Knock If You Dare

This guy



is very similar to the one I used to have on my front door. The one I had was about 20 pounds of solid brass. The newer versions are crappy cast iron. I used to get a kick out of peeps who would come up on my front porch and knock with their knuckles on the door instead of using the knocker. Only friends of mine would use the knocker; they thought it was the kewlest.

Unfortunately, the old door that my greenman knocker was on had to be replaced and the new door has a different design that won't accommodate a giant door knocker.

Kewl Krap

I think some of these Tesla Coils



would make a nice addition to the landscaping in the front of my house. One on either side of the front walkway would be quite nice. I'd like to see those pesky Jehovah's Witnesses try to navigate their way through that. And what the hell is with those Jehovah's Witness lately? Now they're leaving literature written entirely in Greek. Do they think there are a lot of people who are able to read Greek around here?

And for the first time in probably ever I tend to agree with most of the comments on that video. This one is a beaut:

"Maybe the kid can't help it she is a worthless waste of oxygen. Blame the parents for not teaching her manners or learning her about good music. "

I blame you and your school for not teaching you the proper usage of the word "learning" even though I agree with the gist of your comment. The parents are clearly cretins. And yeah, shut the hell up, you dumb-asses!

And



Here's another good one:

"If I were your neighbor and heard this song really loud in the middle of the night like this, I would probably shit myself."

That would be the result I would desire from my neighbors. MWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

Hurricane Isaac can kiss my ass.

What a pain in the ass hurricanes and tropical storms are. This one is no exception. I'm not wishing for hurricane force winds. I don't even want tropical storm force winds but I'll take them as opposed to hurricane force ones. What I would really like is for this storm to go the hell away.

Regardless, I've had to spend the better part of the day preparing for what may or may not come. I put up the hurricane panels to the windows and rounded up all the miscellaneous crap from around the yard and locked it in the dog kennel. I rearranged the crap in the car-port and pulled my car in there. I put batteries in all the lanterns and flash lights and the little TV so I'm about as ready as I can get.

My mother is driving me completely insane because of this stupid storm. She loves worrying just as much as nagging. In fact, she can combine the two so she can drive me more insane than usual. I wish this fucking storm would hurry up and get the hell out of here so I don't have the extreme stress to deal with.

And to add insult to injury, a nosy relative had to tip my mother off to the fact that my dad bought the property in Tennessee and also told her that he gave $$$$$ to his SiL. That really has my mother set off. She's been berating me all week over that as if I can make my dad do or not do anything. My mother is so envious. All she can think about when he spends money on something is that it's money that she isn't getting. Now she's on the "Aunt B is trying to beat you out of your inheritance" theme. Well, there's no guarantee in that since my dad is so irresponsible that he probably doesn't have a will to begin with and there's no guarantee that he would leave me anything because he can't stand the thought that anything he'd leave to me would benefit my mother.

Anyway, the storm should be here by Sunday evening and last through Monday. Hopefully there won't be too much wind although there *is* supposed to be a lot of rain. Just as long as the power doesn't go out I'll be good. See ya after the storm!

Is there anyone out there with normal parents?

Because if there is, it really must be an amazing thing to know that your parents are not completely bat-shit insane. Just being around my mother is pure psychological torture. I'm pretty sure one of her favorite things in the world is to torture me in little sadistic passive-aggressive ways. She knows what things drive me nuts and she deliberately does them when she knows there is no way for me to escape. For example, over the weekend she wanted to go to the Penn Dutch market up in Hollywood(just going there and having to deal with the lunatics that shop there is torture enough, I think I have PTSD just from being in there) but she can't be like any normal person and take I-95 so that we can get there in 10 minutes or less. Oh no. No, no, no. She has to take a bunch of meandering side roads and if that wasn't bad enough, she has to drive so damn slow it's like she's driving Miss Daisy. I swear to god that her maximum speed was 25 mph. It took 45 minutes to get there when it should have only taken 10 minutes.

When we got to the damn store, the place was totally insane like it always is, except somehow it seemed worse than ever. The people who go in there are such rude assholes with no manners. They push and shove and act like it's going to be their last opportunity for the rest of their lives to buy some fucking meat. Christ, people! They're open like every day and they have shit-tons of meat. They're not going to run out. Don't worry. Anyway, she has to start haranguing one of the poor stock boys about whether or not the meat is actually graded "choice" because the ad says it's "choice" but the packages aren't labeled "choice." So the stock boy did what any normal person would do when dealing with my mother, he said he would go in the back and check and then never came back. After waiting about five minutes or so, she decided to go ahead and take the meat since it was apparent that the stock boy wasn't coming back.

