Damian’s Deconstructive Diatribe, 2/21/2007

My kids make me laugh.

On Sunday, I was playing with them using a sock puppet, while they were chillin’ on the top bunk of their bunk beds. My puppet, Mr. Greeney, was a huge hit with them, as he tried to eat their toes and bite their noses and discuss the finer points of “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. At one point, 4YO was huddled as far away as humanly possible in the back corner of the bed in an attempt to avoid Mr. Greeney’s (un)wanted advances. In between squeals, he said “Why are you eating my toes, Mr. Greeney?” Mr. Greeney said “I don’t know, 4YO! I love toes! I’m just CRAZY for toes!” My 4YO looked at that sock puppet, all laughter gone, and said with the straightest 4 year old face ever: “Well, if you go crazy, some people will still call you Superman.”

Are you familiar with the rock band 3 Doors Down? Have you heard their first hit song, “Kryptonite”? If not, the lyrics in the chorus are “If I go crazy then will you still call me Superman?” My child had heard that song on Kid’s Bop (which is created, written, recorded, produced, distributed, and sold by the devil himself), and was trying to comfort dear Mr. Greeney. Let’s just say Mr. Greeney had to take a little break while Daddy ran from the room, laughing his ass off.

Gotta love the kiddos.

Let’s diatribe.

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A rookie Anne Arundel County police officer has been charged with taking a cell phone picture of himself groping a teenager during a traffic stop, after threatening to jail her for drunken driving if she didn’t cooperate. Officer Joseph F. Mosmiller, 22, is accused of telling the 18-year-old and her female passenger to lift their shirts in the parking lot of a Pasadena church just before midnight Jan. 20, according to documents filed Tuesday in District Court. When the friend refused, the documents say, Mosmiller took the photo and then let the women go. He was charged Monday with fourth-degree sex offense, second-degree assault and two other misdemeanors. The allegations against Mosmiller join a string of suspected police misconduct cases in the Baltimore area. Four city officers were charged last year with rape in three separate incidents. Charges against two of those officers, accused of standing by while a third raped a woman at a police station, were dropped last month. The third officer was acquitted of a rape charge in that case last month but will stand trial on another. A fourth officer, who allegedly had sex with a 16-year-old girl at the same station house, is scheduled to go on trial in March.

Um, I don’t know what course these guys are taking in the Maryland Police Academy, but they’re either failing miserably, or passing with flying colors. Their “Law Enforcement Ethics” instructor is seeing if his head will fit into his gas oven, but their “How To Be A Dick With A Badge And A Gun” instructor is smacking his female grad assistant on the ass right now, giddy over the news. There’s just so much wrong here. I understand that the age difference between the cop and the victim isn’t so large that it’s creepy, in and of itself, but Jesus, he’s an adult! Forget the cop part for a sex – oops, I meant “sec” – this was a grown-ass man asking a barely legal adult to expose herself to him. Oh, and her little friend, too. Add in the fact that it was in the middle of the night, and you can truly feel the fear the women must’ve felt. The fact that he’s an officer of the law is the sour icing on this demented cupcake. Regardless of age, this man already had them in a weak and powerless position, and he exploited that to his own sick means. This shit right here is why people fear and distrust the police. The vast majority of cops are honest, law-abiding, diligent workers who do their damnedest to protect all of us, but it only takes a small fraction to spread the perception that they’re all corrupt. I’d like to think that I’d be all bad-ass if a cop tried to pull some dumb shit like that on my ass, but I know what’s up. Cop + gun + corruption = Damian following instructions to the letter. Sounds like they need to move that whole police station to Iran and tell the Ayatollah that they like porn and pork, and that they called the Ayatollah’s mama a bitch. That’ll straighten ‘em out.

