Quiet

Much better night at work last night.  The loonies weren't thinking the shadows were going to get them, attention seekers weren't threatening suicide and silly boys weren't trying to castrate themselves.  Always a bonus.  

Work was... ok.  I did my paperwork, checks and watched the history of rock 'n roll on dvd.  Cuz... it was something to do.  I watched Letterman & Ferguson first.  Denzel Washington was on Letterman, so that made that worth the effort.  Ferguson amuses the shit outta me most days... so watched him.  Not sure if I'll watch either tonight... I just might go right for the dvds. 

In shift briefing, I let more of the real myself come out.  You know... these people I work with... they just don't realize how much I self sensor and hold back while I'm in that building.  I possess a caustic wit and a very sharp tongue which, in real life, I  use quite frequently... but on the job?  Yeah... I either keep it tucked away (as much as I can) or tone it down.  (Unless I'm pissed... I lost the ability to self sensor when I'm really angry!) 

And no... I didn't say anything bad to anyone last night. 

I did, however, make Sam snort.  You know... one of those laughter snorts?  When someone hears something that just makes them bust out in laughter and a snort comes out right along with it?  Yup.  One of those snorts.   

See... they've been striping the parking lot.  And they've been taking a long ass time.  It's not hot right now, not humid (well... today was a bit) and it's not rained in a week... and it's not like we have a huge parking lot.  But... it's taken them all fucking week to do this, ok?  And Sam was complaining about it... wondering if they were out there on their hands and knees with stencils and paint rollers or something. 

My reply was that, while I was glad they were restriping the parking lot so that the parking spaces were clearly defined, I was annoyed by the fact that having brand spanking new lines didn't change people's parking habits a damned bit... the person parked next to me was parked ON the line, instead of in between them. 

Then I told him I felt like printing out a bunch of business type cards to leave on the windshield of these knuckleheads who couldn't get their vehicles between the lines... and told him the card would say "If you fuck like you park, you'll never get it in." 

Apparently, this hit Sam square in the funny bone. 

Cuz, that's when he did the laugh-snort thing.  Then had to cop to having just snorted.    Ahhh... kids.  

Not Much

Going on otherwise.  Still have cable.  Have no idea what was up with that stuff the other day.  I'm amused by it, though, especially if they came out here and actually checked my line and I'm still getting it for free?  Seriously.  What the fuck?  But... amusing, just the same.    

Shouldn't be much at work tonight.  Intend to watch more of the history of rock 'n roll on dvd.  Made it up to the late 60s/early 70s soul music era... Barry Gordy & Motown records and the Motown sound.  All that stuff.  This is after having gotten through the beginnings of rock 'n roll... through the R&B guys who really gave rock 'n roll it's start (No... white America... Elvis is not where rock 'n roll started, but thanks for playing.), through the Elvis days, Buddy Holly, etc and so forth... on through the British Invasion with the Beatles... and everyone who followed hot on their footsteps... and the Beach Boys, etc.  

I pretty much already know how the whole thing came about... so the history isn't really why I'm watching these things... it is the music.  Man, starting from the blues guys and other "race" music folks... up to Chuck Berry, Little Richard and them... Elvis, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison... the "teen idols" that honky-fied race music into bubble gum pop style (Yes, Pat Boone... I'm talking about you.) Chubby Checker, Jerry Lee Lewis... then the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who... The Animals, Herman's Hermits, Beach Boys... then rolling through to folks like The Byrds, The Mamas & Papas... then off into soul music... Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson and all the Motown & other soul groups...  Man... I rocked out all night long last night.  

You get to hear all this fantastic music on this dvd set.  I'll hear more tonight.  Moving through the 70s... lots of good stuff there... then onwards & upwards.  

Talked 

To my nephew while I was out grilling burgers this evening.  He had just come back from the pool.  He said my dad and him had driven up to my aunt & uncle's to bring them back stuff from the condo.  Zach was annoyed.  It's probably because these are annoying people to deal with... he should know this.  

They were supposed to be up there at 11a.  Ok?  So my dad starts calling around 0900 or so to confirm they're going to be there.  Nobody home.  Calls several more times.  Nobody home.  Now... this is AFTER they've already set the time and date... ok?  Not like my dad was springing this on them or anything.  

