The Omen

According to the stats on my log-in, this is my 666th post to this blog. Read into it what you will; not being a Christian I just think it's funny:

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Tasmia,
Happy birthday to you!

(and a happy birthday to comic creator and friend Batton Lash today as well!)

Legal Eagles

Spent six or so hours today being deposed for our lawsuit against various agencies, then had a stressful shift at work. We'll just say today's been a little frustrating and move on to bigger and better days.

Ferris Bueler's Day Off

My employers were generous enough to give me a day off to mourn. . .

I've spent it fairly numbly surfing the internet, without goal or real interest. I want to thank everyone who has expressed concern, love and/or condolences. I don't really feel any less pain, but it does make my heart grow two sizes knowing that I have people who care. Even so, right now I just feel very, very alone.

I'm not really sure how to reconcile the privacy of the pain and the experience with a life lived in parts publicly via blogging. Should I have not mentioned a thing, mourned alone and resumed posting as normal when I could? Surely it would keep from becoming a spectacle, but somehow it wouldn't feel honest to me. And waiting until I was better to mention her passing off-handedly would just be wrong. Regardless, I intend for this to be the final posting where I dwell a great deal this.

It's easier to "talk" to a computer than it is to a person. Every time I talk to a person about her passing, the tears come running again.

Last week my grandmother had surgery to correct some circulation problems. She's had the surgery before, and worry was relatively low. She called me when she came home on Friday to let me know the surgery went well, to ask if the kids got the camera she'd sent them, and to make sure to tell us she loved us. I'll always be thankful that our last words to each other were expressions of love. She passed away in her sleep on Sunday morning. We don't yet know the cause.

I received the news while our home was filled with guests over for our weekly gaming session (I was in another room for the call). Trying to find a way, the strength, whatever to tell people that you need them to go without telling them why (because the rest of the family shouldn't have learned that way) is a nightmare I would never wish on anyone. I eventually was able to rope Lash in to getting Denise so I could tell her to cancel our session and have everyone leave, after which I told her.

It took some time to gain enough composure to tell Lash and Aeia. They took it hard, but are faring better today. We spent a couple hours just holding each other, me sharing happy memories I had of her with them, they sharing their own happy memories of her with me. Then I went to sleep for a couple hours. . .and Aeia stayed with and watched over me while I slept.

My first news on waking was that my grandmother, as per her wishes, was not going to have a service (there will be a memorial in December). This brought on another bout of crushing despair. I don't feel as if I'll be able to say my good byes without one.

I ate something. Posted my previous post and concurrent Facebook status and commenced to numbly watching television.

Today, all I've wanted to do is sleep, but Denise still had to work and the kids needed me up, aware, capable and caring, which I have been. Tomorrow is also going to be very stressful for unrelated reasons.

Denise has been here for me, supporting me as much as I've asked, a little more than I've asked, actually, as I have trouble ever asking for much.

I have so many good memories to celebrate. And as soon as the hurting lessens, I'll get right on that.

Thanks again.

Sudden Impact

In my life, the relative to whom I've always been closest in my heart (after Denise and the children), is my grandmother. She passed away today. I'm not ok.

Friday

Before the more painful events of Wednesday night, I took the kids to Toys R'Us to pick out Halloween costumes and look into getting a second controller for my PS3. Halloween costuming was easy enough: Lash is going to be Boba Fett, Aeia is going to be a witch again, Rael is going to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and Tasmia is likely to be a jack-o-lantern. Anyway, you'll see pictures after the day comes and goes, so more on this then.

In the PS3 aisle I spied that they had Little Big Planet (which, if you didn't already know, is THE primary game I've been looking forward to for the PS3 for a good six or more months now), having forgotten that it was supposed to have been released the day previous. With a bit of heroclix sales money still burning my frivolous meter, I scooped it up and we finished our shopping. At the teller, the scanner refused to sell me the game; manually entering the upc code refused to sell me the game. A manager was retrieved, the release date was verified and then the manager repeated the same check-out attempts that refused me before. And was refused again. The manager was kind enough to apologize, knock ten bucks off for the hassle and entered in a charge for a generic item so that I could take my game and they could figure out their problem. I leave the game unopened and wait 'til my day off to open and explore it.

The game, a puzzle platformer, extremely cutesy, is super fun and addictive on its own merits as just a puzzle platformer. However, the even bigger draw, and one that I think could change the face of video game programming, is the ability to also build entire new levels of your own from scratch, play them and post them online for everyone else to play them. It's a fantastic little toy (and now I need to get the Playstation Eye so I can even more greatly utilize this aspect of the game) and I totally dig it.

