wish i had an excuse...

lately i have been rubbish about updating this thing. my posts are shitty at best. weeks go by and i don't even have a small conciliatory paragraph to offer.

and i don't have a reason really. i have thoughts. funny things happen. it's not a proper writer's block, it is a simple case of unmotivation in the writing department.

and it doesn't matter as much as i might initially think. why? well, i would guess that the majority of my non-existent readers, my faithful few, my droogs and only friends, have wandered off to more verdant plains wherein they might find the kind of regular stimuli they crave. and in complete fairness, i have been a complete dick about keeping up regular with the blogs in my pals list. i do still read. just not regularly, and i don't comment as much as i should.

those of you that still toddle by this piece of sun-baked used chewing gum on the sidewalk of the world wide web, worry not. i have ebbs and flows when it comes to all my hobbies and habits, and i will again be prolific, if nothing else, about writing here.

i am still battling with the publishers for availability of my book. it has been a rather fun rollercoaster. if you have a credit card issued in the uk, you can purchase my book, The Unfinished Work (though it is in the list as simply Unfinished Work, so you have to scroll all the way down to the u's in the list). however, i myself, as well as the majority of my friends and family, are in the states, and are still unable to purchase the book. not only that (they are working on it, they tell me, and i believe them, but with a grain of salt), but recently the book disappeared completely from the list. when i pissed and moaned about that, they restored the book to the list, but now the author's name says "ron sardonic" instead of "darth sardonic." not that there is anything wrong with the name ron i spose, just not what i would've picked as a nom de plume. (and of course it goes without saying that when listed properly my name will neither be "darth" nor "sardonic." i often contemplate just outing myself in this blog, as anyone that buys the book will know my whole name, but then it is so much fun being "darth sardonic" that i am loath to lose the moniker. i will keep it up with the publishers, and keep you posted as new details emerge. (i am letting them have the new year to start bugging them about the "ron" bit, as i have been a near-perpetual thorn in their side since they made the magnum crappus available.)

the kids have been home from school for the holidays, which means lots of wii, and few breaks for myself. my oldest and my wife both have the same personality when it comes to playing video games, and they argue constantly and try to steal mushrooms from each other whilst playing games. it's fun to watch for the first say, 30 seconds? then promptly wears one thin.

while attempting to burn down our house wasn't on our to-do list for new year's day, we managed to squeeze it in anyhow. we were helping in a cove-wide dinner for last night, and had put the potatoes that b's daughter had prepared in our oven to bake. now, the daughter, being a bit lazy and not really knowing a whole lot of useful cooking tips had poured olive oil straight into the foil with the potatoes, which meant that we had quite a surplus of oil at the bottom of the oven.

comme ce, comme ca, o beloved non-existent readers the end result was that the tin foil we had put in the bottom of the oven to make clean up lazy (err, easy. freudian slip.) got soaked in oil and ignited.

in the time it took me to ask where the gas shut off valve might be, my wife had the extinguisher (that, quite frankly, i had no idea we had) out and had shot a quick burst of spray that immediately quelled the conflagration.

which, of course, launched a gray-green cloud of noxious fumes into the kitchen. "get your goddamn shoes on and run over to mr. b's house!" the wife and i yell simultaneously to the kids.

now, a tangent. if i had a dollar for every time the wife or myself have told no. 2 to do something and without missing a beat he asked "why?" followed by a lecture from myself about how in the time it takes a rascally kid to ask "why?" the truck is already mowing him down, or the rock already crushing his skull, or the fire already removing the top layers of his skin; i would be able to produce my own porn movies.

now back to our regularly scheduled program.

"get your goddamn shoes on and run over to mr. b's house!"

"why?"

the billowing cloud of evil is already spreading from the galley kitchen into the living room and dining room and adding sandpaper to the backs of my wife and i's throats as she turns the overhead fan on and opens windows and i drag our two standing fans to the back door to draw the foul gases straight outdoors.

so naturally, our next sentences were rife with inappropriate language:

"get your fucking shoes on and get out of the motherfucking house before you start choking like a goddamn beached fish, NOW!"

we were not far behind them, and strangely, despite all the chemicals raging around them, not only are the potatoes properly baked, but taste amazing.

an hour or so later, stuffed with jamaican jerk ribs, baked beans, and the wonderful baked taters, the wife and i wander back to our house and discover that her quick thinking and my johnny-on-the-spot with the fans have assured that absolutely no damage was done to anything; not the house, not the kitchen, not even the inside of the oven. oh, well, i mean the tinfoil suffered greatly.

but some dusting, some vacuuming, and a little oven cleaner, and we are currently baking no. 2's birthday cake.

and i am pretty sure he won't ask "why?" when we tell him to have a piece.

darth sardonic

i posted this and then realized i didn't even bother with a "happy holidays and a prosperous new year!" it's official, i really am a cunt lately.

Safty tips

Safty tip 1 Never StanD on a Swivil Chahr.

(i wonder laconically if this is from no. 1's personal experience getting into the halloween candy as i see the above sentence on a piece of homework. the rest of the "paper" is more standard fair: don't sit "wonG" on a chair, don't touch "ElatCraty" or you will most likely be shocked. then he finishes up with "StN4 NeVer Be a thieff." seems like good advice to me. the drawing of his thief has abnormally large ears and no mask, not sure what that means exactly.)

darth sardonic

smile scream always so extreme

man, o my beloved non-existent readers, my droogs n only friends, i have decided: a.) i am a shitty poster, and b.) i am a lousy fucking friend.

gringa, i finally got your link fixed.

i just finished up mid-terms, in which i had four essays, ten drawings, and two tests all due within the scope of a week.

and i have been feeling pretty selfish lately i guess. hording my free time and wanting to spend it doing only the things i want to do. and of course, the creative energy i would normally spend coming up with witty posts is instead being channeled into all these essays and such in the hallowed and hollowed halls of higher learning. (say that ten times fast.)

but i do have this for you:

we have long held in my household that if you want to hide something from my view, simply place it on a shelf behind something else. i will never find it. i am sure all of you, the beloveds, are snickering because you know some other male who finds himself in this self-same category.

well, the other day i am looking for the last rock glass that hasn't been left in a drunken haze at one of the neighbors' houses, i look in the cupboard, the dishwasher, the sink, the side table by the couch; marred with moisture ring scars the exact size of the bottom of said rock glass: to no avail.

suffice to say, o my beloveds, i am kinda aggravated. it's been one of those days. i want a goddamn drink. where the sweet cherry fuckstain is my glass...?

"it's in the cabinet with the rest of the glasses." my wife is sooo helpful.

"it is not! i looked there, twice!!" i spout, all piss n vinegar as i yank open the cupboard for the third time and--

"well fuck me gently with a chainsaw! why'd you put it on this side of the small juice glasses?"

