OK, it's that time of year again. The time of year when everyone and their dog waxes nostalgic about all the shit nobody cares about from the year past, and stupidly predicts the next year in the grim knowlege that when the next New Year comes along nobody will remember that the dumbass predicted a bunch of foolish shit that turned out to be complete and utter balderdash.

I might as well, too. Just like I did last year (yes, a lot of this was pasted from last year's final chapter). Last year I wrote "Linda would be 48 had she lived. Tammy, the girl mentioned in the last PD journal, is 48. I still don't know where that one's going, but I'm still hopeful. Maybe stupidly hopeful."

I'm still stupidly hopeful. I've been going to church with her almost weekly, and... well, folks who accuse men of not being able to commit should STFU. One minute she's madly in love with me, and the next she doesn't even want to talk to me because of that damned Tami. Tammy's insanely jealous of Tami, and thinks I'm in love with her. I sure wish I could disabuse her of that silly notion.

Last years' SciFi:
We still haven't found extraforgostnic life
Hadron Destroyers (2009)

Journals:
the Paxil Diaries
A Paxil Diary Christmas Story
2007
2008
2009

Earl meets the Big Bang Theory
Daze of our lies
The Batshit Crazy Vacation
Valentines Day in Springfield
Trolling for Dollars (and other Springfield nonsense)
A Tale of Two Tamiys
Party Girls
The dangerous streets of Springfield
Not another one...
No big bangs tonight...
Stand up stand off
Errata
Three women and fireworks
One door closes, another door opens
BAR WARS
Sorry, no journal today
Superstition
The Prisoner
Bad Day
Turning in my license
Saturday Sex and Sunday Cuddles
...and in the darkness bind them.
Battery, Jail, and Robbery
Nothing but good news (for me anyway)
Mayor Quimby found dead in his home
A bad, BAD virus! ...and some old hacking.

Accepted Slashdot Submissions:
Sit Longer, Die Sooner
Stem Cells Curing Burn-Induced Blindness

Lyrics/Poetry:
It's Christmas Time!
Quake Christmas Carols

I didn't really make any predictions last year, except that we'd take a trip around the sun. Balls of crystal, I tell ya!

This years' stupid predictions:

• Either I'll still be dating Tammy this time next year, or I won't.
• Someone will die. Not necessarily anybody I know...
• SETI will find no sign of intelligent life. Not even on Earth.
• The Pirate Bay won't make inroads in the US. I hope I'm wrong about that one
• In Soviet Russia, something will happen to YOU!
• US politicians will continue to be wholly owned by the corporations
• I'll still be a nerd
• You'll still be a nerd
• technophobic fashionista jocks will troll slashdot
• Slashdot will be rife with dupes
• Many FSes will be poorly edited
• I'll finally get that book in paper form
• John Belushi will remain dead

I had been putting a double dash in front of "Paxil Diary" type journals, but I'm going to change this. Bullshit opinion journals' titles will have /. in front of them, science fiction stories will have a dot in front of them, and "Paxil Diary" type journals will be plain.

Happy New Year! Ready for another trip around the sun?

I started the car to go to work this morning, and a new variation of "Grandma" came on the radio, a protest against the TSA. "Grandma got molested at the airport, flying home from our house Christmas Eve..."

Ok, where's the change Obama promised us? The only changes I see are for the worse. Hell, in my opinion Bush was the worst President we've had in my not short life, but Obama is by far not the best. As Presidents go, he's marginally better than Carter but he's still a dismal failure. To misquote Airplane, "he sure picked a bad time to quit smoking".

Seems it doesn't matter whether you vote Democrat or Republican, a vote for either party is a vote for more corporate power and less personal freedom.

The short carol I posted the other day wasn't my first. Several years ago I penned "I'm dreaming of a secular Christmas" (without using a pen, of course). If I find it before next Christmas I'll post it here next year. It was on the internet before, when I had the now defunct mcgrew.info, but if it's still there Google can't find it.

But the "Grandma" song took me back ten or so years ago when I had my Quake site, the Springfield Fragfest. Every December I posted the Quake Christmas page, with a tree decorated with weapons and ammo, dancing Stroggs decked out in their Christmas finest, Santa and Mrs. Claus skins, and Quake Christmas carols. I had an MP3 of the then eleven year old Patty singing "I saw mommie killing Santa Claus", and another one I can't remember (Patty's 23 years old now). If You're her age, that was half a lifetime ago. If you weren't into Quake and Quake II, these carols likely won't make sense to you, so here's a little background.

In my opinion, the turn of the century was the golden age of computer gaming, and Id was the king of computer games. Quake was a surrealistic mismash of medevil and futuristic themes and kind of a disjointed offshoot of DOOM. It was far easier to play networked than DOOM, and Quake II brought it to a new high. It was very open to players; like DOOM, you could make your own maps ("maps" were the actual playing arena) and "skins," which were what you looked like to other players. Anyone could host a server, and servers were easy to find within the game, and even easier after somebody wrote "QuakeSpy", which Planet Quake bought and turned into GameSpy, letting it work with about any networked game.

With the lyrics to "I saw mommie killing Santa Claus" there were downloads of the MP3, and Santa and Mrs. Clause skins. It was illustrated with a screenshot of Santa Claus getting fragged by a BFG. here are the lyrics:

I saw Mommie killin' Santa Claus
Playin' in a game of Quake last night.
Old Santa didn't see
Her shiny BFG
The way he splattered on the wall was such a funny sight!

I saw mommie kicking Thresh's butt.
Boy, my mommie sure knows how to play!
He was camping by the cage
And I guess he couldn't guage
Just how her super shotgun would blow his butt away!

I saw Mommie fragin' everyone!
Boy, it sure was such a sight to see!
Immortal, Blue, sCary,
Zaphod and an LPB.
And oh, my God! She even killed- Kenny!

I saw Mommie killin' everyone!
Gee, my Mommie sure can play that game!
Oh, Mister, are you sure
That you want a game with her?
'cause you're surely gonna wish she hadn't came!

Gaming today sucks, having been corporatized into oblivion.

The "Grandma Got Molested at the Airport" made me think of "Grandpa Got Dismembered by a Shambler". The shambler was a monster that was in both Quake and Quake II. It was illustrated, of course, with a screenshot of a shambler seconds after your player died.

Grampa got dismembered by a Shambler
Playing Quake at our house Christmas eve.
You can say there's no such thing as shamblers,
But Grandma couldn't get his ass to leave.

Grandma said "come home, you old fart"
As she headed for the door.
Grampa grabbed another cold one,
Mumbling something 'bout a dried up bitchy whore
Grampa said "I'll beat this damned thing"
That was followed by "OH, SHIT"
Must have had too many cold ones
'cause he tripped and fell into a lava pit.

Grampa got dismembered by a Shambler
Playing Quake at our house Christmas eve.
You can say there's no such thing as shamblers,
But Grandma couldn't get his ass to leave.

We'd been drinking too much whiskey,
Then he drank a little more.
First he threw up on the keyboard
Then he puked and passed out on the kitchen floor.
Now there ain't no Quake for Grampa
'cause the shit has hit the fan!
Grandma says his game is over,
And she's gonna play a little Ms. Pac Man.

