naladahc | tripping along the golden path

Ok. As of today I have more or less watched the following:

• Parts of 1965's "The Daleks' Master Plan"
• Parts of 1965's "The Crusade"
• 1975's "Pyramids of Mars"
• All of 1978's "The Key To Time"
• 1983's "The Five Doctors"
• 1982's "The Visitation"
• 1982's "Earthshock"
• 1988's "Rememberance of the Daleks"

My opinions so far?

• I definitely like the 1st, 4th, and 5th Doctors.
• K9, for all of his problems of canis ex machina, should always be in Doctor Who in some form. It is time for a K9 Mark IV.
• Tegan grates on my nerves. Ace however grates on my nerves even more.
• There are a ton of people who acted in Doctor Who that I've seen elsewhere. Admiral Ozzel and the original Jabba The Hutt to name a few.
• My do some of the Tom Baker episodes get way too "word-heavy". Out of the 9 hours or so of "The Key To Time" 20 minutes is actually pertinent to the whole key to time thing. That's a helluva lot of other crap going on that really isn't very pertinent to the story. Bad craziness. Except after 9 hours the ending is TOTALLY THE LAME!!!
• The pseudo-Pet Shop Boys-ish music in "Rememberance of the Daleks" sucks major balls.
• Just as I was starting to like Adric, I watch the epsiode in which he dies. (And getting eaten by a Tyrannasauras Rex is not pleasant!) Ironically, I had asked Giga "Does any of the companies ever die?" not more than 30 minutes earlier.
• I like a Davros-free Dalek continuity. The original non-Davros origin is more organic and I like it better.
• Surprisingly, I'm not burnt out on Doctor Who yet.

Yes. It has a special charm.

I never would have gotten into it myself but I'm sorta-kinda glad Giga did get me into it.

It also helps that I've been sick for several days and haven't really gotten out of bed.

Sickness + Feeling Shitty + DVD content = wasting time in bed.

Yay! My final room has been started. (Of course, I may still quickly do the basement stairwell.)

Watch the progress over the next 2 weeks or so.

Remember the words of the Borg Queen from Star Trek: First Contact...

Behold... your last lesbian wallpaper border's end!

Well. We all know that's what she meant to say to Data.

So. It is now 2006.

Can someone please tell me where the hell 2005 went? I mean seriously. Where the hell did it go?

It seems like I was just standing Ben J's front porch watching fireworks go off for New Year's Eve 2004. What the fuck? Ack!

While I don't make New Year's Resolutions, I do have some goals that do need to be accomplished in the first part of 2006.

January 2006

• Figure out what the hell to get The Cousin for his birthday since this is the last birthday he'll probably be happy admitting to. Just wait until 2007 C!
• Get the 2 rooms of the front bedroom finished by Friday, January 20th.
• Start working out, however brief, with a weigh trainer and shift my program towards a weight lifting/cardio combination.
• If possible, get down to 230 by January 27th.
• Get all non-comics related shit shorted and/or thrown away out of the Attic of Love™ closet.
• Figure out how to sort and prep comics to be sold and/or given away.
• Find Max Power some form of 36th birthday present that represents the fact that both he and I are now, truly, and officially, fucking old as hell.

• Get the basement stairwell quickly and cheaply fixed and redone by February 17th.
• Remember that the Fabulous Andrea™ will hit the three-five milestone and therefore requires extra special love even though she stopped aging at 22.
• If possible, get down to 215 by February 28th.
• Sell all non-show character Beast Wars figures.
• Sell the pile of shit that should have been sold from the Attic of Love™ in 2005.
• Try and have the comics out of the house by end of the month.

• If possible, get down to 200-205 by March 17th. Size 36 pants would be really mega balls cool too.
• Prepare for passing over the hump and begin squarely looking at that four-oh down the tunnel.
• If possible, repair wall mortar and drylock the laundry area of the basement by March 31.
• If possible, repair wall mortar and drylock/paint the room under the front porch by March 31.

• Meet with mortgage agent and bankers.
• Touch up paint in hallway and seal cracks that have appeared in living room.
• Maintain 200!!!

• Put the House of Love™ III on the market and hope for the best so I can get off this shithole block and into a quieter neighborhood.
• Find religion so that I can continually pray that I'll be able to come up with the monthly mortgage to a house in a non-retarded neighborhood with the insane housing prices and lovely Bush 2006 economy.

• Get to San Francisco and spend quality time with those I know and love and get to meet all the people I so badly want to meet.
• Commission Erik to shoot the photo for the dust jacket of my new books Transformers: Splintered, Knots Landing: More Than Meets The Eye, and Doctor Who: How many times do I have to tell you not to fuck with the Doctor?

See. Easy. Piece of cake!

And that's only the first half of the year!

Oh Mr. Smith. I so understand your pain.

Long time naladahc.com readers will no doubt remember Nala's 2003 Adventure In Anal Fissure Surgery.

Unfortunately, I seem to have failed to restore those entries to the blog when I changed hosts so I can spare you the gory details of my 2 weeks of recovery hell.

Like he says in the post... "Without good rectal health, you have nothing.".

Word!

And in other news, I really need to give serious consideration to forking over the cash for this tshirt.

I got an email from some service trying to make me buy a domain I had wanted months ago from them since it had expired.

Of course, I just ended up going to my GoDaddy account and registering plasticcrack.com instead much cheaper than they wanted.

Since I have so much content now at The World's Most Beloved Transformers Blog I'm just having it redirect.

And while at GoDaddy I also registered knotslandingmotors.com to redirect here. The glorious memories of that most famous car dealership and repair shop live on here at naladahc.com with every word I type.

Unfortunately, The Sumner Group was taken by a real firm called The Sumner Group. Hmmm. I wonder if Galveston Industries and Morikame are taken. Or maybe "laurareallyhatesrichard.com" would have worked.

Hah!

They apparently decided, without announcement, to do a live feed of the new Stern studio rehearsal.

This is some funny ass shit.

I'm glad I was flipping through channels.

So Giga's got most, if not all, of the nasty ass wallpaper border removed. This'll allow me to begin the nasty dusty wall scraping and plaster repairs of the ceiling, walls, and now some areas of the window frames.

With any luck I'll be caulking by Saturday.

Still undecided about the color for the walls. The trim will definitely be a bright satin/semi-gloss white and the ceiling of course will be a flat white.

Suggestions?

And for your enjoyment, video of some hardcore Giger/Wall Action.

Is Darby Conley outting Rob today?

Hmmm...

I do like Bucky in that hat though. That'd make a great 5" pvc statuette.

Ok.

I'm in publishing.

This you already know.

I spent my day working in IT making things look prettier than their creators intended. Or more often correcting an image because the creator was clueless about software use.

I've been doing this in some form, to some degree, since I was 17 years old.

That was like a hundred years ago.

But can someone please tell me how in 2006 a security hole can exist to "... open the door for a malformed WMF image to cause remote code execution and potentially allow for a full system compromise" ?!?!?!

We are talking WMF here.

We are talking about one of the shittiest file formats ever designed and implemented.

We are talking about a remnant of the late 80s here.

My god.

I really have been in this field too long.

Must... find... way... out...

Only 42 days remain until the release of the 9th Doctor's first season on DVD.

Forty-two days!!!

Arghhhhhh!!!

I really really really hate the fact that I've become addicted to another scifi series!!! I really really really hate the fact that I've become addicted to another scifi series that has practically 40+ years of continuities and story shit in mixed media!!!

Thankfully I basically have only Battlestar Galactica and now The Doctor to occupy my non-TF toy geekness. Most forms of Star Trek are now just best-left-in-the-past distant memories and there will never again exist decent TF fiction like Beast Wars and Beast Machines so I'm free on that front.

I could hate Giga about this. I really could. But hey. I managed to hold off for 8+ years on this.

