Chapter VII, Wherein Mysteries are Revealed, and Villains Become Heroes

Hi There!

I figured I'd post something quickly to catch you all up to speed. I'm living in Jacksonville Beach, FL. Still slaving away for the (Hu)Man(a). Still making music--in fact I finished an album(http://www.mp3.com/artist/tortoise-vs-hare/summary/). Still having late night existential crises fueled by alcohol. Been on a few hot dates lately, but nothing steady.

What else? I did dj-ing for awhile and had my own business. Met a few cool people down here in Jax and droves of idiots. I think I'll stay here long enough to buy some property and flip it, Rid myself of some unnecessary debt. After that, I think I'd like to try NYC or maybe Europe. To do that though, I think I'm going to have to find a different line of work. Any pyramid schemers out there?

So. How is everything with everybody? It's been a while, no?

Got a new job with a new employer (Humana) that hates employees who fritter away company time, so my internet usage has been restricted as of late. I know, I know: that's no excuse for the near three- month's absence. I wish I could have followed everyone's stories a little more regularly. People have been married (Blookum), moved on to better job opportunities (Volvita)... god knows what else that is eluding my alcohol-impaired memory. Let me just congratulate and say in sincerity how much I have missed reading about each and every one of you.

If this sounds a little maudlin, forgive me; I've always been the emotional retard.

I guess I'm trying to say that I probably won't be updating this anymore. Time restraints have proven to be a bit much, what with work and the album project and all. I'm almost done with that, though, and plan to move back into Old Louisvile next week, so who knows? Maybe I'll run into some of you. If so, I hope we won't be strangers.

Anyways, take care. I'm sure to delete this in the next week or so. I don't much use for it any more, as I've put all of my self and my time into my work. As for reading everyone else page, I don't know: it just kind of makes me feel creepy when I randomly intrude on people's pages these days, especially when I feel the urge to chime in.

So yeah, anyways, happy trails!

Ps. I am watching a Norm McDonald movie that has already had cameos from Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, the fat guy from Seinfeld, and countless others. I sure wish I knew the name of it....Anyone?

Inside the the news was no better than without
The airwaves had barely been broken
We stole away from our buried cave
Only to find mad fortune had spoken.

The act was rehearsed
For better or for worse
The audience waited on forgotten parts
The sins of the flesh may in fact weaken us,
even while strengthening the heart.

It leaves me thinking of surprise endings
The kind that don't happen outside books
Where those that are favored by fortune
divine the right answer
Reaching out to them through damnable looks.

I'd hate to be the one to tell you that your days are numbered
I'd love it if I could only stop thinking
That somehow you made it past the sharks to the shoreline
That somehow our ship wasn't still sinking.

But oh, nevermind, let us instead speak of pleasant things.
Let me think of the different ways of loving the sun,
Foolishly frittering life,
with three square meals a day, upon a paid holiday,
and a coy, south islander wife.

When I reach the shore to find my home and
Let no one tresspass to sell or to deceive me
And hang a scarecrow to sing out from his crucifix
And breathe clear at night ever so deeply.

And I'll adjure my scarecrow to keep watch.
He'll burn away predators so fiercly
Endowed with fiery weapons of magic,
Vigilant against those that would steal from
and poison the air with their heresy.

Life around here has lately been a little...well...surreal.

Just when all was quiet on the decepticonfront, the cosmic powers-that-be decided that a lightning bolt of insanity shot straight to the heart of things would be just the ticket.

I present you with Alpha Girl: named both for her prime position in the decepticonfetti life-narrative and musical pantheons.

You see, we?ve known each other for a long time. A looooong time, but it was always just impossible. Initially it was the age disparity; she was 20, I was 17. I had the usual high school emotional baggage compounded by bird-chest and acne. And an afro to boot. Forget "euro", this was an afro.

And yet, somehow we hit it off. Maybe it was just that we were both hopeless Romantics. I don't just mean your run-of-the-mill, pick-a-Julia-Roberts-flick-for-a-frame-of-reference, cheese; I mean we were both, well...discontent with the lives lived less fully and more ordinarily. We had...I don't know...what's the word? intimacy? On an emotional and intellectual level, perhaps.

But for whatever reason, we didn't. And we knew we would be good friends, but we didn?t try to make it more than that.