(an aside: what the hell purpose do the small juice glasses really serve? i mean, does anyone still make a "well-balanced breakfast" replete with cheerios, toast and jam, a large glass of milk, and the apparently quintessential juice glass of oj? they are sorta the right size for a gibson i have noticed though, as long as you don't make it a double... now back to your regularly-scheduled program.)

"are you serious? you couldn't find it because it was on the other side of the juice glasses?!?"

i take a deep, steadying breath, and let it out in a prolonged sigh of surrender.

"let me see if i can attempt to explain the phenomenon of my inability to find things in pantries and on shelves to you, once and for all:"

she is already starting to giggle at me. which of course, makes me want to pour on the theatrics.

"let's say you tell me to get the medicine." i say, holding up one of the boys' prescription bottles, "and this is what i see in my head. an rx bottle. but let's just say the medicine actually looks like this:" holding up a blister-pack of gas-x.

"i will look thither n yon. my eyes will pass over this little packet of pills a million times without ever registering them, because i am looking for a bottle."

the giggles are full-on laughs.

"furthermore, if i think the object i am looking for is red, and it is actually blue, same thing, it's like it doesn't even exist."

the laughs are tears and are bordering on snorts, and by christ, o my beloved non-existents, i am hell-bent for a series of snorts.

"but the biggest way to confuse me is to put something slightly out of place from where it should be. if i know it is in a certain spot, then i won't be looking for it anywhere else, even if that is on the left side of the juice glasses instead of the right. since they are glasses, and it's a glass, it was completely invisible to my eyes."

i get the crescendo of laugh-snort-laugh that i so desperately needed at this point, and smile myself as i fix an old fashioned in my newly rediscovered rocks glass.

darth sardonic

what you've missed since last post...

a brief disjointed stream-of-conscious barrage of what's been going on in my world since last i posted: with all the traveling i have done on my own for tatts n sundry stupidity, i had completely forgotten how great it feels to fly with my wife's head resting on my shoulder and her hand resting on my knee. nothing says "i love you" like lopping off part of your pinkie or your ear to give to the object of your affection. dashing through the hallowed and hollowed halls of learning like a crazed dostoevsky on crack. the interceptor corners like it is on rails and i can cloverleaf from 55 on one highway to 55 on the bisecting highway without ever letting the speedometer drop. mr mc if you are reading this; sorry, not everything i write can be magical gems of literary greatness. i don't wanna end on a downer so here, right in the middle: i promise not to forget, to never forget. ten years; ten years and every one of them a wonderful time and i can still remember how hot she looked in her cream dress on the back side of a dirty little park in portland, or. here's to ten more, followed by ten more, followed by ten more, followed by... silly hats with jdot rdot in vegas after some fifteen years of not hanging out. it's all about the onion at the bottom of the glass. sneaking out in the middle of the night to skinny dip under the full south carolina moon in full view of any neighbors who cared to look. turbulence can be fun. i am already semi-putting together another magnum crappus that will be made up of posts about pierce county and traveling back to pierce county; unfortunately for you, the beloved non-existent readers, it will be almost completely compiled of posts from this dirty little grease-spot on the world wide web. my wife's friends c&k who are cool as hell and hope to see you again in a few months. still no word on when The Unfinished Work will be available, though i have been assured there has been a rush put on it (yeah, yeah, i aint buying it either). "are the hookers there yet?"

tidbits from a deranged mind

running on the beach is not as soul-freeing as chariots of fire would lead you to believe. it is good for the knees, but incredibly hard on the quads and calves.

if i left every spelling/grammatical error i made in these posts uncorrected, this blog would be virtually unreadable. and i am not even drinking.

while i joke constantly about being a lush and using the "bukowski method to fame and fortune through writing", i actually don't do very inspired writing when i have had a few drinks. and even when i do, the typographical mistakes are off the charts, and it is often difficult to piece together what i was getting at in the first fucking place.

i love the sun.

there is a picture hanging in our kitchen of the hale-bopp (spelling? i am too lazy to google it) comet flying through the northern lights from my time in alaska. every time i sit down to eat, it is crooked. every time i see it, i straighten it. next time i sit down, it is crooked again. it is trying to drive me insane. my ace in the hole is that i already am, mwah ha ha haaaaa.

my wife has been running at work (they do physical training together). her legs are crazy dark. i told her i bet she could go out at midnight in a bikini and come in a whole nother darker shade of brown.

no. 1 doesn't actually sit to eat. he leans against the chair like he expects, at any moment and of a sudden, his arch nemesis to burst through the door, and needs, as a result, the ability to dash away quickly for his own protection.

back soon with more insanity buried under the guise of the day-to-day.

darth sardonic

you know what's funny?

funny is leaving a comment on a blog (welcome blogget) that you are just going to link it, and noticing on your way out to do so that you are already linked. not the brightest crayon, me.

it is odd, as an aside (since this post is so fucking teeny tiny) that cell phones and the internet have conditioned us to seek instant gratification, attention, and made us a bit paranoid:

"why hasn't so-and-so texted me back? why won't they reply to my im's? why haven't they noticed my posts? are they ignoring me?"

ummmm, maybe cause they got shit going on. maybe their kid has drawn on the walls and they are frantically trying to get it off with one of those (godsend) sponge eraser thingies before their spouse gets home and asks what the fuck they have been doing all day.

i mean, just for instance, you know.

darth sardonic

I-90 to I-25

so, we got the florida job.

at this juncture, there is a bit of administrative stuff to tend to, and then we will probably be traveling cross-country sometime in january or february.

we love road trips, as a family. we like seeing new things and venturing forth into new territory. we like making fun of town names, cars we pass, and road signs. these kinds of trips afford me a cornucopia of witticisms and observations to jot down here for you, the beloved non-existant readers.

tomorrow or the next day, i should have a pic up showcasing the latest on my tattoo.

this weekend, i go to las vegas for a few days to meet some of my friends. i asked one of them if i would be a complete dork if i ended up wearing kinda dressy (but still punky) clothes the whole weekend. she told me, yes, i would. i started trying on what i wanted to take, and since one outfit made me look like a jw knocking doors, i scrapped that one in favor of my carhartt jeans and a dickies work shirt. but i still have a pair of smart pants and a shirt that will definitely fall under the category "putting on the clover." yeah, i am just a bit excited.

little else is happening at the sardonic household. the wife is back at work, and things are kinda back to normal.

well, as normal as we can all be, heh heh.

darth sardonic

simple truths

no one likes to be judged. everybody judges others.

i should be balancing our checkbook right now.

i can leave the house with cookie-monster blue hair, piercings and a few tats on full display, wearing my dickies workshirt with the nametag that says "loser" and my pin-up girl all-stars, wallet chain swinging, looking as mean as i can, and some sweet old grandmotherly lady will still smile at me and ask me if i would be so kind as to tell her how to get to the wal-mart and boy, my young men sure are cute.