Fucking geekdom.

Grrrr....

At least my Frank Herbert geekdom is in a very removed level from this craziness.

So.

Do you think I should use this photo for my book dust jackets?

I don't look like total ass in it.

Well.

Except the Polish bags under my eyes. But I've had those since I was 11 or so.

That's what happens when you have to sell your ass on the streets for drugs, food, and transformers at such a young tender age.

But I'm clean now and living right. Working hard. And loving life.

Clarett makes 1st appearance in court on robbery charges (Blade)

Man it must suck to have had such potential, even if it was at something like running and catching ball, and see it totally and utterly collapse.

As a college freshman, Mr. Clarett scored the winning, overtime touchdown in Ohio State's 2003 Fiesta Bowl national championship game over the University of Miami (Fla.). He then tried unsuccessfully to jump directly into the National Football League draft, a move blocked by the courts at so early a stage in his college career.

Amid allegations of special treatment and NCAA investigations, he never returned to the team or the school. He was eventually drafted last year by the Denver Broncos, but he was cut from the team without playing a regular season game.

Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel said Sunday he had talked with Mr. Clarett about a move to NFL Europe.

There's an NFL Europe???

---

I still find it vaguely creepy that I took communion for 3 years from this priest when I was a christian of the worshipper of cathol variety.

I mean communion is creepy enough let alone having a possible murdering priest's fingers near your mouth.

These days, if I'm going to have a priest's fingers in my mouth, I at least expect a bj or a Black Fire Convoy or something.

And then...

The border was gone!

*poof*

The spackling, plastering, sanding, and caulking can begin.

But not tonight.

The Giga's got a migraine so I'd rather keep it quiet.

Perhaps I can convince him to watch another Doctor Who episode instead.

There's always room for more Doctor Who to be watched.

Ultrasparky over at Trusty Sidekicks made me realize what a slacker I've become in terms of use of proper typography when writing these days.

Yeah. I've devolved into a slacker on so many levels it is beginning to hurt.

I'd have to say that the there are 4 main factors that have contributed to my "improper use via non-caring attitude" to my typing these days:

• Instant Messaging (it began here)
• Shifting to the IT side of publishing instead of the creative/production side
• my blogging activity since the late 90s
• a constant increase in my life to "speed things along"

These 4 things have definitely combined into a major slackerness downhill slide.

It doesn't help that with content I tend to just write in a thought-by-thought fashion and don't really reread what I've written that often. I suppose I should write blog entries in a word processor and spell check more often too. I try and catch my grammar and logic mistakes but I know I'll be cursed with "form and from" mistakes haunting me the rest of my life. (I type the word "form" constantly at work when I write procedure guides.)

I should make a goal of 2006 to try and slow down and be more consciously aware of how I type, especially in content posted via HTML.

I'm a sinner when it comes to en-dash and em-dash usage. It probably wouldn't hurt for me to brush up on my typography skill set in a Unicode sense too. I designed this 30 page document for work that has all of the Unicode and other mathematical and chemical typography symbols for all major fonts used in scientific publishing and I've come to rely on "looking it up on the fly" alt-codes for Windows instead of really memorizing and using common characters.

Hmmm. Perhaps I should just do all my future 2006 entries as long sentences that run on and on without any real punctuation like ancient Greek and throw in a good old pilcrow (¶) every now and then. You don't see many ¶ characters on blogs.

That would make me cooler wouldn't it? And it would help naladahc.com readers prevent dementia since they would have to use their brains to analyze what I'm trying to say and get across in my entries. And if having to analyze my writing prevents early onset dementia that's just the kind of positive thing I think I should do for you all.

Holy shit!

I forgot somehow along the way this week that Battlestar Galactica returns to the airwaves tomorrow.

This is a good thing.

You know that I've totally descended into madness when I actually am considering buying one, if not all, of these cookie jars.

Me!

Me who wants the kitchen counter spartan and bare all the time!

Ugh!

I am such the lame!

Yes. Today is that great holiday that I still occasionally mark on my calendar in memory of my busia Martha.

It is Six Kings Day!

Now to the rest of Poles, Americans, Polish-Americans, worshippers of Cathol, and pretty much the rest of the world today is called the Epiphany, a holiday that celebrates Mary finally being able to take the Christmas decorations down in the stable because the Magi arrived and left.

It was tradition for my busia to leave her tree and crap up until this date, January 6, because it was all a part of the "12 Days of Christmas" insanity.

But my busia was always confusing January 6 with the Ephiphany's 3 Magi/Wise-Men/Kings and hence, the birth of Six Kings Day! (She was a little confusing at times. What can ya do!)

I hope people don't think that tonight's Trivial Pursuit night is really about playing the game and eating. Hell no! You are all going to be packing up the geek tree and helping me sand and scrape the front bedroom.

And then, and only then, may you watch the new episode of BG!

In this corner, weighing in at what looks like about 130 lbs, Randal McCloy Jr, survivor of the coal mine accident.

In this corner, Ariel Sharon, stroke laden decaying Israeli Prime Minister.

The 24 Hour News Vermin didn't quite seem to know how to drop the Randal McCloy story in light of the Sharon drama that theoretically they can milk more crap out of.

It is ridiculous.

Things were ho-hum because of the holidays and then the News Vermin went all bad craziness over the collapse of a mine (that isn't all that rare of an occurence). The past few days media vermin frenzy, made even more insane by the misinformation about who died and who lived, was like watching vultures in the Sahara. Insane!

The whole mine incident will fade from the greater public consciousness by early next week. Unless of course Randal McCloy ends up not surviving this. Then it'll be until a week from today.

But Ariel Sharon is a tough fighter and has claimed the brunt of the news vermin coverage now. Thankfully he had to be readmitted to surgery again which boosted his rating even higher.

If he dies, it'll be fantastic for CNN, MSNBC, the main 3, and even the poopy asshole of news channels FOX. We'll get all kinds of drama over who will or won't attend the funeral, if there is a state one, since so many in the Middle East hate Israel.

The news vermin can haul out their special commentators. Larry King can have on celebrities talking about the state of affairs in the Middle East after Sharon's death. It'll be classic television folks!

The miners? Who? Oh. That was so last week!

Hell. Good old Pat Robertson might even offer some words of wisdom with a depth of insight rarely seen these days in these compassionate conservative christian times..

Huh? Oh. Great. He seems to already have chimed in.

And as usual, Mr. Robertson says best what we all fear to say. He's a good decent human. Please send him some money.

So.

I've been thinking.

Do you think that Jack Abramoff will meet a mysterious death over the course of the next few weeks?

There's a whole lotta vermin out there that have a few too many hidden illegal and/or unethical dealings with Mr. A. that I'm sure don't want them to come to the surface of public knowledge.

And then of course there's the Dalek problem to consider.

On this day in 1994 West Coast Mob Boss Tanya Harding gave Order 66, in which her capos and soldiers set out to destroy the patellar regions of arch-rival East Coast Mobster Nancy Kerrigan.

However, Godmother Harding had not counted on the Daleks ability to travel through time and alter events that would turn her into a boxer.

Ok. The 2006 Death Pool is up.

I'm still waiting on lists from several of you. They need to be in by Sunday night. And no retroactively putting Lou Rawls on it!!!

Newcomers Frowny McBeard and Pongo's Owner have joined.

Now I just have to find that prize that goes to Max Power for winning the 2005 pool.

Dear The Nation magazine.

I would like to personally thank you for turning the minor curiosity of my wanting to see a few issues of a liberal magazine into a bullshit corporate whoring crapfest.

Thank you oh so much for selling my name and address out to every goddamn fucking democrat and liberal organization that exists. Like I would fucking give money to a politician, any politician, outside of a region I live in!!!

No doubt if I'd tried the same thing with The National Review or The Weekly Standard I'd now be getting the EXACT SHAME SHIT but for Republicans candidates and conservative causes!!!

