I used to be kind of a techie geek.  I liked the newest tech-toys and the hippest websites.  When I worked at Alltel, I was all about the newest, coolest phones.  I was one of the guys that the customers would come to so they could transfer all of their saved crap on their old phone to their new phone (because we didn’t have fancy machines that did that automatically), or set custom MP3 ringtones on phones that weren’t supposed to be able to have custom ringtones, or whatever other crap needed to be done that took a lot of time but didn’t generate any commission.  Also, friends and family, because I worked at a cell phone store, thought I was the be-all, end-all to tech greatness.  I liked being a go-to geek.  Then I started doing actual tech support, and everything changed.

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I also used to love to read.  I loved being taken away to a life that actually contained adventure by having my imagination stoked by a master wordsmith.  Holding a book, turning the pages, feeling its heft in my hands, knowing that someone had taken months of their time creating this tale just for me… reading was awesome.  I always dreamed of being one of those wordsmiths, creating those tales just for that individual who chose to be carried away by my musings.  I dreamed of having a mass of paper bound together and full of my words with my name embossed on the cover underneath a catchy, deep title like: Whereas Whispers the Will of our Souls, or, Arnklot, Last of the Vampyre Clan of Tillystone. All dreams must come to an end.
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The wife used to be pretty technologically ignorant.  She was anti-smartphone because they were too “fancy”, and she didn’t feel she would ever use all of the “fancy” Internet features on a smartphone.  Still, I was able to convince her to go into a Droid, and she has never looked back.  Her next step was a Kindle.  I was actually against the Kindle (this was after I stopped working at Alltel, and technology had started to lose its appeal to me).

“Books are books, and they can’t be replaced by a stupid e-reader,” I would tell her.

“I still love books,” the wife would say, “it’s just nice to have a whole library in one easy-to-carry device.”

“That’s crap,” I would logically disagree.  “Kindles are stupid.  Only babies have Kindles!”

Whatever,” the wife would say, usually rolling her eyes.
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So the wife got her a Kindle and started getting fancy electronic books.  They were much less expensive than the good old paper books, and she soon had a decent sized collection of crappy e-books on her Kindle.  I was disgusted.

I started to notice that more and more “experts” were predicting the slow demise of the paper book.  Digital books were predicted to be the wave of the future.  I disagreed.

“Who is going to take the time to write a book if they have to sell them on Amazon for 99¢?” I would inquire.

“There are writers out there who have become millionaires selling books on Amazon,” the wife would argue.  “These writer’s would have never even received an offer from a traditional publisher.”

“But, without a traditional publisher, how do you get a paper book made?” I asked.

“Well, they don’t have paper books made,” the wife said.  “They are all digital.”

“That’s stupid,” I would conclude.  “Only baby writers don’t have paper books.”

More eye rolling always followed.  The wife likes to roll her eyes.

Before I knew it, the wife was getting involved in all kinds of reading crap.  She got all wrapped up in Goodreads, and there she found new Facebook discussion groups and whatnot.  She learned more ways to get enjoyment out of her stupid Kindle.  She actually was fast becoming an expert on e-readers and e-books in general.

This past Christmas, both of my boys and the wife all got Kindle Fires.  Now, all three of them are supporting making authors struggle more by buying e-books instead of the good old traditional paper books.  How in the crap are you supposed to get a signed copy of an e-book?  You can’t, that’s how!  Stupid Kindle.  Stupid Amazon.  Stupid Nook.  Stupid Barnes & Noble (whose brick and mortar stores are on the verge of extinction thanks to stupid e-readers).

The wife was recently talking about how e-reader experts will probably be in pretty high demand in the near future.  Traditional bookstores, libraries, and even many businesses will have a need for an on-staff e-reader expert.  That sounds like a job I would like.  That seems like a job the wife has positioned herself for.  Stupid technology.  After dealing with tech crap all day at work, the last thing in the world I want to do is submerge myself in technology after hours.  I watch stupid scary movies or find some other mind-killing activity to help me get to sleep: things that in no way will help me transition into a fun job (if there is such a thing).
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I don’t really read much anymore.  I used to read because I thought reading might be a good way to improve my writing skills.  Now, I have given up on my dream being a writer.  I won’t have my name embossed on the cover of a stinking Kindle, and nobody is going to let me sign their stupid Nook.  Selling e-books for 99¢ isn’t going to lead to a full-time gig (… at least not with any of the hogwash I would end up writing), and who in his or her right mind would write seriously just for fun (I have this stinking blog for that).

Technology kills dreams.  Technology erodes real human contact.  Technology is destroying the world.  My wife is now the technology expert in our house.  And although I work with stupid Internet technology all day, I am thankful that, technologically, I’m an idiot…

Normally, I would end my post here with this profound thought, but I’m feeling kind of bad.  Here I have written a kind of stupid post (yeah, so what’s new?) and interlaced it with attractive women with a more-than-necessary amount of skin showing for the sole purpose of getting guys to stay on my site longer and increase my stats.  I may be a little geekier than I let on.  This is not fair to the women who visit my blog: the wife and my sister.  In order to make amends, I offer the following for the ladies:

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The time of year is upon us for some pretty cool seasonal food. I grew a few things this summer, and it always kind of sucks to have to wait for the fall stuff until… well… fall. I did well with buttercup squash and pumpkins. I only planted one pumpkin plant, and it only grew 4 pumpkins, but I think I’m set on pumpkin for awhile…

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Now, I like pumpkin pie as much as the next dude.  Three of the four pumpkins we grew are in the picture above.  The two that are a darker orange color weigh over 100# each.  The lighter-orange pumpkin weighs slightly over 80#, and one more pumpkin not pictured weighed in at over 40#.  That’s over 320# of pumpkin… how much pie can a fellow eat?!?  Although one or two of these may end up wasted as jack-o-lanterns, this is way too much food to not find some different ways to eat pumpkin.  Deciding to try out the smallest (40#!) pumpkin first, I decided on a pumpkin soup and some pumpkin butter.  The pumpkin soup was okay, but the butter rocked, so I thought I would share my recipe and experience.

The first thing we did was to split the pumpkin, gut it, and bake it.

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I cut a bit of it off raw to make the pumpkin soup, but the rest of it went in the over at 350° for about an hour.  Remember, this was a BIG pumpkin… I had to do 2 shifts to cook the entire thing.  I made the pumpkin soup while the pumpkin baked

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Once it was nice and soft, I removed it carefully from the oven and drained of the juices (there were a ton of juice cooked out of this sucker).  Then, I got out a knife to start removing the flesh from the shell.  Of course, being a dude, I like my knives big and sharp.

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The big knife was, of course, a mistake.  Almost every time I get together with a knife in the kitchen, someone gets cut.  And seeing as how no one will enter the kitchen if I am holding a knife, it’s always me.

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So, with my finger hurting, I soldier on and remove the pumpkin flesh.  It all goes into a bowl and I mash it up.  Now, as you can imagine, I got me a ton of pumpkin meat… way more than I’m going to need to make a little bit of pumpkin butter.  The nice thing about pumpkin is it freezes really well.  So, I decide I’m going to make about 8 cups of pumpkin puree into pumpkin butter, so I blended and set aside 8 cups.

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I freeze the rest of the flesh just mashed.

