Okay... I'm totally confused... I am trying to figure out the correct order of the Hellraiser series: This is the best I can come up with -

Hellraiser
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth
Hellraiser (IV): Bloodline
Hellraiser (V): Inferno
Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker

Is that right? I know there's a Hellraiser VII: Deader and a Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld but haven't heard much about 'em other than Kari Wurher is in VII and Lance Henrikson is in VIII.
Of course, I am only really a huge fan of the first two. After Clive Barker left the series, they kinda went in a strange direction...
III was just a slasher flick to me...
IV was kinda cool, in that it explored the history (and future) of the creator of the puzzle box's "bloodline."
V was a very good story, but it didn't strike me as a Hellraiser story... Well, in all honesty, it was pretty cool in that it was a look at all the sufferring of one of the box solvers... I liked it, but I had trouble seeing it as a "Hellraiser movie."
VI was actually probably the best Hellraiser since the first two, honestly... It features the return of "Kirsty" (Ashley Laurence) from the first two movies, and has a pretty cool "mystery-thing" going on. It definitely floated my boat, as far as my "Hellraiser Jones" goes... I'm wondering if I can find the next two on DVD, anywhere (as I understand, they were shot back to back in Romania, and VIII was supposed to have been released in early October - I don't think there's been a theatrical Hellraiser release since IV)...
If anyone knows anything else about the latest two, let me know in my comments section, maybe? Thanks...

When I read the script for The Big Lebowski, I saw the part of Walter and I thought, "That part has Steve Buscemi written all over it." I could picture it so well in my mind... When I actually sat down and watched it, I saw his name on the DVD box and thought, "Hey! Whadya know!" Then I looked at the box a little close and saw John Goodman with a gun and then thought, "Oh, so John Goodman is gonna be Walter... so does that mean that Steve Buscemi is Donny?" Sure enough... I really wish that Steve Buscemi had been Walter and they would have gotten someone else to be Donny (because Donny's role was rather small, and I'm a pretty big Buscemi fan). As it turns out, Goodman was really good in the role... so I didn't feel that bad.
The only clip I had previously seen from the movie was when they go to spread Donny's ashes at the ocean (and instead, pretty much spread them all over the Dude)... a great scene... we talked about that at my dad's wake. I still have a big chunk of my dad's ashes. I often wonder if I should go up to Long's Peak (the local "fourteener") and let some of 'em fly. Eh. Maybe... I mean, he already resides in some plants at the Riviera in Vegas, amongst the sand in Windy Hill, South Carolina, with a tree that he, my brother and I planted on Mother's Day out front of the house in 1976, and in upstate New York... I may just hold on to what I have.

Enough, Already...


Okay, we found Saddam Hussein... He looked like shit... He's a bad man who deluded himself into thinking that what he was doing to his people was okay... He got caught in a hole under a building (you'd be scared, too, I bet)... I'm already tired of hearing about it on every channel, already... If all goes properly, he will have to answer for his actions. Let me know when that happens, and until then, mellow out on the "every story has to do with Saddam" thing on the news, already...

I have realized something over the last few weeks... I do not enjoy Salvador Dali's art, at all... If his symbolism meant anything remotely cognitive, maybe I would enjoy it (somewhat), but as it stands, it's just shit... Well, there is one piece I've always liked (Meditative Rose)... His realism was awesome, but he just got all twisted and fucked up on smack that he made no sense... like I said, it's just shit...

More Cellular Gripeage

I was in the mall today, looking for a CD (it was insanity, but that's besides the point)... As I was walking down the hallway, I came up on a group of three young men walking towards me... all talking on cellphones... My guess was that they were talking to each other on a three-way call, trying to appear cooler than they actually were. I stopped where I was and laughed. They saw me. I didn't care.
If you're gonna hang out with your friends, howsaboot actually hanging out with them?
The whole cellphone thing is really out of control around here.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually agreed with something the Rev. Jerry Falwell had to say on TV, this evening... but not for the same reasons...
The topic on Scarborough Country tonight was "PC Police Bans Christmas." There were these wackjobs on there spouting off about how Christmas was offensive to non-Christians and stuff... It was pretty insane. But what Jerry Falwell said was something to the effect of, "These people say that it's okay to sing Christmas carols as long as they don't mention Christ, which is a load of hooey..." (note:those for sure weren't his exact words) Now his reasoning for it being hooey was because this country is a country "under God" and all that... which I don't really care about... My reasoning behind the "hooey" was because politically correct people need to be slapped around a little because they are ridiculous... and becoming more ridiculous all the time. The whole idea that Christmas offends muslims or atheists and stuff like that... it's just silly. I can't even argue with people like that, because they're so ignorant.
So, if you're offended by Christmas, go to Iraq... or wherever. If I want to sing a Christmas carol, any Christmas carol I want, I'm gonna sing it, not because I am some kind of devout Christian (because I'm really not), but because I want to and I don't care what some politically correct jackass says...

A Little Too Ironic

This is Lucy:

Lucy is a sweety of a dog, but she has a little problem with chewing stuff up from time to time... so, her owner got some stuff from Petco to try to stop this little problem... the result:

I thought it was a bit of hilarious, beautiful irony. Her owner didn't think it was as funny as I did.

Okay... More Shit to Gripe About

There's a law in Ohio where you're not allowed to drive a car and talk on a cell phone unless you are using a hands-free device... So I come to Fort Collins, and everyone and their mothers talk on their cellphones and drive at the same time... apparently there is no such law in Colorado (but there's a law that says you can kill people on your front porch).
Dont get me wrong... I love my cellphone. It comes in quite handy at times, not to mention the WAP browser that helps me find my way around a rather big town that I've only lived in for two and a half months. But everywhere I turn, some little 18 year-old college girl has her cellphone glued to her ear with one hand, engaged in a deep conversation about eye liner or something, and trying to drive a car with the other. I've seen a few near-wrecks by these exact same people in recent days, and I think it's ridiculous. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not... at least every fourth car contains a driver on a cell phone... I say it's time that Colorado jump on the hands-free bandwagon. I mean, there's already public smoking bans everywhere, in an attempt to save lives, apparently, how about trying to save a few more?

There's actually a law here in Colorado called the "Make My Day" law...

...and it was used in a rather heinous way, earlier today...
Okay... The "Make My Day" law states that a person is allowed to use "any force necessary, including deadly force" if someone enters your house without your permission... There was a law similar to that in Ohio, but in order for "deadly force" to apply, you have to be reasonably certain that your life is in imminent danger, or else if you kill someone in your house, it's not justified... see?
So, guy #1 has a dog... it barks... Guy #2 lives next door... he doesn't like guy #1's dog, nor it's bark... so he shoots guy #1's dog... Guy #1 is enraged... Guy #1 grabs a stick from his yard (probably not his best move, but still, guy #2 just killed his dog) and goes to guy#2's house... Upon arriving on guy #2's front porch (not unlawfully entering the house, mind you), guy #2 shoots and kills guy #1... The DA of wherever this all took place refused to charge guy #2 for any crime, citing the "Make My Day" law...

This is the one of the most ridiculous, ludicrous things I have ever heard of in my life...

That South Park About Starbucks is Too True

When I first saw the South Park that was about Starbuck's trying to buy out Tweak's parent's coffee shop, I thought it was a hoot... they made it out like there was a Starbucks on every other corner out here...
Well, I come to find out by moving here that it's oh, so true... There is a Starbucks on every other corner here in Fort Collins (which isn't all that far away from South Park, actually - well, closer to North Park, but y'know...)... not to mention that Starbucks is now the coffeeshop that inhabits the Barnes & Noble bookstore... I swear, one popped up overnight inside a Wells Fargo building... there's probably a dozen of them just on the main drag (College Avenue), alone... fuckin' crazy...
Makes me glad I don't drink coffee...

Y'know, I always liked the first Crow movie, even with some of the discrepencies with the original James O'Barr comics... I thought the story was incredibly good, the movie artwork was done really well, and Brandon Lee was a great pick for the role... However... What in the name of all that is sacred was that Crow 2 shit??? Could they at least picked a guy that spoke some semblance of english? Okay, Iggy Pop was in it... but that couldn't keep the movie from sucking royally... Decent premise, poor execution... There was a Crow 3 made, I think, too... straight to video... I can't imagine how much it sucks, and I'm not about to find out... I remember trying to get into the TV series (Stairway to Heaven), too, but it sucked on equal par with this crappy thing on my TV... Thank Maynard it's time for South Park...

"The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians are an affront to
Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church's founder, Henry
VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon, his wife Anne Boleyn, his wife Jane
Seymour, his wife Anne of Cleves, his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife
Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on
traditional Christian marriage."


hahahahahahahaha

Congrats

David Letterman became the father of a 9 pound 11 ounce baby boy on Monday...

The baby is named Harry Joseph Letterman, after Dave's father.

Congratulations, Dave.

Kobe Bryant

I've been quiet about the whole Kobe Bryant thing, and I guess it's time I opened my mouth on it, now...

Plain and simple - Kobe Bryant is a megalomaniac who measures his love for his wife in carats.