Whores out to turn tricks wherever and whenever you can! That's all any you are.

It is very cold in Cowtown today. The Attic of Love is really freezing. The front bedroom, where I had hoped to work for a couple of hours today, is also freezing.

Grrr...

We had some people over some Trivial Pursuit last night, some food, and the start of the new season of Battlestar Galactica.

I really need to rewatch it before commenting. Suffice to say it once again had some great moments and by the end I was, as always, bitching I'd have to wait a week for the next episode. Next week's show is most definitely the money shot folks!

I think this may be the greatest action figure ever created in the history of Homo sapiens sapiens.

This is an icon of all icons.

Ok. So I got some paperwork and stuff done this afternoon but did slack a bit after we came back from running around.

I did end up buying a Cybertron Galvatron today and with some additional minicons I bought I've entered a completely loser unclean level of 1535 transformers. Ack!

However, I did surprisingly get most of the initial spackling and plastering of the walls done this evening. I really should have worked on the ceiling but the old Nala knees... they ain't what they used to be. And aspirin wasn't helping today.

So tomorrow the plaster should be fully dried and I'll do an entire sanding off the entire room. I'm fairly certain I'll need to work on the wall where the bed goes (not the window one) more and probably do another layer of plaster and spackly some of these strange indentations.

I don't understand how some of these strange dents in the wall have been made. Some are dented lines and such. Really bad crazy and all that.

Oh. Picked out some colors too. There's a few off white/light almond colors we're batting around. No doubt it'll be one of those. I'm hoping for a lighter one. It'll make painting the ceiling/wall area so much easier.

That's enough for tonight.

Time to go watch me some Auton badness in Spearhead from Space, the 3rd Doctor's first appearance.

Well. The last of the plastering is done and I think I'm going to leave it as-is.

I've done two rounds of sanding and then some spot plaster smoothing and the two major area (1 and 2) should now blend smoothly into the walls.

Man oh man is the dust everywhere. So very very nasty. Especially the layers of it in my hair. And the plaster is so ingrained into my fingers. Ack!

Tomorrow after work will be the final sanding of the entire remaining walls and the ceiling areas I patched. Perhaps in the early evening I can get Giga to assist me with washing to entire room down of dust and lightly washing the walls. I may even be able to get the remaining areas caulked and the windows/floors taped off.

It is entirely possible that by Tuesday evening I could be priming the whole room! Woot!!!

Ok. Time to shower and I think I'll go watch me yet another Doctor story or listen to some commentary on some Doctor.

And Howard's back on the air, er... satellite tomorrow!!! Yay!!!

I had another weird zone-out/black out moment while I was in the shower this morning after working out. Lasted somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes maybe. I don't know for certain since it was a bit before I was fully cognizent and could look at the clock.

I haven't had one of these in over a year and a half or so.

The last time I had one of these moments is what left me getting diagnosed with sleep apnea. Of course, I haven't slept with the sleep apnea machine since I lost so much weight. I have felt horribly tired as of the last 2 weeks or so.

I probably should get an appointment with the doctor again to see if my blood is ok and non-vampiric and stuff.

Ugh! I hate this.

So I hooked up my Sirius replay unit up at work this morning to listen to the new Stern show and lo and behold, they've got George Takei on this week as the first official announcer.

I cannot believe that they got George Takei doing this all week!!! (Actually, he'll be live this week but will be the "voice" of the show from now on.)

I really thought that he had to be angry and pissed at them for the 2 years worth of sound bytes they constantly ran from his audio books. Especially the crank calls they made with his voice and the classic time when someone posed as "Ricardo Montalban" and called him asking him where to pick up hookers.

This puts George Takei higher on my list than I ever thought possible.

In other news, Futurama may be coming back on the air much like Family Guy returned. Seems like FOX finally realizes, due to DVD sales and syndication ratings, that the show, if on a consistent time and not constantly interrupted by

Some of you might be interested.

I came across the teaser trailer for the new Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles that takes place after the final episode of Robotech: The New Generation. It negates the continuity that I've come to accept from the novelizations but of course, dealing with negated continuity, drastic story changes, and rebooting and retelling ad naseum is now part and parcel to reading/watching pretty much all comics and science fiction related materials.

Harmony Gold even did a small video that was used as a salute to the U.N.'s 60th anniversary.

The animation is pretty good. I'm quite impressed with the redesigns of Scott Barnard and Marlene/Ariel but the new voices were off a bit. Of course, it has been 20+ years since the original voices were recorded so new ones are expected.

I like the fact that you can see the 3 mountainous buttes where the remains of the SDF-1, SDF-1, and Khyron's battlecruiser are entombed since the end of the Macross Saga.

Alas, protoculture matrix go boom!

And there were no Daleks involved.

Ugh! The servers where my databases are hosted is having problems.

That could explain why many people who've posted comments and such are getting duplicates made and why the rapture has not happened yet.

No doubt the problem is Dalek infestation. It usually is.

The last few days have been very weird for my mentally.

Two nights ago I had a very long dream (or so it seemed long) that I actually remembered upon waking. While not disturbing, the ramifications of this dream have left me with this strange gaping emotional void that I haven't been able to get my thoughts around.

In this dream I was in Glass City with my infant son.

My son was relatively blond compared to me, but I remember saying that he got his blond hair from his mother.

Now there wasn't any mother in the dream. She was completely absent and never once mentioned.

It was just me and my son named Krzysztof.

I remember having to correct family who would call him Christopher and I was constantly calling hi Krzyst (pronounced like Krischt sorta). I always wanted to name my second son Krzysztof so I found it funny that this name ended up in the dream as my only son's name.

What was strange was that towards the end, I remember being at my aunt's but my son not being there and then I had to go pick him up somewhere or something since the Cousin or someone was watching him. I don't really remember.

I awoke to this supremely dark disturbing emotional void that I haven't been able to shake the past few days.

Are my dreams telling me something that I need to seriously look at?

Hmmmm...

I don't want to. I really don't.

But I have to open the door, put on my balls nasty dirty clothes, and start this bad ass sanding.

It isn't the sanding I hate so much as the fact that I have yet to find a pair of goggles that don't fog up on me. I just get 2 minutes in and then I can't see at all and have to resort to touch. Balls! Nasty! Sucks!

And the dust is going to be way bad on this one. But it all has to get done so we can wash the room down good tomorrow and maybe, just maybe, I can get a coat of primer on.

So tonight I got into my Plaster Retard costume. What do you think.

Tomorrow will involve just a bit of spot sanding and then I'll wash the entire room down and try to get as much dust off the walls, ceiling, and windows as possible.

Hopefully I can finish the caulking tomorrow before bedtime. If that's a positive then I'll be priming on Wednesday!

Yay for me!!!

Ok. I've got some Green Death to finish.

Goodbye Jo Grant! I really liked you and will miss you lots. You didn't suck and you had the best groovy late 60s outfits!!!

Happy
29th
Birthday
Cousin

Just wait until next year.

Can I be allowed to ritually slaughter a few sheep and goats to the great ancient pastoral dieties so that they may continue to interfere in the childish antics and magic of the retarded predmoninant hominid species on this planet.

Please!

So Giga managed to find The Unquiet Dead and Aliens of London and get working VCDs of them.

I soooooooooo love the 9th Doctor!!! Why oh why couldn't have Christopher Eccleston produced more episodes than Colin Baker's 6th Doctor? Eccleston's Doctor is so great.

Hopefully we'll have World War Three and The Empty Child for tonight. Some of the visuals for The Empty Child, especially the little boy in the huge gas mask, creep me out. Why? I don't know. They just do. Hell. That is part of what Wesley Dodds was obviously going for in the late 30s.

This new series is exactly what I needed. It has a modern story telling pace and the visual effects are pretty good.

