Blowjobs

I recently bought a membership in something called BJ's. I am going to complain to the Better Business Bureau. The place does not offer blowjobs, so I consider it tantamount to false advertising for them to use such a name.

Still, they do have awesome food and at reasonable prices, so I won't cancel the membership just yet.

New Year

This has been a phenomenal year, all things considered. May 2005 be better. For me, I mean, although feeling generous right now I'm willing to extend that wish to everyone else so long as it doesn't detract even a tiny bit from how good it will be for me.

Bet that's the first Happy New Year's you've ever seen with a disclaimer tacked on.

Alien Culture

I've been harping now and then, on this blog and elsewhere, about the current war we're embroiled in being more a war between completely incompatible philosophies or ways of life, instead of being a war between countries, or even between us and the hazy group known as 'Terrorists'.

This point of view seems to be very difficult for Westerners to grasp, for some reason. Which in and of itself perplexes me since it's not the first time we've been involved in such a conflict. People still speak of trying to negotiate, and there being alternatives that don't involve all out war. Then again, I'm sure there were similar voices raised in protest during our war against the Axis. Hell, there's still a pretty sizable group that insists on denying the Holocaust even happened.

Anyway, I recently stumbled across a very interesting book, written by one Carmen Bin Laden, a non-Saudi ex-wife to one of Osama's brothers, Yeslam. In her book she chronicles her experiences from her first meeting with Yeslam in Switzerland, through their courtship, marriage and subsequent relocation to Saudi Arabia. The insider view she paints of Saudi Arabia's restrictive culture and their complete inability to understand any other way of life is very illuminating. Carmen, of course, writes her book from Switzerland, where she managed to flee with her daughters from a land where a woman belongs, literally, to her husband, father, brother or designated male keeper, and is not allowed to make a decision on her own. A land where a man may divorce a woman just by saying so 3 times in front of a witness, but where a woman cannot sue for divorce under almost any circumstances. A country founded on a radical brand of Islam called Wahabiism, which is growing more radical by the day as the Saudi rulers try to save their asses, and which explains perfectly where Osama is coming from.

I seriously recommend everyone make the effort of reading Carmen's book. If you can't or won't buy it, try to get it at your local library. The title of the book is Inside the Kingdom : My Life in Saudi Arabia. I guarantee it'll be a fascinating read.

Happy Idiots Day!!!

Dang, almost forgot... Feliz Día de los Inocentes!!!

Sushi

Going to try my hand at making some tonight. I think I have all the necessary ingredients^*, equipment and instructions. If I don't, I'm sure I'll still enjoy eating the result.

^*Except for sushi vinegar, but I'll buy that on my way home.

Merry Xmas Redux

There was a time when I fell deathly ill every Xmas. I'd recover a few days after, none the worse for wear. I used to attribute it to the increased Christian sentiment during that holiday. I've mentioned this before, too, I know. Just confirming that yet another year has gone by without the Xmas Malaise.

A pity Southeast Asia can't say the same.

Happy Holidays!

May you all have a Happy Winter-Solstice-Festival-as-co-opted-by-the-Christian-Church-to-further-it's-own-nefarious-purposes!

Invasion

My house has been invaded, ever so slowly, over the past 3 years. It's been so gradual a thing, that I really hadn't given it too much thought, despite my having been the prime vehicle for said invasion.

I speak, of course, of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of free books, movies, and audio products I've collected since working on this account. One of the perks here, as I've mentioned before, is that they constantly place review copies, and the odd final version, of some of the thousands of products sold through us in a spot known to all as The Freebie Cube.

While I have grown a lot more selective since my first days here, when I used to just grab any book or object that I thought I might conceivably read at some point from here to the end of eternity, I still frequently find a lot of must have items.

I'm going to fight back. I'm going to take back my home from the encroaching hordes of books, movies and audio. I plan on taking a day off, and putting it in as sick leave, and just spend the day separating the items into 4 piles, like so:

* Trash: This will include all items that I definitely don't have a use for, nor can I think of anyone who might want them. I'm sure it'll be a humongous pile before I'm done, since I sort of went overboard at the start, exactly like a kid let loose in a toy store with unlimited money. These I'll probably post in Freecycle and hopefully someone will take them, if not, the dumpster will be their destination.