Zach said it was 230p before they finally got up there (which means nobody was home until around 130p... even though my dad was supposed to be there at 11.  At least he was smart enough to call ahead...) and then when they got there and are unloading all this junk (furniture type stuff... dresser, microwave, etc) my aunt didn't know where she wanted it, didn't have any room made for putting it anywhere... causing Zach to have to stand around, holding heavy shit while she figured out what the fuck she wanted to do with it.  This also involved Zach carrying something upstairs, then having to carry it back down again when she changed her mind. 

Zach was not a happy camper.  

Of course... this is how these people are.  First lesson to all of the rest of us?  The world revolves around THEM.  Your schedule is unimportant, your life is unimportant... etc and so forth.  They can't be bothered by little details like... being on time, having shit set up before you get there... they are IMPORTANT PEOPLE.  (The world revolves around them, remember.)  They have IMPORTANT things to do... like play golf and play the organ for church.  They do not have time for such trivial things as finding a place to put their junk when you do them the favor of bringing it home for them.  (My thinking is that they have so much of the grandmonster's shit in their house that they don't have room for their own shit anymore...)  

Then Zach was saying how my dad was telling him that he wasn't going to say anything, he was just going to smile the whole time he was there and then curse them the whole way home.  

  Yeah.  

That's what the fuck he always does because he doesn't have the balls to say anything to them.  My dad... he talks big... he's going to do this, that or the other thing... but, in reality he is a big pussy.  He is waaaaaay too fucking nice to people... and those people (especially the ones related to him like his brother & mother) take advantage and then fuck him over.  And... he just keeps going back for more.  

I do not have that particular problem.    As I've written here before... if I never see those two (my aunt & uncle) and their kid ever again... I won't be sad about it.  I won't miss them.  I won't care.  I mean... I don't want them to die or anything like that... I just don't feel the need or any desire to share oxygen with them.  Ever.         

Today's Video

As Tears Go By... written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards.  Originally recorded, I believe, by Marianne Faithfull.  I would've posted that version... but I don't like it.  (Not a huge fan of female vocalists, generally speaking... unless they have a blusey or deeper voice.  Women tend to sing in tones that hurt my ears!)  This song,  this version, was also used during the last... 4 or 5 minutes of the season finale of House.  (You really didn't think I was going to go an entire post without mentioning House... did you???  )

The Rolling Stones ~ As Tears Go By

Lyrics for my hearing impaired readers...

It is the evening of the day
I sit and watch the children play
Smiling faces I can see
But not for me
I sit and watch
As tears go by

My riches can't buy everything
I want to hear the children sing
All I hear is the sound
Of rain falling on the ground
I sit and watch
As tears go by

It is the evening of the day
I sit and watch the children play
Doin' things I used to do
They think are new
I sit and watch
As tears go by

Peace... 

Two More...

Nights to go.  The question is... will I survive?   

Oh yes.  I suppose I will.  It has been a long ass week, though. 

Fox fucking with my reality and not showing House this week... at all.  Water heater going kersplat... or whatever... not much sleep.  Hoping my free cable doesn't go away (it hasn't... yet)... work silliness.  Argh.  

I'm ready for the weekend.  

This is my favorite holiday, you know.  Celebrating America's birthday with The Three Bs... Beer, BBQ & Blowing Shit Up.  Seriously... what the hell could be better than all that???  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing. 

The good news, I suppose, is that I actually slept well today.  Last night was kinda suckish in the lack of sleep, whoa holy shit I'm tired department.  Fortunately, Black Hawk Down is loud & busy, so I stayed quite awake.   

Last Night

During shift briefing Kelly tells Sam that Doug (one of those E-Vile 1sties) came to her and told her our head fixer upper guy told him that someone (feel free to insert MY name here) was still moving the TVs off the pod and breaking them.  This pissed Sam off... apparently, he's had like... four or five conversations about this with admin... these TVs keep getting broken and they keep pointing fingers at 3rd shift.  (Well... me, let's be honest.)

#1... Good thing Doug's dumb ass didn't think it was a good idea to say anything like that to me.  Seriously.
#2... As I stated when this all came down months ago... It was never me breaking the fucking TVs in the first place, it's the fucking inmates... hello.  You'd think that'd be obvious now, but... guess not. 
#3... I work in a building full of absolute fucktards.  Seriously. 

