"Do you ever wonder what would happen?"

"All the time."

A man piloting a hot air balloon discovers he has wandered off course and is hopelessly lost. He descends to a lower altitude and locates a man down on the ground. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says, "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon about 30 feet above this field."

"You must work in Information Technology" says the balloonist.

"Yes I do" replies the man. "And how did you know that?"

"Well" says the balloonist, "what you told me is technically correct, but of no use to anyone."

The man below says, "You must work in management."

"Yes I do" replies the balloonist, "how did you know that?"

"Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect my immediate help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now, somehow it's my fault."

Well, I'd forgotten it was that time of year, apparently, but I was reminded tonight. I logged into my MySpace account and found a friend request from an ex of mine to whom I'll simply refer as Misery.

It happens around this time every year: near the end of October/first part of November (she waited a bit longer this year), she tries to get back in touch, and she's done this every Oct/Nov since we broke up (probably because it was near the end of October 2005 that we got together in the first place; she's very anniversary-minded).

It usually consists of either a pleading e-mail or a MySpace friend request or a pleading note attached to a MySpace friend request.

This is not someone I want in my life, children.

My overall attitude on the subject has shifted a bit, but the principles are the same. While I don't have the pervasive loathing for the woman that I used to -- somehow, that's dialed itself down some -- she remains probably the last person I would ever want to have around again. For one thing, this time of year, with its endlessly grey, cold, wet, miserable weather, makes it the worst possible time for her to attempt any kind of friendship reconciliation.^* This is primarily because the dreary weather depresses me, and since I'm notorious for empathetically feeding off the energy of those around me, her perpetual negativity and misery (hence the moniker) brings me down with her in the worst way.

That's the short, polite version. There's also the part about how she treated me like an imbecilic, insubordinate personal assistant she just couldn't believe had a mind of his own. We won't go there tonight, I'm trying to let go of the past.

Having said that, I denied her friend request and blocked her from my profile, which I'd already done on Facebook and can't believe I'd overlooked on MySpace. Hopefully, it's toodles until next year.


^*I assume that was her goal; I suppose it's possible she's been recently dumped and/or heard about The Girl Who Called departing unexpectedly.

Gays Hit Back at Mormons

"That's why we are seeking to strip the Mormon church of its status as a religious organization. According to IRS law, "no organization, including a church, may qualify for IRC section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying)." [Emphasis added.]

Please join our efforts and show the world that gay people -- and their friends and families -- know how to hit back. Sign this petition to support the legal effort to strip the Mormon Church of its tax-exempt status."

How wonderfully, wonderfully sweet it would be to see this actually take place, to show those holier-than-thou, closed-minded bigots that legal action is a two-way street, and that their efforts to stamp out equality and civil rights actually do have consequences.

Read the column, and then visit www.MormonsStoleOurRights.com to let them know they're not the invincible tower of power they think they are. If there's even the remotest chance of this happening, it's worth signing and/or sending a small donation. I already have. Most importantly, THEY DESERVE IT.

This may help give you a better context as to the goings-on of the past several weeks, as well as what's been going through my head since the break-up.




You mean, the call that took place back in April? Months and months and months ago? That was pretty exciting. For you too, as I remember.





So happy to see the wind blowing this way, sweetie! Mwah! :) As for the title of Best Boyfriend Ever, it's one I'll always hold dear... and by "always," I mean "October."





Twelve compliments in one sentence (not the least of which was "love"). How can I contain my excitement without blushing?! By waiting a month, apparently. And by the by, you won't have to trade anything for the world -- you'll give it away free.





I can't tell you how much it means to hear this. And read this. And read it again. And again.





YOU'RE SO WELCOME! Hey, is that a door that just hit me in the ass... ?





"Now get the fuck out."





And by "always," you must mean "October." It looks like we really are on the same page. Squee!

Full context:
Letter 1, page 1
Letter 1, page 2

Letter 2, page 1
Letter 2, page 2
Letter 2, page 3

I haven't been told any more than before, but I probably know more.

Her response to my query from yesterday:
i just can't do it.

I replied:
I know we're done seeing each other. But if you ever had an ounce of respect for me, please tell me why you just can't do it. There must be a reason.

And she responded:
It's not you at all I just can't have a relationship right now. So that is why I can't do it.

Which, of course, tells me everything and nothing. It is a complete cop-out, there's no doubt about that part; we've gone from "only seeing each other once a week" to "can't have a relationship right now," and the two don't exactly play well together.

It's been suggested that she may have hooked up with an ex (or similar circumstance), which is pure speculation, of course, but I tend to think the truth is probably more in line with just having lost interest for no particular reason.

My point being... that's the reason. So out with it, if that's the case. It isn't very theatrical or even interesting, but I'm not writing a script for stage, I'm just asking for the truth. And as I recently posed to a friend: when did the truth become such a luxury that one person can decide another doesn't deserve it?

Here, I will show you an e-mail exchange. It took place tonight between me and my now-ex-girlfriend, The Girl Who Called. I will let the e-mails speak for themselves, and you can let me know what your take is. All opinions welcome.

The Girl Who Called wrote:
hey there you are right but I'm the type of person that I can't talk about how I feel I have to write it.

So what has been on my mind is that I don't thinking you and I are going to work out because I don't see you but once a week and I just don't feel like its going to work. I'm sorry that I told you this way but I just can't do it.

I would still love to be your friend if you would like me too. Thank you for everything that you have done for me and the kids. I'm sorry.


And my response:

If that's the only problem, why not just ask if we can see each other more often?

Because that's not the real reason... is it?

Look at it this way. You called me every single week, all summer long. Relentlessly. You've never had a guy treat you the way I treat you -- those were your words. I'm the best boyfriend you've ever had -- you put that in writing. In the past, guys have abused you, locked you in the house, tried to 'assault' you, etc.

And you're letting 'us' go over a problem you don't even see fit to ask if I can solve?

I'm actually not mad, believe it or not. I just really, really want to know what the real problem is. Can I know?

If I hear anything back, I will be sure and post it here. I'll predict one of two things: either she'll be all kinds of indignant that I accused her of lying, or she'll write back lamely insisting this is all there is to it, but not saying much else.

Your thoughts?

Some people will believe anything if it's about the other party's candidate. I just got the umpteenth e-mail from a Deaf guy I always see at Sidepockets who is one of the friendliest and most patient and accommodating guys I know when it comes to people just learning sign language, like me.

His political e-mails, anyway, always seem to revolve around the same few anti-Obama topics:

- his alleged "ties to terrorism"
- his "real" religion
- his "real" ethnicity

After today's e-mail, I finally responded. I couldn't keep it to myself, and hell, why should I?

"Come on, man. Are you really still spreading this fear-based paranoia? Half of these anti-Obama e-mails have been debunked by factcheck.org, and I'm sure this one has been too.

When Romney ran in the primaries, all we heard was 'there must be no religious litmus test.' Apparently it wasn't right to judge a guy according to his religious beliefs. But now what are we hearing about Obama? He's a Muslim, he's an Arab, he's got a bad pastor, he's only 8% black -- religion, race, fear, fear, fear. If this is the best the Republican party can do, well, it's no wonder McCain's about to lose."

I can't wait for November 4th. The whole thing will be over by midnight.

As I'd hoped, our instructor handed our mid-terms back to us tonight in class.

And as I'd hoped, my score was 75/75, which by my count is 100%. You can't do a whole hell of a lot better than that. :)

My current overall grade in the class is 98%. Now that's an ass-whoopin'.

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

All right, on a less contentious note, tonight we had our mid-term exam in my Deaf studies class. I haven't talked much about class so far this semester, but yeah, I'm knocking out another pre-req as we speak, and so far it's been mildly interesting, somewhat entertaining, and not altogether difficult.

I was pulling a 97% going into tonight's mid-term. One would think, then, that just about any grade, even an A, on the midterm would almost certainly pull my overall grade down, right? Well, not so fast.

