Friday, April 22, 2005

just a quick note...

i thought of another antiinspirational poster for work (see inspirational thoughts) last night while i was at work:

today is the first day of the rest of your life

(and you are spending it here getting fucked in the ass by the boss and anyone else that wants to have a go)

anyways, thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

Thursday, April 21, 2005

reunions...

"do you remember a k.s.?"

"um, the name rings a bell, why?"

"oh, she remembers you. she went to high school here in orting, a grade beneath you."

"huh."

my mother has found someone else i went to school with. she works at the pharmacy in the safeway there in orting. and apparently she remembers me.

a phenomenon has been revealing itself to me slowly since i have moved back to the area that i left 15 years ago without a look back.

i believe that i have alluded to the fact that i did not really enjoy my childhood and pubescent years in orting. (see back to the old house) the town was like a giant clique, and me and mine did not fit in. plus, i was further made a misfit by the fact that i was a complete and utter nerd.

so i have figured that i couldn't have made much of an impression on anyone from school that i wasn't close friends with, or in some kind of organization with (i.e. track, cross-country, performing arts).

i'm half tempted to ask my mom if she described me as a scrawny, goofy kid with big glasses, or maybe as the kid who wore eyeliner (yes, i was the kid who wore eyeliner in my school. your school may have had a whole enclave of eyeliner-wearing punks and goths, i was the only one at my school, and it gave me a bit of notoriety at the time as you can imagine. or maybe you can't. who cares?)

k.s., it turned out, did not run track or cross-country, and now i am completely baffled as to how she might remember me. my wife says, "maybe she had a crush on you." i say, "might've been nice to have had some kind of clue while we were still in high school. i could've stood to have a date or two." so i decide to dig out my yearbooks to find out who she was. and i recognize her face, but can't remember ever having a conversation with her, or what kind of impression i would've made on her (other than the aforementioned eyeliner thing) that would've caused her to remember me 15 years later from a description made by my mom.

"well, she says to stop in sometime and say 'hi'."

"mkay"

since i have been back, though, and rekindled friendships with some of my old pals who i left in the lurch, so to speak, so many years ago, and have begun toddling around the old town again, i have run into people i went to high school with, who then seem genuinely happy to see me, and to catch up on what's going on, etc etc.

i can't fathom it, these people more or less ignored me in high school, and yet now, some years later, we catch up like we were old pals.

so of course i will stop in and say hi to k.s., and see what's been going on, and try to figure out why the hell she would still remember me.

but apparently i was a bigger fish in school than i initially figured myself to be.

or most likely, she confused me with someone else, and doesn't remember me at all.

darth sardonic

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

schedules...

my wife watched fucking supernanny the other night while i was lost in lakewood. someone really should smack that bitch in the back of the head with a shovel. not because she's annoying, or whatever, but because she's fucking right! but i already spend so much time feeling like a semishitty dad, and now we have added new shit for me to feel guilty about.

so, one of the things that my wife says that the supernanny suggests is that we come up with some kind of schedule. here is my submission for a schedule:

7:00-ish (it should be noted here that all these times are ish. i don't want to do anything so fucking structured that i have exact times to accomplish stuff by)-get up.

7:05-get up

7:07-get up. for real this time.

stagger around scratching crotch, ass, and head (not necessarily in that order, and not with the same hand) for about five minutes. try to remember something important...

7:12-remember important thing--coffee!!

make coffee. stare blearily at coffeemaker while sound grows inside head.

7:20-identify sound--infantile whining.

drag body to source of sound--no. 2 trapped in crib.

7:22-get no. 1 ready for school. explain for the nth time that we are not taking the car to school and that he will ride the bus.

7:31-get no. 1 on bus.

7:32-breathe huge sigh of relief.

drink copious amounts of java while no. 2 makes noises that are the sonal equivalent of jamming shards of broken glass into exposed gray matter.

7:34-scratch ass some more, for good measure.

spend several hours in favorite chair in semicatatonic state. drool on self.

10:30-miraculously, no. 2 is asleep. go outside to meet bus early, cigarette in hand. suck down cigarette like life depends on it (it very well may). get no. 1 off bus.

