The year 2010 was ugly. Like waking up in bed with a hangover next to a naked Barney Frank in a Michelle Obama mask ugly! For me, it started out with a swift kick to the bait and tackle when my supervisor, Eeyore (as he was nicknamed), called me to the conference room and proceeded to tell me that The Company was heading in a new direction and my services would no longer be needed. However, the written notice of my termination said the reason was “due to ongoing inadequate performance over a long period of time.” I don’t know what Eeyore’s donkey chow-eating ass considers “inadequate” or “long period of time,” but I was only written up once in October 2009 for leaving several tickets in a queue untouched for a day or two. Three months does not a “long period of time” make, especially since I was employed with The Company for more than five and a half years. It wasn’t normal practice for me to ignore tickets either, but the migration of an archaic web server broke many company-provided cgi scripts, and it was my job to fix them… on top of my normal load of handling four separate ticket queues by myself. Whatever.

I went back to my office, packed up all my office flair, and grabbed LDriver to head home. Just like dealing with a family death, there are stages of grieving when you lose a job. I think I was done with denial by the end of the first day. Anger ended and acceptance began at sunrise the following day when I realized I didn’t have to make that soul-crushing commute to Seattle ever again. Of course, depression started when living on unemployment (a.k.a. “unenjoyment”) and finding a new job closer to home became more and more difficult. It was enough to make me enter a seldom-expressed stage of grieving: revenge!

On the world stage, a giant earthquake leveled parts of Haiti in January. It was the third deadliest earthquake of all time, and it was rumored to be caused by a runaway Prius. This led Toyota to recall over 8 million vehicles for several reasons, including magical pedal-pushing floor mats, sticky accelerators, an anti-lock braking virus, as well as general smugness and/or ugliness.

February brought a Super Bowl win to the Saints who beat the Colts. While Peyton Manning cried, Saints fans celebrated the best thing to happen to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. February was also the start of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, BC. Being only 100 miles away from Oak Harbor, I really wanted to at least visit Vancouver, but my jobless situation prevented discretionary spending. One positive in not having a job is I could watch as much Olympic coverage as possible on NBC. In further sports news, Tiger Woods gave a televised apology for his infidelities. This made everyone’s jaw drop to the floor simultaneously, causing another giant earthquake, this time in Chile.

In March, I was fully on the job search hamster wheel, rewriting résumés and cover letters, scouring the State’s WorkSource site as well as other online job listings. In Washington, you have to make three job search contacts each week — and keep a contact log — in order to receive your weekly pittance. With a fair amount of free time on my hands, coupled with the occasional trips to the WorkSource office or job interviews, I had plenty of opportunities to go shooting with my camera. I took many photos during my jobless time, and I dumped nearly all of my shots on Flickr, and created a new blog at photography.wafwot.com. It’s a better way to spend a day than watching Bewitched and All in the Family reruns, or FOX News which was covering the Obamacare politics pretty heavily in March.

Princess Pelosi is infamous for saying crazy fucking shit, but her comments about Obamacare to the National Association of Counties stating “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy,” ranks up there as the stupidest things ever said by a human being, let alone a politician. Clearly the Botox in her Liberal face has poisoned her mosquito-sized brain. Seriously, Pelosi’s “pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” remark makes Jessica Simpson’s Chicken of the Sea comments sound genius! Of course, by the end of March, King Obama signed the bill into law even though the majority of Americans didn’t want it. Out like a lamb, my fat white ass.

April saw yet another giant earthquake, this time in China. The Earth must have been mad at humanity in 2010, because a volcano under Eyjafjallajökull (which is Icelandic for “how the fuck do I say that?“) erupted, grounding planes throughout most of Europe. Not to be outdone in the shock and awe department, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, sending thousands of gallons of crude oil per hour into the ocean. BP initially lied about the severity of the spill; they’re British, they had to scale it down a bit. April also saw Apple’s release of the iPad, basically an expensive iPhone for people with giant hands, but without phone service. In Arizona, lawmakers passed SB 1070, which made being of Mexican descent illegal. Cops were instructed to start rounding up wetbacks and throwing them into concentration camps for extermination in August… so said MSNBC. White power, motherfuckers!

After three months of job searching, it was time for a change. Family genetics left me with a head of gray hair, and no one wants to hire an old fat-ass. So, while watching the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs, I started applying Grecian Formula to my giant old man head. It took a few weeks to see my hair changing a nice shade of graphite, like I was rubbing pencil sharpener shavings on my scalp. And my head smelled like a book of burnt matches. Clearly this wasn’t working. So, I gave Tina my berries and went to the Wal-Mart for a box of women’s hair dye. Good God, what a scary ordeal that was! After leaving that color on my head for a twenty minutes, I looked like Ronald Reagan in 1981… but with less wrinkles. To me, I looked ridiculous. Good thing I have hats.

Overly concerned about the continuing flow of oil into the Gulf, our Supreme Overlord made a couple trips to Louisiana in May for some photo ops. The media was plastered with video showing Obama standing on the beach — surrounded by black globs of oil — staring benevolently out at the water. It was the least he could do between rounds of golf. Meanwhile, Congress held hearings about the spill, and suggested we melt down defective Toyotas and fashion a giant drain stopper. When the giant the giant bathtub plug was shot down, Congress decided to outlaw deep sea drilling. The way the Administration was acting, you’d have thought the Gulf crude was leaking into their morning bowl of Wheaties.

