Disconnection

Well, folks, I feel totally lost and stir-crazy but my Internet service has been disconnected. Yep, it finally caught up with me falling behind on being able to pay the bill. Right now, just so my readers will know why I'm not going to be able to keep this blog up I came to the library to spend the allowed 15 minutes (generous, huh?) on this last post. I hope things turn around for me soon so I can get back online, it's driving me nuts. Don't forget about me! In fact, think about me often, and maybe a prayer or two might not hurt either ...

Top Three Things That Annoyed Me Today, In No Particular Order And For No Particular Reason

I - Come on, seat Roland Burris already, it is after all going to happen anyway and probably rightly so but I'm sick of listening to him politically masturbating his own ego proclaiming himself the Illinois junior senator, his wet dream job apparently. Fine, point made, he should shut up now and the media should shut up about it too, undoubtedly he's only a placeholder anyway for another year or so. Jeez, make everybody happy and get this over with finally, move along. Blagojevich, criminal brilliance there with that appointment I must give him credit for, despite his whole weird hair thing which does still raise some concern about his overall mental wellness.

II - Really? After ten years of your kid gone missing you decide maybe the time is right now that you might call that in to the authorities, since that eleven-year-old boy disappeared missing person is now of age at twenty-one the time is right to worry finally? Well, he did used to have a tendency to run away as a kid, out of habit, but never for quite so long as a decade, maybe starting just now to be a bit concerned. And they even justify the waiting for going public, not having wanted to over-react or anything. Little wonder the boy's inclination to get out of the house since forever as a moppet, but either the CSI will eventually soon uncover a shallow trailer park grave with a child's remains inside it or if not, I certainly wish godspeed to the man who finally got away, Adam Herrman.

III - Gap-toothed Condi Rice totally gung-ho now behind the ceasing of fire thing betwixt Israel and Palestine over that whole mess of the Mideast tussle, a plan offered up by France and Egypt by the way, who really cared enough to actually step up to the plate and put out some sort of maybe option for consideration. We, on the other hand, with Condi at bat not wanting to piss off really our bestest of like-minded Israeli admin by directly pointing out their example of mostest bad behavior (rest of the fingers might end up pointing back west, that kettle pot thing we try to avoid being so obvious about) wiser to just slink into the pulpit after the fact, alongside some other nations with enough balls trying to stop the craziness there.

Bots Bitch Post

Things that pissed me off today, belated from yesterday. I'm slow to anger sometimes, but it eventually kicks in sooner or later.

So Monday, I attempted applying for a job online with GE, one of those six-step application processes. Just after step two, after clicking Next, I was popped up with some message about not meeting the minimum qualifications for the job.

For the record, by step two I'd only covered providing my name and address. I guess maybe I don't live in a qualifying neighborhood apparently, getting pretty strict about applicants' whereabouts eligibility. Kind of jumping to conclusions there, in my opinion.

Anyway, they had the requisite Contact Us link, so yeah, I clicked on that about it, because I'd rather be poor there in some available crap job than altogether homeless here. Also it just peeved me, so I was thankful for that email customer service option to vent, just asking what was up. This was the response sent back to me.

Thank you for your interest. Recently, when submitting your application for employment, you received a message that you did not meet the minimum qualifications for this position.

In the event that someone is unfairly terminated we would request that you provide documentation of wrongful termination. Please fax your documentation, your information will then be reviewed and you will be contacted regarding the next step in the hiring process.

I suppose based on my personal information short of even the ability to submit my resume, it is to be assumed that I for whatever reason must have been wrongfully terminated at some point, unworthy of completing the final four steps of even applying for the job.

Moving on, also then the next irritation yesterday, the Time Warner Cable folks here have a new and exciting live webchat customer service option. Finally! Problems with their bills and such and impossible to ever manage getting a rep on the phone, I gave that a shot as it couldn't be any worse and thankful they had branched out to the live online help instead. Thought it was a nice touch.

So I duly provided in the comment box the nature of my question or problem, mine about trying to work out resolving billing issues with them to keep up my cable Internet service and bringing the TV service back to just basic cable to save some bucks, then was advised to wait for the next available representative.

