naladahc | tripping along the golden path

So The Cousin and The Cousinling will be down tomorrow.

I'm surprised he wanted to drive down and see me given the fact that she's only 10 months old and so forth.

I'm giving her an early birthday present straight out of my book collection. While she can't appreciate it now she will hopefully come to love it in the future.

And I can't wait until she's about 3 or 4 and I can give her the Transformer I've been saving for her!!!

Oh my god!!!

The new Battlestar Galactica is the single greatest thing on television!!!

I was literally jumping out of my seat tonight screaming and yelling and I never thought the episode would end as it did.

And we have to wait until July for the next episode!!!

Arghhhhhhhh!!!

And for Season 2... I think I'm going to have a weekly BG viewing party because this is so the kind of show that all of the geeks and losers would yell and scream at the TV at.

Thank you Ron Moore for making me love 10:00pm on Friday nights. I am rarely this moist any more. You are a natural lubricant and I will highly recommend you to all women in menopause.

Well. I've sorta-kinda been thinking same thing.

Of course, he'd be done in CGI now and fight the stupidly named Count Dooku too.

Well. So far so good. (Fingers crossed.)

But then again I said that before.

From an unexpected invite from Jhames I am now on Yahoo! 360° which will I will no doubt spend about as much time on as Friendster and Tribe.net.

I've always had a problem with these kinds of sites because I typically am not apt to include people I've never met in person.

I don't know why. Just a Nala thing I suppose.

And I've never met Jhames but I accepted the invite so I must be suffering a stroke or something.

Who knows.

These are the best pictures of old girl Jaclyn Smith that I've ever seen.

Most definitely not safe for work.

The 2nd cousinling-once removed, is quite possibly the single cutest 10 month old little girl I've ever known.

And so last night Ganesh removed all obstacles to the Tonapi wedding, but apparently not inclement weather.

This is a post aimed at the heart of all of you pussy loser geeks out in the Central Cowlands.

I challenge you all!

Yes! Me. Nala! I challenge you!

With Spring here we need leave our attics and basements, get our asses off of the couch, shut off our computers, and go outside.

And we must do so after building model rockets so we can challenge each other to mutual model rocket destruction out at some metropark!

You know that you now cannot help but build one since I have taunted you with your loser pussyness.

And if you aren't in the Central Cowlands then you better get your own loser pussy ass to a hobby shop and build and fly your own rocket and taunt others with your fiery phallic prowess.

Leave a comment, IM me, or email me if you can face my masculine rocket building skills and don't want to pussify yourself against the almighty!

This threat has been brought to you by TCCLGPC (The Central Cowland Loser Geek Pussy Club).

Living will is the best revenge (sptimes.com)

• I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.
• I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.
• Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.
• In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.
• And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

Now I've mentioned before how the show Unfiltered over on Air America Radio would drive me crazy. I loved Chuck D. and Liz Windstead but there was this droning from Rachel Maddow that would drive me crazy. And when Liz left the show and Chuck was travelling my head would explode when Rachel Maddow would host the show solo.

But on the 1 year anniversary of Air America last week Unfiltered was put to death and replaced by something that quite possibly might just be worse... Springer on the Radio.

Yup. Jerry Springer spending 3 hours a day rambling on. And they even refer to him as "the voice of the middle class".

Methinks I want my 3 hours of a droning lesbian back. At least Unfiltered had a few talking heads. One talking head with just an invisible audience to talk to makes it ever worse.

"It says in the Bible that the morning-after pill is wrong. I believe the passage is Pharmaceuticals 3:16."

A five-minute sampling of Hindi-language channel Zee TV stretched into a five-hour Indian TV marathon... "I have no idea what's going on, but I can't turn it off,"

Well it is over.

After approximately 340 episodes of continuous devotion my beloved Snots Landing has come to and end.

Done. Fin. Over.

What the hell will I do between 5 and 6 now???

Listen, it takes dedication to hit the streets dressed as Darth Vader, but c'mon...everyone knows what you're up to, and even if they don't, you're safely covered from head to toe anyway. It takes a real fan to unabashedly prance around Broadway as an AT-AT Commander.

If this guy from tfans.com can have a Victory Saber then I really need to get one.

There hasn't been much action on my part in regards to My So-Called Cracky Life and hence the few updates.

There's a Predaking giftset that should be arriving sometime this week. I wasn't going to buy it but an email from Mr. E. convinced me the seller's price was good so I went for it. Saved about $40 over Bigbadtoystore.com and the like so I don't feel too bad.

Also have Masterpiece Ultra Magnus and Robot Masters Lio Convoy w/DVD coming. (It sucks the balls that I'm being a completist on the RM line. Well... I still don't have the overly expensive black magazine exclusives yet.)

Oh, and if the rumors are true and Michael Bay ends up directing the live action Transformers movie my hopes for something kick ass and yet adult accessible have been thrown out the door.

Like the song says...

“Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies.
I guess Perl Harbor sucked,
Just a little bit more then I miss you.”

Would you all still respect me if I built a new Windows PC from scratch using this case?

Or would you taunt me, call me names, all the while pant-hooting and throwing feces at me?

So I'm being hounded by Blogrolling.com to renew my subscription.

Funny thing is I paid my money as a donation to the founder of the service because it once rocked major balls. Once Tucows bought it the whole service has gone downhill with all kinds of performance problems and down time. (Funny thing is, I used to use Tucows ages ago in the early days of the web but until today I hadn't gone back.)

I can live without the blogrolling scripts.

While it is nice that I can easily maintain my public and private link lists and have them accessible everywhere I am I realized I have settled on the same group of sites to read and rarely venture forth for new content. I suppose I should but quite frankly I don't have the time to read much online anymore.

It does kind of piss me off that my "donation" became a fee somewhere along the line. I don't really remember.

I guess it'll just kick back to the basic one and I'll have the blogrolling.com logo or somesuch appearing.

Oh well. I'm not giving any money to Tucows.

Ok. It is official.

I'm definitely thinking of creating a real Central Cowland Loser Geek Pussy Club now. Perhaps I can convince others to join too.

I've never had so many comments to a post. Ever.

Of course, they are all from the same usual suspects. But they are all Cowlanders after all!

I'm kind of shocked DC Comics didn't think of this as a lame and pointless crossover with the likewise lame Countdown to Infinite Crisis, which may quite possibly be the worst named comic series ever.

And DC's VP Dan Didio calling it a sequel to 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths is just stupid. I mean just because you have a sub-series dealing with the magic characters and another dealing with the alien/sci-fi characters doesn't make it equivalent to what Wolfman and Perez did in 1985.

Spoilers ahead. Don't continue reading if you don't want it ruined for you. And believe me. Your life will go on if I did spoil it.