We left there and she wanted to go to the animal shelter to look at the animals. More slow driving. There were some nice dogs and cats there. It made me think of Petrichor because they had a few cats that were free and she is well on her way to being a crazy cat lady and would probably have taken them.

After that, my mother wanted to go to the other damn side of town to return some rawhide chews that I had gotten for the dog since they were made in China and my mother doesn't trust anything from there. So we do the slow-drive all the way out there to that store and since it was the weekend before back-to-school, it was totally insane so suddenly my mother decided against it. Then we slow-drove home.

When we got home, she goes ahead and opens the package of rawhide chews and gives one to the dog anyway even after all her bitching about it. The next day my mother cooked one of the packages of meat that we had bought at Penn Dutch and I vacuum sealed the other one and put it in the freezer. Of course my mother never has a good thing to say about anything and starts going on and on that the meat is terrible, who knows were they got it, it doesn't have any flavor, it doesn't taste like beef, on and on and on. She's fucking bat-shit insane! There was nothing wrong with the damn meat! It was fine...tasted good.

So today, more of her damn insanity. And to add insult to injury, I have Ma Nature to deal with. I had to drive her to her weekly doc appointment. On the way there, she starts bitching about all the money the county is spending on new school buses with a/c and the whole nine yards for the kids. I mentioned that back when I was in school, the buses didn't have a/c or even seat belts. But luckily for me, I didn't have to ride the school bus and the only time I was in one was when my class would go on a field trip somewhere. Then my mother lays into me that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, that I rode the school bus every morning to school and that *she remembers* because she had to get me ready every morning. Well, I just about hit the fucking ceiling because I have never in my life heard of such a fantasy and that she had the fucking nerve to be arguing with me about it. I. NEVER. RODE. THE. FUCKING. BUS. NEVER!!!! YOU DROVE ME TO FUCKING SCHOOL EVERY FUCKING MORNING AND PICKED ME UP AFTERWARD AND WHEN DAD HAD A DAY OFF FROM WORK HE WOULD TAKE ME AND PICK ME UP!!!!!!!!! Oh my effing god, so that erupted into a real full blown argument complete with me calling her a fucking delusional lunatic and her telling me to go fuck myself amongst other choice words. She's such a damn nut-job. I was sooooo fuming mad that after she got settled with the doctor, instead of me going to the waiting room I went back out to my car to call my dad so that he could confirm to me that I indeed never rode the fucking bus to school. Well, he did indeed confirm that *I* was right and that my mother is a delusional lunatic.

Anyway, while I had my dad on the phone, I asked him how his last trip to Tennessee went. Pretty good, it seems. He bought 5 acres of land with a house on it and got it super cheap. With any luck, he'll leave it to me in his will. I've always wanted a house in the mountains! He's going back up in a week so I hope he takes some pictures. Usually my dad is just about as nuts as my mother, but it seems he made a good decision about something for once.

A New Fuel Source?

One of the problems with the squirrels knocking down all my avocados is that I have to eat them so they don't go to waste. And one of the problems with eating avocados is they make you have very potent farts. Now if someone could figure out a way to capture the farts they could be used as an alternative fuel source! LOL So in honor of the other musical fruit, here is some idiot lighting his fart.

Little Bastards

I love laughing at this tenacious little bastard. I wish my fruit trees were equipped with such devices. My resident squirrel was at it again today. I went out back with the dog so he could make pee-pees and the little bastard was running across the top of the fence heading toward one of the avocado trees. Then he jumped into the tree and ran up the main trunk. I walked around the bottom of the tree trying to see where he went. He was doing the ol' ring-around-the-tree keep away dance so I decided to climb up in the tree to scare him. Well, when he saw me climbing up into the tree he had a look on his face like he could shit a brick. Then he jumped onto a smaller limb which was within my reach so I grabbed onto it and gave it a good shake. At that point he high-tailed it and jumped onto the roof of the house and hauled ass, I know not where.

Well, lo and behold, when I climbed down from that tree I noticed that the fluffy-tailed tree rat had already knocked down an avocado from the other tree. This one wasn't half eaten; it only had a small bite mark at the top by the stem.

Too bad my air rifle broke a long time ago. I was quite good at dispatching the little bastards to the great fruit buffet in the sky. Oh well. I'll just have to put up with tons of half-eaten fruit.

And just out of curiosity, I investigated whether or not the local squirrels are diseased little buggers and it turns out that they are not as I had suspected. They're pretty healthy for thieving little fluffy-tailed tree rats.

