LifeBox

We got a lovely little pamphlet left on our front gate today from these nice folks. It’s all about how the gays are going to destroy America with their homosexual “marriage”. Yep, that’s right. Those sashaying communists are just huddled in the back room of their leather bars, gleefully rubbing their dirty little hands together, plotting out exactly how they can terrorize your sorry white-bread ass. I mean, if we let people like that get married, then what? Next thing you know, they’ll want to be able to vote or something! Assholes. You know, you can believe whatever crazy crap you want, just don’t bring it to my house. Keep your ignorant, prejudiced bullshit to yourself, monkey. Fortunately, their website has a convenient comment form, so you can tell them exactly how much you appreciate their righteous battle. Here’s mine:

“I’m sick of you superstitious shitbags, and I swear to god if I ever catch you on my property again, you’ll get an ass full of buckshot. Burn in hell, you hateful motherfuckers.”

Amen, and God Bless America.

Hm. Now I’m out of paying work, but I feel like I should be doing stuff, but since I’m not getting the l3wt, I feel spectacularly unmotivated and lazy. Hrm.

We went out to the Mollberg’s yesterday evening, ostensibly to get some woodworking and gardening advice, but wound up getting some food, and hanging out for a good bit to chat and stuff. Cousin Alex showed me his new crossbow, and gave me some pyrotechnic shotgun shells. Uncle Bernard showed me around the wood shop (he restores pianos and stuff) and gave me a little tutorial on all the cool tools and stuff. I want to start fiddling around with some of that, make some wooden machines and toys and stuff, but that’s all pretty new to me, and it seems like it might take a few bucks to get into in. I’ve got an open invitation to go out and use the super-fly stuff at Bernard’s shop, though, so, that’ll be fun. Bernie also got some good direction on the garden and yard and landscaping stuff - I think she’s going to be plenty busy with a big new patch in the front, and there’s paths and fences and trees and stuff to take out and put in and bang together, so I reckon I’ll be out there a good bit, too.

Today, I’ve been super lazy. Played some SWG last night, slept real late today, went out for a bit, burned a bunch of movies to CDs. There was a flash mob on the UT campus - we played rock, paper, scissors on the corner until the campus cops showed up because someone had called in that people were fighting. Then I had my drawing class, which I ducked into a little early, then skipped out on. So far, the class has been pretty disappointing. We show up with our bag full of expensive art supplies that the teacher had us buy, pick an easel in the studio, and then she sets up a model or gives us a picture or something and pretty much just says, “draw this. use charcoal.” The class is close to three hours long, and there’s maybe a dozen people in it, so you’d think there’d be some individual attention or direction going on there. Not so much. I draw like a retarded chimp to start out with, and I can just do that at home if I’m not going to get some instruction here. So, I came back home, grabbed Bernie, and took her out to dinner at Ruby’s BBQ instead. Afterwards, we browsed around in ToyJoy, and got some toys and necco wafers, and it was good.

Also, I hate the new release of BitTorrent. Alert boxes, eugh.

Yay, Austin City Council.

Tonight, the Austin City Council passed a resolution regarding the Partiot Act. This was the last of three long meetings to discuss this issue. The resolution at the table basically states that “fundemental rights granted by the United States Constitution are threatened by actions taken at the federal level, notably by passage of certain sections of the USA Patriot Act.” The implementation of this resolution would affirm that “the City of Austin has been and remains absolutely commited to the protection of civil rights and civil liberties for all of its residents and affirms its commitment to embody democracy and to embrace, defend and uphold the inalienable rights and fundemental liberties granted to under United States and Texas Constitutions.”

Fuckin’ A. Take that, hippies!

I think I’m on the tail end of this busy stretch, but I feel like I’m sort of spinning my wheels at the moment. This is the weird thing about doing contract work for other people: you work and work and work for a while, and then, when you’re done, you don’t really have anything. Well, except for a check, hopefully. It seems like the best pieces of work I’ve done, I’ve done for fun, or for free. (Maybe if things go well, an upcoming contract will change some of that, but we’ll see.)

