Despair

I fucking hate my life. I fucking hate my family. I fucking hate where I live. I would just like to end it all. I'd like to douse my house with gasoline and set a match to it all with me in the midst of it and then blow my fucking brains out as it all goes up in flames like some great big Viking funeral minus the boat and water. But then the stupid assholes on the news would likely use my ass-ugly drivers license picture on the news report to identify the lunatic woman who did such a thing and the thought of my hideous drivers license photo being broadcast for all the world to see is just about as horrifying a thing as I can think of. So I guess I'll just have to be brave and tough it out and maybe things will all work out in the end. I just hope I don't have to wait too long.

Classical: Hell Yeah!

The first music I was ever exposed to was classical. My mother had a whole collection of classical records(those big, round vinyl things) that she used to like to play so it would appear that she was "cultured." She probably *did* enjoy them, too. I think she mostly played the Beethoven ones. I guess exposure to classical music is also supposed to be good for the development of children's brains. Maybe that's why I'm a smarty-pants.

Anyhoo, my tastes in classical have changed over the years. In junior high school I was into Mozart. After I was out of school I got into Bach and was introduced to Carl Orff's Carmina Burana by a guy friend at work. I'm not really into opera but Carmina Burana really kicks some serious ass. It's nice and powerful like much of Bach's work. I'm actually listening to it right now as I'm writing this.

At one place I used to work, at different times throughout the year, a particular local opera company used to come and perform. We also from time to time would be able to sign up for complimentary tickets for the employees. Of course when I found out that Carmina Burana was one of the shows that they were going to be performing for that year I got very excited at the chance that they might be giving comps for that particular performance. Well, one of the other employees who had worked there for a long time said that that particular opera company didn't give comps as the full price to attend was very expensive even for the nosebleed seats. As I hadn't worked there very long I believed her. I didn't get to see the performance since it was very expensive.

Well, come to find out after having worked there many years, that opera company did sometimes give comp tickets, a few, but it was just that the management and certain others from different departments got first dibs. It was a very cliquish place to work so if you kissed ass with certain people you too could get access to the better shows when comps were given. I'm not one to kiss ass at work so I never went to any shows. The only time free tickets were ever offered to my department was when it was some shitty show and they wanted to make it appear that there were butts in the seats. I don't work there any more and those assholes who still do work there can go screw themselves. They were a bunch of fake-ass bastards who thought they were so cultured because of where they worked but in reality most of them wouldn't know Bizet from Brahms.

One time I had a brief conversation with one of the opera company's peeps and she was surprised that I knew so much about one of the shows. I think it was Carmen. She said most of the peeps working there didn't know a thing about any of the shows. LOL

Bitch.

I was up to nineteen consecutive days of exercising and then

<---this bitch

had to show up and ruin everything. Cunt. Now I'll have to start back up on Monday. Then it will be eleven more days to go! My legs are looking nice and toned and my ass is getting nice and firm and defying gravity which is always a good thing for an ass to do.

I was thinking about what would have happened if MMA was popular 20+ years ago when I was taking kung fu classes. Would I have pursued it seriously? Probably not. I don't like getting hit in the face. But it's fun to fantasize about being a super bad-ass MMA star, one way better than Gina Carano or Cristiane Cyborg Santos. Just humor me a bit.

So just imagine that I'm the super-awesomest female MMA fighter and I need to pick some super cool walk-up music when I make my entrance. Feel free to make suggestions. I was thinking of:

"Fire Woman" by The Cult (I thought this was the coolest song evarrr the first time I heard it.)
"Bringer of Death" by Danzig
"Sonne" by Rammstein (lyrics are kinda fitting but the tempo is a bit plodding)
"Feuer Frei" by Rammstein (better tempo)

So? Waddya think?

I hate leaky faucets.

The bloody faucet was leaking in the master bathroom shower and it was driving the engineer part of me totally insane. So in typical Xul fashion I decided to take the thing apart to find out why it was leaking. I managed to figure out how to get the handle off and unscrew it. Then I tinkered around a bit with the decorative face plate and figured out that it turned and then pulled off. Then the main bit was revealed behind that. So I started unscrewing that and then all hell started breaking loose with the water pouring out of the faucet like Niagara Falls. Then my brain went into panic mode and I tried to retighten the screws but that didn't seem to help so then my brain went into full panic mode and I dashed downstairs and out the back door to shut off the water supply at the main shut-off valve; the same main shut-off valve that doesn't shut off all the way.