Unfortunately, whenever I tried to connect to the online aspects, I got an error message. I checked, everything else was connecting ok, even other games on the PS3, the PS3 store, etc, just not Little Big Planet, so I went online and researched whether there was a bug or an update I needed, only to discover that the game's online servers weren't up for anyone at the moment, and wouldn't be up before the game was released. That isn't a typo. It turns out that the original print run of the game was recalled by Sony because one level's music track contained a song that had lyrics that included a line or two from the Quran and they were afraid of offending Muslims (let's not dwell on how further research has found some bigger Muslim groups have come out to say they aren't that bothered by it and that there are more important offenses for them to worry about in the world than a child's video game that has two lyrics from a passage in their holy book) and that a new cut of the game would be released with the music track from that level changed. Depending on where you live, you could get the new cut of the game as early as this coming Monday, or sometime around November 7th.

So I've been enjoying a new game that wasn't supposed to be released to me yet, with a $10 discount. I'm ok with it, and I'm not offended by the music in the first level of world three in the slightest.

Max Payne

Wednesday night (or technically Thursday morning, around 1 a.m., shortly after Denise came home from work) was a painful night for me. It was very late; Denise and I had just gotten Rael into the shower with Denise upon discovering he'd soiled himself in his sleep and I went to descend the stairs and retrieve the sleeping Tasmia for bed.

Around the third step from the top, I missed the step completely and ended up falling down the entire flight of stairs. This was not a fun experience.

All told, I tore one of my toes up, all bloodied and gross, the toenail bent off. Another of my toes hurts a great deal. My entire right foot, right wrist and forearm have bad rug burn (our stairway is carpeted) and I sustained a nasty welt above my left elbow. I also hink I might have been very mildly concussed.

The next day at work, my boss was kind enough to assign me to back drive-thru for the majority of my shift, where moving around would be very minimal. A lot of standing though, which is when I came to discover I'd hurt my side and sored up my back as well.

I did a lot of resting Thursday evening, and had Friday off for more rest, which was nice. As of today, I still have a lot of pain in one toe, and the burn on the same foot is still very tender to the touch, but otherwise I think I'm ok.

Book of Kings

Some of you longer-term readers may remember my previous disgruntlements over the laziness of our postman when it comes to the recycling bin being too close to our mailbox and refusal to deliver our mail when this occurs. This extends to many other things too, and since I live in an apartment complex predominantly populated by college kids, it seems at least once a week I'm moving some sort of misplaced trash from behind our mailbox and into our dumpster so that we can continue getting our mail. . .so last night when I get home from work around one in the morning, I see two sizable piles of refuse behind our mailbox and let out an unhappy groan. I'm already dirty and grungy from work so I may as well deal with it promptly than to let it sit.

When I get over to the garbage I have to stop myself a moment. My initial reaction is "Holy shit, Denise has kicked me out of the house without telling me! What did I do this time?" Why, you might ask? Because I find myself staring at two sizable piles of books, almost all hardcovers and, from what I can see, almost entirely Stephen King (which anyone to visit my home would be able to say is a fair assessment of my own library--a lot lot lot of Stephen King hardcovers). Upon closer inspection I stop having my mini paranoid experience, as there are also books I've never seen, as well as books that are very much not the editions I own.

All told there's probably about fifty books, three-quarters of which are hardcover editions of SK novels and all seemed to still be in good condition (some old, some a bit scuffed, but no weather damage from being next to our garbage for somewhere between one and eight hours) and there was just no way I could ever bring myself to throw away all those books. So now I have two giant boxes full of books that I need to sort through, decide if any are to be kept and what to do with the rest.

Why somebody would just throw their library away is beyond me, but whoever you are dude, I suggest you kiss your wife's ass and make up already before she throws out your electronics.

Time Bandits

I'm in a fairly bad place right now, but rather than talk about that I'd like to talk about something that hasn't come up for a while: Stephen King's epic serial novel, The Dark Tower and some new revelations I've had into reading it. I've come to rethink my entire take on the series based on the one immutable fact that Roland Deschain is actually the greatest evil of all in the series, and doesn't realize it. That Roland is an agent of chaos attempting to destroy the natural order in things. I apologize to any readers who are unfamiliar with the series, as I spoil plenty and otherwise won't make much sense to you. Now readers of the Tower, ask yourselves a few questions, realize a few things:

If the beams are meant to be eternal, why are their keepers all frail and mortal things? There isn't a set of rules in place to create new caretakers of the varied beams, and all of the caretakers still extant in the series are near death in one form or another. The answer, of course, is that the beams aren't meant to be eternal. The great wheel turns, the world moves on. For everyone except Roland.