My guess is that we will never know what really happened in the hotel room just down the road from here in Eagle County... Kobe could be innocent and get conviceted, he could be guilty and be acquitted, or any combination thereof... Such is the case when you are dealing with the law and celebrities...

But he's trying to pretend like nothing's wrong and he's still the Kobe that everyone supposedly knows and loves... and he's wrong... he's never going to be that guy again, no matter what happens in court. He thinks he's just going to show up on the basketball court and everyone will forget about the fact that he may well be a rapist... news flash - they won't. He's about to go on trial for rape, and all he seems to put forth that he cares about is basketball... Kobe, c'mon... don't you think the other stuff is a little more serious than dribbling a ball down a court?

Kobe Bryant is a lost cause who's about to become a public relations nightmare, and he only has himself to thank for it. Not the press, not the law, not the girl... himself.

What About Pedophilia Victims?

Many people remember the high profile "Operation Ore" that went after people that download images of child pornography... It nabbed a few pretty despicable people along the way. But it seems that there has been a big upswing in the availability of such imagery, thanks to good ol' peer to peer file sharing... It's free, there's no need to leave any incriminating credit card data anywhere where it can be picked up on, and there's no "middle man," thus providing much easier access to the images...

Is anything being done to stop the people that make the imagery? Well, people are trying, but lack of manpower and lack of knowing where to look isn't helping matters very much...

HERE is a rather disturbing article into some of the things that are going on, and what law enforcement is trying to do to in response...

Ridgeway Expected to Plead Guilty to 48 Murders

In an effort to spare himself from the death penalty, suspected "Green River Killer" Gary Ridgeway is expected to plead guilty to 48 murders next week.

Ridgeway will plead guilty to 42 murders on the "Green River" list as well as six that were not on the list...

The Green River killings involved mainly runaways, prostitutes, and drug addicts in the mid '80s and get their name fro the area where the early victims were found in Washington state...

Funny how a guy can admit to mercilessly killing fifty people and not have to die for it, while other people get the chair for one murder... in some cases, even wrongly convicted... society is strange, I say...

You know what's kind of annoying? People that don't seem to pay attention to the noises they make when they eat... I remember watching The Flamingo Kid way back (in the day) and when Matt Dillon moaned and breathed through his mouth while he ate, I thought it was incredibly funny... Now, I guess I find it just totally revolting... but anyway, is there a tactful way to tell someone that they kind of gross you out when they eat? hmmm...

Errgh...

Okay, you wanna know what sucks? How about this:
On Thursday, it was 84 degrees... On Friday, it snowed...
What the fuck?


By the way, the new South Park this week was gold... Pure gay gold...

Dear God, Someone PLEASE Make it STOP...

It was cool to see ABC drop "The Real Roseanne Show" after only one episode... It actually gave me hope that maybe, possibly people were getting a bit fed up with the reality show craze that "Survivor" started several years back... but no... After saying that they would only do two seasons, "The Osbournes" is getting ready for its fourth season... "Newlyweds" Jessica Dingbat and Nick LeGay have renewed for a second season (apparently so people could see just how incredibly air-headed Jessica Simpson is)... There are other shows like "Orange County Choppers," where guys build motorcycles for people that you will never be able to afford at any time in your life... Then you have lame shows like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," "The Real World," "Elimidate," "The Fifth Wheel," "Blind Date," "The Bachelor," "Big Brother" (what are they up to, now? 4? 5?), and stuff like that, which serve absolutely no purpose, whatsoever... And now, the latest in the "we're celebrities with lives so much 'better' than yours" department, meet "The Arquettes. Yep, Courntey and David have decided that they want to cash in on all this crap, too...
I just don't understand the craze that is "reality TV." I always thought that "reality TV" was the evening news, but apparently, that's not even close, anymore... Anyhow, someone please make it stop before I throw my TV out the window... I don't want to do that, y'know? I like to watch TV... but the flow of crap that is inundating my TV is starting to really piss me off... I wonder how long until we have "forced reality show content" on the Internet?

I'm on a Roll

More stuff from the Guardian... An interesting little piece about how good ol' Jack Valenti's banning of "screeners" is nothing more than a scam to keep independent filmmakers from getting what they deserve...

READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE

Okay...

WHO THE FUCK STABS A BABY IN A BAKERY???

In an effort to actually beat my brother to a cool article for once:

THIS IS INTERESTING

What? Racist Cops? No Way

I thought stuff like THIS only went on, like, where I'm from...

*sigh*

Upon further review, I am finding streets named after colleges (not just Ivy League ones, either) all over the place, here... Right around the corner are Purdue, Standford, Villanova, and Columbia streets... wild, wacky stuff... My guess is that the founders of this city were just extremely unoriginal, or something...

I went and saw School of Rock, tonight. I thought it was really good. It was kinda funny to see Jack Black doing something that's not all filth flarn filth, but that was fine with me... I still laughed... quite a bit... The kids were funny... Jack was typically really funny. When I saw Sarah Silverman's name in the credits, I thought that it was cool, because she's a really funny comedienne... but in this movie, she was just really, really mean... but that was okay, I guess... because Jack was funny...

I've Been Trying to Tell People This All Along

"...dont watch Fox News. The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong..."

I guess the moral of this article is listen to NPR...

"Big Mac" Could be World's Second-Most Powerful Computer

It seems some fellas from Virginia Tech strung together 1,100 Power Mac G5s and made them into a supercomputer... not just any supercomputer... possibly the world's second-most powerful computer on the planet...

The cost? A mere $5.2 million... Alot, you say? Well, most of the top ten supercomputers cost $40 million and up... and the world's most powerful computer (Japan's "Earth Simulator") costs a whopping $350 million... So, at a mere 1.4% of the cost of the world's most powerful, you could own what could be the world's second-most powerful... not bad...

Read the full article HERE

Hmmmm...

I was noticing today that there are a lot of streets here named aftet tribes of Indians... There's Pawnee, Osage, Navajo, Mohawk, and Sioux, to name a few, all in this one little part of town... The funny thing about it is that they all seem to intersect with streets named after Ivy League universities... Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, and Cornell... I just kinda scratched my head over that all day...

See Desi...

See Desi engaging in his favorite activity...

Desi is a cool kitty... I like him... He likes me, too... sometimes.

My Cool Phone

I have another cell phone (well, not to mention the two that are still in a box somewhere, yet to be unpacked), but it's a real teeny fold-up thing... It makes me think of that skit from Saturday Night Live when Will Ferrell pulls out that phone that's about the size of your pinky nail... Besides, this one's chrome.


Yeah, that's right... ice cold chrome... well, for now, anyway... I bought some sweet faceplates for it on Ebay for a buck a piece (same exact ones in the mall here are twenty bucks)... They'll be here Monday... and then I can change my phone to suit my mood... how ridiculous is that?

Why am I even showing it to you? One word, my friends... boredom... and besides, when I get my new housings, I can show them to you, too... and you will go, "wow, cooooool," like the good friends you are...

I was at the grocery, today... My brother and I used to make fun of this product when we were very young... back in the late '70s... I was totally unaware that they were still around...

Now THAT is Some Gooooooood Bread!



Hey! I know her!

Meet "Brother Mel":


He runs "Brother Mel's Southern Style BBQ..."
located at 151 South College Ave. in Old Town...
It is some of the best food you will ever eat in your life...

p.s. - don't tell my mom I said that...

Rush

Okay... Rush Limbaugh made a racially-motivated statement... not surprised... because he's, in fact, a racist... and a jackass...

Democratic Presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton called for a boycott of ESPN's parent company, ABC, if Limbaugh was not fired... Sharpton... also a racist... and also a jackass...

Limbaugh resigned from ESPN... Problem solved, Rev. Sharpton... you can go and talk more about the white devil, now.

Now, Mr. Limbaugh is apparently being investigated for purchasing several thousand Schedule II narcotics (i.e. Percocet, OxyContin, etc.) without a prescription... Limbaugh says he was "...unaware of any investigation by any authorities..." Okay... I'll buy that... But how many people that have ever been "under investigation" knew that they were under investigation at the time? John Gotti, maybe? I mean, that's kind of the whole point to an "investigation," to not let the person know you are doing it, so that you might be able to catch them doing something wrong... maybe?

Anyhow... Mr. Limbaugh, you always have been, and you always will be a complete jackass... you continue to prove it to people on a daily basis...

Les Enfants Dans Le Corridor

Every other Tuesday late night is a good night to actually not listen to music and to watch TV, instead. Comedy Central shows four Kids in the Hall episodes... They used to be on every day about a year ago... then they started this "late night every other Tuesday" thing... It kinda irked me for a while, but I guess having it every couple weeks is better than not having it at all...

Jigga What???



Wait a minute... What city did I move to? I am a little confused... I swear I moved to Fort Collins, not Fart Collins... apparently, I was confused...

"Gelukkige verjaardag te u,
Gelukkige verjaardag te u
Gelukkige verjaardag mijn lieve, zoete, fantastische on,
Gelukkige Verjaardag te u..."

eh... close enough, anyway...

so... what do you like on your pomme frites, anyhow?