Aggravating the situation is the big stack of books sitting next to my desk. I think my incoming (and outgoing) bandwidth is decreasing as decrepitude approaches, and the “to read” pile is approaching three feet tall. This includes some great stuff that I got for christmas last year (I know that if I showed you my boobies, you’d buy me stuff from my wish list, too), a big pile of books from my birthday, various tech manuals I need to get through, and some killer game design books, which directly relate to my current non-paying project.

To make matters worse, Quicksilver just showed up today. It weighs exactly three pounds, and is begging to be bumped to the top of the stack. Stephenson, you bastard!

[Bonus track: Zombie Girls!]

In brief:

– I am not sick any more, but I am rather busy. Which is good. Busy, busy, busy.

– We are making very good use of the grill. Today for lunch was cowboy burgers (ground beef, onions, hot peppers, and bacon), spicy italian turkey sausage, with grilled yellow peppers and onions, and watermelon juice. I am full of meat. Made of meat!

– This week looks to be pretty busy, extracurricular-wise, too. Drawing class tonight, voice acting class on wednesday, the kung fu on tuesday and thursday, and maybe go see Jerm at the Carousel Lounge tomorrow night.

– Went to an interview with the science textbook flash demo people this morning. I think it went very well - they people seem very cool, and I like what the little outfit is doing. I’m not expecting a whole lot of work from them right off, but they seemed to like me, and I look forward to doing stuff with them.

– I think one of our neighbors is keeping racing pigeons. Also, when I woke up for an urgent trip to the bathroom early this morning, my brain constructed a nice explanation for the bird racket outside. There were three or four screeching chirpers right outside the window, and my sleep-adled mind decided that they were playing a game, where, on a given signal, all of them have to squawk as loud as they could, and the last one making noise won. Sometimes, there would be a tie, at which point a bonus round would immediately take place - sometimes, in rare cases, this would happen several times in a row. Every now and then, they would break into chatter after a round, probably communicating the bird equivalent of, “man, that was a good round! you totally got me that time, petey!” After a while, they flew off. I figured that this group of birds must get together regularly to play, and they had to get back to work or whatever. Then, I went back to bed, and got a couple more hours of sleep.

– I got a really badass java book. It almost makes it seem like java doesn’t suck. Almost.

Man, I feel like hammered shit. I think I got a touch of malaria, or radiation poisoning, or something. Last couple of days, I’ve been feeling sort of wobbly and clammy, sore all over, with a touch of nausea, and a whole lot of squirting out the back end. I feel like I haven’t really eaten anything in the last day or two, even though I’ve been trying to eat well, because it’s all just shooting right through me. It’s not super bad - I’ve had bouts of the flu that were a lot worse - but it’s sort of a low-level pain in the ass, because, for a change, I’ve got stuff to do, and mostly I feel like laying flat and staring at the ceiling.

I got me a basin wrench, and I know how to use it. Actually, I didn’t even know what a basin wrench was half an hour ago, but I had this problem taking off the thingers under the sink while replacing a faucet, and I was pretty sure that someone had run into this same problem before - maybe even the person who installed the sink. Go to Home Depot, look for a thingy that looks like it’ll do what I want, and not only do they have it, but it turns out, there’s a name for it, too. So, that, and some teflon tape, and I’m off to be handy. (I couldn’t find a sink stretcher, though. Maybe somewhere else for that.)

LATER: Got the new faucets installed and hooked up, but there’s no way I can get that drain out without taking the base of the whole basin off. Crap. On the side of the box that the faucet came in, it says “Grifo de Baño”. I’m pretty sure that’s spanish for “Pain in the Ass”.

I’m totally getting one of these. We don’t have a dog, but I figure I can strap one of those things on myself, and learn dog language. By emulating their barks and howls, and reading back what they mean, I should be able to communicate with any dog I come across in a fairly short time. Then, after I establish myself as their leader, and assemble my vast canine army, this city will experience a crime wave the likes of which has never been seen before! Then those fools will pay! Oh, how they’ll pay!!

..uhhh, I mean, I like puppies.

Making with the work - paying work - all day. Also have two more gig emails to reply to, so it looks like it may keep coming for a while. Downside is, I totally flaked on my weekly drawing class tonight, and Sifu Lorens called this afternoon to find out why I haven’t been to tai chi class in three weeks. The deadly combination of business and laziness.

Now, done with work, time for to get back to that stack of books that’s waiting for me…