Sancto Sanctorum

Today I'm heading down to West Palm Beach to help my parents pack. It'll probably be a lot of work, very little fun, and a lot of my mom 'making suggestions' about what I should do in my current jobless state.

The only thing that confuses me about this is that their closing date is August 1st-- doesn't that just mean that the sale is finalized and they don't have to be out? I've never bought or sold a house before, just heard stories from friends about it. Does their completely emptying the house seem premature?

Ah well, at least they sold the house in this market. Now I can look forward to visiting them in Palatka, which is just as charming as it sounds. If Florida is America's wang, Palatka is found squarely in the taint.


On the upside, West Palm's got some tasty restaurants and seeing my folks isn't all bad, plus I can see my Aunt Molly. She was diagnosed with lung cancer, then tuberculosis, and then a brain tumor late last summer, and is still grimly plugging along, although she took up smoking again. I can also see my Aunt Linda, my mom's best friend.

Ah well, better finish up here and hit the road. Have a nice Wednesday, y'all!

I just spent 4 jolly hours attending online traffic school. It's for a ticket I got in May (I know that seems like a long time ago but it's all sorted, believe me) and can't afford to pay because my unemployment still hasn't arrived.

Now I'm going to mop the kitchen floor, because we somehow got ants yesterady and I sprayed Raid to wipe out their filthy little military formations. Unfortunately, the fumes are still present in the house and there are weensy bodies all over the kitchen floor. Gross.

Also, the plumber is supposed to come back today to find the leak he didn't find Friday, and that the maintenance guy couldn't find yesterday. All we know is it's somewhere IN the house, because when he shut off the valve to the house but left the water main on, the gauge stopped registering water use.


I sure hope your Monday's going better than mine!

We have these shitty neighbors.

I feel totally okay with calling them that and judging them to be shitty for the following reasons:

1. They let their dog wander the neighborhood. It shits on everyone's lawn, and when it comes in my yard and barks and growls at me I have a bad moment where I know that if it attacked me, I would hurt it horribly and feel terrible afterwards because its shitty masters have not properly trained it. It always drops to a submissive position when I turn to face it, but I feel like it might be the type to sneak up on someone.

2. When they moved to Ocoee, and decided to sell their house, they would make occasional visits back to the house here. On these visits, if the father saw me outside, he would try to inveigle me to buy his house. Like seriously trying to convince me. As in he starts by shouting at me from across the street and then runs over and starts telling me about all the amenities. I think he thinks I have money. I repeated the phrase 'Well I'm not really looking to buy right now, and I can't afford a 160k house, let alone the 260k that you are asking' like eight times. What usually ends the conversation is me walking away.

3. They had an Explorer, which they would drive the 50 yards to the neighborhood mailbox. They traded that in for a Suburban. And they keep it parked in front of my house.

4. The three year old is usually in the front yard in her diaper. I understand that mothers get tired and can't keep up with things so much, but the fact that I have never seen the child dressed bespeaks something much more trashy. I heard somewhere that other nations toilet train their children before the age of 1, and that fact blew me away. I wonder about its authenticity.

5. They were renting the house to the father's young brother, who was the one who approached me with a bat one day and warned me about people banging on his windows. I have deduced that drugs and possibly the sale of drugs were involved. He also had a friend over who crashed his scooter within a day of him getting it.

They moved back this week, with ANOTHER dog in addition to the first one. This one is bigger, and even less trained. I haven't encountered it face to face yet, but the fact that I walk down to get the mail every day virtually guarantees I will. Or someone else will. They are the reason that the mailboxes are not on all the houses, they had an unsocialized, untrained pit mix which attacked the mail lady and had to be put down. This is also a point against them.

The father got out of his suburban holding an open can of Miller Lite the other day. He also tried to get me to rent my spare room to his friends, who were previously renting his place. When I told him I was renting myself and the Landlord wouldn't like it, he advised me to lie and do it anyway. This was, as always, shouted at me from across the street.

When both our cars were broken into last December the wife told me she was getting her gun permit so she would 'feel safer.' She also intimated that the persons who broke into her car were, in the most polite terms I can render, 'not white.' (It turned out the thief was an old friend of her brother's who was stealing for drug money-ha ha). They have three young boys and the small girl. I don't trust them to have guns in the house.

I don't like these people. And I have an even better, FUNNIER reason to not like them other than they are shitty and trashy.