Blecch



Damn... I don't like temperatures like that when it's still September... considering that it's currently 20 degrees warmer in Portsmouth, right now... blecch...

Having an Oktoberfest celebration in late September is an interesting thought, don't you think?
I went to the one up in "Old Town" (the historic district a few blocks up the road), tonight... Had a good brat, some peaches & cream corn cooked in milk, and some really good micro-beer (I canna think of the name offhand, but it was tay-stee). Saw a pretty okay band called Newcomers Home, too. I mean, they were coming off to me as something sort of like a "Nickel Creek meets the Sundays with a pinch of Edie Brickell" kind of thing, and I like those acts (even though the mandolin player from Nickel Creek totally gets on my nerves in a huge way)... my only sorta complaint would have been when the violin player girl (oh, yeah... I guess even in newgrass-speak it's still a "fiddle") busted a string and the rest of the band tried to do some kind of improv instrumental thing while she fixed it... well, it was so nasty that I was tempted to go up to the stage and take the two mandolins from the guys playing them and beat them about the heads in an effort to get them to (please) never try something like that, again... but other than that, it was pretty good entertainment for the night...

Get with it, Sharemation... It's been's two days, now... that's almost unprecedented. I mean, if you don't want me to host my graphics there anymore, I guess I don't have to and stuff... but that would be a tremendous hassle... so I prefer you get your servers back to being stable and get on with it... 'kay?

"I am
surrendering
to gravity and the unknown
Catch me,
heal me,
lift me back up to the sun..."

I went to see Underworld, tonight. I was preparing for it to suck (as most "vampire movies" over the last couple decades have)... Much to my relief (and the relief of my $7.50... not to mention the $13.50 for popcorn, chocolate thingamajigs and a vat of root beer), the movie was actually pretty cool... a surprisingly decent storyline... a couple cool effects, good cinematography, cool "low color" (it was nearly black & white)...
I'm sure that all the flakes that think that they actually are vampires/lycanthropes (I think I recognized a couple of them coming out of the theater after me) that sit around and play Vampire: the Masquerade and think it's real will find all kinds of stuff to criticize the movie about (they seem to live and die with the actually-pretty-crappy Interview With the Vampire)... but y'know, they're flakes...
So, I had a pretty good time, tonight. Good times are... always good.

I was walking through the mall the other day... I passed a table with two guys sitting, eating pretzels and talking... I overheard one of the guys telling the other about how good of friends he thought they were. That really hit me as strange, I guess. I mean, I can't recall ever sitting with any of my closest friends talking about how good of friends we are. We just are, and we know it. I think our actions have always spoken louder about our friendships than any words. To hear that guy saying, "...yeah, I think we're great friends because..." sorta made my hair stand on end... it made me wonder if he was getting ready to ask him for money or something, y'know? It was just weird...

Maynard: "Go back to sleep..."

Tony: "okay..."

"...pale angel go away
come again some other day
the devil has my ear today
I'll never hear a word you say

promised I would find a little
solace and some piece of mind
whatever, just as long as I don't feel so

desperate and ravenous,
so weak and powerless
over you..."

"I formulate denials of your effect on me..."

"Close my eyes just to see you..."



"...so rare to witness such an earthly goddess..."

"Show me openings to lead me closer..."

This is the neighbor kitty...
Despite the look on his face, he is a very nice neighbor kitty...

Damn...

I love the idea of being "free..." I haven't been so in a long time... by my own choice. I mean, I was the one who chose to watch over my dad... until he passed away in June. It was the right thing to do... let my brother go off and get his doctorate, get married, become crazy successful, win an Oscar, drive awesome cars... and I'll stick around town and try to watch out for the old man... He needed someone to keep an eye on him. His health went downhill a lot after he had his first stroke in '84... maybe it wasn't all the stroke's fault, but nonetheless...
Now, sadly, my dad's not around for me to watch over. It's a kind of weird feeling... I still have dreams all the time where I'm looking out for him... Like my mind is trying to convince me that he's still alive. I dream about going back to Ohio, to my old house, and trying to get the rest of the stuff that I left there to bring back out here... and he'll be there... sitting in his blue La-Z-Boy... just hanging out... and a lot of the time, I don't even question the fact that he's sitting there. Other times, I'll tell the people I'm with in the dream that the man sleeping in the chair has to be a ghost, because I have his ashes in a box... and I wake up and feel guilty for thinking that he's dead... He told me in a dream once that he was glad that I was around to help him out over the years... and that he loved me... He rarely ever said that to me in my life... I told him I loved him, too... 'cause I did... and I do...
Now, I am free. Free to live my life for myself...
There's someone I wish I could hang around with... just because... because I think they are one of the cooler people possibly on the entire planet... Knowing them how I have known them is fine... I can handle it, and all... I could have never met them in the first place. But oneday, I got all ballsy and said hello... They are far away, but it's not like it has to stay that way forever and stuff... after all, I'm free... Free to do what's right... for me... aren't I?
Maybe not tomorrow... but maybe one day...
Damn... I know it's almost 6am, but I could use a good hit of scotch...

Where I Am, Now

Okay, I wanted to show you a pic of where I live, now... When I lived in Ohio, I lived in a pretty part... we had some "big hills" and stuff... but this is just a bit better... The pics don't really do the "spread" justice...
Dont' get me wrong... I definitely live "in the city." This is just what happens when you look west... ;)







Basically, that's the "foothills" of the Rocky Mountains... The "hill" in the front is referred to as Coyote Ridge. Pretty cool, aeh?

More piccies to come...

Reality TV is SO Strange

I hate to admit this... even to myself... Recently, I have found myself watching Elimidate and The Fifth Wheel. Not because I think the shows are any good... No no... quite the contrary. They are the two biggest piles of garbage on TV... On Elimidate, basically all that goes on is a bunch of catfights and name calling crap between really stank ho girlies fighting for the opportunity to be with a complete loser waste of space... and on The Fifth Wheel, it's usually guys trying to get girls to make out with each other (which they will do a lot of times) and trying to impress girls by showing their weenies to them... and then, on both shows, when things don't work out for the people, they are always given the opportunity to talk more shit about the people whose ass they were just kissing... totally lame... lame beyond lame...
I guess I watch it because I really can't wait to see how totally ridiculous these people are going to act in an effort to impress some skank (male or female, mind you)... and I am always disgusted after I watch them... which I expect to be... if I wasn't, I would have to question my sense of ... good taste & morality... or somethin'...

More on John Ritter

I watched the ABC special on John Ritter a little earlier tonight. It was very good, I must say... I was wondering where Joyce DeWitt was during all of this (I had figured she was totally staying out of the issue because of her extremely deep admiration of Mr. Ritter (whom she lovingly referred to as "Jonathon")). But she did actually come out and speak about it all tonight and, as I had figured, she was a complete wreck. She was trying to keep it together, but you could tell she was having a rough go of it...
I don't really know what else to say about it all, besides still being really shocked about it all... Besides... Three's Company is on Nick at Nite now, and I'm gonna go watch...

John Ritter

Yeah, Johnny Cash died, too... but y'know, I hate to be all shitty, but I didn't really care a whole heck of a lot for Mr. Cash. I mean, he beat the Hell out of his wife at one point and acted like an asshole to a lot of people in his life...
John Ritter on the other hand...
I remember watching the very first Three's Company when I was probably seven or eight... and I watched nearly every other one afterwards until it ended. It was one of the funnier things to ever grace the television screen at the time. I have recently rediscovered them on Nick at Nite, probably about a year ago, and I forgot just how funny it was (and how much I knew about life and sex and stuff when I was eight). "8 Simple Rules..." was probably the best sitcom on television, currently, and I watched it every chance I got. John Ritter made me laugh... a lot... I love to laugh. I will miss watching him in the future, but I am thankful to have had the opportunity to watch such a genuinely happy guy work so hard at something he loved so much...

I was talking tonight about some of the conversations I had with my father in the months before he got sick and passed away... One night, I was watching a movie about growing up in the '50s (which he did). He came and sat in my room and told me about the time he met James Brown in a recording studio in Cincinnati one day, back when James was recording "race records." Then another day, when I was listening to Dean Martin (yeah, I listen to Dean Martin... wanna make something of it?), and he came in and we proceeded to have a long discussion about the Rat Pack and Dean and Sammy (Davis, Jr.). And there was one Saturday morning when I was watching a Jerry Lewis movie that had (jazz drumming legend) Buddy Rich in it... I hollered for him and he came in and watched the rest of the movie with me... and we laughed... and laughed... I always loved old Jerry Lewis movies, and he knew it, too... He asked me if I ever thought that maybe I grew up in the wrong decade and I told him that yeah, in fact, I did. But y'know, if I had then most likely he wouldn't have been my dad (but I betcha we would have been good friends).
I felt kinda crappy for a while after he died, because I thought I didn't get enough "good time" with him, but I am realizing that I actually had a lot of "great time" with him... It makes me miss him a lot more, and it tends to get me sad, but y'know...

