This is actually an non-event, because really it only took ten minutes and had no lasting effect (that I know of). Although, to read the NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH - Rabies Policies and Procedures, you would think our lives are in great peril, or at the very least our health.
Last night, I was watching the Sci-Fi Violent Movie of the Week when I heard a little fussing about in the chimney. First of all, I was under the impression that the flue has been better than closed for a good 30 years. It has had a plywood cover up against it all those years along with the iron damper being totally shut. Last year a creature got in to the chimney and fussed like that for a couple days, but nothing came of it.
This time, it was different.
The fussing went on for a few minutes.
Last year I had knocked up against the plywood cover with the poker to warn off whatever was in there and it worked. I thought I might be doing that again, but just sat listening.
It was different somehow. The last captive had been a bird, with a lot of scraping around and flapping noises. This time is was subtle and less frantic. Like whatever it was had a plan. Little did I know, the plan was to GET IN THE HOUSE!
Sure enough, after some concerted effort the creature dropped into the fireplace and fussed around some more against the chain mail curtain that encloses it. A moment later, a black shape flew up across my view and started circling the living room at about six feet in absolute silence.
It was a bat, of all things. A rather largish bat actually. It seemed to have an eight inch wingspan and was black except for some lighter colors around the feet and face.
It flitted around the living room, bobbing and swooping in a great oval, just missing the lamps, just touching the ceiling.
I got up & quickly scrambled for the door in a crouched position so it wouldn't nest in my hair.
They do that. Nest in your hair.
But I stayed low & quickly had the door wide open and hoped that would be inviting somehow. I stood in the end of the hall to block the bat so it would swoop on by and go right out.
Well, the bat wanted to see the house, so it flew over my head, missing me by an inch or two surely. It went ahead into the bedroom and did a couple loops, got bored and left again. I closed the bedroom door and the bathroom & other bedroom and watched as the bat went back to the big oval circuit of the living room.
It repeatedly came into the hall and passed right across the open door to the great outdoors as if it wasn't interested. I turned on the light, hoping to get it to see the big black rectangle of the open door against the lit grey walls of the hallway, but it didn't seem to respond to my careful choice of illumination. It wanted to see the kitchen, which was but a brief segue on the soon to be greater tour.
I scrambled around and found a cardboard sheet about two feet square and tried to direct the animal and indeed it changed course a few times by running directly into the thing with a light thump.
Around and around it flew, without a sound.
A bird would have been ham-winging it and flapping wildly against the curtains, but the bat seemed almost acrobatic in flight and with so little room to breathe its little mind must have been racing.
The great wooden front door, covers the opening to the stairs up to the attic when it's open. The stairwell was dark and just the smallest opening the bat had available to it, but that is where it flew now. Up the stairs to a landing with a right or left ninety degree turn into either the green room or the blue room. The blue room has a large sliding glass window, which to the eye might have seemed an exit, but to sonar, a solid wall. It was in & out in just a few seconds.
In the tight space of the landing, with a full sided railing, desk set and steeply sloped ceiling, I thought I'd soon be pulling the frantic and exhausted bat from my face, but it dove and reeled up and over a chair and down the stairs again.
Soon it was back to touring the living room.
I tried turning off interior lights and turning on the porch light, in an effort to make the landscape the inverse of what it had been. I had no idea whether changes in light would matter to it, but I also continued to try maneuvering it toward the door with the cardboard. That, at least, would be on its radar.
Many more circuits were made and more than once the poor creature tried to alight on a curtain as far from me as possible. It was getting tired.
Maybe it would come to rest or maybe it would go on flying around until it collapsed. Then I'd have to rush around looking for a way to get it off the curtain or out from under a couch, better still.
In any case, all this came to nothing, as I said, because on one more round of the living room it ventured into the hall & chose inexplicably, the front door. I watched it shoot off into the darkness & went back to the show I was watching.
Nothing to it...
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
History Rich Bullshit
It's all so very tedious.
China says it's much better than it used to be and yet the "President" Hu Jintao has a news conference with vetted reporters & vetted questions and so the inevitable result is little more than a photo-op with a press release. No reporter there is going to risk asking a "real" question because she'll wake up somewhere in the South China Sea strapped to a purple dragon shaped pool float. (MADE IN CHINA)
This pre-screening is so transparent, I can't imagine a grownup head of state resorting to such sophomoric shenanigans in this day & age, unless they just don't give a shit about truth or legitimacy. This kind of blatant indifference to democracy is just what you would expect from a third world thug government pretending reform, or the Bush administration.
