now THAT's scary!

eating an extra 500 calories per day will cause you to gain one pound in a week. 500 calories is a dozen twizzlers or 2 20oz cokes or a mere 4oz of cheddar cheese or just 1/8 of a homemade apple pie. you'd have to eat an extra 500 cals per day for 7 days to gain a pound, but just think about all that party cheese dip, all those candy bowls at the office, all the it's-easier-than-water soft drink at the family gathering, all those desserts you'll be putting away betwixt now & the new year. walk by that office candy bowl and have three hershey kisses three times a day, and you've racked up 200 calories. do that every day for a week, and you'll gain 1/2lb. yes, it's the beginning of eatin' season '10! best not wait until the new year to start that exercise program, eh? yessirree! walk or run 1 mile, you'll burn off 100 calories, so to break even on that regular reese's pack, you'll have to put in 2.63 miles.

happy hollereen! enjoy that candy!

bwah hah hah!!

books 2010

currently:

complete:
in the woods
[tana french]
here if you need me
[kate braestrup]
spider bones
[kathy reichs]
the coffee trader
[david liss]
a spot of bother
[mark haddon]
the dead fathers club
[matt haig]
harry potter & the deathly hallows
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the half blood prince
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the order of the phoenix
[jk rowling]
the ravenmaster's secret
[elvira woodruff]
harry potter & the goblet of fire
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the prisoner of azkaban
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the chamber of secrets
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the sorcerer's stone
[jk rowling]
the local news
[miriam gershow]
the magicians
[lev grossman]
benjamin pratt & the keepers of the school: we the children
[andrew clements]
water for elephants
[sara gruen]
the last child
[john hart]
the youngest templar: the keeper of the grail
[michael p. spradlin]
the last song
[nicholas sparks]
the magykal papers
[angie sage]
the memory of running
[ron mclarty]

it's hollereen eve!

i know somebody who is getting married today. no doubt thousands or maybe even millions of people are getting married today, but of all those i know one. yes, one. no, she is not marrying herself, she is marrying someone else, but i don't know him, so see - i only know one person who is getting married today. i'm not going to the wedding for several reason - chief among them, i wasn't invited. even if i had been invited, i have great doubts that i would have gone because the wedding is in another city and i wouldn't have gone to another city for her wedding because i barely know her and barely knowing her is of course why she didn't invite me.

at any rate, it's a great day for a white wedding and a great day to start again, which is why, today, i am going for a run. probably 3 or 4 miles, nothing big. just getting started again, that's all.

what is the optimal interval between pedicures?

okay. i'll come clean. i am a believer in trickle down economics. today on the radio they were slamming trickle down on the basis that 10% of the population benefits from the system, and 1% really benefits and .1% really, really benefits. okay. good for them. the fallacy here is thinking that by their benefiting, the rest of us are somehow losing. wrong. when the top benefits, we all benefit. what, you think by causing them to not benefit, there will be more for you? to that i say: ppfahahaha!

they're always skating right past telling you whether or not you will benefit. it's always about taxing the uppers or not taxing the uppers and who qualifies as uppers and how upper the uppers are. it's all about trying to play off your feeling left out, trying to make you feel used.

get a freaking clue.

no matter what the system is, that .1%, 1%, 10% - they are going to benefit. c'mon. you think that somehow there will be a system where everyone will be equal? really? just go read your history and tell me how those everyone-is-equal systems work out. life is not equal. life is not fair. no, trickle down economics is not perfect but guess what? no system is perfect. trickle down works.

caring for the downtrodden. helping the helpless. ensuring that everyone has a say in how their lives go, a chance to pursue their happiness, a tranquil and protected homeland. show me how trickle down is counter to these ideals and more than that, show me a proven alternative that is better at getting us to them.

in ireland, they say estate to mean subdivision and garden when they mean lawn. a confused bunch, those irish.

a few months back i told you about how a kid i know was in hospital. well, he seems to now be in the clear, although there will for a few years be annual checkups specifically to check for the thing that landed him there. so, you know, not exactly completely out of the wood, but sort of like at the edge there where you can see the car park but you haven't reached it yet, capice?

he recently celebrated a birthday and his parents said please don't give him any more toys because he has way too many as it is. so we gave a wee bitty donation to that hospital in his honor. i made the donation online and received an email confirmation. we wrote a card to explain and his parents thought it was great. that was it.