Greetings... from Fort Collins, Colorado...
"Where?"
That's right... Colorado... I just moved there from Ohio... I really like it here, I must say... It's some pretty territory... there's, like, an assload to do... something different everyday... Anhyow, I have a lot of stuff to talk about, but I don't really have the time to do it at this second, because I am still in the process of setting up residency and all that fun stuff... SO, as soon as I get all that garbage straightened away, I will be back in full force, letting you know what's been going on in the land of Tonus... See ya soon...

Tom Phillips (1938 - 2003)

I have been absent from here for a long time... I have a good reason, I would think. My dad passed away June 8th, 2003 - two days before my 34th birthday. It made for a pretty shitty birthday, I must say. Anyhow, I'll have more to say about it all in the future. In the meantime, be cool.

"Numb is the word
when I get like this
Still out of touch
Still couldn't feel
a kiss

Bells going off
but I can't say why
Trapped in the house
with the walls and the roof
on fire

Flames rise higher...

Fever broke...
My fever broke
as you watched over me...

"(How many hours)
I hear you breathing
(How many days)
I smell your skin
(How many years)
I watch the ceiling
(How many times)
The fog comes rolling in

Time stood still -
nobody knew but me and you..."

"Today I am your chariot horse,
Tomorrow I'm your albatross
Suspended by the finest thread
no one could ever see...

...though I'm ashamed to be afraid
I just can't help myself
Can't help myself

If I was blind
Could you still be my eyes
or hide everything you see,
Pretending to care about me
when all the time
You're just wishing I'd fade away,
You can't bring yourself to say..."

"I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
of diving in too deep
and possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
that I know will be alright
It's just overkill

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away..."

I should probably talk to someone...

Yikes

Was it just me, or did anyone else think that President G-Dub's carrier-landing thing was a bit... oh... I don't know... much? insane, even? Okay, it wasn't like he was delivering his speech from the middle of Baghdad, or anything, but still... that's not exactly the, y'know... safest thing in the world for a sitting President to do, eh?
Maybe it's just me...

grr...

I was sitting here this afternoon, and I had a GREAT idea for something to talk about on here... something that I remember was gonna be so cool, and a lot of people would really get a kick out of reading it... so I tried to get online, but I couldn't (they are moving modems around to alleviate some crowding)... so I laid down and fell asleep... and forgot what was so cool that I wanted to write about...
Oh, well... Roasted Garlic Triscuits are fucking awesome...
(yeah, not nearly as cool as whatever I was thinking... damnit)

Am I Paranoid?

Does anthrax smell like car exhaust? If so, I think my neighbor might be an Al Qaeda operative...

Really Strange...

I'm watching this whole "Siege on Baghdad" thing happening... and the newscasters cut away to one of those cameras mounted in the city... and you can hear big guns firing... then some machine guns... and you can see, like, cars driving around, stopping at red lights and weird shit like that... Now, I seriously hope they're not headed to the deli for some goat on a stick... I mean, hopefully, if people have any sense, they're getting the hell out of there, y'know?

Too Cool, Yet So Sad...

I just saw (with the rest of the world) the video footage of Army PFC Jessica Lynch (from about an hour away from here, in Palestine, West Virginia) being rescued from an Iraqi hospital by a task force consisting of Army, Navy, AirForce, and Marines... Very cool. Very, very cool... Kudos to the Iraqi guy that tipped the military to her whereabouts (and even told them what room in the hospital she was in and everything)...

BEFORE AND "AFTER": Jessica Lynch (at left) in a family photo from 2000 and (at right) moments after being rescued by American troops in Iraq.
She looks so scared (and who the hell could possibly blame her?)... yet, I can guess she is probably also very relieved... I can also venture to guess her family is incredibly happy, as well... I honestly was afraid that we were never going to see or hear from her, again... I think the whole country breathed a big ol' sigh when the reports came out that she was not only alive but out of Iraqi hands... All she wanted was to go to college to become a teacher... She couldn't get a decent job anywhere, so she joined the Army to get the Montgomery G.I. Bill to have money to afford college... and this is what she got for it... shot (I hear she was shot, I hear she wasn't shot... but c'mon... the good money is she most likely got shot a couple times)... legs broken... broken arm... according to someone inside the hospital, she was being tortured, as well... no food for eight days... I sure as shit hope she'll become a teacher, now...

More "Hmmm"

If we get all bent out of whack because Iraqis show American and/or British POWs on Iraqi TV (because it violates certain terms of the Geneva Convention), why are we showing Iraqi POW's faces on American TV? No, we don't do it all the time, and sometimes, it shows pictures of Iraqi soldiers in the act of surrendering (not technically POWs at that point, I suppose would be the media's rationale), but I just saw a video of an army guy interviewing a captured Iraqi soldier, getting information from him and stuff... they were both all smiley and happy and everything, but still... what's the dilly-o?

Woah!

Okay... this is freakin' awesome...

SODACONSTRUCTOR

I'm not real good at making it all work, yet... but I'm learning... and soon enough... I will be making cool little creepy crawlies... Go there, load up the constructor, and check out the saved "creatures." Too cool... :)

A New Domain

Okay, you can still get to this page from the normal link:

tonus.blogspot.com

and now, you can get here from

tonyphillips.tk
NOTE: when the DOT.TK site is down, it won't work, so keep the other address handy, eh?

as well... same exact place, different names... (oh, yeah. the "tk" address has a very painless, unobtrusive popup... I can turn it off if I want, but they won't advertise my site if I do (nor will they send me a spiffy shirt)). But those of you who already have the "blogspot" link bookmarked have nothing to fear... it's not going anywhere...

ALSO, you can get email to me now at tony@tonyphillips.tk, should you feel the need.

SNOW???

Okay... Friday night at, like, 2:00am, it was 75�... Now, at 9:35am Sunday, it is snowing... I'm not pissed... I'm just, like, pissed... make uppa you mind, eh?

Hmmm... Part II

So... "Saddam Hussein" is offering 100 million dinar (about $30,000 US) to the families of anyone willing to become a suicide bomber for the Iraqi "army." So, the dinar is basically worth about 3/100 of a penny... that's shitter than the yen... shittier than the peso, as well... Okay, besides whatever it's worth, that's a pretty shitty deal, I'd say... I'd have to say, "pass." but judging by what some of the reports are saying, I'm not so sure that people are necessarily volunteering as much as maybe having some folks show up knocking on their door and informing them of their "volunteer" status...

Hmmm...

The Iraqi news is trying to tell the people of it's country (and elsewhere, too, I guess) that the oil fires are "pipeline fires caused by coalition missles..." Hmm... well, the "movin' pichers" I'm looking at are showing oil well heads burning and such... the Iraqi news explaination? "The Americans are using file footage from the first Gulf War..." Again, a great big hmmm... So, I guess that 2000 Chevy Blazer in the picture is from the first Gulf War, too, then, eh? :rollseyes:

Embed This?

When did this become the cool word of the new war? I mean, I don't think I've ever heard "embedded" anywhere with regards to the press before last Thursday... Just the new "catch word" or something this go 'round. I know there are some freelance reporters roaming around out there, and sometimes they seem to be telling a bit of a "darker" story to this war, but my best guess is that the press was "embedded" with the troops to keep an eye (and ear) on them and such. I mean, apparently these reporters aren't allowed to take a dump without it being on the record, so... y'know...

Anyhow, flipping through the channels earlier and came across a report from MSNBC's Bob Arnot (are so) who is currently embedded with a forward unit of troops (I believe the 101st Airborne)... and he confirmed somthing I have been afraid was going on (well, he confirmed it by saying he "saw it with [his] own eyes"). The Iraqi (para)military are going around to homes and rounding up teenage boys at gunpoint, killing one that doesn't want to go and dumping them in the streets (as a sign to the others to obey), sticking the teens on busses, taking them out to the front lines, in front of the main Iraqi army troops, giving them mortars and ordering them to fire at coalition troops... the coalition troops are between a rock and a hard place, because they're being shot at... but they're being shot at by little kids who are being forced to shoot at them... I've been thinking about it on and off, and I honestly have no idea what I would do if it was me out there... I'm glad it's not, anyway... War is Hell... and it sucks, too...

Okay... What the..?!?

I was trying to find the picture of the US military men standing in the Iraqi city with the painting of the Twin Towers getting hit by the plane with the Iraqi flag and all that so that I could post a link to it... so I'm searching through some links on Google... and I come across THIS WEBLOG... As I read some of it I was wondering, "Could this possibly be real?" The more I read, the less I started to believe any of it... I had linked into it in the archives and a couple of the articles were almost kinda believeable... so I just went to the front page of the WEBLOG to see what I could find... and I found some pretty seriously over the top stuff... Regardless of its authenticity, whoever this guy is that's writing this stuff obviously isn't a fan of the US... oh, well... get in line, buddy...

Propaghandi

Iraqis: "The American pigdogs have targeted our civilians and marketplaces..."
Americans: "The Iraqi terrorists shot a SAM at their own people and are trying to blame it on the Americans..."

