What we’re doing here is killing time until the Bucs/Eagles game at 9. It’s 4:30 in the afternoon or thereabouts as I sit typing this, but I’m about to go out and get some Pepsi. Stay tuned.

All right. Let’s do personal real world crap, because that’s what my mom reads this blog for, and honestly, I think realistically the rest of you can just take a back seat for the moment to what the woman who brought me into this world at great personal cost to herself wants from me, okay?

And it escalated from there, with Paul screaming at me that all I ever do is bitch bitch bitch whine whine whine complain complain complain about EVERYthing, every minute of every day, which is, I suppose, fair… I don’t internalize, I vent, and my life isn’t one where there aren’t a lot of annoying little frustrations, and I do tend to externalize every single time one of them comes up, often at great volume and high pitch… and frankly, I’m not used to being in a social environment (i.e., one shared with at least one other person) so much, so instead of talking to myself or screaming into the empty air or sending emails or simply venting on this weblog, I tend to grouse to Paul a lot about it. And it would seem he finds it annoying.

However, in all fairness to myself, there were two elements contributing to Paul’s irritability far more, one minor, one major:

a) The minor one was that it was his birthday and he came home from work with a fairly discernible aura of birthday entitlement… in other words, he felt that because it was his birthday, the world was somehow obligated to do absolutely nothing to in any way irritate him. And, yes, that works well, little brother. That’s an attitude that is always rewarded, I’ve found.

a) The major one is money. Paul has found me to be, generally, a pleasant and charming companion when I was helping pay the bills. With my Unemployment dried up and a windfall check from the Unnameable Porn Site completely gone, Paul finds me considerably more annoying these days. So where Paul would doubtless have simply said “yeah, you’re right, they should have that feature” and moved on had I, for example, just put a whole bunch of groceries in the fridge, or just paid a huge electricity bill online for him, the fact is, I haven’t done anything for him lately, so that, combined with his “it’s my birthday you should be kissing my ass more” attitude seemed to cause him to want to be bitchy and obstructive in what should have been a pretty innocuous conversation.

Look, money is a biggie. It’s always going to be a biggie. And Paul is coming pretty hard up against a financial wall now, that was very effectively masked by me moving in here right after he lost his last job at Dell’s, prior to getting his current one at Circle K. The fact is, Paul loves his current job, and he loves his current situation… or he has, right up until this point. The reason for this is that with me bringing in some $640 odd/per month in Unemployment, and pretty much spending 3/4s of that on helping with the bills around here, it very effectively kept him from noticing that he currently is not making enough money to live the way he wants to.

The fact is, Paul is working 32 hours a week, and he doesn’t get paid much. He’s working second shift (3-11) 4 days a week, with 3 days off in a row (usually Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday) and frankly, he adores that schedule, it fits perfectly in with the social structure he and his friends, who all work weird hours themselves, have evolved. He bitches every single morning he gets up (at 1 p.m.) about having to go into work, but he likes the job fine (and has no ambition to ever do anything else) and he loves the schedule.

However, when he moved into this place, he was working 40 to 50 hours a week cooking at a restaurant named Dell’s for, I think slightly more money per hour, and either way, he was making at least $50 more a week. He was living a lot simpler (I cleaned off his stove, which was simply a clutter area because as Paul put it, “I don’t cook, I microwave” before I moved in) and yes, when you have a roommate, bills go up (we buy more groceries now, the utility bill is higher because one of us is always home and we have twice as many TVs and I have a computer, and the water bill is higher, too). And all this was fine, as long as that extra $600 a month was coming in.

Now it’s not. And suddenly, Paul is looking at having to pay all the bills himself until I can manage to get a job, which I am putting a full court press on this week, but still. Right now, Paul is looking at having to pay somewhat higher bills than he’s had to pay before, on less money than he’s been making, and obviously, it’s severely pissing him off, and all the intangible (or sometimes very tangible) improvements to his lifestyle that my presence has brought really don’t mean a goddam thing to him if I’m not handing him a big stack of $20’s regularly.

