Yesterday felt like a Saturday. I’m glad it wasn’t. We got a fair amount of stuff accomplished, all things considered, and even had a chance for the first time since we’ve been here to do what it was we moved out her to do in the first place – have a fire and set a spell while looking at the woods and listening to the critters. Very nice indeed. And today is supposed to even better. Got hold of my dirt guy, and will be getting a few yards of topsoil this morning, so that’ll give me something to play with for a while. Gotta see about getting some stone, too. So much to do, so little money.

Speaking of money, my Dish install went well, and I’m pretty happy with it so far (except I have to figure out where all the damn channels are). It’s gonna save me $44 a month (for a year, anyway), and when I called to cancel my TW cable (and made them swear not to shut off my Internet), they gave me $20 off RoadRunner for 12 months (I should call the bank and tell them I want to cancel the mortgage and see if they’ll cut a few hundred bucks off). So perhaps things are looking up a bit here.

Of course, no Bill Maher last night. And I’ll miss the second season of Treme, which I think starts in a couple weeks. Bummer. Guess I’l have to wait for DVD. On the bright side, I get to watch Nurse Jackie with my free three months of Showtime. And I watched Tootise this morning, which I haven’t seen in a long time, and find hard to resist because they put on a play at the “Syracuse Playhouse,” which is a barn out in woods across from a gas station. I give them a lot of credit for realizing that we actually have gas stations up here.

Haven’t really looked at the news, but I guess there’ll be no gubberment shutdown. Something to do with a tentative agreement leading to a temporary spending bill. Or something. Whatever it is, I bet those Democrats really drove a hard bargain. As usual.

Question: how long after a big earthquake does it have to be before another earthquake is no longer considered an “aftershock?” I mean, isn’t there a statute of limitations or something? I mean, there’s already been a “one month later” photo expose and an episode of NOVA devoted to the one on March 11. Shouldn’t a 7.1 count as its own earthquake?

Oh well, better get going. The sun’ll be up soon. I wonder how early I can wake the neighbors up with the soothing sound of a three-cylinder diesel engine?

47 years ago today, the top five songs on the Billboard Hot 100 were all by the same artist: The Beatles. In fact, the lads from Liverpool had a total of 12 songs in the list. For you younger folks, “singles” were like “tracks” except they came on a round piece of vinyl with grooves (and a big hole in the middle), and instead of downloading one song for a buck, you actually got two because there was a “B” side (unless you hung out by the local AM station – back then, AM stations actually played music, if you can believe that – and got the DJs to toss you their worn out radio station singles, which were single-sided – presumably because DJs weren’t smart enough to play the correct side).

Another difference was that singles – also known as 45s, because they played as 45 RPM – were “open source,” meaning that once you bought them, you could play them on any device you owned without any authorization or de-authorization nonsense, and you could freely trade or lend them with your friends. You could also create your own “playlists” by stacking them up on a big dildo-looking thing and playing them in whatever order you wanted (not a whole lot of them at once, though; the stack got pretty thick pretty quick). Ah, those were the days, spent listening to music back when it was music, and basking in the warm glow of the tubes of the Stereophonic.

Anyhow, never before or since has there been a group or artist with 12 in the top 100, or 5 in the top 5. And yes, despite being 3 at the time, I have these. Someplace. They probably don’t sound too good (frankly, stacking them up and playing them was probably not real good for ’em).

Coincidentally (or not), Julian Lennon was also born 47 years ago today. And Steve Howe (who is looking rather like a cross between Don Knotts and David Bowie’s Goblin King in Labyrinth these days) is 64 (definitely getting old and losing his hair – which happens to the best of us).

As if the women’s bowling thing wasn’t enough, the largest spring dairy festival in the entire continent of North America is right here this weekend. This is huge. Over 1,000 cows from 20 states and Canada will be here, vying for the title of prettiest heifer (if I was a cruel, sexist man, I’d say we may have trouble distinguishing the cattle from the bowlers meandering around town looking for a place to put on a feed bag – for one thing cows don’t eat from feed bags, At least, I don’t think they do – but of course I’m too enlightened for that – even though, being a white man, I’ll be considered cruel and sexist no matter what I do, having been single-handedly responsible for the repression women, the enslavement and discrimination of black people, and Native American genocide – so I might as well just go ahead and say it).

The cow show is even free, so maybe me and maw’ll hop in the pickup, head over to Sears, and get her a brand new gingham dress (and uh fancy-schmancy Easter bonnet, to boot).

