Okay, so we were staying at the house my father-in-law and his girlfriend share in PA, right outside Philly. As I said before, it's all nicely outfitted with various antiques and such. Well, dear old dad decides that he doesn't like the way this clock is hanging on the wall.
I had noticed the clock earlier, it was fairly hard not to. It had a giant face on it, probably 12 inches or more, with a huge pendulum hanging from it. I mean, the pendulum alone was a good four feet long; about four inches across at the top, widening down to a bulb at the bottom that was nearly as big as the clock face. The clockface had a metal box on the backside, that I assume held the various gears, that was probably 5 or 6 inches on each side. It looked quite odd hanging on the wall, because there was no housing or design to the clock itself. It consisted simply of these three components and absolutely nothing else.
Apparently, the G/F and her teenage son had hung it on the wall, and Father-In-Law decided he thought it looked like crap. I don't generally agree with anything he says, but he was right. It was held onto the wall by two screws at the top corners of the box behind the clock face; anchored into the plaster or concrete or whatever the walls were. It hadn't been tightened down, so the clock hung at a down-facing angle, which meant the pendulum wouldn't swing right. So here's this disgusting clock barely hanging on the wall, and it doesn't even work.
So he asks me for help. I was cornered, I had no excuses (I was on vacation), so I was enlisted into service. He wants to take the screws out, rework the anchors, and screw it back in; so I agreed to hold the monstrosity while he was doing that. This was a mistake. I didn't realize it; but picture this thing, it's all fucking brass, and it's hanging about six feet high. I stand under it and try to maintain it's position while he starts removing the screws. The weight isn't that bad, maybe 45 or 50 pounds.
A couple minutes later, he's got the screws out, and I'm the only thing supporting the clock. I'm beginning to second guess my estimate, maybe this bastard weighs 60. As I'm standing next to it, holding it about shoulder height, I realize the ultimate stupidity of what we're doing. This clock looks stupid because it's a fucking grandfather clock without the giant wood cabinet. No wonder it's all hanging off balance, grandfather clocks don't hang, they're perched inside the cabinet so that the pendulum swings from a level platform.
"Hey, um. This thing looks like a grandfather clock without the box."
"Yeah, that's exactly what it is." Father in Law says this with a bit of pride, and I realize that I'm dealing with a dumbass. This clock will never work right in it's current state.
"So...maybe what you should do is build a housing for it, so that it doesn't hang, so much as it's supported by a shelf or...I don't know, a cabinet?" I try not to let the sarcasm come through, but the clock assembly is beginning to feel very heavy. I start to get mad. I'm sitting here trying to 'fix' something that is 1)not going to work because 2)what we're doing is not going to solve the problem and 3)this fucking thing is ugly anyways. Not to mention it's 4) fucking heavy, which makes this stupid solution not even worth the effort. It will not improve functionality or appearance, it will simply return the clock to its currently Ridiculous Clock status. The solution here is to put the goddamned grandfather clock into a fucking grandfather cabinet like it's supposed to motherfucking be. Why in the fuck would you remove such a heavy peice of shit from a functional design, only to hang it on your wall so that it looks like shit and works like shit and might as well be a big fucking 60lb peice of brass shit hanging on your living room wall? SHIT!
I tell him to unscrew the pendulum from the clock body itself, because it's really heavy. He does that and it's so heavy he almost drops it on the ground. We set the two peices down on the couch and I try to explain to him without slapping him around and calling him names that we probably need a more functional solution. I'm actually very good at this, as I routinely find myself diplomatically telling people at work that their ideas are stupid and wrong. He wants to stick to the Two Stupid Fucking Screws Idea, and I decide I don't give a shit about this Ridiculous Clock anyways. It's just not worth it.
I hope that damn thing falls off the wall and crushes him while he's home alone some day; and he bleeds out. What a fucking Ridiculous Clock.
The Wife and I flew up to PA for a family wedding. Since we were up that way, we decided to stay with her father and his girlfriend, who share a home right outside of Philadelphia. Neither of us had ever been to Philly, so we figured this would be a good opportunity to see the sights.
