It’s the last day of Autumn, with winter officially arriving around here at 12:30 tomorrow morning. We’re celebrating with an expected high temp of 52°. It’s also the 33^rd anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, which of course we always make a big deal about in these parts, though we don’t have Ghadaffi Duck to kick around anymore. Last I heard, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was still alive, though, and supposedly the new Libyan government has agreed to allow a new investigation into the incident, which could conceivably allow a retrial for al-Magrahi’s alleged cohort – Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah – who wasn’t convicted the first time around. Probably depends on what BP oil contracts are in the works.

Just when it looked as though the GOP had been Newtered, it seems that the Newt has hit the Great Wall of Mitt, and the two are now tied nationally in the race for the Republican nomination. Of course, thanks to our marvelous system, national numbers are pretty much meaningless, but it certainly seems that Republicans have remembered (or found out for the first time) just what Newt is. And I don’t think they like what they see.

Speaking of Republicans, they suck.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m rather socially dysfunctional and don’t really like talking on the phone (ever since the call in the middle of the night when I learned my dad had died, I despise the sound of a ringing phone) – in fact, I don’t even have a landline these days, and my phone is forever set to vibrate. And yet, even I don’t need “WikiHelp” to tell me how to answer the phone.

I mean, isn’t that a “skill” you pick up by the time you’re, like, 5 years old or something?

For some reason, I am filled with a creeping malaise these days. Especially on Mondays, when it’s past creeping and has fully settled in. I really need to get my mind right.

I think I need some time off. Too bad I’m not gonna get any.

As Vernon noted last night, Dear Leader has passed away. Not a surprise, as we all knew he was il. So I guess that means Junior Jr. is the new boss. Unless somebody takes him out. I think I’d be worried if I was him. But we’ll see. Maybe they’ll get somebody who isn’t crazy and will help the people out. Or at least somebody about whom they can say, “well, he isn’t as bad as l’il Kim, and half a loaf is better than none.” Actually, in North Korea, I guess even half a slice would be an improvement for most people.

If you haven’t spent a lot of money on Crap for Christmas (kind of catchy, no? Like Toys for Tots), there’s still time. And lots of places have free and reduced shipping guaranteed to arrive by x-mas eve (which, rather disturbingly, turns out to be Saturday. When did that happen?), including the HBO store, which will get their overpriced shit to you for a mere $2.99. I’ve had my eye on a Kenny Powers mullet hat for quite a while now. Not to mention the True Blood “Sookie Set” (though for $45 it should come pre-filled with Anna Paquin).

As for me, I need to buy a ground bar for my breaker panel (makes a great stocking stuffer), and it seems like I need to get a few other things, too, but I forget what they were. Oh, that’s right. I need a project box and a rocker switch so I can mount one more light on my tractor (facing backwards). Shame they don’t sell those at Home Depot.

I’ll have to run out at lunch during the day, though, ‘cuz there’s no extra time off scheduled for me this week (pretty poor planning on my part), but I’m sure plenty of other people will be off. If not today, then at least by Friday the parking lot at work should be pretty empty.

Well, I reckon I better get going. Happy Shopping!

I have a system. Not saying it’s a good system, but it’s a system. Here it is: I open a beer (so far, so good). I leave the bottle cap on the counter. I drink the beer. I get another beer, open it, and note the number of bottle caps on the counter. If that number is under my limit (+/- a couple), all is cool and the cycle continues. Over the limit, and it’s time to call it a night. This is especially important when I’m watching basketball (as I was last night), where the ebb and flow has me pounding them down rather furiously (either in joy and excitement, or in anger and frustration, depending on the game). Unfortunately my wife has a tendency to throw away the bottle caps when I’m not looking, thereby throwing off my count.

This leads to how I’m feeling this morning, which is not that great (though I’ve certainly had mornings far worse than this). The physical pain, however, is more than mitigated by the result of the game, which was quite satisfactory (and, thankfully, over early enough where I didn’t get so hammered that I passed out in a puddle of drool – or worse – in my chair).

Sadly, time marches on. And we’re back to “Monday Eve” after one crappy little day off. Our string of days without at least an inch of snow ended yesterday at 269 (fifth longest streak ever). I’d take some comfort in that, except last year was the record, and we proceeded to get pounded on by one of the longest, coldest winters in recent memory (not as bad as 1816, though, when there was no summer, thanks to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in April of 1815). And as I write this, it’s about ten degrees out there, though it’s supposed to get warm(ish) today.

It’s nice and warm in here, though. Part of that is because I changed the gasket in one of my pellet stoves yesterday, and It seems to be running much warmer. It’s been on my list of things to do for a while. In fact, it’s too damn hot in here (70° – I’m starting to melt).