* Semi-trash: This will also be a huge pile of stuff, composed of items I don't want, but which I'm sure would be of interest to one friend, acquaintance, colleague or other. However, if they don't take ownership of them soon after, I will put them in the first pile.

* Keepers: A significant portion of them will probably fall in this category. This'll be items that I definitely want to keep as part of my permanent library, but which I don't need at hand right now. I'll take the time to box them, and jot down the contents of each box in a database. I'll then go to one of those self-storage places and rent space. When I finally get around to buying another Necromansion, I'll have a roper library and recover these from storage. Right now, I just don't have the space.

* Criticals: I hope this will be a manageable pile. It'll be composed of those items that I really want to read, view or listen to in the near future, or which I just have to have handy for reference or sentimental reasons. To give you an idea of sentimental reasons, I'd put my copy of the Liber al vel Legis there. Even though I have it committed to memory, I still like to know it's close. Some of the unread criticals could migrate to other categories once I've read them or decided I definitely won't, but that's in the future.

I'm sure I'll be able to actually navigate the house again without climbing over stuff once I've concluded this. I may even designate one of the more cluttered areas as a ballroom afterwards, just to give you an idea of how much space is being taken up my this stuff now.

I know... I'm pissing of almost every bibliophile, cineophile and audiophile in the universe who has never had enough money to get everything he or she wants, and probably never will. Tough noogies. :)

Devolution

It is amazing what a little belief can buy, especially when that belief is sincere and pure. The ancient writings speak of this, but few realize it's another case of putting the cart before the horse.

Most started out as Fertility Gods, of course, since deities must need be in accord with their worshippers. As such, the powers granted the Gods by their creators were immense. Talk about fucking up a storm! Unfortunately, all this power came with the job, and there was never any innate knowledge of how to use it, generate it or even how the whole thing worked. Many fertility deities, once belief in them waned either through time or through the conquest of their believers by other tribes, were hard pressed to give a drunken barmaid a proper orgasm, since they didn't understand the mechanics of the whole thing. All they knew is that before they had but to manifest, and glorious things happened.

Some few, though, even before the waning of their powers, set aside some time from the regular debauchery and put in the effort required to understand sex. If one is to be a deity, they understood, then better to be one not so dependent upon his or her worshippers.

As time went by, many of these fertility deities were transformed by their believers into war deities. Watching one of these fight was sheer bliss, but again, most times the deity wasn't conscious of how he was fighting. When their power in turn waned, most hadn't a clue on how to grip a sword, much less use one effectively. Yet a very few had taught some of their better worshippers the proper techniques, by example, and these worshippers in turn taught others, and also wrote down many of the techniques so they would not be lost. Many a fallen deity humbled himself and went to study with the descendants of his original worshippers, simply in order to learn the ways of war. Most of these incidents happened in Yamato, and their legends are rife with gods, demons and goblins teaching war skills to the people. They don't mention the opposite, the gods learning from the mortals, but this, too, happened many a time.

It is well known among certain circles that all surviving deities, weakened though they may be, belong to that group which I described above, those who put in the effort required to grasp how their powers worked. Greatly weakened, almost mortal, but survive they did, on the basis of their powers which no longer depended on mortal beliefs.

There was no further transformation of deities. The next attempt at defining gods came in the form of monotheism, with its corollary of omnipotence. The very idea of a single and omnipotent god is so ridiculous, especially at the inner level of psyche which is capable of empowering Godhead, that even though many professed belief, the God in question never manifested in this reality. For which thanks be given to whatever aspect of Fate saved us from the possibility. Can you imagine an omnipotent deity? Such a one would have destroyed mankind almost instantly. Foolish mortals, to dream up such a one and still believe that it might be a good thing.

On a happier note, some of the deities that have suffered from the weakening have been gaining in innate power once more. I think mortals are returning to their core beliefs, upon being disillusioned by organized religions.

On that note, let us pray...

Kali... Kali... Kali...!

Serves Me Right

My company had the most assbackwards way of making purchases ever invented until then by mankind. It started off as a way to control spending initiated by people in the field, and as such, was probably a good idea. A lot of account folks would order whatever the hell they thought they needed, without stopping to think if it was necessary, or if they had the budget for it, or even if it was the most cost effective thing they could do.

