TANcast

What a week I had. A wondrous week full of surprise and warmth.

A truncated timeline follows:

Thursday, July 22 – At about midnight or 1 am, on my way back from 5 days of vacation spent house-sitting for my folks with my sweetie I think I feel a bit under the weather. I figure it could be allergies (I’m not allergic to my parents’ cats) since I just spent 5 days in Stockton which is known for its dust, pollen, and mold, or possibly I could be sporting a mild sunburn.

Saturday, July 24 – I’m definitely sick. Fever, aches, desire to watch shows on UPN: all the signs are there. My girlfriend is on her way back to her house, too, to finish packing for her move this direction. After 9 days together it is weird to have her 200 miles away again.

Monday, July 26 – I’m home sick from work, the temperature outside is going to try to hit triple digits again for the third day in a row, and I have no AC at my place. Doesn’t matter, though, since my own body has spent the last 3 days dancing on both sides of the 100 degree mark. I’m standing in the freezer section of the grocery store in a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals and so hot I am sweating profusely. Advil and Tylenol are taking the edge off, but every 4-5 hours the fever comes back as the last dose wears off.

Tuesday, July 27 – I haven’t slept through the night in 4 days. I sweat through my sheets every 4 hours because of the fevers. At about 4:30 pm I get a call from my mom asking how I am. And telling me that she left my father. For good.

See what I did there? “Warmth” because of the fevers and “surprise” because my parents are throwing away what would be 33 years of marriage as of August 29. It was “wondrous” because I am full of wonder that I didn’t die from something.

I did lose about 8 pounds, though. It wasn’t all bad, I guess…

For the record, it looks like the 13 total days I got to spend with my fevers were due to a bad bout of influenza, a low-grade West Nile virus infection, or something similarly heinous. I followed all that that with a lovely 7 day chaser of strep throat. It was actually a shitty 3 weeks, but who’s counting?

Internet Explorer is seriously one of the WORST software products ever conceived. What could Microsoft possibly have been thinking?

Maybe something like this:

Let’s create a web browser and give it full access to both the outside network and the innermost workings of the operating system. NO! BETTER! Let’s have the OS interface BE the browser! That will get the Justice Department off our back when our “cut off Netscape’s air supply” memo leaks, since by then both of them (OS and browser) will be “merged”.

Next, lets create a technology that allows fully functioning programs to be run in the browser. We can call that ActiveX. We’ll need to set the default security settings pretty low, since we want people to have easy access to this. We can even make people use it to upgrade their copy of Windows. Why have a separate, secure system in place that can only connect to our servers when we can just give the web browser total control of everything and then assume nobody will ever find a flaw that lets them rape systems remotely.

As the crowning pinnacle, lets let 3rd party people modify the browser’s function using this ActiveX thing and not give people any easy way to remove the “enhancements”. Marketers will LOVE the ability to change the browser so that every time it accesses www.disney.com it pops up ads for hardcore midget-shaving porn, especially if the ads show graphic horse fisting, too.

Last item for action: once we are done using our OS monopoly to control the web browser market, we need to stop upgrading the software. Standards? Bah. Who cares. Rendering bugs? Not a problem. Features? Control? Security? Well, we’ll patch critical flaws, but other than that, fuck it. Users can like what we forced the PC makers to ship or they can kiss our hairy beans.

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Ever fart and then think you should apologize to God for it?

I have.

I had Taco Bell and pepperoni pizza from Round Table on back-to-back nights about a week and a half ago and I was blowing the sort of ass that was outlawed in the fourth Geneva Convention in 1949.

Fat Bastard said “We all love our own brand, don’t we?”, but I have discovered the exception to this rule.

It takes a potent combination of fuels and a reacting chamber as prolific as my colon, but I have incontrovertible proof that it is possible to not only offend one’s own self but in fact to actually make oneself sick.

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I’m old now.

I don’t want to hear from any 30-somethings or middle-agers or AARP representatives. I know old, and “late 20’s” is old. I can’t even say “mid-20’s” anymore with a straight face. Late. LATE !!!

What have I accomplished with all the time I’ve had?

