Needless to say, the last couple of weeks have been less than productive for me- except for the whole “healing and not bleeding to death” part. I was even becoming bored with the butt groove on the couch (which, of course, I managed to deepen as I convalesced).
After 20 days out (and no pay) I went back to work this Monday. It took all of half an hour for me to be ready to get the fuck out for another 20 days.
There are only so many times you can pep talk yourself with “be thankful you have a job” before you start to want to bitch slap that Pollyanna of a thought right out of your head. Can you dig it?
I mean, I didn’t expect any major work to get done while I was out- but I did at least figure some of the small stuff might get taken care of. Yeah- fuck that.
And, I come back to not one, but two broken air conditioners in my work areas. It was 82 in both rooms when I left Monday afternoon. Oppressively hot? No. But one of my workspaces (the one I spend the most time in, of course) is enclosed- except for the door. Even with the little box fan running on “High” I have exactly zero air circulation. And then there’s the other room- where I kind of require a clean environment to be able to work (clean being relative in my business). Which, of course, means that when I get there Monday morning, the mental midgets had left the doors propped open so all the sand, dust and grit from the shop could blow in.
Yep- I’m ready for another 20 days…
Most of my convalescent time I spent watching movies. As I mentioned previously, thank goodness for Netflix.
The majority of what I watched was a mish-mash of dumbass horror movies and lame comedies (with the sheer volume of titles I had in my queue, I knew I was in for more than a few craptaculars), but there were some standouts. Among them:
“Surveillance“ starring Bill Pullman (the guy who played the fighter pilot president in “Independence Day”- a movie worth watching only for the explosions, because the rest of it is just so stupid), Julia Ormond (a lovely woman whose first starring role was alongside Sean Connery and Richard Gere- no, that’s not a typo- in that steaming pile of cinematic shit known as “First Knight”- which almost single-handedly managed to kill any hope of a decent King Arthur movie ever being made again) and Michael Ironside (he’s one of those “you’d know him if you saw him” guys).
The movie’s worth a look, with Pullman and Ormond playing FBI agents on the trail of a pair of deranged killers- and the three separate tales they get from witnesses to the killers’ latest crimes. I’m always pleasantly surprised when movies aren’t overly formulaic or predictable, and this one delivered nicely.
“The Crimson Rivers” starred Jean Reno and some other French people I didn’t recognize. You may remember Reno from his turn as the title character in “Leon: The Professional” (which also introduced the world to Natalie Portman- judge that however you want). Reno plays a cop investigating a series of bizarre murders in a secluded town in the French Alps. A good mystery yarn, with some strong supporting performances. It’s in French, with subtitles, though (so you may want to skip this one, Mike- ‘cause there aren’t any explosions, either).
“Mutants” and “Bloody Mallory” also hailed from France. The former is about a pair of ambulance drivers trying to radio the army to rescue them from an abandoned hospital where they’ve holed up to a) get out of the blizzard and 2) escape the title baddies, who are suffering from a “Night of the Living Dead”-type virus that is spreading. To me, it’s always interesting to see foreign filmmakers take on the Romero-style zombies.
“Bloody Mallory” was a different sort of movie. That’s the only way I can really describe it. Part supernatural horror, part comedy, part love story. This thing was all over the place- and that’s not an insult.
The title character and her band of buddies (who include a priest, a mute child who can “possess” and control others’ bodies and a 6’6” drag queen) take on a band of demons who are out to break the seventh seal and get the ball rolling on Armageddon. (Please don’t write in and correct my faulty theology. I haven’t read the book of Revelation since eighth grade.)
“Bloody Mallory” had me laughing the whole way, and wishing they’d made a sequel (and that’s truly rare for me).
Then there was “Grimm”, from the Netherlands, starring no one I had ever heard of. This movie was unique, to say the very least. The movie used the Brothers Grimm tale of Hansel and Gretel as a stepping off point- except they renamed the lead characters Jacob and Maria, made them adults and- instead of them running into a witch who wanted to eat them, they had to deal with a shady benefactor who was playing nice just to steal a kidney for his ailing sister.