thank you, krissie, for reminding me that i am decent-looking. i appreciate that (i think you said something along the lines of the full package, hahaha, anyways), everyone loves to hear from others that they hold in regard that they look good. the majority of people do not love to hear they are good-looking from creepy folks whose footprints are pressed into the mud outside their bedroom windows. most people don't think of themselves as "hot" or "sexy." people who do think of themselves as "hot" or "sexy," i find, are complete bores to be around and have all the personality of a vacuum bag. i also find that i might see someone i find attractive, spend an hour or two talking to them, and then subsequent weeks getting to know them, and somehow or other, they go from "attractive" to "hot and sexy" in my head. personality goes an incredibly long way for basic sexiness of a person in my opinion.

we have bought a second car. despite my repeated venomous and heated declarations to the contrary, i will be returning to the inner circle of pepperoni hell and dragging people's pizzas around in my hat and stupid shirt, at least until such time as we toddle off to florida (the wife is, as we speak, videoconferencing with the fella in charge of filling the vacancy by way of interview), and this necesitated another vehicle.

it goes without saying, of course, that we did not buy a benz. quite the contrary. we purchased, with cash, a '97 kia sephia with a dented front and hood, a relatively newer engine, a back door that won't open from the outside (and the wife won't let me even take the panel off to see if i can fix it as a result of all the door-latch issues we had with the fucking prelude--although i am sure this particular issue is simply a rod that has fallen out of place), and one missing hubcap.

buying a car with cash has been, in my experience, a crap-shoot at best. here, for you reading pleasure, a brief list and description of a few of the cars i have purchased with cash:

the first car i ever owned, babe the blue ox, a '75 volvo station wagon. no stereo, one fender off-color, reverse went out on the tranny a month after i bought it.

a '73 volvo sedan (yes, i had a thing for volvos. no, i wasn't very bright). banana yellow, and smelled slightly of petrol inside. tranny gave out a few months after i purchased it. went to junk it, and found that the seller had never changed the title over to himself from his father-in-law, and therefore i could not get a title for it in my name. i removed anything with my name on it from the car, parked it a short distance from my apartment, put the keys in the ignition, and left it. it was still parked there when i moved a few months later.

an '83 chevy cavalier. my buddy s bought this car for less than $200 from an insurance auction. he put a new front clip on it, that actually more or less matched, and got it realigned, and drove it for about a year. then he decided he wanted a motorcycle. he sold me the car for $500, which i paid in two payments, and even helped me put in a new cd player. i drove the sweet bejesus out of that car, replaced the starter, and sold it for $500 several months later when i moved. for all i know, they are still driving it.

an '83 toyota tercel, the beaster. oh, this thing was a piece of work. front was extremely dented. driver door was dented. back was dented. i mistakenly thought it was charcoal gray when i bought it. after cleaning it a bit, i discovered it was actually a light blue. the carpet around the stick shift was pocked with cigarette burns, and the interior looked as if someone had put an m-80 into a two-liter bottle of coke and set it off inside the car. i replaced the tires and back struts (any time i went over a big bump, the back tires would slam up into the wheel wells with a horrible noise and large sections of tread were burned right off the tires as a result), and did little else to it. i covered it in stickers: nofx, the mighty mighty bosstones, and one that said, "your proctologist called: they found your head" and drove it like jehu constantly in the harsh alaskan winters. two years later, when i moved, i sold it for $500 to a young guy who needed a cheap second car. again, that kid is probably still driving the beaster around.

we'll see how this one shapes up.

darth sardonic

an open letter to the beloved non-existants

what can i say, really? i mean, you guys are really helping more than you know for me to get through this little dip in the road.

and pixie, were i closer, we could be lonely and miserable together. but the british isles are a bit of a drive for me with two kids. and ty for reminding me that i don't really have it that bad, i know, really i do, in the back of my head, even in mid-whine.

i too, am looking forward to my blog when my wife gets back. i did alot of ranting. i was witty (well, i guess i am somewhat still). i still had my moments of massive deep feelings that would spill onto the page along with my tears, but not nearly as much as now.

the majority of you have only recently tuned in (mostly due to overcommenting on my part at sparx's blog, heh heh), and so have only really seen the mopey morose and ofttimes beleagured darth. i would encourage you, if you find yourself with free time and literally nothing else to do (i.e. showered, finger nails clipped, root canals all up-to-date), randomly pick a month from the archive and read through it, and maybe get a feel for the normal darth (first of all, those two things are a bit of an oxymoron, and second, this is normal me as well, just kind of put into a place of greater introspection through sleep deprivation, over-exposure to whining children, and missing important parts of my anatomy temporarily--the beauty of accepting the fact that you are a bucket of contradictions is the ability to accept that even when you are at your ugliest or most strung-out, even as you are shouting to the very heavens to crush you please, that is all still part of who you are, and doesn't negate the beauty that is within you and the good you do), and hopefully laugh as well. (funny, as i was rereading the line about being a bucket of contradictions to check and make sure i had gotten it right, i got a little choked up. a small bit of the malingering funk.)

other news in my world recently:

my mom and i were discussing some family issues, and she told me that she had told my brother that i had them (the immediate family) all beat, since i have always been comfortable in my skin. i almost asked my mom, what the fuck?!? clearly she missed the teen angst that lasted well into my twenties, hahahahaaa. it was odd to me to hear that even while i was torn up inside with dealing with, well, the fact that i am a bucket of contradictions, i seemed to present the image of being at ease with myself. i distinctly remember wishing on a nearly hourly basis that i was someone else, somewhere else, doing anything else than what i was doing. sometimes, i still do, though, except for here, i mostly keep it to myself.

i tore one half of my industrial out the other night. (i know, i know, you're all asking what an industrial is: it is a barbell that spans across the upper conch of the ear cartilege from front to back.) the front hole was pushing the barbell out, and i suspected i was going to need to repunch it (i may have even mentioned that here, can't remember), but the other night, i pulled it right out while removing my t-shirt. so i slid a small barbell through the back hole, and superglued the edges of the other together (you laugh, major hospitals use superglue on small cuts and stuff instead of stitches: it brings the edges together well, you don't need to be numbed, it protects the cut, and by the time the superglue falls off, the cut is well on its way to healing) and will have to wait a few months for everything to be healed well so i can repunch it, deeper this time, and get my industrial back. i also bled like fucking crazy, i looked like i had been in a battle or something. i should've taken a picture.

i got another three hours done on my back yesterday. when it is healed, i will post another picture. i probably have one more shading session, and then we will be into the color, which will take at least as long as the shading. barking mad, remember? barking mad.

there is little else at this moment to report. as we near the end of the week, i am feeling better, and the sun is actually out today. as they always say, this too shall pass.

