Author: David

All I’ve been hearing on the news lately is that the gas is going to be skyrocketing in the very near future. Well, being someone who already hates paying $1.99 a gallon I decided to go and fill up my car tonight. I go to the gas station and I pull up to pump #8; I open my gas cap, stick the nozzle, flip the lever up on the gas pump and I hit the “pay inside” button. My gas pump does it’s thing and then the nice little screen on it says “Ready; Start Pumping.” Well, apparently I’m retarded or something because at that moment on the loudspeaker the guy running the gas station registers inside gets on the loudspeaker and says… “Ready on pump 8 with the red car.”

Who in the hell is that for anyway? First off I can read and I saw the little thing on the pump telling me that I could pump my gas so I pretty much figured that I could. Now if I’m looking at the pump and I see that I’m on pump 8, why did he say in the red car? I’m not in a real big gas station, so I’m assuming there is not a second pump 8 because that would be stupid and confusing, so did he think if he said ready on pump 8 in the yellow car I would have been confused and had to leave? I guess I’m just too old school because I’m used to going to the gas station and doing my thing and only having the clerk bother me when I pay.

I found out Friday that we are going to be getting lottery tickets back in our store. What the fuck for is the question I have to ask. See, we have tried to sell lottery tickets in the past and we never really sold that many because our corporate office wants us to sell the scratch off ones but not the major ones like Megabucks and Powerball. You know what? Those are the ones that most people want to buy. Nobody gives a shit about the instant tickets anymore because most of them only have a top prize of $1,000 or so. Nevertheless, since my corporate office doesn’t have a clue they decide that we need those back in our store. It just amazes me that corporate never listens to the individual stores for input considering that we are here and we know a little better than someone sitting their ass behind a desk what we sell. Oh well, if everything plays out like I want it to, maybe I can be out of there around the start of summer. Damn, that would be too nice.

Late at night I’m often stuck watching some lame infomercial on TV because for whatever reason I seem to wake up around 3am and can’t fall back asleep. The perfect remedy to fall back asleep is not to count sheep, but to bore yourself into oblivion. That’s where the infomercial comes into play. So here’s how the scenario plays out. I wake up around 3 and I stumble into the bathroom and do whatever I need to after sleeping for a few hours. I come out and I lay back down and I realize that I’m no longer tired like I was earlier. I figure hey, why not just flip on the TV for a little while and then I’ll lull my sorry ass back to sleep in no time. After 3am there really isn’t any real programming on to keep me interested, I might as well watch an infomercial and that will knock me right out. Well, I flip on the TV and I usually go to bed after watching something on Comedy Central so when I turn the TV back on I’m instantly watching an infomercial for Girls Gone Wild. No shit, every night like clockwork it’s on Comedy Central. So there’s no way I’m going to watch that shit, I’ll be up all night; maybe even awake.

Time to flip the channel. Well, that’s interesting, some guy named Esteban that I’ve never heard of is selling a guitar and lessons. Wow, I always wanted to learn to play the guitar; shit, I better watch some of this. Ok, got sidetracked, wanted to fall asleep so I better find something more boring. Make more money… blah, skip that one. Oooh, check out that piece of exercise equipment that I’ll never use in my life. Damn, exactly how many different machines are there for you to work on your abs these days anyway? So I decide to do a count of how many different machines there are and at 4am there are three different ones. I keep flipping because I have to be up in a couple hours and I don’t need this shit.

