Tomorrow.

A day in which it is asserted that the sun will come out.  Ascribing to tomorrow the qualities of a sentient being, it could be said: “You’re only a day away.”

If I relax, I feel exposed.

Oh yeah.  The demons are back.  Anxiety with just a nice hint of depression coming around the corner.  It’s bad this time, bad in a big way, probably the worst since the first time it all went to shit, which has been 12-13 years behind me now.  I had just gotten us up out of our mess at the crumby apartment, gotten myself back in school, and gotten a home loan.  Think there might be a connection there?  Feelings of disability in coping with my responsibilities?  I feel like that’s a part of it, but just a part.

The feeling is just one of constant discomfiture: I imagine it’s something like an addict feels when he hasn’t had a fix.  A nervous, skin-crawling on-edge sense of preoccupation with a thing which seems initially to have revolved around driving at night, or going to large public places, but which has just now taken over large parts of my life.  At work, and even at home, this feeling is taking up a majority of my waking life.  For how long?  I don’t know, I hope it is short and ugly, like it has been times before, but to be honest, I fear I won’t be that lucky.

I don’t normally like to talk about these episodes, and so I doubt I will much change that habit, but be aware that if I do not write much in the next little while, the reason is that I am trying to get myself well again, and that I hope it will be very soon.

A post to cover the month of September, because I’ll feel like a chump if I don’t.

Gotta get in at least one post a month.  It’s funny how I weave in and out of blog productivity.  Almost like I have a life or something.  Almost.

I’ve been mired in Fall semester classes for several weeks now at ASU, here in awe-inspiring, historic Augusta, GA.  Man alive, it’s only two classes but it’s going to be harder than I thought to get all A’s this time around.  I’ve got two professors (make that one professor, and one BROfessor), both of them are relatively new adjuncts here, and both seemingly have the agenda of proving themselves to be hardasses in order to get better positions athe University.  Well, I can sympathize with their plight a little bit: I know academic life is a tough slog and is why even though I think I would be well-suited for academia, I’ll probably avoid the temptation just to keep things profitable in other areas of my life.  But I thought I could just BS my way through these classes and get As.  I think Bs are definitely doable with a minimum of effort, but in the paper I got back from my english class yesterday, dude actually called me out for having “an eloquent pen but not much to say here”.  He’s totally right, too!  I don’t have much to say because the part of the text I picked to expound upon was a crappy choice, and I can see that I’m going to have to choose more wisely next time.

Writing is such a finicky endeavor for me, and the main reason my posts here are so short is because I can easily get to this stage of narrative where even I don’t believe the bullshit I’m going on about. And if I’m getting to that point, I figure what’s the use of trying to get anybody else on board the tripe-mobile with me when there are better things to do.  Well, writing for school has proven to be no different, because I had to literally force myself to continue to write just to make the 1500-word requirement for the assignment.  I’m probably the lamest English major of all time, because even though I have a passion for good books and am a pretty strong writer myself, I find it fairly difficult to wrap me brainbox around the idea of Criticism as a Serious Pursuit.  Mayhap I’m not a Serious Person, and if so please forgive the impertinence, there’s a good chap; but I just think the best critics are people like Roger Ebert, who have been able to sythesize criticism and autobiography in such an awesome way that, in some of his finer examples of long form writing, Ebert is actually able to surpass the object of his criticism.  People who read Ebert will know what I mean by this, he is a master of the subjective narrative and I think in a hundred years, while we may not still care about James Cameron, we will still be reading Ebert’s reactions to him.

None of this is to say, “oh, if only they’d give me free reign, I’d tear some criticism up and have it screaming my name”, because I don’t think that’s the case.  I appreciate the fact that school is a structured environment where you sometimes have to do things you don’t necessarily find to be intellectually fulfilling.  I get it.  But passing over the noble arguments about ideal educational approaches, the hard truth is that my GPA sucks, so I have to start making some As in a hurry so I can get past the sins of my younger days, and it’s a tad discouraging to me that I’ll be upset if I end up with Bs instead.

