Hooray! The Zombie Survival Guide and my paycheck both came in the mail today.

Lately I've been noticing that I poop a lot more on Thursdays.

Pretty pretty moon rise, the color of a banana peach mango smoothie.

Soggy toilet paper is like a terrible white trash bidet.

So very sleepy, so very chilly...

Come bleed with us

I saw this video earlier and thought it was kinda cool but also kinda creepy.

Even though squid and octopi have multiple arms they don't seem quite as malevolent as spiders. Maybe it's because they just sort of float along and spiders are very deliberate in their motions. As far as sea creatures go, crabs are much more spidery than octopi. Plus, spiders have all those eyes whereas cephalopods only have two like we do. Maybe it's because I've watched a lot of nature shows and, however creepy they are, cephalopods have been better explained than spiders.



Spiders can kill you when you least expect it. Who knows where the damn things are 'cause they're tiny and hide anywhere. True, not every spider has venom that can kill humans, and some cephalopods have a toxic bite, but I've been bitten by enough non-lethal spiders to be wary of them all. Unless you happen to feel it walking on you, and a lot of times you don't, you have no clue the spider is on you until after it bites. If you really had to you could fuck an octopus up pretty quickly if you don't panic. And I'm not talking about a giant squid. If one of those got ahold of you you'd be dead in seconds. I couldn't find the clip with the computer simulated attack I saw on Discovery once but it was lightning fast.

Way back in the day I went to the movies with my sister and one of her friends to see Tentacles, the squid version of Jaws. It scared me silly. I didn't make it halfway through before I had to call and have my grandma come and get me. I was a timid child. Something about a critter that could come at you from any angle and reach you when you were out of the water didn't sit well with me. Sharks, by my eight year old reasoning, only had one danger zone (the mouth) that could be avoided to some degree, plus you could tell they were coming because they always showed their dorsal fin above water (so I thought). And if you could get out of the water and onto a boat that pussy shark couldn't touch you. I hadn't seen Jaws yet. All bets were off with an octopus or a squid. They could even go on land for a little bit, just long enough to find an unsuspecting redheaded kid on a beach and drag him back to the depths.


Sorry for the lame comments that popped up on the screen. That was the only version I could find.

Maybe because of that movie I made a point to learn more about various non-shark threats in the oceans, and that's why I don't fret over them these days. Granted, if I'm ever scuba-ing around some tropical lagoon and an octopus latches onto my face I'm pretty sure I'll have a freak out similar to the times I've been in musty basements and thought a spider landed on the back of my neck. Not that I'm afraid of spiders, mind you (giant ones notwithstanding), but I am afraid of venomous things biting my neck. Still, all those suckers, the parrot beaks, the ink shooting - cephalopods are fairly creepy. Read these awesome Dinosaur Comics to for another angle on things. The first one is about raccoons, but it's a set-up for later hilarity. And for the record I'm down with raccoons. Also, if you've never read Dinosaur Comics, if you move the cursor over the comic some fun extra text will appear.

nature's most siniter animal

cephalopods: oh my goodness what went wrong

guess who's coming to dinner

nothing you can say will scare me!

block slumber party

come on. dromiceiomimus was most likely already late to the dentist to begin with.

another time where...

I'm not making fun of the devil...
(god speaks in panel 2, the devil speaks in panel 5, the raccoons and cephalopods speak in panel 6)

cakes that are just cake on the inside...

The title of this post is taken from "nothing you can say will scare me!" but you already knew that 'cause you read them all. His old blog about that comic is gone but basically he saw the line "Come bleed with us" on a flier advertising some sort of hippie pagan womens' menstruation club, and that's creepier than any multi-armed creature. Pfft, Canadians. In the future there definitely won't be any Canadians, but there might evolved cephalopods.





And of course, the damn spiders are still around.





I really recommend watching all the clips of that show that you can find. It's some very nice speculative fiction.

Soooo... I think I've exhausted all of my thoughts about squids and their relations. I suppose I could have included some musings on hentai (google it if you don't already know) but that's seems excessive and I have to go to bed soon. I have to start a new training class bright and early and I haven't been able to swing my sleep pattern back around to waking up in the mornings. I prolly won't get much sleep tonight but however much I do get I know it won't include anything like The Dream Of the Fisherman's Wife.