Just an hour or so ago two young black women with dreads came by campaigning for Obama. I gave them my information and said that I'd be interested in helping with the campaign (I secretly hoped they'd be able to get me a sign for my lawn). I even coined 'O for O,' meaning 'Orlando for Obama,' and they were thrilled and said it was a cute slogan and I should help them out more. I said I'd be happy to. It was starting to rain, and I invited them in but they said they just had one more house to do and then they'd be done. It was, of course, the neighbor across the street.

They spent exactly 4.2 seconds speaking to the neighbor before the door was closed in their face and they left. I am a little ashamed to say that I watched from the window as this transpired, but I couldn't help myself. Witnessing the event was probably a mistake, because it illustrates to me more strongly and confirms my possibly biased belief that these people are shitty and I don't have to respect them. However, I did, they are, and I don't.

toddalcott said in his review that Dark Knight redefined this genre and elevated the bar for 'comic book' movies in the same way that The Godfather did for gangster movies. By the fifties and sixties in American drama, gangster movies had become almost total pulp and were largely dismissed by cinema enthusiasts. Godfather changed all that.

In terms of 'comic book movies,' The Dark Knight changes all that, too.

Sweet syrupy, buttered and brown-sugared waffles, this film is magnificent. The whole thing is a piece of amazingly executed art, and I want to frame it and hang it on my wall.

There isn't a weak performance in it, the melding of CGI action and setpieces are flawless. Sometimes the story goes a few weird places, but overall it fits. There are no winks at the audience. You don't need cheap tricks to stay entertained. And you are frightened of The Joker. Don't wait to see this on video, it's really worth it to see it in the theater. Especially a crowded theater--there was a lot of clapping at the end of it.

I can't say a whole lot because I don't want to ruin anything for anybody, so I will say this:

It was so _______ when the __________ ___________ the _________. And ___________'s performance was magnificent. I was blown away when _________ was introduced. It was __________ .

Just repeat that paragraph a few dozen times and you'll get the idea.

There's nothing overblown or over the top about this movie, this wasn't Spiderman. This was the best crime drama I've seen in a while, which in the very beginning was what Batman was all about.

It's me.

Your wang.

I'm sure you might've heard by now, Rest of the Country, that America has this crazy little storm going on begun by a Department of Health and Human Services proposal that groups birth control and other methods of contraception as 'abortion.'

Normally the mad little things this country gets up to are cause for a knowing chortle from the other industrialized nations and an 'Oh United States. . . when will you learn to live up to your own vaunted proclaims of liberty and justice for all, and not just dance to the tune that the wealthy and religious pipe out? Surely your citizens are smarter than to just go along with the ludicrous edicts handed down from on high. . . wasn't that the whole point to begin with?'

Or maybe you haven't heard about it, and you aren't enjoying a chuckle. Waffles knows I'm not.

So, that whole thing I said up above. The whole reason for the kerfuffle is to protect the rights of those fucking ingrates who decide to get a job dispensing pharmaceuticals but don't really want to DO the job correctly; that is, they want the right to refuse to treat a woman based on their own beliefs. Their own religious beliefs.

This is horseshit. Plain and simple.

This is a world gone mad. One part of it is what happens when special interest groups get too much sway: Government institutions begin attempting to rewrite science, by declaring that pregnancy begins at some unquantifiable biological moment-not implantation, but maybe when two adults have enjoyed their second drink together and though 'Ah, why not?.' The move by the HHS would group all contraceptive devices-the pill, the ring, the IUD, EVERYTHING- as an abortion, and would allow the recipient of federal grants to refuse to treat someone based on their own beliefs. Which is as twisted as the right to religious freedom of expression as one can get.

What the fuck, Rest of the Country? What happened to 'I may not agree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it?' Remember that? That sense of 'Let's bond together against EVERYONE ELSE.' Hell, maybe it was combative and insular against the rest of the world, but at least we agreed on something.

I worked with a woman who was a pro-lifer once, and I managed to get her to see the other side very easily. It went something like this:

'By forcing someone to carry a child they don't want, and have a family they don't want, you are ruining at the very least two lives.'

Never mind the other extended family members who wind up helping out (if you're lucky), the taxpayers who fund your child, or the oversaturated foster system when you fuck up continually because you werent' ready and your kid goes somewhere else. And adoption's an option, but of course if your kid doesn't look like it walked right off a Huggy's commercial it might just float around for a few years, never mind the difficult process for parents to actually GET a kid.

And, of course, you are drastically limiting the choices of the parents. College? Personal growth? Taking a risk on a dream? Pff, you have time for none of that. You're a parent now, with a mouth to feed for the next decade and a half. Your lives are over. Hopefully your kids will learn how to use contraceptives in order to have half a chance at their own lives instead of becoming beholden to another's right off the bat.

