on the verge

...of a break-through, or a break-down. not sure which.

when i began this dirty little fly-spec on the world wide web, its main purpose was two-fold: to excorcise the demons that too much free time combined with overexposure to whiney needy kids seemed to mass-produce in my cranial cavity, and to rant at length about the political arena.

but, since writing about my kids and observations is way more fun, and since dubya hasn't really done anything ridiculously stupid of late (well, anything new. he still does dumb shit all the time, hourly, no doubt, but nothing that is making the news anymore), i have been focusing on the day to day of yours truly and his own.

and so here we are, o my beloved non-existant readers, from all areas of the globe, all walks of life, those who knew me when, and those who have never really known me, per se, except what is presented here in the written word; on the cusp of something new in the field of yank politics.

and i have to say, it looks to be dull. dreary. dull, dreary, uninteresting, ho hum, and mundane.

i don't hate or love either of the candidates. i think they will both do an equally mediocre job of cleaning up the immense cesspool that dubya has left (though i am leaning more toward obama, as he seems, on paper at least, to have a plan).

we are days away from having a new president, and, to be perfectly honest, o my beloved non-existants, my droogs and only friends, i could really give a shit.

my predictions for the future: if mccain wins, we can count on at least another four years of iraq war (and a pitch will be made to add, at the very least, iran to the list of antagonists, though i am thinking the list will probably look more like: iraq, afghanistan, iran, pakistan, and any other "stans" that might seem bomb-worthy) whilst "cutting unnecessary spending" (and don't ask me how that works, i am not a politician and have no idea how one can continue a couple wars on foreign soil and simultaneously reduce surplus spending. maybe he means cut back on government grants to schools, and reducing the overages spent on dead and maimed veterans' benefits.)

beyond that, it promises to be four years of dithering, dodging the question, smoke and mirrors, and reminding everyone that he takes a "strong" stand on some vaguely familiar issues that remain to be clearly defined.

if obama wins, he will spend alot of time dodging bullets.

(begin side rant: what the motherfucking fuck?!!!? the us is on the verge of actually joining the 21st century, and rednecks with recently shaven heads and relatively new copies of mein kampf are fucking going to enmire us boldly in the late 19th century with great pride and seig hiel waves of the arms.

seriously?!!!? really?!!? i mean, fucking come the fucking fuck on!! if we are going to pick a misfit child-molester-looking maladjusted criminally insane icon as someone to emulate, can we at least pick one from our own fucking country?

wake the fuck up, you ignorant wasters. anyone who has made a bid for purifying the race, or ethnic cleansing, or anything of that nature was out of their damn gourd and ended poorly. according to wikipedia: "Adolf Hitler shot himself in the head with a pistol on April 30, 1945, shortly before the invading Soviet Army captured his bunker in Berlin." after allegedly taking cyanide. wanted to make sure i guess. "Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian ROYALISTS, who wanted to re-institute the Italian monarchy in power. He was shot, and his body was hung in the main square in a Northern Italian city, along with his mistress," it was rumored that an angry mob beat the living bejesus out of him first. according to another website, "Cambodians wept in disappointment after hearing that Pol Pot had died of heart failure Wednesday in a jungle hut on the Thai border, even as the last diehard members of his vanquished movement were moving toward surrendering him to an international tribunal. (sic)'He deserved to die. I am only sorry that he died so easily without being tried,'" it goes on to say he was being held prisoner at his own house by his own men, who wanted to turn him in to the international tribunal. stalin's "official cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage." followed by speculation that he actually drank way too much, woke up in a bed full of piss, unable to speak, and was neglected by doctors who were afraid of being arrested and sent to gulag until he died.

anyone know any icons these miscreants might find to be "suitable role models" who ended well? i would love to know.

so, to the poor white trash dipshits who insist on holding onto ideals better suited for the dark ages, do us all a favor: take hitler's way out.

end side rant.)

beyond that, he seems to have some good ideas, only about 10% of which congress will actually let him enact, and that begrudgingly.

cause let's face it, o my beloveds, politicians are all glad-handing, baby-kissing, backstabbing, lying, hypocritical sonsa bitches who really could care less about me, the voting john q. public.

i'll let ya know how things turn out.

darth sardonic

I know I'm not the one you thought you knew back in high school

i have decided that i am the kind of person that moves on when i move on. or kinda. that is to say, when i move away from an area (and i have done a fair bit of that in the course of my adult life) one can bank on the fact that there are friends i am going to completely lose contact with. cause i'm lazy. cause i sorta live in the moment a bit. cause i'm an ass. who knows? i sure don't.

