What I Did on My Winter Vacation

1. Beat Super Mario Galaxy. Emu says he won't recognize the accomplishment until I've rescued every star. For those of you playing the home game, that translates into English as "I'm a whiny bitch who hasn't even managed to kick Bowser's ass yet."
2. Got to expert mode in Guitar Hero 3. Mother FUCKER, that game gets tough. Fun as hell, though. If you don't strike a proper power stance, you're made of fail, though. I have spoken.
3. Damn near broke my hand. We took a bunch of shit to GoodWill today. Way more than reasonably fit into the trunk. I was trying to cram a giant box of clothes into the trunk, slipped, and slammed my hand into the frame of the car. Now one of my knuckles is approxmately three times its normal size. But anything that hurts that much is manly, right?
4. Finally replaced my burned out laptop. I'm a Mac bitch now, which I guess means I get to be even more of a smug, arrogant prick than I already was. I shopped around a bit. Dell's Linux PCs suck ass. Everything else is Vista. Fucked if Vista's touching one of my machines. So I took the plunge. So far, I'm digging on it, but there's a lot to get used to.
5. Fixed my electric guitar. One of my pickups actually fell out of the fucking thing while I was practicing the other day. Fixing the stupid thing turned out to be fairly simple, but I didn't have any spare strings (again). Fixing it without removing the strings was more interesting. This is where I do the Tim Allen grunt, right?
6. Finished Olympos. Spelling, grammatical, and continuity errors aside, hot damn, Dan Simmons can tell an awesome fucking story. Read it. Now. God damn.
7. Read I Am Legend. Wifezilla was awesome enough to give it to me for Christmas. The short story was fucking awesome. After reading it, I couldn't imagine Hollywood being brave enough to stick to the real story (plus, I had no self-control), so I read a plot synopsis of the movie on Wikipedia. I've lost all interest in the flick. Go read the short story, though. Srsly. Fux.
8. Started Bloodsucking Fiends. That book is a bitch to find. Nobody fucking stocks it. I've held off on reading the sequel (despite the awesomeness of overlapping a scene from A Dirty Job) because it's not in goddamn stores and I hate people so I couldn't buy it. Wifezilla ordered it through one of the bookstores hereabouts, so she fucking rocks. Also, Christopher Moore is the funniest son of a bitch currently walking the earth. You're allowed to disagree, but only because you're allowed to be wrong.
9. Didn't rake the yard. Because fuck. Srsly.
   

I shaved my head tonight.

I'm not sure why, except that I'm losing my hair anyway and tonight seemed like as good a night as any. So I scalped myself. It feels really good and I don't think that I look appreciably more ridiculous than I did before. Hrrrmmmm.

The Chosen Beer

I wish my camera phone was better, because something as bizarrely awesome as this deserves something better than the grainy, out of focus crap my razr churns out.

We stopped by the beer shack near our house this evening to pick up a flavored beer my wife's fond of and can't find any place else, and as I passed the He'brew shelf, I swear the clouds parted and sunlight broke through to land dazzlingly upon the display even though it was night time, I was indoors, and the DVD I'd been shopping for at the previous store is apparently a figment of my imagination (at least according to the pubescent brainchildren at Best Buy).

Behold the glory. It's the chosen beer. L'Chaim!

Out of sorts

I'm tense as all holy fuck. Not sure why. Things are going pretty well lately. Maybe it's just the paranoia I've been half-joking about in my recent posts.

I'm good at paranoia. It creeps up on me daily, and I turn around and greet it warmly, and say, "Oh, hi, Paranoia, you're late. Nice day, innit?" And the Paranoia is all, "Why, yes, it's quite a lovely day. By the way, you're mentally incapacitated and people are snickering behind your back and you smell of elderberries." And I'm like, "Shit. Pass the bacon." And then Paranoia goes all, "Fuck you. Just kidding. Here's the bacon."

And the bacon is delicious.

So yeah, tension. It's been gnawing at me. I had a really bad knot in the muscle over my left shoulder blade this weekend, and now my bursitis has flared up so bad I can't use my right arm. Fun. I've been really hard to get along with lately, which is really saying something, coming as it is from a cranky know-it-all with no social skills. Fortunately, wifezilla is willing to overlook it so far, since I'm willing to suck it up and admit I'm being a dick.

(If I'm gone more than a week, she killed me.)

Day 4. Still no shoe. Tensions mounting.

Here there be rambling.

This afternoon was pretty damn great. And that scares me, because Mr. Murphy still owes me a kick in the ass, and it was a Monday. He's gotta have something really bad planned.

It was warm out today. T-shirt weather. I took a walk this morning just because it felt so good outside (my walks are usually motivated by a desire to postpone committing a homicide until the witnesses disperse).

It was a good work day. I got a lot done. Then the UK guys got back to us, and not only were they receptive to the features I requested... they had anticipated them and designed ahead for them. So not only was their answer a rather out-of-character yes, it was a yes, and would you like to supersize your order for an additional fifteen cents?

I stopped by Target on my way home to pick up a DVD set for a friend of mine. I'm really shitty at giving gifts at holiday seasons, so when I see something that makes me think of someone, I usually pick it up right then and give it to them. Actually, that's probably why I'm so bad at giving gifts at holiday season: I can't hang onto a gift once I've purchased it. It's okay, though. I've embraced it. I call them Happy Today Presents and just hand them out.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The internet. It has porn and lolcats. And porn. It has to have surpassed sliced bread as the greatest human accomplishment by now.

No, wait... DVDs. Right. I knew Blue was a fan of the show, so after I made sure she didn't have them already, I picked them up on the way home. Stopped by Target, nicked in, grabbed the last set they had, and cashed out. I was feeling kinda bouncy on my way out, 'cause it's always fucking awesome when you get someone something you know they'll like, so I was whistling my way back to my car.

