Happy Christmas From Billy Idol

The rumble you felt this morning was the signaling of the beginning of the apocalypse.

Billy Idol...

In a suit and tie.

Singing Christmas carols.

No, seriously.

Speaking of Political Games...

For some reason, I'm strangely addicted to this one.

The name of the game is Subpoena Power. Your goal?

To weed out the perfidious scoundrels in Congress.

Yes, armed with a stack of subpoenas, you sally forth into the hallways of Congress, searching plants, bookshelves and committee meeting rooms for evidence and lobbyist cashdrops. You also dish out some federal justice smackdown on representatives, senators, sycophants, lobbyists and the dreaded (and dangerous) mudslinging toadies.

I found the printable certificates of merit also amusing. Added a nice touch since you have 535 members of Congress to round up. That does take a while, after all.

Thanks to my pal Trystera for giving me another excuse to shirk responsibility this week...

That it's all just a little bit of history repeating.

A little commentary on the events of the past month. First of all, the election.

Good work Democrats, now don't royally fuck it up. You raise my taxes or spend too unwisely, I'm going to give you a wag of my finger. Also, find someone better than Hillary (or Jay Leno chin doubles) to run in '08. Eight years of the Clinton political machine did more than enough damage to this country. Find someone who's interested more in helping the country than helping themselves.

Get your shit together and remember that your position is a privilege, not a mandate for asshattery. Remember that you can be voted in just as easy as you can be voted out.

Republicans, enjoy your time out. Your worst sin was one of arrogance. Instead of considering good legislation to reduce the size of government, the oppressive tax load on the country, fix the debacle known as Social Security (which will be long gone by the time I'm retired), you chose to squander your years in power building bridges to nowhere and impeaching a sitting President because he cheated on his wife and lied about it. Great jarb there.

Get your shit together and remember that your position is a privilege, not a mandate for asshattery. Remember that you can be voted in just as easy as you can be voted out.

Moving on.

I'm busy redesigning the site again as well as redesigning the Smoke Ring BBQ site that I maintain for a friend of mine. This redesign is likely to take a while, but I hope it looks more spiffy when I'm done with it.

I'm also considering what directions to take with it. If things come to pass as they might in a few months, we may have a totally different Internetainment beastie than we have now. More on that as things progress. For now, let's just say it's a work in progress.

Next, Thanksgiving is approaching and I am still not ready for the holidays. Then again, am I ever?

The day job is keeping me busy with plenty of work needing doing in time for Christmas. They got me a new Mac with a major Final Cut Pro Studio upgrade, which makes me giddy. I have more options for creativity at work, but I just wish beyond wishes that I owned this stuff myself.

I do not know how I'm going to get there, but I want to work on my own stuff and break free. I'm creatively stagnant these days and I think that is mostly due to the frustration I feel at not getting ahead in life. I've been cutting a lot of expenses out of the monthly budget, which will help slightly, and I do have big plans whenever I get the tax refund. I just pray that I don't have to fix the car or something else before that.

Crossing fingers.

In other news, I'm hungry and I'm seriously considering a burrito. Or a ham sandwich. Possibly a ham burrito if I get really brave. We'll see where the day takes me.

If The Song Is "Shiny Happy People," Then Why Am I So Damned Sad?

On the way to work this morning, I picked up my little girl at the vet.

She wasn't really there, of course, just the contents of what she had been encased in a porcelein urn. Where she really was at the moment is a subject of debate in the realm of theologians or those more highly trained in the psychic arts than I.

It's a strange thing, cremation. Cremation is a process, whereby an individual is reduced to the basic elements in a matter of a few minutes. Just a close of a door, push of a button, *whoosh* and that's it.

I didn't actually know how I would feel when I picked up Katy. The wait for her return seemed to drag on for a painful stretch of time. I had thought that perhaps I would have been able to move beyond the grief or the pain, but I realized just this morning that I had denied myself the basic truth that I hadn't fully let go.

I had stopped being angry about the circumstances already, but the feeling of lonliness had lingered. Compounding the feeling I was having was the recent revelation that one of my best friends (and Quality Television co-conspiritor) was seriously considering a move out of state with his girlfriend and also is considering hanging up our collaborative creative efforts altogether.

Granted, we hadn't done as much with QTV this year as we should have. We both looked at how events in our lives this past year have prevented that.

At least his reasons are ones that he chose in the path to happiness that he is on. I cannot fault my pal for his decision to be happy, nor would I attempt to throw a stumbling block in his way. If he's ready to move on to other things then so be it.

Seeing him with his girlfriend just really throws into light how extra squishy happy in love he is. I'm happy for him, sure, but at the same time I feel a little like one of the other Beatles when Yoko arrived on the scene. Maybe not to that degree, but I do admit that I feel a bit like Ringo sometimes.

Apart from this single post, I keep my mouth shut around the house about how I'm feeling. What would be the point otherwise?

I've been learning a lot about letting things slide off my back. I try not to stack up a lot of emotional baggage, but sometimes the conveyor belt runs a little faster than I can move to throw each new piece of luggage onto a connecting one-way flight to Anchorage.

I spoke months ago about how my personal Phoenix was going through the rebirth process. I thought I had just about figured through that and was enacting a new plan when I find out now that even THAT plan has altered substantially.

Life is funny like that.

Even the newborn Phoenix is apt to go up in flames, so it seems. Good thing there is another rebirth that follows!

I drove to work listening to REM's "Out Of Time" album. While one of my favorites of long ago, this album inevitibly drags out memories of when I was a sophmore in high school. Oddly enough, I usually skip "Losing My Religion" and "Shiny Happy People" and just headed straight for the deeper cuts of the album.

The first was simply played out too much in my brain, the second ... just too happy for its own good. Too goddamned "Shiny Happy" for my tastes.

And yet this trip in to work I listened to Shiny Happy at least three or four times. I don't know why, I just did.

Perhaps it was my brain trying to cheer me up because of the 'passenger' in the seat next to me.

Perhaps it was my emotional nerve center trying to inject some happiness in my skull to prevent me from drifting into the realm of one of those whiny emokids that you hear so much about. The ones who thrive on drama because it gives them a boost to their self esteem to be so depressed and break into tears because someone dipped their long hair in an inkwell in the third grade. (Heh. Not a bit likely.)

Or, just perhaps, it was my brain trying to tell me to just shut up and enjoy the song. Let the world sort itself out for awhile and savor the moment. You may not exactly enjoy hearing the happy annoying tune, but it sure is a whole hell of a lot better than sitting here alone in the silence.

Looking Into The Abyss

Maybe it was the way that things were meant to be.
Maybe it was the way that things were meant to be.
Maybe it was the way that things were meant to be.
So many great things to come were not made for me.