By June, I was about fed up with with the job search rut. I had interviews at several companies in Skagit County, and all but one said “no,” and that one didn’t say “no” wasn’t saying anything yet. Frustration and depression were setting in quickly, especially when the Flyers lost the Stanley Cup finals to Drunken Queef and the Chicago Blackcocks.

One position I applied for was for a network administrator at a local casino. I won’t say which casino, but it rhymes with “two day shit” if you say it real fast and put the emphasis on “day.” Their application wanted more personal information than a new car loan, which started me (and Tina) on a 10-day scavenger hunt. Things like driver’s license and Social Security number were easy. But they also wanted a copy of my criminal record, driving record, and high school diploma. High school diploma? Sweet baby Jesus, it’s been a quarter century since I’ve seen that! After turning the house upside down in a fruitless search, I called the school for a copy. They told me a replacement diploma would cost $25 and take a couple weeks. Just as I was about to give up, Tina finally found my diploma — the last item I needed — in the very last possible place it could have been. I spent several days polishing the turd that is my curriculum vitae, then emailed my application to a friend that worked at the casino. He printed the app and all the supporting documents and submitted it for me. After several weeks, I got a phone call for a job interview. My Ronald Reagan hair and I drove the 70 miles to Marysville for the interview, which was a bit ambiguous. You know how there’s more than one way to do things in much of life? It’s not any different in the IT world. Several of their questions could have had more than one answer and still be correct. However, you if you didn’t have their answer, it counted against you. I thought I did well, but found out that no one answered their interview questions correctly. This told them their questions were flawed, and they subsequently withdrew the position. Excellent.

I continued the three weekly job contacts into July, living my own personal Groundhog Day. The BP spill was still spewing oil into the Gulf. However, BP was finally able to stem the flow with something they called “LMRP,” which I think is a British acronym for Lick My Royal Posterior. With the well capped, America could now focus it’s full attention on more important things, like LeBron James‘ eeny, meeny, miny, moe game of where to play basketball, Lindsay Lohan‘s 14-day jail sentence, and the excitement of World Cup Soccer (yaaawwwn). I was still using my huge amounts of free time to take photos around Island and Skagit counties, until I got a phone call from that one company that hadn’t said no. It was nearly two months since I interviewed with them, and had written it off as another failure. But when they offered me the job over the phone, I gladly accepted without hesitation! I was happy to be employed again, but sickened by the fact that I had just helped Obama lower his jobless percentage.

August was a good month; I had a reason to wake up in the morning. I was hired as the IT Manager of an aerospace company. It sounded pretty cool until I realized it’s a start up company that hasn’t built a plane yet. They’re setting up the fabrication facility using the assets of a company they bought out of bankruptcy, and they didn’t even have an IT department yet. So, I am the manager of one (me), but it’s my job to build the IT department, and I like that idea a lot. With my second paycheck, I went to the local Sprint store and bought the EVO 4G. I had it rooted within four days of owning it.

Also in August, the East Coast was attacked by giant bedbugs which prompted NASA to extend the Space Shuttle program in order to plan an attack of planet Klendathu. Up in the panhandle of Florida, the Messiah and his family vacationed in Panama City on the Gulf Coast as a publicity stunt showing the waters were safe. To maintain his “first black president” hue, he went swimming with the crude oil globules. Unfortunately, the Gulf was oilier when Barry got out of the water, so the First Family finished their vacation in Martha’s Vineyard by playing golf and shopping. Obama also put a another woman on the Supreme Court, and Planet Blago was downgraded to Douchebag Blago.

By September, the midterm elections were coming to a head. Balack Osama and his Congress were about as popular as a hooker with cold sores, and they knew it. When they began campaigning in their home districts, they didn’t talk about Obamacare, they talked about being a witch or worshipping Aqua Buddha. In the entertainment industry, Tony Curtis died, the tragic victim of a runaway Toyota.

October was uneventful for me. I was living the dream with a full time job, and enjoying the work. I designed a logo for the company and built them a simple beginner web site for an Internet presence. At the company’s main offices, I was building new cubicles and computer systems for a contingent of Chinese engineers on work visas. I was also supervising new Cat 6 cable runs at the airport facility, built a Linux router/firewall, and deployed a new Asterisk phone system.

Elsewhere in the world, yet another earthquake off the coast of Sumatra killed over 400 people, terrorists in Yemen tried sending printer toner bombs to the U.S. via UPS, and a gaggle of Chilean miners trapped in a mine for 69 days were rescued with a giant mechanical tampon applicator. A bright spot was the news that the International Space Station surpassed the record for the longest continuous human occupation of space, unless you count John Dingell‘s white ass planted in his House seat for more than 55 years. What the hell kind of name is “Dingell” anyway? Sounds like a piece of shit stuck to the hairs of his mudcutter.