I noticed that the sound is really fantastic. There are background sounds that are inserted into the episodes that are done so perfectly that I've had to mute the audio because I thought it was coming from outside or downstairs. I'm surprised that audio sounds so good due to the hurdles of getting the stuff to VCD.

There's something inherently satisfying about working on the front bedroom, becoming a nasty dirty dusty plastery mess, cleaning up, and then crawling into bed with the new Doctor. (Is "plastery" a word? If not, it is now.)

If you never got into Doctor Who and feel the 40 years of collective television, novel, and audio drama are a barrier to entry... you must at least try the new series. Really. I swear. It rocks the balls!!! And up until a few weeks ago I pretty much hated Doctor Who!!!

Ok. It is official.

I am so far removed from being my former Macintosh-self that I'm now oblivious to things I used to take for granted.

I didn't even realize there was a Macworld going on.

It is actually kind of funny that the "Mac" part is still there considering how little impact even Macintosh has in the scheme of Apple's future anymore.

Sure there will be Macs as long as Apple can sell them to someone. But the writing is on the wall in terms of what Apple wants their bread and butter products to be. And it is definitely not heavily Macintosh-focused anymore. I see less and less of Macs in publishing even.

It is such a different publishing world from the one I started working in back in 1989 in college.

This is the greatest video of girls ever shot!!!

If there was more of this action going on in wrestling I would have went to a helluva lot more of The Cousin's tournaments back 100 years or so ago.

[via]

Riot damage dooms a north-end mainstay (Toledo Blade)

The bar at Central Avenue and Mulberry Street was badly damaged when a planned neo-Nazi march sparked a rampage that caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Mr. Ratajski was hustled out by Mr. Rybczynski, just before the bar, which was also his home, was broken into and set on fire.

Jim & Lou's Bar was a few blocks from my parents house.

When I was a kid it was just one of many... and I do mean many... small corner bars that peppered central and peripheral Lagrainka. I've noticed that bars such as this tend to be part and parcel to older once ethnic and/or blue collar neighborhoods. A place to get away from both work and "your wife and kids" seems to have been heavily a part of the Polish male laborer mentality for a good part of the 20th century in Glass City.

Honestly, I'm shocked that the bar still remained open as long as it did. So many of these places are gone in Lagrainka. They are either boarded up or have been torn down and exist as weed-filled empty lot. Very very sad. Even for bars and taverns and the lot.

What I found most unusual about the articles was...

Jimmy Carter visited when he ran for president in 1975. Mr. Carter sent a condolence letter to Mr. Ratajski after the fire.

"Rosalynn and I are concerned about your recent misfortune," Mr. Carter wrote in the brief note.

Wow. I was 5 during Carter's visit but I do seem to have some vague memory from the news or something about that.

I am most definitely impressed that Carter remembered this place. That is impressive. That man never ceases to amaze me.

Scipio is right. It is too easy.

Comics.

Subconsciously subverting Americans for over 70 years.

Toledo, OH.

Known for such things as a local war, a glorious past as Glass Capital of the World (aka Glass City), the JEEP, Jamie Farr, Katie Holmes, Gloria Steinem, Tony Packo's, a kick-ass zoo, a recent racial riot, and now...

A child prostitution/sex trade ring!!!

There's no place like home. There's no place like home.

Bad craziness. That's all I gotta say.

So I finally was able to see Dalek.

Sad. Very sad.

Yet. For the first time in 40 years I was finally able to see the Daleks as a threat. Or should I say a Dalek.

It is truly amazing what a budget and digital video special effects can achieve today.

Yay!

Not sure if the comment was from the real Michael Chain or not but I approved it anyway.

Not sure who Michael Chain is? Here's my post from last year.

And while Mr. Palochi's comment on Mr. Chain's hair in that photo, all I have to say is many of us have had the hair.

Michael Chain's Red Alert is still da bomb! And while I'm not a huge fan of the character, you gotta admit Powerglide is far more memorable due to his voice acting in the role than a lot of characters in the old TF show.

No. I didn't get bored and tag my own bedroom with grafitti. It is an elastic crack spray.

It only has to last a few months until the house is sold. Hopefully it will last a good deal longer.

You may recall my getting furious a few months back at seeing all of the cracks reappear in the living room after all of the work I did in July.

I spent hours spackling and sanding those cracks out only to have the house shift again and all of them reappeared as if I had done nothing. Super mega wasted time!

So this elastic spray goes on over the crack. It gets primed and painted as normal but because it is somewhat flexible it will allow the house to shift and the walls and ceiling to move but hopefully the crack will not break through or be noticeable again.

Let's hope not.

Remember me blacking out at the gym Monday?

Well I spent the morning having a stress test done, various EKGs, and blood work run. Yay me.

I got hooked up to a ton of probes and had to run the treadmill. Thankfully the last 9 months of working out every morning made this possible. Primus knows how messed up I'd have been if I was taking this test last April.

But I was doing fine for 12 minutes and then the incline got too steep and my knee just couldn't handle it. They got the data they needed but I feel kind of sad that I couldn't last the whole 15 minutes. If it wouldn't have been for the damn incline I'd have made it to my ususal 50-60 minutes.

Normally in the mornings I work out on the treadmill or elliptical for an hour or so but I vary the incline and speed in 10 minute sections. Typically I go about 5 minutes "normal" and then 10 minutes at a much higher incline and about 5.5 miles/hour or so which is enough to get my heart rate up to about 150-170 or so after sustaining it. I do this about 5-6 times which basically puts me at about 4 to 4.5 miles jogged.

Not being able to adjust and reduce the incline made me feel like I'd accomplished nothing over the past few months. Kinda sucked.

The blood part sucked too since the first stab didn't get anything. There's nothing worse than having the phlebotomist work that damn needle in your arm and not get anywhere. She eventually had to start again but finally got the 4 vials she needed.

So. I wait.

I don't expect much in terms of any of this showing anything. The last time I went in for tests put me down the path to diagnosing I had sleep apnea but there was no real determination why I had the "zone out" moments before anyway.

So it'll take about a week I guess. Why so long I have absofuckinglutely no idea.

According to Scipio, apparently it is Delurking Week in the blogosphere.

Now if I can sort this out right in my logs, I get about 200 unique hits per day or so here, most of them coming from my blogger profile that I use to comment on those sites and google itself. A lot of people from the Allspark end up here too.

So. In honor of Delurking Week, if you tend to lurk here, please leave a comment just to let me know you live.

I'm pretty much a lurker on a lot of Transform fan blogs and such so I'm planning to do the same.

Then again, this site is so devoid of remotely interesting content or opinion that most of those hits probably quickly click off.

Perhaps I need to say fuck more or talk about sex more.

(Oh. And if you ended up here because you did a net search for the name of a gay pr0n twink, please go to his site instead. His name is the #1 search term that results in this site because of a blog comment and naladahc.com is not a gay site nor does it have gay content. Well. Maybe if it is geek related I suppose. You be mess'n up my search logs! Thanks!)

I think it is funny how Howard Stern's move to satellite radio ended up, at least where I work, "outing" many people who normally would probably not admit to listening to Stern.

Now every morning the little Sirius antennas pop up on people's cubicles.

And what I love most of all is the number of 50+ year old women who are Stern fans! That still boggles my mind.

But I'll say this, those women also tend to be the least uptight here. Perhaps there's a distinct correlation there that needs further research.

I suppose you could say that today is Black Thursday.

I recently left a meeting in which I was informed that a lot of my coworkers are being let go.

My position is safe.

For now.

Kelmeister's Brother emailed some good news just now.

Sci-Fi Channel has picked up the new Doctor Who series and will begin airing it later this year.

Woot!!! Woot!!!

Believe me. I already know that Max Power, Evebird, and a few others can easily get addicted to this.