11:00-eat lunch. think about taking walk. no. 2 is still sleeping. no. 1 is on verge of throwing melt-down tantrum for inexplicable reason. say, "fuck the walk."

11:01-think about walk again. tell self that it should really take walk, that walk would do the body good. say, "fuck walk, fuck body, fuck you."

11:02-last-ditch attempt at walk. "you really should take-" inner voice is squashed like bug.

several more hours in chair in semicatatonic state. add to semicatatonic state feeling of exhaustion combined with depression at having to go to work when wife gets home. more coffee. feel soul being sucked away by kids.

3:00-shave, shower. put on khakis and docs.

sit in chair. think of things that should have accomplished during day. think about what was actually accomplished (nothing), think, "at least kids are still alive". beg kids to leave alone for a little while so that proper frame of mind for work can be formulated. realize there is no proper frame of mind for work.

4:25-put leuko in stereo. play "velocity". notice no. 1 beginning to mosh. notice no. 2 attempting to mosh as well. join kids in moshing for five minutes. laugh. act goofy. universe is reset.

4:30-wife arrives home. say "how was your day honey?" say, "mine was fine." kiss wife. leave for work.

spend five hours lost in lakewood. return home with free pizza, pocket cash, and splitting headache.

11:00-sleep.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

side effects

are you tired all the time? or maybe you can't sleep? do you suffer from a feeling you can't really explain? are you happy sometimes and sad others? do some people make you feel good about yourself while others make you want to bash their face in? do you eat, even if it is only occasionally? these are all symptoms of something doctors refer to as the human condition. ask your doctor about our drug to counteract the effects of the human condition.

side effects may include: dizziness, drowsiness, headache, mild fever, insomnia, heart palpitations, diarrhea, constipation, urinary tract infections, seizures, cold chills, constipation, temporary and/or permanent blindness, cough, itchy eyes, watery nose, loss of feeling in fingertips, kidney failure, liver failure, heart failure, insanity, feelings of emptiness, melancholy, suicidal tendencies, decreased libido, increased appetite, in clinical studies the most common side effect was death.

you should not take if: you are a woman who is pregnant or may become pregnant, or who dreams of becoming pregnant, or who ever dreamed of becoming pregnant, or ever held a baby. if you recently gave up alcohol or sedatives, or have ever entered a bar. if you have liver problems or kidney problems, or if you have a liver or a kidney. if you have ever been in love. if you have ever taken a cab. if you are depressed, repressed, or easily excitable. while driving or operating heavy machinery. if your immune system is compromised due to an illness, such as hiv. if you have an enlarged prostate. if you smile. if you frown. if you belong to the species homo sapien.

don't do drugs, kids, unless you're prescribed them by your doctor and the pharmaceutical company profits. and if we haven't found a drug for you yet, hang on, we're working on it.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

annoying habits

we all have annoying habits. everyone. and when you get into a serious relationship with someone, they come out in a glaring fashion. (and to my wife, this blog is intended to be lighthearted fun. i am not saying anything here that i haven't teased you about before on numerous occasions.)

a couple of my weirder ones that annoy my wife are: first off, i gnaw on my nails. yes, gnaw. i don't bite them, or chew them. these would entail using both sets of teeth, and ending up with bits of fingernail inside the confines of my mouth. i gnaw them. i place the edge of a fingernail against the edge of an upper tooth, and grind them back and forth against each other. i don't know why, i just do. whenever i am tired, my nails have gotten a little long (long being a relative term. i chop mine off to the cuticle on an almost weekly basis, so my "long" would be where most men probably cut theirs to.), or when i am nervous, apparently for hours on end if no one calls my attention to it. and this drives my wife nuts.

i also "twiddle" the silky lining of coats or blankets between my fingers, or rub them under my nose (if it's dark and i think no one is around). i was a long-time thumb-sucker, and used to rub the silky edging on blankets under my nose and between my fingers. and apparently, given the right blanket edge or coat lining, will still do it. again, drives my wife nuts. she can actually hear me rubbing the silky under my nose in our bedroom in the dark! man, does she have issues!! just kidding.

yes, i am insane. no, i am not taking anything for it.