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I froze it mashed instead of pureed in case I came across a recipe where the pumpkin needed to have a little more substance… but I’m guessing it’s mostly going to go in soup, more butter, and some pies.  But, it’s easy enough to blend it after it thaws.

To freeze it, I just filled quart freezer bags with 4 cups of mash.

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A neat way to get the air out is to stick a straw into the bag and suck as you seal it up.

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Okay, I’m getting close to ending the freezing of the pumpkin.  Of course, my hands are all slimed up with pumpkin.  I wash my hands and realize…

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… something is missing.  I know I had a bandage on my freshly cut finger.  I know it hasn’t been off that finger for very long.  I know I didn’t have it when I went to wash my hands.  For crying out loud, where could it be?

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Oh no.  I had a pretty strong suspicion I knew where the bandage was.  See, the masher did a decent job of mashing the pumpkins, but every once in awhile, there was a piece the masher didn’t get.  I’d just stick my hand in that goop and mush it with my hands.  So, I went “fishing”.

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It didn’t take long until I found what I was looking for.

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Yeah, I just tossed it… the bandage, that is.  I’m not going to waste good pumpkin.  I just marked the package extra special so I knew which one not to eat myself.

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Finally, I finished getting all of the extra pumpkin and was ready to start in on the pumpkin butter.

Following is what you will need to make a batch of pumpkin butter.  I actually made a double batch.  However, I went the slow cooker route to cook the butter (cause there is no stirring or watching or any of that crap) and I quickly realized that my concoction was a little much for a standard slow cooker.

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It was a little messy.  If you want to double the recipe, do so at your own risk

* 4 cups pumpkin puree

* 1 cup brown sugar

* 1/2 cup white sugar

* 3/4 cup apple juice

* 1 Tbs vanilla

* 1/4 tsp allspice

* 1/4 tsp ground cloves

* 1/4 tsp ground ginger

* 1/2 tsp nutmeg

* 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

* 1 Tbs lime juice

That’s it.  Mix it all together and throw it in the slow cooker.  I cooked the double batch for about 12 hours overnight on high in the slow cooker.  A smaller batch probably won’t take quite as long.  Make sure you tilt the lid on the cooker so that a lot of the the moisture cooks off.

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You want your pumpkin butter to be nice and thick… you know, so that sticks to the back of a spoon.  You want it spreadable.  I love that word: spreadable. Sounds kind of sexy, doesn’t it?  Sweet and spreadable.

While I’m getting prepared to cook this overnight, the wife says to me, “Uh, that slow cooker looks a little full,”

“Yeah,” I say, “I want lots of butter.”

“You realize that is going to make a mess, right,” the wife says.

“Don’t worry,” I say.  “I’ll clean it up.”

Well, you see, I have this little habit of saying I’ll clean stuff up and then, for some reason, I never really clean it up.  Or rather, I don’t clean it up fast enough for the wife and she ends up cleaning it up herself.  Long story short, the wife doesn’t let me cook my pumpkin butter in the kitchen.  I am relegated to complete my cooking project in the basement.

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After about 12 hours, my slow cooker full of goodness…

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…had reduced to the perfect consistency.  Too bad so much of it was water.

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All that work and I get a couple of jars of pumpkin butter.

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I was trying to decide if I wanted to process the butter by canning to make it last longer (which isn’t apparently recommended), but I decided that it wasn’t going to take long for the family to go through what I had made.  I stuck one jar in the fridge for now and one jar in the freezer for later.  The hardest part was preparing the pumpkin.  The rest was a cake walk.  It sure is good… and I have the reassurance that if I want to make more, I’ve got plenty of pumpkin to make that happen.

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Now, I just need to figure out what I am going to do with my squash…

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I’m a happily married dude.  I am about to embark on, most-likely, a once in a lifetime adventure with my family: a cruise to the Bahamas.  However, when I discovered that almost a third of the guests on Royal Caribbean’s  Majesty of the Sea were attendees of some sort of fraternity leadership conference that Royal Caribbean was happily ($$$) hosting, the wind in my sails diminished just a little.  Even though I’m happily married, I am not dead.  I had some preconceived notions of what the view around the pool on that cruise ship was going to look like.

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My “notions” were quickly replaced by reality.

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Yeah.  Disappointing, to say the least.  Anywho, now I can try to focus on actually enjoying the family time, right?

The ship is amazing.  It’s like 14-stories tall, and it travels across the ocean; this in and of itself is utterly amazing to me.  There are two formal dining halls, a buffet, a pizza place, a deli, and a burger joint.  Everything except the burger joint is included in the cost of the cruise (you have to pay an entrance fee of like $5 to get into Johnny Rockets).  There was a full-fledged casino, two or three lounges, an awesome weight room with a spectacular view of the ocean (which I promised myself I would use… but never did), a teen hang-out area, a little kid hang-out area, two small swimming pools (constantly full of frat boys), two hot tubs (constantly full of frat boys), a basketball court, a climbing wall, a ping-pong table, and the Chorus Line theater which had nightly live entertainment.  The center of the ship was kind of like a mall, with various stores selling various expensive items: a Caribou Coffee, a jewelry store, a liquor store, a gift shop and the like.  Each day, in the area between the stores, they were selling different garbage that looked expensive and was ridiculously inexpensive.  The wife and youngest son each got a watch for like $10 each, and they looked like they were worth much more.  We’ll see how long they actually last :)  Needless to say, the ship itself was pretty cool.  Our room, on the other hand, not so much.

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Standard rooms on a cruise ship are extremely small.  I cannot stress enough how small these stinking rooms are.  It’s a good thing you pretty much just sleep in the rooms, because, in a family of four, someone would end up dead if you had to spend too much time together in those stinking rooms.

So, we check in on the ship and go through a “muster drill”.

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A muster drill is where they make everyone get outside by the lifeboats and tell you what to do to avoid dying if the ship starts to sink.  Great!  Now that we are all now terrified, let the fun begin.

We spent the first night at sea and just enjoyed the boat and tried to avoid the drunk, potty-mouthed frat boys.  Man, when the frats were sober, they were bearable, but once they got liquored-up, we pretty much had to walk with our hands over our sons’ ears to block the f-bombs.  Thanks, Royal Caribbean!  Thanks for not warning us our cruise was going to be a floating college party full of frat boys with no chicas for them to concentrate their alcohol-fueled, testosterone-driven horn-doggedness on.  I actually overheard a frat boy talking to a girl who appeared to be about 16-years-old, and he was trying to talk her into going to one of the lounges with him.  She kept shaking her head, looking around for someone to rescue her, and I heard him say, “I keep forgetting you’re under age.”  Man, that girl’s parents (as well as almost every parent with a daughter on that cruise) had to be loving Royal Caribbean for that week.

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The next day, we ported in the Nassau.  Pretty cool, if you could look past the poverty that was prevalent everywhere.  We got off the ship and were immediately accosted by numerous people trying to get us to take a taxi or go on a tour or buy stupid toy turtles.  One old guy even asked me if I needed something to smoke, and when I told him I didn’t, he got pissed and stormed off.  We walked around the streets of Nassau.  Me loving people the way I do quickly grew tired of the people constantly in our faces, and we returned to the ship after a short time.

