January 20, 2003 (4:12 a.m. CST)
Gads. A dingo ate my sanity.

So it's the Raiders and the Buccaneers facing each other in Super Bowl XXXVII. Niiice! I bet that pirates across the world are setting sail for San Diego to lend their support for their eyepatch-wearin' and doubloon-stealin' brethren as I write this. Yar! If we could convince Mike Alstott to swing in from the mizzenmast during the player introductions, my life's work would be complete.

I can tell by the way my monitor is burning holes in my corneas that it's time to retire. Sleep tight, fair readers. I should return tomorrow. Or the next day. Well, sometime before mid-April. I think.

January 19, 2003 (5:37 p.m. CST)
Sweet, sweet jesus. By way of Bill Simmons of ESPN.com's Page 2, here's a page that will confuse you, amuse you and possibly bruise you: Peja Drobnjak's Manjaks. Drobnjak is the center for the Seattle Supersonics, and has possibly the best Web site of any athlete. Ever.

Today's been a lazy day of sleeping in, breaking my diet and watching football. All of these things make me a happy, happy Gord. All I need is a hummer, and the weekend will be complete. I doubt I'll be able to watch the Raiders-Titans game, as Fungushead's decided that she wants to tune into the Golden Globes tonight. We'll see, I guess.

January 17, 2003 (11:42 a.m. CST)
Alright, before I go to lunch, here's a quick post. First, my sweet Natalie Portman was named one of People Magazine's Top Bachelorettes of 2003. For the most part, she's in good company (more specifically, women I'd have no problem screwing): Renee Zellweger, Kristin Davis and Nicole Kidman for instance. But Jennifer Love Hewitt? Mariah Carey? Oy.

Also in the news today...Pete Rose may just make the Baseball Hall of Fame sooner than most of us think. No, not that Baseball Hall of Fame...the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. I guess his half-season with les Expos qualifies him for nomination into the Canadian Hall.

I'm so hungry, I could eat a batch of ricin oatmeal cookies. Well, almost.

January 16, 2003 (5:59 p.m. CST)
Okay...I've finally reset my UTA account, so my page should be working on both the UTA server and Angelfire by sometime tomorrow. Cross your fingers.

I'll be archiving the blog entries for September through December sometime this weekend.

I haven't posted a random GIS image for a while. So here's a Hawaiian shirt, complete with hula dancers! Spiffy!

Yesterday, I received a court summons. No, I didn't witness any heinous crime. I've been selected for jury duty. Unlike The Simpsons' Apu, I didn't need to earn my citizenship before receiving my summons. Thankfully, I'm able to duck out of being a juror due to both my alien status and my university enrollment. I'm pretty sure I'll get my chance to bless the courts with my flatulence soon enough, though.

January 2, 2003 (1:53 a.m. CST)
Okay, I lied. I had two accepted. Alright...three, then. Four, even.

January 2, 2003 (1:37 a.m. CST)
Look what I found! An archived version of my only contribution to the Dysfunctional Family Circus. Back then (early 1998, I think), I was known as "knuckles" -- I changed to "caknuck" after too many other "knuckles" popped up. It even retains the link to my first Web page at the U of M.

Here's a collection of a few of my most recent E2 nodes:
-- Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War
-- Why 'X' Sucks
-- Jesus was a black man
-- Cotton Bowl

January 1, 2003 (2:19 a.m. CST)
It's been far too long since I've blogged. Far too long indeed.

Here are my New Year's Resolutions:

• I resolve to join my wife in her dieting attempts.
• I resolve to be a better friend, and to keep better contact with my friends.
• I resolve to be more consistent with my blogging.

That's it.

November 9, 2002 (6:00 a.m. CST)
So, I had my hair cut yesterday. Cutting my hair isn't that difficult of a task; certainly not difficult enough to warrant charging $12.95 to do it. I've given myself a number of haircuts in the past -- mostly complete shaves, but I have given myself a trim now and again -- so it can't be that tough.