I hope I haven’t jinxed myself by complaining.  I’m going to have to take a look at this post again in December.  If I end up with Cs I swear to Baby Jesus I’m going to cry bitter bitter tears.  Thank God for vodka.

Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.

If you ever want to feel the gaping void of madness that would be created by immortality, just do what I did today:

1. Go to work while it’s raining very hard.

2. Fall into a puddle and thoroughly soak your socks.

3. Try to microwave the socks.

4. One minute later, enjoy your blackened, burned, useless socks.

4. One second later, throw them shits in the trash ’cause they stank.

4? Relent to societal and workplace demands, put your wet feet into a pair of ten-year-old leather bucks with no socks, and no hope of getting socks.

4! Work with nice older ladies who prefer the thermostat to be set at all times to 62 degrees.

∞ Watch as your nice eight-hour workday turns into Ī́̅̂͌҉̺̲͕̺̺̳̣̫ ̵̣̖̹͙́͂͐͌ͦͬ͗̓ͤ́C͉̳͙͊̇͑̄ͯ̊͟͝Ä̶̹͔͚́̇̄̅ͯ̇ͯ̃̚͘N̛̳̼͔̫̥̎͆̅̚ ͯ̑́҉̤̲̹̹̕͟S̷̺̹̬̭̪̤̾̅ͦĒ͂̃ͭ̋ͫ̎҉̴͕͕̝̪͍̪̮ͅE̺̭̬͍͇̬ͭͣ̈́̏̂ ̺̳̯͔̞̳̽͊̊́͋ͫͬ́͢F̲̻͚̈̏͂̓̏ͫ͑͢Õ̴̻̘͎̪͎̹̮̳̒͌̂̕R̩̭̆̀̐̽̀̔͟E̐̆͒̉ͭ̋ͥ͐͏̵҉̠̖̪̮̬͓͇V̋҉̙̻E  ̹̤͔̹͖͎̞̤͛͆R̡̗̣̥̳͇͔̓͋ͣ͝.

I have such wonderful, wonderful things… to show you…

Cheapskater’s Review: 39dollarglasses.com

My wife and I ordered two pairs of glasses from www.39dollarglasses.com after having looked all over the internet for the best buying advice for cheap glasses.  Neither one of us has a special funky prescription, so we figured what the heck, let’s save ourselves 400+ dollars and just buy glasses once a year or so (or however long it takes for them to either a.) break or b.) become thoroughly unfashionable).

The glasses that I received are pretty awesome.

Fig 1. Pretty awesome.

I was immediately impressed with the build quality and the index of the lenses was awesome, because they are so thin compared to my old pair!  The frames are not the high quality enamel of Ray Ban or Oakley, but they are good solid plastic frames, and because they are not enameled they are also extremely light, which has turned out, weeks later, to be a huge plus. I have already ordered another pair of similarly accoutered sunglasses for myself.  It’s a great deal as long as you aren’t tempted by the upgrade features like photochromic lenses, super high index lenses, blinged-out cases and whatever else they hit you with at the end.

The downside to our experience has been Jeannie’s glasses.  The frames are really high quality, but for whatever reason, the lenses just weren’t right.  We looked over our prescription though and the problem appears to be that the official pupillary distance measurements are different from the measurements we made ourselves, so it does seem to be our fault.  However, we were offered a 70% refund and we think that is fair, as getting glasses is just as much a service as it is a retail product.  Anyway, we put in another prescription, this time with the proper PD measurement and we’ve got our fingers crossed that these will be as great as mine have been thus far.

My take on it is that it’s a really good deal and the only reason to say no is that you have some silly requirement to have a specific brand label on your eyewear.  Because let’s face it, glasses get to looking pretty junked up in a hurry, no matter how expensive they are, and when you pay (much) less for (slightly) less quality, it’s doesn’t hurt the wallet nearly so bad when it’s time to replace the glasses you have.  So far, I’m a fan of this company and this business model.  It’ll be interesting to see whether this opinion is redeemed or refuted in the next few days, as we attempt to collect our refund and get our new pairs in.

*UPDATE 8/3/2010*  & The whistles go WHOO WHOO!

