An Interview With Me!

Blog Times: "So, John, what's been going on? You haven't posted much lately."

Me: "Well, not much going on, and I can't tell interesting stories if nothing interesting is going on."

Blog Times: "You're telling me there's not even ONE interesting thing going on in your life? I find that difficult to believe." (interviewer looks at me skeptically)

Me: "You are trying to tell me you think that a person can't possibly be as boring as I am?"

Blog Times: "Well, I wouldn't have put it so bluntly, but yes."

Me: "Ha, ha. I come from a family that LIKES being in a rut. At least nothing bad is happening if you're travelling along in the same old ruts. I must have heard Sainted Mother say that a million times while I was growing up."

Blog Times: "Do you believe that yourself, that it's ok to live life in a rut?"

Me: "Not necessarily, but sometimes in life when things aren't going great, but they aren't really going bad either, my definition of being in a rut, it can be a good thing."

Blog Times: "You're going to have to explain that to me a little more."

Me: "Say you have some bad things going on in your life, for example heavy financial pressures and chronic back pain, but you still have to work every day to bring in that pay check. You take the medicines the doctor gives you for the chronic pain, and while that lowers the pain level somewhat and you're grateful for that, the price for lower pain is that you need more sleep and the pain that you're left with causes you to take longer to do everything. Everything as in it takes you longer to shower and get ready for work. It takes you longer to gather up your stuff and get to and get situated for the day at work. Things of that nature. All the lost time costs you in the ability to go out to eat or see a movie with your wife and so forth, at least during the week, see what I mean?

Blog Times: (Nods head)

Me: "Then at home in the evening, eating supper and spending a little time doing something that I would like to do more of like practice my guitar or work on my new FPGA (robotics brains type thingy) electronics card, and all of a sudden it's time for me to get ready for bed. Remember, I need more sleep now."

Blog Times: "So the net result is eat, sleep, work, with a dash of fun things thrown in, resulting in a pretty boring life."

Me: "Just a dash of fun, yes. I'm living proof that all work and no play makes John a dull blogger."

Blog Times: "I'm beginning to see what you are up against. Have you no more funny stories from your childhood or anything like that that you could write up an put on your blog?"

Me: "I guess that I could have a brainstorming session to try to do just that, I'm a big fan of and believer in brainstorming by the way, but the math just doesn't add up for me on that right now."

Blog Times: "I'm sorry John, you just completely lost me. What do you mean by 'the math just doesn't add up for me on that right now' exactly?"

Me: "Sorry, sometimes I say things that are three steps ahead like that. For me, it's like this, in math form, Oxycontin + chronic pain = blog apathy. And to explain that, I just mean that I'm doing my best to deal with 24 hour pain, by the way I never set an alarm clock any more, my back pain wakes me up every day whether it's a week day or weekend, and the medicine that gives me a bit of relief and the sleep I need right now to function, all pretty much robs me of even the desire to blog. I occasionally have a great blog idea but simply don't care enough any more to write the idea down. Then when I do feel like writing, the idea is gone, or I simply am faced with trying to dredge up something from my boring life and make it interesting enough to blog about."

Blog Times: (Gently snoring)

Me: "Hey!"

Blog Times: (Startled awake, smooths the hair on his oversprayed helmet head.) "Hump-hmm! My hair!"

Me: "No problem. See, if I can bore you to sleep when we are face to face in an interview, how boring do you think if would be to try to explain all of this on a blog where I would want victims readers to read through it all?"

Blog Times: "But I've NEVER done that before. EVER! I'm so sorry."

Me: "Just glad that I could be such an integral part of such a big moment in your life. It's my pleasure."

Blog Times: "We're about out of time. Is there anything else you would like to say."

Me: "I haven't even had the desire to get out and roam around with my camera and take my usual assortmen of rocks, trees, and ocean pictures the past few weeks. And I LOVE doing that. But just don't care enough right now to get out there and do it. I'm going to have to change the name of my photography blog from 'John's Daily Digital Images' to something like 'A Picture Now and Then'."

Blog Times: "That's sad and funny, I hope you get a burst of energy and inspiration soon." (looking at watch. Rolex Submariner)

Me: "Yeah, me too." (making ultra-sharp creases with my thumbnail in a post-it note to pick my teeth with)

Blog Times: "I thought for sure something would come to mind while we talked, but I guess not. Thank you for your time"

Me: "You're welcome. (light bult appears above my massive cranium) Hey! Big Sis just bought a BRAND NEW car, does that count as interesting?"