now, that doesn't mean that i wasn't good friends with these people. that i didn't feel close to them. that we didn't share some great times. quite the contrary.

so as you can imagine, o my beloved non-existant readers, my droogs and only friends, my wonderful ptitsas n malchikiwiks, when i have time to think, or when something sparks a memory, i pause to wonder, "whatever happened to so-and-so? what have they been up to?"

this also causes me to wonder, almost immediately thereafter, if that person might also, on occasion, wonder what the fuck ever became of me, and what have i been up to. i usually laugh to myself, and think, what kinda fucked-up shenanigans could i have possibly pulled to leave any kind of imprint on that person's memory?

well, in recent times, due mostly to me joining facebook at dj kirby's request so that i might better pimp out The Unfinished Work (coming soon to a website near you!), i have had a chance to find out.

several people from my school have found me. this is kind of interesting, because sometimes i think, oh my god, no way! followed by, i was a complete dick to them, why on earth would they want to add me on their facebook? (and of course i accepted, for no other reason than that i could send them a message apologizing for being a dickhead!) and sometimes i think, i am going to have to get out the yearbook to figure out who this person is.

here and there i get invites from people who know me from somewhere else (my neighbor recently said, "you got facebook? i'll send ya an invite.") (i have several friends who are also my friends on suicidegirls.) and it is always an interesting sort of experiment to see all these different people from different stages of my life at one place. how many different darth's are there really, that each and every one of these friends probably knows some different aspect of myself. some who have found me lately are, no doubt, disappointed with some of the life choices i have made. well, i am sorry bout that, but the fact of the matter is, i am happy, so sod you.

in the course of the last 13 years (cause it has been that long since we have spoken), i have one friend from my single days at travis afb, jdot rdot, that i have wondered about from time to time.

in those days, i knew a girl who was going to school for audio/visual stuff, and as part of her curriculum, had a half-hour block available to her on the local cable access channel, and access as well to a cornucopia of av equipment.

she and i and another friend, s.b., (who really ought to find me or me him on facebook too, shit) who was a spazz and sarcastic and silly like myself, all wanted to begin a sketch comedy show similar to kids in the hall. we were going to call it "the ward" (a funny play on words, we all met in a single adult "ward," or congregation, at church, but the implication by the title being "psych ward") and we all agreed that we wanted jdot rdot as the straight man in our show.

because jdot rdot was possibly the biggest wiseaker of us all. but his humor was so droll, he could drop the funniest lines without cracking a smile or even blinking an eye.

about two weeks ago, i found myself wondering, out of the blue, wonder whatever became of jdot rdot? and wonder if he ever thinks of me sometimes? c'mon, how dumb is that, it's not like he didn't have a ton of other friends.

a week ago, i get an email, "jdot rdot has requested your friendship..." no way. no fucking way! and there it is, the invite, with a little tagline, in true jdot rdot fashion: "are you THE Darth Sardonic, and not just a cheap Chinese-made knock-off?"

i quickly add him, email him that i am in fact a cheap chinese-made knock-off, and we swap phone numbers for a call that ends up lasting about an hour and easily cliff notes 13 years and sets the stage for an ongoing friendship that is new and living and vibrant, and not enmired completely in the past.

early in the course of that phone call, jdot rdot says to me, "man. i have been trying to find you for a long time."

guess that answers that question.

darth sardonic

quick random surrealistic connection

i am catching up on all of your blogs, and trying to leave lots of comments, so you will know i have been catching up.

o my beloved non-existant readers, my droogs and only friends, many of you have that silly word recognition thing (i might too for all i know, shit), and i have received two silly words that i found to be not so silly (and in the same font and color as well, hmmm, odd):

whina and orgiancana. to which i draw this conclusion: if you are being a whina about the orgiancana that the hot swinger couple next door has invited you to, then you ought not read blogs.

or something more clever probably.

darth sardonic

last of the v8 interceptors...