I got out into the cars and someone started calling to me to get my attention. I turned to look, and this little old black lady in a motorized scooter was trying to wave me down. I walked over to see what she needed, and it turned out that she'd bought a big case of bottled water, and couldn't get it into her car's trunk by herself. No idea why the asshats at Target didn't offer to help her, when it was pretty obvious she couldn't lift the damn things herself, but whatev.

Hey, I used teenager slang from a couple years ago that's totally out of style. I'm officially old.

So I helped the lady lift the water into her trunk, and then talked to her for a few minutes afterward, and she was the most charming little old woman I think I've ever met. I was grinning ear-to-ear for an hour or two after.

Whatever's headed my way is going to be nasty.

Waiting for the other shoe...

It's been a pretty good week for us at Casa del Taco:

1. Wifezilla's broken the 20 pound mark on Weight Watchers and is going strong. Her success has inspired many of my family to follow in her footsteps... and has also given them enough guilt and accountability to follow in her success :) I'm terribly proud of her.
2. My father-in-law is responding well to his chemotherapy. They're going to do another scan at his next session in a few weeks to determine whether he's done or needs a few more. In any case, he's doing well and won't be at it much longer.
3. I got a fucking raise. Healthy one, too. It's nice, both because I've been busting my ass lately and because I've had only one other raise in six damn years. Granted, the end of the dot com bust was in there, but it's still frustrating. Not to mention the fact that my last raise was pretty fucking piddling and I only got it because I got promoted, and they had to give me a raise so the books would work out right. Still, I can't complain. Now I'm making what recruiters tell me I should be. Of course, this comes the day before an interview I was fairly certain I'd knock out of the park, so it's doing my paranoia no good...
   

My grandfather used to tell us that Irish Luck was stepping in a pile of dog shit and then realizing you were wearing your bad shoes (what a lucky son of a bitch I am!). I'm bracing myself for the bad news...

I lack what they call "social skills."

So yesterday my stomach wasn't doing all that great. Let's just gloss over the details and say that what I did to the bathroom wasn't pretty, and it took three flushes of our industrial grade toilets to undo the damage.

I washed up and left the bathroom. A woman was leaving the women's room at the exact same moment, and she stopped and gave me a look of... well, not horror, exactly. Perhaps concern?

It was an awkward moment, and I lack the social finesse to navigate such treacherous waters. But, I reasoned, I've never seen this woman before, so she must work for the other company on our floor. What's the worst that could happen?

So I did the first thing that popped in my head, which seemed pretty funny at the time:

I held up three fingers and said, "That's right. Three flushes." And I walked off for the breakroom to reload on caffeine.

When I stopped to fish my access badge out of my pocket, she walked past me. As in going the opposite direction of the other company on our floor. I watched until she got to the end of the hallway, scanned her badge, and entered our office space.

Shit.

Heh. Shit. I just caught that.

Oh hell... I'm doing it again.

Precocious little thing, isn't she?

So wifezilla, my daughter, and I stopped by Target today on our way home from breakfast. Wifezilla needed a few things and wanted to do a little Christmas shopping while we were there.

So while wifezilla was off doing her thing, I took the wee one over to the grocery side of the store to nab a free cookie. On the way there, she took a hard right and bolted into the personal hygiene aisle. When I rounded the corner, she was standing there with a box of tampons, which she proudly held up and informed me, "These are for mommy's butt."

5 Things With a Vengeance: Vague Apologies

I was hanging out in Blue's office today, and we were trading embarrassing stories, and one of the ones I told has been stuck in my head since. Haven't thought of it in years, and it's had me giggling under my breath all afternoon.

I was trying to figure out something to post here, and finally decided to use that story to build an entry. And what the hell, I'm going to make (most of) them vague to confuse and tantalize anyone who cares. Which amounts to... hold on... carry the one... nobody.

So anyway, here's five apologies I owe people but never gave. Been carrying some of these around with me for better than half my life now. Wow. I don't even know how to get in touch with most of these people to give the apology, but what the fuck, I'm already going to hell for better reasons.

1. Jessica: I'm sorry that I said what I said, and I'm even sorrier I said it where I said it. I was 14, and not really capable of empathy... not that it's any excuse. I thought it would be funny, because it was funny to me when you said those kinds of things in a different setting. I didn't realize how bad it would hurt your feelings until it was already out of my mouth. You were my best friend at the time, and continued to be my best friend for a long time after that, which is testament to how much you rock. You're still one of the best friends I've ever had. I'd never make you feel that way on purpose.
2. Alyson: I'm sorry about the barf. In my defense, there were spiders. S. Plural. Christ.
   
3. Patrick: I'm sorry about the porno magazines. I really thought they'd stop sending them to you before a whole year had gone by and your mail started getting forwarded to your mom's house. On the bright side, she stopped worrying about you being gay for a while.
4. Suzie: I'm sorry, I really did forget the date of your show. I've never really been good with anything outside a regular schedule. I wish I had been there.
5. Dr. Beaumier: I'm sorry I laughed at you so hard you had to go home and change clothes. In my defense, dude, you were wearing spandex cycling shorts with a dress shirt. What the fuck? Actually, fuck it, I don't owe you an apology... laughing long and hard is the correct response. Jackass.
   

Their brains are like little sponges.

So I very nearly taught my sweet little daughter the word fuck tonight. Fortunately, I worked harder than I should have this week and managed to turn a simple case of the creeping crud into what now feels suspiciously like bronchitis. The coughing fit that elicited the poetical utterance also rendered it unintelligible.

My daughter now yells, "Ock!" every time something annoys her.

Necro Feel Ya II

Grimmy sent me a screenplay tonight. I only mention it so you can writhe in jealousy. That's right. Writhe, my pretties, writhe. No, seriously, writhe.

Oh, this? It's just baby oil. Don't worry about it. Get back in the jello pool. No, really. No big deal.

Oh, yeah.

Zombies and strippers make everything better.