and, with all of your continued help, it will pass pretty fucking fast.

darth sardonic

an interview, maybe

well, if you, o beloved non-existant readers, read my comments at all, then you will know that mike (sounds so nice. mike. like i might sit down with that fella at our favorite watering hole. "you want another fat tire, mike?") has invited me to do an interview.

commence the duality that is darth sardonic, your humble narrator, in stream-of-concious form.

first of all, an interview? seriously?!? like i am some celeb or bigshot in the blogging community? i mean really, c'mon, we all know that at best i am the guy at the party whom everyone agrees is funny as fuck, but no one can really remember his name or even who invited him to the party in the first place.

what does "mike" get out of it?

god, that is so cool. i am totally gonna fill out the interview, have a little fun with the answers, and try to present myself in my usual, inimitably humble and self-deprecating way.

so, the two halves that are my whole having duked it out, and with a certain amount of a "i'm really too good for this silliness" attitude, i fill out the interview.

when i submit it, i get a page telling my that my cpu is too full or some other such nonsense. which means i really am not even sure that my interview went through, and am not too sure on how to find out if it did or not. so, in a manner that is very true to both halves of my whole, i think:

if it went through, cool. if not, sod it, i aint fucking filling that shit out again.

so there you have it. if the interview went through, and you have any clue where to find it, help yourself. if not, meh, what do i care? i don't foresee it will significantly skew my life one way or the other.

god, i love being a walking, talking dichotomy, heh heh.

20 days, devotchkas and malchicks, less than three weeks. i occupy my time with tending to the extra cleaning i want to accomplish before the wife gets home (next week i tackle the bathrooms. i hate, and i mean fucking hate cleaning bathrooms. and at this juncture we aren't just talking a wipe-down here and there, we are talking strip down to shorts, splash water everywhere, souse the bathrooms in inhalant-laden cleaners and disinfectants, and scrub. and scrub. and scrub. rinse, repeat. (see visions. develop headache.) (and lest this description bring up horrible visuals (i am picturing the "worst toilet in scotland," hahahaha, just kidding (mostly, i am just trying, at this point, to see how many parentheses i can use in the same paragraph (i gotta lust for life)), let's remember who we are talking about here, and remember my penchant for overexaggeration (which really seems a bit redundant, does it not? overexaggeration. overexaggeration. yes, definitely not a very clever word, i must kick my own ass).) the bathrooms aren't really as bad as all that.), and scrabbling to hang on to whatever tiny scraps of sanity i may have left (i think i wrote my grocery list on one: scrap of paper. scrap of sanity. dammit).

if you, o beloved bemused befuddled non-existant reader, think that last paragraph was hard to read, you should've tried being the one writing it. i am sure i forgot a closing parenthesis or punctuation in there somewhere.

i must be related to e.e. cummings somewhere along the line.

thanks for playing along,

darth sardonic

roll out those lazy hazy crazy days of summer

it's funny, how i could say something one way, and you would take it completely different than how i might mean it. for example, if i was to say:

hydrogen peroxide is wonderful for getting bloodstains out of carpet and clothing

you might reply with, "oh, fuck!"

now, if i said it like this:

the other night, no. 1 decided to sleep on the floor of his bedroom because it is a little cooler. no. 1 also gets frequent nose bleeds when it is dry and there is a high pollen count (he can't, for the life of him, keep his finger out of his nose), and sometime in the middle of the night, he got a nasty nose bleed and woke up with dried blood all over his face, blankie, and the floor. luckily, i remembered from my days as an oral maxillofacial surgery assistant that hydrogen peroxide does a fine job of breaking up the protiens that usually keep a bloodstain permanent in cloth.

then you might brush your hand shakily across your nervous brow and say, "phew."

not that the thought of killing my kids didn't cross my mind for a fleeting moment just before i threw the kitchen chair.

but i am getting ahead of myself.

the house was kind of hot on the third. on the fourth, it was damn near insufferable: a full 15 degrees hotter inside than out. this, combined with a high levels of sleep deprivation and argumentativeness in no. 1, and whininess in no. 2, resulted in what i like to refer to as the "jack nicholson/shining effect" or how a perfectly sane and normal fella could slip rapidly into the deep vaults of homicidal/suicidal insanity.

(all this is, you, the beloved non-existant readers, should probably know at this juncture, is extreeeeeeeeemely overplayed for dramatic effect.)

but no. 1 did break the dvd player we have in our bedroom whilst throwing a bit of a tantrum, then proceeded to argue with me the whole time i attempted to fix it, while no. 2 whined about not being able to watch the movie he wanted, and the in-house temperature creeped up on 95 degrees farenheit (and for my canadian and european non-existants, that is about 35 degrees centigrade) with a relative humidity of probably about 80%, and as a result the already-broken dvd player was further damaged by a rough-ish fall and my foot and its own power cord. then the kitchen chair was accidentally broken during this time (our kitchen chairs, it should be noted, are very flimsy and cheaply made), and then found itself flying across the back patio. and i am sure there was no kind of volume control on my voice at the time all this was happening, so no doubt the neighbors five blocks over knew someone was getting their ass chewed. i am, to put it plainly and frankly, one lucky motherfucker that no one called cs or the cops or anything. most likely out on the lake in a boat drinking beers and enjoying the sun while i was losing my mind.

so we loaded up the car, and left for my pals m&g's wedding early, since i figured it was cooler outside, and a bit of a breeze was blowing. and the wedding was nice. i calmed the fuck down, and the kids ran around with other kids and were able to be boys without dad fucking in their shit every split second.

the next day, i bought a ceiling fan for the boys' room (there is one in our bedroom, and it makes all the difference), and installed it, and patted myself on the back, since no one else was there to say "good job" except the boys themselves, and believe me, they did say it.

"good job, daddy, you a deneeus."

which is really all it takes sometimes. like saying,"it's cool, i forgive you." without having to actually say it and watch dad burst into tears.

i also called maintenance and found out why the house wasn't cooler and they told me what i had forgotten to do to keep the fan running without blowing warm air, and today, the living room is a few degrees warmer than outside, and the bedrooms are downright frigid. (no. 1 put on a windbreaker before falling asleep last night. he is crazy.)

the weather has been gorgeous. we went to the lake, and the boys got bronzed, and i got a little pink (it is a beautiful tan today, thank you for asking), and i got more work done on my tattoo, and the angel girl is nearly all shaded in and i suspect that after the next appointment the majority of the shading will be done, and we will near the color stages of this huge project. my mom tells everyone proudly that i designed the tat myself, and i am just too lazy to bother correcting her, or reminding her it is based on a vallejo painting that probably inspired my original idea in the first place. every time i think that the kids are going to push me right over the edge, they do something colossully cute and grown-up and lovely, and i calm a bit.