There’s also a goat and a donkey. Bizarre, but worth the watch.
Now, just so you don’t get the idea that I sat and watched strictly subtitled movies (I didn’t- I watched all of those last week, when I wasn’t on quite as many painkillers), there was also a little gem called “Primal”, from Australia.
“Primal” is the story of a student archeologist who’s doing his dissertation on some previously undiscovered Aboriginal cave art when he and his friends find some other things best left undiscovered.
It’s not overly gory, though it has a few gross moments- but it is a good scare and a fun watch.
Something else I watched a couple of time was John Carpenter's "The Thing"- which, even now (almost 30 years later)- is one of the most brilliant creature features ever made. For some reason, it seems to run every other Sunday night on whatever “free” movie channel we get…
I put together the Lego star fighter that the Iron Horse gang got for me as a get-well present. Remember when you were a kid- and Lego toys were simple to build? I mean, I was more of a Lincoln Logs kid, but still- I don’t remember Lego needing “how-to” guides. This thing must have a few hundred pieces…
While I'd personally never shop there, the Wal-Mart commercial with the old man firing off an air horn to wake up the two kids is just flat out funny to me. I wonder how long it took before the reactionary asshat brigade started whining about “how dangerous that is”, and how it’s “bad parenting” and blah, blah, blah, whine, whine, whine, bitch, bitch, bitch?
It’s funny. Get over it…
I was watching “The Cleveland Show” a couple of weeks ago and happened to catch one of the Fox "green" promos, featuring the star of the show- Mike Henry. And no matter how many times I see him, it cracks me up to hear Cleveland's voice coming out of that dweeby white man…
Monday, April 25, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Abridged Print Edition for 04/01/11- No foolin'
First off, let me ask a favor of you. If you’re the praying type, please put my good friend Sylvester Carr in your prayers. He lost his wife, Diane, in a car wreck last weekend and was critically injured himself. If you aren’t the praying type, how about some good thoughts? Either way, he could use the support…
From the Fox SportsSouth Facebook feed came this gem Monday: “Tonight’s Braves vs. Nationals game has been cancelled due to weather.”
Really? Isn’t “sunny” a type of weather, too? I guess it would be too much to ask for them to add three fucking letters to the goddamned post where it reads “bad weather” and God forbid they seem the least bit erudite and describe it as “inclement weather.”
Of course, this is Fox we’re talking about- the same network that continues to employ the fucktarded duo of McCarver and Buck- so I really shouldn’t be surprised…
Know what else I shouldn’t be surprised by? Getting to work Monday morning and having to make my way around a ginormous pile of crap left right in the middle of the fucking walkway.
Or a riding lawnmower right in front of the door to my work area.
Or the pallet of aluminum left right out in the middle of my other work area’s floor- after I’d specifically told pretty much everyone that the material didn’t go to me, and please don’t put it in the goddamned router room. Because, obviously, driving 25’ into the router room was much easier than moving it five feet to the goddamned left- where it wouldn’t have been right in the middle of a fucking walkway…
Know what else I shouldn’t be surprised by? The big-assed puddle of water in the middle of the floor in the router room- courtesy of a leaky roof. A leaky roof that I’ve been suggesting be repaired for at least two years now.
This time around.
See, when I started this job around five years ago, the roof leaked then, too. I know because one of my first questions was “what’s that bucket in the middle of the floor for?”
After months and months of my pointing out that a leaky roof over a $50,000 piece of electronic machinery might be a bad idea, the powers that be got off their ass and forked over the dough to get the roof fixed.
It lasted all of about a year before it started leaking again. That time, it didn’t take as long to get it repaired.
This time, however- well, as I said, I’ve been suggesting it be repaired for two years now. So last week, our two crane truck guys were on the roof banging around, trying to fix the leak. I was told “that should do it” (not by either of the crane truck guys, though- they were still on the roof).