Fast forward eight years, and she?s telling me what I guess I always knew she would. I knew it through all of those years when I'd come around and her boyfriend would be visibly uneasy. She?s telling me she wishes she had never been with him--her first and only boyfriend--and that even though she loves her two little children, if those years had been different...

"But, listen here, say I, "I don't want to be your rebound, and I don't want to be a homewrecker because you all of a sudden have got the fanciful notion that the grass is somehow greener."

But that was unfair, and she called me on it. Home wrecker, nothing. Her home has been in shambles for six years, if not longer.

"So why cling to him?" I ask.
"I haven't been with him for ___--"
"That's not what I meant. I meant: why have you been cohabitating with him all of this time?"

She then proceeded to rather swiftly and disdainfully inform me of a number of real-world economic considerations that having kids and low-paying jobs exposes one to, and that most of us never have cause to consider; and that, besides, they had more or less been staying separately at different friends' houses, taking shifts with the kids, moving back and forth between here and her home city of Newark, all in effort to avoid each other as best as possible.

Fucked up to think it might work, I know.

"It is, but it isn't, she said."

And she was right, kinda. I don't think there?s been a single instance when we?ve hung out over the last decade where we didn?t enjoy each other's company. O.K. maybe one, but that was because I had to listen to her twaddle about some other guy.

So last night we hung out at the karaoke bar--us, and my two band mates, one of which happens to be her cousin, my long-time friend, and the man that introduced us--and it all kind of erupted into the open. To make a long story a little less long, it ended in a few, promising moments, and the conclusion, mutually reached, that it would best be sorted out tomorrow when we could go out alone and be a little more sober.

Of all the things about this, nothing scares me more than sobriety.

Opinions?

In lieu of a real, and decidedly depressing entry about this weekend's numerous misadventures, may I present you with a meme:

Tagged by emoticripple:


List five songs that you are currently digging - it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions and the five songs (with artist) in your blog. Then tag five people to see what they're listening to.


The Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #1 (tunnels)

Leonard Cohen - Sing Another Song, Boys

Cake - Let Me Go

Bell & Sebastian - Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying

The Brian Jonestown Massacre - When Jokers Attack

Now Your It!

volvita
tabjunea
cinnabunny
rohmie
starryknight

Stolen From emoticripple, who stole it from somebody else, who I'm pretty sure was the original stealer from the source.

I forgot my wallet today and the lasagna leftovers I had in the fridge. This means that I have to choose between eating my pinkies and the bag of weird-tasting chocolate candy that Patty has had in her office for an indeterminable period of time. I've always thought pinkies were a little bit overrated, but you never know when they may come in handy...Choices.Shit...

These terrorist fucks don’t get it, do they?

The invasion of Iraq was only ever possible because Bush linked it with the 9-11 attacks. You can argue about the motives, the rationale, the relative weight we should give to each pro and each con of having invaded. But the simple fact is, what made it possible in the first place was the palpable shift in the zeitgeist in late 2001. A lot of people were confused and angry at being attacked, and they wanted revenge. It is extremely doubtful that a clear majority of Americans would have supported a sustained ground invasion and occupation were it otherwise. Bombs from afar? Perhaps. Commitment of troops over an indefinite period? Doubtful. The people wanted retribution. They fell behind the man that promised them security and a quid-pro-quo for each instance of terrorist nastiness. ‘Get the fuckers that got us, and get them before they do it again.’

The terrorists say they want our and our allies’ troops out of the Middle East. Not such a bad idea, if you ask me. But if these jackasses knew the first thing about the West, they’d have seen that it isn’t going to be expedited by giving people more of a reason to be bloodthirsty and pissed at Islamic fundamentalists. All this latest attack on London ensures is that British troops will be turning over every sand-encrusted rock in a two thousand mile radius of Baghdad for another twenty years to come.

Sure, our leaders do some shady stuff, but the vast majority of their work is carried out in the public’s full view and with their acquiescence, if not active cooperation. With the media spin machines at work, it is much easier for our leaders to harness a vague discontent among the masses and direct it towards their own, particular vision for fucking up the world (by giving whole thing a specious plausibility) than it is to achieve something purely under the public’s radar. As every one familiar with either history or Star Wars knows, there is no more tried-and-true method of getting people to support questionable agendas than by drumming up patriotism. People are just never more united than when they have a common enemy....

