Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

I wonder how many times I’ll feel the need to write a little post like this, just to note that I can’t think of a damn thing to write? I’ve been given a decent sized megaphone to shout through, but I find myself mute and disengaged and unable to construct even mindless meaninglessness, let alone what I try to pass off as coherent thought on a regular basis. Not that it matters. It’s just a moment.

Melissa claims that drunken Chris posts more profanity than sober Chris. She used this post as an example. Personally, I’m perplexed. I’ve never known myself to be profane. Odd, really. It might make an interesting experiment, however, to compare the posts of liberal Philadelphia bloggers after about 9:00 on Tuesday nights, right after Drinking Liberally, to see if they use more profanity than at other times. I, for one, won’t be using any additional profanity, though some might.

And you bastards were expecting a panda, weren’t you?

I just wanted to check in, say hello and welcome Ellen to the site. I don’t know how much she had to drink before she posted the picture of the dog in the panda suit, but it was a damn good effort. I’m still thinking about trying to recruit somebody in addition to Ellen, just so none of us feels too much pressure to maintain the sordid affair.

Now indulge me while I do something quite tasteless and link to myself. So far I’ve written four posts for Booman, which you may or may not have seen. Since there are a handful of sickos out there who actually show up here to read my drivel, I might as well point you to said drivel. The first post was an incoherent mess about the ineptitude of the Democratic party establishment. It makes no sense, but there are pictures of pandas in the comments. The second was your standard issue, “fuck Bush” sort of post. Good for the soul, but bad for your teeth. At least that’s what my dentist tells me. The third was a little of my Fourth Amendment blather, that has been boring you to tears for the last few months. The fourth is something you’ve seen a lot of from me, where I down 10 beers and proclaim my undying love for The Editors. Funny story about that one. I was making a correction to a spelling error and pressed a button labeled “archive” rather than “save.” Fucking Scoop. Anyway, now it only exists in some strange suspended animation where nobody can actually see it. Fun.

Carry on.

As I mentioned previously, I’m going to be doing some front page writing for the Booman Tribune. I’ll admit to being a bit nervous, as that site has a far larger audience than what I’m used to here. My first post is up if you want to have a look. It’s not very good, but I had to start somewhere. Since I’m comfortable with sucking, a sucky post seemed appropriate. It got 30+ comments this afternoon, which is about what I’m used to in a week. Yikes.

Anyway, I’m not sure how I plan to divide my time between this site and that one. I’m not planning on doing any cross-posting, but since I don’t really write all that much, that could mean that this site drys up for a bit. Maybe I’ll try to recruit somebody to pretend they are me and post pictures of baby animals late at night after drinking too much. If you’re interested, drop me a line. Here’s a baby panther picture I stole from my sister.

I’ve returned home from my brief journey to Arizona. The trip and my brother’s wedding have left my brain in tatters, so I won’t try to provide you with anything useful tonight. Anyway, here’s some random pictures from the trip.

This is our rental car. It’s a 2005 Ford Mustang with a V8 engine. It goes from zero to sixty in 5.1 seconds, sounds like an earthquake, and is way too much fun for anybody’s good. It settles in very nicely at about 110 mph on the open highway, and it clings the road like glue. Highly recommended.

This is a shot of Sedona through some snow. My wife claims that bad weather follows her, no matter where she goes. After 14 years of bad weather, I’m inclined to believe her.

Just in case you ever wondered what I look like, this is the back of my head, taken on the summit of Squaw Peak in Phoenix.

Anyway, forgive the boring interlude. I’ll be getting back to politics shortly. I’m not sure how I’m going to handle posting on two sites, or if I’ll even continue to maintain this site at all. We’ll see. I love it when shit’s all up it the air.

Today is the only day I have in Arizona where I don’t have to do anything related to the wedding. Naturally, it’s 48 degrees and raining heavily. Oh, and the most exciting thing on TV is Pro Bowling. Sigh. At least I have beer, my oldest and dearest friend.

Some days are better than others to be introduced to a wider audience. Today wasn’t one of the better days. Hell, the last year pretty much sucked. No matter. I’m more than happy to bask in the soft, yellow glow of my own mediocrity. Whatever.

Just to keep things amusing, and way the fuck cute, I offer this picture of Su Lin. If you don’t smile and wave back, you pretty much suck.

If you do suck, perhaps you should read up on cat shit coffee or self surgery. One or the other ought to bore your sorry ass to tears.

Watch as I shamelessly steal Sifu Tweety’s entire post, without offering a single observation of my own:

The GOP has mastered an error condition in the political process, an infinite loop of abstraction that drains all meaning from political speech. They don’t have to focus on meaning, really, at all, they just turn up the burbling nonsense until we all descend past the noise machine event horizon into infinitely unproductive debate, never to re-emerge. This is how we progressives (rationalists?) keep ending up on the sucker side of the media war with the right: we’re still using the old paradigm of meaning and they’re busily deploying the equivalent of malware and DOS attacks.

Since I’m in a stealing way, have a look at this picture I’ve stolen from Will Bunch:

For now, I’ll resist the overwhelming urge to post a picture of a cute little panda to offset the presence of Big Time’s sneering, ass faced visage (I repeat). The pandas deserve better.

It’s time for another of my regularly scheduled sick of blogging moments. Have a nice undefined period of time and, whatever you do, take care of your shoes.

Sometime Thursday morning, the Philadelphia Gas Works shut off the gas to my apartment. This wasn’t due to non payment on my part, but rather, by PGW’s own admission, an error. Somebody moved out of an apartment in my building and cancelled their gas. Rather than shutting off the gas to the proper unit, PGW shut off the gas in mine.

