The Rogues Gallery
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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Monday, November 9th, 2009 | |
sailor_jim
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5:28p |
Olaf
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=73 Okay, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this one before, but – if so – it’s worth repeating.
Oglaf.Com is, perhaps, the funniest adult web comic I’ve seen, bar none. It only updates on Sundays, but the art is superior and the writing is so tight as to be almost virginal. (The one where the king ends up telling the wizard, “Well, come on, man! Look a bit happier about it!” almost made me do myself an injury.)
It’s mostly x-rated, with graphical stuff appearing every other page (at least), but I still recommend it to everyone over the age of 18 with any sense of humor about God’s funniest joke on humanity, sex.
(By the way, do yourself a favor and start from the beginning, instead of backing your way from the latest. The artist – whomever he or she might be, there is no credit page that I can find – often does series of comics, such as the most recent, which took three pages to finish. Anyway, backing your way through the collection means you’ll miss out on quite a few great punch lines. Better still, use the index.) |
leighblack
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7:00a |
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fred_bear
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10:38a |
Muse! and The Big Day Out
As you know, Muse are headlining the 2010 BDO. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) eagle_riley and I are both huge Muse fans and were umming and ahhing about buying tix to the BDO just so we could see Muse, but decided against it as we were (well, I was) sure they'd announce Side Shows. They haven't yet. Dooom! All the BDO tix sold out the day they went on sale. Then, light at the end of the tunnel, BDO organisers announced a ballot for 3,000 extra tix to each show. eagle_riley and I both signed up and he'd just been notified that he won 2 tix to the Friday 22 Jan show in Sydney! Wooo! So we do get to see Muse after all. Of course this now means they'll announce side shows. If that happens and we get tix to those I may have 2 BDO tix for sale. Woooo! Muse!!!! :) ETA As it turns out I was also successful in the BDO ticket ballot. So, if anyone in Canberra wants 2 x Sydney BDO tix for Fri 22 Jan @ $150 each, let me know. Current Mood:  excited |
| Sunday, November 8th, 2009 |
leighblack
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7:01a |
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| Saturday, November 7th, 2009 |
leighblack
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7:01a |
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| Friday, November 6th, 2009 |
leighblack
|
8:10a |
Writer's Block: Here's looking at you
I'm not sure what it says about me that the first scene I thought of was the kiss in Never Been Kissed. I kind of love that ridiculous movie. But I should really say something more like Wesley tumbling down the hill in The Princess Bride and Buttercup throwing herself after him. Or really anything from that movie. Current Mood:  blahCurrent Music: fucking Kings of Leon on the radio |
leighblack
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7:01a |
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| Thursday, November 5th, 2009 |
leighblack
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7:01a |
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| Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | |
sailor_jim
|
11:15p |
Up, Up, and Oy Veh! (part 2)
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=66 So we set up shop at the local university and put up fliers all over campus.
That’s when the shit really hit the fan …
To begin with, there was the matter of where we were to be housed. Our federal funding guaranteed that we’d find office space on the campus of the sprawling federally funded university, but it didn’t guarantee that we’d be welcomed, or even openly tolerated. That intolerance was apparent from the first time we stepped on the campus and were shown to our offices by a reverential of the student senate, in lieu of any university official or even employee. The location of our offices was also a hint, located as they were in the basement of the furthest building on campus. Not just the furthest building from the rest of the campus, but also the furthest from the parking lots, the furthest from the classes, and the absolute furthest from the admin building.
But right beneath the day care center.
I was going to use my government contact to rectify the situation, but my head tech commented that – by some fluke – we had exactly what we needed by way of power, water, sewage, and space. I counted to ten in Latin then checked out the spaces with an open mind.
Damn … it was perfect. There was even a secure reinforced area that would be perfect if any of the test subjects … well, if there was any trouble. Parking was still an issue, but there was a parking lot across the street that my sponsors were willing to purchase for our use, and there was still the small matter of moving our equipment in without alerting any student radicals (if there were still such things) or local reporters looking for their big break (of which there were always an ample supply), but our isolated location worked for us in that matter, permitting the crew to move us in during the darker hours of night.
