!!!!!!!  HOLY SHIT WE FINALLY SHIPPED  !!!!!!!!!!

Woot

    Annual review today.  I did very well.  Kinda nice to hear, also depressing.  More on this later.

Danby calls the book an outrage on human nature

    My junk mail is more literate that I am.  Never did I think that the day would come when I would write that sentence, but nevertheless it is true.  Recently I have begun to recieve in my inbox a stange and somewhat delightful mashup of classic literary works. 

    Just today I perused a mail quoting the oft-forgotten classic "The White Monkey" by John Galsworthy, extorting me to "Eat the fruit, scatter the rinds, and get copped doing it".  Indeed,Mr. Galsworthy, indeed.

    Oddly enough, the email does not attempt to sell me anything, nor does it seek to gain information from me.  There is, as far as I can deduce, no real purpose to the email other than to stir in me a strage curiosity and greater knowledge regarding tomes of yore.  It is almost maddening in its simplicity.  Compelling in the passive-aggressive nature.  It demands attention because it does not seek it.

    Like a fickle lover or the proverbial brass ring, I find myself wanting their unadvertised product.  It's so secretive and elusive that they can't even share a hint of it with me.  Who knows what it is?  Perhaps it is an elixer of life, or the secret of happiness?  What riddles have they hidden, what clues exist behind the Monkey?

    I will find out.  There are ways.  I have ways.  There are people that you can ask about these things, you know.  There are methods that one does not casually employ.  Places that one does not set foot without a carefully spoken passphrase and a subtle exchange of money.  Dangerous places, secret places.  These tools and more exist and can be used...

Eddie With a V

    In other news of Ye Olde Artworke, Mr. Munch (of "Crunch N' Munch" Fame) was recently delighted to hear that his famed painting "The Scream" has been returned.  Except that Edvardo is dead and has been for some time.  Regardless, I am sure he would be happy were he not suffering from a slight case of rictus eternalis.

    It turns out that whoever stole the painting quickly realized that one cannot sell something of that nature.  It doesn't exactly work like it does in the movies, where you steal a painting and then Sean Connery comes sauntering out of the other room (in a smoking jacket that has been improperly tied and threatens, with every movement, to let go altogether and forever scar one mentally with an ingrained memory of the Bondian jewels) and offers you fantastic amounts of money in a thick broguh that one can hardly understand around the ice cubes from his tawny drink (which you can only assume, it being Sean Connery and all, is Scotch).  No, that is simply not the way of things.

   In the real world, you steal the painting and then call your buddy who promptly says "Now what the fuck am I supposed to do with one of the most famous paintings in the universe?".  Then it becomes kind of an albatross around your neck, because really... what are you going to do now?  You can keep it, sure, but then what's the point?  Why go to all that risk in the first place when you could have just popped down to the museum on the first Tuesday of the month and seen it for free and not had to worry about the swat team busting down your door?

And then there are the Nazis

    There is a well-known internet rule that foes something like this:  "Any argument held on [usenet/bulletin boards/forums/chat rooms/etc] will eventually decline until one party mentions Hitler or Nazis.  At this point the other person officially wins."

    Today Bush compared the war on terrorism to the war against the Nazis.  Which totally makes sense, except if you spend more than a milisecond thinking about it.  Then it's just fucking stupid.

Driving is dangerous

    Let us bow our heads today.  Gentle reader, I regret to inform you that today at approximately 8:00 am Pacific time four of our kindred were tragically killed in a traffic incident just outside of San Antonio. 

    Twenty-one penguins did survive the ordeal and were said to be shaken up, but otherwise unharmed. 

    One unidentified passenger had this to say:

"Oy guv'na!  There we was, sitting around enjoying a nice game o crib when the octopus gets it in 'is mind that ee's going ta steer the trolly!  Next thing you knows there's this 'orrible sound and quicker than Bob's your Uncle you're flying tailfeather o'er beak!  A right nasty spot o trouble, that was."

    The octopus was tested at the scene and had a Blood-Alcohol level of 0.12.  The legal limit in Texas is 0.06.

But so is the bus

    I myself had a close call with the grim reaper on Monday.  I was scheduled to attend a baseball game in downtown Seattle at 7pm, with a tailgate party starting earlier.  Traffic getting into Seattle between the hours of 4 and 7 is a gigantic mess, so I thought that I would be clever and take the bus.

    The theory was sound.  No traffic woes, no hassle with parking and the bus would take me within a five-minute walk to my destination.  Seems like a winning situation, doesn't it?