Grampa got dismembered by a Shambler
Playing Quake at our house Christmas eve.
You can say there's no such thing as shamblers,
But Grandma couldn't get his ass to leave.

Bob Waring, who wrote a DOOM strategy guide that sold pretty well (Bob was known in the Quake community as "Sgt. Hulka") emailed me that his favorite of the songs I posted was "Oh come, all ye campers". A Camper was a player who hid out and sniped, usualy at a respawn point, and was pretty much universally hated. Campers were Quake's version of a messageboard troll, who got their jollies ruining the game for other players. It was a short carol, and went like this:

Oh come, all ye campers
Joyful and triumphant,
Come out, all you pussies and fight like a man!
Come, let me kill you
Frag your ass to pieces
Come out so I can kill you
Come out and let me kill you
Oh, Come and let me kill you
Christ, this is fun!

This one was illustrated with a pickup truck with a camper shell.

My personal favorite was "Rudolph, the four legged Stroggie", which takes a lot of explanation for someone who didn't play the game. "Stroggs" were the single player monsters, and there was one that looked kind of like a doberman that would kill you with its tongue. These Stroggs never showed up in the multiplayer games, which were called "deathmatches".

There was an online competetion that Id sponsored, and the winning prize was John Carmak's Ferrari. One fellow named Dennis Fong (AKA "Thresh") won the Ferrari by what some considered cheating -- he rented a T1 line back when nobody had broadband.

Rudolph, the four leg Stroggie
Had a very deadly tongue
And if you ever saw it,
you would prolly die real young.
All of the other Stroggies
Used to growl and call him names;
They never let old Rudolph
Join in any deathmatch games
Then one bloody Stroggos eve
Shambler came to say,
Rudolph with your tongue so long,
come take care of Dennis Fong.
Then all the Stroggies loved him
And they shouted out with glee,
"Rudolph the four leg Stroggie,
You can come and play with me!"

Man, I miss those days.

I changed the oil in my car, put four new tires on, changed the spark plugs and filters, and started the engine -- or tried to. A message lit up on the dashboard: "Your car has changed too many parts. You must reregister your engine before it will start".

Yes, that was only a metaphor. I hadn't done any real hacking since the eighties, when I'd attached a real keyboard to a TS-1000, and software hacked a TRS-80 MC-10 to get higher resolution graphics that allowed me to write a graphics program and video games. I'd written a Space Invaders clone, Moon Lander, a few other arcade clones with the higher graphics; these games wouldn't have been possible on that machine without the hack, which I'd been pretty damned proud of.

Gail had given me an old HP computer with the front cover laying on its top. He makes a living buying used stuff; all kinds of stuff, from garage sales, giveaways, dope addicts needing money, etc., and selling it for a profit. Once he had a clarinet in what looked to be in good shape he'd picked up at a garage sale for fifteen bucks. "Want to buy a clarinet?" he asked. "Your daughter plays clarinet, doesn't she?"

"Yeah," I replied. He pulled out the clarinet and I looked it over. He said "I paid fifteen bucks for this, I'll take thirty for it."

"It's worth a lot more than thirty bucks", I told him. He later said he'd gotten two hundred for it, and was really grateful to me. I told him "look, next time you get a musical instrument, show it to me before you sell it and I'll let you know what it's really worth." I mentioned that I was looking for a used computer I could hack into an analog to digital TV converter, since you can't find them any more, plus make a DVR and media center out of it.

"Hell," he said, "I get those all the time. They never work, I just throw 'em away."

"Well," I said, "next time you get one throw it my way." So he had. It sat in the living room for a couple of days before I dragged an old wireless keyboard and mouse, and an even older monitor out of the underground floor of my two story basement. I didn't expect the mouse to be any good, since it had an unremovable li-on battery and had been sitting downstairs in a box for the last couple of years, so I brought up one with a cord as well. I went to put new batteries in the keyboard, and to my chagrin discovered that I'd left batteries in it, which had of course leaked and corroded. Damn -- it was the only keyboard I could find down there. I'm sure there are two or three more, but I couldn't find them.

Fuck it, I plugged the wired mouse in and fired it up to see if it would work at all. It didn't. It came on for a few seconds -- "CPU fan inoperative, system shutting down".

*Sigh*. I decided to go to Felber's. "Ada" was there. Now, that's not her real name, the reson why I'm using a fake name will be clear shortly. "Luke" isn't Luke's real name, either, because if you knew who Luke was you'd know who Ada was. I'd made out with Ada at her apartment early in the summer, but hadn't had sex with her; It was right after Tammy had said she was my Tammy, right before I'd met Ms. Lady. A week later I was supposed to take Ada to D'Arcy's but had gotten into an argument with her after drinking too much at Felbers; she'd said something very unkind and I'd told her to fuck off. I didn't need any more drama.

So I was on again, off again with both Tammy, who was insanely jealous of Tami and got crazy when she was on her prescription pain pills, and with Ms. Lady, who I hadn't seen in months and who'd shown up at Felber's unexpectedly. A month later Luke and Ada were drinking at Felbers's, and Ada started ignoring Luke and talking to me. I saw Luke a day later. "The bitch is just using me," he said.

The next night I went to Felber's after going to the grocery store. Ada was there again, and after a few beers I offered her a ride home; she doesn't drive, and takes the bus everywhere. "I have to drop these groceries off at my house first," I said. "Want to come in for a beer and a joint?"

"Sure!"

We wound up making out again. I could tell she was getting aroused -- I was going to get laid. Unexpectedly she blurted out "I'm afraid of sex!"

"What?" I said, startled.

"I'm HIV positive!" Her late husband had died of AIDS. "With the medication they say I can live another thirty years". Pretty good for a woman almost my age, but holy fuck! Looks like we're going to be just friends; I don't trust a condom THAT much! We talked a while longer, and I took her home.

The next day I opened the PC case and investigated, and found the fan was just unplugged. Judging from the rest of the PC's insides it had been monkeyed with by someone who wasn't very good at working on computers; there was a CD burner sitting over the DVD burner, not aligned with the computer's front, and held in with a non-PC screw. Obviously they'd knocked the fan power plug loose putting the CD burner in and couldn't figure out what had gone wrong with it.

Or had just given up -- the plug was in a tight spot that was hard to see and harder to reach. I spent a good half hour with a needlenose vicegrip working on it before I finally got it plugged in. I fired it up, and an HP logo came on the screen for maybe twenty seconds, the screen went black, and gave an error message that the MBR was corrupted.

Ok, more searching, this time on the book shelf with the CDs. I got an old version of Mandriva Linux, circa 2005, put the first CD in and fired the PC up again. I got through the first part of the installation, and it choked. Looks like it wasn't just a corrupted master boot record, but rather the HD itself was bad.

