Being Smacked Didn't Hurt At All

...well not much anyway.

Forgive me Miss Chatty for I have sinned,

I have blatantly disregarded the command of Sassy Sadie and did use orange in my template. I have committed the atrocity of moderating said comments and I do humbly ask absolution. I did ignore the law unto which we are bound by Bitter Bitch to refrain from poetry. I have disobeyed Princess Pottymouth and perpetrated eye-jarring colors upon my avatar. For these aggrieves sins I do so ask forgiveness, however undeserved it is.

In the name of Charred, Charles, and The Merciless Minx,
kthnxbai



P.S. Comments have been unmoderated. If you want to read the review go here.

The Group Thing is Just Not My Cup of Tea

Group school work that is. It seems to be the latest fad in teaching or maybe it's just that I haven't been in school for a long time. I absolutely hate doing group projects and my teachers just absolutely love to assign them. I have no idea why. Maybe they just like to piss people off.

I've gotten them in almost every class in two years of college. It's not that I don't like working with others, well, maybe it is, but it goes beyond that. I don't have the time to go searching for when these people have days off. I don't want to deal with their lack of motivation for decent grades. I don't want them over at my place and I don't want to go to theirs.

I work and I go to school full time. I barely have time to sleep much less find the infinitesimally small window of time that the three of us have free together. This is ridiculous. This is college. My work should be my work alone and I don't want to be responsible for any one else's grade, much less have them responsible for mine.

Give it up teachers. Everyone hates group projects, except the people who don't do any work and then get the grade because their group pulls their weight. If you want to do a group thing find an orgy, don't bastardize my education.

It's Official: My Job Sucks

We had suspicions before, but now there is no doubt. To give you a little information needed for this story I have to tell something about myself. I sleep walk. I also talk in my sleep. I do lots of things in my sleep, but apparently nothing very useful. I would love to wake up in the morning with all my laundry done. Alas that never happens. I do, however, tend to reset my alarm or plain turn it off in my sleep.

That is exactly what I did on Saturday. I eventually woke up about 15 minutes before I had to be at work. This is not usually a very big deal. I rushed to get my morning ablutions done and hurried into work. I was expecting my coworker to be there already. Oops, my bad.

The guy that was supposed to be in at 9 A.M. as well hadn't made it in yet. I was 20 minutes late and now I knew we were both in deep. I opened up the store and got reamed by my boss on an open radio channel.

That is why I hate my job. Instead of calling me like he should have done, my boss radioed to my store on a channel that, not only is broadcast in my store, but also in two other stores. It was a public dressing down and I am adamantly against those.

What happened to my coworker? Nothing. He walked in about three minutes after I got there. His excuse? He got lost on his way to work. Yeah. Lost. He's been working here for over a month. That isn't even the kicker. He walks to work. But wait, there's more. I could throw a rock from the store and hit his house. He. Got. Lost. Either he is the dumbest person on the face of the Earth, or he is so bad at lying a four year old could call him out. I'm thinking a bit of both.

Walking into the Past

The past is a scary place, especially when it changes. This semester I am taking an Intro to Teaching class and I have to complete 15 hours of classroom observations. Today I had scheduled some time at the local elementary school. This school was built in my town after they demolished the one hundred year old school that I had gone to grade school in. This place is huge. I was intimidated right from my entry into the parking lot. I was going to spend three hours there this afternoon, but I got creeped out and was sort of lost so I rescheduled more time next week.

I was disappointed in my welcome. The principal was friendly and kind and the teacher was very nice, however, I was not given any kind of idea what I should do or were I should go. I was escorted up to a class and introduced to the teacher. I was then left alone after being told that the rest of the teachers would be notified of my visit and that I could 'wander' around to whatever classrooms I would like.

