Damn. I could probably fit the best of my porn collection on one of these... Wouldn't that be neat?

Happy Birthday, Muad'Dib!!!!

Some people are damned unlucky... And then there's the Bagleys... LOL

Mother Gaia is generating defenses against us, having grown weary of our repeated insults. SARS is but the latest...

Humanity as a species is doomed. The evolutionary record shows a linear progress, mostly, with a few quantum leaps here and there, where lifeforms grow more complex, more specialized and more efficient as time goes by. This was made possible because Darwin's Law prevailed. Survival of the fittest. If you weren't as good as most of your brethren, if not better, chances are you wouldn't get the opportunity to reproduce. If you didn't reproduce, then you couldn't pass on the substandard characteristics to your offspring. Therefore, the next generation had been culled of most of those traits that were detrimental to survival, making that generation that much better than the prior one. On occasion, the environment suffered a change so severe that great leaps would become necessary within the space of a few generations if the species were to survive. Of course, what survived was often not the same species that started out, but instead a new, more efficient one. More efficient in the sense that it was better suited to the new conditions.

Humanity has done away with Darwin's Law. The substandard are as likely to reproduce as the fittest. More likely, in fact, since they outnumber the rest of us by several orders of magnitude. Ever wonder why people seem to be so much more stupid nowadays than before? Ever wonder why so many idiots get elected to Congress, and even get to the White House? Sooner or later, intelligence will be totally bred out of the human race and what will pass for humanity then will soon die off, being incapable of sustaining the necessary processes that keep modern civilization running.

Either that, or the intelligent minority will have to put a stop to the dullards' current reign as leaders and policy makers. I have ideas regarding how to keep them from reproducing, but I will share those only with my core team, when the time comes. Where is Magneto now that we have a need for him?

I attended the most fascinating pair of lectures by one Tony Grafton from Princeton U. The lectures were actually at UPENN, but that's mere logistics. Prof. Grafton is a scholar of scholars. That is, he studies scholars and their works. This particular set of lectures were on Trithemius and his work. The first one being mainly about his contributions to bibliography and historical knowledge (where it's more or less accepted that he was a fraud and a forger). Yesterday's was on Trithemius as a magus. I wonder if Prof. Grafton noticed he had at least one very real necromancer in his audience. I say at least because there were as many as 5 other unsavory looking types in the auditorium, and it being a small venue, I had the chance to unobtrusively look everyone over. True, I was scanning for chicks, but I couldn't help but notice everyone else at the same time.

During the Reception after the Lecture, where a more or less palatable wine was presented along with some passable food, I had the chance to converse for a few minutes with Prof. Grafton. It turns out he will be publishing a history of magic by Fall of this year. I am anxiously awaiting its publication, or dare I hope? Finding it in the freebie cubicle here at work a few months prior to its publication.

My employer got caught earlier this week with their collective butts in the cookie jar, to paraphrase the saying. Normally I'd carry the hope that people would learn from their errors, and emerge improved, to boldly stride into the future. Not this lot, though. The company will sooner or later implode through their own assfirstedness. What they did was so hilarious and so stupid that I wish I could write about it. It didn't happen at my customer, of course, as I am as vigilant in seeing that my employer doesn't screw me as I am in taking care the customer doesn't beat them to it. Unfortunately, others are not as wary as I am, or have bigger territories to look over, as happened with the case in question.

12 hours later, I'm still chortling.

Back when my eldest daughter was 4 or 5 years old she fell ill. One of those weird fevers that most children get at some point or another, and which skyrockets their temperature to really dangerous levels. For whatever reason, this invariably happens at 2am in the morning, as any parent will be able to confirm. I rushed her to the ER where they quickly looked her over, agreed with my evaluation, and decided they were going to give her a shot of something to reduce the fever. If that didn't work quickly, they'd leave her for the night, under observation. Now, my eldest daughter doesn't scare easy, but there was one thing that terrified her at the time. Needles. Once she saw she was going to get an injection, she went into panic mode. I took advantage of the fact that she was half delirious and promised her that when the time came, I'd cover her ass with my hand, and fool the doctor into injecting me in the hand instead of her in the butt. She immediately calmed down, turned over and waited it out.

