The House

This what I like about this place, lots of curves instead of corners. You can't see it in all the shots, but you can see it here.







Syd's room


Hall


Our bedroom. Folly was on the bed so I couldn't make it.






Hol's room








Bathroom








STAIRS!!!!!!!!!








Living room








My office








TV Room







Kitchen & Dining room























More living room








This is the fountian that doesn't work. We must have a post about this place and the insanity sometime.






This little window in the closet opens.

I want to vote for an adult

I’m extremely annoyed with John McCain. I’m annoyed because I can no longer take him seriously and have to vote for Barak Obama for president. I’m not angry that I’m more or less being forced to vote for Obama. I’m actually quite happy to vote for Obama, even if some of his stated policies look like they either need a little work or need to be defined better, or possibly need to have a long drawn out explanation about how the hell he intends to pay for it.

I can get around that though. It’s not voting for Obama that has annoyed me, it’s deciding in August. I wanted to watch a couple of debates and I wanted to listen to what these two men had to say. I wanted to weight the pros and cons of each man’s arguments. I wanted to make an informed choice about who would best represent the country and lead us out of the shit storm that the last eight to ten years have driven us into. In case you’re wondering, yes I do blame part of where we are now on things that happened during the Clinton Administration and by extension Clinton himself. People didn’t just suddenly start getting bad loans when Bush came to office, that situation started under Clinton. Most of all, I wanted to finally make up my mind in October, after weighing the pros and cons for myself.

I can’t listen to John McCain anymore though, because John McCain’s campaign has already fallen into a childish routine that makes the last two election cycles look restrained and grown up. He’s lying, but all politicians lie (sorry, stretch the truth) so that doesn’t get me so much. He’s looking like he’s in the pocket of big oil concerns, but show me a political figure that hasn’t chased money at some point. What has undone him in my eyes is the childishness and the willful ignorance I’ve seen on display. He's made himself look foolish at a time when I need someone serious. Giving away tire pressure gauges as a way to mock Obama’s claim that properly inflated tires would save the country more fuel than off-shore drilling and then actually telling people he agreed with that idea after they told him how stupid he looked for mocking the idea? I don’t even know if the claim is true or not*, but I do know McCain has now come out against himself! I can do no better than to quote my choice for President… "In the coming days it's going to be interesting to watch this debate between John McCain and John McCain."
*Evidently it is.

Then you have the extremely stupid Celebrity Ad that mocked Obama for being the current media favorite. Politicians as celebrities didn’t bother McCain back when he was the celebrity in question. Didn’t bother him when he was on 24, didn’t bother him when he was asked to be on The Daily Show 12 times, didn’t bother him when he played himself in The Wedding Crashers, but it bothers him now. It seems that it’s only bothering him now that he’s not the center of attention. If I may point out, it sounds like someone is annoyed that he got dumped for a younger man. It sounds like someone is whining like a little bitch instead of taking it like a man.

And then he got PWNED! Not only did he get slapped around like a little bitch, but he got bitch slapped by Paris Cock-Gobbling Hilton! Paris doesn’t care about politics, she’s not making a statement about the nation, she’s just scoring off the wrinkled old guy who insulted her. However, when Paris Hilton can score off you, you know it’s time to just go the fuck away. This whole situation has taken the single most important responsibility that the American people have, and turned it into an internet joke.

I’m not even going to go into the race bating or the “Elitist” comments because… a guy who dumped his injured wife so he could go shack up with a millionaire beer baronesses who thinks inflating your tires properly is a joke and has been in congress for 30 years is going to accuse someone else of elitism? He doesn’t have to worry about his 6 houses being taken away, or having to skip new glasses for a while because milk prices just went up again. He doesn’t even get the idea of keeping your tires inflated to try and save three small, but precious dollars a week. He thinks that’s a joke!

The race bating is just as stupid, stupider even. I would have liked to hear what he had to say to actually refute Obama’s claims, but all anyone can come up with is comments amounting to about how Obama is an uppity negro trying to get above his station. I’ll grant, there might have been a few statements about him being wrong, but I stop listening after some version of “Didn’t you hear me? He’s an uppity *word deleted* and he can’t be allowed to be in charge!” comes out of their mouths. That alone tells me that they’ve either got nothing on the guy, which is a plus for him or that they’re so ingrained in the idea that no one will ever vote for a black man that they don’t need to take him seriously, which insults my considerable intelligence and just pisses me right the fuck off.

