I decided to rebuild my laptop. Easy enough, but fucking hell, getting all the little pieces back together blows a mighty big chunk.

Meanwhile, on the work front, yeah, M. has it right when he mocks my slacker failure. As in, I consistently fail to be the slacker of my dreams. The version of me with some suckass, screw the man, fuck you I’m getting high and then stocking the shelves, you don’t own me type job.

Nope, I can’t hold one of them low stress jobs with low skills and maximum time to think. Instead, I end up in all sorts of “important” work, fucking bullshit.

Right now, though I guess I suppose that I can’t complain, I might actually be drawing on a little gray matter and digging back into the 20-year-old cobwebbed archives to the glory days of earning my Bachelor’s. Back 20 years ago, when I studied print journalism, VDT’s were emerging technology, and most of my professors believed that media assuredly did not agenda set, it followed the public. Preposterous to think a business reliant on advertising could do anything but lag behind, lest it offend the public it needed.

Back then, Karl Rove, Roger Ailes and Fox “News” hadn’t been invented yet. OK, I suppose Ailes and Rove breathed and roamed the planet, but “news analysis,” a new idea back in the 80s that seemed to give agita to many of the old guard reporters, lovers of short ledes and “just the facts, ma’am,” hadn’t yet morphed into so-called pundits and self-appointed “fair and balanced” talk show hosts shouting editorials as news.

So, here we are, with Peter Jennings dead, thus losing a champion of world-wide reporting, and Sean Hannity still alive. (I typed and deleted a few of the people involved with “news” who I would prefer in the great beyond rather than Jennings. But, O’Riley and Coulter and Tucker Carlson are so aggravatingly idiosyncratic in their bullshit, I’m hoping they will self-destruct. Hannity stays (mostly) infuriatingly plausible in his lies.)

Seems like these days the media is the goddamn agenda. While else would otherwise sane people consider boycotting Aruba for one suspected murder, whilst living in a country with quite a few more actuals.

Back to the point of this little old trip down old-school, newsroom memory lane. I work for a place that thinks maybe juicing the playing field with cash encouraging mainstream media connections to the fucked up world and what’s going on in out there beyond our myopic domestic view could help. What the hell, maybe if the news actually showed, I don’t know, some semblance of reality with a little foreign correspondence, more folks would get how the world’s fucked-up-edness interconnects with their own fucked-up-edness.

You never know, and sometimes education does make a difference.

So, where, might I, a shitty-ass would be writer and comic (note to West Coast denizens who may not catch sarcasm and bullshit, I actually think I’m pretty fair at both writing and comedy), where do I fit in with this noble plan? Apparently, they might be giving me a shot at re-writing a tough-time getting birthed media strategy statement.

Go figure. I’m back to reading and writing about the kind of junk I used to study for credit and argue about in dorm rooms.

Here’s my very own, personal, album cover. It’s like sleeping around 70s/80s style without the messy STDs.

My digital cowboy on his mechanical bull:

Today’s episode of free things at work that make me smile: Pluots,
aka a trademarked hybrid of plums and apricots.

Not only do they stock the place with fresh fruit, but a lot of it is
the kind of fruit that you see cruising the produce aisles and itch to
try, but you don’t want to drop a few bucks on the thrill ride for
fearing of strange fruit rotting on the counter. So I get my fix of
weird and fresh and fruity at work and tend to bug M. a little less on
the impulse buying. (I have to say, I do hold against him quite
bitterly his impulse control while shopping. Well, unless there’s
Spam involved, then all bets are off impulse-wise.)

Speaking of M., I’m figuring how best to showcase my next world-wide
web mocking of him. I mentioned in a recent post that his cowboy
fashion leanings put him one step away from riding a mechanical bull.
He scoffed and suggested that my artistic license had crossed the line
on that one.

Two days later, he is in fact riding a mechanical bull, and silly,
silly man gave me the pictures to prove it.

I’m almost sad I didn’t go to this week’s SF LinuxWorld. I’ve seen
many a geek sweating to Dance, Dance Revolution. But, a mechanical
bull? That’s funny.

My own cowboy will be uploaded to the old weblog tonight, I think.

By the way, I now have pictures of M. dressed as himself, as a sailor,
as an armed militia wannabee and as a cowboy. Does it make me gay if
I’m living with someone who could all by himself comprise a Village
People album cover?

Only writin’ for the sake of writing.’

A couple of months of working, and I’m already clowning around and fucking with the boss. Shit, I have gone west and gotten wickedly cocky. Seriously. But, at least most of my teasing was a riff off the president, who was laughing. Maybe this gig will last seven years before implosion… (Nah, I’ll kill myself before seven more years of straight administrating, so that’s cool.)

Had a brainstorm while web surfing the other day – I’m trying out TotallyPhotos.com. Since I have so many pics, and, I think, some of them are pretty good, I figured why not see if I can earn some cake. I’m always taking the baby steps to get something from my creative bursts.

One day I swear I’ll walk all adult and grown up like. I was thinking “walk like a man,” but you know, my swagger will always lack a certain pair of balls.

Overall, I’d have to give this weekend pretty high marks.