This makes Black Thursday slightly less depressing.

Spacecraft bringing comet dust back to Earth (CNN)

If all goes as planned, Stardust will release the 100-lb. capsule carrying the samples at 1 a.m. ET on Sunday.

So does that mean by Monday morning there will be space plagues and mutating monsters rampaging across the face of this planet?

I mean. You know it is going to happen.

Help me finish this joke:

-- A priest, a rabbi, and a Dalek walk into a bar...

A very interesting X-Men Beast Maquette, [via]

Um...

I think I prefer my Hank McCoy's clothed.

Ok. It being St. Knut's Day I think we can take down the xmas tree now.

I totally blew Six Kings Day.

Well. Not fellated six kings or anything like that.

Um.

No.

I so have the worst bags under my eyes.

I've had them since I was a teen and they make me look even older than I am and I hate it.

I think I should have surgery on them.

Of course, if I did I know I'd end up like Joslyn Wildenstein. And then I'd have to kill myself.

Ok. In my evil plan to get Evebird and Max Power addicted to the new Doctor Who, soon to be on Sci-Fi Channel, I'll let you bask in the awesomeness that is the new Cybermen.

You will love the new Cybermen.

The new Cybermen will hate you.

It is so perfect.

Love them. Yes.

I managed to get a full coat of paint on the ceiling and walls last night.

The walls are being done in a color called "Heavy Cream" which has turned out better than I thought it would. It is so much nicer than that cool bluish-white that was all over the room. I really didn't realize how much I hated that until I had this new color up.

I still need to get a second coat on the walls tonight and ceiling touch up. It may even be possible to get the door done too.

Tomorrow will be the trim since I'll need to lightly tape off the walls and baseboard.

It looks a hundred times better than before!!!

So Giga and I just got back from a model train show.

Now model trains aren't our geek thing at all but in support of what I have now officially christened Max Power's "rolling crack" habit we tagged along. Kelmeister, Kelmeister's Husband, and Kelmeister's Husband's Youngest Brother came too.

It was definitely a very different kind of geek crowd than I'm used to. Mostly it seemed to be a lot of 35+ year olds and surprisingly a lot of parents with children.

What was shocking was this model train show was probably 7 times larger than Botcon 2005 was.

I didn't realize that there was such a huge geekdom for model trains but it does make sense that it would have a much larger exposure than a niche thing like Transformers would.

And there's a major convergence of geekness here. Lego geeking crosses with train geeking and model geeking and this and that. Totally crazy.

And I ended up eating out today and had to much food and feel guilty. Grrr.

Ok. I must go paint. Gotta get 2nd coats up tonight so I can do the trim and door tomorrow.

So the second coat of paint is on the walls and I've got two coats of bright ultra white on the baseboards, "arch", and window frames.

I should be able to get the third (and hopefully final) coat done tomorrow and get the door done too.

As you can see I had to just lay it on the floor.

I decided today to do the smaller room (where the closets are) in a color called "Spiced Vinegar" which is on the same swatch as the cream but a bit darker. I think it'll contrast well without being too dark.

I gotta find time to get to the gym tomorrow too.

Sooooo need to work out. I'm back down to my pre-Christmas holiday weight but I feel bloated.

Oh. And my Doctor called today and the test results were all negative for anything abnormal. I really need to get a new mask for my CPAP and see if I can get decent sleep again. That may be the problem.

Ok. I have the day off.

I slept in 2 extra hours or so. I've laid in bed for an additional 2 watching Mrs. Brown and now I'm freezing my nala-ass off in the attic.

I really should get my craptastic paint rags on and start that next coat on the trim.

So as of last night I've managed to finally see all but one of the new Doctor Who episodes. Yup. I only have "Christmas Invasion" to go and I'll be all ready to watch them again in butchered commercial format on Sacrifice Channel in March.

As a newbie to The Doctor going on 4 weeks or so of Who addiction I can truthfully say I loved them all but I loved some more than others.

*spoilers*

Before...

After...

Now doesn't that look a thousand times better.

Ack! I so hated that fucking border!!!

Tomorrow I move the small room into this one and start that room. While there's less wall and ceiling there's a helluva lot more complex trim and 5 doors!!!

And in disturbing change of events this photo of Evebird is now my most viewed Flickr photo.

*sigh*

I knew these shirts would come in handy one day.

Somedays I wish I was in charge of the bathing suits.

It would be a helluva lot more fun than being in charge of the computers.

Computers suck ass.

Then again, from a certain point of view, bathing suits suck ass too I suppose.

In lieu of anything actually interesting to write about I'll blog more about Doctor Who. It is proving to be excellent filler for my empty life.

Last night, after I finished up the the main bedroom work, we watched "The Christmas Invasion" and all I can say is... I'm most definitely going to like the Tenth Doctor!

"On the flip side, Frank Miller has turned into the week-old meatball sandwich you left in the fridge but have convinced yourself will still be good after a few minutes in the microwave, then spend the next two days regretting it in a variety of stomach-content-expelling ways."

Loss of $1.3B causes Dana stock slide - Shares fall 21%; analyst calls results 'terrible' (Toledo Blade)

Oh Glass City. It hurts to see the end times approaching.

It really does.

Mayor sets deadlines for Marina District - Developer ordered to sign 1st anchor (Toledo Blade)

Um... you all are trying to put "big" retail in downtown Toledo?

What the fuck!?!?!

Do any of you remember that Toledo had big retail... a whole lot of it... downtown until the 1970s?

Am I the only ex-Toledoan who remembers Lasalle's, Lion Store, Tiedkes downtown?

Am I the only ex-Toledoan who remembers that miserable retail failure of the 1980s called Portside?

Consumerism is not the answer Glass City! Spending money does not equal making money in Toledo.

Do I have to quit my Cowtown job, sell the House of Love, and move to Toledo to start my life anew to try and save the armpit of Northwest Ohio???

Do I???

Because let me tell you... I'm actually fucking considering it!!!

Need to know all 871 people (and their order) for succession to the British throne?

Well then... here it is!

Poor Princess Marie Louise of Schaumburg-Lippe down there at 871st. You don't have a chance in hell do you.

And Prince William, when he finally ascends the throne, will be the first British monarch descended from Charles II, as well as the first descended from Charles I since the death of Queen Anne in 1714.

Atta boy!

So I got the majority of items out of the small room in the front bedroom. Even got the blinds down.

Giga will need to sort some miscellaneous stuff and help me move my dresser and I can then begin the 4-5 day process of getting this room redone.

It'll be a bit darker than the main bedroom and I'm even thinking of doing the doors in the "heavy cream" possibly. I'll mock up something in Photoshop first I think.

New hardware on the closet doors and new blinds will go up followed by a nice rug, lamp, and Giga's morris chair from the dining room. This'll look a thousand times better than before.

And then... onto the basement stairwell I think.

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 65% Hulk 60% Catwoman 45% Spider-Man 45% Robin 45% Batman 45% Superman 40% The Flash 40% Supergirl 35% Wonder Woman 25% Iron Man 25%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Hal Jordan??? Frigg'n Hal Jordan???

At least let me have the illusion that I'm Alan Scott. At least he's still cooler than shit.

(And his daughter is hot too!)

Did you know that today is the 70th anniversary of the "jockey" brief?

Yup.

Now personally I abandoned the tighty whities in the 90s for boxer-briefs. I've never been a fan of just plain boxers due to the fact I could never get used to my massive practically god-like genitalia flopping all around down there.

Ok. That was probably too much information for 7:30 in the morning.

On second thought. That was probably too much information period.

But you should feel comfortable in knowing that combining boxer shorts and briefs into boxer briefs is not considered "abomination" in my life. I think there's even a passage or two in Deuteronomy about it. And 3000 year old text is always 100% accurate.

Been there. Done that. Got the degrees to prove it.