the wife is counting the days, even though she is only half done, and i have to say, so are we.

darth sardonic

how many are going to st. ives?

round two:

the kids are clearly ready for bed a little early tonight, and so i grant them my wish. then, around 11, i head to bed too. the mugginess of the house had made it a little hard to lay down and settle in, but it wasn't too much later before i was right out.

i awake to every light in the house on and the demonspawn laughing and shouting with glee.

it is 1:45, a.m.

apparently the things for which kids awake in the middle of the night are: games, sesame street, yogurt, and the four riders of the apocalypse (you may know them as the teletubbies), and there is nowt for it but to make coffee, turn off all the lights, and hope what tattered and tiny shred of sanity i was harboring like a fugitive manages to hold out longer than their ability to stay awake. somehow, i doubt it.

we have played this game before. it was many many years ago, before no. 2 got tubes in his ears to help prevent the all-night painful infections he would get on a regular basis. (of course, back in those days, i had a huge overstuffed rocking chair firmly implanted in front of a tv equipped with several movie channels, so that i might find something i didn't mind watching all night long.) in my experience, we will be up until around five, when complete and utter exhaustion will finally wipe us all out.

the cats, who more or less slept all day, are smart enough to stay away from me this time around. (most likely, they are asleep somewhere, much like they did all day.) the kids, who did not sleep all day, are not that clever. no. 1 finally was told to "shush!"

to which he replied, "don't tell me 'shush'."

followed by my quit retort, "i telling you shush! and if you don't, i will smack your face."

in a rare moment of brilliance, he listened.

darth sardonic

kits, cats, sacks, and wives...

first of all, i want to know what the hell a concert is supposed to do to help the degenerating ozone? and for the unlucky sods who are slated to play on antartica, i hope they aren't using their most prized equipment. i also predict that will be the shortest concert in recorded history: "fuck this is cold!" followed by about 46 seconds of song, followed by all the guitarist's strings snapping as he lays into a heavy power chord, followed by "thank you, antarctica, you've been great! (now get us in the fucking quansat hut before my fucking fingers freeze off and i never play again.)

at 6 am this morning, i awakened quite abruptly to the sound of no. 2 shrieking in anger (somewhere in our family tree, a howler monkey is grinning his fool ass off), followed by no. 2 crying quite noisily.

i throw the covers off and stomp out to the living room. i have to dodge pele, who is convinced he hasn't eaten in weeks, and thinks that if he trips me up and i break my leg, he will get the food faster.

in a split second i have sized up the situation: nos. 1 and 2 are fighting over whether they are going to watch a movie or play a game.

i lose it.

i inform them in no uncertain terms that it is too early to be up, that they need to get back in bed. i rant, i rave. i inform them that it is six in the morning and they wouldn't even be up this early for school. i stomp around. i advise them that fighting at this time of the morning has been proven by the surgeon general to be hazardous to their health. i pace back and forth angrily, and pele is right behing me, caterwauling the entire time. due to my general lack of sleep, coffee, and the earliness of the hour, i lace my tirade with words i shouldn't be using with my children.

i am, in general, greeted with blank stares from my children, as if i have donned a fur cap and boots and am shouting in russian like a vodka-soaked cossak. ("you guys need to get back in bed!" is greeted with, "it's light outside, daddy" this because a few weeks ago, i awoke to noise at 1 a.m. upon investigating, i found no. 1 in the living room hunched over the video game controller playing games like william lee getting his fix in a tangiers apartment. i informed him that if it was dark outside, it was too early for video games. of course, it is summer here, and we are a bit northerly on the map: it's light here until nine p.m. and is probably light again around 5 a.m. (though i cannot confirm this, not actually having seen it for myself).)

all the while, pele is glued to my ankles like a cancerous growth, whining and mewling for his food. by the time i give it to him and free myself from my white-and-orange-shadow with a deathwish, it is apparent to me that any dream i might've had of returning to bed for a few more hours' sleep should be ground, placed in a corn cob, lit afire, and inhaled.

is there a looney-bin in st. ives?

Wanted to scream for them but had to stand in silence

my kids are currently watching the mst3k version of godzilla vs. megalon. they love it! which is great, cause as a kid i watched the rubbery dinosaur and his HO-scale-japan-destroying counterparts faithfully. when i got older, i watched mst3k faithfully, and would laugh extra-hard when they made fun of a movie i had seen on saturday's sci-fi theater. and when i stumbled out of bed this morning, my kids actually stopped the video games to ask me for the "mosser/wobot" movie.

friday night me, s, and t went to the l&m tavern. it is actually called the firehouse now (it burned down some years ago, and they rebuilt), but it will always be the l&m to us. my cold was still in play, though getting better, and we ordered up dinner and gin n tonics and laughed and did the kind of bantering that high-school mates with over 20 years of history behind us do.

brooke's eyes are real. they are ridiculously blue. and i have never wanted to just stare intently into her baby b's to figure it out, but while she was taking t's order, i managed to sherlock holmes, and there are no contacts.

as for her boobs, the jury is still out. t "brushed" them with his chest when they were trying to get past each other in a tight space between tables, and informed us they were "pretty firm". they are, also, (not that i really noticed, mind you, but i have been told...) err, umm, rather large for her frame. must do more research...

{we interrupt this program so that no. 2 can spend five minutes pleading and wheedling at no. 1 to get his binkie, when i know damn good and well that no. 2's binkie is probably in his bedroom. but no. 2 would rather spend all this time saying, "plaese (yes, the misspelling is intentional, that is how he says it, a cross between "please" and "place"), plaaaeeeese, plaaaaeeeeeeese, PLAAAAAEEEEEEEEESE." over and over like some fucking whiney-voiced oliver twist crack-addict begging his pimp not to hit him again. it goes without saying that when no. 2 does this, it drives me beyond crazy.

i tell him to go find his own. it is in his bedroom, right where he left it. he continues with the pleeding plaeses until i see red, jump up, pull him by his arm into the bedroom, stern voice on full alert the entire time, and find his binkie for him while he cries like i am hitting him in the head repeatedly with a baseball bat.

when he does this plaese wheedle thing, i am unable to concentrate. since this is a rather largish post covering several days of happenings, drastic measures were called for.

that is all. now back to your regularly-scheduled program.}

as the night wore on, karaoke ensued, and s, t, and i were forced to nearly shout to be heard, and this, combined with the already sandpapery condition caused me to sound like the love child of harvey fierstein and gilbert godfried as it goes through puberty.

saturday, i needed to clean. and clean. and clean. then shower. and nap. then people showed up for my little do. i received presents of tangueray (my friends know me oh, so well, o my beloved bemused non-existant readers), and happily drank and talked and basically had a rather toned-down little fiestita. i did not run around the back yard in my boxers. just wasn't the right mood. (and my new non-existant readers, which is damn near all of you, will have absolutely no idea what i am talking about. suffice to say, the right group of people + the right atmosphere x a drink or two = darth suggesting a boxer run, which is usually seconded by one or two of my more exhibitionistic friends, resulting in a few of my tipsy friends running around the backyard in their respective underwear.)