Suddenly I come across a new one that I haven’t seen before for the Magic Bullet. When I first heard the name I thought it was going to be some sex toy, at least that’s what the name sounds like to me. Now the Magic Bullet is some sort of food processor but the part you grind up your food in is also able to be thrown into the microwave and you are going to save time and money if you waste your money on this product. I’ve since seen a couple different promos on this item but the one that sticks out in my mind is the one at the kitchen island with the supposed married couple cooking for some of their stupid friends. Now I don’t know how acting goes in Hollywood and all, but I’m guessing that the hierarchy goes something like this: You work in infomercials and when you hone your skills and prove yourself then they allow you to work in porn. Honestly I’ve seen quite a few stupid infomercials but this Magic Bullet one has got to have some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen. This thing comes with a full size blender and a juicer which I’ve been told is much better than that $200 juicer. The husband makes this fat guy a drink with the juicer and he puts a bunch of vegetables in it. Then he tells the guy that the taste of the fruit will overpower the taste of the vegetables and you won’t even taste it. He put broccoli in the drink ok, he fucking juiced broccoli and god knows what else and tells this fat guy, who the last time he saw a vegetable was when he saw his comatose aunt in the hospital, that he won’t taste it and it’ll be good for him. Let’s just say I didn’t believe the fat guy when he drank the juice. First off he didn’t finish it, he should have chugged the shit because him just nodding his head like a retard didn’t do it for me. I also want to know how he got this hot chick that is sitting next to him. Come on people, a little reality here. The fact is that the entire supporting cast in this infomercial was horrendous. I’ve never seen such a shitload of yes men and women in my life. So of course after watching this infomercial and getting pissed off at the people in it I now realize that it’s 5am.

Well fuck, now the morning news is on and I might as well watch that and see where they send Jessica Miles off to today.

One of the most traumatizing painful times in my life happened tonight twenty years ago. February 13th, 1985 was the night my dad died. I’m not going to go into a lot of details of what happened since I do on my main site. I guess the feelings have really changed over the years since it happened. The first year it was a lot of guilt. My dad had a nice collection of old coins and I’d say a week or two before he died he showed them to me and I kept telling him that when he died I wanted those coins. When you remember something like that at 11 years old after you lose your dad it can lay some heavy guilt on you. There also was the fact that he absolutely loved to take me Trick or Treating and the last year that he was alive I told him that I was too old to have my Dad going with me and I went off with a friend. I also revealed to them that I didn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore and his final Christmas was just a plain one with no Santa antics; which was something he loved. I felt extremely bad for taking away two of the things that he loved and kept thinking if I only knew I would have let him take me Trick or Treating and I would have pretended to still believe in Santa just for him. So I dealt with that for a while.

Within six months of him dying (he died of a heart attack) I began having real bad chest pains. I remember the pain extremely well, and whether it was real or not, it felt real. I don’t know if it was anxiety attacks, panic attacks or what. So for a few months I seriously thought that I was going to die of a heart attack. Shortly after that I began experiencing real bad headaches which were eventually diagnosed as migraines. I would assume these were triggered by what I had went through plus the fact that I left everyone that I had known in school and wound up in a new place in a new school and lost my dad all in a couple weeks time.

The next thing I went through was fear. After I realized that I wasn’t going to die, I became deathly afraid that I would lose my mom next. When you’re living your perfect life and then it gets ripped up like that, you don’t know what to expect next. I would worry whenever she would go somewhere and always thought she wouldn’t come back. I dealt with that for a few years until we had moved again and I got into high school. When I got into 9th grade and I had a good three years that stayed the same without any major changes I started to simmer down some. The migraines went away and some of the overwhelming fear went away.

Even though most of the pain went away, whenever a holiday would roll around I would always get a little choked up. I wouldn’t start crying or anything but I would just remember. Things like shooting off fireworks in the driveway or listening to old Gene Autry records at Christmas would pop into my head during those times. A lot of times I would wonder what it would be like if he were still alive. Graduation was tough since I always thought he would be around for that.

Recently if I have thoughts it’s not what if he was here, but where would I be if he hadn’t died? I doubt we would have moved, we wouldn’t have had a reason to. I would have finished school in Tomah and I would have never met anyone that I know now and I may have not gotten into the internet or web design or anything like that. But minus all of that I still wonder how different life would have been; would my life be better off or worse off.

