Sunday, December 23, 2007

Twas the Night Before Chrismas Eve. . .





Twas the Night Before Christmas Eve,
And I'm kinda bored.

With fifty-one and a half hours to go,
before into my belly several beers get poured.



Eh.

Guess I'm just not in a blogging mood.

December has seemed to race by. Yesterday, when Cin and I were cleaning up before having some family over today I found the little note I had sketched out with the title, 'Kitchen by Christmas.' I had done a little drawing of how I envisioned the kitchen might look after some renovation, and then had some bullet points about work to be done. I think the whole Idea came to me one morning as I was waiting for the coffee-maker.

Nice to find an old Idea-note and have seen it through to fruition.

In the last month and some change we have, repaired and painted all the walls (Northern Star, a nice Sherwin Williams color, a stately blueish-gray), painted the ceiling, replaced all the switchplates with groovy brushed nickel ones; puttied, caulked, primed and painted all the trim and baseboards ( with two coats of sexy oil-based white paint ) and made a few cosmetic alterations to the kitchen cabinets. That was step one. Next I divided the cabinets into four quadrants, prepping, priming, and laboriously applying two coats of that same said oil paint to each of them. Completely taking over the kitchen for a shift and then returning everything back to my 35 gallon tupperware storage bin where the materials were safe from marauding kittens.

Many nights in the last few weeks I came home a bit early from work to dive right into painting cabinets again. I can't believe I'm done and I can count the imperfections on one hand. The cabinets were old and mis-matched to begin with, if we were the kind of folks that just throw money at problems, I'm sure the entire cabinetry would have been gutted, for about $500.00 in materials and 80 - 100 hours of labor, we've come a long ways.

Hang some shelves, replace the hood fan over the stove, re-organize and clean like fiends. Feels good to be done.

Still got a window and a back door to paint ( I convinced Cin that it's too cold for the paint to cure ), and we measured for some new counter-tops this afternoon. No rest for the wicked, but I will be taking a few weeks off.

The old wrist has been acting up again, too much painting. . . Trying to lay off the typing till the carpel tunnel symptoms recede. Suppose I could mention that at my physical next month (having good health insurance is a trip), but I don't like doctors. That's a hold-over from my youthful rebellion, if I want to live my dream of staying gorgeous into my fifties I'll have to get past that.

Fifty-one hours to go before I shatter these contemptible chains of sobriety.

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Sunday, December 16, 2007

Day 60





Lo and behold, today is day 60 in my ten weeks of damned sobriety. That means I am at 85.7%, with ( in 2 hours 44 minutes ) only nine more days to go before I'm back on the sauce. That's only six work shifts, and only one more dry weekend. Yeee Haw!

To be frank, it has been a swell experience that has taught me quite a bit about myself. I'm planning on incorporating the system into my lifestyle as a fundamental part of my yearly cycle. A few ten week excursions in a 52 week year, that's got to add to the life expectancy of the liver. It is not easy, but it is not impossible either.

It messes up the destructive routines as well. Gets you to thinking about stuff. Like, some of the factors I got into about 'vangs and using Jesus as a drug in my previous post. Listening to Rhapsody 'Public Enemy' Channel - quality old school stuff by rhyme swingers who use their mikes to advance a position of intellectual understanding - this is all I think of when I think of Hip Hop. Anyways, I'm digging to The Disposal Heros of Hiphoprisy's 'T.V. . . .

On television, the drug of the nation,
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation . . .

A
few month back I had an interesting exchange of words with a fellow at work. He asked me what was up, and I replied, 'eh, it's after lunch, so I'm really just thinking about getting home so I can get drunk.' His response: 'good to know I'm not the only one who's feeling that way around here on a daily basis.'

Booze, cigs, television, evangelical 'worship'; ain't it all just an altered state? What percentage of our fellow sentient beings are really just craving an altered state - get through this so we can hurry up and get back to our high?

Like I say, it's got me thinking.


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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Highway of Holiness?





I heard just a few lines about this on the local radio's news round-up, and I had one of those, 'What the fuck?!?' moments. I found the article in a Twin Cities ezine, about how evags are embracing I-35 as a 'Highway of Holiness.' It seems like a truly harmless chuckle, but then you watch the video from Pat 'liberals petitioned Satan for 9/11' Robertson's 'news' program and it ain't so funny anymore.

More video of blank-eyed young people enthusiastically spewing nonsense about 'Jesus moving in their hearts' and 'being called to public displays of God's power.' Mobs of children and young adults of slightly below average intelligence who have been given permission to act outrageous in public. Mass hysteria with a bible in one hand. This ain't Jesus' ministry they be following; it's the Bacchae.

If only I could I'd grab one of those poor,hapless, misguided kids and smack them around a bit: "When did you people decide that Jesus was a narcotic? When did being a follower of Jesus mean jumping around and tweaking your fucking adrenal gland?!? I've read the New Testament and I don't remember too many scenes with the apostles, the guys who actually hanging around with Jesus Christ, hopping around and whooping it up on the His good shit."

"What are you doing when you confront a stranger and try to convince him/her (all too often a child) that they need to pray right fucking now to feel the power of God? Your 'spiritual experience' has been reduced to feeling good. You people have devolved your god into nothing more stimulating than a shot of liquid viagra. Your behavior is fundamentally revolting."

"You are not feeling anything even remotely fucking associated with the spiritual or the divine. What you are doing is making an ass of yourself in public, and then pretending that the shame and humiliation you feel when strangers are taken aback by your ridiculous behavior is actually Jesus taking over your body. You are being overwhelmed by something, dumbass, it's called the fight or flight response - a legacy from the not to distant past when our ancestors were both predator and prey."

"All the bullshit surrounding 'Revivals' and being 'Born Again' is just pricks who have figured out how to use social stimuli to invoke an adrenal response. You poor fucks have conditioned yourselves to believe that the all the endorphins and adrenaline surging in your bloodstream somehow proves 'God loves you.' All it really proves is that you are a product of evolution."

"Why don't you shut the fuck up and try a little experiment. Go try bungee jumping. Better yet, spend the day before searching the internet for videos of people dying during bungee jumping mishaps and then bring your mother along on the day of to constantly tell you that she don't think it's such a good Idea. If you survive, when you're in the middle of boing, boing, boing, really ask yourself if that experience is any different from the first day you were 'saved.'

"It is time to stop acting like a child. If you want to remain a follower of Jesus' teachings - and hey, for the most part they're pretty good stuff - you have to do so like an adult."

If only I could reach more of those poor kids. Damn I feel sorry for them as fellow sentient beings. I also dread the society we'll create when we normalize that sort of asinine, self-indulgent, masturbatory behavior.

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