Later that afternoon, we went on a snorkeling tour.  We got on a boat and left the port area to an area where we could check out the corral.  We boated past a lot of really nice houses and the tour guide dropped a few names while cruising past these mansions.  Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan had houses there, along with a bunch of other people whose names I don’t remember.  Can’t imagine owning a mansion of such incredible grandeur surrounded by such intense poverty.  Nothing like rubbing it in the face of the locals, huh?

The snorkeling was kind of lame.  On the way, they warned us that people had seen lion fish in the area we were going to, and lion fish are apparently quite poisonous.  Coolest thing about snorkeling was that I actually found a lion fish.

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I got both of my boys and the wife to see it before one of the tour divers discovered it and scared it away.  Bastard!

That was pretty much the day in Nassau.  The next day, we relaxed on the beaches of Royal Caribbean’s private island, Coco Cay.  This was, by far, the most relaxing day of our adventure.

Swimming in the ocean…

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… playing with the conch…

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…tearing it up at the water park

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… avoiding the killer seagulls…

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… or hanging out in the hammocks…

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…oops, I forgot… stinking frat boys…

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Overall, a very good day.  Then, back to the boat for a relaxing evening and lots of eating.

The next day, we ported in Key West, FL.  Can you say “tourist trap?”  Of course you can. I really felt for all of the foreign (non-US) guests on the Majesty of the Sea when we ported in Key West.  Every single one of them had to take part of their day to go through US Immigration, whether they were getting off the boat in Key West or not.  The immigration officers apparently set-up shop in the theater and the lines were horrendous of families waiting for immigration’s approval.  I imagine those vacationers wasted hours of the last day of the cruise waiting for US Immigration to check them out.  Honest to God, it’s no wonder why so much of the rest of the world hates the United States.  Sometimes, our laws are just retarded.  I really thought it was cool how there were different people from all over the world on this cruise and, except for the frat boys, we all got along just splendidly… up until “Homeland Security” kicked in and the US made sure there wasn’t someone vacationing from Japan or France setting off a dirty bomb in Key West (or someone who has just spent thousands of dollars on a vacation trying to sneak into the country… if they can make that kind of money, they have brains and a good work ethic… let ‘em in!) by making every man, woman and child go through an immigration checkpoint.  I didn’t feel safe, I felt embarrassed for our country.  Why not allow these people to enjoy the last day of their vacation and check them out after the cruise in Miami?  I didn’t have to go through immigration in the Bahamas… and I could of been planning to buy some crack from that dude who wanted to know if I needed a “smoke”… or something!!!

Anyway, back to the non-crappy part of the Key West visit.  We did a little sight seeing

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… did a little shopping…

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… ate some conch fritters…

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… enjoyed frozen chocolate-covered Key Lime pie on a stick…

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and overall had a touristerrific, sunshiny day!

Then, back on the ship for the last time.  We had a wonderful evening of eating lots of food and swimming with the frat boys… and then eating some more.  I crap you not, I gained 10# on that stinking cruise!

When we woke up the next morning, we were in Miami.  Up and at ‘em and off the ship.  We spent an entire day at Miami International Airport (’cause we had to watch our luggage… we could have “checked” it at this storage place, but they want to rape you and kill your first born as payment for that, so we said “screw it, airports are fun”).  We discovered that Miami isn’t too exciting when experienced from the airport, so airports aren’t really that fun.  Didn’t even get to see Tubbs, let alone Crockett

Finally, a turbulent flight back to Denver, a late-night hotel stop on the way home, and finally back to the Craphandle.  And then, back to work with another year until the next real vacation.

Crap man… I just realized how much I miss my ΣAE buddies…

Have you ever dreamed of the perfect vacation?  Have you thought about it for years and years, and then made the decision that you were going to make it happen?  Well, the wife and I did just that: we planned for, saved for, and made happen our dream vacation.  We went on a cruise to the Bahamas.

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Yippee-ki-yeah!

First off, I have to give a big shout-out to the wife.  She is the one who squirreled away money (tax refunds, Christmas bonuses, a little extra cash-flow every month, etc) to make our dream become a reality.   I want it to be known that the time I had with my wife and two sons was much more enjoyable than I am about to make it appear.  In fact, given the opportunity, I would remain with my wife and sons on that stinking cruise ship with the stupid frat boys until the day I die (if given the choice), and I would be one of the happiest dudes alive… until I died on the cruise ship, and then I would be one of the happiest dudes… uh… dead, I guess.

The wife and I planned on going on a cruise for our 15th anniversary.  It was going to be a really special treat, and we had been looking forward to it for years.  The problems that led to us not being able to make that happen were like the perfect storm of CRAP that transpired in the few years leading up to the 15th year of our ultimate declaration of love.  We had started a little business together, built it up to a level of creating a decent profit,  and had recently sold that business to a clueless chick who ended up declaring bankruptcy and screwing us out of a lot of money. At that point, we should have declared bankruptcy ourselves, but decided to take the higher road and repay all of the debt we owed.  Some “sage” at some point in time made me believe that repaying your debts will benefit you in the long run.  Yeah… I’m still waiting to reap the benefits of that stupid little piece of advice.   Shortly after being screwed in the candy business, the economy took a major tank; and shortly after that, reductions in pay (as opposed to raises) were the trend of the day.  Some of the employers had the balls to call it what it was (a reduction in pay), while others called it a “pay restructuring” or a “new compensation plan” and made you read Who Moved My Cheese.

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Needless to say, the 15th anniversary cruise was suddenly a pipe-dream.

Shortly before the 15th anniversary, we had started to save for the dream.  When we realized that it wasn’t going to happen at the 15-year mark, we decided to prolong it a couple of years and make it a full-family-free-for-all.  In other words, we were going to take our sons.  Much less romantic, absolutely NO hanky-panky,  more full of farts and body odor, and multitudes of inappropriate comments at the absolutely most inappropriate times.

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Sounded like a relatively fair trade to me.  Don’t get me wrong… I likes me that there hanky-panky… but I likes me thems there farts too…

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… theys makes me giggle… and giggling is good for the soul

So, we have it all planned to go on a cruise to the Bahamas.  We decide on Royal Caribbean, and we were ready to set sail on the Majesty of the Sea.

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Sounds pretty cool, right?  Sure does.  Of course, we have to get on the ship in Miami, and we live hundreds and hundreds of miles from Miami.  So, we have to fly.

I hate flying!

I hate the fear of having no control of anything while soaring at 30,000 feet above the earth (or, as I like to think of it, about a 40 second nightmarish fall to a certain, messy, instant death).  My palms get clammy and my stomach doesn’t feel too swell just thinking about it.  I also hate getting to the point of being able to get on the stinking plane,  You know, the whole TSA nightmare.

“But they are just keeping us safe!” says the nincompoop who likes the TSA.

“Flying is a privilege, not a right,” says the government advocate.

I’m gonna call BS on both of those statements.  They are not keeping us safe by patting down small children and old ladies.  They are not keeping us safe by subjecting us to radiation.  They are not keeping us safe by making me put all of the liquids I need in 3 oz bottles and limiting them to a 1 quart bag.  This is all retarded.  This is all “shock and awe” in an attempt to make us think that they are really keeping us safe… and, in the meantime, they are stepping all over our civil liberties.  But it’s all in the name of “stopping terrorism,” so the vast majority of us just let it slide. And when there are armed National Guard in front of Walmart making sure we aren’t trying to bomb super centers, that will be all right too.  And when they start reading our mail and listening in on our phone conversations in the name of national security, we’ll be fine with that as well.  And when the civil unrest finally starts, those involved in the unrest will be hauled off to “camps” to protect the rest of the population from the “extremists.”