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In my youth I was a registered Republican and true believer. I stayed that way for several years before finally leaving the party for greener pastures 2 years ago.

Please note that I’m not a Democrat. People seem to treat this as an either/or distinction. For my thoughts on what this sort of assumption says about them, see my “people are stupid” post.

The two largest parties are out to keep their hands on the reins and little more, but the smaller political parties tend to be fringe (including the Libertarian Party, which is anarchist) or interested in limited issues (though despite the name, doesn’t as much apply to the Greens). I don’t feel that any party will properly represent my wishes at this point so I am not a member of any of them.

I sit on some weird intersection of Libertarian, Socialist, Fascist, and Conservative ideologies on the political spectrum, and where I land on any issue depends on the exact matter at hand, so maybe I really am a party of one.

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Well, maybe a little bit of a rant.

I am sick and tired of people from the rest of the US bashing California over things like earthquakes or LA “culture” or electing Ahh-nod as the Governator when you get stupid shit like this coming out of the South:

Georgia House bans genital piercings for women
The Associated Press – ATLANTA

Genital piercings for women were banned by the Georgia House Wednesday as lawmakers considered a bill outlining punishments for female genital mutilation.

The bill would make such mutilation punishable by two to 20 years in prison. It makes no exception for people who give consent to have the procedure performed on their daughters out of religious or cultural custom.

An amendment adopted without objection added “piercing” to the list of things that may not be done to female genitals. Even adult women would not be allowed to get the procedure. The bill eventually passed 160-0, with no debate.

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I just took a quick trip to see my parents, which means I drove the same 90 miles twice in about 24 hours. The visit was lovely, but what follows is a profanity-laced letter to a few of the drivers who “shared” the road with me. Anyone weak of stomach or easily offended or related to me should read no further.

To the Sunday drivers, yes I know it is actually Sunday but seriously: MOVE THE FUCK OVER. I should not be doing 62 in a 65 zone in the FAST LANE behind you. Hell, you shouldn’t have been going 65 in the fast lane if people behind you are trying to go faster. Funny thing, that. The law states you can’t exceed the speed limit, but you ALSO can’t impede traffic even if they are trying to speed. And a special “fuck you” goes to the guy doing 55 in a 65 zone on a 2-lane highway next to a big rig. You deserved every inch of that finger I flipped you, buddy.

As an extension to the above, the granny going 45 in the slow lane should look for her gas pedal, look for her nerves, or look for someone else to drive her. Ever try to merge left into real traffic when you are stuck behind some fucking blue-hair who is forcing your lane to be 20 mph slower than the rest of the freeway? I can only say “Thank God I drive an Acura.”

To the asshats who forgot how to merge, I suggest you look at your steering column on the left side. You will find a nifty little stick there which tells the rest of us you want to move over. I, as a fairly conscientious driver, will try to make room for you unless you have been driving like a dick (see below). One caveat, however: it is a physical impossibility for us both to exist in the same space at the same time, so to the two special fucktards who almost ran me off the road I suggest that in the future you use that nifty doodad called a “neck” (the thing that holds your shit repository up) and LOOK OVER AT THE ROAD NEXT TO YOU. I’m no ninja, so I have no idea how you idiots failed to note the presence of me and my big green car in that lane.

To the dick in the Mitsubishi, the fact that you put a fin on your little piece of shit car does not mean you own the road. In fact, even if you paid substantially more in taxes than I did last year, you still do not get to drive like the rest of us are your road cones in some car slalom game. And yes, I saw your turn signal when you were trying to merge in front of me. I also saw you cut across 3 lanes of traffic and make a bunch of other people hit their brakes because you thought you were in the next Indy 500 trials. I stuck you in that lane so you could think about what you did. Ass.

To end on a higher note: to the other THOUSANDS of people I was on the road with today, thanks for all being decent human beings. I would let you all date my sister, if I had one.

People, by and large, are stupid.

I’m not saying this from some sense of superiority, nor did I just have some upsetting experience with a stupid person. This is a fairly deep-seated belief I base on twenty-something years of observing the human experience.

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