Beyond all this, Paul wants to live his life with no financial discipline whatsoever, and I say ‘yay, Paul, me too’, but, well, that just isn’t very feasible under his current circumstances, and I think he’s going to be shocked how infeasible it continues to be even after I finally move out. The simple fact is, he is currently making less money and paying higher bills, and he will be even after I pack up and get out of here, simply because the cost of living has gone up and Paul’s income has declined. Yet while I was here and getting Unemployment, we had so much surplus cash that Paul could literally simply spend money whenever the hell he felt like it… on videotapes, DVDs, games, great big bags of… er… incense, yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket… if Paul was out somewhere and saw something he liked for $60 or less, he was like “Yeah, BABY, gimme THAT!” And that’s a fine fine way to live… but he honestly couldn’t afford it when I had money coming in, and we had a few talks about it then, and now he REALLY can’t afford it, and frankly, it’s pissing him off.

Please excuse my pissy tone. I’m not really trying to indicate that this is all Paul’s fault. I’m under stress from not having an income and no longer pulling my weight around here, and in addition, as I think nearly everyone does, I feel very unappreciated, and this page is indeed where I vent. So I’m venting.

Anyway, Paul and I really had a screaming match Friday night, in front of friend Pat no less, who blithely ignored us as he played SoulCalibrre while we yelled at near nuclear decibel levels less than two yards away from him. (Small living room.)

Actually, Saturday, most of the day passed in a blur. I woke up with a horrible sinus headache that combined with a desperate need for more sleep that, due to the headache, I didn’t seem able to get. I finally went back to bed right after Paul and Kimber left to see the concert and got a few more hours. The headache was lessened but not gone when I got up again, and played a little SoulCaliber and otherwise didn’t do much at all. I remember talking to Paul a bit about the concert when he got home and that’s about it. But yesterday and today I slept much better (for the first time in a long time) so that was okay.

The rest of the weekend passed uneventfully, as Paul and I walked very softly around each other. Paul apparently enjoyed his Counting Crows concert Saturday night a lot, although he complained that the new ban on smoking in public places has worked very effectively to keep people from smoking pot at concerts too, which he feels sucks. (I can’t say that it sucks, but remembering the few concerts I’ve gone to in my life, including the very first, the Eagles “Hotel California” tour in Buffalo in the late 1970s, I have to say, seeing a pop concert in a venue in which the air wasn’t green and extremely aromatic certainly seems to herald a new and utterly different era of public entertainment in America.)

As I was peeking out the front door when they pulled in, and saw no good night kiss between Paul and Kimber, well, it looks like Paul has been sensible enough to dodge a bullet there. Or perhaps Kimber, who really strikes me as very addled, was simply sending conflicting signals, or changed her mind, or whatever. Either way, that seems to be drama that won’t be happening, and thank The Mighty Jeff for that.

I played a lot of SoulCaliberII this weekend, and still resolutely suck at it, but what the hell, I resolutely suck at everything except writing and refereeing my RPG (and, once upon a time, long long ago, a few people told me I gave good neck rubs and was pretty decent at some other stuff I won’t go into details on, but I would imagine I’m awfully rusty at that entire array of skills by now).

And let’s see. Today I got a book to review from JoeBobBriggs (not one of the ones I asked for, but something by Arthur C. Clark and Stephen Baxter that I may or may not be bored enough to actually read at some point; Clark usually puts me to sleep). I called Wal-mart to follow up on my application and the Personnel Department was out to lunch so I left a message.

In email, I stayed offline all day (an effort greatly aided by sleeping in until 1 like Paul; I’ve been getting a little more sleep these last couple of days and am actually NOT exhausted or feeling horrible right now, which is nice) so I could keep the phonelines clear in case someone wanted to call me to ask me in for an interview. Having just now checked it, I find the always pleasant KimInDayton has dropped me an email telling me I’m as witty and charming as always, which, you know, could be good, could be bad ::grin::. And Nate peppered the blog with comments, which I appreciate, even if I have little meaningful to say to them and I’m about to put them all into an archive when I post this page in a little while.