So, my point is, any government, by the people or by the dictator or by the military, nets the same results to the people of that country because it is foremost a self aggrandizing institution. It has to control you first, then add a pinch of freedoms in to improve the taste of it. Most are just prettied up with words like democracy or republic to give the false impression of flourishing individual freedoms on its citizens or to disguise the country itself being little more than a glorified gulag with occasional fireworks.
Certainly, I have to admit that Americans & Chinese have "rights", but in both states, the right to a comprehensive education is, in the case of China, "your fucking problem" and in the case of the US, slowly being re-evangelized, de-funded and dumbed down to the point where you can sell a US high school graduate any lie because they won't know how to figure out what's wrong with it. Praise Jesus!
For instance, in the discussion of Cheney's "secret" meeting to explore ways of starting a war with Iran they actually considered building fake Iranian gunboats and manning them with disguised Navy Seals so they could attack a US warship and create an incident. REALLY!
See this:
Complete Bastard
Their only "problem" with this was Americans might kill Americans, but the underlying premise was great stuff!
HOLY SHEEP SHIT, do they ever think our citizens are dumb fucks!
What a bunch of fuckwads! This is Iran we're talking about. They supposedly have a giant Axis of Evil network of terrorists embedded in every "democratic" nation on earth, just waiting to blow our Walmarts into piles of rubble and cheap Chinese crap!
Cheney wants to provoke a "terrorist nation" to violence and retribution against his own countrymen.
No wonder he has his DC neighborhood blurred out on Google Earth!
"grumble grumble Can't touch ME! grumble grumble"
Never mind the overt atrocity of starting a war.
Never mind the notion that you're "right" enough to do a thing like that.
Never mind that maybe one of those injured Seals might be captured and exposed.
It's just the boundless arrogance of government power and Cheneyhood that would hatch a plan like this and think NOTHING of the people they are sworn to GOD to represent. We'll be killed in droves and taxed out the ass until our shit ain't even worth shit! And THEY...
THEY will get some SWEET oil contracts and consolidate their power in the world ABSOLUTELY. Until China comes a calling...
Just so there's no doubt, I have to say, Cheney is the supreme fuckwad and is only separated by means from actually being the reincarnation of Hitler.
Now, imagine every descendant in your family line being erased forever in a giant war with China over the oil under Iraq & Iran that Cheney & the Neo-Cons lay claim to.
You see, China is getting geared up for their big World Domination Tour because pretty soon they're going to want to be Americans and have an SUV, 2 kids, dog, pool, stainless steel kitchen, vacation home and digital entertainment center just like us.
Somebody is going to have to be their China. Somebody is going to have to make the cheap consumer goods that they will be buying from Walmart (who has betrayed us completely)
And just who do you think is hurting for work right now?
Who's loosing their status, both morally (with war & torture issue) and economically (failing dollar, huge foreign debt) as a First World Power?
Get used to the idea of 60 hour work weeks, no benefits and, if you're lucky, 75 cents an hour with a 5 cent night shift differential.
If you think China won't hesitate to kick our asses all over the planet as soon as possible, consider this;
If you're 1 in a million, there are 1300 people just like you in China.
That means 1300 Dick Cheneys too!
::::::END VOMIT:::::::
China says it's much better than it used to be and yet the "President" Hu Jintao has a news conference with vetted reporters & vetted questions and so the inevitable result is little more than a photo-op with a press release. No reporter there is going to risk asking a "real" question because she'll wake up somewhere in the South China Sea strapped to a purple dragon shaped pool float. (MADE IN CHINA)
This pre-screening is so transparent, I can't imagine a grownup head of state resorting to such sophomoric shenanigans in this day & age, unless they just don't give a shit about truth or legitimacy. This kind of blatant indifference to democracy is just what you would expect from a third world thug government pretending reform, or the Bush administration.
So, my point is, any government, by the people or by the dictator or by the military, nets the same results to the people of that country because it is foremost a self aggrandizing institution. It has to control you first, then add a pinch of freedoms in to improve the taste of it. Most are just prettied up with words like democracy or republic to give the false impression of flourishing individual freedoms on its citizens or to disguise the country itself being little more than a glorified gulag with occasional fireworks.