So you can see that NY City isn’t the only place in New York where big, fancy, posh events take place. Take that, Ed Koch!

Oh well, Dish day, warm weather, sunshine, ladies bowling, dairy cows, and I don’t have to go back to work ’til Tuesday. Other than having a set of bucket forks, that’s about as good as it gets.

Big day in Syracuse today, as the USBC Women’s Bowling Championships kicks off 88 days of bowling excitement, all leading to the crowning of a champ in, um, about 88 days, I guess. For three months, our fair city will be filled with hot babes, all with one arm massively larger than the other. You’ve probably noticed the amazing pulchritude that epitomizes the typical male bowler, and, from the report and interviews I just saw on the lo-cal news, female bowlers are just as impressive. We’ve hosted the men’s championships in the past (oh, I know, when you think of bowling, you probably don’t think of Syracuse – personally, I think of Buffalo, or maybe Cleveland), and it’s just fortunate that these things aren’t held in the same city at the same time, or in between their kegeling, these folks would be back at the hotel hoisting a few pitchers before retiring to their rooms to breed a master race of athletes that could take over the world. I kinda feel sorry for these ladies. I mean, Syracuse doesn’t seem like much of a reward for earning a spot at the championships. At least it’ll be warm(ish) for them.

It’s also a big day for me, as I’ll be getting my two permanent crowns cemented on (I hope), and then killing a few hours at work before putting a premature end to the week (remind me to water my office plants before I leave). Tomorrow, I get Dish if all goes well (I’m a bit concerned by the rather enormous pine trees to the south), and the weather is supposed to be decent, so maybe I can get some stuff done.

Sure would be nice to have my bucket forks.

Some sad news here. For quite a while now, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra (don’t laugh – it’s been quite highly regarded, consistently ranking in the top 50 orchestras nationwide, which is no small feat considering they wear overalls and play in barns and corn fields) has had financial difficulties. Things are tough all over, management has been somewhat questionable, and both attendance and funding have withered (young livestock these days just aren’t as cultured as they used to be, and it’s hard to afford symphony tickets on what Wal-Mart pays).

Last week, the SSO canceled the rest of this season (and said there would be no refunds for the suckerspatrons who had purchased tickets – including rather expensive ones to see Yo-Yo Ma (my, my ma?, no yo ma). Yesterday, they threw in the towel, declared bankruptcy, and decided to shut it down after something like 50 years. I guess we just can’t support a full time, 77-piece (or whatever it is) orchestra up here in the provinces. A sad day, indeed. I guess I’ll just have to settle for chamber music. Nothing quite as scintillating as a string quartet.

Other than that, though, yesterday was a lovely day. I started out for work in driving rain at about 42 degrees. The rain shifted to wet snow about halfway there, and the ground had a nice white coating of snow by the commute home in the evening. On the bright side, the legendary weather-prognosticating, Marcellus Mike (he’s a marmot) came out of his hole just before sunset last night and saw his shadow, meaning either that spring is right around the corner (anywhere from two to six weeks), or that the sun happened to come out very late in the day.

Yes, it’s a little known fact outside these parts that the first Tuesday after the first Monday in April is Marmot Day (which means we’re all feasting on Woodchuck Stew today, as the first Wednesday after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in April is Woodchuck Wednesday; we’re not really sentimental about our marmots and, as I mentioned before, times – unlike roadkill – are tough all over).

And, in fact, the human weather geeks are predicting upper 60s on Sunday (which I’ll believe when I see – they’re kind of like Republicans. They say one thing right there on live teevee one day, and three days later they deny it and say something totally opposite, though at least the weather dudes assign a percentage to the likelihood that they’re full of shit).

So the grass will, overnight, go from brown and dead-looking to 10 inches high and needing to be cut. And me without my mower deck installed on the Kubota (not to mention somebody will have to deal with cutting the grass at our emergency back-up money pit that I’ve been doing my best not to think about). They have still not shipped my bucket forks, which I’m kinda bummed about, ‘cuz I could really use them. Never mind I can’t really afford them (which has me kind of conflicted, because I’m tempted to cancel them before it’s too late and save the money).

Still, it would be nice not to be cold all the time. There’s way too much house to keep warm with just the pellet stove, and HW boiler is basically verboten at this point. I need to spend time and money getting the snow tires off (if only I could afford to buy a set of wheels; damn rims are expensive, so I may have to head on over to the pick-n-pull and see what I can find – or maybe just head out for a ride one of these nights with my floor jack and lug wrench to see if somebody left a Hyundai laying around somewhere).