Of course I find myself now at 31 thinking about my dad who died when he was 37 and my own mortality keeps coming into my head. In my head I only give myself six more years to live even though I know I don’t have the problems that he had. I also look at my life and think that when he was 26 he was married and had me and I’m 31 and still single and childless and am currently at a dead end in my job right now. I know part of the mortality comes into play because I am now in my 30’s which is an age that I never really thought I would reach. I didn’t think I’d die beforehand or anything, I just never contemplated turning 30. It was a blast to turn 21 but that 30 really sucked. I also always have that creeping thought of what is the point really? Regardless of what you do in life and how hard you try and how much you succeed; you’re going to die. Whether you’re someone living on welfare in a trailer park or you’re Bill Gates or even the Pope, one day your number will be up. Sometimes I just wonder what it’s all about.

If there’s one thing I’m sick of, it’s snow. Let’s examine the situation here, I live in Wisconsin and apparently one of the penalties is that it has to snow. Well that’s fine, but if it has to snow why doesn’t it just snow a lot? I would rather be looking at grass or snow, but not a combination of both. It’s like the weather has a split personality here. When I wake up in the morning and I’m looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/4″ of snow I get a little irritated. It’s enough to have to go out and shovel but there’s always that thought in the back of your head that the shit’s going to melt in another month or so anyway. Well according to what the weatherman is saying now, we might get rain on Sunday so that should get rid of a bunch more of this shit… then again when was the last time they were right? You would think that in February I wouldn’t be so irritated with snow because being in Wisconsin this is just the norm right? Wrong; and for any naysayers I just point you to February 2001. You see, in the early part of 2001 we had the mildest winter I ever remember having. In fact mild is too mild of a word to use here. I would say that it was downright warm that year. The one thing that sticks out in my mind is that when Dale Earnhardt was killed I called my friend to tell him and he had just gotten back from a round of golf. A fucking round of golf… in February… in Wisconsin. I also remember having thunderstorms that month as well as temperatures well into the 70’s. Alas, here we are four years later and the only 70’s to be found around here are in the nursing home.

In my almost ten years that I’ve been online I think I’ve evolved. One of these days I might put an addition onto the main page explaining my trek from chatting in TalkCity in 1996 to spending most of my time on here religiously devoted to my web pages. One thing I noticed back in the old days was the shorthand text we used. There was the LOL, the LMAO and many variations of LMAO including LMMFGDAO as well as others. I think I used LOL back when I used to chat but not to the extreme, and now I can’t stand to type it at all; in fact it was painful just to type it now. I’ve been in the Yahoo Chat rooms off and on lately just checking out what’s going on and I wasn’t too impressed. Minus the porno bots, the environment has changed extremely. LOL and LMAO seemed to have stood the test of time and are still alive and kicking to this day. The other one that I’ve noticed that has come around is typing your feelings in between two *’s. Now I don’t do that either. You see when I was chatting we had this real cool program called Pirch32 that we used and one of the functions it had in it was called actions. All you had to do was type the following: /me wants to kick your ass.

Then what Pirch32 would do was put your chat name in and it would say DisgruntledHuman wants to kick your ass. Ahh, the pure awesomeness of the action. Of course now chatters have traded actions for emoticons and we’ve got 1,000 different smilies to express our feelings. Nothing tells me you love me more than a smiley with a throbbing heart on… it.

My point is that even though I mingle in with the chattatonic crowd I’m not really into the lingo and I’m not really part of it. I think much like there are rules to follow everywhere else in society I think there should be chat rules. The first should be that you are not allowed to use LOL more than once every 15 minutes… and if you put it more than once in a sentence then you are banned for four days. Oh yeah, and if you start a sentence with LOL you’re computer gets smashed with a sledgehammer.

The point I’m trying to make here is that you shouldn’t rely on LOL and you really shouldn’t think you need to use it to be part of the computer age. You don’t need to waste your time typing stupid acronyms to look like you’re in the in crowd when online. Seriously, wtf?