apparently, i am also a granny driver. my wife and my friends are always saying "you can go. you can still go." but what's funny about that is the instant i get fed up with their whining and gun through on a yellow or enter a thoroughfare almost cutting someone off, they fucking freak out! make up your goddamn minds, for fuck's sake! you want granny driving, or you want me to drive like you? crazy people.

no. 1, just today, pulled one of his favorite annoying habits. he has a thomas the tank engine insert with all the thomas toys that are available for purchase that he stares at for hours, no doubt dreaming about the day when he will own them all (i used to do the same thing as a kid--only i "bounced" while doing it. bouncing is rocking back and forth while seated in a piece of furniture that doesn't rock, i.e. the couch. bouncing cause that's what your head does against the back of said piece of furniture. also with the silky jammed up under my nose and my thumb in my mouth--yes, as it turns out i have a ton of annoying habits, and they are all weird! i'll book my appointment with a psychiatrist just as soon as i am done with this blog. now, shut up.). he handles this little glossy so much that it tears where the folds are. so it got a little tear, and he says, "uh oh. brokeen. it'sa brokeen." i look, and say, "it's alright, i'll fix it, just don't pull on the tear." he turns around, and riiiiiip, splits the glossy right down the middle by doing exactly the thing i had just told him not to do! you know the "don't touch" thing we used to do in grade school, where you'd only touch something you had just been told not to touch? no. 1 does it now. he started doing it at two.

my wife likes to wear an article of clothing for a couple hours (she's in uniform most days, so she usually only wears an outfit for a couple hours), and then save it for the next time cause it's not dirty. i understand, i usually wear the same pair of jeans two days, unless i've been to a bar (smokey) or peed or pooped or puked on by one of the kids. the difference is, i wear a pair of jeans, at night i take it off, and lay it on the floor (we keep our floors clean), and the next day i put it back on. my wife wears an outfit for a couple hours, puts it on the floor, gets a different outfit the next day, and puts that on the floor with the other, then gets a different outfit the next day, and so on and so forth, until i decide that the dust has piled up on the clothes enough to now constitute dirty clothes and throw the big pile in the wash. this is a constant battle with my wife, and i tease her about it and she says, "well, i am trying to save you laundry." no, you would be if you actually wore the "clean" outfit again.

so, you see? we all have annoying habits. they all get on other's nerves. and i defy any of you to present me with weirder ones than my "nail gnawing" "silky fetish" or "bouncing" habits.

anyways,

darth sardonic

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

when it rains, it pours...

okay, so last night i completely forgot about how jazzed i am for the "hitchikers guide" movie coming soon to a theater near you. (they don't say that anymore, do they?)

i heard an add on the radio the other day as i was manuevering the hairball of roads that is lakewood, and it started with "people of earth, your planet has been scheduled for demolition..." and i knew instantly that finally the long-awaited hitchiker's guide to the galaxy movie was coming.

i'm very excited about it, as you can imagine. or maybe you can't, who knows? more importantly, who the fuck cares? anyways, so i started reading the books again, which are simply genius. but as i read them, i can't help but think that alot of the sarcasm and wit may not translate well to the screen.

so now i am both excited, and a bit trepidatious. i mean, i hope the movie will be really good, and capture the irreverent wit that douglas adams filled the book with, but i am afraid that it will be a sorry and sad attempt, and that the whole point of the books will be completely lost in some insane special-effects cum computer-generated megablockbuster that will fall flat.

and my wife saw a preview for it on the tube, and said that none of the actors looked familiar. which is probably good, though i always kinda thought william h. macy would make a good (though americanized) arthur dent, and i always kinda pictured slartibartfast to look like the old guy from the oil tanker in waterworld. who knows, might be interesting to see who they get and how they do. i want the part of marvin the paranoid android. did you know that as a kid, my favorite disney character was eeyore? of course you don't, i've never put it in here. initially, my favorite star wars character was c3po for the same reason. maybe anthony daniels could be marvin, though he would have to lay it on even thicker than he did as c3po.

so, umm, i guess that's it. not really much of a pouring so much as a kind of dribble of the last few drops left in my cerebellum. not even enough to water a flower really. sorry.

and so i'll leave you,

darth sardonic

Monday, April 11, 2005

stream of concious...

