This is only a test.

This is just a test to determine whether or not I know how to communicate properly.  I have been told by one person in particular that I don't know how to communicate.  That's kinda funny, since all evidence seems to support the fact that I have been able to successfully communicate for the past few decades.  So let's do a little experiment.  I shall relate to you the small task that I did today and then you tell me if you understood.

Here goes:  I had to cut down three fishtail palms that were growing by the neighbor's fence.  The palms were not deliberately planted there.  It seems that they sprouted up because of seeds dropped by a bird.  That sort of palm is rather messy and can get very large so it was best that I cut them down before they got any larger.  So I went and cut them down with the electric chainsaw and then proceeded to cut all the fronds off and cut the trunks into small, manageable pieces.  I then put as many of the fronds and trunk pieces as I could fit into the big wheelie bin for trash pick-up.  The rest of the fronds and trunk pieces were loaded onto the lawn cart and wheeled around to the car port.  I then unloaded them from the cart and stacked them on the floor behind my car.  I did this so they wouldn't lay in the yard killing the grass and getting wet and nasty with all the rain we've been having.  After I stacked the fronds and trunk pieces behind my car, I then put the lawn cart on the top of them.

Now, a few questions to determine if you understood what I just said here.

1)  What did I do to the fishtail palms by the neighbors fence?

2)  Where are the fronds and trunk pieces?

3)  Where is the lawn cart?

4)  Was that story so hard to understand?

Ancient Chinese Wisdom

To keep the Chinese theme going a bit more, here are some wise sayings. Enjoy!

Passionate kiss like spider's web, soon lead to undoing of fly.

Virginity like bubble, one prick all gone.

Man who run in front of car get tired.

Man who run behind car get exhausted.

Man with hand in pocket feel cocky all day.

Foolish man give wife grand piano, wise man give wife upright organ.

Man who walk thru airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok.

Man with one chopstick go hungry.

Man who scratches ass should not bite fingernails.

Man who eat many prunes get good run for money.

Baseball is wrong, man with four balls cannot walk.

Panties not best thing on earth but next to best thing on earth

War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.

Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cathouse.

Man who fight with wife all day get no piece at night.

It take many nails to build crib but one screw to fill it.

Man who drive like hell bound to get there.

Man who stand on toilet is high on pot.

Man who lives in glass house should change clothes in basement.

Man who fishes in other man's well often catches crabs.

Man who farts in church sits in own pew.

Man who drops watch in toilet bound to have crappy time.

Crowded elevator smells different to midget.

Have A Smelly Day!

Yesterday(Thursday), seemed like it was National Reek to High Heaven Day.  No matter where I went, there were lots of nasty-ass people who smelled like B.O. and ass.  The first was a big, fat guy in the waiting room at the doctor's office.  He smelled like ass and flop sweat.  Then there was a whole herd of fat hippo-looking bipedal beasts at Publix stampeding through the produce aisle.  And then there was an old man in the check-out line in front of me who had the old man B.O. funk.  What the hell is wrong with people?  Can't they smell their own selves?

I also went to the Oriental grocery last night.  At least there weren't any smelly peeps in there, just the usual aroma.  I wanted to get some items to make some Chinese food.  I ended up getting there about a half hour before they closed and the young guy who works there was already mopping the floor. I apologized for messing up his work and he said it was okay, but then a bunch of other peeps came in behind me and really messed it up. (This is why you should wait until the store closes to mop up.)  Anyway, I needed some red marinade for roast pork and some baby bok choy and bean sprouts.  The bean sprouts there are the cheapest in town.  I can get a big package for around $1.  The baby bok choy wasn't looking very good so I ended up getting the regular size bok choy.  It ended up being cheaper at $0.95/lb, about $0.50 cheaper per pound than the baby variety.  And I managed to find one that wasn't too heavy and had a good quantity of green tops.  Surprisingly, they didn't have any snow pea pods so I was glad that I had bought them at Publix.  I ended up picking up a few sauces in jars and a package of fried noodles, too.  The weird thing was they didn't have any frozen egg rolls.  They had egg roll skins and frozen pot stickers and buns and such, but no egg rolls.  Ah well, they had a lot of other cool stuff.  I think the Oriental grocery is one of my favorite places just because of all the different and unusual foods for sale.  Even durian.

