Shoot me again, I Ain't Dead Yet.

Let's see. Sysadmin day has come and gone, I have had an unmitigated week from hell (we're talking the seventh layer with demons shitting down your throat and Nickelback serenading you the entire time), and I'm drinking a beer. I'm sitting at home, by myself, drinking beer. Damnit, when I was 19 I never pictured that. Oh well, onward and upward. The Caffreys tastes good anyways so it's all good. Just wish I had more. That's an equation that's easily solved with a small trip to the liquor store, or I switch up to whiskey, but drinking whiskey at home by myself would mean that I have a problem. I don't have any mix.

The title of this one is a tip of the hat to one of the most influential bands of all time. I'm talking about Metallica. Not the bad chunk of their career starting with that piece 'o' shit everyone loved called Enter Sandman (to be perfectly honest, compared to other songs on that album, it's not a bad tune, but that's like asking if you would prefer Syphilis or Gonorrhea) and ended some point later. I'd like to say when they were at the bottom of the pit, but I had given up on them long before that. I've recently come back into the flock with their latest release (don't judge it by the single, it's not the strongest track) and realized how important of a role music has played in my life. Maybe I've gotten back into them for the memories I had growing up, although unlikely. I think it's because the album is genuinely good. Of course now when I listen to them I won't end up in some slam dancing pit at a bush party dodging broken beer bottles. In a sick and twisted way it could be fun to do that again...for a few minutes anyways before I looked around and realized that I'm too out of shape and old to be doing that shit.

Since we're talking about past memories, I think it's time to put a great fallacy to rest. The whole idea about "you'll look back at these as the best year's of your life". I guess I haven't had those best years yet, because when I look back all I think is a penetrating "Fuck no" about the whole mess. We can start at those teenage years (I'm not going to go back any earlier than that because you aren't really even a person until you are a teenager) of high school and the brief period before your twenties. High school sucked. I wasted to many years of my life sitting there being bored, when I showed up at least. There were a few spots of really memorable stuff in there. Many, many concerts, many nights of decadent drink-fests, a few of the ex-girlfriends, the whole getting rid of the virginity thing, and spending the hours I was supposed to be in school hanging out with my friends who also didn't feel like attending those hallowed halls. I think returning to the teenage years would be a fun weekend, maybe a week, but live my life like that? Fuck no. Not on a bet. That was a very, very decadent, self-serving and slovenly time, and as much fun as some bits were, I couldn't live fly by night like I was back then (yeah, like I'm so responsible and such a straight arrow now).

Fast forward a bit...

My twenties. Hmmm, lets sum them up quickly (and in chronological order I might add, just for fun)...battled with various addictions, lived with a couple of girls, got engaged, didn't get married, rediscovered addictions, beat addictions again, got engaged again, got married, got divorced, decided not to re-acquaint myself with addictions, work, work, more work, work, some more work just for a change, go home after a week of unmitigated hell, drink beer. Go back to that? Fuck no.

That one bled into the thirties a little bit. Felt like my twenties anyways. Only difference is all the work mixed in for fun.

Now after reading this far you might be looking at the rev with a slightly cocky look in your eye thinking "what a bitter asshole", but that's not the goal of this entry. Yes, I can be a bitter asshole, but the point is this. Ready? It's the important bit. Even with all that (and I'm not pulling a holier than thou, or a look at me jumping up and down thing here) I still think that there are some great things in store for me and those "best years" are still yet to come. Or, how bout this folks, the best years aren't a decade or even a couple of years, but they are those little memories that always cause a smile or get stuck in your head. I still remember the first day of sun after the summer of unpleasantness and decided then and there that things were ok. It's maybe a three second vision, but it's still very important to me. No matter where/when I am in my life, I remember the sunset that night, the color of the sky, and the smell of the evening and it takes me back to that moment in time when I realized everything's cool.

I guess I should go get some food in me before I indulge to deeply into the fun with alcohol part of the evening.

BTW, go see Clerks2. It's Kevin Smith at his finest.