Finally decided to pull the plug on my cable and switch to Dish. It’ll save me quite a bit each month (no more HBO, though; I’ll miss Bill Maher and the upcoming season of True Blood, but maybe I can add it in this summer for a couple of months), plus give me the satisfaction of telling Time Warner to kiss my ass (except I need their Internet service, and I really hope they aren’t gonna screw up and cut that off when I cancel the cable – ‘cuz TW kinda sucks in that respect especially).

If you wanna switch to Dish, let me know. You get $50, I get $50. It’s a win-win.

Speaking of money, they just keep piling it on. Yesterday, I got the registration renewal for my van, which is up in May. They want $80 plus a new $20 “use fee” for a total of $100+ for two years. This new fee must be something Governor Snotball invented in order to balance the budget without raising taxes on millionaires (I haven’t checked, but I suspect there are limousine and Mercedes exemptions).

Today is our bi-weekly meeting, and our “team leader” is out recuperating from surgery, so we’re left unprotected from the next higher level of mucky-muck. Should be freakin’ great.

Oh well, at least it’s warm there. My nose is cold.

If the way I feel at the moment is any indication, today is gonna suck as much as yesterday did. Except it’s gonna be colder. And more rain. Oh boy. I’d like to congratulate the team that won the NCAA hoops championship last night, but I can’t. All I can manage is “fuck UCONN.” Not that I’d have wanted to other team to win, either. So I didn’t watch, don’t care, fuckemboth. It’s lacrosse season, and before you know it, it’ll be football season. And there’s some other sport that goes on during the summer (I mean, besides the interminably long NBA and NHL playoffs) which I understand a lot of people seem to give a crap about, but I never really did. Except I used to like going to the local AAA games, and probably would still enjoy it, but am not much for going to things alone.

But now I’m pretty close to Auburn, home of the “Doubledays” (named, of course, for Abner Doubleday, who grew up in Auburn and invented – well, probably not really, but we’ll go with it – the game of baseball in 1839 or something) – the Class A “short season” (they play from mid-June ’til the first week of Septemver, which, in the parts, makes a helluva lot more sense than playing in April) affiliate of the Washington Nationals. They have a nice little park and the games are cheap. Plus, if you join the “Little Abner’s Club,” you get to go to Sunday games for free and you can run the bases after the game (might be you’re supposed to be a kid for that, but, hey, screw the little bastids, I wanna run the bases).

But I probably won’t do that, either.

If you’re like me, you’ve gotten a few e-mails from companies you’ve done business with at some point in the past few years, informing you that
the vendor they use to send out e-mails – a company called Epsilon – had their e-mail database hacked, and you might now expect to get a lot of spam and phishing e-mails. They claim that no personal or account information was compromised, but you’re certainly ripe for the cyber-picking. Companies affected include Citigroup, Chase, Barclays, U.S. Bancorp, Capital One, Walgreen, Kroger, Marriott, TiVo, Verizon…. And lots more, no doubt. So it would be pretty easy to, say target you with phishing e-mails tied specifically to the companies you do business with. So, watch out when your credit card company send you a legitimate-looking e-mail saying you need to click on a link and fix your account. Though I’m sure you already knew that.

If you plan on flying today, good luck. Especially if you’re flying Southwest (though you know if they’re having these problems, so are the the rest of them. Flying just all it’s cracked up to be). I advise you to pay close attention to the part where they tell you how to put on the oxygen mask upon losing cabin pressure (my favorite part is when they say that if you have small children, screw ’em and save yourself).

Congratulations to libertarians, teabaggers, and the champions of deregulation. While the invisible hand of the market may not be enough to lift up your flight and keep it in the air, no doubt after enough planes fall apart mid-air, prices will drop (so to speak).

There are a great many mysteries in life, and Sunday is a good day to take a step back and ponder them – if for no other reason than Sunday is a bit of a mystery in and of itself. For one thing, is Sunday the first day of the week, or what? If it is, then why don’t I have to go to work today (not that I’m complaining, mind you)? Or is it the seventh day of the week (you know, the day that the American Constitution – aka, the Christian Bible – states that God rested from all that lettin’ there be light, heaven & earth creatin’, and hidin’ fake dinosaur bones in the ground to be dug up in a few thousand years to test our faith – and if God is all powerful, why did he need a day off to rest, and does he get paid vacation, and isn’t religion kind of a collective bargaining arrangement)? I guess those of us who are going to heaven when the rapture comes will get that question answered, and the rest of us will never know (perhaps that’s the secret to what hell is: an eternity spent never knowing the true meaning of Sunday – and not being allowed to negotiate for better conditions).

