So yesterday, just after lunch, I went back to the office and while it was slow, did something to botch my laptop. I’m not sure exactly what I did but after some hours of frustration and the loss of some hair follicles, I reimaged my system back to w10 and then did another fresh install of mxlinux.

Play with fire…

I got burned.

But not really cause everything is a learning experience if you think of it in the right context. Yeah I lost some work but how much/little is the real question.

I’m currently re-installing dropbox and waiting for it to sync up to see what I lost. At most, what I wrote during my lunch, which is already posted online sooo…. TTHHHPPPTTTT 😛 (I lost nothing!)*[except for time.]

It’s almost time to start installing my kali tools and messing around again. Muhahhahahahhaa!!!

I’ve actually been doing some writing this past month or so.

I’m still swear-here-ing

Oh she’s cute. It’s my lunch right now and I’m plinking away on one of 11-inchers (LAPTOP you…uhhh … nevermind). She has one some leather outfit that screams ‘Pinch Me’.

Will I? Hell no (at least not outside my the fantasy of my mind)

I have too much respect for wo-what the police can do if called.

MAGA! – Make America’s Groping Acceptable!

Am I a pig?

Sure 😉

We all are but its just the timing of the event that gets you in trouble. I mean I can go up to my wife and pinch her on the butt and also get a slap across the face but I would expect her to not call the police on me …

Again

Ahh, she’s leaving (my wife or the hot leather number?) Maybe both?

Back to my un-puritan thinking.

Hey, there goes a ‘couple’ of women who look like they could beat me up.

Yes, I’m a P-watcher. What can I say, I like to study people and how they flow about around me. I’m a Pee-Watching-Man!

Uh…

Nevermind.

An older man who reminds me of Captain Mitch just walked in. If you grew up in the Sacramento area in the 70’s you would know who I’m referencing. Hey, I’m making references to something that is decades outdated.

I just did a quick google and found out that the captain passed away a few years ago.

KTXL Icon ‘Cap’n Mitch’ Dead at 92

BUMMER

That is part of the reason I’m not getting as much written as I would like. There are too many things to distract yourself with, like googling your childhood heroes and discovering that they are dead. Yeah family, jobs, cooking dinner and doing laundry, clearing up unwarranted restraining(defamation**) orders, all that crap takes too much time.

** Kiss Kiss Dwight 😉

Okay, my lunch is just about over and I’ve gotten in a bit of a mental exercise in quick writing. You see that is how you get over mental writing roadblocks, you just start typing away about the dumbest (people**)stuff and see what comes out. If it’s “golden” or if it’s “crap”, either way, it’s yours cause you made it. Now I’m going to bask in its glory and head back to work.

I’ve had the same work schedule over the last year. Come March, it will change. Today is the last time I’m meeting with my Wednesday writing group. Time to hit up the interwebs and look for another group.

So last night was the State of the Union. I’m what I would like to call a liberally minded thinker. Does that mean I’m a liberal? Maybe. I tend to think of myself as somewhere in the middle. The funny thing is, after talking with some of my conservative friends, is that most people tend to think of themselves in this way. Yes, everyone thinks of themselves as normal or close to it. It takes a true loon to accept who they really are…

Anyway…

So during the Presidents speech, I heard him make a number of true/exaggerated/false claims about this and that. He did this and that which depending on how you round the numbers could be construed as misleading/close-enough/lies.

Illusions.

You see/interpret what you want.

I too want to look my best and have hot (members of my sexual preference) chicks lusting after me if I only take supplement Denyitall.

I swear the greatest evil we face is our ability to fall for (self-made??) illusions.

At least that is the truth I wish to believe from my centrist view that I wrap myself up in as a means of comfort.

Right?

Left?

No wait, I mean I’m correct, or at least I believe I am.

To deny the doubts of ones one being is to live the shadow of ignorance.

Wait, what?

Yeah, I was just trying to say something to the effect that to question things is the basis of understanding that you may not have the clearest view. To look at it from another angle, to step outside of your limited perception. I was just trying to say something deeply flatulence… er… or rather fluctuant.

I really need to get back into writing one of my stories again, I have such a gas working on them. Or at least that is the illusion I’m asphyxiating from.

Politics, (potty)humor, exaggerations of the truth, aren’t they all just different spins of the same bullshit?

*

🙂

32 days since my last post?

Ggrrr……

So I went out and saw the movie Glass the other night. Originally the wife didn’t want to go and see the movie but then realized it was technically my birthday weekend and relented. She is so kind to me in forgetting when my birthday is and then remembering at the last minute.

I thought the movie was a “B” grade. It wasn’t a “great” movie but it was still “good.” I don’t want to ruin anything so I’ll keep my comments on the generic side. Man the way Mace Windu swung his- oh…

Ever notice how Samuel J is in just about every movie franchise?

Jaws, Star Wars, Marvel, Incredibles, Die Hard. Am I missing any?

Let’s see, what else? My dishwasher is leaking. It’s also ten years old so at this point is it worth a few hundred bucks to fix or do I just get a new one?

My daughter’s Chromebook just died. Don’t know if that is fixable either.

On the upside, my 14.5-year-old cat “Nibbler” is doing better as the steroids seem to be working. She’s desperately trying to sit her ass down on my keyboard right now.

Alright, that’s it for now. Life is calling me back to dealing with the bullcrap again, which of course is cutting into my free/writing time.

Wha….?

I pay $25 a month to a professional author so she can live the dream via Patreon. I’ve been doing it for a number of years. What have I gotten out of it? Smug satisfaction? I mean why else do you continue to make that monthly donation to your local public television station. It’s not like you actually watch it.

Small truth/joke here. Every time I want to test an internet connection issue, I use a site I know I don’t frequent all that often, PBS.org. Yeah… Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of supporting the arts/community/etc… Some people donate to other (nobler?) causes like the United Way. Well, artists need sandwiches too. They can’t all drive around in minivans with collection buckets spread out on the sidewalk before their wares.

You see it’s a guilty pleasure. I still have the dream of publishing my own works. So, instead of saving my hard earned money and using it to invest in a real editor, I splurge it on others. Dave… you make no sense. Yeah, well, ‘rumple fart sniffer’ is what I say back to you. It doesn’t have to make sense. The United Way has a way of siphoning off donated funds toward their executives.

I think of it as my non-canceling gym membership.

I’m still plugging away at my own stuff, keeping the ‘delusion’ alive.

🙂

We all have a dark side. I’m not afraid of mine. I don’t know if I discussed this another posting, I’m thinking I did, or not, but if I did… so what.

So this last Wednesday, as my local writing group was finishing up our quiet focused hour, we started discussing our progress. I used that time to ask another writer, who is working on a story in ancient Egypt if lacquer is used in body preservation. I got a number of strange looks from the other participants. To be fair we didn’t have very many regulars that day and the majority of them were first times (and last?) to the group. I then turned to address the group and said, “I need to know how viable it would be in preserving a freshly killed body.” Their looks only soured further.

The group lead started chuckling as she has grown accustomed to my antics/personality. She said, “I really like your dark side. You have a real grasp on it and have fun with it.”

I found myself nodding. I would like to think I do. To be fair, it can go much darker but that is not what this topic is about. It’s about my skipping across the murky pond that resides within my subconscious and coming out the other side with only a few skip marks on my persona. Hopefully, I never have to go there out of necessity. Ever since my kids were born, I knew I had it in me to kill in order to protect them should the need arise. My thoughts have also gone in the opposite direction no thanks to sleep deprivation. With my son now eight, and daughter now twelve, I have also embraced the thought of going to prison for the rest of my life should anyone threaten either of them. On the flip side, heaven help my kids if they would cause harm upon somebody else’s kids. Homey don’t play that.

I find myself thinking back to Dwight again. That was a person, much like a person who never learned to wipe their butt correctly, never developed a healthy means of playing with their inner demons. This got me thinking, have I been picking on Dwight out of a twisted sense of perversion on my part? Is Dwight a handy-special person who just doesn’t know any better? If so, then I owe her an apology. I had no idea you were ‘gifted’ in your limitations.

Now, if you feel the above is in any way insulting or that you are indeed ‘not special’, take heart. You will always be special in my heart. I know with some people they were diapers before going to bed because they never master basic human bladder control kindness. Are you one of these people?

Here’s the thing. I know you are not as you have said to my face after reading my blog-posts so many times, “I have been called worse by far better people.” Those are big words and they were used in the correct context. You piss-passed your urine all on your own. You pissed all over yourself of your own volition. You bathe in it as wear its musk like a badge of honor.

Is my d(a/o)rkness showing again? ‘Funny’ you should ask? Let me try to not skip around the answer. Life is short. Life is about death. Upon our very creation, we are all destined to die. Why not try to have a little fun with it just so long as we don’t go around pissing each other other off?

Okay, its time I put a diaper on this stream of thought and get back to my story* again…

*(The next installment for my character named the Puppy Kicker)

My IT security class is over.

The holidays are around the corner.

I’m just getting over a cold.

I wrote today at my writing group.

My next big goal for 2019 is to clean up one of my novels for possible publication.

Rejection is painful.

It comes in many forms. Being let go from a job. A friend ghosting you. It can even haunt your dreams.

So I woke up this morning at around 4:30 am, a full hour before my alarm was set to go off. I was “pissed”. I looked over at my sleeping wife and wanted to punch her in the nuts. Yes, she lacks that particular part of human anatomy, but you get the idea. She had just “dumped me” in my dream.

Upon being more coherent of just how early and dark everything was, the rational side of my (*squirrel!) started interjecting on my emotional self. I rolled over onto my back thinking I could focus on what had just happened when the urge to relieve my bladder making itself known.