The religious right's idea, boiled down, is that sex outside of marriage and for any reason other than procreation (at least on the part of the woman, these fucktards don't seem to have any problem filling Viagra prescriptions) is wrong, and the doer of the deed must be punished. And the punishment for their misstep is to raise a family.

How insane is that? Tells you quite a bit about how they view the family, doesn't it? It's something everyone must do, regardless of whether they want to. It's your duty. And you can hate it, as long as you subvert your hatred into resentment towards people who have their shit together and aren't afraid that the Invisible Sky Policeman is going to punish them for having a good time.

So yes, rest of the Country. THAT.

You know what nation is the happiest on earth right now? Hint: it's not the one that gave the world Disney.

The Danes.

And they're Socialists.

You guys. . .!

Omg!!!

SERIOUSLY! YOU HAVE TO LISTEN!

METALLICA LULLABYES.

NO FREAKIN WAY!

Is this old news? Did I just NOT hear about this until now?

wow!

Woo!

A lot of the time being taken on this novel is that I have the big pieces in place, I just have to connect all the little ones and add details and subtext and complex relationships and whatnot. I'm a continual fiddler, too, in that I'll write something on page 80 and think 'Oo, I need to go back to that earlier scene and make sure I didn't use the same dialogue, or give away 'the big reveal' from this one somehow.' Or I think of new scenes, something for foreshadowing et cetera. It's all one big-ass word doc right now, I'll break it into chapters later. And this is the super silly chick-lit 'Family Matters' in space story. Oooo, 'Family ANTI-Matter!' Heh heh, god I'm funny.

In Word I have 116 pages, 12 pt double-spaced. 56 of those were written in the last few weeks, although I took most of the week of Nathan's birthday off. And the first week I wrote barely anything. Still, I'm doing pretty good.

The plumber or maintenance guy has yet to make contact. Updates as the story unfolds. Or doesn't.

I've been keeping up with the news too, and know that my superskills of satire are needed--birth control pills in the same category as abortion? Really? I step away from the Internet for a few days and utter madness breaks loose. I feel a 'Dear Rest of the World' post comin' on.

And there's the matter of this little movie about a flying rodent crimebuster to deal with.

And by 'deal with' I mean HOLYSHITSOEXCITEDCHANGEMYPANTSEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

We DO have a water leak. I did the test where you check the meter, write down the usage, then check it again half an hour later without using ANYTHING in the house. If I'm reading the numbers right, we're somehow using almost a gallon a minute. Crap.

Ah well, better to know about it and get it fixed than wonder how the hell we're going through 40 kilogallons of water a month when we don't even have sprinklers. I've said it before, I'll say it again: thank WAFFLES we didn't buy this house.

Mirth and joy return tomorrow, I'm just a little down in the mouth tonight.

Today's interview didn't take place either, since the address I had this time led me to an abandoned office building. Fun!

Seriously.

Yesterday's snafu was partially my fault, because I transposed two numbers of the address. But again, that's the address that I found on Google because these goddamn people never gave me any kind of contact information and their emails read like a teenager's IMs, in that they are one line long and have absolutely no corporate signature or other indicator that it's anything but a fake email. 'Can you interview tomorrow at 12PM?' That is the extent of their information. No directions, no 'ring the bell for the receptionist,' no phone number, nothing. It's a cruel game of cat and also-cat.

They ought to just take down the frigging job posting on Monster and put up something a little more accurate. Being the consummate professional I have written something for them.

Are you only interviewing with us out of a vague feeling of guilt about being unemployed and chasing a stupid dream! Well we don't want you either, but dance to our sadistic tune anyway! We aren't really based in Florida, we're a cable company with no presence whatsoever in this state but plenty of presence in the Pacific Northwest! Roam around a part of town entirely made up of warehouses, truckyards, and retention ponds! Be completely demoralized as a result of our failure to provide you with helpful information, when you can't find us at all and slink home to drown your sorrows in ice cream! Could that abandoned office building we sent you to actually be the setup for a horrifying sexual assault? Come find out!

Position title: Whatever you want it to be! It's not real!

Pay: Moonbeams and forget-me-nots.

Benefits: Powered entirely by your imagination

I had an interview today for a copywriter position I found through Monster.

When the company contacted me, they did it through the 'fake' email they'd created just for Monster, and had absolutely no contact information in the email. No phone number, no address, nothing, just the HR recruiter's name. I wrote them back confirming my interest in an interview last Wednesday and received no response, so I Googled the company name for an address, and fed that into Mapquest.