Certainly, I have to admit that Americans & Chinese have "rights", but in both states, the right to a comprehensive education is, in the case of China, "your fucking problem" and in the case of the US, slowly being re-evangelized, de-funded and dumbed down to the point where you can sell a US high school graduate any lie because they won't know how to figure out what's wrong with it. Praise Jesus!
For instance, in the discussion of Cheney's "secret" meeting to explore ways of starting a war with Iran they actually considered building fake Iranian gunboats and manning them with disguised Navy Seals so they could attack a US warship and create an incident. REALLY!
See this:
Complete Bastard
Their only "problem" with this was Americans might kill Americans, but the underlying premise was great stuff!
HOLY SHEEP SHIT, do they ever think our citizens are dumb fucks!
What a bunch of fuckwads! This is Iran we're talking about. They supposedly have a giant Axis of Evil network of terrorists embedded in every "democratic" nation on earth, just waiting to blow our Walmarts into piles of rubble and cheap Chinese crap!
Cheney wants to provoke a "terrorist nation" to violence and retribution against his own countrymen.
No wonder he has his DC neighborhood blurred out on Google Earth!
"grumble grumble Can't touch ME! grumble grumble"
Never mind the overt atrocity of starting a war.
Never mind the notion that you're "right" enough to do a thing like that.
Never mind that maybe one of those injured Seals might be captured and exposed.
It's just the boundless arrogance of government power and Cheneyhood that would hatch a plan like this and think NOTHING of the people they are sworn to GOD to represent. We'll be killed in droves and taxed out the ass until our shit ain't even worth shit! And THEY...
THEY will get some SWEET oil contracts and consolidate their power in the world ABSOLUTELY. Until China comes a calling...
Just so there's no doubt, I have to say, Cheney is the supreme fuckwad and is only separated by means from actually being the reincarnation of Hitler.
Now, imagine every descendant in your family line being erased forever in a giant war with China over the oil under Iraq & Iran that Cheney & the Neo-Cons lay claim to.
You see, China is getting geared up for their big World Domination Tour because pretty soon they're going to want to be Americans and have an SUV, 2 kids, dog, pool, stainless steel kitchen, vacation home and digital entertainment center just like us.
Somebody is going to have to be their China. Somebody is going to have to make the cheap consumer goods that they will be buying from Walmart (who has betrayed us completely)
And just who do you think is hurting for work right now?
Who's loosing their status, both morally (with war & torture issue) and economically (failing dollar, huge foreign debt) as a First World Power?
Get used to the idea of 60 hour work weeks, no benefits and, if you're lucky, 75 cents an hour with a 5 cent night shift differential.
If you think China won't hesitate to kick our asses all over the planet as soon as possible, consider this;
If you're 1 in a million, there are 1300 people just like you in China.
That means 1300 Dick Cheneys too!
::::::END VOMIT:::::::
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Dumb & Dumber
I sold me a fancy plate the other day.
It was definitely NOT true fine china, but a production of some dank Viennese cellar sweatshop where children fed only on dark chocolate bon-bons are forced to paint beautiful designs on display china. It even says Hand Painted Vienna China in fine orange lettering so you can see it from 100 yards and you know it's real.
Marvelous.
Bitchin'.
DOPE!
Or so I thought.
I did say in my listing that it had some minor wear, but was in excellent condition none the less and I suppose that's true, as far as vintage Viennese china goes. I just had a little hiccup @ the point of boxing it up.
I stood there in the bright florescent light of my basement eBay facility which includes a photo booth, shipping table, inventory shelving and monster paper cutter I rescued from an old dumpster.
The bright light played me false. I looked at the plate & it had the distinct appearance of having been flailed with a cat-o-nine-tails laced with tacks & coated with abrasive carborundum chips.
How do I know that look?
Let's call it a vivid imagination. Let's just say, the line between reality and any given nightmare I create is mighty thin. So, I've convulsed to death from a sever head blow, drowned, burned, tasted Zyklon-B gas, been crushed to death under a leaky port-a-potty, and sadly, seen this lovely plate thrashed with such an aforementioned device as the China Distressing Cat-O-Nine!
What would I think if I got this gnarley piece of landfill and paid 12 bucks for the privilege?
I'd think, "Fuck this guy! I got ripped off! I never ordered a fucking plate!"
So, I think that this guy is gonna be pissed.
Unless he understood that minor wear was an expectation of condition when the words "vintage" and "handed down" are used. I mean, you can see the picture of it. Can't you see the yawning white spaces of china showing through the gold?
