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“News” reports are spotty at best, but it seems as though Robert Anton Wilson shuffled off his mortal coil 11 January 2007 @ 0450 at his home.

ALL HAIL ERIS – PRAISE BOB – HAIL CONNIE – KALLISTI!

This is easily my second favorite Christmas song ever. EVER.

Of course, my favorite Christmas song, the one I used to play in a relatively nonstop fashion from the day after Thanksgiving until midnight on 25 December is the Barking Dogs’ “Jingle Bells”. No video for that, but if you don’t know it already there’s no saving you.

My rug was, in fact, micturated upon. By my cat. And my linoleum. And bed linens. And pillows. It’s unfortunate, but it really seems that Pervelous is going to need a different home. We’ve had him for 2 years and he’s never really fit in with our existing cats & dog. His litterbox manners have gotten progressively worse, too. As of this writing he is the sole occupant of the basement with his own – unshared, freshly cleaned and filled – litterbox. Yet he continues to, ah, soil my rug. This will not stand, man, this aggression will not stand.

I felt like a complete jackass thinking about giving him back to the shelter, but the cold fact of the matter is he has never used the catbox like he should. We went from having two cats share one box necessitating a cleaning once a week to three cats with four boxes and he still would pee on the Dude’s rug even if they were all cleaned once a day. It’s sad that he never really fit in with Rusty & Miebutte, but that’s a known problem when you bring one adult cat in with two existing adult cats. Selah.

It is awfully cold in my fair city for this time of the year, a chilly 5°F (-15°C) this morning. Starting last Thursday with the ice and the snow and the wind, a couple Alberta clippers sailed through. I can’t help but think this is payback for the lovely weather we had around turkey day, though.

There were seven of us what descended in Rogers Park on what was dubbed “Fakesgiving”, an excuse for friends to get together and gorge ourselves. At one point, all standing out on the beach at Scott Action & Leighanthrax’s place, ooohing and ahhhing as I delicately lowered a 16 pound turkey into three gallons of bubbling Canola oil.

Hell yeah, I fried a turkey for Fakesgiving. Best goddamn turkey I’ve ever had. Plus I’ve got a line on a guy who will turn my five gallons of once-used oil into biodiesel. Nice.

Saw 7000 Dying Rats the night after. Good show, as always. We didn’t stay to the end to find out if Spock or Bigfoot won, but I don’t think it matters too much.

But unfortunately it’s not all moist, tender turkey and experimental heavy metal in my life. I did come down with a case of food poisoning or E. Coli or stomach flu or something last weekend, because I spent Friday night thru Tuesday at noon mostly in the bathroom and a little time on the couch, moaning in discomfort. Lovely. Must’ve had something to do with that quick run out to Taco Hell in Jersey last Thursday night.

I was actually driving around that night in the sleet and I gotta say that the Golf is very well mannered in the snow and ice. Traction control and heated seats sure are nice. That efficient diesel engine doesn’t warm up too quickly, tho, but since I’ve blocked off part of the grill with foam pipe insulation, it does make a noticeable difference. I’ve got usable heat within 1.5 miles and straight up 190°F on the temp gauge in 4 miles of easy city driving, even this morning.

Still, it’s much nicer than my old car, which had a stuck-open thermostat. Some days it wouldn’t even move off the cold peg, even after I blocked off part of the radiator with a piece of cardboard. Most days it would get warmish in city driving but progressively get colder and colder in highway driving. It’s nice driving a car where everything works (knock on wood) with 40+ mpg to boot. Last tank was almost a record at 45.7 mpg. I’m hoping our upcoming road trip down Hotlanta way will give me some record tanks – it’s entirely possible to make it from my house to Charlie‘s in one tank of fuel.

One thing it takes me a long time to get used to after the switch back to Daylight Spending Time is that it’s suddenly dark when I get up, beginning to be light by the time I leave, light all day while at the orifice, deep twilight by the time I get out and solid nighttime for my entire ride home.

A productive weekend. Sort of.

My sister-in-law came over Friday and brought her two kids. And a friend. And this friend’s child. Yes, two adults brought over three kids. I have nothing against kids, I just don’t particularly like them being in my house. Mainly because I like having shelves full of heavy pointy things and plenty of power tools, razor blades and pornography. Plus children carry germs and now my wife and I are both sick, much like the War of the Worlds or that episode of the Simpsons.

They went to see some 3D retooling of some movie in darkest Indiana on Saturday. Originally, I wasn’t planning on going, but since it made the difference between getting to have breakfast with my lovely wife and not, I chose to go. While they were in the theater, I dropped by the nearby Harbor Freight and bought a bunch of cheap imported crap… hose grip pliers, 5W solar panel, Kill-A-Watt (just what I needed to start my offgrid project), metric tap & die set, mitivac, box o’ nitrile gloves. Spent a lot of time looking at the milling machines & lathes they had… all of them were utter garbage. When I get the room for a shop, I’m going with old refurbished machines, a 3′ lathe and a Bridgeport knee mill would do me just fine.

Anyway, my lady bought a flybook off fleabay for hell of cheap, so we spent some time having fun with it and installing linux. She’s got to be quite the linux poweruser, far far faster than I did. It’s probably because she’s much smarter than I am and less lazy. I kegged my beer and put the CO2 screws to it to force carbonate.

Sunday I got up early and drove all the way to Janesville, WI, for a TDIclub get together. Did some work to ye olde Golf, such as rotate the tires, wired up the unused rear fog positions as brake lights, bypassed the clutch interlock switch, recoded the instrument cluster to achieve a 24 hour clock. Good folks, very knowledgeable, hell of nice shop. It’s amazing what you can get done in a heated shop with two jackstands and a floor jack.

On a similar note, the Al Warren Oil Company‘s Summit B11 pumps are now officially labeled as ULSD. This is absolutely fantastic fuel and with the cool weather my MPG is headed skyward.

David Lynch used to have a daily weather report narrated by him on his website. It now appears to be a subscriber-only feature, unfortunately.

Fortunately, thanks to the magic of the interweb, you can see a few of them.

I will not be responsible if you have nightmares about LA weather afterwards. Do not question why there is a bear dancing in a mirrored coffin full of chum in the middle of a dog show – this is David Lynch’s weather report. I don’t live in LA, but he’s a hell of a lot more interesting to watch than WGN’s Tom Skilling.

Yes, friends, Motherfucking Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane took the top spot this past weekend and I, for one, did my part to earn it the $15.3M. All in all, it was a surprisingly good movie, far better than most of the other placating crap movie studios churn out. If you’re interested at all, go see it. You won’t be overwhelmed, but you won’t be disappointed either.

I’m back from China. Again. This time Qiqihar (surrounding area looks like Illinois/Indiana) and Shanghai (the NYC of China). Hot and numb tofu is fucking delicious and tastes exactly how it is described.

I’m another year older. Again. Thanks for those of y’all what offered your congratulations or brought me bourbon. You should really quit bringing liquor over to my house and leaving it, though, because we’ve got about 10 bottles in the freezer right now. We’re considering a mixed drink party in the forseeable future.

I’ve seen another good movie. Again. Maybe you’ve heard of it, it has to do with herpetological avionics. Totally worth it and far better than most action movies what come out these days.

25 years ago MTV played their first video – the Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star.

25 years later, radio still plays music but MTV no longer plays music videos.

You aren’t fooling anybody. Nobody is in that big of a hurry what ain’t running.

Fast gait + color copies == wasting time.

ps – you walk like there’s a broomstick up your ass

yrs,

ted