Infinite Patience: The Blog of Alexander Luthor [via Photon Torpedoes]

Nothing against Superboy, but sometimes I wish I had “accidentally” closed the portal a few minutes too early and shut him back with the anti-matter and dying Flash and craziness.

Hah!

Man, I haven’t seen a good movie in a long time. The BATMAN flick is out in a few days. I bet it’s gonna suck, too. Michael Keaton? Yeah, right. And I bet Superboy’s going to want to go with me… and hold hands or something. Jeez, why didn’t I bring Power Girl with me instead?

Indeed.

I tell ya, now I know why the Luthors have wanted to kill Super people for all these years. It isn’t because we’re evil or whatever… it’s because they’re such pains in the ass. Little Clark can’t get over the fact that New Superboy wears glasses. “How does he see?” he asks and I’m like, “uh, don’t you have x-ray fucking vision, Einstein?” and then he storms off to “talk to the Legion of Super Heroes” about this travesty. Yeah, right – don’t you think I’d know if he was getting transmission signals from Braniac 5 or someone into this universe? I AM this universe. And I’m a Luthor – I know from Braniacs. He ain’t talking to Braniac. He’s just crying into his invulnerable sniffle cape. Pussy.

Earth-Prime Superboy was always a total pussy.

Did you hear that rumble outside your window? That's the apocalypse coming.

No. It isn't because the government wants all the info on your pr0n searching.

No. It isn't because the government wants to destroy your rights in the name of "terror protection" even though it doesn't seem necessary to raise terror alert levels when the supposed source of terrorism announces threats of attack.

Hell. It isn't even because France has a nuke hardon all of a sudden.

Why then?

Because Nala fit into size 38 pants last night!!!

The apocalypse will indeed come in the form of size 38 pants on Nala's ass!

Don't say I didn't warn you.

And imagine what will happen if size 36 would ever be possible?

Ugh!

I am getting hit with a massive amount of referral spam this week with most of it coming from bbs/forum sites or myspace accounts.

Grrrr....

I hate computing.

Who knew that K9 guest starred in Sex in the City?

I do now.

So I spent this morning and most of the afternoon working on the small room.

The walls are scraped, spackled, and sanded. The ceiling is patched as best as I can. And I've caulked all the holes and gaps.

The ceiling cracks also have the elastic crack cover too.

Tomorrow... the priming and start of the painting!

Now to go relax and watch me some 1964 Doctor goodness in the form of The Aztecs.

So this morning started with breakfast with Mr. and Mrs. B. and continued with the priming, running around looking for light fixtures, and then painting of the ceiling and walls (1st coat).

The B's definitely got me thinking about going back to grad school. Every time I get into conversations of the non-geek variety I end up realizing that I'd have my PhD for probably 5 or 6 years now if I hadn't been a loser slacker and got lost into the Dark Ages of my life.

I need to go back and get my Masters and at least work on my PhD. It is possible. Sure I'd get my PhD in my early 40s but at least I'd be happy that I'd done it.

I'll have to see what I can do at 35 and how I could afford to go to school and work fulltime. (G'bye Transformers. That's for sure!)

Ok. Back on lame topic.

So I got the room primed and then ran around trying desperately to find light fixtures. That isn't going to be easy. Both wall mounts are different lengths and I really can't justify spending a lot of money on good fixtures if I'm going to put the house up for sale in a few months. But something's gotta happen since I don't want to put that ugly one up again.

I ended up spilling a whole bucket of water into the bedroom today when I fell off the step ladder. That sucked major balls. Yup! Major ballage!

But the ceiling is done and I've got a solid coat of the "Spiced Vinegar" up. At first I didn't like it when it went on since it look really sea foamy green but as it dried it darked a lot and has browned up a bit. I'll live with it. Makes the room look totally different which if of course the goal.

Tomorrow will be the ceiling/wall border and a 2nd coat on the walls. Tuesday I'll tape the walls off and get 2 coats on on the trim and baseboards. Wednesday I'll get the first coat on the doors. Thursdays I'll get the 2nd coat on the doors and a 3rd coat on the trim. Friday I'll rehang the doors and scrub the floor and windows down and get the new blinds hung.

And then I'll finally be done with the majority of the 2nd floor. I still need to do touch up in the bedroom and hallways but other than that I'm done.

I'll have to see what really needs to be done to the basement stairwell and the basement. There will definitely be some plaster and cement/mortar work that has to happen.

Oh. And Chris R. stopped by this evening on his way back to the lesser Cowlands.

Hmmm. And I tried to watch the extant 2nd episode of the 2nd Doctor in The Moonbase last night and all I can say is that it was one of the most awful boring things I've ever tried to watch. My god this was 60s sci-fi pacing at the boringest! I actually fell asleep while trying to watch it!!!

That is all.

I found this over at Photon Torpedoes and had to share with the nalaverse.

I think that for 2006 I need to really prioritize my life.

I'm well on my way to meeting many of the January goals I set for myself earlier this month for 2005 which is a good thing.

Unfortunately, the only 2 I can check off are the Cousin's bday gift and Max Power's bday gift, though Max's is just geeky I'm afraid.

I obviously didn't make the January 20th goal to have the rooms done but I should be done by the 28th.

I'm pretty sure I need to finish that before considering getting the trainer since I can't give up any more time right now until the 2nd floor is done. And I guess you could say that I don't have a chance in hell of losing 8 lbs within the next 4 days so I won't be hitting 230 either (though thankfully the downward momentum is happening again).

And the comics? Ugh. That's not going to happen anytime soon and I should probably plan on that for March or April before the house goes up for sale in May.

But I think I can still meet a lof of these goals just not in the time frame I set for myself.

And while I didn't make any goals for after May since I really need to be house-focused I can say now that I need to find a way to keep a decent paying job and find someway to get back into an academic program.

I'll have to get some remedial stuff under my belt since there's no way in hell I could just go back into it, especially trying to play my best game, with 12 years out of experience. But I have to find some way to do it. I have to!

Nickelodeon, Kellogg Targets of Lawsuit (SFgate) [via]

Advocacy groups and parents are suing the Nickelodeon TV network and cereal maker Kellogg Co. in an effort to stop junk food marketing to kids.

Wakefield, Mass., mother Sherri Carlson said she tries her best to get her three kids to eat healthy foods.

"But then they turn on Nickelodeon and see all those enticing junk-food ads," Carlson said. "Adding insult to injury, we enter the grocery store and see our beloved Nick characters plastered on all those junky snacks and cereals."

The slacker parent. Oh how I love them.

And honestly. I think a lot of the people born between 1970 and 1985 are or are going to be the worst parents.

A food industry-backed group defended the companies, saying the lawsuit assumes that parents can't turn off televisions, have no control over the food they buy and can't make their kids go outside to play.

That would mean they would have to be parents now wouldn't they. It is easier being a slacker.

Well I've once again proven the marketing lie that the $6 specialty roller is about as good to use as the $1.00 bargain roller.

In the hopes of hiding some of the 80+ years of flaws in the plaster that I did not fix I bought an expensive name brand $8 roller intended to leave a medium texture of paint on the wall. Not enough to be heavy but to create a surface where light would reflect more randomly and hence reduce shadows from any raised areas.

I tell you... the damn roller was about as clean and lint free as the $1.00 bargain ones I use for priming and other basic quick painting. In fact, I'd say by the lint embedded into the paint on the walls for the 2nd coat that the $6 roller might even be worse than I've experienced in all the rooms in the house I've used the cheaper use once/throw away rollers.

Grrrr....

In other news, the uneveness of the seam between the wall and the ceiling is not making a pretty border. The tool I use to paint the top and not get paint on the ceiling isn't working well due to the various bumps and crevises. Even having caulked the seam smooth didn't seem to help.

This is going to add a helluva lot of frustration to this room.