You're welcome :)

Oh man, I'm craving a BLT. Good thing there was bacon left over from breakfast. I hope the L and the T won't be an issue.

Fuckity dang!

I thought I'd be clever and use my 4gig flash drive to transfer files from the lappy to the PC instead of wasting a disc. In that, I was successful. I moved all of my pics, music and movies at once instead of the three or four CD-ROMs it would have used otherwise, and in a fraction of the time. Yay technology! Being my life, though, there were complications.

Downside No. 1) None of the file folders for the pics made the switch for some reason. I now have a ginormous single file full of ever pic I ever took. For the most part the pics are grouped together as if they were still in folders. For example, all the pics from a party are together. I'm guessing it was because most of those kinds of pics were taken with the digital camera and Windows 7 used some bit of info in the file (the original number name given the pic by the camera, or the date it was taken maybe) to organize them. In the case of folders containing pics I took with the digital and my old 35mm it's anybody's guess. In the case of my trip to the Pacific Northwest and a few others they're pretty much all out of order since I scanned the 35mm pics into the old old lappy and they all have some other sort of secret computer naming system going on.

Downside No. 2) None of the names I gave the pics made the switch. For example, what used to be "Ben and Dennis, Bridge Day 2006" is now 572 or whatever. It seems that Windows 7 just assigned them all numbers from 003 to 2661.

Downside No. 3) For some reason - I'm going with a mix of incompetence and deceitfulness - Jesse somehow managed to keep a bunch of pics in a file, or files, I knew nothing about. Nothing gross, just random day to day stuff, a few weekend trips. It's kind of like we do live in the same town and I keep bumping into him even though I go to all new grocery stores and restaurants.

Downside No. 4) I have to do it all over again, re-organizing and renaming the pics; a whole new round of re-deleting pics with Jesse. You know how lazy I am. The deleting is no big deal but all the others will be a chore.

it's not all bad though.

Upside No. 1) A huge majority of the pics are also stored on Photbucket with the exact same folder names. In the case of the PNW trip this is a huge upside.

Upside No. 2) In the pics that Jesse had squirreled away there are lots of pics of me I've never seen before, good pics even. You know how I love to look at myself.

So two sides up and three down. It could be worse. Goddam polyhedrons!

Hmmm, I'm starting to see a few short-comings with #Chrome.

New comics! Joe the Barbarian #s 3 and 4, Brightest Day #0 (why can't they just start with 1 anymore?), Walking Dead TPB vol. 6.

For the past several days I've had the increasingly nagging suspicion that I've forgotten something kinda important.

My new PC presents a whole new set of problems

Don't get me wrong...

The lappy I've been using the past year was a godsend and I'm so SO grateful to my pal Jenn for letting me have it on extended loan. It was more than adequate to do the things I needed to do, i.e. bitch about bloggy nonsense and look at porn. BUT. If I tried to do more than two things at once, say, listen to a streaming radio station while I tried to write or noodled around with a photo editor while I had an IM chat window open, then it would sometimes lock up and always pestered me with constant warnings about the virtual memory being too low.

Now that I have the new PC - my handsome Dino - I can do all of that and more and never get the first warning of any sort. Sometimes I wonder if I might have accidentally turned some safety function off and it's gonna melt down the next time I open a new tab. Until that happens I've been trying to catch up on listening to music I like. Sadly, WOXY.com (my favorite) isn't broadcasting right now 'cause they ran out of $$$ so I've been making due with SomaFM out of San Francisco.

The trouble I'm having now is that I don't want to turn Dino off and go to bed for fear of missing some awesome new song or artist. Plus, it's a connection to the larger world that I crave desperately to be a part of. Not the music industry mind you, but any larger, more diverse area that has music I like on the actual radio and not off the internet or beamed in by satellite to your car. The only place in WV that has that is Morgantown with the college radio stattion, WWVU. They're on the net now too, I believe. And no, even of Jesse didn't live there I have no desire to be there longer than a day or two to visit friends. Living there again would be a huge step back on par with moving back to Oak Hell.

