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June 28th, 8:46AM

Sucking the pipe

Today starts off horribly:

I wake to face the day steeped in defeat and despair, and consider the prospect of getting anti-depressant medication. Ach, fuck that, it's just not who I am, I think to myself. But just who I am is a subject for debate lately. I used to know, but am increasingly unsteady on that point.

I feel pathetic lately, feeble and powerless. My only consolation has been to take loving advice and narrow my focus, doing less and asking less of myself. It's been a nice respite and eases the self-condemnation somewhat, but I can't shake the feeling I'm not pulling my weight, and it troubles me deeply.

Work through it

And so, it comes to a simple decision: to try, or not to try; struggle, or accept defeat; rail or go limp. I resolve to try, struggle, rail. There are a few leads and ideas I can take a stab at. There are things I can do. I may give up some day, but not until I've exhausted these options.

I have more toys, more gadgets that magnify my potential for doing something special, than I can easily keep track of. When I'm optimistic, they represent the possibilities. When I'm down, which too often, they are my failures, given form. Maybe if I use them more, create more, I'll associate them with successes more. Ah, this psychology is worth every penny I paid for it.

June 26th, 8:46AM

Glad I could help

I checked again on the recently-blogged and hardly-functioning www.geoportail.fr, to find a message that translates into English:

"You are incredibly numerous to connect you to Géoportail, gate of the territories and the citizens since his setting on line. We recorded several million connections in a few hours. Because of this multitude, the site is currently saturated.

Our teams put all open to allow you to reach it again under satisfactory conditions of navigation and thank you for the interest which you carry to this innovative interdepartmental site."

Wow, too popular, eh?

June 25th, 4:34PM

The Good Frenchman

I took a book to Hogan Lake this afternoon, hoping to steal a few leisure moments and a few pages. It didn't quite turn out that way, but I did get to read some on the way there and here at home; chapter one has been very good. The book is called: "The Good Frenchman," a biography of Maurice Chevalier by Edward Behr. Unfortunately Mr. Chevalier's life and times were ahead of mine, (he died within a year of my birth) and I am barely aware of his popular significance, but the story of his youth proves interesting. I hope I'll learn something tangentially about Chevalier, Paris, and other things. Or at least enjoy the book.

My wife and daughter (among others) lavished precious gifts upon me for my recent birthday, including books and DVDs that I will no doubt enjoy at some point. I hope they don't take it personally that I am choosing to read a less-recently purchased, used book ahead of their gifts. Nothing personal.

Transmissions from the universe

I have spent much of this weekend (and much of my recent years) generating negative thoughts, unable to see or experience the joy around me. I am still nearly clueless of the way out of this maddening waywardness, but I have hunches that it's connected in some way to being myself. Maybe if I work on that, this knot may begin to untie itself.

June 23rd, 1:21PM

GeoPortail.fr?

CNN reports that France has a website to rival Google's Google Earth, at www.geoportail.fr. I'm all for it, but it doesn't seem to work, just at the moment, for me at least.

First steps

I am glad to have taken a step towards familial functionality lately, one that I have been promising to take for months on end. Good for us. I know this post is cryptic, but it's all I've got for you.

Clearer vision

My brother had a serious-sounding procedure performed yesterday - I spoke to him today, and all seems on track.

Pissing blood

A good friend of mine has had real health concerns lately. My thoughts are with him.

June 19th, 8:28AM

The Big Three-Five

Today, I am thirty-five years old. Feels a lot like thirty-four, if you ask me.

For those of you not in my special, redneck cryptography loop, "three-five" is a blue collar euphemism for masturbation, alluding to the number of fingers doing the gripping during the motion of the act; it is also used to denote a confused state of mind or total waste of effort. Examples: "This is a total three-five job," or "What am I doin'? Oh, just three-fivin' it, you know..." Special thanks to Jeff S. for introducing this into my ever-more diverse lexicon. On with the blog...