That's not enough. I didn't get 1000 positive feedbacks by splitting hairs and frankly I don't deserve the 12 bucks. So I compose a letter to the customer.
"I was putting the plate in the box & looked at it one last time and realized I was perhaps too enthusiastic about the "minor wear" in the gold leaf. This has happened before. I think everything is fine, but when I give it the last check, it looks far worse than I first thought. Sometimes it's as simple as "the right light".
I'm hoping you don't agree, that I'm overreacting and it's just a rare form of Fine China Dysmorphic Disorder on my part.
However, I'd much rather err on the side of caution and not leave you feeling ripped off, because I hate that! I claim to be trustworthy & I'm serious. If you have any problem with the plate, let me know. If not, enjoy and I'm glad it was just dysfunctional anxiety. Thanks. Peace, HB�"
I can see this guy now rubbing his hands together in a Mr Burns, sort of "I've got him now" fashion and looking for any way he can take advantage of my disorder and get a free plate. He probably doesn't even open the box before emailing his utter disgust at my flagrant mail fraud in attempting to foist off this piece of dross on such a fine American as himself. This is tantamount to retail terrorism! An outrage!
He marks me down as the worst seller on record, somehow managing to give me two negative feedbacks and a letter of censure from eBay.
He demands his money back and treble damages for my gross misconduct!
I'm out $60!
Or not.
Maybe he's a regular guy and I need to get over myself.
He can plainly see the gaps in the photo I used.
What the fuck is his problem anyway?
It's only a fucking plate...
EPILOGUE:
Two days later, he's got his plate. I'm waiting for the inevitable "there's a problem" email. Instead, I get this feedback:
Lovely item. Smooth, easy transaction. Prompt service and shipping. THANKS.
Kick me in the ass & call me shorty!
Friday, July 25, 2008
Put me on the No Fly List, Please
Just how many jokers start a blog with, "I'm starting a fucking blog, man. Don't know why."
Well. count me among the jokers. I'm just hoping to be inspired by something and write a few lines of drivel now and again. I imagine all sorts of pithy comments drifting into my head.
They will probably center around my extreme anger and disillusion with BushCo Inc. and the dirty dealings of a dry drunk fascist misanthrope who holds hands with Osama's Uncle Akmed when vacationing in The Land of Saud. Vacationing...
I often wonder why anyone bothers to illiterate the myriad facts against Bush that show plainly his banal perfidy, callous betrayal, depraved indifference, abysmal ignorance, sniveling cowardice and reckless belligerence. No one with enough power cares or they're making too much money off his regime to do anything about it and only a very few are even remotely real about it.
(You GO Kucinich!!)
I don't much care for that Parliament of Whores in the Capitol Building either. They have SO betrayed us as to be criminal!
My wife loves that scene from Mars Attacks where the whole body is charred into green & red skellingtons! I used to be more temperate about it, but now I see the virtue in clearing the boards aggressively. The status quo is killing us!
Unfortunately, I actually believe Daniel Quinn in Beyond Civilization who said, and I paraphrase poorly, voting is crap, because you just replace one useless sack of money grubbing excrement with another younger useless sack of money grubbing excrement.
You won't change this "democracy" by adhering to the institution that protects it. "It" being its deformed parasitic twin and not democracy at all.
THIS JUST IN:
New energy source! By shoving a rod up Jefferson's dried out old rectum and attaching it to a generator, power can be produced by his pretty much constant rolling over in his grave. Other forefathers, also tapped, could feasibly power Cleveland.
To be fair, I'd have to say some of the forefathers were losers too, because they wrote the Constitution just to shut "the people" up who, after fighting the revolution at their behest, had to pay outlandish taxes to the landed pricks who's only claim to the land rested with THE FUCKING KING!
What had the Americans just fought and died to determine?
That the power of the king is no such power!
Who's King George and how dare he?
Savvy?
So, we're entering into our two hundred and thirty second year since The Declaration of Independence and we are no more free of tyranny than on that day.
Somewhere along the line we forgot that capitalism is not a form of government and that efficiency of law is unethical and that ethics and cooperation is how we got civilized and corporations do not deserve human rights.
It's all such an overwhelming heap of stinking dung now, I think most people just turn away. They take a "Not My Problem" pill & hope they don't lose the house. In fact, the idea of coming out against tyranny makes you a target, so stay indoors away from the windows and maybe there'll be another Passover for Pussies.