Benjamin Franklin defines insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." By the end of the series we discover that Roland has done this all before. The insinuation is made that Roland has done this before many, many times. All to the same result.

The natural order of the universe is to tend towards death, decay and then rebirth. Roland is an enemy of nature as his ultimate goal is to stop the world from moving on, which is ultimately a crime against nature. The Tower actually tries to teach Roland this lesson early in the series by killing Jake in book one and rebirthing him in book two. Roland's too busy vowing to do right by Jake this time (which he ultimately doesn't do anyway) than realizing that Jake is a message: stop fighting the universe and let the natural order of things progress the way they are meant.

Jake isn't enough of a lesson to Roland, however. The Tower also tries to clue Roland in on the evils inherent in his actions via the other partnerships it sends him: an addict, mule and dealer of hard drugs; a woman with a fractured personality whose every personality is a psychopath; a fallen and faithless priest. All of them have a nugget of purity in them, true, and what better lesson is there for Roland than a realization that even those who might think they have the right motives in mind can still be wholly wrong and doing the wrong thing? The Tower surrounds him with bad people so that he can realize his mission is, in fact, flawed and wrong.

Forgive if I'm too blunt in reiterating this: in retrospect, our hero Roland Deschain is actually the bad guy. And if you think about it, most of the world's biggest bads have all fancied themselves good guys, saviors, benevolent, etc.: Hitler, Bush, Christian Crusaders, Catholic Inquisitors, Doctor Doom. . .

For a time this realization that Roland is the bad guy, that his entire quest is flawed and abhorrent to the natural progression of the universe, that Jake dies (twice) in the service of helping the bad guys. . .troubled me. Why does King have us follow this for seven increasingly large novels? And the only answer that rises to the top for me is this--that the Dark Tower is in fact a morality play for the rest of us to stop trying to control the universe, to stop trying to fight nature, and to let the world be what it needs to be and just live in it.

Just live in it, people. And live in it well.

Hi-Fidelity

Top 5 Things I Have Been Fallaciously Called This Week (I Shan't Elaborate):
1. A druggie
2. A Christian
3. A minor
4. A racist
5. A pussy

Care to suggest any of these are actually true?

Canadian Bacon

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Adrienne,
Happy birthday to you!
eh.

The Neverending Story

What holiday is your birthday closest to? Father's Day.

Where was the last house you went to besides your house? Um. . .the Taylors' I think.

Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity? Yes; I can think of three, agree with none of them--any guesses?

Do you have freckles? A very few.

How do you like your steak cooked? Bloody.

What is the best thing in your refrigerator right now? I think there's some hard salami calling my name.

Were you ever rushed by an ambulance into the emergency room? Yes.

Have you ever seen a dead body? Yes.

What's the first thing you did this morning? Vomit up bile.

The last website you visited? Amazon.com.

Is anything alive in your room? There's life in absolutely every room. Microscopic bacteria exist pretty much everywhere people do, and the statistics on spiders per square foot in domestic dwellings pretty much guarantee there's some in every room of the house (goodness knows I have to kill enough in the downstairs restroom often enough).

When is the last time you ate peanut butter and jelly? Maybe a month or so.

Do you have a desk in your room? I do.

What happened at 9:00 am today? I woke up and headed to the restroom to vomit bile.

What is the last thing someone bought you? My boss bought me a 7-Up this morning.

Do you plan on moving in the next year? I hope

What were you doing at 8:30 pm last Saturday night? I was home enjoying Rock Band 2.

Do you have a job? It's not just a job, it's an adventure! A shitty adventure.

What are you doing right now besides this survey? Watching X-Play and hoping Rael successfully went pee in his potty.

What are your plans tomorrow? Work.

Have you ever done something outrageously dumb? Not at all.

Who was the last person you saw? That I don't live with? Tonia.

What was the last movie you watched? Hmm. Tropic Thunder.

Have you ever cried when you're mad? Of course.

Is there anyone you wish was still in your life that passed away? A couple folks, yeah.

Name something that made you mad today! Gravity pisses me off. All. The. Time.

What were you doing at 12:00 today? Playing register jockey at a fast food joint.

Is there anybody you wish would fall off the planet? More than one.

What were you doing an hour ago? Stripping down from my work clothes.