Blog Times: (looking interested) "What kind of car?"

Me: (with lots of enthusiasm) "A Kia."

Blog Times: "Nope. Not even close to interesting, though I'm sure it IS interesting to her. Does she have a blog? (looks pathetically hopeful)

Me: "Nope. She doesn't blog. She just talks about Keith Urban all the time."

Blog Times: (gets that look on his face like he's glad he didn't step in that pile of stuff) "Never mind. Gotta go."

Me: "Who is next on your agenda? A blogger with a huge following, like a political blog or something?" (while interviewer stands and opens door)

Blog Times: "No such luck. Someone with a blog titled "The Cutest Mommy Blog EVAR! Adventures In Breastfeeding" (interviewer winces like you do when you bite the inside of your mouth really hard)

Me: (interviewee winces like you do when you bite the inside of your mouth really hard) "Yeah. Good luck with that one."

Then I wave as he drives off in his Lexus.

I immediately go to my computer to write out the fact that I was interviewed. It might stink as interviews go, but it was exciting while it lasted.

(Dangit! I forgot to ask him the web address of the mommy blog.)

A Trip to the Beach

It's spring, and you want to go to the beach to sit for a while.

Look north along the coast.


Look south along the coast.


Look out over the Atlantic itself, and imagine Africa over there somewhere.

Go ahead an let that cold Atlantic water wash up around your feet and ankles. It's still cold yet, but it'll be warm enough to swim in without hypothermia soon.

But for now, get the feel of it rushing around your ankles as it sweeps back into the ocean.

More On My Stolen Cell Phone / The Cuss-O-Meter

I wrote a post the other day explaining how I had my cell phone stolen out of our van, and how Cell Phone Thief had free use of it for, like, three or four days.

Well, what I didn't talk about was that apparently Cell Phone Thief quickly told every friend of his all over the country about his new phone number.

But then AT&T killed the stolen phone and SIM card for me, and let me keep my number and reprogram my new phone and SIM card with the number.

The penalty that I've personally had to pay for keeping the same number is that I've been getting messages for days now from Cell Phone Thief's friends from all over America. No lie. I've been getting calls from all manner of strange area codes. I'm just thankful his friends are in America and didn't use all my minutes.

Cell Phone Thief's friends look to their rap stars of choice and Randy Jackson of American Idol fame for their lingo in the cell phone messages.

Consequently when I listen to the voice messages to see if by chance there might actually be a message for me in there (rare, I have few friends), about the only words I can make out most of the time are "Yo", "Dog", "Up in here" "mumblemumblemumble" and the like.

But yesterday I had two messages that, when heard back to back, made me laugh.

I now regret having deleted them immediately after listening to them, so I could transcribe them here, but the gist of the first one was: "Yo Dog, this is (unintelligible) and I've run out of Mo-F-in gas. I'm in Orlando, and need you to call me back RIGHT NOW! And come bring me some Mo-F-in gas, mayn! Call me back, mayn, NOW!" (Of course, he said Mo-F-in in unabbreviated form).

Since his "mayn" ain't got that number any more, it's MINE again, the dear caller didn't hear back from his target. He left a second message, which simply consisted of a string of muffled cuss words and shouted Yo!s and Gas! and generally cussing out his "mayn" for not calling him back and bringing him some gas.

I must say it was quite amusing to me.

Too bad Cell Phone Thief was unable to hear his friend in need.

Nah, not really. I'm hoping he gives Cell Phone Thief a good cussin' when he sees him next.

---

Speaking of cussin', I'm about as far from wanting to be "cool" or even knowing what things are cool when I see them, but the other day, I saw the Cuss-O-Meter on Miss Norma's Collecting My Thoughts blog and just had to go there and get one for my blog. The Cuss-O-Meter is down there on the right side, and shows what percentage of my blog is cuss words.

This is something that very much ranks as Way Cool in this decidedly un-cool man's world.

But then again, I'm still known to use the phrase, "All that AND a bag of chips," so what do I know about cool?

Notice, my Cuss-O-Meter is registering down in the "darnit" range (though I much prefer "dangit" to "darnit"). What a hoot.

Created by OnePlusYou

If You Think Politics Ain't Funny...

You ain't never been to the IMAO web site.

The head muckety-muck and main funny man there, Frank J., used to work as an engineer at the same company I work for, but he got out. He moved to Idaho or some other place far, far away from Florida.