Rant much?  Why yes, thank you, I do.  Anywho, I hate the TSA.  They are just people doing a job, right?  Yeah, so are the buttmunchs who send you unsolicited spam, and the jerkwads who call you at 7:30 on a Saturday morning trying to get you to buy their auto insurance.  Personally, I’d rather flip burgers at McDonald’s than help implement the military state and invade citizens’ civil liberties… but hey, that’s just me.

So, we get to the airport in Denver, check our bags, take off half of our clothes, get radiated, and make it through security.  We get on the plane, and we fly to Miami.  Well, we fly to over Miami, and then we circle over Miami for like an hour because of some storms.  Then we fly to Ft. Lauderdale because we’re low on fuel.  Then we sit in the plane on the tarmac for like an hour getting refueled and waiting for the okay to fly back to Miami.  Then we fly back to Miami and land.  My least favorite parts of flying, other than the turbulence and the extreme heights and the small seats in “business class” and the fat-assed flight attendants who bump my shoulder every time they walk down the narrow aisle (I thought flight attendants had to be petite… now they’re all fat or dudes and most definitely like banging into passengers) and the narrow aisles and the small restrooms and the long lines to the small restrooms and trying to pee in turbulence… the parts I hate the most are taking off and landing.  Taking off and landing are where most accidents occur.  Well, on the trip to Miami, what was supposed to be a 4-hour non-stop flight from DIA to MIA turned into an almost 7-hour ordeal with two take-offs and two landings.  We really got some bang for our buck on that stupid flight.  So, instead of having an afternoon to check out Miami, we went straight to the hotel, grabbed some supper, and got ready for bed.

The next morning, after feasting on the hotel’s all you can eat breakfast buffet (just the beginning of us gorging ourselves), we take a cab out to the port.  Going through the boarding process is quite a bit less intimidating than the airport security, but still kind of sucks.  Finally, we get on the boat and are ready to really start enjoying our vacation… when I notice them.

Dudes… young dudes… rich-looking young dudes… everywhere.  Preppy guys looking like their ready to get their drink on.  What the…?!?  And they all have Greek letters on their shirts.  Frat boys… seriously… everywhere!  Most of them appear to be ΣAE (Sigma Alpha Epsilon), although there are some something-with-a-Deltas there, and a something-Kappa-something or two as well.  EVERYWHERE!!!  It’s nothing personal against young gentlemen in fraternities, God love ‘em.  I just have a very strong aversion to guys who are almost guaranteed success because they have rich daddies and like looking down on those not in their group.  I had to deal with frat boys when I went to college, and I didn’t much care for them then… and now, almost 20 years later, my dream vacation is in jeopardy of being tainted by an extremely large ship FULL of them…

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… and not a sorority girl in sight :(  It was shaping up to be a long week.

… to be continued

So about three weeks ago, I post my previous entry to this blog. It’s all about how stress sucks and how I don’t handle stress very well. This was on a Saturday.  It was my 100th post, and I planned on following it up with a 100th postaversary celebration, but you’re getting this instead.

Monday rolls around, and I get a phone call from my dad (one of my three regular readers) who says that his Norton is telling him he can get a virus if he goes to my site.  I’m at work, so I don’t really have time to look at whatever the issue is (and I’m thinking in the back of my head that it’s probably just something screwy with Norton… or my dad).  Throughout the day, I hear from the other two people who read this blog and they both tell me that my blog is apparently an “Attack Site”.

Sure enough, every time I tried going to my site on any browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox), I’m getting a message that my computer can get a virus my visiting my blog!?!  CRAP!

Alright, so I start griping to anyone who will listen about hackers and their ilk who have fun making other peoples’ lives living hells for no apparent reason.  I am of the conviction that all practitioners of cyber-terror (spammers, hackers, identity thieves, etc.) should be publicly executed… with stones.  You know,  Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery-style.  I may actually toss a stone or two myself.  I bet you have some world-wide televised public stonings and the rate of cyber terror will drop drastically.  Just saying.

So anyway, my boss overhears me bitching about some jackwad hiding a link to a malicious site in my code, and he takes it upon himself to remove the link.  See, I don’t know anything about coding or PHP or HTML or any of that crap.  I use Wordpress because I’m not supposed to know about how to do that coding crap with WordPress.  Thank goodness I have a cool boss

I’m all good now, right?  The code is gone and my blog is once again safe.  I figure I’m all in the clear.  Except, I’m not.  Because now I have to request that Google re-review my site to confirm that the bad stuff is gone.  See, many of the reporting sites that different browsers and whatnot rely on to determine if a site is safe to go to rely on Google for their information.  Googlebot is a web crawler, or “spider”, which scours the Internet looking for new web sites… and searching existing web sites for dangers to Google’s users.  So, unless you can prove to Google that your site is clean and safe after it has been ruled compromised, a lot of potential visitors are going to get a warning page when they try to visit your site.

This is all well and good.  I want to be protected when I visit sites, so I really didn’t have any issues with any of this.  Where my issue comes into play is with proving to Google that I own my web site.  This was not an easy task.

Google gives you like four different methods to prove you own your site.  One requires inserting some “meta” doohickie into a certain position in your sites code.  Well… that was out, because, like I wrote earlier, I don’t know nothing ’bout no stinking code.

Another method involved copying some HTML thingamagiggee into some section of your site on the server… blah blah blah.  Again… HTML… not happening.

A third option for proving that I owned my site was by adding a DNS record to my domain’s configuration by signing into the domain register and… you’ve got to be freaking kidding me.  Isn’t there an app for my Droid that I can just download… or maybe a button on Facebook I can click?

The final option is linking your web site to a Google Analytics account.  HOORAY!  I have a Google Analytics account, and I use it to monitor my web site.  I figure this is going to be easy, right?  Yeah, wrong.  I try using that method and I come to the realization that I must not have the required asynchronous snippet in my tracking code.  What exactly is an asynchronous snippet?  Well, I looked it up, and I still have no idea.  If I could figure out what a freaking asynchronous snippet was, I’d probably know how to add a DNS record to my domain’s configuration.  FOR CRYING OUT LOVE OF PETE!

Alright, so I figure I’ll just contact Google and see if they can help me.  HAHAHA!  Did you read that?  “Contact Google.”  Exactly how stupid am I?  Apparently, very stupid.  One does not “contact” Google.  Period.  Seriously, go to Google’s web site and click on “contact us” on the bottom of the page.  There is no way to actually “contact” anyone.  There is no phone number, no email addresses, no mailing address… just recommendations to go to different forums and blogs and crap.  When I first went to “contact” Google, they recommended that the fastest way to resolve my issue was to search their forums.  Have you ever searched a forum?  There is absolutely nothing fast about searching a forum for ANYTHING!

Okay, so I’m way past the point of literally pulling the hair out of my head.  There are still hairs lodged in between the keys on my laptop’s keyboard.  I figure “screw this, I’m done!”

“Oh, but it’s not fair to ask that Google have live people to help nincompoops like you,” says the tech geek who thinks I’m an idiot.  “They are much too large of a company with way too many interests.  Do you know how many calls they’d get and email they would have to respond to?”