A few days to wire the place correctly and we were ready for volunteers. I sat at my slightly worse for the wear desk, moved test subject 1 onto a small pile of papers, and waited.
Six days later, we were still ready for volunteers and I was still waiting. With the exception of a few adventurous three year old’s and one overly chirpy counselor, nobody had come down our stairs since we moved in. This wasn’t like the students at my alma mater, where damn near every student without a wealthy parent (and many with) routinely signed up for any program of study that would pay four bucks an hour. Heck, most of my bodily fluids were still at college; what the heck was wrong with the students of today?
I told the staff to keep the equipment ready and set forth to the student union, to see just what the student of today wanted. Halfway there, I noticed that every one of the fliers we’d put up was either covered with other fliers or missing. Several had been vandalized, with poorly spelled and ungrammatical accusations of what we were trying to accomplish scrawled across them.
By the time I reached the student union, it was obvious that the men and women of this particular university were more interested in selling blood and plasma than getting paid by the hour to “have degrading medical experiments” performed on them by “government quacks and hacks.” I looked at an advertisement for the local blood bank and could see why … they paid a lot better than when I was in college. I walked through the entrance and past various doors, just trying to get a feel for the environment, when I found the student newspaper.
Hmmm …
I walked in and asked to speak to editor-in-chief, who turned out to be a rather attractive young lady with a rather unfortunate skin condition. I introduced myself and asked if she’d like an exclusive interview as to what we were really doing in the basement of the old Croppy Building? She called over a much younger man and the three of us retired to an empty room, where we sat around a folding table and they asked questions.
After the third time they caught me out on my official story, the one that the DOD public relations experts assured me was foolproof, I shrugged and told them what I really wanted to do … create superheroes. After they stopped laughing, I asked if any of the reporters outside took chemistry? One did and she happened to have her textbook. I opened it to the author’s bio and handed it to the editor.
She did a classic double-take at the photo (which wasn’t all that long ago and I’ve aged gracefully, I think), read my bio, and then asked me if I was really serious about “making superheroes?”
I explained that lots of athletes gained amazing strength, speed, and stamina with various substances, such as the mundane steroids, so was it really so hard to believe that I had discovered processes that could create superhuman strength, speed, and powers? I made sure that they understood that I was just in the testing stages, but – yes – I was quite serious.
The next morning we had more volunteers than we knew what to do with and the Pentagon was on the phone waiting for me when I walked through the door. It was our primary patron, a four-star patron, and I still have trouble hearing out of that ear to this day. To say he was a tad miffed that we’d broken cover was like saying that New Orleans had a bit of a dampness problem when Katrina came through. He spent the first five minutes driving my ear drum into my brain and I had to actually look up some of the phrases he used, as well as one or two of the words. Most were instructive, if inaccurate … or, in a few cases, physically impossible for any species known to man.
When he finally stopped to inhale, I quickly explained that nobody was going to take us seriously, not after the interview. I mean, c’mon … create superheroes? All I’d have to do is make sure everyone who volunteered signed the proper releases and were told that, no, of course we can’t create superheroes! We were just doing tests on possible strength and endurance enhancers for the military that, conceivably, might one day, in the distant future, possibly lead other scientists to discover some currently unknown way to … blah, blah, blah.
Which is exactly what I told the local reporter who elbowed her way to the front of the line. I brought her into my office, made sure to seat her towards my good ear, and we had a long, laughing, chat about how a simple testing procedure and a few random comments on the possibilities that the future might bring had resulted in a highly misleading story in the student newspaper. I asked, toward the end of our interview, if she’d like to participate in the testing? She agreed and I had her sign a release.
Our resident shrink tested her for any psychological oddities, our resident physician took blood, and our physical therapist measured her relative strength and endurance. Wanda, the shrink, gave her a green light, as did Bob, our doctor, so I tested her for any allergic reaction, then gave her the first shot, the one that everyone would receive, and had her sit for five minutes while we talked a bit more about genetics and the possibilities of nano-technology, a subject that neither of us knew the first thing about, so both of us could talk as if our opinions meant anything.
