Twas the Night Before Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
my dog Xena was prowling, protecting the house
The stockings had runs, thanks to Nikki's fun without care
and I ran thru the house, nude, naked, bare

until at the door, the garage one, it did open
I grabbed for my boxers, right side in I was hope'n
I threw on a shirt and some shorts I thought matched
I put on two shoes, one brown and one black

I went to the door and unlocked the latch
I threw open the storm door and checked my shirt tag
And what did I see in my garage space?
Some fat man with unusual speed, dexterity & grace

His face was round, wind-blown and red
his clothes were the same, covered in bugs, all dead
His boots were worn down and missing their soles
His pants were no better, the crotch had a hole

He made his way in, heading straight for the tree
He met first the coffee table, with his left knee
He cursed and cussed and made such a tinkle
I thought to myself "This is Kris Kringle?"

He grabbed for the gift in his graying sack
not caring too much he tossed it to the back
it landed with a thud next to the one wrapped in black,
the one with holes that hissed, Grandma wrapped up her cat...

With a scratch of his ass and a gulp of warm milk
he perused through the kitchen to see what he could bilk
Grabbing the pudding some 3 weeks old
and the plate of brisket already covered in mold

He went back to his sleigh, and hooked to the right
the reindeer must be blind, or senile at night
they hit the street light, taking it out
along with Dasher, Dancer and Donner's left snout

They recovered altitude almost hitting my car
but hit the neighbor's tree, they didn't get far
As they fell to the street, Santa's words I heard him say:
"Goddamn you flying assholes, you ruined my sleigh!"

-I never get tired of re-posting this one. I must have been drinking some powerful eggnogg that day I wrote it back in 2003.

4

Found this on Ivettes site:

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: Morning Show Producer, Assignments Editor, amusement park ride operator, alarm monitor

Four movies you could watch over and over: Office Space, Tomorrow Never Dies, X2 X-Men Unlimited, Austin Powers: Goldmember

Four places you’ve lived: El Paso...

Four TV shows you love to watch: Family Guy, Mythbusters, Futurama, Star Trek Deep Space Nine

Four places you’ve been on vacation: San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Chicago, Las Cruces

Four websites you visit daily: fark.com, metafilter.com, snopes.com, illwillpress.com

Four of your favorite foods: Pizza, lasagna, tacos, chicken parmesan

Four places you’d rather be: Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, Rome

Kickin' it Old School

So, here I sit on vacation. IM bored off my ass and well, my Playstation 2 is out of commission.



I've played every Playstation 1 game I have and was really going insane. I loaned out my Gameboy to my niece and nephew and was starting to get desperate for some entertainment until I remembered something I had stored in one of my drawers.



I weeded through the drawers in my closet and found it. My brother had bought this SEGA Genesis off his friend for like $50 back in the day & just left it. It's been resting in my closet since the last time I borrowed a few games from my friend Joe. So I pulled it out and the cords and connectors for it...



...and other things...



Remind me to show you what else I have stashed away in my drawers...



I also found my only two games.



This was yesterday I took the pictures. I've been playing the games since. Man, how the time flies by...

STRANGE FINDINGS FROM THE INTERNET LXX

*Lookie who's back!*

No thanks to Ivette, I am a Trekkie. Next Gen and DS9 are my favorites and I will admit the movies were great. Well, there's talk about a new Star Trek movie, based on the "mirror universe" story line of several episodes of Next Gen. It was rumored William Shatner was going to make a cameo in the last Star Trek series Enterprise, but didn't do it. Now, they took the idea and...

Downloading my songs from CD to iTunes is awesome. The one thing I don't like is that the lyrics aren't automatically downloaded with the songs from the iTunes library. Well, there's a reason for that. Fucking music industry.

I plan on buying a new laptop come the new year. It's going to be a new Apple iBook. The cases themselves are works of art, with simple and elegant clean lines with just the touch of minimalism that form & function follow to the letter. How do you improve on it? Well, if you happen to have a $20,000 laser etcher lying around your rumpus room and some artsy photos, you can have yourself a custom made laptop case!

Stuck as to what to get the person that has everything? I bet he doesn't have a working desktop trebuchet.

These foreign signs are hilarious. The Seoul Korea police signs are fucking stupid if you ask me.

Panoramic view of Paris (with points of interest highlighted).

An now, some Friday funnies. King Kong kicks ass...

I like these things

I got this in an email the other day and thought how much people like being voyeurs, so I decided to cut, paste & answer the questions rather than send it back to the person who sent it to me.