Kelly & Sam (& Jake for that matter, even if he isn't a real supervisor) know that I'm not moving those fucking TVs.  I haven't moved one since I was first accused (indirectly) of breaking them and asked to stop moving them.  I used the wall mounted TV... now... it puts me in a bad position to monitor inmates... but, apparently, that's what they want... so there ya go. 

Even better was that Kelly said when she told Doug that nobody on 3rd shift was moving the TVs, Doug replied with "That's not what the inmates are saying."  Cuz you know... we always trust what inmates have to say... especially against fellow COs.   

I swear to the stars... if all of the 1sties (except Kate & Jeff) fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, I wouldn't be a damn bit sorry.  (Actually, I might be the one putting a foot to their ass to push them over.  )  Bitch, piss, moan & complain about everything and then pull shit like this... cuz it's easier to blame 3rd shift for shit than accept the fact that maybe they (and 2nd shift) aren't watching the inmates as closely as they should be when they're messing with (hooking up video game systems, vcrs, dvd players, etc) the TVs. 

At least Kelly & Sam seem to be pissed off by the fact that 3rd shift (ME!) is still being blamed for this shit.  I'm not sure if it's because they don't like our shift being blamed for doing shit we're not doing OR because they're afraid someone's going to say something fucking stupid to ME and get me all fired up.  They do not want to deal with me when I'm pissed off and they know someone saying something stupid to me (like what Doug said to Kelly) will set me the fuck off.  Or maybe it's a combination of those two things, who knows?

Though Mal & I were chatting as I was leaving shift briefing last night (he's in 2nd briefing) he said something about his temper and I made comment about when I'm pissed, I'm really pissed and Sam was like "Nooooooooooooo..."     Then when I gave him a look he was like "Oops... did I say that out loud???" 

Craziness...

Since we no longer have a locked mental health facility in our area (the state closed it down... said it was wasn't necessary.) for teenagers, we keep getting certifiable fucking whack jobs into our facility that need to be in a mental institution and not in a jail.  They're a pain in the ass to deal with and we don't have the... anything... necessary to deal with them.  We don't have the medical personal, we don't have the staffing, we don't have a facility designed to deal with them.

Right now, we've got a pretty full house with whackolicious kids.  We had the oncall mental health counselor out for three kids last night.  A girl who was seeing shadows and freaking out (crazy as a shit house rat), one that is crazy, but just wanted attention last night (he's assualtive, sexually aggressive and exceptionally needy) and the third one attempted to castrate himself by ripping his sheets into strips and trying them (very, very tightly I'm told) around his scrotum.  He did change his mind after a while... but had tied his shit up so tightly and he couldn't get it undone... so Sam & Todd had to go in there and cut the sheets off his nutsack.  Fucking idiot. 

I'm so very glad I'm back in my little hole and don't have to repond to shit like that.  Seriously.  I don't have the patience to deal with crazy fuckers.  Crazy fuckers are not logical and I don't do that very well.  At all.  And there's nothing at logical about wanting to castrate yourself.  You know??? 

It was pretty quiet after they got those three all squared away. 

Today

Haven't done much, of course.  I slept really well.  I still feel a bit tired, probably cuz I've been running behind all week on the sleep quota... but I feel much better than I did yesterday.  So that's something. 

Had some chow, had some ice cream... looked at the email.  Came here. 

Downloaded some music.  The Thrill Is Gone ~ BB King, My Lucky Day ~ Bruce Springsteen, Don't Bring Me Down ~ ELO, Ooh Child ~ The Five Stairsteps, Baba O'Riley ~ The Who, Tweeter & The Monkey Man ~ Traveling Wilburys, You've Lost That Loving Feeling ~ Righteous Brothers, Hot Stepper ~ Ini Kamoze, Boom Boom ~ John Lee Hooker, I Know You Want Me ~ Pitbull, End of the Line ~ Traveling Wilburys, Unchained Melody ~ Righteous Brothers, Hoochie Coochie Man ~ Muddy Waters. 