Didn't have much hold time until Mark the next up webchat host, yep, he was online and joined in my chatroom to help out only me.

Hi, I'm Mark. I understand you are inquiring about not having a dial tone with your digital phone service.

Whaaaa ...? Holy fuck! Are you kidding me? I don't even have phone service nor would I ever through TWC, and I'd have thunk with keywords such as Internet service and cable television not to mention using the email address for my own account with them as the source of the inquiry, nothing phone, that even a bot might have picked up on something better than assuming a dial tone issue.

No job offer I'm reckoning will be forthcoming from GE and probably I'll be shut down online at any time since the "contacting us" and "live webchat" assistance links really just mean, well ... nobody's home. Kind of makes the waiting on the phone for thirty minutes to actually speak with a foreign person that you can't understand and who has no clue what the hell you're talking about either is maybe even the better option.

Sure, those folks are just as phonetically scripted and programmed how to respond and don't care so much either, but I'd rather know my getting pissed off at someone with a headset in India might at least recognize my indignation whether they understand so much what I'm saying or don't. At least I'd feel better blustering to a live person rather than being fed some automated back talk that will not only never be understood, not so much difference there, but also never even read nor paid heed whatsoever. Total waste of time.

Hey, if I'm going to stay unemployed and unable to salvage my home and online access, I'd be better off probably spending these final few days here perusing porn and YouTubing instead, until my wrongful terminations and dial tone issues prove my downfall.

Israel v. Palestine, Whodathunkit?

There will be no peace while Hamas controls Gaza. Holy shit, that I learned from some editorial headline I read today. Yeah, stupid me for not remembering how peaceful that neck of the woods before Hamas was handed over the reigns. Democracy in action which, again proving my lunkhead self, I thought was a good thing we were trying to spread around.

All righty then, so yeah ... now once again more stupid rigmarole headed up by the arrogant daffy chieftains killing off and maiming other folks just for the sake of bragging rights really, our BFF Israel versus whatever Palestine. Same old story. Way of the world I suppose, particularly over there in that part of it.

Give me a break, enough already. Not even going so much back into the forever history of why all the strife, just looking at the now with after a week of blasting and at the moment Israeli troops prepped and ready straight away to head in with boots on the ground, our buds into Gaza, it's all the same old bullshit.

Of course the aerial clobbering is planned to continue, I'd reckon though that they might probably tend to focus a bit more on accurate targeting what with their own bit players below, good guys duly tanked and booted to take on the reprobates.

That headline, the no peace as long as Hamas controls Gaza? Of course not. Nor was there beforehand, nor will there be ever after. Brainless whoever wrote it, hardly breaking news or anything there.

Here's the deal for the most current ballgame, plenty enough bad to go around. Israel gave up Gaza awhile ago, back over to the Palestinians to whom it belonged anyway. Cool beans, Jews not really so happy about it, though.

Then Hamas who would like nothing more than to quash Israel comes elected thanks to that democracy-rules crap we preach. That backfired big time, but all right, then yada yada and things eventually settled down for awhile.

Cease-fires I do find amusing, it's like after so much rubble and blood and gore and carnage and body parts strewn willy-nilly that the powers that be on either opposing side deciding to just stop playing the game and I guess calling a time out. Funny how easy that, just something I always find puzzling.

Anyway then inevitably someone will piss off the other and it's game on again. Like now. Gaza as Palestine, fine, but despite all the rhetoric from our country's fuckbuddy Israel about them having pressed play to start up the game again by shooting off those Qassam rockets into Israel, let's remember also something else.

We Israel not doing so much to help out our their own reputation amongst the Palestinian commonfolk by laying seige and blockading off Gaza from cargo crossing over including all basic goods for sustenance even. Despite being dissed by almost everyone except the United States, of course. I have a feeling mostly just ratcheting up a larger assemblage of those who wouldn't mind going Qassam on Israel's ass either.

Which then pisses off more those commonfolk across the Israeli border randomly shot at, so the hate spreads from both sides. Seriously, I understand I suppose the whys of both sides of this forever rivalry but wonder when maybe someone in charge someday might possibly wise up and put aside arrogance and save some scores of lives maybe for the better future.