What was the last thing you said aloud? "Aeia, go make sure Rael made it to the potty and let me know if he didn't."

3 different things you will drink today? Not much of the day left, hmm. . .:water, Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi, maybe a small glass of juice.

Is success in your future? I'm sure to find many successes in the future, it's more a question of successes that matter, because who really cares if I can rock out on Hard guitar and Expert vocals on Rock Band 2?

Are you a heavy sleeper? Usually only if I've been drinking, which is fairly infrequently.

Was today a good day? It was fair.

How do you feel about Valentine's Day? Ambivalent.

How is your hair? It effing rocks. It's one of my finest physical qualities.

Are you typically a jealous person? Not particularly but I do have my moments.

Do you chew on straws? Nope.

What's on your mind? My scalp.

Terminator

A typical occasion of Denise and I watching television:

Denise: Hey, is that River Tam?
Me: No, that's Cameron. She's a Terminator. River Tam is a character on Firefly.
Denise: *sighs* I know. I meant is that the actress who played River Tam?
Me: Yep, that's Summer Glau. . .

This sort of conversation happens a lot, enough that it's had me noticing more and more how all of us seem to have our personal cache of actors whom we identify more as the parts they play than as the actors they are.

I do it all the time; Josh Jackson may be in Fringe now (which I find terribly not entertaining and have already stopped watching after the Jurassic Park episode) but he will always, always be Pacey (as Van Der Beek will always be Dawson to me, but oddly enough Katie Holmes is Katie Holmes). I go giddy at Veronica Mars being a cast member on Heroes now (and Weevil too!), even if I'd like a more interesting direction for her character.

Lash is so much like this that he recognizes voice actors for animation and refers to them as the various Titans, X-Men and JLA members they've played.

Is it disrespectful to the actor to not bother with their real name (a la the "Brenda" line from Ethan Suplee at Shannon Doherty in Mallrats)? Or is it more a testament to their impact on our hearts, our psyches, our whateverness that they have a character that imprints on us so strongly that we refer back to them as such?

Most of all, I'm curious: which actors are like this for you?

Changing Lanes

Hey, they can't all be birthday posts. . .even if today is my mother's birthday, and I'll have another one to post in a little over a week.

As a quick aside, I actually like the eponymous movie for this post, even though I'm not typically a fan of any of the principal cast. There are exceptions to everything, I guess.

Some inquiring minds have wanted to know: I am still currently in the fast food management job. After I put in my notice, they rebutted with an offer of more money, an offer which my sense of responsibility and Denise thought I shouldn't refuse--putting us a little bit better financially until I can move on to something more in line with what I want to do with my life (and a nod to friends who have put the idea of relocation out there--I actually will be expanding our focus to include Washington and Canada after the outcome of certain other things are resolved).

Right now, what I most need to do is get myself properly motivated to continue working on story pitches, writing said stories, and trying to get them out there. There are a couple small comics presses I've had my eye on and have kept from moving in on for whatever reason. While I'm thankful to Sean for trying to help me get work at Elfin, I haven't had any response from them to my pitch, so I plan to rework it and try to shop it around somewhere else as well, since I think it's a pretty darn good fantasy story and I want to share it. So, have to move on with that one as well. If anyone wants to volunteer to be my motivational nag, that'd be cool but I'd probably grow to hate you almost as much as I already surely love you.

I feel like there are aspects of my personal life in massive flux right now as well. I feel like many of my friendships are on the cusp of redefinition and something (nostalgia? fear of change?) is keeping me from acknowledging and nurturing these changes in my various relationships: people I feel growing closer, people growing apart, people I want to grow closer. . .such is life.

Neither here nor there: ADJ, I don't believe I've seen any response from you regarding Steph's resurrection and the silence on this is killing me.

Speaking of comics, my quest for an HDTV has me selling more of mine here. Help a brother out, eh? Besides, my friends get shipping discounts.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Lash,
Pride of my life and fantastic kid,
Happy birthday to you.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Bandito,
Happy birthday to you!

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Chrissy,
Happy birthday to you!

Yay!



***

And to my old friend Robin Brokenshire (now Williams), happy birthday to you too.

Click

So far today we've seen two black-outs/brown-outs whatever they're called these days, at Casa de Peterson. While not fun, especially when you have to re-set so many clocks (why oh why do we have so many clocks?), it's even less fun for the kids who freak out when the house suddenly goes pitch black on them (though it somehow made Tasmia decide it was time for bed, for which I'm grateful).