1. What time did you get up this morning? Well, if we go based on the first alarm clock to go off, I wake up at 2:58am.
2. Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
4. What is your favorite TV show at the moment? Mythbusters
5. What did you have for breakfast? Cereal
6. What is your middle name? David
7. What is your favorite cuisine? Italian
8. What do you dislike? Having to repeat myself or explain ordinary everyday actions.
9. What is your favorite chip flavor? As of late, chili cheese fritos
10. What is your favorite CD at the moment? Incubus - A Crow Left of the Murder
11. What kind of car do you drive? 2005 Dodge Neon SXT
12. Favorite sandwich? Ham sandwich (bread, mustard, ham, ham, ham) and fritos.
13. What characteristic(s) do you despise? People who wait till you make an ass out of yourself to point out a way of doing the exact same thing their way, and speaking to you when you are trying to talk to someone on the phone (especially when they are staring at you and can see you're trying to concentrate on conversation)...
14. Favorite item of clothing? I would say it would be my collection of Simpsons boxers
15. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? As much as I hate the cold, I would love to take an Alaskan kayak vacation.
16. What color is your bathroom? It's yellow. Not the color I would have chosen.
17. Favorite brand of clothing? GAP
18. Where would you retire to? South Texas
19. Favorite time of the day? Noon
20. What was your most memorable birthday? I don't know. None really stand out...
21. Where were you born? In a hospital.
22. Favorite sport to watch? baseball (Chicago Cubs & Boston Red Sox)
23. What fabric detergent do you use? Gain, All
24. Coke or Pepsi? IB&W Cream Soda
25. Are you a morning person or a night person? Night person. Definitely night.
26. What is your shoe size? 14
27. Do you have any pets? Yes, my puppy is a German Shepperd/ Beagle mix
28. What did you want to be when you were little? I remember being at Bassett Center mall when I was like 5 when one of the TV stations was there getting footage of shoppers and thought how cool that was. Then in the 6th grade, me and my parents passed by KTSM Channel 9 when I leaned forward from the back seat and said "I'm gonna work there". They dismissed it...

Tis the season

Remind me to tell you about the fucked up dream I had last night.

After doing some laundry the other day, I came to the realization that Levis are an inferior quality jean. I own several pair of jeans from at least 8 years ago that still fit, and are ok to look at, but are starting to show their age. The new ones I bought aren't fairing too well, tears along the seat, belt loops that are torn from their stitching and buttons that are tearing free of their anchors are really starting to annoy me. Paying $45 a pair and having 4 out of 6 pair fucked up IS fucked up!

So I went to the mall on Monday. Yes, the mall. Cielo Vista Mall. I have an account at J.C. Penney's. I figure I had some cash on the card to go purchase some new clothes. I get there and find every single style of jeans featuring my size is out of my size. Terrific. So, I am hunting the entire stack of clothing in every bin when the guy standing less than 2 feet from me cuts a pretty hefty fart. I freeze and look at him, to which he looks at me and casually walks away!

I was heavily disturbed. I grabbed several pair and ran into the changing room. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but I was making good headway at being disgusted. I tried several pair on and decided to just leave everything there and try my hand at shopping for clothing online. I had several pair of various sizes so I could judge what brands fit at what size so when I order online, I didn't need to actually try them on and return them if they were incorrect. The less time I spend at the mall around really gassy people the better.

I might take another stab at the mall, but I doubt it. People wonder why I don't enjoy the mall.

WTF of the Day

The Vehicle:
1995-1999 Cadillac DeVille



Pimp'd Parts:


Genuine Continental Spare Tire Kit


Faux Rolls Royce-style grille with custom inlay logo.


GM small/ light duty truck/ offroad rims/ tires combination.

Found some new information

While on a scouting mission, stumbled onto some interesting ruins. I will be taking the camera out and getting some evidence of the impact of something that really did try to influence a community positively. Its actually pretty sad to think that people's hopes and beliefs were held in one location being a success -- a fleeting, hopeless dream of entertainment & merriment.

More to come.

Photograph

IM pretty sure you've heard the new single from Nickelback titled Photograph. If not, its about a guy who goes back home to thumb through his photo album he has in his old room. While looking for a picture of a friend of his, he starts remembering all the classic moments of his youth, arcade shenanigans, public school expulsion, wondering how his eyes got so red...

If you haven't heard it, its a pretty haunting song. Not as haunting as a leftover bean & churro burrito, but haunting in the sense that it makes you stop and remember your days of forgotten youth. I actually sat in the car one afternoon listening to the song and was at the verge of crying out of regret that I didn't take pictures of my school days like the penman of the song.

Then, I snapped out of it and started to think to myself what self conscious person would take a camera with them to school & other social gatherings and snap pictures of hijinks & random acts of stupidity (and no, even though this fits me and my friends in school)? I honestly don't know of many people who I went to school with who decided to take a camera with them and docudrama their lives in a mosaic that just rests at the bottom of their picture drawer.

I also started to think to myself if it was just me & El Paso's small town mentality, because there are people who swore up one side and down the other about how their high school lives were just the toast of the town and wouldn't mind reliving them again. I remember mine only when I meet someone from my past and am reminded how bitter and distrustful I became because of these people. I did meet the brother of a tormenter of mine and found that the rest of the family didn't share his disposition on people.