>>>>>>>

This is not to be construed as a racial slur whatsoever, but it's just one of those funny as shit things I had to share. You don't know funny until you see a minivan in a fast food drive through (yes, I bought fast food. Call it comfort food after the abysmal week) with some fellow who can barely speak English arguing with the 16 year old at the other end tinny, undecipherable speaker about the three fillet o' fishes sandwiches he's trying to order with extra sauce. Last I checked there wasn't any hummus in a fillet o' fish, but I swore he tried to get some on it. Well, I thought it was funny anyways.

This Entry will not be Edited for Content

Here is the official warning folks. This entry will (not may) contain the use of a certain four letter word, that starts with an F and ends with an uck. If you find this kind of language objectionable, or you are worried about offending your virgin eyes look away and tune into the next entry. This one will be offensive.

Fuck the fucking fuckers.

Good. Got that out of the way right off the top.

Now, you may ask yourself, why the gratuitous warning, or perhaps if you didn't heed the warning and read the first line, what's up with the overuse of he word fuck. Well, let me tell you. I watched a very amusing, and very good documentary tonight called F*ck. It is all about the use and etymology of the word fuck. I'm not going to rehash the film, but I'd strongly suggest watching it. It really appealed to my sense of my anti-censorship. I've always been a really strong believer in the right to free speech, even when I don't like what is going to be said, I believe that it has the right to be said. Besides, I like the internet obscene and dirty thanks.

I love (sarcasm) the fact that the "public" can determine that certain words are deemed as obscene and others aren't. What gets me is the fact that I can utter a certain word and offend people. In my true nature, I actually really groove on the fact that I can utter a word that pisses people off. Not that I would do such a thing (wink, wink). It's all about the reaction anyways. Doesn't matter how they react, as long as they react.

The other thing that gets me going is the religious right dictating which words are naughty. For the sake of continuity, let's use the word fuck. It's always be an unwritten law that fuck is the big nasty one, and god won't like it if you say it. Hmmm, I understand the whole premise behind the theory that if you think it's bad, then by the nature of religion it is, but if I don't consider fuck an obscenity, and I cared about the religious viewpoint, I guess it wouldn't be a bad word. Without all the crazy theological and theoretical nonsense, let's look at the facts. No one knows where the word came from but it first appeared in print in the 1400's. 1400's huh? Last I heard Jesus (and religion for that matter) was around a little bit before the 1400's, so wouldn't any obscenities that were around during biblical times probably be lost in the sands of time, and not to mention not in English? Yup, you've been served.

Before I go off on some rampage here I better stop. One last point though. It's just a word. Plain and simple. Four letters strung together in a sequence. It's not like it's a gun. Last I heard a word never killed anyone. Directly anyways.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, / Mother, mother fuck, / Mother, mother fuck, fuck / Mother fuck, mother fuck, / Noich noich noich, / 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, / Noich, noich noich"
Jay

To err is Human, but to forgive is Questionable.

I'm sitting at work watching the storm in Kitchener wishing I had my camera and tripod here so I could get some good shots off. I have a slight addiction to chasing down active thunderstorms and trying to get pictures of the lightning. One might ask why try to get pictures of lightning? Isn't that an effort in futility? The answer is yes, but for every hundred shots, you actually get a couple that are worthwhile. That in itself is worth it. Of course, standing outside in a thunderstorm with a big metal tripod is also a questionable activity, but in this case, the chase is just as good as the catch.

I have been trying to think about what to write to update my blog, but the only thing I hear is the weeping of my liver and how much damage I did to it over the past week. I'll update later this week with a real entry once my body has flushed most of the alcohol out of my system and I've had a chance to get a good night sleep. For the time being, here are some pictures. As Alex likes to say, everyone likes pictures.





















BTW, Friday July 28th is the Annual System Administrator day. Make sure you give your favorite IT person something (hint, hint), but preferably not herpes.

Onward and Upward, into the Great Beyond.