Party was fun

My birthday party was a good time, due entirely to the quality of the guest list; I had some bright ideas a few weeks out about games and events, but I implemented absolutely none of them, and I'm disappointed in myself for that. The upside is that these seeds of inspiration may come in handy for making a future get-together more interesting and exciting.

However, my guests carried the day with conversation and personality, and I am lucky for that. They were all good sports, and made the day.

The guests came through with so much food that we could live for a week just on the potluck and appetizer trays assembled for the bash.

France ties Korea - Hooray?

France tied Korea in a World Cup soccer match I recorded and watched yesterday. They fairly got robbed when a) they scored a hair-splitting goal (but a goal nonetheless) on Korea, but it was not counted because only the most careful of instant replays made it clear that a goal was in fact scored, as the ball barely broke the front line of the goal box, and b) one of their most prominent and talented players, Zinedine Zidane, was harshly flagged for a foul, a very minor infraction, that caused him to be pulled from his next game. As he has declared that the World Cup string of games is to be his last sports role, if France doesn't survive past the next game, today may have marked the end of his career. This was not a triumphant, go-out-with-a-bang career-ender, so I hope they persevere a bit longer.

Believe it or not, I'm not a big soccer fan, and just yesterday learned how to properly pronounce "Zidane." It's amazing how fast one can be swept into a new interest and begin picking up details and trivia.

Happy Fathers Day - Hello...?

My daughter celebrated Father's Day by spending the entire 24-hour period at a friend's house, and ending a "can I stay the night at my friend's house" phone call by saying: "oh, and Happy Father's Day... <nervous chuckle>."

My family is cursed to having unusual, not-to-say bizarre, paternal relationships. So be it.

June 15th, 8:01PM

The Manteca Bulletin has some dopes working there

Among the common grammar and spelling mistakes, here's an amusing goof:

What’s the secret to living a long and healthy life? Ask centurion, Grace Taylor, and she’ll tell you that she’s selling her secrets for cheap.

Now, since it's late at night, and The Bulletin doesn't archive their news, you probably won't get to read the linked story online. By the time you read this, it'll probably be gone, and replaced by a different story. But my point is:

See, a hundred-year-old person is a centenarian, shit-fer-brains. A centurion is a "professional officer of the Roman army." And I'll bet you any amount that most of the people at The Bulletin make a lot more money than I ever did at a job. That shit they tell you in school about doing well in school paying off in the business world? Big lie. I've known too many dunces who do just fine, and too many geniuses (geniii?) who struggled to no end.

Now that I've talked a gang of smack about lousy spelling, grammar and attention to detail, I will proofread and run spell-check. You know, like people should do when they run a newspaper...

June 13th, 6:21AM

For the record, Newdow's right, and Bill O'Reilly can go chase himself.

Someone sent me an e-mail, saying: "Blog this," and noting with disgust that Michael Newdow is pressing his case against having "In God We Trust" on U.S. money. Okay, I'll blog it. I have to say, though, that I'm a lot closer to Newdow's way of thinking than my correspondent's.

Having: "In God We Trust" on the money isn't right. It advocates religion. It does it in a very general way, but it still advocates religion! How hard is that to understand? What if you're an atheist? It's an affront. What if you're polytheistic? Just one god? Also an affront. It's a mild affront, sure, and we all manage to work around it, but it (the separation of church and state) is one of those ideals, like freedom of speech, or the right to privacy, that those of us who love our country hate to see subverted. It's also an ideal that is easy to achieve pragmatically. Just don't mention God. Easy. How hard is it to legislate without offering up a Holy Benediction now and then? Not very hard, I think.

As Dennis Miller used to say: "And another thing..."

Having "under God" in the pledge of allegiance is wrong, too. I'm sure that declaration isn't surprising by this point. But what if you're an atheist's kid or a Jehovah's Witness's kid or someone else who doesn't neatly fit into one of society's acknowledged majority religiosity pigeonholes? Being a kid is hard enough; fitting in at school is hard enough; being raised in a minority religion is hard enough; having to mumble through swearing an oath you can barely comprehend everyday in the second grade is pushing it as it is, and now you have to hash out your religious views between getting shoved around for your lunch money and trying to master long division? And while we're on the subject - swearing a fricking oath in the first place?? These kids are six and seven, for Pete's sake! Ech, not me, Jackson.

