None of my shit ever gets old.

WIFEZILLA: Hey, who played Principal Moss on King of the Hill?

TACO: Huh?

WIFEZILLA: The voice actor who does Principal Moss on King of the Hill. I recognize him from somewhere.

TACO: Hang on, I'll look him up.

WIFEZILLA: Has he done any other voice acting?

TACO: Oh! He was Principal Moss on King of the Hill!

WIFEZILLA: You know, none of your shit ever gets old.

There's a giant doing cartwheels.

Took this photo from my front porch this morning. It fails utterly to capture what I really saw.

Incoming Movie Binge

I love the after-Christmas DVD sales. In addition to a couple of just-'cause gifts for other people, I snagged season 2 of Big Bang Theory, season 1 of True Blood, and season 5 of The Office for myself this week, at a mere $17 a pop. I finally broke down and decided to buy Wet tonight, and that trip to Best Buy yielded copies of 9, District 9, and Paranormal Activity.

I think my DVD dry spell may be over. I might even get around to watching Tropic Thunder, finally, Coyote.

Been about a month since I sent out my last short story submissions. No word yet. The wa-yay-ting is the hardest part.

Got a gorgeous wooden brain teaser puzzle set for Christmas this year. Due to a misunderstanding over something I said last night, wifezilla let kidzookie play with it today. It's now in pieces I'll never figure out how to reassemble, and worthless for display. So now it's in the trash. Le sigh. Win some, lose some.

Mailed out a couple of late Christmas gifts at lunch today. Yes, I'm well aware that you hate Christmas. Call it a Happy Today gift if you must.

Made up my mind to be Mellow Taco at work today. Went much more smoothly than it has when I've been my usual charming self. Guess I'll have to keep it up. I think it may actually keep me from having a heart attack in the long run.

Off to drink beer and watch 9. Yay.

Vampirism in the Modern World

Do vampire activists worry about peak hemoglobin?

Wherein Kidzookie Discovers Monty Python

We had the big family shindig for Christmas tonight. One of our traditions is to play that old holiday game where everyone brings a fairly inexpensive gift, and everyone has the opportunity to pick an unopened gift or steal someone else's. Great fun.

This year, someone brought the Rabbit of Caerbannog. My son went nuts for the thing. I was already out of the game, having won a $10 lottery ticket. Wifezilla fought valiantly for the stuffed animal, but was unable to secure it (side note: having failed to acquire the rabbit, she wisely went for the kill on the growler of beer, which she later traded to my cousin for the snuggie he won. I call it a bad trade, but she's been wanting a snuggie).

The boy was pretty upset to see the rabbit elude his grasp, but we promised to let him spend some of his Christmas money on one. I promptly searched for one, found the very one he'd liked so much... and it's out of stock.

However!

I also found this one, which is quite possibly the best toy evar.

Wifezilla is awesome.

We traded stories about our days when I got home from work. My story was pretty boring.

Wifezilla, on the other hand, regaled me with the tale of her shopping trip. She parked and was getting Girlzookie out of the car when she noticed two children in the car parked next to her. Alone. One was an infant in a car seat, and the other was a toddler.

She was concerned, was our heroine, so she stood around for about a bit to see if Lousymom showed back up. When 15 minutes failed to produce Lousymom, Wifezilla called the highway patrol, who advised her to call 911. She promptly did so, and left them her name and number.

They dispatched a cop, and Wifezilla didn't hang around for the fireworks once he showed up. He did call her a bit later to thank her for the report. Not only were the children left alone in the car, but it turns out the doors were all left unlocked as well. He apparently managed to track the mother down in a nearby restaurant, and yelled at Lousymom until she cried. While no charges were pressed, it apparently does go on her permanent record, so to speak. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I readily admit to some significant schadenfreude where the crying is concerned.

I wish I could buy the cop a beer. Instead, when I buy Wifezilla a beer for being awesome, I guess we'll raise the first glasses to him.

Zee Germans, Tommy.

Long day.

They had the grand opening of the office today. The governor came out for it. The news crews came out, but it was a pretty small event, so I don't know that it'll actually show up on any news outlets. If it does, keep an eye out for me and marvel at how I behaved myself.

Been doing financial investment training courses. Jeebus. How is some of this shit legal? I start the actual classroom training tomorrow. Maybe I can ask them then.

The prereq courses I've been taking have been online ones the company put together. They're very typical of corporate training courses. Their attempts to be politically correct wind up being hilarious. The fictional investor whose story we followed today was Ralph Menses. I shit you not. I'm not mature enough to do this shit.

Company dinner at The Pit to celebrate the opening tonight. Great fun but also somewhat odd. Several times I introduced myself with just my first name only to be met with an epiphanic, "Oh, you're [insert my whole name]." My friends made jokes about my reputation preceding me. I wonder if I should be concerned.

People there are super nice. Met an Indian guy who is one of the funniest fuckers I've ever met, and I know all three of you who will read this, so that's saying something. Also, god damn, zee germans can throw down.

And now to bed with me. I am le tired and I have an early day tomorrow. Whee.

We had children so we could torment them.

KIDZOOKIE: Mom won't let me watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

TACO: K.

KIDZOOKIE: It's really funny. There's a milkshake guy.

TACO: Does he bring all the boys to the yard?

KIDZOOKIE: What?

TACO: Are they like, "It's better than yours?"

WIFEZILLA: [yelling from the next room] Damn right, it's better than yours!

Jeez It, the Cops!

I'm proud of that little scientific mind.

KIDZOOKIE: Hey, dad.

TACO: Yeah, buddy, what's up?

KIDZOOKIE: Is Santa real?

TACO: Sure he is. Why?

KIDZOOKIE: Well, I mean, magic isn't real, so how in the world would reindeer fly?

TACO: I dunno.

KIDZOOKIE: I think you and mom just buy a bunch of presents, and then on Christmas Eve, you check on us to see if we're really asleep. Then if we are, you put the presents under the tree and label them from Santa so we'll think that he put them there.

TACO: You think so?

KIDZOOKIE: Well, come on. It makes a lot more sense.

Things that are awesome because they happened to someone else.

My wife had to explain to my son what a vasectomy is tonight. It wasn't me. And that makes it awesome.

To hold my tongue speaks of quiet reservation.

Progress was made on the security for my little side project. Got the authentication stuff set up, so the site can now authenticate users and grant or reject access based on the users' granted rights. Sweet. Next up is encrypting the password. Yay.

My joints have been in really shitty shape for the past week or so. This week has featured a new treat in that my hands have been so painful that I haven't played guitar in days. I tried to play WoW last night but my hands hurt too much for that, too. Getting old is for the birds.

The pain in my joints eased up a bit today since I have naproxen again. I seem to be developing another ear infection to replace the pain though. Whee. I just fucking love the shape of my ear canals.

Big reveal went pretty well. The boss and I discussed my taking a new job, and he was pretty gracious about it. I felt kinda bad for him, because he came back from vacation sick as hell and had to have that conversation with me. He was supposed to talk to his boss about it and then get back to me and send an email out to the rest of the team. The email didn't seem to go out today, so I spoke with my team lead this afternoon just to make sure he was up to speed for any project planning he was doing. So... new job. Wow.

Pretty sure wifezilla's completely hooked on Buffy now. I've been given orders that I'm not to get ahead of her in the series. Excellent.

Done ruined that boy.

I came home today to a gift from my son wrapped up and waiting in my favorite chair. I opened it to find this piece of beauty, and it is indeed fucking awesome. I can't really go through it till I finish burning through the DVDs, but holy shit does it rock.

Because: Moar!

On my morning commute today I was behind a car with the personalized plate: MORE DPS. I couldn't agree more.

Guess tomorrow's the big reveal. Much of my desk is already cleared out. Hmm.