Well, it was my weekend to work and since I had a whole eight days off I should be happy with that right? Well of course not, I’m a fucking disgruntled human remember? First thing off the bat when I walk in is the manager tells me that the night manager didn’t run the reports the right way. Well that’s a wonderful way to start off my morning since the last weekend I worked something similar happened and I had a shitload of problems. Basically the two steps that this person missed made a few reports not pull correctly and therefore they didn’t send to our corporate office. I called the helpless desk right away to let them know about it and see if they wanted to correct the problem before I did anything else on my end. They didn’t, in fact he told me to just do what I had to do today and if they don’t see those reports down there at the office he’d call back and walk me through what to do to get them. Of course about 20 minutes before I’m ready to leave he calls to let me know that they didn’t get those reports and we’d have to lock one of the registers up front (during the lunch rush) and the one in the office and I’d have to get out of my program I was doing so I could finish up and leave.

Well that’s just great since I now cannot finish my work and get out of here on time. I went out and locked the one register and the master register we have in our office, turned PC Anywhere on in our DSD office and got back on the phone and told him to do his thing. He said he would and then he would call me back when it was completed so I could get back into my program and finish my day. 30 minutes later he calls me back and tells me there is a problem with the sub-master which is our register one. For some reason it wasn’t communicating properly and he wanted me to check it out. I asked if I was supposed to actually close out the register or just lock it and he said close it out. I didn’t do that the first time so I went out there, unlocked it and shut it down and locked it again. I go back in the office and told him it was ready to try again so he did. Twenty seconds go by and he says ok, it’s done; you can finish your computer work now. Hold on jack, 20 seconds it took you to pull that info and you left me hanging for almost a half an hour. Why didn’t you call me back earlier so I could get the hell out of this place? I finally did get out of there, just 45 minutes late. On my way out the girl working produce tells me that some old fart called her and asked her what the price of strawberries was. She told him they were $4.99 a pound and he flew into a tizzy telling her that during the summer he can get a whole bucket for that price. She said well sir, it is winter and he slammed the phone down on her. Fucking customers.

I was in Wal Mart yesterday and I walked past the clothes section and they had most of their winter coats on a clearance rack for $9.00. Nine fucking dollars I got a Starter winter coat that was originally $39.98. Can’t beat that can you? Hell, I should have bought a bunch of them and resold them next winter for $20 a piece. I could have been rich. Dammit.

Of course at the moment I don’t need a winter coat because Indian Summer finally arrived. Four months late mind you but it’s here. We have been having highs in the 50’s but of course reality is once again going to rear it’s ugly head tomorrow and put us back into a world of shitty Wisconsin winter weather. Oh well, I’ll be counting down the days until spring gets here… so I can bitch about having to mow grass and how much I hate the heat and humidity.

So today’s the day. I am officially going back to work tomorrow and it really sucks. I thought for some reason that if I was away from the place for a week or so that I would stop disliking it so much and I would end up going back in a much better and refreshed mood; not so. Instead I’m faced with the ever growing realization that I truly hate my job. It’s not just a job where I go there and I think that it sucks, it sucks even when I’m not there. Now not only do I have to go back after being gone for eight days but I have to go back to a shithole that didn’t even have a proper replacement for me while I was gone. I usually have someone that does my job while I’m gone, and even though she doesn’t have all of the training she can get it done without too many problems. So last Thursday when my load was coming in was she scheduled to work it? No, of course not; she was working that day as a cashier and they took a cashier that hasn’t even done HBC for over 20 years and threw her into my department. Well that’s fucking genius if I ever saw it. Let’s take someone who hasn’t done the job in a long time and give her absolutely no brush ups and just set her free into the department and let her figure it out as she goes. So I have that wonderful scenario to walk into tomorrow. I also have the overwhelming feeling that I’m going to walk off the job sooner than later. I’m not all for the walking off the job thing but I’ve only played it out in my mind about five times a day for the last few days. I think if I did walk out I wouldn’t even feel bad about doing it which is a change from roughly a year ago. On the plus side I did check into schooling for Web Site Development while I was on vacation and I am almost positive that I will be going to school this fall. Let’s cross our fingers anyway.