Public sentiment is a very powerful thing. Our most effective politicians have learned how to shape public perceptions by learning how to put a positive spin on agendas that in a different setting would seem either partisan or sinister. And fickle though it may be, changing the public’s feelings about something is still the best avenue for effecting political change. The ironic part of today's bombing on London was that popular support for Bush and his tired justifications for the Iraq mess had recently hit an all-time low; after the Downing Street memos, I suspect that the situation was much the same for Blair across the Atlantic. A large part of America was finally starting to ask such questions as: “Why did we go over there? How and when can we leave?” On rare occasions even: “What are they attacking us for, anyways?” But whatever coincidental coalescing of interests on the part of terrorists and normal, responsible Britons and Americans might have been possible at one point--such as getting our people the hell out of the Middle East--it is becoming less conceivable as the dialogue in our own countries about what to do over there becomes overwhelmed by the cries of outrage.

The terrorist would probably counter that a lack of dialogue about the Middle East situation was the whole motivation for the attacks: that no westerners ever stopped to listen to Osama and his pleads to disentangle the Middle East from Anglo-American interests prior to 9-11; that no one cared about the favoritism we were showing the troops in Saudi, or the attack on Lebanon. Well I’ve got news: the higher the bodies pile up, the less many people are going to listen. Reasons, issues, who needs them? This thing has a life of its own.

Why is it, friends, that a hardened java junkie like yours truly can no sooner finish a single cup of coffee in the morning than be caught dashing to the pot for fear of soiling the old skivvies? Or that the perfect antidote to this state of discomfiture is, of all things, an extra-large bar of Hershey’s milk chocolate?

 

I am sorry. What an awkward choice of subject matter after such a long absence from LJ.

 

It must be the lack of sleep I suffered at my parent’s place last night from The Closet That Won’t Shut Up, which, besides being located under a creaky staircase, evidently houses a colony of crickets and two unnaturally animated water heaters. I don’t know how this managed to escape my attention over the past couple years. It’s probably an indication of just how drunk I usually am when forced to be in close proximity to my parents for several hours at a time.

 

Things seem to be once again going along splendidly with the music project, after suffering a brief setback when reinstalling windows caused me to erase my recordings. Not such a big deal, really, since only one among the lot was a good enough take to be kept. I quickly jotted down the material I’ve been working on lately so as to commit it to memory. I gave a couple of ditties to emoticripple to listen to, in hopes that he could apply his formidable literary talent in whipping me up some lyrics. Bob appears to be coming along at a respectable pace on the drums, and I’ve got another guitarist I’ll be playing with soon that I expect will be able to help with the writing.  

 

Things on the job front have not been as smooth. Of course, I can not honestly say that I’ve been actively seeking full-time employment aside from my ill-timed application at the Veteran’s Bureau, but the obstacles seem to be real enough. Day by day there appear to be fewer jobs opening up to history majors with mediocre GPA’s and unimpressive extracurricular involvement. This leaves me in the same predicament I had been facing several months ago: whether to throw my all into seeking and securing some sort of better employment, or to continue on with the plan of getting a paralegal’s degree. This summer was to be the time for decisions, but already the days feel like they’re getting shorter.

 

But anyways, it will all work out for me. Right?

 

Incidentally, I urge you, if you have not done so already, to go see the new Batman movie. I cannot fathom that in this vast domain of dorkery there would be a single person not touched by this knowledge already, but, if so, let me be the first to contaminate you: this Batman movie had not only a new set of more realistic, three-dimensional villains, and a different, notably less square-jawed hero, but also a quite talented director at the creative helm, Christopher Nolan. From what I read, a sequel is already in production.

 

Nolan, like Burton in the first two films, creatively reinterprets Gotham for the silver screen in an original, visually engaging way that is also rigidly faithful to the comic that inspired it, in particular Miller-era Dark Knight. This is the man that brought you Insomnia and Memento, and his methods are consistent with the character and quality of those films. Nolan’s Batman has none of the cartoonish stupidity of the Schumacher flicks, which foolishly tried to outdo the Burton films in terms of surrealism, and the late 60’s tv show in campy, homoeroticism (Sorry, folks: no panty-hosed Robins ‘sliding down the Batpole’ here.).  Sure, if you’re already familiar with the Batman story, you will probably find the expository stuff to be a bit tedious, but even in that instance you will have a good deal to look forward to with some creative narrative weaving involving the Scarecrow and Ra’s Al-Ghoul. Lastly, there is the simple choice of casting. I think anyone who has seen American Psycho would agree that few actors are better able to capture the asceticism, psychological foreboding, and patrician aloofness of the Batman/Wayne character than Christian Bale. Batman Begins has all the right ingredients of that rare class of films that exhibit both artistic grace and popular sensibilities. It is a pity that the financial reserves of we dorks have been so heavily tapped into already by Star Wars, or else most of us would be right back there in the front row again.