Yes... I know.  I'm all over the place with my music tastes.  Eclectic.  Most of my friends/family don't want me to bring MY cds if we're going on a road trip (the exception would be my nephew, cuz his tastes are eclectic as well) because I burn my own stuff and you never know what you're going to get.  I may have Mandy Patinkin performing Send in the Clowns and right after him have 50 Cent banging some gangsta shit.  (And yes... that is how I mix my cds.  Occasionally, I'll make one that's all one genre of music or similar genres... but usually I mix and match.  That music I downloaded tonight?  It's now all burned onto the same cd.  That's how I roll. 

Tonight

Still have Training Day to watch.  I'll have to find something else to throw in the backpack and take along... not sure what, though.  I'm going to run outta movies eventually.  Then what?  Start watching House season 1 again, I suppose... since season 5 doesn't come out until August 25.  I dunno.  I'll think of something, I'm sure.  

I'll have to poke through my dvd collection and see what I can't find.  I have the history of rock 'n roll on cd and a video anthology of Springsteen's stuff... I could dig sitting and groovin' to that shit.  Maybe Red Dawn... I love that movie... and I haven't watched in a while.  Besides the usual suspects in that film, there's Brad Savage (he played Danny...  he & the one girl were the only survivors in the movie.) and Brad is the bass player (and occasional vocalist) for my favorite celebrity charity group, Band From TV.

I dunno.  We'll see what I can dig outta the dvd case for this evening...  

Today's Video

I'm pimping Band From TV... again.    Their CD/DVD combo is available exclusively on amazon.com.  Click the link in the previous paragraph to check out the band, it's members and the charities they support with their music sales and concert revenue.  Members include;  Greg Grunberg (Heroes), Hugh Laurie (House), Bob Guiney (The Bachelor), Bonnie Somerville (Cashmere Mafia), Jesse Spencer (House), Jamie Denton (Desperate Housewives), Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives), Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) and Brad Savage.  (This cd/dvd was recorded prior to Jesse Spencer & Teri Hatcher being involved in the band, however...)  Other actors have performed with the band at live gigs... including Jorge Garcia (Lost), Zachary Levi (Chuck), Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), Wayne Brady (Who's Line), Joey Fatone (N'Sync), Lester Holt (NBC news)... probably a few more than I'm not aware of cuz they seem to have no problem sharing the stage with anyone who wants to gig with them. 

Band From TV ~ CD/DVD promo (all clips taken from the DVD)

Peace... 

Annoyed

So like... as if showing an American Fucking Idol rerun last night wasn't enough to fuck up my weekly mojo, Fox decided that they needed to show Legally Blonde tonight, instead of House.  Fucking.  Bastards.     Now I'm all sorts of bummed the hell out.  Good gawd damned thing IHop Tuesday wasn't cancelled or I'd probably have had a nervous break down.    Jeezes.  

Anyway

Watched movies at work.  Reservoir Dogs... because I find it highly amusing.  (Not sure if that was the intent or not, but... I think the movie is funny as hell.)  Steve Buscemi.  Need I say more???    Then I started on Black Hawk Down.  Interestingly... I never realized how many non Americans (playing Americans) were in this film.  I guess I just wasn't paying attention.  Jason Isaacs and Ewan McGregor, I knew... had forgotten about Orlando Bloom being in the movie (just a wee spot, so not hard to forget) and Eric Bana... wasn't very familiar with Eric Bana (name was familiar, that's about it) and didn't know he was an Aussie until I watched the bonus material and he opened his mouth. 

Everyone does a nice job on their American accents... mostly.  Not real sure about Jason Isaacs' version of a southern accent... it just comes off sounding... weird.  But then... I've never heard Isaacs speak with anything but his native accent before... so maybe that's why he sounded weird to me?  I dunno. 

Oh yes.  Ewan Bremner is a Scot, Hugh Dancy's a Brit, Ioan Gruffudd's Welsh... I assume if I went through the entire cast, I'd find many, many more. 

Wonder why so many non Americans playing American soldiers???  Not that it matters.  I just find it curious.

Didn't have time to get through the entire movie.  I watched Letterman & Ferguson last night before starting Reservoir Dogs... so by the time I got through that and it's bonus material... I just didn't have time for all of Black Hawk Down.  I'll get through it tonight, though... then move on to Training Day.   

After work...

Well... it was IHop Tuesday, of course.  Had some of the breakfast... hung out with my friend for a while at her house... not long, though... maybe 20 minutes after breakfast, if that.  Then off to home.