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ANDALUSIA, Ala. — Police said a grenade found in the Burger King in Andalusia caused some tense moments yesterday. Andalusia Police Chief Wilbur Williams said an employee at the fast food restaurant found the grenade and gave it to a manager who called police. The building was evacuated and the grenade was taken to an empty field so a military expert could examine it. The grenade turned out to be inert. Williams said officers are trying to determine who brought the grenade into the restaurant. He said grenades are widely available at gun shows. Since no threats were made, it is unlikely charges will be filed.

Holy hell. I guess whoever did it didn’t have it their way after all. I’d like to give the Congressional Medal of Honor And Stupidity in the Line Of Fry Duty to the employee who GAVE the grenade to his manager. Gave. “Gave” implies he picked it up or in some other way handled the explosive device, and then offered it to another person. Gave. Um….Hector? You don’t “give” someone a grenade. You can see the grenade, and you can flee the grenade, but never gift it to another.

Jimmy: “Man…I dunno why Chad always gotta be doggin’ me out..it’s not like I come to work high. Every day. (spots a gray pineapple on the floor) Heeeeeeeeey, when we started serving pineapples? I love pineapples! Lemme take it to Chad and see what’s the deelio. CHAD! Here, man! Here! I totally found this on the floor, and picked it up. Employee of the Week!”
Chad (backing away): “…You may be, quite possibly, the single most intellectually challenged, dumb as fuck, common sense deprived, devoid of cognitive thought, functionally retarded, hindered by life and genetics, destined for failure, backwards, inbred, MENSA-allergic human being who has ever walked the face of our Mother Earth. Hoe Lee Shit.”
Jimmy: “Thanks, man. So, you want me to cut it open now, or wait till the rest of the crew rolls up?”
Chad: “Your father should’ve pulled out.”

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SALEM, Ore. — Two days after electronic locator units helped rescuers locate three missing climbers on Mount Hood, veteran mountaineers pleaded with state lawmakers not to require them to carry the devices every time they head for the summit. Some warned Tuesday that requiring locators would foster passivity among climbers who get into trouble and activate the beacons. They will wait for a rescue, and not do enough to rescue themselves,” said Leslie Brown, a spokeswoman for Access Fund, a national mountaineering group. Another said nothing can replace basic common sense when it comes to keeping people safe, and requiring electronic beacons would not be a “panacea.” “Pulling the cord (on a locator unit) doesn’t turn the sky black with helicopters coming to pick you up,” said Scott Russell, a veteran of numerous search-and-rescue operations. “Self-reliance and knowledge are what’s going to keep you alive on the mountain.” Those arguments came as a House panel opened hearings on a bill to require that climbers who intend to go above 10,000 feet on Mount Hood from November through March carry locators that send signals to help searchers find them if they run into trouble.

Lemme see if I got this straight: Oregon state lawmakers want to introduce a bill to require the insane people who climb tall snowy mountains in winter to wear electronic devices that would make finding their frozen carcasses easier, and thus safer for the people then assigned to find those carcasses, and the very people who would be protected by these locators are protesting them because it would “foster passivity”? Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t 3 people JUST die up there on Mt. Hood, most likely because rescuers COULDN’T FIND THEM? Look, I’m certainly of the opinion that if your life is so lacking excitement and adventure that you have to climb a mountain to get off, then you should be on your own, but the bottom line is that even if you’re willing to take your own life into your hands and cast your fate with the mountain, your relatives and loved ones may not be so avant garde about your safety. They may want to find you if you don’t come down off that mountain, and finding your dumb, numb ass requires volunteers, helicopter pilots, emergency rescue personnel, dogs, coordinators, communication specialists, expert mountain climbers, and various other personnel who would probably rather be doing something other than risking THEIR lives to go save YOURS, all because you didn’t wanna punk out and wear a damn locator. I tell you what, climbers – let’s take it to the next level. You don’t want to wear the locators that could potentially save your life and the lives of others? Fine. Don’t wear it. But when you climb that mountain, be sure to stop by the hospitality desk and sign the waiver that states “I hereby waive my rights to all rescue attempts for my dumb ass, should I encounter hazards on this climb, because I’m too proud/too cocky/too self-reliant/too cool to wear a simple electronic device that would pinpoint my location to anyone attempting to rescue me, thus reducing their risk, the amount of manpower required, and minimizing the rescue time. I waive these rights because I am dumb. Whatever happens to me, it’s on me. And if someone DOES bother to come save me, I will be their indentured servant for as long a time as they see fit. The end.”