I felt like an intruder. The class I was in was nice although I don't remember classroom being that cluttered in my own days of school. The teacher made it pretty plain that once they finished the math section that I was being dismissed to another class. It was all so unstructured. There was a phone in the class and it rang twice interrupting the class for the teacher to conduct personal business. I thought that was unbelievable. I am in some kind of culture shock and I definitely don't want to go back. This place creeped me out. I don't know how teachers do it.

I really wish I would have been given better instructions than 'wander around and see what you can see'. Wouldn't a teacher like to know more than, perhaps some college student will wander into your class in the middle of your lecture and he might disrupt everything, or he might not. I don't think I will be going back to this school after I complete the five hours I need for this assignment.

God save all the teachers because I sure don't want to teach elementary school. Good on you if you do. You deserve a raise, a medal, and a lifetime supply of drugs courtesy of the government.

Explanations

I guess I am fully baptized in blogging now. I got my first comment spam. I moderate comments here to stop this stuff. I never delete or moderate comments that aren't spam. I don't moderate so that I can change any person's comment, mostly because I don't really care if you have a different opinion than I do. I like hearing from my readers and if you think I'm stupid go ahead and say so, God knows I say it myself enough. So feel free to comment away.

In other news I would like to thank my blog pimp Dog for making my week renting his blog a fantastic experience. I received a ton of traffic from his site and he is my current hero.

I really don't have much to post today. I try not to post if I don't have anything to say. It makes for a really boring read. At least I have always thought so. Go read IT2M if you want a dose of drama. They serve it up fresh daily.

P.S. I know you will have an uncontrollable urge to say something nasty about me now KG. Go ahead get it out of your system.

Just Call Me Bella

Since I really don't have much to post today I'll let you in on a secret.

First, though, I want to say hey to my visitors from NYC Watchdog. He pimps harder than any other I've seen for his renters and it is much appreciated.

Ok. On to the secret. The Antichrist My ex used to have an online magazine called Simming Monthly. She was HUGE into The Sims 2. She had an article in there titled Ask Bella. It was sort of a twisted kind of Dear Abby for your sims. People would write in asking questions for their sims and Bella would answer. She usually wasn't very nice.

Well. I was Bella. At least I was until my wife left. I think I did through November or December. It was fun, I have to admit. I could be nasty and mean and I was just writing to fictional characters in a game. Maybe I'll start a blog answering questions like Bella.

Maybe not. It's too much work and I'm sure someone else is already doing it. Anyway, now you know. I masqueraded as a fictional female character answering letters from fictional characters for an online magazine about a game.

Wow doesn't sound very impressive when I put it that way. If that's my fifteen minutes of fame I want my money back.

Parlez-Vous Stupid

So yeah I did technically sign up for it. That doesn't mean it's not dumb. My French class starts at 8 AM! Who decided that learning a foreign language and sleep deprived foggy coffee slugging mornings go well together? Before you ask, no, there were no other times. There is only one French 101 class available for the entire college. Out of more than 13,000 students only 25 want to take French? If we are so elite why don't you give us a break and not make us get up at ungodly hours for class. Why do I constantly chose the classes like this. If my luck gets any worse I won't be able to leave my house.

Crack, Now in New Convenient Digital Form

I have always liked RPGs (Role Playing Games). They have always sucked me in from the earliest Final Fantasy games on the Nintendo to table top games like Dungeons & Dragons and the White Wolf games. A few years ago I was introduced to online RPG chat in the White Wolf Vampire the Masquerade venue. I was instantly hooked. I have found, however, that when you get into a bad chat things turn instantly to horrible. When people do not know how to role play or take things too seriously or personally things can go from great to I quit in seconds.

I stopped doing the Vampire chat after the original game started breaking apart. I tried several other venues but nothing really grabbed me. Since my wife left I've been stuck with a huge amount of free time that used to be spent with her. A good friend of mine suggested I try the chat he plays on. I was reluctant at first but then decided that I had nothing better to do so I told him that I would try it out. I poured over the books and tried to learn as much about the system that I could. He plays Mage the Awakening which is a new version of the system I used in Vampire.