Water heater still leaking.  Call the place on the label on the damned leaky and set up an appointment for someone to come out and look at it.  My mom came home from work early to be here for that, so once I got all that set up, I was able to go to bed... which was good, cuz I was really tired.

Of course... that sleeping... or at least sleeping well... thing went out the window as soon as the water heater fixer upper guy came... had to have a new heater put in, which I had already suspected.  That interupted my sleep for over two hours, off and on.

Because the water heater is, literally, about 2 ft outside my north bedroom door.  So, this guy removing the old one and putting in the new one?  Well... let's just say it's not the most quiet of processes.  Though I do have to say, it wasn't annoying loud, either.  I did manage to sleep, off and on, through the mess.  But, I'm very tired now.  Tonight at work is going to suck balls because of that.  Hopefully, I'll be able to sleep undisturbed tomorrow, though... if not, I might die before the weekend gets here...

And then...

Thought we lost our free cable there for a while.  I guess the cable guy came out and was messing around with our line... and then the cable went bye-bye... but now it's back.  Go figure. 

Now... understand, I didn't run a line up their pole and snatch their cable... I didn't do that.  Wouldn't do that.  The cable company was told, by the previous owner's of the house, to shut the cable off when they moved.  But... they never did.  Three years and change later?  I still have cable.

This is a good thing.  While I'm not fundamentally opposed to paying for cable... I'm kinda opposed to paying for the craptastic ghetto cable we have here.  It is seriously bad... fuzzy upper channels (we're just talking basic cable here), channels that fade in out... channels that morph into each other.  All kinda of crazy shit.  (and yes, it's that bad even if you're paying for it...)

If they figure me out and cut me off, I'll pay of course.  I won't be happy about it... and neither will they.  See... I don't pay, so I don't have any right to complain about the craptastic ghetto cable service they provide.  But if I pay???  Oh yeah.  I gots me some rights and believe me, complain I will... cuz their cable sucks.  (And they are the only game in town, so it's them or nothing...)   

So.  Now I'm just waiting to see if my cable magically goes away.  I'm thinking... if they were on to the fact that it's not being paid for that they'd just shut it off and leave it off... but today they shut it off and then turned it back on.  What the hell?  Maybe they have craptastic ghetto cable because retards run the place???  I dunno.  

  I

Have nothing on my agenda for the rest of the week.  My mojo has been tossed outta kilter by Fox, the fuckers.  No House, at all, this week.  The upside, I suppose, is that... I just have to get through tonight and two more and then I have a three day weekend. 

I'm ready for that.  First, it's my favorite holiday.  Second, I need the three day weekend.  I'm so fucking tired.  Not that I'll sleep much, but... I won't be at work and that's restful all by itself.  And that's likely to be my last three day weekend until September.  Which sucks balls... 

Today's Video

This song is being played on some TV ad (Pontiac?  I think it's a car ad, but not 100% certain.) and it's such a catchy little tune, you hear it and it's stuck in your head.  Been a long while since I'd heard it too, until that commerical...

Ini Kamoze ~ Hot Stepper

I'm outta time...

Peace!  

What The...

Blueberry fuck muffins is this shit???  American Fucking Idol for two hours and NO House???  You fuckers!  Tribute to Michael Jackson... a two hour American fucking Idol rerun??? Argh.  I think we've had enough of the MJ tributes and shit now.  It's all good until it starts fucking with my reality.  Gawd damn it.  

Grrrrrrrrrrr...

They better not pull that shit tomorrow, the assholes.  Fuck up my entire week.  Now I've got to wait until morning for IHop to be in a more gooder mood.  Not.  Happy.  

And yes... I'm going to pout.  That shit helps me get through the stupid part of the week.  Now my flow is all disrupted and shit.  

And...

To make matters worse... my hot water heater has decided it would like to leak.  I suppose that means I need a new one.  Which, I suppose, means I have to call a fucking plumber tomorrow.  Or... something.  I have no fucking idea.  That makes me so incredibly happy, as you can imagine.  