Peace.

Vicarious

Look at this bullshit here, people.

If you don’t have sound, I’ll recap. The two kids were wrestling in a tournament. Kid A gets Kid B pinned, while Kid A’s dad videos the match. The pinning move is uncomfortable, but not illegal, and the referee was just stepping in to call the match when Kid B’s dad runs in and tosses Kid B out of the ring before coming after Kid A’s dad. To top it off, Kid B’s dad is a wrestling coach himself.

End recap.

Now, as a parent myself, I want the best for my children. I want them to be successful in all their endeavors, and I want them to pursue excellence. Most importantly, I want to instill them with a sense of pride in whatever it is they choose to do, so that they understand the value of their work, and so that people know that they can be relied upon. In doing this, I place a piece of myself into them and their activities as an investment…I want to look upon their actions and see my lessons reflected in them, because that is the truest gauge of good parenting. Sports, in particular, offer instantaneous feedback on the lessons you teach your children. If you teach fair play and hard work, you’ll see it unfold before you as your child runs up and down the court or the field. If you teach perspective, you see it when your child loses, and even moreso when they win. These are the things that my children learn from their parents. But it seems like these lessons are growing more rare by the day.

This instance of the father protesting his son’s defeat isn’t new, and it isn’t even that bad when compared to measures taken by some other parents. I’m sure you’ve all heard the stories about parents physically assaulting coaches, referees, and other parents, sometimes to the extreme of actually attempting to kill them (or succeeding, in a few cases). By comparison to THOSE examples, tossing a kid like a sack of potatoes ain’t all that bad. But the thing is, it IS that bad. What are these parents teaching their children? Do they think the kids are savvy enough to turn a blind eye to their activities, saying “Oh, Dad’s just too into it”? Most of these kids aren’t mature enough to make that type of distinction between act and intent, especially when the act is committed by the single most influential person in their lives. Failure is not only an option; it’s a life requirement. We all HAVE to fail at some things, sometimes. It teaches us humility, it shows us our limitations, and it provides the proper perspective for when we actually succeed. Failure isn’t an abomination that we should shelter our kids from. They NEED to know that it’s always there, and that sooner or later they will experience it.

Last soccer season, 7YO’s soccer team went undefeated with one tie, and that tie was against a team in a higher division than they were in. Because this was his first time playing in organized sports, he naturally began believing that his team was unstoppable. This season he found out that his entire roster is returning, but that the team will likely be placed in a higher division this time, since they pretty much beat the monkeysnot out of everyone in the C class. Watching him win filled me with joy and pride, especially when he scored on a header in the tournament. Oh yes, I was proud as hell, full of “That’s my boy!” and “I taught him everything he knows!”. But as they approach this season, we both warned him that they may, and probably will, lose games this year. We want him to understand that defeat isn’t the end of the world, and that it will occur whether you’re prepared for it or not. Kids don’t understand this, and apparently a lot of parents don’t, either.

I think the biggest reason why these incidents keep happening is that the parents are placing too much pressure on the kids to perform, in the hopes that they’ll become very, very good at that sport or activity. Why? Because it reflects positively on the parent, and in certain cases, can lead to financial gain. If you push your kid to be the best hockey player on the high school team, then that means maybe scouts from major colleges will come check him out and perhaps offer a scholarship, which could possibly lead to professional hockey down the road. Therefore, if Coach Nobody decides to bench Junior for being late to practice or (God forbid) not being quite as good as Johnny, you see YOUR future circling the drain like the last soap sud in the tub. You might just react negatively to that, because maybe then you can’t live in the reflected glow of your child’s stardom. Another reason this happens is by parents living vicariously through their kids. Say you played a little football in high school, but you weren’t good enough to get a scholarship, or maybe not good enough to go pro. Suddenly you’ve got a son who is a dynamo with the football. You see an opportunity for him to do things you couldn’t do…to be someone you couldn’t be. So you push him. You want him to taste that life you wanted, if only so that you can get a taste yourself. Anything that impedes that golden path is seen as a threat. That’s wrong.