I scored a "39% (Yankee). A definitive Yankee" on this silly Southern Dialect Quiz.

And based off my answers I'm pretty dead on for the Great Lakes dialect I've been surrounded by from day one.

But of course, I've also successfully changed some things such as my past 15 year conscious effort to say "soda" instead of the incredibly horrible "pop".

*shudder* I so hate the word pop.

I wonder how Mr. and Mrs. B. would score. I am always happy to hear the "y'all" slip out of them every now and then.

So Takara's MP-2 Ultra Magnus arrived yesterday. I found him online the other day for only $99 and broke down and bought him. Of course I wasn't going to get him since he's just a repaint of the Masterpiece Convoy mold but something about his minimalist white and gray (not that that palette seems to appeal to me or anything) was nice and he and Convoy would make great bookends to the Binaltechs and Alternators. And I guess I had the money to burn too.

Also snagged a Robot Masters #23 Lio Convoy which really has a nice metallic paint job like RM #10. The Convoys, no matter the version, tend to look good accented with the metallic paint.

This post over on Tfans.com shows and advert that implies there will be 5 more Convoys added to the Robot Masters line. And thankfully one of them is God Fire Convoy, my favoritest Convoy of all time.

I can do without another reissue of the godawful "Super Pants" Armada version and even the Power Rangerish Energon one but I am most definitely looking forward to a Beast Machines Beast Convoy.

No Big Convoy though which kind of sucks. He'd have been a nice addition.

I've actually gone a bit overboard on the TFs lately. Especially with winning some auctions that were just plain stupid on my part.

This auction for the original RID Ruination will finally allow me to open one up. I have Rail Racer and Landfill on my RID shelf but needed a Ruination too. (I'd have rather found the Car Robots Baldigus gift set but this'll do.)

And then I fucked up and bought this auction for a Chase Deszarus PVC thinking I had the standard one when in fact I bought the chase figure at OTFCC2004 last year and need the standard one. Grrrr...

I can never seem to win the full color one so I settled for the Chase/Bonus gold Victory Saber PCV from here. Not great but needed.

And then I fucked up again winning this auction only for the chase/limited edition Convoy in Cab/Trailer mode when in fact I also seem to own that one too. I thought I had the shitty clear one but I have both. Grrrr...

What I really need to win is this auction of the 4 magazine exclusive Robot Master repaints that will complete the line. I've currently got it and I'm willing to go a bit more too for these.

Of course, the damn RM Victory Saber exclusive is now shipping.

Grrrr... fucking loser completist.

So the world will not forget, Giga coined two of the gayest names recently and they are now forever part of our lexicon: Beardie Mcpillowbiter and Waggle Mackhakipants.

I will never forget these two men.

Ever.

FYI:

Just because it is a "robot" and its parts appear to move and change shape does not necessarily mean that it is a Transformer.

Understand this important lesson and find enlightenment.

Did you ever notice there are no fat Emo kids?

Just an observation.

I mean, can you not be bone skinny bordering on totally skeletal and still be "emo"?

It is thoughts like these that keep me up at night.

So my blogrolls are now dead. I'm experimenting with del.icio.us right now as as bookmarks manager.

While I don't love it I also don't mind it. I just wish it was a bit prettier. Then again I suppose there's a whole lot crap about it I don't know about it so why the hell am I even being a whiney bitch about it? Well... cuz I can be a whiney bitch on my own journal I suppose.

"We're gonna take you where you want to go. It's showtime." ends the Peter Gabriel song The Barry Williams Show. And indeed the show is getting downright good. Fantastic even. The thunder is growing and the children can feel the chill deep in their bones.

This Washington Post article rocks such awesome balls that I realized how proud I am to be a 'Merican.

Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

...lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.

Schlafly called for passage of a quartet of bills in Congress that would remove courts' power to review religious displays, the Pledge of Allegiance, same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts... "The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court says it is," Schlafly asserted.

The fun is just around the corner.

Perhaps Michael Bay being assigned the directorship of the new live action Transformers film was indeed the first sign of the coming apocalypse.

Perhaps the rapture is right around the corner.

I hope so. I'm getting sick of waiting.

And the Washington Post is so cool. They used the word "doyenne" and I didn't even laugh. I'd have been more partial to c*nt in this case but no newspaper is perfect.

I've been trying to find some kind of font layout that I don't want to hurl when I look at. You'd think that after all these years and even with improvements coming from CSS use that "typesetting" within html would be much nicer.

And the fonts? I don't really know how people who are paid money to develop and maintain multi-platform/multi-browser websites and web applications deal with the complete and utter shittiness of the font situation.

I've always tried to at least work within the barely tolerable Microsoft "web" ones. At least the next version of Windows will have some new web fonts. And since they are Opentype they will hopefully ship with MS Office for Macintosh. Microsoft should do the right thing and make the damn fonts a free download and allow Apple and Sun to add them to the default font set but that's unlikely.

I'm excited about Constantia and Cambria. Hell. I'll settle for any new sans-serif offering. Arial and Helvetic just don't cut it anymore (not that they really ever did) and Verdana just annoys the hell out of me.

Then again I'm also never happy with the way things look on the web and I'm shocked that the current visual design of confessions of a plastic crack™ addict has remained the same since I unleased it upon the world 8 or so months ago (I think).

Oh well. I don't do this for a living. I just need to make it look good on paper.

Because you've been clamoring for it. Here's the theme to both my life and this website.

It pretty much accurately describes my entire life.

No.

Really.

It does.

So Eric Nassau released his new CD x-country last week.

It is eally growing on me.

Two songs are available for download on the discography page.

I'm hoping he'll make "This Ain't No Bad Side of Town" available for download soon. It really is a great song.

I do think that x-country is his best work yet.

Eric is currently touring and will be in Kansas and Nebraska the next few days.

Should demons rise from the depths of hell and angels descend from the sky then you'll know that I have decided to get married.

But, if I do, these guys will definitely top my cake.

I'm rather upset at myself these days and I'm the only one to blame.

First off, my remaining fish is not doing well at all. He was doing excellent and then about 5 days ago I noticed he was sort of listless and it was different from his sleeping listlessness.

He's now been attacked by a fungus and I think I may be too late in trying to treat it. I really only noticed the cotton fungus on his tail 2 days ago and at first thought he'd damaged the tail, perhaps on the filter, shitty plastic plant, or perhaps when I removed him to clean the gravel.

So yesterday I ran out and got some antibiotics. This morning though he's worse than ever. The antibiotics haven't done anything and the fungus has spread.

He's not going to make it. I know this. But he was doing so well.