I should have just stuck with the "heavy cream" color. It really is barely noticeable against the ceiling so you can't tell if it isn't totally even or not without detailed inspection.

Grrrrr....

My weird moment of the day?

Filling out the February mortgage statement and check and writing the return address as a place I haven't lived since I left Glass City 17 years ago.

Is this an omen of some kind?

Damn weird shit moments.

Wow! Because Infinity Broadcasting won't let Howard Stern use any of the old material on the new Sirius show they've been re-recording popular bits, songs, and sound effects and stuff.

Yesterday, Janis Ian came on to the The Wrap-Up Show that follows Stern and re-recorded "At Seventeen". This time she recorded the real version of the song and not the Jerry Sienfeld parody she did previously.

Back in the 70s my mother listened to Janis Ian a lot and I distinctly remember the vinyl and album cover to "Between the Lines" often being played in the house.

What's amazing is her voice has held up so well. Age hasn't diminished the smooth quality she had when delivering lyrics while playing guitar, a feat that I can't say many other singer-songwriters have been able to take into their 50s.

I'm hoping that James Taylor and Cyndi Lauper come on and re-record their stuff.

Those were some of the best live acoustic recordings I've ever heard.

Oy Kolendy!

Talk about a bizarre kind of episode!

Last night I started watching the "The Mind Robber" story of the Second Doctor from 1968. Insane craziness.

This is so far the most un-Doctor Whoish story I've watched and with 1968 being the hey-day of the psychedelic movement this story fits in totally with the timeframe.

The TARDIS gets shunted to a different universe where thought is pretty much the end all of being and nothing is as it seems. It really is like fiction being born into reality as one thinks about something.

I've still got 3 parts to go but there was a great moment where the TARDIS rips apart and only the control panel remains, spinning in a void with Zoe and Jaime clining to it. Cool stuff there.

I need to try and watch another part after I paint tonight. I'll be working in the ceiling/wall border and trying to get the trim and baseboard taped off.

Who'da thunk it that the Fourth Doctor's scarf has its own website.

However, the Ninth Doctor's ear's probably have their own too.

I've been pretty quiet about last week's Battlestar Galactica episode "Epiphanies" but that's because the series may have just jumped the shark for me.

Yes. You read that right.

BG has jumped the shark.

Or perhaps I should more properly say that BG has destroyed its own integrity by taking the cheezy path.

(spoilers ahead)

Scipio keeps coming up with the best in Silver Age comicdom and today's adventure of Green Arrow and Speedy doesn't fail to amaze and astound.

The Absorbascon. Bringing joy to my life every day.

Alas, Speedy would go on to become a heroin junkie in the early 70s (like he wasn't destined for that with his name) and Green Arrow would go on to bang Black Canary for several decades, dying briefly in the 90s, only to be resurrected to bang Blank Canary again!

But plastic cat arrows with whistling butt shafts haven't been seen in over 35+ years.

A pity really. I'd love one that looked like this one.

Futurama is dead. Long live Futurama!!!

Woot!!!

Holy shit!!!

Disney buys Pixar for $7.4 billion (SFGate)

There goes innovation and quality story-telling in animation.

Not only hasn't Disney got "it" in terms of what works in modern animation, their penchange for rape and pillaging via marketing is well known. Hell. They whore out practically all of their properties. It is sick.

Steve Jobs will join the Disney board and since he basically owns Pixar will make major dollars off this. Jobs' holdings alone worth more than $3.7 billion or so.

Pixar President Ed Catmull will become president of the new Pixar and Disney animation studios. John Lasseter, a Disney alumnus who is credited with being the driving force behind Pixar's blockbusters, will become chief creative officer of the animation studios. Lasseter also will be the principal creative adviser at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he will have input in designing attractions for Disney theme parks.

I suppose that is the only saving grace I see here.

John Lasseter is one of the major reasons Pixar exists and was so successful.

If there's anyone that can put something creative into the Disney wasteland it may just be John Lasseter.

Of course. That is if he's allowed to be creative and not be interfered with.

Imagine if Sally Forth used the phrase “shoebox full of dead rats” when she deployed her sly look. That feature would be improved thereby.

Pssst... Mr. Palochi?

Come back to us from whatever dimension or parallel universe the super villains threw you into.

We miss you.

I don't know why but my favorite quote of the day comes from an email exhange regarding this article that Evebird sent Giga and I.

Giga, in response to the comment "I'd expect the whole series for that price!" on that site complaining about the DVDs costing $589 (for 50+ hours of story and tons and tons of awesome incidental stuff), replied:

Keep expecting, jerk. The day you get 27+ years of tv for $600, you let me know.

And what's funny is that I don't know why I think his response is funny.

I am such the lame today.

What to know sorta-kinda what I do for a living?

I'm a guy that deals with this shit everyday.

Not so much the authenticy of scientific image data but making it look pretty.

Yes. Indeedy. That's what I'm responsible for.

Oh how I need go get my PhD.

*sigh*

Any research I do and submit for publication will have perfect graphics. That I can guarantee!

Evebird made a comment yesterday about 2005 being the "year of the new Nala" and to some degree he's correct.

But in thinking about where I've been, what I am now, and where I'm going, I realized really that I'm pretty much in the beginning phase of Nala 3.0.

Yup. Definitely the third iteration of me over the course of the past 35 years.

Nala 1.0 pretty much existed from 1970 to 1992 or so.

Nala 2.0 was more or less 1992 to 2005 with a good chunk of that a crazed period of mental illness, the Dark Ages, and the recovery from those earlier periods that began in 1997 or so.

Nala 3.0 is definitely on now with a much different underlying attitude brewing in everything. Surprisingly, the smack in the face a few weeks back from Black Thursday has helped me to begin the process of figuring out what Nala 3.0 should be about.

I haven't talked about it much, only casually mentioning it to confidants and not even really bringing it up to Giga even.

But I think I have to finish grad school. I think I need, in some deep personal way, dig back into 1992 and pick up where I left off.

I haven't figured out how I'm going to do this at all. I have barely come to terms with the realization that this is what I must do.

If I had a TARDIS this would be so much easier.

Hopefully the All-Being Master of Time, Space, and Dimension will be on my side with this era of my life.

Pope warns about loveless sex (SeattlePi)

Pope Benedict XVI warned in his first encyclical Wednesday that sex without unconditional love risked turning men and women into merchandise.

In the 71-page document "God is Love," Benedict explored the relationship between the erotic love between man and woman, referred to by the term "eros," and the Greek word for the unconditional, self-giving love, "agape" (pronounced AH-gah-pay).

Once again I've got to say that a celibate demon believer cannot have anything remotely accurate to say on the topic of erotic love between any two people.

If this new pontificate wants to impress me they are gonna have to start banning donations and the "passing of the plate" around at church.

Take away the "preying on people" revenue stream, which essentially all organized religion amounts to, and maybe that'll be a step in the right direction for me to believe the church can be saved.

Max Power's Y-chromosome donator has surgery today and I wish him well and hope that everything goes well.

I was thinking.

When David Tennant decides to stop being the Tenth Doctor the series should go in a different direction slightly.

Patrick Stewart would make a great Eleventh Doctor!

I have never been a huge fan of Spider-Man. He just never cut it for me.

Like most Marvel characters, his rogue's gallery consists of some of the lamest bad guys this side of DC's Hector Hammond and even tops the Flash's rogue's for most boring collection of bad guys (Shade excluded>.

Spider-Man just has never ever been interesting to me.

The Spectacular Spider-Ham however...

I have no idea why Peter Porker is swinging into action as Spider-Ham on this variant edition of some current storyline but S-H brings back some pleasant early 80s memories.

I get a lot of emails from people around the world wondering how I manage to keep naladahc.com and plasticcrack.com full of such wonderful content and how I maintain such a wonderful outlook on life.

