Archive for 2009

Argh. It snowed last night. And now I get to drive to work. Argh.

Update, after 7PM: it turns out the snow wasn’t a problem at all. The streets in town were a little slushy, but I didn’t have any trouble getting to work. Once I was able to knock off the solid shell of rock-candy-hard ice that had formed on my car during the night — which meant I was a half hour late to work. Note to self: purchase an ice-scraper for the car. Fortunately my friend happened to have one, but I’ll need my own next time.

Anyway, the champagne is cooling in the fridge, and the steak dinner has been eaten. Happy New Year, kids.

Anyone who can become convinced by their “religion” to plant explosives in their underwear with the express purpose of setting them off in that same underwear does not belong to a normal, mainstream religion, but to a dangerous cult. My wish for the new year is that I no longer have to hear, after every single Muslim mad bomber “incident,” that we must rush about making sure no Muslims who aren’t currently engaging in terrorism (and heck, maybe the ones who are currently engaging in terrorism, as long as they aren’t involved in the incident in focus) get their feelings hurt. While I’m at it I think I’ll wish for a silver unicorn and a big check for a million dollars.

Time Lords.

That is all.

If I took a drink for every time someone in an episode of the new Doctor Who (I mean the entire new series starting with “Rose” with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor) said “the Whole Of” (something, usually “Creation” — yes, with capitals), I would long since have to have been put on the list for a liver transplant. I can only imagine what it is like to, say, go on a dinner date with the show’s current executive producer and head writer, Russell T. Davies:

“What would you like, Rusty?”

“I will have the Whole of the Pizza!”

“Um… that’ll be pepperoni, then.”

“The WHOLE of the Pepperoni!”

“Right…”

He’s like a gay Brian Blessed.

Anyway, I’ve been babbling on matters Who here and over here for Deep Spoilers (The WHOLE Of The Spoilers! Oh stop it!). And trying to watch videos on my computer, which has decided not to play videos anymore without big lags. Sigh. I really need a RAM upgrade for the desktop. And then I want to totally wipe the hard drive and reinstall a fresh copy of Windows XP Home. And… so anyway, how was your Boxing Day?

Merry Christmas!

Nothing profound to say here, just hoping everyone is having a happy Christmas. I’m here in the Land of Gloom waiting for the icy rains, so I’ll be safe and warm indoors with my coffee and my internet and my cat. Laters!

Added: oops, I forgot! I’d like to thank everyone who donated to my Paypal these past few months.

Update: haha LOL!

Aaah, I know I should write a post, but I’ve just been exhausted for one reason or another. Maybe it’s just the getting used to getting up early every morning and going to a job — though it’s only part time, they can only afford me for four hours per day, and it’s only at $9.00 an hour. But at least it’s every (week) day, for a few weeks at least.

Another thing that is probably tiring me out is the snow, though I my friend drove me to work today and yesterday, because we weren’t sure I could cope (and there is still some ice around my car neither of us feel like dealing with for now). But I think I’ll be driving myself tomorrow, because most of the major roadways have been cleared. But there’s a huge amount of snow everywhere. The stuff just fascinates me. I have to restrain myself from grabbing handfuls and stuffing it in my mouth (especially as it’s gotten rather dirty at least around the edges). And what surprises me is I haven’t been that cold. True, it’s mostly been in the 30s during the day, but I thought I’d be in bone-chilling misery, yet I just layer up a bit extra and wear my coat with its liner in and make sure I have socks on and I’m good to go. My Walmart-bought Dr Scholls are holding up well, but I’ll bet they’ll be looking pretty ragged come spring. Well they will have to do, as I can’t afford to buy any snowboots or other fancy gear of that sort. Anyway, my new joke now is that I’m going to wish for a million dollars, because I wished for some snow for Christmas and look what I got. (Yes! I’m to blame! Fear my powers over life, death, and the weather! Bwahahahaahaha!)

Anyway, over here I’ve linked to a video some guy who lives I think in Charlottesville, which is about 35 miles from here on the other side of the mountains. But it looks just like this here in the valley. I also took a bunch of quick photos with the cheap camera that takes lousy photos so I’ll go through them and get some up one of these days. Before the snow melts, anyway.

My little desktop weather thing is informing me it’s 9 degrees Fahrenheit outside at this time, which is 9:30 AM. Eee. However, the sun is out. But I don’t think any of this snow is going anywhere.

(Pictures coming up — I’ll be using the cheap camera, since the batteries in my nice camera are dead.

Update, 6:37 PM: well, I never got around to taking pictures, but there are plenty of Snowmageddon photos all over the internet so I’m sure you’ll find some. Instead I spent some time helping my friend to half dig out his car, and then a couple of guys came along and finished the job and dug out my car as well. The street is piled with snow, but there were trucks with plows and a guy with a snow blower moving the white stuff (well, rapidly turning grey and brown stuff) around. It didn’t seem all that cold to me but then I was doing some physical activity, and also I layered well up. One of these days I need to buy some tights and thermal underwear, though. And maybe some snow boots, though my leather work shoes with the nonslip soles seem to be holding up.

In other news, I updated the blog software to Wordpress 2.9. Woo. Life is such a pageant!

It’s still coming down! I’ll take pictures tomorrow if I can — my camera battery is dying. My friend and I went down the block to the theater to see their production of A Christmas Carol so I got to wade in the snowdrifts. On my way back, I went to the lump of snow that I thought was my car and uncovered one of the sideview mirrors, just to see if I could, but tomorrow I’m sure it will be covered back up again. I don’t think I’ll be driving anywhere for a while. Well, I wanted to see snow, didn’t I? Frankly, I blame this big winter storm on the Copenhagen “Climate Change” debacle, or as I’m going to call it now, “Snowpenhagen,” because as everyone probably knows by now Obama and his entourage had to rush home early from the shindig or else he’d have been stranded across the ocean while the blizzard inundated DC. Darn, we were almost rid of him, at least for a few extra days.

