I swear, I'll never understand what benefits people get out of being clueless, but damned if they don't seem to enjoy it...

Today is the most important holiday in the Satanic Calendar... All hail!

Doing a retrospective of the year since I last celebrated this holiday, it's been fun. Can't say I'm overjoyed with it all, but several great things have happened, and a prophecy was fulfilled. Overall, a good one...

Many times in my life I have seen a business and immediately slapped my head, going, "Why didn't I think of this first???"

This retouching service elicited just that response from me today.

I find it highly evil and horrifying that Angelfire has decided to put up an ad for a Cher concert on my webpage, of all places. Oh, the humanity...

Here's an interesting questionnaire, designed to gauge one's rational consistency as regards matters of faith (or lack thereof). I achieved what the site deems a second place, first place being 100% rational and consistent. In other words, and to use the site's parlance, I took one direct hit and bit one bullet.

My 16 year old son travelled yesterday to Argentina to play against two of the top ranking soccer teams there, Boca Juniors and River Plate. His dream for quite a while had been to do that. I am happy I got to make that dream of his come true. At his age, my dream was to kill people, in as artistic a fashion as possible. Don't you just love it when everyone's dreams come true?

I love it when the customer tries to be sneaky. That way I can catch them with their collective asses* in the cookie jar. If only making them look like idiots weren't so easy...

*Yes, asses. They are not too hygienic when it comes to eating cookies.

First snow of the season. Earlier than last year by almost a week. Looking good...

What with part of the work going away here, plus the general animosity between my group and the customer, I think my time here is winding down. I'm going to miss the free books and movies and such, but on the other hand, I have years of material at home from what I've taken so far, so it should be a long time before I'm hurting for something to read/watch that is new to me.

Regarding the job, I figure I'm relatively safe till January '04, and I've got feelers out there, hunting for another position within this dumb company, as well as without. Hopefully it'll be the latter, but beggars can't be choosers. I'm not too worried, yet. I also have some alternate plans sitting on the back burner, just in case. I'm not too confident about any of them on their own, but if I combine a couple of them, I shouldn't be too bad off till something better comes along.

Stupid cat went and had kittens while I was out!!!! Goddamn!!! All 3 of them plus the mother and the father, okay. Pics soon...

Got my first training as a fireman today, plus my firefighting gear and pager. Shiva being one of my patron deities, I was very pleased with tonight's drill. We got to tear a car apart with a couple of delightful power tools, one a gargantuan pair of shears and the other, the better known 'jaws of life', which is great at tearing things to pieces. I could have used those back when I ran with a gang...

Strolling through town, I couldn't help but notice it... It's different from all the other churches.

I can imagine it's publicity...

At the start, Jesus produced amazing and undeniable miracles! But even He did not know how He produced them! But then He graduated, and He at last understood... Please... Join us...

The First Church of Christ, Scientist.

All sorts of situations coming to a head, some of them in hilarious ways, too. It is fun to be me...

It never ceases to amaze me, despite the fact that it happens to me continuously, that people who have exited the stage that is my life remain forever convinced that I still give a damn about what they're up to. Months, even years after last seeing someone I am contacted by them, who then accuse me of looking into their affairs, or sabotaging their plans or some similar fantasy. Amusing, but tiresome.

Today a cheap squeeze emailed me asking that I cease reading her blog, and that she was trying to erase every trace of me in her life, and that I please do likewise. Hilarious to the extreme, especially taking into account that I coined the term she uses as her url.

Get over yourselves, people!

Wow. I was really prolific here yesterday, wasn't I?

Who needs terrorists? We are our own worst enemies...

One of the Staten Island Ferries crashed into the pier today. The pilot was, according to police suspicions aired on the radio, either drunk as a sailor or stoned out of his mind. And also attempted to commit suicide shortly after he fled the scene. If all that was made up it wouldn't surprise me at all. I think it's more likely that plain, old, garden variety stupidity was to blame.