I finally decided this last weekend to hang it all and just jump in. In the last three days I've spent an inordinate amount of time in this alternate world. I have found the players to be very good at role play, which is the main reason I play at all. I am thoroughly addicted. I am planning to hop back in just as soon as I finish posting this.

If you want to check out what I'm talking about you can go here and if you would like to see my own character you can check him out here. If you happen to get sucked in like I did, or maybe you already play please say hi to Blazar if you see him around Boston.

I have to go stamp out the bad guys and celebrate with some imagined scotch. I'm getting the shakes from being away too long. Jason, you should be arrested for peddling this stuff.

P.S. If you are looking for a good 9/11 tribute you can go here.

Fortune Cookies Hate Me

As long as I can remember I have gotten bad fortunes inside fortune cookies. I am not talking about obscure fortunes like 'something good is coming your way'. I am not talking about negative fortunes like 'hide now or you will die'. I am talking about fortunes that don't qualify as fortunes and barely qualify as sentences. I know these cookies are probably made in Peru or something and that fortunes cookies are an American invention, but there must be some kind of mistranslation going on.

I received a fortune after my wonderful mushroom beef lunch (no I'm not posting a picture, it was delicious but those pictures always look like dog crap on a plate). This wonderful fortune says:

"Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought."

WHAT? Did Confucius smoke a joint on his lunch break? What part of this is a fortune? It's not even a good wisdom saying.

I will be posting others as I get them. This kind of fortune is all I ever get. My favorite of all time was:

"It is a nice day outside"

Yeah I actually ate a cookie that tasted like cardboard soaked in plaster for that.

Goodbye Nanny

Late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning my grandmother passed away. She was 95. It is hard to tell what this means to me. Her death was not unexpected as she was given a short time to live by the doctors nearly seven years ago. All she wanted was to die at home and in that she got her wish. She died peacefully in her sleep and I suppose that is the best we can hope for.

We called my grandmother Nanny. I think this comes from a mispronunciation of Nana by one of the older grandchildren, perhaps my sister. She was married to my grandfather, who passed in 1992, for more than fifty years. Nanny fiercely loved and protected her family and I don't know that I would be able to name a better person to have on my side. She would have wrestled a hundred bears to protect any one of us. She always endeavored to make sure that all of her extended family had what they needed, and it was always the little things that meant the most. She saved those little green stamps to get sets of flatware for both my brother and me. I was quite young when she did this, but I wouldn't use any other flatware on my table. Her last words were to one of her great great grandchildren; "I love you". That was so fitting for Nanny. She absolutely adored children and I'm sure she would not have had her last words be anything else.

Nanny has quite a family left behind on the earth as a legacy. She left three children, nine grandchildren, nine great grandchildren, and three great great grandchildren. I can think of no better tribute to her than the fact that she has protected and loved the lot of us no matter what we did.

Here's to you Nanny. I hope PopPop is there to great you on the other side. We love you and miss you.


P.S. You can see her obituary here if you would like.

Neptune is in my WHAT?

First of all I'd like to thank all of the commenters. It's nice to know that there's other suffering bastards nice people out there. Your kind words are much appreciated.

Now on to the main reason for my post today. Astrology. I've never been a fan of or an adherent to horoscopes or any of that sort of thing. I am now rethinking my position. My good friend Jason and I were talking about it the other night and he had some very interesting insights I'd like to share with you. Yes, both of you, now listen up. He, like me, doesn't believe the horoscopes, but he did have something interesting to say about the personality types. I made a comment about how the majority of what the astrologers write about Pisces fits me perfectly. I find this to be eerily disturbing for a skeptic such as myself. He gave me a new perspective on astrology.

He said that he believes that there are certain cycles in our personalities. The cycles are not determined by what constellation that the sun was in on your birthday, but they can be categorized that way. Obviously this won't fit everybody, or maybe it does, I don't know. So for instance, the fact that the sun happens to be in Pisces on my birthdate does not make me a moody introvert. It may however be that during that particular time many people are born with this type of personality.