Gah. I am still recovering from driving home from work (about twelve miles) through the snow. Am I reassured that everyone else in this state seems to be as bad at driving in snow as I am? No, I am not. *Twitch*

In my Tumblr list I came upon a link to this TIME Magazine photo article, histrionically titled “The 10 Worst Things About The Worst Decade Ever.” I kid you not. Prompted by the kneejerk emotionalism of most of the replies I decided to look at it. I was not exactly “hit in the heart” or devastated or anything like that, because here is what events TIME chose to use to represent why the 2000’s are in their eyes the “worst decade ever!”

1. The 2000 Election fuss, illustrated with some guy peering at a ballot card through a microscope. I know, I know, I clutched my pearls…
2. The September 11, 2001 attack on our country by treacherous and evil Muslim terrorists. Yeah — number two, behind hanging chad guy.
3. We invaded Afghanistan. Oh noes! We should have sent a sternly worded letter instead.
4. We invaded Iraq. Oh noes! Now we don’t have that nice Saddam Hussein around to accuse Republicans of palling around with anymore! And he was so accommodating to the media, too, unlike the US military.
5. The tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Yes, that sucked… but somehow TIME manages to make it sound like it wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the US dragging everything down.
6. Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans, which city is supposedly “so integral to America’s self-image.” Yeah, what would we do without cheap plastic beads, “show us your tits!”, drunken hordes of college students, the most hideous crack neighborhoods I have ever seen (and I grew up in Miami, famous for the, er, “quality” of its crack neighborhoods), and zydeco music? Well, they do have some nice restaurants, I’ll grant them that.
7. The market melted down, which meant some people who were living beyond their means now aren’t. I know, it’s like my gut just twisted in compassion or something, ya know?
8. Bernie Madoff gets sent to prison. Yeah, I would have thought the imprisonment of a crook who apparently bilked the entire Earth would be a good thing about the decade, but I don’t write for TIME.
9. The American auto industry collapses. Oh but wait — didn’t the auto industry actually get shored up by Federal money so that they will still get to put out their “ugly, low quality cars with shameful gas mileage” only now the American taxpayer is paying to keep those workers on the assembly lines (or more probably, with their feet up in the break room doing the crossword puzzle at $75.00 per hour because no one wants to buy GM cars even with President Hopey McChangester’s backing)? Well yeah, that does suck now that I think about it.
10. Guantanamo, where we treated those nice terrorists to “brutal” interrogation techniques like shouting and pouring water on their faces. It’s like America became Nazi Germany overnight!

I swear that’s the list. Visit the link to get the full treatment, because I can’t do it justice.

And here is what I said on Tumblr:

You know what? This list is just bullshit. For one thing, most of it was “Aw, a bunch of Americans lost some money!” Bernie fuckin’ Madoff goes to jail is one of the “worst things I’ ever”? OH WHAT BULLSHIT. And the Detroit car industry wasn’t, actually, allowed to fall apart but is instead shored up by government money, so what is TIME crying about there? Didn’t Obama save GM’s ass like they think government is supposed to do? And again with Katrina — “Waaah, our party town got wet, and mean old government” (they said “all levels of government” but you know they mean about EVIL GEORGE BOOOOSH and the Fed) “let babies and puppies drown!” What about the rest of the Gulf Coast that got pasted (by actually getting hit full on with a restrengthened hurricane, not brushed by a weakened Cat 3 and then brought down by a later collapse of the rotting, neglected levees) and have cleaned up with nary a complaint — or sobbing, overemotional tv coverage — from anyone? But Pass Christian didn’t have a Tipitina’s or a Cafe Du Monde, so screw ‘em.

Yeah, 9/11 sucked, but when it comes to “worst attacks ever” that devastated whole buildings and killed loads of people at once, has anyone at TIME heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (I’ve got the 1940s on the white courtesy phone, TIME; they’d like to have a word with you about this “worst decade ever” thing.) Nice of them to mention the tsunami, but it looks kind of… out of place when paired with the DEVASTATION caused by some people losing homes to foreclosure that they shouldn’t have bought in the first place because they couldn’t effing afford them… And I love how TIME has arbitrarily decided that invading Afghanistan and Iraq is part of the “worst” things of the decade. You know, I’m sure it was from the Osama Bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s viewpoint, but since when do we care what the enemy thinks? Oh, I forgot — NUANCE.

And then they have to go and put Guanatanamo in there. Oh oh oh! Guantanamo is the worst prison ever that prisoners of war have been kept in in the history of all mankind! Worse than Stalag 17! No — I’ve got it: worse than Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen combined! And making those nice Muslims that our mean, nasty soldiers scooped up just like so many innocent little bunny foofoos stay in our nasty, horrible, worse-than-anything-ever-in-the-universe prison at Guantanamo (which Obama still hasn’t closed! But that’s because Dick Cheney has one of his daughters in a secret dungeon prison!) is worse than the Bataan Death March!

Fuck you, TIME Magazine. I will never buy another of your rags (not that I’ve bought one in years), and if I still had my copies with the covers showing the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the time U2 was chosen best band in the galaxy or something, I’d rip them to shreds and send them to you with a copy of this post.

I usually use Tumblr for my silly Doctor Who natterings, but I couldn’t just let this nonsense pass. So you know, I guess a lot of people will unfollow me now. Oh, boo hoo! Fuck ‘em.