I bought an electric guitar. I can't play a note.

I bought an electric guitar. On impulse. At Costco. I can't play. What on earth possessed me?

I suppose I could try to learn how to play the damn thing, but my track record in this area is not stellar. My musical education began and ended in primary school, with my biggest success being a tinny performance of Frère Jacques on the xylophone on parents' night, which was met with polite, if muted, applause. At least I think I struck the majority of the notes nearly correctly that night. A nasal-sounding rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star failed to achieve a passing grade later that year and my version of Für Elise is still spoken of in hushed tones when elderly retired educators foregather to swap stories over a pint.

I tried choir, but was thrown out when the teacher figured out where the noise was coming from. I wasn't interested enough to learn the lyrics of songs either. Well, of clean ones at least.

My parents attempted to engage a music teacher privately, but we didn't really hit it off. The man simply had an odd prejudice against lazy, untalented smartarses, and he gave up quickly trying to teach me the piano. He thought that rhythm might be more my thing and suggested the drums, possibly as a form of revenge against my parents for inflicting me on him. That ended when my first drum solo was likened to the sound of a painful bowel movement. As an aside, fuck you, Mr. Holzheimer. Shame on you for humiliating a 10 year-old to get a cheap laugh out of the other kids. Bastard.

I've got to face it, I'm never going to learn how to play and this impulse purchase is just a vainglorious attempt at recapturing lost youthful dreams. I've become a sad, pathetic, middle-aged bastard whose dreams are now behind him. Buying this guitar confirms it.

What is your robot name?

To generate it, simply combine your initials with your full social security number, followed by a hyphen and and any bank account numbers you may have.

I'd share my own, but I'm more interested in yours.

Also, how about your WWF fighter name?

Simply combine the town of your birth, followed by the name of your first pet in quotes and your mother's maiden name. For example, Philadelphia "Fido" McNabb.

Hahaha, what fun these innocent little games are.

Oh, and finally, list all your login passwords. I've got 7 of 'em! Can you beat that? Be sure to show them with their url's to make sure you don't duplicate!

How are you fellow atheist arseholes this morning?

I evict orphans and widows for a living so my job's been giving me great satisfaction these past few years. Since the weather's been so nice lately, I've been able to walk to work and indulging in my special hobby of pushing wee bonny children who are playing outside face-first into the mud. It's the small pleasures that are so special, aren't they?

This morning I had the opportunity to beat up a damn hobo who had the nerve to ask me for money. Bloody scrounger! I very much enjoyed his screams of pain.

Isn't it great living without morality? It's gong to be a fine day today. Maybe I'll encounter some small animals to torture on my way home. One can but hope!

I came home from a weekend getaway today to find the house a mess...

There was garbage everywhere, including empty pizza boxes & beer bottles. The carpets were stained something terrible, one of the bookcases had fallen over and there were books all over the place. My computer chair was broken, sagging and bent at a strange angle, and the carpets were all askew or ripped in places. In the bedroom, the drawers from the chest of drawers were all pulled out, and clothes were strewn everywhere. There too, the carpet looked like some drunk had vomited on it multiple times. All the paintings hung crooked on the wall.

I was pleased that everything was as I had left it. It's good to be home again.

The bigot brush

Religions don't all get treated equally when it comes to criticism or mockery.

Make fun of a Quaker and he'll shrug and walk away.
Tell a Jewish joke to a Jew, and he'll laugh and tell you a better one.
Make fun of a Mormon and he'll look sincerely confused and not get it.
Poke fun at a Catholic and he'll turn red-faced and complain of Anti-Catholic bigotry.
Have a laugh at a Liberal Christian and he'll say he doesn't believe that either, but won't say what he does believe.
Sneer at a Fundamentalist Christian, and he'll damn you to Hell.
Mock Islam, and have a huge mob baying outside your window wanting to cut your head off.

There's a large segment of society who thinks we therefore shouldn't criticise or mock Islam.

Why do they even bother with player interviews anymore?

These guys all had media training and they haven't said anything interesting in years. When they lose, they're confident things will get better, and when they win, they're confident things will continue to go well. They're up for the challenge, and apparently they like scoring goals and prefer winning over losing.

Wow, who'd have thought?

And have you noticed interviewers feed them the answer in the questions now?

"How happy were you when you scored that winning goal today?".
"Oh, I was very happy scoring that winning goal today. It was great".