Seriously?!?  Google is a multi-billion dollar corporation.  Their stock sells for like $600/ share.  $600 PER SHARE! Yes, I just yelled it at you.  You mean to tell me they can’t afford a customer service center… or 20?

Anywho, I gave up on the whole blogging thing.  Figured it was supposed to be a way to relieve stress, not create stress.  I was done with the whole thing.  And every day I would try to visit the site and see that stupid warning page, and I’d get more and more pissed off.  And I’d try to research a way to get the whole -prove-ownership-to-Google-thing accomplished.  And I’d learn a little and get really frustrated and pissed-off, and I’d give up again.  Lather, rinse, repeat… for almost 10 days.

Funny thing is, if I used Microsoft Internet Explorer, I could get to the site just fine… no warnings.  Apparently Microsoft (and Norton, and McAfee, and all other leading anti-viruses) knew the bad code had been removed from my site and was a safe place to visit.  Google (and Firefox… who relies on Googlebot) apparently has no problem listing my site as dangerous, but don’t apparently have the advanced kind of technology that allows them to periodically revisit sites it has condemned to see if anything has changed.

“But that’s you’re responsibility as the site owner,” says the Google advocate.  I’m gonna have to call BS on that.  Google, on the warning page, stated that they had contacted the site owner to let them know the site had been found malignant.  I received no notification from anyone other than my dad and his Norton.  They didn’t contact anyone… they just made a decision to make my site appear dangerous to much of the online community (which I understand)… even after it was fixed (which is inexcusable).  Google has a crap-ton of power over the Internet.  You could almost call it the “Googlenet.”

As we learned from Spider-Man:

With great power comes great responsibility.

It would take very little for Google to make the entire “review” process for corrupted web sites much easier (maybe even automate it)… and that would be showing “great responsibility.”  Hell… if some random stranger wants to have my little stinking blog reviewed… I say, “Have at it!”  Why does one have to prove ownership to have a web site reviewed?

Anyway, after 10 days of short bouts of learning… intermixed with long periods of full-on rage… I finally figured out how to FTP some HTML to the server I use to prove my ownership… and I got a clean review from Google.  What exactly did I just write?  You’ve got me.  I did it once, and if I ever have to do it again, I may end-up bald!

A lot of guys like to cook.  I like to cook.  There is nothing wrong with a guy cooking, especially when he cooks something that ROCKS!  I like cooking with heat… and I don’t mean on the stove.  I like peppers.  Hot peppers of all kinds; jalapenos, habaneros, serranos, green chilies, red chilies, yellow chilies.  I usually grow peppers over the summer to can or dehydrate to have on hand for cooking spicy food.

My love of spicy has been passed on to my two sons.  I guess my constant talk of, “real men like it hot,” and “only wimps don’t like spicy food” has probably helped develop this taste.  I think they are afraid to not like things a little spicy.  They will try about anything, and hardly ever admit that something is too much (although they aren’t afraid to ask for milk while testing.)

My wife has even developed, to a lesser degree, a tolerance for my cooking.  She, however, isn’t afraid to tell me something is too much.  She’s such a girl.

I’m always trying new recipes and new takes on old recipes to spice them up.  I decided that I need to document some of them here to share with fellow lovers of all things spicy.  I’ll throw an occasional recipe into the Happy Stinking Joy mix from time to time, only if I think they are worthy.     Some will be pretty simple, and some will take some time and effort.  I try to make things mild enough that the wife will eat them, yet with enough heat to make it worth my while.  I hope some of you try these out, and let me know what you think!

To start it off, I’ll go with a recipe I made over this past weekend.  We went to a farmer’s market and picked up some jams made with hot peppers.  We bought some strawberry/jalapeno jam and some peach/habanero jam.  $4.00 for like an 8oz jar.  Pricey!  So, I figured I’d make some on my own.  I’m guessing the overall cost is about 1/2 of buying it at the farmer’s market.  A little more work that driving to the market, and you end up with more than a bottle or two, but this stuff will last like a year if you can it properly.

Please read the whole thing through before trying this recipe.  I’m not a professional recipe writer, and things may be a little out of order.  I’d hate for anyone to start and then figure out that there was something they were supposed to do before they get to a certain point.

Good luck!

Adventurer Rich’s Pear/Jalapeno Jam

What you’re going to need:

*6 medium jalapenos (approximate)

*4 pears (approximate) [pears + jalapenos need to yield 4 cups uncooked]

*1 Tbs margarine or butter

*1/4 cup lemon juice

*7 1/2 cups sugar

*1 3oz pouch liquid Certo

*canner

*1/2 pint or 1/4 pint jars with rims and lids, sterilized

Now, the first thing you’re going to want to do is chop up pear and jalapenos.  Peel and core the pears, and chop the jalapenos.

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I cut up the pears and jalapenos with knife and then dice them.  I use one of those fancy choppers that you can get in the infomercials… you know, you stick the stuff in and then pound on the top of it to dice the contents.  You want pretty close to exactly 4 cups of diced pears and peppers.  If you want it a little hotter, add more jalapenos and less pears.  If you want it a little milder, go to a different website.  I removed the seeds and white membrane from the jalapenos (to make the wife happy), but if I were to make this again, I would leave them in to add more heat.  Once they chunks are the size you think you would like in your jam, throw them in a pot on the stove.

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Add the sugar and lemon juice and throw the slap of butter or margarine on top; the fat helps prevent the mixture from forming an undesirable foam on top… and fat just makes everything a little better.  Most hot pepper jellies and jams call for vinegar (and even pickled peppers), and many people like the certain tanginess that vinegar adds.   I like the vinegar flavored jams and jellies too, but with this recipe, I wanted the fruitiness of the pear and jalapeno to be the centerpiece of the taste… thus the lemon juice as an acid instead of vinegar.  Look at me, I’m writing like I know what in the hell I’m talking about!  Don’t be mislead… I’m as confused as ever.

Once you have everything in the pot, turn the heat up to medium on the burner and bring the works to a rolling boil.  A “rolling boil” means that the mixture’s boiling can’t be stopped by you stirring it.  Speaking of stirring, you want to stir this pretty constantly.  Sugar burns very easily.  Speaking of sugar… that crap gets very hot.  As soon as the sugar is melted, I’m pretty sure it is about temperature of the center of the earth.  Once it boils, I’m guessing it would make the surface of the sun feel like a day at the beach in Canada.  In other words, don’t touch the hot sugar.  Seriously.  You’ll be sorry (I was).

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Once you have that rolling boil, it’s time to add the fruit pectin.  For this recipe, I recommend (’cause it’s what I used… and it worked) Certo Liquid Pectin.  One three ounce pouch is just right for this recipe.  The cool thing is, I bought a box of the stuff, and there were two pouches, so I have an extra pouch to make something else.

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Once the pectin is added, bring back to a boil and boil for as close to exactly 1 minute as possible (stirring constantly).  I’m guessing that if you don’t boil it long enough, you’ll have syrup instead of jam, and if you boil it too long, it will be more like rock candy; both of which are great ideas, just not for this recipe.

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Now it’s time to fill your sterilized canning jars.  Remember, this crap is HOT!  Be careful.  If you get it on your hand, you will cry like a little girl (I did), and the pain will last FOREVER!  Fill the jars to about 1/4 inch of the top.  If you get some of the mixture on the lip of the lid (which you will), wipe it away.  You want the lip clean to ensure a proper seal and prevent icky stuff from getting in.