When the doctor came over, I pulled down my girl's pants and placed my hand on one of her butt-cheeks. The doctor readied the syringe and plunged it home, on the other butt-cheek, of course. You should've heard that child scream. I knew the place was empty except for the nightman, the nurse and the doctor, so I figured what the Hell. I started screaming, too, as if a horde of angels were dragging me up to Heaven. Once the syringe had been pulled out, I explained to my baby girl that the doctor had, in fact, fallen for our trick and stuck the syringe in my hand. Unfortunately, the needle being longer than my hand was thick, it had gone clean through, continued into her ass, and injected her with the medicine. She then spent 10 minutes consoling me and forgot all about her injection.

The punchline of the whole thing is that when we walked out we found out that 3 more kids plus parents had been brought in and were in the ER Waiting Room. One kid was unconscious, so he doesn't count, but the other two, they were actively trying to escape from their parents' embrace and rush out the door. My screams can be pretty bloodcurdling when I try... LMAO

I went hiking yesterday. The most astonishing grouping of waterfalls on a tributary of the Delaware River. Not too many people there yesterday, and while you're expected to pay 8 bucks to get in, it's ridiculously easy to just sneak in from downstream. I wasn't trying to sneak in, I sort of lucked into it while engaged in honest hiking on public land. True, I did see the signs saying it was private property, and that the way in was elsewhere, but then again, I don't believe in ownership of land, unless I own it, of course. Some nice college girls who were also hiking fed me, too. And I was invited to a party afterwards. All in all, nice weekend. To make up for having snuck in, I did exit through the appropriate gate. I will post pics as soon as I develop the roll of film. The whole area is so peaceful and well maintained that it would have been worth the $8 to get in.

Best of all, the whole thing is closed at night, and there's a perfect place for arcane rituals.

I've been following the Laci Peterson thing since she disappeared on Xmas. I always did sort of think that the husband offed her. Which is still not a sure thing, but it's starting to look that way. My main interest back then was because she more or less conformed to my type of chick (Yeah, I know, now that she's dead, we can take the more or less off of that prior clause LOL). Anyway, I enjoyed looking at her pics. She looked sweet as cottoncandy, too. I just have to wonder, having been involved with my own share of psycho bitches from Hell in the past, if her looks were as deceptive as some of the ones I managed to attract. Something must have driven the dude (if he's guilty) to off her. The whole "he was having an affair" thing isn't enough of a motive, either. That's a motive for dumping her, not offing her (I'm famous for dumping, but I've never been motivated to do more than toy with the idea of doing away with one). What did she do that made him (if he's guilty) plan and execute the murder and decapitation of his sweet-piece-of-ass wife, along with his unborn child?

Can't wait for the LIFE channel or whatever to come out with the made-for-TV version...

It is sadly indicative of the world's (lack of) culture these days, that I was able to buy, new, a book at Walden-books covering Rodin's life and works. This book is a hardcover, in coffee table format, with fantastically large and high quality color plates of dozens of his most famous sculptures. The price? $5.99. There were higher priced comic books on display. And they were selling better than the Master's book, too.

I have to admit, I was initially drawn in by the Marvel Encyclopedia: X-Men ($24.99), which I will buy, only at a much lower price, later, so I'm not knocking comics. But I do feel that people should be at least as knowledgable regarding acknowledged masterpieces as they are on the origins and adventures of fictitious anti-heroes.

I love Easter. Jesus is technically dead, for one. And then there's the whole excitement on Sunday. The hunt for the eggs... The overeating of chocolates, peeps and jelly beans... And the main show, watching Jesus come out of his cave, and knowing that if the little guy sees his shadow, it'll be 3 more weeks of Winter!

I have a date with the Maiden, at long last. July 30th... Can't wait...

Only the better casinos in Vegas have these....

Coming soon! A new post!

Happy Birthday, little one... Of all my children, you are the one whose mind and essence are most similar to mine. I look forward to to watching you grow, and caring for you, as you once did for me. Daddy loves...