Got my rejection from F&SF this weekend. I only got as far as one of the assistant editors. Still, it wasn't a form letter, but a real letter with a signature, which was nice. Granted, they just pasted my name and my title into a Word doc -- I found the same rejection, verbatim, online -- and hit print, but even so, quite nice, I thought.

Not sure where I'll send it next. Asimov's has a bunch of hoops you have to jump through, and that seems like a lot of trouble for a rejection. I went through my list of lower-tier publications last night, and the majority of them have gone under. No big surprise there, I guess... it's a tough business. Many of the remaining places have non-continuous submission windows, and the one I want to hit up next stops accepting submissions... carry the one... today. Rather than push the deadline, I'm thinking I'll just wait till they open it up again (sometime in February I believe).

Meantime, I briefly mastered the intense depression that swallows me whole every time I look at Tezarul, tweaked it to match some requirements, and submitted it to a flash fiction place.

Spent the weekend getting that website side project in a fit state for development again. I lost my work when the mac died a while back, and had to rejigger it from my backup. That gave me the opportunity to correct a few mistakes I made in the deployment process in my first pass, which was nice. But I wound up spending most of a night trying to de-fuck (technical term) some mangled files, which was frustrating. End result: it's back and in better shape than before, and I'm making headway again. I got the basic security stuff set up and working, so I'm able to restrict content to users with certain rights now. Next up: storing passwords encrypted instead of in plain text.

Got my Buffy set and it is indeed awesome. Kidzookie and I binged on season 1 almost immediately, and he's hooked, especially on the standalone eps that don't really advance the overall plot. Wifezilla's coming around, too. She's watched an episode or two a night with me for the past few nights. I have hopes that she'll soon admit that she's actually enjoying the show.

As a result, yes, Coyote, I'm afraid that (much like almost everything I Netflix lately) Tropic Thunder is going to pull a longish stint on my coffee table before being viewed. But I've got a good reason this time, at least. I'm binging on 7 seasons here, man.

My hands hurt like hell all the time any more. Perhaps it's time I planned a graceful exit from 40 hours of typing a week for some time down the road?

How They Find Me: November 2009 Edition

I don't get many funny search terms any more, just the same ones repeated ad nauseam. (Apparently Google thinks I'm a leading expert on tequila.) The days of people endlessly searching my site for groin mustard and naked Hitler groin massages seem to have gone the way of the dodo.

Alas.

But tonight I found out that one of my posts got Dugg (only twice, but hey, that's doubly amazing to me), and that prompted me to check my search terms out of cycle. And when I did so, I found this:


Most of it's pretty typical of my month-to-month results. There's two things I want to point out to you here, though.

First, someone's coming here to find out what suyapi means. I guess it's as good a place as any, but I don't think you'll find the answer here. You really have to experience suyapi.

Second, and more importantly, a Carl Sagan quote is tied for #1 most visits to my site. That's fucking awesome.

P.S. Groin mustard guy? Where are you? I'm worried about you. Let's talk.

Immature Taco is Immature

PHONE: Ring ring.

TACO: Hello?

KR4STER: Hey man.

TACO & KR4STER: Blah blah blah.

TACO: So I picked up the demo for Wet. It's fucking awesome. It's like being in a John Woo movie.

KR4STER: Download now? Yes.

TACO: Cool, are you getting Wet?

KR4STER: ...

TACO: rofl

Just nod if you can hear me.

WIFEZILLA: Hey, I've got an idea.

TACO: Well, be nice to it. It's got to be lonely.

WIFEZILLA: <_<

TACO: >_>

WIFEZILLA: <_<

TACO: >_>

WIFEZILLA: All right, that was pretty good.

TACO: Yay!

Enjoy Buffy and the Vampires.

My mom gave me a check for my birthday last night. I anticipated the parental check and asked everybody else for money this year for my birthday. The proceeds thereof got me the collected set of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series on DVD. I called my mom tonight to tell her that she bought me the Buffy DVD set for my birthday. There followed a 45-minute-long conversation about this and that after which my mother told me that she hoped I enjoyed "Buffy and the vampires."

My mom is adorable and awesome.

I follow the blogs of several of my favorite authors. One in particular I particularly obsess over. I think she's absolutely amazing, and I readily admit that she's far smarter than I am. She tends to rail on against her writing being categorized, though, and that's always a huge letdown for me.

I'm setting aside and ignoring the morons who defy categorization because they want to establish a false mystique. She's awesome, and beyond that kind of crap. And yes, I'm well aware that there's a stigma against "genre fiction." I still think the attitude is bullshit and disappointing.

We as human beings categorize things. It's part of our nature. It helps us to deal with things intellectually, and it's not going to stop. And it's beneficial to you. If I want to recommend you to a friend, I'm far more likely to be successful if I can relate you to something that they can understand. Categorizing things is a great way to put them in the general ballpark.

Yes. I'm well aware that categories almost always fall short. So is my audience. So they know I'm just giving them the high points.

Yes. I'm well aware that there occasionally erupts something new that doesn't fit an existing genre. Know what we do then? We define a new genre by your work. Know what else? You're probably not actually a new genre.

God, I hate this self-aggrandizing bullshit. Someone called you horror. But you want to be called Weird Fiction. Shut the fuck up and let people convince other people to buy your shit.

Why must people be so self-defeatingly contrary? And yes, I'm also well aware of the irony of that question.

Off to #2.

Magazine #2. Not bodily waste elimination function #2. You're gross.

Just got back from mailing my story in to Fantasy & Science Fiction. They reject really quickly, so hopefully I'll be able to mail it out to Asimov's by sometime next week.

It sounded less disgusting in my head.

Pot roast + vodka + chocolate birthday cake + burp smells a lot like Indian food.

Ever notice...

...how the most embarrassing experiences become your favorite memories?

Weird.

Rejected But Not Unexpected

Got my rejection letter from Analog today. Regrettably (but unsurprisingly), I got a form letter rejection, so it wasn't a particularly close thing. On to the next on the list.

Silence, Looking Glass, Peemoflage, Coding, and Murlocs (Oh My)

Day 37. No word yet. But today was a holiday, so no mail.

Haven't gotten my special package yet, either. Today would've been a good day for me to get it, because a new way of looking at it hit me: am I likely to get this kind of opportunity where I currently am? Made the decision obvious to me today. By tomorrow I'll be second guessing myself again. It's kinda what I do.

Random thing you didn't want to know about me: I almost always flush twice when I urinate. My school didn't have enough class rooms, so my sixth grade class was held in what was basically a gutted doublewide trailer. A pretty blonde girl sat right in front of the bathroom door, and I was horrified by the thought of her hearing me pee, so I developed the clever plan to flush first to drown out the sound. This necessitated more frequent trips to the bathroom to ensure that the flush-gurgle outlasted my urinary drumroll. Nearly 25 years later, the habit is deeply ingrained. If I'm not concentrating on pissing like a normal human being, I flush first, then pee. If I am, I usually forget halfway through my micturatory observances and flush early. And damned if my OCD will let me leave an unflushed toilet, so... doubleflush.

Today was a long day. Not a bad one, just long. I implemented the last feature on my list for this month's sprint. Doing that work revealed a flaw in the design of part of our model. Tsk, tsk. Someone violated the rules our Most Senior Coder lay forth lo, these many years ago, and the result illustrates exactly why these guidelines exist. I should write it up on my coding blog.

I spent much of the afternoon refactoring that portion of the model. That's actually pretty fun, or at least it is to me. It's my favorite part of the development process -- and I guess it shows a bit, since the team has occasionally had to tell me to knock the refactoring the fuck off and write some new code.

This refactoring job wasn't as straightforward as it should have been; another team in California references some of this code, and our source management system is rather prohibitive where collaboration is concerned. It's a shame, really, because the code repository winds up discouraging good practices in coding across our greater organization. Nobody in management gives a shit, though. Oh well. Anyway, coordinating changes to any of the code they reference would be a goddamn nightmare, so I had to refactor with a light touch. Which is to say that it wound up being somewhat less than ideal, but still pretty damn good, I think.