a&m showed up for a little while, though m looked completely strung-out. he reacted badly to the anaesthesia, resulting in vomiting, followed by reacting badly to the morphine, resulting in vomiting, and then reacted badly to the percocet, resulting in, yep, you guessed it, vomiting. as a result, he was taking tylenol and toughing through the pain, and gimping around pretty poorly. i will mention here, though, that m is a crazy fucking rugby player who took a knee to the eye and wanted them to send him back in with his eyebrow hanging open like a side of beef at the slaughterhouse.

a good time was had by all.

the next morning, i awoke with no voice. one nostril was completely plugged, not with boogers, but with swollen nasal tissue, and my throat was paved in freshly-laid hot tar and gravel. my cold in its death throes, putting up one last-ditch attempt at making me miserable.

and it worked.

i tidied from the party (my friends are not the kind to make a large mess and not help clean), and rested. the kids thought that daddy sans voice = not having to listen, until no. 1 was trying to outtalk me as i was softly lecturing him, and pissed me off, and i stripped my throat out outyelling him, causing him to cry, and resulting in both of them being a little easier to be around for the day, though i did have to repeat the "yelling-till-i-spit-up-blood" manoeuvre on no. 2 a little later on, resulting in him crying, followed by better behavior.

today, the majority of the cold is gone. i still have lingering snot and junk in my throat, and i sound a bit like dirty harry.

so you have to ask yourself, do you feel lucky, punk, huh? do ya?

darth sardonic

p.s. sparx, i am so pleased to be linked at all that you could link me under "boring twat what whines too much about his life despite how good he's got it" and it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever. dj kirby, i left a comment, but don't know if you have seen it, "some people are just small, hard peas" is a line from a codiene song, pea, and i guess you could use it as long as you gave proper credit, though i am not sure how that would work, copyright laws-wise.

some people are just small, hard peas

sometimes i think it's me...

we here at not even star-crossed, just unlucky strive to bring you the best in blogger technology at regular intervals. if you have found our service to be lacking, please press...

heh heh, saw on one of my pal's blogs (can't remember off-hand which, and can't be arsed (what a great turn-of-phrase that is--i think it was pixie's blog i saw that in, totally gonna steal that too) to find out just now) that they had me linked as "not even star-crossed, just unlucky" as opposed to "darth sardonic", and the paragraph above totally popped into my head like the recording you might get when you call your insurance, or internet provider support line.

for my birthday, i received a head-cold. sinus head-aches, dripping nose, dry lips, sandpaper throat. it has taken me the better part of a week to kick it. actually, truth be told, it is still lurking about sometimes. hope to drown it in alcohol tonight. they use alcohol in hospitals to kill germs, right?

mostly, that didn't stop me from doing what needed to be done (read: i fucking had to do shit despite the fact that i felt like a pile of warm dung), but left little energy for the side-projects. just started to get back into the swing of things yesterday. (now that i am in the swing of things, if i could just get someone to give me a push... man, english is fucked up!)

when i was feeling the gunkiest, the days were sunny. bright, cheery, pleasant. now that i am feeling better, it is overcast. oh, cause that makes perfect sense. ty, o mighty whatever thing you are that is running the show up there, he he.

(i posted once about possible past lives i may have had, and i mentioned that i must have been close to (and teased incessantly) someone of significant religious importance, say jesus, or buddha (though i think it would've been ultra keen to have been chilling with vishnu), because the powers that be (and i would capitalize that probably, if i bothered to capitalize anything in this tiny flake of dead skin caught in the world wide web) seem to occasionally poke fun at me in mostly harmless ways.)

i guess, for now, we will leave it at that, o my beloved non-existant readers, and no doubt after tomorrow i will have a (hopefully) clever post about drunken party shenanigans (lo and behold, i had always been spelling that word with too many n's, my irish forebears would kick my mostly-german ass) and sundry silliness for your reading pleasure.

until then.

darth sardonic

god, i hate being right

lord knows how many times i have told my kids to ask for my help when handling the dvds and games. i keep telling no. 2 not to handle them, that they get scratched and finger-printed and crudded up, and that he might break them.

so why exactly was i surprised when no. 1 said, in his pained voice, "oh daddy, look, he bwoke it." and held up two halves of melody time?

and immediately began the tirade. "if you guys would listen to me, and pay attention, these kinds of things wouldn't happen. i tell you to ask me for help, and what do you do?"

it goes on in that kind of vein for some time, while no. 1 mourns the loss of a movie that i think is shite but is apparently near and dear to his heart (though he hasn't watched it in several months, maybe even years), and no. 2 pretends to listen and care (though it is quite clear he is doing neither).

this is the sort of thing that happens alot around the sardonic household alot. "someone is going to get hurt." waaaah, my head. "you're going to break that." gish, snap, tinkle. "it's not going to work if you put it in the pool." wahwaharble, pop, fizz.

the thing is, it would be easier for all involved if: a.) they would listen and comply, and hence not test daddy's prophetic abilities, and/or b.) daddy was always wrong.

this was followed by me trying to purchase a replacement on ebay, whilst addressing a care package to the wife in far-off places and filling out the necessary customs paperwork, and no. 1 saying "daddy?" "daddy?" "daddy?" "daddy?" and then staring blankly each time i said, "what?" "what?!" "wha-haaat?!?" "what?!!!? for the love of christ!" and no. 2 walking into the room with another dvd that he has pulled out of the case so hard and fast upon bearing the brunt of my lecture, this time with slightly better results, though if the cops need his fingerprints, the media side of buzz lightyear of star command seems a very safe bet.

i've a feeling my kids are never going to learn to listen.

i am, as an aside, also scared to death about teaching them things that i can't remember ever really learning: like, how do you teach a kid to be polite? i mean beyond "thank you" and "please". how do you teach them to be respectful of others? to not be judgemental? to love and respect women? and on, and on, and on.

anyways, i know it has been a bit since i have posted, i have been alternately busy and drained of energy. and another little note, i am not one to leave comments on every post of the blogs i read, but rest assured that i read each and everyone's blogs on a regular basis.

darth sardonic

the continuing saga...

so "toll free" called one more time after i posted yesterday. upon hearing a male voice say, "hello, helloo?" they promptly hung up.

i was fuming.

then i read all the comments left me by you, the (not so) non-existant readers, and had a good laugh. i have actually done things like that in the past. though none nearly as clever as all that. particularly the "how long have you known the victim" thing and "she's left me and i am going to kill myself." dear lord, i was rolling! i do, it might be good to reiterate here, have an extremely twisted sense of humor.