    That is because you, like me, have failed to take into consideration that King County Metro is not accountable to anybody and therefore has no vested interest in the little things, like making sure their busses actually show up.  Yes, the 4:08 545 bus simply failed to materialize.  This had many side effects, of course.  One side effect is that the subsequent bus would take longer to get into downtown.  Another was that the bus was overcrowded.

    Upon boarding the bus I began looking for an empty seat.  Seats were, of course, at a premium given the large number of passengers.  Any daydreams of sitting next to a smoking-hot nymphomaniac in a thong bikini were quickly dashed by the reality of the barely washed masses.

That's no moon!

    One of the few remaining seats was currently occupied by the massive tree trunk that one lady was using as a leg.  I tapped her on her ample appendage and gestured in the universal sign of "Move your goddamn fat ass so I can sit down."  This was, of course, greeted with the normal reply look of "Why can't you leave me and my gigantic posterior in peace?"

    Slowly and in stages the flesh began to move off the seat.  Mass acceleration being what it is, the core of the leg moved first, followed by a ripple-effect as the unwilling flesh followed.  The bus creaked on its poor abused shocks as ginormagirl literally flopped about for a few moments.

    Of course, the laws of physics are immutable and the total volume of person was still larger than the space that King County had thought to allot for a standard size Earth creature.  Luckily my bony ass is approximately half that of standard, so I was able to sit down.

Reverse Thrusters!  It's too late!

    Mistake.  Mistake of epic proportions.  The warm and clammy flesh pressed up against my thigh, and no amount of shifting could cause separation.  The slant of the seat in her direction combined with the gravity well that she was generating began to slowly suck me in.

    I was being engulfed in a cocoa-colored sea of skin.  Desparately I grabbed at the armrest but it was as an ant trying to resist a tornado.  In terror I watched my left foot get swallowed into the abyss.

    I kicked and clawed at the seat, seeking purchase where none was to be found.  My hips and lower torso had by this time been consumed and my vision was beginning to dim.  Looking down, I saw the yawning chasm of her ass loom before me.  It was then that I realized I faced the kraken.

    The stories about the smell are true.

    A dark cavern opened wide and I knew that if I were to venture into that place of danger no team of spelunkers would ever find me.  I would be chalked up as one more hapless adventurer lost inside the Kraken's Ass.  My screams pierced the air as I called for help.

Saved by the bell

    No rescue was forthcoming and my fate was assured.  I closed my eyes in silent contemplation of the life I had lived.  Everything passed before my eyes.  Well, actually, mostly the women.  And specifically, their boobs.  I'm kind of a boob connisour.  Which is odd because I tend to date women with petite breasts.  I think I like them because they're perky, ya know?  Plus, you know they're real.  But, anyway, I'm digressing.

    My life flashed before my eyes and I took one final gasp of air.  Then, just as the cavern was set to close about my head we reached the Karkan's stop.  A sudden shifting ocurred then.  I thought I heard the trumpets of heaven sound all around me and then there was a tremendous gust of wind.

    I was lifted, flying and free.  The hurricane-force gale shot me to onion-smelling gastrointestinal safety.  I landed upon the sidewalk with a great thump and thanked all the gods for their mercy.  I was free.  Free! 

EDIT:

    I sometimes put in little 'joke grenades' to see if they will go off.  Sometimes then do and sometimes they don't.  My latest attempt was a bit too obfuscated, I think, and for that I apologize.

    Here then, is the joke that I was making in a very indirect way.  Kraken.  Ass.  Ass-Kraken.

    So, fine, it's not exactly Shakespeare.  But, then again, Shakespeare couldn't play goalkeeper, so fuck him.

Elder Penguin

    For those readers who do not know, I have passed the pint-of-no-return when it comes to the number of candle-blowing age-fests that we call birthdays.  Yes, last January I turned 30 years old.

    Although not unexpected, this birthday was a catalyst for the slow and inexorable disintegration of my body.  To be sure, my body had been on the decline for some   time.  Broken bones and frozen shoulders had been my erstwhile companions on the journey through my late twenties. 

    It is reasonable to expect that a person who engages in physical activity will suffer harm.  The more activity, the more harm.  (Compare, for example, the rather sedentary Carl Sagan to the uncontroversially insane Evel Knievel.)

    But never in my prior years of existence had I had a body part fail on me in the course of normal usage.  Ok, well sure, that too.  But that happens to a lot of guys!