Walpurgisnacht looming on the horizon... My life runs in cycles, some of them large, others small. Where I interact with other events or people whose cycles revolve in such a way that they complement mine, much as 2 interlocking gears work, magical things are wont to happen. Advances and progress for both occur. The outcome is a synergistic product way beyond the sum of what each of us might have achieved on our own. If there be many of us in such a complementary relationship, evolutionary leaps are a common result. That hasn't happened in quite a while, but sooner or later it will, it's all part of the Grand Cycle.

On the other hand, when I interact with events or people whose cycles run counter to my own, chaos ensues. As with my earlier machinery analogy, friction escalates, materials strain and stress to the breaking point, and something gives. It's not pretty.

Anyway, Walpurgisnacht is one of my complementary cycles, it strengthens me, and I always look forward to it. This will be my first one in my new territory, so it will also allow me to consolidate some of the local power wells, tie them to me so as to be able to make use of them at will, instead of having to invest time in rituals and ceremony. Think of me as a battery. On Walpurgisnacht, I recharge...

Gods, I love pissing people off... Definitely becoming my life mission. And when it actually serves a useful purpose beyond amusing me, much the better.

I was called at 2 in the frigging morning by the Helpdesk analyst assigned to the account I manage. Part of our contract with our customer, and most every other customer the company has, is to have a 24 x 7 helpline manned by one or more humans for reporting problems affecting critical systems and to serve as a point of coordination for all the activities involved in getting the impacted systems back into a normal state. Now, having my cellphone start bleeping at 2am is not cool. Luckily, the cemetery I was visiting does not have a night custodian, but the cops are prone to doing hourly patrols in the general vicinity. I answered before it had finished the first ring. I set my back against a headstone, and admitted I had answered.

Heldpdesk Dude: Nicholas, we have router 5 in Norwich showing up as down. ISDN kicked in automatically, so there's connectivity, but Frame Relay is completely down. I have John on the line from Network Engineering and Eric from the Netowrk Monitoring Center.
John: Hey, Nick. I can't reach the router at all, so we need someone to go into Norwich and take a look at it.
Me: Helpdesk Dude, have you paged the on-call Network Engineer in Norwich?
Helpdesk Dude: Yes, we've paged Kevin twice, but he hasn't answered.
Me: That's typical. I have yet to see Kevin answer a page. Eric, what time did the router go down?
Eric: Around 12:30 am, Nick.
Me: Helpdesk Dude, call Kevin's manager, Tom, on his home phone, and conference him in. I need someone to go into Norwich now, and I'm tired of that group's lack of response whenever we have an issue.
Helpdesk Dude: Uh, shouldn't I follow procedure? I'm supposed to page again, and then start paging the secondary on-call tech.
Me: Why do you want to keep paging? They're not answering their pages.
Helpdesk Dude: Yeah, but the procedure says that...
Me: Look, man, I'm the IT Manager on the account. I'm telling you to call Tom now.
Helpdesk Dude: Okay, but I'll have to make a note in my log about it.
Eric: Hey! I'll call him! I don't care about the procedure.
Me: Great. Do it. I appreciate having someone smart here.
Helpdesk Dude: You don't have to insult me.
Me: I'm not insulting you. I'm praising Eric.
Everyone except Helpdesk Dude: *laughter*

2 minutes later an extremely pissed off senior manager of Network Engineering was on the line. I explained how tired I was of having his people completely ignore pages during off-hours, and my expectation that on-call people would actually call back promptly instead of forcing me to escalate. There are few things as sweet as waking up someone who is above you on the corporate ladder at 2am and then proceeding to chew him out. Tom said he'd contact Kevin himself and ask him to call into the bridge we were on. He then dropped off to do that. It was obvious to everyone that if he could've killed me right then and there, he wouldn't have hesitated.

I commented that the Helpdesk's procedure of page-wait-page-wait-page_someone_else-wait-rinse-repeat sucked, and that I much preferred my procedure of getting one really pissed upper level manager on the line at 2am and then things started happening quickly. As if to prove my point, at that instant, Kevin joined and Tom rejoined the bridge. It seemed that Tom had managed to contact his wayward on-call tech. 15 minutes later, Kevin was in Norwich and manually recycled the router, fixing the problem.

I was finally allowed to return to my interrupted activities at the cemetery. It's tough, being a necromantic IT Manager. On the upside, I managed to royally piss off both the Helpdesk Dude and Tom, the Senior Network Engineering Manager for all the customers serviced out of Norwich. I'll write all that up into a formal complaint and send it along to my manager, Tom's manager, and all my peers in the region on Monday morning. Nothing like keeping people on their toes...

I have long held that here in the US we sometimes go overboard on the whole handicapped and disabled accessibility and benefits laws. True, it sucks to be handicapped and/or disabled, but you can take a good thing too far. Like the totally moronic legislation that forces drive-thru ATMs to have braille on the keys. Cause of all the frigging blind people we have driving cars, right? Here in the office we also have a slew of handicapped parking spaces. In the ten months I've been here, I have yet to see a single one being used, much less the dozen or so that are available. So here I was, blissfully thinking how stupid the US has become, and then I see this little news item. Trust the Swiss to put a whole new spin on stupid.

Sometime last week I went to the DMV office nearest me. I moved last year from North Carolina to Pennsylvania, and Lola, the necromobile, still had NC plates (mental note, mail the plate back to NC instead of keeping it in Lola's trunk (mental note note, keeping something in Lola's trunk sounds kinky)). You're supposed to get local plates within 60 days of moving in. Of course, I've always considered such rules to be for lesser men, so I ignored the whole thing till now. So, I finally got around, almost a full year after moving in, to getting the car registration transfered and new plates assigned. Fiendishly simple process. Fill out a form, pay a small amount of money, and you're done. I even chose a nice, eco-friendly plate which cost more but is better looking than the blank, impersonal, standard ones. And besides, the incongruity of my car having eco-friendly, cute, furry animal on the plate plates was impossible to resist. So my car now has PA plates (see below for the ecoplate I chose). But that wasn't the story.



While at the DMV, after taking a number and sitting down in the uncomfortable folding chairs they have in the waiting room, I settled back to my usual sport in such situations, scanning babes. One walked in, a nice, latina-looking chick. Big boobs, cute-but-not-unbearably-pretty face and looked to be easygoing... Emphasis on easy... I continued scanning downwards... About 8 months pregnant if I'm any judge... I can actually get pretty turned on with pregnant chicks... I'm a kid at heart... Got Milk? She was wearing very low riding blue jeans, in deference to her huge belly. I memorized her and continued scanning. Right. That wasn't the story, either...

Here's the story. She came in with a friend, and the friend was very slutty looking. I ignored her immediately. I like a little bit of ghetto in a girl, not the whole Bronx. When they got their number and sat down, they did so two rows of seats in front of me. When pregnant-babe sat down, her already low riding jeans rode away into the sunset, so to speak. She bared her ass completely, to the joy of every male in the area, and to the utter disgust of one particularly ugly chick in the row behind me. It seems that seeing an ass that was so much better than her sorry excuse for one was an insult not to be borne. Her comments were funny, though... Who knew such vitriol could spew out at a moment's notice. She voiced all that under her breath, of course, but I could hear. Her soundtrack didn't detract one bit from the panorama in front of me... I loved the panties pregnant-babe was wearing... Something like this... I really must get a camera and start carrying it.

I've been so wrapped up in the ongoing match between Georgie and Saddam that I've been overlooking other topics which are as amusing as that hissyfit.

The other night I stopped to get gas. I always do this in Pennsylvania, since among the many stupid, little annoyances to be found in the Commonwealth of New Jersey is that all gas stations are full service. That doesn't mean it comes with a blow job. It means that they have someone who doesn't speak a shred of English and who would otherwise be an indigent standing beside the pump. The purpose of this individual is to take your credit card and operate the pump in such a way that the gasoline is poured into your gas tank. For this, no mean feat due to the innate abilities of this creature, you are charged a few cents more per gallon to cover his salary. I therefore never buy gas in NJ. In Pennsylvania most pumps are self-service, and gas is cheaper anyway, so it's a no brainer.

Anyway... I put my card in the pump's reader and while waiting for it to scan and authorize, I noticed a photograph lying on top of the pump. A luscious, big (I hate teensy 5 foot women), large breasted and naughty looking blonde in her mid-20s. Not used to finding any sort of photographs atop pumps, I turned it over:

"Girlfriends wanted! Call XXX-XXX-6006. Wanted Hot Bi Girl!!! Please call."