Perhaps this "tank" that I've assembled is just not a good idea after all? Maybe it is the space upstairs? Maybe I'm just out of luck?

When he goes I'm going to take a break from attempting to have fish again and rethink this. I know it is actually a helluva lot easier to maintain a larger tank (5+ gallon) than a smaller one but space is a luxury I don't really have. Maybe I can find a way to incorporate that 6 gallon long tank I found at Meijers onto the vintage crack shelf. It'd require some substantial toy moving but could easily be done. More thought needs to be done here.

Oh. And the other thing that I feel really bad about is the fact that I don't think I successfully used the Pope's death to advance my political agendas.

Everybody else has done it but I somehow forgot to do it.

El Shrubero managed to ally himself with the Pope as members of the oxymoronic "culture of life" and even that Neil Cavuto Fox dreg managed to spin a good bit of retroactive history about the Pope's "support" of the Iraqi War of Petroleum Liberation.

Me? I mentioned Karol here and there but overall forgot to mention the letters he sent me.

Back in the mid 1980s the Holy See realized that magic and demon belief were going to make a comeback in the latter days of the 20th century.

They pulled out the Polonia Almanac and realized that I was the chosen one that had been prophesized and they intended to support me while diverting the public (like all good religions do) from the facts.

One day, over a dinner of Stanley's kielbasa and my homemade kapusta, the Pope kissed my ring and became a firm believer in Nalaism.

Unfortunately, the corruption of the Church was not something I could overcome during my teens and I was powerless to stop the 2000 year old evil at the time.

But in his secret will, it is clearly stated that all should convert to Nalaism and begin the revolution.

So you see... my way is the one true way. You are either with me or against me. Karol was with me. Shouldn't you be?

So Spring has officially overtaken the Cowlands.

To celebrate the the cultures of life (and of death) I was wondering if anyone would be interested in joining my Dead Pool?

I realize that it is already April but we've got plenty of months left in the year.

Leave your list of 11 people (10 + bonus) in the comments and I'll throw together a full page with everyone's list on it and come December we'll see how everyone did.

I'll even provide a prize.

Congratulation to Mr. E. for finally getting a broadband connection.

With your new broadband connection you can expect such wonderful things as better spam throughput, router attacks, connection outages, faster porn downloads, and a wonderful increase in the number of hacks into your computer.

Since you've got a Mac OS X computer you are probably sorta safer but you should activate your firewall anyway.

And thank you and Chico E. for going to get ice cream yesterday.

I needed that.

I wish I'd have found this blog entry earlier.

It's Good Friday. Like every Good Friday for the past five years, I made my pilgrimage and partook of one of the few religious traditions I have left to me: going to Burger King and getting a Whopper.

The New York Times recently had a fantastic article on "man dates", defined as "...two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports. It is two guys meeting for the kind of outing a straight man might reasonably arrange with a woman."
event analysis and there's nothing more rewarding than analyzing male Homo sapiens sapiens behavior (often regardless of straight or gay inclination).

I don't know how I missed this ebay auction reported in The Register last month.

No doubt this infuriated some people but I find the whole implausibility of it a riot.

Description: 24 Small Children that come with their original warranty papers, clothing etc.. 8 of them have over-sized heads, and were supposed to be called back, but never were.

All are ages 2-5, and have had as many years experience in the Japanese language. All of the children above age 3 have already had training in factories owned by Disney, making Donald Duck Velcro wallets. I am asking £340 dollars a head for this bunch, or take them all for £5,000!

Also available - GRAB BAG! Receive in your grab bag: 3 random children and a fun, free mystery prize. Shipping costs vary depending on order size and how large my friend Eggers and I have to make the wooden box. Boxes range from £35 to £80 dollars, food, water and air holes cost extra.

A Chase/Bonus Gold Takara Victory Saber PVC and a Predaking Reissue Giftset have arrived and joined their brethen in the Attic.

I've been giving some thought to evolutionary events and those so-called "big ones" that tend to have happened every so many millions of years.

There was the super successful extinction event around 65 million years ago that ended the Cretaceous period. Then there's that African weather event of 6 million years ago that caused hominids to change and go to the grasslands.

The only real constant in reality is change.

And that got me onto fresh ideas along a new train of thought.

Now I'm a firm believer in the fact that without a natural predator, Homo sapiens sapiens will essentially wipe itself out. I see signs all around me that this is happening in both biology, society, and elswhere.

Without this natural predator to "thin the herd" Homo sapiens sapiens grows like a cancer across the face of the planet, unchecked, and continues to consume pretty much everything that it finds.

But what if the uncontrolled growth of the species is in effect part of the extinction event itself? Instead of it coming from the outside of biology (meteor, weather, etc.) it is in fact nature, through over population of the dominant species, pushing the limits of the biosphere and causing a certain threshold to be crossed that will begin mass extinctions and the eventual rejuventation of the planet.

Nature doesn't care if species live or die. Nature has seen it all so many times that it probably could be viewed as an endless rerun of The Beverly Hillbillies. There goes Granny hiding the jug. Well doggy. Jethro wants a career. There goes Granny hiding the jug. Well doggy. Jethro wants a career.There goes Granny hiding the jug. Well doggy. Jethro wants a career.There goes Granny hiding the jug. Well doggy. Jethro wants a career. And that's just the way it goes.

I guess I've been of the mind that the extinction event would be an outside force and of course that is missing the point of the reality of over population.

The extinction event is very much around us now. We are on the upwards slope of a bell curve. It probably won't happen within the next 15 generations or so but the effects will increase as the peak is approached.

We are our own predator.

How utterly appropo.

So over at Vincenzo's daddy's Yahoo blog I found one of these Which religion is the right one for you? web quiz things.

Of course I love how any one remotely educated about religions other than their indoctrinated one would be able to figure out which questions would lead you to a given "brand" of belief system.

No surprises for me.

Of course I find it ultimately ironic that the results lean me towards "Satanism". That name is completely offending to my sensibilities because it is too steeped in Christianity and one would need to believe and have faith in the Christian diety to also believe in his theological adversarial equivalent? A much better name is needed (even though my few, if any, dealings with supposed "Satanists" lead me to believe that Satan has very little to do with it and that these poor folk were just self-delusional.)

And paganism? What the fuck? Perhaps this test maker is dealing with definitions that are not classical.

I'd like to see a 100 question quiz developed by theologians and well versed individuals. This one is just too simple.

But in the end I suppose the fact that I am so non-Abrahamic tradition wouldn't change at all. S'funny how the bottom ones that this quiz ranks me as "least" are the ones where fear is used the most to control the a given populace.

Scratch that. It isn't funny at all.

Well it appears that the last episodes of the godawful pile of animated shit known as Transformers Energon will finally air in late May on Cartoon Network.

