It had been a couple of weeks since I'd had piggie backed days off, so it sure seemed like a vacation.  I'm fighting off a cold and the weather was shit, so I pretty much parked my ass in front of the TV and computer, and watched movies the whole time.  Here's what I saw.......

01.)  Easy Rider:  There really isn't a whole lot I can say about this movie that hasn't already been said.  Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper make a drug run into Mexico and use the proceeds to fund a cross country motorcycle trip to Mardi Gras.  Along the way they visit a destined for failure commune, hang out for a few miles with a destined for a beating Jack Nicholson, and trip face with Toni Basil and Karen Black in a New Orleans cemetery. 

02.)  Saw VI:  The name of the production company is Twisted Pictures.  That pretty much says it all.  To explain part six I'd have to explain one through five...let's just say part six is every bit as fucked up and nasty as the other entries, though not nearly as original as the first. But then these movies seldom are.  The opening sequence made even me wince.

03.)  The Final Destination:  At the beginning of the film one of the characters admits he only watches racing for the wrecks...and by the end of this film (the fourth and hopefully final installment in the series) I realized.....I was just watching it for the kills.  But then, that's not my fault....there was minimal effort put into the story line.

04.)  A few episodes of South Park:  Quite possibly the most socially relevant program on TV.  I watched the Pee episode, the Somali Pirates episode, and the Fun With Weapons episode.

05.)  And episode of Intervention.  I don't think I've ever made it through an entire episode with a dry eye.  There, but for the grace of God, go I......

06.)  Arrested Development Season Three, Episode Two:  Man.....we're running outta shows.  This is gonna suck as we've come quite attatched to the oh-so-dysfunctional Bluth family and only three seasons were made.  *sigh*

07.)  Law Abiding Citizen:  I can't even begin to describe this movie.  To do so would make it sound cliche...a man's family is murdered before his eyes...the system fails him and he sets about exacting his revenge.  But this is no rehashing of Death Wish...because his revenge isn't on the murderers...well...that's a small part...no, he gets his revenge on the fucked up system that set the killers free in the first place.  The ending was a bit disappointing, but I think that may just be because the rest of the movie was so good...

08.)  Precious:  The best film of the weekend, quite possibly the year.  I read a review of this film somewhere online, or maybe it was in a magazine in the breakroom at work, I don't know.  When I saw that M'Onique was playing a villainous abusive mother I just had to see it.  Comedians in serious (or better yet dark) roles has always been a favorite sub-genre for me.  Nobody can make me cry in a drama like Robin Williams (Patch Adams, The Dead Poets Society...shit, I even cried at Mrs. Doubtfire)...and Rodney Dangerfield's work as an abusive father in Natural Born Killers....I couldn't watch his comedy for years afterward...he was that good at being evil.  And M'Onique did not disappoint.  There was one scene that had The Mrs. and I holding our hands over our mouths as the tears rolled.  Well, mine did anyway...she's much better at handling this shit than I am.  And the final scene...an exchange between M'Onique's fucked up mother and Mariah Carey's social worker (yes, that Mariah Carey).....out of this world.  Most amazing acting I've seen since Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For A Dream...and if you've been reading this journal with any kind of regularity, you know how I feel about that.  This may be enough to get me to watch the Oscars this year...which is something I haven't done since...well, Ellen Burstyn lost to Julia Fucking Roberts.  Don't get me started.......

Well, gotta go dig my car out.  Have a great day.

The good news is, my sore throat is pretty much gone.  The bad news is...so is my voice.  Not entirely, but I sound like Brenda Vaccaro in that tampon commercial from the 70s.  I have no idea why I remember a tampon commercial from the 70s, but there you have it.
Anyway.
I'm off today and tomorrow.  Gonna spend much of my time either online or on the couch, trying to kill my cold with boredom.  The most excitement I'll be experiencing over the next forty-eight hours will be writing posts or watching movies.  Right now I'm about halfway through Easy Rider.  This would be a good time for a minor relapse.  (Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding...)  Next I think I'm gonna watch 2LDK, a wonderful slice of Asian cinema about two actresses who share an awesome apartment (2 bedroom, Living room, Dining room, and Kitchen)...and find themselves up for the same part.  What, to me, stands as one of the finest fight sequences in any film anywhere ensues, and ends tragically.  If you're ever looking for a tragic ending, Asian cinema is the place to check.  Beyond Hypothermia is another fine example.
Anyway.
Man, am I ever glad that anybody reading this is doing so from another time and another place.......I just went to top off my coffee in the kitchen and, as I was pouring it my eye caught movement.  A fucking spider was crawling across the top of the coffee machine.....I made a very child-like and less than masculine sound.  Now, when I see a spider my first instinct is to kill it with whatever I have handy.  I saw a spider coming at me in the woods once while I was out squirrel hunting...that spider met it's demise at the business end of a 12 gauge.  And I used to garden in an area that was fairly heavily populated by snakes, so I carried a .357 with .38 caliber snake shot in it.....I came home from a day of gardening and turned the light on as I entered the bathroom...there on the floor was a big honking spider.  The .357 was out and leveled, hammer back, and my little gun safety alarm bell went of in my head just before I did something really really stupid (fortunately...a .357 indoors could be deafening...).  The same bell went off this morning, except this time it was telling me that if I used the glass coffee pot that was in my now drawn back hand to kill the spider, I'd have a bunch of glass and coffee to clean up.  So I used an envelope that was sitting on the counter and gave it a good smack with that, followed by my God I'm Such A Fucking Pussy dance.  Sorry, no video.
Anyway.
I'm gonna get back to the couch.  I looked for the Brenda Vaccaro tampon commercial on YouTube, but couldn't find it.  I did however, find this.....which I think is even better.  Enjoy.  I sure did.