I haven't figgered out how to do that yet.

Here's a snippet of something Frank posted over there today, and gave me a much needed laugh on an otherwise bummer of a day:

Barack Obama Rumors
Posted by Frank J. at 12:53 PM | View blog reactions | Comments (2)

There have been many rumors about Senator Barack Obama, so I thought I'd check on how which ones are true if any:

RUMOR: Obama is a Muslim.
STATUS: False
Obama is not currently a Muslim. He's a Christian of some sort in the "hate Whitey" sect.

RUMOR: Obama is an enlightened space alien sent to save humanity.
STATUS: False
All evidence points towards Obama being a below average man who his wife stopped asking to do chores around the house because he was always getting his head stuck in the mop bucket.

RUMOR: Obama tried to bomb the Pentagon.
STATUS: False
That was his friend.

RUMOR: Obama felt we got what we deserved on 9/11.
STATUS: False
That was his other friend.

RUMOR: Obama was once a hired goon for the Aquaman villain Black Manta.
STATUS: False
While Obama has served on a number of committees and attended a fundraiser hosted by Black Manta, Obama has never worked for him. His campaign has on numerous occasions called it out of bounds to draw connections between Obama and the terrorists, hatemongers, and supervillians he happens to hang around with in his spare time.

And those are just a part of the Obama rumor analysis.

Go visit them for the humor, but stay for the, well, um, whatever. Go visit them.

You'll find yourself bookmarking the site for future use. Frank's wife Sarah, has a cool blog of her own. Well, it WAS cool until she started putting pictures of home made sushi on there.

I have been really spotty in my blog looking and lurking lately, but these are two good places for a champ-een lurker like myself.

---

Earth Day went out with a wimper for me yesterday, I didn't see, and therefore didn't get to yell at any yuppie Prius owning snobs.

Have to wait 'til next year I reckon.

I Didn't Miss It! It's Earth Day!

I live entire lifetimes in my head. I spend many hours in thought about most everything.

But I really spend a lot of time thinking about old friends.

Anyhoo, this being Earth Day, I always think of W.B., a friend I used to work with for Delta Airlines in Atlanta, Georgia.

Knowing that W.B. was much like myself, a conservative in most political matters, I asked him one day at work what he had done to celebrate Earth Day. I thought it might get him fired up about the whole environmental movement, you know?

W.B. looked at me with a mischievous smile and said 'I burned my trash today. I heard earth day was coming up so I've been saving our trash and burned it all this morning. Took me all morning too.'

Ah, good times, good times.

Naturally, I think of him every Earth Day. A good ol' country boy from Georgia who lives so far out there is no garbage service and burns his family's trash.

I always wonder if he saved up a good batch of trash and spent his morning of April 22 burning it all.

Knowing W.B., he probably did.

Here's to ya, buddy!

I celebrated today by driving a few miles per hour over the speed limit and used extra toilet paper, way more than Cheryl "One Square" Crow I'm sure. I also turned on lots of incandescent bulbs in the house this morning while getting ready for work.

Also, I plan on yelling at anybody driving a Prius, but alas, I haven't seen any today. Maybe I'll get lucky on the way home this evening.

How have you been celebrating Earth Day?

---

How's this for an Earth Day celebration? The Edmonton Sun, a Canadian newspaper has an article about how the local Earth Day celebration was moved into a tent because of a BLIZZARD.

So much for global warming. Earth Day festivities went ahead despite the blast of frigid weather yesterday.

Vendors and presenters from various eco-friendly groups, including Bullfrog Power, CO2 Reduction Edmonton and the local solar energy society, crammed into a lone tent in Hawrelak Park after a blizzard forced them to abandon their original locations.

Organizers crammed over 40 groups in a space that would normally be occupied by half that number. Presenters' booths were initially planned to have been spread out between at least five tents, with far larger displays.

"We're normally here with a lineup of cyclists for our free bike repair service. No bikers came today. Big surprise," said Chris Field of Mountain Equipment Co-O...

I love it!

Many Young Liberals / Progressives / Socialists Are Stupid

The Democrat's newest attacks on John McCain are that they are starting to say that John McCain is too old to be President.

Wow. Talk about already being out of things to complain about with a candidate, they are already down to calling him too old? And the Democratic nominee hasn't even been chosen yet?

Man, the Democrats must really be in trouble to already be in this situation.

You know when you get into an argument and before you can even get up a good head of steam, your opponent starts calling you names? You know that they HAVE NO argument when they quickly start calling you names, right?