Well. I have to tell you. It isn't easy.

And I should probably come clean and let you know that naladahc.com and plasticcrack.com aren't one man operations.

Nope. There's an entire staff behind the scenes working countless hours to bring you this wonderful content day in and day out.

It think it is finally time for a tour of naladahc.com.

Today was Day 17 on the bedroom and I've run into problems here and there.

Yesterday I got most of the tape down by hurt my fingers from picking so much. It isn't releasing from some areas and I forgot what a pain in the ass it is if you get too much of the semi-gloss white on it and it gets buried in multiple layers. Grrr.

But I've got a 1st coat on the small doors, and a bunch more tape removed, and an attempt has been made to prettify the wall/ceiling seam.

So I'm covered in paint and I'm trying to clean up when the phone rings and upon answering it I'm informed that "I can't believe they killed him" or something to the affect is announced.

Yes. It is Max Power calling because of the shocking opening to Battlestar Galactica which I wasn't even watching.

Hah!

You know what a grand group of geeks we are when a moment in a tv show deserves a phone call 180 miles away!

I did however clean up and rewind the TIVO so as to watch what he was talking about. So much for the new commander of the Battlestar Pegasus. Actually, on the whole, it was a pretty good episode and while I still haven't forgiven them for last week I didn't think it was necessary to allude to child slave/sex rings or whatever the hell they were implying with the Wilson Fisk wannabe.

Oh. And Father Power is doing well after surgery and all only time will tell how it all plays out.

Found me a used $5 copy of "The Tomb of the Cybermen", a Second Doctor story from 1967 today.

While we'll no doubt eventually get the DVD I figured for $5 we could at least cheaply watch it and then buy the DVD whenever.

I've been watching it this evening (and yeah, Giga will probably be mad) but overall it is kind of slow.

It has some of those lame early Cybermen of course. One can only hope that the new Cyberman kick their cyberasses all around. I don't think it'll be too much of a problem.

Also ran into Doug G. today who I haven't seen in like 70 years or so.

I really should get in on one of Doug and Kelmeister's Husband's board game nights. That is if I can stay awake later than 9pm.

So between last night and mega early morning (with a break for some fine Saturday morning club sandwich action) the walls in the small room are looking pretty good.

I'm attributing the problems with the tape not releasing and the various issues I've experience here to the fact that it is pretty much my own fault.

Since it was such a small room, and since I really didn't want to have to remove all the clothes from the closet and try and contain the dust I didn't really prep this like I have the other rooms. I usually wash everything, then scrape all large specks and other embedded crap off the walls, spackle and plaster all gouges and cracks both from sight and by feeling the walls, power sand everything down including the trim, wash everything, hand sand the walls again and respackle and smooth things out as necessary, wash again, prime, and then paint.

This time since I really didn't want so much dust I didn't do the fairly critical spackle and sanding prep job I normally do and it shows. There's areas of the walls that look like I never bothered to blend the plaster in and then there's all kinds of weird wall knicks and crap that I just left. I feel pretty guily about it but quite frankly, why should I?

I've done more doing this room half-ass than the previous owners did doing it at all.

I wish I had just bought a house in Clintonville like I should have and all this work could be done right and I'd be stripping beautiful wood molding than just painting it over to make it look better. *sigh*

Anyway, the smaller doors have all had their 2nd coat of paint on (1 more just to be sure) and I still need to clean the paint of their hinges.

I've got a fan going so that semi-gloss should dry pretty fast and I can get the 3rd and final coat done and also do all the touch up for the trim and baseboards.

Hopefully I can start on the big closet door tomorrow, get its hinges boiled clean (I'll post pics) and just maybe get that room fully back in order by Monday night. I still need to buy new blinds though.

I'm also thinking of just saving money and lightly sanding and spray painting white the old light fixture I hate. Of course I can live with it and entirely white may work since it'll contrast well against the wall. I'll give some thought all day to this since I will have to do some spray painting of the furnace grate soon anyway.

It is most definitely getting closed to finished.

I placed the smaller closet doors back in and it looks pretty decent (well... from afar at least).

It looks a helluva lot better than it did (below).

Day 19 brings finished doors that are rehung, new knobs, depainted hinges, new blinds, a new outlet, a new light fixture, and a scrubbed floor.

Tomorrow will bring a floor buffing, some final touch up to the walls, some touch up to the trim, and a floor waxing.

Hopefully on Tuesday we can move the chest into the back bedroom, I can get some touch up done in the bigger room, and the closets can be cleaned and maybe Giga can thin his closet out bit. Hopefully I can get the big room floors stained and maybe, just maybe I'll be able to move the bed back in on Wednesday.

Almost there!

Yay! The wax should be dry by the time I get downstairs!!!

Giga was home today and cleaned out the one closet. Tons of shit to be heavding to the Goodwill soon. Some fat man will be very happy.

Hopefully I can get the other room done tonight.

I've been having very strange dreams lately.

Two nights ago I won $300 million dollars in a lottery and was given a $100 million first installment check. I quickly bought my parents a new single story 3 bedroom condo, paid off the House of Love and the New Beetle, and had $199.5 million to give away.

I awoke abruptly at 4am and was never able to fall back asleep since I felt that my life was meaningless because all I would have to do was get up, go to the gym, work, and then paint. There was some lingering weirdness about the feeling in the dream that I didn't have to slave at a job and could spend this money on improving myself mentally and experience-wise. Knowing it was a dream made reality harse yesterday morning.

And this morning I dreamt that it was 1991 again and I was in Anthropology 603.01 back in school and was driving myself insane because I could not tell a hyoid from about 20 other bond fragments.

To this day I feel guilt over getting this wrong in my test. I also confused an ankle malleolus with a general bone process and I got that wrong.

Why has this guilt lingered in my subconscious all these years? Why has it manifest on a morning in which I forgot to turn the alarm back on, 30 minutes late in getting up, and overall had my morning ruined?

*sigh*

Gonna be a messed up week.

But at least all I have to do is wax the floor and do some wall and trim touchup in the big bedroom tonight and that room should be done. Well. I need to clean, sand and paint the furnace grate too.

On this day in 1606 Guy Fawkes was executed for attempting, poorly, to blow up the British Pariliament building. This event is celebrated on November 5 as Guy Fawkes Day.

This has absolutely no bearing on a Polish-American living in the Cowlands.

So the last coat of wax went on the floor and the walls and trim have been touched up. Other than sanding and repainting the furnace grate (above) and eventually finding a new light fixture for the nipple of love on the wall I'm done.

It isn't the best. It isn't the worse. But it is a breath of freshness to a stale cold nasty-ass room.

Tomorrow I've vacuum the nasty cheap carpet that goes under the bed to protect the floor and then, with Giga's help, start moving furniture back in.

And it only took me 21 days!

I still need to find some frames and art for the walls and some affordable throw rugs and runners to protect the rest of the floor.

Oh. And Giga managed to fill up 2 huge garbage bags of clothes to add to my 2 bags so we've got quite the Goodwill load downstairs. There's no doubt more that can be added later this week. Woot!

Yes kids. Overall my main work on the livable floors of the House of Love#8482; has more or less come to an end. I've got a tiny bit of repainting to do in the 2nd floor hallway and some minor work in the bathroom and I'll do that all in April.

February's project is the one that has scared me since the day I bought the venerable House of Love™. Yup. I'll be doing basic repairs on the basement stairwell and trying to do some cleanup and mortar repair work on the wall along the stairs.

I've got plenty of reading and research to do on this repair work.

I don't plan on spending a lot of money on it.

The goal for February is to see if I can repair and repaint the stairwell and then deal with the wall directly down the stairs. I want to make it clean, as waterproof as possible, and more or less pleasant to look at from the top of the stairs.

I may try to resurface the stairs as well. That ancient linoleum needs a little work.