Let me put it this way. Putting a little blue stick person figure on a door doesn't make that room automatically turn into a restroom. It does however, conveniently mark a restroom for us. It makes it easy for people to identify a restroom.

That is what the zodiacal constellations are. Identifiers of personalities. They don't cause the personalities or determine whether or not you should pay your stupid tax purchase that lotto ticket.

I found this explanation to be not only profound but also very sensical. I hope you do to. Hey I have to go according to Yahoo's psychics I have to contemplate my future for the rest of the day. Oh, and if any Geminis or Scorpios need a Pisces who is lost in their own little fantasy world be sure to let me know.

It Made My Night

Well, it made it terrible. I got a call from my soon-to-be exwife. Yes, I know my profile says I'm divorced. It's in the works, cut me some slack. She wanted to know why I haven't returned the divorce settlement she sent me. The quick answer is that I've been a wreck lately. I've been trying to find a lawyer to look it over and I need to find one cheap (read: free). I have been meaning to contact the Prairie State Legal Aid Society that supposedly offers discounted legal services to people in need (read: poor).

We inevitably started talking about other things and that always depresses me. Every time we talk I get reminded that she ground my heart into dust and she couldn't be happier. I am left feeling desolated and devastated but she is having the time of her life with a new boyfriend. She admits to feeling great since she left me which leaves me feeling awesome about life. I know I should feel like I am better off without her and that she was dumb for leaving me. I have heard it a million times from my friends. They are trying to make me feel better and I truly appreciate their efforts. It's impossible for me to turn my feelings off. Despite everything she did to me (cheating, lying, hurtful words, etc.) I still love her. I have already said I am stupid so leave me alone.

I just want this to be over. I want to be able to remember this and kind of chuckle about how much it sucked and how things are so much better now. I really want not to love this woman anymore. I wish I could get over it. I wish I could just make it stop.

I can't. I just have to drag through it. I hate my life right now.

Sprint is Owned by Satan

Tonight I received a call from Sprint. They wanted to let me know that my cell phone bill is past due. Setting aside the fact that I already know this, the call pissed me off. First of all, it's a holiday. Nobody should be called by a bill collector or telemarketer on a holiday. Doesn't Sprint give their poor phone center workers the day off? Apparently, because they seem to be hell-spawn, they don't. Secondly, they called at 9PM. I have never minded getting calls from friends or relatives at any time of the day or night. I expect that they know when the need to call me is outweighed by the time of day or night. If they need to talk I'm game for a call as long as I am awake. If it's something serious go ahead and wake me up, I don't mind. Sprint should never call me after 7PM or so. This is my time to relax and finish up my day. I don't want to go to bed flaming mad about a courtesy call. I can only conclude that the management and board of directors at Sprint consist of Lucifer and all his top demons. Thanks Sprint for pissing me off this evening.

I'm Tired aka Stupid

Why am I tired? It could be that I stayed up until 8AM. Of course that is not really staying up late that's just not going to bed. I know I shouldn't do this. I need to get more sleep. Ever since the summer class sessions were over I've been having problems getting to bed at any kind of decent hour. I end up getting less than six hours of sleep and I definitely regret it after dragging myself through several hours of the day. I would never treat my car this way. I would be appalled at anyone who just gave their car enough gas to get to their destination, but not a drop more. This would not only be bad for the car, but also be colossally stupid, so why would I treat my body this way?


I guess that means I'm stupid but we have already established that fact. I can always go out and get a new car but bodies are in rather short supply. I am normally a night owl and whenever I get the chance my body tends to slip back into a nocturnal schedule. It's horrible. I am pumping myself full of caffeine, which I don't think is very effective, and I am still falling asleep at the keyboard/desk/wheel/cash register. I have to go take a nap.