In November, I was invited to watch the Manny Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito fight on pay-per-view at my boss’ house. He had a $150 in bets against Pacquiao with a couple people at work. Needless to say, Pacquiao beat Margarito like a Mexican piñata, and broke his right orbital bone. Ouch. My boss paid his bet in $1 bills. Awesome.

Also in November, the Democrats were beaten like Margarito by the Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections. The jackasses lost the House majority, several Senate seats, some governorships, some state legislatures, and Dancing With the Stars. It was the biggest game of musical chairs since 1948, and the largest for any midterm election since 1938. If you listen very carefully, you can still hear Princess Pelosi crying in her Zinfandel.

Three days before Thanksgiving, it snowed in Western Washington, and everyone dropped a rectal plate. I was a little worried about the accumulating snow. Not because I can’t drive in bad weather, but because other people are complete retards when the pavement is anything but dry. When I left work, I put my truck in 4×4 low and headed out, adjusting my speed for the road conditions. Fifteen miles from home, got stuck in a long line of traffic. There was apparently an accident in Deception Pass that blocked the entire highway and snarled traffic for hours. A trip that normally takes me 40 minutes took ten minutes shy of 4 hours. Told you they were retards.

Then, while millions of Americans were cooking their junk at the airports in full body scanners, Tina and I went to Thanksgiving dinner at my boss’ house. The night before Thanksgiving it snowed again, but it was no trouble for my truck. We arrived right on time, had a great meal and enjoyed the visit. The very next day, Obama was punched in the mouth by a Latino man angry that the Administration was allowing Arizona to gas beaners. The resulting cut to King Hussein’s upper lip required 12 stitches.

December saw a federal judge in Virginia rule that Obamacare is unconstitutional. In response, the Justice Department said, “Nuh uh!” The 2010 Census numbers were released in December, showing that the U.S. population grew 9.7% to 308,745,538, the smallest increase since the 1930s. Was it a coincidence that the unemployment rate was 9.8% and the population increased 9.7%? The world may never know. In response howerver, Joe Biden said, “These new motherfuckers need to get a job to help America’s recovery.” Elsewhere, Obama dropped to his knees and blew the Republicans in order to hammer out and sign the GOP tax compromise bill, then repealed don’t ask, don’t tell to the delight of butt pirates everywhere. Hmmmm.

At work, the company sprung for a Christmas meal for all employees. The food was catered by Haggen Food in Burlington, but needed to be heated before serving. Not having a stove at the office, my boss planned on having his wife heat the food at his house which was only about a mile away. I asked why we just didn’t heat the food in the oven, and was told we don’t have an oven at the office. “Um, the hell we don’t. We have a 55-foot curing oven,” which I often refer to as the Jew Cooker. Needless to say, our Christmas meal was cooked in the Jew Cooker. Here’s a crappy cellphone picture.

And that about covers it. There was lots more that happened in 2010, but this is all I can muster in my glossed over Reader’s Digest edition. I, for one, am glad to see 2010 in history’s rear view mirror. Let’s hope 2011 is better for me and our troubled country. Peace, bitches.

Since I’m stuck inside tethered to the shitter, I watched racing on television. The 92nd running of the Indianapolis 500 and 49th running of the Coca-Cola 600 took place, and I watched ‘em both. I’ve talked about the Indy 500 before, but watching NASCAR is something new for me to be watching. However, I’m by no means one of those sleeveless flannel shirt-wearing, Busch beer-drinking Southern rednecks or Appalachian hillbillies. You know the type, the double-wide trailer-living dumbass that eats, sleeps, and shits their favorite driver by plastering stock car numbers on every worldly possession, including their vehicles and muffintop women. Holy hell, man!

After 1,100 miles and 2,400 left turns, I noticed something. There’s no black people in motorsports. Yeah, I know, not an original observation, but I found it funny. Tina and I started making fun of the sport, and invented our own sanctioned racing series — “Popeyes Fried Chicken Series.” You won’t find this racing series on FOX, ESPN, or even the SPEED Channel, oh no. Thanks to a multi-million dollar deal, the Popeyes Series races will be seen on BET. And just as the Truck Series is different than the Cup Series, so too shall the Popeyes Fried Chicken Series. Here’s some of the highlights:

• There’s no more pace car. Instead, the Popeyes Series will use a chase car painted like a police car with a red and blue light bar and sirens that will stay out on the track during “normal” conditions. This will encourage fast driving and aggression. In the event of caution, the chase car will leave the track so the drivers can resume slower speeds.
• When a car crashes, Popeyes Series drivers must bail out of their car as fast as possible and run like hell from Race officials in the chase car and television helicopters flying overhead. If caught, the driver loses points in the standings.
• The vehicles may only be a 1971 to 1996 Chevrolet Impalas, any year Chevrolet Caprices, second generation Buick Regals, or any 1985 to 1993 Cadilac Coupe de Ville. The wheels must be 22 inches or bigger and wrapped in anything but Goodyear tires. Here’s an example… and another… and another… and another… and another.
• The drivers must blare hip hop music while racing, so loud that the trunk lid and quarter panels rattle with each beat. They must also drive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand hanging out the window, without sitting upright in the driver’s seat.
• To add a bit of a challenge to the race, each car will be equipped with an unregistered hand gun that may be used while passing to take other drivers out of the race, “drive-by” style. Points will be earned for every drive-by that results in a wreck.
• While it may not meet normal NASCAR safety standards, all Popeyes Series drivers must wear pants that hang around the ass and expose at least six inches of underwear. Helmets are still required, but must have Kangol or FUBU printed them, and be worn sideways.
• All cars must have a passenger seat, and drivers must fill that seat with one of his homies or one of his ‘hos. During pit stops, the pit crews may only supply Olde English 800 or Colt 45 to the driver.