After the five minutes were up, I had Daniel, our physical therapist, retest her strength and reflexes, and she actually did around twenty percent better (he already knew what result to “discover” … no sense in not giving her a nice ending for her story). I had Bob take another blood sample, “to compare against the first one,” I explained, and sent her on her way with a small list of possible side-effects that was pure fiction, cobbled off of a non-prescription cold medicine bottle, I believe.
While I was dealing with the reporter, Wanda and Bob and Daniel were testing a conga line of applicants, treating them exactly like the reporter. The only difference was that Wanda was really testing them to make sure they weren’t nuts, Bob was carefully checking all blood samples for any foreign substances, and Daniel was carefully determining if they were the correct body type (and if they had any disqualifying physical problems). Everyone cleared by Bob were given the first shot and, after a brief rest, had a second blood test taken and a reevaluation by Daniel.
The first shot, of course, didn’t do a damn thing for anyone’s overall strength, it merely introduced a certain compound into their bloodstream. If their blood reacted a certain way to that compound, then they were good candidates. If it didn’t, then they never heard from us again, no worse the wear for their brief time in our offices.
We had over five hundred candidates pass through our doors in that first week following the student story.
Only five were selected as candidates. |
leighblack
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7:00a |
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sailor_jim
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4:42a |
Up, up, and Oy Veh!
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=61 I remember when I was younger, there was this television show that featured a guy who’d had his arms and legs replaced with bionics. He could run real fast, just real high, and hit like Joe Frasier on crack. It was a real impressive show, especially how they showed a diagram of his bionics in the opening theme every week. You could see how they attached and everything. It gave the show a bit of a science cred, y’know?
Then, half way through the first season, the guy flipped a car onto its roof by grabbing it with a bionic hand, bracing his bionic legs, and standing up while doing a curl with that bionic bicep. One car over easy peasy.
Except it should have ripped out his non-bionic spine. Okay, the arm was cool and the legs were cool, but the skeleton and flesh in-between were just that, normal bone and meat. No way they could support that much weight. The bionic hand should have stayed locked on the car while, pop, the bionic shoulder popped right off the human being.
They corrected it by the next season, when he laid on his back and did a legs only car flip, but it was too late. All science cred was already gone and there wasn’t any sort of explanation that would ever get it back.
It was the same way in comics. It didn’t matter if the guy or gal was super strong; if they didn’t have invulnerability, then there wasn’t any way they could bend a bar of steel. The vulnerable flesh and bone of their hand would be crushed way before the steel bent. Ditto with flying or running real fast; if bullets didn’t bounce off their eyes, then insects wouldn’t either and any air-born matter larger than a speck would hole them at any real speed. If they had speed and strength, but no invulnerability, then they’d better have a damn good suit of armor and that was that.
Which is why I decided to go for invulnerability, first!
Besides being a great deal easier to increase one’s density than one’s strength or speed, it was the keystone of any superhuman worth the title. I readied my chemicals and attacked the problem.
My first experiment showed the slight difficulty I’d overlooked. To wit; movement. If one’s density was increased to the point of invulnerability, then one’s mass was increased to the point that one simply was too massive to move. Moreover, it became impossible to get through the hyper-dense dermal layers to reach the vein needed to start the proper chemicals for super strength. The poor rat just laid there, unable to do anything else.
In short, I invented the first living, breathing (with difficulty, but breathing), furry paperweight.
And it only cost around thirteen billion dollars.
Fine, so super strength first, then invulnerability!
After the fifth lab rat embedded itself into the wall, I decided that some sort of tranquilizer would be a good idea. I loaded a needle with five cc’s of a basic animal tranq, injected rat number seven, and – as soon as he nodded off – started the procedure to give him super strength. I can only assume that the tranq somehow combined with the chemicals for the procedure, resulting in number seven not becoming super strong.
On the other hand, he did melt his way through the cage, table, and wall … I’d call that at least a partial success. (If you ever happen to see him [he's about average rat size, brown and white colored, and glows with an unnatural hellish inner light ... kinda mauve], please contact your local animal control officer and do not try to capture him.)