Either way, I had blonde white trash girl cutting my hair (as opposed to dumpy, brunette white trash girl and semi-attractive, potentially-white trash girl) today. She tried to engage me in conversation, but I met her with disinterest. She turned her chatter toward dumpy, brunette white trash girl. It seems that the white trash girls are exchanging tattoos for Christmas, but they haven't finalized the details yet. Blonde is wary of screwing Brunette over, as her tattoo likely would cost more than Brunette's choice. (This implies that Blonde's tattoo is either big or colorful, probably like one of those fuck-off tats that porn stars get in the smalls of their backs.) Brunette responds by saying that she'll get many small tattoos to equal Blonde's sprawling exhibit of fat girl art. Brunette has a plan: she wants to get all (her choice of words, not mine) of the Disney characters inked on her ankle. All? That's a lot of characters, dammit! Brunette is a hefty girl, but her ankle can't be that big...I hope. If I had to choose a handful of Disney creations to adorn my body, I think my list would loook something like this: Pumbaa (the warthog from The Lion King), Lumiere (the "lovestruck candelabra") from Beauty and the Beast, voiced by Jerry Orbach, no less), Rick Moranis (Wayne Szalinski from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids), and the Swamp Fox. Now that's a tattoo!

November 7, 2002 (6:00 a.m. CST)
A quick perusal of the times I posted the last four blog entries should lead you to an obvious conclusion: my sleep schedule is messed-up. Well, it's erratic by nature, but the last few days have been extraordinarily so. I think I would've gotten a good night's sleep if I hadn't been awaken to walk the dog. So now I sit here, unable to sleep but with a few good items for a blog entry...

It's about time, eh? It looks like Jean Chrétien's iron grip on the the Canadian Liberal Party, and thus Parliament, is slipping. Former-FInance Minister Paul Martin (a Grit) and Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper led several Liberal backbenchers astray in a vote to have committee appointments selected via secret ballot. This should help staunch Chrétien's blatant use of patronage to reward his yes-men. More importantly, it looks like this may be the harbinger of Chrétien's long- overdue loss of power. Sweet.

In this week's dumbass fraternity news: Pi Kappa Alphas from the University of Nevada at Reno drowned a pledge and Kappa Sigmas at the University of Missouri in Rolla were dumb enough to videotape themselves blowing up a box turtle. As a fraternity alumnus (thankfully of neither of those GLOs), this sort of thing pisses me off immeasurably. Fraternities and sororities invest a lot of their resources in overcoming the myriad stereotypes with which they are tagged. Misogynists. Elitists. Drunks. Racists. Rapists. Whores. The last thing they need to do is add "murderers" and "animal abusers" to that list.

November 6, 2002 (2:09 p.m. CST)
It sucks to be Winona Ryder. I suppose you could say that Reality Bites, eh Winona?

While on the topic of theft, it looks like the mother of an eighteen-year old Swazi girl who was kidnapped by the reigning monarch won't be getting her daughter back. It must be good to be king, even if you're only reigning over a small, landlocked African nation. "You, yes you by the radio. Come with me and be my wife... well, one of my wives, at least. No? I don't recall phrasing that as a question. Seize her!"

November 6, 2002 (3:31 a.m. CST)
In what I'd like to believe is an effort to win my undying love, whatever government agency or agencies responsible for highway construction have decided to extend the frontage road on the south side of Loop 820 from Beach Street to Haltom Road. While this new frontage road may only result in a handful of avoided headaches in the next year or two, it's a signal that the road builders haven't forgotten about us in fair Haltom. As far as the project to widen 820 to three lanes goes, that project is still several miles away.

Well, bully for the Republicans! To be honest, my political leanings are right-of-center, but I'm a bit wary of any unchallenged majority. Also, I'm hardly a fan of the blind partisanship necessary to pass legislation in Congress these days. Phooey. But who am I to criticize...I didn't even vote. Then again, I'm not legally able to vote.

---

Now look at this handsome gentleman, the result of another random GIS search. I bet he's the rage with all of the goth chicks: anguished look, lace collar (whose effect is betrayed somewhat by his wiseguy-chic gold chain) and heavy eye makeup. At least I hope that's makeup; I'd hate to see this poor, downtrodden soul suffer more than he reasonably should, simply because he was dumb enough to have some faux Egyptian design tattooed on his cheek. Wait a freaking minute...I love to see that crap. Abuse away, folks!