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Alrighty, now it’s time to put the lids and rims on.  Again, make sure the lips and threads of the jars are clean.  Keeping the lids in hot warrm until you are ready to place them on the jars is a good idea.  Why?  Who knows.  It’s just a good idea.

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Now the jars are ready to go into the canner (which should be filled with boiling water).  Make sure there is enough water to completely cover all of your jars.

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Lower the jars into the water, place the lid on the canner, and boil those bad boys for 10 minutes.

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Remove the jars from the canner and set them on a dishtowel on a counter to let them cool.  If they are canned properly, the lids should pop down and not pop back up when you push on them.  It jam may have to cool quite awhile before the lids don’t pop back up.  If you have a jar or two that the lids refuse to seal on, that’s ok; those just need to go in the fridge and be the first ones you eat.

Once the jars are sealed, place them in a cool, dark place and you can store them for up-to about a year (but I doubt they will last that long… ’cause you’re gonna eat this slop up way before a year).

Once of my families favorite way to eat this stuff is on cracker with cream cheese.

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You know what’s really cool?  Not only do the flavors of the pears and jalapenos compliment each other nicely, and the mild heat of the jalapenos make this a solid spread for pepper-heads… but the jam looks kind of like something you might clear from the back of your throat!  Now, that’s a jam a any real man would be proud to eat!

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I like free stuff.  I really, really like free stuff.  Google has been giving away free CR-48 computers, and I want one, because they are free.

I want one.  I have wanted one for awhile now.  In fact, I sent Google my information so that I could participate in their “pilot program”.  I think it was in January that I “applied” for one of these cool devices… which are absolutely free, by the way.  Almost everything I do with a computer outside of my job is Internet based.  I watch stuff on YouTube (owned by Google).  I check my Gmail (owned by Google).  I use the Google Chrome web browser (owned, of course, by Google).  I read blogs on Blogger (owned by Google).  Although this blog is not hosted by Google, I do use Google Analytics (owned by Google) to track traffic to this site.  Most of the little short stories I have written I store in Google Documents (owned by Google) so that I can work on them from any computer with Internet access.  Google Calendar (owned by Google) helps me keep my life semi-organized… at least in theory.  My phone is a Droid (more Google).  I put all of this information on my application to the pilot program.  I figured I would be a shoe-in to test one of these little bad boys out for Google.  Yet, I haven’t received one on my doorstep yet.  Damn it!

I applied for the pilot program on a weekend.  I remember coming to work the following Monday, and one of our phone techs was carrying a new netbook.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s one of them new-fangled Chrome OS computer thingies,” he said.

“Hey, I just applied for the pilot program this weekend,” I said.  “How do you like it?”

“It’s pretty neato,” he replied.  “It starts up real fast, and it’s quicker than snot on a skillet online.  It even has one of thems fancy webcams.”

“Wow, cool,” I said, starting to feel a little jealous.  “How long ago did you apply for the pilot program?”

“Oh, I reckon it were a couple a months ago.”

“And what did you say to impress them,” I asked, “you know, to get them to send you one?”

“Oh, I just said silly stuff,” he said.  “I told them that it’d be neato to have one and that I’d scream it to the world how great they was and whatnot.”

I just stared at him.  Seriously?  He put something stupid like that and he got one?  Now I knew I was a shoe-in, because my reasoning seemed so much more intelligent.  I knew mine would arrive in the mail in a few short weeks.

Well, short weeks have turned into long weeks, and the pilot program is over.  Stinking Google.  I even own some of their stupid stock.  Now I’m just pissed.  In fact, my coworker doesn’t really talk like a redneck hillbilly, I just wrote him like that out of sheer jealousy.

Well, looks like I’m going to have to get rid of all of the Google in my life.  Guess I’ll have to switch to Yahoo! for my mail and calendar… and stop watching YouTube videos… and stop reading Blogger blogs… and find a way to monitor my blog other than Analytics… crap.  This is going to take a lot of work.  You know, it would be a hell of a lot easier if Google would just send me a free CR-48.

Seriously, please send me a free CR-48, Google.  I know that someone at Google will see this post, ’cause I’m gonna tag the hell out of Google in it.  If you send me one… I swear… sigh… I’LL SCREAM IT TO THE WORLD HOW GREAT IT IS!!!

You know how you think that Boy Scouts would be just a slight cut above their peers?  Maybe a little more respectful, a little more clean?  I mean, c’mon, the Scout Law is as follows:

A Scout is:

• Trustworthy,
• Loyal,
• Helpful,
• Friendly,
• Courteous,
• Kind,
• Obedient,
• Cheerful,
• Thrifty,
• Brave,
• Clean,
• and Reverent.

Did you see “Clean” on there?  Of course you did, ’cause it’s right there between “Brave” and “Reverent”… in the LAW.  Yeah, you would think that Scouts would be just a small cut above their peers.  You would think that… until you go on a camp-out with them.

I have been on many camp-outs with many different Scouts, and I can say without a doubt that they are filthy little creatures.  Oh sure, not all of them.  Some of them actually follow the Scout Law… even the “Clean” part.  But a large percentage of them are dirty little grime-covered insects.  They remind me of cockroaches.  Don’t believe me?  Go on a Scout camp-out where there is a latrine or port-a-potties and call me a liar.

I went on a Scout camp-out this past weekend.  It was the annual tree plant at Fort Robinson.  This is a great service project that Long’s Peak Council has been committed to for many years.   There was a massive forest fire in this area in 1989.  It’s Nebraska, so there wasn’t much forest to begin with.  Scouting has tried to help ensure that Nebraska doesn’t turn into a desert.  Funny how the “Arbor Day State” has so few trees, isn’t it?  Well, that’s a subject for another post.

Now, this was a two-night camp.  We arrived Friday evening, set up camp, and went to bed.  The next morning, we got up at the butt-crack of dawn (which is the norm on a Scout camp-out).  I guess we get up so early to try to teach the boys something.  I have no idea what it is we are trying to teach them, but my best guess would be it has something to do with some kind of mental torture.  We are trying to break their will and make them pathetic, crabby, miserable little boys before we start building them back up to help them with their self-confidence, turning them into men… or something.  It’s kind of like basic training in the military, except for they’re just kids and not really men yet… and we can’t make them drop and give us twenty when they get all kinds of mouthy because they are in a bad mood because we made them get up so early.  I know that the early mornings are about the only part of Scout activities that I detest.  Well, the early mornings… and the inability to take a healthy poop.

After watching the stupid sunrise while trying to get Scouts out of their tents and making breakfast, we all stumble groggily over to a flag ceremony.  We watch a demonstration on how to plant trees.  We drive out over a bunch of rutted, washboardie roads to the middle of nowhere, park the cars, and then hike for like a half -mile to get some small trees to plant.  With bags of trees and these spades that weigh like 200 pounds, we start hiking and planting trees.  Several hours and a moderately severe case of spring sunburn later, we head back to camp for lunch.  We mess around most of the afternoon, and then head over to a building for a group supper.  By this time, I start to realize that I haven’t pooped since back in Terrytown the previous day.  I’ve got yesterday’s supper in me, along with breakfast, lunch and diner from today.  I’m starting to feel “the urge”.