Funny how the longer I do this shit, the less technical and the more business-bullshitty the challenges are. Maybe I should leverage some synergies or something.

Dead tired when I got home. Wifezilla tried to give me a break and let me chill out and unwind. She rocks that way. She got a bug to do some cleaning and started going through the fridge chucking this month's aging leftovers. A big tupperware container of spaghetti noodles went into the garbage disposal, and promptly clogged it.

Again, she didn't want to drag me into it. I finally went to investigate the strange noises I heard coming from the kitchen and found her working it over with a plunger. Well-intended, but it actually just crammed the noodles farther down the pipes. (I sound like I'm making fun of her, but I went straight for the plunger myself.)

I wound up having to take the pipes apart to clear the impaction. Ever smelled the inside of your plumbing? It smells the way I imagine murlocs do. Which may explain the gurgles.

Booyah. Got the /mom.

TACO: Stop restoring my faith in humanity, damn it. I can't be a curmudgeon unless I hate my species.

BLUE: not all of us are assholes

TACO: You're messing with my worldview

BLUE: giving you a new paradigm... i'm not [jackass' name deleted], though.. i don't have art to go with it
BLUE: lmao

TACO: Maybe you could leverage some synergies to create an actionable paradigm?

BLUE: or maybe i could just put a boot in your keester and tell you not be a curmudgeon? :)

TACO: *shakefist*

BLUE: pfft
BLUE: unafraid

TACO: Gonna take my walker out in the front yard and yell at people to get the hell off my lawn

BLUE: uh huh
BLUE: take the hose with you
BLUE: lol

TACO: Man
TACO: Why's it always come down to hoes with you?

BLUE: lmao!
BLUE: /mom

TACO: Yay!

BLUE: yeah.. figures that would be a /win for ya

He's got a bead on you.

Kidzookie had his first brush with internet porn.

He's been playing online games and managed to get the computer infected, and it started throwing pornographic popups at him.

There's a scan running on the machine now, and in the meantime, we're having on-again, off-again talks about what happened to see if he has any questions that need answering.

And it was during one of these conversations, just after telling me about a popup of "a lady with no clothes on sitting on a pizza," that he told me, "I don't think that site is for kids. I think it's for teenagers. Or maybe Steve."

Damn kids and their intertubes.

KIDZOOKIE: Daddy?

TACO: What?

KIDZOOKIE: Daddy?

TACO: What?

KIDZOOKIE: Daddyyyyyyyyyy?

TACO: What?

KIDZOOKIE: DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

TACO: WHAT!?

KIDZOOKIE: We're in a restaurant, Daaaaaaaddyyyyyyyyy.

Wherein she sets my priorities in order

WIFEZILLA: [digs through Taco's change bowl] Can I borrow some change?

TACO: Sure.

WIFEZILLA: Another Canadian dime. Damn it, you're where I keep getting them!

TACO: Alackaday, my secret is out! I'm having an affair with my sexy Canadian man!

WIFEZILLA: Lovely.

TACO: He pays for blowjobs with Canadian dimes.

WIFEZILLA: You need to start charging more.

We have traveled this way before and there is much to be learned.

Netflix has Cosmos available for online streaming. I've been watching an episode a night for a few nights now. I forgot how much I love this series (and Carl Sagan).

Upgraded my main PC at work to Ubuntu 9.10 today. Our network sucks balls so it didn't finish until a few minutes before I had to leave, so I haven't put it through its paces yet. It's pretty, though.

Today marks one month since I submitted my short story to Analog. The Black Hole indicates a turnaround time of around 40 days for rejections from Analog, so I guess I don't need to be panicking for another two weeks, give or take. Figures the one thing I wouldn't procrastinate on would be panic attacks.

Speaking of panic attacks, never got the promised call from RecruiterLady today. Knew I shouldn't have said anything aloud. Done gone and jinxed m'self. Damn it.

Wifezilla and Girlzookie met me for lunch today. During lunch, Girlzookie pointed out a group of highway patrolmen eating a few tables down from us and told me, "You can't say any bad words, Dad. The cops are here."

I don't care if she plucked puppies from god's ass.

Picked up The Plan today. Just finished watching it (and the extras). Awesome. It's almost like watching a behind-the-scenes flick on the actual plot. Maybe that makes no sense. Lots of fun, though, good story, and very good ending. I'm jonesing for BSG again. May have to binge on the whole series now.

Don't want to jinx myself, but I think the interviews are going well. Getting more excited with every iteration, which is something of a novelty for me. Supposed to schedule the next one on Monday. Woo.

Wifezilla wanted hot wings so we went to Hooters for lunch today. Lunch at Hooters on Halloween is a Very Good Idea.

There was a guy two tables over dressed as Joker from The Dark Knight. This was the most elaborate Joker costume I've ever seen. It was convincing enough that I was hard pressed to even attempt to dissuade Kidzookie from his assertion that he was the real Joker. I tried to get the kids to go over and ask the guy why he was so serious, but they were afraid of him. Asking him if he wanted to see a magic trick was also a no-go. On the way out, however, Joker got up from his table and approached the kids, and gave each of them a playing card upon which the Joker's face had been scrawled over the normal array of diamonds, clubs, hearts, or spades.

Completely. Fucking. Awesome.

The kids are now even more convinced he was the real Joker. Who knew the real Joker ate at Hooters?

I stayed at home to hand out candy while Wifezilla took the kidzookies out trick-or-treating. We ran out of candy, which I figure is the mark of a good Halloween.

Sometimes the jokes don't land.

INTERVIEWER: So I apologize if this question is too easy or is insulting, but you'd be amazed by how many supposedly senior developers can't answer it.

TACO: Okay.

INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me what a static variable is?

TACO: Yeah, that's when you rub two programs against each other and variables from one build up on the surface of the other one, right?

CRICKETS: Chirp! Chirp!

20 Questions (+/- 15)

WIFEZILLA: Why is the dog staring at me like that?

TACO: Because you have cheese.

WIFEZILLA: Why is the dog staring at me because I have cheese.

TACO: Because he's waiting for you to give him a slice.

WIFEZILLA: Why is the dog waiting for me to give him a slice of cheese?

TACO: Because he likes cheese.

WIFEZILLA: How does the dog know he likes cheese?

TACO: Because I give him a slice of cheese whenever I get one.

WIFEZILLA: Why do you give the dog cheese?

TACO: Because you told me to stop giving him dog treats.

WIFEZILLA: [sigh]

Ill Communication

PHONE: Ring, ring.

TACO: Hello?

WIFEZILLA: Why are we playing phone tag?

TACO: Because we can't reach each other. Duh.

WIFEZILLA: Cute.

TACO: Wanted to apologize.

WIFEZILLA: For what?

TACO: Smarting off at you this morning.

WIFEZILLA: Huh?

TACO: When you wanted me to contort myself down onto the couch and all. I realized I probably haven't ever told you how bad that shit hurts, so that was unfair.

WIFEZILLA: Oh. I didn't expect you to do that. I was just giving you shit.

TACO: Oh. I didn't realize that. I wind up feeling bad every time I tell you no.

WIFEZILLA: Well now you know.

TACO: Yeah.

WIFEZILLA: And knowing is half the battle.

TACO: Yeah.

WIFEZILLA: G. I. JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOE!

Local Legends Die

There was an old stump in my home town, not far from the house I did most of my growing up in, that they called The Witch's Tree. The stump was the stuff of local legend, and the legends were pretty colorful... the stump was supposed to be what remained of a tree that had been used for various Satanic rituals back in the day, and everything short of the H-bomb had failed to remove the damn thing from the field it sat in.

The reference librarian in my home town is a good friend of mine, and he's been looking for The Witch's Tree to take a photo for posterity's sake, since we figured it wasn't likely to last forever. He dragged a friend of ours who'd been out to see it before into the caper today. Alas, The Witch's Tree is no more. They burned it out a few years ago, it would seem.

