Drunken Pumpkin

The world is not really a functional place these days. Long ago when things would go to hell it was common for people to protest or become poiltically active. When that happens now we call the perpetrators “hippies”, and, frankly, no one wants to be part of that great unwashed conclave.

But what do we do when we have thoughts and feelings that just make us want to burst? Well, we could be like Smoochy and howl, which certainly has its benefits, but can also tend to make you look like a hippy doing some “primal scream therapy” or suchlike. No, the modern solution is a blog or website.

Blogs are great solutions to real activism, because in one respect you are shouting your beliefs from the rooftops. When you’re on the internet anyone, and everyone, can see you. There is a certain sense of pride that one gets knowing people in India can read what was written in Indiana.

The other excellent part of blogs versus real activism is they are like putting up posters in your room. Chances are, no one else will ever see them. If you have the option of listening to some dink whine about saving his favorite molusc bar from foreclosure, or looking at Jessica Simpson naked, which one are you gonna choose? (Remember, your wife can’t really see inside your head.)

That’s right folks, blogging is the new safe activism. It used to be bitching around the watercooler, but people can see your face then and that’s just no good.

Tune in next time when I tell you about my electrical burns and insulation up my nose. Unless, of course, you want to forward me those naked pics of Jessica Simpson.

I don’t like it when my life invades DruPum all that much. However, I think I should explain the recent silence from me. It isn’t that I don’t like all of you unknown people anymore. Usually, I have to at least see someone before deciding I’d like to kick their teeth in. The problem is the recent move has left me without access to the internets. And there my troubles begin.

The new house was originally built in 1890. Obviously, they didn’t have electricity back then. Over the course of the last century my house has been “updated” by many folks. Most of them didn’t have a clue what they were doing. Now, when I plug in my computer and turn on the TV, the bathroom light goes out. So, that’s a problem that needs some fixin’.

I have a friend who is an electrician, and he’s going to do the work for me to get my house approaching code. It really was quite funny listening to him splutter over the state of my electrics. He kept asking, “Why would they do this?” And I kept telling him that I stopped asking those kinds of questions a long time ago.

As an example of the funhouse wiring I have we found no less than 2 breakers that had tremendous amounts of wire that terminated at wire nuts or electrical tape. That’s all, just live wires that go nowhere. And the bulk of the house (read that as all) is on one 20 amp breaker. Okay, that’s not true, my front porch light is on it’s own breaker.

So, that’s what’s going on in my neck of the woods. I’ve been playing with copper spaghetti and trying to keep my house from burning down, and I haven’t even got into the spiders yet. I don’t know what’s up with Jeff. Maybe he’s gone back to Dagoba for more Jedi training. You never know with Jeff.

Tune in next time, which I hope will be sooner, when we can discuss why Hillary really isn’t working class, even if she gets drunk with frat boys.

I really think Scratch had the right idea when he said he wanted to have all of his teeth pulled and those snazzy ceramic implants soldered into his head.

To be quite frank, my oral hygene has never been quite as good as it should be. Lately, I’ve been paying the price for that bit of sloth. I’ve been to the dentist every couple of weeks since the beginning of the year. Not only is that expensive, it hurts like hell. Now it looks like I might need another root canal.

If you’ve never had a root canal, just take the term apart. “Root” as in, the bit with all of the nerves and stuff that mounts your pearly whites into your noggin, and “canal” as in, trench. Yep, it’s a canal through the root. They even “irrigate” the canal when they’re done. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I know it was last time I had one. On the bonus side, root canals are expensive, too.

I’ve pondered what on earth would make someone become a dentist on purpose. The only thing that really comes to mind is Steve Martin’s character in Little Shop of Horrors. You know the guy that sings about causing pain.

On a side note Steve Martin also played a dentist in the film Novocaine.

Don’t ask me why I brought that up. I’m currently dosed with Vicodin, until the doctor decides he does need to perform the good old root canal, so things aren’t quite right with me, presently.

Tune in next time when I search craigslist for someone else’s teeth in hopes of swapping them for mine.

I was reading about the Ryan Schallenberger bomb thing today and was struck by something; this kid has real parents.

