.: The tiki gods of Hawaii have spoken… angry volcano rumble… the Island has chosen it's next victim.

I know this will make at least one friend of mine happy.  She never really liked the guy.

Which guy?

[image:8:l]  This guy.

Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Jin-Soo Kwon on the show.

Now, that's not to say that I know this for sure, but he's following in some pretty heavy tire tracks.  Ana-Lucia and Libby both got busted for drunk driving, and were shot by Michael.  Mr. Eko was busted for a traffic violation and disobeying a police officer and was cut down by Smokey.  

Now according to the BBC News Jin has been busted for drunk driving, which following the rules I have just made up, indicates that he will likely be killed by another castaway on the Island.

My guess is that he will accidentally get run over by Hurley, as they try to back the Dharma van off of a dead Other.  

Comment with your own guesses if you like.

AB 

.: Had a Dr. appointment today.  Apparently, for a overweight, smoking, physically unfit bastard, I am the epitome of health.  

Blood pressure a little high, but I had consumed much coffee and a seriously salty lunch (which needs to stop).  Cholesterol is good, possibly better than, which surprised the fuck out of me.  No blood clots in the leg (which is why I went to begin with), though I will probably need to wear the compression stocking for the rest of my life, unless I lose a serious amount of weight. 

He wants me to consider gastric bypass surgery, which I probably won't.  My problem is that I eat too much shit, and get no exercise.  I have another appointment scheduled for six months, so I hope to lose some weight by then and show him that I just need to have my ass kicked on a semi regular basis.

One concern is that my white blood cell count is a little high.  Could be an infection or result of my leg injuries.  Could be that I smoke.  Another blood test in a month, and I guess if there's something to worry about, I'll hear about it before my next appointment.

[image:7:l].: Carved a pumpkin with Pip this evening.  She did most of it.  I carved the top off so she could gut the goofy bastard, then did the nose to show her how I wanted her to use the wicked sharp knife safely.  She carved the rest of the face, including a nice set of buckteeth.  Then she set about sorting the seeds from the guts so that I could bake the seeds. 

[image:6:l]Here's what I did, in case anyone who reads this wants to cook some pumpkin seeds.

Cleaned the seeds as best I could.  Had about a cup of them.  Put them in a pot with four cups of water and a 1/4 cup of salt.  Boiled them, then let them simmer for about 15 minutes, which I think may have been too long.  Drained them.

Spread them out on a greased cookie sheet (butter and oil, thin) and baked them at 400 degrees for about twenty minutes.

They came out okay, and still very tasty, but kinda fucked up looking and slightly burnt.

Next time, I'll simmer them about 8-10 minutes, bake them for 15 and see how they turn out.

I have been mildly fucking domesticated.

.: I have noted a mild case of finger tourettes in previous posts.  For instance, I said at the close of my last post:

fucking clown bastard bitch fuckers.

What the fuck is that?

I did a spit take when I read it later.  And wondered who the fuck talks like that, let alone writes like that.

Probably some fucking clown bastard bitch fucker.

.: Been getting a lot of ideas about this years novel entry for the NaNo thing. Also getting much done on the writing that I've been lax on.  'The Seventh House' has been going pretty good, and the rewrite on the ages old 'Bistro' have been going slow, but going.  So I think that this year's NaNo project is going to take a backseat to mo' better things.  But I'll still do it, just lower it as a priority.  The idea I have is a good one, so even if I just get a rough novella draft out of it, it'll be something to work on this winter after Pip rejoins her mom.

I'll need something to do once she's gone.

Insert sad face icon here, because I'll be fucked if I will.

AB 

.:  It's almost time for National Novel Writing Month.

From Nov. 1st to Nov 30th, I and thousands of others will undertake the writing of a novel in 30 days.

Yes.

It doesn't have to be a polished novel, a long novel or god forbid, even a good one.  It just has to be 50,000 words or more before the deadline.   The idea isn't to write your magnum opus, or even Opus from Bloom County, it's just to get the writing done.  Sit down and write your 50,000 or so words and just. Fucking. Write.

Which I'm all about.

I've done it three years now.  I "won" back in 2004.  Did not win in 2005 or 2006.

I will make it this year though… oh yes.  I am fucking focused. 

I promised updates last year and never delivered.  I will do it this year or you can cut off one of my balls with a sharpened spoon.  

For more info, visit NaNoWriMo.org and check it out, sign up and start thinking about writing.  

Peace you fucking clown bastard bitch fuckers.  

AB 

Almost a week since my last post.  Not cool.  At this time, few are reading, but still…

The Dude should be flattered that readership has dropped by half or so since he announced his departure.

I have statistics, fucker.

I don't care much about readership.  Of course I want people to read what I say, but what am I saying at this time, really?

Not fucking much.

Part of the main idea of this site was just to be writing.  Everyday.  Get to work, because everyday I don't write, is a day where I lose that finely honed edge I was thinking about getting eventually.

But, enough whining about how often or not I fucking post.