For more hilarity, check out the pandering poetry this mutant forced out of his eighth grade vocabulary at his Web site: "The Inner Torment of Puuba" Believe me, Puuba, the torment's all ours, especially after we read arsefluid like this: "And gory, and covered with mud/The blood, oh, the blood, the blood!" Yes, that is blood. And it's issuing forth from our ears, bitch. So stop whining, clean up your face and start cooking those fries. And when you're done doing that, stop your fucking whining, clean up your fucking face and start cooking those fucking fries. Otherwise the only thing that'll be gory and covered in mud will be the lifeless sack of organs you formerly claimed as your body.

Why are there so many goths on the Internet, anyway? Not long ago, the moanings of misplaced teenaged angst were confined to spiral notebooks ablaze with hackneyed poems, Jesus and Mary Chain lyrics and rhetorical thoughts on sexual ambiguity. But now, all of these things (and more!) are available to the viewing public...free! Just remember Azrael Nightshade, Prince of the Moonlit Glens, that some web crawler at some university is caching your page, solidifying its place in the Internet's history. And that goth Web ring? They won't escape posterity either.

(Note: The above rant doesn't reflect the full spectrum of my feelings about goths. Frankly, I don't care how much mascara you wear, or how bad your "morbid" poetry is. Just leave me alone, and all will be cool. I suppose I just crossed that line myself, but you have to admit that guy looks a bit fruity.)

---

November 6, 2002 (12:52 a.m. CST)
I was thinking the other day, if the Palestinians are insistent on getting their own homeland, then why haven't we been able to provide them with one? Look at the Slavs...they have two homelands: Slovakia and Slovenia. So why shouldn't the United Nations yank one of these minor European countries away from its current owners and hand it to the Palestinians? Well, several reasons in fact, one of them being that most central Europeans would prefer not having millions of swarthy Middle Easterners as neighbors. But enough of that...

I've been spending much of the last few days playing a free demo of Battlefield 1942. Only one map is playable, but it gives you a very good idea of how the gameplay works. Highly recommended.

I'm thinking about requesting the aid of the farkers with naming my fish. They've gone long enough with no identity. (Not that tropical fish care about such things, though...) I am skeptical about the quality (and decency) of any monikers that the FARK.com denizens may choose, but I should have thought about that before waiting so long to name the bloody fish.

October 31, 2002 (5:11 a.m. CST)
Reminder to self: buy Hallowe'en candy. Second reminder to self: leave enough candy for the kids.

Work should be interesting tomorrow, depending on how many people show up in costume. It could very well be a parade of miniskirted hookers, zombie hunchbacks and quakers. Then again, families could be too wrapped up with trick-or-treating to bother going to JCPenney. I'm crossing my fingers for the latter.

If you see more snippets from my childhood and drawn-out stories about the mundane happenings in my life work their way into the blog, do not be alarmed. I'm growing more enthralled with James Lileks' style of writing each time I visit his site. (Be sure to read The Bleat, his own blog.) That being said...

In my household, much of the grocery shopping is done by Caramelhead and I together. We'll head off to Target or Albertsons with our list, usually on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon that I have off from work. Ideally, we'll wind through each and every aisle, finding new ways to spoil her diet. Sometimes, I'll be dispatched to the store for a late night shopping trip. The reasons vary: the item(s) could be at Wal-Mart, which is a horror to shop during regular hours; Karen could need a specific item for school the next day; I'll get a craving for some snack food not found in our cupboards. You get the idea. There's a great deal to be said for early morning shopping. You don't have to wind your way past fat ladies who don't care if they block an entire aisle with their cart. You don't wind up with headaches from children throwing tantrums. And, at Wal-Mart, you don't have to wait 20 minutes for your turn to check out. There's a certain demographical group of shoppers found in a supermarket at 2:38 a.m. You have the night owls (like myself), who prefer getting chores done in the wee hours. There are people who work odd hours: security guards, convenience store clerks, hospital staff. Some folks just are beginning their days earlier, rather than ending them later. The only hazards to shopping after midnight are the stockboys. Wal-Mart is infamous for this -- entire sections will be clogged by palattes of LIbby's Baked Beans, crumpled cardboard boxes, tinny-sounding radios and damaged merchandise. If you can navigate these obstacles, usually a free register can be found on your way out the door.

October 30, 2002 (11:06 p.m. CST)
I'm crazy protractor beard, so give me some candy!