I would like to think that if either of my sons show an aptitude at a sport or activity that propels them to greater performances, I’d have my head on straight about their success. There are things I would’ve loved to have done at their age – but I didn’t. I can’t force them to lead a life I maybe might’ve could’ve possibly perhaps have had, anymore than I can put a turtle in the desert and call it a camel. I just hope this alarming trend corrects itself soon, for the sake of the children it affects. I’ll always have my sons’ backs.

I’ll just make sure I have their backs from as far back as I can.

Peace.

Damian’s Deconstructive Diatribe, 2/14/2007

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! I hope all of you with SO’s are treated to a nice time. And those of you without SOs, well, pot pies are on sale at Albertson’s. Heat up and eat up.

It seems like it’s been forever since I diatribed, and I gotta say, I really missed it. You see, stupid people didn’t stop doing stupid shit, just because ol’ Damian decided to go on a mini hiatus. Every day I would read Fark.com and either laugh or shake my head at what people do. It’s truly amazing, if you think about it, because somewhere along the way, nature has failed us. Do you think antelope on the Serengheti have this many stupid antelope in their pride or flock or gaggle or whatever antelope congregate in? Do you think two antelope are standing on the plain, eating grass, and saying “Yo, did you hear what Greg did yesterday? No? Oh man, get this: so, we’re crossing a stream, right? And everyone says ‘keep your eyes peeled for crocodiles. They’re on the prowl.’ So Greg is prancing across, spots a croc just chillin’ in the sun, and says ‘Watch this, Jason’, and he tries to run PAST the crocodile! Muhfucka didn’t even move his tail. Just grabbed Greg outta midair like he was Bud Light at a football game. You know, Darwin wrote his theory about THAT guy.”

I bet they don’t.

Foreplay’s over. Let’s clap off the lights, turn on some Alexander O’Neal, and diatribe between the sheets. Aw, sooky sooky.

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BOSTON – A bookkeeper pleaded guilty Monday to embezzling $6.9 million to pay for such things as a ranch in Vermont, a life-size statue of Al Capone and a private performance by singer Burt Bacharach, federal authorities said. Angela Buckborough Platt, 43, pocketed the money over six years while an accountant for J & J Materials Corp. in Rehobeth, Mass., federal prosecutors said. She was charged with one count of interstate transportation of stolen property. Under the plea deal, Platt, formerly of Cumberland, R.I., and now of Wyoming, Pa., must pay back all of the money, and prosecutors will recommend a prison sentence of at least four years and seven months. The charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and $250,000 fine. Prosecutors said Platt — who made $40,000 a year — wrote checks from company accounts to herself and eventually began writing checks for nearly $50,000. Her theft was discovered in June by another bookkeeper. Platt’s purchases included six talking trees modeled after the “Wizard of Oz” characters; a 20-foot-tall smoke-breathing dragon; a four-bedroom house in Rhode Island; more than 35 vehicles; and a replica of a Ford Model T customized to look like a green goblin.