Back to the basement. I brought up two other junk computers, one with a bad power supply and one with a bad motherboard. One of those three hard drives would work, and I hoped it was the one with all my MP3s. The first one worked, and booted up Windows 95. OK, it was probably only half a gig, so I shut it down and replaced the drive with a different one, and then set to work seeing if I could clean up the battery compartment of the keyboard. I got the keyboard functioning, and XP fired up. OK! I tried the wireless mouse, and to my surprise it actually worked. I restarted it and went into the BIOS to change a few settings -- shut off fast boot and turn on diagnostics, change the boot sequence so it would look for the CD first since I was going to install Linux on it, and a few other settings.

I took the video card out of the PC with the bad power supply and installed it in the HP, as it had an S-Video adaptor I could plug into the TV, and started it again. The boot sequence scrolled down the forty two inch TV screen. Life, the universe, and everything! XP came back up, and I clicked through all the "you have new hardware" screens. A message came up and said I'd made too many changes to the computer and had three days to reregister it.

I'd paid over a hundred dollars for that OS at Best Buy back in 2004 or 2005. No clue where the CD or magic number was. I ignored it; I was going to install Linux anyway. All I wanted from it was data on the hard drive -- backups of old games I hadn't played in years and years, my old web sites, etc. The MP3s must be on a different drive.

People wouldn't put up with this kind of shit with a car, why do they with a computer operating system? It's pure madness. Once again I swore never to go back to being Microsoft's customer until they stop being greedy thieving cocksucking buttfucking bastard dickhead sons of bitches, the assholes. God damn but it pisses me off that a paying customer is treated like a felon. You hear me, Microsoft? Change your God damned evil ways -- Win 7 is actually a pretty good OS, but I'll be damned if I put up with your anti-piracy bullshit again. You fucking owe me an operating system, fuckweeds.

If I decide to install Win 7 I'll get it from the Pirate Bay so I don't have to put up with your antipiracy measures, dumbasses. You're not inconviencing the pirates at all, but you're fucking over your paying customers. I don't expect any change, or you would have learned your lesson from when you tried your extortion tactics on Ernie Ball. Dumb fucks, you got a few thousand bucks from him, and lost that multiple times, since the Ball corporation is no longer your customer, having lost them to FOSS with your stupid, stupid, STUPID greedy tactics.

Dumbasses. No wonder they can't write decent programs -- they're apparently morons.

Did I mention that I'm not happy with Microsoft?

I put the Linux install CD in and went through the install process, and rebooted it, choosing Linux from the LILO menu. When it got to KDE, the TV screen turned to garbage. Damn. I'd forgotten how the Linux drivers for the card were borked when trying to get the picture on a TV screen. I shut it down, pulled the card, and restarted it, choosing Windows. I couldn't remember what brand of card it was, and none of the markings on it gave me much of a clue at all. I decided to put another of the drives in and see if my MP3s were on it.

After installing the second drive, Windows wouldn't start. "You must reregister Windows." Fuckheads were holding my data hostage! Dear FBI, please put Steve Ballmer in jail. Oh, right, I forgot -- rich assholes are allowed to extort like MS does, and allowed to root computers like Sony did. We have the best government money can buy.

Fuck it, I'll get in through Linux. Windows doesn't get malware, it is malware!

To be continued...

It's Christmas time, Christmas time, Christmas time of year
Christmas time, Christmas time, it's time for Christmas cheer!
The baby in the manger
The pagan Christmas tree
The Santa and his raindeer
Are here for you and me!
It's Christmas time, Christmas time, time for Christmas cheer
Christmas time, Christmas time, I think I'll have a beer.

Futurama got it all screwed up. It's spelled Leila, not Leela. And she's not a mutant, her sister Patty is. And it's not one eye, it's one kidney. And they don't mention that her dad's a cyborg. Sheesh, durned cartoonists just don't do the proper research. At least they got Springfield's Alderman Simpson right (I think she's Homer's sister in law).

I know this, of course, since I'm Leila's dad.

Futurama's mistakes piss Leila off! She called a few minutes ago. "The Mayor's dead! I heard something on the radio so I turned on the TV and he's dead! There are cop cars all over the place, I bet somebody killed him. Mom says she's thinking about moving out of Springfield because there are so many murders!"

"Your mom's an idiot," I said. "What, twelve murders in a town of over a hundred thousand? And most of them are friends and family members, or drug related. I'll bet he wasn't murdered."

"Gotta go!"

"OK, bye."

Then I read the paper -- WOW! There's not much there; I'll post the whole story, since it uses a GPL noncommercial license. If you click the link, you can see that the late cartoon Mayor of this cartoon town looks exactly like the misnamed "Quimby".

Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin was found dead in his home at 2604 Apple Creek Drive this morning, authorities have confirmed.

Springfield Police Chief Rob Williams said authorities found the mayor deceased after going to the home about 9:10 a.m.

Davlin did not show up for a court-ordered appearance this morning in a pending estate case involving his late cousin.

Davlin reportedly died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, but authorities would not confirm that at a news conference this morning.

Ward 3 Ald. Frank Kunz is mayor pro tem of the city. He said he is shocked and said "it's a sad day."

Mayoral spokesman Ernie Slottag said day-to-day operations of the city will continue the same.

The city has 60 days to selected a new mayor.

The Illinois State Police is handling the investigation into the death.

"All we can confirm now is that Zone 4 isp investigators have responded out that way and we're in the early stages of the investigation," said Capt. Jim Wolf with the state police. "We are in the very preliminary stages of our investigation, so I'm not going to comment on anything right now."

Outside Davlin's home on Springfield's west side, city police were blocking several intersections while state police were investigating inside.

Springfield police said they'd be keeping people out indefinitely.

Update: They've added a whole lot to the newspaper article; it's quite long now.

Evil-X got married, which makes me happy as hell. She no longer has my name! Yippee!

Patty came for the wedding, of course, and planned on staying at my house. She called before she left, saying she was having a really bad day and hoped I could help her. "Of course," I said, of course.

"Could Mom come by your house and get my TV? The one at my new apartment is tiny, and my car broke down, and I don't think I can take a TV on the bus." She went on to say that someone was giving her a ride to Indianapolis, and her mom was picking her up there.

Evil-X was her evil old self. Leila called and said her mom was doing something and didn't know when she'd be by and to wait for her.

Bullshit. I got rid of the bitch eight years ago, she's not going to inconvinience me any more. I called Patty. "I'm not going to sit around here waiting for your mom," I told her. "I gave up going on her schedule when she left, and I'm not letting her fuck me over again. Tell her to have Leila call when she's on the way, I'm going to the bar."

Less than a minute later Leila called back. "She's at her friend's house and said she's leaving in a minute."

"Well, tell her to call when she's on her way." I sat back and continued watching DS9. Leila called again ten minutes later. "She just pulled up in the driveway."

"Well, like I told you, call when she's on her way."

"But she's in the driveway!"

A bit of a misunderstanding; she was in MY driveway. I lugged the TV out. I'll bet burglars love the new LCD TVs, since they aren't so backbreaking to carry.

Evil-X got out of her ratty little SUV. God, that woman gets uglier all the time. Now she had red hair, which didn't match her eyebrows or complexion. Once again I was glad I was divorced, and wondered what I ever saw in her. I put the TV in the back of the SUV and went back inside. I finished the TV show, washed dishes, and went up to the bar. After two beers, who should appear but Ms Lady!