Which led me to a weedy retention pond in a crummy part of town. Joy.

I drove around for half an hour trying to find the place and nothing. I wrote them an email just now in the most polite and professional tone basically asking WTF? and that I still want to interview tomorrow if possible.

Honestly, I wasn't interested in the job at all, but thought that they might give me part-time work and that it would at least be good interview practice. But no contact info at all? Seriously? I can accept that I found the wrong office or that I maybe put too much trust into Mapquest, but when there's not even a bread-crumb trail to follow I can't be totally responsible if I get lost in the forest and eaten by a witch.

I mean seriously.

I think I will soon have one of those friending frenzies that people are always having. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. I want to organize my tags a bit, first.

My parents sold their house, the closing date is August 1st. I'm supposed to go down to West Palm the week after next and help them pack and move some stuff; most of their stuff is already in Palatka, where they are retiring, but there's still a lot of knickknacks, their basic furniture, dad's workshop and other stuff. And I have to say goodbye to the house, too.

My dad moved into that house when he was eleven, I think, and then bought it from my Grandmother so he and my mom could move in. He's sixty-three, this year. Over fifty years in the same house. He's been dealing with a lot this year, from Gary Fountain dying to my Aunt getting worse and worse healthwise and my 93-year-old Granddaddy's health scares. My dad's old school in that he doesn't show what he's REALLY feeling, he usually masks his emotions with humor or some kind of deflection, but he's been expressing himself more and more the last year or so and I try to encourage him and be there for him. It's hard, since I'm not really sure how to do it other than to be direct and blunt.

I grew up in that house. It's the only forever home I've ever known. Since I moved to Orlando eleven years ago, I've moved seven times and each time I paid lip service to the concept that home is wherever you feel safe, but I think in the back of my mind I only believed it because my parents' house was still there. It's weird, I'm almost thirty and going through the kind of separation anxiety about moving other people did when they were very little.

This has certainly been a year for closing chapters on my life. I hope the second half of the year is more about opening them.

Yay for greyweirdo for his Google-fu in figuring out this morning's puzzle. The answer was 'A bible.'



Now, do I hop in the shower and get cleaned up so I can go see the 11:45 showing of Wall-E, or do I take a more leisurely saunter to the shower and see it at 12:55?

Still alive, although my sense of reality and normalcy has certainly become more flexible.

While waiting at a crossing for a train to pass, I noticed one of the cars had this spray painted on the side in very fancy lettering:

'A [blank] taken literally is a Horror!'

The blank was the only thing painted over, and all the other train cars sported ink, so I wondered what that three or four letter word could possibly be. Must have been obscene, otherwise they wouldn't have painted over it, right?

An ass?

A c*nt?

Any suggestions to this puzzle for the ages would be greatly appreciated. I think Nathan's worried he'll come home and it'll be scrawled all over the house walls while I lay on the floor weeping and gibbering from cabin fever.

The barbecue came off a smash, and enormous sloppy thanks to everyone who came!

The Weekend

Thursday

-Ran around for some basic barbecue supplies, including hanger steaks and ground beef from Petty's.
-Dinner with Nathan's family at Hollerbach's Willow Tree, the German restaurant in Sanford. It was spectacular and I had my leftovers for breakfast just now. Soon I will need a nap.
- Baked an herb and cheese bubble loaf and waited for methuse and geekgirrl to get into town from Atlanta. Holiday traffic was unfortunately a nightmare, and they got in around 2!

Friday

-Up and about relatively early, then to Nathan's grandma's birthday bbq/4th of July celebration at about 2.
-Home for a bit, then out again for Chris Rosales' bbq waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in Bithlo. There was a LOT of drinking, fireworks, and a 15-foot trampoline. Amazingly, no one was hurt, although Nathan's arm has a big raw spot where it was pinched between the trampoline surface and the thing covering the springs. Unfortunately Nathan left his wallet, keys, cell phone and knife there, but the lovely and wonderful Kate brought it all to us the next day.