Deer, Pocky, Lips

So I'm riding in to work this morning, and the whole drive in, it looks like I missed some massive, failed deer uprising. The carnage was impressive. Several of the corpses were even more or less intact.

I saw no human bodies, by which I conclude that we must have won. I mean, we had the luxury of hauling our dead off the field of battle. Go home team!

Then, upon my triumphant return to work, and after wading through all the confetti and ticker tape (they say you get used to it, but I find that you never really do), I log in, check my email, and find that Grimmy's back, and has been posting comments on my blog.

Could it be coincidence that Grimm -- the man who once confessed to a burning desire to best a deer in hand-to-hand combat -- returned today? Nay, I say. Nay! I feel quite certain that he must have led the assault.

Your children are safe tonight thanks to this brave man.

The Tropic of Taco

Noq: i sent you some songs this morning

The Taco Prophet: Yay!

Noq: theyre both by a band called Ten Masked Men, who apparently just do death metal versions of pop songs

The Taco Prophet: <3

Noq: i sent you their versions of Sledgehammer and Livin la Vida Loca

The Taco Prophet: I am downloadifying now

Noq: yay!

The Taco Prophet: This music makes me humid in the britches.

Noq: everything makes your britches humid. it's a temperate zone

Noq: it's the Tropic of Taco

Toldja I was a prophet.

And like any good prophet, nobody fucking listens to what I predict.

The natives were restless a week ago, and raised all manner of hell at work. Management got cornered and had to listen to a laundry list of gripes and complaints. And things went more or less as I predicted they would when they asked me to participate and I declined:

1. Management denied the issue existed.
2. Management made sympathetic noises at them until they shut up.
3. There was a great big hullabaloo about addressing the issues.
4. Nothing changed.

I'm so fucking tired of this shit. I'm tired of the rampant favoritism here. I'm tired of being the bastard child of an office that's the bastard child of an organization.

One of my coworkers called me last week to say he's going to take it back up with management, and I gave my "You're wasting your fucking time, you're just going to end up pissed, it's mental masturbation" speech again. He hit me with "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. You've got to either fight here or look for another job."

That second one's the row I'm gonna hoe, I think. Six years here and not a god damn thing has ever changed.

Play the Moment

So I've been working on this song for the past few weeks. It's a blues guitar solo by Robben Ford, and it's fucking badass.

It's also the hardest damn thing I've ever played.

I've worked my ass off on it, and broken more than a few sets of strings practicing it. I've developed a brand new callous on one of my fingers because one of the techniques I had to learn to play it places my fingers down on the fretboard a different way. Awesome.

This week, I got worse at the song instead of better. Shitballs. I haven't worked on anything new for a week, because I've been reworking all the stuff I already nailed down. Playing it slow. Working out the movements.

It's not that I'm playing it badly (though sometimes I do completely fall apart on one of the phrases currently giving me trouble). I'm actually playing it pretty well for a spare time musician. But I'm not playing it as well as I did last week, and it pisses me off. Teach says nobody'd be able to tell the difference listening to it, and I guess he's right, but my hands feel clumsier. The movements were smooth and confident last week.

Working the parts that are troubling me is the right thing to do. I need to nail them down again before moving on. But I think getting frustrated because I moved backwards a bit is screwing me up. Fuck it. Last week I played it better. That was last week. This is how I play it this week. I need to work on it. It's got nothing to do with last week. Work on -- and with -- what you've got now.

Play the moment.

Weirdest urinal graffiti ever.

Parenting is hard to do...

...with a straight face.

So last night, we hit Sears to buy kidzookie a suit for Emu's wedding on Saturday. After a painful round of trying on dozens of suits while one kid whined that she was bored and the other that he was tired of trying shit on, we got him squared away, and headed back out into the mall. Wifezilla brought out a gift card to Victoria's Secret and said she'd like to go pick some stuff up if I didn't mind.

Mind? Pffft.

So we all pile into Vicki's, Wifezilla's digging through piles of stuff and having a grand old time, and the kids are bored shitless. My daughter asks me to spin her around and get her dizzy, and I look down to tell her no, this really isn't the place to play that kind of game.

Then I look up.

My son is wearing a thong on his head.

I stare at him for a moment, trying to figure out exactly how best to approach this situation, and he takes the opportunity to inform me, "It's a superhero mask, dad."

Hrk.

Just a hair too far.

I just returned from a vacation that Blue's been after me to take for a few weeks now. It would seem that my temper's been a bit short at work, and she feels that some time away from the fucktards in California and the U.K. was just the thing I needed.

I think it's postponed justifiable homicide. We'll see if anything more has been accomplished.

So the family and I spent a few days visiting with my father-in-law. Pretty nice visit. He and the kids played a lot, wifezilla visited with a couple of her friends, and I finally read half of Ilium (it's a geek's masturbatory fantasy. Spoiler: one of the characters has sex every which way with Helen of Troy. I'd have gone with Cleopatra given the choice, but then again... beggars can't be choosers, right?).

Then we drove over to visit suyapi. Suyapi, his girlie, wifezilla, and I took the kids to the zoo today. At some point during the trip to the zoo, my sister texted my phone, and I showed the message to suyapi. Somehow -- I forget how exactly, but I'm pretty sure peer pressure was involved. My high school gym teacher told me that shit's insidious and I have no resistance to it -- suyapi wound up with my phone and started texting my sister back. At some point, he threatened to text my sister a picture of his junk. She freaked out, and my dad started sending threatening text messages.

I love my friends.

I've got a feeling I've got a few long conversations to be endured next time I'm at my parents' house though.

She's my little princess.

So this weekend, we're riding around in the car, and my daughter is sitting in her car seat, red-faced, grunting, and straining:

TACO: You okay over there?

DAUGHTER: Nnnnngyeah.

TACO: Do you need to be changed?

DAUGHTER: Nnnnnnng...no.

TACO: You didn't poop your pants?