.: Almost a full week since Pip came to live here full time.  She's got her room set up, we have her school schedule worked out nicely.  Homework is getting done and snacks are being had.

Gantor's trip to sunny fucking Florida was waylaid, laid on the way and altogether fucked.

She's fine, but she left Saturday and as of today (Thursday), I still don't know if she made it all the way.  She calls daily with an update that doesn't include the word Florida without it following 'still on the way to'.

.: KOSCO is making me wish for bowel obstructions to keep the constant flow of shit I endure at bay. Things are getting hairier, I am personally getting busier and busier with each fucking tick of the clock. It's a lot to do there, and I wouldn't bitch if it weren't for the fact that I am underpaid for the work I am doing, and even if I were being paid more, it's still too much to get done in a sixty hour week.  

It will get better, they say, when we move to the new facility.  

I will wait and fucking see.

.: Serenity, my car, is about to hit fucking drydock seeing as how everytime we go to fix my brakes, new problems crop up and rear their ugly heads.  Yes, I mix metaphors.  And yes, my car is named Serenity. 

I have the geek thing of naming my car after some sci-fi spaceship or another.  The first car was the Millennium Falcon, which was also the name of the Dude's old car.  Yes, I stole it, Lando.  This was followed by Serenity, named after the ship on the show "Firefly".  Oh, I am such a fucking geek at times.  But with Serenity getting laid up for repairs for a few weeks, I am bringing Gantor's old car out of retirement.  It was nicknamed "the Beast", because it is.  It's an 8 cylinder nightmare from the eighties, and it growls like there's some small child or large midget caught in it's throat.

So while it remains "the Beast", it's also "Galactica" from the reimagined BSG.  Because, the nickname of the Galactica was "the Beast" during the time when the Pegasus was still with us. 

I am such a fucking geek.

And Galactica Razor in just over a month,

Fuckers.

AB 

The Dude has posted over in the ill-literati section of the site. 

You can read and comment on his post here.

AB 

.:I've gotten some positive feedback on my 'Che'ness picture.  I'm glad people are liking it.  Feed my ego, you bastiches.

But, I do want to clarify something on the Che thing overall.  I'm not a big fan of Che Guevara.  I'm all for revolution when warranted, but in actuality, the revolutions that Che tried to start (with the exception of Cuba) failed miserably in most cases.  And (include Cuba) said revolutions actually made things a whole lot worse in the countries where the revolutions were attempted.  Failed revolution = Crackdown on the populace.

So why did I Che up my image?

Well, it looked cool.  It was mildly ironic.  It fed my ego a little.  And perhaps most importantly, it gave me something to do when I should have been working.  It only came about because I happened to see the image on the BBC news site, then looked up to see that picture of me flipping the camera off (because that god damn picture is all over the walls at work, they think it's funny… motherfuckers even Warholed it) and decided that the time was right for me to become an icon myself.

Since, you know, in my head I already am.  

.: Gantor has still not moved. Which kinda sucks.  How many times will I think this is goodbye before it is?  It's like when Chef left for the Marine Corps all them years ago.  They kept pushing his departure date back, so instead of the teary-eyed goodbye he got the first time, we were kinda like "Oh, you're leaving?  Okay, bye."  The same thing happened when my Grandmother was dying.  She was always dying.  The doctors kept saying "Say goodbye, she won't last the night," and then she'd recover again for a while.  So finally, it was like "Say goodbye, she won't last the night."

"Okay," we'd reply.  "See you tomorrow, Grandma." And we did.  She eventually died at home, away from hospitals and all that, but she had to sucker punch a nurse to go out her own way.

But I stray from my point.  

Gantor, if you're going, go.  I can't take the emotional rollercoaster shit anymore.  But, hey, you know, don't go if you don't want to.

Pip's room is coming along, at least to the point where her stuff is in it.  That'll be a project for the next few days, getting that shit organized.  I'm glad she's staying with us for the next three months, because I will surely lose my shit when she leaves.

.: Got hammered last Friday.  I haven't been that drunk in quite a while.  Went to see my friends band, "Hooker Dragger".  Didn't see them play though.  I've been to three gigs and only see them play once.  But the hammering happened at Snapper Magee's later in the night.  I'm still getting snippets of the chaos I was up to.

That's why I stay away from the hard stuff kids.

.: Went to the 'Haunted Hayride' in Ulster Park the next night.  It's okay.  It involves standing in lots of lines so that you can eventually take a hayride through some faux haunted woods where teenagers dress up and try to scare you.  Then into line for the corn maze, where teenagers dress up and try to scare you.  Followed by a line for a haunted house where teenagers try to scare you again, and then into another line where I opted out of standing in lines so missed the last haunted feature.

I bet there were teenagers there, dressed up trying to scare you.

In all, it was pretty cool.  Apparently, you should go on a weeknight to avoid the lines.  

Thanks for listening.

AB 

Because I have problems…

[image:4:l] Took that photo of myself with the cigarette dangling from my mouth as I flipped off my 12 year old niece, and in typical messianic fashion, made myself an icon.  It's a take off on the famous reworked picture of Che Guevara.  