I know it’s often seen as condescending when a white guy says this, but I really did listen when MLK asked us to judge a man by the color of his soul rather than the color of his skin. The results from my soulometer are showing that McCain’s color is not so good while Obama looks pretty healthy. Even if I don’t like all his ideas, at least with Obama I get the idea that these are the ideas of an adult who understands that America is facing some really tough times in the next 10 years instead of someone trying to play tit for tat like a 12 year old in a school yard.

And that, in a nut shell, is what has me angry. I’m angry that McCain, once a member of The No Bullshit Caucus has fallen so deeply into the bullshit that you no longer can see the man he once was, or at least the man he was once perceived as being. I’m angry that I still haven’t heard one word about what he’s for, just what Obama is doing that he doesn’t like. I’m really angry that someone who proclaimed that this was going to be a new kind of gentleman’s campaign sank to these ridiculous depths so fucking early and so easily.

I’m angry that I can’t actually pick between two intelligent people who understand the gravity of the situation the country faces at this moment in history. I wanted to be able to take both candidates seriously. I wanted to elect one of two grown ups who would do the grown up thing and lead the country like an adult. I’m perfectly happy to vote for Obama, and probably he is the guy I would have voted for anyway, but I feel like I’m only doing so now because I don’t want to be associated with any of John McCain’s bullshit.

Steampunk Books I've been meaning to write

Oscar Wilde: Soldier of Fortune
Format: Graphic Novel
The adventures of the wittiest snob ever to put pen to paper or sap to criminal. This six issue limited series contains what may be Oscar's most difficult case against a Gay/German/Oriental/Jewish villain that encapsulates most of the major ethnic terrors facing the British bigot at the end of the 19th Century. Will Oscar defeat the evil Dr. Fu-Mann-Berg, or just seduce him for King and Country? Find out by reading Oscar Wilde: Soldier of Fortune!

The Further Adventures of Captain Mors, Air Pirate
Format: Novels
One of the more obscure Victorian Air Pirates returns for adventures that are almost nothing like the original! Since you've probably never even heard of Mors, much less read any of his adventures, this character will be a completely blank slate which any story can be hung on without fear of annoying any one besides Germans and the four non-Germans who have bothered to look up the books and actually read them. One might even wonder why we bothered looking up a real character instead of writing about an existing one at all!

H.P. Lovecraft: Lost in Time!
Format: Whatever we think you'll buy
Holy sh*t! Really? Lovecraft wasn't even born until 1890 and only really wrote in the 20s and 30s? Really? Well, we know that people who like Steampunk like Lovecraft too, so we've fired up the old Deus Ex Machina machine and found a way to zap him and his stories back to 1880 anyway! Hey! Do you want historical accuracy or do you want Sherlock Holmes fighting with Cthulu? Yeah! That's what I thought.

Jules Verne VS The Army of Steampunk Clichés
Format:Books, Comics, some moded action figures and even an Anime!
Evil Victorian bad guys have stolen a nuclear sub, a number of gear driven machines and a computer with a brassy sort of sheen to it and only Jules Verne can get them back! Look out for the bad guy with a clock work... something or other. See the dinosaurs and machine guns that always seem to get shoe horned into these things. Marvel at how little our writers know about actual steam or clock work technology. Watch as Jules Verne, with the help of Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Dole and Bram Stoker fight every damn baddie that was ever written about between 1851 and 1900.

Don’t give me have to!

You know what bugs me? People saying things like “If tagged, you HAVE to do this meme.” Because you will get “Oh no I fucking don’t bitch!” sent back at speed as a return.

I also hate things like “You have a nice day now” when I leave a store. It always starts the same narrative in my head. What if I don’t want to have a nice day? What if my cat is killed by Sandinista rebels and the ducks blow up my kitchen? I couldn’t possibly follow your orders then, could I? Did that ever enter your rat fuck mind? Don’t put pressure on me about what kind of day to have assface. And by that point, I can’t have a nice day because I’m worried about those damn Sandinista rebels gunning for Folly. Fancy can take care of herself, but Folly is just a stripy-butt who can barely find her own tail.

I just plain don’t like people telling me what to do, it’s a simple as that. I’m always resistant to the idea of people giving me orders outside of the understood social order. I have to obey a lawful order given by a police officer. I have to obey the laws of my state and country. I have to eat and drink and breathe. Beyond that though, I don’t really have to do anything.

There are some things I should do, just to exist within polite society. I should tip waitresses a good and fair amount, since waitresses are the one group I know of who are exempt from minimum wage laws and that really is part of her pay. I should learn and understand the customs of any group outside my own to know what would be considered rude, so I can either do those things or avoid doing them with the understanding of what will be the likely reaction.