There won't be.
Back to Quinn, I paraphrase again.
Get OUT!
You can't reform the war pigs.
You can't stop the corporations.
You can't trust the politicians.
Every effort you make is wasted time better spent on getting out of the loop, getting off the grid and choosing a new way to live. I know I'm not making it very sexy, but look at how you live now. Look at what you're up against. Imagine the Congress turning around tomorrow and doubling the minimum wage, ending the war and impeaching BushCo Inc.
NOT going to happen!
And it's not that I adhere to the words of Daniel Quinn. I'm far too jaded & lazy to go rushing off to war. I just think his ideas are a better place to go than the endless nightmare we have built for ourselves here and I want everyone else to start living like that too. I don't believe in living by example. I believe in bitching until everyone is so tired of my bitching that they do what I want.
I also cherish the words of Groucho Marx and don't trust any club that would have someone like me as a member. So I leave it to you.
Ishmael Society
Well. count me among the jokers. I'm just hoping to be inspired by something and write a few lines of drivel now and again. I imagine all sorts of pithy comments drifting into my head.
They will probably center around my extreme anger and disillusion with BushCo Inc. and the dirty dealings of a dry drunk fascist misanthrope who holds hands with Osama's Uncle Akmed when vacationing in The Land of Saud. Vacationing...
I often wonder why anyone bothers to illiterate the myriad facts against Bush that show plainly his banal perfidy, callous betrayal, depraved indifference, abysmal ignorance, sniveling cowardice and reckless belligerence. No one with enough power cares or they're making too much money off his regime to do anything about it and only a very few are even remotely real about it.
(You GO Kucinich!!)
I don't much care for that Parliament of Whores in the Capitol Building either. They have SO betrayed us as to be criminal!
My wife loves that scene from Mars Attacks where the whole body is charred into green & red skellingtons! I used to be more temperate about it, but now I see the virtue in clearing the boards aggressively. The status quo is killing us!
Unfortunately, I actually believe Daniel Quinn in Beyond Civilization who said, and I paraphrase poorly, voting is crap, because you just replace one useless sack of money grubbing excrement with another younger useless sack of money grubbing excrement.
You won't change this "democracy" by adhering to the institution that protects it. "It" being its deformed parasitic twin and not democracy at all.
THIS JUST IN:
New energy source! By shoving a rod up Jefferson's dried out old rectum and attaching it to a generator, power can be produced by his pretty much constant rolling over in his grave. Other forefathers, also tapped, could feasibly power Cleveland.
To be fair, I'd have to say some of the forefathers were losers too, because they wrote the Constitution just to shut "the people" up who, after fighting the revolution at their behest, had to pay outlandish taxes to the landed pricks who's only claim to the land rested with THE FUCKING KING!
What had the Americans just fought and died to determine?
That the power of the king is no such power!
Who's King George and how dare he?
Savvy?
So, we're entering into our two hundred and thirty second year since The Declaration of Independence and we are no more free of tyranny than on that day.
Somewhere along the line we forgot that capitalism is not a form of government and that efficiency of law is unethical and that ethics and cooperation is how we got civilized and corporations do not deserve human rights.
It's all such an overwhelming heap of stinking dung now, I think most people just turn away. They take a "Not My Problem" pill & hope they don't lose the house. In fact, the idea of coming out against tyranny makes you a target, so stay indoors away from the windows and maybe there'll be another Passover for Pussies.
There won't be.
Back to Quinn, I paraphrase again.
Get OUT!
You can't reform the war pigs.
You can't stop the corporations.
You can't trust the politicians.
Every effort you make is wasted time better spent on getting out of the loop, getting off the grid and choosing a new way to live. I know I'm not making it very sexy, but look at how you live now. Look at what you're up against. Imagine the Congress turning around tomorrow and doubling the minimum wage, ending the war and impeaching BushCo Inc.
NOT going to happen!
And it's not that I adhere to the words of Daniel Quinn. I'm far too jaded & lazy to go rushing off to war. I just think his ideas are a better place to go than the endless nightmare we have built for ourselves here and I want everyone else to start living like that too. I don't believe in living by example. I believe in bitching until everyone is so tired of my bitching that they do what I want.
I also cherish the words of Groucho Marx and don't trust any club that would have someone like me as a member. So I leave it to you.
Ishmael Society
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