The city itself is actually quite nice. Lots of famous landmarks and interesteing architecture. Oh, and they give away free shit for no reason. They just give it the hell away. I guess it's for product review or brand recognition, but they'll drop these huge crates on the street corner, and people will get in line to take whatever they're giving out. When we were there, it was those Handi-Vac vaccuum sealers and they were handing them out by the twos. I was like "Sweet! Now I don't have to buy a wedding gift!"
We drove out of the city to this place called West Goshen Township. Apparently, PA is a commonweatlh, which means they do some pretty odd things like call towns townships, and make access to alcohol about as clumsy as possible. You can't buy beer anywhere except a bar or a beer warehouse. And you have to go to state-run liquor stores for wine and the hard stuff. Whatever. So this town where the girlfriend lives is really upper crust. The schools are expensive and manor-like, with fenced in manicured pastures around them. I've never seen so many private schools in such a small town.
Her house is very nice. It's small, but it's been tastefully maintained and updated. You know, they kept the cool stuff (original doors, floors, etc) and updated things like ladnscaping, added an A/V setup in the basement and a hot tub on the patio. Well, one of the things that they decided to keep 'period' were the plumbing fixtures. Don't get me wrong, these still looked nice, but the reason plumbing fixtures have changed is because the old shit is just not very user friendly.
She made this great dinner, and I had two portions. Needless to say, after that much beef tips and rice, any normal person has a serious poop on deck. So I go upstairs to the bathroom and briefly survey the scene. Toilet paper? Check. Clean toilet? Check. Then I step closer. The hole at the bottom of the toilet bowl is about as big as the hole in the middle of a Lifesaver. This antique peice is not going to be able to handle the 21st-Century assault that is about to come charging out of my ass. I decide to hold off. We're only here for one more night, and if I can hold my poo for another 24 or 36 hours, then I'll be good.
Seriously, there wasn't even a plunger handy. I go back downstairs and sit on the patio with everyone else, but all I can think about is this Impossible Toilet. I mean, how do they take a shit int his house? There isn't a reasonably sized toilet? Do they shit outside? I guess, maybe. As The Wife and I are sitting in bed, I decide to consult with her.
"Babe, I seriously have to take a dump; and this woman's toilets are a joke."
"What are you, stupid?"
"Seriously. Go look at her toilets, and come back and tell me how I'm supposed to shit 7 pounds of beef and rice into that thing without some serious power tools." I shove her out of bed and make her go check this out. She comes back, get's into bed and says, "Dude, I don't know what to tell you."
Well shit. I thought she would actually have an idea. She says, "Maybe you should go a little, and do multiple flushes?"
This does not satisfy me. I can tell that what I have inside me is a giant log, and I won't be able to cleave it with my sphincter. It's just too massive, too solidly organized.
I wake up in the morning, and the urge to shit is so intense it carves a look of obvious discomfort on my face. The Wife sees me and tells me I need to go take a shit before I hurt myself. I figure if I go now while everyone's still asleep, at least I can clean up any overflow without anyone noticing. I decide that I have to do what I have to do, and hike off to meet my fate.
I make another more thorough plunger check that is completely fruitless. These people must have turds like robin's eggs. I decide that my only option is to try and break this giant dump into peices, so there I am: hovering over a toilet, looking down through my legs and hoping I don't end up shitting all down the back of the toilet. I am completely disgusted at the sight of shit coming out of my own ass, but I have no choice.
The first barrage comes out the bomb bay with such force that I push so hard to pinch it off that my knees buckle and I damn near end up falling over. I look down in the bowl and see that my dump is practically choking the worlds tiniest crapper. My shit is actually laughing at me.