Knowing my coworkers like I do, though, I said I’d reserve my judgment until it rained. Which it did this weekend. A lot.
And, of course, led to about a two gallon puddle of water on the floor. What had once been just a slow drip was now more like a leaky faucet that won’t quite turn off.
Not that I blame the crane truck guys. We do signs. Not roof repair. It’s the dumbasses who are “in charge” who are to blame for not having a professional do the goddamned job in the first place…
So, Kenshin Krapakami’s line from Sunday was four innings, three runs and five hits, which Chip Caray deemed “not bad”- and reminded us of two things.
A) Krapakami should not be on the Braves’ roster and 2) Chip Caray is a fucking idiot.
If you work that line out to nine innings, it pegs Krapakami’s ERA at 6.33.
Rumor is Krapakami will start the year at AA Rome. In my opinion, even that league’s gonna pound him like he was an all-you-can-eat buffet surrounded by fat guys…
Another joy Monday morning came when I tried to boot up my other work computer. After a number of “file not found” types of errors, I determined it just wasn’t going to play nice.
And, of course, the place where we bought it doesn’t open until 9:00 AM.
Now, I’d be all for a custom built machine if it weren’t for the fact that this particular piece of shit has already been back to the place it came from on two other occasions due to hard disk problems.
See, the same geniuses who wouldn’t spend five or six hundred bucks to protect a $50,000 machine by having a roof repaired are the same ones who insisted on spending something like $1200 on a fucking computer when I insisted that we could buy an off the shelf model for about $600 less and beef up the RAM and still not spend as much. And it probably wouldn’t be broken…
I’ve been refilling my Netflix queue ahead of the two weeks of down time I’m about to be facing. And, I love their streaming feature.
I’d actually resisted buying a DVD Blu-Ray because I didn’t want to have to replace movies yet again, but- once Vizio (maker of my ginormous TV) came out with one that was only $120 and had Wi-Fi and would stream Netflix, I bought.
And I liked the Netflix streaming feature so much, I went and got another for the bedroom- where I’m sure to spending a lot of time post-surgery.
So, like I said- I’m refilling my queue. Any suggestions?
By the time print readers get this, I’ll be just a few days away from Operation: Cutthroat (as I’ve decided my tonsillectomy shall be called). Maybe I’ll be nervous, maybe I won’t. What I won’t be, after it happens is at work for at least two weeks.
This seems to be catching many of the dunderheads I work with by surprise. You know, ’cause I’ve only been telling them about it for something like a fucking month now.
And last year, when they revoked our vacation, they revoked sick time, too (it was all lumped together as “personal time”), so I won’t have any income for those two weeks, either.
Despite the fact that I’m losing out financially- and won‘t be compensated- one of the dipshits still had the balls to ask me if I’d be “checking in” to answer “technical questions” and “stuff like that.”
Go fuck yourself is never really an professional way to approach a query of this nature, but it sure seemed like the appropriate response today…
From the Fox SportsSouth Facebook feed came this gem Monday: “Tonight’s Braves vs. Nationals game has been cancelled due to weather.”
Really? Isn’t “sunny” a type of weather, too? I guess it would be too much to ask for them to add three fucking letters to the goddamned post where it reads “bad weather” and God forbid they seem the least bit erudite and describe it as “inclement weather.”
Of course, this is Fox we’re talking about- the same network that continues to employ the fucktarded duo of McCarver and Buck- so I really shouldn’t be surprised…
Know what else I shouldn’t be surprised by? Getting to work Monday morning and having to make my way around a ginormous pile of crap left right in the middle of the fucking walkway.
Or a riding lawnmower right in front of the door to my work area.