Stories about the stump were a staple of my teen years. I feel somehow simultaneously relieved and saddened.

Bathroom Schadenfreude

I was at the urinal taking a piss today when one of the high-powered executives down the hall sprinted in and past me doing that rapid knock-kneed duckwalk some people do. Looked like a race to the finish. I had just mentally bet myself that he was executing The Move -- you know, when you run in and simultaneously hook the stall door with your elbow, loosen your belt, and launch yourself ass first at the toilet? It's a complex ballet that is all the more amazing for the inherent risk that, should any cog in the intricate machine misfire, you'll be shitting up your back -- when suddenly, from the stall, came a sound absolutely identical to the one you hear when you release an overinflated balloon and it flies around the room.

For just a second, I thought in alarm that the man was deflating. Then that thought sank in and I started to laugh. Hard.

I've got to find a brake pedal to slow my reactions down till my brain has had a chance to tell me they're a bad idea. Not that I'd probably stop reacting inappropriately to things, just, you know... I'd be an immature asshole on purpose.

Weekend in Review

Grimm called me tonight and we talked for a few hours. Traded short stories, promised to critique them and speak again later this week. Awesome.

Fridge broke. Can't seem to turn off whatever mechanism cools the inside. Fridge side is 20 degrees below freezing. Have to spend money fixing that shit. Sucks.

Had to drink the beer before the cans explode. That can totally happen. Awesome.

Watched Rise of the Lycans this weekend. It wasn't as bad as I'd read, but lacked the style of the first two (by which, yes, I do primarily mean Kate Beckinsale's rubber-clad ass), so it wasn't as fun a romp. Meh.

Wifezilla wanted hot wings so we went to Hooters today. Nom nom nom. Awesome.

Sent Superpowers back to the library. Started out good, but the more I read, the less interested I was. I think I poisoned myself by reading a review before I was done with it. Oh well.

Missed my Thursday night lineup on TV this week because I went to LOL with Enzo. I think the other guy there might be Enzo's new boyfriend, but I didn't ask. If so, he might be the first decent guy Enzo's dated in a long time. The opening act wasn't funny at all... so unfunny, in fact, that I felt sorry for the guy, which is pretty much the opposite direction from fun. The headliner was damn funny, though, so the night was saved overall. Yay.

Beat the main story of Brutal Legend. The single player story is pretty short, which is a bit of a letdown. Great story, though, and it's very fun and funny. The multiplayer mode apparently makes use of the RTS element of the story, which kinda sucks... while that stuff was fun, the console controllers don't lend themselves well to it, so it never really becomes easy or transparent to make people do what you want. Great game but not worth initial retail in the end, I think. Pick it up for sure but maybe wait till it hits the $30 rack. Oh well.

Finishing Lux the Poet now. Love Millar. This is the least good one I've read by him and it's still quite fun. Been too unfocused with my reading lately, and have several books going concurrently. Buckling down and getting that back down to one. Once I get done w/ Lux, I have to finish off the Andy Jack book I got. Win. Sorta.

I think that's more in the plus column than the minus. Calling the weekend a win overall. Yay.

I... think I love her.

TACO: blah blah blah

WIFEZILLA: [makes fun of Taco]

TACO: Are you making fun of me?

WIFEZILLA: Noooooooo.

TACO: Are you making fun of me again?

WIFEZILLA: ...yes.

xjc, yer yeller.

I love this error message so much it hurts.

OMG Me Too

Yesterday, we were driving to my folks' house for Sunday dinner and witnessed... well, I'm not sure exactly what we witnessed. As we were heading south out of Raleigh, a rather rotund man -- and one who made my fish-white belly look tan, I soon found out -- suddenly windmilled his duffel bag into the ground and ripped his shirt off, then went apeshit on one of those markers the phone company uses to indicate underground cables. Damn if he didn't hate that thing. He punched it a few times, stomped it into the ground, then grabbed it a bear hug and apparently tried to suplex it. It was... yeah. I tried to fish my cell phone out of my pocket so I could share with you guys, but I wasn't fast enough. Ah, well.

This morning, on my way into work, I was behind an SUV with the personalized plate: "LUV GINA." I waved and yelled, "OMG, ME TOO!" but I don't think they heard me. Again with the too slow cell phone. I need to keep the damn thing on the dash when I drive.

Almost called in sick today, but manned up and went in. Work was somewhat less craptacular than I expected.

My laptop came back in today. Looks like Apple fixed it all up. The LCD had some scuff marks on it when I bought it that I was never able to remove. They either knew how to clean them or put a new LCD in. Either way, I'm quite pleased. They also gave me a new battery even though it technically wasn't covered. The old one was beginning to discharge a little quicker (I hear it's a common problem in hard drives of a certain age [I hate me, Larry])... not too bad yet, but I was looking at replacing it soon. Free is always good. Very happy overall with my experience so far. Yay.

Tired of wrestling with my fantasy hockey settings. Dropped my goalie a week ago and can't get it to give me a new one. The docs are sparse, hard to find, and shitacular. Think I'm giving up on playing. Deleted the bookmark off all my computers today.

My arthritis has been a bit worse lately. Shit.

Back to reinstalling crap on my newly-returned laptop. World of Warcraft should be done installing any week now.

It's obvious, really.

I respectfully disagree, sirs.

The threshholds we cross.

Today I got to drop the "if you're too sick to stay at school, you're too sick to get out of bed for the rest of the day" line I so hated in my own childhood. It's the kind of periodic bastardy that makes being a parent fun, but also that makes you old.

And it lifts you up...

• Zombieland was awesome. So much yay.
• There's hope for my laptop. So much yay.
• Out of respect for the person's privacy, I'll keep my mouth shut, but I didn't promise not to go whoring for good vibes, so heads up, do whatever it is you do: cross fingers, pray, sacrifice an animal, masturbate for peace, punch a moron... whatever higher powers are currently at large will fill in the blank, I'm sure.
• Friend of ours has a very sick daughter (I've mentioned her before). Her daughter had a seizure today, during which I'm told she turned rather purple. The doctors offer no explanations for the seizure, citing normal readings all around.
• Same friend's sister has two children who are very poorly cared for. They both need medical attention due to the neglect (though they're doing rather better recently since our friend has been keeping them while their mother is in the damn county jail), and they suspect abuse. She tried to get help for the kids from social services today, but was ignored and hurried out of the building because "times are tough for everyone, I'm sure it's poverty, not neglect."
• If I ever run into my high school guidance counsellor, I am going to kick her ass for not telling me about this.
  
• There's a guy in California I got roped into working with a few years ago. To put it kindly, he's difficult, and I generally get little in the way of support other than "make it go away" whenever he comes a-callin'. He sent a very pointed, very nasty email out last week and copied half the damn world on it. I sent a rather pointed, more polite email back to the whole list and eventually got a backhanded apology. Momentarily got some backup that evaporated with the faux-apology. Sigh. Can't take much more of this.
  
• Got an interview at Deutsche Bank. The recruiter informs me that the hiring manager "is a real ballbuster." I don't mind intense and/or difficult interviews (they reflect well on the quality of the team I'm considering joining), but I don't respond well to dickheads who are abusive during interviews. We'll see which he is tomorrow, I guess. Bets on whether I slip and call them Douche Bank?
• Managed to master my low self-esteem long enough to mail my latest short story off to a magazine yesterday. The headrush that hit me when the envelope was irretrievably out of my hands just about brought me to my knees. Doing better now (though I suspect another nasty attack when the return envelope does its boomerang act into my mailbox). Need to start working on a new one now. Not really feeling the ones I have a grip on. Need to bullshit with somebody about one of the ones I'm more interested in doing but haven't fleshed out yet. Where's Coyote?
• I will shoot you SO HARD!
• Double tap.
• ...then it puts you down / and it feeds you life / then it lets you drown / while it holds your heart / then it slowly tears you apart

Of undead obsessions and birthdays

I'm very fortunate to have a family that humors my obsessions. Below is a photo of the early birthday gift my father-in-law (who rocks harder than anybody else's father-in-law. My word is law) gave me this evening.