I think I said something the other day that I was going to bitch about my lame ass cellular service that I’m getting from Cellular One. Here’s the deal on all that noise. Not even a year ago now I started having my calls getting dropped on my digital cell phone and when I went in to complain I was given this schpiel about the newest technology called GSM. According to the slick sales bastards the GSM was the newest craze and it would be totally replacing the digital within two years. They also said that as they were moving people from digital plans to GSM plans they would be able to dedicate more tower power to GSM. So anyway I get my new phone back in April and the first time I talked on it I could have swore that the person I was talking to was under water. It didn’t get much better beyond that. I know at least five other people that have this plan; all with different phones and all with the same problem. The problem is that Dobson Cellular One’s GSM service sucks major ass. Your calls will just drop out for no real reason, if the other person just happens to be on the same plan good luck hearing more than every third word out of their mouth. This is some bullshit contract that I am now supposed to keep for up to two years even though the service is not up to par. You know, I liked Dobson’s, I really did. They are the only service I’ve had since I’ve had a cell phone back when I got my first analog phone. The only other time I had this problem is when I had a Mitsubishi cell and it sucked ass. I switched back to my Nokia and it was fine. Now of course since I know of at least five people all with different phones having this problem, the phone itself is obviously not the problem here… it’s the company and their shitty service. If I had the ambition I would bring a class action lawsuit on their sorry asses. I know of five people that would sign on.

Oh yeah, fuck you groundhog.

You know, I’ve been off for a while now and greatly enjoying it. I haven’t really spent a lot of time online, haven’t been wasting away doing a whole lot of anything. I re-assembled a radial arm saw, cleaned a basement, visited some friends and went snow tubing. So this morning I wake up around 6am and I’m thinking how great it is that I don’t have to go to work again today. So I’m bored and want to fall back asleep so I figure I’ll flip on the news. I usually turn on KSTP 5 and check that out; see what’s happening around the Twin Cities and the world.

Apparently we were having a little bout of light snow today and they had to go out live to Jessica Miles to report on it. I was half asleep and didn’t have my glasses on, but they sent her outside somewhere with a microphone and a camera to tell us it’s snowing. That’s when it dawned on me… poor Jessica Miles. Whenever there is something going on they throw her out into the field to report on it. The bad thing is that the time that she is reporting on is from 5am to 7am. There’s really not a whole lot of shit going on at that time. If there was a big fire during the night, here’s Jessica standing outside of a charred building reporting. If it’s -40 out, here’s Jessica standing outside reporting trying to keep her eyeballs from freezing. If the Viking’s did something here’s Jessica standing outside of the empty Metrodome reporting. If there is an ice storm, here’s Jessica standing by the side of the road reporting on the slick conditions.

The point is that probably 90% of the time that she’s out in the field reporting, she could do it from behind the desk. She’s got a great smile and a good presentation but she keeps getting thrown out into the elements. I know she’s a good field reporter, but put her in the field when there’s actually something to report, not snow flurries we can see if we open our damn curtains!

Well, maybe I’m just over reacting. You know I haven’t been to work for a while so I’m kind of lacking on shit to bitch about. On the plus side, I got myself some new DVD’s that I’m going to have to go watch now. I re-joined Columbia House again so I could get some more movies free. I just got 7 DVD’s for under $4 a piece. Of course all that’s going to do is lower my online time even more now. I do have one thing I need to bitch about, maybe I will tomorrow. My lame ass service I get from my shitty cellular company: Dobson Cellular One and their new worthless as shit GSM service that they can shove up their ass as far as I’m concerned. In case you can’t tell, I’m not too happy with them.