 

If you are by chance still reading down this far, and wish to be amused, let me call your attention to this rant of one goofy, curmudgeonly blogger (hats off to Rohmie for the link). In his overeagersness to disparage the anti-Iraq crowd, he commits, methinks, a mix-up just a tad bit embarrassing, confusing some loony followers of a homophobic Kansas preacher as “leftists” and “communists.” What is just as amusing to me is that after being called out in the comments section, he justifies his gaffe with a response so stupid as to defy the imagination:

 

“And what are they all upset about? Are they upset about a deranged protest at a military funeral? Do they denounce this lunatic? Nope. They're simply upset at being lumped in with a crazy preacher.”

 

To which I had to reply:

 

"Hello? Am I missing something? Was not the whole point of your idiotic meanderings merely to paint the anti-war gang as a solid bloc of soldier-hating communists? Was it to discuss in earnest detail issues of foreign policy, or was it to demonize your political opponents as a cohort of traitorous lefties?" 

 

A Mental Postcard


Sitting here, in the coral wreath.
I’ll think I’ll float around just a bit.
In the sun, in the sea, smell barbecues
And bide my time for a whit.

Think about overpriced margaritas,
Free-spirited college girls,
And senoritas.
The kind you don’t see much of in Indiana.

I’d like to make this
My postcard to future me's.
A touchstone that,
When cudgeled and bedraggled,
Or waylaid by self-doubt
Can be a reserve of tranquility.

I don’t know much about anything.
And I believe in even less.
As astute companions have suggested,
It’s probably why I so often regress
Into cynicism, animalism,
Absurd situations.

Armed only with ‘come what may,’
And a tried romance with apathy,
More often than not,
Only bacchanalian delights
Have delivered me from the hand of my enemies.

Still when I can’t swim,
I’ll pretend like I can,
And let the waters engulf me freely.
So that the stains of regret
In Lethe I'll shed,
Like so much dead weight not needed.

No worries about tomorrow,
Or senseless sorrow,
No need of sterile conformity.

I’ll tell myself it's all
Just another harmless shadow play on the wall.
Another distraction while wandering the cave.

One has time, after all,
To chase after the blinking lights,
In the relentless hare-chase of destiny,
That brings us incrementally closer
And pushes inexorably harder
To dig! dig! dig! our own graves.

To rest once before winding down a day.
To rest once before resting forever.

So, I'm thinking of taking a hike. Hard as It may seem to believe, it would be the first time I've really been outdoors all year, excepting to jump on my trampoline a few times. Bear in mind that I live surrounded by several thousand acres of untamed nature, somewhere in Laconia or Elizabeth, IN (We're unsure of where, exactly. The address says Elizabeth, while the phone number's Laconia. Either way, the only thing to do around here is to go hiking.).

Until now, I've had a lot of things to preocuppy me. There's the music project, the whole work and keep up your metabolism thing and what have you , and as if that weren't enough, I've kind of taken an unfortunate liking to the satellite tv we get out here. I haven't quite squeezed in time to make it out there this season.

Incidentally, I did mention the graveyard, didn't I?

The graveyard dates back to about 1800, judging from the average time most the folks resting in it left this world for the next place. If your adept at navigating the windy forest trails, full as they are of errant vines and branches, it is only about ten minutes' good walk from my house. Once you spot the old, wooden cross marking the spot, you find a nearby patch of unassuming markers dating from the early to mid-19th century. A few graves read from the mid-1700's. Most of these latter were juvenile victims of typhoid or cholera. The very latest is from about 1900. Only a few, unfortunately, have still legible epitaphs.

My aunt, who live over the valley yonder, said it's a family cementary. "...That would," she says, "explain why, for all of the weeds that blight the place, you once in a while see it freshly-mowed."