Hopefully you’re laughing at all that nonsense, and not thinking I’m a racist. Racism is, basically, discrimination based on skin color. I’m definitely not discriminating against black people… I’m just making fun of the stereotypes. This is no different than the stereotypes of rednecks and hillbillies mentioned above, or the time I poked fun at the driving skills of Asian drivers 18 months ago, so don’t get your panties in a wad. In fact, here’s a picture of me looking apologetic.

Okay, I had planned on writing more. I made another graphic to segue into another “race” issue, but I think I’ll save it for another day when I’m not playing King Wafwot, ruler Bathroomia. Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day holiday.

If you’re a regular reader of this periodic bullshit, you’ll know that I live with a distant relative of Doctor Doolittle… third cousin, twice removed, or some such nonsense. Tina is like an animal magnet; if it’s got fur or feathers, it’ll be at my back door looking for attention or food. There’s almost a goddamn zoo in my back yard at any given time — neighbors’ dogs, rabbits, deer, birds, and stray cats. Across the road, there’s a rooster that cock-a-doodle-doos all goddamn night at a mercury-vapor yard light. Poor bird is more confused than a blind lesbian lost in a fish market. I should set up turnstiles and collect admission… sell popcorn, hot dogs, and soda. There’s been stray cats coming to the back door for years. I’d like to say there’s been a fucking parade of pussy at my house but someone would throw the bullshit flag, I’m sure.

One of the descendants of these mangy feline bitches had her own litter of kittens. This latest batch of felidae happiness is like the third or fourth generation. I thought we may have escaped the cavalcade of cat fucking this year, but I should be so lucky. Tina and I were barbecuing one evening, and we thought we saw little paws and a little tail under the crawlspace cover. Sure enough, the next day, there were three kittens frolicking on the patio. A closer count revealed there were four. Sonofabitch. It wasn’t long before they were getting attention from Tina, who was already leaving water for the heard of creatures that adopted my back yard as their wildlife preserve. I swear I’m going to change my last name to Perkins.

Long story quasi-short, we weren’t feeding the cats. Mama cat was hunting and bringing food “home” for her babies. For as many animals that enter my back yard, there were twice as many dead gophers, dead baby bunnies, dead mice, dead snakes, dead moles — all without heads — that were left on my patio. Why the fuck do cats eat the head first? Like foods high in omega-3 fatty acids, maybe it’s “brain” food. Ha! I crack myself up.

Then we saw the kittens acting lethargic. One Sunday afternoon it started to rain. Before the rain, one of the kittens was sleeping in the yard, enjoying the sunshine. Once the rain started, I notice the kitten still in the yard getting wet. I thought that was odd for a cat, but, the next time I looked outside the kitten was on the patio. By the evening, one kitten was in the water dish, up to it’s chest in water, and another had its paws on the rim. They weren’t responding to noises or “hissing” sounds to scare them out of the water. I did some Googling, and we believe they had feline distemper. Hell, they could have eaten a poisoned mouse or rat and fell victim to the poison. It could even have been antifreeze poisoning. We don’t really know.

By Monday morning, there were three dead kittens on the patio. The fourth looked stronger and might live through the ordeal. When I got home Monday evening, I went outside with a shovel and a garbage bag to dispose of the kittens. It was like The Kitty Killing Fields out there; the patio was littered with the carcasses of tiny little cats. What are you supposed to do with a trio of dead cats? There’s all kinds of jokes about swinging dead cats, but they’re somehow not as funny when you’re staring into a plastic bag o’ feline death. “You can’t swing a sack of dead kittens in Portland without hitting a drunk, pill-popping, no balls pillow biter.” Well, maybe those jokes are still funny. Oh, relax! It’s not like I said, “You can’t swing a sack of dead Jews in New York City without hitting a Arab taxi driver.”

Anyway, back to the heart-warming story of what to do with a bag of lifeless baby cats. Tina said I should bury them. Yeah, let me dig a deep hole in the back yard and create a kitten mass grave. Who am I, Hitler? Screw that. It’s too much work. They ended up in the trash dumpster. Island Disposal trucks its garbage to Seattle, where it’s put on a train heading to the Beaver State. That means there’s a sack of dead kittens decomposing in a landfill in Arlington, Oregon. Rest in peace, little ones, with the used condoms, banana peels, bloody Band-Aids, shitty diapers, coffee grounds, empty beer cans, and used tampons of Washington State.

To make this story even sadder than it already is, the fourth kitten died on Tuesday night and followed its siblings on the next train to Oregon. Mama cat continues to meow and call to her dead babies. Yep. Life is fun at my house.