Never gonna happen, I know, particularly so long as the United States that is for whatever reason apparently looked to for reconciling this mess. For decades now continuously, though, simply spewing meaningless rhetoric about the need for peace in the Mideast and heading up talks and whatnot, all just hot air whilst we continue to pump up Israel's arsenal.

Sick of the whole thing, sick of hearing about it, don't know why I bother to even rant about it. Nothing new over there ever, and like I said enough finger-pointing to go around but bottom line from both sides, the conceit and behavior from those at the top trickles down and the hate spreads from there. And so it goes, on and on ad infinitum it will continue. It's sad, though.

So no, there will be no peace while Hamas controls Gaza, that's true. Nor peace whomever takes over next, nor peace while the United States as though joined at the head with Israel gives no consideration to the Palestinians' right to co-exist alongside whilst certainly giving heed to keeping Israel battle-axed to the hilt.

Happy New Year

Homeland Lesbo Christian Gal Melissa Etheridge and Over-there Straight Muslim Dude Salman Ahmad - Ring The Bells


Whose God is God? Whose light is light?
Whose law is wrong? Whose might is right?
Here we are on the edge, the edge of change.

I believe in peace, my only wish.
I believe that we can co-exist.
Let's go further now than we've ever gone before.

Ring the bells, ring the bells of change.
Ring the bells, every boy and every girl.
Ring the bells, ring the bells of peace all over the world.

We've all been called to wake from sleep,
To feel our power to create the dream,
To step out from the dark past our fathers' fear.

Here we stand in unity making one choice to be free.
Every truth blends into one as we believe it shall be done.
Here we stand as soldiers now, turning our swords into plows.
There is not a nobler climb, achieving peace in our own time.

I know peace begins with me, with all I feel and with all I see,
And I know it's no easy task removing our own fearful mask.

But I have seen us rise and fall,
Stand on the moon, tear down the wall,
And I know we can do it all, can do it well.
Show me the bells. Ring the bells.

Obama's Plate Not Already Full Enough

Day four of the kikes carpet bombing the fuck out of the towelheads, nearly 400 of them dead already. Minus the collateral damage, kids and others who just wished to live out a normal life. Ground incursion the next play, no end in sight and an all out war declared. That's what the chief Jew guy asserted today.

Of course those terrorist Hamas folks started it up in the first place what with rocketing haphazardly into the Israeli territory as they seem prone to do, wiping out too their own fair share of innocents and guiltless citizenry, kids and others who just wished to live out a normal life. Cease fire be damned. That's what the chief Muslim guy butted in with the other day.

It's open season again betwixt the two, just a matter of time it was bound to happen. No new tale to tell there, never will there be. Just one more heated up side dish on Obama's already full plate of less-than-savory leftovers to nosh on come next month, I'd reckon he should come to the table with a hearty appetite. Best of luck.

Letter From Mom ... Explains A Lot

Letter from my mom, no envelope to go along with but guessing around 1980 plus or minus a year or two. Whenever, here obviously proof of genetics accounting for my propensity for babbling from one gist to a totally off point another, clearly a maternal heritance.

Dear Doug,

Just a quick note so I can stick it in the box at the post office on the way to church. We're starting at 7 o'clock on Wednesday nights again. The ones that wanted it later haven't been coming anyway. Ha!

Just to brief you in. Last Friday afternoon, I took Don to Independence Center to meet Mary, Denise and Dana. He went with them to get Jim and Keith at work (Keith helped Jim last week) then they all went to the Royals' double-header.

And guess what I did! I spent the night with Eve. We had such a good time. Dwight and Heath had gone to Alabama, and Chad spent the night with a friend so it was just Eve, Tif and me.

Saturday I made five pints of relish and two pies and a cobbler.

That evening your dad and I went to the fair, then out to eat and drove around. It was fun. Don stayed at the Doores' until Sunday.

Monday your dad did another plumbing job.

Eve and the two kids came out that evening and ate with us. Then Joan and her kids came later and Roger spent the night. We took him home yesterday evening and had supper with Joan and Lavon.