Okay, clearly something was a little messed up in the home, or the kid wouldn’t want to blow up his school, but it can’t be all bad. I was impressed that the parents were a little taken aback at receiving 10 pounds of Ammonium Nitrate in the mail. I didn’t know you could send that stuff through the post. The Ny Times article goes on to say they searched his room and found a journal that made the police describe him as an “angry young man”.

Okay, so they followed that first rule of good parenting; don’t assume your child is a criminal without reason. And from the articles I’ve read, Ryan was a good kid. But when ingredients for explosives turn up on your door, it’s time to rethink that.

Next, when it looks like your child might be a danger to himself and others look for more evidence. Sadly, they found it. It isn’t sad that they found out his plan, it’s sad that he had the plan to begin with.

Finally, deal with that danger. Just imagine if Harris or Klebold’s parents had been paying any kind of attention to them. I can’t imagine how hard it is to turn your own kid in as a bomber/murderer. But they did and that’s pretty impressive.

Now, don’t take this as a chance to ransack your kid’s room looking for guns, drugs, and explosives. Most teens aren’t about to snap and kill everyone in town. That would require way too much effort on their part. However, when little Timmy wants to head down to the local TSC for 50 lbs of fertilizer and you live in an apartment building, maybe it’s time to do a quick scan around his room.

Nothing really funny about that, it’s just I thought it important to point out when parents act like responsible adults, since it doesn’t seem to happen quite often enough anymore.

Tune in next time when a giant rabbit eats all of the cabbage in London and all the Eastenders starve.

I never understood the attraction of Prank Phone calls. I can almost understand the humor and thrill of actually making a prank call, that sense of playing off the cuff and adlibbing nonsense to mess with people. However, I just can’t understand listening to prank calls. They strike me as very Three’s Company humor and that show always made me have to leave the room.

A few years ago the Jerky Boys were so popular they got their own movie. And that was a dumb idea. I would hope that as time passed people would get a little smarter, but no.

I listen to this alternative station out of Chicago whenever I hit the region. Unless, of course, it’s around the afternoon rush hour. Then they have the hourly “Phone Tap” where some obnoxious wench calls people and pretends to be someone else. The effect is truly enhanced by the fact she always talks through her nose. As soon as it approaches ten past the hour on that drive I turn the channel. And usually don’t bother to go back.

On the bright side if you hit Chicago around noonish you can hear Electra’s Last Letter Game, which normally plays some pretty off the wall stuff. Hence the reason I keep going back to that station. I know they have good music, but damn I hate prank calls.

Tune in next time, whenever that may be, for more things that you love and I hate.

Dogs are man’s best friends. But what do you do when your best friend attacks the postman, chews up your couch and then pisses in the corner? The same thing you do when your kids make too much noise with the new Playstation you bought them; drug them.

That’s right better living through chemistry finally extends to your pets. A product called Poyz purports to keep your dog calm with a non-addicting supplement made from all natural ingredients. Need I remind you folks that Heroin comes from an all natural ingredient? So does Cocaine for that matter.

What is it with our country and generation that insists that drugs are always the answer? Last spring I wandered around Hamburg, Germany with my wife. We saw more dogs than I care to think about, and rarely were they on a leash. On the other hand, those dogs rarely, if ever, barked and they were always right there by their owners. I wonder how many of those dogs were on pet prozac? No, chances are they were trained the way that humans and animals have been trained for millenia; good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior is punished.

But reward and punishment takes consistency and time. Drugs are way faster, and you only have to deal with it around pill time.

If you haven’t seen the Kids in the Hall’s Brain Candy you should give it a go. The entire film is about the need to have drug induced happiness. The original intention of the drug in the film is to help chronically depressed people function in society, which is what anti-depressants used to be for. One of my favorite lines in the film is, “We made the drug for people so depressed they couldn’t get off the floor, not because they missed the bus or they look bad in a yellow hat.” And that’s what those drugs should be for.

If your son is flying off the handle every day at school and biting his teachers, he might need some meds. But maybe you should try playing catch with him on the weekends first. Or taking away the Playstation you bought him. If your dog tries to bite the mailman put him in a cage when the mail is delivered and give him a treat for sitting there quietly. Dogs are fairly stupid, but they can be taught. After all, a bunch of monkeys sorted out how to do Shakespeare.