Better yet, I get to listen to my mom flip the fuck out.  She was ranting and raving and pitching a fit over it... slamming doors and shit.  As if the fucker's going to stop leaking because she's pissed off that it's leaking.  Dork.  She was all "if I have to stay up all night"...   I guess she thinks, if it's leaking, she should stay up all night and watch it leak?  I have no idea.  It's just a little leak... and if it becomes a big leak, what the fuck is she going to do???  Toss towels on it all night?  Goofy woman.

Work

Not too much going on there.  I haved decided, sorta, to see if I can't make Sam "twitchy".    My old goal was to punch a dent into one or the other of my admin filing cabinet doors.  After months of smacking, them I finally managed to dent one.  (Fuckers are harder than they look!  That and every good smack required two to three weeks hand healing time before I could whack it again.)

I pointed out my dent (it's just a little one... did I mention those doors are harder than they look?) to Sam and told him I punched it into the door.  He freaked out.    Not in a "bad War, no denting government property" sorta way but in a panicky, twitchy sorta way.  He started acting all concerned, asking (in a nervous tone) if I was pissed off about something or what the problem was.  

This amused me greatly. 

Since I've already been told (by other supervisors and others) that I intimidate the pants off Sam... well... I've decided that making him so anxious in dealing with me that he becomes twitchy.  

Why would I do such a thing?  Oh... cuz I can.  It will amuse me.  It's like an experiment.  See how twitchy I can get Sam without ever doing a single thing to him.    We've never even had a single cross word and he's already afraid I'm going to beat him up... or something.  Four hours to come talk to me about his stupid ass email he sent out six hours to come give me my evaluation.  He does NOT want to have confrontation with me in any way, shape or form... and that amuses me.  

I've got to find a new hobby there because my pandiculation/mirror neuron reaction experiments have been caught on to and I get yelled at for making everyone in shift briefing yawn. 

Today's Video     

Since the bastards didn't put on House, I decided to watch my own version.  **Warning** season 5 finale spoilers... if you haven't seen the last ep yet, you probably wanna skip this.  (And what's taking you so long???)

House

I've run outta time, so I'm outta here.

Peace... 

Well...

It was an uninteresting, quick day.  I didn't do anything.  I slept in.  Way in.  Did some laundry, fixed my shower, played with the dogs, went out to eat, played keno (and didn't win), watched House with mom, played Sims 3 (I'm reasonably sure I don't like this incarnation.), checked out some stuff here and there on the 'net, read some email... doing this post. 

Yup.  'Tis exciting being me. 

Well.  Nobody around.  Dad, sis, bil & kids are in Colorado.  My ferrety friend... well... haven't heard from her, I probably won't until IHop Tuesday.  (Dead ferret and all, you know.)  And... well... those are about the only people I hang out with on any consistent basis, so there ya go. 

From Yesterday's Comment Section

You sound like you feel displaced in a sense. It's how I would describe it. There is no wrong way to mourn or "feel" i though hubby was the only other person besides me that really could live without the rest of the human race but maybe not lol.. ~ one_trached_momma  Hmmmmmmm... interesting thought.  I'm not sure that displaced is the right word, but I get what you're saying and I don't think I disagree.  There is a "quote" from a John D. MacDonald book that has always stuck with me because it's quite often how I feel.  The protagonist from the book, Travis McGee, says this in The Scarlet Ruse: 

I am apart. Always I have seen around me all the games and parades of life and have always envied the players and the marchers. I watch the cards they play and feel in my belly the hollowness as the big drums go by, and I smile and shrug and say, Who needs games? Who wants parades? The world seems to be masses of smiling people who hug each other and sway back and forth in front of a fire and sing old songs and laugh into each others faces, all truth and trust. And I kneel at the edge of the woods, too far to feel the heat of the fire. Everything seems to come to me in some kind of secondhand way which I cannot describe. Am I not meat and tears, bone and fears, just as they? Yet when most deeply touched, I seem, too often, to respond with smirk or sneer, another page in my immense catalog of remorses. I seem forever on the edge of expressing the inexpressible, touching what has never been touched, but I cannot reach through the veil of apartness. I am living without being truly alive. I can love without loving. When I am in the midst of friends, when there is laughter, closeness, empathy, warmth, sometimes I can look at myself from a little way off and think that they do no really know who is with them there, what strangeness is there beside them, trying to be something else.

As for being able to live without the rest of the human race... well... I probably could.  I've never understood why Tom Hanks tried so fucking hard to get off that island in Castaway, to be perfectly honest.  I don't think I would've.  As long as I was reasonably sure I wasn't going to starve to death or anything...