Oh well, big day planned today. Phase two of messing with the electric, trying to tidy up the panel and get the transfer switch set up so that I won’t have to run the house on extension cords in the event of a power outage. Plus all the usual laundry-type stuff.

And next week is Christmas. When the hell did that happen?

Another day, another adventure in spelunking for Senate Democrats. I of course refer to their caving in on the payroll tax cut thingie. In exchange for a honking two whole month extension of payroll tax cuts for the unwashed masses, Democrats agreed to a provision forcing Obama to take a stand on the Keystone pipeline. This is seen as terrible for Obama, because he actually has to take a position on something. Dreadful. I’m confident he’ll find a way to either weasel out of making a decision, or just go ahead and cave in on the pipeline completely (which, let’s face it, he’s gonna do in the end anyway). Or I suppose he could just veto the extension. But that would take a lot of guts – and I have yet to see anything from him that would lead me to believe he has any guts. Of course, House Republicans have to sign off the deal too, so expect to see some more caving in the days ahead.

Some idiot Republican State Senator in Washington is attacking Maria Cantwell for not being married. This is apparently the reason why she supports Plan B{{Z}}[[Z]]Personally, I’m a big supporter of Plan 9 (from Outer Space).[[Z]] Because only an unmarried harlot would be in favor of such a thing. I say, hey, Maria Cantwell isn’t married? She’s not bad for an old broad{{Q}}[[Q]]And I’ve always had a thing for harlots.[[Q]] (a couple of years older than me, even!). If only I weren’t married and 3,000 miles away, I’d go for it. Though I’ve often considered relocating to the Pacific Northwest.

Oh well, lots to do today, so I better drink more coffee.

Glad to hear Mr FK is back home safe and sound. I think you ought to make him stay there, FK. Tie him to the bed or something (assuming you’re into that kind of thing. Just make sure you settle on a safe word first. Like “Engel”).

I emerged from the shower yesterday morning, and was irked to see shampoo all over my chin. After a few minutes of trying to rinse it off, it finally occurred to me that it wasn’t shampoo – it’s just the color of my beard these days. 🙁 Oh well. Still no snow on the furnace door, at least{{1}}[[1]]TMI, I know.[[1]]

Christopher Hitchins has finally succumbed to esophageal cancer. Sad. He was a bit of a pompous ass at times, and I didn’t agree with his Iraq War cheerleading, but he was a very interesting read much of the time, and I agreed with a lot of what he had to say (and it was kind of fun to see him appear on the teevee half in the bag a lot of the time). I hope he was pleasantly surprised to find out there’s something better on the other side.

I don’t have much else to say this morning, other than to note that it was on this day back in 2005 that Morning Sedition signed off the air for the final time. That, too, was a Friday (a snowy one, as I recall, back when I was bitching about being an old man in grad school rather than bitching about being an old man having to go to work).

Should you care to relive the moment, you can download it from here. Hard to believe the needless war in Iraq lasted about four times longer than MS did. And hard to believe AAR turned into such a steaming pile of crap.

Sad. But, hey, at least it’s Friday.

They (whoever they are) say all good things must come to and end and, today, the US military presence in Iraq officially does just that (in fact, it’s right there live on my teevee as I write this – they’re alternating between that and a “live shot” of a water main break, because there are few things more compelling than watching people dig a hole in the street right there in real time). Oh, there are still a few thousand troops there (in Iraq, not at the water main break, which only requires a crew of half a dozen or so), and we plan to have 15,000 people in our enormous Iraq embassy, but, still, this is a rather momentous milestone (and after a mere 8½ years). So, now what do we do with ourselves?

I don’t think there are enough missing blonde chicks and perverted college assistant coaches (and their wives) to keep our attention properly diverted, Michelle Duggar lost kid #20 (at some point your uterus must just get too worn out to function properly, no?), the Republican Presidential campaign is even more ungodly boring now that we’re down to a race between White and Whiter (I think of it as a contest between a guy that should be starring in Cialis commercials vs. the Efferdent spokesmodel), and I don’t think there’s a new version of the iPhone/iPad coming out for at least a week, so whatever shall we do to keep ourselves amused?

Clearly, the only thing left is drinking. But now I see they’ve actually outsourced moonshine production to India. I guess that’s ‘cuz all our toothless hillbillies are too busy cooking up meth.