until... they received a card from the hospital, telling them about the donation. and, we received a thank-you card from the hospital and then we received a thank-you letter from the university of which the hospital is a part. that's three mailings from one donation - all unnecessary. pretty sure that's what they're talking about when they say that charities have "overhead expenses" but it's simply ridiculous. there was no need for any of those cards or letters, all multiple piece mailings with envelopes and mailing costs. what a waste.

i recently gave a much larger donation to another organization in the guise of a raffle for a house. (not talking about st jude's, although i did that one, too.) i have given to this organization before, and i know they provide a printed letter for tax deduction purposes, but that's the only thing they've ever mailed me by paper mail. everything else has been by email. i feel they are much more consciencious with my money. maybe they aren't - it's not like i've done an audit - but i feel like they are.

feeling like someone is carefully spending my money to do good encourages me to give them more. being pelted with paper - whether from alumni organizations or from a cause i have given to in the past - discourages continued giving and makes me wonder how much of my money is going to do good, and how much is being used to support the paper monster.

\

in the woods

i'd like to stay and chat with you but this is a very good book so as much as i'd like to chat, i'd like to read more. you're welcome to nose around here and read some of the older stuff, some of it's quite good, you know. no, i'm not going to show you around. it's not dark yet, you'll be fine on your own. nothing to fear.

fail-fail-succeed. it's the new duck-duck-goose.

so last week this was in the newsbulletin at work:

Fishbowl Wanted
Need a one-gallon fishbowl.
Call Betty Sue at x0000.

i am considering calling betty sue [name changed to protect the idiot] to tell her about the dollar general store. i do wonder what's going on with betty sue's fish. would this one-gallon fishbowl be a step up or a step down? are they a growing family looking for a place to spread out? did they get in over their gills and have to swim away from the mortgage on that five-gallon baby with the castle and little diver man?

so last month i made some banana bread and it didn't come out exactly right. it looked okay at first, but it sort of fell and became a bit compressed and if not exactly soggy, well simply too moist. i thought i had taken it out of the oven too soon. i made some more and virtually the same thing happened but i put it down to taking it out too soon again, and also thought i might not have gotten the bananas totally mixed in well. (it's also possible the harvest gold oven is dying.) tonight, i made another loaf. it's in the oven now and i will be leaving it in there until it is very nearly burned, thank you, but this time, i was out of non-stick spray and didn't have quite enough butter for the recipe, much less any to spare for to grease the pan. so i had to short the recipe a wee bit on butter and use parchment paper in the pan, giving me two whole brand new excuses for failure.

so last weekend i was down to the shopping center to pick up the pizza from jet's [bbq chicken pizza, probably completely terrible for us, too bad!] when i saw something that fascinated me. here, take a look:

can you see what they did there? they parked some grass! they reclaimed part of the parking lot as green space. you can tell it's reclaimed by the way the curb runs there behind the grass. this is just absolutely fabulous. they looked out at the parking lot and saw that it was too big, so they reclaimed one entire row at the back. i am so not a fan of parking lots. how many times do you see a parking lot full? the last time i remember a full parking lot was when i was a teenager and there was one mall in town and everyone went to it at the winter solticefest and it usually took a good 20 mins or so of driving around just to find a parking spot. but that was [insert insanely large number here] years ago. now there are just too many parking lots and most are half or more empty all the time. i don't know how to get it started, but i am going to see about a campaign to get businesses to park some grass.

it's not a really that big of a deal. it's just a crappy childhood - lots of people have them. i mean, c'mon, it's not like being born without hands.

we called them "special nights". each of the four of us got an evening alone with him, to do something of our choosing - eat where and what we wanted, go bowling, whatever. i don't remember the exact schedule but it must have been like twice a month because every week doesn't seem quite right. i do know all the "special nights" were recorded in his careful lettering on that big calendar that hung behind the door to the upstairs, a testament to his promise to honor them.

so it was my special night and i went to find her to get some help with the safety pin that held my pants together. these were some of my best school pants that i had chosen for my special night. i had absolutely no concept until years later that safety pins were considered a temporary emergency repair. i thought after the button fell off that's how you repaired the pants. it's about par for the course that she had a sewing machine that could embroider monograms and i didn't have a clue about buttons.

i found her in the great room but it was weird that the crown prince was there, too, with him and with her and so all of us were there except the little boys and who the hell knows where they ever were, ever, ever. probably off playing with legos. so, i was fixing to ask her for help with the safety pin when he announced he was taking her, right then, immediately, now, to a residential treatment program. a spectacularly unsuccessful residential treatment program, i might add. i just stood there with the safety pin in my hand and watched him walk her out the door.

i swear to you - swear it on her very grave - that in all the months and years of special nights, that is the only one, the only only one i remember at all. no, i am not shitting you here.