I’m at work today just trying to do my job so that I can get done and go home and enjoy eight days off in a row. Yes, I said eight, go ahead and count them; you’ll need both hands unless you’re some deformed freak. I’m working away and some woman I’ve never seen comes in carrying a bag and clipboard and I think wonderful, some retard is going to try and sell me something. Well, she wasn’t here to sell, she was here to re-sticker. For a while now Listerine has been putting on their bottles of mouthwash that Listerine is clinically proven as effective as floss. Then at the bottom in minuscule lettering it says Floss Daily. Well apparently, the people over at the floss factory were a little bit pissed off about all of this and they decided to put the boots to Listerine because the lady came in today to re-sticker all of the bottles that were making this claim. Now the new stickers tell people that Listerine is effective at reducing plaque and gingivitis… no more mention of floss in there.

Actually, they were court ordered to re-sticker all of these products because a judge decided that using Listerine is not the same as flossing. Why did a judge decide that Listerine was in the wrong? Because Johnson & Johnson sued them because they felt it might hurt the sales of their Reach Floss. So, see, I was fucking right. I tell you what Listerine, if you really want to do some false advertising; why not just do an ad like this? Use Listerine daily for a month and your penis will grow. I guarantee that men will use your product a minimum of 12 times a day if not more. Hell, some guys would probably be going through a bottle or two a day. By the time those assholes at Viagra sued you you’d be rich already… hey wait a minute, you’re both owned by Pfizer anyway, maybe you could do a cross promotion. I can’t wait to cut in Big Dick Listerine into my oral care section.

Ah, like I mentioned before, I’ve got eight days off in a row. In a fucking row. How great is that? You know what, I’m going to do a bunch of shit around here and try to play catch up. I’m not going to fuck around with my web sites, I’m not going to veg out in front of the computer or any of that lame ass shit. I want to go to the tech school and check out a few different classes that are going to be starting this fall so I can see what options I have, and I also want to check out a couple of jobs as well to see what else I can do since I hate my job so bad. It should be a fun week. Scratch that, a fun eight days.

So I have a question here. Why the hell was all of that money wasted for the inauguration? Bush has been president for four years already, it’s not like it’s his first win. It cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 million dollars, not including security ($17.3 million.) Where’s that money coming from? I know some of it was private donations, but not all of it. Plus, the people and companies that donated this money for this waste of time are probably the same kind of people that wouldn’t donate a dime to anyone that actually needed it. Homeless or starving, too bad… fancy celebration for someone who has to do the same thing he’s done the last four years for another four… whip out the checkbook. My original point here was why in the hell are we even celebrating this? He’s already the president isn’t he? So between my tax dollars and private donations someone who already had the job is throwing a four day party and I’m not even fucking invited? Now that’s some bullshit.

Speaking of bullshit, did you know that Spongebob is gay? That’s what they were telling me on the news instead of looking into why the government wasted so much money on the inauguration.

From what I understand of this whole story, my good friends the hardcore Christians are upset over a video that was released by a non-profit organization to schools promoting tolerance to others and a message to respect others. Spongebob is hardly in the video more that a few seconds, and others are in there as well like Bob the Builder and Barney and Winnie the Pooh. So they decide to pick on Spongebob saying that he is promoting a homosexual agenda. So what we have here is a video going out to schools with all of these children’s favorite characters singing the song “We are Family” to promote tolerance and diversity. Well what kind of stupid asshole would want to promote that, well aside from that Jesus fellow?

So get this straight you Christian hardcore jerk offs. Spongebob Squarepants is not gay. He’s just stupid.

A while ago I had mentioned that someone had bought up the disgruntledhuman.info site. That didn’t really bother me too much; the part that did bother me though was that all of the registry information was the same as mine. Well, after watching the domain for a while, it never became and actual website. Of course I’m not one to just let shit slide so I started checking around again trying to figure out what happened and I’ve found out that this happened to several people. In fact it happened to nearly 1,000,000 different .com domains. I still haven’t figured out the whole deal yet and I’m not sure who I should be emailing as of yet.