We talked for a while, and wound up going back to my house, where I got my nerd license suspended yet again, completely forgetting that Patty was coming. Luckily we finished before she got there, and we were innocently watching a movie when she showed up.

Patty surprised the hell out of me by actually liking her! I'd thought that Patty would hate any woman I wound up with, but she was all for my being with Ms Lady, who went home some time later, and I went to bed happy, Patty sleeping on the couch.

The next mnorning wasn't so cheerful -- she discovered that some of the DVDs she had gotten me were missing. I didn't tell her about what Charlie had done, but she knew Charlie had been there and ranted about her for an hour, pissed off at ME for letting her in the house at all.

She never did like Charlie. My daughter's a better judge of character than I am.

She stomped out of the house. "I might not come back to see you before I go home", and slammed the door.

The next morning I called Tammy and asked if she was going to church, "and if so could you bring some coffee grounds?" I was broke, having extra bills this month, and had forgotten coffee when I'd gone shopping. She was going to the 10:15 service, I was going early, so she said she'd drop the coffee off on her way home.

She called from my driveway; her "friend" Darlene, who she seems to despise, was with her. I thanked her for the coffee and they left, having not gotten out of the car.

Then Amy called with bad news -- Connor's dying. "He has nine months unless he gets a new kidney." Seems he's not been taking care of his diabetes, and it's killing him. She wanted to come by, and I said "no". I had enough trouble with my daughter without her walking in as I was "comforting" Amy.

I decided to watch some Christmas movies, so I watched Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, my two favorite Christmas flicks. Just as I was making lunch my door knocked. Ms Lady! I picked out Forest Gump and started it. "I love that movie!" she exclaimed.

"Want some Lunch?" I asked. "I have a great big pork chop I'm puttng on, I'll make another baked potato for you."

"No, don't make a potato for me", she said. "The meat and veggies are fine."

I finished making lunch, and she was sound asleep on the couch. I couldn't wake her up, so I ate as she slept. Lieutenant Dan was losing his legs when she did finally wake up, and we decided to go to Felber's. "Did you see how Dave came down to the end of the bar when we were talking? He's jealous as hell of you!"

Dave's a friend of hers, a man who's married to a woman with a physical handicap. I suspect he and Ms. Lady have been closer than "just friends". I still can't get use to men being jealous of me -- it just seems so weird having such an easy time with the ladies. Practice makes perfect, I guess.

We got to talking about cartoons after a couple of beers at the bar, and went home to watch Cool World, but wound up watching the last half of Gump instead.

Patty came back by, having forgiven me for getting ripped off, it seemed, and spent the night on the couch. The next morning we said our sad goodbyes, and she drove off in the ratty SUV her mother had let her borrow. Evil-X had changed plans and was driving Patty home; I could have gone without seeing her, but seeing how much uglier that red hair made her had made my day.

I called Tammy, who didn't like the idea of my getting back together with Ms. Lady one little bit, no siree Bob! I told her she had a court date for the Divorce in February. "Yeah, right," she said.

An hour or so later Ms Lady showed up, and we went to the bar. Back home again her phone rang. She ignored it. "It's dickhead," she said, using the pet name she reserved for her husband. "Fuck him!" We made plans to watch Cool World the next day, since we watched Gump instead. "Do you have to work tomorrow?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm off at four. I'll call you."

I drove straight to the bar after work, hoping to find someone to loan me a few bucks until payday. I called Ms. Lady, and got voicemail. Damn! Flashbacks from last summer! "Hi, if you're wondering where your coat and muffler are, you left them at my house. Give me a call!"

She hasn't.

Someone spotted me a twenty, so I guess I'll have enough gas to get to Church Sunday. And Felbers changed the Christmas party from the nineteenth to the eighteenth, so now I don't have to decide whether to go to the tavern's party or the church's party. I'd have hated to miss the Church Christmas party. Even if Ms Lady doesn't call back, I'll see her at the Felbers party -- she's providing the food. I should take Tammy just to see which one likes me more.

Tyrone, one of the few black people that go there (despite the fact that it's in the ghetto), wanted some help with his computer. "Catch me tomorrow when I'm sober," I told him. I'll get a few bucks out of it, but Tyrone's a cheapass, or I'd have gone over there then.

Dewey came in. "Hey, Gail wants you to drop by, something about a hard drive."

I've mentioned how wierd this town is -- Gail's a man. "He's got my number," I said.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. It was Gail. "hey, come look at this hard drive," he said. I told him I'd drop by when I left; he's almost next door to Felbers. Gail's a generous guy who's been nothing but good to me, so I wasn't even going to charge him for whatever it was he wanted help with. He and his girlfriend were in the living room. "Want a hit?" he asked, handing me a full one hitter.

"You don't have to twist my arm!" I replied, and took a hit. It turned out that the "hard drive" was actually a whole HP computer, sans monitor and keyboard. He was giving it to me! "I get these things all the time," he said, "I usually just throw 'em away, but you said you needed one."

I woke up in a really good mood this morning!

"I'm gonna beat that cunt's ass!"

I was startled. Charlie never uses the word "cunt". Like most women, she hates that word.

She'd said her boyfriend had thrown her out, and I'd reluctantly agreed to let her crash on my couch over the weekend until she could move into her new place, a room KY was renting. I'd gotten up to go to church that morning, and she'd not wanted to go along. "I ain't ready to repent," she said. "I ain't been in church for thirty years!" Which meant she'd not gone since she was about ten. No problem; I'd have my church buddy Tammy to keep me company. When I got home, Charlie had polished off my last forty ounce bottle of beer, so we went to the bar. After a couple of beers, her phone rang and she went outside to answer it. I chatted with KY while she was outside.

KY smiled at her outburst. "What cunt's that?" he asked.

"My stepdad's girlfriend, that no good rotten bitch! Pops found out where she is and he's taking me to beat her fucking ass!"

This should have raised alarms with me, since Pops was the "ex" boyfriend, a guy maybe ten years older than me. A while later she left. A couple more beers and I did, too, to eat and take the car home before I was drunk, planning on walking back up to the bar. She called as I was walking out the door. "I'm headed up to Felbers", I told her. "You're going to have to drive back." I drove on up to the bar, and after three beers she showed up.

"What happened to you?" someone asked her. "Don't worry, she got a lot worse than I did. You ought to see that goddamned bitch's face!"

I drank another three before we headed home, armed with a couple more forty ouncers. I rolled a joint and put the "Our Cops is On" episode of My Name Is Earl on. The pot makes funny things funnier, and we were laughing our asses off. The scene came on where Patty the Daytime Hooker has her hand in a soda machine and tells the cop "don't worry, I ain't stealin' soda, I'm coolin' off my hand for a client that's into dead people!"

Something about that struck me as extremely funny and I howled with laughter, looked at Charlie -- and she punched me in the face. "You bastard!" she screamed, and tried to kick me in the balls. Luckily she missed; my thigh hurt for days.