I may just teach my son to start singing "Highway to Hell" during the Pledge every morning. Sure it'll make him stick out in a crowd, but that line has already been crossed, as far as I'm concerned.

June 11th, 6:49AM

Kenzie's Kamp

Today, I take my daughter and drop her off for a several-day stretch, at a camp somewhere near Strawberry, where the roads wind and their straightness fails and gives respectful way to the rise and fall of hill and mountain. There is no such thing as a straight line on the atlas for these parts, and "as the crow flies" is a meaningless flatlander expression that makes the locals fidgety and suspicious.

Cousin Kathy

Yesterday the entire household went into Stockton to visit my Uncle Larry and his daughter Kathy, who is visiting from Waupun, Wisconsin. She has a case of cancer that isn't going in a hopeful direction, and the only tactfully descriptive thing I can think of to say is that it is considered important to visit her on this trip, as the availability of the next trip is in doubt. So we went and had a brief visit, and left.

Kathy and I never were very tight, but I remember several childhood get-togethers with her and her sisters. She was always quiet and kind, an elf. Comparing those memories from my younger days to the small, bald, sweet and frail young woman in front of me yesterday conjures feelings hard to explain. Jarring, tragic, sad. Lucky for me I'm emotionally stunted and distant, or this would've been a harder visit.

"My side" of the family sat quietly across the living room from Kathy's, and nobody said a word more than they had to. It wasn't as uncomfortable as that sounds, but there wasn't much mixing going on. I couldn't think of much to say, but I tried to engage and entertain her teenage daughters, hopefully plant some kind of memory for them. At least, I figured, they might remember the nicely weird guy from California. I set the obnoxiousometer to about 7, and bothered them for most of the visit; I got a few laughs without hurting anybody's feelings. I'll settle for that.

June 8th, 3:51PM

Abu Musab al-Kablooey

First off, crack a beer and give a cheer: hats off to the US forces and the al Qaeda operative who put together the Big Goodbye for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He is now tap dancing on land mines in Hell, where he belongs. Piss on him.

Injured Wolverine

In local news, I took it upon myself to change the engine oil in our Yamaha Wolverine ATV last week, using our brand-new torque wrench. As I finished up the job, I set the torque wrench to the correct setting, twisted hard on the roughly-two-foot handle, and waited for the snap of the torque wrench reaching its desired poundage.

I got a snap, all right.

The torque wrench never gave, but the drain plug did, and the rim of the thing snapped off cleanly like a mushroom giving up its cap, leaving me stunned and confused. I can't explain it, although I think that the spectrum of torque my torque wrench is supposed to apply is not suited to the task at hand. Plus, I'm a useless handjob when it comes to mechanical things. I'm trying to improve, and I know it delights my cruel and pitiless God to no end to watch me struggle. Anyhoo...

Wright Motors in Lodi got me the replacement part I needed, and I picked it up today for just over half of what they quoted me over the phone. I don't know where the discrepancy came from, but I benefited from it, and everybody was happy. What the Hell.

I got the drain plug in place, and had to guess at just how much of the gallon jug of oil should go into the crankcase to make 3.2 quarts. Naturally, I boned the estimate and rather than pouring a little too little, I poured way too much, and had to puzzle myself a way to get the oil back outta the thing without wasting it, or at least without making a hell of a mess.

I devised myself a little device by jamming a drip irrigation tube into a plastic water bottle, and turkey-basted at least a quart of oil out of the quad, and back into the jug. I was so proud of myself.

Other notable notes

Today was Joe's last day with BNI Tokay Chapter. We'll miss him. No really, we will!

