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I found this link over at Hatley that basically reaffirms what fucktards our government can be when put to the test.

Amazing.

Now what?





If there is one thing that will fuck up the establishment of a stable and effective government in neo-Iraq, it's religion. Whether it's the Assyrian Democratic Movement, the Amal Islamic Organization, the Assyrian Patriotic Party, the Bet-Nahrain Democratic Party, Chaldean Federation of America, The Constitutional Monarchy Movement, the Iraqi Communist Party, the Islamic Dawa Party, the Islamic Dawa Party(again), the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Coalition, the Iraqi National Congress, the Iraqi National Front, the Iraqi National Front (again), the Iraqi National Party, the Iraqi Turkman Front, the Kurdish Democratic Party, the Kurdistan Islamic Union, the Kurdistan Toiler's Party, the Movement Sacred National Defense, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, The Socialist Party of Kurdistan, The Faili Kurds, the Turkoman People's Party, or the Worker Communist Party of Iraq... religion is going to fuck this up. Someone's Wheaties are going to get pissed in and it will all come crumbling down. Progress will digress and the next thing you know, there will be some Saddam-ish rise to power and subsequent oppression. There are some that would argue that if the world had no religion, there would be world peace. I think that's a little farfetched, but there is some truth in concept. Personally I believe that we started out doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and now we're probably going to do the wrong things for the right reasons. Sometimes we need to stay out of OPP and drink a beer on the porch. God forbid a bunch of senseless killin', but this hundreds of billions of dollars of debt shit is going to drive my taxes through the roof. Am I being selfish? I think not.

Alas, my stock is slipping.

Buy it while it's cheap!

People can be so rude sometimes. I was just walking to get some lunch in the tunnel and this short, little, bald man cuts me off so abruptly that I almost trip not to step on him. No one stays to the right. Congestions. Chaos. I finally get to the line at the eatery and guess who jumps in front of me to cut me off just as I approach the end of the line? The same short, little, bald bitch that cut me off a few minutes before up the tunnel. He was asking for a piece of my mind. Is it Friday yet?

Happy Earth Day and all that...

I feel much better after reading Sean about not being the only one to not associate eating ham with Easter... for a second there I thought something may be wrong with me. Heh. Work is sluggish this morning. I have a lot on my mind and it never helps when there is not a lot going on to keep the clock cycles productive. I just bought a book online that I've been searching for over the last 8 years unsuccessfully. I don't give two squirts of piss about the book itself or the bulk of what's in it. I bought it for about 8 or 9 pages of genius I found in it back in 1995... rare prose that moves one to believe in writing as the art form it once was before talent slipped into obscurity... words put to page that make me wish mine were better placed. I also bought a gift for EL. Online shopping is a fun way to kill time... dangerously fun. I've been mulling over my list of tasks to accomplish for wedding prep. I think I'm going to buy the wine from Christopher's. I think that's really as far as I've gotten. I look at the list of things to do and my head starts spinning. Weddings are a pain in the ass... I am really looking forward to the whole event, but I have to admit that I'll be glad when it's all over. I feel for EL. She's planning the entire thing. I'm just a helper elf... she's Santa. Does anyone know where they sell Black Bush in Houston?

I would say this guy was preeeeetttttttty drunk.

Rest in peace Nina Simone... I heard she died yesterday. EL and I spent most of the day in the Woodlands after a stop at the DPS to pick up my motorcycle license. I just need to fight that temptation to roll out and buy a bike. I rode Sam's almost-fully-restored 1958 Vespa last night for the first time... very cool scooter. It was quite a contrast from the 135 hp, 114 cubic inch Hellcat brochure he had on the kitchen table. Diversity is a good thing. I seem to be weekly reaffirming my supposition that I am allergic to work. I had such a wonderful weekend and was feeling fine. I woke up this morning with a terrible headache. It's got to be work. These days, I only feel bad when I'm at work. If I could only get a doctor's prescription to not work... hmmm... anyhoo, in light of the fact that EL and I recently invested time into searching for bridesmaid dresses, I thought this was kinda cool.