Rough draft done.

A hair under 3200 words. Editing to come. At least two excerpts need to be rewritten. A couple other things I noticed when I read it all tonight. Will probably give it an editing pass tomorrow, then put it down for a week or two to get perspective. Panic attack is go in 3... 2...

630 words. Oh my.

I'm fairly certain that's a new record for me. I found the end of the story tonight. Now I just need to write the pamphlet excerpts, do a couple of editing passes and... wow. I'm done. O_o

Week in Review

0 new words, but I'm still rather excited. Started out with a readthrough & editing pass as has become my habit, did some light editing, then hit a section that's never quite felt right. It finally hit me last night that I wrote that section backwards. Reordered it, and I am well pleased. Was exhausted, so I called it a night after that. Turned out the light, started drifting, and a title finally popped in my head: The Quickening of Warren Nowlan. Still rolling it around to see if I like it, but it's the first that I've come up with that I'm willing to seriously consider. Thoughts?

One of my aunts and her husband came down to visit dad this weekend. The whole local clan got together for dinner and then to hang out at mom and dad's for the evening. Had a lot of fun... so much so that I lost track of time, and we didn't leave until after 10pm... well after the kiddos' bedtimes. Ah, well, it was a weekend.

Kidzookie woke up at 5am vomiting and having difficulty breathing. When he started bringing up blood we wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a bucket, and took him to the emergency room. Playing the stoic adult isn't fun when your seven-year-old little boy starts crying and saying "I don't wanna die, I haven't beaten Batman: Arkham Asylum yet." By the time he passed through the doors to the ER, he'd settled down and was just coughing a bit. We skipped the assholes at the ER by the house and took him to a real hospital, so he was admitted more or less immediately. Final verdict? Acid reflux. Who the hell knew acid reflux could be so damn scary? I'm happy to report that kiddo was very brave through the entire ordeal, including when they drew blood from his arm with the same needle they use when I donate blood (though his eyes were like dinner plates when they pulled that bad boy out), and he's no worse for wear now.

We spent most of the day recovering from the ordeal and the interruption of our normal sleep schedule. Lots of lying around napping.

Woke up to find that my mac has crapped out. The display is dead, dead, dead. This appears to be a pretty widespread problem with macs built around the time mine was. Apparently nVidia had a run of incredibly shitty graphics chips. So now I have to try to salvage the important data off the thing and then make an appointment with the techs at the Apple store to see what they'll do about it. I've read that they're fixing a lot of these issues for free, but with my luck, they'll try to charge me for it. So we'll see how that goes. Hopefully I'll at least be able to salvage the work I did Thursday and Friday. Sigh.

So ups and downs and all arounds. What a week. Still, the rewrite was awesome. Yay.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

I've been meaning to do this, but work has been rough this week. On the plus side, although it's sucked ass, the end of the day has quickly snuck up on me all week, which is nice. Anyway, Coyote called me out, so here it is.

Fair warning, there's some naughty words down below.

So Baltimore. I made a trip up that way to figure out how I could lure Coyote away from there. It's going to take crabs, I think. I'm not sure how to overcome this obstacle, but it's a problem, and problems can be solved. Maybe if I apply fire. But to what? More study is needed.

I had to use Mapquest to get my directions because Google does not know where Coyote lives. Coyote swears it works for him. Coyote lies. But lying is cool, so I was duly impressed.

Jack and I left early on Saturday morning. Cold, foggy, and almost rainy during the morning, which was actually pretty nice weather to travel in. The route they had me take through Virginia was very rural in some places, and a really great drive. Once the sun came up and burned off the fog, I opened the sunroof to enjoy the pretty weather. And sunburnt my brainpan. Oh well.

I passed one of those historical marker signs that said something about John Wilkes Booth at one point, but didn't stop because every 100 feet for miles there was a forest of signs warning me not to stop under any circumstances, including a cluster right around the marker. So that was odd. "Hey, look here at this interesting point of historical significance. No, don't look. Move along, citizen." Might have been because it was in the middle of a military training center, but I'm working on a theory that involves elder gods, an alien scouting expedition, and spaghetti.

The bridge over the Potomac on 301 is steep as hell. I think they were building a bridge to the moon and chickened out.

Wifezilla told me I needed to take the lady of the house some flowers as a preemptive apology for my behavior over the visit, so as we started to get close, I kept an eye out for a grocery store where I could pick up a moderately priced bouquet. I passed a Food Lion on the left and decided I'd hang on for something on the right. I never saw another grocery store period. I'm sorry for that, Ms. Coyote. I suck.

Jack did really well on the trip. I let him stick his head out of the window a few times as a reward for the excellent behavior.

So we pulled in right about exactly when I thought we would, which is amazing. I wasn't 100% sure of the number of Coyote's place, and Mapquest doesn't actually put the address anywhere on the directions when you print them out (what the hell?) so I had to call Coyote from the parking lot, about 100 feet from where he was standing. My name is Taco. I am retarded. Hear me splay clap. YAYYYYYY.

Gifts were exchanged. I gave Coyote an awesome zombie sock monkey that wifezilla made. Coyote gave me a shitload of awesome books which made my gift look paltry and embarrassing by comparison.

We think that Jack was abused before we took him in, so I had some minor concerns about him warming up to people when we got there. My concerns were largely unfounded. He took to Coyote and the missus pretty quickly, and Coyote now knows how awesome my dog is. Jack even demonstrated his amazing ability to prairie dog for extended periods as he spent the afternoon telling people to get the hell off Coyote's lawn.

We were whisked away to the library, which is amazing. I'm jealous as hell. Wifezilla promised me a while back that I could convert our dining room to a library, and what I have in mind is a lot like the glory I witnessed in upstairs 'Yoteland. While I was there I was treated to a demonstration of a bunch of autographed copies of books (so jealous), and was allowed to rub the armor of Divine Ray (Ray be praised!). I was properly respectful and did not rub too vigorously or on my junk. I may have had my other hand down my pants, though.

Then was the trip into town. We hit a comic book shop, but as you may recall from a few paragraphs ago, I am retarded, and it it didn't occur to me that I'd have Jack with me. So Jack and I walked around and watched a kid learning to play soccer while Coyote picked up some comic book goodness. I think Coyote felt bad, but it was a nice day, and I had fun walking Jack around. Plus he took a big steaming dump in the parking lot, which was pretty funny.

Then we went to get steamed crabs. Jack flipped the hell out over the smell and climbed into the back of the car to get at them. I called him back up front several times, but he kept winding up back there with the crabs every few minutes, so I had to leash him up even though he was in the car. The siren song of the crab was too much for him.

And with good reason. We got back to Coyote's place on Cap'n Mal Lane and Coyote dumped them on the table and sweet Jeebus. The seasoning they put on those things. But I get ahead of myself.

Coyote had to teach me how to eat them, because I'm from North Carolina and we don't have access to such delicacies. Leastwise not like you can get it in Baltimore. So teach me he did. There should be more foods that include the instruction, "Shove the knife up its ass." I'm just sayin'. And yes, I did feel like a moron when I asked where that was and was told, "Well, here's the face so... the other side." :)

Many apologies were given out for the crabs being out of season and small, and, one infers, less delicious than is their ordinary wont. If that was not good, I'm not sure I'm emotionally equipped for what is. The seasoning they cake the damn things in is so good I could have jammed a popsicle stick into a crab and walked around licking it like a lollipop. Hot damn. That shit ain't right. The dog, who was so unable to resist the crabscent in the car, absolutely refused to eat it when I offered him some. Weird.