[thumb:3:l] [thumb:5:l]

I have problems.

Really! 

Kinda…

Culled from the BBC News Site

2007 Ig Nobel Winners 

Medicine - Brain Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and Dan Meyer for their probing work on the health consequences of swallowing a sword.

Physics - A US-Chile team who ironed out the problem of how sheets become wrinkled.

Biology - Dr Johanna van Bronswijk of the Netherlands for carrying out a creepy crawly census of all of the mites, insects, spiders, ferns and fungi that share our beds.

Chemistry - Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavouring from cow dung.

Linguistics - A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.

Literature - Glenda Browne of Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the", and how it can flummox those trying to put things into alphabetical order.

Peace - The US Air Force Wright Laboratory for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among enemy troops.

Nutrition - Brian Wansink of Cornell University for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, "bottomless" bowl of soup.

Economics - Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan for patenting a device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them.

Aviation - A National University of Quilmes, Argentina, team for discovering that impotency drugs can help hamsters to recover from jet lag.

Full damn story here: 2007 Ig Nobel Winners 

AB 

… or a completely amateur code monkey/hack.

.:Been tooling around a little with the site and the theme I've chosen.  I figured out how to extend my widgetized sidebars and break them up with that text box in between.  It's pretty easy, which is why I figured it out without even looking for help beyond looking at the existing code.

I know it's not much for a lot of you, but give me my fucking moment, eh?

.:And I've been speaking 'Canadian' after answering my kid's question about whether or not Canadians talk the way they do in movies like 'Strange Brew' and on shows like 'South Park'. 

I told her they did.  

.:But about the code, I now have 6 sidebars running down the two right columns, broken up by a text box area.  I can keep going, but why would I?  Six may even be too much.

Nah.

Also upgraded the ill-literati blog to Wordpress 2.3, and changed it from being 'old site' to 'ill-literati'.  Need to make some small changes to the headers on both blogs. I haven't upgraded this blog because I do it through fantastico via my webhost, and while I don't need to do it through that, it's easier and faster to use and if I upgrade without out, I'm done using it.  So handy it is… so I wait. 

.:Chef, Toon and I did some work on my car this evening.  We were going to change the rear calipers and rotors, front rotors and all four pads, but apparently, the calipers don't have the mounting brackets.  You has to order them separately.  So I still drive around on a brake and a half, although we're that much closer to solving the problems.  We did change the PCV valve, and square away a bad vacuum leak, as well as changing the water pump which was just pissing antifreeze all over the motor and heading me towards major trouble if I left it alone.

.:So, accomplished much today, though not everything I set out to do, and at work I am getting buried and falling behind, which I predicted when I cleaned up my stack of shit the other day.

It never lasts.

.:So like I said, the above is probably absolutely fucking boring unless you're me. Sorry about that, but I did warn you.  

AB 

.: I should have been in bed already, but…

.: Warren Ellis has begun podcasting again.  Stuff by people you probably haven't heard of yet.  Which is better than anything Metallica or Britney Spears might hurl at you from their soulless bowels of shit and self loathing.  Listen to The 4am here. 

.: Speaking of Britney Spears.  She's lost custody of her children.  Which, I have guessed, is exactly what she wanted.  Better to act like a fucking asshole around your kids and have them taken away from you than it is to give in and hand them over to someone else.  You get more pathempathy by losing them, and either way you get to keep showing up in the news and on the internet blogosphere. 

Oh fuck. I just contributed to that, didn't I?

And you read it.

To make up for it, listen to The 4am, wherein you will find no popped idol.

.: Now I can sleep.

AB 

.: I hate this fucking laptop.  It keeps scrolling without being asked, and it just tanked the last attempt at today's post.  Fucking mindless piece of windows trash.

.: I actually saw the bottom of my desk today.  I am so caught up at work that it can only mean one fucking thing… I am doomed tomorrow.  I know that they will come in with a hundred proposals for a hundred units that have been shut down and condemned and I will have to find a way to get them done before the temp. dips below fucking freezing.  Good luck with that folks, you should have gotten a new unit when we first told you you needed one, not after you turned it on for the first time this season to have it shit the bed and blow soot in your face. 

.: My car is looming on disaster.  Not only do I still have no rear brakes, or struts, but now I think the water pump is going.

Can we say cocksucker? 

.: On the brighter side, I am now officially the legal guardian of my semi-step daughter.  I'm pretty much her father already, but now, for at least the next three months, I have papers to back it up.  Until her mother comes back from Florida to either come to her senses and stay here in K-town, or pick up the light of my life and move her to America's wang. I hope for the former, because, hey, America's wang, people!

.: More happy news on the family front, my sister had a baby, which brings her total to three. Mom and baby are well, and though I never, ever, call her (or anybody), I really, really should.  

.: Finally watched last weeks Chuck, Journeyman and Bionic Woman.  Review may follow this week.  It may not.  New Dexter on last night, and I'm going to watch that now.

Adios.

AB