Onward to Wally World!  Had to pick up some bread and dog food.  At least they had the frozen egg rolls!  While I was in the check out line, someone came up and tapped me on the arm and said, "Excuse me.  Don't I know you?"  It was someone who I used to work with about four years ago.  She told me she was still working at that place and that the lady who was our manager was still there.  She told me that they remodeled the place.  I told her that I had heard that one of the other managers had died.  She confirmed that he had died from a heart attack.  I think he was 52.  She didn't seem to have too much to add so I told her it was nice to see her and went about my business.  Too bad the other manager didn't die.  I might've seen about getting my old job back if that was the case. 

Movie Review Time!

Since I have nothing better to do, and since I had some free movie channels over the weekend I got to see a few movies that came out in the last two years or so. Here we go!

Fright Night A remake. I'm sooooo tired of remakes. Which proves my point that Hollywood seems to have run out of original ideas. It wasn't horrible but it wasn't that good, either. And there was some CGI abuse which is another peeve of mine.


Harry Brown Oh man, this was a great movie! Michael Caine (one of my favorite actors) as an ex-military pensioner, kicking ass vigilante style against a bunch of young, despicable thugs. Excellent, excellent movie. I highly recommend it.


Meskada Movie about a police detective who has to go to the small town where he grew up to solve the case of a young boy who was murdered. A bit slow paced but not too bad.


Contagion This is a movie that will make the obsessive-compulsive germaphobes even more crazy. It was pretty good for a Hollywood movie. It sorta reminded me of a book I read about the scientific reasons for kosher/Jewish dietary laws. It said that there was a reason why a lot of pandemics start in Asia. In Asia they will literally eat any kind of animal. In the Jewish dietary laws, there are two categories of animals: clean and unclean. Many of the "unclean" animals are responsible for cross species infectious diseases. I won't say any more about that so I don't ruin the ending of this movie if you haven't seen it yet.


Puss In Boots Animated movie in the style of the Shrek series. It was pretty good.


Crazy, Stupid, Love. Not horrible but seriously? I know that this is just a movie but what a sad social commentary that there are people who actually act this way. And I totally don't get why some women go crazy over Ryan Gosling. His eyes are too close together and he has a weird looking face. His abs are even weird looking. And his surname means a young goose.


The Black Swan I just don't get what all the hype was about. It wasn't *bad* but it wasn't great either. Not Oscar-worthy IMO. Natalie Portman totally does not look like any ballet dancer that I have ever seen and I *have* worked around ballet dancers before. Ballet dancers are very muscular and fit and have very little body fat. They are not scrawny anorexics like Natalie Portman. I guess people get all worked up over the wanking and the lezzie scene. Which reminds me: Q. What's just as embarrassing as someone walking in on you wanking? A. Someone walking in on you while you're watching someone wanking in a movie!


Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy I usually like Cold War era type movies and this one had a really great cast. There was a lot of dialogue to pay attention to and once again someone had to walk in on me and go off on a monologue for several minutes so I ended up missing some critical dialogue and that pretty much ruined it for me. I guess it was pretty good.


The Debt Another movie set partly in the Cold War era. It was about three Mossad agents who had to capture a Nazi doctor who had experimented on Jews. It had Helen Mirren in it and she is one of my favorite actresses. It was pretty good.

So Bored

I have nothing much to write about because I do nothing much day in and day out. All I do is vegetate and watch TV and screw around on the internet. Where I found these funny geeky shirts and things. I think this one is my favorite. And this thing is pretty funny, too.

I have free HBO and Cinemax this weekend so I've been watching a few movies.

So what are y'all up to? Maybe Arekino would like to do some guest posting for me?

NIAFPHFPPW the Third

I'm surprised I've kept this up for three whole posts. Alrighty then!





Last night's dinner of sausage, sauerkraut, and a nuked potato with garlic butter was second day leftovers. It's an easy meal for when I don't feel like spending much time cooking.

Nuked potatoes are the best! I think they come out much better than ones baked in the oven. Oven baked potatoes usually come out a bit hard in my opinion. When they're cooked in the microwave, they come out nice and fluffy since the microwave cooks them from the inside.

I was going to make pork chops today but I didn't feel like it so I just had a pizza instead. No pic of that, though.

NIAFPHFPPW: Offering the Second

This is the sort of thing that breakfast mutates into when part of your family is English and part is Dutch and you live in the South. Two eggs over medium, English muffin(American-style crumpet) with Dickinson's Lemon Curd(very English) and butter, and grits with a dollop of butter melting in the center(very Southern). All washed down with a bold, full-bodied English tea(The London Cuppa brand) in a Van Gogh Starry Night mug.