explanation

with an online expenditure we expanded our exacervance of contact lenses and by extension unexpectedly annexed $10.23 in drugstore.com "exchanges" which are expendable exclusively at drugstore.com and in exogenous exacerbation, expire proximately. to extensively exploit this we must expend exactly $10.23, extripating the extra expiring extensions expressly fixed to excurse us back to the website in an exhaustive pavlovian cycle of expend and ex-gratia.

do you want to sit outside, or do you think it's too windy?

so we did such a good job at work that we got a smallish cash reward. $100. not your bulls-and-bears bonus, but nice enough. i took mine over to the b&n today and purchased the first four septimus heap books in paperback. syren is not yet out paper, and they didn't have the others in hardcover, and i really just wanted the paper anyway, and i very much want them to all be the same format. so, i bought the first four. i looked for this addiction but alas the alkaline trio slot was empty. they did have a little card with the band's name on it, which is something i guess. the clerk offered to special order it for me and have it shipped to the store so that i could come and pick it up there and i was about to be all like, "hey, welcome to 1988." but instead said, "i can order it online myself, thanks." sheesh. so now i have $65 left.

hey you dang woodchucks! quit chucking my wood!

you know how that thing where you will hear or see or learn something newtoyou, and then you will start to see it everywhere? it's called "perceptual vigilance". you will rent a car of a type you've never heard of, and suddenly you will see this car everywhere. your friend gets a job at a bank you never heard of, and suddenly you see this bank advertised everywhere. you hear a phrase on a sitcom and you think it's spectacularly original, and suddenly you hear this phrase everywhere. this happens because we each have a spectacularly tiny sphere of knowledge which we perpetually perceive to be more voluminous than it is, resulting in our predictable surprise when we learn something new and consequently, inevitably discover it is in fact, not new at all, at all.

nissan frontier
pomegranate
sharon jones & the dap-kings
isle of skye
oil can friends
forty-seven fried clams
arithmetic
fancy pants
alienation tide
foundational wonder

this addiction

so my carpool buddy has been gone all week with vacation and a death in the family and working late, which means i am on my own which means less chatting and more music! i have bout worn a hole in agony & irony to match the hole in crimson so i went over to epitaph records to see if alkaline trio has anything new and firstly yes they do and secondly they have apparently made seven, count 'em seven, studio albums. i have just three and good mourning i don't particularly like. anyway, the point here is that they have something new out - this addiction - and a fabulous sort of 80s billy idolish or adam antesque genre video. pink floyd. david bowie. whatever. schoolkids in grey uniform skirts, slacks, cardigans, oxfords, all with face paint and running wildly in the fields to the driving drums and guitars. you should google it and watch it because it's okay enough throughout and then has a smashing ending. but, to get back to the point, i plan to purchase this album. and just to make a wee secondary point, epitaph has some really interesting looking bands that call for more investigation, but at another time.

the difficulty, of course, is that it happened so quickly. you left your mind unattended for only a moment but that was enough - it devoured itself.

people are always axing me, "ace, how did you get so smart?" as if there were a secret to it, and if they knew the secret, well then they could be smart like i am, but i just smile and shake my head. i used to tell the truth, but i don't anymore because when i tell folks the truth, they get all offended. they think the truth is a lie that i am using to cover up the secret, to hide it, to keep it to myself and away from them. they would rather think i am a selfish prat than accept the truth.

the truth is that i didn't GET smart; i AM smart. i was born this way. my IQ is pretty much off the charts. yeah, sure, there are plenty of people around who have more formal education than i do, but formal education doesn't make you smart, it makes you educated. and yes, there are people with higher IQs, but most of them are kept very busy being astronauts or neurosurgeons or winos or scientists in laboratories discovering things and winning nobel prizes. srsly. my IQ puts me in a group of like 2% of the population so obviously the rest of the really smart people are nowhere near me most of the time, resulting in my appearing to be dazzlingly brilliant in my native habitat on any given day.

any given day NOW, that is. in the house in which i lived as a child, everyone was a genius. srsly. there were six of us and we were all geniuses. well, at least 80% of us were. it is profoundly odd to be simultaneously so rare and so common.

i realize people will read this and perceive me as arrogant, but this perception is less about my intelligence than it is about your stupidity. i mean, duh, of course i am dissing you - you are an idiot. try to see it from my point of view: compared to me, you are like a rock, a talking rock maybe, but a talking rock that manages to make about as much sense as... well... as would a talking rock. hey, now - don't be a hater. don't hold my being intelligent against me. c'mon. i don't blame you for being stupid.