Bored

Ugh. Life is soooo boring when you don't have anything in particular to do with yourself. So what did I do today? Not much of anything. I picked a few ripe limes off the tree and then cleaned up all the half-eaten mangoes from the ground courtesy of the bloody squirrel. After that, it started pissing down raining for most of the day so I had no choice but to stay in and try to find something interesting on the TV.

Not much luck with that. Over 200 channels and not a damn thing on. I watched the movie Code 46 again. It's a good thing I know a little bit of a few languages because that movies is in English with some Spanish, French, Mandarin, and Arabic thrown in with no subtitles. It seems like that would be kinda annoying if you didn't know what the non English phrases meant. Anyway, that movie is depressing. One of those dystopian futuristic deals. While I was wasting my time watching that, I was missing a concert from one of my favorite bands--The Cult. It turned out to be a fairly old concert, but it seemed like it was new. They sure did give a good live show.

Now I'm watching another movie--Winter in Wartime. I saw it before too. At least it has subtitles. So, anyone out there doing anything interesting?

Goooooooooooooooold!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn't have asked for a better women's soccer final. It was a great game and was played by the two best women's teams in my opinion. This game was the way soccer should be played; two very skillful teams playing their hardest and playing with integrity and respect. Yes, there were fouls but they weren't from dirty playing and no dives. Some of the male players could learn good sportsmanship from these ladies.

This was such a great game and really kept me on the edge of my seat, shouting instructions the whole time. LOL That pass from Alex Morgan that Carli Lloyd scored her first goal off of was a thing of beauty. I thought Abby Wambach got a foot on it at first but the replay showed that it was Carli Lloyd who got it with a lunging header. And Carli's second goal was freakin' awesome. It was perfectly struck to the far post. Hope Solo was great in goal with some key saves: two put over the crossbar and a couple stuffed at point blank range. The Japanese ladies never gave up and eventually got one goal back but just couldn't put another one in. They played their asses off and they have all my respect. No shame in that loss.

So one more gold for the US Women's National Team. They're definitely one of the best women's teams that we've had.

My Girls

Today, my girls, the US women's soccer team, played the Canadians in their semifinal game. I got to watch most of the first half and then I had to take my mother to her doctor's appointment. (I broke out my old Mia Hamm jersey to wear while I was out.) Well, when I left for the appointment, the Americans were down 1-0 and I was most unhappy. When I got to the doctor's office, they had some Olympics programming on but not the soccer game since that was on cable. I was really pissed because I figured the game would be over by the time I got home.

Fast-forward to when I get home: to my surprise, the first 15 minutes of overtime was just about to end and to my relief the score was tied 3-3. Second overtime starts and it was a very nerve-wracking thing to watch. The Americans were looking much fitter than the Canadians and I was praying that one of my girls would score because deciding a game on penalty kicks sucks ass big-time and I hate to see games decided like that. Well, I got my wish! With maybe 30 seconds left in stoppage time, Alex Morgan, who played her ass off in my opinion, got the game winner with a beautiful header! I was screaming at the TV with great joy and I could hear my mother downstairs saying something sarcastic about it to the dog.

Anyway, now my girls play Japan for the gold. I really like the Japanese team. They play hard as a team and with good sportsmanship; I kinda hate to root against them.

Olympics

Sorry for the lack of posting but I've been a wee bit distracted by the Olympics. I love the Olympics and I love competition. My country is doing pretty good, as usual. The US female gymnasts weren't too bad(gold medals) but I have to say that no one comes close to Mary Lou Retton in my opinion. Nope. None of you will ever be Mary Lou.

1984 was pretty special. That was probably the first Olympics that I remember and definitely the one that I was most into; the Cold War was still on and it was most satisfying to see an American beat gymnasts from Soviet Bloc countries even after they put their people through athlete mills and shot them up with all sorts of steroids and God know what else. And Mary Lou was freakin' awesome. I remember that everyone loved her. How couldn't you? Her smile and personality were absolutely infectious and she was hella amazing as a gymnast. Gold medal, baby!

Yeah, I'll never forget the 1984 Olympics. I was soooo into it that I had all the US olympic team kit: the warm-up suit, t-shirt, watch, hat, even a swimsuit. Hell, I even got to see Mary Lou Retton herself at Disney World. I could have died and gone to heaven! Not only was I at Disney World but I got to see Mary Lou freakin' Retton!

These Oympics have been pretty good so far but I doubt there will ever be one as good as the 1984 Olympics.