I hit the flusher and watch as the toilet begins to work it's ass off. The bowl is filling, and the higher it gets the wider my eyes become. Oh Lord, my shit water is going to be coming through the floor into the room below isn't it? The bowl is now just over half full and rising, and I'm pretty sure at this point we'll be leaving a day early. This bitch is not going to want me in her house after I get my poo all over it. At three quarters full, I'm already hobbling around the bathroom with my pants around my ankles, grabbing towels off their racks in preparation for a shit flood of biblical proportions.
Then it happens. There is a deep thunking noise like a bass drum, and my shit disappears down the hole. Success! Sweet God yes! The weight of the water must have squished it through the head of the needle. I repeat this process several times over, probably flushing three or four payloads down the toilet. About thirty minutes later I come out of the bathroom and The Wife is laughing at me. "What were you doing in there? Beating a drum?"
That was ridiculous. Speaking of which, remind me to tell you about the Ridiculous Clock. These people were all about frustrating housewares.
Hello. What Shank doesn't know is that Jim (who originally blogged here and is now missing & presumed employed) gave six people rights to post here while he was on vacation -- let's call them The Snooze Crew™ -- and I was one of those six.
He never revoked that right. And now I see Shank has put out a request for co-bloggers, not knowing he already has some!
There's a lesson in there, somewhere.
So. I think I'm gonna post here every now and then, mostly because I think it'll annoy Shank. And maybe Jim, but I'm ready to take that risk. It's possible I'll see my rights revoked Real Soon Now, but until that happens, enjoy this clip from the old Johnny Cash Show:
And just so you know: I don't really want to annoy Jim, because he's a good guy.
I am somewhere in the vicinity of West Chester, Pennsylvania.
I have been drinking all day, and I feel like a champion.
I am staying at The Wife's Father's Girlfriend's house (which is friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend awkward for me); and it is way too nicely outfitted for a person of my drunkedness.
Remind me to ask you about the Impossible Toilet.
I have a rental car. I bought the retarded $20 insurance policy. Enterprise is going to cry when they see what I bring home next week.
Until then? Crickets...
Leaving in the morning for a prolonged (and past due) vacation; so blogging will be light.
Which of course is a retardedly redundant statement.
I just wish there was someone else I could share this blog with. Maybe even two someone else's would be nice.
Yeah, two. So i;ll be taking applications when I get back. You can post them in the comments, or just send them to the two emails on the sidebar over there that don't belong to me.
More importantly than a co-blogger, I need a co-spammer. Seriously, I'm despamming 20 or thirty comments a day on this bad biotch; and that shit is monotonous and sucky beyond belief. I'd punch a baby if it would keep spam away for a day, and then I would continue to punch that unfortunate little fucker every day just for ransom. I'd pay serious dough to hire someone to find spammers, fucking break into their houses, rip their nuts off, eat them, and shit them down their throats.
Oh fuck me, the goddamn local dumbass news channel has these 'meteorologists', and they just interrupted my fucking TV program to tell me there's a thunderstorm three counties away. Right at the good part of the show too.
You know what?
Fuck three counties away, alright! I'm watching my fucking nationally broadcast, live TV show; and I don't give a fuck what's going on out there in western bumfuck flyover country! They can kiss my ass!
As I've noted before, I see a lot of froth in the oil market; and probably in other commodities too. The reason I think this is happening is because traders are beginning to treat commodities futures as assets.
In reality, a future is simply a bet on which way you think the price is going to go. So if I work at Goldman Sachs and I have a billion-dollar position in oil; then I release a press statement that says "Gee, I think oil is going to double," everyone else is going to say "Holy shit, that Goldman Sachs guy must know what he's talking about, so I'm going to fall in line behind his position." And voila, oil prices begin to edge upwards. In this example, supply and demand of actual oil has not effected price. This is what we call a bubble. If you bought a home in 2007 and you're trying to sell it now, you're painfully familiar with this idea, I'm sure.
The story of supply and demand is that it hasn't really changed much over the last three years, yet price has tripled. The real bad news is that Congress is on the job, and they're trying to enlist the help of the FTC and a commodities regulation body to help reign in the traders. I don't like the idea of meddling with the free market, but the situation begs the question: Is this really a free market if the price of a good is decoupled from demand for said good? Either way, with demand plateauing (or declining, if you look at recent numbers); I would expect some volatility in the oil markets in coming quarters. When the price run-up has made it into the forefront of everyone's mind; it's time to sell your position and wait for the bottom.