So here we have the Democrats already calling John McCain too old.

It's actually kind of reassuring in a way, because if they are already down to such weak attacks, then John McCain's chances to win the Presidential election are really looking pretty good aren't they?

But just the audacity for young morons to attack a true American war hero as being too old is pretty astounding to me.

First off, morons, the man is 72, but HIS MOTHER IS STILL ALIVE AND SPRIGH AND OFTEN ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL WITH HIM.

In case you're too dumb to understand the implications there, dummy, this energetic 72 year old OR his mother can still kick your butt. Comprende?

I read where one (of the many) liberal groups even put together a 90 second TV ad where a bunch of young Democrats talk about how John McCain is too old to be President.

I'm only 45, but that makes me want to find a good stick and find those punks and work them over a bit for their stupidity.

Don't these stupid young liberals / progressives / socialists realize that way LESS than half of eligible voters under 40 bother to vote?

Don't these stupid young liberals / progressives / socialists realize that way MORE than half of eligible voters over 50 DO bother to vote?

Don't these stupid young liberals / progressives / socialists realize that they are being discriminatory to people who are older than them, and that their silly antics will help get the mature voters out to vote for John McCain in even bigger numbers?

Nope, I guess not.

These stupid young liberals / progressives / socialists are simply to idiotic to see how foolish their claims are and that by being so stupid, they are HELPING John McCain get an even larger share of the more likely to vote than them older voters?

They are insulting the very voter group that can put John McCain into the Oval Office.

So much for the Democrats being the party of the tolerant and the party of inclusion for all.

This "John McCain is too old" attack scheme is going to backfire on the Democrats, big time.

You just watch.

"Youth is wasted on the young." -- George B. Shaw

What's Up With That?

In the middle of last week, I had my cell phone stolen.

The van I've been driving has the front passenger window stuck in the down position and I haven't taken it in to be repaired. I have a really classy piece of thick, clear plastic and duct tape over the window to keep out the elements.

So working late one evening, I went out to leave, and noticed that my cell phone was missing. Like a bone head I left it in the van. By the time I was leaving, there were only two other cars in the parking lot, and neither was anywhere close to mine.

The place where I work is very sedate and there is almost no theft or anything like that. But the empty lots next to where I work attract evening batches of off road motorycyclists as a place "in town" to ride their motorcycles.

I was actually kind of stunned that the phone went missing and a few days went by before I reported it to AT&T as stolen.

We tried calling the number just to see if we could hear the phone in the house or the van in the case that I was mistaken about my having had the phone with me that day, or that it might be rolling around in the van somewhere. But when we called the number to see if it rang within our hearing, there was a new answer tone on the phone.

I personally detest rap music, and when a rap song by none other than $0.50 (Fiddy Cent, whom I prefer to refer to as "Four Bits") started playing when we called my number, I knew the phone had been stolen, and was in fact being used. (How dare they change my The Count from Sesame Street counting rings answer tone!)

AT&T immediately killed my cell phone number and sent me a new phone. When I went through the process of bringing the new phone and SIMM card to life, I have gotten a few calls from some strange people, whom, I can only assume, thought they were calling the guy who stole my other phone.

I was able to look up and see that they hadn't made any three hour calls to Tokyo or any internet usage on the phone for the few days that they got to use it for free, so there's no big deal.

But it has been a lot of years since someone has stolen anything out of any of our vehicles.

I have an appointment to have the window fixed, and hopefully, that will be the end of the temptation for easy riches to the morons who steal stuff out of lonely cars.

I was also able to get rid of the Four Bits answer tone and reinstate my The Count from Sesame Street counting rings answer tone.

Interesting note, it's funny to hear how it stymies the cell phone people when I tell them I want a simple bar phone WITHOUT a camera. I guess flip phones with cameras are becoming such a normal thing that the lady had to put me on hold and go speak with her supervisor about finding an acceptable phone.

I guess I'm almost too low tech when it comes to cell phones, but I can't take a cell phone with a camera to work, or one that connects to a computer, because of security issues. It's easier to get the most basic phone I can get, so that I'm not violating any rules at work by just walking in with the phone in my pocket.

I can't believe the thief only stole the cell phone I had in a recessed pocket in our van and didn't take the stock, 1998 Dodge Grand Caravan AM/FM Stereo Cassette player from the dash. He probably wanted it really bad, but didn't think he had time to get that prize out of the dash.