Similarly, the folks around town have it that some reticent, old Indian comes up a couple of times a year and weedeats it or what have you-- I guess whatever it is that spooky, old, Indians do that doesn't make noise or unnecessarily expose them to the sinful ways of Western man. To me, this part is just a bit of hogwash invented by local yocals with too much time and imagination on their hands. Anyways, on occassion, the rumor's that it's an Amish. Besides, I've never really seen it mown. I've never seen it in any shape other than what's like every time I go back there.

I do see how people get that impression. The stones are never turned over. The weeds never sprout so high or the bushes so thick that the stones become buried in all the folliage. The place has a remarkable timelessness and strange serenity about it.

Usually I don't attempt it because of the chiggers. Tonight, I'm feeling a little restless. A few brews more, and I'll go where the restless spirits go. I'll unburden.

Who are you? said the knight,
while burning his dark, incestuous stench
inflamming the leaves and the passersby
riding and strutting with sapphire
With the wanton cruel pride of the witch.

And the dove?
And the dove he sat immovable,
eyes fixed, entranced, perched squat on his branch.

Who am I? I am the cataclysm
Of your deepes surrender
The pining for loves lost
And thorny handle of a rosy situation,
Your spiny alligator

Who are you?
I am the beast and the whore,
your stupid elemental fear.
I would lash and whip you a thousand times
because you're the only one near.

Who am I?
I'm a haunted hatred
Who will curse and lure you into the ground
While drunken men dance around you
And dark soil sweetly embraces you

I am proud, protestant, ecstatic glee
for remembebrances of brighter days
when maybe a few fools and harpies
didn't surrender
to the infamy and the irony
and genuflect with cowering simplicity
to all of their mercenary's ways.

You may think me a shadow, a pale ghost
But turn right back around and I'm there, beside you,

Lilting voice, curling upwards
Entreating So gently
Tirades of mounting vehemence and sincerity.

...Whispering...

...in...

...your ear.

Is it just because I"ve already had three, or is it because I've got Star Wars on the brain, that Dos Equis sounds not so much like a beer, as a fictional planet? Or that, while sounding like a backwater planet ruled by the Hutts, it tastes like backwash?

Well, it's now only three days until my life will be complete. You know what I'm talking about. You too have been unable to eat, sleep, or shit without thinking of that showdown between the Emperor and Yoda that they teased you with in the previews.

To top it off, guess what lucky boy just learned that he will be in Orlando when Disney World is having their Star Wars weekends? No, sorry, as much as I would like for the answer to be "____ (insert name here)", I am afraid only one of us has asked off of work next week.

For once, fair Fortune is giving this reporter his just deserts.

Website says they're going to have Star Wars themes, costumes, characters, and trivia contests, including Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Star Wars version. I am more than a little psyched about this, since the last time I was at MGM and I played that game, I was in the audience and got all of the questions right (still only coming in 9th place, unfortunately...stupid thumbs). Best of all is, they're going to be having a celebrity cast appearance each weekend. This means I can finally father a little Luke like I was destined to (with Natalie Portman);learn the mysteries of the Sith (Ian Mcdiarmid); or at least have somebody to get some weed from while I'm down there (Ewan McGregor). God help me, if it's Jar-Jar on my day there, we're going to see a Gungan hate crime.

Click http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-paint10may10,0,4918994.storynother to read about another great milestone in the Republican Revolution. These certainly are comically stupid times.

Superannoying Superego

Friend, you're neither saint nor monster
when you're cursing at some soccer mom
for observing the state's highway laws.
Even venerable Dr. S__,
Respectably groomed and dressed,
Mutters about his back once in a while.

I think you picture yourself
In fine, dramatic shades
Of Wagnerian splendor, knightly grace.
Against a tapestry of collapsing civilization

You sweat out the pills
and out it spills, over into your life
In the form of aggression,
Unchecked, agression

Which you keep to yourself
To be unnecessarily reprimanded about.

There's no way of hating anything
Except what lacks a face, contrary to what they say.
You're smart enough to know
That every preacher and dim-witted politician
Has an astrovan in his or her way.

Well, friends, I just got back running errands on campus, and it’s now officially, as they say the tongue of New Jersey, ‘hotta dan ballz out heeyuh.’ It is sure to be the first of what will be many silly putty sack days in the months to come. To top this off, the fan in my dodge is shot again, and my shag of a mop is oppressively hot. Time I think to close-crop.