So The Wife and I have lived in our new neighborhood for about six months now, and we're really glad we chose to buy here. And no, we didn't get an ARM or finance more than we can afford or anything like that; so you won't be paying our mortgage with your tax dollars anytime soon. One of the reasons we like it so much is because we live on a cul-de-sac, and we've made some really good friends with all the neighbors.
Anyways, so I'm walking out of the garage yesterday evening and B, the guy who lives across the street, waves me over. "Come on around back, M and E are over with the baby. We're just sitting on the porch." So I head over and he says, "Just give us a holler when you're about to come through the gate. M's dogs are over, and we'll have to hold them so they don't make a break for it." I hadn't yet met M's wife E, or the new baby; so I figured what the hey.
So I pause at the gate, get the go ahead, and walk through. Now, I'm carrying a beer and a folding chair, so my hands are fairly full. As I close the gate, they open the screen door on the porch, and the dogs come out as I go in. Of course, the dogs are excited because dogs generally get all excited around new people, and they're barking and jumping as we pass eachother. I hold out a palm to them as I'm walking through the screen door, and amidst the canine social niceties I get a solid bite on the ass.
Now, I've never been bitten by a dog, so I'm like. "Son of a ... (they had their kid with them, so I held back the urge to scream BLOODY MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD)! Your dog just bit my butt dude!" I put my chair down, and B's wife L is a nurse, so she's like "Go in the bathroom and have a look to make sure you're not bleeding." M grabs the dog that bit me and chastises him, while the little dog is still running around yelping and shit. I go off to the bathroom to survey the damage to one of humanity's Great Flawless Asses.
Thankfully there were no puncture wounds, but it did leave a raspberry about the size of a silver dollar. Almost as if I'd scraped it in a fall or something. So I go back outside, and of course M, E, B, and L are all as shocked as I am. The dog doesn't have a history of biting, and it's shots are all up to date and what not. So there we are, making awkward conversation and pretending that what just happened was neither hilarious nor painful. I slammed my beer as fast as possible just so I'd have an excuse to get the hell out of there.
I got home and called The Wife, who'd just left for her shift. Now, she's a nurse to; and as soon as I made the mistake of telling her about it, she got all hypochondriac on me. Generally, I dislike going to the doctor. However, I have discovered that for the sake of my marriage (and my own health) it is best to just take my medicine. I ended up going to the local urgent care last night for a tetanus booster and some advice on how to prevent infection. I also had a weird moment with the doc, when he asked me how the hell I got bit on the ass by a dog. The way he said it implied that he thought I was running around the dog park in a banana hammock, trying to lay with the beasts of the field or something. Anyways, he said soak in a bath for a while, wash it with some antibacterial soap, and keep an eye on it.
When I returned from the urgent care, I had a voicemail from M. He said he'd heard I went to have it looked at, and wanted to make sure everything was okay. Needless to say, it's kind of an awkward situation now. Firstly, I haven't been scared of a dog since I don't know when, and now I'm kind of scared of M's dog; and secondly because we don't really now each other that well. The dog didn't growl or posture in any way that made me feel like it was in an aggressive mood. I mean, I understand that animals are animals, and sometimes they bite; but now I'm all thrown off. Maybe it didn't like the color I was wearing. Maybe it was because it was held, then released as I came in; thus putting it in a defensive mindset. Hell, maybe it was just being friendly. I mean, I didn't have to pull myself away from it; the bite was more of a quick release type of nip than a chomp and hold.