Then she started breaking my stuff, and I ran out to the porch and called 911. When they got there, she'd smashed a beer mug on the TV screen, and I was lucky the TV didn't break. It must be made of that Gorilla Glass.

Charlie told the cops I'd beaten her, and they took me to jail. I asssumed they'd taken her, too, since she'd blacked my eye. They hadn't, and I'd forgotten about the fight she'd been in earlier in the day.

When I got out the next day, with no charges filed at all, I walked the three miles home, dead cell phone in my pocket, and discovered that both of my computers, a bunch of tapes and DVDs, my garage door opener, my phone charger, and some other things were missing.

I drove up to work, and saw my boss walking. I parked and walked up to him. "Wow," he said, "what happened to you?"

I told him the sad tale, and since it was half an hour to quitting time anyway, took a vacation day for that day and got my spare phone charger from my office and went home to start cleaning up the mess she'd made. I plugged the phone in and called the cops to report the theft.

The cop gave me a hard time, telling me I was stupid. I agreed with him; I sure felt stupid. "Look," he said, "don't ever let anybody into your house! My own cousin wanted to stay a week with me and I wouldn't let her!"

I still hadn't put two and two together, until I went up to Felbers and saw KY, who reminded me of Charlie's earlier fight. It all clicked -- she'd had the heist planned all along. A few other things clicked, too; She'd always hated thieves and hookers, and it turned out that she was a thief, and probably a prostitute as well, especially considering her reaction to my laughter at Patty the Daytime Hooker.

I called Tammy, or tried to, because I needed to talk to someone about forgiveness. I was having a hell of a time forgoving Charlie; she'd beaten me, slandered me, jailed me, and robbed me. But I just got voicemail; it seemed as if either God wasn't with me, or I was having to suffer for some other reason. How could I possibly hope to understand the motives of a being smart enough to create an entire universe? But perhaps it was because I hadn't really gotten the forgoveness thing. Apparently I hadn't, because I was pissed. I'd have liked to see her skinned alive and salted.

Not a Christian attitude, is it? But perfectly human.

Tammy called the next day, and I told her the sad tale. She called daily, worrying about me. She was there Friday night, and stayed until the next day. I was just about to roll a joint when she saw two police cars outside -- with Charlie. She'd come to get her junk out of the garage.

I was worried, because Tammy was livid at what Charlie had done and was determined to do violence to her.

Charlie claimed she didn't have the garage remote or the house key she'd stolen. "well," Tammy said, "I guess you can't get your stuff, because there's no garage door opener." Charlie came up with the opener and house key, having just lied to the cops, who noticed it.

After Charlie and the cops left, Tammy told me that she loved me, and wanted me to bring my laundry to church, and she'd tale it home with her and wash it. The scent of pheromones was in the air, and I think I was on the verge of being seduced.

Then her phone rang; it was Tami, whose calls I'd been ignoring. Tammy's mood changed quickly, and started accusing me of being in love with Tami. It went on all afternoon, and by nightfall she stomped out of the house and went... who knows where she went? I'd put enough gas in her car for her to get home.

The next day she wasn't at church, and left a nasty voicemail on my phone.

Then George dropped by. "I've got a voicemail from Charlie I want you to hear, she said I shouldn't come and visit you." It was her, accusing me of smashing a beer mug into her face. I told him the sad story.

"You're not the first one she's done that to. There's a guy on 13th street that had the same thing happen; she picked a fight with him, he beat her ass and she stole his stuff when the guy was in jail."

Then it hit me -- she'd tried to victimise me once before, a couple of years ago when she actually had been living with me. She'd clocked me three times, but I hadn't struck back, thwarting her evil plans. So this time she made sure she got in a real fight first.

"I'm scared as hell," he said. "I won't let her in my house, not even my car. I haven't since I heard about the guy on thirteenth street."

I'm about to give up on women entirely before I become a mysogonist. Or maybe I'll take Kathy D. to church next week...

The headline screams Fed to buy $600 billion in bonds to aid economy.

Gee, don't they think the economy is sick enough without giving it AIDS? What's next, the States American Reserve System? Treasury Bureau? Cash On Preferred Districts?

They used to shoot horses this sick...

A guy has goten a lot of flak over his Halloween decorations. Apparently the NAACP doesn't like images of hanging. Electric chairs are fine, but not hangings. Apparently, a cowboy hanging from a gallows is somehow racist.

Local man's Halloween display comes under fire
Several people who objected to the display, including Archie Lawrence, president of Springfield NAACP, appeared before the Springfield City Council Tuesday night. Lawrence said the decoration "incites racial hatred and unrest."

Witkowski, who also attended the council meeting, said he has erected the same display for several years, but the mask is new this year. A lighter-colored mask he used previously melted while in storage over the summer, he said.

The new mask is gray with brown and red tones, he said, but the shadow from the cowboy hat must have made it appear darker.

Witkowski, who took the mask off the display briefly Tuesday to show it to aldermen, said he plans to adjust the color of the new mask. He said he also is willing to work with people who object to the display. However, he stopped short of saying he would take down the display altogether.

"My question is: I'm the homeowner, the property owner there," he told aldermen. "At what point do we stop censoring an outdoor display? It's Halloween decorations.

"I've got an electric chair right next to the guy that's hanging. If the death penalty people have a problem with that, do I have to now remove that from my yard?"

The display also includes tombstones and animatronic figures that move and are lit up at night.

Several aldermen encouraged Witkowski to remove the hanging man. Mayor Tim Davlin said his office has received more than a dozen calls from concerned residents, some of whom said they are offended because they know people who have committed suicide by hanging.

I'm appalled. Not at the halloween display, but the display of people who would hang this man's freedom of speech.

It's amazing what mischief a useless shiny bauble can cause. "I'll let you hold this ring as collateral".

So now I'm a pawn star, I guess. Tami and Robert had been renting a room from Billie, the redneck broad that knocked one of my teeth loose, and had gotten thrown out. For what it's impossible to imagine, but they'd moved into a boarding house across the street from me. Somehow the ring had come from Billie; Tami said Billie had sold it to them and it was going to be a wedding ring.

"But not now. Every time I look at it it makes me think of that cunt. You know I don't like that word, but she's a cunt!"

The ring sat on my dresser longer than they stayed at the boarding house; they were thrown out of there as well. They moved into an apartment way down in the darkest part of the east side, where most of the buildings were boarded up and you would be crazy to be outside alone after dark.

That Sunday I went to church with Tammy, and some big guy dunked me in a giant tub of water. Afterwards she spied the ring and asked about it. "It's Tami's. I'm holding it for collateral."

"I'll give tou twenty five bucks for it!"

"I can't do that!" I exclaimed. Jesus, I'd just gotten baptized that morning and she wanted me to steal Tami's ring.

"It's not like she hasn't stolen a lot of stuff from you."

True. My and Evil-X's wedding rings were among some of the stuff that had gone missing, and Tami had been the #1 suspect, although it could have been Linda or Brian; I heard Brian, a heroin junkie, had just got out of prison for shoplifting. But I'm pretty sure it was Tami.