Now I'm totally freaking out. I tried to do a good thing in fixing a damn leak and everything went tits up and now it's going to cost a fucking fortune to get a damn plumber out on the weekend. So I called my dad to see if he knew of a plumber. Of course he was no help at all. The only plumber he knows is a French Canadian friend of his from the bowling alley and unfortunately he's back up in Canada for the summer.

Then I called my neighbor across the street. Unfortunately for me, his grandmother picked up as he wasn't there at the moment. I told her what my problem was but she seemed to be having a senior moment and was no help. Grrrr. I'm not one to give up so easily especially when lots of money is at stake so I decided to finish trying to take the rest of the faucet mechanism apart to see if I could figure out what the damn problem was.

Well, lo and behold! I got the thing apart and took a good look at how the mechanism worked and I figured out that there was a leaky gasket on the cold water intake side! Isn't that always the way? It's always some damn two cent piece that makes for a damn catastrophic failure. So I reassembled the whole thing again and tightened everything up really well and then tentatively went and turned the water back on at the main valve. When I came back upstairs it wasn't Niagara Falls any more but back to the same annoying drip. Well, at least I know WHY it's dripping and how to fix it. Now I have to go to the bloody hardware shop tomorrow and buy some new rubber gaskets. At least my engineer genes allowed me to figure out how to fix the thing and it turned out to be a fairly easy fix. I would have been super pissed if I had to give big moolah to a plumber for a freaking two cent part.

I AM CLOSING COMMENTS ON THIS POST.  STOP FUCKING TELLING ME THAT I SHOULD HAVE TURNED OFF THE MAIN SHUT OFF.  I AM BLOODY WELL AWARE OF THAT YOU FUCKING TROLLS.

For LOLz

These pics had me just about laughing my ass off:





FB friends are funny things. The person who I steal these things from is someone with whom I used to go to high school. She was in the next grade up(1 year older). I remember seeing her around school but we were never actually friends. I think she had a couple classes with a few of my friends but I don't ever recall speaking to her at school. The first time we actually met formally was about nine years after graduation when my friends K and W and I went to the NHL All Star block party and this person was a vendor there. I think K had a class with her when we were in school. So now after another few years we're FB friends. It's one of those funny quirks of life; if I had had classes with her when we were both in school I'm sure we would have been great friends. We both have a very similar sense of humor and we seem to have some of the same interests. Now she lives about two hours drive from where I live. Oh well, c'est la vie.

BTW, the second pic I totally need on a shirt!

Summer Solstice

Yep. Longest day of the year indeed. It was almost 8:30 before the sun went down over here. Not much fanfare about it, though. I don't think there was even a mention of it on the news today. No fun pagan festivities going on.

From Wiki:

The pagans believed that it was a sacred holy day honoring the two most important elements: Fire and Water. The tradition is to burn fires at the end of the day and bathe in open waters at sunset, singing and dancing around 'pal' till midnight. At midnight, under the pretext of searching for "Fern flower/the flower of the Fern," unmarried men and women run into the forest. Ladies with a crown of flowers on their head (Polish: wianek), a symbol of their unmarried state, go first, singing. Next they are followed by single men. If you find the "flower of the Fern" the wishes of life may be fulfilled. However, nobody found it so far, but they lived happily together. The lucky man would return with a flower ring on his head, with the now engaged lady.

The closest I'll be getting to any of that today will be firing up the gas stove to make some hot dogs and having a shower before bed. Unfortunately I don't have any lucky man around to run into the forest with either. I'm sure the "lucky man" returned with more than a flower ring on his head...probably a big grin on his face, too! Dancing around the pole til midnight sounds like some sex euphemism to me! LOL Those pagans must've had some herbal viagra in the mix!

In Slavic religion, Kupala is the goddess of herbs, sorcery, sex and midsummer.

(Oh, good guess, eh?)