Anyhow, some mysteries (like the Sunday thing, and the part where God loves us and wants us to be happy, but allows good people to suffer and is basically kind of a dick a lot of the time) are magnificent and magical, while others (like why hollering out “goddamnit!” or “jesus fucking christ!” when you hit your thumb with a hammer is considered taking the lord’s name in vain, while some megachurch preacher or teevee evangelist saying “god wants you to give me all your money” or “the lord almighty lifted his cloak of protection from the United States so mooslams could fly planes into buildings” is considered spiritual and holy) are just plain stupid.

On the stupid side, there’s FedEx. Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, well, you probably quit reading it a long time ago. But if you haven’t quit just yet, you probably know that I’m an antisocial recluse (is that redundant?) who had been waiting all my life for the creation of the Internet (perhaps that was on the eight day?), and would order everything online if I could (BTW, have I mentioned lately how you ought to check out PetFlow and check out whether or not they’ll save you money, and if they can, use that link or the one over there on the right, and I get $50 and I think you get a deal on shipping or something?), just to avoid having to deal with people.

Oh, most people are OK, I guess, but it’s the handful of assholes that stick out (I guess an asshole that sticks out would be some sort of a prolapse. Maybe that’s what the teabaggers should start calling themselves – the Prolapsed Patriot Party – PPP for short), and, given the option I would shun most personal contact. Anyhow, as such, I get a lot of packages delivered, some of which, regrettably, come via FedEx. Again, longtime readers will recall that FedEx and I have had our differences, mainly due to the fact that FedEx sucks. Though, to give them credit, they seem to suck much less than they used to, and I haven’t had a problem with them in quite a while (which of course means I just cursed myself and all future FedEx deliveries for seven generations to come).

This newfound absence of suckiness seems to have coincided with a new (well, not all that new, as they’ve been doing it for a while now) policy that I have to assume was the brilliant idea of some management upper mucky-muck who has probably never broken a sweat in his or her life, let alone driven a truck (or delivered a package), and which is the source of mystery to me.

Now, when FedEx drops off a package at my door, they put a sticky note on it. The sticky note says,

Delivery Notice
We delivered your package.

And there are even little checkboxes (never filled in) as to the location of said delivery – front door, side door, garage, etc. – (which, if it wasn’t for the fact the the note is on the fucking package, might actually be useful).

Now, has this been a problem? Have beleaguered FedEx recipients been tripping over boxes on their way in the house, wondering where in hell their packages are? And now they pull the sticky off the package, and say (probably aloud) “oh, that’s what that is?”

Because, frankly, if you can’t figure out that your package was delivered w/o the sticky note, then the sticky note just doesn’t go far enough. It ought say, “we delivered your package, AND THIS IS IT, YOU IDIOT!.” Because, many’s the time I’ve pulled the sticky off the package, saw I had a delivery, but, damn, they didn’t check the box to tell me where it is, and then I have to go traipsing all over God’s creation to figure out where the damn thing is.

Which I guess is yet another of life’s little mysteries.

Looks like I’m not the only one with sump concerns. Over in Fukushima, they have a two-meter deep sump pit with an eight-inch crack in it, and “highly radioactive” water (in a hour, the levels are 330 times what us folks in “civilized” parts of the world get in a year) is leaking out of the crack and into the Pacific Ocean. Rest assured, however, that they have a plan to fix it. They’re gonna fill the pit with concrete. Um. OK. Perhaps I’m just an idiot, but, like, I have sump pits myself. And I reckon I could fill them up with concrete, and that certainly would keep the pumps from running. But it wouldn’t stop the water from coming in, which is what the actual f*cking problem is. And my water (to the best of my knowledge, knock on wood) isn’t radioactive.

Water from the two-meter deep, concrete-lined basin could be seen escaping into the sea through a roughly 20-cm (8-inch) crack, an official the Tokyo Electric Power Company told reporters Saturday afternoon. But the company could not explain how the water was getting into the sump….

Yeah, might wanna figure that out.