Tune in next time when Jeff bears all about his elf-ear fetish.

Of course, if you’re on our site that means you were one of those folks with foresight that did your taxes as soon as your W2s came in and have been sipping Margaritas watching the rest of your friends scramble to find the right form for their income level. Or maybe you’re here so you don’t have to think about that wonderful bit of bureaucracy known as the IRS for a few minutes. Bummer for you.

I don’t know why so many people wait until the last minute to do their taxes. Maybe they like the bald patches they get filling out all of those little forms looking for that one last deduction that will keep them from owing the government quite so much this year. Maybe it’s because they didn’t think it worthwhile to snag some tax software or hit the IRS website for the free versions. Silly people. And, seriously, if you’re like most people you can probably pull off doing the 1040EZ by yourself. At least, you can if you filled out your own job application.

Me, I got my refund about a month ago and this whole tax season thing has been completely overdone for me. I’m just waiting on that incentive check to pay off some other bills that the refund didn’t quite cover. Like that Kindle.

Tune in next time when I make fun of the emotionally impaired.

I’ve noticed a fair number of DVDs now come with exclusive web content. And you know what, I really hate that.

I’m peeved enough when all of my special features are hidden on some other disc, but at least when that happens I feel confident that I’m getting a good amount of extra stuff in high quality. But this Web feature nonsense almost guarantees I’m getting crap content at crap quality.

So, in order to see the special features that I paid for I have to put my disc in a different machine and hope that my internet connection is up to snuff for whatever they’re going to show me. Not only that, I have to hope that the provider of the content is still paying for me to be able to see their content. What kind of nonsense is that? From either end Web content is a losing situation. The consumer has added steps to get to it and the provider has fluctuating overhead for an undetermined amount of time. Just put the fan films on the damn disc and be done with it.

Tune in next time when I hope to not be scraping the bottom of the barrel for interesting ideas.

About a month or so ago I bought an Amazon Kindle. If you don’t know what that is, click the link, read the text, sell some blood, and order one. Just be prepared to wait. And wait. It seems Amazon’s salesforce is a little better skilled than their production force.

Anyway, I bought this thing mainly because I really like books, but the recent move has made me really hate carrying books. And now I can have a little over a thousand books that will fit in my messenger bag.

I already told my family not to buy me anymore books, unless they’re comics, because I don’t want them. (The Kindle doesn’t really play nice with lots of images, and the screen is the size of a mass-market paperback, which is no good for comics.) That got me thinking about the nature of text.

My mother also has a profound love for books, but she takes certain things too literally. She is very attached to the materiallity of books. To her, once a book is printed and bound it is something approaching a sacred relic. I once said, and often still say, that all Reader’s Digest Condensed Books should be burned. My mother freaks out every time she hears that, and starts calling me a Nazi. It’s difficult to reason with people that think you’re some kind of animal. But I take the Ray Bradbury stance on books; it’s the words inside that make them special, not the book itself. And Condensed Books destroy the words inside.

Now, I have to say I will probably end up buying more physical books than I let on. I’m a sucker for weird publishing formats. One of my favorite books is on hair, and is covered in fake fur. And just last week I almost bought a book on golf, a “sport” I have no interest in, just because it had a fake grass dust jacket. It’s like they see me coming.

On the bright side I haven’t given all of my money to Amazon. I’m currently working my way through downloading the library at Feedbooks. And the Baen Free library has some cool stuff too. As of yet the only thing I’ve bought for my Kindle is a newpaper subscription and the Bible. Being an Atheist I find it important to have a Bible with me at all times. You know, just in case. Kind of like the Krishna belief that if you are saying one of the names of god when you die it gets you bonus points with the big guy.

So, in the next couple years when the Kindle drops in price from the astronomical to the simply absurd, I heartily recommend it. And then you can finally read all of the Wizard of Oz stories and Alice in Wonderland and Art of War and…

I’ve been meaning to put this up on the site for quite some time. And, yes, the store this comes from did end up being sold. Now, bear in mind this didn’t come from some small town shop, it came from one of the largest grocery chains in my state.

You’d think they would have an editor around.