The other thing I hate about powerloss? Powersurges when they come back on. Despite being connected through surge protectors, this power outtage seems to have killed Lash's television. If I want to allow him video game time as a reward for doing chores, homework, just being awesome, I need to look for a new tv for him. TV was perfectly good before too. Damn. Now when you plug it in it just clicks over and over again constantly. Le sigh. I think the surge may have damaged my wireless router too, as it seems to crap out about every half hour or so now (and if it happens mid-posting of this I will kill).

Grr, argh.

At least I was planning to do another big culling of old comic books in my quest for an hd tv this weekend. If I ever get close enough to that, I can always give Lash the tv in the family room. Crossing fingers (a big wish there, comics are so fickle in how lucrative they;ll be on ebay).

Splash

I'm a little muddled, a little scattered. Haven't felt well at all the last few days, but think I'm way overdue for giving this blog some attention. Seriously, I've been a bad blogger ever since returning to the McWorkforce.

How's my month been so far?

The kids have returned to school and are enjoying it as usual. A couple Saturdays have passed without Rock Banding; this is cause for a little sadness.

I finally have my PS3. Tired of slowly saving up for it and then needing to spend the money on something else, I sold off about a third of my heroclix collection and got the requisite money--only to spend the day discovering that every store in town was out, every online vendor I would usually go to (Amazon, BestBuy...) was out. No way was I getting a used one on eBay or Craigslist, or anywhere. On a whim, despite being told by the clerk at Circuit City that they were even sold out online, I went to their website anyway and, sure enough, they were still available and two days later I had my pretty new toy. Shiney. Now I need to save up slash sell something and upgrade to an HD television set and really enjoy it.

I've finally seen the first half of the Dark Knight and, so far, it is not all that or a bag of chips. Maybe the full film will see it prove otherwise. Of course, I am hard to please cinematically. I finally saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall as well and thought it had funny moments but was still only ok.

I'm a little bummed that I haven't had as much opportunity to enjoy this summer as I have in previous summers; I feel bad the kids didn't get to enjoy it as much either. Damn fires. Damn working weekends. Meh.

As if I didn't have enough time wasters--I usually spend an hour or so a week on sporcle. Can you name all of the planets in Star Wars? Because I can.

It is a sad sad day today in Casa de Peterson. Lash's beloved three year-old goldfish passed away. We're supposed to have the grand tank cleansing ceremony sometime tonight as well, keep it bare for a couple weeks in memorial and then start getting new fish to die and prep the water for the next long-timer. Lash is ok, but it was pretty upsetting to him this morning.

Sixteen Candles

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday, dear Aimee,
Happy Birthday to you!

Kisses and hugs.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

I have a new favourite hated customer type in fast food land: the bad parent.

As a unique example, we recently had a family come through the drive-thru. They had a young toddler, maybe two years old, in the car seat with a small microwave pizza on a plate while they drove through to get McMeals for themselves. Now any parent knows you don't go to the land of McMeals with your very young children without them expecting McMeals for Kids all their own. The kid was crying because she wasn't getting a McMeal and she wanted one (now let me interject--I am fully behind the idea that a child behaving inappropriately needs discipline, but I think disciplines need to be appropriate as well). The parents, getting frustrated with the child's crying, grabbed her pizza, threw it out the car window and made it clear she wouldn't eat at all then. In a year of extreme asshole customers, this is the first and only one whose meal earned itself being messed with as we then set out to short serve them old fries, soda that was 90% water, etc.

As a general example, working the night shift, we invariably get an average of 15 or so families who come through between the hours of 10pm and midnight to buy happy McMeals for their kids. Now some have pointed out that these could be people stopping in off the highway on their travels, or coming home extremely late from an event of somesort (usually something sporting and involving older kids). To the latter, while it could be possible at times, not for all of them and not for every night (and if I know I'm going to be unable to pick up food for my kids 'til after 10 I pick something healthier up before the event and bring it along for them to eat at a reasonable hour). To the former, our McBurger is not located right off of or very near a highway exit, while there are McBurgers located at both the northmost and southmost highway exits in our town, much more easily accessible and visible to any people travelling through.

So no, predominantly this is a group of people who just seem to think that after 10pm is a good time to feed their kids. I guess they should be applauded for remembering to feed their kids at all.

***

My week has been riddled with a few bouts of annoyances, disappointments and aggravations, but I don't want to air them out all that much. Moving on, that's my motto for the day.

Summer vacation for Lash and Aeia is almost over and I am so very ready for it.