Yesterday I canned five pints of tomatoes.

I've got the piano stained but still have to put the polyurethane finish on it. I've gotta get it on the way to church.

I'm supposed to go to Judy's Friday for lunch.

I think that about does it for my news.

Oh, I forgot. Mr. Seaton showed our house awhile ago. I don't know, of course, if they'll want it or not. They looked around for about half and hour.

Sunday is supposed to be "open house" here, so don't call that afternoon 'cause we won't be here and the realtor may answer the phone and you'd still have to pay.

I've really gotta go. Bye. See ya!

Love, Mom

So you see, it's really not my fault the shifting from one day politics to the next day feel-good fluff to another only nonsensical crap. I was apparently bred to be the yo-yo nutjob that is me. Case closed I have some screws loose indeed, my mother the one to blame.

I Hate Walmart, So I Love This Story

I detest Walmart anyway, utterly reprehensible in my opinion for so many considerations. I refuse to shop there despite lowest prices every day and always, even for some of them thar mostest fantastic of sales. That's why I find such delight in stories such as this, one more item on my list of whys and wherefores my boycotting.

From some Walmart Supercenter in Connecticut, a local guy there bought a buttload of $10 gift cards to pass out arbitrarily to the store's Christmas shoppers as they came in, his own spin on putting into practice random acts of kindness.

Cool idea, until he was ordered by management to stop doing that after the employees noticed him handing over the cards to unwary strangers. Scary the concept of wanton holiday gifting apparently.

Barry Goldberg said he had bought them, all $1,300 worth of the gift cards, to give away as a gesture of goodwill for handing out to customers in the store's lobby.

“I figured let me see if I can’t make a difference in peoples’ lives, for the better. A lot of people couldn’t believe that there’s actually people that exist in this world that are going to share in a random act of generosity and not look for anything in return,” he said.

After only half an hour spent inside before being asked to leave, he alternately then took it outdoors to the parking lot instead. Until of course he was finally directed again by store officials to vacate the premises altogether.

A Walmart spokesman did verify the whole bother, justified even the reason for the store's actions banning Goldberg's carrying out his best of intentions because, well, it was not after all an official store promotion. Now there's some inarguable rationale for ya.

A Target store boss nearby, though, caught wind of this and contacted the guy, welcomed him to continue carrying on his giving at their store. So he swapped out the rest of his Walmart stash for Target cards and rather passed those out over there instead.

Wrong of Me I Know, My Cynicism Showing

Britain’s Court of Appeal overturned a lower court's ruling already having decided that a certain guy, Stephen English, was not entitled to file a homophobic harassment charge against his former employer because he is in fact married, ipso facto totally straight. Now though he's good to go on legally pleading his beef, so to speak.

The English guy filed his original complaint alleging homo harassment that began when his co-workers discovered he had been educated at a boarding school and also that he lived in Brighton, apparently like Frisco's sister city from across the pond. Who knew about the boarding school connection, but okay, apparently the both together screaming gayest of the gay.

Anyway, somehow I find this amusing, both that this married lady-loving guy cared as much to be so offended and then quitting his job even over some name-calling and taking the matter before court in the first place.

Also that when they obviously rebuffed his hoped for ruling, to go ahead and bother bringing it on again to the higher up court for appealing. When divas don't get their way, better watch out.

He claims to having been forced to quit his job at some awning manufacturing company because they refused to shut up his fellow employees from calling him a faggot and stuff, and how that final straw was when the company’s newsletter pointed out him having attended the Brighton’s Gay Pride parade while wearing those skin-tight Lycra cycling shorts.

Okay, well ... I suppose now he will be eligible for yet another day in court after all, arguing why he should be meted out some sort of monetary reward, this straight upstanding family man having been forced out from his lucrative career in the manufacture of awnings because of ostensibly rampant albeit petty insults.

Hell, I've been called faggot before, didn't occur to me how it could have warranted quitting a job I hated anyway, in hoping for whatever sort of payoff instead. And I too was married back in those days!

Guess I just never thought to show up in Lycra shorts to any manner of public fairy parade, or I might as well have opted for trying raking in similar legal plunder. Stupid me, never with a plan until it's too late, always only in hindsight.