What a lazy ass day. The clouds rolled in sometime last night and what began a beautiful weekend, ended in overcast and dreary mugginess. Thankfully, we all survived the night. After the festival of carnivorous fury last night, breakfast was not an option... So, what was going to be an all you can drink mimosa brunch at Rivas became martinis and cheesecake for breakfast at The Cheesecake Factory. I finally stopped whining about wanting it and broke down and bought Battlefield 1942. Two words: kick ass. It was worth every dime and a few nickels more. EL and I delivered Greg to the presumably correct terminal and began discussing how to best spend tomorrow in wedding preparation. What a great birthday weekend!

Oh yeah... Happy Easter btw.

3 words:

Fogo de Chao

My scheduled lunch yesterday was cancelled and we all ended up having late breakfast at Le Peep before driving up to see our new house. Greg and I wandered for an hour or so through Fry's Electronics with eyes glazed over and drool sneaking our of the corners of our mouths while EL ran some errands. EL and I had to sign some papers for the house, so we made short work of that and the three of us made a few shopping stops. Afterwards, we went to see Bulletproof Monk. It was just the action cheese that I expected to be young grasshopper. The next stop was a long one. We drank martinis at Davenports for a few hours. Irfan showed up with a couple of friends and the six of us went to Michelangelo's for a nice dinner. Greg, EL, and I headed home after that for some much needed rest. Overall, it was a great Friday off. I wish I could have every Friday off. Heh.

I hitched a ride to Blanco's yesterday afternoon with Joe so EL didn't have to brave the downtown traffic to pick me up for our airport trip. Greg arrived safely and with baggage in tow, we headed for food. I made a wrong turn that pointed us in the opposite direction from where I was headed and since there were no handy exits to turn around, I made a poor impromptu decision to eat at El Tiempo over our original destination of Massas downtown. It was crowded and loud as usual. We saw some girl puke on her table (and herself) before getting carried out... and another guy fall into a plant before his ass kissed the floor. Fucking idiots. If you can't hold your liquor, don't drink in public. Anyhoo, I felt like an ass for picking the place, but my stomach was focused on the Deluxe Mixed Grille. It would be ours... and it was... after a 45 minute wait in the land of self-important people. Albeit pricey, the dinner was delicious and definitely more than we could eat. Parilla style grilled lobster tails, beef fajitas, carnitas, jumbo tiger shrimp, quail, pork ribs, sausage, shrimp diablo, chicken fajitas, chili relleno, etc. I think we rolled out of there like pill bugs. After the much-too-long valet wait, we pointed the car for Downing Street. Motherfuck. You would think there was a holiday the next day or something! Oh... wait... ahem. We opted not to stop because of the crowd. We were home in two shakes of a lambs tail and the digestive food coma was setting in with the speed of the TGV. EL headed off to bed a little earlier than Greg and I. I was too tired to function really, so our catch-up talk was abbreviated. My grand plans to sleep in this morning were pissed on by my inability to stay sleeping for some reason. I quietly made coffee for the house and thought I'd take a minute to spill some misspelled words here. Wow. A whole day off. What the hell am I going to do with myself?