Or the pallet of aluminum left right out in the middle of my other work area’s floor- after I’d specifically told pretty much everyone that the material didn’t go to me, and please don’t put it in the goddamned router room. Because, obviously, driving 25’ into the router room was much easier than moving it five feet to the goddamned left- where it wouldn’t have been right in the middle of a fucking walkway…
Know what else I shouldn’t be surprised by? The big-assed puddle of water in the middle of the floor in the router room- courtesy of a leaky roof. A leaky roof that I’ve been suggesting be repaired for at least two years now.
This time around.
See, when I started this job around five years ago, the roof leaked then, too. I know because one of my first questions was “what’s that bucket in the middle of the floor for?”
After months and months of my pointing out that a leaky roof over a $50,000 piece of electronic machinery might be a bad idea, the powers that be got off their ass and forked over the dough to get the roof fixed.
It lasted all of about a year before it started leaking again. That time, it didn’t take as long to get it repaired.
This time, however- well, as I said, I’ve been suggesting it be repaired for two years now. So last week, our two crane truck guys were on the roof banging around, trying to fix the leak. I was told “that should do it” (not by either of the crane truck guys, though- they were still on the roof).
Knowing my coworkers like I do, though, I said I’d reserve my judgment until it rained. Which it did this weekend. A lot.
And, of course, led to about a two gallon puddle of water on the floor. What had once been just a slow drip was now more like a leaky faucet that won’t quite turn off.
Not that I blame the crane truck guys. We do signs. Not roof repair. It’s the dumbasses who are “in charge” who are to blame for not having a professional do the goddamned job in the first place…
So, Kenshin Krapakami’s line from Sunday was four innings, three runs and five hits, which Chip Caray deemed “not bad”- and reminded us of two things.
A) Krapakami should not be on the Braves’ roster and 2) Chip Caray is a fucking idiot.
If you work that line out to nine innings, it pegs Krapakami’s ERA at 6.33.
Rumor is Krapakami will start the year at AA Rome. In my opinion, even that league’s gonna pound him like he was an all-you-can-eat buffet surrounded by fat guys…
Another joy Monday morning came when I tried to boot up my other work computer. After a number of “file not found” types of errors, I determined it just wasn’t going to play nice.
And, of course, the place where we bought it doesn’t open until 9:00 AM.
Now, I’d be all for a custom built machine if it weren’t for the fact that this particular piece of shit has already been back to the place it came from on two other occasions due to hard disk problems.
See, the same geniuses who wouldn’t spend five or six hundred bucks to protect a $50,000 machine by having a roof repaired are the same ones who insisted on spending something like $1200 on a fucking computer when I insisted that we could buy an off the shelf model for about $600 less and beef up the RAM and still not spend as much. And it probably wouldn’t be broken…
I’ve been refilling my Netflix queue ahead of the two weeks of down time I’m about to be facing. And, I love their streaming feature.
I’d actually resisted buying a DVD Blu-Ray because I didn’t want to have to replace movies yet again, but- once Vizio (maker of my ginormous TV) came out with one that was only $120 and had Wi-Fi and would stream Netflix, I bought.
And I liked the Netflix streaming feature so much, I went and got another for the bedroom- where I’m sure to spending a lot of time post-surgery.
So, like I said- I’m refilling my queue. Any suggestions?
By the time print readers get this, I’ll be just a few days away from Operation: Cutthroat (as I’ve decided my tonsillectomy shall be called). Maybe I’ll be nervous, maybe I won’t. What I won’t be, after it happens is at work for at least two weeks.
This seems to be catching many of the dunderheads I work with by surprise. You know, ’cause I’ve only been telling them about it for something like a fucking month now.
And last year, when they revoked our vacation, they revoked sick time, too (it was all lumped together as “personal time”), so I won’t have any income for those two weeks, either.
Despite the fact that I’m losing out financially- and won‘t be compensated- one of the dipshits still had the balls to ask me if I’d be “checking in” to answer “technical questions” and “stuff like that.”
Go fuck yourself is never really an professional way to approach a query of this nature, but it sure seemed like the appropriate response today…
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