okay, i just got back from five hours lost in lakewood (aka, my job), and i'm always a little jazzed when i get back and must decompress, and lo and behold, today when i arrive, everyone in my family is sacked out, and i have a million and one things pinging in my head, so guess what? yep, that's right, o loyal reader, you get saddled with all my shit yet again.

first off, i just caught the opening bit of tonight's loveline, and adam corolla is talking about pandas, and he makes some valid points. like, why exactly are we fighting so fucking hard to save this species? it must be cause they're cute, cause they are some surly angry and lazy motherfuckers who would rather sit around looking cute and cuddly than fuck to save their species. i'm distrustful of any species that doesn't enjoy fucking, if for no other reason, then at least to propegate.

also, there is apparently a big stink between two new bands, the killers, and the bravery. alright, first off, everyone is saying, "oh, the eighties style bands are coming back. that kind of music is cool again." okay, you dozy pratts, here's the thing. those bands (i.e. the cure, joy division, bauhaus, new order, depeche mode, et al) that you seek to emulate, they weren't popular in the eighties. oh, yes, alot of us were listening to them (myself included, duh, like you needed me to clear that one up), but they were not, i repeat, not getting played on popular radio. as a matter of fact, i caught shit all through high school cause i listened to "fag" (i openly apologize to my pals to whom this particular slur would be most offensive) bands. so while all you teenie boppers who were shitting your nappies while i was crying in my bedroom to atmosphere or a night like this, shut up, you don't know shit about the eighties. okay, sorry, back to the killers/bravery thing. alright, the dickhead from the killers was saying shit about the bravery, that they were a copy band, and that they sounded just like the killers, blah blahddy fucking blah. um, hey pal, the phone's ringing, it's robert smith, he says "quit fucking stealing my voice stylings." oh, and that line on hold is duran duran. they say they want their music back. there are precious few bands out there who are not stealing from some other band in one way or another. and i like bands that don't have tiffs with other bands (although i readily admit that i like the killers, and will probably own their album, but will most assuredly say it's a gift for my wife when i bring it to the register).

in various parts of the richer areas of lakewood, there are speed humps to assure that plebians like you and me don't drive our eyesore vehicles too fast and disturb the upper crust's carefully created habitat, causing their rare night-blooming scarlet hydrangias to pull themselves up by the roots and kill the family as they sleep. what cracks me up is that invariably i end up behind a truck or suv that is higher off the ground than i am tall (6'1" in case you were wondering), and these guys slow down to almost stopping to go over these three foot wide, foot high mounds of asphalt. exqueeze me? suv. four-wheel drive. off-road vehicle. shit, dude, i gun my little camry to see if i can catch air like starsky and hutch every time i come to one of these, and then these guys go over it like their gonna drop tranny. sheesh.

and can we make a law that annoying acoustic-guitar playing female twins with whiny nasally voices aren't allowed to make music? please? and if we can't, can we make a law that radio stations aren't allowed to play them?

furthermore, i'm getting annoyed with all the truth.com and tobaccosmokesyou commercials. first of all, i get it, not everyone likes tobacco smoke. smoking is bad. second-hand smoke kills. etc etc etc. but if you listen to their commercials, you can hear how cleverly (or sometimes not cleverly at all) they bury the truth in fabrications of the imagination. for example, waitress talking with boss. waitress says, "oooo, i hate tobacco smoke." boss says, "too bad, cause even if you can't smell it, you're still getting hit with smoky cancer beams. pew, pew." bullshit einstein. if that were the case everyone in the world would have to quit smoking and all tobacco plants destroyed for any of us to be safe. at some point it quits being cancer due to second-hand smoke and starts becoming cancer due to air pollution. also, they use figures that include the phrase "tobacco-related deaths". what exactly does that mean? i mean, if someone gets into an accident and dies cause they were reaching for their lighter, does that count? what about heart defects? if i've got a heart defect, and i smoke, and my heart defect ends up killing me, is that a smoking-related death? if i smoke like a chimney, and get cancer of the pancreas, does that count? who all are we including in this? and now they are doing ones aimed at teenagers called "the insanity games". the one i heard on the radio tonight was some enactment of a guy snowboarding naked with raw meat strapped to his back in front of a pack of hungry polar bears. these always end with the line, "think that's crazy? try smoking. one in three teenagers who smoke will die" and by this time i have usually begun sputtering a long string of obscenities, cause is it, or is it not the dumbest fucking thing you have ever heard in your entire life?!!? comparing smoking to exreme sports. what the brainiacs at tobaccosmokesyou fail to realize is that some kid who regularly breaks bones doing dumb shit on his skateboard will only be fueled by the first half of your commercial and completely and utterly miss the point. the rest of us will be so annoyed, we will take up smoking just to spite you. i know, i did.