When I finished the exam tonight, I left the classroom and ran into a classmate of mine who asked what my impression was of the exam. What came out of my mouth sums up the whole thing: "If I missed one, I don't know what it would be."

And there you have it. I'm not sure I missed any. The only thing I can think of is that I might have flubbed a multiple choice answer. I don't know which, but so far, the only points I've missed in the class at all were on a multiple choice quiz, and he told us before the exam tonight that he put a couple tricky ones on there. So who knows, I might get a 96 or a 98 instead. But, and I've said this before, if that's your biggest problem, you're in pretty good shape.

I have to get something off my chest right this minute. I put down my sandwich so I could blog about this. So don't go anywhere.

If one more person looks at me and uses the phrase "package deal," I'm going to show you all a package you'll never forget, and I won't even give you the benefit of a warning, a link, nothing. Just, boom. Right there in front of you.

The Girl Who Called, as you all know, has two kids, a five-year-old boy that I'll call Amoebic Dysentery, and a three-year-old girl as well. I've dated girls with kids before, it's been no big deal. But the reason it's been no big deal is because they've never made a habit of bringing their kids on our dates.

Our first date was on August 30th, a Saturday. It was followed by two more Saturday dates on September 6th and 13th. Beginning September 20th -- and every Saturday since then -- the kids have been with us. We haven't had a date without the kids since the 13th of September. If things go the way I expect them to, we'll have the kids with us again this Saturday as well, which makes four in a row. And I have to tell you, I'm getting burnt the fuck out on kid-time.

The Girl Who Called was half-comatose on the phone tonight, so I'm not sure anything I said really sunk in, but I mentioned to her that we've had a lot of group action/kid action/family fun lately, but that coming soon, I'd like to get back to just going out with her, if we could work that out. She did mention that this was her weekend with Amoebic Dysentery and she'd like to do something with him, and I felt like saying ok, I'll see you next weekend then. But I didn't, and she otherwise seemed to think it was fine that we start going out on our own again. So I'm going to keep my eyes wide open on this subject and try to keep in mind that it can't be easy for a single mom to date.

My whole thing is: she has six-and-a-half days of straight kid-time. You would think that by the time Saturday evening rolled around, she'd be gagging for some grown-up time. But for about the last month, she hasn't; she's brought the kids then too. She made a point to tell me she was trying to see what I was like with the kids, because if I wasn't good to them, or blew them off, or whatever, then she'd know it wasn't going to work.

I personally think it's a mistake to introduce your guy to the kids this early, especially when they're that young, but I can't tell her how to parent, either.

I can only tell you what I think, and that is: I don't know any guy who would be willing to let a girl bring her kids along starting with the fourth date. That, to me, is beyond all reason. I think I've been more than flexible about all this, a good sport that defines the very nature of good sports. So, going forward, if it happens that I need to keep reminding her that our dates should be ours? And the kids really should stay home while the adults go out? It isn't going to work. That's one package deal that's going to get re-packaged and sent right back.

Regardless of your situation, you need to (at some point) learn to have some kind of a life outside of your kids. She got such an early start on the kids that I'm not sure she knows how to do that. It might take some patience on my part. I don't, in any case, feel like I'm asking too much. I'm not interested in being a role model at this point, I'm not looking to fill in for any missing dads, and I did not sign on to date three people at once. I just don't think there's anything wrong with one evening out with adults. We will find a balance, or we won't do this.

This sums it up pretty well... I'm afraid.

Our ongoing segment continues in "Fun with Spam," and I'm going to warn you, sometimes they get pretty raunchy. :)

From: Reese Anatola
Subject: Slut waits ejaculations of the dog
Because who couldn't use a little hair of the... I think that's a different deal.

From: Bronny Johnson
Subject: Dog enjoys a pussy
They don't call him man's best friend for nothin'.

From: Elsie Ernest
Subject: Naked in city stool
And some people won't even take a dump in public.

From: Wit Manley
Subject: Horses penetrating toongirls
Dibs on Betty Boop.

