitchen decor, and allows you to be a lazy fuck and just store the dishes in the dishwasher. BRILLIANT!

But as I'm watching it...

Who in the hell puts their dishes in a drawer? Every one I've ever eaten with stores their dishes in cupboards. So I'm thinking, this guy, on the couch, decided to put the dishes in a drawer way down low so he can stare at her ass all day. I was expecting a sly smile, a fist pump, or even a self high-five, followed by the Budweiser logo, of course. Until the reveal at the very end, I swore it was a beer commercial.

It's a pretty funny commercial, sorry for spoiling it for you. I couldn't find a copy of the commercial online. If you find one, let me know so we can add it here.

Women | Computer | Fair

I'm in the process of moving right now, so I'm sorry I haven't been online lately. My lease expired on July 31, 12:00pm. I've moved into a nicer house with more room and a garage. I'm still living with Tas, and a new roommate I met via Strangetalk.

Since we would have had to do the standard "homeless for a day" waltz, I conned the new landlord to give me the existing tenant's contact information. I called them up and asked if they'd let us store stuff in their garge. Being agreeable fellows, they well, uh, agreed.

So Starting last Friday (July 27th), I started moving stuff into the new place's garage. A lot of my crap was still packed from the last time, since I knew I wouldn't be staying more than a year. That made packing somewhat easy. I have a lot of books, CDs, DVDs, and Transformers. Those all got boxed up and sent over.

I figured out that i can totally remove the bench from the back seat of my Magnum, allowing the rear seats to fold totally flat (even more than flat, actually). That's good because the brakes on my Taurus are out, so I couldn't use it as a moving vehicle. With the magnum packed full of stuff (pics later), I'm pretty sure I had the fastest moving van in Ames over the weekend.

To be honest, the days just sorta blended together. I don't remember when things got done except in a sort of vague relationship to other things which happened. Matt (3rd roommate) showed up with a minivan sans seats to move some big stuff, so our couches, TV stands, bookshelves, weight bench, etc. went over with a minimum of fuss. I basically continued the pattern of filling the magnum up to the roofline, stacking it in the new garage, and repeating, until the stuff was all out.

I busted ass to clean the kitchen, including a horrible looking stove and the inside of the fridge. I cleaned the bathroom too (except the toilet, Tas did that). I also put Tas in charge of mopping because I was still taking communal crap over to the new place. We got the place cleaned up literally moments before the girl from Martin Property Management showed up to do our check-out.

I had 4 styrofoam coolers in the back of my car with our freezer and fridge stuff in there. The fridge stuff packed in ice, the freezer packed in dry ice. That worked out well. I had a few odds and ends and my 2-wheeled dolly in there too. Since the rear seat of my car was stacked somewhere in the midst of the garage, I couldn't fold the seats up and strap Amica in. So for the first (and hopefully last time ever) she got to ride shotgun. Now that I was officially homeless, I did what all homeless people do. I drove to the big city to seek my fortune.

Des Moines, city of my birth, land of my forefathers, and location of the most comfortable couch to sleep on, ever: Mom's. After chatting with her for an hour or so, I passed out on the couch. In my hazy recollection I seem to dredge up two or three phone calls of friends wanting lunch or other various hangings-out, all in vain. I Finally awoke to Hanna's call, asking me to eat with her and Ericha (I think that's how she spells it. It's a shame her mother sucked at spelling). So I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and drove back up to Ames. I decided to break into my new house (or just sleep in a recliner on the front porch) after dinner. I also decided to leave Amica at home with my parents so she wouldn't be under foot while moving.

A sidenote: A funny thing happened on the way to Ames. I nearly died.

After getting in the car I was futzing with my cell phone to get it charging, get my sunglasses out, and prepare for the drive to ames. I noticed a tighness in my chest and I started panting; as though I had just got done participating in those fat-kid-torture sessions otherwise known as the Presidential Fitness Challenge from elementary school.

Hey kids, guess what dry ice is? It's carbon dioxide! Eight hours of sitting in a sealed car in the hot sun ensured that my car was chock full of this life-stealing devil gas.

I opened my door and practically fell out, gasping for air. I rolled all the windows down and waited there, carefully doing my best not to die. It seems to have worked, so I started driving.

After dinner I was party to the easiest B&E I've ever seen. Noticing our pile of furniture stashed in the back yard (yes, we filled the whole 2-car garage), the landlord left the rear door unlocked so that we might move furniture in. So we did. Matt showed up and we moved my bed in so I could sleep, then I started moving the food products inside. So now I had severely improved my predicament: Rather than being homeless, I was a squatter!

The next morning I went to the new landlord's office to pay the rent and make our residency official. By the way, all of the hot chicks have returned to Ames. Thank you, hot chicks!

We spent the better part of tuesday and wednesday moving crap inside. I'd say we're about 80% into the house. I have no internet access, but can sometimes get a weak wifi signal from the neighbors, so I might be online (off and on).

My bed won't fit around the corner and up the stairs into my upstairs bedroom. Also one of my bookshelves is about a quarter inch too tall to stand up under the 6ish-foot ceilings upstairs. I need to sand a little off of it to make it fit. I plan on replacing my current queen-sized bed with a king-sized bed since everyone tells me king beds come with 2 little box springs which might fit easily up the stairs. Mattresses bend enough to make it around the corner, I'm sure.