Apparently the place where Coyote keeps his DVDs is called his "man cave." It sounds dirty and sexy, but apparently it's just a room. I know! You can imagine my disappointment! One wall of the man cave looks exactly like the exterior of my first apartment, so I told the story of how Grimm and I came to refer the style as "Neo-Holland Ghetto." I think I also mentioned how that apartment was briefly located behind a strip club (though I think I referred to it as a "titty bar" since I was a tad buzzed). I forgot to tell the story about the night I got drunk on vodka there, irretrievably lost my clothes, and exposed myself to an elderly woman. Oh well. Maybe next visit.

Down in the man-cave-that-isn't-what-it-sounds-like he hit me with Dark City (which I admit I need to give a fair shake to... the circumstances of my first viewing were not conducive to appreciation) and then chased me across the room with Hot Fuzz. I mean both of those quite literally. I do note with some satisfaction that he did not have a copy of Goonies with which to assault me, which I take as tacit admission of the movie's terribleness.

I chose to finish off my Battlestar Galactica collection the week that BSG season 4.5 and Dollhouse season 1 dropped. (In retrospect, a poor decision: the much anticipated commentary track for the final episode did not provide any explanations to appease my concerns over the poor endings of several important plot threads. Rather, it was several hours of people verbally sucking Ron Moore's dick and telling him how brilliant he is and what a privilege it was to work with him. Bleh.) So we watched the final, unaired episode of Dollhouse season 1. What a shame that never aired. As much as the show picked up steam and got great toward the end of the season, that episode really blew me away. So much want. Fortunately, season 2 starts tomorrow.

His couch is quite frighteningly comfortable. I'm fairly certain that something demonic is going on there, because no naturally occurring couch is that cozy. In fact, that may be the source of the supernaturally opening bathroom door I heard tell of. Whatever malignant spirits prank the house thus did not make an appearance that night. I'm pretty sure Jack kept them at bay. My dog is awesome that way. Now that Jack isn't there to protect them, I suspect there is probably an evil force rebound effect occurring. I'm not sure how you double up on evil door opening. Maybe it's opening windows now, too? Note to self: must investigate this. Anyway, the couch was so comfortable that I spent the entire morning on it. I didn't get off the couch until it was time to leave.

I showed off my beloved journal where I've been working on finishing my story. I even let Coyote flip through it some, which is huge for me, because I'm usually too insecure to let other people see my work. Side note: not a single word written in a little over a week. Need to get back on it before I stall out.

We played Mario Kart, and I got destroyed. Partly because I picked Baby Mario when I meant to pick Mario. But only partly, because I picked Mario in the second series and got destroyed just as badly. Mainly, Coyote was sober this time. When I beat him at Mario Kart, he was drunk off his ass. Great strategy, that one.

After Mario Kart, it was the dreaded time to leave. I asked Jack if he wanted to go for a ride and he started bouncing around so excitedly that he actually jumped ahead in time. So I had to hang around a little bit longer until we caught up to him. I kept the sunroof closed on the way home, so I didn't burn my brainmeats any worse.

Jack's a pretty small dog, with stubby legs, so he eventually took to standing on the arm rest between the front seats, as this raised him enough to see out the windows easily. Dogs aren't good at standing up in cars, though, and he'd take weird tumbles during turns or when I tapped the brake. At one point the guy in front of me slammed on his brakes, so I had to stop rather abruptly, causing the poor dog to do a faceplant on the dashboard. His shoulder caught the gearshift and threw the car into reverse, so it was a rather terrifying and thrilling moment there. Fortunately, I was pretty much stopped when all this occurred, so no harm was done.

Jack did so well on the trip that I was considering taking him to my folks' house for Sunday dinner, but by the time I got back into Raleigh, I was so tired I just wanted to go home and nap. When we pulled back into the neighborhood where the speed limit is low, I opened up Jack's window and let him hang out like dogs like to do. When we got into the driveway and I let him out, the wind had teased his face hair until it looked like his head had exploded.

So all in all, successful trip. I have data for my insidious plot to lure Coyote down here (there's more of us down here than up there, damn it). And I got to shove a knife up crabs' asses. So yay.

One day they'll invent a job where you fuck up interviews

...and I'll be able to retire early.

Okay, technically, it wasn't an interview, since she was a recruiter. But I guess I can safely assume I'll never land an interview through this lady.

RECRUITER: How would you rate your Java development skills?

TACO: Well, now, the thing is, I was just reading an article about this sort of thing a few weeks ago. And it turns out, people are really bad at self-assessment of skill level. People who are bad at a skill generally overestimate their ability because they lack the skill necessary to recognize how poorly they're doing. Whereas people who are very good at a skill generally underestimate their ability because they assume that if they can do it, everyone must be able to. So, since I've read that, your result set is now contaminated. I should game the system by deliberately underreporting my skills.

RECRUITER: [muttering as she makes a note] Well, you're a geek, clearly.

TACO: If you'd like to get a more accurate feel for where my skill level lies, I'd be happy to discuss a few technical topics with you. How about the Law of Demeter? Although every toddler in the country knows that one.

RECRUITER: Eh?

TACO: "Don't talk to strangers." I hate you, Larry.

RECRUITER: Who?

TACO: Long story. I've got a habit of telling my friend Larry I hate him whenever I hear a joke like that now. Sorry.

RECRUITER: I see.

TACO: Anyway, it's called the Law of Demeter because it originated in a project called Demeter. Which I always thought was a shame, because given the rule, it really should be called the Law of Persephone.

RECRUITER: I hate you, Larry?

TACO: Now you're gettin' it!

Pushin' Forward Back

Last week, around the middle of the week, I realized that it had been quite a few days since I so much as touched the damn story. That's what I do: I get intimidated by some tiny little detail, avoid it for a while as my paranoia inflates it to epic stature, then run completely out of steam.

Wednesday night, I forced myself to write some more. I managed 270 words. Not a lot, but pretty respectable for me. I wasn't very happy with it, but I did some light editing while I transcribed a bit in IMs to Coyote, and found myself reasonably pleased. For now.

I'm now into the very last bit of the story proper, and worked myself up again, and started avoiding the story again. I realized tonight that I was repeating -- well, not history. Present? -- and forced myself to write again. Once I got going, it got out of hand, and about 450 words ran out of the pen tonight before I got too tired to continue. There's only one important concept left to work into the scene now, and then all that remains is to find the end.

And then I have to write what I've been calling the bookends, though in truth, they're more like interstitial excerpts from a pamphlet in the story. Writing that part really scares the shit out of me. So I'll probably avoid it like the plague. Though snippets of the excerpts have been rising unbidden into my brain when I'm not paying attention for the past couple of days. So we'll see.

The other morning, I passed a car on the way into work that had a sticker on the rear window that said LWFC. I've decided to read that as an acronym for "Local Women's Fight Club" but that might just be a side effect of having been listening to Jucifer at the time.

My friend Dave brought this article from Computerworld to my attention the other day, and it seems to be making the rounds. It's basically an article about how to deal with IT people's quirks from a management perspective. They're referring to IT in the strictest sense, but I found that a lot of it applies to any computer nerd. I know I recognized some of the dysfunctional behaviors they describe in my own routines. One of the more interesting thoughts I took from the article is that no employee is completely happy, and you hire computer geeks to work around difficult problems... so if you're never hearing any complaints from your computer geeks, you're probably the difficult problem they're working around.

Attending a funeral for a guy I went to high school with tomorrow. I didn't know him very well, but his brother's an old friend of mine. His passing has kinda rattled my cage. He was younger than me, and the same age as my brother. I guess we're not young and invincible any more. Who the fuck dug up the kryptonite? Put that shit back where you found it, asshole.

And his name that sat on him was Taco, and Whiskey Jack followed with him. To Baltimore. In less than a week. Bitches.

Damn recursion will destroy us all.

In memoriam.

GIRLZOOKIE: [sits on the floor of the living room playing with her My Little Ponies]

GIRLZOOKIE: [holds up a piece of cardboard, cut from the packaging of one of the playsets, which bears the face of one of the ponies]

GIRLZOOKIE: ...and let's remember our friend Pinky, who was killed last year by zombies...