"How sad were you when you lost last week?"
"I was very sad. I don't like losing."

"How confident are the lads that the side will stay up/win the title/get promoted/whatever?"
"The lads are all very confident that the side will stay up/win the title/get promoted/whatever".

"You really are a bland, boring git, aren't you?"
"Yes, I really am a bland, boring git and... Eh?"

The dubbed interviews with foreign players are no better.

You hear a stream of excitable Spanish or Italian which sounds like they're saying a lot, and then the dubbing starts:

"I... Like... Scoring... Goals... That's... What... I... Like... Because.. It... Is... Very... Nice..."

Player interviews are only interesting if they're honest. I'd love it if a player went off-script for once, and starts calling the manager an incompetent bastard, and explains how they don't have a hope in Hell of staying up with that idiot in charge.

But those bland, media-savy professionals will make sure that won't happen of course.

Are Dove icecream bars getting smaller every year?

I just opened a box for the first time in a year, and something the size of a lollypop fell out.

I have a feeling this has been going on for years, because this not the first time I've noticed this. I do know this has been happening to other items long enough for Mad magazine to joke about it back in the '70s already, but these Dove bars seem to have lost half their size.

Or is it me?

Edited for typo in the subject line.

I was awakened by a terrific banging...

It's that time of year again here in the Pacific Northwest. That time of year when simple, honest homeowners such as yours truly are terrorised from slumber by Irony Metalpecker and his headbanging pals. How can such a small bird, the flicker, produce so much noise? I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that it quite literally sounds like somebody is trying to break into the house through the roof with a jackhammer. If they were just woodpeckers, I think I could live with it, but what's attracting them to the noisy, metal parts of the roof?

Why don't they have headaches all the time?

Literature in 6 words

Fans of the TV series Lost -- a question

I haven't watched TV as such for decades, but sometimes I binge-watch a series that was popular many years earlier, 2,or 3 episodes a night, every night. I've done the X-files, Twin Peaks, Rome and several more that way. I recommend this approach to anyone who doesn't care about watercooler conversations about last night's TV show.

I'm currently on to episode 3, series 2 of 'Lost'. I enjoyed the first series, especially the "don't tell me what I can't do" episode. I don't think most of the characters are all that strongly written though, appearing to be mostly a bag of stock characters with a little pat story attached explaining how they got that way. That's OK. The story is what's kept me watching so far. But I'm ready to throw in the towel.

I'm enough of a veteran of shows like the Twilight Zone that I have strong suspicions that either the survivors of the plane crash are living in the afterlife, or they are the only survivors of humanity in a world destroyed by a nuclear holocaust or something like that. No spoilers, though, please!

I'm slowly beginning to suspect something about the writers of this show:

I think they're making it up as they're going along.

Look, I don't need everything explained to me. I like ambiguities and mystery, and I enjoy David Lynch films. That's not it.

I get the impression that the writing sessions for this show went like this:

"Hey Fred, you know what would be really cool? A numbers station in a bunker on the island with no apparent entrance or egress!"

"That's beautiful, Charlie. I'm still trying to come up with an explanation for that damn polar bear we had in the first series. Any ideas?"

"Ah, just don't worry about it. That polar bear was awesome and the viewers just think it meant something that they can't figure out if we don't bother explaining it. It'll make the show edgy."

The bunker WAS interesting. Number stations ARE interesting. But what's with this contrivance of having to hit that number sequence every 108 minutes? Nobody in all that time figured out how to write a program simulating some keypresses every hour and a half? I mean, what's the point anyway? Why make someone do that? And with all the millions spent on the place, didn't they think a few backup Apple II's might be a good idea?

I get the feeling the writers were veteran D&D game masters who stocked their dungeons randomly with vicious monsters living next to other vicious monsters in adjacent dungeon rooms, whose only purpose was to guard the treasure and be killed by the player characters, without worrying about the overall narrative.

Oh, and now there was this great big damn side door the whole time and the guy could've gotten out at any time? What's the point of the sealed tower entrance then? And why is there a window?

I turned it off in disgust.

My question is this: There are several more seasons of this and before I invest any more time in this series, I want to know if there is going to be a rewarding and interesting story here, or is it all going to be like this?

Thanks in advance! Not looking to start an argument about your favourite show, honestly!