I’ve never embezzled any money. Hell, I’ve never worked anywhere or been put in a position where I COULD embezzle. By the way, when black people embezzle, it’s just called “stealing”. But if I DID decide one day to walk down that dark path, there are a few things I’d do differently than Ms. Platt. Firstly, I would provide a damn-good cover story for how and why I was suddenly able to buy 35 cars. I’d say I won them, or they “fell off a truck” or something. I wouldn’t leave that question open, ’cause people know if you only make 40K. Especially when you start buying lifesize Capone statues, which brings me to Point #2. If I stole some cash, I’d display MUCH more style and taste than she did. Six talking trees modeled after the “Wizard of Oz” characters? A 20-foot-tall smoke-breathing dragon? Burt Bacharach? BURT BACHARACH? Is he even ALIVE? She had 6.9 milly to burn, and she wastes money on someone who sang love songs to pteradactyls? This is reason enough to throw her silly ass in jail. Don’t even get me started on the green goblin Ford Model T. If you make 40K, you can’t get a Model T. There’s even a math equation for it, called Hammer’s Law, named after M.C. Hammer:

40K ≠ Model T

And also:

M.C. Hammer ≠ Good accounting

Hammer was bad with money.

People, listen up. If you steal money, please be discreet. Stash your cash in the Caymans or in Switzerland. Spend very little, and certainly don’t spend it locally. Come up with a mysterious hereditary tropical contagious illness that forces you to retire early. Move to Aruba and spend money like your name is Federal K. Government. The K is for “kriminal”.

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JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla., Feb. 13 During a routine arrest of two suspected burglars in Florida, police were shocked to discover a stolen automated teller machine in the back of the duo’s car. When Jacksonville Beach police arrested John Kiedroski and Damien Shain Lee Saturday, they found very damaging evidence in the suspected burglars’ car in the form of a stolen ATM, the Florida Times-Union reported. Several Florida police departments had been working together to keep the suspects under surveillance and the two were arrested after allegedly robbing a Jacksonville Beach store. It was then that police followed them to a home in nearby Atlantic Beach and located the store’s ATM in the suspects’ car. The paper said as the men remain in custody, police are attempting to determine what other stolen items may be present at their home.

I realize that being a police officer is often a hard, demanding, and sometimes unrewarding job. But every now and then, you MUST see something that just makes you laugh out loud. Talk about incriminating evidence. Seems like if you stole an ATM machine, you’d maybe try to get rid of it, or stash it somewhere, like those two dudes in “Barbershop” did. I think it was “Barbershop”. Hell if I know. But to tote it around in the back of your Suburu like it’s a third passenger is completely asinine. Just take your ATM to the nearest Andy Dick School of Social Ettiquette and Manliness, ’cause you KNOW that place would be deserted. At 10am. On a Tuesday. When you get there, take your time and crack that baby open lovingly, with the care and caution reserved for deflowering a virgin. Then take a cash bath on the floor. Do NOT drive it around town like you’re Morgan Freeman, and the ATM is Miss Daisy! What could they even say when they got caught with it?

Officer: “John, Damien, step on out of the car.”
John: “Um…ok. But our, um, friend is asleep in the backseat. Right, Damien? Our FRIEND?”
Damien: “Do what, now? OH! OH! Yeah. Friend. Yeah, he had a lot to drink, and he was driving, so he decided to-”
John (in a hard whisper): “Shut up, dumbass! The cop will give him a breathalyzer if you say he was drinking and driving!”

Mad geniuses, both of ‘em.

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A Danbury man’s plans to bail himself out after a drug bust went more than a bit awry over the weekend. State police said that a small safe that Nakia Davis, 32, had his aunt bring in to the Southbury barracks not only contained $5,000 in cash for bail, but also drug paraphernalia and 16 grams of cocaine, leading to more charges. Davis had been pulled over for speeding on Interstate 84 in Southbury. With the help of a police dog, marijuana was seized from the car, and police found 43 baggies of cocaine weighing 48 grams when they patted Davis down, police said. Davis arranged for his aunt to bring a small safe which Davis claimed contained money for his bail. State police said when Davis’ aunt opened the safe in front of a state police trooper, inside was the cash, but also drug paraphernalia and 16 grams of cocaine. Additional drug charges were filed against Davis and his bond was increased to $125,000. He was later bailed out by another relative. Davis was charged with possession of narcotics with intent to sell, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of cocaine, possession of marijuana and speeding.