I realize that some people would have probably reported the bite to animal control, but I didn't. The dog doesn't have a history, and B &L even kept the dogs for a week while M &E were away and had no problems. I mean, it would only add tension to an already awkward situation. Here I am, embarrassed that I got bit in the damn ass; but I could tell M & E were equally embarrassed that their dog acted like that. If I reported the bite, it would just give them a reason to let their embarrassment turn into resentment. I'd prefer not to have a relationship like that with neighbors, especially people who are as easy to like as M & E seem to be. I figure it'll be socially lame for a little while, but eventually it'll be a funny story.
I ain't going to be hanging around his damn dogs anytime soon though, and you can take that shit to the bank son!
So at 8:30am this morning I read some economic data that I can only describe as fascinating. It's kind of like a jungle gym for your mind. You read the report, and it's a framework that you just sit and mull over.
Okay - so the trade gap is narrowing - which means even though we're still importing more than we export, we've actually begun to import less and/or export more in the last quarter. Which is good, because that will increase our GDP.
So here we are, using less of 'other peoples stuff' to run our economy, and it's still growing. The real interesting part is this:
Imports of industrial supplies fell 3.2% to $61.6 billion, including an 8.9% drop in petroleum imports.
The average price of oil rose to a record $89.85 a barrel, but demand fell 9% to 8.97 million barrels a day.
We're using 10% less energy. Think about that. Then think about the ridiculous increase in oil prices of late. And you wonder if maybe there's an oil bubble expanding, what with Iran floating 28 million barrels of oil.
Is this an indication of some kind of 'lean' capitalism? Are consumers going from big spenders to keen shoppers? Is this the invisible hand at work here, as lean operations become a response to inflated energy prices?
It'll never happen, mainly because it would trample the liberties of billions; but my dark side is beginning to wonder if we need to require people to take a test and get licensed to surf the web.
There's a whole lot of good stuff out here, but there's an equal amount of scams, garbage, revisionism and sensationalism as well. You only have to look as far as current events to see it.
Take the 'rice shortage'. I mean, give me a break. I went into Walmart today and the shit was a buck-fifty a bag, and the shelf was full. What's stupid is that people in the US are hoarding the shit. What first world citizen fucking lives on rice anyways? If the industrialized world went without rice for a month, would it kill us? It's not like rice is irreplaceable. If it wasn't on the shelf, you could always eat hominy, grits, polenta, or risotto. Or, you know, a fucking PB&J. But no, these people hear there's a rice shortage and what do they do - they go down to the store and load up. Dude, now that I think about it, rice isn't really even a staple food for me. If I had to give it up for an extended period of time so that folks in far-flung places who do consider it a staple could eat; it would have zero effect on me. I eat so little of it now, that if it disappeared from the shelf I wouldn't even notice. It would be like Bentley going out of business or something.
Then there was the whole global warming thing. Now they're saying the globe is actually getting colder. It must be because Al Gore finally converted that horrible energy hog of a mansion he's got to something that doesn't need its own power grid. What a dickhole. But that wasn't our first response to global warming, was it kiddies? Nope, everyone lined up to punch their ticket on the Alarmist Express for a rip roarin' ride straight to the edge of sanity. There were a few people who actually began to look at the data, and the hipocrisy, and the politics of the situation and they caught a lot of flack for going against the grain.
Seriously, before anyone should be allowed to purchase a modem or sign up with an ISP, they should have to show some kind of license that proves they've taken an internet safety class. You know, one that would explain how shit gets out of hand, and that just because the internet is the fastest way to spread the word, doesn't mean that the word is neccesarily worth a damn.
Jesus people. Get your shit together, pull your head out of your ass and behave like rational human beings! Now go out there and make me proud!
The Wife had to work tonight, so we set the DVR to record Hell's Kitchen for her. For some reason, the damn thing wouldn't record. It's a cable company-supported peice, and they recently upgraded the software on it and ever since it's been a little wonky. Anyways, I decided to take notes for her, and write up the episode so she wouldn't miss anything.
I present it to you here in the style of a video game walkthrough. If you're not familiar with the genre, you're a geriatric or a Luddite, or both.
Now, what follows may not be funny if you've never seen the show. I'm also willing to take the risk that it may not be funny regardless; but I don't care.