These new sunglasses are so bad-ass that I wear them at night (so I can, so I can, watch you weave then breathe your story lines).

Fig 2. So bad-ass, e.g. Corey Hart

Seriously, I like them a lot, I have done a complete 180 in that I NOW CRAVE SUNLIGHT FOR TO TEST MY MIGHTY SUNSHIELDS.  And my wife’s came in and they are also very good quality and fit great and make her to look like the sexity (I don’t remember what they are called, so photo is a no-go, bro).  And yep, if you’re keeping track, we did get the refund for the bad pair after about a week.  So, my money is going to these guys from now on, until they fuck up, which will be never because my readership at this blog is INTENSE and is a TERRIBL(Y INSPIRING) MOTIVATOR for any business looking to stay afloat.

Tales from reddit: Crazy Cat Lady

I used to do onsite stuff for home users. Most of the time it was faboo, nice people with nice homes, made a few friends, etc. But this one time I had a call that came out of nowhere, a lady in Old Towne (a part of Augusta GA that is famous for mansions that are nevertheless sorta rundown). She called me up and said she had a home office PC which needed a backup and Windows reload. She asked with forced nonchalance if I had any allergies; unfortunately for me I have a terrible allergy to most domestic animals but, always a trooper, I just said don’t worry about shit, I’ll be there in a jif.

So I get there, walk in the front door and the first thing I notice is the STANK. The smell of ammonia was all up in this piece, dawgs. The second thing I notice is the lady herself: she’s wearing a wispy white nightgown, which was bad enough considering she was probably in her mid-fifties, but because she’s rockin’ it sleeveless I notice that she’s got these scratch marks, some old and some new, all down her arms. Oh shit. That smell, and those arms: that’s right, we got us a crazy cat lady.

Anyway, cat ladies are nothing new to me in my line of work, as computers and craziness are often bedfellows, but I could tell just from the scratch marks on her arm that this was going to be hardcore.

She tells me to follow, and we go all the way to the back of this enormous and rundown old Antebellum house to what I think was probably once a kitchen, she opens the door and I am immediately bombarded with a stinking yellow cloud of funk that can only be cat piss. She walks on in, but I hesitate and look at my phone, wondering how I can possibly get out of this job, hoping beyond hope that someone would just call me so I could beg off, but nope.

So I walk on in and before the scene even enters my brain, I hear them hissing like a pit of snakes: I’d say somewhere around 60-75 cats, all of them hissing at me. It was weird in a way that I can’t even fully describe: the room used to be a kitchen, like I said, but all the cabinetry was more or less doorless like it had been partially uninstalled, so there was just row upon row of cats lining the walls, and even more creepily squirming around like a furry river on the floor, and there were at least three on her desk, which is where I had to work. And all of them were looking. right. into. my soul. Finding me lacking.

Time to get your game face on, I said to myself, but what I was actually feeling was a kind of subtle terror. I like cats in a normal environment, but when there are that many cats together in an enclosed space, one gets the impression that one is not in the room with “cats” anymore, but rather some kind of collective alien entity and this particular entity was malignant.

Two minutes in and my eyes are watering from the smell. Five minutes in and I start to sneeze uncontrollably. Ten minutes in and I had to do what I had never done before, I looked that lady in the face and said, “Yeah, this is not working. I’m going to have to take your machine into the shop for service because I can’t breathe very well and frankly I’m a little scared of this situation.” She was unsurprised and helped me get the computer (which by the way was practically ruined from all the hair and dander, I’m told the cleaning of this computer in the store has an epic tale of its own but I was not a part of that) to my car. By this time I am literally wheezing even though I’m now out of the room, and by the time I get to the shop I was seriously starting to think about heading to the hospital, and indeed I did end up going home early because of the awful hacking cough I had developed.  Took a few days to fully recover.

A few days later, I had to bring it back, but this time I rolled in there with a paint respirator (again, she was unsurprised) and ten minutes later I was on my way home with a 200 dollar tip in my pocket. Still creeped out though. All in a day’s work.

tl;dr: Crazy cat lady had ~75 cats in a small room with her computer, ended up out of work sick, but crazy cat lady tipped well; conclusion: