squidbag

My Mind Is A What?!?

Your Personality Profile

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs. For you, comfort and calm are very important. You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection. You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

Who the fuck writes these things?  And how do I do one?  I want to analyze people's personalities based on their answers to the following questions:

1.  What does the Squidbag represent to you?

2.  What does blue smell like?

3.  What is the one album you know you "inflict" on others?

4.  Which sock do you put on first, the left one or the white one?

5.  Have you ever felt completely at peace while engaged in an anti-social behavior, such as picking your nose, shopping, or kicking the living shit out of someone?

That's right, just answer these five questions, and I will construct an incisive and totally made-up analysis of your personality, guaranteed to be as accurate as these kinds of things deserve to be!  None of this, of course, explains why I keep doing them.  And enjoying them, too.

Found on Eat Marbles.

Max's Top 16

Earlier tonight, Max got to apply some stickers to his favorite books.  He got these stickers specially made at a kiosk in the lobby of a movie theater weeks ago, and they featured him making a funny face and a green dinosaur.  There were sixteen of them, they cost me three bucks, and I had to hold him up while the machine shot his picture.  They were microscopic, to be honest, but they made him happy, and so we stuck them on his favorite books.  That meant he had to choose 16 "favorite" books.  Max's favorite books are sort of like how you picture comfort food, or a favorite movie: Since we read to him at bedtime, and often the same books over and over, some of these are "old" favorites, some are recent "Hey, I can read this," and some are just cool.  Here is a snapshot of what Max says are his favorites - in my own arbitrary order - as of the last week of March, 2006:

Hug, Jez Alborough, Candlewick Press, 2000 - he and his mom have been reading this since he got here, and it's a consistent pick.  A very sweet story.

What Was I Scared Of?, by Dr. Seuss, Random House, 1961 - from Kat & Jennifer, this one is a good one for him, since he has to be brave a lot more these days than he used to have to be.

Ten Little Dinosaurs, Pattie Schnetzler & Jim Harris, Accord Publishing, 1996 - from C's Uncle Tommy and Aunt Rhonda, we read this like, once a week.  It has big googly eyes, poems, and facts about dinosaurs in the back.  Old enough to have been colored on.

Bob (and 6 more Christmas Stories), Sandra Boynton, Little Simon, 1999 - I got him two Xmases ago, and he likes it all the time.  He told me it was "like pretending it was Christmas."  Yeah, okay.

Jennifer Jones Won't Leave Me Alone, Frieda Wishinsky & Neal Layton, 2003 - his mom got him this one, and it's a cute book that makes smushy love stuff okay for boys who think it's gross sometimes.  Important stuff.

Bugs Bunny's Carrot Machine, Clark Carlisle & Anthony Strobl, Western Publishing, 1971 - picked up by me at St. Vinny's in Madtown, because I used to have this book.  We do voices, and maybe he's as fascinated by the junk and strange food things in it as I was.

Zoom, Istvan Banyai, Viking, 1995 - A Josh and Amy book, and one which requires no reading.  He likes to have the pages flipped and then describe what he sees.

Underwear Do's and Don'ts, Todd Parr, Little, Brown & Co., 2000 - One of my Xmas gifts to him from last year, because underwear is funny.

Doggies, Sandra Boynton, Little Simon, 1984 - a mom book.  She gives all the dogs individual voices and personalities, thus improving this book a great deal.

If You Take a Mouse to School, Laura Numeroff & Felicia Bond, Scholastic, 2002 - a recent fave.

The Noisy Airplane Ride, Mike Downs & David Gordon, Tricycle Press, 2003 - another Josh and Amy book, complete with their picture glued inside.  A sound effects read, and one we recently moved back into rotation after an absence.

It's Okay to Be Different, Todd Parr, LIttle, Brown & Co., 2001 - Uncle Brian and Aunt Kate got him this one, and not only does it keep him on good ground with something he needs to remember, but it's colorful and funny, too.

Dinosaurs Galore, Giles Andreae & David Wojtowycz, Scholastic, 2004 - with British Museum factoids.

Zen Shorts, Jon J Muth, Scholastic, 2005 - an Uncle Jesse gift.  Man, I love this book, and Max is really attached to it.  He named his stuffed panda Stillwater after the one in the book, and this another one I have to read almost every time it's my turn to read.

KaPow, George O'Connor, Simon & Schuster, 2004 - third Josh and Amy book on the list, and one he likes to read himself while you just turn the pages.

Actual Size, Steve Jenkins, Houghton Mifflin Co., 2004 - the FOURTH Josh & Amy book, and one we're reading more and more frequently.  We also have to pretend to be the various animals in the book after we read it.  What's my motivation for being an Atlas Moth?

(And no, I didn't pose this photo.  He sleeps on SpongeBob a lot lately.  Also featured are Uncle Matt's snake, and Stillwater the Panda.  That's the sleep shirt his Uncle Jesse gave him.)

Homeownership

I hate owning a home.  The condition of owning my domicile forces me to care about a lot of things that I would never normally care about.  I have had to learn things I would not have probably learned, and that only people who own homes need to know.  I have a book on wiring, now.  I have to spend a lot of money on things - landscaping, roofs, garage doors - I don't really want in any concrete way, when I would rather be out buying comic books and cigars.  Since I am now trying to sell my home, I have spent over a month of weekends now working on my fucking house.  C gave up her whole Spring Break, pretty much.  We are now slaves to our house.  I have put in new ceiling fans & garbage disposals, swept and mopped floors, replaced, cleaned, and re-painted, and I am bloody goddamn sick of this, and know that I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't own my home.

I first became a homeowner, or homo, in 2001, shortly before the birth of my son, when I got fed up with the only thing worse than owning a home, renting one.  We moved into a small yellow house in Madison that leaked on Eric.  Since then, we have moved into the house we occupy now, in Pensacola, and I have come to two conclusions: I hate working on houses, and I think I'm less of a "do-it-yourselfer" and more of a "needs a robotic butler who keeps things clean and affects repairs as needed" kind of guy.

Now, of course, begins the process of being upbeat about a house I can't wait to get away from (though, in all honesty, it's perfectly fine and quite nice in many ways) and moving to another city to - gasp - buy another house.  Yes, there's independence and equity, but everything else kind of blows.  I lack the Martha Stewart/Bob Vila gene.  I need a maintenance team and a grounds crew.  And to those of thinking, "Well, if they just performed regular maintenance on their home they wouldn't have to do everything at once," I say fuck you.  That's just what I need, to spend ALL my time working on damned house.

There.  That all popped into my head while replacing the spark plug on a pressure washer only to find that the air filter was the problem, and that was after I replaced the mailbox, painted the garage ceiling, fixed the hole in the wall outside, put a new switchplate in the kitchen, and did two loads of laundry.  Ah, weekends.

Religion's Oppression

(clears throat, shakes cobwebs from brain)

I believe that everyone should have the right to adhere (or not) to the faith of their choosing until the exercise of that right directly impacts the life of another in a way that violates one or more of that person's basic rights.  At this point, it should be the job of people - and never the government - to sanction the member or members of a faith, and force them to mind their own fucking business.  As much as that hurt me to say, it also reveals why I just send Amnesty International money, instead of trying to win people over.  In theory, I'm a huge proponent of other people's rights to practice (or not) whatever arcane, ritualistic faith they set their sights on.  In theory, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" sounds pretty good, too, but rarely works out.  Heavy ideology seems to bleed out of the mind in which it lives to touch others all too often, which is why the only ideology worth a damn is extant in every religion, and loved by many non-believers as well - "treat others as you would be treated."  No one follows this all the time, and taken literally, implies a lot of revenge, but hey - it's the best the human race seems to be able to do.

We are hypocrites by nature, it seems, and nothing demonstrates that more than a government, a media, and a public whipping itself into a frenzy over the death penalty being imposed on a man in Afghanistan who's family ratted him out for rejecting Islam in favor of Christianity.  Because he's a Christian, Condi's having meetings in her office, he's on every news program I see or hear, and we're fucking ballistic as a nation over the penalty he might get.  This, from a nation which hands out the death penalty on a regular basis - usually with a priest in tow, I might add - and from an administration which didn't give two fifths of a damn about the excesses and persecutions of the Taliban regime until it wanted to bring us around to the war effort.  Jesus has had the best propaganda all along, hence the huge number of adherents to what is essentially the baby religion.  What are missionaries, but an advance propaganda force?  Like dropping leaflets before you bomb. 

I don't hear about Tibet in the media unless Barbara WaWa interviews the Lama, or I subscribe to a special email.  Students for a Free Tibet - I send them money so as not to be involved, too.  I only hear about the Falun Gong when Google or Microsoft makes a money-over-information decision, and I only hear about the Sudanese trying to wipe out homegrown religions when I go look for that.  Under the Taliban, the Chinese government, and especially in Sudan, there have been, and continue to be, multiple deaths, often without trial, just large scale killing of those who believe differently.  There's so much more out there, but since we live in a Christian nation which is capable of overlooking its own hypocrisy to a massive degree, this is all you're going to hear about.

And now I'm exhausted.  I'm going to go drink Vault and paint my kitchen.

Panthers & Eagles

This story brought a couple of things to my attention - first off, though I could have assumed it, I was not aware of the wide-ranging destruction of the panther habitat, nor was I quite up to speed on their dwindling numbers.  I got curious and went to this site, which has lots of good stuff about the Florida Panther.  Mostly what grabbed my attention was that the panther had been run out south Florida to make room for development.  I don't know how many of you have been to south Florida, but with the exception of one little college and the Ringling Museum, (which is almost certainly not what you think it is), and maybe part of Ybor, they should let the sands and the heat take back that part of sunny Dickstate.  Of course, that could be just the geography talking.  In addition to this, however, was the Arkansas moron who's letting the "horror stories" out of California about FOUR panther attacks in the last twelve years put him off wildcats for the rest of his life.  What a cheese this guy is.  "If this'd been a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago..."  You'd still be a moron by flat-Earth standards, guy.  This is a predator, driven out by the only predator with guns and foundation concrete, and they need to be allowed to come back into places where they would normally live, if not for the ever-expanding American.  This is the guy you hope gets eaten by a panther.  Panther grudge attacks, one dreams.

A fan of conservation generally, I have to question one thing about this eagle story, though.  DDT has caused thin-shelled eggs - as it did in one of the guys I used to spar with - so scientists steal the eggs and leave behind fake ones for the eagles.  The science guys then abscond with the eggs to safer climes, hatching them under controlled and controllable conditions, yielding eaglets.  Meanwhile, Mama Eagle's at home sitting on a dodgeball, wondering why it won't hatch, and if an 80-mile-an-hour plummeting orgasm was worth all this fucking sitting around.  Rephrased for someone who knows more than I do: Doesn't this kind of interference, while in the short term ensuring that there will continue to be bald eagles, contribute to less-than-enthusiastic mating (or at least incubating and nurturing) behavior if consistent hatching routines lead to non-results?  This wasn't covered, and Enquiring minds and shit, you know.

(Aaaaand the Squidbag from a year ago today.)

Half-Nekkid Thursday III

So you might remember ages ago, when I decided to become involved in the blognomenon known as Half-Nekkid Thursdays, or HNT.  Then I did two of them.  Then I realized that my options for photographing parts of my own body in any artistic way that I could show and keep friends for any length of time was pretty limited, and that I would need assistance or Glamour Shots (see you in hell with a chocolate malt first) in order to continue.  Well, I got something good, finally, so I thought I would share it for HNT.

This is a study of my left foot, in X-ray, from almost two weeks ago now.  It's picked up a lot of debris in the meantime, but I managed to snag copies of this because I thought Max would like them.  He was less fascinated than I was.  Sorry there are no toes - this is the way the X-ray lady shot it, and I couldn't pose for holding the lead apron over my nuts.  I made it clear that I had all the kids, pending and otherwise that I was ever going to want, but they insist, these people.  The story is that I had some tendonitis in my foot from work, so I wrapped it up and continued to walk on it, like a big man.  Then, in a downpour, I stepped in some mud and twisted it 90 degrees or so and according to the doctor, sprained holy hell out of it.  In one of the views, you can see some black lines on the tendon, and that's how they can tell.  I didn't know that.  It's mostly better now, and the meds are almost gone.  No street value, anyway.  I was on a cane again for a couple of days, and it delayed us on our trip to the Nash.

So yeah, enjoy my bones - you can see the little non-x-rayable "L" they always put on these things, up on the side, there.  Now, if I can find an excuse to get my skull films, I could do a number of entries about those.  "I got thissere dark spot in 1992, along with a citation..."

Kid Wisdom

"When there's no rainbows in the world, I like to wear my colorful shirt so there's a lot of rainbow all around for everyone to see.  I think people like rainbows, and it's nice to make people happy."

This is the comment my son made this morning when we picked out his shirt for today, a shirt you've seen on this blog before, if you've been paying attention.  This comment made me hug him very tightly.  I'm sure he didn't really know why, but then, he's probably used to spontaneous shows of affection/weird playfulness from me at this point.  (I am given to occasionally throwing him on the bed for no reason other than to watch the bounce.  This had led to him holding on for dear life to my neck, then laughing uproariously at my further attempts to throw him, always ending in collapses and tickles.)  This statement lubricated my day for the most part, and allowed me to slide right through.  I seriously love my kid.  If you don't have one, you should pick one up - they rock.  Of course, they also insist on making this face whenever a camera is pointed at them, but I find that this pose upsets female relatives and friends more than the male ones.

So yeah, give it up for Max and making rainbows.

Tax & Spend vs. Borrow & Spend

All my life, conservatives have screamed into the wind about the  "Tax and Spend Liberal" this modern-day scourge in our society, a person to be feared, someone who will steal the money out of the pockets of hardworking Americans and give it instead to (gasp!) social programs, teachers, welfare mothers (who, as I recall from the Reagan years, keep the Caddy industry afloat), the arts, the homeless, and the needy.  Fuckers.  Somehow, I guess, I am meant to believe that this practice is still abhorrent, compared to pushing the height of the national debt to 9 trillion dollars, which we borrow from other countries, presumably to fund our wars and costly programs here at home.  Am I right in thinking that the sole difference between the parties on this issue is that Dems take money from us to spend on us, and GOPhers take it from other countries?  I know people - many of them close to my age - who claim that they became conservative Republicunts when they realized that they would make better decisions about how to spend their money then their government would, so they support a party that doesn't ask them, in theory for as much of their money.  Indeed, many of them are prepared to go to war over this.  I guess they're also fervently hoping that the rest of the world never twigs on to this logic, since if they did they would stop dumping cash down the great hole that is the United States Fucking Government, and we'd be dead(er) in the water, unable to celebrate our third Warniversary in style with a grossly over-publicized military operation, more of the "Shuck and Jaw" you heard so much about three years ago before our leaders begged, borrowed and stole all the money lying around so they could fight a potentially three or more front war with virtually no plan at all.  I'm so glad the conservatives are in charge right now so that they can misspend money we don't have, instead of those bastard Dems, who, if I recall correctly, ran a huge government surplus the last time they were in charge.  Go ahead, trust your government; secret CIA facilities, black ops jobs, making people disappear and rigging elections costs a lot of money - so much that there's frequently nothing left for body armor, vehicle light armor and protection, and the infrastructure repair and maintenance of places we bomb the holy shit out of.

Image taken from here.

And Brian needs to go read this.

Fun People to Work With

I am a very mild person.  Laid back, easy to get along with.  Not someone who's in the practice of rocking boats, stirring shit, or causing problems.  Clark Kent comes to me for lessons on being mild-mannered.  I am smooth like a malted, cool as a cucumber, and moreover, I am easy to work with.  (Right now, JB and C have snarfed into whatever they were drinking, and the rest of you are wondering where I got the new drugs.)  Yeah, okay - I acknowledge that I can be difficult and even harsh to work with, but for the most part I try to keep my head about business until others fuck with the protocol.  Then, all bets are off.  I have one of those situations brewing now, and that seems as good as excuse as any to hash out some of the ones from the past, too.  I have had a number of jobs since entering the market at the tender age of nine, and so have also had a great number of opportunities to work with some really "fascinating" people.  For example:

Bob the Werewolf - In response to a co-worker who absolutely would not stop asking me to come to his church to see him play drums, and maybe also attend a fellowship meeting, I found myself (after an experience with certain chemicals and a three-story bookstore) a novel way to make him stop pestering me.  I accused him of being a werewolf.  After all, he was pale-skinned with black hair, furry arms and legs, and eyebrows that met in the middle.  That was good enough for me.  I began with telling all of our co-workers about my theory, which probably made them think I was insane, or more likely, unaware of when a joke should die.  Then I accused him directly, insinuating that he ate children and small farm animals on weekends.  It helped that he wasn't at work for a couple of full moons in a row.  Eventually, he broke down crying (apparently) and complained to our boss who was forced to (while struggling with laughter) order me to "stop calling Bob a werewolf."