I’ll follow that uplifting story with a hilarious story of cock waving. As you should all know by now I commute to Seattle on a daily basis. One day in August, we’re heading back to Oak Harbor, sitting in downtown Seattle traffic. We’re behind a bus waiting for the traffic light at Howell and Boren when we see what appears to be a local whack job on the sidewalk making lurid gestures at the passengers of the bus. This was highly amusing to watch. He was pointing at the bus, grabbing his crotch, and muttering something in “whack jobese,” which is a relatively new language based on the highly complicated mutterings of the North America Retard.

He grew tired of the bus and continued on his happy way, and we knew we were next. He saw LDriver watching him and started hollering, “What? What?!” LDriver decided to fuck with the guy and blow him a kiss. I don’t know what went through this nutter’s brain, but he proceeded to unzip his pants, drop trou, and wave his scrote and shlong at us. Jesus Christ! Everyone in the car broke out in uproarious laughter! People in other cars were laughing! Wotta riot!

LDriver thinks the guy’s perfectly sane. Why? Because his response to people watching him is to demonstrate the mechanics of a mushroom tattoo? I personally think the dude’s as unbalanced as FOX News at a Democratic National Convention. Here you have some weirdo, obviously a few McNuggets shy of a Happy Meal, shaking his grapes at us like there’s not a bus load of people watching him! What the fuck? How can he not be crazy?

When the light changed green and we started moving, Mr. Dick Flapper was still standing there with his hand full of frank and beans. LDriver yelled out, “It’s got to be bigger. Much bigger!” It was hysterical, and I was too shocked to snap a picture with my phone! Shit! We still laugh at that today, more than a month and a half after it happened. Good times!

Thinking about the other topics I have left to write about, I think I’ll skip one. I have a tale of Tina’s sister Michelle, who ended up in the hospital with life-threatening injuries. However, I don’t feel comfortable writing about her dire condition, so I think I’ll let Tina do the talking. When she writes about it, I’ll link to her blog entry… or you could just subscribe to her blog to keep up. No one’s really sure how she ended up in the condition she’s in, but the police are finally involved. Certain members of her immediate family are fucking inconsiderate, selfish, “what’s-in-it-for-me” asstards who should be ashamed, absolutely ashamed of themselves for attempting to use the situation for financial gain! They know who they are, and I don’t give a tiny peanut-shaped shitlet if they read this. Let them come up to Seattle and confront me face-to-face. C’mon, motherfuckers, I goddamn dare you!

Let’s move on. I don’t need to stroke out over all that drama.

If you haven’t figured it out, I obfuscate the name of the company I work for, and only mention them as “The Company.” I pretend I work for some covert Government-funded project called “The Company,” or some such shit, just to keep a modicum of anonymity. In reality, I work a humdrum job for an ISP‘s Hosting/Domain Registry department in a Seattle skyscraper. I make sure people’s web sites are on the, uh, Internets.

Late last month, we had our company picnic. The Company catered the affair with pulled pork, beef, and baked chicken, with baked beans, corn bread, lots of beer, and other picnic type foods. Why we don’t just cook hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill at a BARBECUE, is beyond me. I guess pulled pork is an American barbecue food. Hey, free food is free food, and who am I to complain?

Before the picnic, one of my co-workers and I were jabbering about cheesecake. She read my Rocket Science blog update about cheesecake and cheesesteaks, and we decided to bake cheesecakes for the picnic. We didn’t tell anyone, we just agreed to make cheesecakes. Of course, it turned into a friendly competition between us. We talked smack about each others cheesecakes before they were even baked. When we showed up at the picnic, we had our cheesecakes ready. Here’s a picture of mine, and here’s a picture of hers. Mine had real Ghirardelli chocolate on it, and was made with 6 bricks of authentic Philadelphia cream cheese. Her’s had hand-picked blackberries from Issaquah. BlackBerrys are for email, not cheesecake. Mine was thick and hearty, sure to give you a heart attack like a good New York-style cheesecake should. Her’s was thin and creamy, like it came from a box. I’m sure to catch shit for poking fun of her cheesecake… but it’s just that, poking fun. Her cheesecake really was very tasty.

Once The Company found out we were having this little bake-off going on, they turned it into a full-blown competition, with voting and a prize. Most everyone got a tiny sliver of each cake, and they had to vote by placing a raffle ticket in a cup representing my cake or hers. When the votes were cast and tallied, she won by a vote of 13 to 12. I demanded a recount, as I’m sure there were hanging chads somewhere, goddammit! Her prize, get this, was a gift card to The Cheesecake Factory. How ironic. We both agreed the contest was a tie, since both cakes were very good, and the voting was so Floridaesque.

And I know I mentioned an upcoming move… but I think I’ll take a pass on that, too. When I know more and can safely talk about it… you’ll be the last to know, I promise. Besides, I’m tired of typing. You got two blog updates in one week. Go get drunk, smoke weed, rejoice, wave a flag, hump redheads on your lunch break… something… just leave me alone for a bit. I gots a life!