From: Ferdinand Randall
Subject: Slap a pound of meat in these chunky chicks.! om
Why would she only want the first pound.? om

From: Phil
Subject: Your package deserves an upgrade
Oh, I think I started with the upgrade.

Political debates during election years really are just a series of Rorschach tests -- you see what you see, and likewise with everyone else, respectively. Here's my take on last night's ink blot test; you guys will have to fill me in on yours.

Like many other people, I tuned in expecting (and hoping for) two things: one, that Sarah Palin would step on her dick, and two, that Joe Biden would dismantle her summarily. That she didn't speaks well for her (or her handlers, I can't decide which), and that he didn't shows his class and political savvy in navigating shark-infested waters. This was, after all, by far the most anticipated debate yet, given Biden's 35-year Senate career vs. Palin's five-minute political shelf life.

No, there were no train wrecks last night, but that doesn't mean there's no winner. I think Biden mainly stayed on topic and on message in a way that was as respectful and straightforward as possible. Palin, on the other hand, occasionally came across as snarky, chiding, and condescending, kind of like my boss talking to a group of college students as though they were showing up for the first day of kindergarten.

Palin, we knew going in, has a gift for offering glittering generalities in the place of specific answers to specific questions. Several times during the debate, she would begin her non-answer in such a way that told you she was dodging the question -- by the fifth or sixth word out of her mouth, you knew she had shifted focus, and I never caught Biden doing that once.

Given Palin's near-sarcasm at times, I don't see how Biden managed to keep from tearing her to ribbons the way we know he could have. Let's face it: a two-year governor who couldn't keep pace with Katie Couric is absolutely no match for a 35-year veteran of the Senate, she just isn't. But destroying her outright would have made Biden look like a bully and/or a sexist pig, and he successfully steered around all those potential post-debate accusations by answering the questions that were asked and never straying too far off-topic. Palin, meanwhile, occasionally spoke s-l-o-w-l-y, with plenty of verbal pauses, as though giving herself extra time to formulate her, well, formulaic answers.

I am worried about one thing. Palin was not the disaster I (and others) expected her to be, and I think we're going to see our share of people who equate the lack of disaster with a victory, given the laughably low expectations most people had for her. She did not win; but she did not cause her own defeat, either. Biden has himself, not Palin, to thank for his win. So many people are going to be so shocked by the fact that she didn't fall on her face that they're going to be tempted to declare her the winner, but they'll be wrong.

There is one undeniable fact. For an unknown know-nothing who was grotesquely outgunned to step up and go head-to-head with an old, old hat like Biden? Took some enormous balls. The odds she faced were simply insurmountable, but it didn't stop her. She came out swinging regardless, and for that, if nothing else, I admire the hell out of her.

It's going to be hard for me to communicate to you just how bizarre the last little bit has been. Not all of it is bad, and really, none of them are major, life-changing events; it's a cumulative effect similar to death by a thousand cuts.

You may remember The Girl Who Called from back in the spring, many entries ago. August 30th was our first date, and it's been every Saturday night since then. We've already decided we don't care to see anyone else, and what's cool is that it just came up one night in conversation; as we were marveling over how we constantly appear to be on the same page about almost everything, I made the comment that even though I'm always on the lookout for dating prospects, so to speak, I'd recently realized that I was no longer doing so. She agreed that she wasn't still "looking" either, and so there you have it.

Meanwhile, my mind has not been on The Girl at Work for quite some time, obviously; as soon as one chapter closed, another began. Her last day at our company was Thursday, and it pretty much went exactly as I expected: a few tears, everyone brought food for a pot luck (I brought a chocolate creme pie, thankyouverymuch), and we already miss her. That hellhole will certainly not be the same without her; I do love her to pieces.

One of my favorite bands of all time, Letters to Cleo, made it known on MySpace this week that they will have a "major announcement" coming soon. They disbanded in mid-2000, and we Cleo fans were on pins and needles for any news involving a new album, an upcoming tour, anything... and today, they announced a four-show reunion tour beginning in L.A., heading to Boston, and finishing up in New York. I was hoping for a new album, but you've got to start somewhere, and who knows, p'raps a small reunion like this will lead to bigger things.