happy birthday! what - it's not your birthday? well, then i wasn't talking to you, was i?! sheesh.

in mexico, birthday celebrations often include a piñata which is a brightly colored, hollow papier-mâché sculpture filled with candy and small toys. the guests take turns bashing the piñata with a stick until it breaks like a junkie at a cop convention and spills its candy guts all over the ground for the kids to retrieve and enjoy. the most interesting thing about this tradition is that papier-mâché is a french word and piñata is not.

in china, many folks celebrate two birthdays: one on the solar calendar and one on the lunar calendar. exempli gratia: a boy born on July 31, 1972 on the solar (id est: normal) calendar would have his lunar (id est: luney) birthday on June 20. the chinese are a celebrating bunch - if you have ever done business with anyone in china you can attest to the fact that they are forever celebrating some new year or some dragon boat thing and are never there to answer your queries about the manufactury process in a timely manner. the celebrating is exacerbated by the dual calendaring system by which they end up celebrating everything twice and with the continual overlapping celebrations it is truly a wonder anything at all gets done there, hence the saying: on a slow boat from china.

in the philippines, the house of the birthday child is decorated with brightly colored lights so that the entire neighborhood knows there's a birthday going on there. this is especially helpful to the neighborhood bullies, as it provides clear guidance concerning which child will have new toys or a bit of extra pocket money this week. those philippians have totally streamlined the bullying process, to which we say: bully!

in russia, children get birthday pies instead of birthday cakes, yet another in a long list of tragedies that arise from being born a commie pinko.

in israel, the birthday child wears a crown of leaves or flowers and sits in a special chair of honor. guests dance around the chair singing while the child's parents lift chair with child, once for each year of the child's age. for this reason, you will find that most israeli children are quite slim, and birthdays are not celebrated after the age of 12 or the weight of 100lbs (whichever comes first). at age 13, the jewish child will have the bar or bat mitzvah. "bar" means boy and "bat" means girl and "mitzvah" means thank gd we don't have to pick this little brat up anymore.

in england, small tokens are baked into the birthday cake, so each slice contains a token which is thought to reveal the fortune of the person who gets that slice. an amusing game is to give the old folks the slice with the death token and watch them choke in fright on the very cake slice, thuswise fulfilling the destiny of the token. the brits invented birthday cards 100 or so years ago, and today an entire industry owes thanks to the brits' clotted emotional range which required an impersonal printed card to deliver endearing personal sentiments cleverly disguised in crude barnyard humour and sly witticisms.





(october has two birthstones, tourmaline and opal, both of which are known to contain many colors, both soft and fiery, and many facets, both visible and hidden. appropriate, eh?)

all is swell. all is well. alice well. ali swell.

day two and the just-pretend-it-doesn't-hurt plan is going swell. exceptionally stellar footballing yesterday in which i played marking back and midfield and striker. that's right, i played everywhere except keeper because don't be a git i am not a keeper, and no i did not play everywhere at the same time, again don't be a git. you know what i am talking about here. today held a sweet little jog up the new swath of pavement over the hill and back again. now i am hungry.

the problem with the just-pretend-it-doesn't-hurt plan is that of course it hurts, you git, but i have lost all perspective on whether it hurts because i am out of shape or it hurts because of some injury or whether it's a normal amount of hurting or more than normal and what is normal and am i merely sore or more than sore. what i am facing is a conundrum, a quandry, a riddle, enigma, a problem or puzzlement, a stumbler, a stickler, a fish head wrapped in a newspaper.

one thing i do know is that it is not a rubicon. for a long time i thought rubicon meant puzzle but i have since learned it means point of no return.

i was gone yesterday. did you miss me? we went to a cabin in the mountains. that's all you need to know.

i did start reading in the woods and so far it's very good. the only problem that i have is the britspeak lingo which trips me up from time to time. i believe a good part of the text has been americanized -- i could be wrong but it just seems that i'll be reading along without having to pay special attention and then i'll realize i've gotten into a section and don't know what it says. i do think that brits are freakin hilarious. here's a sample, I recently found a diary entry from college in which I described my classmates as "a herd of mouth-breathing fucktard yokels who wade around in a miasma of cliché so thick you can practically smell the bacon and cabbage and cow shite and altar candles." Even assuming I was having a bad day, I think this shows a certain lack of respect for cultural differences. HAHAHAHA!! understated. hilarious. ...and subtly bigoted jokes justified as "ironic", which always made me want to go into a long pedantic lecture on the definition of irony. I KNOW, RIGHT? yah, i love the brits.