It’s a video game console. Video games were invented for entertainment and for the fatass fuckers who can’t actually play football, baseball, basketball, hockey, or drive race cars, jet skis, motocycles, or shoot people, aliens, monsters, et cetera, et alii, ad nauseam, so on and so forth. Game-playing Americans have prided themselves on sitting in front of the TV while eating Cheetos and improving their hand-eye coordination. Who the fuck told Nintendo they could make a game console that requires the user to stand up, let alone exercise? Goddamn, I’ve been sitting in front of a computer all day long. When I get home, I don’t want to play a video game that requires, you know, physical fitness. Fucking Jap bastards, what the shit, man? The only thing gamer geeks should be exercising is their thumbs… and their right arms during certain other activities (if ya know what I mean).

When I did a little reading on the Wii, I found that people are complaining about soreness in their extremities after playing the Wii for long periods of time. This just proves my point, people; video game consoles are for flabby wastes of humanity, and that’s the way your Higher Power intended it to be. I find it hilarious that Nintendo responded to the many complaints of sore necks, shoulders, and joints. You know what their response was? "Work out more, fatsos… If people are finding themselves sore, they may need to exercise more." Slanty-eyed dicks! That’s what they’re doing while playing your console! That’s what’s causing their pain! If it wasn’t for your console, they’d be enjoying a pain-free evening while eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts. These poor people… arms flailing like the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man from Family Guy or an epileptic waterhead on crack, their Wiimotes flying out of their hands and smashing into their two thousand dollar plasma television screens… and all Nintendo can say is, “exercise more.” American gamers don’t want buns of steel, motherfuckers, they want buns of cinnamon! Sonofafuck, am I the only one that sees this as a pandemic? It’s only a matter of time before James Sokolove starts advertising on late night television. “Have you or a loved-one suffered serious or even minor injuries due to the use of the Nintendo Wii? Call the law offices of James Sokolove. We can help get you the money you deserve.” Those motherfuckers are lining up at the courthouse. By the way, Wiimote? How stereotypical of them. I know Japanese have a difficult time pronouncing their Rs, but that’s just ridiculous. “It’s fried rice, you plick.”

I’m writing this update in email before sending it to the server. Spry, the company that hosts my VPS is doing maintenance from nine tonight until five tomorrow morning. I doubt the server will be operational by the time I finish if I typed directly on the blog. All these goddamned Wikipedia links take for ever! I’m a little disappointed about this maintenance, though. I checked the uptime on the server this afternoon, and I had over 208 days.

wafwot@yavang:~$ uptime
  14:48:03 up 208 days, 3:45,  1 user,  load average: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01

Try that on a Windows server, bitches! It’s next to impossible unless you run Linux. Thanks a lot, Lyle, for killing my uptime! I keed I keed! I know they were moving servers to a new data center, and there’s no way to do that unless you unplug shit. The people at Spry are awesome, and I’ve never had a problem since I’ve been with them… Especially in the past 208 days! They’re rock fucking solid, baby! (hehe, let’s see ‘em use that quote on their web site.) As you can see, the server is back up and my quest for long uptimes begins again.

Tonight, we stopped at the Swinomish Indian reservation for gasoline and cigarettes. I paid for gas at the pump, but had to go inside the store for a carton of cancer sticks. I stood in line while two Indian cashiers (casino Indians trying to act all Slurpee Indian) chatted with a customer about puppies. I was standing there for about 25 minutes before I finally got my turn. I could be wrong about that time, it may have only been one minute… but hell, why should I (and the others behind me) have to wait at all? There is a silver lining though. I learned the ancient meaning of “Swinomish.” It’s a native American word for “Land of Postal Workers.”

Yesterday, I received an email at work, with the subject line, “Too much penis is never a bad thing.” Normally this type of junk goes straight in the Trash folder, but I think this particular email came from our Sales Department. No, it couldn’t have. Well, maybe. I don’t know. Ho-ly crap, what if it did? Somebody please hold me, I think I’m gonna cry.

Recently, people have berated me for talking too much about crap in my blog, like I’m a coprophiliac, or some shit. Oh, goddammit! I assure you I have no such fondness for crap. Poop is just funny, like farts, and it makes people laugh. I strive to make people laugh at this ridiculous fucked upness, and turds are an easy laugh. But to prove to those of you (Tina) that don’t think I can do it, I’ll go 10 posts without resorting to toilet humor. That’s at least two months worths of blogging. But, if I fall victim to some restroom antics like the phantom door shaker, or a barking co-worker, I will write it down. You may just have to deal with an entire update about dookie…

Let’s start with a little story. A friend of mine related a tale that I find somewhat disturbing. He works for a Bank in Portland, and they’ve had some commotion with a fellow co-worker. He tells me that this co-worker (whom I’ll call Pam for reasons of anonymity) has performed her duties satisfactorily, but her reliability is in the porcelain funnel o' shit, as evidenced by this list:

• One time, poor Pam slept off a bender in the bank (with the alarm off) because she was too drunk to drive home. Ho-ly crap!
• Another time, Pam requested time off because she needed to cry over being dumped by her boyfriend. I guess Pam isn’t known for crying, or shouldn’t cry because she’s the manly type, or something. Sweet Jesus.
• While talking to co-worker, Pam called a customer a “cunt.” It wasn’t in earshot of the customer, but the female co-worker was highly upset. Poor misguided Pam was called to the bank president’s office for an ass chewing.
• Pam also messed up a customer’s bank account which ended up costing the bank about $1000.
• On more than one occasion, Pam has been caught sleeping at her desk. Could it be all that crying that’s keeping her up at nights? Maybe. I don’t know.
• And twice, Pam didn’t show up to work on time. No big deal if she was only five or so minutes late. Poop occurs. But my friend said it was four and a half hours one time, and just recently it was more than two hours! Apparently, Pam has a position at the bank that requires her to take… loan application calls from the East Coast starting at five in the morning. If she’s not there, a loan may not get processed, and the bank can’t have that!
• She went to a customer’s house to help them with their banking needs, and was dressed like it was laundry day in Pamsworld™. Instead of going in banking attire, she was wearing a t-shirt with a worn out Trans-Am iron-on. Her ratty jeans were held up with a length of sisal rope, and she was wearing sneakers!

Worst. Employee. Ever. The only thing Pam hasn’t done is play Windows Solitaire all day long when she should be working. Wow. If we had an employee like that in the company I work for, she would surely be fired. That type of behavior simply doesn’t fly in the IT industry. Our managers won’t stand for such piss-poor work ethics, and you would be shown the door. I’ve seen it happen to several sysadmins. Funny thing however, Pam still retains her job at the bank! Can you believe it? Color me dubious, goddammit! If that list of shit is true, Pam works for the most lenient company in all of Oregon, possibly the entire West Coast! Can you imagine the perception other employees of that bank must have? “Hey, we can dick off without fear of being fired, because Pam’s still here.” I wouldn’t bank with those people if you paid me. Who knows what would happen to your life’s savings?

Continuing on the line of co-workers… If you’ve read this collection of nonsensical bullshit in the past, you know that I’m in a carpool and we have a soul-crushing 200-mile-a-day round trip commute. In our carpool, we worked out a simple solution to buying gasoline: rotation. We each take turns buying tanks of fuel. This has been working well for us, until recently. Yesterday, when it came time for one of our carpoolers to fill the tank, he complained that he only had $25 in his account. Jesus-fucking-Christ! So, an arrangement was made where I would pay for this tank, and he would buy the next tank on Monday. I may be a cranky motherfucker by nature, but I’m flexible and understand being strapped for cash.

We stopped at Costco in Mount Vernon for gas, where I spent thirty dollars even. As we left the gas pumps, we made a detour to EB Games, where the carpooler — who claimed to only have $25 in his account — chasséd his rotund keister into the store and bought an expansion pack to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. What in the Spic and Span hell, man? We can buy games, but not gas? I didn’t throw the bullshit flag until today, ’cause I was too busy stringing an unnecessary number of angry exclamation points together in my head. That shit ain’t right. Gas, grass, or ass, bitch! Nobody rides free! And trust me when I say no one wants any of that ass.

My segues are working out well tonight, as I have another nugget about ass. Have you ever had one of those moments where you suddenly have to shit? It happened to me yesterday, and I’m here to tell you about it. I was at work yesterday, as I frequently am, and had just come back from lunch. I was doing just fine at my desk, when all of a sudden my body said, “hey gallbladder, we need some bile,” and sadly there was no response. My gallbladder went AWOL in 1998, and this behavior is normal at times. Any-way… I clenched my whale eye tighter, and beat a path to the rest room down the hall. I’ll be a sonofabitch if both stalls weren’t occupied. Screw this! With my colon in distress, I headed for the elevators to use the toilets on the third floor. Ten fucking minutes passed before the elevator doors opened. It may have been closer to 30 seconds, but the space-time continuum gets all fuckered up in situations like this… so I just don’t know.

Two floors down, and in unfamiliar surroundings, I start bombing. Then, I hear the restroom door open. I don’t know about you, but I always cough a little fake cough or clear my throat to let the newcomer know that they are not alone. I don’t need some whackjob baby talking to his “little man” at the urinal, or whistling a little tune while taking a piss. “C’mon lil’ buddy. Time t’come on out and do your bidness.” Goddamn I hate public toilets.

Back to the story… In mid-drop, the intruder decides to try the door to my stall. But it’s not a simple little tug, or a knock. No. It’s full-on yanking and rattling like he’s trying to un-stick his garage door after it jumped off it’s tracks. The attempt startles me, causing… the bomb bay doors to close prematurely. Motherfuck!!! I shouted out “Occupied,” probably loud enough for the people at FiberCloud on the 19th floor to hear. All I heard back was an irritated sigh. Excuse the shit, literally, outta me! Holy shit, man! What makes a person think that a closed shitter stall is an invitation to rip the door off it’s hinges? I listened as Mr. Door Shaker used a urinal to take a piss then leave… without washing his hands. I spent the next five minutes going through half the roll of paper to return my sphincter to some resemblance of it’s pre-shit self.

Okay, that’s all for now. All that talk about coming up with a title, and I stuck to work-related topics, and managed to slip in a little bit of corporate toilet humor, too. So, I changed the title from “Miscellany” to “Work Strife.” You probably don’t care, do you?