This past weekend marked the slide into self-depravity that everyone needs to fall into occasionally. It was officially the start of my summer vacation, so I figured why not start it out with a open bar wedding and follow it with a week down in North Carolina hanging out with a couple of good friends. As you can imagine, Reverend Moloquin has taken the occasion to not just have a moderate amount of slumming, but instead slide down into the lowest bowels of drunken enjoyment, although it has come with a price. As much as I don't believe in karma, there seems to be some of it following me around, like some leprous person insisting on sharing all the fun with me. For every fun and debaucherous action, there is an equal act of punishment or retribution if you will.

It started with what may have been the wedding of the decade. The same buddy who's bachelor party I went to a couple of weekends ago had the reciprocate wedding this past weekend. As much as I love the principle of an open bar, it is like having bleach in one hand and having toilet bowl cleaner in the other. I wonder what this would make if I mixed them. Do not try that one at home kids...It makes mustard gas. Bad, bad stuff. Anyways, walking up to an open bar at a wedding always results in the same first question from everyone, which also becomes the same question every time you walk up.

"So, what do you have here?"

If it is a well stocked bar this always becomes the most dangerous predicament, because as much as I say I'm going to stick to beer, it becomes an every second drink kind of thing.

"Give me a Creemore, and whatever that is in the neat shaped bottle over there."

As you can imagine the rev was quite mightily tanked by the end of the night. Yup, mighty inebriated. So much so that I was planning on starting the road trip down south on Sunday, but when I woke up early to get on my way, I was still drunk. Not a good combination for driving for 14 hours with a border crossing in the middle, so I decided to sleep Sunday away and leave Monday morning. All in all sounded like a reasonable thing, but it seems that Monday is not a good day for me to travel, or it was that karma bullshit that CG is always talking about.

I'm not going to lay down my 14 hour becoming over 17 hours drive and all the highlights therein but there are a couple of points worth mentioning. Ok, only one worth mentioning, but it is good.

I've always had problems at border crossings. More so when I fly, but occasionally when I drive. I'm not entirely sure why I do. I'm usually wearing my work clothes so all my ink is covered, and I'm not disrespectful or nervous around the guys who wanted to become cops, but ended up as border guards because they couldn't get their shit together, but I can almost never get across the border without some hassle, and why would this time down be the exception? To start with, as I am approaching the border the traffic starts backing up. A little of this is expected, and seeing that it has been a while I couldn't remember where exactly the little booths were so I just rolled with it. An hour later I was still rolling with it, two hours later I was still rolling with it, but now I had to go to the washroom as well, and then, around the two and a half hour mark I could actually see the little border booths. I haven't even got to the border yet and I'm already getting fed up. This should prove interesting. Eventually I get up to the border booth, pass out my documents and start the process of answering all the questions I usually get asked. Where do you work, how long are you going to be in the USA for, etc, etc, etc. I am so used to the questions I'm pretty sure I could be asleep and still answer the questions, but this time they threw one at me I had never heard before.

"What exactly are you bringing into the States?"

Not a question that seems extremely out of the ordinary, but was worded strangely enough that my response was "Uhhh, clothes, ummm....." at which point I got the honor of giving him my keys and got all my baggage searched. The truth is I faltered because my smart ass nature came out with the answer first. I had to choke it back as I wanted to say, "Oh, I'm bringing in Chlamydia, and Tuberculosis, and 48 pounds of black heroin...and a small puppy which is actually a thermo-nuclear detonator."

Luckily my filter came on or I may have got to have fun with a rubber glove that day, fun being a relative term.

Eventually they decided that I wasn't a threat to National security, I didn't have a WMD hiding out with my underwear and socks, and they let me cross the border.

Fast forward 16 hours and I am pulling into the drive at my friend’s house. You gotta love it when you show up at after four in the AM and there is cold beer waiting for you when you arrive, followed by another, and another, etc, until it's bright and sunny out, all the neighbors are driving to work, and me and my buddy are hanging out in his garage, drunk to the lords, deciding that maybe nine in the morning is a good time to go to bed. It pretty much set the mood for the week.

Damn. My liver is crying right now. Shut up and take it bitch. We'll be home soon and we can detox then.

Cya'all in a week. Got some drinking to do.

Making a Million, Five Dollars at a Time.