God has pooped yet again on Central Pennsylvania, this time with an inch or so of snow. I have a route to work that passes for flat around here, meaning there's only one or two mountainous inclines along the way...I think I'll take that today, depending on conditions. I'm ready for summer...

In the big freezer that's in the back of the store there are five bins...eight feet wide, three shelves high. They are for backup storage and the like. Up until yesterday, on the left hand side the order of bins was pizza vendors, two bins of meat, bakery, and then deli. Yeah, my shit was tucked in the last bin, occasionally buried by skids of freight that had been received. Yesterday, the supervisor from the bakery and I got permission from our assistant to...shift things. It took almost six hours, but the layout now is bakery, deli, two bins of meat, and pizza vendors. Let the pizza man dig his shit out. Life has just gotten a bit easier. For me, anyway....my associates now have one less reason for not doing what needs to be done. (I actually have very good people, but there's this one.......)

My Dead Pool has begun for 2010, and the list remains pretty much the same as previously posted...the only change being I dropped A-Roid and replaced him with Courtney Love. I saw a recent picture of her and thought, "Wow...she doesn't look so good". Go with your gut, y'know? That, and she just lost custody of Frances Bean...that's the kind of thing that can send someone over the edge...trust me. When the judge sent The Girls back to their mother it almost killed me, and his decision wasn't based on my being an unfit parent. I just happened to be the parent without the vagina. That, and she had a better bank account that I.

Each day brings me twenty-four hours closer to January 2nd...diet, exercise, etc. There's a show called Intervention...I think it's on A&E, I don't know, I watch it on Hulu. Anyway, for twenty-five minutes of the show they follow the addict and their loved ones around with cameras, filming the addict using and the loved ones worrying. The last five minutes of the show is the intervention, where everyone sits down together and tells the addict what effect their useage if having on them and everyone that loves them. Ultimatums are given, and the addict is offered treatment. Usually the addict accepts, though I've seen episodes where the offer was met with great resistance. This one time the person in question responded with, "I'll go, but can I go home and tie-off one last time?" The interventionist agreed, and I thought, "Are you fucking kidding me?" But here I am, a little over two weeks from completely changing the way I eat and live.....and I've been acting like I'm "tieing-off" for the last time. Donuts, cookies, chocolate covered marshmallows, coffee by the bucket. January 2nd is going to be quite the change, but I need it. I'm not getting any younger, and my ankles aren't getting any stronger. What keeps me optimistic is...the addict who went home and tied-off one last time.......she was one of the success stories.

Well, as much as I'd love to sit here and chat, I still need to shower, shave, and dress. And thaw my car out. Have a good one.

Shit. I shoulda picked Oral Roberts, that would have been a two day hit.

(The record is currently held by The Mrs. for picking Gerald Ford thirteen days before he died.)

We had another visit from our divisional veep yesterday (plus his entourage) and I gotta say....we fucking aced it. Not just my deli, though at the risk of sounding proud, we did look pretty awesome...no, the whole store. I didn't notice anything out of place or dirty, and I don't believe the veep did either. In all honesty, I doubt this guy ever walks into a store and says, "Wow...you guys really suck"...but our numbers consistently show that whatever we're doing...it's working.