Y'know... I have no problem believing that the Iraqis are sticking guns to people's heads and saying, "Go stand in front of that AAA battery or I'll shoot you and your grandmother..." These are the same fucks that throw dissidents into plastic shredders head first... so it's no surprise at all that they would use civilians as shields and then blame us for killing them... because apparently the Iraqis aren't into following the "rules of war" or something... yeah, I know... the word "rules" in conjunction with "war..." kinda crazy... well, again, I probably shouldn't be surprised. I mean, we're talking about an Iraqi military that says "Okay, we surrender," and then when the US military gets close enough, the Iraqis start shooting grenades and shit at 'em... again, paying no attention to any kinds of "rules..." and in doing so, they're really only going to end up killing more of their own countrymen by pulling stupid shit like that, because it's gonna make it a whole lot harder for the US/British military to accept surrendering Iraqis, because who knows who's gonna be waiting to ambush them when they do? I think there's a word for when the Iraqis do that shit... I think it's called "treachery," but maybe I'm mistaken...
And the whole "dressing up like American soldiers" thing is pretty skullduggerous, as well... I mean, they're not fucking Hogan's Heroes trying to sneak into Berlin to get a little action... and of course, leave it to the American media to tell us that the military will now be opening fire on anyone dressed in US military gear that's not wearing the (now manditory) chemical pants (I think the Iraqis can pull in CNN, too, if I'm not mistaken? I'm not saying that they have any MOPP gear, but still...)...
It's the duty of each country to spin all the action in their own favor, in order to make the others look bad and get people all over the world to say, "Can you believe what they're doing over there?" Just like when, twelve years ago, we bombed a "baby milk factory," people shit kitties until they found out (if they ever bothered to pay attention, that is) that the "baby milk factory" was what was known as a "dual purpose facility." In other words, yeah, there was baby milk there, but there was also a weapons lab in the basement, so, it had to go... but the only pictures we ever really got to see on Iraqi TV was the baby milk factory part, so people freaked... of course, I don't blame them... it's called propaganda...
I happened to catch a live press conference with the Iraqi Defense Minister that was taking place outside somewhere in Baghdad just as some of the heaviest bombing in a few days hits the middle of the downtown area... and the Defense Minister is all saying, "We're not afraid... (looks around in the air) What is that a cruise missle? Our country is not afraid of these cowards..." and you could almost hear the shit filling up in his pants, not to mention the eyeballs the size of dinner plates and stuff... I don't want to say it was amusing because I really don't want to seem insensitive to the war and the fear that is in a lot of the Iraqi people currently, but it was really interesting to see this guy who would obviously rather be deep in some secret bunker somewhere, rather than standing out in the open as Tomahawks are flying over his head and 4,500-pound bombs are blowing the place all to Hell and back, standing there throwing out all this spin about how the Iraqis are "winning the war" and all this stuff... just some crazy shit to witness...

Meanwhile in New York, masses of idiot anti-war protestors linking themselves together with PVC pipes lay down in the middle of 5th Avenue in a "die-in..." you think those soldiers are risking something by being in the middle of Iraq? Try laying down in the middle of a street in downtown New York City... they're idiots... but idiots with big balls apparently... I mean, I figured there would be reports of people just running them the fuck over...
So, why do I call them "idiots," bedsides the whole "laying down in the middle of the street" thing? Well, apparently this "die-in" was staged in order to try to "give New Yorkers an idea of what a hundred dead bodies looked like..." uh... HELLO?!? Does anyone else remember that whole 9/11 thing with the two big buildings that fell over? hmm... but New Yorkers can't conceive what a hundred innocent dead bodies looks like...
I honestly think it's just a little too late for anti-war protests at this point... but maybe that's just me...

I saw the picture of the US military men in the Iraqi city, yesterday, with a big painting in the background depicting two buildings and a plane flying into one of them (with an Iraqi flag on the tail of the plane)... I really didn't know what to think of it... well, okay, I know what I think of it, but I really don't know what to say about it...

Headaches Suck... Really

I have been the victim of migraine headaches for a few years, now... and I'm suffering from one right now, as well (well, at least the onset of one)... so why am I even sitting here talking about it? Well, I thought the aspirin-stuff I had taken earlier in the afternoon when I first felt it coming on was going to head it off at the pass... but no... I was sitting here surfing around (staring... concentrating on newsgroup messages on the screen), and bang... here it comes... complete with the borerline violent nausea starting to appear, as well... so I probably should go lay down for a few, now... My friend Tracie (a fellow sufferer) has recommended the Imitrex nasal spray stuff... sounds like a plan in the near future... ugh... this sucks... blecch...

Fox "News"

Okay... I was pretty resigned to the fact that the people at Fox news weren't really all that great a group of journalists, but more like just shills for the Bush administration... but now I'm convinced that they're also a bunch of shmucks... (some of you would also consider "shills for the Bush administration" and "shmucks" to be synonymous)
Flipping through the channels and I stop at Fox News, where they are talking about the US Army Seargent who threw grenades at his own people... The broadcaster says (something to the effect of), "The soldier has been identified as Hasan Akbar. Yeah folks, that's right, Hasan Akbar," and then proceeded to roll their eyes. Um, okay... How about you bias yourself a little more, why don't ya? I'm actually kinda surprised they stopped there and didn't go ahead and accuse him of being a possible Al Qaeda operative... I was pretty insulted by it, actually (as most sensible folks probably were, as well)... Yeah, most of the news is a little bit biased, I'll give you that, but come on... that was just fucking rude... How about you let us jump to our own conclusions, maybe?
Personally, I think the guy will most likely be executed (although he probably deserves to spend the rest of his life in Leavenworth with those really, really scary people), but not because he's a muslim... but because he's the truest form of a traitor.

Hmm... Coalition forces take control of a hospital in a larger Iraqi city... and find several thousand chemical warfare suits and thousands of syringes of atropine (the antidote for certain types of nerve gas)... but... they claim to have no weapons like that, eh? Hmm... Interesting...

In other war news, a US soldier that left his tent in a forward base to go to the latrine some fifteen feet away during one of the sandstorms was reportedly lost for eight hours... That would suck... Thank goodness all the news from the war is not quite so grim...

I Need a New Keyboard

I spilled the tiniest amount of soda on my keyboard this past summer... It seemed to have taken it pretty well... then, oneday, all of the sudden, my "D" key and my "Control" key decided that they wanted to misbehave... now they have become the most annoying things on the entire planet... I never realized how often I used the "D" key until it started sticking... sometimes, it seems like every word I type uses the damned thing... and I have to sit there and flick it after I hit it, much like you would flick the kid in the seat in front of you's ear at school to be a dick... every now and then you get the big dddddddddddddddddddd trail, too... That's always special... I purposefully try to not use words with "d" in them, now, just because I hate having to sit 'n' flick at the key to get it to pop back up...
I nee... must get a new keybo... keythingie...

Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein

Congratulations to the Smart Family

Congratulations goes out to the family of 15 year-old Elizabeth smart. After being missing for nine months she was found, alive and well...
When I first heard the news this morning, I stopped what I was doing and just kinda sat "in awe," I guess you'd say... I mean, to be quite honest, I figured the next news we would hear regarding the case would be the [chill] discovery of her bones... I am very, very glad that she was found and is now safe... considering that less than two percent of kidnapping victims are found alive after 24 hours, this is an incredible thing...
In a moment of pure speculation, here, I think that she must have been the victim of some form of mind control... I mean, first of all, she is fifteen... I'm sure at one point she was, at one point, capable of planning/attempting an escape, yet she was still with her captors (a husband and wife that were known to be a bit on the "radically religious" side). When they found her, she was disguised and such... yet, it wasn't like they had a leash on her or anything... quite possibly the mere threat of harm against her, her little brothers, her parents, was all it took to subdue her (possibly after some form(s) of deprivation)... makes me think of Patty Hearst (who was kidnapped in the '70s and brainwashed into committing bank robberies and such for the "Symbionese Liberation Army"). It doesn't take much to brainwash even the most strong-willed... Ms. Hearst was simply deprived of things like light (she was locked in a closet), a place to relieve herself (again, locked in a closet), nutrition, etc. and with the use of someone skilled in "programming," they got what they wanted from Ms. Hurst pretty easily... this could have easily been the case with young Ms. Smart, too... but, again, it's just a moment of mere speculation... we'll know more in the coming weeks... at least tonight, she is sleeping much easier, I bet...

It's Finally Revealed (?)

Welp... All this buildup... all this waiting... and for what? Well... I'm not exactly, sure...
8march2003.com is now featuring the pictures he said he would... blah blah blah, cataclysmic flooding... and he points to another site - MOUNTAINSUB.COM - that was allegedly created by "the faction" to divert the true purpose of the "sub" into some "publicity stunt" (which, in fact the WHOLE THING is one big "publicity stunt," but, y'know...)...
...and it's worth pointing out that it all is pointing to Australia and such (which I stated in an earlier post the writer seemed Australian, possibly - although now he's stating he was "vacationing" in Australia - heh)...
So... it all boils down to the fact that he's going to reveal yet MORE information on April 15th... as if he needs to be holding anything back, at this point... blah... letdown? yeah... but I expected it, so I'm not as let down as I could have been, I guess...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MICHELANGELO

More Signs That I May Know Something

As if I needed more proof that kids aren't taking advantage of technology to make themselves any more intelligent -

CHECK OUT THIS STORY of what a teacher got for an essay from a THIRTEEN YEAR-OLD... sad... so, so sad...

Math Geeks Unite!

THIS is beautiful... in an "I've got too much time on my hands" kind of way... and quite well done, at that...
read the FAQ too, and you can download all 220 MILLION digits of pi for your very own!

Someone HAD Make This, Eventually

In an earlier rant, I griped about how I couldn't stand the stupid, lazy way people communicated on the internet... Well, someone actually came up with a WEBPAGE that will "take what you write in it and turn it into the manner a 12-year-old AOLer would write it." Thus:

"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of the party"

becomes:

"NOW IZ DA TIEM FOR AL GOD MEN 2 COM3 2 DA AD3 OF DA PARTY1!!1!1!1 OMG WTF LOL"

(it actually will give you different translations every time you click the button, thus adding to the merriment...) Beautiful, no?
GO TRY IT OUT FOR YOURSELF HERE

Does anybody feel this way?
Does anybody feel like I do?

Half of me is gone,
The lonesome part is left,
I cannot find the other half,
I cannot find the other half...

"Tabloids... is that one of those really strong mints?"

lactomangulation, (n.):
Mutilating the "Open Here" side on a carton of milk so badly that one has to resort to the "illegal" side.

Damned "bandwidth limit exceeded" crap... I think it's 'cause I hosted a file for one of my friends to use in his signature on a bulletin board, somewhere... crap, crap, crap...

Some So-so Pics

I had the resolution messed up, so these aren't really all that good, but they show some nastiness, still:


a view from the top of my hill at my birch tree in the front yard... it's MUCH taller than the pine tree in the background - NOTE: That is NOT snow... that's ICE... pure, solid as shit ice

the same (poor) tree from down the hill looking up... note: there's a car in there, somewhere.

It's really hard to make out, but there's a HUGE limb piercing the carport as well as a piece of the roof, there...

a HUGE tree that fell in my neighbor's yard

post-chainsaw... that's a HUGE BITCH of a tree, eh? (it's still like that... NO CLUE how they're going to get rid of it, either - I'm thinking either, like, a helicopter, or dynamite)

my next-door neighbor's (used to be a) Dogwood tree

my birch tree, post-thaw... NOTE: those branches you see buckled are bigger around than your legs, and they were snapped like little twigs

Another HUGE BITCH of a tree... in my back yard... about 85 feet tall... that I was thoroughly convinced was going to come crashing through my bedroom at any given moment... you should have seen the size of some of the limbs that came off of it... that could easily kill a human... even a great big strong one... jinkees...

a completely shredded tree across the street from my house

a view from my next door neighbor's of a totally slaughtered tree in my backyard

my backyard... trust me... there is a backyard in there somewhere amongst the treelimbs...

Like I said... so-so... but you get the idea... uh... don't you?

"Going to war without France is like
going deer hunting without your accordion."
�Donald Rumsfeld�

Ingenious

THIS is courtesy of my brother.

I'm watching this special, Psychic Detectives, on CourtTV... Some of it, highly cheesy... Other parts, kind of interesting, I have to admit... but the biggest thing I'm going to walk away from it with is that (host of Crossing Over) John Edward still deserves the Biggest Douche in the Universe award.

"Homer no function beer well without..."

I like to play "Girls Gone Wild" backwards... because then it looks like the girls have learned their lesson...

Slippery Pete: You knew she was my mail-order bride...
Cosmo: Yeah, well... I signed for her...

8march2003.com - a HA! (okay, not really, but still)

I have a friend who is Russian... Moldovan to be more precise... They were telling me that March 8th in their country is something called "Women's Day" where men pamper women and all that good stuff like that (hmmm... Valentine's Day, part II?), and apparently daughters all buy presents for their mothers and such...
So, 8march2003.com is actually gonna turn out to be a big marketing campaign to make "Women's Day" a bigger holiday (probably by the Hallmark people).... eh? eh? C'mon, feel me, people... well, okay... so it's not about that... but it was a nice try, anyway, wouldn't you agree?

This is the actual fortune I got in my fortune cookie, today:

"To love and win is the best thing;
to love and lose, the next best."

What kind of fucking consolation is that supposed to be? Who wants to settle for second best? What a shitty fortune. All the sudden, Chinese food sucks...

"From the air I see your lonliness
You carry on despite your fear
Inside a box you keep your sanity
And it will never be clear...

Over the hills, the light it flows
It shows the angels laughing
But where is the love that we're supposed to find?
Lost in a maze of games so very
dark and overwhelming
Lost in these thoughts that seem to rule my mind..."

Haloscan is starting to aggravate me... They need to do something about whatever the heck's been going on with them, recently... It's not like people are beating down the door of this blog waiting to post comments... but still, if even one of you were wanting to comment, you couldn't because they crash three times a week, lately... Anyhow, my apologies...

WHOA! This is TOO cool!

I was baffled... It took me about a half an hour to figure out what was going on... but until then, I was stumped... sometimes, I need to not think so hard... think hard make brain go, "Ow."

CHECK IT OUT

Something Else

PREFACE: The word �suck� is one of those words that can take on a couple different meanings. One meaning can be of a very positive light, with several delightful subdivisions unto itself... and then there's also a meaning that connotes something very bad is going on, as well... Sadly, this is one of those stories in which the word "suck" reaches whole new levels of �bad.�

So... Big ice storm... not a little minor thing... insanely major... 30,000 houses without power kind of major, see? Pants-poopingly major... I, personally in my nearly thirty-four years of existence, have never seen anything remotely like it. HERE are some images from the city website... I personally think they vastly understate the damage that I personally saw (and am still seeing) within just a few blocks of my house (as best as I can tell, they look like images from a couple different places out in the more rural areas). When I can find the software to get the pics I took from the digital camera, I'll post them, as well... I think they're much more telling of the carnage (at least in a personal manner, anyway). I will now attempt to recount my ordeal as best I can for you here (yeah, it's pretty long, but it was a pretty long and intesne ordeal - so, why don't you do yourself a favor and bookmark the post and take a few days to read it all if you have to):

Friday, February 14, 2003
St. Valentine's Day... After a week of snow, cold, snow, thaw, a little more snow, and a nearly compete thaw, Friday brings us 40� temperatures and rain starting at about noon... It's nasty out, I want no part of it, at all, and end up falling asleep for the night at about 9:30pm. Pathetic, I know, but that's how it goes, sometimes.