Now, Long’s Peak Council has thought of everything.  We have port-a-potty galore.  There are a ton of those things scattered throughout the designated camping area.  Well, maybe Long’s Peak Council hasn’t thought of quite everything.  They apparently haven’t thought of the fact that a bunch of mostly 11 to 14-year-old boys are going to make a pretty big mess of every single stinking port-a-potty within hours of setting up camp.  Even though port-a-potties have little plastic urinals mounted on the inside, many of the boys are going to pee directly into the pooper; and a large portion of these boys are going to pee all over the seat.  These boys should be punished.  I want to go to each and every one of these boys’ houses and pee all over their toilet seats.  And then I want to make them sit in it… many times… over and over again.  I think this is going to be about the only way to break them out of the habit of peeing all over toilet seats.  If they are learning it from their fathers, those fathers need to be punished as well.  This goes for any boy or man who has ever peed in a public restroom without lifting the seat.  Each and every one of you should be forced to clean public restrooms.  For every peeing offense, that is one entire restroom you must clean… with a toothbrush… your toothbrush… and then you should be forced to brush your teeth with your toothbrush.  Seriously.

I know that you may be thinking to yourself, “I’m never going to poop on this toilet, so who cares if I pee on it?”  Well, every person who may be in need of pooping on that toilet cares.  Think of someone other than yourself, you smug jerkwad.

Or maybe you’re thinking, “I’m a really good aimer.  I can get it all in the toilet bowl without touching the seat!”  You are insane.  When dealing with something that may touch another man’s (or woman’s) butt, now is not the time for delusions of grandeur.  Lift the stinking seat.

Okay, so I have checked out almost every porta-a-potty at the camp.  Those without poop or pee all over the seat that are actually clean enough to use are out of toilet paper.  Wow, there is still all of tonight and tomorrow morning to go, and they are out of toilet paper.  Then I remember that there is actually a heated restroom up by the building where we ate supper.  So, I take the hike to the heated restroom and go inside.  There is mud and water and (I’m almost positive) pee all over the floor.  I immediately want to wash my hands just from touching the door… but both sinks are occupied by young Scouts feverishly washing their hands (a couple of those who obey the Scout Law, I presume) and there are no paper towels in sight.  There are two toilets in the restroom, and one has a line going almost out the door.  The second is empty with no line.  Now, I know that there is something about that second toilet that is keeping everyone else away from it.  There is no way all of these Scouts and Scout leaders are standing in line for one toilet if there is a second toilet that is perfectly fine.  So I get in line… and I stare at the door to that empty stall.

The person sitting in the first stall is making all kinds of strange noises.  There would be a low moan, and then a grunt, and then a little plfft noise.  Just a little tiny noise.  The younger Scouts in line would giggle.  The older Scouts would roll their eyes and elbow the younger Scouts.  I was making a mental note to make sure I didn’t moan or grunt when my time arrived.  This continued for minute after minute: moan, grunt, plfft… moan, grunt, plfft. The poor dude on the toilet was making little progress, and the audience, once amused at his efforts, was becoming annoyed.  Several of the boys were actually squeezing their butt cheeks together with their hands.  One of the boys near the front of the line got an awful look on his face.  His face got all squinchy, and I heard his stomach rumble.  He squeezed his knees together and his hands went to his belly. His whole body tensed, he let out a soft “oh no”, and then he relaxed.  His face burned bright red and he refused to meet the eyes of any of the other line-waiters.  He slowly slipped past all of us, taking small, calculated steps,  and made his way out the door.

No one said a thing.  We all just bowed our heads in a moment of silence for the soldier who fell before us.

Not able to take any of this any longer, I went to the second stall.  I didn’t care how bad that toilet was, I was bound and determined to…

FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING SACRED AND HOLY!!!

Oh dear sweet Jesus, how could You let something so hideous come into Your creation?  The toilet was plugged.  No big deal, right?  I mean, we’ve all seen plugged toilets.  Of course, this isn’t your standard “plugged toilet”.  This sucker is filled to the brim with poop and pee and toilet paper.  This sucker has been flushed so many times that part of the contents of the toilet bowl have spewed over the side and onto the floor.  I quickly realized two things: that I was right about part of the wetness on the floor being pee, and that I was wrong about the brown muck on the floor being mud. With the slight taste of vomit in my mouth, I looked closer.  There, sitting on the seat, was a lone pile of poo.  It resembled the top of an ice cream cone, perfectly twisted up to a little point on top.

“How in the hell…,” I thought to myself, and then it hit me.  Some poor soul  had been so desperate that he had tried to use that plugged toilet.  In an effort to avoid getting the mess from within the bowl on his hiney, he tried using the “hover method”.  The “hover method” is… well, I think you can figure that out on your own.  Apparently, he “hovered” just fine, but his aim was a little off.  Instead of plopping his goods down into the filthy murk of the bowl, he laid it neatly on the toilet seat, ice-cream-cone-style, for all to see.

I turned from the horror in front of me and walked directly out of the restroom.  I went back to camp, crawled in my tent, crawled in my sleeping bag and went to sleep.  I dreamed of being chased across inescapably wet floors by monstrous brown ice cream cones.  The next morning, we packed up camp and headed home.

Well, here we are now, several days after the camp out.  I still haven’t pooped.  Apparently, holding that stuff in makes it kind of… I don’t know… compress and back-up or something.  It’s kind of neat, ’cause I have hardly any appetite.  If I could poop, I’d almost bet that I’ve lost weight!  But I haven’t pooped, so I have actually gained weight.

Anyway, back to my original point.   Cockroaches are filthy creatures.  They eat almost anything, they hide in dark, damp places, and they leave their feces all over the place in disgusting manners.  Scouts truly are like cockroaches.

Okay, true story.  100% true.  I was going to wait to post it until after April Fool’s, but it’s just too good to not get out right away.

Yesterday, a coworker of mine comes back from lunch and has the most amazing McDonald’s story I’ve ever heard.  Actually, this is one of the most amazing customer service stories of all time!

The coworker’s name is… well, I don’t want to use his real name, so I’ll just call him Ron.  Ron goes to the drive through at the McDonald’s in Gering, NE to order a little lunch for himself… as is his wont  for lunch.  “Wont”… not “want” or “won’t”… look it up.  I’m all fancy-languaged and whatnot.  He orders his grub and is told to “Please pay at the first window.”

So, Ron drives to the first window.  Inside, he sees the middle-aged cashier-dude who informs Ron of the total due.  The dude appears to be of Hispanic decent.  I know that mentioning race seems a little silly, but it will have relevance a little further along in the story.  The cashier gives Ron his change.  I know, I know, this all seems pretty boring right?  We’ve all been through this same experience probably hundreds of times.  Typical McDonald’s experience.  Typical, until the cashier decides to go completely insane.

“I’ve always wanted to say this to someone before I quit,” says the cashier.  He looks Ron right in the eye.  “F$%k you, you fat white f$%*&r.  Don’t eat here.  Don’t bother telling my manager, ’cause I’m going to quit right now.”

Ron, stunned, watches the window close and then pulls forward.  Still in amazement, he is handed his food by another McDonald’s employee who closes her window before Ron has a chance to say “boo.”

Back at the office, Ron is finally laughing as he relays the story to the rest of us.  Ron has already gotten over it and thinks it’s funny.  Some of the other coworkers feel the same.  I, like with most things in life, get a little pissed off.