Not that I've ever needed an excuse to stay up late but, for example, I decided to make this silly post so I could justify it and listen to the radio. The first step is admitting you have a problem, and I do that every time I mention this town or gripe about my sister so now you all have to give me money to move an intervention. I wonder if you can pick up any good stations at Passages Malibu?

Never goddam fails: every time there's a meteor shower, or the rare comet, we get a solid week of over cast night skies. Hate. It. Here.

Super regretting my decision to not get a to-go order of sopapillas earlier when I was in Fayetteville.

BWA-Hahaha and also HA!

Mummy! from Lizzy Caplan

Got to hell, flowers, and take your filthy, eye-itchy sex powder blowing all over everything with you.

Hitting the snooze button for 2 hours still counts as getting up when the alarm goes off, right? I had to stand up to do it.

Stoopid allergies, my head is killing me. :(

To quote Dorothy Parker, "I deserve this."

I woke up early - for me - about 9am and fiddled around online. Two of my friends from Charleston, Heather and Nick, decided to visit Fayetteville today and do some hiking and when they got done I was gonna meet them for lunch. The hiking didn't happen but we met up for lunch at Pies & Pints. It's a very yummy place. We had the rosemary and garlic flatbread to start and then a Mediterranean Pie. That was my first time trying goat cheese. It was okay, I didn't hate it but I prolly won't make it a habit either. Oh, and Heather made muffins and brought me a few. SCORE!

After lunch we went over to Beckley and hit Cheap Thrills Records. Today was National Independent Record Store Day so i thought it would be cool to check out. Nick and Heather haven't been in a real record store in ages, because Charleston is lame, so they were psyched. While we were there a local bluegrass band, the Poor Taters, was playing because they were releasing their CD. They were really good, did unexpected stuff like the Beatles "Get Back" and Stray Cats' "Stray Cat Strut". One of my good buddies from high school plays with them sometimes but he was just watching this afternoon. He'll join in when they have their gig over in Fayetteville later tonight.

Anyrockintunes, Heather and Nick made some good purchases and I got Sonic Youth's newest, The Eternal. We also picked up a bunch of free samplers from Astralwerks, Last Gang Records, the Cochella festival, and a mix of awesome Motown, R&B and funk. After all that strenuous cool we moseyed over to a nearby Starbucks for refreshment. It was a chilly afternoon so I had one of those hot apple caramel drinks. After that I took them down to Thurmond 'cause they've never been. It's a funky little ghost town in the middle of some gorgeous nature.

I was planning on hanging out with a new friend tonight but he had to cancel 'cause he's feeling under the weather. It's prolly just allergies but I gotta be cautious after that last flu nearly derailed my job. My allergies have been in high gear the past week. The OTC meds make me wired so I haven't been getting much sleep, plus they kinda do a number on my tummy. And my eyes have been really itchy to boot. It's prolly best if I lay low this evening and get rested up. I'll just stay in and listen to my new tunes and when he's feeling better maybe we can go see Kick Ass. Plus, I had a good visit with another old friend last night at Diogi's so I think I can slow down on the social whirlwind. For now, my cabin fever and wanderlust have been abated.

I'm gonna go have a muffin now.

Tim Gunn + geekery = awesome!

Mom and dad just got back home. Other than being really sore she's okay.

mom just fell on the steps & hit her head pretty bad, EMTs said it didn't seem too serious. they're taking her to get checked out anyway.

Yum! Just had a delicious dinner at Diogi's with the delicious @rellehcim ( @Michelle Seletyn Rodriguez for FB peeps).

Today on As The Stomach Turns: Lisa threatens to have her brother arrested and her father kicks her and her daughters out.

An awesome online purchase

It was waiting to bash me in the head when I got home today.

Farewell forever, dear friends, maybe I die soon. Really.

The current state of high drama in the Aliff household is all over that pit bull pup. This all started well over a month ago. My ex-brother in law is friends with some coke dealer and he took his daughters , my nieces, over there for a visit one day. The pretext was so they could look at his puppies. I knew as soon as they said why they were going over that they'd be bringing a dog home with them. They were warned repeatedly not to by their grandmother. They tried to be sneaky and hide it in the basement but pups don't understand "shhhhh" and the jig was quickly up. The guy who they got it from was able to unload all of the rest of the litter but this one. He used the "if I can't find somebody to take it I'll just kill it" line and they fell for it. The girls tried to sweet talk my parents into letting them keep the pup saying it wasn't a full-blooded pit, it was just a mutt with some pit in it. One look at the thing and you knew instantly what kind of dog it was. If it was a beagle or a hound dog of some sort my parents might have relented but it wasn't and they didn't. My sister wasn't any help, as usual, saying that she had no idea they were going to bring a dog home and that she absolved herself from the situation.