Speaking of toothless hillbillies, I heard a new ad that the Newt Gingrich is running in Iowa or something (despite being king shit GOP frontrunner, he only recently came up with enough scratch to hit the air with commercials – no wonder, since a third of everything he takes in goes to Tiffanys), that says we need to put an end to “Obama’s war on religion.” Have you noticed Obama warring with religion? ‘Cuz I haven’t. Not that I’ve been paying attention, really, but this just seems stupid to me. Are people in Iowa really that dumb (or is it just the Republicans)?

Another government shutdown or budget crisis or whatever the f*ck it is is looming on the horizon. This time it’s because House Republicans are insisting on the rapid approval of an oil pipeline from Canada in order to extend the payroll tax cuts.

One of these days you’d think We the People would see how tiresome Republicans are.

Time to resurrect the Whig Party, I think.

Another warm day today (supposed to get damn near 60°), but rainy and windy, ahead of a temperaure drop later on tonight. There still isn’t any real snow on the horizon, but I did put the plow on the tractor to at least get it out of the driveway. I don’t wanna have to dig it out when the time comes.

Happy Birthday to Tim Conway today, plus Dave Clark (who is apparently no relation to Dick Clark).

The good news is that my totally worthless every-other Wednesday morning meeting has been cancelled. The bad news is that I have a different totally worthless meeting this afternoon. Even worse, it’s not at my location, and I have to go downtown to get there (I realize that the idea of “downtown” Syracuse is amusing to those of you who live in real cities, but that doesn’t make it any less traumatic to me). In short, I will be very happy to get this day over with.

I also seem to have developed some kind of “thing” on my face by my nose. I would guess it’s in the zit family (at my age – is there no advantage to being old?), but maybe it’s a cold sore kinda thing? I dunno. Not an expert. Whatever it is, it appears to be forming very deep and wide, and is red, but barely a bump at this point. Sore, though. With a very wide, hard, swollen footprint. The type if thing that feels like you’d like to squeeze and pop it (kinda like this; warning, don’t click on that link if you are easily grossed out), but you know it wouldn’t pop and all you’d do is make it angry and spread. So I guess I’ll try some topical oil of oregano, and just live with it.

Another warmish day today. We’ve had .7″ of snow so far this season (last year, we were up around 50″). I credit the difference to my having gotten my snow tires put on early this year. I doubt this’ll last, but I’m enthusiastically ready to cede the Golden Snowball and Golden Snowglobe awards to somebody else.

According to a new NBC/WSJ poll, Newt would lose rather handily in a general election against President Obama. I don’t know if this is the WSJ’s attempt to talk some sense into Republicans or what. And I’d find it comforting news (in that I think a President Newt would be pretty f*cking bad) if Newt’s campaign hadn’t been declared all but dead back in June.

Never underestimate the stupidity of the average American.

You may have heard that our local circus has now been bolstered by the addition of Gloria Allred (an attorney whose reputation is not exactly on par with Atticus Finch), who announced a lawsuit on behalf of two clients who are apparently suing my alma mater and its basketball coach for defamation for his initial reaction to the charges, where he angrily expressed his opinion that this was bullshit, and two individuals were looking for money. So, in other words, they are looking for money.

Not named in the suit, of course, is the person who has been alleged to have molested the two complainants (and – so far – no criminal charges have been filed against anybody).

On the face of it, and assuming no new facts come to light, this suit would seem dead on arrival (as I understand it, in order to win a defamation lawsuit in NY, you need to demonstrate that the person knew at the time that the statements weren’t true, that this person acted intentionally or recklessly in making these assertions, that the plaintiffs suffered damages as a result, and that this damage came as a result of these assertions). But of course the end game here is to drag this out and be as annoying as possible until there’s a settlement. So this circus could conceivably go on for years.

Oh boy.

Happy Birthday to Patty Duke, who turns 65 today (I wonder if it’s her cousin Cathy’s birthday, too; you ever wonder why nobody questioned those kids’ lineage? I mean, identical cousins?). Also Morey Amsterdam, who would be something like 97 today, and Nostradamus, too (who’d have predicted that?). It’s Ronnie McNeir’s birthday today, too.

And, of course, Ernie Davis. Happy Birthday, Ernie.

Congratulations to Billy Joel, who is the first non-classical composer to have his portrait hung at Steinway Hall in NYC. Billy is also starting to look a lot like Uncle Fester. It’s amazing how all these musicians from my youth keep getting older while I remain ageless. I feel bad for them. Except for Stevie Van Zandt – he remains ageless as well.

Another weekend finally over. Thank goodness for that. Today is supposed to be relatively warm and sunny, which is always a bonus at this time of year. Not that it really matters, I guess, as I’ll be stuck inside all day. But it’s always nice to at least see a little bit of sunshine now and again.