in a few mins i am going to play soccer and tomorrow i am going running and the next day i am going running and i am just going to pretend like it doesn't hurt and see how far that gets me. yipee ki yay!

yeah, we didn't go

yesterday or today, but we might go tomorrow for one night in the mountains with a stop by to see mini-me. not what you'd call a dream vacation. it's nice to get away and all, but i hate rushing around in an effort to force a bit of relaxation. not that i have a bad attitude or anything.

i did buy a new book yesterday for the vacation reading. it's called in the woods and i don't remember who it's by but i do remember that she's irish and that it's billed as a "promising first novel". it's an irish detective story about some kids who get caught up in a mystery... where...? in the woods, of course. the kids are not the detectives, actual police do the detecting. the kids just get caught up in something going down... where...? in the woods! i'll let you know how it is when i start it. i was going to start it today, but i had bought a magazine also, so i read that today. i am not a fan of magazines, but every once in a while i have to purchase one and remind myself that i am not a fan. all that jumping around from topic to topic makes my head spin. in a world of short attention spans, i am an outsider.

also today i cleaned out the desk, did the filing, all like that. but i don't know where the time went, really. it wasn't one of those fulfilling days off. it was more like every time i looked at my watch another hour had gone by and i was like - hey, what's up with that! so here it is nighttime already, nearly 7pm. you what's the thing that's really throwing me off... it's the not running part. the sitting around waiting to feel better part.

::sigh::

we might be going on a trip.

the thing about packing for a weekend trip is that i end up taking about as much as i would for a weeklong trip. like - if i'm going for a week, i'll take one pair of jeans. a weekend? same pair of jeans. need running shoes and chucks and crocs for a week, and need 'em all for the weekend, too. the reality of what i am planning to do at the destination is messing with my fantasy of packing light.

huh. huh. huh.

about once a month or so, when i click on the blogger shortcut, blogger will tell me that i don't have cookies enabled, but i click again and it works. i don't follow their "click here for more info" link. i don't check my cookies. i don't close and reopen the browser. alls i do is click on the link again, and it works. huh.

i am currently at starbux using the wifi and they say it's free, but i think i paid for mine pretty well by giving the folks inside a good solid comedy routine of me trying to find a table outside side A - where there were no empty tables - and whilst returning inside to check outside side B, proceeding to squoze the cup in a manner that loosened the top and let the coffee out with a splooshing on my hand but lucky #1 (heh.) it wasn't too hot and #2 (heh!) it didn't get on my clothing, but then i had to wipe it up off the otterman where it had spilled. but really, if you are still reading this, my point is that people in the bux are shameless about staring while you fix your coffee and while you peruse the seating choices and while you go outside and inside and spill and clean up. shameless! staring! oh, what, they don't stare at you? huh.

i'd love to stay and chat but i have to google some info about bruce pearl. my old man heard from a student up at utk who has class with a basketball player that ol' bruce has been asked to resign or retire. he had a few ncaa violations, but that's neither unusual nor cause for resignment so if the resignment is true there are either additional ncaa violations or something else altogether. bruce pearl resigning? huh.

ten twelve ten

you know what i hate? hmm? well, yeah, you're right. i do hate that. but, i was going to talk about-- what? what did you say? well, of course, if there's anything i hate, it's THAT, but that's not what i am here to chat about today. i am here to-- huh? oh for the love of pete, stop guessing! it wasn't a real question - it was a rhetorical inquirical introduction! i hate when people take rhetorical inquirical introductions seriously!

but, i digress... today i am here to chat about the pre-dispensed paper towel.

have you ever gone in the restroom, say at work or publix or where ever, and there's a paper towel hanging there out of the dispenser, waiting on someone to use it? how does that happen, you wonder. is there a paper towel fairy? NO. it happens because some wanker is freakin paying it forward. thanks a lot, wanker! so they've paid it forward on me, and now i owe karma. super. great. FAB. U. LOUS.

firstly, i've got enough karma debt without any assistance from the anonymous hordes. secondly, karma never forgets - karma compounds - so i now have the added urgency of paying off this karma debt rightnow and my life doesn't need any more deadlines. and thirdly, what the hell are you doing planting a karma ambush? it's not like i can turn around and walk out - restrooming is an immediate-need activity.

so there i am, trapped by the karma ambush, right? wrong!

that pre-dispensed paper towel has been waving around there in air populated by toilet germs. it's not sanitary. therefore, the pre-dispensing paper puller has not, in fact, done me a favor. no, quite the opposite infact - she has tried to poison me with toilet germs! i will not be fooled! pre-dispensed towel in the trash! bright clean new fresh sanitary towel dispensed by me, used by me, disposed by me. because i did something nice for myself by avoiding the germy paper towel, i have paid it forward to myself, earning myself double bonus karma points.

you really have to be on your toes, all the time.