Another fun-fun day of work tomorrow and then I get a day off. I am sick of work again, but I am going to be taking off a few days starting up next week. A well deserved vacation as far as I’m concerned. I can’t wait until that shit is here. I just hope the weather cooperates with me because the last few days it has been hella cold. I know it’s not as bad as a tsunami, or an avalanche or a mudslide or tornadoes… but dammit, it’s been real cold. When you wake up and it’s in the -20’s before you factor in the wind chill, you know it’s going to be a cold ass day. Now I know I won’t be golfing when that week gets here, but I would like to not be freezing my ass off.

I’m playing around with my 3rd Bass page, hoping I can have it finished by tomorrow night. I am adding pictures back in, using a shitload that I captured from the video. Of course I’m playing around with it and I keep making little changes and obviously I’m never satisfied too long with a site. Well, hopefully I will be with the 3rd Bass site after tomorrow.

I don’t know why I’m really bitching about this since we don’t have a Blockbuster in our town, but I guess it just pissed me off. I’ve been watching the stupid commercial every time it comes on and it pisses me off. Ok, first off people, get this through your head. The no more late fees thing only applies if you are going to keep the movie for another day or two. If you keep the movie for an extra week then you buy the movie. Although it doesn’t say so on the site, I can guarantee you that you won’t be paying the going rate at Wal Mart or Best Buy. You will be paying the $29.99 MSRP rate. Then if you decide to bring it back after all of this within 30 days, they will give you your money back from your purchase but will charge a restocking fee. Well that’s great, as long as it’s not a late fee.

Now I’ve worked in a store with video for a long time and I’ve rented videos for a long time and I have one question. Why the hell do you people need more than two days to watch five hours worth of movies? It usually is nothing more than pure laziness on your parts that you can’t return the movies on time. Then when you go to rent something new and we remind you that you have an “Extended Rental” on your account, you go ballistic. You get all demanding and want to know which movie it was and of course you swear you brought that one back on time. Yeah, let’s see here, it was due back the 10th and you brought it back on the 15th. Yeah, nice try asshole.

So the whole point is shame on you Blockbuster for launching this misleading campaign making these idiot customers of yours think that you are really trying to do something to benefit them. I mean come on, seriously. A grace period on a video rental?

Well, with any luck my new monitor should be here tomorrow. Should being the operative word here. It is only 50 miles away from here and for whatever reason it wasn’t delivered today. My hope is that when I get home tomorrow after work that it is sitting here. Of course I’m so used to disappointment with this thing I wouldn’t doubt it doesn’t show up until Monday.

On Monday when I got home I found out that Dell finally got my new monitor into the shipping stage. Of course they didn’t bother to email me and tell me that until Tuesday, but like everyday since I ordered it I went to their site to check my status. Now I just have to wait and hope the people that are responsible for shipping it don’t fuck something up. As far as I can tell they are telling me it should be here by tomorrow, but I’m guessing Monday. Luckily it’s not the post office delivering it or it would be delayed another day for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

I’ve been watching movies lately. I’ve watched a few of mine and then I’ve been renting as well. Off the top of my head I’ve watched The Village, Without a Paddle, Wicker Park, Surviving Christmas, Mystic River, Radio, Starsky & Hutch and I’m sure a few others. Oh shit, now that I’ve mentioned the movies I watched and since I have a forum to speak to the masses I guess I’m obligated to give my opinions on the movies. Fine, you’ve talked me into it. Oh, and if you haven’t seen the movies just be warned I don’t give a shit if I give out the ending or not, so if you’re a big puss that can’t stand reading what’s going to happen before it does then go surf for some porn then. Now, where were we?

The Village: This was a good movie. The way it was portrayed as a nail biter and shit of that nature really didn’t pan out. There were probably two parts in the whole movie that would get a response and one of them was when the blind girl fell into the big hole. So much for being a scary movie. Even Signs had more suspense that scared you than this one. I also looked at the movie in my opinion to represent religion. The people of the village make up something scary to prevent everyone in the town from going out of its boundaries; much like religion tries to. If you go outside the boundaries then something very bad will happen to you and people will die. Yep, sounds religious to me. Would I watch it again? Yes.