…

I’m not even going to comment on this story. Let’s all just take a moment to allow this thing to soak it.

…

That’s it. Soak it in. Feel the intrinsic stupidity.

…

There. Now, the next time you encounter something as dumb as this, you can come back to this happy place, and understand its true meaning. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.

Peace.

We Could be “Heroes”

CTRL + to make the font bigger, gente.

Someone tell me why I waited nearly five months to watch the show “Heroes”. Someone HAS to tell me, ’cause I don’t know. This show kicks my ass. But for whatever reason, I allowed the show to backlog in my DVR all this time, choosing the likes of “Jericho” and “24″ and “Everybody Hates Chris” to watch instead. I dodged conversations about the show like Neo from “The Matrix”, even going so far as to run and hide from hallway conversations about the show, and avoiding online message boards and reviews and episode synopses like Lance Bass avoids vagina. And it worked – I successfully lived in a “Heroes”-free blackout.

Until the DVR box started fucking up.

Have any of you ever suffered from Bad Box? I bet some of you have.

Bad Box is when your beloved and revered DVR (or TiVO) set top box starts acting real funny. It’s especially bad when that box is also your cable box. A couple of weeks ago, the box start moving slowly when I tried to access the online guide or play taped shows (yes, I still call it “taping”, because I’m old-school like that. I also watch “Krush Groove”). That’s annoying as hell, but it’s tolerable. Over the weekend, though, it did the unthinkable: the online guide wouldn’t show me what was on, or what was coming on, for any channels. All it says now is “Information unavailable.” Y’all, this is unacceptable. How am I supposed to know when “FutureWeapons” or “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” or “CSI” or “The Dresden Files” is coming on? Telepathy? This has to be fixed, post haste. However, in the past, whenever a box goes bad, the cable or satellite company wants you to send them the box to either fix or replace. And if you happen to have shows and movies saved on the hard drive, just kiss ‘em all goodbye, just like we had to kiss the entire season of “Firefly” goodbye the LAST time this happened. I’m still bitter about that. So THIS time, we want to make sure we clear out all the shows we have on there before we send the box off into the Great Beyond.

We had every episode of “Heroes” taped, thinking we’d watch them sometime before Barrack Obama becomes president. Now, though, we had to put a rush on things so I can know when “Men In Trees” is on so I can avoid it. So on Saturday and Sunday, we sat down on the couch and the loveseat, shushed the kids with Playstation 2 and Oreos (which is kinda funny, if you think about it, given that our kids are mixed or biracial or interracial or whatever you wanna call it), and started watching this show with all the hype. We did this for many, many hours. Sometimes we peed. But we watched it all, from the first episode to the last. And upon finishing this arduous task, may I just say this:

Oh. My. Shit.

This show kicks my monkey ass.

There’s so much here! Plots, subplots, bad-ass super powers, a BUTTLOAD of interracial relationships…oh yes. There’s Niki and DL, Simone and Peter, Simone and Isaac, Simone and just about any man onscreen with her at the moment, Hiro and Charlie (till her head got cut off)…I am digging the diversity. And the show plays out so much like a comic book, my secret passion. I was sitting there, forecasting things that would happen later because in comics, that’s how it would go – and I was right. Ordinarily this would piss me off, because I want my movies and shows to challenge me and to make me actually think, but I’ll accept it in this case because of the whole “super powers” thing. Couple that with a woman who is sometimes bad (Niki/Jessica), a guy who might be bad (The Haitian), a guy we think is bad (Mr. Bennet), and a guy we KNOW is bad (Mr. Linderman), and you have the makings of some prime rib, grade A television programming experience. God, it’s great. I’m sitting here now, predicting the new characters they’ll introduce, based solely on comic book powers:

• Someone who can control/create the weather
• Someone with an animalistic mutation (wings, claws, horns…something)
• Someone who can move at super-speed
• Someone who can shrink and/or grow
• Someone who can breathe underwater
• Someone who can alter gravity, or control it (Nathan kinda does this, but only to fly, so far)
• Someone who can alter reality itself (maybe Hiro, with his abilities)
• Someone who can stretch
• Someone who can create illusions

I could go on and on. I’m seriously geeking out over this damn show, and I’m pissed off at myself for waiting so long to watch it. A bunch of people kept telling me to check it out, the loudest being Laurie (as she’s almost always the loudest, no matter WHAT she’s saying), but I just put it off and put it off. Well, now it’s on. And I’m fully on board.

I want to be on this show. I only want one power: the ability to remotely bitch-slap stupid people. I’ll need a special “stupid sense”, like Spider-Man’s spider-sense, and I’ll need a backhand galvanized in steel. I’ll also need to be able to reach across time and space in order to administer my backhand, and perhaps the ability to speak to them, even if only to say “Shut up, dumbass.” I would rule.

We also have 15 episodes of “Nip/Tuck” to watch. Nobody better tell me SHIT about what happened this season!

Peace.

Don’t Call It A Comeback

Oh. Hells. Yes.

God, how I’ve missed this.

Don’t get me wrong…I’ve needed the break. Like I said before, I’ve had a LOT of things going on, and the blog simply had to get back-burnered so that I could deal with:

• The lead singer from my band being in jail for a while. Yep. It’s a long story, and I’m not going to get all up into it right now, but he had a charge sitting on him for a while now, and needed to get it cleared up. And by “cleared up” I mean “re-enact every scene from ‘Oz’, minus the anal rape”. It involved cancelling a gig or two, and other things, and it was a mess. But he’s out, and it’s all good now.
• My job has lovingly provided me with more responsibilities, just because they care. These responsibilities, sadly, do not involve sexy lingerie models, bacon, or alcohol (although, last week, we DID go to Dave & Busters, where I consumed beverages and played shuffleboard with my boss. And lost. Shuffleboard sucks). No, the responsibilities mostly involve the completely foreign concept of “more work” and “projects” and other nonsensical bullshit. I’ve now become the Coordinator of This and the Project Lead of That, and while I appreciate the Boost Mobile effect it has on the ol’ curriculum vitae (or résumé, if you haven’t heard that term before), it HAS put a bit of a crunch on my blog availability, also known as my “blogability” during working hours.
• Blogger can kiss my natural black ass. I was going to move this bad boy over to WordPress anyway, because I like some of the features better. But when I made my first attempt, it wouldn’t allow me to pull my posts in, which chapped my ass more than you can imagine. So I began meticulously moving my blog, post by laborious post, fixing the style issues and assigning categories to everything. And lo and behold, I got about halfway through before I began asking myself why the hell I even blog in the first place, if this is the kind of shit I can expect. But WordPress came through – they finally allowed me to pull my posts in! But then I had to go back through, and unfix what I had fixed, and re-fix what I had unfixed, and listen to The Fixx a couple of times before I could consider THIS blog ready for public consumption.
• Life, in general, is a big-ass roller coaster that is constantly shrouded in fog. I hate roller coasters. And fog. So there.

Now, I’m back, and I’m ready to write, and I’m ready to get back to doing the things I do best, like talking shit and diatribing and living my crazy life and talking about it to you. And…no more Haloscan! I didn’t like that shit anyway – it completely overwrote all my previous comments. So fuck that noise.

Feel free to take a spin around the place. I’ve thoughtfully divided my posts into categories, ribbed for your pleasure, and I’ve even added a page where you can see my Damianitions. And don’t forget about Squirrel, Please, the newest addition to the Almost Infamous family. That shit makes me laugh till I cough, emphysema-style.

I’ve missed you all. But I’m back now, and I ain’t going nowhere.

I hope you’ve missed me, too.

Peace.