Saturday, February 15, 2003
I wake up about 6:30am (thanks to falling asleep so early the night before). Still raining, still grey as can be and basically nasty. I check the Weather Channel in between some Boomerang and I see where they are calling for the rain to start to freeze up after the sun goes down... hooray... I grab a guitar and proceed to fidget around on it for the next couple hours, recording a few bizarre odd-meter, open-tuning ditties (inspired by the seriously silly movie, �Overdrawn at the Memory Bank� (a really early Raoul Julia flick produced by New York Public Television) that is on Mystery Science Theater 3000) into a little digital flash memory recorder I have.
About noon, I call my friend Mike and tell him about the strange movie I just watched and suggest that we go get some lunch... so about an hour later he comes and gets me and we go through Wendy's... they actually get BOTH of our orders right the first time (they have an uncanny knack for fucking up orders every time you go there in some fashion or another). �Hey maybe the gods are with us, today,� I think to myself, revelling at the fact that I didn't have to go back through and get my side order of cheese or the fries that they forgot to put in the bag... (note: famous last words)
SO we go back to Mike's and chow. Afterwards, we spend the next couple hours checking out the newest expansion of Ultima Online. I used to play the game, but I got kinda put off by the tedium... Anyhow, I still like to watch stuff going on in the game when I have a chance, and Mike was taking me around to all the new gigungous houses he and two other friends had just built in the new land expansion. Seriously impressive stuff, especially Steve's (the �veteran� of the group), complete with a battle arena on the rooftop for people to gather and compete in a �Friday Night Fights� thing and stuff like that...
So after we run around in UO world, I suggest we go to Sam Goody. After all, there's always a CD waiting to be added to the collection. So we head out. There's a fine sheen of ice starting to show on the trees in the area, but the roads are fine to and from Sam Goody. We go back to his house and gather up the crap I had left there and we head to my house. It's about 9:15pm. To get to my house from Mike's, there's two ways you can go. You can either go around �the boulevard� to the east or you can cut over the hill that houses the city's reservoir. The roads were okay when we got home from Sam Goody so we really don't think anything of going over the reservoir... umm... oops... When you get to the top of the hill, the road curves left. When we reached the top of the hill and attempted to make the left, the truck just basically went straight, instead... and made a beeline for a big guard rail. At the last possible second, the truck regains traction, swings hard to the left and we avert smacking the snot out of the gurad rail by mere inches... my comment to him was, �I could have stuck my tongue out the window and licked it, we came that close to it...� Collective breath-catching and a bit of a nervous chuckle later, I arrive home.
My neighborhood consists of three streets on a hillside surrounded on three sides by one of a few legit �forests� inside the city limits. You can have a better look HERE, if you like. In the winter, when all the trees have shed for the season, there's an incredible view of the city from my house, clear across the Ohio River to the Kentucky hillside. I thought I should fill you in on that for the rest of the story...
It continues to sleet and freezing rain and all that great stuff. I get online and reply to a couple emails waiting in my mailbox. I can hear the sleety stuff hitting my windows now at an accelerated pace. Things are clearly not improving outside, at all... I continue to surf around the net, thinking, �Well, it has to end sometime... doesn't it?�
About 10:30pm, the phone rings. It's someone who we'll call Extremely-important Person, or EP for short. EP is many, many miles away, safe at school. I inform her of the current situation and the near accident on the way home. As we continue talking, I can hear the freezy shit getting heavier... We continue our conversation, with me doing my best not to notice the weather... Then, at about 11:45pm, it happens... �PLOINK!� Out go the lights. Fortunately, they immediately come back on. Being on a cordless phone at the time, I lost communication with EP for a moment. When everything is cool again, I tell her that the lights have just flickered off and on and apologize for the brief loss of the phone. About five minutes later, �PLOINK!� again, and a very distant �KAPOW!� of a transformer popping, and the lights go out and immediately return for a second time. Seeing as it's the second time it's happened (and subsequently, the second time the computer I was sitting by had to go through the whole ScanDisk crapola), I decide it's probably for the best to shut the computer down for the night. About three or four minutes later, �PLOINK!� (�KAPOW!�) again... This time, the lights do not come back on... they tried to, about three or four times, but no luck... in the meantime, I have lost commuinication completely with EP, this time... I know that she will call back when she realizes I didn't come back, and make my way down the pitch-ass black stairs through the pitch-ass black living room to the corded phone in the kitchen. I inform EP of the situation, kick back in the La-Z-Boy, and we resume our conversation... no big deal... I've had the power go out on me before. It'll be cool.
Sure enough, about 1:30am, the light in the kitchen informs me that power has, indeed, been restored to the neighborhood... that wasn't so bad, at all. I can still hear it raining and such, but hey - we've got power back. EP and I finish our conversation for the evening and I make it upstairs in time to watch South Park at 2am, relieved that the power is back on and rather tired from being up so long. After South Park, I switch it over to SciFi, where a cheesy horror-esque movie is just starting... Well, I'm in one of those �the cheesier, the better� kind of moods. Sitting up on my bed, I finally start to give in to the fact that I'm really tired, and I begin to nod off... catching myself as I do so the first few times, continuing to ingest the cheese on my tv screen... I quickly nod off again - this time waking up to darkness... I have no idea how much time has passed, what time it is or anything - my watch is across the room and I don't feel like knocking over a huge stack of CDs in my floor to see what time it is, 'cause I couldn't really care less. �Shit,� I think. �Fucking power's out again...� About the time I get up to take of my clothes and actually get into bed, the power clicks back on. �Good deal,� I think and crawl under the covers for the night...

Sunday, February 16, 2003
10:00am - I pull the covers off my head and greet the morning with a yawn and a squint... one of the first things I realize as I come out of my haze is that it's still sleety-freezy-shitting outside. This is starting to suck... An oatmeal bar and a glass of orange-pineapple-banana juice later, I'm playing my guitar. Quickly realizing that nothing productive is happening, I put the guitar back in the case and flip around the channels... Nothing good there, either.
12:00 noon - I switch it over to FOX to see if the Daytona 500 is going to get rained out or what (the Weather Channel clued me in to some inclement weather down that way, too). About five minutes into the broadcast... yes, you guessed it... �PLOINK!� (�KAPOW!�)... �Shit!� I wait... I wait a little longer... nothing... Looking outside, the snowplows that went up and down the hill did their job pretty well - my street is very clean, considering the foul weather that hasn't stopped since Friday. In the silence, I can hear more �KAPOWs� from tranformers all over town popping... Something else I'm hearing more and more, too. The cracking of tree limbs as they snap off of trees from the ever-growing weight of the ice that is building up on them... Some of them make such a sound, you would swear someone is cranking off shots from a 30-06 rifle. �Okay, this is definitely not getting any better...�
I go out, clear the inch of "pre-Slushee" (without the syrup) off of my porch porch and have a look around. It generally pretty nasty out, but more specifically, it's really nasty out. Trees are starting to droop a bit more significantly, now. Starting to get hungry, so I go in to order some Chinese. I'm standing in the sunroom at the back of the house, looking down the hill and just as I hang up the phone I see a tree come teetering over out of the woods about four houses down... Not a branch from a tree, and entire tree about 18" in diameter... It rips through the power line on the poles out back, literally unearthing one pole, which comes to rest against a garage... If it hadn't been for the fact that the cable company put in new cable about 18 months ago on brand new, super-heavy-duty strand, the tree would have totally blasted the back of the neighbor's house... as it was, there was damage, but not what it could have been... I came shooting out of the house and down the hill to see if everything is okay (it's obviously not). After looking over the damage to the power lines, poles, etc., I slowly start to realize that we're not going to have power back on the hill anytime soon... not a very comforting thought...
The power company says they'll have everything under control in 24 to 36 hours (should I start holding my breath?). This, of course, is of little comfort to me, whose worst experience with power loss was probably when it was about 105� outside one summer and we lost power for about three hours in the afternoon. Meanwhile back in the real world, it's still extremely shitty out and only getting shittier...
The sounds of the �rifle fire� are getting much more frequent, now (it seems like there was a decent-sized �CRACK!� about once a minute), and it's honestly starting to unnerve me, a bit. So I figure the best thing for me to do is to grab some CDs and some batteries for the Walkman and do what I can to not worry about it for the moment. After all, I can't do anyting about any of it while there's still ice continuing to form on the trees and they're breaking in-two everywhere... So I grab my Walkman, grab a few CDs (including the ones I bought at Sam Goody last night that I haven't had a chance to listen to, yet)... open the drawer of my desk to grab the spare AA batteries... searching... searching... searching... "a ha... there they a- AAAs??? Huh??? SHIT!!!� So much for that �the gods smiling on us� nonsense I was thinking yesterday. Well, I absolutely cannot sit there and listen to nothing but the trees breaking apart outside. I'll break apart, myself... Considering that my car is broken (and even if it weren't, it's handily blocked in by my wilting birch tree), there's only one thing to do...
I strap on my boots and head for the carry out about ten blocks away... When I get there, I can see the big "CLOSED" sign in the window... "Yippee..." The only other choice is to walk to the Super Quik about three miles away by Mike's house... Ack... but I've got no choice... it's either that or back home to the silence... I grab my cellphone and call Mike and tell him that I'm heading his direction and will probably stop by and thaw for a few on my way to the Super Quik. On the way, I am passed by a formerly very, very close friend... not once, but twice on the way to Mike's in about a fifteen minute time span... It's not that we had some kind of falling out or anything, he just convinced my girlfriend to leave me and marry him about six or seven years ago. So I wasn't really expecting him to stop or anything, but still, if I had seen him trudging through the shit, I have no doubt I would have stopped and picked him up in a heartbeat... I guess I should maybe rethink my kindness to assholes in the future. About a 1/4 mile from Mike's I see a guy come walking up the boulevard. As he gets a little closer, I can see he's toting a 12-pack of Busch Light... �Mmmm... yummy swill.� I almost stopped in my tracks when I saw what I saw next... the guy is totally hitting a hooter... and not, even, like, hiding it, or trying to hit it like a cigarette, but, y'know, toking on it, walking down the street in broad daylight. I guess I need to stop being surprised at how ignorant people are, anymore.
Anyhow, I get to Mike's and get warm. While I'm there, I hear the weathrfolks say it should be in the mid 40s tomorrow and the mid 50s on Tuesday... "Well, at least it will thaw out..." (note: more famous last words)
So I leave there and go to SuperQuik... There's about 50 people in line at the kerosene pump... I think to myself that I'd almost rather be cold than sit and huff burning kerosene fumes - it tends to make me (and others) quite ill-feeling.
6:15pm - Back home (finally). Stuff is really nasty out, now... I go down to Mrs. Bays' house to check on her. She's lived alone for a while, now, and after seeing a tree limb bigger around than my leg pirced through her carport and sever others of comparable girth laying in her front yard and strewn about, I figure she's probably freaking out in her basement or something (and probably rightfully so). After seeing that she's okay, I come inside and basically collapse... but not before I slap my batteries that I trudged though the shit for in to my Walkman and fall asleep listening to King Crimson... at last, a minor bit of relaxation...
Sleep kinda comes and goes throughout the night... one thing kinda sticks out... Every time a song ends, in that little silence in between songs, without fail - �CRACK!�... damn...
Another late-night call with EP proves a bit settling. There are tree limbs falling all over the place at this point, but the sound of her voice is rather soothing among the chaos... as soon as we hang up, though, it's back to the realization that there are some mighty big, OLD trees that just so happen to have a bead right on my bedroom should they decide to give way... In particular, Where my bed is in my room and where I lay on my bed, I open my eyes and behold a GREAT BIG tree that just is aching to fall over and has been for the better part of about ten years. So... I just need to keep my eyes closed and concentrate on the music and being any kind of warmer...