Over the next several weeks my nieces were told repeatedly that they had to get rid of. If they couldn't find somebody to take it then it was going to the pound. Naturally they lied a lot. So-and-so said he would take it but then he'd never show up. Whats-her-face said they could bring it over to her place but then she was never home. And so on and etc. I finally found a number for a local no-kill shelter but they aren't taking any dogs for the time being. I told the girls to call the local vets and see if they had any suggestions, or the pet store over in Beckley. They said yeah, they'd do that but they never did. Even though I didn't want the pup here either I didn't wanna see it put down for no reason if we could find a home for it so I asked around, even posted it on Twitter and FB, but couldn't find any takers. Until Monday.

A guy I work with said he'd like to have it so we made arrangements, he followed me home yesterday and I handed the dog over to him. All hell then proceeded to break lose. Laci, the oldest niece, happened to walk outside just as I was handing the pup over. She ran inside and cussed my dad like a sailor. Lisa, my sister, made some vague threat that I better be prepared to pack my bags as she and Laci stormed off in a huff. I'm not sure where they went but dad was still gracious enough to let them use his truck. Then later Julia, the youngest niece, bounced into my room, cussed me and said that when she fights, she fights hard or something to that effect. I said "alrighty" and she stomped off. I was 95% sure I knew what she and my sister were gonna attempt, and I was right.

Later, my sister demanded that I call the guy who took the dog and have him bring it back, all the while mom is in the background saying that the dog was never to be brought back here. The guy was already at his other job so I couldn't call him even if i wanted to. Lisa then demanded that I give her his number and she better get her dog back. Her dog? The same dog she said she had nothing to do with? Whatever. I didn't give her the number but said I'd giver hers to him. Then this morning as I was getting ready for work Lisa got up and followed me around as I was getting ready, huffing and glaring. I said again that I wasn't gonna giver her his number but I'd give him hers. Apparently he still hasn't called but I'm getting ahead of myself. Mom was up by then and told Lisa that the dog was never to come back here. Well, we'd all just better be prepared to deal with the consequences. I went on to work.

After I'd been at work a few hours I got a voice mail. It was Julia saying that she'd just told my dad I was gay. "I told you I'd fight back!" Okay. Let me digress and offer up some history. Waaay back in 1992, maybe in the Spring but no later than the Summer, I had The Talk with mom and dad at the kitchen table one evening. I was still attempting to be a student at WVU at the time so I was either home for a weekend or holiday, or summer break. Anyout, dad decided that I wasn't really gay, it was just experimenting or going through a phase, or it was because of all the drugs I was on at the time. He's known for a long time. He's been in denial, but he's known. In the years since we've all just decided to let him think whatever and not push the issue for the sake of keeping things calm. I really have meant to fess up on several occasions but Lisa and the girls always seemed to have some new tempest brewing - dad would be angrier and angrier, mom would be sadder and sadder so I never had the heart to add to the mess.

I should have kept the voice mail but hitting delete was a knee jerk reaction as I rolled my eyes. I really do delete all my messages unless it has necessary info so it was force of habit over-ruling better judgment. I wasn't angry, I pretty much saw it coming. I actually had another chance to spill the beans last night. Dad asked me out of the blue if I'd heard from Jesse (my ex), how much longer is gonna be at WVU, how long has be been in living in Morgantown now? Again, if it hadn't been for mom being upset because the girls hate her now I would have explained why I quickly change the subject whenever he asks about Jesse. I put it all out of my mind and focused on work. I do admit I was a tad nervous because dad is fairly homophobic so I wasn't sure what exactly I'd be walking into when I got home.

Mom was sitting ion the carport, dad was going in the door as I pulled up. Mom said that she had to tell me something that i needed to know. I said yeah, I knew, Julia left a message and told me what she'd done. Mom looked confused and asked what did Julia do. I told her and she said she didn't know anything about that but now the guy who used to own the pup, the same guy who said he was gonna kill it, told Lisa that if I didn't bring the dog back I was gonna end up with my head bashed in. Ah, really? I think Lisa dragged him back into it when she was trying to find a home for the dog after i gave it away. No idea why he's suddenly so concerned, though.

I half expected Julia to try and get her boyfriend and one of his pals to attempt something like that, so again, I wasn't too surprised. My sister is prone to blustery threats that never seem to get realized. Then she puts and fumes and holds a grudge forever, waiting for a chance to stick a passive/aggressive knife in your back. Her I'm not worried about. The low-life idiots she tends to surround herself with might actually be a concern. I won't lose sleep over it but I won't take it lightly either. Lisa said that they told her that even though mom had me give the dog away that they wouldn't beat up an old lady. It was all gonna come down on me. Most things usually do when my sister is involved.

But getting back to dad, right after mom told me all of that dad came outside and acted like nothing had happened. I dunno if Julia really did tell him anything or if she was trying to fuck with me. Either way, fail. If she really did say anything she actually did me favor. I don't have to try and find the exact right time to talk to him now. I don't have to worry about how he'll react. No more stress from that issue. And if she didn't say anything then I know what her big, and only, gun is. She's 15. She's certainly sneaky enough but not exactly Bobby Fischer. As for her mother, I've long been of the opinion that it would just be a matter of time before she turned on me like she has most of of our relatives and pretty much every friend she's ever had. Not anticipating that would be like owning a pit bull and then being surprised when it went for your throat.

And really, that's just the tip of the iceberg for the complete and utter mess of things going on here lately. I'm not gonna drag out all the dirty laundry but believe me when I say clusterfuck doesn't even begin to cover it. Well, I won't write it all out longform on here. I'd still be typing this tome tomorrow night. But, if you'd like to hear all about it I'm available for weddings and bar mitzvahs. Unless I get my head bashed in sometime soon.

Stereolab always manages to make me not angry. Currently looping Dots & Loops

Wow, #Chrome is ridonkulously fast.

My monitor is a Samsung so I shall name him Sammy, making the HP Dino (as in Martin). Guess that makes the chair Frank.

DAMMIT! Of all the damn times to start back to work, I was gonna go to Pittsburgh tonight and see my favorite band. Closest they'll ever be.

Instructions

I like this a lot better than the manual for the new PC

NOOO!!! I had to change the resolution of my monitor so I could see the whole screen and now the color isn't quite as sharp. :(

Gah, have to get used to using a full sized keyboard again. Also, the mouse is very senstivie compared to the touchpad on the lappy.

Okay, next question: Firefox or Chrome? Or something else entirely?

0_o 40 damn dollars for a female to male HDMI/DVI adapter plug?!?! Pfft, more like Rape-io Shack.

That's *DOCTOR* Mr. Moneybags to you!

So I just bought myself a desktop PC - an HP Pavilion p6130f; a monitor - a 23" Samsung 1080p LCD HDTV/Monitor model no. 2333HD; and new desk chair - a Vocazo chair item #646143. As if you couldn't guess from the links I just went over to Staples and got what seemed like the best deal. The PC comes with a keyboard and mouse so I didn't feel the need to get extra fancy ones just yet. In a month or so when I get my savings built back up I'll decide if I need to upgrade. Same with my old printer and scanner. Oh, and I also got a mouse pad with a pic of a tropical beach to match my room, and a pack of blank CD-ROMs.

I know I could have gotten a better deal if I had shopped online but I don't have a credit or debit card and the prospect of paying for all that with a handful of prepaid Visa cards was unappealing logistically. Plus, the tax on that many prepaid Visas would have added another hundred bucks to that total. Besides, I just thought it would be cool to fork over a wad of cash, ten Ben Franklins to be exact. I got back fifty-two cents.

I can't tell if I'm delirious from lack of sleep or dropping that much cash all at once. Either way I'm gonna try and put it all together now. Oh and could one of you tech savvy people tell me if there's an easy way to move all my bookmarks from the lappy to the PC, pretty please? I'm kinda thinking they're in a file somewhere and I can just copy it. I'm pretty sure I saw it once when I was looking for something else but who knows if I'll ever be able to find it again. Wish me luck.

didn't get more than 1/2 an hour's sleep. Hooray! By "hooray" I mean I'll bite your eyes out.

Hooray! My savvy pathology just scored another win on eBay.

Ugh, up even earlier today. The things I do for toys.

GAH! What's with the Arctic death wind? I have to go build a fire now. Really.

Aw, Malcolm McLauren died. Sads :(

Ugh, I'm up too early. Gotta start getting ready for going back to work next week.

I won't be a part of combo meal tyranny again! Except for you Baconator.

My new dirty habit: double cheeseburger from BK, fries from McD.

I hear thunder and it sounds awesome!

Tricksy laundry, we hates it, Precious!

When I woke up I found all the caramel eggs and chocolate bunnies I bought for myself the other day. Thanks, Me-ster Bunny, bock bock!

The long road to recovery

So it's been just over a year now since some of my stuff got stolen after I moved into that crappy apartment. Here's the recap . That whole phase of my life was a shitty mess but of all the crap I had to deal with losing stuff I worked hard to get was the one that kept me awake all night most often. The anger I felt over the break-up with that lying, cheating douche nozzle was nothing compared to the sheer blinding rage I felt whenever I thought about somebody taking my stuff. And the fact that they had no idea what any of it was, they just took it because it was there... I went cross-eyed when I thought about it, couldn't speak, just clenched my fists and made feral noises.

Does that make me shallow and materialistic, being more upset over things than betrayal and the loss of a relationship? So what if it does? I'm okay with that. I don't define myself by what I own. My collections of toys and knick-knacks don't make me a better or worse person. We all want stuff to varying degrees. I'm confident I can surround myself with the things in life that truly matter but I also plan to surround myself with things that matter to me. And by God, Satan, or whoever, if I drag my sorry ass out of bed, slog through hours, days, weeks, dealing with a job and all the joys that go along with it to get some money to buy crap I want then nobody better fucking touch it.

So here I am a year and three months later. I finally got a job that pays pretty nicely and I've been saving a good bit of each payday for things I actually need like car repairs and a computer. Then yesterday I thought "Peace of mind is kind of essential, too." I've occasionally checked on eBay to see if any of my stuff showed up but never saw anything that was clearly mine. Most of what was taken wasn't common, but it wasn't super rare either. Except for a few pieces and I never saw any of those until yesterday. No, it wasn't my stuff per se, but it was two of the rarer sets I thought I'd never be able to replace, and for not nearly as much $$$ as I'd been fearing if I ever did find them again.

One I was able to buy outright but one I had to bid on and wait. When I found it this afternoon it had three hours left and no other bids so I spent a tense three hours waiting to see if anybody outbid me at the last minute. Nobody did, I got them both. I also found one of the figures loose and got an extra one just to be safe.











The big name characters in the sets (Flash and Green Lantern) aren't what I was after. They're cool enough, variant designs that you don't see very often but not all that different form the many, many different versions of Batman floating around. My main objective was Blue Beetle. He's been one of my favorite characters for ages, and this was the first time he'd been made into a figure (I think these came out in 1999 or there abouts). And as a bonus his set also came with a tiny Atom that was also a variant because it featured a short-lived change to his costume, not that you can see it in this pic. The Doctor Polaris figure was also a bonus because he'd never been a toy either, and the Total Justice/JLA line didn't have but like three other villains.

So as luck would have it, these two sets and a loose Blue Beetle just happened to be available when I went to eBay yesterday and this afternoon. I still have to get all of the other sets and figures (there were only four I didn't have from the whole line) but I think I've made a decent start on rebuilding my collection. And my life in general.

p.s. The photo uploader thing for Blogger is still a big pile of crap and hassle.

GAH! I'd forgotten how tense the last few minutes of an auction are or #eBay.

Hooray, the gooseberries are getting nice and leafy!

HA, the retro title sequence for last night's #Fringe was great!

It all comes out finally!

Despite the fact that today's installment of the awesomely funny and smart Dinosaur Comics is an April Fool's gag it confirms what I've been suspecting was a damn lie all these many years.