It was a very filling breakfast since it stuck with me all day(I forgot to eat lunch). It even lasted through me mowing the lawn today in the blistering heat. It was a strange weather day today. I got up to what felt like the beginning of Autumn. It was hot but not too humid and the sky was perfectly clear.

There must have been a nice high pressure area in position, but it was hotter than blue blazes. After mowing for about 45 minutes I had to stop and come inside before I passed out. I had to strip down to my undies since my clothes were sweated clean through and sit in front of the fan(and this is with the AC going) and drink about a liter of ice water. After I got cooled back down to a reasonable temperature, I went back out and finished up. At least when I went back out, the sun was down enough to get obstructed by the big trees in the front of the house. There was a bit of a breeze so it didn't feel too bad as I mowed the rest of the yard.

For dinner I had leftover sausage with sauerkraut and a nuked potato with garlic butter. I'll save that pic for tomorrow's post!

National Irritate a Food Pic Hater Food Pic Posting Week

Because I'm sick of bitching about politics and Laura is cool and shit with all her ideas and renderings and it gives me an excuse to post some of the delicious food that I make!

So, here's my Offering the First: Fried Lamb Chop with English-style Mint Sauce and Tabulleh. Or Tabbouleh. Or however the hell you spell it.

Lunatic Fringe

This year for the first time in my life, I decided to watch both political parties' conventions. The Republicans held theirs first in Tampa. Due to Hurricane Isaac, the first night of that convention was cancelled. The rest of the convention was the usual boring fare that you see in these things--our guy is great and is going to do all this wonderful stuff, yaddy-yaddy-yaddy. They made Mittens seem like a nice enough guy even though he is not who I want to be President. (My guy didn't win the nomination.)

Now we're onto the second night of the Democrat convention. I watched the fist night--the whole thing on CSPAN--and I have to say, these people are fucking frightening. I don't know how many times I said out loud that the people in the audience looked like they were bussed in from a psych ward. And all the speakers looked like raving lunatics, literally shouting into the microphone. The message that I came away with was "abortion is the greatest thing EVAR, because of Democrats women now live past 50 years of age(yes, one of the speakers actually said that), and we all belong to the government." WTF? It literally made me sick to my stomach. And all the pandering to blacks and hispanics was sickening and very alienating.

I have been following along with Kevin over at Hillbuzz. He has been live-blogging the thing and helping the rest of us who are following along keep our sanity with his spot on analysis and sense of humor. He has a great summary here. I couldn't put it better myself, and since he already did, I don't have to. Go read for yourself.

Mysterious Redness

This past Thursday I was putting some crap back in the carport post Hurricane Isaac. Afterward, I went back into the house to cool off and wash my hands. I then noticed that there was a strange reddish patch on the side of my left hand between my pinky finger and my wrist. It looked like a burn but it didn't hurt or itch and it wasn't a different texture than the rest of my skin. It sorta looked like a stain. I know I didn't get bitten by anything and thought perhaps it was an allergic reaction to something that I had touched.

The next day, Friday, when I woke up I noticed that there were more reddish-brown marks on my left hand, this time at the base of my thumb and in-between my fingers by the knuckles,and a small mark near my wrist. That's when I started to get very concerned. So I consulted the internet.

I found a lot of people have had similar experiences but no one seems to know what it is. The most popular explanations are contact dermatitis or a sluggish liver. After the discoloration near my thumb appeared, it occurred to me that I've had this happen before in the same location by my thumb, except when it happened before I figured I had burned myself somehow.

It's a very strange thing. I put some of my mother's prescription steroidal skin cream on it and it had no effect. Hydrocortizone cream had no effect. I put some tea tree oil on it last night and this morning it looked a little faded, but that could just be that it's going away on its own, although I'm continuing to put the tea tree oil on it. The tea tree oil doesn't smell so bad once the initial turpentine scent wears off.

So now I'm thinking that perhaps it is a congested liver. I've been eating some fried food and fatty things lately and I just cooked a turkey a few days ago so I've been eating that. Maybe my liver *is* taxed. I guess I'll have to look up one of those liver cleanse things. Oh well, I guess it's best to catch these things while you're still young-ish.