DAUGHTER: Nnnnnnng...no.

TACO: What are you doing over there?

DAUGHTER: Nnnnng... I'm trying to fart.

I have the best brother ever.

Boring background info, part the first:

I used to work for BEA about six years ago. I really loved it over there. I was on a great team, we had pretty interesting work, and I was learning tons. The last project I worked on there was a new website implementation for a big time credit card company. For a couple of months I worked 14-16 hour days and Saturdays. We delivered the project in spite of the ridiculous deadline, and the credit card guys were thrilled.

A week later, I got canned when the company laid off 10% across the board. My wife was as pregnant as it gets.

Not that I'm bitter.

Background info part the second:

My brother is currently in San Francisco on business.

The story:

Emu: BEA has a booth here. I got cornered by a sales guy. He was telling me of their VM appliances and what not. He asked what I thought....

Emu: I told him that they let my brother go a week before his son was born...

Taco: lmao

Taco: Did you really?

Emu: The look on his face was priceless.

Emu: Awkward moments ftw!

Taco: You are the greatest fucking thing ever.

Emu: Would have been better if it had been you.

Emu: Figured it was the next best thing.

Music, music, I hear music....

There have been two musical high points in my life, both characterized by the question, "Where the fuck did that come from?" They've been much on my mind lately, so I'm subjecting you to them.

The first occurred my senior year of high school. I was a band nerd. Even worse, a marching band nerd. Even so, the homecoming game my senior year was the only solo I ever got to play, so fuck you all, I'm rolling in it like a dog in stinky dead shit.

Homecoming, 1992: we played Can't Help Falling in Love. Cheesy assed songs and homecoming games go together like homosexuals and pleather. Bite me. They crowned Miss Red Fox and I played my shit. Dunno what came over me, but I played the hell out of it. Gave myself goose bumps.

Wasn't sure at the time if it was just me or what. When we came off the field, though, my old section leader was there waiting on me, with that oh-so-inspiring exclamation: "Where the fuck did that come from?"

See, I don't generally play that well. I tend toward the mechanical. I play the same every time, but it's not very moving.

Sight read like a motherfucker, though.

My mom was up in the stands with the video recorder, and she got so excited about my performance, she hit the record button. Sadly, the machine was already recording, so she actually wound up excluding my solo from the tape.

It's probably all for the best. My memory of the night is almost certainly ten times better than the actual performance was.

I've got recordings of subsequent performances. I can tell you: I vastly prefer the memory.

Flash forward about 10 years: I've mentioned the practice a few times. I ditched the trumpet, and started studying guitar. You get laid more playing guitar than trumpet, or so I'm told. Unless you're black. Black guys get laid plenty. That might not have much to do with the trumpet, though.

Where was I? Oh, yes, hot, sweaty, black men.

No, wait. Music. Right.

So I took up guitar. I'm a mediocre guitarist at best. And a shitty vocalist, again, at best.

A few years ago, I hit pretty much rock bottom as far as my young 30-something years are concerned. I went all emo and shit, and wrote a song about how bad I hurt.

It was thoroughly horrible.

I played it a few dozen times, in self-serving fashion, and hollered it at the top of my lungs, and it helped me deal with one of the most thoroughly awful times I ever bullheaded myself through.

I was playing music with a couple of my friends at the time. Nothing serious: we played a few coffee houses, but nothing more. Had a few thorougly embarassing moments I'd rather forget, and a few rather awesome moments I'll never let go.

At practice one night, while we were waiting to start in on the routine proper, I was noodling around to warm up, and started playing the self-indulgent piece of shit I'd written. The guitar part was ass. The lyrics were worse. But when you really feel it, sometimes, something gestalt happens.

When I got done, the guys all looked at me for a while. I can't remember which one finally asked me, but the question was, once again: "Where the fuck did that come from?"

If I knew, I probably wouldn't be writing software for a living.

Art is a mystery to me, a depth I've barely plumbed.

Ups and Downs (Updates and Stuff)

Faithy: the brain tumor is benign, but, as one might expect, it's got to go. We had lunch with the guys this weekend. Faith played high fives with my son through the whole meal. She is cute as a button, as ever. My heart is broken. Fuck life.

Father in Law: though it cost me quite a bit emotionally, I kept my mouth shut as per his wishes. He's of an older school, and doesn't share his tribulations. We've had some good news, though, and so he's okay with us talking now. The bad: he was diagnosed with lymphoma. The good: it's relatively early-stage, and his doctors are universally confident that it is treatable and non life threatening.

Work: my temper has grown shorter than usual with incompetence from other teams (and my own team in one notable case). Serious doubts about how much more I can take. Blue says I just need a vacation. Time to move on? I love Raleigh, but I seem to be employed by the best gig in town. Somebody come sweep me off my feet.

Brother: the wedding date draws ever nearer. We had a wedding shower for him and his fiancee this weekend. I had a blast. My soon-to-be sister in law rocks. Hell yeah.

Writing: I had a new idea for a short story, and I think it's awesome, but my self-esteem is at a nearly all-time low, so I'm too chicken shit to start in on it.

Children: we went by my folks' place last night, and my parents spent the evening making ice cream sundaes with my children. Watching grandparents and children laughing so openly and honestly together was one of the most wonderful things I've ever witnessed, so I went total dad-geek and took pictures. If you give a shit, yell, and I'll give you the URL.

I can't take much more of the ups and downs. Somebody stop the ride. I want to get off.

I'm just not one of the cool kids.

A lot of my friends love Dave Matthews. People whose intelligence I respect. So he must be good, right? Right?

I still don't get it. I've listened to it tons. Hours and hours. I tried really really hard to like it.

It's official. I hate Dave Matthews. Deleted every bit of it tonight. Probably 50 songs.

I feel so much better.

Personalized License Plates

I have a completely irrational hatred of personalized license plates.

I had a couple of paragraphs here earlier detailing my hatred in acid tones, but deleted it. I've got a once-in-a-great-while reader that I made fun of, and with my luck, he'd load up my blog and see it. Allow me to sum up without examples: a) unless your plate is intended to be witty and amusing, I probably only grind my teeth a little, and b) I probably don't mean you.

If your plate is supposed to be clever, I die a little inside whenever I see it. Fuck me, I hate those damn things.

The ones I do like are the ones that are unintentionally funny. A few years ago, I was riding behind someone with a plate that read:

BCNSLT

Now, sure, their initials were probably BCN, and the car was probably an LT model of whatever-the-fuck conspicuously consumed vehicle they'd bought, and they wanted the world to know that it was BCN's god damned LT.

But for the rest of my life, that chick will be known to me as The Bacon Slut.

On my way home tonight, I saw the second funny personalized plate I've ever seen:

MM 88

God help me, I laughed until I cried. If you don't get it, then Noq and I just get to lord it over you. Especially you, Coyote, since you're going to lord the beginning of my own conversation over me.

Neener neener neen.

This story is funnier with the part that immediately precedes it.

Taco: Hmm.

Blue: Shut up.
Blue: Jackass.

That's all I've got. I forgot the stuff that came earlier, and now Blue won't tell me what it was. It was pretty awesome, though.

So your mission, dear reader, is to make up something funny that came just before it.

So there, Blue.

I never get to play along.

There's another internet meme in the works, whereupon people are giving each other questionnaires to answer, and having them post the answers on their blogs. Being the social tard I am, I find myself watching it all in bemusement once again, unsure how to butt in and participate.

Coyote and I have periodically discussed how every internet questionnaire that flies around the world's email servers invariably sucks. They always ask questions that involve no risk on the answerer's part, so you don't really find out anything about them.

So we decided to correct that dreadful problem.

Plus, you know, offensive questions are funny. We're mature that way.

I've kicked various questions around in my head for a long time. We decided a long time ago that twenty was the optimal number for such a list. Or maybe it was ten. Or thirty-seven. I forget. Anyway, the latest internet phenom has people giving and answering five questions, and it's way easier to come up with five than however-the-hell-many we decided we needed. So I'm copping out and posting my five favorites.

Answer my questions, bitches.

1. What's your favorite book of all time?
2. Now that you've given a totally bullshit answer in order to impress people on the intarwebs whom you've never met, stop being a poser and tell us what your real favorite book of all time is.
3. What famous person, past or present, would you ravage sexually given the opportunity? Addendum: this person must be counter to your own sexual orientation. If you are heterosexual, they must be of your sex. If you are homosexual, they must be of the opposite sex. If you are bisexual, they must be an animal or a plant.
4. What's the most bizarre sexual act you've ever committed? If you puss out and post something that's not interesting, we get to make fun of you. Make something up if you have to. Use lots of adjectives.
   
5. Can you get the image of your grandparents fucking out of your head?

How the hell am I supposed to compete with that?

Inga: fett and i have been playing this game

Taco: Oh, now just so we're clear
Taco: FETT IS MINE

Inga: oh yeah? well YOU CAN'T STOP OUR LOVE

Taco: I bought him mashed potatoes! You just try and beat that!
Taco: Oh wait... yeah... boobs.
Taco: Shit.

Confidential to the Blonde Lady Who Works For the Other Company on Our Floor:

If I can tell with my eyes closed whether you're in the office or working from home today, you're wearing too god damned much perfume.

Shit neck deep and rising

Allow me to recap the raging shit-hurricane that has been hovering for the past few weeks, refusing to make landfall and spend itself:

• Faithy, the teensy and adorable daughter of some long time friends of ours, already suffering from cerebral palsy, is diagnosed with a brain tumor. I already bitched about that. Fuck life. I'm stabbing life right in the fucking face next time it gets near me.
• Ray, a guy who was very involved in my high school band program, died. He was one of my mom's best friends back when we lived in that town. I loved him to pieces. He didn't just keep his mouth shut on that one school trip where we broke out after curfew and went to Hard Rock Cafe; he went with us. Bonus points: I think he died from the same form of cancer my dad has.
• Wifezilla gets a call from Faithy's mom. Tommy, a long-time friend of wifezilla's, had been home alone with the kids for a few days while her husband was out of town on business. When grandma couldn't get her on the phone for a few days, she got scared and called the sheriff's office. They broke the door open to find her on her bed, having passed away in her sleep. Nobody knows why. She was younger than me.
  
• I get a call from Luke, who's been a friend for so long I can no longer think of him as anything other than family. He's supposed to be getting married at the beginning of September, but now it's being postponed. His fiancee has a tumor, which has to be removed. Fortunately, the tumor is benign and the procedure is very low risk. But she's not allowed to do anything stressful for six weeks after the surgery, so the wedding has to be postponed.
• I get a call from Mona, who I've known since I was 13. It's weird to think that someone you occasionally go years without speaking to could be such a close friend, but Mona knows me better than almost anyone. It's one of those relationships without any hangups, where you go ages without contact, and then pick up without missing a beat, and without worrying when the next time you'll meet is going to be. Her dad has been fighting cancer for a while. It suddenly exploded throughout his body, and he lost the fight, as we all seem to eventually do. He passed away on Saturday. I think she was tired of talking about her dad. We talked for ours and covered just about everything but that.
  
• I get a call from wifezilla. Her dad, who's in town for the week, noticed a lump on his neck yesterday, and scheduled an appointment with our general practitioner. He didn't like the looks of it, and sent him for an ultrasound. They found that the lump is six centimeters in diameter, and scheduled a CAT scan and a biopsy. Wifezilla is freaking the fuck out. Grampa is playing it lower key around her, but is worrying just as much. He's already shuffling money around so wifezilla can get it "in case of the worst."

That's the last couple weeks. Not months. Weeks.

Those of you who know me, save yourselves. I'm clearly an albatross hanging around your neck.

I do believe I'm fucking flattered.

So I got an email from a recruiter at Google today, asking whether I was interested in jobs with them. I probably won't pursue it, since it's almost certainly located in California (and I Hate California). But still, I'm fucking flattered (check out that alliteration... no charge to you, dear reader).

Go me, or something.

I wanted to play too

So Blue posted one of those promotional viral campaign things they do for movies these days. I fiddled around with it, and was highly amused to see that they'd paired me with my old high school's mascot. I guess they didn't have any daemons that are cranky, mean bastards.

Taco, you glorious bastard...

Steps to a pretty good morning:

1. Get a chicken biscuit from McDonalds on the way into work.
2. Sit down at your desk and eat said biscuit while checking email.
3. Get an email from a guy in California wanting info about your software.
4. Dig around in the code, find what you're looking for, and wonder who the hell wrote it, because it rocks.
5. Check the version history.
6. Find out you wrote it.

Works every time. The chicken biscuit is key. I can't stress this enough.

Goth Chicks

I just don't see what all the fuss is about.

Dear Life: Fuck You.

I have these two friends, Candace and Carl. They're married. Some people do that. You try to talk them out of it, but they never listen.

They've kinda struggled. Neither of them has a college degree, which makes things a little tougher. They've pushed on through, though, and done pretty well.

They had a little girl, Faith, three or four years ago. Faith's cute as a button. Poor thing has cerebral palsy, though, which is a real kick in the nuts. She had to go to a special school earlier this year to learn how to eat. Poor thing usually eats through a tube.

Making ends meet is tough for them, because it costs a lot of money to take care of a kid with those needs. The government helps out a bit. Of course, if they ever have more than a few hundred dollars in the bank, the government aid craps out, so they can never really get ahead.

They take things in stride, though, and they've done really well with her. A few months ago, they built a new house that's handicap-accessible, so that Faith'd have a nice space to grow up in. Carl's gone back to school and is just about to finish up his degree, which'll mean a nice raise, hopefully.

Got a call from them tonight. Faith has a brain tumor.

Dear Life:

Fuck you.

Hate,
Taco

Sibling Rivalry

Last night I was watching the kids while Wifezilla was at work, and I heard one of the kids crying. I went searching for the disturbance and found my son at the top of the stairs, sitting on the floor, shaking, and crying his eyes out.

I sat down next to him, handed out hugs, and settled him down. Then I asked what was wrong. I knew it couldn't be the thunderstorm that was brewing outside. He's never been afraid of thunder.

It was the thunder.

Sorta.

It turned out that after a particularly nasty rumble of thunder, my two year old daughter had told my five year old son, "Godzilla's coming."

The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly

Coyote yelled at me the other day for failing to update my blog for a month. In truth, that's been largely because the world has rained shit hip deep in Tacoland, and I'm loath to write about such things because a) nobody wants to hear it, and b) I tend a bit toward melodrama when I write about myself, and it leaves me vaguely embarrassed later. So I've generally tried to only post things that happen to or around me which I find funny, but there's been a bit of a dearth of funny lately.

But since Coyote's been after me, I figured I'd give the whole thing a go.

The Good: Kidzookie's first day of real school was today. It's kindergarten, but it's at a real elementary school, and they follow the same schedule as all the older kids. I took the morning off to ride down to the school with him and walk him to his class today, since the first day is the only time we're allowed to do that. Both kids wound up bawling -- my son because he didn't want to stay, and my daughter because she didn't want to leave ("No, daddy, I wanna go kinnergarden! I saw a playground and they have crayons!"). It was thoroughly awesome, if bittersweet.

The Bad: I found out this kid who worked on our team last summer got a job with our company. He was a nice enough kid, but couldn't code his way out of a wet paper bag, largely due to the fact that he absolutely refused to admit when he didn't know something. We spent the entire summer encouraging him to ask questions (or, indeed, to answer honestly when we asked questions beginning, "So, do you know anything about..."), but when he left after three months, we had very little from him that we could use. He finished up a master's degree and got hired by a different team in our company, and probably makes more than I do now.

The Fugly: I don't really feel like treading this ground publicly, so instead, here's a place you can buy some fugly underwear.

The irony, it burns.

So yesterday, I released some soda back into the wild and stopped by the breakroom to pick up a new can. The circle of life and all that. The office manager was in there with a fuckton (metric, not imperial... I checked) of boxes full of paper cups. Naturally, I commented on this unusual circumstance. The office manager then told me, while crushing several large boxes worth of unused styrofoam cups into the trash can, that the company had gone green, and switched from styrofoam cups to paper ones.

How very environmentally conscious of us.

The Devil's in the Details

I guess it's just my week for error dialogs.

Today, I was happily coding away, and got this dialog:


Well, now. That's pretty helpful. I mean, they tell me to check the details, so this is going to be a really helpful error message. I can tell. So, being the team player that I am, I immediately click the details button so I can be illuminated:


Gee, thanks.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Awesome names

I've been working here for five years now, and I still see awesome names all the damn time. Names with so much fantasticalosity that I'm jealous having my own puny little name. In the past five years, I've seen name plates or email signatures bearing monikers like Steven Martin, Mike Michael, Mike Jackson, and my favorite ever, King Wang (if I ever have my name legally changed, I'm changing it to King Wang).

Today I got an email from someone named Siddhardha. That's so awesome it hurts. That's got to be like naming an American kid Jeebus.

The Vampires of Love

For some reason, whenever I'm listening to "Las Palabras de Amor" I mentally edit it to "Nosferatus de Amor." Weird.

Can I get my wang engineered?

KHAAANNN!

I mean PAAARRRKERRR!

Poetry night in Azeroth

I had a little time on my hands during the RP event on Steamwheedle Cartel tonight, so I amused myself by making up dirty limericks. It's okay. I stayed in character.