So tranquilizing the subject was impossible, while giving it super strength without tranquilizing resulted in interesting splatter patterns, but not much else, and going for invulnerability first was simply counterproductive.
The bottom line was that continued experimentation on animals, in that they couldn’t be reasoned with or trained to deal with super powers with any reasonable success, was of limited use.
I needed human test subjects and that’s all there was to it. However, it was no longer possible to use prison volunteers for such an endeavor and there was no way that the military would permit testing on their personnel … not after number seven melted it’s way through the generals steel-belted tire on his way to glowing freedom, at any rate.
So where does one find humans stupid enough to be willing to undergo incredibly dangerous and irreversible alteration to their body chemistry for the piddling sums our budget could afford?
I spent most of the night awake and puzzling this one out … then, when I walked through my living room, I paused to straighten my fraternity portrait. Moments later, it dawned on me that most of my frat brothers had spent almost every waking moment attempting dangerous and irreversible chemical alternations to their bodies. For fun!
So we set up shop at the local university and put up fliers all over campus.
That’s when the shit really hit the fan … |
|
sailor_jim
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3:07a |
Jeez, I hate it when this happens!
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=59 Okay, I have really nice Internet service. Really, really, nice; like 6 Mpbs fast kinda nice, wireless.
I use the Internet all the time to research and write (ie, look at comics and porn and write), while Dian only uses it occasionally at home. At work, she has this incredible rig and spends tons of time on an even better Internet hook-up, but rarely uses her new laptop at home.
So I had no idea there was anything wrong with her Internet access until, about two, three weeks ago, she says she can’t get on-line. I walked over and looked over her shoulder. Speed was listed at 54 Mpbs (which is, of course, just connection speed to our wireless modem) and signal reported excellent … but the status was searching for the ip address. While I watched, it changed and reported there there was limited or no connectivity.
Huh. So I scooted her out of her chair, sat down, and ran some diagnostics. Halfway through doing so, the status changed to connected. Okay, I figure I either fixed it or that it fixed itself and all was cool.
Jump forward a couple of days and it’s down again. This time I run the diagnostics and nothing happens. They show the hardware is fine, so I check the software, starting with the repair function on the Windows program that manages network connections. The repair function runs and – shazam! – we have Internet! A kiss for my troubles and back to normal. I worked fine the rest of the day and when she used the laptop that weekend, so I figure the problem is solved.
Nope; a few days later, same bs. I run diagnostics, nothing; I run the repair, nothing; I got on-line on my own laptop and started researching the problem. When I finally had the beginning of a good idea of what to do, I sat back down at Dian’s machine and … it was on-line. I rebooted. On-line. I shut it off, left it off for a half hour, then booted it up. On-line.
Well, crap.
It worked well until two days ago, just before she left on an overnight trip. This time I simply sat and watched it, waiting for something to happen. An hour passed, then two; nothing. I rebooted; nothing. I did everything that I’d done before; nothing.
Fine. I got on-line on my own laptop and sent a request to the ip, explaining what was happening and asking for a solution. Dian left on her trip, I promised she’d have a working Internet when she came home, and then I waited for a reply.
The reply came this morning. It started, “You may have wireless interference which could be the cause of your wireless issues.”
Wireless interference?!?
Her friggin’ laptop is sitting not six feet from mine and I’m getting on-line with no difficulty, how the hell could it be wireless interference?! I read the rest of the reply, which explained the most common causes for wireless interference and explained how I could change the channel the modem broadcasts on and/or crank up the power setting, to either go around or through the interference.
I carried her laptop to my table and turned it on. Same as before; Speed: 54 Mpbs, Signal: Excellent, and Status: Searching for ip address.
I wrote a blistering reply back, explaining that there was no possible way it could be wireless interference. To underscore my contempt for their “wireless interference” cop-out, I stopped and changed the broadcast channel to 10 (they said 2 and 10 were the best) and cranked the power setting as high as it would go.
Then, of course, I had to copy my blistering reply to a Word document and restart my Internet connection, since I’d changed the damn channel. I went back in, opened the reply, pasted the reply back in, and noticed that Dian’s laptop was now on-line and doing fine.