Fungushead and I went to see Punch-Drunk Love last weekend. I was anxious to see it, as it had garnered so many positive reviews. Moreover, I was cautious, it, of course, being an Adam Sandler movie. It's been a long, long time since a movie made me this giddy. Giddy happy. In a good way. Go see it, it'll make you feel more human; how many movies can claim that, eh?

It seems that someone up there likes us: VH1 pulled the plug on the Liza Minelli reality TV series. Who would've thought that the gay husband would be the bigger cunt? Not me. Nope. No way.

And now, the first paragraph of a hastily-written ghost story:

Marcus and Dana left the cabin a bit earlier than the rest of the tour group. They used the innocent excuse that they were going to loganberries (which in fact, they were). The idea came about misadvisedly and from an unlikely source; it was the old crone at the bait shop who told the couple that the area had the best loganberry patches in the state, but she didn't say why. Nor did she tell them how many young couples had died picking loganberries by the abandoned Archaeological Society worksite...

October 30, 2002 (5:25 a.m. CST)
After looking at my previous entry, I noticed that I failed to give you readers any links to further waste your time. Fine...here's a few:

Israel's government is about to collapse, as the Labor Party is planning to withdraw from the ruling coalition because Ariel Sharon won't drop his policy of funding Jewish settlement of land previously occupied by the Palestinians. Until settlement abates, the Palestinians will continue to attack and kill Israelis (which leads to equally violent responses from the Israeli Defense Force, of course). Sure, it's being played out more as a budgetary battle than an ideological conflict between parties, but I'll take it.

As previously reported, the Cowboys suck. Well, not all of them. Emmitt doesn't suck. Neither does his backup, Troy Hambrick. Last Sunday, the defensive front seven didn't suck either. And I find it hard to blame the offensive line, as they've been forced to deal with more injuries than ER during sweeps week. So who does suck? My shitlist includes Ken-Yon Rambo (for dropping a perfectly-thrown Hail Mary at the end of the first half) and the Cowboys secondary (for taking too many penalties and allowing too many 3rd down conversions when the game was on the line).

October 30, 2002 (5:08 a.m. CST)
I was minding my own business at work today, attaching security tags to Dockers khakis, when a man with long sideburns approached my cash wrap. He wanted pleather pants and a matching jacket, two articles that JCPenney decided not to carry this season. I've never owned, needed or wanted a pleather jacket, so I was at a loss where this gentleman (who later admitted he was an Elvis impersonator) could find these items. What struck me as odd is that Penney's did carry pleather pants last year (in the Juniors' Department, for teenaged girls). I guess TCOB includes wearing pants meant for a husky fifteen-year old girl.

A carioca paused to discharge a blunderbuss at a passing aardvark, but missed and resumed sambaing down the street. Don't ask.

As usual, I've been plugging away at E2. I'll post a list of nodes in short time.

Here's another random GIS image, this time a shell encrusted with large calcite crystals...

October 19, 2002 (3:39 a.m. CDT)
Another birthday has come and gone, and rather quietly I might add. The highlights were installing the new aquarium, and my Sour Patch Kid-encrusted birthday cake. Few complaints here, but I'll save those for a time when I have more desire to write.

In speaking of writing, I've pumped out a few decent E2 nodes in the past week:
--Ken Hitchcock
--Jack Adams Award
--Tourmaline
--I Used To Work In Chicago
--Battle of Bannockburn
--Khe Sahn
--The Dallas Morning News

With November around the corner, the political ads are starting to gobble up the television commercial spots. Gone are ads for tampons, replaced by ads describing Tony Sanchez' flimflamming of his business partners, baloney about how Rick Perry is in bed with "Big Insurance", John Cornyn espousing SDI and Ron Kirk dragging his poor mother into the fray. Poor Mrs. Kirk.

October 13, 2002 (4:30 a.m. CDT)
This should be a short entry, as I need to head to bed very, very soon.

For all of its quirks, I think that I'd like to visit Florida sometime soon. Maybe I saw too many episodes of Miami Vice and/or G.I. Joe, but I think it'd be extremely cool to skip across some swampy Floridian lakeshore in one of those flatbottom swamp boats. Two drawbacks to this plan immediately come to mind, though: picking mosquitoes out of my teeth and nostrils, and the stench of decomposing organic matter.