a quick final chapter about my job, or more accurately, the aggravation that surrounds the people at my job: today we were informed just before lunch by the (holier-than-thou, arrogant) boss that the new guy is indeed, without a shadow of a doubt anymore, the assistant superintendant. at least three people left in a hurry, one squealed his tires in the parking lot. the last two days, we have been laying sod. in the rain. all of us. now, normally when we lay sod, it's all the young fellas, say, 8 of us. when i say "all of us" this time, i mean the oldest guy there who nearly died of cancer last year, the other old guy who usually farts around and manages to miss it, and even the mechanic who has had three foot surgeries and tries to remain seated as much as possible. all. fucking all. except that motherfucking new fucking cunt twat ass-kiss johnny-come-lately who was just handed the assistant superintendant job. he was off fucking around on jobs that weren't really as important as getting the sod down. we also recently received a "team excellence" award for all the hard work we have been doing to improve the course. we were going to get a free breakfast in honor, and all get to go up in front of everyone and receive the award, and as much as we pretended we didn't give a shit, we were pretty proud. yesterday we were informed that due to "human error" the award was actually sposed to go to a different team. so they stripped us of our title, and left us swinging. business as usual at the shop.

the next thing i would like to catch all of you, the beloved non-existant readers who have plugged along with me through so many many things, before we return to our regularly scheduled program, is the car.

or more appropriately, the interceptor. the wife n i have been talking for awhile about getting rid of my honda passport (17 miles to the gallon--ouch!) and looking for something a little more fuel efficient. but i kept holding off because we didn't need a car payment and didn't really have the funds to purchase a decent replacement.

then my neighbor was getting rid of his '93 lincoln mark viii, a car that i had, to be honest, been drooling over nearly since the day i saw it.

the car looks like it angrily ate a t-bird or cougar and is now looking to eat you. evilly-grinning grill, dark purple oxidated paint with the occasional missing flake or rust speck. black plush leather interior, being in the seat is almost like being in your favorite overstuffed chair. all the bells and whistles of a luxury car, but broken in to just the point that i like, and most people hate. a v8 under the hood that roars in hunger when you press the gas.

so how could this car possibly be an improvement in gas mileage over the passport? well you may ask. it averages 23 mpg (on longer trips at higher speeds, it actually averages 28-29 mpg). yeah. a v8. exactly. and has one of the fastest engines ford motor company has cranked out stock. and while 23 mpg isn't the best i could've done, it certainly makes up for it in pure cool-ass vibe.

the other day i was driving down the highway, trying to remember the next line in the song i was singing along with on the radio, and looked over in time to see a late model lexus merging next to me. damn. i could've gotten over, but...

i pushed the gas down, and without even a hiccup the engine sprang into life and i went from 50 to 70 in about 50 feet and left the lexus (who i am sure was trying to keep up alongside me just to be an asshole or prove a point) about a quarter-mile back.

yeah, love my new car.

darth sardonic

pompous, posh, and prigs

and now to get to the golfers. (i know i know, sorry it took so long i have been busy!)

the golf course i work at is on base, and not one of the nicer ones in the area (or even in the air force, for that matter), and as a result at least 90% of the golfers are retired military.

i would venture a guess that most of those are retired officers. and the bulk of them are a) not very good golfers, despite thinking they are the greatest, and b) completely full of themselves:

instance one: recently, the horse n rider (a group of golfers who get together at the course regularly. i call them "dog n pony") team had a big get together with food, and one of the nicer ones invited all the employees of the golf course to join them for lunch. i showed up a little late, with a few of the other maintenance guys coming behind me, so i grabbed an empty table and sat down with my food. a few minutes later, an old fart golfer comes over and says, "hey guys, here's an empty table here." and sits down. he is joined by about 6 more golfers, all of whom don't even look my direction, let alone ask if i am saving seats, or say hi, or anything of the sort.

they then proceed to ignore me for several minutes as they scarf their food and bad-mouth the "liberal media".

instance two: i was doing set-up (every day we move the hole on the green so the grass doesn't get worn), and was on 9 punching a hole. 9 green is right by 1 tee box, and the golfers are usually waiting to tee off when i reach the 9th hole to set it up.

on this particular day, i am bent over filling the old hole and stand up and a ball lands about 3 feet away from me. i look over, and there is a golfer practicing on the 9th green while i set it up. i can see him, so i know he saw me and knew i was on the green. the thing that made this more offensive is that instead of practicing his chipping from say, 6 to 10 feet, he is about 25 feet away and down a hill, which means he had to put enough steak on the hit that if it had hit me, at the very least, it would've stung and left a nasty bruise.

