Drink Rum

When I'm bored at work I find myself staring at the vending machine downstairs. I stare at it the hopes that perhaps one day I will look inside it and see that if were to press H7, no longer would a crispity, crunchity Butterfinger drop a few feet for my eating pleasure, but that H7 would now grant me access to a steak. Granted... vending machine steak sounds as appealing to me as a Butterfinger... which to me sounds like some sort of lewd sex practice that comes with a surgeon general's warning.

So today as I gazed at the rows of Lays chips and Twix happiness with a few M&M varieties thrown in for good measure... I noticed the Oreo's that were there yesterday (I really do do this frequently) were replaced with a new version.

Oreo Cakesters.

I'm not even sure what that is, but the idea revolted me like early 20th century Russia. I don't want to eat something called a cakester. You can't take a decent desert item and then add "ster" on the end and expect it to maintain any sort of dignity whatsoever.

Peaches & Creamster?
Chocolate Fudgester?
Cherry Piester?

Those all sound like they belong in the "Butterfinger(ster)" category to me.

Someone should just tell Oreo to be itself. It's been the same round, black and white thing for decades and everybody who eats that sort of thing (and some who don't) love them. Just be happy with that.

If you need, Nabisco, to play Frankenbaker and build a cakester... leave the Oreo name off of it. It's like if Porsche wanted to make a crappy car, they wouldn't put the Porsche brand on it for fear of tainting it. Would you buy a Porsche Cakester?

As I typed that I realized that we're probably no more than 6 months away from such a thing probably existing.

I sure hope I win the lottery so I can start working on my personal space program. That's a space program that I plan for personal use, not a program to deal with personal space. I should probably work on that too though. It'll be cheaper.

Posted by Monty at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So the economy is going in the toilet.

That's not news... unless you believe Bush's press releases where he says the economy's fine. I swear to god Bush is a reincarnation of the Black Knight from Monty Python's Holy Grail...

"Sir, there aren't any WMDs in Iraq."
"Yes, there are."
"No there aren't, sir. We've dug up the entire country and there's nothing there."
"Yes, there are."
"Sir..."
"They're invisible."
"What?"
"Could be... invisible WMDs. Mission Accomplished!"
"What mission would that be?"
"We discovered invisible weapons in Iraq."
"No we didn't, you just made that up."
"No, I didn't. It's a fact backed up by several people that agree with me."
"You're a looney."
"I am not a looney, I'm the bleedin' decider, I am!"

So...

The House of Uselessness has decided to give Americans a pile of money to play with in the hopes of kicking the economy in the pants. That's fine by me. I'll take my $300-$1200 depending on which article I read.

But wait... isn't giving me back hundreds of my own dollars kinda like an admission that they didn't really need it in the first place? Or if it was needed, what program got cut to cover the $178 billion dollars of lost IRS funds in the Treasury.

I'm of the mindset that we'd have been better off handing money back since 2001 instead of attacking Iraq. I'd rather have $1000 less taxes per year than the best case scenario in Iraq. I don't care if they're a democracy. I don't care if Saddam liked killing babies. I'd rather have my cash, please.

I saw that in a rare bit of bipartisanship, the Republicans and Democrats (by the way, both of those terms are drawing equal ire from me at this point) are going to extend refund checks to people who don't earn enough money to actually pay taxes. That's interesting. Stupid I think is the word I was looking for.

I'm tired of the hand out nation. I'm tired of financing wars that serve no purpose. I'm tired of financing daycare for teens who were too stupid to use a condom and now have a baby or five. I'm tired of seeing my money (taxes) pissed away on stupid programs.

I think the tax refund is a good idea... and maybe one day someone will go gut the federal government and it's spending and go back to the old days when government was the same thing as social services.

Also, I'm having surgery on 3/3/08... so... that's fun too.

Posted by Monty at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had bee in my bonnet (a pretty blue one) about a bit of political correctness that I was going to have a go at today. In doing some research on it, I found a very fascinating bit of trivia that seems to have sort of... um... well... been forgotten or overlooked.

A long time ago, in the late 15th century... Europe was sending people in ships all over the place. One of these people in three of these ships (don't ask me how he did it) landed in the Caribbean and discovered the New World. That man was Christopher Columbus. And as your public school education will tell you, he went home and told Spain all about it and what a great thing he did. And they named the continents after some other guy named Amerigo Vespucci... who no one really ever talks about other than he was also on some ships and sailed around and they named the continents after him.