My wife spent a few long hours on Friday afternoon standing in line at the PGW billing center at 11th and Chestnut, trying to get the gas turned on. Apparently these things can’t be done over the phone if you get the wrong call center operator (your results may vary). She was quite successful on paper. PGW Agreed to send a technician out on Saturday to do what needed to be done, and he did indeed arrive. Sadly, the meter number on his work order didn’t match the only meter in the building that was shut off and he refused to turn on the gas until he could get it sorted out. Unfortunately, the people with the power to sort these things out don’t work on Saturdays. Nobody works on Sunday, but he promised to get somebody out on Monday. A little over half an hour ago, Monday ended. Needless to say, nobody arrived.

Naturally, the last few days have been some of the coldest of this fairly warm winter. Just now, the temperature outside is in the mid-twenties and Sunday night the temperature dipped into the teens. My wife and I are young, healthy and employed, so this isn’t really much more than a pain in the ass. We have an electric heater and a fireplace and have managed to keep the temperature in the apartment hovering in the upper fifties. If worse came to worse and this situation lasts, we can get a hotel room.

Most people who lose their heat mid-winter are not in my situation; it’s much more dangerous than just a pain in the ass. When it first became clear that this was going to be more than a few hour event, my wife wondered what would happen to a couple with an infant who don’t have the means to get out and get somewhere warm. A good question. Other questions naturally involve what happens to the elderly and others who’s immune systems are not so robust when faced with a similar situation. Nothing good, I’d imagine. It is now perfectly legal for utilities to cut service mid-winter in Pennsylvania, so some very dead answers to these questions are likely available, or will be soon.

Anyway, I’ll be busy for a bit so have a nice Tuesday.

Update: A fairly unpleasant gentleman at the PGW call center promised me, on Tuesday morning, that a technician would be sent out Tuesday night to turn on the gas. Tuesday is gone and nobody ever arrived. We’re probably moving in November, and at this point I’m almost inclinded to give up on ever getting service in my appartment. Our water heater and stove are both electric, so it’s not really a huge deal. Just a bit chilly is all.

I wonder how many posts I’ve lost to Firefox’s Ctrl + W shortcut, which closes the active tab. My guess is about 5, including the one that should be sitting at the top of the page right now. I know better than to type straight into the browser, but I’m also a fool. It was pure drivel, so no loss. Anyway, I’m crazy busy at the moment, but I hope to be with you shortly. Have a nice Monday.

I’m not a cruel person, but I’ve found myself, over the last month or so, looking forward with glee towards the moment when every Blackberry in America goes black. I can’t put my finger on why I feel such animosity, but just to be safe, I’ll blame The Swarmy Fucking Note.

I’ve got nothing. Have a nice afternoon and don’t forget to call your endocrinologist.

Update: Just to be clear, there is no problem with the chihuahua’s endocrine system, so don’t go around feeling sad.

Some of you may recall that I wrote a few posts a while back with Cat Shit Coffee as their titles (here and here). I gave an explanation for that in another post altogether (which also contains a baby panda picture). As I’m sure you suspected, it all revoves around Bob Casey.

Much to my surprise, Cat Shit Coffee is a real beverage. Its real name is Kopi Luak and it comes from Indonesia. The raw coffee beans are consumed by a small cat-like creature named the luak. The beans pass through the animal’s digestive tract and are excreted a few hours later. Plantation workers gather up the beans to be roasted and packed. One pound of these excreted beans costs around $100, which seems just about right for a pound of cat shit.

Now you know.

I’m pleased to announce that for the first time since early 2003, I have a valid driver’s license. Now If only I had a car, I could drive somewhere exciting like South Jersey or Staten Island without fear of prosecution. What fun! To be clear, there is a car in the family, though it’s not the sort of item that qualifies as “ours”, but rather “hers.”

I won’t get into all of the boring details of why I didn’t have a license for so long, but I will say that it involved a rented Lincoln Towncar traveling at about 120 mph through Central Illinois in the middle of the night. Apparently they don’t care for that sort of thing there.

I’m such a loser with fonts. This one is too small, isn’t it? I’ll work on it tommorow (or not). To make up for my aesthetic lapse, I offer you a picture of my chubby little cat in a basket. Say hello to Zoe.

One, not so gentle way your body has of reminding you that you do indeed have a lower abdomen is with a hernia. Sigh. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to cross my legs a few times and contemplate a few more pain killers.

In my effort to make up for my indiscriminant use of baby gorilla images, it seems I may have done irrevocable harm to Anita Job’s psyche. This is all just too much to bear. I try to avoid evil, but apparently it drips from my pores. In an effort no make up for past sins, I offer an unnamed panda cub.

My wife has decided that posting the picture of the baby gorilla in the last entry constitutes cruel and unusual punishment on my part. She says that most people who see that picture will be overwhelmed with the desire to have a baby gorilla in their own lives.

That’s all well and good, but I would argue that the image of the baby gorilla was used for good rather than evil. Clearly, some disagree. Well fine, stop looking at that gorilla and start looking at this baby picture of Hua Mei.

Picture stolen from pandafix and Baby Panda.

So it looks like my site design is broken. Perhaps this has always been so. Try not to scroll down too far for the next day or so because it gets ugly. Just when I think I have a handle on this madness I go and break everything. For whatever reason, it seems to render properly in Internet Explorer which is always a good sign that you’ve really gone and hosed things up. Carry on.