Hartmut has just sent me an email informing me that my emails over the past several months had all been filtered out by his email software. So I’m basically the mother in law on the new AOL commercial. Yay.

And my mom has been deluging me lately with pics of Sean and Erica’s kids. They are indeed adorable kids. They would doubtless fetch top prices on any open market and most likely should, too. But I have a very slow computer, so when people send me pics, it would be nice if they would crop off the upper 2/3s of the picture, said sector of said pic in which the kid does not appear, but a very large tree trunk and a lot of background does, which causes the actual pic of the kid in question to take forever to load.

And now, having thoroughly annoyed my mom, Sean, and Erica in one paragraph, let’s move on to:

Hey, I watched Shrek the other day. I’d always vowed, based on the ad campaigns and the little bits of it I’d seen at video stores on the monitors, that I would never sit through that awful thing, but Paul had it on video, so I watched it and it’s pretty good. I found much of it rather forced and obviously formulaic and rather a lot of the humor was more heavy handed than it needed to be, but still, stuff like Geppetto turning Pinnochio in to the Science Nazis in exchange for a quick payoff (“fifteen shillings for the possessed toy”) really cracked me up. I had kind of expected that, towards the end of the movie, it would be revealed that Shrek, like the Princess, was also under a curse, it’s just that his made him an ogre full time… so when they finally kissed, they’d both be gorgeous humans (or, in a switch, Shrek would turn into Prince Charming and decide to stay with Ogress/Princess because he loved her anyway, which would seem like a very PC message to send to all the fat chicks in the audience). However, no, it was just that the Princess was really an ogress, too, I guess… that part didn’t make much sense.

It does very much send out the ‘all you HOMELY ass people should just date each other and leave us A-List Beautiful Types alone’ vibe, which I’m not wild about… the only reason A-List Beautiful Types exist, and should be tolerated in their snootiness, is to fulfill the fantasies and gratify the desires of us real life trolls, as far as I’m concerned. Shrek DESERVED the Princess As A Babe, and had that turned out to be her true form, it would have sent a lovely (if depressingly false to fact) signal about how sometimes the fat ugly guy can get a major hottie, if he’s just really sweet to her. (In real life, the fat ugly guy can get a major hottie if he’s really really rich… see Billy Joel/Christie Brinkley… at least, until she meets some great looking helicopter pilot.) But, no… in the end, Ugly sticks to Ugly, and that’s just how it is.

Although, honestly, there are very few Beautiful People in the movie at all, and the only two I can think of (Snow White and Cinderella) didn’t seem to be very nice. (The very brief scene of them beating hell out of each other trying to get the bridal bouquet thrown by the princess cracked me up, though.)

So, I watched Shrek, and it was much better than I expected. I would bet it has a kick ass soundtrack, too. Although David Fiore will probably be appalled at me for saying so.

Scott Shepherd’s family is doing as well as they can in an extremely shitty situation (which I haven’t gone into more details on out of simple respect for Scott’s privacy, although it’s simply a shitty break for them, nothing that reflects or is in any way a result of anything Scott or his family did). I’m keeping them in my thoughts, as much as a surly selfish whiney obnoxious old Real World ogre with no princess nor talking donkey friend can, anyway.

But, in many ways, I am the talkinest damn beast anyone has ever seen, so that’s something.

Oops. Bad news, America… due to various things like an automatic transfer of $10 from my checking account to my savings account (it keeps the savings account from having monthly fees assessed to it), the $47.70 I just put on my bank card for U Stor’s September fee made me go about $1 in the hole… which, of course, immediately incurred a $30 overdraft fee. So I am now $31 below zero on my savings account… which will only get worse, when they hit me with the monthly fee because I no longer have direct deposit coming in from anywhere. ::sigh::

Now would be a good time for me to somehow get a big PayPal payment, so I could transfer it into that account and stop the bleeding before it turns into a hemorrhage. Or I could just resign myself to yet another checking account biting the dust because I did my math wrong by a few pennies. Ah, well…

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.