"That's true, but it still doesn't make it right. I'm a Christian, remember?"

"Yeah, you're right," she said.

A week later, Amy was fighting with Tim and wound up back with Connor. Then she fought with Connor and had me take her to Tim's to get her things, which he'd told her he'd given to Goodwill. Fearing violence, she had a Sherriff's deputy meet us at Coonrod's, a bar down the street from Tim's. The cop was no help at all; Tim wasn't answering the door. So we went to Felber's, she saying "I need a drink!"

Of course she needed a drink. Everything makes her need a drink. Halfway through my first beer Tim called saying she could have her stuff back, so we drove back up to NEWT country. NEWT is short for "North End White Trash", which used to be the name of a bar up there. The deputy showed up just as we were getting the last of her things in the trunk.

Two days later she was back at Tim's, leaving the stuff she didn't want to lose at my house. Connor had worried about her and I'd told him I'd call if I heard from her, so I did. "Are you missing anything?" he asked.

"Not that I know of."

"Amy told me Tim talked her into stealing a ring from your dresser. She said she was going to tell you about it and apologize."

Sure enough, the ring was gone. She called a couple of hours later, and I told her Connor had narced on her. "I was going to tell you... look, Tim talked me into it. We were about to get our electricity shut off and I took it to that pawn shop on Cook street. I'll get it back, it'll cost thirty bucks. The slip is in my bookbag." The book bag was in my bedroom.

Tami called an hour later as I was on my way to get Amy. "Can you give me and Robert a ride downtown? We'll give you a couple of bucks for gas."

"Uh, sure. Uh about your ring..."

"Yeah?"

"I don't have it. Amy stole it."

"What? That bitch! I'll have her ass in jail, I need it back to get Billie off my ass!"

"Don't worry, I have the pawn slip. We'll get it back."

I picked Amy up and headed to the Ghetto to give the two white ghettizans a ride. I was surprised that the bitching wasn't worse.

Two days later and Amy was sick, probably caught it from me; the common cold is an STD, apparently. Tami got a ride to my house, we got the pawn slip and went to get her (Billie's?) ring out of hock. It cost me thirty bucks.

Tami turned around and repawned it, still having not paid me back what she'd owed me. Amy got some money out of Connor and paid for the pawn ticket.

Yesterday Tammy called, and somehow I wound up asking her out to dinner, where I told the sordid tale of the One Ring at D'Arcy's. I put in a few digs about how often she blows me off on our dates, and she was amused at my choice of terminology. "I know better than to make a date with you" I'd said on the phone.

She called this morning to thank me again. "That was better than an orgasm!" she said. "Lots more memorable, and lasted longer."

Diamonds are forever? Don't put your treasure where moths can corrupt it and thieves can steal it.

It's only money.

I'm planning on voting Green Party candidate Rich Whitney for Illinois Governor this upcoming election. Sure, he'll lose, but both incumbant Quinn and Republican Bill Brady are for the continued outlawing of pot, and I'll be damned if I'll vote for a man who wants me in jail. Besides, they're both incompetent bozos.

Whitney is doing better than Libertarian Lex "Luthor" Green, but he's still the underdog. But that doesn't stop the Chicago Democrats from playing dirty against him (Whitney's from Carbondale, so far south it's almost Kentucky, as far south as Chicago is north).

And this is indeed a dirty race. All the TV ads are attack ads; the Dems attacking Brady for shenanigans involving his bankrupt bank, the Reps attacking Quinn for his early release program that let a murderer out of prison only to have him kill somebody else a week after he was free. Odd how he's letting murderers, rapists, gangbangers, and thieves out but not potsmokers. Also odd how a man who can't keep a fucking BANK solvent thinks you'll believe he can get Illinois out of its dire economic problems.

But the dirtiest of all is what they did to Whitney. It seems that there was a "typo" on the ballots in some black parts of Chicago that listed him as... sit down now...

Rich Whitey! Would a poor black man vote for a rich whitey? The ironic thing about it is that Whitney is a civil rights lawyer!

I picked up a copy of the Illinois Times today, and its cover story was Censored in a brave new world. Oops, should have put that in quotes or italics; that's the story's title. The list is:

1. Buh-bye U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency
2. Environmental enemy No. 1: U.S. Department of Defense
3. Internet privacy and personal access at risk
4. ICE's secret detention centers
5. Blackwater in Pakistan
6. Cause of death: lack of health care
7. The African land grab
8. Massacre in Peruvian Amazon over Free Trade Agreement
9. Human rights abuses continue in Palestine
10. U.S. funds and supports the Taliban

Ain't that America
You and me
Ain't that America
Somethin' to see
Ain't that America
Almost free
Little pink slips
For you and me

I'd had a date planned with Tammy for Sunday. The previous Sunday she was supposed to come by and take me to church with her, then we were going to have lunch; she'd made lasagnana, and watch a few movies. Church happened, but she said she had to visit her mother in the hospital and had to cancel the rest of our date. I was disappointed, but her cancelling dates and cutting the ones she didn't cancel short was getting old. And she paid part of the money she owed me and left the lasagna, which was even better than Saputo's, a nice Italian restaraunt downtown whose lasagna I had previously thought was the best I'd ever eaten.

I went to Felber's and got shitfaced.

Monday I came down with a cold. By Wednesday I was deathly ill. I took the afternoon off and went home and camped on the couch watching Star Wars. Later that afternoon my lungs were so full of fluid I could hardly breathe. I'd have gone to the hospital if I'd had the energy to drive. I'd rolled a joint the night before, but hadn't smoked it. I lit it up, took two tokes, and started coughing. I must have coughed up a pint of phlegm, and wonders! I could breathe again. Truly a wonder drug the herb is, hmmm?

Friday I took Amy to school on my lunch hour, and picked her up after work. She was fighting with Tim, but I was too sick to give her what she wanted. I drank a couple of beers with her. "When are you going to clean that nasty bathtub?" she asked. "After I get the drain unclogged," I said. "I put Drano in this morning, but it needs some more. But look, hon, I'm too sick to fuck and you think I have the energy to clean a bathtub?"

"I'll do it for twenty bucks", she said. Sounded like a good deal to me!

Saturday morning I felt almost human, and called Tammy to see if she was going to break our date. Indeed she was. I was angry and told her off -- I was sick of this. I'm not taking her out any more; I'm tired of her making dates then cancelling. I've spent way too much time and effort on her. Shortly afterwards Amy called. "That asshole's going to his brother's and leaving me here by myself and I don't even have anything to smoke. Why don't you come get me and let me clean your tub? I need cigarettes!"

She put Comet down in the tub and asked if I was well enough for sex yet. "I need some dick!" she said. "I've been too pissed at Tim to fuck him, but I'm horny as hell." I was feeling much better, so we laid down for a "nap" before she finished the tub, then we went to Felber's for a couple of beers. Tim called and said he was home, so I took Amy home and went home myself and watched a movie and read more of TFM for Kubuntu. Why doesn't Windows have a FM? I got Firefox installed, but I'm still trying to figure out how to get it in the kMenu; I have to start it from a command line. I have a lot to learn; Linux and KDE have changed quite a bit since Mandriva 2005, the last distro I used. Almost as much as XP changed when 7 came out, but the difference is that Windows didn't add much functionality, just moved shit around for no discernable reason.