Two nights ago, my computer kept rebooting. Automatically. Spontaneously. In the middle of everything. It would click off, reboot, and then a few minutes later, it would do it again. Sometimes it would do it in the middle of a reboot. I got my IT guy on the phone to see if he could make heads or tails of it, and from the way things sounded, he suggested an XP repair installation.

So I did that -- I floundered my way through it, forgetting some of the details, it'd been so long, and when I came back to check on it periodically, it didn't appear to have made any progress. It would be just slightly ahead of where I left it even though over half an hour had passed. It turned out the damn thing was rebooting in the middle of the repair, and when it came back on, it would have to start that particular segment over.

I took it in the next day, but before my IT guy could look at it, I opened the case to see if there was anything I might be able to immediately recognize as wrong. Turns out there was -- dust. And I mean blankets of it. Two air flow vents of some kind -- they were most obviously designed to facilitate air flow -- were almost completely blocked by curtains of dust. I removed the curtains (each in one piece) with a pair of plastic spoons, and when it came time to turn it on and check things out, it wasn't rebooting itself anymore.

The defrag went fine, although we didn't let it finish because I had to get to a meeting after work, but later that night, I got an IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL stop-error. I recovered from that, and the next day, I got a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT stop-error. I googled these error messages and found that among other things, they can be a sign of faulty memory. So I did what any conscientious computer owner would do -- I switched out all the RAM. Replaced it with new. And I haven't had a single problem since.

The going theory now is that the huge amounts of dust caused two problems:

1. The restricted air flow caused the processor to overheat, which then gave rise to (what appeared to be) random consecutive reboots;
2. Since dust conducts electricity, somehow it shorted out or otherwise zapped one of the RAM modules (or perhaps both).

Lesson learned. I wish I had an efficient (read: quick) way to test which, if any, of the RAM sticks was still good, but at this point I just don't give a shit enough to look into it. Because...

... a day later, my 80 gig USB external hard drive either crashed or was corrupted beyond use. I'm in the process of getting a recovery program from my IT guy at work, because I had between 30 and 40 gigs of data on this drive, and I'd like to lose as little as possible. At this point, it doesn't look like the drive can be saved, but it might still be possible to salvage some of my brother's wedding photos, as well as the goat porn.

Tonight, we had a pretty important presentation in class, but that's over and I don't feel like discussing it. It went well, that's all I care about.

So it's been an interesting... several days. If I could start getting some more sleep, I'd be in much better shape. Here's hoping things calm down a bit.

The saying goes, usually about religion, that "for the believer, no proof is necessary; for the non-believer, no proof is possible." I have to believe that's what's going on with this year's Presidential election.

I do not understand how any rationally-thinking individual with even an average I.Q. would consider -- consider -- voting Republican this year. It's bad enough any other year, but it has become uncommonly clear that anyone voting for John McCain in November is one or any combination of the following:

1. A blind follower of the conservative right based on so-called "moral" issues;
2. A blind follower being told how to vote by a church, community leader, or family member;
3. A racist.

Let me rewind a few months to the Presidential primaries back in February. All I had heard for months was how no self-respecting Republican -- assuming there are any left who still respect themselves -- would ever consider supporting McCain, a perceived and so-called "maverick" who had the nerve to call the GOP out on their bullshit (a full-time job if there ever was one).

Now take a look around, and all you see are flip-floppers, people who couldn't stomach McCain a few short months ago but now rally round the flag either because they're just stuck with the guy or because he's Veeped the former mayor of an Alaskan town of nine thousand who once fired her police chief for not supporting her campaign. And whose daughter was knocked up by the tender age of seventeen. "Moral issues" indeed.