So what my company did was devise an Excel spreadsheet format where you had to fill in the nature of the purchase, which budget it would hit, why it was necessary, what the depreciation would be and a slew of other facts that together would, hopefully, allow the approvers to gauge whether it was convenient for the corporation or not. Also, there had to be at least 5 different levels of approval, which guaranteed that when the bills came due, no one would be surprised as they'd all had to sign off on it when it was in the requisition stage.

So far so good, right? Well, the problem was that making a purchase now took upwards of a month, and that if you were lucky. Good enough when you're talking about capital purchases on the company's nickel which were part of a planned expansion, but completely useless when it was something required to offset a problem, or more commonly, something a client was requesting and which we were selling to them at a profit. Go and explain to your client why they should buy something from you, allowing you to make quick and easy money off the deal, when it would take them more than a month to actually receive the product, whereas they could walk out the door, head to CompUSA or its equivalent, and just pick it off the shelf and attain instant gratification.

Most of my purchases have been of that latter sort. In other words, something I'm buying solely because my client asks for it and said client has the money in his hand to pay for it. As a result, I've spent the past 3 years complaining about how asinine the process was, and how all it did was cripple me and stop me from making easy money for the company. Many times, to avoid the grief, I'd just tell the client, off the record, to go buy it themselves. And all this while my company's supposedly trying to get every possible cent of profit it can.

Well, my company finally listened to me (and everyone else who has complained about the same thing) and rolled out our new online Purchasing system. Suffice it to say that the old, bureaucratic, slow and tedious process looks like greased lightning in comparison. We've been trying for 5 days to get an order into this system, and it always crashes at some point due to the lack of some key piece of accounting nonsense which no one saw fit to communicate to us. And as soon as we ferret out the particular code that's causing it to tank and advance to the next step, it'll do the same thing for some other datum it apparently needs.

If I didn't know better I'd be convinced that our executive leaders want to go into bankruptcy. As of now I will no longer accept any purchase orders from my clients. It's become impossible for me to deliver, plus it wastes my time and makes me look bad in front of the client. No one in their right mind, not even my terminally inbred customer, would ever believe that my company deliberately or by happy chance is sabotaging my every attempt to sell something to them at a profit.

Welcome to Corporate America in the 21st Century.

Time Off

I am going to take some time off pretty soon. I am going to dedicate it to perfecting my grasp of certain arts. I've also been getting a little soft around the middle, despite my more-active-than-before lifestyle these days.

Upon rereading the prior paragraph, and having the advantage of knowing exactly what I mean, I am starting to realize that I'll probably need some time off after that to recover from my time off. LOL

Xmas party this weekend, at the Firehouse, which I'm looking forward to. Also invited to dinner on the same night by some friends in NYC, and I'm looking forward to that, too. Yes, I realize I can't go to both, but did make the gaffe of accepting both invitations by mistake. Haven't decided which one to bail out of yet.

Murphy's Frigging Day

Today just goes to prove that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. I really wish I could share here the unholy mess my employer made today. They screwed up hundreds of our customers, all due to a single event that could have been easily prevented. The loss of credibility, and the penalties sure to be assessed will be in the millions.

I feel unclean sometimes, just by working for this company. What pisses me off the most is that you can make a case that I am stupid, dishonest and incompetent simply by association with these buffoons.

Japanese

I respect and admire the Japanese, and their culture, very much so. I am, in fact, and have been for a long time, a dedicated student of all things Japanese, especially their arts of war, language, art and cuisine. But every now and then I have to admit to myself that the Japanese can be effortlessly weirder than any other people. As evidence I offer the lap pillow.

Earthsea

I have to say that SciFi Channel's version of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea novels was pretty much a load of crap. Honestly, I'll never understand why the hell people can't stick to the original plot when making one of these movie adaptations. I understand some changes may be necessary, due to the change of media, but to change critical aspects of an author's work seems plain perverse.

I was turned off from the start, on the first night, when I saw that they'd decided to switch Ged's true name and public name around, Gods know why. And from that point on, it just went from bad to worse, with a lot of bad acting and lame dialogues to further annoy me. In the whole 4 hours, probably the only memorable segment is when a dragon, forced to provide 3 answers to the wizard, tells him he only gets 2. "But isn't it supposed to be 3?", asks Ged. "True, but that question brings you back down to 2 again", replies the sneaky reptile.

