Well, I have the dutifuly ironic, but actually not since it was a true vision on the highway of my cross-country trek, symbolic photo and most, but not all, of my page re-created on a new server.

Whew. Pain in my ass.

But, there should be some new fun things afoot as I get settled in, since Bluehost.com has more than a few scripts and doohickies with which to destroy this site.

If all goes well, this puppy will show right up.

If all goes poorly, just look away.

Fuck iPowerweb’s hosting. Between inexplicable delays on loading, weird glitches of PHP stuff spontaneously not working (and their swearing there had been no server-side changes), the email SPAMcop problem and the non-technical prowess of their support, I’m done.

If all goes well, there will be no down time as I switch hosting companies to BlueHost (as recommended by WordPress), and I come back with the new and improved (or at least different) dee-rob.com.

I just got this SPAM:

What are Soft Tabs that everyone is talking about?
A Soft Tab is an oral lozenge, mint in flavor, containing pure
Tadalafil Citrate that is placed under your tongue and dissolved.

This is most modern and safe way not to cover with shame!

I have to admit, I was intrigued. I’m always in search of modern and safe ways not to be covered in shame.

Less interesting is that tadalafil is the generic form of Cialis. I guess it’s good, though, if the guy with the rock-hard, chemically induced woody has minty fresh breath.

You know the scene in a movie version of a Steven King story where the sky darkens and suddenly the trees are buffeted by forceful leave-stripping winds? Looks like San Jose is in for one hell of whatever the native word for Nor’easter is or my neighborhood is about to be visited by evil.

Nothing like running a few errands and coming out of Target to find the hot day has turned chill and the skies ominous. An invigorating top-speed bike ride home to beat a drenching sure cleared some cobwebs. I think I have enough energy to slog through another dozen replies to job listings.

Giving a quick look at Craig’s List before sleeping, and I saw this job.

Female Urinalysis Collector/ Office Support

Maybe one or the other, but I haven’t hit the desperation mark where I would seek to do both.

Still stuck in my head and feeling sorry about the job interview that wasn’t meant to be.

I think part of the funk is realizing that as much fun as it is assuming the role of a misanthropic loner who enjoys her solitude, I’m really a great yellow ball of sunshine. Yeah, deep down I’m a people person.

Anyone want a hug?

I even miss a bunch of comics back there in Boston. Thursday night is especially lonesome on that score, since it had become somewhere between a routine and an addiction to hang at the Walsh Brothers’.

Nah, the addiction crack lessens the essence of the fun I had there. Sure it was an excuse to drink to excess among friends, but the friends part is the key. That and the pranksterism.

For nostalgia, I’ll relink this video of my aiding and abetting their riding my bumper:

Other than that, I never thought I would write the next sentence, but it’s coming. I take comfort in the quietness of the house, except for the rhythmic snoring next to me.

(By the way, my Puritanical New England streak runs so deep in its insipid prudishness, that I hesitated to write the snoring was next to me. Like you all be thinking out there that I moved 3K+ miles and ended up in a twin bed and a separate room.)

The good news is a few days ago I wrote that I had lost whining privileges. As of today, though, I now get to enjoy my whine.

Seems the folks who wanted to meet with me tomorrow and talk about my mad skillz changed their minds and went with some other folk(s). I feel a little stood up on a much-anticipated blind date. I got the voicemail when I sadly (ironically) was in the laundry room (or kind of laundry hut or laundry dog house) washing my planned interview outfit.

The other good news is I’m pretty damn sure the End Times are fucking nigh, so it really doesn’t matter. With impending global destruction as a new leader in a new fundamentalist branch arises, why worry about the petty little footprints of my daily existence, right?

Honest to fucking god (or whatever force fucks this planet up), 9/11 was truly chilling and the pure hatred of fundamentalism Muslims is a serious threat. On top of that, cowboy G.W.’s wacky brand of fundamentalist Christian has brought “god” and “values” to enough rhetoric to make Cotton Mather jealous. And, now we have the Inquisitor Pope bringing back good, old-fashioned wholesome values like keeping a little priestly pedophilia secret and smacking down heretics.

I sure as heck hope the Likud doesn’t come up with their own crazed rabbi leader next, itching to make Sharon seem like a softie.

My little rainbow or olive branch or other cloying simple of hope is twofold. Good old Tom DeLay is in enough trouble that fervent Christians have a special prayers just for him (‘cuz, you know, God hates in when liberals and non-Bible banging Republicans start talking about the truth).

The other half of the hope rainbow/branch is John Bolton is going to have slow down on any plans to decorate a new office. (You do have to wonder about the bizarro world in which a guy with a badass reputation for an assholic temper could become the country’s leading diplomat. Guess diplomacy ain’t required.)

So I was pondering this new pope as I was drifting off to sleep. OK, you’re a kid and everyone is in the Hitler Youth, so you are too. I get that.

But, later, when conscripted into the Wehrmacht, and I think already a seminary student, wouldn’t, as a devote Catholic, you have to do something? Maybe he did desert in the end (although the Allies did keep him as a POW).

But, since the Nazis were hip to executing Catholics, I would think anyone of that generation and country devout enough to be papal quality (as it were) would have fled or been killed.

It’s not entirely fair to forever flail all Germans for their Nazi past. However, it seems a bit more fair to flail Germans who were there and served as Nazi soldiers.

Yesterday, I was listening on the radio to an interview with Laurence Rees, who just wrote a book on Auschwitz. He was talking about having interviewed not just Holocaust survivors and Nazi war criminals for his book but also soldiers from Japan and the Pacific and from Stalin’s Russian Army. One thing he especially noted is that everyone he talked to from various war-time atrocities consistently said something like, “I had to do it,” “I was forced to do it,” “It was participate or die,” kind of thing.

Except the Germans. Apparently, the former Nazis and Wehrmacht veterans he interviewed explained how they thought they were doing the right thing based on what they knew then. So, they felt justified.

I wonder what Pope Benedict 16 thought at the time?

I found this guy’s weblog while searching for more info. He seems to have done an excellent job providing some interesting source information on John Ratz.

Scariest of all, I think, for us who are not actually living within the arms of the church, is he might well be the guy behind justifying dissing John Kerry at communion. I will never be able to comprehend the Catholic stance on the last election that de facto threw support behind a guy who presided over a nation-leading number of executions as governor of Texas.

Growing up, I believed that the Catholic church was against killing anyone even at the potential stage of sperm, so with that logic birth control is a problem and abortion and the death penalty are both very bad. Apparently, in today’s church, though, Kerry’s legislative votes on abortion make him a sinner, but GW’s zealous killing of retards and minorities is just bizness.

Viva, Papa.

A short entry, because I shouldn’t be writing at all. I should be sleeping.

Tonight I went to a San Francisco open mike, the first one since I have become the new ex-pat me. (I did one or two last year, when I was a mere tourist.)

I was #31 out of about 35 comics. The first 10 0r so did 10 minutes, the remaining 20-25 did 4-5 minutes. Mathematically (and conservatively), that’s about 200 minutes of comedy in total. Also knows as, over three fucking hours.

It gave me a good, long look at a corner of the scene here, which was time well spent. I met some pretty nice people and your customary kooks.

I got some laughs at some appropriate times, despite the lateness and fatigue. And since comics remaining at the end split a tip jar, I got some reimbursement for the gas spent getting there (and wasting time looking for parking, which is why I was late and why I was #31 out of 35).

Now, it’s just spooky quiet here with M. in Toronto. I sure have gotten used to having him around pretty damn quickly. At this rate, he’ll probably figure out I like him. Damn.