As I got home from work at a reasonable hour, Caramelhead and I wasted an hour or so lounging at Barnes & Noble. I browsed through a book on blogging (the first, I've been keeping watch for what should be the first of many in the next six months), a few graphic novels and a strategy guide for Civ III (which I realized that I had smimmed through several months ago). The book on blogging (its title escapes me ATM, but I think it was simply Blogging) was interesting, especially the background information on the blogging subculture (of which, I'm a relative newcomer). I was distressed to see that no mention was made of raw-text blogging. I've mentioned this before -- I'm a bloggin Luddite, forgoing Blogger/Moveable Type/Livejournal etc. for Notepad and Bulletproof FTP. Every line break and anchor tag were done manually. I suck.

This evening, after returning from the bookstore, I had a most pleasurable nap. On its own merit, the nap would hardly be worth mentioning. What is funny, though, was my reaction to its termination. Caramelhead came in to wake me up at 10 p.m., as we had plans to watch SNL. She roused me from my slumber, only to have me sit up, yell out "BAH!" (much like Chris Kattan's monkey-man character, Mr. Peepers), giggle for a second, then lie back down to sleep for another five minutes. Of course, I have no recollection of any of this.

BAH!

October 12, 2002 (2:45 a.m. CDT)
I really can't explain the cult of devotion that has sprung up around Ellen Feiss. In case you haven't seen the ad, poor stoner Ellen lost her paper because her PC locked up. You can tell the girl isn't that bright to start with, but it doesn't take too much tech acumen to save your work occasionally. And considering that I did Internet tech support for Macs, and that I lived in a Mac household for a few years, and that I used Macs for two years while working at the Toban, I believe that I'm qualified enough to say that most of the Macs I worked with were no more reliable than the PCs I've worked with. System Error 11. Extensions conflicts. Forced reboots. Even the odd "sad Mac." I've worked with them all...extensively. But I digress. The droopy-eyed Feiss is no looker. I'm sure she cleans up all purdy (as does the surprising majority of young women), but the ads make her look frumpy. Even so, there's still the fact that she's a meme, complete with a fan site. Now, I wouldn't mind taking a crack at Janie Porche's System Folder.

Now...THIS is creepy. If the thought of a picture of a scorpion tattooed on the shaft of a penis is disturbing, then don't look down. No! Don't! I'M WARNING YOU! Too late.

October 11, 2002 (6:16 p.m. CDT)
While I'm waiting for E2 to finish their regular database maintenance, I figured I'd throw together a short blog entry.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the City of Arlington? Y'see, I can't really bitch too much about the construction currently going on at I-820 and Randol Mill (in eastern Ft. Worth), as I've been advocating widening all of 820 to three lanes since I moved to DFW. The construction going on along the length of Cooper St. in Arlington seems to be a different matter. They've had the entire summer to resurface and widen the road, but the construction still drags on. Getting to school proves to be an adventure every morning.

Of all of my Crappy Ex-Girlfriends, I'll make the following promotions to mt Ex-GF Cabinet: C. #2 is proclaimed the Trollop Queen of the Sluts. As of now, S. is the Traitress General. I nominate T. #2 for Surgeon General of the Infected Taco, and A. as the Most Unladylike Minister of the Arts. Finally, M. (who?) has been named Speaker of the Whores. Congratulations, ladies. I despise you all.

October 11, 2002 (3:46 a.m. CDT)
Just a quick entry tonight...

My fantasy hockey team is off to a good start. I entered a league with a few guys from my fraternity chapter back in Winnipeg, and it looks like I should pull off the first head-to-head match without any troubles.

This is great! Back in Wpg, there were a few "massage parlours" a block-and-a-half away from my high school. At these "massage parlours" (note the continued use of quotation marks), one could sit in a jacuzzi while a semi-attractive "masseuse" wearing a bikini gave you a "sensual massage." For a few extra dollars, you could upgrade to a topless "masseuse," a nude "masseuse" or even, providing you had sufficient scratch to "tip" your "masseuse," have her join you in the jacuzzi. I've been to a few bachelor parties in my time (and yes, even my own), so I can tell you with some degree of certainty what a whore looks like. Whores look like those "masseuses" and not like chiropractors. I wonder how long it took the vice squad to figure out what was really going on there...