These are part of the social order though. I’m actually very big on social order, which is probably something I don’t talk about that much, but I am. I’m very big on the little rules of the road that come in social situations and understanding them well enough to know that I can swing into the oncoming lane so I can pass a slow driver if I need to. I’m not talking about marking someone down for using the sugar spoon to get some jam for your toast. That sort of salad fork and dinner fork stuff is bullshit and they only put those things in to pad out what could be a five page book.

I have actually corrected salesmen who look at something with my name on it and say “Well, Brett…” By looking them directly in the eye and saying in a soft, commanding voice “Mister Lashuay” because that fucker A) Doesn’t know me well enough to call me familiar and B) Is in a service position. It’s snobby, I know, but I don’t like people presuming that we’re friends. We ain’t friends, mister car salesman!

If we were friends, you would know that few people call me by my first name anyway. My mother and father rarely call me by my given name. Almost no one ever calls me by my first name, like ever. Death will likely look in his book when the time comes and simply say, “Well, let’s go if you’re going.” understanding that I’m just arrogant to think he’s talking to me at that moment.

Acting like we’re the oldest of friends (and doing it badly at that) and that you can put an arm around my shoulder is a road to No Commission Town, pop. 387. I’m always polite about it, but I rarely buy things from people who try to presume that we have some kind of relationship that does not exist. I don’t get nasty to people, because I have my own little code on those points, but I do bristle and avoid buying anything.

If it’s a social situation, where someone I know has introduced me to another person or we’ve been talking about something, that’s a different. In fact, that’s completely different because then the person wouldn’t be presuming that we have some sort of relationship that doesn’t exist, we actually would have one. Even then, I feel more forgiving because this is a person who is just themselves on their own and not trying cynical tricks to get me to buy something.

These are some of the reasons I respond to commands so very, very badly. I am not someone who takes orders, or I would have entered National Service when that time came along. I respond to requests quite well though, and usually a request will find me an amicable and friendly participant if I’m able. I respond to well wishes in kind most often. It’s just a few words difference quite often between “Hope you have a nice day” and “You have a nice day now” but my reaction to one or the other is drastically different. One feels like a wish and the other sounds like an order to me. And what would be wrong with simply saying “Thank you” anyway? I hardly ever get thanked anymore, I just get my change.

I don’t jump on people, or berate them, because that would be equally as rude, but I do get annoyed about it every once in a while.

What a dated joke

So I was listening to the Weird Al song "Headline News" and I noticed that all the joke were really sort of dated. Of course they were. They were all things that were going on at the time the song was written. What’s interesting is that if the song was a few years older (or possibly if I were a few years younger) I don’t think I would think “dated” so much as “cultural milepost” or something like that. If you weren’t around, and you wanted to know what people were obsessing over in 1993 and 1994, here is a song that will give you three stories to look into.

I’m always torn on the idea of current pop-culture in movies and songs. On the one hand it’s neat to see an old movie mention something you’re read about, because you get to see living people respond to something you only know about in the abstract. You can see how mocked some events or people were in comedies, you can get a good barometer for how certain things effected people at certain times. In stuff I wasn’t old enough to know about, it’s kind of neat.

When dealing with something more current though, it always seems to distract and annoy me. When I watch a movie now if someone talks about those little spots in the soda commercial, yes I know what they’re talking about, but those spot commercials are so long ago that it just reminds me that this movie is old and I’m old for remembering what they’re talking about. If you don’t know what soda-pop commercial had a spot for their mascot then fuck you for being young and skinny!

No! Fuck you! You don’t get a link. Google it, you damn young whipper-snappers!

Oh, alright… it was 7Up.


anyway,
In both situations, the movie is being dated by the references to current events. It’s just that it’s less distracting in the older stuff, for me anyway. In the older movies, everything is old. There are a thousand little things in any given shot that we don’t use today so you hardly notice it if someone starts talking about Hoover being slow to act or what great legs Betty Grable has or some other statement that would have been current at the time. In a current movie, almost everything is current, except the cell phones, the computers and the conversation about whacking a skating star in the knee cap.

I know that part of it is also that in the mid to late 90s, making references to other bits of culture became incredibly hip. Both old and new things started being referenced to such a degree that some movies were all reference, taking recycling to a ridiculous degree if you ask me. I am specifically thinking of Shrek 2, where I felt a lot of the jokes were old the day it came out. The Spider-Man gag specifically wasn’t just old it was overdone by that point.

I suppose when it gets to being 2028 all these movies will show kids what it was like living at the beginning of the 21st century. I just wonder if they’re going to bother watching us at all or just watch all the old stuff we’ve been referencing. It could be a quandary, but I’m too bored to think about it anymore.