Manboobs

GIRLZOOKIE: [walks into the room wearing her brother's padded Spider-man costume]

TACO: Hey, darlin', how's it... what are you wearing?

GIRLZOOKIE: [cups the pecs on the costume] Look! These are my manboobs!

On a gathering storm comes a tall, handsome man

Girlzookie starts her second year of preschool this week. After this year, it's public school for her. I'm getting old.

Kidzookie finishes his first quarter of second grade this week. He's finally getting real homework, to my relief and to his chagrin. He's bitchy and whiny about it, but adapting reasonably well.

Disney is buying Marvel. This is wonderful news. Marvel has gone pretty much as far as they can in destroying their own name. Disney can help them take their game to the next level.

Beat the story mode of Batman: Arkham Asylum last night. Great game, fun story. Gotta do all the extra modes it offers now, as well as play back through to pick up all the junk I missed. Whee.

Ran a few instances with my guild this weekend. That's a big deal for me. I'm very instance-phobic, largely because I'm convinced I'll fuck it up for everybody. Didn't go too badly, though, and I had a great time. Signed on for a big cross-guild run that's supposed to happen this weekend. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll no longer be such a WoW hermit.

Didn't manage to write any new content last night, but I did go back through and do some more light editing to the last bit I wrote. Happier still with it. More new story tonight hopefully. Steady progress continues, though, and that's good.

Work continues to be insane. The grammar we're supporting is bizarre. Wrote some pretty wild code to support it, gnashing my teeth the entire time and muttering about how much easier support would be if the grammar was in any way related to what they were trying to accomplish. But nobody ever asks me. The team lead chuckled at my pain, then indicated that v2.0 of the grammar is even worse. Fun. On the other hand, I guess if the grammar is so hard to write for, it's that hard to use... and that makes our software a necessity for our users. Reminds me of this Dilbert strip.

Tired Taco is Tired

I've been burning the candle at both ends lately. Passed out last night at 9:30pm. No more gas in the Tacomobile. Even so, I failed to set my alarm clock correctly and overslept this morning, so I was late to help my dad and brother move the last of my sister's stuff to her new apartment. Managed to get out there a mere 40 minutes late (sorry again, guys), and we moved her stuff.

Picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum this week. Hot damn. Great game.

Broke my sunglasses today. Whee. Don't have the spare cash to replace them right now. Dug through some old boxes and found my old sunglasses from high school. Twenty years out of style. I'm calling it "retro." But we all know it's really "Taco gots no style."

Dragged my journal to lunch with me today and write 275 words while the family nommed on cheeseburgers. Would've been more, but I instantly hated the first pass and did a full rewrite of the new bit. I know it's not a ton, but I'm calling it a win. Steady progress to a finished story. I've only ever finished one before, and I'm not thrilled with it. The full rewrite will have to wait until I finish this one.

Couple of guys from my World of Warcraft guild are in the area this week. We're headed off to meet them for dinner tonight. Can't wait.

Kiddo's tracking out of school in a couple weeks, which means the family's going out of town to visit with my father-in-law. I'm desperately hoarding vacation, besides which, it's cheaper when someone stays here so we don't have to board the dog, so I won't be going. To cheer myself up, I talked to Coyote about heading up his way for lunch that Saturday while they're out of town. Can't wait Part 2.

And now it's time to go nap more, because 11 hours last night didn't finish the job.

Ride On

Got myself a one-way ticket
Goin' the wrong way.
Gonna change my evil ways
One of these days.
-- AC/DC, Ride On

Okay, it's not a Larry-caliber pun. Cut me some slack.

So the proverbial bug's still up my literal ass with regard to my writing. I finished touching up what I have for my latest story tonight, and it's ready for me to forge on ahead. Did some light editing to a few points as I transcribed it (in its latest form) into my favorite journal. Formatted it according to the decision I reached with Coyote the other week. Even managed to write the scene that's been intimidating me all these months, and I'm fairly happy with it... though the bulk of what had been intimidating me about the scene has been shuffled off to bookends that'll be added to the story in its new form after I finish the main body. So there's that. Oh well... we'll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, I've started the next scene, which very likely will be the last of the story, so we're getting there. Progress.

Things I Hate That the Rest of You People Seem To Love for Some Damn Reason:

• Salma Hayek
• Dark City
• The Goonies

What else am I missing, guys? I know there's more. Does Dark City even count? I barely remember the movie. I only remember hating it, actually. And I watched it the week of a really bad breakup. So maybe it's an association thing? I need to rewatch it. Been meaning to for a long time. But, you know. Hate. It doesn't have Salma Hayek in it, right? In that case, it may be safe.

Got my new hard drive from IT today. It was in my hot little hands less than 24 hours after I reported that the old one was failing. Most impressed with them, and more than a little surprised. Spent most of the work day getting the computer back up and running, and was mostly successful in keeping the changes from being visible at all to my users. Probably the only change any of them will notice is the password to access the machine. The new security policies on the box prohibit the old one. I managed to cheat and give it an empty password, which will hopefully mitigate the inconvenience.

I had a long conversation with fiberferret about erections tonight. My friends are awesome.

Which reminds me, I've decided that we could all get rich by starting a Porn Insurance company. Our (very reasonably priced!) Porn Insurance policies will ensure that, in the event of our clients' deaths, one of our agents will remove all their porn before their moms find it. Who's in?

Already linked this on my website, but there's... carry the one... one of you here that I might have missed, so go watch this video. It's work-safe, but wear headphones. I'm told that her vagina is 8 miles wide. Metaphorically speaking. Or something.

Various and Sundries Pt. 512

Trying a real post to break my Conversations of the Damned run of late.

Coyote's got me in my pathetic trying to write mode again. Went back through my latest writing attempt. I'm rather fond of it. What's written is, I think, the best stuff I've ever written. Not that that's really saying much. It's about 2/3 of the way through the story. I don't quite know how to proceed from here, though. Trying a rework based on a discussion I had with Coyote. Went through today and set up the new format. Still struggling. Baffling. I know everything that happens, but can't get it down on paper. Partly, I'm intimidated by one concept. Partly, I can't get my head into that place where the words come out. Halp.

Can't take any more Family Guy. Make wifezilla stop. Please.

Emu Final Countdowned me. Rat bastard.

Finally watched Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Enjoyed it overall, but hated what they did to Tambor's character. Interesting development that happened in the first movie? Never happened, apparently.

Half way through Planet Terror. I know. Way to strike while the iron is hot, Taco. It's my Tarantino aversion. I hate anything that has his stink on it any more. He used to be so great, but for the past decade or so, he hurts me. He cuts me deep.

Speaking of shit I hate that everybody else seems to love, yes. I hate The Goonies. Bite me. You probably like Hayek too, even though her name is onomatopoeic for the noise I make when I eat bad shellfish.

P.S. Work sucks. Fix the fucking economy and get me out. Moping again because my shit got plagiarized. Which brings me back to my first point. It's a vicious circle. Seriously. It bit me, and I had to get shots and everything.

Passing the Torch

KIDZOOKIE: Hey, Dad?

TACO: Hmm?

KIDZOOKIE: When the zombies come, could we go to the grocery store and get a blender, jam it on their head, and push the button?

TACO: You're thinking. I like that.

That's a pretty good deal.

Wish I could take credit for it. My sister found this one.

Tacometry

PHONE: Ring ring.

TACO: This is Taco.

SOME LADY: This isn't Scott?

TACO: I believe that's the corollary, yes.

Kirby vs. Religious Tolerance

KIDZOOKIE: Check it out, dad! Kirby's gotta kill Meta-knight!

TACO: Why's Kirby attacking a Mennonite?

KIDZOOKIE: No, Meta-knight. Remember, from Brawl?

TACO: Poor old Mennonite, just minding his own business, and...