I'm am not a social person.  I'm a very misanthropic person... not that I dislike humanity, necessarily, but I'm a little leery of them as a whole and most certainly distrust the vast majority of them.  (Yes... I do have trust issues, always have... and then I got a career in corrections!    If that doesn't make you distrust people on the whole, nothing will.)  

I don't need (or want) vast amounts of interaction with other people.  My mother lives in this house... that's almost more interaction on a daily basis than I can handle, truth be told.  (But then again... in the grand scheme of things, we do not spend a great deal of time together during the week.  Just meals...)

I've lived in this house for a bit over three years now and I can count, on both hands, the number of times I've had friends over.  The last time I had friends over?  Was last July 4th... if that tells you anything.  (And these are my friends!)  I do go over to my ferrety friend's place fairly regularly... but she is really the only one that I visit with any consistency.  My other friends?  Kate, Malachi, Brent, Mark, Jeff, Jeff & Lisa... (man... what a short list!) well... I'm going to hang out with Kate here in a couple of weeks.  Our birthdays are a day apart and we always try to hook up for a dinner celebration at some point.  Our work schedules don't allow a lot of hanging out time anymore, though.  Malachi?  Is my friend... but we do not socialize outside of work.  (Neither of us is all that social, so it just works out that way.)  Brent... doesn't live here anymore, I've seen him once in 3 years.  I do email him on a regular basis, though.  Mark?  I have no idea what's happened to Mark... haven't heard from him in... forever.  Jeff?  Lives in the same town as me, but I never see him.  Hell, I barely see him at work.  Besides, he's got a family now and he's got military stuff, so he's always busy.  Jeff & Lisa (my godkid's parents)... they live an hour away... it's been over a year since I've visited them... though we email every day.

The people I hang out with the most?  Are my family.  My sis & bil, my nephew.  (Not so much my niece... we have absolutely nothing in common, other than being related, sooooo...)  I haven't even hung out with my brother in forever.  (Conflicted schedules, don't ya know...) 

Sounds rather lonely, I suppose... but... I'm not lonely.  I don't desire to have a multitude of people needing me to spend time with them.  I like hanging out, but... like to hang out on my patio with my family, more than anything.

Yes, I know... I'm an odd duck. 
QuackQuack!  

Anyway

I've spent a goodly amount of time playing Sims 3... I don't think I like it.  Which sucks, cuz I spent $60 on it.  I don't necessarily dislike it... it's just... I dunno.  It's not the way I want to play The Sims, I guess.  I do like some of what they've done, but it hasn't nothing do with game play and everything to do with customizing. 

What I don't like?

1)  The little Sims peeps all look the same.  Yes... you can customize them, but... they still look the same... and they're ugly.  What the fuck?  You can change their features and all that... but they still all resemble each other way too much.  That bugs the shit outta me.  
2)  Having to run all about the place to build up skills.  That is annoying.   
3)  I have no idea what I need to do to get promotions (I mean, I do, but there is no little meter to help you.) at your job and you don't make very much money.  Poor fucking Sims in the poor house!
4)  It is exceptionally difficult to make friends.  Stand-offish bastards, these new Sims.
5)  No "memory" or history or whatever you want to call it for your Sims.  I had a fucking baby disappear.  Have no earthly idea where she went.  She was just gone.  Don't know if someone kidnapped her (I was having a party at the time.), if social services came and took her (Did I mention I was having a party at the time?) or if the evil baby-snatching fairies took her.  (I have no idea if there are baby-snatching fairies, I'm just saying...)  The baby's parental peeps didn't seem to stressed out about the fact that their youngest child went missing either.
6)  Too many peeps in too many places.  As if having a disappearing baby wasn't enough... my teen Sim managed to drown at the swimming pool, the stupid fucker.  I can only assume that while I was at another location, tending to the rest of the family's needs that teen boy Sim got exhausted and drown.  Couldn't plead with the Reaper to save him, like in Sims 2, either, damn it, so the fucker just died.  The teen's parentals were upset by the fact that his stupid ass drowned.  Guess they liked him better than his sister.  ::shrug:: 

House, MD
Trouble ~ Pink

Peace!