Now I thought the previous series Transformers Armada sucked pretty hard but the sequel series may have surpassed it.

Good riddance.

Let's see how badly they turn Galaxy Force into Cybertron.

I am going against my new paradigm here and had to say...

I now own an Car Robots Super Car Brothers Osaka ToysLand Show Exclusive!!!

This set is one of my "holy grails" for my collection!!!

There were only 1500 pieces made for the Osaka ToysLand Show from September 2000 and now I am the proud owner (or will be when it arrives) from Singapore.

Ok. Effective today there has to be a curtailing of crack purchases and a moratorium from Ebay.

Yesterday presented me the opportunity to finally acquire the one exclusive I've wanted for years and later last night I got the other 4 exclusives I'd been trying to get.

Yup! I got the Robot Masters magazine "black" exclusives of Convoy, Beast Convoy, Beast Megatron, and Starscream for $60 cheaper than what they are retailing for in the online stores. That means I only need to snag the Victory Saber exclusives now and my Robot Masters line will be complete.

And... of course it isn't over yet... I snagged an auction of PVCs that included the non-Chase Deszarus that I needed, Star Saber, Lio Kaiser, a complete Star Convoy, and unfortunately the pewter version of the chase figure Scorponok.

The color Scorponok easily goes for $40+ and I figure this will be one I can repaint so I'll have my own custom Scorponok for about $4. Not ideal but that gap will more or less be closed. (I plan on repainting a clear Soundwave as his reborn Soundblaster persona too.)

So. Yesterday was an expensive night.

And all I can say is thank god the tax refund is coming!!! That is making this possible.

Normally I'd be horribly guilty the following morning after spending so much on plastic crack but these are all figures I need and some of them are figures I've wanted for ages. That Osaka seems to be emitting an anti-guilt/anti-depression aura around me.

So now I can rest for a few months and only need to find Alternator Shockwave and Wheeljack before being inundated with the Cybertron line.

I thought I'd found a steal when I filled up on gas at $2.06 yesterday. This morning it is down to $2.01 at Speedway and that silly named BP replacement "Buckeye Fuel" is actually $1.99.

Ya know it is scary when you think $2.00 is cheap.

But I have no doubts that's exactly what the energy whores want us to think.

They get their added profit, they can use the "price per barrel is so high" excuse, and the massive consumption of the 'Merican people will continue unabated and we'll invade Iran because of potential nuclear capabilities that 'Merica gave them during the Shah's era.

I wonder how much petrol goes into the crack that I consume?

I'm certainly not innocent in this whoring going on. If I recall my chemistry years it somehow has to do with petroleum. Just about our entire global culture is dependent on derivatives of the good old black fluid of love.

Oh. And don't go looking for any reasons why Neo-Con Paul Wolfowitz is now at the World Bank, the utterly fantastic John Bolton is being shoe-horned into the UN, John Negroponte is handling "intelligence", and the God'Merican administration has purged most people who were not happy with the results of our Iraq adventure.

Be happy with the price of gas dropping.

Mr. Power:

Since I know you read this site I just want to let you know that all my email to you seems to be rejected and sent back as fatal errors and so forth.

I don't know why but it sucks the balls.

Ruination awakens!

I found some slightly better "spirituality" quizzes that are almost fun. This was my response to the thinness of the one I did the other day.

And then I read...

Who I Want to Meet: I want to meet that woman who announces me when I come pulling in the metro stations..."Bong Bong...Approaching...Inbound Train...Two Car...Mission Bay...followed by...One car...Embarcadero...in two...minutes..." My god, she is sexy. If I had a weenie it'd be hard. If you want to be my friendster, my full name is N-Judah Muni. Write a testimonial...I'm a fucking train and I don't get a lot of excitement unless some homeless guy pees on someone's leg.

I so want to meet the MUNI announcer woman. And creating a Friendster profile for the N-Judah is just hilarious.

I know the N-Judah well.

Not in a biblical sense. But hey. I've been known to ride the N-Judah with the best of them.

Nineteen Robots In Disguise Spychangers arrived today. I only spent $10 on 'em and that's one helluva deal since the tiny tins versions still retail for about $3.99 or so each.

However Matt snagged the new Alternators Shockwave and Wheeljack at a Target this afternoon.

WooHoo!

I am totally going into debt for the amount of crack I purchased this week. Thank god this coming Day of Odin is pay day.

On April 15, 2004 Alternator Shockwave joined his Autobot and Decepticon brethen and found a home in the Attic of Love™.

So the first "work outside in the yard" day of 2005 has officially happened.

Magnolia blossoms on a tree one day become thousands of them laying on the ground 5 days later. It is a beautiful tree but man is it a messy one. So I spent the morning raking and raking and raking and bagging and bagging and bagging to try and avoid last year's decaying organic mess that was the foulest thing to clean up. I'll go over it again in 3 days and rake up the last fallen petals.

So I'm laying in bed late last night doing my usual surfing of the 300 channels of shit and I came across City Cops: San Francisco Blue: "The Tenderloin District" on one of the plethora of Discovery Channels.

The best part of watching any special about The Tenderloin is seeing places that I know and love. And let me tell you, there's nothing quite like seeing the a drunk/drug addict handcuffed to the gate/fence in front of the parking lot of the apartment building that Liz and Matt used to manage on Jones and Ellis where I spent many a vacation.

Inside I'm like "I know that place!!! I've smelled urine by that fence!!!"

And so close to the place where that Asian guy all messed up on crystal meth started asking me how to get the voices to stop talking.

Ah San Francisco. It is the little things in life that make be remember you so fondly.

Good times. Good good times.

I must get out there soon. Anybody want to put up a geek loser for a few days?

Ok. The official 2005 Pool de Muerte is up.

Those of you who still need to get me your lists better do so. If not, I will be forced to taunt you mercilessly here and elsewhere on the internets.

When all is said and done, and the universe as we know it ends (either by natural process or some kind of magic supernatural god-on) the one thing that every being in existence will agree on is that Soundwave kicked an incredible amount of ass.

For those that don't know, Soundwave is the Decepticon that could transform into a walkman, carried a small army of soldiers in his chest who could transform into cassettes, and more or less never failed Megatron or the other 'cons.

He was so beloved by his troops (and no doubt fans) that even after he and Blaster, the Autobot boom box, fought each other to the death, his spark was given a new body and he returned to fight another day.

Now Soundwave was given life on tv by the great Frank Welker. Non-TF geeks will know him best as Freddie Jones from Scooby Doo. But if you stayed and watched movie credits you'd realize that Welker is hired for tons and tons of stuff every year just for his animal noise ability. He is that good!