Did an open mike, went to a rundown and crappy county fair, registered to vote in the new state, went to Wal-Mart, barbecued a bit, wrote a bit, fixed a referrer on my website, swam in the Pacific ocean (for the first time since my buddy who is now a full professor was in grad school in San Diego) and had some steamers with a very local Pinot Grigio on a pier.

I always feel good spending a day around the water and dining on sea creatures as a closer. But, California knows dick about a good bucket of steamers. Perhaps that’s do to the lack of little necks. It was some other kind of teeny clam in what wasn’t really a bucket, but something upper scale, and there was a garlicky, chive-y, buttery broth in which they were swimming. No such thing as unadulterated steamed clams with drawn butter on the side in these parts.

My cross-country move loses luster when I consider the clams. (Not to mention our fried seafood entrees include fries (as they should) and steamed zucchini. Heresy, really, fresh veggies with your fish and chips. Fucking California and its agricultural and health.)

Although, I guess the counterbalance to sub-par seafood tradition is weekends with M. and Dee that are so chockfull of sweetness and fun, it borders on revolting.

Despite two things, (1) someone who shall remain nameless teased “you’re going to blog about this…” and (2) I don’t support their business model, I have to give a big shout out to the box store of all box stores. The mother ship. Wal-Mart.

Let’s face it, M. and I are far too good looking and refined to rub shoulders with society’s flotsam and jetsam who shop at Wal-Mart. I mean look at us:

OK, maybe that picture doesn’t prove it. But, usually we are a damn fine looking couple.

So, M., partially for the western theme his company will be sporting at Linux world and partially because he’s one step away from riding the mechanical bull down at Gilley’s, was looking for a straw cowboy hat. We headed to a neighborhood in San Jose full of taqueritas, markets selling Corona, lard, tortillas and hot peppers and party stores with ample pinata aisles, and we found a western wear store. But, frankly, yuppie scum that we might be, $100 + for a styling, summer-weight straw Stetson is a mighty steep price for irony and costuming.

My brainstorm, whilst trucking through the Mexican part of town, was Wal-Mart. Your average working class dude out here in the wild west who wears a cowboy hat for real and rugged sun protection and keeping some sweat at bay, ain’t wearing a dress Stetson and silk shirt every day of the week. Nope, he needs something he can buy where America shops and not mind when it absorbs dirt and grime and dries and cracks under toil conditions.

Score. For a small $8 investment, I’m strutting my Wal-Mart smiling self throughout the merchandise, a re-shapeable straw working-man’s chapeau on my head.

Better yet, I’ve still been looking to avenge my pride with the nosiest and most painful of meddling landlords, Nick the Greek. After our fight that left me shouting that I would get my own damn patio table, I’ve been searching for satisfaction. Joy and wonder, for $10 Wal-Mart had just the thing, and Nick will be eating his Grecian, old-world heart out when he sees the faux stone “art deco” design embedded right there in the resin.

(As an aside, fucking Nick, threw away the kitchen stink stopper I bought that is impregnated with lemon freshness and put in his own really annoying, because it gets caked with garbage, screen strainer. Who the fuck thinks it’s OK to muck about with your tenants’ shit and throw stuff away to introduce your own aesthetic? Fucking Nick.)

The hat and table would have made the trip success enough. But, we also came home laden with mops and brooms and assorted other bargains. And, M. bought the newly released on DVD Alexander for the bargain price of $13. Woohoo.

(Another aside, M. likes them big costume-y spectacles. I, on the other hand, found Alexander to be a great big pile of shit. Seriously, has Oliver Stone become brain injured? There’s crap in there that people thought was hokey when I took a high-school film-making class with Super 8 movies. (Blood, dying, blood, right snap that red filter on the camera, stat.) It was probably distracting for M. that I kept checking his manhood to comfort myself with no reaction during the completely homo-erotic scenes (which were basically as ridiculous plot-wise as gay porn).

Wal-Mart rules.

If back in, say, the 1980s, when my hair was spiky and dyed “Uptown Tangerine,” if someone said, “Hey, I bet you end up waking up in the suburbs (in the West Coast no less) with the Bee Gees on the stereo,” I’m sure some stabbing would have occurred.

Yet, here I am.

Man, time has been passing here in the wild wild west. I’m most conscious of it since the boy-o o’mine was kind enough to by me the latest Harry Potter. Say what you will, but J.K. Rowling woman can keep you wanting to see how the story goes.

Not bad for a former dole-living mum. Makes me curse my lazy ass for reading more, writing less.

I still hate the gym, even as I go to fight the ravages of aging. However, it is a little different going to a gym where someone walks in and says, “Mind if I turn on the ‘Newshour with Jim Lehrer?'” Don’t they know it’s supposed to be shitty videos to shitty beat-laden music, sports or something like on the E! Network?

There was a young, possibly Arab-American, Georgetown student who was part of a panel talking about American Muslims and why they need to get a little more radicalized and vocal in condemning terrorism. I should figure out the kid’s name, since I pray to god, or allah, or well, actually I don’t pray, since religion is part of the whole problem, but anyway, I wish there were more guys as articulate as that student and future bullshit slinging Imams and GW Bushes.