This summer seems to be the summer of weddings, and also inversely the summer of divorces. Strange how those two seem to go together. No bitterman, not today. In correlation to the amount of weddings, the amount of bachelor parties rise along the same curve, so this past weekend I got to go to one for one of my buddies. As with any bachelor party they all start out fun and innocent, but all end at the same place, the peelers.

It has been a very long time since I've been to a strip joint, about ten years or so actually, and like some place that time forgot, it hasn't changed. This was one I had never been to before, but it might has well of been any other strip joint. As a matter of fact, there were only a couple of things that had changed since the times when I had gone to them. I should bring up a point here before anyone thinks that I was at the rippers all the time when I was younger. I liken strip joints to an amusement park. They're a lot of fun the first few times, but after you've been on all the rides, it's just not that exciting anymore. Besides, it is the ultimate exercise in frustration. As one of my friends put it, "I don't go to a buffet to just look at the food."

There were a couple of things that jumped out at me that have changed though, the male clientele not being one of them, so here is the list of the more noticeable differences that I managed to note.

Piercings - This is a cool new addition to the stripper scene. There weren't alot of girls with any hardware when I was a patron of the clubs, and seeing it now makes me smile. I like seeing the piercings coming in simply because it is something a little bit different, and by the way the crowd was reacting, accepted. Back in the day when a peeler came on stage with piercings it was like a sideshow event, and the girl was trumpeted up as one by the announcer, but last weekend, it was just part of the scenery. Nice. Now if I could only get away with a 0 gauge piercing at work, oh wait, I do. I wonder how one becomes that licentious announcer guy at the strip joints?

Female Clientele - Now this one, although not completely new, was something else. Women at the strip joint in my early twenties were either on stage, serving drinks, or there sitting quietly by their Significant other. This is not to be interpreted as a misogynist comment in anyway; it's just the way it was. I always gathered that it was a joke date, a couple living out some fantasy, or getting ammunition for their later romp. This weekend there was a couple of ladies at the club I was at. They were probably mid-twenties or so, and by far the loudest people in the club. Even louder than the aforementioned announcer. They were on stage with a five dollar bill for every stripper, often times multiple visits. They were both very open about their sexuality and having an absolute blast, although it didn't look like the one's boyfriend was. I thought that was very cool. Not the unhappy boyfriend, I really couldn't care less about that, but that the women were that open and having fun. Of course, probably outside the club they would be ostracized for that same behavior, but for a little while it was accepted, and encouraged. Of course the male clientele were probably just happy seeing something that they have only seen in movies and on the internet.

The Tattoo - you will notice that I wrote The Tattoo, and not just tattoos. This is probably one of the detriments of modern day strip joints, and probably not only strip joints, but you will get my meaning in a second. There is a certain tattoo that you can get which has been dubbed by tattoo circles as "The Stripper Tat". This tattoo is usually tribal in the background, with something over top, sometimes a flower, other times a gemstone, and sits on the lower back directly above your ass. Sure enough, I got to see up close and personal why this tat has earned its name. Every woman who came out on stage that night had one. If you had not gathered this from my past entries, I would qualify as what you would call a tattoo junkie. I have a very large collection of ink in my skin, and one thing that really irks me is when people get tattoos that are very unoriginal and uninspired. There are some very cool tattoo's that follow a pattern or placement on the body, but the stripper tat does not fit into this category. I've also seen some very cool ink on the small of the back, but every piece I seen on stage (pun un-intentional) could have all been traced from the same flash. Being a huge fan of ink, I really like to see women wearing it, but come on, think up something original and reflective on yourself, unless you want to be qualified as a stripper your entire life. I think the best summation of this idea is a quote from a movie I seen. "Might as well be a target." 'nuff said.

What have we learned from this latest experience? Well, unlike many people, the rev has nothing against strippers whatsoever, other than their choice in tattoos. We've also learned that strip joints, no matter how much time has passed essentially remain the same, and finally, I should probably watch the pretty ladies dancing on stage rather than sit there and try to come up with things to write about in my blog. I think I missed the point of the peelers somewhere along the way.

"I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience."
Shelley Winters