And in 1984 he gave Soundwave, with the little help of some reverb, a voice that was unlike any other character. Soundwave said little but rarely needed to. He got his point across quite often in less than 6 words.

And this is was this post is all about.

Here are some great examples of Welker's Soundwave in MP3 format:

Example 1: "Free to go... to Cybertron"
Example 2: "Rumble...Laserbeak...Ravage... prepare for battle."
Example 3: "Eject..."
Example 4: "The Autobot jet is afaid to fight."

They are all excellent examples of why Soundwave rocks.

He's so memorable for the lack of words which practically borders on speech impediment for him.

But then, in one episode, they had to go and ruin it.

Here's Soundwave actually trying to say a real full line of dialogue about an Incan Legend.

It makes ya cry.

Oh well.

He still rocks.

As long as he keeps his words to less than 7 or so.

Well...

This post over at The Movie Blog got me thinking.

I was pretty young (only 4) when The Six Million Dollar Man debuted but I watched it religiously and had the toys and all. Hell. This was pre-Star Wars, Micronauts, and Shogun Warriors for me so there wasn't a whole lot of sci-fi-ish geekage available for a young lad. I was also a major fan of The Bionic Woman and Lindsay Wagner has been known to make me moist on occasion, no doubt due to early exposure to her as a young boy.

But supposedly there's going to a be a film version because mainstream Hollywood has absolutely zero creativity and originality left.

But if I was going to "reinvent" the series... who would I cast?

I'm thinking it'd have to be total unknowns or relatively new actors as Steve Austin and Jamie Summers. I'd probably cast someone recognizable as Oscar Goldman and Rudy. Maybe Ed Harris or Peter Krauze as Oscar.

But can you seriously call the show "The Six Million Dollar Man" again when typical state powerball type lotteries are in the 100 million range now?

Six million might allow me to by one of each Transformer ever made and a really nice vintage Victorian era home but it should wouldn't buy a lot of bionic technology today.

I started using blo.gs recently to keep track of all the blogs I read and generally keep an eye on when they are updated. I never quite warmed up to del.icio.us but blo.gs does what I want.

But I noticed that the porn spammers have hit blo.gs really hard.

There are now a ton of blogs set up that are totally fake and their sole purpose is to mislead you to go to the URL thinking it is a personal blog and immediately redirect to a porn site. No doubt a bot pings blo.gs, technorati, and the like several times a day to move the fake blog to a "recently updated" state.

In my futile quest to find new bloggers to read I've gotten burned a lot recently by this tactic.

I suppose I should really go back to just checking out the people who leave comments in blogs I do like. I mean at least if we mutually find some content enjoyable it might be worth reading their own crap on the net. And over the past few weeks I have read a whole lotta shit. Makes me realize what utter crap I myself contribute several times a day to the internets.

But the spammers and dregs just don't let up do they? To even consider doing something like this, or to go into spamming and so forth, must require a certain lack of personal self-satisfaction in life or a serious problem with being a whore. It blows my mind.

Adobe to buy Macromedia for $3.4 Billion. (Cnet.com)

Woah!

I know Macromedia had pretty much gone stagnant over the past 2 years with Flash and Dreamweaver being their only real desktop sellers but man oh man... $3.4 billion.

What sucks is that FreeHand will probably die and I still, after 17 years, still prefer it to Adobe Illustrator.

Can somebody that isn't retarded or clinically insane tell me why this is news?

Why does this deserve any form of media coverage at all?

These are the kinds of things that indicate the complete and utter vapidness of the fabric of our culture.

Robot Masters Magazine Exclusives are in the house! Woah!

Ugh! I still have to read JSA!

Yay! It is over.

And Paramount is letting it die.

Yay!

And now just another reminder. Do not trust anyone about anything on television. Hell. Might as well make it everywhere too since American journalism can no longer be trusted.

Everybody has an agenda on everything.

Everyone is guilty until proven innocent, though the layers of illusion on innocence are mixed in with vast amounts of bullshit as well.

The best knowledge you can carry deep inside you is that practically every person is a whore in someway. Whoring is part and parcel to information now and you must constantly be aware of this.

But my Transformer reviews? Yeah. You can trust them. I mean the figure can be pretty shitty (and I'll say so) and I still waste money on it.

(However, even I would probably whore for Takara if they offered me one of each items created. See? You have to be wary of everyone.)

I suppose congratulations are due to the worshippers of Cathol. Your backwards patriarchal masters have wasted no time and elected Joseph Ratzinger as grand magic showman.

May the numerous ideological problems facing your church hasten its demise.

And parents? Lock up your boys. If you thought the church was going to do anything about priests fucking boys you can pretty much forget about it now. Karol didn't do anything about it and his right hand man isn't going do anything either.

And women? You have never really mattered much anyway. Keep birthing and baptizing them babies. That is your job.

And so the wheel turns. Turns along the road to the Great Struggle. It is so close you can almost grab it and hug it and say "Hey. I've been waiting for you! Here's some chamomile iced tea!"

Several of Takara PVCs arrived today to fill the gaps in the collection.

Matt also found a new TF Universe Blastcharge while he was out on a geek run today.

And while entering these new figures into my spreadsheet I realized that I so badly need to do a full audit of the attic.

In an effort to make certain lines more manageable in Excel I pulled some areas out of their lines and gave them their own worksheets. By pulling out the PVCs and the Spychangers it just made it easier since there are so many of these individual groups to keep track of.

But somewhere along the way I've introduced a possible error. Now I was trying to clean up some data that I knew was downright incorrect and so I did move more than just those 2 lines out.

But now, I'm somehow showing total Transformers at 1235 but the manual assignment of new figures I'd been doing for my recent additions reads 1226. Somehow 9 are either real and should be added or phantoms and need to be eliminated.

Ugh. I so don't want to audit this stuff. I'm tending towards the spreadsheet count.

So I hadn't bothered to mention #5 or #6.

This is the danger you face in the Attic of Love when you clear any space on a shelf.

It is a wonder my Micromasters aren't more of a mess.

This is the danger you face in the Attic of Love when you clear any space on a shelf.

It is a wonder my Micromasters aren't more of a mess.

And then I read...

The decision came after Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, shocked his fellow Republicans by saying he wanted more time to study the charges against John Bolton...

Not that I care really. He was a balls lame guv'na and what has he done for me lately as a Senator?

Exactly!

Balls!

And the excitement never ends here at the Attic of Love in Cowtown.

More frigg'n Robots In Disguise Spychangers arrived as well as an extremely disappointing and major waste of money known as Galaxy Force Master Megatron from the new line. (I'm skipping the Hasbro version!)