Saturday

-I got up and mowed the front and back yard.
-We ate a late breakfast at Christo's
-Went to Skycraft and I got some lovely little bits and bobs with which to make stuff.
-Home to meet The Houseguest.
-Back out to find some plastic lawn chairs and some kind of party game (we never did find one though)
-Home to finish party preparations and make the spinach rosemary griddle cakes everyone loves.
-Nathan and The Houseguest went out to pick up Nathan's brother Tommy, who's in college and home for the summer.
-The party. It was great. It was wonderful. Lots more people showed up than I anticipated and I wound up cutting the hanger steaks into these wee little mini-meats so that everyone could have a bit. I used a churascaria (or however you spell it) marinade and Tommy used some of the mocha dry rub I got Nathan for his birthday. They were delicious. Seriously. With respect to all morals and ethics concerning the not eating of meat, I really did wish the vegetarians could have experienced it.
-I had to chase some people off of the trains enticingly parked nearby, but otherwise everything went perfectly.

Sunday

-Up at 9 and sat outside chatting with folks. The Houseguest made a cursory appearance, then left without saying goodbye when I went to use the bathroom. He contributed nothing to the party (besides the small bottle of Jaeger that was hidden in the freezer and which is still unopened) and didn't help clean up or thank us for a lovely time. I've decided he won't be staying with us if he comes to Orlando again. That's just not cool.
-Cleanup was done in about an hour with the help of Brent, Jessi and Tommy, then Tom's parents came to collect him (they were all three in town visiting Nathan's grandma).
-Breakfast/lunch at Scruffy Murphy's, some Venture Bros episodes (which you know are good because Jessi fell asleep-a blessing bestowed upon great shows such as Dr. Who and Monty Python) and then it was time for them to head back to the ATL. I miss them already!

So that was my incredibly awesome holiday weekend. Stupidly I took no pictures and my camera just sat on the project table gathering dust. But the memories will last a lifetime! Especially 'What the hell are you doing on the train? GET OFF THE GODDAMN TRAIN!'

. . . and the birthday tortoise has completed his round the world journey and returned, to bring presents and cake to fictition!



Happy Birthday Nathan!

Today you get to do anything you like, as you've been reminding me constantly the last five days!

Eat three kinds of meat with every meal!

Go outside without pants on!

Lay across the entire bed! I'll sleep on the floor!

Today's your day, you've earned it!

Our AC's on the fritz again, it's been 84 in the house the last three days. I'm not even going into what's wrong with it this time, it's just supposed to be fixed today or tomorrow. I smell like a football team's laundry hamper, and showering does no good. Thank waffles it was cool last night, we had the windows open and for a wonder didn't wake up stuck to the sheets!

I have nothing more to report really, other than we saw Mongol, worked out with maelstromsl, I saw a dead owl nestling in our neighborhood, and I am excited about this weekend's barbeque and impending visit by geekgirrl and methuse. I'd write more but it's too damned hot in the computer room for coherent thought.

Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.

See if anybody else responds with "I've done that."

Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.

1. Water skiied in canals and rivers where alligators and water moccasins were very visible.

2. Performed in a symphony on a stage in a performing arts center, where people paid to see us and it wasn't just our parents.

3. Drank shroom juice.

Okay, they didn't really, but their 20 jobs too awesome to exist thread is an awful lot like my Wanted: Professional Jerkoff entry of a few months back. It's pretty fun anyway, and of course, deliciously juvenile!


I would totally work in a dinosaur rodeo.

Most of you know that I strength train.





I've come to a few understandings concerning this hobby:

1. Most shirts just won't fit me, and I'm okay with that.

2. People will treat me differently, fearing that I will suddenly begin shouting in a strong German accent that they are lazy and need to get their fat asses to the gym, that they disgust me, et cetera. Honestly, I couldn't care less, but it makes starting casual conversations a bit harder.

3. No matter how hard I train, or how strong I get--if I were squatting three hundred and benching the same--I will still scream like a castrato on helium when surprised by a bug. As I screamed a few minutes ago, when a large roach crawled over my foot.

A neon-green spider blew in through Nathan's open window the other day, and I let out a shriek and almost went out the passenger side window when it started scrabbling towards me.

All this rain has got INSANE amounts of insect and arachnid life out and about, and the place to be is where ever I am. An enormous wolf spider crossing the living room floor the other day took a sharp left and came straight at me while I was on the couch. I went outside for half an hour until I was sure it was gone.

The roaches I make Nathan kill, but he gives me such a guilt-complex over killing the spiders that I can't even do it anymore. Plus they might be able to jump or something.

Status?

..........sinus intakes clogged. Retch function automatically enabled.

Options?

..........hot foods to open nasal passage. Cold Water. Hot shower.

Enable Backup Plan

..........backup plan enabled.

Deploying peanut butter and hot pepper jelly sandwich in 3.......2......1.

..........Intakes cleared. Running Kleenex intervention. Ready to Start day.