instance three: i was by the pumphouse dumping some dirt. the pumphouse is off the 11 fairway, seperated by about 15 feet of rough (including trees) a small access road (about another 15 feet) and another 20 feet of fallow ground. when i pulled up to dump, there was a ball sitting there. over by the trees, a group of dog n pony-ers are searching for their ball. i whistle, and point to it. the guy drives over in his cart, and as he rounds up his (extremely way off course) ball, he says to me, snippily, "well why didn't ya kick it over?"

my first thought was, "why don't you fucking keep it on the fairway you lousy-assed golfer, then i wouldn't be your bitch boy." and my second thought "i don't fucking work for you."

but most of the golfers seem to think so.

darth sardonic

nitwits, nincompoops, and ninnyhammers

ok, let's start by catching up on the work front. this is going to be a two-parter: the workers, and the golfers. i will start with the workers.

but first, a word math problem: if it takes 5 maintenance flunkies a half-hour to empty two pallets of sod, and the future assistant superintendant to dump a pallet of sod on its side with the forklift and then spend 25 minutes behind an irrigation box watching sprinklers run, how long before they are all skull-fucked?

now think about it, it's not as hard as it first appears. and all the info you need is there.

give up? the answer is: they were skull-fucked when they came into work that morning.

i work with a ragtag lot of ne'er-do-wells who are, for the most part, decent fellas and good workers. we all have our quirks. mine is a negative attitude and a penchant for cracking wise about anything and everything under the sun. one old guy can take a job that takes the rest of us 2 or 3 hours and spreads it out all day. but there are three dumbshits that are really pissing us off right now.

dumbshit no. 1 is your average, run-of-the-mill moron and fuck-off. he runs his mouth like an unblocked sewage pipe, frequently saying things geared towards pissing one or all of us off. this is the dimwit who chucked a golf-ball at fred's head just to watch him snap. this kid is given a job and does it half-assed, and invariably leaves some kind of mess that has to be cleaned up by one of the others later. (an example, he was once put on the frontloader to build an area for a new tee box, and pushed the excess dirt against a tree, leaving a big mound of fresh-turned earth half-way up the tree trunk. i was sent out the next day (he was off or didn't come in, can't remember which) with the frontloader to scatter the dirt and try to return the area to some sort of normalcy.)

he is a blow-hard. he talks alot of shit, but lacks the balls to back any of it up. he was recently denied full time (the kid that was hired same time as me told him, "i wouldn't hire you full-time either, you are a screw-up!" god i laugh and laughed), and decided he was going to get "everyone in management" by keeping track of all their discrepancies and writing them down. the next day he was five minutes late, and got written up for the first time since he was hired there. if he gets three write-ups for the same thing, he can be shitcanned. he isn't long for this job anymore.

dumbshit no. 2 is our "irrigation tech", which is apparently golf-talk for "show up when you like and take a month to do a job that takes 8 hours to do". he was "sick" for two weeks, (the union requires a doctor's note after an absence of more than three days) while me and another two guys and our superintendant fixed a plethera of irrigation issues (our plumbing and sprinkler system is outdated and falling apart), showed up in time to tighten a joint on a break and get recognition from the boss, then was "sick" again for another day, had to appear in court the second, and recently spent another week not showing up for various reasons. he has yet to produce a doctor's note, or any other note not written sloppily in crayon with misspelled words. he shouldn't be long for this job, but the superintendant likes him, and he knows just how to schmooze the boss.

as bad as both of these twats are, dumbshit no. 3 is the worst. dumbshit no. 3 hired on a mere two months ago. there was no position actually open at the time. but dumbshit no. 3 golfs with the boss regularly, and one day the boss says, "go talk to [the superintendant] and i will make sure you get hired." within days, he was. took me almost a month from resume to starting my first day of work. he is, in a word, a suck-up. a brown-noser. he's not even been there long enough to know what the fuck he is doing yet, but is already bucking for promotion. and he is gonna get it. because the boss created an "assistant superintendant" job, that looks ear-marked and specifically tailored for this busybody. in my experience with suck-ups (and i have had lots, having been in the military), they are usually so busy keeping the higher-ups' asses clean that they very frequently have only the vaguest idea how to do the actual job. this guy is no exception. he often skips his breaks and takes shorter lunches. he shows up fifteen minutes early. he is nearly always out on the course tinkering with something or weedeating or pruning or whatever thing, and yet he still manages to take longer than anyone to do the things that need to get done on a daily basis. on the rare occasions that i have worked with him, i have noticed that he is like a squirrel with add on crack. he never finishes a job, because he notices something else that needs to get done, and rather than making a mental note to come back later, he drops what he is up to at the moment, and goes to do the new thing right then. but you can be assured that when the boss is around, or the superintendant, he is outworking all of us.