I thought of going to church without Tammy Sunday morning, but that particular church (a very nice one) is all the way on the other side of town, and I wasn't sure exactly where it was, since I'd only been there once. I drank my coffee and fumed some more about Tammy breaking yet another date. I ran some dishwater and put on Mike and Dan's blues show on WQNA at noon, and Charlie called wanting some company. The radio and TV sound real good now. Tami's boyfriend had sold me a 200 watt Pioneer stereo for ten bucks; it's good to be a nerd. The only thing wrong with it was it didn't have a power cord, and that was easily replaced.

Charlie's been living with her stepdad, and apparently his girlfriend has been taking all the fool's cash (yea, I've been in his position before) and their electricity was shut off. I drove uptown to pick her up. She got in the car carrying a bag of DVDs.

"I've got pot and beer," I told her. "Cool", she said, "I haven't smoked a joint in two weeks, been trying to get the money to pay the damned electric company."

The first movie was a cartoon, which was especially funny with the pot. The second movie was Selena, and by the end of the movie Charlie was cuddled up in my arms. I was glad that stupid Tammy called our date off! Charlie's younger, shorter, and lots more cuddly than Tammy anyway, and Tammy's too frail after just having her gall bladder removed.

Fuck Tammy. Charlie and I ate some of the Tammy lasagna and I put a roast and potatos on, and we ate that and some veggies later. By the fourth movie we were drunk and stoned and full of food and her blouse was up and her bra was undone with those pretty titties hangging out and I was giving her a backrub. She fell asleep.

I pulled her blouse back down, covered her up with a blanket, and went to bed.

It was freezing cold when I got up. I turned the furnace on, put on a robe, started coffee and woke Charlie up. "Here, hook my bra back up before you pour that" she said. We drank a few cups and I took her home on my way to work.

It was a lovely weekend. Fuck Tammy. Who needs her, anyway?

From the AP (via Yahoo) (emphasis mine): "House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., abandoned the effort late Wednesday in the face of Republican opposition to his proposed "network neutrality" rules. Those rules were intended to prevent broadband providers from becoming online gatekeepers by playing favorites with traffic."

I'm going to piss some people off by saying this, but the Democrats are pussies. Goddamned balless wimps. For Christ's sake, they have a majority in both houses, yet they're so pussified that the minority Republicans can block them. WTF???

But the phone and cable companies insist they need flexibility to manage network traffic so that high-bandwidth applications don't hog capacity and slow down their systems. They say this is particularly true for wireless networks, which have more bandwidth constraints than wired systems. The communications companies also argue that after spending billions to upgrade their networks for broadband, they need to be able earn a healthy return by offering premium services. Burdensome net neutrality rules, they say, would discourage future investments.

First they say they don't have the bandwidth, then they say they need a "healthy" (read: windfall) profit from their investments in bandwidth. Which is it? Speak of talking out of both sides of your mouth! Is there anybody less honest than a corporate mouthpiece? I have more respect for a crackhead than these evil assholes. At least you know the crackhead is lying when he says he wants twenty bucks "for a prescription".

And the thing is, from the AP story, it's more about Net Neutrality for wireless customers than wired customers. This makes no sense whatever. I have a plethora of wireless choices; competetion makes Net Neutrality Regs completely unnecessary for wireless providers. On the other hand, I and most other people have only one "choice" for wired broadband -- in my case, Comcast. Others have other monopoly providers, but almost all of them are monopolies.

ALL MONOPOLIES NEED HEAVY REGULATION! Where there is a lot of competetion, the free market keeps things in check in most cases. But when there is little or no competetion, the government needs to step in.

Waxman's proposal, in part, fell victim to today's political climate, with Republicans hoping to rack up gains in the upcoming midterm elections apparently unwilling to help Democrats make progress on such a contentious issue. With an anti-government, anti-regulation sentiment sweeping the nation -- and boosting Tea Party candidates -- Republicans also were reluctant to support a proposal that opponents equate to regulating the Internet.

Contentious? Huh? The only contention is between giants like Google and Time Warner. Net neutrality is a boon for anyone wanting to USE the internet.

The anti-government sentiment comes from the fact that government (neither major party) has done Jack Schitt for the average working stiff while bending over backwards for sociopaths like Charles and David Koch, who are according to the Jim Hightower article linked, behind the tea party astroturfing movement.

"Opponents who equate" net neutrality "to regulating the Internet" are disingenuous at best. This doesn't "regulate the internet", it regulates the monopolies who deliver the unregulated internet to your computer.

If it comes between the goverment regulating the providers and the providers regulating the internet, I'll take government regulation any day.

I'm about ready to turn in my nerd license, because I'm feeling downright incompetent.

I was going to buy a crossover cable to connect the netbook with the laptop, but then thought "WTF? I have spare network cables; it'll be easy enough to hack one into a crossover." So I pulled out my pocket knife and skinned the cable and its wires, and looked the color codes up on wikipedia. It turned out there were three ways to do it: 10/100 base T and two ways for gigabit. I wired it gigabit.

It didn't work. The newer Acer I just bought in April was trying to communicate at 100 mbps, while the ancient Thinkpad was trying to connect at 10 mbps.

Shit. So I go to rewire it and the phone rings. Amy. Wanting alcohol, of course. "Yes, I'll come get you." It meant she was fighting with her boyfriend and I'd get laid.

She'd been accepted at Robert Morris College and was ecstatic and wanting to celebrate. We went to Felber's, where she bought my lunch and beer for a change, then went to my house for more partying. It turned out, of course, that she was indeed fighting with the boyfriend, a real loser who's been on unemployment since before he met Amy and who's not been looking for a job despite the fact that his unemployment is about to run out.

I took her home about eight and went home to bed myself. Quarter after one there was a tapping at my window. "Amy?"

"Yeah, let me in!"

I was up the rest of the night trying to talk her out of killing herself, and pinpointed the reason her depression had hit -- it was an anniversary for her. This time about five years ago the love of her life had hung himself. Oddly, just knowing the reason for her depression lifted it some. "That's why I've been such a bitch for the last few weeks!" she exclaimed.

I took her home about noon or so and got to work trying to get the two computers to talk to each other. It wasn't happeneing; no matter how I wired the cable, one wanted 10 mbps and the other wanted 100 mbps. Wikipedia said modern electronics did the pair switching automatically, so I tried an unmolested network cable, to the same effect. I've started suspecting that 100 mbps is the slowest the netbook will go (under Linux, anyway) and 10 mbps is the only speed the IBM will go. I guess I'll go buy a router when I get paid and see how I can fuck that up.

So I went to hook up the stereo, and at least something was going right. Of course, it's damned hard to miswire a stereo. I managed, though -- I had the speaker wires coming from the front, wrapped around the damned cabinet, so I had to untangle them and reconnect them.

Yesterday wasn't my day. It seems to have started going downhill right after I got laid.