I stumble up out of bed, wood and all, and make my way into the bathroom. I know women probably have it worse when it comes to biological issues but trying to pee into a toilet while at attention really sucks. I manage to sit my ass down and lean forward so that I’m almost touching the ground with my face so that my soldier is able to deflect its flow downward and into the bowl. It’s not comfortable by any means and borders on being painful. Compared to bleeding out of your crotch for a week every month, its a small price to pay.

Finished, I head back into bed. No sooner than I slide back in and onto my back again does, not one, but two cats pounce on me hoping to get some attention. I start petting them and doing some more reflecting on my dream as the two knuckleheads begin trying to abscond with the hand that is petting the other thinking they can each get double the attention.

Idiots.

As I start recalling more of my dream, I begin placing the various parts of it back together and as to why it stung so much. Back in high school, I dated a girl for two years, I will call her Lenna. The house that my wife and I shared in my dream was reminiscent of Lenna’s parent’s house. Even today, as I’m 30 years past that event, I still have an emotional connection to that house. What was even wilder, was that my wife and I were on a trampoline in the backyard. One that, upon further reflection, was similar to the one Lenna chose to break up with me upon at a mutual friend’s house.

So who’s the idiot now? Apparently me. Yeah, I know you can’t control your dreams but the emotions I felt were so vivid and raw. I tried pondering why my subconscious mind would screw me over with a dream like that and the only thing I could come up with was that I might be (hormonally?) unbalanced right now.

Hey ladies, you can keep that bleeding emotional unbalanced stuff, I really don’t mind leaning forward to deflect my pee.

Yes, it’s (The Iron Price) a rip of “the phrase” from GoT. I needed an idea to start the story and this what I used as my starting point. There shouldn’t be any further connection beyond the tagline.

***

The Price of Iron

Will didn’t want to join the space marines, at least not at first. He was on vacation in the Alps when the carbon scored iron chunk broke through the Earth’s atmosphere and obliterated Rio De Janeiro. His soul, along with everything he had ever cared about, died that day.

Globules of spittle flew out of the drill sergeant mouth, “You are all a bunch of fucking retards!” The sergeant, having found another victim, leaned in closer towards private Spencer. Private Spencer couldn’t but help start blinking as the sergeant’s continued verbal barrage rained onto his face and seeped into his eyes.

The sergeant noted the reaction and with a grin only reserved for true Sith lords, asked, “Am I making you uncomfortable Spencer?”

Spencer started to nod but Will, who was laying on his back due to his own transgression, tapped the back of Spencer’s calf with the toe of his boot.

The drill sergeant, having caught the motion of Will’s foot from his peripheral vision, spun on him. “You got something to say private Armond?”

Will, still straight-arming his partially assembled weapon over his chest, replied, “No drill sergeant!”

The sergeant stepped away from Spencer and stood over Armond’s chest so that his crotch was centimeters from Will’s elevated weapon. “I saw you tap your boot into the side of Spencer’s leg. You are either clumsy or a liar. We can’t have clumsy in the marine core. You could cause the unwonted deaths of marines. What’s worse than the killing of marines? A liar.” He looked up and around at the rest of the platoon who were still working on assembling their weapons. “A liar is the worst kind of scum there is, short of being a Dessloc. Desslocs are sneaky fuckers who throw whole mountains down and destroy cities like Rio De Janeiro. He looked back down at met Will’s horrid stare. “Yes, I read your file private Armond. I know all about why you are here.” He reached out and slapped the weapon from Will’s grasp. It struck the floor above his head and further disassembled itself. “You dropped your weapon private Armond, how clumsy of you.” The sergeant stepped off and moved down the length of the barracks. “You have KP duty for the next seven nights.”

Will wanted to jump up and beat the fuckers ass. How dare he use the death of his family like that. His mind was fuming with rage. He was on the verge of tackling the fucker and beating him to with an inch of his life.

The sergeant called back, “Now get up and finish putting your weapon together before you really piss me off.” He then changed course and headed towards the latrine. “Seems as if I need to use the head. By the time I get back out, I expect you all to finish having put your weapons back together… or else.”

Once the sergeant was out of earshot, Spencer now feverishly working on assembling his weapon, said, “Is it true? You’re from Rio?”

Armond said, “I’m not discussing it.”

A moment of silence went between them until the sound of a gaseous release of a bowel movement echoed out from the latrine area.

Spencer said, “What are you still doing on your back? He is going to bust your ass.”

Armond knew that he hadn’t been given permission to get up again. He had seen other squad-mates fall for double contradicting orders given by the training cadre. At least this way, even with his arms still extended, he was relaxing on his back.

“Do you want me to get you your weapon?”

Armond shook his head as he said, “No. He is setting me up again. I’m going to take it and not pull any of you into this.”

Spencer went silent but then asked, “Then why did you tap my leg, if you didn’t want to get involved?”

Another round of explosions echoed out from the latrine. It was followed by the sergeant yelling out, “Yippie ki yay mother fuckers!”

Will didn’t want to ponder the question. He was still too frazzled. A part of him also suspected that some part of him had survived that day, and it scared him.