Now I have to wait for it to screw up again before I send the damn blistering reply, since there is an infinitesimal chance that their suggested solution, no matter how stupid or unlikely, actually worked!!
It’s like when my car used to act up, way back when I was single and living on base in California. I bitched about it to a friend, on my way to take it in to a mechanic, and he said, “Maybe your battery is low.” The friggin’ problem was in the transmission, I explained it was in the transmission, he heard me tell him it was in the transmission … “Maybe your battery is low”?!?
He insisted, even after I explained that there was no connection between the battery and the transmission (well, nothing direct, at any rate), but he insisted that he’d seen this sort of thing before and was so persistent, I let him check my battery. Okay, it was a little low on one of the cells, so I let him pour in some distilled water he kept in his trunk.
And the noises stopped. The rattle stopped, the ping stopped, and the grinding sound stopped. I drove it into Oakland and back into San Francisco … nothing.
I waited for years for that damn cars transmission to start acting up again so I could, finally, take it to a competent mechanic, but it never did! There is no way in Heaven or Hell that a little water added to the battery could have possibly fixed the problem, but there it was … I finally sold the damn car and bought a Honda that had never heard of faith healing.
Now I have to wait until Dian’s laptop screws up again before I can send a nasty reply to the dork who thought it was wireless interference! In the meantime, I’m spending hours researching the problem to be ready for it when it does break down again. At the moment, I’ve narrowed it down to either a large breasted Chinese girl or maybe a redhead with a killer tush … or it could be a celebrity. I’ll research it a little more and get back to you. |
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sailor_jim
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2:17a |
Yeah, yeah, yeah … I got it easy and all that.
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=57 My loving wife, Truthzilla, decided that I was whining too much in my last entry, so she commanded me to add the following:
I have a good life.
I haven’t any real problems, only minor annoyances.
There are many, many people – several of those who read this, as a matter of fact – who are worse off than I and I apologize to bitching about my little irritations like they were serious problems.
Blah, blah, blah; yadda, yadda, yadda; wackity-smackity … okay, already?
(Sheesh, the things I do for sex … ) |
| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 |
leighblack
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7:00a |
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| Monday, November 2nd, 2009 |
leighblack
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9:05p |
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sailor_jim
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9:35p |
@^%$#%@!!!
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=55 Well, ain’t this just spiffing!
It’s Monday, time to register my little truck and – Paints See Braised – my tail lights survived the weekend! I pulled out enough cash to cover the inspection and registration fee ($10 and $65, respectively, if not respectfully) when I bought groceries, ran home and made sure I had proof of insurance and … and …
I couldn’t find my title.
Ah, well … that just meant that Dian had it stuck away with the other official stuff we’ve collected over the years. She used to keep it all in an oak file cabinet, which we still have, but which was empty of documents. So she moved the documents when we moved out here, no biggie. I’d just have the inspection and registration taken care of after lunch.
I did something very naughty, but delicious, to a huge slab of salmon and served it with risotto and mixed steamed veggies. For desert, Peaches Dian (who’s this Melba person, anyway) and I asked her while she yummied her way though the bowl where we were keeping our official documents now.
She looked up, a little cream on her chin, and asked what kind of official documents was I looking for, then nodded when I replied and told me all that stuff was in the metal brief case in the closet. Ta-da!
Of course, it wasn’t in the case. Oh, the title for my old Honda Civic was and the title for our old Oldsmobile was, but not the title for my little truck. I called her at work and asked where else I could look?
She shrugged (something Dian can actually do over the phone … it’s conveyed with breathing, I think) and said, “Well, then you must have taken it out and put it somewhere else.”
That was over an hour ago. Now the house is torn up, folders and stuff all over, and I just got off the phone with the Texas DMV, having called to determine just how one would go about obtaining a duplicate title. I have to fill out a form, mail it in with a check, then it’ll take about a week – maybe a little more – before it gets here … by which time, of course, I will have found the gd title, run out and bought a new tail light (because one of them will have gotten busted by then), gotten the inspection, and been told at the local DMV that I’ve missed some sort of artificial deadline for registration and will have to pay some silly ass fine!
Why?
Because I’m Sailor Jim and the Gods of Screwing with Mortals just loooooooove me to fucking death!! |
leighblack
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1:02p |
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sailor_jim
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1:51a |
Found a new favorite restaurant!
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=53 Dian and I, heading out to the movies, left a few hours early to grab a bite and wander a bit. We generally would have gone to a Chinese buffet or our regular steak and seafood place (oddly enough, the seafood is always delightfully fresh here), but Dian was a tad burnt out on our regular haunts. So we spent a few minutes with the phone book before leaving.
The place was a unassuming cinder block building from the outside and not much more on the inside. Oriental art on the walls, black and white checked linoleum underfoot. and well maintained wood tables in rows, with a couple of Koi filled large fish tanks on one wall. The waiter brought the menus and we spent quite awhile choosing.
Neither of us had been in a Vietnamese restaurant in years, maybe over a decade, and we couldn’t remember what we used to order back then. (I was a bit astonished that there even was a Vietnamese restaurant in town, but Dian assured me that there was quite a large Vietnamese community … who knew?) Anyway, Dian ended up choosing a meal based on the fact that it was listed as a local favorite, one that was built around a very tender steak and some incredibly done rice, and I asked for one that featured stir-fried squid, shrimp, beef, chicken, and several different veggies on a kick ass crisp rice noodle bed. For an appetizer, to hold until the meal showed up, we each had a spring roll.
The spring rolls were incredible! Translucent rice paper all but shrink wrapped around tender whole shrimp, crisp green spinach, and steamed rice (there were a few move veggies in there, but nothing readily identifiable), with a dipping sauce that had maybe started as a fish sauce, but had be elevated to a entirely new taste with the addition of some fresh spices and herbs. They called it Nước mắm pha and it was marvelous.
I don’t know about Dian, but the main course just might have been the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth … but don’t tell my wife. It was a lovely experience and my stomach was as happy as my taste buds by the end of the meal. Dian loved her dish as well, but kept trying to steal tastes of mine throughout the meal.
The final tab, including tip, came to $25, which capped the deal and made it our new default restaurant for dining out. |
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sailor_jim
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1:23a |
This is It and Astro Boy
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=51 Well, This is It wasn’t.
The local cinema (and, for the first time, I see the word enema half hidden in cinema) managed to schedule a documentary about Michael Jackson’s final tour – his musical tour, mind – on a screen that had screwed up speakers. It was obvious from the first seconds of the previews and I alerted the staff to the problem, but – after it still hadn’t been fixed ten minutes into the move, around twenty minutes after I let them know there was a problem – Dian and I walked out … and into the movie just starting across the hall.
Astro Boy was about as light weight as they come, but fun. I had to work at ignoring the entire blue positive energy/red negative energy silliness to enjoy the film (most films call for a suspension of disbelief, but this one really worked it hard) and the underlining morals were a tad thick, but – overall – Dian and I enjoyed ourselves.
On the way out, I asked a guy who was standing outside of This is It if they ever fixed the speakers. He shrugged and said, “Yeah … kinda.”
I’ll catch Mr. Jackson’s final performance on DVD; I know my speakers will be up to it. |
fred_bear
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11:27a |
Trip Photos
Hi all, I've finally finished uploading all my photos (well 1250 of them) to Photobucket. I'm slowly going through and adding titles to them all as well, but it will take time to do them all. So far I'm only part way through the Forbidden City photos. You can find them here if you're interested: http://s82.photobucket.com/albums/j244/jenny_mason/Trans-Mongolian%202009/Hope you enjoy them! Current Mood:  sadCurrent Music: jjj |
| Sunday, November 1st, 2009 |
leighblack
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1:02p |
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sailor_jim
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1:15a |
Bloody Halloween, anyway!
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=49 Dian and I bought around fifty bucks worth of candy in anticipation of tonight. Good stuff, too! None of that cheap bubble gum or off brands; mixed bags of various kinds of mini-Hershey’s candy bars, Tootsie Rolls, Tootsie Roll Pops, and really good salt water taffy!
Dian took half of the load to her office on Friday, since everybody with kids or grandkids were making the rounds, office to office, to show off costumes, and then they all got together for a party in the main hall. The other half we poured into our largest bowls and set them by the front door for tonight.
And nobody came! Not one kid came to the door! We turned on the porch light, I carved a jack-o-lantern and had it out there lit up, we even had a stupid cardboard skeleton on the door. Nothing. We waited until an hour after sunset … still nobody.
I finally walked next door to our slightly trained rat owning neighbors and, after putting up with around fifteen minutes of excited yipping, asked what the deal was with the kids. Why no trick or treaters?
My neighbor replied that there were thousand of kids trick and treating … just none in our area. Apparently, since everyone in our little cul-de-sac is over fifty, nobody bothers bringing their kids down our way.
I walked home and told Dian that we weren’t going to get any kids … so we called around and located a public Halloween party for little kids at one of the local schools and took all our candy down there. Still, it was a tad disappointing to not have anyone come to the door. |
| Saturday, October 31st, 2009 | |
sailor_jim
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7:22p |
Street legal … but for how long?
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=47 Overall, I’ve had very few complaints about my little pick-up.
Oh, I would have preferred that the transmission would have been made of sterner stuff and that the a/c less of a tinker toy affair, that the spare tire that came with her was an actual tire and not a overgrown solid riding mower tire, and that her engine could be worked on by more regular mechanics, instead of having to either take her to dealerships or strange greasy men who mutter “Metric, huh? I know I have some metric sockets around here somewhere … ,” but other than that, I’ve always been very happy with my little girl. She’s done famously for me in very trying situations and performed far above any expectations I had when I first bought her new in 1994. She was my retirement present to myself, y’see, and I’ve never had much of a reason to regret buying her.
That having been said, there is the small matter of her tail lights. Not the bulbs … the entire assembly!
Y’see, they don’t seem to last very long. I no sooner replace one, either driver’s or passenger’s side, when the other gets broken by some dork backing up … who, of course, doesn’t bother to even stop afterward. Or they get busted out by some moronic teenager with a hammer and a need to make as many people as possible miserable like him … God, save us from friggin’ teenage angst!
Once, it was a pre-teen showing off a side kick to his friends in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I was loading groceries into the back of the truck at the time when, suddenly – heeYAHH! – Chuck No-brain kicks in my driver’s side tail lights. His mother and father were right there, too! His friends ran off; his mother said, with a tsk in her voice, “Oh, now look what you’ve done to that car, Junior;” His father smacked the kid on the back of his head and was dragging him toward their station wagon when I yelled, “HEY!”
Poppa turned, momma turned, and kid started to run (but, since poppa had a firm grip on him,he only ended up burning off a little sneaker rubber). Poppa, in a polite, but annoyed voice, replied, “Yes? Can I help you?”
I walked around to the back of my truck and pointed at the tail light. “Your kid just broke my tail light, mister!”
“Oh, I’m sure he didn’t,” he replied, turning back around while momma stared at him.
“I was standing right here, pal!” I shot back, walking after them. “He kicked it out right in front of you. You slapped him on the back of the head and started getting the hell out of here before I said anything, and now you wanna play like nothing happened?”
“It was broken before he kicked and that’s all there is to it!” He’d reached his station wagon and started yelling at his family to get in the car. I took out a pen and piece of paper and jotted down his license plate number.
“Hey, APL682!” I called, waving the piece of paper in front of his rolled up window. He flipped me off and started his engine. “You see those cameras up there? The one’s on the roof? Well, I got your number and those camera filmed him kicking out my tail light, as well as your walking away from the scene of a crime. You better start practicing what you intend to tell the police when they pick you up, because I’ll be calling them the instant you drive off.”
He turned his engine off and stared at me. I waited for about a ten count, then shrugged and walked back toward the store and the pay phones. I got about ten feet away before he caught up with me and tried to give me a twenty dollar bill, “for the damages, okay already?”
I held my hands back, letting the twenty fall to the ground and motioned him over to my truck, where I fished the receipt for the last replacement tail light out of the glove box. That one had cost me sixty bucks and some change. I showed it to him and he started to cuss.
He covered the cost, but that was a rare exception. In the fifteen years that I’ve owned my little pick-up, I’ve had to buy no fewer than twenty-four tail lights. Now I keep two rolls of tinted clear tape in the glove compartment, one red and one yellow, just to make temporary repairs, and – when I once found a parts store that was selling replacement tail lights for only forty bucks each, I bought two spares for each side. (I used all of them within a few years.)
Well, I have to register my pick-up in my new state and, here, that means I have to pay a police officer ten bucks to inspect my car before I can do so. The inspection is to check my VIN against the hot sheets and to ensure that my ride is street legal … so I bought a replacement passenger side tail light today for a little over eighty bucks and installed it a couple of minutes ago.
I’ll do the inspection on Monday.
I sure hope the new tail light lasts until then! |
leighblack
|
7:56a |
only time will tell if our limbs will swell
I have to leave for work in a few minutes, so this will be short. Last night's Motion City Soundtrack show was fantastically awesome! Even with equipment failure and Justin forgetting the words to entire songs. Heh. The crowd was SUPER rowdy! It made for a lot of fun, although I was very glad that we got our usual spot along the railing above the pit. Because I had no desire to be in that mob. It's been a very long and stressful couple weeks and this was exactly what I needed! And I am very glad I decided to change out of my skant dress. It would have been way too hot for the show. Anyhow, photos from work yesterday! ( behind the cut )And now off to a nine hour (GROAN) shift at Hallmark, in my other Star Trek uniform! Current Mood:  calmCurrent Music: Panic at the Disco - It's Almost Halloween |
| Friday, October 30th, 2009 | |
sailor_jim
|
4:23p |
You should talk to MY retirement investment broker!
http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=41 For those of you who sneer at a military career, lemme hit you with a few facts.
1. My retirement fund: I’ve received just shy of $200,000 in convenient monthly installments from my retirement fund since retiring. Call them dividends or interest, since it will never deplete the principle. The majority of this dividend, incidentally, is not taxable by either state or federal, so it represents a much larger overall spending amount.
2. My medical insurance: My wife and I have received, according to the yearly report from my medical insurance report, over $2,000,000 worth of medical care since I retired, including hospitalization on several occasions, surgery on more than one occasion (including one elective procedure that would have run over a hundred grand … and been refused by damn near every civilian HMO), and around fifteen years of regular doctors visits … basically for free. We have received health care of the highest standards, whenever we needed it, with no debates from bean counters over need or cost … and we’ve spent, out-of-pocket, only around a grand a year.
3. My life insurance: When I die, provided the world goes on living after the event (which I’m still dubious about), Dian will keep receiving the exact same medical care, 95% of the same monthly dividend payments, and all the various side benefits (discount shopping, lodging, and so forth) that are so numerous that I’m not even bothering with listing them all.
If Dian or I live to see 90 (which, since I have no intentions of ever dying, should be easy), and assuming that the steady increase as to the percentage of my monthly dividend payments, and also assuming a spiked increase in medical care, then my retirement will have ended up providing the equivalent of around one hundred millions dollars.
Of course, I have to serve for over twenty years, drown, get shot a few times, cut a few dozen times, divorced a little, bury over a dozen close friends, and end up in and out of a couple of military loony bins to earn that retirement, but – hey – no career is without a little stress, right?
So, when any of you in the proper age group are considering what to do with your life, or if any of your close-to-high-school-graduation kids or grandkids ask for your advise as to what they should do next, might I suggest you seriously consider the only career left in the country that not only pays well from day one, but has on-the-job training up the ass, its own training centers for advance instruction, astonishing room for advancement, medical benefits second to none, and probably the most kick-ass retirement plan around?
Best of all, join at seventeen, retire at thirty-seven … and then go to college (on whatever version of the GI Bill that exists at the time, saving tons of money) and then start a brand new career, backstopped by a retirement that will never, ever, get ponzi-ed or go bankrupt.
In conclusion, to those of you who have sneered at my and others military careers, please feel free to suck it. |
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hungry