It looks like Kay Hutchison is more of a war hawk that I gave her credit for. Almost all of the Democrats from The South supported waging war on Iraq. They were joined (astonishingly) by both Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman. Ditto Tom Daschle. It looks like all of the potential Democrat nominees for the presidential ballot (there's a few more on the list that I didn't list here) voted in favor of the resolution. Handicappers, start your... um...handicapping! In semi-related, voters-determining-where-American-bombers-will-go- next news: Oh sweet, sacred fuck.

Read this article, then take a look at my post from 1 a.m.-ish last night. Coincidence? I hope so.

I'm going to continue my CNN linking spree by throwing this at you... Yay fuel cell cars! Get used to them now, it's what we'll be driving in 10 years. If I had the druthers -- when's the last time you heard that expression -- I'd build a combination sea water distillation plant/wind turbine farm/hydrogen fuel cell manufacturing plant on the California coast. You want clean drinking water? Okay! Sick of brown-outs? I'm your man! Asthmatic? Who loves you, baby?

Um, alright. Okay. Avril Lavigne isn't Bob Dylan. Yet. Not stubbly enough. I'll believe it when I hear "The Freewheelin' Avril Lavigne." Until then...

...

Ever notice that whenever I promise a short entry, I write a fucking novel?

October 10, 2002 (2:48 a.m. CDT)
I've added my blog to BlogTree. Since I claim that my blog was born of my rants page, it has no parentage. I can only hope that I gain a few children somewhere along the way. I also submitted this blog to the The Weblog Review. My last attempt to get this claptrap of a blog reviewed failed miserably, so I don't know how it'll work out. Cross your fingers for me.

Having been a student journalist myself, I feel some sympathy for the staff of the Washington State Daily Evergreen. While the newspaper's name is almost inexcusable, the shoddy editing which resulted in a satirical Web site's deliberately falsified translation of "Nuestra Señora de Buena Esperanza" being accepted as fact. Oops. My own experience gives me a bit of insight into what happened. Firstly, this illustrates that most journalism majors have little or no sense of humor. Secondly, it illustrates the rather chaotic nature of putting out a newspaper. The paper I worked for, the Manitoban, was only a weekly, but we had our share of typos and formatting errors. Missed deadlines lead to early morning copy editing and layout binges and, no matter how much caffeine one ingests, a rule states that the quality of editing is directly proportional to the punctuality of writers. But "The Big Ass Spanish Boat"? That's bush league.

I'll close with a tidbit from the National Post: an Ontario woman is seeking compensation for being jailed for being engaged to a man of Chinese descent, some 63 years after the fact. I never knew that Ontario had its own version of the Mann Act. I always thought that Canadians were more tolerant, even if only on the surface, but this law against miscegenation (which was only repealed in 1964) raises my eyebrow. To put this into perspective, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all anti- miscegenation laws in 1967, meaning that inter-racial marriages were legalized in Ontario only three years before they were in Mississippi and Georgia. Proud to be Canadian, eh? Um, not right now.

October 10, 2002 (12:54 a.m. CDT)
I'm really liking the look of my fantasy hockey team. I'm a bit thin on defense, but I have the second best goaltender trio (Felix Potvin, Marty Turco and Mike Richter) in the league and I have the added bonus of Todd Bertuzzi. Bertuzzi seems to be the only player in the Yahoo!Sports Fantasy Hockey system that can play both wings, which makes managing my bench much, much easier. As long as he doesn't get hurt, then I should be set. (With that comment, I can only hope that my blog's prognostic powers don't resurface, lest Bertuzzi break a femur. No fractures, okay Todd?)

Ah yes, the fish. We set up the new aquarium on Monday night. Now that the water has had ample time to aerate and dechlorinate, it was time to add the first group of fish. When Caramelhead returned home from work, we sped off to Petco to get a handful of fine fishy friends. We decided upon a pair each of green tiger barbs and neon tetras. Our original plan to get a fiddler crab or two was nixed when I read that the crabs would die off within a month if they didn't have solid ground on which to rest. We'll be heading back to Petco in a week or so to purchase the second batch -- likely a pair of red tetras, a pair of gold-colored barbs, a large snail (only one, so the tank doesn't get overrun with successive generations of snails) and a corydorus (catfish)... So far, our new fish seem to like their new environment (i.e. they haven't died yet). I am stuck with a question...do I retitle the Epic of the Goldfish, considering that none of my fish technically are goldfish? Hmm... I may have to go with "Epic of the Goldfish" then.