First, who is stupid enough to speak to a customer like that?  It’s not like this guy was some teenager who still has the reason of being young, immature, and ignorant.  The dude was just a middle-aged wash-out who is immature and ignorant.  Even if you are planning to quit, why would you talk to someone in that manner who has done absolutely nothing bad to you in any sort of way other than try to support the company that pays your wages?

Second, imagine if roles were reversed.  Imagine a white dude saying to a Hispanic person, “F#$k you, you fat brown f$%*&r.”  McDonald’s would be looking at a lawsuit like no other.  “Racism” and “hate crime” would be thrown around and the white dude would have to go live in the hills in Idaho for the rest of his adult life.  The cashier from this incident will probably just get another job at another fast food restaurant.

Third, what kind of middle-aged dude works as a cashier at McDonald’s?  And the fact that he said “I’ve always wanted to say this to someone before I quit” makes me think that he has had a sting of drive-through cashier jobs… all of which he’s quit.  I’m thinking this dude needs to knock over another convenience and land himself back in prison, which is apparently where he’s spent most of his life up to this point.  Can you think of any other reason a middle-aged dude would be working a string of fast food drive-through jobs… all of which he’s quit? Neither can I.

So I’m just steamed that this punk had the nerve to talk to someone like that, right?  I go home and I’m still all torked out of shape.  And then I really start thinking about it.  I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but other than the whole racist-aspect of the ordeal (the punk needs a little bitch-slap for that), I kind of respect the dude.  Here is this loser who is in a really crappy, dead-end job, and he goes out with a bang.  He gets off his chest something that has been building up probably forever.  I mean, I feel for poor Ron, ’cause he didn’t do anything but try to buy some lunch (and he really isn’t what I consider to be fat… although he is the whitest dude I know), but you have to hand it to the punk.  He did something that most of us only dream of doing… every waking hour of every day of our lives.  Good for him.

Now this middle-aged dude just needs to find a career where he can utilize his skills, where he can find peace, where he can fit in.  Like I already stated, knocking over a convenience store…

I have really big plans for this blog.  Someday, I will make enough money with this blog that I can spend all of the time that I now devote to my job doing nothing more than bitching about stuff here all day.  You know what they say, do something you love, and it won’t really be “work”.  Well, bitching is about the only thing I do that I really enjoy, so this has to be the answer to my prayers… at some point… right?  Oh please, let it be so.

Okay, so to make money with a blog, you have to… uh… COME ON!  There has to be a way to make money with a blog! Every once in awhile, I put a link to something on Amazon on here.  I’m an Amazon Associate, which means I can get commission if someone clicks one of those links and actually buys something from Amazon.  I have been an Amazon Associate for about two years, and I have actually made some money doing it.  Of course, I haven’t seen any of that money yet.   Amazon won’t actually pay anything out until you have built up at least $10 in commission… and I haven’t hit that mark yet.  In another three or four years, I should get my first $10 check from Amazon.

I’m stoked!

There is also Google Ads.  I could have a list of stupid links on the side of my blog with Google ads and I would get paid every time someone clicks one of those links.  Happy Stinking Joy doesn’t really have a lot of visitors, and, at this point, I’d rather have you stay and read my thoughts than get distracted by the ads on the side and leave my site.  Also, it would mess up my ultra-professional layout… or something.

I haven’t exactly had an onslaught of individual advertisers approaching me with bids for some of the precious real estate on my site.  I guess rant sites aren’t real popular with traditional advertisers.  Before I’m going to see any real revenue from this site, I’m going to have to get more than a handful of people coming here on a daily basis.

Most popular blogs seem to fall into a couple of categories, the first of which is the “expert” blogger.  You know, these are the Seth Godins of the world who share all kinds of free insight into crap that they are experts about.  Their whole ploy is to give you “free advice” to make you feel like a friend, and then they try to sell their books to you or try to talk you into hiring them to do consulting or speaking engagements.  Well, my forty-one-years of life have not exactly led me to become much of an expert at anything.  I know a little about a lot, but a lot about little.  I have been too busy chasing the next-step-up in middle-class pay to stay with any one company in any given field for more than a couple of years.  If your current promotions and pay increases aren’t getting you where you want to be: quit, and maybe the next job will take you where you want to go.  Of course, the next job never does.  So, I’ve had the opportunity to work with all kinds of interesting people in many different fields, but I haven’t stuck around any of them long enough to actually have become an expert at anything.  I’m an expert bitcher, but companies aren’t going to hire me to give a “bitch seminar” to their workforce… at least not yet.  I figure if I pray about it long enough, God, if nothing else, will get tired of me asking and either give it to me just to shut me up or strike me dead…

… either of which would lead to no more Monday mornings dreading work.

The other major category of successful bloggers seems to be those who cover current events.  Whether it be Perez Hilton covering the latest embarrassments of the rich and famous, or any of the slew of Yahoo! bloggers covering the latest in world events; people who get the story first tend to get a following.  I think this may be the route I need to follow.  I need to get the hot stories first.  Of course, I live in Nebraska, so the celebrity fodder may be a little out of my grasp.

Ooh… Ooh… Miss America is from my part of Nebraska, so I could dedicate my blog to digging up all of the crap I can to humiliate Miss America I did a little blog about Miss America right after she won and it was actually one of the most visited rants I have posted!  But… I have a pretty strong suspicion that Teresa Scanlan is almost as squeaky clean as you would think a Miss America should be. I bet she actually believes what she says she believes, and I don’t think that “Miss America thought about skipping church once because she was just too tired to go, but then she prayed about it and changed her mind” will draw a lot of visitors to my little site.

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So, I’ve got to find a way to get the latest and greatest news before anybody else.  This is a “must” if I ever want to make this thing my sugar daddy.  Okay, so here it goes:

Breaking news… Charlie Sheen has gone insane!  The impact was devastating.  Damages are estimated… oh, great, my kid just looked over my shoulder and informed me that this is old news.  Okay, I guess I need to find something a little more “hot”.

Alright, I just did a Google search for “breaking news” and I don’t think I’m going to be able to go this route.  It seems that all of the “news” sites already have the breaking news covered.  The news sites and a bunch of Twitter people.  I don’t tweet or chirp or cockadoodledoo… or whatever it is that those people do.  I’m not quite hip enough for that.  Besides, all I’d be able to add to the Twitter conversation would be unique things I’m experiencing.

“It’s windy in Nebraska… again!”

See, it just doesn’t work.

Hmmm… I gotta figure something out.  Okay, I know, I could just make kind of creative news stories.  No, that wasn’t “make up news stories”, it was “make kind of creative news stories”.  There’s… uh… sort of a difference.

Breaking news…. There is a humongous oil leak in the… uh… Gulf of Istanbul.  Yeah, and it’s causing infertility in the… uh… Great Northern Spike-Backed Whale.  Oh, you should hear the sad song those poor whales are singing at this moment.  It would make you cry.

This just in… apparently the oil spill was caused by… uh… Miss America!  Yeah, that’s it!  Apparently Miss America was on a diplomatic mission to Alderan and she and her entourage accidentally knocked over a big oil thingie in the Gulf of Istanbul.  Anti-American sentiment is through the roof in the countries bordering the Gulf… and by Great Northern Spiked-Back Whale lovers around the world!  Check back to this site often for more of the latest…

This just may work