NTodd Storms the Castle

Please check out the excellent blog by my good friend NTodd. He's been in our capitol for the past few days trying to get arrested for being right about things. Complete w/blurry pictures!

Onward Pagan Warriors!

There was an amusing commentary on CNN's website yesterday by Roland Martin on "putting the Christ back in Christmas." It's tripe, but it pleased me greatly to read the peanut gallery's comments: about half or more of them went on about how the Christians co-opted the Pagans' wintry celebrations in the first place. Of course this is representative more of computer users that happen to browse CNN and bother posting in such places, rather than our nation, "but... still."

"I'm not ashamed to tell people who I am with Merry Christmas. I will not stop saying it even if you throw me in jail." - a proud CNN reader fighting the good fight in the War on Christmas

Hot'n'Heavy GOP-on-GOP Action

"It's another example of the administration's failure to treat global warming with the seriousness that it actually demands." - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Ahnold's probably my favorite Republican these days. Read about him suing the federal government here!

Good Doggie.

R moved out the other day, taking her cats and dog with her. Lexi here was the dog I've loved most in life (I'm a cat person). I think I liked her so much because she was such a cat stuck in a dog's body.

Kitschy Kitchen

For years I've been thinking... "I should clean out our cutlery drawer someday." That day came. Yesterday I unearthed everything and washed it. For pictures, check out my new photo album at http://picasaweb.google.com/phobrek/Kitschy

The tally is:
15 forks (no two of which alike)
a large serving spoon and fork
38 spoons (I did find THREE of one type)
a straining server spoon
4 wooden spoons
2 large Chinese soup spoons
2 ladles
a pasta ladle
20 knives
2 cleavers
5 carving knives
8 bread knives
a cake knife
a cheese cleaver
17 steak knives (in a vegetarian household)
3 fillet knives
a nice pair of chopsticks
10 sets of disposable chopsticks
2 plastic spatulas
2 rubber spatulas
a metal bbq spatula
a set of bbq skewers
large bbq tongs
2 sets of tongs
3 set of measuring spoons/cups
4 can openers
a whisk
a huge egg beater
a peeler
a garlic press
a vegetable grid cutter
a wine bottle opener
a tea ball
2 tea straws
several extra long straws
a metal rolling pin
a potato masher
a cheese grater
2 pizza cutters
kitschen scissors
2 rubber jar grips
and a paintbrush.

"Now THAT was a shopping experience." - The Bots

(This entry is actually two days old.)

I just returned from That's Entertainment (thatse.com), my favorite store in like, the world, which is New England's largest comic store. It sells a myriad of other things geek-related. Anyway, by using credit (for comics I'd traded in), a holiday coupon, and an employee buddy discounting some old D&D figs (for the uninitiated: diminutive metal figurines one paints and uses in playing Dungeons & Dragons, and other related games), I got a shiteload of merchandise for cheap. All in all, I gots:

1. three new funnybooks (Incredible Hulk, Mighty Avengers, and my favorite, Captain America)
2. a new X-Factor hardcover
3. NINE blister packs of figs

:for only $30 cash. Fuck yeah. Geekasm. I love a bargain.

I walked through the cold snowiness, but had to because I needed to deposit rent $ in the bank across the street from That'sE. I wasn't cold, except for my neck, which made me think that, since I was sick, I should have worn a scarf. But, I then realized that since I already had a sore throat and coughing nastiness, well, it didn't really matter, right?

Eulogy for Spot

I recently had to fill in my friend JennyLisa about my previous kitty, Spot. I did so w/these words, elsewhere:

Poor little sweet Spot never returned one day. I stalked the neighborhood for a number of days, did the whole poster thing, but nothing. I'm hoping that he got lost and someone took him in, rather than getting run over. Such is the risk of having an outdoor kitty.

I really miss the guy, he was such a riot. I like to imagine him traveling around the world: dining fine dining in Paris, prowling castle ruins in England, investigating Berlin's catacombs, finding secret passages (yay D'n'D!) in Egyptian pyramids, warning children away from IEDs in Iraq, carrying medical supplies to inaccessible areas in Malawi, searching for woolly mammoths in Russia, fighting for workers' rights in China, hunting giant rats in Indonesia, going on a vision quest with the Kiwis, guest-illustrating a manga graphic novel in Tokyo, climbing to the edge of volcanoes in Hawaii, advising Chavez in Venezuela, leading Mexicans across the border, trying his hand at goalie in Canada, and maybe, just maybe, visiting me before he makes a full frontal assault on the White House.

In any event, to me, Spot is a martyr in the struggle for fun and the absurd.

BTW - anyone that likes to look at pictures of precious little kittens can do so in my new photo album, yawp.

Cats'n'Dogs

So, two days ago, one of my housemates very suddenly moved out. She (R) and J (I feel reluctant to name other people in my journal, for whatever reason) finally broke up at one o'clock that morning. She'll be missed, but, I guess this was a long time coming (though it came as a surprise to me, because I was never quite familiar w/the state of their relationship).

Unfortunately, she's also taking her dog and (three) cats. Oddly, her first two cats seemed never too friendly with me, whereas usually cats and I love one another. The third cat, a rescued stray, was absolutely adorable, and I'll really miss that one. Also, the dog was my favorite dog ever (I'm not much of a dog person, otherwise). The dog, Lexi (I guess the anonymity habit doesn't carry over to animals), was kind of ridiculous and mentally defective. When she heard the first rumblings of a storm approaching, she would hyperventilate and hide in the bathtub or under my desk (she wasn't a small dog, btw, making this clumsy accommodation particularly amusing). With the cats, she would occasionally remember that she's a dog, and that she's supposed to dislike and chase them, so every once in a while she'd growl and maybe even woof at one, totally at random. Oh, and she liked to help people watch TV or movies, so whenever we turned on our A/V devices, she'd trot in and lie on the couch.

Now I'm thinking of getting a cat, but, I'm not the most responsible person and have difficulty even taking care of myself, let alone others. Meh.

Bible Humper

I love my Bible. It's beautifully printed, designed, illustrated, and the pages are even edge w/gold leaf! But the reason I love it is because every once in a while, I think to lift it up and see if there's anything that I've previously stuck there w/the intent to flatten it. This is by far the biggest and heaviest book I own! I just now found my once-warped copy of The Incredible Hulk #109 under there, and now it's nice and flat. I must have put it under there a couple of months ago. I love my Bible!

Re-boot #23

Otay,

My favorite webbed curmudgeon and college buddy NTodd just sent me an email suggesting that when one has a blog, there's some kind of expectation for the blogger to occasionally write something in it. So I decided to try it again.

For the uninitiated that somehow work their way here, I'm a 38 year old layabout with a medical condition that leaves me a bit of a zombie. Like most zombies, I will die if you shoot me in the head, so, I ask that you don't. Ha, ha, ha. Anyway, I live in a nice house in Worcester, Massachusetts, with housemates consisting of a couple of great friends and my brother (also a great friend). I'm a bleeding-heart liberal near-vegan atheist. I live off the government (screw you, taxpayer!) and manage a handful of apartments (two of which make up the second floor of my nice house).

Hopefully, I'll maintain this blog. Or, I'll post here a couple of times and then abandon the whole thing for another 3-6 months.