"toll free" called again today. i did not swear, i simply asked if it was company x (the company that my wife clearly and firmly told to fuck off, though not quite in those words), and no, this is company y. i let the poor girl do her schpiel, and then told her that thank you, but we were not interested as we didn't need that particular service (sorta like having insurance on your credit cards--you pay a little each month and if you lose your job or whatever, you can defer your payments for a short period of time).

i was extremely polite.

if i am in the right mood, i will totally mess with these people. the following are a couple examples:

i once answered, and proceeded to attempt a conversation, in a made-up language.

"gumka? gumka, bigga est baclay. du cannae wattapukomp?"

they hung up.

another time, a telemarketer called while both my children (then 2 yrs and 6 months) were screaming loudly in the near-background. i hit talk, waited a moment, and said, "now is a really bad fucking time. so if you can't say what you need to say in ten seconds or less, then don't even bother." (all with harmonizing wails so loud as to make it virtually impossible for me to hear myself talking.)

click.

the funniest, and funnest, time i had was on a call offering a similar thing as "toll free". i had been getting calls once a month from one of our other credit cards for this insurance thingie. every month i would tell them no, thank you, we didn't need it.

then one morning, a nice-sounding young man with a pleasant voice called. a real go-getter, judging by his phone ettiquette.

so i say, "let me tell ya, john (or whatever it was), my wife is in the military. it is damn near impossible to get 'fired' from the military." [we knew this, because one of my wife's troops, who was a complete and utter fuck-up, was in the military a full year-and-a-half of fucking up before they finally booted him.]

he chuckled and said, "right."

then i said, "now, let's imagine for a moment that, god forbid, my wife loses an arm or a leg or her mind. the military will medically release her, giving her a large lump some of money when they kick her out, as well as a percentage of her pay at the time of release every month until she dies. which we would use to pay off this credit card."

he's laughing a little harder, and says, "uh huh."

"now, john, let's go for the big one. if, by some freak chance, and i'm not wanting this to happen, mind you, but we are talking about worst-case scenarios here, my wife is killed in some way. well, through the military we have a wonderful life insurance policy, which i again would use to pay off all our bills, including this credit card."

he is outright laughing now, and says, "ok."

"so, as you can see, i really don't need this protection plan, and if you wouldn't mind passing on to whoever, you guys don't have to call me anymore and use up your precious time on me."

(still laughing) "i will get that done mr. sardonic. and ty for your time."

"no, thank you."

now, if that telemarketer had been selling something i might've even thought i might be remotely interested in, i would've told him yes, just for having so good-naturedly put up with my diatribe.

clearly, the time of sufficient rest continues. we'll see for how long, hahahaha.

darth sardonic

and the stars align...

(wait, what the hell? align, sign. jesus, the english language is all kindsa twisted and silly. now, if something is in a row, we say it is in a line. so the verb of that ought to be aline, right? not aliGn, dammit. somewhere early on in the development of the english language, some dippy git ran through with just random letters tossing them into the middle of words. through would be another example of this. so would would. fuck's sake, this could take all day...)

it is amazing what a full night's (again, there it is) sleep will do for a family of rowdy punk boys. nos. 1 and 2 were much more cooperative and listened better, and actually got to play games for a bit, and didn't even fight (again) when it was time to turn them off and do something else.

and we did. we went outside to "wash the car" again, cause honestly, that was pretty damn (again) fun. i actually sorta worked on flower beds while (again) the sprogs blasted me and each other with the hose at close range. laughter (again) ensued and we all got soaking wet.

now, in the past, when i have been rested, i have had a tendency to not be as harsh or "stick-to-my-guns" as i am when exhausted. but not today. i was, no doubt (yeah, i aint even trying anymore, shit), much more pleasant than i have been, but i still made the kids listen to me on the important things, and they still lost some priveleges. by god and sonny jesus, i am gonna make this thing work if it kills all of us! it won't, but, you know, i like to be all melodramatic.

all is currently quiet from the bedroom as well, so i am thinking (and hoping) that tonight will be another like last, and we will be again pleasant and listen and chipper and whatnot.

now, i am going to clean a bit, and cook myself a steak (yes, a steak. yes, me cook. oh, stop your bloody snickering!), and have a nice salad (i mean it, knock the damn guffawing off!) and maybe watch rebel without a cause, have a drink or two, and toddle off early.

and now i am going to go off on a rant because the phone just rang and this is really starting to piss me off:

before my wife left, i stood in the kitchen as she answered the phone as "toll free" popped up on the caller id, and watched as she proceeded to tell the whorey sonsa bitches on the other side that she was not interested in what they had to offer, and that she had told this to at least two other syphilitic operators, and would they please take her number off of their list, as we would not ever be interested in their product, thank you. (a note here, she didn't call them names or insinuate that they were disease-riddled or any such thing. that is being added here by me. she was very polite but firm. however, if they could've seen her eyes they would've crawled under their desks as if a nuclear blast was imminent. woo, got shivers just thinking about the look, glad it wasn't aimed at me.)

now, after she has left, we still get regular calls from "toll free", which i tend to not answer. but a mere week after my wife left, i am in the shower, and i have just put the shampoo on my hands but not into my hair yet, when the phone rings. at this time, my wife wasn't on some sort of set schedule, and hence would call at strange times of the day. i quickly rinse my hands, bark my shin on the side of the tub, curse the tub, and the installer of the tub, and the creator of bathtubs, nearly turf it on the tile floor (cause my fucking wife is calling from fucking turkey or something, i don't have time to even grab a towel!), and then stand dripping and shivering as i see "toll free" on the caller id. i do not answer it. i do not answer it because the ensuing barrage of obscenities and filth and foul would misrepresent the person that i attempt to be.

now, "toll free" has called at least once a day, mon through fri, since.

today, i answered. "may i speak to wife sardonic?"

"she is not home."

"thank you."

a few hours later, again, same voice. "may i speak to wife sardonic?"

"sorry, she isn't going to be home for several months."

"thank you."

and just now, o my beloved, and surely enraged (as i am) non-existant readers, the same successful brain-donor just rang back and asked me yet afuckinggain if she could speak to my wife.

i took a painful deep breath, and calmy said, "wife sardonic is not going to be home until september at the earliest."

"thank you."

and now, my droogies and only friends, if "toll free" calls again, o the beautiful tapestry of the deepest, foulest, murkiest filth i shall weave for their listening pleasure. i will no doubt dredge up words they may never have even heard before, whilst explaining to them that they are harassing me and that i have been nothing if not civil to them up to that point, and ending with the number they should direct their next call to (my lawyer's) because i swear to all that is good and holy in this shited-up world that if they call me again after i unload on them, there will be harassment charges being filed.

darth needs a new drumset.

i did say i was going to have a drink or two, did i not?