Damn. I'm hot, but I'm not bi, and I'm definitely not a girl (really, I just checked again, to be sure). Guess that rules me out. Anyone out there interested, email me and I'll send the complete phone number, and I'll probably scan the pic for you, too.

Bush and his prison bitch (Tony Blair for those of you unfamiliar with Americanisms) have stated that the UN will have a 'vital role' in post-war Iraq. I guess bending over and grabbing your ankles could be considered a vital role... Depends on whose viewpoint you use...

I'm not even going to continue keeping track of how many journalists die. Someone let me know if we run out of them, okay?

Gods above and below, I do like snow... Makes me feel oddly vibrant and empowered. I never expected to see more snow around here until Winter rolled around again, so looking at what's forecast to be 12 inches of snow coming down is awesome!!! Now I'll go out and enjoy it... See you all soon...

And another journalist dead! This one simply up and died at some point, without any apparent injuries. Weird... Maybe Saddam "Muad'Dib" Hussein has enlisted Djinn against the coalition troops?

I hear a journalist was killed in Iraq... I wonder if they'd been advised that in this particular Reality Show, when they're voted off, it's for keeps.

I was going to post this yesterday but forgot. I had CNN on as background noise on Tuesday night, so I witnessed Dorf Blitzen (or whatever his name is) reporting live that a female POW had been rescued by American forces. I immediately knew which one it was. With the whole war being treated as the latest in a series of Reality Shows that the dimwitted majority of our population has placed at the top of the ratings for at least 4 seasons now, it was a cinch to know that it had to be the cute, wholesome, blond, sweet piece of ass POW. The producers (and the voting audience, hence the troops, as well) weren't going to waste time on any non-photogenic female POW, right?

What's the insider name for this reality show, huh? Should it be Joe Dictator? And should Saved by America be a segment on it dedicated to rescuing the hot POWs, or is that a spinoff show, like the many that Survivor has spawned?

Had a recent offline chat with a friend. You know, one of those where you're IMing each other back and forth, but always with only one person online. I post at her, then I leave to do some work related nonsense, and when I come back I find she's responded but has, in turn, left to do something. Then I respond, and leave... You get the picture. Anyway, a comment she made reminded me of something that happened years and years ago, on another continent.

I was walking down a street, minding my own business. And this was a pretty much deserted street, and not in any particularly good part of town, either. The town had (and still has) a pretty large population of homeless people, all dirty as sin and many of them not quite right in the head. Someone was walking towards me, which I noticed when the person was still a block or so away. I noticed because, as I mentioned, it was a seedy part of town, and there were practically no people around. In other words, perfect place for someone to attempt an ambush with robbery as the motive. I'm more alert than usual in those cases, so as to get a head start on any necessary mayhem.

As she got closer, it became apparent that it was a she, for one, and also that she was homeless. She was wearing some sort of a sheet wrapped around her hips and almost reaching the ground, a makeshift skirt of sorts. Her torso was covered by what looked to be a shawl. The exposed skin was as grimy as you might expect. As she neared ever closer, I could see that her features were quite comely, which was rare. Most homeless people there looked like something out of an old horror movie. I could tell that her face, if the grime were to be removed, would be quite pretty if not beautiful. When she was 20 feet away from me, I stopped to light a cigarette, unobtrusively checking behind me to see if anyone was moving in. No one was.

As I prepared to continue walking, she stopped right in front of me. She looked me straight into the eyes, and smiled as if we were old friends. She spread her arms wide, pulling apart the shawl, showing that she had nothing underneath. Or rather, she did have something. The most gorgeous pair I had ever seen. Then she asked me whether she looked nice, and if her hair (on her head, for those of you with nasty, evil minds) was okay. As she spoke, I noticed that she was missing her front teeth, which was a shame. Also, her speech was cultured, not the street slur and slang I would have expected. Barring the lack of teeth, and overlooking the grime, she was a handsome specimen of feminine beauty. As I wondered how she had come to the sad state in which she found herself, I cavalierly replied that she looked perfectly wonderful. She covered her torso anew, thanked me, practically curtsied, then continued along her way. As did I.

To this date, I still wonder where she came from, and what became of her.