Harold - Harold was an older Jewish man who had been employed in the diamond-selling industry for longer than I had been alive when I knew him, and is significant here because he is the one who told THE JOKE.  Harold told jokes all the time, and not well.  This one got sort of forcibly cleaned up at the end because of unexpected mixed company, the best kind.  Here goes: "A woman goes to see her plastic surgeon to get a pump installed into her bosom.  From henceforth, when she flaps her arms like a bird, she will get a cup size.  When she comes out, she unexpectedly discovers her husband has benefited from this technology too, because when she flaps her arms and asks, 'Do you like them?' he rapidly clenches his legs together and responds 'YES!!!'"  (I am confident someone will put the adjusted version of this in the comments field.)

DJ Solo - For a short time, while employed as a manager at Signs Now, I was given the Special Ed team - because I was the new manager, and because at least one person wanted to see me fail.  DJ Solo was this skinny kid who fancied himself a record-spinning DJ and who was dangerous around power tools.  After several warnings from me, Solo eventually chopped off one of his fingers, and I harangued him until the ambulances arrived and took him out of my life forever.  I gather he was too embarrassed to come back - and this after we put his finger on ice so they could re-attach it.

Jeff - JB will remember Jeff.  Jeff would not sit on public toilets, would not eat anything others had touched, kept his hotel rooms at 80 degrees or higher, was anti-social in a way that defied explanation, and had a gift for doing and saying the wrong thing.  And this was in a travelling roadjob where we had to adapt to different towns and people all the time.  Classic Jeff: You say, "I used to play baseball in high school."  Jeff says: "Oh, I always thought baseball was for idiots."  Eventually, Jeff managed to piss off and alienate everyone we worked with, and was the subject of peltings, of both empty Guinness cans (while swimming) and three-day-old bread.  This last was purchased at a deep discount by me at a bakery in Sweetwater, TN, and we waited outside his hotel room, subjecting him to a six-thirty AM barrage of stale rolls one morning.  Nothing says loving like something from the oven.  Hurled at you.

Those are just a few, selected out of the panoply of alcoholics, drug addicts, malcontents, social oddities, freakshows, climbers, and occasionally, thouroughly decent people (in spite of some of the above) that I have worked with.  I have the unique distinction now of working alongside the most unpleasant person I have ever worked with, possibly the most unpleasant I have ever met and not punched in the face, or at least waved a whiskey bottle at.  She and I have moved into new areas of direct confrontation at this point, including:

HER (after giving me the silent treatment for several days): Did you finish that job yet?

ME:  I'm sorry, but are you addressing me?  Because if you are, I would have to ask you to stop it.  I am having a pleasant day for once, and if you could stick to your silent nastiness and grumbling gurgles, I'd really appreciate it, as would our mother tongue.

One can only hope she has a blog where she writes about me, as I have about her.

Alan Moore is Also a Genius

Of course he is.  As any good fanperson is aware, Alan Moore is the creator of what is possibly the finest comic work ever published, the deconstructionist epic Watchmen, which is sort of like the Bible and the work of Watson and Crick (all rolled into one, natch) for all comics since the mid-80s.  He is also the brain behind The Killing Joke, the second-best Joker story ever (just behind Arkham Asylum), a briliant run on Swamp Thing (beginning with "The Anatomy Lesson"), and my favorite Superman story, "For the Man Who Has Everything."  He is also responsible for From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and V for Vendetta.  And now we come to the reason for this entry - where I step out of fanboy formation for a couple of paragraphs.

It seems to me that Alan Moore is also a bitch.  He bitches endlessly about what they do to his comics when they become movies - and he may have a point; we're looking at some solidly mixed results and tomorrow tells the tale - and he hides in a cottage in England making porn about nursery rhyme characters and declaiming the state of the industry and its creators.  He is not God.  Frank Miller, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Mark Waid, Brian Bendis, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison have all contributed at least as much to the world of comics as has he, and this endless carping about rights to material and how shitty movies are has pretty much got to go.  Frank Miller got Sin City made, and he's working on 300.  Seems like the approach of being "hands on" works pretty well for Frank - maybe it's time for a new way, Al.

I say all of that to say this - despite my myriad problems with the whole Matrix trilogy, I am looking way forward to the Wachowski-helmed V for Vendetta movie coming out tomorrow.  I am hoping they will re-discover the way they made me uncomfortable and excited during Bound.  It is a good time for a movie about resisting the government to come out, and I need this kind of movie right now personally.  I think it can be good - even very good, despite Moore's protestations.  In my opinion, he is brilliant enough to have spawned an idea that has life beyond him, and his fears that that life will be one of the whore or the homonculus quash any objective appreciation he could have.  Yes, it could be LXG or Constantine, but probably not.

Keep an open mind, as always.