And then we camped…

So let me tell you about our camping trip last weekend. It was hotter than a fresh pile of jalapeno-stuffed dog shit. We had fans in our tent, too. I also had a window unit air conditioner. I had it sitting on a TV tray, which was nice. Except that somewhere in the middle of the night, the cat ran into the TV tray, and the whole thing toppled over, crushing her. Rest in peace, Peachez. Damn, I’ll miss that cat.

There’s – well, there’s really not much to talk about. I mean, we camped out. That was about it. We didn’t really sit around drinking beer or anything. I mean, it was just a camping trip. Anyway, I told you I would tell you about it, so there you have it. Now you want to hear something real exciting? Read on, dear friends. Read on.

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White Van Specials

You ever get accosted in a gas station parking lot by one of these gangs in a white van, trying to sell you speakers for cheap? I have. Probably four or five times in my life. I’m always amazed at how this person’s story is so similar to the last person’s I heard. “Oh yeah the guy at the warehouse accidentally gave us a couple of extra speakers and if I don’t sell them, then the guy I’m delivering to will take them for himself and sell them. I just need some extra cash man!” Uh huh.

I’m also always amazed at how rude and persistent these people are. And how when I tell them to go screw themselves they start cussing me out. Well let me back up – I don’t tell them to literally go screw themselves. I say, “No thanks, I have a pretty good set of Klipsch 8.1 surround sound speakers in my theater at home. They cost way more than the speakers you’re selling, and are probably better, therefore.” Then they say, “Well you suck and don’t know a good deal when you see one!” And I say, “Uh, yes I do. Which is why I’m going to have to pass on this one.” Then they get mad and start cussing me out. Then I tell them to go screw themselves.

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Rights? What rights?

Why are people so willing and ready to give up their personal freedoms so easily, and with so little objection? Read ahead and you’ll see what I’m referring to. You might not think this is a big deal, or that I’m nitpicking about trivial shit. But I’m not. And I’m not willing to bend on little shit like this, because the more you give them, the more they will take from you. And you have to draw the line somewhere!

When I’m leaving Wal-Mart, I don’t expect to have to show you my receipt. Big deal, you say? Yes, it is a big deal. Number one, I’ve already paid for the shit. It’s mine now. The receipt is also mine. It’s proof that I purchased my stuff in case I need to return it. It’s not yours to see, and you have no legal right to ask for it. If I refuse to show it to the old woman at the door, there is nothing they can do about it, and they certainly cannot detain me over it. Most people just assume they have to show their receipts at the door, when asked for it. No! You don’t!

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The Price of Ice is Not so Nice

Happy Friday the 13th everybody. Hope spooky things happen today. :rolleyes: Actually, you know what would worry me more, would be Monday the 13th. If I were a superstitious guy, which I’m not, because that’s just gay, and I really don’t get into gay stuff, especially meaningless shit like superstitions, yeah, including that one about throwing the salt over your shoulder, but if I were a superstitious guy, and I actually believed that the number 13 was unlucky, and it fell on a Monday, then I might be worried. But Fridays are awesome!

Anyway, so I went camping this weekend. Just a few close friends and I – nothing big. We only took like six coolers full of food and beer. Don’t you have to be close friends to go camping with someone? I mean, really – are you going to take someone you don’t even like? Anyway, yeah, like I said, we went camping. And it was so son of a bitching hot that we had to keep buying bags of ice. And I finally realized something. I’m in the wrong damn business.

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Relief? Check.

So by now we’ve all gotten our relief checks in the mail. Right? If you haven’t, then please stop reading here. I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you.

Yeah, so I got mine this morning. Well, it didn’t come in the mail, as such. It just sort of came in my bank account. That sounds unnatural and disgusting. It arrived in my account. How’s that? And let me tell you what a relief it was.

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Join the Alliance

Some time last year, Kimbre and I inadvertantly formed the Huge Shades Alliance. Bring back beauty with offensively large shades™. Or some such. Well, her legacy lives on, and I’m on a mission to find the largest, most ridiculous – yet still stylish and somehow not gay – shades I can find. It has become a hobby of mine. Looking at and trying on the largest shades I can find in an effort to bring back the beauty.

How, you say? Well it’s really simple. The larger they are, the more space they reflect. And in those reflections you can’t see the ugly and inhumane scum we as humans have become. That’s probably kind of a lame (if not hippy) answer, but work with me. It’s all I got.