It’s getting awfully hard to ignore all this stuff. I went from caring about the future to giving up and just hoping things are good enough to keep my life from being too miserable for the next 25-35 (whatever I’ve got left) years, to hoping they don’t fuck it all up before I at least get to retire for a couple of years.

Clearly, the “Democrats suck but the Republicans are worse” theory isn’t really getting us anywhere. I mean, it’s true as far as it goes, I guess, but it’s a moot point. It’s like arguing over whether Hitler was worse than Stalin or something. At best, Democrats are feckless (they’re the Chinese dude, and the Republicans are the tank, except the guy driving the Republican’s tank aint gonna stop), and at worst they’re in collusion with the Republican monsters.

The meek won’t inherit the Earth. The ruthless, greedy, evil assholes will, having been delivered their mandate by the ignorant, with the tacit approval of the apathetic.

I wish I could afford a backhoe, ‘cuz I’d like to dig a really deep hole and then go hide in it.

Maybe I’ll get a puppy instead. :pup:

It’s April 1^st, which (around here, anyway) means it’s opening day of trout season. That means you’re sure to see dozens of ‘anglers’ in chest waders braving the cold (really cold) water to stand out in the snow and drizzle in hopes of catching some poor unsuspecting fish by the mouth with a hook, and then letting them suffocate to death before chopping their heads off, slitting them open, and squeezing their guts out. Or whatever they do. Not one for fishing, personally. But I’m a Vonnegut fan, so I consider this to be Kilgore Trout Day. So on behalf of Kilgore, Kurt, and Theodore Sturgeon, let me just say, “Up your ass with Mobil gas.”

You also have just two weeks to get your taxes filed. Mine are already done (have been, for a week or two), which I’m fairly certain is a personal record. My previous record was April 13, I think.

I shouldn’t complain, of course, but it never ceases to amaze me that I can get a fair chunk of change back from the feds, pay ungodly amounts of property taxes, and yet still owe NY State money. Goddamn unions.

I’m growing increasingly terrified of my financial situation, as, having reviewed the month of February yesterday, it appears I managed to spend about $100 more than I took in. This does not bode well for March, when the cash hemorrhage included my car insurance payment, an unexpected utility bill twice what it was the past month, the procurement of a spare sump pump, emergency generator, & new water heater, and probably a few other unexpected expenses that I’m no doubt mentally blocking, lest I go ahead and just kill myself – though not by drinking Drano, the way Kilgore Trout did after being informed by a psychic that dubya would win a second term as President by a 5-4 vote – and get it over with (but before I kill myself, you can be certain I’ll spend all my savings, max out the credit cards and go to minimum payments, and wait ’til I get the third eviction notice and the sheriff is at the door with the locksmith).

That’s all without putting away any money to pay the school taxes (which everybody assumes are going to increase dramatically from “too fucking much” to “way too fucking much” thanks to Governor Snotball and his insistence in preserving tax cuts for millionaires), and September is looming large on the horizon.

I guess I need to make some changes (first off, I need to become a millionaire – but there aren’t a lot of openings). Unfortunately, I already quit drinking beer, and there aren’t many other places to cut, except of course the teevee (but Curb is starting up soon – and True Blood in the summer; how can I give those up?), and spring is road kill season, so I reckon I should toss a few garbage bags in the trunk and start collecting sail rabbits to make stew with.

We’re on pellet heat only at this point, the water heater runs only twice a day for a total of three hours, there will be no more dental work for me, and I’ll just have to live with my glasses that are held together with tin tape and the wire from a twist tie (and of course the other pair that I can’t seem to find lately, held together with Gorilla Glue® and electrical tape).

It will be time to cash in my last remaining CD soon (which won’t mature until Jan 2012, so it’ll cost me a few bucks, and of course I’ll miss that 30 cents a month interest I’m earning on it), and we may need to feed the cats to the coyotes (don’t tell Granny that’s where they went, though).

“Cats? Why, no, now that you mention it, it has been a while since I’ve seen them.”

Not that they’re that expensive to keep, but I’ll be eating their food pretty soon, so it at least eliminates the competition – not that they like that ridiculously expensive crap they get, the ungrateful little bitches (or whatever you call female cats).

But spring is in the air (if, by “spring,” you mean “snow flurries”), and while it may be dark and rainy to start out April, those May flowers will be blooming before you know it (and I can start not being able to afford air conditioning, instead of not being able to afford heat).

And, hey, at least it’s Friday.