Still, it had to be seen. I really enjoyed the original Earthsea trilogy books, especially the 1st and last members of it. I encountered them early on, when I was just starting to read Fantasy and SciFi, and I've always had a soft spot for them as a result. Earthsea, and The Word for World is Forest, are about the only 2 LeGuin works I like at all.

SciFi channel's adaptations have been getting suckier and suckier, for the most. Which is a shame, as they started off with a great Dune one, which really deserved a better followup than that lame Children of Dune monstrosity.

The only good thing they've done recently is Battlestar Galactica, which I really hope they don't completely screw up in January when they release the followup of it. Still, if they give us a nude Sackhoff this time around, it at least won't be a total waste of time.

Pandemonium

Last night, just when I was pulling into the driveway, the pager went off. Turned around immediately and drove to the firestation. Obviously, I was the first one there, since the alarm caught me already in my car. A few minutes later, I was joined by several other firefighters, enough to man an engine, and we asked for instructions. We were told to help shut down I-80 at the exit nearest us for an accident cleanup/investigation.

Turns out the accident was more than 5 miles away, and had quickly ballooned into a major foul up. After the initial accident, which had involved 3 cars, the drivers/passengers were (very stupidly) having a conversation in the middle of I-80, at dusk, with no lights on. The state trooper who got the call to go investigate/assist ended up ramming into one of the cars, killing the driver and passenger, and seriously hurting himself. But we weren't told all this last night, we were just told to close the frigging interstate, which we did. We love screwing up everyone's commute. I found out the details today, when I did a quick Google on the accident. Man, you should have seen how far backed up we had traffic. Probably reached halfway into Pennsylvania.

In other news, I am still assimilating my thoughts on Los Angeles, plus the job opportunity that's opening up for me there. Haven't made up my mind, either way, which probably means I'll procrastinate it to Hell and back and go with whatever seems best at the time I'm forced to make a decision. One thing about Los Angeles, though, they're really big on chili. They put that stuff on everything. Thankfully, I like chili.

The Christmas sales season is bringing record sale volumes to my main account, and, for a change, the system's are holding up nicely. Client's about as happy as I've ever seen them, which means they're just bitching twice a day, instead of twice an hour, but that's still a huge improvement.

My other account has been plagued by one moron at our Data Center who's either very accident-prone, or just braindead. Usually, the Data Center guys are great, so this one surprises me. Had a talk today with the guy's manager's manager, escalating the problem so they'd take care of it soonest. It's understood that one more screwup by this particular tech and he's history. I hate going to those extremes, but I don't see anything else I can do at this point.

I had a really good rodizio the other night with one of my former employees, and his wife. I was touched by her comments on what he thought of me as a manager, and how he'd been ready to quit when I came in and had quickly changed his mind on that once he got to see my work style. I really don't try to be a good people manager, but I do try to take care of the business, do what makes the most sense and most importantly, not be as assholey as some of the managers I've had the misfortune of having in this company. I have to admit that my current slate of managers isn't too bad, but I have had some doozies. Darth Diep, or Ho She Mean as a colleague called her, back when I first moved back to the U.S. in '01 was about the worst. I was rid of her in less than a half year, but it was sheer hell for a while. Stupid, clueless twit.

I have an uncle about ready to give up the ghost in NYC, and an aunt who is old and seriously attached to him already in panic mode, so most of my weekends have been in the city. I've had a lot on my plate what with my two accounts, plus the job opportunity, plus the personal shit, plus firefighting, plus sword practice and a ton of other shit. It's becoming less manic, though, so I hope to come back for good to this little corner of the web. Hope you've all been waiting with bated breath.

Not Dead

Seriously. I'm still here. Just terribly busy. I'll be back in top form within the week, and with reams of stuff to share. Tune in back then.

Back

I am back. No time to write a lot, but definitely back.

Hope you weren't all worried or something.

Turmoil

In a very short time I will meet with a group of people and fully expect to be offered something I won't be able to refuse. This will initiate a sequence of events, some of which are distasteful to me in extreme, but which nonetheless I'll have to follow through on.

At the same time it's sure to piss a lot of people off, alienate some I currently am close to, and bring joy to others who I scarcely know exist yet but which have, apparently, been following my progress.

Some of that brings glee to my heart, while other aspects of it sadden me. In particular, there are two doors I wish not to close at this time, but which I fear will end up closing anyway.