I am doing some very weird things lately, I wonder where it will all end. As of today, I've just been notified, I am a fireman. Will be assigned firefighting gear on Monday, and start receiving training soon.

I've been looking at the whole Kobe Bryant thing. The rape scenario just doesn't ring true to me. Barring whacko nutjobs like Tyson, I just don't see a celebrity, who can usually have his pick of willing ass, be so stupid as to decide he just has to have the one piece of tail that's saying no. Now the defense is saying they have compelling evidence surrounding the tail's history of sexcapades. Should make for fun reading once they release it for public consumption.

That plan I set in motion some weeks back is seriously starting to piss a lot of people off. I'm getting calls from people I thought had forgotten I even existed. A pity that in the short term some of the few people I really care about are going to suffer. I am convinced it's for the best, though, in the long term. For both them and me. Funny thing is, most of the people who have contacted me so far agree with my position (not that I'd care if they didn't) but urge me to reconsider having a showdown now. To give the whole thing one final chance. I don't play that way. The final chance was last time. I am like Bush, albeit nowhere near as benighted. Once I adopt a stance, come hell or high water, I am committed to it.

This website is great. It is a web-enabled phyla tree with a user-friendly interface. One can waste hours upon hours there... Sheer awesomeness...

The Most Important Person who has emailed me today: Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia.

The Least Important Person who has emailed me today: The stupid idiot pretending to be Charles Taylor and who's trying to run the Nigerian Scam on me.

Someone has put up the actual footage of Roy (of Sigfried & Roy) being mauled by the tiger. It is so quick, poor guy never had a chance. If you are squeamish or faint of heart, do not open this link!!!

Actual Footage of Tiger Mauling.

I am (finally) starting to make some changes to the format here. Bear with me. Apologies for any inconvenience.

My upper management just outdid itself (collectively, it's a group). We've been doing this offshoring thing for a while, to which I am adamantly opposed*, and one person in particular was targeted early on because his salary was pretty high. Our contract with the customer does have a clause saying no one can be offshored without their approval. Many months ago the customer refused to grant approval for this individual because they consider him a key resource. So do I, for what it's worth, but my approval or lack thereof was never a factor.

Regardless of all that, the people in charge of the initiative just blithely went ahead and hired someone out in Malaysia, of all places, to replace the guy we told them could not be touched. So now we're stuck with paying the Malaysian guy's salary, plus the local guy's salary. And all this started out because they thought the local guy's salary was too high.

These people, collectively, have an IQ lower than George W. Bush's.

* I actually plan on writing a mini-article on the subject soon.

I seriously need to install an interdimensional nook and cranny system in my house. After a bit more than a year of having access to free books, movies and music, it's come to the point where it's becoming difficult to walk through the place. Someday soon I hope to find a Library gone out of business, or better yet, a Church, that I can lease or buy and convert into my public residence. And I have no idea how many books are in here now, but even if I did nothing but read it would easily take me 5 years to go through them all.

Of course, as luck (and Murphy) would have it, I have almost no free time left for reading nowadays. Even my kind cannot win 'em all, I guess...

When you've lived long enough, you naturallly gravitate towards a state of pessimism which I prefer to call being realistic. As I commented to my Finance Manager today, the advantage to having that mindset is that when I'm right, I'm never taken by surprise, and when I'm wrong it is always a pleasant experience. I might have been wrong. That lifted a weight off my shoulders. Not a sure thing yet, but it's looking that way.

I want to do some hunting later this year. I saw a passable shotgun and a pretty good deer rifle yesterday. Going to be buying those, most probably. I need to get some target range time set up, too. I haven't fired a gun in close to 3 years, and the time before that was probably 8 years ago. I recall I didn't embarrass myself when it came to hitting what I aimed at last time, so I expect to pick it up again without too much grief. And, of course, this time around, I don't expect my target to be shooting back, which always helps, in case you didn't know...

Klytus, I'm bored. What play thing can you offer me today?

For shame! Won't anybody stop these Catholic priests from buggering the children?!?!?!?



Please note that his other hand is nowhere to be seen...