Ultimate Father's Day Movie

For Father's Day(I hate made-up holidays designed to make the greeting card companies money) I sent the obligatory card(Ha! Made my own! No money for you, card company!) and called my dad(Ugh). Then I made myself a nice pumpkin pie as a reward for my endurance and long-suffering. Then later that evening I watched two far-fetched yet entertaining movies: Taken and Faster.

I had seen Taken before and it is way cool. Even though it's very unrealistic in many ways, it would still be awesome to have a dad with certain...skills. Therefore it gets my pick as Ultimate Father's Day Movie.

Bryan: I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Marko: [after a long pause] Good luck.

That is one of my all time favorite movie quotes. Liam Neeson is such a bad-ass in this movie. And I noticed that the dude who played Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite is in this movie as well as the dude who played the john that Kevin Spacey's character made kill the prostitute with that weenis contraption in Seven.



The second movie was Faster starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob is good in just about every movie he's in so I gave this movie a shot. It turned out to be surprisingly entertaining. Good action and lots of ass kicking and assassinations which usually makes for a decent flick.



So if you need a movie for a rainy day, I give both of these a thumbs up. You will no doubt be entertained.

Got Dick?

So I go out to get the mail today and what do I see? Well, at first I was like, "What the hell is that?" Then I realized that it was my spotted dick!


And after only five months since I won it! It seems Weasel Time is a lot slower than Mexican Minutes.



Anyway, the prize was the spotted dick but the real prize was the hand drawn weasel pic.




The weasel pic is probably going to get framed. Too bad it got a bit bent and smudged in its cross-ocean transit. I'm just surprised it all got here in one piece.

Not much happening around here other than getting my dick. The Euro 2012 games are really pissing me off big time. The teams that I am rooting for are not winning. Even wearing my orange and KNVB kit is not helping. It looks like Spain is going to end up in the final. They are looking way better than the other teams. Oh well, so much for all of that!

The only other thing is I've managed to get to day 13 of my exercise regimen. Woo-hoo! I can once again do a high side kick without pulling a groin muscle. Soon I'll be able to do the flying front kick a la Bruce Lee.

So, anything interesting going on with any of you out there?

5.166 Feet of Fury

I was going to title this post Eff-Eye-Vee-Eee Feet of Eff-You-Are-Why but if you write that out like it's supposed to be spelled, that name already belongs to another blog and that person would probably sue my ass because she's well known and shit. Well, maybe not. Who'd bother. Besides, why short-change myself two inches for a little alliteration? Since I don't have a good martial arts pic of myself, here's a pic of someone conjuring some chi:



Anyway, I have managed to stay on my exercise regimen every day this week in spite of doing a lot of yard work over the weekend in nasty, humid 90 degree heat. Seven days down, twenty-three to go.

Over the weekend I had a chance to watch a bit of the new American Ninja Warrior program. I found it to be a bit disappointing since the producers seem to have the 'give everyone a trophy' mentality and just pass guys through who did not complete the course. They also don't have a time limit to the stages like in the original Japanese version. I HATE when shit is dumbed down or made to be easy. The Japanese don't make it easy. If no one can complete the course then tough shit! No winner. If you want to win, train harder and come back next year. None of this take the fastest losers even though they fell off the obstacles and advance them to the next stage.

I wasn't raised that way. My parents just didn't allow me to win at things. If I wanted to win, then I had to be good enough to win. Imagine if that mentality was applied to doctors. 'Oh, Johnny tried really hard in his anatomy classes but he just doesn't seem to be able to tell his ass from his elbow. Just go ahead and give him his MD so he won't feel bad!" Well, fuck that! No one wants a doctor who hasn't achieved excellence in his field so why should failure be rewarded in other areas of life?

I see that there was a Miami trial down at the FIU campus. I wish they would do a Kunoichi (women's) version. I'd go try out for it in a heartbeat. The Japanese version was tailored to a woman's strength, mainly obstacles that required good balance and speed. Well, just so you know, I am the master of good balance! I'd totally own the rest of those chicks! I used to have monkey bars in the back of my house until a few years ago when they fell victim to the hurricanes. I used to do some real daredevil stunts off those things. I sure miss those monkey bars. They were good for ninja training! Too bad code enforcement is my enemy around here because it would be cool to have some of the ninja warrior obstacles to play with!