Monday, February 17, 2003
After a pretty restless night (I actually fell asleep for good at about 6:00am), I wake up around 10:00am... The little battery-powered radio tells me that not only are most of the radio stations in town off the air, but the one station that is still on is reporting 30,000 homes in the area are without power... yikes... "This sucks." Since the water pumps are electric-powered, there's no water pressure here, either... hooray... more joy... Well, at least it's supposed to thaw out, today... After I become a little more awake, I realize something... It's not sleety-freezy shitting outside, anymore... "Still sucks, but thank god..."
I shouldn't have thanked anyone, because not only did it not get above freezing all day, but it began snowing right before noon and proceeded to dump about three inches of snow on top of the thousands of tons of ice...
At about noon, I decide it's time to go out and make another survey of that crapola... I walk out to the middle of the street and turn to take a look down the hill... "Holy shit..." At the same guy's house where the tree fell over in his back yard nearly through his house, the super-old, SUPER-huge tree (at least three feet in diameter) in his front yard did not only fall over, it came right out of the ground, partial root-system and all... not broken tree... good-and-uprooted tree... It missed going through the master bedroom of his house by a matter of about two feet... the house next to his (luckily empty at the time), however, is now wearing the tree firmly through the balcony and front porch... It is truly an ugly, ugly mess...
About 6:30pm, I call Mike to get a report on what he's seen out in the field (he's a cable guy)... As I'm talking to him in the sunroom, I'm looking out in the back yard at the some twenty or thirty limbs laying there... All of the sudden, a tree abuot 18 inches across comes STRAIGHT for the sunroom.... and catches on the cable strand (again)... thank the powers that be for strong anchors... I was backing out of the room the whole time, waiting for it to crash through the roof of the sunroom... and it didn't... it just hung there... *SHOOO!* That was tripped out...
[note: as of the writing of this, the tree is still laying on the cables out back... doesn't appear to be going anywhere, anytime soon]
Other than the continuing tree carnage, the lack of thaw, and the snow, the day is rather boring... still pretty unnerving - in fact, I'm starting to become convinced that this will never end - but pretty uneventful... I checked on a couple neighbors (Mrs. Bays' son finally came and got her and took her to his apartment that has had all utilities the entire storm) saw a couple neighbors I haven't spoken to in a while and walked around with them and surveyed more shittiness... heard from my saving grace (Extremelyimportant Person) and went to bed... Tonight, however, the great big, old tree took on a whole new characteristic - where the snow had fallen and clung to the ice glaze, it had formed a face that looked remarkably like the mascot of the band Iron Maiden, "Edward T Head." The face was staring right at me, smiling its wicked smile... Man... I really need the power to come back on...
Sometimes I'd catch these flashes of light through my closed eyelids... I'd open them... "Lightning?" I would think... "Nah... No way... not feeling any thunder or anything..." It happens a couple more times in the next few minutes and I'm totally confused... I shut off my CD player, sit up in bed... and wait... sure enough... �FLASH!�... �KAPOW� (faintly) "A haaa... The transformers..." When they go out, they actually put off an insane amount of light, even from really far away... I put my headphones back on and try to get to sleep...
At a couple points through the night I would hear branches breaking, wake up, look out the window, and SWEAR that the tree was falling... It SO looked like it was coming right for the window... not good for my now thoroughly sketchy heart... I would do just about anything to not be where I was at that point. I'm going mental...

Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Well, the power company said the power, that should have been back on (according to their earlier report) last night will now be on by Thursday... well... okay... so they only missed it by three days. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, though... They weren't expecting quite what they got...
And again... the weather people drop the ball... The supposed-to-be 50� temperatures don't get above freezing... still ice everywhere... still extremely shitty... trees still snapping, but not nearly at the pace they were... mostly because most of the stuff that was going to fall is already laying all over the fucking place...
I'm feeling severely mental at this point... I mean yeah, I've got music... I've got EP doing her best at keeping me calm (she has a wonderful voice among other things, I think). I'm not sure she truly realizes the actual severity of the situation, but nonetheless, she's keeping me sane... I appreciate it way more than I would ever make it apparent to her...

Wednesday is much like the rest... cold... shitty... ice everywhere... there's not a lot to report... Chainsaws a plenty... EP keeps me as relatively calm as she can... Being smelly and cold and worn out takes a real toll on the psyche... It's one thing if you prepare for it, like climbing K2 or something... you're prepared to be smelly and cold and worn out... but when you don't expect it, and don't want it, and it never seems like it's going to come to an end, it kind of freaks you out...

Thursday, February 20, 2003
5:01am
�CLICK�
???
I was totally asleep... but I swear I just heard my converter on my TV come on...
Wait a minute... What did I just think to myself, there? I swear I just heard... my...
I throw the covers off from over my head and lo and behold!
"...let there be light..."
Oh my god! Oh my god! Incredible...
�WHIRRRRR!�
Could it possibly be??? The furnace!!! is ON!!!
Oh, joy of all joys!
The afternoon brings temperatures in the mid 40s and even though it's very sunny out, it sounds like it's raining out... Ice is coming down all over the place... the thaw is on...
...
The house warms up... The water is warm (well, the water is back, first and foremost)...
Soon I am clean and warm... incredible... am I dreaming? *pinch* "Ow! Fuck!" Nope... not dreaming.
No cable (and no net), yet, but I am warm and clean... incredible...

Friday afternoon brings the return of the cable and the internet and I finally can let out a big sigh of some form of relief... That was five days of complete shittines... boy, did it suck... But the suckdom has ceased to be quite so sucky... It's still a total mess... a complete disaster... but I think it's going to be a little better... Things feel almost kind of normal, again... but for five days... it was something else.

I've changed my mind from an earlier post... The worst show on TV is anything that includes the word "reality" in it's ads.

*sigh*

I'm growing ever more tired of my friends interrupting me when I'm in the middle of talking about something I want to talk about sometimes for the sake of basically just not letting me talk about one thing I want to talk about, ever... and if I do chime in with what I think about whatever, more times than not I'm told, "No, [it's like this]..." as if my opinion is somehow incorrect... Maybe I'm mistaken, or maybe people don't realize they step on my toes way too much when we all talk... I always let them dictate the paths of conversations, and they (never fail) always end up sitting around talking about the same things - either politics (one of the two friends is right-of-center, the other is left-of-center, which makes for some legit entertainment, at times) or Ultima Online... after a conversation about the bugs in the recent addition to the UO world (I try to stay interested in it all, but I played the game for a few months (and would probably still be playing it out of loyalty to my friends if it wasn't for the fact that the computer I currently use can't handle the load) and basically found it WAY too time intensive for WAY too little of a return - I need more plot in my adventures other than mining my ass off for hours at a time to smelt it into ingots to smith shitty items to melt down to go mine some more to smelt some more to make more shitty items to melt down some more etc. for countless days (and that's just one skill of your characters 7 possible "grand mastered" skills), so I kind of tire of hearing about it incessantly after a while), it had to get around to politics (because it always does)...

[note: I'm not using "blah blah blah" to be a dick, but because I can't really remember what was actually being said - I was trying to enjoy my steak]
Pa: "...[blah blah blah, Bush's and Cheney's families both got rich on oil (yeah, okay, not really earth-shattering news)]..."
Fi: "...[blah blah blah, five year plan... blah blah blah, hydrogen cars...blah blah blah, something about] JFK..."
(a ha! an opening!)
Me: "Oh, my god. That reminds me. Have either of you seen 'Clone High,' yet?"
Fi: "No."
Pa: "No."
Me: "It's the first thing I've seen on Mtv in years that I can actually stand to watch."
Fi: "What is it?"
Me: "Well, it's a high school that has clones of, like, Joan d'Arc, Ghandi, Abe Lincoln, JFK, Cleopatra, and all these historical figures... it is absolutely hilarious... all kinds of famous people doing voices, too... Nicole Sullivan, Andy Dick-"
Fi: "What, it's a cartoon?"
Me: "Yeah."
Pa: [some form of sigh-type thing]
Fi: "I'll never watch it..."
Me: "Well, you're missing it... It's fucking hilarious... There was this one on the other day - JFK was in the media room getting it on with Catherine the Gr-"
Pa: "After we clean up Iraq, we need to continue right on into Iran, then Turkey, then [blah blah blah, let's make sure the entire world hates us before we annihilate it]..."
[I hereby give up on ever being able to get a word in edgewise when the two of them are in the same room together]

I think my friends are too commited to trying to be intellectual all the time and trying to solve other people's (like, say, G-Dub's) messes (which no one on the planet will ever do) to lower themselves to laugh at a silly cartoon. It's okay to laugh at Dave Attell (who is really funny) talk about getting a handjob from one of the Dixie Chicks, but a cartoon? Don't be so absurd.*sigh*