Rundown. I think that single word sums up how I feel these days. If there isn't one already, there should be a sniglet for the feeling of disgust when one thinks of blogging all the shiznit that's happened over the past few days of not blogging. The short version is pretty simple. After Sam and I had our meeting, he presented me with a beautiful humidor. I love it! To celebrate our step toward the future, he and I headed off to smoke up Downing Street. EL met us there a little later and about a hundred and some change in martini bucks later, we called it a night. EL came downtown and met me for lunch at Bossa where we enjoyed the oddity of Cuban spice mixture. The parking attendant for the lot we parked in didn't speak a dime of English... a frustration for me. If I wanted to work in some foreign country, I would expect at least a modicum of proficiency in the native tongue. This guy might have well been mute. While we were enjoying lunch, he double parks a car behind us, thus blocking our exit. Well, let me re-phrase that... he allows someone to double park behind us. This doesn't seem like a significant detail to the story really... it didn't then either... that is until he tried to move said vehicle and discovered an extra pedal and a pointy thing in the center console. This “parking attendant”, who works at a lot where you are expected to leave your keys, had never driven a manual transmission before. I watched him try to put it in gear (after reading the little R off the pattern printed on the shifter) without depressing the clutch for a good 5 minutes before I offered to help. I moved the car. We left. Fucktard. EL and I had a quiet evening at home that would have been a night of relaxation if it weren't for me having to work on some non-relaxing things at the house. I finally got to bed around midnight. Today has been quiet. I had been giving Redhat 9 the benefit of the doubt this week on a trial run, but in the end it proved just a disappointing as I expected and I installed Mandrake 9.1 this morning. It was an instant faith restorer. I'm officially converted... of course, it didn't take much since everything after RH7.2 has pretty much been crap. EL met the home inspectors this morning and spent most of the day shadowing the termite guy and the inspection guy... she did a great job at getting all the pertinent information we needed over the three and a half hour inspection. She joined me at Cabo for lunch. It was nice to sit outside, but the waiter fucked up my order and I didn't eat really. I've kinda been like a zombie this afternoon. I'm going through the motions, but I can't really concentrate. Greg flies in tonight and I'm super excited about that... it will be so good to see him again. Well, I don't know what to say about my lack of posting other than sorry... I've just been trying to make it to the weekend. I need to recharge in a bad, bad way.

After a delayed dinner at Black Labrador last night, EL and I went home for some CSI. The entire evening I was either directly working on something from the office or waiting on the call to move to the next testing stage. Workin' for da man sucks. Speaking of suck, my taxes are done. I owe a couple grand thanks to my employer fucking up my W-4 last year and me not finding out until I received my W-2 at the end of the year. So kiddies... make sure your exemptions are correct on your W-4 or it'll bite ya in the ass later. Ugh!! Oh, here's some more terrific news, the lithium ion battery connector in the bottom of my laptop chassis shit the bed and I now my work laptop won't run unless plugged in to the mini brick. Kind of defeats the purpose of a laptop, doesn't it? One of my home systems downloaded the RedHat 9 ISO's yesterday while I was at work. I burned them last night. I want to check it out for curiosities sake, but I'm still headed for Mandrake 9.1 as my new standard at work due to RedHat selling their soul to money. I'm running a Mandrake 9 server at work for a local repository for field security scans and it seems to be all that and a bag of chips barring a few kinks that I haven't had time to work out. I am intrigued by the myriad of distributions out there, but don't have the techie-time to install and evaluate all of them for a wider view of the competition. I've been on the jones for a motorcycle excursion ever since I wrapped up that MSF course I took a couple weeks ago. Actually, on the way into work I thought about how beautiful the day was shaping up to be and how great it would be to have the day off to ride and take pictures... then I remembered my camera was lost and stolen and I didn't own a bike... oh, and I was driving to work. Geez... talk about getting pissed on... ahem... anyhoo, I have my weekly engineering staff meeting in 45 minutes and I need to get some items together for that... I'm sure it's going to be more fun than watching a tasmanian devil try to claw it's way out of a garden tub of midgets and tapioca pudding. Please pass the coffee.

Holy shit! Why can't this day just be over!? It's a damn good thing that carpel tunnel isn't fatal. I would have been gone a long time ago. I've been working my booty to the baklava all day. I did take a break to have lunch with Sam, but other than that... zoom. I long for sleep. Getting up at 5:00 on a Sunday morning to go to work puts a dent in the productivity of the weekend relaxation agenda. The worst part of all is that there is no time to take a breath. I try to TDM some calls to set up home inspections and fill the blanks of the never-ending paper trail to my lender... all the while, EL is taking reins of the wedding planning and assisting me with various calls here and there for the move. We are doing another reception in her home town after the wedding and reception in Texas. This is causing a few minor complications to arise, but we're sorting through them one at a time. I am searching for something to post right now and to be completely honest with you, I am mentally exhausted. I can think of few words... words like "nap" and "sleep" and "bed". Of course, they are difficult to make out because words like "martini" and "Downing Street" are beating the shit out of them.

"how does it feel
is it the way you imagined
this is your time
this is what u make it
this is your day
everything else for the taking"