You're not allowed to watch that.

I was reading the Mail today and I ran across this article about Brooke Burke launching her new line of lingerie. Every time I see that woman I'm reminded of a funny little incident that happened while visiting a friend and her husband.

I was hanging out at K and W's place. I don't really remember what we were watching on TV, probably hockey or something. Then whatever it was that we were watching ended and some program with Brooke Burke modeling swimsuits and such comes on. Then W perks up, "Hmmm, this looks interesting." I chimed in also in the affirmative. Then K comes and snatches the remote away from W and says, "You're not allowed to watch that." Then she looks at me and says, "You're not allowed to watch that either."

Now any time I see Brooke Burke I always remember that line of reproof: You're not allowed to watch that! LOL

Anyway, seeing that article also reminded me that one can still look pretty hot even after turning forty, not that I'm quite there yet. Getting older doesn't mean that you have to turn into a blob. I admire women who stay in shape even after being married and having kids. One of the things I promised myself is that I'd never let myself go like a lot of people who I grew up with.

That being said, it's still a little too easy to slip into bad eating habits and get lazy when it comes to my fitness. And since I'm a visual person, seeing images of fit people or people exercising always gives me the nudge that I need to get back into my exercise regimen.

They've been advertising one of those DVD series inspired by MMA training so that gave me the inspiration to get a little more serious and try to do one of those "exercise for thirty days and see the results" deals. Of course, the first day I managed to over-do it like I always seem to do, so I was sore the next day. (That was on Monday.) I still managed to push myself through a light workout yesterday. Today I wasn't so sore so I did a light workout but concentrated more on stretching. I sure as hell am not as limber as I used to be when I practiced martial arts many years ago! But that's a fairly easy fix. I can probably get myself pretty limber within a few weeks.

So! Would anyone like to join me in doing a 30 day regimen complete with before and after pics?

So Wrong Yet So Hilarious

I do not seek these stories out. They just find me. Or rather, others find them and pass them along to me with the obligatory question, "WTF is it with the Dutch?"

The uncreative will never understand such artistic genius.

Isn't it funny that I watched a whole marathon of American Stuffers over the weekend and now this? Somehow I find making kitty into a 'copter less disturbing than just freeze drying him and displaying him on a coffee table. I did reassure my dog that I would not get him freeze dried when he eventually carks it.

I had a little conversation about the subject with my mother. Maybe it would be a happy medium for her instead of a traditional burial or cremation? Perhaps the taxidermist would expand his services to include freeze drying people? It was all in jest but she failed to see the humor in it. LOL "Just think," I said. "They take out your organs and brain so those bits won't be rotting and reeking and then they freeze dry the rest. It's almost like mummification. Then you won't have to worry about your body liquefying and putrifying into a big ol' mess inside the casket!" LOLOL The disapproval was a thing to behold! You'd think she'd be used to my sense of humor by now.

Could you imagine freeze drying my mother and then making her into a helicopter? What a weapon of terror that would be! Brrrrr!!!!! I'm probably going to give myself nightmares!

They're not retarded, they're Dutch.

That video was pretty funny Arekino, and it kinda reminded me of a couple things.

I had heard this story before but it still cracks me up. And it's also one of my favorite stories from someone's childhood.

...Both of her parents are from Amsterdam and came to live in South Carolina the year she was born. Anna’s father was an anesthesiologist and was gone all of the time. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom so Anna got to spend all of her time with her mother. Anna’s mom was very lonely for Holland. When Anna reached school age, her father told her mother that Anna could not stay home but had to go to school. The first day, her mom dressed her up in a fancy little dress and patent leather shoes and walked her to school. She handed her over to the teacher and left. That afternoon, when Anna’s mother came to pick her up, the teacher said she needed to talk to her. The teacher said “We think Anna’s retarded.” You see, Anna’s parents forgot to teach her English, and her teacher failed to recognize that Anna was speaking Dutch. So her parents taught her English IN A WEEK and sent her back to school where she excelled.

I've had peeps on Facebook (well, one peep in particular) ask me the same thing when they saw some Dutch stuff on my page. "What's up with those peeps? Are they retarded?" No, not retarded. They're Dutch!