So best of luck, and congrats on that appeal and a second chance now for proving why the clichéd tagging costed your job and warrants financial reparation for damages, Steve. I only regret that I was not so ingenious as you way back when.

Not that it would have mattered much, my ex-wife would have ultimately ended up with it just the same after all those monthly alimony payments, me having been caught in that rather compromising position with another guy.

Just a heads up there, dude, reminder for best keeping certain things on the down low if in fact you do manage to win this next time around and want to keep some coin, you know what I mean.

Certainly not assuming anything, mind you, but I'm saying just in case. Also probably a good idea to scrap the Lycra altogether, and maybe consider moving somewhere more butch than Brighton.

Baby, It's Cold Inside

Right now it's about 4 degrees here, windy and the feel-like temp down already to minus 15, and it's only just after 10pm. Predicted to dip to around zero or below later on with wind chills down in the negative 25 degree ballpark.

Tomorrow only if we're lucky up to about 8 degrees plus, but windier even so that during the day that we'll be having zero minus 35 degrees the chill factor in the afternoon. Finally then, tomorrow night colder still with negative actual temps and feeling like some number I can't count so low.

Have I mentioned, this of all years so cold and I have no heat in my house? I swear to God, if not for Mom bringing out a couple of space heaters I'd be already stock-still hardened over from head to toe! Lifesavers those are, the space heaters.

Not the really fancy shmancy kinds that actually could heat up an entire room, nothing like that. Rather the sort that you have to literally toe up to and hunker over until your kneecaps catch fire while your ears still go numb out of range.

And taking caution to not sway left nor right outside of the narrow hot zone, lest something might flash-freeze and snap off. Okay I'm not grumbling, I am beyond measure thankful to have any heat at all! But hell, I can see my breath indoors right now even and I also just finished etching my initials into the ice on the kitchen window ... from the inside.

I don't understand why I do things like that, but I was there, it was there and all frosty and glittery, so things kind of sort of just happened. I do weird shit sometimes, usually bored and easily entertained. Pathetic me, I know.

I actually had originally headed into the kitchen only to grab a bottle of water left on the countertop, but guess what? Iced over it was. Bottom line it is cold beyond belief outside and also inside here at my house tonight, and I just wanted to bitch about it, so there.

Everything touched out of that 2' X 2' comfort range from the Holmes' 1500 watts of temperate clemency you'd swear was brought straight out of the freezer. Actually it's probably warmer inside there than outside here, truth be told.

So hey, if it's cold too wherever you are and you are bemoaning those occassional shivers and shudders? Keep your trap shut already and quit your whining, just think of me as the example you always hear tell about, that other someone worse off than yourself. That would be me, the frozen one.

My mom rocks so much more than yours. She is awesome. Mostly not even for lugging out here over too many miles those space heaters (granted, potentially hazardous conflagratory devices, I'll take my chances) but in particular for the extremely appreciated electric blanket she brung with, too! If no where else in my house, it is all good under the covers anyway, you know what I mean.

And given the forecast here, I'll probably be hibernating there for the next 36 hours or thereabout, dual controls both set on high. (Of course, I don't necessarily need the dual settings option, being all lonesome myself, but nonetheless just in case some frozen desperate cutie fellow other loser might possibly show up to cuddle alongside, a Christmas miracle or some such thing ... shut up, it could happen.)

Back to me being all nipply up top and shriveled down below ... bottom line is about how you all should be counting your blessings, folks, because things could be a lot worse, you could be me. That's not such a bad mantra worth remembering almost any day, whatever the weather, year-round, the being glad you're not me affirmation.

"There but for the grace of God go I ...". Doug, of course, being that lowest common denominator for comparing whatever your bad to being more worse off. You're welcome, and glad to be that undermost precedent helping you through the bad times.

Stay warm, and no bitching if you too are suffering through this arctic blast taking over nearly everywhere it seems. It may be cold, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that you can't carve out your name on any window from the inside at your house. So just bundle up, try to enjoy yourselves, and hope you all have a great weekend!

Cry Of Love - Too Cold In The Winter