Moving Tasks

1. Move out
2. Clean
3. Move everything into new garage
4. Move everything into new house
5. Assemble network
6. Assemble living room A/V stuff
7. Wash car
8. sand bottom of bookshelf so it can stand up
9. unpack books,etc. in bedroom
10. get a king sized box spring (maybe mattress too if not expensive) to fit up the stairs

So there you go.

General Nerdonics

Over this past week, I:

• Resubscribed to WOW and reinstalled it.
• Bought several Magic cards.
• Bought a new pocketpc phone.

You know what? I don't really mind that I'll never see a naked woman ever again. Being a nerd is in my blood. I can't get rid of it.

So my friends Blaine and Matt still play WOW, and they've been wanting me to get back in for a while. I finally caved. I got WOW reinstalled (took a good goddamned long time), but found out that my mods are all out of date and/or malfunctioning. I'll have to go get updates and get my UI put back how I like it.

I put my mono-brown 5-color deck back together. I think I'm going to take it back to it's more combo-ey roots and take out the little Myr dudes and put the big crazy game-breaking ridiculous chunks of shiney back in.

Also I found out in recent sets they released something on the order of 40ish new sliver creatures. It's going to take a while getting a full playset of those in foil.

Sprint Mogul aka PPC 6800 aka HTC Titan

I went and got a PPC-6800, newly renamed by Sprint as the Mogul. That name is pretty tragic, even though I'm carrying around the phone Sprint thinks is for CEOs and stuff. Since it's brand new no store has them in stock yet, so I had to call around and ask if stores had them or if they could order them. Nobody understands when you ask for a "Sprint Mogul" over the phone, because they hear "Sprint Mobile", so then I have to go through some verbal gymnastics to convince the person on the other end of the line that there is a new Sprint pocketpc phone which is the successor to the PPC-6700 (coincidentally my previous phone), called the Mogul. HTC, the phone's maker, calls it the Titan. I like that name much better. TITAN!

This phone is basically a little better than my old phone in every way. Better OS, more memory, better feeling keyboard, more battery life, a little faster it seems, and better bluetooth support. Later on they're going to upgrade the internet access to EV DO Rev. A, which is even faster.

Timed as it is, to coincide with the iPhone's release, several people have asked me if I got an iPhone, and when I say no, they ask why not. Well, frankly, the phone I got is better in almost every way than the iPhone. The iPhone's feature set is strictly worse than the Mogul's. It's got slower internet, a shitty mail client, non-expandable memory, non-replaceable battery, can't to MMS (picture and video) messaging, doesn't allow 3rd-party applications, doesn't support Instant Messaging, can't take videos, and doesn't have a real keyboard. The only thing the iPhone's got going for it is an admittedly slick UI. However, that doesn't make up for its critical lack of features.

Oh yeah, and the Titan is $200 cheaper than the iPhone. Eat that, iPhone.

Wu-Tang Clan!

mp3 player

A few weeks ago I bought a Sansa Express 1gb mp3 player. This is my first new one in a few years. It rocks my holey socks off. It's sized and shaped like a USB Thumb drive, and in fact it plugs in like one too. So there's no goofy cable to lose. It's even got an FM tuner in it in case I want to listen to the radio, oh and I can put a memory card in it too, to add more space. All for $60. Eat that, iPod Shuffle!

Transformers

Omg what a great movie. It could have been so shitty, but was so good. Admittedly there was some sidestory that could have been cut, but I don't care. I could have watched a 9-hour Transformers movie. I really want an 09 Camaro now. Maybe I'll ask for a big fat raise and pay the Magnum off early? :-D

Personal Life

I've been thinking a lot about death lately. Well, more than normal. Something will trigger a thought of my own death, and I'll get a sudden wave of dread. It feels like it's pushing down on me from all directions. On one hand I'd rather not feel this way, but on the other hand I'd rather not die, either. Maybe I should go see a doctor about it or something?

In other news, I'd like to go to the fair this year. If you've got a couple X chromosomes and you want a free trip to the fair, let me know.

It was a pretty good song. Anyhow, the news.

4th

Is sexy? Yes.

This beautiful picture of sky brought to you by Zaino Bros car polish

Today was pretty uneventful. I slept in, and that was pretty good. I woke up early enough to catch McBreakfast. I also grabbed a sausage biscuit for Amica, because she enjoys diarrhea as well.

After breakfast I washed the car and detailed the interior. I was thinking of claying it today, but god damn it's hot out and I need to reorder Z6 spray anyhow. I took another shower after washing the car then drove around a bit.

At home I drank a couple beers (planned on drinking more) and then passed out from exhaustion. Whoops! After I woke up I drove around a bit and stopped at DQ for a blizzard and watched the fireworks from the parking lot there.

I guess I didn't eat lunch or dinner, but the blizzard and beer had enough calories anyhow.

It kinda sucks that the 4th is on a Wednesday, and I had to work the two previous days and have to work the two next days.

Visited my Dad

Hell, I dunno. Maybe a month ago now? My sister and I drove out to my dad's acreage to visit him again finally. Everything went well. Dad is doing fine, and Wanda was even nice too. He liked my car, and we talked a bit more about just about anything. We stood out on his porch while he cooked up some pork chops. He's got a big garden and a few fruit trees which, if the deer don't kill them, should be pretty cool when they mature.

They loaded us up with some canned goods and a box of old family photos and sent us on our way. Hopefully we can get out there to see them more often.