I bought my yearbook. Class of 1997. It sits in a drawer in my closet, hidden from the light, only emerging when I thumb through the contents of that drawer for a forgotten CD or to gaze upon my rather small Anime action figure collection. Usually its pushed to the side or placed out of the way, and seldom opened to remind myself of the people I didn't want anything to do with, and to an extent, still don't.

I listen to Nickelback's song and love the composition of the piece, the way the author of the song relives the highlights of his youth and gives that slight pregnant pause in thought that maybe he's looking for the photo of a friend because they aren't around anymore for unknown reasons and makes you just ever so poignantly sad because of this rather ambiguous context of searching for old photos of friends.

I think I will keep this song in my mind a musical journey through the storytellers past, not of my own.

THE LIGHT, IT BURNS

So I pick up Mike D from Power 102 this morning and happen to notice that the front porch light at his house was abnormally bright. En route to work today, we talked about it. It seems he had installed some of those low consumption but brighter-than-a-nuclear reaction energy saver lightbulbs all around the house, that also included around his front door and the yard lighting in his back yard. Turning them on brought out his neighbors from all around.

Laughing, I told Mike about my venture in electrical lighting. A few weeks ago, I had changed the lighting fixtures in both the kitchen and the dining room at the house, and with the new fixtures, we bought new bulbs, the same low watt energy savers as the rest of the house. The fixture's warning label warned not to place any bulb higher than 60 watts. Well, if anyone has ever bought the damn things, the low watt 60's are about the same output as 160 watt flood lights. Couple this with the 5 bulb design and you got one powerful searchlight hanging from the ceiling!

Yeah, I had made that mistake when I got home at 11pm that night. I never saw what it looked like with all of the bulbs on, so I innocently turned the fucking thing on and toasted my retinas. Once my eyes adjusted to the blinding white light and dead relatives stopped beckoning, I saw the living room was flooded with light and it just kept creeping down the hallway! I swear if you looked outside it would have looked as if I had opened an otherworldly portal into another dimension. The light was that fucking bright.

Since that blinding moment, the bulbs have been replaced with 30 watts. Don't be fooled though, the light is still fucking bright but at least you don't need sunglasses at night.

Why do I even bother sometimes?

It's more of a rhetorical question I ask myself whenever I stop and try to do some shopping before work. You see, I go and buy the stupidly needless items that I really don't need, but bothers me that I don't have. Today's stupidly needless item were a set of foam covers for my iPods earbud headphones. You see, the original set have been removed by months of abuse and picking them up and moving them about in the car. IM sure I sucked up one of them in the car vacuum.

I digress. So I leave work early and decide to stop at a local Radio Shack. Well, the one close to my house is closed, so I thought about just getting off the freeway before the Sunland Park exit and look for one. My fellow commuters were fucking nutzoid, I wasn't quick to throw the clutch and pop into first gear when the light changed and the prompt knuckle-dragging mouth breather in back of me laid on the horn! Well, After shifting into second I just let the car idle in gear, really annoying him for his rather rude way of getting me going! I would understand if I were just sitting there with the light green and my thumb up my ass enjoying myself and he blared the horn...

So I guess it was a bit of karma coming back to me. I was at the next lights turn lane and when the light changed, the vapid excuse for a person driving in front of me was searching his car for God only knows what. I laid on that horn after the entire second turn lane had already gone and with him aware of his stupidity, we made it through the light with me catching the red. Oh, I made sure I welcomed his presence into stupidity with the one finger salute at door-to-door range.

Eventually, I get to Circuit City, knowing there isn't a Radio Shack around my area and look for the stupid foam covers. In a huge electronics store like Circuit City, there was none. I then searched around for some time and couldn't find them. I eventually got to Best Buy and found them there, but for something that should be stupidly inexpensive, they were ridiculously outrageous! I paid $8 for a two pack of foam protectors. That means I paid $2 for each stupid little foam covers!

So, getting to work, I took a moment & re-gathered my thoughts, went inside & put the new covers on my headphones. I think I will just stop trying to do things and buy things around this time, because I tore one trying to put it on...

Caveat Paenitendus

Yes, I already used this title before...

Seriously, I have no idea why I always second guess what I buy. I think it all goes back to the Cavalier. I wasn't exactly happy that I was forced to buy a car when my first car, the 1991 Pontiac Sunbird died on me. The Cavalier was one of those purchases that needed to be done, but I grew to like it. Buyers remorse hit when I couldn't put the top down on the car. Other things I have regretted:

• The Mustang
• the first iPod
• the eMachines desktop computer
• the Dell Inspiron laptop
• the Neon
• Sprint PCS
• RayBan Sunglasses

So, I am going to set some things right. I am going to undo one of the above listed and really drastically change the way I do things. I have decided to go and buy another laptop. This time, I am buying an Apple. I haven't used an Apple computer in at least 10 years, but I can catch on pretty fast.

My biggest problem is I don't know anyone who owns one to help me in case I have questions...