the superintedant, who used to be a jovial, easy-going fella, has so much shit on his plate now with these three worthless hunks of scum and playing mediator to the rest of us bitching about them that he is grumpy and short all the time now. his year contract is up in january, and we doubt he is going to be around a day longer than he needs to be, which will leave us with suck-up until they can find a new superintendant to take his place.

despite all this, i still love the job. the days are cooling off. the gators are out. most of the time i get to work with only myself and my ipod to keep me company, and the hours work out perfectly with my kids' school schedule, so i am not spending half my paycheck on daycare. so i am unlikely to quit, but the next several months ought to be really interesting.

tomorrow, i will tell you all about the golfers.

darth sardonic

fuck you i hate you...

...is all she said as she slapped my face and spit beer on me

what do you write about when you have neglected your (sorry little) blog to bang out your (disjointed) first book and get it off to the publishers whilst all kinds of (insane and exciting) post-worthy stuff has been going on around you?

there is so much to catch you up on that i am going to have play catch up one subject at a time. which is, for me at least, a daunting task.

but i promise i will post more real soon, and will also keep you, the beloved non-existant reader, posted on what happens with The Unfinished Work.

darth sardonic

wish me luck

i just emailed off my ms as well as the other required documents to the publishers. suddenly i'm nervous as a motherfuck. there's so many things i coulda done wrong, forgot, etc etc that would negate this thing getting published. boy oh boy.

deep breath. ok, it's gonna be ok. wish me luck.

and of course, i will post the link(s) to purchase the book as soon as i know it is available.

i wanna take a second and thank all of you, the patient, persevering, long-suffering non-existant readers. in the book i shorten it to "beloved readers", but you, the real non-existants, know who you are, and can honestly say you were on the front-lines. thanks for the support, help, finger-crossings, and comments that have gotten me to this point.

i am already thinking about what book no. 2 should be...

darth sardonic

do we...?

we teach our children that they can do and be anything they want.

do we teach them that just because we can doesn't mean we should?

Flobots, Handlebars:

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars
I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars
Look at me, look at me
hands in the air like it's good to be
ALIVE
and I'm a famous rapper
even when the paths're all crookedy
I can show you how to do-si-do
I can show you how to scratch a record
I can take apart the remote control
And I can almost put it back together
I can tie a knot in a cherry stem
I can tell you about Leif Ericson
I know all the words to "De Colores"
And "I'm Proud to be an American"
Me and my friend saw a platypus
Me and my friend made a comic book
And guess how long it took
I can do anything that I want cuz, look:
I can keep rhythm with no metronome
No metronome
No metronome
I can see your face on the telephone
On the telephone
On the telephone
Look at me
Look at me
Just called to say that it's good to be
ALIVE
In such a small world
All curled up with a book to read
I can make money open up a thrift store
I can make a living off a magazine
I can design an engine sixty four
Miles to a gallon of gasoline
I can make new antibiotics
I can make computers survive aquatic conditions
I know how to run a business
And I can make you wanna buy a product
Movers shakers and producers
Me and my friends understand the future
I see the strings that control the systems
I can do anything with no assistance
I can lead a nation with a microphone
With a microphone
With a microphone
I can split the atoms of a molecule
Of a molecule
Of a molecule
Look at me
Look at me
Driving and I won't stop
And it feels so good to be
Alive and on top
My reach is global
My tower secure
My cause is noble
My power is pure
I can hand out a million vaccinations
Or let'em all die in exasperation
Have'em all healed of their lacerations
Have'em all killed by assassination
I can make anybody go to prison
Just because I don't like'em and
I can do anything with no permission
I have it all under my command
I can guide a missile by satellite
By satellite
By satellite
and I can hit a target through a telescope
Through a telescope
Through a telescope
and I can end the planet in a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handle bars
No handlebars

you can't make this shit up!

my kids have been watching the indiana jones movies alot lately, and yesterday i overheard my youngest say, "and who's goin a save yew junia?" in what can only be described as the best sean connery impersonation i have heard evfuckinger!!

more to come, o my beloveds.

darth sardonic