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

darth's vallejo back

yeah, so i made an attempt to post about round number three of the back piece. the shrieking of the kids and their repeated attempts to ignore anything i said that wasn't "by all means, play video games until the end of creation." or "here is food and drink, sup until thy sides burst." made it virtually impossible to focus on what i was trying to say.

so i saved it to draft.

well, the long and the short is, o beloved non-existant readers, it sucked ass.

so the cliff notes:

"hey, ready to get started?"

"yeah."

whirr whirr clackity clackity whirr whirr. (while zoning.)

"i need to go get rid of some taco bell."

"cool, i am gonna stretch my neck and check out what you've done so far."

[never, ever ever ever do this: before i stood up i was happily in the zone. i would even go so far as to say that the tattoo didn't hurt so much as it was just aggravating.]

whirr whirr clackity clackity whirr whirr. (oh my fucking god, is this appointment over yet? what happened between then and now that this hurts so damn much?)

and that is pretty much it.

nine hours into the cistine fucking chapel that is my back, o beloved (and no doubt snickering behind your hands) non-existant readers, and i think i have decided that i will still be working on this blessed thing until the roaches (and keith richards, whom they will worship like a god) have inherited the earth.

the last couple days, the kids have been experimenting with what happens when they ignore daddy completely. they have discovered that not being allowed to play video games at all, as well as being banned from movies altogether, really sucks. i have discovered it sucks for me, as well. the whining increases in frequency and volume. they have also discovered that daddy's stern voice can reach a volume and gravelliness that could be said to be hard on the eardrums. they have also discovered that increasing the amount of whining whilst not playing games or viewing movies also increases the potential damage to their eardrums. they have discovered that bothering daddy over and over again while he is napping on the couch is both hard on the book he was reading prior to dozing off, and their eardrums. they also discovered that after books learn to fly, daddy expands his 6'1" 200 lb frame to something that would rival the giants of old, as well as shooting lazers out of his eyes and emitting a sonic barrage that would fragment lesser beings. they learned that all of this causes an odd reaction within their own tiny frames: the instant appearance of copious amounts of salt water combined with the need to flee to the safety of their room. throwing their own toys around while in the safety of the room only causes the giant, lazer- and sound-wave-emitting daddy to come down the hall at a high rate of speed while the collossul sound waves that precede him reach an even louder and deeper frequency.

so after therapy (and the loss of nearly all priveleges allowed a young boy), i got the great idea that we would wash the car when we got home. i figured this would keep the kids entertained, and that i would be accomplishing something at the same time.

this was a good idea for about five minutes. five minutes is not enough time to wash a car. it is, however, enough time to soak daddy. it is also more than enough time to add dirt to the soapy water several times. five minutes is enough time for the oldest to bogart the hose, and to have it forcefully removed from his grasp a few times. it is plenty of time to get wet, dirty, and then parade in and out of the house, against express orders to remain outside, over and over again. it is enough time that had anyone on my block been home, children's services would no doubt have arrived to cart away my kids. (i say that completely in jest. i never laid hands on them at all, and i actually even overexaggerated the forceful removal of the hose--it's called creative license.)

doggedly, no, no. maniacally would be a more appropriate word, i continued to wash the car. this was completely stupid, as it looks worse than it did before. all filmy and dull and it is clear i am going to need to take it in to a car wash place and pay others to have it done properly.

i am competely unsure how two boys who battle sleep until nine at night before passing out on the floor of their room can wake up chipper and bouncey at five am. i go to bed an hour or two after them, and then am forced to search for binkies at ungodly hours of the morning, and remove toddlers with scratchy toenails that they use to take skin off of my thighs and hips from my bed, and finally drag myself like a half-dead slug from sleep when the alarm goes off a full hour-and-a-half after they have already been up and into shit.

however, this might explain the dark circles under their eyes, and maybe even the loss of hearing that they are both exhibiting.

darth sardonic

never could take forever...

i am not kidding when i say how amazed i am at the amount of interest this mote of dust in the world wide web is drumming up.

thank you, one and all, for the comments, and especially for the votes of support in regards to my doubts about being a father. i sure hope you'll forgive me if i continue to refer to all of you as "non-existant readers". (it's a thing i have gotten used to doing that started off as a weird joke between me, myself, and i.) also, i hope you will forgive me if i still find myself unsure as to how fit a father i might actually be. i know, i know, we've all been there, etc etc, and i am not saying that i am not really fit to be a father, or that i am a lousy stay-home dad, but that doesn't change the fact that i still feel that way at times, and whining about it here seems to help immensely. you don't have to feel obligated to commiserate, though you are more than welcome to do so. heh heh.

i am beyond exhausted today. like, if i could compare the levels of sleep deprivation to the movie mad max beyond thunderdome; we'll say a little tired is our pal max as he dozes behind a herd of camels just before the plane knocks him loose and steals all his gear.

thunderdome would be not quite falling asleep while driving, but having trouble keeping your eyes open whilst sitting down.

then the gulag is wishing you could actually be in your bed, and imagining how nice the comforter feels.

well, then, o beloved non-existant readers, my droogs and only friends, i am in crack in the earth, wishing to christ i could ease my head back while kids run around screaming and talking and begging me to catch the wind and calling me captain walker and shit.

(and if you have never seen the movie, then my whole stupid analogy/inside joke/insanity has been for nought, and no doubt you are currently scratching your head and asking yourself, "what the fu...?" don't worry, i get that alot. from people who have known me for years. it is, in and of itself, an unfortunate side-affect of being just this tired. i can actually hear my wife inside my cranium saying, "funnier in your head?")

it is, after all, thursday. i have come to the conclusion that for me, personally, wednesday and thursday are usually worthless days. the after effects of an exciting (such as it is) weekend have worn off, and the anticipation of yet another exciting (compared to thursdays, for example) weekend hasn't quite begun yet.

i should be cleaning. oh, and maybe i will. as the song says, "if you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down."

i desperately wanted to lay back down in my soft bed after shuttling nos. 1 and 2 onto the school bus this morning, skipping my workout and ignoring any other things i ought to do, but a quick glance at the calendar told me i had several things to accomplish. no sweat, i will shift them to tomorrow morning. another quick glance informed me that not only do they have monday off for memorial day, but tomorrow as well. what the blue fucking blazes!?! don't these acedemic fuckers know what they are doing to me?!? mother of god!

and so another cup of coffee was hastily consumed, and a quick shower was taken, and i dress myself and into the fray, o beloved non-existants.

i will post something of merit soon, i hope. as soon as the kids go to sleep at their normal time, and i get the house clean in short order, and lay down extra early, and the kids allow me to sleep the entire night unhindered...

ummm, maybe you ought not expect anything overly grandiose anytime soon, eh?

darth sardonic