My daughter took her fat Fair paycheck, opened a Junior Investor bank account, and paid us back for our investment in her livestock enterprise. Her amount is not nearly so fat now, but it's all hers.

Our DSL provider sent a guy out to check their equipment yesterday, after two and a half days of teeth-grinding outage. When the gent did show up, he was two and a half hours late with no phone call. I was tempted to chase him back to his vehicle with a claw hammer, but I needed the connection fixed. To his credit, he did get it up and running again. Hopefully I'll get more than a few days of reliable service out of this latest fix, which is about what I got the last time onsite repair was required. I'll get over it someday, just not today.

Oh yeah, I stupidly dumped an ounce or two of sugary coffee into my laptop today, and I tested my ability not to curse a blue streak in a public place as a result. Another result is that my laptop seems to perform just fine, but several keys make a krinklykrackly noise when you press them.

June 3rd, 7:10AM

In the neck

It's a great day to blog. From a story in The Record's online newspaper:

"A 16-year-old boy who in March was arrested on firearms and gang charges was arrested again early Friday after leading police on a low-speed pursuit... After he appeared to be barricading himself inside the van, an officer shot a beanbag round from a shotgun through the front passenger window, striking the boy in the neck..."

He was driving around at low speeds during the pursuit in his mother's van and flashing gang signs. What a gangsta! Bust a rap, loser!

"Cruisin', in Mommy's Aerostar, Po-lice know, I ain't gonna get far;

Chillin', drivin' slow as heck, gonna take me down with a beanbag to the neck;"

Word!

June 3rd, 6:48AM

Go ahead, push your luck

I saw a sweet little accident on Highway 26, on my way in from Manteca yesterday.

Let's set the scene: There's two cars ahead of me, and two cards behind, rumbling east on 26. In front of all of us is a cement truck, trundling along, as they are known to do. After a brief period, a straightaway makes itself available, and me and my impatient road companions make our moves.

Numbers one through four all pass this hulking obstruction safely and without incident, but just as I'm slipping back into my rightful place in the right lane (and the guy behind me is still passing the truck), number five comes roaring past all of us, determined to take the pole position. "Good for him," I think, because at that moment, the lanes are clear, and he has every chance of making his maneuver without much danger, even though he and his four-wheeled rocket are hauling some respectable ass at this point, and heading toward what they call a "hairpin" turn to the left.

Well, Speed Racer couldn't leave well enough alone, and instead of slowing to sub-sonic speeds before resuming his normal flow among the mortals, he pushed it - hard. He continued gunning it up to and through the tight kink in the road at the head of the line, and his car joyfully relinquished the bonds of traction and sailed elegantly through the asphalt and dust, whirling gracefully into a utility pole, bashing in the idiot's side - I mean, driver's side - of the vehicle.

Luckily, there was no oncoming traffic to involve in this vehicular hari-kari, and Captain Nutjob was the only fruitbasket to take damage to his melon. I assume there were injuries, but I didn't stop, neither to be sure, nor to help, for several reasons:

So if you're sitting around with a souped-up, primer-covered hot rod in the garage, drinking redneck boilermakers consisting of Old Milwaukee Light and Red Bull, and masturbating to "The Fast and the Furious," stay at home until the buzz wears off. Or at least, do like our friend did: put on a show, destroy your sole means of transportation for the enjoyment of mere civilians around you, but don't take out anybody else in the process.

I shoulda stopped for photos, I'll grant you that. I figured it smarter and safer to put distance between myself and the whole event, lest stupidity rub off, or be transmitted by blood or airborne pathogen. Being a confirmed carrier, I have no intention of becoming any more infected than I already am.

June 1st, 10:20AM

Miranda's graduation

I went to my niece's graduation last night. She looked great, and the ceremony was mercifully short. Saw lots of folks that I don't bump into anymore.

BNI changeup

My brother helped me out by substituting for me in BNI this morning. I'm glad he did, it really helped me out. Plus, I'm glad he went and rubbed elbows with my group. I think it did him some kind of minor good.