I think there's been another name change with the impending puppy. When we first thought of names for the runt, we considered Baby, because Baby was Otis's half-sister in House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. But it just didn't seem to fit. So we ended up with Echo, but then Echo died. So we were faced with coming up with another name for Echo's sister. At first it was 'Quila, but that just didn't stand the test of time. And naming a dog after an alcoholic beverage makes one sound more like a professional drinker than a hobbyist. And then somewhere along the line The Mrs. and I got hooked on the now defunct show, Arrested Development. In it there is a rather opinionated, mischievous, and tenacious teenager named Maeby. (I'd say she's our favorite character, but Arrested Development is one of those shows where they're all our favorite characters.) So we decided to name Echo's sister Maeby. But during subsequent visits to Maeby's home, we found ourselves calling her Baby, which is kind of ironic, given the course of events. So yeah, looks like we're back to square one. Baby. Sounds more feminine than any of the other names, and that'll make Middle Sister happy (she thought all the other names sounded a bit butch). And The Mrs. had always been partial to the name, as well. Me? As long as she listens we can call her Dog.

As you may or may not recall, I took a few days off for my birthday this past August, and one of the activities I had planned was a hike up to the cul de sac (remember the tadpoles?) and then further into the woods and to the top of the mountain. I made it to the cul de sac, but the underbrush was like a solid wall. Not having a machete with me (wouldn't have used it even if I had), I had no option but to postpone the hike until the brush had died off.
Well, this Saturday is December 19th and, as you may or may not recall, that's the date last year when they opened up Yours Truly once again, this time to remove my appendix. (I've made an OR nurse gag on two separate occasions, and I just can't tell you how fucking proud that makes me...) So I'm thinking that's the perfect date for my second attempt at taking the mountain. I'll let you know how it goes...

Yesterday I stopped at My Old Walmart to say hi to whatever friends were working. (Apparently starbuck42084 has had the past year off, because I haven't seen her there in forever.) When I got out of my car a few CDs fell out of the little compartment thingie on the door. Most fell onto the floor of the car, but I could have sworn one fell outside. I looked for it, even getting down on my knees to look under the car, but to no avail. I went in the store, visited, and then drove home. When I got out of The Kia and made my way down the driveway, I saw a CD wedged into the gap between the ground effects thingie and the body of the car. Someone must have found it on the ground and placed it there. What are the odds of it staying there, the whole five mile drive home?

Feels good to catch up in here. In January, when I give up sugar and caffeine and cut way back on my carbs, I may just cut way back on my Facebook, too. Maybe cold turkey for the first month (just to get over the withdrawl), and then limit myself to ten minutes a day....or maybe just two days a week. When I think of the fucking time I've spent on there in the last year......it's almost as much as the time I wasted getting....well, wasted.

And it's not like I haven't had time to post. I've just been getting sidetracked with other shit and shenanigans, and most of my postings lately have been on Facebook. LiveJournal is like next day off, marathon, multi-positional, multi-orgasmic, grabbing the edge of the couch, feet off the ground, feeling like a teenager, if your erection lasts more than four hours seek medical attention, porn star sex. Facebook is a quick blowjob.
And I'm lazy, even when it comes to something I enjoy as much as writing posts in LiveJournal.
But I have an hour (OK, we're down to forty-five minutes) before I have to leave for work, so I figured I'd give you what I've got. Though I'll warn you, my feet probably won't leave the ground. (Though I know what I wanna do this weekend...)

My stepdaughter was booted from the assisted living facility for what they referred to as "failure to adjust". No fucking shit, people...failure to adjust is why she's been in and out of these places for most of the time I've known her. We once had a "behavioral specialist" drop Nikki because of...are you ready for this?...her behavior. And people wonder why I respect whores more than shrinks. Psychiatry is a "practice"......whores know what they're doing.
Anyway...Nikki being eighteen means The Commonwealth no longer gives a fuck, so they sent her home. A few days later, Nikki called to see if she could stay at someone's house. The Mrs. said no, so Nikki hung up. And stayed out anyway. She called the next day to say she wasn't coming home. So now she's living with these people in subsidized housing. We know where she is, it's heated, and she's got her meds. Whether she's taking them or not, we don't know. I hold my breath every time the phone rings.

God took a big icy shit on Pennsylvania yesterday. I work 37.8 miles from home...it took me almost three hours to get here. My regular route home was blocked by what I less than lovingly refer to as Fucking Amateur Hour...people who think the best way to ascend a hill in a car is putting it in drive and gunning it. People, the transmission has more than one setting....fucking use them.
So I turned around and took the highway home...it's probably a quicker route anyway, but it's multi-lane and higher speed, and those of you who have been reading my journal for awhile may recall that law enforcement is an ongoing issue in my driving. But not when there's two inches of solid clear ice on the road. I put the car in second and made my way down the highway at ten miles an hour. And I felt like I was speeding. Other people were passing me, but other people were going into guard rails and ditches, too.....fuck that, I just wanted to get home, I didn't care when. For once The Mrs. met me at the door before My Boys did.

Well, there's more...plenty more...but I've still got to get dressed and down some coffee. Sorry it's been so long, perhaps after work I'll post some more.