I once knew a lass from Un'goro
Who was such an incredible whore-oh,
I went there every night
For her nethers so tight
'till she finally put me on /ignore-oh.

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

I took a picture of my wang.

Sometimes I'm so mature it just hurts.

Dell called me today.

DELL GUY:	Our records show that you bought a computer from us about a year ago.
TACO:	Yep.
DELL GUY:	Have you been happy with the machine?
TACO:	The machine, yes. Dell, no.
DELL GUY:	I'm sorry, why not?
TACO:	The machine has died twice due to a driver issue. There's no info on Dell's site about it, so I had to google for a solution. It wasn't hard to find info. The problem's apparently pretty widespread, and updated drivers have been available for more than a year, but Dell doesn't want to acknowledge the issue.
DELL GUY:	I'm sorry.
TACO:	Also, your finanicial services division harassed my wife so much about extra services, coverage, and insurance that she's vowed that we'll never buy another Dell no matter how cheap they are. We had to contact the Better Business Bureau to get you to leave us alone.
DELL GUY:	I'm sorry to hear that. So, would you like to renew your service agreement? As you know, that's a high end PC, and it can be expensive to repair. Unless you renew, you'll lose access to our coverage and our technical support.
TACO:	Didn't you hear me? Your support department pretends problems don't exist, and my wife will leave me if I give you more money.
DELL GUY:	Well, I, uh... I guess to save your marriage...

I hate it when nobody takes the bait.

Wifezilla called me today and asked me to stop by the grocery store on my way home. Target's right on my way, so I popped in and bought a couple of sodas, a case of beer, and the makings for Wifezilla's Awesome Nachos (TM).

As I was checking out, the cashier asked me if I was throwing a party. I told her, "No, it's my wife's birthday. Can I get a gift receipt?"

She didn't say a word, just printed a gift receipt out for me.

I gave it to Wifezilla when I got home. She asked me what it was for. I told her that if the jalapenos didn't fit she could return them.

Boobhism

A friend of mine was quite concerned over the fact that I no longer affiliate myself with any church. So to allay her fears regarding my immortal soul, I have founded the Boobhist church.

You may properly address me as The Boobha.

I'm told that a faith must have commandments. We really only have one:

1. I am the Boob thy Gland, which brought you out of Puberty. Thou shalt handle no organ before me.

For those of you who feel that you need some sort of creed to recite, I offer the following:

Your Boobs
Which art in thy sweater:
Handled be thy state.
Thy date be fun,
Thy bra undone,
But be back home by eleven.
Cop us this day
Our daily feel.
And forgive us our lame passes,
As we would totally forgive those who made lame passes against us.
But deliver us from celibacy.

Just wait until you see the communion ritual.

I'm even weird when I'm asleep.

Yeah, so I had a dream about my friend fett last night. That's right. Lowercase f. He's all e. e. cummings old school, bitches.

So in my dream, I was living in Clemson again, and fett dropped by to visit me since he had finished up his Ph.D. It turned out that he had been working on his advanced degree in piracy lo, these many years. He was on his way out of town to hit the brine, having bought a boat and everything.

The boat was awesome. It folded up all tiny for road travel, and then expanded out to a full sized monster when he needed it for booty on the high seas. It was like a grown up transformer.

Heh. "Booty."

So fett and I said our tearful good-byes, and then he left. And then we noticed that he had stolen my cell phone, along with my wife's, my sister's, and my father's.

The dream ended as my wife asked me who he was, and I told her, "The best god damn pirate you'll ever see."

I swear to God.

Who is that glorious bastard?

Taco is the farthest planet from the Sun (usually) and is by far the smallest.

orbit: 5,913,520,000 km (39.5 AU) from the Sun (average)
diameter: 9.144e-4 km
mass: 92.98 kg

In Roman mythology, Taco (Greek: Javacus Programicles) is one of the lesser gods, the patron of the cubicle. Our celestial friend probably received this name because he is so far from the sun that he rarely encounters other people.

Taco was discovered in 1974 by a fortunate accident. Calculations which later turned out to be in error had predicted a planet beyond Pluto, based on the motions of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Not knowing of the error, Leon van Guggenheim at Chimerical Observatory in Wyoming did a careful sky survey which turned up Taco anyway.

After the discovery of Taco, it was quickly determined that he was too small to account for the discrepancies in the orbits of the other planets. The search for Planet XI continued but nothing was found. Nor is it likely that it ever will be: the discrepancies vanish if one accounts for the mass of all the McFarlane figures and soda cans on his desk (determined from the Voyager 2 encounter with his office furniture). There is no eleventh planet.

Taco is the only planet that has not been visited by a spacecraft. Even the Hubble Telescope can only resolve the largest features of his surface.

There are some who think that Taco would be better classified as a small asteroid or comet than a planet. Some consider him to be the weirdest-looking of the Kuiper Belt objects (also known as Trans-Neptunian Objects). There is considerable merit to the latter position, but historically, Taco has been classified as a planet, and he is likely to remain so.

Taco's orbit is highly eccentric. At times he is closer to the vending machine than his computer (as he was from noon to one o'clock).

The surface temperature on Taco varies between about 36 and 38 C (309 to 311 K). The warmer regions generally correspond to areas that appear to be plaid flannel in optical wavelengths.

Taco's composition is unknown, but his density indicates that he is probably a mixture of about 70% bullshit and 30% pizza. The bright areas of the surface seem to be covered with a heavyweight 50-50 cotton blend and smaller amounts of flannel, polyester, and mustard stains. The composition of the darker areas of Taco's surface is unknown, but may be due to primordial organic material or photochemical reactions driven by cosmic rays.

Taco can be seen with an amateur telescope, but it is not easy. There are several web sites that show the current position of Taco (and other planets) in the night sky, but much more detailed charts and careful observations over several months will be required to actually find him.

And trust us on this last bit: when you do find him, it's pretty anticlimactic.