I just saw a girl at the library that I have a crush on. I can’t remember the last time I had a real, youthful, school boyish kind of crush on someone, one of those lacking an overt element of sexuality, the mild and harmless kind. Figures that I would see here there with her boyfriend.

I decided to use this hiatus between the end of college and the beginning of real work to record my first album. I’ve been playing guitar for 16 years, writing ditties since I was about 13 or 14, but have never really felt secure enough about my skills or had the time and equipment to make a record. It’s finally all starting to come together. Here lately, my one-track mind’s been on my sixteen-track recorder. Looks so far like it’s going to be a solo project. I can multi-track pretty much all of it except the drums, anyways, and if Bob’s not willing to whittle away a little more at his free time to come up and practice (the man lives off of social security, for chris’sakes), I’m sure I can convince Byron to at least throw down some drum tracks. Had a singer for a while, too, but we both came to the conclusion that we were hindering, rather than aiding, each other’s development. To my surprise, I found that with a little tweaking, my voice actually sounds pretty good.

I’d really like to find more musicians that I’m compatible with, but it’s such a pain in the ass to try to get people to drive up to Elizabeth, AND know how to listen to what’s being played, AND not try to steer the music in a totally opposite direction. I hate the thought of being a musical control freak, but damn it if isn’t so much more productive when I just do it all myself. I used to think it was so lame that really good bands would break up over musical control, and the members would come out with solo albums that seemed like pale reflections of the earlier, collaborative stuff (e.g. Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, or more notoriously, anything Robert Plant has done until his newest album). I now realize that the splits often have less to do egotism or money than the simple fact that differences of opinion over what the finished product should sound like are a force that—more often than not—threatens to rend apart the project from the very beginning. Bands with a number of different songwriters that survive this pressure for a lengthy period of time would seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

The one thing I dread most is writing the lyrics. Mostly because I’m inexperienced. Also, because I can’t be as long-winded as I am accustomed to being in writing prose; everything has to be so damn tight, rhythmic. I’ll probably be posting more lyrics on here, to your collective annoyance, and maybe on some poetry forums, in order to get some feedback on how to improve quickly.

I suppose I should do some work now. I’ve been living on easy street since school got out. But two haters named Patty and Teresa are knocking down my door.

School's out fuh-eva! Presently at an cloud 7 and a half, and the plane's still rising!

On a more or less completely unrelated note, I ate Chicken McNasties at UofL's McDonald's for the first time in like 20 years last night. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the nuggets look like Indiana on y'alls side of the river also.

Yippee! I just got back a test with a super good grade on the cover page. I usually don't post my academic ramblings here, whatwith all of the lawsuits these days and the potentially lethal mixture of eyestrain and boredom that, say, an essay on Gregory of Tours might expose one to. In case you lot want to read this one, though, I've made good use of my newfound powers of cutt-ingl-ery below. It's called "Continuities in German Culture and the Rise of the Third Reich." Had to do it for Blum's Historical Methods class.

 

Such a nice man. Such a good teacher. So comparatively lenient about deadlines.

 

Shittiest thing about take-home tests (other than having to do them at home), is that one still has to write another essay-type thingy--the actual essay--which, however, I've learned through painful experience, cannot be just a rehashed version of the take-home test. This, my friends, is but one of the many reasons for my scant number of postings lately.

 

( Click Here to Remember Why You Never Majored In a Sucky Arts & Sciences Subject )

In other news, the most beloved Pope John Paul II has recently died. It is the opinion of this reporter that the mere passing of his early vessel should not prevent future generations of the devout  from gazing upon the visage of this most venerable of saints. I propose that we prop up the late father's right arm, fill the bulletproff booth of the Pope Mobile with formaldehyde, and continue to let the good father get on with his urgent work of dissipating evil by blessing random passers-by.  As every person of faith knows, Armeggedon is just around the corner, and the we've no time to waste.

 And as for the new one, there's just something about the way he looks.... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Benedict_XVI&direction=prev&oldid=12526972. (Special props to Brooks for pointing out this article.)

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The bleepity-bleep road crew was working on my street in the blankety-blank morning yesterday, so I was trapped at home the whole day. This meant that in order to make it to work today, I would have to get up at normal people time. Let me just go on record as saying I am no fan of the a.m.