~*^*~ ^^ *~*^*~* ^^ ~*^*~ ^^ *~*^*~*

if you stare at them long enough
the flat images will rise
from the pages of your life
in soft imitation of reality.

having people around you
is enough like having friends
for you to convince yourself
that you are not alone.

but your life isn't real
and these people around you
know no more about you
than the potted plant by the window.

you disconnected your heart
because you can't stand to listen
when you know that it's right,
that you're made for more than this.

at the end of the day
you're just too scared to wonder
about what's really out there.
too scared to find your life.

because you know it takes work
and causes pain to have a life
and you'd rather be comfortable
than ever be truly happy.

books 2010

currently:

complete:
here if you need me
[kate braestrup]
spider bones
[kathy reichs]
the coffee trader
[david liss]
a spot of bother
[mark haddon]
the dead fathers club
[matt haig]
harry potter & the deathly hallows
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the half blood prince
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the order of the phoenix
[jk rowling]
the ravenmaster's secret
[elvira woodruff]
harry potter & the goblet of fire
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the prisoner of azkaban
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the chamber of secrets
[jk rowling]
harry potter & the sorcerer's stone
[jk rowling]
the local news
[miriam gershow]
the magicians
[lev grossman]
benjamin pratt & the keepers of the school: we the children
[andrew clements]
water for elephants
[sara gruen]
the last child
[john hart]
the youngest templar: the keeper of the grail
[michael p. spradlin]
the last song
[nicholas sparks]
the magykal papers
[angie sage]
the memory of running
[ron mclarty]

the last chore on the list

so i was at the publix deli getting my ever-roast and lorraine when the deli lady started talking to another customer. "put this in a ziploc, okay?" and the customer looked at her like okay-whatever because your deli meats and cheese come in ziploc bags already. deli lady didn't like the skeptical look. she said, "well, i took home some cheddar last week and in two days it had lost all its flavour. what does that tell you??" and i was gonna say, tells me you got some stale cheese. but, i refrained.

hey, now that's a funny word. refrain. on the one hand it means to hold back from taking action, but it can also mean a part of a song that's repeated over and over during the song. wonder why that is. but, i digress.

ms cheap had in the newspaper that dollar general store is selling blue jeans, and she got some and was surprised that they were long enough. i also have a problem with long-enough jeans, plus at dollar general they are cheap, so i stopped by there today and my DG doesn't carry them. that was very disappointing. if they had them, i probably would have bought some other stuff there, too, like cleaning supplies and toothpaste, but instead i bought it all at publix. except the jeans. publix doesn't sell jeans, either.

do you balance your checkbook? every couple weeks or so i will diligently copy down everything from the bank's online statement into my ledger book and bring the balance down. oddly, it still doesn't match what the bank has but i really wonder why i feel the need to do this. we use our checkcards for nearly everything, and we don't write any of it down at the time, so it is all those transactions that i am catching up every couple weeks. but all i am doing is writing them from the online statement into a little notebook. it's actually a pointless exercise. pointless! but it gives me a sense of control, which is weird since i am being controlled by the bank statement and what little i might be able to control, the balancing, never happens.

flu shots and tequila shots are two totally different things.

so i went to get a flu shot today. my workplace was going to offer them for $7.50 but walgreens started giving them free, except the "free" was "free to the customer" and not like free-free because somehow it would have cost more against our insurance if we all went and got our shots at walgreens, more than it would if we got them at the workplace, even if the workplace gave the shots free, so the workplace decided to give the shots free.

you still with me here? flu shots. free. today.

so i toddled on up to get me one.

i had printed my PDF form from email, filled it out, and signed it, but of course there was a queue of folks going "what form?" and filling out the form right there because they're just too busy to read their email. they saved a lot of time by standing in that line. pffth.

turned in my form and got into the shot line, and who got in line behind me? standstooclose guy. gah! don't stands, don't stands, don't stands oh close to me!

so i am busy with the iphone trying to play a little words-with and avoid conversing with the other queuers. the ladies in front are discussing how one of them's DAUGHTER had her TRASHCAN attacked by a BEAR - CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?! HAHAHA! sheesh. and of course there's standstooclose right behind me, and he's chatting with annoyinghello, the persistent greeter, and they are alternating between the sort of extreme cornball jokes that old guys are forever telling each other, and intense debate on the safety of the flu shot.

we are slowing moving towards the shotlady when three of the cool kids show up and take their places at the end of the queue, and they three each make a face at me, and i make a collective face back in their direction. wordless convo successfully completed, i go back to the iphone when standstooclose starts tapping me "hey, look, they are waving at you. hey, waving. hey. hey. hey, they are trying to get your attention. those three. there. hey. hey."