Five Things

I really dig on Merlin's Lists of 5 Things and Coyote's recent listage has gotten me back in the mood for lovin'listin'. So I'm shamelessly copying the sexy fucker:

Five Things I Wish I'd Done But Didn't:

1. Embarrassed the guy who couldn't flush.
   

   At my old office, there was a guy on our floor who apparently suffered from some kind of congenital defect which prevented him from flushing. Every couple days you'd find a loosely coiled surprise, bobbing gently as it waited for you.
   

   It was like I always imagined Christmas would be if you were the kid who lit puppies on fire.
   

   I actually caught the fucker leaving the bathroom after packaging up his daily gift one day, and was sorely tempted to follow him all the way back to his office, and then stop him in his lobby, and loudly tell him, "Hey man... I saw that thing you left in the toilet... no, no, no... don't worry about it, I flushed it for you, man. But seriously... I'm concerned about your diet."
   

   Dear 2006 Taco: sometimes it's all about commitment to the bit. Keep your eye on the ball and follow through.
   
   

2. Bought the Torino.
   

   When my first car started to nickel and dime me to death, I donated it to charity and started shopping for a new ride. I found an old Gran Torino with a rebuilt engine being sold for a song and dance.
   

   Like any good nerd, I immediately had mental images of riding that awesome chunk of steel around town while blaring "Ride of the Valkyries" and "Dogs of War."
   

   In the end, I did the "responsible" thing and bought a sedan from Saturn.
   

   Dear 1999 Taco: I'm not talking to you.
   
   

3. Stayed enrolled in that fiction class.
   

   Despite the prerequisites listed in the course catalog, I did not have the background necessary to keep up with the class, and I didn't really feel like my writing was up to the level of the rest of the class. I really enjoyed the material though, so I hit the professor during his office hours to find out what I needed to do, and he gave me a reading list.
   

   The list was quite extensive, and I was starting up on that hellish semester every discipline has. You know the one: that couple of months where they try their damnedest to make you give up and change over to a degree in leisure skills.
   

   So I dropped myself from the class. I continued to attend, and I did all the background reading in my spare time, but I didn't turn in any assignments or take any tests, since I wasn't getting a grade. The professor was pissed, since I was the only one in the class actually interested in the material.
   

   Dear 1997 Taco: Your idealism is cute, but you probably wouldn't be struggling so hard to finish a damn short story 10 years later if you'd gotten some supervised practice in class.
   
   

4. Puked on the nurse's shoes.
   

   I caught a hellacious stomach virus one year. I've never been so sick. My supposed girlfriend at the time left me in a field to rot when she got tired of dealing with me, and a stranger took me to the urgent care place.
   

   We got to the urgent care place at 9:45am, but they didn't open until 10:00. One of the nurses was standing outside windexing the front door. I told her I was really sick and needed to vomit, and asked if I could go inside to use their facilities, but she wouldn't let me.
   

   That old familiar feeling reasserted itself right then, and for a moment I considered letting fly on her white orthopedic shoes, but instead, I filled the bushes by the sidewalk with chunky bile.
   

   Dear 1995 Taco: Bitch had it coming. Consider yourself Karma's agent (you'll think that's funny in 2005, I promise). Also, dude, seriously. Dump the bitch.
   
   

5. Carolyn.
   

   She was pretty, smart, and the guitarist for a band. I was convinced I was too big a nerd, and concerned over the delta of her awesomeness to mine, so I didn't pursue it when I should have.
   

   Dear 1993 Taco: when girls show you their piercings and insist on baking you birthday cakes, they're into you. Get your head out of your ass and say yes.
   
   
   

The Zen of Potty Humor

I'm a complex individual. Yin and yang. And wang.

When I was twelve, my classroom was in a mobile home. Not one of those fancy schmancy trailers kids get these days when their schools are overcrowded. An actual mobile home they rolled up onto the playground.

You didn't leave the classroom to go to the bathroom. You went into the little bathroom closet. The door was right there in the classroom. The whole class could hear when you flushed. And that pretty little blonde chick, Amy, sat right in front of the door.

I was so embarrassed that she'd hear me taking a piss that I always flushed and then immediately let fly while the toilet's gurgle drowned out the cheek-reddening sounds of my micturation. I mastered the art of silently pissing into the side of the bowl if I outlasted the flush.

It's a habit that's stuck with me. That was twenty years ago, and if I'm not paying attention, I still flush-piss automatically. Funny how that stuff works.

And yet, despite my outrageous urinary bashfulness, today, when it took our industrial strength office toilet three flushes to clear the damage I'd done to it, I felt an immense pride.

My new goal is four flushes.

Yin and yang, baby. And wang.

My name is Taco, and I WoW on an RP server.

I know. I know. I can hear you all shaking your heads in sad disappointment now.

But I'm a really good roleplayer. That's a rarity, even on an RP server.

Take my favorite character, for example. He's an undead warlock. So he's got a thing for dead chicks. And dead chicks? They're prone to rot. So every time I'm ogling a hot undead player, I say, "Dude, did you see the tits near that chick?"

I'm not mature enough to be married.

Whenever we go out for a meal, my wife suggests eating at Moe's, because she "can't get enough of the tuna taco."

Tell me, how the hell am I supposed to hear that without giggling?

I used to have some things...

...but I gambled them all away. I tried to get some more things, but I didn't have much money, so I could only afford some stuff. Of course, they don't make stuff like they used to, so it was broken all to shit within a few months. That's okay, though. Even though it's all shit now, it's my shit. I keep it all in a little pile in my room. It's very impressive. All my friends who've seen it, they all say, "Man, that guy really has his shit together." Except my wife. She's always saying, "Why don't you get rid of all this shit?" Which makes no sense. She wants me to throw away all my shit, but she's always giving me crap. I asked her why she was always trying to unload all her crap on me, and she said, "Women don't have crap. They have things."

I wish I had some things.