On a less amusing note, the Potomac River Sniper (my name, in case someone else tries to take credit for it) seems to have claimed a seventh victim, this time in Manassas, Virginia. My theory, as disconcerting as it is, is that this is a new form of domestic terrorism. Hear me out: Al Qaeda (and other organizations with similar motives) most certainly lacks the opportunity, resources and werewithal to duplicate the strikes of 9/11/01 (otherwise they would've followed up their successes with similar acts of terrorism shortly after their strikes last September). We know, based on the break-up of the alleged terrorist cell in Buffalo last month, that there are still Al Qaeda men in the continental United States. It isn't that great of a leap to guess that other major U.S. cities unknowingly harbor other cells, similar to Buffalo's. Let's hypothesize that a theoretical Washington-area cell decided to scatter following the arrests in northern New York. Take this scenario a bit further and imagine that one of the cell members starts shooting innocent Maryland residents, both to incite panic in American suburbs and to divert federal investigators away from his cell and toward him. Even more frightening is the idea that other independent cells will copy the shootings in metropolitan areas nationwide; the Potomac River Sniper could be an Al Qaeda beta-tester, for all we know. Disturbing, isn't it? Just pray that I'm wrong...and take care of yourselves in case I'm right.

We should try to be more like Spongebob Squarepants. We should enjoy our menial jobs, live in pineapples and yearn to be like jellyfish. Wouldn't life be much easier? And more colorful?

Am attempt or two at a random GIS yielded this picture. Sweet Jesus. I doubt that "richardm" has ever laid eyes on titty that hadn't been purchased upfront or pixelated. Or both. (I shouldn't say that, they probably could make my computer detonate through some evil tool of their making, stored in the depths of their Dork-Cave. And yes, I am a big fucking asshole.)

October 9, 2002 (6:09 p.m. CDT)
New fish! New fish! I hope they don't die...

I'm about to dive into my Ore-Ida Funky Fries. Frankly the concept scares me a bit, but the smell of the "Sour Cream & Jive" flavor lured me in. And they were on sale. I'll let you knoe how they turn out.

October 9, 2002 (1:41 a.m. CDT)
Well, the in-laws are leaving tomorrow, so my blogging activity should increase dramatically. I'll miss them. I talk to them far more than my own family, and they seem to show more interest and have more concern as far as how Caramelhead and I are doing down here. That, and they bought me a sweet-ass aquarium as an early birthday gift. (More on the setup in a future installment of the Epic of the Goldfish.) Also, Caramelhead cooks more when they visit; it's nice to come home to a warm meal...even if I have to microwave it myself.

At work today I was "display bitch," which entails the following:

• "Move these pyjama bottoms to this rack."
• "Put together this table."
• "Move that display rack up a few inches."
• "Oops, pick up those wallets while I find a replacement leg to replace the one we broke."

(Incidentally, Penney's uses some shoddy particle board for some of their display tables, but I digress.)
• "Move this rotating display over here."
• "Put together these cardboard displays."
• ...ad nauseum

I was also "carry-out bitch," but that was only a minor part of my day. An aside from being the display bitch, if you will.

You'll notice a new link over to the right: Blog Hot or Not. I refuse to subject myself to the horrors of having my mostly-nekkid pic laughed at by the women (and gay men) of the world. Fine then, laugh at my blog, bitches!

I've added two more E2 write-ups: I am King Shit of Fuck Mountain! Death to all who oppose me! and Bring It All Back (a Hip song). I plan on completing a content rescue (it's a long story) soon, just because I'm an XP whore (also a long story).

October 7, 2002 (1:11 a.m. CDT)
I stumbled upon a copy of KROQ's top 100 songs for every year of the 1980s. One thousand songs, ripe for the downloading! Of course, I already have several of them, but I've already uncovered several gems. Who knew that movie composer Denny Elfman fronted Oingo Boingo? I also learned the titles to several songs which I recognized from classic radio, but had never known the titles (like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "Refugee").

I haven't posted a random GIS result in a while. So here's a pretty hibiscus painted on a stitchery box...

Finally, here's an article about an English girl who was struck by a meteorite.

After all it is not every day you get hit by a meteorite... The odds of winning the Lottery are better.

There goes her chance for a university education...