And to a seventh grader, that's your 20 minute lesson on the birth of a nation. Down the hall in sex ed, they'd teach you about the birth of a baby, and if you were lucky later at the dance that night you might experience the birth of your sex life... which could lead back to the birth of a baby... which leads me back to the birth of a bunch of crap.

First bit of crap is just opinion. I will state it as fact though because my opinions are more reliable than many peoples' facts. Columbus landed in the Caribbean. In the Bahamas. I've been to the Bahamas. If I had a couple of ships (Captain Dorko ran one aground in Cuba) I'd have stayed put in the Bahamas. Screw Spain. Stay in the islands man! I mean, in Spain they called the guy Cristobal Colon. That's a horrible name.

So they named the continents after Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed around the Amerigos many times... so he said. Turns out, he did it twice and then died. He was a big fat liar. One of the people he lied to in 1507 was this German guy whose name I can't spell and am really sure you don't care created a map of the known world and label South America as The Americas. This map is the first known usage of America to describe the continents. North America was labeled as The Indies. So it was a great map. But... it started something. A few years later, people found out that Vespucci was a liar and hadn't done half of what he claimed. And the German map maker removed the term America and replaced it with Terra Incognita (Unknown Land). But it was too late. By the time the new maps were made, people were already calling it America.

So there's your history lesson for today. America... discovered by a mistake... and named for a different one.

Welcome to the United States of Terra Incognita.

Posted by Monty at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So... um... whoops?

I remember at some point thinking that I really should consider getting back to putting my silly ramblings back on the site. I've got at least a dozen half baked ideas that I never finished (shocker) and many things that I've thought, "hey that's a good blog!" but alas...

alas is a strange word... It's like someone went up to Alaska and said lose some weight. So it dropped the ka and became just alas.

I'm sure that's what happened.

I feel like I should have a story to tell you here, but I don't seem to really.

Once upon a time...

Nope. Nothing there.

I've made a few decisions regarding my surgery. Firstly, I'm going to have it. Secondly, I'm going to have it in very early March. In theory, that'll allow me to walk under my own power again by my birthday. Won't that be lovely?

The more I've read about the surgery, the more I've come realize that the weeks immediately following the surgery are going to be awful... but the long term benefits are huge. Like my knee not coming out of socket again. That's big.

So... the next 6 weeks, I'm going to try to be up and around as much as possible. Following that, I'll get a week in the hospital and then another 3 on my back letting my leg bone heal.

I've never had a broken bone before... and I find it odd that I'm going to pay someone to break one for me now.

If people are looking to get me gifts and crap to make me feel better... buy me video games. Because I'm going to be riding that boring ass couch for weeks on end.

Actually, don't. There are many things that I can do with that time. Such as play the games I already have.

I'll probably blog daily... just because that'll be how I keep up with the outside world. I'll have to figure out a way to keep family away during that time. I'm sure they'll want to be helpful but I'd rather not be visited in a broken state.

Next post I'll have an actual topic... this was just filler to see if I remembered my password to login.

I did.

Posted by Monty at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope everyone enjoyed or at least survived the holidays.

I've been away from the computer here a bit over the past few weeks so I apologize for that. One of the major distractions going on is the return of the old knee issue. About a month ago, my knee started hurting... more than usual. This was probably also due to the termination of Operation Vicodin. A few weeks ago I went to a new orthopedic surgeon and asked him to give me once over and find out what all the hub bub was.

The verdict... I need (or would definitely benefit from) a patellar realignment. My knee cap is still out of place. It's drifting on the outside of the area it should be... basically waiting to dislocate again. It's also grinding and compressing cartledge. That's the ouchie. Oh... and an x-ray showed that there's a bone spur sticking out of the side of my knee cap.

The patellar realignment is not a dainty process.

I'm not really going to go into the details, but it involves two processes. One is to severe a ligament that is pulling the knee cap to the outside. This would let it move to the center and remove the possibility of dislocations in the future (awesome). This is done arthroscopically. The second phase involves lessening the tension on the knee cap by shortening the length of the tendon that runs over it and connects to the shin bone. This is accomplished by sawing the contact point area of the shin bone and moving it to another spot and screwing the new bone in place.

It'd be at least 4 weeks before I'd be off crutches. Rehab... likely 6 months or longer.

The good news is that the procedure has the amazing benefit of solving the problems that are plaguing me. It's just going to be a major suck-fest to get there.

More to follow on this.

Posted by Monty at 6:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)