I turned on the netbook and tried to get on the internet; no signal today. Annoyingly, the icon at the bottom right for "bluetooth" kept turning up, even though the netbook doesn't have bluetooth. I tried to remove it, and they all went away!

Luckily, KDE has a comprehensive manual as well as the man pages, unlike Windows, which has nohelp files and nothing else. Unluckily, the manual doesn't always correspond with the build of KDE I have installed. Windows lacks good documentation, kubuntu has the opposite problem; there's a shitload of info in the manual and man files; TMI in fact. I have a lot of reading to do.

I liked Mandriva a lot better. Its tools made things so easy I didn't even have to go into a shell prompt or RTFM, and it's been so long I've forgotten all the commands anyway.

Windows 7 is better than kubuntu in a few respects -- it's harder to fuck up, for one. Like the lost icons, which were way too easy to lose and way to hard to find again. But then, Windows suffers from the reverse, making it way too easy to install stuff that shouldn't be installed and way too hard to remove it.

The two OSes seem to boot at about the same speed, but kubuntu shuts down a LOT faster. In fact, where I'd put Windows in hibernate mode so everything would be just like it was, I just shut kubunto down, because it boots fast, shuts down fast, and when I log in it's just like I left it. And kubuntu shuts down faster than Windows goes into hibernate mode.

And when I installed kubuntu on it I lost the root password, so I can't sudo in and install Firefox, and konqueror really, REALLY sucks. I mean it makes IE look good it's so bad. It's ugly, and a lot of sites, like Yahoo mail, won't work at all with it (and I promised a faithful reader a copy of The Paxil Diaries. Sorry, GameboyRMH, I'll get that to you as soon as I get email (i.e., FireFox) working. Which may be a while, as it seems my nerdfu has deserted me.

I'll be reinstalling kubuntu and this time I'll write the root password down. I'm way too stupid to hang onto that nerd license.

Let me clip your dirty wings -- Nirvana

Sometimes September 13th is bad luck for me, probably karma making up for the good luck I had on Friday, September 13th 2002 when Evil-X left. This was one of those years, and it started a day early.

I fired up the slow, ancient IBM laptop with the thumb drive sticking out the back and watched some TV. My phone was next to me, and it startled me when it beeped. I looked at it, and its bluetooth icon was flashing blue. "Shit," I thought, "somebody's trying to hack my phone."

The bad hard drive in the IBM had stopped its annoying clicking noise, and I realised that it was my own computer that was trying to hack my phone. I didn't know the old ThinkPad had bluetooth. It didn't occur to me yet that I would be able to get out those music files I'd recorded from a live band that were too big to email.

I took the netbook up to Felbers to have a beer while fiddling around in Linux, which was a BAD idea. My thought was to read the man pages and so forth; It's been a while since I've used Linux. My brain seemed to be showing showing its age; ten years ago I could build a computer from spare parts and install the OS while drunk and stoned at the same time. Somehow I wound up with two instances of Linux, so I decided to put the computer away and drink in the beer garden.

The phone rang. It was an old friend I hadn't seen in a while. "Why don't you come get me?"

"I don't think I've got enough gas to get there, I know I don't have enough to get there and back." I'm usually broke a day or two before payday when the previous payday was rent and car payment. After that, food, cleaning stuff, electronic gizmos, and DVDs I don't have much money left.

"I can put some gas in your car if you can make it here."

"Well, I could at least get close. I have a gas can in the trunk."

"I'll meet you at the gas station by my apartment," she said.

I'd had the radio playing for three hours by then, and the car wouldn't start. And I just replaced the battery a few months ago. Luckily the guy parked next to me was willing to give me a jump, and luckily I have cables in the trunk that I'd bought after I'd replaced the battery.

It made it to her apartment, and she prepaid for the gas before hitting me with bad news. "You have to promise not to tell anybody."

"I promise, not tell what?"

"I'm dying."

"WHAT?" Dying? Damn, she's twenty years younger than me. Dying? "What do you mean you're dying?" I asked, shocked.

"I have lung cancer. I'm not going through chemo or radio, I'm just going to enjoy myself as long as I can. Would you take me to Felber's and get me drunk?"

I felt like crying. It sucks being in your late fifties. The older you get, the more people go dying on you.

Damn. Cigarettes. She probably smokes two packs a day, and cancer runs in her family. Her mother would be a year older than me if she was still alive; I met her mother shortly before she died of "the big C" a few years ago.

She said she's probably got a year at the most. We dropped the car at my house, walked to the bar and indeed got trashed, and took two forty ounce bottles of beer and a half pint of whiskey home and drank some more. Knowing one's own mortality changes a person radically. She'd threatened to sue if I ever wrote about her. I had anyway.

"I want a printed copy of your book."

"Well, I can print it out, but it's just in PDF form right now," I said.

"Oh, you know how I said not to write about me? I changed my mind. I want you to write about me, as a warning to others not to fuck up like I have. And I want to be remembered."

"I already have," I admitted, and pulled up a slashdot journal. She read it and started cursing me.

"Damn it, Steve, God gave you all these talents and you let them go to waste. You paint, you draw, you write, you play guitar, and you waste it. You have all these talents nobody else has and you don't use them for anything. How long has it been since you picked up your guitar?"

"It's been a while," I admitted.

"Let me read something else you've written."

More going wrong, thanks to the booze. I have it set to hibernate when the lid's closed, and had learned shortly after I got the netbook not to plug it in until the lights stop flashing or Windows gets confused and pukes like an overdosing junkie. I forgot, thanks to the beer, and had plugged it in before the lights stopped flashing. I turned it on, and it started running chkdsk.

Oops!

Then it got to where the login should be, but instead of a password prompt, it said that its policies said access was denied. If you're a programmer for Microsoft, you should be ashamed of yourself. Once I get to my pictures and music and books and other data I'm going to back it up, wipe the whole drive and make it single boot again -- linux only. Windows is more of a pain in the ass than a hemmoroid operation. If you've ever had one, you know what I'm talking about.

"Sorry, the damned things's fucking up. I'll have to fix it after I'm sober." I'd forgotten I had Linux on it, even though it went through GRUB to get to Windows. Like I said, we got pretty trashed.

She made me play my guitar for her; the Nirvana CD had been playing in the car when we dropped it off, and she wanted me to play the parrot song. Fitting, since talk like a pirate day is only a few days off. I couldn't get it very close to being in tune; it badly needs new strings. And I was rusty as hell, and couldn't remember all of it.

"I'm horny," she said after I finished my tortured serenade. "Lets fuck. You got a condom?"

"I have a female condom."

"Shit,I hate those. Well, it'll have to do."

Gees, one shock after another. At least something went right; the day was ending on a good note at least. I tried to talk her into spending the night, but she said she had to be at work at five in the morning. I got her a ride home and went to bed.

Windows was still hosed this morning, and I discovered I'd lost my phone.

I should stop drinking. God but I hate September 13.

After I got to work my desk phone rang. It was Amy, who I'd been trying to call for a week. She's fighting with Tim again and may spend the night with me tonight.

I sure hope so.