After six weeks of commuting to Seattle, I’ve come to totally agree with the Asian driver stereotype. Every time — and I mean every time — there’s a slow-moving vehicle in the HOV lane, it’s either an Asian driver, or a bus (probably driven by an Asian) causing the slow-down. What the fuck? They nose their cars into traffic like you’re invisible, expecting traffic to stop for them. They seem completely oblivious to any cars on the road!

I’m not kidding. They drive erratically. They don’t know how to merge into the freeway. They drive too slowly. If you pass an Asian driver on the freeway, odds are they will speed up and pace you! “I tink I’ll drive arong in dis round eye’s brind spot for as rong a posserble.” It’s infuriating. If you see a vehicle backing up at an intersection, turning right from the left hand lane, stopped dead in the middle of rush hour stop-and-go traffic trying to merge into another lane… It is always an Asian driver. I am not shitting you.

And, there must be a language barrier, too, because they don’t seem to read traffic signs. Are they busy texting a message with their phone? Maybe they’re distracted by the Hello Kitty kitsch hanging from their rearview mirror, or reloading their camera… I just don’t know.

There are two kind of Asian drivers. You’ve got the young Asian male driver, and the FOB Asian female driver. Males are recognizable by the rice burner car they drive. It’s always an Asian import with a 4-cylinder engine and an over-sized wing on the trunk lid that looks as out of place as cat turds in Christmas pudding. Don’t forget about the carbon fiber hood (with non-functional scoop), neon lighting kit under the car, cut suspension to lower the vehicle, a fart cannon coffee can resonator bolted on the exhaust pipe, logo stickers plastered all over the paint job, and an 8-inch tachometer mounted to the dashboard. Their cars sound like a mosquito tweeked on meth and are usually louder than an A-6 Intruder. These boys have more money than brains, and really need to get laid. They probably still live with mommy.

Speaking of mommy, the Asian female driver can be identified by her thick-ass goggle glasses that look like they were made from the old optics of the Hubble Space Telescope, her hunched-over posture, her white knuckle death grip at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, and her head never moves, keeping an eagle-eye stare on the fog line four and a half feet in front of the vehicle. The body of their car — also an Asian import with a 4-cylinder engline — is riddled with the battle scars of parallel parking and driving in the city.

Their bad habits can’t be because American roads are different? It’s gotta be genetic. You would think that Asians would be the best fucking drivers in the world. We’ve got Asian car manufacturers falling out our asses: Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Honda, Suzuki, Kia, Subaru, ad nauseam. They even make tires with names like Yokohama, Toyo, Bridgestone, Sumitomo, and others. Apparently they can build the shit out of a car, they just can’t drive the goddamned things. Excellent.

So, what’s the problem? Why can’t they drive? I’ve got some ideas, but these are just theories, so no wagering. First, I think they get their license at a late age. Americans start driving at 15 or 16 years of age. Asians hop off the boat and open a convenience store, make lots of money, then decide to get a license while their male children run the store. The old addage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” plays well here. (Hell, they probably ate the old dog anyway.) Second, they’re genetically predisposed to riding in or pulling rickshaws, which have no gas pedal or turn signals and go pretty slow. Third, they’re too fucking short. They sit in their car, and their eyes are directly level with the top of the steering wheel. This causes a blind spot, hindering their ability to see traffic directly in front of them. Lastly, their eyes are three-quarters closed! Hell, you can blindfold their ass with dental floss. That can’t be good for seeing traffic. There may be other reasons, too. If you know of any, used the aforementioned comments link below and tell us about them.

My damned car still has a dark right brake light. It’s a shorted ground somewhere, I just can’t find it. Of course, it’s been raining on the weekends, making it difficult to get and play with car “battrees.” Why do some people call batteries, “battrees?”

Illiterate hicks. The country is filled with them.

Are you tired of the Schiavo case in Florida yet? Co-workers thought it was funny when I made a joke about the Pope getting Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. That was slightly funnier than “To hell with Schiavo, stop feeding Kirsty Alley!” We all laughed. Good times. I’ve been trying to find humor in almost anything lately.. I’m such a prick. Anyway, my opinion is let the poor woman die! She’s been in a vegetable for 15 years. She’s the human equivilent of a goldfish (actually, I guess a goldfish can eat on their own. Draw your own conclusions). Look, she’s not going to get better. I understand the family’s point of view, but Terri is a human being that can’t think, talk, or eat and has no conscious. The videos we’re seeing on CNN are 3 to 4 years old… and even without a conscious, the mind can still instruct the body to perform basic instinctual actions, like tracking a balloon or responding to sounds. Her quality of life is not how a human being should live. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live like that. I know my opinion isn’t popular with most of the indoor plumbing gender, but you know what they say about opinions…

So, maybe you’re wondering what the hell the title of this post has to do with the subject matter. Nothing. It’s more of how I feel lately. My stupid car and its tempermental brake light, the garnishment, work, the passing of my father, a respitory infection, and just daily stress in general. It’s all left me feeling off my tracks, like a train wreck. Of course, most of this shit happened in the month of March. It kinda felt like last year’s hurricane season in Florida. I just keep telling myself it will get easier.

I often lie to myself.

It’s a good hobby.