"i know."

i find the pithy reply to work best in these situations.

here's a phenomenon of the shot line: premature sleeve rolling. four, five, six deep back from the shot provider, folks are rolling up their sleeves and like tucking them all up around their shoulders and even in some cases holding them up at the ready. like, when they get up there, shotlady is going to be all like - "your sleef not ready! no shot for you!" relax, people. nurse betty will give you time to roll 'em up.

the shotlady was for some reason not opening the sterile hypodermic packages. when she was running low, otherlady came to help open the packages. first, otherlady slathered her hands with disinfectant, then she started opening the packages, putting the little plastic tops on the needles, and neatly stacking them up. suddenly, a package popped open too quickly and a hypo got away from her and leapt to the floor, trying to make its escape. she picked it up, looked at it, put the little plastic top over the needle, and put the thing on the use-me pile. does the 5 second rule hold for sterile medical equipment?

then it was my turn so i signed my name on yet another form, rolled up my sleeve, got my shot, thanked shotlady, and went back to work. the end.

my sincerest apology

i was gonna be all like -- hey sorry my blog has been so sucky recently, and by sucky i mean short entries about nothing -- but that would imply that a unsucky blog has long entries about something, and the only bloggers i know that write long entries about STUFF are naval-gazing social outcasts and try as i might, i simply cannot become one of those types. as much as i hate the peoples, the peoples just loves them some ace. what can i say. also, it is bad form to apologize for having a sucky blog because what does that say about the readers, eh? "sorry you people are so completely lame that you are spending your time reading something that even i, the writer, recognize as crap. thanks for stopping by!!" the thing is that i don't actually think my blog is sucky but i think that you will think it is sucky so i want to pre-empt the judgment of suck by telling you that "hey, i know it sucks, beat ya to it!" but that's not workable because firstly, i don't think it sucks and secondly, i don't give a flying turtle turd* what you think of my blog because -- here's the real shocker -- IT'S NOT FOR YOU. it's a blog, ya doof. it's blather by the ace, for the ace. clearly the internet is a public media, and anyone can breeze on by here and take a gander. it's not SECRET, it's just MINE. if you don't like it you can leave, and anyway, the bottom line is that i don't give a flying turtle turd** what you think.


[*flying turd of a stationary turtle, not to be confused with a stationary turd of a flying turtle, nor with a flying turd of a flying turtle, nor in any way associated with turtle soup.]

[**ibid]

googlers anonymous

my name is ace and i am a google addict. i tried to yahoo, to bing, to ask jeeves. i changed my homepage from igoogle to at&t. i changed my toolbar default to yahoo, and ended up yahooing google. it's the results. google's return is just. so. damb. goooood. google knows what i like, and google serves it up. google understands me. google has more pages indexed, more images, more news. yahoo and bing are like sad little malnourished dirty-faced cousins with stringy hair and mismatched socks. google is creepy. google is draconian. google does not care that i don't like the settings, the options, the layout, the auto-fill, the search suggestions. google knows it is sitting at the top of the giant heap of content that we call the internet and that for every abusive invasion of my privacy, for every unwanted enhancement, for every irreversible formatting change, it returns a dozen long-stemmed roses of prized content. ::sigh:: google, i can't quit you!

livebloggin from the soccer pitch

on mine journey homeward of the day, i didst tarry to replenish yon vino cabinet and lo, what hath i selecteth? nay unto a pomegranate varietal. wherefore this venture afar towardst ye olde testament? verily i sayeth unto ye: yon wine bottle caughteth mine eye for t'was lovely like a cedar goat.

a mark goodson - bill todman production

dial the phone.
roll down the window.
plug in your contact lens cooker.
mimeograph that carbon copy.
turn the channel.
adjust the antenna.
lick a stamp.
preheat the oven.
wash the diapers.
empty the ice trays.
practice your penmanship. your long division. your spelling.
hand me my skate key.
duck and cover!
read a nancy drew.
save that indian-star wrapper.
get your cootie shot.

today's episode has been brought to you by the letter Ꮝ.