Dear Mrs. T.:

It has come to my attention that I am not sure exactly what your current working email is so I sent one to your old hotmail account. I believe you changed your work email with the new last name but I can't find your email about doing it so I'm also resorting to posting here because I know you occassionally read this useless blog.

I'm making the taco salad you wanted tonight.

Come over at 6pm with Where's the Party Yaar?.

(And yes, apparently calling it Dude, Where's The Party? and making the package look like Dude, Where's My Car? was merely a studio attempt to confuse and associate this film with the other one. Balls. It is great on its own merit!)

Ok people. I understand you are desperate. I understand you can't find meaning in your lives so you seek if from outside instead of inside.

You are easily malleable and believe anything or or you make up things to find substance in your life. This is common and part of your illusion.

But c'mon people!

A steady stream of the faithful and the curious, many carrying flowers and candles, have flocked to an expressway underpass for a view of a yellow and white stain on a concrete wall that some believe is an image of the Virgin Mary...

“We believe it’s a miracle,” said Elbia Tello, 42. “We have faith, and we can see her face.”

I remember in Toledo when this happened back in 1989 and Mary was hanging out on a garage door in Lagrainka and in 1986 when Jesus decided to make a cameo appearance on an oil tank in Findlay, OH.

They get around don't they?

I mean you never exactly see the main man appear do you? It is typically Mary. Of course the man would make a woman do all the running around appearing in stains, bread mold, feces, or the like.

I wonder how hard it would be to collate data between the people who see Mary appearing in stains and those that see UFOs?

Hell. I'm going to put forth a new term... ISMA... or Identified Stationary Mary Appearances.

Trixter posted some links (link 1, link 2) to Japanese sites with some extremely culturally non-'Merican drawings of Transformers.

They really love that "super deformed cute" look for Transformers in Japan. Hell... it goes back to the bumpers on Transformers Victory back in 1989 from what I can tell. And the fans produce a lot of it as these sites show.

But then Trixter posted this image (not safe for work) and I now realize I need to poke my eyes out.

I'm glad she posted that one link though. It had even more Japanese TF links from one of those old school web rings.

Thanks Trixter!

Trixter posted some links (link 1, link 2) to Japanese sites with some extremely culturally non-'Merican drawings of Transformers.

They really love that "super deformed cute" look for Transformers in Japan. Hell... it goes back to the bumpers on Transformers Victory back in 1989 from what I can tell. And the fans produce a lot of it as these sites show.

But then Trixter posted this image and I now realize I need to poke my eyes out.

I'm glad she posted that one link though. It had even more Japanese TF links from one of those old school web rings.

Thanks Trixter!

Man oh man the things I could do with these shelves.

So I started reading the novel Crisis on Infinite Earths the other night. This is Marv Wolfman's attempt to revisit his and George Perez's 1985 maxi-series of the same name. While it isn't a complicated read I'm finding it fairly enjoyable.

The point-of-view is that of Barry Allen, the Earth-1 Flash, who is actually dead before the story even starts. Due to the nature of his speed powers, and the fact that he can time-travel and traverse dimensions, he is the perfect character to explore events of Crisis in greater depth. And so far I'm liking it.

Now this isn't an adaptation of the 20 year old comic series. (My god. has it been 20 years???) This novel works as a peak into different issues of Crisis and fills in major areas that only a geek would love.

There's a moment with the original Superman (from Earth-2) and his wife Lois that was excellent and it is sad these kinds of moments never appeared in the comics written prior to 1985.

Perhaps I'll review it fully when I'm finished.

But so far, if you (1) are a paper crack geek, (2) loved the characters of the DCU prior to 1985, and (3) want to revisit that other era, then this novel is for you.

Or perhaps DC will do Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Musical someday and you can check that out.

Hmm... I can totally see that...

*singing* I am the Anti-Monitor... and I will consume your worlds... shadow demons go forth... oh Supergirl... I shall kill you... *music*

The weather for the central Cowlands looks pretty bleak this weekend.

It is damp, dreary grey, and cold today with rain coming and going as nature sees fit. The next few days appear to offer more of the same.

I suppose I can get started on the plastic crack audit/cleaning that needs to happen. I know Mr. E. has been wanting to delve into all of the plastic goodness and help take an inventory.

He's also got the hotel reserved for this September's Botcon and we'll probably finalize airfare in a few days. Suffice to say I'm not thrilled at a late September con nor am I thrilled with a Dallas location. But plastic crack addicts can't always be choosers now can we?

Hopefully we can meet some other Cowtown addicts (in real life) which will make the excursion to Texas more enjoyable too.

Oh. And #6 is still doing very well. This is a good thing.

Umm... why is this filed under the category: Toys & Hobbies > Action Figures > Transformers > Beast Machines on ebay?

So last night I made my version of Olivia Covarrubias' Muddle Puddle Restaurant Sweet Taco Salad and it turned out fairly decent. Even everybody's favorite German came over to sample some.

Mrs. T. had asked me to make it this past weekend and it has been awhile since I put it all together.

She brought over Where's the Party Yaar? so we can finish watching it. It really is funny in a Bollywood way.

One week ago we began working in the yard, mowed the lawn for the first time, started weeding, and all of the other preparation work for getting things ready for summer.

Today it actually snowed again in the Cowlands!!! Balls!!!

It mean it won't stick or make a difference but this dreary nasty weather has pretty much sucked out the life that was slowly coming back to me. It is like winter never left.

So what do you do when it is cold and dreary outside?

Why you invite Mr. E. over to help clean and reorganize Transformer shelves. Duh.

So what do you do when it is cold and dreary outside?

Why you invite Mr. E. over to help clean and reorganize Transformer shelves. Duh.

Now I know some of you say "Damn! That Nala sures bitches about Ohio, Cowtown, and the Greater Cowlands all the time!" and if you did say that you'd pretty much be true.

Case in point: It is April 23, 2005 and there is snow on my deck this morning and snow on my magnolia tree out front.

The end is near! The end is near!

Oh wait. This is just fucking Ohio!

Balls!!!!

That Robot Masters #24 Reverse Convoy really looks like a total turd. I mean if it was a G2 "tank" Megatron it'd be ok but the one Convoy (Optimus Prime) head and one Megatron head just makes it look shitastic. I may not buy this one after all.

And what the fuck is up with more repaints of Microns from Takara? 'Mericans bitch about Hasbro having repainted the Spychangers so many times and yet here's Takara, chugging out repaint after stupid repaint of the goddamn microns (minicons) from Micron Densetsu.

And these new ones are just frigg'n white plastic to boot. Not even any actual "re" to go with your "paint" on this one.

Reissue more G1 Micromasters for Hoontsake!!!!

Matt wanted to go to Meijers and I obliged because I wanted to go to the Bargain Outlet for some additional plastic crack shelves.