and in news on the home front, no. 2 goes in for surgery to put tubes in his ears on thursday. if the time no. 1 went in for surgery on his thumb is any indication, i will wake up screaming and crying from horrible dreams the day after the surgery, and the day after that. not to end on a downer note, but after no. 1's surgery, i woke up one morning bawling because i had had a dream in which i was bitten by a cobra, and shortly thereafter, no. 1 was also bitten by said cobra, and people were walking by and i was trying to get them to help us, and at the same time trying to keep no. 1 awake, but i knew that my time was also limited, because i was bitten too. and we were laying on this beautiful persian rug, and looking up at this gorgeous mosaiced tile ceiling, and dying. and nobody cared. the next morning, i awoke with my pillow soaked from a dream in which both of my children had been involved in an accident, and died. but the next day, they told me that no. 2 was miraculously fine, and handed him to me. but no. 1 was gone. gone, finito, not to be seen again. i'm almost bawling now just writing about it. fucking scary. i'm not saying anything will go wrong with no. 2, just that my subconcious will most likely have a fucking field day at my expense. and to think, before kids, i had scary dreams about nuclear war, torture, being beset upon by voracious and only dimly viewed beasts, and sundry other shit that wes craven and clive barker would just love, but never once woke up screaming or crying since i turned like 7.

anyways, i must really be tripping out, cause everyone is asleep but me, and yet i swear i keep hearing someone walk up behind me and keep turning around expecting to see no. 1 standing behind me with his blankie held to his nose and looking at me like "what the fuck are you doing on the computer at this time of the night, old man?"

and one more thing before i go: why is it that when the posting thing says "this may take awhile if you have a large blog" it only does so on my short ones? this blog will post like that! (snaps fingers), but if i write one line, ten minutes. i don't get it.

again, anyways,

darth sardonic

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

i figured it out...

okay, so something i say frequently (a line from "forever young" by alphaville) that sums up the way my personality is: "hope for the best, expect the worst."

me in a nutshell.

no, this is me in a nutshell: "oh my god, how'd i get in this nutshell? get me out of here! this isn't fucking funny, what am i doing in this nutshell?"

sorry, couldn't help myself. i'll shut up.

darth sardonic

the point is that it's pointless, that's my point

i just finished watching cube, which was a really good movie. however, it was a little like se7en, in that while i really really enjoyed the movie, i will probably never watch it again because the ending was such a glaring example of the mindless evil within humanity.

which causes me to pause and take an honest look at myself. i joke all the time about making a movie where evil wins. because it reflects reality. but when i see a movie that is actually reflective of reality (house of sand and fog, se7en, cube), while i may thoroughly enjoy the movie, i always, without fail, get pissed at the ending.

i had a buddy who once told me i was "a bucket of contradictions". this is so. i am a cynical prick. but i am a romantic. i like to think of myself as a realist. but i have a huge chunk of idealist in me, with just a dash of your run-of-the-mill naivete. at the time that the label "bucket of contradictions" was applied to me, my buddy said, "you hate authority and being forced into a structured routine, and yet you belong to a large, conservative religion, and you're in the military."

so there you have it. the reason that my name would be darth sardonic and i can still write blogs like "epiphany" and "there is still hope".

but cube is good, as long as you don't care that the ending will piss you off.

darth sardonic

Friday, April 01, 2005

varying degrees of randomness...

okay, so i watched hellraiser for the first time last night (yes, in some ways i retain my gargantuan dorkiness--and i'm proud of that) and ladies and genitals, it sucked ass!!

i would like to get together a few of my more sarcastic and witty friends, pass around drinks, and do an mst3k on that one, cause i was cranking them out last night.

my wife said this movie was fairly groundbreaking when it came out, and maybe if i had watched it in the late eighties instead of waiting almost 20 years, then i would've enjoyed it more. but lets face it, this movie wasn't really that good.