pumpkin pancakes are back!

so we got up this morning and went to j-christophers, a breakfast place.

j-christophers : cracker barrel :: target : walmart

that is to say, the j's is more expensive, but also cleaner, less fried-ish, and they bring you a whole pot of coffee they leave on the table. why cracker barrel hasn't gotten on the pot-of-coffee-at-table bandwagon is beyond me. it's a customer service boost while being simultaneously a relief to the wait staff. seems like a win-win, yes? i drink a lot of coffee, don't like having to wait for someone to bring me more, and don't like having to continually ask for more, so at the least it's a win. for me.

and... there's really nothing more important than a win for me.

this morning i selected the pumpkin pancakes and they were good. not great. not exceptional. but, a solid B effort. the pumpkin flavor was not fakey, and the cakes were moist, if somewhat thin. i ordered them with pecans, and the cook was a bit stingy with the little broken nut pieces. the pecans added a nice touch of flavor, but i would have liked more of them for the protein value. i have given up syrup because... well... i don't know... i just don't like how it tastes anymore. i'll use some butter if the cakes or waffles are dry, but these cakes didn't need any help in that area. (i got mine without whipped cream because whipped cream is foul.)



another nice feature of the j's is the wanderer. this one young man in a logo tee shirt was constantly circling, circling. he stopped on one circuit to give us the "how's everything" and we stopped him on a later circuit because we were out of coffee. this is much more efficient than having the entire wait staff circulating. that would be a parade. the other option is that no one is checking on anyone, which is basically the cracker barrel method.

j's is clean and bright with blonde wood furnishings, large windows, high uncluttered ceilings, crazy art, colorful fiesta-ware, discreet television over the bar area, freshly ground coffee, designer pancakes, excellent service, and customers who are mostly fit young families with toddlers. cracker barrel is dingy and poorly lit with dark wood, shaded windows, duct-inhabited ceilings, antique art, plain white dishes, no television, stale coffee, over-fried pancakes, sketchy service, and customers who are mostly middle-aged fat-fatties.

where would you want to eat breakfast?

saturday afternoon at the beanery

sitting outside the beanery and for company there's the pizza delivery guys from next door. apparently there is a lull in delivering right at the moment. they're having an indepth discussion about national defense. ppfha! right. they are discussing something about how the usa has this top-secret program whereby we send arms to our enemies and they're deciding that we need to stop doing that. hoh-kay...
i'll just get the top-secrets on the phone for ya fellas, hang on...

you'll no doubt be thrilled to learn that i acquired a lovely pair of jeans at the stein mart. they are a longish capri length. back in the day, we would have called them pedal pushers. these are just darling and fit stellarly, allowing me to immediately get rid of the wankerish pair in my ongoing struggles against wankerism.

oh, wait. the pizza guys are now discussing atheism and the proof of a higher power... which segues into... an examination of the deep-seated psychological issues of their manager who refuses to entertain opposing viewpoints. wow, these guys are quick! they are now discussing racism. and, now into politics. you can really cover ground fast when you're complete idiots because you don't have to waste all that time actually thinking.

these guys just sat down at the next table for a tutoring session and the teacher is starting with the atomic weight of pizza. oh, man -- sorry but i gotta go. i need to fire up the skype and get beavis on the line because nothing begs for a disturbance by skyping like the atomic weight of pizza.

drive yourself insane tonight, it's not that far away, and i just filled up your tank earlier today.

took the long way home today. beautiful clear sky, no passengers, just me & the alkaline trio in the little slingshot car. ahhh...

one of the greatest things about taking the long way home is that hill. you know, the one where if you're in the slingshot doing about 50 when you crest it, you can let off the gas and glide across the slight down & slight up of the quarter mile ridgetop, and the car will lose momentum just right so that when you hit that sharp turn at the edge of the downhill side, you're doing exactly 35 and you'll think you need to slow down because of the sharpness of the curve, but if you resist that urge to hit the brake and instead keep going, you'll find the bank of the curve is precisely calibrated for the slingshot car doing 35mph, and so you hang on and you've shot the curve and you're headed down... 37... 42... 45... you'll be doing close to 48mph at the bottom of the hill and if there's no one behind you, you can let the car wind on down to where the road curves and ends at the highway and you'll barely have to touch the brake to wait for the infrequently-used trigger to change the light to your favor and give you the green-go-ahead to re-enter the real world.

today i discovered a brand new traffic signal smackdab in the middle of the ridgetop, glaring red red red, completely devastating the entire adventure.

sometimes i hate people.