Without a Paddle: This was pretty funny. Basically four childhood friends make a pact that they are going to go in search of DB Cooper’s lost fortune. When one of the friends dies, the remaining three go on the adventure to find the treasure. I thought it was pretty funny, some of the gags I’ve seen before but all in all I think the movie pulled off what was intended of it… to make me laugh. Would I watch it again? Yes.

Wicker Park: Wow, what can I say about this movie? I liked the story; I thought it was good and all… I understand the director trying to go for a unique presentation and all, but I was totally fucking lost until there was only about 30 minutes left in it. I read the back and when I saw the commercials I thought it was going to be one of those either psycho movies or some spiritual haunting kind of shit, but um, it wasn’t. I knew that the guy had the love of his life and lost her, so when I see the guy in the restaurant with his fiancé I just assumed that she would be disappearing and then he starts thinking about this hot little reddish blonde haired girl and I wasn’t sure if it was flashbacks or just imagination. Once I got all of that shit cleared out and understood what the fuck was going on I liked it. Would I watch it again? Yes, in fact I probably will so I can actually understand the damn thing.

Surviving Christmas: You have to go into this one knowing that it has the shortest span from being in the theater to being on video. The shortest (like less than nine weeks.) As far as the movie goes, I did think it was funny, but unfortunately it just seemed to play out like a B movie to me. It was very predictable but I did watch it until the end. There were parts that I did laugh at and there were parts where I would watch knowing what would come up next. Let’s see, he’ll take Kelly Bundy to the park and the tree will be iced. I bet his girlfriend is either coming over to the house or she’s already sitting outside. Damn I’m good… too bad the movie wasn’t. Would I watch it again? No, once was enough.

Starsky & Hutch: Honestly, I’ve NEVER watched the original television series or ever caught it on reruns so I had no basis to compare this movie to. I just took it as another movie with Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller since I like most of the stuff they’ve been in. It had its comedy and quite a bit of it was predictable but still enjoyable. I would have to assume that the old farts in the end of the movie were the original actors from the TV show making the god awful cameo that original stars sometimes make hoping to spark a little bit of nostalgia. Anyway from everything I saw it was a pretty decent movie. Would I watch it again? Yes, hey it was better than Zoolander.

Mystic River: This movie was weird. I definitely liked it since it was kind of had the detective elements of movies like Se7en except I didn’t see Morgan Freeman in this one. I do have to say that either Tim Robbins has really let himself go or he was decked out for the part. I knew he was in the movie but I didn’t even recognize that as him until about a third of the way through the movie. All I could keep thinking about the Dave character was that he looked like Ron White on a bad day. I think this movie played out rather well although I still don’t know why the dude from Footloose had such a freaky ass wife and why he took her ass back in the end. Other than the last five minutes I thought the movie was kick ass. Would I watch it again? Yes.

Radio: This movie was pretty good; especially considering it was based on actual events. Sure they were spiced up for Hollywood, but it was based on a real person. Besides, you really can’t go wrong with a good retard movie; especially if you’re trying to get laid that night. Throw this or I Am Sam into your DVD player and she’ll cry herself into position. Back to the movie I guess; everyone gave pretty good performances although I thought it was kind of cheesy at the end how the people that didn’t like Radio suddenly took to him. I can see eventually but not because the football coach gave a speech in some barber shop. I guess that was the Hollywood effect. Would I watch it again? Yes.

So take that Siskel or Ebert, whichever one of you isn’t dead yet. Any schmuck with a keyboard can watch a movie and tell people what they think of it. How’d you fuckers get a job doing that? Some people slave away and all you do is watch a movie and point your thumb up or down depending on how good the popcorn was when you were watching. Well that’s all from the balcony… see you next week. Or whenever I feel like coming back.