here's why: ok, first of all, the dumb little bitch they got to play the teenage girl, has she done anything (other than sequels) since hellraiser? cause she spends the whole movie screaming, crying, and looking worried. that's it. finito. i could fucking do that, and more convincingly. second, the woman that's supposed to be luring men to their death with sex is just plain hideous. okay, i mean you've got this weird fucking guy who is a crazy sex maniac in his late 20's, and he chooses this lady who looks a little like a 50-year-old david bowie in drag (no, wait, scratch that. cause if i had to choose between sex with david bowie in drag and this chick for eternity, well, dave, i hope you like middle-aged guys with goatees and glasses) to be his sex goddess? alarm bells are ringing, willy. and absolutely every character in this movie seems unreal, stilted, and lacking in real human emotion and interaction. i've read a few books by clive barker, some of which weren't made into movies, and this is a running theme with him. i mean, i am not publishing tons of books, or getting movie deals, but every character he writes seems a little lacking, a little off. and not in a cool david lynch kind of way, but in a "ho hum i don't really wanna take the time to fill this character out" kind of way. when the dad tears his hand on a nail taking a bed upstairs, he doesn't cuss, or kick the wall, or scream and then go downstairs to clean himself up and get a bandaid. he stumbles around like he's had too many margaritas, calling for his wife in a choked voice, and goggling his eyes like it's some kind of vaudeville act instead of a horror movie. if i had a buck for every time i've torn myself open, i could produce porn movies, and i have never acted like this guy. and he never figures out that something extremely odd is going on in his house. they should've just shot him in the back of the head in the opening scene, it would've been less painful. then the uncle's only motivation is pain and sex. whoopdedoo. the wife's only motivation is sex with the freaky uncle. or love, sort of, i guess. i mean they never really present me with a reason for understanding why she would have any interest in this guy at all. then why would the girl open up some "toy" that the freaky skinless uncle really wanted? and more importantly, why, after seeing the gooey freaky skinless uncle, did she not do what all normal people would do, namely, puke, piss her pants, and pass out, only to wake up in a mental institution? anyways, so crap. crap crap crap.

in other news, i have a female neighbor across the street who i have never met and don't know but with whom i have a smiling-and-waving-and-shouting-out-good-morning relationship with. let me splain. no, no, there is too much. let me sum up.

since no. 1 has started school, i apparently am getting him on and off the bus at the same time that the across-the-way neighbor lady is loading her kids into and out of her van. i spose it started off innocently enough, nodding hello. for my part, this is as far as i would go without actually having some kind of conversation with one of my neighbors (i met my neighbors, j and n, because i have a millenium falcon hanging off of my rearview, and turns out j is a freaky star wars fan too). i know my other next door neighbors' names, and i have talked to them once or twice, and still haven't progressed passed nodding hello to them when i pass.

but after a couple of nods, the atw neighbor lady added a smile. a big, dimple-inducing smile. umm, okay. after a week or two, she added a verbal "hello". alright. then a wave. not an open-palmed fingers-splayed wave, or a cursory karate-chop-over-the-shoulder forrest gump model (my personal favorite for using with people i know only casually), but an almost coy oliver hardy finger-curl wave, which eventually graduated to a more grown up wave, but progressed quickly to the arm-up drowning person wave, with a loud "good morning!" added in for good measure.

i must admit, i am completely fascinated. this particular species of homo sapiens' behavior in their natural habit is as foreign to me as tax accounting. i'm not sure if she's just super nice, or if she's working up to inviting me over for coffee laced with rufies followed by a little of the old "my-hubby's- gone-alot". admittedly, i watch alot of porn, where you can't enter a diner/airplane/car/submarine without ending up in an orgy within five minutes, so the latter coffee and "discrete visits" is probably the furthest thing from her mind. but i am certainly a little piqued to find out what her motivation is. so for now, i continue waving a little self-conciously, and trying to figure out why a guy smoking and waiting for a school bus would warrant so much attention. she's probably just a week or two away from asking me if i have accepted jesus as my personal savior.

anyways, that's what's on my plate for today. now i must mentally prepare myself to spend five hours lost in lakewood.

darth sardonic