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The Incredible Shrinking Medium

I’m always amazed at how far we’ve come in the last hundred years with technology. It’s crazy that only a hundred years ago we had just invented the telephone, and now we have cellular shit, that doesn’t physically connect to anything, that can send pictures and texts and porn instantly to anyone else with a cell phone. Through the air. I still have trouble understanding how an analog phone worked, transferring voices across a wire. But here we’re sending that stuff through the air. And it’s digital. What?

But I really came to talk about media formats today. Well, cameras would be one qualifier: we used to use photo plates in our cameras. And film. Remember film? Ha! Now we use memory sticks and whatnot. And the idea is apparently to make them as small as possible. Seriously, give it a rest, people. My phone has a one-gig micro SD card in it. It’s smaller than my pinky fingernail. But it holds a gig worth of pictures and music. And porn. What the helling hell.

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  • Reading time:4 mins read

The Fall of a Masterful Empire

When I was young, I collected Hot Wheels cars. Matchbox too. I remember those John Cleese commercials where he’d slip one into his shirt pocket, and that always made me feel so good. I made my mother buy me a white dress shirt with two breast pockets just so I could stand in front of the mirror and slip into my pockets my two favorite Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars again and again.

I collected them. Like I do guitars, books, Elvis Costello albums, tattoos and Evan bottles, I collected every one of them I could find. They had realistic die-cast metal miniature automobiles with vibrant colors and awesome chrome wheels (and sometimes flake paint). It was magical when my mom would take me to the Wal-Mart and I had a five-dollar bill in my pocket. I could buy five new cars. They were 89 cents apiece. The only problems I ran into back then was which five or six to get. There were so many to choose from, and I knew that at any minute, Matel could go out of business and the Wal-Mart could burn down, and I’d be forever kept from completing my collection. So I had to select the best five.

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Take the Mall by Voice

In my never-ending quest to find and archive things I’ve written, I’ve come across a little gem here about a friend of mine we all know. And rather than posting it with the date I wrote it, I’ll just post it as current and tell you when it happened, because I remember when it happened. But not when I wrote it. This was back in July of 2002. This story is about Katy 80. Sweet little Katy Fanning, who almost never writes here, but always has something to say. Or in this case, to sing. She had just turned fifteen.

I work at a web hosting company, building the web servers. I often go into work at midnight or later and grab my stack of server build sheets and stay until five or so knocking them all out. My boss doesn’t care when I come in or leave, so long as I get them all built by their due date. And I work better at night. This frees up most of my days to do more important things like baseball games, beer drinking and, well, whatever I want. I live in Flower Mound, but work in Las Colinas. My friend Kim and her sister live in Coppell, and we often have lunch together when Katy has decided to skip school or is off for a teacher’s work day. Oh the glorious Teacher’s Work Day. Yes, that should be capitalized. I think she told her big sister she was out for TWDs a lot more often than they really were. On Friday of last week though, we were all off. It was the day after Independence Day, so everyone was off. And most of the world was at the Vista Ridge Mall. Which is, for whatever reason, where we decided we should head for lunch.

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Things That Make Me Go Boom

You know what I hate worse than – well, than almost anything? I hate going to the cobbling farmacy. Seriously. You pull up to drop off your prescription, or – if you’re like me and actually get off your lazy ass – go inside and wait at the counter. You wait while someone says, “Someone will be right with you.” Then you stand there watching them act like they’re doing something really important. More important than you, the customer. Which is the whole reason for their existence.

So after standing there for a pre-determined amount of time that only they can deem appropriate, someone finally decides to walk over and take your scrip. So you stand there while they key it in, then ask you when you’d like to pick it up. Wait. What? Mother cobbler, if it’s gonna be ready in ten minutes, you tell me to come back in ten minutes. Don’t ask me so I might say twenty which gives you a ten-minute break! Cock! Tell me the soonest possible time I can return and pick it up. That fries me, seriously. Then they tell you it will be ready in an hour (after you’ve requested a ten-minute return time). So you return in an hour only to stand there and wait another twenty minutes while they get ready to serve you. Then they finally come to the counter, get your name – as if they don’t remember it – and then say, “Oh he’s filling it right now. It will be ready in just a moment, please have a seat.”

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