And to my surprise Meijers had the 6.6 gallon Attic of Love ideal aquarium kit I mentioned before for 1/2 off!!! Of course I bought it and now have to find a place for it. Unfortunately, Brave Maximus and my other big G1 bots will probably lose their homes. But then again, there may be extra space for one or two of them as decor (yes, gag if you must) around the thing.

So I had been mildy concerned that my crack count was off by 8-10 figures.

However, I've spent the rest of today auditing and cleaning shelves and there were 2 boxes of PVCs that I had someone forgot to add to my spreadsheet... and this doesn't include the ones Mr. E. forgot to take yesterday. (And yes, I do count my PVCs into the total.)

According to my current inventory I have 1267 Transformers and direct Transformers-related figures in the attic.

That means I'm only 33 from 1300!!! Scared of that shit!

And on another note, I think Mr. E. should name his blog "Carnage in D-Minor".

I stole this from Jhames. I was bored.

I am missing the following people a lot at this moment: The Cousin, Andrea P., Christine D., Deb Doran, and Monica W..

I just am.

I need to go to Glass City, New York City, and San Francisco soon.

After the shitastic weekend the weather has flip-flopped back to Spring and it is about 60 degrees out and sunny. This of course took care of all of the snow and ice that appeared over the weekend. Hopefully the plants haven't suffered since the hostas are all going and practically everthing else is sprouting.

Cleveberg, 180 miles to the north on Lake Erie got hit with something like 12 inches of snow this weekend. Detroit got hit too. I suppose I should call my mother and see what Glass City got hit with to appease my curiosity.

Oh well. Hopefully it'll stay in the 60s like predicted and have less rain as well.

So I've rethought the attic based on setting the filter in the tank and so forth.

I shall not destroy the G1 shelf but destroy the Energon shelf instead! See. It fits well with bots on each side. When the light is on it'll fill the entire attic with warming love too.

Now Number 6 will be incredibly jealous since I've decided to go with a small tropical community environment instead of goldfish. I'll probably start out and cycle the tank with 3 small long fin zebra danios, then after a few weeks add a small pleco or 2 small grey corydoras or other bottom scavengers. Then probably finish it off with some other hardy basic fish like Tetras or guppies (though they could get out of hand). Well, maybe a couple of ghost shrimp. We'll see how the tank and bio bed handles it once everthing is established. Who knows what'll change my mind between now and then.

But... I could go completely horridly unreal and go with black mollies with the black gravel with black everything else then put in some of those albino corydoras. That'd be practically an abonimation against nature.

And I learned something very important while cleaning up the attic shelves. I can no longer have the "buy one to open, buy one to save" mentality that often plagues toy collectors. There's just not enough room here. I separated out an entire pile of duplicate TF Energon figures. Thank god most of these were bought on clearance or substantially reduced prices. This'd even make a pretty decent lot on Ebay if one needed a wide range of Energon shit. Perhaps. It'd help pay for the aquarium stuff.

I'll probably be fairly picky with my Transformers Cybertron purchases too. There's just not a whole helluva lot of the Galaxy Force stuff that I like so I don't see bothering buying the domestic releases. I'll probably snag a few and the bots always get better as a line matures. Then again, I could probably part with much of my Armada and Energon line to make room for new things.

Collecting-wise I'm pretty much going to focus on Takara G1 releases from Masterforce and Victory and the ever fun to track down Micromasters stuff.

And I've decided to be picky too. I'd rather spend $300 for a mint figure with all accessories and box than spend $100 on 3 figures that may be rare but are missing pieces. You just can't find accessories to figures that were never released in the US. It is just too much of a pain in the ass. Poor Robowang's drama over a domestic released accessory is nothing compared to what it'd be like to track down a piece of a Japanese only figure. Not too mention if it never arrived once you bought it.

Anyway. Life goes on in the world of fishes and plastic crack and attics with too much shit in them.

Talk about yer bullshit.

"It appears that if you want to rise up in the rankings over at the MSN search engine you would do well to host your page on IIS. (Slashdot) (source)

Um. Isn't a search engine about the fucking content and not about which system it is stored on???

Arghhh!!! It'd be great if Google checked such sources and dropped the ranking of IIS served pages. Yeah. That'd be great since Google is #1 and people would say "Wahhhh... Google is biased!!!"

The author of the source goes on to say...

On the whole is seems that the MSN search engine is indeed placing IIS hosted sites higher in the results more frequently than other webservers. Frequently the MSN search is placing more IIS servers in the important top 10 results than Google even where result sets from a query have actually returned fewer IIS servers overall on MSN.

Looking at the coverage graphs, most search phrases return a more even spread of IIS servers thoughout the results sets from the MSN searchs.

So what's going on?
I have no idea, I doubt it's all a big conspiracy... but some possible explanations spring to mind:

Perhaps the MSN search has simply been coded by developers used to talking to IIS machines and so it just does that job better?
Perhaps the MSN spider is taking advantage of some specific IIS features to provide enhanced indexing?

Being a huge frigg'n Microsoft whore???

More than likely.

If indeed it weighs sites hosted via IIS it shows you that you cannot trust the content as being more relevant to your search term but content that happens to reside on a server that MS produces.

Does one need to take a "test" to know certain things?

I finished off the tank setup this afternoon after work. It's all up and running and getting all stabilized and water conditioned so I can begin the nitrogen cycle in a couple of days.

I made it late to the Post Office today and wasn't able to obtain my Osaka Exclusive Car Brothers set that I bought the other week.

Maybe tomorrow.

And then all I have to wait on is two chase PVCs and Car Robots God Magnus and I'm set.

I'm trying to stay off Ebay too.

I just got an email from Abominations H. Substantiation about "Best Schoolgirl's pussy" and I didn't even know there was a contest going on.

Man. Abominations H. Substantiation has got to be the coolest name.

Ever.

Mr. and Mrs. Substantiation have got to be proud! Of their boy. Er.. or girl... or just plain abomination.

I may be a geek. I may be a loser. I may even be a geek loser Transformer collector.

But... thanks to a link supplied my Mr. B., I know I'll never ever do this in my life. I'm just not one to dress up like this.

(But... it is kinda cool in a sick way. I'll deny I ever said it though. And you can't use this blog entry to prove anything.)

[Update: I keep going back to the pic and the only thing I can think of when looking at the Stormtroopers to the front left is Leia's line "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?". There are some pretty cool costumes there.]

In my car is the Osaka Exclusive I've been eagerly waiting to own for almost 4 years now.

And quite frankly it is a bit underwhelming being a small box and all.

Therin lies the main contradiction of the collector mentality and inherent flaw in being a collector: there's more satisfaction and excitment in tracking down an object than in actually having it.