McCain's military service to the United States can't be disputed, but his status as a former POW as evidence of his readiness to lead the country is laughable. Senator McCain became a POW because he got shot down -- the other pilot was better than him. And once on the ground, he managed to get himself captured and sent to the Hanoi Hilton for a whopping five years. Is that the defining qualification for President of the United States? A pilot that couldn't stay in the air and out of enemy hands? How many thousands of soldiers and pilots served as long as (or longer than) McCain and never got captured? Are we nominating them for President?

Republican administrations are riddled with corruption and deceit, yet people continue to vote with them on moral grounds. That hardly makes sense. Every time you look up, yet another member of the Bush administration is resigning in the middle of some scandal or other, usually involving fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy charges. Of course, the charges never stick and the subpoenas are never honored because President Bush overextends his executive privilege to get his cronies out of trouble. Name the last Bush lackey who actually had to testify and/or appear before Congress. Yeah, I can't find one either. But the turnover rate in his administration would rival your area McDonald's restaurant.

Have we already forgotten that Senator McCain was one of the Keating Five, five senators accused of corruption connected with the Savings & Loan crisis in the 1980s? The S&L collapse cost American taxpayers nearly $125 million.

That same $125 million, by the way, is approximately the budget surplus we enjoyed on Bill Clinton's watch. Now we suffer through the largest deficit in U.S. history -- under a Republican president.

Please don't e-mail me with that ludicrous theory of how it takes eight to ten years for a president's economic policies to affect the country. The Republicans sure would love you to believe that, wouldn't they?

Have we already forgotten that oil was $28 a barrel under Clinton, and a mere eight years later, it languishes at well above $100 per? P'raps putting oil billionaires in charge of the world's largest oil consumer was a conflict of interest after all. Too late now.

Have we already forgotten that September 11 happened on a Republican's watch -- the same Republican party that chides the Democrats for being weak on defense? If 9/11 had happened on Clinton's watch, Ann Coulter would still, to this very hour, be screaming for his blood.

Have we already forgotten that our illegal, unjustified invasion of Iraq has cost trillions of dollars, untold lives, and alienated us before the international community?

Clinton? He jizzed on a dress. Reprehensible, to be sure, because he was married. But no one died, lost their job(s), or was called to active duty because of it.

Anyone can be fooled once. But some people were stupid enough to vote for Bush a second time. If that's not enough, some of them are preparing to vote for him a third time -- only he will appear as John McCain on this November's ballot. It can only be the product of unreasoned blindness or out-and-out racism. I give credit by assuming it might not be both.

I got an e-mail from my brother earlier tonight spreading propaganda for the McCain campaign. The subject line was, "I'm just saying..." and the e-mail itself, which cites no sources, of course, was a breakdown in the differences in income tax we'd be paying under McCain vs. Obama. According to these unsupported figures with no apparent source, income taxes under Obama would be nearly double the taxes we'd pay under McCain.

Then I remembered something he'd e-mailed me back in February. I had written him and his wife urging them to vote in the primaries the next day, and he sent me this e-mail:

"i mailed my vote in for Romney last week and so did [my wife]!!!! i reeeeally don't like mccain."

I dug up this e-mail, hit forward, and included this note:

"Well before you declare your love for McCain, take a look at the e-mail you sent me back in February (below) during the primaries. Didn't have much good to say about McCain then. that's called flip-flopping bro!"

There's no telling how he's going to react to these things, but here's how he replied:

"yeah i know. but if you gotta drink piss, better to drink your own."

By "your own," he certainly means Republican vs. Democrat, not white vs. black. But his response essentially told me what I knew all along: he will vote for absolutely any Republican they put up there, regardless. And he'll do it because his church told him to. It's all partisan politics with him. Forget the issues -- that requires thinking for yourself, and if there's one thing his church doesn't stand for, it's individual thought.

Sorry for ya. John McCain's going down a la Bob Dole come November. See if he doesn't.

I went out after work tonight for some drinks with The Girl At Work and some friends and got about half drunk. Still pretty tipsy. On the way home, I decided I would cut my wrists open and spray her name on the wall. Then I realized my mom's birthday is tomorrow, and I can't take that away from her for the rest of her life. Hearing my friend Erin on the phone saying she loved me doesn't hurt either.