KIDZOOKIE: Die, Meta-knight!

TACO: I think that might be a hate crime, buddy.

KIDZOOKIE: I'm not talking to you while I play these games any more.

Bitchy to the End

TACO: John Hughes died.

WIFEZILLA: What?

TACO: Yeah, at 59 apparently.

WIFEZILLA: People need to start living to 100.

TACO: Workin' on it. So far, so good.

WIFEZILLA: You better live to 100. Of course, you'll be all aches and pains.

TACO: Now there's a prediction. "You'll be all aches and pains at 100." I'm all aches and pains at 34.

WIFEZILLA: Look at it this way. You'll get to be bitchy at people for longer.

TACO: Sold.

One of the many.

WIFEZILLA: Don't you hate that?

TACO: Makes me wanna kill.

WIFEZILLA: You always wanna kill.

TACO: Well, yeah. But that's one of the things that does it.

Philadelphia

Flipping through the channels tonight, stumbled onto Philadelphia. Granted, I didn't see this when it was hot, but it seems pretty heavy-handed now. Were we ever stupid enough to need this kind of ham-fisted bludgeoning? If so, I'm depressed.

Charming Taco is charming.

Today was kidzookie's first day of second grade. They don't do registration the week before school like they did when I was a kid, so we walked him in so that we could get all the info we need.

TEACHER: Also, put a Y next to his name if you're going to buy him a Scholaskit dictionary.

TACO: What did you say?

WIFEZILLA: [frantically waving Taco off]

TEACHER: A Scholaskit dictionary. We encourage the students to have one.

TACO: We have a collegiate dictionary.

TEACHER: But the Scholaskit dictionary is user friendly.

TACO: Excuse me?

TEACHER: It's easier for the kids to learn to use.

TACO: He already knows how to use a dictionary.

TEACHER: But the Scholaskit dictionary is user friendly.

TACO: [hands dictionary to Kidzookie] Look up "ubermensch."

KIDZOOKIE: [flips through] It's not in here.

TACO: [hands dictionary back to teacher] We'll keep the collegiate dictionary.

How many cylons can dance on the head of a pin?

It's been a while since I've had a good night's sleep, between plain old insomnia, nighttime nausea (maybe I'm pregnant), and a longer-than-usual rash of nightmares. Fun.

Last night this girl I used to know from high school, Becky, was in my dream. I was pretty fucking mean to her in my dream. That happens a lot. I guess I'm not mean enough to people during my waking hours, so it bleeds over into my unconscious time.

I don't think she's crossed my mind in 15 years or so. Back in school, my mom seemed to want me to date her. Kept dropping hints that she liked her. She was never my type, though. For one thing, the girls your mom likes are not the ones you're after when you're a teenager. But more importantly, her face had no pores.

These are the things you have to pay attention to if you intend to survive the uprising, people.

Always freaked me out, because clearly, that meant she was an early model terminator infiltrator unit. Of course, I realize now that she might be an early model Cylon skinjob instead, but that doesn't really change things.

Anyway, sorry I was mean to you in my dream last night, Becky. When the robot revolution comes, please make my death painless.

Elderly and mean.

Girlzookie: Can you believe I knew that?

Taco: Nope. You tell lies.

Girlzookie: You're so mean!

Taco: I was just teasing you, sweetheart.

Girlzookie: Oh. Freaking old people.

Shhhh... Don't Tell Coyote

I watched In Bruges. After letting it sit on my counter for 78 days.

Excerpts From My Life

WIFEZILLA: But it involves chickens and car batteries.

TACO: I've got jumper cables.

Sometimes you just... that is sometimes... yeah, I really don't know what to do with this one.

So my wife started reading a new book yesterday. I don't remember which book. Some chick lit thing or another.

She got a few pages in, then finds a scrap of paper tucked inside. It's got something scribbled all over it, and she puzzles over it for a few minutes, then holds it out to me, saying, "This looks like some of your Lord of the Rings stuff, doesn't it?"

I glanced at it and said, "Yeah, kinda looks like Cirth." So I break out a reference (yeah, I know, no geek cred) and start transliterating it.

It's gibberish.

I hand her the scrap back, saying, "I dunno, maybe he was just messing around trying to memorize them or something."

She responds, "He? This is a chick book."

At this point, the light bulb goes off. "Wait, gimme that... if it was a girl, maybe she didn't know that they changed for LOTR, and used the Saxon-based runes from The Hobbit."

I break my reference back out, and look it up again off the other chart, and the scrap of paper says

I ALWAYS HAVE BRUISES ON MY KNEES
FROM FALLING FOR MEN

O_o

Hail to the Queen

So, I guess asking if she does is kinda moot at this point, huh?

That's one way to go about it.

GIRLZOOKIE: Look, dad!

ME: ...why are you wearing two pairs of underwear?

GIRLZOOKIE: I'm not.

ME: Yes, you are.

GIRLZOOKIE: No, I'm wearing four.

ME: Okay, why are you wearing four pairs of underwear?

GIRLZOOKIE: I don't like getting ready in the morning.

ME: Okay, but why are you wearing four pairs of underwear?

GIRLZOOKIE: I put on lots of underwears, then when I wake up, I just take off a pair and I'm ready for the day!

ME: ...

GIRLZOOKIE: Isn't that a great idea?

It's the little things.

If you ever want to feel good about yourself, give a formerly abused dog his first hambone.

Apparently my daughter could have written for The Tick.

KIDZOOKIE: Happy Earth Day!

TACO: I hate the earth.

KIDZOOKIE: Nuh uh.

TACO: Yuh huh. [shakes fist] DAMN YOU, EARTH!

KIDZOOKIE: [laughs] You're supposed to like turn the lights out and recycle.

TACO: I'm going to turn extra lights on, and then go outside and pee on the earth.

KIDZOOKIE: Awesome.

TACO: Want to help me destroy the earth?

KIDZOOKIE: Yeah!

GIRLZOOKIE: No! You can't destroy the earth! That's where I keep all of my My Little Ponies!

Gentle slackasses, I greet you as your king.

Tribute is due in the form of cash money.

Oh, don't worry. If you ever get around to doing it, you're not one of my slackass minions, and are thus not subject to the tribute rule.

I'm apparently pretty bad at these dreams.

This weekend I had a dream that Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan were starring in a porno that fett was directing.

I don't even pay attention to conversations that I'm participating in.

WIFEZILLA'S CAR: [chirps tires]

TACO: Rrrrrrrrr!

WIFEZILLA: Was that my car?

TACO: No, that was me doing an impression of when your car made that noise.

WIFEZILLA: Why did my car make that noise?

TACO: Because you went around that curve so fast. You're a maniac.

WIFEZILLA: I am not. I'm a good driver.

TACO: You're out of control. It kinda turns me on. Want to make out?

WIFEZILLA: Why are you doing an impression of George Bush?

TACO: I... don't know.

Apparently I'm insensitive.

KIDZOOKIE: [comes in crying]

TACO: What's wrong?

KIDZOOKIE: The dog bit me!

TACO: What were you doing when the dog bit you?

KIDZOOKIE: I was playing Bite with the dog.

TACO: If the name of the game is "Bite," just what the hell did you expect to happen?

One day, she's going to kill me.

TACO: I had an ancestor named Julius Caesar.

WIFEZILLA: Yeah, I heard you talking to your mom.

TACO: I had an ancestor named Kinchin, too.

WIFEZILLA: I've never heard that name before.

TACO: Yeah, mom either.

WIFEZILLA: That's a weird name.

TACO: If we have another kid, I'm naming him Kinchin.

WIFEZILLA: No, if we have another kid, I'm naming her Annaliese.

TACO: No, if we have another girl, I'm naming her Cordelia.

WIFEZILLA: Okay, we'll have twins.

TACO: Fine. I'll name the good one Cordelia.

WIFEZILLA: What's wrong with Annaliese?

TACO: She's the bad one. Pay attention.