No doubt Siddhartha Gautama would understand this.

Perhaps splitting my blog in two was a bad idea.

But does it really matter even?

There is a goal for tonight that I must strive for.

I must finish cleaning the attic and the closet area.

There is no must.

There can be only do.

After auditing some UNIX host files I got bored this afternoon and one link led to another which led to another and then I ended up at a Wikipedia entry for Amoeba Music.

Amoeba Music has a frigg'n Wikipedia entry!!!

Translucent Speedbreak, Mach Alert, and Wild Rider.

'Nuff said!

Translucent Speedbreak, Mach Alert, and Wild Rider.

'Nuff said!

It is indeed the little things in life that make a difference.

Case in point: managers of gas station convenience stores.

Everyday I stop by Speedway to get my morning coffee since it is easy to get in and out of on my way to work.

The previous manager, who disappeared 3 or so weeks ago from working there, always had the coffee brewing no matter what else was going on in the store. Hell, he'd tell a customer to wait a second while he went over and got other pots brewing if they were low. These days things aren't so good.

Today, out of 3 pots of regular coffee, 2 were empty and the other one only had about 30 oz. or so left.

I usually buy a 24 oz. cup so it I scraped the bottom of the barrel today and man, it sucks the balls.

I'd hazard to guess that 80% or more of the people that physically go into the Speedway actually do so to get coffee so not having coffee always brewing is a crime against nature.

I wish the old guy was back. Not that I'd wish Speedway Convenience Store management even on my enemies but at least he was on the coffee ball!

Children Allegedly Make Sex Tape (Cowtown 10)

Five different Springfield kids have been arrested, accused of taping themselves having sex.

The sex tape was discovered just two days ago when detectives say one of the teens involved showed it to her little brother. He told his mother and she went to the sheriff.

The four girls and one boy, who range in age from 12 to 17, include one sixth grader, three high school sophomores and a senior.

The tape is marked "porno" on the side and Lieutenant Russel Garman says it is a true description.

The important lesson for life here is that you should 1) never videotape or photograph anything that would remotely incriminate you in something that you don't want known, and 2) it probably isn't wise to put a written label on the tape with "porno" on it. Hell, in college if it was a tape like that I put a red dot sticker on it. Everyone in the dorms who wanted to borrow them asked for the "red dots". It was also easy to know which tapes were mine too. Most people never questioned why tapes had the red dots so they were on the down low.

Kids these days.

They are just so dumb.

Well, that or they are being raised by atheist liberal democrat parents. So they are going straight to the fiery pits of hell anyway so it shouldn't matter then.

So while I did work on the attic last night I actually made it worse than better. Hell, you can barely walk through the many piles of crap and trash bags right now. But that shouldn't necessarily be misconstrued as a bad thing.

While I have none of my typical phenomenal images that push the medium of photography to new heights, I will tell you that Z1, Z2, and Z3 (yes, my zebra danio names are creative) are doing well and have started the new aquarium off well.

My only concern right now is the that the hood light seems to give off a lot of heat and that, along with the heater itself, may make maintaining an exact 79 degrees impossible. So I lowered the thermostat a bit and hope that the 10 hours of light plus the heater will find a happy medium. And of course Ganesh is there to help out too.

Anyway, Cowtown is once again a dreary some-what chilly grey mess and it looks like it will remain so for the rest of the week. And of course I say to this... balls!!!

One of my coworkers gave me some hostas I've wanted for over 2 years and we'll have to find time to get them in later today or tomorrow regardless of this shitty weather. I think the big hosta in the back yard is too late along to break but I may just try anyway.

But the attic must get cleaned up. Man oh man I can barely walk through it and I banged my head on the ceiling big time this morning trying to navigate around a Brave Maximus box, several empty crates, and other shit.

I've pulled out some more shit from the closet that I hope to sell at the Victorian Village yard sale in June. There's a ton of very faggy Herb Ritz framed lithographs that I so badly want to get rid of and some assorted canine-related things from my youth.

By canine-related I mean I had these statues of dogs and such from when I was really little that decorated my bedroom. I've always had a hard time parting with these kinds of things because I think they were given to me by my great-grandmother but they have no intrinsic value to me. I just get leary about getting rid of them. Never been able to explain it really. So they sit in a box in the closet taking up space.

All possessions, no matter the shape, size, or cost, ultimately contribute to my inability to change. It sucks major balls and I wish I need to learn to part with material things.

I won't make my original May 1 deadline but I've been taking a new attitude to having 2 blogs and so forth.

I challenged myself to redesign both this blog and the more heavily cracked out blog as if they were part of a "brand" and therefore had to have some basic common denominators in terms of looking affiliated with each other and yet not the same.

I don't do any design whatsoever anymore. I'm the IT tech guy to make publishing happen. My days on the creative side are so long past that I don't even try to bog myself down with that anymore. But there's a part of me that hungers to understand CSS at a level that I sure as hell don't need to in my daily life. Hence, this is part of the reason for this self-design challenge. I frankly want to unlearn bad CSS habits and learn perhaps how someone would do it working on a team in a collaborative environment. I'll be better off for it and the few websites I do design and maintain for people will be better off too.

Anyway, my goal for this site is to sorta-kinda make it more accessible, code it cleaner if not better, carry over some elements from plastic crack addict that I have always felt worked successfully (to me at least), and clean up the databases by fixing the bad links and getting it all reimported in MYSQL (and stuff).

Of course, real life must intrude so I'm thinking maybe by June 1 I'll get this done.

But here's a first glimpse of what this site will probably distill to over the next month.

Feel free to tell me how horribly boring and "like so many other sites" it is. Of course pretty much all blogs look the same. Sucks don't it.

The other day I mentioned I was reading Marv Wolfman's novel Crisis on Infinite Earths. I finished it.

And now I really have mixed thoughts.

It was nice to revisit many characters that no longer exist in-continuity at DC Comics but at the same time the whole book was just a light fluff piece without any real substance at all and never really bothered to delve into the things it should, or perhaps I should say, could have.

Crisis on Infinite Earths the original series is all you really need to read. I almost feel as if this book was created to take $20 out of the pockets of people just like me who remember the 1985 series fondly but at the same time are stupid and will devour anything related to our person-specific pop-culture of our teen years.

If you are a DC Comics fan you should just borrow this from a geek loser who was stupid enough to pay for it.

On the whole, it is total fluff and just is not worth buying.

I'm sorry. But too much of any one thing is abomination. Even my attic is abomination.

Remember the days in 2003 when I only had about 50 Transformers and they all fit on one shelf in the corner of the old House of Love II?

I gots the Danio Mania. Uh-huh!